Speaking well of Ford, Orwell, and Toer

Continuing with my embryo tradition of "the gleaning of great mentionables," that is, what I refer to in previous posts as my sharing great quotes and points of view, recollections, musings from the nonstop procession of literary gods and goddesses whom I have been reading, see Feb. 26, I have for you here Richard Ford, George Orwell, and Pramoedya Ananta Toer.

First, from the Indonesian version of Albert Camus, we have Mr. Toer's Child of All Nations.  Below, the narrator reflects on witnessing the sailing away of his young, beloved wife:

     The sun was moving slowly, crawling like a snail, inch by inch across the heavens.  Slowly, slowly--not caring whether the distance it had traversed would ever be traversed again.

     The clouds hung thinly across the sky, unwilling to release even a single spray of drizzle.  The atmosphere was gray, as though the world had lost its multitude of colors.

     The old people teach us through their legends that there isa mighty god called Batara Kala.  They say it is he who makes all things move further and further from their starting point, inexorably, towards some unknown final destination.  A human blind to the future, I could do no more than hope to know.  We never even really understand what we have already lived through.

     People say that before humankind stands only distance.  And its limit is the horizon.  ...There is no romance so strong that it could tame and hold them: the eternal distance and the horizon.

What killed me is the sentence "We never even really understand what we have already lived through."  I just love it.  I'm more than halfway through the novel, the second in his Buru Quartet.  It is not an easy, simple, humane life that Toer writes about, this turn-of-the-century (1901-ish) Dutch-conquered land of the future Indonesia.

From Richard Ford's book of short stories, Rock Springs.  This is a selection from the last story in the book, "Communist."  It's the narrator's response to a question his mother asks, that is, if she is still very feminine, she's 32, but she needs his truthful approval.

     And I stood at the edge of the porch, with the olive trees before me, looking straight up into the mist where I could not see geese but could still hear them flying, could almost feel the air move below their white wings.  And I felt the way you feel when you are on a trestle all alone and the train is coming, and you know you have to decide.  And I said, "Yes, I do."  Because that was the truth.  And I tried to think of something else then and did not hear what my mother said after that.

     And how old was I then? Sixteen. Sixteen is young, but it can also be a grown man.  I am forty-one years old now, and I think about that time without regret, through my mother and I never talked in that way again, and I have not heard her voice now in a long, long time.

What wrested my heart was the mention of the geese, that he "...could still hear them flying, could almost feel the air move below their white wings."  I've heard them, the mammoth glides of geese in their v-formations in Colorado, not just their honking but their wings.  And my sister Robyn has felt the air displaced, while walking or working in her garden, by the thousands that have flown overhead, east and west, constantly.  So it really resonated with me.  I highly recommend Rock Springs.

From George Orwell, in a piece he wrote toward the end of the war in Europe, from As I Please: Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters:

     So long as one thinks in short periods it is wise not to be hopeful about the future.  Plans for human betterment do normally come unstuck, and the pessimist has many more opportunities of saying "I told you so" than the optimist.  By and large the prophets of doom have been righter than those who imagined that a real step forward would be achieved by universal education, female suffrage, the League of Nations, or what not.

     The real answer is to dissociate Socialism from Utopianism.  Socialists are accused of believing that society can be--and indeed, after the establishment of Socialism, will be--completely perfect; also that progress is inevitable.

     ....Socialism is not perfectionist, perhaps not even hedonistic.  Socialists don't claim to be able to make the world perfect: they claim to be able to make it better.  And any thinking socialist will concede to the Catholic that when economic injustice has been righted, the fundamental problem of man's place in the universe will still remain.

I loved this little bit.  I have many socialist tendencies, and I know sometimes everyone goes too far somewhere, but like Orwell says, they "claim to be able to make it better" not perfect.  And that I adhere to.  I also loved the little bit about pessimism.

Well, thanks for listening, and leave the light on for me, will you?