I Read Jacqueline Harpman’s ‘I Who Have Never Known Men’.

This book’s mood suited its dampened language. Told from the perspective of someone too young to understand what it meant to be Alive before an Event, this book establishes a context for all of the things that we experience as human beings and how societal a species we are.

All things that Narrator was willing to experience was only able to be drawn from the memories of those she was surrounded by. She never knew what it was to be a part of a traditional family, a traditional home. When she asked her cell mates what those things were like, often they would laugh at her, keeping their memories holed up and unexplained. It grants context to how the rest of the first half of this book plays out:

• What is love?
• What are words?
• What is math?

All of these things are withheld from Narrator because the women with her choose not to teach her any of it because “there would be no point.” I wonder how much of this comes up in normal conversation in our real world between friends, between acquaintances, coworkers, lovers. How many questions are we asked that are chosen not to be answered? “Because there’s no point.” The point is communication, bonding, society, contribution, connection. When people are asking us these questions, there is always a deeper sense to it. It’s not only to understand the core concept. Sometimes we just want to hear a story told, to bond over a procedure, to gain insight into who we’re speaking with.

We want to know you.

And I think there’s a great deal to be said not only of the inability or lack of interest in explaining things due to a common draw for many people to retreat into themselves, but also because I don’t believe that they are willing to honor the memories of things as much as they “should”. Love, moments, memories, tasks, skills, cares, microjoys… it seems like all of these things become encased in a block of ice as people begin to take these things for granted. I’ve recently heard that whenever you tell a story, you’re just retelling your most recent memory of you telling that story, not the core memory itself. What’s to stop us from continuing to make these memories robust, warm, detailed, cinematic, endless, emphatic? Is it the fear of sharing? The practice of slow solicitude? Why? What are we gaining by withdrawing into our mind palace and hoarding the library of Who We Are?

As the book evolves, there is a small sense of tribalism that grows within the women and there’s a thawing of their hearts, of their shared experience. And through this, much time passes and we don’t truly get to see much of the day-to-day lapse of time. But I think in large jumps, we see that months and even years are passing. Knowledge becomes second to experience. Being out in the world and being able to tangibly apply it means more and more over time. And the same cycles renew. Those who are interested, engaged, invested in their lives tend to thrive and survive while others seem to fall behind and disassemble. Mentally first, then physically.

Act 3 of this book is such an interesting and marvelous turn of narrative. It is both the most alive and the most bleak of the entire piece, truly the candle burning at both ends. Narrator is thriving, finding strength and hope in their journey. She experiences growth, fortitude, learning deep, core lessons about herself, about the world as it was before she knew it, about the self she is and has become. In hindsight, she learns about the women she was with, the friends she made, she learns the Whys of what made them the way they were. Sadly, she finally understands the values of the memories they would not share with her, but also the humane reasons in which they kept them from her. Ultimately, this book ends with a note of senselessness. It puts the book of Humanity back on the shelf and shuffles the pile, reasoning that all of these things, all that was learned, all that was imparted, all that was ignored, all that was built and ruined and reckoned with has a mortality to it. There is an engine that continues to drive and our species is not its fuel and not its road, just some accessory to it.

Existence is absolute. The details within it and around it are semantic.

I recommend this book as it lends a grand stoic philosophy to who We are as a society and as a species, and I think that there are few things more interesting than the collective human experience as we engage with it, especially as we are deliberate about building and growing our place within it. This book does a great deal in terms of killing the ego, but also stoking the fire about what makes Us who We are, and gives bold reasoning to how we connect with those around us. It shines light on the temporary nature of people, of how storytelling might be the most robust and useful tool we have (second, probably to hands-on experience) and also is told in such a sad, off-the-cuff way, but in the face of tremendous beauty (and squalor). I find this is a coming-of-age story that creates a thick coloring book of blank space, and in giving us this perspective, it also reminds us to go back and bring a billion colors to the table because when we reach our own personal finale, all that might be left of us are the colors we chose and the people we allowed to see them. The story is only the memory of the last time we thought of it.