24th of July – SELCS Summer Book Club: Reading Reflections – Sara Karim

By sarakarim, on 27 July 2020

Since we had our last book club meeting, I have been reflecting on what I have learnt from the SELCS Summer Book Club. As I have not just learnt skills for discussions, I have learnt skills for life. A lifelong passion for literature and reading has been further instilled within me.

Communication: The SELCS Summer Book Club has undoubtedly strengthened my communication skills. Initially, the prospect of raising points in front of a wide-ranging virtual audience was quite a challenge to grasp. Yet, with determination and the sheer camaraderie of the book club members, coupled with its more informal atmosphere, I reignited my thrill for literature. It was amazing to embark on a journey alongside fellow readers who too, shared my same yearning for literature and communication. Communication with the book club members helped me to find and present my voice and listen to a broad spectrum of notions and opinions.

Listening: Through this book club experience, my listening skills have also been enhanced. Each book club discussion featured a range of themes and ideas, some of which I was new to. I learnt about new terminology and also about different cultural contexts. Therefore, in the discussions, the ability to listen was strengthened since I became conscious of new ideas and literary references, which I could then apply to my own readings. Possessing strong listening skills enabled me to confidently express my ideas whilst also evaluating other interpretations.

Analysis: Furthermore, my analysis skills have improved as a result of constant collaboration with team members and I had the opportunity to gain insights into world literature on a temporal, cultural and textual level. I encountered the tropes of different genres of literature and synthesised my thoughts effectively to analyse not just one layer of meaning, but several layers of meaning that arose from authorial intentions and political and social contexts. I relished the opportunity to delve into a variety of genres including contemporary literature, dystopian literature, political literature, and the rewarding classical literature.

Awareness of Cultures: One final key skill that this book club has fostered within me is to have an awareness of different cultures. As my chosen language for my comparative literature study is German, I was naturally inclined towards the German texts and references discussed. However, as the discussions progressed, to my delight, I became more enthused with the desire to be open to a range of cultures and to reflect on French, Russian, Indian, Bengali, Chinese and African literature too, that helped to change my perceptions, especially during lockdown!

3rd of July-Summary of Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’ by Evie Worsnop

By evieworsnop, on 14 July 2020

This week’s session was led by Alex Samson

The summary of the discussion is by Evie Worsnop

Over the past few weeks of the SELCS summer book group, the opportunity to share different perspectives on readings has generated diverse discussion; with this week’s focus, Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’, being no exception. The publication of Rooney’s novel in 2018 was met with high acclaim, a popularity which has further resurfaced with the recent release of the BBC’s TV adaptation. Through following the lives of two teenagers, Connell and Marianne, ‘Normal People’ is a portrait of young adulthood, exploring their experience of friendship, love, and sex: both together and apart. Rooney’s writing creates a dynamic that is compelling and addictive to read, one which sees the two characters drawn to one another again and again like ‘two little plants sharing the same plot of soil, growing around one another’ (pg 265). We questioned the idea of the novel’s relatability which this ‘number one bestseller’ is marketed upon. Can Connell and Marianne really be viewed as two individuals who strive to be ‘normal’? Or is this a truly inaccurate presentation of the millennial experience?

The clear contrast which Rooney creates between Marianne and Connell within ‘Normal People’ was a major focus of our discussion. Though the two are drawn together despite their outward differences, their relationship seems to break down on account of social pressures that define them. Due to their conflicting social statuses, Connell strives to keep his private sexual interactions with Marianne hidden; a breaking point which implodes when he invites someone else to the ‘debs’ (school dance) and Marianne withdraws from school. This clear social disparity between the two is interestingly reversed however once both attend Dublin Trinity University, seeing Marianne gain new popularity and Connell struggle with the isolation of his university experience. While Rooney creates these key comparisons between Connell and Marianne, our discussion also suggested how these differences unify them. Though the pair’s inability to communicate with one another is obvious, a shared likeness between them can be seen in their struggle to navigate their senses of identity and relate to the world around them. Rooney’s writing and stylistic choices which create this dynamic left some frustrated, as some described the sense of ‘claustrophobia’ which accompanied their reading and engagement to ‘Normal People’.

Another topic that was also focused upon within our discussion was class, a key theme within ‘Normal People’. The argument in the novel that money ‘makes the world real’  is proven to bear a harsh reality. Similar to how the pair’s opposing social statuses are made clear from the beginning, Connell’s and Marianne’s story is also overshadowed by the difference in class between them. Their first interaction in the novel for example is framed by the background knowledge that Connell’s mother works as a cleaner for Marianne’s wealthier family. This stark contrast persists beyond their time in high school moreover, as Jamie’s (a different boyfriend of Marianne) labelling of Connell as a ‘culchie’ (a term used to describe those from a rural background in a derogatory way) and Connell’s discomfort in the privileged setting of Trinity both serve to highlight his opposing socio-economic background. Furthermore, anxieties surrounding class within the novel are also shown to appear in the interactions between Marianne and Connell. When on a trip to Italy a conversation between the pair reveals how money, ‘so corrupt and sexy’(pg160), has been what has prevented Connell from many opportunities. He suggests how his educational scholarship ‘has made everything seem possible’ (p159), and Marianne’s acknowledges her ignorance in not considering ‘the financial stuff’ (pg 173) and how the two ‘got to know each other because (his) your mother works for my (her) family’ (pg173). Some within the group criticized that the novel’s discussion on class did not extend as far as it could, while others argued this commentary was successfully embedded into the heart of the novel. Whether determined as a key focus of ‘Normal People’, Rooney’s incorporation of a social analysis so seamlessly within her love story may be viewed as a key testament to her writing.

Given my previous reading of ‘Normal People’ prior to the book club, the contrasting responses to this novel within the group particularly interested me. The question of whether we as readers should really root for a relationship with such obvious problems was raised, producing some interesting responses. Rooney’s presentation of Connell and Marianne’s relationship within ‘Normal People’ had mixed reactions, as while some viewed the way in which the two are repeatedly drawn back to one as intensely romantic, others labelled the relationship as toxic. The instability which surrounds Connell’s and Marianne’s relations in ‘Normal People’ acts as a clear form of suspense for the reader, creating a will-they won’t-they dynamic that keeps us engrossed in their story. Though Connell observes that his relationship with Marianne contrasts to the ‘normal’ and ‘good’ (pg170) relationship he has with Helen (one of his other girlfriends),  it was interesting that our discussion agreed that an ending where Connell and Helen definitively ended up together would not have been as fulfilling. While making for compelling reading, the question of whether this clear portrayal of a relationship so self-destructive in nature fetishizes unhappiness was raised in our discussion. Furthermore, many argued that this could also be seen within Rooney’s depiction of the personal problems faced by both characters. The description of Marianne’s appearance in terms of her ‘thinness’ and references to her small appetite was suggested as a glamorization of an unhealthy beauty standard and perhaps, eating disorder. Through the unclear ending to ‘Normal People’ which sees the relationship between Connell and Marianne remain unresolved (a comparison was also made here to Adichie’s ‘Americanah’, another book club text), Rooney doesn’t seem to afford her protagonists a clear ‘happy ending’. Connell’s statement upon parting with Marianne that ‘in the end she has done something for him, she’s made a new life possible’ (pg265) may be interpreted as a bittersweet revelation fitting for two characters who have recognised their imperfections as one and are learning to live apart.

However, though many opinions within the group highlighted some of the novel’s drawbacks, I found it interesting that many created parallels between ‘Normal People’ and their own lives. Our discussion connected points from literary critic Rita Felski, and I noticed how ‘Normal People’ utilizes this concept of ‘everyday life’ in a way that makes us question the novel’s very relevance to our own lives. Despite differences in age, the rawness and deeply personal nature of ‘Normal People’ was clearly felt by all; perhaps the book contains some truths that we can all relate to regardless of whether it is viewed as deserving of the Guardian’s title of ‘a future classic’.

26th of June – Summary of Han Shaogong’s ‘Pa Pa Pa’ by Cory Nguyen

By uclmngu, on 1 July 2020

This week’s session was lead by Dr Xiaofan Amy Li

The summary of the discussion is written by Cory Nguyen

Image: Xu Bing: Book from the Sky, Blanton Museum Austin TX by sbmeaper1 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/)

This week we discussed Han Shaogong’s Pa Pa Pa. Both terribly grim and terribly comic, Han’s text tells the story of an topographically and temporally isolated village and its inhabitants, and in particular, Young Bing, a boy who never grows and can only utter ‘Papa’ and ‘F___ Mama’. Han writes the story in almost vignette-like flashes of prose, with his narrative fleeting and merely brushing past characters as it moves along. We find the village and its inhabitants to be superstitious and violent, wearing the skin of tradition. Speaking in archaic Mandarin and mixing up kinship pronouns, they seem to exist in a space untouched by time and modern culture. 

It came up that the lack of a cultural framework through which we could read the story induced anxiety, as if the heavy Eurocentrism of our education comes and shames us. But perhaps in our lack of knowledge, we speed up the Barthesian death of the author and forcefully decenter the grounding of the story in the trauma of the Cultural Revolution. To view Young Bing as merely an allegorical representation of China in the wake of the Maoist regime would be overly reductive and frankly uninteresting. Yet, despite this benefit of reading Pa Pa Pa in a cloud of cultural unfamiliarity, the issue of reading in translation came up. The story undoubtedly deals with language, often playing with sounds in different ways. Han’s usage of homophonic puns, for example, in the title and Young Bing’s name is obscured through the process of translation, losing a sense of comedy throughout the narrative. But is this truly the case? Venuti, in his article ‘How to Read a Translation’, for example, reminds us that ‘the fact remains that the translator has chosen every single word in the translation, whether or not a foreign word lies behind it’. It would do a disservice to the text to so adamantly glorify the linguistic play of the original to the point that we ignore the linguistic play of the translation. Cheung retains the onomatopoeic quality of the title in translating ‘ba’ as ‘pa’ rather than keeping it as ‘ba’, and in doing so, she clearly demonstrates a thought about the translation of sound. Cheung’s further use of innuendos builds upon the comic nature of the text. For example, in describing ‘Mount Cock’, she writes that ‘below its peak—Cock’s Head—there was a jagged cliff with multi-coloured veins in the rocks’ (61). While the sounds of the original are muffled in the translation, this is not inherently ‘bad’ in any sense. If anything, the translation reminds us to confront our distance to Chinese culture (though reducing Chinese culture to a single, uniform culture is rather problematic). It is also important to emphasize Han’s exoticization of traditional culture, because when we address his exoticization of traditional Chinese culture towards an audience fluent in Chinese (and presumably Chinese culture as well), we are confronted with the fact of the text’s inherent distance from the reader, one that, though varying, is maintained through the process of translation and is portrayed to the extended audience.

Moving past the issue of translation and cultural difference, the character of Young Bing proved to be interesting, drawing comparisons to works by Günter Grass and Peter Pišťanek. As previously stated, Young Bing only says two expressions: ‘Papa’ and ‘F___ Mama’. Han writes that ‘it didn’t really mean anything and could simply be taken as a sign, a symbol, what you will’ (35). Young Bing is, essentially, an empty space onto which the villagers imbue meaning. At one point, they use him in a sort of semiotic augury, inscribing meaning upon his words and movements. We find this when ‘a heated argument developed’ over whether it is more pertinent that ‘higher’ rhymes with ‘retire’ or that it rhymes with ‘fire’, and also in the normalization of profanity, in Young Bing’s constant repetition of ‘F___ Mama’. We find that the essence of the utterance is empty, it has no power as a vulgar expression. It is in these acts that Han depicts the emptiness of Young Bing; the meaning behind his linguistic incapability is irrelevant as the only manner in which he can gain meaning of any sort is through the wholly external inscription of meaning onto his words and behaviours. Young Bing, then, mirrors the village, reflects it, takes on the means of the village. 

But this led to a discussion of the ethics of writing disability. Though Young Bing seems to absorb whatever the village impresses onto him, the question of whether his passivity can only be indicative of an exoticization of disability. This was, of course, discussed in relation to Foucault and the synthesis of normality. Daoist texts, for example, bring up the possibility of holding those who are disabled in high esteem, as if they are ‘perfect people’ in possession of knowledge superior to that of a ‘normal’ human, but this, of course, only furthers the divide between what is deemed ‘normal’ and ‘deviant’. The ethicality of writing such a text addressing disability, then, must address what is to be considered normal. In Han’s case, this is easily discerned by the monolithic movements of the village as a singular entity, tied together in a clanship united under a common legendary history. But the foundation of ‘legendary history’, while at once defining normality, is shaken in Han’s negative portrayal of traditional superstition. 

This is perhaps best seen in the moment of cannibalism, in which an enemy’s corpse and a pig is thrown in a big pot. A piece of meat is speared out and fed to the villagers who cannot refuse. A literal mixing of human and beast, Han demarcates the villager’s selfhood so definitely that the very concept of humanity is kept for themselves. Eating, here, is not merely the simple incorporation of the Other because what is eaten is a strange mixture between Self and Other. (The eating of the enemy is the eating of the Self because Han is of course aware of the readers’ recognition of both groups of villagers as human and thus Self). But this terrifying ambiguity, the possibility of consuming some sort of Self, ascribes, ironically, a beastliness to the village, as if tradition radically overwrites this Self-ness. There is even an underlying desire for this cannibalism, as if it not only derives itself from tradition, but reaffirms the very fact of tradition. It becomes an act of belonging, a moment of decision, in which one must choose whether one belongs to the in-group or the out-group, the Self or the Other, forced to occupy binary structures just as Young Bing and his linguistic incapability, a satirical bastardization of yin and yang. In this manner, Han subverts the culture of the village, albeit with a rather Conradian line of reasoning.

What do we make of Young Bing’s survival, then? Although Han seems to bring together Young Bing and the village, he also separates him in that he survives, in that he belongs neither to the living nor the dead of the clan. Following a quasi-modernist logic of time, Young Bing seems to be able to break out of the clan’s cyclical history of following ancestral rites, as if his atemporality is able to surpass even death. But does this not set him apart, highlighting his difference? Does this not return to the Daoist notion of the ‘perfection’ of disability, as if Young Bing’s disability provides him with some superiority that allows him to survive? And what to make of Idiot Ren, whose character is tied to modernity and progress? He tempts the villagers out of tradition, but just as indicated with the epithet ‘Idiot’, he does not truly care about the village, nor does he care what will happen to them. He riles them up before ‘[going] home to cook himself some gruel’ (72), living his life as ‘a flawless performance’ (73). While he sees that tradition is flawed, Han seems to also denounce the hypocrisy of modernization. 

It is worth discussing the fact that Han, whenever discussing any of this in Pa Pa Pa, is able to maintain a sense of comedy, his discourse more like poking fun at things more than anything else. He treats the idea of patriarchal lineage, for example, quite comically in the fact that Young Bing’s father is absent despite the amount of weight placed on the role of the father, and in the phallic imagery used when describing the mountain, satirizing phallocentrism with Young Bing’s survival. It is this mixing of comedy and seriousness that was so enjoyable about the text.

Perhaps our reading of Pa Pa Pa, more than anything, emphasized our need to read more outside of the Eurocentric canon, more works that are less known to those of us raised on the Western canon. As students of comparative literature, is it vitally important for us to address the shortcomings in our education and seek to expand our personal libraries, not simply for the sake of cultural education, but for the sake of constant awareness of the inherent limitations of our adherence to canonization.

12th of June – Summary of Anthony Doerr’s ‘Memory Wall’ by John Telensky

By johntelensky, on 25 June 2020

This week’s session was led by Helene Neveu Kringelbach

The summary of the discussion is written by John Telensky

For this session we focused on the first short story in the Memory Wall collection by Anthony Doerr. The eponymous work follows Alma, a South African woman suffering from Dementia, and her cyclical routine involving the retrieval and immortalisation of her memories at a clinic that she often visits. In a world where it is possible to extract and store memories on plastic cartridges that can be viewed by almost anyone, Doerr explores the concepts of remembrance, time and preservation whilst expertly intertwining commentary on South Africa’s harrowing past through the lives of the characters that populate his narrative. Lingering racial disparity manifests itself in the tribulations of Alma’s black helper, Pheko, as well as the character of Luvo whose vicarious existence through Alma’s memories leads one to question the integrity and intimacy of the past. The dynamic that exists between the various characters as well as the persistent use of metaphor to engage with themes of racism and apartheid create a story that is truly unique.

While in some ways a relic of the past, there is no denying that the vestiges of Apartheid still linger in modern South Africa society. The abject poverty and ludicrous wealth that often separates black from white is ever-present in Doerr’s novel and the implementation of apartheid rhetoric was often brought up during our discussion. Nods to the Truth and Reconciliation committee can be found in the character of Dr Amnesty, whose name and desire to “fill in” the blanks in the memory of those with dementia echoes the endeavour of the committee to uncover all the horrors of the regime that were hidden and “fill in the gaps” of South Africa’s history. Indeed, many of the memories that Alma preserves illustrate sentiments of white superiority and disgust towards Africans; for instance, Alma being scolded as a child for drinking from the same bottle of Coca Cola as her black housemaid. With no recollection of any kind of personal past and a pitifully short life expectancy due to an operation enabling him to read and view memory cartridges, Luvo also arouses sympathy as he lives through the memories of Alma day by day. His daily break-ins to spend hours sifting through a past that is not his showcases a man living in the shadow of someone else, as was the case of many Africans living in the shadows of their white counterparts.

Another significant aspect of discussion was the notion of relics and the overtly physical portrayal of the past within the story. Fossils play a substantial role in the novel, being a reflection of the permanence and preservation that time offers to a select few. Luvo himself notes that ‘It is the rarest thing, that gets preserved, and that does not get erased”, and it is this selective preservation that can also be applied to the wider theme of remembrance. Try as we might, only some memories can be recalled whilst others simply fade away.

Deep History also carries with it the cynical undertones of human insignificance and the notion that we are all part of a world that is constantly changing and evolving. Our short time on earth means that we can achieve little in the grand scheme of things, yet we should at least be entitled to live a full and dignified life regardless. There was some contention within our group as to whether such themes frame human life as an object of importance that should be protected and sustained or whether they devalue it completely. Luvo’s initially difficult lifestyle and state of ennui has him working for a robber who breaks into the house of Alma every evening and scanning through her collection of memories. This is done to find clues as to the whereabouts of an expensive fossil that her husband was searching for before passing away. Upon eventually finding the necessary information and witnessing the murder of his thieving chaperone he is left with the means to amass a fortune for himself which he promptly does so by excavating The Gorgon. The concept of going on a journey to obtain a large fortune at its conclusion mirrors that of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and where intertextuality is concerned, one can draw parallels between the characters of Jim Hawkins and Luvo. Indeed, the book itself is referenced many times throughout Doerr’s story with its pages being pasted all across the titular Memory Wall in conjunction with various memory cartridges. Perhaps the events of the story are in fact intended to showcase a journey that each character must undertake in order to reach their final destination.

What the end point of each character’s development signifies is a matter of perspective, however. Alma finishes her journey in a home for the elderly with her dementia reaching its final stages, the sterile white room in which she resides echoing a kind of purity and finality. Throughout the story we have viewed some of her most intimate memories and perhaps even engaged on a personal level with her past, with Luvo acting as a kind of conduit between the her and the reader. Yet, one of the questions that came up during our discussion was whether the story and its themes would change if it were a white woman probing the memories of a black man. One cannot know for sure, yet it is interesting to question how race often plays an important role in literature in determining the social, financial and moral positions of certain characters. Pheko’s story ends with him spending some money that was given to him by Luvo to obtain a membership to a Virgin Active swimming pool and taking his son on one of the slides. It seems that Pheko, whilst struggling to support his son throughout the novel, has finally reached a stage in which he can live out a somewhat fulfilled life. Although, some were quick to question whether Luvo or Pheko would be able to reach the same destination without the knowledge of a wealthy white woman. This is a difficult question to answer, however, and is one that once again displays how representations of race can create and alter a narrative.

Questions of race, time, memory and self-preservation all had a strong presence in our discussion and were what led me to thoroughly enjoy this first story in Doerr’s collection. It’s ability to construct a compelling narrative on top of South Africa’s rich history enables it to engage with the reader in such a way that makes them appreciate the cultural significance of apartheid in modern day society, which is only further accentuated through the abundance of retrospectivity and allusion to a past in which the ideals of the regime were fully realised. The use of fossils and cartridges as metaphors for the desire to preserve oneself and escape the ephemeral human condition enable profound discussion on how and why history and the past play such a fundamental part in shaping the present and future. Ultimately, it is this intriguing presentation of time and history as well as the many ways in which it can be interpreted that make Doerr’s story so unique and compelling. The fact that there was so much to discuss and dissect only emphasises how interesting and thought provoking the short story is and it is precisely this ability to make us ask questions that we would previously not consider that makes it something I would recommend.

5th of June – Summary of Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘The Home and the World’ discussion by Lucia Magáthová

By lucia.magathova.19, on 12 June 2020

This week’s session was lead by Sara Karim

The summary of the discussion is written by Lucia Magathova

The first book our club discussed in June was the compelling The Home and the World (1916) by Rabindranath Tagore, a Bengali writer, musician, and artist.

Tagore received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 and shaped the Eastern viewpoint on nationalism and Indian culture. He also spent some time at our university and even though he hadn’t graduated at UCL (not a direct result of a pandemic as it is the case today), his studies didn’t escape our discussions and comments on him and other prominent “episodic” students of London universities.

His novel is often considered to be a part of the Indian literary canon, yet we tried to praise as well as criticise Tagore’s genius. The Home and the World is the novel of the senses, and all of us agreed on his sensory and natural imagery being one of the best features of the novel, together with the novel’s interesting collaboration of the narrators, contentious philosophical discourse, and poetic language (similarities made between Tagore the writer and Tagore the painter).  Adversely to this, worth mentioning was his most influential critic, György Lukács, who considered him tedious and unimaginative and this novel as a mere one-sided propagandistic pamphlet.

The story is set in India and follows the contemporary nationalist movements, the emphasis given to the problems of the colonial powers in the market, the morality behind violence, and the unfathomable question of ‘What does it mean to me to be a part of a nation?’. Tagore’s philosophy encouraged a healthy relationship with one’s nation, neither denying one’s culture nor following it blindly. He believed solely in the power of individual freedom (not national and especially not national in the Western sense) and opposed the pre-Gandhian Swadeshi Movement and even Gandhi himself (who supposedly also studied at UCL).

The three main characters work together to convey the story, each having various confessions throughout the novel.

Nikhil, a peace-loving Indian noble, whose opinions coincide with those of Tagore, wants the best for his family and community (which could be understood as the nation in this context) but refuses to use violence or patriotic incitement in his fight for independence, because “To tyrannize for the country is to tyrannize over the country.”

Sandip, his childhood friend of a lower caste resides for the time in his house and is considered the “Enlightened” leader of the Bande Mataram national movement. The narrative uncovers his great enthusiasm for having power and money, being a rowdy revolutionary, in the spirit of “We shall want all we can get.” Nonetheless, our discussions also took into consideration if his actions, despite being immoral, were in any way justifiable.

Bimala is Nikhil’s wife, who got attracted to Sandip’s charisma and rhetoric (comparisons with the enchanting force of the magic mountain of the same-titled novel of two weeks ago are welcome). Previously considered ugly and ordinary, in Sandip’s eyes, Bimala suddenly became a beautiful muse; a goddess, though ungodly, and a mother, though childless.

“I can see that you are that beautiful spirit of fire, which burns the home to ashes and lights up the larger world with its flame.”

Despite containing local colour the story could be described as rather European in its style and there are various reasons to acknowledge the Romantic influences on it, Bimala’s spirited glorification being only one of them. In our session, it was labelled as the romanticising of the political reality, while the websites on Tagore went straight for the Romantic utopia. If the national theme were not enough, the novel offers a love story, an ode to all things natural, and an ending with a moral. Moreover, my opinion is that Nikhil is the perfect example of a titanic hero: a loner in love, willing to die for what he thinks is right and noble, even if it means standing up to his friend and possibly losing his wife:

“‘I now see that though you two do not rhyme, your rhythm is the same.’

‘Fate seems bent on writing Paradise Lost in blank verse, in my case, and so has no use for a rhyming friend!’”

The historical reading of the text opened up an inquiry into the position of women in early 20th-century India. In the public sphere, Bimala carried no significant role until the arrival of Sandip, while in the private sphere, she and her sister-in-law fought for dominance . Bimala on the basis of being Nikhil’s wife, while Bara Rani relied on being the older one. We briefly compared the character of widows (widowed sisters-in-law) in family hierarchies and found similarities with the West African, Chinese and early Jewish cultures.

While the house Bimala’s family lived in, traditionally divided into the inner and outer apartments, presented a clear division between men and women, Nikhil tried to destroy the physical as well as the psychological boundaries between the two genders. In the house, he advocated the “amphibious” rooms and in his marriage, freedom and openness. This contrasted greatly with the vehement devotion and submission Bimala demonstrated in relation to her husband and country. For that reason, we touched upon the danger of Nikhil’s passion for freedom being imposing, rather than modern, at least from Bimala’s point of view.

The title of the novel wasn’t discussed to a greater extent, yet here are some ways of understanding it:

1.The Home and the World as a novel about the colonisation of the market and country, describing an individual’s difficult relationship between one’s immediate neighbourhood and more widely, the whole world. While some of us saw the character of Nikhil in a positive light and his libertarian stance as progressive, others considered it as negative, since his actions made him an ally of the colonising powers. Power, however, was regarded differently by Sandip, who thought becoming exactly like the “all-powerful” world is the only way to save his home: “The greatest weapon of those who rule the world, Sandip Babu has told us, is the hypnotism of their display. To take the vow of poverty would be for them not merely a penance – it would mean suicide.”

2. The Home and the World as the gender struggle. As mentioned before, the novel handled the subject of the position and responsibility of men and women, which varied, depending on the domestic and cosmopolitan environment they occupied. Additionally, the status of a housewife was re-evaluated throughout the story. “What is a wife? A bubble of a name blown big with your own breath, so carefully guarded night and day, yet ready to burst at any pin-prick from outside.”

3. The Home and the World as a story about violence. In times of revolution, Nikhil’s house served as a safety net against the turmoil on the outside. Bandits getting in and robberies happening challenged the security a home should possess. Especially, since Bimala was the one responsible: “I could not think of my house as separate from my country: I had robbed my house, I had robbed my country. For this sin my house had ceased to be mine, my country also was estranged from me.” More generally, however, Nikhil’s wealthy mansion was much safer in the revolution-driven India than, for example, the property of his servant Panchu, which was in danger.

Though initially very descriptive (which I considered as a plus, but de gustibus non est disputandum), the novel escalates quickly and makes for an enjoyable read. That is why a big ‘thank you’ goes to Sara Karim for recommending it.

29th of May – Summary of the discussion of César Aira’s ‘Ghosts’ by Cory Nguyen

By uclmem7, on 8 June 2020

This week’s session was led by Dr Emily Baker

The Summary of the discussion is written by Cory Nguyen

Image: Ghost Dance Texture by Ian Burt (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)

This week, we discussed César Aira’s novel, Ghosts, an atmospheric text that takes place within a luxury apartment complex in the process of being built. The novel begins by writing of the owners visiting the construction site, seeing the building in the process of being built, yet the narrative later reveals that the space and the text itself is occupied by the Viñas family and various ghosts. Indeed, these titular ghosts are what set Aira’s novel apart from a long line of literary ghosts; they do not evoke a sense of terror. They are so utterly un-ghostly that the ghosts themselves seem to approach a very real, human existence. And here lies an essential question brought up during the seminar: How does one read Aira’s ghosts?

We discussed how Aira’s ghosts seem to be tied up in a complex web of ontological ambiguity—their function within the text resists a singular reading. It was suggested that the physical openness of the space within the novel refers to the open textuality of the novel itself, including, of course, the function of the ghosts. Aira’s text seems acutely aware at all moments of the space surrounding the characters, at one point describing how ‘the whole site was outside’ (5), yet their presence hardly shares the same openness. Though their presence is undoubtedly real, we come to question what these ghosts are and why Aira writes them as he does. He writes, for example, how the ghosts ‘had started shouting, bursting into thunderous peals of laughter that shook the sky’ (47), emphasising a physical affection by the ghosts and affirming their existence. Even in the novel’s last line, ‘man and ghost stared at each other’ (139), Aira places man and ghost in the same state, committing the same act, and we find here a certain mirroring, an ontological equivalence between man and ghost. In this manner, the ghosts assume a certain presence that perhaps rivals that of their human counterparts, sharing the Viñas’ ghostly presence within the building.

This apparent presence is the reason why it was brought up that Aira’s ghosts seem not to haunt, as we expect ghosts to do. Ghosts tell you that something has happened, they are themselves signs that a haunting is taking place; yet, there is a sense of ahistoricity in the ghosts’ existence. Indeed, Aira portrays within his novel a tension between space and time. Patri, the Viñas’ eldest daughter, dreams at one point of ‘an art that would be instantaneously real, without ghosts’ (57). The ghosts certainly seem to be real, but at the same time they reflect the Derridean spectre in that they occupy a space of ambiguity, a space between the state of being finished and unfinished. That space ironically, of course, is time. The ghosts disappear when art occurs instantaneously, their very existence is tied with the notion of time. It is here that the forward motion of the ghosts came up, with the entire novel situating itself on a border of time, New Year’s Day, with the underlying knowledge of the forward progression of time. The ghosts, like time, want to move forwards, to fly forwards, yet their occupation within the very transitory state of the building prevents them from doing so. Just as the ghosts seem to have no history, they seem to have no future either; they do not seem to precede anything. The ghosts occupy a present that cannot be projected past itself. In this manner, Aira subverts the notion of spectrality and haunting, because the ghosts neither belong to the past nor the future; their present presence subverts the literary expectations of ghosts. The ghosts do not strike fear to those who see them, nor are they characterised by some subterranean existence. They stand out in the open, on a hot Summer’s day, inciting irritation in the building’s inhabitants. It is Aira’s open defiance of the ghostly genre that forces open the text, allowing no reliance on previously established expectations.

One of the most peculiar points about the ghosts is that they are not seen by the rich, bourgeois owners of the apartment complex, only the proletarian Viñas family, to whom their existence is hyper-normalised to the point that their existence, so undoubtedly and excessively real, becomes a nuisance. One suggested reading of the ghosts pivoted around this intermediary role of the ghosts, the link between the two social groups. In this manner, we read through the ghosts to reach the humans. In this reading, the ghosts were metaphorically read as representing the means of production, which the owners refuse or lack the ability to recognise. To the Viñas, who work to construct the building, however, the existence of the ghosts is as real as their own. Their irrefutable existence to the Viñas proves not to be irrefutable after all—to the owners, the ghosts lack recognition and thus the certainty of their existence seems to shatter.

Yet the idea that the ghosts only function as a pivot was challenged in other readings, such as the ghosts as a mirror of the Viñas family. Elisa, the mother, bleaches the clothes of her family with the goal of whiteness and pallidity— they want to become ghosts to avoid being seen, to avoid being recognised as illegal immigrants. The ghost, here, is read as a social figure, stemming from the Viñas’ need to hide their identity by becoming invisible to the Argentinians. The desire to become ghost plays an important role in the novel when Patri is presented with a dilemma: she is invited to the ghosts’ ‘Big Midnight Feast’, but to attend, she would need to be a ghost. Though one ghost tells her ‘of course you’ll have to be dead’ (105), we are left unsure of whether this is true. How does one become a ghost? Is it truly through death? Can the Viñas only fulfill their desire through death? The novel ends with Patri deciding to go to the party, but Aira never explicitly states that she becomes a ghost. He writes two lines: ‘Patri leaped into the void. And that was it’ (138). Is it a Lacanian death drive that incites her to jump off of the roof of the unfinished building, or is it simply the desire to become ghost? What does she achieve? It is important to recall the fact that Aira’s ghosts differ greatly from traditional ghosts, and here we question whether or not it is even in death that one becomes a ghost. Aira, of course, cleverly leaves Patri’s final jump wildly ambiguous, yet the key to understanding his ghosts lies in those two lines, not knowing Patri’s final fate. Patri jumps into a void, a space of ambiguity, of both being and non-being. Only in this manner, perhaps, does she become a ghost.

The discussion turned towards the physical characteristics of the ghosts at one point, focusing on their masculinity and their nakedness. The complete lack of embarrassment from the side of the ghosts and the side of the Viñas becomes almost comical, such as when Patri was almost caught ‘peeking’ at a ghost’s penis, but felt that ‘their laughter proved her innocence’ because she ‘did not feel that she had been “peeking” at the ghost’s genitalia, not at all’ (49). Aira almost seems to satirise the quasi-macho haughtiness of the ghosts, but this, again, is tied to the openness of the ghosts. Is their nakedness a display of masculinity that perpetuates the capitalistic exploitation of machismo? Is their nakedness a comment on the bareness of the transitory state of writing? Of architecture? Of art in general? Or perhaps even, despite their apparent ahistoricity, their nakedness emblematises the trauma in the Southern Cone, a present trauma, one that is rebuilt in the present military and capitalist violence deriving from the incorporation into a global neoliberal ideology. The trauma is laid bare, normalised, and to an extent, even scorned. Yet, Aira leaves their nakedness at just that. The ghosts are naked, ‘and that [is] it’.

Aira’s ghosts are enigmatic figures, not because we do not try to know them, but because we cannot know them. Our framework of understanding is insufficient from what Aira decides to tell us. He leaves us not in the dark, but rather, he leaves us in the open. And because of this, we find ourselves stuck in the same incompleteness as the building, as if we can never truly finish this act of reading.

by Cory Nguyen

22nd May – Summary of Thomas Mann’s ‘The Magic Mountain’ discussion by Chloë Marshall

By uclmcm8, on 27 May 2020

This week’s session was lead by Dr Jennifer Rushworth

The summary of the discussion is written by Chloë Marshall

(Disclaimer: At time of writing, I am only about a quarter of the way through, so this is by no means a comprehensive take-away from the novel, but rather a summary of the book club’s impressions and encounters with the novel.)

“Mann managed to create with his profoundly lucid style and nonchalant irony an allegory that cuts through the reality of his time: that is Post-First World War and Post-Spanish influenza pandemic, and apparently continues cutting through reality until today, since it comes across nowadays as a topical novel; as a resolute scalpel in the hands of a dexterous surgeon.” some wise words from Jennifer’s friend Igor Reyner, the original inspiration for this week’s book choice: The Magic Mountain.

Our discussion this week was so enjoyable, because it was clear we had all felt a personal connection with Mann’s novel, and were able to share our appreciation for what we had read in the context of our collective experience of being forced to stay put for weeks on end due to the pandemic. Much like the sanatorium in The Magic Mountain, we are all sequestered in our own isolated communities around the world, and yet we meet each week to contemplate literature amongst the incomprehensible tangle of code which is allowing distanced communities to congregate.

A striking theme of the novel which we discussed at length was certainly Hans Castorp’s experience of time at the sanatorium, through his discussions about it with Joachim, and how this comes across to the reader through the structure of the chapters, which play with our own experience of time as we read. Time not only appears to be radically decelerated, from the instant Hans Castorp steps off the train, but it seems also have a strange elastic quality. Hans and Joachim discuss the seven minutes it takes to measure one’s temperature with a mercury thermometer and how this can sometimes go slowly or quickly. This causes Hans to start questioning how time, something so measured, can therefore be experienced as going at different speeds. This apparent disjunction between perception of the velocity of time and its ability to be measured in precise and regular intervals contradicts what was hitherto his understanding of the passage of time. He comments “there is nothing ‘actual’ about time as it is not something we sense with any physical organ, it therefore exists exactly how it is perceived: long or short, or not at all”. This led in our discussion to a consideration of “capitalist time” “the time experienced in the flatlands of the novel, or in our world, in “healthy” society. If we conceive time as linear, as measurable, it is necessarily complementary to a capitalist society due to its focus on progression and production. In the sanatorium, however, this ceases to have much meaning: when the only important thing is maintaining oneself, fulfilling the basic needs of one’s body (and in excess: five meals a day and four “rest cures”!), progression of time and productivity within its limits is mostly irrelevant. We felt that this was particularly resonant at the moment as lockdown has forced us all to be more “present”. With no real access to our past through habitual routines, and no defined expectation of the future and what it will look like, the present, and therefore our appreciation of it, has become increasingly important. However, this does come with a certain confusion about what it means to consider the past: is it really accurate to mark it as different from the present, or would it perhaps be more appropriate to say that it is only through the present that we can think about “other” presents which once were? This sort of temporal synchronism takes place in The Magic Mountain; the incredibly slow pace of the novel in the first few chapters is due in part to some of Hans Castorp’s recollections about his childhood (his grandfather and his admiration for Pribislav Hippe). This is turn creates a sort of perpetual present, where past events from Hans Castorp’s life are experienced in great detail, seemingly interacting with the present as he makes connections between them and characters in the sanatorium: Settembrini’s grandfather with his own, Clavdia Chauchat with Hippe. Thus, much as we ourselves considered the blurring effect lockdown has had upon our own lives, this temporal blurring is also taking effect upon Hans Castorp and distorting his understanding of how time passes, or perhaps more suitably, does not pass in a linear fashion but exists as an element of space.

“Hans Castorp was still standing there trying to think what to do next, when quite unexpectedly he had a brilliant insight into what time actually is – nothing less than a silent sister, a column of mercury without a scale, for the purpose of keeping people from cheating.”

We recognised that a contributing factor to this distortion of conventional time was the atmosphere of the sanatorium, with its routine and concentration of a social stratum obsessed with their health and gossiping about others’ illnesses. The routine at once lengthens time to the extreme with its regularly structured, seemingly interminable day, but as Hans becomes accustomed, several days are missed in the narration, effectively accelerating time for the reader. This “speeding up” of time, for us and for Hans, is linked to the sickness of the sanatorium’s community due to the imperative of the routine. He enters the community, and shares in their sickness – the effects of which he notices as soon as ascends the mountain: his feet get cold and his face flushes. He also notes the strange quality of Joachim’s reference to the community: “us up here”, which makes him feel anxious: this moment linguistically delineates a distinction, one that is to be short lived, between Hans and the residents of the sanatorium. We discussed this distinction in terms of the thematic opposition between the “flatlands” and the mountain, observing it as a metaphor for the lands of the healthy and the sick. However, we realised that this may not be so clear cut: the difference between health and sickness seemed too arbitrary. This led us to consider what being sick or healthy means, and whether the “healthy” condition might actually be a myth, as the words of Doctor Krokowski suggest: “In that case you are a phenomenon of greatest medical interest. You see, I’ve never met a perfectly healthy person before.” Talking further with another member of the book club afterwards, we began to realise that perhaps the novel is in itself an exploration of the futility of any and all distinctions: there is no true “health” that is not a myth, there is no “actual” time, there is no certain desirable attitude to life; reality exists in the very contradictions we have constructed to understand it. Oppositions such as sickness and health or science and art or technology and morality are actually shown to be imagined, and contrasting concepts are then assimilated we might then understand that they have been as one all along.

“But as he spoke, he brought together, in a single breath, categories that until now Hans Castorp had been accustomed to think of as widely divergent. ‘Technology and morality’ he said.”

Hans is open to the opinions of others such as Settembrini and is not openly hostile to those who differ from him because he views his visit to the sanatorium as just that: a visit. He has the interest of a traveller in a new country, hoping to understand the customs of the native people, with the knowledge that return to one’s own land is possible at any time. In a phrase, and one that Settembrini coins as a sort of epithet for Hans, placet experiri: “he likes to experiment”, “it was pleasant to experiment”. This stresses the nature of The Magic Mountain as a Bildungsroman, Hans’s journey of experimenting with a community in which, due to his self-admittance in the sanatorium and thus belief of free leave, he does not notice himself taking root. We also discussed his journey in terms of the career in shipping that he has left behind, both literally, by ascending the mountain where there can be no seas and ships, and spiritually, as he starts to experiment by philosophising. We noted the tension in his life between the artist and the engineer, exemplified by his potential as an artist that he puts to use for his detailed drawing of ships. While considering this, we remarked a parallel between the characters of Hans and Miranda from Station Eleven, the novel we read the week before. These two characters work in shipping but are both artistic (Miranda’s passion is her graphic novel); their involvement in nautical transport and their more creative tendencies seemed a striking connection, given where they end up at the end of their narrative journey: each facing a global crisis, each somewhat alienated and searching for meaning in their lives.

The discussion also turned towards the issue of translating The Magic Mountain: as well as English, amongst the group were speakers of Russian, Italian, French and Chinese – and of German who had read Mann’s original text. This was really helpful in allowing us to consider the various translations of the title, for example, which was mentioned for the first time in Russian press as the equivalent of “The Enchanted/Bewitched/Charmed Mountain”, before the novel was translated into Russian. Early translations in Italian appear as “La Montagna Incantata”; however, this has since been updated to “La Montagna Magica”. What is the difference between these translations and the original title? What different impressions do these translations have upon the reader? We came to the conclusion that the use of the passive voice in these instances enhances the mountain’s fairy tale quality: the dualities of the text are perhaps experienced more allegorically, and it is perhaps more apparent that Hans is under some sort of spell. To be enchanted as opposed to simply “magic” suggests, more sinisterly, that the mountain has been put under a spell, one which has trapped the residents of the sanatorium in a timeless vacuum from which they can never leave.

Similarities were brought up between this and Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” which is also based around enchantment and dualism and what comes between, which the music is able to give voice to a fairy tale dualism of good versus evil, magic versus realism, love versus lust, to name a few.

Finally, one thing which we all agreed upon was the humour of the text. Despite some of the heavier subject matters Mann explores, and the fact of being in a sanatorium where everyone is suffering various afflictions, this novel does not take itself too seriously. Mann’s heavy use of irony through dialogue and characterisation in The Magic Mountain make it incredibly enjoyable to read. Moments like Joachim’s description of the bodies being transported down the mountain in bobsleds and the “half-lung club” are so unexpected and witty in a text many approach with the apprehension of reading such an influential and celebrated work.

We were left questioning the relevance of conventional time and its absence in our lives at the moment, the unavoidable condition of sickness that everyone is forced to confront to some degree, the recurrent question of translating and what this means for readers in different languages, social and spiritual understandings of the symbol of the mountain itself, and the realisation that many dualities we came across in this text revealed themselves to be more ambiguous and even convergent in their nature. Perhaps we can use this novel to consider misconceptions about oppositions in our contemporary world: those of sickness/health, art/technology, reason/irrationality. In the words of Igor Reyner who prompted Jennifer to suggest this wonderful book, “The Magic Mountain is a lesson on how to deal with all sorts of ailments and illnesses; those of the body as well as those of the society. It teaches us how pointless [it] is to fight what happens to us and how to fearlessly engage with the deterioration of life and time that in a way or another will befall upon us all. And all of that with unparalleled sense of humour.”

15th of May – Summary of St. John Mandel’s ‘Station Eleven’ discussion by Sara Karim

By uclmem7, on 22 May 2020

This week’s session was lead by Dr Florian Mussgnug

The summary of the discussion is written by Sara Karim

‘Station Eleven’ – Emily St. John Mandel

Dystopian novels that are deemed as apocalyptic fiction are not the usual books I prefer to read. My outlook on apocalyptic fiction and dystopian fiction transformed after reading and discussing Emily Mandel’s ‘Station Eleven’. The unfamiliarity of this fast paced and anxiety ridden novel launched me into being out of my reading comfort zone. During my reading journey of this novel I felt enlightened especially by the comical tone to the novel. These moments of spontaneous euphoria included August’s ability to seek out Poetry and TV Guides in abandoned, dilapidated houses. As well as the collective solidarity of the Symphony who had the conviction to perform Shakespeare even when times were bleak and uncertain. Indeed, during our discussion, there were parallels drawn between current times during the pandemic and the serious tone of the novel.

The most striking aspect of our discussion was when we thought about what may happen when there is a global demise of the Internet. One of the points raised which was thought-provoking was when it came to the realisation that it would only take a few shops to close down, a few street lamps to stutter and planes to no longer take passengers to classify this as an apparent world-ending point. But perhaps, as the author of the novel may suggest, there is more to humanity than global connectivity, even more so there is a strong desire to encourage solidarity and to reach out to those family, friends and dear ones whom we once thought we had lost, but now we have found again. The globalisation that features in this novel from ‘hearing no news from Beijing, then Moscow’ and then the isolated South Korean ships on the Malaysian Coast, struck a chord with our group. Here, the world is depicted as being so dependent on technology for business, travel, adoration, love, and memories of friendship and laughter that resonate in the protagonist, Jeevan. Surely, if the technology no longer prevails then perhaps, we can choose what we would want to rejuvenate into the next ‘new normal’ future?

The polyphonic nature of the novel including magazine captions and the interview scripts that explore Kirsten’s experiences show the powerful effects of Emily Mandel’s writing style. Not only does she deploy this to show the connectivity between the characters from all walks of life, she also may do this to exhibit that the ‘mourning‘ of Arthur has encouraged the characters to reflect on their own lives. This sense of reflection is even perhaps encouraged in ourselves as readers, as self-reflection can be especially powerful and humbling during a pandemic. As is the case with Arthur’s first wife, Miranda, she composed herself to ‘repent nothing’, in reality she also reflects on the sorrows and joys of her past. Furthermore, as a group we discussed that despite the Symphony’s initial grudges and petty dislikes against one another, they all poured their energies into performing a ‘Midsummer Night‘s Dream’ and they sought to value each member as one of their own. This novel made me realise that dystopian fiction novels are not just full of sadness and catastrophe, dystopian novels can also be remnants of hope that seek to provide an opportunity to self-reflect and empower us.

By Sara Karim

8th of May – Summary of Edgar Allen Poe ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ discussion by Sophie Smars

By uclmem7, on 19 May 2020

This week’s session was led by Dr Tim Beasley-Murray

The summary of the discussion is written by Sophie Smars

In this week’s book-club we discussed Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Masque of Red Death’. An appropriate read considering the current situation of lockdown, where much like the characters of this gothic short story, we too are slowly losing a sense of time, as a pandemic rages on outside.

Indeed, the concept of time and specifically the symbol of the clock was one of the points we focused on. Time appears to be liquid in this story. On the one hand, the guests are taken in the illusion of excess to a point where they lose a sense of this time and awareness of what is happening in the outside world. Yet on the other hand, they are also constantly haunted by the presence of the clock and thus cannot really escape time. It is the device that mediates and organizes everything in the story. The party is constantly marked by the eerie effect of silence and stillness that the ominous sound of the clock creates every time it strikes a new hour, until this tension eventually builds to the fatal rupture the midnight hour brings, when the Red Death is finally among them. The appearance of this figure illustrates how time symbolizes the frailty, futility and illusion of Human control in the face of inevitable death.

The omnipresence of a time that is accelerating towards death is also mirrored by a quickening-pace in vivid descriptions of the environment of excess. Readers had different point of views on what these depictions of the castle meant to them. Some thought it to be a gorgeous, exotic fantasy that is undeniably attractive to its’ guests. Yet others found this surplus to be sickening and oppressive, with an architectural geometry resembling a maze that is purposefully confusing to its’ guests and the readers. The question was thus raised: is something being kept out or are they being kept in? Are these guests even enjoying this party or is it an illusion, like a staged masquerade or similar to a ‘Danse Macabre’? Are these prisoners or guests? These questions about the descriptions of the castle bring about a general feeling of horror, which we compared to HP Lovecraft’s writing of ‘impossible spaces’, or physical dimensions in stories that create horror due to being unimaginable, inhuman, and unknown. This chaotic space is further highlighted by the abundance of colour (red and black being the most significant), with typical gothic images from 19th C literature, like the stained glass, as well as a profusion of sensory impression, that represents the moral decadence of the time. We concluded that red could symbolize death, but also life, vitality, and desire, which we related to the tension of Eros and Thanatos, that is commonly found in literature.

The importance of aesthetic in this story, as well as the indication of Prospero being somewhat of a ‘mad artist’ made us question the role of Art and the Artist. We often associate art, music and dance as things that bring joy, and much like storytelling, activities that put of death. But in this story, it is actually what brings death to them. We also tend to think of the artist as the voice of society’s victims, or as Nadine Gordimer says ‘Art is on the side of the oppressed’. Yet here the figure of the artist also happens to be a controlling and tyrannical one that does not care about those dying outside. This Prospero and his story also have many similarities to Shakespeare’s Prospero in ‘The Tempest’. The latter is a figure of magic and illusion, and the play itself has often been interpreted as a part of Prospero’s dream or a metaphor for the illusion of theatre itself. In Poe’s story we see a similar importance of dreams, magic, and the occult, that is conveyed through the rich sensory images and colours, acting as omens of the approaching death. Sorcery is often seen as a zero-sum game; engaging in magic means winning but necessarily losing something in the process, which we see in the fate of these guests who thought themselves protected. Their illusions and specifically their fantasy of power are eventually caught up by reality. ‘The Tempest’ isn’t the only literary reference in Poe’s work that is unquestionably a mesh of intertextuality, with its masked spectral figure that reminds a reader of ‘Macbeth’ or the mentioned Victor Hugo’s ‘Hernani’, but also made our readers think of later works, such as ‘The Library of Babel’ by Jorge Luis Borges or ‘Cortigiana’ by Miloš Marten.

Lastly, we may be left with questions about the ‘aim’ of this text. Is it didactic and moralizing? Does it resist the idea of a moral, despite the argument that it is hard to write about an apocalyptic scenario without being moralizing (especially considering the time period). Does the presence of Horror prevent a didactic conclusion? What is the allegorical function in this tale? And so on.

By Sophie Smars

1st of May – Summary of Leïla Slimani ‘Lullaby’ discussion by Amélia Damy

By uclmem7, on 19 May 2020

This week’s text was chosen by Dr Tim Beasley-Murray

The summary of the discussion is written by Amélia Damy

Leïla Slimani was awarded the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2016 for her newly English-translated novel Lullaby, or Chanson Douce. Slimani takes the reader in the spiritual odyssey of a woman who comes to murder the two children she has been taking care of for several years. What triggers the attention of the reader is the ongoing subtle violence described, starting with the striking sentence “The baby is dead”. The seemingly bloody atmosphere she implements from the beginning awakes the reader’s desire to understand how such a ruthless crime can ever be committed. However, even though bloodlust and violence can make a novel readable, it is not how a Prix Goncourt is awarded. Leïla Slimani seems to hide under the cover of a popular novel the denunciation of much deeper concerns intrinsically tied to our society; racial and social inequalities.

Myriam is from Moroccan descent and she is the mother of two children. Louise is a white woman who was hired as the nanny of the family. It is not the normative situation in Paris to see a white woman working for a woman of colour. Tensions are therefore pre-installed. Louise feels like she belongs in the middle of expensive Paris and she disowns her background completely. She lives in disadvantaged Parisian suburbs but loves and takes care of higher-class children, when she is repulsed by own daughter who has disappeared. In some way, Louise loves Mila and Adam more than she loves her child because she seems to believe she should be the mother of those predictably successful children in the middle of Paris. It is where she would like to live, and it is the life she would like to lead. But she cannot take Myriam’s place, which leads both characters to evolve in parallel. Her daughter does not exist anymore but in short analepsis, she lives in the apartment when the family is away and wishes she could sleep on the floor, next to the young girl Mila, so that she does not ever have to leave. Louise becomes the fifth member of the family and rejects completely her own background. I think this novel encapsulates very well the prejudices one keeps towards his race or another; as Louise believes that she could legitimately be part of the family she is working for, Myriam is also unsure of her own position as the employer. She adores Louise and is constantly looking for approval, trying to prove that her presence is legitimate in the family she has built herself. Both Louise and Myriam’s mindsets impregnated with racial bias and discrimination are entangled and seem to blur the borders between the employer and the employee.

Sexism is also a major theme is Lullaby. Both Paul and Myriam work hard and come home late because of their rising careers. However, we are pushed to believe that Myriam is more to blame for what happened to her children. She is not more involved than her husband in Louise’s doings. She comes home late as much as he does. Myriam did exactly what her husband did, so why do we blame her? Because she is a mother and she should be animated by maternal feelings; she should have stayed home with her children, or at least she should have realized that the nanny they hired, despite all of her unique qualities, was a psychopath. Slimani highlights the reader’s own bias. She makes us realise that we instinctively blame Myriam for choosing her career over her children, when both parents should bear the same weight.

In conclusion, Leïla Slimani, as well as offering a warning to all parents not to give trust too quickly, denounces the preponderant prejudices anchored in our society. She uses her characters as puppets that we do not manage to empathize with, maybe because of the lack of feelings and emotions described, giving the readers a more naturalistic and scientific approach to the story. This lack of emotions allows the reader to think instead of feel. Slimani’s novel, gives us the story of broken people in a broken society, but also frightens the reader by describing a normal woman who, throughout her existence, was shaped by different experiences leading her lose control of her life and commit a dreadful crime.

By Amélia Damy