I want to write about the Lydia Davis selection and get into some Meisner Technique, or remind myself of that joke about “Mississippi- how do you spell it? I-T” (or re: my last post, how do you spell bourgeoisie, yes I did it). I read these pages again then, because I told myself I shouldn’t blog about the Mississippi joke. And then I think I got it! (Not the joke, the theme of these selections.) Lights lights lights hoping to be liked the baby the baby the baby killed killed killed all the rabbits! (And it’s the first day of the month, so rabbit rabbit rabbit!) The do it with mirrors, with funny mirrors. And then you wonder what’s really reflected, repeated back at you. Raymond Carver’s baby mantra made me wonder how he could sit there chanting and humming about the baby while its screaming and he’s gonna hurt the baby!
These pieces are so short that theoretically I am torn between the advice stuck in my head about eliminating unnecessary words so why waste them on repetition, and the reasoning that its not wasting because if you only have a limited amount of space time and words to get your point across, then what better way than to say it over and over? I like the latter because I tend to like unnecessary words sometimes. But it’s not unnecessary if its necessary to say it twice.
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors", and has left no other nexus between people than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment". It has drowned out the most heavenly ecstacies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation.
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigor in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former exoduses of nations and crusades.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind.
I wanted to concentrate on this rather long passage because of the finger-pointing repetition of “The bourgeoisie”, and I believe that by the end of this post I’ll finally remember how to spell it. Not only does the first line of all of these paragraphs, but the insistent “it has pitilessly torn asunder”, “it has drowned out”, “it has substituted”, “it has converted”’s never let you forget who you are reading about, and forcibly keeps your eyes focused on them. It starts off with a single, understated, ominous sentence, followed by a severe outpouring, a torrent of indictments, that halfway through, claim to be able to be summed up in one word. The anger of this text is clear when that very one word of “exploitation” is almost immediately amended to “brutal exploitation” surrounded by numerous qualifiers.
The last paragraph of this passage lets go of the pointed accusatory style and starts to actually explain the workings of the bourgeoisie. All of a sudden it seems more reasonable and relaxed and less incendiary. The isocolon that begins the last sentence begins to sound like poetry, and we hear “at last” with a sigh of relief and a sibilant hiss, “last compelled to face with sober senses”. After the storm we are let down easy, with “sober senses”, faced with a calm statement confronting our predicament, our condition, and our kind.
The girl stood up and walked to the end of the station. Across, on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees. ‘And we could have all this,’ she said. ‘And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.’ ‘What did you say?’ ‘I said we could have everything.’
"I think about what we could have, about all we could possess," spoke the girl who stood framed against the fields and forest-obscured river, "And we could. All of this is within the realm of our grasp and possession, and yet we ourselves, as every day wakes and rises and night sets, push it away and create an impossibility out of this possible reality." At the end of the station, to where she had walked, was a view of the tree-lined banks of the rivers of Ebro, bordered by fields of grain., and far beyond this river rose the mountains. The man did not, or feigned to have not heard the girl, and therefore spoke as such. The girl did not revisit the entirety of her previous statement, but once again spoke the sum of it for the man.
Earnest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” starts off with a hyper-observed scene. The geography of the setting is precise. The narrator is even aware of the exact train schedule:
“It was very hot and the express from Barcelona would come in forty minutes. It stopped at this junction for two minutes and went to Madrid.”
The descriptions of the actions, when acknowledged, do not cut corners and completely commit to that action.
“The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads. She put the felt pads and the beer glass on the table and looked at the man and the girl.”
Hemingway did not settle for telling us that the beers were served, or that the woman brought them, but goes all the way to the little felt coaster pads and has the woman looking at the couple. However, we don’t see her leave again, and later on the dialogue speaks alone. When that happens, the passage of time and actions are assumed, and we are now not sure of the forty minutes as we were before.
We are made to feel even more unsure as we continue to eavesdrop on the couple’s conversation. We are obviously missing something, and not just having them tell us what the operation is. Like Howard’s diary in “On Beauty”, this couple has their ‘in’ jokes that aren’t really jokes but annoyances and catchphrases, like when the girl remarks that, “Everything tastes of liquorice. Especially all the things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe” or that “That’s all we do, isn’t it – look at things and try new drinks?”
I read this story a few times this weekend, and I believe that this is necessary. On the first reading, I admired the style, but didn’t really have a clue as to what just happened. It took repeated readings to start seeing the subtext or where the plainly written dialogue was sarcastic, for instance, because Hemingway gives no clues. On first reading, I took these lines at face value, not questioning whether the procedure really did leave people all that happy:
‘I know we will. You don’t have to be afraid. I’ve known lots of people that have done it.’
‘So have I,’ said the girl. ‘And afterwards they were all so happy.’
When the man tells the girl that he knows it is simple, and she rather witheringly comes back with “Yes, you know it’s perfectly simple”, we are listening to a tense couple that knows and can attack every little word the other utters. Not so perfectly simple.
In my opinion, this is a very good depiction of a stressed out, conflicted woman. The itchy, creepy, annoyed, gnawing feeling you get when someone you love is bugging you, not loving you enough and at the same time too much, is as palpable as the heat.
"Changed your mind, did you?" he said. "Damn good thing; by God, tomorrow when this town hears about how you talked tonight-"
"Now, now," the other ex-soldier said. "Hawkshaw's all right. Come on, Hawk; jump in."
"Will Mayes never done it, boys," the barber said. "If anybody done it. Why, you all know well as I do there aint any town where they got better niggers than us. And you know how a lady will kind of think things about men when there aint any reason to, and Miss Minnie anyway-"
"Sure, sure," the soldier said. "We're just going to talk to him a little; that's all."
"Talk hell!" Butch said. "When we're through with the-"
"Shut up, for God's sake!" the soldier said. "Do you want everybody in town-"
"Tell them, by God!" McLendon said. "Tell every one of the sons that'll let a white woman-"
"Let's go; let's go: here's the other car." The second car slid squealing out of a cloud of dust at the alley mouth. McLendon started his car and took the lead. Dust lay like fog in the street. The street lights hung nimbused as in water. They drove on out of town.
A rutted lane turned at right angles. Dust hung above it too, and above all the land. The dark bulk of the ice plant, where the Negro Mayes was night watchman, rose against the sky. "Better stop here, hadn't we?" the soldier said. McLendon did not reply. He hurled the car up and slammed to a stop, the headlights glaring on the blank wall.
"Listen here, boys," the barber said; "if he's here, dont that prove he never done it? Dont it? If it was him, he would run. Dont you see he would?" The second car came up and stopped. McLendon got down; Butch sprang down beside him. "Listen, boys," the barber said.
In this passage, Faulkner evokes the “bloody twilight” before the nightmarish night. Description is limited, as through the entire story, but we can still make out the dusty fog in the street and the air. Dialogue is cut off and brief, leaving us snatching at phrases to figure out what’s happening. The hurried, panicked interruptions make it clear that nothing logical and reasoned will be able to be said or heard. The barber makes an effort, but his continual “listen here”’s and don’t its and don’t you’s show that no one is listening to him and he is trying to get something through their heads.
In fact, from all quarters, not just from the barber, the repeated phrases add to the anxious, tense tone. The air lays still and the lights hang suspended. Their whole environment holds its breath, but verbs used for the gang are violent and active. The car squeals, McLendon takes the lead, hurls and slams his car around, Butch springs from the running board, people are incited to jump in. We can see these movements in the fading light, later on all we hear are voices in the dark. Most of the story feels blindfolded like this, the exceptions are the scenes with Minnie Cooper and the last scene when McLendon proves us wrong in thinking he couldn’t be a bigger asshole. These three scenes are written cinematically. We view the remembered action, which is presented without rank or judgement.
The choral repetitions that stuck out the most to me where the bright, fevered, glittering eyes, the dead air, and the air as absorbent or enveloping, feeling like “molten lead”. The last example clues us in to Will’s fate, since with our blindfolds on it goes unsaid and unseen. The descriptions of dead air and the fevered quality of the townspeople’s eyes makes us feel the lack of control, sanity, and reason in the town.
When Zadie Smith’s piece switched from emails to the Belsey’s home life, it was easy to see the false binary that she had set up. We expect Jerome’s world to be stuffy and reserved, as it is in England, and populated with religion and church charities, virgins, internships, and polite and considerate families.
The Belseys, on the other hand, are a cool, hip-ly academic family in America, with (admittedly assumed) Brooklyn accents, busy schedules, children coming and going, a passionate and troubled husband and wife, and curse words. Yet Jerome’s world is the one that is written conversationally, confrontationally, colorfully. Though we have no extraneous information from his correspondence, and don’t know what he looks like or where and who he is other than what is slowly let on, we are allowed to read his emails, and therefore we feel close to him. When we arrive at his parents house the tone changes to formal storytelling, detached from its characters minds. We are told their moods, characteristics, histories, but it is the narrator who must let us in to these secrets, not the characters. This contrast of setting and tone makes us question our initial expectations of situational style.
