Lessons in Chemistry and Easy Beauty
Everyone loves Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. What’s not to like? It’s entertaining, it’s charming with brisk storytelling, it addresses important topics. It’s pretty heavy-handed in that regard, but I wonder if that’s partly Garmus’ point since the characters’ one-dimensionality must be intentional. (I really do believe this has to be a stylistic choice on the author’s part.) I decided to read it sort of like a fable. Like how I think La La Land is a fable. (I am a huge La La Land fan! I wrote about it together with Milkman by Anna Burns back in 2019.)
The storytelling is ‘easy beauty.’ The cover is ‘easy beauty.’ (There was a NYT piece about Garmus and the kinda pop art/Lichtenstein-esque artwork for her novel’s American cover.) Its protagonist, Elizabeth Zott, is ‘easy beauty’ on the surface. (She can’t stand this assessment and it’s partly what propels the fairytale-esque plot forward.)
What is ‘easy beauty’?
My friend Ashley loaned me her copy of the memoir Easy Beauty by Chloé Cooper Jones, a professor of philosophy who offers up a complex and sprawling narrative of what it “means” to journey through our world as a person with a physical disability. (Jones was born with a rare congenital condition called sacral agenesis.) She writes that according to philosopher Bernard Bosanquet, “Easy beauty was apparent and unchallenging: ‘A simple tune; a simple spatial rhythm…a rose; a youthful face, or the human form in its prime, all these afford a plain straightforward pleasure.’…Conversely, ‘difficult beauty’ … required more time, patience, and a higher amount of concentration. Our ability to appreciate difficult beauty depended on our education, insight, endurance, and our capacity for attention. In difficult beauty, one often encounters ‘intricacy,’ tension,’ and ‘width.’”
Why does Lessons in Chemistry resonate so much? I don’t think it’s solely the “empower women!” message. I actually think it’s the ‘easy beauty’ of it, which is what we often are automatically drawn to. And there is value in that! Here’s the catch with ‘easy beauty,’ however: What happens when you’re done appreciating it?
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