The lie of regret and of life gone off the rails. What rails. The life is the rails. It is its own rails and it goes where it goes. It cuts its own path. My path took me here.
Okay – I will admit it. I have been a mess the past month with way too much to do, so I utterly failed my goal of trying to read all of the books that were long-listed for the Man Booker Prize before the Short List came out, i.e. before today.
In my younger years – meaning up until now, but I am actively trying to change – I beat myself up about not reaching the goals that I set for myself. But I’ve started (and before those of you who know me as a crazy type A person write me off, I said started) to realize, that I am human, and it is okay to fail at your goals sometimes. In fact, goals should be aspirational so that in reaching for them, you accomplish more than what you otherwise would have had done.
What I mean to say, after all that rambling self-reflection, I have decided that instead of thinking that I failed by having a million other things to do that got in the way of my reading list, I’ve decided to be grateful for what I did accomplish – reading two great pieces of literature that I would not have otherwise gotten to had I not tried to read the entire Long List.
AND, I did manage to read one that made the Short List, Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room. The Mars Room follows a young woman as she makes her way through the criminal justice system, and chronicles her attempt to come to terms with serving two life sentences. The book was thought-provoking, especially with regards to the American justice system and the so-called “American Dream.” The story itself, however, was not my cup of tea.
Admittedly, The Mars Room is not the type of book that I would have gone for myself – which is one reason I like reading books that have been nominated for prizes; it gets me out of my comfort zone – but as it is not my favorite type of novel, you do need to take my thoughts on it with a grain of salt.
In the novel, you come face-to-face with the vulgarities of life; strippers, drug dealers, murderers are all featured in the novel. And Words are not minced. Instead, the book breaks through our quixotic illusions of what we think the world is and should be and shows us the realities of a life that has become far too familiar to too many. The result leaves the reader in a space where he or she must learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Facing reality is usually an uncomfortable business.
In fact, just as the reader is finding him or herself less guarded, opening up to the “family like” network that the characters have created for themselves, google and its vast knowledge of the world upends the unspoken agreement between the author and the reader that the main characters in this story are the protagonists – the wrongly incarcerated who are at the complete – and unfair – mercy of the criminal justice system. Google tells the story of their crimes. And some of their crimes are heinous.
It was this moment that I realized why this book had been long listed (and subsequently short listed). It is Rachel Kushner’s ability to create a story full of multi-dimensional characters that are neither good nor bad, but fully human that sets her apart. Her novel is an ode to reality. A reality that desperately needs to be acknowledged and has for so long gone unnoticed.
I will say, however, that if you do like your novels to end all wrapped up in a tight bow, you will definitely feel unsatisfied at the end of this book. It leaves you, to borrow a phrase from Julian Barnes, but one that is especially apt here, without the “sense of an ending.”
The Portrait of a [sometimes] Lady 