In Transit

Maturity may bring about some level of sensibilities but age has nothing to do with maturity and sensibilities. Perhaps age and experience can make a difference in the way we approach a subject or the manner we  perform or execute a particular task or tackle a certain problem,  but I find that  age has nothing to do with how one thinks. I am not saying that we are no older than how we feel, I like to believe that we remain forever ourselves no matter what age we are. The saying that people mellow as they grow old often eludes me although it is not impossible for us to become better persons when we make conscious efforts to improve ourselves if we know and acknowledge our failings. A change for the better is always welcome.

While we must be prepared to  accept several certainties or limitations of life, we tend to avoid thinking about  growing old though mortality is ineluctable and dying is a certainty.

The upshot of growing old is that you know life is about liberating yourself from vanity and graceful acceptance about mortality and death. Nonetheless you do not want to think  much about it .

Last week, I attended a memorial concert performed by a Russian pipe organist and also the funeral of a 93 year-old man, who was once my  senior partner in the legal firm where I was. At the material time, I read about the passing of I.M.Pei the prolific  architect who  had designed the Louvre Pyramid and iconic buildings around the globe. He was 102 and his legacy stretches from west to east  and he was renowned for fusing modernism into the old buildings. 

A weekend ago,  I chanced upon the book written by Erica Jong during my visit to BookXcess bookshop together with my family.  I have been meaning to read Jong’s writing and voila, I have purchased her book   Fear of Dying . It looks to be  another promising read, a relatable theme indeed.

A few weeks ago, I read the debut novel by Meg Wolitzer. It was published when she was only twenty-three while she was a student at Brown University. She sold the manuscript at age 21.

 

Sleepwalking  is a story about  three notorious “death girls” on the Swarthmore campus because they dress in black and are each compulsively obsessed  about the work and suicide of a different poet namely Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Lucy Asher, a gifted writer who drowned herself at twenty-four. Asher  is a creation of the author. The death girls gather at night and read their heroines’ work aloud in a candlelit room. 
Thia is how Wolitzer starts describing the "death girls". 

' They talked about death as if it were a country in Europe.They made it seem that , after a brief vacation there, you could simply fly home bearing rolls of color film and tourist anecdotes. The three of them stayed up every night, usually until five o'clock, with the shade up and the window propped wide open, partly so the constant rush of air would keep them awake, pride themselves on how Spartan they were for requiring so little sleep,' 

One of her characters, Claire Danziger has to confront some past that she has been avoiding and to consider why she has to hang on to the “death girl” identity. One day she takes the leap and vanish from her college, causing her mother, boyfriend, Julian and Naomi, one of “the death girls” to worry as she has carried her obsession too far by showing up at her heroine’s home. Lucy’s parents are suffering from their grief of their daughter’s suicide.

Meg Wolitzer is an insightful writer even at a young age as she was then.

 ‘ The girl’s parents stood slope-shouldered in their overcoats in the doorway, silently waiting to take her home. Helen had turned to face the wall so she would not have to watch anymore.

It didn’t mean much to be a parent. All of those books -advice from Dr Spock and the rest of them – could take you only so far. They told you how to make the baby stand and take its first steps like a little sleepwalker, arms stretched out in front of leverage. They told you the right way to mix up the food, to mash together the greens and oranges and yellows into a muddy paste and spoon it in so it got swallowed. Here comes the train, choo-choo, speeding around the tracks, clickery-clack, and into  Lucy’s mouth. Open the tunnel wide and let the train through. That’s a good girl. They told you a few basic tenets of child psychology …………. “

Wolitzer  wrote in her preface to the book ,

“ I feel a real tenderness and protectiveness toward this book, in part because it was my first, but also because of its hushed awareness and its lack of showiness. I wrote the book I wanted to write, and I wasn’t particularly concerned with whether it would find an audience, or whether it would be “relatable,” which is a concept that all writers have heard a lot about in the intervening years. I suppose it was written in a state of innocence and mild grandiosity.”

Meg Wolitzer is fortunate to have a  writer mother who was supportive of her endeavours. Hilma Wolitzer is a novelist and the dedicatee of Sleepwalking. Both mother and daughter loved the same kind of writing. I enjoy Meg Wolitzer's fictions due to her acute observation about contemporary life. 

Incidentally, just before I came across the novel Sleepwalking, someone asked if his friend could initiate any legal action against a fellow patient who apparently beat him in his sleep while he was recuperating from dengue fever at a private hospital. The patient was apparently sleepwalking when it happened. The hospital had explained that  the  medication  could have triggered the sleepwalking incident.  Sheer coincidence.

This is My Life

What would you tell your young self? I would tell her for every endeavor you undertake or agree to undertake, you have to ask what you are getting out of it ? If it is nothing but you feel happy doing it, go ahead as the pleasure must be yours. But always ask the question : What are you going to get out of it ? What will you benefit from it? Be calculating for your time is precious.

You may set out  to undertake tasks that may seem pointless to others so long as you know why you are doing them, you should carry on regardless what others may say. Be it a challenge, an education or just doing it for the sake of  doing it, it is your life. If I could go back in time , I would tell my young self that you should trust your instincts and have more convictions about your decisions.

Your teachers or your parents can tell you how to lead your life but they cannot tell you how to live your life. Like many things in life, you have to figure it out yourself.  

This is My Life by Meg Wolitzer is a story about Dottie Engels, a celebrity stand-up comedian and her two daughters, Opal and Erica. Dottie  performs in Las Vegas and on late night television. After leaving an unhappy marriage, she struggles to balance her career with the needs of her children who live in New York , aspiring comedians  are  their babysitters. When Dottie’s ratings slide as time has changed,  both her daughters have to save her from herself.

Both Erica and Opal have their adolescent angst dealing with her mother’s fame and growing up in general. When  Erica tells her  colleague Walter Green who her mother is, he tells her that he does not make the connection as she is petite unlike her mother who is big.

‘ “ We don’t look alike,” Opal said quickly.

  “ Do you look like your father?” he asked.

Opal shrugged. “ I’m not sure,” she said, and her voice dropped away.

  “ I’m sorry,” said Walt. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “ You didn’t,” said Opal. “ I’m just weird about certain things.”

  “ Everybody is,” said Walt. “ Everybody has a theme. You talk to somebody awhile, and you realise they have one particular thing that rules them. The best you can do is a variation on the theme, but that’s about it.” He shook his head. There was a protracted silence, and Opal became tense, wondering what he would say next.’

This is My Life was Meg Wolitzer’s third book and its original title was This is Your Life.

Meg Wolitzer is a keen observer of contemporary life and she is insightful and smart  in portraying the modern family life.  I have also read her later fictions such as The Wife, Ten Year Gap and The Interestings. The Wife has  been made into a movie where Glen Close was nominated for an Oscar for her role as the wife.  Both  The Wife and The Interestings  are  brilliant reads.

The Interestings is about six teenagers who had met  at a summer camp for the arts and all of them had some artistic interests and abilities but the kind of creativity that is rewarded at age fifteen may not be enough to propel someone through life. Five of them ended up keeping in touch for decades and they stayed good friends.

Meg Wolitzer wrote,

“ You had only one chance for a signature in life, but most people left no impression.”

In The Interestings  Jules Jacobson, one of the participants who was an aspiring comic actress at age fifteen said this,

“ My guidance counselor came in the other day with pamphlets about careers ,” said Jules. ‘Now we have to think about becoming experts. We have to have a field.” She thought for a second. “ Do you think most people ,” she asked,” who do have a field, sort of stumbled into it ? or were they being shrewd when they decided to learn everything about butterflies or the Japanese parliament, because they knew it would make them stand out?”

Jonah whose mother was a famous folk singer said, “Most people aren’t shrewd,” Jonah said.” They don’t think that way at all.”

One of the characters, Ash managed to pursue her dream of directing in her adult years. There was one time  she had to respond to a mother in the audience who asked,

“My daughter wants to be a director too. She is applying to graduate school in directing, but I know very well that there are no jobs, and that she’s probably only going to have her dreams dashed. Shouldn’t I encourage her to do something else, to find some other field she can get into before too much time goes by?”

Ash told the mother that the child had to really, really want it and if she did really want it and if she seemed to have a talent for it, then “I think you should tell her, ‘That’s wonderful.’ Because the truth is, the world will probably whittle your daughter down. But a mother never should.”

Meg Wolitzer is truly perceptive about the contemporary minds. The Interestings is an interesting and engaging read.

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