He was older than the days he had seen and the breaths he had drawn.

The Call of the Wild  by Jack London
First published in 1903

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
 The Call of the Wild  is a tale of friendship, brutality, risk, and the laws of nature. Our protagonist is Buck, a dog who's a cross between a German Shepherd and a St. Bernard. When our tale begins, he's living his best life as the pet to a Judge in California. But little does he know that Manuel, one of the workers on the Judge's ranch, has a gambling problem. Manuel dognaps Buck and delivers him to some cruel men who proceed to 'break him' for the journey north to the Yukon. We're just before the start of the 20th century, you see, and it's GOLD RUSH TIME. So Buck ends up with a series of masters, some fine, some awful, some move on, some die, blah blah blah. Sorry, I wasn't that into the whole gold rush story line, so I'm not going to dig too deep here. After his worst master, he lands a great one in John Thornton, and Buck turns into a masterful sled dog under his influence. They make it to the mine and Buck is happy and proud, but soon he feels the tug of the greater natural world (or some might say, The Call of Wild ;)). He spends some time on the proverbial fence, dancing in between the forest sauvage and the world of man's best friend. In the end, John Thornton is killed by a band of Yeehats (who are of course depicted as evil and also who WERE ALREADY LIVING IN THAT LAND the white dudes were mining, so you know, agree to disagree) and after tearing lots of Yeehats apart with his bare jaws, Buck joins a wolf pack full time.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Well, there were some things I liked about this book, but there were also many things I did not like. On the whole, I can see why it was seminal, but I also feel like it's pretty problematic in a few ways. I will leave it to you to decide if you want to embark on it, dear readers. 

Here are my thoughts!

On brutality
I had a hard time reading the first part of this book because Buck was treated so brutally. I suppose that's part of his journey from domesticated pet to 'animal of the wild', but I like to think he could have come into his 'wild' self without being so violently abused. I have to say that a lot of the language about breaking dogs and crushing their spirit and bending them to the will of man felt a LOT like the language I've read about slavery. There's even a line about Buck feeling 'a fear that no master could be permanent' that felt a lot like the mentality of a slave. So I felt like it was problematic that black people in America were still coming out of this kind of culture (and white people were definitely very slow on moving way from it) and yet Jack London was writing about this dog we should really empathize with. 

Dog named 'Nig'
Yeah... so that's a thing. I was not here for it. Felt super racist and gross and also reminded me of Jack Bellew calling Clare that as a nickname. Let's just all agree that it should not be a nickname for anyone where white people are involved. #kthanxbye

They broke their own trail
The dogs are having to do all kinds of crazy things to get the silly men up into the middle of nowhere to go Gold hunting, and at one point it mentions how much harder it is when the dogs have to break their own trail. It reminded me of the snowshoeing course I took when I was living in New Hampshire, and how ridiculously hard it was to break trail when there were several feet of snow. I really felt for the dogs!

Let's hear it for the novellas
While there were many things I did not like about this book, there were many beautiful things about it, and after reading two short novels back to back, I have to say I really enjoyed how much the writers packed into those hundred-odd pages. 

Buck's moccasins
I loved this scene: 

Buck's feet were not so compact and hard as the feet of the huskies. His had softened during the many generations since the day his last wild ancestor was tamed by a cave-dweller or river man. All day long he limped in agony, and camp once made, lay down like a dead dog. Hungry as he was, he would not move to receive his ration of fish, which François had to bring to him. Also, the dog-driver rubbed Buck's feet for half an hour each night after supper, and sacrificed the tops of his own moccasins to make four moccasins for Buck. This was a great relief, and Buck caused even the weazened face of Perrault to twist itself into a grin one morning, when François forgot the moccasins and Buck lay on his back, his four feet waving appealingly in the air, and refused to budge without them.

Later his feet get 'hardened' to the trail and he doesn't need the moccasins anymore, but I loved this moment. 

#atavistic
If we were looking for a hashtag for this book, it would definitely be #atavistic. The whole book is basically about evolving (or devolving) into your truest self.

He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move. This writing is just stunning. 

A mercy
It was crazy how much they rode the dogs until they died, and it felt so selfish to me. 

His comrades talked of how a dog could break its heart through being denied the work that killed it, and recalled instances they had known, where dogs, too old for the toil, or injured, had died because they were cut out of the traces. Also, they held it a mercy, since Dave was to die anyway, that he should die in the traces, heart-easy and content. So he was harnessed in again, and proudly he pulled as of old, though more than once he cried out involuntarily from the bite of his inward hurt. Several times he fell down and was dragged in the traces, and once the sled ran up on him so that he limped thereafter in one of his hind legs.

On likening themselves to "the Indian", and then simultaneously painting them the villain
Yeah, so like I mentioned in the plot summary, the Yeehats were villainized at the end for protecting their own land, but there were tons of places throughout the journey to the Yukon and back where the white men prided themselves on being like the Indian. It felt like they were trying to have their cake and eat it, too. 

On killing a black bear and a moose
Buck does this. During some of his wilding phases. It was gnarly (and a little gross, tbqh) but I was also a little impressed at the concept of a dog taking down such enormous and powerful animals. This is a picture of a "St. Shepherd", which seems to be a mix of the same two breeds as Buck. 

Lines I Liked

• And when, on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolflike, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose at star and howling down through the centuries and through him. 

• They were perambulating skeletons. 


• With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. 

• But Buck possessed a quality that made for greatness - imagination. 

• But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called - called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.

Sending you all thoughts of safety, health, and healing! On to Sage Descent, or something of that ilk.

It's such a frightfully easy thing to do. If one's the type, all that's needed is a little nerve.

Passing by Nella Larsen
First published in 1929

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
Passing explores the juxtaposition of two women who look similar, but lead very different lives. We begin with Irene Redfield receiving a letter from Clare Kendry, in the 1920s. Irene is avoiding Clare because, as it turns out, Clare is 'passing'; both women are African-American, both light-skinned. Both are wealthy and comfortable; they meet in Chicago, which is where they both grew up, but later reconnect when Irene is home in Harlem. Irene has a husband whose skin color announces him to the world as definitively African-American; his name is Brian. Clare is married to a white man, Jack Bellew.

In a strange twist, we realize quite early on that Jack has no idea that Clare is not white. In fact, he calls her a very derogative nickname, joking that she could 'pass' as black if she wanted, but that he wants nothing to do with n*****rs. Clare and Jack have a daughter, Margery, who also passes for white (and doesn't, in fact, know that she isn't). Irene and Brian have two sons, Junior and Ted. What follows from their first re-encounter of each other is a series of increasingly high-stakes socializations between the two women. Irene keeps telling herself it's unsafe to re-connect with Clare, but Clare is persistent, and stubborn, and, tbqh, selfish. Clare ingrains herself into the Redfields' household, and after a few months, it becomes clear to Irene that Clare and her husband, Brian, are not simply friends.

Irene bumps into Jack on the street, and since they met before (and because Clare made it seem so, he thought she was white) he greets her, only to realize that she is arm-in-arm with another black woman, which makes him realize she is not so white after all. Irene thinks about telling Clare (and Brian) that Clare may have been outed, but she decides not to, hoping that Clare will simply dematerialize from their lives and give her back her sense of security (and her hubby). A few days later, Jack interrupts a dinner party that Clare, Brian, and Irene are attending at another friend's house. He calls out Clare in front of everyone, and in the blur of a moment, she tips over the ledge of a balcony and falls to her death. As Irene was running her way and had her hand on Clare's arm, it's ever so uncertain if Clare fell or if, perhaps, she was gently pushed.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Dear blobbists, 

How are you? Are you surviving all the Coronavirus mayhem? I hope this blob finds you well, and resting comfortably if you are finding yourself not so well. 

I loved this book. Looking back, I'm pretty sure I read it in high school for a class, but I didn't remember the particulars, so it still held a great deal of suspense for me. If you haven't read it, I HIGHLY recommend. It's quite short (120 pages or so) and definitely readable in a day or a weekend. 

Without further ado, my thoughts!

Purple ink
The book opens with Irene reading a letter from Clare and among the many things that stand out (and that annoy her) about it is that it's written in purple ink. I'm sure this was pretty scandalous for the 20's, but it made me smile because all my letters from my best friend Mar are in purple ink. I immediately read purple ink and thought, OOH! Irene got a letter from Mar! 

Clare
Clare is such a fascinatingly drawn character. One of the things I remember about reading the book before is that I thought Clare was the main character. Which, in a way, she is, but also, in another way, she very much isn't. Irene is our narrator, we return to her in between encounters with Clare, and we sympathize with her at various points in the work. I felt a little bad that I kind of forgot Irene entirely. But perhaps that's part of the beauty of the contrast between her and Clare. Here are some lines about Clare that paint a picture. 

• What strange, languorous eyes she had!

• Arresting eyes, slow and mesmeric, and with, for all their warmth, something withdrawn and secret about them.

• The basket for all letters, silence for their answers. 

Clare reminded me in many ways of Rebecca deWinter from Rebecca. She had this allure and mystery and fatal energy floating around her, and it was both fascinating to watch and a little terrifying to behold. 

Layers on layers on layers
Probably what I loved most about this book was how many layers it had packed into its 120 pages. It gets at all kinds of things conceptual, racial, and personal, and deals with everything from womanhood to personhood. Here are some examples of the layers: 

Irene is 'passing' when she encounters Clare at the restaurant. 
Later, Irene makes it clear that she occasionally 'passes' when she's at a restaurant or the movies, for matters of convenience, but that she never willfully misleads people about her race, and she's honest if asked. Still, it makes their first encounter so fraught because Irene is analyzing every bit of herself to see if Clare has realized she isn't white, when in actually, Clare is staring at her because she recognizes her from when they grew up together. 

There's also something sort of mystical about 'passing' that Irene is attracted to, and wants to learn more about: 

She wished to find out about this hazardous business of 'passing', this breaking away from all that was familiar and friendly to take one's chance in another environment, not entirely strange, perhaps, but certainly not entirely friendly. 

'passing over' - at one point, Clare refers to it as 'passing over', which I thought was fascinating because it made me think of dying. And I suppose in a way, Clare transitioning to a world where her blackness wasn't permitted was a kind of death. The terminology felt so final. 

Conversation about children: When Clare has Irene over to her house, another woman, Gertrude is over, who grew up with them. All three women have the skin tone to 'pass', but all live along the spectrum of blackness. Irene, as we've said, 'passes' only on occasion for convenience. Gertrude is married to a white man, but they have known each other since they were young, and he knows that she is black. Clare's husband and daughter know nothing of her blackness. 

I loved this exchange, as they were discussing children, and the layers of complexity of pigmentocracy and self-hatred:

Clare - I nearly died of terror the whole nine months before Margery was born for fear that she might be dark. Thank goodness, she turned out all right. But I'll never risk it again. Never! The strain is simply too - too hellish!

Gertrude - But of course, nobody wants a dark child.

Irene - In a voice of whose even tones she was proud: "One of my boys is dark."

Clare later asserts that the average black woman needn't worry about such things - It's only deserters like me who have to be afraid of freaks of the nature. Like I said. Layers on layers on layers, people. 

On being bound to Clare while also wanting to get as far away from her as possible:

She had to Clare Kendry a duty. She was bound to her by those very ties of race, which, for all her repudiation of them, Clare had been unable to completely sever.

She was caught between two allegiances, different, yet the same. Herself. Her race. Race! The thing that bound and suffocated her. Whatever steps she took, or if she took none at all, something would be crushed. A person or the race. Clare, herself, or the race.

This was so exquisitely articulated. Irene is pushed and pulled by the very thing which Clare has tried to wish out of existence, and it is what simultaneously makes Irene hate and resent Clare and what binds them together in solidarity. 

Irene, talking to Brian: 
Irene: 'It's funny about 'passing'. We disapprove of it and at the same time condone it. It excites our contempt and yet we rather admire it. We shy away from it with an odd kind of revulsion, but we protect it.
Brian: Instinct of the race to survive and expand.
Irene: Rot! Everything can't be explained by some general biological phrase.

Their conversations about race and passing were also beautifully complex, which is, I think a real triumph not only because she captures it so well but also because she does it so concisely. Every scene, every moment has its purpose and packs its proverbial punch.

Irene talking to Hugh, a wealthy white man at the Negro Welfare League dance:
Irene: 'It's easy for a Negro to 'pass' for white. But I don't think it would be so simple for a white person to 'pass' for coloured.'

Hugh: 'Never thought of that.'

Irene: 'No, you wouldn't. Why should you?'

I suppose it's obvious that the average white person wouldn't try to 'pass' as a person of color (although there are a not insignificant number of recent examples) because the power to be had is on the side of whiteness. I love that Irene points it out to Hugh, though, and makes him do this mental work.

So you want to [not] talk about race
During their tea at Clare's house, Irene watches Clare talk about everything BUT the blunt facts of the matter - that they live in separate worlds. Here's how she describes Clare not talking about race:

It was the most brilliant exhibition of conversational weightlifting that Irene had ever seen.

I love this mental image, and it made me think about how so many white people I know do this. They bend over backwards, twist themselves in all kinds of contortions, to talk about anything but race, and while I recognize that race is a construct, racism is real, and not acknowledging it is basically gaslighting every person of color on a daily basis. It's also just mean, on a really basic level, to pretend that differences in lived experience across race don't exist, because it refuses to allow someone full personhood. So maybe drop those conversational weights, people, and just tell it like it is.

On Jack calling Clare 'Nig'
Yeah, so remember how I said Jack had a very derogatory nickname for Clare? That's it. I didn't even want to type it, but I figured it would be kind of obfuscating if I just wrote asterisks. Again, layers on layers here. There's this brilliant brimming tension when we're in the room with Jack and Gertrude and Irene and Clare, but there's also this vehement hatred just spewing out of his mouth, and Irene's loyalty to Clare (again, ironically largely due to their shared race, though Clare doesn't own it) as well as a sense of personal safety, that keeps her from spitting in his face or calling him out. When Irene calmly asks him what he thinks of n****rs, he says he doesn't hate them, but they're:

'Always robbing and killing people. And...worse.'

Ah yes. So NOT hate then. Riiiiiiiiiiiiight. 

The loneliness of 'passing'
There are so many beautiful themes in this book, but I think the loneliness of 'passing' was my favorite. Clare claims in writing to Irene that she would have been fine and never looked back had she not run into her at that restaurant. But when she came back in contact with her past, and with blackness, she felt an ache so all-consuming she was compelled to rekindle their friendship. She says:

I want to see Negroes, to be with them again, to talk with them, to hear them laugh.

Interestingly, Irene experiences loneliness when she's in the room with Gertrude and Clare:

Later, when she examined her feeling of annoyance, Irene admitted, a shade reluctantly, that it arose from a feeling of being outnumbered, a sense of aloneness, in her adherence to her own class and kind; not merely in the great thing of marriage, but in the whole pattern of her life as well.

As I read Passing, I tried to imagine a time in my life where I had felt something close to what Clare was feeling, or even what Irene was feeling in that moment. Obviously as a white person I can't inhabit the experience of a person of color passing as white; that said, I think the closest comparison I came up with was when I was living in France. I could 'pass' as a French person, and my accent was good enough that the average person assumed I was French, but even when I was around Americans, I felt deeply alone. I'm still not sure why that was, but I think a big part of it was that I wasn't proficient enough or comfortable enough in French to really be myself. I couldn't make jokes in French, which sounds silly, but humor is a big part of my identity. And French humor is very localized and super important to their culture, so I felt sort of doubly on the outside in that regard. I also had never spent that much time away from my family, my friends, or my sisters. Anyway, while I kind of wanted to resent Clare, because I wanted to side with Irene, I understood how traumatizing that loneliness could be, and ended up empathizing with her deeply as well. 

LIKE I SAID, folks. LAYERS.

On wealth
I thought it was super interesting that Clare and Irene's lives were not demarcated along lines of wealth. Part of the crux of their conversation in the beginning centers around the fact that they both have money, children, husbands, nice houses. In some ways, I loved the way this challenged 1920's notions of blackness; I don't think the average white person thought of blacks as being educated, capable of being high-income earners, etc. and Irene's husband Brian is a doctor and they have servants. That being said, there was an interesting disconnect in a way, in that I wondered if Clare's passing would have been somehow more 'permissible' if Irene were not living a life that was equally comfortable. But again, perhaps this is precisely Larsen's point! #layersonlayers

On not being safe
I loved these lines. Here's Clare describing herself to Irene, when Irene tells her it wouldn't be 'safe' to spend time together: 

Why, to get the things I want badly enough, I'd do anything, hurt anybody, throw anything away. Really, 'Rene, I'm not safe. God, I love this line. 

And then later, Irene reflecting on Clare's behavior: 

If, at the time of choosing, Clare hadn't precisely reckoned the cost, she had, nevertheless, no right to expect others to help make up the reckoning. Again. LOVE.

On realizing Clare and Brian are...
The scene where Irene puts two and two together around Clare and Brian and Brian's increasing emotional distance is so lyrically depicted:

In the room beyond, a clock chimed. A single sound. Fifteen minutes past five o'clock. That was all! And yet in the short space of half an hour all of life had changed, lost its colour, its vividness, its whole meaning. No, she reflected, it wasn't that that had happened. Life about her, apparently, went on exactly as before.

Yes, life went on precisely as before. It was only she that had changed. Knowing, stumbling on this thing, had changed her. It was as if in a house long dim, a match had been struck, showing ghastly shapes where had been only blurred shadows.

The danger of not counting yourself
Irene is the opposite of Clare, and while Clare thinks of herself and herself only, Irene thinks of everyone else. Here's one of her first thoughts after she realizes her husband has been cheating with Clare:

How would it affect her and the boys? The boys! She had a surge of relief. It ebbed, vanished. A feeling of absolute unimportance followed. Actually, she didn't count.

Again, so beautifully articulated, and, I think, so often true of mothers. And yet also so unspeakably sad, and perhaps, in the end, dangerous.

On intersectionality
Along the lines of incredible layers, Irene suffers from her blackness not in relation to the white world, per se, but because it ties her to Clare, whom she desperately wants to hate and cast out of her life for good: 

For the first time she suffered and rebelled because she was unable to disregard the burden of race. It was, she cried silently, enough to suffer as a woman, an individual, on one's own account, without having to suffer for the race as well. It was a brutality, and undeserved. I think Irene would have liked seeing Lemonade in this moment.

On when you talk to your kids about race when they're POC
Another beautifully nuanced exchange between Brian and Irene as they discuss when it's appropriate to talk about race with their sons: 

Brian: 'You're absolutely wrong! If, as you're so determined, they've got to live in this damned country, they'd better find out what sort of thing they're up against as soon as possible. The earlier they learn it, the better prepared they'll be.
Irene: 'I don't agree. I want their childhood to be happy and as free from the knowledge of such things as it possibly can be.'
Brian: 'Very laudable. Very laudable indeed, all things considered. But can it?'

I think about this a lot not so much in relation to children in my own family (though I have started to have conversations with my nephew, G, about race, and his school has done a fabulous job of guiding exploration of it and diversity) but more so in relation to the students I've worked with. All of my jobs in education have been non-profit positions, designed ostensibly to support underresourced communities and work to dismantle racism, prejudice, inequity, etc. But at one point do we (or do the families of our students) loop them in to the why of our program? Do we put it front and center and speak transparently about it, so we don't gaslight anyone (as mentioned above)? Or do we honor each family's independent decision and timeline around how and when (and if) to address matters like that with their young adult children? I'm sure on many levels, students of all ages are aware of and conscious of race, and it's not for me to "open their eyes" to anything, but it can feel complex when you're working with a young person and trying to honor their personhood to figure out how and when and where to discuss heavy things.

Referents and Reverberations
Two specific ones came to mind. 

This moment: On the floor and the walls the sinking sun threw long, fantastic shadows.

Reminded me of this line from Jane Eyre: Daylight began to forsake the red-room.

And this moment, when Irene is at a party with Brian (and Clare, and a bunch of other people) and she knows about the affair: 

Someone in the room had turned on the phonograph. Or was it the radio? She didn't know which she disliked more. And nobody was listening to its blare. The talking, the laughter never for a minute ceased. Why must they have more noise?

Reminded me of Macon, and his two-sided cassette tape of silence. Maybe he could lend it to Irene. ;)

Well friends, it's been a strange few weeks, and I'm sure they'll get stranger before they feel normal again. All of this 'social distancing' has made me think of how easy it is to subjugate a population by not allowing them to meet in groups. It made me think of Prague Spring and Arab Spring, of secret police, of World War II, of slaves not being allowed to congregate in groups for fear it would foment rebellion. I know the isolation is for our own health in this case, but it's made me realize how easy it would be to keep people from banding together, from revolting, from communicating, from breaking down barriers, from challenging unjust governments. 

And it's certainly reminded me how deeply privileged a life I lead, in that while my grocery store may be short on some goods these days, I've never once gone without a meal from a case of need. And while 'social distancing' reminds me of my loneliness in France, I've never been (and still am not, except perhaps physically) kept from communicating with others, from organizing, from publicly dissenting. And while Coronavirus sounds scary to our most vulnerable communities, and certainly has taken its toll fatality-wise, I live in a country virtually untouched by Ebola, Dengue fever, Malaria, or SARS. 

In the mean time, I will also continue to be grateful for another of my life's privileges - reading books. Keep each other safe. Keep faith. Good night.

Elizabeth's Blog-Along on 'The Accidental Tourist'!

Dear Blobbists, 

As I mentioned in a previous post, Elizabeth read along with me for Macon and Muriel and the whole wild ride. Here are her thoughts on the read, with a few bits of my commentary sprinkled in (in purple, to make Mar smile). To be clear, I asked her not to read my blob before writing her thoughts, so you'll see some overlaps. 

Enjoy!

Elizabeth's thoughts, in no particular order: 

As I mentioned before, the only other Anne Tyler book I have read was A Spool of Blue Thread, and I found it rather meandering, though the characters felt quite “real”. Not too long after, a friend of mine commented on GoodReads that Anne Tyler is one of her favorite authors and when I expressed my lukewarm feelings on Blue Thread, she said “She can write families like no other” and I had to agree on that count. When I realized that the Accidental Tourist was set in Baltimore too, and much of it would be largely taking place in the family’s ancestral home, I wondered if it would be very much like Blue Thread. Some authors tend to write the same story in the same place over and over. But I don’t think that was the case here. The Learys were really not very much like the Whiteshanks. The only similarity I felt was that both families had their own idiosyncrasies and a general feeling that the way they do things is the RIGHT way, and everyone else is ignorant, misled, weird, or just plain wrong. Yet, Tyler manages to show that no family is immune to the struggles that come for everyone - sickness, loss, heartbreak, but also unexpected joy. This story had a much more contained storyline than Blue Thread and I appreciated that very much.

THEMES!

TRAVEL / HOME / FOREIGNNESS

In the afternoon (so to speak), he visited hotels. … Most were maintaining their standards, more or less, but something had happened to the Royal Prince. The fact was that it seemed…well, foreign. Dark, handsome men in slim silk suits murmured in the lobby while little brown children chased each other around the spittoons. Macon had the feeling he’d got even more hopelessly lost than usual and ended up in Cairo. Cone-shaped ladies in long black veils packed the revolving doors, spinning in from the street with shopping bags full of…what? He tried to imagine their purchasing stone-washed denim shorts and thigh-high boots of pink mesh—the merchandise he’d seen in most shop windows. “Er…” he said to the manager. How to put this? He hated to sound narrow-minded, but his readers did avoid the exotic.

Yikes. This passage makes me wince with the latent racism / xenophobia! Though it goes along with the theme of reluctant travelers, who only want to be reminded of the familiar when they are away from home. [Ooph, same feels for me.]

“To tell the truth,” Macon said, “I’ve always thought a hotel ought to offer optional small animals.”
“Animals?”
“I mean a cat to sleep on your bed at night, or a dog of some kind to act pleased when you come in. You ever notice how a hotel room feels so lifeless?”

Yes, I completely agree with Macon. And this is why we now have CAT CAFES all over big cities! Cat Hotels has got to be the next big thing… [OMG I AM SO HERE FOR CAT HOTELS. YES PLZ.]

GRIEF/ LOSS / MEMORY

When Macon’s niece Susan joins him on his Philadelphia trip and mentions Ethan:
She pressed her fingertips to her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said. “For what?”
  “I didn’t mean to talk about him.”
   “You can talk about him.”
 “I don’t want to,” she said.
  She gazed off across the room. Macon, following her eyes, found only a harpsichord. He looked back at her and saw her chin trembling.
 It had never occurred to him that Ethan’s cousins missed him too.

This is so poignant. Grief can be so all-consuming, that one suffering from it becomes a bit self-centered, and unable to see others that are suffering too. There is also a tendency for people to avoid talking about the loss to the ones who are at the center of it, as though speaking of it will hurt them more. I loved this whole scene of Macon and his niece dearly remembering his dead son. This bit too:

“You don’t think he’s mad at us, do you, Uncle Macon?”
 “Who’s that?”
“You think he’s mad we’re starting to forget him?”
“Oh, no, honey. I’m sure he’s not.”

I think everyone can relate to that pang of guilt a person may feel when they realize they haven’t thought of their deceased loved one lately.

I liked this description of how a memory can live in your physical body, not just your mind:

Macon was visited by one of those memories that dent the skin, that strain the muscles. He felt the seat of Ethan’s bike pressing into his hand—the curled-under edge at the rear that you hold onto when you’re trying to keep a bicycle upright. He felt the sidewalk slapping against his soles as he ran. He felt himself let go, slow to a walk, stop with his hands on his hips to call out, “You’ve got her now! You’ve got her!” And Ethan rode away from him, strong and proud and straight-backed, his hair picking up the light till he passed beneath an oak tree. [I forgot about this! Reminds me of Proust remembering the shape of his bed as he wakes up.]

I thought that nicely compared with the stillness and emptiness of the corpse of a loved one, as described when he recollects the time he went to identify Ethan’s body at the morgue: “Odd how clear it suddenly became, once a person had died, that the body was the very least of him. This was simply an untenanted shell…”

In the sleepiness of the night, Muriel places his hand on her C-section scar and it speaks to the universality of grief and loss:

And it seemed to him, as he sank back into his dreams, that she had as good as spoken aloud. About your son, she seemed to be saying: Just put your hand here. I’m scarred, too. We’re all scarred. You are not the only one.

BECOMING A CERTAIN KIND OF PERSON / BEING UNABLE TO CHANGE ONESELF / FINDING STRENGTH TO CHANGE AFTER ALL

I enjoyed following Macon’s journey along this path - first finding himself successful in dating Sarah when he “played it cool” as a young man, then realizing he was unable to STOP playing it cool as he got older. I also enjoyed the descriptions of the Leary family and their specific behaviors that seemed to drive away spouses. I could relate to both Sarah and Muriel as they perceived Macon. Sarah, for being initially attracted to Macon’s cool remoteness, and then later frustrated by their lack of intimacy, especially as they navigated the depths of grief. And yet… still missing him when they were separated. And Muriel for being an open book, being patient and generous of herself with him, and then feeling frustrated when he was holding himself back and not treating her as family.

So many universal feelings related to love and relationships:

• feeling attracted to someone for some feature that later on seems to drive you apart

• finding yourself having locked into certain behavioral patterns for reasons unknown and seemingly incapable to stop doing them

• the joy of being with someone who brings out a different side of yourself, that was previously hidden or unknown 

• what is more important - being with someone who accepts you as-is, or being with someone who challenges you to be different, maybe even better?

• how do you define love? Is it admiring the other person? or admiring who YOU are when you are with that person? [Love this. It's the central question for Macon!]

Upon presenting a cool exterior to Sarah in their early days of dating, when he sometimes didn’t really feel that way at all

He felt he’d been backed into a false position. He was forced to present this impassive front if he wanted her to love him. Oh, so much was expected of men!

Well, that is just hilarious in a head-up-his-ass kinda way. He didn’t stop to think what kind of “front” she may be presenting to him. MEN! [LOL. Preach.]

Later on, Sarah says to Macon:

“Everything that might touch you or upset you or disrupt you, you’ve given up without a murmur and done without, said you never wanted it anyhow.”

hmmmm foreshadowing??? Muriel certainly touches, upsets and disrupts Macon!!

On Rose’s extremely low-and-slow cooked turkey dinner: 

“It’s pure poison,” Danny finished for him.

This scene had me laughing over the nitpickiness of the Leary brothers, when Rose DARES to try something different, mixed with the boredom of Porter’s teenagers, who probably just contributed to the insanity for entertainment purposes. [LOL agreed. I also loved that Julian ate the 'pure poison'. :)]

Macon finds himself becoming a different person with Muriel, and like it:

Then he knew that what mattered was the pattern of her life; that although he did not love her he loved the surprise of her, and also the surprise of himself when he was with her. In the foreign country that was Singleton Street he was an entirely different person. This person had never been suspected of narrowness, never been accused of chilliness; in fact, was mocked for his soft heart. And was anything but orderly.

Muriel starts to get uneasy about Macon’s seeming disinterest in commitment (and appropriately so). She seems to notice that men seem attracted to her because they find themselves able to change when they are with her… and then … they leave.

“It was like I had, you know, cured him, just so he could elope with another woman.”
“Well,” he said.
“You wouldn’t do anything like that, would you, Macon?”

Later, after Macon learns she had quit her job and was starting to rely on him, and his brain starts going ALERT ALERT! 

Seeing her go was like shucking off a great, dragging burden.

And Muriel works her magic again, reassuring him and bringing a smile to his face, this time with a mitten-puppet:

“I’m not Muriel! I’m Mitchell Mitten! Macon, don’t you know Muriel can always take care of herself?” the puppet asked him. “Don’t you know she could find another job tomorrow, if she wanted?…”
I kind of want a little Mitchell Mitten for myself, who can tell me that everything will be okay! [OMG yes I LOVED the mitten-puppet!]

Muriel pushing to go to France with him, refusing to be mugged, etc: 

He had to admire her. Had he ever known such a fighter?
I guess he hasn’t! Seems like most people in his life seem to resign themselves to the hand they are dealt.

Macon again notices how he has changed and wants someone to notice!! Like oh uhmmm I dunno, his estranged wife??

Macon, listening absently while Edward sighed at his feet, had a sudden view of his life as rich and full and astonishing. He would have liked to show it off to someone. He wanted to sweep out an arm and say, “See?”
  But the person he would have liked to show it to was Sarah.

Sarah and Macon on deciding who to be with at this later stage in their lives:

“Macon, I think that after a certain age people just don’t have a choice,” Sarah said. “You’re who I’m with. It’s too late for me to change. I’ve used up too much of my life now.”
…
“After a certain age,” he told Sarah, “it seems to me you can only choose what to lose.”

They both agree with each other, but they aren’t saying exactly the same thing….

…he began to believe that people could, in fact, be used up—could use each other up, could be of no further help to each other and maybe even do harm to each other. He began to think that who you are when you’re with somebody may matter more than whether you love her.

Again, this idea that certain people enhance who you are, and other people detract… and maybe that should be how you select a partner.

More Leary siblings driving away their partners —Sarah describes Rose as like a flounder - “she’s lain on the ocean floor so long, one eye has moved to the other side of her head” - And Julian describes how she ended up moving back to her grandparents house and taking care of “the boys”. I wonder if Macon thinks about Rose’s inability to change and sees it in himself too? Is this why the phrase “you could have taken steps” has such an effect on him at the very end?? His thoughts:

He reflected that he had not taken steps very often in his life, come to think of it. Really never. His marriage, his two jobs, his time with Muriel, his return to Sarah—all seemed to have simply befallen him. He couldn’t think of a single major act he had managed of his own accord.
  Was it too late now to begin?
Was there any way he could learn to do things differently?

This is a great line of thought. So many of us drift through life, one thing after the other. It can be hard to change that habit and actually make up your mind on what you want.. then fight for it!

There is this motif of Muriel weaving threads into Macon: 

It seemed she had webbed his mind with her stories, wound him in slender steely threads from her life.

Upon leaving Muriel, and it not being “so clean-cut” like in the movies when important changes happen in characters’ lives. Macon has to leave some belongings behind.

He had to abandon them—messy, trailing strings of himself cluttering his leavetaking.

Later, when she shows up on the plane to France with him - He was conscious only of Muriel somewhere behind him. He felt wired to her. 

Macon later describes a feeling of tug-of-war with her when she urges him to go to breakfast with her Paris, he declines, then she turns around and walks out…

After they have dinner in Paris and he declines to join her in her room after: And then he felt how she drew at him, pulling deep strings from inside him, when the elevator creaked away with her.

Interesting that the last page, when he rejoins Muriel, does not have any thread/wire/string imagery… instead, confetti!

Little bits I liked:

• Macon wasn’t very familiar with dogs. He preferred cats. He liked the way cats kept their own counsel.

This says a lot about Macon - throughout the book he tries to block out unsolicited stories, advice, secrets, etc. You can easily imagine him awkwardly trying to back out of conversations throughout the book. So it’s interesting that the book follows his relationship with Edward the dog FAR more than Helen the cat (who is barely mentioned at all). 

• In New York the passengers scattered instantly. Macon thought of a seed pod bursting open.

I like this bit of imagery. Why don’t I think of things like this when I’m navigating crowds?

Words I learned: 
So, I didn’t really learn new words; instead, I learned how NOT to use some words - like nauseous or enormity! A few of the Leary-corrections I did know and also am annoyed by - “eck cetera” or abusing the phrase “literally”. When people mix up “your” and “you’re” or “they’re” and “their” I just figure, poor thing, you are not so bright, you can’t help it. But when educated people mix up “effect” and “affect” or “less” vs “fewer” I feel my eyelid start to twitching!! (and YET, I abuse grammar all the time… so where do I get off???) [LOL right there with you. English and Latin teacher parents, so grammar was an all the time topic of conversation. ;)]