It is necessary to look for safe places, more than ever

The sound of the ES-Alert has become a symbol of these times we live in, of instability and uncertainty, of anguish and dread, of this kind of life we will have to lead between being cowed and resigned. If the impertinence of the alert that interrupts reading, conversations, and states of reflection is combined with news of the riots in France or the grotesque presence of Trump or the unease that a technological advance like AI can cause us, day-to-day life sometimes becomes unbearable.

That is why I have returned to reading Crossing to Safety (Libros del Asteroide, with a Catalan translation by Dolors Udina) and the second reading, far from disappointing me, has reconciled me with literature-as-refuge, so I cannot resist recommending it once more.

Crossing to Safety is the last novel written by Wallace Stegner, a historian, environmentalist, and novelist born in Iowa, in the United States, Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction for Angle of Repose. Stegner was a literature professor at Stanford University, where he created the writing program where Raymond Carver, among others, studied.

This last novel of his explains the enduring friendship between two couples. A weekend together after decades, when one of the four characters is about to die, invites the protagonist to remember and reflect on friendship and the passage of time.

"What happened to that passion we all had to improve, to unfold all our potential, to leave a mark on the world?", the narrator protagonist asks himself just at the beginning. And the answer leaves you frozen: "To leave a mark on the world. Instead, it is the world that has left a mark on us. We are getting old. Life has taught us in such a way that now we lie waiting for death, we walk with a cane or sit on porches where in other times young juices flowed with strength, and we feel old, inept, and confused."

You will have already deduced, therefore, that when I spoke of Crossing to Safety as a literature-refuge, I was not referring to an optimistic and complacent novel, but to a story that makes us feel understood and accompanied. It is, however, also a novel grateful for the good things in life, such as friendship and nature and creativity. It is not for nothing that the prologue by Ricardo Menéndez Salmón is titled Wallace Stegner: life is terrible and wonderful. Or, as Oques Grasses and their legion of followers would say: "Between the miracle and the disaster is where we live".

It is necessary, now more than ever, to look for safe places. This novel is one of them. Good friends are another. Everyone will have to figure it out for themselves.