[ilds] the quartet & US politics

[Charles Sligh]

Grove, Ilyas, James, & co.:

I agree.  The appearance of the /Quartet/ in discussions and debates 
about US foreign policy is most interesting--and unexpected.

If anyone spots additional responses to NEH Chairman Jim Leach's 
invocation of the /Quartet/, please do forward those mentions to the 
listserv.

I'll go back to Grove's little anthology of Durrellian endings:

>         Maybe I'm cheating to go to the various series' final passages, and yet they buoy me up. At the end of the /Quartet/, Darley writes: "And I felt as if the whole universe had given me a nudge!" 
>
>         At the end of the /Revolt/ Felix writes (says?): "There is some fine black jazz playing and we have been dancing, dancing in complete happiness and accord. And we will keep on this way, dancing and dancing, even though Rome burn."
>
>         At the end of the /Quintet/ Blanford thinks of describing the scene in these terms: "'It was at this precise moment that reality prime rushed to the aid of fiction and the totally unpredictable began to take place!'" 
>
>         Yes, in each case I sense Doubt and Irony waiting in the wings, but for me their presence doesn't dampen the spirit of the words. 

Yes, as I wrote before, I agree.  We must attend these endings and what 
they forecast about the "future" for characters living within the 
story-time world of the novels. 

I will note that "optimistic" readings of the /Quartet/'s ending must be 
projected by the reader.  The happy turn of events does not occur on the 
page, but rather in potentiality--after the book has ended.  Something 
seems to be about to happen.  But we do not see it transpire.

And that might be the rub for me.  If peace, happiness, and 
enlightenment have been shown to be illusory in every previous epoch or 
incident within the /Quartet/, am I doing the book justice--am I playing 
by the inner logic and rules that the book presents--if I imagine Darley 
finally "getting it" in some moment immediately after the book ends? 

There is no reason outside of the book why a reader cannot imagine 
Darley entering into wisdom or a "sense of reality" (?), but by the 
story-time logic rehearsed inside the book, the /Quartet/ seems to me to 
be front-loaded with questions about that ever being possible.

Mind you, if we recast this "doubt" as "acceptance of our limits and 
unknowing," then I do not find the close of the /Quartet/ to be at all 
pessimistic.  By contrast, the ending might be seen as moving toward 
something that Durrell would cast as "Eastern."  

Charles

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Charles L. Sligh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
charles-sligh at utc.edu
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