Re: Read this after you've finished -- Northwest Nerds Bookclub

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Date Posted: 09:17:40 02/09/00 Wed
Author: Chris
Subject: Re: Read this after you've finished
In reply to: David 's message, "Re: Read this after you've finished" on 12:45:11 02/08/00 Tue

David, I appreciate what you're saying and I agree that this story could have been cut down to more of a novella, at the least. I likewise found the supporting characters flat. Part of it may be that I see that static, flat designation as the role for typical supporting characters. Unless one has 500+ pages it's impossible to round out more than one or two characters. Their traits become simple comparisons with or foils for those of the main characters.
Secondary characters also serve as a sounding board for the opinions and actions of the main characters. Now, I agree that these were not the most well-drawn characters and they often did uninteresting and inconsequential things, but a majority of novels don't have the time or space to delve beyond the superficial. On that note, I enjoyed her roommate and thought that she provided some interesting insights beyond her wild & crazy jewelery and t-shirts. I wish I had my book at my side so that I could reference them, but that's for another day.

To respond to your other point about Darwinism,while I'll disclaim the following as based on reaction versus established knowledge, I have some questions regarding your commentaries. You use words like "savagely opportunistic, or needless" when describing Schine's view of friendship. However, it would appear to me that the relationship is far from needless considering the fact that her ruminations on the friendship alone made up the entire text. Until the point where Jane met Martha, Jane wrote that she didn't know what loneliness was until she remembered what her life was like before Martha. (I wish I had the book with me)

More than her ill-fated (and evolutionarily more significant) relationship with her husband, it appears that their friendship was the most significant relationship of her life to date. Typically, following a failed relationship, people are still wont to talk about the other person endlessly; Jane never does this with her husband. Instead, she imposes her relationship with Martha on herself as well as others in much the same manner as she would a lost love.

I think that our observations of animals typically highlight the stripped-down characteristics of humans. That's why we find the Wild Kingdoms and what not entertaining. Regardless of a human's so-called intelligence, he or she is still governed by many of the same instintcts that govern the rest of the animals and insects of the world.

As noble as the thought of "sexual reproduction. . .involv[ing] giving only half of a genome in the interest of improving the next generation" is, one need only look at masturbation to realize that there's little nobility in relieving that need to get our proverbial "rocks off." There's little nobility or concern for future generations in self-loving, yet we do it because there is a deep seeded need that must be met.

Friendships also meet an immediate need for the majority of people. How else can you explain why people, who at one point were crucial to your survival, become extinct in your consciousness. I think that we are an instinctive animal and friendships are no different. We do what we must in order to survive. To survive we do need to form bonds with people. However, I see it as more like having a whole row of life preservers in a pool (pardon my metaphor, David.) You dive out there and try to swim. You go a little on your own and then grab on for dear life and you end up repeating this process until you make it across the pool. This process seems to be more for the individual(s) involved than for the greater good of humankind. I agree that it would be interesting, perhaps moreso, for Schine to focus on the genesis of relationships. Typically we have more control control over where a relationship goes than the circumstances in which we meet.

Damn, this is long. I have to get to work. I'll think about this whole issue. Thanks for your insights, David.

This is a mediocre book that would have been an
> excellent short story. The stockpiling of
> coincidences, the flat, needless secondary characters,
> and the magnitude of the main conflict suggest to me a
> smaller canvas that would connect the question of
> friendship to evolutionary musings and limit the
> coincidences to the Galapagos islands and Martha�s
> presence there. A single conversation between Jane
> and Martha would resolve the issues at hand. The main
> idea here has potential, and one of the few
> connections I had to Jane�s personality�I rarely felt
> like she was thinking, talking, or narrating like
> anyone our age�was that insecurity about change that
> has been especially pronounced for me in the last few
> years. I can�t speculate on my future adaptive
> instincts, but I think change has been so routinized,
> even ritualized, in the past that only now, in my
> mid-twenties, am I regularly surprised by the turns my
> life takes. And just like Jane, I�ve tried to make
> sense of them with high-flying theories. I like how
> Schine evoked that nagging inner voice. Still, I
> don�t know who would prefer 210 pages of it to a more
> succinct narrative that used the unique situation to
> shed light on a familiar sensibility.
>
> Part of my impatience with Jane�s ruminations stem
> from the narrow view of Darwin�s ideas and
> evolutionary theory. The metaphor of evolution seems
> to depend on a view of natural selection as fierce,
> individualistic, and opportunistic, and on a view of
> friendship as purposeless [�I wondered again what
> evolutionary value friendship could possibly hold.
> There are theories about cooperation, I know, but
> friendship is hardly that. I suppose it could be some
> remnant of parental love or sibling love or family
> love in general . . . Just a vestige, though . . .�
> (198)]. Schine uses those well-worked (and usually
> politicized) tropes about progress to explain the
> demise of Jane and Martha�s friendship: �The feud was
> genetic! Martha and I had inherited it! If this
> theory were valid, Martha had stopped being my friend
> because she had to.� (42). Even Martha explained the
> feuding Ritters and Wittmers as having �dutifully
> fulfilled their vulgar Darwinian destinies, struggling
> over territory, even over reproduction.� (105). And
> Martha, who was so admired by the other characters in
> the book, seemed the most �evolved�--if you take that
> to mean immune to the ebb and flow of relationships,
> well-adapted to her environment, and far from fretting
> about lost friendship.
>
> My understanding of evolutionary theory is a little
> less malevolent. My friends (?) who study life
> sciences tell me that most sociobiologists work hard
> to strip away from Darwinism the dogma that Schine
> buys into wholesale. Friendship and companionship are
> not residual, savagely opportunistic, or needless.
> They�re essential. That they ebb and flow doesn�t
> mean that they are undependable. The major
> transitions in human evolution have arisen through
> cooperation, not competition, as the dominant force
> (there�s a new book by Alison Jolly, Lucy�s Legacy:
> Sex and Intelligence in Human Evolution, that argues
> exactly that). Trust between friends and love between
> kin fuel evolution: sexual reproduction, for example,
> involves giving only half of a genome in the interest
> of improving the next generation (as opposed to
> cloning); in all of our evolutionary �progress,�
> children are still dependent on parents long after
> birth. Instead of looking to evolution to explain why
> friendships change or end, Schine might have used
> evolution to explain why they form in the first place.
> As frustrating as it is that Jane and Martha�s
> friendship ended, evolution explains virtually nothing.
>

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Replies:

Re: Read this after you've finished -- Sarah, 20:52:21 02/16/00 Wed