I love this book and I don't know why. I think I am less demanding of transcendent meaning in the stories I read and now I'm wondering what it is I am reading for. I think I just love stories about people surviving and trying to find love and connection. No, they don't succeed and yes that's sad. But I find Arthur's attempts to make connections compelling, even when he fails. And his self awareness that he was using his friend V as a diary. There was a period in my life when I wrote many many letters to many friends and some of them weren't even very close friends. And I think often I was just using people as a diary. I felt compelled to write and I wanted to make connections to people and I was lonely. And at some point I kind of realized that's what I was doing, that it wasn't about the actual person on the other end who was reading my letter. This was in the days before blogs existed and I think what I wanted was a blog, a place to put my thoughts where I could touch other people and have them read. I wanted an audience, but I didn't necessarily need a particular audience.
Anyway, there's something so human and vulnerable about Arthur's letters to V. And something so human and relatable about her vindictive publication of those letters. She's right to resent being used merely as an object, not a person. And then that comes full circle to Kirsten taking that book of letters as the only book she carries out of Toronto. (I forget where in the novel we learn that, I think it might be in a later section?) So Arthur becomes a kind of lifeline for her, a mentor, a human connection to her past and to the world that is gone but also maybe something.... more? Almost as if she, not V, becomes the intended recipient of those letters.
That book of Arthur's letters, written into the void, and the Station Eleven graphic novel, never published, product of Miranda's compulsive need to create... those and the plays of Shakespeare. Those are the texts we see having a life in the post-pandemic world. (And August's TV Guide.) And I think it's interesting that Arthur and Miranda, two people whose connection in life fell apart, are the two people whose lonely texts survive for Kirsten in the hereafter. In a way she becomes their spiritual child? They become her spiritual parents?
Is the act of writing the thread that ties the novel together?
What endures of Arthur isn't his acting, his films or his plays, but the lonely letters he wrote.
And the interesting thing about both plays and music is that they are ephemeral. Each performance is a work of art that exists in time and then is gone if it's not recorded--- and for most of human history there was no way to record them. The performance then lives only in memory. And the novel shows us a world where there is no longer a way to record them, and thus performance is once more the intimate act of connection that exists only for the duration of the performance and in the minds of the performers and the audience.
I think the novel is asking me to ponder the nature of art and what endures, what can be passed on and what exists only in memory. And also how fragile memory is when we don't have a way to record and pass on what we know. I think I remember someone noting that Kirsten has a memory gap, that she lost a year of her life that she can't recall. And that her memories of life before the pandemic are very flimsy. She doesn't really remember her parents at all. And this Arthur and Miranda are more real to her through their books than her actual parents.
Thank you. This was a valuable discussion. I had (arrogantly) passed judgment on Station Eleven because I thought the pandemic served no purpose in this plot: remove it and nothing meaningful changes apart from material conveniences. But I hadn’t considered that it was Mandel’s intention to put the lack of transcendent meaning into stark relief.
But what then is the purpose of putting Arthur at the centre of this book? I am looking for that to become clear by the end of the book.
To Heidi’s question as to whether there is anyone who loves each other.
Things ahead of where we are but the married couple who asks for care because the wife has been shot. Jeevan knows, by the way he asks, that he really loves her. It really stood out to me but I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because it’s supposed to be very different from the other relationships.
That’s a great point. I was also thinking of the other couples & families we meet in that section. I don’t want to spoil it too much by going into detail but it seems like there is real love there.
I really like everything Heidi is saying.
I love this book and I don't know why. I think I am less demanding of transcendent meaning in the stories I read and now I'm wondering what it is I am reading for. I think I just love stories about people surviving and trying to find love and connection. No, they don't succeed and yes that's sad. But I find Arthur's attempts to make connections compelling, even when he fails. And his self awareness that he was using his friend V as a diary. There was a period in my life when I wrote many many letters to many friends and some of them weren't even very close friends. And I think often I was just using people as a diary. I felt compelled to write and I wanted to make connections to people and I was lonely. And at some point I kind of realized that's what I was doing, that it wasn't about the actual person on the other end who was reading my letter. This was in the days before blogs existed and I think what I wanted was a blog, a place to put my thoughts where I could touch other people and have them read. I wanted an audience, but I didn't necessarily need a particular audience.
Anyway, there's something so human and vulnerable about Arthur's letters to V. And something so human and relatable about her vindictive publication of those letters. She's right to resent being used merely as an object, not a person. And then that comes full circle to Kirsten taking that book of letters as the only book she carries out of Toronto. (I forget where in the novel we learn that, I think it might be in a later section?) So Arthur becomes a kind of lifeline for her, a mentor, a human connection to her past and to the world that is gone but also maybe something.... more? Almost as if she, not V, becomes the intended recipient of those letters.
That book of Arthur's letters, written into the void, and the Station Eleven graphic novel, never published, product of Miranda's compulsive need to create... those and the plays of Shakespeare. Those are the texts we see having a life in the post-pandemic world. (And August's TV Guide.) And I think it's interesting that Arthur and Miranda, two people whose connection in life fell apart, are the two people whose lonely texts survive for Kirsten in the hereafter. In a way she becomes their spiritual child? They become her spiritual parents?
Is the act of writing the thread that ties the novel together?
What endures of Arthur isn't his acting, his films or his plays, but the lonely letters he wrote.
And the interesting thing about both plays and music is that they are ephemeral. Each performance is a work of art that exists in time and then is gone if it's not recorded--- and for most of human history there was no way to record them. The performance then lives only in memory. And the novel shows us a world where there is no longer a way to record them, and thus performance is once more the intimate act of connection that exists only for the duration of the performance and in the minds of the performers and the audience.
I think the novel is asking me to ponder the nature of art and what endures, what can be passed on and what exists only in memory. And also how fragile memory is when we don't have a way to record and pass on what we know. I think I remember someone noting that Kirsten has a memory gap, that she lost a year of her life that she can't recall. And that her memories of life before the pandemic are very flimsy. She doesn't really remember her parents at all. And this Arthur and Miranda are more real to her through their books than her actual parents.
Thank you. This was a valuable discussion. I had (arrogantly) passed judgment on Station Eleven because I thought the pandemic served no purpose in this plot: remove it and nothing meaningful changes apart from material conveniences. But I hadn’t considered that it was Mandel’s intention to put the lack of transcendent meaning into stark relief.
But what then is the purpose of putting Arthur at the centre of this book? I am looking for that to become clear by the end of the book.
To Heidi’s question as to whether there is anyone who loves each other.
Things ahead of where we are but the married couple who asks for care because the wife has been shot. Jeevan knows, by the way he asks, that he really loves her. It really stood out to me but I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because it’s supposed to be very different from the other relationships.
That’s a great point. I was also thinking of the other couples & families we meet in that section. I don’t want to spoil it too much by going into detail but it seems like there is real love there.