McNair to Brinkerhoff #6

Let me be clearer. (I’ve been mulling this.) The metaphor of unfastening — that is, lifting away from earth’s troubles toward the dream of harmony and fulfillment is the central thing in the book. I think the rest of the book flows from that. By the rest, I mean the personal loss and sorrow in section one, the sorrow in the lives of others in section two, the solace of beauty and the search for it in section three, and the pathways to consolation and “fastening back down again” in the world as we have it in section four, significantly titled “Maintaining.”

 

So if you do what you said in the first place, that is, an illustration (or work of art, as I’d prefer to call it) of that passage you quoted in “The Unfastening,” that would be good. Would you mind sending sketches as you go along?

 

Thanks for your patience with my muddled commentary in the last email. You see, I’ve never talked with anyone besides my wife about this book, and not even she has given it a full final reading yet. So the talking does me good, allowing me to check on the flow and arc of the book’s contents. I do hope my sense of that arc squares with what you’ve found as a reader.

 

Wes