memory

Molly Fox's Birthday

admin — Sat, 01 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The fact that Deirdre Madden's tale takes place all in one day, as a calm reflection of the narrator’s relationships, does not take away from the fantastic insights to human nature that the author reveals. It may be Molly Fox’s birthday, but the real gift is for the playwright who hangs out in Molly’s house in Dublin while the eponymous character is away.

Molly Fox’s Birthday is told from the point of the view of the playwright, who revisits the memories of how she met Molly and their careers. She later expresses her feelings for another character, Andrew. The playwright is very good at pinpointing the motivations behind the actions of people she associates with; however, she comes to discover that maybe she doesn’t really know Molly at all. Madden puts into words what is universal to the human psyche.

One of the more interesting aspects of Molly Fox’s Birthday is how the playwright's brother, a Northern Ireland raised priest, maneuvers his way through cosmopolitan Dublin and London, maintaining a rather secretive relationship with Molly. He appears to be much more self-accepting and tolerant than our storyteller, who lies to others when she feels insecure.

Denial opens up to truth as the book winds down, not that it ever moves at a fast pace. It is, instead, rather tranquil. The narrator mentions and revisits one small memory from her relationship with one of the male characters, which she has lied to Molly about. It only takes a knock at the door to bring emotions from twenty years ago back into the front of her focus. Time can’t erase what she still feels, and tries to bury under silent hemming and hawing.

The ho-hum nature of describing what a wonderful actress Molly is, and how beautiful her belongings are could be replaced with more detail about the two women's undergrad years at Trinity, since this is the time that forms the foundation of all of the relationships in the book. Another aspect that should have been further explored was the behind-the-scenes details of life behind the stage (the actors, writers, directors), a life about which we only get hints.

One of the struggles that is universal to the human experience is the choice of whether to conform to family and community expectations or step into the role of the black sheep. Madden explores this through the narrator, who has trouble returning to the embrace of the family. She also makes a point of inserting the tensions between Molly and her mother. These examples, like the other memories, further the view that the past directs our present. Molly Fox’s Birthday is a nice, short, quiet trip.

Written by: Nicolette Westfall, April 30th 2010

Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization

admin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:00:00 +0000

By Michael Rothberg

Stanford University Press

In Multidirectional Memory, Michael Rothberg offers an alternative to competitive memory, or the idea that the capacity to remember historical injustices is limited and that any attention to one injustice diminishes our capacity to memorialize another. Rothberg also disputes the idea that comparisons between atrocities erase differences between them and imply a false equivalence. In focusing on the Holocaust, Rothberg navigates between two extremes: the tendency to proclaim the Holocaust so distinct that it should not be compared to anything else, and the tendency to universalize the Holocaust, turning it into an abstract lesson about good and evil that can be applied to any and all atrocities. His solution is “multidirectional memory,” which describes collective memory as “subject to ongoing negotiation, cross-referencing and borrowing; as productive and not privative.” In other words, comparisons can both aid in understanding and illuminate differences.

In part one, Rothberg explores the idea of “boomerang effects” found in Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism and Aimé Césaire’s works on colonialism and genocide. Through these works and many others, Rothberg examines how, prior to a full accounting for the Holocaust and its reinvention as a historically unique event, scholars such as Arendt and Césaire were constructing the Holocaust and totalitarianism as colonial practices, ideas and structures brought to Europe from the colonies. While Rothberg does a serviceable job of explaining and justifying the productive nature of the comparisons in the abstract, he glosses over the unfortunate concrete relationship between colonial genocides and the Holocaust, specifically Hitler‘s modeling of concentration camps after the North American reservation system and his co-opting of the language and tactics of the so-called Wild West. He mentions these links briefly, but so vaguely as to conceal them from any reader not familiar with the historical facts.

In part two, Rothberg focuses on the works of W. E. B. Du Bois, André Schwarz-Bart, and Caryl Phillips as they explore the light the Holocaust and anti-Semitism shed on the Black experience in the United States, Europe, and the Caribbean. Here, the comparisons are limited to the abstract connections between the historical oppression of people of African descent (including slavery, colonialism, segregation, and genocide) and the Nazis’ racialization, ghettoization, and extermination of the Jews. This section also emphasizes both peoples’ histories with “ghettos, ruins, and other diasporic spaces.” This is perhaps the best example of multidirectional memory in the book.

In parts III and IV, Rothberg explores various works (both literary and cinematic) to examine the connections between the Holocaust and the Algerian War in the waning days of French colonialism and the opening days of the Eichmann trial that would transform the public discourse surrounding the Holocaust. Here, Rothberg does a better job of distinguishing the abstract connections between colonialism, racism, and the Holocaust from the concrete connections between French treatment of the Algerians and French complicity in the Holocaust. Perhaps most disturbing is the implication that a timely attempt to address French complicity in the Holocaust may have prevented many if not all of the atrocities committed against the Algerians, as both involved the same people, places, and tactics.

Overall, Rothberg does a decent job of showing how multidirectional memory can improve understanding through comparison; however, the book fails in a few places. By limiting himself to elite discourse, Rothberg underestimates the public’s capacity to undermine or diminish memory of one atrocity through competition with another as part of the self-fulfilling nature of competitive memory. He also doesn’t seem to fully explore how the taboo against comparisons in general and certain comparisons specifically undermines attempts to make such comparisons productive. Finally, his language is often so stereotypically academic that it may be inaccessible to non-experts. In the end, I am left uncertain whether to recommend the book or suggest that readers attempt to find some other work that addresses these concepts more clearly and completely.

Written by: Melinda Barton, February 12th 2010

When I Forgot

admin — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:23:00 +0000

By Elina Hirvonen, Douglas Robinson

Tin House Books

This kind of forgetting does not erase memory, it lays the emotion surrounding the memory to rest. – Clarissa Estes

The protagonist of this short, dense novel is Anna Louhiniitty, a twenty-something Finnish journalist. It’s a slushy April day in Helsinki. Anna sits at a café table. She’s supposed to be transcribing an interview.

On the table sits a copy of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, that famous novel of war, suicide, and society parties. Anna’s lover, Ian, an expatriate American who teaches modernist literature at the local university, has given her the novel. But just as Anna cannot work, she cannot read the book either. Instead, she thinks of Woolf’s demise. Thus Anna spends the day alone gulping coffee and campari and reliving the events of her childhood and adolescence, her dysfunctional family, and Ian’s dysfunctional family. This remembering forms the substance of the novel’s scenes and trajectory.

Elina Hirvonen, author of When I Forgot, is a Finnish TV host, documentary filmmaker, and producer of current affairs programmes. She is also editor-in-chief of a feminist magazine, Tulva (The Flood). This fiction, her first, has become the most successful debut novel ever in Finland. Hirvonen’s writing style is spare and pithy. Her handling of the fractured narrative—temporal discontinuities, flashbacks within flashbacks, brief letters, imaginings, and other voices telling their stories—is skillful. The consequence of this style is that the reader, like Anna, must work to assemble the pieces from the past in order to understand the present.

That past has its redemptive moments, but is generally not a happy one. Anna’s wan mother is given to hectoring her only daughter. Her father, a minister, has beaten his son, Joona—until Joona grows enough to retaliate. Anna’s grandfather has been ruined by his soldiering in WWII, just as Ian’s father is from participating in the Vietnam holocaust. (Strong anti-war sentiments pervade the novel.) Ian’s mother becomes a basket case until she becomes a Republican (same thing in different guise?). Ian is plagued by 9/11 because he was living in New York when the planes hit the towers. Anna has scars on her wrists. This overlapping of themes and lives gives the novel great resonance. Traumatic experience and suffering, Hirvonen suggests, may seem different in particulars, but is universal in its visitation and effects upon us all.

This brief sketch could make When I Forgot appear to be yet another examination of the depressif realities of northern peoples (the literatures of Canada and Russia, for example, are replete with downbeat narratives). As a child, Anna prays to God; as an adult, she imagines Hollywood endings; both strategies prove fatuous. Yet the spring season, which is the present tense in this novel, hints that all will not be lost in Helsinki.

Anna’s childhood bond with Joona has been crucial; she has also been twisted by it. His mounting insanity drives her to the brink, too. Meeting Ian and falling in love with him helps Anna to break free from Joona and from her parents. Ian is no paradigm of mental health himself; however, the lovers’ connection ultimately directs them from their pasts and allows them to journey together renewed. Does this sound simplistic or romantic? Anna and Ian overcome so much personal detritus that their hard-won victory seems convincing enough. In this way, Anna’s story is an honouring of Mrs. Dalloway and its author—via themes and method—and a rebuff. Take those rocks from your pockets, Virginia. Happiness lives though it’s a tough go to get there.

In sum, when was the last time you read an excellent Finnish novel? Never, right? Well here’s your chance, and well worth the read it is. For this we have Tin House Books to praise. This little publishing concern up in Oregon, like Dalkey Archive in Illinois, is keeping the faith by printing interesting, somewhat experimental fiction that isn’t remotely like Dan Brown's or any other mega-seller like him. Yippee!

Written by: Neil Flowers, October 9th 2009

Where Did I Leave My Glasses?: The What, When, and Why of Normal Memory Loss

admin — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:40:00 +0000

By Martha Weinman Lear

Wellness Central

I knew Where Did I Leave My Glasses? was for me the moment I read its title; by the time I finished the first chapter I was sure that it would be my ‘Bible’ for rest of my life. This informative book on memory loss by Martha Weinman Lear assures us that “memory loss” is perfectly normal as we age. Well, aging may not be a very comforting thought (at least for me), but once we accept this fact “gracefully,” we will accept “memory loss” as its accomplice.

Ms. Lear makes the book very readable and entertaining with amusing life experiences and good humor. She explains the “technicalities” of the human brain in simple words and with simple examples. Who wouldn’t understand if the complex works of neurons, neurotransmitters inside the brain is compared to the big O—Orgasm!

This well researched book includes excerpts of the interviews and expert opinions of neurologists, biologists; cardiologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and many other “ologists” (and some amazing combos like neuropsychologists).

The best part of the book is the tips Ms. Lear gives for memory retention like repetition and word association. Did you know, for example, that aerobics boosts your memory? Ms. Lear distinguishes between “normal” and “not so normal” memory loss, which gives us the clue when to start worrying about memory loss.

This book is a must read for the types like me who have “what’s his/her name,” “tip of the tongue,” and “what I had for weekend’s lunch” issues. Though I know that I am getting older, that at least is much more comforting than to know that I have amnesia.

Written by: Sunitha Jayan, July 7th 2009

The Housekeeper and the Professor

admin — Fri, 08 May 2009 18:43:00 +0000

By Yoko Ogawa

Picador

If you want to read a book that is punch-you-in-the-gut beautiful, then pick up Yoko Ogawa's novel, The Housekeeper and the Professor. This novel is a careful meditation on memory and communication. The precision of the plot is such that you won't know what hit you until you finish the very last sentence; you'll feel as moved as you do gutted.

The premise of the novel is seemingly simple: the plot revolves around the relationship between a housekeeper and a once-famous mathematician, the latter of whom was in a car accident that left him brain damaged. This man's short term memory is shot; it lasts for only eighty minutes. Armed with only decades-old memories and his formulas and theories, the novel shows that despite such loss, affection and love are still possible. Math becomes the language that penetrates this man's mind and allows him to make sense of a world that has changed without him knowing it.

There are no bleeding heart miracles or learning curve love affairs in this book. Ogawa is wise enough to let the novel's plot unfold without explaining too much. In this way, Ogawa understands the mystical power of numbers and memory—that what is unknown is as moving and powerful as what is known. As the Professor says about God, you have to acknowledge the truth of what can not be disproved. Thus, although the Professor may not have access to memory, the ties that bond are there; they cannot be disproved, and thus, they must exist.

The complexities of memory and love are present in the relationship that forms between the housekeeper's son and the mathematician. The professor may not remember Root, (the son’s nickname) after eighty minutes have passed, but upon each introduction, he is as paternal, protective, and loving as before. He feels something behind concrete memory—an essence, an idea, a certain truth. Thus, memory becomes something of an iceberg, both seen and unseen.

Ogawa accomplishes the seemingly impossible; she makes numbers exquisite, exotic, and alluring. The language of love is contained in the pluses and minuses and equal signs that dot the communication between the characters. The poetry of the formulas will curl in and around the reader's mind so they can't help but fall into them.

By the end of the novel, math becomes the decoder ring for the relationship built between the housekeeper, her son, and the professor. The journey they take is one that is equal: the son and mother discover one another as much as the professor discovers them again and again. You'll never look at a prime number in the same way.

Written by: Lisa Bower, May 8th 2009