Light Years
Our struggle with — and perhaps our fight against — the ordinary is what makes us human. We all, at some point, want to believe that our lives are extraordinary. Of course, every life is extraordinary…I truly believe that. But it’s in the mundane and humdrum moments where our uniqueness flourishes. “Extraordinary” is subtle; “ordinary” gives itself away amidst obvious attempts.
Take light, for instance. How easy to take sunlight, moonlight, and even artificial light for granted. I have a very distinct memory as a 3-year-old of lying with my feet perched on our hearth watching the sunlight on our walls change shape and angle. The room seemed to transform just as my emotions transformed. (Deep in my head even as a preschooler!) Light is ordinary because we assume it will be there. But of course it’s extraordinary! It’s something special when it shrouds the objects and people around it in different ways. That’s why we love sunsets, shadows, and table lamps instead of the big ceiling light.
This is the first James Salter novel I’ve read. At first I felt like Light Years was going to be analogous to a Carol Shields novel. And it is, somewhat. This is a perfect case of domestic fiction: Married couple Viri (an architect) and Nedra (a somewhat ambivalent homemaker with bohemian proclivities) wade through life with their two daughters in Westchester while simultaneously longing for a different (i.e. cosmopolitan) type of existence. Nonetheless, they embody whatever the curated “artsy” version of the NY suburbs would be mid-century (and reflected upon in 1975, when Light Years was published).
But Salter dives into his characters’ interiority differently than Shields. There’s a self-awareness that’s mostly missing, which is fascinating (not to mention skilled) given Salter’s use of light as the device meant to reveal and provide warmth — but that never does.
“He became terrified, that moment of terror which cannot be confessed when one realizes one’s own life is nothing.”
“One of the last great realizations is that life will not be what you dreamed.”
Yikes?
Read this one with Joshua Rothman’s New Yorker piece titled ‘Why is It So Hard to Be Ordinary?’ by your side.
originally published on instagram