Maura Reviews The Goldfinch

  The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I dislike being that cranky curmudgeon who does not find what others are enthusing about in a book. However reluctant I am to admit that I cannot get on board the Donna Tartt train, the truth is, I am unable to join the flock trilling praises for THE GOLDFINCH.

I couldn't wait to finish the book because I was anxious to be done with it. With one exception, the worlds that Theo inhabits are never anywhere that I want to be, and so I was itchy to turn the pages as quickly as possible so I could get the hell out of wherever he was.

My greatest criticism with the character Tartt has drawn is this: if Theo is so stinkin' bright, how can he be so naive--scratch that; as long as I'm being honest--stupid as to not know anything about life insurance benefits, or how to convey the facts about his abusive grandparents and alcoholic father to adults who can help? Why does he go so unprotesting from safety and a summer spent sailing to the desert of his father's care? Not even PTSD, or an unresolved Daddy-complex can explain this level of naivete. Theo's extreme "I'm out of it" innocence reflects the mentality of, say, a normal five-year-old.

To my way of thinking, Tartt's first person POV is written from much too great a distance. We all have certain blind spots about ourselves, but Theo's are so massive they defy credibility. I tried to believe Tartt when she told me that Theo was brilliant. However, there is too much about what he does that contradicts his literary mother's bragging rights. The best I can give her is that she created a character whose black-out drunkenness is mirrored by the black-holes in his brain.

Tartt's philosophical wrap-up is lovely. But in a book of 756 pages, that's just not enough loveliness to counterbalance the hours spent reading about puking and vomit, mindless materialism, and bloodied, drugged, wasted human potential. Ugh. Get me outta here.

View all my reviews

Father Dave and St. Therese of the #LittleWay

I thought I had Father David Link all figured out. I spent three years of my life immersing myself in his life story and then writing a book about him. But it was not until I read Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese de Lisieux and Three Gifts of Therese of Lisieux, by Patrick Ahern, that I fully comprehended the colossal secret behind his success. This secret is the Little Way of St. Therese.

Let me explain.

St. Therese is a role model of how one’s own “littleness” can be used to great advantage. She saw herself as a tiny white flower blooming for just a moment of time in this awesome universe. Keenly aware of her smallness vis-a-vis the overall scheme of things, her genius was in discovering a redeeming purposefulness in performing even the most anonymous tasks with immense love. Her living legacy is the brilliant insight that all of us can do the same.

Having read Therese’s autobiography and, subsequently, Bishop Ahern’s book about her, I am thunderstruck by the uncanny connections between the little saint and the subject of my book.

Therese chose to use her days on earth as if they constituted a forward march straight into the outstretched arms of Love itself. The cadence by which she stepped was “confidence, nothing but confidence” – confidence, that is, in a God who is merciful, tender, and very much in control. In fact, whatever Therese was asked to do was accomplished with equanimity, humility, and confidence.

Curiously, as if they were bookends, Dave Link represents a counterbalance to Therese’s signature style. Even though Dave has been asked to do some very important things, he fulfilled those callings with equanimity, humility, and confidence. This is because, like Therese, he maintains a sense of proportion.

He knows that we are but a grain of sand. Even so, he realizes that each one of us is an integral part of God’s master plan. Thus every action undertaken by every one of us is essential, potentially redemptive, and important.

Father Dave gives his late-wife, Barbara, to whom he was married for forty-five years, credit for whatever good he has achieved in his careers as an attorney, academic leader, and as a priest and prison chaplain. That Barbara nurtured a lifelong devotion to St. Therese explains some of the uncanny connections that color the late-in-life-career of this accomplished professional who, having everything, could be doing almost anything.

Therese made her final profession of vows on September 8, 1890. September 8 is Barbara’s birthday.

Dave and Barb were married on July 12, 1954. July 12 is the wedding date of Therese’s parents (both of whom have been beatified).

Dave and Barbara Link were deeply involved in their home parish, St. Therese, Little Flower Catholic Church in South Bend. They were also profoundly committed to helping the homeless of South Bend (Dave is co-founder of the renowned www.cfh.net).

St. Therese is the patron saint of priests; St. Barbara is the patron saint of prisoners.

Like Therese, Dave traded an easier existence for a purpose-driven life. When he could have taken a vacation, he strapped on a tool belt as a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity instead. When he could have been enjoying a roaring fire at home, he plowed through snowstorms and kept watch over homeless men in a subterranean shelter. And now, at a time when he could be golfing or visiting his children and grandchildren, he chooses instead to go behind the razor wire where, as chaplain at six of Indiana’s state prisons, he shows incarcerated men that miracles can happen when they choose to walk the Little Way.

Dave shares Therese’s philosophy that we will not be evaluated on the works we have performed when we are summoned from this earthly life. The question, says Dave, will not be, What have you done? Rather, it will be, Did you act in such a way that other souls were led to Me? Have you brought any camerados along with you to the gates of My heaven?

Father Dave inhabits a place in my heart that is reserved for just a few. His gentle constancy and wellspring of strength remind me of my beloved father. His goofy sense of humor reminds me of what it was like growing up with five incorrigible brothers.

He is admirable but fallible.

He inspires me but, even so, he is, quite simply, one of us.

I walked away from my first meeting with Father David Link knowing that he was someone special. Of course, I did not yet appreciate the many aspects of his extraordinariness. But I came to understand that he is whom he is because, like St. Therese, he works confidently, lives compassionately, and loves completely. And these are things that all of us can do.

Jack Kerouac and St. Therese of the #LittleWay

Between the lines of some of Jack Kerouac’s best writing is the veiled presence of the author’s chosen patron saint, St. Therese de Lisieux.

Known the world over as the Little Flower of the Little Way, the famously on-the-road Kerouac admired French-born Therese Martin for her childlike faith and guilelessness. It was to her that he directed many of his prayers; it was from her that he received comfort. He must have been enchanted by the images of little lambs and fragrant roses that were associated with the young saint, for they appear in his books over and over again. Much of his work is infused with the unabashedly childlike innocence associated with St. Therese. Indeed, her aura pulsates throughout his books as if it is the very heartbeat of his prose.

St. Therese and Kerouac shared a great deal in common. Both were life-long seekers of the reunion with the Divine. Both had been gifted with rare faculties that allowed them to see the world through ancient eyes and appreciate all of creation with their poetic souls. Both of them revered, and were contented in, nature.

In her autobiography, Story of a Soul, Therese describes an idyllic childhood in which she played outdoors with her sisters and took daily walks with her father. During one walk, her father plucked a little white flower that was growing from a patch of moss in a wall made of stone and gave it to her. It was not lost on the little girl that he had taken care to pull the blossom out with the roots still intact. Using this as a teaching moment, her father explained that God had taken ineffable care to nurture and preserve this little flower. It was a watershed moment for Therese, who later recalled, “While I listened I believed I was hearing my own story.” Even as a young child, Therese was exquisitely aware that the choices we make in how we live our lives have an impact on the living world around us.

So, too, was it essential to Kerouac that he live in respectful harmony with animals and nature. As an author, Kerouac wrote this veneration right into his work. Tender references to creatures great and small as well as a burning appreciation for the majestic awesomeness of this world make for some of Kerouac’s most lyrical, memorable, quotable prose.

Significantly, in his first published work, Kerouac gives to the autobiographical family whose story is chronicled in The Town and The City St. Therese’s own surname, which was Martin. But St. Therese’s influence can be seen and felt in countless other ways throughout the entire body of his work. In The Dharma Bums, for example, the opening scene shows Kerouac, who has just hopped a freight train, meeting a bum on the lam. Pulling a tiny clipping from his pocket, the stranger explains that he has carried this copy of a St. Therese prayer for years and that he reads it “most every day.” From then on, Kerouac refers to this man as “the little St. Therese bum.”

In a sense, these opening chapters of The Dharma Bums are a symbolic gift from Kerouac to St. Therese. They are Kerouac’s attempt to provide St. Therese with closure on an unsettling episode she recounted in her autobiography:

During the walks I took with Papa, he loved to have me bring alms to the poor we met on the way. On one occasion we met a poor man who was dragging himself along painfully on crutches. I went up to give him a coin. He looked at me with a sad smile and refused my offering since he felt he wasn't poor enough to accept alms. I cannot express the feeling that went through my heart. I wanted to console this man and instead I had given him pain or so I thought. The poor invalid undoubtedly guessed at what was passing through my mind, for I saw him turn around and smile at me. Papa had just bought me a little cake, and I had an intense desire to give it to him, but I didn't dare. However, I really wanted to give him something he couldn't refuse, so great was the sympathy I felt toward him. I remembered having heard that on our First Communion Day we can obtain whatever we ask for, and this thought greatly consoled me. Although I was only six years old at this time, I said: "I'll pray for this poor man the day of my First Communion." I kept my promise five years later, and I hope God answered the prayer He inspired me to direct to Him in favor of one of His suffering members. It is as though Kerouac attempted to write into the script of the universe a new connection that would enable St. Therese to feel the satisfaction she had been denied in the moment. Breathing new life into the old cripple, Kerouac gave him legs strong enough to jump a boxcar and brought him all the way from France to America where, with the help of the sustaining prayers of the little saint, her devotee rides the rails.

Two hundred-some pages later, Kerouac invokes the spirit of St. Therese in a rush of ecstatic prose. Writing of “little flowers that grew around the rocks” and “children and the innocent,” Kerouac vows to love as she loved: “Okay world,” I said, “I’ll love ya.”

Kerouac’s friends were witness to the author’s exceptional powers of observation. They say that his eyes functioned like movie cameras, capturing images that he then stored in a recall vault so flawless they nicknamed him “Memory Babe.” Thus there can be no doubt that Kerouac knew what he was about when he concluded The Dharma Bums. He surely knew that the final words uttered by the twenty-four-year-old nun on her deathbed were, “My God, I love you!” And so, when we read on the last page of The Dharma Bums,

       …I said, “God, I love you” and looked up to the sky and really meant it.

we recognize that Kerouac is wrapping the ending right back around to the beginning pages where we were introduced to “the little St. Therese bum who was the first genuine Dharma Bum I’d met.”

In his work and in the way he lived his life, Jack Kerouac did his best to shine a light upon and to follow the Little Way of St. Therese. I’d like to think that she was among the first to embrace him as he stepped from this world into the next.

   

Book review of The Signature of All Things

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Only Elizabeth Gilbert, whose success allows her to do pretty much whatever she wishes, could have gotten away with publishing such an epic, ponderous work. Lucky for us that she has this kind of clout.

What makes this novel so, well, novel, is its artful blending of writing styles. Somehow, Gilbert has updated classic Russian literature by writing a contemporary plot with a Victorian quill pen. Whenever one metaphor would do, Gilbert gives us three, the net effect of which is to leave other authors standing in the midst of a smoking, bombed-out, post-nuclear figure-of-speech landscape.

Drawing rooms, pristine forests, sea voyages around the world, and life on several continents are backdrops as characters debate the meaning of life, the folly of human relationships, and the delicate interplay between science and spirituality. I heard Gilbert's own voice as she wrestled to place all possible answers along a continuum, and I was inspired to refine the articulation of my personal philosophies.

This is a book that demands a significant investment of time. For me, this investment was repaid with interest when I arrived at the ending. Here, Gilbert performs a perfect 10.0 dismount with some of the most perfectly pitched passages I have ever read.

In psychology, there is something known as the Zeigarnik Effect. Inconclusive thoughts fester in our minds because we struggle to close the loop, understand that which was undefined, complete the idea, solve the riddle. In writing a Zeigarnik ending, Gilbert ensures that the inquiry continues long after we close the back cover of THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS.

(I listened to the audio recording, which is performed magnificently by Juliet Stevenson.)


View all my reviews

Wake-up Whistle

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

It is tempting to allow life to charge forward as if our moments are like boxcars clamped together into one great, endless train. We slip into routines that distance us from the felt experience of life, as if we are not really inside our own train but are watching as its tiny image chug-chugs on some distant horizon. The rote performance of our customary tasks is a gentle rhythm that lulls us from feeling the immediacy of new moments. Distracted from an awareness of the joys of the here and now, our inattentiveness has the effect of pulling us from feelings of attachment to our personal destinies, as if we have delegated to some invisible conductor the privilege of steering our course. Once in a while, however, seemingly unrelated events happen synchronously, and we are shaken from our complacency. Today, for example, is a day that my dear friend, Dawn Neely-Randall, marks with emotions wide and inexpressible. Today is the first anniversary of the death of her husband, the love of her life, John Randall. (See: Eternal Flame)

For those of us who love Dawn, The Year of Firsts has been a shared journey. Sometimes, we gave her space. Sometimes, we appeared at her door. In essence, we hitched as many boxcars of our lives to her train as we could without becoming additional weight that she had to pull. But now here it was: the First Anniversary. I woke up feeling as if I could let out the breath that I’d been holding since John passed.

But, then again, maybe not.

Early this morning, my telephone rang. It was Ronald Lane, whom my family and I had met shortly after his escape from Hurricane Katrina. He had thrown some possessions in his car and feld to Lorain, Ohio, where his mother, Grace, lived. He had spent the past many decades working as an artisan in the French Quarter. The hurricane destroyed his life-sustaining career.

My family and I helped Ronald as much as we could. He delighted in the laptop we were able to give him. My sons spent hours with him, teaching him how to email and peruse the Internet, which proved a good instructor for an eager student. He spent many evenings researching far-away places, like Egypt, that have always held his fascination. “I’ve been going on all kinds of trips,” he told me, chuckling. “I’ve been traveling all over the world with my computer!” Shyly, he mentioned that his Internet studies were improving his reading skills. He was more able to read signs now, he said.

My sons also set him up with a free Web site. They photographed his jewelry and inventions and placed them on the site. Ronald was hopeful that an Internet presence would be able to replace, somewhat, his physical presence at the French Market. But the business aspect of on-line marketing proved too tough for him to manage. He stayed in Ohio for a couple of years and then returned to New Orleans, hopeful that he could reestablish his jewelry making career.

Since then, Ronald and I have stayed in touch. Every time we spoke, Ronald expressed faith in the journey, faith that God had everything under control. His tag line was, “I love you, Maura, and there ain’t nothin’ you can do about it!”

In November, Ronald received news that his mother was in the final stages of lung cancer. He called me. If a voice could buckle, his was on its knees. Yet by the time we hung up, he was calm. He just needed to know he had someone who could be there for him just as he would be there for his mother.

He drove to Ohio and learned how to care for his mother. He told her, ‘Mom, you can’t use your legs to get around anymore and so I will be your legs. Your arms don’t have the strength they used to have and so let me be your arms. I am an extension of your legs and arms. Whatever you want, whatever you need, you just tell me.’ He cooked for Grace, he bathed her, and he kept her house as she wished it to be kept.

Two weeks ago, Grace was hospitalized. Ronald beat back Fear. He would not allow It to own him. He knew that he needed to be strong for Grace. This morning, then, when I heard his voice on the other end of the phone, hope rose in me because he sounded so different. He sounded elated. There must be good news, I thought.

“I wanted to call and tell you that my mother transitioned,” he said. “And she’s just fine, and I’m just fine."

And so there it is: A brilliant explosion of synchronicity. For Dawn, today is the end of The First Year. For Ronald, the same date is the beginning of The First Year. For me, the day escorts me out of Dawn’s First Year and into Ronald’s, blessing me with another chance to be a friend.

Synchronicity is a stick that prods us from distracted complacency.

Stone Books

Release Date: Tuesday, June 15, 2010

My heart was speaking to me. It told me to ignore the zillion tasks that were squawking at me. It told me, Go home. I lifted my eyes from my work at the computer, gazed out the windows of my study, and saw that my heart was leading me south. There was something that I needed to do. I decided to follow my heart.

As soon as I made that decision, of course, many frustrations arose to threaten my journey. They filled me with indecision. Are these omens telling me I should not go? I wondered. Half a dozen times I paused and considered turning back. Each time I decided to stay the course because the first message contained the essence of something we call "purity of heart."

It took many more hours to arrive at my destination than it should have. All along the way I coached myself - and truly believed - that it was all happening as it should. Despite the misgivings that flew at my resolve as if they were angry blackbirds pecking at my face, I felt centered. Calm. Purposeful. I was following my signs. I was ignoring false detours.

At last, I saw the exit to Circleville, Ohio. As I pulled off the highway onto the ramp, my iPod, which is loaded with more than 8,000 songs and which was set on shuffle, began to play "No Regrets" by Tom Rush. I was flooded with emotion. This song is special to me. It always calls up images of my mother as she mourned her husband and the love of her life--the man who was such a magnificent father to me and my siblings.

I drove a few miles ahead. There, on the left, was my destination. The last strains of Rush's song sounded when I flicked on my left turn signal and

watched for an opening in the oncoming traffic.

The next song on my iPod began to play as I pulled into St. Joseph's Cemetery. The first line of Van Morrison's "Reminds Me Of You" is "I miss you so much . . . " It was as if Morrison was seconding Rush's motion that this was exactly where I should be. That my heart had been true and I was correct to have followed it.

And so I brought my book to my parents, who always, always believed in me. I laid it just below my mother's name. The floodgates were opened and tears fell from my eyes. This was the moment toward which my heart had been leading me.

My hands were shaking so much that many petals fell from the peonies I placed in the headstone vase. Two fluttered down and landed upon the cover of my book. I started to move them and then stopped. How appropriate, I thought. Of course there would be two petals that would fall, one touching the other.

I started talking to my parents. I told them about meeting my Melchizedek and about how and protective he had been of me. I had heard that Melchizedek was hundreds of years old. Not mine, I told them. My Melchizedek is really quite young. In fact, he's extremely young to be so wise. My Melchizedek is awesome.

I placed daisies, the flowers that covered their graves so many years ago the day we buried them, in Robby's and Stevie's headstone vases. I talked to them, too. I told them how sorry I was that they had died so young.

I sat on the grass and had a long talk with my parents. Together, we recounted the moments that had led to this day. Together, we walked down Memory Lane. That walk brought me to a bicycle ride I took one beautiful spring day in Willoughby, Ohio. A two-year-old little towhead, my firstborn, Brittany, rode in a child's seat behind me as I cycled around Willoughby in the sunshine.

A few days later, Brittany asked, "Mommy, stone books?"

Our daily routine was to either ride the bike, or a tricycle, or sometimes I would push Brittany in her stroller, a few blocks to the library. At home, we read piles of books every day. So when Brittany asked me this unusual question, I tried to remember which titles were in the stack of library books. Nothing was clicking. There didn't seem to be a connection.

Brittany persisted. "Mommy. Stone books?"

And then it hit me. On our bike ride earlier that week we had passed by a cemetery. She was right! They were stone books!

And so it seemed to me on this eve of the release of my first book that, somehow, a 29-year-old moment was also part of this moment. The present had gone back, swooped up the past, and returned it to me so that I could recognize that God really does draw straight with crooked lines. He had been drawing me toward this moment long before I knew it. He and His universe had been conspiring to bring me to this day for a very long time.

Paulo Coelho writes in his magnificent The Alchemist: There is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it's because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It's your mission on earth . . . The Soul of the World is nourished by people's happiness . . . And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

So it had.

And I feel so blessed.

I introduced my parents and brothers to the best four-legged friend I have ever had, Donovan--the canine companion who has sat beside me every sentence of the way. Donovan sniffed their headstones and looked up at me with questioning eyes.

It was hard to say goodbye. I did so with many a backward glance.

But time marches us forward, doesn't it? And God rewards us for trusting in the future. Immediately upon pulling out of St. Joseph's Cemetery I received another message. I turned on my car stereo. Once again, the iPod shuffle found the perfect song for me: Bruce Springsteen's "Working On A Dream." I smiled. It is true. The release of Miracles Every Day is not the fulfillment of a dream; this is one accomplishment in my personal quest. I am still working on my dream. I'm far from finished here.

And so, today, I am filled with gratitude for everyone who has helped me to fulfill this part of my personal legend. I hope that my first published book gives honor to my parents. I hope that my family and friends know that their love has been the key to my happiness and that I treasure their love with all my heart. Perhaps most of all, however, this moment belongs to my Melchizedek. It is his voice that held me steady and kept me on course. I was blessed to have God's hand on the wheel and Gary Jansen's on the rudder.

On the journey home, I eschewed the highway for a country road. There were four confounding detours because of that decision. Even so, I had total confidence that I was where I was meant to be. My trust was rewarded with one final sign of the day. An American bald eagle, huge and majestic, swooped down alongside my car. He looked at me. Then he deigned to alight on a tree stump by the side of the road, allowing me to have a chance to admire him both in full flight and at rest.

Sometimes love and the pursuit of our personal legend is in full flight. Sometimes it is at rest. But, in life and in the fulfillment of our chosen destiny, love is always, always there.