To the Wedding by John Berger
A tale of two lovers converging towards marriage under the shadow of tragedy.
Finished: 30 November 2021
Rating: ★★★★☆
“He knows exactly what he’s doing. More than you or I know what we’re doing. When we do a thing, when we decide to do something, we’re already thinking about what it’ll be like when it’s done, when it’s over. Not him. He only thinks about what he’s doing at the moment.”
Shakespeare’s comedies all end in marriage. This book is anchored and pulled by preparations for a wedding but it is anything but comedy. The wedding takes place only because of an inevitable, known tragedy. Tragedy can make everything seem meaningless or it can imbue every moment with a sense of urgency to live. I’ve only ever read John Berger’s nonfiction — all of which I’ve loved — but it seems he generally favours a fragmentary, poetic style strung together by vignettes. I love that, but it takes a certain frame of mind to enter into. I was struggling to get through the story, brief as it is, until I stopped trying to make sense of it all and took each scene as it came, appreciating each line, immersing myself rather than forcing my way through. And then it came together and it was heartbreaking, barrelling towards the wedding (a beginning) permeated by death (an end). In that way, form served substance.
Some chapters move between perspectives and times by the paragraph, dipping in rapid succession between two characters’ thoughts. I’ve seen similar ‘technique’ in stream-of-consciousness narration, and it’s difficult to follow if one is consciously trying to keep track. If the author is skilful, one should be able to sense the shift between voice, pick up instinctively on the cues. But the ability to do this, as a reader, requires a different understanding of what’s going on. I’ve been thinking about the thread of my life and where to channel it, what purpose to serve. I think many of the stories we read and consume are structured this way too — we’re taught to look for where the plot is going and what the resolution will be. All else is judged in that light.
But there’s no resolution here other than the resolution we’re all destined for. Until then, only an endless continuation, one step after another. The beauty of this novella is that it doesn’t really tout a particular message or viewpoint — it just shows us a way to be. And one thing that can be done with and within that continuation is to take it one moment at a time, accepting and savouring what we’ve been graced with.