The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls

Jeannette Walls' memoir tells her story of growing up with a charismatic drunk father and an eccentric, neglectful mother.  While stories of neglect and poverty are not new, Jeannette brings an analytical eye to what caused the events in her childhood and uses it to deliver many refreshing insights.

When the kids were little, the father seemed quasi-behaved.  There was chaos in their lives because the father had a strong personality and would move from job to job and then from town to town, but for the most part he seemed to be working.  There was also chaos because their mother had a belief in free-range children that bordered on neglect.  But the kids' saw their lives as an adventure and for the most part, the family seemed happy.  Things changed when the family decided to move to the father's hometown to receive help from his family.  There, the father seemed to give up.  He barely worked and became the town drunk.  The mother and extended family were no better, and the kids were largely left to feed themselves.  While the kids banded together and stayed afloat, they did so with their family as constant obstacles.

While Jeannette never lets her father off the hook for his utter lack of responsibility, she clearly loved him.  He seemed to be the type of person who was very good at spinning tales to the point that he could often believe the lies he told himself.  I suspect he could always frame the bad things in the now as temporary and pretend that just around the corner there was a brighter future that in some ways felt more "real" to him than reality.

Jeannette seems less understanding of her mother.  On the one hand, her mother was often very rational and empathetic.  She taught her children to see all others as equals and to try to understand situations from the other person's perspective.  But it seems like these skills often stayed in the intellectual realm and didn't cross over in to the more personal, emotional realm- or if they did, they didn't lead to action.  Her mother could have seen how much her children were suffering and made choices to change that.  But instead, she largely stayed mired in self-pity about how miserable she was herself.  She wanted the kids to see her and their father's perspective, but felt less of a need to validate their perspective.

I think both of the parents' flaws are things that I see to some extant in most people, including myself.  I think it's easy to see your dreams of the future as having more reality than the negative aspects of your current.  I think it's easier to intellectualize empathy in theoretical situations than it is to feel and act on empathy in the emotionally agitating realm of one's own life.  I don't think most are in danger of making the choices that Jeannette's parents made, but I could see those flaws leading to poor choices- even if less dire ones.  I think her tale serves as a reminder to take the hard path.  Sometimes we have to do the things we don't want to in order to avoid things that we want even less.

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

I found this book extremely impactful.  It is the story of a kid who abandoned everything he knew in search of adventure.  Immediately after graduating college, Chris gave away all of his money and set out to travel across the US, experience the natural beauty, and see what life threw at him.  Along the way he met many people that he made a deep impression on.  Then he wanted to have a final adventure living off the land in Alaska for a few months.  Unfortunately, that adventure killed him.  The book goes through interviews with people he met trying to piece together his journey and motivations.

One of the things that struck me about this book was the effect Chris had on others that he met on the journey.  The book made him out to be a quiet guy who didn't seem particularly extroverted.  Yet one elderly man completely abandoned his old lifestyle and took to the road at Chris' prompting.  Chris was an idealist who was willing to do whatever it took to live by his ideals.  I think that is extremely rare and extremely potent.  I think it mostly exists in the young because they haven't yet had to make choices that might compromise those ideals.  The most finite resource we have is time, and there's just not enough of it to do everything we can imagine.  So people prioritize and pick some dreams over others.  They might pick a steady paycheck to support the family they've always wanted over their desire to live day to day, travelling the world.  Or they might make other compromises that while they understand, they can't help but admire and feel drawn to somebody who makes no compromises.

This book also left me with the question of what makes a life meaningful?  Chris absolutely led the life of his dreams.  But he died at the age of 24 with so much potential for life left.  He knew that what he wanted to do was risky and gladly took those risks.  But he didn't fully consider the impact they would have on others.  He was angry with his parents and utterly unconcerned about their feelings.  He was not angry with his sister but also seemed unconcerned about how his actions would affect her.  I don't know what I think.  I can't decide if his choices amounted to childishness and an unnecessary death or if his death was merely an unfortunate event that came from the very worthy pursuit of living life to the absolute fullest.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend to any who find the above questions worthy of exploration.