Snow is a good thing.
This is something that I will not say in two months, perhaps, when I am trapped under a 13-foot snowdrift in the northwest end of the Diag, but for now, I think, snow is a good thing. I welcomed the first snowfall last week.
Just why is snow a good thing, you ask?
For one reason, the snow spurs some of the best stories around. Often in these stories snow becomes a central symbol, representative of a variety of things - purity, isolation, innocence, death. In other stories, the snow sets the scene: A swirling blizzard foreshadows later emotional chaos; a soft snow shower sets a tone of sadness; a sledding scene fills us with happiness.
Here are some recommendations for snowbound reading:
One of my favorite stories, Anton Chekhov's "Heartache," opens with a scene of snow (this is a passage from A. Yarmolinsky's translation):
Evening Twilight. Large flakes of wet snow are circling lazily about the street lamps which have been lighted, settling in a thin soft layer on roofs, horses' backs, peoples' shoulders, caps. Iona Potapov, the cabby, is all white like a ghost. As hunched as a living body can be, he sits on the box without stirring. If a whole snowdrift were to fall on him, even then, perhaps, he would not find it necessary to shake it off.
Fittingly titled, "Heartache" may be one of the saddest stories ever written. The tale of an old man who has just died, you'd be advised not to read this one while battling a case of the midwinter blues. But you should read it, and it does read even better in the middle of winter.
Perhaps one of the most famous snow stories is Jack London's "To Build A Fire." While London is sometimes a clumsy writer, this story is one of the best around. In it, a man stranded in the Yukon tries desperately to build a fire as he waits out the night. He knows that without a fire he is sure to freeze to death. The story glistens with suspense and as the man struggles with a fire, you can almost feel the great Canadian wind hitting your flesh. At one point in the story, the protagonist finally gets a fire going, and you seem to feel warmer as you read. Until this scene under the spruce tree:
High up in the tree one bough capsized its load of snow. This fell on boughs beneath, capsizing them. This process continued, spreading out and involving the whole tree. It grew like an avalanche, and it descended without warning upon the man and the fire and the fire was blotted out! Where it burned was a mantle of fresh and disordered snow.
Common to London's writing, this story deals heavily with the power and violence of nature. This is a good thing to read if you find yourself wallowing in self-pity because you have to walk to Angell Hall in three measley snowy inches.
Some other classic snow stories would include F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Winter Dreams" and Hemingway's masterpiece of short fiction "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio" relies heavily on snow as a symbol for isolation and loneliness in his classic tales of midwestern life. Finally, J.D. Salinger's "Catcher In the Rye" portrays snow and ice as symbols of all that is untarnished and pure.
Local author Charles Baxter delightfully illustrates the childlike fascination we attach to snow, the joy the first snowfall brings. His short story "Fenstad's Mother" has a fabulous scene at the beginning: A middle-aged man, going to see his mother, notices he has 15 minutes to kill after church, and goes ice skating. In his "churchy Sunday-morning suit" he takes off on the ice pond:
He waved to his friend Ann, an off-duty cop, practicing her twirls. He waved to other friends. Without exception they waved back. As usual he was impressed with the way skates improved human character.
Twenty minutes later, in the doorway of her apartment, his mother said, "Your cheeks are red." She glanced down at his trousers, damp with melted snow. "You've been skating." She kissed him on the cheek and turned to walk into her living room. "Skating after church? Isn't that some sort of error?"
"It's just happiness," Fenstad said.
Still, I think that few fellow bibliophiles would argue: The last passage of James Joyce's "The Dead" is the most wonderful snow scene around. Perhaps it's the emotions that lead up to the scene, or perhaps it's the masterful language and imagery of the scene itself. Nonetheless, no winter is complete without rereading Gabriel Conroy's gaze out the hotel window:
A few light taps on the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. ... His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
The snow is going to get colder, fierecer and deeper. If you have books, though, I think you'll be OK.
- Dean Bakopoulos can be reached at deanc@umich.edu.