<p>Bathroom humor ala Possession–amusing<br>
[url=<a href=“http://www.tc.umn.edu/~d-lena/WynneOnByatt.html]WynneOnByatt[/url”>http://www.tc.umn.edu/~d-lena/WynneOnByatt.html]WynneOnByatt[/url</a>]</p>
<p>I love the fact that we come from all different fields of study/careers. I confess to having been an English major way back in the day, but I’ve been married for 30 years to a scientist who might stop listening to me if I began using the word “motif” multiple times in a single day. And at work I’m the business manager, which doesn’t feed my literary soul. So I guess we all find fulfillment here for different reasons. :)</p>
<p>I don’t want to be contentious, or in questionable taste, but I’m having trouble with the use of the word “consummated” here.</p>
<p>To me, it is an old fashioned word that refers to what happens in the marriage bed. I think young people who are part of the modern hookup culture would laugh if somebody used the word to mean a tumble in the hay.</p>
<p>I’m certainly no expert, but my impression of female sexuality – especially among women who are “bi” or first discovering sapphic love – is that emotional closeness is paramount, and that it may become physically only gradually (or partially) and still be something very powerful and meaningful.</p>
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<p>I think Byatt agrees with you. I just re-read a part of the novel that I had not looked at too closely the first time because it was a long excerpt from Cropper’s The Great Ventriloquist…snooze. Anyway, based on the intense sensuality of the Embla poems, Cropper makes assumptions about the connubial bliss of Ellen and Randolph. His analysis appears on p.123, too early in the book to have much meaning for the reader. In retrospect, however, we realize how wrong Cropper is:</p>
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<p>Randolph may have been an “exquisitely considerate” husband, but not in the way Cropper is implying. It raises the question of how many generally accepted theories we read in historical and scholarly texts are actually way off the mark.</p>
<p>NJTheatreMOM, I agree with your definition of “consummated” – it is not to describe a hookup. When I used the word above, I stretched the meaning beyond the marriage bed to include loving, committed, presumably long-term, romantic relationships. I feel comfortable using the word in terms of Maud and Roland’s relationship. I would not use it to describe a sexual encounter between Leonora and Blackadder.</p>
<p>^Haha Leonora and Blackadder! </p>
<p>Agree about Maud and Roland. There, the word “consummation” implies being consumed, or summed together…finally…in a culminating act.</p>
<p>I like the old-fashionedness of the word consummation to describe Maud and Roland’s relationship. It’s always harder to describe sexual relationships across time and cultures. My son is in Jordan right now. There it is common for men to show much more affection for each other, (holding hands etc.) even though homosexuality is much more taboo. </p>
<p>I think Blanche and Christabel were probably physically affectionate, but not necessarily lovers in the 21st century sense. </p>
<p>As an aside, many maiden ladies of the turn of the century had female companions that they lived with and there is often a lot of speculation about what those relationships entailed. Mostly we don’t know, but I was amused that some 80 year old women talking about the woman who founded my prep school thought she was absolutely certainly gay. (This because there was some brouhaha about a lesbian couple living in faculty housing and she thought it was funny in light of the school’s history.)</p>
<p>NJCM - Very entertaining link. I love the writers “Revelation of the John”!</p>
<p>I am out of town and don’t have WiFi, so I am limited to my limited data plan on my iPad. All the posts about names are great. I wondered if the name Christabel also has a “Christ” connection? I don’t have my notes with me, but I remember she had some issues with Randolph’s religious views in his Ragnorok poem.</p>
<p>I thought Blanche and Christabel had a sexual relationship. It never occured to me differently until reading all your thoughts posted here.</p>
<p>I am definitely not an English major. :)</p>
<p>NJCM, Byatt and the bathroom, very funny! </p>
<p>To the point of our–and any interpretations of this text, this from the narrator (and Byatt’s voice I assume) on pg. 511: There are readings–of the same text–that are dutiful, readings that map and dissect, readings that hear a rustling of unheard sounds, that count grey little pronouns for pleasure or instruction and for a time do not hear golden or apples. There are personal readings, which snatch for personal meanings, I am full of love, or disgust, or fear, I scan for love, or disgust, or fear. There are–believe it–impersonal readings–where the mind’s eye sees the lines move onwards and the mind’s ear hears them sing and sing."</p>
<p>I have mixed feelings about this, because it is SO true, that we extract what we will, if we will, from whatever we read, and we, the readers, never know the true intention of the writer; at the same time, Byatt seems quite aware, and perhaps disdainful, that her readers will be piecing together the clues she’s scattered throughout this book. I do feel manipulated, although, this is why we read (poetry or other)–to be manipulated. </p>
<p>She goes on to say," Now and then there are readings that make the hairs on the neck…stand on end and tremble, when every word burns and shines hard and clear and infinite and exact, like stones of fire…readings when the knowledge that we shall know the writing differently or better or satisfactorily, runs ahead of any capacity to say what we know…we have now for the first time recognised, become fully cognisant of, our knowledge."</p>
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<p>Wow. I never thought of it that way. My initial reaction was, “I disagree,” but I see what you mean, in a way. I’ll have to mull that one over.</p>
<p>Well, I’m the one who admitted to skipping the lengthy poetry, so you know I wasn’t an English major. I’m learning all of this as we go, and that’s what I love about these book discussions. I didn’t know Tennyson from teflon, or Rosetti from Roast beef, and now I do. Sort of. I don’t care for their poetry, but find amazement in their lives. Thank you internet! </p>
<p>From AS Byatt herself : [url=<a href=“http://www.cercles.com/interviews/byatt.html]BYATT[/url”>BYATT]BYATT[/url</a>]</p>
<p>Readers should be empowered to skip, which sounds simple but isn’t really. They now read every word–at least in the world of literary studies–and feel they should always be forming a judgement; whereas I never review a book without reading it through first very fast. I will make a note of what strikes me but I won’t expect to have a thought. You just read it to see if you can read it, and, of course, at this stage in my life if I can’t read it, I don’t.</p>
<p>If you don’t see art as being profoundly related to the pleasure principle there’s something wrong with you. Art is not there for making sociological observations or political decisions or, really, to be a substitute for psychoanalysis–though the great novelists are wiser than most politicians, most sociologists and most psychoanalysts, except the very great ones of all those. I think that, while Martin Amis feels it is required of the modern novelist to write something about the atom bomb, it probably isn’t. We’re all afraid of it and it will come in at the edges of whatever we write. What we in this country feel about war with Iraq is for a great journalist to take on, not for me as a novelist. What one offers the reader is a much more slow and complicated relationship with an individual habit of mind.</p>
<p>I want my readers to want to read and reread me, and if they don’t quite understand, ask themselves, “Now why the hell is it snails she’s interested in?” I get letters all the time, and particularly from America, saying, “I thought your Victorian poets were real, and I looked them up and found they didn’t exist, but I did get out Tennyson and Browning, and, dear Mrs. Byatt, can I tell you what pleasure I got out of The Idylls of the King, which I was told I should never read because it’s a very bad poem.”** I like to spark people on to reading another thing and another thing**</p>
<p>This is not related to “names” of characters, but there was a minor character named Bertha (I think) the pregnant housekeeper sent away. Who didn’t think of Downton Abbey at that point? </p>
<p>I admit I thought Ash was the father, but that storyline seemed to just fade off? I didn’t get it.</p>
<p>^^Oh, that Ash was the father never crossed my mind. And yes, a reminder of Downton. </p>
<p>I did read that the pregnant housekeeper in Possession was similar to the real life counterpart in Robert Browning’s maidservant with child, who–was not sent away as by Ellen Ash–rather, was supported financially by the Brownings. I can’t find anything about Browning being this illegitimate child’s father, though.</p>
<p>I like what Byatt says in the interview above. She certainly sparked my attention!</p>
<p>Holy cow, I never even thought of Ash as the father, but now that you’ve put the idea into my head…eeek!</p>
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<p>LOL :). SJCM, I appreciate all the research you always do on our selections and the links you provide. I loved the bathroom article and the Byatt quotes above. Sometimes, I wonder about something I should look up, but then think, “SJCM will find it for us”…and you always do!</p>
<p>SJCM, Thanks for the link. I also appreciate these thoughts from the same Byatt interview,</p>
<p>"and then I spend time trying to think why they bother to make works of art. You know, why don’t they just get on with their lives? I think the answers to both questions are involved with each other. We get a kind of physiological excitement when two threads of the mind cross.</p>
<p>" I’m worried about the increasingly judgmental element teachers introduce into the reading process: we have these techniques which mean we know better than the writer does what the writer is doing</p>
<p>“I would like my readers to take me on trust, which is difficult in the present academic climate. If they don’t understand something I would like them to keep reading, instead of saying, “Hey, I don’t understand this, it isn’t for me.” I would like them to keep reading until they have a sense of how the novel fits together.”</p>
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Oh this reminds me so much of my son complaining that Hemingway said that there was no symbolism in The Old Man and the Sea, but he was forced to write a paper about the religious symbols. I like the Byatt says the first thing you should do is just read something for enjoyment - a book has to work at that level or what’s the point?</p>
<p>I sorted out my thoughts on the subject of whether, when we read for pleasure, we read to be manipulated.</p>
<p>Of course it’s true that we want our pleasure reading to have the power to act upon us, and to stimulate various emotions. Watching a good movie or hearing great music will do that too. All of them do manipulate us, in a way.</p>
<p>I find that I enjoy my “pleasure” reading in a different way as well. I find that it is somehow more interactive. My mind is more attentively engaged, to the extent that I somehow almost feel involved in the writer’s creative process. </p>
<p>I am not musical, and my visual arts skills are middling at best, but of course I am able write (in the sense that anyone who can read can write), and so I have a much better idea of what goes into a writer’s craft.</p>
<p>A wise person once said something along the lines of “whenever we experience a work of creativity, we are in a sense going through its process of creation with the creator all over again.”</p>
<p>When I was in high school English, one of the central lessons I learned was, “Why does the author say it exactly this way, and not some other way?” Obvious, perhaps, but it struck me as a revelation. </p>
<p>These days, one of my greatest pleasures in reading comes from well written prose that cause me to stop and exclaim to myself, “Wow, how beautifully that was expressed! How did the author do that?” We talk about those things in this book club too. </p>
<p>It’s why I love a sentence like the following one of Byatt’s (imagining George Eliot in the London Library): </p>
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<p>That’s something I would like to be able to have written myself, if I had the capability. I could have done with more of it in Possession, as opposed to the overly long poetry (I liked the shorter ones) and the overly repetitive letters in the Christabel/Ash correspondence.</p>
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<p>I was wondering to myself how the author managed to write two sets of poetry in different gender voices combined with myths, love letters, etc. It seems so grand in scope…I can’t even conceptualize it. I had the same feeling while reading *Cloud Atlas.<a href=“The%20structure%20of%20the%20novel%20and%20the%20interweaving%20through%20the%20generations%20amazed%20me.”>/i</a> I ended up doing a search of Byatt and Mitchell and discovered Byatt had reviewed Mitchell’s books, giving them ultimate praise. Furthermore, they were on tour together in China! I guess these creatively brilliant minds like to hang out together :)</p>
<p><a href=“http://literature.britishcouncil.org/news/2012/august/un-now-news[/url]”>http://literature.britishcouncil.org/news/2012/august/un-now-news</a></p>
<p>Nicely said
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<p>I agree with you, and maybe manipulate, with its negative connotations was the wrong word. I read for the pleasure, the challenge of it, to learn new things, and so much more. I love a quick and easy page turner, but I think that books that change us (me), are what I want to spend the majority of my reading time on, of late. This book, I feel, is a great success!</p>
<p>Nice post, NJTM – and what a wonderful sentence you chose as your example. Love it.</p>