Notable Book of the Year 2016 - H is for Hawk

"Prisonface is terrified of life; he is a chameleon, a mirror, existing only through his reflection in the eyes of others."

H is for Hawk is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an obscure book. If you wind the clock back a year and peruse through any best books list from 2015, you'd find its name there, typically at the top.

The first time I attempted to read the book was in early February. I failed. On that balmy day, with the sun dazzling through the oily leaves of the tree in front of dorm 10, I propped the book open on my lap and spent the next ten minutes absorbing its premise. And even in the Ahmedabad sun - the unrelenting, unremitting Ahmedabad sun - I experienced a chill down my spine. I couldn't read it. Another nine months went by till the day I eventually sat down on a blustery morning in New York to read through it, an intensely rewarding experience which prompted me to write this review.

To explain why I couldn't find the courage to proceed in my first attempt, you must understand what the book is all about.

At the core of H is for Hawk is the question of how people make sense of their lives by putting their selves in a symbol that they hope represents everything they were meant to do (or be) in life. The symbol can be anything but it stands untarnished by compromise; unencumbered by bonds of love or pangs of suffering.

H is for Hawk is an autobiographical account of Helen Macdonald as she fights through the grief of losing her father. This is the essence of the story - a gut wrenching journey where the author spins hopelessly away into the void; struggles to stay afloat; closing down the world around her; a magnificent and ancient creature - a goshawk - her only company and Patronus.

To merely say the above, though, is to completely miss the point. H is for Hawk transcends genres - as a story about a young girl who only always desired to fly with majestic birds of prey; as a gorgeous handbook on falcons and the history of falconry; as a commentary on the quintessential English countryside; as a disturbing and piercing biography of a famous writer of the previous century.

By the way, a goshawk looks like this:

Reading H is for Hawk can be difficult. Helen's personal sorrow drips out of every page. It imbues a melancholic strain that lingers, even when you've set the book aside to get back to your own existence. At times, this affects you. There was many a time when I flipped through the pages to the back cover, to find myself staring at Helen's face and her brooding eyes. Eyes that seem heavy with sadness and a weight that looks almost impossible to bear.

The reader will persist. The prose is beautiful and Helen mixes up a story of depression and misery with the magical description of her Goshawk, Mabel. In one of the lighter moments in the book, she talks how giving a "tough" name for a hawk is a sure recipe for disaster.

"There's a superstition among falconers that a hawk's ability is inversely proportional to the ferocity of its name. Call a hawk Tiddles and it will be a formidable hunter; call it Spitfire or Slayer and it will probably refuse to fly at all."

Helen is a practicing falconer herself - becoming one was a childhood passion of hers. Helen teaches you to love what she loves and it all comes so naturally that you hardly notice it, and yet when you close the book you'll never see a bird of prey the same way again. H is for Hawk also has rich and intimate descriptions of the English countryside. Of course, the size of the demographic who enjoys this is understandably fledgling but I put it out there, just in case.

Darkness and despair doesn't merely run through Helen's own story. An important and intriguing element of the author's narration is the parallel account of T H White (author of the famous The Sword in the Stone series). White's life acts as a compelling counterfoil throughout the book, as he narrates a tortured existence and how he desperately attempted to tame his own goshawk, Gos. White, former headmaster of a school, a misfit since childhood carrying many ghosts of his past tries to find refuge in the training of his hawk. The book moves back and forth between these two solitary and anguished narrators as Helen tries to make sense of her own sorrow. It's a moving and powerful literary device.

Customarily, a book review must include perceived shortcomings. Allow me to end with one. Autobiographies by their nature can be one-dimensional and therefore it's a mark of how well Helen has finessed her story that you end up demanding (unfairly) more details about the other characters in her life, who have a fleeting presence, being part participants exiting the stage almost as soon as they enter it. I struggle to find more flaws in this exquisite book.

H is for Hawk is good literature that's accessible to all kinds of readers. It makes you realize, as all good books do, that our smallest and most private tribulations have been expressed by the great artists of language.

"You are exercising what the poet Keats called your chameleon quality, the ability to 'tolerate a loss of self and a loss of rationality by trusting the capacity to recreate oneself in another character or another environment.'"

The book is destined to be a modern classic, a story that leaves you with strength and hope, yes, but also little tidbits of enlightenment. For instance, Helen describes a tragedy as:

"...that it is the story of a figure who, through some moral flaw or personal failing, falls through force of circumstance to his doom."

H is for Hawk is a must read in every sense.

(This is the first in a series of 5 posts on the best books I read through the year. The first one (as you can see) is an Autobiographical work. The next in this series include non-fiction, fiction and comic books/graphic novels! Follow me at hamstersqueaks.blogspot.in)

Exams

There's something about exams that's hard to pin down with ordinary run-of-the-mill feelings. Stress? Fear? Irritability? That's the school boy essay writing set that'll come in along with the occasional "excitement" thrown in to speculate on some counter points.

As I study in the East Asian Library of my University with a huge stack of lecture chapters, problem sets, recitation notes, supplementary research papers, previous examinations and H Is for Hawk (a man has to read after all) I only feel numb.

The boring question, "Should I begin from the first chapter or start from the end," seems resolutely intangible. I don't feel like preparing for this. There's so much more fun in staring down the barrel with one Matrix move to save yourself. Being a PhD student does mean taking these exams seriously.

Back to work.

The Greats

I like to follow the actions and achievements of the Greats across all fields spanned by humans, in the present and from the past. What amazes me constantly is how they managed to balance out their focus across different areas of self-improvement. That kind of judgement is rare.

In the midst of the three M's, I am spending days and nights together to get there. Not sure if I will. Each small let-up costs a lot.

The dream lives on. 

A Gem from Zen Pencils

My set of "Favorite Zen Pencils cartoon strips" has just welcomed a new member.

Art has no limits

This is more or less exactly what I feel about achievement and, associated with that, the overwhelming sense of worthlessness when you realize how much there is to know and to do.

Change

For the first time in my life I am training to be properly good in a subject. And I have to cover a lot of distance. A lot of it. It reminds me of the time I was in the 9th grade and I had to teach myself more chemistry after a sizable jump in effort was demanded. Thankfully, things smoothed out eventually back then. Yet to see what happens this time.

Maybe it doesn't matter.

Ithaka, here I come.

(For the previous post in this series: http://haarisian.blogspot.com/2016/04/change.html)

Another Excerpt from She by H Rider Haggard

Been a couple of weeks since I read She but sharing one more (and last) excerpt:

' "Who is she?" I asked, as soon as I could take my eyes off the statue.
    "Canst thou not guess, oh Holly?" answered Ayesha. "Where then is thy imagination? It is Truth standing on the World, and calling to its children to unveil her face. See what is writ upon the pedestal. Without doubt it is taken from the book of Scriptures of these men of Kor," and she led the way to the foot of the statue, where an inscription of the usual Chinese-looking hieroglyphics was so deeply graven as to be still quite legible, at least to Ayesha. According to her translation it ran thus: —
    "Is there no man that will draw my veil and look upon my face, for it is very fair? Unto him who draws my veil shall I be, and peace will I give him, and sweet children of knowledge and good works."
    And a voice cried, "Though all those who seek after thee desire thee, behold! Virgin art thou, and Virgin shalt thou go till Time be done. No man is there born of woman who may draw thy veil and live, nor shall be. By Death only can thy veil be drawn, oh Truth!"
    And Truth stretched out her arms and wept, because those who sought her might not find her, nor look upon her face to face.
    "Thou seest," said Ayesha, when she had finished translating, "Truth was the Goddess of the people of old Kor, and to her they built their shrines, and her they sought; knowing that they should never find, still sought they."
    "And so," I added sadly, "do men seek to this very hour, but they find out; and, as this Scripture saith, nor shall they; for in Death only is Truth found."'

Now Reading: She by H. Rider Haggard

An excerpt offered without comment:

"However, I could do nothing for him, for we had all already taken a good dose of quinine, which was the only preventive we had; so I lay and watched the stars come out by thousands, till all the immense arch of heaven was strewn with glittering points, and every point a world! Here was a glorious sight by which man might well measure his own insignificance! Soon I gave up thinking about it, for the mind wearies easily when it strives to grapple with the Infinite, and to trace the footsteps of the Almighty as he strides from sphere to sphere, or deduce His purpose from His works. Such things are not for us to know. Knowledge is to the strong, and we are weak. Too much wisdom would perchance blind our imperfect sight, and too much strength would make us drunk, and over-weight our feeble reason till it fell and we were drowned in the depths of our own vanity. For what is the first result of man's increased knowledge interpreted from Nature's book by the persistent effort of his purblind observation? It is not but too often to make him question the existence of his Maker, or indeed of any intelligent purpose beyond his own? The truth is veiled, because we could no more look upon her glory than we can upon the sun. It would destroy us. Full knowledge is not for man as man is here, for his capacities, which he is apt to think so great, are indeed but small. The vessel is soon filled, and, were one-thousandth part of the unutterable and silent wisdom that directs the rolling of those shining spheres, and the Force which makes them roll, pressed into it, it would be shattered into fragments. Perhaps in some other place and time it may be otherwise, who can tell? Here the lot of man born of the flesh is but to endure midst toil and tribulation, to catch at the bubbles blown by Fate, which he calls pleasure, thankful if before they burst they rest a moment in his hand, and when the tragedy is played out, and his hour comes to perish, to pass humbly whither he knows not.

Above me, as I lay, shone the eternal stars, and there at my feet the impish marsh-born balls of fire rolled this way and that, vapour-tossed and earth-desiring, and methought that in the two I saw a type and image of what man is, and what perchance man may one day be, if the living Force who ordained him and them should so ordain this also. Oh, that it might be ours to rest year by year upon that high level of the heart to which at times we momentarily attain! Oh, that we could shake loose the prisoned pinions of the soul and soar to that superior point, whence, like to some traveller looking out through space from Darien's giddiest peak, we might gaze with spiritual eyes deep into Infinity! 

What would it be to cast off this earthy robe, to have done for ever with these earthy thoughts and miserable desires; no longer, like those corpse candles, to be tossed this way and that, by forces beyond our control; or which, if we can theoretically control them, we are at times driven by the exigencies of our nature to obey! Yes, to cast them off, to have done with the foul and thorny places of the world; and, like to those glittering points above me, to rest on high wrapped for ever in the brightness of our better selves, that even now shines in us as fire faintly shines within those lurid balls, and lay down our littleness in that wide glory of our dreams, that invisible but surrounding Good, from which all truth and beauty comes! 

These and many such thoughts passed through my mind that night. They come to torment us all at times. I say to torment, for, alas! thinking can only serve to measure out the helplessness of thought. What is the purpose of our feeble crying in the awful silences of space? Can our dim intelligence read the secrets of that star-strewn sky? Does any answer come out of it? Never any at all, nothing but echoes and fantastic visions! And yet we believe that there is an answer, and that upon a time a new Dawn will come blushing down the ways of our enduring night. We believe it, for its reflected beauty even now shines up continually in our hearts from beneath the horizon of the grave, and we call it Hope. Without Hope we should suffer moral death, and by the help of Hope we yet may climb to Heaven, or at the worst, if she also prove but a kindly mockery given to hold us from despair, be gently lowered into the abysses of eternal sleep."