Book Report: In the Distance

18. Hernán Díaz, In the Distance (2017) (7/6/2020)

Another book that I don't remember why I bought it, but so glad I did. In the Distance is spectacular. So much so that, although it came from seemingly nowhere—more specifically, from a tiny publisher in Minneapolis (Coffee House Press)—it ended up a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and winner of the 2019 Whiting Award in fiction, presented to emerging writers.

It is the story of a gentle giant, a Swede, Håkan Söderström, who as a boy, in around 1850, leaves his impoverished home with his brother to find a better life in New York. Only, he gets on the wrong ship and ends up in San Francisco. From there, he starts to head east, his only thought being to find his brother.

That's the premise, but the book itself is not an adventure story, or the tale of a quest. It is an odd and riveting exploration of existence, of the American west, of survival, of solitude and companionship, bordering on magical realism but never quite stepping into that realm, for it remains relentlessly real. 

Along his journey, Håkan encounters various Old West characters that manage not to become caricatures: the Irish gold prospector, the toothless old lady who kidnaps him to do her bidding, homesteaders, a sadistic sheriff, a vineyard owner, a naturalist who has come up with his own version of evolutionary theory, and a man who rescues him and becomes his only true friend—for a while. But much of the time Håkan simply wanders through the desert alone, or hunkers down in place, surviving, being. He grows old on his journey. He also becomes the stuff of legend—here again, bordering on tall tale, but not quite stepping into that realm either.

And the writing! Alternating between the austere and the lyrical, realism and dream, it is simply exquisite.

Here are a couple of examples:

During their lessons, Lorimer often reminded his student that his remarkable talent with the scalpel would amount to nothing if the knife was not held by a loving hand guided by a truth-seeking eye. The study of nature is a barren enterprise if stones, plants, and animals become frozen under the magnifying glass, Lorimer said. A naturalist should look at the world with warm affection, if not ardent love. The life the scalpel has ended ought to be honored by a caring, devoted appreciation for that creature's unrepeatable individuality, and for the fact that, at the same time, strange as this may seem, this life stands for the entire natural kingdom. Examined with attention, the dissected hare illuminates the parts and properties of all other animals and, by extension, their environment. The hare, like a blade of grass or a piece of coal, is not simply a small fraction of the whole but contains the whole within itself. This makes us all one. If anything, because we are all made of the same stuff. Our flesh is the debris of dead stars, and this is also true of the apple and its tree, of each hair on the spider's legs, and of the rock rusting on planet Mars. Each minuscule being has spokes radiating out to all of creation. Some of the raindrops falling on the potato plants in your farm back in Sweden were once in a tiger's bladder. . . .

And this is how chapter 17 begins, immediately after his friend, Asa, rescues an injured Håkan from the evil sheriff:

Blue and cold were one. Håkan felt the crisp blue sky on his skin and eyes. And with this consonance of sight and touch, he realized that his consciousness had returned. His cramped limbs were an indication that he had been gone for a good while. He tested his other senses (the swish and swoosh of grass, the smell of old coals and manure, the sourness of sleep in his mouth); he confirmed the hardness of the soil under him (so unlike the viscous pit down which he had been slowly sliding for days); he conjured up a few memories (friendly pictures he could summon and dismiss at will, not like the ghosts that haunted him in his dreams); he tried language in his head (jag är här därför att jag kan tänka att jag är här). Dots of bright but undefined colors popped in and out of the sky as he tried to look deeper into it. He was still in the plains.

There are amazing scenes in which Håkan fashions and expands and repairs a coat he has made, starting with the pelt of a cougar, but adding ever to it "the skins of lynxes and coyotes, beavers and bears, caribou and snakes, foxes and prairie dogs, coatis and pumas, and other unknown beasts. Here and there dangled a snout, a paw, a tail." Or in which he or his companion forages for food. Or in which he excavates a meandering underground bunker. Or in which he travels with his horse Pingo and his burro through the desert, avoiding all contact with humankind. Or or or: so many amazing scenes, some uplifting, some horrific. Life is not easy for Håkan, but we are privileged to be privy to his experience of it.

For whatever reason this book ended up in my library, I am grateful.

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Current numbers for Monterey County: 2,151 cases, up 87 since yesterday, up 236 since I last posted on the 4th; hospitalizations, 149, up 9 since the 4th; deaths remain at 15.

And meanwhile the resident of the White House says we should just "learn to live with it"? We must vote him out in November. We simply must.

And, wear your mask. Please.