An Accidental Man
Nov. 16th, 2012 08:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearWhat is it about Iris Murdoch? Can someone please explain it to me?
I have now read at least three of her books and they are all the same.
A group of unengaging or downright unpleasant characters indulge in intensive, self-obsessed, ridiculous navel-gazing, awful things happen to them or are perpetrated by them, and pretty much nobody ends up in a good place.
And yet, somehow, these books are wholly absorbing and I come away really impressed.
As regular readers will know, I've been having a bit of trouble with my reading recently, and I was fairly certain an Iris Murdoch book would last about ten pages before being thrown out of the window - but The Accidental Man had me shunning my soon-to-be-ex-work colleagues at lunchtime so I could sit in the canteen alone and continue reading it.
Why am I not totally repulsed by these books? I don't understand it.
In terms of this particular one, the juxtaposition of the intense navel-gazing with the party scenes in which superficial dialogue is exchanged, getting gradually more and more ridiculous, is absolute genius. I suppose it's about the contrast between the complex agonies of people's internal lives and the surface interest other people take in them, which only extends to malicious gossip and the thrill of experiencing other people's tragedies from a distance.
Also, I suppose it's both comforting and horrifying to contemplate that everyone else is just as screwed up as you inside their own head.
Reading an Iris Murdoch book is a bit like watching a spectacularly bad car crash in ultimate slow motion. I hate to admit it, but apparently I am a rubber-necker after all. And, perhaps, that is also the point of the book - it presents the party-goers as despicably shallow people who engage wholeheartedly in schadenfreude, and then makes you one of them by drawing you into the car-crash theatre of the central plot. I've only just figured this out while typing this, and now I feel like I have to go and have a shower...
I have now read at least three of her books and they are all the same.
A group of unengaging or downright unpleasant characters indulge in intensive, self-obsessed, ridiculous navel-gazing, awful things happen to them or are perpetrated by them, and pretty much nobody ends up in a good place.
And yet, somehow, these books are wholly absorbing and I come away really impressed.
As regular readers will know, I've been having a bit of trouble with my reading recently, and I was fairly certain an Iris Murdoch book would last about ten pages before being thrown out of the window - but The Accidental Man had me shunning my soon-to-be-ex-work colleagues at lunchtime so I could sit in the canteen alone and continue reading it.
Why am I not totally repulsed by these books? I don't understand it.
In terms of this particular one, the juxtaposition of the intense navel-gazing with the party scenes in which superficial dialogue is exchanged, getting gradually more and more ridiculous, is absolute genius. I suppose it's about the contrast between the complex agonies of people's internal lives and the surface interest other people take in them, which only extends to malicious gossip and the thrill of experiencing other people's tragedies from a distance.
Also, I suppose it's both comforting and horrifying to contemplate that everyone else is just as screwed up as you inside their own head.
Reading an Iris Murdoch book is a bit like watching a spectacularly bad car crash in ultimate slow motion. I hate to admit it, but apparently I am a rubber-necker after all. And, perhaps, that is also the point of the book - it presents the party-goers as despicably shallow people who engage wholeheartedly in schadenfreude, and then makes you one of them by drawing you into the car-crash theatre of the central plot. I've only just figured this out while typing this, and now I feel like I have to go and have a shower...
