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This week, a new story, Kazuo Ishiguro’s 1988 The Remains of the Day. (Whiny voice: This week, a new story, Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat and—ow! Sounds of struggle, a crash. Something seems to strike a microphone, and feedback ensues). ‘Kay. Everyone settle down. I want to apologize—get him! Don’t let him get away!. (indistinct yelling). I first read Remains in 1995 when I was living in Chicago. My wife and I had seen the wonderful 1993 Merchant/Ivory film version starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, and I was eager to read the original book. I purchased the 1993 Vintage International Edition—connected to the film—and rely on it to this day. Remains is one of my favorite books and films, and this is the fifth time I’ve read it. (Distant shouting—big deal, Mr. Big Shot!) There has been a lot of scholarly attention on and writing about Remains, and if I make use of any of these ideas, I’ll do my best to cite them. The cover of this edition is made up of images from the film showing Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson in character as Mr. Stevens and Miss Kenton, the butler and housekeeper of Darlington Hall, a large estate in England during the nineteen twenties. (The film collapses the time a bit, I believe, so that its events begin more in the thirties). After the title page, there is a dedication to a real woman who was a friend of Ishiguro’s in the 1980s, Mrs. Lenore Marshall. Remains is in broad terms about a road trip that the protagonist, Mr. Stevens, undertakes from Darlington Hall in southeast England to the southwest where he seeks Miss Kenton, who had left Darlington Hall to marry before the war and has recently written Mr. Stevens to let him know about a separation from her husband. Stevens hopes to persuade Miss Kenton to return—both for professional and personal reasons. So it is a story about a journey, both to reconnect with Ms. Kenton and to understand the past, and Stevens’ role in it. The novel is divided into eight sections, each one’s title refers to portions of the six days of Mr. Steven’s journey, except for the first, which is—Prologue 1956 Darlington Hall. The first line. “It seems increasingly likely that I will undertake the expedition that has been preoccupying my imagination now for some days.” Mr. Stevens original employer, Lord Darlington—deceased in the book’s present—had a compromised life. An enormously wealthy man who socialized with the elite of British society, he also became involved with those who supported Adolph Hitler and the Nazis’ rise to power in Germany. He went so far as to try to broker a peace agreement between the Nazis and the British government, and is shown as being anti-semitic. He is, however, also shown as someone who rejected the Nazis and their beliefs, perhaps too late. Stevens was his loyal butler throughout, and now struggles with the satisfaction he feels at being a good butler vs. the reputation his former employer has as a traitor. Was Stevens complicit with Lord Darlington’s misbehavior? Was Lord Darlington himself complicit with the Nazis, or was he their dupe? It should be said that Mr. Stevens is never shown directly doing something to help the Nazis (beyond taking the German Foreign Minister’s coat). His sins are, if you will, ones of possible omission rather than commission. He remains the loyal servant of Lord Darlington despite having clear evidence of the Lord’s mis-guided conspiracy with immoral people. The text is written in first person, presenting the thoughts of Mr. Stevens—not so much as a memoir but as a piece of rhetoric designed to persuade an imaginary reader of Mr. Stevens’ lack of guilt—not unlike Pat in Silver Linings Playbook, who is trying to convince his ex-wife of how he’s reformed himself. However, in Remains, we gradually sense that this imaginary reader is another butler whom Mr. Stevens believes is the only person who can really understand him. Let’s define the imaginary reader as a hypothetical entity that a work is addressed to, whose attitudes, etc. may differ from an actual reader’s. Adam Parkes in his book The Remains of the Day: A Reader’s Guide, writes that the use of this structure (a narrator addressing an imaginary reader) sets up two audiences. One is the sympathetic “you” to whom Stevens addresses his plea for understanding; the other is the reader of the novel, who is shown not only Mr. Stevens’ plea, but also the growing evidence that compromises claims of innocence. Mr. Stevens is pre-occupied with presenting himself in a certain way which is not congruent with the truth. An example occurs when he is traveling through the countryside and stops to avoid running over a chicken. The hen’s owner rushes out to thank him, saying he was probably in a great hurry, and he replies: “Oh, I’m not in a hurry at all,” I said with a smile. “…I’m just motoring for the pleasure of it, you see.” Well, this statement is contradicted by large sections of the narrative that show Mr. Stevens’ eagerness to re-connect with Miss Kenton. Why does Mr. Stevens deny this? He wishes to present the world with an image of himself as a different person, sometimes a gentleman, sometimes the perfect, loyal servant to a great man, instead of the person he really is—and this person, we shall see, remains a puzzle to him. #TheRemainsOfTheDay #KazuoIshiguro

One of the hallmarks of fiction, one of the things that often keeps us reading, is how the protagonist transforms in the story. Aristotle himself got us going on this idea; static heroines/heroes just aren’t very interesting. Recently, we looked at a story—By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept—that is all about transformation via Ovid’s Metamorphoses. So…(wait for it)…how does Pat transform in Silver Linings? At the beginning of the story, Pat is focused on the end of what he calls “apart time,” the separation from his wife, Nikki. He dreams of reconciliation with her and is convinced that the pathway to this is to do all the things she wanted him to do in their marriage. Nicely summarized by the expression “To be kind rather than right,” this path involves being in excellent physical condition, not losing his temper (that’s an understatement; it’s more like controlling his rage), and reading and appreciating the novels she taught to her high school students. Pat believes that by being a “better” man (as he thinks is defined by Nikki), he will get her back. He believes this process will occur magically, that all he has to do is stick with his program, and his personal movie will have the happy ending he desires. We’ve talked about how Pat is shown to be an unreliable narrator of his story. At the end of the novel, he has given up his dream of re-unification, he has taken direct action to become closer with Tiffany, and has lost interest in his self-betterment program. He has, I believe transformed from someone who feels essentially worthless, to being able to recognize his worth. Most importantly, his view of the “reality” he shares with his family and friends becomes much more realistic. He journeys to see the real Nikki and observes her with her husband and children, a tangible sign that she’s moved on. And we’ve talked about how this transformation occurs because of the (mostly) gentle disconfirmation and confrontation of Pat’s delusions by his family and friends. And therapist! After considerable confrontation, Pat is at his parents’ home on New Years Eve. His mother falls asleep on the couch, Pat goes to retrieve a blanket to cover her and finds the VHS tape of his wedding. He puts it in the machine and presses PLAY. There’s no commentary and/or internal experience of this, but I think there’s a sense in the story that, at this point, Pat is ready to face his demons. He’s gone through lengthy preparation—the process of loving confrontation, the trauma of learning Tiffany has deceived him about Nikki, and the trauma of being mugged and having his leg broken. He’s—somewhat miraculously—reconnected with his old friend Danny, who does not offer explicit advice but has a strong influence on Pat to face his problems. Pat presses PLAY and watches the film of his wedding. He sees Nikki, his parents, his brother. He hears the dreadful “Songbird” song that the wedding band played and which has haunted him ever since. Then for the first time, he’s able to remember what he could not previously—the reason for his being sent to the psychiatric hospital. He’d gone home early from work and found Nikki with the man she’d been having an affair with. He physically assaults this man, nearly killing him, and turns with rage on Nikki, but she conks him over the head with a CD “boombox.” He wakes up in restraints in the hospital. Nikki divorces him, and he is sent to a secure psychiatric setting for years. Pat remembers the whole thing; the narration is dispassionate, matter-of-fact. He finishes, regards his reflection in the TV, then goes and leaves a message for his brother, saying he needs a huge favor. The favor is to get Tiffany’s number. In response to a call that is not shown, she sends him a long letter explaining why she made up the story about Nikki—because she loves Pat. She writes of the loss of her husband and the difficult process of letting go. She asks forgiveness. This letter is another nice example of layering in the narrative. The reader is presented with an unmediated message from another character in the story—not Pat, who is not shown distorting what Tiffany writes to him. At the end, Pat meets Tiffany in a park. He acknowledges he needs her as she needs him. It’s clear they are going to be a couple and that they will face many problems together. There is no resolution of everything. Just a reliable narration. And this represents Pat’s biggest transformation—giving up his delusions about the past, his attempts to “go back” to something that never was. Next week, a new story. Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, a novel with a different sort of unreliable narrator. Till then. #SilverLiningsPlaybook #MatthewQuick

I have written about how Pat is an unreliable narrator in Silver Linings. The unnamed narrator presents Pat’s story as a sort of journal he eventually tries to send to his ex-wife Nikki, a journal which is a sort of instrument of propaganda, designed to convince Nikki to accept him again. However, cracks begin to appear in what Pat writes, the “journal” begins to contain passages that would probably not bring the “real” Nikki toward reconciliation—like Tiffany’s profane tirade we looked at last week. These are entries that Pat probably would not approve for his letters to Nikki, but they creep in anyway, showing the reader that Pat is not only unreliable in presenting the truth, but also not in full control of the narrative. Poor fellow. By the way, fun fact—there are a number of famous unreliable narrators in literature. Don Quixote is a prime example. We will examine what happens in the story—probably next week—but this time, I’d like to look at some of the assumptions the story makes and how this effects our reading. There’s an implication that a separate “reality” exists as a background to Pat’s journal. His version of things is clearly not a reliable picture of the reality of the story and the characters in it. His is a very idiosyncratic version designed to influence, to paint a pretty picture of his resolve to “be kind rather than right.” We get a sense that the other characters do not necessarily share this world, that they inhabit a different version of reality. Tiffany is a prime example, as is Jake, Pat’s father, even his long-suffering mother. To varying degrees, they reject and challenge, and dis-confirm Pat’s world-view. There’s an implication that they are more correct, and that Pat is often delusional, yet they are not shown as being smarter or as not having problems. In fact, it’s clear that Tiffany is very troubled. Pat’s father is an alcoholic, abusive jerk. Dr. Patel, Pat’s psychiatrist, comes closest to being wise, but he is also shown letting Pat encounter him as a real person who loves professional football. This is part of the complexity of the story. It would be quite different if Pat met an unequivocally wise person who would present a more stable and “realistic” view of life to challenge Pat’s troubled one. But this doesn’t really happen—Tiffany is the one who finally cracks Pat’s delusions but she does it for her own reasons—she loves him and is jealous about his feelings for his ex-wife. The people in Pat’s life are all flawed humans with their own problems and agendas. His mother is pretty close to being self-less. But of course that’s her exact problem, and it causes her to be taken advantage of by the people she loves. In any case, we the readers only have what we have, Pat’s unreliable version at first, and then a growing crush of disconfirmation. We have to imagine how things “really are,” and this pulls us in to the story. We read passages where I think, we feel sorry for Pat because it’s obvious how mistaken he is. We groan (causing raised eyebrows from our partners) when Pat returns to his “life as a movie with a happy ending” story. Contrast this with a story where everything is explained accurately, where the author makes all the characters mouth-pieces of her/his own agenda. An author who believes she/he is right and wishes to demonstrate this to the reader. It’s part of the strength of Silver Linings that we become so involved with Pat’s character, wanting him to succeed. To truly find a silver lining. And of course, at the end, he does find a silver lining in Tiffany’s love, but it’s not a sweeping one that miraculously makes everything better. He must endure pain and loss to get to a better place, and at the end of the story, it’s clear that his struggle is not over. The ending is open. ‘Kay. Many of you have asked me to comment on the more formal elements of this fine book, and I will do so now. In terms of the narrative structure of Silver Linings, we have a story told by an unreliable first-person narrator whose story is, of course, actually told by a nameless, faceless narrator entity who is able to be inside the protagonist’s head. Present tense is utilized throughout, along with some conditional passages that collapse time (making use of “she/he would” type of constructions). Adaptations of film techniques are used—the repetitive “montage” section that also collapses time. Frequent use of letters are used, which adds another layer to the text. Reference is made to a number of other novels—because Pat is trying to read the books that Nikki teaches to her class. The Great Gatsby, The Scarlet Letter, A Farewell to Arms, and The Bell Jar are all described, and this cleverly provides a way for the Narrator to confront Pat’s delusions. These are all stories without happy endings—in Pat’s mind—and he angrily rejects them. However, the effect on the reader is to be shown that Pat is mistaken. The narrator entity’s presence can also be seen in passages we have discussed where other characters intrude on and confront both Pat’s delusions and his composition of a propaganda type “Notebook” to win back his ex-wife. Also we have the chapter titles that seem to slyly question Pat’s rigid world and poke ironic fun at the events in the story. “An Infinite Amount of Days Till My Inevitable Reunion With Nikki.” “I Fear Him More Than Any Other Human Being.” “Break Free of a Nimbostratus.” Next week, we’ll look more at the ending of the story and how Pat’s character transforms. Till then, my dears. #TheSilverLiningsPlaybook #MatthewQuick

I have said that, in Silver Linings, Pat is an unreliable narrator. Let’s look at this more closely. An unreliable narrator is a narrator whose credibility is compromised. They aren’t telling the story accurately, because of a need to lie, or in Pat’s case, a need to deny the truth. Hold up, hold up! Is Pat even the narrator of Silver Linings? It’s probably more accurate to say that the story’s narrator tells the story through Pat’s experience, his consciousness. (whiny voice—Mr. Big Shot, Mr. Big Shot, can you talk about something else now?) The story is Pat’s voice, mostly Pat’s voice—there are also those things the style of the novel conveys, like the chapter titles. (Well, sure). It’s Pat’s voice, and like all of us humans, he’s sometimes in error. It’s an interesting puzzle, best beloved. The protagonist is telling a story that the reader increasingly comes to realize is in error—which implies there is another, truer story that’s conveyed somehow. (Gibberish!) Pat’s voice says: “…and then there is my writing, which is mostly daily memoirs like this one, so that Nikki will be able to read about my life and know exactly what I’ve been up to since apart time began. (my memory started to slip in the bad place because of the drugs, so I began writing down everything that happens to me, keeping track of what I will need to tell Nikki when apart time concludes, to catch her up on my life. But the doctors…confiscated everything I wrote before I came home, so I had to start over.” So Pat explains just what Silver Linings is, a way to communicate with Nikki, the implication being that it is a sanitized version for her consumption. He’s writing an account of his life but it is for her, it is not necessarily the truth. It’s what he wants her to believe. It emphasizes that he wants to get back together, that he’s doing all the things she wanted him to do—be in shape, read the books she taught. The character of Pat is someone who believes he can make up for all his errors and get back the life he used to have. He idealizes Nikki and their life together. So how does the reader come to realize that Pat is an unreliable narrator and that there is another, truer reality, a reality he must come to accept? (More on that next time). It’s clear from the first chapter that Pat has been confined in a psychiatric hospital and is supposed to be taking medication. At the same time, he espouses his silver linings philosophy and idealization of Nikki. His mother gets him out—it’s said because good lawyers are involved who promise the court that Pat will be in outpatient therapy and take his meds. Why is he in a psych hospital taking meds? Why does everyone there tell him that Nikki will not come back no matter what he does? If you have some conception about psych hospitals and mental health treatment, you might wonder at Pat’s grasp of reality and suspect that he is an unreliable narrator. If he is just this nice, positive guy who loves his wife, why did she leave him? And why is he in the hospital? These are significant questions the reader starts to ask. Once he’s home, Pat’s conception of things shifts, his idealization of Nikki slips. He reads the books she assigns to her students to read (she’s a high school teacher), and is upset by Sylvia Plath and Ernest Hemingway. In his view, neither are creators of silver linings. Why, he wonders, would Nikki teach such depressing stuff to kids? Other characters, his friend Tiffany, his mother, Ronnie, Jake, Dr. Patel, begin to challenge his view. The Sister Sailor Mouth chapter contains a fine example. Pat reacts violently at a Philadelphia Eagle’s game, losing his temper and assaulting a Giants fan who had assaulted his brother, Jake, but is terrified that Nikki will be angry at his behavior. He talks first with his new friend Tiffany about it, and her reaction is swift and profane. “Fuck Nikki,” Tiffany says. “The Giants fan sounds like a total prick, as do your brother and your friend Scott. You didn’t start the fight. You only defended yourself. And if Nikki can’t deal with that, if Nikki won’t support you when you are feeling down, then I say fuck her.” Pat says, “Don’t you ever talk about my wife like that.” “Your wife, huh…You mean your wife, Nikki, who abandoned you while you were recovering in a mental institution. Why isn’t your wife, Nikki, sitting here with you now, Pat? Think about it. Why are you eating fucking raisin bran with me? All you ever think about is pleasing Nikki, and yet your precious Nikki doesn’t seem to think about you at all.” Pat reports, “I’m too shocked to speak.” There are other cracks. Pat’s brother Jake reveals that Pat has been in the hospital for several years vs. the few months he thought. Pat’s mother gets drunk and tells him Nikki was not such a great wife. Pat begins to transform, and as a result becomes less unreliable as a narrator. He is confronted with other character’s views and must struggle to render his own congruent. Instead of presenting a “sugar-coated” story for his ex-wife, he starts to focus in a more honest way on his own inner turmoil. #TheSilverLiningsPlaybook #MatthewQuick

I'm very pleased to announce that Blue Lake Review will publish my short story "The Loss of the Whaling Ship Pequod" in their May issue. Yes, my friends, there is a Moby Dick reference here, but the story is about the Dreamers Program, the pathway to citizenship that was under so much attack in the previous administration. When the story comes out in May, I'll post a link.

This week a new story, Matthew Quick’s 2008 novel, The Silver Linings Playbook. I first read the book six years ago after seeing the great film adaptation directed by David O. Russell, and the differences between the two intrigued me. I believe the book is a darker rendering with a more open ending. Matthew Quick was a public and private school English teacher. Silver Linings was his first published book and was nominated for a PEN/Hemingway Award and optioned for a film before it was published. My position reading the book for the first time was a unique one. (Because you think you’re special). I refuse to get drawn into childish name calling with certain audience members. If you don’t have anything constructive to say, then just listen. As is said in Silver Linings, it’s better to be kind than to be right. (Bully!) I had a whole set of pre-conceptions about the characters and story. I knew nothing of Mr. Quick. I quickly realized the novel was a different beastie than the film and grew to appreciate it in its own right. I’ve read that David O. Russell filmed more than one version of the script before settling on one—specifically having Robert De Niro portray the character of the father as darker vs. more comedic. However, neither Mr. Russell nor Mr. De Niro have commented on these matters to me. (Because they don’t care). Silver Linings the novel is what we will focus on. I have the first paperback edition from 2010, published before the film was made. The first-time reader is confronted with the cover that displays the title, and a distant image of two people jogging down a suburban street. The author’s name is there, as well as a quotation from “Nancy Pearl, NPR, Summer’s Best Books,” in which she says, “Heartwarming, humorous, and soul-satisfying.” Well, such is the standard for book promotion. Since I spend most of my waking hours listening to National Public Radio, I took this quote positively. The title refers to silver linings, a focus on positive things, and to playbooks, an athletic reference, the whole title seems to refer to an athlete’s guide to achieving silver linings. Here we have an interesting self-referential thingee. The book is indeed about a former athletic coach who has a personal philosophy about seeing the positive, and the story itself is a kind of guide for the reader on how to find silver linings—not at all in any pedantic way, meaning it doesn’t hit you over the head, trying to teach you something. But there is wisdom within. However, the protagonist’s philosophy is shown to be—at least initially—largely derived from self-delusion and denial. Pat Peoples (Pat Solitano in the film) is a former high school teacher who, at the beginning of the story, is released from a psychiatric hospital where he’s been confined after a brutal assault on a man his wife Nikki was having an affair with. He has coped with being hospitalized by idealizing his now ex-wife and believing that he can magically make her return to him by becoming the person he thinks she wanted him to be. That’s a tortuous sentence. In Pat’s words: “I believe in happy endings…And it feels like this movie has gone on for the right amount of time…Haven’t you ever noticed that life is like a series of movies?…Well, you have adventures. All start out with troubles, but then you admit your problems and become a better person by working really hard, which is what fertilizes the happy ending and allows it to bloom…Plus I know it’s almost time for the happy ending, when Nikki will come back, because I have improved myself so very much through physical fitness and medication and therapy.” Works of fiction are made up; the reader is always asked to accept certain elements of a story’s reality on faith. Silver Lining is a realist novel told in memoir style by a first person narrator who we’re asked to accept as the voice of Pat Peoples, the protagonist who we’re also asked to accept as a “real” person. Not so hard, he presents himself in realistic fashion, albeit obsessed and in denial. Further, we’re asked to believe that he is communicating with us through a text, that he is telling us a story. As this story develops, we come to understand that Pat is an “unreliable narrator.” In other words, he believes what he is relating is true, but we start to doubt that he knows what he’s talking about. More on this next time. Of course, in the time-honored tradition of this blog and my thoughts, I would like to— (Sounds of loud yawning). I would like to present the classic story-telling triumvirate in Silver Linings—first, the real author, Matthew Quick, second, the Narrator who stays pretty close to the Protagonist, and finally, the book’s style. We have immediate evidence of the presence of the style in the chapter headings. Chapter 1 is entitled, “An Infinite Amount of Days Until My Inevitable Reunion with Nicki.” Very interesting, almost like another layer and voice of commentary. Ostensibly in Pat’s voice, this phrase is saying Pat’s reunion with his ex-wife is both an infinite number of days away (it will never occur) and inevitable—a bit of a paradox. Of course, you can also take it as a somewhat poetic expression of Pat’s experience—that his wait to be re-united with his wife feels endless. However, as we read, we form the impression that Pat is rather concrete and not terribly poetic. Further, Pat would not, particularly at this early stage, admit that the reunion is infinitely off in the future, being very committed to re-union. Curious. Who is communicating with us here? Is it the Narrator? Don’t think so. I think it’s the style, the text’s implied author whom we’ve had to flush out before. The style or the implied author, begins to diverge from the story presented by the Narrator about the Protagonist, gradually showing the reader that the Protagonist is mistaken. Actually the Narrator also assists the reader in understanding that Pat is mistaken by showing, not these chapter titles, but certain interactions with other characters. #TheSilverLiningsPlaybook #MatthewQuick

What role does transformation play in Grand Central? Transformation is a key element of fiction and of memoir. “A transformation is a dramatic change in form or appearance. An important event like getting your driver’s license, going to college, or getting married can cause a transformation in your life.” In Grand Central, we have a very dramatic event—the protagonist embarks on a love affair with a married man and becomes pregnant. Eventually he leaves her to return to his wife. Last week, we talked about the operatic nature of these events. Such circumstances would indeed transform many fictional and even real-life people, possibly turning them angry, more wary and wise about love. What happens in Grand Central? At the beginning, we have the protagonist (let’s call her Blondie) “holding my terror to face the moment I most desire.” She’s awaiting the arrival of a man and his wife, the man whom she’s been desiring but has never met. But she likes (loves) the wife, “and I entirely renounce him for only her peace of mind.” She imagines suicide and senses a strong contrast between the beautiful Pacific coast of California, and deadly creatures in the shadows. “The long days seduce all thought away…the Beginning lurks uncomfortably…(the Beginning of their affair.) Blondie is obsessed with him, and finally has sex with him beneath a waterfall (sigh!) “No, my advocates, my angels with sadist eyes, this is the beginning of my life, or the end. So I lean affirmation across the café table, and surrender my fifty years away with an easy smile.” (This is a point where she’s giving a clue to when she wrote it, and to the distinction between the protagonist and the Narrator. She—the Narrator—is talking about “my”—the protagonist’s—fifty years.) She has the affair but then her paramour’s mother and brother are killed in the Blitz and he leaves for England. She is pregnant. “When I doze, the Fact, the certain accomplished calamity, wakes me roughly like a brutal nurse…Thus every quarter hour it puts the taste of death in my mouth, and shows me, but not gently, how I go whoring after oblivion.” Now she is in pain. Transforms to pain. “O the fact, the unalterable fact: it is she he is with: he is with her: he is not with me because he is sleeping with her…But I do not bleed. The knife stuck in my flesh leaves only the hole that proves I am dead.” She is in pain, but still hopes for his return. She goes through the first two stages of grief—denial, anger…sort of, but cannot maintain anger at him for long. She’s angry at his wife. At the end, she imagines her lover yearning for her, saying her name as he sleeps beside his wife. Last line—My dear, my darling, do you hear me where you sleep? So there are some subtle transformations here, initially her brazen lust is modified by meeting her lover’s missus, and she feels guilt and then contemplates self-destruction. By the end, she’s physically transformed into a pregnant woman, but it doesn’t feel like there’s much emotional transformation. She goes from waiting to meet him at the beginning, full of desire, tempered by terror. At the end, she dreams of getting him back, dreams of him loving her rather than his wife. I have to confess (maybe I already did), that I feel frustrated with Elizabeth Smart. Grand Central is a beautiful book in terms of the poetry, the style, we could say. But as a story it disappoints me. In a naïve way, it would be satisfying to have her realize Mr. B is a jerk, a cad who’s used her, but she continues to be a victim. A saint. A pregnant saint. It’s a tragedy. As her father says at one point, “Aren’t you just a little obsessed about this whole thing?” But this is just a snippet of her life, published years after the fact. Her project seems to be to show what her life was like at this time. Memoir-like. It’s possible there was more significant transformation later on. Wait! Wait! Even though the protagonist doesn’t appear to change much in the story, the story is full of change, full of transformation. One of the main allusions in Grand Central is to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. We have a reference to the story of Narcissus and also the story of Marsyas and Apollo. As mentioned in an earlier post, we have the story of Venus and Adonis. These are all stories about transformation, about one thing becoming another. Metamorphosis shares its first two syllables with metaphor, and Grand Central is stuffed with metaphor and allegory, another means of transforming one image into another. One thing is actually two. Her beloved is a somewhat fussy man who gets off a bus, anxious with tickets; he is also transformed into the shepherd who feeds his flocks in the lilies. Poetry is transformation, the metamorphosis of words. Grand Central has a somewhat static story but is full of messages about change. Next week, a new book. Mathew Quick’s 2008 novel “The Silver Linings Playbook.” Till then best beloved. #ByGrandCentralStationISatDownAndWept #ElizabethSmart

Last week, I wrestled mightily with the question of whether Grand Central is a memoir or a work of fiction, deciding that the story seems to contain elements of both forms but shades more to the memoir side. After a further week of thought and struggle, I agree with my previous assessment. (Yay! A good day.) I think a useful way to think about the story is that Ms. Smart took a particular period in her life—the onset of her affair with Mr. Barker up to the birth of their first child—and used elements of fiction to create a dramatic prose poem. She may have taken some liberties with the truth as she remembers it, I don’t know. But it’s fair to say that she added in fictional elements. An example: Part or Chapter Four of Grand Central is justifiably famous. In it, sections describing the protagonist’s arrest for indecency in Arizona are combined with quotes from The Song of Songs from the Bible. Amazing! It begins: “But at the Arizona border they stopped us and said Turn Back, and I sat in a little room with barred windows while they typed. What relation is this man to you? (My beloved is mine and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies.) How long have you known him? (I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine: he feedeth among the lilies.) I believe this translation “feedeth among the lilies” leaves out two perhaps critical words. “He feedeth his flock among the lilies.” He, the beloved, is not feeding on or eating lilies (I’m not sure humans can digest them). He is called a shepherd who is grazing his flocks in a no doubt watery and pleasant place. It’s probably the case that the reader doesn’t need to know that the text within parentheses is from the Bible. Its meaning is pretty clear. Apparently while being booked, the protagonist has an erotic reverie about her beloved which also may be seen as a response to the police official’s questions. “What relation is this man to you? He is my beloved…” Now, I doubt very much that Ms. Smart actually quoted from the Song of Songs during her interrogation. So, we must see this as an example of adding fictional elements to real events. It’s beautiful writing, but also, I think, evidence of the Narrator being different from the protagonist. It’s possible that the protagonist is simply relating here a memory of being arrested and the literal thoughts she had. Possible, but I don’t think so. I think it’s a fine example of the real author, Elizabeth Smart, expressing herself poetically. She takes a dramatic incident, the arrest, and has the Narrator show the protagonist being interrogated while musing on an erotic poem from the Bible. This serves to show how the protagonist felt about her lover at this stage in their relationship. Despite immediate difficulties (the arrest) she is very much in love with him. Now, I’ve never been arrested for public indecency (never got caught), but I believe if I, as a representative average person, were to be, I would not sit in the police station thinking of poetry that expressed love for my partner in crime. I’d probably be caught up in thoughts of what a drag it was, how to make bail, how to present one’s case to an attorney, and ultimately, to a judge. So, I take this to be a dramatized scene. Why is this important, you ask? (I ask). It’s important to know whether a story is memoir or fiction because the reader reads a memoir in a different way, has a different relationship with memoir than fiction. A memoir puts one’s attention on a real person who is recounting events from their past. The word memoir comes from the French word memoire, meaning memory or reminiscence. The reader wants to know who this person is or was. The whole project of fiction is a different beastie as it depends on the creation of characters and story, as opposed to the manipulation of the remembered past. Yet, best beloved, it should be acknowledged that we’re dealing with a big gray area here—the distinction between the two forms. You could write a work of fiction and call it memoir, and who would know? (Didn’t James Frey do just this, and Oprah Winfrey found out and got mad at him for abusing everyone’s trust? So watch out. People really do care.) #ByGrandCentralStationISatDownAndWept #ElizabethSmart

‘Kay. I have said that, this week, we should examine Grand Central as a work of fiction. I felt good about the clarity, not exactly smug, but pleased with myself. Now a week has passed, and we have a problem, my friends. (Whiny voice—You have a problem). Is Grand Central a work of fiction or of memoir? “A memoir uses fictional techniques to draw readers into an honest account of a true story. It is written in the first person, from the author’s point of view. And it differs from an autobiography or biography in that while the latter tell the story of a life, a memoir has a narrower focus. A memoir can be said to tell a story from a life. The turning point of an author’s life might make a great subject for a memoir. A novel is a work of written narrative fiction that may be based on or inspired by a true story, but does not claim to be a true account.” Based on these definitions, it would seem Grand Central falls into a gray area, but is closer to memoir. In rough strokes, it is the story of an unnamed Narrator who tells the tale of a love affair with an also unnamed man. He is married, and the Narrator experiences intense guilt over inserting herself into the marriage. (although that doesn’t stop her). The couple encounter major obstacles to their love which must at times be clandestine. They are criminally prosecuted. The Narrator faces disapproval and outright interference from her family. Her lover returns to his wife, and the Narrator addresses him in passionate passages which could be letters, could be thoughts. She is tortured by the way she feels about a man who distances himself from her. Despite my protests, we cannot ignore the fact that this is very much the story of the real Elizabeth Smart and her paramour, George Barker. (Who are “we?”). However, Grand Central also fits into the definition of fiction. It makes no claims to be a true account. This is not a memoir that begins with something like “When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. . . the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters . . . . " (Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt) On the contrary, the text of Grand Central is composed in present tense, and provides little context for the events it describes. It does not begin: “When I look back at my intense affair with Mr. Barker, I wonder how I survived.” It begins like this: “I am standing on a corner in Monterrey, waiting for the bus to come in, and all the muscles of my will are holding my terror to face the moment I most desire.” Powerful stuff. A Narrator, an “I,” begins telling us a story of waiting for something with magnificently mixed feelings. Terror and desire. Then the Narrator describes what occurs when the bus arrives: “But then it is her eyes that come forward out of the vulgar disembarkers to reassure me that the bus has not disgorged disaster: her Madonna eyes, soft as the newly-born, trusting as the untempted…Her eyes shower me with their innocence and surprise.” So, a female bus passenger emerges, perhaps when the Narrator had expected someone else—suggested by that “But…” And the Narrator is reassured, the emergent passenger does not appear angry; in fact she seems innocent and trusting. Then: “Behind her he whom I have waited so long, who has stalked so unbearably through my nightly dreams, fumbles with the tickets and the bags, and shuffles up to the event which too much anticipation has fingered to shreds.” The Narrator reveals it has been waiting for a male person whom the Narrator can now see. The Narrator has long anticipated this meeting, dreamt about it. (Excuse me, Mr. Pretentious Bully, but you’re making this as dry as toast—as usual. When will “we” get to the racy parts?) It does not refer to any of the characters by name. (except for the protagonist eventually being called Blondie) Is this significant? I think so. It’s part of the book’s style to keep a boundary between reality and—if you will—poetry. If the protagonist were called Liz, her beloved, George, it would change the story, forcing the reader to think of the real people the book is about. It would spoil the feverish, dream-like style. As in a work of fiction, one can identify the story-telling triumvirate. First, there is Elizabeth Smart, the real author, who lived events close to those shown in the book, second, the Narrator, an “I,” who focuses with intensity on her experience of things rather than telling a story in a more conventional manner, and finally the book’s style, which is poetic and allusive. Is the Narrator of Grand Central Elizabeth Smart? I say no, best beloved. They are incredibly close, but the difference is that the Narrator, despite relying on the present tense, is writing about events that have already occurred—occurred to Elizabeth Smart, the protagonist. And the Narrator tells the story using a raw and poetic language which had to have been generated after the fact. (more on this next time). Perhaps the Narrator could be thought of as a future Ms. Smart, looking back. But, as mentioned above, she does not make this explicit, nor does she refer to herself as Elizabeth. In the final chapter, the Narrator mentions opera. “The Pain was unbearable, but I did not want it to end: it had an operatic grandeur.” (please note past tense). Is this a clue to understanding the story? The European operatic tradition consists of stories of dramatic events, deaths, betrayals, adulteries. The characters present these stories with extreme emotional expression. Sounds like Grand Central. #InGrandCentralStationILayDownandWept #ElizabethSmart

A week of sleepless nights, best beloved. I’ve been struggling with Grand Central. The personal nature of the story, a possibly fictionalized version of real events in the author’s life, “put me through the changes,” as an old friend used to say, meaning that it challenged some core beliefs about reading and about writing. When I read a story, I generally am not terribly interested in the author’s personal life or what kind of person they are or were. I’d rather approach stories in themselves, as projects crafted by possibly less than perfect beings whom I probably will never know. Not that it doesn’t matter—I often read books because they’ve been written by the authors of other books I’ve enjoyed. I would quickly sit down with any new book by Colm Toibin for instance. However, the story itself holds the essential attraction. To return to an old favorite example, I don’t know who wrote the Dick and Jane stories that readers of a certain age may recall. I’m sure I could find out, but as an impressionable lad reading those stories, I had no interest in who the “real” author was. I was only interested (more or less) in what she/he had written. (Bark, Spot, Bark! It's a miracle I ever learned to read). It’s probably true that our educational system introduces the idea of the importance of learning about the “real” authors of books, so that a high school reading of The Great Gatsby consists not only of a version of Fitzgerald’s life but also information about the 1920s in America. Sadly, the Dick and Jane authors are lost to oblivion. (Zerna Sharpe and William S. Gray—I looked it up). I am tempted to undertake an enormous digression now about the history of literary criticism, focusing on the schism between those who privilege studying stories in context vs. those who insist on focusing on the text itself, isolated from all else. However, I’m loathe to expose myself to accusations of being a Pretentious Bully. (Sounds of microphone rustling). Let’s move on. I tend to be uninterested in author’s and their lives, but deeply appreciate Dostoevsky’s writing and know something about who he was and how he worked. I know he suffered from epilepsy, and that madness (as he understood it to be) and the experience of alternate realities were central themes in his writing. He endured a mock execution and was reprieved at the last possible moment and sent instead to prison in Siberia. In his writing, the issue of capital punishment recurs again and again, and it’s interesting to know the reason. Okay, must an author have had the personal experiences she/he writes about? No. To believe such a thing ignores creativity and imagination. And it completely ignores what a reader brings to a reading. How does all this relate to Grand Central? Could Elizabeth Smart have written such a searing book if she’d not experienced the things she did—specifically the traumatic love affair with George Barker? We’ll never know, my friends, but I’m inclined to say yes, she could have. That’s what writers do; they imagine characters and situations and stories. Perhaps, as is true with many things, it’s a mistake to make hard and fast rules about something so complex. “I do not want to know nothing about the author” is a limiting attitude. With some authors writing particular books, it deepens ones understanding to know something of their lives. But to me, Grand Central presents a dilemma. The more you know about Elizabeth Smart’s life, the more you pity her, and the less enjoyable the book becomes, as it transforms into a painful confessional. I think it’s better to approach Grand Central as fiction, poetic fiction. In this particular book, knowing a version of the real author’s life spoils the fun—my fun, at least. So, next week, let’s examine Grand Central as a work of fiction. #ByGrandCentralStationILayDownAndWept #ElizabethSmart

A new book this week, Elizabeth Smart’s 1945 novella, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, weighing in at one-hundred and twelve pages in the 1992 Flamingo edition. I became aware of Grand Central via my son, who read it in a literature class at McGill University and recommended it to me. Elizabeth Smart was a Canadian writer whose life took a dramatic turn when she picked up a book of poetry in a London bookshop written by George Barker. She loved it, and eventually loved the married Mr. Barker, embarking on an affair with him that produced four children and this book, the somewhat fictionalized account of at least part of their affair. Ms. Smart died in 1986. How’s that for drama? There’s more. George Barker, who fathered a total of fifteen children with three different women (busy, busy) published his own account of the affair with Ms. Smart, The Dead Seagull. After Ms. Smart became pregnant with their first child, Mr. Barker attempted to visit her in Canada but was turned back at the border for “moral turpitude.” Whoa! The story of this couple’s passion is probably a good example of the sometimes risky project of having writers as romantic partners. Everything’s going along great and then you realize the latest blockbuster novel is all about you and how you leave your dirty socks on the bedroom floor. However, Grand Central Station is no blockbuster, and has never aspired to be. After 1945, it languished for twenty years before it was re-published to greater acclaim. Of course, part of the reason it languished was because Ms. Smart’s mother bought up as many copies of the two thousand initial printing and burned them. I guess she didn’t like it. Grand Central asks a lot of the reader. Umberto Eco talks about the Encyclopedia of knowledge that each reader brings to a reading and that may be used to understand texts. Thus, if you have some knowledge of dog grooming and you read a novel about a dog groomer, you’re reading will be informed by your own Encyclopedia with its entry under Dog Grooming. Ms. Smart’s story requires the reader to have knowledge of The Psalms (from which the title is derived), The Song of Solomon, the story of Tristan and Isolde, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the poetry of Rilke, and Greek myth in general. (probably more I don’t know about). Now, if you’re not up on these things, you can still read Grand Central, but if you do know them, your reading will be enhanced. Does that make Grand Central snobby and elitist? By way of answer, let’s look at a couple of specifics. The title refers to Psalm 137 in the Bible—“By the waters of Babylon we lay down and wept…” The “we” here are the survivors of the Kingdom of Judah who were deported to Babylon after being conquered by King Nebuchadnezzar and are grief stricken over losing their home. I didn’t know this reference, I read about it in the fine introduction to Grand Central by Brigid Brophy. Before this, I thought the title was about someone in New York City who was grief stricken, someone who expressed themselves poetically. In fact, I thought the book was about this someone, and, of course, it is. But if you understand the reference to the Psalms, your understanding of the book is deepened. The protagonist is experiencing not only a romantic grief in New York City, but an epic grief which is akin to the feeling of being deported from a beloved home. Similarly, we find this passage early on: “One day along the path he brushed my breast in passing, and I thought, Does this efflorescence offend him? And I went into the redwoods brooding and blushing with rage, to be stamped so obviously with femininity, and liable to humiliation worse than Venus’ with Adonis, purely by reason of my accidental but flaunting sex.” Now we’ll get more into the context for the passage later but for today’s purposes, we find a reference to Venus and Adonis. Because of a slight collision with her estranged beloved, the protagonist feels she is liable to a worse humiliation than that which Venus experienced with Adonis. Sounds bad in itself. You don’t have to know the story of Venus and Adonis to get it. She’s embarrassed to the point of running off into the woods, and she associates this somehow with being a woman who because of her form can’t help but be enticing even though she doesn’t want to be. Incidentally, “efflorescence” means “a crystalline or powdery deposit of salts often visible on the surface of concrete, brick, stucco, or natural stone surfaces. It occurs when water leaves behind salt deposits on the masonry surface.” Cool. So somehow, her lover brushing her breast in passing affects her the way a deposit of salts might mark a stone. Very cool. The story of Venus and Adonis comes from the Metamorphoses by Ovid, although it’s also the subject of a poem by Shakespeare. “Venus, the goddess of love, is smitten with Adonis, a hunky young shepherd who accidentally dies after being attacked by a wild boar. In Ovid’s version of the tale, Adonis is the willing lover to Venus, however, in Shakespeare’s ironic and comic interpretation, Adonis does not repay Venus’ admiration and despite his resistance she still attempts to court the young man for physical intimacy.” So it seems Ms. Smart drew more on Shakespeare’s account which emphasizes the rage and shame Venus experiences at being rebuffed. It’s interesting to learn about Venus and Adonis; it increases one’s appreciation for the story. But if you don’t know or don’t find out, what happens? A slight irritation, a feeling of insult that Ms. Smart was smarter than you? That she’s rubbing it in? A smarty-pants? Hmmm. Some might even conclude Ms. Smart was pretentiously concerned with showing how well-read she was. Come on. Don’t read it then. I think Ms. Smart was alluding to Shakespeare in her writing not to ride on his coat-tails or be a braggart, but to provide a cue to the reader. This book, Grand Central, is a poetic work and I want you to read it that way. Even if you have to take the energy to look them up. the allusions serve to help the reader understand the text. Instead of the protagonist saying, “He brushed my breast, and it felt like a deposit of salts on stone because he was so cold about it. I was big time embarrassed and ashamed because I didn’t want him to think I bumped into him on purpose to express my feelings about him. I’m trying to play it cool but am having a hard time.” Instead of that, we get efflorescence and Venus and Adonis. The use of the metaphor of salt deposits and of classical allusion collapses a lot of information into more compact and elegant prose. #ByGrandCentralStationILayDownandWept #ElizabethSmart

The ending of The Moslem Wife tells us what the story is about—the point—if you will. We talked last week about how the style of the story shifts, with the past imperfect sections diminishing, the appearance of paragraph breaks. There is also a greater use of Netta’s consciousness, more in her own language and voice than that of the Narrator’s. Here’s a nice example: “Not a hope, she was trying to tell him…If I say it, I am free…If I relied on my memory for guidance, I would never have crept out of the wine cellar. Memory is what ought to prevent you from buying a dog after the first dog dies, but it never does. It should at least keep you from saying yes twice to the same person.” In brief, in this ending of the story, we have Netta reporting to various people about what she’s been up to during the war—in a letter to Jack, in conversations with one of the Indian sisters and with Dr. Blackley. We learn that Netta has survived at the hotel, while beset by Italian and German soldiers, by her looney mother-in-law. She has survived in part by having a sexual liaison with an Italian officer, who provided her with food. It was a bad time, the hotel was shelled, she experienced death and destruction. She did what she had to in order to survive. Finally, Jack returns, somewhat tardily. I’ve always found the last several pages ambiguous, open to the reader’s imagination as to what occurs between Netta and Jack. But after several more times of close reading, I’m going to call it. I think what Ms. Gallant wants to show in The Moslem Wife is that, for all her resolve to reject Jack, all her anger, Netta accepts him back to her bed, to her life. She is a survivor but not a hero. In our time of long overdue, greater emancipation of women and gender rights equality, this ending may disappoint some readers (me, a little). We want Netta to be more resolute, more independent. We struggle to imagine her life with a man who abandons her and expects to be taken back when he’s good and ready, a man who is rather vacuous and insensitive. A more satisfying ending might be one in which Netta tells Jack to, well, hit the road, Jack. But, despite great misgivings, she doesn’t. “He pulled her into an archway where no one could see. What could I do, she asked her ghosts, but let my arm be held, my steps be guided? “Later, Jack said that the walk with Netta back across the Place Massena was the happiest event of his life. Having no reliable counter-event to put in its place, she let the memory stand.” That last line is very interesting, so let’s try to unpack it. It’s kind of indirect free speech, in that it could be Netta’s voice, it could be the Narrator’s. The implication is that she wouldn’t let the memory stand if she had a reliable counter-event to put in its place. If her memories of Jack’s misbehavior were more reliable, she wouldn’t keep the memory of him saying the walk with her was the happiest event of his life. She wouldn’t believe him, but memory is unreliable; it’s the thing that keeps her saying yes twice to the same person, when she should know better. Netta decides to accept Jack back. Despite giving every indication of being a competent adult, she is dependent on him. She believes she must have a man in her life, that she cannot survive without one. The point is that she is still the Moslem wife. We might not agree with her choice, but that is the story. We want Netta to survive, to find more happiness, but we cannot choose for her. The Narrator looks back with anger at those who imposed on Netta. But the Narrator’s voice is eventually crowded out, and Netta makes her choice. We, the readers, are left with a troubling and powerful emotional experience. Tragedy lurks here, my friends. “Oh, thought Netta, I am the only one who knows all this. No one will ever realize how much I know of the truth…and she let the first tears of her after-war run down her wrists.” Next week a new story, Elizabeth Smart’s By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. Till then. #TheMoslemWife #MavisGallant