21st Century Literature discussion

This thread is for discussing Part 2.

My my: on rereading, it seems shorter, and also less chaotic. I understand the timelines of the intertwining lives better.

Mark, I would imagine the jumping back and forth in time and perspective would feel... well, less "jumpy" upon a second read. Are there things you're picking up that you missed or misunderstood upon first reading?

I still haven't really made heads or tails of the opening scene from Part 1 (naked man washed up on shore--is that a visual art reference or... ?).

I got about halfway through the first chapter of Part 2 and had to start over--felt lost again, but then I looked up Christine Keeler and this all made much more sense to me. I imagine she's a lot more familiar to Brits than Americans, but I had never heard of her.

Still ruminating on all this tree growth/encasement at the beginning of this part...

I take the naked man to be Daniel's experience in the nursing home as he's dying. It pulls, as Smith has said, images from Odysseus and, I suspect Merlin to shape the events. The Merlin-like encasement is a dream evocation of his immobility in bed. The girls coming along the shore are Elisabeth beside him.

Yes, the first time through, it was just a surreal frame for the story; now, it is as central an experience as Elisabeth's fun at the Post Office.

Also read the links I posted (or others) on Pauline Boty. Smith's stories are often collages of vivid imagined characters moving through historical reality.

I agree with Mark. I would add that it also reflects the idea of metamorphic experience as a liberating act, or rather the ability to transfigure reality into dreams and reverse. (The trees, which Smith must love, will also figure in transformative way later in the book.) There are two extended quotes from Ovid to that effect.

I personally like nonlinear stories when well done, as I think Smith masterfully does it here. The structure is also more like a collage, probably mirroring Boty's collage art.

Yes, I agree that it requires some basic familiarity with the Profumo scandal and Keeler, which I knew nothing about until now. There is also Boty's painting/collage of Keeler entitled Scandal '63. On the whole, it seems to me that bringing in Keeler and Boty speaks against seeing women as objects, though in Boty's case there are also some other thematic layers and it will come full circle for Elisabeth by the end of Part II.

Mark, I saw your post about Boty which intrigued me, along with Smith, to explore her art more and I enjoyed that journey, along with reading Autumn. I will add a couple of more links there.

Thank you both for the explanations and the links, which I've been meaning to check out. She does a wonderful job of having history, art, dream, and fiction bleed into one another (from Daniel's visions to the tree visual/metaphor being part of one of their word games/discussions). I'm thinking there's a nice tie in with humanity's split-from-Nature/desire-to-reconnect-with-nature here, as well, but need to give that one more consideration.