The Member of the Wedding - Carson McCullers
Every once in awhile I'll read something that I don't really know what to do with. I like Southern writers. I like unreliable narrators. I like coming of age stories. I like stories about a specific moment in time. I'm not entirely sure I liked this novel. I didn't dislike it, but it wasn't as engaging as other stories by McCullers. I could relate to Frankie in some ways. I remember being in that in between age where I was trying so hard to understand everything around me. There is a dreamy sadness and frustration that I associate with those memories that I think is illustrated well in this book.
"Only yesterday, if the old Frankie had glimpsed a box-like vision of this scene, as a view seen through a wizard's periscope, she would have bunched her mouth with unbelief. But it was a morning when many things occurred, and a curious fact about this day was a twisted sense of the astonishing; the unexpected did not make her wonder, and only the long known, the familiar, struck her with a strange surprise."
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men - David Foster Wallace
I don't think I have ever had so many people comment on the title of a book I was reading. It is an excellent title.
I decided to pick this collection up in preparation for reading Infinite Jest. I figured if I hate Wallace's style altogether it's best to find out before committing to a 1,000+ page novel. I tried the same thing with Joyce: read and loved Dubliners before attempting Ulysses. Unfortunately, the model didn't work so well with Joyce. I fear Ulysses will be my white whale for a long time.
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men was almost painful to read. As a woman, I was horrified by some of the men; but, as a reader, I was also weirdly fascinated and amused by them. The interviews are interspersed throughout the collection which makes them a bit easier to digest than if they were all grouped together. My favorite interviews were B.I. # 31 03-97, Roswell, GA, B.I. #14 08-96, St. Davids, PA, and B.I. #20 12-96, New Haven, CT. There were a few others that made me feel like a complete ass because they were oddly familiar sounding. I like the idea of these men being truly and completely honest to this faceless, voiceless, interviewer. That kind of honesty is terrible and yet must be oddly liberating. At the same time it's clear that the men are not entirely unaware of their audience. Two of the interviews are done with men the interviewer has a relationship with which is interesting to read and in some ways explains the motivation of the interviewer.
"Can you believe that I'm honestly trying to respect you by warning you about me, in a way? That I'm trying to be honest instead of dishonest? That I've decided the best way to head off this pattern where you get hurt and feel abandoned and I feel like shit is to try to be honest for once? Even if I should have done it sooner? Even when I admit it's maybe possible that you might interpret what I'm saying now as dishonest, as trying somehow to maybe freak you out enough so that you'll move back out and I can get out of this? Which I don't think is what I'm doing, but to be totally honest I can't be a hundred percent sure? To risk that with you? Do you understand? That I'm trying as hard as I can to love you? That I'm terrified I can't love? That I'm afraid maybe I'm just constitutionally incapable of doing anything other than pursuing and seducing and then running, plunging in and then reversing, never being honest with anybody? That I might be a psychopath? Can you imagine what it takes to tell you this? That I'm terrified that after I've told you all this I'm going to feel so guilty and ashamed that I won't be able even to look at you or stand to be around you, knowing that you know all this about me and now being constantly afraid of what you're thinking all the time? That it's even possible that my honesty here trying to head off the pattern of sending our mixed signaled and pulling away is just another type of pulling away? Or to get you to pull away, now that I've got you, and maybe deep down I'm such a cowardly shit that I don't even want to make the commitment of pulling away myself, that I want to somehow force you into doing it?"
Ouch.
There were a few stories I had trouble with. "The Depressed Person" was technically hard to read with the massive footnotes. I couldn't decide how to read it even if I could appreciate engaging with the text in a different way. I couldn't even finish "Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko." I have no idea what was going on there and I gave up three pages into it. It may have been too clever for me... -_-
I absolutely loved "Octet." It made me smile and it was fun and clever without being cutesy. "Adult World" and "On His Deathbed, Holding Your Hand, the Acclaimed New Young Off-Broadway Playwright's Father Begs a Boon" were my two favorites outside of the interviews. I thought about "Adult World" for a long time after I read it.
"When, later (long after the galvanic dream, the call, the discreet meeting, the question, tears, and her epiphany at the window), she reflected on the towering self-absorption of her naiveté in those years, the wife always felt a mixture of contempt and compassion for the utter child she had been."
I may not approach love and sex in the same way as the wife does in the story, but I do understand being frustrated with yourself when you realize how self-involved you've been. It's hard not to fall into the self made trap of thinking that if there is a problem somehow you are the cause. I think maybe it's easier to believe because it keeps the one you love from being at fault, it keeps them untarnished in a way. The realization that the person you love is not perfect, is flawed, and ugly in some ways can be difficult to accept. But disillusionment is absolutely necessary and inevitable. The wife in the story does not start to fully become her own person until she has her epiphany about her husband.
In the second part of the story, it is suggested that the wife and husband embracing the realities of who they really are is what truly makes them married and capable of loving. I wonder if people actually get to that point? How many people make it past the superficial ideas of each other to the point where they can love honestly, without illusions? So many people give up after that first disappointment, that glimpse at the imperfect. Sometimes there are impossible standards that you aren't even aware of until it's too late. Or your expectations are so high you are destroyed by the disappointment that must come. It's not fair for anyone and yet it seems like at some point we all do it.
Ugh. And I said this wouldn't be one of those blogs.
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