3rdragon

I just finished A Ring of Endless Light. I really like that book. It's a dark and gritty and deep while still being bright and very alive, full of joy and wonder. It's a study in contrasts, and the sorrow makes the the joy even more poignant.
Brief digression on the subject of joy: This time while I was reading, I was particularly struck by one particular quote, "Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God." Google says that it's from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
Anyway, back to the book. I always associate this book with Poly and the O'Keefes, probably because Adam is in it a lot, and because the paperback version (which I have?) has an image of a girl swimming in the sea with a dolphin leaping over her, and the dolphin always makes me think of Marina, Poly's particular friend - but this is very much a book about Vicky, about her struggles and glories. It is, in some ways, Vicky's version of A House Like a Lotus, with the same focus on grief and growing up, but there's less attention to loss of innocence and more to an affirmation of life, not in ignorance of the realities of the world, but despite - because of - them.

I have some tendency to divide L'Engle's work into categories: sci-fi, realistic fiction, and adult (extra-realistic). I think of all of the Austins books as realistic, and most of the ones about Calvin and Meg's children as realistic too (except that one about Polly and time travel - the one that isn't A Ring of Endless Light, even though it has that circle on the cover . . . what's it called . . . An Acceptable Time), but really, they aren't. The laser in The Young Unicorns is mildly sci-fi, and the whole Starfish business is, but dolphin telepathic communication and non-linear time is certainly beyond the pale, but I'd just taken it in stride before (it's a lovely idea, though, isn't it).

I have to say that I really don't get it about Zachary. Yes, I understand that he's as rich as they come, and perfectly happy to spend money on a girl, and that he's handsome in an ebony-and-snow sort of way, and that he tends to make the female protagonists weak-kneed. I also understand that he has rather a talent for being incredibly needy, and for making whoever he's on the date with feel like she's the only woman in the world, but still . . .
I really just can't wrap my mind around the idea of going out with a guy who I couldn't trust on the most basic level of not getting me killed because he drives like a maniac. (Did that sentence actually cohese? I'm not sure, but you get the idea.) See, when I run into those people, I generally don't get back into a car with them at the wheel. Or if it's fairly unavoidable to get back home (although really, if someone were to drive like Zachary does, I think I'd manage to find my own way home fro New York. No, on second thought, I'd manage to find my own way home from some hole-in-the-wall gas station on the New Jersey Turnpike somewhere because I wouldn't even have gotten to New York before demanding to be let out of the car for the sake of my health and sanity), I don't agree to get back in a car them. And I really don't arrange to go on another date with them next Wednesday.
Zachary dances with death. And not just his death, but the deaths of lots of other people, too. I'm not saying that he's a daredevil. I've known daredevils. In particular, I'm thinking of my closest guy friend in middle school, who was more than a bit of a pyro and would do the most ridiculous things on his bicycle, including knocking out his two front teeth, but about whom I always had a very strong feeling that whatever he did, he would never risk someone else in something he wasn't sure of. I recall my mother saying that he would grow up to be a very nice man, provided he survived that long. Zachary isn't like that. He threatens to run over old ladies for a thrill, or to get a rise out of a girl. In a really fey mood, he'll risk entire passenger planes in wild stunts. It's like he has no idea that consequences exist that you can't buy your way out of. Or he doesn't really understand that death tends to be irreversible under the generally accepted way of running the universe, except possibly in special religious cases. Or maybe he just believes that science will eventually fix death,* and he has enough money to buy a ticket to then, so why bother being careful? Or, I rather suspect that he doesn't care. He seems to feel that nothing matters. I suppose that it's tied in to his lack of belief in any sort of higher anything, but it doesn't make sense to me. I think that if I weren't religious, I'd still try to spend my life enjoying as much of it as I could and doing my best to see that everybody else has a good time too, or at least a somehow fulfilling or meaningful one, on the logic that if this life and this planet is all we've got, we'd better make it a really good one. Which isn't to criticize L'Engle. I know that there are people who feel the way Zachary does, I just don't get it. At all. I guess you could say that it's incompatible with my experience of existence.

And yet, despite all this, Zachary still surprises me. I wouldn't have thought that he would talk to the Rodneys, for example. E.M. Forster described a round character as one who can surprise you convincingly; I suppose Zachary is quite round. Or at least deep. I still wouldn't go out with him, though.

*About that whole cryonics thing. He has some sort of babble about a dream of a world where it's available for everyone. Doesn't it occur to him that if some decent fraction of the world's population decided that they wanted to be zombies at some point in the future and the science to make it work was actually developed, it would be a huge problem in terms of population? I mean, we're crowded already without a bunch of people who died ages ago coming back to live the good life. I suppose that population wasn't as bad a problem 28 years ago, but it wasn't totally off the horizon. Also, how can you be sure that the future is a world you'd want to live in? (Particularly if, like Zachary, you can't seem to even be sure that you want to live in this one?) Maybe I'm just alarmist, but advanced medical technology is no guarantee of nice people or a decent standard of living. But perhaps for someone who feels that "Most people are . . . out for number one, and they don't give a damn about anybody else, and if they have to step on you to get where they want, they don't even notice you lying in a pool of blood--literal or figurative." And concludes with the definite note that he approves of behaving this way, because, "It's the only way to get on in the world." and that "Money's what makes it possible to cope with the real world. If you don't get it, it'll get you,"^ would be - not happy - able to get on in any capitalist society, and unable to conceive of any society other than a capitalist one.
I can't help but feel that it's a terribly narrow way to view the world.

^Quotes from pages 294 and 302, respectively, of the second printing of A Ring of Endless Light.