Those Who Walk Away: Patricia Highsmith

“Suddenly it seemed to him that love-erotic and romantic love–was nothing but a form or various forms of ego.”

Patricia Highsmith’s novel, Those Who Walk Away examines the relationship between two men in the aftershocks of a suicide. Peggy, a 21-year-old strangely unworldly, yet sexually curious young woman commits suicide a few months after her marriage to affluent Ray Garrett. Ray is planning to open an art gallery in New York and trust fund Peggy, was the daughter of the brutish American artist Ed Coleman. When the book opens, Peggy has been dead for about two weeks. She and Ray were living in Mallorca when, while Ray was visiting a female neighbour, Peggy sat in the tub and slit her wrists. A furious, inchoate Ed removed all of his daughter’s paintings from her home. There is bad blood between the two men–Ed, who is irritable, unpleasant and a boor, blames Ray for his daughter’s death, but Ray insists there were no indications that Peggy was suicidal. Ray says that Peggy was painting again, and that she “actually looked happy.”

Ray travels to Rome to talk to his father-in-law in order to attempt some type of reconciliation. Ed isn’t alone; he’s traveling with his companion, “his current woman,” the elegant, wealthy Inez. A night-time meeting between Ray and Ed ends with Ed pulling out a gun and wounding Ray (it’s just a graze). Ray is lucky.

At this point, any sensible person would:

a) get on the next flight to either Mallorca or America

b) call the police

But Ray, who must have some sort of death wish then follows Ed to Venice. Ray telephones all the prestigious hotels in Venice until he locates Ed. Ray calls Ed’s room and to his surprise, Ed for some reason, acts as if nothing has happened between the two men and invites Ray to dinner that night. As the meal concludes, Inez urges Ray to leave Italy immediately as Ed “will never understand it is not your fault.” And then she asks if “it is true that Peggy was afraid of sex.” After another dinner, Ray and Ed walk off alone in the night to talk. Peggy’s suicide is still fresh and Ray fumbles in his awkward explanations to Ray:

“Maybe she wanted more magic than I had to give her–or than there is in marriage.“

“Magic?“

Ray felt baffled and vague. “Peggy was very romantic–in a dangerous way. She thought marriage was another world–something like paradise or poetry-instead of a continuation of this world. But where we lived, it couldn’t have been more like a paradise. The climate, the fruit on the trees right outside the door. We had servants, we had time, we had sunshine. It wasn’t as if she was saddled with children right away and up to the elbows in dishwater.“

But there’s no appeasing Ed, and guess what happens…. again.

Those Who Walk Away explores the strange cat-and-mouse game that takes place between Ray and Ed. Ray’s behaviour and choices are repeatedly baffling, at least to this reader. The only thing I could conclude is that:

a) Ray is some sort or saint/martyr

b) he feels some guilt at Peggy’s death.

Nearly all of the story takes place in Venice, and this location is perfect for the plot. Ray, in spite of his choices, or perhaps even because of them, is an interesting character. After he goes into hiding from Ed, Ray learns a great deal about his own character. At one point, he develops a relationship with a young woman who works in a bakery. Ray’s illusions about her are shattered when they go out to dinner and he realises that she’s not that interesting or intelligent, after all. Secondary characters, in light of the Ray-Ed situation make certain moral choices which are sometimes perplexing (or valiant). Finally, there’s something dark buried under the plot. Highsmith just gives us a couple of hints and lets the reader draw the conclusion.

About People: Julie Zeh

“When did everything go so totally haywire?”

Julie Zeh’s About People is a remarkable novel set during the Pandemic. Thanks to comments here, I know that like-minded readers are somewhat jaded with “Pandemic novels.” Lisa, in particular, noted that some Pandemic novel plot threads are thin. And that brings me to About People, a novel that easily makes my best-of-year list.

About People is set in the Pandemic, but it addresses moral questions concerning beliefs, fanaticism, humanity and compassion. The book opens in 2020 with ad agency employee, 36-year-old Dora in Bracken which is located in Nordrhein-Westfalen in Germany. Dora moved from Berlin to rural Bracken with her dog, leaving a tepid relationship with a long-term boyfriend, Robert, behind.

Dora still wasn’t even sure she wanted to move to the countryside. All she knew was that she needed that house. Urgently. Even it it was just an idea. A mental survival technique. A hypothetical emergency exit from her own life.

Dora’s relationship with Robert, who works at an online magazine was initially good, and she “can’t remember when it all started” to go wrong. After 2015, Dora notes Robert’s friends “started snapping at one another,” over political and social issues. “Friends began sorting into new constellations. You’d meet up with some friends, but not with others. You’d unfriend certain people on Facebook, unfollow them on Instagram and Twitter and replace them with new connections.” Real differences emerged when Robert began a “climate-defender phase,” and he started to get upset with Dora’s “tiniest recycling mistakes, as if improper sorting were a criminal act.” At first, Dora admired Robert’s commitment, but his commitment slid into superiority as he begins lecturing Dora with statistics. “The world they had previously shared morphed into a suffocating corset of rigid rules,” and distance grows between them.

He saw Dora as an agent for throwaway society, consumer culture run amok, wasting energy, piling the garbage dumps ever higher.

It’s not that Dora disagreed with recycling; she didn’t need “convincing,” But it was his arrogance, his tone and “the rhetoric that paralyzed her.”

There’s a great section on the “energy” needed to produce a cotton tote vs a plastic bag, and at one point, Dora’s brain runs with the calculations as to whether or not she’s “done something to save the environment.” Dora and Robert had many scenes about recycling, but after Covid arrived, Robert discovered his true calling.

Fueled by fanaticism, Robert becomes a Covid “expert.”, and following lockdown, Dora’s life with Robert becomes suffocating. He rides around town on his bike saying he’s gathering info for his articles, but when they are at home together, they get on each other’s nerves. She takes her dog for walks in order to escape his criticism, but then:

Robert informed her that he would no longer tolerate her walks. He spoke slowly and clearly as if Dora were somehow cognitively impaired.

In the months prior to lockdown in Germany, Dora quietly made forays into the countryside looking for the perfect property. The ‘perfect’ property is an old run-down house in Bracken on one acre. It seemed like “the next logical step of her adventurous life journey.” Bracken is in the district of Prignitz, and her father, Jojo, an eminent neurologist asks Dora “what do you plan to do out there among all the right wing nutjobs.?” She thinks he’s exaggerating. But the “so-called Clash of Civilizations really does exist. But it’s not between East and West. It’s between Berlin and Bracken. Between metropolis and province, center and perimeter, city and outskirts.”

Bracken is small:

The technical term is linear settlement, which means it’s your typical East German one-horse town. At its center lies a church overlooking the village square. There’s a bus stop, a firehouse, a mailbox, 284 inhabitant. 285 with Dora.

Dora meets her neighbour, Goth, a lanky anti-social man who says he’s the “village Nazi.” Dora thinks he’s joking, but then when some of Goth’s pals arrive and they all start singing Nazi songs, she understands that Goth was stating the truth.

Adjusting to living next door to a Nazi is one issue, but Dora is a city dweller who must adjust to country life. She’s ill-prepared for shopping which she learns must be planned with “military precision,” and shocked to find out that her neighbours vote for AfD. As she becomes more involved with her community, she realises that as a Berliner, she did not understand the issues faced by those in rural communities:

Every minute the bus doesn’t come is a minute gained for the right wing populists. The people in power can’t even get local public transit up and running, and now they want to abolish diesel?! That’s how anger turns into rage. And rage turns into hate.

Working in the ad industry, Dora is perfectly placed to understand how product branding is geared towards consumers who wish to wear their beliefs like medals of honour. I’m thinking of Guy de Bord here in the Society of the Spectacle: “The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.” T shirts, flags and window signs which signal our beliefs. Dora, however, is an independent thinker; she refuses to be swayed by political rhetoric:

Dora doesn’t like absolute truths or any supposed authority that relies on them. There’s something bristly deep within her, something that always wants to resist. She has no desire to fight to prove she’s right, and refuses to take part in any kind of groupthink.

About People is a amazing novel. Dora is in a relationship that is wrecked by her partner’s application of his intensified beliefs, and she moves to an area where voters don’t share her views. Dora is horrified by the idea that she has a Nazi for a neighbour, but stuck out in the country, Goth shows her some prickly kindness and Dora, once over her horror and fear, struggles to see his humanity. About People is a subversive novel as it tackles topical issues while establishing compassion for a Nazi. Dora wonders “who’s more carbon neutral, an activist crisscrossing Europe to attend rallies, or a stubborn grandma who doesn’t bother with recycling but has never set foot on a plane?” And that’s a question I’ve chewed over too.

Review copy. Translated by Alta L. Price

The Assistant: Robert Walser (1907)

Robert Walser’s The Assistant is a delight. It’s a story of the resilience of youth, a longing for family, and the complexities of the employer/employee relationship. When the novel opens, Joseph, an impoverished young man, arrives at the Evening Star, a country villa owned by an inventor, a man named Tobler. Joseph, who has had a spotty employment history, is to be Tobler’s new clerk, and the previous clerk, Wirsich, who appears later in the novel, left under a cloud of disgrace. Joseph suffers from poverty. His clothes are shabby and threadbare, and he arrives hungry. Joseph, desperately grateful for the job, carries a chip on his shoulder and is well-aware of his lowly station and his dependency on his employer’s grace.

At first the situation looks promising. Joseph is given a pleasant room, and he eats with the family. The food is good, the coffee excellent and the job is not too demanding. Joseph is quick to sense the moments when Frau Tobler patronizes him, but gradually he finds himself attracted to her.

Tobler was at one time, a “low-level employee, an assistant engineer in a large machine factory.” He received a large inheritance and decided to buy a splendid lakeside villa at Bärenswil, and here he launched himself as an inventor. So far there’s the Marksman’s Vending Machine (it dispenses bullets), the Advertising Clock, and an Invalid Chair. While Tobler pours money into these inventions, no one seems interested. Things at the villa begin to unravel quickly after Joseph’s arrival. There’s no mention of Joseph’s wages and while Tobler gives his clerk a little pocket money now and again, a salary does not appear.

There’s a phase of debt and decline in which the debtor (Tobler) dives into a spending frenzy, and in this case, while the local merchants grumble, they still provide services and goods on ‘the tab.’ At this point the local tradesmen are not aware of the dire nature of the Tobler finances.

The Tobler house was still releasing the odors of the most fragrant cleanliness and respectability into its beautiful surroundings.

Joseph, at first prickly and unsure of himself, feels that his life is tied up with the fortunes of the Toblers. He becomes adept at avoiding creditors and skilled at letters which promise future payment. The bank presses for its money, and Tobler builds an underground fairy grotto and throws a party.

Frau Tobler becomes increasingly depressed, and life at the villa is in freefall. The Toblers’ youngest child becomes the vessel for her mother’s frustration, and only Joseph takes Frau Tobler and the sadistic maid to task over their treatment of the child.

At one point Joseph meets his predecessor, and this section of the novel illustrates Joseph’s humanity, kindness and optimism. But there’s a sadness too–Joseph has no family and longs for one. His only correspondent is his former landlady.

The human magic that resided in a home like this–how dolefully enchanted Joseph had always been when he saw it reflected in some window that had been left standing open, making it visible down where he was standing on the cold street all alone, tossed from one place to another, without a home.

The Assistant makes my best-of-year list. My copy includes a splendid afterword by the translator Susan Bernofsky

The Way Some People Die: Ross Macdonald (1951)

“The house was in Santa Monica on a cross street between the boulevards, within earshot of the coast highway and rifleshot of the sea. The street was the kind that people had once been proud to live on, but the last few years it had lost its claim to pride. The houses had too many stories or too few windows, not enough paint. Their history was easy to guess; they were one-family residences broken up into apartments and light-housekeeping rooms, or converted into tourist homes. Even the palms that lined the street looked as if they had seen their best days and were starting to lose their hair.”

And that’s Lew Archer’s impression as he pulls up at the home of his latest client. Even though “the house didn’t look as if it had any money in it, or ever would again,” Archer, who “liked the woman’s voice on the phone,” knocks at the door. The woman who telephoned Archer is in her 50s, and she contacted him as she’s worried about her missing daughter. It’s now March and 24-year-old Galatea, a nurse–has been missing since December. According to her very worried mother, Galatea, or “Galley” as she is known, is a ‘looker’ and “fascinating to men.” Not a good combo. The fascinated man, this time, is a gangster named Speed, or perhaps the fascinated man is Tarantine. But there’s a third possibility: bit-part actor, a man with movie star looks anyway, Keith Dalling.

Lew’s search for the elusive nurse takes him to her ex-roommate who paints an unattractive picture of Galley as a woman who had a series of men–including a “couple of doctors on the string but that was married stuff.” This version of Galley is vastly different from Galley’s worried mother’s portrait. The more Archer digs, the more versions of Galley he uncovers, and then he meets her. …

Galley may be fascinating to men, but Archer is fascinating to readers–well this reader at least. While he gives the impression of being world-weary–a man who has seen it all and knows the depths that human nature can sink to, he never loses his sense of humour.

“It isn’t every day I stumble over unconscious men, you know.”

“All right,” I said,” I’ll lie down and you can stumble me all over again.”

The German Refugees: Goethe (1794)

“Nothing sharpens a person’s eye as much as being restricted.”

Goethe’s The German Refugees concerns a group of people who have fled from the French army and retreated to an estate on the “right side of the Rhine.” The group is led by the widowed Baroness von C. She is accompanied by her daughter, Fraulein Luise whose fiancé is with the allied army. Also in the party is the Baroness’s son, Friedrich, his tutor and cousin Karl.

Once they arrive, old friends who live in the area come to visit. There’s Herr von S., a petty councillor. His wife is a dear childhood friend of the Baroness, so there’s a cherished reunion in these troubled times when seeing old friends is both a delight and a relief.

There’s that old saying: never discuss politics or religion at dinner, but revolution and revolutionary ideas are in the air. Karl and Herr von S. have political opinions that are diametrically opposed. Karl is in favour of “imminent reforms” while Herr von S. supports the “old system.” A debate which focuses on the German Jacobins in Mainz rages between these two men. The argument becomes heated with Karl wishing “the French army all success” and that the French, if they succeed in Mainz will “regard and treat them [the Jacobins] as their own, not sacrifice or leave them to their fate, but heap honors, wealth and trust on them.” Karl, a man with poor self-control, ends his speech with “he hoped the guillotine would reap a fine harvest in Germany as well.” Herr von S. is so offended he leaves with his wife in tow.

Political opinions have trumped nationality, and the friends who drew together in the face of war, feud over opposing ideas. The Baroness is upset when her friend departs, but admonishes the rest of the company to “return to our former mode of behaviour,” and amuse each other with conversation. Members of the company take turns to tell stories. Some of the stories are little more than anecdotes while others are substantial. The priest tells an excellent story of a singer who has many lovers but one true friend. That friend, a businessman, eventually asks to become the singer’s lover.

She gave into his wishes, but reluctantly and against her better judgment. “I fear,” she said, “that by yielding thus I lose the most valuable thing in the world: a friend.”

The priest tells another great story. This time it’s about a sea merchant who, deciding that he’s missing out on life, marries at the age of 50. At first, he’s happy to stay home with his beautiful young wife, but then after some time passes, he longs to return to the sea. He knows if he leaves his young wife alone, he is asking for trouble. He leaves and tells her that if “you can no longer do without the company of a man, no longer deny yourself the pleasures of love,” then she should pick carefully. And as soon as the merchant leaves, all the young men in the town lose no time at all. They start parading, back and forth, under the young wife’s window.

The priest really pays his way with these stories, and of course they have a moral. There’s another about a young man named Ferdinand whose covetous habits lead to trouble. Those seven deadly sins….

The introduction states that Goethe “hated politics” and goes into some depth about his political beliefs. Translated by Mike Mitchell .

The Bachelors: Adalbert Stifter (1850)

Adalbert Stifter’s The Bachelors, a beautiful story of regret and time, begins with a group of young men “frolicking and cavorting” in the countryside. It’s a gorgeous day; a “dazzling landscape spread out all around them,” and the young men revel in the joy of youth, health and possibilities for the future. One of them insists he will never marry, and another agrees. The author steps in here with an observation about the future and time:

We must remark at this point what a puzzling, indescribable, mysterious and fascinating thing the future is, before it becomes our present–and when it has, how quickly it rushes by, slipping through our fingers –and how then delineated it lies there as the past, spent and insubstantial.

One of the young men is Victor, Both of his parents are dead, but per his father’s will, he was raised in the countryside by a woman who is now elderly. Over the years, she has received a small amount of money for Victor’s care, and she’s managed to save some for his future. There’s a job arranged for Victor, but before he takes up that post, he is to visit his uncle who lives on a remote island. Victor is depressed at the thought of leaving and states that “all the enjoyment’s gone” from his life. While one of the story’s themes is regret, there’s also the idea of living in the present. His foster mother gives him some advice:

I’ll soon be seventy years old and still haven’t said that the enjoyment’s gone has gone out of my life because everything, everything should give you pleasure, for the world is so beautiful and grows even more beautiful the longer you live.

Victor undertakes the long journey to his uncle on foot, and an old dog, who was his companion at home, joins him. Victor has already gone too far to return the dog, and so he takes this faithful canine along with him. His destination is his uncle’s island home, a former monastery, called The Hermitage and when, after a long journey, he gets as far as he can on foot, he finds a man with a boat, and asks him to row him to the island. It’s at this point that Victor learns, or at least begins to learn, exactly how isolated and hostile his uncle is.

The Hermitage is like a veritable fortress–as if his uncle lives under siege. There are grilles on all the windows, locks on all the doors and the building is surrounded by a high wall. Victor’s uncle tells him to drown the dog, which Victor of course refuses to do. This is the beginning of a very strange relationship, with Victor’s taciturn uncle locking Victor in at night and his uncle, apparently so paranoid about safety, that he disappears into what seems to be cupboards (they are actually doors leading to another section of the house). It’s a bizarre situation, and the atmosphere in the house is depressing. All around Victor is decay, with his uncle, spewing bitterness and hostility. In order to escape this oppressive life, Victor explores the island and discovers its many beautiful nooks and crannies. All this time, the uncle observes his nephew, looking for signs of his brother’s character. At last, he too gives Victor some advice:

Life is immeasurable only when you are still young. You always think there’s so much ahead of you and that you’ve only gone a short way. And so you postpone things, put this and that to one side to be taken up later. But when you do take it up it’s too late and you realize you’re old. That’s why life seems a vast expanse when viewed from the beginning but scarcely a stone’s throw when at the end you look back over your shoulder.

Living in the present is a pertinent issue– this is especially true now perhaps more than ever. I see people in restaurants on their phones instead of engaging with others. I see children watching children play on Youtube in videos that fabricate reality. I see people who spend more time on social media than they invest in their own families. It’s all rather sad.

The Class: Hermann Ungar

I’m blasting off German Literature Month XIII with Hermann Ungar’s The Class (1927). The protagonist of the novel, Josef Blau, a schoolteacher, is permanently scarred by his impoverished past. Unfortunately for Josef, who works in a school for the “well-to-do,” he is consumed with a sense of inferiority, a terror of his students and sheer horror at the idea that the pupils will mock him:

Nothing Josef Blau felt, was more suspicious to well-to-do people than poverty. Even their compassion had a level of arrogance.

All the boys wear these sailor-suit type uniforms, and in one case, the uniform is idiotically infantile as the lad already sports chest hair which sprouts out. There’s one exception to the uniform; the boy’s father is poor, a law clerk, and his son’s clothes are old and worn. Blau is terrified that the pupils will compare him to this poor student. At one point, Blau asks the boy which career he wishes to pursue after he leaves school, and to Blau’s great shame, the boy replies that he wants to be a teacher. Of course, Blau, who is paranoid and neurotic, takes this comment personally–that “Josef Blau’s profession was a profession for poor people”

Blau agonizes that the boys will feel sorry for him and try to share their food. He’s certain they will look at his nails and see that they are not manicured. He worries that his pupils will follow him home and see the poor area he lives in. He won’t turn his back on the students as he’s convinced they are making fun of him. It’s not easy being Blau, and then another more popular teacher starts working at the school.

The boys were well-fed and well-dressed. He was aware of the freedom of movement and self-confidence a well-to-do background gave a person, if they enjoyed it from birth, and that it could not be replaced by education, not even by the acquisition of culture and wisdom. He was afraid this was where the first chink in his armour might appear. He could feel the boys’ eyes scrutinizing his movements and his clothes.

So that’s Blau’s professional life, so now for the personal. Blau lives with Selma–a young woman who is pregnant. Also sharing the dingy apartment is Selma’s mother, Matilda–a woman who struggles into her corset whenever her late husband’s cousin, Bobek visits. Bobek leers at Matilda, but his real object is Blau, and he persuades Blau to sign a bill of exchange. Blau agrees to sign even though he is no position to risk the potential financial loss.

Blau also believes that his fate, which is entwined with the lives of others and society’s sometimes unknown mores, merely waits for a mis-step, a wrong word, so there’s forever a Sword of Damocles hovering over Blau’s head:

If everything had been decided in advance, then one could have been free of care. If there were a fate, an unavoidable predetermined fate to which one was subject, then one would have only to do or say what was already decided, and one would have done it without a care in the world. But there was no unavoidable, predetermined step or word awaiting. It was not the case that one could take this step alone, say that word alone, and with every word, with every step fulfill the fate that followed from them. One chose the step and the word from among many. One overstepped a harsh, unknown law, to which one was subject, and stumbled into one’s fate.

Blau in one sense reminds me of the sort of paranoid neuroticism in Dostoevsky, but Dostoevsky sometimes adds long character studies or asides which provide some relief. There is no such relief in Blau’s self-gnawing self-cannibalism. Here we are in Blau’s head–subject to his paranoia, his anguish, his self-loathing, and it’s not a pleasant place.

Translated by Mike Mitchell

The Fugitive: Proust

The Fugitive opens with the sobering fact (for the narrator at least) that Albertine has done a runner. Marcel* was informed, at the end of the last novel, by Françoise, that “Mademoiselle Albertine has gone.” Indeed, the night before Marcel heard a window open. I envisioned Albertine tying together sheets to form a ladder and escaping via the window, but her exit was more traditional–through the front door. Marcel, who’d been planning on giving Albertine the old-heave-ho, is shocked, then devastated. Then he galvanizes his energy in order to get her to return. And so another layer of games in this toxic relationship begins.

Marcel decides that he does love Albertine after all and that he will marry her. He commissions Saint-Loup to visit Albertine’s aunt, and the plan is that Saint-Loup will persuade the aunt to tell Albertine to return. This is all supposed to be done behind Albertine’s back, but it’s a clumsy plan, and Albertine, at her aunt’s house, sees Saint-Loup and writes to Marcel that she will return. Mission accomplished? Will they now marry? But no, once Marcel gets Albertine’s letter, he backpedals. He writes to Albertine that it was a good thing she left when she did as he just got his mother’s permission to marry, and that Albertine’s departure has spared them a life time of misery. Marcel then adds that he intended to buy Albertine a yacht. And a Rolls. Too bad for her that she left when she did.

His next move in this twisted game is to write to Albertine and tell her that he’s invited Andrée to stay. But then he sends a telegram to Albertine begging her to return.

This never happens, and Marcel is left mourning an Albertine he never really knew. His jealousy does not die however, at least not for a long time, and he commissions Aimé to go to Balbec and quiz people about Albertine’s suspected lesbian relationships. Marcel also quizzes Andrée about Albertine’s secret sex life. Andrée tells him one story and then later, another. There is something very spiteful and malicious about Andrée, and so her versions remain suspect.

Just as Albertine exits the picture, Gilberte returns. She is now transformed into Gilberte de Forcheville (she dumped the name Swann, and took the name of her new stepfather–Odette’s second husband). Poor Swann, who sacrificed a great deal to marry Odette, is now effectively swept under the rug. No one seems to remember him–or if they do, then the recollection is cloudy. There’s a great irony here as Odette, a former prostitute, was the persona non grata, but now Gilberte, and her money, are welcome everywhere, while Gilberte’s father, Swann, is conveniently forgotten. Gilberte marries Saint-Loup and it is destined to be an unfortunate match.

There’s a second ‘great’ match in this novel–this one is between Jupien’s niece and Legrandin. Jupien’s niece, although abandoned by Morel, is now Charlus’s heir, so the fact she is the niece of a tailor is swept under a rug too. The same rug. The snobbery rug which readjusts itself admirably according to the quantity of money underneath it.

Marcel visits an unhappy, neglected Gilberte and it takes him a while to realise that she’s trying hard to look like Saint-Loup’s former mistress, Rachel, but her efforts are in vain as Saint-Loup’s tastes have moved in another direction. …

All these messy lives: Marcel “barely has a 1/5th of the fortune” he originally had. Marcel playing cruel games with Albertine and mistaking emotional pain for love. Gilberte desperately trying to interest a husband who has no use for her beyond her bank account. Jupien’s niece, Marie-Antoinette, married off to Legrandin, a one-off lover of Charlus.

There was one incident I found very disturbing. In the wake of the void left by Albertine, Marcel picks up a child in Paris, and asks her “whether she would care to come home with me, as I might have taken home a dog with faithful eyes.” He sits her on his knee, but later dismisses her with a five-hundred franc note. Marcel is later called to the Surété after the child’s parents lodge a complaint against him, but he is dismissed with a warning.

Ultimately, for this reader, the novel is about forgetting: the cruelty and hypocrisy of forgetting: Marcel forgetting Albertine. The snobbish Gilberte (and everyone else in society) forgetting about Swann. Society forgetting Marie-Antoinette is the niece of a tailor.

No doubt Gilberte did not always go so far to as when she insinuated that she was perhaps the natural daughter of some great personage, but as a rule she concealed her origin.

Gilberte may choose to bury the (Jewish) name Swann and adopt the more aristocratic de Forcheville, but there’s a collective amnesia afoot:

Moreover, Madame de Guermantes, when this outburst of sentiment had subsided, added with a worldly frivolity, addressing Gilberte: “Why, he was not only a great friend of my brother-in-law Charlus, he was also a great favourite at Voisenon” (the country home of the Prince of Guermantes), as though Swann’s acquaintance with M. de Charlus and the Prince had been a mere accident, as though the Duchess’s brother-in-law and cousin were two men with whom Swann had happened to be intimate for some special reason, whereas Swann had been intimate with all the people in that set, and as though Mme de Guermantes were seeking to make Gilberte understand who, more or less, her father had been, to ‘place’ him by one of those character sketches by which, when we seek to explain how it is that we happen to know somebody whom we would not naturally know, or to give an additional point to our story, we name the sponsors by whom a certain person was introduced.

(* there are hints that Marcel is the name of the narrator and for the ease of writing this review, I’m going with that)

The Man Who Killed Himself: Julian Symons (1967)

Middle-aged Arthur Brownjohn is a henpecked husband. He’s married to Clare, a sporty, bossy woman who brought their home, The Laurels, and her own independent income to the union. Not that she’s sharing her money, and that’s just one of Arthur’s many unspoken grievances. When he met Clare, he’d been “looking for a bank account,” to pump money into his inventions and his failing business. Clare seemed to fit the bill, but she refuses to hand over any money.

It then occurred to Arthur in later years to wonder why Clare had married him. He came to the conclusion that the idea of marrying somebody socially beneath her was really positively congenial, although she pretended otherwise. To social inferiority was added Arthur’s natural timidity, which made it easy for her to overcome him on any point, and when these qualities were topped by a disinclination for nonsense* he became (as he saw afterwards) an almost ideal husband. * nonsense = sex.

When the novel opens, Arthur is a seller of car parts, and his work takes him from home for part of the week, but when he’s home, Clare and Arthur occasionally host Bridge nights with friends. During these evenings, Clare openly monitors Arthur’s alcohol intake. One guest, feeling sorry for Arthur, finds Clare’s rationing of Arthur’s drinking humiliating for the poor man, but then again there was that incident when he drank too much and took off his clothes.

Repressed or henpecked people find alternate outlets for their grievances. Arthur manages to wiggle out from under Clare’s supervision for half of the week. During that time, sporting one of several specially made wigs (in various stages of growth), he leads a double life as Major Easonby Mellon, the confident, rakish, opportunistic owner of a matrimonial agency. This agency, with its low key work load, has the benefit of bringing many lonely women into his life. To make life comfortable, as Mellon, he lives with a woman named Joan who cooks his meals, washes his clothes and asks few questions as he cockily tells her he’s a spy and can’t discuss his life with her. It’s no small feat to juggle two lives, and two women, but then a young sexpot named Patricia arrives at the matrimonial agency looking for a husband. Patricia isn’t his usual sort of client and Arthur/Easonby can’t believe his luck. So Arthur, who also desperately needs to hide a money problem from Clare, decides to get rid of both of his old lives and start afresh with Patricia. Of course, that means murder. …

I came to this book thanks to reading the delightful The Colour of Murder, and I was not disappointed. With dark humour, Symons explores the vagaries of Arthur’s nature through his dramatically opposite dual lives and then Arthur’s new found freedom-post-Clare. Arthur discovers that without the old ball-and-chain to defy and sneak around, life has lost its meaning.

The History of England: Jane Austen

I was in need of some comic relief and so turned to Jane Austen’s The History of England. My copy contains editor’s notes by Allyson D’Antonio which include a brief biography. These notes are useful–not just for the fact that they point out that Austen was a mere 16 (approximately) when she wrote this, but that The History of England (according to Jane Austen) was “clearly intended to provide a humorous exploration of England’s past.” It’s emphasized that it was “not written for public consumption” but was for her family–“especially her sister, Cassandra.” The history begins with Henry 4th and ends with Charles:

Henry the 4th ascended the throne of England much to his own satisfaction in the year 1399, after having prevailed on his cousin Richard the 2nd to resign it to him, & to retire for the rest of his Life to Pomfret Castle, where he happened to be murdered.

Jane Grey:

She declared herself displeased with being appointed Queen, and while conducting to the scaffold, she wrote a sentence in latin and another in Greek on seeing the dead Body of her Husband accidentally passing that way.

I’m glad I read the intro first as then I could appreciate certain parts:

“A teenage Austen seems to have developed a soft spot for the Catholic causes,” even though, or perhaps because, she was the daughter of a Church of England cleric. The editor notes that Austen’s “papal sympathies may have been a genuine interest or a rebellious act.”

This ‘soft spot’ becomes ragingly obvious when Jane gets to Elizabeth I, “that pest of society,”-whose cardinal and unforgivable sin was being the “murderer of her Cousin” Mary Stuart (It was a shitty thing to do IMO). Illustrations are by Cassandra Austen.

review copy