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Re: Johnson-Wendel: "Time & Ebb" (fwd)
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In a message dated 5/14/97 10:38:49 PM, Roy Johnson wrote:
>VN's rather dodgy [and no doubt unconscious] views of Woman.
>
>... and if anyone else wishes to run after the
>misogyny hare
Well, no, I don't.
Who defines "dodgy"? Is "dodgy" bad?? Are we in the business of deciding
good-or-bad, and modifying our tastes thereto? I am completely puzzled by
this urge to cloak what I thought was art in the drab fashions of
contemporary neo-puritan platitudes. We don't need male scholars to tell us
who is whateverist. If women aren't bothered by alleged "sexism", then leave
it alone!! This kind of solemn labeling _for your own good_ is worse than
the leering, panting sexism -- it's android Big Brotherism, and I say it's
spinach, and I say the hell with it.
Meanwhile, I am still waiting for someone to disprove my claim that "Time &
Ebb" is not only an effective _story_, but a great one. Let me set a
parameter -- "great" within the context not only of VN stories, but of
comparable modern writers, Joyce, Updike, Bellow, for example. I don't
believe he should be lumped in with the 19th century writers mentioned in Dr.
Johnson's note (would you place Keats next to Pope, or next to Shelley?).
"Time & Ebb" captures that ache in the American heart, that lyrical nostalgia
for times lost and irretrievable, which we see every day in the chopped-up,
formulaic, prepackaged nonsense that passes for history in our splendid
media, but which remains apart from all that and as much a part of our
permanent landscape as baseball, drive-throughs, and hero worship (c.f., all
that parodic reverence of Barrett). In numbingly simple terms, we [generic
Americans] found this country. We loved this country. We wrecked this
country, or allowed it to be wrecked while we did other things. But we still
love it, and we love that which is gone more than we love what is here now.
There's an element of guilt involved -- particularly for the narrator of
"T&E", who as a scientist bears no little responsibility for the destruction
of the world he so lovingly sets forth. What does "toying with animal
tissues" entail anyway? What have been the consequences of our narr.'s work?
What does he know about the revelations concerning "the true nature of
electricity"?
VN doesn't tell us, does he, and there lies the story's greatness. The
narr.'s nostalgia lies uneasily atop a bed of guilt -- for we are all guilty,
in growing up, becoming adults, working in family and/or career, of
destroying the worlds of our youth. Everyone of us, in one way or another,
has broken the heart of a "Professor Andrews" somewhere. Everyone of us has
mocked or ignored an unfulfilled "Richard Sinatra," , even if
unintentionally.
Gosh, this seems an obvious parallel to "The Dead," a similar elegy as much
national as personal: efficient, bustling, optimistic Gabriel Conroy has the
wind (and the lust) knocked out of him by his wife's moody nostalgia. Gretta
Conroy cries as much for her lost youth as for poor dead Michael Furey, and
she certainly bears an element of guilt about his death, doesn't she. Yet it
is also Ireland she mourns for (no Hopkins intended) -- western, rural,
boggy Ireland, lost to her personally thanks to what might be called the
"yuppie lifestyle" of sophisticated Dublin. She wants to go home again, but
of course, one can't. She is the Professor Andrews of this story, if you
will, and Gabriel is the narrator as scientist, who understands what has
transpired, who has brought about the change (he married Gretta), and who
must live with the consequences. Now, since every freshman knows "The Dead"
is a great story -- and "Time and Ebb" may be compared to "The Dead" -- does
that make "T&E" as great? Not necessarily. But then, not necessarily not,
either.
This is what one seeks in fiction -- release, relief, understanding,
admiration of another's style and insight, words to fit this "gentle,
trustful, dreaming country," even if, like so many H.H.s., we have all
defiled it with our "trail[s] of slime." When I want feeble quasi-leftist
propaganda, I will read the L.A. Times, thank you.
Proustian under the palm trees,
Sylvia
Sylvia Weiser Wendel