Last time, we talked about several different ways to look at the supernatural features of Daphne Du Maurier’s short story, Don’t Look Now . In part to recover from the death of their young daughter, a British couple are vacationing in Venice where they encounter a mysterious pair of sisters who tell them their daughter is present and concerned that something bad will happen to them. Their son, at a boarding school in England, falls ill, and the boy’s mother, Laura, returns to care for him. The father/husband, John, believes he sees Laura returning to Venice at the same time he knows she is on a plane headed north. John tries to make sense of this and blames the sisters for influencing Laura to return. Eventually, he runs afoul of a maniacal killer. At the end, he dies, realizing—in his mind—that seeing Laura coming back to Venice was a vision of her in the future, returning for his funeral. ‘Kay. One way to appreciate the story is to embrace the supernatural elements as true. Whether or not one believes in ghosts and visions, one can read the story with an acceptance of the idea that—in this story, at least—they are true. Perhaps this would be an appropriate strategy to adopt on a first reading. Another way is to read with an eye as to how the author constructs the story and its “spooky” elements. Is it truly a tale of Gothic horror or is it actually something more ambiguous? You knew which one I was going to pick—#2, please! Do you have to believe in the supernatural in order to appreciate this story? No, best B, you don’t. In fact, it’s not necessary to believe in ghosts in order to be scared (so said a wise person commenting on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw , another famous ghost story). Boo! A fair question concerns the author’s intent: is Ms. Du Maurier writing a story that treats the supernatural as real? Does she want to scare us? Maybe, but I think a careful reading reveals something more complex. Let’s dig in. The first spooky thing that occurs in the story is when Laura tells her husband what one of the sisters has told her: “You see, she isn’t dead, she’s still with us. That’s why they kept staring at us, those two sisters. They could see Christine.” She continues, recounting more of what the woman told her: “Don’t be unhappy any more. My sister has seen your little girl. She was sitting between you and your husband, laughing…Oh, John, don’t look like that. I swear I’m not making it up, this is what she told me, it’s all true.” ‘Kay. Interesting, but what is the context for these passages? John and Laura are having lunch and note the sisters. Immediately, they jokingly tell each other that the sisters are transvestites who have criminal designs. (remember this was written in 1970). The couple mocks the sisters and contextualizes them for the reader as unreliable and possibly bad. They are “trying to hypnotize” John. “They’re not old girls at all…They’re male twins in drag…They’re criminals doing the sights of Europe, changing sex at each stop…Jewel thieves or murderers?” But Laura presents a different interpretation: “’The things is,’ she said after a moment. ‘We’ve got them all wrong. They’re neither murderers nor thieves. They’re a couple of pathetic old schoolmistresses on holiday, who’ve saved up all their lives to visit Venice…They’re called Tilly and Tiny.” John is delighted that his wife, who has been so grief-stricken by their daughter’s death, seems light and having fun. In this vein, Laura resolves to follow one of the sisters into the bathroom to see if they switch into male clothing, and that is where the sister tells her that her blind psychic sister has seen dead Christine.   So. This shocking message to Laura occurs within a context where the sisters are ridiculed and generally presented as unreliable. This makes what the sister says highly ambiguous—should the reader accept this ghost-sighting as “real” or the ravings of an unreliable person? Laura, who mediates the reader’s experience, believes the story. Of course, Laura herself has been presented as unreliable. She is described as depressed, as not herself in the wake of Christine’s death. She says Christine is alive, when it’s clear she is dead. John, who has the authority of narrator, does not believe the story. He thinks the sisters are trying to trick Laura.    The story is very ambiguous. It can easily be read as a story of an attempted con-job, as easily as it can be read as a ghost-story. If we the readers read a blurb or synopsis, it might describe a ghost story. But this is misleading. Of course, the beautiful and frightening irony is that something scary and awful really does happen. More on this next time. Till then. #Don'tLookNow #DaphneDuMaurier #AlanBray

Daphne Du Maurier’s Don’t Look Now  is a long short story (some 60 pages), originally published in 1970, thirty-two years after the publication of our previous selection, Rebecca, which speaks to Ms. Du Maurier’s long career. It was first published in Great Britain under a different title, Not After Midnight . The edition I’m reading is a short story collection of Ms. Du Maurier’s work entitled Don’t Look Now , published by The New York Review of Books. A famous film version was adapted from the story by Nicholas Roeg. (Highly recommended). To begin, I’d like to note again that Ms. Du Maurier has often been dismissed by the literary establishment who regarded her work as “ atmospheric, feminine romance that was escapist rather than artistic.” She has been condemned for writing romances and simple horror stories. As I’ve said, I think some of this animosity is due to the way her writing was marketed and some of it due to sexism. Another possibility is that Ms. Du Maurier had early success as a writer and was wealthy; in a sense, her life was easy compared to other writers who had to contend with poverty and neglect of their work. Perhaps there was some jealousy toward Ms. Du Maurier. While her peers experimented with innovative writing techniques, like stream-of-consciousness and an emphasis on war and poverty, her writing remained more conventional. As was true with Rebecca , Don’t Look Now  seems to have been written without reference to real historic or cultural events. We might suspect that a story written in 1970 would mention the women’s movement, the war in Vietnam, or the powerful social changes that began in the 1960’s, but it does not. In fact, there is a lack of referents that would place the story in any particular time period. It could occur in the 60s; it could occur in the thirties. (As it mentions cars and planes, it couldn’t be much earlier). Don’t Look Now  unfolds over a twenty-four-hour period. It is written in close third-person narration strictly through the perspective of John, who is on vacation in Venice with his wife, Laura. The couple has just suffered a major loss; their young daughter, who died of illness. They have a son who is in boarding school in England and who will play an important part in the story. The first scene shows the couple having lunch in a restaurant. Here is the first line: “Don’t look now,” John said to his wife, “but there are a couple of old girls two tables away who are trying to hypnotize me.” This beginning captures a central theme of the story—others gaining undue influence over oneself and one’s loved ones through unconventional measures. Here, though, in the first line, the theme is introduced as a joke. John and Laura see two elderly ladies sitting nearby who seem to be watching them and they—John and Laura—hide any discomfort by joking. We the readers have access to John’s internal thinking. He is concerned about his wife and glad she is joking; he hopes the vacation is good for her. It is not till well into this scene that we learn the reason: “The holiday could yet turn into the cure she needed, blotting out, if only temporarily, the numb despair that had seized her since the child died.” John’s own grief at the death of his young daughter seems to be denied and expressed through his focus on his wife. In a flashback, John remembers how the doctor told him, rather patronizingly, that Laura would get over the loss, that they had another child, a son named Johnnie, and that they might have other children. John, reflecting on this memory thinks, “So easy to talk…how replace the life of a loved lost child with a dream!” thereby showing some of his own despair, a despair which he usually projects onto his wife. The story’s inciting incident occurs when one of the old women (who are twin sisters) tells Laura that her sister is psychic and blind and can see Laura’s deceased daughter sitting with she and John. The girl, or ghost, is worried that something bad is going to happen to them. Laura tells John this, and he is horrified, thinking that the old women have preyed on his wife’s grief. But Laura seems happier. That night, after a pleasant afternoon of site-seeing and lovemaking (!), John and Laura receive a call from their son’s boarding school saying that he is ill and may require surgery. Due to complexities that defy description, the couple agrees that Laura will return to England the next morning. In the morning, John drops his wife off at the airport and returns to Venice to check out of their hotel, intending to drive their car home. But as he returns to the airport where the car is, he sees his wife in a boat along with the two sisters, headed back toward the city. “Then he saw her, Laura, in her scarlet coat, the twin sisters by her side…He stared, astounded, too astonished to shout…” John can think of no reason why Laura would return from the airport and be accompanied by the sisters. Later in the story, we learn that at the time he “saw” her in Venice, Laura was on a plane headed to England. This incident is one of several in the book that could be called, well, spooky. The realists among us might say, “my dear, it was simply a sort of hallucination experienced by someone under stress.” I believe it’s more accurate to say that a prime rule of the story is that supernatural things can occur without explanation. The story describes a protagonist who is experiencing events which cannot be easily explained in scientific terms—however, the story merely shows this; it does not make meaning of it. It does not say, Oh, supernatural events are real. Spooky premonitions, visions, and ghosts are real. The story just presents these phenomena, leaving it to the reader to explain them. So, the first example of this, and the first cue to the reader that this will be a story about “spooky” things, is when the sisters tell Laura that her dead daughter is sitting with her and that the ghost is concerned that something bad will happen to her parents. Now, I don’t happen to believe that the dead persist and that certain individuals have the sensitivity to “see” them. However, I can suspend this judgement and be intrigued (or seduced, to use Ross Chamber’s terminology) by the story. Is Don’t Look Back  a ghost story? I don’t know, best B. The ghost of their daughter is never presented as anything but something the blind sister “sees,” and this sister’s reliability is repeatedly called into question. John believes she is trying to manipulate a grieving Laura. There is never a sense of the ghost haunting John and Laura in a frightening way. Frightening things do occur—and we’ll get to that—but they are not presented as spookiness. Let’s stop there and resume next time. Till then. #Don'tLookNow #DaphneDuMaurier #AlanBray

Last time, I threatened to write again about Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca , focusing on the Epilogue. An epilogue is defined as “ a section or speech at the end of a book or play that serves as a comment on or a conclusion to what has happened.” Let’s return to this definition later. This very curious chapter deserves some attention. In the edition I have been working with, apparently a 2001 reprint, the last chapter ends with the narrator and Maxim returning in haste to Manderley from London where Maxim has firmed up his alibi for his first wife’s murder—that it was indeed a suicide. “He drove faster, much faster…The road to Manderley lay ahead. There was no moon. The sky above our heads was inky black. But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.” Then we have an actual letter from the editor that presents some biographical information on Daphne Du Maurier and an explanation of what follows: a letter from Ms. Du Maurier about her experience writing the novel, an essay by her about the real house that inspired Manderley, and “the original epilogue.” “The Rebecca Epilogue” begins: “If you travel south you will come upon us in the end, staying in one of those innumerable little hotels that cling like limpets to the Mediterranean shore.” There follows a return to the story’s present that was introduced in the beginning: “Last night I dreamt I saw Manderley again.” It is again twenty years after the events of the story’s past and the narrator and Maxim (now surprisingly called Henry) are living a self-imposed exile in Europe. They do not wish to return to England. Henry—or Maxim—is an old man, and the narrator is middle-aged. So, Rebecca  begins say in 1938, goes back for most of its length to 1918, and then returns to 1938 for the epilogue. Of course, this is a fictitious time; we could imagine that it is now 1938 when Ms. Du Maurier wrote the book. In any case, there is no mention made in the novel of real historical events like the two world wars. I’m sure other novels have this structure; I’m just not aware of them. The Odyssey , by contrast, begins in the middle of the story, goes back in time to catch the reader up to the middle, and then proceeds to the end.   Ooh! Odyssey  reference. It is different but there is a similarity between Rebecca and the Odyssey . If you include the epilogue as part of the text, we have a showing of what happens to the narrator and Henry/Maxim after the climax of the burning of Manderley. There is another great line at the end: “And before us, long as the skein of wool I wind, stretches the vista of our afternoon.” If we think of the end as occurring with the narrator and Maxim returning to Manderley and finding it in flames, we are forced to rethink the structure of the novel. Now, the climax is probably better seen as Dr. Baker’s revelation that Rebecca was dying, and everything after it—Maxim’s exoneration, the dream-like drive to Manderley, and the discovery of the fire—as showing what happens as a result. It is, indeed, a comment on a conclusion, referring back to our original definition of an epilogue. Of course, the text as presented shows the aftermath at the beginning, which creates considerable tension as the reader must figure out how the characters got to the situation they did. How and why. Perhaps there is some wisdom in presenting both endings and letting the reader decide which they like best. I want to say that the last two or so chapters contain some of the best prose writing I’ve ever read. Thank you, Ms. Du Maurier. Next time, let’s consider another book by Daphne Du Maurier, a long, short story written some thirty years after Rebecca — Don’t Look Now . Till then. #Rebecca #DaphneDuMaurier #AlanBray

A major feature of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca  is the way that time is presented. What stands out is the sense of present events always occurring in the shadow of Rebecca’s death. The story’s focus on this is a clue, teaching the reader to interpret the present in terms of the past. To make sense of the story, that’s where one’s attention has to be. When the narrator describes an event, a scene, a conversation, one must always make meaning of it in terms of the past. Nothing is context-free. Everything Maxim says and does is colored by Rebecca’s death and his role in it. Everything the narrator does is colored by her being married to Maxim and not being in on the mystery (till later).  Till she knows the truth (as recounted by Maxim) she interprets his aloofness as coldness toward her and their marriage. Of course, here she interprets the present in terms of the present, thereby violating the rule of the story. And she’s wrong. After the revelation, the narrator writes: “We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still too close to us. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us would stir again, and that sense of fear, of furtive unrest, struggling at length to blind unreasoning panic…might in some manner unforeseen become a living companion as it had been before.” This is a bit enigmatic, no? Despite the story being all about coming to terms with the past, (or not), the narrator is saying that she and Maxim must avoid the past, forget it or else it might overwhelm them. We the readers must follow a different path; to read Rebecca is to enter the past. But along with these wise reflections, we must confront another level in the story of how time is handled—the level of writing, full of cues. Ah! The story’s present, which evidently is meant to have occurred some twenty years after the events leading to Maxim’s confession and the destruction of Manderley, are written in a distinct style—distinct from the remote past. The story’s present is reflective and slow, making considerable use of the depiction of the narrator’s internal thoughts. There is no dialogue: the dramatic scenes are told in narrative summary. This section begins with that marvelous first line that encapsulates so much: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” The style of this whole section is right there, the repetition, the dreaminess, the attention to the past. There follows a description of the dream, told in gorgeous prose with considerable description. The narrator writes: “Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me…The beeches were white, naked limbs leant close to one another, their branches intermingled in a strange embrace, making a vault above my head like the archway of a church.” And again: “The house was a sepulcher, our fear and suffering lay buried in the ruins. There would be no resurrection.” There is use made of the conditional tense: “The room would bear witness to our presence…And Jaspar, dear Jaspar…would be stretched upon the floor, his tail a-thump when he heard his master’s footsteps.” The sense is that if the dream were real, the narrator and Maxim would be able to return. But: “We can never go back again, that much is certain.” The narrator continues by describing: “Once, there was an article on wood pigeons.” This article, in a magazine, threatens, as she reads aloud to Maxim, to bring back too much of living at Manderley, and the narrator falters and stops. This entire section is written in a dream-like imperfect tense. Their life in exile occurs as an on-going process, one without firm markers of time. “The scrubby vineyards and crumbling stones became things of no account…”  And the last line of the curious epilogue (which we will comment on later): “And before us, long as the skein of wool I wind, stretches the vista of our afternoon.” In general, time has different meanings. There is time as a measurement, scientific time that is used as a sort of absolute yardstick. A day has twenty-four hours, an hour, sixty minutes. However, real humans experience the passage of time in different ways; time is subjective. “Durational time, or duration,  refers to the subjective experience of time as a continuous flow of lived experience, rather than a static, measurable quantity .  It emphasizes the qualitative, interconnected nature of conscious moments, where the past, present, and anticipated future are experienced as a unified whole, distinguishing it from  clock time  or  spatialized time , which treats time as a series of discrete, separate points.” Writing from the story’s present, the narrator says: “Of course we have our moments of depression, but there are other moments too, when time, unmeasured by the clock, runs on into eternity…” Later, the narrator comments on an incident experienced between she and Maxim: “It was ours, inviolate, a fraction of time suspended between two seconds.” This is not scientific time, best B. Once Rebecca’s boat is discovered with her corpse inside, the narration assumes a distinct form. Maxim confesses that he murdered Rebecca and scuttled the boat. Time—still quite subjective—speeds up, but its tense is strictly the simple past. “I’I don’t want you to bear this alone,’ I said. ‘I want to bear it with you. I’ve grown up, Maxim, in twenty-four hours. I’ll never be a child again.’ He put his arm around me and pulled me to him very close…I stood there with my face against his shoulder. ‘You’ve forgiven me, haven’t you?’ I said.” (he forgives her). Yes, there is considerable quoted speech, my friends, which—as we said last time—turns every utterance into an event. For over a hundred pages, this style continues, making a sort of one, long running scene as the narrator struggles to support Maxim’s alibi. This creates considerable tension, as the reader does not know the outcome, and there is a shocking development that ironically, saves Maxim. There is more to cover—a curious epilogue that returns us to the first time period and to its different style. Let’s cover it next time. Till then. #Rebecca #DaphneDuMaurier #AlanBray

One of the key features of fiction is the transformation of the protagonist. By this, I am not referring to a certain genre of fiction known as Transformation Fiction, where a character, often an animal, changes its form like a shapeshifter, which suggests fantasy and science fiction. No sir, I’m talking about a realistic transformation of personality, the kind of thing all humans go through. Here is what our friend AI says: Transformation in fiction is a fundamental narrative technique where characters, themes, or the story world undergo a significant, evolving change, often leading to a new equilibrium by the story's end. This can involve external or internal shifts, such as a character developing new beliefs, adopting different behaviors, or physically changing form. The process involves an inciting incident, a series of actions, and a compelling before-and-after contrast that shows the character's evolution.  It is commonplace to believe that people transform due to an outside event, perhaps meeting a charismatic person or experiencing some trauma. This may lead to an internal conflict which is resolved by change. Satisfying, relatable fiction makes use of this causal relationship, and Rebecca  is an outstanding example. The story begins with the unnamed protagonist who describes herself in this way: “…with straight bobbed hair and youthful, unpowdered face, dressed in an ill-fitting coat and skirt, and a jumper of my own creation, trailing Mrs. Van Hopper (her employer) like a shy, uneasy colt.” “Any measure of self-possession I had gained hitherto…was like a rag now, fluttering before the wind; it seemed to me that even the most elementary knowledge of behaviour was unknown to me now; I should not know my right hand from my left, whether to stand or sit, what spoons and forks to use at dinner.” In short, at the beginning of the story, the protagonist suffers from poor self-esteem. Her husband Maxim seems to abet this process of self-loathing. He is some twenty years older and treats the protagonist more like a daughter than a wife, kissing her on top of the head, and addressing her as “my sweet child.” He is often withdrawn and grumpy and the protagonist takes this personally, believing he is dissatisfied with her because she’s such a wretch. Of course, we learn that she is incorrect, although one might wonder why Maxim does marry her. She does become very stalwart and more womanly, perhaps old Maxim saw a potential in her that she ignored. The marriage is what Ai would call an inciting incident. A crisis develops. She believes he longs for his first wife and actively tries to emulate her. However, the protagonist becomes convinced that she will never measure up to the deceased Rebecca, and that Maxim must regret marrying again. At the fancy dress ball, the protagonist acts out this crisis by dressing as a forebear of Maxims, not realizing Rebecca had done the same. Maxim loses it, and the protagonist is plunged into despair. It should be noted that the evil Mrs. Danvers encourages all this drama, wishing to discredit and drive away the protagonist. The situation seems to be lurching toward disaster when Rebecca’s sailboat is discovered with her corpse inside a cabin. Maxim confesses to the protagonist that he shot Rebecca to death and tried to conceal the murder by scuttling the boat. He describes Rebecca as emotionally abusive, a woman who taunted him into a homicidal rage, and that he didn’t love her. Here is where we get the protagonist’s transformation. “I held his hand against my heart. I did not care about his shame. None of the things he had told me mattered to me at all. I clung to one thing only, and repeated it to myself, over and over again. Maxim did not love Rebecca. They had never known one moment’s happiness together.” And: “I was the self that I had always been, I was not changed. But something new had come upon me that had not been before. My heart, for all its anxiety and doubt, was light and free…I did not hate her (Rebecca) anymore. She could not hurt me.” ‘Kay. Some of you may raise your eyebrows at all this. Why does Maxim shoot his wife? That’s pretty extreme behavior. Well, there is some foreshadowing—mention of Maxim’s bad temper, but, hey, no book is perfect. The protagonist’s reaction to learning of the murder may also seem a bit surprising—if your spouse confessed to murdering your predecessor, would you conclude he didn’t love her and exult? This does get at the point of reliable/unreliable narrators, but Rebecca  never raises this question. If Maxim says the sky is blue, it is. My point here is to show how the story handles the process of transformation. As things develop, the protagonist describes sexual behavior with her husband (very discreet)—the likes of which you’ve never seen before! She transforms from being a sort of teenager to being a woman who can be sexual and can also support her partner through a rough time. Let’s stop here and pick up next time. Till then. #Rebecca #DaphneDuMaurier #AlanBray

It has been said by the wise that music resides between the notes. In fact, I actually quote this on the main page of this site. Today, let’s apply this idea to Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca , looking at two scenes and the way what isn’t written is as important as what is. This is a key skill of writing, the ability to tell a coherent story without  re-counting possibly tedious moment-to-moment experience. In Chapter Ten, the unnamed narrator and her husband Maxim go for a walk after the visit of Maxim’s sister, Beatrice, and her husband. Here's the first paragraph: “We watched the car disappear around the sweep of the drive and then Maxim took my arm and said, ‘Thank God, that’s that. Get a coat quickly and come out. Damn the rain, I want a walk. I can’t stand this sitting about.’ He looked white and strained, and I wondered why the entertaining of Beatrice and Giles, his own sister and brother-in-law, should have tired him so.” The first leap or gap in time is in that first sentence. They watch the car disappear and the next thing is that Maxim grabs her by the arm and speaks. What happened between watching the car and Maxim grabbing her? Nothing judged very valuable to the story, apparently. Was this transition immediate in the narrator’s experience? —As I watch the car disappear, Maxim grabs my arm and speaks. The author made a decision here: let’s go right to the action of arm-grabbing and speaking. This is not the place for more showing of what it was like watching the car disappear. Continuing, while Maxim is speaking, issuing commands like a tyrant, the narrator notes he looks white and strained, and, during his speech, she wonders why his sister’s visit would cause this. In other words, she attributes his pallor to the visit—an important connection to the story as it unfolds. Maxim is stressed seeing his sister and brother-in-law because they are reminders of what became of Rebecca. They knew Rebecca, and we can infer that, throughout the luncheon, Maxim worried that the subject of Rebecca and her fate might arise. Of course, the narrator doesn’t know that; we the readers can infer it. (Only, however, upon re-reading). So Maxim’s “tired” demeanor is attributed to the visit, instead of something more benign and less relevant to the story—say because the fish he ate was spoiled. How much time elapsed in this scene? Two minutes, three? Perhaps less, perhaps it all happened quickly. The car disappears, Maxim grabs her arm and speaks, and she notes his appearance and attributes it to a particular thing. Then, we have the narrator speaking: “’Wait while I run upstairs for my coat,’ I said.” How much time passed here? Maxim says he can’t stand sitting around—is there any pause before the narrator speaks? Does she stare at him in annoyance? We don’t know because the text doesn’t say. And then why do we get a new paragraph with quoted speech by the narrator? She’s remembering all this; it happened in the past. Why use quoted speech instead of narrative summary? (I said, I’d run upstairs for my coat). What it does is makes her utterance more of an event. It’s set off from the previous paragraph. In a sense, the action stops as we can imagine her pulling away from him, preparing to head up stairs. Perhaps she finds him annoying but doesn’t say. In any case it’s more dramatic. In effect, it shifts the narration from the protagonist to the hidden narrator of the story who quotes her. Ooh! But Maxim continues to direct his wife, telling her not to go upstairs, that there are raincoats in a nearby room. He sends Robert the servant to get one. “He was already standing in the drive and calling to Jaspar (the dog). Jaspar barks. ‘Shut up, you idiot,’ said Maxim; ‘what on earth is Robert doing?’” ‘Kay, There a number of time-leaps here, best B. Has the protagonist pulled away from her husband’s grasp when he directs her to stay? Or not? Where did Robert come from? How much time passes after Robert goes to get the coat and when Maxim frets about how much time he’s taking? Maxim has evidently moved from the house’s front entrance out into the driveway. His movements and his speech convey a sense of urgency and upset. The man wants to walk and doesn’t mind irritating his wife, Robert, and the dog in order to get going. It's notable that if this were a scene in a play, we would see the action in all these leaps and pauses. But we are in a book and must contend with the compression and contraction of time. We must imagine. Let’s consider a different scene. In Chapter Seven, Maxim takes the narrator to Manderley for the first time, and she meets the housekeeper, Mr. Danvers. After a somewhat spooky arrival, we have: “I can close my eyes now, and look back on it, and see myself as I must have been, standing on the threshold of the house, a slim, awkward figure in my stockinette dress, clutching in my sticky hands a pair of gauntlet gloves…Someone advanced from the sea of faces, someone tall and gaunt, dressed in deep black, whose prominent cheekbones and great hollow eyes gave her a skull’s face, parchment white, set on a skeleton’s frame. She came towards me, and I held out my hand, envying her for her dignity and her composure, but when she took my hand hers was limp and heavy, deathly cold, and it lay in mine like a lifeless thing. ‘This is Mrs. Danvers,’ said Maxim, and she began to speak, still leaving that dead hand in mine, her hollow eyes never leaving my eyes, so that my own wavered and would not meet hers, and as they did so her hand moved in mine, the life returned to it, and I was aware of a sensation of discomfort and of shame.” This passage differs from the first in that it is less action and more reaction, if you will. Whatever else is going on in the scene, the narrator is focused on Mrs. Danvers, who is her nemesis, and the scene is focused on the narrator—not Maxim or Robert. It is focused on her reaction to Mrs. Danvers.. There are all kinds of compressions and ignoring of what else is happening—Mrs. Danvers has all the narrator’s attention, and the scene is all about the narrator. She describes Mrs. Danvers in a poetic way, saying that she is like a death’s head. This certainly foreshadows later developments, but it also goes to characterization: the narrator is fearful and timid.   Oh dear, looking at the length of this post, I’m afraid I’ve overstayed my welcome. Let’s stop here and resume next time. But before I go, I do want to say, damn it all, that I wish the unnamed protagonist was named. I know I could refer to her as Mrs. De Winter, but couldn’t her first name be given? Edith or Brittany or Kendra? Daisy? Till then. #Rebecca #DaphneDuMaurier #AlanBray

Last time, I announced I’d be talking about Daphne Du Maurier’s 1938 novel Rebecca , and many people stopped me on the street to say “ Rebecca ? Seriously? No one reads Rebecca  anymore. Get a real job.” And I was left grinning too broadly and trying to explain. Somebody reads Rebecca ; it’s been in print continuously since its publication—an unusual distinction for a book from the 30s. Two film adaptations have been made: the famous 1940 version with Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, and a 2020 remake with Lily James. The book is popularly regarded as a masterpiece of Gothic Romance, but I say, “Not so fast, Raisin Bran!” (Silver Linings Playbook reference). I think to call it that is an attempt to pigeon-hole a much more sophisticated work, perhaps because of when it was written and because of the gender of the author. Here's the famous first line: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” (Please imagine this with an upper-class British accent). Here we have a complex statement about time; later I’ll get into how the book deals with time—a major issue. A narrator, speaking as “I,” states that she dreamed last night that she had gone somewhere again. Consider the difference if she said, “I dreamt that I went to Manderley.” In the text, the narrator is looking back from a present, which is a major theme of the book, and describing going somewhere again. A repetition, which is again a major theme. Here's the narrator on repetition: “I wanted to go back again, to recapture the moment that had gone, and then it came to me that if we did it would not be the same, even the sun would be changed in the sky, casting another shadow, , and the peasant girl would trudge past us along the road in a different way, not waving this time, perhaps not even seeing us. There was something chilling in the thought, something a little melancholy, and looking at the clock, I saw that five more minutes had gone by. Soon, we would have reached our time limit and must return to the hotel.” Darn it, the whole book is encapsulated in that passage—the melancholy, the trying to hold on to the past, and the realization that one cannot. And the book’s first line too—the past is a dream, to experience the past again is only a dream. Brilliant, and please not the shimmering prose. Rebecca is narrated by a first-person protagonist who remains unnamed throughout the book. She is not Rebecca, best B. She is the “I” in the famous first line. We are not provided much background information on her. The story’s present is a place from which this narrator looks back at the events of the story. She exists in the shadow of the past. Her existence in the present consists in trying to cheer her husband Maxim up when he gets mopish while the couple travels around Europe staying in swanky hotels. This sounds rather fun, but the narrator presents herself as unhappy and obsessed. There’s a sense that the narrator’s present is somehow less important and vivid than is, or was, the past. And in a similar way, the narrator feels less important than Rebecca. Of course, we are dealing with a fiction here. The narrator must focus on the past because that’s what the story is about. In fact, we can detect an interesting phenomenon. Ooh! The novel attempts to seduce the reader with romance and suspense, and, on a different level, the unnamed narrator is seduced, both by Maxim (although things remain very chaste in the book) and by Manderley itself. Perhaps, she is also seduced by Rebecca’s memory. Ah! The story is, briefly, that the narrator meets Maxim de Winter while working as a lady’s companion. Max is a wealthy widower who has had, it’s rumored, a tragic past. He pursues and marries the narrator, who learns that Max’s first wife, Rebecca, died under mysterious circumstances. Max owns a marvelous estate in Cornwall, England called Manderley and takes his bride there to live. As said, a theme is that the narrator, who is twenty years younger than Maxim, feels inadequate to be the lady of a grand estate. Although, also as said, we don’t know much about her, we are confronted with her self-doubt. In the story’s present, she says: “I am very different from the self who drove to Manderley for the first time, hopeful and eager, handicapped by a rather desperate gaucherie and filled with an intense desire to please.” The narrator is an outsider who is alienated from Maxim’s world, a world she desperately wants to join. An outsider desiring to be let in. The book seduces the reader into identifying with her, loving her, imagining oneself taking her part in the story’s dramatic scenes. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a mise en abyme with the story of Mrs. Van Hopper, who the narrator is the companion of when she meets Max. Mrs. Van Hopper is unpleasant and arrogant and constantly demeans the narrator, treating her like the naïve fool she believes herself to be. The narrator carries this dynamic to Manderley where she feels inferior to Rebecca and to the sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers. After moving into Manderley, the narrator learns much more about her predecessor, Rebecca, and the story’s intensity deepens after Rebecca’s body is discovered. Eventually, the narrator transforms into someone older and wiser who must support her husband through a difficult time. ‘Kay.  Let’s stop here and resume next time. Till then. #Rebecca #DaphneDuMaurier #AlanBray

We’re back. At the end of Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo , the brothers, Peter and Ivan, reconcile, and Margaret plays a prominent role although she no longer has her own perspective as a character. It’s all Peter and Ivan. After the episode where Peter beats Ivan up, he is surprised by his two lady friends, Sylvia and Naomi, who confront him and propose they continue their triadic intimate relationship. Peter had been thinking he had to choose between the two, not considering what they wanted. Then, he is shown at his flat in Dublin when his mother texts him with the news that Ivan is playing an important chess match nearby and includes a link to the live reporting on the match. Peter taps this and studies Ivan’s image. He realizes the significance of the match and resolves to go to the nearby venue; he plans to remain outside so as not to interrupt Ivan’s concentration. Arriving, he sits in the lobby to wait, occasionally checking the live report on his phone. He thinks warmly of Ivan and with regret over their fight. He will remain in the lobby till the match ends and then briefly congratulate his brother. A woman wearing a raincoat emerges from inside the hall, and Peter decides it must be Ivan’s significant other, Margaret. Of course, it is, and Peter introduces himself and asks Margaret if she’d sit with him. What we have here in the climax of the story is that the two brothers, grieving over their father’s death, have had various difficulties and challenges. Peter has been self-medicating and has been confused over which woman in his life to commit to. Ivan has clung (literally) to a woman a decade older than he, who has her own troubles (an abusive ex-husband) but who actually seems like a pretty good person to cling to. But Ivan has also avoided his grief and wallowed in an under-employed existence, settling for mediocrity. And he and Peter have had several major arguments, culminating in a physical fight. However, they have constantly thought of each other in warm terms, and now, at the end, are ready to forgive and accept that they are family who have survived a major loss. Margaret is the catalyst. As they sit together, Peter is intensely aware of her, wondering how much she knows about he and Ivan. “Finally she says in a very low voice: I can imagine what you must think of me. As if scalded, in shock, he answers too loudly: Oh Jesus, don’t start. I was just going to say the same thing to you.” Then Peter says: Our dad should be here…I mean, I’m sorry our dad would have been here. To congratulate Ivan. You know, he was very proud of him. We all are, very proud…I’m sorry, she says quietly. I know it must be very difficult.” And Peter replies: “Thank you. It is hard. I miss him.” Peter is able to verbalize his grief with Margaret, a stranger he feels close to, an intermediary with Ivan. It represents a large step toward reconciliation with his brother. Notably he has not yet been able to talk about his feelings with the two women he loves, Naomi and Sylvia. The match is over; Ivan has triumphed. Margaret gets up to go back inside to him. She addresses Peter: “Will you wait? I’m going to go in and tell Ivan you’re here. I feel he will want to see you.” Peter remains. “And was it real he wonders. She, the raincoat, flower-like her face, the live stream, captured pawn…Half in love with her himself by the time she was walking away…Sitting there beside him quietly: she seemed to embody the inexpressible depth of misunderstanding: of her, his brother, interpersonal relations, life itself.” And Ivan emerges from the auditorium. “Peter looks back at him, his brother, the watchful child, so young still, all of life ahead of him, and his eyes are filling with tears, hot, the corridor dimming and growing blurry…Ivan comes towards him, saying: Hey…And in desperation, as if not to be seen, to hide his face, he puts his arms around Ivan, embraces him…I’m sorry, alright? …I’m sorry as well, he (Ivan) says. Are you okay?” At this point, Peter and Ivan have a long conversation about their father’s death, the women in their lives, chess, and their relationship, tying together the loose ends the story has developed. The last paragraph is long. In it, Peter’s stream of consciousness is on full display, as he leaves the event and the book. He imagines the whole family plus the three women he and Ivan are involved with, having Christmas dinner together. ”Nothing is fixed. She, the other, Ivan, the girlfriend, Christine (his mother), their father, from beyond the grave. It doesn’t always work but I do my best. See what happens. Go on in any case living.” There’s a sense here of Peter feeling responsible for them all, caring for them. And so Intermezzo  ends, connecting nicely with the beginning in which Peter is shown musing affectionately about Ivan but also very blocked about expressing himself. Thank you, Sally Rooney. Next week, a new book, Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca . Till then. #Intermezzo #SallyRooney #AlanBray

More housekeeping to begin: I received a notice from Google (although it could have been someone pretending to be Google) that certain pages on my site could not be viewed because they were “blocked by robots.” I would like the robots to stop this activity. Don’t they have something better to do? Malicious mischief. If there is any truth to this problem, and anyone is having trouble with the site, please let me know. Now then. In my first post about Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo , I mentioned the epigraph before the story begins. It’s a quote from philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein:   But don’t you feel grief now ? (But aren’t you now playing chess?) Today, let’s consider how this guides the book. As always, there will be spoilers. The story begins with Peter walking along a Dublin street, musing. We learn straight off that there’s been a recent (eleven or twelve days past) funeral that his younger brother, Ivan, a chess master, attended as mourner, and finally, that this funeral was for their father. These thoughts, occurring on page one and two, are critical to the overall story, but may be lost because of the way they’re presented—yes, best beloved, the style. This essential information—the father’s death and the brother’s chess vocation—are embedded in the novel’s key stylistic device—the presentation of Peter’s stream of consciousness, and this device demands the reader’s attention—overshadowing the content  I’ve quoted this passage before and won’t do so again, but the content is that Peter is thinking affectionately and with caring toward Ivan. He seems to deny his own grief, particularly in the scene he’s about to walk into. In this scene, he tells Naomi that his father died but that he doesn’t want to talk about it, and that he doesn’t know how his brother is doing emotionally. Of course, this contradicts the opening stream of consciousness passage. While with Naomi, he remembers being with Sylvia, at and immediately after the funeral, and this reveals a central theme of the story, the love triangle that torments him and pre-occupies him so that he avoids grieving. But at heart we get a sense in the story’s opening of a man who feels something is missing. His father has recently died but he focuses (to himself) on worrying whether his younger brother is okay and on his erotic fixation on a younger girlfriend. In the next chapter, we are introduced to Ivan and Margaret in scenes that may occur around the same time as Chapter One—eleven or twelve days after the funeral. The reader is not initially cued to this. Although we are privy to Ivan’s thoughts, there is no mention of his father’s death, and, as a result, Margaret knows nothing about it. Ivan thinks about chess; he’s about to play an exhibition chess match, playing simultaneous games against the members of a local chess club.  He also thinks about Margaret. Several pages along, we get the first cue: “…he has to admit that Peter organized pretty much everything around the funeral.” He muses about his brother yet ultimately thinks about eating a chocolate bar, deciding: “These are the right kind of things for him to think about at this moment: precise things, tangible, replete with sensory detail.  And then the games will begin.” So, in the opening of the story, we are presented with two brothers who deny their connection with each other. They’ve both experienced a major loss but deny it, focusing instead on erotic attractions. And chess. Certainly for Ivan, indirectly for Peter, the game of chess serves to take them out of the past and away from grief. While playing chess or planning to, Ivan actively avoids grief. The brothers have a history of competition and conflict which predates their father’s death. It would seem they get along best when not together. At a restaurant dinner, written from Ivan’s perspective, they talk about everything but their father’s recent death, although they’re both thinking about it. Ivan thinks about Peter giving the eulogy at the funeral and wishes he’d given it. Peter asks him if he’s been back to their father’s house since the funeral and Ivan says no. They talk about the house in terms of whether their mother will sell it and how that would feel. Ivan says, it would be sad never to be able to go back to the house again. He doesn’t like to think of it empty and no one living there. “An expression comes over Peter’s face, a difficult expression to describe, and then immediately it’s gone again, and he answers: I know what you mean…it wouldn’t be practical for either of us to live there. Ivan agrees.” They dance around their grief, talking about it in these once-removed terms of empty houses. Ivan thinks about their father’s final illness, about how Peter had trouble sitting bedside along with Ivan. The dinner deteriorates quickly when Ivan tells Peter about Margaret, Ivan’s thirty-six years old paramour. Peter disapproves of the age gap, and Ivan becomes angry: “In a deliberately quiet, almost hissing voice Ivan says: I actually hate you. I’ve hated you my entire life. Without stirring, without looking around to see if the other diners or staff are watching, Peter just answers: I know.”   Days later, when Ivan is staying at their father’s house, Peter visits in a drunken state and the brothers’ relationship erupts into a physical altercation. Here’s Peter’s perspective: “Seems to feel before he sees. The sensation, sudden, jarring more than painful, shoved backwards against the hearth, and he has to step back, find his footing. Ivan has pushed him…Heat of rage flaring inside him now, hot light. Peter reaches out and slaps him hard across the face with the back of his hand…Peter grasps him by his sweatshirt, both hands, holding hard, and throws him down on the floor, where his body lands heavily…Peter feels himself draw back to put the weight of his body into his foot, ready to slam it into his ribs, who’s sorry now, you little worm, I’ll fucking kill you. Before he can move however, he catches in the eyes a glimpse, eye’s looking at him. Ivan’s. Turned up to him, widened in horror, pleading, whole face ashen sick, beyond white, grey. Terrified…Frightened, he’s really frightened, and Peter steps back now, steps away, clearing his throat…He wouldn’t really. It was just. I wasn’t going to do anything, he says aloud.” So the brothers, who feel enraged by death, act out the rage against one another—and, of course, there is real bitterness between them. By the way, the above passage is a great example of the jagged, stream-of-consciousness thought that characterizes Peter. ‘Kay, I don’t want those robots after me. I’ll stop here, and next time, we’ll cover the story’s conclusion that connects to the beginning. Grief and chess, my bro. That is the key. Till then. #Intermezzo #SallyRooney #AlanBray

To begin today, some housekeeping. It has come to my attention that the New York Times  ran an article last week on the Performative Male, a cultural archetype who, “ might sip on iced matcha lattes at a cafe while reading Sally Rooney or Joan Didion. He might wear wired headphones and baggy pants, and he would most likely be carrying a tote bag (perhaps with a  Labubu  attached). He could be listening to Clairo and would be quick to reveal his collection of vinyl records. He turns himself into a walking mood board of on-trend markers for softness, stylishness and a feminist leaning that he may or may not actually possess. And as a result, he has become a scoffed-at meme.” I would like to state that I am not writing about a novel by Sally Rooney in order to seem more sensitive to contemporary women. I am happily married and am already pretty darn sensitive (Dena says two-thirds of the time).  I have no wired headphones or LaBubu dolls. I don’t listen to Clairo, although I do have many vinyl records and some Joan Didion books. Baggy pants, yes but not so stylish. ‘Kay. That’s settled then. I am not a meme. Last time, we were discussing the style of Intermezzo , in particular the use of the present tense and the deployment of two different narrative styles to represent the two main characters, Peter and Ivan. Throughout both styles, there is a pervasive focus on internal, subjective experience. Peter has a complex romantic life that involves him believing he is in love with two women, Naomi, (22) his younger sexual partner, and Sylvia, a woman of his age (32), a former paramour who suffered a bad accident that left her unable to enjoy penetrative sex. Such a fictional situation—a not-quite-classic love triangle—might inspire many authors to focus on the interpersonal relationships of the lovers, as revealed in dialogue and dramatic scene, but Intermezzo consists of a lot of inner talk. Here is Peter with Naomi: “She lies down beside him, warm, her breath warm, the scent of coffee and something else…Letting him touch with his fingertips her damp underarm. Chalky scent of deodorant only masking the lower savory smell of perspiration.” ‘Kay, so he’s kind of obsessed with her, but the obsessions are all filtered through his sensory experience. They’re impressions that are largely unmediated by past contexts and/or interpretation. Ivan’s inner life is also shown, yet he is more reflective and intellectual, which speaks to his being a different character. Here he is after having sex with Margaret for the first time: “Is this how it feels, he thinks, to get what you want? To desire, and at the same time to have, still desiring, but fulfilled…Other people might experience these feelings all the time, whatever they are. Strong, powerful feelings of happiness, satisfaction, protectiveness. It could all be very ordinary, in the aftermath of mutually pleasant episodes just like now.” Yes, he’s very inside his head all right. Margaret herself is shown as being more…well, normal, I think. Here she is driving Ivan to his place: “What do you think you’re passionate about? she asks. At this, he blushes. She can see him, even in the dim light, blushing, and he says something that sounds like: Hm. Alarmed, she says with forced cheerfulness, too loudly: Never mind, you needn’t tell me. Then she regrets saying that too.” So Margaret tends to often be shown in dialogue (and the dialogue tends to be unmarked) along with her internal reactions to what’s being said and heard. She second guesses herself a lot and lacks confidence. Another feature of the story is the depiction of social media. Peter texts and emails, and these communications are shown in this format: “Finally the resigned padding of his thumbs on the screen.   Peter: That’s terrible news, Janine. (a friend of Naomi’s) I’ll head over to Kevin Street now. Do you know why Naomi was arrested? And is she okay? Janine: Yea I don’t think she got hurt or anything.”   It’s interesting that Peter, whose thoughts are typically shown in sentence fragments, tends to text in complete sentences. I don’t know why. Ivan has a hefty on-line presence because of his chess games which are apparently streaming but doesn’t communicate much otherwise. And there is use of several slang terms. Ivan is given to saying “cool,” even in profound moments, and many of the characters make use of the expression, “No, yeah,” which I believe is an effort at showing Irish dialect. (It also reminds me of my late mother-in-law who had a confusing verbal style). All of these things—the present tense, the internal focus, the mixing of narrative styles—are features of modernism. Is Intermezzo  a modernist novel? Whoa! I can see where this question is coming from. Last time, I noted Ms. Rooney’s interest in James Joyce, a sort of high priest of modernism, the artistic movement that began in the late nineteenth century. Yes, the above things are indeed features of modernism, which was, however, centered on breaking with tradition. In Intermezzo , we have a book that strongly expresses the tradition of modernism, an artistic movement that was supposed to defy tradition. A paradox, no? No, yeah. (crash of chairs being thrown, incoherent yelling, whine of feedback from microphone) “Excuse me, Mr. Pretentious Bully. Mr. Snooze…” Oh no. How did you get back in here? Call security! “…Mr. Performative Male. Who cares if Intermezzo is in a modernist tradition? I just want to read the good parts and get to the ending. Hey, let go of me! Hey!” ‘Kay. It’s useful (but not necessary) to understand how a book fits into literary traditions. No author writes without context and influence. No artist creates works that are completely new. There is always precedent and knowing this may increase your pleasure. It seems to me that Intermezzo  is a hybrid, parts of it are very much in a modernist form, parts are more traditional, consisting of mainstream prose styles. Till next time. #Intermezzo #SallyRooney #AlanBray

“Begin at the beginning," the King said , very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” This quote from Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland will get us started today. There are, my friends, a number of lenses through which one can regard Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo.  We’ll do as many as I can think of but today let’s consider style. “ Literary style refers to  the distinctive way an author uses language to express their ideas and tell a story .  It encompasses elements like word choice, sentence structure, and figurative language, creating a unique "voice" and tone for the writing. Essentially, it's how an author writes, rather than just what they write. ” So sayeth our friend, Generative AI. Of course, we the wise, know that AI is “implying” the role of the implied author, the entity that the reader perceives is creating the text—distinct from, in this case, Ms. Rooney herself. Part of the style of Intermezzo  is that it is written in the present tense, and makes use of a close third-person narration, although there is considerable movement towards first-person, in a stream-of-consciousness way. After the intriguing epigraph concerning grief and chess, mentioned last time, the story begins: “Didn’t seem fair on the young lad. That suit at the funeral. With the braces on his teeth, the supreme discomfort of the adolescent.” (This beginning links up nicely with the novel’s end, a feature we will return to). ‘Kay. This passage immediately cues the reader that the story is inside the mind of someone who thinks in a jagged and fragmented way—not that we all think in complete sentences. No? We learn within a page that the thinker is Peter, and that he is arriving at his girlfriend Naomi’s apartment (or flat, as the Irish say).We get movement from internal thought to third person, present tense here—still on page one: (Peter is thinking of comparisons made between he and his brother, Ivan): “Brains and beauty, an aunt once said. About them both. Or was it Ivan brains and Peter beauty. Thanks, I think. He crosses Watling Street towards an apartment…” The present tense in fiction has been popular for a number of years, before that, not at all, I think. It creates an immediate paradox. A text is written before the reader reads it, however, it’s written in such a way as to give the sense that it is written and read simultaneously—like speech (I know, there’s a lag there too). In the above example—which may have been written several years ago—we the readers are presented with a story about a man who is walking down a street thinking about his brother and their relationship. There is no shift to simple past tense in that phrase, “He crosses…” The story begins in a present time which is actually the past and moves forward. The implied author—not the characters—knows what will happen even though what will happen will occur in the story’s future. Of course, as if that’s all not enough, we have that intriguing “About them both,” which seems to be a comment by the narrator—not Peter, who would have said, “About us both.”   Rabbit hole time. We are pressing our noses against the difficult issue of how an author choose a stable point from which to tell a story. Simple past tense has the advantage of establishing a fixed point. “Peter was walking one evening to Naomi’s flat, thinking about his brother Ivan and how he appeared at their father’s recent funeral. That suit didn’t seem fair on the young lad, he thought. Present tense is harder, more complex. In fact, Ms. Rooney is doing something very creative here. She is shaping a particular narrative style for Peter that is distinct from Ivan and from Margaret, both of whom appear in the next chapter. Peter, a character who is shown as being troubled and abusing alcohol and other drugs, has this jagged, stream-of-consciousness style, consistently to the end when he transforms into a calmer presentation. Please compare how Ivan and Margaret are shown in Chapter Two: “Ivan is standing on his own in the corner, while the men from the chess club move the chairs and tables around…Alone Ivan is standing, wanting to sit down, but uncertain as to which of the chairs need to be rearranged still and which of them are in their correct places already.” Here’s Margaret: “By the time Margaret finishes dinner, it’s dark outside the window of the bistro, the glass blue like wet ink. Garret behind the till asks her what they have on tonight and she says the chess clubs are in.” And here’s the narrator’s voice: “Ivan’s brother Peter, who is thirty-two and has a graduate degree in philosophy, says this school of thought on the relations between body and mind has been refuted.” I believe last time, I related that I was put off by these different styles between the main characters but now see them as parts of a whole. Peter is anxious and depressed, and his style is ragged. Ivan and Margaret are shown as being calmer and more conventional. They are more clearly sited in time and space and are painted in rather elegant, flowing prose, complete with poetic similes—“like wet ink.” It should be noted that Ms. Rooney says that she was reading James Joyce while writing Intermezzo  and tried to incorporate his usage of stream-of-consciousness narration. There’s more to say about style in Intermezzo , best beloved. Let’s stop and resume next time. Till then. #Intermezzo #SallyRooney #AlanBray

This week, for your consideration, a discussion of Sally Rooney’s 2024 novel I ntermezzo . Long time readers of this blog will recall that at one time, I discussed Ms. Rooney’s Normal People . I first read the second chapter of I ntermezzo when it appeared as a stand-alone short story in The New Yorker,  and then eagerly bought the book. Intermezzo  came on the heels of Normal People the book, and the popular film adaptation. Ms. Rooney thinks of it as her pandemic book, as it was written in a period of quarantine during the COVID-19 years. Faber and Faber, the book’s publisher, released  Intermezzo  on 24 September 2024, in what it called its "biggest trade campaign ever" The novel achieved strong initial sales, becoming the fastest-selling book in Ireland in 2024, with 11,885 copies sold in its first five days. Several Irish bookshops opened early to meet anticipated demand. Critical reaction was mixed, with praise tempered by objections over the book’s length (450 pages). Sadly, while I had enjoyed the short story adaptation of the book’s second chapter, I didn’t care for the first chapter and set the book aside. But recently, I thought, dang it, I should give Intermezzo another chance (a go, as the Irish would say) and I’m glad I did. I discovered that the choppiness I found in the book’s first chapter and the way it clashed with the style of the second, was of course, quite intentional and an effort at distinguishing two different narrative perspectives. More on this to come. First, some thoughts about the design of the hardcover edition. On the front cover, we have the author’s name and the title, Intermezzo, set against a background of a chess grid, presented in attractive shades of yellow and gray. Five human silhouettes are on the grid, two male and three female, although they hang upside down and resemble shadows. This would suggest that the story is about chess players and/or that the game of chess is a metaphor of the story. It is true that one of the principal characters is a professional chess player. The title Intermezzo   references both musical interludes and chess terminology . In music, an intermezzo is an interlude occurring between two more significant movements; “in chess, an intermezzo, also known as a  zwischenzug , is  a move that occurs during a combination or sequence of moves .  It involves inserting a surprising move, often a check, capture, or attack, before the anticipated recapture. This unexpected move forces the opponent to respond, potentially disrupting their plans and creating new tactical opportunities.” TMI!  We’ll have to explore this. It would be a clever idea that a novelist is like someone playing chess, that is, someone who controls the characters as if they were “pawns.” And that unexpected actions of the characters occur—this is a challenging issue. A novelist has the story all thought out, right? She/he “knows” the story. Well, I’m not sure this is always true. Surprises do happen when one is writing. Characters that are being written sometimes seem to become real agents who “take over” a story, acting in accordance with their desires and motives, so that the writer has no choice but to go along. Now, of course this is an illusion, a beautiful one to be sure, but a writer slaving away at a keyboard is the only one who can guide plot. It does get at the issue though of where stories come from: the writer’s unconscious? A wise editor who assembles scattered parts? Another aspect of how this chess metaphor might be expressed in the story is that the main characters (there are, arguably, five) could be seen as having different agendas, rather like people playing chess against each other. Both want to win but both can’t. Actually, there’s not a lot of direct mention of chess in the story, but the fact that the cover design and title refer to chess seems to imply the game has some meaning here. Intermezzo  is about two Irish brothers, Peter and Ivan, whose father has just died after a long illness. Peter is involved with two women, Sylvia and Naomi, and Ivan, just one, Margaret. The story may be seen as being about the effect of grief on people’s lives and relationships, although I’d have to say there’s not a lot of direct content about this. There’s some, particularly at the end, but it doesn’t dominate things. Ms. Rooney shows the reader what it’s like to be Peter and Ivan, and part of that is that their father has just died. As one might imagine, male-female relationships are explored in depth, and there’s a healthy dollop of sex! Hurrah! Another thing to consider: There is an epigraph before the story begins, and Ms. Rooney mentions it in an afterword, saying she translated it herself. It’s a quote from philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein: But don’t you feel grief now ? (But aren’t you now playing chess?)   This epigraph suggests that, indeed, the story is about grief and chess. A connection is made between feeling grief and playing chess. Something about playing chess should allow the player to feel grief, presumably from some prior loss that hasn’t before been felt. Hmmm. Let’s pause here and resume next time. Till then. #Intermezzo #SallyRooney #AlanBray