The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

I have been aware of Le Guin, but hadn’t read her before. I don’t read a lot of Science Fiction - although I am a huge fan of Asimov’s short stories. (“Good Taste” is a favorite - and, for completely different reasons, “The Last Answer.”) I also love the classic Jules Verne novels, campy and dated as they are. I have read a few books in that genre since I started this blog, from A Princess of Mars to the recent Mort(e) by Robert Repino. And of course, the very first Science Fiction story, Frankenstein.

The Left Hand of Darkness was recommended by a friend, particularly for its creative treatment of gender. Written in 1969, it shows signs of the times it was written in - but in other ways seems quite familiar. 

Here is the basic setup. Genly Ai (who narrates most but not all of the story) is the “First Mobile” from an organization, the Ekumen, which is similar to the United Federation of Planets in Star Trek. However, it is less centralized, and doesn’t govern so much as it facilitates trade and exchange of ideas. Persuasion and agreement, not force, if you will. Unlike in the Star Trek universe, the hominoids in this one did not evolve separately, but instead are the survivors of a great age of planetary exploration followed by a devastating war that separated the various groups. After a few hundred thousand years, the link is being reforged. Warp Drive does not appear to exist, so interstellar travel is slow, and the travelers are put in stasis during the trip.

The plan for the Ekumen is to send a single envoy to live among the natives of each planet. The envoy will learn the cultures, establish relationships, and tell his or her story. Eventually, usually after a number of years, the planet will voluntarily choose to join the Ekumen. This inevitably unifies the planet, because the Ekumen does not make separate treaties with different nations on any world - they have to join as a unit.

Genly Ai is sent to a planet aptly named Winter, which is on the raw edge of habitability - much colder than Earth (or Terran, as it is named in the book.) This difficult survival is believed to be one factor in why Winter doesn’t have all-out warfare between nations. Sure, they have skirmishes and raiding parties and such, but there really isn’t the leisure time or resources for full out war.

But that isn’t the main difference. Rather, as the result (probably - nobody remembers for sure) of genetic engineering, there are no males or females on Winter. Rather the “Genthans” are ambisexual. Specifically, they are androgynous and assexual, having characteristics of both male and female during most of the month, but go through a monthly “kemmer,” where they develop into either male or female. It is during kemmer - and only then - that a Genthan experiences sexual desire. It’s kind of like being in heat, basically. The kicker is this: in any given kemmer, an individual has an equal chance of becoming male or female. If female, the person could become pregnant, and thus stay female for an extended period, until the child is weaned. The author notes that many Genthans have fathered several children and given birth to several more. In isolation, the female and male roles develop randomly. However, if two Genthans are in kemmer at the same time, if one goes one way, the other tends to go the other way in response, thus making mating more likely.

Because all Genthans are alike, and Ai is, well, very different, he is considered to be a “pervert.” Actually, there are other “perverts” too. Any Genthan who does not develop full ambisexuality, but is stuck in one gender, he or she is also considered a pervert. Because they, unlike “normal” people, are in rut all the time, and thus have perverted sexuality. Le Guin notes that “perverts” are treated like LGBTQ people in our society - distrusted and slandered, but not generally murdered - pretty bold for 1969, perhaps.

In addition, Genthans possess the personality traits associated with both male and female. The result of this biological fact of ambisexuality is that society is set up rather differently than our own. All Genthans are given a week off of work each month when they are in kemmer. Because anyone can end up pregnant, society does not insist on tying down anyone quite as much as we are used to. Anyone can hold any profession. And everyone is expected to pitch in with childcare. Hey, it could be you next, so bear the burdens equally. As the guide Ai is given says, “Therefore nobody here is quite as free as a free male elsewhere.”

The guide also notes:

There is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protective/protected, dominant/submissive, owner/chattel, active/passive. In fact, the whole tendency to dualism that pervades human thinking may be found to be lessened, or changed, on Winter.

This becomes one of the themes of the book. Dualism in the “this versus that” sense is indeed not part of the Winter cultures. Rather, internal dualism is the central belief. The contrast is within, between the parts of one’s nature. As the Genthan poem has it:

Light is the left hand of darkness,

and darkness the right hand of light.

Two are one, life and death, lying

together like lovers in kemmer,

like hands joined together,

like the end and the way.

There is a lot more about marriage and sex in general in the book - much of which is a fascinating thought experiment. But there is one more line that I really found fascinating:

The First Mobile, if one is sent, must be warned that unless he is very self-assured, or senile, his pride will suffer. A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect or subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. On Winter, they will not exist. One is respected and judge only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.

In my job doing divorce cases, I have seen enough of this to know it is true. And also true about family and friends in some cases. People, both male and female - in about equal proportions - often lean on their gender identity for their sense of worth - and would be appalled if they were judged, not on their ability to fit gender stereotypes and values, but on their goodness as human beings.

To give an example, I run across far too many males who draw their identity from the masculine signifiers. Sports prowess. Income. Virility. And, often, violence. Likewise, there are many women who rely on their beauty, their feminine charm, their devotion to being a full-time mom, their social signalling through style of dress. And in our society this works. A man who is rich can get away with anything. A woman who is conventionally beautiful can leverage that into acceptance regardless of her lack of substance. Tall, strong males tend to develop into entitled brats like King Saul - not always, but often. And likewise, a woman who fits her society’s preferred gender roles can get away with being a jerk to others.

All of these people, who rely on their gender conformity for identity and acceptance would indeed find being judged as human beings to be a thoroughly appalling experience.

My wife, on the other hand, has spent much of her life expecting to be evaluated as a human, not as a female. This has (as I have previously described) resulted in a lot of heartache for her. She does not fit the preferred “female” traits well. She is assertive, competent, confident. She relies on her intellect more than her emotion. She doesn’t take crap from anyone, particularly not entitled males. She works outside the home, and probably draws her identity from that more than motherhood (which is the opposite from me - I draw more from my fatherhood than my job). Amanda would thus function better in Genthan society than in the Patriarchy morass that she grew up in.

Okay, one more observation on this. I am genetically and physically male. I identify strongly as a male. That said, I do not fit the male signifiers all that well. I am more nurturing and emotional, not competitive and stoic. (In other words, I am the girl in our marriage - if you believe in gender essentialism.) So, while I do not consider myself female or wish to be in general, the idea of splitting genders as the Genthans do is fascinating. Amanda and I have often joked that it would have been better if I could have gestated half the children. And really, if it weren’t for biology, I would be totally on board with it! There is something special about that, and were it reasonably possible, I would have done it. Taking turns would have been a relief for her, and a special experience for me. Again, this isn’t a sign I identify as female or “other.” It is just something that is fun to contemplate.

Ai’s main ally on Winter is Estraven (who also goes by Harth and Therem depending on who is addressing him - these are equivalent to first and last names and titles), who is the prime minister of Karhide - monarchy and one of the main nations of Winter. (The other country, Orgoreyn, is closer to a Soviet style system, with a veneer of bureaucracy over the iron fist of the secret police.) Estraven is the only Genthan to truly trust Ai, but cultural differences mean that Ai struggles to understand and trust Estraven. Only after (spoiler alert!) Estraven rescues Ai are they able to become true friends. This is another significant theme in the book: friendship, betrayal, and loyalty. Ai is deeply lonely as he is the only person of his race on the planet for years. Estraven is lonely for other reasons: his family history, a lost love, and political betrayal. The story of how they bridge a vast cultural - and biological - divide is a key part of the book, and quite enjoyable.

Perhaps even more fascinating than either the gender theme or the friendship theme is the discussion of politics and “patriotism.” Le Guin draws a contrast between two essential types, and I thought it brilliant:

“Let me ask you this, Mr. Ai: do you know, by your own experience, what patriotism is?”

“No,” I said, shaken by the force of that intense personality suddenly turning itself wholly on me. “I don’t think I do. If by patriotism you don’t mean the love of one’s homeland, for that I do know.”

“No, I don’t mean love, when I say patriotism. I mean fear. The fear of the other. And its expressions are political, not poetical: hate, rivalry, aggression. It grows in us, that fear. It grows in us year by year.”

This conversation, early on, between Ai and Estraven sets the stage for what comes later, as the king of Karhide and the Sarf (secret police) of Orgoreyn escalate a conflict to gain their own political ends. Later in the book, Ai reflects on the machinations of Tibe, the new prime minister, who talks on the radio a lot about patriotism of the more sinister kind.

He wanted his hearers to be frightened and angry. His themes were not pride and love at all, though he used the words perpetually; as he used them they meant self-praise and hate.

Sound familiar at all?

Ai also considers the difference between a nation which builds an unified culture and state on the basis of mutual accomplishment, and those who do so by shorter - and more evil - methods.

Now Karhide was to pull herself together and do the same; and the way to make her do it was not by sparking her pride, or building up her trade, or by improving her roads, farms, colleges, and so on; none of that; that’s all civilization, veneer, and Tibe dismissed it with scorn. He was after something surer, the sure, quick, and lasting way to make a people into a nation: war. His ideas concerning it could not have been too precise, but they were quite sound. The only other means of mobilizing people rapidly and entirely is with a new religion; none was handy; he would make do with war.

We are seeing this played out yet again in our own times. Rather than build patriotic pride by investing in our mutual benefit - making college affordable for all, providing healthcare to the most vulnerable in our society, fixing our roads, building relationships with other nations, or anything else productive - we want to build it by inciting hatred of others, the perceived enemies within and without.  

On a related note, I think Le Guin has a fascinating observation about civilization. Too often, in our colonialist mindset, we draw a dualistic contrast between “civilization” on the one hand, and “primitivism.” This fallacy is present in both the colonialist viewpoint and also in the myth of the “noble savage.” Ai notes that Tibe is always talking about the “veneer of civilization” as if the underlying reality is somehow nobler.

It is a durable, ubiquitous, specious metaphor, that one about veneer (or paint, or pliofilm, or whatever) hiding the noble reality beneath. It can conceal a dozen fallacies at once. One of the most dangerous is the implication that civilization, being artificial, is unnatural: that it is the opposite of primitiveness...Of course there is no veneer, the process is one of growth, and primitiveness and civilization are degrees of the same thing. If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of those two things, you have either one, or the other, not both.

A few other lines stood out. The first comes from an extended scene in what is essentially a concentration camp in Orgoreyn. While Genthans can and do suppress kemmer for various personal and religious reasons, in the camps, it is repressed by force. That way, laborers can work continuously, without taking the customary week off. Also, by repressing sexual desire, Genthans are more easily controlled. As Le Guin notes, the ability to eliminate sexual desire altogether is really a key component of the ideal totalitarianism. She mentions ants (which do not exist on Winter) - most individuals are for practical purposes asexual - and thus are expendable workers who loyally serve the hive. I can’t help but feel that this has always been a part of the desire to exploit others. From the days of slavery, when slaves were expected to be celibate - unless they were bred by the masters - and fear of black sexuality became part of our national consciousness; to the rhetoric now about how the poor should just stop having sex if they can’t afford the babies. (With, of course, no plan to make parenthood affordable with a living wage - or any plan whatsoever…) Basically, there are the breeders, and there are the workers. And the workers should just shut up and stop having sex. I suspect if a drug became available that could repress all sexual desire, there would be a great many more than willing to use it on others.

There was also a terrifyingly beautiful line about the way that the Orgoreyn concentration camps worked. Indeed, it is probably how most concentration camps work - not the Nazi gas chambers, but the rest.

They do not kill people on their Farms: they let hunger and winter and despair do their murders for them.

Actually, this is how many genocides happen. Not through overt slaughter, but by the deaths that occur in the shadows. Death from disease, hunger, and cold. Death from the creeping despair that you will never be helped, never loved, never really noticed. And this is the kind of murder that the Ayn Rand philosophy (which has taken over the GOP lately) leads to - and may even intend. The slow death by deprivation, not the more obvious murder by force. But it is violence nonetheless.

And this really is where the “patriotism” meets real life. As Ai puts it regarding Orgoreyn’s socialistic economy - and specifically a non-explanation of a stupid situation: “This, at least, is the accepted explanation, though like most economic explanations it seems, under certain lights, to omit the main point.”

This is exactly the frustration I feel in discussing economic issues with those who believe some grant, incomprehensible, and esoteric theory is behind what sure looks - under certain lights - to be simple exploitation.

One more note: this edition of the book has an introduction by the author, which is fantastic. I would love to quote it all, but I recommend just getting the book. In this introduction, she philosophises about the nature and purpose of Science Fiction - indeed of fiction in general. The art of lying, as she puts it, to tell the truth. Everything in a novel - particularly like this one - is fictional. (Or, a “lie,” as the fundies my wife grew up with would say - just like Le Guin, except without the intelligence to understand the point.) There are so many lines, from the one, “Almost anything carried to its logical extreme becomes depressing, if not carcinogenic,” to “Science Fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive,” to “Is it any wonder that no truly respectable society has ever trusted its artists?” Just so good. Read it.

I guess I may mention the layout of the book. While the narration is primarily by Ai, there are portions from the journal of Estraven, notes from scholarly Ekumen sources, and from official documents and legends  of Karhide and Orgoreyn. This book is apparently from the middle of a cycle of related books about the extended universe.I think this book can stand alone, but it might be interesting to read the others and see if they help make sense of the universe. I should note that if you struggle with the names in Russian novels, you might do as I did and keep a list of names for each character.   

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Quick note on the author: Le Guin was one of the pioneering female Science Fiction writers, and influenced many writers in a variety of genres who came after. I will particularly note Neil Gaiman. She was the daughter of an anthropologist and an writer, which does explain some of her themes. She married an historian, which may well have added another layer to the mix. 

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This book has inspired some intriguing art on deviantart - particularly the contrast of the dark skinned Ai and the androgynous Estraven. Here is one:

The Great Brain by John D. Fitzgerald

Source of book: Audiobook from the library - but I own the entire series and read it multiple times as a kid.

If you haven’t discovered the Great Brain series, you really should. The semi-autobiographical series set in Utah at the end of the 1800s by John Fitzgerald is really quite funny, yet full of more serious stuff than you might imagine. The basic setup is the same for each book. John D. is the youngest Fitzgerald sibling, and he narrates the story. The parents are Papa, an Irish Catholic, and Mama, of Danish descent. (The real life Mama was a Mormon, but in the books, she is Catholic as well.) The oldest kid, Sweyn, is a pretty typical kid; but Tom is a bit too smart for his own good, and proves to be a con man in the making. John is the gullible little brother.

The family lives in the (mostly) fictional town of Adenville, Utah, in the “Dixie” southwest part of the state. The author was raised in Price, Utah - as was my father-in-law. Adenville is mostly fictional because it appears that such a place did exist once upon a time - it is now a ghost town somewhere west of Cedar City which is mentioned in an obscure book, although it was never as big of a town as the author makes it out to be. Rather, it is most likely that the name and geography of Adenville was combined with the town life of Price to create the story.

(True story: Although I haven’t yet written about Zion National Park - stay tuned - my family practically lived there in my teens. We traveled to St. George multiple times a year for quick weekends of hiking and exploring. As a result, I got to know the area pretty well, and located a few towns that matched the description - particularly the ill-fated camping trip in one of the books. Still my best guess: Adamsville, just west of Beaver. It even has a mining town (Minersville rather than Silverlode) nearby, and the Beaver River would have fit with the stories too. Yeah, I was a weird kid. Anyway, a piece of my heart will always be in the Utah wilderness.) 

 Perhaps the real-life Adenville was closer to the Escalante Desert, but I still think Adamsville is a solid choice.

The Great Brain is the first of seven books published between 1967 and 1976. There is an eighth book, published posthumously from notes which I haven’t read. These books came about a decade after Fitzgerald wrote Papa Married a Mormon, which, while still fiction, was intended for adults, and hewed closer to the actual facts of his upbringing than the Great Brain books, which were aimed at children.

One of the reasons that these books remain a favorite of mine is that they combine laugh-out-loud humor with surprisingly serious themes. Just in this first book, there are two stories about racial prejudice, with serious results. In two other episodes, two brothers nearly die after getting lost in a cave, and a young boy attempts suicide after having a leg amputated. And this is just the first book! Later books also explore religious prejudice, terminal illness, the trauma of losing one’s entire family, and more. And yet, reading them, you spend most of your time laughing. I guess this is a sign of good children’s literature.

The book opens with a description of growing up Catholic in a Mormon town. While all non-Mormons are minorities in Adenville, Catholics are particularly so, being outnumbered by the Protestants. All the Mormons attend the same church - the big one. The Catholics and Protestants must make common cause and form a mutual church, and hire a mutually acceptable preacher, who “preaches strictly from the Bible” so that he doesn’t take sides on denominational issues. Once a year, a revivalist comes to town for the Protestants, and an itinerant priest comes likewise to baptize babies and perform weddings.

For the Fitzgerald boys, however, religion takes on a different color. Because they are the odd kids out, they are forced to demand respect, frontier style. As J. D. explains it in the opening chapter, they had to teach the other kids respect and tolerance - by licking every kid their size and smaller in a fight.

Mormons and non-Mormons had learned to live together with some degree of tolerance and understanding by that time. But tolerance hadn’t come easy for my oldest brother, Sweyn, my brother Tom, and myself. Most of our playmates were Mormon kids, but we taught them tolerance. It was just a question of us all learning how to fight good enough for Sweyn to whip every Mormon kid his age, Tom to whip every Mormon kid his age, and for me to whip every Mormon kid my age in town. After all, there is nothing as tolerant and understanding as a kid you can whip.

Even more than 30 years after I first read that last line, it still cracks me up. And it really is true about childhood anywhere. Sadly, tolerance and understanding do not come naturally to everyone, and sometimes you have to teach it. I’m not exactly a fighter - and I have always been small for my age. But I scrapped a bit in my day, and my brother and I had a reputation of being stronger than we looked. We’ll still bulldog you to death at soccer - we don’t quit or whine.

Tom D., aka The Great Brain, is an interesting character. He has some sociopathic qualities - he’s always out to make a buck, and takes advantage of J. D. all the time. However, he has his standards, and he is hardly a bad person in most situations. For example, it is Tom that takes the Greek immigrant boy, Basil, under his wing, and teaches him English and how to fight and get along in American society. Admittedly, he has his eyes on getting compensated for his trouble, but he is also genuinely concerned for Basil, and refuses to swindle a helpless mark. Likewise, it is Tom who steps in to prevent Andy’s suicide attempt (which the unwitting John is naively willing to assist with) and restore his sense of self worth. If anything, Tom is most interested in pulling the wool over the eyes of the adults, who (with the notable exception of Mama) are at least a step or two behind the workings of the Great Brain. (This is why my favorite book of the series is The Great Brain at the Academy, where Tom snookers the Jesuit priests at his boarding school - they are a mark truly worthy of his talents.)

I do want to mention the darker episodes in this book. First, when Abie, the Jewish peddler, is encouraged to set up a shop in town, it is inevitable that he will fail. And the author actually allows him to starve to death. It is in the speech to the townfolk at the funeral that Papa - who (as the later books demonstrate) is all too aware of fate of outsiders in a mostly homogenous community - that the problem becomes apparent. Abie doesn’t die because people hate him, but because they don’t notice that there is something wrong. Because he is the “other,” he just isn’t on their radar the way that even a fellow Protestant would have been to the town Protestants. Certainly someone would have seen that things were going wrong had a Mormon - if anything, the Mormons are legendary for caring for their own tribe when needed.

I think this is a really important lesson in these days as well. When we envision private charity magically taking over for the safety net, we tend to miss the fact that outsiders (particularly if they know they are outsiders) being too proud or embarrassed to ask for help. And, unlike those who are insiders in some way, we just won’t notice as they starve to death or die for lack of health care. And it isn’t that we would refuse to help. We just wouldn’t notice the need.

The other episode also rings true. Basil is bullied by Sammy, the son of a miner father who is deeply prejudiced against immigrants. When Tom asks Papa about it, Papa explains that Sammy’s father is always complaining about immigrants coming and taking jobs from “real” Americans. Tom, who is no fool, notes that Sammy’s grandfather was an immigrant. Papa explains further:

“When you come right down to it, we are all immigrants except for the Indians. What men like Mr. Leeds fail to understand is that it is the mingling of the different cultures, talents, and know-how of the different nationalities which will one day make this the greatest nation on earth. All intolerant persons must have somebody or something to hate. Mr. Leeds is an intolerant person who hates immigrants.”

In listening to this book again, I realized that this (along with similar things my parents taught me) has shaped my views to this day. This is why I recommend these books to people time and again. It is also why, when the GOP made the switch in the last decade from being at least tolerant to immigration to adopting the hateful anti-immigration rhetoric of the KKK of a century ago, I couldn’t go along with it. And now, I am left wondering if the people I know who keep repeating these horrible and untrue things about immigrants are just influenced by too much Fox News, Breitbart, and Milo Yiannopoulos - or if they are intolerant persons who just need somebody or something to hate. (And this also applies to those who seem obsessed with making sure LGBTQ people can be denied employment, housing, and government services…maybe you just need somebody to hate.)

Just a few more observations about these books. It is a well known truism that many children’s books rely on the “dead parents” to exist. Kind of hard to have certain adventures if the parents are right there, after all. These books are a definite exception. Not only is a parent present, both parents are, and are in an intact nuclear family. Furthermore, both parents are involved, intelligent, and helpful. (Although they aren’t exactly helicopter parents - times were different, and few parents would, for example, let the 12 and 10 year olds teach the 7 year old how to swim in the river, without adult supervision.) Both Papa and Mama are admirable, well drawn characters, who love their kids, and do right by them. They are also pretty progressive for their time, earning their kids’ respect without resort to the violence which is endemic in other families of the time. Because whippings are not an option, they talk to the kids as if they were rational human beings, able to understand ethics and empathy - and they do.

While these books have a particular setting - long ago in a small town - they have universal appeal because the human characters are universal. While we may not know someone quite like the Great Brain, we know people who are at least a bit like him. And we know more who are like Sammy, and Basil, and John, and Uncle Mark, and the other denizens of Adenville. And life in Adenville, just as in Mayberry, isn’t the idyllic version we sometimes remember. There is prejudice, hate, death, sadness, and angst too, and problems to be solved that stem from the darker side of human nature. Fitzgerald doesn’t sugar coat these at all - but he has optimism that decent people can and will make a difference. That the Toms and Papas and Mamas of the world will stand up for immigrants, that they will agonize over their role in the hardship the poor suffer, that they will insist that life is worth living and that people are worth helping and that love and decency and goodness can and will triumph over hate and intolerance and indifference if we make it happen.

Don’t let me create the wrong impression. These books are not heavy - they are filled with humor, slapstick, and silliness in good measure too. They just have more depth than you would expect from them. The whole series is worth reading. You can probably jump in anywhere, but they are best read in chronological order. I also recommend finding the original Mercer Mayer illustrations if you can - they are so very good. 

This audiobook was read by Ron McLarty, who is fine. I haven’t really checked to see if the other books can be found in audiobook form, but I suspect they can somewhere.

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The author had a rather varied life, starting out as a Jazz Drummer, and working at just about everything - including serving as a staffer on Wendell Willkie's presidential campaign. It is hard to find now, but Papa Married a Mormon is worth reading if you can find it. Fitzgerald also wrote a couple of textbooks on creative writing.

Changing Together - 16th Anniversary

Although it obviously wasn’t original with him, my dad used to say that women marry expecting men to change, and that men marry women expecting they won’t - and both are wrong. There is a bit of gender essentialism here that I don’t quite agree with, but there is a certain amount of truth to the idea. One might rephrase it that we go into marriage expecting that some things will change - and we are often wrong - and that other things won’t change - and we are often wrong about that too.

Clearly, no one should marry intending that their spouse be their little improvement project. We humans are remarkably set in our personalities from birth. (Having five kids who are all different from each other in temperament made this pretty dang clear.) So we shouldn’t expect to be able to change our spouse.

On the flip side, though, none of us are the same person after a decade of marriage as we were before. For that matter, are any of us the same as we were a decade ago, leaving the issue of marriage out of it? I would hope we are not. I am glad I have grown up a bit since my teens; and I am glad I am not the same person I was when I married at 24. He who does not grow remains stunted. (Le Toupee is a great example…)

So, yes, I am essentially the same person I was when I married. But I am also a very different person. And so is my beloved wife, Amanda.

Today is our 16th Anniversary.

When we married, we were both pretty young - she was barely 21, and marriage was not really in her plans before we fell in love. We still had a lot of baggage from our Fundamentalist days, which led to some hilarious-in-retrospect moments like our “dating contract,” and her insistence that “obey” be in our wedding vows - I was more egalitarian, so I let her have her way. Neither of us in our present form would repeat those specific decisions now. Because we have both changed.

If you think about it, this really was inevitable. We have had five children together, and now are entering the teen years with some of them. We have read literally hundreds of books, gone through some traumatic experiences with extended family and church, made major life decisions together, made new friends, learned many things through experience and research, built careers, and just a whole bunch of stuff. We have both been shaped by these experiences and decisions. We have both changed.

I am no longer married to a 21 year old living on her own for the first time. (Not that she wasn’t competent - even then she had mad skills.) She is no longer married to a twenty-something trying to figure out the legal profession. I have a couple more inches around the waist. Her wedding dress won’t fit over her biceps after 15 years of turning 400 pound patients. We both have some grey and smile lines creeping in. We are technically middle age - although we don’t really feel that way inside.

I know that we will both continue to grow and change as we age in the future.

But what I must say is this: there is something magical about growing together. Changing together. Experiencing a friendship that itself changes both of us. We were always pretty good at connecting, but we can read each other’s thoughts even better now, after these 16 years of marriage. (18 together - and yes I count them)

Amanda says I have mellowed. It’s true. And so has she. We have learned enough about the way the other acts and reacts that we roll with it, because it is familiar, and we know how the other works out frustration and stress. More than ever, we know how to ease each other’s stress, and when to step in and when to give space. It is a dance, and we know the steps better than ever. And the dance doesn’t get old. The familiar notes awaken a sense of peace and belonging and mutual love. This is companionate, egalitarian marriage. We are better together, stronger together, happier together, more at peace together.

Life is a journey, not a fixed place. We may not know the future, but we know there will be things we do not expect. It is truly a blessing to have a friend and companion to share the journey with me, and I do my best to be pleasant company for her as well. Wherever our roads may lead, my dearest wish is that I walk them with her.

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Last summer, we had the chance to visit Paris - Amanda’s first time overseas. This is my favorite picture from a professional photo shoot we had there. 

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Other Anniversary and mushy posts:

Anniversary 2011 (republished Valentine’s Day 2013)

Anniversary 2012

Anniversary 2013

Anniversary 2014

Anniversary 2015

Anniversary 2016 
Valentine’s Day 2012

Love at First Sight

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Just a bit of music from local funk fusion band Soulajar: Outweigh the Bad. Life and marriage aren’t perfect, but in a good marriage, even in troubled times, the good times outweigh the bad.

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Source of book: I own this.

In some ways, it is surprising that I made it to age 40 without ever reading any Evelyn Waugh. Somehow, he just slipped through the cracks. I discovered Wodehouse in high school, and E. M. Forster in my 20s. So I at least have some experience with British writers from the first half of the 20th Century. In some ways, I might place Waugh between the two. He has his humorous moments - although his wit is more biting and less good natured than that of Wodehouse. He also reminds me a bit of the sense of malaise and resentment of social change that characterizes Forster. In any event, Waugh was a true craftsman of words, with gem following bon mot, and pictures told clearly in an economy of words. His skill is apparent, as is his ability to see the cracks in people and society. 

Brideshead Revisited is one of Waugh’s more serious novels, rather unlike his early farces. It also is a book he intended to be expressly religious, with a theme of redemption and a defense, perhaps, of his Catholic faith. It also contains a number of autobiographical elements, as I discovered reading up on him after I finished the book.

The story is told in the first person by Charles Ryder, who at the time the story starts is in the British army in World War II - serving on the homefront due to his unsuitability to military life. After a brief introduction, the rest of the book until the epilogue is two flashbacks to his past. The first is of his days at university (clearly Oxford, although not named) in the 1920s, and the second takes place about ten years later.

At Oxford, Charles becomes fast friends with Sebastian Flyte, and thereafter becomes acquainted with his entire family, an aristocratic bunch with Roman Catholic faith and a whole lot of dysfunction. Lord Marchmain, the father, never came back from World War I, choosing to live with his mistress in Italy. Lady Marchmain has turned her pain inward and become a bit of a religious zealot, and a control freak regarding her children. The eldest, “Brideshead” (whose given name we never learn - just his title) is likewise religious, but socially and especially romantically inept. Sebastian has suffered the most from his mother, and he drowns his pain in alcohol, which nearly destroys him by the end of the novel. Julia rejects the faith for a while, marries a divorced Canadian who she will later divorce after a decade of unhappiness. The youngest, Cordelia, turns her religion into a life of service as a nurse. The family is fascinating for all the wrong reasons, as no one is really healthy. Cordelia is probably the closest to truly functional, but she has attained this by essentially rejecting everything about her family except for the faith.

Sebastian is essentially the focus of the first half of the book. Charles is smitten with Sebastian, and spends his freshman year running in his circles - which are rather obviously, to use Neil Gaiman’s delightful turn of phrase, “gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide.” Sebastian is a bit peculiar, to say the least. He has a teddy bear he takes with him everywhere, which he calls Aloysius, and treats as if it were a person. I would have thought this was a bit too silly for a novel, except that Sebastian was based on John Betjeman, who had a bear with an even sillier name (Archibald Ormsby-Gore), who not only went everywhere with him, but was in his arms as he died as an old man. That Betjeman eventually became a beloved television personality and Poet Laureate indicates to me that it is apparently possible to be eccentric to the point of absurdity and still find a place in the world.

But Sebastian is deeply unhappy, despite his appearances. The tears of a clown, you might say. Charles eventually notices the difference after Sebastian has a particularly bad drinking binge. While Charles tends to get carried away when he is happy, and overindulges in an exuberance of high spirits, Sebastian drinks hardest when he is unhappy. He is killing the pain. Charles eventually concludes that Sebastian is “ashamed of being unhappy.” This is, for what it is worth, why I intentionally do not imbibe when I am in a dark place. I prefer that the fruit of the vine (or barley) be a source and accompaniment to more joyful things. The psalmist talks of wine gladdening the heart.

Brideshead, who is not a drinker, explains thus: “I like and think good the end to which wine is sometimes the means -- the promotion of sympathy between man and man. But in my own case it does not achieve that end, so I neither like it, nor think it good for me.” As an introvert, it does indeed assist to that end. Just not when I am in a bad emotional place.

The relationship between Charles and Sebastian has been much debated, but there are solid indications in the book that it is fully homosexual. There have been claims that it was a close, but platonic friendship, but the reference to serious sin seems to indicate more than mutual interest. In any event, the way Charles describes Sebastian is clearly romantic, and even erotic, and I suspect most of the attempts to explain it away have been driven by the perceived need to reconcile Waugh’s Catholicism with his sexuality.

It is no secret that Waugh had at least two lengthy homosexual relationship during his youth, before he eventually married. The first marriage (ironically to an Evelyn - Evelyn Gardner) was short and unhappy, ending in divorce after she cheated on him with a close friend. Soon afterward, Waugh converted to Catholicism, in a move that rather shocked his Anglican family. He remarried eventually, after a long struggle to get the first marriage annulled. (Yep, complications from his newfound faith…)

Waugh, like Sebastian, would abuse alcohol and prescription sedatives throughout his life, which led to a mental breakdown in 1953, and poor health in general. By the time of his breakdown, his popularity had declined, and he worried he would fade into obscurity. History has been kinder, and his books have enjoyed renewed popularity after his death.

The first half of the book contains some delightful scenes. After the profligate Charles spends through his allowance and has nothing left for the holidays, he is forced to return to his father. (His mother was killed in World War I.) His father, who is a bit peculiar, makes the holidays a living hell for Charles - without appearing as if he intends it. But he certainly does. He invites dreadfully boring people over, has his cook make only bland and tasteless food, and generally embarasses poor Charles. These scenes showcase the Waugh wit quite well.

There is also the farcical scene in which Charles, Sebastian, and a couple of friends decide to hit a brothel while rather intoxicated. The subsequent arrest and scandal is well written. The barbs at the English upper class and their obsession with “respectability” is targeted. After all, the fact that the boys were drunk, at a brothel, and driving while intoxicated is less the issue than that their names will be in the papers the next morning.

The second half of the book occurs ten years later. Sebastian has been living in Morocco, and has destroyed his health with his drinking. Julia, having married, is deeply unhappy. And Charles has become a respected painter, and is just returning from a long trip abroad, only to find his wife has been cheating on him. (Perhaps the most awkward - and brilliantly written - dialogue in the book is between Charles and his wife. Most remains unsaid, but both know what is meant.

Finding himself reacquainted with Julia - and discovering he is attracted to her in significant part because she resembles Sebastian - he has his own affair with her. And man, talk about a thoroughly unsexy sex scene. It is both shockingly graphic in a non-graphic way (if that makes any sense), and obviously awful sex. The affair seems to be unpleasant for both of them, even though they insist they are in love. When they eventually do break it off at the end (sorry about the spoiler), it is no surprise, just sorrow and relief.

Also mixed in with this is the return of Lord Marchmain after the death of his wife - and he has come home to die. And Brideshead has decided to marry an older widow - who his father hates - causing further drama.

As I noted, the central theme Waugh intends is redemption. And in a manner, I guess that is what happens. But I found this the least convincing part of the book. Okay, so it is at least plausible that Sebastian would end up working at a monastery. And it is more than plausible that Julia would return to her faith. But the conversion of Lord Marchmain seems contrived, and there is nothing to really suggest that Charles will leave his agnosticism for Catholicism. It just seems to happen suddenly without preparation.

Not only is it sudden and without a proper emotional foundation, it seems to go against Waugh’s many arguments against Catholicism earlier in the book. Perhaps this is because Waugh is much better at illuminating faults than he is at inspiring. He can lay bare the skeletons, but can’t draw the spires of the cathedral.

As an example, Sebastian talks of Catholic families early in the book:

“They [Catholics] seem just like other people.”

“My dear Charles, that’s exactly what they’re not -- particularly in this country, where they’re so few. It’s not just that they’re a clique -- as a matter of fact, they’re at least four cliques all blackguarding each other half the time --but they’ve got an entirely different outlook on life; everything they think important is different from other people.”

Add to that the fact that the central Catholic family is deeply dysfunctional, the priests are naive and clueless, and the rest of the Catholic characters are hypocritical at best, and it is hard to see a good argument in favor of the Roman Church. (This isn’t because the task is hopeless: G.K. Chesterton, for example, gives a rather positive argument and example for Catholicism.) It’s almost as if Waugh never completely reconciled himself to his faith, and thus struggled to write a justification for it.

I can sympathise with this - as I can with a number of the things about Waugh that irritate me - mostly because I see them in myself. Waugh is a reactionary, openly pining for the old days and the old ways. He wishes the aristocracy was still in place - a trait he shares with Forster. He just about came unglued when the Vatican II council voted for the vernacular mass, rather than the Latin mass. In Brideshead Revisited, he pointedly objects to the nouveau riche, feeling the world is a much worse place with mere merchants being the new rich. And I get that one all too well. Being an American, it isn’t quite the same, but I too rankle at having a vulgar, profane, and tasteless boor in the White House.

But on the other hand, I have no great love for the old days either. I recognize that the rose tint is unrealistic, and that life is by most objective measures better today, even if I feel affinity for old music and old books.

Perhaps it is natural in all of us, to yearn for the feelings of youth, and expect that a return to the culture, values, and even injustices of those times will make the feeling return. There is a beautiful - and intentionally saccharine - line to this effect in the book:

The languor of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth - all save this - come and go with us through life...

I guess that is one of the questions that I have after reading this book about Waugh himself. Just how much of his attraction to Catholicism was because it was old and venerable? Was it part of his general reactionism? Did it go deeper than that? Perhaps, and it is likely complicated. But it is hard not to feel that the same deep instinct which led to his veneration of the aristocracy even as he lampooned its foibles is also behind his attachment to Catholicism even as he illuminates its cracks.

And likewise, it is hard to avoid seeing Waugh as having much in common with the flamboyantly gay Anthony Blanche (based on Brian Howard, a classmate of Waugh’s at Oxford) as with Charles Ryder. Blanche is in many ways the most perceptive and honest character in the book, recklessly baring the souls of the other characters while making them all uncomfortable.

Waugh is a delightful writer - his prose seems so effortlessly good, never labored, and always fit to the purpose. Brideshead Revisited is a good book, despite its flaws. Perhaps best is the way Waugh complicates motives. Nothing is as pure as it seems, and we are all flawed, wounded, and damaged. Waugh may not be convincing in his proposed cure, but he poses the essential questions, creating memorable characters along the way.

***

In one scene, Anthony Blanche downs four Brandy Alexanders in short order. While that kind of inebriation isn’t my cup of tea, I did have one in honor of the occasion.

***

I miss the late Christopher Hitchens very much indeed, in part because of his delightful writing on authors like Waugh. From The Guardian in 2008. Enjoy.