Week Beginning Sunday 7th May 2006: "By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept" (1945) by Elizabeth Smart (1913-1986)

First Line

"I am standing on a corner in Monterey, waiting for the bus to come in, and all the muscles of my will are holding my terror to face the moment I most desire."

Diagnosis: 6/10. Again, a strong opening line, which made me want to read on. Rather abstract if anything, but the imagery works very nicely.

Impressions

I've made an exception with this book and not done a character list, simply because it is the most solipsistic novel I've ever read. No characters are mentioned by name (apart from the unimportant Mr and Mrs Wurtle), and there is very little dialogue - it is almost entirely a chronicle of the thoughts and feelings of the narrator. Not a great deal happens in terms of action - the narrator falls in love with a married man, the man and his wife come to stay with her, the narrator and the man have an affair. The affair continues, they are arrested going to Arizona for immorality (because they are crossing state borders together without being married). The man stays with his wife, but continues the affair and the narrator falls pregnant.

Clearly, when we look at Smart's biographical details, we see that this novel is entirely based on her own experiences. Smart fell in love with the poet George Barker before she even met him - through his work. Then they corresponded, and Barker and his wife flew to the United States to stay with Smart. Smart and Barker began a passionate affair, but he never left his wife even though Smart ended up having four children by him.

This novel is widely acknowledged as a masterpiece of poetic prose, and I can certainly see its appeal - there can be no denying its emotional rawness and you have to admire Smart's courage in attempting to turn her passionate feelings into art by means of such an unusual and unique narrative style. However, I did not enjoy the book. Perhaps it was the fact that I read it straight after Nabokov, an unparalleled manipulator of the written word, but this novel seemed to suffer by comparison. I found the tone of the novel rather pompous and self-serving, and the narrator constantly casting herself in the role of some tragic lamenting Ancient Greek heroine became irritating. In a novel so loaded (perhaps even entirely comprised of) poetic imagery, there were inevitably things that did not always work - phrases like "the thighs of love" "the cold semen of grief" and "the tigershark that tears my mind to shreds" just seemed to me to be ripe for parody. Certainly, it did have its successful moments - I quite liked, for example "Take care of this girl, for she is what makes my blood circulate and all the stars revolve and the seasons return" - but then again, sentiments such as this have been expressed equally beautifully elsewhere.

I don't want to say that this novel was bad, because I can certainly appreciate what Smart was trying to achieve, but in the end I think it was a bit of a disappointment. I picked it up because of the "remarkable" "intense" spiel on the jacket and because of its reputation as a great piece of poetic writing. I was excited by Brigid Brophy's introduction, in which she compared it to Jean Genet, and her gushing praise of Smart is proof that the right reader could certainly find greatness in this novel - unfortunately though, I was not that reader.