Skating to Antarctica: A Journey to the End of the World

Rating:
Summary: St. Olaf Review
Review: Skating to Antarctica Review Essay
Jenny Diski presents to her readers the story of her painful childhood, venturing from her sexually abusive parents to her journey through poor foster care, until she finally escaped with the help of Doris Lessing. Her story appears inspirational and hopeful to those of an unfortunate background, making the reader believe one can achieve happiness and success in their own life, aside from what their past held.
From the very opening sentence Diski makes it known that: "I am not entirely content with the degree of whiteness in my life" (p.1). Her goal of reaching pure, white Antarctica seems natural here, it seems to simply be another step in her healing process. However, as the memoir continues, it seems as if Jenny changes her mind, describing her experiences on land "neither white nor solitary" (p. 165). Her depiction of the manner in which her father and mother treated her begin to play a more prominent role and it is exposed to the reader that Jenny Diski may not be the calm, composed, healed adult she pretends to be.
Skating to Antarctica emerges from a strong base in which Diski allows us to view her past and the horrific events and people she had to surpass in order to become the thriving author that she is today. Defensive from the very beginning, Diski attempts to convince her reader's that she has forgiven her father for leaving and her mother for the embarrassment and ridicule she caused her as a child. Lack of Jenny's "true"
Psychological healing is obviously apparent the entire way through her memoir, beginning with her idea that "disappointment is a safety net, to be relished in a secret knowing by the disappointed" (p. 8). This statement alone uncovers the idea that she lives her life in this sort of "net," just waiting to be hurt by everyone and anyone.
Trust is a huge issue in Jenny's life, an act she has a very difficult time both believing in and having faith in. She refers to the matter of truth as: "...dangerous, the truth was poison" (p. 98). Her non-ability to trust the people in her life proves that she still holds bitterness and resentment for her parents. Had her parents not harmed her in the way that they did, she's saying, she would be able to trust with no hindrances.
Immaturity also plays a part in this well written memoir. Diski, on the defensive, claims that she has moved on from her childhood, wanting no contact with her mother, yet she has not forgiven her. "The one truly generous act of my mother's that I could really put my finger on: her leaving me alone" (p. 28). Her dismissive attitude towards anything positive her mother did for her as a child is completely suffocated by Jenny's anger. She spends so much time challenging her reader to believe she has moved on, yet her defensiveness created the obvious idea that she has not.
While there are weak points in Skating to Antarctica, Jenny Diski writes in such a way that one can not help but be drawn to her story. Her depictions of Antarctica, while she discovers it may not be the place she can achieve pure whiteness, she makes it known that she did enjoy herself:
"It was, however, the most exhilarating ride I've ever
had, fast and furious, the motor buzzing angrily against
a wind that howled past my ears and made my eyes
water salt tears to match the salt spray drenching
my eyes" (p. 167).
While sometimes she acts though action and adventure is something she loathes, ("a phone call initiating activity is never so welcome as the one canceling it" (p. 66) here, one can see that she does enjoy getting out and experiencing new things. It is times when she tells of the things that are good in her life that her defense is down and the reader can sense a true feeling of who Jenny Diski is. Had her entire memoir consisted of passages where she was invigorated, rather than defensive or depressed, she may have been able to present herself as a more contented person.
Progress seems to have been made through the book, while Jenny learns new things about her childhood through Mrs. Gold and Mrs. Levine, however, once she learns her mother dead, Chloe asks if she is glad to know. Jenny's response: "Mmm. Yes, I think it is" (p. 250) makes one second guess whatever progress one had hoped she had made. Jenny Diski was not concrete in her thoughts even about her mother's death, making her audience question if she can be convinced the things in her past that aren't dead still don't need to be a part of her life any longer.

Rating:
Summary: Pondering Whiteness and Childhood
Review: We all have things in our past that make us cringe. Embarrassing moments, fights with loved ones, mistakes made to learn from, or painful realizations of the truth. In Jenny Diski's memoir, Skating to Antarctica, she airs out her past while thinking about the huge vast whiteness of Antarctica. The book pulls the reader into Diski's world, and even if some readers may be left wanting at the end of the book, the story flows well and keeps the reader interested throughout.
Diski's book opens up with her contemplations about white. She describes her bedroom, "...white walls, icy mirrors, white sheets and pillowcases, white slatted blinds. It's the best I could do. Some lack of courage-I wouldn't want to be thought extreme-has prevented me from having a white bedstead and side tables. They are wood, and they annoy me a little" (pg. 1). She further ponders her attraction to the white-the reason she has coated her bedroom in a covering of white-and reveals to the reader that she was hospitalized in a mental institution for depression. The root of that depression is the heart of this book.
Diski's need for white to permeate everything leads her to desire a trip to Antarctica, because, "I wanted my white bedroom extended beyond reason. That was Antarctica, and only Antarctica" (pg.5). Throughout the book she alternates scenes, every other chapter describing her trip to the Antarctic to find a white that will bring her true calm in the way she thinks only pure, extending white will.
The other alternating chapters describe Diski's childhood-a rough, horrifying childhood that leads her into depression, drug abuse, and institutionalization. She describes her mother, a suicidal and vengeful woman, and her father, a con man that Diski suspects used the same charm on his daughter as he did to trick women out of their money. A young Diski is stuck in the wake, and is often hit by the crossfire. Diski describes Jennifer, the young and frightened child that perhaps Diski once was or perhaps is a product of Diski's fiction writing: "As a writer, there is considerable freedom in the vagueness of Jennifer. The child who often appears in my novels sometimes has experiences I remember, but frequently doesn't. I am not fettered by history, by an absolute sense of telling-the-truth or making-things-up. I am free to play around with who Jennifer was, might have been, never could have been" (pg. 86). She describes one memory of her parents telling her the "truth" about each other, writing, "The truth-the truth that she concealed but now would reveal to me-was that my father did not love me as he said he did, was a bastard and a crook and a coward... The truth-[my father] disclosed-was that [my mother] insisted on being unconscious when she gave birth to me, that she refused to touch me to change my nappies and that my father had had to do it" (pg. 99). Her parents often used her to hurt each other, which, as Diski shows us, in reality did more damage to their young daughter than each other. Diski, throughout her novel, tests the boundaries of truth, proving that the truth can be irrelevant or manipulated and perhaps not the valuable commodity that society makes it to be.
In her adulthood, Diski deals with the ghost of her mother, a mother that she has not seen or spoken to in 30 years. After the death of her father, Diski reveals that her mother's antics became too much. She cut off all contact with her mother, and placed her in a box, never knowing her whereabouts or even if she was alive or dead. Diski however, realizes she must confront the reality of her mother's existence when her daughter, Chloe, starts asking questions about her long-lost grandmother. Chloe is trying to open the box and Diski must decide if and how this will change anything. She tries to conceal her interest, but realizes there is no hiding: "Though my mind said no, good citizenship told me she had as much right to that information as I did. It wasn't that I was already getting interested in this, just a case of not wanting to hamper an admirable exercise in basic research. Nothing more. Really" (pg. 36).
Diski shares her story with the other travelers on their way to Antarctica, as well as her childhood neighbors. Her fellow travelers on the boat to the end of the world, are a motley crew, and often remind Diski of the other story she is telling in this narrative. The other people sharing this book with Diski and her family are her childhood neighbors, who remind her of what she was, and what happened to her. There is a sense that Diski's visits with these neighbors is more about corroborating her story-making a point that it was her parents who were crazy and evil, not her. The interweaving of all the characters in this book connect them all back to Diski and her search for peace about her childhood. This is truly a bit of brilliance on the part of Diski. She manages to give everything meaning, pondering everything in the context of her story.
In the end, this book, perhaps like all memoirs, in a little self-indulgent. Diski focuses primarily on the evil her parents have done to her, and leaves the reader to wonder if she is so messed up because of these people, how did she become a successful writer? Diski, does, however, create an enthralling narrative, one that seductively teases and pulls the reader into her current life and her past. Her personality adds humor and warmth. One example is Diski's description of the elephant seal, a large creature named for its nose. Diski however, writes, "If an honest name were to be given, they would be flaccid penis seal, because the wrinkled concertinaed length and the bobbing, swinging floppiness of those extended noses is a satire on the male reproductive member" (pg.150). The book ends with another tease, but also with a definite conclusion. Readers may be disappointed by the ending, but not by the over-all memoir, which presents Diski at her most personal yet.

Rating:
Summary: Pondering Whiteness and Childhood
Review: We all have things in our past that make us cringe. Embarrassing moments, fights with loved ones, mistakes made to learn from, or painful realizations of the truth. In Jenny Diski's memoir, Skating to Antarctica, she airs out her past while thinking about the huge vast whiteness of Antarctica. The book pulls the reader into Diski's world, and even if some readers may be left wanting at the end of the book, the story flows well and keeps the reader interested throughout.
Diski's book opens up with her contemplations about white. She describes her bedroom, "...white walls, icy mirrors, white sheets and pillowcases, white slatted blinds. It's the best I could do. Some lack of courage-I wouldn't want to be thought extreme-has prevented me from having a white bedstead and side tables. They are wood, and they annoy me a little" (pg. 1). She further ponders her attraction to the white-the reason she has coated her bedroom in a covering of white-and reveals to the reader that she was hospitalized in a mental institution for depression. The root of that depression is the heart of this book.
Diski's need for white to permeate everything leads her to desire a trip to Antarctica, because, "I wanted my white bedroom extended beyond reason. That was Antarctica, and only Antarctica" (pg.5). Throughout the book she alternates scenes, every other chapter describing her trip to the Antarctic to find a white that will bring her true calm in the way she thinks only pure, extending white will.
The other alternating chapters describe Diski's childhood-a rough, horrifying childhood that leads her into depression, drug abuse, and institutionalization. She describes her mother, a suicidal and vengeful woman, and her father, a con man that Diski suspects used the same charm on his daughter as he did to trick women out of their money. A young Diski is stuck in the wake, and is often hit by the crossfire. Diski describes Jennifer, the young and frightened child that perhaps Diski once was or perhaps is a product of Diski's fiction writing: "As a writer, there is considerable freedom in the vagueness of Jennifer. The child who often appears in my novels sometimes has experiences I remember, but frequently doesn't. I am not fettered by history, by an absolute sense of telling-the-truth or making-things-up. I am free to play around with who Jennifer was, might have been, never could have been" (pg. 86). She describes one memory of her parents telling her the "truth" about each other, writing, "The truth-the truth that she concealed but now would reveal to me-was that my father did not love me as he said he did, was a bastard and a crook and a coward... The truth-[my father] disclosed-was that [my mother] insisted on being unconscious when she gave birth to me, that she refused to touch me to change my nappies and that my father had had to do it" (pg. 99). Her parents often used her to hurt each other, which, as Diski shows us, in reality did more damage to their young daughter than each other. Diski, throughout her novel, tests the boundaries of truth, proving that the truth can be irrelevant or manipulated and perhaps not the valuable commodity that society makes it to be.
In her adulthood, Diski deals with the ghost of her mother, a mother that she has not seen or spoken to in 30 years. After the death of her father, Diski reveals that her mother's antics became too much. She cut off all contact with her mother, and placed her in a box, never knowing her whereabouts or even if she was alive or dead. Diski however, realizes she must confront the reality of her mother's existence when her daughter, Chloe, starts asking questions about her long-lost grandmother. Chloe is trying to open the box and Diski must decide if and how this will change anything. She tries to conceal her interest, but realizes there is no hiding: "Though my mind said no, good citizenship told me she had as much right to that information as I did. It wasn't that I was already getting interested in this, just a case of not wanting to hamper an admirable exercise in basic research. Nothing more. Really" (pg. 36).
Diski shares her story with the other travelers on their way to Antarctica, as well as her childhood neighbors. Her fellow travelers on the boat to the end of the world, are a motley crew, and often remind Diski of the other story she is telling in this narrative. The other people sharing this book with Diski and her family are her childhood neighbors, who remind her of what she was, and what happened to her. There is a sense that Diski's visits with these neighbors is more about corroborating her story-making a point that it was her parents who were crazy and evil, not her. The interweaving of all the characters in this book connect them all back to Diski and her search for peace about her childhood. This is truly a bit of brilliance on the part of Diski. She manages to give everything meaning, pondering everything in the context of her story.
In the end, this book, perhaps like all memoirs, in a little self-indulgent. Diski focuses primarily on the evil her parents have done to her, and leaves the reader to wonder if she is so messed up because of these people, how did she become a successful writer? Diski, does, however, create an enthralling narrative, one that seductively teases and pulls the reader into her current life and her past. Her personality adds humor and warmth. One example is Diski's description of the elephant seal, a large creature named for its nose. Diski however, writes, "If an honest name were to be given, they would be flaccid penis seal, because the wrinkled concertinaed length and the bobbing, swinging floppiness of those extended noses is a satire on the male reproductive member" (pg.150). The book ends with another tease, but also with a definite conclusion. Readers may be disappointed by the ending, but not by the over-all memoir, which presents Diski at her most personal yet.

Rating:
Summary: Review of "Skating To Antarctica"
Review: William Richards
1-18-04
Review of "Skating To Antarctica"

In "Skating To Antarctica" author Jenny Diski weaves a transfixing memoir of her journey to Antarctica with her thoughts and memories of childhood to create an original masterpiece. Diski grew up with abusive and suicidal parents who fought constantly and provided little support or love to their daughter. Jenny struggled with depression as a teen and slipped in and out of psychiatric wards. When Jenny was eighteen years old, living in a foster home, her father died and soon after her mother vanished never to contact Jenny again. Diski learned to cope with her depression and became a successful writer and a mother. Diski chose to lock her past away but when her daughter, Chloe, becomes interested in her grandmother, Diski is forced to relive her past.
Diski writes to the rhythm of her thoughts not following a pattern but allowing her hand to flow freely. When reading this memoir you seem to be within Diski's head following the thoughts of Diski as they bounce around. Longing for an "unpeopled", "white", "empty" landscape we set off with Diski as she travels from London to Antarctica. Along the way we flash back and forth between her present escapade and her dark past fueled by the interest that her daughter has in her grandmother. Diski paints vivid descriptions of her human comrades on this Antarctic voyage from the self-conscious Big Jim to the shrewd Roth couple. She writes of her human interactions with humor, honesty, and familiarity that create a feeling of being at the scene observing the stranger. She intricately describes one man as, "an eager-faced graying US citizen with a touch of the shy but not so simple Ernest Borgnine about him". Diski has an inherent mistrust of people stemming from her troubled human relationships of childhood. When she meets someone who she happens to have a distant connection with, she is "slightly annoyed, since my Antarctic dream had not included pointless coincidences that would make anyone feel we had something in common. It was already not solitary enough". Diski writes with an unwavering honesty and precision that I find invigorating. Although you may disagree with her ideologies at times I don't think that you can question her courage to write what enters her mind, however coarse it may be.
Diski's voice is honest, confident, and vulnerable throughout this memoir and follows the familiar wavering pattern of human emotion. Diski writes with a confidence about her past saying, "The past can still make me shiver, but no bones are broken". However, one night considering genetics Jenny is flooded with despair, "My parents suddenly seemed inescapable, and I was caught up in the melodrama of feeling doomed". Diski, by so intricately explaining her emotions allows you to ride the waves of emotion that she experiences and you become enthralled in the moment.
What many people take for granted Diski critically analyzes. When on the island Grytviken, Diski is surrounded by fellow tourists snapping photographs in a blinding whir. Diski has an alternative view of photography saying, "photography is a modern, miniature form of colonization". Diski's analysis of human memory was fascinating, at one point she says, "Memory is not false in the sense that it is excitably corrupt or in its inclination to make a proper story of the past". Diski is in a battle with her own memory striving to make some sense of her past. Diski at times can seem excessively self-indulgent going on rants about her parents and dismissing the ways of the world. When nearing the Antarctic Peninsula Diski considers not landing on the landmass saying, "It's not the arriving but the not arriving...it's not the seeing of the whales, but the possibility of choosing not to see them". She goes on to introduce her "I don't have to if I don't want to" ideology about life. However whiny this may seem Diski opens all her emotions to the reader in this memoir and similar to any human, she has her own faults.
When reading this memoir one can't help but become enthralled in Diski's probing of memory. Diski paints the details before your eyes as if she is leading you through her story. When in the town of Ushuaia, "the town at the end of the world", Diski creates an eloquent scene saying that the houses would "make the designers of OZ hearts sing". Diski allows us to look inside a troubled mind that was wounded but has recovered. I found this memoir to be an encouraging step for Jenny Diski as she allows her daughter to open the box that she has always feared and accepts the contents with courage. I think all readers can relate to Diski's human tendencies, both her strengths and weaknesses. Individuals curious with the human mind and all the complexities therein would find this memoir to be both original and fascinating.
Diski is obviously not concerned with the perceptions that others have of her and she is not likely to conform to popular culture. When writing about her belief that writing is not a competition she says, "[I]'ve refused to let my publishers submit any of my books for prizes, because I don't think that I write to compete". However you might interpret this I can guarantee that you will never read anything else quite similar to Diski's memoir. It is always refreshing to have a writer that is not afraid to create a stir in society, Diski challenges us to reflect on our own perceptions of issues ranging from memory to how we pass the time that we have. Diski has crafted a beautifully written memoir that allows us to travel into the depths of the human mind and explore the complexities of life.
Sources:
New Statesman (1996), June 23, 2003 v132 i4643 p10-11.