I'm finally doing it.

I'm writing proliferately and painfully and beautifully and I feel possessed.

I am doing this.

Yes.

quick scrambled thoughts.

I need to do a lot of thinking about both Bowen and Baldwin here, mostly because I am concerned about the language with which I am framing my near-future seminar paper.  I talked in class about being intrigued as to why both Stella and David tell “false” or “non-factual” stories about themselves, but I don’t like this language, because really, the stories they are telling are within a work of fiction, itself nonfactual, and also, that any story told is a version and never a full truth.  So I am trying to find more acceptable language for that.

So I’m thinking that I am thinking too much about Stella and David’s motivations behind telling these stories, and not enough about the narratives’ motivations for telling these stories.  What is the similarity between the story Stella tells others about her divorce and the story David tells others about his sexuality?  One, both characters are purposefully deceptive in their storytelling – the narrative and the characters purposely deceive other characters in the novel (and, in Bowen’s case, the reader for a great portion of the novel) – when they tell these stories.  Two, the two authors occupy at least two minority positions in their own lives– Baldwin is gay and black, and Bowen is Irish Ascendancy and a woman.

The contrasts are more interesting.  David lies to obscure or hide his marginalization and align himself with patriarchy (he is desirous of being viewed as a traditional “Man” – the “see I’m straight, see I’m normal” argument), while Stella becomes more marginalized when she tells a story that fights against patriarchy (she is desirous to tell others that she is an adulterer, to place herself in a position of power over the male sex – the “see I’m a wicked woman, see I’m a vamp” argument).  But again, we arrive at a comparison – both David and Stella gain anonymity by telling stories, even though they tell these stories out of very opposite motives.  Why do they want anonymity?  I think they are uncomfortable with their own authority in telling stories about themselves.  I think more largely Bowen and Baldwin are uncomfortable telling stories about people like themselves, and locking these people into stereotypical roles – perhaps motivated by the American psyche of promoting the individual, and the 40s/50s psyche of promoting feminism/the female as individual of the male, in the face of “news” telling us that women should be a certain way?  (After all, Louie finds her ‘identity’ when she reads the newspaper).  Certainly this is related to the cultural work that Bowen and Baldwin are both trying to accomplish through their narratives, but I’m not quite at the point where I can put together all the pieces there yet.

It is refreshing to realize that you miss someone.

A healthy missing, not a pining.

And then to sink into them, exhausted, at the end of a long few days.

It is a coming home of a different kind.