Hi all,
Finally, the big day! Last time, we narrowed down the four finalists for the 2017 TOA Book of the Year down to just two, eliminating Threads by Kate Evans and M Train by Patti Smith. This left First and Last Notebooks by Simone Weil and Pachinko by Min Jin Lee as our two finalists. Let’s briefly deliberate before I reveal the big winner.
Weil’s entrant makes its case by being what I’m starting to consider a classic TOA-style book – chock full of the deep insights and sharp observations that catch my eye immediately and help me understand my life a little better after my extended reflection. When Weil notes, for example, that an equal is someone you can both obey and command, it gives me a clearer way to think about the concept of equality than I get from my interactions with the everyday world around me.
First and Last Notebooks is also undeniably a classic work, one that I’m sure people will continue to pull off the shelves so long as people continue to read. Weil’s wisdom is both immediate and eternal, a combination seen in no better example than her characterization of God as having an unattainable infinity of patience and humility yet being entirely incapable of sending one hungry man a piece of bread. In other words, though God is forever out of reach, we can briefly exceed God by taking on the simple compassionate work He is unable to do.
I don’t have the same confidence in the longevity, so to speak, of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko. Fifty years from now, I don’t think a hypothetical reader like me is going to seek out this book in the same way he or she might hunt down First and Last Notebooks. Pachinko doesn’t have the same vision – if Weil’s representation of infinity is based on the limitless expansion of the human spirit, Lee’s concept is perpetually cyclical, a spinning wheel powered by the universal preferences for habit, custom, and comfort.
However, when I think about my experience in 2017 and the way these books influenced it, I can’t help but think about Pachinko. Weil’s book may have reflected her endless vision to the horizon and back but Lee’s sweeping narrative gave me visibility of the unseen and unsighted that had always remained in the darkness nearest me. If Weil helped me understand my life a little better, Lee helped me live it, her words serving as blueprint at times for interpreting, navigating, and, yes, even writing through 2017.
So, it is with great delight that I crown Pachinko the 2017 TOA Book of the Year. Congratulations (maybe?) to the author, her loyal fans, and the book’s many admirers for this most pointless of literary honors.
We’ll be back – hopefully much sooner than in twelve months – to review the nominees for 2018 and kick this entire pointless process off again.
Until then, thanks for reading.
Tim
