Joan Didion's statement that "we tell ourselves stories in order to live" is one of my touchstones. Its truth is shown to me every time I try to figure out why someone believes even an absurd thing -- often because he has tried to form a narrative around something he wants to be true -- or that someone becomes a reader because a story resonated with her -- a cause for celebration.
The other touchstone is E.M. Forster's "only connect -- live in fragments no longer" from Howards End. The entire quotation, speaking of both connecting prose and passion, and of human love being seen at its height, is powerful to me precisely because of the connection between being able to write, to communicate, about the better aspects of human nature and one of those better aspects -- the ability to care for another, to love others. (I'll leave the part of the quote about the no longer isolated beast and monk dying -- those "unconnected arches that have never joined into a man" -- to someone more able to discuss it.)
Both touchstones came to mind as I got to the end of Skippy Dies. Paul Murray's sophomore novel, which was longlisted for the Booker, is about the students and teachers at a well-established Dublin board school and those they love, or would love. It's also about string theory, drugs, music and other dimensions. And how grownups let children down. And how the good guys rarely win. And how sometimes people get a second chance and, when they are certain characters in this sprawling novel, the reader wishes them well.
This is a big novel at more than 660 pages and is told by focusing on several characters at different stages, sometimes during the same times. (An aside, I love reading the last part, because looking at the same event or relationship from different perspectives is an advantage in fiction that we don't often get in real life, to so thoroughly see the world from someone else's vantage point and perhaps even see ourselves.)
The main characters include Skippy, or Daniel Juster, who indeed does die in the opening pages. That Murray can pull off the death of a 14-year-old boy in a doughnut shop and the reader wants to continue reading is quite the achievement. Using the event around which the rest of the novel revolves as a prologue allows Murray to go back a couple months in time to tell Skippy's story and to bring in other characters.
The first to appear after the prologue is sad sack teacher Howard Fallon, a former Seabrooke student now lecturing on history. If it's not in the textbook he's not to mention it, according to the acting principal (who is quite the corporate, Michelle Rhee-loving, grand ego type), because it's not on the bally test. Howard and his live-in love, an American freelance gadgetry writer, are near the end of their days. The allure of the stereotypical hot substitute teacher (think Gywneth Paltrow on Glee) only hastens the process.
Howard the Coward (more about that name later in the book) and the other teachers may live full lives, but they hardly register with the boys. Skippy, roommate Ruprecht the genius, and the others trade insults, misinformation and dreams for the future even as they suffer through classes. Murray is fabulous at capturing those endless lectures, the earnestness with which alliances are made and broken, the pop songs that create cultural relevance and the feeling that we're young, we're eternal and we're bored, so let's try these pills. There is copious drug use in the novel by the teens, and it's to Murray's credit that the reader sees the various reasons why they try them. Thoroeau's "mass of men" leading "lives of quiet desperation" have nothing on these kids.
Skippy's lot is a case in point. He's not brilliant but he's getting by. He hates swimming but he carries on because that's what his parents want. He misses his parents dreadfully but his mother is very ill and they cannot attend his swim meets. His father barely has time to talk to him on the phone while caring for his mum. Skippy's roommate talks a lot of twaddle about M-theory. And he saw a girl. The most beautiful girl in the world. And at a dance, he meets her. and, of course, it goes wrong in the most horrible way, involving not only the girl, Lori, but her boyfriend, Carl the bully, and Lori's best friend, Janine, who adores Carl.
The scheming adults are doing their best to try to keep up with the machinations of the students. The acting principal, poised to modestly (of course!) take over for the dying priest who now has the job, is a catalyst for no good. Another adult in a position of trust fails miserably. What happens to that one would be farce if it was not so tragic for future victims. Parents try to live through their children. Others are as perpetually drunk as their children are high.
Murray uses two setpieces to bring together the problems and dreams of the teens and adults, to watch them collide and explode and impact lives. Both the setups and plotting to get to these setpieces are brilliantly done.
They help get over the feeling that sometimes Murray is a bit too clever. There's a lot going on in this novel, and it often appears it's not going to amount to a hill of beans. But Murray does have a point to make. There are bleak lives that appear worth carrying on. There is hope. There also is the feeling that love of poetry can save a life, much like love of literature was used in Ian McEwan's Saturday, but to better effect here. These teens are telling themselves stories in order to live. And those stories deserve an audience.
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