Book Review and Highlights:
In The Distance, by Hernan Diaz
Introduction
When chasing your life mission leads to an extraordinary adventure, does it matter if the goal is ever reached?
“In The Distance” takes us through the life of Håkan Söderström as he traverses the American frontier in search of his brother, whom he was separated from at the outset of his journey from Sweden to America.
Context for In The Distance
The book was a finalist for a Pulitzer in 2017, and explores the hopes, dashed dreams, and the often sinister side of the Americans seeking fortune and a better life out West. Even if there was “Gold in them thar hills,” sometimes finding it created more problems than it solved. Not everyone Hakan encounters was out for themselves and themselves alone, and the novel explores the various ways human nature responds when the future isn't what it seemed and the present can be downright deadly.
Key themes and ideas
Man created man
“Because he is the supreme intellectual creature, man has to be, necessarily, the very first form of life to have appeared and developed from that original thinking substance—the oldest being on the planet, still growing, through all the anteceding ages, from that earliest of all seeds. The inescapable and stunning conclusion of this was that human intelligence, in some form, must have preceded all organic matter on Earth.”
Just casually erasing God and upending the theory of evolution here. No biggie. I’m still thinking about this a bit. But it’s not the idea that grabbed me the most. That would be:
We are all connected—physically
“The naturalist claimed that all life was the same and, ultimately, one. We come from other bodies and are destined to become other bodies.”
This idea of earth as a finite amount of matter, in constant growth, decay, recycling, over and over, matter neither created nor destroyed. It’s not a novel idea, but the way Diaz writes about it made it feel more profound, and for some reason, comforting. My body is part of this fixed ecosystem. Eventually, it will dissolve and reassemble in millions of different places and forms. We are just stewards, for a short time, of this matter assembled into “us",” and we should have gratitude for all that came before to create this body — and to treat our bodies with the reverence and care they deserve.
Pacing and tone
“Plodding” is an overused term for many slow-moving novels. In The Distance does not plod. Instead, Diaz, has an even-keeled, ever-advancing style. Never too abrupt. Like the mirages the book’s characters experienced in the desert, Diaz walks the reader up to new situations, which are always seen off in the far distance. In an era where movies rely on “jump scares” -- unexpected, jolting circumstances, Diaz prefers to bring us up to situations slowly to examine them, and like mirages, the situations change in surprising ways once we reach them -- even though we say them well off in the distance.
This passage describes Diaz’s narrative style well:
“A naturalist should look at the world with wary and patient curiosity, open to the possibility of never understanding it fully.”
Personal Lens
In The Distance hooked me because of its opening question: “Can Hakan ever find his brother?” But to use the mirage metaphor again, as the book walks up to the question to examine it again and again, it becomes clear that answering the question doesn’t matter nearly as much as the experiences gathered on the journey.
Conclusion
In The Distance paints a personal and grounded look at the challenges and sometime horrors of the American frontier. Diaz brings the frontier experience out of the abstract in history books and makes it personal and painful. Hakan spends so much time alone that at times I got “Castaway” vibes, but the character’s actions, learning, and inner dialogue are so rich that even his stretches of solitude don’t drag.
Quick quotes
Six passages I loved:
“A naturalist should look at the world with wary and patient curiosity, open to the possibility of never understanding it fully."
"After coexisting for a while, the moon prevailed over the lantern. Its light on the snow gave a mineral glow to the land that made everything look as though it had been forged by a cold volcanic eruption."
”As soon as the foregleam on the horizon showed the dimmest gray, he started walking again."
"At the mine, however, time seemed either to be going too fast or too slow, never matching his sense of the day."
”Because he is the supreme intellectual creature, he has been given the supreme intellectual burden: a consciousness of death."
“He reminded Håkan that life is a struggle against the downward pull of gravity—life is an ascending force that moves every plant and beast away from the dirt (and the same can be said about a creature’s moral evolution, by which it moves away from its primordial instincts toward a higher awareness).”