Yes to all of that, the sense of reeling from the unthinkable. But I meant to focus on, rather than everything being so fragile and tenuous, the fact that what is gone is gone entirely, and these are losses of what one assumes permanant--body parts and parents--and not of friends chance-met. The relationships we get to really see after all, are not born of war: Sandy and Alec are students together since before the war; Ralph and Alec are lovers and friends of fairly long standing; Ralph and Laurie were at school together; Gareth and Lucy are brought together because he shifts to her parish; even Laurie and Andrew would have met at Oxford had they not been torn or kept from it by war. The relationships that form because of the war, whether in-scene or Laurie's friendship with Reg, are treated as marked by war and a ruptured temporality, especially in case of Bunny and Reg who are both also not Our Sort. The others do have a common past, whether personally or simply in commonalities of socio-economic standing.
The present certainly is uncertain, but that only brings more starkly into focus the past, both what truly was and what in Laurie's mind might have been, to say nothing of reminiscences of past imaginings of a now-impossible future. The whole lovely thing about seven years and cells. The past is in one's body, and cannot be shed. Surely that is much of the trouble in the novel?
I frankly detest Laurie in the 'come and say goodbye to me' bit. I mean, yes I get his hesitation and trauma, but oh how awful to be in Ralph's place and to know that one is valued, in the end, as a body. It takes that to hold Laurie's attention, after all. Love he can get from Andrew, but sex he's too squeamish to ask for.
no subject
Yes to all of that, the sense of reeling from the unthinkable. But I meant to focus on, rather than everything being so fragile and tenuous, the fact that what is gone is gone entirely, and these are losses of what one assumes permanant--body parts and parents--and not of friends chance-met. The relationships we get to really see after all, are not born of war: Sandy and Alec are students together since before the war; Ralph and Alec are lovers and friends of fairly long standing; Ralph and Laurie were at school together; Gareth and Lucy are brought together because he shifts to her parish; even Laurie and Andrew would have met at Oxford had they not been torn or kept from it by war. The relationships that form because of the war, whether in-scene or Laurie's friendship with Reg, are treated as marked by war and a ruptured temporality, especially in case of Bunny and Reg who are both also not Our Sort. The others do have a common past, whether personally or simply in commonalities of socio-economic standing.
The present certainly is uncertain, but that only brings more starkly into focus the past, both what truly was and what in Laurie's mind might have been, to say nothing of reminiscences of past imaginings of a now-impossible future. The whole lovely thing about seven years and cells. The past is in one's body, and cannot be shed. Surely that is much of the trouble in the novel?
I frankly detest Laurie in the 'come and say goodbye to me' bit. I mean, yes I get his hesitation and trauma, but oh how awful to be in Ralph's place and to know that one is valued, in the end, as a body. It takes that to hold Laurie's attention, after all. Love he can get from Andrew, but sex he's too squeamish to ask for.