The Butler Has Feelings

Lo and behold, the butler has feelings!   Not only does Lord Darlington notice tears on his face during his father's final evening, he reads romance novels.  Of course, he has reasons for allowing himself to feel emotion -- something that simply does not fit into his concept of a butler.   

The tears that Lord Darlington sees are the only evidence of his grief as his father is clearly dying.  The last conversation he has with him is as formal and stilted as any other up to this part in the book.  Is he remembering the conversations accurately, or is he portraying himself the way he wishes his audience to see him?   His actions that evening show that his job took precedence over his grief, but I can understand that in a way.  When my father died, I only took one day off from classes simply because being at the university distracted me; I could not stay home and allow the grief to swallow me.   I had to deal with those feelings eventually, but it was easier to only allow them space in small increments of time.  However, Mr. Stevens, the butler, does not seem to go back and deal with any of his dismissed and denied emotions, unless it is throughout the course of this narration.

Just as he put his grief aside, he pushes anything he feels for Miss Kenton so deep that he can deny that he feels anything at all beyond a professional respect.  Even that respect is limited as she never quite measures up to his view of a perfect housekeeper.  May only Data from Startrek could be a perfect servant, completing tasks efficiently and thoroughly without letting those pesky feelings get in the way.

One also has to question Mr. Stevens' loyalty to Lord Darlington.  He constantly defends him, but lies about having worked for him.  He provides reasons for Darlington's pre-war allegiances, but not all of them ring quite true.  I find myself wanting to know more about what happened after the war and whether all the other nobles who criticized him were really inviting the same people to be guests at their table.

The romance novels that Mr. Stevens read are the oddest twist so far.  He claims to read them in order to improve his English.   I read cheap romance novels as a way to improve my German, but German was my second language; at that time even the newspaper was still challenging to read for me, but the novels were written at a far lower level.  Mr. Stevens clearly already had the language skills so one must believe that he was a romantic at heart.  

I read a poem by Robert Graves earlier this year about repressing his sexuality.  This theme is also apparent in his autobiography.  Here it is again in this novel.   I know this is a stereotypical view of the English, but I don't know that the English are any different from the Germans and Americans that I know.  All traits appear to some degree or another in every culture that I've encountered.  It will be interesting to see how this novel continues and whether Mr. Stevens finds true love at the end of his journey.

The Remains of the Day

The Remains of the Day is an interesting juxtaposition to Goodbye to All That in that it provides a butler's viewpoint to Edwardian upper class society.  It is interesting that the narrator's view of the English countryside, English people, and a good butler have a common thread of dignity and understatement.  Of course, not everyone fits into his tidy little box of hard-to-define rules.  One gets the impression that even as his father began to become less proficient as a butler-now-houseman, the narrator is more offended by this failure than understanding of the diminishing physical ability that comes to everyone who ages.  It is difficult to glean whether the father feels the same way or whether his reticence comes from shame.  Their conversation is surreal with the narrator referring to his father in the third person.   It seems that this inability to communicate with each other started before the narrator hired his father, the man who originally trained him,  as a an under-servant.   As often happens in families, the roles of father and son are reversed, but this time in a professional environment with little -- or maybe no -- hint of a family relationship.   The narrator clearly admires his father, even puts him on a pedestal, which makes it hard to understand why he would assign him living quarters more suitable to a young housemaid than to a respected and retired butler.

The narrator also continues to refer to the former housekeeper by her maiden name instead of her married name.  Does this indicate a desire to deny that she was married (and therefore emotionally involved) with another man?   I still remember the maiden names of my best friends from high school, but over the years their married names have become a part of them.  It feel that it would be disrespectful to refer to them by their maiden names, especially those of them who have had long and successful marriages.   That brings me back to the book.  The narrator states that Miss Benton has moved out of her marital home and appears to find some pleasure in that idea.  He couches it in terms of not letting a private life interfere with one's professional life, but I think there is more to it than that.  Underneath all the stuffy rules and disparagement of those who do not meet them there may be some real emotion.   I hope I'll find out before the end of the book!

What I'm Not Reading

As we've moved paint cans and yard sale items into more organized piles, I've been able to get to my books that I planned to finish reading this summer.   They are all great books, and I've been waiting so long to finish them, but I am only a little more than a week away from starting my graduate class and have not made much progress on the two novels I need to read before that starts. 

I once told a friend of mine that one of the reasons that I wanted to teach was so that I would have more time and inspiration to continue my creative writing.  It is times like this when I don't even get to read what I want that I truly understand why she softly laughed that day.   She also teaches, so she knows how much our job can dictate what we read and write.

The first book I'm not reading, even though I am three quarters of the way through is Said and Done by Roger McGough.  McGough has been one of my favorite poets since I discovered modern poetry in high school.  The same irreverent humor so often prominent in his poems is also in this autobiography.  It's a book that makes me laugh and my favorite pick for those insomniatic nights when I'm reading at 3:00 a.m.

The next book is also an autobiography by a poet:  Good-Bye to All That by Robert Graves.  Many people assume that I know about the lifestyles of the English upper class, but this book describes a life as foreign to me as to my American students.  What I know about the customs of nobility I have gleaned from shows like Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey and from books.  It is interesting to read about vacation trips to German castles and friendships with people whose names I vaguely remember from my high school history classes, but it in no way reflects the life of the working class population in England.  I have reached the part of the autobiography describing Graves' early years in the military.  I don't know if this book is going to give me any new insights into his war poems.   I can't help but feel that I should be reading a biography about Wilfred Owen instead of this book as Owen is my favorite World War One poet, but I just resisted the urge to order a copy after looking at the other books sitting on the side table waiting for me!

The third book is a autobiography that I started last summer before last year's lesson planning supplanted reading for fun.   I enjoyed Angela's Ashes so much that I knew I would like Frank McCourt's Teacher Man.  I do so enjoy his style of writing, and I also enjoy books written by successful teachers.  I never made it beyond his first year of teaching -- that book may need to go to the top of the stack.

The last book is Stephen King's On Writing.  I've read excerpts from this book and found them enjoyable and useful, both for me and for my students.  I quote the little I've read when I teach with such frequency that I know I need to read the whole book.  I bought it when I bought Teacher Man, but have yet to crack the cover.

Still, I am enjoying Anil's Ghost and The Remains of the Day.  Which one I read depends on whether I pick up a printed book or am waiting somewhere with my Kindle.   Even though I like these two books, I have to quiet the little voice that says that it's summer break and I should be able to read whatever I want instead of reading for work.  I also have to remind that voice that I will be teaching some books that I really like next year and both two of those books are ones that I've read during a summer break!

Anil's Ghost - Questions I Have.

I'm 76 pages into Anil's Ghost, and the question that I keep coming back to is "Who is Anil's Ghost?"  Anil is the protagonist of the book, so if the ghost is the ghost of Anil, she is destined to die at some point during the novel.  That seems unlikely, at least at this point.  So, is Anil's ghost something that led her to Sri Lanka or something that she finds in Sri Lanka? 


So far there are many possible ghosts.  As a forensic archaeologist, she's dealing with dead bodies, so is she to become so embroiled in the search for what happened to the skeleton mentioned most often that he becomes her ghost?   Why did her colleague take photographs of this one skeleton in particular and place them in a envelope that he then addressed?   To whom is he sending them?   If her colleague is not trustworthy, maybe the ghost of Anil will take a lead role later in the story, but I still doubt that.  What about her parents?  Is there some unfinished business with them or with her brother that will come to haunt her?  Why did Anil relinquish the name given to her at birth in exchange for her current name?

One question leads to another in this book, but there is also a plot with events that keep me wanting to read more.  I don't know what I'm enjoying most -- the questions prompted by the title and plot or the story itself?  I left England at close to the same age as Anil was when she left Sri Lanka.  I can relate to the feelings of belonging and not belonging to the country of one's childhood.  That Michael Ondaatje understands this dichotomy after leaving Sri Lanka to live in Canada is clear in the thoughts and actions of Anil.  How will this come into play in the rest of the novel?