The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness: 751 Books to Cure What Ails You (62 page)

See also:
Adolescence
•
Alcoholism
•
Drugs, doing too many
•
Rage
•
Risks, taking too many

See
:
Adolescence
•
Alcoholism
•
Carelessness
•
Drugs, doing too many
•
Gambling
•
Rails, going off the
•
Risks, taking too many
•
Selfishness
•
Twentysomething, being

Bright Lights, Big City

JAY MCINERNEY

•   •   •

These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine

NANCY TURNER

I
f only.

Beware these two little words. They may sound innocent enough, but give them half a chance and they’ll stick their steely hooks into you, winch you off your feet, and leave you swinging—ineffectually, miserably—for years. Because regret derails; it paralyzes and prevents. And what’s more, it’s often misdirected. For who’s to say that we would have been better off if the thing that we wish hadn’t happened
hadn’t
happened, and the thing we wish
had
happened
did
happen after all? If you feel regret over things you never got around to doing, see: Procrastination. But if you feel regret for things you did get around to doing and wish you hadn’t, read on.

The protagonist of Jay McInerney’s
Bright Lights, Big City
—which is, actually,
you
*
—certainly seems to be setting himself—or, rather, you—up for regret. You mess up your job, you make absolutely sure to cut off all avenues back to it, then you stand up the only decent woman who’s approached you in years. None of which does anything to slow your stride as you and your notorious friend Tad pursue your mission of having “more fun than anyone else in New York City.” You still manage to end up in bed with a lovely girl.

Some would say the novel is amoral; others would counter that life is just endlessly available. You may have abused your twenties, screwed up in your thirties, and spent your forties on the psychoanalyst’s couch—but no matter. Regret? Pah! There are more things ahead, this novel tells us, so just keep going.

That said, few in literature have more cause for regret than Sarah Agnes Prine, the narrator of
These Is My Words
. Having upped sticks once and traveled the Oregon Trail out west, Sarah’s papa decides to sell up a second time and head to greener pastures still, in New Mexico Territory. It is a disastrous decision. Not only does the youngest son, Clover—“a top notch fellow after he got out of diapers”—die from a rattlesnake bite on the way, but they are attacked by Comanche Indians, who steal their entire herd of horses. Sarah,
not yet eighteen, witnesses gruesome deaths among the families traveling with them (Mr. Hoover takes an arrow “plum” in the throat), watches the multiple rape of a friend, and has the blood of two white men and five Indians on her own hands. Meanwhile, her older brother Ernest loses a leg. By the time they get to their promised land, they find there’s nothing for them there—it’s hot and scorched, “deader” than where they have come from. And then, within a week of arriving, Papa himself dies from a gunshot wound, and Mama promptly loses her marbles.

“Couldn’t we turn back and go home?” Sarah asks her papa, understandably enough, while they are still on the road. But Papa puts his hand on her arm and says, “Girl, there’s never any turning back in life.” Mr. Prine—may he rest in peace—is right. Turning back won’t bring Clover back, nor Ernest’s leg, nor eradicate the traumas from their minds, and the only thing that can bring Mama back to her senses is the passage of time. Instead, one has to allow oneself to be made stronger by one’s experiences, and then move on. Readers of this novel will see clearly how Sarah is transformed by her sorrows and hardships. And without the pluck and resilience of character she acquires, would Captain Elliot, the droopy-mustached cavalry soldier, have noticed her?

Take heart from this novel. We can either spend our time looking back mournfully at the door that just closed behind us, or we can emerge from that door tougher for it. The wisdom and strength we’ve gained will help us through the door that comes next. At least this way we won’t make the same mistakes twice. And what awaits us through the next door may very well be better than what we wish we’d never left behind.

See also:
Bitterness
•
Guilt
•
Shame

See:
Adultery
•
Age gap between lovers
•
Commitment, fear of
•
Jealousy
•
Love, doomed
•
Married, being
•
Mr./Mrs. Wrong, ending up with
•
Non-reading partner, having a
•
Wasting time on a dud relationship

See:
Anger
•
Bitterness
•
Cynicism
•
Dissatisfaction
•
Hatred
•
Jealousy
•
Rage
•
Regret

See:
Anxiety
•
Claustrophobia
•
Itchy feet
•
Jump ship, desire to
•
Skim, tendency to
•
Wanderlust

The Enigma of Arrival

V. S. NAIPAUL

•   •   •

The Spire

WILLIAM GOLDING

F
or many, the moment of hanging up your hatchet is a terrifying one—if not for you, then for your loved ones. What will you get up to in the next few decades? Set off on a round-the-world adventure, build your own folly, learn Sanskrit, or get under the feet of your family and neighbors by being constantly, annoyingly,
there
?

Retirement offers the first opportunity for reflection that you’ll have had in a long time, and to start you off, read
The Enigma of Arrival
, V. S. Naipaul’s fictionalized meditation on his own life—how he came to leave his native Trinidad and live his latter years in England. Naipaul studied at Oxford University as a young man, then traveled the world repeatedly and extensively, exploring Africa, India, America, and the Muslim world. Naipaul now turns his outsider eyes on the ancient heart of olde England, a place where he was “truly an alien,” yet where he finds he’s been given a second chance—a chance for “a new life, richer and fuller than any I had had anywhere else.” For the first time, he is “in tune with a landscape”: the hips and hawthorns of England suit his temperament better than the lush tropical vegetation of Trinidad. It’s a surprising and inspiring discovery for someone at this stage in life. Have you, too, yet to find the landscape with which you most resonate and belong?

Bucolic and tranquil,
The Enigma of Arrival
will encourage you to take stock of your life and enjoy the unfolding of new possibilities. Try focusing, as Naipaul does so beautifully, on the minutiae of life—such as when he notices that the grass on the mown path through an orchard has been mown in two directions, “one swathe up, one swathe down . . . the two swathes showing as two distinct colors.” Just because you’re retired doesn’t mean you can’t learn to see the world in new ways—especially now that you have the time.

Sometimes the change from working to not working can be too fast and
sudden, leaving you feeling you’re in freefall or that there’s no meaning to your days (see: Dizziness; Pointlessness). Perhaps, you think, retiring was a mistake. Perhaps you weren’t quite ready to quit. If you find yourself tempted to jump back into the fray, we urge you to hesitate long enough to read
The Spire
by William Golding. Dean Jocelin will not rest until he has built a four-hundred-foot spire for the local cathedral, an act of religious and personal hubris. The fulfillment of his vision exhausts everybody, except him, and his blinkered determination to see the job completed against all odds leads to terrible suffering for others. It’s an excuse for some brilliant writing about the desire for beauty in the world: “Everywhere, fine dust gave these rods and trunks of light the importance of a dimension. He blinked at them again, seeing, near at hand, how individual grains of dust turned over each other, or bounced all together, like mayfly in a breath of wind.” But by the end, the folly of the endeavor is all too apparent. Think twice before embracing work once more—especially if it’s to leave a last monument to posterity. Realize how lucky you are to be away from all that stress. Sign up for a literature course instead.

See also:
Boredom

See:
Bitterness
•
Hatred
•
Vengeance, seeking