Apeirogon
In college I took an art history class – for fun, I guess, since I don’t think it fulfilled any requirement. I traipsed over to the Museum of Fine Arts one Saturday with my friend Keith because I had to write a paper on Rothko. I did, and I managed to make it a 10-page paper. Not a BS paper, which I’m sure some would like to think. No, it was actually a magnificent afternoon at the MFA as Keith and I spent about an hour talking about just one solitary painting because nothing in this artist’s work is straightforward, despite surface simplicity. Rothko is tricky like that.
So too with Apeirogon, Colum McCann’s latest novel and a National Book Award winner. At its simplest, this book is about the real-life people Bassim Aramin (a Palestinian) and Rami Elhanan (an Israeli), both fathers who lost young daughters to sectarian violence and who met through Parents Circle, a real organization. (My parents actually had the opportunity to hear them speak in Israel.) Of course, the message is peace and unity, an exploration of a common bond that sadly develops when one meets another whose child has died. Yet we all know that life is more complex than “let’s get along,” and this is where McCann takes this book to crazy, fascinating, and inventive territory. What do birds’ flight patterns, an experimental composer, the history of shrapnel, Sinéad O’Connor’s version of Nothing Compares 2 U, and François Mitterand’s last meal have in common? Everything…because an “apeirogon” is a shape with a countably infinite number of sides. Who or what is *really* at fault for the death of these precious daughters? That’s complicated. Conflict runs deep and is interconnected with everything – the “domino effect” in action.
Apeirogon is a book in 1001 sections: 1-500, then one section numbered 1001, and then 500-1. In some ways it recalls Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders and Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann. Yes, it’s a book about seeking peace, but it reminds us that life involves an endless unraveling of multifaceted connections. Colum McCann is tricky like that.
originally published on instagram