Anxious People

 

The purpose of fiction is to teach us empathy—teaching not as passing on an abstract idea like algebra or the representation of topography by the drawing of maps but teaching as drawing out something already inside us that regularly draws back like a frightened animal. If you read a novel and have no empathy for any of the characters—likeable or not, for people are not always likeable—then the unwritten contract between the author and you, the reader, to embolden empathy has broken down. This happens, for all manner of reasons; and is not in itself reason not to try again, with another author, another reader.

The first novel by Fredrik Backman that I read was Beartown. It is, I think, the most achingly beautiful story I have ever read. The story is a painful one: of a schoolgirl who is raped by a boy, and the community who rallies around him and turns against her family, because in Sweden—as in my own country—the life and future of a boy is worth far more than that of girls. Because this story is so regular an occurrence, there will be many people for whom Beartown is too painful to read, but I wish that as many as can, would. It might not stop boys from raping girls, but I do believe (I recognise perhaps naïvely) that it might change society, the gross injustice of those whose responsibility it is to uphold justice—not only the police and legal system, but, to an extent, every citizen—compounding injustice upon injustice.

Anyway, Beartown is another story from the one I am trying to tell, and a beautifully told one. So perfect that I was hesitant to read another book by the same author, lest I be disappointed. I was so invested in the characters, in rooting for them, that I did risk the sequel, Us Against You, and it is also a fine story, though not as perfect. But I have never risked Backman’s earliest novel, A Man Called Ove, despite many endorsements, nor anything written before Beartown.

But the other day, when, on holiday, I was failing to find a book to read, and having walked into a bookshop for the third time searching, my wife pointed to a book on a table just inside the entrance and said, ‘What about this one? You like this author.’ And that was that.

Anxious People has been a delight. In part because it is so different in style from Backman’s other storytelling (including, I'm told, ones I have not read), thus avoiding the trap of disappointment. It is a charming story, a comedy of errors and a whodunnit and a love story, of the author’s love for his fellow human beings in spite and because of their short-comings. It is a story that falls over itself to tell itself, returning to a new starting-point again and again; and one so well written as to catch you out again and again, lovingly bringing you face to face with your own limits, the limits that make you as flawed and loveable as the characters.

Anxious People is a story about the ways in which our lives affect one another, without our even being aware. Of how the lives of at first glance strangers are intertwined. It touches, gently but deeply, on a suicide, and the lifelong impact of that action on several lives, and for that reason some might need to choose whether they want to read it or not.

Fredrik Backman is a writer who can help us navigate the painful and the frighteningly wonderful vulnerabilities of the human condition, working with us to embolden empathy. To take a risk on our neighbours, on who they could become, given the chance, given acceptance of where they (and we) are, and forgiveness of what brought them (us) to that place where necessary, and support to get where they (we) need to be in the next chapter—however short or long, but no more than that—of our story. All accomplished, as only fiction can, by catching us up in a truthful deceit.

 

On the side of the angels

 

Contains no plot spoilers

One of the things I love to do on holiday is get lost in a novel. This holiday, I have read All The Devils Are Here, the sixteenth in Louise Penny’s series of Chief Inspector Gamache Mysteries. These are among my favourite stories. Here’s why.

[1] The way in which Penny evokes place:

Penny understands the joy of discovering certain almost magical places for the first time; and the even greater joy of introducing someone else to that place, and their loving it, too. This, of course, comes with the great risk that they won’t see it for how you saw it: I well remember introducing a friend to the first Gamache mystery, and them hating it, a feeling as intense as my own but the exact opposite. To be honest, it caused me to question their judgement, even their character—in turn inviting me, in a very Penny-like way, to question my own second-guessing and conclusion-jumping in relation to my friend.

Penny also understands how place both changes and stays the same through time (including seasons), and that a dear space can be violated by the actions of others, but can even then be redeemed, scars remaining but adding to its depth of character, the richness of its story-holding.

[2] The insight Penny has into human nature:

Penny understands that everyone is capable of good and evil—and that we must be invited, again and again, to give greater weight to good, to choose good over evil. Even those we love are flawed; have tendencies, and make choices, that make them hard to love, at times. And yet, we are invited to love them, despite their flaws, and even, on account of the flaws we perceive (our own perception being not without flaws of its own). We are invited to choose forgiveness, again and again; and to recognise that it is never too late for the one who is consistently loved and forgiven to change. We are invited, also, to always take responsibility for the consequences of our actions.

Penny believes this—that a person can change, can make amends—because her own life had lost its structural integrity, and spectacularly imploded, by her mid-thirties, only to be redeemed, entirely unexpectedly, by love. This truth is explored not only through the story-arc of various recurring characters, but also by the motif, in several though not all of the stories, of structural engineering.

[3] The way Penny never loses sight of our blind spots:

Penny understands that we are all unreliable witnesses, in as much as we do not only observe things but supply an interpretation to what we see. This is inevitable, but problematic, for the reader as well as the characters. One of the things Gamache does (though it is hardly the focus of novels) is teach a class at the police academy, where his first act each year is to write Don’t Believe Everything You Think on the board. Our mind is a great weapon in the fight against evil, but it is a weapon with which we can shoot ourselves in the foot.

To mitigate, Penny arms Gamache with four other powerful statements, which he imperfectly but habitually lives by, and passes on to others:

I don’t know.

I need help.

I was wrong.

I am sorry.

They are insightful statements, from an insightful author, whose body of work helps me to be a better human. For, as author Neil Gaiman put it, fiction is a lie that teaches us deep truths.

Like Sayers, and in contrast to Conan Doyle or Christie, Penny loves her very human detective creation, flaws and all. She is not alone.

 

Phase space

 

I love stories and storytelling, and want to become a better teller of stories. And so, I spent some of a birthday book token on Philip Pullman’s Daemon Voices: On Stories and Storytelling. Pullman is, rightly, a celebrated storyteller. He is also something of a celebrated atheist. It doesn’t take much intellectual rigour or integrity of character to be an atheist—or, indeed, a theist—and perhaps both things are out of fashion anyway, but there must be some who possess both, and I am disappointed that Pullman does not seem interested in being one of them. When he writes about religious faith and religious texts, as he does a great deal, the deftness with which he deploys his fallacies does not make a sure path through the woods.

That said, he is an excellent storyteller, with a raven eye and the ability to weave a nest from idea-twigs. And one of the ideas he returns to over and again is that of phase space, a term stolen from theoretical physics, which, taken for his own purposes, Pullman considers as “something like the sum of all the consequences that could follow from a given origin.” [DV, p.87] This he describes by analogy as a vast wood, or forest, crossed by paths, such as the one taken by Little Red Riding Hood on her way to visit her grandmother. The purpose of the storyteller is to follow the path, making decisions as to which fork to take, perhaps slowing down to look at whatever may be found next to the path, but never stepping off it, for, the moment you do so, you lose your audience.

I am fascinated by this elegant idea, and how it applies not only to the telling of story in general but specifically how it applies to the library we know as the Bible. The sum of all the consequences that could follow from a given origin describes, to me, the knowledge of God, who sees the whole forest from above, and who walks its paths, from the track taken by Little Red Riding Hood to the paths made by a stag beetle in search of a mate and the deer in search of a safe hollow in which to give birth to her fawn, paths beyond number, both habitual and provisional, and every path not taken. That there is a wood which, moreover, can be traversed, and paths, taken or not, is blessing. That we must leave a character for now, facing a seemingly impassable obstacle, while we pick up the progress of another character along another path, curse.

Here is an idea by which to understand the Garden of Eden, that plays so very much on Pullman’s mind. He paints a picture of a petty God who wants to keep the humans in the servitude of innocence and punish them for losing it, and Satan as the Saviour who leads us from captivity to the wisdom of experience. I see a world of possibility and responsibility that calls for just such experience-gained wisdom, learned only through suffering that God would shield his children from for a time, but not for ever, and a long path out of childhood through adolescence to maturity. Every story needs a given origin, and ours begins in media res, not with a myth about origins but a myth about purpose, not asking how is it that we exist? but, what do we exist for? And not, why are we here? but, why are we here? Here, in exile in the walled garden city of Babylon, so far from our home in Jerusalem? And why must the great Father and Mother of All Humankind not consume the fruit of the tree God, not they, has planted in the very midst of their kingdom?

The Hebrew Bible is precisely a collection of stories concerned with a path through the woods. A path that rescues life through a cataclysmic flood, unleashed by shadowy forces, a path the protagonist is pointed to by a powerful ally who, from then on, will often be described as walking on the waters. Paths that lead out from the Plain of Babel, though we cannot follow them all and must choose which one to take. A path that beckons Abram and Sarai out from Ur into the unknown, to live as sojourners in a place that their descendants will call home. A path through Egypt, to save many peoples from famine and out of Egypt as refugees, and seemingly around and around the wilderness while those who have known nothing but slavery to capricious gods might find paths to a new identity. Paths in and out of a land of promise; paths that lead, through love and betrayal, to unity and to division; paths that detour into long exile. And, in exile, a collection of Writings on the theme of wisdom, borrowing from other nations, other ideas about the world, yet distinctive in the way in which the forest is mapped by Jewish cartographers.

One of the key ideas that really comes to the fore in these Writings but has in fact been there all along at the corner of our eye is that ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’. And this has often been understood as, if you are wise, if you know what is good for you, you will be in fear of God: this fear will prevent you from stepping out of line, off the path, where the Monsters lurk. Though, of course, in such a reading, God is the ultimate Monster; or the best weapon of the ultimate human monsters. But in every other case, the something of the Lord refers either to something that is inherently the Lord’s—the arm of the Lord, the eyes of the Lord, recognising of course that these are metaphors—or to something that has been given a particular purpose by the Lord—the angel of the Lord, the mountain of the Lord. So, it would only seem fair that we should take the fear of the Lord to refer either to a fear that is the Lord’s, or to fear that is surrendered to the Lord.

Many Christians don’t like the first option, because we have been conditioned to think of God in Greek Platonic terms, the Ideal far above and behind the jealous, squabbling pantheon of Greek gods. Some atheists, such as Stephen Fry, claim they would have more time for an honestly jealous God; Pullman seems to see no such distinction. But Yahweh is not at all a Greek god, and fear is a perfectly legitimate thing for such a god as this to experience: fear for those he loves, for avoidable pains and unavoidably suffering on the path from naivety to maturity. Wisdom might flow from such a fear, as drops of blood from a man in another garden on the night before he is tortured and executed. Or, and these need not be mutually exclusive understandings, it may be that when such a man willingly surrenders his fear to God, so that God takes ownership of it, it is transformed into wisdom. In any case, there is something reciprocal here, and generous, and brave. In these Writings we might discern the discovery of some given magnetic field, the invention of a form of compass, and their use by adventurers to venture beyond the horizon.

And in these Writings, the path of wisdom is absolutely grounded in the material world, from close observation of the natural world from lizards and ants to rock badgers and gazelle, snakes and eagles, rivers and winds and trees, and every conceivable realm of human experience, from ships carrying traded spices on high seas to ivory towers of learning, hard toil both honest and bitter, extravagant and modest pleasures. This world is also inhabited or visited by a divine council, including the satan or counsel for the prosecution, by freshwater and saltwater and celestial non-human sentient beings. What we make of these—and the earliest tellers of these stories seem not to be of one mind—matters. We can claim that they are metaphors that are erroneously taken literally, and who are in any case no longer required as we have found better explanations for what they were groping towards, but that would be to entirely misrepresent ‘metaphor’ and ‘literal’ and ‘better explanation’. This world also takes in, within its compass, a shadowy realm of the dead; but the goal of the story is not to leave this world behind for a fairer shore, but, rather, the making new of our world, countless times over, through the rise and fall of civilisations, through the planting of human society as ‘trees’ and the (re)movement of human society as ‘gardeners’.

In short, the story Philip Pullman finds himself so compelled to tell is already told, and well. This is, of course, hardly a surprise; for every fresh story is a variation of archetypal stories, and none the worse for it, as he himself frequently acknowledges. Every great story is a path through a phase space that bears re-walking, and the taking of previously unchosen paths, and Pullman is well equipped to play in the woods. But he urges the storyteller to pay attention to the path through the wood and not be distracted by the trees, and I fear that he has failed to take his own advice.

 

Sulking children

Author Candice Carty-Williams has won Book of the Year at the British Book Awards for her novel Queenie. She is the first black woman to do so. Interviewed, she admitted to a host of emotions: pride at her work, and gratitude towards her publishing team, alongside sadness and confusion that she should be the first black woman to have won the award.

BBC Radio 2 shared the news on social media, and the comments are vile, ranging from the racist, “this isn’t about talent, it’s about politics: no white authors will win prizes for the next few years” to the racist, “she’ll have to live with never knowing whether she only won because of the colour of her skin” (white authors, how confident are you?) to the racist, “this prize should be about writing, not skin colour” (indeed; so why is she the first? and why are you so defensive?) to the desperately emotionally-stunted, “If she can’t even be happy to win, she should give the award back.”

In the Gospel reading for this coming Sunday, from Matthew chapter 11, Jesus describes his society as being like children sitting on either side of the marketplace, one group calling out, “we played the flute for you, but you would not dance,” and the other responding, “we wailed, and you would not mourn.”

Jesus is describing learnt, coded, culture. Men led the community in celebrations, such as weddings; women led the community in lament, such as funerals; and boys and girls learnt their expected roles—as leaders and followers, depending on context—through role-play, while the adults went about their daily business. But the role-play had broken down, into two camps, each aggrieved at the other.

Jesus’ point was, surely, (at least in part) we’ve forgotten how to hold celebration and mourning together. He goes on, John (the Baptist) came in prophetic severity, proclaiming God’s imminent judgement on injustice, and you dismissed him; I came proclaiming God’s embrace of the marginalised, and you dismiss me. But the two go hand-in-hand, each taking a turn to be the leading- and responding beat.

It seems to me that Carty-Williams gets this, and that her critics don’t.

World Book Day

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Synopsis: The Very Hungry Caterpillar falls off the wagon and goes on an absolute bender at the weekend, but discovers grace on Sunday.

It is, rightly, a classic.

The other day, I was in the chapel, when someone came in. I was deep in concentration, writing notes for a colleague, and they startled me. They are an alcoholic, and had had a relapse, and had come asking for prayer — if I was willing to pray for them, given that they had had a drink.

Of course I was bloody willing.

They talked, I listened. And then I prayed with them, and spoke over them God’s forgiveness for their guilt; God’s deep cleansing for their deep shame; and asked for God to hold them and carry them when they could not hold nor carry themselves.

That is what we are there for. If you need to know.

Three things about everyone

Over the past few weeks, I have been reading three books by Joanna Cannon, the novels The Trouble With Goats & Sheep and Three Things About Elsie and a memoir, Breaking & Mending. Cannon is a psychiatric doctor, and her deeply compassionate novels are inspired by the lives of her patients.

Three Things About Elsie is concerned with how what at the time appear to be small, insignificant choices can have the biggest impact on our lives, and the lives of others. But it is also a wonderful exploration of what it is to be human; a fictionalised companion to Prof John Swinton’s Dementia: living in the memories of God.

Swinton speaks of three selfs that, together, shape who we are; and all three can be traced through Three Things About Elsie.

Self 1 is first-person self-awareness in the present moment. This has begun before our first birthday, and we never lose it. This is most apparent in the chapters with a time stamp for a heading. Flo, the first-person narrator, has fallen in her flat and is waiting to be discovered. Flo lives with dementia, but possesses Self 1, and over these chapters, and the course of the novel, is making peace with the present moment.

Self 2 is made up of how we think and feel about ourselves. This is most clearly explored in the chapters headed FLORENCE (first-person narrated), MISS AMBROSE and HANDY SIMON (both told by a third-person narrator), in which three characters reflect on themselves. We see the things they value, even when other people do not share the same values. We see their regrets, and how choices they made have resulted in those regrets. We see them tell themselves stories, constructed from the past, to help them in the present. We note how they compare themselves against others. We note that they (and by extension, we) are not reliable narrators, not reliable constructors of themselves, both in that they are not in full possession of the facts and in their ongoing struggle to accept themselves, to forgive and own and love themselves. Self 2 changes, many times, over the course of our lives, changing through big events (such as moving into sheltered housing, or the death of a friend) and through incremental series of small choices. We can never hold on to our Self 2, though we hoard all our previous Self 2s in the corners of the room of our lives.

Self 3 is social, various social personae, that are and can only be constructed in interaction with others. We see this in how Flo, Miss Ambrose and Handy Simon see each other, and in how each of them is impacted by interaction with a wide range of other characters, past and present. We see this in being a friend (you cannot be a friend without another), a work colleague (how you are seen, and how how you are seen can change, changing, in turn, how you see yourself), in being a vulnerable adult standing in front of a doctor or a policeman.

In the end, there are limits to Selves 2 and 3. We construct our lives, in collaboration with others, but God and nature and time and eternity conspire to save us from ourselves, to tenderly strip away our outer clothing until our Self 1 is present(ed) to us, and we are invited to make peace—or, as Swinton puts it, to make friends—with the present moment.

It is amazing how much energy we put into shaping a Self 2 to our (current) liking, and how much energy we expend on trying to control the input of others into our social Self 3; and how hard we work to push away the Self 1 that was our first self in the world, our only constant self, and the self we will be at the last.

Postscript: there is a sentence hidden in Three Things About Elsie, a landmine in a field. If you have not read The Trouble With Goats & Sheep, you won’t stand on it; but if you have, you will, and, though you keep your weight on it for as long as possible, eventually you will shift and then, only then, it will explode...