A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood

[dejavu]

Any thoughts?

Sara, some interesting questions you raise about the Mr. Strunk passage.  There may be a question of whose "voice" is speaking there, too.

I'm going to lunch now but want to give this some more thought later.

[Ellen (tellyouwhat)]

Here are the questions for the first section of 'A Single Man' for pages  1 - 41:

1.)  The opening of this book is quite unusual and breathtaking - the description of a person coming to consciousness, moving from 'it' to 'he', reflecting on mortality and finally identifying itself as 'George.'  What is your opinion of the opening of the novel?  Is it unique or does it remind you of other books or authors?  How did the passage affect you - does it draw you in or put you off?  Please share your thoughts on this interesting passage.

I absolutely loved the beginning pages and I wondered if the author could possibly keep "it" up.  Very detached and science fiction feel.  Drew me in immediately.

[dejavu]

I’d like to address the second issue first:  the hyperconsciousness of society’s bylaws.  I think this feeling of having “an acute criminal complex” comes from George’s constant awareness that his homosexuality makes him a deviant in the eyes of society.  Being gay is breaking the rules.  He has become used to creating a mask to protect himself from being recognized as gay in many social situations (perhaps, for example, at work).  By extension, he imagines that any people everywhere (the agent who stamps his passport, or the postal clerk who checks his identity) may see that he is breaking the law in some way, presenting a false identity, or otherwise doing wrong.  It’s like the man who knows he left his driver’s license at home, or the woman who knows her friend left some marijuana in the car’s glove box:  they might drive below the speed limit and check the rearview mirror all the time to be sure no police car is following them.  And if a cop does happen to be following them, they will just try all the harder to be sure not to commit the slightest infraction.  The result is a rigidity which George does seem to be experiencing as he drives.  But I don’t think this has anything to do with progress, or an antipathy toward progress.  Homosexuality (rather than a missing driver’s license or the presence of marijuana) seems to be the underlying issue here, in George’s case.  It's not something a cop would stop him for, but he's aware of it nevertheless.

Sorry to quote myself, but I had to refer back to this.  In rereading the text and giving it some more thought, I also realize that George is afraid that if he attracts the attention of a policeman, he might be taken away to "some beautifully-ordered nursery community where Senior Citizens...are eased into senility."  So the fear of aging also enters into his "acute criminal complex," but this sounds like a form of paranoia, since George, at 58, is nowhere nearly old enough to be considered "too old" to drive.  (Although the concepts of "old" and "middle-aged" had a different meaning in the 1950s, when lifespans were shorter.)  But I still think his awareness of his homosexuality as a societal deviance is a more a stronger and more underlying source of his "acute criminal complex" than the questionable notion that he might be getting too old to drive.

[dejavu]

9.)  George concocts a scenario in his mind where he is destroying buildings, kidnapping newspaper people and torturing them, terrorizing the populace and holding executions.  Why do you think he is fantasizing about this?  Does it relate to Jim's death?  To quote the book: 'Does George really hate all these people?' and 'What is George's hate, then?'  What do you make of this passage in the book - is George losing his mind?

This was the strangest section of the book yet.  For one thing, George’s grievances were widely different.  The new apartment building was going to block a view, but that seems like a relatively minor irritation in life, even though it gives him an excuse to rail against “progress.”  The newspaper editor campaigning against sex deviates has a much more serious and dangerous relationship to George’s life, since that could bring about new laws and prejudices that would affect him.  The senator who wants to attack Cuba even though it might mean “rocket war,” could have the most serious and dangerous impact not just on George’s life, but to the lives of everyone in the country.

As George first begins separating his “chauffeur/it” from the rest of his consciousness (going “deep down inside himself” to dwell on the three above irritations), he at first concocts humorous ways of dealing with them:  spraying the apartment walls with an odorant to drive people out, or finding a virus to eat away at the apartment building’s metal; forcing the newspaper editor and others in the anti-vice campaign to perform humiliating sex acts on film.  True, destroying a building and kidnapping newspaper people would have been serious acts, but the details of his plots had humor to them.  I don’t think he was losing his mind here; and I don’t think he had the slightest intention of carrying out these actions; he was just taking out his frustrations with humorous fantasizing. 

But this search for amusing remedies fails George when he thinks of the senator who wants to bomb Cuba.  My theory is that the consequences of what that senator wants to do are so awful that George can’t find a way to cope humorously with him, and that’s what really gets George into a fighting frame of mind.   Thus his idea of forming a terrorist organization.  The only consequence he proposes for the senator is a forced retirement, but he also circles back to include the people responsible for the apartment building and the newspaper.  But he’s stepped up his tactics to include a lot of killing of associated people, including the innocent wives and children of the men actually responsible for the apartment building, the sex deviate editorial, and the bomb-Cuba speech. 

I don’t see how George can possibly hate all the people that might end up being killed in this fantasy, since he doesn’t know them.  For a moment, he somehow associates them all with Jim’s death, saying that “their whole way of life willed it, even though they never knew he existed.”  If Jim had died as a result of anti-gay violence (but later in the book, that doesn’t appear to be the case), then I could see some link between Jim’s death and George’s hatred of the newspaper people.  But I can’t see a link between Jim’s death and the apartment building (which would kill only a rural way of life) or the anti-Cuba speech (which could incite a war that would kill vast numbers of the population).  Perhaps it’s just the broad notion that all of these things (a lost view, possible new anti-deviant laws, and rocket war) represent undesired change, that has George experiencing an undefined hatred which he at first tries to tie to Jim’s death.

When the book asks, “What is George’s hate, then?” we are told that the hate (or rage, or spleen, or resentment) might be nothing more than a stimulant, something to keep George going in middle age.  This seems to imply that George is at a point in life when he has nothing happy to keep him going, so the only way to make his emotions get up off of a plateau is to keep himself angry at things.  Again, I don’t think George is losing his mind here.  There are enough things in his life that he might well be angry at (the modernization of Los Angeles, the prejudices against and misunderstandings of homosexuality, and the possibility of nuclear war).  I just think he is becoming overly preoccupied with these things because they seem like a way of bringing some feelings back into his life, to counteract the emotionless mourning that he has been doing as a result of losing Jim.     

[janjo]

This issue you bring up about breaking society's laws reminds me of a matter which happened here a few weeks ago. The reporter and gay activist Ray Gosling, who is 71, was arrested because he admitted on TV having smothered, with a pillow, a lover who many years before was dying a painful death from AIDS.
An interviewer said to him, "Why did you say it?"
"Don't you realise that what you have done is against the law?"
He replied, "For most of my life, what I AM has been against the law."
In other words, a gay man.

Maybe that sort of feeling colours George's reactions too!

[dejavu]

Good observation, Jess.  Thanks for bringing it up, since I'll bet a lot of people in the U.S. wouldn't have been aware of that incident or interview.

His language expresses a lot:  "What I AM has been against the law."

Back in the 1950s, George probably had that in the back of his mind all the time.  And even (going back to the opening pages of the book), when "it" took on the consciousness of "George," maybe one of the things that George assumed as part of his identity was that he was a man whose existence was against the law.

[Nikki]

9.)  George concocts a scenario in his mind where he is destroying buildings, kidnapping newspaper people and torturing them, terrorizing the populace and holding executions.  Why do you think he is fantasizing about this?  Does it relate to Jim's death?  To quote the book: 'Does George really hate all these people?' and 'What is George's hate, then?'  What do you make of this passage in the book - is George losing his mind?

Jim is nothing but an excuse for hating three quarters of the population of America...  "His teeth grind as he chews the cud of his hate."  If George isn't going crazy, he is certainly having a full-blown meltdown.  He reminds me of someone who starts throwing things around in anger, except he's driving, for God's sake.  The only thing that keeps him from turning into a killing machine is that he arrives on campus and "rapidly puts on the psychological makeup for the role he must play."

His grief has turned him inward, and what feelings he has feed his hatred of anyone and everyone. It's the work at the college that is keeping him together and become the George his colleagues know.

[michaelflanagansf]

"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." Kafka

I hadn't thought of that, but yes!  Thanks Gary.

[dejavu]

Jim is nothing but an excuse for hating three quarters of the population of America...  "His teeth grind as he chews the cud of his hate."  If George isn't going crazy, he is certainly having a full-blown meltdown.  He reminds me of someone who starts throwing things around in anger, except he's driving, for God's sake.  The only thing that keeps him from turning into a killing machine is that he arrives on campus and "rapidly puts on the psychological makeup for the role he must play."

His grief has turned him inward, and what feelings he has feed his hatred of anyone and everyone. It's the work at the college that is keeping him together and become the George his colleagues know.

Nikki, when you say "keeps him from turning into a killing machine," do you mean just that he might kill someone by careless driving?  Or do you think he's actually planning to carry out any of the ideas about killing the women and children of the men whose actions annoy him (the apartment builders, the newspaper people, the senator, etc.)?

If you mean kill someone by careless driving, do you buy the idea that the "chauffeur" part of George is sufficiently in charge of the vehicle to guide it safely to the campus even while the other part of George's mind is burrowing down into these odd or apparently crazy thoughts?  Or do you see the chauffeur as being fallible, so that it could lose control of the vehicle?

Also, I've been wondering, since we're talking about whether George is going crazy:  If you (and any others here who may agree) think he's headed in that direction, do you think that indicates a serious mental illness like schizophrenia (or more commonly, "split personality")?  Is that what's at the root of the apparent "it" vs. "George" split that we see in the opening paragraphs of the book?  Or is that "it" vs. "George" split more of a philosophical mind/body split?

I think that's at the root of what the book means.  Who is George supposed to represent?  Everyman?  A middle-aged man?  A gay man?  A mourning man?  Or a mentally ill man?   

[CellarDweller115]

5.)  The book refers to several gender related attitudes in this first section: 'Mrs. Strunk's hour and the power of motherhood'; 'the masculine hour of ball playing'; 'the doctor's pretty sissy son'; 'The Girls--as Mrs. Strunk and the rest will continue to call themselves' - do these descriptions act to further isolate and alienate George from his neighbors?  Do you think that these gender descriptions are meant to allow us to identify with George and take his part against the neighbors? How do the attitudes concerning homosexuality relate to these gender notions?

I think that there are many places in society today that still fall into the behavior of "typical" gender roles.  From what I've read in the book, it seems that the area George lives could very well still be that way.  I think it's also a way to help explain why George isolates himself from his neighbors.  It's possible that the views of the neighbors could possibly be "homophobic", so to protect himself, he avoids associating with them.

[CellarDweller115]

6.)  George has not told his neighbors about Jim's death.  Why do you think he hasn't told them what happened?  Does this decision tell you anything about how George feels toward Jim's death (e.g., is it his own personal pain and domain and does this make him unwilling to share it)?  Do you think this is making him more or less able to deal with his loss?  The discussion in which he says 'Jim wasn't a substitute for anything' is occurring entirely in his own mind.  Is Jim's death yet another isolation that George has imposed upon himself - should he be having this conversation with someone else?

I don't find it plausible that George would talk to anyone regarding Jim.  From what we've read, he's pretty much isolated himself from the neighbors.  For him to open up that door and invite someone into his home and let them see him when he's at his most vulnerable, and see a very private grief, would be very against type for George. 

Dealing with Jim's death on his own is probably the only way he knows how to deal with this blow.

I see Jim's death as a part of a pattern of isolation.  I think we all know peope who would rather hide away than risk exposing themselves to hurt.  By being alone, George has reduced his chances of being hurt by someone else's death or leaving.  However, in doing so, he's severely limited his chances to connect to anyone, and grow emotionally, which would go back to George being an "it" rather than a "him".

[CellarDweller115]

9.)  George concocts a scenario in his mind where he is destroying buildings, kidnapping newspaper people and torturing them, terrorizing the populace and holding executions.  Why do you think he is fantasizing about this?  Does it relate to Jim's death?  To quote the book: 'Does George really hate all these people?' and 'What is George's hate, then?'  What do you make of this passage in the book - is George losing his mind?

I don't think George hates anyone, or that he is actually feeling hate.  I think he's never moved on past the grief stage of "anger" over Jim's death.  I believe it directly relates to Jim's death, as it's way of expressing the anger he feels.  He has no one to "share" with, so he's turned to imaginary violence towards people he doesn't know.  It's a "guilt-free" way for him to express these thoughts which may be considered "unkind".  No one is hurt, and he's had the chance to expell some of the anger inside him.

I don't believe George is losing his mind.  We've just seen a glimpse inside his head, when he's expressing anger.  I know a number of people who will talk to themselves out loud, and it happens quite often. 

[tfferg]

Yes, indeed.

I think George's terrorist fantasy is purely a fantasy as you say. He is mentally letting off steam in a way that doesn't affect anyone in he real world.

I think one of the things that connects the three phenomena that make him angry is indifference to others, a deep contempt for the lives of ordinary people. In the case of  homophobic newspaper campaigns, it's the obvious bigotry which is whipped up for profit and hate agendas. But the building of the condo in the service of profit and the privilege of the well-heeled and influential shows contempt for the local people and their environment. The rocket crisis is all about the ideological power struggles of political leaders who are prepared to sacrifice three quarters of their own population (let alone the population of the enemy country) for their own insane ends. Remember MAD - mutually assured destruction?!

I don't think George is insane or having a psychotic break. The 'it' and 'he' is not related to a split personalty. BTW, I read up a good deal on schizophrenia after my brother's diagnosis. It has nothing to do with split personalities. The symptoms often include a range of aural and visual delusions, such as hearing controlling and threatening voices in one's head or emanating from the TV and being unable to distinguish them from reality or get rid of them. George has none of these symptoms or others common to schizophrenia.

[tfferg]

Sorry to quote myself, but I had to refer back to this.  In rereading the text and giving it some more thought, I also realize that George is afraid that if he attracts the attention of a policeman, he might be taken away to "some beautifully-ordered nursery community where Senior Citizens...are eased into senility."  So the fear of aging also enters into his "acute criminal complex," but this sounds like a form of paranoia, since George, at 58, is nowhere nearly old enough to be considered "too old" to drive.  (Although the concepts of "old" and "middle-aged" had a different meaning in the 1950s, when lifespans were shorter.)  But I still think his awareness of his homosexuality as a societal deviance is a more a stronger and more underlying source of his "acute criminal complex" than the questionable notion that he might be getting too old to drive.

The other day I read another book set about the same time. Two of the characters were spinsters 'in their desperate years". The descriptions make them seem so decrepit as to be almost one foot in the grave, but their ages turn out to be 60 and 62. And I saw a poster at the hospital the other day with the headline '60 is the new 40'. Ideas of who is old and senile have changed in the last 50 years. George is beng swept up in a society that subscribes to the cult of youth which is also expressed in the way his neighbours bring up their children.

[dejavu]

I think one of the things that connects the three phenomena that make him angry is indifference to others, a deep contempt for the lives of ordinary people. In the case of  homophobic newspaper campaigns, it's the obvious bigotry which is whipped up for profit and hate agendas. But the building of the condo in the service of profit and the privilege of the well-heeled and influential shows contempt for the local people and their environment. The rocket crisis is all about the ideological power struggles of political leaders who are prepared to sacrifice three quarters of their own population (let alone the population of the enemy country) for their own insane ends. Remember MAD - mutually assured destruction?!

Tony, I think this is a very well-stated summary of what the three widely differing sources of George's anger have in common.

Yes, I remember "mutually assured destruction."  That was enough to make any sane man angry.