The Other - a book review

David Guterson's new novel "The Other." Guterson, best-known for his richly evocative bestseller "Snow Falling on Cedars," once again sets his story in the Pacific Northwest. Neil Countryman, the narrator, comes from a blue-collar family and becomes a schoolteacher; his closest friend, John William Barry, is Seattle royalty—born into a fabulously wealthy dysfunctional family. Brilliant but increasingly eccentric, John goes beyond drugs, quasi-mysticism and so much else that was fashionable in the 1970s to dropping out of society altogether, living as a hermit in a cave in the woods. His co-conspirator is Neil, who initially believes this is only a passing phase but then can't summon the will to try to save him by breaking his vow of silence about his "disappearance."

from review by Andrew Nagorski Newsweek

This is my book review of sorts :
The Ohter by David Guterson
The book covernotes say this "...is a novel about youth and idealism, adulthood and its compromises, and two powerfully different visions of what it means to live a good life." I found this book profoundly affecting. Possibly because the two main characters are of my generation and and come of age in '70's which revives many reminisces of my own life. One character,the narrator adapts to the pressures of the times and life to become an English teacher, marry, have two children and be generally happy and adjusted. The other, with a Thoreau-like uncompromising contempt of American materialism and ecological blindness, withdraws from society by living a hermit's life in an Olympic mountain cave near the Hoh rain forest. The hermit has a $400 million trust fund.
The narrator notes the irony of his becoming a teacher: '..i made my living opening my mouth. And all the while I privately preferred silence.' The new year's first snow/how lucky to remain alone/at my hermitage is from Basho . He taught this haiku which bored his high school students but spoke for him. I identified with his sense that even though he succeeded in worldly terms he severely compromised his true values. Without revealing any of the plot I will quote from the narrator's lyrical meditation near the end of the book: "..the truth is that truth is too complicated. If I extrapolate from myself there is a lot of deceit in the world without a beginning, middle, or end. The way it really works, a lot of the time, is that you suffer from the weight of what happened, from what you said and did, so you lie as therapy. Now the story you make up starts to take up space other-wise reserved for reality. For phenomena you substitute epiphenomena. Skew becomes ascendant. The secondary becomes primary. When it comes to confess, you don't know what you're saying. Are you telling the truth, or do you confuse your lies with reality? The question is comical. The answer is lost in the maelstroms of consciousness. It's even possible to pretend, eventually that the question wasn't asked. You've been kidding yourself about yourself for so long, you're someone else. Your you is just a fragile fabrication. every morning, you have to wake up, assemble this busy, dissembling monster, and get him or her on his or her feet again for another round of fantasy. Is this what some sutras by Buddhists are about? ...

I don't know much about myself...but I'm glad to still be breathing, to still be here with people, to still be walking in the mountains, and to be still uncertain....I'm a hypocrite, of course, and I live with that, but I live."