The narrational style of Now We Shall Be Entirely Free shifts from beginning to end. We’ve talked about how, in the beginning, it is classic omniscient, the narrator inhabiting many of the characters’ consciousness to show the story. As things develop, though, there is an increasing focus on just two, Lacroix, the protagonist, and Calley, the antagonist. A central character, Emily, who becomes Lacroix’s partner, is always shown in traditional third person narration; the reader never has access to her private thoughts, only by inference from her speech and actions. Ernesto Medina is the only other character who is inhabited by the narrator beyond the middle of the book. This style of narration is often called close third-person. · It uses third person pronouns, but moves the point of view from outside of the characters to inside of a single character’s psyche, where emotions, thoughts, and assumptions become available, and where tactile details and actions external to the character are filtered through that characters’ individual experience. · It tells the tale in the individual characters’ voice, not in the voice of a consistent narrator (or author). What effect does this shift have? There is an end to omniscience, and, as a result, many of the characters become more mysterious. Emily for instance, by virtue of always being shown from others’ perspective—almost always Lacroix, although there is an intriguing “sighting” of her by Medina. Come to think of it, Emily is always mysterious—without sight but able to “see.” (Check out that ending). The shift tightens the focus on the two central characters and increases the reader’s rapport with them. The story tacks back and forth between the two up to their final confrontation, which is all Lacroix’s point-of-view. I think if the omniscient narration had been maintained throughout, darting in and out of Emily, Ranald, Captain Browne, Jane, and Cornelius, et al, the story would have lost focus and tension. However, it’s worth noting that the omniscient narration contributes to the book’s initial early nineteenth century style. The style shifts to a more modern mode—obviously not what a nineteenth-century book would have done. Does rigor and discipline suffer? Give me a break. The close third person narration that develops is wonderfully suited to showing the drama of the latter part of the book. Calley gets closer and closer to his target—Lacroix—and at the same time, seems to express more vulnerability, telling Medina more about his terrible childhood. When he kills Medina, it seems to be almost a crime of passion due to the intimacy that has developed. Medina tells Calley he is going to leave him; Medina’s inner consciousness reveals he thinks Calley is nuts. And Calley murders him, apparently because he rebels against Calley’s control. Like an abusive husband faced with a wife who refuses further domination, he reacts with extreme violence. The close third person allows the story to express the complexity of Calley’s emotion. “When you were small,” said Medina. “A boy. Who was your friend?” Calley made a noise, something connected to laughter but not laughter…”There were other boys,” he said. “In the yard. I can’t remember our games.”…Each man’s face was a thing of fire and shadow. After he shoots Medina, Calley continues conversations with him (Gollum-like, my precious). “He dug deep in one of his many pockets, pulled out the brass case…He was not sure Medina had seen him palm it. ‘Did you see me, you sly dog?’ And he grinned and thought, I’d give it to him now, if he were here, if he wanted it.” Perhaps that is how many murderers think of their victims. I don’t know. It’s interesting how after the last scene in Calley’s head—when he walks on water to the island where Lacroix is going—he fades into one-dimensionality, becoming monster-like, which is the way Lacroix experiences him. Lacroix is shown confessing his guilt regarding the atrocities in Spain to Emily, whom he loves. It is in many ways the climax of the book. As mentioned last week, Emily disconfirms Lacroix’s sense of guilt, and in fact, shows him just how she feels about him. “I do not know how to judge any of this. It is not for me to judge it…But I do not feel disgraced by knowing you. Nor do I wish to be free of you.” (A nice echo of the title). Lacroix’s confession apparently only strengthens her affiliative feelings—I say apparently because we have no access to her consciousness, only to her behavior. Then too, Lacroix is shown grappling with the appalling realization that Calley is after him. Throughout the story, Lacroix has felt wracked by guilt and deserving of punishment. Now, after having been forgiven by Emily, he learns that a real-life nemesis is after him, a crazed killer whom he’s warned to kill quickly because he’ll only get one chance. Whatever his own worth is, he feels he must protect Emily, especially after Calley assaults the saintly Ranald. Because of the shift in narratorial style, the book becomes more modern. Whereas in the beginning the reader has a sense of being told a story from long ago, at the end, there is a contemporary feel that contributes to immediacy and emotional engagement. #NowWeShallBeEntirelyFree

Literary theorist Roland Barthes developed a distinction in literature between readerly and writerly texts. He believed most texts are readerly texts, defined as those where meaning is fixed so that the reader is called upon to essentially read. (Whiny voice—"Question, Mr. Big Shot. What else would you do with a book, except read it?”). In readerly texts, standard representations and structure are used to hide any elements that would open the text to multiple meaning. (You got to answer my question. You promised). Very well, if you’ll just listen. A writerly text, in contrast, reveals those hidden elements, so that the reader must become a more active participant in meaning-making. (More pretentious double-talk, is what I call it). But you see, despite your annoying interruptions, best beloved, you are demonstrating my point. You are actively making meaning of what I’m saying. (Then I’m going to be quiet. I refuse to continue being a part of this reckless caper! And I’m not your best beloved). The last novel we examined, A Sport and a Pastime, is, I believe, a fine example of a writerly book. The reader is presented with an ambiguous situation and must draw her/his own conclusions. Are Dean and Anne-Marie real or are they creations of the lonesome narrator? The story offers no clear yes or no. The reader must decide for themselves, and this is different than reading a story that offers answers. So, yes, best beloved, let’s say there are different kinds of reading. (Silence). “Dick and Jane watch Spot. Run Spot, run!” Here, the reader approaches a brief narrative. There are three actors; two of them, one with a historically male name, one female, observe the third, who has a name often given to a dog. Especially if the reader is familiar with the Dick and Jane stories, the readerly interpretation is simple. There is little ambiguity. However, there is a hidden narrator observing the actors, who are opaque, their motivations for watching Spot and his for running, unclear. Without further context, the lack of information would cause many readers to make meaning of what they’d read, creating explanations for what the characters were doing. Dick and Jane could be happily playing with the family dog, or they could be trying to catch an animal in order to kill and eat it. Much is determined by context I believe Now We Will Be Entirely Free is essentially a readerly text, which is not in any sense a criticism. It is a classification. Apples are not better than oranges, only different. The text is a beautifully written story with a strong plot and interesting characters. But as one reads, the meanings are gently well-defined and closed to interpretation. The narrator of the story is assured; there is never a sense that she/he is unreliable. She/he tells the story as if it really happened. Of necessity, the story must begin in more open fashion. It takes time and page-space to establish what’s going on and to close off possible alternative meanings. Lacroix is shown as blaming himself for the atrocities that occurred in Spain. It is not till quite a ways into the book that Lacroix tells the story of what happened, confessing it to Emily. Up to that point, the reader is shown Lacroix’s guilt and self-recrimination; the reader doesn’t know whether or not it’s justified. Lacroix thinks of his father’s funeral, his sister’s grief. “Was that what had happened in Spain? He did not know, he did not know. In his effort to understand, he had worn language thin but made it no sharper. He was bitterly tired of thinking about it, thinking and a minute later beginning again with the same bare and terrible facts. That was almost the worst of it, not being able to stop the thinking. Or not until the world broke in with hunger, a fist, stars above the sea. Then for a breath or two, he went free.” (An interesting reference to the title, I think). At the moment of confession, there’s a possibility of the reader being asked to judge for her/himself, but that is quickly closed off when Lacroix and Emily make love, and Lacroix thereby realizes Emily doesn’t think he’s a monster. (checks out, Lacroix. She likes you). He lets himself off the hook, or she does. There’s a beautifully done set-up here, wherein Emily is gradually revealed to have poor and deteriorating eyesight. Lacroix accompanies her to Glasgow to have eye surgery to correct the problem. Is the surgery a success? Will she be able to “see?” After Lacroix’s confession, she “sees” very well, offering redemption. And the story takes a while to establish that Calley is a monster. Is he misunderstood? The story presents some explanation as to why Calley is such a sociopath (troubled childhood). But his behavior as an adult closes off much meaning making and/or forgiveness. Throughout the novel, his character becomes less complex and more one-dimensional. The story frames Lacroix as good and Calley as evil. Lacroix acts heroically to protect the British sailor who is on the run from the Royal Navy. Calley brutally assaults the hapless Nell and William Swann to get information on Lacroix’s whereabouts. He becomes increasingly deranged in his pursuit of Lacroix and eventually, assaults another likable character and murders his own companion Medina, thereby compromising the success of his mission. The reader is shown a side of both characters that makes the narrator’s unspoken case. Sides that might contradict this case are omitted. The “deck is stacked” for Lacroix and against Calley. Lacroix’s actions in Spain are not admirable, but in the context of other “good” deeds he does and his general behavior, I think most readers would be willing to forgive him. This is what is meant by closing meaning. What might be an alternative that would tilt the text more toward “writerly?” Perhaps, if the narrator was shown to be fallible. Let’s say if Calley suddenly did a noble deed, (rescuing Spot?) and the narrator “stepped into” the action as a character who admitted he’d misjudged Calley. That would shake things up. But in Now, I appreciate the narrator’s confidence and reliability.

The significance of names in Now We Shall Be Entirely Free should probably be noted. John Lacroix certainly makes one think of the French word for “Cross,” a reference to Jesus Christ and the crucifixion. A reference perhaps to a characters who is to take on the sins of others, a martyr? A sin-eater, someone who atones for the sins of others. A sin-eater is a person who consumes a ritual meal in order to spiritually take on the sins of a deceased person. The food was believed to absorb the sins of a recently dead person, thus absolving the soul of the person. Sin-eaters, as a consequence, carried the sins of all people whose sins they had eaten. For readers of a certain age, the name Calley combined with the story of soldiers committing atrocities against civilians, cannot help but trigger associations to Lt. Calley, the American officer who led US troops during the My Lai massacre in the Vietnam War. Coincidence? The beginning of Now We Shall Be Entirely Free focuses on John Lacroix. The reader learns he is a British cavalry officer who was part of the army driven from Spain by the French and that he is sick and near death. Although it is not said directly, he is, at best, absent without leave. He has managed to get himself carted to his childhood home where he recovers thanks to the loyal housekeeper, Nell. Nell, who wonders, “…what the night had brought her and might bring her yet.” A foreshadowing that increases tension. A fellow officer visits Lacroix and presses him about when he will rejoin the regiment. Lacroix puts him off and dreams of dead enemy soldiers he’s observed. “But something else must have come to him in his sleep that night, something more useful, for when he woke, an hour or so after dawn, it seemed to him he knew exactly what he was about to do…” Here again, is the busy omniscient narrator, who can not only report on a character’s dreams, but also make a statement about dreams the character doesn’t even remember. Lacroix writes to his sister Lucy that he wishes to travel to northern ports, “a convalescent’s tour,” and could her husband help him find a ship? Nell asks if he is in trouble, and he replies with an enigmatic smile. Lacroix packs for the trip and includes the pistol he brought back from the war. “He did not dare to question what he was doing. Start to question it and he might find himself gazing through aa tear in the skin of the world. There was no other plan.” This “tear in the skin of the world” business seems like the narrator’s lyric voice. Questions arise: Why is Lacroix AWOL? Why has he decided to journey to the north? These questions are not answered, but a new section introduces the character of Corporal Calley, a British soldier in Spain. He is witness at an inquest regarding atrocities committed by British troops against Spanish civilians at the village of Morales. He testifies as to his innocence and describes observing the murders and destruction, including seeing a British cavalry officer failing to stop his men from the assault. As if it were a secret, he confirms the identity of this officer—wearing the uniform of a Hussar—Lacroix’s regiment—without the name being shown to the reader. However, at this point in the book, the curious reader begins to wonder if this derelict officer is John Lacroix. After the inquest, an anonymous senior officer gives Calley his orders, albeit in indirect fashion. “…our Spanish friends are in a dither. They are striking attitudes. They say they would be better off with the French…the trust between us has suffered and must be recovered…There will be gifts of money, naturally, but something more than that is required…They want a man. A guilty man or one who can be taken as such.” Without naming John Lacroix directly, the senior officer makes it clear to Calley that his assignment is to find Lacroix and kill him in order to satisfy the Spanish. A scapegoat, a fall-guy, a sin-eater. The killing must be witnessed by a Spanish officer, Medina, who will accompany Calley. If Calley can perform this duty, he will be rewarded with a promotion. Calley is dismissed and thinks” “…those fuckers could have hanged me! Then nearly laughed out loud at the pleasure of recalling the voice in the room, the power it had given him, and to him alone. Like a secret spring drunk from in darkness.” Calley is pleased at being given an important task, at escaping blame for his own (implied) crimes. Is it the narrator though who comments on his pleasure in poetic terms? I think so. Calley is not poetic. He’s a psycho. The reader’s wondering has become a sharper question: Is John Lacroix a villain who committed war crimes and is trying to escape justice? The answer is obscured by plenty of mixed messaging, both in the first section regarding Lacroix and in the one about Calley. The story indicates with craft and subtlety that Calley is a kind of nemesis in pursuit of Lacroix, a man who may well be innocent. On a personal note, I’m pleased that there were no unruly elements in today’s post. It was nice to be able to focus without interruption. The new security measures seem effective. #NowWeShallBeEntirelyFree

With the help of my wonderful wife, Dena, I have a new web site. It has some new photos, including a fine one of yours truly. A new feature is that we've created a Blog section devoted to my weekly posts about novels and writing. I hope you enjoy.

Now We Shall Be Entirely Free is a novel written around the year 2018, but the story takes place in the British Isles in 1810 after the battle of Corunna and the British retreat from Portugal. How does the book communicate this information to the reader? More broadly, how does it communicate the plot? This gets us into the issue of exposition. A definition: Narrative exposition is the insertion of background information within a story or narrative. This information can be about the setting, characters' backstories, prior plot events, historical context, etc. In literature, exposition appears in the form of expository writing embedded within the narrative. Exposition is different from narration, but may be artfully woven within it. Artful insertions. (What!) Skillful embeddings. (Innuendo! Stop it! I demand you stop it!) Stop what, my friend? (This twisting of words, this playing with meanings. A thing is a thing, not something else—and certainly not sexual). Well. One way to do this explaining, a way my friend might follow, would be to state in no uncertain terms, “This story is set in the British Isles in the year 1810 during the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon was the Emperor of France and a foe of the British. At this time, people rode horses or walked because cars hadn’t yet been invented. Neither had Netflix.” With this information, you could begin reading Now, and understand many of the references and the behavior of the characters. A second way, and the way Now follows, is to show the settings and the character’s consciousness and interactions, and let this “tell the tale.” On page one, a storm is occurring. Horses are pulling a sort of carriage through atrocious weather, driven by a man identified as a postilion, who is trying to find a house in the violent darkness. Back along the road, he’s seen candlelight in a farmhouse window. He has a passenger in the cab, a “poor wretch,” who may well perish unless the postilion finds a particular house. Several things cue the reader as to time/space context. First, of course, there is the presence of a carriage (probably a post chaise) pulled by horses. This suggests rather strongly that the story takes place pre modern times. The designation “postilion” further establishes that this is no current drama. If you know what a postilion was, or look the word up, you learn it was the driver of a post chaise, that it’s often a term used in novels from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, often European novels. And candlelight—its presence is not conclusive, but it does fit in with a historical context. On the fourth page, the postilion has found the house. He tells Nell, the housekeeper, that the man he has brought to the house “had come up from the coast the day before. From Portsmouth…there were soldiers back from Spain.” Nell’s character then communicates exposition via her private thoughts. While unpacking his gear, she recalls when the unconscious man had left for war, how his kit was spread over the bed—his boots and uniform, the shirts she’d sewn for him. “He had been with the regiment three years already, bought his commission the autumn after his father died, but he had not been on campaign before…” From his pack, she takes a cavalry pistol and accidently points it at the unconscious man, thereby delivering a bit of foreshadowing. From these ruminations, the reader learns the man is a soldier who has been away at war. His name, John Lacroix. The busy doctor helps in explanation. “As for the news the doctor had anticipated, it did not come from John Lacroix but from the brush seller, a pedlar who crisscrossed the county like some industrious insect…He told the housekeeper…that the army had been chased out of Spain, that there had been a battle at a place whose name he could not recall…that the British general had been killed…What was left of the army…had escaped in ships.” At this point, we don’t know if Lacroix was in the battle, but we can infer he was one of those who escaped by sea. The visit by Captain Wood, one of Lacroix’s fellow officers, fills in more information. Is this more subtle approach to exposition necessary? A tough question. It makes sense that the postilion would tell Nell what he knew about the soldier. Would Nell think about the soldier’s history while going through his belongings? Maybe. Objects often trigger associations of when we last saw them. However, if she didn’t, the story would be even more open to the reader’s making meaning. The issue here is how much exposition is too much, how much is not enough. It’s a judgment call. Readers often enjoy having elements of the story explained, and this exposition via Nell’s thoughts is artfully done. Without it, there would be more suspense in Now, as the reader wonders what is going on with Lacroix. It is not till Chapter 2, when the story shifts to Portugal and the character of Calley is introduced, that questions like, what is the story about? begin to be answered. There is another more subtle cue as to when the story takes place. The implied author, whose presence we have previously described as being revealed by a novel’s style, has written a contemporary novel in the style of a book from two hundred years past, utilizing language and the choice of the omniscient narrator, which, two hundred years ago was a common narrative device. So the novel “reads” like a much older book. We shall further explore these matters, best beloved. Next time. #NowWeShallBeEntirelyFree

This week, a new book, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free written by Andrew Miller, published in 2019. I first read it earlier this year, can’t remember how I heard about it, but the book had excellent reviews. Mr. Miller is the author of seven other novels. The time the story is set in, Napoleonic England, had an interest for me, as I’d been working on my own novel from this period. Now is a very different beastie than the other books I’ve been writing about, particularly in terms of narrative structure. Although written recently, the author makes use of the third-person omniscient narrator, the “all-seeing” eye and ear who can not only travel mysteriously between the inner, subjective worlds of the various characters, but also describe settings and back story to the reader. Yet this narrator is hidden, not at all like the voluble fellow of A Sport and a Pastime, who is an “I,” the incarnate storyteller, an entity inside the story. (Whiny voice—Hey! Why’d you start putting book titles in italics instead of using quotation marks?) Let’s move on to a definition. “The third person omniscient point of view is the most open and flexible POV available to writers. As the name implies, an omniscient narrator is all-seeing and all-knowing…the narrator may occasionally access the consciousness of a few or many different characters.” A key distinction is that the omniscient narrator is outside the story and knows the outcome. The first sentence of Now reveals the narrator’s presence. “It came through lanes crazy with rain, its sides slabbed with mud, its wheels throwing arcs of mud behind it.” Pretty nice prose, by the way. However, “someone” is telling the reader this information. As readers, we are so used to this sort of thing, we hardly think about it, but it is the storytelling “voice.” The first character the narrator “inhabits’ is the driver of a carriage (undoubtedly a post chaise) identified as the postilion. The narrator describes what this man is doing as well as his thoughts and feelings, making generous use of free indirect style, that blurring of the omniscient narrator and the character’s voice. “If he were to be thrown here! Thrown and bones cracked!” as opposed to “If I were to be thrown here,” he said. Does this presence of free indirect style move the omniscient narrator more “inside” the story? Perhaps, my friend. In a sense, the narrator changes from exhibiting a rather dispassionate showing of the tale to an expression of concern. “It” is now an entity who, along with the character, is alarmed by the story’s action. We also move into the character’s consciousness, but never as an “I.” “Here the road turned and descended—he could sense it more than see it—and he sat, pushed at by the rain…” Then, after a suspenseful search, the driver finds the house he is seeking. A woman answers the door, yet the scene remains within the postilion’s point of view. But the story is not about the postilion, and the narrator leaps to the consciousness of the woman. “She looked at the postilion, took proper notice of him for the first time. He wasn’t from the village or the next village or the next, though she might have seen him somewhere…” My point here is that the narrator describes not only the outward behavior of the characters but their inner thoughts and appraisals as well. If one was filming a documentary about this postilion delivering an unconscious man to a remote house (that’s what he’s doing), the only way to indicate what the people were thinking would be to use a narrator who could say such things as “The postilion is frightened by the storm,” or “The woman thinks the postilion could be familiar.” Happily, in this book, we have the busy narrator who can flit around from character to character and show this stuff. Then it is the local doctor who appears. “The doctor came in the afternoon…This last winter he had noted the stiffening of his joints, pain at times in both knees, in the deep places of his hips.” He attends to the unconscious man, now identified as John Lacroix. Then a return to the housekeeper, who is named as Nell. “Each day she bathed his feet with the solution of brimstone…which she knew to be good for wounds.” There is a long section in which John Lacroix is observed and described through the housekeeper’s eyes. In fact, it is not till page forty-five of the paperback edition, that the narrator enters the consciousness of the book’s protagonist, John Lacroix. Up to that point, he is a constant presence, but seen through others’ eyes. It would be possible to begin reading the book, and conclude that the story was about Nell, the housekeeper, since she is the main consciousness in the first forty-five pages. But John Lacroix is central, the story she and the others tell is about him. There is mystery as to his identity and situation. There is exposition about him, his going off to war. The omniscient narrator tells the story. So is the omniscient narrator the same as the implied author we’ve talked about before? No, best beloved. Let’s get into that another time. #nowweshallbeentirelyfree

An early review of “A Sport and a Pastime,” states that to live for sex alone is to be less than human. I don’t know. On the face of it, Dean does pursue a rather narcissistic relationship with Anne-Marie, meaning he focuses more on himself than on her. (He likes mirrors). It could be said they care for one another; it could also be said they use one another. But—remember, I don’t think they’re real. They are imaginary characters the narrator manipulates like puppets. ‘Kay. So, it’s the narrator who creates a whole fantasy about a very sexual affair. And, it should be said, about tragedy and loss. Does the narrator’s somewhat dysphoric view of intimate connection impel him toward imagining a tragic end to love? Maybe. It’s always fun to look at definitions, so let’s look at a definition of love. Love is “an intense feeling of deep affection for someone.” (Actually, there are some pretty wacky things that come up if you google “love,” best beloved. There are, for instance, "fifteen signs of true love, including Hurt and Annoyance. You become very hurt when your partner annoys you; however, what they do never makes you mad.” You can also “learn how to test a guy to see if he really loves you.” Anne-Marie might have found that article useful.) Here’s the narrator’s definition of love. (I think). “By now they know something of each other. There is a fund they can draw on together. The encounter begins to have an essence of its own which neither can define but which nourishes them both, and happily, in the single unselfish ritual of love, they contribute to it all they can. Nor does it matter how much either takes away. It is a limitless body. It can never be exhausted but only, although one never believes this, forgot.” That’s pretty good. Maybe the wisdom here is that there are different kinds of love, different definitions, and they are not mutually exclusive. I think it’s too judgmental to say Dean and Anne-Marie live for sex alone and are, as a result, less than human. Or, that the narrator, who is imagining them, is less than human. They behave, not as “real” people do, but in the way that fantasies behave. They are idealized, the sex they have is idealized. They are not romantic, although what they do is romantic. They are like actors on a stage who are asked to show certain things and to hide others. Dean and Anne-Marie are shown acting out a love affair. So are they really in love, or not in love? Neither, they're not real. What “A Sport and a Pastime” does do is to show a lonely man imagining passionate connection (an intense feeling of deep affection for someone). He imagines the thing that is missing in his own life, the thing he seems unable to produce. Perhaps he is incapable of love. He imagines a young man who has an affair with a young woman who will, on the surface, do anything for him. She is an equal and enthusiastic partner sexually. She is not idealized, she is shown as a real human who occasionally has bad breath and flatulence. She is the subject of Dean’s attention, a vehicle for pleasure. He is uncomfortable when she voices her own needs. In this way, he is like the narrator. Dean—the narrator’s creature—confirms the narrator’s own deficiencies. He runs from his feelings for Anne-Marie. The reader doesn’t really know how she feels about Dean—there are hints, but we have no access to her consciousness. She is not “real.” Maybe it’s a love story, maybe a story of the kind of relationship young people tend to have—“starter” marriages and love affairs. It would be a mistake to generalize and say the book makes a grand statement about love. It is a particular kind of love that’s shown. A pretend, as-if kind that presents how people think and act and feel when they’re in that kind of love. Against this background, the story shows different currents, deeper ones. Dean and Anne-Marie play at being married; the tragedy is how lonely and needy they both are. “A Sport and a Pastime” is a work of fiction that shows us a certain perspective. It makes no claim to be the absolute truth. However, is there a value judgment here? A sour view of love? The title is not neutral. The story is about “a sport and a pastime,” an illusory thing of the world, set against a truer, different world of the spirit. Love is of the senses, and so is not as important as the spiritual world. Perhaps that’s what the reviewer meant when he said to live for sex alone is to be less than human. Big shocker—I think to live without sex is to be less than human. (Stunned silence.) Tennyson said it best. “Tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.” Maybe that’s the message of “A Sport and a Pastime.” Even if you have to dream it all up. #asportandapasstime

An oft-noted distinction within literary texts is whether they emphasize showing the characters in action over telling the reader about them. Exposition vs. theatrical action. Of course, this is a simplification. (Of course). Our friends Plato and Aristotle wrote about this stuff. Plato talked about diegesis and mimesis. (Indistinct yelling. A loud crash). What? These posts are getting worse—first you introduce a sexy title, and then start talking about Plato. What is the point of— Please remove this individual from the blog. (More yelling). Pretentious bully! Let go of me! …as I was saying. Diegesis is the telling of a story by a narrator. Mimesis is showing action, quoted speech. (Mimesis from the same word root as mimicry—copying). I’m sure the fans of the blog now see the relevance of this distinction to my purpose—exploring the narrative voice in fiction. In “A Sport and a Pastime,” you have a narrator who is a character in the story telling a story about Dean and Anne-Marie. So, it’s simple then, it’s all diegesis—all telling. Well, actually, most of the story consists of dramatic scenes that “show” the characters in action, along with sections that “show” the narrator moping around and thinking stuff. There you have it—the distinction between diegesis and mimesis, between showing and telling just melted (“Someone left the cake out in the rain, all the sweet green icing melting down.”) What? In fact, I think what “Sport” does is to demonstrate that these distinctions are too simplistic. Maybe a more useful way to look at it is that diegesis is the whole “reality” of a story (I think this is a major concept in film). Mimesis gets at verisimilitude, believe-ability. As a reader, you get seduced into the world of a text, wanting to feel that it is real, and this depends to a large extent on how believable and consistent it is. Our example from last week was “Lord of the Rings.” Spoiler alert! Dwarves and hobbits aren’t real, but to read “LOTR” and be seduced into its magic is a beautiful experience. Both elements are necessary. Let’s look for them in “Sport.” Here’s the scene where the narrator first meets Phillip Dean in Paris. Through the crowd a woman is approaching. “Isabel!” Christina cries. It’s her friend. There is no way to begin except with admiration for Isabel who is forty and dressed in a beautiful, black Chanel suit with silver buttons and a ruffled, white shirt. On her finger is a ring with a large diamond, a perfectly round diamond that catches every piece of light, and her smile is as dazzling as her clothes. There’s a young man with her whom she introduces. “Phillip…” Her hand flutters hopelessly, she’s forgotten his name. “…Dean,” he murmurs. “I’m the worst in the world,” she says, the words drawling out. “I just seem to forget names as fast as people can tell them to me.” She laughs, a high, country laugh. “Now, don’t take it to heart,” she tells him. “You’re the best looking thing in this room, but I’d forget the name of the President himself if I didn’t already know it.” She laughs and laughs. Phillip Dean says nothing. I envy that silence which somehow doesn’t disgrace him, which is curiously beautiful, like a loyalty we do not share. Okay. First, there’s a lot of dialogue here. Dialogue tends to be “showing” or mimetic, although it can be used to present exposition—characters telling each other background information they already know for the reader’s benefit. Salter doesn’t indulge; the dialogue here is about the scene. This is all the narrator’s point of view (as is the whole story). He is observing Isabel approach. He informs us that this is the friend of Christina who was referenced earlier. He describes her costume and appearance with admiration. There’s no way to do that—describe—without “telling.” If this were a play, then the audience would see what the characters look like and draw their own conclusions. Writing, best beloved, is different. Here, we’re meeting Isabel (and Dean) through the narrator’s eyes. We see what he wants us to see. And it is not neutral. A subjective judgement. Isabel is beautiful. Salter describes someone who is forgetful and relatively unembarrassed about it. Aware of it—“the worst in the world.” To do this bit only by “showing” would be quite a challenge. Somehow, the text would have to convey that Isabel is the friend previously referenced without the narrator saying it. Isabel could say it—“Oh, hi. I’m the friend previously referenced,” but that would create all kinds of problems (a character commenting on being in a work of fiction? It’s been done, but it’s not the style of this book). So we have diegesis and mimesis. What is a high, country laugh? I don’t know but I like the description. It’s a nice contrast to Isabel’s elegant attire. There’s a story here that we really don’t learn. She’s a woman from the American South who lives in France and wears expensive clothes and jewelry. “She’s married to a rich, rich Frenchman.” And Dean is with her—what is the implication there? It’s never spelled out. What it does do is make Isabel a more interesting character, more than one-dimensional. It raises questions about her. “High, country laugh” is the narrator’s view. The description of Isabel’s clothes are through the narrator’s vision but are mimetic. In fact, they are free enough of judgement that we the readers are therefore free to make meaning of them. And Dean says nothing—his silence says a lot. The narrator notes this; he envies him. He makes a subjective appraisal that Dean’s silence doesn’t disgrace him, somehow. And that it’s curiously beautiful, “like a loyalty we do not share.” What does this mean? A silence that is admirable, that communicates a loyalty that the narrator is not a part of—a reference to Dean’s relationship with Isabel, perhaps? Perhaps a code of silence about indiscretion that the narrator admires but doesn’t feel capable of. In this scene, I believe the mode is mimetic embedded within diegetic (diabetic?) What’s its “point?” It’s the first appearance of Phillip Dean, and the reader learns several things about him. He’s ambiguously “with” a wealthy and beautiful woman. He is handsome and taciturn, possibly discrete. These things are believable but they are also part of the created “world” of the story. #asportandapastime

Since writing last week’s post, I’ve been up around three a.m., worrying about what I wrote last time, worrying about the effect of my words. No one has of yet expressed any outrage and/or tearful accusation, but I know that often, people keep such things to themselves. What did I do? Well, I stated that the narrator entity in “A Sport and a Pastime” was imagining the story of Dean and Anne-Marie. I cut the diamond, best beloved. I could have said, “I don’t know if the story’s real or not. I just don’t know.” Shrugging of shoulders. Pursed lips. But that would have been a lie. Well, you say, how come, Mr. Big Shot. The story of “Sport” is about the narrator, looking back on the time he spent in France, remembering the fantasy he created about a young couple. He made up a story in the same way the author of fiction makes up a story, the same way James Salter made up the story about him. It’s a story within a story, about a story-teller. “But of course, in one sense, Dean never died—his existence is superior to such accidents. One must have heroes, which is to say, one must create them…It is we who give them their majesty, their power, which we ourselves could never possess.” This statement by the narrator occurs on the last page of the story, however, it should come as no surprise. The text is awash with similar statements, going back to early sections. “None of this is true…” There are a number of mise en abymes—stories within stories—that foreshadow the finale of the tale. (Including Dean’s death in a car accident). An example, as I mentioned in an earlier post, concerns the narrator observing a young man in Autun, a sort of louche ladies’ man, and stating that he will emulate him—at least for an evening. The idea that the narrator imagines the story is not a surprise that comes all at once at the end, a la “He woke up, twitching. It had all been a dream.” It is an integral part of the story. However, the novel is so beautifully constructed that the truth is quite ambiguous. It is certainly possible to read the story and believe that Dean and Anne-Marie are “real” in the sense of fictional characters being real. After all, narrators can say whatever they want, as can any characters in stories, they can be deluded or just wrong. Of course, I am taking the narrator at his word. He says he made it all up; I believe him. Why? I think having a story within a story is very aesthetically pleasing, if you will. It makes “Sport” a haunting tale about a lonely man, isolating himself, and creating a whole imaginary story to provide comfort. It is also a story about story-telling. The process of writing involves imagining characters in scenes, plots. I like the idea of James Salter writing a story about a narrator—who may be “like” James Salter—spending a winter in small-town France and imagining, in his loneliness, a whole world of sexual intimacy. This is an example of a reader (me) co-creating meaning of a text. The first time I read “Sport” I essentially accepted the fiction of the story—that the adventures Dean and Anne-Marie had were “real.” I enjoyed the sexual content (blush). I was saddened when Dean died at the end, and when the narrator has a last meeting with a grieving Anne-Marie. I ignored/denied the narrator’s clear statements that he was making it all up—because that’s what a first reading is like. You want to believe the magic of a story. When you read “Lord of the Rings,” you get seduced into believing in elves and dwarves. You think, “That Sauron is a pretty bad dude. Wow, what would I do if I had to carry that ring?” “Sport” does quite a job of seduction. It’s as if Tolkien had kept writing things like, “None of this is real. I just feel compelled to keep writing about goblins. Help me.” It’s only after the fourth reading of “Sport” that I’ve come to appreciate the depth of artistry it contains. The book continues to seduce me, but in an increasingly fine-grained way. #asportandapasstime

This week, let’s look at how time is handled in “A Sport and a Pastime.” In his great book, “The Perpetual Orgy,” Mario Vargas Llosa writes about four categories of time in fiction. There is singular, specific time, wherein the characters proceed in linear fashion. Scenes showing this kind of time are particular, discreet moments, often with dialogue. We talked several posts back about Umberto Eco’s comment that pornographic films tend to occur in real time, novels do not. But linear time (which is real time), is an essential part of fiction. There is circular time or repetition. The imperfect tense, indicating an on-going action which began in the past is the hallmark of circular time. Whenever you encounter passages in fiction that are like, “He would get up at the same damn time everyday,” you’ve got circular time, my friend. I believe dogs tend to experience time circularly. Habit and routine. Woof! There is immobile time, defined rather annoyingly as moments when time is neither linear nor circular. The action disappears and people become motionless, living in an eternal moment. And there is imaginary time, the time that exists in the characters’ fantasies. A subjective time. This gets tricky, as all fiction is by definition imaginary. However, imaginary time occurs whenever you read about a character imagining or dreaming of something. Desiring and wanting. When we desire something or someone, it is not a linear event. We don’t desire someone for six minutes, forty-one seconds, and then this desire leads to making a grilled cheese sandwich. When we dream and desire, it occurs in a different time, a “day-dream” if you will. (I will). It is not circular though. You could write of a character, “She/he desired a BLT every day at eleven o’clock.” This would be circular, but it would not show the actual “desire for the BLT” experience. “Sport” contains all four of these types of time, however one of the mysteries of the book is how the categories are blurred. Scenes that on the surface seem linear possess a kind of circular quality, dream-like, repetitive. This is fitting as much of the story is imagined by the narrator. (Come on—it’s “time” to admit this). Linear: “’Don’t you get tired of being down there for months on end?’ Cristina says. ‘God!’ I don’t know what to say. They’re all looking at me. I’m really not sure. It’s not a question of being tired of something. It really can’t be compared. ‘What on earth do you do there?’ Alix says. ‘Well, I’m doing some work.’ A pause. ‘I’m doing a lot of reading—I know that sounds funny.’ ‘It must be fascinating,’ she says.” This snippet is from a scene in which the narrator returns to Paris and goes out with the Wheatlands and their friend Alix. It is not imagined by the narrator; it’s part of the story, the plot. It is imagined by the imaginary author of the book. The Wheatlands, Alix, and the narrator are all “real” characters, as opposed to creatures of the narrator’s imagination. It has a generous amount of dialogue and also some reflection by the narrator that reveals his inner thoughts and feelings. So the passage is linear, with a bit of imaginary time thrown in. Circular: I’m going to go out on a limb here. I believe most if not all of the scenes with Dean and Anne-Marie have a strong circular quality. The narrator imagines their life together, their lovemaking. “…afterwards she lies strewn across him. ‘You are bread and salt,’ he tells her. ‘Oh, Phillip,’ she says. They are lost in the darkness. ‘Oui…’ She does not continue. Finally, in a soft voice, ‘You are good for me.’ The last bells are sounding. The pigeons sleep…” On the surface, this is a linear event. A couple lie spent from love-making, express caring for each other. It could be a particular event, but it could also be a sort of emblem for many episodes of lovemaking. In the same way, Dean and Anne-Marie are often shown taking car trips around France. They go to a new town, have dinner and go to bed early (those rascals). And this occurs again and again. Immobile: “There’s a photograph of Annie and her father and step-brother, the three of them looking directly at the camera. She is sixteen but seems younger. Behind them is what appears to be the railroad station, large windows, distinguished façade. It’s one of those ordinary little snapshots which illustrate the life of almost everybody. It was taken in the sunshine.” This is not part of a scene where a character finds a photo and describes it as part of a linear scene. The passage is the narrator imagining a photo, imagining a younger Anne-Marie. We “see” the photo through the narrator’s consciousness but there is no one really mediating it except the implied author. There is no time. An eternal moment. Imaginary: Well… Most of the book is imaginary. It is the fantasies of the narrator about Dean and Anne-Marie. A project he creates during his winter sojourn in Autun. He imagines a young man he met in Paris coming to visit him, the young man becoming involved with a young woman, going off with her on long car trips, staying overnight in the towns of provincial France. Having wild sex. A tragic ending. Occasionally the lonely narrator travels to Paris to see the Wheatlands. He lusts after women but seems unable to initiate an intimate relationship. Only in his head, best beloved. Think again, please, about the title and the epigram that starts things off. Remember that this world is only a sport and a pastime—the implication is that there are two worlds, a linear and circular one, and an imaginary one. Of course, a work of fiction is all fantasy, right? More to come on that one. A further wrinkle. There’s a statement that indicates the narrator is writing the story from a future point, looking back on his memories. He is a photographer and describes the story as a series of snapshots. So the presentation of time in “Sport” is very complex—what effect does this have? Uh…it makes it complex? Good answer. We’ll pick this up next time.

Last wee k, we began to turn our keen minds toward James Salter’s “A Sport and a Pastime.” Let’s continue. By definition, a work of fiction is not about “real” people or events, although that line has deservedly become fuzzy as most lines do. However, part of the excellence of fiction has to do with its believability, or verisimilitude, as they say. (Who?) So a work of fiction is a work of the imagination, of creativity but part of its excellence lies in how much the reader can be seduced into believing it’s true. For example, if you read “Love in the Time of Cholera,” how much do you believe that the story is true? Much, my friends. Much. Reynolds Price, in his fine introduction to the 2006 edition of “Sport,” poses the question: How true is this narrator’s story? A nameless male narrator is spending the winter in a provincial town, taking photographs and yearning for the town’s female half. While visiting Paris, he meets Phillip Dean, a young (twenty-one) American who has dropped out of Yale. This occurs on page nineteen of the 2006 edition—roughly ten percent of the way in, a figure of some significance. Ten pages later, and chapter five begins, “He arrives in the late afternoon…Of course, it’s a complete surprise.” It is Dean, come for a visit. He and the narrator “pal” around. It’s a very realistic, albeit episodic, portrayal of two guys having dinner, driving around in Dean’s borrowed sports car. There’s really no reflection on the narrator’s part about Dean’s arrival. Maybe that’s a departure from realism—if I had someone I didn’t really know show up at my house and invite himself to stay, I’d probably talk about it. Like, what’s going on here? Then, the narrator returns to the house after buying a newspaper. Dean promises him a surprise. “You’re going to be pleased,” he assures me, stopping before the mirror to look at himself…” It should be noted that Dean is often shown in close proximity to mirrors—we’ll talk about that, best beloved. The surprise Dean has is that a young woman, Anne-Marie Castallat, is joining them for dinner. They have dinner, Dean takes her home. The narrator muses a bit—we’ll discuss. The next paragraph begins, “She was waiting for him at six.” It describes the first “date” between Dean and Anne-Marie—the narrator is not present. After a sentence in past tense, the account returns to present tense. The rest of the story focuses on a third person account, present tense, of Dean and Anne-Marie’s affair, interspersed with the narrator’s comments and occasional first person scenes of his own life. What’s going on here? Several possibilities occur. One is that Dean really does come to the narrator’s borrowed house in Autun, really does have an affair with Anne-Marie, and tells the narrator enough about it so that the narrator can make a story of it in his own writerly way, perhaps with some imagination. Another is that the narrator meets Dean in Paris and imagines a whole story about him—the story comes from the narrator, not from Dean, who is a sort of actor. A story within a story. This would imply that the story is not “true,” but made-up. (It actually is made up, of course, but the point is, are we to “believe” it?). A third possibility is that Dean tells the narrator a story that is not true. Dean makes up the story. We really can’t be sure about this one. My audience says, “Hold up, please. Aren’t most novels vulnerable to this kind of questioning? What makes you, Mr. Big-Shot, wonder about “truth” in this book? What makes “Sport” different? Well. Statements like this: “None of this is true…I’m sure you’ll come to realize that. I am only putting down details which entered me, fragments that were able to part my flesh. It’s a story of things that never existed although even the faintest doubt of that, the smallest possibility, plunges everything into darkness.” Huh. A bit of a rabbit-hole, no? You’re contentedly reading a work of fiction and are seduced by it. You believe it really happened, or want so badly to think that it did. You trust the narrator, care about him. And then he says the story that you wish to be true is not true. Moreover, he continues to tell it with a kind of ironic resignation. As if he had no choice. You read about Dean and Anne-Marie’s sexual escapades and are basically unsure as to whether the narrator is reporting on things he heard about, or if he imagined the whole thing. Imagine the difference if the narrator made no such statement. Or if he said, “It’s all true. It really happened. Dean told me the whole thing.” I suppose it’s safe to say if he did, you’d probably have that “faintest doubt” that it was true. #asportandandpastime

This week, a new work of fiction, “A Sport and a Pastime” written by James Salter, published in 1967. I first learned of Salter belatedly after reading his 2015 obituary. In short order, I read “Light Years;” “Sport,” and two collections of his short stories. The memory of a first reading might elide certain central features, leaving the reader with the sense the novel is the vivid story of an affair between Phillip Dean and Anne-Marie Costallat in the provincial France of around 1960. It is much more and presents challenging mysteries of narration. When I described some of my thoughts about “Sport,” Dena said it reminded her a bit of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” in that both are about a narrator imagining the (more thrilling) life of someone else. And those someone elses are both called “Dean.” Huh. Smart woman—in all fairness, I believe Salter was a much more accomplished writer than Kerouac but I wonder if Mr. Salter may have found some inspiration in “On the Road.” “A Sport and Pastime” is known as a book about sex. Writers are encouraged to read Salter to learn how to write about sex; the book is “classified” in Amazon’s key word system as an “erotic novel.” On the surface, it does seem to refer to 1960-era beliefs about male sexuality and women viewed through a man’s eyes—think Playboy and Esquire—by the way, both magazines lionized Salter. I think the book can be approached on this level, but that such a reading cuts out great depths of subtlety. The book does take on the enormous task, I believe, of trying to give clarity to such issues as, what is sexual attraction? And what is love? (or isn’t). The title itself, “A Sport and a Pastime,” could seem to be trivializing love and sex, lumping both together with the manly ideals of sports and the need to fill one’s idle time. But no, best beloved, I think it’s deeper. The story begins with the quote from the Koran, “Remember that the life of this world is but a sport and a pastime.” There is a question of translation here, but I believe the quote suggests a more mystical shading—the idea that there is “this world” where serious matters should not be taken so seriously. And of course, this implies the existence of another world. So some reviewers see the book as a shallow and sexist tale of a slightly older man exploiting a nineteen-old girl. Others see it as a homoerotic story of a man (the narrator) unable to express his sexual feelings toward another man and instead, fantasizing about the other’s sexual life. Well, a book can be a kind of lens that reveals things about ourselves. Any reading is legitimate. I myself tend to be fascinated by creative structures of narration (eroticism is fine, too). Maybe this could teach me something about myself—that I am bossy and like to tell stories? Controlling? Oh, oh. “Sport” begins with an unnamed, male narrator traveling from Paris to the provincial city of Autun by train. The time is probably the early sixties. He has been in Paris, partying with friends who drink a lot and are very sexualized. One couple, the Wheatlands, owns a house in Autun but only go there in the summer, and agree that the narrator can stay there in the fall. He is a photographer and dreams of capturing Autun the way Atget captured Paris—in the camera’s eye. The prose is gorgeous and lyrical. “This blue, indolent town. Its cats. Its pale sky. The empty sky of morning, drained and pure. Its deep, cloven streets. Its narrow courts, the faint, rotten odor within, orange peels lying in the corners.” The narrator states he is in the “real” France, as opposed to Paris. But he goes back and forth between the two places, and while back in Paris, partying with his louche friends, meets a young man named Phillip Dean. Dean is also American and a Yale dropout. “Dean has a small, straight mouth and wide-set, intelligent eyes. Hair that the summer has dried. It’s of school-boy heroes that I’m thinking, boys from the east, ringleaders, soccer backs slender as girls.” Dean has been in Spain, and the narrator fantasizes about this, “Images of a young man in the dun-colored cities of late afternoon…Suddenly I like him.” A nice mise en abyme (mirror in the text) occurs when the narrator visits the local hotel in Autun. He observes several teens in the bar—the “gilded youth” of the town. One is an “angel, at least for betrayal. Beautiful face, Soft, dark hair. A mouth like spoiled fruit…He’s ready to start seductions…A chill passes through me. I recognize a clear strain of assurance which has nothing to imitate…I am modeling myself after him, just for the evening.” We will see later how this is a small model of the narrator’s relationship with Dean. The narrator is alone, frustrated. He lusts after women—especially Claude Picquet—an attractive resident of Autun, but is unable to seek intimacy. He is easily rebuffed and discouraged. He is often empty and on the outside of situations he can only observe. “Sport” is very much a story of a couple imagined by the narrator, who is of course himself imagined by the author. Layers of irony and self-reference. We’ll get into this next week. #asportandapastime