Euphoria - Chapters 06-10 (March 2015)

[Violet]

This is the thread for all thoughts and impressions on chapters 6-10 of Euphoria.

[Caroline]

These chapters are around when I started liking the book more. The big theme, for me, seemed to be observer vs. player/participant (or those who take a more active role in the world around them). Bankson is the main observer. In much of his narrative, he describes himself watching Nell and how her movements and actions make him feel. I got the sense that he likes taking on the role of a quiet observer, or someone who remains in the background. However, through Nell's journals, which we get from Helen, we see that Nell was observing him too.

In contrast, Nell and Fen are far more active, though Nell would like to believe that she is a successful observer. She certainly seems to have a negative view of the active player, which is perhaps one reason why she finds herself pulled towards Bankson and constantly finds fault with Fen (as does Bankson). One passage in Chapter 10 captures this sentiment fairly well:

"Fen didn't want to study the natives; he wanted to be a native. His attraction to anthropology was not to puzzle out the story of humanity. It was not ontological. It was to live without shoes and eat from his hands and fart in public....His interest lay in experiencing, in doing. Thinking was derivative. Dull. The opposite of living. Whereas she suffered through the humidity and the sago and the lack of plumbing only for the thinking...The pleasurable part of the fantasy was always in the coming home and relating what she had seen. Always in her mind there had been the belief that somewhere on earth there was a better way to live, and that she would find it."

One small note about the journals, I like how it's not clear whether the journal entries we see (other than in the initial chapter where they appear) are supposed to be read as Nell writing them or as Bankson reading them in the future.

[Casceil]

Part of the difference in Nell's and Bankson's styles of observation stems from differences in their training. Nell makes a comment somewhere about Bankson still being back in the old Victorian school of measuring heads, and indeed Bankson was measuring heads until someone asked him why and he could not come up with a reason. Bankson's style is much more, study the natives and do nothing that might change their behavior. Nell's method of learning about the natives is much more interactive and intrusive.

I liked the way the author used the journals to give us Nell's point of view. Once the journals have been introduced, they start to be folded into the narrative chronologically. They are the parts of the story that Bankson does not learn until much later.

[Violet]

Lily's posted an interesting link on the general discussion thread about the problems King had getting Nell's voice. Do you think the journal works as a vehicle for making Nell more vivid and engaging? I'm still a bit split.

[Violet]

Great post Caroline. With you all the way.

[Violet]

Fen's not getting great press so far. We've had a couple of sympathetic glimpses, like when he was upset that Bankson didn't turn up to go hunting with him but mainly he's being portrayed as a bit of a self-centred bully. I'm expecting to see him in a better light. At the moment he's veering a bit close to a cliche of the brawny old world Australian male. I keep thinking, he can't be that bad.

[Terry]

Looking at how Neil and Gen contrary in their views of the natives, I am reminded of a quote from Anais Nin: 'we do not see the world the way it is; we see the world the way we are'.

[Lily]

Terry wrote: "Looking at how contrary Nell and Fen are in their views of the natives, I am reminded of a quote from Anais Nin: 'we do not see the world the way it is; we see the world the way we are'."

My guess is that you may be close to the theme or message of the book, Terry.

[Lily]

Violet wrote: "Fen's not getting great press so far...."

So far we seem to be observing competitive male behavior viewed from the perspective of one of the males!? ;-0

[Terry]

I suspect I'll finish this today. It's hard to slow down and savour...

[Charlotte]

These chapters were the ones that I started to really enjoy too - the shifting perspective stopped and I think you can start to see the story taking shape.
Terry: I too read Euphoria really quickly. I think it's quite a light read but with some good stuff to take away.
The form - using diary excerpts from Nell's manuscripts make this far more interesting.

I didn't think much of Fen up to this point either. Also, not really comprehending the appeal of the Fen/Nell relationship, at all. I found Fen, like you say Violet, slightly 2D up to this point and a little stereotypical.
I will be interested in seeing who has a change in perspective on this guy/who doesn't as we read on!

[Lily]

Has anyone seen commentary that suggests to what extent the journal entries follow versus fictionalize the journals of M.Meade? Likewise for Bankson/Bateson letters...

[Lily]

I enjoyed the sequence of Bankson writing to his mother, tearing the letters from his typewriter, crumpling and balling the sheets of paper, throwing them out the window, where the young boys used the discards as balls and targets. His emotions felt palpable.

My stream of consciousness contrasted a very different vision -- all the scenes of letter reading/writing in Vermeer paintings. Because of the crumpled paper, I thought especially of "A Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid." Somehow, my mind had sunlight highlighting the disparate scenes of frustrated concentration.

http://www.canvasreplicas.com/Vermeer... - Lady & Maid
http://www.canvasreplicas.com/Vermeer - for all

[Violet]

Yep, that was a great example of how show rather than tell is so much more effective. We'd already heard several allusions to the frayed relationship Bankson shares with his mother but that scene really made you feel it on your skin. Love the Vermeer comparison, Lily.

[Ben]

Someone said that King withheld much of her research. I’m wondering if she should have put more in because for me the depiction of this somewhat generic and happy clapping tribe is flat. Sometimes it feels like King arrived too late on the scene, that the real story took place back with the more misogynistic and unsettling Mumbayno tribe. That it was something about the emotional atmosphere there that alienated Nell and Fen from each other. Obviously the biggest challenge of writing this novel would have been to credibly create the world of the village on Lake Tam and make it pulsate with rich authentic life. So far I don’t think she’s done a very good job. To me it feels like she’s always observing through binoculars. Anthropology books I’ve read involving field research always dwell much more on sensual shocks, the new and strange tastes and smells, the physical sensations, the emotional and physical changes wrought by unprecedented routines. Here most of the drama is played out exclusively by the trio of westerners as if the village is merely a stage prop against which they can dramatise their emotions for each other. There should perhaps be an enigmatic figure in the village, a living embodiment of the spirituality of the tribe, a sinister figure too averse to sharing sacred knowledge with strangers. Instead I’m getting a rather soulless idealised world where the children are lovably playful, the women are always fishing and the men always joking. Surely there should be more dramatic tension within the village itself. Perhaps I’m alone in thinking this as no one else seems to have commented on it? In a nutshell, so far King has failed to convince me she's physically and emotionally there, side by side with her characters.

[Casceil]

Ben, it sounds like you wanted the book to be more like other books you've read, with more "familiar" elements like a sinister figure in the village. There was plenty of dramatic tension within the tribe itself. Malun's worry and hope for Xambun--the way she created a basket of knots, one for each day he was gone. The way people in the tribe cut off fingers to mourn dead loved ones. If you haven't gotten past Chapter 10, perhaps you haven't gotten to parts where more of the tension is revealed. As Nell and Fen become more accepted, they learn more about the tribe's more private aspects.

[Terry]

I think you're talking about a different story. I think it might be a pretty good story, but it's not the one King is trying to tell. It *is* the story of the westerners, not the story of the tribes. We only see them through our westerners' eyes, and so we focus on our vision, our sight, what we notice and pick out, how we see. Not the things that are seen in any objective sense.

[Ben]

Yeah, you're probably both right (Terry & Casceil) though it's detail I'm feeling the lack of rather than story. However I've only reached the end of chapter ten so glad to hear there's tension up ahead. I did like the basket of knots. That's the kind of thing I'd like more of.

[Casceil]

Ben, you might like State of Wonder by Ann Patchett. It's about a scientist in the Amazon Rain Forest (rather than an anthropologist), but I think it did go into more detail about the jungle setting and tribes.

[Ben]

Thanks for the recommendation, Casceil. Sounds great. I suppose I'm using Shabono: A Visit to a Remote and Magical World in the South American Rain Forest by Florinda Donner-Grau which I loved as a yardstick for Lily King which isn't really fair, as one's a novel and one isn't.

[Ben]

I've been made to eat my words. Read another fifty pages last night and all of a sudden King addressed all my misgivings. A wealth of details that brought the village to life, some great dramatic tension in the form of Fen's revelation about the Mumbanyo flute with its writing and the desire to steal it, an enigmatic figure in the form of the return of Xambun. I also loved Nell turning Romeo and Juliet into a creation myth.