Let the Great World Spin - August CC Book Club Selection

[SouthJerseyChessMom]

<p>Harry Truman’s favorite poem- because it inspired a Peaceful, Utopian Future World ? League of Nations where wars would be avoided ?
""TILL THE WAR-DRUM THROBB’D NO LONGER, AND THE BATTLE-FLAGS WERE FURL’D
"IN THE PARLIAMENT OF MAN, THE FEDERATION OF THE WORLD,</p>

<p>The President carried a copy of the following text with him in his wallet from the time he graduated from high school. He claimed that he had recopied the text thirty or forty times during the course of his life. The President attributed the text to Alfred Tennyson’s Locksley Hall.</p>

<p>"FOR I DIPT INTO THE FUTURE, FAR AS HUMAN EYE COULD SEE,
"SAW THE VISION OF THE WORLD, AND ALL THE WONDER THAT WOULD BE;
"SAW THE HEAVENS FILL WITH COMMERCE. ARGOSIES OF MAGIC SAILS,
"PILOTS OF THE PURPLE TWILIGHT, DROPPING DOWN WITH COSTLY BALES;
"HEARD THE HEAVENS FILL WITH SHOUTING, AND THERE RAIN’D A GHASTLY DEW
"FROM THE NATIONS’ AIRY NAVIES GRAPPLING IN THE CENTRAL BLUE;
"FAR ALONG THE WORLD-WIDE WHISPER OF THE SOUTH-WIND RUSHING WARM,
"WITH THE STANDARDS OF THE PEOPLES PLUNGING THRO’ THE THUNDER-STORM;
"TILL THE WAR-DRUM THROBB’D NO LONGER, AND THE BATTLE-FLAGS WERE FURL’D
"IN THE PARLIAMENT OF MAN, THE FEDERATION OF THE WORLD,
"THERE THE COMMON SENSE OF MOST SHALL HOLD A FRETFUL REALM IN AWE,
“AND THE KINDLY EARTH SHALL SLUMBER, LAPT IN UNIVERSAL LAW.”</p>

[ignatius]

<p>

@Mary13

I don’t have any details on the death of Petit’s child—that article I posted was the only place I read about it. Very sad, though.

</p>

<p>Man on Wire is dedicated to Philippe’s daughter Cordia-Gypsy.</p>

<p>And yes, very sad.</p>

<p>An interview with Petit after 9/11:</p>

<p>

Sixteen months on, he still finds it painful to talk about the atrocity. When I first ask about his feelings about that day, there is a long silence interrupted only by the sound of Petit gently swaying through the air. Fixing me with intense grey-blue eyes the colour of the sky’s changing moods, he says softly: “For me, it’s like talking about the death of my child.”</p>

<p>The neighbour with whom he watched the events of September 11 is painter Elaine Fasula. Petit and Fasula had a daughter, Cordia-Gypsy. “We created a masterpiece,” he writes. He takes me to his beautifully ordered workroom in the basement and shows me a wall in his office papered with photographs of his daughter, an enchanting little sprite with her father’s impish looks.</p>

<p>At the age of nine-and-a-half, the child he named after the cords that support him and his Gypsy-like lifestyle fell ill. “She was wonderful, witty, rebellious, then a volcano erupted in her brain,” he says. He’s vague about her affliction - a cerebral brain haemorrhage - and exactly when it happened and where. She died in 1992 and her ashes are buried in the columbarium of the Cathedral Church of St John the Divine in New York City, which was struck by fire at almost the same time as the terrorist attacks. He is artist-in-residence at this, the largest Gothic cathedral in the world. Over the years, he has carried out a dozen wire walks inside and outside the Episcopalian cathedral, which he believes is imbued with Cordia-Gypsy’s ethereal presence. When the fire broke out, Petit was distraught.

</p>

<p>[Interview:</a> Philippe Petit: He walks the line | Scotland on Sunday (Edinburgh, Scotland) Newspaper | Find Articles at BNET](<a href=“http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/scotland-on-sunday-edinburgh/mi_7924/is_2003_Feb_2/interview-philippe-petit-walks/ai_n33407760/?tag=content;col1]Interview:”>http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/scotland-on-sunday-edinburgh/mi_7924/is_2003_Feb_2/interview-philippe-petit-walks/ai_n33407760/?tag=content;col1)</p>

<p>SJCM and the Willis Tower - impressive! (I have an irrational fear of heights, so really mean IMPRESSIVE!)</p>

[ignatius]

<p>

@SouthJerseyChessMom

I agree that poem is a complicated piece to tackle, but let’s look at just the big meaning of the poem.</p>

<p>As I recall, it is about a young man on the eve before he is do go to war. He returns to Locksley Hall, a place where he reflects about his life and his lovers, he soon will be in battle, his future unknown, like so many who have gone before him, and will go after, because that seems to be the nature of things.</p>

<p>The way the world works, the way it spins.</p>

<p>Here is Mccann addressing the title:
I had some difficulties finding the title, but then I came across the Tennyson quote: “Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change …” And, as luck would have it, Tennyson had been influenced by a series of sixth century pre-Islamic poems, the Mu’allaqat, which asks the question: “Is there any hope that this desolation can bring me solace?” And when I found that line, my heart skipped a beat or three, because it was exactly what I wanted.

</p>

<p>The author snagged my attention with a sentence on page 2 “Another day, another dolor.” (I’ll never again hear “Another day, another dollar” without thinking of that play on words within the context of this book.) With that thought in mind, I think McCann explores the question: “Is there any hope that this desolation can bring me solace?” Certainly the lives presented in the book have more pain, sorrow, and grief at that time than joy. I think perhaps that McCann answers the question with the title Let the Great World Spin.</p>

<p>Or as it says in the Old Testament - A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains for ever.</p>

<p>Knowing the great world continues to spin despite travails such as Corrigan’s death or Claire’s loss (or tragedies of great magnitude such as 9/11 on the larger scale) can be a measure of solace and hope in itself, can’t it?</p>

[SouthJerseyChessMom]

<p>Ignatius and others- do you think there is any political message in the novel? </p>

<p>I searched Mccann’s interviews to find an answer to this, and on his website I found this.</p>

<p>Much of your fiction engages issues of social class and the working poor, including this one; do you consider this a political novel, or yourself a political writer? </p>

<p>Yes. And yes.
(and, he goes on to further address that issue)</p>

<p>Another question
The World Trade Center at this point is quite a loaded symbol; would you call this book a 9/11 allegory?
…
But I really wanted to lift it out of the 9/11 “grief machine.” One can read it on all sorts of levels
…
I felt it was quite impossible to write something that would break your heart, because anyone with any sort of heart had it broken that morning. And I’m not just talking about the hands-on grief, that look-at-me-I’m-burning sort of grief,
I’m talking about what it meant for the world, the horrors that the Bush administration would unfold in its name,
the terrible way they turned justice into revenge,
the dark mark of hatred that reared itself both in the Islamic world and in Britain and here in the States.</p>

<p>I mean, I just recall being so very hopeful for the first few days, thinking that maybe now we would understand grief, maybe we could be empathetic, maybe we could turn some good out of this.</p>

<p>But then the months went on and it kept getting worse, until of course they unfolded the map of Iraq to level it, and it turned into a tragedy of Shakespearian proportions. And still the question was: how do I write about this? How do I get from one end of the tightrope to the other? </p>

<p>[Let</a> The Great World Spin](<a href=“http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TmzBHLoO_usJ:www.colummccann.com/interviews/LTGWSinterview.htm+let+the+great+world+spin+political&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us]Let”>http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TmzBHLoO_usJ:www.colummccann.com/interviews/LTGWSinterview.htm+let+the+great+world+spin+political&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)</p>

[SouthJerseyChessMom]

<p>****and this from that link above</p>

<p>Question:Another thing that maybe this novel anticipates, or reflects perhaps, is the Obama era.</p>

<p>Mccan: The last chapter is very much a metaphor for the Obama years and the promise of being able to break from the past.</p>

<p>Ignatius- interesting article about Petit you linked to- thanks</p>

[teriwtt]

<p>Oh my… since I’ve not participated in an online book discussion, I’ve mostly been lurking here, but I did finish the book and really enjoyed it. </p>

<p>Not surprisingly, I related so much with Corrigan’s character and the theological tension and struggles he experienced. This may sound trite, but the conflict he had between his devotion to God and his human desires (and the constant back and forth) reminded me of Father Ralph (Richard Chamberlain) in The Thorn Birds. With both characters I could almost feel their temptations, the rift, the guilt, the need for forgiveness, redemption, etc.</p>

[PATheaterMom]

<p>Yes, Corrigan was a really intriguing character. I liked the idea of his brother that he was one of the hidden saints that are keeping the world from destruction. He was like Christ in that he embraced the most outcast with compassion and love</p>

[SouthJerseyChessMom]

<p>I, agree, that Corrigan epitomizes Christ-like love, empathy and hope. But, when it was posted that Corrigan’s character is based on Daniel Berrigan, I think LTGWS contains a strong anti-war message.</p>

<p>Teriwitt, glad you de-lurked!Good comparison with Father Ralph of the Thorn Birds. Corrigan’s description and confession of his love for Adelita, was beautiful and, for awhile I thought he really did have a drug problem.</p>

[Mary13]

<p>

@SouthJerseyChessMom

Few long-range forecasters can compete with that great English poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1883) whose poem Locksley Hall, first published in 1842, forecast the use of flying machines in trade and war. </p>

<p>For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew
From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue

</p>

<p>That is just eerie. Considering that Let the Great World Spin presages the destruction of the World Trade Center, the fact that the title is based on a poem that “forecasts the use of flying machines in trade and war” is chilling. And these words—read in light of 9/11—gave me shivers: “Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew.”</p>

<p>

@ignatius

Certainly the lives presented in the book have more pain, sorrow, and grief at that time than joy

</p>

<p>So true. We know the book is about finding hope, and about recovery, yet each story has so much…melancholy. Only Corrigan exhibits a sort of intense joy in spite of his suffering (a very saint-like quality). Could any of the other characters say with conviction the words that Corrigan does?: “All respects to heaven, I like it here.”</p>

[Mary13]

<p>

@teriwtt

Oh my… since I’ve not participated in an online book discussion, I’ve mostly been lurking here, but I did finish the book and really enjoyed it.

</p>

<p>We love lurkers who come out of the woodwork. Rest assured that there are no rules to our online discussions. It’s always very free-flowing. Feel free to change the direction of the discussion, throw out a new question, express a contrary opinion or suggest a future title. The more the merrier!</p>

[ignatius]

<p>

@SouthJerseyChessMom

Ignatius and others- do you think there is any political message in the novel?

</p>

<p>My thoughts on LTGWS – well, to quote McCann:</p>

<p>

Well, on one hand it is a simple narrative of lives entwined in the early 1970’s. </p>

<p>It’s also a social novel that looks at the ongoing nature of our lives, how the accidental meets the eternal. </p>

<p>And maybe it’s just a novel about the polyphonic city … my love letter to old New York in all her clothes, shabby and dignified both.</p>

<p>I think in many ways it is a book about healing, and about moving on even in the most difficult times. We recover. </p>

<p>And then again it could just be what Faulkner says every novel should be about, and that’s the complications of the human heart …

</p>

<p>Truthfully, beyond that, I as the reader didn’t really go.</p>

<p>McCann remarks:</p>

<p>

The last chapter is very much a metaphor for the Obama years and the promise of being able to break from the past.

</p>

<p>I did not like the last chapter – it rambled – just one of my complaints. Hopefully, I’m neither responding to a political statement nor making one by expressing disappointment in the last chapter. :)</p>

[ignatius]

<p>

@Mary13

Rest assured that there are no rules to our online discussions. It’s always very free-flowing. Feel free to change the direction of the discussion, throw out a new question, express a contrary opinion or suggest a future title.

</p>

<p>I’m taking you at your word so:</p>

<p>in the interview linked by SJCM, McCann says:</p>

<p>

I was never conscious until I’d finished the novel that I had Corrigan and Jazzlyn (two of the main characters) becoming two towers. Small and ordinary towers, I suppose, those lives that fall. And they are the only ones who never get to tell their stories. Everyone else tells the story for them. But they go on living. This, I suppose, is the art of how we come to survive.

</p>

<p>Think AP English Lit test: “Which two characters in LTGWS represent the two towers?” I’m not sure I would have picked Corrigan and Jazzlyn. After that initial moment of panic, wondering what the heck I missed, I would have chosen Corrigan and then fumbled for his match. Maybe I would have fumbled close to Jazzlyn; after all, she and Corrigan die together. I have such strong feelings for Corrigan though and Jazzlyn pales in comparison. Actually I’m not sure who I could match with Corrigan. So perhaps I’d choose Jazzlyn and Josh (Claire’s son). Both represent youth and yet stand alone in a way. Both die tragically. Both serve as catalysts for following events - Tillie’s anguish and inability to continue, Claire’s anguish and push to heal. Regardless, I wouldn’t have aced the question, I guess. (Though again, I may have stumbled back toward Corrigan and Jazzlyn.)</p>

<p>Do you have any thoughts besides Corrigan and Jazzlyn - or do those two best represent the towers to you?</p>

<p>teriwtt: Liked the comparison to Father Ralph in The Thornbirds.</p>

[SouthJerseyChessMom]

<p>Great question, Ignatius! </p>

<p>Corrigan and Jazzlyn are the only two (main) characters we witness dying. Mccann describes their deaths in great detail, and they “fall/ die” in such a tragic, senseless way, just driving along the Deegan Highway. Doing something normal, that we all do, like the workers going to work on a normal, sunny, beautiful day in Manhattan in mid September 2001.</p>

<p>Corrigan’s Christ-like character, makes him an easy symbol, for the towers, and I can understand why you question Jazzlyn in this role. </p>

<p>For me, Jazzlyn represents those “small-ordinary towers” Mccann alludes in your quote above, the innocent victim.
Her life was heartbreaking, as a daughter of a drug addicted hooker, living in abject poverty repeating the ugly cycle of addiction. She had no way out.
It was through her death though, that we could eventually experience the redemption of her daughters, when Glorious Gloria, stepped in to change the cycle of destruction. </p>

<p>So, while, Jazzlyn, was a less sympathetic character, and not as developed as Tillie, she was one of the tightrope walkers, walking “close to the ground” (does a street walker get any closer), but her fall was as profound as any other. </p>

<p>Josh’s story line was more about Claire’s personal struggle with grief, death and loss, and since Claire “survived” she couldn’t be a fallen tower. </p>

<p>Tillie was a very, strong character in the novel, but I suspect,we all felt “less sympathy” for her, and, had she died with Corrigan in the accident , we would not have had an empathetic connection. I think it had to be Jazzlyn.</p>

<p>So like the fallen WTC towers Corrigan and Jazzlyn,are never to return, but always remembered. </p>

<p>I found this quote from Mccann-
“And I was interested in the mythic proportions of the story – especially if I could tell the stories of the forgotten corners, the Tillies, the Jazzlyns, the Glorias.
I wanted to say that what happened on the streets of the Bronx
that morning was just as important as any fancy tightrope walker,
which is kind of saying that
what happened in Basra is just as important as
what happened in downtown Manhattan. World. Trade. Center.
A complicated trinity. But what began to overwhelm me was the fact that life goes on, that even grief finds its own level.”</p>

[SouthJerseyChessMom]

<p>Ignatius, I just found this on Mccann’s website. Does this remind you of a scene you, and others, didn’t like in the book ??? LOL :)</p>

<p>You are concerned it seems with redemption.</p>

<p>It’s true that much of my work is concerned with death and the redemption that might or might not come from it. I can’t locate a specific personal reason for this. The only significant death I’ve experienced is that of my grandfather.
He died when I was eight. I only met him twice. He had no interest in me until I gave him the bottle of whiskey that I had smuggled into the hospital for him.
Then he held me in his arms, a smell I will never forget.
He died a few months later. He was happy for that whiskey.
Apart from that my parents are still alive and my own family is healthy and intact.</p>

[Mary13]

<p>ignatius, I’m glad my English AP Lit test days are over. You’re giving me hives just thinking about those types of questions.</p>

<p>

@ignatius

I have such strong feelings for Corrigan though and Jazzlyn pales in comparison.

</p>

<p>Agreed. I wonder if that’s because a) I relate more to Corrigan (a fellow conflicted Irish Catholic) or b) Corrigan is more vividly written than Jazzlyn. I suspect it’s a combination of the two. Perhaps there is some truth to the old advice, “write what you know”…My guess is that our Irish Colum McCann grew up around more Corrigans than Jazzlyns.</p>

[SouthJerseyChessMom]

<p>^ and, I suspect our Irish Colum Mccann may have spent some time around the Tillies …</p>

[Mary13]

<p>^ Could be. McCann did say that he had to do a lot of research for the novel, although he didn’t specifically mention the Tillie-style research:</p>

<p>

And for Let the Great World Spin, I did a fair amount of research—I went out in New York with homicide detectives, chatted with folks in the Bronx, dug through piles of rap sheets, spent time with computer hackers, that sort of thing.

</p>

<p>After reading McCann’s interview (the one at the end of the book), I am compelled to play devil’s advocate to my own post above. McCann doesn’t put much stock in “writing what you know”:</p>

<p>

I don’t want to write about myself. If I wrote exclusively about myself it would be a book about me sitting on my arse in a New York apartment, a middle-class white man with a wonderful wife and three fabulous children. But as Montaigne says: “Happiness writes white.” It doesn’t hit the page. So we have to search elsewhere. And so for me the logical conclusion is that I have to write outside my life.

</p>

<p>[Let</a> the Great World Spin by Colum McCann - Hardcover - Random House - Author Interview](<a href=“http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781400063734&view=auqa]Let”>http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781400063734&view=auqa)</p>

[ignatius]

<p>From the link SJCM posted earlier:</p>

<p>Tillie</p>

<p>

Let the Great World Spin spans so many nooks and crannies of New York City – what research did you do for this book, for instance to learn about prostitutes in the Bronx?</p>

<p>Do you really want to know?! I have a bit of an errant imagination, I suppose. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!</p>

<p>Seriously, for many months I tried to imagine the life of Tillie – the 38 year old grandmother/hooker – but her voice was elusive. I read a lot. I watched some movies and documentaries. I went out on the beat with a lot of cops, including homocide detectives. Out in their squad cars. It was wild.

</p>

<p>Claire</p>

<p>

I was interesed in ideas of faith, art, poverty. But then there was another thread I wanted to go for, the wealth and the technology, and the voices that might accompany this, and a sneaky favourite of mine is the wealthy Park avenue mother, Claire. Don’t tell anybody … but I also live on NY’s Upper east Side. The area has got the worst rap in the city really – everyone finds it diseased with all this WASPy mentality, all old money and colonial furniture. But nothing is ever exactly what it seems … and again I was more interested in finding out what goes on behind the curtains. She came to me already fully formed. I knew her. And I ended up loving her, her broken-ness. I think she’s true. I have a feeling that a lot of Upper East Side women will like her, and maybe even feel represented in the fact that she’s not a cliché, at least I hope not.

</p>

[Mary13]

<p>

@ignatius

I did not like the last chapter – it rambled – just one of my complaints. Hopefully, I’m neither responding to a political statement nor making one by expressing disappointment in the last chapter.

</p>

<p>Since one of the questions from the reading guide concerns the last chapter, I’ll bet you weren’t the only one who found it a little “off”:</p>

<p>

8. All but one of the chapters in Let the Great World Spin are set over the course of a couple of days in early August 1974. Why do you think McCann chose to jump thirty-two years, to 2006, for the final chapter? In what ways do these pages add to, complicate, or even change the story that came before? Why do you think he chose the character of Jaslyn to tell that final piece of the story?

</p>

<p>Jumping ahead in time could be simply a (misguided?) attempt to satisfy the reader. With any story, it’s only natural to want to know “What happened in the end?” “How did it all work out?” But I’m not sure what that last chapter adds. It is a bittersweet close to an already grim tale…Gloria is dead, Solomon is dead, Claire is dying. Ciaran and Lara are at peace, but still sorrowful: “Ciaran talked of the Dublin real estate market: but really, Jaslyn felt, they were talking about hidden losses, not profits, all the things they had passed by over the years.”</p>

<p>If that last chapter had been left out, the book would have ended with Gloria’s voice:</p>

<p>

“You know these kids?” said the cop.</p>

<p>I guess I said yes.</p>

<p>That’s what I finally said, as good a lie as any: “Yes.”

</p>

<p>I like that as a hopeful, affirmative end to the story. Makes me think of the last few words of a work by another Irish author, James Joyce’s Ulysses: “…yes I said yes I will Yes.”</p>

[SouthJerseyChessMom]

<p>^^^ Why do we dislike that last chapter so much ? There are parts I like and a couple things I really didn’t understand/ like.</p>

<p>Would we have known that this was really a book about 9/11 if we didn’t have that last chapter?
page 325
“As if the walking man were somehow anticipating what would come later. The intrusion of time and history. The collision point of stories. We wait for the explosion but it never occurs. The plane passes, the tightrope walker gets to the end of the wire. Things don’t fall apart.”</p>

<p>Mary13- you wrote-
But I’m not sure what that last chapter adds. It is a bittersweet close to an already grim tale…Gloria is dead, Solomon is dead, Claire is dying. Ciaran and Lara are at peace, but still sorrowful:</p>

<p>I found parts of the last chapter quite beautiful. The reason, tears ran down my cheeks during those last few pages, was that while Claire lay dying, fate had led her to help Jazzlyn’s children, who obviously played a large role in her life, especially during her final days, as her “blood” relatives brought in real estate appraisers, and drank cocktails in the living room. </p>

<p>Gloria was dead, but she was truly loved by Jazzlyn’s children. Gloria lost three boys, but gained two daughters and, Claire, a lifelong friend.
Page 346-
“She likes the word mother and all the complications it brings. She isn’t interested in true or birth or adoptive or whatever other series of mothers there are in the world. Gloria was her mother. Jazzlyn was too.”</p>

<p>Re: Solomon. Did anyone else find him to be quite arrogant and pompous? His lunch time wine drinking and dismissive attitude towards Tillie and Corrigan, rubbed me the wrong way. </p>

<p>But, what I truly don’t understand about the last chapter, was why Jaslyn had sex with a stranger she randomly met on a plane. What is the purpose of that ? </p>

<p>And, can someone explain the little episode with the coyote ?</p>

<p>Remember when Jaslyn returned to the overpass where her mother used to stroll,
page 346
“The thing was that the coyote was going toward the city, not back out…She wanted to scream at it to turn, that it was going the wrong way, it needed to double back, just swivel and sprint free. Far behind her she noticed siren lights turning. Animal control…”</p>