“Word came today”

This post made me cry – it’s a swept-away and yet articulate response to Richard Powers’ Gold Bug Variations It brought me back to my own experience reading that extraordinary book … and how blown away I was (and still am) by it. I’ve never written about Goldbug Variations because … I find the prospect daunting, I guess. Where to start?? The same with Hopeful Monsters – a book that means more to me almost than any other. I can’t seem to bring myself to write about it. The last big book on my personal-fave list (and I always think of these three together) is Mating: A Novel – and that one I DID manage to write about. In a frenzy. I find some books hard to talk about. Because not only are they a good story, a good book – but they are sometimes like angels, come into my life at the perfect reason, to help me struggle with a certain issue … the books show up – These 3 books were like that. There was no reason for me to read them. I picked up Hopeful Monsters because I liked the cover art and the description of the plot on the back. I picked up Mating because the description of the plot on the back spoke to me. Nobody recommended it. I read it a couple years after it won the National Book Award. And I picked up Goldbug Variations for … I have no idea why. But these three books – together – ended up being woven together into a rope, a strong rope – for me to hold onto – until the bad-ness passed. This was in the late 90s. Each book is dog-eared from re-readings. I love them as BOOKS, but I also love them as saviors. Goldbug Variations came at a time when I was ricocheting around in my own loss, and I had been for about a year. Everything was cold, I was always walking into the wind. Goldbug it was challenging, a real feat, it takes concentration – and it’s an intellectual battle. But (as it so often is for me) – the intellect is PART of the passion. It’s not either/or. I don’t separate. And an intellectual love affair … hmmmm … what would that be like? I know exactly what it would be like, and it is the only kind of relationship possible for me. There is a hopelessness in that. A swoon of necessity, of self-knowledge. And in these 3 books I list here – I’ve seen such a relationship described, dissected, analyzed. (Possession is another one, actually).

But alongside of (or woven into) the intellectual rigor of Goldbug Variations is this keening note of mourning, longing, bittersweet love … Oh, how I know that. I know it better than anything else.

He feels a strange euphoria, an overwhelming sense of inevitability. The thing about to make its grand entrance surprises him by its uncanny familiarity.

— Richard Powers, Goldbug Variations

The first words he said to me were, “Are you waiting for someone?”
I didn’t say what I wanted to say, which was, “Yeah. You.” Instead, I smiled up at him, strange how familiar he seemed, uncanny familiarity, and said merely, “Yeah.”

I still haven’t written about Goldbug Variations. I still don’t feel ready.

Here’s the link again to the post that started off my brain a-spiralling. Thinking about that book makes my heart pound faster.