What's It All About, Tony?

Last time, we left off amidst David Szalay’s linked short story collection All That Man Is. We were studying the final story which deals with Tony, a man near the end of his life. Unfortunately for Tony, he has just been in a serious car accident and is recovering. We the readers wonder if this traumatic experience leads to some transformation in a character who is darkly focused on the meaninglessness of his life.

Tony’s wife Joanna drives him home from the hospital.

“On the drive home, however, his spirits are low. He isn’t sure, now, what he was looking forward to. It is snowing lightly, ineffectually. Small flakes that won’t settle, that melt as they touch anything.”

A nice passage, no? The small flakes that won’t settle, that melt as soon as they touch anything—it’s a temporary world Tony is moving through. Impermanent and ineffective. It does seem that Tony is still stuck in dysphoria.

However, Joanna tells Tony that although she herself can’t stay, their adult daughter Cordelia will be visiting him for a week. Tony is pleased although he tries not to show it. Joanna proposes they watch a film together. “He notices the full glass of wine in her hand. She’s drinking a lot of wine, he thinks. She’s uneasy, with them here together like this.”

Tony and Joanna are estranged, as they say.

An amusing scene follows of Joanna suggesting a series of films to watch—Groundhog Day, On Golden Pond, The Bucket List, Driving Miss Daisy, About Schmidt—Tony rejects them all. The films are of note as they all have to do with mortality and ageing—more or less successfully. Here is a nice example of there being nothing random in good fiction. The scene could be a self-indulgent opportunity for the author to show how many cool films he knows. Instead, they all relate to the story’s theme; they amplify it.

Tony and Joanna quarrel but reconcile and choose to watch The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel together.

In a new chapter, the story’s mostly invisible narrator addresses us:

“One always imagines that there will be some sort of serenity at the end. Some sort of serenity. Not just an awful sordid mess of shit and pain and tears. Some sort of serenity. Whatever that might mean. And what that actually might mean becomes problematic up close. Amemuse eterna e non periterna. That would seem to be sound advice, if serenity is what one is after.”

Of course, this passage reflects Tony’s predicament. We see again the use of repetition here.

Joanna leaves, and their daughter Cordelia, who is forty-three, arrives.

Tony is happy his daughter is there, although he tries to hide it, remaining kind of grumpy and mopish. He finds her studying a photo of he and Joanna and thinks about the emptiness of the marriage and how Cordelia has suffered.  

They go out shopping for a new car for Tony, and at lunch, Tony tries to explain some of the insights he’s recently had. “’It’s important,’ he says, struggling to make sense, he can that on her face, ‘to feel part of something larger, something…something permanent.

‘Yeah,’ she says patiently, pouring herself some more water.

She doesn’t see the point of this, he thinks.

He’s not sure he does either. It seems so elusive, even to him, when he tries to put it into words—or indeed when he doesn’t.

‘I’m not making much sense,’ he apologizes.

‘No, it’s interesting,’ Cordelia says.”

“She has started on the ravioli.

‘Is it okay?’ he asks.

‘Lovely,’ she says.

And he is very moved, suddenly, by the sight of her.

Overwhelmed.

She notices his moist-eyed stare and smiles at him.”

Tony returns to dark, empty thoughts about mortality.

Then, “Cordelia is talking about Simon (her son, the protagonist of the very first story). Normally she talks about him a lot. This week she has made an effort not to. He is aware of that…She is touching on the aspects of her son that strike other people as odd and admitting, unusually, that she worries about them sometimes.

He tries to soothe her…I shouldn’t worry, he tells her, putting his hand over hers.

She nods.

It’s what she wants to hear. Whether it is true or not, who knows.

Only time will tell.”

They leave the restaurant.

The last lines:

“The air is frigid, stings the skin of his face.

Via Maggiore is fading away in the dusk.”

Well, best B, what I make of this is that Tony has been stuck in feeling sorry for himself, and probably will be stuck again, but for this brief moment in a restaurant, he’s pulled out of it into realizing how important his daughter is to him and he to her. He struggles to offer her sage advice but then really does, very simply, consoling her about her maternal cares. He forgets, however briefly, the everyday cares of his life and immerses himself in the eternal cycle of parent and offspring. He comforts her and is comforted.

A beautiful story.

Let’s stop there and return next time.

Till then.

#AllThatManIs #DavidSzalay #AlanBray