Like many other books I love, There There is a multigenerational saga: a book whose plot spans many decades and many families, although, in one way or another, all of its characters are related. In a way, reading a book alleviates the pain of that inevitability which always accompanies the passage of time: the knowledge that every moment will produce another moment, no matter what you do.īut There There by Tommy Orange is not so simple. You can flip back and revisit your favorite moments you can skip scenes that are displeasing or overwhelming and at any time, you are at liberty to shut your book and never touch it again. Here, the past and the future can fade away: all that exists is the page you are currently reading, and the scene it’s recounting. Whether I’m willfully ignoring a deadline, staving off boredom, or attempting to recuperate my senses after receiving bad news, I find that to read is to be ensconced. Tony’s alternating invisibility and hypervisibility often leaves him feeling unbearably lonely, and when he dies at the end of the novel due to gunshot wounds sustained in the robbery, he feels as if he has at last been freed from wearing the “mask” of his identity, which has always imprisoned and minimized him.I often read to escape the passage of time. Octavio selects Tony as the one to facilitate the robbery, ordering him to purchase bullets and hide them in some bushes at the coliseum entrance and come dressed in full regalia, so that when he demands the safe which holds the powwow’s cash prizes, he’ll be harder to identify and trace. Tony inadvertently gets involved in selling drugs, a path on which he meets Octavio and becomes a part of his scheme to rob the Big Oakland Powwow. Tony is not particularly intelligent, though his counselors at the Indian Center attempt to inspire him by pointing out that he’s smart in other ways. True to his name, Tony is something of a loner who has always been ostracized because of his strange face, disfigured due to fetal alcohol syndrome-which Tony calls “the Drome.” He has an adversarial relationship with himself and often sees himself as a monster.
Part I: Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield (1).
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