10 things I liked about - The Opposite of Loneliness by Merina Keegan

The Opposite of Loneliness

• The writing style seems to border on the occasional flashes of wisdom and orginal thinking. The style can be termed as 'felt writing’.

• The formats employed for the writing is ingenious and is quite refreshing. ‘The Emerald City’ set in the context of the war on terror, develops through the exchange of letters and shows gradual progression especially in terms of the protagonist’s transformation into a ‘jihadi'.
  
• The author is a quite accomplished person. She did her internships at the Paris Review and the New Yorker. She also was a research assistant with Harold Bloom. I read a review of the book in the Goodreads app which said that the only reason why the book was a success was because of the pre-mature death of the author. I have reasons to differ with the reviewer. The reviewer comfortably ignores the fact that she is a prodigy. In her writings, she has reiterated the fact that there is always the possibility of doing something in this world. 

  “Maybe I’m ignorant and idealistic but i just feel like we can do something really cool to this world"

    The Guardian reviewer clearly states that 

  "she never had the chance to lose her youthful idealism". 

• The idea or concept of the 'cinematic gaze’ was something that had always enthralled me. As tourists roaming around the capital city of Delhi, we have come across the xenophobic tendencies of my country men. We overheard Chinese being ridiculed as Chinese Manchurian and the white skinned ladies being stalked by teenagers begging for a selfie. This anti-social traits is one of the spin-off effects of technology. The non-fiction piece titled ’The Art of Observation’ talks about this 'gaze upon the foreigners’ from the POV of Merina and her friend when they visited India. Her moral stand in this regard is 

  "If it made them happy,after all,why not play along?"

• The way the reader is introduced to the Toyota car in ‘Stability in Motion’ is quite innovative and fresh. She was able to develop the idea of a car into a well-composed non-fiction piece. She describes the car ‘as a vehicle crowded’ with ‘physical manifestations’ of her high school memories. 
• Some of her writings carries a foreboding the pre-mature death. The story ‘Winter Break’ has this sense and it also has the words ‘Don’t worry, I’m driving - the message conveyed to her mother. To borrow the esoteric construction from 'The Guardian’ - ‘

  "sentences written light heartedly are piercingly loud reminders of what will never be"

  
  
• One of the personal themes that I was able to read into the book was - Live happily and when you know that you are going to die, have a frame of mind of calmness and no-regrets. 
• I  need to comment on the presence of death in her writing. There is this sense of doom that permeates in her writing. We all tend to get emotional about death. To quote The Guardian ‘ her finite body of work inextricably and forever after bound up in the tragedy of her death, lending an understandable poignancy to much of the writing. It is the same feeling that we get when we watch - Fast and Furious 7 sans Paul Walker and The Dark Knight sans Heath Ledger. 
• The legacy of Merina Keegan - What she has left for a reader like me and others is something that should be documented. She had a short but meaningful stay on this earth. A productive and well-lived 22 years. She was quite optimistic about life. She wrote in her final essay for the Yale Daily News, the opposite of loneliness - 

  "We’re so young, We’re twenty two years old. We have so much time"

  This is the temperament that she has left for us. Two poetic expression that appear in my mind are,  
  
  Rabi Ben Ezra - Robert Browning 
  Grow old along with me!
  The best is yet to be,
  The last of life, for which the first was made:
  Our times are in His hand
  Who saith "A whole I planned,
  Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!''

Dylan Thomas - Do not go gentle into that good night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

The following themes in the books appealed to me: 

• The bug killer and the human side of a menial job.
• The trapped sailors in the submarine.
• The U.S marine and his emails to his girl.
• The girl who was allergic to gluten.
• The sense of loss after death of a love one.
• The sense of loss after the death of loved ones.
• The train journey through the Indian heartland 
• The 'elegiac essay’ about the first car.
• The child who was the Jesus under study for a Christmas  
      event.
• The placement test and the employability patterns at Yale    
      University.
  
  The themes are varied and are drawn from different sources. This gives me the idea that it is not a book or a movie that should serve as the prompt for me to write. It should be the life that I see around me. As writers around the world are engaged in NANOWRIMO, this is the thought that should take me forward.