An All-Clear in the End-- But Not the One You Were Expecting

I will probably never understand why it takes me so long to get my head back on straight post-vacation. If nothing else, it's at least a sign that I had an excellent time, and was thus able to forget everything real-world related. At any rate...

Out Stealing Horses: wow. While it didn't take the turn towards disturbing teen relationships I suspected it might, it did offer plenty of unexpected occurrences and things for both narrator and reader to ponder. Had an American author taken on this story, there probably would have been a great deal more pained self-examination and a years'-long process of recovering from the self-torture an abandoned kid might have imposed upon himself, at least until some therapist-figure convinced him he wasn't to blame for anything.

It's precisely that lack of striving for a state of psychiatry-approved equilibrium that I value about this book. There's almost a stoicism to it; a confrontation of restless ghosts, but one that just lets them come up and show themselves, receive the requisite amount of attention they demand, and then recede back into the far corners of memory, probably only until they start feeling neglected again. And the narrator's awareness of what some might call faults-- his ambiguous feelings towards various family members, for example-- is present not in the activist mode of envisioning steps on the ladder of "well-being" to be climbed and conquered, but simply as self-awareness, and that's that. Even the question that rose up in my mind-- whether it's preferable to live through a solitary existence without any outside connections, or to get through that same state of being knowing that there's a slew of people out there who love and care about you, but whom you keep at a safe distance-- really didn't matter in the end-- because the narrator probably wouldn't have seen it as a relevant question. He's ended up at the place he's ended up, he can't do anything about the past but acknowledge it, and now he'll get by as simply as he can, period.

Other than being a solidly good book, Petterson's work is also a reminder (especially to a standard American public convinced of the universal desirability of its brand of individual "happiness" at all costs) of what travel, face-to-face interaction with non-locals/-co-nationals, or just written exposure to someone else's thoughts should do: remind you that there are multiple ways of looking at things-- and maybe, following on that recognition, that you can at least investigate some of those paths before stressing out about adhering to the one you've been assigned.

Unease of Different Sorts and Probabilities

Two chapters into Out Stealing Horses (Per Petterson), and I'm already wondering if this thing's going to take a turn I didn't expect. Admittedly, I stopped reading last night at one of those perfect points that, after having neatly brought to an end a sudden onslaught of weirdness, lets you sit with it, not introducing anything else until you feel like embarking on the next chapter.

I'll refrain from spoilers, but at this point, I'm not sure whether the protagonist's childhood memories will stick to recounting a more-or-less standard golden age, or whether something his friend's just done will take this thing into one of those formative extended situations that makes a clean break with a kid's childhood and pushes him into a more complex, less rosy-cheeked world. My sister and I did grow up with lots of boys as playmates, and although we all engaged in a wide variety of stupid dares, everyday cruelties, and general injustices, I've never been able to recognize in all that the occasionally sadistic joy some literature and films allege young boys take in death, destruction, and intimidation-- something portrayed in a particular episode of this book as well.

Photo by nottsexminer.

Again, it's too early to make any pronouncements-- but in its low-key look back at past events, it's gripping so far.

What I'm afraid is going to be all too gripping, and not in any sort of good way, is Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. I saw Alexander speak a little over a year ago on the multiple, often race-based horrors meted out by the US justice and penal systems, and so I know what I'm in for-- not only in terms of content, but (and the following is positive) a really clear, concise presentation of something no one wants to think about. What I'm hoping is that giving myself fuller exposure to and information about a situation I'm already aware and beyond ashamed of will push me into actually doing something more than reading-- and just telling others to read the book. I've barely begun with this one, though, and so I suppose I can take comfort for a short while in the fact that I'm arming myself with information that will allow me to proceed more efficiently and effectively.

And as for the periodic sadisms represented by our cultural products, mentioned above? I'm guessing Alexander's book will be exposing a lot of those-- just more than periodic, perhaps more subtle and definitely more severe, and probably being dispensed by the very people we're expected to believe work against such goings-on.