by Ben Arzate
How can anything make sense once it feels so big? I’m barely in control of myself. How can the sky be anything but a huge, beautiful fluke? Whatever it is, I’ll take it.
The unnamed narrator of Thomas Moore’s We’ll Never Be Fragile Again spends the one hundred pages of the novel contemplating the sky, remembering parties and good times with friends, and, most of all, deeply missing a woman, also unnamed, who is no longer in his life.
Throughout the book, the narrator’s thoughts return to her. He deeply regrets not having been able to forge a lasting relationship with her, despite their intense mutual attraction. Among the many reasons is that the narrator identifies as gay. He views this, in retrospect, as an easy way out for both of them. Because society has set their sexualities as fixed and binary, they can tell themselves they could never have been together. This does little to stop the deep longing he continues to hold for her.
At one point, he compares having met her to first hearing the songs that resonated with him to the point he felt it changed his life. Much like being with her, these songs got inside him and created powerful memories. He later asks if he expects too much from these songs when he listens to them again. Do we ask too much of someone whom we feel a deep need for? It’s not the fault of the artists that you can never listen to an amazing song for the first time and feel that way again. It’s rarely, if ever, the fault of that person that they can’t be with you or don’t feel the same longing anymore.
The narrator often turns to drugs and anonymous sexual encounters for comfort. While he recognizes the risks in these things, such as addiction and contracting an STD, he does not ultimately condemn them. He finds drugs a sometimes useful means of heightening or deadening emotions. Cruising, a major theme of Moore’s prior work, is something that he finds beauty in. A fleeting but intense means of creating a connection between anonymous people through mutual pleasure.
The narrator finds himself contemplating the sky more and more as the book goes on in beautiful, poetic prose. And why not? The sky will always be there. It may change colors, go dark, be filled with clouds, but we can always look up and know the sky will be there. In comparison, human connection is incredibly fleeting. The sky may never respond to your conversation, but it has no choice in the matter. A person chooses not to respond.
The title by itself may seem like a statement of strength. However, in its context where it’s mentioned within the novel, it’s a mourning of a loss. The fragility, fear, and uncertainty of a deep connection with another were an essential part of what made it so painfully beautiful. Now, having become hardened, set on a certain path by society, and reduced by being identified, that beauty is lost.
While his shortest, We’ll Never Be Fragile Again may be Thomas Moore’s most affecting novel. The prose is simple, but incredibly evocative and poetic. It’s also probably his most honest and insightful examination of the pain and beauty of love. I very highly recommend this one.
Ben Arzate lives in Des Moines, Iowa. His articles, reviews, short stories, and poetry have appeared in various places online and in print. He is also the author of books. His newest novel, If today the sun should set on all my hopes and cares…, was recently released by Baynam Books.
Find him online at dripdropdripdropdripdrop.blogspot.com or at his substack benarzate.substack.com.
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