Edith Wharton's "His Father's Son" by Belén Tizón

FATHER AND SON RAMBLING IN SOCIETY 

by Belén Tizón

Source for image here

"His Father’s Son" depicts Wharton’s detachment from social expectations about economic status and social constraints.

On one hand, we see a father who has no other aspiration than to increase the success of his company (“outwardly devoting his life to the manufacture and dissemination of Grew’s Secure Suspender Buckle” p. 2). On the other hand, Mr Grew exerts control over his child to prevent him from reproducing roles. His inner struggles make him dream of a son triumphing in society in all contexts.

Wharton is an author who constantly denounces the expected social status of people and how devastating it could be for a person. In this short story, Mr Grew despises his mediocrity, and social complex and remains hopeful in his heir (“Ronald in fact constituted his father’s one escape from the impenetrable element of mediocrity” p.2)

Her obstinate refusal to social constraints is also represented in the cities mentioned in the short story. While Wingfield seems to be a dull, not prosperous place (cf. description at the beginning of the novel), Brooklyn is a city close to New York, giving him the chance to have a livelier social life in theatres and also the kind of “society” the people living there constitute, a different standard (“had found their manners simpler, their voices more agreeable, their views more consonant with his own…”). 

In the relationship between father and son, we can see the conflict between tradition and change, the father urges his son’s change and celebrates any performance contrary to stagnation (“Mr G. always affirmed to himself that the boy was not a genius [..] he had managed to be several things at once-writing poetry in the college magazine, playing delightfully..”). Criticism of tradition and passivity is also transmitted through the figure of the mother, nonetheless, we can appreciate some kind of female irony judging the role of women in the American society of the time.

"The Bolted Door" by Edith Wharton

 The Abyss inside

Edith Wharton’s “The Bolted Door”

“Have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over acuteness of the senses?” (“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Alan Poe).

Edith Wharton’s “The Bolted Door” unspins memories of other literary works: “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde, “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Alan Poe, and “Faust” by Goethe. The abyss inside and the social gestures outside of the first; madness as an acute perception of the senses in Poe’s short story, or the search for a contractual destructive bond which resonates with Goethe’s “Faust.” These might be some compelling threads to bring these works together.

Hear the chiming of the clock, the thud of the bolted door in the asylum, the throbbing of the heart, and the creaking wood, consider Hubert’s spasmodic shoulders, the old man’s eye …. the pungency of sounds entangled, mental and physical reverberate in both stories Edith Wharton’s “The Bolted Door” and Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.”.

Let us examine the openings of Edith’s short story “The Bolted Door” and Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”:

1.”In exactly three minutes Mr. Peter Ascham, of the eminent legal firm of Ascham and Pettilow, would have his punctual hand on the doorbell of the flat. It was a comfort to reflect that Ascham was so punctual—the suspense was beginning to make his host nervous. And the sound of the doorbell would be the beginning of the end—after that, there’d be no going back, by God—no going back! “ (“The Bolted Door” by Edith Wharton)

2.”True! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses — not destroyed — not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?” (“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Alan Poe)

Both appeal to a feeling of restlessness and disquietness which has to do with the senses. Words like “Irritably, nervous, spasmodic” pepper the opening, paralleling Hubert’s nerve-wracking feelings with those of Poe’s narrator in the “Tell-Tale Heart.”

Hubert Granice’s life ennui, “his abyss inside,” his feeling of failure, and purposelessness drive him into a spiral of self-destruction and a distraught nervous system.

“It was not recovered pleasure in life that he felt, but only a deeper withdrawal into himself. It was easier to go on automatically with the social gestures than to uncover to any human eye the abyss within him”

In a frustrated attempt to perpetrate his death, he requests, in a Faustian-like way, his lawyer, Peter Ascham, to do it for him. Ascham has settled his will, as well as supervised his thespian contracts but, now, he is asked to be part of a life and death deal which he refuses and does not take seriously. The question of Hubert’s insanity starts to take shape. He claims that he has killed Joseph Lenman, his mother’s cousin, to appropriate the money that already by inheritance belongs to him. 

In the manuscript found in his drawer next to the revolver with which he tries to attempt against his life, we know of his being rejected as a playwright for lack of drama: “My dear Mr Granice….the play won’t do, it isn’t the poetry that scares her—or me either. We both want to do all we can to help along the poetic drama---….the fact is that there isn’t enough drama in your play to the allowance of poetry."

The irony is that Hubert’s own story provides the drama his play lacks, and in a nested narrative /framed story narrative technique, the script unfolds parading a series of characters that seem to impersonate different roles: from detectives, to lawyers, journalists, and doctors that play detectives. He desperately looks for endorsement that will grant his much-desired death.  Ironically, he has perpetrated the “perfect crime,” with no loose ends nor evidence that can incriminate him.

As nobody believes him, he is finally confined to an asylum in which he is constantly trying to rewrite, and reenact statements that may compromise him. There is only a faded hint at the end of an already a-missed sanity.  McCarren states: “I did it get a clue ….it wasn’t a delusion ...I tumbled on the truth by the merest accident ...I couldn’t hang the poor devil ...but I am glad when they collared him, and had him stowed away safe in here.”

At the end, he is stowed away physically in an asylum and mentally in the eternal torment of his unproven thoughts.

And the door was bolted

"The English Patient" by Michael Ondaatje

 

"The English Patient"_ Reading Club: Books Up! de Ana María Sánchez Mosquera

Underwood Typewriter, a story by Carlos Mota

A Velvet Sofa and an Underwood Typewriter

by Carlos Mota

Link to Krzystof Pelc’s Story

After reading Green Velvet, by Krzysztof Pelc, the son of an Iranian émigré, I couldn’t help but reflect on the lives of so many migrants whose dreams have been deferred—or even irreversibly devastated—by Trump’s infamous and cruel executive order to deport them. The story’s themes resonated deeply, echoing the shattered hopes of millions who have sought a better life in a country that now turns its back on them.

I was reminded of an old Underwood typewriter my brother found on the streets of Manhattan shortly after he arrived in New York from Venezuela in 1970. He cleaned it and placed it prominently in the home he and his wife purchased eight years later. Though it was in perfect working order, he never typed a word with it. Instead, it became an object of beauty, sitting on a wooden pedestal in the middle of their living room, a small but potent symbol of transformation and pride.

My brother now lives in South Carolina in a smaller home purchased with the proceeds from selling his New York property and a South Carolina apartment he once owned. I imagine the typewriter still commands its place of honor in his new living room, a quiet reminder of how far he has come.

His two sons, who were born and live in New York, exemplify the opportunities once accessible to migrants and their children. His older son holds an MBA, while the younger one, a talented artist with several exhibitions to his name, earned a PhD in psychology. Their accomplishments evince the incredible contributions migrants and their descendants can make when given the chance.

The typewriter and the velvet sofa could symbolize the promise of America: opportunities seemingly lying on the street, waiting to be claimed by those who dare to dream and work for them. Yet, for so many today, that promise has been shattered. The country that once embraced its identity as a land of opportunity has erected barriers, shutting out the very people who continue to enrich it.

This reality is not unique to the United States. Watching a woman on Spanish television express her fears about menas—unaccompanied migrant minors—I was struck by how her concerns mirrored the prejudice and exclusion present across the Atlantic. She claimed these children threatened her community and would drain local resources, an argument that has long been used to justify exclusion, both in Spain and in America.

Possibly, in the eyes of Trump, his German grandfather and his Slovenian wife bypass the concept of unacceptable foreigners, much like unaccompanied Ukrainian children in Spain manage to avert the moniker of menas and are instead welcomed, supported, and provided with opportunities to thrive, opportunities that could just as easily be extended to others, yet are denied because of prejudice.

The Underwood typewriter and my brother’s life serve as reminders of what is possible when opportunities are accessible to all. But they also underscore the tragedy of shutting the door on those who come seeking that same promise. The green velvet sofa reminded me of the lives caught in this tension—those whose potential is stifled by systems that see them as “other.”

James Salter's "Light Years" by Begoña Rodríguez

James Salter's novel “Light Years” 

in Adam Rapp´s play 

“The Sound Inside”

A Review by Begoña Rodríguez Varela

Source for photo here

A priori, James Salter´s novel´s title “Light years” brings to mind a time of intense happiness, a time when everything ran smoothly and looked bright. In fact, Vedra , the female protagonist of the acclaimed novel , is a handsome mysterious woman married to an architect ,Viri, and , seemingly, lives a gilded life. However, those shiny appearances contrast with frustrated ambitions and enervated passions. Also, the prospect that aging or a deadly disease may take one’s life in an instant leads them to make wrong decisions ….or not.

“All that glitters is not gold.” True. As the story unfolds, the initial picture of their idyllic life with their two children in a Victorian house by the Hudson river, where they host candle-lit parties and entertain very interesting friends, turns out to be fake. They are not happy together and, besides, they have love affairs. Interestingly enough, the characters appear to be performing on a revolving stage. We can see what their friends ignore. An upper middle class cultivated couple who think life is richer than what they have but lack that clear-sightedness to know exactly what they are looking for.

Contrary to what is expected, it is not adultery that puts an end to their marriage but the death of someone close to them. Then, Vedra decides to travel to Europe with the intention of becoming an actress while Viri , her ex husband, is much appreciated by his new colleagues in an Italian Architecture Studio and marries again..Deep inside frustration and depression creep in, though. Insightful snapshots of a Polaroid camera.

Indeed, Salter´s mastery of the language is shown in his storytelling , the lyrical descriptions of places and, above all, the dialogues, which give a real portrait of the characters.Like in Pinter's theatre, they show the unsatisfied and unsatisfying desire to find haven. A haven which cannot be found in the material, money or sex. Where else can they turn to, then? Maybe to “The Sound Inside.”

It is what Bella Baird in Adam Rapp´s groundbreaking play does, after learning she has got cancer. Initially, Bella, a Yale professor of Creative Writing and author of an unsuccessful novel, prefers Literature to real people. The power of intellect, the intense connection between the writer and reader is key in her life until her mother´s death, her deadly disease and the arrival of a brilliant student trigger a change of mind.

Life is absurd. Can Art, Literature, Theatre and Architecture make life meaningful? Is it professional excellence or is it the connection and real bond with special people that make our lives worthwhile?

Ironically, Viri and Vedra realize, at the end of their lives, that only the time spent with their children gave them some comfort, some happiness . Thereby, Viri regrets having sold their Victorian house by the Hudson river and comes back there after Vedra’s funeral. After all, it is this old house that conjures up pleasant memories of past light years.

"The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D.Salinger

 “Growing Pains” in J.D.Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye”

Source: here

Holden Caulfield ushers us into the story of his life: “If you want to hear about it” no problem”, but warns that he will not follow the line of that “David Copperfield’s kind of crap.”

Having a look at the first chapter of Charles Dickens’s “David Copperfield,” a first-person narrator details the precise hour of his birth, day, and circumstances: Friday, midnight, dispossessed, and with a caul that was bid for. Begoña brought the interesting meaning of “caul” a membrane that covers the newborn’s face and body, a case occurring once in 80, 000 births. A symbol for protection? The sage ladies have prophesied David’s unlucky destiny as well as his gift to see ghosts and spirits, a flair all “unlucky children” have according to David. 

Caulfield’s narrative does not deviate from David Copperfield’s. His name evokes the “caul” / David Copperfield’s protecting membrane. He chases the ghost of his brother Allie and the ghost of his bygone childhood to face the “pains of growing.” And we are certainly given “oodles” (to follow the language game) of factual information about him as well: he attends expensive schools; has three siblings, Phoebe, Allie who died, and D.B., a writer he says has prostituted himself working for Hollywood.  He comes from a well off family and his granny has lost it giving him money for his birthday more than once a year. His father works as a lawyer, and his mum seems to suffer from a nervous condition.  He wears a red hunting hat, and has been "axed" from some phony schools.

He initiates his ritual into adulthood on a Friday / weekend in a Dantesque (metaphor owned to Mónica) and Joycean perambulation through the streets of New York after being “axed” (expelled from) his phony school “Pencey,” to finally reach his parents’ home, his return to his Itaca. A teenage sulking and nonconformist tone pervades the whole novel passing harsh and vitriolic criticism on the world he evidences. Traumatic experiences, beatings, unrequited love, unfairness, physical and moral abuse, and social double standards are some of the hurdles he must overcome. He unquestioningly states that the only thing he would like is to catch the children in the rye, to save them from falling into the precipice as Robert Burns poem recounts, yet, Burns's poem has sexual undertones that infer the danger might go deeper.

Where do the ducks go when the lake freezes? He questions. Sonia highlighted very interestingly that Holden appears towards the end of the novel, sitting by the empty frozen lake, on the brink of pneumonia.  This idea that frantically chases Caulden reminisces Yeats’ “The Wild Swans at Coole” (click here to read the poem) as a symbol of what is gone, and changed. Unlike the avian flock, time freezes and perpetuates in museums within their glass cases: the Indian natives are crystallized in a moment, but Holden thinks we are never the same person twice.

The relentless Heraclitean loop of time spares no child, a truth reflected in the narrative through Phoebe, who embodies the emblems of Caulfield—a hunting-red hat perched on her head and a suitcase in hand—when they agree to meet at the museum. Caulfield muses that time seems to freeze in museums, yet the observer is never the same when gazing upon the exhibits, and growing pains.

“I took my old hunting hat out of my pocket while I walked, and put it on. I knew I wouldn't meet anybody that knew me, and it was pretty damp out. I kept walking and walking, and I kept thinking about old Phoebe going to that museum on Saturdays the way I used to. I thought about how she'd see the same stuff I used to see, and how she'd be different every time she saw it. It didn't exactly depress me to think about it, but it didn't make me feel gay as hell, either. Certain things should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know that's impossible, but it's too bad anyway. Anyway, I kept thinking about all that while I walked. “ (Chapter 16)