The Stone Diaries - Ch5 thru End

[Janine]

Please comment here on The Stone Diaries from Chapter 5 through to the End.

[Irene]

Well, I finished. I thought chapter 8 was telling. When all those characters speculate about the cause of Daisy's depression, each revealing more about their own attitudes and concerns than anything about Daisy, I felt as if something unlocked for me. How we understand the meaning of this novel may say more about the reader's individual vantage point than about Daisy. Is she a powerless woman carried along on the expectations of a patriarchal society? Is she a richly blessed human, known in so many ways by so many people; we can only be truly known by our relationships, by the lives we touch. Is she the testimony to the resiliant female spirit, endlessly adaptable, a true survivor?

It seemed to me that Daisy's life was the set piece that threaded all the decades together. She was the constant, yet constantly evolving so that the social reality of that decade could be revealed in the lives that revolved around her latest incarnation.

[Rick]

Nicely said, Irene. I find the whole book rather sad, a life that is not so much lived as passed through, so the euphemism for death--"passing on"--is just one more form of Daisy's passing.
Some of the sound bites that jump out for me from the last chapters:
"Her present sinking of spirit, the manic misrule of her heart and head, the foundering of her reason, the decline of her physical health--all these stem from some mysterious suffering core which those around her can only register and weigh and speculate about." That's in Chapter 7, right before Alice and the rest of everyone carries on with their speculations--observations from detached points of view that can only guess but never penetrate to the truth of what's going on, like the whole book does for us.
Later, Daisy allows herself a moment of self-perception springing from Johnny Carson's favorite line:
" 'Moving right along' is what she murmurs to herself these days....Moving right along, and along, and along. The way she's done all her life. Numbly. Without thinking."
How sad is that? She sees herself as not much more than an object in her own life, a stone that reflects only the significance which others give to it, like Cuyler's tower and pyramid.
Towards the end, Daisy reflects on the fact that she has never made a serious connection in her own life. Even though she has been surrounded by people (and faces, as we see in the photographic memoirs), she has to resign herself to the basic existential conclusion:
"The odd thing about the pictures that fly into Daisy Goodwill's head is that she is always alone. There are voices that reach her from a distance; there are shadows and suggestions--but still she is alone. And we require, it seems, in our moments of courage or shame, at least one witness, but Mrs. Flett has not had this privilege. This is what breaks her heart. What she can't bear. Even now, eighty years old."
This is a particularly poignant passage because we get her whole life summed up in naming: Daisy Goodwill, the child who was abandoned at birth by a dying mother, and Mrs. Flett, the mother and grandmother who doesn't believe that she has made any real difference in her own life. That's not true, of course, because we see the effect of her life on her family--especially Victoria--but it's what she feels at that moment that can't be denied.
The last chapter's prosaic recitation of lists--of addresses and illnesses and clubs--is another nail in the coffin. What is the point of all of these accumulated things if not to gain some experience, some feeling, some humanity from it all? Daisy's conclusion is, "I am not at peace." We could see that as her post-mortem resistance to just being contented, as she has been lulled into doing with her entire life, but it's still rather sad.

[Irene]

I did not read this as sad. I read it as profoundly apt. I think that loneliness is the deep sense of one's finite status, of the realization that much of life has to be faced alone, ultimately death, that we are never fully known, maybe not even by ourselves. When I was younger, I believed that I could make some profound impact on something, anything, that I would find some soulmate that would truly know me, that the deeply situated existential emptiness would be filled by romantic love or meaning or... As I move through the later half of my life, I am slowly realizing the naivety of these suppositions.

[Rick]

Irene wrote: "I did not read this as sad. I read it as profoundly apt. I think that loneliness is the deep sense of one's finite status, of the realization that much of life has to be faced alone, ultimately d..."

Irene wrote: "I did not read this as sad. I read it as profoundly apt. I think that loneliness is the deep sense of one's finite status, of the realization that much of life has to be faced alone, ultimately d..."

That is sad too. And apt. What meaning we can make out of our existence is enough, as Camus says.
Daisy is frustrated, but not enough to be able to give a clear voice to her frustration. Her depression at losing her job is because she has defined herself as Mrs. Green Thumb--on someone else's terms again--and has had even that shred of vindication torn away from her. When she is angry, she is most clearly herself, though; it's her very human, very typical complacency that renders her into a background character in her own life. Her last unspoken words--"I am not at peace"--are the motto of anyone who wants to get up out of contentment and actually do something, make a difference, live rather than exist.
I don't like to preach, but that's what this book has left me with: the motivation to do more than just be.

[Irene]

That is a wonderful gift from a book, Rick.

Given that there are half a dozen or so characters who explain the cause of Daisy's depression, all different and none of them Daisy herself, I am reluctant to add to the speculative voices. Each of those characters saw their own reflection in Daisy's situation and explained her life according to their own needs, fears or passions. I don't want to add to that chorus for fear that I would end up revealing more about myself than about Daisy.

[Angus]

I just finished the book. At the end (actually somewhere in Chapter 9), I felt a sense of optimism. I had this vision that I will be a happy person when I reach my golden years, which is funny if you just knew the nihilistic thoughts that cross my mind. I wish I had read this earlier, in my early 20s perhaps.

I agree though that there is a general sense of sadness in the book, but it's not the devastating kind. I believe there is a better term for this. Yearning, perhaps? A yearning to make a mark in the world (the part where Carol Shields used stone as a metaphor for dying/death made me think of this).

Nice inputs there, Irene and Rick. I wouldn't have thought of those had you not put them here. Lastly, I was a little bothered by Daisy's last unspoken words. But if you think of it, are we ever at peace? It's almost the same as asking if anyone is ever ready, which I believe is never.

[Irene]

I agree. I took that final admission of a lack of peace as a challenge to the popular notion that survivors can claim that someone died peacefully. How do we know that when all we can see is the lack of physical struggle or hear the absence of verbal signs of distress. How do any of us really know what the dying is feeling at the final moments? And, no matter how insignificant our lives may seem, how little we self-actualized or achieved goals or appeared to be directing our life events, life is still worthwhile, we still want to go on living.

[Rick]

All in all, this seems to have been one of those books that makes me analyze myself a lot more unflinchingly than I am usually willing to do. I get the sense that this has happened for you as well, Irene and Angus, and I hope it's also true for the others who are following this particular thread.
Again, it's not preachy, but it encourages some sobering self-reflection, doesn't it?
So...why are we not giving it a full 5 out of 5 stars?
Any thoughts on that one?

[Angus]

^I feel that Carol Shields held back. I think she could have unleashed her full powers as a novelist with this. There are many parts that start lyrically but veer off elsewhere. It's like she's always discovering a truth that she's also always losing sight of. Also, perhaps Shields is not an indulgent writer. The book might feel overloaded if she pushed the literary levers further (the structure and POVs are stylistic enough).

[Irene]

I am stingy with my 5*s. I only give them to those books that blow me out of the water on some level, ones that really haunt me, ones I can't put down or stop thinking about. This one did not meet that criteria. I could easily put it down. For most of the book, I was not quite sure what to make of it. It really did not prompt the level of self-reflection that other books have prompted in me.

[Nelliew]

I thought this book was fantastic by the end. I think the reference to Camus is right on. The lack of interior reflection by Daisy and focus instead on the world moving around her and what she seems to have (and have not) made of it makes this a great piece of existentialism in my view. I think I'm a sucker for books that deal with the loneliness of life and death so squarely. Here's one of my favorite lines: "The larger loneliness of our lives evolves from our unwillingness to spend ourselves, stir ourselves. We are always damping down our inner weather, permitting ourselves the comforts of postponement, of rehearsals" (297). The closing chapter, with the scraps of Daisy's life was just deeply sad to me. These are the scraps that are left behind, which her children won't care about at all (I get the sense that these odds and ends, lists, recipes, addresses, etc. are all the things they find as they clean out her belongings), and that she'll soon be forgotten altogether.

I also liked comparing the death scenes of Mercy Goodwill, Cuyler Goodwill, Magnus Flett, and then Daisy.

Thanks for leading the discussion, Rick.

[Rick]

NCW wrote: "I thought this book was fantastic by the end. I think the reference to Camus is right on. The lack of interior reflection by Daisy and focus instead on the world moving around her and what she seem..."

Great last words on this one. Thanks for the support and I will look forward to the next round of discussion. Cheers to all who participated!