Story II
‘This bread’s going off,’ said 3. ‘We must have had it quite a while and the bag’s not even open. Honestly, it really gives you a sense of time passing by when you can purchase a loaf of bread, take it home, keep it in your house and then it can go off without you ever being aware it was old.’
4 was in another room, folding away the washing. She faintly heard 3's miserable and reflective voice droning through the expanse she’d applied between them – an act she often did when annoyed with 3; an act she often did. ‘You’ll have to speak up,’ 4 said. ‘I can’t hear you.’
‘I said the bread’s off.’
‘I still can’t hear you.’
3 sighed. What was the use? 3 closed the door. They both knew that they both knew she could hear 4, but it was a relief not to have to pretend that this was the case any more. If she couldn’t actually hear him, everything was much simpler, and now she really couldn’t hear him; at least not to any discernible degree.
‘I suppose I’ll just throw the bread out, shall I?' said 3; the word asked wasn’t really appropriate, since it wasn’t really a question. 3 took the loaf, still in its bag, and held it over the bin. His foot was on the pedal which kept the lid suspended in the limbo between open and shut, volunteering itself to be burdened with waste.
3 felt he ought to put the bread in the compost bin, but that would require opening the bag to tip the bread out. He couldn’t bring himself to destroy the ecosystem contained within the vicious parcel of biodegrading food, for that would be to unleash the multifaceted viruses stored within upon the outside world.
Had van Gogh been present, 3 supposed the artist could have painted a magnificent swirling image of all the spores spreading throughout the house; but, as was often the case, van Gogh was not present.
Instead, he sadly slumped the bag in the bin, still sealed up, still waiting to be eaten, still seemingly unaware that mouldy bread departs unfulfilled.
Upstairs, 4 had managed to block out all signs of 3's distress; 3 was distressed so frequently any issue he faced leant closer to self-imposed anguish than any real-world concern.
4 was now in the relaxing state of full absorption in her own thoughts. Unfortunately, thoughts were often distressing when single-minded, so 4 adopted some of the thoughts espoused by others; she picked up a book, Novel B, and started reading.
Sarah lived in a town house in Essex which was really nice. Her house had all her things in it. She liked it.
In her house, she had books. One of her books was Angel, which was a really good book that was written by Katie Price.
Sarah liked to read when she could, so sometimes she did read because she liked to. On one nice and sunny day in her house in Chelmsford, which is in Essex and is the best place in Essex, she started reading her book.
Angel was so good. It was like if you’ve ever dressed up real nice and gone out on the town and then been hit on by all the guys all the time. So good!
Lots of stuff happened in the book. Lots of really good stuff that was so great. And it was at that moment that what she decided was that she wanted lots of good stuff to happen in her life, too.
Oh, those torturous pages. The thrilling exchange between Sarah who’d just had her nails done and Charles whose family were slightly posh. 4 wondered when the fictional couple bound by the pages she held in her hands would unite in glorious love. It would happen eventually. It always did. In the world of pages, not in the real world.
4 had been reading Novel B for a few weeks on and off. It took time to read and time was all too scarce. She’d started an A-level in English Literature when she was at school, but became bored after a month. She stuck with it, though, and finished with a B grade, showing she had the determination to commit to and go through with anything; a fact confirmed by her having taken half a year to read Ulysses.
3 didn’t have the time for reading. He did so anyway.
At the moment he was reading Novel A, which described the conversations between Virginia Woolf and James Joyce around the time of the start of World War I. It was thrilling.
When I say ‘At the moment’, I refer both to the long-term progress of his reading – ‘I’m currently reading Ulysses,’ she says, whilst sipping a cup of tea and not reading – as well as the immediate event; 3 was, at the present time, engaged in holding the physical book, propping up his location within the narrative through force, and indulging in the experience of having his eyes flow back and forth across the pages before him, taking in every word and allowing every word to take in him.
3 observed the book – Novel A – with a loving glint in his eye. He held the text to his face and sniffed, taking in the luscious particles to his body. It smelt of freshly vinegared chips on a temperate summer’s day.
He began to read, to absorb every word of the text. It ran:
Virginia gazed into the brandy bottle sat on the book shelf. It was far from literary, yet held a revered spot there; a work waiting to be created. She wondered how long it would sit there, and if it would be drunk in happiness or sorrow. She saw the future in the swirling brown liquid, and it was bleak; many hours sat listening to Joyce's bragging.
'It's selling perfectly! Everybody wants to hear the imaginative story of the Dubliners.'
‘Do they? What is it about?’
James Joyce sighed the gently demeaning sigh of someone about to argue for argument’s sake. Virginia Woolf could relate of course, but her arguments had a social purpose; she believed her discussion of life’s tiresome details added to life itself; if Virginia could address the role of women in literature, maybe she could make the fair sex equal as writers.
'Dubliners is not one mere story; it is all manner of stories, detailing the aforementioned Dubliners.' The phrase ‘all manner’ had long eluded Virginia; surely a manner is singular; or else, the phrase may be better explained as ‘all manners’; it seemed unlikely that James Joyce himself understood the expression ‘all manner’; but, of course, he used it anyway; in all likelihood, he used it purely because he did not understand it; Virginia Woolf fancied that Joyce was using the term purely for self-gain; the arrogance of him to believe he had dumbfounded Virginia Woolf was certainly telling.
Similarly, 4 lay on her bed and read from her holy tome: the novel which was Novel B. Though 3 might not regard Novel B as having the same literary value as all the books he read, it brought as much joy to 4 as any book she had ever read, and that included Ulysses.
That most general of messages about the comparison between two works formed the current comparison between the experiences of 3 and 4 in their house at that present moment.
The two homeowners rarely spoke about literature; 3 had learned early on that his cohabitant was a fan of the terrible gutter fiction he so detested – works such as the hated Novel B; likewise, it was the case when 4 first started living in the house that she discovered uncomfortably that she would never share reading tastes with the far more precocious 3.
However, the attitude towards differing literature was not shared by these two people; while 3 was firm in his belief that any literature which amused him was the perfect art form, 4 was happy to let everybody enjoy the writing which most entertained them. The initial discussion about art between the housemates led to a mostly one-sided argument; this was not one-sided in the sense that there was any obvious bias; on the contrary there were only two people living in the house and so there was no external body to impose a bias upon the two people; apart from the societally enforced privileges that each person semi-consciously possessed, there was a level playing field within the house; nobody could be said to have the upper-hand; and so it was the case that the one-sidedness which occupied the debate was on account of the limited understanding between the two people.
The characters of Novel B were not deep in the same sense that Novel A’s allegedly were; none of them were symbolic of social or political struggles, and they said nothing (either verbally or figuratively) about the history of western or east
ern literature. Novel A’s characters did. From all 3 had said about his new favourite book (a new work which 3 claimed to be his favourite ever novel, play or poem, and probably the greatest contribution to the history of western civilisation ever known seemed to emerge with each passing hour), the work talked about Virginia Woolf (every book seemed to talk about Virginia Woolf) in relation to the progress of art.
It was all very well for works to ponder on the nature of beauty and the existence of a perfect art form, but unless they told a compelling story – 4 thought – they were not worth telling at all.
Novel B, however; Novel B had it all. It had romance, it had relatable characters, it had the essence of life.
3 had never read Novel B. The book dealt with nothing more than Novel A did. This was inevitable, since Novel A was actually a fairly dull story about Virginia Woolf and James Joyce bickering over interpretations of The Odyssey. Even then, it left the audience significantly wanting.
3 had his nose deep into Novel A; an unusual expression that was, since having one’s nose inside a book would make it impossible to read; nevertheless, that was the commonly used expression, and the common representationalism.
Fully regardless of the idiom’s ideal idiocy, 3 was keen to read the work, with the potential to retain nostril intimacy with the written word. 3 lived in the fantasy world where Literature came before comfort and all other needs or emotions.
Of course, 3’s main concern was with his own perception of the beauty of literature; with the ability to transform the human mind (or the mind-brain-soul) into any shape, the majesty of literature could never be matched.
Inevitably, the irritation became too much for Virginia. She could never bear to watch people in any level of comfort for any length of time. She stepped over towards James.
'What you doing?' she asked; she sounded angry; this sound of anger probably relied heavily upon the fact that Virginia Woolf was, in her very being, angry; her anger stemmed from every issue in her life; the constant pursuit of perfection and perfectionism; the perfectionism itself was notoriously easy to grasp; yet perfection itself was a Herculean task; she could never resign herself to accept that which was imperfect; but she knew that if she ever hoped to see her writing published she would have to allow a stranger’s dirty fingers to tear up whatever she had produced and to give in to mediocre popularity parades; advertising, and that which was advertisable, were her only prospects of having her work published; she had not the privileges of James Joyce; she had some privileges associated with wealth; but not the power of manhood; she must accept the unacceptable; she must give in to whatever she could publicise; that, or else set up her own publishing press.
'I'm reading,' James Joyce replied. 'It's a concept you may or may not be familiar with.'
'I’m familiar with reading,’ said Virginia, littering her every word with all her excess spite. ‘What I’m not familiar with is lazing around.’
3 looked up from his book and peered over towards the window. The blind was down, but it was a windy day; the stiff sheet of cotton was being blown towards him slightly; then the wind would change and the Earth outside would suck the blind away. As the sheet was drawn into the window, the edges creased and sharp points and caverns appeared on either side. This happened endlessly and day and all night. 3 wondered how long it would be before the creases showed up permanently.
3 returned to his book. Novel A – that was his hearty text; a passionate, literary work based upon the connection between Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.
He knew every word would be perfect; he knew this because he believed Novel A to be the perfect form of literature, and henceforth read it with an utterly unquestioning approach. He looked down at the page again:
‘Who’s lazing around?’
‘There is work to be done. I can’t stand timewasting.’
‘Neither can I,’ said James. ‘That’s why you should lie down and read a book.’
Virginia Woolf could not remember the last time she entered her drawing room and found it free of James Joyce; Virginia Woolf found it impossible to be creative while the man occupied her house, lying around and talking about either Dubliners or how he was the modern-day Homer: all she wanted was a room of her own.
On the contrary, 4 questioned everything she read. 4 took nothing for granted. When 4 opened her book, Novel B, and read the words: ‘She didn't hear him. Charles saw this was going nowhere. He could be insightful at times – and not so insightful at others. At this moment, Charles was somewhere between the two and not prepared, after the day he had had, to sit here with an inattentive Sarah and try to express himself’, she was certain that she liked the work because it pleased her.
Her love of the work came from her subconscious and instinctive feelings towards it.
In this sense, 4 was a far more insightful reader than 3 could ever hope to be. Although 3 believed himself to be a great artist, his views of books were supposedly derived from some outside force. In the same sense that an orthodox Abrahamic follower believed all morality to come from the external force of God, which could neither be seen nor questioned, 3 believed there to be an inherent quality to good literature which was to be accepted unknowingly and unquestioningly, as determined by some abstract but unidentifiable force.
Nietzsche was – under these guidelines – the primary enemy of 3; Nietzsche was the great philosopher who imposed the premise that there is no inherent morality; no guidelines by which life can be judged as perfect or bad; everything, to Nietzsche, existed on a plain beyond good and evil; henceforth, it was the classical summation of these beliefs that Nietzsche named his book such; the great tome of his post-moral beliefs was Beyond Good and Evil; reversing the philosophically based – although primarily pseudo-philosophical at a societal level – trend of looking for the grey areas in life; since Nietzsche blew apart the false perception that the universe was neatly split into good and evil, much public discourse had begun to redesign and reshape the structure of civilisation in order to account for the spectral view of reality; of course, the horrors of the 20th century (namely in the forms of dictators in the 1930s, such as Stalin, Hitler, Churchill, Mussolini and Franco – Generalissimo, not James) destroyed finally the false perception that humanity primarily aspired towards good; the wars and atrocities of the past century depicted perfectly that humanity is not a perfect species driven by God’s love; humans are whatever society molds them into; this necessitated a new form of literature, to reflect the definitive trend away from religion and towards quantifiable reality.
3 was fully ignorant of this interpretation of his reading abilities; far from the extent to which he could read, the essence of his reading abilities was why he read; while 4 read for the sheer pleasure of reading; 4 was certain that she knew why she read; her ultimate aim was pleasure; by reading books she enjoyed, she could achieve pleasure; disregarding the artistic aims of the writers, she read just because she wished to; 3, on the contrary, aimed to please some mythical deities of literary values; the unknown bodies of art which controlled the powers of quality and shoddiness in the world.
'I had a flick through Novel A while you were out.’
'What did you think?'
'I don't get the point. It's not fun.'
'It's not meant to be fun. It's a serious exploration of the nature of literature as well as an evaluation of the influence of the classics upon the early Modernists.'
'So? What's so great about a bunch of old guys sitting around and talking about The Odyssey?'
'It's not old guys. You want to read about it because they're great writers.'
'It's not actually them. It's just a fictional story.'
'Yes, but it's inspired by what they wrote; written in their fantastic style.'
'So?'
'So? It borrows from the greatest works by the greatest writers. This is James Joyce and Virginia Woolf we're talking about.'
'Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf, that's all I ever hear about.'
/> 'Because Virginia Woolf is the best. Read Mrs Dalloway. Better still, read Novel A. It will change your life.'
'Is it that good? It changed your life.'
'Not my life, your life. Read it.'
'Okay, but on one condition.'
'Such a cheesy line. You ought to read great literature. Go on.'
'You have to read Novel B.'
3 opened the front door to the house and slumped his outdoor accessories on the floor in front of him. He had a particularly sullen expression on his face.
4 wandered downstairs, book still in hand, saw the look, and said, ‘Oh. What’s wrong?’
‘I walked past a woman today who smelt exactly like old cabbage.’
‘What?’
‘Exactly the same. I think it must be something she was smoking, though I can’t say what.’
‘Right,’ said 4. ‘I don’t really know how to respond to that.’
‘Neither do I. What have you been up to?’
4 wrinkled her face and looks grumpily towards her housemate. She had a book in her hand, though not the one she’d been reading all afternoon. The novel in her hand was Novel B, which she’d taken to reading after she’d finished reading a book. ‘I finished reading a book.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ asked 3. ‘Is it a novel I’d be interested in?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘In fact, it is one of your novels. I borrowed Novel A from you. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Not at all,’ 3 said, grinning. ‘How did you find it?’
4 sighed. ‘Pointless. They just sit around and talk about literature.’
‘What else is there to do?’ asked 3.
‘There’s more to life than books, you know.’
‘But not much more.’
‘What I mean is they are dull and have no real events.’
‘What is a real event then?’
4 turned over yet another corner of a page of Novel B, causing 3 to wince vigorously, and placed the book on the table. ‘It’s the mood of intertextuality which pervades neo-modernist literature that ends up removing any sense of original thought.’
‘What’s wrong with a bit of external reference.’
‘I prefer books which refer mainly to themselves.’
‘Why?’ asked 3.
‘Because they build upon themselves by continually working to better their own efforts.’
‘Novel A is odd. I don’t find them realistic as characters, since their only purpose is holding a place.’
‘I don’t think that’s true,’ said 3 as he wandered through to the kitchen, filled the kettle with cold water and placed it back on its stand to boil. He’d heard cold water carried disease less efficiently than warm water, and had never bothered to check if this was true; hence he boiled water from cold instead of starting with hot water and taking that up to 100ºC. ‘James Joyce and Virginia Woolf are distinct enough household identities that any scenario featuring them holds plenty of scope for further exploration.’
‘Yes, but that’s my point. I don’t think anything is actually happening in Novel A itself. They’re just making generic statements and presuming the readers to do the work themselves.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ 3 reached into the cupboard and pulled out a tea bag, holding it from its empty top, at the base of the string, for he never held the string itself, and observed the sagging granules as they descended into his empty mug. He wondered how much psychoanalysis had been performed upon people on the basis of their tea-drinking habits, then wondered no more when it began to feel painful.
‘I’m all for literary criticism and that, but I feel the novel, the actual art if there is any, should be taking between the walls composed of the back and front cover.’
The kettle clicked; its small light went out; the rate of steam expulsion ceased to accelerate; 3 picked up the kettle; he poured the boiling water into the mug; he picked up the mug, now filled with tea, which he took without any milk or sugar; he wondered if that indicated he was asexual; he stopped thinking about Freud; he took a sip of the tea and raised an eyebrow. ‘Surely you don’t view Novel B as artistic.’
‘It’s just as artistic as Novel A.’
He spat out some tea. He always liked to tell people a shock caused him to spit out tea, but his body never naturally reacted like that, so he had to perform a self-imposed convulsion. ‘As artistic as Novel A? But Novel A is a chick-flick!’
‘Hardly. It’s a novel just like any other,’ said 4, picking up the dog-eared text again and flicking through. ‘Granted it doesn’t talk about old writers non-stop, but that doesn’t make it any less worthy of praise.’
‘It doesn’t have any of the same flair. It can never be great literature.’
4 looked over her eyebrows at 3. ‘Oh, please. Do you have to be so pretentious? Nobody really cares about novels like that.’
‘I’d be perfectly content not holding any pretentions, provided everybody read high-calibre literature.’
‘A book is a book. Yes, I know we have a canon and I respect that. I know some books are use more advanced words and make frequent references to poetry, but I found Novel B entertaining and that’s all that matters.’
‘How did you enjoy it?’
‘I said it was entertaining,’ 4 reminded him, ‘not enjoyable.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘A work of art is enjoyable when you gained pleasure from delighting in its events. However, you can watch a horror movie or read a crime book and be horrified by its contents without in any way finding them enjoyable – and still go away with a great opinion of the work; that’s when something is entertaining.’
‘Pssh.’
‘Don’t you pssh at me.’
‘Trash is trash, whatever you want to call it.’
‘That’s not true,’ said 4. ‘To some people it’s “garbage”; to others “waste”.’
‘And what is Novel B to you?’
4 thought about this for a moment. ‘Mixed dry recyclables.’
3 laid down on his bed. The warm, soft blankets were calming at the worst of times. This was not the worst of times. As such, the blankets meant nothing to him.
Who does 4 think she is? Is she some overlord that she allows herself to so overpower me? She's not one of overt intellectual prowess; the trashy novel saw to that; but then she won't allow herself to be brought down in mood by depressing literature; and perhaps that holds some merit of its own.
But does that make her smart? Does ignoring anything which makes you depressed mean you are intelligent? She's certainly acting in her best interests. So am I stupid? But my self-awareness of my stupidity wards off the stupidity itself; which must then mean the arrogant presumption of intelligence means I am stupid; and my stupidity is a hint of intelligence; and this recursive pattern goes on ad infinitum; I must resolve that I am incurably stupid, making myself intelligent in the belief; and so on and so on and so on until death.
But I am thinking these things and she isn't; so perhaps I have the edge over her. Perhaps I, 4, am intellectually superior to all others; I presume this on the basis of my thinking about thinking leads me to be a superior thinker; an inferior thinker after all would not contemplate eir own place in the world of thinkers; a poor-quality thinker would never be able to summon the mental capacity to think in such a self-reflective manner.
I do not wish to be one of those people who believes people can be ranked against each other in such a way; yet deep down I believe that I believe such, even if I do not want to believe it.
I hate snobbery, thought 4. 4 frequently had this concept and claim at the centre of her mind. 4's brain increasingly tailored itself to thoughts on the matter of snobbishness.
Though she believed herself to hate snobbery, she could not fully convince herself that snobbery was completely absent; at the heart of her utter antipathy towards 3 in his belief that Novel A was inherently perfect and Novel B inherently terrible, a niggling part of 4 feared that she, too
, held some form of snobbery.
For the very fact that she contemplated reading Novel A under the belief that it was above her.
But was not her analysis of feeling that there was no debate to be had itself a form of overanalysis.
Was it not the case that all analysis was overanalysis? Why does anything need to be analysed anyway?
If only there were a freer art, there would be no need to analyse. People could speak as they please, but write with an unexaggerated passion.
On a walk later that afternoon, 3 took a chance to free his mind from the strain of literary analysis. What symbolism lies in the trees around me? he thought. What meaning can be brought from them?
What meaning needs to be brought from them? Why does all beauty need a fixed, mandated purpose? I love the trees, as they are an icon of beauty; there is no need to analyse, since the beauty is inherent; perhaps the only purpose for beauty – either in art or life – is merely a substitute for the natural world.
The whole world around him was really just an allegory. A secret message within some outside world.
Then he began to wonder if there could ever be a meaning held by this idea of reality.
'So,' said 3, 'what exactly makes Novel A superior to Novel B?'
'It's just better. More symbolic. More meaningful. More powerful.'
'Uh huh. So what exactly should a book be?'
'It should have a message.'
'Why?'
‘Because that is the purpose of literature.’
3 realised she could never reason with 4. 4’s beliefs were dead set in his mind as the objective truth, and nothing could deter him from believing that he was inherently right about everything.