How was the "real core" of that bundt cake so delicately and accurately detectable to Regina Ullman and also to the characters, who could sense its "candid truth" in the light of several signs that were handed out by the author who had created it and likewise created them, and so let us say that the cake is at liberty to understand them just as profoundly as they understand it. If they can see that "the knife stuck fast in [the cake] couldn't find its way in or out," then this cake, which has the same status as them, a noun in a book, must be able to watch them experience their "attentive joy that people feel for one another at these moments" as they arrive at the house where food is going to be cut apart and eaten.
Throughout the story you have this attentiveness; the fine-tuned social senses of these people are at the forefront: "each person had his own sense of proportion, and could sense that the others did as well: still their petty eyes kept searching for something else." Searching, that's what they're doing; they are looking and feeling through the minute signals of the social and transcendent weft. "They have the thoughtful, expectant look of the man who has done everything and is prepared for what is to come." This is as they are moving towards the house where they are going to have lunch and a cake. They are like people who are living in a village where a volcano is about to erupt but the volcano is only a comestible and after they have eaten it they each accept the gift of a flower before they leave the house.
The young girl came to the table with a little basket on her arm, bringing each of the guests one of the little roses or buds that grew in the garden. Her smile was hidden, like the fragrance of the flowers.
The horror seeps into the world very obliquely and the aftermath is expressed gently and obliquely too as they put the flowers in their hats or buttonholes "or held it by the very end of its stem, as if it could easily wilt." How are the flowers hiding their fragrances? Why does the bundt cake try to conceal the knife?
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"the horror" being, maybe, the pointlessness of life? a strong zen component here, it seems to me. a gentle whiff of Indra's net, wherein all things in the universe are spread evenly everywhere, like undifferentiated molecules without value attached. ultimate detachment, in fact. a non ego impression of all reality. i can't wait to get the book; the poetry must be quite haiku-like. thanks for the thoughts...
ReplyDeleteThe Zen idea is interesting. If I had to pin down the horror in this story then I'd say that it seems to come from the presence of the people, as it does in Kafka; there's the sense that the ordinary social arrangements of human beings are capable, in themselves, of generating an ineffable atmosphere of dread.
ReplyDeleteindividual awareness varies. some wouldn't even notice; others can't stand to be around people at all! humans, to a sensitive personality, are barely tolerable at best. loneliness can range from unpleasant to crazy-making, so it's seems a continual struggle to find that balance. some of us like trees better than humanity, anyway... the poetry of chinese taoist hermits bears upon this subject quite well, i've found...
Delete"an ineffable atmosphere of dread": great line!...
DeleteThat's a good point; those those Taoist poems pay such meticulous attention to the presences of human and non-human things. Are people here, are they not here; if they are not here then what is here? "Two or three pines." "Silence of water." "The last fragment of cloud."
Deletei'm well into "the country road" and am seeing, among a host of "ineffable" ideas, much the same kind of reference in r.u.'s work. she is really a poet, as single lines will spur one or several minor explosions of thought that illuminate her images in different ways. as you know it's a volume of short stories, with the first being by far the farthest out. great fun, thanks for pointing her out!
Deletei almost said, "kaleidoscopic fireworks", but then felt it wasn't quite like that. but not ponderous either. she was quite religious, but saw religion in a somewhat naturalistic way; lending sort of a rural flavor to the lines.
DeleteThis is where I see the main stylistic link between Ullman and Walser, that idea of the story as a journey through lines, and "single lines will spur one or several minor explosions of thought." In Walser you see him giving in to that coaxing one moment and then suddenly deciding to resist it (the story is trying to make him talk about the hero but he refuses; he'll talk about the river instead).
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