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Arcadia
In the fields and forests of western New York State in the late 1960s, several dozen idealists set out to live off the land, founding what becomes a famous commune centered on the grounds of a decaying mansion called Arcadia House. Arcadia follows this lyrical, rollicking, tragic, and exquisite utopian dream from its hopeful start through its heyday and after.
309 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 13, 2012
About the author
Lauren Groff
57 books6,306 followersLauren Groff was born in Cooperstown, N.Y. and grew up one block from the Baseball Hall of Fame. She graduated from Amherst College and has an MFA in fiction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Her short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in a number of journals, including The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, Hobart, and Five Points as well as in the anthologies Best American Short Stories 2007, Pushcart Prize XXXII, and Best New American Voices 2008.
She was awarded the Axton Fellowship in Fiction at the University of Louisville, and has had residencies and fellowships at Yaddo and the Vermont Studio Center.
She lives in Gainesville, Florida, with her husband, Clay, and her dog, Cooper.
Her short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in a number of journals, including The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, Hobart, and Five Points as well as in the anthologies Best American Short Stories 2007, Pushcart Prize XXXII, and Best New American Voices 2008.
She was awarded the Axton Fellowship in Fiction at the University of Louisville, and has had residencies and fellowships at Yaddo and the Vermont Studio Center.
She lives in Gainesville, Florida, with her husband, Clay, and her dog, Cooper.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,275 reviews
June 28, 2018
i had reservations about this book because, well, look at that cover. fucking hippies.
but i should have known that lauren groff would write a spectacular book even if it was about fucking hippies. i have read all three of her books now, and while monsters of templeton is still far and away the winner in the "books by lauren groff" award ceremonies, this one is very very good.
this novel focuses on bit, a child born into a hippie commune, and checks in with him during four periods in his life.
when he is born, he is just a tiny little thing: she wrapped you around and around with a thick wool scarf and went to the grocer's and weighed you. you were three pounds, exactly. the size of an itty-bitty butternut squash.
hence, bit.
bit is initially believed by many members of the community to be defective because of his size and because he doesn't speak for several years.
when he is six:
He wakes three times per night, desolate for his mother. At last, he writes a note to Sweetie. He labors over it with a red pencil.
Im to little. it says. I have to sleep with Abe and Hannah.
When he hands it to Sweetie, she goes speechless. You can read? she says.
Sweetie gives the note to Hannah, whose lips form an O.
Oh, Bit, you can write? she says. She kneels to his height and kisses him.
but bit is not unintelligent, he is just watching. he watches a man die, he watches his mother slip into her winter depressions, he watches the community in its triumphs and failures.
and through his eyes, there is so much beauty. the story is told in brief episodes that build upon each other to give a sense of how this particular dynamic operates. there is an undercurrent of what will eventually break the utopia running throughout,its gentle hypocrisies and conflicting personalities, but through bit's eyes, we see a loving extended family, who work together for a common purpose, where children run wild and free, and nothing is shocking. as much as i disdain the hippie lifestyle, it becomes truly beautiful in her descriptions; human lives stripped down to the essentials. bit is a character filled with love and wonder, who is shaped by the hippie ideals into not a sex and drug-crazed stereotype, but a loving caregiver who wants to protect these fragile people he sees around him.
the second part is about the breaking up of the community, and bit's life in the "real world". the beginning of this segment shows just how a project like this can get out of control. as its numbers grow, and under the "leadership" of a man with messianic leanings, everything begins to break down. the ideology that once held the community together weakens as newer members join up for the free love and drugs, there is resentment about the distribution of labor, and too many mouths to feed. it gets ugly pretty quickly, and eventually, the authorities descend and everyone has to go their separate ways, even helle, the girl bit loves and hates, is disappointed in and excited by in equal measure.
What Bit hated most in all the Outside world, hated with an irrational, puking hatred, was the goldfish in the pet store a street away, its endless dull slide around the glass. When he passed the store on his way to school, he crossed the street. He was afraid of himself, of how badly he wanted to smash his fist through the window, to cradle the fish in his bloody hands and carry it down to the river. There he would dip it to the surface and free it into the terrible cold water. It might have been swallowed in a second, a sudden jagged mouth out of the black. but at least that second it would feel on its body a living sweetness, a water that it hadn't dirtied with its own dying body.
bit is still consumed with his need to protect those around him, and has really only traded one fishbowl for another. his mother is still sad, his father has suffered an accident, and his upbringing has made him different from other kids. he turns to photography, another way of watching and capturing what he sees, and retreats into silence once more.
i don't want to say much about the third and fourth parts of the story, because it would give too much away about the characters and where they find themselves. but yes, "finding themselves" is a pretty major theme. there are some really heartbreaking and beautiful scenes, one of which involves bit and helle, where she explains to bit just how much he missed when he was supposedly watching; how his perception of his early life is flawed:
there is so much damage in this story. so many idealistic intentions, so many mistakes. and to see where the characters end up, after the scattering of the commune; there are some unexpected consequences of having shared that specific formative experience, and each will take something different from it into their adult decisions.
there is one intentionally-dropped thread that i kept waiting to come back into the story. i mean, it probably took great writerly restraint to let it go, and it was probably for the best, but eeerrrggghhh!! closure! i long for closure!
but, yeah. really lovely book, and it shows that hippies are people, too! some of them, anyway. in books.
come to my blog!
but i should have known that lauren groff would write a spectacular book even if it was about fucking hippies. i have read all three of her books now, and while monsters of templeton is still far and away the winner in the "books by lauren groff" award ceremonies, this one is very very good.
this novel focuses on bit, a child born into a hippie commune, and checks in with him during four periods in his life.
when he is born, he is just a tiny little thing: she wrapped you around and around with a thick wool scarf and went to the grocer's and weighed you. you were three pounds, exactly. the size of an itty-bitty butternut squash.
hence, bit.
bit is initially believed by many members of the community to be defective because of his size and because he doesn't speak for several years.
when he is six:
He wakes three times per night, desolate for his mother. At last, he writes a note to Sweetie. He labors over it with a red pencil.
Im to little. it says. I have to sleep with Abe and Hannah.
When he hands it to Sweetie, she goes speechless. You can read? she says.
Sweetie gives the note to Hannah, whose lips form an O.
Oh, Bit, you can write? she says. She kneels to his height and kisses him.
but bit is not unintelligent, he is just watching. he watches a man die, he watches his mother slip into her winter depressions, he watches the community in its triumphs and failures.
and through his eyes, there is so much beauty. the story is told in brief episodes that build upon each other to give a sense of how this particular dynamic operates. there is an undercurrent of what will eventually break the utopia running throughout,its gentle hypocrisies and conflicting personalities, but through bit's eyes, we see a loving extended family, who work together for a common purpose, where children run wild and free, and nothing is shocking. as much as i disdain the hippie lifestyle, it becomes truly beautiful in her descriptions; human lives stripped down to the essentials. bit is a character filled with love and wonder, who is shaped by the hippie ideals into not a sex and drug-crazed stereotype, but a loving caregiver who wants to protect these fragile people he sees around him.
the second part is about the breaking up of the community, and bit's life in the "real world". the beginning of this segment shows just how a project like this can get out of control. as its numbers grow, and under the "leadership" of a man with messianic leanings, everything begins to break down. the ideology that once held the community together weakens as newer members join up for the free love and drugs, there is resentment about the distribution of labor, and too many mouths to feed. it gets ugly pretty quickly, and eventually, the authorities descend and everyone has to go their separate ways, even helle, the girl bit loves and hates, is disappointed in and excited by in equal measure.
What Bit hated most in all the Outside world, hated with an irrational, puking hatred, was the goldfish in the pet store a street away, its endless dull slide around the glass. When he passed the store on his way to school, he crossed the street. He was afraid of himself, of how badly he wanted to smash his fist through the window, to cradle the fish in his bloody hands and carry it down to the river. There he would dip it to the surface and free it into the terrible cold water. It might have been swallowed in a second, a sudden jagged mouth out of the black. but at least that second it would feel on its body a living sweetness, a water that it hadn't dirtied with its own dying body.
bit is still consumed with his need to protect those around him, and has really only traded one fishbowl for another. his mother is still sad, his father has suffered an accident, and his upbringing has made him different from other kids. he turns to photography, another way of watching and capturing what he sees, and retreats into silence once more.
i don't want to say much about the third and fourth parts of the story, because it would give too much away about the characters and where they find themselves. but yes, "finding themselves" is a pretty major theme. there are some really heartbreaking and beautiful scenes, one of which involves bit and helle, where she explains to bit just how much he missed when he was supposedly watching; how his perception of his early life is flawed:
there is so much damage in this story. so many idealistic intentions, so many mistakes. and to see where the characters end up, after the scattering of the commune; there are some unexpected consequences of having shared that specific formative experience, and each will take something different from it into their adult decisions.
there is one intentionally-dropped thread that i kept waiting to come back into the story. i mean, it probably took great writerly restraint to let it go, and it was probably for the best, but eeerrrggghhh!! closure! i long for closure!
but, yeah. really lovely book, and it shows that hippies are people, too! some of them, anyway. in books.
come to my blog!
March 24, 2012
Am I just the buzzkill who wouldn't drop acid at the party? Did someone shut off the volcano that fueled my lava lamp? How do I explain my huge disappointment in this book?
I, who loved The Monsters of Templeton and Delicate Edible Birds, found Arcadia unreadable. Why? The story is slave to the style. Groff uses a floaty, present tense, semi-random flow that very nearly resembles a plot, but not quite. Everything is seen through the eyes of Bit, a little boy who somehow doesn't seem to be "all there" upstairs. There's no appreciable dialogue or character development. The whole thing has a sort of dreamlike quality, which I suppose will appeal to some readers.
This is a weird book that a lot of people will like. It breaks my heart to give it one star because I like Lauren Groff. But I hated the book. Resented it, too, because I was so looking forward to it.
Sorry folks. Buzzkill over.
I, who loved The Monsters of Templeton and Delicate Edible Birds, found Arcadia unreadable. Why? The story is slave to the style. Groff uses a floaty, present tense, semi-random flow that very nearly resembles a plot, but not quite. Everything is seen through the eyes of Bit, a little boy who somehow doesn't seem to be "all there" upstairs. There's no appreciable dialogue or character development. The whole thing has a sort of dreamlike quality, which I suppose will appeal to some readers.
This is a weird book that a lot of people will like. It breaks my heart to give it one star because I like Lauren Groff. But I hated the book. Resented it, too, because I was so looking forward to it.
Sorry folks. Buzzkill over.
August 22, 2016
Arcadia takes us from an enactment of utopia to the dawning of a dystopian nightmare in the span of its 280 pages. It focuses on Bit, the first child born into a 1960s hippy commune which begins with only a few charismatic acolytes and ends with thousands. We see Arcadia through his eyes, and he in turn sees it through the filter of Grimm’s fairy stories, the only book he has access to as a child. Groff does a really good job of showing us the world through a child’s sensibility – the wonder and the terror alternating in equal measure. It isn’t however until cracks start appearing in Arcadia and the inevitable expulsion becomes imminent that the book sparks into full life. “Arcadia feels like a book with the pages ripped out, the cover loose in Bit’s hand.” From about pg 70 I was utterly engrossed.
Bit’s love interest in the novel is the cold, self-destructive Helle, the daughter of the cult’s founder and lead inspiration. If this novel has a weakness it’s maybe the relationships. They all veer dangerously towards idealisation or exaggeration, whether it’s Bit’s unrelenting love-in with his mother or his passive devotion to the narcissistic self-serving Helle. Bit is at times a bit of a wimp. You want to shake him out of his benevolent, almost masochistic passivity. I also never quite understood why Groff made Bit so short – he’s barely five feet: it made Groff’s constant claim that he was attractive to women, in particular thin willowy girls, implausible as a dynamic. If she made him short as a metaphor for his stunted growth it wasn’t worth sacrificing plausibility in his relationships for such a lame metaphor.
As was the case with Fates and Furies, the prose is a constant delight. Bit becomes a photographer and Groff’s prose is masterful at drawing out the poetry from visual moments. “The strong wind rises against the trees so they bend like girls washing their hair.” “The sun and wind pour into the sheets on the line. There are bodies in the billowing, forms created and lost in a breath.”
It’s also super clever how Groff’s descriptions of the early days in Arcadia call to mind the atmosphere of many dystopian novels and prepare you as a reader for the real dystopian scenario which arrives late in the novel when a pandemic arrives, threatening to wipe out the old order of civilisation.
On the whole I adored this and now look forward to my next Groff – The Monsters of Templeton.
Bit’s love interest in the novel is the cold, self-destructive Helle, the daughter of the cult’s founder and lead inspiration. If this novel has a weakness it’s maybe the relationships. They all veer dangerously towards idealisation or exaggeration, whether it’s Bit’s unrelenting love-in with his mother or his passive devotion to the narcissistic self-serving Helle. Bit is at times a bit of a wimp. You want to shake him out of his benevolent, almost masochistic passivity. I also never quite understood why Groff made Bit so short – he’s barely five feet: it made Groff’s constant claim that he was attractive to women, in particular thin willowy girls, implausible as a dynamic. If she made him short as a metaphor for his stunted growth it wasn’t worth sacrificing plausibility in his relationships for such a lame metaphor.
As was the case with Fates and Furies, the prose is a constant delight. Bit becomes a photographer and Groff’s prose is masterful at drawing out the poetry from visual moments. “The strong wind rises against the trees so they bend like girls washing their hair.” “The sun and wind pour into the sheets on the line. There are bodies in the billowing, forms created and lost in a breath.”
It’s also super clever how Groff’s descriptions of the early days in Arcadia call to mind the atmosphere of many dystopian novels and prepare you as a reader for the real dystopian scenario which arrives late in the novel when a pandemic arrives, threatening to wipe out the old order of civilisation.
On the whole I adored this and now look forward to my next Groff – The Monsters of Templeton.
May 24, 2017
Our narrator is Ridley Stoner – Bit or Little Bit as he is known, who is born to Hannah and Abe in their car as they are travelling with a group of idealists to Arcadia House. Arcadia House is the derelict mansion and it's surrounding fields, pastures and river which has been bequeathed to one of the group. Ridley was premature and weighed 3lbs; hence the name Bit. Arcadia whose vision is to “live with the land, not on land”, will be a true commune; you pool your resources, your goods, your food, your talents and everybody shares everything including their bodies. Marriage is defunct and new couples are formed although Hannah and Abe choose to stay together.
Thomas Cole's interpretation of The Arcadian or Pastoral State
The story opens with Bit at age 3 when Hannah is suffering from a type of seasonal depression and her recent miscarriage. The mansion is not yet inhabitable and life is tough; they live in the Ersatz Arcadia; tents, cars, vans, caravans and the days are spent working hard to grow crops, make bread and tofu, wash, weave and deliver babies etc. The commune is strictly vegan. They admit newcomers who accept the groups philosophy plus runaways and 'trippies' – people coming off drugs.
Fast forward to Bit at 14, he has his best friend Helle and has discovered photography via his beloved Lecia camera sent to him by Hannah's mother. On their annual Cockaigne Day, a day of celebration, food, music and dance, quite a few members partake of the marijuana which is harvested and freely available. The commune is open for outsiders to come and join in the celebrating. A day few of them will forget – someone brings acid, hostilities surface between the oldies and some newcomers, Bit witnesses Helle tripping and being sexually abused by a few of the outsiders. A fight breaks out, one of the outsiders is accidentally killed and Handy, Arcadia's leader, and many others are arrested. The outside world suddenly feels very close and threatening.
Fast forward to Bit at 35, with his parents, he has long left Arcadia to live in the outside world and he and Helle have married. He's teaching photography at a university and he and Helle have a 3 year old daughter, Grete. One day Helle goes out for a walk and simply does not come back.....
Fast forward to Bit at 50....
The Pulitzer Prize winning author Richard Russo says: “ Arcadia is one of the most moving and satisfying novels I've read in a long time.” I didn't expect to be as involved with these characters as I found myself. Apart from disliking that Groff, for whatever reason, decided not to use quotation marks to signify speech, I found this an intensely absorbing book. She uses some beautiful turns of phrase, her imagery is particularly credible and she has the gift of drawing you deep inside her character's lives.
Groff had me baking bread and feeling tired and hungry at Ersatz Arcadia, smoking weed and dancing on Cockaigne Day, missing and searching for Helle, returning to Arcadia to care for Hannah as ALS ravages her body and finally feeling as if my life has come full circle. No matter that by page 15 I hands-down knew I could never live on a commune, I really enjoyed reading this novel. I recommend - stepping aside from all your techno gear, get off your mobile phone, turn off your laptop, and come and spend some time with a group of people who thought they had a better way of living life – Highly Recommended 4.5★
Thomas Cole's interpretation of The Arcadian or Pastoral State
The story opens with Bit at age 3 when Hannah is suffering from a type of seasonal depression and her recent miscarriage. The mansion is not yet inhabitable and life is tough; they live in the Ersatz Arcadia; tents, cars, vans, caravans and the days are spent working hard to grow crops, make bread and tofu, wash, weave and deliver babies etc. The commune is strictly vegan. They admit newcomers who accept the groups philosophy plus runaways and 'trippies' – people coming off drugs.
Fast forward to Bit at 14, he has his best friend Helle and has discovered photography via his beloved Lecia camera sent to him by Hannah's mother. On their annual Cockaigne Day, a day of celebration, food, music and dance, quite a few members partake of the marijuana which is harvested and freely available. The commune is open for outsiders to come and join in the celebrating. A day few of them will forget – someone brings acid, hostilities surface between the oldies and some newcomers, Bit witnesses Helle tripping and being sexually abused by a few of the outsiders. A fight breaks out, one of the outsiders is accidentally killed and Handy, Arcadia's leader, and many others are arrested. The outside world suddenly feels very close and threatening.
Fast forward to Bit at 35, with his parents, he has long left Arcadia to live in the outside world and he and Helle have married. He's teaching photography at a university and he and Helle have a 3 year old daughter, Grete. One day Helle goes out for a walk and simply does not come back.....
Fast forward to Bit at 50....
The Pulitzer Prize winning author Richard Russo says: “ Arcadia is one of the most moving and satisfying novels I've read in a long time.” I didn't expect to be as involved with these characters as I found myself. Apart from disliking that Groff, for whatever reason, decided not to use quotation marks to signify speech, I found this an intensely absorbing book. She uses some beautiful turns of phrase, her imagery is particularly credible and she has the gift of drawing you deep inside her character's lives.
Groff had me baking bread and feeling tired and hungry at Ersatz Arcadia, smoking weed and dancing on Cockaigne Day, missing and searching for Helle, returning to Arcadia to care for Hannah as ALS ravages her body and finally feeling as if my life has come full circle. No matter that by page 15 I hands-down knew I could never live on a commune, I really enjoyed reading this novel. I recommend - stepping aside from all your techno gear, get off your mobile phone, turn off your laptop, and come and spend some time with a group of people who thought they had a better way of living life – Highly Recommended 4.5★
May 27, 2012
Your view of this book is likely to turn on two things: 1) whether you find the mystical and deeply sensitive hippie/child protagonist Bit a credible character, one worth spending 289 pages with; and 2) how much of Lauren Goff's vivid prose style you can stomach. Here's a good test. Try these four passages below; they nicely encapsulate Bit's musing mind. If they intrigue you, join the crowds of ecstatic reviewers. If their windy phoniness makes you retch, then don't bother.
“The women washed clothes and linens in the frigid river, beating wet fabric against the rocks. In the last light, shadows grew from their knees and the current sparked with suds.”
“All day the secret icicle sits inside him, his own thing, a blade of cold, and it makes Bit feel brave to think of it.” [the kid ate an icicle]
"He smells the bread of his mother, feels the wind carrying the cold."
“The world is sometimes too much for Bit, too full of terror and beauty. Every day he finds himself squeezed under a new astonishment. The universe pulses outward at impossible speeds.”
“The women washed clothes and linens in the frigid river, beating wet fabric against the rocks. In the last light, shadows grew from their knees and the current sparked with suds.”
“All day the secret icicle sits inside him, his own thing, a blade of cold, and it makes Bit feel brave to think of it.” [the kid ate an icicle]
"He smells the bread of his mother, feels the wind carrying the cold."
“The world is sometimes too much for Bit, too full of terror and beauty. Every day he finds himself squeezed under a new astonishment. The universe pulses outward at impossible speeds.”
March 28, 2022
Best to distrust retrospective radiance: gold dust settles over memory and makes it shine.I loved Fates and Furies, so Arcadia was a must-read for me. It’s the story of the rise, peak, and fall of a commune in upstate New York, and the effect that experience had on the survivors. It is told through the eyes of the first child born there, a boy named Bit, and told in four parts: when Bit is a small child, a teenager, in his 30s, and finally when he’s around 50 years old living in the near future.
…
Pay attention, he thinks. Not to the grand gesture, but to the passing breath.
Do I feel like there’s a bigger meaning to this story that went over my head? Yeah, maybe; that’s always a risk with literary fiction. But did I enjoy the story? I did. Arcadia is so vivid I would have believed Ms. Groff actually grew up on a commune. Ms. Groff’s writing is truly excellent. It’s so evocative, so lush, with every word seemingly considered with none wasted, that it feels like poetry. She has become one of my favorite writers. Recommended.
November 13, 2013
Page by page through Lauren Groff’s story about a hippie commune in western New York, I kept worrying that it was too good to last. Not the commune — it’s a mess from the start — I’m talking about the novel, which unfolds one moment of mournful beauty after another. As she did in her inventive debut, “The Monsters of Templeton” (2008), Groff once again gives us a young person — in this case a boy — struggling to understand himself and his peculiar history. But this time, she’s moved beyond the legends of James Fenimore Cooper that infused “Monsters” and taken on the more universal myth of paradise lost.
Stories about utopian settlements usually suffer from our dyspeptic need to humble anyone suspected of radical idealism. Nathaniel Hawthorne set the national tone early by satirizing his comrades’ credulity in “The Blithedale Romance.” Nowadays, as we take our solitary way, disparaging the naivete of 1970s communes offers liberals and conservatives a rare “Kumbaya” moment. For anyone still naive enough to feel nostalgic about free-love merrymakers, T.C. Boyle’s “Drop City” was, like, a total buzz kill, man, and at first Groff, who has published stories in the New Yorker, the Atlantic and “The Best American Short Stories,” seems to be strumming the same lament. But “Arcadia” offers something surprising: if not a redemption of utopian ideals, then at least a complicated defense of the dream.
At 33, Groff can barely remember the Village People, let alone Woodstock, but in her second novel she’s constructed an entirely believable settlement of Free People dedicated to “Equality, Love, Work, Openness to the Needs of Everyone” — a veritable Republican nightmare. The story begins when Bit Stone is 5 years old, “a mote of a boy,” living in bliss with his parents and a few dozen fellow vegetarians on 600 acres of natural beauty — and pot. “We are a hive,” Bit thinks in amazement. Their leader is a rock star who’s already served time for possession and seems determined to keep the group from taking any practical steps toward sustainability or independence from his laid-back tyranny.
With Creative Critiques, Vision Quests and communal birthings in the nude, these beatniks make ripe targets for satire, although Groff rarely plays them for laughs. “Arcadia” is too melancholy for that. The herbal optimism of these young men and women arrives already cast in the shadow of failure. It’s the age-old problem of utopian designs: Who wants to clean the kitchen while everybody else is getting high with a little help from their friends? While they lazily try to grow vegetables in their own waste, starvation is a real possibility; malnutrition is a fact. The risks are even more harrowing for the children left untended by intoxicated parents: sex abuse, poison, fire. This is only paradise if you’re stoned.
Or a boy like Bit. While we sense “the layered tensions of Arcadia” playing out in the background, Groff keeps us focused on the visceral wonder this child feels. “The world contracts in a friendly way around him,” she writes. Small and quiet, he’s a woodland sprite, awed by his affable father and concerned for his depressed mother. His empathy is a raw ache that seems sometimes too intense for a little heart. Even “the teeth of the comb are so gentle on his scalp,” she writes, that “it feels like crying.” He knows instinctively “that people are good and want to be good, if only you give them a chance. This is the most magnificent thing about Arcadia.” If you’ve read Emma Donoghue’s “Room” — one of the most powerful novels of 2010 — you have some sense of the tender perspective that Groff cradles in these pages. “The world is sometimes too much for Bit, too full of terror and beauty. Every day he finds himself squeezed under a new astonishment. The universe pulses outward at impossible speeds.”
The whole novel is told in short scenes, usually just a few pages long, sometimes no more than a few sentences. It’s a form well suited to Bit’s intense sensitivity and Groff’s poetic style. I was constantly torn between wanting to gulp down this book or savor its lines. Even the most incidental details vibrate with life. A mouse “prays into its pink hands, watching Bit, it smoothes its fat haunches like a housewife in a new dress.” Walking after a rain shower, he sees “a low sweep of birch trees pale as girls in the dusk. There’s a feeling of captured movement, a slight tilting down the hill as if in a breath they will regain their human shapes and stumble back into a run.” We couldn’t possibly get any closer to experiencing a world as fertile as his.
Paradise is lost, of course — Groff is too steely for anything else — but “Arcadia” follows a complex, quietly hopeful trajectory through the valley of death. She has divided the story into four parts, each separated by several years, that go on to capture Bit as a lovelorn teen, then a young man and finally a gentle adult in a dystopic future that may await us all.
Even as the novel sinks into questions about social and bodily illness, it resists any easy cynicism in favor of a profound consideration of the American paradox. Like Fitzgerald at the end of “The Great Gatsby,” Groff ties Arcadia all the way back to those old Dutch sailors who looked upon this land as the “fresh, green breast of the new world.” After all, weird little groups with starry-eyed plans have scratched a long, mournful history on our shores. Bit isn’t naive enough to think his parents’ commune should have worked, but he suffers “grief as a low-grade fever.” He can’t shake the hopeful story that spawned him, that edenic sense of harmony. “We’re all looking for what we lost,” he says. “A tight, beautiful community, filled with people he loved like family, living closely and relying on one another, a world with music and stories and thought and joy, of earthy happiness.”
In practice, of course, that dream gets the psychedelic life kicked out of it. Groff’s miracle is to record the death of the fantasy but then show how the residue of affection can persist and, given the right soil, sprout again. “Arcadia” wends a harrowing path back to a fragile, lovely place you can believe in.
Stories about utopian settlements usually suffer from our dyspeptic need to humble anyone suspected of radical idealism. Nathaniel Hawthorne set the national tone early by satirizing his comrades’ credulity in “The Blithedale Romance.” Nowadays, as we take our solitary way, disparaging the naivete of 1970s communes offers liberals and conservatives a rare “Kumbaya” moment. For anyone still naive enough to feel nostalgic about free-love merrymakers, T.C. Boyle’s “Drop City” was, like, a total buzz kill, man, and at first Groff, who has published stories in the New Yorker, the Atlantic and “The Best American Short Stories,” seems to be strumming the same lament. But “Arcadia” offers something surprising: if not a redemption of utopian ideals, then at least a complicated defense of the dream.
At 33, Groff can barely remember the Village People, let alone Woodstock, but in her second novel she’s constructed an entirely believable settlement of Free People dedicated to “Equality, Love, Work, Openness to the Needs of Everyone” — a veritable Republican nightmare. The story begins when Bit Stone is 5 years old, “a mote of a boy,” living in bliss with his parents and a few dozen fellow vegetarians on 600 acres of natural beauty — and pot. “We are a hive,” Bit thinks in amazement. Their leader is a rock star who’s already served time for possession and seems determined to keep the group from taking any practical steps toward sustainability or independence from his laid-back tyranny.
With Creative Critiques, Vision Quests and communal birthings in the nude, these beatniks make ripe targets for satire, although Groff rarely plays them for laughs. “Arcadia” is too melancholy for that. The herbal optimism of these young men and women arrives already cast in the shadow of failure. It’s the age-old problem of utopian designs: Who wants to clean the kitchen while everybody else is getting high with a little help from their friends? While they lazily try to grow vegetables in their own waste, starvation is a real possibility; malnutrition is a fact. The risks are even more harrowing for the children left untended by intoxicated parents: sex abuse, poison, fire. This is only paradise if you’re stoned.
Or a boy like Bit. While we sense “the layered tensions of Arcadia” playing out in the background, Groff keeps us focused on the visceral wonder this child feels. “The world contracts in a friendly way around him,” she writes. Small and quiet, he’s a woodland sprite, awed by his affable father and concerned for his depressed mother. His empathy is a raw ache that seems sometimes too intense for a little heart. Even “the teeth of the comb are so gentle on his scalp,” she writes, that “it feels like crying.” He knows instinctively “that people are good and want to be good, if only you give them a chance. This is the most magnificent thing about Arcadia.” If you’ve read Emma Donoghue’s “Room” — one of the most powerful novels of 2010 — you have some sense of the tender perspective that Groff cradles in these pages. “The world is sometimes too much for Bit, too full of terror and beauty. Every day he finds himself squeezed under a new astonishment. The universe pulses outward at impossible speeds.”
The whole novel is told in short scenes, usually just a few pages long, sometimes no more than a few sentences. It’s a form well suited to Bit’s intense sensitivity and Groff’s poetic style. I was constantly torn between wanting to gulp down this book or savor its lines. Even the most incidental details vibrate with life. A mouse “prays into its pink hands, watching Bit, it smoothes its fat haunches like a housewife in a new dress.” Walking after a rain shower, he sees “a low sweep of birch trees pale as girls in the dusk. There’s a feeling of captured movement, a slight tilting down the hill as if in a breath they will regain their human shapes and stumble back into a run.” We couldn’t possibly get any closer to experiencing a world as fertile as his.
Paradise is lost, of course — Groff is too steely for anything else — but “Arcadia” follows a complex, quietly hopeful trajectory through the valley of death. She has divided the story into four parts, each separated by several years, that go on to capture Bit as a lovelorn teen, then a young man and finally a gentle adult in a dystopic future that may await us all.
Even as the novel sinks into questions about social and bodily illness, it resists any easy cynicism in favor of a profound consideration of the American paradox. Like Fitzgerald at the end of “The Great Gatsby,” Groff ties Arcadia all the way back to those old Dutch sailors who looked upon this land as the “fresh, green breast of the new world.” After all, weird little groups with starry-eyed plans have scratched a long, mournful history on our shores. Bit isn’t naive enough to think his parents’ commune should have worked, but he suffers “grief as a low-grade fever.” He can’t shake the hopeful story that spawned him, that edenic sense of harmony. “We’re all looking for what we lost,” he says. “A tight, beautiful community, filled with people he loved like family, living closely and relying on one another, a world with music and stories and thought and joy, of earthy happiness.”
In practice, of course, that dream gets the psychedelic life kicked out of it. Groff’s miracle is to record the death of the fantasy but then show how the residue of affection can persist and, given the right soil, sprout again. “Arcadia” wends a harrowing path back to a fragile, lovely place you can believe in.
June 24, 2012
Lauren Groff’s lovely and poignant Arcadia is a novel of sublime sensuality. It is redolent of the ripe, husky scent of pot and unwashed bodies, the strumming of guitars and gasps of lovemaking, the taste of warm blackberries plucked from the bush and popped into the mouth, the glow of naked flesh in moonlight, the feel of a mother’s soft, full breast, of a father’s muscled, callused hands.
The key to the novel’s earthy nature is its narrator, Bit, who begins his story at the age of five. Children are the most sensual of human beings; they live in the moment, using all their senses in equal measure, without discernment, complete in their physical selves and open to the world as it unfolds.
Bit is one of several dozen residents of a growing commune, Arcadia, in upstate New York. Arcadia takes shape in the early 1970's - shortly after Bit's birth - as a scattered collection of musicians, hippies, romantics, runaways and recovering drug addicts move from a hovel of tents, shacks and buses into a dilapidated mansion. There they create a home, a life sustained by communal work, education, friendship, music, sex and drugs. Bit is raised to adolescence in this agrarian Utopia, separated from the hazards of the world (which include sugar, animal by-products, television and currency), surrounded by the constancy of his parents, Abe and Hannah, and by a community that protects and embraces this quiet and keen observer.
It seems to me that residents of a commune choose the most child-like way of life, striving to accept the world on its terms, trusting in the willingness of their fellow residents to work and play together in harmony. Yet, children are also selfish creatures, who cooperate and share only when it is in their best interest. The residents of Arcadia play at leaderless democracy, but into the void between communal decision making and anarchy, steps the charismatic father-figure Handy and his Scandinavian goddess-wife Astrid. Even those who openly resist his authority, including Bit's parents, seek his approval. Handy creates Arcadia in his own image, yet follows none of his own rules, becoming the serpent that brings Eden to the point of collapse.
Groff's language and syntax are intoxicating. She writes in lush and languid tones, as Bit rotates through years harmonious and troubled. At times the scenes are heavy with malaise, as Bit witnesses the grind of his mother's midwinter depression. At times they are as pointed as a young girl's hipbones, as she exposes her characters to brutality and desperation. And at times they are hushed and soft, as we watch a man and his daughter give comfort to a loved one during her final days. Groff offers us Bit's perspective in third-person present tense, which allows us to experience Arcadia in real time, to be as present as the characters, to exist within a child's mind yet to remain detached observers.
Bit’s story continues into his adolescence, which is set against the Reagan years of the Cold War and rising American prosperity. The story ends in a future most of us can see if we squint and tilt our heads just so. Bit is now a father of a teenager and returns to the site of the old commune to care for his dying mother. The world is in quarantine, retreating from a deadly flu flung out from Southeast Asia.
Bit's life moves from Utopia to Armageddon. But when Bit returns to the place where his life began, he is able to recapture the spirit of hope of its best times and set free the bitter demons of its worst. Through the grace of Groff's rich prose, the reader moves in bittersweet concert with Bit and with the dream that is Arcadia.
The key to the novel’s earthy nature is its narrator, Bit, who begins his story at the age of five. Children are the most sensual of human beings; they live in the moment, using all their senses in equal measure, without discernment, complete in their physical selves and open to the world as it unfolds.
Bit is one of several dozen residents of a growing commune, Arcadia, in upstate New York. Arcadia takes shape in the early 1970's - shortly after Bit's birth - as a scattered collection of musicians, hippies, romantics, runaways and recovering drug addicts move from a hovel of tents, shacks and buses into a dilapidated mansion. There they create a home, a life sustained by communal work, education, friendship, music, sex and drugs. Bit is raised to adolescence in this agrarian Utopia, separated from the hazards of the world (which include sugar, animal by-products, television and currency), surrounded by the constancy of his parents, Abe and Hannah, and by a community that protects and embraces this quiet and keen observer.
It seems to me that residents of a commune choose the most child-like way of life, striving to accept the world on its terms, trusting in the willingness of their fellow residents to work and play together in harmony. Yet, children are also selfish creatures, who cooperate and share only when it is in their best interest. The residents of Arcadia play at leaderless democracy, but into the void between communal decision making and anarchy, steps the charismatic father-figure Handy and his Scandinavian goddess-wife Astrid. Even those who openly resist his authority, including Bit's parents, seek his approval. Handy creates Arcadia in his own image, yet follows none of his own rules, becoming the serpent that brings Eden to the point of collapse.
Groff's language and syntax are intoxicating. She writes in lush and languid tones, as Bit rotates through years harmonious and troubled. At times the scenes are heavy with malaise, as Bit witnesses the grind of his mother's midwinter depression. At times they are as pointed as a young girl's hipbones, as she exposes her characters to brutality and desperation. And at times they are hushed and soft, as we watch a man and his daughter give comfort to a loved one during her final days. Groff offers us Bit's perspective in third-person present tense, which allows us to experience Arcadia in real time, to be as present as the characters, to exist within a child's mind yet to remain detached observers.
Bit’s story continues into his adolescence, which is set against the Reagan years of the Cold War and rising American prosperity. The story ends in a future most of us can see if we squint and tilt our heads just so. Bit is now a father of a teenager and returns to the site of the old commune to care for his dying mother. The world is in quarantine, retreating from a deadly flu flung out from Southeast Asia.
Bit's life moves from Utopia to Armageddon. But when Bit returns to the place where his life began, he is able to recapture the spirit of hope of its best times and set free the bitter demons of its worst. Through the grace of Groff's rich prose, the reader moves in bittersweet concert with Bit and with the dream that is Arcadia.
July 3, 2016
3.75
This novel floats through the air and over the earth in three discrete sections (past/present/future? paradise/expulsion/return?), all filtered through the senses of the sensitive Bit, all cohering in unsentimental, muted tones. Though I enjoyed Groff’s first novel, The Monsters of Templeton, (which, to her credit, is very different from this, though both have a powerful sense of place), I put off reading this, her second, because I thought I wouldn’t be interested in the setting of a hippie commune during the late 60s/early 70s. But that is the time and place of only the first section, and I ended up enthralled with it anyway; plus, the novel is, of course, about much more.
The language is gorgeous; the descriptions of people, places, everything, are unique and integral; and after putting the book down, I’d feel drawn back to it, until about halfway through when a few things felt repetitive. The main element that didn’t work well for me, though, is Bit’s passive obsession, starting when he is a teen and lasting until he is a middle-aged man, with the cold, pale Helle.
Bit’s realization about which community has replaced Arcadia was my favorite passage; and it still has me thinking, something I love when I get it.
This novel floats through the air and over the earth in three discrete sections (past/present/future? paradise/expulsion/return?), all filtered through the senses of the sensitive Bit, all cohering in unsentimental, muted tones. Though I enjoyed Groff’s first novel, The Monsters of Templeton, (which, to her credit, is very different from this, though both have a powerful sense of place), I put off reading this, her second, because I thought I wouldn’t be interested in the setting of a hippie commune during the late 60s/early 70s. But that is the time and place of only the first section, and I ended up enthralled with it anyway; plus, the novel is, of course, about much more.
The language is gorgeous; the descriptions of people, places, everything, are unique and integral; and after putting the book down, I’d feel drawn back to it, until about halfway through when a few things felt repetitive. The main element that didn’t work well for me, though, is Bit’s passive obsession, starting when he is a teen and lasting until he is a middle-aged man, with the cold, pale Helle.
Bit’s realization about which community has replaced Arcadia was my favorite passage; and it still has me thinking, something I love when I get it.
January 10, 2016
Oh what a fine novel this is, one of the few I feel is worthy of the 5-star rating. This is a book that leaves you sad because it has ended, but also happy because you have read it and got to know Bit, his mother Hannah, and his father Abe, whom I wish could be real people who are greatly admired friends of mine living their lives of clarity and substance somewhere in the wilds of upstate New York, not so far from me.
This is a finely crafted, exquisitely written, and particularly interesting novel, especially to those of us of a certain age who grew up among idealistic people searching for a better and peaceful life, people known then as hippies. People who, like many of the characters in this book, may have found that the dreamed for utopia isn't always much of a utopia.
Lauren Groff's literary gifts are evident in this book and the pleasure of them is all ours. I am shouting from the rooftops: Read this book!
Postscript 1/21/13: Even now, almost a week since I finished this book, I find myself thinking about the characters in this book. I imagine they will always be with me.
This is a finely crafted, exquisitely written, and particularly interesting novel, especially to those of us of a certain age who grew up among idealistic people searching for a better and peaceful life, people known then as hippies. People who, like many of the characters in this book, may have found that the dreamed for utopia isn't always much of a utopia.
Lauren Groff's literary gifts are evident in this book and the pleasure of them is all ours. I am shouting from the rooftops: Read this book!
Postscript 1/21/13: Even now, almost a week since I finished this book, I find myself thinking about the characters in this book. I imagine they will always be with me.
May 2, 2012
The first two quarters of this book were beautifully rendered. The first, told from the point of view of the naive yet sensitive and often frightened five-year-old, Bit, describes his growing up in the eponymous hippie commune. Despite apparent flaws and personal trauma, it is an idyllic childhood, and this section is the novel's heart as well as Bit's sustenance as he moves through life. The second part describes, through the adolescent Bit's eyes, the decline and fall of Arcadia, pressured by inner and outer politics (personality conflicts with the charismatic leader; generational disputes; the disintegration of 60s ideals into hedonism; the War on Drugs in Reagan's America). This section is also poetic, astute and filled with insights into human nature and teenage longing.
The novel goes down hill from there, however. Like life outside the commune, reality is gritty and boring. I didn't dislike the adult Bit, a photography professor and single Dad struggling with loneliness in the Big City (NYC), but the themes are a bit trite ("single Dad struggling with loneliness in the Big City")and there's no more magic, literally or stylistically. The final section for some unaccountable reason takes place in the near future and is set against a backdrop of a serious but not apocalyptic worldwide epidemic. What?! The entry of speculative fiction is jarring and makes no metaphoric contribution to Bit's dealing with mid-life issues (decline of parents, rediscovery of love) beyond that supplied by a setting in our current day.
Overall, read the first half or two-thirds of the book for its beauty and original setting. The rest reads like an epilogue, so if you're curious about the fate of the characters, finish the novel. Know, however, that when the commune disintegrates, the 60s are truly over.
The novel goes down hill from there, however. Like life outside the commune, reality is gritty and boring. I didn't dislike the adult Bit, a photography professor and single Dad struggling with loneliness in the Big City (NYC), but the themes are a bit trite ("single Dad struggling with loneliness in the Big City")and there's no more magic, literally or stylistically. The final section for some unaccountable reason takes place in the near future and is set against a backdrop of a serious but not apocalyptic worldwide epidemic. What?! The entry of speculative fiction is jarring and makes no metaphoric contribution to Bit's dealing with mid-life issues (decline of parents, rediscovery of love) beyond that supplied by a setting in our current day.
Overall, read the first half or two-thirds of the book for its beauty and original setting. The rest reads like an epilogue, so if you're curious about the fate of the characters, finish the novel. Know, however, that when the commune disintegrates, the 60s are truly over.
December 12, 2021
Arcadia was the second novel by Lauren Groff, and may I add that she has become one of my favorite authors. Arcadia has been lauded as being a beautiful book and more or less a vision of a perfect world. One reviewer noted that she hated to leave . . . and I could hardly wait to get the hell out of Arcadia. Obviously there was a disconnect and I was an outlier in the midst of these glowing reviews. But that was in the first fifty pages and then I decided to trust the beautiful and lyrical writing of Ms. Groff and experience Arcadia. In the 1970s in the fields of western New York state, a few dozen idealists formed a commune on the lands of a decaying mansion and repurpose Arcadia House to meet their needs as they seek to live off the land becoming self-sufficient in this agrarian version of Utopia.
As the story unfolded our narrator throughout the book was known as Bit, but his name was Ridley Sorrel Stone and weighing only three pounds at birth. His father Abe would tell him he was called, Our Littlest Bit of a Hippie, Oldest Soul in Arcadia. It is through Bit's eyes that we have early glimpses of his parents, Abe and Hannah, instrumental in the establishment of Arcadia. As the commuity grows over the years so do the problems as more and more people are wanting to be a part of it. As Bit and his childhood friends grow to adulthood, their experiences as children growing up in the commune remain with them. As Bit becomes a parent himself, he is faced with many of the same issues. This book really comes full circle as we become immersed in the life of Bit and his family.
Having read a few books authored by Lauren Groff, I believe that one of her underlying themes and overreaching arcs of a lot of her writing is the welfare of children. I think that this author is able to communicate the hidden terrors and peril that children are facing each day in such a jarring way. However, she is also able to communicate the magic of childhood as well as their sensitivity and good-heartedness. Another reason why I love this author's beautiful writing.
As the story unfolded our narrator throughout the book was known as Bit, but his name was Ridley Sorrel Stone and weighing only three pounds at birth. His father Abe would tell him he was called, Our Littlest Bit of a Hippie, Oldest Soul in Arcadia. It is through Bit's eyes that we have early glimpses of his parents, Abe and Hannah, instrumental in the establishment of Arcadia. As the commuity grows over the years so do the problems as more and more people are wanting to be a part of it. As Bit and his childhood friends grow to adulthood, their experiences as children growing up in the commune remain with them. As Bit becomes a parent himself, he is faced with many of the same issues. This book really comes full circle as we become immersed in the life of Bit and his family.
Having read a few books authored by Lauren Groff, I believe that one of her underlying themes and overreaching arcs of a lot of her writing is the welfare of children. I think that this author is able to communicate the hidden terrors and peril that children are facing each day in such a jarring way. However, she is also able to communicate the magic of childhood as well as their sensitivity and good-heartedness. Another reason why I love this author's beautiful writing.
"Time comes to him one morning, stealing in. . . . He sees it clearly, now, how time is flexible, a rubber band. It can stretch long and be clumped tight, can be knotted and folded over itself, and all the while it is endless, a loop. There will be night and then morning, and then night again. The year will end, another one will begin, will end. An old man dies, a baby is born.
"Childhood is such a delicate tissue; what they had done this morning could snag somewhere in the little ones, make a dull, small pain that will circle back again and again and again, and hurt them in small ways for the rest of their lives."
July 30, 2012
There were parts of Arcadia I liked very much, especially the language and themes, but overall, I found it uneven. The first part, particularly, was a bit tough to get through, an overlong history of the commune Arcadia, told in the voice of a child whose parents helped found it under the leadership of a sketchy character named Handy. The fact there was little conflict in this first half of the book, along with the narrator’s voice, describing much but perceiving little, made this section less compelling.
But it did pick up. Once it got rolling, I liked the later parts of it quite a bit. Groff’s outstanding facility with language is apparent throughout, lush and lyrical with original imagery that sometimes just stopped me in my tracks. The writing was top-notch and was put to better purpose in the second half, when the adolescent and grown-up narrator Bit could bring more to the table in reflecting on his past and present experiences that shaped his attitudes toward family, community, freedom and conformity, and the striving for perfection in a very flawed world.
The founders of the fictional commune of Arcadia reclaim an abandoned estate in upstate New York and rehabilitate the mansion on the grounds with the goal of becoming a largely self-sufficient, off-the-grid social experiment. They are trying to get back to the land, reject notions of corporate capitalism and the corruption it breeds, and create a better world. A classroom discussion led by Bit’s father Abe references both George Eliot and Milton in Paradise Lost as the children discuss the ways “civilization can be better if we just believe,” that “we are doing good by trying to do good.” Abe points out that both writers back up the idea that “desiring change is a powerful way of making change; that change unfolds from this desire,” but while intention is important, so is the struggle to act on good intentions in a way that was not happening in Arcadia’s present reality.
Even after it becomes clear that things are not right in this supposed utopia, that there is a snake in the Garden and human nature, with its inevitable self-interest, will always be a factor, there is an exploration through the story of the boundaries of idealism and reality, the clash between them, and the value of the pursuit itself. Arcadia is not at all an endorsement of the communal lifestyle, but throughout the book there seems to be a celebration of that part of the human spirit that desires and works toward positive change, the notion that it is the relentless pursuit toward improvement despite all odds that defines the best in us. So no matter how far short we fall, you still gotta try.
The child Bit is raised in an environment where the (impossible) goal was a community of perfect purity and caring, equity and harmony. As an adult Bit struggles with loss and heartache out in the real world, in New York City, where he has become a photographer and professor, trying to raise his daughter alone. His nostalgia for Arcadia makes him yearn for “the people, the interconnection, everyone relying on everyone else, the closeness.” He still wishes for a sense of community which, since the demise of small-town America and experiments like Arcadia, can only be found in a city: “millions of people breathing the same air.” And yet he recognizes the tenuous nature of all human interactions. He stops into a diner alone one Thanksgiving night and observes the scene:
“When people come in, he tries to guess who they are . . .They sit here in the darkness, trusting. That the coffee will be hot and unpoisoned. That no raging madman will come in with a gun or a bomb. It leaves him breathless at times, how much faith people put in one another. So fragile, the social contract: we will all stand by the rules, move with care and gentleness, invest in the infrastructure, agree with the penalties of failure. That this man driving his truck down the street won’t, on a whim, angle into the plate glass and end things. That the president won’t let his hand hover the red button and, in a moment of rage or weakness, explode the world. The invisible tissue of civilization: so thin, so easily rendable. It’s a miracle that it exists at all.”
Throughout years of loss and heartbreak for Bit – and some of the last third of the book is very, very sad – he never stops believing in the value of pursuing a better world, of finding solace in the beauty that exists to mitigate the sorrow, or in love as he dotes on his adored daughter Grete. There is a great passage on page 212 when Bit and Grete share lists of their favorite things – “The sharpness of radishes on the middle of the tongue. A hot shower after a cold day. Abe’s funny little knock knees. . . Grape cough syrup” -- that reminded me of Woody Allen’s why-is-life-worth-living monologue in Manhattan. And in the midst of grief, loss and trouble, when Bit finds some long-forgotten and undeveloped film in Abe’s desk, even though the images might be ruined, he knew “the distortion of age could make for the unexpected, the sublime. . . He wanted to sing. How perverse, the possibility of beauty, unearthed when he least expected it. That there could be such surprises left in the world. He goes out into the sunlight, something softening and settling within him.”
But it did pick up. Once it got rolling, I liked the later parts of it quite a bit. Groff’s outstanding facility with language is apparent throughout, lush and lyrical with original imagery that sometimes just stopped me in my tracks. The writing was top-notch and was put to better purpose in the second half, when the adolescent and grown-up narrator Bit could bring more to the table in reflecting on his past and present experiences that shaped his attitudes toward family, community, freedom and conformity, and the striving for perfection in a very flawed world.
The founders of the fictional commune of Arcadia reclaim an abandoned estate in upstate New York and rehabilitate the mansion on the grounds with the goal of becoming a largely self-sufficient, off-the-grid social experiment. They are trying to get back to the land, reject notions of corporate capitalism and the corruption it breeds, and create a better world. A classroom discussion led by Bit’s father Abe references both George Eliot and Milton in Paradise Lost as the children discuss the ways “civilization can be better if we just believe,” that “we are doing good by trying to do good.” Abe points out that both writers back up the idea that “desiring change is a powerful way of making change; that change unfolds from this desire,” but while intention is important, so is the struggle to act on good intentions in a way that was not happening in Arcadia’s present reality.
Even after it becomes clear that things are not right in this supposed utopia, that there is a snake in the Garden and human nature, with its inevitable self-interest, will always be a factor, there is an exploration through the story of the boundaries of idealism and reality, the clash between them, and the value of the pursuit itself. Arcadia is not at all an endorsement of the communal lifestyle, but throughout the book there seems to be a celebration of that part of the human spirit that desires and works toward positive change, the notion that it is the relentless pursuit toward improvement despite all odds that defines the best in us. So no matter how far short we fall, you still gotta try.
The child Bit is raised in an environment where the (impossible) goal was a community of perfect purity and caring, equity and harmony. As an adult Bit struggles with loss and heartache out in the real world, in New York City, where he has become a photographer and professor, trying to raise his daughter alone. His nostalgia for Arcadia makes him yearn for “the people, the interconnection, everyone relying on everyone else, the closeness.” He still wishes for a sense of community which, since the demise of small-town America and experiments like Arcadia, can only be found in a city: “millions of people breathing the same air.” And yet he recognizes the tenuous nature of all human interactions. He stops into a diner alone one Thanksgiving night and observes the scene:
“When people come in, he tries to guess who they are . . .They sit here in the darkness, trusting. That the coffee will be hot and unpoisoned. That no raging madman will come in with a gun or a bomb. It leaves him breathless at times, how much faith people put in one another. So fragile, the social contract: we will all stand by the rules, move with care and gentleness, invest in the infrastructure, agree with the penalties of failure. That this man driving his truck down the street won’t, on a whim, angle into the plate glass and end things. That the president won’t let his hand hover the red button and, in a moment of rage or weakness, explode the world. The invisible tissue of civilization: so thin, so easily rendable. It’s a miracle that it exists at all.”
Throughout years of loss and heartbreak for Bit – and some of the last third of the book is very, very sad – he never stops believing in the value of pursuing a better world, of finding solace in the beauty that exists to mitigate the sorrow, or in love as he dotes on his adored daughter Grete. There is a great passage on page 212 when Bit and Grete share lists of their favorite things – “The sharpness of radishes on the middle of the tongue. A hot shower after a cold day. Abe’s funny little knock knees. . . Grape cough syrup” -- that reminded me of Woody Allen’s why-is-life-worth-living monologue in Manhattan. And in the midst of grief, loss and trouble, when Bit finds some long-forgotten and undeveloped film in Abe’s desk, even though the images might be ruined, he knew “the distortion of age could make for the unexpected, the sublime. . . He wanted to sing. How perverse, the possibility of beauty, unearthed when he least expected it. That there could be such surprises left in the world. He goes out into the sunlight, something softening and settling within him.”
Read
January 4, 2024"It seems a give-and-take, you know? Freedom or community, community or freedom. One must decide the way one wants to live."
Given that the story is set on a hippie commune where people are free to live as they please (provided that they share everything with the community), perhaps the word "lawlessness" or "individualism" would have been a better fit than "freedom".
I struggled to discern what Groff intended to say about society with this book, but at least the story was rendered in the same stunning linguistic style I've come to expect from her work.
Given that the story is set on a hippie commune where people are free to live as they please (provided that they share everything with the community), perhaps the word "lawlessness" or "individualism" would have been a better fit than "freedom".
I struggled to discern what Groff intended to say about society with this book, but at least the story was rendered in the same stunning linguistic style I've come to expect from her work.
September 13, 2017
My feelings for Arcadia snuck up on me. Groff is a wonderful writer and I found the first part of the novel, set on a commune in upstate NY, fascinating. As the novel progressed and focused more and more on Bit growing into a man - it shifted for me. I fell in love with him (and the novel). At the end, I couldn't bear that it was over. So I listened to the last 15 minutes 3 times and cried - not because it was sad but because I was so sorry to leave Bit and Arcadia.
October 30, 2019
. . .what we wanted to do was unusual. Pure. Live with the land, not on it. Live outside the evil of commerce and make our own lives from scratch. Let our love be a beacon to light up the world.
Oh, silly, silly hippies . . . thinkin' you can change the world by doin' lots of drugs and not bathing . . .
Welcome to Arcadia, the finest in communal living!
Here you'll get to ride out a New York winter in a tent, quonset hut, or bread truck while waiting for your Utopian palace to be restored.
Prepare to put all your bank accounts and trust funds into a communal pot, because everyone who joins must give everything they have.
Here you will live a pure and truthful life. You will treat all living creatures with respect.
Everyone will be a vegan.
Just as there is no crying in baseball, there are no egos in Arcadia. Everyone will live together in love and kindness.
Oh - and you're allowed three inches of warm bathwater each week.
Enjoy!
It's fairly easy to predict that this won't last long. One man calls the shots. There is jealousy and resentment, and even a few braid-pulling chick fights. (I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to touch the hair of a woman who gets to bathe only once a week, but maybe that's just me.)
Things fall apart.
I didn't love this book, though I liked parts of it enough to give it a fairly weak fourth star. It was interesting watching the main character grow, and seeing how his unusual upbringing influences his later life. (Hint - he finds himself at a loss for words when on a date with a woman who is NOT A READER. Hmmm . . . that sounds familiar.)
I also liked how the book began in a past that was never as perfect as it seemed, and ends in a near future that is far scarier than I had imagined it might be.
Oh, silly, silly hippies . . . thinkin' you can change the world by doin' lots of drugs and not bathing . . .
Welcome to Arcadia, the finest in communal living!
Here you'll get to ride out a New York winter in a tent, quonset hut, or bread truck while waiting for your Utopian palace to be restored.
Prepare to put all your bank accounts and trust funds into a communal pot, because everyone who joins must give everything they have.
Here you will live a pure and truthful life. You will treat all living creatures with respect.
Everyone will be a vegan.
Just as there is no crying in baseball, there are no egos in Arcadia. Everyone will live together in love and kindness.
Oh - and you're allowed three inches of warm bathwater each week.
Enjoy!
It's fairly easy to predict that this won't last long. One man calls the shots. There is jealousy and resentment, and even a few braid-pulling chick fights. (I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to touch the hair of a woman who gets to bathe only once a week, but maybe that's just me.)
Things fall apart.
I didn't love this book, though I liked parts of it enough to give it a fairly weak fourth star. It was interesting watching the main character grow, and seeing how his unusual upbringing influences his later life. (Hint - he finds himself at a loss for words when on a date with a woman who is NOT A READER. Hmmm . . . that sounds familiar.)
I also liked how the book began in a past that was never as perfect as it seemed, and ends in a near future that is far scarier than I had imagined it might be.
June 3, 2013
We read books to be entertained, to be informed, to have a laugh, to escape the day-to-day. And then, every now and then, we stumble across a book that we read at just the right moment in our lives for us to be bewitched, transported and transformed.
That just happened to me while reading Arcadia by Lauren Groff. This isn't a new novel—it was first published by Hyperion in 2012—and the fact of the matter is that I tried reading it four separate times before I finally was able to become absorbed by this book. That's what it feels like, once you get into the rhythm of the language: as if you're falling down a well or crossing through some sort of foggy membrane and entering another dimension entirely, your entire being surrounded by Groff's magical imagery.
The story revolves around Bit, who is a very young boy when the novel opens, living with his parents in a commune in the 1970's, and traces his life as the commune rises and falls, and as he has to make his way in the world after this Utopian dream shatters. The language in the novel is dreamy and complex, especially in the first half of the novel, when we are trapped in Bit's perspective as a child and can only glean from snatches of conversation what's going on around him. I was fully expecting the language to become simpler as Bit aged out of the commune and, in the second half of the book, is an adult living and working and parenting a young child of his own. Instead, the language grew even more lush, with image after image that floored me.
By the end of the novel, I was weeping not only for Bit's personal losses—and there are many—but also for the loss of our nation's innocence—an innocence that once allowed us, as children of the 1960's and 1970's, to truly believe we could be in harmony with each other and with nature instead of in constant conflict. It was a good cry—I don't mean to imply that the book is depressing. The emotions Groff provokes are complicated and cleansing. You will wake from the dream of Arcadia, as Bit does, determined to do whatever you can to stay more fully present in your life and aware of the magic of everyday things.
That just happened to me while reading Arcadia by Lauren Groff. This isn't a new novel—it was first published by Hyperion in 2012—and the fact of the matter is that I tried reading it four separate times before I finally was able to become absorbed by this book. That's what it feels like, once you get into the rhythm of the language: as if you're falling down a well or crossing through some sort of foggy membrane and entering another dimension entirely, your entire being surrounded by Groff's magical imagery.
The story revolves around Bit, who is a very young boy when the novel opens, living with his parents in a commune in the 1970's, and traces his life as the commune rises and falls, and as he has to make his way in the world after this Utopian dream shatters. The language in the novel is dreamy and complex, especially in the first half of the novel, when we are trapped in Bit's perspective as a child and can only glean from snatches of conversation what's going on around him. I was fully expecting the language to become simpler as Bit aged out of the commune and, in the second half of the book, is an adult living and working and parenting a young child of his own. Instead, the language grew even more lush, with image after image that floored me.
By the end of the novel, I was weeping not only for Bit's personal losses—and there are many—but also for the loss of our nation's innocence—an innocence that once allowed us, as children of the 1960's and 1970's, to truly believe we could be in harmony with each other and with nature instead of in constant conflict. It was a good cry—I don't mean to imply that the book is depressing. The emotions Groff provokes are complicated and cleansing. You will wake from the dream of Arcadia, as Bit does, determined to do whatever you can to stay more fully present in your life and aware of the magic of everyday things.
February 9, 2017
Oh, Lauren Groff. Your purple prose. Your absence of quotation marks. Your writing is actually quite beautiful, but that isn't good enough for you, apparently. What does it mean for a girl to have a "sweet cupcake face" anyway?
I went back and forth between feeling like this book was a total slog and finding it utterly compelling. This is my second Lauren Groff book. With Fates and Furies, I loathed the first half and loved the second half. With Arcadia, my emotions didn't reach such extremes, but my experience was the same: I enjoyed the second half much more than the first half.
Arcadia presents us with the life of Bit, born in an idyllic commune in the middle of the woods in the 1970s. It follows him from childhood through adulthood, as he is eventually forced to assimilate in the outside world.
He falls in love, experiences life-altering tragedy, has a child of his own and ultimately finds himself returning to the commune years later, as if it were part of his destiny.
Arcadia is about a utopian dream—at its best, its worst and everything in between. It's about life, and what matters most within it: family, love, community. It's a complete, fulfilling story with remarkable beauty and depth if you're willing to endure Groff's ostentatious prose.
I went back and forth between feeling like this book was a total slog and finding it utterly compelling. This is my second Lauren Groff book. With Fates and Furies, I loathed the first half and loved the second half. With Arcadia, my emotions didn't reach such extremes, but my experience was the same: I enjoyed the second half much more than the first half.
Arcadia presents us with the life of Bit, born in an idyllic commune in the middle of the woods in the 1970s. It follows him from childhood through adulthood, as he is eventually forced to assimilate in the outside world.
He falls in love, experiences life-altering tragedy, has a child of his own and ultimately finds himself returning to the commune years later, as if it were part of his destiny.
Arcadia is about a utopian dream—at its best, its worst and everything in between. It's about life, and what matters most within it: family, love, community. It's a complete, fulfilling story with remarkable beauty and depth if you're willing to endure Groff's ostentatious prose.
January 3, 2020
Incipit-
“Le donne che cantano, nel fiume.
È il primo ricordo di Briciola, sebbene all’epoca non fosse ancora nato. Nondimeno la strada che serpeggiava tra le montagne gli appare nitida, e così pure la sosta per riposarsi tra fiori gialli che si chiudevano al tocco dei bambini. Era il tramonto quando la Carovana vide il fiume inverdire lungo la curva e stabilì di fermarsi per la notte. Era una sera di primavera tinta di blu, faceva freddo.
Camion, pullman e furgoni si disposero in cerchio a ridosso dell’argine, come bisonti contro il vento; al centro, il Pink Piper, l’autobus a due piani. Handy, il capo, si trovava sul tettuccio del Piper per rivolgere il saluto del sole al giorno morente.
Bambini nudi sfrecciavano ai margini dell’accampamento, la pelle irruvidita dai brividi. Gli uomini accendevano un falò, accordavano chitarre, cominciavano a preparare cene a base di frittelle e stufati di verdure. Le donne lavavano vestiti e biancheria nel fiume gelido, sbattendo i panni contro le rocce. Negli ultimi sprazzi di luce, sotto l’ombra sempre più scura delle loro ginocchia, la corrente scintillava di bolle di sapone.”
Trittico del giardino delle delizie - Hieronymus Bosch
“Libertà o comunità, comunità o libertà. Una persona deve decidere come preferisce vivere. Io ho scelto la comunità.”
Il primo libro del 2020 mi ha catturata da subito: una di quelle letture da cui non ci si riesce a staccare ed ogni incombenza esterna è vissuta come doloroso fastidio.
”È così che sei diventato Ridley Sorrel Stone, chiamato col nome di una città dove, di fatto, non arrivammo mai. La Briciola di noi hippie. Il più antico nascituro di Arcadia. Il nostro erede senza lascito...”
Tra mito e realtà la storia personale di Briciola è intrecciata ad una storia collettiva; Arcadia è il suo nome e come il suo corrispondente mitologico si nutre dell'idillio di una vita bucolica.
Handy è la guida, il faro che illumina il cammino di chi vuole costruire un mondo migliore.
”...noi volevamo fare qualcosa di diverso dagli altri. Qualcosa di puro. Volevamo vivere con la terra, non su di essa. Vivere restando fuori dalle perversioni del mondo mercantile e guadagnarci da vivere partendo da zero. Volevamo che il nostro amore fosse un faro col quale illuminare il mondo.”
L’utopia, però, è già(Ahimè!!!) per definizione un atto perdente.
Così è stato deciso e il (buon??) senso comune che decide cosa è bene e cosa è male, da sempre, ha indicato questo mondo di speranze come una mera fase adolescenziale.
Insomma, crescendo, passerà...
Eppure in tutto ciò c’è la forza dell’amore, della condivisione, l’accettazione dell’Altro.
Perché tutto ciò è destinato a fallire?
Perché l’uomo non riesce a correre ai ripari soprattutto ora che si continua a vivere ai margini di un dirupo?
Queste domande accompagnano la mia lettura.
La storia di Briciola attraversa il tempo e le idee.
La scrittura di Lauren Groff è attenta e studiata.
Briciola bambino decifra l’incomprensibile mondo adulto che lo circonda con l’alfabeto delle favole. E’ il libro dei fratelli Grimm (che coincidenza aver letto queste fiabe proprio lo scorso mese!) che legge di nascosto a dargli le coordinate.
Tuttavia “Arcadia” racconta di un luogo e di un tempo che non muore scomparendo ma incide e si radica in ognuno.
Un romanzo che , nelle sue quattro parti, segue il cammino di Briciola dalla sua nascita alla sua vita adulta.
Un romanzo affascinante a cui, tuttavia, non posso dare un giudizio pienamente positivo perché ho trovato un eccesso nell’ultima parte, nel senso che ne avrei fatto a meno avendo aggiunto troppe altri argomenti di riflessione (rapporti generazionali, la malattia, l’eutanasia, le torri gemelle, i cambiamenti climatici, il progresso tecnologico...).
Insomma, un po’ come quell'abbondanza di cibo che c’è stata in questi giorni di feste:
piatti succulenti ma quando è troppo è troppo!
In ogni caso, un libro che mi è piaciuto moltissimo e forse perché è una storia di nascita, di morte ma soprattutto di ricostruzione.
Ed io voglio continuare a crederci...
"Lui pensa al vecchio paracadute con cui giocavano da bambini ad Arcadia: sfrecciano nella vita invecchiando con velocità inimmaginabile, ma ognuno agguanta un setoso lembo del manto di ricordi che a ondate si leva tra loro, addolcendo così il lungo autunno."
-------------------------------------------
COLONNA SONORA-
🎶 Simon & Garfunkel - The Sound of Silence (from The Concert in Central Park) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAEpp...
🎶 Ray Charles canta « Lift everyvoice and sing », canzone contro la guerra di James Weldon Johnson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU892...
🎶 Cat Steven Tea for the Tillerman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T76_0...
🎶 Led Zeppelin Houses of the holy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8e6V...
---------------------------
★★★★½
“Le donne che cantano, nel fiume.
È il primo ricordo di Briciola, sebbene all’epoca non fosse ancora nato. Nondimeno la strada che serpeggiava tra le montagne gli appare nitida, e così pure la sosta per riposarsi tra fiori gialli che si chiudevano al tocco dei bambini. Era il tramonto quando la Carovana vide il fiume inverdire lungo la curva e stabilì di fermarsi per la notte. Era una sera di primavera tinta di blu, faceva freddo.
Camion, pullman e furgoni si disposero in cerchio a ridosso dell’argine, come bisonti contro il vento; al centro, il Pink Piper, l’autobus a due piani. Handy, il capo, si trovava sul tettuccio del Piper per rivolgere il saluto del sole al giorno morente.
Bambini nudi sfrecciavano ai margini dell’accampamento, la pelle irruvidita dai brividi. Gli uomini accendevano un falò, accordavano chitarre, cominciavano a preparare cene a base di frittelle e stufati di verdure. Le donne lavavano vestiti e biancheria nel fiume gelido, sbattendo i panni contro le rocce. Negli ultimi sprazzi di luce, sotto l’ombra sempre più scura delle loro ginocchia, la corrente scintillava di bolle di sapone.”
Trittico del giardino delle delizie - Hieronymus Bosch
“Libertà o comunità, comunità o libertà. Una persona deve decidere come preferisce vivere. Io ho scelto la comunità.”
Il primo libro del 2020 mi ha catturata da subito: una di quelle letture da cui non ci si riesce a staccare ed ogni incombenza esterna è vissuta come doloroso fastidio.
”È così che sei diventato Ridley Sorrel Stone, chiamato col nome di una città dove, di fatto, non arrivammo mai. La Briciola di noi hippie. Il più antico nascituro di Arcadia. Il nostro erede senza lascito...”
Tra mito e realtà la storia personale di Briciola è intrecciata ad una storia collettiva; Arcadia è il suo nome e come il suo corrispondente mitologico si nutre dell'idillio di una vita bucolica.
Handy è la guida, il faro che illumina il cammino di chi vuole costruire un mondo migliore.
”...noi volevamo fare qualcosa di diverso dagli altri. Qualcosa di puro. Volevamo vivere con la terra, non su di essa. Vivere restando fuori dalle perversioni del mondo mercantile e guadagnarci da vivere partendo da zero. Volevamo che il nostro amore fosse un faro col quale illuminare il mondo.”
L’utopia, però, è già(Ahimè!!!) per definizione un atto perdente.
Così è stato deciso e il (buon??) senso comune che decide cosa è bene e cosa è male, da sempre, ha indicato questo mondo di speranze come una mera fase adolescenziale.
Insomma, crescendo, passerà...
Eppure in tutto ciò c’è la forza dell’amore, della condivisione, l’accettazione dell’Altro.
Perché tutto ciò è destinato a fallire?
Perché l’uomo non riesce a correre ai ripari soprattutto ora che si continua a vivere ai margini di un dirupo?
Queste domande accompagnano la mia lettura.
La storia di Briciola attraversa il tempo e le idee.
La scrittura di Lauren Groff è attenta e studiata.
Briciola bambino decifra l’incomprensibile mondo adulto che lo circonda con l’alfabeto delle favole. E’ il libro dei fratelli Grimm (che coincidenza aver letto queste fiabe proprio lo scorso mese!) che legge di nascosto a dargli le coordinate.
Tuttavia “Arcadia” racconta di un luogo e di un tempo che non muore scomparendo ma incide e si radica in ognuno.
Un romanzo che , nelle sue quattro parti, segue il cammino di Briciola dalla sua nascita alla sua vita adulta.
Un romanzo affascinante a cui, tuttavia, non posso dare un giudizio pienamente positivo perché ho trovato un eccesso nell’ultima parte, nel senso che ne avrei fatto a meno avendo aggiunto troppe altri argomenti di riflessione (rapporti generazionali, la malattia, l’eutanasia, le torri gemelle, i cambiamenti climatici, il progresso tecnologico...).
Insomma, un po’ come quell'abbondanza di cibo che c’è stata in questi giorni di feste:
piatti succulenti ma quando è troppo è troppo!
In ogni caso, un libro che mi è piaciuto moltissimo e forse perché è una storia di nascita, di morte ma soprattutto di ricostruzione.
Ed io voglio continuare a crederci...
"Lui pensa al vecchio paracadute con cui giocavano da bambini ad Arcadia: sfrecciano nella vita invecchiando con velocità inimmaginabile, ma ognuno agguanta un setoso lembo del manto di ricordi che a ondate si leva tra loro, addolcendo così il lungo autunno."
-------------------------------------------
COLONNA SONORA-
🎶 Simon & Garfunkel - The Sound of Silence (from The Concert in Central Park) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAEpp...
🎶 Ray Charles canta « Lift everyvoice and sing », canzone contro la guerra di James Weldon Johnson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU892...
🎶 Cat Steven Tea for the Tillerman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T76_0...
🎶 Led Zeppelin Houses of the holy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8e6V...
---------------------------
★★★★½
March 19, 2012
Some books grab you from the get-go, while some take a little time before they hook you completely. Lauren Groff's wonderful Arcadia fell in the latter category for me, but it was an investment well worth my time. This was a beautifully written book about family (biological and otherwise), love, responsibility, relationships, and the unique pull of one's upbringing.
Arcadia is a commune that develops in the early 1970s in upstate New York, built around a dilapidated mansion called Arcadia House. Born into this community of musicians, farmers, midwives, bakers, and burnt-out escapees is Ridley Sorrel Stone, aka Bit, the son of friendly community pillar Abe and Hannah, a baker often laid low by the depression that commune living cannot cure. The book follows Bit, his family, and other Arcadia residents as the community finally succeeds after years of struggling, looks at the after-effects of its success, then follows Bit's life after nearly everyone has left Arcadia, and what living on the "Outside" has done. Bit is an idealistic, creative, sensitive, and intelligent person, who finds his life turned upside down by the complexity of many of his relationships. This book is an interesting, thought-provoking meditation on the many ways "free" living can shape people's futures.
The book starts when Bit is only five years old, and I felt that portion of the book was the most difficult to engage with, perhaps because you were seeing things through his young eyes, however unique a perspective that provided. As Bit matured, the book really took shape and flight, and I found all of the characters so memorable and complex. Lauren Groff is a terrific writer; her first novel, The Monsters of Templeton, remains one of my all-time favorites, and it is good to see her talent and storytelling ability flourish with Arcadia. It's definitely a book that will get you thinking about your own life, your own dreams, and your own relationships. Definitely read it.
Arcadia is a commune that develops in the early 1970s in upstate New York, built around a dilapidated mansion called Arcadia House. Born into this community of musicians, farmers, midwives, bakers, and burnt-out escapees is Ridley Sorrel Stone, aka Bit, the son of friendly community pillar Abe and Hannah, a baker often laid low by the depression that commune living cannot cure. The book follows Bit, his family, and other Arcadia residents as the community finally succeeds after years of struggling, looks at the after-effects of its success, then follows Bit's life after nearly everyone has left Arcadia, and what living on the "Outside" has done. Bit is an idealistic, creative, sensitive, and intelligent person, who finds his life turned upside down by the complexity of many of his relationships. This book is an interesting, thought-provoking meditation on the many ways "free" living can shape people's futures.
The book starts when Bit is only five years old, and I felt that portion of the book was the most difficult to engage with, perhaps because you were seeing things through his young eyes, however unique a perspective that provided. As Bit matured, the book really took shape and flight, and I found all of the characters so memorable and complex. Lauren Groff is a terrific writer; her first novel, The Monsters of Templeton, remains one of my all-time favorites, and it is good to see her talent and storytelling ability flourish with Arcadia. It's definitely a book that will get you thinking about your own life, your own dreams, and your own relationships. Definitely read it.
June 17, 2012
This is an amazing book. I don't give 5 stars very often. The only author even reminiscent of Lauren Groff, is (early) Anne Tyler, only there is more depth to Lauren Groff's writing. But she does have the same gift for writing about family relationships, emotional reality. This book touched me really deeply--I have lived in an intentional community, and my mother died from ALS, like Bit's mother. This story is true, and moving, and very heartening. Interestingly, even though she writes from the perspective of a man, her narrator is completely believable. I didn't think that was possible: I've never liked novels written by an author about someone of the opposite sex. Best of all, she writes true to the experience of living in community--although the community she writes about is a sixties commune, and certainly not the kind of community I've lived in it is still true to the experience of living in community--both the beautiful and the challenging parts of that. And she writes true to the experiences of loss, of living with terminal illness, of love. I'm in awe of this book. This is an author who truly writes from her own experience, from her deepest experiences.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 13, 2013
I am struggling for my review of this one. For most of the book I found it a tough slog and was seldom eager to get back to it. But I could see that the writing was far too good to quit reading. So I just didn't worry when I couldn't keep track of all the characters and my mind wandered here and there. And then the last section of the book was my favourite and very beautiful, and it's left me feeling quite different - not at all the relief I'd thought I'd feel to be done. And the think the author had lots of interesting things to say about community, and she was both compassionate and also critical of all different ways of living - even the characters disagreed with one another. Every time I wanted to criticize some aspect of the book or the actions of the characters, I can now look back and understand why they'd do what they did. So in the end I'm feeling glad to have read it and surprisingly a bit sad to be finished, though at the same time I hope I'll enjoy my next book a bit more.
March 18, 2012
I don't know about this, you guys. I've heard good things about "Monsters of Templeton," so I was excited to read this, but I kind of have to say it left me going "so what?" This review is kind of spoiler-heavy, because I can't think of anything to do but say what happened, because I didn't love anything in particular enough to talk about it.
SPOILERS!
The first couple of sections deal with a boy growing up in a commune, which is fairly interesting, but certainly not a topic that hasn't been dealt with before. The only really redeeming part of this section was the main character, Bit, who you can't help but love. But because of that, you just feel bad for him most of the time because of all of the shitty things that keep happening to him. And just when you think the really interesting part is going to start, as he leaves to live in the city after living in this commune his whole life, the book skips forward 20 years. And Bit is, if possible, even more lovable, because he still has somehow retained that innocence and decency despite a whole bunch more shitty things happening to him. And then 11 more years pass, and global warming is wreaking havoc, and a huge pandemic is spreading, and Bit isn't sure whether his daughter will have a life worth living in the future, and then his parents die. But he finally gets a decent girlfriend in the end, and the pandemic doesn't kill everybody, so...yay.
/END SPOILERS
There are some beautiful passages, and Bit is a wonderful character, but the whole time I felt like there must be something I was missing that would make this book better. I thought maybe I was reading it too fast or something. But I read "The Book of Jonas" today, in one day, and got more out of it than I did reading this book for four days. So I'm going to assume that "Monsters of Templeton" was just a way better book.
SPOILERS!
The first couple of sections deal with a boy growing up in a commune, which is fairly interesting, but certainly not a topic that hasn't been dealt with before. The only really redeeming part of this section was the main character, Bit, who you can't help but love. But because of that, you just feel bad for him most of the time because of all of the shitty things that keep happening to him. And just when you think the really interesting part is going to start, as he leaves to live in the city after living in this commune his whole life, the book skips forward 20 years. And Bit is, if possible, even more lovable, because he still has somehow retained that innocence and decency despite a whole bunch more shitty things happening to him. And then 11 more years pass, and global warming is wreaking havoc, and a huge pandemic is spreading, and Bit isn't sure whether his daughter will have a life worth living in the future, and then his parents die. But he finally gets a decent girlfriend in the end, and the pandemic doesn't kill everybody, so...yay.
/END SPOILERS
There are some beautiful passages, and Bit is a wonderful character, but the whole time I felt like there must be something I was missing that would make this book better. I thought maybe I was reading it too fast or something. But I read "The Book of Jonas" today, in one day, and got more out of it than I did reading this book for four days. So I'm going to assume that "Monsters of Templeton" was just a way better book.
July 24, 2012
So, the first section, experiencing that world through Bit, was emotionally provocative, well-written, sad, but deeply insightful into the emotional life of that sensitive boy. Beyond that, the book became somewhat formulaic for me and lost the thing that made it special. I was still interested in the story - in a beach-read, what-happens-next kind of way - but not engaged by the characters in the same way.
One more criticism - beyond the main characters, there are so many others, especially among the group of children, who are named and continue to appear but are not fleshed out enough for the details to be memorable to me from scene to scene.
One more criticism - beyond the main characters, there are so many others, especially among the group of children, who are named and continue to appear but are not fleshed out enough for the details to be memorable to me from scene to scene.
February 27, 2013
This is really like a 3.5 or a 3.7.
Groff is an astonishingly gifted writer. She conveys atmosphere like no one else, and as in The Monsters of Templeton, she creates a world and then moves through time with it. (Also like Monsters, you may think she's juggling too many characters and that detracts from the overall impact.)
She does a marvelous job though creating the commune of Arcadia, shown in its heyday, its Reagan-era decline, its diaspora, and then its slightly futuristic (2018) new incarnation as an island away from the ills (literally) of the modern world. Most importantly, she creates a very human and humane narrator, Bit, who lets us view this world, his parents, and the less benign Arcadia members through his essentially benevolent and caring spirit. (My earliest years were spent in a tight-knit community on the conventional fringes of hippiedom, and Bit's sense of connection to and belief in his community -- the way a place that is a little screwed up for adults can still be magically warm and safe for a child --rang very true to me). I really liked Bit, and I cared about the people around him, and found myself rooting for them, not judging them. I was also impressed by Groff's ability to include enough details w.out being heavy handed so that an alterna-verse (whether past commune or future dystopia) seems fully realized and complete.
But but...the book is long. There are a lot of very loving descriptions of the New York State woods which after a while seemed not revelatory or enchanting, but repetitive. You have to accept that the book's pacing is a bit uneven -- it meanders, like a life, with a few sharply punctuated crises, but really no resolution or tying up of loose ends. I'm not sure if my impatience with that structure is the book's failing or my own. But in any event I wouldn't have missed my time in Arcadia, and the vivid way I can still picture it -- so, a 4.
Groff is an astonishingly gifted writer. She conveys atmosphere like no one else, and as in The Monsters of Templeton, she creates a world and then moves through time with it. (Also like Monsters, you may think she's juggling too many characters and that detracts from the overall impact.)
She does a marvelous job though creating the commune of Arcadia, shown in its heyday, its Reagan-era decline, its diaspora, and then its slightly futuristic (2018) new incarnation as an island away from the ills (literally) of the modern world. Most importantly, she creates a very human and humane narrator, Bit, who lets us view this world, his parents, and the less benign Arcadia members through his essentially benevolent and caring spirit. (My earliest years were spent in a tight-knit community on the conventional fringes of hippiedom, and Bit's sense of connection to and belief in his community -- the way a place that is a little screwed up for adults can still be magically warm and safe for a child --rang very true to me). I really liked Bit, and I cared about the people around him, and found myself rooting for them, not judging them. I was also impressed by Groff's ability to include enough details w.out being heavy handed so that an alterna-verse (whether past commune or future dystopia) seems fully realized and complete.
But but...the book is long. There are a lot of very loving descriptions of the New York State woods which after a while seemed not revelatory or enchanting, but repetitive. You have to accept that the book's pacing is a bit uneven -- it meanders, like a life, with a few sharply punctuated crises, but really no resolution or tying up of loose ends. I'm not sure if my impatience with that structure is the book's failing or my own. But in any event I wouldn't have missed my time in Arcadia, and the vivid way I can still picture it -- so, a 4.
August 8, 2022
Im torn on this one honestly. There were some things I loved about it but overall I just wasn’t sure what the message or point was, and I disliked some of the ambiguity.
One of the characters has an accident at some point that impacts him in a pretty meaningful way. Another character just disappears and we never find out what happens to her, which I get, is life, but as a reader I wanted some closure to that story.
Groff definitely enjoys exploring humans and the relationships they form and maybe that’s all this one is. I think I enjoyed the earlier bits in the commune more so than the later parts. I did like Bit as a character but mostly when he was a child- I think the way he saw the world was very unique and then as he grows and becomes an adult he becomes less unique, so it started strong and ended less strong.
The writing, as ever, and is probably what keeps me coming back, was gorgeous, but I just don’t know that it was enough to carry the story.
I much preferred Matrix by Groff, though I will likely keep reading her work. Somehow her writing has sucked me in.
One of the characters has an accident at some point that impacts him in a pretty meaningful way. Another character just disappears and we never find out what happens to her, which I get, is life, but as a reader I wanted some closure to that story.
Groff definitely enjoys exploring humans and the relationships they form and maybe that’s all this one is. I think I enjoyed the earlier bits in the commune more so than the later parts. I did like Bit as a character but mostly when he was a child- I think the way he saw the world was very unique and then as he grows and becomes an adult he becomes less unique, so it started strong and ended less strong.
The writing, as ever, and is probably what keeps me coming back, was gorgeous, but I just don’t know that it was enough to carry the story.
I much preferred Matrix by Groff, though I will likely keep reading her work. Somehow her writing has sucked me in.
April 10, 2017
„Umysł jest swoim własnym panem i sam potrafi Niebem uczynić Piekło i Piekłem Niebo.”
Raj Utracony John Milton
„Arkadia” należy do tych powieści, które przy bliższym poznaniu potrafią zaskoczyć głębią odniesień, wzruszyć pieczołowicie dopieszczoną symboliką, uradować oryginalnością spojrzenia. To jeszcze nie jest ta dojrzała Lauren Groff, która zachwyca fantastyczną „Fatum i Furią”, ale widać w niej już ten unikatowy głos, który potrafi z przekorą uchwycić ulotność szczęścia, absurdy życia i samej rzeczywistości. I czytając nagle zaczynamy baczniej obserwować swoje małe idealistyczne krainy, a rysy pojawiają się raz po raz.
Raj Utracony John Milton
„Arkadia” należy do tych powieści, które przy bliższym poznaniu potrafią zaskoczyć głębią odniesień, wzruszyć pieczołowicie dopieszczoną symboliką, uradować oryginalnością spojrzenia. To jeszcze nie jest ta dojrzała Lauren Groff, która zachwyca fantastyczną „Fatum i Furią”, ale widać w niej już ten unikatowy głos, który potrafi z przekorą uchwycić ulotność szczęścia, absurdy życia i samej rzeczywistości. I czytając nagle zaczynamy baczniej obserwować swoje małe idealistyczne krainy, a rysy pojawiają się raz po raz.
November 17, 2015
Arcadia, the utopian hippie paradise, is shown to us through the eyes of Bit, first as a child, then adolescent... It's obvious from the beginning that it will fall, and it definitely does, for many reasons, but this idealistic community is quite beautiful in their intentions and their commitment to living 'freely'. With much toiling, they refurbish a derelict mansion where they live together in a commune. But growing numbers, free love and drugs, and disillusionment in their leader Handy, ultimately brings Arcadia to its knees.
My favourite part of the book was Arcadia. After its dissolution, the book lost its magic for me somewhat. Bit is in the real world, he has followed love down a terribly painful path (OMG - the Helle story killed me and left me wanting more more more...), is a photography professor and single father. His parents are aging (painfully, too). I wasn't entirely sure of where the story took us, although it seems to me that Bit's challenge is to come to peace with the world he lives in.
Groff's writing is SPLENDID. She's a pleasure to read, so descriptive, so luscious. Lots of vocabulary that was new to me, loved that too. She brought us into that world so well, and I didn't really want to leave.
My favourite part of the book was Arcadia. After its dissolution, the book lost its magic for me somewhat. Bit is in the real world, he has followed love down a terribly painful path (OMG - the Helle story killed me and left me wanting more more more...), is a photography professor and single father. His parents are aging (painfully, too). I wasn't entirely sure of where the story took us, although it seems to me that Bit's challenge is to come to peace with the world he lives in.
Groff's writing is SPLENDID. She's a pleasure to read, so descriptive, so luscious. Lots of vocabulary that was new to me, loved that too. She brought us into that world so well, and I didn't really want to leave.
September 25, 2015
The structure of this book reminded me of the two John Irving novels I’ve read: The first half of the book was about the childhood of the main character, Bit; the second half was about his adulthood, and the two halves were so different they felt almost like two different books.
I liked the first part, detailing Bit’s childhood in the upstate New York commune of Arcadia, even though I hadn’t been sure I would—I don’t usually like books that eschew quotation marks, tending to feel that this particular stylistic choice dampens emotion and liveliness and makes a novel feel one-note. In this case, though, I kept picturing Arcadia as a woven rug or blanket—the characters, setting, plot, and dialogue were all different colors that worked together, forming one whole where no element was any more important than any other. It was effective and enabled me to get completely absorbed in the odd world of Arcadia and its people.
The second half, which takes place out in the “real world,” lost this quality—which is appropriate, I guess, considering that by this point Arcadia really had ripped apart at the seams. But the novel also lost its effectiveness for me. Part of it was Groff’s baffling decision to have Bit hung up on a woman, Helle, who seemed to have no desirable qualities at all. But I also wasn’t crazy about It was all so relentlessly grim, in some ways needlessly so (I mean, we already had ; we didn’t really need as well). I wondered over and over again what the moral of the story was—because it seemed clear to me there was supposed to be some kind of moral in all this. Was the second half of the book meant to be a contrast to Arcadia, an indication of what happens when we live too distant from the land and from community with others? The structure of the book seemed to imply that. On the other hand, we also get reminded that too much freedom can be a bad thing and that technology can save lives, which seems to imply Arcadia wasn’t really a force for good, and was never more than a lost cause. I don’t necessarily believe every book has to teach us some kind of lesson, but I felt like I was supposed to be getting something from this one, only I wasn’t sure what it was.
One thing I am sure about, though: Lauren Groff can write. Although I have postponed my plan to read Fates and Furies in the immediate future, I fully intend to get to it and the rest of Groff’s books. I need a little break from her dense language, but I will be back to try again.
I received this ARC via Shelf Awareness back when Arcadia was first published. There was no expectation of a review.
I liked the first part, detailing Bit’s childhood in the upstate New York commune of Arcadia, even though I hadn’t been sure I would—I don’t usually like books that eschew quotation marks, tending to feel that this particular stylistic choice dampens emotion and liveliness and makes a novel feel one-note. In this case, though, I kept picturing Arcadia as a woven rug or blanket—the characters, setting, plot, and dialogue were all different colors that worked together, forming one whole where no element was any more important than any other. It was effective and enabled me to get completely absorbed in the odd world of Arcadia and its people.
The second half, which takes place out in the “real world,” lost this quality—which is appropriate, I guess, considering that by this point Arcadia really had ripped apart at the seams. But the novel also lost its effectiveness for me. Part of it was Groff’s baffling decision to have Bit hung up on a woman, Helle, who seemed to have no desirable qualities at all. But I also wasn’t crazy about It was all so relentlessly grim, in some ways needlessly so (I mean, we already had ; we didn’t really need as well). I wondered over and over again what the moral of the story was—because it seemed clear to me there was supposed to be some kind of moral in all this. Was the second half of the book meant to be a contrast to Arcadia, an indication of what happens when we live too distant from the land and from community with others? The structure of the book seemed to imply that. On the other hand, we also get reminded that too much freedom can be a bad thing and that technology can save lives, which seems to imply Arcadia wasn’t really a force for good, and was never more than a lost cause. I don’t necessarily believe every book has to teach us some kind of lesson, but I felt like I was supposed to be getting something from this one, only I wasn’t sure what it was.
One thing I am sure about, though: Lauren Groff can write. Although I have postponed my plan to read Fates and Furies in the immediate future, I fully intend to get to it and the rest of Groff’s books. I need a little break from her dense language, but I will be back to try again.
I received this ARC via Shelf Awareness back when Arcadia was first published. There was no expectation of a review.
January 4, 2016
okay, so this book surprised me a little bit. (heh.) i was keen to read it and i am excited it has made it into the 2013 tournament of books, but even with those giddy-making, anticipatory things....i was still a little hesitant to actually jump into this book. i don't have a problem with hippies. in fact, being born during the summer of love i often wonder if i was predisposed to hippiedom. i'm not totally crunchy-granola-tree-hugging in my ways...but i get it. i really get it. i decided, during the read, that my hesitation really had more to do with Groff being able to pull this off well at her age (presently, she's 34). it seemed to me that no matter how good your research or how awesome one's writerly chops...there was way too much room for a story about a utopian commune to go off the rails. i probably shouldn't have thought about it so much. over-thought it, really. are hippies this anxious? did i mention grunge was also dear to my heart? heh. :)
i loved arcadia a lot. i viscerally responded to the settings and people Groff created here and i am kinda floored by Groff's talent. i own monsters of templeton and though it is a novel i began to read, due to bad timing, i set it aside and, as of yet, haven't gone back to it. no reflection on the novel, i was enjoying it at the time. just the way life conspires sometimes. though i now want to get back to it and give it a restart asap. but back to arcadia: i was totally caught up in Bit's life. i loved the timeline and following him along life's path. the introduction of a slightly in the future and potentially dystopian aspect to the later part of the novel worked for me, as a plot device and as a juxtaposition to the first section of the novel, set on the commune. arcadia had humour and heartbreak and while i have no commune experience, i felt like bit's experience could be real or true. i wanted arcadia (the commune) to work and had moments of 'that would be kinda cool!', but i also wanted to smack some people upside the head, on behalf of the children and babies living at arcadia through no choice of their own. (not very loving hippy of me, i know! but...come on!)
my only quibble with the book has to do with the character of Handy - the 'leader' of arcadia. he seemed underused or underdeveloped. while i noticed this and it gnawed at me a few times during my reading, it wasn't enough to effect my overall feeling for the story.
23 february 2013
i loved arcadia a lot. i viscerally responded to the settings and people Groff created here and i am kinda floored by Groff's talent. i own monsters of templeton and though it is a novel i began to read, due to bad timing, i set it aside and, as of yet, haven't gone back to it. no reflection on the novel, i was enjoying it at the time. just the way life conspires sometimes. though i now want to get back to it and give it a restart asap. but back to arcadia: i was totally caught up in Bit's life. i loved the timeline and following him along life's path. the introduction of a slightly in the future and potentially dystopian aspect to the later part of the novel worked for me, as a plot device and as a juxtaposition to the first section of the novel, set on the commune. arcadia had humour and heartbreak and while i have no commune experience, i felt like bit's experience could be real or true. i wanted arcadia (the commune) to work and had moments of 'that would be kinda cool!', but i also wanted to smack some people upside the head, on behalf of the children and babies living at arcadia through no choice of their own. (not very loving hippy of me, i know! but...come on!)
my only quibble with the book has to do with the character of Handy - the 'leader' of arcadia. he seemed underused or underdeveloped. while i noticed this and it gnawed at me a few times during my reading, it wasn't enough to effect my overall feeling for the story.
23 february 2013
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