Book Review - "One Day" by David Nicholls

The novel “One Day” centers on two characters, Dexter and Emma, over the course of a 20 year span of July 15ths starting in 1988. I believe that “One Day” was conceived as a “star-crossed” love story—with the intent for the reader possibly to murmur “seize the day” as they close the book with a sniffle and a sigh. Sure, Dexter drinks like a fish as he pursues a reality show host career and sleeps around, while Emma wrestles with her self-esteem issues and tacky restaurants for far more years than seems humanly tolerable… but we are still supposed to feel their connection as they write notes and miss each other in weirdly passive ways for modern day folk, a la Jane Austen.

The book club I belong to had a split decision on the only question, for me, worth asking about this book. Did this couple really have a deep spiritual connection that transcended time and place, or were they just each others default “fall” position for frequent stumbles in lives that neither of them seemed to want? The ladies on the “deep spiritual connection” side of the split decision voiced the belief that the couple would have certainly lost touch if there wasn’t something spectacular about their relationship to each other. They said that to maintain the thread of a relationship over that length of time, to seek each other out, something transcendent must have occurred between them. The evidence of this level of depth is implied rather than shown, as their correspondence and contact with each other doesn’t seem to consist of more than reporting news of the past year. This led us to a discussion of how some of us had become swept up in dramas with deeply narcissistic persons (like Dexter) that had lasted for years, resulting in broken engagements and hearts, but seemed “karmic” and major and necessary on some level. The rest of us (OK I was on this side) felt that Dexter and Emma were exceptionally skilled at skimming the surface of their experiences and lazily relied on the other as an excuse not to turn up the flame on whatever they were cooking in their present day life. By page 158, I was cursing at the book and hopelessly haunted with images of Ryan Seacrest from American Idol and Renee Zellwigger as Bridget Jones, cast in a Shakespearean tragedy. Of course I have no idea what Ryan Seacrest is really like, but if he is like Dexter, he gets very annoying by page 158 and for me, Bridget really is more fun when she’s wearing a Christmas sweater at her mother’s in a film. I did have to disqualify my opinion a bit, as I had done the unthinkable for serious book clubbers, I had read ahead, and so noted the plot twists that either a.) made the story more real, or b.) were cheap dramas to save us from the insufferable natures of the two main characters. Regardless… I think I mostly lost the argument about deep personal relationships, but as someone who has kept threads of relationships over long periods of time for no apparent reason, I think I can speak from experience on the compelling quality of laziness….

Anyhow, the book is fairly well written and generated some good discussion and juicy personal storytelling from book club members. Carpe diem, sigh.

Inception - Movie

I was sold on seeing the movie “Inception” because of a short clip. In it, Leonardo DiCaprio (“Cobb”) speaks about entering dreams in a soft monotone to actress Ellen Page (“Ariadne”) as the street and buildings around their café table explode, break up and flutter away like loose paper. (Fabulous!) The movie’s premise, a corporate super-spy (DiCaprio) who has perfected the art of entering dreams to steal ideas, is hired to pull off the “heist” of a lifetime by a mysterious Asian businessman (Ken Watanabe) who operates out of a spectacularly lit ballroom. This “heist” has a twist. Cobb is supposed to implant an idea destructive to maintaining the corporate enemy’s monopoly, after mining the unsolved father/son angst for usable reasoning. This is apparently much more difficult than stealing the secret plans to say, a car engine. The reward, strangely like that of Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, is a promised trip “home,” which for Cobb is more difficult than for some because he’s had some bad press there, and also, has been dreaming so long he's not sure where his lifetime is anymore. We are also never sure, like with the wizard, how his powerful client can make good on his promise, but Cobb takes a “leap of faith,” or maybe desperation, and trusts him with his muddled mind, and the lives of his team. He agrees to take the job. Enter--- defenses, memory bits, or (maybe unconscious rage?) disguised as Cobb’s dead wife “Mal” (Marion Cotillard) in a glam dress to sabotage his mission every which way. I excitedly picked up the references that “mal” means “bad” in French, and in mythology, Ariadne was the goddess of weaving, or the maze. Unfortunately I lost more of the references than I got, but even lovely Leo seems to have developed a line down the center of his forehead trying to wrap his mind around the content of the movie. Even so, what psychological type like me doesn’t love the idea of worlds peopled with unconscious “projections” there for the scrutinizing? And who doesn’t want to know what happens when a cute little student presses “B” for “basement” in the elevator of her mentor’s subconscious? Of course, the sheer beauty of the cinematography almost makes me understand why the film editor left the endless shooting scenes in. Almost.

What I found disappointing about “Inception,” was that Director Christopher Nolan didn’t seem to trust that the suspense of a psychological puzzle or the internal worlds of the characters would be compelling enough to drive this movie. If you’re going to whip up a premise like “Inception” and use a word for the title that most people have to crack a dictionary open for, why fall back on matrix-y regurgitations and camera tricks? Beautiful details like the characters’ totems, meaningful dialogue, character development or associations with the fascinating images got lost in the “shoot ‘em up” noisy action formula that invaded the story like—well—a bad dream. The jumble of fantastic images and the mere potential for a great story still make the movie worth seeing, but unfortunately not much to discuss except “so what do you think happened?”

a.m. and the afterlife

Some friends of mine lost their brother in law recently and I sent them the lyrics to Dan Fogelberg’s Netherlands (“from this rocky perch, I continue to search, for the wind and the snow and the sky…”). Knowing that they are agnostic, I thought maybe I had “gaffed” in implying some life after death experience and was over-thinking my intuitive response. This (as usual) occurred during an early morning walk in my yard with my dog, after a thunderstorm had just broken an intense heat wave. She was foraging around for apples in the grass and I could almost hear plants slurping leftover rain. A slight breeze animated the grape arbor vines.

These friends had often said that they thought, “After you go, that’s it. Cease to exist.” My response has always been, “Well I guess I won’t have the ability to be disappointed then.” But this morning the conversation in my head moved on for a moment, as the dog scampered after a tennis ball and then refused to pick it up because it was too wet. I answered, “How does one cease to exist? Exactly what form is ‘nothing’?” Is “nothing” wind, or earth, or rain? As our little consciousness joins the elements, does it move into some larger form—does it have the capacity to know things? This thought was fleeting, because, from the house, a bowl of chicken and sweet potato called to my dog and a cup of coffee called to me. It was only 7:00a.m. after all.