The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness: 751 Books to Cure What Ails You (61 page)

W
hy do today what can be left undone until tomorrow? Because every day that you leave a task undone it grows bigger and the motivation for doing it gets smaller.

Procrastination, or the art of avoidance, has nothing whatsoever to do with laziness, or even busyness. Its causes are emotional. Quite simply (and, one could argue, quite sensibly), the procrastinator avoids those tasks which, consciously or subconsciously, he or she associates with uncomfortable emotions, such as boredom (see: Boredom), anxiety (see: Anxiety), or fear of failure. The problem with allowing an uncomfortable emotion to stand in your way is that, once avoided, tasks that were probably quite achievable to begin with grow larger both in our imaginations—and, often, in actuality—until they loom over us in such an oppressive way that they become worth procrastinating about. And while we’re busy procrastinating and avoiding those uncomfortable emotions, untold opportunities for happiness and success—whole lives, in fact—pass by. It is this sense of a life half lived, and the intense regret that follows, that we should be trying to avoid—not just a few unpleasant emotions that will in any case quickly pass. What
procrastinators need, therefore, is a lesson on the catastrophic consequences of running away whenever an unpleasant emotion threatens to ruffle our ponds. And who better to provide us with this than the very English, buttoned-up butler of Darlington Hall in Kazuo Ishiguro’s
The Remains of the Day
.

Mr. Stevens is an arch avoider of emotions—
all
emotions. As such, he has the perfect job. Because he believes that what separates a great butler from a merely competent butler is the ability to repress one’s real self and inhabit a purely professional front at all times—holding up as an example the butler who “failed to panic” on discovering a tiger under the dining table (see: Stiff upper lip, having a). His repression thus justified and protected, he spends his life focusing only on being the best butler he can be, even when it is clear that his boss, Lord Darlington, is a Nazi sympathizer, and even when his own father is dying. So it is that when his father wants to say his final good-bye, all Mr. Stevens can think of is hurrying back upstairs to serve the port. And when Miss Kenton, the housekeeper, tries to show her interest in him, he rebuffs her with coolness and distance from behind the fortress of his butler self.

It takes him twenty years to realize what he has missed. By failing to act on those “turning points” in his relationship to Miss Kenton as they presented themselves—those precious moments in which, had he been brave enough to make himself vulnerable, he might have let down a drawbridge into his fortress and allowed himself to feel his feelings—he has lost the chance of a happy married life, for both of them. Instead he has lived as if he had before him “a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of [his] relationship with Miss Kenton.” Now, of course, it’s too late. He is left with the poor scraps of what remains of his day. Even someone with a lip as stiff as Mr. Stevens has a heart that can break when he realizes this.

Procrastinator: you do not have a never-ending number of days in which to accomplish the tasks you are so intent on avoiding. By procrastinating, you are allowing your negative emotions to become obstacles to an otherwise productive and forward-flowing life. Whether it’s anxiety or fear that accompanies the contemplation of the task at hand, put out that hand and greet your emotions one by one. Invite them to come in and sit down, and make themselves comfortable. Then begin your task in their company. Once you begin, you’ll find they don’t hang around very long; in fact, they’ll probably get up and leave immediately. And when you’re close to finishing, you’ll look up and discover far more pleasant emotional companions sitting in their place, waiting to celebrate with you when you’re done.

See also:
Indecision
•
Seize the day, failure to
•
Starting, fear of

See:
Nausea

Death and the Penguin

ANDREY KURKOV

T
here are plenty of things to complain about in life. If you agree with this statement, you’re one of them. Because you are one of those annoying people who suffer from querulousness, or a constant urge to grumble and complain, which is not only self-perpetuating—a determination to see the world in black and white being the surest way to bleach it of color—but it also precludes you from noticing life’s bounty in the first place.

Viktor, the would-be novelist in Andrey Kurkov’s
Death and the Penguin
—written with the deadpan concision of an obituary itself—has plenty of things to complain about. His girlfriend left him a year ago, he’s trapped in “a rut between journalism and meager scraps of prose,” he has just come home to a power outage, and his only friend is his pet penguin, Misha, who is himself depressed. And yet Viktor doesn’t complain. He receives his lot with a sort of dumb acceptance that makes it unlikely that anything will ever get better.

But then it does. The editor in chief of
Capital News
offers him three
hundred dollars a month for creating an index of “obelisk jobs,” or obituaries, while the subjects are still alive. Viktor’s first reaction is alarm—it sounds like real work. But once he begins, he finds he enjoys it. Soon, however, he becomes aware of the downside: that after a hundred obelisks, he hasn’t yet had the pleasure of seeing his work in print. His subjects are all, stubbornly, still alive. When a contact of the editor’s—a man who shares the name of Viktor’s penguin, Misha, and so becomes known as Misha-non-penguin—pays him a visit, the urge to moan about this gets the better of him: “Here I am, writing and writing, but nobody sees what I write,” he can’t help protesting out loud.

That’s when the VIPs start to die.

Don’t grumble to anyone else. You might receive the wrong sort of help—and you’ll certainly bring others down. But also, don’t grumble to yourself. After the deaths start happening, Viktor’s life improves in many ways, but by then the habit of accepting what life has given him is gone and he’s querulous about the good things instead. Those who catch the habit of querulousness and find themselves constantly peeved about life may, like Viktor, fail to spot happiness even when it’s delivered to them on a plate.

See also:
Dissatisfaction
•
Irritability

Invisible Man

RALPH ELLISON

A
nyone on the receiving end of racist attitudes or behavior—or those still inclined to lay the blame for racial tensions at the door of the beleaguered minority—would do well to read Ralph Ellison’s extraordinary and radical
Invisible Man
. The writing and publishing of this novel was a feat of heroism on the author’s part, and when it exploded onto the literary scene in 1952, America was still a country bound by segregation and fraught with racial prejudice. Rosa Parks had yet to refuse to give up her seat on a bus. Martin Luther King, Jr., had yet to give his speech. Suddenly, here was a novel that offered a whole new black aesthetic: elegantly written in an ironically laid-back voice—the novel quickly acquired the label “the literary extension of the blues”—but opening with an act of shocking black-on-white violence that yet did not throw down a gauntlet. Because here we had a highly educated black narrator for whom the tendency of other people not to notice him is sometimes convenient (he uses it to live rent-free in the basement of a building reserved for whites) and sometimes, in a wry understatement typical of his voice, “wearing on the nerves.” When a tall man with blue eyes and blond hair bumps into him and then insults him in the street, the Invisible Man grabs him by the lapels, brings the man’s chin down sharp against his head, then kicks him repeatedly, demanding an apology. He refuses—to us—to take responsibility for
the man’s near murder. “I won’t buy it . . .
He
bumped
me
,
he
insulted
me
. Shouldn’t he, for his own personal safety, have recognized my hysteria, my ‘danger potential’?” And so we are shown the geyser of rage that exists inside him, built up over the years, handed down from preceding generations.

Attitudes—and laws—have improved since 1952, both in America and elsewhere. But de facto segregation still persists far and wide, and statistics suggest vast inequalities in wealth, education, opportunities, and the treatment of racial minorities. Those experiencing racism will find Ralph Ellison’s courageous, groundbreaking novel to be a bracing tonic—both as a literary achievement in its own right and as a nonpolemical examination of one man’s struggle to define himself in relation to a disrespecting world. Those who know that racism resides in their hearts will, we hope, find a way to see themselves for what they are—and others for who they are. And whatever your race or color of your skin, know that it is an act of cowardice (see: Coward, being a) and shame (see: Shame)
not
to join the fight against racism whenever you glimpse its presence in the world.

See also:
Hatred
•
Judgmental, being
•
Xenophobia

Cry, the Beloved Country

ALAN PATON

R
age consumes. It’s the hottest, fieriest emotion there is. Your vision turns red and you cannot think logically. You become a tsunami, wreaking havoc on everything around you. You don’t care what you destroy.

The problem with giving vent to your rage is that you not only might hurt yourself or someone else, or break something valuable to you (in the event of which, see: Broken china), but your rage will frighten those who witness it and may make those who love you feel unsafe. Moreover, rage is deeply exhausting and wounding to the soul. Repeated outbursts will deplete you, leaving you a little more broken, a little less noble in heart, than before. It should be nipped in the bud at its first appearance, and before it becomes a habit.

Our cure,
Cry, the Beloved Country
, is a novel about a man who has more reason to rage against the world than any in literature, and it is told in language that soothes and calms. It shows by example that, even when
confronted with the most appalling calamity, it is possible to contain your rage and choose a different way. “There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it . . .” So, with beguiling lyricism inspired by the language patterns of Zulu, begins this deeply moving account of a country parson’s search for his errant son, Absalom, in Johannesburg. It is 1946, and Johannesburg is a frightening place for Stephen Kumalo. Unlike in his native village, Ndotsheni, where “every bus is the right bus,” there are countless ways to lose oneself, both morally and physically. Following one word-of-mouth sighting after another, the gentle
umfundisi
(parson) and his wise friend and colleague Msimangu discover that Absalom, like countless other vulnerable, discriminated-against young black men in South Africa during Apartheid, has been swallowed up in a criminal underworld, and by the time they find him, it is too late. The boy has shot and killed a white man—a man who, to complicate matters, had devoted his life to campaigning for the rights of the black underclass. The
umfundisi
is forced to watch his only son stand trial for the murder of a widely admired and respected man, and we in turn must watch Kumalo become more and more bowed and frail as his heart breaks under the enormity of his grief.

There is no happy ending for Kumalo. Instead, what Alan Paton gives us is an extraordinary evocation of one man’s endurance through suffering. Kumalo thinks and acts slowly, in the “slow tribal rhythm” into which he was born, and Paton monitors the old man’s emotions as he struggles against his rage and grief with each new assault. Sometimes his rage wins out—for Paton’s characters are nothing if not human—and Kumalo submits to the desire to wound with words, but he is always quick to back down, and later to go back and apologize.

Cry, the Beloved Country
is a novel about having the courage to say what needs to be said, about apologizing when rage wins out, and about how hard and bitter words do not lead to resolution but to more anger and hurt. Kumalo’s sufferings will put your own in perspective. Paton’s language will quiet your raging soul. And the wisdom of Paton and his cast of suffering characters will show you how it is possible to live with your pain—and, even, to laugh again.

See also:
Anger
•
Road rage
•
Turmoil
•
Vengeance, seeking
•
Violence, fear of

Goodnight, Nebraska

TOM MCNEAL

T
hough it occurs most often in adolescence, vulnerable people can go off the rails in their twenties, thirties, or even older. If someone you know is heading that way now, it can be hard to know how to help; he or she is likely to present you a toughened, prickly facade and push away the hand you reach out. And if you’re heading off the rails yourself, how do you stop careering toward destruction? You fall in love with one of literature’s wayward souls is how, and Randall Hunsacker is your boy.

When Randall, at thirteen, loses his father in a horrific accident at home (see: DIY), the loss is more than he can bear. He is shy and awkward, and his fragile relationships with his mother and sister nosedive further when his mother takes up with a new man, Lenny. And when Randall discovers Lenny enjoying a compromising moment with his sister, he finds a vent for the hatred he’s been nursing ever since his father’s death. Randall careers off the rails in spectacular fashion, involving a gun, a stolen Le Mans, two severed fingers, and juvenile hall. It’s his football coach who comes to the rescue, dispatching him to a new life in the small town of Goodnight, Nebraska. Here, hurting and alone, he intimidates the locals with his “obstinate sullenness” and alarms his peers at school with his recklessness on the football field.

To disclose that he catches the eye of a popular local girl, Macy, suggests a Hollywood plain-sail ending, but McNeal is a braver writer than that. He takes Randall, and us, on a realistically bumpy—and moving—journey in which nothing turns out as you expect. Whether you’re concerned about someone else going off the rails or think you might be heading that way yourself, this novel will help you to see the sensitive, wounded person beneath the angry exterior. Just because someone acts tough doesn’t mean he or she doesn’t, deep down, want to be rescued. A fall from grace generally begins with a loss, an absence, or a neglect; hitherto healthy human beings become disaffected when there’s no one to catch them when they fall. Be there for your tumblers. Catch them and hold them. And if it’s you who’s falling, take heart from Randall’s story. Someone will be brave enough to see who you are beneath that hardened skin. Let that someone in and, like Randall, you’ll find your way back.