Willis' "Fire Watch"

I just needed something different to read last night. While looking for my copy of "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," I found my copy of Connie Willis' "Fire Watch" - which is a book of her short stories.

I started the first one - which is the eponymous "Fire Watch" last night.

(Warning: spoilers may follow. However - I think Willis' stories are still worth reading even if you know the outcome).


(Incidentally, a text of the story is available online.

I like Connie Willis' writing; mostly what I've read by her are her time-travel novels ("Doomsday Book" and "To Say Nothing of the Dog," which are very different in tone - "To Say Nothing..." has far more comic moments and is ultimately a "happier" book, but even "Doomsday Book," with its sad themes of Plague and good people sacrificing themselves, has a fundamentally-optimistic tone to it).

"Fire Watch" is set in that same world. Bartholomew, a History undergrad, is being sent to do his "practicum" - because, in this world, time travel is a fact of life, the sort of trial-by-fire (like a Senior Thesis on steroids) that undergrads get is to (apparently) be sent back into the past to do something.

However, there's a big slip-up right at the start. Bartholomew was preparing to travel with St. Paul (And of course, Bartholemew has Biblical significance as a name). He had learned first-century ways, learned the languages - was all prepared.

But the computer, apparently, specified that he was going to St. Paul'S - St. Paul's Cathedral, during the Blitz, his stated purpose for going is to prevent the incendiary bombs from burning it down. (Cathedrals feature prominently in Willis' work - To Say Nothing of the Dog features the rebuilding program for Coventry Cathedral).

**spoilers after here**

In the world of Fire Watch, St. Paul's has also been destroyed - but not by Nazi bombs...apparently, in the alternate universe of Willis' story, the communists became sort of a world-wide terrorist organization, either developed or got hold of something called a "pinpoint bomb" (which, thank God, has not been invented in our reality), and apparently, in 2009 in Fire Watch World, the cathedral was destroyed.

But at some points, Bartholomew thinks he's going to save the cathedral...and somehow, by saving it in 1940s time, that may save it from the pinpoint bomb later on - or that's the sense I got.

One of the atmospheric things about the story is the very jumbled, not-very-linear, stream-of-consciousness style. Because Bartholomew was, to say the least, poorly prepared for the era he was ultimately sent to (and the error was only detected two days before he had to go), he had little time to prepare - so he did some kind of brain-doping thing (which is just sketched out briefly) where apparently he is put into a drug-induced coma of sorts, and has all the stuff downloaded into his long-term memory. The problem being, accessing that stuff is very, very spotty when it's learned that way (as opposed to being learned by the traditional method of a program of hard study).

(And I like that idea. It makes me feel hopeful that they never will actually develop a working brain-microchip system, where you could, say, immediately download a knowledge of High Church Slavonic or something into your brain and be able to use it - meaning, that teachers and professors would be rendered useless and all of us who earned our knowledge the old-fashioned way would be branded the ultimate chumps)

The only way he can get at that information is to apparently intoxicate himself somehow - trying to get enough brandy to do the job is a minor complication in the plot.

However, because of the "access" problems, he doesn't know the lingo of the times (there is an early hint of this, when the man he takes for a verger asks him if he's from the "ayarpee" - the ARP, or Air Raid Precaution.) He also is confused about people's motives - Langby, his co-worker, in particular.

(One thing I'm wondering about, and none of the online reviews hint at it - Enola, the girl he meets and feels somewhat protective towards - she's described as "looking something like" Kivrin, Bartholomew's roommate, who had done her practicum (which is the plot of Doomsday Book) earlier - could Enola have been Kivrin sent back in disguise to watch over Bartholomew? I almost got that sense. However, I was also reading the story when I was tired, so I may have missed what either confirmed or contradicted that fact. Enola seems an unlikely name for a 1940s Englishwoman but I could be mistaken on that; of course the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped one of the nuclear bombs, was named for the mother of the pilot, so it was a woman's name in existence at that time. Oh, I know, there's the "printout" on Enola he's given, but that could have been faked.).

The thing I like about Willis' writing - at least, all of it that I have read - is that even in the sad stories (and sad things do happen in Fire Watch), there's a fundamental HOPEFULNESS. Or an optimism. Or something.

(I've speculated before on Willis' faith - I get the sense from her writing that she believes there is a Bigger Sense of Order out there than what we humans know, and that things will ultimately somehow be put right.)

I've said before I don't read a lot of modern novels, at least not what would be billed as modern "serious" novels (as opposed to "genre stuff" like mysteries), because I so often find them depressing. I used to belong to a book club where we read a lot of modern novels, and with the exception of "The Strange Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time," which is about a young man with autism learning how to navigate the world, and also with somewhat of an exception for "The Life of Pi" (but oh, how I preferred the story with the animals), most of them left me either disappointed in or angry with the main characters.

I mean, really. I am not a rocket scientist, I am far from an expert on relationships or understanding humanity but - if you are married to someone who is good and kind and loyal and hardworking, and you cheat on that person because you want "a bit of fun," IT WILL MESS UP YOUR LIFE. And again and again, people did just that - and then wondered, and spent many pages whining about, how their lives got messed up.

I mean, I know, I know: people are messed-up. We're all messed-up. If we weren't, there wouldn't be shows like "Dr. Drew" on television. I'm messed-up too, in specific ways. (But I'd hope that if I were married to a good man, or even a decent-if-not-exciting man, I'd be smart enough to realize I had a good thing, and remain faithful to him.)

But here's the thing: even though I acknowledge our fundamental messed-up-ness, when I am looking for the solace of a book or other entertainment (and really, a lot of times, that's what things like books or movies are to me - a solace and an escape from the world) - I don't want to READ about someone who's messed-up in such banal ways.

I see enough dysfunction around me - people I know having family problems, students with some pretty spectacular issues - that I want to run from what I deem "dysfunction" in my entertainment time.

And yes, I know, a lot of older novels address serious problems - Dickens tried to bring social issues to the fore and address them; some of the most harrowing descriptions of poverty are in Dickens. And yet...and yet, there's something different to reading it in Dickens than there is to reading it in some recent MLA grad's novel. I can't put my finger on why...I once said one of the reasons I liked the novel "Middlemarch" is that it showed people who made bad decisions with their lives (e.g., marrying the "wrong" person for them) but they tried to find ways to live with those decisions. (Perhaps "a lack of whining about the problems" is the simplest way I can contrast things like Dickens and Eliot and Trollope with modern novelists...or that those who whine about problems in the older novels are not the norm, and it's assumed they're not-entirely-desirable characters. Or something).

I think the other thing about Willis' writing that I like, is that there IS the idea that there's something larger out there than individuals and their problems...that going up on the roof of St. Paul's to dump sand on incendiary bombs that may fall on it outweighs other issues. That people have a purpose bigger than screwing each other over.

There's also an interesting philosophical question brought up towards the end of the story: Bartholomew remarks that Dean Matthews said to him "Nothing stays saved forever" - I suppose, a lesson in letting-go. (I previously remembered the other historians as having told him that, but no, it was the dean of the cathedral). And Bartholomew remarks that he knew that from the first day he saw the cathedral - knowing, as he did, that (in the Fire Watch world) the communists had blown it to bits in 2009.

And Bartholomew says towards the end that he actually believes that, in some way, some things (everything?) is ultimately saved forever - even St. Paul's, even Langby (who apparently sacrificed himself to stop an incendiary - even while Bartholomew was still suspecting him of being one who wanted to burn the cathedral.) That memory, remembering things as they were - and perhaps, carrying the idealistic idea of how things could or should be - is what saves them forever. Or that hope that things could be better is what saves things forever.

Interviews of Connie Willis, talking about her work and thoughts, can be found here and here (That second interview has an interesting insight to her fascination with St. Paul's).

I highly recommend Connie Willis. I find her writing very absorbing, and there are often surprising things in it.