{"id":272,"date":"2016-12-16T02:03:13","date_gmt":"2016-12-16T07:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl-209-fall16\/?p=272"},"modified":"2016-12-16T02:03:13","modified_gmt":"2016-12-16T07:03:13","slug":"the-history-of-love-a-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl-209-fall16\/uncategorized\/the-history-of-love-a-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"The History of Love: A Novel"},"content":{"rendered":"

The History of Love<\/em> is an ambitious title. It sounds like it should be on the cover a textbook, perhaps a cultural analysis of love over the ages. It suggests the enclosed pages will offer a comprehensive account of love, an all-encompassing, authoritative expose of love\u2019s general nature. Rather, Nicole Krauss answers the questions raised by her novel\u2019s title with a complex story of three people unwittingly connected by one man\u2019s love. To describe love, to live up to her title, Krauss shows the crippling, lifelong romance that Leo Gursky has with Alma Mereminski, the lives affected by it, and how they all connect.<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t read the book, here are the plot points you need to know: Leo wrote a book called The History of Love<\/em> for the love of his life, Alma Mereminksi, who left him in Poland when she escaped for America in 1942. Alma Singer, a fourteen year old girl who takes turns narrating the novel with Leo and others, was named after the Alma Mereminski in Leo\u2019s book. After barely surviving the war, Leo follows his Alma to New York, where he finds that after giving birth to Leo\u2019s son, Isaac, she assumed Leo had died and remarried, never telling Isaac about his true father. Leo lives alone in New York for the rest of his life, and is around eighty in the novel\u2019s present.<\/p>\n

With such a bold title, it is no surprise that Krauss disappointed some readers. The London Review says that the novel\u2019s \u201cimportant questions are soiled by the book\u2019s inability to be primarily truthful about human conduct and motive, about life\u2026. The centre of the book \u2013 its rendition of life, its ability to make one believe in it \u2013 is empty\u201d (29). Wood blames the novel\u2019s failure on Krauss\u2019s forced attempts to please readers. But there\u2019s another obstacle to achieving the primarily truthful understanding of love the title seems to promise, an obstacle Wood leaves out: The novel is polyglot \u2013 It is narrated by several distinct voices. Some readers see the competing voices as supporting each other. Jessica Lang writes in the Journal of Modern Literature that \u201cThe History of Love<\/em> is the history of the self \u2014 \u201cI\u201d \u2014\u00a0 a single story. It is not so much about a Leo, or a soldier, or an Alma or a Bird; rather, the narration delivers a sense of meshed identity, a result of the various interactions accumulated over the course of a lifetime\u201d (52-53). Although the novel\u2019s different but connected characters may reinforce a broader, humanizing notion of togetherness, they have such different understandings of love that no coherently meshed characterization of love is delivered. If Leo\u2019s perspective stood alone, we could take his conception of love as archetypal. However, the unique views presented by each narrator leave readers puzzled with a complex and internally conflicted picture of love. The History of Love<\/em> shows that love means different things to everyone. To see this, we only need to look at Leo and his strongest foil, Alma Singer.<\/p>\n

Leo Gursky<\/strong><\/p>\n

We see Leo\u2019s voice in two contexts: We first catch glimpses of his voice in The History of Love<\/em>, the book he wrote as a young adult for Alma Mereminski. As a young romantic, Leo is expressive, emotional, and invested in the world. He writes about Alma, \u201cHer laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering\u201d (11). Leo\u2019s passionate, aphoristic writing demonstrates how deeply he feels love\u2019s beauty and power. His book details an imaginative history of love, describing angels\u2019 love lives, the \u201cBirth of Feeling\u201d, the \u201cAge of Glass\u201d (106, 72). Leo\u2019s writing is spirited, wrapped up in the joy of feeling. He falls deeply in love with Alma after his first interaction with her, begs her to marry him at age eleven, and promises never to love another girl. Leo\u2019s young love is strong and joyful, the type found in Hollywood and readers\u2019 dreams. However, Alma consumes his identity, which at first seems touching but quickly becomes dangerous. He later describes Alma\u2019s love as the \u201conly thing I knew,\u201d and writes of his time hiding during the war, \u201cI wanted to live very badly. And there was only one reason: her\u201d (8, 226). Leo falls in love so strongly that it becomes his life\u2019s purpose. But young Leo is satisfied, happy with love as his driving force.<\/p>\n

Leo is a heartbroken old man when he narrates the novel, and the difference in his voice shows how losing Alma affected him. First, in contrast to the other narrators, Leo narrates dialogue in italics. Since italics are conventionally used for a character\u2019s thoughts, when used for dialogue they emphasize Leo\u2019s isolation and erect a boundary between the inside of Leo\u2019s mind and the outside world. Communication with other people does not seem quite real \u2013 Leo travels in a haze, never really connecting with those around him. He spends his whole life yearning for the love he had as a teenager and recovering from its absence \u2013 he makes little effort to move on or pursue other interests. Second, Leo writes in short, frank sentences and often interjects with \u201cAnd yet\u201d or \u201cBut.\u201d For example, he says of his occupation, \u201cIt\u2019s not what I would have imagined for myself. And yet\u201d before dropping the subject (5). Leo\u2019s short sentences show his tiredness, and his brief self-contradictions express the irony he sees in the world and his frustration that every positive in his life has come with reservations. He appears tired of fighting back \u2013 he now takes injustice and incongruence for granted, hardly worth expanding upon. After losing Alma, and later Isaac, nothing energizes him. Third, Leo loves to joke about his own mortality. The first lines of the novel are Leo\u2019s: \u201cWhen they write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say, LEO GURSKY IS SURVIVED BY AN APARTMENT FULL OF SHIT\u201d (3). Hopeless about love, Leo has no reason to live. After losing Alma, Leo transfers his love to Isaac, Leo\u2019s son who does not know he exists. Leo fantasizes about talking to his son for decades, but Isaac dies right as Leo begins to summon the courage. Leo writes, \u201cOnly now that my son was gone did I realize how much I\u2019d been living for him. When I woke up in the morning it was because he existed\u201d (80). Just as for Alma, Leo lived because he loved Isaac. Leo\u2019s narration shows readers that love is so wonderful that it is the highest purpose of life \u2013 without loved ones, life appears meaningless.<\/p>\n

In the context of Leo\u2019s extreme loss, valuing love so highly is unfortunate. But Leo finds no way around it. Leo writes in the third person, \u201cIf the man who once upon a time had been a boy who promised he\u2019d never fall in love with another girl as long as he lived kept his promise, it wasn\u2019t because he was stubborn or even loyal. He couldn\u2019t help it\u201d (13). Leo\u2019s theory of love holds us slave to love whether we like it or not, fantastically happy when in love and helplessly lost, purposeless when out. This distinct understanding of love is powerful in Krauss\u2019s novel, but Leo is opposed by the other narrators.<\/p>\n

Alma Singer<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alma\u2019s voice is very different from Leo\u2019s, as is her conception of love. She writes in numbered sections that try but fail to organize her scattered narration. She never gets too invested in one train of thought, never too attached to one mindset. Her sentences are long, and often contain playful figurative language. For example, Alma writes of her mother, \u201cSometimes she would get stuck on a certain sentence for hours and go around like a dog with a bone until she\u2019d shriek out, \u2018I\u2019VE GOT IT!\u2019 and scurry off to her desk to dig a hole and bury it\u201d (48). Alma\u2019s youthful energy saturates her narration. Krauss constantly reminds us of Alma\u2019s age \u2013 and her naivety. For example, after telling a powerful story about a blind photographer, Alma writes, \u201cI know there is a moral to this story, but I don\u2019t know what it is\u201d (39). This innocence may be absolved with age, but note that young Leo at this age was spouting wisdom about the depths of his love. Alma is a much more typical teenager, and the conception of love that her scatter-brained, youthful simplicity reveals is quite different from Leo\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Alma\u2019s mother is similar to Leo \u2013 her life has been overtaken by love. After Alma\u2019s father died, her mother \u201cturned life away\u201d to keep holding on to him (45). Witnessing her mother\u2019s loss colored Alma\u2019s perception of love. She writes, \u201cWhen I was little my mother used to get a certain look in her eyes and say, \u2018One day you\u2019re going to fall in love.\u2019 I wanted to say, but never said: Not in a million years\u201d (54). Alma views love as undesirable, something to be avoided, something that will ruin her life. Further, Alma is annoyed by her mother\u2019s love for her. Alma says, \u201cShe\u2019d call after me, \u2018What can I do for you I love you so much<\/em>,\u2019 and I always wanted to say, but never said: Love me less\u201d (43). While Leo views love as central to his identity, Alma does not want it to be a dominant part of her life. She views the depths of love as a dangerous place. With the pain that love has caused her mother and Leo in mind, readers may empathize with this idea. And Alma offers a way out, a way to free herself from love: Even when she does fall in love \u2013 She slowly develops feelings for her friend Misha \u2013 it never becomes inextricably tied to her purpose in life. Alma is also concerned with her hobbies, her brother\u2019s sanity, her dream of becoming a wilderness explorer, helping her mother move on from her father, and the puzzle of determining the author of The History of Love<\/em>. She is never slave to love like Leo. And unlike young Leo\u2019s sudden, passionate romance, Alma\u2019s is awkward and uncomfortable. She doesn\u2019t know how to describe her feelings, and the resistance culminates when Misha kisses her for the first time. Alma tells him to stop. \u201cAnd then I said: \u2018I like someone else.\u2019 As soon as I said it I regretted it\u201d (142). Even as she feels the pull of love and wishes she could say the right thing, her confliction shows she is skeptical of love. Being in love is not bliss for Alma as it was for Leo, and she does not need it to find purpose in life. Alma opposes Leo\u2019s perspective with well-founded skepticism about love\u2019s virtue and by showing that there is more to life than love.<\/p>\n

The novel contains many other speakers and unique interpretations of love. The third primary narrator shows a love between Zvi and Rosa that is desperate and built on deceit, Uncle Julian is driven to cheat on his wife by her distaste with painting, Alma\u2019s brother\u2019s love for his dead father causes him to think he is the Messiah, Herman Cooper bullies girls in an effort to earn their love \u2013 each of these complicates the novel\u2019s definition of love and blocks the novel from revealing a unified theory. Since love in reality is more diverse than one man\u2019s conception, the multi-faceted nature of love that The History of Love\u2019<\/em>s polyglossia reveals is valuable and demonstrates the power that a single novel can have to simultaneously represent many contradictory world views. Critics searching for a one-track theory should turn elsewhere \u2013 I\u2019d recommend another genre entirely.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This essay was written in the style of Jake Romm and received preliminary feedback from Paul Griffith.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/p>\n

Krauss, Nicole. 2005. The History of Love<\/em>. W.W. Norton & Company. Print.<\/p>\n

Lang, Jessica. 2009. The History of Love<\/em>, the Contemporary Reader, and the Transmission of \u00a0\u00a0 Holocaust Memory. Journal of Modern Literature, Vol 33, No. 1. Indiana University \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Press. Web.<\/p>\n

Wood, James. 2005. \u201cTides of Treacle.\u201d The London Review, Vol 27. No. 12. Web.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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