Like Banville, like Cusk

  Norm's post on John Banville's The Sea (you must read it - Norm's piece, that is, perhaps not the novel itself...) reminded me of a scene from Rachel Cusk's The Bradshaw Variations in which a character goes to Marks & Spencer to buy a coat. He and the assistant have a brief conversation about whether he wants the coat put in a bag, with or without the hanger, but he opts instead to wear the new coat to go home and have his old jacket bagged.

"Leo feels deflated. Somehow, in the course of that exchange with the woman at the till, the desirability of the brown coat has peaked, has reached the summit of what it is or ever could be. The woman hands him the plastic bag containing his rumpled grey jacket. She has folded it carefully: she has smoothed the exhausted fabric with her long brilliantly varnished nails. She seems to take pity on it, this discarded piece of his life. She seems to feel for it, for all unwanted things, for everything that is old and abandoned: he feels that by her folding and smoothing she has criticised the world for its inhumanity."

    Blimey!

Comments

[Susie Vereker]

Blimey indeed. Actually I liked the image of his old coat being packed away in M&S, but then the para becomes wildly over-written and so, in my view, spoiled. Perhaps she'll grown out of criticising the world for its inhumanity. Loved Norm's blog too.

[Susan in TX]

LOL! At you, and at Norm. I have a feeling there's more than one "prize-winner" out there that will be an embarrassment to their voters in the future... :)

[m]

She can't have shopped in M&S for years ... in my local branch, they'd roll it into a ball and stuff it into a bag that might comfortably hold a T-shirt.

[Dark Puss]

Yes very funny! I was also wondering why South Riding won the 1936 Tate Black Fiction Prize (see my view of the book on CBG).

[Harriet]

Norm's post is brilliant! I haven't read The Sea and I won't bother now. His point about Barry is spot on.

[Janice Hally May]

Oh my goodness, thank you for those! I think it's good to have a NOT To-Be-Read list!

Sometimes, in writing, the minutiae of life can speak volumes - but speaking volumes about the minutiae of life doesn't have quite the same effect!

Thanks again!

[m]

I've just read Norm ... blimey again! I'd forgotten that this ousted the wonderful Sebastian Barry from the prize.

[Norm]

Many thanks for this, Karen. I haven't ever read Rachel Cusk, and I probably won't now!

[Cornflower]

Good point, Janice!