10-05-13:Mark Epstein Examines 'The Trauma of Everyday Life'
You and Buddha
Trauma, we hope, calls attention to itself. It stands out in the course of our experience, at least some of our experience. It's an exception, an interloper that comes and goes with easily detectable fanfare. We create rules to keep trauma at bay.
But what if trauma is itself a rule? It does not take much of a twist of the vision to encompass this understanding. Our rules to keep it at bay are without use, while the comings and goings are far less easy to trace. How then can we learn to live with the unlivable? It would be nice to think of trauma as rare, but once we consider it, rarity becomes an unattainable wish. Avoidance is not going to work. We have to come up with a means of encompassing trauma.
In 'The Trauma of Everyday Life,' Mark Epstein, MD combines a modern psychological look at the life of Buddha with a fresh examination of trauma to give readers a powerful new understanding of just what it is that bedevils our lives. Trauma is much more common than we might wish, but it need not be the devastating blow that we imagine. Reading 'The Trauma of Everyday Life' is a great showcase for the act of reading itself. Words, properly arranged, can re-train the mind.
Epstein is up to a very difficult task here, but his path is relatively simple. Looking at the life of the Buddha from a modern, psychological perspective, he examines the role of trauma, both big and small, in the Buddha's path to enlightenment. There, he finds many parallels to pitfalls we face, and unhelpful responses that cloak pain with avoidance. We are buffeted throughout our lives by problems both immense and small. But scale is not so important as we might think. How we manage our response is — and the Buddha has much to say on the matter, especially in the keen analytical light provided by Epstein.
Don't think that 'The Trauma of Everyday Life' is simply a feel-bad-to-feel-good Buddhist tract. Epstein offers some careful analysis of the import of parents by way of D. W. Winnicott, who coins the terms "good-enough mother" and "good-enough father." Epstein is a fine writer, who can cut a clear swathe through a pretty academic analysis. The reading experience of this book is well-considered and engaging, even when Epstein is diving into the kind of psychological complexity required to untie the painful truth.
For all that 'The Trauma of Everyday Life' offers a reading experience that is meant and manages to help the reader, it never feels like a tome of unasked-for advice or unwelcome solutions for thorny problems. The way out through trauma is to dive in. Mark Epstein's book makes this a matter of language and offers his readers a look at solutions both modern and ancient, but more pertinent every second.
09-30-13:Connie Willis Declares a 'Blackout' & 'All Clear'
Reading as Time Travel
We learn nothing from the past, no matter how much we study it. Everywhere — every when — we turn, we find nothing but mirrors that prove less informative than we'd like them to be. Connie Willis has made a specialty of observing humans who observe the past, first hand, using the science fiction device of time travel.
From her first story set in mid 21st-dentury Oxford, "Fire Watch" to 'Doomsday Book' and 'To Say Nothing of the Dog,' she's been sending men and women of the near future back into the timeline where they learn as much about themselves as they do about the past. Her most recent foray into the past was published as two novels, 'Blackout' and 'All Clear.' They're actually just one novel, an immersive example of reading as time travel.
The premise here is quite simple. Three students of James Dunworthy Michael Davies, Polly Churchill and Merope Ward — are prepping to be sent into the past. But something's off. Assignments change, and the trio ends up being sent to bits of the second World War in Britain for which they are less-than-suitably equipped. But they're smart, plucky and have the advantage of what should be 20/20 hindsight. Once they get in place, Davies at Dunkirk, Polly in London observing the Blitz, Merope scoping out children evacuated from London, things initially seem to have stabilized. When they realize that they cannot return to the future as planned, history itself is at stake. It is possible that they have altered their own future.
Over the course of more than 1100 pages, Willis manages to keep readers riveted with a huge and complicated vision of the past. 'Blackout / All Clear' is an outstanding work of historical fiction even as it uses the science fiction genre to ratchet up the tension. What makes Willis' work so wonderful is her ability to combine a vision of the horror of war with a truly human vision of her characters. This is a big book, with a large cast, and Willis explores more than the historical setting; she reveals her expansive vision of the essential nature of humanity; a comedic, tragic, heroic combination that shifts at a moments' notice.
In sending three individuals into an enormous historical setting using the science fiction trope of time travel, Willis contemplates the import of the individual. In this book, by virtue of the fact that the time travelers come from the future, the ability of an individual's actions, even someone seemingly insignificant, to change history, are fraught with disastrous potential. But that possibility is also perfectly clear. Willis intimately combines history and science fiction to explore just what it means to be an individual, the import of our choices.
While 'Blackout / All Clear' do tell and long and involved story, Willis makes every word and every action count. Indeed, that's not just a writer's technique; it's an essential part of the plot. Willis takes readers into the past, the present and the future with skill, humor that often trends to farce and prose the evokes everything with clarity and grace. If there's a surplus of anything in this book, it's grace. Willis seems to know us better than we know ourselves, knows our better selves, and reveals to readers an appealing vision not of history, or some future where things will get better. We may not learn from the past, but from reading Connie Willis, in the present, we can learn that we are worthy of examination of self-examination. If we rattle about with an open mind and a sense of humor, we're likely to find an imperfect past, present and future — but as well, humans who can make the best of whatever circumstances present themselves.
New to the Agony Column
09-18-15: Commentary : William T. Vollman Amidst 'The Dying Grass' : An Epic Exploration of Simultaneity
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with William T. Vollman : "...a lot of long words that in our language are sentences..."
09-05-15: Commentary : Susan Casey Listens to 'Voices in the Ocean' : Science, Empathy and Self
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Susan Casey : "...the reporting for this book was emotionally difficult at times..."
08-21-15: Agony Column Podcast News Report : Senator Claire McCaskill is 'Plenty Ladylike' : Internalizing Determination to Overcome Sexism [Incudes Time to Read EP 211: Claire McCaskill, Plenty Ladylike, plus A 2015 Interview with Senator Claire McCaskill]
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Emily Schultz Unleashes 'The Blondes' : A Cure by Color [Incudes Time to Read EP 210: Emily Schultz, The Blondes, plus A 2015 Interview with Emily Schultz]
07-05-15: Commentary : Dr. Michael Gazzaniga Tells Tales from Both Sides of the Brain : A Life in Neuroscience Reveals the Life of Science
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Michael Gazzaniga : "We made the first observation and BAM there was the disconnection effect..."
04-21-15: Commentary : Kazuo Ishiguro Unearths 'The Buried Giant' : The Mist of Myth and Memory
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro : ".... by the time I was writing this novel, the lines between what was fantasy and what was real had blurred for me..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Marc Goodman : "...every physical object around us is being transformed, one way or another, into an information technology..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report UPDATE: Time to Read Episode 199: Marc Goodman : Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
