The Novel: A Survival Skill by Tim Parks

Author:Tim Parks [Parks, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary Criticism, Semiotics & Theory, Books & Reading
ISBN: 9780198739593
Google: SgrHCQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2015-11-15T00:28:58.923552+00:00

Morris is aware of the possible function of these paintings in his life:

Perhaps I collect these paintings so as not to kill again; that thought flashed through his mind. Or perhaps because I’d love to kill again but don’t have the nerve.

A cannibal who wants to have his corpse and eat it. (p. 58)

Still frustrated, however, still convinced he is undervalued, Morris has the idea of sponsoring a major art exhibition focusing on paintings of brutal killing. This megalomania is justified as being essentially didactic in nature: if Morris has something to give to the world, it is his knowledge of what murder is about. At one point, and here again the unconscious had clicked in, this sense of what Morris knows and what paintings tell us about killing is linked to marriage. Our hero is in bed with his wife of twenty years; the couple now live in a state of mutual, sexless incomprehension:

Suddenly, lying in this poignant silence between himself and his wife, it struck Morris with extraordinary force that murder was the moment when the dam broke and the truth about your nearest and dearest burst forth. Two people—Cain and Abel, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, Othello and Desdemona—who had lived together in growing tension and distance, were finally revealed to one another. The horror on the victim’s face was not just the horror of one about to die, that was nothing, but of someone who finally understands what has lain hidden for so long in his beloved’s psyche. Yes! Or there was Romney’s Medea where she is looking at her children and you can see what she’s thinking. They are playing innocently, naked of course, and she is full of fury, full of murder. And the dam is cracking. The inhibitions are going. If I can’t kill my husband I’ll kill them! Good! Any moment now she’s going to jump up and strike.

This was what his art show would really be about, Morris realised: the moment of truth between two people, of awful truth, the rending of the veil that hides our unforgivable selves from each other. And Morris would be making that statement, talking about that issue, which was supremely his issue, but without actually quite giving away his own personal truth.

How brilliant! God!

All at once Morris Duckworth felt so pleased with himself he squeezed his wife’s hand tight.

“Oh Morris!” she murmured.

“Carissima,” he sighed. Full of affection he pushed his face blindly through the dark and kissed her hair.

“How sweet,” she whispered. “What on earth was that for?” (p. 78)

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