We Can't Afford to Forget

Memory, hither come, 

And tune your merry notes;
And, while upon the wind
Your music floats,

.......

And, when night comes, I'll go
To places fit for woe,
Walking along the darken'd valley
With silent Melancholy. 

            -- Memory by William Blake

 

In her novel "The Great Believers", a finalist for the National Book Award, Rebecca Makkai wove an intricate tale of love lost, friendship betrayed, lives cut short, and dreams unfulfilled. The narrative shifts between Chicago in the 80’s and Paris in 2015 in alternating chapters. There is Yale Tishman, a young gay man in Chicago, who watches his friends literally drop like flies all around him, as AIDS starts to become an epidemic. And there is Yale's friend Fiona, thirty years later, searching for her estranged daughter in Paris, the City of Lights that is to see more bloodshed and violence. Each narrative thread serves as the other’s foreshadower or revelation, a true butterfly effect -- every action, however trivial, does have consequences. Looking back now, with the battle against AIDS not yet won, it is astonishing to realize just how fast time has already erased (from the collective consciousness at least) much of the terror and devastation of those tumultuous years. 

         The characters in this book, straight, gay, young, and old, struggle with not only dying but also being alive, as time waits for no one and spares no one -- memories fade, people are forgotten, and those who survive must trudge on until their own demise. A character who was once a handsome and talented actor laments never getting to play Hamlet despite being in the play multiple times. Surprisingly, his even bigger regret is not playing Horatio, Hamlet’s confidant. In the play, even though Horatio wants to die with the prince by finishing off the poisoned drink, Hamlet tells him no, because Horatio needs to live --

 

“And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain/To tell my story.”

 

Someone has to tell the story, to be the witness to history, the keeper of memories. Fiona likens forgetting her dead friends and loved ones to killing them a second time. If it weren't for her memories, who would ever again care about these people? Who would even know that they ever existed?

 

We may get to linger in this world after we die, for a while perhaps, as long as we live in the memories of our loved ones, as long as they hold on to us. But surely the day will come, when our memory keepers are themselves but mere dust and air, and then, all of us would disappear into the ether, while the earth keeps on spinning.

 

Surely a book that inspires such morbid and depressing thoughts must be a downer. Rest assured it is not. At times almost a page-turner, the book contains some truly hilarious moments as well. Makkai not only infused the book with tenderness, insight, and hope, but also inserted two little mysteries into both the then and now, with masterful deftness. Art is another central theme to the book, actors, artists, collectors, museums, Shakespeare, and Modigliani and his bohemian brethren all feature prominently in the story.

 

Fiona’s 90-year old aunt Nora says, to remember the past is a kind of time travel. So is reading this book, an experience of being transported back to the not-too-distant past and bearing witness to the lives of many. It reminds us of the duty to keep certain memories alive, in paintings, pictures, videos, and of course in words, for we are all memory keepers -- certain people, certain things, we can't afford to forget.

[风语BusyBee]

回复 '夕阳影里一归舟' 的评论 :
嗯，不是大团圆结局，但是书写的真是好。从整体布局，到人物心理描述，都非常棒，入围国家图书奖名至实归，推荐????

[夕阳影里一归舟]

你的英文太了得啦！

[夕阳影里一归舟]

又读完一本？又一个伤心故事？看来此书人物繁多，命运多桀。确确实实， keep certain memories alive, in paintings, pictures, videos, and of course in words, for we are all memory keepers。