Recently, I’ve found myself in the enviable position of reading during the day, instead of just before bed. Reading nicely places another narrative in my head and I no longer ruminate about absolutely everything that’s happening in my own life, right before bed. Naturally a worrier, my own life used to keep me up at night.
One of the books I read last month was one of a trilogy by Rachel Cusk, Outline. I’m presently reading the second, Transit.
The structure and approach to Cusk’s writing in Outline is fascinating. I hesitate to recommend this book, however, given that it is such an interesting read. My friends don’t necessarily like my take on ‘interesting’ reads. I missed the book discussion on this one. It was held at the Fish Creek Library. I did, however, drop my notes off to the desk one day, hoping that my group would get my take on the read. In the end, I learned that the notes didn’t get passed on to them. But, I wasn’t surprised to learn that no one in my circle enjoyed the book. I wasn’t surprised with that news.
A female writer boards a plane headed for Greece. She will be conducting writing workshops shortly upon her arrival and also taking in a bit of sun. What happens on the flight is that she meets that person sitting next to her…he’s like every other person you stand next to in line or the one who sits across from you in class. He is the person who sits alone at a table in the restaurant where you are reading your book and eating a salad at the same time. These people in our lives are like ‘outlines’…we have no context with them…but, what Rachel Cusk does is she creates their stories, generously building their motivations, passions and needs…their vulnerabilities and strengths. The reader is witness to the building of each character. It’s remarkable.
I am fascinated with the exercises that the protagonist creates for her classes and with the participants’ reactions/responses. I suggest, strongly, that you give this book a chance.
A couple of moments particularly delighted me. I am captivated when one of the writer’s students walks under an open window and hears a familiar piece of music…oh my…so wonderfully- described and so rich in meaning! (page 138). In truth, from beginning to end the syntax and the description is refreshing and new.
Cusk’s writing is thought-provoking.
On page 245…
“She had sat there, she said, and thought about her own lifelong habit of explaining herself, and she thought about this power of silence, which put people out of one another’s reach. Lately, since the incident – now that things had got harder to explain, and the explanations were harsher and bleaker – even her closest friends had started to tell her to stop talking about it, as though by talking about it she made it continue to exist. Yet if people were silent about the things that had happened to them, was something not being betrayed, even if only the version of themselves that had experienced them? It was never said of history, for instance, that it shouldn’t be talked about; on the contrary, in terms of history silence was forgetting, and it was the thing people feared most of all, when it was their own history that was at risk of being forgotten. And history, really, was invisible, though its monuments still stood. The making of the monuments was half of it, but the rest was interpretation.”
In Rachel’s writing, her characters speak…they talk about themselves and we know them like we can not know other characters in other writers’ books.
I see parallels between Outline and my repetitive painting of a single bush at the edge of a pond. It is the atmosphere, surroundings, weather/season, even the time of day that fleshes out what the bush is. In part, this is why I responded to this book as I did. The character (writer) surfaces out of the development of everything around her.
