Downton Abbey in a More Revealing Light

I saw the movie of The Remains of the Day in the mid 90’s and was very impressed by the performances of Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.  Something about that film has haunted me ever since. Having read and much appreciated Ishiguro’s more recent NeverLet me Go, I thought I really should read The Remains of the Day.  Booker Prize in 1989.

Two damned good actors.

So glad I did.  Ishiguro is a master of tone and nuance.  Nothing much happens. Recollections of the past and small but telling moments in the present. The book is written in the first person from the point of view of an aging British butler, Mr. Stevens is struggling to keep together a postwar 'aristocratic' household whose past is being called into question, and whose future is at best uncertain. He's stuck in the past and ill-suited to the demands of the postwar present.  But he is also severely limited in the emotional realm, and much of the fascination of the book is that his limitations are revealed only gradually. We come to know him bit by bit through his account of the present and his recollections of the past.  Always it’s the tone that is paramount, and that is constricted by Stevens’s limitations.  There’s much talk of ‘dignity’, and lots of derision of ‘banter’, a modern form of repartee that Stevens finds foreign and repugnant.  But it turns out that 'dignity' can be a way to justify crippling emotional limitations, and 'banter' is a way of representing spontaneity and freedom of expression.

It’s been many years since I saw the film, but memory tells me that it is a faithful expression of the novel’s essential message.  That’s not so common in these days of film adaptations that veer off into Hollywood themes that have little to do with the original text. I’ll revisit the film soon.  Gladly.

For now, I’ll say that Ishiguro is a master prose poet. The writing emits an aura that perfectly describes Stevens’s state of mind.  It’s a chance to enter another’s world, a chance to feel what another feels (or doesn't feel).

Such is good fiction.

Detachment

Nicholson Baker: one strange dude.  Undeniably and proudly male. Also unarguably odd.

I have many reactions to The Fermata, his novel about a young adult male who has the power to stop time (he can act while the rest of the world is paused), and uses that power almost exclusively to kindly and lovingly undress women, to masturbate to the sights, and to indulge his sexual fantasies.  He is for the most part harmless and perhaps even loving in his way, but also tellingly irrelevant in a social connective sense.  Nobody knows what he’s up to, and he seems to prefer it that way … at least for most of the book
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A knowing look, isn't it? Et tu?

We’ve all experienced the feeling of existing outside of time.  We’re so completely absorbed in what we’re doing that when we finally look up we don’t know if five minutes have passed or five hours.  And we don’t really care.  I often have that feeling in doing musical work.  I also remember it distinctly when emerging from a movie theater by myself after seeing Bergman’s The Seventh Seal for the first time.  I had no idea where I was, what time it was, or who was around me, and that was just fine.  I wanted to stay in the Bergman movie world.  I was experiencing a sort of cultural/social version of the bends as I gradually and somewhat painfully adjusted to being back in reality.

Baker’s protagonist regularly experience this kind of displacement when he stops time. He considers the ability to be a great gift, but the resulting isolation is stifling.  Only at the end does he realize that he might be better of being more honest with those around him, even if that means sacrificing his special powers.  The need for real connection does, in the long run, trump all.

But for 95% of the book, the protagonist is stuck in a powerful but lonely place, a spot where he can manipulate, he can fondle, he can masturbate, he can fantasize, but he can’t truly connect.  He recognizes the powers are irresistibly attractive to him but he also knows on some level that in accepting the devil’s bargain he is condemning himself to a life sentence of isolation, endless striving, and perhaps despair.

But the language is so rational, so reasonable, intellectual and compelling. Also funny, and sharply insightful. Who wouldn’t want that protected and special perspective?

Maybe it’s a bit like walking out on that glass-floored space over the Grand Canyon.  You should be falling.  You feel so very strongly you should be falling.  But the colors are beautiful, and you look down and think of certain impressionist paintings you love.  You’re isolated in your wonder as you at least temporarily“don’t fall”.

Or maybe like a doctor who operates on himself.  He makes the incision and pulls back the tissue to reveal a beautiful tumor.  He can’t help admire the sight, like looking at clouds in the sky and finding first a dog, then seconds later a flower, then a tree … all in the shifting cloud shapes.  But he’s really looking at his own disease, his own demise. But it’s still beautiful.

Or maybe it's just a fun and fanciful metaphor for hard won male wisdom

Is there a female in the world that can appreciate Nicholson Baker?  Doubt it.

I was so relieved that in the last twenty pages the protagonist takes a step toward an honest relationship, and learns to sacrifice the privileges granted by his special powers.  If he can learn, maybe there’s hope for us all.

There’s chick lit.  Then there’s Nicholson Baker.

Worlds Colliding

Inventory of my life realms (in no particular order): partner and lover, father, friend, extended family member, professional IT developer, musician, tennis player, cook, reader, consumer of popular culture, etc.

Each one of the above has its own concerns, contacts, and ambitions.  The Venn diagram that would include them all would show significant but limited overlaps. I don’t think it’s uncommon to have so many spheres, but I’m not sure what the implications are.  Enrichment from any source is a good thing, so there may be a gain from each. But I can only function optimally in one realm at a given moment.  And the inevitable intersections and collisions can be awkward; yet unanticipated connections are also so rewarding. To the extent that life is divided into separate spheres we risk losing ourselves in a maze of multitasking.  And the keeping any secrets, anything that is known in one realm and kept from another is a recipe for psycho-disaster.

 

Charles D’Ambrosio shows us in his essay collection, Loitering, that language is a strain that runs through all of our worlds.  How I address my partner, my daughter, my friends, my colleagues, my friends on the tennis court, how I read … language runs through it all.  And looking carefully at language can teach us quite a bit about ourselves.

D’Ambrosio is a complicated man with a messed up family history and lots of personal issues, but he’s managing to sort it all out through writing, through language, through careful thinking about words.  This rewarding but uneven collection covers lots of territory.  My favorites include “Casting Stones”, about a famous trial and all of the personal, legal, and cultural implications of the outcome, and “Hell House”, a telling essay on the contrast between true horror and political propaganda.

D’Ambrosio is a serious thinker and an even more careful writer.  He slices very thin, very thin indeed.  His observations are keen, thought provoking, sometimes controversial, and even at times infuriating.  But his careful prose is alive, breathing, and needs to be taken seriously.

Is there some Utopia in which each of us can live a truly united life, where it all fits together seamlessly and we don’t have to keep explaining parts of ourselves to those outside that particular circle, or just keep sucking up the tension created by the collision and staying quiet?  Maybe there once was a way to do it, but probably there is no longer.  But applying the same kind of rigor to our use of language in all spheres will help us understand the commonality.  It’s literally a kind of verbal psychoanalysis.  It is both paralyzing and liberating. A double edged sword, and a sharp one at that.

Sex and the Anglo Saxon

I remember riding a crowded bus in London in the 1970’s and noticing a seated young adult male who was holding a small dark wooden box in his hands.  After a while he opened it and just stared at the contents for several minutes.  I thought it might be a special piece of jewelry or a religious icon of some sort.  I moved a little so I could see over his shoulder.  It was a simulated human rear end lovingly mounted in burgundy velvet, a small doll’s ass, realistically colored, just there to be admired.  He was fascinated by it, and didn't care who observed him enjoying the sight and feel.  It struck me then that yes, it really is true.  The Brits have their own strangeness about sex.

 

There's a movie version with Haley Mills. I dare you.

Kingsley Amis’s Take A Girl Like You is a comedy of manners that satirizes class, academics, marriage, and even a little politics.  But it’s mostly (actually pretty obsessively) about the social aspects of sex, pure and simple.  Yes it moves to a typical Kingsley Amis climax (sic).  In Lucky Jim it was a speech, here it’s the main character losing her virginity (willingly … sort of).  It’s all so very upper class British.  So many inside jokes, so much snobbishness and conceit.  On the whole, not very attractive, and more importantly not all that insightful about sex and intimacy.  I’ll take James Salter on this topic any day.  A Sport and A Pastime is marvelous.  As for Amis, his traditional British reserve, ultra-sophisticated understated and indirect language, and his satirical intentions don’t combine for me to produce insight about physical intimacy, or at least not in this case.  There’s some fun along the way, but for me anyway not the kind of ‘happy ending’ I hoped for.