Holiday reading: the freedom to get sand between the pages of my trashy pot-boiler (yes, I gave in and bought that one), gallop through some light-weight romp from Virago, then a serious effort from Coetze - and finally settle down with Alex Wright's Meanings of Life on behalf of sof readers. Maybe the context was wrong, but I can't guarantee that a book which rather dampened my seaside spirits will raise anyone else's.
It’s perverse but true that creative works which are bent on showing ‘hope’ or ‘a way forward’ sometimes only succeed in pointing up the depression and despair which their authors have encountered. This paperback’s cover shows a green tree bravely flourishing in a field of rocks – but green for how long? Like the writing in this book, the image lacks the vital quirkiness and humour which make Dali’s impossible, barren landscapes bearable and interesting.
Alex Wright tries supremely hard not to write Making Some Sense of My Life, despite including a great deal of autobiographical material. On the other hand, the profundity of the hurt he has suffered personally cannot help but underpin the whole endeavour. In brief, we learn that he lost his job as a successful publisher in the field of religion as a result of writing Why Bother with Theology? (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2002). Although this initial project fell foul of his employers and the religious establishment generally, it was, Wright gratefully records, enthusiastically reviewed in sof by David Boulton.
As far as the Sea of Faith Network is concerned this is not the happiest starting point for his latest book. So many of us have lost jobs and sponsors, or on principle given up ‘promising’ careers with substantial pensions and found ourselves in the wilderness of unemployability: surely we don’t need to be dragged again over such rocky ground, even in the exercise of empathy? To be fair, this literary record of a similar body-blow is intended not to be about ‘exorcising demons or lamenting that life can be unfair . . .’ but about ‘reflecting the cathartic time through which the author has passed.’ In that it is put together with integrity it is worth attention, and may for some readers aid the healing process: how and when we can begin to take heart is different for everyone. Without resorting to an astringent ‘Get over it!’, however, I feel more affinity with Cupitt’s advice to ‘leave that country, emigrate’, and Holloway’s exhortation to extricate ourselves from the grip of ‘The Force’ – whatever damaged us, dragged us down.
The book’s sections (Self and World, Loss, Love, Fulfilment) certainly aim to impose some coherence, tracing rainbow through rain. The author is impressively well-read, and the notes and bibliography are carefully presented. There could be valuable material here for bereavement counsellors and for the bereaved themselves. The passages Wright selects from prose and poetry are discussed with considerable flair for lit.crit., but so much quotation on top of so much autobiography makes for an unsatisfactory anthology, leaving little room for the main thesis. ‘This has turned out not to be a decisive or tightly compartmentalised book, but has emerged . . . impressionistically and unsystematically as a variety of categories and topics have come into frame one by one, like hikers looming out of the mist, only to disassemble like footprints washed away by the tide .’ Quite so, but what about the ‘meanings’?
Things do come together better in the last section (Fulfilment) and the Conclusion, but by that time too many potentially interesting questions have been touched on and left hanging: pantheism as an alternative to secularism, what justice entails, what are our duties to ourselves, each other and the planet in whatever age we decide to call the present moment. ‘My reflections on “meanings of life” have taken the form of a cycle of meditations on my own memories’ . . . ‘ I have wanted to discuss issues open–mindedly and non–prescriptively’ . . . agreed, but he has to continue, ‘and to connect with a variety of metaphysical material like water running over stone’. At this point one could perhaps hope for a little more precision. Wright’s aim to ‘connect’ with as many people out there as possible could backfire if nobody finds here more than a glimpse of insight into their own personal, social or political concerns.
Personally, though, he might have achieved a ‘closure’ which will open doors in the future.
Alison McRobb is chair of SoF Steering Committee.
Meanings of Life by Alex Wright. Darton, Longman and Todd, London, 2005. 144 pages. £9.95. ISBN 0232524890.