I’m not talking about a romanticization of poverty. Or a book about the importance of gratitude or being #blessed. Nor am I looking for a defeatist way of looking at life, or even something close to nihilistic. Or someone who has giving up goals.
What I’m looking for is someone who has managed to find their “enough”, as this quote from Joseph Heller puts it:
“The late novelist Kurt Vonnegut informed his friend, Joseph Heller, that his host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had made from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 in its entire history. Heller replied: “Yes, but I have something he’ll never have… enough”.
A friend of mine said that the movie Paterson might fulfill my request. I’ve never seen the movie, but maybe this title will help find something similar in book form. Maybe that’s an odd request, so I’d be grateful for any pointers.
by cuddlyballofstress
1 Comment
Yes! You put that so beautifully.
So to make sure I understand, you are looking for something outside of the modern paradigm of the “endless race for glory”? Maybe a bit Buddhist, but without the isolation and suffering part?
I’m always looking for that to be modeled in fiction. And I like something else there, too – where the goal of the protags is to in some way slow down entropy. To decrease fighting and destruction. To increase cooperation.
The novels that push that button for me have the basic paradigm that the goal is to land in a cooperative pack.
I find the first Tommy & Tuppence books by Agatha Christie strike that note. My theory is that it’s because of the time period. People were living at the end of a baby boom (the Victorian period), they’d experienced world wars and several pandemics and at some point a Great Depression. They had to pull together from societal fragmentation to (try to) make a better world. The books featured protags who were just trying to make do and they ended up super happy just working on espionage and being together.
So yeah, to recapture that vibe I re-read The Secret Adversary, Partners in Crime, and N or M. They have some dated elements, but they capture that overall feel for me.
P.S. Weirdly you might also find the short story “First Contact” by Murray Leinster satisfying.