Ancient stories from the Torah serve Mendelsohn in The Lost,his account of his search for ancestors lost in the Holocaust. Like a Greek chorus, they comment directly and indirectly upon his search story as it unfolds and the family stories he gradually uncovers.
Mendelsohn does this most effectively when he uses the Adam and Eve story to highlight the pain and pleasure that comes in acquiring knowledge. He recounts Adam and Eve's story while he tells of gathering the first fruits of his own family research. In both cases, knowledge proves a curse and blessing. Mendelsohn's knowledge blesses him by connecting him with people he presumed lost. When a near contemporary of Shmeil's daughters "acts out" how he once upon a time greeted Shmeil's ten year old daughter Bronia, hearing this old man's recollection of the moment comes close to bringing the moment back for Mendelsohn. It's as if the recollection transports Mendelsohn back to the streets of Bolechow as they existed in 1939.
However, as he grows in knowledge of his family, along with connection, Mendelsohn experiences pain. There's the pain of the truth; his family met a horrific end. There's also the pain unique to knowledge: as Mendelsohn's reading of the Adam and Eve story points out, knowledge inevitably makes you aware ignorance and the likelihood you'll never bridge it. With knowledge, you come to know what you wish to know and are not likely to ever know. In hearing an old man vividly recall his greeting to a ten year old girl, to hear him say it again with the inflection and tone he used, is to come awful close to bringing a moment back. Conversely, this very proximity also points to the gaping hole in the almost recalled moment.
In searching for his family, in his focus on the past, Mendelsohn like all historians is after something. As with all historians, he's after something definitive: an object, a letter, a location that is linked to people from the past. Yet, this something definitive is meant to serve as a tool, a bridge, to something of a more indefinite nature. The object(s) the historian gathers ideally transport him of her out of their contemporary selves and into the selves of another time and place. Oral testimony of witnesses can perform the same function, as it does when Mendelsohn hears a contemporary of his mother's cousin Frydka recount how the young girl confided her love of a Polish boy to her. Mendelsohn had heard this fact from a few people prior, who had heard it second-hand. Hearing of Frydka's love, from someone Frydka told, brought the truth of the fact home to Mendelsohn. He experienced how, "a single human memory can catapult you to a specific and now irretrievable point in space and time"(357).
Unlike professional historians, Mendlesohn's history is motivated by a family instinct. I didn't grow up in a culture of family like Mendelsohn's and I perhaps presume in commenting upon it. But, from reading his book, one gathers that family is a means of extending ones self and ones time beyond natural boundaries. In family-centered cultures like Mendelsohn's, individuals live on in the memory of their descendants. They are re-membered every time they are remembered.
This notion of extending one's life in the memory of descendants is even hinted at by perhaps casual turns of rhetoric. Thus, on the back of a photograph of himself taken on his 44th birthday, Uncle Shmeil writes that the picture was taken "Im 44 lebensjahr," which Mendelsohn deftly points out literally translates out as 'in the 44th year of life'. Shmeil may have a set number of lebensjahr, or years of life, but in so far as he's remembered afterward he has years beyond that. As a presently living member of such a family, Mendelsohn quest to uncover the lost history of his ancestors is as much an obligation as it is a seeking after knowledge for its own sake. In doing the work by which he remembers Shmeil, Mendelsohn adds years to his life. And, family does this for one another. Someone will do it for Mendelsohn, one presumes. It is an expression of a family's love for one another.
Beyond this, his search seems driven by a real yearning, born of love, a quasi-mystical hope that the process of knowing history will transport him to the past and he can become one with his relatives who died. To an uncertain but palpable extent, he can feel their pain, their anxiety, their suffering.
To stretch a point, it almost seems that in a family-centered culture like Mendelsohn's, Mendelsohn's work at remembering is what's expected, and presuming it yields a kind of comfort. One's descendants as well as one's ancestors will possibly be with you at moments of joy and at moments of suffering. Near the end of the book, when Mendelsohn finally locates with some certainty the location where Frydka and Shmeil were shot, it is as if he believes he will join them there, at that moment. Joining them, he will be able to share it, and their end wont be as lonely as it is horrible. But, alas...this doesn't quite prove to be the case.
Yet, Mendelsohn remembers for History's sake. To the extent that History must be composed of stories, the past he unearths stymies his attempt to write history. According to Mendelsohn, stories have specific features: their narratives proceed according to an orderly, cause and effect flow of time; stories have hero's and villains; essential elements (personality, locations, sequences) of the story must be known/spoken of with a certaintyl; stories must assume certain narrative shapes and patterns for them to appeal. The past he uncovers refuses to conform.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Daniel Mendelsohn's The Lost
Daniel Mendelsohn's The Lost: a Search for Six of Six Million is as it's subtitle indicates an attempt to discover the histories of six individuals who perished in the Holocaust. It seeks to humanize a history that often gets lost in numbers. Mendelsohn's book is a record of his five year effort to touch and to feel an historical event, to recapture a moment in the past.
As a teenager and young adult, Mendelsohn harbored an interest in his family's history. In particular, he was fascinated his mother's family, the Jagers. Even more particularly, he was fascinated by his great uncle Shmeil Jager, his wife Ester, and their four daughters who died in the Holocaust. As a boy, the information he gathered and overheard on this family was scant and Mendelsohn naturally assumed that owing to their fate nothing further could be gathered. However, as he pushed and researched further, at one point traveling to the Jager's ancestral residence of Bolechow, a town in what is now the Ukraine (given their fate, "home" seems the wrong word for this town, despite the fact that Mendelsohn uncovers documentation establishing that the Jagers lived in Bolechow for some four hundred years), Mendelsohn discovers that his ancestors haven't quite disappeared without a trace. Indeed, his trip and his persistent and dogged research leads him to discover all sorts of documents, and more importantly, people who recall this family of six.
Mendelsohn's book is elegantly structured. He tells of his search for his family in a chronological order: the first chapter (1967-2000) details his burgeoning interest in the family and in particular Shmeil Jagers, the second chapter recounts he and his siblings journey to Bolechow in 2001, the third tells of their subsequent trip to Australia to visit folks who had lived in Bolechow and knew Shmeil and his family, the fourth of a trip to Israel to connect with yet more contemporaries of this family, and so on.
In the process of telling a contemporary story,his search for the Jagers, Mendelsohn recounts and comments on ancient Torah stories, from the Creation to Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac. He cleverly weaves the two sets of stories together, so the ancient ones comment and reflect in a timely way on the more contemporary stories of his family and his search for them.
Sometimes, the ancient ones seem almost a template, and the Holocaust stories and the stories surrounding the uncovering of those stories reflections, or iterations of the ancient stories. Thus, throughout his account of the genesis of his interest in his family, Mendelsohn writes and comments upon the Torah's account of the creation of the world. As he comes to find out what he can (and what he can't) about his family, the story of Adam and Eve provides succinct reminder of the pains and pleasure of knowledge. Throughout the second chapter, alternately focused on Mendelsohn's trip to Bolechow and the relations between Shmeil and his siblings, Mendelsohn recalls and comments on the story of Cain and Abel: from whence rises murderous hate, proximity or distance? In the third chapeter, dominated by first-person recollections of the Holocaust as it unfolded in Bolechow, the author puzzles over the story of Noah and the flood: how does it make sense of a senseless tragedy?
This is clearly intended as a history. But, it's a refreshingly and self-consciously modest history governed by values and ways more common associated with story. The book tells a contemporary story but is grounded in the ancient stories of the Torah, as it unfolds according to the traditional weekly readings of the Torah.
As a teenager and young adult, Mendelsohn harbored an interest in his family's history. In particular, he was fascinated his mother's family, the Jagers. Even more particularly, he was fascinated by his great uncle Shmeil Jager, his wife Ester, and their four daughters who died in the Holocaust. As a boy, the information he gathered and overheard on this family was scant and Mendelsohn naturally assumed that owing to their fate nothing further could be gathered. However, as he pushed and researched further, at one point traveling to the Jager's ancestral residence of Bolechow, a town in what is now the Ukraine (given their fate, "home" seems the wrong word for this town, despite the fact that Mendelsohn uncovers documentation establishing that the Jagers lived in Bolechow for some four hundred years), Mendelsohn discovers that his ancestors haven't quite disappeared without a trace. Indeed, his trip and his persistent and dogged research leads him to discover all sorts of documents, and more importantly, people who recall this family of six.
Mendelsohn's book is elegantly structured. He tells of his search for his family in a chronological order: the first chapter (1967-2000) details his burgeoning interest in the family and in particular Shmeil Jagers, the second chapter recounts he and his siblings journey to Bolechow in 2001, the third tells of their subsequent trip to Australia to visit folks who had lived in Bolechow and knew Shmeil and his family, the fourth of a trip to Israel to connect with yet more contemporaries of this family, and so on.
In the process of telling a contemporary story,his search for the Jagers, Mendelsohn recounts and comments on ancient Torah stories, from the Creation to Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac. He cleverly weaves the two sets of stories together, so the ancient ones comment and reflect in a timely way on the more contemporary stories of his family and his search for them.
Sometimes, the ancient ones seem almost a template, and the Holocaust stories and the stories surrounding the uncovering of those stories reflections, or iterations of the ancient stories. Thus, throughout his account of the genesis of his interest in his family, Mendelsohn writes and comments upon the Torah's account of the creation of the world. As he comes to find out what he can (and what he can't) about his family, the story of Adam and Eve provides succinct reminder of the pains and pleasure of knowledge. Throughout the second chapter, alternately focused on Mendelsohn's trip to Bolechow and the relations between Shmeil and his siblings, Mendelsohn recalls and comments on the story of Cain and Abel: from whence rises murderous hate, proximity or distance? In the third chapeter, dominated by first-person recollections of the Holocaust as it unfolded in Bolechow, the author puzzles over the story of Noah and the flood: how does it make sense of a senseless tragedy?
This is clearly intended as a history. But, it's a refreshingly and self-consciously modest history governed by values and ways more common associated with story. The book tells a contemporary story but is grounded in the ancient stories of the Torah, as it unfolds according to the traditional weekly readings of the Torah.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Angel's Gaze
Notes on Hardy's "Tess of the D'Urbervilles"
Like Alec and the narrator, Angel is a watcher. He is at many points in the novel positioned at a distance, as an observer. At Talbothays, he lives in the attic and sits apart at meals. In either spot, his figurative position above is mirrored by his literal position.
Tess continually discovers herself being watched by Angel. On the day when he first closely observes Tess during a meal, "owing to his long silence, his presence in the room was almost forgotten"(119). So forgotten, Clare stares at her as she speaks of the ways she escapes her body. Lost in his gaze, Angel ends up reducing Tess through abstraction; he ends up defining/praising her as a "genuine daughter of nature."
In part, this speaks to the fact that Tess is here speaking and acting without a sense of self-consciousness, with a freedom and honesty that society normally precludes. The irony is that while her honesty attracts Angel's gaze, his gaze quickly restrains Tess's honesty. Growing conscious of his gaze, she begins to feel "the constraint of a domestic animal that perceives itself to be watched"(120).
In observing her unawares, Angel often converts Tess into an object, a piece of art. Thus, on the warm July afternoon, Angel chances upon her milking Old Pretty out in a far mead, and "the sun chancing upon the milking-side it shone flat upon her pink gowned form, and her white bonnet, and her white-curtain bonnet, and upon her profile, rendering it dazzlingly keen as a cameo"(150). In this scene, his vision renders her a picture and rather than interacting with her, he ends up studying her.
Many times, his observation has an intrusive quality. Upon returning from his visit home, Angel comes upon her at the top of the stairs at the dairy; "She had not heard him enter, and hardly realized his presence...she was yawning, and he saw the red interior of her mouth, as if it had been a snakes"(169). The last touch in that description once again hearkens back to Tess as an Eve figure, this time a fallen one. Likewise, Angel's gaze seems intrusive in the episode in the far mead referred to above, where he watches her unawares and observes her milking Old Pretty as "in a trance, her eyes open, yet unseeing"(150).
These episodes of Angel observing/defining Tess seem to share elements with similar episodes involving the narrator and Alec. As with these other watchers, Angel derives pleasure in watching her whiles she's not aware. This renders his gaze invasive. Like Alec's and the narrator's, Angel's gaze often reduces her. Sometimes it reduces by abstraction. At other times, it reduces her to body parts. Thus, the scene where Angel stares at Tess while she milks Old Pretty. In this scene, she's no longer the "visionary essence of woman"(130). Instead, she becomes simply a part. In this instance, Angel's gaze gradually telescopes in, and begins by focusing on her face, before gradually moving to her mouth, and ultimately resting on "her top lip" which he finds "distracting, infatuating, maddening"(151). His gaze ultimately compels him him to thoughtlessly embrace Tess, "the desire of his eyes"(151).
Yet, Angel's gaze doesn't seem quite as threatening somehow. Unlike with the narrator and Alec, Angel too is subject to gaze. Izz, Retty and Marian spend a great deal of time observing him without his knowledge. And, while he stares at Tess unawares, she also does the same. Thus, "He would sometimes catch her large, worshipful eyes...looking at him...as if she saw something immortal before her"(192).
Moreover, the primary object of his gaze seems to acquire some power once she escapes her home and moves to the Vale of Little Dairies. There, Tess becomes a subject, or at least a co-participant, of gaze. From the moment she enters her new home, Tess is give/finds a new outlook. From the summits ringing the vale, she quite consciously looks down and reflects upon what will be her new home. Unlike other trips where she's crossed summits without note, her trip to the Vale of Little Dairies is different. After a somewhat arduous journey, she "found herself on a summit commanding the long-sought-for vale"(102) which gives her a "bird's-eye perspective"(103). In the Var Vale, she shows herself to be a woman with powers, who looks out, observes, and acts upon the world.
In fact, at certain points, Hardy comes close to picturing Tess as a victimizer and Angel as an almost otherworldly child. Shortly after marrying Angel, Tess grows spooked by the carriage in which they are to leave the church. Angel attributes her qualms to the fact that "a certain D'Urberville of the sixteenth or seventeenth century committed a dreadful crime in his family coach"(214). Similarly, during their first supper alone, Hardy writes "such was their childishness, or rather his, that he found it interesting to use the same bread-and-butter plate as herself.
Angel never comes across as powerful. In fact, we learn that Angel has been victimized by a woman himself. In his youth, Alec "went to London to see what the world was like." In the big city, Angel "was carried off his head, and nearly entrapped by a woman much older than himself"(116). Thus, Angel comes to Talbothays "as to a place from which as from a screened alcove he could calmly view the absorbing world without"(153).
While he comes to Talbothays looking for a perch from which he might in a detached fashion study a world that threatens by "absorbing"(153). However, once there, his environment rather surreptitiously acts upon him, furnishing him with a new perspective: "he recognized his power of viewing life here from its inner side"(168). Angel is transformed by the environment and folks he observes. Ultimately, in contrast to Alec, Angel's observation of the world is not simply the prelude to his manipulation of it. While he may look at the world in hopes of altering it, his observation simultaneously alters him
Ultimately, what separates Angel is a power of sympathy born of his ability to transcend himself. While he observes from distance, studying those around him, in doing so, he frees himself from himself. He's as capable of studying, knowing and handling himself as he is capable of studying, knowing and handling others. While pursuing her, at one point:
Even better, Angel attains true sympathy to the extent he realizes he can't achieve a perfect sympathy: he will never fully feel and know a woman's perspective. Shortly after marrying her, "looking at her silently for a long time....he thought to himself...'Do I realize solemnly enough how utterly and irretrievably this little womanly thing is the creature of my good or bad faith and fortune? I think not. I think I could not, unless I were a woman myself"(217-218).
The narrator never allows Tess to have a perspective on Angel that outstrips his own perception of the man. Before Clare, Tess "had not know that men could be so disinterested, chivalrous, protective, in their love for women as he"(192). At this point, the narrator corrects Tess's perception and, perhaps because he believes Tess incapable of shrewd observations, in a paternalistic fashion adds a few observations of his own. Despite the frame, one observation seems to highlight Angel's particular strength: "his love...was an emotion which could jealously guard the loved one against his very self"(192-193).
His ability to selflessly sympathize leads him to act very differently than Alec. He has the same privileges, but his scrupulous heart, his powers of sympathy, thought, and self-control make him a very different man. Or, so it would seem till events put him to the test. He seems to promise so much. If anybody would seem suited to handle Tess's secret, it would seem to be Angel. And, yet, he can't, at least not initially, and given his qualities, his failure to sympathize at a crucial moment seems all the more damning. If he could see Tess's perspective as a woman prior to learning her secret, why can't he see her perspective and understand her past?
Like Alec and the narrator, Angel is a watcher. He is at many points in the novel positioned at a distance, as an observer. At Talbothays, he lives in the attic and sits apart at meals. In either spot, his figurative position above is mirrored by his literal position.
Tess continually discovers herself being watched by Angel. On the day when he first closely observes Tess during a meal, "owing to his long silence, his presence in the room was almost forgotten"(119). So forgotten, Clare stares at her as she speaks of the ways she escapes her body. Lost in his gaze, Angel ends up reducing Tess through abstraction; he ends up defining/praising her as a "genuine daughter of nature."
In part, this speaks to the fact that Tess is here speaking and acting without a sense of self-consciousness, with a freedom and honesty that society normally precludes. The irony is that while her honesty attracts Angel's gaze, his gaze quickly restrains Tess's honesty. Growing conscious of his gaze, she begins to feel "the constraint of a domestic animal that perceives itself to be watched"(120).
In observing her unawares, Angel often converts Tess into an object, a piece of art. Thus, on the warm July afternoon, Angel chances upon her milking Old Pretty out in a far mead, and "the sun chancing upon the milking-side it shone flat upon her pink gowned form, and her white bonnet, and her white-curtain bonnet, and upon her profile, rendering it dazzlingly keen as a cameo"(150). In this scene, his vision renders her a picture and rather than interacting with her, he ends up studying her.
Many times, his observation has an intrusive quality. Upon returning from his visit home, Angel comes upon her at the top of the stairs at the dairy; "She had not heard him enter, and hardly realized his presence...she was yawning, and he saw the red interior of her mouth, as if it had been a snakes"(169). The last touch in that description once again hearkens back to Tess as an Eve figure, this time a fallen one. Likewise, Angel's gaze seems intrusive in the episode in the far mead referred to above, where he watches her unawares and observes her milking Old Pretty as "in a trance, her eyes open, yet unseeing"(150).
These episodes of Angel observing/defining Tess seem to share elements with similar episodes involving the narrator and Alec. As with these other watchers, Angel derives pleasure in watching her whiles she's not aware. This renders his gaze invasive. Like Alec's and the narrator's, Angel's gaze often reduces her. Sometimes it reduces by abstraction. At other times, it reduces her to body parts. Thus, the scene where Angel stares at Tess while she milks Old Pretty. In this scene, she's no longer the "visionary essence of woman"(130). Instead, she becomes simply a part. In this instance, Angel's gaze gradually telescopes in, and begins by focusing on her face, before gradually moving to her mouth, and ultimately resting on "her top lip" which he finds "distracting, infatuating, maddening"(151). His gaze ultimately compels him him to thoughtlessly embrace Tess, "the desire of his eyes"(151).
Yet, Angel's gaze doesn't seem quite as threatening somehow. Unlike with the narrator and Alec, Angel too is subject to gaze. Izz, Retty and Marian spend a great deal of time observing him without his knowledge. And, while he stares at Tess unawares, she also does the same. Thus, "He would sometimes catch her large, worshipful eyes...looking at him...as if she saw something immortal before her"(192).
Moreover, the primary object of his gaze seems to acquire some power once she escapes her home and moves to the Vale of Little Dairies. There, Tess becomes a subject, or at least a co-participant, of gaze. From the moment she enters her new home, Tess is give/finds a new outlook. From the summits ringing the vale, she quite consciously looks down and reflects upon what will be her new home. Unlike other trips where she's crossed summits without note, her trip to the Vale of Little Dairies is different. After a somewhat arduous journey, she "found herself on a summit commanding the long-sought-for vale"(102) which gives her a "bird's-eye perspective"(103). In the Var Vale, she shows herself to be a woman with powers, who looks out, observes, and acts upon the world.
In fact, at certain points, Hardy comes close to picturing Tess as a victimizer and Angel as an almost otherworldly child. Shortly after marrying Angel, Tess grows spooked by the carriage in which they are to leave the church. Angel attributes her qualms to the fact that "a certain D'Urberville of the sixteenth or seventeenth century committed a dreadful crime in his family coach"(214). Similarly, during their first supper alone, Hardy writes "such was their childishness, or rather his, that he found it interesting to use the same bread-and-butter plate as herself.
Angel never comes across as powerful. In fact, we learn that Angel has been victimized by a woman himself. In his youth, Alec "went to London to see what the world was like." In the big city, Angel "was carried off his head, and nearly entrapped by a woman much older than himself"(116). Thus, Angel comes to Talbothays "as to a place from which as from a screened alcove he could calmly view the absorbing world without"(153).
While he comes to Talbothays looking for a perch from which he might in a detached fashion study a world that threatens by "absorbing"(153). However, once there, his environment rather surreptitiously acts upon him, furnishing him with a new perspective: "he recognized his power of viewing life here from its inner side"(168). Angel is transformed by the environment and folks he observes. Ultimately, in contrast to Alec, Angel's observation of the world is not simply the prelude to his manipulation of it. While he may look at the world in hopes of altering it, his observation simultaneously alters him
Ultimately, what separates Angel is a power of sympathy born of his ability to transcend himself. While he observes from distance, studying those around him, in doing so, he frees himself from himself. He's as capable of studying, knowing and handling himself as he is capable of studying, knowing and handling others. While pursuing her, at one point:
her determined negative deterred his scrupulous heart. Their condition of domiciliary comradeship put her, as the woman, to such disadvantage by its enforced intercourse, that he felt it unfair to her to exercise any pressure of blandishment which he might have honestly employed had she been better able to avoid him.181
Even better, Angel attains true sympathy to the extent he realizes he can't achieve a perfect sympathy: he will never fully feel and know a woman's perspective. Shortly after marrying her, "looking at her silently for a long time....he thought to himself...'Do I realize solemnly enough how utterly and irretrievably this little womanly thing is the creature of my good or bad faith and fortune? I think not. I think I could not, unless I were a woman myself"(217-218).
The narrator never allows Tess to have a perspective on Angel that outstrips his own perception of the man. Before Clare, Tess "had not know that men could be so disinterested, chivalrous, protective, in their love for women as he"(192). At this point, the narrator corrects Tess's perception and, perhaps because he believes Tess incapable of shrewd observations, in a paternalistic fashion adds a few observations of his own. Despite the frame, one observation seems to highlight Angel's particular strength: "his love...was an emotion which could jealously guard the loved one against his very self"(192-193).
His ability to selflessly sympathize leads him to act very differently than Alec. He has the same privileges, but his scrupulous heart, his powers of sympathy, thought, and self-control make him a very different man. Or, so it would seem till events put him to the test. He seems to promise so much. If anybody would seem suited to handle Tess's secret, it would seem to be Angel. And, yet, he can't, at least not initially, and given his qualities, his failure to sympathize at a crucial moment seems all the more damning. If he could see Tess's perspective as a woman prior to learning her secret, why can't he see her perspective and understand her past?
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Love and distance: further thoughts on Josephine Humphrey's "Rich In Love"
In The Lost, a chronicle of his search for relatives lost in the Holocaust, the writer Daniel Mendelsohn argues
Lucy Odoms, the heroine of Josephine Humphrey's Rich In Love, claims to be rich in love; when her brother-in-law Billy McQueen tells her "You have a lot of love," she readily agrees, thinking to herself "that was me. That was the me"(160).
Lucy professes to love a lot of things. However, her love seems rather general and diffuse. Seconding Mendelsohn's point, her love might be attributed to the distance Lucy attempts to maintain between herself and the world. She doesn't admit to seeking distance. Instead, she speaks of her attachment to panoramic views and the therapeutic perspective they afford.
Her father shares her feelings on this matter. A demolition man who claims he can tell how a building will collapse from standing on its roof, he recalls a religious experience he had standing on the roof of a condemned hotel in Columbia, South Carolina, prior to its demolition. From this vantage, "he felt queerly lifted from his own life into a clan and qiet myth"(81).Later, together with his daughter on the roof of their house, he tells her "from above, the world looks, well gorgeous. The higher you go, the better it looks" (84).
Lucy's ex-boyfriend Wayne points out that she is "happy as long as [she] can see at least three hundred yards. That's when you're at your best. I think you're afraid something is going to sneak up on you"(138). Lucy argues for "the human need for vista," and confesses "without it, I am in danger of losing myself behind my own eyes...A person has to now and then break out of the head and heart, places that cannot over any length of time, support life"(132-133).
Proximity clouds one's view. However, when she suddenly grows close, literally and figuratively, to her brother-in-law Billy McQueen, her clouded vision of him plays a part in her falling in love with him. Sitting on the pier with him, she admits to having once suspected that he "had gotten Rae pregnant on purpose in order to marry her. But suddenly I could see that he was not that sort of person. I saw it only now because I had not been close enough to him before"(154). Of course, in this scene, "his face two feet from [hers] in the moonlight," Lucy is falling in love with Billy. Shortly, he will "recognize" her being rich in love. Of course, Lucy later discovers that Billy did indeed get Rae pregnant on purpose.
And, also, I think we discover that far from being rich in love, Lucy is scared of love. Love is a cloud that impairs vision and knowledge. She grows so blind, she isn't able to 'see' her she's grown blind. In the past, she's recoiled from intimacy with Wayne; in the past, when they grew close, "the feeling that I called 'blinders' assailed me, and I had to get free"(161). Shortly after falling in love with Billy, she meets Wayne again and they begin to make love. Lucy claims that "'blinders' did not come"(161). Yet, she never really sees Wayne during the course of their love-making. Instead, she's wrapped up, however unconsciously, in a vision of Billy while making love to Wayne. Reversing the sleeping beauty motif, love lulls her to sleep, and, asleep in love, she begins to dream away rather than live her life.
So, proximity might bring about awareness and antipathy. Yet, it might also bring about a clouding of vision. This clouding of vision may bring about love. This in turn may induce dreams and a further clouding of vision.
"Closeness can lead to emotions other than love. It's the ones who have been too intimate with you, lived in too close quarters, seen too much of your pain or envy or, perhaps more than anything, your shame, who, at the crucial moment, can be too easy to cut out, to exile, to expel, to kill off."(130-131)
Lucy Odoms, the heroine of Josephine Humphrey's Rich In Love, claims to be rich in love; when her brother-in-law Billy McQueen tells her "You have a lot of love," she readily agrees, thinking to herself "that was me. That was the me"(160).
Lucy professes to love a lot of things. However, her love seems rather general and diffuse. Seconding Mendelsohn's point, her love might be attributed to the distance Lucy attempts to maintain between herself and the world. She doesn't admit to seeking distance. Instead, she speaks of her attachment to panoramic views and the therapeutic perspective they afford.
Her father shares her feelings on this matter. A demolition man who claims he can tell how a building will collapse from standing on its roof, he recalls a religious experience he had standing on the roof of a condemned hotel in Columbia, South Carolina, prior to its demolition. From this vantage, "he felt queerly lifted from his own life into a clan and qiet myth"(81).Later, together with his daughter on the roof of their house, he tells her "from above, the world looks, well gorgeous. The higher you go, the better it looks" (84).
Lucy's ex-boyfriend Wayne points out that she is "happy as long as [she] can see at least three hundred yards. That's when you're at your best. I think you're afraid something is going to sneak up on you"(138). Lucy argues for "the human need for vista," and confesses "without it, I am in danger of losing myself behind my own eyes...A person has to now and then break out of the head and heart, places that cannot over any length of time, support life"(132-133).
Proximity clouds one's view. However, when she suddenly grows close, literally and figuratively, to her brother-in-law Billy McQueen, her clouded vision of him plays a part in her falling in love with him. Sitting on the pier with him, she admits to having once suspected that he "had gotten Rae pregnant on purpose in order to marry her. But suddenly I could see that he was not that sort of person. I saw it only now because I had not been close enough to him before"(154). Of course, in this scene, "his face two feet from [hers] in the moonlight," Lucy is falling in love with Billy. Shortly, he will "recognize" her being rich in love. Of course, Lucy later discovers that Billy did indeed get Rae pregnant on purpose.
And, also, I think we discover that far from being rich in love, Lucy is scared of love. Love is a cloud that impairs vision and knowledge. She grows so blind, she isn't able to 'see' her she's grown blind. In the past, she's recoiled from intimacy with Wayne; in the past, when they grew close, "the feeling that I called 'blinders' assailed me, and I had to get free"(161). Shortly after falling in love with Billy, she meets Wayne again and they begin to make love. Lucy claims that "'blinders' did not come"(161). Yet, she never really sees Wayne during the course of their love-making. Instead, she's wrapped up, however unconsciously, in a vision of Billy while making love to Wayne. Reversing the sleeping beauty motif, love lulls her to sleep, and, asleep in love, she begins to dream away rather than live her life.
So, proximity might bring about awareness and antipathy. Yet, it might also bring about a clouding of vision. This clouding of vision may bring about love. This in turn may induce dreams and a further clouding of vision.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Alice Munro's short-story Face
The unnamed narrator of Alice Munro's story "Face" is born with a birthmark covering almost the entirety of one side of his face. According to the narrator, who in turn is relying a great deal on his mother's account of these matters, this causes his father to reject him. His father takes one look at him in the hospital nursery and tells his mother "What a chunk of chopped liver" and threatens "You don't need to think you're going to bring that into the house"(New Yorker, September 8, 2008, p.59).
The boy actually grows up in this house for nine years, living in proximity to a father whose "most vivid quality was a capacity for hating and despising"(59). He internalizes a warped view of himself, remarking at one point, "Of course, a production like myself was an insult that he had to face every time he opened his own door"(59). Accordingly, he and his mother go out of their way to keep the fact of his face hidden, not only by keeping the boy out of the way of the father, but also by keeping the fact of his face hidden from the boy. On one level, this is done by strategic placing of mirrors. On another, it's done by keeping the boy hidden from the world at large. All for his good, or so the boy believed and the man remembering does as well. He's to be seen but not too clearly. Gradually, he loses sight of what he looks like; he minimizes the mark on his face, believing "that half my face was a dull, mild sort of color, almost mousy, a furry shadow"(64).
Of course, as the story argues, love is based on sight. Whether it originates in the physical or finds a home there, it is dependent on the body.
The little boy in the story longs to be loved. His mother can't. She's dependent on him. The fact of his face serves her as an explanation of why her marriage has failed; she's failed to produce an acceptable son to the father. She binds with the child as his self-sacrificing protector. As the son recalls, "She had been devoted to me-not a word either of us would have used, but I think the right one-till I was nine"(60). On his side, he remains loyal, defending her decisions when he can, pleading ignorance of her motives when he can't.
Seeking love, the little boy develops crushes on various older women he happens to come across. However, when he's about four, he develops a friendship with a little girl about his age, Nancy, who lives with her mother in a gardener's cottage on the grounds of his home. In reality, this is proves to be a childhood love of sorts. Living in an isolated area, estranged from parental figures, the two children develop a love between them that proves profound. Although she clearly proves to be the love of his life, The narrator can't bring himself to call her this; instead, he's almost erased her but for a single incident with her that he refers to as "the Great Drama" of my life.
The narrator hedges and evades on the way to remembering this great drama, admitting during one such digression, "how I circle and dither around this subject," (61) yet gradually recalls an afternoon when both are eight years old and exploring in the cellar. They discover some old jars of paint and brushes with badly stiffened bristles. Loosening up an old brush with turpentine, the boy begins to write on the wall with paint. The little girl "had her back to me ad was wielding the paintbrush on herself"(63). Using a loud red paint, she's painting her face to match his face. She's "overjoyed, as if she had managed something magical"(64)and asks "Now do I look like you?"(63).
The little boy is horrified. He feels this as an insult. He wishes to be loved. But this means either not seeing him, or, only seeing him as he's come to see himself. The little girl's come to love him fully. She's come to love his birthmark. Her seeing it forces him to confront something he wishes forgotten. Loving him wholly, and as a body, she loves a part of himself he can't face.
This is a strange and heartbreaking story. It is most remarkable for it's form. Although it is a horrifying tale, it is told in a conversational style. We witness a man in the process of remembering a significant event, the one love of his life. Munro skillfully sketches a man's memory as it struggles and moves by indirection to an event he can neither bear to remember or forget.
The boy actually grows up in this house for nine years, living in proximity to a father whose "most vivid quality was a capacity for hating and despising"(59). He internalizes a warped view of himself, remarking at one point, "Of course, a production like myself was an insult that he had to face every time he opened his own door"(59). Accordingly, he and his mother go out of their way to keep the fact of his face hidden, not only by keeping the boy out of the way of the father, but also by keeping the fact of his face hidden from the boy. On one level, this is done by strategic placing of mirrors. On another, it's done by keeping the boy hidden from the world at large. All for his good, or so the boy believed and the man remembering does as well. He's to be seen but not too clearly. Gradually, he loses sight of what he looks like; he minimizes the mark on his face, believing "that half my face was a dull, mild sort of color, almost mousy, a furry shadow"(64).
Of course, as the story argues, love is based on sight. Whether it originates in the physical or finds a home there, it is dependent on the body.
The little boy in the story longs to be loved. His mother can't. She's dependent on him. The fact of his face serves her as an explanation of why her marriage has failed; she's failed to produce an acceptable son to the father. She binds with the child as his self-sacrificing protector. As the son recalls, "She had been devoted to me-not a word either of us would have used, but I think the right one-till I was nine"(60). On his side, he remains loyal, defending her decisions when he can, pleading ignorance of her motives when he can't.
Seeking love, the little boy develops crushes on various older women he happens to come across. However, when he's about four, he develops a friendship with a little girl about his age, Nancy, who lives with her mother in a gardener's cottage on the grounds of his home. In reality, this is proves to be a childhood love of sorts. Living in an isolated area, estranged from parental figures, the two children develop a love between them that proves profound. Although she clearly proves to be the love of his life, The narrator can't bring himself to call her this; instead, he's almost erased her but for a single incident with her that he refers to as "the Great Drama" of my life.
The narrator hedges and evades on the way to remembering this great drama, admitting during one such digression, "how I circle and dither around this subject," (61) yet gradually recalls an afternoon when both are eight years old and exploring in the cellar. They discover some old jars of paint and brushes with badly stiffened bristles. Loosening up an old brush with turpentine, the boy begins to write on the wall with paint. The little girl "had her back to me ad was wielding the paintbrush on herself"(63). Using a loud red paint, she's painting her face to match his face. She's "overjoyed, as if she had managed something magical"(64)and asks "Now do I look like you?"(63).
The little boy is horrified. He feels this as an insult. He wishes to be loved. But this means either not seeing him, or, only seeing him as he's come to see himself. The little girl's come to love him fully. She's come to love his birthmark. Her seeing it forces him to confront something he wishes forgotten. Loving him wholly, and as a body, she loves a part of himself he can't face.
This is a strange and heartbreaking story. It is most remarkable for it's form. Although it is a horrifying tale, it is told in a conversational style. We witness a man in the process of remembering a significant event, the one love of his life. Munro skillfully sketches a man's memory as it struggles and moves by indirection to an event he can neither bear to remember or forget.
Friday, September 5, 2008
'A habit of deep devotion'-first thoughts on Josephine Humphrey's Rich In Love
Seeking to secure love, Lucy Odoms, the narrator-heroine of Josephine Humphrey's Rich In Love, endeavors to know, to get inside the head of those close to her. She's a sensible young woman, quick to dismiss mental telepathy and E.S.P. However, these mythic powers which she dismisses suggest the powers of understanding she's after. She believes she can achieve such powers through observation and common sense.
Hers is an epic struggle to understand and make sense of a world that seems almost to purposefully defy her efforts. At the outset of the novel, she comes home one day to find that her mother has up and left with nary an explanation. Happening on a brief and comically matter-of-fact note her mother's left her dad, Lucy is unaccepting. It fails to make sense to her; "there was no doubt about the message. But not a word of pain or guilt. Not a word of explanation"(18). Lucy writes another more emotional note in her mother's name, detailing a spiritual crisis, "something I need to work out alone"(18).
Lucy believes in observation. She places a premium on what she can see; her keen eyesight not only noting that her abandoned and grieving father needed a haircut but that also "his nostrils clipped"(37). Recognizing that sight can only observe the present, Lucy is attached to history, both big picutre history and personal history, even if she remains "a little nervouss about the fallibility of history...so much gets lost!"(51). She is opposed to poetry and romance; she repeatedly accuses her father of resorting to these villains when he fondly thinks back over his collapsing marriage.
Ultimately, at the outset of this novel, Lucy is fiercely opposed to certain facts about the world. Facts about the world that can't be changed, only accepted. She's opposed to all change, and the death it foretokens. She's tortured by the fact that those we love can do whatever they wish with their lives, even if it defies our wishes, our expectations, and the conception upon which our love is based. She can't accept that love tends to have an inevitability about it. It's outside our control. Thus, while Lucy admits she "felt a strong urge to qit loving my father" and wishes she could "just quit, the way you can go down to a bank and draw out your life's savings"(77), she realizes she's "locked into a habit of deep devotion"(77).
Hers is an epic struggle to understand and make sense of a world that seems almost to purposefully defy her efforts. At the outset of the novel, she comes home one day to find that her mother has up and left with nary an explanation. Happening on a brief and comically matter-of-fact note her mother's left her dad, Lucy is unaccepting. It fails to make sense to her; "there was no doubt about the message. But not a word of pain or guilt. Not a word of explanation"(18). Lucy writes another more emotional note in her mother's name, detailing a spiritual crisis, "something I need to work out alone"(18).
Lucy believes in observation. She places a premium on what she can see; her keen eyesight not only noting that her abandoned and grieving father needed a haircut but that also "his nostrils clipped"(37). Recognizing that sight can only observe the present, Lucy is attached to history, both big picutre history and personal history, even if she remains "a little nervouss about the fallibility of history...so much gets lost!"(51). She is opposed to poetry and romance; she repeatedly accuses her father of resorting to these villains when he fondly thinks back over his collapsing marriage.
Ultimately, at the outset of this novel, Lucy is fiercely opposed to certain facts about the world. Facts about the world that can't be changed, only accepted. She's opposed to all change, and the death it foretokens. She's tortured by the fact that those we love can do whatever they wish with their lives, even if it defies our wishes, our expectations, and the conception upon which our love is based. She can't accept that love tends to have an inevitability about it. It's outside our control. Thus, while Lucy admits she "felt a strong urge to qit loving my father" and wishes she could "just quit, the way you can go down to a bank and draw out your life's savings"(77), she realizes she's "locked into a habit of deep devotion"(77).
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