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<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=marcaramini@yahoo.com
href="mailto:marcaramini@yahoo.com">Marc Aramini</A> </DIV>
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<TD vAlign=top>--- On <B>Mon, 10/17/11, Gerry Quinn
<I><gerry@bindweed.com></I></B> wrote:
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<TD vAlign=top>I don’t agree that the name of the main character in
Suzanne Delage is significant, or that it is about memory.
Sure, the name is apparently that of a minor character in Proust,
and Wolfe is known to like Proust. But nobody has ever, as far
as I know, proposed any particular connection between the actual
Proust character who bears the same name, and the character in
Wolfe’s story. If the story was called Mary Macdonald, I would
read it exactly the same way as I do.
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It does, in my opinion, require that the reader be familiar
with one aspect of Western culture, the romantic love ideal, in
which each person has a soulmate whom they will, it is hoped, marry
and live Happily Ever After. The One In A Million.
Wolfe’s story is an inversion of this trope. It is a horror
story of sorts, about a man who has lived in a small town along with
his Perfect Woman, and by some malign conspiracy of fate, has never
encountered her in person. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The scene is set at the start: “I lay recalling.. my
life. It HAS been a pleasant, though I fear a dull, and
perhaps a lonely, one. ... I have twice been married, but both
marriages were brief... my wives bored me ... and I bored
them.”</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Then comes the bulk of the story, in which he describes how he
might have met this mysterious presence in his life on so many
occasions, but never did.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Finally, he sees her daughter and instantly falls in
love. Note the sensual language of the passage describing her,
used nowhere else in the story. And then the other shoe is
dropped: “She’s the very image of her mother at that age.”</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Perhaps readers would be less confused if the story had been,
in fact, called Mary Macdonald.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></DIV></DIV>
<DIV>> You see, we disagree greatly on it because the premise of the
story is, </DIV>
<DIV>> in italics, "that every man has had in the course of his life
some </DIV>
<DIV>> extraordinary experience, SOME DISLOCATION OF ALL WE EXPECT
</DIV>
<DIV>> FROM NATURE AND PROBABILITY, of such magnited that he might in
</DIV>
<DIV>> his own person serve as a living proof of Hamlet's hackneyed
precept - </DIV>
<DIV>> but that he has nearly always, been so conditioned to consider
himself </DIV>
<DIV>> the most mundane of creatures, that, finding no
relationship to the </DIV>
<DIV>> remainder of his life in this extraordinary experience, HE HAS
</DIV>
<DIV>> FORGOTTEN IT." (361-362, 1st print Endangered Species)</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>That’s what the narrator *thinks* is the premise. He tries to
find a memory of an extraordinary experience in his life, and
cannot. Then he realises that there is one – his having lived in a
small town with a girl whose name he often heard, but whom he never
met.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>> We can accept this as true in which case the narrator DOESN'T
</DIV>
<DIV>> remember or can't make the connection , which would tell us why
</DIV>
<DIV>> pictures of Suzanne would be cut out for scrap booking and the
</DIV>
<DIV>> creepiness of possibly encountering his own daughter, or
even of </DIV>
<DIV>> spreading small pox through the sheets when he and Suzanne got
it</DIV>
<DIV>> on on them, but the point is the EXTRAORDINARY EVENT CAN'T BE
</DIV>
<DIV>> REMEMBERED BY THE NARRATOR, which is EXACTLY why the name </DIV>
<DIV>> of Suzanne Delage and Spanish Influenza and small pox quilts,
all </DIV>
<DIV>> associated with forgotten or shameful memories, are present in
the text.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I don’t see textual evidence for any of these things. Is
smallpox mentioned anywhere at all? We are told why some pictures of
Suzanne were cut out like those of many others including the
narrator. The Spanish Influenza was mentioned, but it was probably a
much later milder epidemic than that of 1918, and the narrator is unsure
what it was anyway.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>> So we'll just disagree on our readings, but the text says the
narrator </DIV>
<DIV>> can't be trusted to relate the extraordinary event and PUTS HIS
MEMORY</DIV>
<DIV>> IN QUESTION with those references. millions of people died
of Spanish</DIV>
<DIV>> Influenze, and he isn't certain about what disease hit his
town. His </DIV>
<DIV>> memory is faulty. He claims he has no idea what Suzanne
looks like, </DIV>
<DIV>> then claims the daughter looks just like her. This is not
Wolfe being lazy </DIV>
<DIV>> with details.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>He is *told* the daughter looks just like her. The important
thing is the effect the daughter has on him. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>There’s no real evidence that the narrator has misremembered or
forgot anything IMO – it is his interpretation that is at fault.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I don’t think Wolfe is being lazy about details.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>- Gerry Quinn</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></DIV>
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