“Bleak House” and the Stories We Tell Ourselves

I recently finished reading Charles Dickens’ marvelous novel Bleak House. I was part of an online discussion group sponsored by the Catherine Project, a forum for studying books that have “richness, depth, and lasting value.” Every Tuesday for 20 weeks, 8 or 9 of us from all around the US and Canada met to talk about three or four chapters. It was nice that such a wide variety of people, each with a unique perspective, life story, and knowledge base, reflected together on a classic text.  I decided to write down a few things that struck me about the book and share them here.

Bleak House, like pretty much all of Dickens’ novels, was set in nineteenth-century England, a time of great social upheaval. Often, his novels highlighted some social ill or injustice—child labor, unhealthy environmental conditions, a rigid class system, the debilitating effects of poverty. In Bleak House, the most prominent target of Dickinsonian scrutiny is Chancery Court, which dealt with issues such as wills, mortgages, and trusts. Central to the novel is the Chancery case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce, a complex case that dragged on for years and engaged a multitude of lawyers, but without resolution. In the first chapter we’re told that the case “has stretched forth its unwholesome hand to spoil and corrupt” a wide variety of people.” I like Dickens’ description of the harmful effect on those who have only incidental contact with the case:

“[E]ven those who have contemplated its history from the outermost circle of such evil have been insensibly tempted into a loose way of letting bad things alone to take their own bad course, and a loose belief that if the world go wrong it was in some off-hand manner never meant to go right.”

It’s so easy for the social ills we live amidst to make us apathetic and cynical. I appreciate the caution to be on guard against such an outcome.

The character most directly impacted by Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce is Richard Carstone, a ward of the court sent at the beginning of the novel to live with John Jardyce, a distant cousin who is also party to the suit. Richard is amiable but irresponsible. As adulthood approaches, he tries his hand at several possible careers, going through a considerable sum of John Jarndyce’s money in the process. He can’t muster much of an interest in anything except the Chancery suit and its promise of riches, though. He starts reading documents from the suit and becomes convinced that its outcome will make him wealthy. Eventually, he gives up every other pursuit to research the case, attend court, and huddle with his lawyer, who encourages this preoccupation and convinces him that it’s in his interest to spend all his money on legal fees. Though John Jarndyce does everything he can to distance himself from the suit, Richard ruminates on the possibility that John Jarndyce’s professed indifference to the outcome is a front for pusuing his own welfare at Richard’s expense. It’s a sobering account of how suspicions can destroy a relationship. At one point, Richard describes his thoughts about John Jarndyce as follows:

“Whereas, now, I do declare to you that he becomes to me the embodiment of the suit; that, in place of its being an abstraction, it is John Jarndyce; that the more I suffer, the more indignant I am with him; that every new delay, and every new disappointment, is only a new injury from John Jarndyce’s hand.”

This shows wonderful insight into one aspect of how we react to our welfare being threatened. Identifying an impersonal or abstract injustice never satisfies; there’s an urge to personalize it, to find someone responsible. Once a nefarious mastermind is identified, every slight, indignity, or disappointment gets related to that source, thus building the offense to monstrous proportions.

Richard ends up deteriorating physically, emotionally, and mentally. Esther, one of the novel’s two narrators, goes to dinner at his house and is startled by what she sees:

“I found Richard thin and languid, slovenly in his dress, abstracted in his manner, forcing his spirits now and then, and at other intervals relapsing into a dull thoughtfulness. About his large bright eyes that used to be so merry, there was a wanness and a restlessness that changed them altogether. 1 cannot use the expression that he looked old. There is a ruin of youth which is not like age; and into such a ruin, Richard’s youth and youthful beauty had all fallen away.”

Richard had pursued the suit, but it ends up pursuing him, consuming his attention and replacing all other axes of importance. Augustine suggested that habits, if repeated often enough, become vices, which then become progressively more ingrained, so that the person’s will is eroded and they are totally captured. Dickens describes the process well in his account of Richard’s progressive preoccupation with Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce. I’m struck by the idea of “a ruin of youth that is not like age.” What a tragedy it is to be consumed by such ruin!

An essential element in Richard’s deterioration is the narrative he constructs about himself and the world. According to the story he tells himself, he’s incapable of giving his full attention and effort to any of the careers he dabbles in. None of them matter anyway, since he is likely to be rich one day when the suit is settled. His best course of action is to devote all is attention to the suit. Anyone else involved in the suit has interests contrary to him and is thus an enemy.

Richard isn’t the only character who lives according to a narrative that doesn’t fit well with the external realities that others see. In other cases besides his, the results are tragic or destructive (for example, Lady Dedlock and Mrs. Jellyby). Though the reader and other characters can see the discrepancy between what the person says and the truth, these narratives are highly resistant to change. Thus, too, with us. The stories we tell ourselves can be either gift or curse. Distorted stories can lead to waste, failure, unhappiness, and ruin. Yet we can’t see what we are doing to ourselves.

Those with inaccurate narratives can be doomed to miserable lives, as with with most such characters in Bleak House. But there are exceptions. I’ll end with one such exception. George is a retired soldier who scrapes by trying to run a shooting gallery. He’s a good man, kind and generous, but that’s not how he sees himself. As he tells his creditor:

“I ought to have been a good son, and I think I meant to have been one. But I wasn’t. I was a thundering bad son, that’s the long and the short of it, and never was a credit to anybody.”

We eventually learn what George feels so guilty about. He joined the military against his mother’s wishes. He didn’t write home at first, planning to do so when he was promoted to officer. However, the promotion never came. Out of shame, he never wrote, and failing to do so increased his shame. So his narrative is that he was a bad son who hurt his mother, who he’s sure was hurt but has come to terms with his loss, and the best he can do is to stay away from family so as to not open old wounds. He hides his background from others to keep information about him from getting back to his family. Eventually, he’s imprisoned on suspicion of a crime. Though innocent, he refuses to get a lawyer, planning to just tell the truth and, if convicted,  accepting the punishment, since he’s a wrongdoer in other regards.

This is his story. Fortunately, his family friends the Bagnets decide to help. Mrs. Bagnet has figured out who is mother is, and sets out to tell her of her son’s plight. She returns to London with his mother. The reunion of George and his mother is to my mind the most touching scene in the novel. Here’s the start of it:

“George Rouncewell! O, my dear child, turn and look at me!”

The trooper starts up, clasps his mother round the neck, and falls down on his knees before her. Whether in a late repentance, whether in the first association that comes back upon him, he puts his hands together as a child does when it says its prayers, and raising them towards her breast, bows down his head, and cries. . . .

“Mother,” says the trooper, when they are more composed; “forgive me first of all, for I know my need of it.”

Forgive him! She does it with all her heart and soul. She always has done it. She tells him how she has had it written in her will, these many years, that he was her beloved son George. She has never believed any ill of him, never. If she had died without this happiness–and she is an old woman now, and can’t look to live very long–she would have blessed him with her last breath, if she had had her senses, as her beloved son George.

This is unconditional love, total love, unending love, and it has its effect. George is changed from that time on—not completely different, but receiving the restoration offered and living in gratitude for it. This is the story of the prodigal son. Like Richard and George, we are all prone to telling false stories about ourselves. Would that we all had our folly corrected with such tenderness and care.

 

Seasons Pass Away

The sun inhabits Lent’s lengthened days.
Snow sheets first were dappled
like metal pounded lightly by a hammer.
The melt then crept down roads,
disappearing into drains.
Eventually snow skirts pulled back
from houses’ knees.
Now there’s just a snowplowed pile or two,
memories of disappeared abundance.

The uncovered ground still sleeps,
her dreams not even tickled yet by daffodils.
Unbudded trees hope dauntlessly for leaves.

Seasons pass away;
there must always be a death
before a resurrection.

The spectral grave clothes are gone
and sunray fingers knead dirt,
the heart’s about to beat again.

 

In the night

This poem is a meditation on Psalm 77, a lament that seems suitable for the current moment. At the end I reference Marta C. Gonzalez, an Alzheimer’s patient who still retained a memory of her days as a ballerina. At the bottom of the page I link to a video of her that went viral.

Troubles fill the day
and spill into night.
My unresting hands reach out,
refusing sleep’s deficient comfort.

It’s not me, God, who wants
to prop my eyes ajar,
so it must be you.
I remember my night songs,
doves fluttering with hope,
and wonder where they’ve flown to.

“God, will you always be like this?
Did your unending love
reach its end?
Favor, mercy, sympathy—
have they all been chewed to pieces
by your angry jaws?”

Sometimes, I think it to be so,
but stubbornly my mind
recalls your deeds, the wonders
that my eyes have seen,
my ears have heard.

Even if I forget all else,
may your music and your dance
be so implanted in my heart
that I could be like
Marta C. Gonzalez.

She,
though wheelchaired and demented,
became again a ballerina,
filled with grace and light,
when she heard the song.

 

Coronavirus and the Way of the Shepherd

In a remarkably short period of time the coronavirus has changed how people throughout the world are living their lives. Here in the U.S., we are exhorted over and over again to practice social distancing—to stay home as much as we can and, should we have to venture out, to remain at least six feet away from those we encounter. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases tells us that we’ll need to practice these restrictions for several more weeks at minimum. That degree of restriction will be difficult for many of us to handle.

I was thinking of all of this when I read the lectionary passages that a large number of churches will read this Sunday (or would read if they could have services). I was particularly struck by the psalm that the Revised Common Lectionary uses this the fourth Sunday in Lent. It is Psalm 23, David’s psalm of thanksgiving for God, the shepherd of his flock. It begins as follows:

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
for his name’s sake.  (Ps. 23:1–3, RSV)

That passage speaks to me in this time of trouble. Many now fear want; David tells us that the shepherd anticipates the needs of his sheep and makes provision for them. It’s interesting that the first thing the shepherd has the sheep do is lie down. That suggests that what the sheep needs most is rest and stillness. Though I’m partly retired, most of the time I have a variety of projects going on, so rest is usually in short supply. Maybe the coming weeks will be a time to stop the busyness and “lie down.” And then I might discover that I don’t need to look elsewhere for green pastures; God has already provided them where I am.

Once the shepherd has brought the chaos we’ve created to a halt, we are more inclined to hear his voice and follow him as he leads us beside still waters–places of peace and refreshment. I’m inclined to be on the outlook for tumultuous waters, and I find plenty of those in the news stories that my phone, computer, and TV direct me to every day. The challenge will be to push those aside and notice the still waters I’m being led to walk beside. Following him there, my soul will be restored.

And that in turn will prepare me to be led in the paths that are right for me. For some of my life I think I’ve been on such a right path; other times I’ve strayed far away. I didn’t set out to stray; I was on a good and healthy path, then I wasn’t, and was uncertain how that had happened. Perhaps I stopped listening to the shepherd. Perhaps he wanted me to just lie down for a while, to let him take care of me until I relaxed and trusted enough to see what was the best path to take going forward. I hope I can use the next several weeks of social distancing as a time to lie down in God’s good pasture, follow him beside still waters, and, restored, listen to his guidance for the path ahead.

 

 

“First Reformed”-A Reflection

FIRST REFORMED, Ethan Hawke, 2017. ©A24/ Everett Collection.

I recently saw the movie First Reformed on DVD (having missed the theatrical run last year). The film is writer-director Paul Schrader’s most significant work in years, and Ethan Hawke has been widely praised for his portrayal of Reverend Ernst Toller, the troubled pastor at a historic church in upstate New York. The church has only a handful of members and is being kept alive through the efforts of Abundant Life, a local megachurch whose theology and approach to ministry are far removed from First Reformed’s Calvinism (Schrader does know Calvinism, having grown up in the Christian Reformed Church, a North American bastion of Calvinist beliefs. I’m from the same tradition, and in fact attended the same church-related high school and college as Schrader did).

Most of the plot has to do with Toller’s efforts to help Mary, a pregnant parishioner (Amanda Seyfried), and her husband Michael, a radical environmentalist who despairs for the planet and is opposed to bringing a child into it. Toller tries to foster hope in Michael, using arguments like the following:

“Courage is the solution to despair. Reason provides no answers. I can’t know what the future will bring. We have to choose despite uncertainty. Wisdom is holding two contradictory truths in our mind, simultaneously, hope and despair. A life without despair is a life without hope. Holding these two ideas in our head is life itself.”

If you don’t find that a stirring call to a meaningful life, well, I don’t either. The problem may be that Toller is himself forlorn. He is a former military chaplain who encouraged his son to enlist. When his son was subsequently killed, his wife left him. He tells Michael,

“I can promise you that whatever despair you feel about bringing a child into this world cannot equal the despair of taking a child from it.”

Much of what we learn about Toller’s interior life comes in the form of voice-overs from the journal he resolves to keep for a year. His intent is:

“To set down all my thoughts and the simple events of my day factually and without hiding anything. When writing about oneself, one should show no mercy.”

He quickly displays such mercilessness towards himself:

“I look at the last lines I wrote with disdain.”

A few days afterwards, he’s again faulting his efforts:

“When I read these words I see not truth but pride.”

He’s even critical of his criticism:

“I wish I had not used the word ‘pride’ but I cannot cross it out.”

Give it a rest, dude! Your self-loathing is getting in your way.

Toller describes his journal as a means of communication, “a form of prayer,” though he later laments that he is unable to pray. Apparently, talking to himself in his journal is an attempt to obliquely talk to God. It isn’t quite true that he can’t pray–when Mary asks him to pray for her, he does so without hesitation. He just can’t take himself before God. This is despair of the Kierkegaardian sort, not over God or the state of the world but over having to be oneself.

Toller is what the 19th century philosopher and psychologist William James called a “sick soul,” a person whose view of everything is “based on the persuasion that the evil aspects of our life are of its very essence.” Even if the sick soul believes that evil will eventually be overcome by a greater good (as Toller apparently does, since he leads the congregation in the first question and answer of the Heidelberg Catechism, which points to Christ as savior), evil is not easily dismissed. By contrast, Reverend Jeffries, the pastor of Abundant Life, exemplifies James’ contrasting “healthy-minded” religious type, the optimist who is taken by the goodness of life and dismisses the seriousness of evil. Jeffries tries to be pastoral towards Toller, but there’s no crossing the gulf between them.

A while later, there’s another revealing voice-over from the journal:

“Some are called for their gregariousness. Some are called for their suffering. Others are called for their loneliness. They are called by God because through the vessel of communication, they can reach out and hold beating hearts in their hands. They are called because of their all-consuming knowledge of the emptiness of all things that can only be filled by the presence of our Savior.”

Toller is such a lonely, desolate disciple, responding to the call but in travail. Though he states that Christ’s presence can fill his emptiness, that’s not what he’s experiencing. In his Spiritual Exercises Ignatius of Loyola describes the contrasting states of spiritual consolation and spiritual desolation as follows:

“I call it consolation when some interior movement is caused in the soul, through which the soul comes to be inflamed with love of its Creator and Lord…. I call consolation every increase of hope, faith, and charity, and all interior joy that calls and attracts to heavenly things and to the salvation of one’s soul, quieting it and giving it peace in its Savior and Lord.” From the Third Rule

“I call desolation all the contrary of the third rule, such as darkness of soul, disturbance in it, movement to low and earthly things, disquiet from various agitations and temptations, moving to lack of confidence, without hope, without love, finding oneself totally slothful, tepid, sad and, as if separated from one’s Creator and Lord.” From the Fourth Rule

Per Ignatius, believers typically alternate between consolation and desolation. Except possibly at the very end of the movie, Toller receives no consolation, only desolation. Perhaps his compunction and self-reproach dam the flow of God’s mercy. I am, like Toller, more inclined to be sick-souled than healthy-minded. I am grateful that, unlike him, my spirit receives much more consolation than desolation.

When true consolation is absent, it’s tempting to seek ersatz consolations. Perhaps Toller’s growing fanaticism over environmental activism serves that purpose. He spends considerable time on Michael’s computer viewing sites that document  environmental degradation. He eventually has to choose between committing a violent act that would garner attention for the environmentalist cause and protecting the well-being of someone he cares for–you’ll have to see the movie to find out what he does. In the end, he may be heading toward recovery, but he’s still an ailing soul. It’s an unflinching portrayal of what might happen to any of us if we go too long without God’s consolations.

 

Infinite Jest: Desire

I recently finished reading Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace’s mammoth novel about the near future. It took me nearly four months, and would have taken longer if I had not had extra time on my hands as I recovered from surgery. Reading the middle third of the book was like wandering through a wilderness; I kept going out of sheer determination, but it seemed like I was getting nowhere. There’s some satisfaction at having persevered to the end, but mainly there’s relief.

One of the reasons I initially decided to read the book was that I had seen the DFW interview movie The End of the Tour (2015) when it was first released, and that movie (which I discussed here) had made me curious about DFW’s analysis of the struggles those of us living in modern (or postmodern) USA have with living meaningful and genuine lives. As I read IJ, I paid attention to anything that shed light on this issue. There is of course much more to the novel than this, and I don’t want to suggest that DFW wrote primarily to offer advice about how to live with American entertainment, excess, and irony. I do want to focus on that issue in giving my thoughts about the book, though.

Just a couple of caveats before I begin. I have no particular expertise at literary analysis and only limited knowledge of DFW’s life and works, so readers are likely to find more astute information about IJ elsewhere. I’m merely sharing some of the thoughts the novel prompted in me. Also, I haven’t taken especial care to avoid spoilers, so if you’re reading IJ and don’t want to know what happens, it may be best to wait until you’re ready for such information before you read what I have to say.

To start, then, this post will focus on one feature that stood out as I read, namely that IJ portrays a world in which human desire is prevalent and problematic. Pretty much everyone is pursuing something they yearn for, usually something they hope will make them whole, or at least better. These desires aren’t a sufficient guide for life, though. In fact, they are likely to make life worse. In one of the two main settings for the novel, the Enfield Tennis Academy, the pre-adolescent and adolescent students all begin with a desire to make “The Show,” the professional tennis circuit. Not reaching this goal is problematic, but achieving it is even more fraught with danger:

“It’s possible that the only jr. tennis players who can win their way to the top and stay there without going bats are the ones who are already bats, or else who seem to be just grim machines….” (p. 437-8)

Thus Schtitt, the head coach of the academy, is as interested in helping his charges avoid the perils of success as he is in helping them succeed. As one of the staff explains,

“The point here for the best kids is to inculcate their sense that it’s never about being seen. It’s never. If they can get that inculcated, the Show won’t fuck them up, Schtitt thinks.” (p. 680)

In the other main setting, Ennet House–a halfway house for recovering drug addicts–the residents had desired what they thought drugs could provide, be that pleasure or escape or peace, but eventually they were always disappointed. More than this, they became trapped. For example, one of the residents, Joelle van Dyne, attempted to kill herself by overdose just because she had been imprisoned by her addiction. Here’s where she found herself:

“It is the cage that has entered her somehow. The ingenuity of the whole thing is beyond her. The Fun has long since dropped off the Too Much. She’s lost the ability to lie to herself about being able to quit, or even about enjoying it, still. It no longer delimits and fills the hole. It no longer delimits the hole.” (p. 222)

Desire is dangerous; it’s likely to become our master. DFW sounds almost as pessimistic as philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer here, sharing with him the idea that what motivates human beings is primitive, illogical desires that can never be satisfied. Many of the characters in the book are caged in some way; typically this is the result of having pursued desires that seemed to offer bliss but end up causing harm.

Schopenhauer thought all we could do to mitigate the force of desire was to lead very constricted lives; fortunately, Wallace is more hopeful. I’ll discuss where he finds hope in a later post; let me close here by noting that for him at least one path to release could be found in addiction recovery organizations such as AA or NA. That this approach works is a surprise even for those in recovery. At one point, Don Gately, a staff member at Ennet House, reflects:

“Substances start out being so magically great, so much the interior jigsaw’s missing piece, that at the start you just know, deep in your gut, that they’ll never let you down; you just know it. But they do. And then this goofy, slapdash anarchic system of low-rent gatherings and corny slogans and saccharin grins and hideous coffee is so lame you just know there’s no way it could ever possibly work except for the utterest morons…and then Gately seems to find out AA turns out to be the very loyal friend he thought he’s had and then lost, when you Came In.”  (p. 350)

We all could use a little help; the trick is to figure out what will genuinely provide assistance and what promises to do so but ends up harming us instead.

 

 

Gatsby and the Failure of Hope

I wrote earlier about Baz Luhrmann’s adaption of The Great Gatsby , suggesting that, despite its many fine features, the movie doesn’t do a particularly good job of conveying a couple of themes that are central to Fitzgerald’s novel.   I didn’t explain my point concerning one of those themes, so I’ll do so in this post.

St. Augustine said that we are what we love.  Human unhappiness results from disordered love—from having the greatest love for something that is insufficient to satisfy us.  Gatsby’s love for Daisy was disordered in two ways.  First of all, he was putting his ultimate confidence in something temporal—in a human being who would one day die.  Over the five years from when Gatsby had last seen Daisy, he had created an image of Daisy that envisioned something that could provide him with perfect happiness.  He had, in essence, idolized her, in the sense of making her worthy of worship.  His illusion was bound to be shattered.  Here is how Fitzgerald describes the aftermath of Gatsby and Daisy reuniting:

“As I went over to say good-by I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby’s face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness.  Almost five years!  There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion.  It had gone beyond her, beyond everything.  He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way.  No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.”

There is no way that Daisy or anyone could have lived up to the idealized image that Gatsby had created of her.  Daisy was also bound to disappoint in another way.  Not only did she display the ordinary limitations of human flesh, but she was a particularly fickle and untrustworthy manifestation of such flesh.  Her life of privilege made her ill-suited to reciprocate to Gatsby’s love with anything like the dedication and commitment that he showed.  She pulled back from him rather than support him when Tom questions his integrity, and when he died he was waiting anxiously for a phone call from her that never came.  Fitzgerald’s final statement about Daisy lumps her with Tom:

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Luhrmann seems to have wanted this tragedy to be seen as a romance, and so he makes Daisy into a weakling overwhelmed by Tom’s bullying rather than the deeply flawed, unreliable person that she is in the novel.  He even gives the suggestion that she was in the process of calling Gatsby at the moment that Gatsby was killed.  Here’s how Christopher Orr of The Atlantic describes how the movie changes Daisy:

“It is with her character that Luhrmann most clearly displays his incomprehension of the work he’s adapting—or perhaps, more cynically, his assumption that audiences would be unable to comprehend it. This Daisy is indecisive rather than “careless,” a co-victim in the story’s central tragedy rather than its principal architect, a smash-ee rather than smasher. Among other consequences, this transformation renders Fitzgerald’s closing judgment on the Buchanans (which Luhrmann reproduces faithfully) all but meaningless.”

Luhrmann seems to suggest that things might have worked out for Gatsby were it not for a few unfortunate circumstances.  That’s not the tale that Fitzgerald tells; his Gatsby is doomed because he has all his incredible capacity for hope on a single person, and one singularly ill-equipped to bear it.  What we put our hope in is as important as whether we have hope.  Luhrmann does us no favors by obscuring this point.

 

“The Great Gatsby” and Self-Invention

Going to see a film version of a favorite book, especially one so highly regarded as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, is likely to be disappointing.  I loved Gatsby since I read it in college, and enjoyed re-reading it again last month in preparation for Baz Luhrmann’s adaption, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby, Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway, Carrie Mulligan as Gatsby’s love object Daisy Buchanan, and Joel Edgerton as Daisy’s husband Tom Buchanan. I approached the movie with trepidation—what favorite scenes would be omitted?  What dialogue mangled?  How well would the book’s atmosphere survive?

I was pleasantly surprised at how carefully the book’s plot was followed.  Only one of my favorite scenes has been omitted—the interaction between Nick and Gatsby’s father when the latter showed up for his son’s funeral.  The dialogue is faithful to the original.  The excesses of the Jazz Age are portrayed effectively, with the switch of musical style to hip-hop rather than jazz very appropriate for conveying the swagger and brashness of the era.  The parties are every bit as gaudy and extravagant as I imagined, and the contrast between the mansions full of revelers and the bleak valley of ashes reveals the vast inequity between rich and poor.  DiCaprio is a wonderful Gatsby and Edgerton is suitably loutish as Tom.  Unfortunately, Maguire is too befuddled and Mulligan too innocent for their respective roles; the former shortcoming was merely an annoyance, but the latter contributed to what for me was the main flaw of the movie, namely that, despite adhering closely to the book, it significantly modifies the character of the story.  I’ll take the rest of the post to explain what I see as Fitzgerald’s central themes and how well the movie does with these.

The three main themes that I find in the book are the arrogance and destructiveness of wealth, the dangers of self-invention, and the problems that occur when one constructs an object of longing that differs from the original source for that object.    As noted above, the movie shows the excesses of the age effectively, and Edgerton’s Tom Buchanan, the embodiment of old wealth, is every bit the haughty, chauvinistic cad that Fitzgerald made him.  Thus, the movie does well with the first of these themes.  It is with the other two themes that it lets us down.

Jay Gatsby is a classic self-made man, even his name being an invention.  Near the end of the novel, Gatsby’s father shows Nick the back cover of a book in which the boy Jay had written his daily schedule for self-improvement as well as his “General Resolves,” the latter including “No wasting time at Shafters,” “No more smokeing or chewing,” and “Read one improving book or magazine per week.”  Following such routines left the teen-aged James Gatz well-prepared to turn a chance encounter with a wealthy old man into an apprenticeship in the ways of the world, and, later, to success in the halls of power.  All this seems admirable, seemingly a case study in achieving what would later be called the American Dream.  Yet, as Fitzgerald portrayed him, Gatsby was fatally flawed.  Here is Fitzgerald’s most direct statement about Gatsby’s self-invention:

“His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people—his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all.  The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself.  He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty.  So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.”

Gatsby himself could be considered meretricious—superficially attractive but lacking in inherent worth.  The web of favors and relationships that had sustained him would be insufficient to support him in the end.  Nick describes him as having “an extraordinary gift for hope,” and such hope is certainly a central driver for self-invention.  Why bother to remake oneself unless motivated by hope that one’s efforts could change the future?  The movie seems to regard Gatsby’s self-invention as admirable, and in particular extols his hope for an idyllic future with Daisy.  In contrast, Fitzgerald saw the danger of Gatsby’s brand of hope.  Here is how the novel ends:

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us.  It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther . . . . And one fine morning—

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Hope that sees only future possibilities is never likely to reach fulfillment.  The past that we try to erase with our efforts at self-invention is part of who we are, and to deny our origins is to fight against a current more powerful than us.  Fitzgerald’s caution against the ahistorical impulse towards endless self invention that has always been part of the American character has never been more pertinent than now, surrounded as we are with life coaches, personal branding experts, motivational speakers, and various other largely self-made experts telling us we can be whatever we want to be.  Only a small fragment of Fitzgerald’s warning has survived in Luhrmann’s movie.

I know I have one more theme to consider, but this post is getting long and my time is getting short, so I’ll come back to that in a future post.

 

Unrealistic Optimism and Hopeful Pessimism

Surveys find that reported life satisfaction and positive emotions tend to increase as we age, at least until we reach the point where infirmity starts detracting significantly from our quality of life.  Most of the elderly are fairly optimistic about their remaining years.  In fact, author Paula Span suggested in a recent New York Times article that many of them are much more optimistic than circumstances warrant.  She cites findings from the “United States of Aging,” a telephone survey of Americans over age 60.   Among those over 70, 23% thought their overall quality of life would improve in the next five to ten years, and 49% thought it would stay the same.  Eighty-six percent of those over 70 thought they would be able to stay in their home for five to ten years without making significant modifications.  The vast majority of survey respondents thought that they would be able to maintain their health over the next five to ten years and that, should an accident or unexpected medical problem occur, they would be able to pay the associated expenses.  Span says, “I see much grimmer tidings elsewhere on a daily basis,” citing statistics showing paltry savings and frequent medical problems among the elderly.   She tries to puzzle out the reasons for the respondents’ optimism, concluding that it reflects at least in part a developmental change associated with aging.

Right now I’m something of an exception to the rule that we become more happy and optimistic as we age.  I’ve had a dip in life satisfaction over the past six months or so as I’ve retired from my primary job and moved to Michigan to be of assistance to my parents.  I still work part-time; my three part-time jobs  together equal about three-quarters of a full-time job.  My income is reduced, and I’m driving back and forth between Michigan and North Carolina frequently.  Less money and a peripatetic lifestyle trouble me some, but the biggest change is that I’ve developed more negative expectations about the future.  That in turn comes from the time I spend with my parents.  It’s not so much that their advanced age reminds me that they’ll soon die—and that I’ll eventually follow them.  Thinking about death is disconcerting only for those who haven’t quite come to terms with their inevitable mortality.  There is actually a substantial body of research indicating that thoughts of death can have beneficial effects on how we live our lives (see a report of this research here).  I’m less troubled by death than by what might come before death.

My parents are in their own home and, for now anyway, are able to cover their expenses reasonably well.  That doesn’t mean that they have a very pleasant life, though.  My dad has dementia.  He still knows who he is, recognizes family members and some friends, and can feed himself and help dress himself.  However, he has to be told the most basic things, remembers very little (even the household schedule, which is repetitive to the point of monotony), and is miserable whenever away from my mom.  He fears being alone, and, whenever my mom is away, he anxiously awaits her return.  At night, he always needs to be reassured that someone will come to get him in the morning.  My mother works hard to keep up the household and keep dad satisfied.  She is plagued with various physical limitations, tires easily, and is clearly weary of the task of answering the same questions and trying to comfort someone who can’t be comforted for more than a moment.  My mom has said, “I think we’ve just lived too long.”  I understand why she has that view.

So I’m no longer much of an optimist when it comes to the end of life.  Perhaps I’m even a pessimist, in the sense of having mostly negative expectations for what it will be like should I live to my mid-eighties or beyond.  I would say that I’m a hopeful pessimist, though.  Health may deteriorate, memory may fade, and friends may die, but I hope to still be sustained by qualities that can survive all these losses.  The Christian tradition talks about the fruit of the Spirit—qualities that God’s Spirit develops in those who open themselves to his activity.  The Apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatians lists these as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Take the first three of these—if my heart were to constantly be filled with love of others, if I were to be always joyful about God’s faithfulness and mercy, and if I had an abiding sense of peace that is unperturbed by life situations, then deprivation and decrepitude would matter much less.  Some days, I seem to be showing exactly the opposite of the qualities that Paul cites.  I know that spiritual formation is a lifelong process, though, and I trust that God’s Spirit knows better than I do how to develop these characteristics in me.  So, at this point I’m a hopeful pessimist, the in-breaking kingdom of the heavens being the only real reason I see for hope.

 

Optimism Vs. Hope

I wrote previously about optimism, ending with the suggestion that optimism and hope differ from each other.  In this post, I’ll say a little about what I found when I did a web search on “hope vs. optimism.” Though some links were to writers who didn’t distinguish meaningfully between the two, the majority made some distinction.  In fact, many of those who thought hope differed from optimism made overdrawn contrasts between them.  Here’s an example–a quote attributed to Scottish theologian John Macquarrie: “Hope is humble, trustful, vulnerable. Optimism is arrogant, brash, complacent. Hope has known the pang of suffering and the chill of despair.”  So if I’m optimistic about something, I’m being arrogant and brash?  I can’t hope if I haven’t suffered?  At best, this passage seems hyperbolic.  Both hope and optimism are similar in that they both involve positive expectations of some sort about the future; it’s best not to lose sight of their commonalities.

I found a few scientific studies differentiating between hope and optimism.  These tended to muck around in the slough of statistical analysis, and none turned up anything that I found particularly helpful.  Careful thought about  distinctions between the two seems to have an advantage over empirical research. Several well-known writers have tried to distinguish between hope and optimism—I encountered quotes from Miroslav Volf, Henri Nouwen, John Ortberg, and Vaclav Havel.  Here, for example, is a quote from Ortberg, as reported by  Smitten Kitten:

“Optimism and hope are not quite the same thing. Optimism requires a belief in progress—that things will in fact get better for me. Hope includes all the psychological advantages of optimism, but it is rooted in something deeper. When I hope, I believe that God is at work to redeem all things regardless of how things happen to be turning out for me today.”

Here is Nouwen, as quoted by KG:

“Optimism and hope are radically different attitudes. Optimism is the expectation that things—the weather, human relationships, the economy, the political situation, and so on—will get better. Hope is the trust that God will fulfill God’s promises to us in a way that leads us to true freedom. The optimist speaks about concrete changes in the future. The person of hope lives in the moment with the knowledge and trust that all of life is in good hands.”

I found that my fellow Christians often focus on a distinction made by both Ortberg and Nouwen.   Optimism is said to have as its object ordinary human events, whereas hope has to do with expectations about God.  Wouldn’t that imply, though, that a non-Christian (or at least a non-theist) can’t hope?  Isn’t it more accurate to say that nonbelievers hope as well, just in something different than believers?

Nouwen’s point that hope is related to trust is a useful one.  Hope more than optimism seems to depend on a sense that there is something benevolent that underlies our lives, though many attribute that benevolence to nature or karma or destiny or spirits rather than to God.  Optimism is often constructed out of selective interpretation of the evidence or simple denial that bad things might happen; hope is built on a foundation of faith in something larger than oneself.  Vaclav Havel, whose experience of living hopefully in the face of oppression gives him a more profound understanding of the concept than I will ever have, expresses it like this:   “Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, and orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.”

Vaclav Havel

So hope is an ability to sense a deeper reality than what is visible.  It consists not merely of thinking that things might improve in the future, but of recognizing—not with the senses but with the heart—that something in present reality is right, and knowing that that present reality will pervade the future as well.   Havel thinks that such hope results in action. “Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.  The more propitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper the hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”     (From Disturbing the Peace (1986), quoted here.)