Bibliopath #14: In which we language ourselves free
Dear reader,
My favourite sentence this week was from Michael Ondaatje's The Cat's Table:
What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power. Nothing much of lasting value ever happens at the head table, held together by a familiar rhetoric. Those who already have power continue to glide along the familiar rut they have made for themselves.
The weight of these sentences find their value in comparison. The first two sentences are mirrored in syntax, like two dancers facing one another, opposite yet in concert. Notice the phrases that are slyly opposed: "what is interesting and important" compared to "nothing much of lasting value", the end phrases contrasted in a way that hints at what power actually is: a familiar rhetoric. The third sentence breaks rhythm into a single longer clause, mimicking the action it describes: gliding, albeit into a circular, self-made, rut.
The Cat's Table takes place on board an ocean liner in the 1950s, as a boy from Sri Lanka is put on board to voyage to England without family, or much direct adult supervision. For meals, he is seated with other loners and oddbods far from the Captain's Table: "'We seem to be at the cat's table,' the woman called Miss Lasqueti said, 'We're in the least privileged place.'"
It's a beautiful book, a coming of age novel that posits coming of age not as maturity but as an ability to see other stories than your own as true. And I could have picked any number of sentences to highlight. But the above was a reminder to me to continue to notice and unpick at the same rhetoric and refrains, to language our way free of those ruts.
In other news, I think the above is going to be the epigraph for the novel I'm working on.
And you, what have you been reading?
Best,
Guan
P.s. I've started a Slack community—a virtual co-working space for compassionate creatives. Let me know if that's something that you'd be interested in.