Loose change

And a book that's like Zillow on acid

Thanks to a long Pithy drought, I’m behind on book recommendations. Well, now I’m back at it. I might have been too busy to write, but I wasn’t too busy to read.

A friend with very good taste in books¹ handed me The North Woods, by Daniel Mason, as soon as she finished it. She was eager to have a friend experience this remarkable novel and if I could hand it to you I would. But the one I have is her copy, so I can’t. Plus, duh. How would I even do that? This is the interwebs.

Anyway. It’s about one house in one place in western Massachusetts–the people who occupy the house, the animals that live (and hunt) in the woods and meadows that surround the house, the trees that grow (and die) nearby. It’s getting rave reviews and it’s one of the NY Times’s 10 best of 2023, but when I first read about it, I sort of yawned. The story of a house? Isn’t that Zillow? But my pal insisted it was amazing. As is frequently the case, she was right.

It’s historical fiction. Or maybe it’s a ghost story (a terrific ghost story). Or simply transcendent nature writing? Let’s say all of the above, with a little speculative fiction and songwriting tossed in for fun. Just give it a try–you’ll agree it’s something altogether original and arresting. It opens with two lovebirds running away from the Puritan colony at Plymouth. Like Adam and Eve, but with buckled Pilgrim hats. They decide to make this spot home, and then we spend the next 400+ years there.

Mason’s imaginative eye roams beyond the different people occupying the house over the centuries to include the flora and fauna as well; his writing style varies from straight character-based narrative fiction to sections written as early American songs to chapters that wouldn’t be out of place in a collection of nonfiction nature essays. His range is especially spectacular to me in his language–how the dialogue and tone shapeshift to accommodate not just every character, but every era. 

Obviously, a book that covers hundreds of years will include a few deaths, and in this novel we mourn not just people but the forests of Chestnuts and Dutch Elm that used to blanket the northeast. When Mason’s aperture adjusts to track the tiny germs that carry these deadly viruses, or widens to track nature’s wild encroachment, our sense of time shifts to adjust.

We can do hard things

He apparently wrote the first draft in a year, and each month he would tackle one chapter (the book has 12 chapters). Astoundingly, he is also a professor at Stanford and a psychiatrist. Talk about an overachiever. I mean, I understand what it’s like; I cleaned out my kitchen junk drawer yesterday and did a load of laundry.

Here’s one of my favorite sentences in the book:

“The only way to think of the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change.”

We’re all supposed to embrace change, but unless it’s a change we actively sought out, who does that? Change is almost always very hard. Also why does it seem the things that most desperately need to change never do? Like our human propensity to grab the nearest weapon and start killing each other?

Early in the novel, a woman murders someone because she honestly thinks it’s all she can do to stop the greater violence happening around her. In this case it’s the English colonists and the Native Americans, but as I read about their relentlessly violent raids, hostage taking, and retribution killings, I couldn’t help but think about Israel and the Gaza strip. How have we not yet learned that you can’t kill your way to peace? 

Mason’s eloquent line about change reminded me of another maybe less eloquent but equally truthful line: “Everything is always keep changing.” It’s part of a moving piece by George Saunders about the fundamental impermanence of nearly everything (except maybe plastic straws and twinkies). If you have a moment, read it. It was written for his students at the height of the pandemic, but Saunders always makes me feel a little bit better about things.²

The change I want to be

I’m writing this on the other side of the holidays, which felt a little weird this year. My kids are getting older and Christma all started to seem a little performative. Like, why am I festooning the house with crap and stuffing stockings? Is everyone just smiling along because they think mom needs all this busy work to give her life purpose? (News flash: I’m pretty sure she doesn't.) 

More importantly, with the current state of the world, “festive” seemed wrong. So many innocent children and families are dying, and I’m out buying Uggs? Then, I thought I was losing my job and who wants to go on a shopping spree when you’re about to be laid off? I wasn’t laid off, thankfully, but man it reminded me that the holidays are beyond stressful when you’re broke.

Change, change, change. I’m sure I'm not the only mom whose kids are aging out of some of the holiday traditions. I’ll bet I’m not the only one who’s up late at night worried about their job and how to find something new. And who doesn’t wake up, look at the news and wonder how in the living fuck are we still doing this shit? 

Things I Thought Made Sense Just Don’t Anymore, a graphic essay, by the writer Mira Jacob, gave me a jolt. This woman way off in Brooklyn is feeling the same way I am, which is the same way everyone I know feels. We need to go beyond singing and writing about peace and love and really be about it. That’s some change I could embrace.

1. My friend has a smart and moving Substack of her own–2,000 words—which is actually about 1,000 words about random, timely, interesting image. This last one in particular is pretty great. Check it out.

2. Learning to Lose by Margo Price and Willie Nelson is a musical lament and it’s a lovely balm for me.