So it Goes (Zane Mandell)

I can honestly say at this point, after just having finished the novel that I did enjoy the short novel. It wasn’t the fact that the plot pulled the reader along and contained twists and turns. It wasn’t even the main character himself that I felt sorry for. It wasn’t even the feeling that I had towards Adrian and Veronica that have solidified my opinion on the novel. It is what is said “in between the lines” as the cliché goes. That is something that I found myself saying more and more throughout the novel as we found our narrator becoming older as the book progress: and so it goes.

I find that the novel evokes a feeling that cannot be explained, or at least not by me anyway. We are all blind to some things; we all make stupid decisions, and when all of that is realized from being able to truly see we then realize that it can’t be changed. We all do not get it. Even Veronica and Adrian do not get it until it is too late. And I see that is unfortunately just how it goes.

On the subject of the work as a whole I find that Part One and Part Two complement each other and are so vital to one another in so many ways. The ideas on philosophy, history, friendship, love, and remorse tie the narrator’s life together. Little fragments that he is able to pull back along the way. He is searching for what was always right in front of him; something that he had direct power of the outcome of the situation. It is a story of life but also a story of honesty, not holding back from how things really are, how we, humans, really are.

It is hard to take in all at once but I feel a sense of pride in completing this novel as I think it is one of those that is important for everyone to read. It gives perspective so that maybe you can live your own life with some knowledge of things, not as they are given in books but as they are given in reality. That is thing about it which I am still concerned with. What Barnes is getting at is that we all must be able to be on our own at some point, with no map, no compass, and no knowledge of what is to come. And yet strangely enough he has captured that sense within a book. Well as Kurt Vonnegut put “so it goes.”