All Night Vigil
The next section of Owen Martell’s Intermission (two of four, if you’re counting) is entitled All Night Vigil (Mary), a reference to a piece by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninov—which has meaning in part because Bill Evan’s mother, Mary, was an American from a Russian immigrant family.
The first sub-section is called Vespers, and begins, “It was already another hot day when Mary awoke.” This entire three page chapter is all about Mary’s subjective experience of waking up on a particular day, filtered by the implied author.
This first chapter is a tour de force of beautiful writing. Mary wakes up on the morning that Bill will arrive from New York. I hesitate to mention (because it’s so obvious) that in Christian lore, Mary is the mother of Jesus who is sacrificed to redeem the world.
‘Kay.
As we know (maybe), Vespers refers to the Christian liturgy of evening prayer and thanksgiving. It involves thanking God for the day and for offering intercession, as well as lighting lamps which symbolizes Christ breaking through the darkness of night.
Huh, and this section in the book begins with the protagonist waking—coincidence?
In fiction, there are no coincidences.
Here’s the second sentence: “The moist undersheet she’d hung from the curtain rail before going to bed had long since given up its damp cooling and the sun was now going greedily at the fibres, trying to proceed by singeing, to press home its translucent advantage.”
There’s a lot to like here—as long as you are smitten by beautiful prose. The sun is given conscious purpose, “greedily” drying the sheet, “trying” like a sentient being to “proceed by singeing” (wonderful phrase). The sun presses home “its translucent advantage.” Here, translucent can be taken to mean an object’s property of allowing light to pass through it while, at the same time, altering it (like a filter) so that objects on its other side are changed. So the sun has an advantage; it dries the bedsheet that was hung in an effort to cool the room, thereby defeating this attempt but also works with the sheet to create an effect of filtered light in the room, a no doubt beautiful effect.
Is the sun the implied author?
Whoa!
How does this passage relate to the story? Everything in a prose piece should relate, right?
I think a major reason why this poetic passage is so pleasing is that it subtly plays with the theme of how Mary’s efforts to help her son are defeated by a powerful force that muscles into her bedroom and even changes the way things look. That force in Bill is his addiction to heroin. As you read on, you learn that Mary had wanted to stay in bed “in order to take another half-hour’s energy,” but the sun was too bright and hot. She hears the “smoky matinale” from the highway (matinale is a French word referring to the morning) and “there was nothing more to be done.” She gets up to begin her day.
So, she wants to linger in the comfort of bed but cannot because of the sun and the noise.
By the way, best B, “A night vigil is a period of purposeful sleeplessness maintained during the night for…keeping watch beside someone who is sick, dying, or deceased.” This seems like a pretty clear reference to Mary reluctantly rising to keep a protective watch over her son Bill.
Some might say, oh, for Pete’s sake, why even have this poetic stuff? Can’t you just tell the story?
My impatient answer is that Intermission isn’t the kind of book that is limited to just telling the story. As I’ve already written, perhaps because the story is based on real events, it can take some liberty in not focusing directly on the facts. But the point is that the book tells the story in a poetic way, relying on language and metaphor. If you find that challenging, Intermission is probably not for you.
Does the book use the story as a mere vehicle to present beautiful prose? Meaning, is the prose more important than the plot?
The book is vulnerable to this sort of criticism, but I don’t think it’s accurate. What we have is the strong presence of the implied author who colors the story with its palette of simile and metaphor and symbol. The characters don’t experience this—Mary doesn’t
think the sun has a translucent advantage.
Here’s more: Mary sits in the kitchen. “She let the colours work out their formations before her and tried to imagine what effect, if any, her presence in the scene might be having on its composition. None, in all probability, beyond the fact of her being able to witness it.”
Well, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? It “does produce physical sound waves in the air, but does not create auditory perception unless someone or something is there to hear it.” So, a falling tree, like the colors in Mary’s kitchen need a witness, someone to affect.
“When she tried to bear in mind a red that needed all the names of a spectrum just to get close to the way it looked…she realized she was neglecting orange blues and purple greens of such fervent numinosity that they’d already become a tugging in her.”
Wonderful. Does Mary really think this? I don’t think so, best B. It’s Mr./Ms. Implied Author.
Finally, “Mary looked down into her tea. There were two leaves floating on the surface. One was long and curved as if it had a joint in the middle. The other was smaller, more round and substantial, and she thought of her two sons, the longer of whom would be home before the end of the day…”
And there we have a nice connection to the story, still expressed in elegant, poetic prose, using the symbol of the tea leaves (predicting the future?) to represent her sons.
Let’s stop there.
Till next time.
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