Jacqueline Carey & Death
16/6/04 00:22![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eredienKushiel's Avatar by Jacqueline Carey is a book about a prostitute. It is not, therefore, one that most people would normally think of picking up at the beginning of a week where two people one knows have died.
I am not most people, and I am glad I did.
The first person I knew who died is Professor Michael Powell, of the History Department of Bryn Mawr college. Not the best professor I have ever had, and awful at assigning a manageable volume of work. But so enthusiastic about his subject, and so kind. And the only person who could compare 14th Century medieval french culture to Klingons and get away with it. Brain cancer.
The second person I know who died is a person I grew up with in elementary and highschool, a boy named Sean Brosseau. He was one of those people who blend into an insdistinguishable mass in highschool--people who you saw around in the halls but weren't your friends or enemies. In later highschool years, he did distinguish himself--he showed himself to be genuinely kind without an ounce of pretension. My fondest memories of him: Senior Picnic, strumming the guitar off-key even though he could play it on. The ecology class trip, where he proved that going in a 175 degree sauna with a tongue ring was a bad idea.
He died an undignified death, sleeping in the back of a car that was sideswiped. No one else was touched.
In the end, Carey's novel--especially the final one--celebrates life, in all its forms, and at its strongest and weakest points alike. It proves that there can be, at the end of pushing through pain, joy felt so strong that it eclipses everything else.
That's all I wanted to say for this evening. I am going to bed now.
I am not most people, and I am glad I did.
The first person I knew who died is Professor Michael Powell, of the History Department of Bryn Mawr college. Not the best professor I have ever had, and awful at assigning a manageable volume of work. But so enthusiastic about his subject, and so kind. And the only person who could compare 14th Century medieval french culture to Klingons and get away with it. Brain cancer.
The second person I know who died is a person I grew up with in elementary and highschool, a boy named Sean Brosseau. He was one of those people who blend into an insdistinguishable mass in highschool--people who you saw around in the halls but weren't your friends or enemies. In later highschool years, he did distinguish himself--he showed himself to be genuinely kind without an ounce of pretension. My fondest memories of him: Senior Picnic, strumming the guitar off-key even though he could play it on. The ecology class trip, where he proved that going in a 175 degree sauna with a tongue ring was a bad idea.
He died an undignified death, sleeping in the back of a car that was sideswiped. No one else was touched.
In the end, Carey's novel--especially the final one--celebrates life, in all its forms, and at its strongest and weakest points alike. It proves that there can be, at the end of pushing through pain, joy felt so strong that it eclipses everything else.
That's all I wanted to say for this evening. I am going to bed now.
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(no subject)
16/6/04 07:15 (UTC)I never know what to do with the deaths of acquaintances. When someone close to me dies, I go into full-out mourning, sob for three days straight, and reread _A Ring of Endless Light_. But with someone I knew for a while... I don't know.
Next time, I shall try Jacqueline Carey, I suppose. Thank-you.
--R
(no subject)
17/6/04 08:51 (UTC)-Ghost
(no subject)
17/6/04 17:19 (UTC)