"Boredom" by Alberto Moravia

"Boredom" by Alberto Moravia is one of those novels that remains undetected until a big series of republications bleeps it out into the literary radars.  I picked it up at Barnes & Noble for $4.95 in a reprint from the New York Review of Books "classics" series.  I wasn't planning on reading it but after finishing "The Anthologist" by Nicholson Baker I sort of fell into the "drone" of the hyper-introspective male narrator voice, and wanted more of the same highly intellectual, philosophical, hair-splitting story-telling.

The story revolves around a middle-aged artist who has decided not to paint.  He is filled with boredom, which he describes as his inability to have any connection to real things.  Most of the novel revolves around the definition of boredom with the action and descriptive pull of the story as the fuel to that drive for definition.  He becomes involved with a young model named Cecilia and uses her as a laboratory rat for his "travels" in and out of boredom.  What he doesn't count on is her extreme elusiveness.  The young woman is a master of the art of lying, and the long stretches of conversation among them (more like interrogations by the jealous artist) are an example of amazing artistry on the part of Moravia.  Here, as in the many long passages on the nature of "boredom," Moravia "splits hairs" about the seemingly most insignificant matters, but at the same time revealing the intellectual pleasure of delving deep into psychological and philosophical matters that otherwise would appear, well, boring (no pun intended) on the page.  The narrator eventually finds out that the young model is being "unfaithful" to him with another man, an actor named Luciani.  The narrator's drive to find out the truth appears to him as a deterrent to his boredom, but unfortunately it is entirely the contrary. The entire definition/redefinition/classification and reclassification of the story elements make the narrator appear as a very confused chess player trying in vain to make sense of a irrational match.

The narrator does not know where to find the truth, and even as his own eyes appear to deceive him, he resorts to his obsessive thought-process.  But the only thing of which I was not capable was resigning myself to Cecilia's elusiveness, accepting it, and, in short, calmly sharing her favors with Luciani.... so did I seek to console myself by telling myself that, while I knew that Cecilia went to bed with the actor, the latter did not know that she went to bed with me.  In other words, I now found myself, in relation to Luciani, more or less in the position of a lover in relation to an ignorant husband, and no lover was ever jealous of a husband, precisely because knowing, in certain cases, means possessing and not knowing means not possessing.  It was a wretched consolation, but it helped me to pass the time with calculations of the following kind: I knew about Luciani and Luciani did not know about me, consequently Cecilia had been unfaithful to him with me and not to me with him.  Finally there was the question of the money, as there had been with Balestrieri: I gave her money and Luciani not merely did not give her any but spent my money with her; therefore she was making me, not him, pay her, and consequently was in a way unfaithful to him with me.  However, it was not impossible that she was going with Luciani for love and with me for money, therefore she was being unfaithful to me with Luciani.  But Cecilia attributed no importance to money.  Money therefore had perhaps a sentimental significance between her and me, and since the actor did not give her any money, perhaps she was being unfaithful to Luciani with me.  And so on, ad infinitum."  

While the plot runs throughout with passages very much like this one, the novel is driven by a subtle amount of action that does not interrupt the inquisitive stream of consciousness-like thought process of the narrator.  This is where I believe the artistry of the novel resides... Moravia is able to (much like Nicholson Baker in "The Anthologist") straddle that line between the useless "hair-splitting" and the philosophical examination and get it down on paper in a very pure state.  To engage the reader at that level, and to get readers to continue passing the page while at the same time putting down these type of passages of deeply introspective ruminations that could potentially bore the average reader... well, to do that and to do it well is art exemplified.

There is no real revelation for the protagonist/narrator at the end.  Yet, having said that, this novel drives itself by the mere force of its art and its amazing depiction of the obsessive human mind at work.  Perhaps that is exactly where the core of existence resides... that we may struggle for meaning and definition while the continued examination never really ends.  "Boredom" is Alberto Moravia's "Ulysses" but with a far better and more traditional plot.

Claire Messud's "The Emperor's Children," and the Question of Literary Fiction

"The Emperor's Children" is indeed a fine novel. I read a review online yesterday that accused Messud of over-writing, long-windedness and a pretentious style. I believe I had the same impression when I first read "The Last Life." I remember thinking that I could have written the book (how pretentious of me) in less than 250 pages and still say the same thing. But what was at fault with that assessment was the fact that it was my first Claire Messud novel, and I didn't really know her and her style and her wonderful and beautiful art. "The Emperor's Children" cleared up the issue quite satisfactorily for me. Messud is probably one of the finest writers alive today and, like Paul Auster, she "plays second fiddle" to people like Picoult, Rice, King, Grisham and others who fall under the blessing of a certain talk show hostess. It's a shame, really, but it seems that there's nothing to do when it comes to literary fiction (read the over-simplified definition from wikipedia HERE).


The novel rounds up very well, as the complications between characters become more and more dense. Of course the break-up between Julius and Cohen (the gay couple) is foreshadowed enough for the reader to see it coming. Now, the complications between Danielle and Murray was artfully written, full of tension and an awesome depiction of the human folly. Murray lies to his wife and says he will be in Chicago for the weekend in order to spend the weekend at Danielle's apartment. Of course, he is staying not too far away from his own home. But the problem really comes when a couple of planes hit the Twin Towers and create havoc beyond all ideologies, countries and civilizations. Murray has to come up with a plan to go back to his wife that very day. How to make her think he was able to come back to New York when all the airports were closed? Really, the book becomes an excellent picture of the confusion and human condition of that day. Bootie, Murray's nephew, writes an article criticizing his uncle and it sets off another avalanche of fireworks... characters were so "fleshed-out" and their trials so alive... Messud is really a great writer.


I didn't mean that the authors I mentioned in the paragraph above go without merit. I think that there's enough readership to go around. My concern is with that "vague" genre called literary fiction. How is this defined? Who makes the decision to label it such? More importantly, why is it such a turn off for people who might read a "beach book" voraciously but shun literary fiction after the first few pages? Literary fiction might deal with the so-called human folly, with the full condition of humanity, emotional turmoils, etc. I can certainly understand people have different taste, but to lump literary fiction as "pretentious" is simply a hasty generalization and slippery-slopish. B.R. Myers claims just that in "A Reader's Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literature." The problem with his argument is not that it isn't true--some level of what he claims as pretentiousness must be taking place in academia and writing programs (although a writers' styles do not constitute pretentiousness. Perhaps overwriting, but not pretentiousness). He sweeps and over-encompasses contemporary American authors lumping them together, portraying them as intellectual clowns and posers and insists that the state of literary fiction is (with reference to Messud's title) a case of the emperor having no clothes. An entire chapter is dedicated to Paul Auster. Of course, my bias is immediate and collective: I love Paul Auster's work. I love it because it is deep, meaningful, insightful... in a word: perfect. Getting that out of the way is a good way to "problematize" Myers' argument further. Why is it that enlarging the message of a particular plot, story, or character to uncover what is "underneath" the words becomes pretentiousness? I am not quite sure about Myers' process of categorizing literary fiction, especially American literature, but one could say the same thing about all the literary fiction coming out of Europe and Asia. Certainly, they have the other types: chick lit, techno and legal thrillers, etc. Moreover, literary fiction also comes from thousands of places, written in other languages other than English... should we categorize all of that pretentious as well? One could say the same about the work of Haruki Murakami, or V.S. Naipaul, or Salman Rushdie. Perhaps Myers already has a second book in the works regarding false European erudition... oh God, did I really say that?

I am off to read "The Religion of the Samurai" next. I am excited to be finishing up the semester with so much ease, as I think the work from last semester is paying off now. Presently, the students graduating in June are taking their final exams... it seems like yesterday we started the year. Cheers!