lie down in darkness
Jan. 4th, 2010 12:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sailorstkwrningI finally finished it late yesterday. I'm going to put most of my thoughts beneath a cut so those of y'all who haven't read it (& plan to, and don't want to be spoiled) can skip, but as a summary, I'll say this:
It's the literary equivalent of a hangover, it really is. It left me feeling sort of swimmy-headed and exhausted, loosely haunted with the desire for either a drink to nurse, or to never touch alcohol again. And possibly also for a big solid plate of breakfast and a strong cup of tea. Or Irn Bru. Actually, definitely the Irn Bru. Something sweet, sharp and fizzy to chase away the lingering malaise.
In some ways I think it's important to consider this book in contrast with it's nearest neighbor, The Ginger Man.
Both of the works appear early in the timeline, and they're both books about drinking, sex and adultery. But where TGM is meant to be a comedy (and in some instances, is actually funny), LDID is a requiem, and is more often than not desperatly sad. They're constructed somewhat similarly, with ever-shifting POVs. The key difference is that Styron transitions between characters and Donleavy confines himself to one narrative voice and yet still tends to lurch around like a, well, a drunk between first, second, and third person POV.
Now that I think on it, the books might be set in the same era - the early 20th century, somewhere around the 1930s-1940s. LDID actually references dropping the bomb on Japan at the end, so that's an anchor in time. Finally, TGM was published (in France[1]) in 1955, and LDID came out in 1951.
You could make arguments about there being elements of monstrousness and monsters, too. Sebastian Dangerfield, the protagonist of TGM, is physically abusive to his wife (who eventually leaves him, to my enormous relief); in LDID Milton Loftis (the father figure) loves his youngest daughter (Peyton) in a way that verges (if not actually alights) upon the incestuous. (Seriously, if incest is a trigger for you or anyone you know: AVOID THIS BOOK or tell them to avoid it, for the love of god.)
The adultery is treated somewhat differently; in TGM, Dangerfield is a creature of almost pure ID, who has three (!) mistresses whom he loves and mistreats in various ways and possibly in equal measure. Loftis has only one mistress (two, maybe, if you count Peyton, though they never have a physical relationship), and he also seems to have a sense of, I don't know, propriety, a grasp of rules and limits and a sense that what he's doing is wrong, even when he's wall-eyed with drink.
They're also both set in tight, constricted worlds - Catholic Dublin and Protestant Tidewater, Virginia - where everyone is watching and murmuring and judging.
I guess, in the end, they're like spending time with different kinds of drunks. Dangerfield is abusive and cruel (which is not at all funny) and yet also spends a whole train ride with his dick hanging out (which is kind of horrifying and kind of funny) and goes on a pub crawl in a kangaroo suit (which is hilarious). If Dangerfield were a real person and alive today, he would be either in jail, all OVER Texts from Last Night, or both.
Loftis, on the other hand, sort of staggers through life in a muddle, sure only of his love for his youngest daughter. He's exhausted by his wife (who is portrayed as a frigid, overly religious shrew, who hates him and also Peyton, largely because he loves her so), often vexed by his mistress (who is portrayed as sort of charming but dim, a trifle, a dolly-bird in name and in deed), and alternately solaced and savaged by Peyton herself, who is portrayed as a spoiled, willful drunk and/or a desperately confused child, depending on who's talking. Then she commits suicide and Loftis' world implodes. Reading about that implosion was wrenching, and I was greatly relieved to turn the last page.
[1] It was banned in the US for obscenity; I'm guessing the "every man should have an affair with a boy at least once" and the (heterosexual) ass-fucking chapter were the icing on that particular cake.
It's the literary equivalent of a hangover, it really is. It left me feeling sort of swimmy-headed and exhausted, loosely haunted with the desire for either a drink to nurse, or to never touch alcohol again. And possibly also for a big solid plate of breakfast and a strong cup of tea. Or Irn Bru. Actually, definitely the Irn Bru. Something sweet, sharp and fizzy to chase away the lingering malaise.
In some ways I think it's important to consider this book in contrast with it's nearest neighbor, The Ginger Man.
Both of the works appear early in the timeline, and they're both books about drinking, sex and adultery. But where TGM is meant to be a comedy (and in some instances, is actually funny), LDID is a requiem, and is more often than not desperatly sad. They're constructed somewhat similarly, with ever-shifting POVs. The key difference is that Styron transitions between characters and Donleavy confines himself to one narrative voice and yet still tends to lurch around like a, well, a drunk between first, second, and third person POV.
Now that I think on it, the books might be set in the same era - the early 20th century, somewhere around the 1930s-1940s. LDID actually references dropping the bomb on Japan at the end, so that's an anchor in time. Finally, TGM was published (in France[1]) in 1955, and LDID came out in 1951.
You could make arguments about there being elements of monstrousness and monsters, too. Sebastian Dangerfield, the protagonist of TGM, is physically abusive to his wife (who eventually leaves him, to my enormous relief); in LDID Milton Loftis (the father figure) loves his youngest daughter (Peyton) in a way that verges (if not actually alights) upon the incestuous. (Seriously, if incest is a trigger for you or anyone you know: AVOID THIS BOOK or tell them to avoid it, for the love of god.)
The adultery is treated somewhat differently; in TGM, Dangerfield is a creature of almost pure ID, who has three (!) mistresses whom he loves and mistreats in various ways and possibly in equal measure. Loftis has only one mistress (two, maybe, if you count Peyton, though they never have a physical relationship), and he also seems to have a sense of, I don't know, propriety, a grasp of rules and limits and a sense that what he's doing is wrong, even when he's wall-eyed with drink.
They're also both set in tight, constricted worlds - Catholic Dublin and Protestant Tidewater, Virginia - where everyone is watching and murmuring and judging.
I guess, in the end, they're like spending time with different kinds of drunks. Dangerfield is abusive and cruel (which is not at all funny) and yet also spends a whole train ride with his dick hanging out (which is kind of horrifying and kind of funny) and goes on a pub crawl in a kangaroo suit (which is hilarious). If Dangerfield were a real person and alive today, he would be either in jail, all OVER Texts from Last Night, or both.
Loftis, on the other hand, sort of staggers through life in a muddle, sure only of his love for his youngest daughter. He's exhausted by his wife (who is portrayed as a frigid, overly religious shrew, who hates him and also Peyton, largely because he loves her so), often vexed by his mistress (who is portrayed as sort of charming but dim, a trifle, a dolly-bird in name and in deed), and alternately solaced and savaged by Peyton herself, who is portrayed as a spoiled, willful drunk and/or a desperately confused child, depending on who's talking. Then she commits suicide and Loftis' world implodes. Reading about that implosion was wrenching, and I was greatly relieved to turn the last page.
[1] It was banned in the US for obscenity; I'm guessing the "every man should have an affair with a boy at least once" and the (heterosexual) ass-fucking chapter were the icing on that particular cake.
