From: Rich Puchalsky Subject: Re: The Bridge: spoil-o-thon Date: Sunday, May 13, 2001 7:50 PM Twenty-fourth post Metamorphosis: Quarternary (part 1 of 2) Actually, I'm going to briefly go back to a couple of things I missed in the last chapter -- as references pile up on each other, the layered meanings get denser, and I have to decide what to leave out. But these couple of things I probably should have put in. First: in the story of the narrator's life in Pliocene, the narrator starts exercising, he starts playing squash but doesn't like it because "he preferred to have his own territory in a game". "Besides, Andrea kept beating him." This is a comment on his relationship with Gustave; each has their own territory, neither will venture into the other's, and Andrea is the one with real control in that game. Second: I had been wondering about the story of the witch turning into a tree that starts out old and ages backwards. It struck me today that this is probably one of the stories from Ovid's _Metamorphosis_, which has very many stories of women turning into trees. I don't remember it well enough to remember which story is most similar, and I'm not going to take the effort to read through it just for this, but if anyone does remember, feel free. Anyways, someone else here previously suggested a connection to Ovid, and this seems like a clear one. The chapter starts with the narrator talking with his friend about all sorts of then-current stuff, all of which has relevant story overtones. First the narrator mentions that (Revillos band singer) Fay Fife's name is a pun: "Where are you from? Ah'm Fay Fife". Another thread here discussed the symbolism of being from Fife: it's rural, the lower class, the narrator's past, the Kingdom of Fife that is the Kingdom which is one of the directions on the Bridge (the other being the City, or the city of Edinburgh, or the upper-middle class, the narrator's present.) They talk about the Sandinistas and SDI. About parapsychology and lucid dreaming (The Bridge is in some ways a lucid dream, a dream that is consciously controlled by the dreamer). They talk about the hypothesis of causative formation, a theory by a British guy named Sheldrake which struck me as being a big pile of crap -- it's the theory that once someone, somewhere, does something, a "morphic field" makes it suddenly easier for everyone everywhere to do that same thing. Immediately after they discuss what the reader realizes is a candidate for morphic field emulation; a Russian engineer living in France who crashed his car in England, they found a lot of money in the car and suspected him of crime, but he was in a coma which the doctors thought he was faking. "Devious bastards we engineers" the narrator says. And yes, this is quite an idea for the narrator it seems. The narrator's drunk, and he thinks about taking thr train back to Edinburgh from his friend's place. He could take the train over the old bridge, throw out a coin and wish that Gustave would kill himself or that Andrea would get pregnant and want to raise the baby here. He wonders how Andrea could leave Scotland, this was her home, where her mother lived, her earliest friends, where her character formed etc etc. -- he would willingly leave himself out of the equation (yeah right, I must interject) but how could she do it? "Self sacrifice; the woman behind the man, looking after him, putting herself second; it went against all she believed in." The narrator is working himself up, obviously, but let's stop for a moment and ask if that last sentence is true. First, the narrator is as usual conflating the problems of ordinary humanity with the problems of patriarchy; although women are called on to sacrifice for men in certain ways in our societies more than the reverse, this is hardly a case where patriarchy is driving the self sacrifice. The fact is that in any lifetime, patriarchal society or not, there are times when people are called on to make sacrifices for other people. In fact, whenever someone gets sick, someone else must make the sacrifice of looking after them. If Gustave had asked or even implied that Andrea should look after him because she was his woman, she'd have been out of there like a shot, but that isn't what's going on. The problems of human existence can't all be blamed on the capitalist/patriarchal/whatever bogeyman. So, putting aside the bit about "the woman behind the man", does self-sacrifice go against what Andrea believes in, or her character at any rate? Andrea previously said that she was selfish and fickle; the narrator said that she was generous and independent. I implied before that I thought that she was wrong and he was right in that case. Well, now's really the best time to decide; we have all of their back story that we're ever going to get. It seems to me that there is nothing particularly selfish and fickle about Andrea. Fickle people don't get Ph.D's in Russian literature; selfish people don't start salons and support artists. Yes, she sleeps around, but that isn't being selfish by her standards, and she is capable of maintaining long term relationships, so she isn't that fickle. On the other hand, generous and independent seems fairly accurate. She's generous with her time and affection, and certainly independent. If she's making self-sacrifices for Gustave, it seems likely that it's because she sees a need on the part of someone who she genuinely likes, and that her generosity outweighs her need to be independent. The narrator's basic problem with Andrea is that he loves her and she doesn't love him; or rather, she loves him, but not in the same way or with the same strength. In the Intermission to this series of posts I wrote about Banks books being about the human condition; well, this novel is basically a story of unrequited love. I'll get into this in more detail later, I'd better stop for now. So, the narrator is worked himself up. He feels like he should Andrea everything about how he feels, about Gustave and her and himself. (If only he had done that a decade or so ago.) But he can't through to her on the phone. So -- he decides to drive home. Why not, everyone does it, he drives better drunk than most people sober, etc. He tries the phone again: still busy. (Like the time when his mother died, when he got disconnected from her and got angry; the metaphorical dangers of his inability to communicate.) He resolves to drive carefully. "What am I doing this for? he though. Will this really make any difference? I hate people who drunk-drive; why the hell am I doing it?" We know why he's doing it, but he doesn't have the self-knowledge to know why. Largely, I think, because his ideology doesn't permit him to admit that he has every right to feel an honest jealousy and thwarted love, so he has to do a revenge/guilt trip scheme worthy of an 17 year old -- though, to give him credit, worthy of an 17 year old in an operatic or Shakespearian romance. He drives towards the bridge; the rail bridge's hollow metal bones look like dried blood. He thinks, about the bridge. "One day, though, even you'll be gone. Nothing lasts. Maybe that's what I want to tell her." (No, of course not. He wants to tell that *he*'ll be gone, that *he* won't last, because she's left.) "Maybe I want to say, No, of course I don't mind; you must go. [...] Go; we'll all survive." (Of course, he actually wants to say that if she goes he *won't* survive. Isn't fooling yourself wonderful?) A truck pulls out from in front of him; there's an abandoned car there in the near side lane on the bridge, he crashes into it. His seat belt holds buts the steering wheel pistons into his chest. Did he really plan for the whole thing to happen? Well, he hardly can have, you can't plan a crash that will be exactly bad enough to send you into a controllable semicoma but not kill you. So things worked out this way at least partially by chance. On the other hand, it seems clear that he was unconciously looking to have a bad crash that would send him to the hospital and call her back to take care of him. If it hadn't been the abandoned car, maybe he would have contrived something else. He could have died, sure, but when you're that pissed off and drunk, your unconcious is willing to take some big risks. Anyways, she *really* would have felt bad then, wouldn't she? But once it did happen that way, it all makes sense; recall his dream where he decides to run to death on the rotating bridge and get back at the unattainable witches who keep sexually teasing him; "They are caught, bound [..] but I am free." He can lucid dream whatever he wants in his coma, while she must come back and take care of him for a change; didn't that work out well?