Walter,
Yes, tracing threads through 4 different time frames makes for a great puzzle! :D Max is a much more complex person than I thought the first time go around.
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Walter,
Yes, tracing threads through 4 different time frames makes for a great puzzle! :D Max is a much more complex person than I thought the first time go around.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Walter
Can either of you list the time frames. I can see three so far:Quote:
Originally Posted by plainjane
1. As a child when he first meets the Grace family.
2. His wife's cancer and decline.
3. Present with his daughter Clair and the trip to the summer home of his childhood.
I must say I'm completely fascinated with the novel, but I can see how the delay of a real story line so far into the novel can turn people off. But Banville's writing is just gorgeous.
Virgil, he also covers his younger adulthood, meeting and marrying his wife, all the whys and wherefores of the marriage that does lead into her illness, but I'd have to put that as a different time frame.
So I'd say,
1. Childhood/Graces/explanation of Max's parents situation.
2. Young adulthood, manner of meeting wife and early marriage, all the explaining of her father and his business.
3. Wife's diagnosis and illness to death.
4. The present at the Graces old house.
Thanks Jane!! You're right, I forgot the courtship of his wife. And who says you're plain. ;) :DQuote:
Originally Posted by plainjane
Actually I would split up the first one into
childhood_ at the beach the graces etc
and childhood_ afterwards parents divorce living in a flat in the city etc.
:D
Timeframes and locales intermingle to produce many combinations like that. After his wife dies and before he decides to return to the Cedars there feels like another combination where he is still at home but without his wife and it feels like a different time frame. It all makes counting them slightly fuzzy. Maybe those different combinations are different 'settings' for the story line, to add yet another word?
The intermingling of time frames is brilliantly done. I am really impressed with Banville's writing. But it's still hard to grasp a story line. Do memories of a central character constitute a story? I can't wait to finish to see. I hope there is some grand epiphany. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Walter
I really can't help but type out some of this magnificent prose. Here's another fine passage.
Quote:
It was an evening just like that, the Sunday evening when I came here to stay, after Anna had gone at last. Although it was autumn and not summer the dark-gold sunlight and the inky shadows, long and slender in the shaped of felled cypresses, were the same, and there was the same sense of everything drenched and jewelled and the same ultramarine glitter on the sea. I felt inexplicably lightened; it was as if the evening, in all the drench and drip of its fallacious pathos, had temporarily taken over from me the burden of grieving. Our home, or my home, as supposedly it was now, had still not been sold, I had not yet had the heart to put it on the market, but i could not have stayed there a moment longer. After Anna's death it went hollow, became a vast echo-chamber. There was somethig hostile in the air, too, the growling surliness of an old hound unable to understand where its beloved mistress had gone and resentful of the master who remains. Anna would allow no one to be told of her illness. People suspected something was up, but not until the final stages, that what was up, for her, was the game itself. Even Claire had been left to guess that her mother was dying. And now it was over, and something else had begun, for me, which was the delicate business of being the survivor. (p.109)
Banville certainly has an unconventional manner of presenting "flashbacks", I don't think I've encountered his method before. I know I missed a lot on the first reading and I'd lay odds I could get even more from a third rereading.
In a way it is a quest novel, yes? Questing for himself, his life, his meaning, his future.
I don't want to go into the end till you finish though Virgil.
Thanks Jane. I am enjoying it. I don't know if the flashback technique is unconventional. It's just that he's such a smooth writer that it appears seemless.Quote:
Originally Posted by plainjane
Virgil, I am glad to hear that you are still going forward. As long as you have made it this far, you can now look forward to many of your questions being resolved as the closing pages approach -- and some surprising new scenes as well.
You definitely have your fingers on the two major features of the book, though: an enigmatic plot being carried forward by magnificent prose. This book is not quite like any others I have read, even including Nabokov or Virginia Woolf. I think Banville's dissection and rearrangement of the time-line is in new territory, far beyond any stream-of-consciousness I have read. So, as you are still with it, you are doing well. :)
Anyone else still reading, or starting?
I read it in June.
I am afraid I do not share your enthusiam for the book. Find it too much work for too little of a storyline.
I don't want to ruin the story for others by giving too much away but ending left a bad taste in my mouth as well.
Hopefully I should finish the novel over the weekend.
I thought the end was quite ambiguous, assuming that we are speaking of the same 'ending.' But that sounds like a good item for eventual discussion.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
Ok I finished today. I have to say i am very disappointed. Such brilliant prose and frankly it seems to me such a flawed structure. Does Banville understand the nature of telling a story? A story isn't just exposition and climax. There has to be a building to the climax, as if things propell toward it. What in heaven's name does the Chloe part of the story have to do with Anna's death? Why in heaven's name does Chloe and a Myles go for that swim and you know what happens? Why is Max so in love with Mrs Grace and then it gets dropped? And why did he hold back all that information about Rose and Miss Vavasour until the last thirty pages? It seems to me that Banville gives 160 pages worth of background only to concoct a story in the last thirty pages. I hate to make such strong statements on one reading, but I just don't get it. Walter, Plainjane, please set me right. I so want to like this novel, but this just baffles me. What am I missing?
Hi Virgil, exactly my reactions after my first reading -- a very disappointing story.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
But it seems to me that you do get at the deep questions that relate to this novel (much better than I did), and I don't think you are missing anything; I think you have the pieces. I think the disconnect revolves around what exactly the 'story,' or plot, of the novel is, and that the true story emerges only after appropriate rearrangement of the pieces and refocusing of the reader's point of view.
To simplify, and probably oversimplify, the death of Anna and the Chloe parts of the novel, indeed, have nothing to do with each other as parts of a single story. They are separate and disjoint subplots. But they both appear in this novel because the story of this novel is about Max Morden's revisiting his life, and they are both episodes in different stages of his life. The novel is not about their lives.
The back cover of the book says that "What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac gorgeously written novel." At first it wasn't clear to me that he came to understand anything about anything, or if so, where that happened in the book.
So, to abbreviate considerably, as I see it now, this novel is about Max's changing perception of his own life. But to complicate matters, that is not told in linear fashion, but rather in a disjointed structure more akin to (Max's) wandering stream-of-consciousness. After much searching. I would put the beginning of Max's enlightenment on page 45, at his answer to Claire's comment that he lives in the past. At first he is going to challenge her, but then he realizes there is truth in what she says, and I think that is the beginning of his mental rumination back over his life while at the Cedars, until he finally comes to see the truth of her observation.
Then his separate relationships to both Chloe and to Anna come into single focus for him and the reader. They were both his immersion into the wealthy life of leisure that he always wanted to lead (and to be able to get sozzled occasionally when he felt like it). The way I see it, his final realization is that with Anna he indeed finally got to lead the well-to-do kind of life he wanted to lead. No great moral for the future, just an acceptance of what his life had been and an insight into himself as a person.
You might still say that is thin gruel for a story, and I would probably again agree. But unraveling his thought process from the individual pieces here and there, and reassembling the underlying timeline of events in his life did contribute to the overall enjoyment for me and made the time spent quite worthwhile. It became rather like solving a detective mystery.
Hope this helps.
THAR BE SPOILERS BELOW
The first time I read The Sea I knew I loved it, but was still throughly confused. :) The second time was the charm for me, and I'd lay odds that a third reread would uncover even more gems.
To me the story was of Max's learning to accept himself the way he was and not someone else's concoction. Not Anna's view, not Claire's, nor the friends of his youth. Max always wanted to be someone else, was never satisfied with, or never truly knew who or what he was. He wanted to better himself by becoming friends with the 'summer people', deserting his local friends.
By going back to that summer he went back to his roots, finally realizing he'd believed in a dream. The dream of Mrs. Grace...little did he realize back then that she was looking right past him to Rose...not him as he'd dreamed/fantasized. Finally realizing the reality of what he overheard in the tree that day he heard Mrs. Grace and Rose talking. Who the affair really involved.
The dream of Chloe, wondering after all those years just what she really meant to his life, the possibilities missed. Or were they?
On page 160...
So maybe it's as simple [and as complex] as "Who was I?" and "Who am I now?"Quote:
"I knew myself, all too well, and did not like what I knew. Again, I must qualify. It was not what I was that I disliked, I mean the singular, essential me--although I grant that even the notion of an essential, singular self is problematic--but the congeries of affects, inclinations, received ideas, class tics, that my birth and upbringing had bestowed on me in place of a personality. In place of, yes.
I like that way of putting it, because it suggests that the novel is not especially about events and characters and their interactions, but more about Max's developing frame of mind.Quote:
Originally Posted by plainjane
That's exactly it, the events are described in such a disjointed manner, I think because Max's frame of mind is so disjointed when the book begins, that is when he decides to go back to what he considers The Beginning. For Max that summer was the point of disbursement, but he was not thinking in a linear manner so was unable to consider his life in a linear way. His wife's death made him question his whole way of thinking about himself.Quote:
Originally Posted by Walter
Ah! This is Max telling his story, isn't it? :nod:
After everything in the novel has transpired.
It still doesn't answer the questions I layed out. What are the connecting links between the various elements of the story, and why hold back such critical information only to spring it on the reader as a surprise? Max is I guess over 60 years old. Of the many, many incidents of his life, why does he pick the Cedars incident to be so important? I don't get it.Quote:
Originally Posted by plainjane
The Cedars incident was his first love? The moment that changed his life forever, as he said? His first introduction to the life of wealth and leisure? The beginning of his escape from his own poor background? His 'coming of age' passage?
No climax!? Max's acceptance of self is quite an achievement in my book.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Groundwork. That was the beginning of Max's attempt to define himself by something other than his own disjointed, poor family. Plus I think Max always wondered if he'd missed out on the 'love of his life' when Chloe died. So really it was a comparative study of Chloe and Anna for him.Quote:
What in heaven's name does the Chloe part of the story have to do with Anna's death?
Myles only followed Chloe, as for her, her anger at Rose and the affair was so strong...remember just before they walked into the sea she'd half heartedly started something with Max? [her inclusion of Myles was rather startling] It was all rebellion against her mother and Rose.Quote:
Why in heaven's name does Chloe and a Myles go for that swim and you know what happens?
Hormones. Adolescent male. :rolleyes: I can't remember right now, and can't seem to find the passage I want, but I think he just became disillusioned with Mrs. Grace.Quote:
Why is Max so in love with Mrs Grace and then it gets dropped?
I did find something I'd like to bring out though regarding Max's frame of mind...page 143
[bolding mine]Quote:
These days I must take the world in small and carefully measured doses, it is a sort of homeopathic cure I am undergoing, though I am not certain what this cure is meant to mend. Perhaps I am learning to live amongst the living again. Practicing, I mean. But no, that is not it. Being here is just a way of not being anywhere.
A little explanation for those not familiar with homeopathy...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy
Pertinent bit from link.
That's why Max went back to the scene.Quote:
Homeopathic practitioners maintain that an ill person can be treated using a substance that can produce, in a healthy person, symptoms similar to those of the illness.
Yeah, I'll buy that. But did you see a connection with his life with Anna? It seems like there are linking passages that Banville doesn't include. And why does Banville spend so much time describing Col Blunder (sp? I can't remember his name exactly and I don't have the book handy)? And still, the surprise of Rose and her affair (and I still don't understand what that has to do with the drownings) and the surprise of Miss Vavasour at the end is just too much for me. I have to question Banville's arrangement of episodes. A writer can juggle episodes in time, but there still has to be a trajectory of story.Quote:
Originally Posted by Walter
Foundation. We have to know what the past was before we can understand his life.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
It's Colonel Blunden. After all it is a rooming house now, would you have Max the only resident? Then it could be said to be unrealistic, because after all, what rooming house has only one tenant?
I thought the bit about Miss Vavasour at the end tied up the questions of her affair with Mrs. Grace beautifully, she was paid off after all.
THIS POST IS ALL SPOILER
This may be overkill for the current discussion, but these are my notes that trace Max Morden's state of mind in the novel, as well as I am able, and also the trajectory of the story when it is straightened out in time.
In his childhood at Ballyless
p25 And my life is changed forever.
p79 Chloe, Myles and I. How proud I was to be seen with them, these divinities, for I thought of course that they were the gods.
p79 My former friends were resentful "He spends all his time now with his grand new friends."
Marriage to Anna
p76 Charlie was a crook.
p76 Anna invited me to marry her
p77 The wedding party was held under a striped marquee
p79 Charlies died a few months after we were married. Anna got all his money . . . there was a lot.
Anna is diagnosed
p12 Well doctor is it the death sentence, or do I get life?
p15 It was not supposed to have befallen us, We are not that kind of people.
p17 From this day forward, all would be dissembling. There would be no other way to live with death.
Anna dying
p114 We shut ourselves away in our house by the sea.
p115 She was in the nursing home by then
Anna dies
p177 I have stopped time. And she nodded, a solemn, knowing nod, and smiled too. I would swear it was a smile.
p195 just another of the worlds great shrugs of indifference
p195 I felt as if I were walking into the sea.
Deciding to go to the Cedars
p18 A dream it was that drew me here.
p19 The journey did not end, I arrived nowhere, and nothing happened
p19 I awoke with the conviction that something had been achieved, or at least initiated.
p19 It endured less than a minute that happy lightness but it told me where I must go.
p111 You're mad Claire had said you'll die of boredom there.
p111 "Then come and live with me, there's room enough for two."
p111 Live with her! Room for two! I said no, I wished to be on my own.
p111 I do not want solicitude. I want anger, vituperation, violence
Driving past the Cedars with his daughter Claire
p44 "You live in the past" she said.
p44 I was about to give an abrupt reply, but paused. She was right after all.
p45 I saw myself as something of a bucaneer . . . but now I. . . acknowledge this was a delusion
p45 To be concealed, protected, guarded, that is all I have ever wanted, to burrow down into a place of womby warmth and cower there.. . .That is why the past is such a retreat for me.
p50 When we got home I went straight into the house . . . and telephoned Ms Vavasour
On arriving at the Cedars
p95 When I first came here I thought of growing a beard
p97 I see the black ship in the distance . . . I hear your siren song . . I am there almost there.
On arriving at the Cedars
p111 Was it all a hideous mistake [going there]?
p116 Would you like to see your room now? Miss Vavasour asked
p117 When Miss vavasour left me in what was now to be my room . . . I felt that I had been traveling a long time, for years, and had at last arrived at the destination to where, all along, without knowing it, I had been bound, and where I must stay, it being for now, the only possible place, the only refuge, for me.
While at the Cedars
p30 The work I am supposed to be engaged in is a monograph on bonnard.
p30 Work is not the word I would apply to what I do. Workers work.
p30 Dabble I do not accept. We are nothing if not professional
While at the Cedars
p69 I wonder if other people when they were children had this kind of image of what they would be like when they grew up . . . from the outset I was very precise and definite in my expectations
p69 This is exactly how I would have foreseen seen my future self, a man of liesurely interests and scant ambition sitting in a room just like this one, in my sea-captain's chair, leaning at my little table . . . yes this is what I thought adulthood would be.
While at the Cedars
p145 what the whole house reminds me of . . .
p145 this must be the real reason I came here to hide in the first place . . .
p145 . . . the rented rooms my mother and I were forced to inhabit through my teenage years
While at the Cedars
p159 I was thinking of Anna
p159 what I found in Anna was a way of fulfilling the fantasy of myself.
p160 From earliest days I wanted to be someone else.
p160 Be anyone you like. That was the pact we made . . .
p160 . . . that we would relieve each other of being the people whom everyone else told us we were
p160 The question I am left with now anyway is precisely the question of knowing
p160 Who if not myself was I? (THE QUESTION - Part 1)
p161 . . . . we forgave each other for all that we were not.
p161 Could I have lived differently? Fruitless interrogation. (THE QUESTION - Part 2)
p161 yet for all that, I cannot rid myself of the conviction that we missed something. (THE RUB)
While at the Cedars
p.182 I do not want to be alone like this
p183 Why this silence day after day
p183 Send back your ghost
Night out getting drunk
p186 I fell into a mood of bitter melancholy
p187 under the shaking radiance of a street light awaiting some grand and general revelation
After he's back from getting drunk
p183 Ms Vavasour knows the questions I want to ask
p183 Ms Vavasour says "I can't help you...You must know that"
p183 All this in the historic present.
Daughter comes to take him home
p191 I must packup and leave the Cedars forthwith.
p191 I had not the heart to tell her my book had not gotten further than half a first chapter.
p192 Well it is no matter. there are other things I can do. I can go to Paris and paint.
p192 I can see myself in my cell, long-bearded with quill pen and hat and docile lion, through a window beside me minuscule pesants making hay, and hovering above my brow the dove refulgent.
p.192 Oh yes, life is pregnant with possibilities.
I'm not denying there wasn't a climax, I'm denying that there was a relavant building to it. I didn't see it. I probably should re-read it. I just don't know if it's worth my while.Quote:
Originally Posted by plainjane
Wait a second. Chloe is what ten years old? How is it credible that a love at ten who he knew for a summer compares to someone who he has been married to for decades?Quote:
Groundwork. That was the beginning of Max's attempt to define himself by something other than his own disjointed, poor family. Plus I think Max always wondered if he'd missed out on the 'love of his life' when Chloe died. So really it was a comparative study of Chloe and Anna for him.
It's not clear to me that she drowns on purpose. And if so, she drowns herself because she fought with Rose?Quote:
Myles only followed Chloe, as for her, her anger at Rose and the affair was so strong...remember just before they walked into the sea she'd half heartedly started something with Max? [her inclusion of Myles was rather startling] It was all rebellion against her mother and Rose.
:lol: I know that. I just don't understand why he makes such a big deal, spends pages on it, only for it to be a side show. I'm not questioning Max's hormones; I'm questioning Banville's selection for emphasis.Quote:
Hormones. Adolescent male. :rolleyes: I can't remember right now, and can't seem to find the passage I want, but I think he just became disillusioned with Mrs. Grace.
That is a good connection.Quote:
I did find something I'd like to bring out though regarding Max's frame of mind...page 143
[bolding mine]
A little explanation for those not familiar with homeopathy...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy
Pertinent bit from link.
That's why Max went back to the scene
But Banville spends pages describing Col Blunden which lead to no point.Quote:
Originally Posted by plainjane
Walter, that is perfect! :D
One of the stages of grief. Well brought out.Quote:
p111 I do not want solicitude. I want anger, vituperation, violence
Virgil, you say...What point would you have it lead to other than what I said in my previous post? Was he supposed to murder someone? Should he be a long lost resident of Max's past? Really if you think about it, it was hinted throughout the book that he and Ms. V would 'get together', obviously a ridiculous thought considering her sexual proclivity.Quote:
But Banville spends pages describing Col Blunden which lead to no point.
Without understanding Max's past the climax would have meant nothing, we had to understand why Max returned, why he felt he lacked a personality and why Anna was so very important to his sense of self.Quote:
I'm not denying there wasn't a climax, I'm denying that there was a relavant building to it. I didn't see it. I probably should re-read it. I just don't know if it's worth my while.
In reality it doesn't, otoh, in the back of Max's mind I feel he always wondered if Chloe was the lost love of his life. It's not unusual for someone of a certain age to wonder what they've missed out on in life, éh? :)Quote:
Wait a second. Chloe is what ten years old? How is it credible that a love at ten who he knew for a summer compares to someone who he has been married to for decades?
I believe the emphasis is so strong because it was Max's first time feeling that way.Quote:
I know that. I just don't understand why he makes such a big deal, spends pages on it, only for it to be a side show. I'm not questioning Max's hormones; I'm questioning Banville's selection for emphasis.
Perhaps Col. Blunden is there to present subliminally the external view of a strong silent man who keeps it all inside himself and swallows huge disappointment without great external show. In effect, he may be the exterior view of what Max Morden looks like all the while that his own inner life is actually in such turmoil. Max, in first person, can't quite tell us what he himself looks like from the outside, but he can tell us what col. Blunden looks like. Just a thought.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Virgil, I accidentally skipped this quote of yours...Chloe was a most deliberate and passionate child person, she did nothing 'by accident'. I would like to know what was said when they argued at the seaside just before the twins death. I speculate, mind you this is only speculation considering the Banville/Nabokov connection...I speculate that Chloe had feelings for Rose herself, and this was perhaps a quarrel about that considering Max had just told Chloe about the affair he thought was taking place. Chloe felt betrayed and was perhaps sexually confused...I'm just not sure which way that fell.Quote:
It's not clear to me that she drowns on purpose. And if so, she drowns herself because she fought with Rose?
Chloe felt betrayed somehow, that much I am certain of, just how I am not sure at this point.
AIE: Now that I think about it, Chloe's rather desperate attempt to engage with Max sexually just before hand could have been to try to feel something with a boy? As opposed to her [possible] feelings for Rose?
I like that. Blunden was all of that, the exact opposite of Max internally.Quote:
Originally Posted by Walter
Well, that's all speculation. I didn't read anything to suggest that. How old is Chloe? I frankly don't know.Quote:
Originally Posted by plainjane
That's a very puzzling event.
I have the feeling that the sea has something like a mystic significance for this story, possibly also underlying its choice as a title. The story opens with the stange high tide, and it ends with Max feeling as if he 'were walking into the sea' when he reenters the hopsital after his wife dies. Moreover Myles has webbed toes (fingers?) suggesting a sea creature to me, and Myles and Chloe were exceedingly close as twins -- even communicating without hardly speaking if I recall.
Chloe had just gotten angry at Rose for intruding on herself and young Max in embrace, and had stomped off to sulk on the beach where she was joined by Myles, seemingly commiserating by sitting shoulder to shoulder with her. It read to me as if, unspoken, they agreed 'enough of this' and decided to end their land-based frustrations in the sea, their 'natural' domain. That is all speculation, but that's how the body language came across to me.
Separately I think the episode also served a literary purpose, to show how passive a person Max really was. He was a good swimmer, but he stood immobile, instead of perhaps charging into the waves to at least attempt to help Myles and Chloe. The passive response of almost everybody else involved also stands out starkly. There was little commotion even among the Graces when Max brought the news. So there was something strange, but definitely different, about the whole episode, as if to suggest a symbolic or mystic significance beyond the mere happening. And that, also, is just my subjective reaction to what I read.
I might add that it provides a close parallel, to Max's later marriage to his wife. Both of the loves of max's life were with women better off than he was, and both came to untimely ends for reasons beyond his contol. That is literary parallelism whose significance is hard for me to see, but it is there.
page 22 - 23...Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Speculation? Perhaps 'tis, but based on facts.Quote:
What age were we, ten, eleven? Say eleven, it will do.
Chloe was a passionate individual, her tastes were well formed and definite. on pages 168-171 Max climbs the tree and overhears Rose and Mrs. Grace speaking together and comes to the erroneous conclusion that Rose is having an affair with Mr. Grace but at the end learns that it was in fact Mrs. Grace that was having the affair with Rose.
Max couldn't stand keeping it to himself and immediately told Chloe about the affair he thought he knew about, page 172. Chloe was skeptical, even to the point of annoyance. Max thought she was annoyed with him, but here supposition enters...suppose she was annoyed with Rose, or she could have been annoyed with Max as well for being the bearer of bad news. We, like Max at the time have no knowledge of what did or didn't go on between Rose and Chloe.
At the bottom of page 173 through to 174...
He didn't know at the time what Rose's secret passion was did he. Fact, not supposition.Quote:
Strangely, though, it was not Chloe whose power was thus increased over Rose, but the contrary, or so it seemed. The governess's eye had a new and steelier light when it fell on the girl now, and the girl, to my surprise and puzzlement, appeared cowed under that look as she had never been before. When I think of them like that, the one glinting, the other shying, I cannot but speculate that what happened on the day of the strange tide was in some way a consequence of the uncovering of Rose's secret passion.
Walter, I like your thoughts on the meanings of the Sea, it makes sense to me.That bowled me over! Not to even make the smallest attempt was just beyond the pale.Quote:
Separately I think the episode also served a literary purpose, to show how passive a person Max really was. He was a good swimmer, but he stood immobile, instead of perhaps charging into the waves to at least attempt to help Myles and Chloe. The passive response of almost everybody else involved also stands out starkly.
But it's true, Max let life happen to him, rather that attempting to guide events, even down to the end when he gave in to Claire's entreaties to live with her, which frankly I think was a good thing for him. That way he gets to keep living the life he wants to.
I am not a fan of this book and reading all your posts has been very interesting; thank you, all! :)
I did not think that Chloe might have a crush on Rose (which is an intriguing suggestion but I will echo Virgil's doubts... These children are supposed to 11 - 12?). To me, even though it seemed unnecessary and meaningless, the twin's act was a kind of reaction to the realisation that their parents (whichever one they might have thought that was having an affair) were not "theirs" purely and also to the fact that Rose, towards whom they were contemptuous throughout the book, turned out to have a great influence on their parents - the kind of influence they could not compete with.
I don't think the twins cared much for Max himself either; both Rose `and Max seemed to mere "play things" for them; to tease and make fun of at times and discard when fancy took them.
Isn't it interesting that the survivors of the story are Rose and Max, who are the ones without a "class"?
There is an element of mystery to the sea, and it is a multifacet symbol. I do think the central meaning of the sea is death. And perhaps that's what is so mysterious.Quote:
Originally Posted by Walter
Virgil, That is a new allusion to me and one I shall definitely keep in mind. In the book it certainly has that ominous overtone. Many thanks. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
:lol: No Col Blunden should not have murdered Mrs. Grace in the conservatory with the candlestick. :p My point is that an good author does not waste effort and pages on a character that has no function in the story. Now Walter makes a very good point that the Col is a contrast to Max, I think that is on the mark, but it does seem forced to me. The Col has no real function in the central plot. It does not seem as elegantly done as some of the other charcterizations. I admit, I did not pick up on Miss V's sexual proclivity. Banville spends so much time on a minor character like the Col and really just touches on Miss V's character? Where's his sense of proportion? Where's the development of the whole Rosie/Chloe relationship if indeed it leeds to the climax? You don't spring something like that in the last 30 pages. Perhaps I need to re-read this.Quote:
Originally Posted by plainjane
Right now I would give this the same vote as Scher, average. I love the prose, I was engaged with the characters, but story line was a mess (flawed if you ask me) and the shock surprises at the end trivialized the whole thing. But I will withhold my vote. I may pick this up again in a couple of months.
I fully agree, the twins were a force unto themselves, not particularly caring for at least Max...I can't put my finger on the relationship with Rose. I know a jealousy comes in and I feel as though I've missed a major hint along the way that would clear that confusion up.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
Virgil, on page 192...Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Bolding mine.Quote:
Miss Vavasour says that she will mess me, but thinks I am doing the right thing. Leaving the Cedars is hardly of my doing, I tell her, I am being forced to it. She smiles as that. "oh Max," she says, "I do not think you are a man to be forced into anything." That gives me pause, not because of the tribute to my strength of will, but the fact, which I register with a faint shock, that this is the first time she has addressed me by my name. Still, I to not think it means that I can call her Rose. A certain formal distance is necessary for the good maintenance of the dainty relation we have forged, re-forged, between us over these past weeks. At this hint of intimacy, however, the old, unasked questions come swarming forward again. I would like to ask her if she blames herself for Chloe's death--I believe, I should say, on no evidence, that it was Chloe who went down first, with Myles following after, to try to save her--and if she is convinced their drowning together like that was entirely an accident, or something else.
On the next page a very good reason for the Colonel's existence is acknowledged...he saved Max's life. Remember he scooped Max off of the beach...I don't remember all the details, but he did save Max when he was drunk that night.
Well, you have a good question there about Banville's craftsmanship. I suppose I just don't mind reading detailed description, as of the Colonel, -- in fact I rather enjoy descriptions of 'atmosphere' -- and I don't often think of the author's craftsmanship except where it glaringly bad and I notice it. I mostly read along with what the author has put on the page and, if parts of it seem slow, I don't really mind slow novels. I have read some in my time. Yes, I could have been interested in hearing more about Miss Vavasour, but I think sufficient was provided for someone who was not a major figure. Regarding surprises at the end, there certainly were some, but that is where I expect to find them, as closure is being approached and dramatic tensions or open plot issues are being resolved. Right from the outset this was clearly not a linear narrative, so I suppose I was ready for considerable jaggedness in the narrative and that is part of what led to the zest for me, trying to keep it all in place.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Or, on the other hand, it may just be that I have read quite a bit of Banville by now and have grown acclimatized to his style. Wonderful prose and detailed description are certainly outstanding parts of his writing in general. In addition, a protagonist like Max, who has no readily definable job, except something vaguely (very vaguely) to do with art criticism, and who mopes along the sleazy edge, boozing more or less occasionally, is a recognizable character in several of Banville's novels. So maybe, for me, rereading The Sea was like 'coming home' and curling up with a good book again.
Walter you have made Banville sound wonderful. I really did enjoy this novel until the last 30 pages. I am going to give it another try in a few months. Perhaps I missed something. But you and Jane must admit that quite a few people, good readers all, had their issues with this work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Walter
Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
SPOILERS GALORE
Virgil, If I have made it sound wonderful then maybe I should take up writing blurbs for the back covers of books. :lol:
But, seriously, my first reaction was the same disappointment as yours, noting the excellent prose style but wondering where the story was, and what all the hullabaloo was about (Booker Prize winner etc).
There is no doubt, it seems to me, that it is a different kind of book -- at least complex, quite possibly difficult, and certainly not easy to read -- and that it requires a certain devotion to make it yield up its secrets. In fact, I think it is more complex and difficult than comparable others I have read from Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and William Faulkner. So I think it is pretty high up on the scale of difficulty/obscurity.
Furthermore, I have the suspicion that Banville set out to make it complicated by deliberately employing more literary techniques than I have yet seen in any single other work. And I'll ennumerate.
1. It is certainly stream-of-consciousness, very extremely so I would say, with largely random transitions from one remembered episode to another and nothing near a linear evolution of the story.
2. We are at twice-remove from the basic plot, as we try to see the basic plot through the eyes of a bewildered first-person narrator who is himself trying to see the basic plot of his life.
3. If we distinguish time-line from narrative, then the beginning and end of the time-line are both to be found in the middle of the narrative in the book.
4. And, likewise, the beginning and end of the narrative are both from the middle of the time-line. So it is difficult to grab onto either end of the narrative or the plot.
5. The plot is about Max's frame of mind, a rather more elusive and ephemeral thing than the conclusion to an event- or character-driven story.
6. If one surmises that it is Max's quest for the meaning of his life -- because that is essentially the question he asks at one point -- then one might expect some sort of epiphany or insightful wisdom to be extracted by Max from a review of his life. One does get the review of episodes of his life, but one looks in vain for that sort of epiphany.
7. Instead, as near as I can tell, Max's epiphany is simply an accurate view of what his life has been like, with no lessons or wisdom distilled from it. So one can spend the entire book looking for the wrong sort of ah-ha moment, as I did for the longest time.
And that is all clearly the author's deliberate doing, as if he wished to put together a tour-de-force of total literary misdirection using all the techniques at his disposal. If there is a simpler way to see the book, I would be overjoyed to hear it, because these items only reflect in essence the obstacles that I found in trying to finally come to some sort of sensible understanding of The Sea. Others might certainly see it differently, and more clearly, and have an easier time of it.
So finally, yes I can easily agree that one can have a difficult time reading it. I too am one of those who did. :bawling: