I have resurfaced, if only for the time being. Swimming and lunging up from the deeps of self loathing and pity, such horrible hallows to wallow in they are, and I carry a beautiful message to pass on. A message that has awakened me, and one I feel that can keep me walking with my eyes open, vigilant.
The title of Dave Eggers' new novel What Is The What summarizes an African creation story in which God has offered man the choice of everything he will need to be satisfied or man can choose The What. Man can either simply be content and trust in what God has offered him, or he can ask, "What is 'The What'?" This formidable dilemma has been presented to us all at one point in our lives, or even every day. Do we trust in what God has given us, or do we sense injustice and reject what God has laid out in front of us, seeking our own path?
Rarely am I moved by stories of human triumph. I'm not insensitive, but usually one man's triumph is another's defeat. However, the story of Valentino Achak Deng that unfolds throughout What Is The What is one so crushing and completely inhumane, but yet he somehow finds the resolve to remain human. After escaping genocide in southern Sudan, walking to Ethiopia and later Kenya, a refugee camp childhood and adolescence, Deng comes to America only to endure minimum wage jobs and be beaten, bound, and robbed in his own apartment as he struggles and fights to get an education. There is no triumph in end, only the matter that he has survived and that he is alive. After being forced to accept, not choose, The What on so many occasions, Deng finally becomes broken and humbled like no other person deserves, and grants God forgiveness for what he has done to Deng.
Somehow the book is a novel and Deng's autobiography at the same time. Both Eggers and Deng pledge to the authenticity of the experience, even if the facts are not exact. The credibility that Eggers has built in his devotion to literature and essential truths (through fact or fiction) that exudes in everything he has pledged his name and efforts towards, make me trust that this book is not some James Frey pseudo memoir, but one of truth, however you want to define it. In the weeks that I walked since I have finished the What Is The What, I have wanted to carry the book with me everywhere, to hold Deng's story close to my heart and be made visible for all those to see.
...then perhaps I shall read this. I've been rather adrift for awhile. Literarily-speaking, too.
Posted by: Brian Faust | January 05, 2007 at 04:48 AM