And Then I Came to This

[thisnewday]

On my third time through The Dog Stars, I came to this. My third trek through Heller's book, wandering, as I've sometimes done, through the reels and images, the twining, thematic threads of a movie. The lights and shadows flickering across the screen, again and again, my eyes sometimes finding the hoped-for thing and sometimes not. The same as here.

But having to acknowledge here that it's backwards, the way I've done it. Opposite the format I've known from academic, clockwork days when life was mostly still ahead instead of mostly all behind. The MLA style sheet we were virtually sworn to uphold: the smaller letters, the indentation, the italics. On pain of what, scholarly disgrace?

Except that now the longer quotes, the important things once said that were not mine, are floating in between. The now and the forever. And have become the spectres once spoken of as images in the darkened mirror.

So that what Hig says, the part that resonates, must be writ large and straight and clear. Before it, and all the rest of what we might remember, disappears...

LPK
LiveJournal
10.13.2012


"There is a pain you can't think your way out of. You can't talk it away. If there were someone to talk to. You can walk. One foot the other foot. Breathe in breathe out. Drink from the stream. Piss. Eat the venison strips. Leave his venison in the trail for the coyotes the jays. And. You can't metabolize the loss. It is in the cells of your face, your chest, behind the eyes, in the twists of your gut. Muscle sinew bone. It is all of you.

When you walk you propel it forward. When you let go the sled and sit on a fallen log and. You imagine him curling beside you in the one patch of sun maybe lying over your feet. Not feeling so well. Then it sits with you, the Pain puts its arm over your shoulders. It is your closest friend. Steadfast. And at night you can't bear to hear your own breath unaccompanied by another and underneath the big stillness like a score is the roaring of a cataract of everything being and being torn away. Then. The pain is lying beside your side, close. Does not bother you with the sound even of breathing."


from The Dog Stars
by Peter Heller
Alfred A. Knopf
New York, 2012

Comments

[insanezanne.livejournal.com]

That's good writing!

[olbuksings.livejournal.com]

I think so too, but I've read a couple of reviews of Heller's book where they had a problem with the broken dialogue, the truncated thoughts, the incomplete sentences. And my thought was, hey, did you actually read the book and understand that Heller's protagonist is struggling with the after-effects of a nearly fatal disease, with neurological complications, the disorienting effects of losing nearly all of the social, psychological, and physical landmarks of his former life, and the incredibly lonely existance which is sustained, in part, by this monologue which Hig admits drifts precariously between various levels of reality and beyond? Whew! They would've loved that sentence if they'd ever had the chance to read it. I even forgot that it was a question, by the time I got to the end of it, LOL...