the way back to Maryland. A copy of House Beauti ful lay in her lap, and she read, "No nation has studied homebuilding so persistently and long as the English, and consequently none has arrived at anything like such general excellence."
This sentence had nothing to do with her and could not logically be met with grief. But the raw lot of her unbuilt house rose in her mind, overgrown with lush creeper, a stand of oak. She had spent the better part of a year imagining, then sketching, a facade in that little Baltimore wilderness, and a layout she knew so well that she could walk it out on the ground.
She was losing everything. Everything in memory and all that never was to be; and things the more poignant because she hadn't noticed that she cared for them. The wood planes in Daddy's warehouse, her hand
patting along the shelf as she told over their names by heart: plow, bull nose, dado, beading, rabbet, slitting. Who ever would have thought she'd grieve for the planes?
"Outside the club car window, flat desert nothing as far as the eye can see; endless stubble in level light." This is our first image. We have not yet placed the point of view, although we will shortly see that this is Eleanor's perception and see the landscape as revealing character. What's missing there? First of all, there's no home, no house, there's no place to live here, and—interestingly—there's no verb. Very quickly, the yearning for a place in the world becomes clear. In a world where there is no place, there is no life, and so the very part of speech which signifies life and movement is missing from the first image in the book. A pseudosentence—even, ironically, a semicolon, as though there were sentences on either side, but it's grammatical nonsense—displays the fact that there's no verb, no life. I talked to you about the organic nature of art, everything echoing everything else. This is a wonderful example of that.
"They were still two days short of Arizona. Eleanor sipped an early aperitif, perspiring jagged rings on the armholes of her pongee suit." A silk suit, pongee silk. And what we now see is this arid place, and a woman out of place, displaced, but in the reflexes of a life that is about to change. Sipping "an aperitif." I dare say the word had never been spoken in Arizona in 1914. Laurel "skimming a Commerce Chronicle" —again, it's as if they were sitting in their parlor, whereas in fact they're being carried far away from the life of their past. And Eleanor is conscious of that. We're in her point of view, so we under-stand that she's aware of the jagged rings of sweat. Laurel's first comment is "When in Rome"—a facile patrician use of a cliche, just because he's taking off his coat. He's still dressed in his pinstriped vest and four-in-hand!
We hear the train running, and the very movement of the thing carrying her away suggests—what?—the rending of silk. Silk already represents the life that she's lived, and it's being rent apart, and then she's all the way back to Maryland. It's House Beautiful ! she reads, talking of homebuilding in England and, meanwhile, the desert is all around them. We find that she has an unbuilt house—and this is where the epiphany of yearning is strongest. Because her grief is not just for aperitifs and silk dresses. In fact her potential is separate from her privilege—and where is that potential found? In the intense memory of something very concrete, very sensual, very specific: her father's wood planes. And then comes that wonderful verb, her hand patting along the shelf, touching these planes and knowing the rich, various names of them. As we see that potential for something of the hands, of building something new, we see that potential in her. She grieves not for her parlor and her silk dresses, but for the planes—and that's where the yearning comes through clearest. If you combine that moment with the devastating desert image in the beginning, her yearning suggests, ironically,
This sentence had nothing to do with her and could not logically be met with grief. But the raw lot of her unbuilt house rose in her mind, overgrown with lush creeper, a stand of oak. She had spent the better part of a year imagining, then sketching, a facade in that little Baltimore wilderness, and a layout she knew so well that she could walk it out on the ground.
She was losing everything. Everything in memory and all that never was to be; and things the more poignant because she hadn't noticed that she cared for them. The wood planes in Daddy's warehouse, her hand
patting along the shelf as she told over their names by heart: plow, bull nose, dado, beading, rabbet, slitting. Who ever would have thought she'd grieve for the planes?
"Outside the club car window, flat desert nothing as far as the eye can see; endless stubble in level light." This is our first image. We have not yet placed the point of view, although we will shortly see that this is Eleanor's perception and see the landscape as revealing character. What's missing there? First of all, there's no home, no house, there's no place to live here, and—interestingly—there's no verb. Very quickly, the yearning for a place in the world becomes clear. In a world where there is no place, there is no life, and so the very part of speech which signifies life and movement is missing from the first image in the book. A pseudosentence—even, ironically, a semicolon, as though there were sentences on either side, but it's grammatical nonsense—displays the fact that there's no verb, no life. I talked to you about the organic nature of art, everything echoing everything else. This is a wonderful example of that.
"They were still two days short of Arizona. Eleanor sipped an early aperitif, perspiring jagged rings on the armholes of her pongee suit." A silk suit, pongee silk. And what we now see is this arid place, and a woman out of place, displaced, but in the reflexes of a life that is about to change. Sipping "an aperitif." I dare say the word had never been spoken in Arizona in 1914. Laurel "skimming a Commerce Chronicle" —again, it's as if they were sitting in their parlor, whereas in fact they're being carried far away from the life of their past. And Eleanor is conscious of that. We're in her point of view, so we under-stand that she's aware of the jagged rings of sweat. Laurel's first comment is "When in Rome"—a facile patrician use of a cliche, just because he's taking off his coat. He's still dressed in his pinstriped vest and four-in-hand!
We hear the train running, and the very movement of the thing carrying her away suggests—what?—the rending of silk. Silk already represents the life that she's lived, and it's being rent apart, and then she's all the way back to Maryland. It's House Beautiful ! she reads, talking of homebuilding in England and, meanwhile, the desert is all around them. We find that she has an unbuilt house—and this is where the epiphany of yearning is strongest. Because her grief is not just for aperitifs and silk dresses. In fact her potential is separate from her privilege—and where is that potential found? In the intense memory of something very concrete, very sensual, very specific: her father's wood planes. And then comes that wonderful verb, her hand patting along the shelf, touching these planes and knowing the rich, various names of them. As we see that potential for something of the hands, of building something new, we see that potential in her. She grieves not for her parlor and her silk dresses, but for the planes—and that's where the yearning comes through clearest. If you combine that moment with the devastating desert image in the beginning, her yearning suggests, ironically,
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