The Sea, The Sea

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There are harebrained schemes aplenty and much of the story has the feel of a stage production as each character hams it up before exiting stage left. What reality she has is elsewhere. She does not coincide with your dream figure. You were not able to transform her." The awful crying of souls in guilt and pain, loathing each other, tied to each other! The inferno of marriage.”

The story of Charles Arrowby, a self-involved and egotistical retired theater director begins as he is setting about to write his memoir. To focus on this task, he secludes himself in a house, not surprisingly, near the sea. He muses: Clement made him feel so good that he did not attempt to find Hartley. She kept him from his one true love by...being...so...terrific. The Poor Bastard.Most of all it is about the depth and changeability of the Sea. The Sea that with one swoosh can take away all that we hold dear and understanding that we never held it in the first place. The Sea, the Sea is the 1978 winner of the Booker Prize for good reasons. It is a brilliantly perspicacious exploration of human weakness in all its gory fullness. All the feelings that torment the soul are thrust into consciousness and displayed so well that the reading experience is so bad at times. Very few books that serve up a detestable self-serving cad as the main protagonist have succeeded in becoming for me a five-star read. This is an exception. I could delve into the profundity of Iris Murdoch on damaged love's lassitudes, but such agony I cannot abide. The bizarre, teasing, unpredictable plot (though plot seems too crude a word, somehow) is one of the great joys of this book. I shan’t, of course, disclose any details. Yet even when you know the story, The Sea, The Sea richly repays rereading (as do all Murdoch’s novels, but this more than most). I have read it five times and I don’t intend to stop there. Is it a genuine voice ? Not enough of one, I fear. Arrowby's dryness is really an unconvincing literary device. (...) The Sea, the Sea tends toward the doughy. There is the genuine weight of obsession in Arrowby's narrative, but also the mere weight of iteration and ingenuity." - Martin Greenberg, The New York Times Book Review

The most significant person, however, is one who had disappeared from Arrowby's life long ago: his lost first love, the woman he wanted to marry but who fled. The life he’d foreseen — the windy, wave-beaten promontory, the sketchy “nature study,” the small gourmet treats (Iris Murdoch does wonders of sneaky characterization by having him gloat over his solitary, greedy, unappetizing menus), the lighthearted pleasure of torturing infatuated ex-mistresses — all begins to disintegrate, as people and nameless things from the past crowd into his field of vision. Arrowby's passion for Mary -- now plain, and settled in a different lifestyle, decades removed from the girl he loved -- comes very close to being beyond believable.Many a menu is described by the would-be gourmet, though Arrowby's tastes differ greatly from most who highly value their food.

Murdoch can be considered an Irish author even though she grew up in and went to school in England. She was born in Ireland and both her parents were Irish.Be still," she begged, "for I must remain unhappily married to the violent Ben and together we must mourn the disappearance of our adopted son, Titus." Anchovy paste on hot buttered toast, then baked beans and kidney beans with chopped celery, tomatoes, lemon juice and olive oil… Then bananas and cream with white sugar. (Bananas should be cut, never mashed, and the cream should be thin.) Then hard water-biscuits with New Zealand butter and Wensleydale cheese. Of course I never touch foreign cheeses.” Felt a little depressed but was cheered up by supper: spaghetti with a little butter and dried basil. (Basil is of course the king of herbs.) Then spring cabbage cooked slowly with dill. Boiled onions served with bran, herbs, soya oil and tomatoes, with one egg beaten in. With these, a slice or two of cold tinned corned beef. (Meat is really just an excuse for eating vegetables.)” But Murdoch’s writing is less sensuous than Banville’s, and Charles is a less sympathetic character. He’s not just a vain, self-centred, controlling, patronising, misogynist who slants and reinterprets events to fit what he wants to believe; he’s actively scheming, abusive, deliberately delusional, and switches between being oblivious to and relishing the disappointments and pain of others. I could have told you the country is the least peaceful and private place to live. The most peaceful and secluded place in the world is a flat in Kensington.”

These events serve two purposes, because they also show another side to Charles. At one point, an ex-girlfriend remarks acidly, "you know you can't keep your hands off women", yet throughout so far Charles has claimed he has a scrupulously fair and respectful attitude to females, even using the word "unsexed" to describe his fastidious, ascetic attitude. Yet now we learn that he has broken up the marriage of Rosina, seemingly just because he can. He will jettison the ever-faithful Lizzie without a thought, at the drop of a hat, as he has done several times before. The reader now begins to wonder about the idolised Hartley. Could the relationship have possibly been as innocent, pure and altogether romantic as Charles has claimed? The journal he writes, and which we are reading, is an attempt to form some structure to his life, and to be a memoir of sorts. But even though he professes to be writing details of the house and village, he seems to find it impossible to concentrate on the job he has set himself, which he says is the reason for being there in the first place. He becomes distracted inordinately easily; even the food he prepares is an excuse. He rambles on about his culinary activities - both past and present, So far, the book is very funny, and exactly conveys the tone and feel of a theatre world where people become, as it were, addicts of illusion, accustomed to manipulate or be manipulated. He has bought a place by the sea -- Shruff End, "upon a small promontory" --, hoping to abandon his old world and life.There's no doubting Murdoch's mastery when it comes to portraying Arrowby's self-deceit. He is able to eloquently insist that he is acting for the good of all concerned while he manipulates and bullies Hartley. Even when he uses Hartley's estranged adoptive son (who arrives on his doorstep in another barely credible coincidence) as bait to lure the poor woman to his house, and then kidnaps her, he puts a case for his own moral righteousness that would be persuasive - if it weren't for the bare facts. Perhaps then Hartley will now be free to live with me?" I wondered out loud, before lapsing into a week-long fever during which I remembered that I had seen the sea monster again during my attempted murder and it had been a Buddha-like James, walking on water, who had rescued Prospero. La mayoría de nosotros transitamos por la vida más o menos desapercibidos, pero existen personas singulares que, allá por donde pasan, dejan un recuerdo inolvidable. Cuando desaparecen, aquellos que los conocieron los recuerdan por mucho tiempo gracias a las huellas que dejaron en su camino. Hay otros, como Charles Arrowby, que más que huellas dejan cicatrices. De todos modos, Charles, aclamado autor y director teatral recién retirado de los escenarios, quiere asegurarse de que su memoria no se desvanecerá, así que ha abandonado Londres para recluirse en Shruff End, una remota casa junto a un acantilado en la costa inglesa, a escribir su autobiografía.