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An excellent novel or short story is immersive. The “story-world” becomes the reader’s world; one feels as if one knows the characters, feels their pain and joy. We care about them. Examples depend on individual taste but think of Lord of the Rings. To enjoy this story means to be transported to a different world, Middle-Earth, where elves and dwarves, wizards and dragons are real. And we want to believe. But in any novel or story an interesting sleight of hand is performed, and it has to do with, among other things, how time is handled, best B.. “Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to compare the duration of events or the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change of quantities in material reality or in the conscious experience.” Well. Maybe for our purposes, we can say that there are different kinds of time. There is objective time that is used to measure important things—rocket science and how long you have to take the SAT. Then there is subjective time, our own idiosyncratic sense of duration. One person’s sense of how long it takes to walk the dog may differ from someone else’s. (including the dog’s). So humans (and dogs) can experience time in different ways and great fiction “plays” with this. How? you ask. Whiny voice—no, I didn’t ask that. You’re just trying to get me to answer a question you already know the answer to. ‘Kay. How? you ask. Stories that seem to be happening as we read them are often written in the simple past tense. The implication is that the events told have already occurred and an author, through the mechanism of implied author, is telling the reader what has already happened. “It was a dark and stormy night…” posits an event outside of the time the reader is in, a time that could be in the past or in the imaginary future, interestingly enough, but not in the present the reader occupies, reading, even though this is the illusion that is created. Jump back! as an old friend used to say to express surprise. Lord of the Rings is like this. The story is supposed to have happened long ago in the past but it could just as likely be in the future or in an alternate reality. This is really getting into epic or mythic time, but my point is that one way authors can manipulate a reader’s experience of their work is by how time is presented. Some stories give an immediacy to themselves by the use of the present tense, the strong implication here being that the story is happening as the reader reads it. However, in an objective sense, all stories—even those in present tense—have already been written, no? An author could write a story in present tense, and in her or his mind, it occurs in the year 1607. The key thing is that the author knows the whole story, beginning to end. To the author, there are no surprises. The time and events of a book are pre-determined (makes me think of our discussion of Gilead). The author knows the whole story and the characters usually don’t. The author is outside the story, in the same way that traditional religions often place God outside the world. God and the author know what’s going to happen. (sort of like Santa Claus—whether you’ve been bad or good). In a book, characters are blissfully unaware of their pre-ordained fates. They are “not on the same page” as the author who may treat them gently or harshly. An artful story begins with a statement about what’s going to happen and then tells the reader how this occurs. Real life is not like this— sorry but it’s not. Real life has a random, contingent quality that doesn’t make for good fiction. In real life, we tend to think about will something happen or won’t it, or will something else happen? Will someone else, or something, intervene and change the whole field? Fiction is thought out and planned by the author, who already knows how things are going to end. Foreshadowing of this future end point is deployed to guide the reader, and foreshadowing implies that the future is known. The same can be said of the mise en abyme device. What if you were happily intrigued by reading Part One of a story, and you learned in an insightful interview that the author didn’t know how Part Two was going to end? How would you feel? Whiny voice—used and abused, just like I do with you. ‘Kay, that’s not really the point. The point— Walter, the point is that you want me to say something, that’s the only reason you asked me. You already know what you want me to say. ‘Kay. And what do I want you to say? That I would be mad if I thought an author didn’t know the end of a book I was reading. Thank you. Yes, we expect the authors of books we read to not only know the ending but to observe certain conventions of writing that we can rely on—unless we’re reading a book we know defies these expectations. What are these expectations? That the author knows the whole story. That the story works throughout the book towards an end. That our expectations will be satisfied that the story answers certain questions, that is, if we begin with characters in a situation, good or bad, how did they get there? Why are they there? If these questions aren’t answered satisfactorily, we are unhappy. Of course, some people believe that a work of fiction defined in this way is like the real world, planned out. Some religious folks believe that one’s fate is pre-destined by God who decides each human’s fate before birth. Some folks believe in signs and omens that predict a future. Think astrology and tarot cards. Palm-reading. Further, there is a belief that history and time will end at the last judgement, when all souls’ worth are weighed by God. Marxists believe that history is pre-determined and that it will pass through inexorable stages till it reaches an end point of communism when history also stops. The Last Judgment, the End of History—whoa! If time really stopped, and that statement opens a ton of philosophical argument, wouldn’t that be death, huh? It’s comforting, best B. to think that we could predict our futures. It takes away personal responsibility which may be a burden. Could this be part of the appeal of fiction itself, that we feel less troubled by reading a story about people whom we know have had their ends planned? Till next time. #AlanBray

All reading is re-reading, according to some very savvy folks. This sounds like a paradox, my friends, after all, reading is different from re-reading. How could they be the same? Today, as promised, something a little different. Instead of discussing a particular book or story, I want to present some more general ideas about reading, specifically, re-reading. In this blog, I have taken the course of only writing about stories I have read before, in short, stories I am re-reading. My reason for this is that, while I find the first reading of a book as enjoyable as the next human does, I don’t think the perspective it provides is deep enough to generate much analysis. Maybe, if you are asked to describe the plot, who the characters are, the verb tense and person used, you could but isn’t it true that to do this one would have to go back in the book or at least think back? It is true, boss. ‘Kay. What is reading? “Reading is making meaning from print. It requires that we: Identify the words in print – a process called word recognition. Construct an understanding from them – a process called comprehension. Coordinate identifying words and making meaning so that reading is automatic and accurate – an achievement called fluency.” This is a fine definition. However, it ignores the distinction that can be made between a first time reading of a text vs, a re-reading. In either process, we do what the above definition describes: We recognize words, we comprehend them, and we (hopefully) demonstrate our fluency through accuracy. However, it is within re-reading that we make deeper meanings. Perhaps a first read is a somewhat linear event in that one reads from start to finish, one page at a time—unless you skip ahead! (or back, which proves the point). A lot of the pleasure of reading occurs on the first read when one can get lost in a different, fictional world. One of the things I enjoy doing when I read a book is to determine how many pages it comprises, to provide myself with a sense of how long I might be occupied in reading it. Of course, this introduces the element of time in reading—we’ll cover it later, I promise. I don’t necessarily feel dismayed when I discover a book is, say, five hundred pages or feel disappointed when a book is only two hundred thirty-nine, it really depends on my enjoyment of the first few pages and my overall sense of the book, i.e., what I’ve learned about it pre-reading. I’ve alluded to this before, this process of getting information about books from reviews, from the covers, from our knowledge of authors’ previous work and their lives. But what happens when we read? If we are concentrating well, and if the text is fairly simple, a first reading may be sufficient. Let’s turn to that perennial favorite, the Dick and Jane stories: “Oh, see. Oh, see Jane. Funny, funny Jane.” (sorry Jane) This passage doesn’t require re-reading, I think. An entity, a narrator, is exhorting the reader to “see,” to look at Jane, whom we could easily assume is a female person. And then the narrator offers a further clarification, that Jane is amusing. We read this, and if we are fluent in English, we can visualize a little girl who does funny things. Perhaps we can even visualize a narrator directing our attention. Easy-peasy, right? (spell check that, please). In contrast, here’s a passage from Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, Volume II: “And so there are very few who can regard as natural the enormous proportions that a person comes to assume in our eyes who is not the same as the person they see.” This passage requires re-reading to get the meaning. (unless you’re smarter than me). Another narrator entity is telling us something, and it relates to the previous sentence and paragraph. It is, in fact, a comment on what has come before, and so, we may immediately need to go back to re-read what is being commented on in order to understand the comment. The narrator wants us to understand a distinction being made between two types of people, one, those who are the same (or seem to be) as the people we experience, and those who are not the same. And then, that a person from that latter group may assume considerable importance. And that this assumption is rarely regarded as natural by those people who experience the person as someone different. This presents an important idea that runs throughout Proust’s work, that the same person may be experienced very differently by different people. Humans do not present a uniform personality or even appearance to others. When we make meaning of others, it is an individual process informed by who we are just as much as who the other person is. Pretty complex, eh? What would Proust say about Jane—would he think she’s funny? Would he have to re-read the passage in disbelief? ‘Kay. The point, as Walter states, is that comprehension of the passage from Proust requires re-reading—requires it the first time through. It requires re-reading, and it requires reflection. Going back to the original definition of reading, if we are fluent in English, it’s easy to comprehend the words, but to comprehend the sentence it’s harder because there are several referents that have to be understood, i.e., those who are like the person one experiences and those who are not. And a narrator. So, yes, I am aligning myself with the savvy ones I alluded to at the beginning of the post. (Do you need to re-read?) Except for the simplest of messages and texts, re-reading is necessary, even on the first try. A primary, linear reading (first-time) of a text is perhaps an ideal, something not to be found in everyday activity. We could say that reading is more a process of going back and forth. Two steps forward, one back, as it were. We read a new passage, and then must go back to make any meaning of it beyond the most basic of comprehending the words. Reflection. Re-reading, best B. Do you have to re-read this blog? I do. Till next time. #AlanBray

In my exploration of Gilead, the first book of four by Marilynne Robinson, I have attempted to look more at its writerly aspects vs. the ideas expressed. A lot has been written about the ideas, in fact, without fear of cliché, one might confidently call this work “a novel of ideas.” Ms. Robinson herself has written more than one fine book of essays that concern the ideas expressed in Gilead and others. Perhaps this is as good a time as any to note that the four books, Gilead, Home, Lila, and Jack, all concern the same events and time-period, as introduced in Gilead. Each one is told from a different character’s perspective. Anyway, today I want to wrap up my discussion of Gilead by looking even more closely at some structural, writerly, issues. Yay! (Sound of microphone being knocked over. Feedback). Please settle down so we can get started. I have written about two mise en abymes in Gilead, one involving the relations between Ames’ father and grandfather, one his father and his brother. Both, as proxies for the larger story, imply an ending for Gilead that does not occur. Ames’ father and grandfather are at odds and remain so. Ames’ grandfather finally disappears and dies, his grave is found by his son, Ames’ father. There is no forgiveness nor blessing as occurs between Ames and Jack. Ames’ brother clashes with Ames’ father and again, there is no reconciliation. They agree to disagree. Based on these cues, the astute reader might expect that Ames, who has been in conflict with Jack Boughton throughout the story, would never make peace with him. But, as we have seen, this is not the case. Ames forgives Jack after realizing he has mis-judged him, and this is a surprise. There is no foreshadowing. Wait! There is foreshadowing, best B. Midway through the book, Jack and Ames are again hanging out on Jack’s dad’s porch, and Jack asks Ames what his view of predestination is (predestination, one of the central beliefs of Calvinism, is the idea that God decides a person’s fate before their birth). Ames says it’s “a complicated issue.” He equivocates, feeling put on the spot—possible because he grasps the subtext: he believes, and Jack believes, that Jack is predestined to be damned. Jack, that rascal, persists: “…But are there people who are simply born evil, live evil lives, and then go to hell?” Ames persists: “’On that point Scripture is not so clear…Generally a person’s behavior is consistent with his nature. Which is only to say that his behavior is consistent. The consistency is what I mean when I speak of his nature.’ I recognized a redundancy there, a circularity.” Jack says, “People don’t change, then.” After further discussion, Ames’ wife, Lila appears, and she says, basically, no fellas, people can always change through grace. “A person can change. Everything can change.” This scene, occurring about half-way through, could cue the reader that Ames is mistaken about Jack. Sure enough, at the end, there is a chapter break—unusual in Gilead—and the new chapter begins, “Jack Boughton has a wife and a child.” Rev. Ames describes how he was in the study of his church “yesterday morning” when Jack came by and recounted a lengthy confession of how he had a common-law wife and son. I believe this passage has a different quality than what has come before and represents the implied author wishing to show Rev. Ames being surprised and shaken. Instead of the usual structure of Ames telling a story which includes considerable personal reflection, we have several pages of Jack taking over this function—not from a first-person voice, but via much quoted speech, as if it is his voice that is struggling to become the narrator. At the end, the implied author returns to the fiction of Ames writing to his son, (and to we the readers). “You might wonder about my pastoral discretion, writing this all out. Well, on one hand, it is the way I have of considering things. On the other hand, he is a man about whom you may never hear one good word, and I just don’t know another way to let you see the beauty there that is in him.” So, Ames, who has written nearly the whole book in a different style, states that the only way he can properly convey Jack is to present his actual speech at length. A surprise, perhaps foreshadowed, but still a surprise. Well, the clock on the clubhouse wall says it’s time to go. What! That’s kind of abrupt, buddy. Perhaps so. I strongly recommend all four of these books. I do not think one has to be a Calvinist or even a Christian to appreciate them. The ideas expressed share much with humanist theories of people. One could even take religion pretty much out and appreciate the books on a psychological level, that is, as a story about people. (if you're more into the whole humanist thing). Next time, something a little different. I’m not saying what, just to build the anticipation. Heh, heh, heh. I will say I think I’ll return to posting something in one week. The two-week format has given me some time to do other stuff, like catch up on mowing the lawn, but it’s time to return to once a week. Till then. #Gilead #MarilynneRobinson #AlanBray

I think it’s fair to say that the central conflict/story in Gilead is within the relationship between Rev. Ames and Jack Boughton. Certainly there are others—Ames’ father and grandfather, Ames and his wife, Lila—but as I said last time, these are subordinate to the main event which is a sort of prodigal son story which includes the book’s central themes of blame and forgiveness. The first mention of Jack Boughton occurs some sixteen pages in. Ames mentions going to “Boughton’s for supper,” although this Boughton is Jack’s father, Robert, Ames best friend. Ames continues “…Jack might be coming home too (to his father’s house). It actually took me a minute to think who that was.” Here is an example of the Rev. Ames as narrator possibly being unreliable. In the context of the book, I think it’s unlikely that he would go to Boughton’s house and forget who Jack was. I believe he’s trying to deny his true feelings. As if Jack didn’t matter to him, and he clearly does. Then some ten pages later, we have: “I walked over to Boughton’s to see what he was up to.” His daughter Glory, Jack’s sister, tells Ames that “we” haven’t heard from Jack for a little while. The elder Boughton acknowledges worry over this, and Ames leaves, lamenting how his dear friend “isn’t himself.” And this represents a foreshadowing of Ames’ anger at Jack for causing his father great worry and distress. Jack, full name, John Ames Boughton, is one of the sons of the Rev. Ames best friend and fellow minster, Rev. Robert Boughton. Jack, now a man of forty, is described as having been the favored child of the family, a son who in his father’s eyes could do no wrong. Ames is Jack’s godfather and namesake. “I don’t know how one boy could have caused so much disappointment without ever giving anyone any grounds for hope…this was the one whom he truly set his heart. The lost sheep. The lost coin. The prodigal son, not to put too fine a point on it.” For the first hundred pages, Ames refers vaguely to something Jack did that caused his parents much embarrassment and grief, an act that Ames himself has not forgiven. He is angry at Jack for troubling his father, the Rev. Boughton. In his purported letters to his son, Ames struggles over whether he should describe Jack’s crimes and Ames’ own true feelings. Ames believes that only the Lord can condemn and forgive transgressions, that it is not up to him to do so. But he does blame and condemn. “It is not for me to forgive Jack…I do not forgive him.” When Jack was twenty and in college, he had an affair with a young woman who is described as being poor and vulnerable. Jack took advantage of her, Ames believes, and the woman became pregnant with a daughter. Jack would not acknowledge the child as his and offered no support. Before leaving town, he did confess to his father what had occurred, and the Rev. Boughton immediately contacted the child’s family and offered money and food. Jack left, and after three years, the daughter died of an infection. Jack was so aware of the pain he’d caused that he stayed away from home, even when his mother died. There are strong parallels here between this story of Jack and his father and the story of the conflict between Ames’ father and grandfather. A strong subtext that emerges (because it is not explicitly stated) is that as Jack returns to town and visits his (Ames) house, Ames begins to imagine that after his death, Jack might take over as his wife’s husband and his son’s father. There is a quality of envy here, as Ames wishes he were younger and not approaching death. He is threatened by the idea. “I fear leaving my wife and child unknowingly in the sway of a man of extremely questionable character.” Ames struggles with whether he should warn his wife and son about Jack, and finally does, although it appears to be via the letters which might not be seen for years. In a powerful scene, Ames is preaching in church and Jack and Lila are in attendance. Ames preaches on the story of Hagar and Ishmael, Abraham’s second wife and son (a son who is portrayed as dark-skinned in the Bible), and how they are driven into the wilderness by Abraham. Ames sermonizes about how fathers can harm children. Jack, listening to this, is pale and stricken, another bit of foreshadowing. Another key scene involves Jack asking Ames about the doctrine of predestination that is a central tenet of Calvinism, the faith of the real author, Marilynne Robinson. I think we will focus the next post on this, as it is so important. At this time, let’s just say that Ames struggles with the idea that Jack is predestined to be evil, and that he is unable to choose to be good. The climax of the book is, I believe, a fascinating narrative shift. Ames has written much of the story looking back on things that have occurred, almost as if they are a predestined series that Ames is showing himself and his son. But then, the present intrudes in an unpredictable manner. Jack confesses to Ames that he has another wife and child, a son who is ten. His common-law wife, Della, is African American. Jack states he does not wish to abandon them. He chooses to reveal this to Ames in the context of pastoral confidentiality—Jack does not want his father or sister to know. Within the circle of characters in Gilead, Ames is the only one who knows. The news is world-changing to Ames who takes it as evidence that Jack has chosen good over evil, that he has been filled with grace. Ames forgives him his earlier transgressions, and in a tender scene, offers him his blessing as Jack prepares to return to his family. Again, there are strong parallels here between Jack and Ames, and between Jack and Ames’ son. So Ames, who thought he understood his life well enough to write a judgement of it—as if it had been planned out—is confronted with something new and unexpected. Life has not gone the way he assumed it would. This revelation has strong implications for the issue of predestination—are our lives entirely planned out before our births, or can we make choices that allow us to change our fates? More on this, I promise you. Near the end, Ames comments on his work and its impact: “I think I’ll put an end to all this writing. I’ve read it over, more or less, and I’ve found some things of interest in it mainly the way I have been drawn back into this world in the course of it. The expectation of death I began with reads like a kind of youthfulness, it seems to me now. The novelty of it interested me a good deal, clearly.” The story ends with Ames’ wish for his son and perhaps himself: “I’ll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful.” “I’ll pray and then I’ll sleep.” Till next time. #Gilead #MarilynneRobinson #AlanBray

What is the style of Gilead? I find it harder to analyze Gilead as a piece of fiction because it reads like a convincing memoir and/or letter from ageing father to son. Yet, the main character, John Ames, is not real, nor is his wife nor son. Gilead is a fictional tale, albeit one that conveys significant philosophical ideas. How does Marilynne Robinson accomplish this sleight-of-hand? Gilead is written in first person, which imparts an immediacy. The present tense is used to indicate the present time of Rev. Ames as he is composing the letters, and the past tense is used as he recounts the stories that make up the content. That is, he is writing from the past and about the past. Are we the readers in the position of identifying with Ames in his time, or with his son in the future, as we read the purported letters? Both, I think. The book encourages us to imagine ourselves both as the writer and the reader. The physical structure of the book is comprised of one-to-three-page sections set off by paragraph breaks, and predictably, the sections concern different subjects. Thus, as mentioned, the story begins with Ames describing an interaction with his son and a particular look his son gave him. “I will miss them (those looks). “It seems ridiculous to suppose the dead miss anything. If you’re a grown man when you read this—it is my intention for this letter that you will read it then—I’ll have been gone a long time. I’ll know most of what there is to know about being dead, but I’ll probably keep it to myself. That seems to be the way of things.” This first passage sets out the concept of the novel—an older man writing a series of letters to his son, intending he will read them in the future. It shows Ames’ awareness of his mortality. And the tone is ironic, almost comic. After a paragraph break, the next section continues some meditations about death, albeit in a folksy manner. “And now they say my heart is failing. The doctor used the term ‘angina pectoris’ which has a theological sound, like misericordia. Well, you expect these things at my age.” Then he describes seeing two young men joking with each other, perhaps even joking about him. But Ames finds the encounter beautiful; he doesn’t want them to stop on his account. “I felt like telling them I appreciate a joke as much as anybody.” There is considerable quotation of other writers, particularly from the Christian Bible, John Calvin (more on this in a later post), and the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach. However, this device of quotation does not occur in a pretentious way but seems well-integrated and meaningful to the larger text. In a formal sense, Ames is a character narrator, a character in the stories he tells, arguably the main character, and of course this raises the question of unreliability. Is he an objective reporter of what happens? I don’t think so, but I also don’t think he pretends to be. Perhaps part of the illusion is that, as a religious leader, he has some special insight and accuracy into people. However, he makes no claim to any special powers and is, in fact, rather unassuming, going out of his way to show his concern that he has not always been right. He is, as we noted last time, offering up an account of his life for judgement. We the readers have access to his private thoughts, and there’s a sense in which the character of Ames is judging himself, despite his wish for his son to do so in the future. The fact is, as Ames acknowledges, his son may not read these letters. They could be destroyed, his son might be uninterested or even dead himself. Gilead reads more like the intensely personal and subjective thoughts of a human trying to make sense of his life, perhaps to justify it to himself. Whatever possibility there is in his son reading what he has written, Ames is explaining himself to himself. “If you remember me at all, you may find me explained a little by what I am telling you. If you could see me not as a child but as a grown man, it is surely true that you would observe a certain crepuscular quality in me. As you read this, I hope you will understand that when I speak of the long night that preceded these days of happiness, I do not remember grief and loneliness so much as I do peace and comfort—grief, but never without comfort; loneliness, but never without peace. Almost never.” Here he recounts an ordinary event in his current life, wondering if his son will recall it and, at the same time, presenting a significant memory to himself. “You and the cat have joined me in my study. Soapy is on my lap and you are on your belly on the floor in a square of sunlight…” It should be said that although this passage is written in present tense, it is a memory recovered at the time Ames writes it. That is, it has already occurred when he writes it down. At other times, after a paragraph break, the narrative consists of Ames telling a story from the past, a story which may be from the character’s own experience or may be one that had been told to him by others. Thus, we have the story of Ames encountering the influenza epidemic in WW1, and how he tried to console his parishioners who’d lost young men. Then later, there is the comic story allegedly told to Ames by his grandfather, of a mid-western town digging a tunnel with disastrous results. Although this is framed as a story Ames has heard, the telling of it suggests a nearly invisible narrator at work, knowing things Ames could not. Here’s another reflection/judgment about himself, couched in the form of a communication to his son: “I’m trying to make the best of our situation. That is, I’m trying to tell you things I might never have thought to tell you if I had brought you up myself, father and son, in the usual companionable way.” As the Dude might say, what’s the point, Walter? The point is that Gilead makes use stylistically of a sophisticated array of narrational devices, different viewpoints that add richness to the text. In classic storytelling fashion, there are several mise en abymes, my dears, smaller stories that reflect larger ones. Ames’ older brother Edward, who returns from Europe and university a changed and agnostic person, offends their father. This is very evocative of the main story concerning Jack Boughton and his father. A sort of prodigal son, although it is Ames whom Jack offends. Ames feels torn between his brother and father. A major theme in the story is the conflict between father and son. Ames’ father and grandfather, Edward and his father, Jack Boughton and Ames, who is a surrogate father. And it’s expressed in the desire Ames has that he can somehow explain everything to his son far off in the future. He fears his son’s anger over Ames not providing well financially for a wife and son he didn’t plan on. He fears he has failed his son. There is the curious passage wherein Ames recounts the story of a man accused of murder who was exonerated because of both the lack of motive and the disappearance of the murder weapon, a knife. Ames says, “Then nobody knew whom to be scared of, which was terrible.” This then leads into the story of his grandfather’s gun, and how Ames’ father, a pacifist, tried to get rid of it by throwing it in the river. This too plays with the larger theme of guilt and judgment and of the way humans fail each other. The accused man, legally acquitted, is an object of fear by the community and is shunned. An outcast, just as Jack Boughton is unjustly blamed by Ames. Just as Ames father blames his father. There is the “rhyming” between Jack having a lost wife and child, and Ames himself having been married young and losing both wife and their infant daughter. And of course, Ames’ death will separate him again from his own wife and child. In the same way that the different narrative styles enrich the text, these mise en abymes provide a more complex texture and structure, as well as deepening the novel’s themes. Perhaps the best way to see Gilead’s style would be to imagine the book written in a different style. Maybe a novel about an ageing man examining his life told in third person, simple past tense. “Today, John Ames Boughton paid a call. Ames was sitting on the porch with the newspaper and his wife was tending the flowers and he just came walking through the gate and up the steps with his hand held out and a smile on his face. He said, ‘How are you doing, Papa?’—a name he had called Ames in his childhood, because his parents encouraged it, Ames believed.” Scenes like these could be adapted fairly easily. The scenes which are more reflective would need more work. Here’s one where Ames is thinking about Jack’s behavior toward Ames’ wife and son: “I have to decide what to tell your mother. I know she is wondering. He’s very nice to her and to you. And to me. No ‘Papa’ this evening, thank goodness. He’s so respectful I feel like telling him I’m not the oldest man in the world yet. Well, I know I’m touchy about some things. I have to try to be fair with him.” Another writer might utilize more of a narrator entity to express these feelings. “Ames struggled with what to tell Lila about Jack as he was certain she wondered why he was so nice to her and to their son. To Ames, Jack was sensitive and polite, so much so that Ames was made uncomfortable because he didn’t really like Jack even though he felt he should.” Well, a somewhat futile exercise because I think Gilead’s structure and tone are just right. Another writer would struggle to include the ironic, self-deprecating tone and the depth created by the device of the letter writing. Till next time. #Gilead #MarilynneRobinson #AlanBray

“I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where? And I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why? and I said, Because I’m old, and you said, I don’t think you’re old.” So begins Marilynne Robinson’s 2004 novel Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. This opening is an interesting commentary, not only on mortality, but also on the process of reading a book and spending time with a character/story, no? We are with fictional characters who may move us intensely, but then we reach an end. We can only return to the written word, as Ms. Robinson has her character the Reverend Ames, envision for his son. Gilead is a novel written as a series of letters from the Reverend John Ames to his then seven-year-old son. The year is 1956, and Ames, who is 76, knows he will soon die from a heart condition. After an adult lifetime spent writing and delivering sermons (he estimates he’s completed over two thousand of them) Ames seeks to write his son a book-length letter which he intends the boy will read many years in the future when Ames is gone, and his son is an adult. The title Gilead, refers to the town in Iowa where Rev. Ames lives with his family, and that’s plausible enough, but of course the word Gilead also refers strongly to the Christian Bible. Gilead was and is a region in Israel, and perhaps more significantly the expression “a balm in Gilead” refers to the idea of a universal cure, which the book could be! Rev. Ames jokes that his wife Lila, the mother of his son, calls these letters his “begats”, which refers to considerable portions of the Old Testament that are genealogical lists—“Shem son of Noah begat Stuart son of Jack.” Well, you get the idea. So Ames states who he is in terms of his parents’ names and his age. Then, he writes, “And what else should I tell you?” Indeed. Gilead is much more than these “begats.” It is a history of the Rev. Ames life, which includes tales of his parents and grandparents that he either witnessed or that were, on the face of it, told to him. There’s no reason to think initially that Ames is an unreliable narrator. He is writing these tales himself; they are clearly subjective accounts, but there is no other source, no other character who might dispute them. After all, his parents and first wife are deceased, we have no word from them except through Ames. Later, we will see how another character reveals to Ames not so much that the Reverend is unreliable but mistaken in his judgement of other people. His wife Lila, is also a separate voice whose quoted speech can dispute the perceptions and opinions Ames writes. Indeed, it’s unlikely some of the stories about his family could be events he himself witnessed or was told, in that a child probably wouldn’t understand adult dealings. (an isomorph of Ames writing a letter into the future). It’s more likely they are tales told by the hidden narrator of the book. Yet, all of this begs the question of what is the Rev. Ames purpose? I suppose we might say the character himself is shown doing a fairly common thing wherein he wants to, in a sense, go beyond his own death to communicate with his young son. To explain adult things to a child who is now too young to understand them. But, as long as we’re begging questions, what purpose does the implied author have in writing this book, or even, best beloved, the real flesh and blood author, Marilynne Robinson? The stories the Rev. Ames writes about his family and himself are largely tales of wonder at the beauty of existence and the physical world. Ames wants his son to know this, and Ms. Robinson (Mrs. Robinson?) wants the reader to know. “I saw a bubble float past my window, fat and wobbly and ripening toward that dragonfly blue they turn just before they burst. So I looked down in the yard and there you were, you and your mother, blowing bubbles at the cat, such a barrage of them that the poor beast was beside herself at the glut of opportunity…You two were too intent on the cat to see the celestial consequences of your worldly endeavors. They were very lovely. Your mother is wearing her red dress and you are wearing your blue shirt and you were kneeling on the ground together with Soapy (the cat) between and that effulgence of bubbles rising, and so much laughter. Ah, this life, this world.” The word “mindfulness” comes to mind here. It’s a lovely description, not just of a mother and child and cat, but of the mental state of the observer, Rev. Ames, and by extension, the implied author, and finally the reader, if she/he enters into the universe of the book. Another set of stories concerns Rev. Ames’ paternal grandfather and his mother. It was his grandfather’s habit to give away money and possessions to anyone that asked for help, a habit which his daughter-in-law sometimes supported, sometimes blocked. “He really would give anything away. My father would go looking for a saw or a box of nails and it would be gone…Times were hard, and she had the old man to deal with and he would actually give away the blankets off his bed. He did that several times and my mother was at a good deal of trouble to replace them…he’d walk off with a jar of her pickled beets without so much as a by your leave. That day though, he stood there with those three coins in his drastic old mummified hand and watched her with that terrible eye, and she crossed her arms right over the handkerchief with the hidden money in it, and as he clearly knew, and she watched him right back, until he said, ‘Well, the Lord bless you and keep you,’ and went out the door.” There is a running commentary, a self-consciousness about what Ames is doing. “This habit of writing is so deep in me, as you will know well enough if this endless letter is in your hands, if it has not been lost or burned also.” This is embedded in Ames’ ruminations about his sermons, a written chronicle not unlike the letter he is writing his son. “ I suppose it’s natural to think about those old boxes of sermons upstairs. They are a record of my life, after all, a sort of foretaste of the Last Judgement, really so how can I not be curious?” (Does he imagine his son-in-the future will judge him?) Yes. So Ms. Robinson writes to us a story about Rev. Ames writing to his son, presenting an account of his life. There are messages and meanings in this account about the beauty of the world, about love for family, about someone assessing the value of a life, what was done right and what was done wrong. Let’s stop there and continue next time. Till then. #Gilead #MarilynneRobinson #AlanBray

As promised, my short story, Forgotten Melodies, has been published on the Narrative Magazine website as their story of the week. I'm honored to be there, and thank everyone involved—Tom, Mimi, Carol. Here's the link: https://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/stories-week-2022-2023/story-week/forgotten-melodies-alan-bray I'm really happy this story is being published. It's been around for a while in different versions. I'm proud of it. When you click, you'll see my handsome mug and the beginning of the story appear. Then there's a link to continue reading but you have to subscribe to Narrative. You may be reluctant to do this—even though you want to read the whole story—I know. But Narrative is a high-quality group and it's worth joining if you like good writing. #ForgottenMelodies #AlanBray

Dear friends, I’m back. The vacation was great. We saw the house in Madrid where Cervantes wrote Don Quixote. I do want to announce a significant change in this blog. For three years, I’ve written once a week posts. From here on, I will change this to once every two weeks. Why? It’s been pointed out to me that it’s often hard to absorb the blog at the current rate of once a week. Two weeks will provide more time to digest and mull over my pronouncements. ‘Kay. We’ll see, as the orange demon says. We’ve been talking about Justine, the first book in Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet. It’s time to ask, who is the main character of the book? At first blush, it would seem to be Darley, the Irish schoolteacher who narrates the story of his love affair with his best friend’s wife in pre-war Egypt. Through memory and diary entries he possesses, Darley learns that his perspective on this past was only one of several, and not necessarily accurate. A familiar theme in many works of fiction is relativity, specifically in human relationships. That is, based on our experience with another person, we form a particular view of the relationship. A relationship may be ennobling, empowering, parasitic, exploitive. A person we are close to may be judged benevolent or evil. But this is all a point of view and many others exist. Another person might have an entirely different judgment about someone we know. There is no “true” view, no objective perspective. We bring our own needs and biases into a relationship. This is the “lesson” of Justine, and Darley is the pupil. I think it’s fair to say that a large chunk of modern fiction has to do with this theme. We’re talking modernism, best beloved. Modernism explicitly rejected the ideology of realism and made use of the works of the past by the employment of reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody. Modernism also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many modernists also rejected religion. There you have it. Justine is a revisionist tour de force. In Justine, new information radically changes what the protagonist, Darley, believes about the other characters. The relative nature of relationships is ratcheted up to an extreme as Darley learns just how mistaken he initially was. Of course, it is the reader whom the text really leads into surprise. All the reader has to go on is what each book reveals page by page (unless you read ahead). The reader is shown the same event—Justine’s disappearance—over and over from different perspectives. Which is the “correct” one? Because there is a sense that Darley is just mistaken, that he has been tricked by Justine. That Justine herself possesses an absolute truth. This is a sign of the power Darley gives her, but at the end, it is revealed that Justine herself is as confused as everyone else. Indeed, if any of the characters can be viewed as having a “true” perspective, it is Darley himself. The implied author would like we the readers to view Darley implicitly as the true center of the book, the point of entry for the reader. There is an implication that, as he learns the mistaken nature of his beliefs, particularly about Justine and Nessim, he discovers the truth. He thinks he does. He claims the story is “really” about the city of Alexandria, yet he is the one who tells it, who provides the impetus for looking back on what has happened. But who is this character of Darley, who at least on the surface, appears to be the central character in Justine? Rather like Max Morden, the protagonist of John Banville’s novel The Sea, (previously discussed in this blog), Darley can be defined by lack rather than possession. He is an Irish expatriate and has no real home or family. He is an unpublished writer and a desultory teacher. Till well into the text, he is even unnamed. He exists in a kind of vacuum, a web of relationships that ultimately devalues him. Darley has apparently fabricated a new identity for himself by replacing the one bequeathed to him at birth—a privileged colonial. This leaves him homeless and impoverished. When the catastrophic occurs, and he is unmasked, he enters a period of crisis. The catastrophe is Justine’s disappearance. It drives Darley eventually into analyzing his life instead of living it. Through a long period of dissolution spent teaching in a rural Egyptian school and smoking hashish, he struggles to separate himself from his past. Central questions of identity and authenticity are posed—till the crisis, Darley only exists through others. Then, he must figure out he is. But at least in Justine, he continues to do so in terms of who are or were the others. Unlike Max Morden in The Sea, he appears unaware of his lack of a distinctive personality. Perhaps, as Monica Facchinello writes about Banville and The Sea, the protagonist’s lack of authenticity, his vacuum, forces the reader’s attention on the style of the book. After all, a vacuum must be filled. Lawrence Durrell has a distinctive style (perhaps John Banville was influenced by him?), characterized by rich language, poetic prose, and intertextuality—the weaving in of different texts into itself. (referring to The Sea is an example) Exoticism is also a key element. Exoticism—the quality of being attractive or striking through being colorful or unusual. As in The Sea, style is the central character of Justine. It asserts itself at the beginning: “The sea is high again today, with a thrilling flush of wind. In the midst of winter you can feel the inventions of spring. A sky of hot nude pearl till midday, crickets in sheltered places, and now the wind unpacking the great planes, ransacking the great planes…” (plane trees). And the end: “Soon it will be evening and the clear night sky will be dusted thickly with summer stars. I shall be here, as always, smoking by the water.” Beautiful stuff. Durrell, not Darley, wrote those. And they really have little to do with Darley; they represent the implied author preening, showing its genius. The style is the central character of the book. Till next time. (two weeks). #Justine #LawrenceDurrell #AlanBray

It is near the end of Justine that the reader is shown the “how” of Justine’s disappearance, as well as other plot points previously referenced. On page three of the text proper, we’re told right away that at a point in the past Nessim still believed Justine would return to him, that Nessim went “mad,” and that Melissa died. We don’t know at the outset who these folks are but we do know about these significant events that have already occurred. From then on, we are cued that the story will tell us how Justine disappeared, how Nessim went mad, and how Melissa died. How and also who these characters are. It would be quite different if the story began with Darley meeting Nessim and Justine in the midst of his love affair with Melissa, and then embarking on a liaison with Justine. Instead, just to hammer home my point, we know right off what happens. It is roughly one hundred fifty pages later that we get the climax. “When the time for the great yearly shoot on Lake Mareotis came round, Nessim began to experience a magical sense of relief. He recognized at last that what had to be decided would be decided at this time and at no other.” This “shoot” is an event that Nessim arranges where many of the characters in the book participate in a duck hunt which is elegantly planned for these privileged folk, rather like a British fox hunt. Thousands of the little quackers are slaughtered. This bloody event occurs in the context of Nessim knowing that his wife Justine is having an affair with Darley, and that Darley and Justine know that he knows and fear his reaction. The implied author actually hides Nessim’s intentions, as the narrative about Nessim’s thoughts is drawn through Darley’s perspective as well as his reading of Nessim’s diary. At no time, is Nessim described as wanting to murder Darley. However, he is described as being insanely jealous of his wife’s infidelities and as being very rich and powerful. Justine, anticipating murder, asks Darley not to go on the duck hunt. “’You are not to tempt providence. Will you? Answer me.’ And as if to make persuasion certain she slipped off her skirt and shoes and fell softly into bed beside me…” But Darley is not persuaded (?) and accepts the invitation, wondering if it will lead to his death. However, he survives. After murdering some ducks, he learns the awful truth. Capodistria, the mysterious man who raped Justine when she was younger, has been found dead—“clearly an accident,” according to the official story. And Justine has taken off. Nessim’s servant approaches Darley and says: “Master, the lady has gone. There is a letter for you at the house.” So in a surprise development, it appears that, instead of Darley, Nessim may have had the man who raped his wife murdered. And Justine, that eternal scamp, ends the affair and the danger by leaving town. The contents of her letter to Darley are not revealed. It is Clea who reveals to a distraught Darley that Justine has gone to Palestine where she is working on a kibbutz. And this leaves Darley wondering if she really loved him and causes him to mope around for years trying to figure things out. Clea also hints rather directly that if Darley will have her, she would like to join him on the island. “The cicadas are throbbing in the great planes, and the summer Mediterranean lies before me in all its magnetic blueness. Somewhere, out there, beyond the mauve throbbing line of the horizon lies Africa, lies Alexandria, maintaining its tenuous grasp on one’s affections through memories which are already refunding themselves slowly into forgetfulness; memory of friends, of incidents long past. The slow unreality of time begins to grip them, blurring the outlines—so that sometimes I wonder if these pages record the actions of real human beings; or whether this is not simply the story of a few inanimate objects which precipitated drama around them—I mean a black patch, a watch-key, and a couple of dispossessed wedding rings. (These are all significant objects in the text—Capodistria’s eye patch, Balthazar’s watch-key, and Cohen’s wedding rings that he’d wished he’d given to Melissa). “…I have decided to leave Clea’s last letter unanswered. I know longer wish to coerce anyone, to make promises, to think of life in terms of compacts, resolutions, covenants. It will be up to Clea to interpret my silence according to her own needs and desires, to come to me if she has need or not. Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?” So Justine ends. Darley has taken a passive position here—which is consistent with his character. He remains troubled by the sense that he was mistaken about Justine and the others and apparently continues his bookish study on the island. There’s a sense in which he is shown not wanting to know more. ‘Kay. I don’t think we’re quite done with Justine, best beloved. However, an announcement. There will be a break in the action. Dena and I are going away on a trip. I will re-charge a bit, and this blog will return on April 20. Till then. #Justine #LawrenceDurrell #AlanBray

First, an apology for posting this a day late on Friday vs. Thursday. We were away on a trip, and the post was not ready. Great regrets, best b. By the way, what is the style of Justine? Let’s remember, style is the way in which an author writes and/or tells a story, the elements that set one author’s writing apart from another. As an example, what if the story of Justine was written in the style of the author of the Dick and Jane series, William S. Gray? “Justine can play.” “Darley can play too.” “Run, Justine, run!” “Woof!” What we have here is an omniscient narrator entity (not part of the scene) showing the reader the action in simple noun-verb-object and imperative sentences, simple present tense. The idea is to use a narrative to teach children how to read. Even the most inattentive among us will note that Lawrence Durrell’s style is quite different. What? How so, you ask? Here’s a passage that describes Darley and Justine at a fireworks show: “This particular night was full of a rare summer lightning: and hardly had the display ended when from the desert to the east a thin crust of thunder formed like a scab upon the melodious silence. A light rain fell, youthful and refreshing, and all at once the darkness was full of figures hurrying back into the shelter of the lamplit houses, dresses held ankle-high and voices raised in shrill pleasure. The lamps printed for a second their bare bodies against the transparent materials which sheathed them—we lay in the cradle of darkness feeling the gentle prickles of the rain upon our faces…through her hair I saw the last pale comets gliding up into the darkness. I tasted, with the glowing pleasure of the colour in my brain, the warm guiltless pressure of her tongue on mine, her arms upon mine. The magnitude of this happiness—we could not speak but gazed abundantly at each other with eyes full of unshed tears.” First of all, Lawrence Durrell employs a narrator entity who, in the style of the book, is very close to the character narrator Darley. It is the narrator who describes this scene in sensuous detail and who is able to dip inside Darley’s head (not Justine’s) to show his experience of her tongue. The narrator in Justine sticks to Darley (not exactly—more on this later), and renders Justine in mystery. As we’ve noted before, except for the citations from her diary (which are selected by the narrator) Justine is always seen through others’ eyes. She is always an object. The language is rich and evocative. Poetic, with its image of the thunderstorm and the others hurrying to shelter, the lamps printing their bare bodies against their transparent garments. The sentence structure is complex with many clauses added. Em dashes are utilized to simulate a flow of experience. As the story develops, there are some passages written in Latin and French without translation. (Did he speak French to you?) The vocabulary is arcane, using words like “aniline” which may necessitate recourse to the dictionary but also cue the reader that this is a particular kind of book. Not Dick and Jane. And it helps if the reader knows more than a bit about classical Greek, Roman, and Egyptian mythology. And the poet C.P. Cafavy. The verb tense used—simple past—and the first and second person signal the reader that these events occurred in the past and could be construed as a memory. In contrast, the Dick and Jane fantasy, set in the present, has the feel of a storyteller describing a story that is occurring now. Time moves forward, step-by-step. Time is handled quite differently in Justine. In a broader sense of plot, Justine is the beginning of a ring narrative, my friends. The Odyssey is probably the most famous example of this device wherein a story begins in a present time, then goes back in time and catches up to where it started at the end. Justine offers a variation on this, as the present of the book is Darley on his island, telling stories about the past, but time is not at all sequential, and there are frequent returns to the time of Darley on his island. What I’m saying here is that time darts about. Durrell—through Darley—makes this explicit: “(What I most need to do is to record experiences, not in the order in which they took place—for that is history—but in the order in which they first became significant for me).” (The parentheses are part of the text.) As we have described ad nauseum, Justine begins with Darley on the island—that is the story’s present. He lays out his project: “I light a lamp and walk about, thinking of my friends—of Justine and Nessim, of Melissa and Balthazar. I return link by link along the iron chains of memory to the city which we inhabited so briefly together: the city which used us as its flora—precipitated in us conflicts which were hers and which we mistook for our own: beloved Alexandria! “I have had to come so far away from it in order to understand it all!…” Then, Darley heads firmly into the past: “At the time I met Justine I was almost a happy man.” The verb tense (simple past) remains the same, but he contextualizes what follows by the clause “At the time.” He goes on to describe his life in Alexandria, and the way he met Justine and began a love affair with her. So, story-wise, we have a character narrator, Darley, living on an island with the “child.” (apologies to the Mandalorian). The reader gets that he is looking back, remembering his friends at a time in the past in Alexandria. And that Darley appears to project responsibility for some actions onto the city, away from the human actors. And that he makes frequent use of exclamation points! Just for fun, here's another different style working with these ideas. This piece uses a character narrator with very close narration. “I’m sitting up here on this island, and the locals think I’m crazy. I’m taking care of my girlfriend’s girl—so far, the police have left us alone. I wander around once I think the kid is asleep and remember my friends. I had an affair with my friend’s hot wife, but that wasn’t really our fault—it was the fault of the place we lived in. My bad! Where did everyone go? How come I’m stuck with the kid?” ‘Kay. I hope this attempt at humor will be forgiven. (It’s not my fault, it’s the place I live—New Hampshire!) Durrell continues: “I had to come here in order to completely rebuild this city in my brain…I have been looking through my papers tonight…those papers I guard with care are the three volumes in which Justine kept her diary, as well as the folio which records Nessim’s madness.” Here is the introduction of an important device—Darley is remembering the events of ten years before with the aid of other texts. He—a self-described writer—has his own notes which he downplays. And he has Justine’s diary which includes a “folio” on Nessim’s madness. So, a key idea in the book (s), is that we are not just getting Darley’s memory and perspective. He has a decade old repository of his thoughts (and he has changed in ten years so that he is distanced from and judgmental of his younger self). And we have another character’s diary—Justine’s. This includes a long section which is labeled as Nessim’s diary but reads more like it’s written from his perspective, that is, as if he becomes the narrator. And a book written about her. There’s an illusion that Darley is a sort of detective who is researching different texts to understand the “case.” The point seems to be that there is not a single truth that must be discovered. The story begins “in the middle,” in that Darley is in the midst of his investigation but does not yet know what he will eventually find out. This is akin to a real-life phenomenon of someone meeting an old friend who presents a different view of an important event. At the end, Darley is presented with a letter from another character, Clea, who reveals secrets concerning Justine’s disappearance. But Justine itself only takes us so far. It is, after all, only the first of a series of four books. Till next time. #Justine #LawrenceDurrell #AlanBray

The history of the city of Alexandria, Egypt is one of frequent conquest by different empires. The British took over in 1881 and remained in control till after WW2. Alexandria was an important outpost of the British Empire, a cauldron of colonialism and its opponents. Yet, the life of the city has always been enriched by the presence of different communities, many of them exiles or immigrants, often co-existing in harmony. Aside from the native Egyptians, these include the Greeks and the Jews. This cultural diversity has enriched the city, and Durrell and his creature the implied author show this. One might assume that an English author writing in 1957 about a piece of the Empire that has just “broken off,” would construct a story that is nostalgic, looking back fondly on “the good old days.” I don’t think that’s what Durrell gives us. Yes the book is nostalgic but not about the days of the British rule. If anything, it shows the reader the crimes of colonialism. The nostalgia is for the characters who lived in Alexandria at the time and their lives. The story is rarely judgmental. It neither idealizes nor condemns. Durrell tells us straight off that the book is a memorial to Alexandria, and a fiction. “Only the city is real…In a flash, my mind’s eye shows me a thousand dusty tormented streets. Flies and beggars own it…Five races, five languages, a dozen creeds…there are more than five sexes…The sexual provender which lies to hand is staggering in its variety and profusion. The symbolic lovers of the free Hellenistic world are replaced by something different, something subtly androgenous, inverted upon itself.” As Darley, the author makes this statement: “I see at last that none of us is properly to be judged for what happened in the past. It is the city which should be judged, though we, its children, must pay its price.” But Justine describes Darley as being different from Alexandrians, that he maintains a distance. “’Regard derisoire,’ says Justine. (Look at your paltry, meagre appearance). ‘How is it you are so much one of us and yet…you are not?’ She is combing that dark head in the mirror, her mouth and eyes drawn up about a cigarette. ‘You are a mental refugee of course, being Irish, but you miss our angoisse.’ (anguish). What she is groping after is really the distinctive quality which emanates not from us but from the landscape—the metallic flavors of exhaustion which impregnate the airs of Mareotis.” (the large, saltwater lake contained within the city). I think there’s an interesting distinction made here between Darley the character, Justine’s lover, whom she views as being different from other Alexandrians, and the narrator, who identifies as being part of an “us,” which includes everyone living in Alexandria. The narrator, looking back, has a different view than did Justine. Justine believes Darley is less anguished than she. (Maybe that’s part of his appeal). Moreover, there’s a sense of the narrator saying only the city is real and persists. All the characters who existed in the time he describes are not necessarily dead but are gone; the life they led is gone. He romantically puts the blame for a great deal of infidelity and pain on the city instead on the human actors, saying that the city itself, its scents and sights, affect its inhabitants as a drug might, making them anguished and indolent and immoral. Is this attitude that the city breeds lassitude and immorality, a sign of colonialist contempt? Maybe. There is a pervasive sense in the whole Quartet that Alexandria was exotic and different, and that this quality is sometimes good, sometimes bad. One might assume Durrell, a heterosexual male, would write about women as sexualized objects. Here is a description of Melissa: “She would come a few minutes late of course—fresh from some assignation in a darkened room, from which I avert my mind, but so fresh, so young, the open petal of the mouth that fell upon mine like an unslaked summer. The man she had left might still be going over and over the memory of her; she might be as if still dusted by the pollen of his kisses.” “I used to see her, I remember, pale, rather on the slender side, dressed in a shabby, sealskin coat, leading her small dog about the winter streets. Her blue-veined phthisic hands. Her eyebrows artificially pointed upwards to enhance those fine dauntlessly candid eyes…her sullen aniline beauty…” (aniline is a curious adjective here. Aniline refers to chemical poisons. Maybe because Melissa is dying?). And Justine: “Justine walked into the dank calm of the little flat, dressed in a white frock and shoes, and carrying a rolled towel under one arm with her handbag. The magnificence of her dark skin and hair glowed out of all this whiteness with an arresting quickness. When she spoke her voice was harsh and unsteady, and it sounded for a moment as if she had been drinking—perhaps she had…But she had closed her eyes—so soft and lustrous now, as if polished by the silence which lay so densely all around us.” And here is Clea: “Everything about her person is honey-gold and warm in tone; the fair, crisply trimmed hair which she wears rather long at the back, knotting it simply at the downy nape of her neck. This focuses the candid face of a minor muse with its smiling gray-green eyes. The calmly disposed hands have a deftness and shapeliness which one only notices when one sees them at work, holding a paint brush perhaps…” These poetic passages are not burdened with observations of sexual features—breasts, hips, etc. They tend to describe women in terms of the feelings they evoke in the observer, feelings which are more complex than lust. A quality of fondness and longing, I think, combined with an appreciation of beauty. Are the women in the story one-dimensional objects, playthings for the author? I don’t think so, best beloved. Melissa is arguably the most “used” by Darley but is a complex character in her vulnerability. Justine “uses” Darley. She is one-dimensional when she is only seen by Darley’s perspective but the whole point of the story is that multiple perspectives exist. And Clea? Darley presents a loving and complex portrayal of her. Could a woman have written these passages? Hmmm. Good question. It’s possible, although a different person would write differently. Gender is not the only determinant of style. Till next time. #Justine #LawrenceDurrell #AlanBray

Today, let’s talk about Justine, Lawrence Durrell’s 1957 book that begins his four-novel opus, The Alexandria Quartet. The other novels in the Alexandria Quartet are Mountolive, Balthazar, and Clea. (whiny voice: Are you going to go over each one?) We’ll see. I have a sense that few people read the Quartet nowadays, which is too bad. It’s becoming forgotten, I fear. Is it dated? In terms of gender roles and the depiction of different ethnic groups, I don’t think so. It’s remarkably non-judgmental and unconcerned with stereotypes and colonialism. Writing in 1982, then New York Times critic Anatole Broyard says, “While almost every modern writer behaves as if we'd come to understand love only with his particular generation, some of Durrell's sentences sound as if they were written yesterday.” I first read Justine one hot summer in Ann Arbor, Michigan when I was living in a basement apartment in the student ghetto. I was in my twenties and the feverish and erotic story enthralled me. I read all four novels and since then, have re-read the Quartet several times. This makes me think about a phenomenon that many have pondered. When we re-read a novel at different points in our lives, we are not the same person. Experience and age change us so that our perception of the novel is different too. My Justine of age 25 is not the same as of age 68. What’s that old saying—you can’t step twice in the same river? How does it differ? When I was younger, I read more naively and I don’t mean this as a value judgement but more that I was not so aware of many of the things I write about now—how the story is told, the narrational style, which perspective is presented. When I was younger, I took such things for granted, as in thinking, this is just how this particular novel is written instead of considering that the style is a choice and there are alternatives. Actually, re-reading Justine now feels pretty fresh. Of course, I recall the plot and characters and certain scenes. But the word-to-word prose seems new and breathtaking. And as I said above, it does not seem bound to the time when it was written. Durrell himself says in an introduction to Balthazar, that the theme of the Quartet is the different types of human love. Further, he writes that the four novels are an exploration of relativity and notions of continuity and subject-object relations. I think what he’s referring to here are continuity regarding time, and subject-object relations in a Freudian sense. There is the idea of object permanence—we learn on a deep level that the Other exists even if they hide behind their hands. (I wouldn’t recommend playing peek-a-boo with Justine though, she’s pretty serious). We’ll have to think hard about these matters, best beloved. I guess as a writer, I’m a little suspicious of authors of fiction who make such claims for their works. It seems to me that a fine work of fiction should be able to stand on its own without an explanation by the author of what it means. (It’s okay if others do this. Like me.). Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is a mighty expression of philosophical ideas (particularly those of Henri Bergson) but as far as I know Proust never commented on this. (Maybe he did, and I just don’t know). In any case, Lawrence Durrell was a master, and these books are fine examples of literature as art—whatever commentary he made about them. They are also funny and moving. The first three novels have to do with the same sequence of events seen through three different characters’’ perspectives—Durrell’s exploration of relativity. The events are, simply put, those surrounding the disappearance of Justine Hosnani, a wealthy woman living in Alexandria, Egypt around 1940. The fourth novel, Clea, has to do with what happens after. The central character is Darley, an expatriate Irishman living in Alexandria. Justine begins with Darley, living on a Mediterranean island with a little girl, the daughter of one of his loves. The time is possibly 1947 so Darley is looking back on events that occurred in the past, specifically his love affair with Justine, the wife of his friend, Nessim, and her disappearance. We have a dedication at the beginning: To Eve these memorials of her native city This a reference to Durrell’s second wife, Eve, who was probably the inspiration for the character of Justine. We have an interesting note from the author, reminiscent of what Michael Ondaatje said of last week’s book, The Cat’s Table: The characters in this novel, the first of a series, are all inventions together with the personality of the narrator, and bear no resemblance to living persons. Only the city is real. And this is a clear statement about the narrator, Darley, being an invention of—wait for it—the implied author! We will see that a book which reads so much like a memoir is a fiction. Then we have two quoted passages: I am accustoming myself to the idea of regarding every sexual act as a process in which four persons are involved. We shall have a lot to discuss about that. Freud There are two positions available to us—either crime which renders us happy, or the noose, which prevents us from being unhappy. I ask whether there can be any hesitation, lovely Therese, and where will your little mind find an argument able to combat that one? Marquis de Sade Justine How do these contextualize what follows? Well, let’s just say that the story is full of love affairs and sexual encounters, and that with a shout out to Freud, these encounters often occur between two people who are involved with other people, making a total of four—at least! M. de Sade speaks about happiness, saying that crime or wrongdoing makes us happy, punishment prevents us from being unhappy. One could dispute this, but Justine is about people who “do the wrong thing” by satisfying their urges but who are relieved when there are consequences. Why is the book entitled Justine? Is there a connection to de Sade? De Sade’s Justine is a story about a young girl who is ruined by bad men who abuse her. Later in life, she recovers after facing death. Maybe Justine ironically refers to De Sade’s character in that Justine Hosnani believes she has been corrupted by older men. She seems to act out sexually but denies responsibility for this, saying she was damaged by others. Maybe this is like De Sade—I’m going to hurt you in order to be happy but if it doesn’t work out, it’s your fault. Justine begins: The sea is high again today, with a thrilling flush of wind. In the midst of winter you can feel the inventions of Spring. A sky of hot nude pearl until midday, crickets in sheltered places, and now the wind unpacking the great planes, ransacking the great planes… I have escaped to this island with a few books and the child—Melissa’s child. I do not know why I use the word “escape.” The villagers say jokingly that only a sick man would choose such a remote place to rebuild. Well, then, I have come here to heal myself, if you like to put it that way… Beautiful prose, no? Hot, nude pearl, indeed. Although I’m not sure what he’s referring to about “great planes.” There’s direct reference made here to someone escaping something and needing to rebuild and heal, both of which I see as strong themes in the story. Another thing of note as we begin is that the story is constructed around Darley reading things after the fact or sometimes being told things, again after they’ve occurred. At the beginning, he is on the island with his notes about what happened in Alexandria. As things develop, he describes how he discovered and read Moeurs, the book written about Justine by her first husband. Later still, he is visited by Balthazar, who presents a dramatically different view of what’s occurred that challenges Darley’s own. Finally, Clea also recasts the events of the story, confirming the idea that perspective is all. Relativity. We all see things differently. We all see people differently. Till next time, best bs. #Justine #LawrenceDurrell #AlanBray