Science (non) Fiction

The History of Love

I finished Nicole Krauss’s The History of Love this week, and it’s been really hard for me to think of what I wanted to say about the book. It was very good, beautifully written and very compelling – it took me a while to read, but that was mostly because I read it in spurts and missed several days of reading completely, and that’s actually probably the best way to read the book, because there are so many confusing twists and turns that reading it in dribs and drabs would make it even more confusing. The story switches narration mainly between Alma, a young girl dealing with the death of her beloved father, and Leo, an old Polish man who is seeking desparately not to disappear into oblivion. Their stories become connected in a way that seems almost impossible at the beginning, tied in with the fate of a novel written fifty years earlier called ‘The History of Love’.

What Kari said about the book being about survival really resonated with me, as that seemed like the biggest theme of the book – Leo’s concern with not disappearing, Alma’s attempts to become prolific at outdoor survival, Leo’s drive to make sure that part of himself is left behind, it’s all about survival, making sure that the life we lead leaves at least a small mark on the world when we die, that something is different because we were alive. And the book communicates that powerfully, I think.

My favorite part of the book, however, is early on during one of the exerpts from the novel ‘The History of Love’ (confusing that that’s the title of both ‘books’). The author is talking about the ‘Ages’ throughout history, and in this part he’s talking about the Age of Silence, when communication was only through gestures and there was no spoken language developed.

During the Age of Silence, people communicated more, not less. Basic survival demanded that the hands were almost never still, and so it was only during sleep (and sometimes not even then) that people were not saying something or other. No distinction was made between the gestures of language and the gestures of life. The labor of building a house, say, or preparing a meal was no less an expression than making the sign for I love you or I feel serious.

I thought that was an amazing statement of the concept that love is about action, that it’s less about feelings and emotions and more about the things we do that let people know that we love them. Of course it’s much easier to say the words ‘I love you’ but to actually show someone that love means something more than words is much more difficult, but also more worthwhile in the end.