'What in Most Lives Would Be Pure Deficit'

“[M]y life has been far less roiled by external events than most lives. The death of those dear to me I have usually been able to take in stride, although the last dozen years have become heavier and gloomier with such loss and the loss of the familiar, comforting world of which they were components.” 

Loss and pain are inevitable, regardless of whatever virtues we may possess, a truth never suspected by children, so we persist in thinking the good are rewarded and the bad are punished. It’s complicated because our nature mingles the good and the bad. While in Cleveland I spoke with two women and a man whose lives were radically “roiled by external events,” unlike my own. The man was severely wounded in Vietnam. One of the women was raped decades ago and tears came to her eyes as she described the attack. All managed to simulate “ordinary life,” whatever that means. They married, had jobs, two had children, all dabbled with but none descended into drug and alcohol addiction. They paid their taxes, committed no significant crimes and persevered.    

 

The late American novelist Richard G. Stern wrote the passage at the top in his final book, Still on Call, published in 2010, three years before his death at age eighty-four. I have a soft spot for Stern. His fiction is thoroughly human. It sometimes reminds me of his friend’s, Saul Bellow. He is devoted to the ordinariness of an American life. In the piece quoted above, “How I Think I Got to Think the Way I Think,” Stern writes for me:

 

“I have never been a soldier, never been in prison, never lived in a city being bombed, never been longer than three days without electricity and plumbing, have never lived under tyranny – except during brief lecturing or tourist visits -- never been threatened by arrest because of my opinions, and never been restrained from expressing political sentiments . . .”

 

In short, a typical American life, like my own. Cause only for thankfulness. Another American writer who embodies a similar sense of realism and gratitude for life in America is the late John Updike. I read most of his books as they appeared, starting in the sixties. Today, his novels mean little to me but I frequently return to his poetry, essays and criticism. and a handful of his early short stories. This is taken from “Spirit of ’76,” collected in the posthumously published Endpoint and Other Poems (2009):

 

“Be with me, words, a little longer; you

have given me my quitclaim in the sun,

sealed shut my adolescent wounds, made light

of grownup troubles, turned to my advantage

what in most lives would be pure deficit,

and formed, of those I loved, more solid ghosts.”