tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post3583063048891587478..comments2024-03-27T16:48:21.039-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: Strange to see meanings that clung together once, floating away in every direction – notes on Your Face Tomorrow, Javier Marías’s great follyAmateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-20054978628931471112011-09-15T10:01:34.520-05:002011-09-15T10:01:34.520-05:00There's a reason that a reasonable explanation...There's a reason that a reasonable explanation for the marital problems is insufficient. Deza has no hesitation about telling us, or telling himself, all sorts of 'orrible and bizarre things in deep and bizarre detail. But he veils this one area. He doesn't think about the details of the problems in his marriage? Nonsense - he chooses to omit them. Why?<br /><br />It's part of the "Never say anything to anyone" paradox - where are the places where Deza follows his own advice? I might have identified the wrong one, the wrong, trivial, absence, a red herring.<br /><br />Those self-quotations are fascinating. I would often miss them until I got to the end of a long paragraph where I would discover the close-quotes. Where's the beginning? Sometimes it was a tangle.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-71917497327531424332011-09-15T09:23:17.111-05:002011-09-15T09:23:17.111-05:00Your first question ("basic," ha!): This...Your first question ("basic," ha!): This is something I hope to address in a post, but it's the post I've not yet decided whether to write, and I don't know how to use this for evidence (or of what). But one thing I noticed is that Deza spends a lot of time giving direct quotations of his own thoughts. That is, he gives us the stream of consciousness that's happening while he narrates, and quotes the stream of consciousness he was having during events. Or so he says. Rather interesting, especially if you start to pay attention and realize how much you <em>haven't</em> been paying attention to those quotation marks.<br /><br />Your second question: There is a definite admission of infidelity prior to Deza actually leaving Luisa, I spotted it again last night, but he doesn't think she knows about it. I simply suspected these everyday banalities, in combination with Deza's seeming inability to live in a normal domestic situation. Does Luisa share that inability or is it only a reaction to him?nicolehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17532641082944082516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-10689572114763796112011-09-05T16:18:57.628-05:002011-09-05T16:18:57.628-05:00That comment of Deza's father highlights the a...That comment of Deza's father <i>highlights</i> the absence of detail - it is dang vague. It is just the sort of thing that makes me wonder what Deza is not telling us, or cannot.<br /><br />Another possibility is that everything significant is pretty much out there on the surface, delivered directly by our confessional narrator. I have doubts, though.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-76840096135428940852011-09-05T15:20:29.118-05:002011-09-05T15:20:29.118-05:00Sorry for the delay in specifically commenting on ...Sorry for the delay in specifically commenting on this, Amateur Reader, but I second Rise's "difficult, tricky questions" assessment of what you've focused on in this post. The "accumulation of domestic banalities" seems a logical enough hypothesis what with Deza's father's comment that he didn't see his son as the marrying kind and the fact that both Deza's and Wheeler's "gift" didn't allow them to interpret their wives' needs and/or behavior at key moments in time (at least not in time to prevent the men from being scarred by the women's decisions). I'm open to other ideas, though, and appreciate you raising the possibility of mental health/trauma issues re: the narrator. There was a kind of ambivalence in his relationships with women in <em>All Souls</em> as well as I recall. Hmm.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01746599416342846897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-14691689874601313092011-09-02T13:52:26.278-05:002011-09-02T13:52:26.278-05:00Telepathy - that's pretty much where I am. So...Telepathy - that's pretty much where I am. So the interest of this direction is that the style - the digressions, repetitions, etc. - is then Deza's way of telling this story to <i>himself</i>, of making sense of it. And then it's worth looking for breakdowns and gaps and even fictions.<br /><br />A radical idea is that the spy agency is fiction, a concoction based on learning about his mentor's espionage background and meeting the mysterious Tupra at a party. Or Deza <i>fears</i> it is a fiction - the arrival of a package of fancy German shoes is essential concrete evidence that it was all real!<br /><br />I don't know how seriously I mean this. I like your idea that he is concealing yet expressing his own ambivalence about his marriage, or marriage-as-such.<br /><br />The comparison with the voice of <i>All Souls</i> is useful, too. He is so much more restrained there, less word-crazy, more interested in the <i>elegance</i> of his expression. And he's funnier.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-68469234126078652482011-09-02T09:25:09.608-05:002011-09-02T09:25:09.608-05:00Difficult tricky questions ... I also think that t...Difficult tricky questions ... I also think that the story is retrospective. It's possible Deza was telling it to "Marías", the character who wrote one false novel <i>Dark Back of Time</i>, if that makes sense. I think he communicated this story partly by telepathy, sometimes in a lucid voice, but sometimes in dreams or in stupor, in a delirious state, like someone high on something. In any case, the silent interlocutor "Marías" managed to put words on paper without running out of ink. <br /><br />I seem to recall that Deza was unfaithful to Luisa when they were still together? I'm not sure anymore. But for some reason Deza himself seemed to be opposed to the institution of marriage. It seems he couldn't stand being in a long-term domestic intimacy, hence his flings were also often short-lived. I'm not sure about his mental health either. But even in <i>All Souls</i> he seemed to revel in states of tedium and vertigo.Risehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17446964640160585194noreply@blogger.com