What is Kafka doing on this blog? (with poll!)

Those among you currently suffering from a severe case of Kafka affliction will no doubt freeze when they see this, but don’t worry, I’m just using Der Proceß as an example to point out an important narrative mode:

Jemand musste Josef K. verleumdet haben, denn ohne dass er etwas Böses getan hätte, wurde er eines Morgens verhaftet. Die Köchin der Frau Grubach, seiner Zimmervermieterin, die ihm jeden Tag gegen acht Uhr früh das Frühstück brachte, kam diesmal nicht. Das war noch niemals geschehen. 

Your German teacher will expect you to know the narrative mode. 

Er. Um. Sorry? Narrative mode? Wha-

What became of Florence?

We’ve talked about how the narrator of the story completely takes the focus away from her at the end of the final chapter – we learn what has become of Edward and how he feels about his life and the decision he made on the beach, but about Florence we learn only very little, much less even than the newspapers, praising her artistic qualities, are saying. 

This is a clever narrative stroke, of course – the book would be much less interesting if we knew; it also provokes readers to think up a future (or is it past?) for Florence. If, as the review said about her, she really was a woman “in love … with life itself” only six years after the fateful night, how did that come about?

Please try to imagine her life beyond her wedding night – has she found someone else? Got herself some therapy? Has she given up on men altogether? Has she ever thought of getting back in touch with Edward? Is music all she needs?

“I am weak from your loveliness” – a helpful poem

I recently bumped into an old poem acquaintance of mine, the bouncy, wistful and sexy “A Subaltern’s Love Song” by John Betjeman. When I first heard it many years ago in a lecture about poetry, I have to admit I didn’t get it – all that skipping, light-footed rhyming made me suspect that there must be something hidden behind the poem.  Now, I don’t think there is – it is just a very good poem about a very every-day love story, told with effervescence, sensuality and a bubbling sense of fun. 

I highly, highly recommend listening to John Betjeman’s own reading of the poem before a live audience. It gives you a sense of the tongue-in-cheek urgency the poem conveys – and the punch-line is just excellent. 

So, you ask, what does any of this have to do with On Chesil Beach? I don’t thing there’s a hidden link (although Ian McEwan was born in Aldershot), but there are several similarities – the young man’s adoration of the physicality of the girl and her mastery of the sport she likes, the games of tennis, the upper-middle-class lifestyle that the young man is impressed enough with to describe its luxury in great detail. It’s a bit like chapter 4 of On Chesil Beach, minus the depressing bits. A bit of the dream Edward was living. 

copyright: John Morrison

To demonstrate that five years of studying literature were worth at least something, I was going to say a few clever things about the name “Joan Hunter Dunn” (Joan of Arc, Artemis and all that, you know), but luckily I googled her before I did and it turns out she was a real person (more here) and only died this year. The picture on the left shows her as a schoolgirl – a former friend sent pictures to the BBC after her death. Stories like these really make me happy. 

Below are some vocabulary notes to the poem. I’m not reproducing it here, as I’m not sure about the copyright; besides, you really need to listen to it.

On Chesil Beach: narrator and language

The narrator in On Chesil Beach …

• is powerfully omniscient
• is a disembodied presence – we never learn who it is (never confuse a narrator with the author of a piece of literature!)
• was conceived by the author as “tolerant, forgiving, passionate and wry” (see excerpt here)
• lectures readers – on the time, on human nature, on fate … (p. 86, p. 96)
• is only rarely present – mostly he withdraws into the characters (to be discussed)
• cruelly withholds almost all information about Florence at the end and denies the reader closure 

The language of the novel (we bravely examined pp. 104-105):

• is almost surgically precise (Jonathan Lethem: “forensic prose”) -> see also McEwan’s interest in science as evidenced in Saturday.
• zooms right in; extreme close-ups; unflinching detail
• very spare and bare – hardly any metaphors and other imagery
• often very finely timed comic relief (waiter with the soup plates)
• descriptions are very precise and vivid

(These are the notes for today’s class that I promised to send.)

Scalpel observation and civilized compassion: Jonathan Lethem on On Chesil Beach

Jonathan Lethem, himself a writer, reviewed On Chesil Beach for The New York Times. I like his review.

Among the encompassing definitions we could give “the novel” (“a mirror walking down a road,” “a narrative of a certain size with something wrong with it”) is this: a novel is a vast heap of sentences, like stones, arranged on a beach of time. The reader may parse the stones of a novel singly or crunch them in bunches underfoot in his eagerness to cross. These choices generate tension: in my eagerness to learn “what happens,” might I miss something occurring at the level of the sentence? Some experience this as a delicious agony, others distrust it.

Attached to the review is a podcast interview with Ian McEwan that I thought was very interesting. I’ve transcribed the bit about the narrator (see below):

Metaphor challenge

In the spirit of the season, you can win this charming fellow if you participate in the following challenge:

• re-read chapter 3 of On Chesil Beach (the really embarrassing one) and try to find as many metaphors as possible
• compile them in a list*, as quotes and with page numbers
• the person with the longest list wins Father Christmas

Don’t quite remember what a metaphor is? 

Look it up!

 

*just a hint: even the longest list isn’t going to be very long.

Have fun!

What about those flashbacks?

Many of you have complained about the flashbacks in On Chesil Beach, saying that they added little to the story and kept you from finding out what was going to happen to Edward and Florence. Now, in such a short novel with just 5 chapters that are so tightly structured, it is highly unlikely that the flashbacks are meant to be just padding. 

When I first read the book, I also (I confess) grew impatient with the flashbacks, but I’ve since re-read so many times that I’ve come to really like them. Let’s have a look at the second chapter, in which the background of both Edward and Florence unfolds. What are their families like? Who are their friends? What are they concerned with? Can their behaviour be explained with the experiences they made as children and teenagers?

Comment away, please.

On Chesil Beach – First Reactions (boys)

On the whole, the boys in my class seem to have liked On Chesil Beach somewhat less than the girls, but they were just as thoughtful about it. Here are their first reactions to the novel. 

On Chesil Beach – First Reactions (girls)

The first assignment I gave my students after reading Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach was to fill in a brief survey with a few questions about their reading experience. I was very pleasantly surprised by the very thoughtful and quite varied responses I got, so I am posting some excerpts here. 

There were more girls in class on Friday than boys, but I still felt that there was quite a difference in reception of the book between them, so I’ve split the responses into two posts. Ladies first!

Where is Chesil Beach?

 

Chesil Beach from the Subtropical Gardens of Abbotsbury, by Steve Naylor

Chesil Beach is a rare shingle beach on the South coast of England, near Weymouth. The pebbles on the beach really are graded in size from south to north, but you are not allowed to take any home as a souvenir or as inspiration.

I’ve compiled a map for you that’s meant to give you an idea where it all takes place. Don’t forget to check out the great aerial view of the Cerne Abbas Giant (you have to switch to the satellite view to see it)!

More pictures of Chesil Beach can be seen here (some are very garishly photoshopped). I particularly liked this picture of flotsam and jetsam, because I love the words flotsam and jetsam. 

For a look at the lush subtropical gardens at Abbotsbury go here. I drove past them and really regret it now. 

And finally, a video that someone was cool enough to make of the waves on Chesil Beach. Listen! you hear the grating roar of pebbles which the waves draw back and fling at the return up the high strand …