Hello reader,
Today, we take our final four down to a last two…
December - M Train by Patti Smith
My experience reading and rereading this book was fairly unusual in the context of the rest of my book list because of how much more I appreciated this work on the second pass than I did on my initial attempt. As I noted in my reading review, on the surface this is the story of some recent times in Smith’s life, a period she describes wonderfully throughout this memoir, and then there are the rails on which M Train runs, the twin foundations of loss and grief, which infuse the narrative so subtly that it took me a second trip to realize how these underlie everything that happens in M Train.
Parting thought: There is no price too high for peace of mind.
As I look back on the recent past, I notice the many ways I’ve put in a little more time, money, or effort to guard against the unlikely and settle the ever-growing influence of what if that jumps uninvited these days into my thinking. It's too bad, I think, and maybe a problem that I worry so much these days about what could go wrong that I sometimes can't enjoy what I should be looking forward to, but at least I have some good techniques in place to work with my anxiety.
Like most things, the more I notice a fact about myself, the more I tend to find the same detail mirrored in others. I see these reflected in both the collective reactions to existential fears and in the individual responses to far simpler concerns.
November - Threads by Kate Evans
Evans uses the comic book form in Threads to fuse art and writing in a way that delivers her message more powerfully than the more common mediums to which we are all accustomed. The best example is how she draws Marine Le Pen in a way that made her look to me like Donald Trump – a visceral link of their politics in one panel that would be an impossible feat with pictures or film (and might take thousands of words to describe in print).
Parting thought: Open borders is a matter of when, not if.
There are many explanations for migration in Threads and this thought felt to me like the summary of the many broad arguments Evans makes for it. We in the USA take open borders for granted because of the ease of interstate travel within our federation – those in certain countries risk their lives for what we can do with a U-Haul and a realtor. And the power backing our passports allows us to pass fluidly through what for others are solid barriers. In short, what the future is around the world has been past and present in this country, perhaps since its inception.
The countries today that see this global future – like Germany – are doing what we’ve always been doing in the USA – allowing people in and figuring the rest out on the fly. If we aren’t diligent, these countries are going to become the places to where our future generations dream of emigrating.
