"The Glass Castle"

OPENING LINE
I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.


CLOSING LINE
A wind picked up, rattling the windows, and the candle flames suddenly shifted, dancing along the border between turbulence and order.


Another book review… wahooooooooooo!

Just kidding, it’s not quite that thrilling, but it’s doin’ what I do. And I’m about 5 books overdue. Eek!

Anyways, that was a bit of an unnecessary tangent. I am sufficiently tired and slowly going crazy. Crazy going slowly am I.

Speaking of craziness, I recently read a book that epitomizes craziness. That book would be “The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls. Essentially it is a memoir of the author’s childhood living in a nomadic bohemian-esque non-conformity, described more blatantly as living in a romanticized wandering homelessness at the hands of her extremely dysfunctional parents. The craziness comes in her accounts of the things that happened to her as a child, in the shock that a real person and family lived this way, and that she managed to come out as a functioning member of society, normal enough to tell her tale. The biggest crazy shocker of the whole thing is not necessarily what happened to her, but that despite her father’s reckless and destructive alcoholism and her mother’s selfish irresponsibility, she still tells her tale with the undertone of unconditional love for her parents. Straight up crazy.

Throughout the book you can feel the love that she has for them, despite the multitude of unquestionably unloving situations they put her and her siblings in. She doesn’t praise her parents, but she doesn’t condemn them either. In fact, she provides no real introspection on how the details and events of her childhood affected her, how she really feels about her parents and her past. No hint of complaining, no trace of self pity, just the impartial facts. Leaving the reader to feel however they would like to feel. This is what happened, here it is. In a way, it’s emotionally absent (not to mention somewhat irritating to the reader), in another way it shows that she accepts her parents for everything they are and everything they are not, what they have done and what they have failed to do. And it feels like she wants you to impart that acceptance as well.

Essentially they were homeless, with a drunk father who couldn’t hold a job and an idealist artist mother who wouldn’t hold a job or go on welfare to support the family. They lived in squalor, were malnourished, could have been third world children, not living in the United States. Despite the starkly real and shocking accounts of ill treatment, the author comes across as unconditionally loving her parents and believing in their reciprocal love for her. And subconsciously asking the reader to believe in that love too.  However, I find it hard to believe that a parent who loves their children, would allow them to go hungry and live with rodents, because it “builds character”. Is it love when you can do such horrible things to your own flesh and blood, enact such neglect for the basic necessities of food and shelter? There were admirable qualities to be found in the parents, this is true, and you couldn’t help but finding yourself in moments of wanting to believe in their love as well. They fostered an appreciation for literature and the arts and an aptitude for education. They had commendable morals and ideals. They were dreamers. But the deplorability in other respects, to me, far outweighs any of those more positive characteristics. In real life, outside of a book (though a memoir and based on reality), their actions are not charming and eccentric, they are abusive and negligent.

Despite coming to grips with the crazy of the book, it is a fascinatingly great read. It is organized in short chapters or episodes, her memories. That makes it a page-turner, the kind of non-stop book you try not to put down. And at the end of it all, you feel triumphant that there can be beauty in struggle and that the dream of a better life is realized. In that respect, the glass castle did get built,. The glass castle was a dream of her fathers, a dream that the author held to in her childhood, the master plan for a beautiful home for them to live in, the master plan for a beautiful life to live. The closest they ever come to actually physically building it was in digging the hole, a hole which ended up being their garbage dump. And symbolically, out of the garbage of her life, that master plan was realized, and her dreams did come true. The glass castle was built.

So, it’s a feel bad and a feel good story, all in one! Wahoooooooo!






[image via The Book Cover Archive]