The Immersion Library

Maybe crazy people are the ones who see things clear but work out a way to live with it.

I feel like it will take me some time to see this book clearly. Reading it feels like panning for gold; impulsively, methodically, obsessively.

I asked myself so many questions, entertained so many predictions, tried to fit so many puzzle pieces together. A story of two seemingly opposite boys by nature, upbringing and passions who, somehow, become nearly inseperable growing up. Wharton mirrors each of their perspectives bv interlacing the chapters from each of their points of view. One tells stories of their childhood antics together, the other about his birds and his strange kinship with them, his obsessive urge to fly alongside them. The reader learns just as much about them based on their voices as by the episodes they describe.

Some episodes invoke a visceral response, some invoke annoyance, frustration, laughter…but always wonder. Panning for that gold. Crouched near the stream bed rubbing sand and gravel between my fingers.

What does this all mean? What is Wharton trying to say or show me? So much intentionality in stylistic choices and structural design. Spending so much time on the edge between literary device and “That’s too far.” Something has to be here. Something…one more scoop.

Here, this looks like a gold flake. Wharton dwells on two major themes; flight and insanity. Wharton creates parallels to illustrate ideas. Consider cages: Birdy watches his birds in cages. Al watches Birdy imprisoned. In war, Wharton strips Al of pretense and lays bare his vulnerability and fear; and in the dream Birdy embodies his deepest desires. The birds’ names coincidentally match those of the friends. As humans, they must live in the cage of civilization, unable to survive without its consruct and control. Perhaps mankind has simply accepted insanity as the status quo and condemned sanity to the depths of crazy.

No, only wet sand flickering in the sunlight. Maybe? Then I hear an exhuberant holler from across the river and look up from my pan. A man tells me to keep panning; I’ll strike it rich soon. Keep going. Don’t stop! But he’s laughing, eyes wide and teeth naked. He tells me not to feel shame over enjoying a crazy story about a boy merging brains with a bird. Moreso, for believing the one who wrote it! He tells me it’s not crazy to want something so insane for myself.

He tells me to keep panning. He’ll come check on me when I’m old, stiff and creaking from crouching, yearning to fit puzzle pieces together in my sane mind, ready to bow my head and die, still searching for gold.