What Makes a Meaningful Death?

Title: Martyr!

Author: Kaveh Akbar

 

The Pulitzer-prize-winning novelist Junot Diaz wrote this in his New York Times review of Kaveh Akbar's new novel:

 

"Cyrus Shams, the aching protagonist at the heart of Kaveh Akbar’s incandescent first novel, is a veritable Rushdiean multitude: an Iranian-born American, a “bad” immigrant, a recovering addict, a straight-passing queer, an almost-30 poet who rarely writes, an orphan, a runner of open mics, an indefatigable logophile, a fiery wit, a self-pitying malcontent. But above all else Cyrus is sad; profoundly, inconsolably, suicidally sad.

"His oceanic sorrows are fed by many Styxes, but the deepest and darkest is his mother Roya’s “unspeakable” death. Just a few months after Cyrus was born, Roya boarded a plane from Tehran to Dubai to visit her brother Arash, “who had been unwell since serving in the Iranian Army against Iraq.” Soon after her plane took off, it was blown up by a missile fired from a U.S. Navy warship: “Just shot out of the sky. Like a goose.”....

"In Cyrus, Akbar has created an indelible protagonist, haunted, searching, utterly magnetic. But it speaks to Akbar’s storytelling gifts that “Martyr!” is both a riveting character study and piercing family saga.  

"Young Cyrus tries to hold it all together, first by chatting with famous people in his dreams (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Madonna, Batman) and later through art, intoxicants, recovery and friends. But none of these palliatives eases his survivor’s guilt or stills the “doom organ,” as he calls it, “throbbing all day every day” in his throat, the siren song of the suicidaire...

"All that holds him back from the abyss is an obsessive desire for his life and his death to matter. He wants the opposite of his mother’s meaningless end, to sacrifice himself for a higher cause..." 

Insights and Opinions

+ Some of our group found the initial going difficult. Both Steve and Lois expressed some impatience with the early sections of the book, but were converts by the time they'd finished. Steve wasn't taken by the first half but was swept away by the end. Lois often gets impatient during the early pages as an author lays the groundwork, but then falls into it as themes and stories began to knit together.

+ Language is an important underlying theme throughout. Akbar is, as Diaz states, "a dazzling writer." Cyrus's musings on words -- which ones are necessary to convey meaning and which ones are not -- should be an essay on its own. One can say "May I have a glass of water, please" or just "Water" and the listener knows what's being asked. The idea of a dictionary designed to spell out the parts of speech you don't need is novel indeed. Further, Akbar's use of metaphor delights and surprises, calling the reader to stop and savor. "I thought this was one of the most beautifully written books I've read in a long time," said Margy.

+ To Steve, the inadequacy of language is one of the basic themes of what he calls "a thoroughly existential novel, which took me back to my existential years in the 70s. What is our life like? What does it mean?" Shirley balked at Cyrus's contention that "the language will never be the thing. Writing will not bring my mother back." But to Shirley, that's one of the points of writing -- to make you understand. "You wouldn't write if you didn't want people to see your writing as teaching them about something."

+ Most of us found Cyrus's poems nested between chapters to be inscrutable. Lois thought maybe that was the intention -- that Cyrus is trying to be deep but hasn't figured out yet how to write good poetry.

+ We asked ourselves this question: What is this book about? What are we to take away from it? Steve feels the book is about gay people dying for love. Liz and Linda disagreed. Instead, they believe the book's message is the self-absorption that grows out of trauma and how the protagonist must recognize and move beyond his/her own trauma to be able to see the other. As Linda said, "He is focused on having a meaningful death, but in so doing, he is also trying to figure out how to have a meaningful life."

+ Addiction is masterfully described here, both the experiences of the active addict and of the sober addict. "The self-absorption exists before addiction. Addiction is self-medication to ease the pain. Then, addiction nearly kills you and you must get sober. So, now you're sober, but the original self-absorption is still there."

+ Loose threads: There are a great many themes in this book, and some of them are dropped along the way. Cyrus's childhood bed wetting does establish him as an anxious child by nature, paving the way for understanding his anxiety-ridden adult self. But a later chapter digs back into his mother Roya's past, when she believed she was wetting the bed, was humiliated by it, and starved herself of liquids, only to discover that her brother was urinating on her while she slept. This is a powerful scene, which made us hearken back to Chekhov's gun principle -- that every story element must be necessary or it should be removed. Perhaps Akbar thought the double bedwetting theme highlighted something important in the Cyrus/Roya saga, but if so, we didn't find it.

+ Shirley was struck by the number of themes and elements about which she knew very little. "I found so much in this book that I had so many questions about, things I didn't know about." The Overton Window is one such thing, which was a new concept to Lois (and probably to the rest of us), but Google has a lot to say about it, so go look that up if you want to know more.

+ Circling back to this book's purpose, Steve had this to say: "It's about searching for the meaning of life, the meaning of death, the importance of language, American life, addiction, immigration, sex and the centrality of sex, dying for love, and finally, coming up with your own philosophy of life." Perhaps it was this surfeit of themes that left Chris without an anchor: "From the beginning to the end, I don't know what this book is about."

+ No book club discussion would be complete without at least some controversy and, in the case, it was the novel's ending. Liz asked others what they thought happens at the end. Margy, Linda and Steve all felt it was a forced happy ending. Liz was just confused as to whether or not the world was actually ending or if the apocalypse Cyrus experiences is a grandiose metaphor.

+ No one disputed that Akbar is an amazing writer. Probably the best description we've found so far is from a Kirkus review: "It's a philosophical discourse inside an addiction narrative all wrapped up in a quest novel." We couldn't have said it better.

Oddments and Telling Details

+ It took us awhile to get started, and nobody remembered to take any photos since our official photographer is off duty at the moment and the rest of us were busy. Lois was fussing in the kitchen, Steve was on tech support, and the rest of us were engaged in random motion. Next time, we'll do better, but we thank Margy for sending us this image from our Zoom chat and Chris for taking the photo. 

This photo of our group is very meta -- a bit of a fun house mirror.

+ Atticus the cat is a huge drama queen who should be the star of his own film.

+ Margy and Chris joined us via Zoom, which is challenging for them, but they are good sports about it.

Our Next Books

April 15: Poetry

We will read and discuss Michael Ondaatje's new book of poetry, A Year of Last Things: Poems. Attendees are encouraged to bring one of two of their favorite poems (by any poet) to share. Lois will host.

May 20: Book to be determined

Chris and Margy will host at Margy's house.

June 17: Someone we know and love

We will read Doorman Wanted by Glenn Miller. Jocey will host and the author will attend!

The Heaven and Earth that Sustain Us

Title: The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store

Author: James McBride

Our meeting this month was a mix of laughter, grief over the losses suffered by two of our members, enthusiastic discussion, and pie-eating. Having taken our host's request for "an attractive outfit" seriously, Steve presented himself in full cross-country skiing regalia, having found ways to ski this year even though there's no snow or ice anywhere. After a brief kerfuffle caused by demonstrations of ski footwear and a Lego Ghostbusters hearse, lunch-serving and eating, and technical "why the heck won't the laptop camera work?" difficulties, we dove into our hybrid meeting, with three of our members Zooming in via the tiny screen of Steve's phone. 

From the publisher: 

"In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.

As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us."

Insights and Opinions 

+ Right from the start of our conversation, it was clear that this book was a favorite of many of us. Chris had started affixing tabs to pages she thought were funny but ultimately gave up once she figured there would be tabs on every page. Steve took 14 pages of notes. Lois, who had read it before, reread it in preparation for our meeting and loved it even more the second time. Liz was so invested in the characters and their fate that she skipped ahead to the end to reassure herself before going back to finish in the right order.

+ Steve noted similarities between McBride's method and that of August Wilson. "Both will take their time and drop in a set piece that delays the story, but it's always worth it," he noted.

+ Liz was struck by the extent to which McBride tells his story primarily through dialog. His chapters open with a bit of back story to set the scene, but then slide into a conversation between people where all of the important points and much of the history are revealed. As a result, there is significant repetition but, rather than seeming redundant, this repetition illuminates and deepens the narrative.

+ Chris agreed, noting that there are a great many characters in the book, but because you hear them speak, the reader learns to know each of them.

+ Because of the way the story resolves and how the key characters prevail in their quest to save Dodo, Steve felt that, on many levels, it was a revenge story. Margy countered with a quote from Kirkus, stating that rather than a revenge story, it is "a boisterous hymn to community mercy and karmic justice."

+ McBride is a master of stepping inside a character. Even though we readers may not entirely understand Nate, for example, Linda said "There was always something about Nate that you knew was quiet danger."

+ In interviews and speeches, McBride has said he does not want to write villains -- that he feels that everyone, no matter how they appear to others, is really just trying to do the best they can. You can watch the whole talk here, and it's worth it:

James McBride Speaks at the Free Library of Philadelphia

+ As part of both the Black and the Jewish communities, McBride is able to write with a deep level of knowledge about both, as well as to the other immigrant groups and individuals who are part of this story. He treats none of them as monoliths. As Lois pointed out, "The old Jews were impatient with the new Jews, the Poles were impatient with the Romanians, even in the Black community there was distance between the Chicken Hill people and the lowgods."

+ Jocey recommended that anyone who hasn't already done so should read McBride's Deacon King Kong, which she feels is a masterpiece. In reference to that book, the Los Angeles Times raved "Shouldn't we just get it over with and declare McBride this decade's Great American Novelist?"

Fun and Games and What's Ahead

+ Many thanks to Lois for baking TWO sweet potato pies. We all had a chance to test both pies. (Our apologies to those who couldn't get a taste through Zoom).  

+ Our next book is Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar. We need a volunteer to host.

Lunch is served.

Steve in full regalia.

Lois and her prize-winning pies (and Liz, who is just happy to eat them).

Not Exactly, Not Entirely, Not Love

Title: Day

Author: Michael Cunningham

Description taken from the book jacket:

 

April 5, 2019: In a cozy brownstone in Brooklyn, the veneer of domestic bliss is beginning to crack. Dan and Isabel, husband and wife, are slowly drifting apart -- and both, it seems, are a little bit in love with Isabel's younger brother, Robbie. 

 

April 5, 2020: As the world goes into lockdown, the cozy brownstone is starting to feel more like a prison. (Daughter) Violet is terrified of leaving the windows open, obsessed with keeping her family safe...And, dear Robbie is stranded in Iceland.

April 5, 2021: Emerging from the worst of the crisis, the family reckons with a new, very different reality -- and with what they've learned, what they've lost, and how they might go on.

 

Insight and Opinions

 

As big fans of Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Hours, we were more than excited to dig in to his new work after a long wait. But our anticipation paled in comparison with how thrilled we were to welcome Faith, our long-lost compatriot, back into the book club fold.

Day bears some similarity to The Hours in that it unfolds in three parts, but instead of hours in a single day, the narrative takes place on the same date in each of three years.

+ Cunningham plays with the concept of "the love of one's life" here, with Robbie at the core. In an interview, when asked about why he references The Mill on the Floss, Cunningham says he used it because it's a novel about a brother and a sister who are the loves of each other's lives, which is what we have here. But Robbie occupies the same role with Isabel's husband Dan, as well as their daughter Violet. Jocey noted that, while this is clearly what the author wants the reader to understand, she needed more, to understand why everyone loved Robbie so.

+ Linda noted that what we do know about Robbie is that he's had three lovers, he has Wolf, his alter-ego who exists only on social media, and he did not receive the love he needed from his parents.

+ Lois was struck most strongly by Nathan, Isabel and Dan's son. "Everyone kept asking him how he was doing, but then none of them really waited to hear," she noted. At the end of the book, after Nathan immerses himself in the pond, it's Dan's brother Garth, whose peripheral life garners little respect from the rest of the family, who finds him and listens. To Steve, "Garth was insufficient and unreliable, but then with Nathan, he was astonishing."

+ What struck Liz about the book is that it is entirely interior. The reader learns about things that have already occurred, but you don't see them happen. Everything takes place within the minds of the characters. This style of writing is what turned Chris off, making it "not for me," she said. On the other hand, "This is the type of writing that made me go into literature," Linda said. Chris wondered why the book takes place on one date, each time a year apart. "I couldn't figure out why the characters advanced the way they did. And why did we have to know that the children picked a lousy spot to bury Robbie's ashes?" 

 

Fab lunch and our buddies in California Zooming in

+ Steve asked if we had a favorite character. To Margy, Robbie could not possibly be as good as he is made out to be. "I didn't like the characters, but I don't have to like them," she said. 

+ Linda noted that, in an interview, Cunningham stated that he wanted to write about the space between something happening and something else happening. He was aiming to strike a balance between "everything is fine" and "complete despair."

+ Cunningham's keenness of observation and understanding of human nature are a wonder. As Lois pointed out, this book is about love and not love. His prose is elegant, beautiful and nuanced. While none of us felt that Chess was a developed character, she has these thoughts about Garth, her "sperm donor" non-mate: "It would be easier if she were more innocent. It would be easier if she felt surer about the lines that separate pity from desire, and desire from rage. She does not love men. She does not love Garth. And yet something keeps shifting inside her, a queasiness that's not love but is not nothing and maybe, in its way, is not exactly, not entirely, not love."

Our Next Read

 

Our February book will be Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride. at Liz's house. Get your copies now!