{"id":306346,"date":"2017-05-26T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-26T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2017\/05\/26\/some-notes-on-the-real-character-two-month-review-the-invented-part\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:06:40","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:06:40","slug":"some-notes-on-the-real-character-two-month-review-the-invented-part","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2017\/05\/26\/some-notes-on-the-real-character-two-month-review-the-invented-part\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Notes on "The Real Character" [Two Month Review: The Invented Part]"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first Two Month Review podcast<\/a> went up just over a week ago, and the next one—covering the first section of the book, “The Real Character” (pages 1-45)—will be posted next Thursday, June 1st. Prior to each week’s podcast, we hope to have at least some sort of overview post that offers some entranceways to the section to be discussed. These posts aren’t supposed to be complete, absolute, or anything that formal. More like notes or musings, and featuring lots of quotes. They also will be—as much as humanly possible—spoiler free. So you can read them before getting into the book, or after you’ve read that particular section, or post-podcast.<\/em> <\/p>\n

You can also download this<\/a> as a PDF<\/span> document.<\/em> <\/p>\n

As always, you can get<\/em> The Invented Part<\/a> for 20% from our website by using the code 2MONTH. It’s also available at better bookstores everywhere.<\/em><\/p>\n

And be sure to join the Goodreads group<\/a> and subscribe to the Three Percent Podcast<\/a> on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t think of another book with as many epigraphs as The Invented Part.<\/em> Sixteen! There are quotes from David Foster Wallace, Iris Murdoch, Bret Easton Ellis, Marcel Proust, Bob Dylan, and many others. Eleven others, to be exact. Covering the first two-and-a-half pages of the book. Some of these are pithy (Juan Carlos Onetti\u2019s \u201cAlways lie\u201d), whereas Geoff Dyer\u2019s runs seven full lines. <\/p>\n

Taken as a whole, these sixteen (again, sixteen!) epigraphs make a good deal of sense and serve almost as an overture for the book. They tend to revolve around ideas about reality vs. fiction. About writing and autobiography, and the relationship of both to the truth. <\/p>\n

All of that comes together in this one from John Cheever, which also works to frame my initial thoughts about \u201cThe Real Character\u201d (emphasis on \u201creal,\u201d emphasis on
\n\u201ccharacter\u201d), the first part of The Invented Part.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Writing is not crypto-autobiography, and it\u2019s not current events. I\u2019m not writing my autobiography, and I\u2019m not writing things as they happen to me, with the exception of the use of details\u2014thunderstorms and that sort of thing. No, it\u2019s nothing that happened to me. It\u2019s a possibility. It\u2019s an idea.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s easy to see The Writer (the main focus of the novel, known as The Boy in this particular chapter) as a stand-in for Fres\u00e1n, and maybe when we get deeper into the book, it will make more sense to write a post about that. But for now, I want to focus on the last bit of Cheever\u2019s quote: \u201cIt\u2019s a possibility.\u201d Because this book is all about possibilities\u2014the way things were, the way they could\u2019ve been\u2014and the interplay between the possible and the invented.<\/p>\n

*<\/center><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Real Character\u201d is basically an origin story. It shows The Boy (who will eventually become The Writer) on vacation with his parents (or \u201convacation<\/em>\u201d since he hears it as a single word), at the beach, running and playing unselfconsciously while his soon-to-divorce parents read in the sun and bicker with each other. And then there\u2019s an event that could\u2019ve broke any number of ways, and which, in retrospect, is the moment that serves as a secret source for all his future writings. <\/p>\n

\n

Is this the most important thing that\u2019s happened to him yet?, The Boy wonders. (Who knows, he responds; and, at the other end of his story, decades later, he\u2019ll say yes, when he realizes that the most transcendent events take place<\/em> in the past but only happen<\/em> in the future, when we\u2019re truly cognizant of their importance, of the influence and weight they\u2019ve had on everything that has and will come to pass. And it\u2019s that which happens after<\/em> that makes the before<\/em> sad or happy. We need to know where we\u2019re coming to in order to fully understand the texture of where we came from. [. . .]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is the sort of idea that could launch a thousand weed-filled dorm room conversations. We never know what was most important until that moment is long past. In the present, we might sense the possibilities, the way our life could shift based on a single decision or accident, but we never get to see those other pathways. Except maybe in fiction, but fiction has the benefit of being able to make those choices or events part of a larger whole\u2014whether things turned out for the best or not. <\/p>\n

This is jumping way ahead, but later in the book The Writer echoes this idea when talking about \u201clogical irrealism\u201d:<\/p>\n

\n

If magical realism is realism with irreal details, then logical irrealism is its twin opposite: irreality with realistic details . . . And yet, is there anything as irreal as so-called realism? Those stories and novels with dramatic pacing and a perfectly calculated and managed sequence of events. Like Madame Bovary<\/em>. Or the neat structure and the precise pacing of most detective novels. But reality isn\u2019t like that. Reality is undisciplined and unpredictable. Real reality is authentically irreal . . . There is more realism and verisimilitude in a single day of the free and fluid and conscious drifting of Clarissa Dalloway than in the entire prolix and well-measured life and death of Anna Karenina.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

All this talk of fiction, possibilities, and books is the perfect segue to go back to the parents on the beach who are sort of, kind of reading the same book together:<\/p>\n

\n

On the beach, under the sun, the father and mother read the same book. It\u2019s not the first time they\u2019ve done this. That\u2019s how they met: the two of them reading the same book. On a train, the most romantic of all modes of transit. That same book they never stop reading. And, of course, there\u2019s no better argument than that for putting a conversation in drive and taking a ride down the tunnel of love. But as tends to happen with everything that seems charming in a romance\u2019s initial hours, this ritual of reading separately together\u2014of reading the same book but different books, at the same time\u2014now just produces a kind of irritation. The kind of annoyance we experience when, after a long time, we still feel obliged to do something that we obliged ourselves to do in the first place. And, then, you can\u2019t help but wonder, why am I doing this, damn it, damn it, how did I get here, could I be more of an idiot? [. . .]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

And the father and mother don\u2019t know it yet, but they\u2019re reading different versions of the same novel in the same way that they\u2019re writing different versions of their marriage and the imminent allegations of their defense and\/or prosecution. Because the book\u2019s author decided, almost desperate, just before dying, to alter the temporal flow of the plot\u2014which wasn\u2019t initially linear, but sinuous, present and past and present\u2014and to reorganize it chronologically. To see\u2014he\u2019d just put so much work into those pages and nobody seemed that interested in them, considering them a successful failure or something like that\u2014if, that way, the novel improved, if it was appreciated more, if it sold better. His instructions were followed post-mortem by his literary executor. The new version was considered inferior and he reverted to the original, to the one that\u2014just like real time\u2014moves forward and backward and forward again. But for a few years, in English and in translation, both versions existed at the same time. And The Boy\u2014when he was no longer a boy, when he was able to read and compare them, multiple times\u2014was never sure which his mother had read and which his father had read. Who moved straight and true from past to future and who was left spinning in place.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s made explicitly clear later, but the book The Boy\/The Writer\u2019s parents is reading is Tender Is the Night<\/em> by F. Scott Fitzgerald. A novel that really was published in two differing orders: one that was semi-complicated and filled with flashbacks, the other that was more straightforward and chronological. With art there\u2019s always the opportunity to rearrange things and explore other possibilities. <\/p>\n

*<\/center><\/p>\n

Another thread that runs throughout this chapter is a sort of tension about the possibility of going back in time and changing one\u2019s life. This is most explicit with the parents, who, while they\u2019re lying on the sand have that untoward thought that a lot of parents have at one time or another\u2014what if I could go back to the time before I had kids?<\/p>\n

\n

No, the father and mother are dragged along by The Boy. The father and mother drag their feet, and a wicker basket, and an umbrella, and towels, and their own bodies. And the father and the mother are dragged by The Boy. As if he were steering them, lassoed, pulling them along, strangling them with an invisible and inseverable rope around their necks. And it\u2019s not like the mother and father have tried to sever it, but it\u2019s also not like they haven\u2019t thought many times about what<\/em> it would be like to cut it. And\u2014presto!\u2014magically return to the past, to those other beaches, where The Boy only existed as a pleasant and egotistical fantasy. The father and the mother return, further away all the time, to The Boy as a mere idea that occurred to them every so often. An idea to enjoy for a while and then hide away under lock and key (one of those keys that you can\u2019t ever find when you look for it and that, with the aid of a pair of parentheses, seems to become invisible) in the drawers of a more or less possible future, always yet to come or, at least, a lateral future, in the possible variation of a possible future. This is what every father and mother in the universe dreams when they close their eyes, though none of them ever confess it. Right there. In that instant. Before falling asleep and dreaming of any other thing, of free falling or being naked in public\u2014the greatest hits of the common nightmare. But first, like the trailer for a movie that will never premiere. About what it\u2019d be like to not be parents. To wake up on a planet where there wasn\u2019t someone resting\u2014yet restlessly moving and making noise\u2014in the next room. About times when they went to bed late or not at all. [. . .] And sometimes The Boy\u2019s dreams overlap with his parents\u2019 dreams, producing a strange phenomenon: The Boy dreams he\u2019s running on a beach without them and his father and mother dream they\u2019re running on a beach without him. And they\u2019re all so happy. And yet the next morning they understand that they can\u2019t live without each other; that, though less and less, they still need each other; that now, nothing and nobody can or will ever be able to separate them or untie the knot of their lives. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

And yet, the invulnerability of that instant of pure love doesn\u2019t last long; and now The Boy is trying get away from them, running.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

*<\/center><\/p>\n

One of my favorite aspects of Fres\u00e1n\u2019s writing\u2014which he really exploits in this novel\u2014is his endless list making. Amusing, poignant, wooly, and overflowing, these lists make manifest all the various possibilities of a given situation. <\/p>\n

What does The Boy think about? Lots of things! A good writer would point to the racing nature of the boy\u2019s mind, how thoughts are freer when you\u2019re small and haven\u2019t yet heard how stupid your voice sounds when it\u2019s recorded, or what you look like when you dance. An equally good writer might pull out a few telling examples of what\u2019s going on in The Boy\u2019s mind\u2014ideas that illuminate his character and fears, while foreshadowing the arc of his story. (I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s a book I would think is \u201cgood,\u201d but whatever.) Fres\u00e1n provides forty-one random examples of The Boy\u2019s thoughts over six pages, ranging from the childish,<\/p>\n

\n

— Why does Superman appear to exert himself equally\u2014the same muscle
\ntension, the same knit brow\u2014when he picks up a car or alters the orbit of an
\nentire planet?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

or,<\/p>\n

\n

— Is Jell-O animal, vegetal, mineral, or interplanetary?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

to the more character-specific,<\/p>\n

\n

— What\u2019s a comma doing putting itself between two numbers? Was mathematics created just to drive him crazy, a universal conspiracy in which everyone pretends to understand something that\u2019s clearly incomprehensible and has no sense or logic? And what makes a psychotic so sure that 2 + 2 makes 5, while a neurotic knows that 2 + 2 makes 4 but just can\u2019t handle it? And what about the person who always thinks that 2 + 2 equals 1 + 1 + 1 + 1, or the exact number of times you have to let the phone ring before answering or hanging up?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

to the more philosophical wonderings a reader looking back on life as a child might think.<\/p>\n

\n

— Why is it that now, later on, when people sing \u201cHappy Birthday\u201d they seem to always be thinking about their own birthday, about how many they\u2019ve had, how many they\u2019ve got left, about whether or not they are happy birthdays?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

*<\/center><\/p>\n

Although I think the seven sections of this novel could be read in any order, \u201cThe Real Character\u201d is a great opening piece, introducing The Boy\/The Writer and Fres\u00e1n\u2019s literary style (references, digressions, lists, and sidesteps) alongside a number of key motifs, not the least of which is the idea of \u201cthe invented part,\u201d which comes up near the end and which is where I\u2019ll leave off for this week.<\/p>\n

\n

The invented part that is not, not ever, the deceitful part, but the part that actually makes something that merely happened into something as it should have happened. Something (everything to come, the rest of his life, will spring from that there and then, from that exact moment) more authentic and valuable and pure than the simple and banal and often unsubtle and sloppy truth. [. . .]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Then, unavoidably, unable to avoid it, when answering those questions, he\u2019ll put on a parentheses face, he\u2019ll invent something, anything, when answering how he invents the invented part. The invented part\u2014an oh so insubstantial cloud that, nonetheless, manages to make the sun shut its mouth and stay quiet for a while\u2014is nothing but a true shadow projecting itself across the real part.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first Two Month Review podcast went up just over a week ago, and the next one—covering the first section of the book, “The Real Character” (pages 1-45)—will be posted next Thursday, June 1st. Prior to each week’s podcast, we hope to have at least some sort of overview post that offers some entranceways to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67426],"tags":[1646,8776,65826,66196],"class_list":["post-306346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-two-month-review","tag-review","tag-rodrigo-fresan","tag-the-invented-part","tag-two-month-review"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306346"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308816,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306346\/revisions\/308816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}