What Kind of Paradise

Jane recalls the way that her father, Saul Williams, shaped her childhood and her identity. He is a genius and has multiple degrees from Harvard, but after becoming widowed when Jane was four, he quit what could have become a high-profile career to raise her alone in a Montana cabin away from the corrupting influence of society. A “bona-fide modern Thoreau” (13), he homeschooled her and taught her how to live off the land.

She remembers one morning when their food stores were low and he took Jane out to hunt a deer. When they encountered a buck, however, he was unable to shoot it. He began to cry and explained to Jane that all creatures on earth are equal, that humans should not be in charge of any other species, and that humans routinely abuse their power. They ate oatmeal for a solid week after that, but Jane idolized her father and remembers doing her best to understand his mentality and tolerate their limited diet.

It is the morning of Jane’s 17th birthday. There is a loud knock at the door, which Saul does not answer. A group of men has recently begun clear-cutting a swath of forest near their cabin, and Jane’s father put sugar in the gas tanks of their machinery. He is adamantly against technology of all kinds, from computers to large-scale farming and industrial equipment. Jane notes wryly that this does not stop her father from using his computer or watching television, but she does respect his intelligence and ideological positions, so she tries to refrain from labeling him a hypocrite.

Saul gives her a beautiful set of pastels for her birthday, and she tries them out by drawing a wolf that lives in a den near their cabin. Her father brings her a cup of coffee, and she suggests driving into Bozeman to go to the bookstore. Saul does not enjoy spending time in any city or town, but he does like the bookstore, in part because the owner sells his libertarian, anti-society zine, Libertaire. They are also always on the lookout for books. Saul homeschools Jane but ignores the curriculum packets sent to them by the state of Montana. He instead teaches her college-level philosophy and literature and high school math and science.

As an adult, Jane struggles to define her childhood. The problem is that the way she assesses her father’s parenting now is very different from the way that she experienced it as a young person. It is possible that her father was a kindly, brilliant man who wanted to teach his daughter a better code of ethics than she would have learned in society. However, it is also possible that he was a “tyrant” who imposed an abnormal living situation on his daughter in service of his “fringe” ideology.

Jane recalls how hard she had to beg for a toilet and that he adamantly refused to buy a toaster, as toast could be made in the oven. He argued that it is absurd to purchase an entirely different appliance for that purpose that will one day end up in a landfill. She recalls stealing a lipstick in town and looking forward to a future when she could leave the cabin.

Saul and Jane drive into Bozeman. Saul drives, although Jane knows how to operate their small truck. Saul does not believe in the necessity of actually obtaining a driver’s license, however, so Jane does not have one.

At the bookstore, Jane greets the owner, Lina, and Lina’s daughter, Heidi, one of Jane’s only real friends. Lina suggests that Saul and Jane move closer to town and think about enrolling Jane in the local high school or even in a university extension course, but Saul scoffs. Jane and Heidi head to the local bakery for a birthday treat while Lina and Saul stay in the store to discuss some business.

Jane and Heidi became friends when Heidi’s mother realized that Saul was homeschooling Jane. Heidi is also a homeschooled student as a result of an accident that damaged her spine. It is easier for her to work from home than it would be for her to attend the school in Bozeman. Heidi, however, lives in town and spends more time around people than Jane. She plans to attend college next year.

Jane’s father believes that college is a “scam.” After attending Harvard, he was in debt and had a degree that made him more “useful” to society, but he was sure that he could have learned all his course material on his own. Heidi urges Jane to consider college anyway, pointing out that she will be 18 next year and will no longer be Saul’s “prisoner.” Jane bristles at this characterization but then wonders if Heidi might be right.

On the way back to the cabin, Saul is agitated, and Jane is in a sour mood. Lina is phasing out their zine shelf because no one reads them. In its place, she is adding a special section on technology and the burgeoning internet. Jane understands, because of Saul, that the world is on a downward trajectory in large part because of the rise of technology. She has read the works of people like Mao Zedong and Karl Marx and understands her father’s ideas about the damaging impact of machines on the intellectual and spiritual health of society.

Jane is upset because of Heidi’s assertions about the strangeness of her life, alone in a cabin with Saul. They pass a crew repairing the damage that Saul caused to the logging equipment and then notice a dead animal in the road. It is “their” wolf, the lone creature whose den was on their property and whom Jane named Samson. Someone shot him, likely a farmer whose livestock Samson killed. Jane tries not to feel sad: Her father would be upset if he knew that she developed an attachment to a wild animal, but she has become attached to the wolf. She mourns its death privately.

Saul wakes Jane in the dead of the night, explaining that the “feds” have finally come for him. She has no real idea of whether the “feds” just means the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) or other law-enforcement agencies, and he has never clarified. She grabs her bag, and the two enter a hidden tunnel that leads from their cabin to the shed in the back of the yard.

Once they reach the shed, Saul pulls out a stopwatch and tells her that other than one small hesitation, she made excellent time. Jane is frustrated with these drills, but Saul insists that they’re necessary so that she does not end up in foster care or worse.

Periodically, Saul goes on short trips that he explains by telling Jane that he is making connections with new bookstores that might sell Libertaire. She isn’t so sure that she believes him, but she relishes the alone time. She sneaks into his office (she taught herself to pick the lock years ago) and uses his television to watch any show that she can find, although her favorite is The X Files.

This time, she digs around in an open drawer and finds a photograph of her sitting on her mother’s lap. She has seen other photographs of her mother, Jennifer, but this one is new. She flips it over, and, puzzlingly, it is labeled “Esme and Theresa” (55). The handwriting is not her father’s. She wonders if he changed her name and perhaps his to evade the feds. She calls Heidi, who informs her that her mother is sure that Saul’s worries about the feds are a “paranoid delusion.” Heidi adds that, perhaps, her mother is not even dead.

Jane contemplates the photograph as well as Heidi’s assertion that her father was paranoid. She is reading Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations again and cannot help but compare her father to the manipulative Miss Havisham. She cannot ask him about the photograph, but she must know the truth. For the first time, she realizes that she is going to have to find a way to leave the cabin.

Saul returns, wild eyed and excited. He has a new computer as well as materials to help the computer connect to the internet. He explains that zines are no longer popular because print culture is dying. As much as he hates the idea of a future without books, he must admit that public discourse is moving “online.” He plans to write a manifesto and make sure that its readership is wide. The internet, although an obvious danger to society, can also be used to “convert” people to his way of thinking. Jane observes that he seems “crazy” and wonders about Lina’s characterization of him. Still, she realizes that the internet can also be an information portal for her.

Jane teaches herself to code. In 1996, the internet is still relatively new, and its landscape is simple. Still, she relishes the chance to learn something on her own without her father’s direction. Each morning, he retreats into his office, returning only at dinnertime. Presumably, he is working on his manifesto.

Jane sits at the computer all day, coding. She also looks for information on her mother but finds nothing. It is entirely possible, she realizes, that he lied to her about her mother’s profession (he told her that she was a schoolteacher) and their last name.

Jane enters a chat room for the first time, not really sure what it is. The other person in it calls himself Steve, but Jane learns that his name is really Lionel. He lives in San Francisco, California, and works for a tech company called Signal. Jane tells him that she lives in the woods and has never played a video game or seen a movie.