Lost Generations
by Megan Mills
I
started reading Necessary Errors by
Caleb Crain on an impromptu road trip to Florida that, despite what my parents might
tell you, was entirely my idea. Our flight had gotten cancelled that morning, like
nearly every other flight trying to get out of Boston that cold week at the
beginning of January. But feeling particularly exceptional, I was set on a
different fate. My bitterness at the current predicament and determination to
do something about it were tangible in the confinement of the car taking us home
from the airport after our failed attempt. The driver voiced his opinion that
my reluctance to just sit back and accept our cancelled plans was a result of
being spoiled. Glaring at him in the rearview mirror, I thought that I
preferred to call it the persistence of youth.
I
opened my book hoping it would make our trip down the east coast go by faster
and was pleased to find myself in the good company of the novel’s protagonist,
Jacob Putnam. Jacob is a recent Harvard graduate, a former English major and
current aspiring writer, essentially taking a gap period between undergraduate
life and reality by teaching English in Prague in the early 1990s. It’s an
impressive resume, no doubt. Yet Jacob feels unaccomplished. He spends his time
in Prague visiting monuments and gay bars recommended by his guide book;
turning bar discovery into an art form with his fellow expat friends; and
desperately trying to capture a moment of historic transition that he has
arrived nearly too late for.
That
moment is the Velvet Revolution in Prague. It is an event I knew little about.
After reading Necessary Errors, I
still don’t know much about it. In his review,
Norman Rush more confidently explains how well the historical context works
with the larger themes and events in the novel. His words clarified feelings I
had not been able to articulate. We agreed on some of the novel’s key aspects. Such
as the lyricism that is Crain’s writing. Or how there’s not so much a strict
plot to the novel, but rather it reads like a sequence of events. We both
approved of the author’s use of semi-colons. And Rush helped me come to terms
with the lack of details on Jacob’s group of friends that are so important to
him and the story. But aspects of the novel that Rush merely touches upon are
what drew me in and kept me absorbed in Necessary
Errors.
This
novel was written for me. Or, more accurately, for people my age. This age is
generally summed up as “twenty-something.” More than a number, it is a stage in
your life when you are really and truly free and unattached for better or worse
and the ideal of endless opportunities vies for attention with the more realistic
fear of the unknown. I was in this mindset when I started the novel, as I came
across a Buzzfeed article that recommends
this book to just this crowd or more specifically “expats teaching abroad,
recent college grads, or transplants to a new city where they don’t know
anyone.” Feeling connected in one way or another to each of these labels
convinced me to read Crain’s first novel.
And
I was not disappointed. Crain brings together themes relevant to these labels
with poetic grace. Jacob thinks frequently about this point in his life, this
moment of transition reinforced by the historical one he hopes to witness in
Prague. He captures the transition from youth to so-called maturity perfectly, admitting
that “he had a sense that everything in his life up to that point was prelude,”
as though what he does now is the real story. The statement resonated with me.
At this ambiguous age, I have come to find that things are expected of you.
There is unofficial pressure to do something worthwhile, to prove to everyone
that you’re putting your expensive, high-end education to use and doing something
with your newfound freedom. That you’re beginning your life. This unofficial
expectation is cause for Jacob’s concern that he is not out accomplishing. Part
of Jacob’s reason for going to Prague was so that he could focus on his
writing. In reality, he works on a single story for the two years or so he is
in Prague; enough to still call himself a writer but not enough that he feels
confident doing so.
Jacob’s
reflections on what it means to be abroad are as evocative as his thoughts
toward his transitional age. Crain achieves what I view as the greatest
achievement of writers – to put to words what readers, strangers really, feel.
Throughout Jacob’s time abroad, not only does he feel unaccomplished but he
feels like he is wasting his time, as though every moment there must be
exceptional. In one mundane instance, Jacob suddenly feels off and he can’t put
his finger on exactly why. He tries to explain that “he felt sad and misplaced,
with the abrupt, overwhelming, dizzying sadness that comes over people in
countries not their own, which has none of the richness of feeling that usually
comes with sadness but is rather a kind of exhaustion.” Exactly, I thought when I read this. It was like Crain threw my
deepest emotions at me, repackaged under the guise of creative license.
Segments of writing such as this are what I found to be the true craft of the
novel.
Not
to be ignored, though, is the particular poignancy Crain conveys in being an
American abroad. Jacob again admits to a realization he is not entirely proud
of. While he is in Prague, the United States declares war against Iraq and
Saddam Hussein. He thinks how this “seemed to prove that the larger world was a
setting where America was the principle actor, and therefore, by extension, a
setting where Jacob ought to feel at home.” He notes that “a part of him felt
ashamed of the grand entitlement that this sense of things implied, but he did
not pretend to himself that he didn’t share it.” Being abroad is meant to teach
you about yourself and your place in the world; it is another reason why Jacob
chooses to live in Prague for an extended time. He searches for a sense of self
and place to such an extent that it becomes forced and clichéd.
Nevertheless, as he shows here, he does learn. He learns
that Americans possess the same exceptionalism as the young yet has the
integrity to acknowledge he does not escape it.
What
I loved most about the theme of the American abroad was its air of Hemingway.
Rush hints at this in his piece; the idea that Crain is shaping another lost
generation. And this is exactly what Jacob and his friends represent: they
themselves are lost in that specific period in their lives while the world
around them is lost as well. Even more relevant is the idea that Jacob as an
American rushes to Prague at a time when the country is striving to discover
and realize democracy and capitalism. As in the finest works of Hemingway, the
protagonist here must go abroad to realize the American spirit.
Crain’s
story enlightened me to the idea that being young and being abroad overlap in
extraordinary ways. In both instances, the world lies at your feet and you feel
the pressure of needing to do something with it. If you don’t, it feels like a
waste. Those of us on the brink of adulthood still retain the optimism and
persistence left over from youth that tells us we can accomplish, we can answer
these pressures. There is always a destination, a focus away from what Jacob
calls “the charmless here.” Belief in a more charmed time and place is what
propels us forward in life and out into the world, hoping against everything
that where we end up will be worth our efforts.
Thanks for everyone's feedback today! I agree with a lot of what was said so I tried to incorporate some of those ideas into concrete changes for this finalish draft. Let me know if you think it worked!
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, I just got around to reading James Wood's review of the novel in the New Yorker (here: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2013/09/02/130902crbo_books_wood?currentPage=all). I really enjoyed reading his take on it, especially since he provides a different perspective from my own. Shout out to Anna: he does a really great job discussing the Prague scene!