Tinkers, Paul Harding, 2010 Pulitzer Prize fiction

Winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize

Maybe it’s the lower-case small font and nearly colorless cover of this novel that had me thinking that this was a quiet novel. I imagined it being somewhat quaint and simple, and began reading it with that in mind. The cover is possibly the only simple thing about this unique and lovely book. There are many threads throughout it:  fatherhood, family, and the passage of time being foremost. But the mysterious elements of regret, personality, and love also wind through delicately. It’s complicated without being overwrought or maudlin.

The first half of the book is a sort of parallel account of father and son, each from their perspectives and in their own voices. Howard, the father, is an epileptic who travels the countryside selling his wares. He watches over his family as best he can, with a particular fascination for his oldest son. At one point, his son runs away:

“There was a moment of sorrow, disappointment, and deep love for his son, whom he at that second wished had had a chance of real escape…I just wish that you had made it beyond the bounds of this cold little radius…”

George, his son, enters the story as an elderly man, in the week preceding his death, hallucinating about his life, his childhood, and his love for clocks. The thoughts alternate from one character to the other, but in real life they seldom had a conversation. Clearly, though, they were on each other’s mind. Details of their work, always involving small and seeming insignificant parts that lead to a complex whole, fill the narrative.

A change occurs though, in the middle of the book, that is ominous and painful and takes the story into a new direction. Suddenly the visual images change from small metal workings to descriptions of light, water, and landscapes. In this portion, the reader goes back further to Howard’s father, whose own mysterious existence now becomes the focus of Howard in his later years. The flashbacks are not confusing in this context, as happens in some novels, because the tightly woven threads of the narrative keep you in place. There’s almost a haunting feeling as you near the end, as you realize the implication of the events in the story.

“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…”

Harding describes his characters beautifully: full of contradictions, flawed, sometimes foolish, and yet often hopeful. At the same time, he describes one with a particular sort of rage and hatred that is masked by indifference. The contrast is chilling. This is by no means a suspense novel, but trying to understand the motives of some characters creates a sense of apprehension. An acknowledgement of the relics we carry, both literal and emotional, plays into the personal impact of the story.

Some moments are unimaginably painful, and yet real: the family gathered before George’s death turns off all his ticking clocks, his life’s collection, because the sound is annoying to them. While he, in his semi-conscious state, realizes that without the ticking, time has essentially stopped, and his suffering is worsened with the loss. Little details like this mean you need to keep the Kleenex handy. And be prepared for after you finish this book: you’ll want to hug your Dad.  Often.

The Canal by Lee Rourke

Flat-screen monitors, an old park bench, the "Park Crew", suicide bombers, swans, an Airbus A320, an Audi TT 225, an unknown woman at a funeral, boredom...

All of these things factor together to make The Canal by Lee Rourke a fascinating glimpse into boredom.  How can boredom be interesting?  Don't we avoid it?  The unnamed narrator has left his job, spending his days ruminating on life on an old bench near a canal in downtown London.  It's not the most scenic location:  dirty water, a roving gang, commuters, and the occasional coot or swan may pass nearby, but no one seems to sit.  Until him.

As he sits, he imagines the lives of the people who, quite literally, cross his path and he reflects on his own experiences.  Having the freedom to just sit is something he's not used to:  "it's the power of everyday boredom that compels people to do things-even if that something is nothing."  He notices that all the efforts to avoid boredom, usually in order to be more productive or to entertain, never really accomplish anything.  It is 'found' time, an appreciation for not filling every moment, that makes time more meaningful for him.  And this he does, spending more and more time at the canal.    It is only after the pace of his life has slowed that the really exciting and life-changing events begin to happen.  But this is no new-age inspirational story.  What he discovers are terrible crimes and intentional cruelties, all tied together by acts done out of boredom.

"I've often thought that we seek reality in places and not in ourselves....We need things, extra things that help us to make sense of it all;  we need the space where things can happen, where these spaces become a thing-it is only at that point, when space becomes a thing to us, that we truly feel real."  The narrator considers the nature of time as an object, one to be treasured.  The different characters he meets are similarly lost, filling up time without understanding that their actions are actually just throwing it away.  "It baffles me why people are so obsessed with trying to fill this time with holidays, cars, designer clothes, technology, energetic sports, et cetera.  Why would they want time to pass by quickly?...Those who bemoan the speedy passing of time at the end of their life are surely those same people who tried to fill it up with things to quicken its passing anyway, aren't they?"

The novel is brief:  we know little about the narrator's appearance, home, or prior job.  He doesn't even have a cell phone.  We know small details about his family but the impression is that he doesn't see them.  He's a complicated figure:  he is fascinated by flight, admiring the planes descending into Heathrow, and yet he's nearly motionless himself.  Throughout the remainder of the story, the concepts of time and flight intersect, and the denouement finds both fractured.  The effect is complex and mysterious and one of those rare books that may yield more insight by being read again.

Special thanks to Megan Halpern of Melville House for the Review Copy.

The Lost Art of Reading, LA Times article

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-ca-reading9-2009aug09,0,4905017.story

Great article by David L. Ulin that sums up why so few people read these days. The only thing I would add is that many times kids are pushed to read for information rather than pleasure, so it becomes a chore. Few people have been taught to enjoy the journey rather than just the destination.

Excerpt:
So what happened? It isn't a failure of desire so much as one of will. Or not will, exactly, but focus: the ability to still my mind long enough to inhabit someone else's world, and to let that someone else inhabit mine. Reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness of another human being. We possess the books we read, animating the waiting stillness of their language, but they possess us also, filling us with thoughts and observations, asking us to make them part of ourselves. This is what Conroy was hinting at in his account of adolescence, the way books enlarge us by giving direct access to experiences not our own. In order for this to work, however, we need a certain type of silence, an ability to filter out the noise.

Such a state is increasingly elusive in our over-networked culture, in which every rumor and mundanity is blogged and tweeted. Today, it seems it is not contemplation we seek but an odd sort of distraction masquerading as being in the know. Why? Because of the illusion that illumination is based on speed, that it is more important to react than to think, that we live in a culture in which something is attached to every bit of time.

...What I'm struggling with is the encroachment of the buzz, the sense that there is something out there that merits my attention, when in fact it's mostly just a series of disconnected riffs and fragments that add up to the anxiety of the age.