Towards These Two Tragedies

My mom had been so looking forward to reading it.  She palmed it adoringly when I saw her at her place as she was about to begin the book and gave it to me as soon as she was done.  I had “Apeirogon” sitting on my shelf along with a half a dozen titles but she checked in on me once and then twice so I made sure it was the next up.  Very glad I did. 

I often read a number of titles based around a physical trip or a theme.  I’ve just finished up a half a dozen novels and again as many nonfiction texts on the Congo, where I was have gone next month.  Two months back I was reading everything I could about Israel.  All of the fiction I read was either by an Israeli, (Jews and Arabs both) or by a Palestinian.  “Apeirogon” is a fictionalized, fractalized account of two real and unlikely friends, an Israeli and a Palestinian, penned by an Irishman, Column McCann.  His distance from the drama and his kaleidoscopic approach allow him a remarkably stern and commanding objectivity.

I have read his work before.  I enjoyed “This Side of Brightness” about the sandhogs who helped to build the Brooklyn Bridge.  The sandhogs effortlessly make an appearance in Jerusalem, in Apeirogon.  I’d enjoyed McCann’s “Let the Great World Spin” where a more finite number of New York slices intersect in 1974.  A real-life figure who figures centrally in this fiction is the French tightrope walker, Philippe Petit.  Pettit makes an appearance in Apeirogon, as well, and his unlikely presence with a dove in Jerusalem is an effortless addition to McCann’s infinite polygon.  It made me wonder if I was missing references from the other four novels, he’d penned which I have yet to read.  

In “Hopscotch” by the Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, one can read it from beginning to end, or one can hopscotch through the novel with the help of Cortázar’s “Table of Instructions,” that leads you from Chapter Two, off to Chapter Thirty Eight and then on to Chapter Fifteen.  One suspects that McCann is similarly trying to challenge the readers linear thinking.   We already know much of what happened to both men’s young daughters in the first few pages.  But we gaze back on and tread unsuspectingly towards these two tragedies from so many angles, each distinct, we become oddly intimate with both men and are able to consider the seemingly interminable struggle with fresh and indeed hopeful eyes.

Friday, 05/01/20