The Portable Veblen

 

The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth Mckenzie
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Writing satire, or claiming to be "laugh out-loud funny" is a precarious endeavor. I never once laughed out-loud. I did see the points she was trying to make with consumerism and big-pharma, as well as how we treat disabled. But instead of the being ludicrous to the point of making you think, or laugh out-loud, it came off as slightly disturbing. I so enjoyed Veblen talking to the squirrel, and the part the squirrel played in the whole thing. But the relationships between everyone else was simply toxic and I have no idea why someone as kind-hearted as Veblen could possibly be interested in Peter, whose resentment and verbal abuse of his disabled brother was more than alarming. Perhaps other people with different ideas of humor will find this charming, but aside from Veblen and the squirrel, I don't get it.

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The Story of the Lost Child

 

The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So now it comes full circle. What was a childhood incident has become reality. The idea that has been flitting in and out of the pages has become front and center--the visibility and identity of the main characters--as women, as political players, as mothers, as lovers, as people who move in this world. What could make a person completely disappear? What happened, why, who is responsible? Some characters physically disappear but as Ferrante's narration completes, we realize there are so many moments when the main characters were invisible, either by choice or by circumstance. They defined themselves by each other, by their friends, money, education, connections, political affliations, familial obligations, but did they really ever discover who THEY were? Were they ever truly seen by another? Are we? Often we are invisible, but just as often we choose to hide behind others and belittle our own existence. Perhaps it is inevitable. Of course, as these women slide into old age, their lives become more and more about routine and the "author" even lets whole decades go by in a few paragraphs. I look back to The Story of a New Name where most of the book is one summer--but while sometimes I felt I was plodding along just to finish the saga, I couldn't give up on the two characters that truly grew on me and I cared how they ended up. So many insights and truths along this journey, and although I didn't always like what the main characters did, they felt real and I couldn't wait to see what they would do next.

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At those moments I saw myself suddenly for what I was: a slave, willing to always do what he wanted,

I, whatever I among those I was accumulating, I would remain firm, I was the needle of the compass that stays fixed while the lead traces circles around it.

When, in spite of her defensive manipulation of persons and things, the liquid prevailed, Lila lost Lila, chaos seemed the only truth, and she—so active, so courageous—erased herself and, terrified, became nothing.

Being close to him gave you the impression of being visible, especially to yourself, and you were content.

that if I went on like that I would lose myself.

Finally it was clear that what I was wasn’t her, and vice versa.

I was I and for that very reason I could make space for her in me and give her an enduring form.

But if she disappears, if you no longer know anything about her, there’s not a thing that remains in her place, in your life.

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

 

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ah, middle age. We have the same strivings, questions, longings, but also responsibilities and routines and in spite of recurrent dramas, they seem a bit flat compared to youth. Even in Ferrante's talented hands, Lina's and Lena's lives feel a bit past their prime. Lenu tries to balance career with family life (and quite frankly makes a mess of it) while Lina's seeming happiness is great for her but a bit boring for us. There is still plenty of sparkling moments, don't get me wrong. And the realization of how long we (especially women) struggle to define ourselves is at once sad and inspiring. Less happens with age (especially with women) becomes we become more invisible. Perhaps that is why Lenu especially seems intent on creating her own drama even if it involves self-sabatoge.

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THOSE WHO LEAVE AND THOSE WHO STAY

No, we remain us and they are they.

And she went on, but taking a self-mocking turn. She wove the praises of her own cleverness, slipping slowly from the luxuries that she had acquired by winning Solara to the solitude of her duties as a bride. Michele, she said, is never here, it’s as if I were getting married by myself. And she suddenly asked me, as if she really wanted an opinion: Do you think I exist? Look at me, in your view do I exist? She hit her full breasts with her open hand, but she did it as if to demonstrate physically that the hand went right through her, that her body, because of Michele, wasn’t there. He had taken everything of her, immediately, when she was almost a child. He had consumed her, crumpled her, and now that she was twenty-five he was used to her, he didn’t even look at her anymore. He fucks here and there as he likes.

It’s as if you fabricated your very own torture, she exclaimed, and I realized then that she wasn’t capable of thinking that she was her self and I was my self; it seemed to her inconceivable that I could have a pregnancy different from hers, and a different feeling about children.

who am I if you aren’t great, who am I? I whispered: Don’t worry, always tell me what you think, that’s the only way you can help me, you’ve helped me since we were children, without you I’m not capable of anything.

I couldn’t get Nadia’s insults out of my mind, the way she spoke, as if it were nothing, in my house.

Did it mean that for him I was no longer Lenù, Elena, Elena Greco? For him and for how many others? Even for me? Did I myself not almost always use my husband’s surname, now that mine had lost that small luster it had acquired?

I took the train, playing with the girls and feeding them, but saddened by another me—the poor, uneducated girlfriend of the wealthy and hyperpoliticized student Franco Mari: how many me’s were there by now?—who had been lost somewhere and was now re-emerging.

This time I decided to try it, but only because, in spite of the wine, I felt I hadn’t a single solid thing to hold on to. My sister-in-law became furious, then stopped talking and burst into tears. I couldn’t find a single word of comfort. I felt her tears, it seemed to me that they made a sound sliding from her eyes down her cheeks. Suddenly I couldn’t see her, I couldn’t even see the room, everything turned black. I fainted.

my body weighed heavily because of an excess of discipline, and the lexicon of books and journals dripped anguish as if suddenly the signs of the alphabet could no longer be combined.

When I insisted on staying, he was irritated, and whispered: I’m not myself, go away.

I remembered details of what Stefano had done to Lila, details that I imagined while Silvia was narrating, and it seemed to me that the words of both stories were animal cries of terror.

he appeared willing to love me only provided that I continually demonstrate my nothingness.

In other words I couldn’t rely on Pietro, he looked at me without seeing me.

His wife—I wished to think—did not absorb him. Eleonora was one of the many pieces of his busy life, but had no influence on him, Nino went forward on his own path without attaching any importance to her.

They show up inside us and withdraw, leaving, concealed in our flesh, their ghost, like a lost object.

The Story of a New Name

 

The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It starts out as a trip to the beach and what takes place in that fateful summer changes the course of their lives. There is a reunion and a betrayal. Who did Lina really betray? Was it inevitable? Why? As Lenu's and Lina's friendship becomes more complicated and interconnected, the question of who needs whom, what education and money truly means, and why we love the ones we do swirl around as these young adults try to figure out what is important and who they truly are.

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Yet they appeared to have lost those feminine qualities that were so important to us girls and that we accentuated with clothes, with makeup. They had been consumed by the bodies of husbands, fathers, brothers, whom they ultimately came to resemble, because of their labors or the arrival of old age, of illness.

Day by day the sense of myself that had so unexpectedly expanded after the party diminished, I felt dispirited.

impression—recurrent in our story—that I was losing something and she was gaining.

She had taken possession of my old feeling, had made it her own.

but to wait for her life and that of the baby to lose their outlines, any possible definition, and she found that there was nothing left in her mind, not even a trace of the thing that made her spiteful, that is to say the awareness of abandonment.

as if the pure and simple fact that he loved me were the public sanctioning of my talents.

I had quickly understood that Franco, his presence in my life, had masked my true condition but hadn’t changed it, I hadn’t really succeeded in fitting in.

Bittersweet

 

Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The idea that there must be sorrow to have joy is not a new concept. But our obsession with trying to be happy all the time and appear as though everything is great can be just as damaging as those that are negative all the time. I thought Cain did a good job of highlighting some of the value in recognizing that we all long for something, and found it interesting that she realized that spirituality is one of the ways to fill that longing. Also honing in our longings can help us recognize some of our passions and purposes in life. Another point I liked was the idea of "sending love out into the world"; that even if it seems ethereal and esoteric, it is still changing you as the sender of love--just by opening yourself up to that idea allows for actions of real love to come later. Not everything she expounded on clicked with me, and her story of her and her mom seemed more cathartic for her than really illustrating some of her points, but all in all I enjoyed this reminder that its ok and even preferable to sit with longing, loneliness, and pain instead of trying so hard to have everything be perfect and happy all the time.

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longing is momentum in disguise:

our longing is the great gateway to belonging.

Our nervous systems make little distinction between our own pain and the pain of others, it turns out; they react similarly to both. This instinct is as much a part of us as the desire to eat and breathe.

The word compassion literally means “to suffer together,”

We shouldn’t look for sympathy in animals that have no contact with their mothers or fathers, he said.

An important first step is to cultivate humility.

bowing down activates the vagus nerve,

the more gently we speak to ourselves, the more we’ll do the same for others.

pothos, which Plato defined as a yearning desire for something wonderful that we can’t have.

Anyone pulled from a source longs to go back.”

‘Oh Lord, nourish me not with love but with the desire for love,’ while Rumi expressed the same truth in simple terms, ‘Do not seek for water, be thirsty.’ ”

if we embrace the suffering, if we allow it to lead us deep within ourselves, it will take us deeper than any psychological healing.”

This longing you express is the return message (to prayer).

Because our culture has for so long rejected the feminine, we have lost touch with the potency of longing.

“Making yourself feel good is not a nothing,”

“Everything that you love, you will eventually lose. But in the end, love will return in a different form.”

the love you long for will not return in the form you first longed for it.

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2018

 

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2018 by Sam Kean
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sometimes I really don't know how these books end up on my Kindle. But I decided to read this before it became completely irrelevant. It was actually amazingly interesting with essays on everything from a man trying to recreate the Pleistocene era in Russia, to cancer treatments, to possible outcomes of communicating with aliens, to trying to rehabilitate psychopaths, to how to categorize mythological creatures. All interesting and entertaining (true, the political essays didn't hold up as well) and I learned a lot as well.

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Woman At Point Zero

 

Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'll admit that the narration of an Egyptian prostitute's life as she waits for death in prison does not sound like something someone would willingly sit down with. But not only is it beautifully written, but uncovers some deep truths about women and their bodies and power. How do you rise above being a victim when you have no power, money, or influence? How do you show courage in the face of oppression? How do you show agency when you are literally trapped? It's a strangely empowering and hopeful book despite its description.

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Its passivity was a form of resistance, a strange ability not to feel either pleasure or pain, not to let a single hair on my head, or on my body, be moved.