In the haunting opening of Andrew Klavan's The House of Love and Death a team of firefighters burst into a burning building and discover four murdered people. Staggered by the tragedy, they drag the corpses out of the house. It's only then that they spot a young boy, not yet ten, standing on the edge of the woods watching the chaos unfold. They dash over to ask him if he lived in the house. When he indicates he did they ask him who was inside, doubtless wondering if they'd found everyone who should be inside. The boy answers, "Everyone."
I was on vacation when I started writing this current series of essays. It was fun to jot down a few ideas on subjects to tackle and I already had most of the notes I needed to write my series on process so I felt I was in a pretty good place. I just had one issue to tackle. As a former journalism student I try to pull lessons on writing from the headlines of the day, since I find a lot of interesting ideas swirling in current events which we often overlook because events are much more pressing that fiction or history. Problem was, I didn't see a whole lot of interesting things in the news to riff on.
However the world is a big place. As I packed my bags and got on a plane to head home I figured I'd find something to write about in the headlines sooner or later. Things just keep happening, after all. So I left my phone on airplane mode and read The House of Love and Death until the last leg of my flight touched down. I didn't really pay much attention to the wider world until late that afternoon, when I was settled in and had groceries in my fridge again.
That was on the 7th of October, 2023. I didn't know it at the time but the latest round of interesting news was writing itself in Israel and Gaza.
In the days since, the opening of Klavan's latest novel and the brutal images of war in Israel have become inextricably linked in my mind. My initial instinct was to avoid writing on the topic. With the fog of war and the fierce propaganda swirling it felt like anything I could say would lack factual foundation and probably be irrelevant in a week's time. Beyond that, I'm inclined to meet these kind of events as Job decided to. Put my hand over my mouth and avoid speaking too soon, because the meaning of these kinds of tragedies is best left in the hands of He who is higher than I.
And I really didn't need to stare at that kind of thing all day.
Yet there's people everywhere who meet this kind of event with a need to scream and shout about the evils that must have brought these tragedies about. How we have to stop the violence somehow, else the world will end. How can we allow these things to spiral up and out of control when we have a duty, even an obligation to extract ourselves from the situation before we make everything worse? The patience of Job is a sin in the face of such duties, is it not?
This busybody hand wringing is what initially brought Job to my mind. It reminds me of his friends, who came to him as he mourned his family, and tried to browbeat him into repenting for imagined sins. I understand why. This is an aspect of human nature that's universal, a desire to seize control of a bad situation and rectify the failures that lead to the disaster before it brings about the end of the world. However, that is hubris of the highest form.
It was Klavan that made me realize that. You see, when those firefighters found that boy in the opening of The House of Love and Death they found someone who's entire life was destroyed. The house he was raised in was gone. His family, while far from perfect, still provided some measure of stability and he had a nanny who showed genuine care for him. These people were all that mattered to him. Thus, when asked who was in his house, he answers, "Everyone."
Outside of those walls who was there that mattered to him? No one. No one at all. For him, the world was already ended.
I have seen many pictures of that kind of devastation in the weeks since October 7th, each and every one of them as devastating to someone as that opening in Klavan's novel. It's one of the powers of art to help illuminate these kinds of experiences. That's why I now struggle to separate those pictures from that scene. It also showed me the very simple lesson for storytelling that I'd ignored.
People are very small and very limited. Although we rail against that and try to seize control of situations that stretch far beyond our grasp the fact is that this is more for our own comfort than out of any serious designs on changing these devastating circumstances. Like that boy discovered, the end of the world is far closer than we think. It's very easy to slip into panicked clutching at control or total despair when we feel that end closing in. Yet, at the same time, most of us will be surprised at the form that end takes.
These twin lessons are what I've taken away from the news this time – how easy it is to end the world, and how futile the boasting of those who claim they can avert it. I look back in some shame on some stories I've written along these lines in the past. I've always tried to address loss and death with a balanced and realistic view but the more I see these things play out around me the less satisfaction I take from my own efforts to depict them. I've yet to manage something equal to the heavy emotional hit I found in The House of Love and Death. That's alright, though, there will be plenty of opportunities to try again. Even if I don't get it right the next time around, it's not the end of the world.
With this we reach the end of my meditations on writing for this outing. As per usual, there will be a week off followed by the introduction to a new series that we'll be following for at least a few months. So I'll see you in February for the beginning of the Sidereal Saga. See you then!
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