Doreen

This post has been a long time coming. It goes back to when we read the first few chapters of The Bell Jar (remember that?) by Sylvia Plath.

I want to make a postulate: everyone, at one point or another in their lives, encounters a Doreen. Remember her? You can't not. She's the person who's already experienced at least most of it all, and has the stories to prove it, if she'll tell you. You cannot help but at least admire her, even if you don't really like her. There are plenty of reasons for both admiration and dislike.

Something about her is wacky as hell, but it...works. She has fuzzy white hair. Or something like that. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, she is charming. She knows how to get people where she wants them, and she is well aware of that. She is intelligent--she can't not be--but it's not necessarily the practical kind of intelligence, it's the kind of intelligence that goads you into seeing the world in a darker light, with a lot more contrast and sharp edges. Doreen is the quintessential "bad influence," the "devil on your shoulder," but the contrast is very appealing.

The only trouble here is that at some point, you have to make a choice between becoming Doreen, being destroyed by Doreen, or coming to the realization that, while she might be a close friend, she isn't someone you should--or necessarily can--emulate. Obviously, Esther makes the latter choice, but it's not so clear for all of us.

I think one of the real strengths of The Bell Jar is the way that Plath handles the elements of the story that are not obvious focal points of the plot. Esther's relationship with Buddy Willard carries through the whole book, but her relationship with Doreen seems to be more relatable. That probably has a simple enough explanation: it is less tied to the plot, and is therefore less personal to Esther's life. Still, that particular relationship seems to resonate throughout others of the books we've covered in the Coming-of-Age Novel class.

One example of a Doreen is Hugo from David Mitchell's Black Swan Green. He is obviously a slimeball, but a very handsome, smooth-talking, and charismatic slimeball. He fulfills the role by being inexplicably attractive despite unconventional behavior, and offers Jason (the protagonist) a cigarette. Jason ultimately realizes that he will never be able to "be Hugo," but it's a difficult thing to admit. In Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson, there is something of a Doreen in the character of Sylvie. Though she seems like a much more nurturing influence than either Hugo or Doreen herself, she is similarly unusual and attractive to the main character Ruthie. In the end, Ruthie comes of age by deciding that her personality is more suited to Sylvie's than to "the common persuasion," but she gives up society to follow Sylvie into transience. It seems like a good thing to Ruthie--and to readers who can relate to her--but members of her tiny town obviously see Sylvie's influence as just as corrupting as readers of Black Swan Green see the influence of Hugo. It all depends on perspective, and there's no denying that Sylvie, Hugo, and Doreen all serve as figures whose behavior serves as a pull for their respective protagonists.

My theory is this: we are all protagonists in our own coming-of-age stories. We can all identify authority figures in our lives, both in and outside of the structures of school and the government. Each of us has at least one Doreen.

Perfidy

Reading Marilynne Robinson's novel Housekeeping, I was definitely sepent a lot of time thinking about the  relationship that Ruthie, the narrator, has with her younger sister Lucille. I have a younger sister with whom I am very close, and so I started out being able to relate to the way they seemed to do everything together. I had to admit to myself as a reader that I wished Ruthie had let a little more of her individual personality show through, but I could completely understand the way it was always "Lucille and me," because frankly, that's how I think of my sister and myself a lot of the time. As the book progressed and I watched the sisters grow apart, it became more and more difficult to read the interactions between the two of them. Lucille seemed so cold and unwilling to relate or even be kind to her sister.

I was reminded of the Kate DiCamello book The Tale of Despereaux, which is a beautifully written book about a mouse (and doesn't really have anything to do with Housekeeping at all) that draws attention to interesting words. In Despereaux, the hero is handed to the mouse-executioner by his family because he is so strange, idealistic, and seemingly unconnected to the real world. The word "perfidy" figures strongly, and because I learned the word from that book, I have always associated it especially with the betrayal of a family member. Housekeeping ends rather more happily than does that particular scene in Despereaux, and it even seems for the best for both sisters that Lucille goes her own way before Ruthie follows Sylvie into the mists of transience, but I can't help but be indignant. They're sisters.

I think now--having finished Housekeeping--that Ruthie's decision to follow Sylvie (who seems in character to be very similar to herself) rather than following Lucille (out of habit?) was a crucial part of her coming-of-age. She had to make up her mind to do what was best for her, rather than continuing to do what she had always done. Maybe my strong reaction to the break between the sisters is because I am closer to my sister than Ruthie is to Lucille, and maybe it's because I haven't yet come to a point at which I have to go my own way.

I leave you with a statement and a question. Ruthie starts off Chapter 7 with the something like "For that summer, Lucille was still loyal to us." Would you say that her decision to leave was a betrayal? My first answer was yes, but I'm not so sure.

Lady Lazarus

We just finished The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath, and the day after we read the final chapter we were handed a packet of some of her poems. I read them and easily saw how they had come from the same mind that put Esther Greenwood on paper. They even sounded—possibly because the suggestion was made in class—like poems that Esther herself might have written a few years down the line, after the bell jar had descended and ascended again. I enjoyed her poems a lot—I like the dark but almost childish rhymes she uses, and the way the rhythm doesn’t ever settle into a comfortable meter. They reminded me a bit of falling down the stairs in the dark, and I love it when a piece of writing can evoke a feeling of close to physical discomfort. “Lady Lazarus” was on the top of the stack, so I was glancing at it out of the corner of my eye all evening. I started to play with it in my mind’s eye, sometimes looking at each three-line stanza as an individual poem, sometimes every sentence. I was thrown by the line- and stanza-breaks every time I tried to read it in an unbroken stream, so eventually I typed it out in paragraph form and was rewarded by chills of new meaning. I was reading it as a collection of images and phrases, roughly referencing the Biblical phoenix-story that is the parable of Lazarus. When I typed it as a paragraph, I saw it for an account of a woman who continually dies and is resurrected, and who makes a profit on people who want to see this “walking miracle.” It struck me as an allusion to continual attempted suicides, which brought me back to The Bell Jar in a way I hadn’t expected. I hadn’t expected the poem to be as moving as it was, either, or to be so changed by the change of formatting. I’ve copied out the paragraph below, but a warning first: it works better if you’ve struggled with the original line breaks and taken all the meaning you can from them. Once you read it like this, there’s no going back. 

 

I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it—A sort of walking miracle, my skin bright as a Nazi lampshade, my right foot a paperweight, my face a featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel off the napkin, o mine enemy. Do I terrify?—the nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth? The sour breath will vanish in a day. Soon, soon the flesh the grave cave ate will be at home on me, and I a smiling woman.  I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three. What a trash to annihilate each decade. What a million filaments. The peanut-crunching crowd shoves in to see them unwrap me hand and foot—the big strip tease. Gentlemen, ladies: these are my hands, my knees. I may be skin and bone; nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman. The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. The second time I meant to last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut as a seashell. They had to call and call and pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I’ve a call. It’s easy enough to do it in a cell. It’s easy enough to do it and stay put. It’s the theatrical comeback in broad day to the same place, the same face, the same brute amused shout: ‘A miracle!’ That knocks me out. There is a charge for the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge for the hearing of my heart—it really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge for a word or a touch or a bit of blood or a piece of my hair or my clothes. So, so, Herr Doktor. So, Herr Enemy. I am your opus. I am your valuable, the pure gold baby that melts to a shriek. I turn and burn. Do not think I underestimate your great concern. Ash, ash—you poke and stir. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there—a cake of soap, a wedding ring, a gold filling. Herr God, Herr Lucifer beware, beware. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair and I eat men like air.

An open question

I'm a bit hesitant to post this, because I (like most of my community) am painfully ignorant of the important details that characterize the experiences of people who deal with Autism Spectrum Disorders. I am not trying to pin any person or group of people to any set of generalized symptoms, and I will try my utmost to tread carefully.

I once had a friend (I have since lost touch with him) with Asperger Syndrome, and I knew that because he told me himself. He described his experience as akin to being in a room that was lined with television sets all playing different things. He said (truthfully) he had an incredibly high-functioning brain, but that the constant sensory stimulation caused by merely existing was overwhelming. He had no filters on input, and maybe because of this, he did not filter his speech through empathy or kindness. I never met anyone more direct, and it was a little bit unnerving. Other people who knew him said that he was "creepy," but I didn't ever really see that.

In The Catcher in the Rye, I have been been aware of Holden Caulfield behaving very similarly to my old friend. Quick and direct with insults, compliments, and criticism, and seeming to not make much differentiation between the positive and negative. Holden Caulfield also has a disregard for the opinions of the people in his society that is familiar from past conversations.

My friend seemed convinced--and told me on a number of occasions--that he was not a good person, but neither was he a bad person. In his own words, "No, I'm not a good person. But I'm a decent person. I'm a decent guy." Somehow I can imagine Holden Caulfield saying that, if he deigned to talk at all.

Salinger wrote his famous novel long before Autism Spectrum Disorders had been classified and named, but they were around then too. It seems possible to me that his character might have been dealing with a condition that he couldn't begin to analyze from a medical perspective, but that would come to be called Asperger Syndrome. How likely is it?

I would like to pursue this conversation because I find it fascinating, but it deserves respect. Please treat it with that respect. I have dear friends who go through hell because of this kind of thing, and I don't want to spark more hate and misunderstanding.

Asshole?

My Coming-of-Age Novel class has just started to read The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, and last night I found myself in a friendly argument about the character merit of Holden Caulfield. My friend had read the book before, and her first reaction was something along the lines of "Great book and good writing, but the main character was an asshole!" The following conversation can be condensed as follows:

"I kind of like him, even if he is an asshole. I think I'd like to be friends with him."

"I don't know, man, I think I'd just punch him in the nose."

"But I have some friends who are a lot like him, and I do genuinely like them."

"That says more about your taste in friends than anything else."

"Maybe."

...And we left it at that. I got to thinking, though, about what it is that puts Holden Caulfield on her bad side. He's certainly no shining exemplar of morality, nor does he mince words when he's not pleased with something. Still, his words are directed at us (the readers) and he seems to be much--for lack of a better word--nicer in person than he makes himself out to be. He is judgmental in the extreme, and he holds humanity to a ridiculous set of standards that he doesn't bother to live out himself. Doesn't that go for most of us privileged adolescents who are trying to work out our own value systems. Just because I get irritated when people intersperse their dialogue with the word "like" doesn't mean I don't find myself doing, like, the same thing on occasion. I'm not one to judge.

Which, I suppose, is one difference between me and Holden Caulfield. If he didn't think he were one to judge, he wouldn't be narrating such a goddamn rude novel.

I do think that I'd like him in person, if find him a lot off-the-wall and probably pretty obnoxious too. I'm drawn to the "I don't give a damn about what people think of me" mindset, as well as the drive to live in the moment. Unfortunately, these are both characteristics of a variety of personalities that could be qualified as "assholes." I also think that Holden Caulfield would ever-so-slightly enjoy being called an asshole. Maybe it's this, more than anything else, that draws me to him as a character. Again with the "I don't give a damn." but also a little bit of "I like it that they're thinking of me, though." He does make a point about his dorm-mate Ackley caring enough to pay attention to things, as opposed to his room-mate Stradlater for really not being aware at all. Maybe there's a difference between "giving a damn" and "caring enough to pay attention." I like that idea.

Joyce grows up

My Coming-of-Age-Novel class has finished reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and the discussion after reading the final chapters mostly revolved around Stephen Dedalus' decision to leave Ireland forever. In class, we naturally talked a lot about the idea of the maturing process, and questioned the nature of Portrait as a bildungsroman.

I drew a comparison between Stephen Dedalus' feeling of being the odd-man-out at the childrens' party portrayed early in the book to his "exile" at the end of the novel. He seems to revel in the former, in a slow, somber way, and looks at the whole tableau as though it must have been pre-ordained. He, the "artistic soul," the "tortured intellect," must have always been set apart in such frivolous situations. He was shown in the earliest chapters to be a scrawny kid, a bit socially awkward, and definitely more thoughtful than his rough-and-tumble classmates. They would've treated him as a bit of an outcast or a loner anyway, and he would've preferred that to taking part in games that could have gotten yet another pair of glasses broken. With kids like that, it's difficult to say whether their propensity toward solitude resulted from or resulted in their peers leaving them alone. Whatever the case, it suits Young Stephen's twisted romanticism quite nicely. He crouches in the corner, eying the girl he can not attract, and thinking very smugly about how mysterious he must look.

The Stephen Dedalus leaving Ireland in the final pages of Portrait is not altogether a different man, but his romanticism has matured along with his ability to express himself. He does not smugly revel, he exalts. He is leaving the nest, taking flight, and embarking upon the road to artistry. I think it is this change which makes Joyce's self-portrait a true bildungsroman. In the beginning of the book, Young Stephen was constantly taking stock of himself as he imagined others must see him. The party scene is a perfect example of this. Stephen is not thinking "Artistic" thoughts, but imagining Emma thinking that he must be thinking "Artistic" thoughts. Terry Pratchett would have considered this phenomenon to be some self-indulgent derivative of second thoughts. Dedalus as a young man is certainly still considering the way he comes across to others, but it is no longer his primary objective to appear worldly and sophisticated. If anything, he feels the need to get away from people who know him as the weirdo in the corner. It is this, more than anything else, that indicates that he has come of age.

All of us lonely together

It seems counter-intuitive to me to christen a new blog with a subject as apparently alienating as loneliness, but it also seems appropriate. My "Coming-of-Age Novel" class is currently busy making its way through James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and I know for certain that the moment the Stephen Dedalus became sympathetic character in my mind was during his stay in the infirmary at Clongowes boarding school. He heard the whistle of a train passing by the school, it reminded him of home, and he wished he could be with his mother.

Maybe it was the train that made this moment stick in my mind: I've always loved trains and train whistles, and they make me feel nostalgic. There are so many songs I know about trains, and many of them are blues songs, and they seem very connected to loneliness imagery. "I hear that train a-comin', a-comin' 'round the bend..." or "Freight train, freight train, goin' so fast....I don' know what train I'm on, and I don't know where I'm goin'" If it is the trains, then maybe this moment is only special for people who see trains with that kind of weight. I don't know. Weigh in, if you feel the same way.

Maybe it's the whole picture. Being alone, sick, and far from anyone comforting or familiar is something that anyone who's gotten sick at school can relate to. Putting your head down on the desk under fluorescent light and wanting to go home, but knowing that you aren't really sick enough to go. Or walking down to the office to call home, realizing that they are at work, and being consigned to the padded bench in the nurse's office with dimmed light from the curtain window and a big poster of a grinning toothbrush leering down at you. So very childish, and yet so familiar. (A disclaimer: I know that this is familiar to a relatively miniscule group of people. If it's not familiar to you, I don't mean to offend you. Put my meaning into terms you can work with, if you feel so moved.)

Whatever the case, loneliness is a well-trodden theme in much of classic Western literature. Fair enough, since reading is so largely a solitary activity. I just noticed it particularly here, in the transition from Stephen Dedalus as a binarily-analytical child to an emotive human being.

Part of me still thinks it was the trains.