“No one knows what to do with this book,” J. Ruth Gendler says. “Bookstores are unsure where to shelve it. Reviewers don’t know what it is so they usually just quote it. Even such a basic question, ‘Is it fiction or non-fiction?’ doesn’t have an obvious answer.”
No wonder. The Book of Qualities is an odd book, deceptively whimsical, that describes 100 “qualities” — such as courage, defeat, guilt, beauty — as if each were a person.
Though the idea may seem slender, The Book of Qualities is a stunning tour of the psyche, and Gendler is a superb guide. Her writing is poetic and precise; she knows how to nudge you off the beaten path so that you feel you’re making discoveries of your own.
A thirty-one-year-old artist, sculptor and writer, Gendler grew up in Nebraska and now lives in Berkeley, California. She self-published Qualities and then went on the road to promote it.
“Reading on the road,” she says, “reading in my hometown, reading in junior high and high school classrooms, churches, day treatment centers, a seminar for cancer patients and their families, has forced me out of my comfortable Berkeley stereotypes and has helped me forget my shyness. Each reading I am surprised to learn more, and lately, I have a sense that I am finally beginning to understand material I ‘finished writing’ two years ago. Words on the page appear fixed and authoritative but words spoken out are alive and unpredictable.”
— Ed.
The Wind
The Wind is a gossip. Not in a malicious way. She just likes to move around and stir things up. She runs through the fire barefoot and has no fear of heights. She carries big blue bowls of rain with her. She plays the flute and loves all kinds of sounds. Her laughter fills the sky. The Wind is a wonderful storyteller. I still remember how she introduced me to the Qualities when I was a child.
Worry
Worry has written the definitive work on nervous habits. She etches lines on people’s foreheads when they are not paying attention. She makes lists of everything that could go wrong while she is waiting for the train. She is sure she left the stove on, and the house is going to explode in her absence. When she makes love, her mind is on the failure rates and health hazards of various methods of birth control. The drug companies want Worry to test their new tranquilizers, but they don’t understand what she knows too well: there is no drug that can ease her pain. She is terrified of the unknown.
Fear
Fear has a large shadow, but he himself is quite small. He has a vivid imagination. He composes horror music in the middle of the night. He is not very social, and he keeps to himself at political meetings. His past is a mystery. He warned us not to talk to each other about him, adding that there is nowhere any of us could go where he wouldn’t hear us. We were quiet. When we began to talk to each other, he changed. His manners started to seem pompous, and his snarling voice sounded rehearsed.
Two dragons guard Fear’s mansion. One is ceramic and Chinese. The other is real. If you make it past the dragons and speak to him close up, it is amazing to see how fragile he is. He will try to tell you stories. Be aware. He is a master of disguises and illusions. He almost convinced me that he was a puppet-maker and I was a marionette.
Speak out boldly, look him in the eye, startle him. Don’t give up. Win his respect, and he will never bother you with unimportant matters.
Patience
Patience wears my grandmother’s filigree earrings. She bakes marvelous dark bread. She has beautiful hands. She carries great sacks of peace and purses filled with small treasures. You don’t notice her right away in a crowd, but suddenly you see her all at once, and then she is so beautiful you wonder why you never saw her before.
Confusion
When Confusion’s parents separated, neither one of them wanted him. Each claimed he most resembled the other. He is a tall boy, and lately he has gotten a bit plump. He is always trying to make people like him. His attempts usually backfire.
Confusion is very accident-prone. He lives from crisis to crisis. Even the clearest directions are impossible for him to follow. My friends shudder when they see him heading toward their studios. He is well-meaning, but not nearly as innocent as he seems.
Confusion is Patience’s nephew. She is the only one who can sing to him.
Loneliness
Loneliness loves to run, but he is afraid to swim. He wears his isolation around him like a gray sweatshirt thrown back across the shoulders. It started when he was a little boy listening to the adults upstairs screaming at each other as he hid under the covers. At age seven he vowed never to need anyone. It was as if he sealed himself inside his skin and separated from everyone.
Once Loneliness almost changed his mind. There was a woman whom he cherished. She surprised him. He loved her so much that he thought he would never be himself again. He trusted that such a relationship could not survive, and it didn’t. Now more convinced than ever that companionship is a lie and joy is fragile, he has become contemptuous of others’ happiness.
Despair
Despair papered her bathroom walls with newspaper articles on acid rain. For years she worked with abused children. She has documented how we all suffer from malnourishment based on insufficient amounts of love. She has investigated how the pain of concentration camp survivors has been transmitted from one generation to the next “through disturbances in the parent/child relationship.” Not only the children but the grandchildren and their children.
Despair is overworked and overwhelmed. She has a heart condition. In her dreams the war is everywhere. She is not lying or exaggerating. Still, it is difficult to be around her. There is no arguing with her. She is persuasive, eloquent, and undeniably well-informed. If you attempt to change her mind, you will come away agreeing with her. She has stopped listening to music.
Discipline
Discipline does not disappear forever, but she does take vacations from time to time. By nature she is a conservative person, and yet she lives a radical life. Guided by a sense of inner necessity, she works hard and takes many risks. When Discipline was a teen-ager too poor to afford dance classes, she skipped lunch to pay for her lessons.
Discipline has a strong sense of order. However, when things are too neat she feels compelled to mess them up. She has a complex relationship to form. She appreciates the necessity and dangers of structure. She understands that the same structure which supports you can also hold you back. The bones of the skeleton which support the body can become the bars of the cage which imprison the spirit. After Discipline has mastered a form, she is free to improvise.
Courage
Courage has roots. She sleeps on a futon on the floor and lives close to the ground. Courage looks you straight in the eye. She is not impressed with power-trippers, and she knows first aid. Courage is not afraid to weep, and she is not afraid to pray, even when she is not sure who she is praying to. When she walks, it is clear that she has made the journey from loneliness to solitude. The people who told me she is stern were not lying; they just forgot to mention that she is kind.
Uncertainty
I have lived with Uncertainty for a long time. I had thought ours would have been a much briefer affair. I had no idea how intimate we’d become until you showed up.
And now you are asking me to leave him, and there are a few things I need to know. Who are you? What are your motives? Can I trust you? Is it really me you want to spend more time with or Uncertainty you yearn to visit?
Confidence
Confidence ignores “No Trespassing” signs. It is as if he doesn’t see them. He is an explorer, committed to following his own direction. He studied mathematics in France and still views his life as a series of experiments. The only limits he respects are his own. He is honest and humble and very funny. After all these years, his sister doesn’t understand why he still ice skates with Doubt.
Faith
Faith lives in the same apartment building as Doubt. When Faith was out of town visiting her uncle in the hospital, Doubt fed the cat and watered the asparagus fern. Faith is comfortable with Doubt because she grew up with him. Their mothers are cousins. Faith is not dogmatic about her beliefs like some of her relatives. Her friends fear that Faith is a bit stupid. They whisper that she is naive and she depends on Doubt to protect her from the meanness of life. In fact, it is the other way around. It is Faith who protects Doubt from Cynicism.
Suffering
Suffering teaches philosophy on a part-time basis. She likes the icy days in February when she can stay home from school, make thick soups, and catch up on her reading. With her white skin and dark hair she even looks like winter. She has a slender face and dramatic cheekbones.
Suffering’s reputation troubles her. Certain people adore her and talk about her as if knowing her gives them a special status. Other people despise her; when they see her across the aisle at the supermarket, they look the other way. Even though Suffering is considered a formidable instructor, she is actually quite compassionate. She feels lonely around students who dislike her. It is even more painful to be around those who idealize her. She is proud only because she recognizes the value of her lessons.
Pain
Pain is subtle. He has cold gray fingers. His voice is hoarse from crying and screaming. Some people think any time they feel something they don’t understand, it is Pain. Other people think feelings themselves are a sign of Pain. When people try to avoid him, he follows them silently and turns up as the bartender or the bus driver or the auctioneer. Pain has an elaborate filing system for keeping track of everyone; he is thinking about asking an old friend of mine to computerize it.
The local university wants to grant Pain tenure, but the students insist his teaching is overrated. The faculty is impressed because when Pain presents his work, it sounds meaningful and difficult.
Pain respects people who are willing to take risks. If you face him directly, he will give you a special ointment so your wounds don’t fester.
Competition
Competition is ruthless. He has to have an enemy. Otherwise, he has a “life is meaningless” crisis. For him there is only one right way, and it must be that way always. He has no respect for different colors, different crop varieties, or different points of view. He will divide life down to its smallest particle in his search to find the only best.
It is hard to say no to Competition. He makes the game sound so inviting until you are caught in the middle and begin to see how he has rigged it. He makes up all the rules and tells us some of them. We tried to change the game, and he kicked us out. Years later I dream I have forgotten to turn in the final assignment, and I am failing his class. His rules still haunt me.
Competition was in love with Creativity, but he married Efficiency. Not that Creativity would have married him. Competition and Efficiency seem more like allies than lovers. They never shout when they disagree. They settle their differences logically. However, it is not all as rational as it seems on the surface. Efficiency still feels more than a little jealous of her husband’s passionate past. She has all kinds of plans and schemes to banish Creativity completely once she is secure in her position and certain of Competition’s loyalty.
Luckily for us, no one is ever certain of Competition’s loyalty. Considering his short attention span, history of treachery, and inability to ever make a commitment to anyone, we can almost assume Creativity will be safe from Efficiency’s snares.
Honor
Many people would consider Honor a poor man. Of course, there were times when he was fabulously wealthy. For a while he lived in a large house with arches and courtyards and fountains and gardens and olive trees and rare birds. Now he lives in a tiny room with windows on three sides. He still likes to go out for breakfast on special occasions.
Honor has a different sense of value than most of us. When Honor was famous, all kinds of people came knocking on the door asking for favors. Since he has met with hard times, many of his old friends are afraid to be seen with him, as if hard times would notice and visit them too. This turn of events saddens Honor but he has never tried to change other people.
Honor is an old man now. He is becoming more transparent. He walks softly, and people do not hear him as he walks past them on his way to the park. Honor’s children, impatient with his old-fashioned manners, complain about him to their friends. His grandchildren adore him. Only his childhood friend Humility has stayed loyal through the long rainy winter.
Panic
Panic has thick curly hair and large frightened eyes. She has worked on too many projects meeting other people’s deadlines. She thinks she has an incurable disease. No one else has been able to confirm or deny it. She wakes up in the middle of the night pulling her hair out. She wants to dig underneath her skin and pull this illness out by its roots. She grabs at her scalp instead. She is crying for help, but only when she is sure no one is around to hear her.
Panic drives recklessly. She speeds down the freeway in an attempt to outrace her fears and numb her nerves. As she rushes to the city, she mutters about the accidents and the traffic and the isolation of each driver safely locked inside a little machine. Her anger at the distant politicians is mixed up with her confusion about how to make her own life mean something. We are all out of control, pretending to be in control.
Panic is sure no one can help her. She insists that she must sweat out these demons on her own. Although people care about her, she refuses to see them. She is ignoring the evidence of her own senses. When she is held, she is healed. Like the politicians she despises, she is scared to be touched.
Alienation
When I first called Alienation to arrange an interview, he said he couldn’t do it right now. “Everything is poisoned. Our speech is the language of captives. All attempts to communicate are futile or pretentious.”
At that point I called around to find out more about his life story. It seems that he was a delightful child, curious and playful, and gentle. He was popular in art school and began his career sculpting massive figures. Although his work was praised, he could not reach the people he honored. Their indifference chilled him. He was hungry and frustrated, and his work became brutal and inaccessible. After his daughter was born, he gave up his studio and took a job downtown to support his family. He is very good at what he does, but it means nothing.
Alienation’s associates are worried that he is really going crazy now. They miss the accuracy and insight of his sarcastic comments. As usual, he could say, “No one understands me.” This time he doesn’t care. He needs to be left alone. He is tearing off his masks. He is exploring the layers underneath the language of lies. He is in a labyrinth, and he is searching for Compassion. Though he hasn’t found her yet, he sees the signs of her presence. He is recovering the pieces of his childhood self.
If you have an opportunity to talk with Alienation, don’t lie to him or attempt to justify your compromises. Listen carefully. He is honest with himself. He will penetrate your mask.
Forgiveness
Forgiveness is a strong woman, tender and earthy and direct. Since her children left home, she has embarked on an extended walking tour, visiting ruins and old monuments, bathing in rivers and hot springs, travelling through the small towns and large pulsing cities, tracing the current of sorrow under the stories she hears. Sometimes the city authorities and officials don’t want her within their gates. If the people want her there enough, she always manages to find a way inside.
Forgiveness brings gifts wherever she goes. Simple ones, a three-stranded twig with leaves turning yellow, a belt she wove on an inkle loom, a little song that grows inside you and changes everything. She brought me a silver ring from the South with a pale stone, pink with a hint of brown. When I had asthma, she taught me how to breathe.
Honesty
Honesty is the most vulnerable man I have ever met. He is simple and loving. He lives in a small town on a cliff near the beach. I had forgotten how many stars there are in the midnight sky until I spent a week with him at his house by the sea.
In my time I have been afraid of so many things, most especially of the heights and of the darkness. I know if I had been driving anywhere else, the road would have terrified me. Knowing I was on my way to see him softened the fear. And in his presence the darkness becomes big and deep and comforting. He says if you are totally vulnerable, you cannot be hurt.
Joy
Joy drinks pure water. She has sat with the dying and attended many births. She denies nothing. She is in love with life, all of it, the sun and the rain and the rainbow. She rides horses at Half Moon Bay under the October moon. She climbs mountains. She sings in the hills. She jumps from the hot spring to the cold stream without hesitation.
Although Joy is spontaneous, she is immensely patient. She does not need to rush. She knows that there are obstacles on every path and that every moment is the perfect moment. She is not concerned with success or failure or how to make things permanent.
At times Joy is elusive — she seems to disappear even as we approach her. I see her standing on a ridge covered with oak trees, and suddenly the distance between us feels enormous. I am overwhelmed and wonder if the effort to reach her is worth it. Yet, she waits for us. Her desire to walk with us is as great as our longing to accompany her.
Our thanks to the author for permission to reprint these excerpts. The book is available from Turquoise Mountain Publications, P.O. Box 10153, Berkeley, California 94709 for $6.95 plus $1 for postage and handling.
— Ed.
© Copyright 1984 J. Ruth Gendler
