The first Friday of the month is my favorite day of the month. It's book lunch day! I get to gather with fourteen of my dear friends, and talk about a book. This is our 21st year. How cool is that?
Today there were thirteen of us. French Onion Soup, Curried Chicken Salad and Salmon Salad, Green Bibb lettuce, a plethora of muffins. And Cinnamon-y Apple Crisp.
The book, Paul Harding's Tinkers.
GEORGE WASHINGTON CROSBY BEGAN TO hallucinate eight days before he died. From the rented hospital bed, placed in the middle of his own living room, he saw insects running in and out of imaginary cracks in the ceiling plaster.
I want to write down some of our thoughts, and some links which threw some light. Not exhaustive. Please forgive my omissions.
You could tell some of us weren't thrilled with the book, so we started the conversation (after the soup, during the salads) with going around the table rating the book. If the book had mixed reviews right off the top, this is a good way of starting. You stated your rating on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being "Best book I've ever read I'm buying ten copies and giving them to everyone I know" and 1 being "What was he thinking?" And you added a few sentences of defense for your rating.
This moves along, because we all know we want to hear everyone. We were split. One 10, a couple 8's, a few 6's, and many 2's. And one 4 3/4.
All agreed the writing needed some editing. Pretty amazing that he would win a Pulitzer Prize with confusing tense changes, some sentences running on a bit too long, and several discussions loosing the reader in the dust.
Some thought it was morbid. Others that it was hopeful and comforting. Depends on what's going on in your life right now, perhaps, that gives you one filter or the other for reading this book? Or just plain it hit you that way.
All also agreed there were moments of brilliance, of poetry, of sentences and paragraphs and descriptions you wanted to hold onto.
Then we talked about the structure. We don't have a list of questions. I try to guide the discussion a little, but not much. Usually each book grabs different people to think up questions or discussion topics. Every month a few people come with paragraphs to read from the book, or insights gleaned while reading. We want this to be a book DISCUSSION group. Conversation with the book as the topic, and also as a launching pad. How did this book affect you? This takes thought time. Challenges us to stretch. Fun stuff.
So the structure. Not apparent to all. Doesn't hit you in the face as a fast plot line. We came to think the author collaged this as the mental ramblings of George dying over the 8 days.
George Crosby remembered many things as he died, but in an order he could not control. To look at his life, to take the stock he always imagined a man would at his end, was to witness a shifting mass, the tiles of a mosaic spinning, swirling, reportraying, always in recognizable swaths of colors, familiar elements, molecular units, intimate currents, but also independent now of his will, showing him a different self every time he tried to make an assessment.
I read in an interview that the first scene the author wrote of this book was the scene of Howard abandoning his family... when George is 12. Right after Howard bites George during a seizure. Right after Kathleen props the Insane Asylum brochure up on his dresser. In the published book, this scene is in the middle-ish of the book. So we could say the author doesn't demand linear chronology in his own life.
Interview by Powells.
After much discussion, much thought, much much discussion we postulated a plot line. For those of us who like to give order to things. We like crossword puzzles, we have all our pens in one place on our desk, etc.
The plot line of the book could be George traveling from age 12 through the moment of death. The terminal stop at the end of his life journey is reuniting with his father. The reunion at the very very end (according to an author interview) was totally imaginary in George's mind. In life, they never reunited. WOW. Think about that.
Take another minute and think about that. His entire life's journey, through trials and tribulations and joys and celebrations, was to heal the sacred relationship that was broken in childhood, with his father.
Now do some of the passages in the book come alive to you?
And how powerful that this reunion is only in his mind. Even at the last moments of life. Only in his mind. How strong his need for this healing was, that his mind was remembering his desires as fact.
Interview in Open Loop Press, Dec 2009
Looked at the passage on life being tiles. Our tiles fade. Other's memories fill in the porous tiles of our past lives.
“I will remain a set of impressions porous and open to combination with all of the other vitreous squares floating about in whoever else’s frames, because there is always the space left in reserve for the rest of their own time, and to my great-grandchildren, with more space than tiles, I will be no more than the smoky arrangement of a set of rumors, and to their great-grandchildren I will be no more than a tint of some obscure color, and to their great grandchildren nothing they ever know about, and so what army of strangers and ghosts has shaped and colored me until back to Adam, until back to when ribs were blown from molten sand into the glass bits that took up the light of this word because they were made of this world . . . ”
Vivid descriptions of the epilepsy seizures.
Reminiscent of Moby Dick, the book held insights into clocks. Time passing, clocks, nature, the cosmos....
We saw kindness in the family, George and his sister, his wife, his kids and grandkids. So there must have been love, forgiveness. George must have been an okay person. Must have grown past his father biting him and leaving him and his mother who wouldn't talk about the illness.
“Boy to his dying grampa: "I am a century wide. I think that I have my literal age but am surrounded in a radius of years. I think that these years of days, this near century of years, is a gift from you.”
Here's another passage we read.
“Howard thought, Is it not true: A move of the head, a step to the left or right, and we change from wise, decent, loyal people to conceited fools? Light changes, our eyes blink and see the world from the slightest difference of perspective and our place in it has changed infinitely: Sun catches cheap plate flaking--I am a tinker; the moon is an egg glowing in its nest of leafless trees--I am a poet; a brochure for an asylum is on the dresser--I am an epileptic, insane; the house is behind me--I am a fugitive. His despair had not come from the fact that he was a fool; he knew he was a fool. The despair came from the fact that his wife saw him as a fool, as a useless tinker, a copier of bad verses from two-penny religious magazines, an epileptic, and could find no reason to turn her head and see him as something better.”
George was fading, receding, dying. There was acceptance. Something reflecting Buddhism we said. The connection of each of us to the unity of all.
“Hands, teeth, gut, thoughts even, were all simply more or less convenient to human circumstance, as my father was receding from human circumstance, so, too, were all of these particulars, back to some unknowable froth where they might be reassigned to be stars or belt buckles, lunar dust or railroad spikes. Perhaps they already were all of these things and my father's fading was because he realized this: My goodness, I am made from planets and wood, diamonds and orange peels ...”
Touched on the Borealis notes lending structure to the passage of time in the book. And to the Radical Horologist's highlighting of the themes.
Bookdrum, go to this website to read factual insights on items mentioned in book.
Read a few more sentences and passages that hit us. This book is a meditation on living, and on dying. Not a book to read on an airplane or while on an exercise bike.
It's a book to savor bit by bit. To put down and think about what he just said. Talk to someone about it. Think a little more. Then pick it up again.
Definitely talk to someone about it.
It's not fast food. These words need to be savored. Not for everyone, at all times. You will know.
Friday night. Need to get into the kitchen to feed the troops. Well, the two of us. Still need to get into the kitchen. Bye for now...
Today there were thirteen of us. French Onion Soup, Curried Chicken Salad and Salmon Salad, Green Bibb lettuce, a plethora of muffins. And Cinnamon-y Apple Crisp.
The book, Paul Harding's Tinkers.
GEORGE WASHINGTON CROSBY BEGAN TO hallucinate eight days before he died. From the rented hospital bed, placed in the middle of his own living room, he saw insects running in and out of imaginary cracks in the ceiling plaster.
I want to write down some of our thoughts, and some links which threw some light. Not exhaustive. Please forgive my omissions.
You could tell some of us weren't thrilled with the book, so we started the conversation (after the soup, during the salads) with going around the table rating the book. If the book had mixed reviews right off the top, this is a good way of starting. You stated your rating on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being "Best book I've ever read I'm buying ten copies and giving them to everyone I know" and 1 being "What was he thinking?" And you added a few sentences of defense for your rating.
This moves along, because we all know we want to hear everyone. We were split. One 10, a couple 8's, a few 6's, and many 2's. And one 4 3/4.
All agreed the writing needed some editing. Pretty amazing that he would win a Pulitzer Prize with confusing tense changes, some sentences running on a bit too long, and several discussions loosing the reader in the dust.
Some thought it was morbid. Others that it was hopeful and comforting. Depends on what's going on in your life right now, perhaps, that gives you one filter or the other for reading this book? Or just plain it hit you that way.
All also agreed there were moments of brilliance, of poetry, of sentences and paragraphs and descriptions you wanted to hold onto.
Then we talked about the structure. We don't have a list of questions. I try to guide the discussion a little, but not much. Usually each book grabs different people to think up questions or discussion topics. Every month a few people come with paragraphs to read from the book, or insights gleaned while reading. We want this to be a book DISCUSSION group. Conversation with the book as the topic, and also as a launching pad. How did this book affect you? This takes thought time. Challenges us to stretch. Fun stuff.
So the structure. Not apparent to all. Doesn't hit you in the face as a fast plot line. We came to think the author collaged this as the mental ramblings of George dying over the 8 days.
George Crosby remembered many things as he died, but in an order he could not control. To look at his life, to take the stock he always imagined a man would at his end, was to witness a shifting mass, the tiles of a mosaic spinning, swirling, reportraying, always in recognizable swaths of colors, familiar elements, molecular units, intimate currents, but also independent now of his will, showing him a different self every time he tried to make an assessment.
I read in an interview that the first scene the author wrote of this book was the scene of Howard abandoning his family... when George is 12. Right after Howard bites George during a seizure. Right after Kathleen props the Insane Asylum brochure up on his dresser. In the published book, this scene is in the middle-ish of the book. So we could say the author doesn't demand linear chronology in his own life.
Interview by Powells.
After much discussion, much thought, much much discussion we postulated a plot line. For those of us who like to give order to things. We like crossword puzzles, we have all our pens in one place on our desk, etc.
The plot line of the book could be George traveling from age 12 through the moment of death. The terminal stop at the end of his life journey is reuniting with his father. The reunion at the very very end (according to an author interview) was totally imaginary in George's mind. In life, they never reunited. WOW. Think about that.
Take another minute and think about that. His entire life's journey, through trials and tribulations and joys and celebrations, was to heal the sacred relationship that was broken in childhood, with his father.
Now do some of the passages in the book come alive to you?
And how powerful that this reunion is only in his mind. Even at the last moments of life. Only in his mind. How strong his need for this healing was, that his mind was remembering his desires as fact.
Interview in Open Loop Press, Dec 2009
Looked at the passage on life being tiles. Our tiles fade. Other's memories fill in the porous tiles of our past lives.
“I will remain a set of impressions porous and open to combination with all of the other vitreous squares floating about in whoever else’s frames, because there is always the space left in reserve for the rest of their own time, and to my great-grandchildren, with more space than tiles, I will be no more than the smoky arrangement of a set of rumors, and to their great-grandchildren I will be no more than a tint of some obscure color, and to their great grandchildren nothing they ever know about, and so what army of strangers and ghosts has shaped and colored me until back to Adam, until back to when ribs were blown from molten sand into the glass bits that took up the light of this word because they were made of this world . . . ”
Vivid descriptions of the epilepsy seizures.Reminiscent of Moby Dick, the book held insights into clocks. Time passing, clocks, nature, the cosmos....
We saw kindness in the family, George and his sister, his wife, his kids and grandkids. So there must have been love, forgiveness. George must have been an okay person. Must have grown past his father biting him and leaving him and his mother who wouldn't talk about the illness.
“Boy to his dying grampa: "I am a century wide. I think that I have my literal age but am surrounded in a radius of years. I think that these years of days, this near century of years, is a gift from you.”
Here's another passage we read.
“Howard thought, Is it not true: A move of the head, a step to the left or right, and we change from wise, decent, loyal people to conceited fools? Light changes, our eyes blink and see the world from the slightest difference of perspective and our place in it has changed infinitely: Sun catches cheap plate flaking--I am a tinker; the moon is an egg glowing in its nest of leafless trees--I am a poet; a brochure for an asylum is on the dresser--I am an epileptic, insane; the house is behind me--I am a fugitive. His despair had not come from the fact that he was a fool; he knew he was a fool. The despair came from the fact that his wife saw him as a fool, as a useless tinker, a copier of bad verses from two-penny religious magazines, an epileptic, and could find no reason to turn her head and see him as something better.”
George was fading, receding, dying. There was acceptance. Something reflecting Buddhism we said. The connection of each of us to the unity of all.
“Hands, teeth, gut, thoughts even, were all simply more or less convenient to human circumstance, as my father was receding from human circumstance, so, too, were all of these particulars, back to some unknowable froth where they might be reassigned to be stars or belt buckles, lunar dust or railroad spikes. Perhaps they already were all of these things and my father's fading was because he realized this: My goodness, I am made from planets and wood, diamonds and orange peels ...”
Touched on the Borealis notes lending structure to the passage of time in the book. And to the Radical Horologist's highlighting of the themes.
Bookdrum, go to this website to read factual insights on items mentioned in book.
Read a few more sentences and passages that hit us. This book is a meditation on living, and on dying. Not a book to read on an airplane or while on an exercise bike.
It's a book to savor bit by bit. To put down and think about what he just said. Talk to someone about it. Think a little more. Then pick it up again.
Definitely talk to someone about it.
It's not fast food. These words need to be savored. Not for everyone, at all times. You will know.
Friday night. Need to get into the kitchen to feed the troops. Well, the two of us. Still need to get into the kitchen. Bye for now...
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