The Way We Miss our Lives
There are two upcoming books I await with a Star-Wars-fan-lining-up-months-in-advance kind of fervor. One is the fourth volume of Robert Caro's Lyndon Johnson biography, which will cover the presidency, and the other is the third Frank Bascombe novel by Richard Ford. I have no idea when (or, shudder, if) the Caro book will be published, but the Ford book is due sometime in the early fall. Ford is one of the handful of truly great American novelists writing today, in my humble opinion, and if you haven't read "The Sportswriter" or "Independence Day" you should click over to Amazon and rectify that problem. (I know this recommendation may seem a little strange coming right after the last post about Bobby Brown, but hey, I am vast, I contain multitudes.)
The main character in both books is Frank Bascombe, a former writer turned real estate salesman with a failed marriage and a troubled son and what I think is a distinctly American set of flaws and strengths. The books are beautiful in many ways but the second one, "Independence Day" is especially powerful and well-written and has become more important to me as I've gotten older. Among other things the book is about coming to terms (or not) with the basic sadness of life, struggling to find a way (or the will) to connect with the things and people you love, discovering who you maybe really are when all the things you thought you might be turn out to be wrong...The daily fabric of American life.
A particulary poignant and piercing passage that has stayed with me:
“A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, though we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: "The ways we miss our lives are life."
Godamn right.
The main character in both books is Frank Bascombe, a former writer turned real estate salesman with a failed marriage and a troubled son and what I think is a distinctly American set of flaws and strengths. The books are beautiful in many ways but the second one, "Independence Day" is especially powerful and well-written and has become more important to me as I've gotten older. Among other things the book is about coming to terms (or not) with the basic sadness of life, struggling to find a way (or the will) to connect with the things and people you love, discovering who you maybe really are when all the things you thought you might be turn out to be wrong...The daily fabric of American life.
A particulary poignant and piercing passage that has stayed with me:
“A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, though we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: "The ways we miss our lives are life."
Godamn right.
posted by tom at 5:27 PM
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