Silence. Complete, unnerving silence. Despite decades of searches for any form of life, intelligent or otherwise, out there in the cosmos, the Universe has but one message for us: No one is answering.
But that solitude is not a curse. The great expanse of the empty heavens above us does not carry with it an impossible burden of loneliness. It begets a freedom—a freedom to explore, to be curious, to wonder, to expand.
Conventionally, the rise of oxygen is seen as life triumphantly terraforming a passive planet. But we’re learning now that Earth was an active participant, and it took two more big lifts of oxygen over the succeeding 2 billion years before it reached breathable levels. So which was more responsible for oxygen’s rise on Earth: the evolution of life or the evolution of the planet? Nature or nurture? And does the same answer apply to all of the rises of oxygen in Earth’s past?
It’s a question beyond curiosity about our past, as it also affects how we might interpret signs of life on exoplanets.
Financial faith relies on the notion that everything works out for the best, irrespective of individual desires. “Trust” gives the reader opportunities to feel that same tension in narrative itself, to question the apparently smooth operations of fiction while still becoming invested in its drama. Through these indirections, Diaz leads the reader on a journey from abstractions—all that literature is capable of representing, including the markets and moneymen that rule the world—down to something small, private, and experiential. Perhaps “Trust,” in the end, makes a surprisingly un-postmodern case for what the novel can do. It can deliver discrete, luminous sensations. It can make one subjectivity clear at a time. And it can help you appreciate experience—your hand in front of your face—before it disappears.
The dedication page of MariNaomi’s new visual memoir, “I Thought You Loved Me,” reads, in meticulously rendered, chalk-colored cursive script: “For Chris Smith.” It’s a perplexing tribute, given that soon into the book readers learn that the author has trouble remembering just who this person was or what part he played in the story being told.
Claire Kilroy’s first novel in 10 years is a whole-body experience: reading it was, for me, like being elbowed through a rip in the space-time continuum back into the chaotic, exhausting, lovesick fog of the baby and toddler years. Anyone who has endured “the blurred days and the blurred nights” of early motherhood – or indeed anyone contemplating the possibility of embarking on them – be warned. You’re looking at a book-length panic attack.
You learn the alphabet from an eight-foot-tall yellow anthropomorphic bird that irrevocably imprints on you. Big Bird may as well be your dad.
You move on to bigger birds (i.e., dinosaurs) and take an intense interest in pterodactyls. This will become the basis for your atheism.
Your mom reads you the story of “The Ugly Duckling.” Your dad reads you the story of “The Ugly Duckling.” Your first-grade teacher reads you—not the entire class, just you—the story of “The Ugly Duckling.” You begin to read between the lines.