I’m reading Incendiary by Chris Cleave. Within a page, I was pulled in and even as I wonder where the book is taking me, I know I’m in good hands.
And that is it. Despite the type of novel I read, I need to know that I am in good hands. Much like with dear friends, I invest when I’m reading. I pay attention. I may not remember the details, but I remember how you felt when you told me a story, and I know how the character would act or not act depending on a given situation.
It’s rare that a friend does something and I think, “Well, that’s surprising.” We’re rather predictable characters, the human race. A list of events happen and we are drawn to a conclusion, good, bad or indifferent. If that pull isn’t there, the story isn’t worth reading. It goes off the rails. The emotional integrity is lost.
Emotional truth.
Today as I sat on the train in a loud car (as opposed to the “Quiet” cars, the closest thing I’ve seen to a police state), two women got into an argument. The same people sit in the same car and as these two got into it, the first, an older woman with short blonde hair, smug and defiant, made a remark to the two sitting behind her. She and her friend have sat behind me in the past, and I think her comment was to the woman behind, to keep it down. It surprised me as she and her friend are loud in their own personal talk. I know as I’ve given up sleep on numerous occasions and been forced to listen to their sagas, overdramatic and full of self-congratulations.
She made a comment, and the woman behind her, another loud woman but of the hispanic variety, loud and brassy, peppered her commentary with token neck shakes and hand gestures, getting louder and louder as she went, putting on a show for the other passengers, a display of “I will not be fucked with”. She and her friend, the hispanic woman I mean to say, gave each other looks and after the woman in front backed down, not without a smirk to save her dignity, she spent the rest of the ride being even louder to prove she could.
Predictable and without the least bit of emotional truth. The woman in the front was snide and condescending, the woman behind was a bully and out to prove a point. Essentially they were both idiots and putting on a show in a world where reality shows are the benchmark for behavior.
I wonder when I see two grown women going at it, not a bit of truth between them, what hope there is for quiet truth. I wonder which of them updated their status on Facebook to remark upon the idiot on the train. Maybe they both did.
I read my book, swept up in Chris Cleave’s ability to take a premise I wouldn’t have read had I known (similar to my feelings for Little Bee) and weave it into something so real and true that as I sat watching real life, I wondered if there wasn’t a crack in the universe.
Truth would now be found in books, and the mess coming out of people’s mouths was no longer to be more than a virtual chest-puffing-out charade.
Cleave does first person so remarkably, I read and felt like I was taking a class on writing and relieved to be among something real, something true in the realm of such utter bullshit. I expect my children to behave better those two adult women.
Lately I’ve begun to suspect that polite discourse is a quaint thing of the past, no more useful than a chamber pot. I teach my kids to say please and thank you, eat with their mouths closed and their elbows off the table. I tell them that sometimes you don’t know what someone has going on, so it’s better to be kind than to meet anger with anger. I wonder if I’m leaving them unprepared in such a senseless world where short tempers are bragged about and bullies are found in business left and right and sometimes the only way to survive is to squash them.
But that flattens the spark that makes you human, and makes you a character on a train, one that puts on a show for the others under the guise of defending yourself.
I don’t want my kids to have flattened sparks.
Lacking role models in this internet/reality tv age, I want them to have the emotional truth of a character in a novel instead.
That’s what I decided when I was not sleeping and reading a really good book while bouncing along a train track for an hour this evening.
I agree that reality shows have taken the universal psyche to a new low (a sort of urban warfare where war is being waged against human intelligence and the species is being warped). I hate arguments over ego or station, I really dislike these Jerry Springer outbursts. Argh! Yes to good manners and patience and a transporting read. (I love that title, Incendiary; I am reading A Summer of Drowning which is like a magnetic pull every night.) xxcat
Gathering at a farmhouse in Italy where people talk and laugh and drink and dance seems the perfect antidote for such idiocy. Can you write me a prescription, Doc?
Ma certo! I recommend a minimum of two weeks on the divan out the back under the grapevines and a steady diet of local wine, light pasta and Cat’s famous salads, involving an occasional swim or visit to a villa, but no activity beyond the occasional scribble in your moleskin or the savouring of a good novel…
Bueno. The beauty of this…this will happen one day. Love.
Ci credo anch’io/I believe this too! Xxx
I think it boils down to personal responsibility. Owning up to what you feel and expressing it in a respectful manner are not valued in our world. Once we deal head on with a problem, we’ll all be better off. Could you imagine if misunderstandings and stomach ulcers died out? What a beautiful world we’d have.
Yes! It’s the respectful manner. Exactly. Even if I’m wrong, if I’m talking to you respectfully, you have the opportunity to help me grow. So many people are done with growing, trying to learn from the people around them, always on the defense looking for the way to be right and tear down anyone who disagrees. Uggh.
I used to wonder why people would go on reality shows and what my family calls slap-fight shows and expose all their secrets and emotions on TV.
But they don’t, really. It’s all just drama, skimmed off the surface. I’m not sure if there’s anything beneath the superficial angst and undying love and lust and rage but hollow cores. Maybe they think their fifteen minutes of WTF-TV will fill them? Justify or vindicate their choices? Win them fabulous prizes or a night at a fancy hotel?
Maybe it’s desperation for their 15 minutes of fame in a world where Snooki is informing their children’s worldview, and internet porn assures them that their husband never looks them in the eye while making love.
“Within a page, I was pulled in and even as I wonder where the book is taking me, I know I’m in good hands.”
Last night I started “The Free World”. You could have been describing me. Ahh, nothing better than than that thrill of excitement with a new good book.
Manners. Aargh. About a month ago a coffee vendor over here implemented a new policy – his staff will not serve someone who tries to place an order while talking on their cell phone. The beginning of a revolution? I hope so.
Is The Free World first person?
As I always suspected, revolution begins with the people holding the coffee beans. Power to the baristas!
Nope.
(Also, I forgot to say, I’ve read Little Bee – different title in US?? The Other Hand or something? and agree re Cleave’s ability)
Power to the baristas indeed!
What POV (I’m in pursuit at present of books that pull you in, powerful, and how they do it, always looking for recommends)?
Just checked and yes, Little Bee in the US, The Other Hand in the UK. Little Bee…devastated me in the best of ways. Incendiary? Yes, just as good. How does he do it??
Barista law! We could all use more of that.
Averil,
I’ve had you on my mind so much lately as your dreams become more a reality. Although, I don’t have words of wisdom for your flat tire as I’m someone who goes until the wheels fall off, just know we all know you can do this. Love and fairy dust to your attempts at greatness.
Oh hell, I’m not attempting greatness. I’m only trying to get a skinny little book published. But I’ll take that love and fairy dust all the same.
XO
There is a crack in the universe. Can we just drop these women into it?!
I’m going back some decades and rereading REBECCA. Ahhhhhhh….
I saw Descendants last night, and I think I missed the point but there was a scene where Beau Bridges is sitting at a bar in Kauai and I didn’t even hear what they were saying. I just wanted to sit quietly at that bar and spend my life as a surfer dudette.
Sadly, I think those people were being truthful – that a side of true (awful) human nature is to pretend, to display, like peacocks, this kind of aggressive, petty fakeness, Whether it’s nature or nurture I don’t know. But I tend to be drawn to these awful characters – only on the page! I flee from them in real life.
“Playing peacock”. It’s my new expression for these nitwits.
” I wonder which of them updated their status on Facebook to remark upon the idiot on the train. Maybe they both did.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about this idea, lately. I remember a caution in grad school, where my MFA concentration was creative nonfiction. A very wise instructor cautioned us about mining our lives too closely for material. I mean, it’s one thing to stretch the truth in memoir, and quite another to edit your life to serve your memoir. I find myself doing that sometimes. Taking the road not taken not to take it, but to give myself better, more interesting material. Good? Bad? Dunno, but that line in your post brought it up.
Facebook has created this ubiquitous public journaling that’s like unprocessed memoir. We take pictures now for the purpose of posting them immediately as though they don’t exist unless they’re shared. And our fights are all these mini Jerry Springer shows, played out in public. So. Manners. I’m for them.
“…as though they don’t exist unless they’re shared.”
Yes, exactly. I wonder how defusing ourselves this way can possibly be a good thing. A dear friend of mine sent me an e-mail with the comment, “…before long we’ll be a shadow of our gravatars” and I thought how sad that I know what that sentence means.