Turn, Turn, Turn: Awkward Segues and Seasonal Produce

Arcimboldo's Autumn, 1573.

Autumn: most poignant of our temperate seasons, marking transition from infinite possibilities of summer to finite impossibilities of winter.  Days are shorter, nights are longer, and average daily temperatures dance until they drop-- along with leaves from decidedly deciduous trees. In prose and poetry, autumn is associated with introspection and melancholy, a cyclical turning inward physically and psychologically.  For creative types, it seems autumn evokes not only a sense of melancholy but also a sensibility to melons.  Case in point: sixteenth-century Italian Mannerist Giuseppe Arcimboldo celebrated seasonal change by arranging fruits, vegetables, and flowers into vaguely unsettling portraiture.

INSERT AWKWARD SEGUE HERE:  Even as we admire vaguely unsettling artistic achievement with harvested organic matter, we struggle with seasonal transition in our literary pursuits.  What follows is an abridged chronology of our summer-into-fall reading, replete with awkward segues:

A Possible Life: A Novel in Five Parts by Sebastian Faulks.

Picador, 2013.  287 pages.

Fiction Favorites

Our timeline commences in early summer, June twenty-third to be precise, when we conclude our reading of the British storyteller’s collection of five novellas.  These narratives are chronologically jumbled and geographically transporting, sort-of linked thematically across centuries and miles, chock full of exquisitely-drawn characters in hot pursuit of human connection.  We meet Geoffrey Talbot, young British soldier-turned-prisoner-of-war, his life trajectory altered by the impossible treachery of dark-eyed girlfriend Giselle.  We meet up-from-the-workhouse Billy, struggling with companionship and cohabitation, his impossible domestic situation defined by the vagaries of Victorian London life.  We meet devout and simple-minded servant Jeanne, remembering a former master and a possibly pivotal life-moment in nineteenth-century rural France.  We meet skinny, seventies-style American singer-songwriter Anya, whose life imitates possible art and whose art intimates possible life.  And finally—but not finally as the pages turn—we meet futuristic Italian scientist Elena Duranti, who researches biological intricacies and psychological convolutions of human consciousness even as she discovers biological intricacies and psychological convolutions about the possible love of her life. 

Alternate cover art, via Random House.

What connects these allegedly linked novellas: what makes sum and substance greater than pieces and parts?  There is overarching concern with fate and fatalism, to be sure.  There are unequal measures of corporeal and cognitive pleasure, of physical and psychological pain—all born of love.  There are misunderstandings, missed opportunities, and a few regrets.  And yes, there are ephemeral moments of understanding, possibility, and serenity.  Really, shouldn't that be enough?  But on the morning of June twenty-fourth, we find ourselves rummaging the bookshelves, ruminating over titles, searching for connectivity and continuity.

INSERT AWKWARD SEGUE HERE:  We would like to read more about unequal measures of corporeal and cognitive pleasure, of physical and psychological pain.  We would like to experience a few more moments of understanding, serenity, and possibility. Following that train of thought, we pick up a novel about human connections over time and... trains: 

The Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline.

William Morrow, 2013. 278 pages.

Historical Fiction/What Were We Thinking?

We were thinking we’d be reading fiction illuminating an under-examined aspect of American social history, compelling storytelling wrapped around welfare programs that carried scores of marginalized urban children from East Coast abandonment toward rural Midwest stability during the latter half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth.  We get a bit of that, but mostly we get back-and-forth between Depression-era Minnesota and contemporary Maine, a sudsy story that sloshes about like lukewarm water in a galvanized washtub.

Under-examined history: an orphan train.

The back part: Young Irish immigrant Vivian Daly is sent from New York to an uncertain Midwest future via the titular orphan train.  Returning east later in life, Vivian leads a quiet existence on the Maine coast, memories of her turbulent childhood packed away in attic trunks.  The forth part: In a desperate last-ditch effort to avoid Juvenile Hall (exclamation point), wayward pierced tattooed seventeen-year-old Penobscot Indian foster child (exclamation point) Molly Ayer is sent to perform community service at Vivian Daly’s home (question mark). The back-and-forth part:  Before long and despite whimsies of time and place, Vivian and Molly discover they share… not matching tattoos, but common emotional experience and lingering uncertainty about their pasts (exclamation point, question mark, period).  At best, this is a tale of upheaval and resilience, a heartwarming examination of second chances and unexpected friendship.  At worst, this is tepid fiction hampered by impossible contrivances and cloying implausibility.  Back and forth.  Forth and back.  Rise and fall.  Fall and rise.  Slosh.  Slosh.

INSERT AWKWARD SEGUE HERE: Following that line of galvanized thought, in early July we turn to a real-life story of upheaval, resilience... and a railroad line sloshing about in the lukewarm waters of the Gulf of Mexico:

Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad That Crossed an Ocean by Les Standiford.
Three Rivers Press, 2002.  281 pages.
History and Travel
Great globs of Gilded Age bluster: behold the development of Florida's East Coast Railway, the rise of right-of-way resort cities, and the building of the Key West Extension, an extraordinary seven-year engineering wonder completed under the sharp entrepreneurial eye of Standard Oil magnate Henry Flagler. Spectacular, absolutely spectacular!  Not so fast: here comes the Labor Day hurricane of 1935, an extraordinary storm that reduces the railroad that crossed an ocean to a mangled flotilla of pulverized detritus in one fell swoop. 

Arcimboldo's Spring, 1573.

INSERT AWKWARD SEGUE HERE: Swoop. Swoop. Slosh. Slosh.  We pause to consider Standard Oil and the business of producing oil, transporting oil, refining oil, selling oil; in short, making great swooping sloshing globs of Gilded Age moolah with oil.  
Sure, Henry Flagler was a major player.  But John D. Rockefeller was the founder, the chairman, a major shareholder and, adjusting for inflation, widely regarded as the richest person in history (exclamation point).  By mid-July, we're wondering about the Rockefellers, thinking about crossing an ocean, pondering the multifarious ways of the world:

Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller’s Tragic Quest for Primitive Art by Carl Hoffman.
William Morrow, 2014.  322 pages.
Non Fiction and Biographies
On November 21, 1961, twenty-three-year-old Michael Rockefeller-- great-grandson of Standard Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller and son of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller-- vanished without a trace in lukewarm waters off the southwest coast of New Guinea.  Young Rockefeller had been on an artifact-collecting expedition for his father's recently-founded Museum of Primitive Art when his catamaran capsized while crossing a roiling river mouth.

Michael among the Asmat.

An expedition partner stayed with the boat and was rescued, but Michael reportedly made a swim for terra firma.  Before long, rumors begin sloshing about: Rockefeller had indeed reached shore, only to be killed and consumed by native Asmat, warrior tribesmen with lifeways built around reciprocal violence, headhunting, and ritual cannibalism... locals who knew Rockefeller by name.  Retracing Michael's ill-fated steps, an author-journalist with emotional connection to the story ventures into remote New Guinean jungles, shedding light on a generational whodunit that at once confounded the Dutch colonial government and aggrieved one of the world's most powerful families.

Arcimboldo's Summer.

As July melts into August, we  briefly consider a musical interlude featuring late-twentieth-century British pop-rock band Fine Young Cannibals but decide that this would be a way-beyond awkward seque, transition bordering on the uncouth and inappropriate.
We turn instead to a tastefully slim volume of first-person essays concerning civil harvests, culinary customs... and the dubious practice of knowing the first name of your dinner entrée:

Harvest: Field Notes from a Far-Flung Pursuit of Real Food by Max Watman.
W.W. Norton & Company, 2014.  221 pages.
Food for Thought
After a revelatory bite into a pink slime burger, peripatetic raconteur Max Watman embarks on a gastronomical journey in search of authentic food: hunting and gathering, butchering and baking, pickling and preserving, fishing and filleting, whimsically transforming his domestic table into a culinary wonderland.  Watman's memoir is entertaining and eminently readable, chock full of cheesemaking, chickens... and a farm-to-table experience with a thousand-pound-steer-cum-entrée named Bubbles.

INSERT AWKWARD SEGUE HERE: Predictably, there are hot, humid days in late August and, also predictably, reading lassitude sets in.  We yearn for a page-turner, but unabashed indolence prevents us from doing much in the way of turning pages. Alternatively, we loll about the house in air-conditioned, ear-plugged comfort, iPod on playlist shuffle.  Shuffle.  Shuffle.  Sing it in 1960's style black and white, The Byrds:

Delicious!: a novel by Ruth Reichl.
Random House, 2014.  380 pages.
Fiction Favorites
Turn, turn, turn.  In this easily digested page-turner concocted by a real-life food writer, fictional Billie Breslin leaves family and vaguely unsettling past behind, traveling from California to take a job at the fictional New York City food magazine, Delicious.  Generally embraced by the periodical's colorful staff, generally embracing a colorful downtown food scene, and generally diverted by weekends at a fictional Italian food shop, our sufficiently complex heroine shuffles along until the magazine abruptly folds.  Lives are upended!  Relationships are tested!  Comfort food is served!  Bills must be paid!  In a plot-propelling effort to pay those fictional bills, Billie agrees to maintain a temporary reader complaint hotline in the lonely old magazine building.  When she's not on the phone, Billie shuffles about the place and discovers a hidden room and a cache of old letters that ultimately encourage our sufficiently complex heroine to come to terms with her complexity, to settle her vague past, and to open her heart to fictional love.  Shuffle. Shuffle. Slosh. Slosh.

Arcimboldo's Winter.

INSERT AWKWARD SEGUE HERE: On the cusp of autumn, we travel to Utah on a hiking vacation and it follows that we turn, turn turn our attention to a terrible, riveting, under-examined chapter of Mormon history.  Lives are upended!  Relationships are tested!  There is no comfort food-- or comfort-- in sight.  It's not exactly the feel-good read of late summer-- or early autumn, for that matter-- but this account of the worst disaster in the history of Western migration is worth the page-turning effort.

Devil’s Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy by David Roberts.
Simon & Schuster, 2008.  402 pages.
History and Travel
In the mid-nineteenth century, huddled masses of impoverished European immigrants converted to Mormonism and were encouraged to join the faithful in Salt Lake City.  Unable to afford horses or oxen, the emigrants served as their own beasts of burden, setting out from Iowa and Nebraska, pulling worldly goods in increasingly ramshackle handcarts.  On the rutted and rough pioneer trail, comfort and food were scarce commodities: mothers watched in helpless horror as hungry children cut loose rawhide from the cart wheels, roast[ed] off the hair and chew[ed] on the hide.  During the troubled 1856 expedition, hundreds perished of malnutrition and hypothermia.  The tragedy stands as a compelling indictment of recruiting policies and practices of Brigham Young and The Church of Latter-Day Saints-- and testimony to the faith and fortitude of Mormon settlers.

 Four Seasons in One Head.

INSERT AWKWARD CONCLUSION HERE: It's difficult to conjure up more thematically appropriate images for this blog post than Giuseppe Arcimboldo's vaguely unsettling Four Seasons.  Sebastian Faulks rendered in strawberries and figs? An Orphan Train hewn from okra and turnips?  John D. Rockefeller worked up in jujubes and rutabaga?  A likeness of Brigham Young crafted from boysenberries and yams?  But wait. How about an offering from the late Renaissance master himself... Four Seasons in One Head?  Turn. Turn. Turn.  Time to turn the page to a new season of literary adventure-- and perhaps a new purpose for seasonal produce.