Maggie O'Farrell's brushes with death and the Continuous Present in 'I AM, I AM, I AM'

 

My wife was reading the Maggie O’Farrell book ‘I AM, I AM, I AM’.  Is she a devotee of Nisargadatta Maharaj I asked:

My Guru ordered me to attend to the sense ‘I am’ and to give attention to nothing else. I just obeyed. I did not follow any particular course of breathing, or meditation, or study of scriptures. Whatever happened, I would turn away my attention from it and remain with the sense 'I am'. It may look too simple, even crude. My only reason for doing it was that my Guru told me so. Yet it worked!

Or indeed a follower of Meher Baba whose motto was ‘Be Here Now’.

O’Farrell is in love with the continuous present in which her, all her, books are written.  In my view she wants a cleansing course of the pluperfect to flush it out of her system.  She ought to get in touch with her inner preterite and open up to multiple tenses. Her success as a writer is not affected by the cliche ‘I am now attending with a feverish vividness and ‘grokking on the fullness’. (Kesey also does  time in, in ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’) .  You can’t argue with a Sunday Times best seller which the afore mentioned ‘I am x 3' was.  In that of course the intensity of brushes with death, only 17, focuses the mind wonderfully and the tense conveys that.  These events are like what Wordsworth called ‘spots of time’ that remain undiminished by time.  In O’Farrell’s case they are shrines to mortality where attention is the homage paid to the dark god Thanatos.  She carries to this day the burden of her childhood encephalitis which has left her damaged in her space perception and fine motor skills.  These deficits play a part in those near things that grip you in a suspended unbelief which is irrational as the ‘I am here to tell you’ proof of life of the book testifies.  Will she make it?  Her publicity photos should show her clutching a copy of The Times of the day so we can be sure.

Its a fine book.  The chapter on her daughter who has multiple serious allergies is moving.  As a parent you do not want to outlive your children.  Can I go first please?

'Under Gemini' by Isabel Bolton (aka Mary Britton Miller)

Again on the subject of the continuous present (cf previous post) this time frugally used by a genius. It is effective when it is used to give the feeling of what the Freudians call a cathexis or a blocked forever undischarged traumatic scenario which remains as a persistent penumbra.

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 I read a lot and there is the danger of dulling by surfeit the critical faculty.  There are too many bad books reading over my shoulder slimeing with cliche the  the work in hand .  One thing that causes me to put down a book immediately is the use of the continuous present.  To the block Hilary Mantel.  It seems to me a cheap attempt at immediacy and if the preterite won’t give your story force; it’s a weakling.

And then I was reading ‘Under Gemini, a Memoir’ by Mary Britton Miller and I realised that the continuous present in the first chapter was not producing the throw reflex.   Why?  Respondit Bergson by ouija:

This is not the Continuous Present it is the Durational Present.  These events frame a soul and make a world: now.   Miller is a very great writer and does not continue this device which is not a device past the opening.  First in ordinary time she tells us what she is going to tell us.

"There is a legend that once the ribbons we wore upon our wrists to establish our identity were misplaced while we were being bathed. Our nurse, Mathilda, unable to tell which twin was which, called upon our mother to decide. She replaced the ribbons, saying I was Mary and the other child was Grace. Let us assume that she was right, for I was christened Mary and my twin was christened Grace; and so, awarding her the honor of having entered this world five minutes before I did, I will attempt to recapture the memories of our life together on this earth.”

Then she tells us:

“There is a room darkened against the light and on the couch a gentleman with a dark moustache is lying fast asleep. He snores. Behind the couch I kneel and kneeling with me is my other self. Identical excitement, terror, fearful joy invades us. We wait. I watch my duplicate arise and I am rising with her. There is a moment for decision and then a swift resolve—a dreadful sharing of the consequences that will follow the awful act we contemplate; and then, excitement urging us, we spit directly in our father’s upturned face. He rises. We flee while panic overtakes us and then a sudden darkness, the waters of continuing experience engulf our father and his wrath. We have no further memory of him whatever.”

In the same way their memory of mother is cut off.  The sudden night that overwhelms them is due to the death by cholera of both parents.  All at once the life of the five children in the family becomes the care of a maternal uncle and his organising wife Aunt Anna.  They now live with their grandmother and a carer which they are instructed to call Aunt Julia.  Apart from a ceremonial visit on Sundays to Aunt Anna’s they are left alone to express themselves by mighty acts of domestic delinquency.

Aunt Anna is no downtrodden and subdued Victorian lady:

"The spectacle of our Aunt Anna affected us quite differently. Whatever charm and geniality she might have had was compressed, laced in, buttoned up, suppressed. Her clothes fitted her tightly; they were handsome and well brushed, not glamourous at all but with their own special elegance. She did not approve of charm; she listened rather disapprovingly to Uncle Jim and always asked practical questions, saying, "My dear Jim, I don't agree. This should not be done. I don't approve." She said, "You must" and "You must not" with emphasis.”

The sweet sadness of the denouement of this memoir comes across the century.  Now my problem is, what am I going to read after this elevation into contact with a real genius whose obscurity was self sought?  I think more of her and then taper off with Elizabeth Bowen.  Maybe Mrs. Gaskell first then Bowen.  That’s what I’ll do.

American Classic.

Regarding the Present Continous

 

So I’ve said that the use of the continuous present is a cheap device to give a feeling of immediacy.  Its particularly blatant used throughout novels such as those of Hilary Mantel and our latest Booker prize winner Paul Lynch in ‘Prophet Song’.  Anthony Doerr uses it in ‘All the Light we cannot see’.  Besides being affected and monotonous what else is wrong with it?  I believe it is psychologically and epistemologically wrong creating a false picture

of human action.  First of all we do not act in a continuous stimulus response mode as though we were conditioned to do so.  Sometimes we do but not always.  In between bouts of habit there is considered action in which the past and its tense come into play.  The brain as Bergson would maintain is an organ of action and is guided by what has worked in the past; in short, memory and not pure perception is the key to response. Our language reflects this modality.  The future is attained by intention.  What will it mean doing this or that or do it differently or not do it at all.  We weigh our options against past error and success and altered situations.  The past perfect, the present perfect come into play and offer their counsel.  ‘I had considered at that point’ but it turned out that I was wrong and woe is me ‘I have done the same thing again’.  The elision of all those subtleties must impoverish the expression of  reality in a novel.

Look no one talks in the continuous present except the gangsters in Damon Ruynon’s short stories.  Leave it to them.

"Anyway, I finally mention the names of these parties to Judge Goldfobber, and furthermore I speak well of their reliability in a pinch, and of their nerve, although I cannot conscientiously recommend their tact, and Judge Goldfobber is greatly delighted, as he often hears of Harry the Horse, and Spanish John and Little Isadore. " (from 'Breach of Promise')

Little Swimmers

 

Professor Liz Harman has the common view about pregnancy that choice folk hold.  When welcome it is a precious event that is shared with others and the medium favoured is a sonogram of the little swimmer.  If miscarried at this point there is sadness and loss.

Now if the pregnancy is unwelcome there is a medical situation that needs to be rectified.  There is magically not a pregnancy which would imply in the course of nature a birth.

The strangely normal thing is that the same woman can have both these attitudes at different times.  Objectively the reality of there being a little sportive swimmer is the same in both cases.

What is our likely attitude toward that moral stance?  How would one view such mutability?  As a mother with a favourite child, as a moral imbecile, a confused person, and probably not our first choice as a friend.  They have intrinsic value even if they don’t recognise it.  Would or should you trust them?

Trollope's Truth

 

One of the things said of Anthony Trollope by an enthusiastic reader of his work which struck me was ‘I trust Trollope’. Should we? Is there mischief in Anthony, a sly misdirection between the deictic events, what he shows and what he tells us in his direct interpolations.  Henry James did not like this breaking of the fabulous spell preferring to lay his mazing anfractuosities there on the page.  None of your, please note I have nothing up my sleeve and my fingers never leave my hand.

Is Trollope telling the truth?  Looking the Palliser series I find his insistence that Frank Tregear was not after the money that Lady Mary would undoubtedly bring his way a little strained.  After all Lady Mabel and he had broken off their attachment due to the fact that neither of them had any money.  She loves him but knows that a life of penury would be impossible for them owing to their aristocratic taste for the finer things in life.  I also recall that Frank has a brother that is due to inherit the modest estate in Cornwall but that he will probably not ever marry and is generally abroad travelling.  Might he be eaten by a lion or destroyed by Corsican bandits or succumb to yellow fever?  This could be a way of resolving the funds impasse.  Frank however does not live in that suspended state and in a few months, takes his permission to seek another to Rome.  He doesn’t go in for languish as does Lady Mabel who is secretly put out by his speed in moving on.  As the Scots steward said in ‘The Eustace Diamonds’ don’t go after money but go where the money is. Which he does.  Lady Mary, with her beauty and ‘sterling’ qualities falls and as we know Daddy Pally demurs.  A penniless adventurer and my girl; that can never be.  By the way have you noticed how fickle men are in the novels.  Phineas Finn skips like a stone over the lake of love but sheers off when the wealthy Madam Marie puts it to him.  In the end those two outsiders are married which brings me to what I think might have lurked in the back of Trollope’s mind.  Can the beautiful but alien Isabel Boncassen be a suitable spouse for the future Duke of Omnium?  I really think that from an aristocratic point of view the union with Lady Mabel who is beautiful, witty and wise would be more fitting and durable given the duties of that elevated sphere.  Can the republican and the monarchist be friends over the long stretch of mutual  accommodations that is marriage?  Isabel must be an eternal outsider and she will feel it.  Such an ending would make a subtle reprise of Plantagenet’s marriage which was to begin with against Lady Glen’s true feelings.  In this case Silverbridge would simply have to revert to his initial love for Mabel. There could be Trollopian prosing about duty over several pages.

Think of that.

For me this novel was the weakest link in the series which probably took too long to die.  The comedy element was more about social embarrassment, again the oil and water of different classes.  The pathos of a man who neglected his family for quints (the decimal farthing) is there but is it enough.

The Duke's Children by Anthony Trollope

 If you reverse engineer the Palliser novels you will reveal the narrative clockwork that drives the novels but it won’t help you to predict what is going to happen in the one you are reading.  I’m in the middle of ‘The Duke’s Children’ and I can see the author running the combinations of the recurring themes.  Marry for money and status - that probably won’t be lucky. Two men caught between two women, oscillating emotion of the male compared to the more steady female attachment.  We’ve seen similar situations before however I feel Trollope will ring the changes this time and there may be jetsam and someone left to languish.  

The busyness of the Victorian upper class who had a fondness for laborious idleness, fox hunting, shooting, up in the morning out on the moor blasting away at the fowl of the month or stalking deer over miles of Scottish mountains.  Behind this sport the army of support staff fettling horses, whipping in dogs, Masters of Fox Hounds blowing the horn, horse coping.  The fixing of the Leger is a theme in this book and a gilded youth losing £70,000.  In 187- serious money but Papa pays up.  Will daughter Lady Mary get the man she loves, will Papa come round?  Can the American beauty be accepted by the Duke of Omnium or will marrying out of the aristocracy be impossible to accept for his son. At a certain point you may feel that you know quite enough about the marriage arrangements of the idle wealthy.  There are no less than two MPs in the romance stakes, both Conservative.  Rebellious youth forsooth.

Like all Trollope novels he keeps you reading and wondering how the romantic tangles might be resolved. The other amazing thing is the amount of visiting each others houses they do.    Mansions  were required to keep up that level of hospitality.  And cousin marriage; chinless wonders did not come from nowhere.

‘The Duke’s Children’ is not the best novel in the series. Does Trollope succeed in humanising the Duke? So far there are touching episodes and those of us that have given their parents trouble will mist up a little recognising the forbearance we have received.  I’m only half way there and this note is dashed off waiting for bread to bake.