Like Mother Teresa, Only Better

I am ashamed to admit that I discovered this book only because Amazon.com suggested it to me and offered it to me for $1.99 on the Kindle. Had I known, I would have paid ten times that. Let's just say that Amazon.com has me pegged, and I am going to have to go to Jenny Lawson's blog (www.thebloggess.com) and buy a t-shirt or something to make up for getting the book practically for free. I think I owe her that much. I can't remember the last time a book reminded me as much of myself and made me laugh so hard I cried.

I am confident that if I had been raised in rural Texas instead of rural New Hampshire and my father had been a taxidermist instead of a new age/hippie/Native American woodsman, this is exactly how I would have turned out. As you can see from the cover of the book, Lawson has not exactly escaped her father's taxidermy fetish. This little guy, in case it is not entirely clear from the photo, is the mouse version of Hamlet, with a tiny skull in his right hand, intoning, "alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well, Horatio." I'm not really big on taxidermy, but even I have to admit that this is pretty fucking cool. I would probably display this with pride. Lawson admits that "having one dead animal in the house is eclectic and artistic. More than one reeks of serial killer. There really is a fine line there." (289) It's unclear how many dead animals Lawson now has in her house, but I know there's a boar's head and a baby alligator pirate and I think that last one alone just about pushes her over the line to serial killer. This is really to put the end at the beginning though, as Lawson returns to her roots in rural Texas and starts collecting dead animals. 

As a child and adolescent, she is not quite so sanguine about her rural Texas upbringing. She writes, "My mom was a big proponent of the 'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger' theory, almost to the point where she seemed to be daring the world to kill us." (13) Don't I know it. The New Hampshire equivalent of  this sentiment, where winters reach -40 F and summers reach 105 F--and frequently espoused by my parents--is "there's no such thing as bad weather--only bad clothing." When I was growing up the thermostat stayed at 67 no matter how cold it was outside. "Please, sir, may I have some more (heat, that is)?" I'd beg my dad. "No," he'd say, "go put on another sweater." See, he was aware that I was probably already wearing several sweaters, which is, inside the house, going above and beyond the call of duty, IMHO, but his solution was to just pile them on. I'd do him one better and put on a coat and hat and walk around in front of him, and he'd say, "very funny. The thermostat stays where it is." If this sounds like a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon that's because I think there was a strip where Calvin and his mom have a similar exchange. I'm with Calvin here. I think that if Jesus intended the heat to stay at 67, he wouldn't have invented thermostats that go up to 90 (or higher) and I like being able to lounge around the house in pajamas and bare feet even in the depths of winter, especially if someone else is paying for my heat (don't tell my management company) so my thermostat is set at something like 75. 

Lawson captures the excruciating agony of growing up weird in an environment that is pretty fucking weird itself. (Personally, I describe my childhood as taking place in Twin Peaks, which  more or less expresses the same sentiment.) Lawson writes:

When I was little my mother used to say that I had "a nervous stomach." That was what we called "severe untreated anxiety disorder" back in the seventies, when everything was cured with Flintstone vitamins and threats to send me to live with my grandmother if I didn't stop hiding from people in my toy box.  

By age seven I realized that there was something wrong with me, and that most children didn't hyperventilate and throw up when asked to leave the house. My mother called me "quirky." My teachers whispered "neurotic." But deep down I knew there was a better word for what I was. Doomed. (37)

I was spared this doomed feeling for a little while longer than Lawson thanks to a magical hippie private school, but after my first week of public school at nine, I too was suffering from a severe untreated anxiety disorder that my parents tried to treat with, essentially, Flintstone vitamins and a lot of threats to stop hiding in the closet and get my butt into the car so they could take me to school, which was generally accomplished by my father physically dragging me into my classroom. What was missing from Lawson's experience, and my own, was any analysis of why a small child would have such a "nervous stomach," which, as a euphemism does not begin to address the horrors of childhood mental illness. 

Lawson's school experience was pretty terrible--there is a chapter about the artificial insemination of a cow with a turkey baster that I'm not even going to attempt to describe because there is no way I can do it justice so you'll just have to read it for yourself--and she quickly turned into the "weird girl"--the one who wrote book reports on Stephen King novels in elementary school and dressed as a goth starting in middle school. Her status as "weird girl" was greatly exacerbated by experiences such as being followed to school, and into school, by her father's flock of aggressive wild turkeys ("large quail," he called them) who caused havoc and shit all over the building, such that when her class was transitioning to gym or something or other, they all ran into Lawson's father cleaning up mounds of turkey shit. Even in Texas, I think that marks you as weird. 

Like most weird girls, Lawson gravitated to the dark and disturbing, with some experimentation with illicit substances along the way (again, better read in the original). Even as an adult, she still seems to have an OCD about the (apparently imminent) zombie apocalypse. One of her ongoing "life" arguments with her rather more traditional husband is whether Jesus, if he was indeed reborn, would have been a zombie. (She says yes, obviously; he says there's a difference, but I think she makes a strong case.) This is not her only OCD. When she is pregnant for the third time (after two miscarriages), she becomes convinced that her cats have the power to grant her good luck.

Once, as Victor drove me to work in the morning, I realized that I'd forgotten to ask the cats to wish us luck and I demanded that he turn around immediately. He tried to logically explain that the cats didn't actually have the ability to give me good or bad luck, but it didn't matter. I knew that the cats weren't in charge of good luck. These were the same cats who would stand inside the litter box and cluelessly poop over the side. Of course they weren't controlling my destiny. I was controlling my destiny. I was just doing it by following all the little OCD routines that I'd picked up that had made life keep going. (130)

Personally, I think that if one is going to endow any creature with magical powers, cats are a great choice, because they already possess magical powers. I would, and do, totally ask my cats for good luck, fashion advice, pretty much anything, their litter box exploits notwithstanding. And I do not leave the house without saying goodbye to them. Ever. So personally I think that her calling this one an OCD routine actually detracts from its inherent underlying rationality and that her husband should know that. 

I was drawn to Lawson because she not only suffers from some mental health issues but several physical ailments as well. She describes herself as having generalized anxiety disorder, which:

[f]or me . . . is basically like having all of the other anxiety disorders smooshed into one. Even the ones that aren't recognized by modern science. Things like birds-will-probably-smother-me-in-my-sleep anxiety disorder and I-keep-crackers-in-my-pocket-in-case-I-get-trapped-in-an-elevator anxiety disorder. Basically I'm just generally anxious about fucking everything. In fact, I suspect that how they came up with the name. (147)

Lawson is acutely aware of the effect her disorder has on those around her, and I suspect she could rattle off  the dates of all the dinner parties she has inadvertently ruined by panicking and bringing up inappropriate conversational topics. I expect that she remembers the look of horror on her husband's face as she dug herself in deeper and deeper at each of these parties. She claims that her "filter" operates on a seven-second delay, and by the time she realizes that she's saying something inappropriate, she's already said it. I really empathize with this problem--as I am continually reminded, I either (a) don't have a filter, or (b) have a filter that only kicks in, along with great remorse, about an hour too late. Ah, well. The problem is, of course, that when you're the bull in the china shop, you know it, and that makes you even more anxious and your behavior correspondingly worse. Lawson explains:

In short? It is exhausting being me. Pretending to be normal is draining and requires amazing amounts of energy and Xanax. In fact, I should probably charge money to all the normal people to simply not go to your social functions and ruin them. Especially since I end up spending so much money on sedatives to keep my anxiety at least slightly in check, and those expenses are not even tax-deductible. Still it's worth the personal expense, because being drugged enough to appear semi-coherent is preferable to being treated like an unwelcome polar bear at a dinner party. (150)

I think that "unwelcome polar bear at a dinner party" should officially supplant the "bull in the china shop" metaphor I used earlier because it's just so much more descriptive of the anxiety one feels in such situations. The damn bull never seemed to have any self-awareness regarding his problem. 

Unfortunately for Lawson, she also suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, the treatments for which are almost worse than the disease itself. She points out the irony of taking drugs for one chronic condition that themselves put one at risk for other chronic conditions, like cancer. I think this might be one of those "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" things. 

Ultimately, Lawson drags her family back to rural Texas so her daughter can experience the kind of freewheeling rural life that she herself did, having realized that it is the quirks that make her who she is. I'm sure that's true. But Lawson acts as if there's no option other than (a) rural Texas or, (b) suburban Texas. I beg to differ. Why not move to a city, somewhere like Austin where one's quirks will be appreciated for their  diversity? I'm strongly of the opinion that quirky people belong in urban environments where everyone is a little bit tweaked, and I'd sooner gouge out my eyes with a spoon than move back to the emotionally crippling environment where I grew up or subject my family to it. But that's just me. Lawson seems pretty happy, except for the possibility that her house is located on an Indian burial ground and when the zombie apocalypse comes, well, you know. . . 

Maidenhair

It is not an exaggeration to say that Mikhail Shiskin's Maidenhair is probably the best book I've read in years. It is the rare novel that transcends the genre--a collection of stories and interviews and narratives  that blend together so seamlessly as to almost appear effortless. 

Persian King Cyrus and his guards

 Maidenhair is sort of the story of a Russian translator living in Switzerland, but it is also the story of his last love affair, his son and the fantasy world they share, his past loves, the diary of a Russian singer who grew up during WWI and the Revolution, and, not to leave anything out, some of the more memorable bits of Herodotus's Histories. If that doesn't sound like it should work, that's because it shouldn't, but Shiskin weaves these texts together so artfully you'd almost think that someone had intended them to go together. The blurb on the back of the book reads, "Mikhail Shiskin's Maidenhair is an instant classic of Russian Literature. It bravely takes on the eternal questions--of truth and fiction, of time and timelessness, of love and war, of Death and the Word--and is a movingly luminescent expression of the pain of life and its uncountable joys."

Lenin addresses the proletariat

Ordinarily, when someone tells me that a book is a "movingly luminescent expression of the pain of life," dealing with truth, fiction, love, time, timelessness, war, Death, and the Word, I start to feel that a Humanities PhD at whatever University Press has gotten a little out of control and read too much into something. But I had time to read the first twenty pages of this one, and in that short space it became clear to me that Shiskin really was addressing all these themes and doing so in a way that felt, well, right. In other words, it is a book about everything and nothing. What you take from it will depend entirely upon what you bring to it.

It is a novel with at once too many underlying threads and no underlying thread. You might call it "a renunciation of the geographic cure," or you might call it the best argument ever for said cure. You could call it "love" or you could call it "loss." Shishkin has some real zingers that echo home, such as "Dostoevsky, I think it was, said that sacrificing your life might be the easiest sacrifice of all." (35) Trust Shiskin to understand Dostoevsky perhaps better than Dostoevsky himself, and trust him to call into question the life's work of all of us who see ourselves as sacrificing for the greater good.

St. Peter's Basilica, Rome

Time and space are fluid in Maidenhair, and intentionally so, as Shiskin gives us lines like, "But time and space are decrepit, worn, shaky. What if they suddenly snag on something--your blackberry branch? And it snaps off?" (70) Or, "Time can be a slippery thing in winter. Your foot takes a step and you have no idea where or when you're going to plop down. Lo and behold, you're in the Russo-Turkish War." (132) More than anyone except perhaps Faulkner, Shiskin captures the feeling of time travel in his narrative--one minute we're in modern-day Switzerland, the next Chechnya, the next the Russian Revolution. His characters are all more or less transient, being driven across borders and states by the flukes of politics and history. And when not driven by history, they're driven by that geographic cure, the idea that everything would be better if I could just make my way to some better place.

But all Shiskin's characters are really looking for is love, something to fill the gaping holes in their psyches. Love of a spouse, love of a child, illicit love will do--it doesn't matter. As in real life, Shiskin's characters don't really get what they want--at least not in the way that they think they want it--but they do get something, albeit fleeting. A famous actor makes an appearance to tell the would-be singer, perhaps rightly, that, as she writes in her diary, "my love, the kind I will have, will depend on me alone." (297) On the one hand, I want to kill the actor because I know he's manipulating her into a love affair by making it appear that she's choosing it; on the other hand, he has her pegged: she is exactly the kind of person who gets to make a lot of choices (some of them hard) about the kinds of love she wants to allow into her life.

Maybe this is one of Shiskin's revelations--we think that love depends on what someone else brings into our lives and whether it pleases us, when in reality where and when and with whom we find love depends entirely upon what we ourselves have to offer. We are impossible; therefore, love is impossible. And yet it's always there for the taking.

The Keeper of Lost Causes

Detective Carl Morck is emotionally scarred after a shooting in which one of his partners died and the other was permanently paralyzed. As a ploy to get him out of the way and procure extra money for the department, his boss names him director of "Department Q" or cold cases. Morck and his curiously-abled "assistant" Assad (supposedly hired for janitorial and clerical duties but possessed of some serious detective skills and a curious Middle Eastern background) decide to look into the five-year-old disappearance of a politician that seems particularly suspicious. Morck and Assad soon realize that the investigation into the disappearance was botched on every level and that importnt clues were overlooked.

At the same time as Morck and Assad investiage her disappearance, Adler-Olsen shows us what the politician, Merete Lynggaad has been subjected to over the past five years. Half-starved, filthy, and subjected to an ever-increasing pressure chamber, it's amazing that she's still alive. Morck certainly doesn't expect her to be, nor does he expect to find her inside a pressure chamber which, if released, will cause her to explode from the inside out, much like a diver coming up too quickly from the ocean floor.

Anyone who likes their mysteries fast-paced and their detectives sarcastic and not quite law-abiding will appreciate this novel and probably want to read the  next one in the series, The Absent One, as well.