the book club: July 2006 Archives

The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau

On fear:

“Somewhere inside her, a black worm of dread stirred…could things really be as bad as he said? She didn’t want to believe it. She pushed the thought away” (2003: 18).

On belief:

“Sometimes you can find useful things just by choosing randomly….just reach out and grab something – in the hope that by accident you might come upon the very information you need. It might be something that another person had written down … just a sentence or two that would be like a flash of light…fitting together things you already know to make a solution to everything” (edited: verbs changed to present tense; “he” to “you”; 120).

On major life transitions when someone takes care of you:

“The day had a comforting feel to it, like a rest between the end of one time and the beginning of another” (141).

On desire:

“She suddenly wanted those things so badly she felt weak” (152).
“She remembered the hunger she’d felt . . . It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. She didn’t want to want things that way” (153).

On earth:

“Light,” she said.
“I see it,” said Doon. “It’s getting brighter.”
The edge of the sky turned gray, and then pale orange, and then deep fiery crimson. The land stood out against it, a long black rolling line. One spot along this line grew so bright they could hardly look at it, so bright it seemed to take a bite out of the land. It rose higher and higher until they could see that it was a fiery circle, first deep orange and then yellow, and too bright to look at any longer. The color seeped out of the sky and washed over the land. Light sparkled on the soft hair of the hills and shone through the lacy leaves as every shade of green sprang to life around them. (255-256)

On life:

“Take a lamp, for instance. When you plug it in, it comes alive, in a way. That’s because it’s connected to a wire that’s connected to the generator, which is making electricity…But a bean seed isn’t connected to anything. Neither are people. We don’t have plugs and wires that connect us to generators. What makes living things go is inside them somehow” (68).

Next: The People of Sparks

Byron

This inscription begins a novel, The Rage of the Vulture, set at the turn of the 20th century in Constantinople, during the last days of the Ottoman Empire. Armenians were still nationless, then. I wonder if the “Constitution” touted during this time was much of a precursor to the secularization of Turkey under Ataturk?

It was a good read for the long plane ride. The protagonist, Captain Markham, is consumed by the need to compensate for a moral lapse (“the love of the turtle”?). His self-absorption is such that he makes choices and engages in behavior that have excruciating effects on those closest to him (making him rather unsympathetic) yet his perseverance and single-mindedness are evocative: he is a quintessential “individual” but aware of his “bound-up-ness” (for lack of a sophisticated social science term) with other people and events whose unfolding is completely out of his control. Late in the novel he finally meets the right person to whom to make his confession – someone who has known pain:

“Markham knew now what it was he had seen in the other man’s face, something there that had survived the indulgence and corruption of life. He had set it down vaguely as refinement, but he saw now that it was the knowledge of pain. Knowledge, not sympathy”(1982: 387).

After listening to Markham’s detailed account of self-preservation, the man replies:

“’But twelve years ago – that was another lifetime, my dear.’ He tucked in his chin and looked solemnly at Markham. ‘We must learn to turn over the page,’ he said. ‘We must have resilience. That is a quality I value very highly. I have it myself. There have been many things not much to my credit, you understand. Fairly numerous’” (1982:389).

The book ends with the son’s reflections on the notion of home: “It was the territory one hoped to recover again, oneself miraculously perfect still, unwounded, unmutilated, whole.”