Machine Dreams
I’ve muddled through this novel — Machine Dreams, by Jayne Anne Phillips — for the past three or four weeks. It’s not the book’s fault; it’s just been a really busy three or four weeks what with moving our children back to school and then moving ourselves about 850 miles away. This is Phillips’ debut novel, and although I had never heard of Phillips until about two months ago, she was apparently once associated with “the girls of Knopf” or a female version of the “literary brat pack” which included excellent company: Lorrie Moore, Louise Erdrich, Mona Simpson.
It's a good novel — an exploration of how modernization affects a family from a small West Virginia town. The most dramatic “machine” that appears is actually the Vietnam War, although the allusions to “flying” can’t be denied with the image of Pegasus on the cover. (Machine Dreams spans much of the 20th century until about 1970.) On my run this morning, I saw this quote brightly painted on a temporary construction-related covered walkway: “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” I had always thought it was attributed to Abraham Lincoln, but a Google search tells me it’s either the 16th President of the United States OR the famous management consultant Peter Drucker. (🤔 Uh, take your pick, I guess?) For eight years, my runs took me by houses situated on enormous lots, now I’m running by cranes and high rises. Truthfully, I prefer the latter, but I find it fascinating to be transported from one extreme — a place where anything “modern” demands numerous debates yet is very bucolic — to the other, which is a place that has been on a mission to “recreate” itself for a long while and embraces progress. (Build, build, build…)
When does “the future” impede and encroach on humanity? I have no idea, but I figure if I can keep exercising in this “old fashioned” manner amidst all the moves and life changes — my own, but also those of a greater population — I can be a perceptive observer as I go along my way, much like the characters in Machine Dreams…
{First pic taken post-run, before we moved. How ‘bout that unintentional sock/shoe matching w the cover? Other photos from my run this AM.}
originally published on instagram