The
Eyes & the Impossible. By Dave
Eggers. Illustrations by Shawn Harris. Knopf. $18.99.
Never underestimate the power of children. Never underestimate the power
of truly excellent authors to connect with children. Never underestimate the
ability of such authors to sneak into a supposedly-for-children book material
of such breadth and richness that the work has as much to say to adults as to
kids, if not more. And never, never underestimate Dave Eggers.
Eggers is a rarity: a writer quite capable of finding the sorts of grand
themes generally thought suitable for adult consumption and presenting them in
books for young readers, without seeming in any way to “dumb down” those themes
or talk down to his readers. Eggers’ The
Eyes & the Impossible stands in the grand tradition of books that are
entirely about nonhuman animals and are told from those animals’ point of view,
dealing with those animals’ worries and concerns – think, for example, of
Richard Adams’ Watership Down – but
that raise issues and questions that will fully engage human readers of all
ages.
Eggers works his magic by creating a wonderful linkage of nonhuman
creatures who have some
anthropomorphic characteristics – communicating in human words, communicating
with each other and even with species not previously encountered, strong
empathy for others of their own kind and other kinds, the ability to create
complex multi-species plans and bring them to fruition – but who are in no way
stand-ins for human beings, any more than Adams’ rabbits were. Eggers weaves
big themes – freedom, mutual assistance, an understanding or at least
acceptance of life and death – into a story that ploughs relentlessly onward
from high point to high point until it eventually emerges triumphant in some
expected ways and some unexpected ones.
The book is narrated by the wild – that is, unconfined and untamed – dog
Johannes, designated as “the Eyes” of three bison that in some never-specified
way are Keepers who maintain the Equilibrium of an island region that humans
consider a park or wildlife preserve but that the animals, through their eyes
and other senses, see as a world in itself. That is, they see it that way until
some of them learn of a much greater world elsewhere, beyond this place. For
reasons that make perfect sense after Eggers establishes and explores Johannes’
personality and behavior, the revelation about the wider world inspires a plan
to remove the bison from the place where they have apparently always lived and
grant them the freedom to roam, explore and become more fully themselves and
not simply Keepers.
There are explorations and revelations galore as this story progresses,
all of them consistent with the world that Eggers creates. This is a major
strength of The Eyes & the
Impossible: the world is self-contained and, within the rules and bounds
established by Eggers, makes complete sense. For example, there is the matter
of names. All the animals have them: Johannes himself; the bison, Freya,
Meredith and Samuel; and all other characters, too. Indeed, Eggers occasionally
lightens what is essentially a serious adventure by playing games with names:
the ducks, comic characters regarded by Johannes with disdain even though they
too turn out to have a role to play in the story, all have names beginning with
J. Eggers also lightens matters in some of the book’s most-serious sections –
which involve animal-human interactions – by making even well-meaning humans
(and certainly some non-well-meaning ones) seem rather silly, although still to
be watched carefully and given the respect due to potentially dangerous
creatures. The animals are not smarter than the humans, but their close
observations, including those of Johannes and also those of other characters,
let them find ways to proceed as they wish while getting around human
interference.
Johannes has some “assistant Eyes,” whose roles in the book are smaller
but still crucial to the story, and each of them is given a nicely developed
personality. For example, Bertrand the seagull, who in some ways is a
mentor/confidant for Johannes, also has a streak of pride that is very nearly
his undoing. And he and his fellow seagulls have their own well-developed
culture, including a “final flight” when they know their end is coming and to
which Bertrand himself aspires. This sense of culture, in fact of multiple
cultures interacting with each other and providing support when possible,
weaves a rich tapestry of meaningfulness into a book that quietly dons the
mantle of “not just a story for young people” without ever becoming preachy or
insistent.
The resonances of The Eyes & the Impossible are many. One of the most interesting is Johannes’ discovery of art – human art, in the form of paintings – early in the book, an event that lands him briefly in captivity and even more briefly in a silly human-made “dog outfit” when the other animals later try to keep him safe from humans. This aspect of Johannes is reinforced by some very unusual and exceptionally well-conceived illustrations by Shawn Harris. This is not an illustrated book per se, but one in which Harris takes a series of actual 19th-century paintings (the full list is given at the back of the book) and adds Johannes to each of them. It is an exceptional effect in an exceptional novel. Just about everything in The Eyes & the Impossible is exceptional: even Johannes’ bravery is nuanced – at one point he rescues a baby but then goes into a depression when humans, appreciative of his actions, make a concerted effort to find and catch him and presumably reward him in human terms that are not his at all. Life is not simple in Eggers’ book or in the world of his readers, and that is one reason The Eyes & the Impossible resonates with adults as well as children. It is a book of many pleasures, including the discovery that what does indeed seem impossible may turn out, under just the right circumstances, to be possible after all.
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