Multiple Reading Personalities

Simon, like Proust, is often seen as a difficult writer. His sentences are complex, run-on accumulations of words and tenses, modulated by numerous markers of subjectivity – like, as if, I think, I’d say, perhaps, etc. It’s a sentence that works hard to rid itself of conventional patterns of speech, or more accurately, of usual patterns of writing; things are presented in their immediacy, grammar is simplified, accumulation, association and digression abound.

This attempt at a more instinctive manner of communication is, of course, hard to read. We are used to texts being neatly put together, to rational explanation, to synthesis following analysis (or vice-versa, depending on culture). Used to, in short, a modicum of linearity. It is a well known human prejudice that we over-explain, draw conclusions where there is nothing but correlations, and guess correlations at the drop of a hat. Hence astrology, reading in entrails and people thinking they can predict the stock market based on some Fibonacci, pi or moon cycle-based formula.

But I digress.

Simon has a somewhat paradoxical project with La Route des Flandres (itself only a part of a biographical-related series of books). On the one hand, he is recreating a past experience (the trauma of World War II) in a more manageable form; on the other, he is trying to preserve the immediacy of it. To do this, he presents memories not in chronological order, but by way of associations. Here I must make a few side notes:

1. Cheating #1: Simon mentioned around that time the idea that memories present themselves to use not chronologically, but depending on their importance. That would imply sometimes, it seems to me, that you would jump from one thing to another without so much as the tenuous help of objective association. The sheer force of the affect should be justification enough. Simon never does that, though – there’s always some element linking one memory to the next. That’s a very Proustian way to go about things – a clump of related things, a huge nodes of sensations emerging in an otherwise pretty disjointed perception. Simon does indeed admire Proust and refer to him quite a bit.
2. Cheating #2: the book was in fact carefully reconstructed after a period of unstructured writing: Simon wrote a number of fragments which he then color-coded depending on the characters present in each. He organized the fragments to alternate colors – and that’s how the book was born.

This brings to mind the way I will write a dissertation given a limited amount of time: desperately scramble any idea that comes to mind on a piece of paper, then isolate a few themes, color code all rudimentary ideas, and shove them in each theme. Of course I’m doing the opposite of Simon (trying to bring together similar colors instead of trying to weave them through the course of the text); I’m amused to think that my draft paper might look more like his end product that my final dissertation.

Anyway – cheating or not, what Simon does is in fact remarkably successful. There’s a sort of indulgence, a sort of hypnosis that wants to lull you while you read the book, but every time you try to stop and think – the strands of meaning come undone, and you’re left feeling uncertain of where you are, what happened, and what Big Lessons you should take away. That last sentence would certainly make Simon very happy, but of course I’ll have to struggle with this in the context of academic learning. My plan of attack therefore is to start by focusing on the obsessions, the recurring motives of the book: horses, the mud, sexual desire, friends, suicide, etc. These are not really themes, more ornaments (at least at this stage, and in my mind), but we’ll see where they’ll take me.

I’m drowning in notes like these. Half a notebook of them.

Pages upon pages, summaries, thoughts, feelings, digressions. I feel like I’m beginning to get it, to understand how it works, but I’m not sure “I’m feeling it”. The magic of Combray — the first part of the first book in the In Search of Lost Time series — is long gone.

I’ve abandoned my excruciatingly slow reading pace for the end of Les jeunes filles (Within a Budding Grove), just so I could enjoy the text more, and as the narrative itself was picking up I had a really good time with it. I feel like I intellectually understand most of what the text is telling me, be it the story or the vision of Art, the importance of writing by one’s own vision, the filtering of reality which is not the weakness but the mark of a true artist; and yet I am still ill at ease.

(My apologies for the discombobulated post; it reflects my state of mind).

La Recherche is written by a narrator (which I’ll call Marcel, though that might be up for debate) largely inspired to Proust by himself — convoluted construction intentional. Proust was however adamant that the narrator was not him, and he indeed constructed Marcel’s life with noticeable divergences from his (and attributed other aspects of him to other characters). What is more, the narrator is telling his life through the prism of memories — something one could forget in the immediacy of the narration, but which obviously (the title says it well) is at the core of the novel. Memories and imaginations are so closely related as to be indistinguishable in Proust’s world… That is yet another caveat against taking the tale at face value.

Against this foggy background, Proust and Marcel both strongly assert that their only goal is to fish for these “deep truths” which reveal reality in the light of the creator’s idiosyncratic vision (careful, I’m reaching into my 50-cent words jar today!)

My problem is, I’m not sure I trust either of them.

For an “anti-intellectual” writer, one who wants to talk from the immediacy of sensations, Proust is incredibly wordy, and so theoretical that a lot of the material for his novel originates in earlier essays (gathered for the most part in the Against Sainte-Beuve collection I read along the novel). That’s the least of my worries: Proust’s interest with homosexuality and Jewish identity, for instance, are unquestionably genuine, but the incoherent ways he talks about them make me wonder whether he is honestly reflecting his inner conflicts or more simply lacks self-awareness in these matters. Another example might be in the romantic obsessions his young hero develops for unreachable girls. Is he depicting some true aspect of his romantic self (with a substitution of a “she” for a “he”, which I would not consider deception in the world of fiction); or is he just reflecting the cover-up lie he used for many years, when he pretended to be madly in love with women he could not have, to dispel any doubts as to his real sexuality?

These are some really big examples, and once these questions breach the trust between reader and writer/ narrator, everything else follows: by the end of his vacation in a chic hotel, was the initially rude lift operator really talkative, or is Marcel rearranging facts to claim one more social victory? Did the nobleman really stare at him unprovoked, or did he do something to attract attention? Did he really miss such train accidentally, or did he never really mean to follow through with his romanesque but unrealistic move? Am I meant to wonder about all this?

I’m hoping further volumes will help, but at that stage I feel like I’m trying to find my way by the moonlight in a beautiful, “Lewis Carollien” maze. I’m still unsure whether I like the feeling or not — but these sure are interesting times.

“…the pioneer debauchee, who during one phase of the American life brought back to the Eastern seaboard the savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloon.”

Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby – a short, finely-wrought novel – as a demonstration of his talent. Now considered a success in this respect (among many!), it however received a lukewarm welcome upon publication.Wide success would not come to it until after Fitzgerald death, in December 1940.

The narrator of the story, Nick Carraway, is a well-born, well-bred young man come to New York to learn a trade. While Nick ostensibly tells the story of his neighbor Gatsby, he also shares how the experience helped him realize what his values truly are, and how to live accordingly.

Shortly after arriving to New York, Nick renews his acquaintance with his cousin Daisy Buchanan and her husband Tom. Both appear to be rather vapid characters. While affectionate and charming, Daisy appears to be self-absorbed and superficial; as for Tom, the fabulous wealth and physical talents hide an egocentric brute who cheats on his wife and doesn’t even bother to hide it. He doesn’t treat his mistress Myrtle Wilson any better, lying to her, even beating her up when drunk. Nick also gets to know his neighbor, the parvenu Jay Gatsby, who gives decadent parties in his gaudy property, with the local gentry in full attendance, trading rumors about their host past, in which he successively appears a murderer, a spy or a bootlegger.

As Nick gets to know Gatsby, however, he realizes that the man is fundamentally naive. Gatsby reminded me a little of Pip (from Great Expectations), a child from a humble family with the ambition to become a gentleman for the love of an idolized lady, in Gatsby’s case Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby lives in an illusion, and tries to weave his own with a sort of earnest dishonnesty: he is a liar, let there be no doubt about it, but a core of truth subsist in all his stories (for instance, he lets other thinks of him as “an Oxford man” by telling them he “went to Oxford” – for five months, as a veteran, not as part of a rich kids’ education as is implied). Similarly, the accusions of having made his money in a dubious manner are true – but certainly not the murder rumors, and one can legitimately wonder if he even realizes that his business dealings are shoddy.

In contrast, the wealthy set he admires keep very little illusions, whether about themselves or about the world. This constrains them to a sort of impotence (while Gatsby truly loves and builds his fortune, they are idle, bored and superficial), but also endows them with power to destroy other people’s dreams. When Tom realizes that his wife is becoming enamored with Gatsby, he promptly shatters his reputation. True to her shallowness, Daisy deserts her lover, and when in her emotion she runs over Tom’s mistress, she flees the scene.  Tom demonstrates his amorality again by blaming the accident on Gatsby, leading to his assassination by Myrtle’s husband. The Buchanans will not even attend the burial Nick organizes for his friend. The young man, his eyes open to the corruption of the East Coast, then decides to return to the Midwest.

Beyond the denunciation of the corruptive power of money, Fitzgerald asks some powerful question about the fundamental myths on which American society is built. It might seem at times as if he is denouncing the “Jazz Age” as a corruption, with the East Coast as its epicenter. However, other details (such as the quote I choose, or the fact that he concludes “I see that this is a story of the West after all – Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I were all Westerners…“) indicate that the issue might have deeper roots into the American psyche, in the thirst for freedom and material ease of its first pioneers. Nick does not return only to “the West”, he returns to his West, “not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth“, a place which is also a time of his life, that of childhood with its hopes, its illusions and its lofty goals. Gatsby was not wrong because of his striving, but rather because of what he strived for. Fitzgerald, with his fascination for rich girls, fancy living and his habit of writing for material gain rather than for his art, fought the same battle in much of his personal life. The Great Gatsby is all the more moving for giving us insight into its author’s inner life.

“As to forming any plan for the future, I could as soon have formed an elephant.”

What a treat Great Expectations was for me! I am generally not a fan of heroes taken on a ride by circumstances and impulses they never even attempt to control, but when the storm is so perfect, so delightfully, magically perfect, who would complain?

Had I been English, or American, or a little less lucky, I would probably have read Great Expectations a lot younger, and would no doubt have had a great time of it, but would I have been able to enjoy the wonderful writing? Would have I made the difference between the social satire and the magical fairy tale undertones? I would have been happy with the mists, convicts and friendships; but would I have enjoyed Estella’s coldness and Pip’s ungratefulness?

The story itself sounds very XIXth century in the importance it gives to social structure: Pip, an orphan raised by his brutish aunt and his illiterate (if benevolent to the point of sainthood) uncle, comes into a sum of money of mysterious provenance. The money is to allow him a gentleman’s education. Everybody, Pip included, assumes that the money originates in the favor of a local old lady, Miss Havisham, a rich spinster driven to madness years ago by a broken engagement. The suspicion seems even stronger for the fact that the attorney in charge of the affair is also Miss Havisham’s; alas, Pip will later discover that the generosity is that of a convict he helped as a child. The dishonorable origin of the money, and the obligations it created for Pip will drive him away from society and from the young, cold-hearted pupil of Miss Havisham he is in love with, Estella.

While this, formally, could be the summary of the plot line, it missed all the important points of the book – in particular, its structure as a fairy tale and its formidable secondary characters. Pip is not a bad hero, far from it: he evolves through the novel, a rarity for the times, and has a complex character torn between selfishness and tenderness, intellectual aspirations and emotional ambitions, snobbery and simplicity… And yet I failed to find him compelling when compared to the lush cast of the book, most of whom forfeited some dose of realism to bask in the glory of unabashed whimsy: Miss Havisham, the witch who renounced the sun, forever clad in her torn bride’s dress, leaving among rot and spiders, casting spells and torturing her victims in an endless revenge; Estella, the barely seen and satisfactorily poorly explained temptress, the mysterious incarnation of her godmother’s sortileges, lovely and icy – the daughter of a gipsy and of a murderess, who seems to respond to violence more than to gentleness; Jaggers, the corrupt attorney of strong persuasion, with his fascination for evil and his compulsive hygiene, who eggs his victims on to evils; and many more, including the noble best friend, the gentle maiden, the double-faced adviser, the incarnated phantom of past guilt… Even Old Barley, the father of Herbert’s (Pip’s best friend) fiancée, who is described as no less than an ogre, was fascinating. And then there are the locations, the misty marshes of Pip’s childhood, the ruined domain of Miss Havisham, the dreary, sooty London of taverns and justice halls…

With so much thrown in, how could I begrudge Pip his lack of direction, especially when he makes up for it in honesty in the telling and a humorous voice? I even thought Dickens’s revised ending – with the young man finally tried getting the girl – was superior in poetry and a better fit to the rest of the book than the more modern, more realistic one, where Pip and Estella end alone and full of unspeakable regrets. “I saw no shadow of another parting from her“, concludes Dickens in this new version. Were I feeling facetious, I could argue that Dickens creates an ambiguous ending with this sentence – after all, Pip has not generally been the most lucid observer – but I prefer to take it with the same diffuse feeling of promise that the more traditional phrase, “and they lived happily ever after“.