many different bits and pieces, using movie stars, particular kinds of characters, film homages and so on, to make it seem important, and all of those moments given gravitas and unity by the same few bars from Wagner’s
Tristan and Isolde
– the famous few, at that – played over and over and over again.
‘But I don’t agree at all,’ said Clare – I think that is how the conversation kicked off proper:
I don’t agree at all
. ‘Why shouldn’t a story be made of bits and pieces?’ she said. ‘And what do you mean by “lack of rigour” anyway? That’s just a fancy way of saying someone doesn’t do thingsaccording to the way you do them, that you don’t like their approach. I felt
Melancholia
was a great film, actually—’
‘You
felt
?’ I said. ‘What’s the point of you telling me what you
felt
? I want to know what it is about the film that made you have that response – of a “feeling” towards it. I want you to give me a reason why it’s great – not just some old “feeling”.’
Clare laughed then, showing her gums in that pretty, sexy way that I think Tolstoy used when he drew an image of the little princess in
War and Peace
and describes her in terms of that particular physical configuration, ‘she had a short upper lip and showed her teeth very sweetly when she smiled,’ he writes. I’ve always found those kinds of smiles pretty and sexy – surprising somehow – and fun. Blame it on that dear old Russian if you want to. Then Clare took off her jersey and settled into her seat, because this was the discussion beginning fully now; we’d just laid out the opening of things and now we could fully get into the subject and its ideas.
I looked over at my husband in the corner of the room, and then at the other guests. They were all happily talking and engaged. Clearly no one was going to notice or mind if Clare and I got deep into some private, esoteric conversation about feeling and reason that, in a way, didn’t belong at a party like this – a cocktail party, really, but with a buffet and music that might lend itself later to dancing – that would shut everyone else out, like a portcullis coming down, ‘No Entry’, our fancy kind of talk. I had a sip of my wine, and Clare began.
‘There’s something I want to tell you about,’ she said, ‘that happened to me years ago when I was still a student. I was reading semantics and philosopy as you know, and it was all Roland Barthes and Irigaray and Deleuze and Guattari. Books like
Language and the Text
– do you know that book?’
I shook my head. I knew of the book but I hadn’t read it, and Clare went on to describe it in brief, ‘all about signs and the signified’ she said, and told me how important it had been to her, that particular title, as a young woman, when she was learning who she was, who she was to be. She’d been thinking about all of this, she said, because she’d just finished reading the new novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, and that book began with a character reading an inspirational book by Barthes,
A Lover’s Discourse
. In fact, that information was ‘the way in’ to Eugenides’ novel, she told me, which she had also loved. In fact, she said, she’d even written an email to Jeffrey Eugenides telling him how much she’d enjoyed his latest work, and he’d ‘pinged an email straight back’, telling her how delighted he was that she’d liked it.
‘And all because of a book by Barthes being at the beginning of it,’ Clare said. ‘Reminding me of a whole period of my life.’
The story, proper – I’ve used that phrase before, I know – as she started to tell me (we’d both topped up our glasses of wine by now and were fully and cosily settled, like two cats, is how I thought of it, into our chairs – though my husband told me much later that night, before we wentto bed, that throughout the entire period of the evening, while we’d all been having those pre-dinner drinks, I’d in fact been
Tristan and Isolde
– the famous few, at that – played over and over and over again.
‘But I don’t agree at all,’ said Clare – I think that is how the conversation kicked off proper:
I don’t agree at all
. ‘Why shouldn’t a story be made of bits and pieces?’ she said. ‘And what do you mean by “lack of rigour” anyway? That’s just a fancy way of saying someone doesn’t do thingsaccording to the way you do them, that you don’t like their approach. I felt
Melancholia
was a great film, actually—’
‘You
felt
?’ I said. ‘What’s the point of you telling me what you
felt
? I want to know what it is about the film that made you have that response – of a “feeling” towards it. I want you to give me a reason why it’s great – not just some old “feeling”.’
Clare laughed then, showing her gums in that pretty, sexy way that I think Tolstoy used when he drew an image of the little princess in
War and Peace
and describes her in terms of that particular physical configuration, ‘she had a short upper lip and showed her teeth very sweetly when she smiled,’ he writes. I’ve always found those kinds of smiles pretty and sexy – surprising somehow – and fun. Blame it on that dear old Russian if you want to. Then Clare took off her jersey and settled into her seat, because this was the discussion beginning fully now; we’d just laid out the opening of things and now we could fully get into the subject and its ideas.
I looked over at my husband in the corner of the room, and then at the other guests. They were all happily talking and engaged. Clearly no one was going to notice or mind if Clare and I got deep into some private, esoteric conversation about feeling and reason that, in a way, didn’t belong at a party like this – a cocktail party, really, but with a buffet and music that might lend itself later to dancing – that would shut everyone else out, like a portcullis coming down, ‘No Entry’, our fancy kind of talk. I had a sip of my wine, and Clare began.
‘There’s something I want to tell you about,’ she said, ‘that happened to me years ago when I was still a student. I was reading semantics and philosopy as you know, and it was all Roland Barthes and Irigaray and Deleuze and Guattari. Books like
Language and the Text
– do you know that book?’
I shook my head. I knew of the book but I hadn’t read it, and Clare went on to describe it in brief, ‘all about signs and the signified’ she said, and told me how important it had been to her, that particular title, as a young woman, when she was learning who she was, who she was to be. She’d been thinking about all of this, she said, because she’d just finished reading the new novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, and that book began with a character reading an inspirational book by Barthes,
A Lover’s Discourse
. In fact, that information was ‘the way in’ to Eugenides’ novel, she told me, which she had also loved. In fact, she said, she’d even written an email to Jeffrey Eugenides telling him how much she’d enjoyed his latest work, and he’d ‘pinged an email straight back’, telling her how delighted he was that she’d liked it.
‘And all because of a book by Barthes being at the beginning of it,’ Clare said. ‘Reminding me of a whole period of my life.’
The story, proper – I’ve used that phrase before, I know – as she started to tell me (we’d both topped up our glasses of wine by now and were fully and cosily settled, like two cats, is how I thought of it, into our chairs – though my husband told me much later that night, before we wentto bed, that throughout the entire period of the evening, while we’d all been having those pre-dinner drinks, I’d in fact been
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