Three more "stories" by Angela Carter today. I am quickly discovering that there is more to Angela Carter than meets the eye, but if you have read her already you'll know that. These are not really short stories of the sort I've been reading so far this year, but creative works? The subtitle of the book is "Nine Profane Pieces". I had to look up "profane" as all that came to mind is profanity and I wanted to make sure I had it straight in my mind. Profane is "characterized by irreverence or contempt for God or sacred principles or things, irreligious". Yes, I can see where these would be considered profane pieces. That pretty well sums up the feel of the stories I have gotten.
Angela Carter's writing is really interesting. It's gorgeous and lush but it's also complex. I love reading her but I think it is easy to get bogged down in trying to understand just what it is she is writing about. Dare I admit that? I understand superficially, but I am not sure I am getting at what is lurking beneath the surface. I think a little additional reading, perhaps some criticism might be in order, when I've read the last of the works in this short collection. What I feel so far is that they are all tinged by sadness and melancholy. They are permeated with a sense of loss and longing. Of love that is denied or not understood or doomed to failure. I don't think I am going to be able to write about my reading properly, so what follows today are ideas I have jotted down, questions I have or little observations on her prose. You'll have to forgive me if this all feels a little disjointed, but it might at least pique your curiosity, too, and spur you on to pick up her work, which I highly recommend.
I mentioned last week that in her afterword she talks of mirrors and reflections. Often the protagonist (Angela herself?) sees herself in others or tries to understand herself by how she is viewed by those she loves or longs for. Is it real or is it playacting? Take for example the third of the three works I read this weekend, "Flesh and the Mirror" where an unnamed woman has been away in England for three months--a death in the family--and has returned to Japan expecting to be met by her lover, who does not show up. Perhaps the relationship is over but she cannot admit it to herself? She meets another man in the street and goes off with him to a love hotel. But she cannot stop thinking of her lover and goes in search of him and finds him in one of his old haunts.
"His image was already present somewhere in my head and I was seeing to discover it in actuality, looking at every face I met in case it was the right face--that is, the face which corresponded to my notion of the unseen face of the one I should love, a face created parthenogenetically by the rage to love which consumed me. So his self, and, by his self I mean the thing he was to himself, was quite unknown to me. I created him solely in relation to myself, like a work of romantic art, an object corresponding to the ghost inside me."
Whew. See, she's not always easy to pull apart and understand clearly, though I still love reading her. So perhaps the mirror (or how she is reflected in how she sees him--how roundabout is that?) is showing herself as she really is? She's writing about perception and reality. The woman is acting in a show that is her real life.
"It was as if I never experienced experience as experience. Living never lived up to the expectations I had of it--the Bovary syndrome. I was always imagining other things that could have been happening instead, and so I always felt cheated, always dissatisfied."
I don't think I can adequately explain what any of that means, but strangely I understand it and can relate to it. This is a work I could read over a few times and find more to think about and perhaps understand or build on with each reading.
Moving backwards to "Penetrating to the Heart of the Forest", I felt on less shaky ground. This is a Graden of Eden story if ever I heard it. À la Angela Carter of course, complete with flowers that snap and bite. It's quite descriptive and detailed.
"The whole region was like an abandoned flower bowl, filled to overflowing with green, living things; and, protected on all sides by the ferocious barricades of the mountains, those lovely reaches of forest lay so far inland the inhabitants believed the name, Ocean, that of a man in another country, and would have taken an oar, had they ever seen one, to be a winnowing fan."
The story is essentially about two siblings who go off to explore this fantastical forest and discover a world quite new and unexpected. In true Angela Carter form the world they find is almost like that of the Garden of Eden and siblings or not they are the first man and woman.
"The Smile of Winter" is, I think, my favorite work so far in this collection. Nothing really happens, it's all more a feeling that Carter creates--another unnamed narrator, a woman dealing with loneliness reflects on her situation. It's beautiful in the presentation. I just found it a lovely and moving piece of writing--quite descriptive again with many seaside images.
"Because there are no segulls here, the only sound is the resonance of the sea. This coastal region is quite flat, so that an excess of sky bears down with an intolerable weight, pressing the essence out of everything beneath it for it imposes such a burden on us that we have all been forced inward on ourselves in an introspective somberness intensified by the perpetual abrasive clamor of the sea."
There's lots of this sort of writing. She likens her emotions to what she is seeing and experiencing and the images are so very apt. Again, I can relate very well to what Carter is saying. It's quite a special piece and one that ends in hopefulness.
"Do not think I do not realize what I am doing. I am making a composition using the following elements: the winter beach; the winter moon; the ocean; the women; the pine trees; the rides; the driftwood; the shells; the shapes of the darkness and the shapes of water; and the refuse. These are all inimical to my loneliness because of their indifference to it. Out of these pieces of inimical indifference, I intend to represent the desolate smile of winter, which, you must have gathered, is the smile I wear."
Three more pieces left in this collection to tackle. I'll let you know how I get on with them next weekend. I have been reading short stories from the New Yorker, but will save those for another day!