When Autumn comes around with its chilly, crisp mornings and early nights, we tend to associate with it the word, melancholy — a word that, when used to encapsulate a book, can mean more than something sad. In melancholy there is space for introspection, remorse, or longing; there is space for us to watch the brown leaves flutter to the ground and think to ourselves, how beautiful. How heartbreaking. Such books had me in their grasp this October. Here they are.
Night by Elie Wiesel
Sixth grade: a projector screen flickering white light throughout a dark classroom, my History teacher a large figure in the corner of his desk as his students watch The Boy in the Striped Pajamas after having finished the book. It was horrible, and my memory can still conjure random scenes from it; I think that day there must’ve been other kids besides myself who walked out of that room a little traumatized by what they’d seen. Sixth grade, in my memory, was when I was formally introduced to the Holocaust, but it took until reading Night just this month for me to truly comprehend that the horrors that occurred during this time could never be fathomed by those who did not experience it.
In Wiesel’s preface to the new translation of his own account of living through the concentration camps near the end of WWII, he finds that “for the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living.” To offer to the broken world an account of all he’d felt and witnessed during a time when it was too close to the war’s end and didn’t want to concern itself with those unfathomable horrors was to make a contribution to “our collective memory” — the memory of the Jewish people, living and dead, future and past. This is a story of truth that presents itself utterly bare and imparts what the reader is not able to believe, but yet cannot help but do so because to turn away from Wiesel’s words — pared back, yet powerful — would be to pretend that humans are not capable of reigning as the worst creatures on Earth — creatures capable of creating Hell and causing a teenage boy to feel that his life had turned “into one long night seven times sealed.” Hope and salvation are completely sucked away into the dead of night and remain unreachable until the last page. There is nothing but betrayal, death, disillusionment, and endless marches in the freezing cold. There is nothing here but bodies.
Iza’s Ballad by Magda Szabó
The original title of this Hungarian translation is Pilátus — as in Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor best known for presiding over Jesus’s trial and ordering his crucifixion. And although the English title doesn’t bear his name but that of one of the main characters, there exists a barely visible thread between them that underlines the captivating central flaw of this story.
In the midst of her fresh grief over the loss of her husband, our elderly protagonist, Ettie, is whisked away from the village of her life by Iza, her beloved daughter, to live with her in Budapest. With her nature of steadfast authority and sufficiency, the displacement happens in a blink of an eye: almost all of the elderly couple’s belongings are sold before Ettie has a chance to decide whether or not to part with them, and she never gets to bid her house, neighbors, or village a proper farewell. Before she even has time to process her loss she finds herself standing in a terrifyingly modern apartment in a major city without a real mark of familiarity to keep her anchored to her past. But this move is supposed to be a mark itself: from now on the elderly woman does not have to strain herself with the endless load of chores that had kept her shoulders heavy all these years. From now on with the comforts provided by Iza, she will finally be able to rest. But how could she? How could she think to embark on a new chapter in her life when the loose ends of the old ones are still flurrying in the breeze?
As it was with reading Szabó’s The Door, it took some time after finishing the book for me to realize the depth and complexity of the story, and to be reminded of her phenomenal skill. The solidarity the reader develops with Ettie as she tries (and fails again and again) to adjust herself to such a starkly different way of living while still offering her homemade bundles of generosity and kindness to others showcases Szabó’s ability to create dynamic dimensions to her characters. She then allows those dimensions to fill up not only the spaces of the characters, but also of their relationships and environments until they create a story potent enough to become entrenched in the reader’s imagination. While Ettie’s physical and emotional decline was enough for me to stay latched to the story, it was the root cause of her decline that ended up being the most arresting, terrible gemstone of the novel. Her storytelling reminds us of the potential we ourselves have to bring complete destruction to the lives around us, even to those we love most.
Stoner by John Williams
(For a wonderful review/essay on this underrated and almost-perfect book, please see this New Yorker piece)
Every now and then I come across a book praised by almost every single person who’s read it. Stoner is one of those books. In fact, I’ve seen a few folks who have called it a perfect novel. And you know what? I kind of agree (nods my head with an intense frown).
Between William Stoner’s beginnings as a young man helping his parents on their arid farm and his retirement decades later from his post as an English professor at the University of Missouri where he’d discovered his love for literature, Williams asks us to embark on a life journey with an individual whose memory is manifested as a single manuscript in the Rare Books section of a University library. If there was a character out there in the world of books that fitted perfectly the word, “commonplace,” it would probably be Stoner. However, with all of that said, the “jewel-like beauty” of Williams’s storytelling makes it difficult for many readers (including myself) to forget the protagonist and the life he ended up living. What worked so well for me was the pacing of this novel. There is a group of books out there that represent what it means for a writer to take great care in the construction of their storylines. While it is the plot that gradually propels the reader forward, I feel that what keeps the reader captivated is the amount of depth in the characters and relationships, as well as the moments carved out of the plot to allow time for reflection. Droplets of wisdom and profound emotion constantly took my breath away, causing me to stop and ponder the states of both Stoner and myself — the ever-present passivity that keeps him locked in a life of grayness, his mistakes and inadvertent contributions to the pains of those around him, the regrets and sadness and quiet beauty and loneliness, I could go on. The characters Williams creates are as imperfect as the rest of us, but maybe that is what draws readers so strongly toward their stories; we see ourselves in them, nothing more and nothing less.
