Shel’s Comments (group member since Mar 05, 2009)

Shel’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

OK one more and then I promise I'll quit.

I was pondering the movement in the story - it goes very much from the outside in, like a camera starting way back and then zooming in closer to Gabriel, sometimes zooming out, until we are finally completely inside his perspective. Starting at the front door of the house, gradually moving up the stairs... then eventually to the hotel room.

Right now I'm reading Women in Love, Infinite Jest, Umberto Eco's book on Beauty (which is AMAZING. I could listen to that man talk about Kleenex), and some of Roethke's love poetry.

At first they don't seem to have much in common with The Dead, except for maybe WiL, but I swear, I have a point here.

Every single one of those books/poems is about love. Falling in it, being in it, losing it, killing it, watching it fade, unrequited love, sabotaged love, love for all mankind even in its fuckedupness.

The last time I remember reading Dubliners and discussing it with anyone I was 25 or so and in an online discussion group on Joyce. At the time I honed in on the class and history issues that were more comfortable for people to discuss and argue about.

But really, this is a story about love, isn't it?

Personally, I don't buy Gabriel's "transformation" because I think we are meant to see through it as an artificial, passing, emotional moment. I think he has the stirrings of deep affection, but I think he is too self-absorbed to move beyond that.

A few months ago, when I read The Lady with the Little Dog, I was far more convinced that Gurov had really changed.

And when I directly contrast Lawrence with Joyce, they are such worlds apart, even though they are talking about the same thing! Lawrence is so internal that it's dizzying; Joyce so external that it takes more than one read to pick up on the subtle mind and heart stuff.

OK, like I said, I'll stop.

I'm with you Ben. I don't read as much contemporary for just that reason... Something new, strange, better and true. I want a story that isn't my story, a writer a gazillion times smarter than me, someone who sees further, deeper, better.

I've even tried. I've read two Jodi Picoult books and one Bohjalian book and heaven help me, a Dan Brown "novel." When my kids were babies because that's about all I could manage to stay literate.

I know it's out there, but a majority of what is pumped out of houses today just... doesn't do it. I suppose I'm waiting for time to sort out the ones that approach having a vision, at which point I'll read them. Heck, Infinite Jest was published how long ago, and I'm just now getting around to it.

I struggle with that all the time in my writing. Escaping my own "bubble" and finding something more.

Then there are the politics and class issues, a whole discussion in themselves - Miss Ivors' challenge to Gabriel of being a West Briton and his frustrated exclamation that he is sick of his country. (And Miss Ivors seems to be a mystery to all.)

The sharp contrast between knowledge of things "continental" and things "Irish."

The conversation about music and talent even seems to be tinged with politics.

From Joyce, oh I mean Gabriel's speech:

A new generation is growing up in our midst, a generation actuated by new ideas and new principles. It is serious and enthusiastic for these new ideas and its enthusiasm, even when it is misdirected, is, I believe, in the main sincere. But we are living in a sceptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought- tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which belonged to an older day. Listening to-night to the names of all those great singers of the past it seemed to me, I must confess, that we were living in a less spacious age. Those days might, without exaggeration, be called spacious days: and if they are gone beyond recall let us hope, at least, that in gatherings such as this we shall still speak of them with pride and affection, still cherish in our hearts the memory of those dead and gone great ones whose fame the world will not willingly let die.

These are just my thoughts as and after I read.

This time, reading this story, I am most struck by the inability of the men and women to relate to one another in... well, in almost any way. It's as though the characters inhabit their own spheres, even the ones who are married to each other, and just... bump into one another and float away.

They speak. But does anyone listen? The conversations are awkward, even painful. They seem to be ships passing in the night.

"The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you," says Lily. (Is she pregnant?)

Mr. Browne seems to confirm it: "Now, Mary Grimes, if I don't take it, make me take it, for I feel I want it."

I could go on for paragraphs about some of the symbols - but the one that seems most relevant to me, as I read how these people relate to one another, is the picture of the tower scene in Romeo and Juliet, hung next to the two murdered princes in the tower.

Patrick, that quote immediately made me think of American Psycho.

So Edna Ferber and Gautreax if I can find it. Got it.

Reading The Dead right now...

I was thinking September 15. To give everyone time for the busy stuff that happens in early September (well, at least in my life, since school starts and all that).

I'll post a reading schedule and some resources on Wharton and her times, too.

Would anyone else like to join me in moderating the discussion? Don't want to be a dictator...!

"Yeah I was joking...I remember the Nobel Prize for Literature dude said it...of course, it is a lot of nonsense. "

Martyn, you need to get into the fine art of using emoticons. Like those little heart symbols and stuff.

(That was also a joke. I hate emoticons. Parens, semicolons and colons are punctuation. I stand by my old-fashioned, anachronistic opinion.)

Hey Kris, how do you feel about emoticons being used in books these days? ::duck::

I agree with you Kris, when it comes to just about everything I've read... except Infinite Jest.

I don't know... popular culture vs. culture. Is there really a difference? I mean, people who go to operas drink Diet Coke in the lobby during intermission. And culture ... seems like such a catchall word as to be almost meaningless.

If I were to differentiate in art... popular culture, to me, is both expressed, even defined, mostly by movies. Or the crap pushed at my kids by Disney.

It's discussed in Infinite Summer - how the pop culture aspect of what he does will limit the lifespan of the book, make the work not survive past my generation.

That may be true, but I am not so sure he cared.

But there's this other guy who wrote with a lot of cultural references... whatshisname... oh yeah. That Joyce guy. Among the tools needed to really penetrate Ulysses: a map of Dublin from the early 20th century with the names of chapters overlaid so you know where they took place. And even when you have it, they don't make sense if you haven't been to Dublin (and Dublin when I was there in the 80s is vastly different from Dublin now), which is a different place than it was then anyway... so what's the point?

The point is that Joyce didn't ignore that who he was and where he was in history had an undeniable influence on his work. And, to try to deny it - to write something so timeless it had no cultural reference points - well, would have defied the point of having the book connect to The Odyssey - the theme of exploring the known world, and touching the unknown, too.

Heck, I'd even argue that The Odyssey has pop culture references. To roasting pigs.

Martyn wrote: "Can't we all just say modern American literature is too parochial?"

I dunno... parochial is a copout the same way "patriarchal" is a copout.

It is NOT and you will be SEVERELY punished by being forced to post a brilliant insight during each day of our discussion.

Looking forward to the photos.

Oh, and the comparisons with The Lady with the Little Dog are ... well... they could be made.

Mainly, do we believe Gabriel's epiphany is really an epiphany, or just a passing emotional moment.

Also, what's happening within Gretta.

Here are some things to know about this story.

1. It was written by Joyce last, to finish The Dubliners.
2. It includes characters based on his family and friends.
3. The wife in the story, Gretta Conroy, may or may not represent his Nora.
4. It has been thought/written/said that The Dubliners was written about Ireland itself, about a people in spiritual crisis/emptiness

Here are a couple of excerpts from critical essays I found interesting, but didn't want to actually plunk down money to read the rest of... (I bought enough lit crit books in my day, thank you)... just some food for thought:

A major point of contention for critics of "The Dead" has been whether Gabriel overcomes his paralysis through his epiphany. Many critics, such as Kenneth Burke, feel that Gabriel does transcend his own paralytic self-consciousness. Others argue that he does not transcend his condition but rather, in a way, gives up any such notion and simply accepts that he is one of the spiritually dead. Mi-chael Shurgot sees Gabriel being motivated by what Freud called a death wish.

.....

In his short stories, Joyce's conspicuous symbols usually grow out of a disparity between a character's romantic inner perception and squalid outer reality. This disparity creates the strange sense of displacement common to so many characters in Dubliners.

......

In his short story "The Dead," James Joyce symbolically presents his critical view of Dublin society. The theme of the story is that of a spiritual paralysis which has seized a lifeless or "dead" society and of the vital effect in paradoxical contrast that the dead may have upon the living in urging them to a fuller self-awareness. In this juxtaposition of the symbolically living and the symbolically dead, the author works with the contrasting images of darkness and light, blindness and perception, cold and warmth, society at large and the individual experience, upper middle-class sterility and the fullness of a peasant's passion, and motion and stillness...

Of course, because it is a dialectic, an omphalitic conversation throughout time and history.

So maybe I'll cross post. In another thread we are talking about hysterical realism. Someone made the point that a lot of contemporary fiction seems to be a demonstration of intelligence but not much else (among other things):

I like your thoughts here.

I was thinking as I was reading the second to last paragraph that it seems like what you're talking about would fall into the category of attempting to imitate David Foster Wallace.

I know, I know. I'm kind of stumping for the guy now.

But no, really.

When I am reading IJ, it is just like reading Ulysses (haven't tried Finnegan's Wake yet). I read a passage. Catch my breath. Go back. Read it again.

There are so many levels. First, the popular culture level. Then, the academic or intellectual one. Then, the DFW Gaze - the one he levels at the world seems to see everything so clearly, so that the other levels slip away. And finally, the heart of it.

There is a lot to untangle, and some of it appears to be a "look how good I am at tennis and math" kind of thing - a demonstration of his brilliance - but in a book that might be an imitation, there would be no more than just that demonstration. Or maybe a little bit more, but not much.

With him - there is a beating, golden, suffering, black, aching heart in everything. There is contradiction. There is so much pain. There is so much love. Even in the details, he is building and building you to the point where you either decide to let the book in, in which case it changes your life, or not, in which case you hold it at arm's length.

He is all about letting the book in. There was a far more eloquent post about this on Infinite Summer, about someone who read the book for drug rehab (ultimately unsuccessfully) - it was about allowing the book to really... seep into you.

Now I'm sounding all mystical and cultish about it but I think it's true.

I like your thoughts here.

I was thinking as I was reading the second to last paragraph that it seems like what you're talking about would fall into the category of attempting to imitate David Foster Wallace.

I know, I know. I'm kind of stumping for the guy now.

But no, really.

When I am reading IJ, it is just like reading Ulysses (haven't tried Finnegan's Wake yet). I read a passage. Catch my breath. Go back. Read it again.

There are so many levels. First, the popular culture level. Then, the academic or intellectual one. Then, the DFW Gaze - the one he levels at the world seems to see everything so clearly, so that the other levels slip away. And finally, the heart of it.

There is a lot to untangle, and some of it appears to be a "look how good I am at tennis and math" kind of thing - a demonstration of his brilliance - but in a book that might be an imitation, there would be no more than just that demonstration. Or maybe a little bit more, but not much.

With him - there is a beating, golden, suffering, black, aching heart in everything. There is contradiction. There is so much pain. There is so much love. Even in the details, he is building and building you to the point where you either decide to let the book in, in which case it changes your life, or not, in which case you hold it at arm's length.

He is all about letting the book in.

Ha!

I forgot to add-death bearing witness to life, unless of course they can't see it because of the sideshow they are watching.

Wow. Life witnessing death. All framed by degradation.

Sometimes I wonder if that filmography isn't the key to the whole book. I've read it five times so far.

I am. I love it. SO much more food for thought. I would miss so much if I didn't use that site as I went. I am behind, of course, but life is starting to settle down, so now I have more focused time to dedicate.

I was just sending a couple of excerpts to a friend today. The most recent post on DFW's influence on the YA world was good, but did you catch that one where the guy used the book for drug rehab? (Unsuccessfully, but still.) The one about really letting the book in.

The one word that I keep seeing in relation to DFW and everything he created is heartbreaking.

Yeah... I even blogged about it.