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A review by mghoshlisbin
Pitch Dark by Renata Adler
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
3.75
Less than an affair, I think this novel is more about someone who constantly feels second place to an idea that has become the center of their world.
I am also intrigued by Kate’s pursuit of “quiet” or “rest”, this push around the globe, a desperate attempt to avoid her own self-scrutiny. Perhaps, because I have the inclination to read everything through lens which I am in current obsession, but this novel is more so a scrutinization of self and personhood, politics and art, than it is a romantic affair. In the wake of reading A Hunger Artist by Kafka, I read this novella as a deep examination of self, a humiliation of oneself in the aftermath of searching. You can focus on set refrains: “You are, you know, you were the nearest thing to a real story to happen in my life” or perhaps, “What you’ve done, though, is to arrange you life so that all the things with a little joy or beauty in them were the things in which I had no part.” But these moments of lingering love with Jake are, in my opinion, heavily outweighed by her experiences and the quality of language that Adler brings to the minutiae of her experiences.
I am caught relentlessly in the tide of her slow forming relationship with the raccoon outside her house ( “I thought he was growing to trust me, when in fact he was dying” ), her strange dissociation at the sight of the Evian bottle in Cihrbradàn (70), her commentary on monotony as “a method of enthrallment” (110) and of sentimentality in writing, in reference to Gertrude Stein (115). Her discussion of Jake is the least interesting component of this book, and Kate’s solitude, deep melancholy, is drawn out by the people she seeks to understand and the tides of exhaustion and isolation she feels in its wake.
I am also caught by her final discussions of legality and storytelling in the final pages of the novella. Perhaps I react so strongly to these lines because I find them inherently wrong.
“So what comes before the court is of necessity, and constitutionally obliged to be, a story: and the only ones permitted to bring the story to the courts’ attention, the only storytellers, are the ones to whom the story happened, whom the facts befell” (145).
As someone in my profession, is this not perhaps the most erroneous, and perhaps idealistic, interpretation of the law? Law is an act, a play story, a falsification of facts, in such line as Kate’s previous observations in another context. I disagree also, that law is inherently different from writing in the sense that it is “settled”, pursuant of its own consistency. What is this but another formation of literary canon? Writing is an establishment of imagination, but law is a constant pursuit of truth. Do they not see one another as brothers? As fraternity?
I think I always enjoy Adler when I read her—she is startling and arabesque. Her style falls into the categories of Kate Zambreno (particularly of Drifts ) and Siri Hustvedt. I am interested to understand her better.
I am also intrigued by Kate’s pursuit of “quiet” or “rest”, this push around the globe, a desperate attempt to avoid her own self-scrutiny. Perhaps, because I have the inclination to read everything through lens which I am in current obsession, but this novel is more so a scrutinization of self and personhood, politics and art, than it is a romantic affair. In the wake of reading A Hunger Artist by Kafka, I read this novella as a deep examination of self, a humiliation of oneself in the aftermath of searching. You can focus on set refrains: “You are, you know, you were the nearest thing to a real story to happen in my life” or perhaps, “What you’ve done, though, is to arrange you life so that all the things with a little joy or beauty in them were the things in which I had no part.” But these moments of lingering love with Jake are, in my opinion, heavily outweighed by her experiences and the quality of language that Adler brings to the minutiae of her experiences.
I am caught relentlessly in the tide of her slow forming relationship with the raccoon outside her house ( “I thought he was growing to trust me, when in fact he was dying” ), her strange dissociation at the sight of the Evian bottle in Cihrbradàn (70), her commentary on monotony as “a method of enthrallment” (110) and of sentimentality in writing, in reference to Gertrude Stein (115). Her discussion of Jake is the least interesting component of this book, and Kate’s solitude, deep melancholy, is drawn out by the people she seeks to understand and the tides of exhaustion and isolation she feels in its wake.
I am also caught by her final discussions of legality and storytelling in the final pages of the novella. Perhaps I react so strongly to these lines because I find them inherently wrong.
“So what comes before the court is of necessity, and constitutionally obliged to be, a story: and the only ones permitted to bring the story to the courts’ attention, the only storytellers, are the ones to whom the story happened, whom the facts befell” (145).
As someone in my profession, is this not perhaps the most erroneous, and perhaps idealistic, interpretation of the law? Law is an act, a play story, a falsification of facts, in such line as Kate’s previous observations in another context. I disagree also, that law is inherently different from writing in the sense that it is “settled”, pursuant of its own consistency. What is this but another formation of literary canon? Writing is an establishment of imagination, but law is a constant pursuit of truth. Do they not see one another as brothers? As fraternity?
I think I always enjoy Adler when I read her—she is startling and arabesque. Her style falls into the categories of Kate Zambreno (particularly of Drifts ) and Siri Hustvedt. I am interested to understand her better.