A Book of Reasons
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times Notable Book: A man sorts through the secret life of his troubled, reclusive brother in this “powerful, moving personal history” (Entertainment Weekly).
Every family has its odd character, the one who never seems right with the world. When a grieving John Vernon was charged with settling his brother’s affairs, he came face to face with a life he had never suspected. His brother’s house in southern New Hampshire was in a state of squalid, shocking disrepair: piled high with a lifetime of trash, unheated and decrepit, and pitifully unlivable. An assembly worker and an amateur inventor, Paul had managed to keep his sad and strange world hidden. But John couldn’t help but search for reasons. Why does a childhood full of promise turn wrong? Why do we clutter our lives with things? What are the meanings behind the material objects we acquire?
John seeks answers in the most unexpected places. Buying a hammer and thermometer at Walmart, this icon of consumerism inspires a short history of tools and the discovery of mercury. Paul’s wake occasions an investigation of blood circulation and embalming. He voyages through science and physiology, culture and mythology, on a search “for a way to comprehend a life that left behind not splendid monuments but ordinary wreckage.”
The result is a book of reasons: reasons for his brother’s way of life, reasons for his own response to Paul’s death. Linking the story of one odd individual to the surprising and irregular upheavals of history, John discovers how reasons, for all of us, are one means of learning to accept things that can never be explained.
“[A] heartwarming tale of brotherly love.” —The Wall Street Journal
“A beautiful performance lit by stark, revealing bursts of language and delivered with the gravity of liturgy.” —Publishers Weekly
“His ability to evoke wonder is inspiring.” —Newsday
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As a novelist (La Salle, etc.), Vernon brings structure and meaning to his art. As an observant man, however, he sees more than enough chaos and apparent meaninglessness in real life. In this erudite memoir of how he tried to understand the life and death of his reclusive older brother, Paul, he embarks on a highly discursive exploration of how "history in its minute particulars touches us all, and in the least expected ways." The thrust of the book lies not so much in the narrative of Paul's life as in Vernon's fascination with everyday objects and their histories. As Vernon uses a Chap Stick that he finds in Paul's car, or hammers a nail, each action triggers a meditative reaction. En route to the house left him by his brother, Vernon stops at a Roy Rogers and, chewing a rubbery sandwich, ponders Ptolemy, William Blake and Hero of Alexandria. The simple act of buying a thermometer sparks Vernon's investigation into the history of the object at hand, which, in turn, sparks an investigation into the history of God and the nature of reason, which leads, finally, right back to brother Paul. And remembering Paul's funeral calls forth a treatise on the history of embalming, decomposition, spirituality, the body, the roots of physiognomy. As Vernon's prose ricochets from Paul's possessions to his own and to the many ideas that fill his head, he gives readers both a description and an example of how a writer's mind forges a web of connections among the objects and ideas of the world. It is a beautiful performance lit by stark, revealing bursts of language and delivered with the gravity of liturgy.
