Tuesday, October 25, 2011

The Novel in Five Pages

First, to get the big thing out of the way, the Rape scene appeared on page 45. So many of my questions have now been answered. The rape was (technically) consensual. That is to say Helga was willing, rather than being raped by force or extortion. She smiles, she experiences pleasure, she pulls her own body closer to his. But, she is also "a girl becoming a woman." Helga is young (how young?), and a married man with another mistress has taken advantage of her childishness. Also, the opening page seems to suggest that X is some kind of legal superior to her. So, this is a rape. X is a villain. But he is, perhaps, a softer villain than he could have been. Or I'm giving him credit because if my own American desire to find the central character of a work of literature sympathetic

Microcosm of the Novel

Today's reading was interesting in that it seemed to encompass all the important themes of the novel in one sitting. The first page featured Dagmar walking through the city streets (a common event on the novel), this time on her way to "this first meeting." She is, as usual, effortlessly beautiful despite herself and this seems to be her first romantic meeting (date) with X. This is the beginning of their romance. The second page contains a car wreck (another?) in which "death is so gentle it makes indifference easier." Who's death is unclear. Of course, most vague personal references in the novel seem to point to X, but that seems hard to accept in this case. This may be the "end" of Marianne. At any rate, it is an end. And this end just happens to occur the page after a beginning.

These two pages, then, create a sort of merism--the entire novel could take place between this beginning and this ending. The rest of today's reading seems to fall naturally between these two events, and the events on these pages represent the most important themes of the novel. Page 43 addresses the macro-cosmic events of the war, as anti-Nazi leaflets are dropped from a high window at Sorbonne (the University of Paris). Page 44 contains a description of Dagmar's apartment/studio where hangs her unfinished work Composition No. 1. Finally, page 45 (the last page of this session) contains the Rape scene--THE unifier of this novel.

If this had been a narrative strategy, it would have been a very interesting one. Narrate the beginning, then the end, then all the stuff in between. Of course, here, it's accidental, and is perhaps even an accident of my own interpretation.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

X's Three Women

I read ten pages today instead of five, which is probably okay since I have catching up to do anyway. Today, we are back to the serendipity of theme. A lot of today's pages dealt with Marianne.

Francine is dying of intestinal cancer and Marianne, as before, refuses to leave her side. Marianne insists that she has cancer as well, but I suspect that her cancer is metaphorical. Dr. Brun doubts her self-diagnosis as well and suggests that Marianne has a nervous condition. In these pages, Marianne also threatens, apparently, to leave X and she goes so far as to leave the apartment building and get into the car, which she cannot drive. She also threatens suicide, locking herself in a bathroom. Interestingly, X does not take her seriously and continues his argument with her, implying that she is lazy (this is narrated and not quoted. X is still technically absent from this narrative). He finally must try to beat the door down and, when she comes out on her own, she has cut her wrists. The injury is not serious. On the last page of today's reading, she sits on the floor and sobs, refusing X's help in standing. The reason she gives for her anger is that he never calls her from work. This is clearly trivial, so she seems to be hiding the fact that she knows what is going on in X's other relationships, though she will not confront him.

Contrasting Marianne's character on these pages, we see Dagmar walking through the winter air in a well fitting dress. Dagmar seems constantly and effortlessly beautiful. So, considering Marianne's characterization as a fading, perhaps even dying woman, it is understandable that X would fall in love with her. Even if it is not honorable, it is forgivable. How can he be expected to resist falling in love with the vivacious Dagmar.

But then there's Helga. Whatever will happen with her is, even before it happens, unforgivable. On page 38, X appears in the garden below Helga's window. It is summer now and her window, depending on the angle from which one is looking at it, appear either black or bright white (a significant dichotomy). Helga finally sticks her head out the window and, seeing X, grins before thrusting her head back into the window and shutting it. Though her grinning seems coquettish and inviting, she is also taking detours to get into her apartment without X seeing her. So here, X seems a bit like Nabokov's Humbert Humbert. He takes Helga's nervous politeness as being purposefully alluring, as if she is playing a playful game with him. She may, in fact, be trying to escape him.

Synthesis:

By looking at the three women to whom X is connected, we get a complex look at X. X seems capable of romantic love with Dagmar, reluctant loyalty (though not faithfulness) to Marianne, and imperialistic brutality toward Helga.

Much of the way in which the reader will interpret X's character then may come from the order that these characters appear and the order that pieces of the narrative is revealed. The very first page of the novel, for me, contained the statute for rape. So from the very beginning, I knew X as a rapist. This characterization clouds all other views of X. Sure, he may wish to salvage his marriage, but he is salvaging it from his own horrific crimes. He may have a compelling romance with the easy to love Dagmar, but he is also a rapist.

Would this characterization change if the order of events had been different? If I knew of his failing marriage first, would I see his clearly exploitative (but not necessarily forced) affair with Helga as a desperate search for something he dies not get at home? If I knew of his love for Dagmar first, would I see his inappropriate dealings with Helga as the flaw of a man who is too easily enamored with pretty things? Or would the rape take over, even if it had come at the end? To what extent, then, is the softening or hardening of my feeling for X determined by the line of the story?

Fade

As soon as I write about serendipitous thematic threads appearing in these pages, I get a set that seems disconnected. In today's reading, Dagmar dances with a black man, and the text suggests that she has her own kind if racism which causes her to be nicest to "jews and negroes." We also see the police watching an intersection with sub-machine guns. They stop cars, talk to the drivers then let them pass. They are looking for someone and, since this is the only intersection in the city they watch, they have specific information. We also see X climbing a dark stair case (the return of the dark hallway from earlier). He puts oil into the lock mechanism of the office door at the top of the stairs to keep the mechanism quiet so as not to alert the nightwatchman. He holds a skeleton key.

There is a thread across two pages, however. On page 26, Marianne eats only grapes (actually, on the juice from one grape) because she is sick, and tells X so. Of course, the reader immediately thinks of pregnancy, but the text suggests something else. She is aging prematurely and wearing a stained dress.

On page 28, unpaid bills are stuck into the frame of a mirror along with an insufficient funds notice. These are here so "Marianne won't forget." So we see a picture of Marianne fading, in health, in beauty, and in wealth. X's actions and her marriage to him are having profound effects on her.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Laying Blame/Thematic Serendipity

Today, we learn that X is a person who passes blame, sometimes without even having to do it himself. On page 25, we learn that X is the driver of one of the vehicles involved in the car crash alluded to earlier. He accuses the other driver of being at fault saying that he himself had the right-of-way and that the other driver was driving way too fast. This might be believable (and may even be true) except that this page falls among others that seem to characterize X as a person who is always shifting blame.

On page 24, Helga is being kissed (by X, no doubt) and is "unsure" of whether or not she will allow it or to fight it. But we don't get the impression that this is a decision about whether or not she likes it, but about whether or not she can "defend herself." This suggests that her passivity will allow X to convince himself, or at least argue to others, that whatever happens between he and Helga was consensual--that she was a willing participant, even if she is only a willing "girl." To him, this will not be a rape but an affair.

Even when X is not purposefully trying to shift blame, others seem to take his blame upon themselves. On page 22, X has confessed to Dagmar, who pretends not to suffer. She takes a share of his crime on herself, feeling as though she is somehow an accomplice, perhaps only because she loves him. She tells X that just as she must forgive him for his faults, he also must forgive her for his faults. It seems that X will not ever have to take full blame for what he himself does.

Serendipitous Thematic Continuity

I have been surprised day to day how well pages I read in succession fit together thematically. The pages on day 1 seemed to center around the theme of small dramas occurring within larger historical dramas. Day 3 foreshadowed the consequences that are inevitably to come for X. The pages on day 4 seemed to all suggest a quality of flashback. And on day 5, we get three examples of X shifting blame to others.

The serendipitous thematic arrangement of these pages has made me wonder more than once if I have shuffled the pages well enough. Perhaps, I have failed to mix the pages up as much as I should and I am seeing some of the author's hand in organizing ideas.

But the fact that these themes seem to be divided perfectly according to day (one day, one theme) makes me think that something else is going on. Here is more evidence that my own brain, in its act of reading and interpreting, is providing its own continuity. The act of reading, then, involves taking possibly disparate pieces of information, and finding among them ways to connect them. Of course, if one follows my descriptions, one will probably see why I reasonably interpreted these pages the way I did--why I saw the themes that I say I saw. But how much of this is my own careful editing, my own picking and choosing information that seems to fit together into a coherent story while leaving the dross on the floor to be swept away.

This suggests that the reader has a great deal of agency, even if unknowingly, in interpreting any narrative. If the events of this story don't make any sense to one reader, it has as much to do with the reader's ability or inability to find and invent narrative threads as it does with the author's own virtuosity or clumsiness. Perhaps this is why we tend to see in any narrative what we are looking for. A Marxist will always see power relationships and class structure. A rhetorician will always see devices the author is using to convince the reader to believe or feel a particular way. So (and this is not news to anyone) we bring as much to the table as the author does.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

The Immediacy of Memory

After four sittings, the plot is beginning to take shape. On page 16, Dagmar is gone and has left behind a hyperbolic emptiness. An "abyss" opens where she should be at X's side. On the next page, Dagmar is leaving--actually "vanishing." But she is also seen in a square feeding birds and enjoying the remarks of a "bold man" (X), something that seems to happen early in their relationship (which increasingly appears to be an affair). This page, then, seems to be a flashback scene. Finally, on page three Dagmar, who is beautifully dressed, gets into a car.

Obviously, the scenes seem out of order--if it's appropriate to talk about order in this book. Add to this the fact that the second of these pages is narrated like a flashback in the classical sense. The fragmented nature of this novel gives the book a feeling of being a disjointed collection of memories.

Interestingly, though, the narrative is in present tense. This is the case on every page so far. This invests the narrative with extraordinary vividness, as if X is reliving these events even as he remembers them. This combination of non-linearity and presents tense narrative creates a very interesting dichotomy. These events are happening now, but they are somehow also jumbled distant memories. There is an immediacy in the novel that is nevertheless clouded by the fracturing of time.