The Missing Shade of Blue

It was 5 years ago that I first read Jennie Erdal’s The Missing Shade of Blue. I had forgotten what a great book it is. A philosophical tour-de-force. Plus, an intriguing story, engaging characters and a set of ideas that continue to linger in my mind. From the Archives, here is what I wrote about it:

Suppose there that a person…to have become perfectly well acquainted with colours of all kind, excepting one particular shade of blue…Let all the different shades of that colour, except that single one, be placed before him…Now I ask, whether it is possible for him, from his own imagination, to supply this deficiency, and raise up to himself the idea of that particular shade, though it had never been conveyed to him by his senses.
David Hume

We are in Edinburgh. Edgar Logan, a young man from Paris, arrives to translate the essays of David Hume. “…most of my life has been spent in books, reading other people’s stories, living vicariously through characters that don’t exist.”

Early on he meets the bitter, physically crumbling, soon-to-be-dismissed-philosophy professor, Harry Sanderson and his enigmatic wife, Carrie. “Up until then I lacked the talent for friendship. Later I would sometimes wonder what it was about the Sandersons that made the difference, what it was the sucked me in…”

This is how Jennie Erdal begins her novel, The Missing Shade of Blue. It engrossed me from the first page. Several threads are interlaced throughout her tale.

On David Hume: Hume had not set out with the intention of being an unbeliever. Rather he had followed the arguments for religion and found them wanting. He was a man primarily interested in explaining our place in the world so that we might live better lives; and the art of living well, he soon discovered did not sit happily with clinging on to illusions.

On philosophy: The unexamined life is much despised. According to Socrates, it is not worth living. But actually, the examined life can get you into all sorts of trouble.

On painting: At that point the language to interpret a painting was simply not available to me. Later Carrie would tell me this was an advantage. My eyes were innocent like those of a child, though to me they were simply crude and ignorant.

On vicarious experience: Nearly all of my experience of life—the highs and lows, the hopes and disappointments, the chaotic entanglements—everything that matters in fact—all of this has been mediated through the written word. With the result that novels have given me the sense—the illusion perhaps—of a connection with others, with the texture of real lives.

On marriage: My close reading of fiction had taught me that nearly all marriages occupied strange territory. But it was more vivid and startling to see it with you own eyes.

On happiness: …happiness often reveals itself as counterpoint. It is edged about with things that are opposite to it.

On novels: …a good novel was like a small miracle…fiction allowed us to live lives of other than our own….And every so often, I said, something emerged from a novel that could only be called truth—there was no other name for it. Which has a paradoxical ring to it, since of course, fiction is made up, full of lies.

These are but a fraction of the passages I noted in The Missing Shade of Blue. Is there a story along with Erdal’s philosophical ruminations? Yes, but on my reading, it plays a minor role. There is the tragic deterioration of a once fine philosopher and an emerging relationship between the Edgar, the translator and Carrie, the painter.

A Philosophical Adventure is the subtitle of The Missing Shade of Blue. That it is, the kind of book I am forever searching for. I found it one of those “small miracles.” For a philosopher, it will be a fictional treat. For a translator or painter, it is an endless debate. For any reader, it is a rich dialogue on Hume, happiness, friendship, language, and should you be the least bit interested, fly-fishing.

The Missing Shade of Blue

Suppose there that a person…to have become perfectly well acquainted with colours of all kind, excepting one particular shade of blue…Let all the different shades of that colour, except that single one, be placed before him…Now I ask, whether it is possible for him, from his own imagination, to supply this deficiency, and raise up to himself the idea of that particular shade, though it had never been conveyed to him by his senses.
David Hume

We are in Edinburgh. Edgar Logan, a young man from Paris, arrives to translate the essays of David Hume. “…most of my life has been spent in books, reading other people’s stories, living vicariously through characters that don’t exist.”

Early on he meets the, bitter, physically crumbling, soon-to-be-dismissed-philosophy professor, Harry Sanderson and his enigmatic wife, Carrie. “Up until then I lacked the talent for friendship. Later I would sometimes wonder what it was about the Sandersons that made the difference, what it was the sucked me in…”

This is how Jennie Erdal begins her novel, The Missing Shade of Blue. It engrossed me from the first page. Several threads are interlaced throughout her tale.

On David Hume: Hume had not set out with the intention of being an unbeliever. Rather he had followed the arguments for religion and them wanting. He was a man primarily interested in explaining our place in the world so that we might live better lives; and the art of living well, he soon discovered did not sit happily with clinging on to illusions.

On philosophy: The unexamined life is much despised. According to Socrates, it is not worth living. But actually, the examined life can get you into all sorts of trouble.

On painting: At that point the language to interpret a painting was simply not available to me. Later Carrie would tell me this was an advantage. My eyes were innocent like those of a child, though to me they were simply crude and ignorant.

On vicarious experience: Nearly all of my experience of life—the highs and lows, the hopes and disappointments, the chaotic entanglements—everything that matters in fact—all of this has been mediated through the written word. With the result that novels have given me the sense—the illusion perhaps—of a connection with others, with the texture of real lives.

On marriage: My close reading of fiction had taught me that nearly all marriages occupied strange territory. But it was more vivid and startling to see it with you own eyes.

On happiness: …happiness often reveals itself as counterpoint. It is edged about with things that are opposite to it.

On novels: …a good novel was like a small miracle…fiction allowed us to live lives of other than our own….And every so often, I said, something emerged from a novel that could only be called truth—there was no other name for it. Which has a paradoxical ring to it, since of course, fiction is made up, full of lies.

These are but a fraction of the passages I noted in The Missing Shade of Blue. Is there a story along with Erdal’s philosophical ruminations? Yes, but on my reading, it plays a minor role. There is the tragic deterioration of a once fine philosopher and an emerging relationship between the Edgar, the translator and Carrie, the painter.

A Philosophical Adventure is the subtitle of The Missing Shade of Blue. That it is, the kind of book I am forever searching for. I found it one of those “small miracles.” For a philosopher, it will be a fictional treat. For a translator or painter, it is an endless debate. For any reader, it is a rich dialogue on Hume, happiness, friendship, language, and should you be the least bit interested, fly-fishing.

Reunion

Memory is a willful dog. It won’t be summoned or dismissed but it cannot survive without you. It can sustain you or feed on you. It visits when it is hungry, not when you are. It has a schedule all its own that you can never know. Elliot Perlman

Alan Lightman’s novel, Reunion, is a meditation on memory and its limitations. We are introduced to a 52-year old Charles who teaches literature at a small liberal arts college. He lives alone in a comfortable house that his ex-wife left him after their divorce.

Out of the blue, he decides to attend his 30th college reunion, where, in the midst of meeting his former classmates, he begins to recall his first passionate love affair with an aspiring ballerina, Juliana. These recollections form the bulk of the novel.

Charles muses often about youth. “Could I ever have been that young? Not a wrinkle in my forehead. Not a crease around the eyes. A thick scalp of hair, broad shoulders, erect posture. Flat lean stomach. It makes me want to cry.”

But how much of what he recalls was true or happened in the way he remembered it? Charles begins to confront the vagaries of memory. Did he really skip classes to take the bus to New York to visit Juliana? Did he actually sleep with her one night? Did she simultaneously carry on an affair with a college professor? Or has he made all of it up with the passage of time?

“How pitiful his life suddenly seems compared to hers. Her life is so simple, focused on one single thing. His mind is filled with uncertainty, hers seems to be certain. He tries to make beauty with words, she creates beauty with her body.”

Reunion reminds the reader that the way we reconstruct the past may not be all that reliable, especially for those experiences that retain an emotional impact. At times they seem veridical, at other times, contradictory and then again, more dream-like than anything else

Do you recall your first love? And how much of what you recall in fact happened? I do very vividly recall my college love. It was to be my last, as she is now my wife and has been for almost 60 years.

Occasionally we talk about those days and how she remembers them is not always the way I do. She may also recall an experience I have completely forgotten about and she has also forgotten much of what I recall. And both of us recall experiences that neither of us believe occurred in just that way.

In The Missing Shade of Blue, Jennie Erdal wrote: “Memory is a slippery customer…And in no time at all and with no evil intent, the truth turns into a kind of fiction.”

Yes, the mystery of memory, the elusiveness of memory, the necessity of memory. Without it, what would we be?

The Five "Best" Books of 2012

When we speak of literary taste, we may imagine we refer to preferences regarding subject matter, genre, form and the varieties of narrative prowess. But much of what taste in reading boils down to is less conducive to objective analysis, less neatly parceled into scholarly-sounding brackets. Simply, it’s the extent to which we take pleasure in the company of the author — or rather, a facsimile thereof, a phantom version composed of and subsisting on words alone. Leah Hager Cohen

‘Tis the season for the Best Books of the Year. The 10 Best, the 100 Best, the absolutely all time ever Best. In the spirit of the season, I reviewed the books I read this year, and while it wasn’t exactly a stellar year, at least for me, I did find five that I can call my favorites.

To say they are the Best, of course, is presumptuous; the Best for one reader might very well be the Worst for another. So I call them, my Favorites and no sooner do I say that than I ask what constitutes a favorite Book.

As I try to answer the question, I realize it is probably the one I remember most vividly and that I am likely to recall a year or so down the path. But it must also contain a goodly number of ideas and those special truths that I find in literature. A few is usually sufficient; a great many is a great good fortune

I did enjoy and was greatly amused by one of the top five, but I doubt I’ll recall much about the story for very long. On the other hand, the remaining four were either so grim or provocative, that it would be inaccurate to say they were pleasurable.

But I digress…as usual. Here are the Favorite Five of 2012, listed alphabetically by author with a link to the blog I wrote about each one:

Jennie Erdal, The Missing Shade of Blue
Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth
Elliot Perlman, The Street Sweeper
Eyal Press, Beautiful Souls
Irvin Yalom, The Spinoza Problem

With the exception of Beautiful Souls, they are novels, to a large extent philosophical novels. After mulling this over for a while, I have concluded that Eyal Press’s Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times, is the book I rank number one.

It is the book I am most likely to consult again, not only because it has led me in a new research direction, but also because it describes individuals who command my respect. I will not forget the effort of Paul Gruninger to enable Jews fleeing the Nazi’s to seek safety in Switzerland. Or the Israeli, Avner Wishnitzer, a solider in the IDF who refused to serve in the occupied territories. Neither can I forget the whistleblower Leyla Wyder who exposed the Ponzi scheme at the Sanford Financial Group.

Press describes the courageous acts of these and other individuals with great skill that reflects a good deal of research and first hand interviews. Not surprisingly his book is not on anyone’s list of the best books of the year, regardless of the size of the list, but for me it was the most notable book of 2012.

Americans in Florence

I don’t have the gift of entering into paintings as I do when reading a book. It isn’t that they leave me without a thought or two and some kind of vague appreciation of their colors and style.

But beyond that, I am at a loss for words and words are the only way I think and imagine, at least insofar as I am aware of. I feel very much like Edgar Logan in Jennie Erdal’s The Missing Shade of Blue.

At that point the language to interpret a painting was simply not available to me. …My eyes were innocent like those of a child, though to me they were simply crude and ignorant.

In spite of this, last week I went to see the exhibition, Americans in Florence, at the Palazzo Strozzi and hoped I could learn a little something about the many American painters who enjoyed their days here, as much as I do, and were suitably inspired to express their pleasure in the way they know best.

The exhibition featured the work of John Singer Sargent. Like many Americans who travel to Florence, they made a first stop in a local hotel. Here is how Sargent depicted one such room.

William Merrit Chase, less well known among the American Impressionists, usually preferred to stay in one of the many villas just outside the centro. Chase painted this picture of the Villa Silli before he bought it a few years later.

Many of Sargent’s paintings were portraits of the writers and artists who visited Florence. The British writer Vernon Lee (pseudonym of Violet Paget) known for her novels, essays, and travelogues, was among them.

Willard Metcalf, also not as widely known as Sargent, was among the several artists who painted the Tuscan countryside. Here is one he painted of Fiesole, located up in the hills above Florence. It is one of my favorite places to visit while I’m here.

Sargent’s painting of Henry James is often reproduced; perhaps you’ve seen it before. One reviewer wrote of this painting, His eyes, watery green, yet secret and profound will look at you, will touch and catch you intimately.

These are only a sampling of the exhibition’s paintings. It runs until July 15th, so there’s plenty of time to head over for a first-hand viewing. If you can’t make it, there’s an app of the exhibition available at the iBooks store.

Schmidt Steps Back

No such thing as graceful old age. F. Scott Fitzgerald

There are novels that you want to write about and then there are others that leave you mute. While I finished Schmidt Steps Back, Louis Begley’s latest tale in his the sad saga of Albert Schmidt, it did little to stir my vocabulary.

But Schmidt bears a certainly similarity to me. We are both relics, relics from ancient times, ancient ways, and ancient ways of ruminating. Schmidt is now a widower, lives on the beach in the Hamptons, but is no longer the lover of the wild, 20 year old Puerto Rican waitress, Carrie, and no longer employed at his high-class legal firm either. What is he do with his life?

“I am a lonely old man I need to think I can make myself useful.”

He does this by becoming the director of the ultra, ultra billionaire Mike Mansour’s foundation that has established a series of Life Centers in European capitals to promote democracy. This takes Schmidt to Europe, almost weekly it seems, where along with promoting democracy, he has a cascade of affairs, and finally a serious lover who works for a publishing company in Paris. At this point the novel picks up a little steam. There’s nothing like a love affair in Paris, is there?

Mr. Mike Mansour is, quite frankly, even more interesting than Mr. Albert Schmidt. Mansour, an Egyptian Jew, is among the 1 percent of the 1 percenters. How he made his percents is never mentioned. But he is loaded.

Need a private plane to take you to Europe, a five star hotel in which to stay, an apartment should you wish to stay longer, for reasons that have nothing to do with democracy, meals at Michelin 5 rose restaurants, a town car, you name it? Pas de probleme.

As usual, in these tales, the strained relationship Schmidt has with his daughter, Charlotte, gives the novel a much-needed zing. At times she displays a cruel and malicious streak. Most of the time she ignores him. Schmidt counsels, “All I can say is that, as a general rule, it is more likely than not that something will go serious wrong between a parent and child. It’s such a fraught relationship.”

He does his best to love her, forgive her, regardless of her rejections and he is always on the ready to help her, probably too much on the ready. Later Charlotte falls into a deep and prolonged depression, requiring care and treatment in a psychiatric hospital all of whose costs Schmidt gladly pays. Sadly, their relationship never has a chance to end peacefully.

Most of the final sections of Schmidt Steps Back depict the on again, off again relationship with Alice, the irresistible Alice in Paris. We learn in great detail about their almost daily sexual encounters. You’d think for a man of 78, his adolescent passions would diminish a bit. But no, not for Schmidt for whom these experiences seem to be far more important than “being useful.”

At the end, there is some consolation for Schmidt other than merely staying alive. However, I am sorry to report this did little to enrich my pleasure in reading about his past reversals and current tragedies. Pas de probleme. I turn at once to The Missing Shade of Blue by Jennie Erdal, a novel that from page one onward is a philosophical tour-de-force.