Don't Just Do Something...
Life rolls on relentlessly, and will leave us behind if we don’t run to keep up. At least that is what Jess Walter seems to imply with the old man’s decision to buy a cell phone and a better car. How else can he catch his grandchildren in their chess tournaments and teenage carnival? He also has to rent a decent apartment so as to provide appropriate accommodations for his grandchildren when his daughter wants him to babysit. Oh, and he needs a job to pay for those new expenses, but there is no meaningful employment left, so he must shepherd golfers around the course.
At least he’s doing something, right? That’s got to be better than reading books, writing, walking in the woods, designing solar power and composting systems, regenerating the land, and just sometimes sitting and doing nothing. Right? Does that conclusion bother you as much as it does me?
For those firmly embedded in the modern paradigm, what seems familiar seems preferable, even if it is inferior. They would rather see the old man plod along in his family’s footsteps than see him striking out in untrammeled wilderness. They can keep an eye on him that way, call the ambulance when he keels over, stick him in a nursing home when he becomes too decrepit.
The wilderness property can reenter the marketplace and fulfill its commodity role. The new owners will doubtless tear down the cabin and build a big vacation home, have power brought in, dig a septic system and drill a well, and upgrade the road. Progress! Lots of money changing hands and resources being consumed. Just what the economy needs.
Some would say this represents the future, while the old man’s dream of living off the grid, returning the land to its original state, reading books, contemplating life, and writing his thoughts represents the past. Of course this relies on the myth of infinite growth, the lie upon which capitalism depends to fool all of us into its twisted logic.
If you don’t believe the myth and chart a different trajectory for civilization, you may interpret the ending of the story differently. Jess Walter certainly doesn’t portray our current predicament optimistically. Nor does he prophecy doom. He seems to invite the readers to make up their own minds.
Logic For End Times
Does the author deliberately toss off the ending as if it was a foregone conclusion, with no emotional investment, just a bald statement of ”this is what happened...” to provide some critical distance from the situation? Does this free the reader to evaluate the outcome rationally, as well as emotionally? Is he telling us that nothing is pure, that everything involves compromise, and that any course of action involves sacrifice?
In the stillness of the blank page following the last sentence, do we question our headlong rush to a troubled future? Could we look upon the deserted highways of the Covid19 lockdown in a different light, one of stillness and poise, with humans standing like trees, soaking up the sunlight? Could we watch the eons pass with equanimity? Is that a responsible strategy when all other courses of action seem to lead to destruction?
If indeed we are approaching the end times, as the militant Christian pastor believed, do we arm ourselves for Armageddon, dig in and recruit for the final battle, content that we will be saved in the rapture, or do we stop, stick our heads above the ramparts, and reconnoiter?
It wasn’t our ability to run fast and climb trees that preserved humanity and allowed them to prosper. It was instead the abnormally large brain, devoted to sensing the environment and planning strategies for survival that made the difference. Was that the old man’s role, sitting alone in his wilderness cabin? Was that so pointless? Was his newspaper editor’s question: ”What have you learned?” ignorant or prophetic? Did she expect a serious answer to such an bald faced question, or did she accurately grasp the depth of our predicament and extend her hope towards this man?
It seems like Jess Walter was unable to reach this climactic height, either in his own mind, or in the mind of his character. He has his yogi, his seeker, reply with a cryptic ”Water is important” and the impotent admission of defeat ”I tried.” Seven years of solitude did not lead to a revelation. Civilization conspired to pull him back into the mainstream, to ”regress him to the mean.”
Are we to interpret his efforts as futile? The character does seem somewhat noble, and his efforts were somewhat successful. What Jess Walter seems to say is that individual effort isn’t enough, especially when society attacks individuals who attempt to opt out. Although he doesn’t hold out any individuals or groups as messianic, perhaps the author intends us to view the solution on a wider plane.
If society actively supported original thinkers, encouraging them to look critically at social norms, took alternative lifestyles under serious consideration, and chose the best elements of many approaches, it might arrive at an eclectic answer composed of many facets, an amalgam of many minds. That might mirror the time-tested methods of evolution. It might add weight to the outliers and push the mean of the distribution in a new direction.
Perhaps the end is nigh, but a new world awaits beyond the horizon. Humanity created this current world. Could we not create a different one, based upon the example of trees, where balance and longevity coexist in a stable ecosystem? If trees once saved us from predators, perhaps we can save us from ourselves by taking on properties of trees. Is not death inevitable, with hope invested in future generations? That at least seems firmly established at the end of Jess Walter’s book.
If I were to extend this novel to my own liking, I would have the old man impart his knowledge to his granddaughter, so that her piercing intellect may articulate what he discovered. Indeed Jess Walter hints at such a possibility. He may then leave us with hope, not in divine intervention, but in transcendence.
Perhaps the grandfather was wise to return from the wilderness, like a shaman returning from the nether world with healing knowledge, or like a modern day Zarathustra. He will not found his own religion, God forbid. Instead many legions of seers may emerge and each make their own small contribution.