I made spasmodic efforts to work, assuring myself that once I began working I would forget her. The difficulty was in beginning. There was a feeling of weakness, a sort of powerlessness now, as though I were about to be ill but was never quite ill enough, as though I were about to come down with something I did not quite come down with. It seemed to me that for the first time in my life I had been in love, and had lost, because of the grudgingness of my heart, the possibility of having what, too late, I now thought I wanted. What was it that all my life I had so carefully guarded myself against? What was it that I had felt so threatened me? My suffering, which seemed to me to be a strict consequence of having guarded myself so long, appeared to me as a kind of punishment, and this moment, which I was now enduring, as something which had been delayed for half a lifetime. I was experincing, apparently, an obscure crisis of some kind. My world acquired a tendency to crumble as easily as a soda cracker. I found myself horribly susceptible to small animals, ribbons in the hair of little girls, songs played late at night over lonely radios. It became particularly dangerous for me to go near movies in which crippled girls were healed by the unselfish love of impoverished bellhops. I had become excessively tender to all the more obvious evidences of the frailness of existence; I was capable of dissolving at the least kind word, and self-pity, in inexhaustible doses, lay close to my outraged surface. I moved painfully, an ambulatory case, mysteriously injured.
This is from "In Love," by Alfred Hayes, a novella that may have inspired "Indecent Proposal." (I haven't seen "Indecent Proposal.")
The narrator has lost his girlfriend--partly from his own laziness. What is so exciting, in the writing, is that we're not just encountering a breakup. We're encountering an existential crisis. The narrator is very much aware--too aware--of the absurdity of being alive. Like a Sondheim character, he is paralyzed by ambivalence. The feeling of powerlessness is as though "I were about be ill." He's close, but "never quite ill enough." There's something to come down with "that I did not quite come down with."
Like Cinderella in "Into the Woods," the narrator believes he now understands what he wants--but it's "too late," and in any case the desired thing is merely the thing "I now *thought* I wanted." Anne Lamott says that you ought not to compare your insides with others' outsides; everyone is secretly just as screwed-up as you, and you can forget that the placid exteriors you observe aren't actually telling the whole truth. Edward St. Aubyn says the comfort of literature is the experience of recognizing, on the page, a feeling you've had--a feeling you've never articulated, or seen articulated. That's what "In Love" can do. It feels timeless--because which reader hasn't been mired in a semi-murky breakup (or, more broadly, in a sense of despair and purposelessness)? Hayes describes human aimlessness in an unsparing, candid way, and that, there, is a joy for any reader to discover.
Hayes also has a gift for "de-familiarization." "My world acquired a tendency to crumble as easily as a soda cracker. I found myself horribly susceptible to small animals, ribbons in the hair of little girls, songs played late at night over lonely radios. It became particularly dangerous for me to go near movies in which crippled girls were healed by the unselfish love of impoverished bellhops." I love that last phrase because it's so deadpan: "The unselfish love of impoverished bellhops" is precisely the bizarre fantasy we would encounter in Hollywood, and we forget how ridiculous it is simply because it's part of our banal, everyday palate. There's great self-mockery: "horribly susceptible," "it became particularly dangerous for me...." When we're in this actual state, we might not feel inclined to laugh, but Hayes, with his dryness, makes us see--anew--how silly life is.
Anyway, this book is a New York Review Classic. Among the other NYR Classics I am excited about: "My Face for the World to See," "Frederick the Great," Don Carpenter's debut novel, some works by de Maupassant, "Other Men's Daughters," some obscure books by Kingsley Amis, sketches by Teffi, and that novel that famously begins..."The past is a foreign country: They do things differently there" (Hartley). Get over to Three Lives! So much to read! So little time!
This is from "In Love," by Alfred Hayes, a novella that may have inspired "Indecent Proposal." (I haven't seen "Indecent Proposal.")
The narrator has lost his girlfriend--partly from his own laziness. What is so exciting, in the writing, is that we're not just encountering a breakup. We're encountering an existential crisis. The narrator is very much aware--too aware--of the absurdity of being alive. Like a Sondheim character, he is paralyzed by ambivalence. The feeling of powerlessness is as though "I were about be ill." He's close, but "never quite ill enough." There's something to come down with "that I did not quite come down with."
Like Cinderella in "Into the Woods," the narrator believes he now understands what he wants--but it's "too late," and in any case the desired thing is merely the thing "I now *thought* I wanted." Anne Lamott says that you ought not to compare your insides with others' outsides; everyone is secretly just as screwed-up as you, and you can forget that the placid exteriors you observe aren't actually telling the whole truth. Edward St. Aubyn says the comfort of literature is the experience of recognizing, on the page, a feeling you've had--a feeling you've never articulated, or seen articulated. That's what "In Love" can do. It feels timeless--because which reader hasn't been mired in a semi-murky breakup (or, more broadly, in a sense of despair and purposelessness)? Hayes describes human aimlessness in an unsparing, candid way, and that, there, is a joy for any reader to discover.
Hayes also has a gift for "de-familiarization." "My world acquired a tendency to crumble as easily as a soda cracker. I found myself horribly susceptible to small animals, ribbons in the hair of little girls, songs played late at night over lonely radios. It became particularly dangerous for me to go near movies in which crippled girls were healed by the unselfish love of impoverished bellhops." I love that last phrase because it's so deadpan: "The unselfish love of impoverished bellhops" is precisely the bizarre fantasy we would encounter in Hollywood, and we forget how ridiculous it is simply because it's part of our banal, everyday palate. There's great self-mockery: "horribly susceptible," "it became particularly dangerous for me...." When we're in this actual state, we might not feel inclined to laugh, but Hayes, with his dryness, makes us see--anew--how silly life is.
Anyway, this book is a New York Review Classic. Among the other NYR Classics I am excited about: "My Face for the World to See," "Frederick the Great," Don Carpenter's debut novel, some works by de Maupassant, "Other Men's Daughters," some obscure books by Kingsley Amis, sketches by Teffi, and that novel that famously begins..."The past is a foreign country: They do things differently there" (Hartley). Get over to Three Lives! So much to read! So little time!
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