A Word Child

 A Word Child  
(Iris Murdoch’s novel, pt. 1) 

LitCrit General's Warning: This isn’t going anywhere - any of it!*

Dear Ted,
     I’m waiting to hear back from you. I’ve started A Word Child though I’m not very far along. Still, I’m anxious to meet ‘Tommy’ – is it short for Thomasin as in The Return of the Native? What sort of girlfriend (or lady (?) friend) / lover could Hilary Burde possibly have? And what effect will the beautiful Indian girl have on their relationship (Hilary and Tommy’s), whatever it is? As you can tell, I’m reading the novel as Romance, not Philosophy. Also, since I borrow all my books – for here no one owns anything, but, as in Acts, everything is held in common – I cannot write in them as you do in yours, I take it.
                                                                                             Write back darn it! Trudy

 Dear Ted,
     Or don’t write back. (Where are you?)

Mayors of Casterbridge
Simon “Pig” Portcullis
1947-1951*

~~~ ‘Tommy’ is Thomasina. She has beautiful legs. You thought I had nice legs, didn’t you? You said so anyway. Not as long as Thomasina’s but nicely shaped.
     Anyway, Thomasina’s star is fading. Now there is this ‘Biscuit.’ Where will that be going? And there is ‘Kitty’ lurking in the wings. All these women with all these nicknames. What will happen to whom next? It’s quite suspenseful, isn’t it? – despite Hilary’s trying to calm everything down.
     He tries to make every week the same; he needs to keep to his routine. But the other characters seem intent on violating it – Christopher and Arthur-and-Crystal; Witcher and what’s-his-name, Reggie, rearranging the office furniture; and now Gunnar Jopling showing up – how dare he?
     I try to think about ‘routine,’ but I cannot where time expands and contracts. Do you still struggle to establish one over which you can exercise control, like Hilary wants to? Why? Do you think it will make you happy or, at least, happier? Why would it? ‘Creatures of habit.’ It’s such a commonplace, isn’t it? But at best it damns with faint praise; at worse it condemns as little, narrow, stuck. So, why would you – anyone – want to become a creature of habit?
     Then there’s this notion that the most ‘effective’ people make a schedule and then make themselves slaves to their schedule. I see the logic of that. What I don’t see at this moment is why one wants to be effective. What does that mean, ‘effective,’ referring to a person? – influential, successful, rich, powerful? Does it have anything to do with Aristotle’s notion of . . . now I can’t think of the word . . . areté (is that right?)? It means something between ‘excellence’ and ‘virtue,’ does it? (Aristotle’s word.) It has to do with one’s being the best he or she can be, the most truly human in her or his way of being human. It doesn’t mean ‘effective’ though that I can see, or ‘influential’ or ‘successful’ or any of that.
     Maybe you can explain though don’t worry if you cannot. I don’t really care. I’m going on with the book. Are you? I do care about that.
                                                          Please! Trudy

Dear Trudy,
     I have gotten to the point where the ‘Anne story’ has come out, Jopling’s first wife – about how Hilary blackmails her into bed, having decided he must have her, and then deciding he must also keep her, how he effectively kills her so she can’t get away. Hilary can’t love Tommy in that way, the way he loved Anne. If there is to be anyone other than Anne he will love, it isn’t Tommy. It isn’t Biscuit either. At this point, I’m wondering where she’s gone. She has come in her sari, but she has been dismissed, and now she has disappeared we don’t know where.
     And Kitty hasn’t come on stage yet, though it must be she, Kitty, Hilary will love – and fasten on. That’s all I have (reading the book as romance). Where are you now, and what are you thinking about it?
                                                                                                                                           From, Ted

 P.S. Have you ever heard the percussionist Willy Bobo? Have you ever heard him sing? A thin, reedy, unimposing voice. The song becomes accompaniment to the music rather than the other way around. It’s a ‘plea’ – is that the word I want? – to pay attention to the background as much as the foreground.

02.18.21

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* LitCrit General’s Warning – By which the General means: Don’t expect to learn anything about Iris Murdoch or the novel that you didn’t already know. The opinions expressed here are those of the uninformed opinionators. They aren’t going to write in any straightforward fashion either. Add that there’s no good online plot summary of the novel that I can find. But, you could read the book!
     The “Mayors of Casterbridge,” phone and tablet drawings by m ball, are collected here.