The Years
Well, The Years by Annie Ernaux is a beautiful and thoughtful book that I nonetheless found very melancholy. “Pensive Amy” made her debut in January and might not go away until the snow does. (That’s too bad; checked the forecast lately?!) My reaction to this book – which has been heralded internationally, but particularly in France where Ernaux is viewed as a literary treasure – can be attributed, I think, to my age (middle!) and to the tumultuous way our days have unfolded recently.
The Years is sort of a collective look at how one woman (who represents many women) has lived in parallel to the public/social/political events that happen concurrently in her life. For the protagonist(s) of The Years, this means the 1940s to the early 21st century, and Ernaux also allows their lives to be “told” via photographs that she describes. Yet toward the beginning of the book, she writes, “Everything will be erased in a second. The dictionary of words amassed between cradle and deathbed, eliminated. All there will be is silence and no words to say it. Nothing will come out of the open mouth, neither I nor me. Language will continue to put the world into words. In conversation around a holiday table, we will be nothing but a first name, increasingly faceless, until we vanish into the vast anonymity of a distant generation.” Yikes.
On the other hand, toward the end of The Years, we have this: “What matters to her, on the contrary, is to seize this time that comprises her life on Earth at a given period, the time that has coursed through her, the world she has recorded merely by living.” Perhaps we all vacillate between the two sentiments and maybe – for now – “Less Thinking, More Living” must be our preferred drumbeat.
originally published on instagram