What do you think?
Rate this book
A Significant Gap
A Significant Gap is part memoir, part analysis. The memoir provides the memories – the analysis probes both the content of those memories, and their attendant feelings. Especially the feelings. An old man’s memories of the miscellanea of his youth. The book review of a life story, reviewed by the protagonist. A story filled with deep feelings, deeper when remembered from the viewpoint of the last chapters.
Feelings, analyzed, are typically feelings about the world. They tell us something about that world. On pain of incoherence, we must grasp that ‘something’ at least well enough to inform those feelings. But deep feelings – especially the feelings awakened by the review of our long-forgotten past – are maddeningly elusive. The ‘something’ predicated by our feelings fails to cohere into something we can clearly know. Surprisingly, a solution to this riddle lies in the hard sciences. Specifically, astronomy and geology.
Science is the premiere knowledge generating engine of our time. Though subject to progressive reformulation and to further empirical evidence, the products of science – especially those that have survived many generations – can confidently be called coherent knowledge. One such we know the universe is an immensely large place that’s been around for an immensely long time. Yet that very immensity recoils back on the knower of this the more immense the universe, the more infinitesimal the knowledge of inhabitants with an infinitesimal history on an infinitesimal Earth.
A Significant Gap follows a man returning to Alton, Illinois – his hometown – on an early April weekend in 1992, for the final settlement of his mother’s house, a year and a half after her death. As he prowls the streets of Upper Alton on a dark Friday night, an elusive something seems to hide under every stone, to hang in the humid night air. A ‘something’ that betokens … what? Wading through memories and analyses, the man is surprised by what begins to emerge. Surprised by Joy, as C. S. Lewis would have put it.
Feelings, analyzed, are typically feelings about the world. They tell us something about that world. On pain of incoherence, we must grasp that ‘something’ at least well enough to inform those feelings. But deep feelings – especially the feelings awakened by the review of our long-forgotten past – are maddeningly elusive. The ‘something’ predicated by our feelings fails to cohere into something we can clearly know. Surprisingly, a solution to this riddle lies in the hard sciences. Specifically, astronomy and geology.
Science is the premiere knowledge generating engine of our time. Though subject to progressive reformulation and to further empirical evidence, the products of science – especially those that have survived many generations – can confidently be called coherent knowledge. One such we know the universe is an immensely large place that’s been around for an immensely long time. Yet that very immensity recoils back on the knower of this the more immense the universe, the more infinitesimal the knowledge of inhabitants with an infinitesimal history on an infinitesimal Earth.
A Significant Gap follows a man returning to Alton, Illinois – his hometown – on an early April weekend in 1992, for the final settlement of his mother’s house, a year and a half after her death. As he prowls the streets of Upper Alton on a dark Friday night, an elusive something seems to hide under every stone, to hang in the humid night air. A ‘something’ that betokens … what? Wading through memories and analyses, the man is surprised by what begins to emerge. Surprised by Joy, as C. S. Lewis would have put it.
Paperback
Published January 1, 2017
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
No one has reviewed this book yet.