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Rachel Cusk: "Arlington Park"

All night the rain fell on Arlington Park.

The clouds came from the west: clouds like dark cathedrals, clouds like machines, clouds like black blossoms flowering in the arid starlit sky. They came over the English countryside, sunk in its muddled sleep. They came over the low, populous hills where scatterings of lights throbbed in the darkness. At midnight they reached the city, valiantly glittering in its shallow provincial basin. Unseen, they grew like a second city overhead, thickening, expanding, throwing up their savage monuments, their monstrous, unpeopled palaces of cloud.

In Arlington Park, people were sleeping. Here and there the houses showed an orange square of light. Cars crept along the deserted roads. A cat leapt from a wall, pouring itself down into the shadows. Silently the clouds filled the sky. The wind picked up. It faintly stirred the branches of the trees, and in the dark, empty park swings moved back and forth a little. A handful of dried leaves shuffled on the pavement. Down in the city there were still people on the streets, but in Arlington Park they were in their beds, already surrendered to tomorrow. There was no one to see the rain coming, except a couple hurrying down the silent streets on their way back from an evening out...

-Rachel Cusk's opening seems to be a throwback to Virginia Woolf. Specifically, it reminds me of the "Time Passes" section of "To the Lighthouse," and also, it reminds me of "The Waves." Cusk wants the reader to see the world in a new way. She doesn't want anything to feel banal. (The idea of rain as a plot device also makes me think of "The Dead," where James Joyce wants our attention fixed on the snow "falling faintly, faintly falling.")

-Cusk's clouds become protagonists. They have agency. They travel. Underneath, the human world seems vulnerable. There's maybe some condescension in the description of London: "valiantly glittering in its shallow provincial basin." (The words "shallow" and "provincial" seem to have multiple meanings. And that adverb "valiantly" seems just a bit--deliberately--patronizing!) We, the readers, are like the citizens of London, lost in our provincial lives, unaware of the drama above: "clouds like black blossoms," "clouds throwing up their savage monuments, their monstrous, unpeopled palaces of cloud."

-Cusk switches back and forth between extremely poetic language and more pedestrian observations. From the "arid starlit sky," we move to: "People were sleeping. The wind picked up." Cusk continues to make the non-living world seem living: Cars "creep," empty swings "move," dried leaves "shuffle."  A simile: Cats jumping at night are like a drink, "pouring itself down into the shadows." We have moved from the countryside, to the city, to the suburb, our main setting. Cusk has taken on the role of God, zeroing in, zeroing in. Finally, we arrive at the human citizens of Arlington Park, "surrendering to tomorrow," as if to an invading enemy. A particular couple pops up, and they will be our first topic of interest--for the next forty pages of the story.

-A less quirky writer might have jumped right into this couple's argument, but Cusk wants to give this novel a sense of "the cosmic." There's an impression of mystery and wonder in these opening paragraphs, with their "throbbing lights" and their "flowering clouds." It's not a shock that Lorrie Moore has just taken on Cusk as her most recent New York Review of Books topic. Both women have a sense of awe in their response to nature--Moore likes to remind us that she knows the names of many obscure weeds--and both women make life exciting (even while speaking in a "knowing," wry voice). It's worth reading Cusk just to remember what you can accomplish in your writing: The world seems jaundiced only if your eyes, and your spirit, are tired. And so I'm grateful for "Arlington Park."

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