FC2_BLOG_TOP

A Weighty Brilliance

Lacuna: A space where something has been omitted or come out; a gap; a missing portion in a manuscript, text, etc.; a small pool. Question: In which sense does Barbara Kingsolver, intend the word to be understood? Answer: We're talking about Kingsolver here, America's unsurpassed master of the written word: the answer is ALL of the above. Lacuna, Kingsolver's first novel since The Prodigal Summer in 2000, is dissimilar to any of her previous works. Told almost exclusively in journal entries, letters, news clips, Lacuna covers the life of Harrison Shepherd from 1929 to 1951. Harrison is the son of a Mexican mother whose mission in life is to find wealthy paramours, and an American bureaucrat who successfully manages to keep his involvement with his son to a minimum. Along the way we meet Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, her on again off again husband Diego Rivera (the famous muralist), and fugitive Communist Leon Trotsky. Lacuna's tale of Harrison Shepherd begins and ends in Mexico, but between these bookends is an extended stay in Asheville, North Carolina. A New York Times reviewer calls Lacuna a "capacious novel". This is a bit of an understatement. The book is so rich in themes and undertones that any reviewer attempting to cover them is doomed from the get go. Kingsolver fans that are used to the short, nimble novels of her early years, or the larger but well-paced tempos of the Poisonwood Bible and The Prodigal Summer, may find themselves disconcerted by Lacuna. The C5A (and subsequent variations) is the largest cargo plane used in the U.S. Lacuna is a literary C5A: heavily freighted, it lumbers down a lengthy runway, gains altitude slowly, but eventually achieves notable speed and altitude. Why climb on board this jumbo novel? Because it is carrying a uniquely valuable and rare cargo, is the best reason.Kingsolver has never been a shrinking violet. Her previous novels have delved into themes that cause apoplexy amongst the Limbaughs, Hannitys, and Becks of the world. Lacuna is different only in that what Kingsolver chooses to explore doesn't strike a nerve, it goes after the spinal cord. Rich in themes, amongst them are included U.S. economic hegemony, the politics of artistic expression, the potential oppressiveness of religion, gay rights, the prudishness of American social conventions, Lacuna shines light with withering intensity on two related, but not identical themes. The first is the vast American lack of insight into the origin of Communism, and the American failure to distinguish between a political ideology and the horrendous results of that ideology being co-opted by the likes of Stalin, Mao, and dozens of smaller statured dictator tyrants. The second theme Kingsolver explores, including liberal use of actual documents from the 40's and 50's, is American willingness to abandon civil liberties in the face of perceived threat. Eric Holder, the current U.S. attorney general, got himself in very hot water by calling Americans cowards on the subject of racism (he has subsequently stated that he regrets his choice of words). Kingsolver doesn't use the word cowardly (that I recall) in Lacuna, but cowards do dwell amongst her pages...as does as least one hero, a woman with the unlikely name of Violet Brown.What may sustain the reader as this heavily laden novel reaches altitude is, of course, Barbara Kingsolver's astounding skill with the English language. Describing the magnificent Mayan ruins in Mexico, Kingsolver is contemplative: "Behind us, the temples stood in the strange yellow light with rain darkening their stone pate, dissolving their limestone one particle at a time, carrying off the day's measure of history." Kingsolver thinking about history: "What we end up calling history is a kind of knife, slicing down through time. A few people are hard enough to bend its edge. But most won't even stand close to the blade." It was a dark and stormy day becomes "The gray mass of a storm sat on the mountains to the west, waiting like a predator. In the afternoon, it pounced, drenching the view and washing the brilliant leaves into matted sop in the road". Lacuna: a gap, a missing portion in the manuscript, or story. Lacuna, the novel, is a potent exploration of a lacuna of American history: the poorly explored era in which many (by no means all) Americans stayed as far away from the edge of the knife of history as possible, allowing that knife to cut down authors, congressmen, actors, Jews, homosexuals, teachers, and all manner of civil servants under the guise of "un-American activities". Kingsolver is no stranger to being accused of lacking patriotism. Though this does her tremendous injustice, in one sense the accusations are correct. Patriotism is by definition a professed loyalty to the fatherland. Kingsolver is less a patriot than a matriot, profoundly matriotic in her desires for America. Patriots trumpet military defense, closed borders, traditional (and often exclusive) values. Kingsolver, in counterpoint, calls for inclusiveness, civil liberty, exchanging nationalism for cooperation amongst nations, and an enthusiastic embrace of diversity of thought, art, and personal choice. Lacuna is a matriotic manifesto, controversial and proud.