Out of Cacophony : Majestic Travesty of Storytelling from Darkness (Part 2/3)

How Modern Tradition Is : Sweet Music & the Remix 

was yo prose genetic structure, one wonders

Perhaps, one such situation finds Serena snooping on Tom’s work-in-progress. On principle, he does not believe in revealing his current writing. Serena is either overly curious or unreasonably responsible with regard to her professional task. Either way, secretly reading her lover-writer’s works, she discovers an aspect of storytelling that reinstates some of the postulates helpful in sustaining the constancy of awareness in an encounter with a piece of literature. First, she finds a story told by a specter apish narrator  presenting musings about his writer-lover. She is trying to cope with the hindrances obstructing the advancement of her second novel. Serena finds herself in an eddy of storytelling. Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth: “Only on the last page did I discover that the story I was reading was actually the one the woman was writing” (224). What a story!

She then decides to switch to another guilty reading. She picks Tom’s piece entitled From the Somerset Levels. It turns out to be a story about father and daughter in pursuit of the mother. Not only the fact that they do not find her is devastating. Not even their ending up dying in each other’s arms is what colors the narrative in an irredeemable apocalyptic shade. What constitutes the backbone of the story is the journey itself. It is a nightmarish struggle with dystopian scenery generated through a wicked collaboration of social ills, corrosive relationships, and a radically antieco environment. Instead of concrete, the streets are glazed with feces. It seems that everything is upside-down in that doomdom including sewage which appears to be overground – exposed and freely pouring the content readily available to whoever happens to be around. No wonder father and daughter are infected by bubonic plague.

Lethal filth rules urban spaces that not only incorporate the very notion of decay, but are one. It is a society with no societal institutions, system with no functioning infrastructure. It is an urbanity with no denizens. It is a dysfunctional, totalitarian state thriving on vague memories of the times when electricity meant something and served the inhabitants, when telecommunications existed and mattered. It is the world climaxing in the triumph of nihilo-cannibalist orgies. Or, so somnambulist logic wants one to believe.

Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth: “All that functions, though barely, is government itself” (225). It is an image of what once was civilization and now is in the state of irrevocable agony. Haley makes a decisive move in the narrative line contextualizing it within recent history. Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth: ”It’s made clear elsewhere that civilisation’s collapse began with the injustices, conflicts and contradictions of the twentieth century” (226). 

Later, when she can freely discuss the novella with T.H. Haley, Serena asks if things get better in this anticapitalist tale of toxicity and is given an unshakably negative answer. But, that’s Haley’s story. Later, in the coda in absentia, one is reminded about the aspect of reading-writing Serena discovered previously when nosing the ape story. Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth:

There was, in my view, an unwritten contract with the reader that the writer must honour. No single element of an imagined world or any of its characters should be allowed to dissolve on authorial whim. The invented had to be as solid and as self-consistent as the actual. This was a contract founded on mutual trust. (224)

When that contract was, one wonders. One would be prone to ponder if it is still in power, even if Haley knows no sleepless nights. How early summer sunshine smile-showers the cottage of his imagination, one wonders. Perhaps, part of the answer can be sensed via the reflections of the character of Joe Rose in McEwan’s novel Enduring Love:

I saw the same joy, the same uncontrollable smile, in the faces of a Nigerian earth mama, a thin-lipped Scottish granny, and a pale, correct Japanese businessman as they wheeled their trolleys in and recognized a figure in the expectant crowd. Observing human variety can give pleasure, but so too can human sameness. (4)

Whether Joe’s imagination generates the same gleaming outpour as Haley’s does might not be decipherable. But, one thing is pretty certain : Joe is no stranger to restlessness spanning the space from sunset to dawn. Were he a writer, would the consistency of his fiction be the same as that of the actual world? Could those two be different kinds of consistency? If so, is it still possible to talk about the consistency of each without identifying them? Were Joe a writer, what kind of universality could be ascribed to the genetic structure of the characters of his stories?

The impalpable substantiality of such an ethereal inquiry may be perceived via a meditation about the impossible music played in McEwan’s novel Saturday:

There are these rare moments when musicians together touch something sweeter than they’ve ever found before in rehearsals or performance, beyond the merely collaborative or technically proficient, when their expression becomes as easy and graceful as friendship or love. This is when they give us a glimpse of what we might be, of our best selves, and of an impossible world in which you give everything you have to others, but lose nothing of yourself. (176)

A glimpse might easily be of the guardian signpost smile so sovereign in its humbleness, as it fills the cottage from the memories of the times bygone and casts rays on whatever fallible context one might find oneself in.

            Perhaps, one such situation is indicated in the supposed coda in absentia in McEwan's novel Sweet Tooth. In the letter to his reader, after the publicized scandal about the Sweet Tooth operation, his being funded by an intelligence service, and his lover being an undercover agent, Tom retrospectively observes the relationship between him and Serena. As much as he acknowledges numerous untruths of hers, he admits a number of secretly paid visits, talks, and exchange of information. The visit to his family now including corrected details. The visit to her family. Disagreeably, pot fuelled conversation with Serena’s sister and her partner. Attending the service of their bishop father. Upon his return to London, being fed from the source of information provided by Max--Serena’s colleague, former lover, co-worker at the Information Research Department. Prior to the trip back to London, tipsy days and nights in a hotel room, so he could digest all the heavy nourishment he was given. Avoiding her that Christmas. Because there was too much to filter. And to sift, to process, it takes a bit of time and insulation. To purify the communication channel, disambiguation is needed.

            The character of Tom is identified negatively--apparently, he is unlike Othello (Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth 354). Tom confesses that the acquired cognizance about Serena’s identity of an intelligence agent makes him assume a similar role: he spies on her and reports back about her. Thus, he contributes to establishing a relationship based on mutual betrayal, and yet, the paradox of it being that there was no single aspect of it that was not authentic. Amid the narrative of radical mistrust, out of the whirlpool of the oscillations between doubt and suspicion, sustained is the inexpressible, yet unbeatable, indisputable presence of the persevering allegiance. 

            If there is a layer of toxicity in McEwan’s novel Sweet Tooth, it is in the service of travesty. If travesty has significance in this book, it is in the service of learning how to read : invigorating critical / creative capacities. If such a process is challenging, it is because a piece of literature calls for an engaging attitude. It is perhaps the reason why learning how to read such a demanding piece equips one with a vocabulary with which to approach cultural realities. One is provided with a vocabulary serving both as a form of peaceful/peaceable resistance to stupefyingly cacophonic amalgamation and as the way of worshipping the aspects of radiant inspiration. It is also a stunningly friendly source of subversive lyrical interjections—quirky genre-bending enclaves--sustaining the much needed alertness and, simultaneously, alleviating the hardship of such a strenuous task.

Out of Cacophony : Majestic Travesty of Storytelling from Darkness (Part 2/2)

How Modern Tradition Is : Sweet Music & the Remix

hic & nunc / anticarpe diem Suspension of Belief

Were Sweet Tooth a sonnet, it might be of a somewhat unusual structure. It would be characterized by an extended couplet, whose first verse opens with Serena’s starting to explore the world of T.H. Haley’s—soon to become a lover of hers—fiction (136). The other is a sort of coda in absentia (albeit not necessarily in the very literal sense) : Tom’s letter to his reader, crowning the novel with the mastery of mediation.

Excelling in reading, Serena not only perfects and solidifies the reliability of herself as the reader, but also enables the reader of the novel regain trust in the story despite the occasional, not always easy challenges. As for the writer’s letter, it turns out to be the most exquisite of narrative devices, as it simultaneously epitomizes the mediating role of epistolary form and, paradoxically, subverts mediated messages by re-establishing the centrality of immediacy as the source, the vehicle, and the basis of the mutual trust between the reader and the text.

However, the trustful reciprocity is not easily won. As the novel unfolds, or, rather, wraps into a labyrinth of mistrustful alleys, the reader is confronted with similar doubts the narrator-reader, Serena, faces. The reader of the novel might not necessarily be an MI5 employee. S/he does not have to fake her profession and present her/himself to her/his parents as a worker for the Department of Health and Social Security. S/he needs not be an agent on the Sweet Tooth mission. Likewise, s/he does not necessitate choosing an artist to be the recipient of the funds allegedly provided by the Foundation and distributed to the awardee via Freedom International, reportedly for the purpose of the promotion of freedom of speech. Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth: “Woe to the nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power” (98). None of these need not be part of the identity of the reader, but s/he may, nevertheless, sense the disguises, the doubt, the travesty.

The labyrinth in which no one trusts anyone and everyone doubts everybody else reverberates with contemporary cultural realities that call for disambiguation. The tone is indicative of certain aspects of such a culture. It is so strangely calmative that it seems quite impossible that such a sedating effect hides no surprises. And it does. The charm of the storytelling has the capacity to suck one into a blurry miasma of mixed boundaries, mistaken guesses, confusing assumptions: ”like a polyphonic chorus” (Sweet Tooth 114). The obfuscation renders the past decades translatable into the cultural vocabulary of the twenty-first century. A glimpse of the contrast between postwar austerity and economic rejuvenation, a portrayal of the sinister turn of the posthippie era that leaked into the recession of the seventies under a monstrous disguise of liberation bringing nationwide access to mind altering substances in the form of a status symbol, class rebellion, intellectual emancipation, sexual liberties, self-improvement, and/or source of income is not entirely different from contemporary cultural climate. There might be divergences in the redescription of power relations, mainstream, countercultures, and their crypto variants, but the core of the phenomenon – the use of drugs as a means of oppressive social control – is more or less the same.

The enchanting steadiness of the tone makes no effort to protect the reader from slight disruptions within the melliferous flow. Thankfully so. Otherwise, it would not be possible to suspend belief towards such a magnitude of cripplingly manipulative mechanisms. The soothing mellowness of the narration, despite the occasional dramatic moments, is by no means set to create a sense of an oneiric drift into an illusion of eternal carefreeness. On the contrary, it keeps and refines the reader’s sensitivity to the subtleties of storytelling : it offers choices between what is and what is not trustworthy. At times, everything is so suspicious that it resembles Haley’s story about Neil Carder. Plagued by ambiguity, it exudes the distrust informing quite a few among the aspects of contemporary culture: ”It seemed so unlikely that people were tempted to think it might even be true” (Sweet Tooth 137). Such an atmosphere of heightened doubt and suspension might be ascribed to the genre. Rightly so. Otherwise, there would be no signposts to distract the reader’s search for the clues along the erratic pathways.

Such a seeming climate of constant alertness might be evocative of the state of ceaseless anxiety, but the reader knows better. There are disruptions of a different kind in this narrative— interjections that reconsolidate the trust in the stability of the tone so pacifying that one might be tempted to doubt its authenticity. Sometimes, to endure noise in the communication channel it takes a bit of restlessness of Serena’s sleepless nights. Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth: ”For most of the night I lay on my back with the covers pulled up to my chin, listening, thinking in circles, waiting for the dawn to come like a soothing mother and make things better” (80). And it does. It does so it feels like a nostalgic reminiscence of a cozy cottage in the country welcoming early summer sunshine so refreshing in gentleness that its smile inhabits the heart to cast its rays on whatever fallible context one might find oneself in.

Out of Cacophony : Majestic Travesty of Storytelling from Darkness (Part 2/1)

How Modern Tradition Is : Sweet Music & the Remix 

What One Talks about When Reading a Genre

If there is travesty in Ian McEwan’s novel Sweet Tooth (2013), it is manifested in the realm of the tone. If there is a correlation between characterization and the tone, it is of a very specific nature. If there is an interconnectivity between the two and the plot, it is certainly in the service of the message.

Speaking of the tone in this peculiarly conventional narrative is to unpack the submerged sphere of the storytelling flow. Tackling this knot within which traditional narration meets contemporary quandary is to dive into the darkish shades of characterization deployed in the form of contours rather than fully fledged images. Penetrating that conundrum is to let the sequences comprising the plot constitute the message : borne out of the seeming cacophony and its not infrequently demonstrated capacity to bewilder and mesmerize.

The manner in which the tone carries the narration is parallel to the way characterization empowers the crocky characters with a restrained impact on the storyline, thus delineating the very specificity of this literary element. Namely, what makes it so singularly intricate is, dare one say, the vitality of the tangential, which is not to be mistaken either for centrality or marginality. More precisely, the character of Serena From is sketched so its narrating maneuvering is sovereign enough to keep the reader’s allegiance, and yet, sufficiently seductive to allow for possible wandering along the erratic pathways engendered by the echoed characters such as that of Jeremy, Tony, Max, Tom, or other--named and unnamed alike.

The peculiarity of such a narration lies in its relying on mediation. And yet, the manner in which the message is conveyed is somewhat incomparable with the literary procédé implemented in other books of McEwan’s. Specifically, the narrator in Sweet Tooth is certainly very different from the one in Black Dogs (1992). Its incapacity to contain the narrative (that weird beauty of weakness) is portrayed through the use of epistolary form, and yet, the afflicted totality of the reliability upon such narration is surely disparate from how the storytelling device in question is incorporated in Enduring Love (1997). What is submerged in the unuttered is part of the thematic regarding the reflections about philosophical tensions such as that between the public and the private, which features a discrepancy in comparison with the treatment of the issues in Amsterdam (1998). 

And yet, not everything is so very diverse in the novel Sweet Tooth.  If there is a thread that ensures a continuum throughout the oeuvre of this twentieth & twenty-first century bard, it is imbued in the significance that the surface layers of the narrative have for the message emerging from the hidden depths. To say this is to inevitably relativize the notion of the surface. It is also to invoke the relevance of the persistence of the themes such as human relationships and communication. To acknowledge this is nothing short of recognizing language as an epitome of the power of weakness : erroneous, imperfect, elusive, and yet abundant in the sources for recuperating imperfectness through disclosing the very limits of it. Like humans.

If there is a node holding the web of McEwan’s storytelling by and large, it might be the subtlety with which seemingly minor scenes are woven. One of them is the farewell pub scene (or, so it seemed at that moment) showing Serena and her friend--soon to be a former colleague, since she is just about to be fired—Shirley. It is not the conversation between them that carries the narrative line, but rather the adjacent scene depicting the band gradually occupying the stage. The suspension of the confidential messages presumably to be exchanged before Shirley leaves MI5--the same agency Serena works for--is suggested through a slightly delayed emergence of the band on the stage. Like a frozen moment between the soundcheck and the concert.

The tension suspended across the elusiveness of the semi-decipherability of the withdrawn words is dissolved by the establishment of the sovereign presence first of the drummer (132), then of the bass player (134). The encounter between the two colleagues / friends in the pub demarcates the intensification of the conspiratorial, bewildering flow within which introjection and projection between and among the characters generates similar intersections with other narratives, notably those by T.H. Haley. Shirley expects to hear from Serena the secret that would illuminate her being sacked. Serena anticipates to be given the explanation for being under suspicion and, consequently, being spied on. The shared experience of being under surveillance entices hopes for the unknown to be revealed. However, neither has the information the counterpart needs. Instead, the mounting confusion is sabotaged by the opening chords of the track coming from the stage hosting the band assembled. Shirley disappears without saying goodbye. Serena stays sipping the remnants of the drinks, then she goes home. A hazy cab ride and a tipsy afternoon mark the beginning of her enhanced learning how to read the prose of Thomas Haley. Or, simply, learning how to read.

 If it constitutes the thread upon which the nodes within the web of Ian McEwan’s storytelling are based, it is most vividly suggested through the nexus between the aforementioned frozen moment and the passion McEwan infuses in the depiction of the artistry of guitar playing in Saturday (2005). Almost oxymoronically, typically colliding emotions characterize the wonder of Theo’s wizardry: ”At the heart of the blues is not melancholy, but a strange and worldly joy” (28).

If there is a travesty in Sweet Tooth, it is to be sought along the lines suggested in this mesmerizing observation about the genre. If the travesty is manifested in narrative fabric, it is at least twofold. If the reader seeks the thrill in the vertiginous euphoria of spy novel and/or any akin genre, it might disable digging the concealed connection between the surface and profound realms of the story. Or, some such relation.