On this episode a review of The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout.
I think people who know me best, know that I love books by Elizabeth Strout.
The single occasion I had to interview this Pulitzer Prize-winning author many years ago about her novel Olive, Again was really exciting. I was most struck by how relaxed she seemed, how any really pointed question I asked her about her novel was met with a kind of nonchalance — not at all in a rude way, but in a way that tempered my overt fan-girlishness and could leave me focused on the essential themes and the memorable characters of the story. It was as if she wanted to disappear from the whole affair and just leave me with the characters.
With Strout’s latest novel, The Things We Never Say, I want to stay with Artie Dam.
He’s the protagonist in this novel set in a town in coastal Massachusetts. Artie Dam is 57. He’s married, has a son named Rob. He teaches history. His students like him. It’s not an easy admiration that’s given over to him. He seems to have to work for it every day. And that’s real.
Readers of Strout’s work know that Olive Kitteridge, that eponymous character from a previous work, is also a teacher.
Strout knows teachers.
She knows they exist in our lives in a half-known space–because though they stand up in front of us for hours each week, we know very little about them, beyond the concepts they lecture on, the assignments they give and grade.
The thing about Artie Dam is he considers the lives of his students long after the school day is over. That's real.
But the beautiful thing about this book is that we see Artie at home. Artie in his boat. Artie with his best friend Flossie — and missing her when she moves to another state. Artie visiting his son. Artie talking to his wife, Evie, late at night before they go to bed. Artie in a hospital room. Artie in his wakeful sleep worrying about the future of our country — and our world.
And even with all this, what is so beautiful about Artie besides what we know about him, is what we don’t know about him. He’s trying to figure it out, too.
And all the while, he feels things so deeply. He’s thoughtful and pensive. He worries. He feels anxious. Wife Evie doesn’t appreciate this side of Artie. She thinks he’s kind of soft, kind of squishy. She’d rather he didn’t bring up the anecdotes about his students, his worries about the future of our country, the hate that roils in all corners of our world, mostly spurred by political leaders. She’d also rather not hear about his childhood.
Artie comes from a family that didn’t have a lot of money. His father was the handyman in the modest apartment building where he grew up. Artie’s mother was not well. She suffered from psychotic episodes and spent time in a state mental hospital. Artie’s sister died young.
Artie went to college and became a teacher and he and his wife live in a beautiful house that used to belong to his in-laws. They live on a private road by the ocean, and Artie even has a sailboat. Things seem pretty good.
But Artie is struggling quite a lot. The worries and anxieties that plague him are part of something deeper — things from his past, things he is connected to in his community and within his family.
There had been a tragedy involving his son Rob 10 years before. Rob was only 17 when he was in a car with his girlfriend. He was driving and it’s likely he was at fault for the accident that caused her death.
For all these years, Artie Dam has been affected by his son’s obvious lingering sorrow, his wife’s ways of playing down the worst of it. She trains as a family therapist and gives clinical responses to Artie’s concerns. Rob goes on to be a success and even went to MIT. But there is something about him that still brings Artie tremendous worry. Strout writes, “every time Artie saw him, Artie’s heart broke a little more”.
And here’s more to consider with Artie. The world is changing so fast in ways that perplex a lot of us.
His students seem different post-pandemic. They act scared and worried.
The upcoming election (We’re in 2024 here) fills Artie with dread.
One of the things Artie wonders about is the existence of free will in the world.
He turns the idea over in his mind. He even asks someone he’s known for only a short time what their thoughts are.
Every time Artie wonders about this, we see him in a clearer light–and then that light dims a little because we need to know the answer, too. We have the same worries he does.
It’s not a rhetorical question. It’s not an existential conundrum that we just decide we will never be able to figure out.
No, the truth about Artie Dam is that he is very much alive. He thinks, he feels, he dreams — he still hopes.
But our world being what it is, Artie Dam despairs. And there is some question about whether or not he will do something to try to end his pain.
And there are other mysteries that float through the story, including one involving another woman. And by that I simply mean another woman that works with Artie at the school. Someone who understands Artie’s tender-heartedness.
It’s easy to fall into a kind of space of analyzing the story by way of his name. Dam is a funny last name. Unusual. The students call him Damn Dam. And though it’s irreverent, it’s never said in a mean-spirited way. Perhaps it’s more like an exclamation: Damn, Dam.
It occurs to this reader that there is a dam that could burst and overflow That Artie has such a capacity for thinking about people and situations, even his students and their issues of fear and loneliness, even the fears of the country and the wider world and even, I’ll add, the fears of those who lived through other horrors in other eras, in other countries. As a history teacher, Artie knows that history is not some abstract thing, that he is teaching his young charges about flesh and blood people — some flawed, some fearful, all of them human beings reaching out for some kind of connection. And that composite is also a mirror that the present and future must look into. Yes, Artie Dam. The Damn Dam. Artie holds so much inside — in his mind and in his heart, that at some point, something’s got to give.
And then something happens to Artie that moves him to the knowledge about free will he has long wondered about.
What does Artie Dam ultimately show us about free will?
There are things we never say because we simply don’t have the words. But there are stories — and books — that give us a lexicon for loneliness, that translates the transcendent and helps us accept the mysteries that live inside our souls. We’ll never access or understand them, but nothing could ever make us feel more alive than trying.
Elizabeth Strout is the author of The Things We Never Say.
