How the Quiet Breathes by John Michael Flynn

Abstract

Reviewed by: How the Quiet Breathes by John Michael Flynn Spencer Harrison (bio) how the quiet breathes John Michael Flynn New Meridian Arts https://www.newmeridianarts.com/how-the-quiet-breathes 266 pages; Print, $20.00 As John Michael Flynn, author of How the Quiet Breathes, got to know the families he was staying with in Moldova in the early 1990s as a teaching fellow, certain questions arose: What did the citizens of Moldova do to deserve abject poverty? Had they not fought in World War II and rid the world of [End Page 85] evil, just like John's fellow Americans? Had not Moldovans participated in a people's revolution and overthrown a monarchy, just as the Americans did? After all they had fought for, why now, after the fall of the Soviet Union, were they being stripped of the life they had fought for? And more importantly, why were the Moldovans handling this situation better than some Americans blessed with material prosperity? How could the head of a Moldovan household stand resolute in his decision to be a strong moral role model for his children in the face of such conditions? How could he maintain good cheer when every day he would travel to the market to buy a single loaf of bread and, more often than not, return home empty-handed. What was it that made John so unhappy in his abundant American household that he felt the need to run away to Europe in order to "find himself"? John's description of Eastern European poverty is pretty much what one would imagine: "babushkas" selling sunflower seeds on the corner for pennies, clothing worn for weeks without washing, bathing occurring no more frequently, and the smells to match. And yet, John's hosts excitedly ferried him through their day showing him their workday. John was expressly asked to not help with the duties on the farm, as he would only get in the way; however, he was required to drink heavily with the neighbors they met all throughout the day. John was under the first table they visited while the Moldovans soldiered on their workday unaffected. The Moldovans were more than happy to talk politics with the first American living in their town. John's new neighbors were helping him much more than he was helping them as he fell ill and adjusted to his culture shock. After all, was John not just perpetuating American imperialism by spreading its education? John observed a drastically different mind-set from the one found in his American friends. He contemptuously looked on at American tourists who looked at minor instances of discomfort, such as not liking the food, as something having gone seriously wrong, whereas the Moldovans were pleasantly surprised if something worked as it should, like the electricity actually turning on. John depends on the kindness of strangers to help him along his winding bildungsroman which he was woefully unprepared for. He starts out staring out his train window pondering how he could find a better way to frame the shot than Orson Welles. John cringes as he looks back on his early attempts at poetry and musings on art and life. He set out to blaze a trail, [End Page 86] only to find he had become a cliché. In stumbling through his early attempts at romance with an older woman, who sees through his warbling vibrato, John learns that he may never find answers to the real questions he should be asking. One of John's Moldovan friends, Iorge, provides a potential answer to John's existential crisis. Iorge encourages John to imagine a mosaic of impressions that fuse in one's mind to form a tiny civilization. It was a microcosm I would claim ownership of and live in as long as I spoke its language. Once fluent, I could connect my impressions to roots that had been there long before I'd seen them. Iorge said the best way to begin this process was to understand Camus, that I was a stranger everywhere I went, always would be, so I should talk to myself, trust myself, use as often as possible the language spoken by...