Sometimes, I hate this class. When we read books that are supposed to be about love and graceful dying, and halfway through the writer beats his wife without apologizing for it.... I have little goodwill towards such sentiments. I'm pasting my book report here, to share my anger.
5March2008
Grace and Grit
This book initially spoke to me for it’s passionate description of deep, soul touching love. I was intrigued by the whirlwind romance and the seeming happy marriage that came out of it, especially the concept of “love at first touch.” I was also happy to see Ken supporting his new wife as she discovered her terminal illness.
However, as I read, my opinions on the health and quality of their relationship slowly deteriorated. The line on page 8 that raised red flags for me (being a survivor of an emotionally and physically abusive relationship myself) was in Treya’s poem “I trust him more than/ I trust the universe.” I was also concerned about the sentiment expressed on page 10, in which Treya talks about how she is so obsessed with Ken that she gets in a car accident and runs out of gas. This kind of love may seem nice in movies and books, however it is heavy with boundary issues, and I worry when people are so quick to trust without looking further at the person they are involved with.
Around page 60 Treya began to assert herself more thoroughly in her treatment. While many of the points Ken brings up about balancing assertiveness with letting go are very valid and necessary for well balanced individuals, Ken seems to focus very thoroughly on what she did wrong, and what she needed to fix, than applauding her strength as one might expect the spouse of a cancer patient to do. There was also a very shocking and disturbing moment when Treya is relating her friend that keeps her very happy and laughing telling jokes about beating his wife… It was in very poor taste, and surprising to me that as a woman, she was willing to listen to those jokes- and laugh at them!
I began to really question the quality of their relationship and sense in such a quick descision to get married around page 150, as they started contracting. Treya seems to take a great deal of personal responsibility for Ken’s happiness, “Maybe I need someone simpler, less sensitive, less intelligent, so they won’t be hurt by the way I am.” “Everything I do seems to give him pain… Is it just me continuing to draw attention to myself when he’s the one who really needs attention? Just me feeling sorry for myself, unable to really feel his needs?” I almost exploded at these sentences. I can’t blame her for writing them, as she is quite obvious trapped in a victim mentality, however I cannot believe the audacity of Ken to allow her to feel that way, and to publish it so widely in this book!
It’s shameful, that a woman fighting CANCER should feel that she is personally responsible for the happiness and well being of her supposed loving husband, and the way she continues to flatter him, demeaning and devaluing herself in the process, is heart wrenchingly difficult to read. This is the mentality of a victim, someone who has been stomped on most of her life, and is now in a relationship where her partner feels he knows what she should be doing better than she does. “The greater the love, the greater the pain.” – This should be the motto of domestic violence. How sickening to read it in a book supposedly about love and graceful dying.
The book at that point spirals into a set of explanations about how he felt, where he attempts to gently degrade himself, “When fear overcomes me, my ordinary lightness of outlook… degenerates into sarcasm,” while mercilessly ripping into Treya, “I felt I had no control over my life… because Treya always had the trump card: ‘But I have cancer.’” He exercises power and control by threatening to end the relationship, withdraw as her sole source of strength and security while undergoing therapy, going so far as to make plans in a dramatic fashion until she is in tears, pleading for him to come back. He has conversations with her friends about how controlling she is, effectively putting them on his side as the victim of Treya’s selfishness. He speaks of walking into a gun shop and how he wanted to kill someone specific.
This violence hits it’s peak on page 154. At this point, I had to set the book down and take several deep breaths, to keep from throwing it across the room or setting it on fire, or some other sort of irrational resolution of my anger.
“I hit her. Again. And again. I kept hollering ‘Get out, goddamnit, get out!’ I kept striking her, she kept screaming, ‘Stop hitting me! Stop hitting me!’”
Right now, I’m having trouble forming my thoughts into coherent words. Maybe Ken Wilber missed a memo, but you DO NOT ABUSE YOUR SPOUSES! I don’t care if the spouse is a controlling monopolizing whatever, you file for divorce if that is the case! I don’t care if you’re at your wits end from chemo and life and death situations and god knows what else, you do not hit your spouse! No! Bad Buddhist!
Perhaps even more inconceivable than the fact that he decided to take his rage out on his wife like that is his method of explaining it away:
“Looking back on it, Treya and I both felt that incident was a crucial turning point… For Treya’s part, she began letting up on her monopolizing tendencies… For my part, I was learning the delicate task of establishing boundaries and announcing needs.”
Not once does he apologize for hitting her, or say it was wrong. He vaguely mentions that it is not something to be proud of, but he does not apologize for his actions, or lament them- in fact, he praises the incident as a turning point in their relationship, something that spawned good. And notice, too, that the flaws in the relationship as it was were not his fault, according to him- she needed to back off, he needed to set boundaries against her, protect himself from her, state what he needed and he desired, and she needed to fulfill his needs.
The rest of the book was hard for me to read with the red fiery anger that the writer had beaten his spouse and not even had the decency to apologize for it. Most of it went by in a haze, and I was quick to point out criticisms in the amount Ken seems to freely talk about his life, his publications, his interests and research, things that have nothing to do with the memory of the woman this book is supposedly about, the woman he controlled and abused with his words and actions.
I tried with this book, I tried very hard to stay open to a love story, open to the impossible, and open to the hidden message. I read the story of a woman who was strong and brilliant, and tragically shone like a red giant star before dissolving into one last dying burst of light, and yes, when I could pick past Ken’s self enhancing stories and interpretations, it was a beautiful story. However, it was too roughly shadowed by the writer, and yes, one incident on one night, on one page of their lives and this book, one incident without apology or afterthought- I will loathe a person for that. And I won’t apologize for it, because it simply isn’t right.
