This week, I want to look at three short stories by Frederick Busch: Ralph the Duck, Are We Pleasing You Tonight, and Domicile . Busch, a prolific writer of novels and short stories, was an acclaimed American author and teacher who died in 2006. Ralph the Duck , published in his 1985 story collection Absent Friends , is included in the 2014 edition of The Stories of Frederick Busch , edited by Elizabeth Strout—as are the other two. Busch once said that fiction that means something must be about serious matters—life and death. Ralph is about an unnamed narrator who is employed as a security guard by an also unnamed Northeastern university. It is told in first person and uses the simple past tense. The tone is ironic and comic, and then sharply intense. The main action occurs in a scene in which the narrator is called upon to get a suicidal young woman to safety during a major winter storm. He must convince her to accompany him, despite her having taken an overdose of pills, and then has to drive her through the dangerous storm to a hospital. Certainly, this is a dramatic enough premise. However, the scene begins more than halfway through Ralph, with the line: “It was the worst of the winter’s storms, and one of the worst in years.” This placement certainly suggests that Ralph  is about more than the rescue. And then there’s the title. In any case, some writers might organize this story differently, beginning with the dramatic rescue. One of Busch’s many strengths is the way he writes action sequences, and the drive through the blizzard with the girl vomiting out the window is excellent. But (and maybe I’m beating a dead horse here—neigh!) he begins Ralph at an earlier point, thereby privileging the character of the narrator over the plot. The story’s first paragraph begins: “I woke up at 5:25 because the dog was vomiting.” In a nice piece of foreshadowing, the narrator carries “seventy-five pounds of heaving golden retriever to the door and poured him unto the silver, moonlit snow.” (The narrator carries the nauseous young woman through the storm to his truck). This first line poses the question: why did he wake up because the dog was vomiting? As a dog owner, I can report that the sound of vomiting does tend to get one’s attention—but not if the dog is in a different room. Something about the dog vomiting wakes the narrator—what is it? The story does not ask will he or won’t he wake up because the dog was vomiting. The first line also answers who is speaking? —“I,” and when? —at “5:25.” The story quickly establishes the character of the unnamed narrator and the dog, and a woman who is named Fanny, whom we realize is the narrator’s wife. In this first scene, she has slept on the couch because the couple had a fight the previous night. (Did the dog wake her?) The narrator says, “I would apologize because I always did, and then she would forgive me if I hadn’t been too awful…and then we would stagger through the day, exhausted but pretty sure we were all right.” There’s a sense here of a couple who care about each other but who are often in conflict, and we don’t know why. It develops other questions—what is this conflict about? What exhausts them? Then, after a line break, we get several paragraphs of explanation about the narrator. Because of his job working for the university, he can take a course for free each semester. He makes the interesting statement, “I was getting educated, in a kind of slow-motion way—it would have taken me something like fifteen or sixteen years to graduate.” This use of the conditional tense—easy to miss at first reading—implies that he is telling the story from the future, a future in which he did not complete his degree. This is not followed up on but seems pretty significant. Also, he explains that in the time of the story, he was taking an American Literature course from an unnamed professor who writes on one of the narrator’s papers: “You are not an unintelligent writer.” The narrator finds him patronizing and absurd. The professor decides the narrator must have served in the military in Vietnam and killed people, for him, an exciting and romantic idea. The narrator humors him and never clarifies whether or not he was a veteran. Then, after another line break, the story presents a scene of the narrator at home after work and remembering a young woman threatening suicide whom he convinced to live. (actually the same woman previously mentioned but an earlier incident). Within this scene, we get the first mention of the child he and Fanny had. He thinks of the young woman as “someone’s child. Which made me think, of course, of ours.” There’s no mention of this child’s fate, except that we know she hasn’t appeared.   Here, the story is asking we the readers to make meaning. We know the couple at the heart of the story are struggling with a painful issue, and we now know that they had, or have, a child. Next, we have several scenes that show more about the nature of the narrator’s marriage to Fanny—caring, close, and the nature of the narrator—independent, passionate, resentful of being patronized by his professor. And we learn more about Ralph the Duck . The narrator writes an essay for the class entitled Ralph the Duck . “Once upon a time there was a duck named Ralph who didn’t have any feathers on either wing. So when the cold wind blew, Ralph said Brrr and shivered and shook…Oh, the mommy said. Here. I’ll keep you warm. So she spread her big feathery wings and hugged Ralph tight, and when the cold wind blew, Ralph was warm and snuggly and fell fast asleep.” Unfortunately, the professor gives the narrator a “D,” although there’s a sense that the narrator was being provocative in submitting it. When he tells Fanny the situation, she is extremely touched—there is hugging. Again, we don’t receive other information about the meaning of the Ralph the Duck  story but must make it ourselves. It seems likely that this was a children’s story the narrator read to his daughter, now deceased. Or perhaps a story he wanted to tell her about protecting her from the cold when she has no feathers. I think I should stop here. My point is about how good writing includes the reader in a process of meaning-making. It’s a delicate balance of how much to show and how much to leave out or hint at. Without enough clues, a story can just be too mysterious; too many, and a story can insult a reader’s intelligence by explaining everything. Ralph  is a finely balanced beastie. Till next time. #RalphTheDuck #FrederickBusch #AlanBray

As I wrote last time, we’ve been looking at largely content and meaning issues in The Garden of the Finzi-Continis,  and last time, we examined some of the structural or process issues of how the story is told. Let’s continue with this today, focusing on the penultimate chapter, occurring before the Epilogue. In the previous chapter, the narrator’s father has asked him not to go to the Finzi-Continis house again and, by implication, not to pursue Micol Finzi-Contini anymore. The narrator agrees. Chapter X begins with a reference to this, “That was how I gave up Micol.” What’s going on here? It’s a simple statement and a simple maneuver in writing, so basic, we probably take it for granted, i.e. our eyes absorb it rapidly and do not dally. In speech, it would be called a summary comment, wrapping up what came before, and, at first blush, that’s what it accomplishes here. The narrator is saying, “okay, the previous chapter shows how I gave the lady up.” It’s a done deal—in his mind, he’s ended things. Well, sort of. Continuing in a narrative summary mode, describing what he did, as opposed to showing it in dialogue, the narrator relates that ten days went by during which he “strictly maintained the promise I had made to my father.” Then, he receives a call from Malnate, the friend with whom he’s been spending time with, the friend whom he met playing tennis at the Finzi-Continis. The narrator has been dining with Malnate in order to get news of Micol. Now we have a scene of dialogue with quoted speech. I believe that first sentence, “That was how I gave up Micol,” relates more to the new chapter than to the old one. It could be seen as simple narrative summary, but it also can be taken literally: The narrator writes, “This is how I gave up Micol,” and then goes on to show how he did it—very ambivalently. How did I give up Micol? By avoiding her for a difficult ten days and then agreeing to see her friend in order to get news of her. So Chapter X begins with narrative summary that marks time and place —the narrator’s residence—shows something of his internal state—he’s made a promise to his father but is ambivalent about it in that he avoids Micol but says, “Luckily nobody sought me during all this time…otherwise I probably wouldn’t have held out.” Then it goes into a scene. Malnate calls the narrator, accuses him of avoiding him (Malnate) and proposes they get together. The narrator agrees, and the scene ends with, “And he hung up.” “The following evening,” the narrator goes to the restaurant where he’s agreed to meet Malnate, but instead of joining him, he hangs back in the shadows and observes Malnate (who’s sitting outside) having dinner. The narrator never makes contact. He spends the next several evenings listlessly riding his bicycle around the city and then goes to an arcade where a woman works who was attracted to Malnate. A scene of dialogue ensues when the woman notices the narrator. She exhorts him to, “Go on home, run along, or your Dad will give you a licking. It’s way past your bedtime!” These two scenes seem to further establish the narrator’s ambivalence—he approaches the man who could give him information on Micol but hangs back. He is ridiculed by a woman for being young and under the domination of his father. Then in a long scene occurring on the next night, “near midnight,” the narrator goes to the house of the Finzi-Continis. On the way, he passes many amorously entwined couples: “I felt, and was, a kind of strange, passing phantom: full of life and death at once; of passion, and of detached pity.” This speaks to his mood; he is detached from love; he only observes. When he reaches the house, it is dark. He decides to scale the wall, just as he had many years before. On the other side, he walks in the garden around the silent house and goes to the tennis courts where there is a small changing room. Here, he stops and has the (apparently false) impression that all this time, Malnate has been having an affair with Micol. “Yes, yes—I went on calmly reasoning, in a kind of rapid, inner whisper—of course. How could I have been so blind? He (Malnate) roamed around with me only in order to kill time until it was late enough, and them after having tucked me in, so to speak, off he rode, full tilt, to her, who, naturally, was waiting for him in the garden.” “But then, as if in replay, a faint sound, heartsick, almost human suddenly arrived…I recognized it at once: it was the old, beloved voice of the clock in the square, striking the hours…It was saying that, once again, it had grown very late, that it was foolish and wicked, on my part, to continue torturing my father in this way…finally it was time for me to resign myself. Truly. Forever. “’What a fine novel,’ I sneered, shaking my head.” (an ironic comment). What we might say straight off about this passage is that it has everything to do with the novel’s theme of unsuccessful love and less to do with the Holocaust. This kind of tragic realization that a love is over could happen in any historical period. Indeed, we have time—the narrator experiences it as a human sound—resuming, breaking the narrator’s melancholic reverie and (apparently) helping him to accept what already seems clear to the reader (the reader knows more than the narrator). However, this kind of loss could happen at any time, but in this case, it doesn’t. The next page opens onto the Epilogue and this first line: “My story with Micol Finzi-Contini ends here.” (please note the shift in verb tense). Then the narrator repeats the information he wrote at the book’s beginning. He never saw Micol again; she died with her family in Germany four years later. The War and the Holocaust put a decisive end to “a fine novel.” Next time, best beloved, we’re going to look at several short stories by Frederick Busch. Till then. #TheGardenOfTheFinzi-Continis #GiorgioBassani #AlanBray

Over the past several weeks, we’ve been looking at The Garden of the Finzi-Continis  through the lens of content and meaning, pondering the nature of the relationship between the novel’s unnamed narrator and Micol Finzi-Contini. Today, let’s consider structure. Ahh! Structure. Bassani uses a common framing technique to present the story. I quoted its beginning in the Prologue two weeks ago. I’m going to do it again: “For many years I wanted to write about the Finzi-Continis—about Micol and Alberto, about Professor Ermano and Signora Olga…” So far, this is ambiguous. It could mean the narrator wanted to write about people who are still alive, or it could be that they’re dead. The narrator, writing in first-person, simple past tense, continues to describe, in this Prologue, going on a Sunday excursion in the year 1957 with some friends who have a young daughter. They go to a group of Etruscan tombs outside of Ferrara. Tellingly, the daughter asks her father, “Tell me, Papa, who do you think were more ancient, the Etruscans or the Jews?” The father laughs and replies: “Ask that gentleman back there,” indicating the narrator who is in the car’s back seat.   This suggests that the narrator is Jewish, that the family with the daughter is not, and it introduces an important theme in the book, that Italian society is constructed from many ethno-religious groups, who co-exist. It also picks out another theme of ancient peoples leaving behind artifacts as records of their existence. Then the group visits the tombs, which reminds the narrator of the nearby Finzi-Contini tomb, mostly empty. At the end of the Prologue, the narrator thinks of Micol and her parents who were deported to and murdered in a German concentration camp. “Who could say,” he concludes, “ if they found any sort of burial at all?” This establishes the tragedy of the story but also tells us the fate of the book’s central character; straight off, the reader knows that Micol dies and that the narrator wants to write the book about her. It eliminates the pesky question which bedevils many a lessor book: Will the narrator and Micol get together or won’t they?  The reader knows before the story begins that Micol doesn’t survive WWII. The reader will read the whole novel knowing that Micol doesn’t survive. There may be tension about what sort of relationship she and the narrator have but it is clear that the relationship ends (actually, it doesn’t end because the narrator, who does survive—the reader knows that too—continues to think about her after her death). This is a huge issue, and I want to clarify. From the beginning, the reader knows that the story is about a narrator looking back at people who have died. As things progress, and as I have been discussing, the story centers on the narrator’s feelings looking back on his relationship with one of these deceased, Micol. Because the reader knows she is dead, the whole story must be about understanding this loss and not whether or not the couple lived “happily ever after.” The central dramatic question becomes, not will they or won’t they get together, but how did the events in the story happen? If the “will they or won’t they” question were used, it would imply that the author, Bassani, knows the answer and is perhaps rather condescendingly telling the reader a story he already knows the answer to and suspending the “news” till the end. The question of “how” is more respectful to the reader; it includes she/he in an investigation of how, that pushes forward to a known ending. Timewise, the story begins in 1957, then goes back to the 1920s, I believe, and moves ahead to 1939, and ultimately back to 1957. There is mention made, midway, that the narrator was imprisoned in 1943, but, again, because of the beginning, we know he survived this ordeal and was writing in a present time of 1957. The story ends with an Epilogue that briefly describes how Micol and her family were arrested and deported because of being Jewish and killed by the Nazis. In many ways, the whole book is a tribute, a tomb, if you will, to her. A different approach would be to start the story without the Prologue, just have the story of how the narrator and Micol met and developed their friendship, building to a climax where Micol and the narrator “break up” and then an afterword that says that she died. A different sort of story, less satisfying, I think. The knowledge that Micol eventually dies provides much depth and tragedy, an intensity that would be missing otherwise. Till next time. #TheGardenoftheFinzi-Continis #GiorgioBassani #AlanBray

There are several interesting literary references in The Garden of the Finzi-Continis  that enrich the story. Certainly, it begins with a quote from the seminal 19th century Italian novel I Promessi Sposi : “The heart, to be sure, always has something to say about what is to come, to him who heeds it. But what does the heart know? Only a little of what has already happened.” This quote is given prominence in its position at the very beginning so it must be pretty relevant, right? What’s going on here? The heart—one’s emotions—knows only a little of what has occurred. This suggests an unreliable narrator, I think. The unnamed narrator of the story is looking back at events that have “already happened” That which is to come in the quote also, I believe, refers to the past, the past that unfolds in the story. The heart/narrator formed many theories about what was to occur in his relationship with Micol but is mistaken. He was forever trying to establish an intimate relationship with her (perhaps ambivalently), assuming he just needed to do more to unlock her heart. But, looking back, he realizes his efforts were in vain. The second reference begins on page 135 when the narrator, deep in his torment over Micol, picks up a book “at random” to distract himself, but cannot “concentrate.” The book is The Red and the Black  by Stendahl, a story of an idealistic young man, whose ambition for success is finally derailed by his passion for a woman. It does not present a completely positive view of the effects of love on a young man, and so, we can grasp why the narrator might have trouble concentrating on it. Then on page 154, the narrator, visiting Grenoble in France—Stendahl’s birthplace, is heartened by reading a phrase in Stendahl’s notebooks, “all lost, nothing lost.” He writes, “Suddenly, as if by miracle, I felt myself free, healed.” (from his pain over Micol). My reading here is that Stendahl comforts the narrator by communicating that “all” may be lost, in the sense of his relationship with Micol, but that this is not the end of the world. It is “nothing” in a bigger picture. A third writer referenced (of course, we must remember Micol’s dissertation on Emily Dickinson and the prescient quote cited last time), occurs on page 143. At the onset of the scene where the narrator visits Micol’s bedroom and attempts to seduce her, she offers him something to drink, and he replies, “I would prefer not to.” (drink something). Micol, a pretty savvy lady, bursts out laughing and says that the narrator has just quoted Herman Melville’s story, Bartleby the Scrivener . She explains the story to the narrator, how the character Bartleby sticks to doing his assigned job as copyist of legal documents but whenever asked to do something in addition, like running an errand, says, “I would prefer not to,” much to the consternation of his employer. The narrator argues that Bartleby is wrong for being so obstinate, and Micol “reproached me, saying I didn’t understand, that I was banal, the same inveterate conformist.” She exalts Bartleby’s “unalienable right, which is every human being’s, to noncollaboration, that is to freedom.” ‘Kay. With this reference, the story “fleshes out” the conflict between the narrator and Micol, just as the Stendahl references develop the narrator’s predicament. Micol is, indeed, the one who is saying “I would prefer not to” become more intimate with the narrator. She keeps to the limits of their relationship as defined—a close friendship, not expanding into physical intimacy. And so, she defends Bartleby. A cynic might say (perhaps to get a laugh), why is Bassani including these literary references in his novel? Manzoni, Stendahl, Melville, and Dickinson? He’s just showing off, trying to show how cool he is for knowing this stuff (Bassani also references Morandi and Montale, which is pretty cool too. And I know who all these people are, so I’m pretty cool, right?). (Silence) Right? My point, of course, is that all these references deepen the story. They also, speak to characterization, in that, we get a sense that the characters are educated and literate. Literary allusion is a useful tool, no? Till next time. #TheGardenoftheFinzi-Continis #Bassani #AlanBray

‘Kay, this is supposed to be part two of a discussion on whether The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is primarily a love story or a story about the Holocaust. Of course, as is true with most such distinctions, both are true. However, I think it’s reasonable to say that, in contrast to other writings by Bassani, Finzi-Continis  centers on a male/female relationship. The way the story is presented suggests that the unnamed narrator is, after a confused adolescent relationship with Micol which culminates in the scene in the carriage, certain but awkward about his feelings for her. She is the one who endlessly bats his overtures aside, who flirts and banters, leaving him in frustration and self-doubt. Of course, this is the narrator’s experience; we never have direct access to Micol’s perspective. But that’s all we have to work with, my friends. It must be said that the narrator himself is no romantic dynamo. In his pursuit of Micol, he is hesitant and easily discouraged. In fact, what is the reason for his attraction to her? As my late father often said, there are lots of girls in Ferrara (well, he didn’t say in Ferrara). But in a realist sense, it’s true; out of many possible paramours, the narrator picks someone who is elusive. The psychologists among us might wonder if he does this to avoid adult intimacy. Let’s just say again that this is a fiction; it’s written to show a certain aspect of human existence. So, why would the narrator and Micol consistently flirt and talk about their feelings for one another without taking things to the next level? The overt reason is clear. The narrator’s feelings for Micol develop out of a pre-adolescent, pre-adult “crush” that involves considerable yearning and confusion. The young people are attracted to one another without having the adult conceptual frameworks of love to explain how they feel. And this yearning does develop into the adult version. However, as we saw in the quote cited last time when the narrator questions his shyness years after the fact, he, at least, struggles to identify his feelings, let alone to act on them. He dreams about her: “I dreamed also that we spoke, and finally without pretense, finally with our cards on the table…Micol insisting that the thing between us had begun on the first day, when she and I, both of us still filled with the surprise of meeting again and recognizing each other, had run off to see the park.” (they banter a bit) “You could come out after all.” (meaning with him). “Me? Out?” she exclaimed, her eyes wide. “And just tell me, cher ami, where would we go?” “I…don’t know,” I answered, stammering. “…if you’re afraid of being compromised, to Piero Della Certosa, on the Via Borso side. That’s where they all go to be alone, you know that…And after all, what’s wrong with being together a bit. It’s not the same as making love! You’re on the first step, on the edge of an abyss. But from there to touching the bottom of the abyss, it’s a long descent!” This scene shows the narrator openly suggesting that he and Micol move things along—however, he’s reporting a dream he had. At one point while he’s awake, the narrator kisses Micol when she returns from a long absence in Venice, but she is shown as shocked and non-responsive. Is it possible she just isn’t interested in the narrator? Yes, it is, however, we are told she has no other paramours and certainly seems to otherwise encourage the narrator’s attentions in an enigmatic way. She encourages him but remains resolutely un-sexual. (Please note that in this respect, the film version is different. Micol becomes sexually involved with Malnate—this does not occur in the book, and the film's presentation of sexuality negates a key theme in the story). Her undergraduate dissertation is on Emily Dickinson, that famously single poet. Micol sends the narrator her translation of a Dickinson poem: “I died for beauty, but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When one who died for truth was lain In an adjoining room.   He questioned softly why I had failed? “For beauty,” I replied. “And I for truth,—the two are one; We brethren are,” he said.   And so, as kinsmen met a night, We talked between the rooms, Until the moss had reached our lips, And covered up our names.   Micol adds a postscript: “Alas, poor Emily. This is the kind of compensation vile spinsterhood is forced to hope for!”   ‘Kay. Micol’s translation (as well as her choice of dissertation topics) says a lot about her. Apparently, she hopes for “vile spinsterhood.” She will die—for beauty and for truth but will be lost to time. Her premature death will be an act of beauty. This is another nicely done encapsulation of the whole story and also touches on our question: Why does Micol not act on an adult relationship with the narrator? Because she wishes to remain forever young—normal sexual relationships mean being a mortal adult, and she wishes to die young while she’s still tragically beautiful. But wait; does she know she will die in the Holocaust? Of course not. But she is aware of the increasingly dangerous environment for Jewish people in Italy, and this awareness surely affects her view of life. Life is unfair and cruel; it doesn’t matter what you do or how virtuous you are, others will judge you as belonging to a group you have small allegiance to. Micol and her family respond to the restrictive laws by withdrawing from the world behind the walls of their estate. They are self-contained, being wealthy enough not to have to work or rely on others for basic needs. But a fundamental condition remains. Is the reason Micol avoids the narrator’s awkward attentions due to a limitation within her, something beyond the condition of being Jewish? I believe Bassani presents a story of the narrator being in love with someone who fears love and life itself. To Micol and her family, life is dangerous. The narrator is dangerous as he represents the outside pressing in and disrupting all efforts to stay the same. There is a clue early on in the story: Micol’s parents had a son who died of illness before Micol was born. The parents decided that their son died because of contamination with the outside world and that they must not expose Micol and her brother to the same risk. They keep their children home and educate them with private tutors. The growing hostility of Italian society confirms their desire for isolation. This the environment Micol grows up in. A great irony is that, despite all their efforts to remain safe and to escape time, all the Finzi-Continis, including Micol, will perish in the Holocaust. Till next time. #TheGardenoftheFinzi-Continis #GiorgioBassani #AlanBray

Last time, I suggested that The Garden of the Finzi-Continis  was more a story of unrequited love than one about the Holocaust. Finzi-Continis is famous for being a novel that shows the plight of Italian Jews before and during WWII; could it also be a love story? To put it more finely: is Finzi-Contini a love story set against the backdrop of the Holocaust or is it a novel showing how the Holocaust effects a relationship? In the introduction (which we will examine more closely later), the narrator begins: “For many years, I wanted to write about the Finzi-Continis—about Micol and Alberto, about Professor Ermanno and Signore Olga…in Ferrara, just before the outbreak of the last war.” The year is 1957, and the narrator is on a Sunday excursion with some friends. Obviously, some years have passed since the time he is remembering, and one wonders why it’s taken the narrator so long to write down his memories. The answer, of course, is that first, this is a novel, and second, the long passage of time gives the reader a sense that the loss of the Finzi-Continis has been so painful that it can only be confronted with the insulation time provides. The introduction continues with a lovely description of seeing some ancient Etruscan tombs, which inevitably remind the narrator of the Finzi-Contini tomb in Ferrara. “And my heart ached as never before at the thought that in that tomb…only one among all the Finzi-Continis I had known and loved, had managed to gain that repose…for Micol…and for her father, Professor Ermanno, and her mother, Signore Olga…all deported to Germany in the autumn of ‘43, who could say if they found any sort of burial at all?” After this, there are several chapters of history about the Finzi-Contini family, a prominent one in Ferrara, and the Finzi-Contini estate, large and walled. The narrator describes how, as a child, he would see Micol and her brother Alfredo at the local synagogue and school. Up to this point, everything would point toward the view that the story is about the fate of Jewish Italians in the second world war, shown through the experience of one particular family. The narrator then writes: “As far as I am personally concerned, there had always been something more intimate, in any case, about my relations with Alberto and Micol. The knowing looks, the confidential nods that brother and sister addressed to me…alluded only to this, I well know; something regarding us and only us.” According to the narrator, this something is a shared Jewish identity. It should be mentioned that, first of all, Italy had only been a unified country at the time of the narrator’s recollection (1933) for some sixty years, so that it was fairly new to think of one’s self as Italian, and second, Jewish Italians had historically been treated as being separate, although after the first world war and in the 1920s, they were accepted by the government. Then, in 1938, the Racial Laws were imposed, which took away most of their rights. In the 1940s, Italy and its leader Mussolini, were criticized by their Nazi allies for not being tough enough on Jews who were then interred in concentration camps. Ultimately, Italian Jews were sent to German concentration camps and some 7,000 were murdered. I believe a shift occurs at chapter five, when the narrator fails part of his school exams and rides his bike aimlessly for hours, fearing his father’s wrath. He winds up at the Finzi-Contini estate and encounters Micol. A coincidence? Remember: this is fiction where coincidence often occurs. (real life is random) Micol has heard of the narrator’s problems and offers to tutor him if he will enter the estate (this conversation occurs when they are at the estate wall.) The narrator experiences danger here, as well as eroticism. Fearing the theft of his bike, he hides it in a dark chamber within the walls and imagines falling and becoming lost. Micol slips and bruises her leg in climbing. “She pulled up the hem of her dress, baring her thigh, strangely white and strong, already a woman’s, and she bent over to examine the bruise. Two long blond locks, the paler ones, escaping the little ring which held her hair in place, fell down, hiding her forehead and her eyes.” (This occurs in 1929; Micol is thirteen). Freudian concepts abound about male ambivalence over absorption by the female. Indeed, the narrator has an extended fantasy that he will live secretly in the chamber in the walls, that Micol will bring him food, and that they will kiss. “And every day we would kiss each other, in the darkness: because I was her man, and she, my woman.” This is a fine example of an adolescent’s experience of the opposite sex, the Other, mysterious and, with the onset of puberty, unknowable, less a real person and more a projection of yearning and fantasy. The narrator certainly becomes infatuated with Micol, obsessed, really, and the feelings seem to be reciprocated. Micol is not shy—although it must be noted that she is always seen through the narrator’s perspective, and he may not be reliable. (Gasp!) Because of the increasing antisemitism in Ferrara, the narrator and others are banned from playing tennis at the local private club and are invited by the Finzi-Continis to play at the estate. In the course of these games, the narrator and Micol take long walks together, exploring the estate and each other—although not physically. During one such walk, they end up together in an old carriage in the rain. Being alone with her, the narrator is anxious and awkward. “How well you keep it,” I said, unable to master a sudden emotion, reflected in a slight quaver in my voice.” He is frozen and does not touch her despite his desire. She speaks about the fate of old objects like the carriage, no longer of use and of an old abandoned canoe. “Look instead at the canoe, I beg you, and look at its honesty, dignity, and moral courage; it’s drawn all the necessary conclusions from its own total loss of function. Objects also die, my friend. And if they also must die, then that’s it, better to let them go. It shows far more style above all. Don’t you agree?” This statement, spoken in an erotically charged moment, is a great encapsulation of the plight of Micol and her family, who are no longer needed by society and will die. Then, the narrator (a slow mover) goes over and over this scene in the carriage during the next year. “If…I had at least managed to speak to her—I told myself bitterly—perhaps things between us would have gone differently…Speak to her, kiss her: it was then, when everything was still possible—I never ceased repeating to myself—that I should have done it! And I forgot to ask myself the essential question; whether in that supreme moment, unique, irrevocable—a moment that perhaps decided my life and hers—I had really been capable of attempting an act, a word of any sort. Did I really know then, for example, that I was in love, really? Well no, not at all. I didn’t know. I didn’t know then, and I wasn’t to know for at least another two weeks, when the bad weather, now steady, irreparably scattered our fortuitous company.” This passage reads like the musings of the narrator looking back from far in the future and trying to make sense of what happened and how he felt. There is a strong sense of loss. I think we should call a recess here, perhaps thinking of this post as part one of at least two parts on this issue of whether Finzi-Continis is or isn’t primarily a story of love. Till next time, then. #TheGardenoftheFinzi-Continis #GiorgioBassani #AlanBray

Today, dear friends, a new story, Giorgio Bassani’s 1962 novel The Garden of the Finzi-Continis . The book won the Viareggio prize in 1962 and was adapted by Vittorio de Sica in 1970 to make the academy award winning film of the same name. It should be noted that Bassani, an accomplished prose and poetry writer, initially worked on the screenplay with De Sica but the two clashed and Bassani left the project. However, the film credits him as the original story’s author. Finzi-Continis  was, of course, written in Italian, and I am working with a wonderful English translation by William Weaver that captures, I believe, a lot of the story’s poetic prose and Italian cadence. Why read a book originally published over 60 years ago, you ask? Finzi-Continis  is a story, a story about relationships (see below), set against the real process of the Italian fascists marginalizing, excluding and finally deporting Italians who were Jewish, a process the reader will recognize is being done today in America against refugees and their children. So, is the story fiction? It is true that the author’s life shares many features with the fictional protagonist and narrator of the book. They are both Jewish men who lived through World War II; their fathers (who did not survive) were medical doctors who strove to be Italians first and Jews second. Both men, real and fictional, were in love with young women who played a lot of tennis, (Love/love). Bassani eventually married his inamorata, the protagonist, as we will see, did not, losing her to the Fascists. No less an authority than Tim Parks calls the story fictionalized autobiography. Elements from the author’s experience are transformed by placing them into a fully realized novel. Bassani is an accomplished writer who organizes his memories into a narrative structure. The cover of the 1977 edition I have shows a beautiful image of a garden bathed in golden light. Of course, this refers to the title, and the title refers to a major theme of the book—attempting to live in an enchanted refuge while surrounded by danger. We will get to this later, I promise you. There are actually a number of references in the text to this quality of light. Here’s one: “For ten or twelve days the perfect weather lasted, held in that kind of magic suspension, of sweetly glassy and luminous immobility peculiar to certain autumns of ours. It was hot in the garden, almost like summertime…the light; that last light invited you to insist, to continue volleying (they’re playing tennis) no matter if the play was almost blind. The day was not ended, it was worth lingering a little longer.” For those of us who have seen the film version, this golden light is captured beautifully, and it probably should be noted that in a story about a young man’s obsession with a young girl, the girl’s hair is constantly described in shades of golden blond. Indeed, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis  is, unlike Bassani’s other stories, about love, focusing on a decade long flirtation/attraction between the unnamed narrator and Micol Finzi-Contini, whom the narrator first meets when she is thirteen. He doesn’t see her during the last three years of her life and learns that she, along with her parents and grandmother and the narrator’s father, perished in a German concentration camp. Let’s stop there today, best beloved. Till next time. #TheGardenoftheFinzi-Continis #GiorgioBassani #AlanBray

Over the past several weeks, we’ve been considering some different aspects of Susan Minot’s fine novel, Evening . Today, I’d like to call attention to the moth. The moth appears on the cover of the 1999 edition that I’ve been reading. The only mention I’ve found of it in the text is on page 74: I’ll never get out now  she thought I’ll never get back down those stairs  a moth batted against the ceiling against the ceiling against the ceiling. (This passage occurs in a scene set in the book’s present wherein Ann is contemplating death. Again, we must note the importance in the text of punctuation ((or its absence)) and the use of italics and repetition. It gives the passage an intensely inner focus). Since the image of a moth is on the cover, we have to assume it’s being highlighted for a reason. Moths, best beloved, are often associated with “darkness, endings, and the unknown, but also with transformation, intuition, and the spirit realm. In different cultures, they can represent mortality, ancestors, and the cyclical nature of life, death, and renewal. They are also linked to the human soul, messengers from the spirit world, and wisdom.” Anyone who’s read The Teachings of Don Juan knows a lot about moths. Whiny voice: Moths eat your sweaters too. That’s why you need moth balls. Thank you, I’m not sure that’s relevant.  It does seem entirely fitting that a moth would appear in a story about transitions and death. The sentence cited above also conveys a sense of a living creature struggling to escape a confining space, which is exactly Ann’s predicament. Perhaps, this moth-thing also touches on the issue of marketing. One could believe that real authors are somehow above financial concerns but that is not the case. Authors like to earn money from their work. A conscious decision (probably the publisher’s) was made to accept the design of this edition of Evening, In addition to the white moth, we note the dark green background color to the photograph. The back cover provides a summation of the story, a version of it, at least: July 1954. An island off the coast of Maine. Ann Grant—a 25 year old New York career girl—is a bridesmaid at her friend’s lavish wedding. Also present is a man named Harris Arden, a man whom Ann has never met…  It continues and mentions that years later Ann is dying. Not to be snarky, but is this a fair description of the book we’ve been reading? Nope. This description attempts to put the book into a Romance genre, a woman’s book genre, and this “putting” seems to be an important aspect of how the book was marketed. I’m going to say it trivializes an exquisitely written story about life and death—not to say that Romance novels are trivial, but to say I don’t think Evening  fits into a narrower genre. Let’s see: “A romance novel is primarily defined by its central focus on the development and exploration of a romantic relationship between two individuals, with a happy, emotionally satisfying ending. The core elements include a love story, often involving challenges and obstacles, and a resolution that leaves the reader with a sense of hope and fulfillment.”   ‘Kay, Evening could be jammed into this, I just think it limits it too much. A simple objection is that Evening  does not have a happy ending. I don’t think it’s necessarily tragic, but Ann does die, and all her particular memories are lost. If a reader was looking for a Romance novel and picked up Evening , I think they’d feel they’d been misled. This makes me think of the ancient distinction between comedy and tragedy—a comedy is a story where the protagonist lives, a tragic story is one where the protagonist dies, essentially because of actions taken by this protagonist. Hence, our friend Dante’s master work is entitled, The Divine Comedy  although it is not terribly funny. In this system, Evening  would be a tragedy. I don’t know if it is, my friends. Every living creature dies, Ann dies (by implication) —is a natural process tragic? To me, tragedy seems like a sad and unfortunate event that could have been prevented. ‘Kay again. The clock on the clubhouse wall says it’s time to wrap up today’s philosophizing. Big news. I am going to take a vacation with Dena. The next post will be on May 16th, and it will focus on a new story, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. Till then.   #SusanMinot #Evening #AlanBray

A major distinction in literary works is whether a story’s plot is linear or circular. A linear plot expresses cause and effect—A leads to B leads to C, etc.. In effect, A transforms to C through the experience of B. A circular plot begins and ends in the same place, often with the main character returning to their starting point after undergoing significant experiences or changes . Transformed by experience, as it were. Evening  seems pretty circular, best B. The story is about a sixty-five year old woman, Ann, who is dying—it’s clear from the early part of the book that she’s dying; there’s no question of will she or won’t she die, only when. At the story’s beginning, in summer, Ann asks her physician, Dr. Baker, how long she has to live, he replies:   Let’s just say you won’t see the leaves change this year.   And at the end, this same Dr. Baker is called to verify Ann’s “expiration.” The story’s final scene occurs in the context of one of those imaginary dialogues Ann has with Harris Arden:   I won’t say goodbye. No, she said. Don’t. He did not come the next day, he did not come the day after. He did not come again.   Now this certainty is largely a result of making it clear that Ann has a terminal illness, but it also unburdens the reader from feeling that the author knows a secret the reader does not. It would be a very different book if Ann’s condition was vague, and if the reader was given some hope she might survive. But no. So, between the beginning and end of the story, Ann’s inner life is chronicled as she remembers incidents from her past. And this past is shown in some other sections by the narrator, and occasionally through other characters’ perspectives. And there is a present in the story, often shown the perspective of Ann’s adult children. So what are the significant experiences and changes that Ann undergoes and attains? The story covers Ann’s childhood and includes scenes from her three marriages, and scenes of her adult children facing her demise. There are scenes from the perspective of the private nurse who cares for Ann. There is even one written from Harris’ perspective in which he rationalizes his decision to stay with his fiancé, Maria, instead of being with Ann. A significant element is the death of Paul, one of Ann’s sons, and this loss seems not to be fully grieved in that it is presented briefly and in such a way that indicates unresolved shock.   Paul was barely twelve and that this had happened did not fit. It did not fit at all.   This passage occurs at the end of the two paragraphs describing how Ann learned of Paul’s death so it’s not clear whether the above passage represents her thoughts at the time she learned of his death, or her thoughts about the death looking back from the book’s present. Either way, there’s a quality of denial and numbness. But the bulk of Evening  has to do with two threads that intersect: the first is Ann’s brief love affair during a family wedding forty years before with Harris Arden, a man whom Ann later regrets losing to another woman. And there is the death of Ann’s cousin, Buddy Wittenborn, that occurs during this same wedding on the evening that Harris made mad love with Ann and then left her for good. (cad). This juxtaposition of sex and death creates an intensity for Ann as she lays dying. (Faulkner reference—no accident). The book tells us in an isolated line:   This was the last story she’d ever tell.   As we’ve mentioned, she imagines conversations with Arden whom she hasn’t seen for years (although, there is a mysterious passage early on that seems to show the real Harris showing up at the house where Ann is dying, but she’s asleep). My sense is that, although Ann was shocked by Buddy’s death, she is, after forty years, more emotionally caught up by the affair with Harris. Despite her three marriages, Harris was the man she always yearned for; the one who, at the end of her life, she thinks about the most. When Ann’s adult daughters ask her about who Harris was, as she’s been mentioning his name in her half-asleep state, she says, enigmatically:   Harris was me.   The sequence is important. Ann has passionate sex with Harris (and it is consensual, unlike another episode with another chap), Harris definitely leaves her for his fiancé. Then Ann is shown in despair over this loss. Then, she gradually learns that at the time she was lying on the beach in Harris’ arms, Buddy was accidently run over by a truck driven by Ralph Eastman (as I mentioned, this is foreshadowed early on). The young folks with Ralph desperately try to find Harris, as he is a doctor, but he is busy with Ann. So there is an element of guilt that Ann feels for taking pleasure and passion at a time of tragedy—although she really didn’t know till later about Buddy’s death. What is the transformation that Ann experiences as she shuffles through these memories of her life?   Hope had changed direction, toward the past.   This is an important, though temporary, turning point, in which Ann realizes that all her hopes are focused now on what might have been. There is no future. In a significant dialogue with the imaginary Harris, she reaches a key insight about her life:   …What else could I do? Nothing. You did the best you could. We both did. There wasn’t much of a choice, she said. We did our best. Maybe I should have done something, she said. Maybe I could have… What?… I don’t know. But something. Just not let it happen the way it did. Some things you can’t help. Think of how different it would have been, she said. You think so? Of course. I mean… She thought for a moment. I mean… What? You’re right, she said. It couldn’t have been different.   In this dialogue, she concludes that things could only happen in one way, the way that resulted in Harris marrying Maria and Ann marrying her three husbands. (not all at once). After years of thinking of what might have been, and the intermediary step of wishing she could change the past, she decides that what happened was the only possible outcome, that it’s pointless to want to change the past. She accepts death and dies. ‘Kay, till next time. #SusanMinot #Evening #AlanBray

Evening uses several styles of narration to show different experiences of time. The chapter entitled A Pale Bay begins: She kept the curtains back in the day and in the night. Her parents had slept with the shades down and on the rare occasion Ann dared enter their room it was always pitch black…Her mother wore a sleeping mask over her face cream, and earplugs. Ann’s father snored. In this section, the narration is fairly conventional and unlike other parts of the book. It is third person, simple past, and reads like a storyteller entity telling us a story from Ann’s past. It does not read like one of Ann’s recollections from her death bed. The storyteller seems to want to give the reader some context for who Ann is. This passage, which we can guess presents a time of perhaps 1940, goes on for several pages and tells a story of Ann’s childhood. After a line break, time leaps to 1954. “The smell of bacon, the kitchen door. Ann Grant was nearly knocked over by a golden retriever as she opened the screen.” This passage remains in third=person, simple past but has a different feel than the one regarding Ann’s birth family. It is more immediate; it contains a lot of dialogue which the childhood passage does not. Heavy use is made of sentence fragments. Here ’s an example from the 1954 section: You look like a painting, said Harris Arden, opening the door. So he said that sort of thing to other girls. Of course he would. Why wouldn’t he?    That last line represents Ann’s inner-ness—something that is presented more formally in the childhood section: Smells good, said her father as Ann steered him to his chair, trying to disturb as few pieces of furniture as possible. He sat down then got up immediately and picked his way out of the room as if leaning into a gale. In this passage, which represents a child Ann trying to help her drunken father, the reader has to infer Ann’s inner state of fear and worry, rather than, in the previous style, experience it more directly, as her jealousy over Harris is shown. After another line break, the story is back in the present: Her breathing was shallow The I.V. rose above her like a flagpole festooned with transparent ribbons.   Here, the narrator begins by commenting on Ann’s breathing—the narrator, not Ann because, of course, a person wouldn’t think this about herself—that "her" breathing was shallow. The section leads to an intensely subjective passage of Ann apparently experiencing a sponge bath given to her by a nurse, but her consciousness slips to remembering other experiences of being undressed: Let’s slip this off. This arm first. That’s it. A warm sponge moved over her shoulders. Strange how little people were naked. Won’t you take off your coat can I take that for you here let me thank you not at all would you mind if I undid this what are you doing This passage is reproduced as it appears in the book—without punctuation and with italics. There is another line break, and we have: Someone was sobbing down the hall in one of the guest rooms then it turned into waves. The sea, she thought, the sea…She shot herself out of a cannon and flew from the house. Here, Ann remains in the book’s present and is apparently under the effects of strong medication. She imagines herself flying free of the house and going on a magical journey through Boston to Maine. Next, she is back in 1954 amidst the wedding preparations and Harris Arden’s presence. Then, a brief passage which is probably not clear at a first reading. It shows a memory from perhaps fifteen years later—around 1960—just before Ann learns of the death of one of her sons. And then we return to 1954. The chapter continues in this fashion, using different styles to show different time periods. There is a present time passage shown from the perspective of one of Ann’s daughters and there is a passage showing a dialogue between Ann and Harris (what I’ve previously called the “he/she” dialogue): Ask me again. What? To look at you What do you mean? The way you did. We’ve discussed this style a bit already. It is mostly dialogue, unmarked in terms of the names of who is speaking. It is intensely subjective and personal and represents Ann’s innerness as she imagines a conversation with someone who is not there, someone whom she hasn’t seen for decades. The reader must imagine the characters speaking to each other as there is almost no scene setting or beats that would indicate how the characters feel, where they are, what they’re wearing, their facial and postural expressions, anything. And this is in contrast to many of the other narrative styles. Perhaps this style can be said to be “out-of-time,” meaning it could occur in almost any time after Ann and Harris met. A hallmark of Evening  is the way time is presented as being fluid. We are shown a character in the present—or technically, the recent past, as the events of Ann’s death are presented by a narrator after the fact—who time-travels around her life, from fifty-five years earlier to thirty-five years, to twenty years, etc. There is an equivalency between these different sections in that there is no strong distinction made between the book’s present and the various past times. These are not “flashbacks,” in the conventional sense of the term. There is no guidepost saying, “Now we are in the year 1954.” The guideposts that are present are the differences in style and voice that I have mentioned. Careful reading will reveal how these different styles of narration help to establish these times as distinct from each other. By careful, I mean careful, my friends. Last time, we discussed readerly and writerly texts and I “cut the diamond” by asserting that Evening  belongs to the readerly persuasion. All this time-traveling in distinct styles is a fine example—the book demands the reader work to understand. Till next week. #Evening #SusanMinot #AlanBray

This week, dear friends, we begin an exploration of a new book, Susan Minot’s 1998 novel, Evening . If one reads back of the book blurbs and plot summaries, one gathers that this story is about an older woman dying of cancer and looking back on her life, particularly her love life—not the sort of book I personally would be drawn to. However, the summary and related marketing efforts fall short of describing a beautifully written story that I believe is about time and memory. In a sense, it defies a unitary description, because it demands each reader to construct her/his own set of meanings. It was no less a human than Roland Barthes (name-dropping) who developed the distinction between “readerly” and “writerly” texts. Readerly texts are more common; they offer a straightforward narrative with minimal ambiguity. Meaning tends to be a given, as in “all politicians are insincere.” The reader accepts the truth of such beliefs in order to enjoy the passive reading experience. Writerly texts, on the other hand, demand active participation from the reader to construct meaning. There is ambiguity and openness, and a focus on the way the story is told—language and style, as opposed to simply conveying generally accepted information. Let’s take our old friend, the Dick and Jane stories as an example of a readerly text. The meanings in the story tend to be given. Spot is a dog, and everyone knows that dogs love to play. So Spot loves to play. Dick is a boy and boys are adventurous, so Dick is adventurous. And so on. Of course, close analysis of the readerly/writerly distinction tends to break down the conceptual either/or clarity. Any story requires the reader to make meaning; it’s just that many stories come with comfortable, pre-packaged meanings that don’t require much work. Evening  is—you guessed it—not one of these. Evening  is essentially the story of Ann, a woman in her sixties who is dying from cancer. She spends her time in bed, surrounded by her adult children, and nurse and a doctor who makes house calls (?). She is using opioid painkillers and is frequently in a twilight state of consciousness. The story is told mostly through Ann’s perspective, although there are sections from her daughters’ perspective, and even one through that of the nurse. Ann is in the present at times, but quite a bit in the past, particularly in a period when she was in her early twenties and unmarried. At a family wedding, she had an affair with a friend of the family, and the wedding was also tragically marked by the death of a cousin. Of course, it is a given in Evening that Ann will die by the end of the book, and that is what is shown—by implication. There’s no will she or won’t she die, we’re told she will up front. ‘Kay, all pretty digestible, right? You might be thinking, what’s all this Roland Barthes stuff? Huh? It is true that the basic story is unambiguous. However, the way the story is told calls for considerable work on the reader’s part. After some fifteen pages of preparation and introduction—which includes an intriguing quote from William Faulkner—the first chapter of Evening  contains three distinct sections. First, there is a conversation between two people, only identified as “he” and “she” in which these entities appear to talk about their relationship. This conversation will appear throughout the book and is never exactly defined or contextualized, leaving it up to the reader to determine who is involved. Second, there is a straightforward prose section that presents the story of a young woman named Ann who arrives at the Boston train station from New York City and is met by three young men, Ralph Eastman, Buddy Wintterborn—both of whom Ann knows well, and Harris Arden (great name), who is a stranger to her. Ralph is driving, which is a foreshadowing of later events. After three pages describing this scene, the story/narrator tells us: It was 1954 and Ann Grant was twenty-five years old. Ann meets Harris, and we are told right away that she is smitten: She felt as if she’d been struck on the forehead with a brick. (Please note—she’s not injured here; she’s metaphorically smitten by Harris). Then after a line break, a third section occurs. Here, we have apparently moved forward in time, although this is not clearly stated. It begins with a voice saying, Have you moved her? And a person named Ann opens her eyes, so was asleep before this section. She is addressed as Mrs. Lord and has a visitor, Dr. Baker. I should mention that one of the aspects of the book’s style is that quotation marks are not used—it must be inferred that characters are speaking. So we begin to make meaning of ambiguity. Probably, the Ann in 1954 and the contemporary Ann are the same person and the Ann in the third section, Ann Lord, is remembering the 1954 experience where she met Harris Arden. We might even infer that Ann is the “she” of the first section conversation, and just possibly, Harris is the “he.” (This becomes a bit clearer later on). Part of meaning making is making connections, and it makes sense that a story would be about one central character—Ann. It makes sense but is not guaranteed, my friends, but we’ve developed a working way to understand the book. After another line break, there is a new section that is occurring in the book’s present—the time of a bed-ridden Ann being visited by the doctor. This section is also in third person, simple past tense, and is largely dialogue, like the “she” “he” section. However, this section seems to be the narrator/implied author showing a conversation between Ann’s daughters and an aunt. Here we get a sense of the narrator’s voice explaining family relationships: (For clarity, I’m going to insert quotation marks). “They’ll be another break, said Aunt Grace…Aunt Grace was an unlikely ally of Ann Lord’s. Her younger brother had been Ann’s second husband.” (The context here is that Aunt Grace is expressing her belief that one of Ann’s daughters should come to see her, despite the daughter’s getting a career break). And again: “So different from his father, said Aunt Grace. Teddy was Ted Stackpole’s son. His father couldn’t stand sick people.” (Here, Aunt Grace is commenting on Ann’s son Teddy, who seems resolute in the face of his mother’s illness). Then we have a new section that begins: “She lay on her back staring up at the canopy. Her thoughts went round and round and it was like spinning staring up at the trees the way she used to do when she was young.” This section shows Ann in the story’s present experiencing memories of the day in 1954 that was earlier shown. Then: “She opened her eyes not knowing where she was. The room had gotten dark. The pain rose in her and she remembered.” (She remembers her current state of being terminally ill), Gradually, she drifts back to 1954. After another line break, she’s fully back in 1954, immersed in Harris Arden and his importance to her life. The chapter ends with another “he” “she” dialogue section. These sections have a very “present” feel, and it’s tempting to understand them as occurring in Ann’s mind as she imagines Harris being with her in the present and talking—in the present but as he was when she last saw him, a young man. ‘Kay. I think we can begin to see, among other things, how time is handled in Evening . The present and pasts of Ann’s life are equally weighted. Till next time. #Evening #SusanMinot #AlanBray

As we read and re-read Frederick Busch’s The Night Inspector , we may ask ourselves, what is the book’s major theme, my bro? (This is assuming that we call ourselves my bro). An answer lies in the story’s beginning and end. As I have mentioned, the very first scene shows Billy ordering that a prosthetic mask be made to hide his wounded face. The last scene, some two hundred and seventy-six harrowing pages later, shows Billy working with Chun Ho, the woman who seemed to accept him the most in the story, in her laundry business. The implication is that they are a couple, committed to one another, and this represents a transformation for Billy, who begins the story not trusting others (except Jessie, more on this later). He and Chun Ho pass a couple of men, and Billy thinks: “I wondered what they made of what they saw; a tea-colored woman with an oval, impassive face and a man beside her whose face was a mask of another sort. In silence, these masks, then, which were turned toward them, permitted those who wore them to be regarded in the light of the bystander’s curiosity, and, quite probably, their scorn.”             Masks, best beloved. Masks are key. People hide their true selves behind masks, both literal and figurative. Masks are ubiquitous in the world, worn by everyone from the literary adventurer, Zorro, to contemporary ICE agents who wish to conceal their identities.             Billy lives an anonymous life, post-war, post-injury. His neighbors know him to be armed with “a face they cannot read.” Since Billy hides behind a mask and sometimes a veil, others are deprived of the information an intact face might provide. His mask is a protection against others seeing his true self without his permission. This true self is, in Billy’s estimation, horrible to behold.             M, the character based on Herman Melville, is fascinated by Billy’s mask, as mentioned. An irony is that in Melville’s famous Moby Dick , Ahab exhorts his men to “strike through the mask,” meaning get at the truth. A further irony, of course, is that Billy is hiding his true intentions from M, in order to manipulate M’s feelings, both of being against slavery and of being a failure, although this “masking” becomes more and more difficult for Billy to maintain as the story progresses. His strong emotions about Jessie—and in a parallel story, Chun Ho, are revealed to the reader, and the women accept him.             Jessie and Chun Ho—the two female characters who Billy is intimate with—apparently in more ways than one. Sex with them feels genuine to Billy. Jessie is described as a beautiful and elegant prostitute, a Creole woman with elaborate tattoos (Queequeg? anyone). A curiosity of the story is that Billy never seems to question her apparent affection for him, that is, why would this woman be so interested in him sexually? He does pay for her affections, yet her behavior seems to be more enthusiastic than money can buy. Billy and the reader learn that Jessie hides her own self behind a mask of beauty and sexuality.             Chun Ho is the Chinese American woman who Billy pays to wash his clothes (that is her business). There’s probably some kind of metaphor here for clothes washing representing Billy removing his mask, which he does, allowing Chun Ho to give him a bath. And this leads eventually to a scene of eroticism! A wet scene, my friends. Everyone gets wet. Chun Ho hides herself behind language, not knowing English well, and what the story often describes as her “mask” of indecipherable facial features. Perhaps for cultural reasons, she reveals herself very gradually, and Billy is smitten with her. Her young children call Billy “gui” which we are told means ghost-man in Mandarin, and ghosts are a related theme. Billy learns that the Confederates during the war refer to him as a ghost who kills The story of The Night Inspector  is essentially about deception, a grand double-cross, if you will. The protagonist Billy, and Jessie, must hide their true intentions to achieve their goals. SPOILER ALERT! Jessie involves Billy in a scheme to bring formerly enslaved children to New York City from Florida in order, she tells him, to free them. His role is to provide money and to enlist M, who is a U.S. customs inspector and will help by providing legal permission for the ship to land the children in New York harbor. Billy also enlists the help of Adam, a former slave who is familiar with the New York waterfront, telling both he and M that they are performing a mission of mercy. Billy believes this; another related theme in the story is that of children being menaced by bad adults. However, Jessie tricks them all, betraying the trust that Billy placed in her. The children are being brought north to be slaves, possibly sexual slaves, and Jessie and her allies will profit from this arrangement. Things go horribly wrong when Jessie gives the children laudanum to make them sleep during the long voyage; by mistake, she gives them too much and they die. Billy winds up feeling betrayed and responsible for betraying M and Adam. Of course, when faced with problems, violence is his usual recourse, and he takes bloody revenge on all who wronged him. At this point in the story, those who matter to him—M, Adam, Sam, Jessie, and Chun Ho—know his true nature. More could be written about this complex book, but all good things must come to an end (is that true?). Next week, we’ll begin a new story, Susan Minot’s Evening . Till then. My bro. #FrederickBusch #TheNightInspector #AlanBray