Being Dead by Jim Crace Chapters 1 - 11

[George]

Please make comments here in relation to Chapters 1 to 11 of Being Dead by Jim Crace.

[Irene]

I read through chapter 9 last night. This is very strange. I am not sure what to make of a book that depicts two corpses rotting on a beach interjected with their back story.

[George]

I am halfway through this mesmerising, beautifully written novel. The description of the dead bodies is very effective and an enthralling reading experience.

Journalist, Gary Krist, in Salon (31 March 2000) states: "As characters, Joseph and Celice are a little difficult to take — prickly, small-spirited, almost willfully unsympathetic. But by placing their lives and obscene deaths in the context of the larger natural processes of decay and regeneration, Crace allows the couple a measure of redemptive grace, something that might have proved impossible in a more conventional narrative."
I was a little surprised by the following comment of
J.S. Colley in Booksquawk, 29 May 2011 where he/she states: "Mr. Crace made up the flora and fauna—and their Latin names—mentioned in this novel. And as earnestly as I think I remember hearing of a similar ritual, “quivering” is also a mere figment of Mr. Crace’s superb imagination." I tend to believe what I read a little too readily, even when reading fiction!

[Irene]

Why do you think there is redemptive grace when these characters are viewed from the lense of their own death and decay?

Redemptive grace is not what I am feeling as I near the half way point. Rather, reading of the lives and the love of this couple against their consumption by insects makes me feel something akin to despair. What is the point of anything when we all end up as worm lunch? The writing is very good, but I am finding this rather depressing right now.

[George]

For me the author's writing about death and decay was well done. I found myself focussing on the sentences and how he seemed to make such a horrible topic not appear as gruesome as it would be in real life. He is writing that this is what happens. This is nature.

I think the author wants the reader to think about the issues of life and death. What it means to be a part of nature and to be human. If the police hadn't found Joseph and Celice they would have become part of nature, immersed in the sand.
Sally Vincent, 25 August 2001, in The Guardian wrote, "as a post-Dawkins scientific atheist and modern Darwinist, he (Jim Crace) doesn't believe there are any outside explanations for the world, only internal ones." The novel quite pointedly reflects Jim Crace's beliefs.

[Irene]

I agree with you that the writing is very strong. Crace can make the natural process of decay poetic. But, I am curious about the quote you cited.

Journalist, Gary Krist, in Salon (31 March 2000) states: "As characters, Joseph and Celice are a little difficult to take — prickly, small-spirited, almost willfully unsympathetic. But by placing their lives and obscene deaths in the context of the larger natural processes of decay and regeneration, Crace allows the couple a measure of redemptive grace, something that might have proved impossible in a more conventional narrative."

I am wondering why hearing their story, seeing the lives of small minded, willfully unsympathetic characters along side their rotting corpses gives them a measure of redemptive grace not possible otherwise. Is it simply death, that we don't want to speak ill of the dead? Or is it something in the decay itself, the way the physical breaks down that is redemptive? I saw it as ironic, that these two naturalists who studied and taught about the natural world are now the object of similar observation. But, I am not yet seeing it as "redemptive grace".

[George]

If the story had been told chronologically then reading a number of pages about decaying bodies at the end of the novel would not have been effective. Describing the process of decaying from the start of the novel to the middle of the novel somehow works. The process of decay is viewed as natural, okay, even 'beautiful' (sic). For example, on page 6 and 7, Crace writes, "The bone caved in like shell. Her brain, once breached and ripped, was as pale and mushy as a honeycomb, a kilogram of dripping honeycomb. It was as if a honeycomb had been exposed below the thin bark of a log by someone with a trenching spade. Her honeycomb had haemorrhaged; its substance had been split."

[Irene]

Yes, a very poetic description of the process of decay. But, I still don't understand how the observation of the decay of these individuals' corpses offers redemptive grace to lives otherwise willfully unsympathetic, a redemption that might have proven impossible in a more conventional narrative form. A more conventional form might have chosen to redeem willfully unsympathetic characters by showing us how they developed into such prickly individuals in a back story or by revealing a moment of love, heroism, goodness surfacing despite their normal behavior, or by pealing back the layors of sadness, self-doubt, frailty beneath the prickly exterior allowing the reader to connect. But, the quote you posted indicated that the very portrayal of decay that we are permitted to view offers a powerful redemptive grace. I am wondering how decay redeems an otherwise unsympathetic life. I understand that Crace's prose redeems the process of decay. I don't understand how it redeems these characters.

[George]

All the characters, Joseph, Celice, the fellow scientists, the police, the keeper of the corpses at the local morgue, taxi-driver Geo, and the daughter Syl, are insensitive and on the whole, not nicely behaved people.

Yes, I too cannot see how the process of decay redeems the characters of Joseph and Celice.

We have unsympathetic characters and descriptions of decaying bodies, yet it was a good read!

Crace description of Celice's body isn't very flattering: "The naked pigeon thighs. The balcony of fat around her navel. The strong and veiny legs."

Crace has a way of stringing sentences together that are a joy to read.

[Irene]

Well, I feel a bit better knowing that I am not the only reader that can not perceive the redemptive grace in the description of decay. I wish I had that critic here to share what he meant by his comment.