– Don Juan, in Carlos Castenada’s The Teachings of Don Juan No coincidence, no story - an ancient Chinese saying. Two mutually exclusive statements, best beloved. However, Don Juan was talking about real life, and the ancient Chinese, about story or fiction. Let’s tease this out. Essentially, coincidence is the coming together of two events. ... Coincidence is often what gives fiction its chance to mean something. When two things come together, improbably or not, a spark is struck. Making those things happen simultaneously suggests that meaning is just beyond the surface—meaning and/or causality. However: “Coincidences always seem contrived, and more than one or two in a story will make the whole plot seem contrived. Now, the whole story is contrived – that’s what fiction is – but if your reader becomes aware of that as he or she is reading, you’ve got a “yeah, right” waiting to happen. The Willing Suspension of Disbelief is what we call the aura that’s cast around a story while the reader is immersed in it. It doesn’t merely seem to be true, it seems to be happening, right there, in front of his or her eyes. We break this aura at our peril.” With apologies to Don Juan, here’s a possible real-life coincidence. Let’s say two people are in love, and both talk about how great it would be to someday live in Hartford Connecticut. (?) They lose touch; ten years later they meet each other in…wait for it…Hartford Connecticut, where they’re both living. What a coincidence! they say. Unbelievable! It must be fate that has brought us together. But the truth is they both chose to move there; they have similar tastes in restaurants, entertainment, etc. It was inevitable that they’d meet. A famous fictional example: In Casablanca, Rick and Ilsa meet in Rick’s bar after a separation of several years, and Rick utters the famous line, “Of all the gin joints, etc.” suggesting a coincidence. But it makes sense that they’d both be in Casablanca and at Rick’s. Everybody, after all, goes to Rick’s, and Ilsa is married to a famous Resistance fighter who must escape the Nazis and leave Europe. Casablanca is the way out so it’s no shocker that she turns up there. And there’s those mysterious letters of transit that bring them together. And Rick—actually I don’t know how Rick wound up in Casablanca—but my point is that it’s really not much of a coincidence that they meet, more of an inevitability, just like with our real-life friends in Hartford, Connecticut. ‘Kay. What about in Steppenwolf? you ask. Aren’t ya supposed to be writing about Steppenwolf? Indeed, coincidence abounds in this novel. It’s no coincidence that there’s coincidence. But here it’s a different beastie than in Casablanca—there’s no rationale that can be easily seen, and Harry spotting the Magic Theater sign seems more like divine interference—or interference from the implied author. There’s a long tradition of this sort of thing, connecting with ancient Greek drama, where the gods “play” with mortals. Think of Oedipus and his mom. The implied author doesn’t show Harry being particularly surprised when he “happens” upon these meaningful events. Harry “happens” upon the Magic Theater sign, “happens” upon the man who gives him the Steppenwolf Treatise, “happens” again on this man who tells him to go to the Black Eagle Tavern, where Harry “happens” upon a young woman named Hermine who will change his life. There is a long literary tradition of characters meeting seemingly by coincidence who are, in fact, related. Charles Dickens is full of such devices. Why do I mention this? Because as Steppenwolf develops, Harry comes to accept that Hermine is his sister, even—his double. Even—himself! Yet, there is no mention of any divine or otherwise outside provocation. At the Black Eagle, Harry sees one a seat at a table and sits down next to an attractive young woman. (explosive laughter from the audience, a loud voice calls, Yeah, right). No, really. “I soon found myself near the bar, wedged against a table at which sat a pale and pretty girl against the wall…She gave me a friendly and observant look as I came up and with a smile moved to one side to make room for me. “May I?” I asked and sat down beside her.” (Laughter continues). Please, I’m not trying to be funny. Does this seem like too great a coincidence? I can see many of you are nodding. Well, this is actually a stylistic issue—hey, settle down! I’m trying to make an important point here if you’ll all please listen. Steppenwolf is a story of someone in despair who is brought back to life by mysterious and mystical means. By coincidence? Not if we define coincidence as random. If we return to our original definition of coincidence—which does not mention randomness—we can see that in each case, there are two incidences that meet. One: Harry goes for a stroll at night. Two: A sign appears on a wall reading “Magic Theater.” Harry “happens” on this sign—no one tells him to go to it—and this sets off a chain of events that runs throughout the rest of the book, leading him to a mysterious woman who seems to be his younger self. At a later point, the young woman tells Harry: “Think of that evening when you came broken from your despair and loneliness to cross my path and be my comrade. Why was it, do you think, I was able to recognize and understand you?” Why indeed. It's worth considering that coincidence is what makes the plot of Steppenwolf. Without it, Harry might be trapped in his miserable and meaningless existence. With it, his life changes and has meaning. Whether or not anyone else sees the sign is outside of the scope of this book, which is about Harry, who does. Although it masquerades as one, this is not a realist novel that attempts to show “life as it really is.” Steppenwolf is a story of supernatural events. The encounters seem at times to be coincidental, but they are planned by the implied author who desires to tell a story of a character being taught a lesson about life. Instead of the ancient Greek idea of the gods creating apparent coincidences to change characters, we have the implied author doing the manipulation. Maybe Don Juan was right—there are no coincidences. Till next time. #Steppenwolf #HermannHesse #AlanBray

Last week, we talked about how the first section of Steppenwolf—after the preface—describes Harry Haller’s painful existence. He is glum, dysphoric; he believes his personality is divided into two parts, permanently at war with each other. This is classic storytelling in the western canon; a story begins with a showing of the protagonist’s conflicted condition just prior to an inciting incident that sets off a process of change. Aristotle would be proud. In Steppenwolf, this incident is Harry’s discovery of the Magic Theater. “With these familiar thoughts I went along the wet street through one of the quietest and oldest quarters of the town. On the opposite side there stood in the darkness an old stone wall which I always noticed with pleasure…the wall was peaceful and serene and yet something was altered in it. I was amazed to see a small and pretty doorway with a Gothic arch in the middle of the wall, for I could not make up my mind whether this doorway had always been there or whether it had just been made…now that I looked more closely I saw over the portal a bright shield, on which, it seemed to me, there was something written.” Magic Theater Entrance Not For Everybody Then on the path he’s walking on, he sees: For Madmen Only! Harry doesn’t seem to think these messages are unusual. After lingering a few moments to see if there will be more, he continues on his walk. He goes to a local tavern and drinks wine, then goes out again, stops to hear a jazz band playing, and, to his surprise, likes what he hears (he usually doesn’t like jazz). Then: “From the black mouth of an alley a man appeared with startling suddenness at my elbow…He wore a cap and a blue blouse, and above his shoulders he carried a signboard fixed on a pole, and in front of him an open tray suspended by straps such as pedlars carry at fairs…I called out and asked him to let me read his placard. He stopped and held the pole a little steadier. Then I could read the dancing, reeling letters: Anarchist Evening Entertainment Magic Theater Entrance Not For Everyone Harry pursues the man and says he wants to buy something from him. “Without stopping, the man felt mechanically in his box, pulled out a little book and held it out to me.” The man “disappeared.” What is the significance of the word “Anarchist?” During the first decades of the 20th century, the anarchist movement flourished in most parts of the world and had a significant role in workers' struggles for emancipation. For the bourgeoisie, it meant something dangerous. An anarchist entertainment would be a show that challenged the basic order of things in the guise of fun. ‘Kay. This makes me think of the film Field of Dreams where the Voice makes dramatic pronouncements to Ray that change his life. “Go the distance!” “Ease his pain!” The difference is in the protagonists’ reactions. Neither Ray nor Harry react in a realist way; Ray gets mad, but Harry doesn’t seem particularly surprised by these events. However, when he gets home, he looks at the pamphlet. “It was with great astonishment and a sudden sense of impending fate that I read the title…Treatise on the Steppenwolf. Not for Everybody. As we know, Harry thinks of himself as a Steppenwolf. So what’s happened is that he’s out walking at night and sees a sign he’s never seen before, an enigmatic and intriguing sign concerning a Magic Theater. Then he encounters a strange, cartoonish sort of fellow who sells him a book—about himself! Whoa. Another facet of this is the repeated condition: Not for Everybody. The implication is that if you’re allowed entrance, or access to the pamphlet, you are somehow chosen, you are special. A time-honored way to create desire, as in, “I’ve got to have the thing I’m not allowed to have!” So, there are several “hooks” cleverly designed to grab Harry’s attention. (The fisherman is the implied author, heh, heh, heh). He reads on till the end. His first reaction is to remember a poem he’d written about the wolf. “So now I had two portraits of myself before me, one a self-portrait in doggerel verse, as sad and sorry as myself; the other painted with the air of a lofty impartiality by one who stood outside and who knew more and yet less of me than I did myself…Both were right. Both gave the unvarnished truth about my shiftless existence. “Death was decreed for this Steppenwolf. He must with his own hand make an end of his detested existence—unless, molten in the fire of a renewed self-knowledge, he underwent a change and passed over to a self, new and undisguised. Alas! This transition was not unknown to me. I had already experienced it several times…” So, Harry seems to conclude that the Treatise is telling him he must go through a painful transition to a new self. He describes other transitions wherein he lost his profession, his wife and family, becoming alone. “And every occasion when a mask was torn off, an ideal broken, was preceded by this hateful vacancy and stillness, this deathly constriction and loneliness and unrelatedness, this waste and empty hell of loneliness and despair, such as I now had to pass through once more.” Interesting—he says the Treatise was “painted with the air of lofty impartiality by one who stood outside and who knew more and yet less of me than I did myself.” So, it’s only a partially accurate portrait. He disagrees with the Treatise on suicide, thinking that it is an acceptable out, not a weakness as the Treatise advises. “On the other hand, all suicides have the responsibility of fighting against the temptation of suicide” In fact, the Treatise says that the Steppenwolf plans to kill himself on his fiftieth birthday, a plan Harry has not divulged to the reader. After reading the Treatise, he gloomily concludes it’s a long time to wait to his fiftieth birthday! There is no specific mention of Harry in the Treatise, so he decides, although it has merit, it’s too general to take at its word. However, although he denies it, Harry seems to be trying to follow the Treatise’s instructions. He doesn’t kill himself; he becomes more intrigued by the Magic Theater and tries to find it and the odd fellow who sold him the Treatise. He finally does find him in a funeral procession. He accosts the man who tells him gruffly to go to the Black Eagle bar. (More on this next time). Is the Treatise another example of the implied author telling, in this case, how the protagonist should act? Could be, could be. Hesse himself wrote of Steppenwolf that he wished to show a sufferer’s state of mind measured against a positive and cheerful world of beliefs above person and time. Well, that’s essentially what the Treatise is, a device that shows a positive world of beliefs that oppose Harry’s dysphoria. As we will see later, the Magic Theater shows the enactment of those beliefs. On a level of writing, Steppenwolf has layers: the Preface, Harry’s journals, the Treatise. As Ralph Freedman noted in his book The Lyrical Novel, this technique allowed Hesse to present a very inner view of a character in the context of a realist novel. In other words, Hesse could have written Steppenwolf a la James Joyce or Virginia Wolf, using the journals without the device of them being “found” by someone else. The book could just have been a portrait of Harry’s consciousness, but Hesse wrote in a different style. Till next time, all you Steppenwolves. Ow-ooh! #Steppenwolf #HermannHesse

Harry Haller’s purported journal begins with a description of his day—written in past tense, something we must return to later. He is, to put it mildly, rather glum. He describes suffering from physical pain, a headache, gout, all of which he attributes to old age—he is forty-seven. He writes of his anger at mediocrity, his desire to smash order, disrupt complacency. This has a very contemporary feel, and one can see how Tim Leary and later rebels would like this. He lives in a very orderly and bourgeois house, and delights at the contrast of his disordered room. He contemplates suicide. As a narrator, he is unlikable; it’s challenging to feel much compassion for such an old crank. He sees himself as old, diseased, hopeless. But Harry’s unique and perhaps redeeming feature is that he believes part of his nature is a Steppenwolf, a wolf of the steppes. Our trusty electronic dictionary tells us that the Steppe Wolf is a subspecies of grey wolf native to the Caspian steppes, the steppe regions of the Caucasus, the lower Volga region, southern Kazakhstan north to the middle of the Emba, and the steppe regions of the lower European part of the former Soviet Union. They are dangerous; they like to eat seals. They often carry rabies. Where do they find the seals? In consideration that the character of Harry, being a creation of the real author who wrote this in 1926, we could speculate that Hesse, a German who was a non-combatant in WW1, tried to come up with a frightening image for his character to admire. A predatory wolf from the steppes of Russia! Harry believes he has a dual nature, half highly civilized European aesthete, and half slavering beastie boy from the dangerous wild. It should be said though, that Harry never kills anyone (except in the Magic Theater, of course—more on that later). He feels this brutal and uncivilized side in his nature but is never violent. He does not behave like some sort of werewolf in the streets of the unnamed city he lives in. What he describes is that he wants to experience beautiful things, art, music, friendship, but always runs up against his wolf nature which ridicules him for liking beauty. Then when he feels more wolf-like, his human nature ridicules him for being an animal. He is rarely happy. The 1920’s were famous for being inhabited by the “lost generation” of men and women who experienced the technological and human horrors of WW1, and who subsequently found themselves unable to fit into postwar life. Ernest Hemingway comes to mind. "You are all a lost generation," he wrote as an epigraph for his 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises. T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Jean Rhys, and F. Scott Fitzgerald are other notable figures. And so is the Steppenwolf, a wild creature who must exist always on the fringes of society. However, Harry never makes mention of WW1, in fact, makes no mention of any historical events, a feature of the story I commented on last week. It tends to give the story a curious, timeless feel, making it a tale that could occur anytime. And anyplace, since there’s no anchoring of the story to a particular city or country. After the preface, in which the character narrator explains how the story should be read, we have a classic story beginning. Harry describes and shows his condition at the beginning of the story, before the events of the story change him. We have a good eight pages of description of his miserable existence before he happens (?) upon the Magic Theater, a place that will alter the course of his life. Another philosophical angle on Steppenwolf is existentialism. Yes, you read it right. The beginning of Harry’s story can be seen as a presentation of the existentialist concept of the longing for immediacy. Harry dreams of being a wolf, an animal with an immediate grasp of sensory reality without any mediation of consciousness. The wolf doesn’t think “Huh, I’m pretty hairy,” the wolf just is hairy. It has direct access to “reality.” In contrast, Harry the human (who may be hairy, ha, ha!)— Mindless alliteration. Sorry. (whiny voice—‘scuse me, Mr. Pretentious Bully. “Scuse me. Why do you put apostrophes around certain words?) Is that a “real” question? Heh, heh, heh. I’ve been asked about my usage of parentheses set around certain words. I do this to indicate the subjective nature of these words. For instance, there is not one “reality” that everyone more or less experiences. We all have our own perspective on reality, and this particularity is a key concept in modern fiction. (whiny voice—I think you do it to make fun of me.) Let’s move on. Harry the human, must be conscious of all the beauty he experiences, painfully aware that he can never immediately “be” in a Mozart sonata; he can only have a second-hand awareness of it, as in, “Now I am listening to Mozart.” This is the pain of Harry’s life, that he yearns for immediacy but can never attain it. And if he did attain it, he would be a wolf, not a human. The ancient philosopher Parmenides outlines this problem, writing that where a gap appears between words and things, the philosopher in search of Being tries to differentiate what is stable and instable in language, the permanent and the fluid, the “true” and the “deceptive.” (He liked using parentheses too). He persists in trying to sift Being from what he calls words or names, which he regards as a ceaseless flow of things at the level of language. Harry Haller has a lot of difficulty doing this “sifting,” and that annoys the heck out of him. ‘Kay. Next time, we’ll look at the inciting incident of the story, Harry’s discovery of the Magic Theater and of the Treatise on the Steppenwolf. Till “then.” Happy Thanksgiving! #Steppenwolf #HermannHesse

This week, a new book, Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, first published in 1927. I am using a Picador edition published in 1963 which features a revised version of the 1929 translation from German to English. So there. Hermann Hesse enjoyed a renaissance in the late 1960s and early 70s, sparked, I believe, by interest in his novel about the Buddha, Siddhartha. However, Steppenwolf was not just swept along on Siddhartha’s coattails. No. Viewed as a counterculture tale, its depictions of sexuality and of drug use made it a natural hit in the psychedelic era. Timothy Leary advised his disciples: “Before your LSD session, read Siddhartha and Steppenwolf.” The book is, in my opinion, not “pinned” very firmly to any particular time period, an idea I’d like to return to as we proceed. My own history with Steppenwolf goes back to those counterculture days. (whiny voice—I thought you read it in the 1920s). As I was saying, I’ll confess I first read the book because it was “cool” to do so. I was in high school, I believe, and got hold of the edition with the realist painting on the cover of a woman naked from the waist up. (Oh, please. Spare us your adolescent fantasies!) I was entranced by the strange story of Harry Haller and his associations with Hermine, Maria, Pablo, and the Magic Theater. Steppenwolf is a favorite; I’ve read it at least five times and have enjoyed the 1974 movie version starring Max Von Sydow. (It’s not a footstool, it’s an ottoman!) The version I’m reading now displays a thickly furred animal on the cover, although it’s at such close range, it’s hard at first to make the animal out, as the image looks abstract. A nice image that captures some of the ambiguous nature of the book, although the other image was pretty hot. After the title page and publication information, there is an “Author’s Note—1961” in which Mr. Hesse states that “of all my books Steppenwolf is the one that was most often and more violently misunderstood than any other…” He goes on to say he realizes a reader is free to make of a book what she/he will, however, “I would be happy, if many of them were to realize that the story of the Steppenwolf pictures a disease and a crisis—but not one leading to death and destruction, on the contrary: to healing.” As we read this story, I will muse on Mr. Hesse’s wish. The story proper begins with a preface, purportedly written by an unnamed nephew who lives in his aunt’s house, a house with a room she rents to a man named Harry Haller. It begins: “This book contains the records left us by a man whom, according to the expression he often used himself, we called the Steppenwolf. Whether this manuscript needs any introductory remarks may be open to question.” This narrator goes on at some length recording his “recollections” of the Steppenwolf before concluding and presenting what are described as certain notebooks written by Haller and left behind after his departure from the aunt’s house. These notebooks comprise the bulk of the story. An intriguing way to begin. The implied author employs a character narrator—who does not reappear—and raises the issue of whether his contribution is needed. I think it is. It represents the implied author offering a guide or template on how the Steppenwolf’s journals should be read. Imagine what a different reading experience it would be to skip this preface and begin with the journals. Dena gave me this idea from her reading of another book. A smart lady. (whiny voice—Mr. Big Shot, is this another adolescent fantasy? Did you skip the preface?) I have never skipped the preface but I imagine doing so would mean having much less context for reading the bulk of the novel. The narrator describes being very suspicious of Haller at first, to the point where he warns his aunt not to trust him. The narrator “snoops,” entering Haller’s rooms when he is not present and searching for trouble. But he then describes being gradually charmed by Haller, charmed and touched by his suffering and his noble struggles to express it. At the end of the preface, the narrator writes: “And now I have gossiped enough. No more is needed to show that the Steppenwolf lived a suicidal existence. But all the same I do not believe that he took his own life when, after paying all he owed but without a word of warning or farewell, he left our town one day and vanished. We have not heard from him since and we are still keeping some letters that came for him after he left. He left nothing behind but his manuscript. It was written during the time he was here, and he left it with a few lines to say that I might do what I liked with it…I have no doubt that they (the manuscript entries) are fictitious…They are rather the deeply lived spiritual events which he has attempted to express by giving them the form of tangible experiences…I have no doubt that even they have some basis in real occurrence.” So the reader is told how to read the book. At first, the character of Haller may seem strange, even dangerous but with time, his exquisite sensibility will emerge, making the reading of the text a valuable experience. The reader is exhorted to stay with something that may seem strange at first. Like sushi. The narrator’s contribution tends to increase the feeling of realism in the story. Even though the whole thing is written as a novel, a made-up story, the reader is told that, on the contrary, the journals are the writings of a “real” person. The reader is thrice removed from the real author, Hermann Hesse: once by the implied author, once by the narrator, who mediates between the journals and the reader, and once by Harry Haller, the journal’s author. ‘Kay. With this in mind, we begin. Next time, dear friends. #Steppenwolf #HermannHesse

An important idea is that reading a story changes the reader, that being with a story—and we should say, the implied author of the story—makes you a different, possibly better person. The implication here is not that there should be a Puritanical and censorious rule: “You are commanded to only read the Holy Scripture or Torah, because you are what you read!” It‘s more an acknowledgement that stories have an effect on us, one that it’s good to be aware of. If reading were not an important activity, then it would be no big deal what you read. If you read stories that show the violent exploitation of children and women, what effect does that have? Not a very good one, in my opinion. Although…it’s a bit more complicated. Lolita is a notorious example of a book that some people call pornography, others literature. I’ll just say that when I’ve read Lolita, I think it made me a better person, but not because I thought Humbert Humbert was a great guy. I thought his behavior was wrong, but was moved by the tragedy of the story, the tarnished humanity, I suppose, of a pedophile. A simpler example would be if an implied author wants to show a character killing someone, the act can be contextualized in different ways. Let’s say a character is a policeman who kills very bad people, people who are shown doing very bad things. Contrast that with a character who kills innocent victims, victims whose innocence is displayed. In the first case, the implied author probably wants the reader to feel satisfaction, in the second, unease. Well, you say, that’s all very fine but what of Casting Shadows? How do we feel spending time with the implied author of this story? What sort of experience does the story’s implied author want us to have? I think the answer is something like, if you read me, spend some time with me, I will move you emotionally. Make you happy, sad, frustrated. I will draw you in with my character’s vulnerability, the way her faults are exposed. You may or may not like her and what she does, but you will profit from the effort. How is this accomplished? Our friend Wayne Booth talks about how the title and first line of a story is an invitation to the reader. The first line of Casting Shadows is: “Now and then on the streets of my neighborhood I bump into a man I might have been involved with, maybe shared a life with.” There’s an immediacy of yearning here; the single sentence captures the way a lonely person is excited by somewhat random encounters. You learn quickly that this man is the husband of the narrator’s friend, but by then you already know that an affair between them doesn’t happen, it “might have” happened, and I believe this forestalls condemnation and dislike. Instead, you are given to understand that this is a story about how the narrator is attracted to the husband of her friend but does not have an affair with him. As we have seen, things become more complicated, and the narrator is perhaps not without some blame, but her errors are always cast in a sympathetic mold. Hey, nobody’s perfect. The implied author has the narrator tell the reader: “In spring I suffer…Every blow in my life took place in spring…of loss, of betrayal, of disappointment.” The reader learns that the narrator is melancholy, has had sad experiences. Some people, reading Casting Shadows, have complained that the story is a portrait of someone with “clinical depression.” This is perhaps legitimate, but I think the overall picture is more of someone with gravitas, someone who has had a range of experience and is alone. Again, this interpretation tends to blunt criticism of the narrator as a “bad” person. Not to excuse her desires, but to make her more likable, less an object, more a ”real” person. The next section elaborates on this theme. The narrator describes an encounter with her “ex, the only significant one.” Now she mostly sees his negative qualities, his fussiness, his pretension. She recalls his unfaithfulness to her, how he maintained a sort of double life, going from life with her to life with another woman. The narrator was badly treated, however…”even as my life shattered into pieces, I felt as if I were finally coming up for air.” A further view of the narrator as a sympathetic survivor. Now that the implied author has established some likable qualities in the narrator it’s time to show her dark side—a dark side now in context. She is a sad, lonely person who yearns for happiness. She follows her friend and the husband, listening in on their arguing. She goes on an outing with the husband when her friend is ill, becoming a sort of surrogate wife, and then waits for his call proposing they have an affair. As I’ve mentioned, she doesn’t express guilt or remorse, but does feel considerable anxiety over falling into “an abyss.” I think the story would have a much different feel if we did not have the earlier scenes of the narrator expressing sadness, loneliness, telling the unfortunate story of her failed marriage. Without the proper context, she could come off as an unlikable psychopath—but that is not the implied author’s intent. (Unlikable psychopath—are there likable psychopaths?) At the end, responding to a crisis, the narrator goes to walk her friend’s dog. Over several days, she walks the dog; she likes the dog: “…though he pulls me, I’m the one holding the leash. Every step puts distance between me and my infatuation until it’s no longer dangerous, until our romance, which never took hold to begin with, loses its hold over me.” So, reading Casting Shadows lets us spend time with a lonely and alienated person who yearns for connection, almost achieves it through illicit romance, but catches herself and accepts that it isn’t meant to be. I am touched by this story, by its style and by what it shows about people. I like the narrator even though I’m unhappy with her at points mid-story. She shows her vulnerabilities, and this helps me like her. Even though I don’t always find her honest, the implied author lets me know the truth. I think we’ll wrap up Chasing Shadows this week although there’s more to say about this beautiful story. One thing that comes to mind is its curious genesis: taken in discontinuous sections from a novel written in the Italian language, translated, and published in a major American literary magazine just before the publication of the Italian novel in English. A marketing ploy, some have said. I say this is a fantastic story on its own, a successful venture, but I wonder if this sort of thing will be repeated—crafting a short story from parts of a novel. Till next time. #CastingShadows #JhumpaLahiri

Last time, we were musing about what connects the sections in Casting Shadows, that there seems to be a pattern of the narrator describing a situation she’s in and then in the next section she writes of an emotional reaction that may be related to it. Often what seems significant is the reaction left out, and I dare say this gets us into the delicious topic of first-person narrator unreliability. For example, the narrator has been invited to go on an outing with her friend, the friend’s husband, and children but the friend falls ill and cannot go, so the narrator goes along on a trip dripping with romantic overtones. She wonders if the husband says she is “stunning” (he may say it, it’s ambiguous). She has a moment of panic at the thought that she and the husband may fall into an abyss together. Then in the next section, as I outlined last time, she recalls being clumsy and having difficulty balancing as a child. What seems left out is the range of her feelings. It would seem she might question herself at desiring her friend’s husband, feel guilt, that she might be angry at him for being so confusing, leading her on in a sense. In fact, the character of the husband is a curious one. Why is he leading the narrator on? Surely, he must realize they are attracted to one another, the scamp. The narrator is, shall we say, very available. Yet, as does the narrator, we only have his limited response to puzzle over. The narrator leaves a lot out of her narrative indeed. It seems at times to be a carefully manicured presentation that shows her unhappy and lonely, as well as simply desiring her friend’s husband without guilt or regret. In the next section, she admits to feeling “off-kilter” since seeing the guy. She wonders what it would be like “to take things further,” imagining the sound of his voice, the hair on the back of his hands. Not much guilt, my friend. She finally thinks of him phoning her and proposing they have an affair. Without any sense expressed of how acceptance would betray her friend, she waits actively for this call. However, when the call finally comes, it poses a much different request, the friend’s father is mortally ill, the couple has left to be with him; can the narrator walk their dog? Perhaps this is simply a good showing of the denial people experience when they’re considering an infidelity. But it doesn’t make the narrator likable. And, best beloved, she is unreliable in that she only describes one side of her innerness. Unless she’s a psychopath who doesn’t experience conflict, but I don’t think so. In Phelan’s sense, she is “underreporting” herself. She may be selfish; however, ultimately, in this story, there’s no affair. Instead, we have the delightful image of the narrator gluing a plate together, getting glue all over her hands, and laughing at herself. Yes, she’s glued her fingers together, but her predicament becomes funny. When that happens, I like her. Of course, what the narrator tells we the readers is determined by the implied author who structures the story. The implied author could show all possible facets of a character but in this case, chooses a limited range in order to create a particular, nuanced story. I think we should pause here, as our “blogship” is headed toward the sea of ethics—not in the traditional sense of a pronouncement of judgement on the “moral lessons” of a story, but in the sense of whether a story is a “good friend” in Wayne Booth’s formulation. Reading a story is compared to meeting someone: what is it like to meet and be with the implied author of Casting Shadows? Till then. Full speed ahead! #CastingShadows #JhumpaLariri

This week, a new story, Jhumpa Lahiri’s Casting Shadows, a short story or novel excerpt, published in the February 15th 2021 issue of The New Yorker. It was subsequently published as part of a full-length novel entitled Whereabouts. However, the text of Whereabouts, containing the short story, was first published in Italian in 2018, and then translated to English by Ms. Lahiri. Casting Shadows is not a continuous selection from Whereabouts but interestingly, comprised of various chapters put together. In a strict sense, then, it’s not a novel excerpt, but a short story put together from elements of a longer work. Isn’t a short story a different form than a novel, a form with particular and necessary features that can differentiate one from the other? P’rraps so. Ms. Lahiri appeared on New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman’s blog, reading and discussing “Casting Shadows.” Some have been critical of Ms. Lahiri and The New Yorker for this presentation of “Casting Shadows,” calling it a sort of promotional gimmick for her book. I shake my head sadly. Dena says that it’s very common for writers to have a short story and/or novel excerpt published in The New Yorker prior to publishing a book. It’s how the publishing/public relations business operates, and writers are entitled to be compensated for their work as much as anyone. I’m no fan of consumerism but I know that I’m very taken with “Crossing Shadows.” I think it’s wonderful. I like “Whereabouts” as well but wanted to write about “Crossing Shadows.” So there. The gauntlet is thrown. Readers of Crossing Shadows who are familiar with this blog will immediately note the presence of a first-person narrator who seems very close to the “real” author, Jhumpa Lahiri. Both are women living in Italy, divorced and middle-aged, so it’s easy to think that Ms. Lahiri is writing about herself in a sort of memoir. But what of the implied author, my dear? That entity created by the real author whom the reader believes wrote the story. That entity who expresses style and values? Do not blunder into this story without an awareness of the implied author. Oh, no. Casting Shadows is presented as fiction. If you look at the index for that issue of The New Yorker, it says: Jhumpa Lahiri Casting Shadows. Fiction. We are asked to believe that it’s fiction. Our time of the cult of personality, when authors are asked to create marketable personas to sell their work, can make it that much harder to separate the “real” author from the implied author and the narrator. I suppose a “marketable persona” is another entity mediating between the flesh and blood author and the market. Huh. We’ll need to consider the implied author’s presence, but first, something else. In Living To Tell About It, James Whelan makes an interesting distinction between traditional and what he calls lyric narrative: “In traditional narrative, in the logic of connected events: one thing happens which leads to another thing and so on until the author finds some way to resolve the sequence. In lyric narrative…the logic of event gives way to the logic of revelation and exploration of a character’s emotions and attitudes in a particular situation. The movement from beginning to end typically follows the movement of the speaker’s thoughts, but these thoughts are not typically a review of his or her identity and situation. Instead, as the speaker’s thoughts follow their apparently autonomous direction, the author finds a way to convey to the reader a rounded awareness of the speaker’s character and situation.” I believe Casting Shadows has characteristics of both traditional and lyric narrative but weighs in more heavily on the lyric side. The events or scenes of the story do not always seem connected except by the narrator’s presence, but there is movement and a kind of resolution of the narrator’s unrest. An example, please. The story begins: “Now and then on the streets of my neighborhood I bump into a man I might have been involved with, maybe shared a life with.” A nice beginning—it immediately raises a question: why might the narrator have been involved with this fellow? Why is she not? And the story provides an answer. The story does not begin: “I see this guy in my neighborhood, maybe we’ll get involved, maybe not.” That would raise a different question: will they, or won’t they? The first section continues with a fine image of the chaste couple observing and trying to photograph the shadows of pedestrians walking along a riverbank. “Then we, too, become two shadows projected onto the wall…” The title, Casting Shadows, of course, refers to this. The next section or scene is marked off with a paragraph break. It continues: “In spring I suffer. The season doesn’t invigorate me, I find it depleting.” This section is about the narrator’s seasonal dysphoria and allergies—perhaps it relates to the first scene, perhaps not. There’s no mention of the man, no sense of how much time has passed. In any case, it tells we readers more about the narrator. In the logic of reading and storytelling, we readers want to believe it does connect somehow. What does the narrator not get that the implied author communicates to we the readers? One thing is the episodic nature of the story, the discrete scenes, some almost like journal entries, that are delineated by paragraph breaks. The narrator gives no sense of awareness of these breaks, these sporadic glimpses. It is the implied author who structures them for us to understand. What is communicated? That the narrator is telling someone and/or herself about particular events and personal reactions in a poetic prose style. That these events and reactions are discrete phenomena that the narrator relates in small sections that begin and end. That there must be a process of selection, so that a great many potential things are simply not related by the narrator. This is not a continuous narrative; it stops and starts by some logic that we may be able to infer. As I said, we want to believe the sections connect and will struggle to make them connect, to perceive their over-arching order. In regard to this, it seems to me that there is a pattern of an event reported, say of the narrator acting as a sort of wife-surrogate to the fellow mentioned above, and then the next section describing the narrator’s memories of being unsuccessful at childhood games of balance, games where she was “…terrified that I would fall, even though I never did.” In the previous scene, she was terrified that she and the man would fall together into an abyss. Well, best beloved, the clock on the clubhouse wall says it’s time to go, so let’s pick up on this next time. Till then. #CastingShadows #JhumpaLahiri

This week, as we wrap up our reading of Three Horses, a little background on the concept of the implied author. (Whiny voice: Are you kidding me?) Wayne Booth was the first to coin this term in The Rhetoric of Fiction, where he defines it as a second self that a writer creates in the construction of a text. He quotes Jessamyn West: “Writing is a way of playing parts, of trying on masks, of assuming roles, not for fun but out of desperate need, not for the self’s sake but for the writing’s sake.” Booth goes on: “However impersonal he (the author) may try to be, his reader will inevitably construct a picture of the official scribe who writes in this manner—and of course that official scribe will never be neutral toward all values. Our reactions to his various commitments, secret or overt, will help determine our response to the work.” James Phelan says: “In Booth’s view, an author will necessarily construct a version of himself or herself…as someone with certain attitudes, beliefs, and values, and these matters necessarily inform the narrative text. Implied authors cannot choose whether to be neutral or positive, they can choose only the ways in which they will express their partisanship.” Booth—cited by Phelan—"makes three main points: The implied author is the source for the assumptions, beliefs, norms, meanings, and purposes of the text. Every feature of that text can be understood as a stroke in the service of the implied author’s portrait. The reader’s task is to reconstruct both the implied author and his or her assumptions, beliefs, norms, meanings, and purposes.” I have previously thought of the implied author as a book’s style, but the above definitions expand this to produce a richer palette that includes ethics. I believe there is a question from the audience. Yes. (whiny voice: Mr. Pretentious Bully, ‘scuse me. Are you the first person narrator of this blog?) I suppose so. Yes. Don’t call me that. (Then aren’t you unreliable the way you’ve been saying? The answer has to be yes, so why should we pay any attention to what you’re saying? It’s all made up, anyway. Mr. Big Shot) Beloved whiny voice, yes, first-person narrators of fiction are often unreliable, but this blog is not fiction, and in any case, much of what first-person narrators say is reliable. (Cold, objective voice: Are you an implied author?) There is an implied author of this blog, let’s call it Mr. Bray, but I am the narrator. Could we move on? (Whiny voice: It is all fiction. You make it all up.) ‘Kay, let’s search for traces of the implied author in Three Horses, its values, assumptions, beliefs, norms, and style. A distinct style is evident. An unnamed narrator tells the story in first person voice and relentlessly present tense—even when writing about the past. “At twenty, I have no knowledge of embraces and I decide to wait.” The language is poetic and at times, elliptical, although some of this may be due to Michael Moore’s fine translation to English. Not all of it, though. “Beneath the weathered cardboard of my face, I feel the face I used to have…I tell her that what she has to do is bring to the boy from the old days the embrace she conceals inside…What I tell her, in other words, is: I’m not me. “If you’re not you,” she says. “you never were you.” We learn from Michael Moore that De Luca is very interested in translating the Hebrew Old Testament to Italian. Alas, I’m no expert on the language of the Old Testament, but my guess is that its style influences Three Horses. Many paragraphs begin with the subject pronoun, “I,” which serves to heighten the sense of first-person narration, as in, “I am doing something.” There is a smooth transition from an imperfect to perfect or specific mood. The story begins in imperfect. “I only read used books” This is not a specific scene, a particular point in time. It refers to an on-going activity. The passage continues: “I turn docile pages, slow morsels, then I tear my head away from the white of the paper and the tablecloth…passing behind the two black pupils of a woman…They’re staring straight at me.” This is a beautiful example of moving from a non-specific time into a specific scene, and Three Horses has many of these. How does the implied author ask us to judge the narrator and the others? What values are expressed? Three Horses has to do very much with issues of right and wrong. The epigram at the beginning comes to mind: “Woe to those who do not practice their purity ferociously.” The narrator’s story is a lot about the woe he experiences because he failed Dvora in Argentina, and now has a chance at a ferocious redemption with Laila. But his chance is ironically “stolen” by Selim, who acts out of a need to reciprocate generosity. These three characters are potentially morally compromised people—the narrator and Selim are murderers, and Laila is an escort who must sell herself to earn money. However, the implied author indicates that all three are to be seen as righteous, that certain killings are justified, and that Laila is more a victim than anything else. The man Selim kills is shown as being relentlessly evil in a one-dimensional way. How different the story would be if he were shown as having a kind side—his killing, and the characters’ actions, would be very much morally compromised. There is a value conveyed of reciprocating generosity, of the need to “square things up” with others in an ethical way. If I help you, I must allow you to help me in return. And there is a strong value concerning the dignity of manual work and of workers, of growing things. All of us involved in writing this blog are grateful to Signore De Luca for Three Horses. Next week, a new adventure. Till then. #ThreeHorses #ErriDeLuca

The narration in Three Horses is written in first person. After all, the very first word is “I,” as in “I only read used books.” Is this narrator unreliable, that is to say, sometimes mistaken? A tricky question, because the entire book is written from this protagonist’s perspective. It’s hard to know if he’s sometimes mistaken—all the reader gets is him. Maybe he sometimes reads new books—we the readers don’t know. One of the characteristics of first-person narration is unreliability. The idea is that a narrator who is an “I” will invariably display some error in his narration because she/he cannot know all the inner workings of other characters, let alone the intentions of the implied author. (Heh, heh, heh—I immediately and cleverly slip in a reference to the implied author). So, what can we the readers do? One thing is to look at the other key characters for evidence the narrator is occasionally mistaken. Laila is the alluring woman whom the narrator meets in the book’s first scene. Despite being with another gent, she makes a point of meeting our narrator and slips him her phone number; even he wonders why. “What does a fine woman like her want from a fifty-year old gardener sitting in the corner of a tavern?…I’m here by accident…This is the first time she’s come by.” So, the narrator is approached by a younger woman who gives him her phone number, and he wonders briefly what it’s about, but apparently chalks it up to his charm and gives her a call. She says: “I want to see you again.” He says: “I’m fifty and I’m a gardener.” She says: “All right. When?” At this point, many readers might wonder, what’s going on here? Can we just believe the narrator is a charming guy, or must we be suspicious—perhaps more so than the trusting narrator? They make plans to have dinner at her place. The narrator muses: “What is Laila like. I try to imagine. She’s someone who looks me up and down, a general who from a thousand-soldier formation can pick out the men to raise through the ranks…Maybe she likes the kind of guy at a tavern who turns pages.” It’s apparent here that the narrator is trying to make sense of why she’s picked him. He believes she sees something desirable in him, that she’s attracted to a man who reads. When the narrator calls her, she enters quickly into a passionate affair with him—except when she’s engaged as an escort. When he asks her about her work, she says she makes a living from men: “I go out with men for money.” She says: “Men never fall in love with a working girl.” He responds: “Maybe her customers don’t, I say, but a ne’er-do-well gardener like me just might.” Again, the curious reader might wonder a little at this. An attractive woman who works as an escort falls head over heels for an older guy who works as a gardener. There’s no suggestion he’s wealthy. She likes him for who he is. Wait! Wait! He’s also an ex-soldier and adventurer who is not unfamiliar with violence. Later, falling asleep after lovemaking, the narrator talks elliptically about having been a soldier, having been violent. Laila apologizes. “She hugs me, repeats that she’s sorry. I don’t know what for. I don’t ask.” No, he doesn’t ask. The answer would no doubt be interesting, no? He gradually tells her several stories from his past, that he was a fighter against the junta in Argentina, that he killed people, was on the run. She is very accepting. “What do you think of my stories?” I ask. “I love them,” she says. “It’s my job to make men talk…With you, I listen freely, I listen and learn to love the life that is on your face.” (breaks into song: I don't want clever conversation I never want to work that hard, mmm I just want someone that I can talk to I want you just the way you are) (Loud crashes, glasses breaking. Shouting. Oh no, I’m sorry, best beloved. Can I have the microphone back? I promise—no more singing.) After an absence, Laila dramatically says she needs to speak to the protagonist. “I have something to tell you.” “Laila speaks of a man to kill or be killed.” “I can’t take anymore. He’s onto me, is watching me…This is not the kind of job you’re allowed to quit. When you can’t do it anymore, you either run away or die.” Laila continues: “Otherwise he’ll kill me. Because I don’t want to continue anymore and as a free woman he thinks I’m dangerous. And he knows about you and this is making things risky for you.” Last time, we looked at what happens next. The narrator resolves to kill the menacing man because the narrator has killed before and wants to spare Laila. She accepts this, telling him not to “mess things up.” Then Selim intervenes. The narrator has ignored Selim’s protestations over the narrator’s generosity. Again, as we looked at last week, he gives Selim flowers to sell and resists any attempt at payment. Eventually, Selim gets kind of solemn and grumpy and takes matters into his own hands. The narrator is stunned. A lot goes on in the story that the reader doesn’t know because everything is filtered through the narrator, and he is, best beloved, sometimes oblivious. He seems clear that he’s changed his life and entered his third “horse” alone, overlooking the fact that Laila knows where he lives and may track him down the way she has before. Unless of course, the point is that she’s done with him because he got rid of her nemesis. In that case, he really was tricked by her. We do not know. What a different story Three Horses would be if it were told from Selim’s perspective, or Laila’s. As I said, in Three Horses everything is told from the narrator’s perspective. He is the entity that sees, in Gerard Genette’s formulation. But who perceives? The implied author, my friends. It is the implied author who arranges the story so that the reader can understand that the guileless narrator doesn’t "get" everything about Laila and Selim. He sees but does not see all. The implied author perceives the difference. He does not tell the reader; he shows. But no, a reader objects. There is only the text. You cannot make up this entity called an implied author and attribute perception to it. Stop it! Tricky stuff, my friends—yes, even the reader who objected is my friend. Let’s look at this more next time. Till then, you happy few! #ThreeHorse #ErriDaLuca

Besides Laila, the other key character in Three Horses is Selim, a man whom the narrator befriends and helps, acts of kindness which have consequences. Like Laila, Selim is only seen through the narrator’s perspective. He first appears a quarter of the way into the book. The narrator has gone to work at the garden. “A tall man, African, older, calls to me from the gate…I let him in and invite him to the toolshed for a coffee.” The two men sit and talk, and finally the narrator asks if he can help with anything. Selim asks if he can have some of the flowers to sell in bouquets, and the narrator gives him “a good armful.” Selim wants to pay, but the narrator says no, adding: “So treat me to a bottle of wine when the blossoms are gone, we’ll drink it together.” The narrator does not note Selim’s reaction, apparently assuming he’s merely grateful. After several days, Selim comes to the garden to pick up more flowers. He wants to pay, he’s earned something. “Forget about it. Without you the blossoms would still be here, inside a closed garden. You, instead, do the wind’s work. You scatter them far, pin them to women’s breasts. It would be exploitation if I took a percentage from the wind. Pay for drinks one night.” ‘Kay. Despite his “flowery” rhetoric, the narrator is a generous dude. But he’s missing something that’s implied from the dialogue and scenes, something we will pick up later. I promise you. An important theme in the story is that there is a need to discharge obligation. After several days and nights of hanging out with Laila and remembering the traumatic past, the narrator is once again at work when Selim appears. They sit before a fire of laurel twigs and drink coffee. “With a remaining branch, he (Selim) pokes at a corner. ‘The ashes say that you have to leave.’” (Selim says). “…I look at the shifted embers that hum with a whispering of oak, like Laila’s voice, but rather than make me speak they want me to listen. I’m initially annoyed by this earthen horoscope from downcast black eyes. I swallow, saying only that I have no place I’m trying to reach. ‘Here no one is following me and no one is waiting for me elsewhere.” “You have to leave.” “I don’t leave anymore. Now my verb is to stay. There’s also a woman to love.” “You have to leave…The ashes are blood, including yours shed beside it. The ashes don’t say love.” The narrator does not remark on the connection with his initial description of the fellow menacing Laila (on the first page) “he wears “a hint of ash.” However, after this, the narrator puts Selim’s warning together with Laila’s saying that the man who is menacing her must die. Then the gardener seems to integrate much of the trauma he experienced in Argentina, and out of this healing he resolves to kill Laila’s foe. “I know the evil of killing before her so I can spare her the trouble. I’ll go. I have to be quick. There’s nothing to prepare. I’ll go and pull it off tonight, like Argentina.” As he prepares to leave the garden to find this man, Selim appears. “At noon I have to go somewhere, I’m not going to the tavern,” I tell him. “I’m coming with you,” he says. They go and see where the man lives, then return to the garden. Selim speaks: “You don’t want my money, you don’t want the wine for my debt. That’s how you keep someone tied to you, not set him free. You say no to a man and don’t give him the peace of repayment. I have to honor my pledge. You have to be friends with men and you have to be even.” He prepares to leave. It’s apparent to the reader—if not to the narrator—that Selim wants to be treated as an equal and not given stuff, even out of generosity. The narrator is oblivious. Selim says: “The time for wine is over, man. I’m taking away the last bundle of my debt. I will repay you all at once.” Selim leaves. After several hours, the narrator returns to the menacing man’s house, intending to kill him. But he’s disabled all of a sudden by a severe bloody nose. A doctor helps him and tells him—not knowing who he is—that the man he came to kill is already dead. An African man pulled the man from his car and cut his throat. So, the narrator realizes that Selim killed the man in order to repay a debt of gratitude. Of course, it’s…let’s say, ironic (homage to Jordan Catalano) that they both emit a lot of blood. (One of them too much). Selim’s prophecy is fulfilled. The narrator takes the train home. There, “in the darkness of the kitchen, my second horse dies…The people of a year migrate in a day, no more hold-me’s or olive pits…I stay behind. At least tonight I don’t touch the emptiness they have left.” Hold-me’s or olive pits refers to Laila and Selim—the people of the narrator’s last year who have moved on. (Laila makes no further appearance although we might wonder what happens next, as she knows where the narrator lives and has proven herself not to be shy). The narrator stays behind, entering the third horse, or period, of his life. He has apparently put closure on his life as a violent rebel. Someone running from his past. The narrator says: “I take the book stopped at a fold, deliver myself to its pace, to the breathing of the other storyteller. If I am someone else, it’s also because books move men more than journeys and years. “After many pages you end up learning a variant, a different move than the one taken and thought inevitable.” ‘Kay. A very good “meta” comment on reading and writing. The narrator is saying he believed his life would be different, specifically that he would kill Laila’s foe. Instead, because of his acts of generosity to Selim, another man has taken up the burden of being a killer. Not what he planned. He has been “moved” by the book he’s in, by the implied author, best beloved. In the final paragraph, the narrator puts the book he’s been reading inside his jacket pocket. “Where the gun used to be, now there is its opposite.” We can recall that the first line of the book also references books and reading. “I only read used books.” Even though I always speak in the present tense, I only exist in a story that has already been told. Whoa! Enigma. The theme of discharging obligation is picked up nicely in what transpires between the narrator and Laila. The narrator feels he failed Dvora in Argentine, failing to protect her from evil men. He owes her, he is “tied” to her, but she is dead, and there is no way to discharge the debt till he meets Laila and says, “Aha! Now I can discharge my obligation.” (He doesn’t really say that). Next week, now that we’ve discussed two of the main relationships in the book, let’s look more closely at the narrator’s style, and if he is, on occasion, fooled by the other characters. Till then. #ThreeHorses #ErriDeLuca

Usually, in this blog, I don’t want to merely describe the plots of the books I discuss in the manner of a book review. My purpose is to examine structures in fiction, particularly narrational strategies. But the plot in Three Horses really demands some explication before we can proceed. Because of the book’s style, the story is not immediately clear. An unnamed narrator, self-described as a fifty-year old gardener, encounters a younger woman named Laila in a restaurant. She gives him her phone number; he’s flattered by the attention and curious. He states he’s working as a gardener for a man he used to know, who has become quite successful. The narrator says: “…he asks about me, but I don’t dwell on my misadventures in Argentina, the unbridled wrongs, the search for life.” The reader knows from the book’s foreword that the story is about the dark period in Argentina’s history, its “immensity of places and events,” and how they’re “connected to the accidents that befell people in this story.” So, at this point, the careful reader (who has read the foreword) perceives that the narrator had misadventures in Argentina during the time of the rebellion against the junta. ‘Kay. The narrator calls Laila. They have dinner at her place. Then, the narrator says to her: “A woman comes to see me some time ago…She wants to hear some news about me, wants to see if two pieces of time match up…I tell her that what she has to do is bring to the boy from the old days the embrace she conceals inside…What I tell her, in other words, is: I’m not me. “…I tell this story and Laila asks why.” ‘Kay. Laila asks this guy to come over for dinner, and they…appreciate each other as a man and a woman. Then he’s telling her a story about a different woman he met. And Laila asks the narrator why he is telling her the story. Reasonable. He replies: “I see old poets receiving prizes for verses written in their youth. None of them says, ‘It’s not me.’ I can’t act like them. “The only thing I manage to say is, ‘It’s not me,’ and I drink the wine left in the woman’s glass.” There’s a paragraph break, and then: I place my hand over the glass in front of me, which is better than the hand from that earlier time.” One way for the reader to make sense of this passage is that the narrator is intentionally telling Laila in the form of a story that he has changed; he is no longer like his youthful self who was rebelling against the government and capable of violence. I’m not me, is what he says. The hand he has now is better than the hand from that earlier time. The only problem is that so far, he’s not told Laila anything about his past. If the narrator is trying to let her know he’s not the right guy to protect her from violence, it’s not because she’s asked him or even told him she’s in danger. In the book’s logic, he just “knows” these things. In any case, they make love, and after, he’s telling her about his days in Argentina. What were you doing there? she asks. “War.” “Her voice becomes rough, sandpaper rubbing against wood. I feel sleepy but I start talking…There’s something in me that you find in many men of the world: loves, gunshots, thorny sentences and no desire to talk…Living is what matters, looking at the palm of your hand at night and knowing that tomorrow it will be fresh again…” Then, Laila apologizes. “She hugs me, repeats that she’s sorry. I don’t know what for, I don’t ask.” So, it would seem that, somewhat out of synchronous time, the narrator does tell the “real” Laila that he was a soldier who killed. And then she apologizes—why? Because she believes she’s forced a sort of confession out of him? One she needs to know? She needs a man to help her; she is in danger from another man. The narrator can “rescue” her. She’s not helpless but needs an ally. That’s why she picked him. Quite possibly, best beloved. The narrator gradually makes a distinction between the “real’ Laila in the present and other women he’s been intimate with in the past. However, he repeatedly enters a trance state usually triggered by the “sandpaper” quality of Laila’s voice, and in this state, tends to mix the past up with the present in a PTSD kind of way. Memories break through the bonds that usually hold them locked away. In fact, Laila is a sort of magnetic force that draws out his past. The narrator lives his life in Italy, tending a garden, eating great food and doing good deeds but generally avoiding the traumatic past. Then he meets a woman who, fairly aggressively and lovingly, shakes the truth out of him. She may have ulterior motives for doing so, and she may also care for him. Since the story is told entirely from the narrator’s perspective, we must infer Laila’s motivations. (More on this to come). Eventually, Laila tells the narrator that she wants to leave the man she is involved with professionally (she’s an escort), and that the man senses this and will murder her. So, she says, she will become like the narrator—violent—and kill the man first. The narrator enters one of his delusional states (sorry, there’s no other way to describe it), and, believing Laila to be the same person as his lover Dvora, murdered by the Argentine junta, resolves that he will murder the man who is menacing Laila. The narrator says he failed her (Dvora) once before, now he has a chance to redeem himself by killing to protect her. Laila accepts this, but tells him: “Don’t mess things up.” (which I think is unintentionally—or maybe intentionally—funny). I realize this attempt at describing the story may make it seem ridiculous. If that’s so, I am truly sorry. It’s an exquisite book, but a little wacky too. The narrator sets out to assassinate Laila’s enemy but finds him already murdered by the narrator’s friend, Selim. Next time, let’s take a look at why Selim does this, entirely, of course, through the narrator’s perspective. #ThreeHorse #ErriDeLuca

As mentioned last week, Erri De Luca, the author of Three Horses, states he can only write about things he’s experienced, placing himself more in the camp of writers who admonish everyone to “write what you know.” The issue has become very partisan, with believers and dis-believers regarding each other with steely-eyed hatred over a middle ground of the undecided. It’s always good to mention Ernest Hemingway, so let’s do. “Papa” was a writer who embodied “write what you know,” although he was also highly skilled at self-promotion. (the two are not mutually exclusive). In any case, he promoted himself as the hyper-masculine author of fiction written about the hyper-masculine. Whether it was bullfighting or military combat, womanizing or drinking, he did as his protagonists did, aggressively trying to erasing the differences between his book’s narrators and their author. Were his protagonists copying him or was he copying his protagonists? Wow! At the opposite end of things, we have someone like Ann Patchett, who wants to learn about realities she’s unfamiliar with but interested in so as to write about them. Thus, in Bel Canto, Ms. Patchett wrote about an opera singer involved in a South American insurrection—neither of them experiences Ms. Patchett has had. Signore De Luca would, I think, not be amused. Hemingway would start a brawl. There are some similarities between Hemingway and De Luca, although I hasten to add De Luca is a more modern author and handles sexual/intimate relations in a multi-dimensional fashion. But, you ask, when the narrator and real author seem very close, what becomes of the implied author? It chugs along with as much swagger as it does in any book but is more elusive. Still there, but harder to detect. And this is true in Three Horses, my friends. Especially since the narrator is never named, it’s easy to think of him as Erri De Luca. He (the narrator) is a fifty-year old Italian man living in Italy in the late 1980s—roughly the same age as Signore De Luca was at that time. The narrator cares sincerely about injustice, the plight of migrants and refugees, the mis-treatment of women. About the trees and plants he tends in his job as a gardener, he talks to them, lays hands on them to help them thrive. He has a history of being—not only a member of the opposition in Argentina—but also a working man, a union man, with some knowledge of the dramatic strikes at the Fiat plant in Turin. Other men recognize his toughness, his authenticity, and aid him. When you read about the real Erri De Luca, there is nothing to make you think he is any different than this protagonist of his novel—except he was not in Argentina. However, we don’t know if the real man has the same character and feelings as the protagonist. It’s possible, it’s also possible that the protagonist is the person the real man dreams of becoming. But—and this a big but—could the real author be as relentlessly righteous as the protagonist? Does he think and speak like this? “Faces are writings.” (Laila is speaking: now comes the protagonist). “Hands are too,” I say, “and clouds, tiger pelts, peapods, and the leaping of tuna on the water’s surface are writings. We learn alphabets and don’t know how to read trees. Oaks are novels, pines are grammar books, grapevines psalms, ramblers proverbs, firs the closing remarks of a defense lawyer. Cypresses are accusations, rosemary a song, laurel a prophecy.” Well, Laila seems to like this. If I spoke this way to Dena, she’d probably interpret it accurately as joking and/or irony. Three Horses shows the protagonist speaking in this poetic/Biblical style throughout (more on this another time). He is never shown saying more mundane things like “How’s it going?” or “See ya later.” Is this realistic? No, it’s not supposed to be. It’s the style, the elusive implied author showing particular instants from a character’s life. Selected instants, best beloved. Idealized instants when the protagonist says and does the exact right thing to tell the story. This passage is a nice example of fictional discourse that does not really impart important information about what the characters are going to do or are doing, i.e. plot. Instead, (especially in a character-driven story) it gives the reader a sense of who the characters are, and of what the book’s style is like. In the reality of Three Horses, the characters speak this way to each other. In the reality of our lives, to have someone speak to you in this way would be maddening. Here’s a further example of how the protagonist and Laila speak: “I can’t imagine living without you, gardener, even if I wring my imagination out. I can think cool-headedly about ambushes, about moving quickly so that I get there before him…But what I can’t do is see beyond you.” “Laila, for you I am a steam-powered love, the force that moved the first trains, the first ships without sails.” “Steam powered love is good for one era.” “You go through many and now you’re in the early nineteen-hundreds. You have to wage your war and if you come back alive, then will come the electric loves, turbo-powered. You can’t see them from here.” “The love I bring you is the kind that burns slowly, like a good wood or coal-burning furnace. It’s good for departures.” “Your thirty years have been still for a while.” … “My steam-powered love, we’ll look at unclouded days, and if I manage to live, I’ll look for your rain-pipe island.” Hmmm. Curious, no? They are talking about something very serious, their planned murder of the man who is menacing Laila. But you almost wouldn’t know that from what they say. They seem to be talking more at each other, rather than to each other. It’s a bit like actors reading lines where each line is more intended for the audience than the other actor in the scene. Ooh. With apologies to Signore De Luca (and great respect), I think he’s overstating the case when he claims he only writes what he knows. I believe he wants to sound particularly authentic and righteous, qualities he seems to personally value. Yes, it’s believable that he’s experienced close approximations of many of the situations in Three Horses, but no, he did not somehow “live the story.” Three Horses belongs to a genre of novels that read like memoir but are not. In a sense, they are “disguised” so as to appear more authentic. I believe it is impossible to be a purist about “write what you know” and write fiction. If you only write what you yourself have experienced, you’re not writing fiction—which is by nature created, “made-up”—you’re writing memoir. #ThreeHorses #ErriDeLuca