The Books: “Damage” (Josephine Hart)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

Damage – by Josephine Hart

My memories of reading this book are so so vivid. I suppose it is indicative (mainly) of my mindset at the time of reading it – because flipping through it now, not only do I NOT find it captivating, I actually find it badly written. Overwrought, obvious – quite terrible, actually. What on earth did I see in it?? On the whole I don’t read “popular” fiction – which I’ve talked about before here. If I look around on the subway and see everyone reading a certain book, it’s usually a book I have no interest in reading. Just a taste thing. I don’t go for “beach reads”, meaning big ol’ popular books that are “easy”. If I’m on vacation, then that will be the time I take to read The Possessed or some other MASSIVE tome I have been putting off in my “normal” life, because I don’t have the time or the brain space. That kind of reading is FUN for me, and for many others. I have caved a couple of times and read the book everybody else was reading on the subway and I’ve usually been sorry. I read The Notebook and it made me angry. I read Tuesdays with Morrie and it made me angrier. Sometimes I go into one of these reading experiences knowing it will be trash (The DaVinci Code) and have a great time regardless. That book is still a piece of shit, in terms of the writing – but I could not put it down. There are always exceptions. I love Stephen King, for example, although with him I feel he gets a raw deal in terms of critical acclaim. He is WAY better a writer than he is given credit for. But in general: those “AND THIS BOOK IS TAKING THE WORLD BY STORM” books are usually crap, and I have no use for them. Too many books in the world (tooooo many books) to waste my time on cotton candy malarkey. And please, to those who love those kinds of books, good for you. I hope you love reading, and that these books please you. To each his own. I had a funny email conversation with Lisa recently – she had forwarded me a bitchy editorial about Annie Proulx (Lisa knows I like Proulx) and the writer had a huge chip on her shoulder, she was basically saying, “These books are not FUN. I want FUN books, okay?” I’m almost not paraphrasing. The writer RESENTED the fact that Annie Proulx had critical acclaim – she seemed to feel ambushed by, oh, you know, that whole Northeast snobby literary set (yawn, yawn, yawn. Project much?) … and was defending herself, saying, “I don’t WANT to read Annie Proulx.” (Uhm, then don’t. Do what you want to do. And shut up about it!) I emailed back to Lisa, “Well, maybe easy beach reads are fun for that writer – good for her – but I, personally, would rather slit my wrists than read Bergdorf Blondes. Everyone has a different definition of fun.” Lisa was like, “I find it fun to read about the monarchy in medieval Bulgaria, so that chick can suck it.” hahahaha Seriously: to each his own!

Damage was one of those “TAKING THE WORLD BY STORM” books – and I was absolutely blown AWAY by it. I read it when it first came out, I think – I was a couple years out of college. I can read a book like The DaVinci Code and have an amazing time -but I still know, in my head, “Wow. Terrible writing.” Damage was not like that for me. I thought it was amazing writing, too. I am baffled. Maybe I was looking for an expression of my own anxieties about my relationship – which was shrieking towards a cliff of doom at the speed of light. Damage taps into those anxieties. Damage says, in an ominous (bullshit) whisper, “You think your life is normal? You think you have escaped pain? Just wait. Just wait.”

Which is fine. That’s a fine message for a book. I’m more interested in the fact that I thought it was so good that I told everyone to read it – including my EX boyfriend – who was an intense “dark” person (he actually wasn’t – he just WISHED he was dark and intense – he really was quite a sweet normal friendly person. Still is.) But anyway, I kind of re-connected with him during the time I was reading Damage – and told him he HAD to read it. I didn’t cheat on my boyfriend with my ex-boyfriend – at least not physically – but I sure did in my heart, at that time. I was reaching out to him, going to him in my head all the time, for escape, respite. I saw the ex-boyfriend soon after that, and all we could talk about was Damage.

Bizarre. The book sucks, to my eyes, now. What on EARTH would we find to talk about?? To have my tastes change so much!

I think the book came along at a time when I needed it. I needed to hear that ominous message, that “never relax, because the axe is about to fall” message. And something about the prose – the preternaturally calm bleak tone – really spoke to me at the time. I have no idea why.

It was made into a movie, which I did not like – an opinion which places me at odds with the rest of the entire Western world. Everyone went gaga over that picture. I, who had somehow been brainwashed into thinking the book rivaled Anna Karenina, did not think the movie did it justice.

hahahaha

Now. Having said all that, let me say something else that completely contradicts all that:

The last two sentences of the book are an absolute slam dunk. I re-read them just now and felt, again, a chill. A perfect ending.

And the first chapter – a two-pager – which I will post as the excerpt – is pretty damn great, if you ask me – and you MUST keep reading. Especially after that last sentence, another slam dunk. If you don’t already know the plot of the book, if you haven’t seen the movie – then that last sentence COMMANDS that you read on. It makes you gasp, “What happened????? Turn the page and find out!”

But still: the WRITING is not good. I mean, in the excerpt below: “There are those born in rolling countryside who are really only at ease in the intense and busy loneliness of the city.” No shit, Sherlock. This is news?

That’s why I’m baffled by my younger self. My taste in writing has not changed at all. I always liked good writing. My taste veers towards the classic, it always has. I always liked challenging writing, whether it be EB White or Dickens or Fitzgerald. And the excerpt below is not good writing. Although I suppose you could make the argument that if you want to read on – then that is a KIND of good writing.

Sure. I’ll buy that. I’m just curious as to why this book so knocked me out as a 22 year old that I ended up having an affair (in my head) with another guy about it. Weird!!

I’ve never read anything else Josephine Hart wrote. I think her second book was not as much of a success (although it would be hard to top the success of Damage) and I read a couple pages of it and it sounded exactly like the prose in Damage – cold, almost dead, with an overwhelming sense of, “And I was never the same after that” in the tone. So maybe she’s a one-trick pony. No idea.

And I suppose the book served its purpose. I had a GREAT time reading it, once upon a time. I will never read it again, but that’s okay too.

EXCERPT FROM Damage – by Josephine Hart

There is an internal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives.

Those who are lucky enough to find it ease like water over a stone, onto its fluid contours, and are home.

Some find it in the place of their birth; others may leave a seaside town, parched, and find themselves refreshed in the desert. There are those born in rolling countryside who are really only at ease in the intense and busy loneliness of the city.

For some, the search is for the imprint of another; a child or a mother, a grandfather or a brother, a lover, a husband, a wife, or a foe.

We may go through our lives happy or unhappy, successful or unfulfilled, loved or unloved, without ever standing cold with the shock of recognition, without ever feeling the agony as the twisted iron in our soul unlocks itself and we slip at last into place.

I have been at the bedsides of the dying, who looked puzzled at their family’s grief as they left a world in which they had never felt at home.

I have seen men weep more at the death of their brother, whose being had once locked into theirs, than at the death of their child. I have watched brides become mothers, who only once, long ago, were radiant on their uncle’s knee.

And in my own life, I have travelled far, acquiring loved and unfamiliar companions: a wife, a son, and a daughter. I have lived with them, a loving alien in surroundings of unsatisfying beauty. An efficient dissembler, I gently and silently smoothed the rough edges of my being. I hid the awkwardness and pain with which I inclined towards my chosen outline, and tried to be what those I loved expected me to be – a good husband, a good father, and a good son.

Had I died at fifty I would have been a doctor, and an established politician, though not a household name. One who had made a contribution, and was much loved by his sorrowing wife, Ingrid, and by his children, Martyn and Sally.

My funeral would have been well attended by those who had gone further in life than I, and who therefore honoured my memory by their presence. And by those who believed they had loved the private man, and by their tears gave testimony to his existence.

It would have been the funeral of an above-average man, more generously endowed with the world’s blessings than most. A man who, at the comparatively early age of fifty, had ended his journey. A journey which would certainly have led to some greater honour and achievement, had it continued.

But I did not die in my fiftieth year. There are few who know me now, who do not regard that as a tragedy.