There is a satisfaction in accomplishing a goal, whether it's large or small. Sometimes, that seems to be one of the points to life -- one has goals, things to do, and one does them. One of the smaller goals I've had this spring was to finish Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. It's a sprawling, 771-page novel that I was wildly looking forward to reading.
The first sections were more than rewarding. I fell right into the story of young Theo, raised by his artistic, lovely mother who is clearly the center of his universe. Her death in a terrorist bombing at the Met, his sudden loss of her presence, seeing a red-haired girl and being with her beloved guardian as he dies in the museum, and urges Theo to take the titular painting, make for a gripping narrative. The aftermath of the bombing as Theo is thrust into the modern social worker strictures of what to do about the poor child is filled with the type of detail that makes a sweeping story poignant without it becoming maudlin.
Theo does veer toward the maudlin. He is fortunate, although it does not always appear so, that he finds a best mate in Vegas. He ends up there when his father suddenly reappears in his life, girlfriend in tow, and takes him out West. Theo is left to basically raise himself while Dad gambles and tries to hustle to make a big hit. Stuck in the middle of a sterile school of drug using teens and deserted subdivisions, he meets Boris, another motherless young teen. They drink and drug their way through school, devouring books and movies as readily as any other intoxicant. They also are the ones who take care of Popchick, the little white dog owned by Daddy's girlfriend but neglected by her as much as the boys are neglected.
Boris is as incapable of being maudlin as Theo is of looking on the bright side of life. Circumstances send Theo back to New York City with the dog in an act that is the bravest thing he has ever done. He ends up at the home of Hobie, who is now grown but who was taken in by Welty. That's the man who had taken his niece, Pippa, to the Met on the day of the bombing and who died with Theo holding his hand. Theo adores Pippa but Hobie becomes the stabilizing force of his life as he restores furniture and cares for Welty's things.
The other constant in Theo's life is his secret possession of the painting. The Goldfinch is a remarkable real work of a tiny bird, chained to a perch. It was painted by Rembrandt student Carel Fabritius in 1654, the year he died. Most of his paintings were destroyed in the explosion that killed him. So it was little wonder that the novelist created an explosion to get the painting into Theo's hands, and that Theo feels himself as much a prisoner of his fate as that bird is a prisoner.
The long middle section of Theo and Boris in Vegas is where many other readers I know lost interest in the book. I didn't feel that way; I did feel swept up in the boys' resilience in continuing to fend for themselves and looking on the bright side of life, as Monty Python puts it. When Theo heads back East on an epic bus ride, I was impressed by the notion that he was ready to become a strong person and put the hopelessness of his youth behind him.
But he didn't. Even when Hobie's mentorship, Theo's interest in Hobie's furniture restoration skills and running Welty's store, Theo was still a drug addict and alcoholic trying to overmedicate himself and sometimes kill himself. Seeing Pippa only occasionally and hopelessly loving her were some of the rare moments of happiness in the story.
Theo was in a rut and so was I as a reader. But at least one reader whose opinion I deeply respect swooned over the ending. So I carried on. It's what one does in life, right? One carries on.
And at the end of the narrative Theo came to some conclusions about himself and life, about beauty and art, about truth and imposters. One of the points I got out of Theo's realizations is that one goes through life accomplishing goals. It is a way to spend one's time, it may even be a way to pay one's debts and restore balance. Tartt's narrator adds that there may be more going on, even if life doesn't have these great big huge meanings that he tries to fit into patterns. These tasks, meeting these goals, may be the route each person takes to make evil of good or good of evil.
Many of us look for beauty and truth in art to help make sense of life and to hope for something better than the daily grind and the bored desperation seen in other lives. But Theo notes it is a little more complicated than that:
... the pursuit of pure beauty is a trap, a fast track to bitterness and sorrow, that beauty has to be wedded to something more meaningful.
For Theo and others in the novel, that beauty is in
The Goldfinch. For Theo, the painting remains the key to his childhood happiness with his mother. He implies that he would move on if he could, that he would seek something besides unrequited love. But
... we don't get to chose our own hearts. We can't make ourselves want what's good for us or what's good for other people. We don't get to choose the people we are
.
No we don't. Nor do we get to choose the circumstances of how we came to be in this world. Nor do we get to choose how others perceive us or what they do to us. All we have is ourselves, what we believe and how we react and what we do with what we have.
Tartt is not content to let it stay there. She adds another layer:
What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can't be trust __?
The nearest Theo comes to an answer is this:
...as cruelly as the game (of life) is stacked ... it's possible to play it with a kind of joy ...
Theo may not believe there is joy in life or "truth beyond illusion" or even in basic goodness. But he does believe in loving beautiful things and caring for them. Staying true to that is accomplishing a goal, especially when there are obstacles set up by outside circumstances and people, and by one's own heart. But it is a goal that Theo accomplished.
Seeing that happen to the lost little boy who loved his mother and the painting of the chained little bird is a goal Tartt accomplished, and for which she received the Pulitzer Prize this month.
So seeing this all unfold make me glad to have finished my goal of finishing the book. It is not a novel that has moved me as deeply as some others, but it is now a part of who I am and how I will look at the world. And that meets my goal of carrying on with a broader world view, not a more narrow one.
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