The Edge of Sadness

Yesterday I served at the cannery on a welfare assignment. We were making jam. My job was to mix 5.5 lbs of pectin with 7 lbs of citric acid, later to be mixed with 75 lbs of sugar. I lifted a 20-30 lbs bag of citric acid at one point and felt a strange twitching in my back. But being the fairly athletic almost 28 year old that I am, I felt no compulsion to stop. I later switched jobs and, for the next 2.5 hours, put glass jars onto a rotating wheel that would later be filled with jam, a motion not unlike ironing or loading a dishwasher ("Whatever you do," my mom would later tell me, "DO NOT IRON OR LOAD A DISHWASHER!") By the time I headed home I could barely move, much less pick up Talmage.

So, thanks to Tyler who took off work today, I have been FLAT on my BACK. I know that's a cute colloquial saying, but I promise you, I mean that quite literally. Flat on my back. At 2:00 in the morning, lying flat seems overwhelmingly tedious and you try to roll to one side or the other. Bad decision. Much better to remain flat.

So, in the last 24 hours, I have read The Edge Of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor. It was a beautiful book and the last 24 hours have been filled with both anguish and joy. Even more so than they would have been with a broken back.

I should probably mention that The Edge Of Sadness is precisely the kind of book that I LOVE that has no plot and rich character development. I.e. I won't be recommending this to Tyler any time soon. The book makes Wallace Stegner novels seem action-packed.

Some of my very most favorite narrators, including John Ames in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Luke Ripley in Andre Dubus' "A Father's Story" are priests. Actually I'm not sure Luke Ripley is a priest, now that I think about it, but he seems like one. In any case, I'm going to add Hugh Kennedy as a favorite priestly narrator. I think that I trust them more, they seem very wise, and whatever growth or knowledge they gain seems very sincere.

The book chronicled the decay of robust Catholicism during the 1950's. Granted, I know nothing about the decay of robust Catholicism during the 1950's. But in the end, the seeds for renewal were located within the Catholic church. They consisted of a quiet and meditative daily connection to God and an active, loving outreach to individuals. I DO know about times when my commitment to God begins to decay, and I agree with the solution that O'Connor offers.

Charlie Carmody, one of the main antagonists? characters? in the novel is humorously curmudgeony. But not quaintly curmudgeony. He really is quite manipulative and down-right mean at times. But O'Connor points out at one point that while humanity is often carelessly cruel, that same humanity is the first to help when needed. He says, "We all share in a shattering duality [...]. And while all this results in meanness and bitterness and savagery enough [...] the essential goodness of man does break through [...] [It] is in the long succession of these small, redemptive instants, just as much as in the magnificence of heroes, that the meaning and the glory of man is revealed."

I like that thought.

Well, now what do I read next? I know that the reading list says I am "currently reading" Little Women and have been for quite some time, but Little Women is the novel I listen to while running. You do the math.