REMEMBERING

I enjoy books that prompt me to consider the nature of Memory. I consider myself a "listener" and a "rememberer," and when I think about those terms, I am thinking about them in relation to the long-term and collective memory of a place and of a people. I clarify my meaning since, it is important to note, my wife would deem laughable my contention that I listen or that I remember much that is of everyday or practical importance, such as where I last put down my cell phone or my keys. I have lately read somewhere that Memory is one of the last remaining functions of our extraordinary human brain that scientists have yet to fully understand -- information that I find utterly fascinating. I am no expert, but if you ask me, and there stands no reason for you to do so, the ways our brain stores and recalls the past may very well be one of the clues to uncovering the secrets and mysteries that make us human and set us apart, in some small way, from the other living things on this planet.

My grandmother who, if she lives to see the coming summer, will turn ninety-one years old this year has recently remarked to me that she spends far more of her time now remembering the past than thinking of the present or the future. She apologizes to me for it, and I beg her to believe me when I say that I do not feel in the least that she should. I have often longed for the time to sit there with her for a long stretch of hours and merely listen as she travels around in those thoughts. A particular phrase from Wendell Berry sticks out for me when I think of her now. In A Place on Earth, Burley Coulter is recounting the last years of his mother's life, when he would sit with her in their front room in the evenings and listen to her stories. Burley says of his mother in those days that "the past has come near to her." I can think of no better words to describe the place in her life where my grandmother finds herself now. Not only that; I am also beginning to believe that being in that place may very well be something about old age to which we can look forward. If I am so lucky as to live to see the age of ninety-one, then I hope I will be able to find pleasure in an ability to put aside trivial cares and worries that plague me now on a daily basis and exchange them for time to simply remember.

What does one remember after nine decades alive? It is difficult enough to imagine the world and our lives ninety years hence, so how must it feel to know that you can look back on such a span of time? How cloudy is a memory after all those many years? Certainly, there are some things my grandmother cannot remember, but there are some things that I cannot remember, and my memory is far younger than hers. Nevertheless, her memory has obviously held onto some things from deep in the past that she sees in her mind with the kind of clarity of the present tense. The same goes for all of us, no matter the length of time we have walked this earth gathering memories. There have to be things we get wrong, details we have missed or replaced with inaccuracies. So, what does that say about our own story and how we tell it to ourselves? What is true and what is not? How much can we trust our memory?

These questions and others were on my mind as I was caught up in my Wendell Berry binge and they were compounded by finishing the book that ended that binge. Returning to my reading list, I picked up The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, the most recent winner of the Man Booker Prize. It is a personal aim to read as many Man Booker winners as I am able and so, the record of works to receive that honor constitute a separate "sub-list" of reading material for me. I can count on selecting something from that august assembly and finding not only the kind of book that appeals to me, but one that is assured to be of distinctive quality.

I am certain it has happened before, but it does not happen enough for me to recall the last time that a book both satiated me and left me utterly disappointed. I am the type who favors the understated irony and dry, irreverent wit that typifies British humor. That and the quick pace of the narrative made the book difficult for me to put down and I found myself waiting expectantly for the next revelation and plot twist. The ending or sense thereof, I suppose I should say, not only stunned me, but actually left me thoroughly annoyed. In an effort to avoid being a spoiler, all I will say is that I object when authors toy with me. It smacks of arrogance. Make me think, by all means and please, but do not be cute.

That being said, questions like the ones above have stayed with me since finishing The Sense of an Ending, so Barnes succeeded fairly enough on that crucial request of mine. My astonishment upon reading the last page reminds me of finishing The Life of Pi, another winner of the Man Booker Prize. And, in spite of my completely unwarranted dislike of Julian Barnes -- and I sense that he might just as well despise his reader on some level -- his book did prompt me to ask questions of myself that I had not before thought of and for that, I am grateful.