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All right, sit down everybody. I’m going to continue talking about “Starting Out in the Evening,” but first I have a few (other) thoughts I’d like to share. What am I doing here with this blog? I’m enjoying writing it very much and hope it’s of interest to others. But what’s it about? What’s the point? My project is to write about novels from a writer’s perspective. I’m interested in a novel’s structure, how the story is told—the narrator’s role. I‘m interested in characters—how they’re developed, how they drive the story along. And I’m interested in the style of the book, the almost hidden signs that make a book like “Starting Out in the Evening” different from, say, “Love in the Time of Cholera.” I’m selecting novels that I’ve read at least once before, and I read them again while I’m writing the blog. The posts are a leaky sieve of spoilers—so beware. Although I love books like “Anna Karenina” and “Far From the Madding Crowd,” I won’t be writing about them because so much has already been done. I will write about books that I love, and my purpose is not to be negative. I would not be comfortable writing about a book I didn’t like and criticizing it—for me—a waste of time. There—a manifesto. Now, on to today’s business. An interesting thing happens halfway into “Starting Out in the Evening,” a new character is introduced, a character with his own consciousness—Ariel’s old love, Casey Davis. My experience of this as a reader is that it’s jarring—you’re used to the stories of Schiller, Heather, and Ariel, and it’s a stretch to get used to someone new when you feel like you’ve already “got” the story. (And that’s a whole phenomenon in its own right—what’s needed for the reader to feel like she/he understands a story before finishing it). It’s interesting that Morse waits to introduce him—I think it’s fair to say that the common wisdom about novel writing is that the author should present the main characters at the beginning of things. But Morse is an accomplished writer, and I have to think Casey’s late appearance “on-stage” is no accident or error. He and Ariel finish the story; they have the final scene. He is what Ariel has been missing. In the first half, she searches for a mate, a man she can love but keeps meeting the wrong guys. And her father is dying. Then just when she’s despairing, Casey appears outside a restaurant window, and Ariel gets up from the date she’s on to join him. This impulsiveness is a quality the book’s characters often exhibit (except for Casey) and this is something we’ll have to examine later. When the switch is made to Casey’s point-of-view, he himself is shown as experiencing Ariel as someone who seems to materialize at uncanny moments—just when he needs her. “She had a way of appearing before your eyes a few minutes after you’d been thinking of her.” Casey is different from the other three. He’s more aware of himself, more adult, more reflective about his actions. He has a tendency to think/reflect in terms of “imperfect” time—the above quote is a good example—Ariel “had a way.” It doesn’t refer to a discreet event in the past or present but an on-going process. What is missing for him? Much like Ariel, he has been feeling the lack of a mate. He has a teenage son from a previous relationship (and I have to say the son makes an odd appearance in one chapter) and doesn’t want to have more children, a source of conflict between he and Ariel. Of course, this conflict and Casey’s ruminations about it serve to make the reader more aware of the issue—whether he wants it or not, a new child, a child with Ariel is missing for Casey. And at the end, it appears that they will get to work on making one together—although it’s not definitive. The ending is left open to interpretation. (not if you’re a romantic). Later on, I want to discuss how the characters in “Starting Out in the Evening” present reflections to each other that are transformative. I think this phenomenon occurs less to Casey; he transforms, but the transformation seems more inward-driven than it does for the others. He is a harsh critic of the others. He believes Ariel is too attached to her father, who is “a loser” who’s squandered his life writing “what—maybe three books?” Casey tried to read one of Schiller’s books and found it “lightweight.” ”Four people bothering each other.” (And this is very funny because the description could also be applied to “Starting Out.”) He meets Heather briefly, finds her attractive but fleetingly. He doesn’t get why she’d be interested in Schiller. My theory is that Casey is closer to the narrator who tells the story. He is more the calm center of a story about three rather obsessive and impulsive people whom he observes. They fascinate and repel him. The others are too wrapped up in themselves to take much notice of each other. Perhaps, Casey doesn’t really like being a character in this novel. But he loves Ariel, and there’s some beautiful, lyric writing about what it’s like to fall in love with someone, to be entranced by their simplest gesture.. Next week—more about how the characters reflect (they’re not shiny, No). #startingoutintheevening

One of the joys of “Starting Out in the Evening” is the lovely interconnectedness of it—the integrity, if you will, of a story that refers to itself over and over like a beautiful carpet whose central figure keeps appearing in subtly new forms. Mise en abymes? In this story, there are many, best beloved. What do the three central characters want? Another way to express this—what’s missing for them? These questions drive the story. On the surface, Heather Wolfe would seem to desire fame. “She had grandiose daydreams…she wanted to have her thesis written before her twenty-fifth birthday and a book contract in her hands before her twenty-sixth.” She is willing to use her sexuality to get what she wants, dressing in a provocative way and flirting with Schiller at their first meeting to get him to help her. But I think her character is much more nuanced, more complex. Two of Schiller’s novels basically made her a person. (More on this below). There’s not a lot of information about her childhood and family (there doesn’t need to be) but one gets the sense she was a lonely person who yearned for connection and found it through reading. “During the years she’d been reading his work, he had so often helped her understand herself that she’d sometimes felt as if he cared about her.” I think that her thesis is more a reason to meet Schiller than an end in itself. Sure—she schemes and imagines writing a book based on the thesis, thereby achieving literary fame, but she also believes (admittedly in a narcissistic way) that she will save Schiller from obscurity. Schiller is very clear from the beginning—he must finish the novel he’s been laboring over for years, finish before dying. “My only remaining goal in life is to finish it.” He initially experiences Heather’s request for help as a distraction and says no but then reverses course and agrees after deciding Heather’s project might help him get the acclaim that has eluded him. Is there more? Is he attracted to her? Yes. However, her youth and attractiveness makes him aware of the changes age has brought him. Ironically, he feels old and more decrepit around her. Ariel’s tory takes a bit of time to emerge. At first, we see her being jealous of Heather’s influence on Schiller. “When Ariel had returned to New York last fall, the rock she thought she could cling to was her father, his love of her, and his need of her.” What develops is that Ariel also feels the burden of getting older—she’s thirty-nine. “When you’re in your twenties, when you’re in your early thirties, you can tell yourself a nice story about your life: ‘I’m young, I have promise. I have everything going for me.’ But when you can’t tell yourself that story anymore, what are you? You’re story-less.” Ariel is story-less—and that’s an interesting condition in a book about writing. There’s a suggestion that Ariel feels the absence of being a mother, and that biological age is limiting this possibility. In fact, Ariel is struggling with a narrowing of the possibilities in life. She’s returned to New York City to care for her father, but in many ways, he cares for her. Yet, she’s aware of his age and his mortality. She feels she’s competing with Heather for her father’s attention and is resentful. Let’s look more closely at Heather. Schiller first published novel is entitled Tenderness and is the book Heather discovers and devours at age sixteen. It changes her life, and that is one of the themes of “Starting Out in the Evening,” powerful books mixing with particular periods in one’s life. “Sometimes, said Thoreau, you can date a new era in your life from the reading of a book. Heather dated an era in her life from the reading of Tenderness.” Tenderness concerns an American couple spending a year in Paris. The wife, Ellen, is completing a dissertation on existentialism and is absorbed by existentialist ideas, resolving she must change her life. She decides to remain in France, risking her marriage and academic career. What she’s giving up is much clearer to her than what she’s seeking. Near the end, she learns she’s pregnant, but that condition doesn’t change her mind. Tenderness made Heather want to take responsible for her own life. “It was as if Schiller had explained her life to her in a more sympathetic way than she’d been able to explain it to herself.” Later, she visits Paris and finds the book has formed her picture of the city. Two Marriages is Schiller’s second published novel. Heather reads it when she’s having a difficult time, trying to decide whether or not to go to law school, as her mother is pressuring her to. In the book, one of the characters is a young man whose father was a gifted sculptor who died young. The young man believes his duty is to champion his father’s reputation. The turning point for the character is a conversation with his mother who says the only battle he needs to fight is his own. Liberation, not happiness ensues. To Heather, this story is “like a letter from a friend.” Her path becomes clearer; she rejects law school. Heather’s adult life has, in a way, been directed by Leonard Schiller’s writing. She must discover the difference between the Schiller the imagined author, and Schiller the real human. The beginning is very powerful. Heather meets Schiller at a restaurant; she brings all her hopes and fantasies, her image of Schiller as the younger man who saved her, who cares for her. The reality is that, in the present, he’s old, fat, mortal. “The man of her dreams.” Both of these novels (which are, of course, imaginary) certainly reflect the story of Heather, but also of Ariel, who has to make the decision to step out from her father’s shadow to find happiness. #alanbrayfiction #startingoutintheevening #fictionwriting #brianmorton

This week, a new book—Brian Morrison’s 1998 novel “Starting Out in the Evening.” I saw the film version of this novel first, in 2018—Frank Langella does a wonderful portrayal of one of the main characters, Leonard Schiller. In mildly innocent fashion, I noted the film was based on a novel (I read the credits). The book had laudatory reviews and I read it. This is my second reading. “Starting Out in the Evening” is very much about writing and mortality—two “sexy” subjects. It concerns an ageing and obscure novelist, Leonard Schiller, his thirty-nine-year old daughter, Ariel, and Heather Wolfe, a young woman working on her master’s thesis. The thesis is on Schiller’s work. Schiller is initially reluctant to help Heather, and she pursues and persuades him, thereby incurring the enmity of Ariel. The names are interesting. Names in stories can be random, and they can have meaning—in this case I think they have playful meaning. Schiller was the great German dramatist and philosopher who wrote about the synthesis of aesthetics and reason. Heather Wolf(e) can be seen as predatory (more on that later—I think she is more nuanced), and Ariel is the spirit who assists Prospero in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” and is eventually liberated by him. The novel has an interesting structure—Schiller, Heather, and Ariel are each given their own consciousness and chapters. So, the first chapter is Heather, as are the next two. The fourth chapter appears to veer into Schiller (“Schiller made his way gingerly on the icy sidewalk.”), but then it’s all Heather after that. Each of the three appears in the others’ chapters, however, there is an assured, omniscient narrator who presents everything in close third person and is hidden—that is, there is no mention of a narrator entity telling the story. Thus, the story begins, “Heather was wearing the wrong dress.” This is a statement about Heather’s opinion of her attire vs. the narrator’s opinion of Heather’s attire. It is, I believe, a fine example of “free indirect style,” developed by no less a writer than Flaubert. It is a statement so close to Heather’s consciousness that it’s a challenge to tell whether it’s her or the narrator. (It’s both). A contrast would be “I am wearing the wrong dress,” Heather thought. Or, if the narrator was describing a character from its own point-of-view, you might have, “A young woman named Heather waited in a coffeeshop, wearing a miniskirt that was inappropriate to the setting.” Well. And this narrative structure—free indirect style—is a constant. The story focuses on the character’s inner life, what they think and feel about the situations and conversations they inhabit. So there are scenes and conversations but they are balanced with long passages of free indirect style. I wouldn’t call these “stream-of-consciousness,” because the passages are focused; they serve the story. What I mean is, I (the actual “I,” Al Bray) could write, “I am sitting here writing a post and the birds are very loud. I look up, and my neck cricks.” The characters in “Starting Out in the Evening” wouldn’t be shown thinking something like that unless bird song and internal sensation somehow bore on the primary action—writing and related to the story. In his book “The Perpetual Orgy,” Mario Vargas Llosa writes, “Flaubert’s great technical contribution lies in his bringing the omniscient narrator so close to the character that the boundary lines between the two vanish, in his creating of an ambivalence in which the reader does not know whether what the narrator says comes from the invisible teller or from the character who is soliloquizing mentally.” Vargas Llosa goes on to say that this structure serves to erase the presence of the omniscient narrator and/or turn it into one of the characters. I’m not so sure this is what Brian Morton does here, “Starting Out in the Evening” being a more modern iteration of the novel. What effect does this have? It brings the reader very close to the character, and establishes empathy and caring.

As I mentioned several posts back, I saw the film version of “The English Patient” before reading the book, an interesting phenomenon. It could be the other way around. What’s different about the two? The film and book versions of “The English Patient” are different stories about the same characters—if that’s possible. Michael Ondaatje, who collaborated on the film, said, “What we have now are two stories, one with the pace and detail of a three-hundred page novel and one that is the length of a vivid and subtle film…There are obvious differences and values, but somehow each version deepens the other…scenes and emotions and values from the book emerged in new ways…and fit within a dramatic arc that was different from the book.” I’d say the film (and its marketing) focuses on the love affair/love triangle between Almasy and Katherine Clifton and her husband, Geoffrey. And I’d say the book does not—it’s about (do I have to say it again?) recovery from trauma. There you have it. Of course, a good story is always open to interpretation—what is “The English Patient” about? An infinity of things, maybe it’s about how sand can make you crazy. The film begins with the powerful image I mentioned a while ago—an unseen artist paints the figures from the Cave of Swimmers, accompanied by the evocative soundtrack. (A huge difference between text and film—film has music which becomes associated with particular scenes and characters.) Then, a scene of Almasy flying a bi-plane carrying a dead Katherine. The Germans shoot him down in flames. Different from the book—I think the film’s beginning focuses on Almasy and Katherine. It poses the question—who are these people? How did they reach this point of disaster? A film leaves less to the imagination in that it has actual actors playing the characters. In a book, although there may be considerable description of a character, a lot is left to the reader’s imagination—the character’s appearance is more open. Your Almasy might not be mine. It can be unsettling to read a book and then see a film version’s choices about what the characters look like. It may provoke fierce arguments—"That actor was just wrong! He didn’t look anything like the way I pictured that character! Ahhh!” If you see the film first, you are left with stubborn visual/aural images of the actors that impact your reading. It’s still difficult for me to read “The English Patient” without imagining that Almasy and Katherine look like the younger Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott-Thomas. When I “see” the characters, I “see” the actors. The actual story is different in each version, and I think this is what Ondaatje was getting at when he talked about the film and book deepening one another. The love affair is presented essentially the same, but other features diverge. Hana and Caravaggio don’t seem to know each other the way they do in the book, although it’s played with a bit of mystery. Caravaggio is captured by the Germans and tortured in Tobruk instead of Florence. Kip’s character is not so central, there is nothing about his “double-ness” with Almasy. The ending has Almasy persuading Hana to give him an overdose of morphine, and we see him fading to death as she sobs. The ending has no flash-forward, Kip does leave, although his anguish over the atomic bombing is played down. Hana leaves the villa with Caravaggio, a beautiful last image is of her regarding a young girl who’s also riding in the truck she’s in. I think it refers to Hana’s younger self, the girl who’s central to Ondaatje’s “In the Skin of a Lion,” and speaks to the idea that Hana has changed—grown up—over the course of the story. Very different from the book. Why does the film show things that were not in the book and leave other things out? Well, best beloved, a film is a different beastie than a book. Why did the focus change from recovery from trauma to a tragic love story, marketed with a heavy dose of romance? A cynic might say to make money. I say—no, stop. The film is beautifully done. Perhaps the filmmakers hoped to reach a larger audience. I think “The English Patient” is one of those happy text/films that complement each other. The film expands on certain themes, omits others. If you read the book and see the film—or vice versa—you have a deeper sense of the characters—particularly Almasy and Katherine. Your experience of the story is enriched. An example—in the book, Kip lights flares to see the Renaissance frescos in the Cathedral. In the film, he shows them to Hana, giving her a flare and hoisting her up to the ceiling—a unique, magical experience that he “gives” her. It expands on the wonder of the scene in the book and adds the element of caring between Kip and Hana. It seems very congruent for both the characters. Well okay. Who’s for “The English Patient?” Me. I love it. Next week, a new story. #theenglishpatient

Today, I want to write about how verb tenses are used in “The English Patient” to—(WTF? Sounds like a snooze-fest, pal. Maybe catch you next week). Nonetheless—we are accustomed to being unaware of verb tenses as we read, it’s more of a subliminal thing. But it has a powerful impact on how we make meaning of what we read. If you are a writer, you must be very sensitive to this impact, and you probably have spent painful hours obsessively switching from past to present and vice-versa. (I have). A problem for a writer in a complex story is how to cue the reader that time has shifted and that different characters are experiencing the action. Now, a speedy review of grammar. The English language has three basic, or “simple,” verb tenses—present, past, and future. Then there are three “perfect” tenses that express an action that was or will be completed at the time of another action or a specific occasion. (Ex. I will be asleep if I read more about grammar). Perfect! Two tense moods (tense moods?—sounds like the way you feel after too much coffee) that are useful to be aware of are the preterite—used to express a completed action—and the imperfect—used when speaking of an on-going action. English doesn’t have a clear imperfect tense the way other languages do, but the imperfect can be conveyed by using auxiliary words, like “She would hold the glass when it was half-full.” So the imperfect and the preterite are distinct from one another—either an action in the past is complete or it’s on-going. (The neighbor’s lawnmower has been running since four a.m.!) So let’s look at the shifting moods in “The English Patient.” The intro is all a quote from the Geographical Society minutes. Quotes from a text within a text are interesting—they occur in the past and are completed but have an ambiguous feeling of being present—because someone is quoting them in the present. Then things get going in Chapter One. “She stands up in the garden where she has been working…” Clear present tense—whatever year we’re reading this, the text is cueing us that it is describing a present moment. Then we have a paragraph break, which communicates change of some sort, and “Every four days she washes his black body…” Okay, this is what I was writing about above—an “imperfect” action expressed in the English language. It indicates an on-going action—every four days, she does something. (It also adds considerable variety, vs. sticking with one tense or experience of time). The scene that follows shows Hana washing the English Patient, as well as her inner experience. It uses the present tense—“She pours calamine lotion in stripes across his chest…He turns his dark face with its gray eyes towards her…He whispers again, dragging the listening heart of the young nurse…”—although there’s a sense of the imperfect, uncompleted actions continuing. So it’s a description of her nursing routine, and of her inner experience of it, and about how the English patient responds—every four days. About what happens. Could it be thought of as the same sort of present tense scene that begins the book? Don’t think so. Because it expresses an on-going action, an action that repeats. What occurs doesn’t occur one time and ends. This device also imparts an imprecise, dream-like quality to the character’s story. Another paragraph break—Ondaatje uses these a lot, combined with chapter breaks, they make up an architecture of the novel. Then a passage that begins in the imperfect. “There are stories the man recites quietly into the room…” Then a very graceful shift. Hana is there with Almasy in a scene, he’s telling her a story in present tense—a particular event. “It is late afternoon. His hands play with a piece of sheet, the back of his fingers caressing it.” Now he shifts to past tense. “I fell burning into the desert…They found my body and made me a boat of sticks…” Then a return to the present. Hana asks, “Who are you?” I want to skip ahead a bit to show a further use of tense. So far, we have the present action, repeated actions in imperfect, and Almasy’s stories in past tense. Now a new section or chapter appears—In Near Ruins. “The man with bandaged hands had been in the military hospital in Rome…He turned from the doorway and walked back into the clutch of doctors…” Past tense. This story about Caravaggio is not told by Almasy, or Hana, or by himself—the Narrator tells it. This will become a pattern in the book—stories are told about the characters in past tense and in third person. Almasy’s stories tend to be past tense, first person—“I fell burning into the desert.” This is the kind of subtle cue I’m talking about. The structure of the story, the actual physical arrangement of words on paper or screen, plus the grammatical structure, conveys meaning.

Last week, I identified two modes of narration in “The English Patient,” the (nearly) invisible narrator who tells the story of the four characters living in the ruined Italian villa, and the many stories the characters tell each other—Count Almasy being prominent among them. So how do these modes interact? Are there mise en abymes lurking? In order to begin to answer these questions, I should bravely state what I think is the point of “The English Patient.” There is a level at which you can quite happily read the book and savor the unfolding tale of how Almasy was burned, the suspense of whether or not Caravaggio will take revenge on Almasy for the loss of his thumbs, what will become of Hana and Kip’s love affair. But (a big but) I don’t think those questions are the essence of the whole story. Yes, they are all answered, but I think the essential question in “The English Patient” is a broader one that concerns whether or not the characters will recover from the traumatic experiences they’ve had in the war. The mysterious narrator entity actually tells us—"Many books open with an author’s assurance of order…But novels commenced with hesitation or chaos. Readers were never fully in balance. A door or a weir opened and they rushed through, one hand holding a gunnel, the other a hat.” The story begins with characters who have lived through and been marked by terrible events, descriptions of chaos. Caravaggio considers Hana—“Maybe this is the way to come out of a war, he thinks. A burned man to care for, some sheets to wash in a fountain, a room painted like a garden. As if all that remains is a capsule from the past…” Yes, I think “The English Patient” is about trauma and (potential) recovery. If you look at it in this way, the stories within the story (how Almasy was burned, for instance) begin to make sense in their relation to the whole. Almasy is horribly disfigured; he’s dying—Hana asks him how were you burned? And he tells her the story of falling burning into the desert, of how he was rescued by the Bedouin so that he could help them to identify weaponry they’d scavenged. That’s all he reveals at that early point in the book, later there will be much more about why he was flying a plane over the lines in the first place. But this first story is essentially a story of someone being saved from trauma, albeit temporarily. Then we find an intertextual reference! Hana is reading a particular book, “The Last of the Mohicans.” If you’ll indulge my oversimplifying here, this can be seen as a story of characters living through the trauma of war, some of them die, some survive. Huh—sounds…familiar. The next story within a story is told by Caravaggio. He tells Hana about how he was captured while spying on the Germans, how, by accident, he was photographed and had to recover the film in order to protect his identity. The woman who took the photo actually tried to help him, but he was ultimately caught. This led to his torture and mutilation, but that comes out later. What we have here is a story of suspense—will he recover the film and escape? Will he be able to take action to save himself? I think the link with Almasy’s story is that the stories are incomplete, leaving the reader wanting more, and the characters both must rely on others for help. And this is true in the larger story as well. The characters recover from trauma to varying degrees by their relationships with each other—Caravaggio with Hana and Almasy, Hana with Almasy and Kip, even Almasy, who dies at the end, achieves fulfillment by telling his life to Hana, letting her read his book, “and in his commonplace book, his 190 edition of Herodotus’ Histories, are other fragments—maps, diary entries, writings in many languages, paragraphs cut out of other books. All that is missing is his own name.” Kip himself, is a different sort, I think, and deserves more attention—and that will come, I assure you. So, there you have it. A story about traumatic memory and possible recovery, with many briefer stories with the same theme embedded in the whole. Smaller mirrors. And nearly continual references to reading. #theenglishpatient

This week, a new novel, Michael Ondaatje’s “The English Patient.” In 1995 I was browsing in a bookstore in downtown Chicago and saw “The English Patient” displayed along with other Booker Prize winners. I had previously read Ondaatje’s wonderful “In the Skin of a Lion,” so I was curious. But the cover of that edition of “Patient” showed a pastel drawing of a bandaged figure surrounded by palm trees. I’m afraid in my ignorance, I concluded it must be a medical tale that wouldn’t interest me. Time went on the way it does. (And that brings up an interesting issue about how book covers influence readers—something an author may have little control over). Then on New Year’s Day 1997 my father died after a brief illness. There was a lot to do, getting a grasp of his labyrinthine financial affairs, making sure my elderly mother would be able to continue her lifestyle. Several weeks later, my wife and I decided we deserved a date night. The film version of “The English Patient” was out and had received positive reviews. We arranged for the neighbor to babysit our son (Hi Julia) and headed to a Northside theater. From the very first few moments, I was mesmerized by the gorgeous scene that referred to Katherine copying the cave paintings, the way the textured paper slowly absorbed the liquid color, the music that sounded Arabic but was not. Based on my love for the film, I resolved to finally read the story. Twenty-three years later, and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read it. It’s one of the pieces of writing that inspires me to write. It seems to me that instead of merely being a story, “The English Patient” is about stories—the stories Almasy tells Hana, Herodotus’ Histories, the book which Almasy pastes his own stories into, about the paintings in the Cave of Swimmers (the symbols) that Katherine records in water-soluble ink. The novel begins with a quotation taken “from the minutes of the Geographic Society,” wherein the speaker refers to the tragic deaths of the Cliftons that had occurred several years earlier—an embedded story that foreshadows the larger beastie. (Beastie?) On page two of the 1993 Vintage International edition, we find: “He whispers again, dragging the listening heart of the young nurse beside him to wherever his mind is, into that well of memory he kept plunging into during those months before he died.” He—Almasy—is telling Hana stories. Is the essential, magical point that the stories are written stories—a book about writing? Maybe. “She would sit and read, the book under the waver of light…This was the time in her life that she fell upon books as the only door out of her cell. They became half her world.” Hana reads. “She entered the story knowing she would emerge from it feeling she had been immersed in the lives of others, in plots that stretched back twenty years, her body full of sentences and moments, as if awakening from sleep with a heaviness caused by unremembered dreams.” Isn’t this an accurate description of what it’s like to read “The English Patient?” So— you’re reading a book about characters reading. The book is telling you a story about characters telling stories. Careful! We’re walking near the rabbit hole again. “This is a story of how I fell I love with a woman, who read me a specific story from Herdotus. I heard the words she spoke across the fire, never looking up, even when she teased her husband.” What I’m getting at here is the narrational style. There is a narrator in this book, but she/he is very hidden. There is a point later when the narrator makes an appearance, and I will discuss that—but now is not the time. The narrator tells a story of people telling each other stories. But that’s not all. The book begins, “She stands up in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance. She has sensed a shift in the weather. There is another gust of wind, a buckle of noise in the air, and the tall cypresses sway.” Very immediate writing with the present tense, the short, declarative sentences—she stands, she has sensed. There is little mediation—certainly not by a narrator’s consciousness. That would be more like, “I see her in the garden where she has been working. A slight young woman who has sensed a shift in the weather.” In that case, the reader would be imagining a narrator “seeing” the scene. Ondaatje’s style makes the narrator so close and intimate to the character in the scene that the narrator nearly disappears like a ghost. The character—Hana—goes inside the villa, and, “The man lies on the bed, his body exposed to the breeze, and he turns his head slowly towards her as she enters.” This is nearly like telling the actors in a stage-play what to do. Except there is no rush of dialogue. There are at least two modes in the story. First, the mode where the invisible narrator “shows” us characters and events from the inside and outside. Then, there is the level of the characters telling stories, becoming their own narrators, perhaps. Their own readers? Hmm. Next time, I’ll delve more into how these modes interact and what effect they bring.

I have spoken at tedious length about the narrator’s voice in “Love in the Time of Cholera,” best beloved. (I’ve been wanting to write “best beloved” all along—a favorite Kipling reference). It is an authoritative voice, sure of itself—the narrator is never in doubt as to her/his grasp of the story and characters. And the narrator is not Garcia Marquez, best beloved, just as the person writing this post—who has been described by a friend as a landowner in the New Hampshire countryside—is not “Alan Bray”—the entity who is telling this story. I believe this unnamed and undescribed narrator takes human form and is finally humbled in his efforts to dictate the story of love in the time of cholera. This human is Captain Diego Samaritano, the commander of the riverboat that Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza take to cruise the Magdalena River, and it is Florentino Ariza who humbles him. Captain Samaritano (Samaritan—a reference to the biblical Samaritan who aids the injured traveler) appears in the last thirty pages of the story. He is described as a giant, with a stentorian voice, always dressed immaculately in the uniform of the R.C.C. establishment. He immediately senses the fragility of Fermina and Florentino, rescuing them from the awkwardness of being ageing sweethearts, nurturing their love. Initially, Fermina didn’t like him, but was touched by the story of how he cared for the manatees, going to jail for six months for marooning the gringo who killed one. When Fermina expresses concern over a woman who is seen on the shore, the Captain explains that she is the ghost of a drowned woman, and Fermina “had no doubt that she did not exist, but her face seemed familiar.” (Interesting). Now, best beloved, I am not saying that all along, it has been Captain Samaritano who has been narrating the story. No. I am saying at the end, the narrator assumes human form. Florentino and Fermina consummate their love for each other physically and are reluctant to end the cruise—it is an enchanted space where they can be lovers. They want to put the other passengers ashore and continue on their own. The Captain explains (he does that a lot) that the only way to do that would be to fly the yellow cholera flag, and in the first sign of Florentino’s power, Florentino says, ‘Let’s do that, then.’ “The Captain was taken by surprise, but then, with the instinct of an old fox, he saw everything clearly. ‘I command on this ship,, but you command us,’ he said. ‘So if you are serious, give me the order in writing and we will leave right now.” Of course, in a book, things have to be given in writing. The passengers are put ashore, the yellow cholera flag is flown. The Captain takes on board his lover, and the steamboat—existing now in a different time of cholera—cruises on with two cases of love on board. Then, when they reach the city, the authorities tell them the ship must be placed in quarantine, and the Captain is furious—with himself—raging that he has gotten them all into a bad situation. He must decide what to do. The Captain, Fermina thinks, ‘was their destiny.’ “Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza looked at him without speaking, as if waiting on a school bench to hear their final grades. They had not exchanged a word during the conversation with the health patrol, nor did they have the slightest idea of what would become of their lives, but they both knew that the Captain was thinking for them; they could see it in the throbbing of his temples.” Yes, they don’t know what will become of their lives because up to this point, the narrator has had this knowledge—of their destiny. Up to this point, the narrator has remained in charge of the story. But now the steadfast narrator is finally humbled. Florentino sees the complete circle of the quadrant on the mariner’s compass. He utters, ’Let us keep going, going, going, back to La Dorado.” The Captain is stupefied by Florentino Ariza’s tremendous powers of inspiration. “Do you mean what you say?” “From the moment I was born…I have never said anything I did not mean.” The Captain was overwhelmed by the belated suspicion that it is life, more than death, that has no limits. (The story is revealed to have no limits). ‘And how long do you think we can keep up this goddamm coming and going?’ ‘Forever.’ The Captain/narrator is overwhelmed and silenced; his job has ended, and the great novel itself ends on a very open note. There will be no more explanation—it is up to the reader to decide for her/himself what becomes of these characters. #loveinthetimeofcholera

Before setting out once again on my discussion of “Love in the Time of Cholera,” I should probably issue, belatedly, a spoiler alert. Beware! “Love in the Time of Cholera” begins with Dr. Urbino going to the house of his old friend Jeremiah de Saint Amour, who has poisoned himself and left Dr. Urbino an eleven-page letter. The letter contains shocking revelations and directs Dr. Urbino to go to a particular house in the city. There he is greeted by a woman he recognizes as Jeremiah’s lover. She is not named in the text, but does greet Dr. Urbino by saying “This is your house, Doctor.” He talks with her, about the suicide and about the letter but is ultimately repelled by the woman who says she refuses to mourn Jeremiah in traditional ways, that she will destroy his possessions and try to go on with her life. This passage occurs on page twenty-three of the Modern Library edition. After this, there is no further mention of the woman, or the letter. No explanation of why the woman says the house is his. Jeremiah reappears on page three-hundred-thirty-three, when Florentino hears tolling bells and is reminded he’s supposed to go to Jeremiah’s funeral—the bells are actually for Dr. Urbino. What is going on? Isn’t it a bit strange to describe these events in great detail, to introduce a secret—and then abandon both? One might expect that later on in the chronicle, an explanation would surface, that Jeremiah’s confession would be revealed. I think the concept of mirroring may help us in our quest for understanding. I’ll go further—I believe what we have here may be referred to as a mise en abyme (literally, placement into the abyss)—the technique of inserting a story within a story. It’s not the only one in “Cholera,” but it does have primacy of place. My opinion—Jeremiah’s lover’s reaction to his death, her apparent lack of caring is a mirror for Fermina Daza’s reaction to Dr. Urbino’s death. More than that, Jeremiah’s having a secret life is a double for Dr. Urbino himself—the measured doctor and man whose secrets are gradually revealed. His liaison with Miss Barbara Lynch, for instance. Ultimately, on page three-ninety-six, Fermina Daza visits her husband’s grave the day before she embarks on her journey with Florentino. “…she made peace with her dead husband in a monologue in which she freely recounted all the just recriminations she had choked back. Then she told him the details of the trip and said goodbye for now.” The term mise en abime originally referred to a technique in heraldry, where a smaller version of an emblem was placed in the center of a larger one. What does this mini-tale of Jeremiah’s death and his lover’s reaction accomplish? It presents two important ideas (two at least) that mirror or foreshadow later events. 1. People you think you know well—Jeremiah to Dr. Urbino—may have shocking secrets. 2. A woman—even if she loves her husband, may experience widowhood as a liberation. These are both key ideas in the broader story; the tale of Jeremiah’s death foreshadows the tale of Dr. Urbino’s death and his widow’s reaction. We learn within the first fifty pages that Fermina will be a widow, that the Doctor dies after the unfortunate encounter with the parrot—without the story of Jeremiah, we might tend to assume that Fermina would go into reclusive mourning and maintain a steely disdain for Florentino. And she does not. No, she does not. #loveinthetimeofcholoera

Here’s that first line again—"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.” The reader opens “Love in the Time of Cholera,” and the first page presents her/him with a charming puzzle—who is speaking? Whose is the voice that tells the story—the storyteller’s voice? Let’s consider the suspects. Is it one of the main characters—Dr. Juvenal Urbino, Fermina Daza, or Florentino Ariza? Nope—because the narrator is able to report on the actions of all the characters, as well as their thoughts and feeling, and do this over a period of seventy plus years. For the same reason, it can’t be one of the minor characters. Is it the author of the book, Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Some might say—duh, of course, he wrote the book, so he must be the narrator. Yeah, I always assume the author is the one telling the story—who else could it be? Hmmm. Last week, the detective figured out that the present-time of the story is in 1913. We know Garcia Marquez wrote the novel in the early 1980’s. The narrator speaks of “we,” and “us,” and seems to be referring to events that have recently occurred, so it appears the narrator is a different entity than Marquez, an entity who is aware of the events of the lives of Dr. Urbino, Fermina Daza, and Florentino Ariza, over a nearly seventy-year period, and can also see inside them to report on their thoughts and feelings. The narrator can also do this with most of the other characters. An entity that Marquez created, someone who is apparently a resident of “our” city and has access to people’s inner lives. What? How could that be? Does the story tell itself? No the narrator tells it. Really? But the narrator is a fictional character in the story. My head hurts. True art conceals art. Last time, I wrote that the reader is seduced into believing that Garcia Marquez is not telling the story, that it’s an unnamed narrator who, by the way, is never mistaken—more on that below, my friends. So, the narrator of “Love in the Time of Cholera” is an entity in the story, unnamed, who tells the story of the named characters, getting inside their skins. What effect does this narrative style have? Let’s try to answer this by considering alternatives—taking the first two sentences as an example. If the story were written in first person: “It was inevitable, I thought: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded me of the fate of unrequited love. I noticed it as soon as I entered the still darkened house…” This might actually work, the rest of the prose is so magnificent. But problems would arise quickly—how could a first-person narrator “know” the hearts and minds of the other characters? How could such a narrator “know” about situations in which they were not physically present? Well, there are ways—more illusion—but another time. Actually, the narrator in “Cholera” writes in first person—or second. “…Jeremiah de Saint-Amour could become what he was among us.” Or if it were written in third person: “It was inevitable, he thought: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. He noticed it as soon as he entered the still darkened house…” Okay, again, this could work for parts of the story, but still, a character described in this way would not know the hearts and minds of the other characters. No, an omniscient narrator entity works well, especially when the story gets to the long description of the city and of Dr. Urbino’s house. If the story were told from say, Dr. Urbino’s first- or third-person point of view, he would have to enter a long reverie to describe things. “I was riding in my carriage and thought about the suffocating gases of the marshes, how the old slave quarters were built from weathered boards and zinc roofs.” No! Why would he notice such things, things he would probably take for granted and not notice. It would make Dr. Urbino a different character. Awkward. The chosen narrative style allows the real author to present a great number of stories—episodes—about different characters that, taken together, weave the whole story together. The reader gets to know Fermina, Dr. Urbino, and Florentino, in depth. In fact, the structure of the story, having two characters essentially separated for their adult lives, needs a narrator who can tell about both. An alternative would be to present the story in first or third person sections—say, first, a Fermina section, then, page break, a Florentino section. Actually the narrator would still be there but tucked further away. Another effect—style. I alluded to this last time, but today, let’s consider it in a new context. The narrative style of “apparently omniscient narrator” refers to an older style, when stories always had a narrator character, a story teller. Think of “Don Quixote,” or Stendhal. And “Cholera” is a tale from the past—isn’t it? (More seduction here). Using this narrative style gives the story a feel of having been written in the past when it really wasn’t. I say “apparently omniscient narrator” because it’s worth considering—does the narrator really know everything? Could it be that the characters trick the narrator, that they don’t reveal everything? Florentino, for instance, is a pretty slippery guy. I guess we’ll never know. #loveinthetimeofcholera

Here’s that first line again—"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.” The reader opens “Love in the Time of Cholera,” and the first page presents her/him with a charming puzzle—who is speaking? Whose is the voice that tells the story—the storyteller’s voice? Let’s consider the suspects. Is it one of the main characters—Dr. Juvenal Urbino, Fermina Daza, or Florentino Ariza? Nope—because the narrator is able to report on the actions of all the characters, as well as their thoughts and feeling, and do this over a period of seventy plus years. For the same reason, it can’t be one of the minor characters. Is it the author of the book, Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Some might say—duh, of course, he wrote the book, so he must be the narrator. Yeah, I always assume the author is the one telling the story—who else could it be? Hmmm. Last week, the detective figured out that the present-time of the story is in 1913. We know Garcia Marquez wrote the novel in the early 1980’s. The narrator speaks of “we,” and “us,” and seems to be referring to events that have recently occurred, so it appears the narrator is a different entity than Marquez, an entity who is aware of the events of the lives of Dr. Urbino, Fermina Daza, and Florentino Ariza, over a nearly seventy-year period, and can also see inside them to report on their thoughts and feelings. The narrator can also do this with most of the other characters. An entity that Marquez created, someone who is apparently a resident of “our” city and has access to people’s inner lives. What? How could that be? Does the story tell itself? No the narrator tells it. Really? But the narrator is a fictional character in the story. My head hurts. True art conceals art. Last time, I wrote that the reader is seduced into believing that Garcia Marquez is not telling the story, that it’s an unnamed narrator who, by the way, is never mistaken—more on that below, my friends. So, the narrator of “Love in the Time of Cholera” is an entity in the story, unnamed, who tells the story of the named characters, getting inside their skins. What effect does this narrative style have? Let’s try to answer this by considering alternatives—taking the first two sentences as an example. If the story were written in first person: “It was inevitable, I thought: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded me of the fate of unrequited love. I noticed it as soon as I entered the still darkened house…” This might actually work, the rest of the prose is so magnificent. But problems would arise quickly—how could a first-person narrator “know” the hearts and minds of the other characters? How could such a narrator “know” about situations in which they were not physically present? Well, there are ways—more illusion—but another time. Actually, the narrator in “Cholera” writes in first person—or second. “…Jeremiah de Saint-Amour could become what he was among us.” Or if it were written in third person: “It was inevitable, he thought: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. He noticed it as soon as he entered the still darkened house…” Okay, again, this could work for parts of the story, but still, a character described in this way would not know the hearts and minds of the other characters. No, an omniscient narrator entity works well, especially when the story gets to the long description of the city and of Dr. Urbino’s house. If the story were told from say, Dr. Urbino’s first- or third-person point of view, he would have to enter a long reverie to describe things. “I was riding in my carriage and thought about the suffocating gases of the marshes, how the old slave quarters were built from weathered boards and zinc roofs.” No! Why would he notice such things, things he would probably take for granted and not notice. It would make Dr. Urbino a different character. Awkward. The chosen narrative style allows the real author to present a great number of stories—episodes—about different characters that, taken together, weave the whole story together. The reader gets to know Fermina, Dr. Urbino, and Florentino, in depth. In fact, the structure of the story, having two characters essentially separated for their adult lives, needs a narrator who can tell about both. An alternative would be to present the story in first or third person sections—say, first, a Fermina section, then, page break, a Florentino section. Actually the narrator would still be there but tucked further away. Another effect—style. I alluded to this last time, but today, let’s consider it in a new context. The narrative style of “apparently omniscient narrator” refers to an older style, when stories always had a narrator character, a story teller. Think of “Don Quixote,” or Stendhal. And “Cholera” is a tale from the past—isn’t it? (More seduction here). Using this narrative style gives the story a feel of having been written in the past when it really wasn’t. I say “apparently omniscient narrator” because it’s worth considering—does the narrator really know everything? Could it be that the characters trick the narrator, that they don’t reveal everything? Florentino, for instance, is a pretty slippery guy. I guess we’ll never know.

Here’s that first line again—"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.” The reader opens “Love in the Time of Cholera,” and the first page presents her/him with a charming puzzle—who is speaking? Whose is the voice that tells the story—the storyteller’s voice? Let’s consider the suspects. Is it one of the main characters—Dr. Juvenal Urbino, Fermina Daza, or Florentino Ariza? Nope—because the narrator is able to report on the actions of all the characters, as well as their thoughts and feeling, and do this over a period of seventy plus years. For the same reason, it can’t be one of the minor characters. Is it the author of the book, Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Some might say—duh, of course, he wrote the book, so he must be the narrator. Yeah, I always assume the author is the one telling the story—who else could it be? Hmmm. Last week, the detective figured out that the present-time of the story is in 1913. We know Garcia Marquez wrote the novel in the early 1980’s. The narrator speaks of “we,” and “us,” and seems to be referring to events that have recently occurred, so it appears the narrator is a different entity than Marquez, an entity who is aware of the events of the lives of Dr. Urbino, Fermina Daza, and Florentino Ariza, over a nearly seventy-year period, and can also see inside them to report on their thoughts and feelings. The narrator can also do this with most of the other characters. An entity that Marquez created, someone who is apparently a resident of “our” city and has access to people’s inner lives. What? How could that be? Does the story tell itself? No the narrator tells it. Really? But the narrator is a fictional character in the story. My head hurts. True art conceals art. Last time, I wrote that the reader is seduced into believing that Garcia Marquez is not telling the story, that it’s an unnamed narrator who, by the way, is never mistaken—more on that below, my friends. So, the narrator of “Love in the Time of Cholera” is an entity in the story, unnamed, who tells the story of the named characters, getting inside their skins. What effect does this narrative style have? Let’s try to answer this by considering alternatives—taking the first two sentences as an example. If the story were written in first person: “It was inevitable, I thought: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded me of the fate of unrequited love. I noticed it as soon as I entered the still darkened house…” This might actually work, the rest of the prose is so magnificent. But problems would arise quickly—how could a first-person narrator “know” the hearts and minds of the other characters? How could such a narrator “know” about situations in which they were not physically present? Well, there are ways—more illusion—but another time. Actually, the narrator in “Cholera” writes in first person—or second. “…Jeremiah de Saint-Amour could become what he was among us.” Or if it were written in third person: “It was inevitable, he thought: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. He noticed it as soon as he entered the still darkened house…” Okay, again, this could work for parts of the story, but still, a character described in this way would not know the hearts and minds of the other characters. No, an omniscient narrator entity works well, especially when the story gets to the long description of the city and of Dr. Urbino’s house. If the story were told from say, Dr. Urbino’s first- or third-person point of view, he would have to enter a long reverie to describe things. “I was riding in my carriage and thought about the suffocating gases of the marshes, how the old slave quarters were built from weathered boards and zinc roofs.” No! Why would he notice such things, things he would probably take for granted and not notice. It would make Dr. Urbino a different character. Awkward. The chosen narrative style allows the real author to present a great number of stories—episodes—about different characters that, taken together, weave the whole story together. The reader gets to know Fermina, Dr. Urbino, and Florentino, in depth. In fact, the structure of the story, having two characters essentially separated for their adult lives, needs a narrator who can tell about both. An alternative would be to present the story in first or third person sections—say, first, a Fermina section, then, page break, a Florentino section. Actually the narrator would still be there but tucked further away. Another effect—style. I alluded to this last time, but today, let’s consider it in a new context. The narrative style of “apparently omniscient narrator” refers to an older style, when stories always had a narrator character, a story teller. Think of “Don Quixote,” or Stendhal. And “Cholera” is a tale from the past—isn’t it? (More seduction here). Using this narrative style gives the story a feel of having been written in the past when it really wasn’t. I say “apparently omniscient narrator” because it’s worth considering—does the narrator really know everything? Could it be that the characters trick the narrator, that they don’t reveal everything? Florentino, for instance, is a pretty slippery guy. I guess we’ll never know.