I spent a substantial proportion of last month enjoying a summer holiday in Cornwall walking sections of the South-west Coast Path (see ‘The Salt Path’ on August 14^th, 2019), sampling local beers and reading books.  The books were mainly fiction.  So it should be no surprise that a recurring theme in the books was relationships because no one exists independent of their relationships with others.  This was very apparent in the first two books I read in Cornwall: ‘River East River West’ by Aube Rey Lescure about the interface of modern Chinese culture with American colonialism and exceptionalism in the context of parenthood and teenagers growing up; and in ‘The Crooked Plow’’’ by Itamar Vieira Junior, a horrific, heart-warming and, for me educational, family saga in the face of brutal exploitation of former slave communities in Brazil.  However, as I read deeper into the pile of holiday reading, a theme of meaninglessness started to emerge.  A hint appeared in ‘Scaffolding’ by Lauren Elkin when one character says, ‘I have always taken great comfort in the chaos of the universe, that nothing is meant to be and History means nothing but what we decide on its behalf.’  It started to crystallize, at least in my mind, when I read ‘How Life Works’ by Philip Ball who referred to Wienberg’s version of a universe without purpose or meaning before discussing at length that there is no blueprint or plan for life and that our genome contains the instructions that allow our cells to make between eighty thousand and four hundred thousand proteins but our cells decide when,  which and what quantity of each protein to produce as a consequence of their relationships with their neighbours and the environment.  However, in ‘Orbital’ by Samantha Harvey, a novel set in the space station orbiting the Earth, the meaningless of our lives is boldly stated: ‘We matter greatly and not at all. To reach some pinnacle of human achievement only to discover that your achievements are next to nothing and that to understand this is the greatest achievement of any life, which itself is nothing, and also much more than everything.’  This sentiment was re-iterated succinctly in ‘Your absence is darkness’ by Jon Kalman Stefansson, as ‘We come out of nowhere, disappear into nothingness, and, in the end, everything is erased‘.  There was a brief respite when I read ‘Slow Productivity’ by Cal Newman who encourages us to give ourselves time to produce something great, citing Isaac Newton’s ‘Principia’ and ‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac; however, I hardly expect to leave such works for future generations so I was not much cheered.  The meaninglessness of life reappeared in ‘Baumgartner’ by Paul Auster, in which a semi-retired professor is writing an essay about Kierkegaard, the existentialist philosopher, and describes his obligation as a professor ‘to ask good questions about what it means to be alive, even if he knows he will never be able to answer them.’  In the last book I managed to finish before we left Cornwall, ‘Close to Home’ by Michael Magee, a leading character decides to steal a copy of Knut Hamsun’s ‘Hunger’ from a bookshop because it was an existential novel with an afterword by Paul Auster, whose last novel I had just read, and foreword by Jo Nesbo, who’s crime thriller, Redeemer, I had read earlier in the holiday but had not yet managed to weave into this post! Perhaps someone had carefully selected my summer reading to ensure that I got the message that all victories are trivial, all wealth is valueless and that happiness is to be found in our relationships with others.  Alternatively, all of these books were published in the last twelve months so maybe all of the authors were possessed by sense of meaninglessness induced by the current geo-political situation.

BTW the only book I read on holiday that I did not manage to mention above was ‘The Premonition’ by Banana Yoshimoto – a beautifully written short novel about relationships and loneliness.

The Books:

‘River East River West’ by Aube Rey Lescure, Duckworth Books, 2024.

‘The Crooked Plow’ by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated by Johnny Lorenz, Verso Books, 2023.

‘Scaffolding’ by Lauren Elkin, Penguin Books, 2024.

‘How Life Works’ by Philip Ball, Pan MacMillan, 2024.

‘Orbital’ by Samantha Harvey, Grove Atlantic Publishing, 2024.

‘Your absence is darkness’ by Jon Kalman Stefansson, translated by Philip Roughton, Hachette, 2024.

‘Slow Productivity’ by Cal Newman, Penguin Books, 2024.

‘Baumgartner’ by Paul Auster, Faber & Faber, 2024.

‘Close to Home’ by Michael Magee, Penguin Books, 2024.

‘Redeemer’ by Jo Nesbo, Penguin Books, 2022.

‘The Premonition’ by Banana Yoshimoto, translated Asa Yoneda, Faber & Faber, 2023.