atmospheric disturbances

In Rivka Galchen’s exquisite novel, ATMOSPHERIC DISTURBANCES, there are breathtaking turns of phrase and unexpected observations on nearly every page.  Take this paragraph, from the start of chapter 11:

 

The way I proceeded with my investigation might cause me to lose credibility before mediocre minds.  And I should admit that I’ve always loved the New York Public Library, so arguably my motivation for going there that day was not just to find more information but also to be comforted, to see the light poring in through the enormous windows in broad cones as if from giant parallel movie projectors.  Maybe – but really the meekest of maybes – I was pursuing the sense I used to have as a child, when I’d see the illuminated dust shimmering and winking and – this was back when the library was always warm – I’d feel myself safe in the belly of an enormous and unknowable beast.  When I was ten or eleven my mother used to take me with her to the library almost every day.  She was researching the legal proceedings related to eviction. Or maybe she was researching a family tree.  I don’t really remember, so probably both of these things were, at different times, true.  She did always believe that some outsized inheritance was seeking her; she’d stand at the newsstand and search the “Seeking” section of the classifieds, and then refold the paper and return it to the stack.(53)

 

In a novel that is essentially placeless (it is set in the fractured geography of the mind of  Leo Liebenstein, MD, with minor appearances by New York and Buenos Aires), this paragraph manages to round up so many aspects of place at once.  The way it feels to be somewhere.  The effect a particular quality of light can have.  The pull of memories associated with the place.  The way we’re called back to places that mean something to us.  Galchen does this swiftly and gracefully, with a sure-footedness that thinks nothing of leaping to the surprising final sentence.

We all know that places can play havoc with our memories and affect how we feel in our bodies.  This is subjective experience, but such that the subject is an inseparable self-and-place.  Tony Hiss, in THE EXPERIENCE OF PLACE, describes it as “simultaneous perception… a more general awareness of a great many different things at once:  sights, sounds, smells, and sensations of touch and balance, as well as thoughts and feelings.”  The brain-body system responds to subtle differences in the amount and quality of light, to air quality, orientation, proximity to others, associated memory, and a host of other cues – all of which, Hiss says, combine to form a gestalt of place.

For the writer, it’s a challenge to get that gestalt onto the page in a way that packs the most punch in the least space.  What I love about that paragraph is how Galchen manages to convey so much information so economically while barely drawing attention to what she’s doing.  Even the scale at which she’s working is extraordinary:  by zeroing in on a single, well known building and addressing it so personally she opens the door to the whole big city of New York. 

Leave a Comment