Behind Closed Doors

Just finished In the Neighborhood by Peter Lovenheim, in which Lovenheim spends two years developing relationships with some of the people on his street. This might seem like a natural thing to do, but Lovenheim makes it clear that, as a society, we tend to get wrapped up in complicated lives that leave little room for getting to know our neighbors beyond saying hello as we pass on the sidewalk.

While my current neighborhood is pretty close, I can certainly see some similarities. It is easy, especially in the winter, for weeks to pass without seeing my next door neighbors to the west. They are lovely people, and I am blessed to live near them. But we all hibernate a bit, and there are no young kids in their home running back and forth, so we don't see them often enough to know if something has gone very wrong. As Lovenheim points out, this could be easily rectified with some deliberate contact. Having children is a huge bonus for me in getting to know neighbors--the kids get to know each other and the parents follow in the wake. It must be harder when you are single or have two full-time careers.

During the years I spent in Dallas--middle school and high school--in two neighborhoods where people were mainly transplants from other cities, pursuing their careers, we knew next to nothing about the people living behind the fences next door. Our churches, schools, jobs and communities were so divergent, there seemed to be no common threads to grab onto. Of course that's not true--a concerted effort would be sure to find something in common with almost anyone. And for Pete's sake, we shared a lot line if nothing else!

I loved getting to know the interesting and very different neighbors that Lovenheim met. It's time for me to make some time, between books, to find out what interesting and different neighbors I don't yet know on my street.

In one chapter, the author accompanies the mailman through his route. I read part of this to my husband Brian, who is a bit of a professional expert on mail (and a bit of a know-it-all in general, as he would admit). Lovenheim mentioned that the mailman had received very generous tips, including expensive tickets to sports events and season tickets to the theater or philharmonic. Brian said that is against postal regulations--they cannot accept expensive gifts. Since the book was published, this mailman has retired. Let's hope the statute of limitations is short on that issue, since someone is bound to find out now.

The Fab Five Book Club is meeting on Wednesday for it's planning meeting for the next six months. We are ridiculously excited about this, and I would welcome your reading suggestions.

One last piece of advice--if you get mail in your mailbox that is meant for your neighbor, don't give it back to the mailman. Walk it over yourself and see where it takes you!

Lonely Hearts Club Part II

Tonight the Neland Women's Book Club, a book club from my church, met to discuss The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. Thankfully for all of us, it turned out that Rita was leading instead of me. Her research into McCullers's sad and hard life helped us identify more with the author who wrote about sad, hard lives.

We quickly came to agreement on the novel's excellent depiction of the loneliness that remain with all of us at some point in our lives. We also agreed on excellence of the writing. It is astonishing that a college girl was writing with such beautiful language and insight into poverty, pain and loneliness, and that she was writing in the late 1930s and knew so much about Hitler, Marxism, racism and the plight of mill workers.

There was little agreement, however, when it came to characters. Each of us reacted to the 5 main characters in different--sometimes vastly different--ways. Where I read Biff as a closeted gay man, others read an impotent man stuck in an unhappy marriage. Where some saw Dr. Copeland as a sympathetic character--an intelligent black man who had faced injustice his entire life and kept working for something higher--others were repelled by his anger and his cold relationship with his children.

Our discussion pointed out the beauty of the novel--complicated, well-developed characters. Each character was seen in a different light by the other characters, particularly in the case of the deaf-mute that they were all attracted to, Mr. Singer. Because he could not talk to them, they all showered their secrets and dreams and disappointments on him, and they projected their own idea of who he was onto him.

Mr. Singer himself is a dead-end Christ figure--a Jewish man who drew people to him, who was generous and kind, who was completely misunderstood by all of them. Yet his messianic presence is more pretense--he doesn't lead them to much in the end. The hunters seem to be on a spiritual hunt, which could sound like we're trying to read into it, since we are a church book club, yet McCullers herself throws Scripture in at critical moments. I don't mean to say that this book is somehow Christian in its arc, but we felt that it described a journey that all of us experience. As she has one character quote, "All men seek for Thee."

So now I'm reading my antidote to McCullers's book of missed connections and lives lived in isolation. In the Neighborhood by Peter Lovenheim chronicles a man's quest to get to know his neighbors. After many years lived on the same stately, affluent street, he realized that he really didn't know anyone living around him. In the wake of a murder-suicide just a few houses down that doesn't seem to affect many people, Lovenheim determines to learn about the people whose lives play out next door to his. He does this by interviews, and where possible, sleeping over at their houses. So far it's an interesting look behind the closed doors of the Joneses and everyone else.

One last item: my friend Laura highly recommends the novel Come Sunday by Isla Morley. I'd tell you what she said about it, but she told me in a Facebook chat message and there's no retrieving it! But if Laura liked it, it must be good.