“So what can we really do for each other except – just love each other and be each other’s witness? And haven’t we got the right to hope – for more? So that we can really stretch into whoever we really are?”
This is a love story.
It is not a blueprint for a perfect relationship.
It is an exploration of love and lonliness within the jungle of human existence.
It’s perfect.
Imagine your own relationship; past or present. Think about the elation, the challenges, the longing, the desire, the fury, the intimacy. Can you contemplate the other person’s existence, their form, the infinite variables combining into their experience, in their terms? Can you make the trip to that other country?
This novel savagely delves into the abyss of human combinations; of themselves, their relationship to the world, to society, to the opposite sex, the same sex, to other experiences. In its boldness, it refuses to assert a correct path to happiness. In its brutality, it stares unblinking into the ferocious angst of survival. It calculates the infinite sides of the human dice baked in lonliness and longing for love.
A collection of individuals, all yearning for the same thing, battling their own misshapen existence to find it. Nothing to give that we can imagine others would want. Nothing to gain that we think we deserve. Always just short of the the climax of true empathy because of our individual, limited range of experience. Always embittered by our self-loathing and in despair at never finding our savior.
“Love was a country he knew nothing about.” Baldwin may not know either but has an alarming wisdom about those seeking it. With an impossible and dangerously accute acumen for polarizing pysches, he chronicles the beauty of our curse. Perhaps we’ll find it in understanding. Self-sacrifice. Acceptance. But that’s for you to figure out. It’s all laid out for you.
The Library Annex 
Leave a comment