Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Reading Journal

Some Luck
by Jane Smiley
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2014
395 pages

Early Warning
by Jane Smiley
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2015
476 pages

Golden Age
by Jane Smiley
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2015
443 pages


Once I asked Hiro, as I was sadly finishing up a book,
"Don't you hate it when a good story comes to an end?"
and his reply was
"yeah, that's why I read series"

And thus I began the trilogy unfolding of a farming family in Iowa.

An epic tale of one family called Langdon, that takes place over three volumes.  Part one titled Some Luck begins with Walter and Rosanna Langdon in 1920 as they are starting out with their first child, Frank on during hard times right before the depression.

When a book begins not with a prologue  but a family tree, you know you will be in for a tale full of fascinating characters, and it was reassuring to see the layout of the family, orderly and parallel lives plotted neatly as I flipped back and fourth to this chart as I anticipated each member's future.

The book is laid out in short chapters, each one spanning only one year.  It was comforting to read about a time where everyone's place in the family, and society was determined already.  On the farm, women were at home having babies and taking care of the house, while the men were out in the fields, riding their horses, plowing the crops.  There were conflicts and problems, but mostly it was man against nature, not man (and women) against each other.  Life just was.

Here is an example of life back before electricity, little Frank Langdon age 7, walking home alone from school, before iPhones, before arming elementary school teachers:

"Mama was walking back and forth in the front room with Lillian (the baby) in her arms, watching for him out the window, as she did every afternoon.  He only had to walk a quarter-mile on his own, and that was on the road- the rest of the way, he walked with Minnie, Matthew Graham, and Leona Graham, who was thirteen...From the schoolhouse to the Grahams' was through the fields, but Mr. Graham took the horses out and stamped down the snow for them.  With Minnie, he went another bit, and then Minnie's ma, in her apron, watched him until he was well on his way and could see his own barn. "

The sense of community was strong and each member of the community had their own unspoken part, out of responsibility.

Smiley, cleverly writes from each individual family members point of view; whether it be the patriarch Walter or the small child Frankie.  All personal narratives are believable and as a parent, I could see both sides of an idea.

Farming and working the land in 1930's was hot as hell, summer temperatures reaching into the 100s for weeks on end.  It was the time of Walker Evens photos, the great dust bowl and depression, but people made due with the strength of family.  Looking back into history has its advantages.  Even as people starve, and wells run dry, we know what happens next in history, soon there will be a war and farmers will persevere.

There are many children, and each are fleshed out with their unique characteristics and traits, and not hard to keep track of.  The first book spans 30 years following first Walter and Rosanna, then slowly as we go to war with the oldest son, Frankie, we shift perspective to their children's generation.  Then again in 1952, the narration changes from the point of view of the next generation, as the last chapter leaves us devastated over the death of a primary character.

The First book introduces us to the first Langdon generation  and goes through the most physical change in the world.  The hardships are palpable- with droughts, working the land, worry about starvation.  Life was much more physical.  There were no cars, no electricity, no phones, no Monsanto, no harmful pesticides. It really laid out the inner workings of family, and as a unit, how they tried to survive.

The second book, (like the Harry Potter series),reaches outward, and brings the characters outside of their small town.  The 2nd generation begins to get more involved with the world, they travel, become interested and tangled up with politics, world events.  They have more time, more leisure to look inward as well, and that leisure gets them into trouble.  The 2nd generation is consumed with affairs, drugs, therapy, and depression.

Smiley paints pictures with her writing, no matter who or where she is telling us about; a ranch in California, the desserts of Iraq. winters in Chicago or riding a bicycle to work in Washington DD.

This is a story that shows us the "big picture" of like, the characters are related by strong ties of relations and blood, even if they only meet one another once in 10 years.

In book 3, I began to see some tricks Smiley uses as sort of cliff hangers from the ending of one chapter to another.  for example: At the end of 1999 Charlie goes for a trek in the wilderness alone:
"He lengthened his stride...Was it strange that he had given so little thought to the future,that he was so engrossed in the next few steps that he had forgotten about the cliff at the end of the path?   It felt good to walk, though.  Good, possibly, to be dismissed and given up on.  ..And then thought that maybe this was the first real thought of the rest of his life."

Readers will probably think with an ending of a chapter like that, that we will never see Charlie again, but it was a little nothing.

or

in 1994 Frank (now in his 70s) is flying cross country in a small jet.  As the plane hits bad weather, we think this will be it for Frank.  The storm is bad, and they barely make it through.  After they land, I sighed a sigh of relief that Frank would continue for a few more chapters as he exits the plane and
"walked toward the edge of the runway to take a piss, thinking how utterly familiar the landscape was to him, not only how it looked, but also the scent of the rain and the dirt and the summer vegetation.  He unzipped his fly."

Then the next moment there is a phone call to his wife Andy and we hear something awful has happened.  Tricks.

The biggest takeaway I had from the epic story was that people are basically born with their personalities intact.  The disposition of a baby can easily be seen in their character as adults.  I see that with Hiro as well as a lot of his friends.

One of the more humorous (but true probably) metaphors of farming, or the evolution of farming from family owned instinctual way of farming to the scientific, Monsanto pesticide ridden back to going organic...life going full circle.

"In principle, Jesse should not have been opposed to these changes.  Hadn't he always been the one to advocate for the most precise, the most efficient, the most scientific, noninstinctual methods?  Hadn't he been very patient with his father, with the stories about the chickens and hogs and the dairy cows, the oats and the horses, and wetting your finger in your mouth and holding it out in front of you to test the direction of the wind?  Hadn't he been a little thrilled when he referred to everything about the farm as "inputs" and "results"? But he was sixty.  Maybe every sixty-year-old deplored change, said that things had gone too far, recalled the good old days of whatever?


One last metaphor:
Weeds always grew fast and produced seed almost instantly.  Corn and beans and, for that matter, peas, tomatoes, zucchini, and peppers, were the slowpokes, rather like educated couples who produced a single precious child when they were in their thirties.

As I began getting toward the end of 2010 in the book, I realized that Smiley was going to have to cover a few years into the future.  One of the characters becomes a congressman, and another is deeply entrenched in the financial crisis.  There is a lot of the world, current events that has created and affected the characters.  There is mention of Clinton, Lewinsky, scandals, Obama, Iraq.  The book was published in 2015 which means, even if she was writing up to the month of publication, there was no way that Smiley could even foresee what would happen with Asshole Trump in office. I began getting nervous how the future 3 years would be laid out.  There is not one mention of Donald Trump in any of the books, not even as a news worthy tidbit item.  How could one write about the last 2 years without living through it?