I Know This Much Is True

I came across my notes from this book, I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb, read several years ago, and was struck by these quotes. This is a powerful read, and not for everyone, both for its subject matter, and for its whopping 928 pages. May I suggest the ebook from Bookshop.org? Not half as daunting, nor as heavy.

Not only is time fluid, but so is memory. We forget this at our self-blaming peril. To quote a Henry Rollins bit that refers back to a beautiful philosophy*, flow like water and "be drinkable". I'm trying every day. Be safe, y'all, internally as well as externally, in these ugly times.

"Life is a river," she repeated. "Only in the most literal sense are we born on the day we leave our mother's womb. In the larger, truer sense, we are born of the past--connected to its fluidity, both genetically and experientially...The point is this: that the stream of memory may lead you to the river of understanding. And understanding, in turn, may be a tributary to the river of forgiveness. Perhaps, Dominick, you have yet to emerge fully from the pond where you swam that morning so long ago. And perhaps, when you do, you will no longer look into the water and see the reflection of a son of a bitch."

*The most lovely and succinct version is, of course, summed up in this Bruce Lee quote:

Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot and it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

Now, here's the novel's synopsis, so you can decide for yourself if the subject matter is too intense or touches a nerve right now. If not, I highly suggest tackling it, at least at some point. It's an amazing treatise on identity: who are we really in relationship to ourselves and to others?

Be drinkable, my friends. And be safe.

Dominick Birdsey, a forty-year-old housepainter living in Three Rivers, Connecticut, finds his subdued life greatly disturbed when his identical twin brother Thomas, a paranoid schizophrenic, commits a shocking act of self-mutilation. Dominick is forced to care for his brother as well as confront dark secrets and pain he has buried deep within himself—a journey of the soul that takes him beyond his blue-collar New England town to Sicily’s Mount Etna, the birthplace of his grandfather and namesake. Coming to terms with his life and lineage, Dominick struggles to find forgiveness and finally rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his troubled twin.

I Know This Much Is True is a masterfully told story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal—an unforgettable masterpiece.