Glover’s Mistake, by
Nick Laird, Penguin, 2009, 247 pages
Is Glover’s Mistake a
comic novel? To answer this, one might consult Jonathan Coe’s discussion of the
comic tradition in England (What’s so
funny about comic novels? The Guardian, Friday 6 September 2013). According
to Coe, there is a Kingsley Amis offshoot of narrative comedy. This tendency
features a hapless protagonist (one slightly more sophisticated than Pierrot,
the sad clown of Commedia Dell’arte) whose mission it is to be initiated into ‘the
awful business of getting on with women.’ Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim (1954) discloses the modern prototype of the comic hero:
an apparent sadsack at the bottom of the male hierarchy, who apes his superiors
behind their backs; who rescues himself from a bad romance as from a sinking
ship; who hopelessly pursues a socially elevated, attractive woman; and who, in
the end, opts out of his entire conundrum.
Glover’s Mistake :
a Hoot?
So when we are introduced to the three main characters of Glover’s Mistake: hapless but
intelligent David, alluring and likely unattainable Ruth, and David’s handsome,
young and, well, very young tenant, James Glover; and when it begins to look
like Glover––of all people!––clueless, unfledged Glover––will get the girl––over David’s dead body– we anticipate
high comedy. Laird’s novel at first blush looks like it is going to be just
this sort of hijinks and hoot.
But Nick Laird’s protagonist, David, is no comic hero. David
will not spend a hundred pages tripping over his own two feet, stymied
amorously and socially, only to get the girl by story’s end. David is no Lucky
Jim, brazening it out in an inhospitable society. The modern comic hero evolved
from the Kingsley Amis prototype may be unlucky in his romantic gambits, but
ultimately he lucks out as a suitor and as a young man on the make. Too
unassertive to get the “girl,” David is content to get revenge.
David’s shadow self is in fact too ambiguous and murky to be
exorcized through a comic plot, and it is part of Laird’s gift as a writer that
he deftly navigates the novel’s passage from the fabrication of comic
expectations to a dark fable of identity.
As a story that is intermittently one of vicariously
experienced otherness, Glover’s Mistake at
times resembles, in terms of character dynamics, Charles Baxter’s more sinister
novel, The Soul Thief (2009). Except that in Glover, it is the main character, David, who manipulates
identities. Under the guise of friend and confidant, masked by the anonymity of
his Internet persona, David stealthily practices soul thievery.
A Soul Thief
“This is what it was like to be Glover,” thinks David, after
snooping through Glover’s room, lying on his bed, and even reading the
bookmarked passages in Glover’s Bible (pp. 153-4, Penguin, 2009). In contrast
to classic versions of a motif that could be termed Visiting the Meaningful
Other’s Place in his Absence––of which perhaps two of the best known instances
are Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and
Prejudice visiting Pemberley, and Tatyana in Eugene Onegin visiting Onegin’s library––David’s intimate
experience of Glover’s room is closer to one of projective identification.
Rather than entertaining an experience of thoughtful
reflection yielding insight, David’s moments in Glover’s room are spent in a state
of projective identification with his absent host, as David confuses his own
identity with that of his enviable young friend. The Visiting Motif typically
plays out as follows: the central character visits the occupant’s abode in his
absence, discovers new information about the occupant, and reflects on the absent
character’s true nature. The occupant might be the beloved, as in the classic
examples mentioned, but it can also be a character, loved or despised, known
intimately or more distantly, living or dead, who is vitally important to the
central character’s sense of self.
Projection, in psychological terms a form of externalizing
conflict, is what David engages in throughout the novel when, avoiding dealing
with his own mixed feelings about Ruth, he focuses on his rivalry with Glover.
In fact before beginning a relationship with Ruth, Glover tries to assess to what degree, if any, David may be
interested–––which is to say attracted––to Ruth. On his first outing with Ruth,
a visit to the National Gallery, David is aware of his lack of responsiveness. As
the couple contemplate Michelangelo’s Entombment,
David projects his dilemma onto the dead Christ figure in the painting. Focusing
on “the spot where his penis should be,” David thinks: “I know how he feels…He
put his hand in the pocket of his duffel and pressed it against his
unresponsive crotch.” (p. 25)
Projection of identity involves the attribution of certain
states of mind, or feelings, to someone else. In Glover’s Mistake, the anticipated match between intellectual equals
Ruth and David doesn’t materialize, in part because David’s positive energy
gets displaced onto his younger sidekick, Glover. In the scene in Glover’s
room, David explores Glover’s being as rivalrous, as unworthy but enviable,
projecting this enviability onto Glover to such an extent that he even envies
Glover his religion––something David has heretofore viewed with derision.
Thus, by contrast with its function in the realist romance Pride and Prejudice, and in the
satirical romance Eugene Onegin, where
the Visiting Motif results in scenes that clarify the character of the beloved,
as well as the relationship between the beloved and the protagonist, the
Visiting Motif in Glover’s Mistake says
far more about David than it does about this other being who is meaningful to
him, not as a love object but as one who. however average intellectually, leads
a life of authenticity and passion. The complexity of the
Visiting Motif as a means of exploring character in this contemporary novel can
perhaps best be seen by comparing it to the uses of the Visiting Motif in the
19th century novel, where the motif serves to provide both the
reader and the main character with insight.
The Good Master
Elizabeth Bennett’s visit to her suitor Darcy’s Pemberley
estate in Pride and Prejudice (1813)
comes at a point in the novel when Elizabeth and Darcy have broken off due to
the improper, even scandalous, behavior of Elizabeth’s younger sisters.
Disgraced by one sister’s elopement and by another’s wild flirtations,
Elizabeth has the necessary social grace to manage the hurt to her family pride.
Does she prejudge Darcy’s reaction to the Bennett family imbroglio? During the
scene in which Elizabeth and her relatives, the Gardiners, visit Pemberley on
the assumption that Darcy is absent, the negative projections which have fallen
shadow-like upon Darcy’s image must be withdrawn one by one as Elizabeth hears
a glowing report of his character from her tour guide: Darcy’s housekeeper.
Deconstructing Onegin
In Pushkin’s novel in verse, Eugene Onegin (1825-1832), the novel’s heroine, Tatyana, visits the
empty mansion of the man who has been the object of her romantic feelings,
Onegin. Far from shy about appropriating the books in Onegin’s library for the purpose
of learning his true character, Tatyana, heretofore a naïve country girl,
becomes a shrewd investigator:
where a sharp nail has made a dent.
On these, with something like obsession,
the girl’s attentive eyes are bent.
Tatyana sees with trepidation
what kind of thought, what observation,
had drawn Eugene’s especial heed
and where he’d silently agreed.
Her eyes along the margin flitting
pursue his pencil. Everywhere
Onegin’s soul encountered there
declares itself in ways unwitting –
terse words or crosses in the book,
or else a query’s wondering hook.
{188}
Indeed, by scanning Onegin’s marginal notations, Tatyana
discovers in Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, and other romantic literature the sources
of Onegin’s ego ideal. As Tanya reads, her own romantic projections fall away. In
just a few stanzas, Pushkin’s heroine changes from a passionate young girl in
love with a man of the world, to a dispassionate analyst of Onegin’s soul. Disenchantment
ensues as she realizes that, not only is
he not the original she took him for, Onegin is a pastiche, and a virtual
patchwork, of the heroes of romantic literature:
Tanya begins to understand
more thoroughly, thank God, the creature
for whom her passion has been planned
by fate’s decree: this freakish stranger,
who walks with sorrow, and with danger,
whether from heaven or from hell,
this angel, this proud devil, tell,
what is he? Just an apparition,
a shadow, null and meaningless,
a Muscovite in Harold’s dress,
a modish second-hand edition,
a glossary of smart argot…
a parodistic raree-show?
(translation by Gary Freeman)
Sacred Spaces
Whether a visitor will experience another’s personal space
in terms of reflection or projection is related to the visitor’s attitude to
the unoccupied space. Visitors who intuit an absent character’s true nature
approach the occupant’s intimate, even if public, space with an attitude of
inquiry, respect, or awe. These intimate spaces guard the mysteries of the human
heart. Such is Yulia Ragayev’s shack, visited by the human resources manager in A Woman in Jerusalem (2004). Typically,
the accidental tourists of another’s secret self treat these intimate places
almost as sacred spaces. Thus the human resources manger approaches a former
employee’s home and possessions in a delicate and scrupulous way:
For a second, he
recoiled. Who had given him permission to be here?…the little shack…suggested a
fairy tale hut in its wintry setting….he…gently gathered the rain-drenched,
mud-and-leaf-spattered articles…wondered briefly whether he had the right to
rinse them…He mustn’t touch anything else… (pp. 85-7, A Woman in Jerusalem, Harcourt, 2004)
“The view from here”
By contrast, David:
So this was the view
from here, from his bed, from his pillow. This is what it was like to be
Glover. Here was his Artex ceiling, the cream paper globe of his
lampshade...The drawer of the wooden bedside table was open a little. He pulled
it a few inches further. Towards the back was an Auto Trader and on top of it
sat Glover’s Bible. When he touched a Bible, David liked to say, he wanted to
go and wash his hands…David pulled out a bookmark…There was something desperate
and saddening about Glover sitting on here….underlining mad and ancient rules
to live by.(pp. 153-6)
There is more. David, envious of what he takes to be
Glover’s simple faith, briefly imagines a possible universe in which disparate
particles and specks of matter “could be resolved”:
For the split of a
second he found himself thinking, Is it really so improbable that God
exists? The sunlight was warm on his
hands and face, and he remembered how faith felt, how cozy it could be…then the
moment passed…If there is a God, David thought, why the fuck should it not be
me?
Coming over halfway through the novel, David’s decision,
following his visit to Glover’s room, to “play God” will lead to a resolution
of the novel’s plot, if not to the resolution of David’s conflicts. The days of
the David-Ruth-Glover triangle are numbered. David will indeed play God,
manipulating the outcome of the romance between Ruth and Glover, an enterprise
in which he is to be helped by his derisory attitude towards Glover, if not
towards Ruth. As David undergoes a metamorphosis from hapless suitor to Machiavellian
plotter, Nick Laird’s novel takes a swerve away from Lucky Jim comedy into a realm where the drama of revenge is leavened
by the darkest of comic enactments.
Ambiguous Satire
Another aspect of Nick Laird’s talent as a writer of fiction
can be seen in his handling of David’s character as the novel swerves from the
appearance of light comedy onto darker terrain. For while David becomes less
the passive sufferer and more the crafty plotter as the story progresses, he
never stops carrying the torch of adoration for Ruth. If David is lacking in
his response to Ruth’s attractiveness, he is full of a slyly sublimated
appreciation for her beauty. Before Glover begins his affair with Ruth, he
initiates the following dialogue with David:
“How do you really feel about Ruth, I mean honestly?”
“I really like her,” David said, mimicking his emphasis. “Why, don’t you?”
“Of course, but I was wondering if
you were going to do anything about it.”
Offended, David “thought Glover considered him inert.” (p.
38) And there is a curious inertness about David. David is being offered
precedence. And David is being forewarned. But, too self-involved to sense a
rival, David misses the warning, even as Glover tells him that he too finds
Ruth attractive.
So David fails at the animal combat of male vs. male, and
fails in that way to win the prize. Yet while his ensuing bitterness twists his
character, and he turns to manipulation and deceit, David, as Ruth’s standard
bearer, remains the window through which we continue to glimpse Ruth, not only
as the object of richly deserved satire, but as an ideal being, one who
inspires David’s continued devotion.
We first see Ruth through David’s eyes and continue to so
see her throughout the novel’s metamorphosis from light comedy to dark satire
cum revenge drama. The novel opens as David spots Ruth across a crowded room:
She did look older of course, and the hair
now unnaturally blonde. Her nose was
still a little pointed, oddly
fleshless, and its bridge as straight and thin as the
ridge of a sand dune; one lit slope,
the other shaded. (p. 3)
This detached, rather fanciful image is soon overlaid with
David’s first sight of Ruth, when he is an art school student and Ruth is his
teacher:
…what came to mind was the moment he’d first
seen her…In various dark layers,
with
a black headscarf over her blonde hair, the new lecturer was gripping each
side of the podium as though she
might fall. She had huge dark eyes, deepened
with a ring of kohl, and spoke with
excessive solemnity, trying to convince them
that she was a serious proposition. The
sobriety, though, couldn’t stay completely
intact. Her voice would crack with
emphasis, she’d accidentally enthuse. She had
an ardour that came with practicing
the art, a passion the professional tutors had
lost. (p. 21)
Throughout the novel, as Ruth becomes involved with Glover
in the most improbable of May/December romances, David remains loyal to his
original vision of
The Lady of the Lectern. At Glover’s stag party, as a drunken
friend of the groom inquires of Glover and David, “So has she got a rack?”
David responds, like a troubadour at a mud-wrestling match:
“Ruth beggars all description. She has an
exquisitely straight nose. And her eyes
Are a deep intelligent brown.”
“An exquisitely straight nose?”
Glover laughed.
“Like Cleopatra’s,” David said. Glover grinned at him with bemused approval:
he couldn’t quite gauge his
seriousness. (p. 181)
David, whose deeds become darker as the novel winds to a
close, continues to be both a source of reasoned idealism: a variety of love,
and, in his waywardness, an object of satire. Classic satire is aimed at
one-dimensional men. Yet many are the barbs of satire that are aimed at David:
troubadour, standard-bearer, confidant, friend, plotter, betrayer.
Today there are many hybrid novels out there, remixes of diverse genres. But not all of them work. Glover’s Mistake succeeds where other books fail because of the author’s exquisite attention to the intermingled elements of character and plot, ideas and writing, comedy and drama. The resulting novel, a whole greater than the sum of its parts, in the end comes to inhabit a kind of alternate universe where comedy joins humor to pathos.
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