Here (quite immodestly) is one of the nicest compliments, I do think, my writing's ever received:
Cohen suggests that real love almost always runs counter to the conveniences of society.
- Carolyn See, reviewing House Lights in the Washington Post
I think See is referring to the various romantic couples who appear in the novel and whose bonds in some way flout convention: an old person and a young person; a black person and a white person; a blue-blood and a Jewish immigrant; a deviant and his forgiving wife. Even Pyramus and Thisbe, the star-crossed lovers of Greek myth and the prototypes for Romeo and Juliet, make a sort of appearance. I see in retrospect that the book is laced with examples of real love that run counter to society's convenience, though I was not conscious, during the writing, of trying to make that point.
And was my mother participating in this tradition when she courted my father? They were in graduate school together, training to become teachers of the deaf. It was generally known my father had a girlfriend. But one winter afternoon my mother couldn't
not ask to speak with him a moment after class, and what she said was, "I'm sure it would be a serious mistake if I didn't tell you that I think you'd be very easy to fall in love with." They were married that June.
This idea of speaking truth, insisting upon truth, not only in order to love truly, but to live truly, has us frequently acting in ways that run counter to society - not to society's
interests, mind, but to its
conveniences.
An old friend refers to himself, with just a soupçon of humor, as a contrarian, and while it is true that he can seem afflicted (as well as to afflict others) with a perennial need to play devil's advocate in any and all situations, it strikes me also that there is a nobility about assuming the role of steadfast contrarian. Contrarians fill a need, perform a service. Why, all societies should have, in addition to governors and poets and healers and farmers, designated contrarians: those who forever question, who keep us from straying into blindness and complacency, who provoke and nurture growth.
And yet, going against the grain is not in itself or by its very nature noble. There are times when loving truly and living fully call for flowing with the current. One of my all-time favorite
things is a found object that hangs in the front hall of my parents' house. It's a long piece of wood, dark and oiled, the color of damp, reddish earth. You would think, from the intricate texture of its surface - wavy, sensuous, harmonious lines, at once confluent and free, reminiscent of sand dunes, snow fields, ocean waves; the lip of the ridges crisp and precise, the valleys alternately shallow and gouged so deep you can see straight through to the wall - that it was fashioned by a great sculptor. In fact, it was made by beans.
My mother's father found it long ago. It's a single plank from what was a wooden chute in a silo or mill; we think soy beans once skittered over it - millions and billions of them, over who knows how many years, wearing away the soft wood more deeply than the hard, until, in time, the natural grain was revealed in relief. Sometimes I think about those beans, their multitudes, and the speed with which they traveled the length of the chute, and, also, of what they, in concert, eventually wrought: something singularly beautiful, a thing that had been there all along and yet could not have been seen if not for the beans' unwitting performance. There had been no intent, no design, yet it happened: they brought to light a form that already existed.
I think of my mother now as embodying almost equally the qualities of a contrarian and of the soybeans. Early on in her life, I think, she was more of the former; later on she has come to embrace more fully the part of the latter. Now I see her as combining the two with uncommon grace: at times questioning sharply, at times tumbling freely; she is at once a resistance fighter and an adventurous surrenderer.
(An "adventurous surrender" - what on earth could that mean? One who goes forward not passively but heartfully into all that is unknown.)
I think See is referring to the various romantic couples who appear in the novel and whose bonds in some way flout convention: an old person and a young person; a black person and a white person; a blue-blood and a Jewish immigrant; a deviant and his forgiving wife. Even Pyramus and Thisbe, the star-crossed lovers of Greek myth and the prototypes for Romeo and Juliet, make a sort of appearance. I see in retrospect that the book is laced with examples of real love that run counter to society's convenience, though I was not conscious, during the writing, of trying to make that point.
And was my mother participating in this tradition when she courted my father? They were in graduate school together, training to become teachers of the deaf. It was generally known my father had a girlfriend. But one winter afternoon my mother couldn't not ask to speak with him a moment after class, and what she said was, "I'm sure it would be a serious mistake if I didn't tell you that I think you'd be very easy to fall in love with." They were married that June.
This idea of speaking truth, insisting upon truth, not only in order to love truly, but to live truly, has us frequently acting in ways that run counter to society - not to society's interests, mind, but to its conveniences.
An old friend refers to himself, with just a soupçon of humor, as a contrarian, and while it is true that he can seem afflicted (as well as to afflict others) with a perennial need to play devil's advocate in any and all situations, it strikes me also that there is a nobility about assuming the role of steadfast contrarian. Contrarians fill a need, perform a service. Why, all societies should have, in addition to governors and poets and healers and farmers, designated contrarians: those who forever question, who keep us from straying into blindness and complacency, who provoke and nurture growth.
And yet, going against the grain is not in itself or by its very nature noble. There are times when loving truly and living fully call for flowing with the current. One of my all-time favorite things is a found object that hangs in the front hall of my parents' house. It's a long piece of wood, dark and oiled, the color of damp, reddish earth. You would think, from the intricate texture of its surface - wavy, sensuous, harmonious lines, at once confluent and free, reminiscent of sand dunes, snow fields, ocean waves; the lip of the ridges crisp and precise, the valleys alternately shallow and gouged so deep you can see straight through to the wall - that it was fashioned by a great sculptor. In fact, it was made by beans.
My mother's father found it long ago. It's a single plank from what was a wooden chute in a silo or mill; we think soy beans once skittered over it - millions and billions of them, over who knows how many years, wearing away the soft wood more deeply than the hard, until, in time, the natural grain was revealed in relief. Sometimes I think about those beans, their multitudes, and the speed with which they traveled the length of the chute, and, also, of what they, in concert, eventually wrought: something singularly beautiful, a thing that had been there all along and yet could not have been seen if not for the beans' unwitting performance. There had been no intent, no design, yet it happened: they brought to light a form that already existed.
I think of my mother now as embodying almost equally the qualities of a contrarian and of the soybeans. Early on in her life, I think, she was more of the former; later on she has come to embrace more fully the part of the latter. Now I see her as combining the two with uncommon grace: at times questioning sharply, at times tumbling freely; she is at once a resistance fighter and an adventurous surrenderer.
(An "adventurous surrender" - what on earth could that mean? One who goes forward not passively but heartfully into all that is unknown.)