Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name

Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name was a taut, economical and fully absorbing book. I read it in a few short days, while in Wisconsin. The pared down language leaves the space for imagination, rather than directing you straight to the point. It is both direct and elliptical at once.

Ripe with heartwrenching drama, the stuff of melodrama really, Vida avoids cliche and sentimentality. Instead, she creates real, memorable, at times very unlikable characters in an icy world that she creates quite warmly. As you can see, there are a number of dichotomies at work here.

The book is really about self-discovery, or lack thereof, and the formation of identity. It is about secrets and coming to terms with one's known and unknown past, and how to reconcile that with your present self. How much does one's past affect one's present and one's future, subconsciously and consciously?

In the acknowledgments, Vida thanks Galen Strawson, "whose essay "Against Narrativity", published in Ratio, made me curious about the kind of person who would see their past as unconnected to their present. In trying to answer that question, this novel emerged." Reading this, I was interested to find and read that essay. So I did.

Basically, the essay is about two different kinds of perceiving one's self and one's life. Those who are Diachronic (and I will simplify here) are people who, "naturally figures oneself, considered as a self, as something that was there in the (further) past and will be there in the (further) future." These people also tend to be Narrative (he uses the big N) in their outlook. They place the events of their life in a timeline, connecting their past with their present, and forming an autobiographical narrative. Most Diachronics (the term Diachronic should not be conflated with Narrative. He elaborates further, I will be spare you here) would construe their past as having an indirect or direct effect and/or influence on their current and/or future self. Essentially, they view their life as an unfolding story. The other type of people, who are assumed to be rarer in the population, are Episodic. An Episodic, "does not figure oneself, considered as a self, as something that was there in the (further) past and will be there in the (further) future. They tend to not see their life in Narrative terms, but rather, as the name suggests, episodically. They live one moment to the next, realizing that there is a temporal progression, but that their self 20 minutes ago is not necessarily the same present self (I think).

Strawson proceeds to elaborate on the differences of these two experiences and what they may share and how they more clearly oppose one another. He also details the bias that either population may have against the other. For example, Diachronics feeling that Episodics live a less emotionally fulfilling life, or out of touch with their self, or may not be able to give as much in a relationship. And the reverse, Episodics may view Diachronics as being particularly self-involved, dramatic, or less involved in living in the present, for example. These judgments, Lawson feels, if made, would be lacking in understanding. Neither style of life is inferior to the other, just different. Strawson also fights the bias, identifying as an Episodic himself, in favor of Narrativity that he views among many in the culture (writers, philosophers, psychologists, academics et al.) He feels that there is a myth created in culture that attributes an ethical quality, a "goodness" to living one's life narratively. He quotes the Earl of Shaftesbury (whom he considers an Episodic), to elaborate on his view that "the ethical Narrativity thesis is false". I will re-quote the Earl here:

The metaphysicians...affirm that if memory be taken away,
the self is lost. [But] what matter for memory? What have I to
do with that part? If, whilst I am, I am as I should be, what do
I care more? And thus let me lose selfevery hour, and be twenty
successive selfs, or new selfs, ‘tis all one to me: so [long as] I
lose not my opinion [i.e. my overall outlook, my character, my
moral identity]. If I carry that with me ’tis I; all is well....– The
now; the now. Mind this: in this is all.

Also, in identifying as an Episodic, Strawson is particularly adept at describing the inner workings of an Episodic. The question of, "Can Episodics be moral beings?" is brought up more than once, and Strawson's answer is yes. In fact, Narrativity, he argues, risks the "commodification of life and time - of soul, understood in a strictly secular sense."

Okay, I'm going to stop myself here, because I did not intend to write this much. Since the essay is more exhaustive in its description, thought, and research, I would rather post a link to it than write my own mini-treatise on it, possibly mangling its meaning in the process (funny that I'm writing this now, having just done exactly that). But if you don't have the time and interest in reading the actual essay and you've gotten this far, at least you have a thumbnail description of the idea. It is quite an interesting essay though. It is especially interesting having read Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, to think about the protagonist, Clarissa Iverton, and her experience and sense of self. I believe it was Vida's intention to write from the perspective of an Episodic, and how this particular Episodic makes sense of her past and her struggle to construct her identity with these fragmented memories and gaps in memory. The result is a very engaging read that offers insight into this experience of self. Clarissa's tale is an illustrative example of the quote from writer V.S. Pritchett that Strawson borrows to make his point about ethics: "We live beyond any tale that we happen to enact."


p.s. The Believer interviewed Galen Strawson for its first issue. Here it is, if you're interested. It is mostly about the concept of free will.