[ilds] the quartet & US politics

Thu Feb 25 13:45:13 PST 2010

Ilyas, et al.-
Thanks for the comments in reply! You're right, of course: the Quintet offers a picture of vitality, especially at the end, with the opening of the caves. Still, though, I've actually read the Quintet (and, especially the Quartet) more times than my age might lead one to believe -- and I really like it, actually! When I speak of bleakness, it's not for Blanford, for whom I see the moment as an instance of joy. Rather I see that intrusion of Reality Prime as (Durrell's) indictment of any political enterprise for art. Partly my reading depends on a stubborn insistence to read; partly, it's a product of my desire to contextualize. 

I'm away from my books and papers at the moment, so things'll be citation free for now, though I can follow up later if needed. (I'm actually writing this long reply on my phone... Shudder.) The Quintet has been called (perhaps cheekily) "unreadable," and people have pointed out inconsistencies of chronology from one book to another. (Obviously an expectation for intertextual consistency says more about the reader, but we'll leave that for now.) Among these include Constance's healing of Blanford's injuries in later books, despite the fact she isn't alive in Monsieur and Blanford's wounds are yet unhealed.

We can choose to overlook the inconsistency, calling it an "oversight," or we can read the Quintet we have, inconsistencies intact. If the latter, two (maybe three) solutions to the Quintet's readability come to mind.

(THREE... Both versions, which contrast with each other, are wrong anyway, as they're just limited understandings, a la the Quartet.)

TWO... Both are right. This mutual acceptance of contradicting conditions fashions the Quintet as a (not un-Durrellian) novelistic consideration of the principle of explosion.  This reading is actually fantastically optimistic, as it suggests the logical possibility of, literally, anything.

ONE... Only one is "right" (Blanford "is," ultimately, at the stage of First Narration, a cripple who imagines the rest of the happenings of the Quintet) and the other is "wrong" (Blanford only fantasizes about having been healed, just as he's only fantasized about his dinner with Tu Duc). If this is the case, then the Quintet is the ultimate example of speculative fiction; even so, the limitations to art's political efficacy are spelled out clearly. At the moment of great change, in light of horrors as large (and symbolic) as WWII, fiction must still face and give way to the demands of Reality Prime. 

At times I lead toward this latter reading, though mostly because of my urge to contextualize. More often I delight in the ambiguity, and I Schrodinger-esque-ly imagine both ONE and TWO are true at once:

Great treasures may be in store! Or it might be a trap! Or it might be even better than treasure! Or it might have all been a dream! If only we don't lose ourselves in the darkness on the way...
Best, 
James

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Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:00:33 
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Subject: ILDS Digest, Vol 35, Issue 12

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: the quartet & US politics (James Clawson)
   2. Re: the quartet & US politics (Ilyas)
   3. Re: the quartet & US politics (Charles Sligh)

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Message: 1
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:40:00 -0600
From: James Clawson <clawson at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Message-ID:
	<93d48d041002241240t674042a7ra4b09a500b157168 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

I'm loving this discussion about politics and the Quartet! And I love
that a politician would use the Quartet in attempt to sound well read
(in the face of legions of Durrellists wondering at the finer points
of his remarks).

I think I'm with Grove: I've always read the endings as, in the end,
optimistic. Especially seeing them all together like this.  But I'd
like also to add The Black Book, which (unlike the others) isn't past
tense, and speaks of The Now.  Nunquam, too, uses the future tense
near the end (though obviously not right at the end) when one of the
characters speculates to Charlock that either everything will change
or nothing will.  Though it ends in past tense, it's that speculative
future into which Charlock and Benedicta dance.

As for optimism, I see even the Quartet as optimistic, though for
reasons counter to the way Leach uses it.  Darley searches throughout
the Quartet to find the batter vantage point, the better way to
understand everything, and it's this struggle which converts him --
from Justine, through Balthazar, and past Mountolive -- into the
artist we see in Clea: taller-standing and not needing eye glasses.
It's the struggle of looking for The Right Perspective that leads him
to realize there is none... which in turn helps him to become an
artist and finally to move beyond Alexandria.

The Avignon Quintet is bleaker, though it doesn't seem to recognize
its own bleakness in the ending.  If (in one way) reading the books
literally, Blanford is at the catacombs only through an act of
imagination, then that last gambit of Reality Prime (recognized,
again, in the conditional and speculative voice of someone who
*thinks* about how he would write it all down in a novel) is a final
and unproductive caveat to the imaginative realm.  (Our imaginations,
in which we are corporeally whole individuals, and in which fantastic
things happen, can be interrupted by Reality Prime when we don't
maintain control; then what good is imagination? Aren't its
limitations only made more pronounced?)

Hmm, I think I've lost my train.  Something about writing about
thinking about thinking about writing will do that to you.  And I have
essays to grade anyway, so I'll leave it for now.  Let's keep this up!
-James (the nominally non-pneumonial)

------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 08:29:05 +0000
From: Ilyas <ilyas.khan at crosby.com>
Subject: Re: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
Message-ID: <C7ABE551.21EEA%ilyas.khan at crosby.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="US-ASCII"

James

One small point - you mention Avignon Q being "bleaker". Like many people on
this thread I have read and re-read both AQ's a few times (I betray my age
here), and I have tended to find myself less negatively affected through
Avignon than you suggest. Its certainly a harder read, and the narrative
creates more work on the part of the reader, but I don't think its "bleak".

Someone once described the end of the Alex Q as being written for a movie,
and perhaps that remains longer in reader's minds eye long after the book
itself has gone back to its place on a dusty shelf.

Take care grading papers,
Ilyas

On 24/02/2010 20:40, "James Clawson" <clawson at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm loving this discussion about politics and the Quartet! And I love
> that a politician would use the Quartet in attempt to sound well read
> (in the face of legions of Durrellists wondering at the finer points
> of his remarks).
> 
> I think I'm with Grove: I've always read the endings as, in the end,
> optimistic. Especially seeing them all together like this.  But I'd
> like also to add The Black Book, which (unlike the others) isn't past
> tense, and speaks of The Now.  Nunquam, too, uses the future tense
> near the end (though obviously not right at the end) when one of the
> characters speculates to Charlock that either everything will change
> or nothing will.  Though it ends in past tense, it's that speculative
> future into which Charlock and Benedicta dance.
> 
> As for optimism, I see even the Quartet as optimistic, though for
> reasons counter to the way Leach uses it.  Darley searches throughout
> the Quartet to find the batter vantage point, the better way to
> understand everything, and it's this struggle which converts him --
> from Justine, through Balthazar, and past Mountolive -- into the
> artist we see in Clea: taller-standing and not needing eye glasses.
> It's the struggle of looking for The Right Perspective that leads him
> to realize there is none... which in turn helps him to become an
> artist and finally to move beyond Alexandria.
> 
> The Avignon Quintet is bleaker, though it doesn't seem to recognize
> its own bleakness in the ending.  If (in one way) reading the books
> literally, Blanford is at the catacombs only through an act of
> imagination, then that last gambit of Reality Prime (recognized,
> again, in the conditional and speculative voice of someone who
> *thinks* about how he would write it all down in a novel) is a final
> and unproductive caveat to the imaginative realm.  (Our imaginations,
> in which we are corporeally whole individuals, and in which fantastic
> things happen, can be interrupted by Reality Prime when we don't
> maintain control; then what good is imagination? Aren't its
> limitations only made more pronounced?)
> 
> Hmm, I think I've lost my train.  Something about writing about
> thinking about thinking about writing will do that to you.  And I have
> essays to grade anyway, so I'll leave it for now.  Let's keep this up!
> -James (the nominally non-pneumonial)
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds

------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:31:18 -0500
From: Charles Sligh <Charles-Sligh at utc.edu>
Subject: Re: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Message-ID: <4B8689B6.1090903 at utc.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

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

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

------------------------------

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