So, after finishing String Too Short to be Saved, by Donald Hall, I started a Jack Reacher book by Lee Child - The Affair. I started this on August 18 and finished it on/around August 28 or so (I got bad with my reading tracking).
I'm a fan of Lee Child and Jack Reacher books - I've read many of them (in order too!). Child has a formula for these books, and it works. It is funny, I was visiting my dad while I was reading this book and we decided to watch the first Reacher movie with Tom Cruise. I have a love-hate relationship with that movie. I love it because it brings the book to life. I hate it because, um, Tom Cruise as Reacher? In no way, shape, or form does he match the description of Reacher that Child repeats in book after book after book. Reacher, in the book, is huge - he's tall, thick, muscular. Tom Cruise... isn't. It just doesn't match up.
But the movie is entertaining, just like the books. The Affair is no different. It is entertaining and a good read. This book answers the ultimate Reacher question - how did he exit from the military. It was interesting to have a look back into Reacher's life. If you've ever read a Reacher book, you know he doesn't follow orders. He goes off on his own line of inquiry and investigation. That's Reacher. And, that's what he does here too. This book has a few turns that were unexpected. And, of course (with 2 exceptions so far) he gets the girl.
Reacher isn't that different in the military than out. He's his own man, doesn't really follow orders, is kind of rogue. The story for this one is that Reacher is sent to a small town to support a military investigation into some deaths of beautiful young women in the town adjacent to the military base. There is another investigator on the base, and Reacher is trying to gather intel in the town. Of course it gets messy. Of course he kicks some ass, and then some - I was surprised at what he did at one point. He takes chances, goes out on limbs, all in an effort to do the right thing and uncover the truth. How he does that though is somewhat not entirely law-abiding. Oh the irony.
I really liked the look back into his life, and look forward to his next nomadic adventure.
A good friend of mine, Scott, recommended this book to me. Scott was born on the East Coast in New England so I'm not surprised that he recommended a book set in New England to me. I met Scott in grad school at SFSU. He's an extremely interesting person, a thinker, a collector, a historian, a learner, a student of life. I'm a ponderer - I think about all kinds of crazy stuff - life, books, stuff. Scott does too.
I started this book about string by Donald Hall on June 13 and finished it on August 13. It took a while to read. It definitely isn't a Reacher book, or one of the Alchemyst books. But, it is a book. It has words on the page - lots of words. It was also a bit of a challenge, sort of, to come into possession of this book. It wasn't available in my local public library. When looking on Amazon, I saw that it was out of print, and ended up ordering a used copy. A book is a book, and I was happy to get it.
When I started reading it, about 15 pages in, I wondered - where is this book going? Up to that point, it was about a boy and his grandfather spending summers together on a New England Farm. I kept waiting for "the point" or "something to happen". Many things happened in the book, but I kept waiting for "the point" to hit me over the head. The Husband asked me repeatedly what the book was about. I kept telling him that I would tell him when I figured it out. He always looked at me quizzically. I'm sure he was thinking, "how can she not know what this book is about...". But seriously, I didn't. I mean, I knew what I was reading - I could comprehend the words on the page. But it was kind of like a collection of short stories. Memories of times a boy spent with his grandfather on a farm. They did farm things - like harvest hay, shovel hay, transport hay, many things with hay. Catch cows, pick blueberries, and tell stories. Or rather the grandfather told stories, lots and lots of stories.
Donald, the boy and also the author, visited his grandparents on their farm every summer when he was growing up. It seemed as if he thoroughly enjoyed this time, working and listening to stories. Early in the book, he wrote:
"For all I knew, I thought, it could be the end of more than that. I felt very conscious, that September, that my grandparents had another winter to live through before I could return to them. The idea of their mortality was never far from the surface of my day, for a flush or a sigh or a hand pressed to a heart brought death to me, as if I had heard someone say the word. It was a pack on my back, and I would feel the sharp, physical pain of their approach to dying, something becoming nothing - or was it my own approach to bereavement that made my side ache?"
Ok - so I should say that Scott recommended this book to me to perhaps answer some questions I have about my questions about life, history, legacy, and my worry that when my father dies, that's it the holder of memories of my parents and my legacy is gone. My father isn't on his deathbed or anything, he's alive and kicking. But he's getting old, he's dealing with dementia, and when his memory is gone, so will be my ability to ask questions and learn about him, my mom (who passed when I was 12), and how I came to be.
Scott met my dad at my wedding 3 years ago. He'd heard me talk about my dad for years and was actually very excited to meet him. My dad is a character - one of a kind. He was a college professor for around 40-ish years, and has a story, fact, or lesson about everything. When we were little, he always told my brother and I not to lie, but he "stretches the truth" all the time. All. The. Time. Perhaps the experience of meeting my dad was an influencing event that brought Scott to recommend this book to me. I'll have to ask him sometime.
The grandfather in the book, Wesley, constantly tells stories to his grandson. Stories about anything and everything. Sometimes you don't know where the story is going. Sometimes it doesn't have a point. Kind of like my dad. As I read the book, it was from the perspective of a time when my dad is not longer the dad I know him to be, and I dogeared pages to mark a passage or something that touched me or was relevant to the lens / state of mind through which I was approaching the book. Regardless, there are a lot of dogeared pages.
One of the passages was about the grandson looking at family photos in his grandparents' house:
Here and there in the unused parlor my grandmother kept a gallery of pictures of the family. Most of the faces belonged to men and women who had died before I was born, but I memorized their names, and my grandfather's stories which gave life to the names. From the top of the piano and the bookcase, the rows of faces seemed to regard me as their survivor. Daguerrotypes, tinted photographs, yearbook groups in cap and gown, blurred Brownie snapshots, field-hockey teams, wedding portraits, silhouettes, pictures taken when the subject knew he was dying, Automatic Take-Ur-Own-Pix, and the crayon drawings you can commission at county fairs for a dollar. There was even the old framed photograph of a favorite cat, a little out of focus and indistinguishable from any other cat. The whole air of the conglomerate past spoke out to me, even the school pictures of my mother and my aunts, which perpetuated a dead girlishness among old hair-dos. To be without a history is like being forgotten. My grandfather did not know the maiden names of either of his grandmothers. I thought that to be forgotten must be the worst fate of all.
That last sentence is exactly it. To be forgotten must be the worst fate of all. I think that is the crux of what's going on in my mind. I don't think anyone wants to be forgotten. How horrible is that?
It wasn't until the last few pages of this book that "the point" really became clear. I mean, as I read more and more of the book, I think I knew what "the point" was, but in the last few pages of the book, actually in the epilogue written by the author, that he really pulled everything together. He ended up purchasing his grandparents' farm after his grandmother died, and came to live there full-time with his second wife. He wrote:
I thought we were coming to a house we loved. We were, and the back chamber holds detritus of a hundred years... I thought we were coming to hills and stone walls we loved - and we were... What I did not know: the people remain, we belong among them, and they are not dead but endure. The dead are dead enough, and their descendants occupy new bodies; but everything is the same. When I was young, I could not credit the power of place and tradition to re-embody itself. When my grandfather died I claimed his kind was dead. Last autumn when I turned fifty, eighteen cousins assembled at a surprise party in our living room; and the gene pool bubbled, live faces sponsoring recollection of dead photographed faces on the walls around them: a chin here and a forehead there. But cousinship is not the matter, for the people who live here - in old farmhouses mainly, but also in trailers, in shacks, in ranches, in A-frames - take from the dead, and from the enduring land, qualities of frankness, wit, honesty, and goodness.
In a subtle way, memories abound. A place, a thing, a person, a trait (character, physical, or other trait) can all be holders of memory. I think it is up to us to open our eyes and take it in, look around, and remember. That is the hard part - taking everything in and cataloging it in our brains and then bringing it back to the forefront whenever a situation calls for it.
I was visiting my dad in August and for some reason I kept remembering a time when he rode his bike up Fargo Hill in Los Angeles. I have certain memories of what Fargo Hill looked like, and that it was GIANT. I have no recollection of where Fargo Hill actually is - in my memory it is near where the Victorian houses are that my dad always visited (on Carol Avenue). I asked my dad about it and he said Fargo Hill is actually in Echo Park - not anywhere near the Victorians. Fargo Hill is about a 30-33% grade - pretty steep. Well, when I was little, my dad made it up that hill. Looking on the web, I found that the first race was in 1974 - it was definitely in the 70s when my dad rode up it, but what 70, I'm not sure. We drove to that hill and the un-grandioseness of it shocked me. It was a very steep hill that was very bland. It had nothing of the fanfare it has in my mind. We drove up it twice, then drove to the other side of the freeway to see it from a different perspective. From there, it looks like it goes straight up. And my dad rode up that monster on his bike. Go dad.
Hall is right though - memories abound. Oh, and that string that is too short to be saved... Hall wrote, "A man was cleaning the attic of an old house in New England and he found a box which was full of tiny pieces of string. On the lid of the box there was an inscription in old hand: "String too short to be saved.""
