Hostages

A winter theme in three novels

After a few months of reading, holidaying and adulting, but (clearly) not writing, a theme has finally revealed itself, one that is coloring everything, now that I think about it.

That theme is Hostages. You heard me.

A hostage story begins with setting, and not just the Stephen King kind where Kathy Bates can break your kneecaps. Alas, all of us who’ve been trapped inside during this polar vortex, not to mention tending to a kid (or two) with a week long flu, know that hostage-y feeling that winter can bring.

Of course it is a figurative hostage that I’m analyzing here, the kinds of traps and quicksands we can all get stuck in. The fact is, if you look at the world through a certain lens, it’s easy to see that we’re all at least a little trapped in our circumstances.

However, my theme today relies on this upside: that it is the sanctity and sanctuary of our own mind, spirit and attitude that must fill our sails during such periods of emotional captivity.

So how do we go from hostage to hygge? Wishing for something different doesn’t help as much as working with what we’re given. So what do we do?

We play music and make hot chocolate and share good meals. Do we turn back to the sourdough days of Covid? Maybe not yet. But we hunker down. We try to make the most of it.

When I briefly lived in Chicago, I remember reading with rolled eyes an article extolling the virtues of Chicago winters. It hyped the work ethic, the fortitude of the Midwesterner. It is true, people raised in the cold are able to persevere, even to protest en masse - here’s to you Minneapolis - because they wear the right clothes and understand the assignment. They see the reality in front of them and are acting accordingly, in both weather wear and in the fight for human dignity. Admirable, to say the least.

I had a friend who, during a long illness, fought against what we called toxic-positivity. We talked of the joys found in embracing reality. Maybe it’s a little like swimming along a rip tide instead of against it. Maybe it’s crying when you need to cry and laughing when you need to laugh instead of forcing yourself into the tropes and tripe of so-called positivity.

But is this a sort of Stockholm Syndrome? I don’t know… aren’t they (Swedish?) privy to hygge too? Do we know too many psychological buzz words these days?

One of the first clips I saw of the unbelievably late, great Catherine O’Hara was a from the last episode of Schitt’s Creek. She’s talking to Alexis, her daughter, who is worrying that their lives are going to change once again.

Alexis: “I’m just saying that part of me feels like I’m almost glad we lost the money.”

Moira chuckles

Moira: “Well I’m happy you’re so well acquainted with your feelings but you wouldn’t be the first hostage to fall in love with your captor.”

Literature is littered with examples of this phenomenon. Beauty and the Beast has been thusly re-examined at length. And let me tell you that a re-reading of Wuthering Heights this past month has me looking at its Romantic label a little differently than I remember (to say the least).

The upcoming film adaptation is currently being held hostage in quotation marks, billed as “Wuthering Heights” because the Bronte organization got involved and the director was forced to say, “well, no real classic can truly be interpreted.” In essence it’s been fan-fictioned and colored in with dark electronic music and saturated in the color red. I assume they’ll ignore the book’s scenes where Heathcliff kidnaps his own child and then his niece and forces them to get married. Or the scene where his nephew is the bodyguard keeping young Catherine in her room. But no worries - once she realizes that he really loves her, she’ll be nice and fall in love with him too. After all, they’re all being held hostage by the setting of a lonely Moor, with no one but cousins to seek comfort in. Ah, L’amour.

Without meaning to, It turns out that I have been reading nothing but hostage stories.

When it comes to mastering one’s circumstances, there is no better book than A Gentleman in Moscow. It’s the story of a Russian Count who, after the Russian Revolution, is told that should he ever leave the Grand Hotel in which he resides, he will be shot. Relying on his upbringing, curiosity and gentlemanly comportment, he is able to navigate his altered life with dignity. There are so many references to Beauty, Art, Music, Architecture, Food and Wine, History and storytelling. An appreciation of all of these things are what sustains him. I am late to the game on this book and I’m wondering if might not be in my top ten books of all time. It’s got a vibe I wouldn’t mind staying trapped in for awhile.

And then the next thing you know, I’m reading Bel Canto, my second Ann Patchett novel which I sort of chose at random. Turns out, you guessed it, a hostage story, where the international group of captives and their South American guerrilla captors find themselves creating a little society of their own, happy to have had this moment to meet one another, and to be given a very bizarre gift of Time.

In each of these books, the hostage can only be “fixed” by one thing - Beauty. In Bel Canto, the voice of an opera singer, the memory of a family-treasured book of art are what sustains all of them. In A Gentleman in Moscow, his memories of a better life, travels, languages, music, philosophies all give him a rich and lucky life. Even Wuthering Heights is fixed by the Beauty of the Spring and a love, however ill-begun, is made possible by the secluded enjoyment of books.

We’re all just really captives here. We are “trapped” if we decide to look at it that way. Trapped in our decisions or our mental loops, our memories. Some who we love are slowly being trapped in their minds, in dementia that takes them out of their bodies to distant shores. This is a trap that is hard to bear witness to. Some have steady, clear minds, trapped in bodies that just don’t want to work the way they used to. Adaptation is one survival trick. The other is really just a reliance on Beauty and an ability to conjure it up by what we make today or what we remember from yesterday.

So here we are, collecting and redistributing things of Beauty that make life fulfilling: furniture and recipes and rooms, artwork and graffiti, records and restaurants, playlists and plays, vacation spots and coffee shops and great conversations.

What are you appreciating? How is it getting you through this winter?