My family has a subscription to TIME magazine and a few months ago I read a book review in its Culture section. The review was about the late David Rakoff's last novel, Love Dishonor Marry Die Cherish Perish. It is a different sort of novel, written in rhyming couplets instead of prose, a story told from different perspectives and characters.
It's beautiful. That's the most prominent thought that comes to mind when I think about this book. It is rich with vocabulary (so many words I had to look up) and rich with imagery, reproducing life on paper with words as it's medium. Rakoff writes in such a way that every emotion that a character feels is vividly defined, in such a way that a reader can connect and possibly imagine themselves as the character. It's a book with layers that I think are only visible with multiple readings, just as life is a layered tapestry made up of everyone's unique experience.
While the book features the grim fates of several characters it still, somehow, maintains some sort of tenacious, witty optimism. In a way, I think this reflects Rakoff's outlook on life, which makes the novel resonate with me even more. Rakoff died in 2012 of cancer at the age of 47. Love was his last work and in knowing Rakoff's background, it is easy to see how he infused aspects of his life within this last labor of love. Most, if not all, of the characters possess some part of Rakoff's life or attitude; I guess in this way Rakoff lives on even if his body doesn't.
But what struck me the most is that Rakoff, even while struggling through "a touch of cancer," never relinquished himself to the life sapping force in him. He was a prominent figure on the series This American Life, and one of the most popular segments he did for that series was an essay: "The Invisible Made Visible." He read it in front of an audience, a piece that explored the battle and effects of his cancer. Throughout it all, he maintained a sharp wit and self effacing humor. His cancer was his reality but he didn't view it with a defeatist, nor even a positive attitude. I think the best way I can put it is that he accepted his fate and made the best of what he had, choosing to live instead of to stay on a bed and wait to die, to let his fate crush him with it's weight. Rakoff, like a character in the book whose husband was paralyzed by a stroke, approached life with wit and whimsy. I have yet to read more of his essays, which I definitely plan on but it's the last line of Love that will stick with me: "She's standing and squinting, eyes half-closed from the sun / And laughing, delighted at what's still to come."
"It is rich with vocabulary (so many words I had to look up)"
ReplyDeleteQ: In your view does this contribute to the feel of a work or dilute the readers access to the book?
"like a character in the book whose husband was paralyzed by a stroke"
Q: Is Rakoff comparing is cancer to paralysis? Do you consider this a fair comparison?
First question:
ReplyDeleteIt can really go either way. In my opinion, the vocabulary and the many references that I couldn't grasp (because they elude to things I have never encountered/may have been prominent in Rakoff's time) create Rakoff's unique voice. Rakoff used words in this way in order to express himself, that was his style. At the same time, while the vocabulary didn't detract as much from the overall experience, because the meaning of a word can be derived from the context it's used in, the references he made were sometimes lost on me. In these cases my own experience may have not been as rich as if I had understood what Rakoff was trying to say. Because his metaphors were frequently used as a way of conveying the character's experiences, I sometimes was left wondering as to what exactly Rakoff was trying to describe. Overall though, it wasn't such a problem that I couldn't discern what happened to each character and their emotions.
Second Question:
I think that he, in an indirect way, is paralleling - not comparing - his cancer to the character's paralysis as a result of a stroke. It's not a question of "fairness," no where does Rakoff make a comparison or commentary relating paralysis to [his] cancer. It is only in my own analysis do I personally relate his cancer to the character's paralysis. Rakoff is both the paralyzed character and that character's wife. Rakoff is in a way paralyzed by his cancer, at one point he loses the use of his left arm because of the cancer/treatment for it. Just like the paralyzed character, Rakoff has a limited lease on life, they are hindered by the betrayal of their own bodies. Cancer and paralysis are not the same things but they are both diseases or conditions that take away a part of you. But the reason I see this parallel is because Rakoff demonstrates through the paralyzed character's wife that though you may be confronted by a situation without a solution (e.g. to the paralysis), letting it take over your life is not the way to go. The wife still maintains her humor and wit, choosing not to ignore her family's predicament, but instead to make the best of what she has, to not let the bleakness or negativity take over. And that, I think, is Rakoff's attitude towards his cancer. This being his last novel, I think he infused it with a lot of his own self, albeit masked and disguised behind different characters and names.