Suspicious to the Core (six / 2)

Unshakably Resilient :The Resistance-Reverence Nexus

Let’s Bee/have : Dare 2 Distinguish

An exquisite and utterly provocative commentary on some of the issues regarding language, public discourse, the public-private scale demarcating individual and communal aspects of human beings, and the meaning and the role of norms and conventions in culture can be found in Ian McEwan’s novel The Children Act (2014). While McEwan’s oeuvre, in a very broad sense, may be perceived in the light of the wordsworthian tradition, as articulated in the Preface to the second edition of William Wordsworth’s and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads (1800), even the most loyal readership mobilize their suspicion apparatus to question the narrative technique and seek justification in the message delivered within the how-what nexus.

The manner in which the storyline raises awareness of the formal aspects of the narration is to a high extent an invitation to enter a quietly rebellious conversation with that what is happening in this seemingly hyper-conventional, at times puzzlingly pacifying, story. That Ian McEwan’s style is certainly anchored in the capacity to juggle, combine, and put in a challenging dialogue soothing wording heavily relying on traditional prose with  nuggets of dissident thought spiking the lulling flow with a tiny dosage of darker shades woven in the narrative tissue is more than obvious. That it features incredible potential to galvanize a critical approach to the themes of relevance is what makes that signature part of the communication currency highlighting crucial aspects of the exchange within the community of human beings worthy of the challenge.

And yet, what seems to be specific about the way this signature technique is deployed in the novel in question is the degree to which it saturates the narrative. The literary convention weaves the narrative yarns solidly to the point where one wonders whether such a device becomes part of the message that addresses the issue of great importance. It is related to the question of the norm, abiding by it, questioning it, subverting it—in the service of communication between and among selfless, yet re-individualized, fellow humans. Namely, in an ultimate sense, it is the question of the way gentleness toward, respect, and care for another human being can be integrated into the social vocabulary conditioned and shaped by conventions and norms. Simultaneously, it looks at the ways cultural realities display an excess in insisting on formalities, thereby signaling certain deviations in the domain of the politeness-humaneness relationship.

The character of Fiona Maye, London’s High Court judge, epitomizes the burden of “being civilized.” To say that she is dedicated to her profession is neither an understatement nor an overstatement. It is an ill-articulated issue. Her “professionalism” hinders her functioning on the private plane. In the world where brazen survivalist impositions might blind one to the deviations of the patterns that can make human life much more humane, much needed resistance instigates suspension of belief, thus enabling thinking in the key that subverts threats of coercion, threats to the mutually conditioning relationship between discourse and cultural realities.

Fiona is confronted with her husband’s love affair with a much younger woman. He cannot resist the call to reanimate the passion fueling the whole being. She cannot accept being abandoned, betrayed. Having had him leave the apartment and the lock on the apartment’s door  changed, she undergoes an ordeal of self-doubt, social anxiety—interestingly, primarily considering the ways to avoid being pitied—and resurfacing through the case in which she “saves” a boy from a detrimental influence of his and his parents’ religious creed. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe in transfusion. According to their doctrine, to allow somebody else’s blood in one’s body is sinful. The boy was going to turn eighteen in three months. Regardless, Fiona decides to make a legally questionable decision in order to enable the law to ensure the boy’s treatment. She declares transfusion legally justifiable. Adam Henry is not just cured, but he is also relieved of the clutches of the staggeringly restricting religious circle that he knew.

The judge experiences an extraordinarily rejuvenating jolt through the communication with Adam, through poetic and musical exchange, and a light encounter with his body at the moment when their cheeks briefly touch, when a soft, unpretentious, unimposing, and nonpromiscuous kiss marks their separation. Despite the allure of those lyrical moments, she refrains from challenging either herself or Adam beyond the limits of the social norm. Meanwhile, she resumes her matrimonial everyday with her husband Jack in an enchanting insipidness of the gated community in which they live.

Here arises the crux of the narrative. It is not her embracing social norms that adds up to the troubling dynamics of the character of Fiona. Rather, it is the way in which politeness and formalities assume a radical dimension that renders them questionable, to say the very least. The extremism in which manners are used as a defensive tool--sheer survivalist means--indicate not only its alleged capacity to ensure inviolability, but McEwan makes it clear how deceptive that defense may be. More precisely, the rigidity of “politeness” turns out to be a somewhat distorted version of the kindness that nourishing, protective control normally generates. In its radical version, it is a corruption of the meaning typically ascribed to the word. Instead of shielding, it isolates. Instead of protecting, it desensitizes. By supposedly preventing vulnerability, it, actually, inhibits openness to another human being. It constricts engagement in human communication. It is the distance that exceeds the vibrant threshold. Under the disguise of safety, it hinders bonding. It is maintained by virtue of anxiety, sense of threat, being endangered by other humans. It spurs the mentality of rivalry and hostility. It encourages a sterile socioscape—barren coldness in the midst of global warming. It is not polite.

How McEwan’s narrative technique conveys the message of that conundrum is a matter of peculiar, sophisticated sensitivity to literary subtleties and moral issues. There is a parallel between the unfolding of Fiona’s bleakly impregnable world that provides the enchantment of aloofness at the expense of everything else on the one hand and, on the other, the storyline that progresses steadily, and yet, so “politely” that it provokes suspicion. Until the clue is provided within an unlikely conversation between the couple at the restaurant. Upon Fiona’s return to London, having spent a fortnight on a business trip, they go out for dinner. Jack shares insights he was exposed to in a geology lecture:

A hundred million years into the future, when much of the oceans had sunk into the earth’s mantle and there wasn’t enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to sustain plants and the surface of the world was lifeless rocky desert, what evidence would a visiting extraterrestrial geologist find of our civilization? A few feet below the ground a thick line in the rock would mark us off from all that had gone before. Condensed into that six-inch sooty layer would be our cities, vehicles, roads, bridges, weapons. (The Children Act 184)

Jack is particularly keen on deciphering the instances within the lecture that mark the point he allegedly ascribes to the lecturer’s observations concerning “the beginning of a mass extinction in which life’s variety had started to narrow” (184).  He is insistent on detailing that minute layer that testifies to our civilization:

Also, all sorts of chemical compounds not found in the previous geological record. Concrete and brick would weather down as easily as limestone. Our finest steel would become a crumbling ferrous stain. A more detailed microscopic examination might reveal a preponderance of pollen from the monotonous grasslands we had made to feed a giant population of livestock. (184)

Jack’s tirade unsettles his wife. She goes to the ladies’ room to regain her composure, “where she stood in front of the mirror, eyes closed, comb in hand in case someone came in, and drew a few slow deep breaths” (185). The scene reflects the manner in which their relationship is being re-established: ”The thaw was neither quick nor linear. At first it was a relief, not to be self-consciously avoiding each other around the flat, not to be coldly competing in politeness in that stifling way they had” (185).

Only with the introduction of different sound do the harsh edges of their worlds soften. Atypically reduced preparations for the annual concert find Fiona strangely at ease. The time she and her co-performer, Mark Berner, were supposed to spend practicing was taken up by his extended confession about a particular case, apparently constituting his swan song, as long as the world of law is concerned. His tenor was stubbornly submerged in that lengthy analysis of legal sanctions applied to some of the participants in the case of a youth violence drenched clash. Fiona is anxious to lower her fingers on the keys. And, yet Mark shares on. Eventually, without either asking for a permission or waiting for an approval, the piano spills notes into the cold of London night having been touched by the hands of the pianist. Mark’s tenor joins her somewhat inspired, somewhat dutiful play.

One night in December, when London was zoning through a hazy corridor connecting the dissipating day and the onset of the evening, Fiona busied herself after work with the preparations for the performance she was going to give in a couple of hours. Not only does her utmost elegant attire color the evening with the shade of solemn exultation, but the room filled with Jack’s presence exudes a magical composite of warmth and smell rising from the fireplace in a silent conversation with a seductive coating leaking from their rarely used stereo. It is Keith Jarrett. Facing You drifts across the room. Sound that melts even the most frozen of thoughts. The wizardry of playing the written notes enriched with the sound created in the interstices of the record on the sheet.

Why does the complexity of jazz inspire nostalgic invocation of the rudimentary patterns of the blues and the beauty of their seemingly predictable combinations? Why is such nostalgic musical thinking evocative of even less demanding paradigms, blatantly sweet easiness of the three chord axiom? How does the sound snake seamlessly through that meandering borderless empire of genres within which each, paradoxically, remains intact, sustains integrity? One would like to know.

Why does the sound reanimate the memories of the early days of their relationship when passion occupied each cell of their bodies, each instant of their existence? It was the time when Jack exposed her to the magic of jazz and when alongside her discovery of the likes of Thelonious Monk, Fiona finds out what it means to be entirely immersed in an ecstatic buzz. The powerful sensation that perhaps never leaves one.

The quandary may acquire a somewhat clearer form once filtered and sifted through the lens of Terry Eagleton’s idiom, especially the instance looking at the nature of jazz jamming and the role of communication within the band:

[T]o a large extent each member is free to express herself as she likes. But she does so with a receptive sensitivity to the self-expressive performances of the other musicians. The complex harmony they fashion comes not from playing from a collective score, but from the free musical expression of each member acting as the basis for the free expression of the others. As each player grows more musically eloquent, the others draw inspiration from this and are spurred to greater heights. There is no conflict here between freedom and the ‘good of the whole’, yet the image is the reverse of totalitarian. Though each performer contributes to ‘the greater good of the whole’, she does so not by some grim-lipped self-sacrifice but simply by expressing herself. There is self-realization, but only through the loss of self in the music as a whole. (The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction 100)

So, is the parallel between the two discoveries an accurate trope depicting Fiona’s experience? Jack’s memories bear witness to her confined perception and consternated approach to the riches playfulness offers:

He played her Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight” and bought her the sheet music. It wasn’t difficult to play. But her version, smooth and unaccented, sounded like an unremarkable piece by Debussy. That was fine, Jack told her. The great jazz masters adored and learned from him. She listened again, she persisted, she played what was in front of her, but she could not play jazz. No pulse, no instinct for syncopation, no freedom, no fingers numbly obedient to the time signature and notes as written. That was why she was studying law, she told her lover. Respect for rules. (200)

 Fiona becomes susceptible to the enchantment of that winter eve filled with music, flame-and-ember backdrop, Jack treating her with champagne, cheese, olives, kiss, and touch. They had to refrain from proceeding with indulging in the exhilaration with the re-enliven bodies. Fiona was to perform in a couple of hours.

Their playing was met by multiple--slightly unconventional for a classical music gig—standing ovations. As she walks from the stage, she meets a woman who tells her something, after which she walks home through the rain. Her hair is still wet when Jack comes home. Half concerned with helping her dry herself, half inquiring about the reason why she left, Jack is attentive. Unexpectedly, the boy who became a hero of her career and penetrated her emotional world in an utterly peculiar way, re-enters it.

Only now, he is dead. That’s the information the woman relayed. That’s the information she now shares with Jack. She shamelessly admits kissing him. Somewhat less assertively, she acknowledges that she never responded to his letters. She neglected the symbolic that might have been there. But only might. Was he determined to relapse, so to speak? Was he outlining his intent to go back to his family, religion, to embrace it, and (mis)use it as an excuse to refuse treatment once leukemia plagues his body again?

Those might be some of the thoughts occupying Fiona’s and Jack’s communication channel. As the story is sagging into the nocturnal sphere saturating the words being exchanged, the theme of the death of the boy morphs with the metaphoric realm, as the two are examining each other’s face, lying next to one another, and their marriage resumes by virtue of the soft rhythm of falling darkness.

Thus, once again one wonders where within Ian McEwan’s novel the equivalents of the descriptions  of the sediment-record can be found. Is it being too polite? Where is the voice that speaks in the key of the sound rebellion reinstating the currency in the communication channel: homo homini homo est?

Is Ian McEwan being overprotective? If so, is such an attitude patronizing? Could it be a commentary on the nanny state McEwan bears witness to? May it be related to the awareness of the society that is acquiring characteristics of overregulated anomie?

If the narrative parallels, reflects, and incorporates aspects of the worrisome thematic, one can’t but wonder if it is a high cost compromise? Does it sacrifice (or, scapegoat, for that matter) the adventure provided by an edgier, subversive, defiant vernacular? Perhaps. One would be misled to believe. Were it not for the components of the novel tangential to the plot, discreetly  embroidering the narrative tapestry, anchoring the belief in the potential of rebellion through subtonic hi-fi solidarity of selfless, yet re-individualized, fellow humans. The components of the novel where darkness closes in, where reigns rain sovereign. Anchoring the potential of the remix.