This morning I finished reading Outline, Rachel Cusk's story of—well—what is it, exactly? It is the story of a writer who has gone to Greece for a week to teach; yes, it is that, at one level. But mostly it is about a woman who moves through the world under the assault of other people's stories. People who find themselves, in her presence, talking through the cyclone of their own lives, presenting themselves as they wish to be presented, asserting their right (right?) to be heard, smudging and aggrandizing, begging to be understood, until, ultimately, their stories devolve into self-circling harangues. The people our narrator meets, the people who natter on, hardly need to be encouraged. Given room to talk, they do, exhibiting, ultimately, that something selfish, stingy, mean of propulsive monologue. We have all been on the other side of such a thing. We understand. There is almost a comedy to it.
But Cusk is after far more than a set piece, a commentary on rampant self-absorption. Cusk ratchets the ambush of monologue to high tension in Outline. She makes, of these disconnected interludes, a story with an arc. She uses her scheme to explore essential questions about the lies we tell ourselves, the responsibilities we negate, the desire we have to blame other people for the unhappiness we feel or the success we have not had or the mess we have made of marriages or parenting. Her narrator is a woman who "did not, any longer, want to persuade anyone of anything." She is a woman rarely asked about herself, but when she does comment on the stories she is told, she brings an outsiderly wisdom, a pausing perhaps. We know the outlines of who she is (a writer, a divorcee), in other words, but far more important is how we come to know what she thinks.
Here, for example, she is responding to an insufferable woman's complaints about marriage:
I replied that I wasn't sure it was possible, in marriage, to know what you actually were, or indeed to separate what you were from what you had become through the other person. I thought the whole idea of a 'real' self might be illusory: you might feel, in other words, as though there were some separate, autonomous self within you, but perhaps that self didn't actually exist. My mother once admitted, I said, that she used to be desperate for us to leave the house for school, but that once we'd gone she had no idea what to do with herself and wished that we would come back.
Here the narrator muses on desire:
I said that, on the contrary, I had come to believe more and more in the virtues of passivity, and of living a life as unmarked by self-will as possible. One could make almost anything happen, if one tried hard enough, but the trying—it seemed to me—was almost always a sign that one was crossing the currents, was forcing events in a direction they did not naturally want to go, and though you might argue that nothing could ever be accomplished without going against nature to some extent, the artificiality of that vision and its consequences had become—to put it bluntly—anathema to me. There was a great difference, I said, between the things I wanted and the things I could apparently have, and until I had finally and forever made my peace with that, I had decided to want nothing at all.A rosy world view this is not. Easy entertainment—it's not that, either. But it is fierce and different and part of a new world order in fiction written by women. A movement to which I think we must pay quite close attention.
0 Comments on On reading OUTLINE by Rachel Cusk, and thoughts on a new generation of scouring fiction as of 1/19/2015 11:03:00 AM
Add a Comment
I re-read often, and never fail to find new ideas and impressions.
I've so been looking forward to re-reading Lucy Maude Montgomery's selected Journals (five in all). There books I imagine I'll return to for a lifetime.
I rarely re-read (say that five times) . . . but one book I read almost every year is The Great Gatsby.
It's a reminder of how a certain person can write in a narrow space and own it.
to answer your question. I've reread a number of books, Wuthering Heights and Pride & Prejudice many times, but I love reading Shakespearean plays too. I'm an odd duck.
Re-reading Larry Woiwode's Beyond the Bedroom Wall has been a wish of mine for many years. I finally found a like-new hardback copy in a charming roadside bookshop in Vermont earlier this year (no one was minding the store but the door was open; I just left the money and then some on the check-out desk with a note). But have yet to get to the re-reading. Thanks for reminding me.
I have re-read The World According to Garp many times and continue to marvel at John Irving's complex and compelling storytelling his use of language--and humor. I re-read many writing books, most especially Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. I also periodically re-read Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gifts from the Sea.. And T.S. Eliot's poetry. All of these renew me and I always find new insights and resonance. I also frequently revisit favorite children's books, including picture books.
As an adult I re-read a book I adored as a pre-teen, Mrs.Mike by Nancy & Benedict Freedman. I was shocked to think the writing bad and how could I not have noticed that when I was young? Perhaps I didn't know know about good writing then, and was just swept away by the story and learning about things I had no idea about at the time. Or--perhaps as I in a bad place as an adult, and my assessment was incorrect. So--I plan to re-read that one again someday. And probably write about it, if doing so gives me something to say. I loved Jane Eyre & Wuthering Heights around the same age and they certainly hold up.
I know I have more answers. To Dance with the White Dog by Terry Kay and The Diving Bell & the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby: both short so don't take long to revisit. And oh my yes one of my all-time favortite books, Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy.
Fun question.
KFP, I loved Mrs. Mike as a girl! And I remember reading Gifts from the Sea at the beach one summer -- bliss.