Content Warning: discussions about and examples of eating disorder, war, terror, suicide, Boston Marathon Bombing, cancer, chronic pain, protesting by refusing food, mentions of torture in Guantanamo Bay prison, and examinations of individual radicalized Muslim terrorists.
That is a whole lot of content warning, but let me explain: I discovered Hilary Plum after I went to a joint reading that she and her husband, the poet Zach Savich, did at the University of Notre Dame on March 22, 2017. I note the date because it’s really common for me to buy a book at a reading, shelve it, and take years to get back to it. Thus, me reading Plum’s nonfiction book Watchfires only 5 months later emphasizes that I didn’t forget her story (and to some extent Savich’s). I remembered clearly that Ms. Plum discussed how she looked at her eating disorder and terror and combined the two in this gorgeous non-fiction narrative.
What I learned upon reading Watchfires is that the focus is more so on the Boston Marathon bombers, Savich having cancer at 30, and Plum’s chronic pain that went undiagnosed all through her 20s. Not quite a memoir, Watchfires is more of a meditation on the war on terror and autoimmune disease. The pages are broken into small sections, sometimes with just a fact or observation, and some longer moments in which Plum describes why detective novels are so suited to her time waiting — in a hospital room next to her husband’s bed or at home while pain consumes her and people doubt there’s anything wrong with her at all.
Watchfires juxtaposes anorexia and Guantanamo Bay, suicide and mass murder, American and unAmerican, terrorist and victim, autoimmune diseases and terror, the Boston Marathon bombing and cancer. It all makes a complete picture that is surprising and moving.
Since this nonfiction work isn’t simply Plum’s lived experience, but her ideas about what her personal and world experiences mean, I wanted to see if her speculations hold up. Plum argues that the war on terror is like an autoimmune disease. At first I didn’t see what she meant until I thought more about the Tsarnaev brothers. One moved to the United States at a young enough age that he “should” have assimilated easily. When he helped his brother kill people, he claimed it was because the U.S. had killed so many in the Middle East during the war in Afghanistan. An autoimmune disease is one that causes the human body to attack itself. If Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was supposed to be “one of us,” then why did he attack us? Plum forces us to ask. Is the United States really fighting a war it didn’t start, or is the U.S. destroying itself by provoking other groups and nations? The metaphor breaks down a bit, in my opinion, because we don’t provoke or hold ourselves responsible for autoimmune diseases, but I see where she’s going with it.
The part I loved about Watchfires is that Plum lays down pieces and invites readers to make connections. Half the fun is asking myself whether I’m putting things together how Plum intended, or in my own way that she hadn’t thought of. For example, for years Plum can’t work or do much because she’s chronically fatigued and in pain. She’s confined to bed and watches detective shows. Plum writes, “The rhythm appeals: the show begins with a crime, proceeds to a resolution. Next episode.” Because Watchfires covered various examples of terror (Sandy Hook Shooting, Chechnya school shooting, gun violence, Boston Marathon bombing, etc.), I connected her TV example to terror — we get so used to hearing about it and know that the nation will be outraged, but we’ll quickly move on to the next act of terror (forgetting even more quickly terror in nonWestern countries), and the rhythm of it is like watching detective shows. There’s an arc, a rhythm.
On the very first page, someone asks, “Did he speak with an accent?” Readers learn this was a question everyone had after the Boston Marathon bombing, which happened the same day Plum’s husband had surgery for his cancer. 67 pages later, Plum notes that autoimmune diseases are complicated: “Here the enemy is hard to distinguish; the enemy melts back into the crowd.” Immediately, I thought of the question about accents. Because Dzhokhar Tasarnaev lived in the States most of his life, attended a public university, liked rap music, seemed “normal” to everyone, and looked white, he is able to hide in a crowd. Of course we must question what we think a terrorist looks and sounds like as a result.
To take it one step further, Plum cleverly puts two passages together in the middle that juxtapose autoimmune and the Tsarnaev brothers:
In the case of multiple sclerosis — also autoimmune — occurrence increases with distance from the equator. If one is born in a high-risk region and before reaching puberty moves to a low-risk region, one assumes the new, lower risk of occurrence. But if one moves after puberty, one’s risk remains high. For this phenomenon there is no firm explanation.
*
The boy [Dzhokhar] was eight when he came to the US. The man [Tamerlan] was sixteen.
Isn’t that just an incredible comparison? Plum doesn’t analyze it for the reader, thus there is more opportunity for us to chew on it and have a discussion.
I will say the end was rather confusing. Part II is only 23 pages of a 192-page book. For all of Part I, which takes up almost the entire book, Plum has been writing in 3rd person (“she”) to refer to herself. This method distances the writer from what can be painful times in his/her life, which I get. But in Part II, Plum switches to first person (“I”) and appears to be having an imaginary conversation with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The people and setting get fuzzy — at one point I think she imagines Dzhokhar at school? — and I fail to see the importance of this shift if it’s going to be done so unclearly. Overall, though, highly recommended nonfiction book that made me think, reconsider, and empathize with the author.
Watchfires was published November 2016 through a press she and her husband started called Rescue Press. I’m interested in reading Plum’s first book, They Dragged Them Through the Streets, a novel which is “a bold meditation on idealism, anger, and the American home front’s experience of today’s wars. This is an innovative work in the great tradition of war literature and a singular chronicle of one generation’s conflicts.”
Grab the Lapels 
Interesting point about the way we forget what at the time appear to be unforgettable events. A calamity happens, we get 24 hour media coverage and wall to wall analysis but when the crisis is over, the attention span fades and then disappears until an anniversary.
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I’m always surprised when I read how long ago an event happened. For instance, the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting happened almost FIVE years ago. Feels like yesterday, but I also forget about it because there are so many other attacks. I think what creates the rhythm is that we never DO anything afterward. No gun control reform, no new safety measures other than more police and more vigilance.
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Im with you on this – I am so sick of the “lessons will be learned’ message that gets trotted out after every calamity. but they never do. I read Five Days at Memorial last year about Hurricane Katrina and the epilogue made telling reading – I quoted it in my review https://bookertalk.com/2016/07/26/five-days-at-memorial-by-sheri-fink-a-storm-of-ethical-questions/
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Oh, I remember this review! It focused on the hospital! I remember how Hurricane Katrina really brought out front and center a lot of racial prejudice. Observers calling black people “looters” and white people “resource finders.”
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I’m torn about ‘terror’ because the risk is so often hyped up by politicians wanting to take away rights which during the vietnam anti-war days we took for granted. So just this week for example, Australian government employees have been banned from posting political material on facebook etc. (I acknowledge you suffer real terror events which we don’t really in our quiet corner of the world). The parallels Plum draws are fascinating and her themes are applicable throughout the western world, not just the US. I see it’s available on Amazon, and no doubt elsewhere, I’ll just have to check out postage.
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It’s a book that makes me think that’s full of poetics, and that’s an art. I definitely see how some Americans want to take away the rights of others in the name of “safety” and don’t see that it’s a slippery slope on which the definition of “danger” changes too easily. In terrorist situations, the terror can come from anyone and for everyone…
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I love when authors make comparisons like this, but leave the reader to connect the dots in their own pattern, it makes reading so interactive!
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I LOVE IT. I can’t wait to check out her first book, which is a novel about terror (this one is a memoir).
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a novel about terror? What isn’t these days lol
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Interesting review! This book doesn’t sound like it’s for me (no particular reason – it just doesn’t speak to me), but some of the points made about terrorism sound interesting.
Part II sounds a bit odd & disjointed from the first part of the book.
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I found one review of Watchfires–just one!–and the reviewer loved the made up part best *shrug*
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Gosh, the part about the rhythms of a detective show and coverage of a terrorist incident is clever, isn’t it. Not a book for (feeble) me, esp as a runner, I can’t bear to read stuff about the Boston marathon attacks (I do care about the rest of the world, of course, but that is so easy to visualise for me). I’m glad you read such challenging books and report on them for us.
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I’m so glad I noted the contents warning about the Boston Marathon! You lived through the coverage (and even yet another freaking Mark Wahlberg movie), so you’re definitely aware.
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It’s an interesting premise. I, for one, would have never put together autoimmune diseases and terror attacks and examined them along the same line.
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Me either, but if you look at the way the U.S. often tries to stop terror with terror, I can see how we are destroying ourselves. So many people point back at how the U.S. gave Bin Laden weapons to defeat terror, and then we were so proud when he was killed.
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One of my favorite things to discover when reading is when the author assumes you have a brain. That quote about MS really drives that point home. I am certainly intrigued by this premise for a memoir-esque book. I can certainly see how Plum came to the beliefs she did, particularly considering her personal challenges aligning with the Boston Marathon bombing– I wonder if this is something others have reflected on before? It’s an interesting concept, that acts of terror can be like autoimmune diseases.
I don’t think I agree with the comparison of acts of terror to detective stories. The breakdown for me is that these acts of terror aren’t always resolved. Yes, the Boston Marathon and Sandy Hook both had terrorists which were captured. But we don’t always “get the bad guy”. There is rarely a clean resolution. Do you feel like to most Americans, these acts of terror are resolved when we identify a terrorist? I feel like there is so much more to be resolved. The victims, the origin of the plot– it feels like we’re constantly cutting off a thistle instead of pulling out the roots.
Personally, I don’t feel like these are resolved. But I do feel like it’s easy for us to move on with how media coverage is a forced funnel. Once the media moves past an event, particularly in America where news is becoming more and more biased and about click-bait, it seems the rest of the country follows. It’s more of a numbness from seeing the same thing over and over again.
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I’m not sure the author makes the connection between detective novels and acts of terror, but I did. What I’ve learned is that detective novels are so addicting and exciting that people read them, are excited about them, heck, even glued to the story, but it seems so easy to move on from that book and start a new one, like watching the coverage of terror acts. There’s definitely little to no resolution with terror; you’re right about that. But I feel like we’re forced to move on when the next catastrophe happens, like moving in to a new book.
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You’re right. The way the media covers these events, we don’t have a lot of opportunity to even process what happened in many cases. Like what’s going on in VA right now– I bet that we will have moved on as a country long before anything concrete comes of it. We’re in it for the thrill, as it were. Sad.
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Give it a week or two and something new and horrific will happen. I really like the civil rights activists who frequently Tweet the names of those who have been murdered by police or in protests because it actually DOES help me not forget.
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I am wondering if the equator thing is true o.o because wow, if it is.
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I know, right?? In grad school I took a class in which we discussed what Europe is. That sounds simple and obvious, but though certain countries are in Europe, many Europeans don’t feel some countries or parts of countries count–and most of it had to do with location the equator.
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[…] Watchfires by Hilary Plum. Part memoir, part observation, this is a book that examines the Boston Marathon […]
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