Thursday, February 13, 2014

What Time Travel Is Really Telling Us

Saturday, October 26, 1991 (Henry is 28, Claire is 20)

Clare: The library is cool and smells like carpet cleaner, although all I can see is marble. I sign the Visitors' Log: Clare Abshire, 11:15, 10-26-91 Special Collections. I have never been in the Newberry Library before, and now that I've gotten past the dark, foreboding entrance I am excited. I have a sort of Christmas-morning sense of the library as a big box full of beautiful books. The elevator is dimly lit, almost silent. I stop on the third floor and fill out an application for a Reader's Card, then I go upstairs to Special Collections. My boot heels rap the wooden floor. The room is quiet and crowded, full of heavy tables piled with books and surrounded by readers. Chicago autumn morning light shines through the tall windows. I approach the desk and collect a stack of call slips. I'm writing a paper for an art history class. My research topic is Kelmscott Press Chaucer. I look up the book itself and fill out a call slip for it. But I also want to read about papermaking at Kelmscott. The catalog is confusing. I go back to the desk to ask for help. As I explain to the woman what I am trying to find, she glances over my shoulder at someone passing behind me. “Perhaps Mr. DeTamble can help you,” she says. I turn, prepared to start explaining again, and find myself face to face with Henry.

I am speechless. Here is Henry, calm, clothed, younger than I have ever seen him. Henry is working at the Newberry Library, standing in front of me, in the present. Here and now. I am jubilant. Henry is looking at me patiently, uncertain but polite.

Is there something I can help you with?” he asks.

Henry!” I can barely refrain from throwing my arms around him. It is obvious he has never seen me before in his life.


From, The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger


There are important lessons in this time travel stuff. Henry's shuffling from the future to the past and then to the present and back again. It's nifty and fun and all of that. But it is cautionary, too. This is why the growing and enduring intimacy between Henry and Clare carries the story.

There are strange comical surprises for both of them. There are struggles with their uncommon circumstances. There are vexing obstacles thrown in their way. And yet, through the tangled mess of time travel what we have here is the story of two people completely in love, finding their way through the mystery of that, as well as facing the ever complicated encumbrances of time.

This was Niffenegger's first novel and it became a New York Times bestseller and was made into a popular motion picture.

There is something to be said for couples who find themselves in a relationship where waiting and distance becomes an uncontrollable part of their alliance. In spite of the charm and lightheartedness of this novel, time is a heavy and serious theme throughout. And underneath all the mayhem created by Henry's time traveling capers is the impermanence of life and the certainty of our own mortality.

Henry and Clare remind us we really should love while we can however difficult in time that may be. ~ TM

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