The Sea, The Sea

by Iris Murdoch

Of course it is quite impossible to buy fresh fish here, as all the villagers tell me with pride.

Is it not a seaside town?

I shall now continue my autobiography.

It was getting hard to distinguish between the book he was writing and the book Murdoch was writing. I’m glad they collapsed into one.

Nell is the new musical comedy star, with whom I had been flirting all through lunch. Nell is twenty-two. (I wouldn’t mind having her in my harem.)

Untasteful.

For dinner I had an egg poached in hot scrambled egg,

How can this be?

Then he turned up in London just after the Chinese invasion of Tibet. I never saw him, before or since, display so much emotion. This was clearly for him a personal tragedy. He exclaimed bitterly about the stupidity of those who had failed to see that China, not Russia, was the real menace.

Prophetic of some.

Honor Klein.

Bizarre reference to a character in another Murdoch book.

someone had been in since yesterday and had put upon the altar a vast odorous bowl of white roses which disturbed me with all sorts of deep incoherent unconceptualized apprehensions.

Roses can do this?

the Jews suffer intelligently, even wittily, the Irish suffer stupidly, like a bawling cow in a bog. I can’t think how the English tolerate that island, there ought to have been a final solution years ago,

Cancel.

She said to me, ‘You liar and you traitor!’ I said to Lizzie, ‘Is it raining?’

Strange response.

time to see Titus’s long pale legs elevated to heaven as he dived under the green water. He reminded me of Breughel’s Icarus.

Ah, this will happen!

clarificatory,

Unpronounceable word!

James said, ‘Can you hear the sea?’ ‘That was Keats’s favourite quotation from Shakespeare.’ I listened.

James and I had drunk between us nearly five litre bottles of wine.

That’s over six bottles of 750 ml.

Of course this chattering diary is a façade, the literary equivalent of the everyday smiling face which hides the inward ravages of jealousy, remorse, fear and the consciousness of irretrievable moral failure.

I have not entered a theatre, even to see Mr Blick’s new Hamlet, which is supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread.

Did Murdoch coin this phrase?

clarificatory