Treacherous ground, the relationship

“The penis, in the contemporary novel, has been a mighty matter, looming large.” I wish so much that I had written this sentence but it was that mighty writer Colm Toibin, commenting on Ian McEwan’s novel On Chesil Beach. Toibin goes on to say “Who will forget the narrator of The Bell Jar seeing an adult penis for the first time and being both fascinated and repelled? (‘The only thing I could think of was turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed.’)”, This London Review of Books review is well worth a read just for the extended riff about the penis.

It wasn’t the penis that got my attention in the novel (funnily enough). This is a novel which pivots on the first night of a marriage. Set in 1962, it's about Florence and Edward. “They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible. But it is never easy. “ What interested me was Florence’s lack of interest in sex. Not just lack of interest but a feeling of revulsion; when Edward starts to kiss her, she contemplates throwing up.

I know that it’s possible to go for extended times without sex and without thinking of sex. (Only one of these characteristics applies to me.) Libido is a rare topic of conversation with my friends but sometimes we talk about it. Usually in an embarrassed way; no one really knows what is “normal”. Do you like sex? Is it good with your partner? Are there things you’d like to do? Have done to you? Does the other person want it more or less than you do? How do you manage the imbalance? Who do you lust after? What turns you on? For a theme that is explored at such length in the media, it is really hard to talk about. (And hard often to talk about with your lover or partner too but that's probably a whole other piece of writing.)

Florence finds it hard to talk about. She feels abnormal. I found it strange to read about; its not something I can imagine easily – the extreme distaste she has for sex. I wanted to read more, to find out why, and this provides some of the dramatic tension of the novel. At first I thought the writing was a little coy. Mark Mordue, writing in the SMH, reframes the coyness: “Initially, McEwan's writing is restrained and formal, a quintessentially British tone befitting the time in which it is set. One thinks of old BBC radio plays and "hears" the story being told. It would be easy to mistake this as tame fare indeed but for a sly humour and confidence percolating beneath McEwan's voice: “This was not a good moment in the history of English cuisine, but no one much minded at the time except visitors from abroad. The formal meal began, as so many did then, with a slice of melon decorated by a glazed cherry… It would not have crossed Edward’s mind to have ordered a red.”” The coy tone is deliberate; it reflects the times, the characters and the seriousness with which they are about to embark on sex, and on intimacy.

Because this is what I think the book is really about – not so much sex as marriage and what it means to make this commitment. What might be lost in the process as well as gained. There is a really graphic description of being kissed; “With his lips clamped firmly on hers, he probed the fleshy floor of her mouth, then moved round inside the teeth of her lower jaw to the empty place where three years ago a wisdom tooth had crookedly grown until removed under general anaesthesia. This cavity was where her own tongue usually strayed when she was lost in thought. By association, it was more like an idea than a location, a private, imaginary place rather than a hollow in her gum, and it seemed peculiar to her that another tongue should be able to go there too. It was the hard tapering tip of this alien muscle, quiveringly alive, that repelled her.” (p29) Of course this is about sex but I think it’s also about the process of marrying someone and living with them. Florence is a very controlling, independent personality who has not experienced the joys of intimacy (her family has not provided warmth or contact). The idea of intimacy, and perhaps losing something of herself in the process, scares Florence as much as the physicalities of sex. And the ending bears this out; you have to allow people into the hidden gaps to truly make contact. It’s a risk but the consequence of avoiding risk is borne out in what happens to both Edward and Florence.

What makes me think that McEwen wanted to go beyond sex is the title. He is fond of the single, life-changing incident (almost all his novels pivot round a single incident) but this novel has a very deliberate title which I think takes us further than the single failed sexual encounter of E and F. I googled the beach after I’d finished the book; it’s a really striking piece of coastline. A long narrow spit (18 miles?) with a lagoon on the land side and the sea on the other. Rocky. Treacherous. McEwen said that he kept some rocks from the beach on his desk while he was writing it (and protests after he admitted this meant that he took them back!) Chesil Beach is a storm beach developed by gravel ridges being driven onshore. It was described like this by one poet:
“Twern't a sea - not a bit of it -
twer the great sea hisself rose up level like
and come on right over the ridge and all,
like nothing in this world"

I think McEwen is thinking about the beach as a metaphor for being in a relationship. One reviewer described the spit as being the line between post-war, conservative Britain (the land and lagoon) and the tempestuous changes of the 60’s (the sea) and while its true that this is a strong theme in the book, it’s a bit lumpen as a metaphor. (And if I was being really crude, you could read this bit of verse and look at how McEwen describes Edward’s premature ejaculation – a great piece of writing). However, I think he chose the landscape deliberately to make a point; it could have been set in Torquay or a host of less interesting locations.

A lot of the writing is very fine and that makes the book worth reading, whatever you think it's about: “The garden vegetation rose up, sensuous and tropical in its profusion, an effect heightened by the grey, soft light and a delicate mist drifting in from the sea, whose steady motion of advance and withdrawal made sounds of gentle thunder, then sudden hissing against the pebbles.” And finally, worth a comparison – Philip Larkin’s poem, Annus Mirabilus.

Let the right one in

“The question of what comprises a ‘good childhood’ in current times has generated significant debate and media attention. While there has always been debate about children, today it is especially salient because of the fast pace of change in information and communication technology and because of the perceived pressures of a consumer-based media culture. According to the charity The Children’s Society, which has conducted a major inquiry into childhood, children’s overall well-being is being endangered by excessive individualism in a competitive modern age. It suggests that the increase in the belief that the “prime duty of the individual is to make the most of her own life, rather than contribute to the good of others” has tilted British culture too far “towards the individual pursuit of private interest and success” with several consequences for children:
- high rates of family break-up
- teenage unkindness
- unprincipled advertising
- too much competition in education
- acceptance of income inequality.”

Been reading this today for work. It’s a paper from Futurelab about curriculum and innovation. I’m always a bit suspicious of the good old days argument. Were we or or parents and grandparents more alive to the good of others? I’m not sure. (I think my father’s generation was better at saving, at “doing without”, but that’s another matter). I was thinking about teenage unkindness this week in the context of the Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In. Luke Davies, in The Monthly, correctly calls this a “gloriously strange and haunted poem of a film”. The screenplay is written by John Lindqvist who also wrote the best selling novel and the film is made by Tomas Alfredson.

Philip French from the Guardian wrote this apropos of the film: "Three of Scandinavia's greatest artists, the Swedish playwright August Strindberg, his friend the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch and the Danish director Carl Dreyer were fascinated by the subject. Virtually all Strindberg heroines are vampires. Munch's most famous painting after The Scream is his Vampyr, while Dreyer's Vampyr is arguably the greatest of all horror films."

I’ve had several encounters with the vampire genre over the years; the sensationally scary Salem’s Lot (Stephen King), the languid and hip, overhyped Anne Rice novels and more recently The Historian ( Elizabeth Kostova). I remember lying in bed in my parents house reading Stephen King scared out of my wits with the dark glass of the night window only inches away and the possibility of vampires just outside. That was 30 years ago – other things scare me more now. What was scary in Let the Right One In was the depiction of adolescence because that is what the film is fundamentally about. Oskar is 12, a lonely bullied boy who is disconnected from his divorced parents. Like most teenagers, he inhabits a little world of his own. He meets Eli, a dishevelled “12 year old” street girl of a vampire.

The vampire riff works fine as a straight narrative but underneath it is a metaphor for the disturbances of adolescence. Blood. Changing bodies. Uncontrollable events and urges. Stuff that you want to do that is forbidden. Desire. Danger. Fitting in or more usually – not fitting in. Loss of innocence – whatever this means in our society. Disconnection and loneliness – the film deals with these threads so well. The violence of adolescence is played out in all sorts of ways in this film including through Oskar who we meet when he is stabbing a tree with a knife (which is handily standing in for one of his classmates).

It’s also beautifully filmed. Luke Davies says it better than I could: “the stillness, - of framing, of pacing – catches us unawares, in the sense that, as in all good ghost stories, we are lulled unsuspecting into that place where the real and the surreal become interchangeable”. The setting is both banal – suburban Sweden, an apartment block, a school, and really beautiful – crisp snow, slender birches, a white dog against the snow. (A white dog against the snow discovering a body hefted upside down from a tree dripping blood – yes it is a vampire film.) That’s the other thing I loved about the film; Eli is by turns kind of fetching street kid and mouth covered in blood, pretty grisly. It looks real and a bit grotesque. And vulnerable. These two, Eli and Oskar, are kind to each other in this world of teenage unkindness and adult neglect. The film has a great ending. It makes you re-think some of the earlier scenes in new ways. The narrative is left open and ambiguous like the character of Eli. Lovely work.

"How am I blest in thus discovering thee!”

Been thinking about the word Elegy after seeing the film of that name. John Donne was really the Elegy man and this thought sent me googling the connection. The first one I came across was Elegy XX To his mistress going to bed. Like a lot of Donne’s poetry, it’s about making the most of the limited time we have. In his world view, its best spent in bed with a lover (apart from the time taken with wondering what happens after you die). Sex and death weighed heavily on the man. I liked re-discovering him- here's a snippet from that poem.

“Licence my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O, my America, my Newfoundland,
My kingdom, safest when with one man mann'd,
My mine of precious stones, my empery;
How am I blest in thus discovering thee!”

The word elegy is more usually used to mean a song of mourning and perhaps Donne is thinking of the ephemeralness of this relationship and the frailties of the human bodies, both his and his lovers. As the title of the recent film, it is less harsh than the title of the novel it represents “The Dying Animal”. Roth’s book and this film is about David Kupesh, a man in his 60s who falls in love with a much younger woman played by Penelope Cruz.

The opening of the film shows him in his New York apartment quoting from Tolstoy: "The biggest surprise in a man's life is old age." This quote has the kind of truth about it that made me want to agree out loud in the cinema. Age has been much on my mind lately, not just my own but the people around me. I thought about my father who seems constantly bemused by the treachery of his body. On the weekend he said to me “I used to be an athlete; I could run 100 yards in X (I think he said 11 but this cannot be right) seconds.” He can’t understand where this fitness has gone, what has happened to him. It’s unbearably sad. And perhaps that means that what happens to Kupesh in the film is sad but not tragic (in comparison with my father who is 80 and tragically sad.) After all, Kupesh has the beautiful Cruz fall in love with him.

Kupesh is something of a tosser but the universality of the aging process is the compelling part of this film. It’s the third film I‘ve seen about aging men this year which perhaps tells us something about the demographics of current film producers. And audiences. But ultimately I had to agree partly with Monalah Dargis in the New York Times: “There’s not a hair out of place here or an emotion. It’s as if Ms. Coixet (the director) had tried to quiet the howls of a dying animal.” I thought the film would end about 20 minutes before it did; there is a twist in the plot that shifts our perspective somewhat. What the twist raised for me is the question – do we feel more keenly for the really beautiful? Would the impact be the same if the plot twist was applied to Kupesh’s older lover? (A woman who I identified with quite strongly). Would that have made the story more interesting? Made us forget the twee beach love scenes that populate the early part of the film?

Cruz plays the role as a cipher; unknowable in her beauty. This tease of the audience is set up quite early when Kupesh first sees her – she is carrying a copy of Roland Barthes “The Pleasures of the Text”. And Kupesh’s friend says something along the lines of the unknowability of the truly beautiful woman; it is a complete distraction. I don’t think that Mr Donne would have agreed but he was truly a renaissance man. Head and heart. Go John. He was up for it – the howl of a dying animal in a way that this film isn’t quite. Re-reading Donne's words, there's a robustness and energy that is never felt in the film; the Kupesh character is way too restrained and melancholy. at one stage, Kupesh compares the Cruz character to a painting by Goya and the relationship has that element; a woman reclining to be admired, a woman looking lovely on the beach, a man looking sad in a darkened apartment. Somehow the blood has left this film. I'm going back to Donne for a bit more sex and death... And maybe Philip Roth. And definitely John Updike.