This month, a meme entitled 'Non Fiction November' is all over bookstagram. I thought I'd jump in on it this year, starting with this classic.
MY THOUGHTS:
For a long time I've seen this celebrated as an inspirational classic. Goodreads calls it 'inimitable and graceful.' I realized not far into that I'd probably end up disagreeing. It's one of those cases, I feel, where the hype is misleading.
Lindbergh is the mother of a passel of kids and teens. She's taking time out by herself at a beach hut for a few weeks where she writes these reflections. As the book's framework, she compares various shells with corresponding stages of the generic woman's life. The two perfect halves of a double sunrise shell signify the shiny beginning of a romantic relationship; the rough, sprawling oyster shell represents those unglamorous years with kids living at home, when the mother's life seems to bulge in several different directions, and so on.
For a book raved about by so many, the shell metaphors strike me as forced and simplistic, more like a school essay than celebrated inspirational literature. Yet this was the top nonfiction bestseller for 1955!
What's more, Lindbergh's comparisons are sweeping generalizations, because women's lives don't follow the same trajectory. She also makes broad claims such as, 'females look inward and males look outward.' And she doesn't even collect all of those shells during this particular trip.
Yet despite my disillusioned impression, she does make some points worth pondering, especially in the light of almost 70 passing years.
It strikes Lindbergh that a short holiday is a bit like an ocean in time, and she expresses uneasiness at being alone. She says:
'The interrelatedness of the world links us constantly with more people than our hearts can hold. Our modern communication loads us with more problems than the human heart can carry. My life cannot implement in action the demands of all the people to whom my heart responds. Our grandmothers lived in a circle small enough to let them implement in action most of the impulses of their hearts and minds. We were brought up in a tradition that has now become impossible, for we have extended our circle throughout space and time.'
My reaction is, 'Wow, you've noticed this in 1955! Anne, you've no idea how crazy and teeming the world will turn with the introduction of the internet and social media.' She lived between 1906 and 2001, passing away just before our online era really took off. Now news from far and wide gushes onto our screens, we are mere finger clicks away from anybody in the world, who can rant about whatever pushes their buttons the instant they get triggered, and You-tubers are always asking us to 'like, share, and subscribe.'
I don't think Lindbergh has a real solution for this problem she'd already started to notice, because there really isn't a clear one. Her personal take-home is simply to focus on the precious small details of her life, the here and now, the drops that make up the ocean. If more people simply make it their goal to improve the things within their own domains, the world will have to get better.
Lindbergh realizes that her regular life is cluttered with too many things and activities, and not enough margins or empty space. We spread our desks with an excess of shells, she points out, where one or two would perfectly suffice. So she plants down her own flag with the likes of Henry David Thoreau and Marie Kondo, sandwiched in the century between each of theirs. This indicates that minimalism is nothing new. Yet avid collectors of the world, like my own daughter, claim that their quests to stuff shelves to overflowing fill their lives with a type of delight these austere teachers of simplicity know nothing about. So at the end of the day, it has got to be each to their own.
In Lindbergh's opinion, the perfect shape of our days resembles a dance or a pendulum, swinging back and forth between the 'particular' and the 'universal'; the first being viscera that comprises our individual lives with all its chat and chores, and the latter being vast, abstract blessings, such as the beach and stars that we all have access to. I guess that's her fancy way of saying that anyone can take time out from our personal daily grind to notice the glory of nature.
Finally, it begs to be said that Lindbergh and her husband, aviator Charles Lindbergh, were big celebs and media darlings of their era, both noteworthy for their multiple torrid extra-marital affairs among other things. I hardly feel she qualifies to address us in the guise of 'everywoman' or even as a person whose advice on marriage deserves attention.
I feel I might be expressing an unpopular opinion by panning this book, since it has received oodles of love over the years.
Ah well, love it or hate it, at least we may all agree it's fairly short and easy to get through.
🌟🌟½
