Ripley Bogle by Robert McLiam Wilson (February 2018)
Ripley Bogle is about a young man who first overcomes the odds to make it into Cambridge (not the one near Boston), then does the same sort of thing in reverse and ends up living out on the streets (not the ones in Boston) despite being so well-educated. I came to this novel after reading Wilson’s Eureka Street, one of my favorite recent books. Though I would not say I enjoyed Ripley Bogle to the same extent, I found it both entertaining and filled with plenty of insight to highlight here.
An obvious topic this book examines is poverty. As Wilson points out, without poverty the rich have a hard time valuing their worth. The ability to look around and know exactly how far away one is from becoming poor is a key characteristic of wealth and contributes mightily to the urge to protect it.
When poverty doesn’t go away, it lingers in the mind. For those who have been poor in the past, the reminders of poverty in the world around them contribute to a nagging sense of insecurity that makes it almost impossible to feel comfortable without a significant level of wealth.
Another observation I liked was that sometimes people avoid certain public spaces out of a fear of possibly running into someone they know. I’ve been there, though rarely. I think these moments are the surest sign that a change is needed and yet also the easiest one to ignore given how little effort is involved in avoiding a particular area.
Finally, though Ripley Bogle uses an extensive vocabulary to describe even the most mundane details, Wilson could only come up with a familiar word to describe the desire for a second chance – grief. It’s not the way I’m used to thinking about grief but I liked the way the definition fit. I wonder if grief, a word seemingly reserved to describe a particular form of loss, has lost the ability to describe some of our more general emotions thanks to its narrow application.
One up: I think most people judge satire based on its humor and the clarity of its reference to an outside person or event. This was more or less my working definition for some time. Wilson added to my understanding when he pointed out that satire walks a fine line between the vindictive and the educational. If satire is not used to correct, it loses its critical ability to stimulate reform.
One down: The thought that placing too much value on sleep is a sure sign of a problem elsewhere in life left me in two minds. On one hand, I’m writing this after having just woken up an hour later than usual (slept through the alarm). I’ve yet to identify the problem in my life, reader, but I’m worried!
And yet, on the other hand, if someone were to stay up all night on a regular basis, surely we would consider this a sign of a problem as well? I think Wilson’s insight about sleep is just one of those things – true until it isn’t.
Just saying: Wilson points out in one passage that people don't really expect to hear the truth anymore. Even the most basic greeting cannot be exchanged these days without a small lie tucked somewhere into the conversation.
My favorite example of a “truth I didn’t expect to hear” came in a description about why the geriatric tend to run the world while the juvenile remain spectators: ultimately, when we collectively think about how the world should be run, we simply would prefer any approach except for the trial and error method so often advocated by the inexperienced.
