Jackson’s Dilemma
Part 2
So Trudy,
Frankly, I don’t know how to think of Jackson’s
Dilemma. What interests me more than anything else is the characters’
sometimes uneasy but sometimes too easy sense that coincidences – or what I
would call coincidences – are somehow mysteriously and necessarily connected. I
don’t think they are entirely wrong about the mystery, but they are about the
connection. Yet who is right about anything (in the book) depends on what we
think of Jackson.: Is he a believable character as the other characters understand
him to be? Or does his role in the drama turn it into something else, something
like The Tempest, which is surely in Murdoch’s mind when she writes the novel?
That is, it’s not to be a novel, but an entertainment. It doesn’t portray our lives
on earth, but what they would be if they were taking place on a stage in the
middle-air somewhere. The action does not take place in London and the near
English countryside however accurately described the geography of the city and
the flora of the fields. It takes place in the Antipodes before they were given
a certain longitude and latitude. We are transported to a mythical place where
every maid will have her man and every man his match. Here, morning, noon, or
evening, the day will be always turning to dawn or to dusk. And the sun will
shine through the night. The story may move forward; still, time stands still.
All separations, however sore, are
illusory; and every conjunction, whatever its difficulties, will be happy. Joy
will be happy. Melancholy will be happy!
When you write back to disagree,
incidentally, please explain how Marian’s blonde, blue-eyed lover Cantor Ravnevik
becomes her dark-haired, dark-eyed husband Cantor Bjerke.
Please,
Ted
_______________
So, you think Jackson is more an entertainment than, what, a novel? What could be wrong with a novel that entertains? Isn’t that one of its first purposes? And Jackson isn’t its purpose, or one of them, to make us wish for a mid-air world, where mysterious forces between people are felt, not just matters for discussion or an explanation as if all we were once we passed 22 (for women) or maybe 24 (for men) our prefrontal cortices, not just our brains but that particular part of our brain that excludes tears and laughter for the sake of mathematics?
After I finished Jackson, I sat down and in one afternoon I read The Italian Girl, which though there’s nary a priest in it or even a guru like Jackson (or Jim in The Sea, the Sea), I think is about religion. “I was a false religious, a frightened man,” Edmund says right at the very end before he finally (finally!) takes a leap of romantic faith. Certainly, one reason we turn to religion is out of fear. More than out of faith we turn to religion out of fear. We turn away from life, which makes no sense at all, to something we believe can make sense of it.
Life is a muddle (a favorite Murdoch word, especially in The Italian Girl), such a one that even if it could be described accurately to us, we wouldn’t understand the explanation. We don’t think we need it, then we wake up one morning in November. We are as naked as Adam and Eve. We realize cold weather is coming. We’d better find something to cover ourselves. Quickly! Religion – in the broadest sense – is what we clothe ourselves in. The muddle needn’t be explained, it can be transformed – or, if you’re a scientist, restructured. It will make sense!
Then, there’s the matter of forgiveness. This, if we are religious, is something we can give to others. Not our forgiveness of them! But they will be somehow better off when they can forgive us.
What the hell am I talking about, and how did I get here? Please explain. Don’t use your brain.
Please! Trudy
04.06.21
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* LitCrit
General’s Warning – 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 misinformed opinionators.
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