Why did he muzzle new feelings with old habits of speech? It might not have been obvious to anyone else, but he longed to stop thinking about himself, to stop strip-mining his memories, to stop the introspective and retrospective drift of his thoughts. He wanted to break into a wider world, to learn something, to make a difference. Above all, he wanted to stop being a child without using the cheap disguise of becoming a parent.
"Not that there's much danger of that," muttered Patrick, finally getting out of bed and putting on a pair of trousers. The days when he was drawn to the sort of girl who whispered, "Be careful, I'm not wearing any contraception," as you came inside her, were almost completely over. He could remember one of them speaking warmly of abortion clinics. "It's quite luxurious while you're there. A comfortable bed, good food, and you can tell all your secrets to the other girls because you know you're not going to meet them again. Even the operation is rather exciting. It's only afterwards that you get really depressed."
"Patrick Melrose" started on Showtime this past Saturday, and it was diverting; I thought the show was underrated. I did miss Patrick's chili-con-carne confrontation, at the end of the book, and I missed Earl Hammer, and also the I-fucked-my-therapist inner monologue. I liked that the shooting-the-rabid-man story was lifted from another episode and inserted into the Ballantine Morgan scene. Why not? You still get two memorable Ballantine moments: "I thought you might be interested in some of my hunting stories..." "The thing you never consider is that someone might *not* be interested..." And: "Of course, this particular specimen was the last of his species in the wild, which made our killing him somewhat bittersweet, but still..."
Making comedy from trauma is an age-old thing. Vanessa Bayer has spoken eloquently about it. She said the idea of inventing jokes helped her through some kind of childhood cancer. Edward St. Aubyn saved himself--recovered from his rape--by concluding, "The world is insane, and I'm just going to describe it with a straight face. The deadest of deadpans." He has an amazing sense of empathy--it extends, even, to his rapist-father and his negligent, drug-addled mother--and the law-of-physics-defying empathy is the item that makes the prose so compelling. In St. Aubyn's world, everyone is at least two things at once, and this is inherently funny. Many parents are secretly children, "in the cheap disguise of having become a parent." Because ambivalence is the human condition, we are *all* that young woman in bed, whispering BE CAREFUL, I'M NOT WEARING ANY CONTRACEPTION, "as you came inside her." In his defiance of cliche and sentimentality, through a minor character, St. Aubyn even suggests that an abortion procedure can be "rather exciting." (But, remember, ambivalence makes the world go 'round: "It's only afterwards that you get really depressed.")
Like Junot Diaz, another brilliant writer and another survivor of childhood rape, St. Aubyn uses infidelity as a kind of metonymy. It's shorthand for the Divided Self. In the Showtime series, the director makes an especially effective joke about this. "I couldn't possibly have sex, I'm just--" says Melrose, to his girlfriend. Then we cut to another woman, another bed, and Melrose finishes his sentence: "Just so sad." "Some Hope" gives us a middle-aged man, bored with his wife, eager to have his covert mistress present at a family party. He knows he needs to get rid of the mistress--but, the thing is, she's pregnant, and what if the kid is a boy? It would be nice to have a boy. So: Maybe keep the mistress in the picture, until the actual birthing happens? Then decide whom to cut loose? The breathtaking monstrousness-and-selfishness is presented without judgment, in the driest of voices: This is the world we live in, says St. Aubyn. Laugh, or succumb to despair.
Worst of all, as his struggle against drugs grew more successful, he saw how it masked a struggle not to become like his father. The claim that every man kills the thing he loves seemed to him a wild guess compared with the near certainty of a man turning into the thing he hates. There were of course people who didn't hate anything, but they were too remote from Patrick for him to imagine their fate. The memory of his father still hypnotized him and drew him like a sleepwalker towards a precipice of unwilling emulation. Sarcasm, snobbery, cruelty, and betrayal seemed less nauseating than the terrors that brought them into existence. What could he do but become a machine for turning terror into contempt? How could he relax his guard when beams of neurotic energy, like searchlights weaving about a prison compound, allowed no thought to escape, no remark to go unchecked--?
St. Aubyn writes with acid, but these books are a plea for tolerance. Here's the advocacy work that they do: They say, to the reader, Do not become David Melrose. It's tempting--but don't do it. The thoughts are dizzying. Part of St. Aubyn's gift is an unconventional mind--and you have to conclude that he received this dazzling mind (or aspects of this mind) from his rapist-father. (The mind reels!) The quest to be someone more loving than David yields some sparkling metaphors. An angry young man is "a machine for turning terror into contempt." (So beautiful.) Neurotic energy is like "a searchlight"--scanning the ground for any opportunity to trigger the machine, so that the machine can make more of a (big, ugly, social, contagious) mess. St. Aubyn dissects himself as fearlessly as he dissects everyone else. You might think of the Romantic poets: Someone getting very, very personal, and so, in a paradoxical way, making something universal. I very much look forward to this coming weekend, and especially to the "Melrose" debut of Jennifer Jason Leigh.
P.S. "Some Hope" is one of my favorites, though it has the thinnest of plots. "Bad News" gave us a real journey: A flight to New York, picking up a father's corpse. "Some Hope" is just a random party--an opportunity to get some deranged snobs together. St. Aubyn novels sometimes feel like the season finale of "Grey's Anatomy": A big funeral! A party! Another party! Put the people together--and give us access to their most bizarre memories--and, there, you have a plot.
P.P.S. "Strip-mining one's memories"--? That, too, is a great metaphor.
"Not that there's much danger of that," muttered Patrick, finally getting out of bed and putting on a pair of trousers. The days when he was drawn to the sort of girl who whispered, "Be careful, I'm not wearing any contraception," as you came inside her, were almost completely over. He could remember one of them speaking warmly of abortion clinics. "It's quite luxurious while you're there. A comfortable bed, good food, and you can tell all your secrets to the other girls because you know you're not going to meet them again. Even the operation is rather exciting. It's only afterwards that you get really depressed."
"Patrick Melrose" started on Showtime this past Saturday, and it was diverting; I thought the show was underrated. I did miss Patrick's chili-con-carne confrontation, at the end of the book, and I missed Earl Hammer, and also the I-fucked-my-therapist inner monologue. I liked that the shooting-the-rabid-man story was lifted from another episode and inserted into the Ballantine Morgan scene. Why not? You still get two memorable Ballantine moments: "I thought you might be interested in some of my hunting stories..." "The thing you never consider is that someone might *not* be interested..." And: "Of course, this particular specimen was the last of his species in the wild, which made our killing him somewhat bittersweet, but still..."
Making comedy from trauma is an age-old thing. Vanessa Bayer has spoken eloquently about it. She said the idea of inventing jokes helped her through some kind of childhood cancer. Edward St. Aubyn saved himself--recovered from his rape--by concluding, "The world is insane, and I'm just going to describe it with a straight face. The deadest of deadpans." He has an amazing sense of empathy--it extends, even, to his rapist-father and his negligent, drug-addled mother--and the law-of-physics-defying empathy is the item that makes the prose so compelling. In St. Aubyn's world, everyone is at least two things at once, and this is inherently funny. Many parents are secretly children, "in the cheap disguise of having become a parent." Because ambivalence is the human condition, we are *all* that young woman in bed, whispering BE CAREFUL, I'M NOT WEARING ANY CONTRACEPTION, "as you came inside her." In his defiance of cliche and sentimentality, through a minor character, St. Aubyn even suggests that an abortion procedure can be "rather exciting." (But, remember, ambivalence makes the world go 'round: "It's only afterwards that you get really depressed.")
Like Junot Diaz, another brilliant writer and another survivor of childhood rape, St. Aubyn uses infidelity as a kind of metonymy. It's shorthand for the Divided Self. In the Showtime series, the director makes an especially effective joke about this. "I couldn't possibly have sex, I'm just--" says Melrose, to his girlfriend. Then we cut to another woman, another bed, and Melrose finishes his sentence: "Just so sad." "Some Hope" gives us a middle-aged man, bored with his wife, eager to have his covert mistress present at a family party. He knows he needs to get rid of the mistress--but, the thing is, she's pregnant, and what if the kid is a boy? It would be nice to have a boy. So: Maybe keep the mistress in the picture, until the actual birthing happens? Then decide whom to cut loose? The breathtaking monstrousness-and-selfishness is presented without judgment, in the driest of voices: This is the world we live in, says St. Aubyn. Laugh, or succumb to despair.
Worst of all, as his struggle against drugs grew more successful, he saw how it masked a struggle not to become like his father. The claim that every man kills the thing he loves seemed to him a wild guess compared with the near certainty of a man turning into the thing he hates. There were of course people who didn't hate anything, but they were too remote from Patrick for him to imagine their fate. The memory of his father still hypnotized him and drew him like a sleepwalker towards a precipice of unwilling emulation. Sarcasm, snobbery, cruelty, and betrayal seemed less nauseating than the terrors that brought them into existence. What could he do but become a machine for turning terror into contempt? How could he relax his guard when beams of neurotic energy, like searchlights weaving about a prison compound, allowed no thought to escape, no remark to go unchecked--?
St. Aubyn writes with acid, but these books are a plea for tolerance. Here's the advocacy work that they do: They say, to the reader, Do not become David Melrose. It's tempting--but don't do it. The thoughts are dizzying. Part of St. Aubyn's gift is an unconventional mind--and you have to conclude that he received this dazzling mind (or aspects of this mind) from his rapist-father. (The mind reels!) The quest to be someone more loving than David yields some sparkling metaphors. An angry young man is "a machine for turning terror into contempt." (So beautiful.) Neurotic energy is like "a searchlight"--scanning the ground for any opportunity to trigger the machine, so that the machine can make more of a (big, ugly, social, contagious) mess. St. Aubyn dissects himself as fearlessly as he dissects everyone else. You might think of the Romantic poets: Someone getting very, very personal, and so, in a paradoxical way, making something universal. I very much look forward to this coming weekend, and especially to the "Melrose" debut of Jennifer Jason Leigh.
P.S. "Some Hope" is one of my favorites, though it has the thinnest of plots. "Bad News" gave us a real journey: A flight to New York, picking up a father's corpse. "Some Hope" is just a random party--an opportunity to get some deranged snobs together. St. Aubyn novels sometimes feel like the season finale of "Grey's Anatomy": A big funeral! A party! Another party! Put the people together--and give us access to their most bizarre memories--and, there, you have a plot.
P.P.S. "Strip-mining one's memories"--? That, too, is a great metaphor.
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