“NIGHT. SLEEP. DEATH. The STARS." by Joyce Carol Oates - review

 “NIGHT. SLEEP. DEATH. The STARS.“ by Joyce Carol Oates:

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,

Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.

               A Clear Midnight (from Leaves of Grass) - Walt Whitman - 

    

At almost 800 pages the latest intimate family novel by Joyce Carol Oates is a hefty monster, but quite an exhilarating, rewarding, interesting, gripping, spellbinding, heart-wrenching and thoroughly enjoyable one. The subject, which could be described as “the story of coming to terms with the death of a loved, revered and dominating family member”, is treated with warm feeling and the characters are painted with a credibility that rings very true. 

It is a brooding, pondering, thoughtful study of how people respond to stress and loss, a chronicle of a family, disrupted and then reconfigured, following the death of its patriarch. It also provides a condemning, accusing snapshot of contemporary American life, class and race relations and police brutality in the US at the end of 2010. It was written before the disturbing video of the death of George Floyd, a 46 year old black man who died as a result of being brutally restrained by a white police officer on May 25, 2020 in Minneapolis, has newly motivated the Black Lives Matter movement. 

Tragedy hits a white, well respected family. 

John Earle McLaren, known as Whitey, a rich elder successful businessman in Hammond, a small New York town, formerly its mayor, stops his car on the highway to intervene with two cops brutally treating a "dark-skinned" motorist. Not recognizing McLaren as a popular, respected citizen, enraged by his interfering, they knock him down, taser him and in consequence Whitey suffers a stroke and heart-attack and spends what’s left of his life in hospital and dies. A death which shatters all of his family as a whole and each family member individually in unforeseen ways. Grief can do crazy things to people. The novel accompanies each family member, after the death of Whitey, on their way to cope and come to terms with the tragedy.

Whitey loved each member of his family and in return was well loved and adored by each one. 

His widow, Jessalyn, has been the perfect  American wife and mother, a woman as if straight out of a Ladies House & Home Magazine, bestowed with wealth and a glamorous big house who never had to care an instant besides the “women“-tasks of being wife and mother. Her life has come to a standstill without sense, meaning and purpose and she plunges into isolated grief, then slowly emerges into a new life that includes a tentative new relationship with a man she has met at her husband's grave. Jessalyn, in all her innocence and development, is one of the very likable characters of the novel.

Of her adult five children, all of them brilliantly drawn characters, this can't be as easily said. None of them is emotionally adult and their father’s death puts a heavy strain on the fragile relationships of the brothers and sisters. 

The oldest son Thom, handsome, successful but also elitist and mean-spirited, married with children, runs one branch of the family business efficiently but struggles with family life and a true sense of living. He embarks on the task to revenge his father’s death by sueing the responsible officers and the police department of the town.

Even less likable than Thom is Beverly, the second oldest. Her marriage is stale and blemished, her teenage kids are disrespectful and egotistical and she is well on her way to become an alcoholic and drug addict. Furthermore is she a shocking bigot and a racist. She in particular is incensed that her “unworthy” siblings receive equal shares of the inheritance. She in particular is enraged by her mother’s “strange and unworthy“ behavior so soon after her father’s death.

Lorene, the third oldest, is probably the least likeable character in the book. She is a high school principal, the youngest ever in these parts. She is a single woman without attachment, overachieving, overreaching, competitive, mean, manipulative, narcissistic, hates everyone but herself, is intensely emotionally disturbed but undergoes a transformation that might lead to redemption.

The two youngest, some years apart from their older siblings and thus forming a natural bond, are the most sympathetic of the McLaren clan. 

Sophia, the prettiest and nicest, is lacking in self-confidence. She is a biological researcher increasingly dissatisfied with her work at the laboratory that involves experiments on live animals. Furthermore she struggles with an affair with an older, married colleague. 

The youngest son, Virgil is the black sheep of the family. Thom, Beverley and Lorene all feel but contempt for him and disapprove of his way of living. He is a local artist, lives in a sort of commune and his social life is an enigma to his family. He flirts with death and late but not too late discovers where love is leading him. He gradually allows himself to express the desire he feels towards another man despite believing his father would have been disappointed in him. His mother and younger sister Sophia love him.

Over the course of a year we follow everyone on their way to come to terms with the tragedy. Everyone handles it differently, not always good. Everyone encounters obstacles and everyone sacrifices something on their way to grow into their new selves. The greatest struggle for the three eldest children in the McClaren family is their prejudice towards lower class and non-white individuals. Much to the dismay of her children Jessalyn, after a period of hopeless grief, surprisingly recovers and finds new strength and meaning in a relationship with a non-white man.

All of the characters seem to walk on unsolid ground, they permanently shift in their ways and our evaluation of them is also based on unsteadiness. Which only makes them more real. In the end, everyone looses, gains or endures, some experience unexpected happiness and the tale ends, in spite of all the grief and sorrow, on a note of hope.

Apart from the main theme of loss and grief there are other themes as well. Sometimes it seems to veer off in the direction of a comedy, at other times more in the direction of a courtroom drama. There are many philosophical musings on life, love, death or the nature of art. The scope is large and not every strand of the story is successfully or satisfyingly resolved. But this, we curiously find, is not necessary, the novel works out fine as it is. 

Through inhabiting the (mostly) white character’s casual elitist and racist minds, showing their categorizing, evaluative automatism, Joyce Carol Oates exposes how prejudice, willful ignorance, racial and social discrimination is a common form of mind in contemporary America as well as the institutionalized racism in large parts of the American police force.

With this truly wonderful novel Oates once more reminds us of one of the great forces of Life: it’s unpredictability.

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry