Summer Challenge '08: The Sea by John Banville

[Walter]

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?

[Scheherazade]

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.

[Virgil]

Hopefully I should finish the novel over the weekend.

[Walter]

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.

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.

[Virgil]

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?

[Walter]

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? .... What am I missing?

Hi Virgil, exactly my reactions after my first reading -- a very disappointing story.

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.

[plainjane]

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...

"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.

So maybe it's as simple [and as complex] as "Who was I?" and "Who am I now?"

[Walter]

So maybe it's as simple [and as complex] as "Who was I?" and "Who am I now?"

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.

[plainjane]

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.

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.

[Walter]

Ah! This is Max telling his story, isn't it?
After everything in the novel has transpired.

[Virgil]

So maybe it's as simple [and as complex] as "Who was I?" and "Who am I now?"

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.

[Walter]

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?

[plainjane]

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.

No climax!? Max's acceptance of self is quite an achievement in my book.

What in heaven's name does the Chloe part of the story have to do with Anna's death?

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.

Why in heaven's name does Chloe and a Myles go for that swim and you know what happens?

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.

Why is Max so in love with Mrs Grace and then it gets dropped?

Hormones. Adolescent male. 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.

I did find something I'd like to bring out though regarding Max's frame of mind...page 143

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.

[bolding mine]

A little explanation for those not familiar with homeopathy...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy
Pertinent bit from link.

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.

That's why Max went back to the scene.

[Virgil]

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?

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.

[plainjane]

Yeah, I'll buy that. But did you see a connection with his life with Anna?

Foundation. We have to know what the past was before we can understand his life.

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.