February 2020

Nicholas Buccola’s The Fire is Upon Us is one of the best books I have read in a long, long time. Building a historical landscape that is as informative as it is spellbinding, Buccola uses The Fire to reconstruct the parallel paths of James Baldwin, the literary lion of the civil rights movement, and William “Bill” Buckley, the father of American conservatism, toward their incredible climactic convergence – a historic televised debate, dated February 18, 1965, at the Cambridge Union. Charting Baldwin’s and Buckley’s lives from boyhood to adolescence to adulthood (Baldwin was 40 at time of the debate, Buckley 41), Buccola artfully stages a powerful juxtaposition, framing Baldwin as a “moral revolutionary” and Buckley a recalcitrant traditionalist, stuck in a sluggish, racially-rooted mindset of pacification and perpetual delay. Buccola’s retelling of their debate at Cambridge is downright riveting — it made me laugh, cry, and literally JUMP for joy.

What I think is perhaps most compelling about Buccola’s book, however, is the lasting resonance he ascribes to Baldwin. Through his novels and essays, Baldwin conceptualized a pathway for an America inured by gridlock, bigotry, and miscommunication, embracing a future marked instead by “universal human dignity.” He warned that, as human beings, we too often deny ourselves and others the truth and freedom this dignity can afford; we too often define our lives by the false power and “mythology” of things that separate us from our fellow man.

This is something all of us do and will continue to do because, as Baldwin reminds us, we are all human. Truth will come, however, when we try to focus on our shared humanity. It is a lesson that rings as true today as it did in 1965, and I thank Buccola for the incredibly timely and imperative reminder.

In this Cinderella-inspired novel, Ann Patchett tells the story about two siblings, Maeve and Danny, who are abandoned by their mother and forced to live under their cruel and vindictive stepmother. After the death of their father, Maeve and Danny’s stepmother exiles them from the titular “Dutch House,” a colossal mansion outside of Philly, resigning them to lives of comparative hardship and poverty. As a reader, I felt incredible sympathy for Danny (the narrator) and Maeve, though I grew to really dislike them. As the book went on, I found myself increasingly frustrated by their unwillingness “to be dislodged from [their] suffering.” Their victimhood became something of an obsession, driving every decision and perception while keeping them locked in a limbo of purgatorial cowardice, indecision, and resentment.

That said, I couldn’t put the book down — Ann Patchett is just that brilliant writer. As in Commonwealth, she explores so many fascinating themes in the Dutch House, from childhood trauma and sibling relationships to divorce, Catholicism, and the conditionality of forgiveness. And as in Commonwealth, she is able to make the ordinary absolutely enthralling, rendering relatability a superpower with which to reflect upon the profoundest of questions: Does our call to help one another encompass or supersede our familial obligations? Is there a way to truly be free of one’s past? And why do bad memories tend to always overshadow the good ones?