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.

Oh, Susannah!

  Oh, Susannah!  

“Do you know the story of Susannah and the elders?” Roz asked me at breakfast.
    Because I had a doctor’s appointment and I had been determined to be an unreliable narrator and because Uncle Albert, who had been judged reliable couldn’t get out on the snow and ice, and there was snow and ice, Roz wasn’t going to work, and we were at the kitchen table, eating sailors’ eggs and drinking coffee and orange juice.
     “Of course you do,” she said. “But did you know it’s the key to the whole Bible?” She stopped. “And it isn’t even in it!” she almost yipped.
     “What are you talking about?” I said. I didn’t add that The Key to the Scriptures wasn’t in the Bible either.

     “Think about it,” she said.

She waited. Then: “It’s excitement that threatens order, always. ‘Don’t get excited’ – that’s the great commandment – because if you do chaos might break through. It’s what happens with Eve, right? God spends an entire six days – or six eons – one entire chapter putting everything in order. How dare she, excited by the possibilities the snake hiss-hints at her, risk all that? ‘Jesus! Calm down, woman.’
     “What Jesus tells his mother at the wedding at Cana: ‘Calm down, woman. Can’t we do things in order?’ And he’s right: The first of the signs leads to the second of the signs and to the third and fourth, and every one causes more trouble than the one before, and soon he’s raising Lazarus on the outskirts of Jerusalem: Real trouble is just next door.
     “‘It was the woman you gave me,’ Adam says. ‘I had to have a mother, there wasn’t another way to do it?’ Jesus asks. It’s not misogyny, I don't think. It’s just acknowledging where the excitement begins – for the learned men writing the story: it begins with women: Susana and the elders!” 

“Where did you get that?” I asked as I began clearing the table to scrape the dishes and put them into the dishwasher.

     “What do you mean?” Roz said.
     “What?” The way she said it, I must have been treading on thin ice, so I said, “What?”
     “You don’t think I could make that up? – I mean by myself?”

     “What time do we need to leave?” I asked.
     “Because I’m a woman?” Gruffly. But then she started laughing. Then, “Bwah-hah-hah,” she said. Then, “We should leave in twenty minutes or so,” Roz said.

 

02.16.21

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  * Illustration by Artemisia Gentileshi. Words and music by Stephen Foster.

Leicester City!

  Leicester City!  

Uncle Albert was up early this morning, knocking at my door: Was I going to watch the Leicester City - Liverpool match?
     “I was thinking I would,” I said.
     “I was thinking I would, too. But I need you to help me down the stairs.”

 

So, I got up, pulled a pair of wool pants over my pajama bottoms and a hooded sweatshirt over my pajama top. I walked Uncle A down the stairs and into his chair. “Yes,” he exasperated to my question. “Yes, I’ve been to the john.” I went into the kitchen and made toast and jam and cups of tea, while he tuned the match in. “What’s it on?” he called. “I don’t know,” I said. But he found it.

 

0-0 at the half.

     “So, you’re reading Iris Murdoch again?” he asked. Out of nowhere.
     “Yes,” I said. “Why is everybody* interested?”
     “I met her once,” he said. “Well, more than once. She was formidable.”
     “I imagine.”
     “Why?” Uncle Albert asked after he’d asked me to mute Rebecca and Robbie and Danny. (“Damn they like to talk,” he said: “Except she likes to yell.” “I rather like her,” I said. “Well, she doesn’t care for you,” he said. Then, I said:)
     “Why what?”

     “Do you keep reading Iris Murdoch?” Uncle Albert said.
     “It’s not that I keep reading her, but I do keep coming back to her,” I said. Uncle Albert didn’t say anything. I said, “Gaspar Stephens asked me the same thing? He was reading The Bell. The only other one he’d read was Henry and Cato. He asked me, too, about the homosexual characters in both. What was she doing, given when she was writing, was she exploring ‘identity and alienation,’ I think were his words, and ‘institutions’? ‘It wouldn’t be like today, would it?’ he asked, ‘where the inclusion of LGBTQers might well only be marking how inclusive the writer was?’” I took a breath. It was an ad. Maybe the game was starting again.
     “Mmm?” Uncle Albert said.
     “I said something like that homosexuality, or homosexual characters, played important roles in almost all the books I remembered. Of the ones I’d read lately, I said, they’d play predominant roles in three of the four. Incest was the titillating investigation in the fourth.”

Uncle Albert and Auntie Iris

There was a pause. “Titillating what?”
     “‘Titillating investigation’ – that was the term I used. Unfair – it might be unfair – I said, but it wasn’t entirely wrong. I said: Murdoch wants to both lure the reader in and (then) push the envelope she's lured him into. She is intensely interested in how love works and how it doesn't work, how it can save us and how it can curse us, and how in the meanwhile it is pulling us this way and that way and this way again. The more varieties of love she can put on offer – or investigate – the more she can think about love for us and with us. I said.
     “‘And that’s why I kept reading her’ is what I told Gaspar Stephens.”

“I met her once,” Uncle Albert said.
     “Yes,” I said.
     “Well, more than once,” he said. He motioned at the TV. The second half had begun.

02.13.21

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  * Dramatis personae: GasparStephens, Uncle Albert. “Everybody.”

Ouranic Dissonance

​ Ouranic dissonance.  

When it rains, it sometimes rains letters from heaven.

Dear Ted,
     I think your friend Trudy knows I don’t really like her. [See here.] She pretends though that I must. And I suppose the Culture supports her, for it holds that not only is all well and everything well, all is love and all manner of things is love. So, there is no more room for dislike than for mourning or tears.
     She tells me you are reading Iris Murdoch novels. Is that right? I introduced you to Murdoch, didn’t I? – when I was reading The Bell for reasons I can’t now remember. How old was I – 17 or 18? But I do remember that I passed that book along to you. It was a used Penguin paperback. How does she know that, Trudy – that you are reading Murdoch?
     Otherwise, all is the same because it is always the same, no tears or mourning, no deviation or deceit. Theoretically.
                                                    Love, Moira          

Dear Ted,

     Your sister tells me that you are reading Iris Murdoch – what fun! Also that you have just started A Word Child – I don’t think I’ve read that one. So, again, fun! I could join you. I think I will. Write to tell me what you are thinking about it.
                                               Yes?! Trudy

02.12.21 

winter colors

 

winter colors 

More snow Saturday night into Sunday morning. Vile, death-dealing snow. (See here, here, and here.) White is not the color of purity. If purity must have a color, it is a soft, subtle blue, for purity is always subtle, wise as a serpent as well as innocent as a dove. White is the color of death. And brides should wear scarlet as they do in the Far East. Grooms should wear canary.

02.03.21