Past and Present Are Interconnected in “The Eighth Moon” https://ift.tt/CbjqfPS
To expect a memoir and open to a scene out of the 1845 Anti-Rent War is surreal and unmooring. Yet that feeling of being unbalanced permeates The Eighth Moon, Jennifer Kabat’s luminous book which seeks to make sense of family, politics, and land today through the lens of the past.
In that same first chapter, Kabat writes, “It is 1845 but could be 1877 or 1893 or 1915, 1932 or 1974, 1983, 2008 or 2009, all the years hard luck comes,” and this sentiment echoes throughout the book, moving closer to the present as the author reflects on both the Trump presidency and the pandemic.
The book is a loose narrative, following Kabat and her husband David from London, a city to which Kabat is decidedly allergic, to Central New York, where Kabat’s socialist parents had roots. Settling into a rural life, Kabat immediately makes connections between the Anti-Rent War of the 19th century and the New York City annexation of property to quench the thirst of Manhattanites. She delves into local archives for pictures of the key players in the region’s history, at the same time she reflects on the path of her now aging parents. She feels an easy sympathy for those 19th-century inhabitants of the land who were forced into poverty yet she initially struggles with warmth for her current neighbors, boasting their hand-painted Trump signs. Having found a sense of clarity over the years, towards the end of the book she writes of these neighbors “[they] were and are the poor white people oppressed by elites often based in the city. They also tied their oppression to others, supporting abolition and suffrage. They are like Trump’s supporters and are socialists like me, believing not in I, but us, a coalition together.”
Jennifer Kabat walks the line between outsider and community member, feeling a hot burn of shame at one point when a grocery clerk comments that she couldn’t afford to buy Kabat’s home. Later, Kabat decides to join the fire department, craving the opportunity to protect and preserve the land and people she had come to call her own. She may tell the history of the area through the frame of her family story, but she is also liberal with details when it comes to describing the players of the past: Zera Preston and Augustus Kittle as well as her community of the present: Rudd and Muriel amongst others.
Additionally, the land itself shines throughout the book. A reader worries for the genetians eaten by the deer as Jennifer and David do. We observe the cycles of snow and mud, central to the landscape of the Catskills. Kabat shows us the flat bluestones, “scabbed” with lichens, the crumbling foundations of old houses, the historical marker for the Anti-Rent War.
Kabat’s eye for words is delightful. On one page, she notes, of a historical tenant lease, that “The language is dizzying.” On the next page, she asserts of those dizzying words, “This ‘distrain and distress’ – those Ds and Ss and Rs roll together in a symphony of dolor.” The author is not just considering the meaning of the document – that landlords could come to demand money or seize goods at any time – but the effect of the very words themselves.
The form and style of The Eighth Moon is unique. A reader senses that the narrative is slowly moving towards the present, but the progress is not linear. The text is punctuated with photographs, text excerpted from historical documents, newspaper headlines. The text moves throughout time as quickly as the writer becomes distracted, finding a connection between past and present. Kabat cites Elizabeth Hardwick who wrote, “Nothing is worse than a transition.” She moves the reader through space and time without many of the crutches a reader prefers—the clear signposts of transitions are intentionally omitted. Kabat notes, “Writing here without the transitions, I realize everything is connected, and all of this is interstitial – marginal – about those out of time, those forgotten by time, It’s the and and and and and of parataxis, where everything is interconnected.” That interconnectedness of past and present is the book’s primary idea.
Kabat’s unique style and perspective, her vigor in an archive, and her ability to connect seemingly disparate events throughout time make her truly a writer’s writer. Read The Eighth Moon to experience how we can move forward into the future without forgetting our history.
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