On Reading Sad Books

I'm over on my friend's blog, Squeeze the Universe, talking about sad books and offering up a review of After Leaving Mr Mackensie.  Check it out?  Weigh in?  What's your sad book threshold?

Oh My Beautiful

I read a lot for this new job. Not all of it pleasant, but some of it is.

Just came across the most lovely, moving story. David Means' The Secret Goldfish. Read it, if you have a spare moment and want to read something deliciously good, if sad.

(Someday I want to write a post about sad stuff--novels, stories--and try to figure out why I like it, why it doesn't make me sad, why it makes the heart swell instead. But that's another post. Note: this story isn't TOO sad, I don't think.)

P.S. Just unprivatized. Other blog will follow soon, I suspect. But I'll start here.

Read This.

Read this book yesterday. Bought it yesterday afternoon, went to read a bit before I went to bed, couldn't put it down. Finished it at 2 in the morning. The writing is beautiful, clear, astonishingly unsentimental and honest. It's a memoir about the last three weeks of her mother's fight with cancer. Amara, you won't like it. Kira, you will.

I've been looking so hard for something to read that didn't make me work too hard, but didn't turn my brain to mush either. This was it. I'm sad it's over. It's been a long time since I read a book that I mourned for after it was done.

Speaking of mourning, I don't recommend reading this when you're already sad. That part--the part where I wept and wailed at 3am for my mother and everyone I love, even though they're fine--that was not so good. Poor Sam.

Two Bits from Marilynne Robinson

I read an interview with Marilynne Robinson, author of Housekeeping and Gilead (which I've read) and the new novel Home (which I haven't read--anyone have thoughts on it?). It was in The Paris Review, fall 2008, and I recommend it for admirable insights on science/religion, solitude, writing life, etc. She also cleverly articulated a few things I've been thinking about:

Thing 1. When asked, "What led you to start writing essays?" she answered, "To change my own mind."

Although I didn't realize it, I think this is why I wrote an essay on polygamy, which is still looking for a home, but which I'm rather fond of. Completely changed my mind about the institution of plural marriage. Not so as I'm looking for a sister-wife, but so I have a clear empathy (pity?) for my ancestors who passed through it. Seems a good place to begin: start from a thing you want to have your mind changed about, plow ahead. Writing changes my mind anyway, might as well go in with that goal in mind.

Thing 2. This one, I hope, stands on its own: speaking of Freud who says it's best to have 'no sensation at all,' to remove ourselves from emotion, Robinson argues, "you are depriving yourself if you do not experience what humankind has experienced, including doubt and sorrow. We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass throught his, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of this, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege" (58).

Makes me wonder: Why do we pull in, stay in bed, if this is a univeral experience, the thing that makes us part of humanity? Why, instead, does pain/depression/sorrow feel so isolating? Like we're the only ones on earth with heartache.

Reminds me of something Henry B Eyring said, which I always misquote, so I won't even try. He says if we treat everyone like their hearts are breaking, we'll be right most of the time. Sam loves that. When people say bad stuff about Mormons, he tells them that one of us said that. And if one of us said that, then we can't be as bad as they say.

But we're so forgetful. So disgracefully forgetful of the universality of our own pain, as well as that of others. We're human.