How High We Go in the Dark - 25%
Hello Inkmongers!
I've begun How High We Go in the Dark, and will be posting updates here after every 25% I read!
I'm understanding the format now-- these are standalone short stories that are lined in vital ways. In total, they add up to a complete novel. It's really unique, and I'm excited to see how it pans out!
Here are my thoughts so far!
30,000 Years Beneath a Eulogy
This chapter was absolutely gorgeous.
As a former anthropology major, having an archaeologist narrator feels like coming home.
There’s a relatability to Clara, Cliff’s daughter. She’s worried about the future, about climate disaster, and determined to make a real difference in the world— to make a future for her daughter, and all future generations. This story takes place in 2031, and it’s mentioned that Clara was in her early 30’s when she passed— meaning that she was born right around the year 2000, just like me. This is a view of the future that feels so pervasive in my generation (for good reason). For as long as I can remember, the generations before me have been talking about me and my peers as the people who would one day fix all of this. The melting permafrost, the rising seas, the spreading deserts. I’m artistically inclined, and never had plans to pursue the hard sciences (except as a kindergartener, when I wanted to be an ornithologist (I love birds)), so my relationship to this kind of existential calling was certainly different from Clara’s. In college, my professors spent the summers excavating coastal dig sites on the time crunch of a rapidly rising sea level— just like Cliff.
There’s a certain kind of angst that I grew from a desire to make a difference, and knowing that my passions aren’t the ones that will put me on the front lines. So when I see Clara neglect everything else in her life to make a real difference in this struggle, I get it. I don’t know what it’s like to be a mother, but I do understand that if you’re someone who can help, you have to help. That it’s bigger than all of us.
I got full body chills when I realized what Cliff was actually doing when he was lying in Clara’s bunk, looking through her things. He was excavating his daughter’s life— performing archaeology on the life she left at the Batagaika crater. There’s so much we can learn about each other from the materials we leave behind. What we looked after, what we shoved in corners or discarded, the memories we hold onto.
Nagamatsu earned my trust here. He gets archaeology on the level that archaeologists do. Archaeology is about piecing stories together, tracing the tracks left behind from a life— one lived by a real human who is both knowable and unknowable. He sees and shows the parallels between the epistemology (the process of finding out what is knowable about something) of ancient humans like Annie and the epistemology of the people we think we know in our own lives. What better way to explore grief?
City of Laughter
The first story beautifully opened the door to grief as a theme, and this one let it gush though unchecked. This story is grief distilled.
I was immediately struck with the horrible irony of the Arctic Plague. Clara began her research in Siberia to protect future generations. It was an act of devotion, of love for the world, a self-immolation for the sake of the world. In the end, it resulted in the condemnation of children everywhere. The fact that the Arctic Plague only affects children is stomach-turning. To imagine Yumi, Clara’s daughter, falling ill to the very thing Clara worked to protect her from is unspeakably tragic. However, we’re not shown that— it hangs in the air as a terrible implication.
The City of Laughter is hard to stomach. It’s cruel and merciful. Unfathomable and a genuine consideration. Gruesome and beautiful. The concept of the euthanasia rollercoaster comes originally from Julijonas Urbonas in 2010, and was first exhibited in 2012— he was a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art in London, and a former amusement park employee (Wikipedia). It’s intended to make the riders feel euphoric before making them go unconscious, and ultimately kills them. The concept forces us to ask the question— what if you could choose for your last moments to be euphoric?
Nagamatsu’s story was originally published in 2013, and was modified for inclusion in How High We Go In the Dark’s 2018 release. And it makes us ask the question differently— what if you could decide for your child’s last moments to be euphoric? To me, this is a much harder question to answer. To decide to euthanize your child is borderline unthinkable. I say ‘borderline’ because I know that this is a decision that some parents make. I’m lucky to be naive to this experience, but I can imagine that time, pain, struggle, healthcare systems and much more can gradually make this decision thinkable.
For me, the deception that the City of Laughter necessitates is almost unforgivable. I say ‘almost’ because up until it was Fitch’s turn, I couldn’t put myself in the shoes of the parents who brought their kids to the park. To imagine being the child, kept in the dark and denied information about my own guaranteed death by the people I trust most in the world? I feel the blinding pain of injustice— It’s. Not. Fair. It feels even more unfair that the children won’t get a chance to feel the injustice that’s just been done to them. But then— if there’s no one to feel that injustice, no one to experience the hard feelings, no one to realize what was done, was there an injustice done at all? If a tree falls in the forest. . . but placing myself in this world, imagining that I occupy a reality where the City of Laughter exists, I, Sam Cote, hear the sound. I exist, and I can feel the injustice that those kids didn’t get to feel. It feels like a duty— if no one else will, then I must. And I’d probably implore others to feel it too. But Nagamatsu won’t accept such an easy answer— and this makes me trust him immensely as an author.
Seeing Fitch throughout the story and hearing Dorrie’s reasoning for bringing him to the park, it began to make sense to me. Making this kind of decision is arguably the hardest thing anyone has to do, and yet if the circumstances are right, it can be the right thing to do. There’s a line from Danny’s father, Skip’s first charge, that reads: “Thank you for giving us a way to say goodbye. We didn’t want him to die in some hospital overflow center” (p.37). By the end of the story, after seeing how much Dorrie loves Fitch, after seeing all of Fitch’s agony, after seeing how great Fitch’s final day was— this is what I want for Fitch too.
This is the power of stories, right? It’s a chance to challenge what we think we know. To realize that people in circumstances we can’t yet comprehend handle situations we can’t yet comprehend in ways that we can’t yet comprehend, and walk away with some small understanding. A seed of some other experience so that if— knock on goddamn wood— I’m ever faced with a similar situation, I will have come across this kind of thing in the past. Or if I meet someone experiencing this, my tiny understanding might help me support them.
I sobbed after reading this.
