Review: 'Klara and the Sun'

(Spoilers ahead).

Faith is something we cobble together out of our own needs, observations, coincidences and hope. And yet it also helps us create the story of ourselves for ourselves -- it might be not entirely rational or correct, but that doesn't mean it can't be meaningful. 

A lot of reviewers have talked about Kashuo Ishiguro's "Klara and the Sun" as a love story, and it's sort of that, but it's Klara's faith journey that sits with me most. Our protagonist is an "artificial friend," a living doll of sorts chosen to be a companion for a young, sick girl. Klara, we see from the beginning, is endowed with a consciousness, but is treated by humans around her either as an object of sorts -- one unkind character likens Klara to a vacuum cleaner -- or as a potential vessel for something of more value than she intrinsically possesses.

We see from the beginning that Klara sees the world in patterns, observing objects and vistas as something less than the whole of their parts -- describing the world instead as a series of colliding geometries; it often takes time for her to reconcile those geometries into a rough understanding of who, or what, she might be seeing. In reverse fashion, she takes a series of observations and coincidences -- as well as her own body's particular needs -- to fashion a likeness of religious faith, treating the Sun as a deity endowed with its own consciousness of its own. In both cases, Klara never quite sees a thing for what it is.

And yet, a miracle happens. 

Or does it? The medical crisis at the center of the book is resolved, seemingly by divine intervention. But we're also told that other people who have suffered the same sickness have sometimes -- sometimes -- gotten better for good after experiencing the same condition. Maybe what looks like a faith healing is in fact something a bit more random.

But the faith version of the story gives Klara a way to organize everything she's seen -- a way to "place her memories in the right order," as she says at the end of the book.

There are many ideas going on in "Klara." Thoughts about how elites treat those below them as disposable. How those "lesser" people find meaning in a world not built for them. Ishiguro's prose is as elegant as ever -- and his themes as large, and unsettling, as they've always been.

White Punks on Dope

 I'd never heard this song before this weekend. Now I love it.

Saturday morning vinyl: Isaac Hayes

 One of my favorite songs ever.

The anniversary

Ten years ago today I went to the emergency room at Thomas Jefferson Hospital, knowing that I was sick but unaware how close my body was to failing entirely. The doctors saved my life. But my body was left broken. I am grateful that I didn’t leave my son fatherless when he was still a toddler. I struggle every day with how to make a good life in a broken body. I am better at that task right now than I have been, but it is still an effort, and the trauma of that year never really goes away. That’s life, I guess. Is there a German word that captures a recognition that one is fortunate but also haunted by a sense of loss? That's me.

Hopefully, I’ll be here in 10 years to give you another update. But nothing is guaranteed. Take care of yourselves and your loved ones.

Joe Biden's big speech

My latest at The Week:

Biden is thinking big. If the tone of the speech was quiet and personal, the ideas were big and transformative: proposals to spend billions upon billions of dollars to create jobs, support young families, and expand affordable access to both health care and education. In the first 100 days of his term, Biden and Democrats in Congress have already done much to expand the breadth and scope of the federal government, but so much of that has been done on a one-off basis, necessitated and made possible by the COVID-19 pandemic and floundering economy. After a generation of watching Democratic presidents genuflect toward the legacy of Ronald Reagan, Biden's willingness to put his credibility on the line for such proposals is still fairly astonishing.

Read the whole thing, as they say.

Writing

Any time I finish the next day's column for THE WEEK before 10 pm, I feel pretty good about life. Except when I think of a better line at 1 am.

Three thoughts about NOMADLAND

 Three thoughts about NOMADLAND....

* This would be a great double bill with WILD, the Reese Witherspoon movie from a few years back. That featured a young woman moving through the wilderness, dealing with her demons and encountering similar adventurous souls. This movie features an older woman moving through America's vistas, doing much the same. 

* I'm trying to think of another recent movie that deals so much with the act of work. Frances McDormand's character, Fern, holds a series of seasonal jobs -- Amazon warehouse worker, camp host, Wall Drug cook, beet harvester -- portrayed in nonjudgmental fashion. (Controversially so, in the case of Amazon.) In so much of popular entertainment, work is the setting for other adventures, not the story itself. SUPERSTORE might've been a recent exception. Fern does this because she has to -- early retirement won't provide the benefits she needs to live -- but also, it's clear, because she wants to. She literally cleans up shit, but you're never under the impression that the work is beneath her or that she's degraded by it. It says something about the cliches of storytelling that I kept expecting an evil boss moment, but never got one.

* But mostly, this movie sits with death, or the prospect of it. The people we meet in this movie are mostly "nomads," living in their vehicles and moving from job to job, place to place. They live with the cycles of life more intimately than those of us living in the suburbs and cities, receiving the Amazon packages that Fern and her friends pack up. Fern is living with the memory of her dead husband. Another character dies, but not dramatically or unexpectedly: It's just part of having lived a long life. We're here and then we aren't. In that sense, we're all nomads.

* Bonus thought: It's fitting that this movie sits alongside SOUND OF METAL during this awards season. Both flicks move through something that looks a lot more like the real world than what most big-budget cinema, neither has any real villains to speak of, and both feature affecting, naturalistic performances by supporting characters. They are movies made for adults.