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4/13/07 09:00 pm - A circle of hell.
I spent an hour or two in the bath with Anita Brookner this evening, having started The Bay of Angels yesterday against my better judgment. Like The Pornographer's Poem (which I finally finished this week) and George Perec's Life: A User's Manual, it's been on my bedside bookshelf for at least a year. This is no excuse.
Dear Anita, yours is the perfect example of poised and considered prose, adorned only with your exquisitely apt syntax and your rare moments of humor. You tell, not show--defying all post-war norms. Your characters are bound by class (upper middle), wealth (modest inheritances), sad upbringings (we tried our best, Petunia), timid social views, and misplaced ideals. They venture to France, but return to England. After brief attractions to rough and/or married men, they long for marriage, status, comfort, and reassurance. They rise, like Icarus, reaching about the level of the streetlamp bulb before plunging back to the pavement to care for a crippled mother, reject the Italian suitor, take on office work.
The sun is setting--so quickly!
Why, Anita, why? In my twenties, I could read your novels with pleasure. By my thirties, I was growing suspicious. And now, you hold up a hideous fly-blown mirror to my narrowing expectations. You are a bummer, Anita. You have not just let me down, but crushed me under your sensible half-inch heel. I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you.
Dear Anita, yours is the perfect example of poised and considered prose, adorned only with your exquisitely apt syntax and your rare moments of humor. You tell, not show--defying all post-war norms. Your characters are bound by class (upper middle), wealth (modest inheritances), sad upbringings (we tried our best, Petunia), timid social views, and misplaced ideals. They venture to France, but return to England. After brief attractions to rough and/or married men, they long for marriage, status, comfort, and reassurance. They rise, like Icarus, reaching about the level of the streetlamp bulb before plunging back to the pavement to care for a crippled mother, reject the Italian suitor, take on office work.
The sun is setting--so quickly!
Why, Anita, why? In my twenties, I could read your novels with pleasure. By my thirties, I was growing suspicious. And now, you hold up a hideous fly-blown mirror to my narrowing expectations. You are a bummer, Anita. You have not just let me down, but crushed me under your sensible half-inch heel. I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you.