A Twisted College Experience
Beasts by Joyce Carol Oates.
On Enduring Winter in Sweden
This winter has been colder — and consequently harder — than the previous ones in Stockholm. It’s been that kind of winter where both your nose hairs and your double espresso somehow freeze to ice on your way to the subway station. Your energy has been gone since late November. You summon all your strength to get out of the hot morning shower into the cold indoor air, and then drag yourself to work while telling yourself that the relentless and heavy feeling lingering around will evaporate eventually. But it continues all throughout November and December, then January, then February… a small eternity. The asphalt streets oscillate between dangerously icy slipperiness — oh, I’ve gotten so many bruises this year! — and snowy slushiness that stains your clothes when you plodder through it. All because the volatile temperature seemingly can’t decide whether to stay above or below zero degrees Celsius.
You can tell I’m from Sweden because of my obsession with the weather. When summer rolls around and the dreadful season has passed, you’ll probably get another update on the long and magical summer days of Scandinavia.
Survival in the coldness and darkness has arguably shaped the people of Sweden. Stereotypically, Swedes are considered reserved, and this is probably due to them staying indoors during a large part of the year. Swedes, on average, spend more money on furnishing their homes than other Europeans. Because if you have to stay indoors so much, why not do so in style? The Danes even coined the term hygge, which has become a trend internationally. You light fires and you buy cozy wool blankets and you either watch TV or if you’re more classy and intellectual like us you read actual books.
The tradition of reading goes way back in Sweden. Although we did not have a culture of socializing around a main square — it did not really evolve in our peasant culture far away from the cultural center that is continental Europe — we have had high literacy rates for a long time. This was caused by the Lutheranization of society where all households ended up with a copy of Luther’s Small Catechism that they could read. Getting lost in a good book — whether after work or on your commute — still today makes time pass by faster. The key is finding a good book and that isn’t always as easy as it may seem. Nevertheless, I succeeded with finding two great ones in this most dreadful season: Elon by Walter Isaacson and Beasts by Joyce Carol Oates (in this essay, I’ll review the latter one). My main point is that, when it’s depressing outside you can always escape from it to some extent by getting lost in literature and keeping it cozy and stylish at home like the Swedes.
On Beasts
College... Those were the days. Apart from the chronic stress from the rigorous course work — although that depends on which university and which degree you went for — and the deteriorating mental health of the student body — partly brought on by experimental alcohol and drug use and an “imbalanced” lifestyle — college life is great! It has always been romanticized in pop culture although most of us don’t have a unilaterally enjoyable experience. The upsides of college life are that you plan your time freely, explore, take interesting courses, go to parties, and have a rich social life where everything can happen.
The setting in Oates’ Beasts is in a quaint little college town in ‘70s New England where the characters are all professors and students at the campus. Having a college setting in a book is always rewarding, because the time between youth and adulthood is naturally interesting, stimulating and from time to time ecstatic. Just think of comedy classics like Animal House and American Pie. After reading Beasts, it struck me that it also has a similar darkly thrilling undertone as The Secret History (Donna Tartt) and Evil (Jan Guillou, a Swedish author) with its passion and violence that takes place away from the adults’ watching eyes.
I listened to the audio version of Beasts, and as is the case with audiobooks, some of the details I may have missed. That’s probably a reason why I to some extent filled out this essay by small talking about the weather, LOL… I simply am an easily distracted person when it comes to audiobooks but nevertheless I recommend this novella strongly.
Beasts starts in Paris where Gillian, our main character, views a sculpture in a museum — can’t remember if it was actually in the Louvre — and is reminded of the death of two people whom she’d loved in the past. An omen of what’s about to unfold. Thereafter we take a jump in time and space into the New England college town in the ‘70s where the whole story plays out. In college, Gillian grows an obsession with D.H. Lawrence aficionado and literature professor, Andre Harrow, and his wife Dorcas, who is a sculpturer making primal and quite disturbing art. Gillian is not alone with her obsession, though. The other female students in Professor Harrow’s class are obsessed too and there is fierce competition and jealousy between them.
Then Gillian catches the eyes of Professor Harrow and his wife and they drag her into their dark and secret lives. She discovers that she is not their “first” and that they have abused many girls in a blurry line of desire and sexual depravity. Although Beasts doesn’t quite reach the suspense of an outright thriller, it’s still impossible to put the novella aside. Captivating as so much of Oates’ work is — a great pick to ease your sorrows from the awful season.
More on Oates
Love & War: A Double Tragedy