I picked up Truth and Beauty, by Ann Patchett because I liked the title. I was looking for something to read while on register duty at Borders, and fast. I knew of Ann Patchett (who working in a bookstore at that time was not aware of Bel Canto?) but had never read one of her books; I simply had/have no interest as her as a fiction writer. But I read the blurb for this book, and realized it was about Lucy Grealy, who was recognizable for two reasons; I had read her book, Autobiography of a Face, sometime in the mid-nineties after its publication, and I remembered having seen Grealy's obituary after she died. I thought, at the time, that Grealy's story was one of the most tragic I could imagine, but the truth is, her life was a great deal more tragic than I ever could have predicted.
The books is lyrical, and I don't know why. I wouldn't be able to say that I think it's because Patchett is such a good writer; it might be because Grealy was such a lyrical person that it comes through in the book. I found a comment thread about the women, as friends, on a blog (through Google), and I was surprised by how many people saw it differently. So much vitriol directed at Lucy, for being selfish, for being small, for being self-absorbed. And never once did I have thoughts that even remotely faulted Lucy or Ann, for any single episode in the book. I don't excuse Lucy because her life was hard; it was, and I can't imagine the body image problems that you have when you effectively have a changing face. I don't excuse Lucy because she was a talented artist; she was, and it's good that people like her can exist. I don't have to excuse Lucy at all, in fact, because there is nothing to excuse her for.
On a good day, none of us are selfish and self-absorbed, and we don't have to consciously think about our happiness. But mostly, I think all of us spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about ourselves, and who we are. Why we're alone. Why we're depressed. Why we want things we can't seem to get; why we want more, better when we get the things we thought we wanted. Perhaps I ascribe these traits to all humans because I have them myself, but I think that in some ways, these things must be universal. We're complex, us people, and Lucy and Ann are no different. Ann wasn't always the white knight, riding in and saving Lucy, and Lucy wasn't always the demanding child. No situation is that black and white, no matter how it appears on the page.
Maybe I love this story so much because I understand that there are relationships that feel sometimes too difficult, too hard to forgive, but are harder to live without than with. When Ann says that in the end, if it was a choice between no Lucy and Lucy with heroin, she would take Lucy with heroin no matter what, I understand that statement. I'm not sure why; I'm not exactly sure why Ann would put up with the shit that she somehow put up with, except that something in me understands the reward of being in a friendship like that. Maybe I think that being in a relationship with me is something like a lesser degree of that. I'm not self-destructive, not really, but I always imagine that being friends with me takes effort, and that nothing with me is easy. Or how about this: My relationship with myself takes effort, and I'm not sure if most people have that problem.
Yet, I also can't understand the impulse to be self-destructive; or to have a productive friendship with a self-destructive human being. I ended my first major romantic relationship because the person was an alcoholic and self-destructive in every way possible. I would say that a couple of the friendships of the past few years that I've been mourning the death of could have ended because of what I perceived as the self-destructive nature of the other person. Maybe I've never had the kind of friendship that Lucy and Ann had, and if I had, I would know the circumstances that leads one to choose any over none. I suspect that in one of my broken friendships, it wasn't my feelings about the self-destructiveness of this person that led to the "break-up" and that I understand Ann and Lucy very well. I understand that no matter how self-destructive this person was, I still want them very much in my life; that I'd choose that situation over this one now.
It's not hard, then, to find something in this book to identify with. I read it twice (recently, in honor of the paperback version) and I could probably start it again tomorrow and find something new, something illuminating in the book. It's just that good.
Edited to add: I'm not sure I could be friends with Lucy Grealy. But I doubt that Ann wrote the book so that everyone would suddenly wish they had been friends with Lucy. After all, I know nothing of the magic of being friends with Lucy, or the heart-break, for that matter. All those people judging Lucy are really judging that they couldn't be friends with Lucy, and so by extension, that no one should have loved Lucy THAT much. She wasn't worth it to them; they never knew her, so that can't have known the exquisite joy (and pain) that Lucy brought. It's unfair to judge thusly.
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