Response to Edward Rutherford's London by Lyle Penner.   What impressed me most about London, the epic historical fiction novel by Edward Rutherfurd, was its sense of dissolved time. Tracing the life and characters of several families, including the Bulls’, the Flemings’, the Silversleeves, the Barnikel’s, & the Duckets’ through two thousand years of London history, the book evoked my historical sense that I’ve carried with me all my life. There’s something honour-evoking about knowing the past of that which is now, because it is so easily hidden and forgotten. One of Rutherford’s fascinating conclusions: “Imagine”, he had said, “a summer. At the end of it the leaves fall. They lie on the ground. They almost dissolve, you might say, but not quite. The next year the same thing happens again. And again. Thinned out, compressed, those leaves and al the other vegetation build up in layers, year after year. It’s the natural process. It’s organic." “Something similar happens with man, and especially in a city. Each year, each age, leaves something. It gets compressed, of course, it disappears under the surface, but just a little of all that human life remains. A roman tile, a coin, a clay pipe from Shakespeare’s time. All left in place. When we dig down, we find it and we may put it on show. But don’t think of it just as an object. Because that coin, that pipe belonged to someone: a person who lived, and loved, and looked out at the river and the sky each day just like you and me.” “So when we dig down into the earth under our feet, and find all that is left of that man or woman, I try to remember that what I am seeing and handling is a huge and endless compression of lives. And sometimes in our work here, I feel as if we’ve someone how entered into that layer of compressed time, prised open that life, a single day even, with its morning, and evening, and its blue sky and its horizon. We’ve opened just one of the millions and millions of windows, hidden in the ground.” Sensing history somehow is very mysterious to me. And Rutherford must be in awe of it as he traces the lives and losses of his imagined characters. I think one of Rutherford’s purposes in writing is to outline for us the intertwindedness of each other through time. The descendents of the early Roman people through the Saxon, medieval, Elizabethean, Victorian and modern eras intermixed with each other. Yet centuries later their history of relating became lost. However, they were still interacting with each other, often with the same historical family problems. Usually it had to do with complicated patterns of revenge and greed, and wanting to amass status and fortune for their heirs - something perhaps made more important "back then" with their relatively shorter lifespans. In unsuspecting ways I also interact with parts of history, and that adds to the sense of mystery when I look out at the world. Perhaps we are also informed by the lives of our ancestors influencing us in unsuspecting ways. In terms of building for posterity, I don’t feel this need as much as the story's characters. I’m aware that I want to give certain values and awarenesses to my son. Since I’m only near the beginning of mid-life, perhaps it will be only later when this will strike me as more important. The urge I'm sure, however impossible to fulfill, will be there. I also enjoyed learning from London about aspects of English history which I was only vaguely familiar with before, such as its early Roman walled status (a northern mini-Rome) for example. An interesting theme of cosmopolitan, historic London was its indefinability. The normal stereotype when you think of this ancient city is of a tribe of Anglo-Saxons with their fierce sense of pride. Yet as Rutherford demonstrates "the" City has been a city of immigrants including Danes, Swedes, Germans and French from the beginning. There are no “real” Londoners ethnically defined! I was interested to know (if it is indeed true) that a Cockney Londoner, besides possessing a distinctive rougher accent, is not ethnically defined either. A Cockney originally meant anyone born within earshot of the bells of the St. Mary-le-Bow church in central London. I suspect that the blurring of the lines of what defines a city or any place has its distinct advantages. It takes out the justice argument of whose "in" and whose "out" when conflict arises. (This is maybe why I react sometimes to when aboriginals talk about land claims and how they were here “first”.) Somewhere down the line this argument loses steam and meaning. We all share this place, and as Sam Keen says, our task is learn how to cope. No one can really fall back on a “we were here first” ideology. You can respond to the author here (responses may be posted) or on our messageboard.