My 80-year old mom, my sister, and I started a family book club in October. Our first book, chosen by my sister, was Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, a book I remember making rather a splash in the blogosphere when it first came out in 2010. I never got around to checking it out, so I’m glad my little sister chose it for our first read.

I did enjoy the story of Major Pettigrew, a British village widower, and his growing friendship with Mrs. Ali, a Pakistani widow and shopkeeper. The two share an interest in literature and tradition and tea and gardening. And slowly but inexorably, Major Pettigrew and Mrs. Ali become more than just friends, despite the fact that the Major is nominally Christian and Mrs. Ali comes from a controlling and traditional Muslim family. Village prejudice and family tradition interfere with the budding romance, but love wins in the end.

My mom said, “The Pettigrew book was fun. It’s nice to read a “light” one for a change, and it did keep me interested.”

Baby sister said, “I thought the author tied up the ends (especially the relationships among the club members and “friends”) a little too neatly. I was expecting more conflict. But, a pretty good read.”

I, of course, had to complain a bit, although it’s not really a complaint as much as an observation. The book implies that love conquers all, but also tries to give lip service to the idea that sometimes love is not enough. I especially thought that the author glossed over the religious differences, even though there is an interesting discussion between Major Pettigrew and the village vicar:

“All I’m really trying to tell you is that I see people get into these relationships—different backgrounds, different faiths, and so on—as if it’s not a big issue. They want the church’s blessing and off they go into the sunset as if everything will be easy.”

“Perhaps they’re willing to endure the hostility of the uninformed,” said the Major.

“Oh they are, said the Vicar. “Until it turns out the hostility is from Mother, or Granny cuts them out of the will, or friends forget to invite them to some event. Then they come crying to me.” He looked anguished. “And they want me to promise that God loves them equally.”

“I take it he does not?” said the Major.

Of course he does,” said the Vicar. “But that doesn’t mean they’ll both be saved, does it? They want me to promise they’ll be together in heaven, when the truth is I can’t even offer both a plot in the cemetery. They expect me to soft-pedal Jesus as if he’s just one of many possible options.”

“Sort of like a cosmic pick-and-mix?” said the Major.

“Exactly.” The Vicar looked at his watch, and the Major got the distinct impression that he was wondering whether it was too early for a drink. “Often, I think, they don’t believe in anything at all and they just want to prove to themselves that I don’t really believe anything either.”

So Major Pettigrew, with his “cosmic pick-and-mix” analogy, seems to understand and even acquiesce to what the Vicar is saying, but then on the next page the Major feels estranged from the Vicar because of his stand and “felt no rage, only a calm and icy distance.” And Major Pettigrew proceeds to ignore everything the Vicar has said, without really coming up with any justification or answer to the Vicar’s warning, in order to pursue his relationship with Mrs. Ali. The Major and Mrs. Ali face opposition from her family as well as from the village, but they push on, ignoring their religious and cultural differences.

I just don’t think people who really believe something about family responsibility and about God can ignore their deeply held convictions without some sort of self-justifiction or change in beliefs. Major Pettigrew, especially, is portrayed as very conservative and resistant to change, and it seems he would face more of a cognitive dissonance over culture and religion as he works through his feelings for Mrs. Ali. But his main issues are the disapproval of the villagers and the difficulties with Mrs. Ali’s family.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting that in a post-modern romantic novel in which the main point is that we should overcome all of our prejudices and allow love to conquer all, the author shows an awareness of the difficulties that such a “tolerant” view holds for people who actually believe something specific—even if she doesn’t allow her protagonist to think about the difficulties of tolerance for very long.

I picked our book club selection for November, Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me by Karen Swallow Prior.

I said in Part 1 of this series that I would talk about Moby Dick and Gulliver’s Travels in relation to Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos in Part 2. But either the conference itself or reading half of Lost in the Cosmos or something else has made me longwinded and rambling, more so than usual, and I am just now getting to the part in which we consider Melville and Swift and Percy and Kierkegaard and many other arcane and enigmatic writers and subjects.

Bear with me. This post may be even more disjointed and meandering than usual.

One panelist noted that Ishmael in the Bible was exiled to wander in the desert. He drew a parallel to Melville’s character Ishmael who chose self-exile to the sea and Walker Percy’s “self” who is lost in the cosmos. Then he also said that Melville’s detailed and scientific description of the whale does not encompass and define the whale completely. The meaning of Moby Dick is something more than the accurate and exhaustive minutia of whales and whale-hunting that Melville treats us to in his tome, which is really half-novel, half nonfiction treatise on whales and whaling, and half philosophical thought experiment similar to the ones Percy provides in Lost in the Cosmos. Similarly, Percy says that man is more than the sum of his scientific parts:

“The peculiar predicament of the present-day self surely came to pass as a consequence of the disappointment of the high expectations of the self as it entered the age of science and technology. Dazzled by the overwhelming credentials of science, the beauty and elegance of the scientific method, the triumph of modern medicine over physical ailments, and the technological transformation of the very world itself, the self finds itself in the end disappointed by the failure of science and technique in those very sectors of life which had been its main source of ordinary satisfaction in past ages.”

Next we move on to Percy and Swift. Did you know that Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels, was an Anglican clergyman? I didn’t. Swift and Percy were both fascinated with Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, another “lost in the cosmos” kind of guy. The book Lost in the Cosmos is a parody of self-help books in general, a satire of modern culture, and a portrayal of the predicament of man in his lostness. Gulliver’s Travels is a parody of the then-popular travel narrative, a satire on politics and politicians of the time, and a portrayal of the predicament of man in his lostness. My favorite quotation from Gulliver’s Travels (which was not quoted at the conference):

“I am not in the least provoked at the Sight of a Lawyer, a Pick-pocket, a Colonel, a Fool, a Lord, a Gamester, a Politician, a Whore-Master, a Physician, an Evidence, a Suborner, an Attorney, a Traitor, or the like: This is all according to the due Course of Things: But when I behold a Lump of Deformity, and Diseases both in Body and Mind, smitten with Pride, it immediately breaks all the Measures of my Patience.”

Percy’s goal, as with Swift, was to startle the complacent and present the reader with such dizzying changes in perspective that he is jolted into an awareness of his lost estate.

The presentations I’ve written about so far took place on Friday afternoon. Then, there was a reception and a keynote address by Paul Elie, “author of The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage, a biography of four American Catholic writers: Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Flannery O’Connor, and Walker Percy.” (Note the use of colons. Mr. Elie fit right into the overall “theme” of the conference.)

I can’t tell you much about Mr. Elie’s talk because I didn’t take notes, but I did enjoy it. And I would like to read his books, both the one referenced above and his new book called Reinventing Bach. It’s about how new technologies can enhance and even re-invent old art forms and works.

The reception itself was interesting, but I’ll save that, and the performance art that Eldest Daughter and I enacted on Saturday morning, for Part 5.