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There are many factors that play into how we experience time. During the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, and longer for many folks, time took on a different quality - and there are numerous instances of this being written about in news, magazine, and online publications. The idea that time dictated by a clock was something we constructed to order the operations of the world, as opposed to something inherently true, crept into collective consciousnesses of people who went into lockdown, or people who suddenly found themselves declared essential workers who had to manage living in a way that was still (and even more so) governed by the clock and its “man-hours.”
I fell into thinking about our experience of time after I recently found myself listening to an interview that featured Jenny Odell, author of the New York Times bestseller, How to Do Nothing, in conversation with Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee. They were discussing her new book Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock. The discussion was expansive and included the different ways time has been experienced both quantitatively and qualitatively - from the invention of modern clocks to the way social time is different than creative time and even touched on seasons and time as it relates to the Earth. This made me think about all the books that had slowed my experience of time, either because the character was experiencing time in a different way than I was, or because I can become so engaged in a book that whole hours of my life are swallowed by its plot.
With summer recently arrived (lazy summer days being another way of experiencing time, I think), I wanted to put together a list of books that have bent how I think about time - something to serve as a reminder to spend time being present in the moment (however we feel ourselves inhabiting it). Hope you get a chance to read one or more at some point during the upcoming hot summer days!
Michael Chabon - The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
Art is a college aged young man home in Pittsburgh and knocking around his own coming of age novel by dealing with the conflicting feelings surrounding his father, “the gangster”, as well as a trio of relationships with his (more or less) peers. He dates a young woman named Phlox, a young man named Arthur, and becomes entangled in the ambitions of a low-level thug, Cleveland, in awe of Art’s father’s status. All of this seems pretty exciting and there is certainly a lot of plot to this novel. But, in the end what really is meaningful about the novel is the haze that drifts over the entirety of the book. It is youthful and uncertain so that even in exuberance there is an aimlessness that feels like watching the heat rise off of asphalt. Art’s youth, sense of confusion, and intoxication with the people in his life make the book feel detached from time. It’s one of the books that is always bouncing around my head, asking me to lose sight of routine and just drift awhile.
Jenny Odell - Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock
As mentioned above, Jenny Odell’s Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock is taking up major real estate in my brain at the moment. This book hones in on the issues that stem from different conceptions of time and explores how our language around time shapes our perception (or misperception) of it. Odell considers that our way of interacting with time is only one specific mode of engaging with our lives as time based experiences. The book’s thesis is also concerned with the way in which nature, and the earth itself, experience time - offering us a new way to think about not just time, but agency in the world. When everything alive has its own way of moving (or simply existing) in the world, how can we consider the clock to be the only way of giving meaning to the way we hold space and arrange ourselves against an idea of purpose. She invites readers to conceive of time in different ways, qualitatively as opposed to quantitatively and she introduces us to the ways time can be both horizontal or vertical. These ideas and many more are brought up, thought out, and researched. It’s a nice reminder that there is more than one way to think about the future, in the present.
Peter Wohlleben - The Hidden Life of Trees
Another book that references time as it relates to the natural world is The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben. This book has been immensely popular, so it’s possible that I am not introducing anyone to anything, but it is a book I waited to read and wish that I had read earlier (I finally read it this past April). The subtitle for the book (at least for the English translation I’ve read) is “what they feel, how they communicate: discoveries from a secret world.” Because Wohlleben is a forester, he has spent decades paying attention to the trees for which he cares. His close observation has led him to understand the social structure of their lives and how they can find themselves in either distress or harmony. Whatever their “emotional” states, the way they exist stretches time in a way that we couldn’t possibly empathize with, even though we can do our best to understand it and interpret it. They grow for centuries, when allowed, and hold onto memory in a way that mirrors the way that we do - sending nutrients to the stumps of felled trees for years after they die using the connections between their root systems. Their time lasts longer than ours, moves slower than ours, but is infused with a similar sense (by all appearances) of identity or love, as well as a sense of preservation - both of others and the self. Time within the context of this book is a reminder of how small we are, but how special it is to be here at all.
Joseph Keim Campbell - Time and Identity
Time and Identity by Joseph Keim Campbell assembles numerous contributors in a discussion behind the philosophy of time, identity, and the metaphysical connections between the two.The book discusses, much as Odell’s book did, the question of how real our conception of time actually is. But then, because it is the work of a philosopher, brings the notion around to meet how we perceive (or conceive) of ourselves. The book uses its essays to strike a highly academic tone but its philosophical wonderings are very much tied to the substance of our way of being in the world. When we contemplate what time is and what it is to be a “self,” we can look at who we are differently and bring a quality of appreciation and attention to moving through the world that we may previously have never considered. Even just looking at time disrupts the way we can sometimes take the notion of it for granted.
Tove Jansson - The Summer Book
Tove Jansson, the artist behind The Moomins, was a mature artist who also wrote this book that considers time in the framework of a season. Wistful and humorous, the book still manages to carry emotional heft because of the love felt between the two main characters - an elderly artist and her six-year-old granddaughter. Over the course of a singular summer the two go about typical activities together and the narrative of the book is shaped as a series of vignettes about their days. Ostensibly, the book is about how they spend the summer, and it is that - but on a deeper level, the book hints at the way we embrace life: its facts and its wonder. The ideas are handled so delicately they almost float by like a summer breeze. The book is for adults, but speaks to something inside of us that’s a little bit more gentle, more wide-eyed. It’s a reminder that time doesn’t have to take away wonder, we can find some space within it to be present and to enjoy.
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About the Author
Jen F. is an Adult Services Librarian at the MLK Library. When not at work, they enjoy listening to music, reading, learning more about camerawork and storytelling, going for walks, and baking.