It's as Great as you Make It

I had a few days off this week, with boys. Primo read Stephen King (his first!--of many, I am sure, he's totally into series), Secundo continued to swim in the Harry Potter soup (he's been continuously reading and/or listening to this series for over a year and a half), and I read two very different books: Peter Mehlman’s It Won’t Always Be This Great, and Rudy Wiebe’s Come Back.

These authors each represent a specific cultural perspective—Mehlman is Jewish, Wiebe is Mennonite. And both authors have a unique voice: Mehlman’s is humourous and modernly ironic (he was executive producer of Seinfeld, and claims to have spawned some iconic sayings, such as “yada yada” and “double-dipping);” Wiebe is a big gun in Canadian literature, an intellectual, and not at all, in the least bit funny.

At first read the two books couldn’t be more different. But, surprisingly, they’re actually about the same thing: parenting, loving, living, loss, grief, fear, regret, aging, religion, dying, death— (ha! what else is there?)

But though the themes may be similar, the delivery couldn’t be more different; in fact they are radically unique: Mehlman uses humour, Wiebe, tragedy. And I’ll let you guess which one I’d rather read.

Without getting into a full-on description of Mehlman’s plot (and it believe me it’s layered, complex, twisted, interwoven, and fabulous!—okay, I’ll say this: on impulse an otherwise law-abiding podiatrist culturally Jewish family man in New York City who adores his wife (that’s a very nice twist!) and kids throws a bottle of Kosher horse-radish through the window of a teen girl fashion store owned by an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, thus unleashing the forces of anti-semitism and black humour . . .  told you it was fabulous) I will include a number of excerpts which nicely show you what I’m talking about (after I say a few more words about tragedy).

In Wiebe's book a man at the end of his life examines the tragedy of his son's suicide. The book is richly written, scrupulously detailed, amazingly complex--there is absolutely no question that it's a piece of literature. 

What I'm saying is, shit happens to all of us, can’t argue with that. And to me, the genius of our life is what we do it: you can shit and get off the pot, you can be in the deep shit, you can throw the shit at the fan, you could eat shit, or you could wear a shit–eating grin.

So what determines what we do with our shit? That’s a whole nother book, right?

Wiebe and Mehlman nicely demonstrate how different people/cultures go about looking at their shit. Am I stereotyping or generalizing when I point out the tradition of Jewish humour, and mention that Mennonites are one of the few cultures on earth that don’t dance?

But then again, you only know what you know. So I guess I’m just saying, after a day of life, with all its joys and sorrows, I would rather spend my precious down time laughing at the foibles of humanity, rather than reliving and recounting (over and over again) the pain and the dreck.

So without further ado, here are just a few of Mehlman’s funny truths.

“But then again, the idea of leaving the planet a better place than you found it? How the fuck do you do that? The planet was a mess when Mother Teresa found it and a bigger mess after she died. So screw it. If not for my kids, I wouldn’t give a shit if the world ended tomorrow. At least I’d feel like I wasn’t missing out on anything.”

“Marriages live and die on white lies. When the white lies end, the marriage goes with them.”

“I remember reading that schizophrenia usually surfaces in the late teens or early twenties. Jesus, how depressing is that? It’s hard enough to keep your kids alive for the first eighteen years of their lives, not to mention sane and functional. Then, out of nowhere, your happy, slang-talking, well-adjusted kid is sitting in a dorm room and starts hearing voices? Come on! By fifteen you should be allowed to declare that your kid’s officially not defective.”

But no, the walk through the minefield never ends. Hell, the mere fact that a kid is born anatomically complete feels like something you’d need Penn and Teller to pull off. For that, your rewarded with a day of ragged relief, then you spend six or twelve months watching a human blob, during which you’re scared shitless about SIDS every night or wondering all day if you’ve spawned a vegetable...”

“I said, ‘You know, Alyse, if we got an apartment in the city and spent weekends there the kids could stay in school here but also experience life in the city.’ Alyse nodded, ‘They would live like kids whose parents are divorce.’ ‘Right. Imagine having all the benefits of being from a broken home while still having your parents together.’ ‘And just think of how smooth the transition would be if we did get divorced.’”

“All these years of marriage to the same girl and I never get over the mind-blowing sexiness of her absentmindedly walking around topless in front of me. Does she know she’s putting on the greatest show on Earth?”

“I’d look at random couples on the street and wonder: “Why don’t they get divorced? I’d hear people talk about how hard divorce is on the kids and think: Still? I’d think kids would have evolved to the point of being used to divorce. The stable family is what seemed to me to be hardest on the kids.”

“If God had a lick of intelligence and gave a shit about families, he’d have made us physically capable of screwing in one position and one position only... All He had to do was keep the possibilities for longing to a manageable number and He could’ve had a much easier time selling all the rest of His bullshit.”

“Maybe the real brilliance of our humanity is our ability to totally ignore our own survival instincts. Some stymied corner of our brain is trying to tell us we should worry about living through the day, but it’s outvoted by the rest of our brain telling us to worry about parking spots and credit ratings.”