The philandering husband seems to get off easy in Murdoch's novel - but more is in store for him

So the plot such as it is in Iris Murdoch's The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974) involves a seemingly happily married man (Blaise) and father of an increasingly estranged boy (David, about 10) has been carrying on a 9+-year relationship with a 20-something woman (Emily) who lives in a nearby part of London, and they have an 8-year-old son (Luca). This is more than a relationship! Blaise supports his "mistress" and their son - leading to financial strain in his home and marriage and to lots of jealousy as Emily (rightly) believes she's living in poverty while the wife (Harriet) lives in relative comfort. Blaise also spends a lot of time with Emily; how does he manage that? He's concocted a story that he has a patient (he's a lay analyst) who requires home visits. That's preposterous on the face of it: home visits that entail spending the night? Week after week? But let's just accept the facts on the ground in this novel; the story is really about the interior lives of each of the characters, how this, and other, domestic dramas can warp and change personalities and relationships. Blaise lives in dread of being "found out," and as the novel begins he learns that son Luca has tracked him down to his suburban home - and he suspects it's only a matter of time before Harriet learns to the affair - so he writes her a long letter of confession and apology. She spends the morning in tears, and when he returns home to her at noon she embraces him, assures him that she loves him and wants to keep their marriage. He's damn lucky - one would expect fury and vengeance. and shame about her own gullibility. So he's off the hook - but we're less than half-way through the novel so we expect things won't be as easy as first they seem, esp in that Harriet says she wants to meet Emily and Luca. Blaise is obviously uneasy about that, to which we say "screw him" - and I anticipate some kind of alliance between the 2 women in his life.

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Murdoch's intellident novel that's more about character than plot - at least initially

At suggestion of old friend DJC w/ whom I share many obscure tastes in literature and music have begun reading Iris Murdoch, the late British writer and one whom I'd never read - one of the many prolific Brits who stay under the radar in the U.S., never really having a break-through novel (one Man Booker Prize or a NYer nod is enough to change that for any Brit., however - see Ishigura, Hedley, even Brookner). Reading her 1974 novel w/ the oddly off-putting title The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (huh?), and finding it unusual, demanding, and at least so far, about 1/3 through, very good. She's the ultimate among the psychological novelists I think, and few if any novels I've read before have put such an emphasis on character (as opposed to plot or narrative). The first 50 pp or so are devoted entirely the back stories of the central characters, with barely an "action" taking place at all: Father B., a 40-something lay analyst (he sees patients but doesn't have a medical degree - not sure this would fly in the U.S.) who's thinking about going to medical school but rightly worried about the cost to his family; wife overly devoted to their son, David, a lonesome teenager who's pushing away from seemingly tight-knit family, neighbor a prominent mystery writer mourning death of his wife and disappearing into an alcoholic funk, a friend of neighbor's who informs the mourning husband that he's carried on years of correspondence w/ the late wife. All very dense and absorbing, but we start to wonder at some point whether this is going to become a novel at all - and then a shift of gears (not exactly a spoiler here, as we're still at the beginning of the novel, but be forewarned): we learn that the husband B has had an affair of 15 or so years w/ a woman whom he "keeps" in a small flat in London/Putney and they have a son of about 10 who has some kind of retardation or mental disorder. Aha - so when and how will these opposing forces collide and w/ what damage and to whom? At last we do understand the image of a boy standing in the garden in the moonlight that several characters witness: Must be the son who maybe has trailed his father home to the other family. Yes, you have to suspend disbelief to imagine that such an affair could be maintained for so long, undetected - but the dad's a wily sort (and aided in his subterfuge, we learn, by the mystery writer - who helped him fashion a fake patient who requires home visits). I'm in, though, fascinated by Murdoch's insights and intelligence.

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The Odysseyan voyage of Mickey Sabbath in Roth's Sabbath's Theater

The last section of Philip Roth's Sabbath's Theater (1995) is about the best Roth has ever written, a beautiful, funny, and emotionally draining visit by the troubled and unlikable protagonist, Mickey Sabbath, to his home town on the Jersey shore, ostensibly to buy a grave site near his parents' and the omit suicide. The visit to the rundown graveyard and his purchase of the plot is a terrific scene, especially the passage in which Sabbath walks among the graves and reads each of the inscriptions - like a prose poem of Yiddish ancestry. Then Sabbath drives around the old neighborhood and is shocked to discover that his cousin Fish is still alive and living in his old, now rather decrepit, house. The visit to Fish, whose memory surges in and out like a tide, is a heartbreaking passage, as Sabbath desperately tries to draw forth memories and make connections. Sabbath leaves with a box of mementos left by his mother, mostly materials from brother Morty who dies in WWII and whose death pretty much destroyed the family - and led in part to Sabbath's dark cynicism and need for attention. Sabbath gets his comeuppance of a sort when he drives back to his home in the Berkshires and endures some difficult encounters, which I won't divulge, with his wife and, later, with the family of his late lover Drenka. By the end, Roth almost has us feeling sympathetic for this nasty character - quite an achievement in itself - and, like him or not, all readers who make it to the end (450 not-small pp) will feel like we've passed through a gauntlet - almost like an Odysseyan voyage that, like the original (and like Joyce's take, which Roth gives a nod to at one point) ends at home w/ much changed and much learned, or at least endured, en route.

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The strengths and flaws of Sabbath's Theater and the great final section

My memory serves me well in re Philip Roth's Sabbbath's Theater, which I recalled from when I read it 20 years ago as having a really rough start and concluding an absolutely beautiful account of the protagonist's journey back to his home town on the Jersey Shore. Same experience reading the novel this time - although I think, first, that I'm even more conscious and aware of the protagonist's horrible treatment of women, in particularly young and vulnerable women, and, to counterbalance, I'd forgotten how many terrific passages of high comedy and schtick Roth includes throughout the novel, particularly Sabbath's rants against the society and culture that, he thinks, has failed to recognize his genius and has marginalized him. An example of the highs and lows: Sabbath's defense of the his obsession with the underpants of the 19-year-old daughter of his friend (who's providing him w/ food, clothing, and shelter when Sabbath is on the brink of suicide) and his attempt to seduce his friend's wife, Michelle - hilarious when you read some of the passages of Sabbath's outbursts, repulsive if you think about his lack of feeling for others and his perverse attraction to young girls. He believes his sexual impulses are without consequences - oblivious to his affect on others, breaking up marriages and families. And why is he so attractive/successful? I wonder why Roth made him such a physically ungamely character - makes it hard to credit his success with women, unless Roth's goal is simply to debase women, which I doubt. In any event, leaving Manhattan and leaving behind his attempt to seduce his friend's wife, he heads to the Jersey shore, initially to select his gravesite in the cemetery where his parents are interred; this is a terrific and an odd scene, setting us up for the last moments of the novel, a return to childhood - an ever-present Roth theme, of course.

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Great writing about a despicable character - can Sabbath's Theater be a great novel?

And the great writing in Philip Roth's Sabbath's Theater (1995) continues, w/ a powerful section recounting the protagonist's (Mickey Sabbath's) visit to his wife, Roseanne, in an alcohol-detox hospital ($1,000/day in about 1990, but covered by insurance - those were the days!) apparently somewhere near Ithaca, N.Y. As Roth always does, he gets the vibe of a community and setting down perfectly, along w/ a few satiric moments and a skeptic's reserve about the language of recovery. This is all to the good, but, as w/ every other section of this novel - and some (not I) would say as throughout Roth's works - the narrative is hindered by the extreme unlikability of the protagonist. Using the rehab-center episode as an example, its all fine and harrowing and engaging when we're reading about his wife's struggles, her ambivalence, the tough love and strict regulations of the center, the range of people in the center each w/ his or her own demons - but then Sabbath entices the prettiest of the young women there to walk on the grounds w/ him, allegedly in search of Roseanne, and he draws her out about her trauma, and of course hits on her (she's about 1/3 his age), which was repulsive even in the 90s and more so today, and gets her to agree to have sex w/ him in return for a few bottles of vodka. The plan down't pan out for Sabbath, but what are we to make of such a character? I'm not one who says all characters in great novels have to be "likable," but must they be despicable? And of course Roth knows what he's doing, that he's creating a demonic protagonist - and he does a great job, to give due credit, in presenting Sabbath's back story, the death of his older brother in WWII and how that destroyed the family, but still, we don't feel sorrow and pity for this guy - we just expect and want him to get what he deserves. (Note: The next section begins w/ his trying to seduce the wife of the old friend who provides him w/ food, clothing, shelter, and medical services when he's in greatest need. What are we to make of that?)

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More great writing from Roth - but about an insufferable character

Again noting that in Philip Roth's 1995 novel, Sabbath's Theater, we see some of his best writing ever and some of his, I won't call it "worst" because as an exemplar of literary style Roth is almost always at the top, but let's say most perverse writing, to wit: the protagonist, Mickey Sabbath, invited to spend the night at the home of wealth friends in Manhattan and put up (improbably) in bed of daughter who's away at Brown and allowed (improbably) free reign of the house in the a.m. when everyone else is out at work, spends an hour or so rummaging through all of the young girl's belongings in search of sex photographs (a bit of quaintness there, as today he'd need to find only her phone or her log-in). The catalog of her possessions is like a valuable archeological document, something future generations (god help us) might read to know what life was like in a particular time and place as signified by material possessions. It's truly a tour de force of Rothian writing - as is a later lengthy passage as Sabbath roams the streets of NYC, esp the Lower East Side, where he formerly had an experimental theater, and we get a terrific picture of a time and place a seen through one man's consciousness - it was a time when NY was at its nadir, filled w/ crime and corruption - seems a long way back now in an era when rents are phenomenal even in remote Brooklyn and Queens - in a Joycean manner, as Roth actually slyly tips his hat to JJ in the midst of this "stream of consciousness." Great writing - yes - but in the process creating a character who rummages through a teenager girl's belongings and, in a later passage when PR goes so far as to provide a lengthy (and sexy, it must be admitted) transcript of a sex tape, involving a 60-year-old college prof and his 20-year-old, naive, immature, vulnerable student. Despite all of Sabbath's pleas for understanding - she was of age, she was a willing participant, everyone's out to get him, he's only following his natural instincts, and so on - it is impossible to sympathize with, and therefore to care much about, this perverse, suffering, insufferable character.

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Strong piece of fiction about American combat soldiers in Afghanistan

Will Mackin's story in the current New Yorker, The Lost Troop, has the ring of authenticity; it's obvious that Mackin has served in combat in Afghanistan and that he draws heavily on his experience in his short fiction. In fact, his writing probably touches on journalism or memoir, but by pitching his tent in the fiction camp he's given himself the necessary freedom to build composites and to imagine his way into the consciousness of others. Good decision. This story is a powerful one that helps us understand both the ever-present mortal danger of this assigned to combat duty and the all-pervasive boredom that infects the lives of soldiers and sometimes leads to stupid decisions. The story begins with the troop feeling so isolated and w/ so little to do that the narrator imagines that perhaps the war has ended and they just haven't received word. Eventually, their troop leader asks the guys for suggestions as to what night-time missions they might undertake, rather than sit around in base camp. They take on 3 (consecutive?) night missions: taken by chopper to a local graveyard that one of the soldiers thinks may include false graves beneath which lie enemy tunnels (it doesn't), slight to a former battle area so they can scatter the ashes of a comrade who died in combat there (mission accomplished, but of no military value - does remind us of the danger that can strike at any time or place), and excursion to the home of a man who was a (cruel and mean) teacher of th Afghan interpreter who's working with this troop (mission of no military value but lets the interpreter get a degree of vengeance on ex-teacher - what wouldn't want to do that?!). Story or selection ends with the teacher on his knees, terrified, asking: "What did I do?," which is a great question that in a sense permeates all the acts of war in this story and beyond. There have been a few - very few - strong pieces of fiction about recent American wars, and Mackin is definitely in the list.

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David Gilbert New Yorker story w/ echos of George Saunders

David Gilbert's fiction in last week's New Yorker, The Sightseers, may be part of a longer work - I suspect it is, based on the open-ended conclusion - but I wonder how long DG can sustain the satiric tone over the course of a longer piece. Not too many writers shows such contempt for their characters; DG's characters are the Manhattan plutocrats - a generation, at least, beyond the bond traders of Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities - these folks far more wealthy - though the source of the wealth not made clear we suspect it's from hedge funds and the like. Wondering how DG knows so much about these people and their lifestyle (so to speak): the family tha buys three adjacent townhouses to make their own Manhattan palazzo, for example. Perhaps just from his abundant imagination. In any event, despite their left-leaning sympathies these 0.02 percenters are pretty awful people, primarily made manifest by their scripted management of their children - and particularly vividly presented in a diner party scene when the adults vie for the adulation and attention of teenage daughter of hosts, named Flip, a great scene. What pushes this story beyond a simple satiric portrait of the superwealthy is that it's set sometime in the indefinite future and one of the pastimes (and so-called foundations or charities) of these people is to "sponsor" families on vacation: a family (the Herons) is on vacation in NYC, all paid for and arranged by the superwealthy family, and in return the host gets to watch the entire vacation as each vacationer is equipped with a viewcam; this is a touch a lot like a George Saunders novel or story 0 in particular it recalls the great Semplica Girls story - but not clear where DG is going w/ this motif; one of the families seems to have disappeared and abandoned their cameras - maybe that's something he is developing further if this is a longer piece. Otherwise, it's too much of a loose thread.

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Why Sabbath's Theater gets better after the first section

And as I recalled (see yesterday's post), Philip Roth's Sabbath's Theater (1995) gets a lot better once we're past the ridiculously salacious first section in which the priapic protagonist, the 64-year-old retired puppeteer Mickey Sabbath, mourns the loss of his "mistress" of 14 years, Drenka. There''s almost nothing good, interesting, or appealing about Sabbath or about any of the writing in the first section; but after a closeout scene in which Sabbath pays a final visit to Drenka's gravesite (where he sees one of D's many other lovers who gets clobbered by D's son, a state trooper and S realizes the trooper thought he was clobbering S) he takes off for NYC. Here we learn much of the history of Sabbath's strange life, and the novel really gets going: mother seriously depressed over the loss of her older son in WWII (covered in the only good part of the first section), Sabbath becoming a merchant sailor and then a part of the avant-garde theater movement in NY circa 1955, first marriage to Nikki, a talented actor, philandering, Nikki leaves him (perhaps after learning of his infidelity) and disappears, presumed dead but Sabbath desperately searching for her, marries Roseanne, an artist who becomes his partner in puppet theater, suffering alcoholic who at present is deeply involved in AA, Sabbath sarcastic as always completely contemptuous of her absorption in recovery etc., he picks a fight, then leaves. He's headed for NY because he received a call from one of his compatriots in the old days of theater who reports that another of their colleagues has suffered depression and killed himself; Sabbath off to join the funeral. Stays w/ the friend, whom he hadn't seen in 30 years, the friend a success, highlight Sabbath's failure and unconventional appearance; puts S up in daughter's bedroom (shes off as a freshman at Brown), a big mistake as S begins to fetishize various items in the girl's room: photos, vaginal cream, even the toilet seat. Again, we are repulsed by Sabbath - but at least by this point we understand some of the horrors and tremors of his life; these do not excuse his terrible relationships with women (nor explain why he attracts to many women, either), but they help us understand his destructive pathology. In a great passage that begins bottom p. 142 Sabbath himself summarizes the failures of his life.

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Reaons why I hate the first section of Sabbath's Theater

This brings us to the issue of Philip Roth. Because many of his books are so great and even in the not so great there are almost always great passages and sections, we or at least I overlook some of the tasteless and boorish passages in his better works - but what about Sabbath's Theater? I read it when it was new, that is, 27 years ago, and was repulsed by some of it and amazed and moved by other sections, most notably the section near the end when the protagonist, Micky Sabbath, visits his childhood home in Asbury Park, N.J. I picked the novel up again, having read in a recent Roth interview that it's possibly his favorite among his novels (it was also touted in a recent NYer review of Roth's nonfiction). Once again, I'm repulsed by the first section, for at least three reasons: First, the sexuality is so overdone, so over the top - who can forget the scene of Sabbath "mourning" over Drenka's grave? - that it's almost comical without actually being funny at all; second, this is so obviously an idiotic male fantasy - the overweight, white-bearded, unsuccessful, unattractive 64-year-old man in an abundant sexual relationship with an eager, ridiculously compliant, sexy younger woman; third, whether you buy into the Sabbath-Drenka relationship at all, you can't help but feel that this rutting couple is incredibly cruel to Drenka's hard-working husband - it's one thing to pursue illicit pleasure but another altogether to do so w/ cruel intent toward an innocent spouse (Sabbath's wife is a complete nonentity, btw); fourth, Sabbath isn't content w/ just Drenka but has to hit on very young, vulnerable women as well (seeking a partner in a threesome, at one point) and has a history (which cost him a teaching job) of sex w/ a minor - at one time some could overlook these character flaws but here's reading the novel today we cannot laugh off Sabbath's crude and perhaps even criminal behavior; fifth, Sabbath and Drenka have been carrying on an affair for 14 years in a small community in what appears to be the Berkshires - and spouses don't know? They must know, but maybe they don't care? This is a third-person narration so maybe we can have a clue as to what others think about these two? All that said, I will read farther into the novel, as I believe Roth pulls back from the sensationalism of the first section and moves on to other more salubrious matters.

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The first existentialist novel - The Sleepwalkers?

OK, at this point I've given it enough - read all of part/volume 1 and half of volume 2, = about half the entire novel - to say that Hermann Broch's The Sleepwalkers may have been important in its day (1928-31) but claims that he's in the same class as Mann, Musil, or even Dolbin are in my view overstatements. We go a long way toward the study of 2 men - The Romantic in vol 1 and The Anarchist in vol 2 - who are not exactly social misfits (the "romantic" is a well-established military officer, the anarchist a young man starting out in business and entrepreneurship) but are troubled and confused, like many young men of their day and always. Esch, the protagonist of vol 2, is struggling to begin a career as an entrepreneur (he has begun to organize a series of women's wrestling matches, which actually gets off to a prosperous start) and confused about his relationships w/ women - by the mid-point of the volume he is drawn to an older, widowed woman who runs a small restaurant - not really attracted to her physically but drawn to her as to a "mother" and provider - and confused about his society. Esch blames many others for the various failures and disruptions in his life, and has begun to think about killing the owner of a shipping company where he used to work - but these thoughts are inchoate. He also feels remorse about a labor organizer who's imprisoned after being set up by some goons who turned a peaceful meeting into violence - but Esch doesn't do anything about his remorse. In other words, he's a man of bitterness and resentment paralyzed by inaction - really the first of the existential heroes, the antecedent of Camus' Mersault. That said, given that the protagonists do very little, 800 pages is a long road to travel. This novel doesn't feel to me like an examination of a society in crisis, nor do I see anything that foretells the horrors facing Germany (and Europe) in the years ahead - both the First World War that preceded Broch's composition of this work and the 2nd, whose seeds were already taking root (compare w/ Berlin Alexanderplatz, which seems much more prescient about German culture). 
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First thoughts on the 2nd volume of Broch's Sleepwalkers

Part 2 or volume 2 of Hermann Broch's 1928-31 novel, The Sleepwalkers, is called The Anarchist, and in keeping w/ that title it's more political and more about current events of the time (set in 1903 in various cities in Germany - Cologne, Mannheim) than was volume 1. The connection across the two volumes is tenuous: one of the main characters in vol 1 (set in 1888) was ambitious and selfish young businessman; in vol 2 this character is the owner of a large factory that employs the main character and others, though at least halfway thru the volume he never appears. In this volume a young man, August Esch, gets fired from his bookkeeping (only word-base in English w/ 3 consec double letters - first time I've ever written it I think!) job, and he suspects it's because another clerk was running a scam w/ the books - this becomes something of an obsession for Esch. W/ help from a union organizer - though Esch is not part of the union and in fact doesn't really favor the labor movement, he's an "independent" man - Esch gets a job at a firm in another city. In this job, he rooms w/ a co-worker and co-worker's sister, and various sexual entanglements arise. At one point Esch's friend the union organizer comes to the city and there's a meeting of radicals that turns violent thanks to some agents provocateurs, and the police swarm in and arrest the organizer and others. Esch, characteristically, thinks only of himself and soon embarks on a plan to work w/ a few others and begin a women's wrestling league as a circus-like entertainment (he has befriended some performers, as well as a rather sorrowful character who's a devout Xtian, perhaps homosexual, runs a tobacco shop and advocates for vegetarianism and the Salvation Army and moral rectitude - an incongruity even back in 1903 I think). So this doesn't seem to be a political novel a la, say The Secret Agent, but it's another look at a man caught in the swirl of currents disturbing his society - but remaining disengaged, a spectator. Nothing in the novel to this point - about 250 pp in - foreshadows in any obvious way the World War (which I suspect will be central of volume 3) or the rise of fascism and anti-Semitism, though there are some nasty comments about Jews but probably nothing extraordinary for the day, or maybe even today for that matter.
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Volume 1 of The Sleepwalkers: A story of one man, or a broader look at social forces?

The end of Book One (The Romantic) of Hermann Broch's 1928-31 3 vol novel, The Sleepwalkers, leaves me puzzled and confused. So the main character, the young German officer Joachim, tries to leave money to his Berlin girlfriend, the sometime-prostitute, poorly educated, "lower" class Ruzena, but she, always classy in her way, completely declines the money and berates Joachim, w/ particular venom toward J's (only?) friend, Bertrand. J then formally proposes to Elisabeth, the daughter of a wealthy landowner who lives near his family estates; this is the marriage that all of the families hoped would take place. But it's obvious his heart isn't in it - nor is hers, as in fact the conniving Bertrand had declared his love for her but, realizing they would never be able to marry, he takes off on a business expedition, possibly to India (the ends of the earth for a European in this setting - 1888). So J is right to think he has been betrayed by Bertrand, but what about this marriage? Why does he enter into it w/ such lack of feeling and emotion? The volume ends with their chaste wedding night, a totally strange night in which J seems to have hallucinations that his wife's face is not a human face but is some kind of landscape, with mountains and valleys. He's obviously sexually experienced, but just not drawn to this woman; she doesn't seem afraid or frigid, in fact seems more forward than he is, but they end up sleeping side by side w/out touching. In the end, I have no idea what to make of this: Is this a portrait of a somewhat mentally disturbed young man, pressured by conflicting forces in his society (drawn toward the sexually adventurous woman but married to the proper German daughter, loyal to his country - he's a soldier though we see nothing of his military profession - and his family but always in the shadow of his older brother who died in a duel "of honor" and of his father, who is increasingly mentally ill himself and trying to disinherit his only son? Is this story meant to represent the forces at work in society in the late 19th century? If so, it doesn't really click - at least not in comparison w/ the other great German language epics of its time: Magic Mountain, Man Without Qualities, Berlin Alexanderplatz - all of which are imbued w/ their time, wrestle w/ grand ideas, and present a broad spectrum of society and not just the torments of a late Romantic. That said, this volume reads well and has some fine, weird passages, the wedding night among them; I will at least have a go at volume 2, sent in 1903 and called The Anarchist (which sounds promising already).

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Broch

The first volume of Herman Brock's 1931 novel, The Sleepwalkers, moves along placidly up to a point; the first hundred pages of so establish the dynamics of the plot, which centers on the young German army officer Joachim Von Pasenow. J is surrounded by opposing forces. His tyrannical napoleanic father insists that, following death of older brother in a duel of "honor," J come home to manage the family estate and to marry the daughter of wealthy neighbor. J is very attracted to the beautiful daughter , Elisabeth, but he is also deeply involved in a love affair w a woman in Berlin whom he had more or less rescued from a life of prostitution (Ruzena). His (only?) friend, Bertrand, a successful international businessman , has insinuated himself into both relationships - and at some point the novel feels frozen in place w the protagonist unable to make any decisions about his love, life, and future - a hamlet/prufrock sort of character. The novel takes a turn for the bizarre and dramatic, however, when the father , herr von pasenow, suffers some kind of nervous breakdown and insists on disinheriting his son and exhibits odd behavior (obsessed w mail delivery, angry at dead son for not writing). Meanwhile so-called friend Bertrand tries to set Ruzena up in a dress shop , which she rightly sees as a way to buy her off; furious, she shoots be w a pistol, grazing his arm. When J hears if this he goes off in search of the now- vanished R; finds her in ladies room at night club/casino. After ugly scene there she leaves w a customer- back to her old ways it seems. J - a la the German romantics (this part of the novel set in 1888 and called The Romantic) descendants of Young Werther considers suicide but literally falls asleep from exhaustion while writing the note. It's impossible however for readers to imagine his settling in marriage w either woman - one too socially outcast the other to good and "pure" - tho perhaps not naive about sexuality, a very open theme in this ahead-of-its-time novel. We hope,however, that he will have the chance to tell off his officious father.

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Another great Modernish novel that few today have heard let alone read

Another classic Modernist novel that for some reason few have heard of let alone read: Hermann Broch's The Sleepwalkers (1928-31, 3 volumes) - which I started reading yesterday. First volume, The Romantic, set in 1888 Berlin and a family estate elsewhere in Germany.Very briefly the initial plot concerns the younger son, Joachim, of the titled landowner, Herr von Pasenow. The younger son forced to go to military school age 10 and into a career in the Army, to which J does not feel fully suited; older brother gets to live on and run the estate. Older brother dies in a duel "of honor," so J may have to go back to run the estate and, presumably, marry daughter of neighboring landowner, Elisabeth - but he is now used to life in Berlin and has fallen in love w/ a bar-girl, i.e., prostitute, Ruzena, who is Czech and not well educated - completely unsuitable marriage from POV of stuffy and hateful father. All that said, this novel isn't plot-driven, although it does have a few beautifully rendered scenes: the father visiting son in Berlin and going out for a night on the town, father tries to "buy" Ruzena for son for 50 marks, a mortifying scene - and perhaps the precursor to the father-on-the-town scene in La Dolce Vita; the beautiful scene of J and R spending a day in the country and falling in love, ends w/ their having sex in R's apartment - a surprisingly frank and detailed description of sexual relations for a 1920s European novel. Most of the novel, though, involves long conversations examining various topics and viewpoints: the morality of dueling, the inevitable rise of the black population in the African colonies. So the novel feels like a novel of ideas, but as such not as focused as the standard-setting Magic Mountain, in that the ideas arise from conversation rather than from action and conflict. Like Mann and Musil, Broch writes in 3rd person, so this doesn't feel as much like an examination of consciousness as does Proust; also like Mann and Musil, Broch does not experiment in form or w/ language (as does, obviously, Joyce). Perhaps the closest literary relative would be Doblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz - though the social milieu is largely landed gentry and military officers rather than thieves and other criminals, the mood is similar, examining the dark side of Berlin life - and obviously doing so across a long span of time (the 3rd volume is set in Brach's present of ca 1930).

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Possible meanings of the "riddle" in Tom McGuane's story

Another fine Tom McGuane story, Riddle, in the current New Yorker; McGuane has established himself as the great chronicler of the changing times in the Northwest, Montana in particular (his friends Tobias Wolff and Richard Ford have also written well about this region and there are many similarities particularly between McGuane and Ford). This piece, in which a contemporary man looks back on an unusual, perhaps pivotal, day in his life about maybe 20 years back, and he himself, as narrator, says he cannot quite make sense of the events or even be sure which if any may be imagined rather than recollected. McGuane focuses many of his stories on the migration or invasion if you will of West Coast $ into rural Montana, whether from those fleeing the pressures of life in the tech or entertainment industries or more often from the uber-wealthy building vacation ranches and estates. His (male) protagonists play a facilitating role in this invasion, which is changing the world they grew up in or at least settled into, in their modest ways. The narrator (often a realtor, a la Richard Ford's major protagonist, interestingly) in this case is an architect, whose specialty is building models for presentation and use by other architects; he notes that "in those days" he rented a small office in town (presumably, no need for him to have an office at present - for reasons left open - too successful? only builds models no need to meet w/ clients? to un-successful? change of career?) and notes that he had a model of FallingWater on display and that his clients usually thought it was a house he'd designed. Ha! On this night, after heavy drinking to closing hour, he sees an old ranchhand on the near-deserted Main Street greeted warmly by a young many or boy, and narrator is profoundly moved by watching this encounter - he's not even sure why, but we can sense that it's out of his own sense of loneliness. On his ride home to his house out in the country (at least 10 miles) he comes across an "accident" scene, which proves to be a scam as the purported victims steal his car and take off. He gets a ride home from a woman - an ER doc - and at his home they have sex; presumably, he never sees her again. The next morning the Sheriff arrives and tells him his car was involved in a bank robbery and the driver and passenger were hit in a fusillade of bullets when they were arrested. He asks why the narrator never reported the theft of his car; narrator cannot answer this - which seems to be the eponymous  "riddle." Was it because he was not sure of his facts? Did that have something to do w/ the ER doc? So odd that an ER doc would pick him up on the highway; could he have gone to the ER and his memory blanked? Did he in some odd way ID w. the bank robber Bonnie & Clyde-like couple, see them as an emblem of what his life could - or should - be: on the run, escaping from norms and expectations, or at least w/ someone instead of out in the country 10 miles from a small city, nobody else in his life?

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Why writing a novel is like a socially acceptable form of insanity

Laurent Binet wraps things up, kinda, in the last section + epilogue to The Seventh Function of Language, but honestly the conclusion is so Byzantine I just could not figure it out or answer all of the questions. But does it matter? Not really; this novel, though a mystery novel in structure, is not at all like a mystery novel in mood or intention.We really don't care exactly who dunnit or why they dunnit - it's more about the send-up of academe and the examination in a lighthearted and entertaining manner of certain complex literary and philosophical issues. But we never or at least I never quite learn what the eponymous 7th function is; at the end I still think it's some kind of pronunciatory function (I now declare you ... which by so uttering makes it so) of language, with the idea tha the 7th function by establishing fact through utterance can influence the behavior of others - in other words, can become a tool of political oppression or control. But we also see - in the final debate in the Logic Club - that the 7th function doesn't work; and then we learn - I guess this may be a spoiler but if you're with me this far you know that it doesn't really matter - that Barthes did not discover the 7th function - one of his mentors (Jakobson) did so, and for some reason entrusted Barthes not w/ a manuscript describing the function but w/ a fake description - which is why the 7th function failed in the Logic Club debate, because it wasn't the real function. So what is? Who knows? At the end of the novel, Simon Herzog - now good buddies w/ police inspector Bayard - is still trying to puzzle out whether he's a character in a novel or living a so-called "real life - hah! - and has the final insight int he last section that he's not only a character in a novel, that in fact he is the author of the novel. Well, hm, I know nothing about Binet but we surmise that, like Herzog, he's an academic perhaps in a philosophy department - but he obviously did not go experience the life of his character, replete w/ murder attempts and the lopping off of his right hand. But in a sense all authors are (all of) their characters; as I have said elsewhere, writing a novel is something like a socially acceptable form o insanity, as novelists carry on these long and complex relationships w/ people who exist only in their heads. Talking to one's self is another function of language, I believe.

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A turn toward the grotesque in the late stages of The Seventh Function of Language

Entertaining, informative, and provocative as it is, Laurent Binet's novel The Seventh Function of Language takes a turn toward the grotesque toward the end - in the "Venice" section, when the characters converge for a high-level meeting of the Logic Club, in which members and "challengers" face off in one-on-one debates on various esoteric topics, the "loser" of the debate has to, gulp, put his hand on a chopping block and have a finger lopped off. We'd already witnessed a few of these debates - I suspect that this club and its gruesome competitions is a sly mockery of some academic face-offs, though I have no idea what Binet's target might be - but the big confrontation in Venice is far more graphic and disconcerting. The debates themselves: In the first, the protagonist Simon Herzog, who amusingly continues to wonder whether he's actually leading a life or if he's just a character in a novel - prevails over a higher-ranking club member in a debate about Classic and Baroque style (a good primer in this section on these two terms in art and literature); in the second, Sollers, whom we believe may be the only person in possession of the document from the late Roland Barthes on the eponymous 7th function, the document that has set this entire mystery into action, does a horrible job in his debate, speaking in fragments and seemingly in a stream of consciousness. Is this supposed to be a demonstration of the 7th function? If so, it's a useless function; Binet has hinted that the 7th function involves provoking others into action, but at this point I suspect all readers are wondering whether we'll ever know what the 7th function is, or even if there is such a thing. In any event, for some unknown reason the novel turns to the grotesque at this point. To put it bluntly, Sollers, loser of the debate (and the husband of Helene Cixous, another "real-life" character in this novel and here a supposed Bulgarian agent seeking the Barthes document) has his balls cut off; shortly after that horror, Simon is attacked by agents of the man whom he defeated in the debate - a prominent Italian politician, as Simon has correctly surmised based on various "signs" - who sever Simon's right hand and toss it into a glassblowing furnace. Why does Binet do this, and unsettle us so much? Perhaps the two short final sections of the novel will elucidate.

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A character in a novel who recognizes that he is a character in a novel

Laurent Binet's The Seventh Function of Language has a really great postmodern moment (p. 247) in which the hapless philosophy professor, Simon Herzog, whom the French police inspector Bayard has pulled from his academic setting and made him an advisor and sidekick in the search for the eponymous document that various spies and other operatives have been seeking for means fair and foul, including possibly the assassination of the one who composed the document, Roland Barthes. At this point in the novel, with Herzog and pretty much everyone else completely befuddled by the tangle of events - and we still don't know why this document is so important to anyone aside from the French intellectuals and their coteries - Herzog takes stock of his life. He realizes that he has had more adventures and strange encounters in the past few weeks than he'd expected to have over the course of his life: To name just a few, he's had sex in an Italian piazza, had witness a couple engaged in sex on a photocopying machine, had seen a man stabbed to death with a poisoned umbrella, had been involved in a car chase across Paris ending when the pursuers tried to kill him, etc. Then he tries to make sense of the adventure he's been brought into, and he goes over in his mind a # of the shaggy plot points that bother attentive readers as well, or this and of numerous other adventure novels: Why, for example, didn't the Prime Minister just have the suspect (a female Bulgarian philosopher) brought in for interrogation rather than send Bayard and Herzog to a conference in the U.S. to spy on her?, etc. At last he says: I think I'm stuck in the middle of a novel! Great: That's a sentence that calls attention to itself in so many ways. Yes, he is a character in a novel, so in addressing that fact he utters a true statement. But then again, even his recognition of his status as a "character in a novel" is suspect: Words are things, too, but what is the reference point here? Who is making this observation? A character? An author? We, the readers? Narrators often step outside of their own narrative to address the reader; characters, rarely so - and even when seeming to do so they remain characters. In a sense, Herzog's feeling of being a character in a novel is something we readers may also feel from time to time: My life is so complicated right now it should be a novel - who hasn't thought that? In some ways, Herzog's utterance is "within character," that is, just a realistic/naturalistic moment in this dizzying narrative.
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Another possible meaning of the Seventh Function of Language

As we continue trying to figure out the mystery behind Laurent Binet's The Seventh Function of Language - what was Roland Barthes's final, eponymous theory and why would a team of Bulgarian and, possibly, Soviet agents be on a murderous spree trying to find or learn the contents of this esoteric document? - and as the central characters - police inspector Bayard and his "impressed" (as in impressed seaman) aide, literature prof Simon Herzog - head of for Ithaca (N.Y.) to try to find the document or its significance (Binet includes in the Ithaca chapter a hilarious take on an academic conference in progress) another theory about the possible 7th function arises: The pronunciation function. Like everything else in this novel it's entirely odd and over the top yet just barely comprehensible and possibly even plausible. The "pronunciation" function of language refers to utterance which in and of themselves become true when and only when uttered, by their very nature. Two examples: I now pronounce you man and wife - it becomes true when pronounced. Similarly: The court is now in session. But why would it be so important to understand this function? Herzog is thinking about this and posits that it may be a way to use language as a means of control. Yes, if a government could at will apply the pronunciative function of language it would be the ultimate degree of fascism and dictatorship: The government says so and it therefore becomes so. This could be a description of the totalitarian world of 1984 (this novel, published this year - 2017 - is set in 1980). 

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