I: Aristotle and Dante

Due to its length, this section was broken out of a daily post. The following is a spoiler-minimal discussion of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. It is, however, a really good book, and quotes are excerpted liberally, meaning that some key plot points are inevitably discussed. Do what you will.

I think when I started writing my novella this semester during NaNoWriMo, I wasn't exactly sure what the topic I wanted to tackle was. Something autobiographical—something about being queer, about being Asian-American, about living somewhere where one's life was aimed entirely at getting out and getting through. In many ways, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe filled that niche for me thoroughly, and I find much less motivation to write following having read it, knowing that such a piece of literature already exists in the world. I read this book as quickly as I could, absorbing it as a dry sponge does water, highlighting passage upon passage along the way.

I think what got me about this story is that it never went where I expected, always straying into some new territory that hit me harder and harder, but in doing so it never seemed to be a plot twist, but rather simply another facet of reality. No matter where I looked in this book, I found meaning and connections to my own life. This tends to be a problem with my way of looking at the world: I'm always looking for meaning and to relate experiences to my own, and sometimes that just doesn't make sense. A quote placed between chapters pointed this to me, my "turning the pages patiently in search of meaning." Even when the statements in the book didn't apply to me directly at the moment, some parts of it just seemed to be utterly part of the human condition, or perhaps part of my past, pulling at strings of me I thought long dead and buried.

The writing in this book has a cruel, almost laughably naive and yet somehow piercingly true logic to it. It comes through in the cynicism of the narrator, Aristotle, who early on states "I didn't understand how you could live in a mean world and not have any of that meanness rub off on you." In that sentence, he called back a part of me which would've agreed wholeheartedly with that statement in early high school and late middle school. A view of activity as drudgery, of oneself as boring: "If a guy was offering to teach me to swim, then for sure he didn't have a life. Two guys without a life? How much fun could that be?"

Perhaps this is why the book is interesting to me: Aristotle's best friend, Dante, seems to be, in some ways, how I (hope I) negotiate the world now, but at heart I was always Aristotle. Statements like "Girls. They were mysteries too. Everything was a mystery." or weird obsessions like a "book of poems by a poet named William Carlos Williams", "a famous painting, Nighthawks, by Edward Hopper"—that was me. It might still be me. Aristotle posits that "maybe life was just a series of phases." If so, Aristotle's statements certainly seem to reflect me in the previous phase of my life.

It's also interesting to me how the friendship between Dante and Aristotle is portrayed, because, in some ways, it seems to be the relationship I have and/or want with my closest friends: "We walked around. I guess we just didn't want to go home. We talked about stuff. Stupid stuff." For Dante and Aristotle, this eventually blossoms into a relationship—yet again, raising the question of what kind of connection, what kind of attribute distinguishes friendship from romance? Aristotle says that "[Dante] was the first human being aside from my mother who had ever made me want to talk about the things that scared me." Is it vulnerability? I find myself more trying to make myself more vulnerable to others even without romance, because we can't always keep everything inside.

Despite this inability to distinguish the two, I still find the draw of the romantic notion exceptionally appealing. "I bet you could sometimes find all of the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand." As to who that someone is, who knows? I find no ability to reconcile the rational with the notional, romantic ideal. Perhaps it is because the ideal does not exist, or perhaps it is because it cannot be explained by the rational. What else is it then? Who knows?

In a similar vein, the use of the word 'love' itself to denote either romance or deep care is an interesting aspect of this novel. I think I once agreed with the following philosophy: "This is what I understood: a woman like Mrs. Quintana didn't use the word 'love' very often. When she said that word, she meant it." After this summer (and perhaps the last), however, I find that I use it a lot for a lot of people (e.g. my counselor group)—do statements like “I love my friends” dilute my usage, or is it simply that there exists a lot of love to go around? When I say ‘I love you’ or ‘I love y’all’, do I mean it? 

In regards to being vulnerable, I think, in some senses, it has formed a coping mechanism in response to the base level of anxiety I experience on a constant basis. Previously, I was Aristotle: "I want other people to tell me how they feel. But I'm not so ready to return the favor." I kept finding, however, that "I have always felt terrible inside. The reasons for this keep changing." I remember talking to one of my friends about this sophomore, junior year, and our novel discovery that, perhaps, not all individuals carried "that darkness inside them." As Aristotle states, "different boys lived by different rules."

Going down a different path, I found the discussion of existing in two different cultures and of differing familial structures familiar to my own experiences, even though, as is perhaps obvious by the statement, Chinese-American and Mexican-American cultures would seem to have a lot of differences. Reading brought back memories of useless and unjustified teenage angst, rebelling against "responsibility...my mother's favorite word."

It is, then, sort of beautiful to see Aristotle round the corner that I passed not so long ago throughout the course of this story, slowly getting to the idea that "[my parents] didn't do anything wrong. They were just trying to help me. But I hated them." Seeing Aristotle go from tight-lipped to jesting around his parents, noting to them that "I'm the uncoolest almost-seventeen-year-old in the universe. And it's all your fault" (a sentiment that I also experience), mirrored my own experience from high school where I gradually began to appreciate my parents more and more as peers than "a form of government." It reminds me of Bao, which is a short film about the same sort of subject that I cry in response to every time. Perhaps this is most clearly summed up in this conversation between Aristotle and Dante:

"'Our parents are really weird,' he said.

  'Because they love us? That's not so weird.'

  'It's how they love us that's weird.'

  'Beautiful,' I said."

As for the more cultural aspects, I kept finding conversations that reminded me of my own thoughts and feelings. The eternal question of living on the hyphen between two cultures—that "I didn't want to live in my parents' world and I didn't have a world of my own"—is reflected over and over in discussion between Aristotle and Dante, who, to each other at least, are immersed in Mexican culture to different extents. Yet the statement that Aristotle is "more Mexican" than Dante is deflected by the question, "what do I know about Mexico, Dante?" The question, in its context, is designed to reject comparisons, but to many raises a challenge—forcing them to desperately claw back vocabulary and cultural facts to maintain legitimacy as a "real" member of the original culture. What does that even mean?

Aristotle makes another interesting statement about such questions early on in the book: "I made up my mind that year—when I was ten—that I wasn't going to sound like another Mexican. I was going to be an American." It reminds me of a line in my Common App essay: "I hated being different. I tried to keep it to myself as much as possible." That rejection of place, of identity still stings a little bit, and it's really interesting for me to think about it in comparison to a lot of people around me at MIT, who've come from places where Asian-Americans dominate (at least, to a greater extent than here). How does this change between us? On one hand, perhaps I am saddled with more vestigial shame, but on the other, I also feel like my understanding of my Chinese-American identity is heightened. Perhaps both are true.

Of course, the capstone in combining all of these thoughts is the intersection between culture and queerness. Some small portions of text seemed to be really jarring for me, both in moving from a personal understanding where "I don't kiss boys" to now, and to small things which reminded me of past relationships. Aristotle explains to Dante that: "'I'm more mad at myself,' I said. 'I always let you talk me into things. It's not your fault.'" Perhaps I have reached the point of understanding the first two sentences, but not the last, at least in regards to my own circumstances. Then, of course, there's the classic, which speaks for itself: "He was busy. I was busy. Mostly I think we were busy avoiding each other."

This intersects with culture in the novel in a way that I found eerily familiar. There's the slightly dainty conversation where Dante asks "Do real Mexicans like to kiss boys?" and Aristotle responds "I don't think liking boys is an American invention." (Note: it's not, but being uncomfortable with it seems to be a Western religious invention, to some extent.) More deeply, however, there's a scene where Dante asks Aristotle: "I wonder how that's going to go over? I'm the only son. What's going to happen with the grandchildren thing?" That question reverberates in my head often, and perhaps it would be more easily answered if I were gay and not bi. Especially after considering all the familial obligation from parental love, it often calls me to ask if I should just rationally restrict my interests, and yet when I become interested in a girl I feel as if I am caving in. Dante's father declares that "I don't care about grandchildren. I care about Dante." If only I could hear that—and sincerely hear it—from my own parents.

With a little reflection then, I still find that, in this regard Aristotle and Dante's parents are more ideal than my own, although Aristotle claims that "maybe everyone loves differently. Maybe that's all that matters." In Dante, I am reminded of my own struggles of coming out and thinking about it all. Two conversations elucidate this:

"How would she know?"

"I don't know. But I bet she knows."

"I have to tell them, Ari."

"Why?"

"Because I have to."

"But what if you fall in love with a girl?"

The suspicions that my parents knew, and the burning sense of obligation to tell someone, everyone. It reminds me of that time, and brings back a variety of feelings that seem harsh and utterly depressing in retrospect. One of my friends just recently talked to me about how dark that period of my life was, and to revisit the pain, although unpleasant, showed how good this book was at making me feel things. There's a conversation between Dante's father and Aristotle:

"But why didn't he tell me, Ari?"

"He didn't want to disappoint you. He said—"

I think I wrote that exact scene once in my novella from junior fall. So. Much. Pain.

Some other interesting tidbits:

"You're fighting this war in the worst possible way."

"I don't know how to fight it, Dad."

"You should ask for help."

"I don't know how to do that either."

Not knowing how to ask for help is kind of a mood, and tackling a problem the wrong way—well, it happens to all of us.

"I had lousy handwriting. Nobody could read it but me. That was the good news. Not that anybody would want to read it."

Actually my handwriting.

"Maybe my life isn't all that interesting but at least I'm busy. Busy doesn't mean happy. I know that. But at least I'm not bored. Being bored is the worst."

This was perhaps a pretty good summary of how I felt during some weeks of the semester. I think the work was grueling, but the week after when I had no work and was bored actually just killed me with anxiety.

"He looked at the hail. 'It's like pissed off snow,' he said."

This is false meteorologically, but the description has some literary merit.

"I guess I was holding a question on my face."

I think this is a really interesting turn of phrase, and it's stunning to me that even the small sentences that randomly consist the scenes of the book can be so beautiful.

"High school was just a prologue to the real novel. Everybody got to write you—but when you graduated, you got to write yourself."

I think this is interesting on two fronts: first, that everybody always thinks it's the next stage of life where you get to write yourself, and it's almost always false, and; second, perhaps my philosophy can be summed up as this: to help write others and to help others write themselves is perhaps just as good if not better than writing oneself.

"I've always wanted to be weird in a good way."

Also a good life philosophy, I think.

I don't usually cry in response to any form of media, and the ones I have found are usually audiovisual, to some extent. This book made me cry. That, in and of itself, means it is exceptional. The sheer amount of thoughts and feelings it evokes is the mark of a work of art—because, of course, what is art except for that which makes us feel something?