They sat at a rectory table, fire in the stone hearth burning. A pilgrim’s feast. Neighbors. Autumn — leaves driven against the house. He put food in his mouth with the food in his mouth he hadn’t chewed enough to swallow.
“I could go out tomorrow.”
He leaned into her.
“I could find somebody next week. A companion, people seek company — to eat with, read the newspaper with, whatever we do, this is natural. Someone to talk to. Poor Beryl can’t do it. Past a certain age, you can’t argue this, women — of course it’s sad. Well, I find it sad.”
He poured wine for the girl and the firelight, thrown, hissed and shattered in it. The glass was dipped in gold — a golden circle — buoyant, living.
At last he swallowed; this seemed to hurt him. A tremor kept moving through him and through everything he touched. One shoulder sloped low. Years on the mound. The joy of it.
“Maybe not everywhere but certainly here,” he went on. “She has me, naturally, but when I go?”
Shaking, all of him. And the windows shook and wind in the trees and the first bright scraps of snow.
Halloween. Talk of costumes — the children’s, the grandchildren’s. Someone was going as mulch, somebody else as a stop sign.
“I’m going as who I used to be,” one of them said.
The girl turned back to him.
“That face,” Phillip said, “is not attractive.”
She had been tearing skin from the fat of her cheek, tatters of it, to swallow. She was sorry. Why was she sorry? Now she was sorry she had said she was sorry.
“Please,” Phillip said, impatient.
His wife was three chairs away, laughing. She was absolutely silent when she laughed. Good breeding, she called it, indignant. Her father had brayed like a mule. He had struck her once with a pitchfork — her husband had. For something. A lost key? A broken cup? Unforgiveable. But she forgave him.
“Poor Beryl. It doesn’t matter that she used to be beautiful or that she’s smart and easy to talk to. Beryl is stuck with me and when I die, Beryl will be stuck alone. That’s the way it is. Who wants her? You reach a certain age and nobody — nobody wants anybody, really.”
After dinner they gathered at the larger hearth and listened to the wind in the chimney. A deer approached and watched them, standing in the dark field. The first the girl had seen. The deer were dying — a mite of some kind. They fell sick and walked madly in circles.
Leaves struck the glass of the windows and lay, one upon the other, in a fringe around the house. A glassblower’s house. He was talking. She was in love with him but he was married. He had hair like a cherub’s, like a painting of hair. Firelight was on it. His hands — she couldn’t explain it — he caught her watching them as he moved. He had had them insured, he laughed, for thousands. Tens of thousands, even. They meant that much to him.
They drank brandy and he kissed her in his kitchen, a surprise. Not a word. He turned her to him.
Now she slipped into the hall where the heat didn’t reach and made her way to his children’s room. His girl was named for a month in summer, his boy for a tree that grew nobly on a continent far away.
Beryl, the girl thought. A mineral. A pilot flying in darkness over the far Serengeti.
She lay down with the boy above the covers. You could love children and nobody stopped you. You were allowed. And they were let to love you, too.
People were already putting on coats by the time she came back into the room. She had fallen asleep in the boy’s bed. The deer had come closer and watched her, the girl dreamed, its breath fogging the glass, fever glazing its eyes. A springtime deer, it couldn’t help itself. The spots on its hide still showed.
She would name her children simple names. Meriwether. Linnaeus. Hidalgo — no. Sam. Jack. Jane. Just names. Not the names of stars or places. Not trees.
So many trees in these hills. She would never leave.
He studied in Venice. He liked Venetian glass.
Florence: no.
Simple. Bob. The glassblower’s name was Bob. He kept tabs of acid in a candy tin in a drawer beside his bed. In Scotland once he had fallen asleep, tripping, in a field of passing flowers. A flock of sheep closed in around him. Bob, they said. They said, Bob Bob Bob.
Dell.
Rain — no. Maybe Wen.
Beryl will live to be a hundred and marry again, and the glassblower will go off with somebody else, a girl, not this girl, not a farm girl, a plump and sullen Venetian girl, and Phillip will be dead in days. An old man, nimble, in swimming trunks. A Halloween swim, his custom. A last act. A passable dive. The fallen leaves still burning.
About the Author
Noy Holland’s latest work is I Was Trying to Describe What It Feels Like: New and Selected Stories, out now from Counterpoint Press. Noy’s debut novel, Bird, came out in 2015 to much critical acclaim. Other collections of short fiction and novellas include Swim for the Little One First (FC2),What Begins with Bird (FC2), and The Spectacle of the Body (Knopf). She has published work in The Kenyon Review, Antioch, Conjunctions, The Quarterly, Glimmer Train, Western Humanities Review, The Believer, NOON, and New York Tyrant, among others. She was a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council award for artistic merit and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She has taught for many years in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts, as well as at Phillips Andover and the University of Florida. She serves on the board of directors at Fiction Collective Two.
I have long admired R.O. Kwon’s fiction and so it was a thrill to hold her debut novel, The Incendiaries, in my hands for the first time. I won’t attempt to summarize the plot because, as is the case with most books I love, the summary won’t come close to doing the novel justice — but The Incendiaries is lyric and devastating and it takes a hard and beautiful look into the religious void.This novel officially joins the world of books on the last day of July. Dear reader, mark your calendars. In our conversation, R.O. and I discussed having faith — in the religious sense, in the joy-terror of novel writing, and in a writer’s convictions.
Laura van den Berg: Can you describe the initial seeds for The Incendiaries? How did the book first begin to take shape in your imagination?
R.O. Kwon: I’ve joked that everything I write is, in some way, about the God I lost. I’m not sure it’s a joke, though. I grew up so freakishly Christian that my life plan was to become a missionary. I use the word “freak” as a direct quotation, since that’s what I called myself, with pride: a Jesus freak.
Then, in high school, I lost the faith. I can’t really overstate how painful it was — I used to think it would have been less hard to lose my parents than to lose the God I loved, since God, in my idea of Him, promised He’d give us back all that we lost. I was so heartbroken that, for the following year, I couldn’t see much of a reason to keep living. Meanwhile, my family and friends, most of whom still believed, dismissed my apostasy as a youthful, short-lived rebellion. So, I felt very lonely, too. I hoped to write for that girl who felt alone, to tell her I’m here. In addition, I started realizing that a lot of people exist on just one side of the belief spectrum: they know what it is to believe in a god, or they have no idea at all. I wanted to cross that rift, to show each side what the other’s worldview can look like.
I’ve joked that everything I write is, in some way, about the God I lost. I’m not sure it’s a joke, though.
I also have distant family members I’ve never met who live — or lived — in North Korea, and who I’ll probably never meet. To try to fill that hole in knowledge, that deep longing, I kept reading accounts of North Korea. The little information that makes it out, though, feels so incomplete. Eventually, I became interested in exploring this gap, in dwelling, imaginatively, in that place of unknowing, and my novel’s cult leader, John Leal, took on a North Korean past.
LVDB: Thank you for sharing this history. I can very much see, and feel, this grief on the page and also those places of “unknowing” — we do know more about John Leal and his past as the novel progresses, yet we never come to learn the “full story,” if such a thing even exists. In my view, while character histories can powerfully contextualize the present they should resist offering up definitive explanations — a line The Incendiaries manages beautifully. Much space is devoted to the interplay between past and present, with the past contextualizing, yes, but also deepening complexity and mystery. Were these sorts of craft questions on your mind as you worked on the book?
ROK: Thank you for saying that. I think a lot about balance, and complexity, and how vast we all are. Other humans can be so fascinating! The people I know best continue to surprise me with the multiverses they contain. I want to rip them apart, but in a loving way — I crave all their secrets, and I’ll never get them. In fiction, as much as I can, I hope to do justice to that complexity. (I’m reminded of Anne Carson, who said, “On the day He was to create justice God got involved in making a dragonfly and lost track of time.”)
LVDB: I was lucky to be an early reader for The Incendiaries and, if I’m recalling correctly, the draft I read was grounded entirely, or almost entirely, in Will’s point-of-view. When I read the novel in galley form, I really loved the choice you made to open up the POV, to fold in other voices, including John Leal’s. What informed that shift?
ROK: There’s so little fiction about losing faith — and then there’s so little, too, about finding it. In The Incendiaries, Will says that he can’t forget the God he lost, and “the joy [he’d] known, loving Him.” That was my experience, too, and I wanted to bring it to life — to give witness, in a way, to a profound and irretrievable joy.
I badly hoped, in other words, to give life to varieties of belief, and, in time, I thought I could best do this by actively portraying some of these varieties. Will has lost God, while the woman he loves, Phoebe Lin, is starting to find Him. I wished to show what it can be to love an invisible, silent being so much that one might be driven to, say, blow up some buildings.
LVDB: I think one of the greatest terrors and joys (joy-terrors?) of working in the long form is knowing that there will be so many false destinations along the way — scaffolding we cling to for years; moments that feel like discovery but will prove themselves to be a wrong turn — and that the work will lead me to places that I could not possibility anticipate and I have no idea what I might find there. Quite possibly somewhere fucking terrifying! This is true, I think, in the short form as well, but the scope of the novel can, in my experience at least, have a way of intensifying the process.
I know you worked on The Incendiaries for a long while and I’m wondering — what did the process look like for you? Did you have false starts and discoveries? Did the work lead you to places you could not have anticipated from the outset?
ROK: Joy-terrors — good lord, yes! I’m still aghast at how long this book took. Ten years. I so badly want the next novel to take less time. I’m hoping for, I don’t know, five years. Four? Three?
But about false starts: for two years, The Incendiaries mostly consisted of a melancholic woman’s private meditations on the nature of an absent God. For those two years, I worked and reworked the first 20 pages of a novel. The thing is, I got hung up on a metaphor: I thought my novel, like a building, needed a solid foundation, i.e., the first 20 pages. But — and this is still more proof of how powerful language is, and how dangerous metaphors can be — there’s no point in laying a foundation if you have no idea what the building will look like! Is it a skyscraper? An opera house? So, by the end of those two years, I had 20 pages of intricately reworked sentences that I — threw away.
The novel really came to life when I started externalizing the book’s obsession with faith, and centering it upon extremist, creed-driven ideologies. What I noticed is that, every time there’s a new terrorist attack, a shooting, an explosion, people say they can’t understand what the perpetrators were thinking. The terrorists are “monsters,” their actions “unimaginable.” This language of incomprehension is also, of course, sturdily a part of U.S. politics.
Rigorously agnostic though I now am, actively progressive as I strive to be, I can’t forget the God-crazed girl I once was.
I know a lot of people are justifiably sick of being asked to empathize with the ideologues and bigots who want us dead, our rights taken, our bodies claimed as theirs. But some pro-life dogmatists truly do believe they’re doing good — some terrorists, even. Rigorously agnostic though I now am, actively progressive as I strive to be, I can’t forget the God-crazed girl I once was, the fanatic who believed that life starts at conception. Who, believing this, could have prioritized the rights of unborn fetuses over those of living women. Given this history, and with and despite my personal convictions, I wanted to portray both these worldviews without dismissing one side as being utterly beyond comprehension.
LVDB: What books were especially important to you while you worked on The Incendiaries?
ROK: Oh, god, so many. There’s one book by Virginia Woolf that was so totemic I can’t say its name — I’m afraid that, if I name it, it might lose its magic. For the last few years I was working on The Incendiaries, I read parts of this unnamable Woolf book every day.
I even — should I confess this? One tries to avoid sounding too odd. But, in desperate moments, I prayed to Woolf, as though to a patron saint. Not because I believe she’s out there somewhere; I don’t; as I’ve said, I’m very agnostic. But I asked for Woolf’s help just because I love her so much. (There’s artistic precedent for this: George Balanchine prayed to composers while making his ballets! And Malcolm Lowry told a friend he’d once been driven to pray to Kafka. He answered my prayer, Lowry said.)
Other books I read multiple times, over the years, were written by Clarice Lispector, Marilynne Robinson, Julio Cortázar, Kazuo Ishiguro, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Elizabeth Bishop. I love We the Animals by Justin Torres and Open City by Teju Cole. Anne Carson’s Eros is, in a fashion, where my novel began. W.G. Sebald is the shit. There are ways in which the novel is, I think and hope, deeply feminist, and Audre Lorde helped see me through.
More than anything, though, what helped was the day-to-day act of writing itself.
LVDB: I find that practice beautiful — and now you have me wondering about what writer I would pray to. I shall have to think on this.
We’ve been talking a lot about faith and I can’t help but think about how the act of writing a novel is, in many ways, an extraordinary act of faith — if an agnostic one. When I’ve worked with students who are writing novels, their most pressing questions are very often ones of faith — How do you keep going? How do you push through the periods where the project seems utterly hopeless? How do you sit in the uncertainty of unfinishedness? So, I was wondering: could you pinpoint a specific moment of extreme difficulty with the project, a time when your faith in it was really challenged, and how you managed to keep going? Could you also pinpoint a moment of deep joy?
ROK: Oh, god, there were so many difficult moments. Close to the five-year mark, in a fit of despair, I started a new novel. I think I eked out a single sentence, and then I thought, No, I still believe in this first book, fuck, I have to see it through.
But then, the book required five more years after that! Part of what kept me going was the help and encouragement of very generous friends, you included. The sense I mentioned of writing for the lonely girl I was — that also helped. Aspects of what I was writing about — terrorists, extremists, North Korea — kept being front-page news, which let me imagine I had something to say that people might be interested in hearing, and that helped.
More than anything, though, what helped was the day-to-day act of writing itself. Of getting to engage seriously, often desperately, with the English language. Words, words, words! I love the shape of words, I love the comet-tail histories of words. I love the roll and crunch of syllables in my mouth. Most of the time, writing’s so fucking hard. But in the rare, astonishing moments when the writing’s really going well, when I’m so deep in it that I forget I have an I, there’s nothing like it. (As Goethe said: “The songs made me, not I them.”) It’s the purest joy I know.
If I were to write a love story featuring the Titanic, I would be the heroine, and the middle child of the White Star Line’s Olympic class of ships would be the object of my obsessive, Platonic affections. It would be the touching tale of an undiagnosed autistic girl and her best nautical disaster, transitioning through major life events such as starting kindergarten, or getting bullied, or being discovered by Dr. Robert Ballard using underwater robots.
Unfortunately, a filmmaker who grew up only twenty minutes down the road, in Chippawa, Ontario, had a somewhat different vision — and $200 million to realize it with.
I first became aware of the RMS Titanic when I expropriated my grandfather’s copy of a December 1986 National Geographic out of our mail. From what I’d come to expect from the magazine, the cover was a little boring. It mostly consisted of words I couldn’t read yet — I was an inquisitive four-year-old, not an advanced one — over a plain blue background. There wasn’t a single green-eyed girl or skeleton with snake jewelry in sight. But there was something about the central rectangular photo that intrigued me, so I took the issue to my room, flipping through to figure out what the cute underwater robot could see through that crusty old window.
I spent the next hours looking at otherworldly photos of broken benches, algae-covered crystal lamps, and the largest boat I’d ever seen. Later, my parents, able to read the accompanying article and having general knowledge of the subject, told me everything they could about the ship, its 1912 sinking, Ballard’s 1985 discovery of it, as well as his return expedition the following year, which had given the world the pictures we were now looking at. I asked more questions, and they promised they would do their best to help me find the answers. This continued on for the next eight years.
Where others might see preciousness, over-ambition, or the capricious whims of a spoiled, only child — or the abnormal behavior of an undersocialized only child — my parents saw a golden opportunity to encourage a love of learning. They gave me books and videos, and took me to the library to source whatever materials we couldn’t afford. We went to museum exhibits, screenings, and historical society presentations across southern Ontario. In October 1987, they made my young life by taking me to a talk given by Ballard himself.
After autographing my copy of The Discovery of the Titanic, he asked if I wanted to be an underwater explorer when I grew up. I’d already been leaning towards writing, but didn’t want to disappoint him, so I said yes. Oddly, he encouraged me to do well in math. I had to tell him that we didn’t have mathematics in kindergarten.
My parents’ instincts paid off beyond what they could have imagined at the time. My obsession with the Titanic didn’t just teach me about the ship itself — it was also a launching pad into other areas of study. Ballard’s work made me curious about math and science. The stories of the ship’s survivors and victims taught me about the human condition. The fact of Captain E.J. Smith going down with his ship, and the string ensemble that played as long as possible to comfort the passengers as it sunk, were my introduction to honor, duty, tradition. The choices of Isidor and Ida Straus expanded my notions of love and sacrifice, the struggles of third class passengers my class consciousness, and The Unsinkable Molly Brown became my first strong female role model.
I grew deeper into my Titanic obsession just as a lot of people in my life thought I should be growing out of it. When adults stopped finding it cute, and my classmates concluded that I was far from cool, it provided a necessary escape from a life I didn’t always understand. Rewatching a video, rereading a book, or repeating a fact in my head gave me a temporary break from not fitting in, or worrying about how poorly I was surviving the psychological warfare that awaited me at school. In one particularly low moment I told a photo of the Titanic, between sobs, that it was my only friend. And I genuinely believed that.
In one particularly low moment I told a photo of the Titanic, between sobs, that it was my only friend.
The intensity of my obsession only faded when I was twelve. I switched schools and made a couple of good friends. My intense focus moved on to Canadian indie rock and the spoils of my local Blockbuster’s foreign film section. I didn’t need the Titanic the way I once had, though I remained fond of the ship. It had taught me so much, and helped me through even more. I would always love it, and feel a little possessive of it, for that.
When in late 1996 I started hearing about a big-budget film focused on my old friend, I received the news with dread. The film snob in me loathed the idea of Hollywood getting its action-romance cooties all over it. I’d also gotten weary of watching people act cool for discovering things months or years after they’d made fun of me for them. And the sad little weirdo in me just wished that she could keep this one precious thing to herself.
K, my oldest and best friend, and perhaps the only non-blood relation who never told me to shut up about the Titanic, consoled me by promising that we would go and make fun of it together. As adolescents of the ’90s ironic viewing was the most withering insult imaginable. But that plan fell through when she started hanging out with my bullies. I handled it as you might expect a girl with undiagnosed social issues and years of being bullied would. By the time Titanic finally came out that December, my former friend and I couldn’t even sit in the same theater together, let alone side by side.
Eleven years after I’d first laid my hands on the issue of National Geographic, I was back where I had started: staring at an image of the Titanic alongside my supportive parents. I possessed just enough self-awareness to know I should probably approach the film with an open mind. But as genuinely cool as it was to see the Titanic launching, sailing, and sinking, thanks to the prohibitively expensive special effects, everything that happened on it and after it filled me with bitter rage.
As cool as it was to see the Titanic launching, sailing, and sinking, everything that happened on it and after it filled me with bitter rage.
I wasn’t particularly fond of Titanic the film. The love story was insipid. As far as dreamy blonde passengers went, Jack was no match for A Night To Remember’s Harold Sydney Bride. It wasn’t even the best film about a sinking vehicle to come out that year. But as a Titanic nerd, I was incensed. No amount of digital wonder could make up for the way James Cameron had used the disaster’s real-life victims and heroes. I knew full well that the ship hosted more interesting stories than that of a poor rich girl, living like common people, doing what common people did, sleeping with common people, then running around on a sinking ship for another hour of runtime. All of them deserved better than to be treated like bit players in Rose and Jack’s hollow journey.
I was not in the majority when it came to people’s feelings about Titanic. The film was an inarguable success, breaking box office records, winning eleven Oscars and remaining in theaters for a year. I tried to stay positive, because it seemed to make other people extremely happy, and I wanted to be happy for their sake. But I was miserable. My beloved coping mechanism had been co-opted seemingly by the entire world. I’d endured years of being told that I was weird and unlikable for loving a boat too much — and suddenly those very people were obsessed with the same damned boat. And yet, I was the weirdo again, because now I didn’t love it enough.
I’d endured years of being told that I was weird and unlikable for loving a boat too much — and suddenly those very people were obsessed with the same damned boat.
It took more time sulking alone in my room, ingesting morbid music and Ingmar Bergman films, than I would care to admit, but I finally got over it. I discovered new, weird interests like cult ’60s spy shows, new shipwrecks (the Lusitania, and the likely apocryphal but too-bizarre-to-resist Ourang Medan), and new friends who had passions like mine. I actually forgot about Titanic’s approaching 20th anniversary, until the first wave of thinkpieces fell upon us. But I figured I would be able to read them with an open mind.
I wasn’t. I’m not, as it turns out, anywhere near mature or objective enough to navigate the current wave of Titanic nostalgia. But I have the empathy to realize that the film meant something very different to a box office-bursting number of people than it did to me, and possess enough life experience to appreciate their stories in a way I was neither equipped nor inclined to at the time. The people who flocked to it had their own issues, their own dreams, and clearly the story gave them a touch of whatever it was they needed. I’m happy it made romantic young women feel less guilty about their passions, and that Rose’s plucky heroism may have acted as a kind of gateway drug to feminism. I just wish these epiphanies could have been inspired by a film about anything else in the world.
Here’s where my new outlook crumbles like brittle fracturing steel against an iceberg: I understand that Titanic changed many young lives for the better, but what I remember is how it reinforced the social pecking order, and made those of us not cool enough to be part of a major cultural moment feel even more isolated. Every time I try to stop being a petulant teenager about the film, I start to feel like a sad little girl instead, still on the outside, still incapable of loving the right things at the right time, or responding in the right way.
The ship doesn’t belong to me any more than it belongs to James Cameron. We can each have our own personal meanings, our own stories.
My childhood hero, Dr. Ballard, always argued that the Titanic shouldn’t belong to any one person. He was speaking about the actual artifacts at the bottom of the Atlantic, but I believe this works metaphorically, too. The ship doesn’t belong to me any more than it belongs to James Cameron. We can each have our own personal meanings, our own stories. For all I know, K might be out there right now, pasting my scowling face onto Billy Zane’s body and talking about how the movie helped her celebrate her emancipation from her dorkiest and most pedantic friend.
My story is that I lost my best boat and my best friend in the ass-end of 1997 and, in 2017, am still telling it. The irony is that perhaps after all I did take something away from that non-tragedy of a plucky young woman who escapes her barely stifling life against the backdrop of a major maritime disaster. Just like Rose, the hero in that tale, I have also never let go. And I am beginning to suspect I never will.
I recently read a review that has me shaken and, if I am being honest, angry. The book of poetry it reviewed has received critical acclaim — deservingly so, I think — but the review in question appears to be a “take-down” of the poet and their aesthetic costumed as a review. As I read it, I felt as though I wasn’t learning anything new about the book, just the reviewer’s biases, their love of allusion, their thirst for a book-encapsulating soundbite. In short, it was easy to identify the review as a bad review.
This made me think about how easy it is to figure out when reviews are bad, often when the reviewer gets in the way of the review, foisting upon the text and reader often poorly articulated senses of what constitutes “good work.” But that made me wonder — what makes a good review?
I actually like it when someone intelligently brings their own ideas of aesthetics to a text, but that seems very subjective, doesn’t it? Is it possible I am getting in the way of my reading of reviews? Is there a way a reader should approach reading a review? And, if I were to write a review, how does that differ in how I approach the work? How do you write a good review? How does the whole idea of “reviewing” a work not become mired in aesthetic subjectivity?
Sincerely,
Viewer Reviewing Reviews
Dear Viewer/Reviewer,
I’ve been a poet in the poetry world for a pretty long time, and the question of whether or not there should be “negative reviews” of poetry books has amazing staying power. When a “take-down” like the one you’re referencing appears, poets inevitably suggest that negative reviews are a disservice to poetry, since so few people read poetry as it is — the implication being that a negative review could hurt the book’s already meager sales, and therefore silence is more kind. I find this argument pretty unconvincing; surely even fewer people read poetry reviews than read poetry. An absence of reviews isn’t going to help a book’s sales either, and in any case it’s not the critic’s job to make sure a book sells.
W.H. Auden said that “attacking bad books” is “a waste of time.” But I don’t really agree, as long as the “attack” provides interesting, instructive perspective, because some books are bad in ways that deserve attention. What matters are the critic’s intentions — the point of a piece of negative criticism should not be to make sure that people don’t buy or read the book in question. Further the point of positive criticism is not to make sure that people do buy and read the book. Good criticism shouldn’t even fit neatly into the “good review”/“bad review” dichotomy — it should be more like an essay, with the book as the occasion, than a recommendation engine. Good criticism is worth reading even if you’ve already read the book or never plan to.
Good criticism is worth reading even if you’ve already read the book or never plan to.
So what is criticism for, if not to tell you what to read? A piece of criticism should illustrate an engaged and considered approach to a book and, by extension, other books like it; it should demonstrate what good reading and good thinking about reading look like.
The problem, then, with bad criticism is rarely subjectivity; subjectivity is inescapable. The problem arises when the critic’s subjectivity masquerades as objectivity, or when the critic’s subjectivity isn’t informed or isn’t interesting.
Good criticism is as difficult to write as any other kind of writing — but I realize it’s a bit abstract to say you can write better reviews by being smarter and more interesting (although it’s true!). So here are a few practical strategies in terms of how to approach a book that you want to write about, and some guidelines for what good criticism of any genre should and shouldn’t do.
When reading a book you might want to write about — but actually, if you’re serious about reading, and if you’re serious about criticism you need to be serious about reading, whenever you’re reading any book — keep a pencil or those little sticky tabs and a notebook nearby. Get comfortable with ruining your books; go ahead and dogear and write in them. Underline and marginalize (in the original 19th century sense: make marginalia). If you JUST CAN’T DO IT or you’re reading a library book, use sticky tabs instead, and write your thoughts and annotations in a notebook; just note the page number you’re responding to. Make this notebook your reading journal. These notes will be incredibly helpful to you later, but further, I think it tricks you into being a better, closer reader, and making more connections. Great writers notice a lot of things, and meta-notice what they notice. Cultivate your habits of observation.
A good review provides context: What tradition is this writer working in? Who else writes like this or about these things? What other books is it in conversation with? Does it represent a natural or surprising evolution in the author’s career? To provide this context you’ll need to do a little reading around the book you’re focusing on — an informed reader is usually a better critic. If that doesn’t appeal to you, consider that you might not be the best person to write about this book.
If you love a book, resist the urge to heap praise on it right away. It’s boring and looks blurby. I like criticism that shows me what a book is like before telling me how to feel about it.
I like criticism that shows me what a book is like before telling me how to feel about it.
Explain the book’s aim, form, and project, in a value-neutral way to start. Just tell us what the author and the book are trying to do. Be as generous as possible in your assessment of the book’s aims; don’t get mad at the book for not doing something that it’s not trying to do. What is the book about (in terms of its subject matter) and about (in terms of its larger themes)? What does the prose or verse actually look like on the page? (Focus on the writer’s choices, though, not the book designer’s or printer’s.) Describe their style, their tone and diction. All of this is basically a way of showing what it feels like to read this book: What are its effects on the reader’s mind, and how does it achieve them?
Back up your description with examples. This is where your notes come in. (As you read and start to make assessments of the book, you should be looking for quotes that are particularly illustrative of the book’s approach or style.)
All of this attentive description and illustration will get a lot of the work done. With or without you adding in overt value judgments, readers will start to get their own sense of how well the book accomplishes what it’s trying to do.
Great critics have a compelling sensibility; their way of looking at and commenting on the world is what we go to them for, more than book recommendations per se. Their reviews are always cross-referencing each other through this common sensibility. So put yourself into your criticism; just remember that thinking is more interesting than feelings. If a book makes you mad, fine, you can say that, but then reflect on why that is.
Question yourself — your assessments and reactions and biases — as much as you question the book. Your questioning doesn’t necessarily need to appear in the finished review, but do the background work.
Question yourself — your assessments and reactions and biases — as much as you question the book.
If you can’t think of anything interesting to say about a book, don’t write about it! It’s very hard to write a good review of a mediocre, neither-here-nor-there book. So, write about books that make you think.
If you don’t like a book, don’t attack its fans, or the people you presume to be its fans, or their presumed reasons for liking it. It’s rude, for one thing, but you’re also probably wrong. And it’s not necessary for everyone to agree that a book is good or bad.
If you have some kind of preexisting, personal problem with the author (not their work), you are probably not the best person to write about the book. In general, don’t bring the author’s appearance or personal life into your criticism unless you’re really, really, really sure it’s relevant to how we read the work. It’s more permissible if the author’s dead.
Don’t make unfair comparisons. I recently read a piece of criticism that compared a book of personal essays by a debut author to a collection of reprinted essays, mostly criticism, by a much more mature author; this just didn’t seem like a useful comparison. One would come to these books with very different expectations.
Finally, as a corrective to the prescriptiveness of all these guidelines: Don’t feel hemmed in by a formula for a “good review.” For example, you needn’t begin — or end — by talking about the book directly. You can get away with almost anything if you’re smart and interesting enough. When in doubt, read more — both more books and more criticism.
I discovered Ursula K. Le Guin quite by accident — on the library shelf, but not in the science fiction section. I was browsing the literary journals, which were stood up like little jewels in the entranceway of the library at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.
I had been sent to that section of the library by my speech coach — sent to find a suitably thought-provoking and emotionally stimulating passage, with less than 50 percent dialogue, that I could read aloud without rushing in less than 8 minutes.
My task was to find a piece suitable for entering in competition in the Prose category, which demands of its high school competitors that they be “a master storyteller, drawing the audience in with a well-cut and interesting piece, energy and variety in vocal inflection, and the ability to engross the listener in what is being read.”
I was not sure at all that I was any such thing, and I had no idea what I wanted to say or do. But I had propelled my 16-year-old self into this moment nonetheless, and was now spending a week of my summer vacation among the stacks of a college library, looking for a piece that I could “connect with in some way on a personal level” and that “flattered” me and my abilities, as the guidelines for Prose suggested.
It was a volume of the short-lived literary book series Left Bank that I ultimately picked up — Vol. 2, circa 1992, featuring Le Guin’s essay “Introducing Myself.” “I am a man,” she begins, and goes on to spin a sardonic fable rich with wordplay, arguing, with dripping sarcasm, that “man” is what she must be — since to be a person, one must, it seems, be a man.
That first sentence shocked me with its daring. I read the whole thing through, my heart beating faster with each new paragraph, and when I got done I walked it straight over to the copy machine and ran off two copies and rushed back to my speech coach as fast as I could go.
“We have been told that there is only one kind of people and they are men,” Le Guin writes. “And I think it is very important that we all believe that. It certainly is important to the men.”
‘We have been told that there is only one kind of people and they are men,’ Le Guin writes.
Le Guin skewers all things stereotypically masculine with dismissive wit (“I can’t write my name with pee in the snow”) while also hinting at the toxicity of masculinity (“I can’t shoot my wife and children and some neighbors and then myself”) in her litany of why she is not a “first-rate man,” but rather “a very poor imitation or substitute man.”
She touches on issues of body image when she laments that she looks “like a hen in a pillowcase” when trying to wear “those trendy army surplus clothes with ammunition pockets from the Banana Republic Company catalogues,” and manages to capture self-deprecation and mockery in the same breath.
Her writing is at once abundant, rich with metaphors, jokes, plays on words and knowing cross-references, while also being singularly focused, every word pushing her narrative forward with stunningly well-crafted focus.
All of this struck my 16-year-old self on two equally resonant wavelengths: First, there was an intake of breath at the thought that this was what writing could be: this sort of knowing, joking wit that was also deeply confessional and intimate. And second, a deeper realization that this is what being a woman could be: someone at once wise and self-questioning, seeking understanding and answers, unfeminine but not masculine, unflinchingly intellectual.
In her 2004 anthology of non-fiction writing “The Wave in the Mind,” Le Guin introduces “Introducing Myself” simply as “a performance piece, performed a couple of times.” I can only imagine what it would have been like to see her perform it. I know that when I stood up in front of the judges in my high school speech competitions, opened my little black book, and read those opening words, “I am a man,” I felt wise, powerful and a little bit wicked.
My speech coach loved the piece, and I loved it, deeply. Together we paired it with passages from “Fascinating Womanhood,” a 1960s self-help book for women that seemed to capture everything retrograde about midcentury attitudes toward women, sex, marriage and domestic life. In performances, I switched between my two “characters” — hunched over, smirking, one eyebrow raised as I growled out the opening lines; then upright, prim, bright-eyed as I doled out saccharine advice on being a happy housewife.
I didn’t become a champion of the Oregon high school forensics circuit with my piece, but I did win one of the only trophies of my entire life with it. The judges praised me for originality, for a piece that was provocative and had a point of view. I was just happy to be spending so much time with Le Guin, to have the chance to embody something of that wise, powerful and slightly wicked spirit.
Le Guin’s words have echoed in my mind throughout the decades since I first read this deeply felt and even more deeply thought gem of an essay. On first reading, what struck me was Le Guin’s sense of resignation, of confession, of having worked for too long in service of an impossible goal — to live in a man’s world.
On first reading, what struck me was Le Guin’s sense of having worked for too long in service of an impossible goal — to live in a man’s world.
“I look back on all my strenuous effort because I really did try, I tried hard to be man, to be a good man, and I see how I failed at that,” she writes.
I am not sure how I knew, even at 16, that I would become a woman who, like Le Guin, owns three bras and feels that she is shaped wrong and is not as tough as she ought to be. A woman who sheepishly tweaks out the nine or 10 hairs that grow on her chin. A woman who can’t seem to find the right foothold among the available options of masculine and feminine — who feels, as Le Guin wrote, that “if I had any real self-respect, wouldn’t I at least have had a facelift or some liposuction?”
As I have aged, my relationship to the feminine has remained complex. I think of Le Guin often when I look in the mirror at my messy brows or contemplate my unshaven legs. I feel vaguely urged to do something about these less-than-feminine aspects of myself. But, like Le Guin, I do not. It does not seem to be part of who I am now, any more than it was when I was 16, and shocked the freshman in my art class, who would run up, giggling, in packs, and ask, “Can we see your hairy legs?”
I fear that I may have taken too seriously Le Guin’s cynical suggestion of equating femininity with non-personhood and have, like her, ended up on a sort of third road of being some sort of “poor imitation or substitute man.”
But as my 40th birthday approaches, I have found myself coming back, not to Le Guin’s electric opening line, but to her wry ending salvo, in which she threatens, at age 60, to “give the whole thing up” and “start pretending to be an old woman.”
“I am not sure that anybody has invented old women yet,” she writes, “but it might be worth trying.”
I think of Le Guin often when I look in the mirror at my messy brows or contemplate my unshaven legs.
Several years ago my mother, who is older now than Le Guin was at the time she wrote “Introducing Myself,” confided in me about aging.
“The great thing,” she said, “is that I just don’t have to give a fuck anymore.”
Like my mother, and Le Guin, I am learning how to be what I am — still learning from Le Guin these many years later. Learning how to not give a fuck anymore. Learning to give the whole thing up and invent something new. May we all face our own futures with a fraction of Ursula K. Le Guin’s wit, insight and acuity. She has left us so many gifts to help us find our way.
M y first exposure to the works of Ann Quin, if memory serves, came via a list of recommendations by Blake Butler of notable books published by Dalkey Archive Press. This led me to Quin’s 1972 Tripticks, a formally bold and deeply unsettling work–the sort of experimental fiction that reconfigures how you process text, feels ahead of its time. Tripticks was the fourth and final novel that Quin published in her lifetime; she died the following year. In the ensuing years, Quin’s work has gained a cult following for its innovation, its tactile sense of place, and its unique ability to capture a feeling of desperate unease.
Purchase the collection.
The new collection The Unmapped Country brings together Quin’s shorter works, from stories and some autobiographical pieces to writings that were unfinished at the time of her death. Jennifer Hodgson edited the book and contributed its introduction. Over email, we discussed the process of assembling The Unmapped Country, how the collection speaks to her legacy, and the works and movements that helped shape Quin’s own work.
Tobias Carroll: We’ll start with the basics: where did you first encounter Ann Quin’s writings? Did you find yourself drawn to them from the first read, or did they grow on you more slowly?
Jennifer Hodgson: I first encountered Quin in that way books have of opening into one another. As a student, I was very much taken with those weird, wonky writers of the mid-twentieth century who don’t quite fit anywhere. Elizabeth Bowen led to Muriel Spark who led to Johnson and then I alighted on Quin. I was in a mildew-y, Patrick Hamilton-y sort of phase at the time, so I guess I was ripe for a claggy book like Berg. For as long as I’d been interested in books and in writing, I’d also frequently felt that this culture, this thing called “The Novel” wasn’t really for me, that I was a kind of interloper in a tradition where I didn’t really belong. Discovering Quin and her contemporaries, like Johnson, Brigid Brophy, Christine Brooke Rose, and the rest, was like opening up a door. It felt galvanizing to me as a reader (and as a human) in that sense of, oh, I didn’t realize you were allowed to do that.
TC: Contemporary writers who have championed Quin’s work include Juliet Jacques, Lee Rourke, Blake Butler, Tom McCarthy, and Deborah Levy—a wide-ranging group, though I’d argue all of them fall under the “experimental” heading. Have you noticed any common elements among the writers who have enjoyed her writings?
JH: Perhaps given that I’ve been immersed in Quin’s writing of late, it’s not surprising that I hear her echoes everywhere, but I do — amongst the writers you mention and also in the work of people like Claire-Louise Bennett, Eimear McBride, and others. With Quin it’s easy to see a kinship, but quite difficult to pinpoint a legacy. There are writers who I’m convinced must have read Quin, but you find they’re not aware of her and then they’ll read her voraciously with this incredible sense of recognition, like an influence that’s always been there without them realizing.
I’m going to leave aside debates about the appropriateness of the term “experimental”—they often feel a bit like a Sealed Knot re-enactment. Nevertheless, what the writers you mention here share with Quin, and what they have in common, is a curiosity — perhaps even a conviction — about the possibilities of fictional narrative (whatever that is, they generally insist on asking), coupled with a sense of dissatisfaction about the narrower interests of mainstream literary culture. They also share a declared interest in fiction not for its capacity to reflect and to make sense of experience, but to render the expressive distortion of reality. By that I mean how the world gets filtered through subjectivity and is then somehow presented, all at once, as a completely imaginary yet substantive universe.
TC: Is there one particular work that you’ve found to be the best starting point for someone looking to read Quin’s bibliography? Would you say that The Unmapped Country could fill this role?
JH: It’s a tricky one, this, given that her now five-book body of work covers such a lot of ground. Take your pick: Berg tends to be the “gateway” Quin, the one people chance across first; then there’s her nouveau roman-esque mid-period, with Three; Passages is a dark take on all those sixties myths about “finding yourself”; and finally there’s Tripticks, her bizarre Burroughsian road novel. For my money, I think Quin really suits the closer, headier confines of the short story. If you want to read her at her filthiest, at her strangest, then start here — but then I would say that.
What these writers share with Quin is a curiosity — perhaps even a conviction — about the possibilities of fictional narrative coupled with a sense of dissatisfaction about the narrower interests of mainstream literary culture.
TC: Why do you think Quin’s work isn’t as widely read as some of the writers to whom her work has been compared?
JH: Up to now, Quin’s always been a not-quite-cult writer. And she’s not alone in that. Her loosely-agglomerated peer group of innovative writers from the sixties — people like Brooke Rose, Johnson, Brophy, and Burns — have also remained out on a limb for many years, although, Johnson enjoyed a rehabilitation of his own some years back. And I think the reasons for that probably exceed the space we have for this interview, but I’ll give it a go. I think all these writers, to a greater or lesser extent, have fallen down the back of the sofa of literary history. During their time they tended to be dismissed as superannuated modernists, or as the victims of some sort of ghastly French flu. And then subsequently, their achievements have often been overshadowed by an idea we have of that period in British literature as mired in old-fashioned realism. If pressed, I’d say that Quin’s moment has come now (at long last!) thanks to the recognition of readers’ appetites for new and interesting forms of writing — an appetite which has been consistently underestimated by a jittery and overly-cautious book industry.
TC: What was the process of assembling The Unmapped Country like?
JH: Quin isn’t (yet?) judged important enough to have an archive of her own, so since her death in 1973, her papers have remained scattered across various archives, private collections, cupboards, drawers, and boxes in the loft. I spent the last seven years or so collecting them back together again. And it’s a pretty strange and uncomfortable thing to do, to go riffling around in the dusty papers of someone else’s past. All the paper trails, all the needling emails to octogenarian ex-boyfriends asking if they maybe, just maybe, have a story or two that’s been sitting in a box in their back bedrooms these past fifty years. But in the end it was the kind of wild goose chase I couldn’t resist.
All the paper trails, all the needling emails to octogenarian ex-boyfriends asking if they maybe, just maybe, have a story or two that’s been sitting in a box.
TC: In “Leaving School — XI,” Quin makes a passing allusion to joining “the Young Conservatives’ Association.” I don’t find a lot of overtly political aspects to her writing — do you know if this reference points to something greater in her work, or was evidence of an ideological period that she left behind?
JH: Are you asking whether Quin was a Tory [a member or supporter of the British Conservative party]? I’d say that what this reference really points to is the paucity of social life for teenagers in England in the fifties! You’re right, I think, to identify that Quin isn’t as explicitly politically engaged as some of her contemporaries and peers like, say, Doris Lessing or Alan Burns or Johnson — and she wasn’t an activist in the sense that someone like Brigid Brophy was. In one of the few lengthy interviews she gave during her lifetime (with Nell Dunn, for her 1965 book Talking to Women), she claimed not to be “political,” that class “never bothered [her]” and that it was “overdone,” that she was “sick to death” of it being the focus of the social realist novels of the fifties. But I think she’s being a little disingenuous, or perhaps provocative, here. The political aspect of Quin’s writing appears in more implicit, diffuse ways, very often as an almost hidden but very insistent undertow to the close, hothouse world of her characters.
To a greater or lesser extent, all her writing centers on a dissatisfaction with quotidian life, coupled with the compulsion to dig around underneath and find out what’s really going on underneath the furniture and the flummery. She’s also concerned with questions of human freedom, possibility, and alternative means of human connectedness. I guess in that sense she’s absolutely a writer of the sixties. But what’s always interested me about Quin is that, for her, liberation is never a benign thing. We have these characters going on wild quests, or attempting to impose their will on the world, or get out of their own minds through self-exile, or sex, or drugs, but they only ever arrive at disillusion or disappointment or frustration — or worse, out-and-out brutality.
Her writing centres on a dissatisfaction with quotidian life, and the compulsion to dig around underneath, find out what’s going on underneath the furniture.
TC: Several of the stories found in The Unmapped Country were first published in the journal Ambit, which also published early work from J.G. Ballard. Did you get the sense that Ambit had any influence on Quin’s development as a writer?
JH: Certainly, in the latter part of her writing life she began experimenting in earnest with the visual-textual style that had found a home at Ambit, particularly seen in Eduardo Paolozzi’s work for the magazine. One reviewer not-too-kindly called it “Ambit-dextrous sub-Burrovian cut-uppery.” But beyond this particular magazine, other British writers were making forays into the similar styles — I’m thinking in particular of those especially out-there, middle-period Brooke Rose novels (Out, Such, Between and Thru), Brophy’s In Transit, Burn’s Babel and Dreamerika!, as well as, of course, The Atrocity Exhibition. And something that hasn’t been much talked in relation to Quin’s work is the influence of British Pop art. She’d been a secretary at the Royal College of Art during the early sixties, where she had come into contact with the scene incubating there amongst artists like David Hockney, Peter Blake, Pauline Boty, Patrick Caulfield, and others. Some of her earliest writings are texts ghost-written on behalf of a student at the RCA, the New Zealand artist, Billy Apple. I think Quin, her peers, British pop art, and Ambit were part of the same moment of cross pollination, all drawing upon a lurid fascination with “Amerika” and the ideas about language that were emanating from French critical theory to create this new, texty, pulp-y, modernist-inflected mode.
England, 1472: Edmond Paston writes a letter to his older brother John. Edmond, a twenty-something younger son of a prominent gentry family living unhappily at home, complains that their widowed mother has unfairly fired his favorite servant Gregory. He relates the shocking story behind Gregory’s firing:
It happened by chance that he had a knave’s lust, in plain terms to fuck a whore, and he did so in the rabbit-warren-yard. By chance he was spied by two plowmen of my mother’s, who were as delighted as he was by the situation, and they asked him if they could have a share in it, and as company required, he did not say no, so that the plowmen had her all night in their stable and Gregory was completely rid of her and, as he swears, did not have sex with her inside my mother’s house. Notwithstanding my mother thinks that he is the originator of the incident; as a result, there is no option but for him to leave.
Edmond spares no detail in narrating his employee’s actions to his brother. His point in telling this sordid tale is to emphasize the unfairness of Gregory’s firing: Gregory swears he did not have sex with anyone under Margaret Paston’s roof — he had sex with her outdoors in the rabbit-warren-yard, not indoors like the plowmen — but Margaret, ever unreasonable and overbearing, blames him anyway for instigating the whole thing. Edmond begs his brother to hire Gregory, whom he insists is “as true as any man alive.”
It seems a bit odd that Edmond would tell this story as justification for why John should hire Gregory: He’s the best servant ever! Yeah, sometimes he gets carried away with lust and fucks whores and maybe facilitated something that sounds like it might have been a gang rape, but he only commits his sexual indiscretions outdoors! But despite the 546-year difference, there’s nothing about Edmond’s letter—excusing sexual misconduct, treating women as tradable commodities without agency, valuing a man’s reputation more than the harm he’s caused—that should feel unfamiliar to us in the present day.
This tale shared between brothers sheds light on the long history of our current views of consent, the social power of the term “whore,” and the role of exchanging obscene material — photos, videos, stories — in shaping bonds among men. By casting Gregory’s crime as merely “fuck[ing] a whore” (he would have written the Middle English “quene”), Edmond implies that the woman has consented to everything. It is not clear whether she is a professional sex worker or if Edmond simply uses the term to remove blame from his servant, as “quene” could designate a prostitute, a lower-status woman, a woman with a bad reputation, or any woman you wanted to insult. Edmond’s choice to call the woman a “quene” removes both the possibility for her to say no, and the necessity of her saying yes. By calling her a “quene,” Edmond ensures that the exchange between Gregory and the plowmen can always potentially be read as three men haggling over the price of a hire for the night. His word choice erases the possibility of sexual violence, shifts responsibility away from Gregory, and allows the woman to be blamed for what happens to her.
It wasn’t me, bro, he seems to say.
Edmond’s depiction of consent here illustrates how the label of “whore” operates. He claims that the plowmen, aroused by the sight of their colleague having sex, ask Gregory if they can go next. They do not ask the woman. Her consent is bypassed altogether, as the label of “quene” nullifies her right to say no. We do not know if she consented or objected, and Edmond makes it clear that it would not have mattered either way. Furthermore, Edmond claims that Gregory is unable to refuse his co-workers’ request by framing it as a “require[ment]” of “company,” part of the code of relations among a close-knit community of men. His depiction of Gregory granting sexual access to his partner because his bond with his co-workers “require[s]” him to do so both minimizes Gregory’s actions and excuses his choice to hand the woman over to the plowmen for the rest of the night. It wasn’t me, bro, he seems to say.
This story has chilling contemporary parallels, illustrating how little has changed when it comes to consent, slut-shaming, and obscene sexual storytelling among groups of men. Since March 2016, nine federal Title IX lawsuits have been filed against Baylor University, alleging that the university mishandled scores of rapes committed by members of its football team. One of these lawsuits, filed in May 2017 by a former member of Baylor’s volleyball team, contains disturbing links to Edmond Paston’s tale of the three servants and the “quene.” In the suit, the woman alleges that that the school’s football players regularly participated in gang rapes of freshman women, including her, as a “team bonding” activity. She recounts how she was drugged and raped by as few as four and as many as eight Baylor football players at an off-campus party in February of her freshman year. She “remembers lying on her back, unable to move and staring at glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling as the football players took turns raping her.” She claims that the men later bragged of “running train” on her; they minimized her rape by referring to it as “a little bit of playtime” and “fooling around”; and they blamed her for the assault, dismissing her as “easy.”
The plaintiff in the Baylor case alleges that the football players circulated photos and videos of themselves assaulting semi-conscious women after drugging them. While their use of technology to re-perpetrate sexual assault is new, their sharing of women’s exploitation for the purposes of male bonding is decidedly medieval. In this alleged trafficking of women’s trauma so that all the team’s members can participate collectively in their violation and relive the assault together, the Baylor players echo Edmond Paston’s choice to write down his employees’ sexual deeds in lurid detail to convince his brother John to hire Gregory, using the tale to illustrate the unfairness of Gregory’s firing by their overbearing buzzkill of a mother. The circulation of the story from servant to master, and then from younger brother to elder brother, illustrates how sexual storytelling can serve as a means of bonding and entertainment among men, whether it be in a 15th-century wax-sealed letter or a 21st-century group text.
Sexual storytelling can serve as a means of bonding and entertainment among men, whether in the 15th century or the 21st.
By painting the women they exploit as “easy,” as “whores,” both medieval and modern men are able to recast rape as consensual and to avoid all blame by using the woman’s alleged previous sexual activity as an excuse for her violation. And by minimizing their actions — as “playtime,” as an attack of “lust” — they refuse to acknowledge any harm they cause.
The dynamics among the Paston employees as well as the Baylor football teammates demonstrate the workings of sexual pressure and violence among men: Gregory is unable to “say no” to his co-workers due to the requirements of shared “company,” just as the Baylor football team’s freshman players were allegedly hazed by their older teammates, who required them to bring female guests with them to off-campus team parties so that the older teammates could drug and rape them. In each case, men are “required” by the code of their all-male community — whether a group of employees or teammates — to become complicit in the assault and exploitation of their female partners and friends. Women’s consent is viewed as a non-issue, as belonging instead to the man who turns her over to the wolves and claims he has no choice.
My research focuses on sexual violence in the Middle Ages and today. I read a lot of awful things. And I am always struck by how similar those awful things are in spite of the differences in time, in space, in technology. Sometimes the details stick in my head like splinters: the glow-in-the-dark ceiling stars in the Baylor lawsuit, Gregory’s insistence that he was “completely rid of” the woman after he handed her off to his co-workers.
I cannot stop thinking about the Baylor freshman staring up at an artificial starry sky, a false heaven; the “quene” trapped in a stable all night by two plowmen with nowhere to go, surrounded by livestock and animal shit. And I think about how much the two women might share in spite of the five and a half centuries separating them: that feeling when your heart goes numb with fear, the sickening realization that your consent does not matter and never did, the glint in their eyes and the smirk on their faces once they’ve decided among themselves what they are going to do to you. As we grapple with issues of consent and power in our own culture, medieval texts like the Paston letters can help us see the hideous taproot of the problem, reaching down deep and straight and sure through the centuries. You cannot eradicate a plant unless you destroy at least part of its taproot. I imagine pulling it up whole and marveling at how at how very long it is; how ugly, how gnarled, how covered in sticky earth.
Writers are often great observers, but we aren’t always good listeners. Our stories share knowledge and create empathy in the reader, but the dark side of our work is the ego it sometimes takes to sustain it. Writing, especially something as long and thankless as an entire book, requires a belief in the importance of one’s own voice, even in the face of skeptics and critics. We rely on our words to crawl into hearts and change minds. In fact, though, the most radical thing those with powerful voices can do in times of conflict is listen.
One author who taught me to listen to women’s stories in particular was Margaret Atwood, perhaps the best-known writer in Canadian literature. Her books taught me that women’s stories were just as important as men’s. Her protagonists survived bullying in Cat’s Eye, monstrous political oppression in the Handmaid’s Tale, and a kind of armageddon in the Maddaddam trilogy. Yet in the past few years, Atwood has shown that her ability to tell compelling stories about fictional women far outstrips her ability to listen to real ones.
Atwood has shown that her ability to tell compelling stories about fictional women far outstrips her ability to listen to real ones.
My split with Atwood began with her support of Steven Galloway, the former head of the creative writing department at the University of British Columbia where I earned my MFA. In 2015, Galloway had been suspended after a number of students filed formal complaints that included sexual harassment and inappropriate sexual behavior. In newspapers and online, a number of famous writers spoke out on Galloway’s behalf without ever bothering to ask whether the complaints might be true. Their outcry culminated in #UBCAccountable, an open letter calling for due process for Galloway despite that he had a union and labor laws to protect him and no criminal charges have ever been filed. Atwood signed that letter and wrote about why in the Walrus, a national magazine. Then she used her considerable Twitter presence to bite back at anyone who disagreed with her.
In a recent op-ed in the Globe and Mail, Atwood once again called out the women who criticized her, positioning herself as a rational being standing up for justice against a backlash of orthodox feminist zealots. She went on to take Galloway’s innocence as a given and argue that his firing was an injustice on the same level as that against Steven Truscott, a man who was arrested at 14 years old and spent ten years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. Her version of the Galloway narrative has been widely debunked, but that didn’t temper her certainty or the strength of her voice. She ended by calling for unity, which is admirable, but asked that readers unify under her version of the narrative in support of her reputation as a feminist rather than each other. What she didn’t seem to realize was that the criticism was never about her right to express her opinion. It was about the moral responsibility we all have to choose when to speak and when to listen.
Criticism of Atwood was never about her right to express her opinion. It was about the moral responsibility we all have to choose when to speak and when to listen.
It’s hard to explain how disappointing all this has been. Before it started, I often defended Atwood against criticism about her prickly public persona. Being a woman writer in Canadian literature, I argued, meant developing a hard shell. I remember coming across her poem “You Fit Into Me” in a CanLit textbook in undergrad and laughing so hard I cried. “You fit into me/like a hook into an eye,” she wrote, “a fish hook/an open eye.” I loved how unsentimental the image was, how in a few lines it demolished love poetry as a kind of violence.
Though she came from a background of far more privilege than I did, Atwood’s uncompromising refusal to soften to the expectations of a woman writer was inspiring. From her and those who came slightly before — Alice Munro, Margaret Laurence — I learned that women of my mother’s and grandmother’s generations lived under a never-ending campaign aimed at breaking down their self-trust. They often worked in isolation and in competition with each other, forced to advocate for themselves against a system that would rather they disappear. Having Atwood’s texts gave me a foundation of strength. Foolishly, I thought she would appreciate seeing the same uncompromising commitment to change in the generations that followed her. I thought she would be willing to listen to reason.
Atwood is not the only Canadian author to ignore the importance of listening. Over the past few years, some of our most venerated authors have produced a great number of words about Galloway’s firing, writing as if those who had filed official complaints against him were characters in a novel. They used their considerable rhetorical skills and personal fame in support of a man accused of hurting his students without considering the damage he might have done to those students. They rode roughshod over one woman in particular, the main complainant in the case, who doesn’t even get the dignity of a name or an opportunity to defend herself publicly because of labor law that protects the accused.
Some signers of the letter have revised their statements, said they’re interested in justice for all, yet the fact remains that not one of those authors thought to contact the complainants and ask what they might need for support before signing. As they wrote press releases and personal statements demanding transparency and justice, never once did they think to contact the main complainant, through her lawyer or through other complainants who’ve named themselves in newspaper articles. The signers said they felt bullied, but it never occurred to them that they might be bullies, too, ones with the ability to control the narrative on a much grander scale than their detractors. Even the recent CanLit Accountable open letter from former Concordia University graduate Mike Spry, which highlights his complicity in a culture of toxic masculinity and abuse in their creative writing program, was written and posted without input from the victims. Without consultation, even well-meaning advocacy feels a lot like aggression.
Without consultation, even well-meaning advocacy feels a lot like aggression.
It’s not that I’m angry with Atwood and those other authors I once admired. More than anything, I’m sad for them. I see them as people who, out of fear or carelessness, have hardened themselves against the voices of those who have less power. They have robbed themselves of a great deal of wonder by drawing a line between who is worth listening to and who isn’t. In her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard writes about what happens when we put aside our assumptions about what we deem normal and construct an “artificial obvious” that allows us to see new and extraordinary things. Dillard watches the air, the grass, the trees with patience and openness, and the world rewards her with incredible beauty. I believe this principle can be applied to listening, too.
Really listening requires full body presence. It requires you to soften and let go of the fear, the urge to argue, and the instinct to control the narrative. It takes a comfort with silence and a willingness to accept that your turn to talk may never come, that what’s happening might not be about you at all. This doesn’t mean internalizing every call-out on social media, but rather acknowledging how your voice carries and reaching out to those who have less power with compassion, respect, and openness. It requires you see them first as individual human beings with names, lives, and experiences you might not have imagined. We’ve assumed for too long that the onus for reaching out is on the less powerful. We must work to upend that imbalance and make space for women of color, Indigenous women, trans women, and others who have been left out of feminism in the past.
Over the past few years, I’ve been working on tempering my voice to make more space for listening. I’ve seen the beauty this openness reveals first-hand in the students I’ve worked with who come from different linguistic backgrounds and struggle with academic English. A few have told me about teachers who have dismissed them out of hand, assumed they weren’t worth listening to, or spoken over them. I’ve never met a student who didn’t have something worth saying inside them. Some just take more time than others.
Indeed, we live in a time when there are endless opportunities to learn about the stories of others in their own words. Just this weekend at the first anniversary of the Women’s March, I stood with a thousand other women and allies on a windy shelf overlooking Vancouver’s spectacular North Shore Mountains and heard Musqueam activist Rhiannon Bennett speak about the way the issues addressed by the #metoo movement disproportionately affect Indigenous women. I heard Hailey Heartless argue with wit and clarity for the life-and-death necessity of including sex workers like herself in feminist discussions. I wiped away tears as Noor Fadel read her poem “I Forgive You,” addressed to the man who attacked her on a crowded SkyTrain for wearing a hijab. As woman after woman told stories of violence, familiar and unfamiliar, I felt awed and grateful, even when the things they said called attention to the many privileges I hold as a white cis woman who was born in Canada. Some have condemned this multiplicity of voices as a descent into disorder and chaos. I see it as an opportunity to move toward an equitable society.
The greatest block to really listening is not the noise of the world, but that voice inside that protects us, centers us, rattles with outrage or disbelief. I still respect the ways Atwood made space for women’s narratives in literature against tremendous pressure, but I can’t help but feel like all those years of protecting herself are what’s holding her back from hearing the voices of the women around her now, making it difficult for her to see the beauty in the moment. If we’re going to find a way forward, we’re all going to have to learn to listen.
I ’ve gotten used to the fact that I can’t talk about women with my straight female friends the way I can talk about men. When I talk about men, my friends hum with encouragement, bubble with excitement over the possibility of what could happen. They give their seal of approval (“he works for Goldman? Nice”) or disapproval (“his mattress is on the floor!? Honey…”), eager to share their own dating triumphs or horrors. In turn, I’m genuinely eager to hear them, but they can’t relate. It’s a one-sided conversation, almost like a diary entry.
Years ago I began to retreat to literature and film to find similar narratives to mine. It was easy to find such on the fringe, in indie films that premiere at small festivals and novels deep within my college’s library. When it came to movies I can see in my hometown movie theater, the ones that are buzzed about for months by everyone from critics to subway commuters, I often came up short. The characters were predominantly straight, rarely gay, never bisexual. I never saw a mainstream film that reflected my experience until Call Me By Your Name.
The characters were predominantly straight, rarely gay, never bisexual. I never saw a mainstream film that reflected my experience until ‘Call Me By Your Name.’
Every year, one LGBTQ movie seems to generate enough buzz to make its way into the mainstream. The pinnacle of this was Moonlight, which not only made back its budget over ten-fold, but it took home the Oscar for Best Picture. Last year that singular movie was Call Me By Your Name, based on the 2007 novel by André Aciman. Watching the trailer and reading early reviews about the film from the Sundance Film Festival compelled me to get my hands on the source material before seeing the film.
Elio, an Italian teenager, is the narrator of the story. During one summer in the 1980s, a Columbia professor named Oliver stays with him and his family. Part 1 of the novel is an incredible build-up. Elio and Oliver meet each other, and Elio is instantly enamored (as is Oliver with him, though the reader only sees Elio’s side). At times, Elio is so peeved he has this unobtainable crush that he talks about killing Oliver, then himself. There’s a line in the beginning of Part 2, though, that struck me more than anything:
Did I want to be like him? Did I want to be him? Or did I just want to have him?
I froze. I reread the line 10 times. This was the first time I’ve had my thoughts read back to me. Elio had just been waxing poetic about Oliver’s muscular shoulders while being incensed that he was apparently sleeping with a multitude of women around town.
For the first time, I found my experience validated by the dance I was seeing on screen. The way I’m attracted to women is inherently different than my attraction to men; it’s difficult to process alone, in my head, without anyone to talk to. The line between attraction and admiration to women is one I walk almost daily. It’s sharing a glance with a fellow commuter on the 6 train. It’s an Instagram photo suggested to me on the explore page, a woman draped in natural light in her bedroom. Do I want to be with this woman, or do I want to just be her? This ambivalence is something I experience often, but I don’t share it with anyone — and here it was repeated directly to me in this book.
This ambivalence is something I experience often, but I don’t share it with anyone — and here it was repeated directly to me in this book.
Elio and Oliver do sleep together. All the while, Elio also sleeps with a woman named Marzia. At one point, he balances sexual relationships with both of them:
Barely half an hour ago I was asking Oliver to fuck me and now here I was about to make love to Marzia, and yet neither had anything to do with the other except through Elio, who happened to be one and the same person.
This occurs several times in the novel, where Elio compares Oliver and Marzia. Elio kisses Oliver the way he kisses Marzia; the way Oliver smells like the sea reminds him of the way Marzia smelled.
Elio and Marzia’s relationship eventually fizzles away, but not before numerous sexual encounters and dates. They never have a proper goodbye. Rather, Elio rushes to Rome to be with Oliver.
It’s clear that Elio was in love with Oliver and not with Marzia. This isn’t because Marzia wasn’t a man, though. It’s because she wasn’t Oliver.
It’s clear that Elio was in love with Oliver and not with Marzia. This isn’t because Marzia wasn’t a man, though. It’s because she wasn’t Oliver.
Stories that are made into mainstream LGBTQ films tend to have similar narratives. The protagonist has experienced only hetero relationships, along with a void that’s always been there. They feel disdain: with themselves for feeling this way or with their partner for not filling that void.
Such is the case with Brokeback Mountain (the mainstream queer movie of 2005) and with The Price of Salt, on which the film Carol (the mainstream queer movie of 2015) is based. In Brokeback, Ennis and Jack are drawn together despite impossible circumstances, as are Carol and Therese in Carol.
The spouses in those stories are antagonists. Who can forget when Michelle William’s Alma spits out, “Jack nasty!” in Brokeback or when Kyle Chandler’s Harge demands custody for his and Carol’s child.
But Marzia isn’t an antagonist in Call Me By Your Name. If anything, she is a distraction Elio willingly takes when he thinks he and Oliver won’t ever go beyond acquaintanceship. Even after the two men consummate their relationship, Elio keeps up his fling with Marzia. While Elio is never in love with Marzia, he is genuinely attracted to her physically and sexually. If anything, I’d argue this shows how layered Elio’s sexuality is. Is he homo-romantic and bisexual, or bi-romantic as well? Regardless of the answer, his orientation remains more complex than other LGBTQ characters in mainstream lit and film.
In other narratives, the character then meets their “person,” someone of the same gender. The void is filled, but not for long. Due to societal pressures or deep-seated self-hatred, the two don’t end up together. One (or both) may die, and they’re ultimately miserable if they live.
Brokeback Mountain is a clear example of this. Jack’s line, “I wish I knew how to quit you” prompts Ennis to insist he’s “like this” because of him. Their sexualities are afflictions, mars to their characters that they want to be without. Jack eventually dies, and Ennis cries into his blood-soaked shirt.
Brokeback is the first “gay movie” I remember seeing. I was maybe 11 or 12, and the concept of sex scenes, let alone gay sex scenes, was still taboo. I was alone and told no one that I watched it; I don’t know if I meant it to be a secret, but it remained one regardless.
In my rewatchings of Brokeback (and readings of the short story on which it’s based), I feel the same disconnect I did at that age. I was watching people that were far away from me, both in location and mindset. They were gay and ashamed. They were trapped in their marriages yet repulsed by the only person who gave them joy, another man. I couldn’t relate.
In my rewatchings of Brokeback Mountain, I feel the same disconnect I did the first time. I was watching people that were far away from me, both in location and mindset. They were gay and ashamed. I couldn’t relate.
My first experience watching Carol was much different than that of Brokeback. I saw it where it premiered to critical and audience acclaim, the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. I was almost 21, secure in my queer identity and excited that I would not only see a celebrated film with queer characters, but queer women at that.
Upon viewing, though, I felt that same disconnect. There was a lingering sense of shame, of detestment towards Carol’s family — and Carol’s husband, too, was as vitriolic as the wives in Brokeback.
In The Price of Salt, Carol is stripped of everything because of her sexuality. Not only can she and Therese not be together, but she allows her abusive husband to get what he wants out of fear of being found out. She lives, but what kind of life is she left with? The novel ends on a hopeful note, but it’s ambivalent at best and tragic at worst.
Brokeback Mountain and The Price of Salt are in the gay literature canon, and they should be. I’m not arguing that they aren’t stories that should be told. It’s also very true that queer people throughout history (and in the present day) have experienced the intense pain that these characters have, and this pain should be projected on screens in thousands of theaters across the country.
But there are so many more stories to be told. Stories that I relate to should be projected on those screens, too. I don’t have the comfort of hearing them in my real life, of exchanging stories with friends over wine or Facebook messenger — and I know I’m not alone.
It’s true that queer people throughout history have experienced intense pain, and this pain should be projected on screens. But there are so many more stories to be told.
If anything, what I see about queerness online is concentrated on how people (men) are trying to push a new identity into the lexicon: “mostly straight.” It’s so pervasive, in fact, that there’s a new book all about the term — and more men identify as “mostly straight” than either gay or bisexual.
The concept is one that frustrates me, but doesn’t shock me: men who are not straight but also not gay would rather identify as predominantly straight than queer, or bi, or anything else. It encourages a binary in sexuality: there is either straight or gay. The fact that I live in this gray area is somehow an additional other. Reading headlines like “More Men Than You Think Identify As ‘Mostly Straight’” makes me question myself again, reinforces the loneliness I feel.
I picked up Call Me By Your Name to feel less alone.
This book does retain some of that classic narrative. Elio and Oliver don’t end up together. The unfortunate part of the novel is that they only share that summer — as Ennis and Jack only share Brokeback Mountain — but it didn’t destroy Elio’s life.
When they are together 20 years after their whirlwind relationship, Elio’s flooded with memories. He wants Oliver to call him by his name again. It’s bittersweet, it’s melancholic and the reader can’t help but think “what might have been”…but Elio isn’t crying into Oliver’s shirt.
One fundamental difference is that Elio’s goes went on without Oliver. There’s also no sense of him wanting to “quit” Oliver, of seeing his sexuality as a burden.
Years after the summer they spent together, Elio reflected on his life post-Oliver and “the people whose bed [he’s] shared”:
Fancy this, I might say: at the time I knew Oliver, I still hadn’t met so-and-so. Yet life without so-and-so was simply unthinkable.
People. The people Elio’s shared his bed with. “So-and-so” is genderless. Elio’s coming-of-age that summer was a distinctively queer one, not a gay one.
Of course I don’t know if this was Aciman’s intention. I don’t know if he set out to buck the trends of Brokeback Mountain, Carol, and other mainstream queer stories, which are so often gay stories. Perhaps I’m projecting my own desire to read a character like me onto this novel.
I want a lot of things out of queer media that will take years to obtain, maybe beyond my lifetime. I want more than one LGBTQ film a year to be celebrated by the mainstream media. I want more protagonists like Elio. I want more female protagonists like Elio.
I want more protagonists like Elio. I want more female protagonists like Elio.
Upon seeing Call Me By Your Name, I was delighted that it remained mostly true to the novel. What was left out was the last section, which takes place 20 years after Elio and Oliver’s summer together. The film left out the fact that Elio fell in love with people other than Oliver, but nonetheless kept his encounters with both Oliver and Marzia. And thankfully, Marzia still wasn’t an antagonist.
The film is now part of the group adapted from LGBTQ literature that have reached awards recognition. That group is unfortunately small, but CMBYN nonetheless separates itself in its portrayal of sexuality. But I still want more characters whose sexual fluidity is apparent and explicit like Elio’s. I want them to acknowledge that gender doesn’t determine attraction and that sometimes there’s a gray area between lust and reverence, and that’s okay. I want stories where queer isn’t synonymous with gay. I want “mostly straight” characters to acknowledge they are queer and accept, maybe even love, that about themselves.
They had arranged to meet at 11 a.m. She arrived at 10:30. I know I must be there early or I won’t go at all. Why am I going. Am I in love. No. One doesn’t question. In love with the situation. Hope of love. Out of boredom. A few days by the sea. A hotel. Room overlooking sand. Gulls. Beach. Breakfast in bed. Meals served by gracious smiling waiters. But the land there is flat. Dreary. Endless. Though the sea. The sea. The whole Front to myself. But what if it rains all the time. It drizzled now as she looked out of the station. Cabs swished by. People rushed through barriers. Escape. Escape with my lover. But he isn’t even that. In her small room. On her single bed they had gone so far. Fully clothed. No we’ll wait it wouldn’t be fair I have to leave you soon. Now the weekend he would prove to be
She clutched her bag. Glanced at the clock. And there he was. His hat cuckoo-perched on an unfinished nest. Dressed in a new suit. Mac just cleaned over his arm. Hullo love. If people stopped to look they would think we were father and daughter on our way to an aunt’s funeral. They don’t look. But think dirty old man. As he takes my arm. My bag.
The train. Carriages with long seats. Without divisions. Seats that make one aware of sagging shoulders. She straightened up. Straightened her skirt. Haven’t seen that dress before love — new? He removed his hat. It nestled beside him. He had washed his hair. Had a bad shave. Without adding the bits of cotton wool. The train shuttled forward. Stopped. Now I could say I’ve changed my mind I can’t go on with it I feel ill. Well how are things sweet? OK had a row with the wife oh some trivial domestic thing anyway makes it easier. Looks as if it might clear up. Brighter in the west — forecast said it would. How long does it take? About two hours love should be there in time for a beer and brunch in a nice pub somewhere. The rest of the carriage empty. Maybe someone will get in at the next stop. Pray that someone gets in. Ininininininin the train chugged on over the bridge. Children threw stones into the river. He had on the green shirt. She remarked once how nice he looked in green. Matches your eyes. Eyes now stared directly at her. Was he thinking of the night. Nights ahead. Nights he had saved up for. Relishing in cosy domestic mornings. Reading the papers together. Quietly sipping tea. Quietly satisfied. Three. Four mornings ahead of them. Already I’m thinking in the third person. Seeing us as another passenger might. But no one got in at the next station. He leaned over and took her hand. She looked out of the window. Looked back at him. Cigarette? Her hand released. She dived into her bag. They lit up. He sank back. She took out a paperback. Looked at the words lumped together. Spaces between paragraphs.
The train stopped. A woman with a child got in. The child held a blue teddy bear nearly bigger than herself. They sat opposite. The woman looked across once. The child more than once. Giggling she approached. Adjusted the bear’s arms. What’s his name then? Tethy. He’s nice isn’t he? She passed the bear over. He took it and balanced it on his knees. The child started crying gimmee back gimmee gimmee Tethy gimmee. Judy come here don’t disturb the gentleman there’s a good girl. He smiled and handed the bear over. It growled. The child giggled and passed it over to me. Do you want to hold Tethy it’s his burfday. She sucked her thumb and watched. Watching. He watched.
The houses crammed together. Back yards where men leaned on spades. Women in doorways dried their hands on aprons. Fields where boys played football. In small parks girls paused over prams. The sky strips of blue. Houses spread out. Fields. Cows. Sheep. Away from civilisation. Away from the little rituals they had been going through. Manipulated. Meetings in pubs. Fish and chips afterwards. Parties where she danced. Flirted. While he looked on. Hurried fumblings. Kisses. In a cab. Long talks by the gas fire. Holding hands in the cinema. Being shown off to his friends at dinner parties. I’m so glad he’s found you he does need someone bless him and you seem so suited his wife as you probably know is
The child bounced the bear on the seat. I looked at the paperback. This autobiographical novel is a brazen confession of rebellion, trespass and blatant sexual exploitation in a world of intellectual despair and moral chaos. She closed the book. He looked up from the newspaper. His shoes highly polished. Crease in trousers nicely creased. Oh so nicely creased. Creases under his eyes. Around his mouth. Anticipation anticipation anti anti antiantiantiantiantianti. The train rattled on. The child talked to the bear. Tethy Tethy my Tethy is a naughty Tethy. The woman put away her knitting. They got out. He leaned over. It’s going to be great just great love I know it will. Pressure on my knee. Only another half hour to go love. A dozen hours to come. No. Perhaps he will want to in the afternoon. An after lunch doze. I closed my eyes. Opened. More fields. More boys kicking in an orgy of mud. Men tinkered with cars. Station after station. Signals. Tunnels. Hedges. Then the sea. Flat grey. Flat washed green land on the left. Well this is it love — here I’ll take your case. The hat flew on.
The wind waited round every corner. Narrow streets. Pinched faces already with the Sunday roast and glazed T.V. look. Girls. Hair in rollers. Queued in the butchers. Wondering if Jim. Fred. Or Harry will be at the dance tonight. Which pub love — what about this one looks OK doesn’t it? Thin widow polished the glasses. Glass topped tables. Round. Dartboard pockmarked. Old men leaned on the bar. Looked up. Dismissed. Side-long glances. Two whiskies please. Thank you. Hungry? Mmmmmm. We’ll have lunch at the hotel. Which hotel? Oh I don’t know we’ll find one — look around take our time I know there are at least three good ones on the Front. Looks like it’s going to clear up Sir. Yes forecast said it would. Thank you Sir good day Miss.
Sky darker grey. Smell of sea. Fish. Tar. Well which hotel love — what about this one it’s a three star one should be OK hope the food’s good. Woman behind the register looked up. Yes we would like a double room preferably facing the sea. How long will you be staying Sir? Oh couple of days. Twin beds or double? Double please. He leaned over. Signed the book. Will you be taking lunch Sir? Yes. Lunch is served from one to two thank you Sir. Small man picked up the luggage. Struggled up three. Four flights of stairs. Doors pale yellow. Dark yellow carpet with pink flowered pattern. A door opened. His hand jingled money in his pocket. Thrust out at the appropriate time. Thank you Sir. Thank you. Door closed. Yellow wallpaper. Yellow bedspread. Pink carpet. Shiny insect-yellow dressing table. Chintz curtains. But it doesn’t even overlook the sea. Ah well love it doesn’t matter does it I mean
Wardrobe door creaked. Hangers. Thin wire hangers clanged. Covered by my two dresses. He’s lying on the bed. Already already. I’m terribly hungry. Sighing he lurched off. Patted the eiderdown into place. My hair into place. Makeup renewed. Eyes averted. His. In the corridor past numerous yellow doors. One opened. An old man lay on the single bed. Looked up at the lamp shade. Sorry I thought it was the bathroom. Deaf. Must be deaf. Or maybe dead. A narrow bathroom. Huge Victorian bath. Pipes gurgled. The sea. A narrow dimension of winter sea from the window if pushed wide enough. Some men dragged in nets. Silently. Children screamed around them. Plug pulled. And it all came tumbling down. Down down down
Into the restaurant. Empty tables. He had chosen one near the window. Terrace. Limp bunting the wind ignored. He passed over the menu. Thin-lipped waitress stood by. Five minutes to two. Dying for her cup of tea. Feet up. Snooze. Is the dover sole nice? Yes Sir. Well we’ll have that I think — sounds good doesn’t it love? The waitress jabbed her notepad. Suppressed a yawn. The sea yawned out. In. Enclosed by glass. A bowl of artificial flowers. His hands spread out on his knees. What names did you sign? Mine of course love for both of us they never ask anyway. Other hotels. Other girls. Other weekends. The waitress tighter-lipped. The fish flat. Dry yellow. Little dishes with lumps of potatoes like ice cream dropped on a pavement. Vegetables as though chewed already. Looks good love doesn’t it? And it is good. It will be good. I can’t survive it all unless it’s going to be good. It’s up to me the whole thing. The next four days. Nights. I can love him. It will be all right once we’ve made it. Everything will be all right then. It’s just this interminable waiting. Gosh you were hungry what about afters love — peach melba? No just coffee. At the corner of his mouth a piece of dover sole. I want to giggle. He folds his napkin. Well what about a little nap? I think I’ll have another coffee you go on up I’ll join you in a minute. The waitress peered round the door again. And again. He yawned. Smiled. Walked across and out.
Will that be all Madam? Yes thank you. Perhaps Madam wouldn’t mind having her coffee in the lounge? And Madam went into the empty lounge. Heavy chintz chairs politely arranged. Politely waited. God why am I here. Well make the best of it. On the stairs the elderly bellboy stood back. Did he wink. Perhaps just a nervous tic. Which door. What number. Oh God. Smile arranged. Held. Hullo love. He pushed the newspaper aside. Red silk dressing gown. Hair on chest. She slid out of her dress. Hung it up. He had already drawn the curtains. Yellow light seeped through, She climbed over him. I love you. Her feet cold she put them between his legs. Adjusted her head. His mouth in her hair. His lips nuzzled. Came further down. She closed her eyes. Turned towards him. Take this off — here. No I’ll do it. She unsnapped her brassiere. Lovely breasts you know that lovely. He held them. Held on to them. Her hand wandered over him. Clutched his hair. Legs. A little lump. Perhaps his finger. No can’t be. His hands. One hand pressed her breasts. The other on her belly. Moved down. His weight moved over her. I feel the weight of my own body. Not like this oh not now not now not like this. She felt for him. How small. He slid down. Adjusted his body’s length to hers. Measuring. A game of poker. Pause. Grunt. Intake of breath. Wait a minute love. Here. She took hold of him. Started rubbing. The lump became a knot. Sorry love. What is it? I don’t know maybe it’s because I love you so much you know frightened I won’t satisfy you enough oh I don’t know. Cigarette? They lay stiff. Side by side. Stared at the smoke. Ceiling. Cracked yellow. Someone padded along the corridor. Sound of rain. We need time plenty of time and we have plenty of time love — sleepy? Yes. Try and get some sleep then. She curled up under the sheet. He got up. Think I’ll do a little exploring of the town get a bottle of whisky or something.
She sat up. Stared at the lamp shade. Sank down. Pulled the sheet over her head. Pushed it away. Got up. Sat in front of the mirror. Opened the drawers. Hotel headed notepaper. A few hairpins. She went out into the bathroom. Spray spattered on to the empty Front. Over the blue railings freshly painted. Half of them yet to be painted. In three months all would be a nice bright blue. The bandstand full of dapper little uniformed men who would pluck. Bang away with their brass instruments. Whether it was raining or not. Holidaymakers in paper hats. Plastic macs. Would eat ice cream. Their faces attempting to expand in a fortnight’s ‘away from it all’. She went back into their room. Their room that had been hundreds of other couples’ scene of illicit love. After all married couples have twin beds. Well usually. At least the chambermaid wouldn’t giggle with the others when changing the sheets this time. Or maybe she will. After all
After all. She took a dress down. No best to put the same one on. They’ll know. They. The staff had nothing better to do than conclude. Make insinuations. As if they cared. Really. She put on the other dress and went down into the lounge. Was the rest of the hotel empty then. But no. Two women she hadn’t noticed resumed talking. Huddled amongst the flowered covered chairs. A fire had been lit. She drew up a chair. Picked at a magazine. The erotic facts recorded. The most intimate characteristics of woman’s sexuality. PARTIAL CONTENTS. Legend of the female organs, of the vulva, the clitoris, destruction of the hymen, circumcision of girls, the female breast, breast of Europeans, African, Asiatic women etc. Fingers dug into her bag. A young man stood in the doorway. Have you a light please? Thank you thank you very much. He took a chair. Sat behind her. He has a nice mouth. Thick hair. Rather nice smiling eyes. Is he alone. Hullo love what a lovely fire — found a good pub — well interesting — full of fishermen they’ve had a good day apparently good catch. Did you get the whisky? Yes it’s up in our room. The young man rose. A girl in the doorway. Smiled up. He smiled down. Gosh it’s damned cold out though got quite wet walking the streets — it’s a nice town hasn’t changed much since I came here last — like some tea love?
She poured the tea. He spread out his hands towards the fire. Shall we have it in our room we can put a little whisky in it then? He balanced the tray. It rattled as he climbed the stairs. Behind her. The elderly bellboy stood aside. Obviously hasn’t a nervous tick. Wish we had a nice room facing the sea — still at least one can see it from the bathroom window. I can ask to change love. Oh no don’t bother it doesn’t matter really — what time’s dinner? Hungry already? No just wondered. Seven I think. What shall we do? Could go to the films though I don’t think there’s much on. Could go to that fishermen’s pub perhaps. Of course you haven’t really seen the town yet — and there’s a ruin too — tenth century castle I believe — it’s worth seeing has dungeons and things. Is it free? No you have to pay.
They sipped tea laced with whisky. He lay on the bed. She sat on the edge. He edged her down. They kissed. A long kiss. A searching of tongues. God you do excite me love. Maybe we ought to try it with clothes on it seems that
A knock on the door. Yes? Sorry Sir just wanted to turn down the bed. Oh don’t bother thank you. Just as you wish Sir — Madam. Damn maybe we should have rented a cottage after all. Stop worrying. I’m not worrying — well not really. He lit two cigarettes and handed her one. No thanks. Let him see. See see seeeeeeeeeee-see. The sea whooshed down. Below. Far away. Away from the walls closing in. His face close. Closer. What’s the matter love? Nothing — nothing’s the matter — what time is it? She reached for his wrist. Hair crawled down and then stopped as if surprised by the sudden lumps. She leaned over. Away. Back again. And undid his shirt. She licked him. His face came up from the pillow. Oh love love love let’s wait until tonight shall we — be better that way be all right then we’ll have plenty of time.
They sat at the same table overlooking the terrace. Waves of whiteness curled. Uncurled. Lights along the Front hovered over circles of wetness. The middle table surrounded by young men. Laughing. Joking rugger type youths talking about rugger. The tight-lipped waitress tightly smiled. What about trying the steak this time love? Overdone medium or rare Sir? Medium I think with peas and roast. Thank you Sir. Two of the youths glanced across. Father and daughter act. But he caught hold of her hand as she helped him to some gravy. The youths glanced away. Loud laughter. I think it’s stopped raining perhaps we can take a breath of fresh air afterwards love would you like that?
Along the Front. Deserted. Long sloping pavements. Carefully avoiding the puddles. She took her shoes off and ran. Laughing. On to the beach. Down to the water’s edge. She heard him panting. Crunching over the pebbles. Her hair over her eyes. She did not sweep away. Lights of the town distant. The sky uplifted from the heaving mass of darkness. That was the sea. Sound of sea. Sounds of other seas. Other days. Spent in other places. Under foreign skies. But I can’t afford to indulge. It’s not fair fair fair fairee fairee fairee. Gulls swooped out of the folds of darkness. Tips of white unfolded into expanse of whiteness. Above her. She laughed into the wind. With the wind. Her face tilted towards his. Make love to me make love make love to meeeeee. Ah love what here it’s so damned cold. He embraced her. She shook against him. Shook with uncontrollable laughter. He gently lifted her face up. We will tonight love or if not then tomorrow eh we have a few days yet. I’m cold let’s go back — or go and have a drink.
They went into the public bar. Men looked up. Paused in laughter. Shall we try the saloon love? No let’s go back to the hotel. They passed a large hotel that looked closed. But waiters gazed out of long windows. Maybe we should have gone there better food perhaps. Oh I don’t know looks pretty grim to me. But at least the rooms all face the sea love.
They went into the hotel bar. The youths roared. Raring to get high. Or already high. Slapped each other on the back. We have got that whisky in our room shall we go up love? They sat on the edge of the bed. Drank from the tooth glasses. Until the bottle was nearly empty. Well I’m turning in love. But it’s only nine o’ clock. Oh well we can get up early — might be a nice day.
She shook out her nightdress. Went into the bathroom. Sat on the toilet and waited for the bath to fill. Water lukewarm. Someone rattled the handle. She stopped singing. Love can I come in? Shivering she reached for the latch. Thought you might like your back scratched. Mmmmmmmm. He pulled his shirt sleeves up and knelt. Applied soap over his hands. Wrists. Have you locked the door? Yes love. He applied his hands over her. Breasts. Belly. What about my back? Just a sec. Oh it’s cold. Here. He held the towel out. Giggling she wrapped it round herself. Here I’ll dry you. He rubbed her body. Knelt and kissed her toes. She wriggled. Love love love oh dear love. You better go first or else someone will see us. Oh what the hell. Well you better. She locked the door. Sat on the toilet. Opened the towel and looked at herself. I’m not in love and that’s all there is to it. She pulled the plug. Notinlovenotinlovenotin. The pipes. Behind walls. Water rushed out. Into the sea.
He lay on the bed. Smoking. Green striped pyjamas. Still smelling of detergent. His wife had ironed. She slid down beside him. He switched the light off. I’d rather have it on sweet. He switched the light on. His hand. Hands. She flung off her nightdress. Bent over him. His breathing quickened. She caught her breath and took him in her mouth. Like a little boy’s. But gradually
She spread her legs out and felt for him again with her hands. Kiss me kiss me there. He obeyed. She held his head. Held on to his head. Hair. Closed her eyes. Held her breath. And froze. She watched herself. Her body. Her lumps of flesh solidified. Love love what is it — what’s happened are you all right? She opened her mouth. The scream couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Be forced out. It lay. Struggled. Thumped within the blood cells. Ribs. That closed in on the scream. That became separated. Someone else’s scream. The child. The girl. The virgin. The woman. Until they joined forces. Screamed at the person outside who refused to collaborate. She felt him lift her from him. Gently put the sheet. Blankets over her shoulders. Let’s try and sleep shall we — we’re both tired and had too much to drink and in the morning it’ll be all right. She felt his back against her back. She waited. Stared into the dark. Was he staring into that too? But no. He was already asleep. Snoring. Little grunts at first. God I hope he’s not the whistling kind. The snores grew louder. She sat up. Reached for a cigarette. What is it love — can’t you sleep? No. Maybe if you… I can’t sleep if you snore can I. Was I — sorry you should give me a nudge. She jabbed out the cigarette. Turned over. And waited. The snores came as before. Yet not as before had been. Heavier. Insistent. Demanding. She nudged him. He grunted and rolled over on to his back. She closed her eyes. Put the pillow half over her head. The snoring continued. Grew louder. The whole room vibrated. She hurled herself up. Was I snoring again? Yes. Oh God — look I’ll sleep over there in the chair. He took the eiderdown off. The pillow. And huddled into the chair. You can’t sleep there can you sweet? Well what else can we do? I don’t know — wish you’d brought your ear plugs — wish I even had some sleeping pills. She watched the dot of his cigarette move upwards. Down. It’s really quite comfortable love it’s better this way. She moved over to the warmth where his body had been. And waited. The snores came. Every minute. I could time them like a woman in labour. Less than a minute. She got up and went out.
She leaned her head out of the bathroom window. The rain made her face wetter. The scream moved up into the lump. A fist thrust in her throat. Spread out. The scream emerged in a coughing bout. I’ll leave tomorrow. Catch the first train back. Go and pack now. Wait at the station. Maybe there’s a late train. She sat on the toilet. Shivered. What a situation to find myself in. No one to blame except myself. The handle rattled. Are you all right love? Yes yes. I could try and sleep in here but then someone will want to use the damned place. She opened the window wider. Lines of white broke up the shore. Waves of blackness swallowed up the houses. I’m so cold so cold. She opened the door but closed it as someone came along the corridor. She waited for silence. She tried again and ran into the room. He smoked. Hunched in the chair. We should have got separate rooms. Perhaps tomorrow we can go to another hotel. No I’m going back. Oh my dear…
She buried herself in the bed. Against the wall. I’ll wait until you’re asleep first love. She heard the lighter click. Shut. Pause. Sound of doors. Opened. Closed. The lighter clicked. She waited. Waited for the next click. And the first faint light to edge in through the curtains. Soon the light came. A thin light that brought the relief of shadows. She could see him. Heard him turn. Confined to eiderdown. Chair. She closed her eyes. When she opened them the room was speckled with light. He was shaving. Did you get any sleep love? A bit what about you? Not really. His face paper yellow. Pink eyes. He grinned. At least it’s not raining — in fact it’s a gorgeous day and we’ll go and have a look at that castle unless of course you are going back? I don’t know just don’t know we can’t obviously go on like this can we? Oh my dear love love love — come on let’s have a good breakfast and then go out shall we?
She decided she really didn’t want any breakfast. Just a cup of tea. So he went down alone. She dressed slowly. Glanced in the mirror. What a sight. But what did it matter. She had decided. The scene had already been set long before they ever came here.
They met in the foyer and walked out along the Front. On to the pier. In silence. Watched the men fling their fishing lines in. A few fish struggled. Thumped around on the iron grilles. Gave a final twitch then slid down with the others in the basket.
The castle surrounded by a moat of dryness. The guide asked if they wanted to be shown around. They walked round together. The guide went back to sleep. Round walls with scaffolding. Crumbling walls. Walls that were no longer walls. Large rooms with wooden floors. Jewellery and fossils under glass. Please Do Not Touch notices everywhere. Smell of must. Please Do Not Smoke round every corner. Endless passage that was not so endless. The castle was round. A dungeon she quietly went into while he looked up at a sword. She heard him go past. She shrank into the darker corner of the cell. His footsteps grew fainter. Above her. She looked through the narrow bars. At the triangle patch of grass. Please Do Not Throw Litter Here. Please Keep Off The Grass. She saw him standing on the fortress. He leaned against a cannon. His hand thrust upwards. Shielded his eyes. He must be looking out to sea. She heard his footsteps approach. She stifled a giggle. And walked out. Oh there you are were you hiding? No I wondered where you were. Well we’ve seen just about everything I think. What about the other dungeons? OK. They walked again the narrow passage. Where no sun had entered. God what a place I could imagine a murder here — in fact you could well… She sprang back. Her mouth open. Closed into a closed smile as his hands came out. Oh don’t frighten me like that. Stupid — God your imagination love. All the same it is frightening. And she sprang from the wall. Ran past him. Laughing. Screaming out. You won’t catch me never ever never. She heard her voice bounce back. And his laughter. His gasps. Until he had caught her up. They held hands. Crossed the drawbridge. Thanked the guide who gave them a pamphlet history of the castle. Who went back to sleep behind his desk.
They went into a seafront cafe and ordered coffee. Lovely day Sir — Miss. A group of girls entered and went over to the juke box. Hypnotised by the choice. Oh there’s nothing here not even the Rolling Stones. They sat down. Nudged each other. Giggled. I have to go back. Oh love. Well. They stared into their cups. He looked up. Across. She looked down. His shoes were covered in seaweed. Sand. She nodded. Give it a day just another day love I mean we’ve hardly been here and
They walked through streets. Past houses that never varied with their lace curtains. Back gardens. Shrubberies. Back yards with washing. Parts of bicycles. Spare parts of cars. Boys in fields played football. Curtained windows. People still in bed. Or yawned over newspapers. Or watched the television.
In the restaurant their table was occupied by the young couple. The middle table surrounded by women. Middle aged with hats. Hats with feathers. Without feathers. Bits of veil. One woman stood up to give a speech, They all clapped. The young couple leaned towards each other. Their plates full of unfinished food.
The afternoon came. Went. And the night. Repetitive of the night before. Yet not quite. They got drunk. But didn’t attempt to make love. Attempted to sleep. And the morning faced their faces now white. They walked by the sea. She finally said they would go could go back together. They went for a final drink in the large hotel. Sat encased by glass and aspidistras. Without talking. If accidentally they touched they apologised. Looked at each other when the other wasn’t looking. The sky expanded in blueness. Their mouths sucked in as the plants sucked in the water the waiter sprayed from a plastic watering can.
They packed their things. She waited outside. Watched him pay the bill. Smile at the woman behind the desk. The elderly bellboy brought out the luggage. Winked with both eyes. Had a good time Miss — glad the weather cleared up for you — come back again won’t you — taxi Sir? No thanks we’ll walk. They walked up the street. Away from the sea. Past the pub with the glass topped tables. Shall we have a drink? Have one at the station I think love if there’s time. The bar closed. They sat in the buffet and had a cup of tea. Lukewarm. The train roared in. The carriages separated by glass doors. A corridor. They went into an empty carriage. Hope no one gets in. So do I. He brought out half a bottle of whisky and opened it. Passed over. She took a tiny sip then a longer one and handed it back. The train moved out. Wheels clanked along. Past the sun-splashed sea. Pale green slice of land that spread out into deeper green. The deeper blue. I’m sorry love really I am. So am I. But I can see you — I mean we will still see each other after we get back? I think not I mean it is impossible isn’t it you can see that. At each station they looked out. No one got in. Or if they did they looked once into the carriage then passed on along the corridor. She leaned over. Held his hand. Pressed. He sighed. I hate it to end like this but
The fields. Hedges vanished. Suburbs crawled in and out. The football fields now dry. Now empty. The river red flecked with white. The power station powered out its smoke. They walked through the barrier. Paused in the half empty station. Well. Well? Well I’ll ’phone you. No it won’t be any use will it? Well then it’s goodbye — goodbye love. And he rushed into the underground. She caught a bus back. Asked the conductor for change. Climbed the stairs to her room. And lay on the bed. The telephone rang. She opened the door quietly. Heard someone talk.
She took out a cigarette. Put it back. And collapsed on the bed. Got up and searched for the change. Went down on to the second floor and put the money in the box. His voice. As though he had a cold. She heard her own. That was not her own. Voice. Look let’s meet up some time this week and talk about it. When? Thursday? What about tomorrow? Tonight? OK I’ll come round? Yes — see you later then. She put the receiver carefully down. Went up to her room and unpacked. Washed her face and applied makeup. The face she saw was smiling little smiles that broke into a wide grin.
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