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.
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