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Executive Times |
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2006 Book Reviews |
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Philosophy
Made Simple by Robert Hellenga |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Questioning The big questions that protagonist Rudy
Harrington ponders in Robert Hellenga’s new novel, Philosophy
Made Simple, face all readers. The same questions have been explored by
philosophers through the ages, about truth, beauty, life and death. In this
finely written novel, the answers that can come through literature shine when
compared to the struggles that can come through philosophy. Hellenga reprises Harrington, whom readers may remember
as the father of protagonist Margo from his 1994 novel The Sixteen Pleasures. Having had the perspective of one of his
three daughters in that book, we now get Rudy’s point of view, set seven
years later. Here’s an excerpt, from the chapter titled, “The River,” pp.
53-57: Getting ready to live is
easier than actually living, just as getting ready for a journey is easier
than actually going on a journey. Rudy was anxious to get on with Philosophy Made Simple, but there was
a lot to be done first. He replaced the uncomfortable invalid’s toilet and
seated a new one. He installed a shower. He bought a chain saw and, for the
woodstove, cut up a couple of dead mesquite trees and a small ironwood tree
that almost ruined the chain on his new Stihl saw.
He slapped a new coat of calc on the thick adobe walls, and he arranged and
rearranged the furniture when it finally arrived. There was no attic, no basement,
no closets, but there were cabinets in the old tack room in the barn, where
he stored his shotgun and fishing tackle, his Ampex
tape recorder, Helen’s slide projector, and the footlocker with his dad’s
magic stuff. He built bookcases in his study that had closed cabinets on the
bottom, where he was going to put Helen’s record collection,
and five adjustable shelves on the top. He didn’t have the pattern for
Helen’s Florentine curve, but he didn’t need a pattern; that curve was fixed
forever in his imagination. He drew it on a piece of cardboard and cut the
top moldings by hand with his Japanese saw. He painted the bookcases forest
green. At the end of his third
week in Texas, Rudy got Medardo, who’d stopped by
on his way to Reynosa for a cultural Friday, to
help him carry Helen’s big post-office desk into the study and place it
against the west wall so that he could look out the window at the upper
grove and the rows of sabal palms that lined the
drive. They rolled out a
threadbare Oriental rug that Helen had bought at an auction, and Rudy cracked
open a couple bottles of If Rudy and Medardo had been speaking English they would soon have
exhausted their supply of conversation, but in Spanish things took time, and
the beer and the fatigue made Rudy less self-conscious. In Spanish he was a
different person — more
relaxed, less impatient. Time slowed down in Spanish. A simple story about
something that had happened on the market, which would take two minutes to
tell in English, would take him fifteen minutes in Spanish. And there were
topics he and Medardo would probably have avoided
in English: Rudy’s philosophical project or quest, for example. Rudy couldn’t
imagine giving an account of it in English, but in Spanish it seemed easy to
explain to Medardo what he was trying to
accomplish, as if he were spending Monopoly money instead of real money: to
get some answers to the big questions, to settle on a rule of life. He drew a
sketch of Plato’s cave and showed it to Medardo,
and he explained how he’d thought he’d caught glimpses of the realm outside
the cave — on Christmas Eve
and then again when he first glimpsed the Medardo examined the sketch of the cave.
“These people in the cave,” he said. “It’s like they’re sitting in a movie
theater, right, or in front of the television set?” Rudy nodded. “Something
like that, but they’re tied to their chairs, so they can’t get up and look
out the window” “And you feel you were
looking out the window? On Christmas Eve? And when you saw the river the
first time?” “That’s what it felt like,”
Rudy said, “but Aristotle — Plato’s
star pupil — Aristotle made
fun of Plato’s ideal forms and said they were no more meaningful than singing
la la la” He laughed. “La
la la. That’s very
funny” Medardo laughed too. “Señor
‘arrington,” he said, “Señor
Aristotle was right about these glimpses of higher reality. You have to be
careful. My cousin in Rudy opened two more beers.
He could never be sure, in Spanish, when Medardo
was pulling his leg. “Do you think it was a
vision?” “I think he got his hands
on a copy of Playboy magazine and
it unsettled his brain.” “How about you, Medardo? Have you ever caught a glimpse of anything?” Medardo leaned forward and put his hand on
Rudy’s arm. “Sometimes, señor, in the act of
love He poured some beer in his glass
and watched the foam rise and spill over the edge and run down the side. He
wiped the side of the glass with a large white handkerchief. “Sometimes in
the act of love I seem to see something,
but then afterward, I think Medardo paused to light a cigarette. “Afterward I think I
was only singing la la
la” Rudy found one of Helen’s
ashtrays in the desk and placed it on the arm of Medardo’s
chair. “My wife used to tell a story about Aristotle that you’d appreciate,”
he said. “When Aristotle was an old man he got ajob
as the tutor of Alexander the Great. He’s giving young Alexander a hard time
about his girlfriend, so Alexander gets his girlfriend, whose name is
Phyllis, to dance naked right in front of Aristotle’s window, where he’s
writing his book about ethics. Pretty soon Aristotle has such an ereccion he can’t take it anymore and goes out
and propositions Phyllis. Phyllis says sure, but she wants Aristotle to do
her a little favor; she wants to play horsey —jugar a caballo.” Medardo laughed. “What you want to say, Rudy,
is montar al caballito.” “Montar al caballito,” Rudy repeated. “In one of her
lectures,” he went on, “my wife used to show a slide of a medieval tapestry
with a picture of Aristotle and Phyllis. Aristotle’s wearing a bridle, and
Phyllis is riding on his back, using a whip on the old man’s bare rear end.
Alexander’s watching from behind a bush. You’d think Aristotle would be
stuck. Here he is, caught with his pants down. But he was a smart old guy:
‘If love can do this to an old man like me, a philosopher,’ he says to Alexander,
‘just think how dangerous it is for a young fellow like you.” The dean at Edgar Lee
Masters had asked Helen not to show this particular slide, but Helen had
ignored his request on the grounds that the slide was an integral part of her
lecture on the iconography of education. Iconography
was one of Helen’s favorite words. Medardo laughed. “It would make a wonderful comedia, don’t
you think? I’ll play Alexander and you can play Aristotle, and we’ll get one
of the girls at Estrella Princesa
to play Phyllis and ride on your back. What do you say? Ah, Rudy,” he went
on, without giving Rudy a chance to respond, “I hope your wife had many more
stories like this one, but now I must be on my way” He smiled, revealing his
large white teeth, and put his hand on Rudy’s shoulder. “No, no, don’t get
up. I’ll let myself out.” He stood in the doorway for a moment. “Maybe you’d
like to join me one of these days. When you get settled. For a viernes cultural.” Aristotle’s appetitive
man, Rudy thought. “A
man my age, Medardo,” he said, blushing slightly.
“I’ve put those things behind me.” “A man your age! Why,
you’re in the prime of life, Rudy. A man your age indeed.” But Rudy waved him
off and Medardo took his leave. Rudy could hear his
footsteps in the passage that led to the kitchen, and then the sound of the
door closing behind him, and then the sound of Medardo’s
car on the gravel in the drive. No more meaningful than
singing la la la, Rudy thought, and isn’t it better, after all, to follow
Aristotle’s advice and appreciate the wonder of the world around us, the
wonder of ordinary experience, instead of wandering like Plato out to the
edge of the universe in order to see what lies beyond? As he turned the pages,
rereading the passages he’d underlined, he could feel Medardo’s
hand on his shoulder, strong and warm and human. “La
la la,” he sang, and laughed again. Hellenga makes thinking about big questions
easier, especially through the delight of a character like Rudy. Enjoy
reading Philosophy
Made Simple, as you think about truth, beauty, life and death. Steve Hopkins,
April 24, 2006 |
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Made Simple @ amazon.com |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the May 2006
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Philosophy
Made Simple.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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