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Outline #2
Transit
The stunning second novel of a trilogy that began with Outline, one of The New York Times Book Review’s ten best books of 2015.
In the wake of family collapse, a writer and her two young sons move to London. The process of upheaval is the catalyst for a number of transitions—personal, moral, artistic, practical—as she endeavors to construct a new reality for herself and her children. In the city she is made to confront aspects of living she has, until now, avoided, and to consider questions of vulnerability and power, death and renewal, in what becomes her struggle to reattach herself to, and believe in, life.
Filtered through the impersonal gaze of its keenly intelligent protagonist, Transit sees Rachel Cusk delve deeper into the themes first raised in her critically acclaimed Outline, and offers up a penetrating and moving reflection on childhood and fate, the value of suffering, the moral problems of personal responsibility, and the mystery of change. In this precise, short, and yet epic cycle of novels, Cusk manages to describe the most elemental experiences, the liminal qualities of life, through a narrative near-silence that draws language toward it. She captures with unsettling restraint and honesty the longing to both inhabit and flee one's life and the wrenching ambivalence animating our desire to feel real.
In the wake of family collapse, a writer and her two young sons move to London. The process of upheaval is the catalyst for a number of transitions—personal, moral, artistic, practical—as she endeavors to construct a new reality for herself and her children. In the city she is made to confront aspects of living she has, until now, avoided, and to consider questions of vulnerability and power, death and renewal, in what becomes her struggle to reattach herself to, and believe in, life.
Filtered through the impersonal gaze of its keenly intelligent protagonist, Transit sees Rachel Cusk delve deeper into the themes first raised in her critically acclaimed Outline, and offers up a penetrating and moving reflection on childhood and fate, the value of suffering, the moral problems of personal responsibility, and the mystery of change. In this precise, short, and yet epic cycle of novels, Cusk manages to describe the most elemental experiences, the liminal qualities of life, through a narrative near-silence that draws language toward it. She captures with unsettling restraint and honesty the longing to both inhabit and flee one's life and the wrenching ambivalence animating our desire to feel real.
260 pages, Hardcover
First published September 29, 2016
About the author
Rachel Cusk
55 books4,262 followersRachel Cusk was born in Canada, and spent some of her childhood in Los Angeles, before her family returned to England, in 1974, when Cusk was 8 years old. She read English at New College, Oxford.
Cusk is the Whitbread Award–winning author of two memoirs, including The Last Supper, and seven novels, including Arlington Park, Saving Agnes, The Temporary, The Country Life, and The Lucky Ones.
She has won and been shortlisted for numerous prizes: her most recent novel, Outline (2014), was shortlisted for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmith's Prize and the Bailey's prize, and longlisted for Canada's Giller Prize. In 2003, Rachel Cusk was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'
She lives in Brighton, England.
Cusk is the Whitbread Award–winning author of two memoirs, including The Last Supper, and seven novels, including Arlington Park, Saving Agnes, The Temporary, The Country Life, and The Lucky Ones.
She has won and been shortlisted for numerous prizes: her most recent novel, Outline (2014), was shortlisted for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmith's Prize and the Bailey's prize, and longlisted for Canada's Giller Prize. In 2003, Rachel Cusk was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'
She lives in Brighton, England.
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January 21, 2020I watched as the reader glanced up from the page, sat for a moment without moving, then closed the book.
"That episode about the dog," she said, turning to me, "the episode where the creative writing student succeeded in conveying to the class that his dog was beautiful even though he didn't know how to explain it initially. What exactly did you intend in that episode?"
I asked what she thought I had intended.
"Well, I'm inclined to think you were making a point about the old 'show versus tell' chestnut," she said. While she had been reading Outline, she told me, she had had the thought that the book was something of a manifesto proclaiming that 'telling' can be as powerful a tool in writing as 'showing', and she had continued to ponder that notion as she made her way through Transit. When she had read the passage where the second student insisted that the first student show the class that the dog was beautiful instead of just telling them he was beautiful, she had thought I was setting readers up for a demonstration of some kind.
"And you were," she said. There were layers and layers of telling in the following pages, she went on, as readers were given not only the narrator's version of the first student's account of his involvement with the beautiful dog, but also his story of the woman he met in Nice, and her involvement with the same breed of dogs. And that story in turn included a story about a man the woman had met years before who trained such hunting dogs. At the end of that series of dog stories, which the reader claimed she had read with increasing interest, she told me that she understood why the dog was beautiful and that she had become completely reconciled to my 'recounting' technique, although while reading Outline, and even earlier sections of this book, she had felt frustrated by it.
I asked her why she had chosen to continue reading something that had frustrated her.
"I'm interested in your project," she answered, "which is why I picked up the second book, in spite of the amount of pluperfect tense I was certain it would contain!" She had never come across the word 'had' used so frequently in a text, she said, smiling. But, in spite of the pluperfect tense and the eternal recounting, she had been intrigued by the inner workings of a writer's life that were occasionally revealed in the books. She imagined the text as giving a glimpse of the way writing is arrived at. Or not arrived at, she added, turning to me with a quizzical look, since the narrator of both books, who is a writer after all, she pointed out, didn't seem to be in writing mode during Outline or Transit, yet...
Even while she was speaking to me about Faye not being in writing mode in the two books that existed in spite of that fact, she herself had taken up her iPad and had been typing furiously. I asked her what she was doing.
She took a minute to answer, her fingers flying across the virtual keyboard.
"Oh, you know," she replied at last, "something akin to what you and Faye do with your students, your hairdresser, your builder, the people you meet on planes and at literary forums."
"What exactly do you mean?" I asked, already anticipating the answer.
"I'm using you," she said.
And then she pressed Save
"That episode about the dog," she said, turning to me, "the episode where the creative writing student succeeded in conveying to the class that his dog was beautiful even though he didn't know how to explain it initially. What exactly did you intend in that episode?"
I asked what she thought I had intended.
"Well, I'm inclined to think you were making a point about the old 'show versus tell' chestnut," she said. While she had been reading Outline, she told me, she had had the thought that the book was something of a manifesto proclaiming that 'telling' can be as powerful a tool in writing as 'showing', and she had continued to ponder that notion as she made her way through Transit. When she had read the passage where the second student insisted that the first student show the class that the dog was beautiful instead of just telling them he was beautiful, she had thought I was setting readers up for a demonstration of some kind.
"And you were," she said. There were layers and layers of telling in the following pages, she went on, as readers were given not only the narrator's version of the first student's account of his involvement with the beautiful dog, but also his story of the woman he met in Nice, and her involvement with the same breed of dogs. And that story in turn included a story about a man the woman had met years before who trained such hunting dogs. At the end of that series of dog stories, which the reader claimed she had read with increasing interest, she told me that she understood why the dog was beautiful and that she had become completely reconciled to my 'recounting' technique, although while reading Outline, and even earlier sections of this book, she had felt frustrated by it.
I asked her why she had chosen to continue reading something that had frustrated her.
"I'm interested in your project," she answered, "which is why I picked up the second book, in spite of the amount of pluperfect tense I was certain it would contain!" She had never come across the word 'had' used so frequently in a text, she said, smiling. But, in spite of the pluperfect tense and the eternal recounting, she had been intrigued by the inner workings of a writer's life that were occasionally revealed in the books. She imagined the text as giving a glimpse of the way writing is arrived at. Or not arrived at, she added, turning to me with a quizzical look, since the narrator of both books, who is a writer after all, she pointed out, didn't seem to be in writing mode during Outline or Transit, yet...
Even while she was speaking to me about Faye not being in writing mode in the two books that existed in spite of that fact, she herself had taken up her iPad and had been typing furiously. I asked her what she was doing.
She took a minute to answer, her fingers flying across the virtual keyboard.
"Oh, you know," she replied at last, "something akin to what you and Faye do with your students, your hairdresser, your builder, the people you meet on planes and at literary forums."
"What exactly do you mean?" I asked, already anticipating the answer.
"I'm using you," she said.
And then she pressed Save
December 22, 2022
reading this series feels like eating a bag of chips.
if chips made you smarter..
now that i know that literary fiction books can be series, i want every book to have at LEAST one sequel. no more endings. no more goodbyes. they're illegal.
although...maybe a SLIGHT case of second-book syndrome here...
while this is just as interesting as the first book, the characters seem less pleasant - or are maybe just depicted with less sympathy. while in outline, characters were complex but ultimately human, and endearing in the way of all people when viewed empathetically, this seemed to...skip that step in many cases.
our narrator seems less enamored with people and their thoughts, and while it'd be hard to point to a quote that shows that, you feel it anyway. and i missed it.
bottom line: an interesting reading experience! but one i fell less in love with.
---------------
tbr review
more literary fiction series, please (i never want anything to end ever again)
if chips made you smarter..
now that i know that literary fiction books can be series, i want every book to have at LEAST one sequel. no more endings. no more goodbyes. they're illegal.
although...maybe a SLIGHT case of second-book syndrome here...
while this is just as interesting as the first book, the characters seem less pleasant - or are maybe just depicted with less sympathy. while in outline, characters were complex but ultimately human, and endearing in the way of all people when viewed empathetically, this seemed to...skip that step in many cases.
our narrator seems less enamored with people and their thoughts, and while it'd be hard to point to a quote that shows that, you feel it anyway. and i missed it.
bottom line: an interesting reading experience! but one i fell less in love with.
---------------
tbr review
more literary fiction series, please (i never want anything to end ever again)
May 6, 2019
SLITTAMENTI PROGRESSIVI DEL DOLORE
In copertina, Jarek Puczel: Beloved. (2014)
L’ingresso della metropolitana affacciava su una rotonda dove cinque strade convergevano come i raggi di una ruota. Il traffico era regolato dai semafori, ogni strada attendeva il proprio turno. A volte la rotonda sembrava un luogo di confluenza; altre volte, quando il traffico rombava senza sosta all’intersezione in un caotico fiume di bus, biciclette e auto, sembrava un semplice passaggio, un luogo di transito.
Faye ha divorziato. Per superare il dolore della separazione (abbandono? perdita?) accetta l’offerta di insegnare un breve corso di scrittura creativa ad Atene.
Fin qui Outline – Resoconto, il primo episodio della trilogia.
Adesso, è tornata a vivere a Londra con i due figli. Compra una casa molto malmessa, ma in zona centrale e prestigiosa. La coppia anziana che abita nel seminterrato e possiede metà del giardino è un incubo: intolleranti, sporchi, torvi e sospettosi, insensibili verso il vecchio quadrupede domestico e i suoi acciacchi.
Come nell’altro, anche qui Faye incontra gente con apparente casualità: un ex fidanzato, l’impresario edile che le farà i lavori di ristrutturazione della casa, altri scrittori a una presentazione collettiva e il moderatore della serata, una fotografa che vuole iniziare a scrivere, il muratore albanese, un’amica, eccetera.
Tutti le parlano, con lei si aprono: Faye sa ascoltare, di sé dice poco, di lei continuiamo a sapere pochissimo, ma Faye fa domande, domande mirate, che dimostrano come sappia ascoltare.
Forse non ce ne sarebbe bisogno: tutte le persone che incontra sembrano avere una gran voglia di parlare, raccontarsi, aprirsi. Come se ciascuno avesse un romanzo di suo da trasmettere.
Cusk racconta tutto come se fosse un unico flusso, Faye è un orecchio letterario.
Il flusso mi consente di sentirmi parte, presente agli incontri, come se anch’io stessi conversando con quella gente.
Non che sia gente pregnante di preziose verità: ma la sorpresa a volte si nasconde anche in chi di primo acchito appare banale, poco brillante. È gente in cerca di qualche immagine che corrisponda a ciò che hanno in mente, testimoni invisibili della solitudine altrui, gente che cerca di intercettare la visione che abbiamo di loro prima che noi si possa leggere alcunché in ciò che vediamo.
Anime perse, che esprimono pensieri senza filo logico apparente, un po’ disordinati, scollegati, ma sinceri e inaspettati: convivenze, abbandoni, cambiamenti, addii taciuti, parlano di famiglia, amore, matrimonio, vita in genere.
E anche di tintura ai capelli e parquet isolanti.
La copertina di “Resoconto” sempre di JareK Puczell.
Rachel non è Faye, ma forse vuole farcelo credere, ho l’impressione che per molti protagonista e autrice si identifichino.
Faye è misurata, si trattiene, non sbrodola come pare fare la gente che incontra (e che lei, si direbbe, incoraggia a sbrodolare). Alla presentazione gli altri due scrittori straparlano senza neppure avere bisogno di domande o di presentazione da parte del moderatore: i loro sproloqui sono riportati integralmente (peraltro, per il pubblico in sala divertenti, e per me anche interessanti) – quando Faye prende la parola, Cusk glissa (censura?), passa ad altro. O è Faye a farlo?
[Il lungo finale nella casa di campagna a cena da amici dove racconta a lungo la serata e i suoi commensali, la casa circondata dalla nebbia al punto che pur volendo andarsene a fine pasto sarebbe stato impossibile… Epifania: un film di Buñuel visto più volte, tutte in un’altra vita.]
”L’angelo sterminatore” di Luis Buñuel, 1962.
Cusk riesce a raccontare il caos dell’esistenza nel terzo millennio con scrittura semplice, calma, posata, discreta.
Una specie di trattato filosofico-enciclopedico dell’esistenza contemporanea diviso in tre lunghi capitoli. Di cui questo Transiti rappresenta il secondo.
E anche se il titolo lascia intuire una situazione fuggevole e temporanea, per l’appunto in transito, Cusk mi dice che niente va via per sempre, transita, ma forse ritorna, sicuramente lascia traccia.
L’ho immaginata in un giardino parigino, al crepuscolo, indifferente nel suo abito bianco, un oggetto assetato se non d’interpretazione quanto meno dell’appagamento di uno sguardo umano ammirato, come un quadro a una parete, in attesa.
Marsden Hartley: Ritratto di un ufficiale tedesco (1914).
In copertina, Jarek Puczel: Beloved. (2014)
L’ingresso della metropolitana affacciava su una rotonda dove cinque strade convergevano come i raggi di una ruota. Il traffico era regolato dai semafori, ogni strada attendeva il proprio turno. A volte la rotonda sembrava un luogo di confluenza; altre volte, quando il traffico rombava senza sosta all’intersezione in un caotico fiume di bus, biciclette e auto, sembrava un semplice passaggio, un luogo di transito.
Faye ha divorziato. Per superare il dolore della separazione (abbandono? perdita?) accetta l’offerta di insegnare un breve corso di scrittura creativa ad Atene.
Fin qui Outline – Resoconto, il primo episodio della trilogia.
Adesso, è tornata a vivere a Londra con i due figli. Compra una casa molto malmessa, ma in zona centrale e prestigiosa. La coppia anziana che abita nel seminterrato e possiede metà del giardino è un incubo: intolleranti, sporchi, torvi e sospettosi, insensibili verso il vecchio quadrupede domestico e i suoi acciacchi.
Come nell’altro, anche qui Faye incontra gente con apparente casualità: un ex fidanzato, l’impresario edile che le farà i lavori di ristrutturazione della casa, altri scrittori a una presentazione collettiva e il moderatore della serata, una fotografa che vuole iniziare a scrivere, il muratore albanese, un’amica, eccetera.
Tutti le parlano, con lei si aprono: Faye sa ascoltare, di sé dice poco, di lei continuiamo a sapere pochissimo, ma Faye fa domande, domande mirate, che dimostrano come sappia ascoltare.
Forse non ce ne sarebbe bisogno: tutte le persone che incontra sembrano avere una gran voglia di parlare, raccontarsi, aprirsi. Come se ciascuno avesse un romanzo di suo da trasmettere.
Cusk racconta tutto come se fosse un unico flusso, Faye è un orecchio letterario.
Il flusso mi consente di sentirmi parte, presente agli incontri, come se anch’io stessi conversando con quella gente.
Non che sia gente pregnante di preziose verità: ma la sorpresa a volte si nasconde anche in chi di primo acchito appare banale, poco brillante. È gente in cerca di qualche immagine che corrisponda a ciò che hanno in mente, testimoni invisibili della solitudine altrui, gente che cerca di intercettare la visione che abbiamo di loro prima che noi si possa leggere alcunché in ciò che vediamo.
Anime perse, che esprimono pensieri senza filo logico apparente, un po’ disordinati, scollegati, ma sinceri e inaspettati: convivenze, abbandoni, cambiamenti, addii taciuti, parlano di famiglia, amore, matrimonio, vita in genere.
E anche di tintura ai capelli e parquet isolanti.
La copertina di “Resoconto” sempre di JareK Puczell.
Rachel non è Faye, ma forse vuole farcelo credere, ho l’impressione che per molti protagonista e autrice si identifichino.
Faye è misurata, si trattiene, non sbrodola come pare fare la gente che incontra (e che lei, si direbbe, incoraggia a sbrodolare). Alla presentazione gli altri due scrittori straparlano senza neppure avere bisogno di domande o di presentazione da parte del moderatore: i loro sproloqui sono riportati integralmente (peraltro, per il pubblico in sala divertenti, e per me anche interessanti) – quando Faye prende la parola, Cusk glissa (censura?), passa ad altro. O è Faye a farlo?
[Il lungo finale nella casa di campagna a cena da amici dove racconta a lungo la serata e i suoi commensali, la casa circondata dalla nebbia al punto che pur volendo andarsene a fine pasto sarebbe stato impossibile… Epifania: un film di Buñuel visto più volte, tutte in un’altra vita.]
”L’angelo sterminatore” di Luis Buñuel, 1962.
Cusk riesce a raccontare il caos dell’esistenza nel terzo millennio con scrittura semplice, calma, posata, discreta.
Una specie di trattato filosofico-enciclopedico dell’esistenza contemporanea diviso in tre lunghi capitoli. Di cui questo Transiti rappresenta il secondo.
E anche se il titolo lascia intuire una situazione fuggevole e temporanea, per l’appunto in transito, Cusk mi dice che niente va via per sempre, transita, ma forse ritorna, sicuramente lascia traccia.
L’ho immaginata in un giardino parigino, al crepuscolo, indifferente nel suo abito bianco, un oggetto assetato se non d’interpretazione quanto meno dell’appagamento di uno sguardo umano ammirato, come un quadro a una parete, in attesa.
Marsden Hartley: Ritratto di un ufficiale tedesco (1914).
August 31, 2022
5 "refreshing, uproarious, precise" stars !!
7th Favorite Read of 2018 Award
In 2016 I read Outline, the first in this trilogy by Ms. Cusk and was blown away by her prose, her train of thought and the clarity of her understandings. I wanted and needed more of her prose pronto and that book was my Bronze award of the year !
I was looking for more of the same in this sequel but was not prepared for a very different sort of book. Instead of pristine distillations of thinking and insight I was immersed in something more earthy, moving from the mind down into the throat and staying here.
We have here more of an interactional book about characters' interpersonal experiences rather than their musings. We meet a variety of very interesting self-absorbed characters that share their experiences with our heroine Faye who has moved back to London and is renovating her new house.
We meet her ex-boyfriend, a few fellow writers, a gal pal, a new writing student, a cousin and his new family, an Albanian renovator and two twisted downstairs neighbours. Faye does not process, judge or even emotionally react. She simply absorbs and is like a mirror to others' experiences while she glides like a skater through her own life.
This book is also at many junctures, hilariously funny and even the ridiculousness of some of the situations become profundities and ideas to reflect upon. Ms. Cusk never even closely goes near slapstick, cheap histrionics or sentimentality. Each fact is whole on its own but also contributes to the kaleidoscope of lived life.
Ms. Cusk I love the way you write and the way your mind works. In vernacular, "you fuckin rock!"
7th Favorite Read of 2018 Award
In 2016 I read Outline, the first in this trilogy by Ms. Cusk and was blown away by her prose, her train of thought and the clarity of her understandings. I wanted and needed more of her prose pronto and that book was my Bronze award of the year !
I was looking for more of the same in this sequel but was not prepared for a very different sort of book. Instead of pristine distillations of thinking and insight I was immersed in something more earthy, moving from the mind down into the throat and staying here.
We have here more of an interactional book about characters' interpersonal experiences rather than their musings. We meet a variety of very interesting self-absorbed characters that share their experiences with our heroine Faye who has moved back to London and is renovating her new house.
We meet her ex-boyfriend, a few fellow writers, a gal pal, a new writing student, a cousin and his new family, an Albanian renovator and two twisted downstairs neighbours. Faye does not process, judge or even emotionally react. She simply absorbs and is like a mirror to others' experiences while she glides like a skater through her own life.
This book is also at many junctures, hilariously funny and even the ridiculousness of some of the situations become profundities and ideas to reflect upon. Ms. Cusk never even closely goes near slapstick, cheap histrionics or sentimentality. Each fact is whole on its own but also contributes to the kaleidoscope of lived life.
Ms. Cusk I love the way you write and the way your mind works. In vernacular, "you fuckin rock!"
August 22, 2018
“Transit” - book 2 - in the “Ouline Series”, was so incredibly magnificent from the start —that by the first touch of my finger turning my ebook Kindle page to the next - still only 1% read - half way down the page my eyes were watering.
After I read these words ( after the ‘already’ eye catching - ears popping - very noticeable opening first sentence on the page before), these next set of words destroyed me, enlightened me, gifted me, putting me into an almost hypnotized trance space —— for most of the book. Especially yesterday - 65%% of it I read ‘before’ having a root canal.
The remainder part of the book - I read early this morning- savoring what I had left to read - but that ‘trance’ was lifted. I was back to ‘normal’ type reading. ( is there such a thing?). Well- I wasn’t having a type of out-of- body experience any longer. I was in my present day.
THESE ARE THE WORDS THAT TURN ON A PANORAMIC VIDEO OF MY ENTIRE LIFE YESTERDAY:
“She could sense - the email continued - that I had lost my way in life, that I sometimes struggled to find meaning in my present circumstances and to feel hope for what was to come; she felt a strong connection between us and while she couldn’t explain the feeling, she knew too that some things ought to defy explanation”.
Rachel Cusk’s writing continued and continued to be so exquisite, I almost couldn’t contain it. And it was as though through osmosis, I ‘knew’ the narrator - Faye- was going to tell us a story about A GUY! Sure enough, the first story was about an ex- boyfriend she walked out on years ago - oh - it’s about much more than that - but that’s enough without spoiling the story itself.
While reading Rachel’s MAGNIFICENT WRITING - GUT PIERCING BEAUTIFUL - past -memories were rapidly displaying themselves on the invisible theater screen in front of me. People - places - things which I haven’t thought about in years came flying by - faster and faster. I couldn’t hold onto them. I was on the verge of tears - often re- reading sentences from Rachel’s book - while the slide show of my life kept flashing photos, feelings, memories.
There was Art..... The psychologist from New Jersey. We lived together in Oakland for two years. He was great. He’s still great. On the night of our engagement party at a Chinese Restaurant in San Francisco with our family all attending — I came home from my afternoon job in Berkeley, “ The Pant House”, across from Sproul Plaza from UC Berkeley ( my part time job while going to school), - gave him about $200. worth of guys clothes with my 40% discount - ( bought a lot of clothes) - and gave him my engagement - to marry - ring back to him. I said.... “I’m sorry, I can’t”. I’m sooo sorry”. JUST LIKE THAT....I walked away.
Other memories- many different types -kept coming ...
And not to worry - there was more completion to the Art story.... but not for years. Today he is married - still a therapist - has adult kids - still a wonderful guy. We have a little connection still today.
The FLOOD of memories kept coming. Bluebirds/ camp fire girls in grammar school -sweetest friends - then leaving them ( moving away)....more loss.
Patterns of bolting in my younger years. Those fears of getting hurt, left, created intimacy issues for me for awhile - until I did some growing -healing - as many of us have had to do- especially those who came from broken families- (death in mine at a young age - etc.).
Rachel taps into all issues below the surface. She’s not only a talented writer but very aware of the human conditions: profoundly.
Ron....My boyfriend in 8th grade. We spent 3 hours each night on the phone together. Ron is still my friend today. But at some point in the school cafeteria- I took his ring off ( that was around my neck), walked up to ‘the boys’ table and threw it at him - in front of all his friends.
Years later he told me he deserved it.
We’re still friends today. But so many memories of leaving - loss - surfaced. Luckily I didn’t ‘feel’ the pain this time around - More I studied them - observed them. Was it Rachel’s intention for us to look at our own stories when she wrote this? I have no idea. I also have no idea how other readers will react. I only can report what happened to me.
More ‘run-away’ memories from every guy I kept ‘running from’ kept flashing in front of me. It wasn’t a proud moment. But I didn’t beat myself up over it any longer. Rather I just noticed I don’t run anymore. I also will hang in to solve problems with anyone today if they are willing.
Other memories - of feeling lost on campus in college came back- confused - in a bad space with the Vietnam war going on. I was a straight arrow ex-cheerleader/gymnast, ( still a virgin), who didn’t know how to ‘be’.
Lots of memories of my two very close girlfriends Renee and Lisi since junior high.
Years and years of activities- friends- so many I love with all my heart - silly times - quiet times -regretful times - ongoing and ongoing....then moved through marriage- children - my years with Paul - Katy and Ali ( who got married this month)...
My sister ....my temple - local community - aging - Goodreads - present day
“Transit” reads like linked stories - conversations - observations and interactions. Past memories - changes facing them and accepting them- and current life.....
The depth of Rachel’s stories reaches down into a space inside us - layers deeper than we usually go on a normal day - but she does something specular: it’s possible she invites readers look at their BEST SELVES .... their most honest - vulnerable self.
Remarkable- and meaningful..... Transit was deeply personal ......
It’s LIFE......family, love, breakups, marriage, children, Home Renovation ( one of my favorite stories, as I saw symbolism), writing conference, oh....and a funny story in a beauty parlor.
Obviously, as you can see, I found this book emotionally affecting!
I was going to begin “Kudos”, today.....but since I’m still recovering from yesterday’s root canal enjoyment, I’m going to listen to one of my Audiobooks in the yard instead.
But I’ll read Rachel’s next book soon
Tea time over too!
Blessings & love to the Goodreads community & my friends.
After I read these words ( after the ‘already’ eye catching - ears popping - very noticeable opening first sentence on the page before), these next set of words destroyed me, enlightened me, gifted me, putting me into an almost hypnotized trance space —— for most of the book. Especially yesterday - 65%% of it I read ‘before’ having a root canal.
The remainder part of the book - I read early this morning- savoring what I had left to read - but that ‘trance’ was lifted. I was back to ‘normal’ type reading. ( is there such a thing?). Well- I wasn’t having a type of out-of- body experience any longer. I was in my present day.
THESE ARE THE WORDS THAT TURN ON A PANORAMIC VIDEO OF MY ENTIRE LIFE YESTERDAY:
“She could sense - the email continued - that I had lost my way in life, that I sometimes struggled to find meaning in my present circumstances and to feel hope for what was to come; she felt a strong connection between us and while she couldn’t explain the feeling, she knew too that some things ought to defy explanation”.
Rachel Cusk’s writing continued and continued to be so exquisite, I almost couldn’t contain it. And it was as though through osmosis, I ‘knew’ the narrator - Faye- was going to tell us a story about A GUY! Sure enough, the first story was about an ex- boyfriend she walked out on years ago - oh - it’s about much more than that - but that’s enough without spoiling the story itself.
While reading Rachel’s MAGNIFICENT WRITING - GUT PIERCING BEAUTIFUL - past -memories were rapidly displaying themselves on the invisible theater screen in front of me. People - places - things which I haven’t thought about in years came flying by - faster and faster. I couldn’t hold onto them. I was on the verge of tears - often re- reading sentences from Rachel’s book - while the slide show of my life kept flashing photos, feelings, memories.
There was Art..... The psychologist from New Jersey. We lived together in Oakland for two years. He was great. He’s still great. On the night of our engagement party at a Chinese Restaurant in San Francisco with our family all attending — I came home from my afternoon job in Berkeley, “ The Pant House”, across from Sproul Plaza from UC Berkeley ( my part time job while going to school), - gave him about $200. worth of guys clothes with my 40% discount - ( bought a lot of clothes) - and gave him my engagement - to marry - ring back to him. I said.... “I’m sorry, I can’t”. I’m sooo sorry”. JUST LIKE THAT....I walked away.
Other memories- many different types -kept coming ...
And not to worry - there was more completion to the Art story.... but not for years. Today he is married - still a therapist - has adult kids - still a wonderful guy. We have a little connection still today.
The FLOOD of memories kept coming. Bluebirds/ camp fire girls in grammar school -sweetest friends - then leaving them ( moving away)....more loss.
Patterns of bolting in my younger years. Those fears of getting hurt, left, created intimacy issues for me for awhile - until I did some growing -healing - as many of us have had to do- especially those who came from broken families- (death in mine at a young age - etc.).
Rachel taps into all issues below the surface. She’s not only a talented writer but very aware of the human conditions: profoundly.
Ron....My boyfriend in 8th grade. We spent 3 hours each night on the phone together. Ron is still my friend today. But at some point in the school cafeteria- I took his ring off ( that was around my neck), walked up to ‘the boys’ table and threw it at him - in front of all his friends.
Years later he told me he deserved it.
We’re still friends today. But so many memories of leaving - loss - surfaced. Luckily I didn’t ‘feel’ the pain this time around - More I studied them - observed them. Was it Rachel’s intention for us to look at our own stories when she wrote this? I have no idea. I also have no idea how other readers will react. I only can report what happened to me.
More ‘run-away’ memories from every guy I kept ‘running from’ kept flashing in front of me. It wasn’t a proud moment. But I didn’t beat myself up over it any longer. Rather I just noticed I don’t run anymore. I also will hang in to solve problems with anyone today if they are willing.
Other memories - of feeling lost on campus in college came back- confused - in a bad space with the Vietnam war going on. I was a straight arrow ex-cheerleader/gymnast, ( still a virgin), who didn’t know how to ‘be’.
Lots of memories of my two very close girlfriends Renee and Lisi since junior high.
Years and years of activities- friends- so many I love with all my heart - silly times - quiet times -regretful times - ongoing and ongoing....then moved through marriage- children - my years with Paul - Katy and Ali ( who got married this month)...
My sister ....my temple - local community - aging - Goodreads - present day
“Transit” reads like linked stories - conversations - observations and interactions. Past memories - changes facing them and accepting them- and current life.....
The depth of Rachel’s stories reaches down into a space inside us - layers deeper than we usually go on a normal day - but she does something specular: it’s possible she invites readers look at their BEST SELVES .... their most honest - vulnerable self.
Remarkable- and meaningful..... Transit was deeply personal ......
It’s LIFE......family, love, breakups, marriage, children, Home Renovation ( one of my favorite stories, as I saw symbolism), writing conference, oh....and a funny story in a beauty parlor.
Obviously, as you can see, I found this book emotionally affecting!
I was going to begin “Kudos”, today.....but since I’m still recovering from yesterday’s root canal enjoyment, I’m going to listen to one of my Audiobooks in the yard instead.
But I’ll read Rachel’s next book soon
Tea time over too!
Blessings & love to the Goodreads community & my friends.
April 22, 2021
“Nos han imbuido tanto esa doctrina de que tenemos que aceptarnos, que la idea de no aceptarse es bastante radical.”En muy pocas páginas, Cusk descarga unas cuantas ráfagas contra nuestra contemporaneidad, como quien dispara unos tiros al aire para que todo el mundo sepa inmediatamente y desde el principio a qué debe atenerse. Dianas como la pérdida del sentido de nuestra relevancia en el mundo, nuestra cada vez mayor necesidad de una tecnología con la que no es necesario interactuar sentimentalmente y, por tanto, sin peligro de recibir daño alguno, de nuestro deseo por aquello que justamente no podremos tener e incluso, contradictoriamente, del alivio que sentimos al ver frustrado tal deseo...
Página tras página vamos encontrando gente confusa que no sabe bien a qué agarrarse, qué camino tomar, hombres y mujeres que basan su identidad en el trato que reciben de los demás, que sienten horror a tomar decisiones e inseguridad, culpa y arrepentimiento por las ya tomadas, personas abrumadas por el peso de padres, parejas o hijos, que vuelven una y otra vez a caer en los mismos agujeros de los que creían haber salido, que ahuyentan precisamente a aquellos que aman, que no parecen llegar nunca a su sitio, en constante tránsito a quién sabe dónde. Como dice uno de los personajes, parece como si en un momento dado nos paráramos, miráramos a nuestro alrededor y solo viéramos niños en cuerpos de adultos:
“Lo veía en sus gestos y en sus manías, en su competitividad, en su ansiedad, en su rabia y su alegría y, sobre todo, en sus necesidades, tanto las físicas como las afectivas: hasta los conocidos suyos que tenían una pareja estable —relaciones que él había envidiado por la compañía y la intimidad— le parecían ahora poco más que mejores amigos en el patio del recreo.”Todo esto nos lo hace saber Cusk, como ya nos lo hizo saber en su anterior novela, “A contraluz”, con capítulos en los que a modo de relatos nos describe de una forma fría y distante, y sin embargo emotiva, conversaciones que la autora o alguien muy parecida a ella, Faye, establece con gente de muy distinto sino para reflejar de alguna manera su propia situación, para ofrecernos de nuevo su imagen a contraluz al mismo tiempo que se la expone a sí misma aprendiendo, o intentándolo al menos, cómo escapar de eso que a veces llamamos destino y que no es más, según la autora, que “la reverberación de la voluntad” de los otros o el reflejo de nuestra propia impotencia.
“Comprendí que era posible resistir al mal, pero al hacerlo uno estaba solo. Aguantabas o caías como individuo. Lo arriesgabas todo en el intento: incluso era posible, añadí, que el mal solo pudiera vencerse con el sacrificio absoluto del yo. El problema era que nada podía dar mayor placer a tus enemigos.”Y todo esto es la idea general, o la que yo he extraído de ella, pero la novela tiene un sinfín de pensamientos, de ideas, de lucubraciones sugerentes, a veces un tanto cripticas, como lo son algunos momentos de sus conversaciones volviéndolas un punto inverosímiles, y que te obligan a un ejercicio continuo de análisis, de reflexión constante que hacen que en la práctica estas poco más de 200 páginas dupliquen, como poco, su número.
Por todo ello, "Tránsito" es una novela que deja una sensación de no haber agotado ni de lejos todo lo que la novela ofrece y que, por el mismo motivo, no deja de crecer en nuestro pensamiento desde el mismo momento en el que pasamos la última página.
“… la pérdida era el umbral de la libertad.”
“… nuestras heridas… el único lugar en el que puede arraigar el futuro.”
“… en el amor… que te entiendan crea el temor a que no vuelvan a entenderte jamás.”
June 7, 2019
I loved this - an improvement on Outline. It has the same intensely observed, rigorous sequence of encounters, but here, the stakes are slightly higher, as our lead buys a flat (set up in part 1), goes on a date, and struggles with downstairs neighbors. When tension and curiosity are added in to Cusk's extreme talent, the result is a book I flew through. It WORKS as a part 2, but would also, surprisingly, function as a stand alone.
May 11, 2019
Always happy to read Rachel Cusk even though I'm still to love any of her books without reservations. Her early novels now all blur together in my mind. There was often a sense that the conventions of plot she chose were stifling her gifts as a writer. They were usually beautifully written and observed novels but showed little special flair for narration, their reach like a day out rather than a three week adventure holiday. The book of hers I most enjoyed was her account of a family trip to Italy. The narration was more interesting. She carried something of this more direct autobiographical voice through to Outline. In that book there was a sense of a writer struggling to write herself out of a crisis of confidence, very like Nicole Krauss in Forest Dark. Not only confidence in herself as a novelist but also in the limitations of the novel as a form.
The narrator in Transit is having her ruined house renovated and while this happens she reports a series of conversations she has with people involved in her life, often migrant builders also struggling to build a structure for their lives. We soon come to understand the ruined house with the nightmare neighbours is very much emblematic of her life and the novel investigates - without much sense of hope - the possibilities of restoration. It was a novel that made me think a lot about the role moral judgement plays in our reading of novels. Judgement is what Faye, the novel's narrator, with her pliable passivity, her defensive reticence, seems to be hiding from throughout the book, as if the less she tells us about herself the less she can be criticised. Ironically, her neighbours, who barely know her, hold her in absolute moral contempt. This perhaps is an easy device to win over our sympathy for Faye. But with each conversation we learn a little more about how she has reached this point in her life, though this often involves the necessity of reading between lines. At one point she writes: "It was as if she was trying to intercept my vision of her before I could read anything into what I saw." And this is very much what Cusk does with the reader. It's interesting that Cusk was sued and lambasted for her two non-fiction books. It's as if, on the one hand, she found her voice in those books and on the other hand then found that voice denied her. Outline and Transit are the result - a mischievous form of fiction that poses as autobiography but tells us more about the nature of the world her character is living in than about the character herself.
The narrator in Transit is having her ruined house renovated and while this happens she reports a series of conversations she has with people involved in her life, often migrant builders also struggling to build a structure for their lives. We soon come to understand the ruined house with the nightmare neighbours is very much emblematic of her life and the novel investigates - without much sense of hope - the possibilities of restoration. It was a novel that made me think a lot about the role moral judgement plays in our reading of novels. Judgement is what Faye, the novel's narrator, with her pliable passivity, her defensive reticence, seems to be hiding from throughout the book, as if the less she tells us about herself the less she can be criticised. Ironically, her neighbours, who barely know her, hold her in absolute moral contempt. This perhaps is an easy device to win over our sympathy for Faye. But with each conversation we learn a little more about how she has reached this point in her life, though this often involves the necessity of reading between lines. At one point she writes: "It was as if she was trying to intercept my vision of her before I could read anything into what I saw." And this is very much what Cusk does with the reader. It's interesting that Cusk was sued and lambasted for her two non-fiction books. It's as if, on the one hand, she found her voice in those books and on the other hand then found that voice denied her. Outline and Transit are the result - a mischievous form of fiction that poses as autobiography but tells us more about the nature of the world her character is living in than about the character herself.
August 12, 2018
It is strange, I suppose, for me to describe this trilogy of books as though they were thrillers, but they acted that way upon my consciousness. I read them out of order, 3-1-2, so I will discuss the totality of them in recognition of their separateness. There was a propulsiveness to the story as told by Faye, writer and teacher, former wife and current mother, and narrator of these three slim volumes. These easily contain some of the best writing I have enjoyed for many years.
The perspective in these novels is female, but Cusk gives us a wide range of male personalities to consider. She is not cruel, though it may be true she leaves out that ‘divine spark’ that gives the male its essence, its truest expression. Her observations are deep enough to border on psychoanalysis, giving us the material with which to draw the conclusions. It is fortunate she is so funny because we recognize then that this is fiction. Real life is never so funny. Is it?
The final scene in this novel recalls the title of a memoir of hers, The Last Supper, which is definitive, even conclusive, in some way. I have no idea whether the two are related in subject matter, but somehow I am tempted to believe they are. One leaves the dinner party shattered, with only shreds of one’s understanding of what makes a good spouse, a good parent intact. Everything we understood about marriage and parenting has been challenged and we are distraught to realize the only thing left of our understanding is that love must be in the equation somewhere. Scratch that. Everywhere. In great abundance.
As a set-piece, this scene has no parallel that I know of in modern literature. The utter compulsion with which we listen to each new voice, each new revelation, gives the book its thriller aspect. What new terror is around the turn in the conversation? Parenting is something about which everyone has opinions. Even when we think we don’t, as soon as someone else acts, we realize that oh yes, we do indeed have opinions.
During the dinner party, and several times in the course of this series of novels, Faye takes calls from her own sons, who for one reason or another are on their own while she is away. We see how she reacts, and sometimes, though not always, we learn what she says. We form opinions about her in these moments. Can anyone disapprove of how she handles these intimacies? We have to ask ourselves why she includes these moments in her novels. Is she modeling how she thinks love manifests? I think it may be so.
This narrator, I should remind everyone, is practically invisible in these novels. She had a few opinions in the first novel, delivered to a man she met on an airplane and about whose life she really shouldn’t have had much to say, since he was essentially a stranger to her. Opinions like these gradually peter out over the course of the novels and when she is asked directly for her opinion on some topic, she may instead offer a memory of something that happened to her that could be construed as an answer.
She uses this technique in her writing classes as well. She is challenged when she is teaching writing sometimes that she does not actually teach, and her novels make no sense. What we learn is that her questions in class about classmates’ experiences are meant to expose those things worth writing about, and how to get to that kernel each time. I think we can assume the author Cusk interrogates herself and her experience in this way to get to stories, though that can never account for the alchemy that makes these books literature.
Struggling through her days as a single mother of two boys, Faye manages to engender rage in the residents below her second-floor flat. She determines to hire someone to soundproof the floor while updating the cabinets and finds the most expressive, articulate, introspective builder who reveals he would prefer to live “somewhere completely blank…where there’s nothing, no colors, no features, maybe not even any light…” Similarly, she finds a hairdresser who casually makes the deepest cuts: “To stay free you have to reject change.”
Later, Faye will tell an old friend, “Freedom is a home you leave once and can never go back to.” Does she mean freedom, or innocence? Are they the same? Still later yet Faye wll say to that same friend that desire and self-control are not the whole story when we speak of ourselves in the world. There is also something that happens that some call fate but others might call powerlessness. This phenomenon may be especially observable in relationships, when other have will, but not, perhaps, exclusively. It is existential, a reason there are gods.
Completely convinced of the potency and success of this trilogy, I am surprised to see how many of my fellows in literature did not share my opinion. She tried something unique in these novels that began as an answer to critics of her autobiographies. It worked. I am eager to discover all I can of her writing, and believe she should be close to the top of the list of our best for what she delivers and how she delivers it. Kudos indeed.
Heidi Julavits interviews Rachel Cusk after the publication of Transit in 2017. “Silence,” she said, “is going to become a very powerful thing.”
The perspective in these novels is female, but Cusk gives us a wide range of male personalities to consider. She is not cruel, though it may be true she leaves out that ‘divine spark’ that gives the male its essence, its truest expression. Her observations are deep enough to border on psychoanalysis, giving us the material with which to draw the conclusions. It is fortunate she is so funny because we recognize then that this is fiction. Real life is never so funny. Is it?
The final scene in this novel recalls the title of a memoir of hers, The Last Supper, which is definitive, even conclusive, in some way. I have no idea whether the two are related in subject matter, but somehow I am tempted to believe they are. One leaves the dinner party shattered, with only shreds of one’s understanding of what makes a good spouse, a good parent intact. Everything we understood about marriage and parenting has been challenged and we are distraught to realize the only thing left of our understanding is that love must be in the equation somewhere. Scratch that. Everywhere. In great abundance.
As a set-piece, this scene has no parallel that I know of in modern literature. The utter compulsion with which we listen to each new voice, each new revelation, gives the book its thriller aspect. What new terror is around the turn in the conversation? Parenting is something about which everyone has opinions. Even when we think we don’t, as soon as someone else acts, we realize that oh yes, we do indeed have opinions.
During the dinner party, and several times in the course of this series of novels, Faye takes calls from her own sons, who for one reason or another are on their own while she is away. We see how she reacts, and sometimes, though not always, we learn what she says. We form opinions about her in these moments. Can anyone disapprove of how she handles these intimacies? We have to ask ourselves why she includes these moments in her novels. Is she modeling how she thinks love manifests? I think it may be so.
This narrator, I should remind everyone, is practically invisible in these novels. She had a few opinions in the first novel, delivered to a man she met on an airplane and about whose life she really shouldn’t have had much to say, since he was essentially a stranger to her. Opinions like these gradually peter out over the course of the novels and when she is asked directly for her opinion on some topic, she may instead offer a memory of something that happened to her that could be construed as an answer.
She uses this technique in her writing classes as well. She is challenged when she is teaching writing sometimes that she does not actually teach, and her novels make no sense. What we learn is that her questions in class about classmates’ experiences are meant to expose those things worth writing about, and how to get to that kernel each time. I think we can assume the author Cusk interrogates herself and her experience in this way to get to stories, though that can never account for the alchemy that makes these books literature.
Struggling through her days as a single mother of two boys, Faye manages to engender rage in the residents below her second-floor flat. She determines to hire someone to soundproof the floor while updating the cabinets and finds the most expressive, articulate, introspective builder who reveals he would prefer to live “somewhere completely blank…where there’s nothing, no colors, no features, maybe not even any light…” Similarly, she finds a hairdresser who casually makes the deepest cuts: “To stay free you have to reject change.”
Later, Faye will tell an old friend, “Freedom is a home you leave once and can never go back to.” Does she mean freedom, or innocence? Are they the same? Still later yet Faye wll say to that same friend that desire and self-control are not the whole story when we speak of ourselves in the world. There is also something that happens that some call fate but others might call powerlessness. This phenomenon may be especially observable in relationships, when other have will, but not, perhaps, exclusively. It is existential, a reason there are gods.
Completely convinced of the potency and success of this trilogy, I am surprised to see how many of my fellows in literature did not share my opinion. She tried something unique in these novels that began as an answer to critics of her autobiographies. It worked. I am eager to discover all I can of her writing, and believe she should be close to the top of the list of our best for what she delivers and how she delivers it. Kudos indeed.
Heidi Julavits interviews Rachel Cusk after the publication of Transit in 2017. “Silence,” she said, “is going to become a very powerful thing.”
April 27, 2018
This continues the pattern started in its predecessor Outline. Once again the narrator Faye remains something of a blank cipher and most of the story is generated by the people she talks to, a shifting cast that allows Cusk to cover a wide range of subjects, experiences and situations. There is a bit more of Faye's own life in this one as she moves back to London and deals with builders and difficult neighbours, but for the most part the observational pattern is maintained.
As always the writing is beautiful, honest, smooth, funny and incisive, making the book a pleasure to read, but rather more difficult to convey in a succinct review. A typical line from early in the book: Besides, Clara needed relatives: it was Diane's view that bringing up a completely undamaged child was in bad taste.
The final section in which Faye attends a dinner party and tells the stories of her fellow guests and their children is particularly effective (and entertaining).
Highly recommended, and perhaps even better than Outline.
As always the writing is beautiful, honest, smooth, funny and incisive, making the book a pleasure to read, but rather more difficult to convey in a succinct review. A typical line from early in the book: Besides, Clara needed relatives: it was Diane's view that bringing up a completely undamaged child was in bad taste.
The final section in which Faye attends a dinner party and tells the stories of her fellow guests and their children is particularly effective (and entertaining).
Highly recommended, and perhaps even better than Outline.
February 6, 2017
Rachel Cusk’s dreamlike Outline, about a writer’s trip to Greece in the aftermath of a divorce, was one of my favorite novels of 2015. Wandering in the languid heat of Athens, the main character, Faye, is something of an empty vessel, less supplying her own narrative than simply listening to the stories of the people around her—but all of these stories, viewed through Faye’s eyes, are about her just as much as they are about the students, dinner companions, and fellow travelers who pass through her life.
Transit continues Faye’s story, but the narrative is brought back to England and, at the same time, firmly back to earth. There’s a theme of renovation—of tearing things down, learning to live with the dust and the noise, and (hopefully?) ending up better than ever, but I think, as the title might imply, we’re in a period of transition here—in the period of dust and noise—and the resulting novel was, sadly, less satisfying for me. Faye’s conversations with other characters, as in Outline, all seemed to reflect her current situation one way or another, but the structure felt ill-suited to the tale this time around, the level of detail the characters supplied ultimately straining both credibility and my patience.
Outline and Transit are the first two books in a proposed trilogy. While a sense of ongoingness has been an important theme in this new work by Rachel Cusk, I have to admit I’m hoping the dust settles in the third volume and we see some indication that all this work has, for better or worse, actually been leading somewhere.
Transit continues Faye’s story, but the narrative is brought back to England and, at the same time, firmly back to earth. There’s a theme of renovation—of tearing things down, learning to live with the dust and the noise, and (hopefully?) ending up better than ever, but I think, as the title might imply, we’re in a period of transition here—in the period of dust and noise—and the resulting novel was, sadly, less satisfying for me. Faye’s conversations with other characters, as in Outline, all seemed to reflect her current situation one way or another, but the structure felt ill-suited to the tale this time around, the level of detail the characters supplied ultimately straining both credibility and my patience.
Outline and Transit are the first two books in a proposed trilogy. While a sense of ongoingness has been an important theme in this new work by Rachel Cusk, I have to admit I’m hoping the dust settles in the third volume and we see some indication that all this work has, for better or worse, actually been leading somewhere.
December 18, 2023
Notes on first reading
In the main, an enigmatic succession of dialogues between the narrator — Faye — and her former lover, her contractor (she has bought a house in London), those she meets at a writers conference (she’s a writer), a mentee who aspires to write and others. Wait till you meet the geezers who’ve been living downstairs for forty years! Timeless imbeciles.
The dialogues stand in a kind of solitude. Each speaker has his or her opportunity to speak uninterruptedly and then we move on to the next one. The narrator speaks about herself as little as possible. It’s as if she’s hiding behind her interlocutors. Something like this occurs in Outline, Cusk’s previous novel and the first volume of the trilogy. But toward the end there’s a bit more discussion of Faye’s situation. She isn’t left quite so much the cipher she is at the end of the previous book.
The narrator doesn’t compare or contrast these dialogues. She engages with them only enough to facilitate her interlocutors' storytelling. In terms of narrative pleasure the novel’s very rich. Everyone is alone. Everyone, even though among others, is suffering.
A recurring motif is the idea of family treasures going astray. In one case, Pavel, a builder like his father, speaks of his father bequeathing his fabulous tools to his son-in-law who apparently has no use for them. In another case Birgid’s father gives the family’s precious things to a horrible new wife who either sells or throws them away.
Moreover, there’s a bit of a disquisition on the impossibility of children; this part might have come out of something by Elena Ferrante. Faye goes to her recently remarried cousin’s dinner party, where the children act like little devils. It’s nice to see the myth of children, too often depicted as sweetness and light, getting its due. And pages later we see the vanity and cruelty of the parents and understand the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.
How fitting then that I just got a copy of E.M. Cioran’s The Trouble With Being Born.
In the main, an enigmatic succession of dialogues between the narrator — Faye — and her former lover, her contractor (she has bought a house in London), those she meets at a writers conference (she’s a writer), a mentee who aspires to write and others. Wait till you meet the geezers who’ve been living downstairs for forty years! Timeless imbeciles.
The dialogues stand in a kind of solitude. Each speaker has his or her opportunity to speak uninterruptedly and then we move on to the next one. The narrator speaks about herself as little as possible. It’s as if she’s hiding behind her interlocutors. Something like this occurs in Outline, Cusk’s previous novel and the first volume of the trilogy. But toward the end there’s a bit more discussion of Faye’s situation. She isn’t left quite so much the cipher she is at the end of the previous book.
The narrator doesn’t compare or contrast these dialogues. She engages with them only enough to facilitate her interlocutors' storytelling. In terms of narrative pleasure the novel’s very rich. Everyone is alone. Everyone, even though among others, is suffering.
A recurring motif is the idea of family treasures going astray. In one case, Pavel, a builder like his father, speaks of his father bequeathing his fabulous tools to his son-in-law who apparently has no use for them. In another case Birgid’s father gives the family’s precious things to a horrible new wife who either sells or throws them away.
Moreover, there’s a bit of a disquisition on the impossibility of children; this part might have come out of something by Elena Ferrante. Faye goes to her recently remarried cousin’s dinner party, where the children act like little devils. It’s nice to see the myth of children, too often depicted as sweetness and light, getting its due. And pages later we see the vanity and cruelty of the parents and understand the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.
How fitting then that I just got a copy of E.M. Cioran’s The Trouble With Being Born.
July 17, 2020
I had found out more, I said, by listening than I ever thought possible.
In this second installment of a trilogy, the narrator Faye (only named once, as she was in the first book, Outline) continues her listening ‘project,’ though with more of letting us into her life. She comes across as emotionless, almost affectless; but there’s no way she is. She just isn’t telling us, or even showing us, how she feels. As with one event in Outline, I supplied the emotion, though it didn’t happen until near the end.
We don’t really know how Faye feels during the struggles of house renovation, nasty neighbors, dealing with children, and more. We don’t know how she feels when the unnamed Chair of a literary festival makes a pass at her. We get only one hint of her emotion when another character, after asking Faye a question, notices she’s blushing.
Despite more glimpses into her life than in the first book, this book basically follows the same structure of recording, in Faye’s words, the stories of others. The most effective of these is the story of a “beautiful” dog, an example of “showing-not-telling” in Faye’s writing class, when she is initially silent as a student takes the teacher-role.
After finishing the book, I thought of the “beautiful” dog in contrast with the nasty neighbors’ pitiable dog. The image of Faye’s torn-up house as being ‘seen-through’ exists as a comparison to an earlier story told by one of the renovators. His story is of the house he built in Poland for his family; he purposely designed it to seem as if it had no outer or inner walls. There’s even more to be parsed.
A scene near the end is a perfectly rendered one of almost-absurdity, of almost laughing then almost crying—not by the characters, but by the reader. Also near the end, a character elaborates on how he had to train himself from subconsciously wanting ‘comfort food’ to consciously desiring the delicacies he now creates. I wonder if this is what Cusk is trying to do for her readers. Though I’ve commented on the ‘end,’ there’s nothing to spoil in this book: it’s all in the writing.
In this second installment of a trilogy, the narrator Faye (only named once, as she was in the first book, Outline) continues her listening ‘project,’ though with more of letting us into her life. She comes across as emotionless, almost affectless; but there’s no way she is. She just isn’t telling us, or even showing us, how she feels. As with one event in Outline, I supplied the emotion, though it didn’t happen until near the end.
We don’t really know how Faye feels during the struggles of house renovation, nasty neighbors, dealing with children, and more. We don’t know how she feels when the unnamed Chair of a literary festival makes a pass at her. We get only one hint of her emotion when another character, after asking Faye a question, notices she’s blushing.
Despite more glimpses into her life than in the first book, this book basically follows the same structure of recording, in Faye’s words, the stories of others. The most effective of these is the story of a “beautiful” dog, an example of “showing-not-telling” in Faye’s writing class, when she is initially silent as a student takes the teacher-role.
After finishing the book, I thought of the “beautiful” dog in contrast with the nasty neighbors’ pitiable dog. The image of Faye’s torn-up house as being ‘seen-through’ exists as a comparison to an earlier story told by one of the renovators. His story is of the house he built in Poland for his family; he purposely designed it to seem as if it had no outer or inner walls. There’s even more to be parsed.
A scene near the end is a perfectly rendered one of almost-absurdity, of almost laughing then almost crying—not by the characters, but by the reader. Also near the end, a character elaborates on how he had to train himself from subconsciously wanting ‘comfort food’ to consciously desiring the delicacies he now creates. I wonder if this is what Cusk is trying to do for her readers. Though I’ve commented on the ‘end,’ there’s nothing to spoil in this book: it’s all in the writing.
October 8, 2019
And here I am transiting between the first and final volume of Cusk’s trilogy. For Transit this is.
Some time had passed since I read Outline and I picked up its continuation, so very different and so similar. One has to guess that we are with the same narrator as in the previous volume. She reveals so little herself that the reader has to pick up one hint here, one there, to make sense of an individual existing at all and of her being the same one. Each chapter reads almost like a detached short story in which we listen to the conversation with a different character, and we get to hear ‘their story’, for the voice of the protagonist keeps almost in mute, except for her promptings to her interlocutor.
Gradually some themes begin forming. Fate, or destiny, is put on the page right from the start and we are to follow if in effect fate has the upper hand in the narrator’s life. Language and writing receive the focus in a couple of chapters, and these lead to the subject of representation as being sometimes more powerful than nature, as when one of the talking characters avows that ‘she takes photographs of food instead of eating it’. But representation of course requires the onlooker, an audience.
I imagined her in the dusk of a Paris garden, untouched in her white dress, an object thirsting if not for interpretation then for the fulfillment at least of an admiring human gaze, like a painting hanging on a wall, waiting..
So may be the narrator, in her search of her life that she senses to be in flux, is looking for a guide in the interpretation of others, and this leads her to think that solitude is not being imprisoned in one’s perceptions but a state that would allow for a shared consciousness. May be this is the key to the string of dialogues in lieu of voicing out herself. Ad this detachment leads onto the notion that living is like reading a book; we just plod along wanting to know what comes up next.
Transitions, such as renovating one’s house, meeting people on the street, translating a text into another language, changing one’s hairstyle, giving free rein to desires, moving to another country, listening to a fortune-teller, or taking refuge in the repetition of familiar sensations. Or writing. Or reading.
And of the American painter that is mentioned in the novel, Marsden Hartley, I have chosen his version of Cézanne’s and Picasso’s Mount Saint-Victoire. . This is another kind of transition.
*****
Now on to transit further and pick up Kudos
********
Reading about Mahler in another very different book I come upon this notion - another take on 'Trasition'
Shortly before Mahler was born, Wagner wrote to Mathilde Wesendonk: "I should now like to call my deepest and most subtle art of transition for the whole fabric of my art is based upon such transitions." The Ninth's first movement is the high point of Mahler's own practice in the deep and subtle art of transition, or organic expansion, of continuous variation.
January 20, 2021
As I have followed Cusk on some of her odd, composed, and introspective novels, which speaks quietly but think loudly in the reflection of her own life, a memoir of a broken marriage and recently reading on 𝙏𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙩 that unfolds again on the character Faye whose life extends through loneliness, abandonment, and reinvention of oneself into a whole new person. From 𝙊𝙪𝙩𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙚, through 𝘼𝙛𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙝, now 𝙏𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙩, has taken me on a quiet journey. Birthing thoughts of change and revision of a woman’s life who has once lost hope and regain the courage to rebuild a shattered hope for the future, to love again, and to see self in a whole new light. These are transitions of changes that don’t happen right away but a slow and steady taking of one small step at a time.
𝙏𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙩 is connected to a series of encounters and conversations of people that Faye moves through into a new life and a new beginning. The prose of narration is craftily oblique but intricately defined, inducing an elegant spell captivating to the readers’ eyes. Faye's engagement with the builders on her newly bought run-down house, a met up with an ex-boyfriend, passive-aggressive tension with her neighbors who obviously hated her, going down to the heartfelt dialogues with the hairdresser, and finally, the unusual stories shared by a group of friends about a blended family, extended family, and mix-up relationships. A relationship is rum trade, and what is all right one day is all wrong the next? When it comes to love matters, it must be handled with absolute intention and attention.
Faye is being set up as a quiet observer and listener to the dazzlingly implemented stories that consist of a quirkily methodical omnivorous turn of mind on one’s identity and interpretation of oneself. There’s unseen vulnerability when Faye wrestles with gaining sight of helplessness in the dramas of her life and on how to comprehend and overcome them. So much humanity, along with sophisticated wit and wry humor, in this novel. Yes, I would say read on…
𝙏𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙩 is connected to a series of encounters and conversations of people that Faye moves through into a new life and a new beginning. The prose of narration is craftily oblique but intricately defined, inducing an elegant spell captivating to the readers’ eyes. Faye's engagement with the builders on her newly bought run-down house, a met up with an ex-boyfriend, passive-aggressive tension with her neighbors who obviously hated her, going down to the heartfelt dialogues with the hairdresser, and finally, the unusual stories shared by a group of friends about a blended family, extended family, and mix-up relationships. A relationship is rum trade, and what is all right one day is all wrong the next? When it comes to love matters, it must be handled with absolute intention and attention.
Faye is being set up as a quiet observer and listener to the dazzlingly implemented stories that consist of a quirkily methodical omnivorous turn of mind on one’s identity and interpretation of oneself. There’s unseen vulnerability when Faye wrestles with gaining sight of helplessness in the dramas of her life and on how to comprehend and overcome them. So much humanity, along with sophisticated wit and wry humor, in this novel. Yes, I would say read on…
July 25, 2019
I am one of the few readers of GR to have found this book just of a paroxysmal boredom.... I finished it and found myself lighter, but can you be so stupid to feel compelled to finish unfit books? I found it a complicated accumulation of events, of characters Sine die et sine logica
and crossing each others as if they were gym drinks to share...
Unfortunately I am not made for these new writers, ( personally) and this conceiving artificial stories with no clue.
I console myself firmly believing that of Kent Haruf, one is born in every 2 million!!!
Sono una tra le poche lettrici di GR ad aver trovato questo libro di una noia parossistica.....L'ho finito e mi sono trovata piu' leggera, ma si può essere così stupide a sentirsi obbligati a finire libri non confacenti? L'ho trovato un accrocchio di eventi, di personaggi "Sine die et sine logica"
e fare incroci come se fossero beveroni da palestra....
Purtroppo non sono fatta per questi nuovi scrittori ( personalmente) questo concepire storie artificiose
Mi consolo credendo fermamente che di Kent Aruf, ne nasce uno ogni 2 milioni!!!
and crossing each others as if they were gym drinks to share...
Unfortunately I am not made for these new writers, ( personally) and this conceiving artificial stories with no clue.
I console myself firmly believing that of Kent Haruf, one is born in every 2 million!!!
Sono una tra le poche lettrici di GR ad aver trovato questo libro di una noia parossistica.....L'ho finito e mi sono trovata piu' leggera, ma si può essere così stupide a sentirsi obbligati a finire libri non confacenti? L'ho trovato un accrocchio di eventi, di personaggi "Sine die et sine logica"
e fare incroci come se fossero beveroni da palestra....
Purtroppo non sono fatta per questi nuovi scrittori ( personalmente) questo concepire storie artificiose
Mi consolo credendo fermamente che di Kent Aruf, ne nasce uno ogni 2 milioni!!!
October 12, 2016
Is it a novel...
…this sequence of unrelated interludes recounted in an aloof tone of voice? Rachel Cusk’s book opens as the narrator (a writer) moves back to her old London neighbourhood with her two sons, buying an ex-council flat sorely in need of improvement and with a pair of nasty neighbours living below. She bumps into an old boyfriend and they have an unrealistic conversation. She has her starting-to-grey hair tinted for the first time and her hairdresser conducts an unlikely monologue. She meets with a seen-it-all-before builder who advises her to sell the flat and walk away. She attends a book festival where she and the other speakers get soaking wet on their way to the tent. She tutors Jane, a struggling would-be writer: “I found myself wondering who exactly she was: there was a sense of drama about her that seemed to invite only two responses – either to become absorbed or to walk away. Yet the prospect of absorption seemed somehow arduous…” Good point, I thought. And stopped reading.
…this sequence of unrelated interludes recounted in an aloof tone of voice? Rachel Cusk’s book opens as the narrator (a writer) moves back to her old London neighbourhood with her two sons, buying an ex-council flat sorely in need of improvement and with a pair of nasty neighbours living below. She bumps into an old boyfriend and they have an unrealistic conversation. She has her starting-to-grey hair tinted for the first time and her hairdresser conducts an unlikely monologue. She meets with a seen-it-all-before builder who advises her to sell the flat and walk away. She attends a book festival where she and the other speakers get soaking wet on their way to the tent. She tutors Jane, a struggling would-be writer: “I found myself wondering who exactly she was: there was a sense of drama about her that seemed to invite only two responses – either to become absorbed or to walk away. Yet the prospect of absorption seemed somehow arduous…” Good point, I thought. And stopped reading.
December 17, 2023
My Dog Nada (Sad Pet Story #2)
Let me tell you a tale ‘bout a dog I once had
(Take warning though friends my story is sad)
A bouvier des Flandres a big bushy black dog
Nada had been bred to guide sheep through the fog
But the only lambkin she now had to guard
Was five-year-old me in a Canadian back yard
She and I were the best friends in the world
Her thick canine fur and my thin hair both curled
I would ride on her back like a knight on a steed
Protecting my kingdom from plunder and greed
All day long we would gambol as sunlight through trees
Made minuscule shadows under flowers and bees
Nada bit no-one and if she ever did bark
You could blame those raccoons playing tricks in the dark
Nada was gentle and everyone loved her
From the grim Boogeyman to my sister’s young lover
But Fate O Fate why must you be so cruel?
Why pick on poor creatures who smile and drool?
What did my sweet dog ever do to offend you
That Fate you should want her big tongue to turn blue?
We found our dear Nada one dark winter morning
Lying dead on the ground just like that without warning
What on earth could have caused her untimely death?
Was it poison or murder or obstruction of breath?
This no-one could be bothered to go and find out
Boy did five-year-old me ever cry his heart out
In a way I ain’t done all my crying as of yet
And it's been a long time since I’ve had my own pet
June 16, 2017
There's a great moment in this episodic, suggestive, quasi-memoir in which the narrator Faye is teaching a creative writing class and a dominant, forceful student instructs another that he can't just say his dog is beautiful, he needs to show the dog, evoke it, and the dog owner student guy gets a little flustered and says something like I dunno she's a beautiful dog, and then Faye simply asks what breed it is, and the dog owner student totally naturally unleashes (no pun intended but hey look at that pun!) an evocative story about his dog, how it's an Arabian breed meant to hunt in packs, with two dogs in the lead working in concert with a trained hawk or falcon above tracking down the quarry (perfect coordination of individuals working in tandem, united, connected, as opposed to feeling alone and disjointed). A saluki. (Cusk seems to excel when writing about dogs.) It's a great moment because it's representative of how this works, how the narrator removes herself like the best first-person narrators (neither Ishmael nor Nick Carraway talk much about themselves) and lets other people tell their stories to her, all of which, thanks to their selection among all the stories she could tell, suggest the concerns of a newly divorced writer with kids who's rehabbing the worst house in the best neighborhood of London. There isn't necessarily a conventional plot but there's definitely the scaffolding of re-establishing herself in London during a transitional time in her life, the workers in the house, student stories about relationships with men, the neighbors downstairs casting serious aspersions her way. One of the most entertaining parts comes when she's on stage with two other writers who write from their life, two men who couldn't be more different in tone and approach, one clever and openly in it for adoration and cheers, the other (a Knausgaardian type who's written a thousand-page memoir that, like the bible, everyone feels like they should own) somber and serious and searching for truth. There's talk about fate and freewill, passivity and action, and more than enough reflection on its own form to make it philosophically engaging, all while never feeling heavy- nor light-handed. The tone is like a lofting comforter, warm but airy, a place I looked forward to returning, reading on the subway immersed to the point of almost missing my stop more than once (I've haven't yet missed my stop thanks to a novel, but I look forward to it happening one day). The final episode, a dinner party interrupted by kids, seemed one of the weakest in this or Outline, maybe because the author seems to excel when she tells a story told by a character to her narrator -- she does better with summarized scenes and description/exposition more than dramatized scenes with dialogue and a handful of characters moving around a room. It's ultimately hard for people to simply have dinner together in a pack, let alone track down a fleet-footed quarry as one. If it had ended more strongly I may have bestowed the prestigious fifth star upon the second installment of this series. Alas, I deem it an admirable four stars and look forward to gobbling up the third installment as soon as it appears, or as soon as my mother gets it, reads it, and lends it to me -- my mom pretty much forced this one on me (always a good sign). File under books about other people, fiction that feels unlike fiction, novels that circle around and suggest something otherwise unstated at their core.
October 26, 2022
This was a pleasure to read. I had to laugh over many of the scenes/conversations because I've had some very similar scenes in my own life. The horrible neighbours downstairs, banging on their ceiling every time you move, and her story about the Saluki dogs. I had a gorgeous hunting dog and I could swear that he would read my mind as we went out walking together - or hunting in his case. I also used to have a pet bird that would signal to him - "rats" and they worked together to keep the rat population down - you can see what salubrious circumstances I have lived in. And, as a divorced and single mother myself, I've also experienced the anxieties of trying to do the best job you can with your children, or in my case just the one - that anxiety of not being present; of having to be in work; of having to dispense motherly love through a telephone line. I think most mothers have been there. But my huge appreciation to Rachel Cusk for writing about it all - for being one of the first to take the every-day events of a woman and mother and put it down on paper and turn it into Literature.
I want to use this quote, which I saw at the beginning of Roman Clodia's review of - 'Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941 - 1995' by Anna von Planta.
Our only reality is in books: the purely fictional distillation from the impurity of reality.
For me this seems so precisely what Cusk is doing in her writing. Taking her reality and distilling it into the most amusing, insightful and profound version; an experience then to which many of us can relate. We sigh and laugh and say 'Yes - exactly that.'
Let me include a small part from the scene at the hairdressers:
'Do you ever get the feeling,' Dale said to me, 'that if you weren't there to make things happen, it would all just go tits-up?'
I said it seemed to me that just as often the reverse was true: people could become more capable when the person they relied on to tell them what to do wasn't there.
'I must be doing something wrong then,' Dale said. 'This lot couldn't run a bath without my help.'
He picked up one of a set of silver clips and fastened it to a section of my hair. The dye would need to stay in for at least half an hour, he said: he hoped I wasn't in a hurry. He took a second clip and isolated another section. I watched his face in the mirror as he worked. He took a third clip and held it between his lips while he separated one strand of hair from another.
'Actually, I'm in no particular rush myself, 'he said presently. 'My date for this evening just cancelled. Luckily,' he said, 'as it turns out.'
I loved that whole section, the lengthy story of Dale's life while our author is pinned to the salon chair; it's not just the story but also that re-creation of the meticulous way in which hairdressers work, their total absorption in your hair as if it were a work of art. Later Dale says, 'I persist in the belief that this is a creative job,' he said. 'But sometimes you have to wonder.'
All Cusk's scenes are similar - she holds conversations with all the people who come into her life, her builder, the builder's project manager, Tony from Albania; the two authors Julian and Louis who speak before her at a writers' presentation, the Chair who attempts to seduce her; a man she agrees to have dinner with, presented to her through a mutual acquaintance; Amanda a friend, she meets in a local cafe. All of them are meticulously observed and the conversation reported back, not verbatim but in a realistic whole. Often our narrator asks disturbing questions, but always the person responds, and you start to understand that she is a good listener, in fact you might say, her professional work is to listen carefully to the people she encounters. We hear the story of a woman, Jane, who fails to engage the attentions of an older man she pursues in Paris. Actually I recognized this story, from "Second Place". In that book, our narrator does the same thing as Jane, walking into an Art Exhibition, early in the morning, after walking the streets of Paris in the early dawn trying to walk off her unabated sexual excitement.
Yes, I'm looking forward to the third book in this sequence - Kudos. I hope to be delighted in the same wonderful tension of recognition that I encountered here in Transit.
I want to use this quote, which I saw at the beginning of Roman Clodia's review of - 'Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941 - 1995' by Anna von Planta.
Our only reality is in books: the purely fictional distillation from the impurity of reality.
For me this seems so precisely what Cusk is doing in her writing. Taking her reality and distilling it into the most amusing, insightful and profound version; an experience then to which many of us can relate. We sigh and laugh and say 'Yes - exactly that.'
Let me include a small part from the scene at the hairdressers:
'Do you ever get the feeling,' Dale said to me, 'that if you weren't there to make things happen, it would all just go tits-up?'
I said it seemed to me that just as often the reverse was true: people could become more capable when the person they relied on to tell them what to do wasn't there.
'I must be doing something wrong then,' Dale said. 'This lot couldn't run a bath without my help.'
He picked up one of a set of silver clips and fastened it to a section of my hair. The dye would need to stay in for at least half an hour, he said: he hoped I wasn't in a hurry. He took a second clip and isolated another section. I watched his face in the mirror as he worked. He took a third clip and held it between his lips while he separated one strand of hair from another.
'Actually, I'm in no particular rush myself, 'he said presently. 'My date for this evening just cancelled. Luckily,' he said, 'as it turns out.'
I loved that whole section, the lengthy story of Dale's life while our author is pinned to the salon chair; it's not just the story but also that re-creation of the meticulous way in which hairdressers work, their total absorption in your hair as if it were a work of art. Later Dale says, 'I persist in the belief that this is a creative job,' he said. 'But sometimes you have to wonder.'
All Cusk's scenes are similar - she holds conversations with all the people who come into her life, her builder, the builder's project manager, Tony from Albania; the two authors Julian and Louis who speak before her at a writers' presentation, the Chair who attempts to seduce her; a man she agrees to have dinner with, presented to her through a mutual acquaintance; Amanda a friend, she meets in a local cafe. All of them are meticulously observed and the conversation reported back, not verbatim but in a realistic whole. Often our narrator asks disturbing questions, but always the person responds, and you start to understand that she is a good listener, in fact you might say, her professional work is to listen carefully to the people she encounters. We hear the story of a woman, Jane, who fails to engage the attentions of an older man she pursues in Paris. Actually I recognized this story, from "Second Place". In that book, our narrator does the same thing as Jane, walking into an Art Exhibition, early in the morning, after walking the streets of Paris in the early dawn trying to walk off her unabated sexual excitement.
Yes, I'm looking forward to the third book in this sequence - Kudos. I hope to be delighted in the same wonderful tension of recognition that I encountered here in Transit.
December 11, 2022
What a book! Love the way the author always pays attention to the skies, no matter what it looks like, there is a very minute description of colours and cloud formations and what impact it has on the narrator
And ew, there was a chilling description of an overnight stay at a cousin´ s place and his strained relationship with his new partner, but the children’s behaviour was the most bonechilling of it all, in my view much worse than any horror story.
And ew, there was a chilling description of an overnight stay at a cousin´ s place and his strained relationship with his new partner, but the children’s behaviour was the most bonechilling of it all, in my view much worse than any horror story.
December 18, 2023
Maybe it's time for Proust.
May 11, 2021
In preparation for reading her new novel, Second Place, I decided to finish Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy. Looking back to when I read the first book, I realize that I may have been too conservative with my initial rating of 4 stars. Since I finished Outline, I have been thinking about it almost weekly. I don’t remember much from the book itself – that’s how it was written. I was stupid enough not to annotate it or leave any markers in the pages. While that may have been a misstep, I had a good reason: I knew I would go back. My second read will not be so clean.
Transit may not be Outline, and that is surely why I have given it 4 stars. But there is a reason why it is in the trilogy. In my opinion, it does what its predecessor does to almost the same extent with almost the same brilliance. The title of the original book was a bit more artistic for me, but this one was laying it on a bit too thick. Transit between married life and divorced life, childhood and adulthood, clubs and drugs to living room and a book. Transit between a beat up, embarrassing piece of trash that the main character calls home and the new, soundproof living quarters that she envisions (not without some choice words by her deplorable downstairs neighbours).
I am in love with the poetry in Cusk’s writing. I know she moved to London at a relatively young age, and that she has a hint of a posh British accent, but you would be crazy if you thought for one second that I am not claiming her as a Torontonian. Are you kidding me? Listen to how she describes the city:
I read that, looked up, took a second to enjoy a nice sigh of relief, and went right back to devouring the chapter. She gets it. Perhaps because I know the city so well, I was able to tell that this woman was not being insincere. She picks out a specific street in Toronto, one that I have walked down many, many times in my life. The way she described moments of joy and panic in that street… it was magical. Made me want to live in London for a few months to experience her description of those streets, that’s how good she is.
One final thing that isn’t about the book: Cusk is such an astute observer of humans and interactions that I am sure she could do the career of clinical psychology better than 95% of the professionals in the field. The only difference between her and a therapist is that Cusk chose to write.
Transit may not be Outline, and that is surely why I have given it 4 stars. But there is a reason why it is in the trilogy. In my opinion, it does what its predecessor does to almost the same extent with almost the same brilliance. The title of the original book was a bit more artistic for me, but this one was laying it on a bit too thick. Transit between married life and divorced life, childhood and adulthood, clubs and drugs to living room and a book. Transit between a beat up, embarrassing piece of trash that the main character calls home and the new, soundproof living quarters that she envisions (not without some choice words by her deplorable downstairs neighbours).
I am in love with the poetry in Cusk’s writing. I know she moved to London at a relatively young age, and that she has a hint of a posh British accent, but you would be crazy if you thought for one second that I am not claiming her as a Torontonian. Are you kidding me? Listen to how she describes the city:
… for him, it summed up something about Toronto and his life there, some vital distinction that he recognised while being unable properly to grasp it, though the word that always occurred to him in trying to describe it was ‘innocence’.
I read that, looked up, took a second to enjoy a nice sigh of relief, and went right back to devouring the chapter. She gets it. Perhaps because I know the city so well, I was able to tell that this woman was not being insincere. She picks out a specific street in Toronto, one that I have walked down many, many times in my life. The way she described moments of joy and panic in that street… it was magical. Made me want to live in London for a few months to experience her description of those streets, that’s how good she is.
One final thing that isn’t about the book: Cusk is such an astute observer of humans and interactions that I am sure she could do the career of clinical psychology better than 95% of the professionals in the field. The only difference between her and a therapist is that Cusk chose to write.
August 22, 2017
Sometimes when I come upon a book by chance and not through premeditated research, there is a sense of excitement, as when I read my first books and every book that followed had the potential to be great or a great failure or both. Maybe it's the danger of going outside of any known rubric for selection. Fate looms, as if each book was meant to be stumbled upon at its time and place rather than arrived at through well-manicured avenues.
Whatever the case, it's lead me to great reads before. I once stumbled upon James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, recalling the name vaguely from some late night conversations. The next morning I discovered that it was autographed, with a note seemingly to me: "For Jimmy, or be that James".
I found Rachel Cusk's Transit by chance in the PR6051 area of the library when it was cataloged as PR6053, which doesn't sound like a big difference, but it is in the labyrinthian scheme of the university library. I would have never found it otherwise, if I were looking for it under its correct call number.
Maybe it was in transit between a bookcart and a holds shelf when it fell in with the wrong crowd and lost its way. Surrounded by the wrong influences many aisles from its home, it would never have otherwise found its way back, so I pulled it out thinking "Rachel Cusk, where have I heard of this name before? Wasn't she on my 'to read' list a while back? Maybe it's finally time to read this."
In fact, I first heard Cusk on KCRW's Bookworm, where Cusk talks about eliminating dread:
"I think dread is a massive component of narrative and it's the thing that I've [long pause, obviously uncomfortable with the next word] suffered from ... for me it's the place where living and writing and reading become very interwoven and to make the book light and free of dread to have it go up rather than down and the sentences go up at the end not down that was a really absolutely crucial kind of morality, because this is a different morality, it's not a Judeo-Christian morality, I'm trying to get to something else, that feeling of... I suppose you can call it suspense, that--you know, people could read my book and complain there is no plot, but for me at this point plot has become a vehicle of dread, the absolute vehicle of dread."
At first I didn't know what dread she was referring to, but as she started talking about plot and suspense, I felt a kinship to what she was saying. This dread didn't come from the plot of the book but rather the way the plot unfolds in an almost constricting manner. It reminded me of something Abbas Kiarostami said about Hollywood movies, that they "took the viewer hostage". It's a similar feeling, a familiar construct ties you down and forces you to care in a way that is beyond your freedom to care. Instead of dropping you in and allowing you to look about of your own free will.
This does not mean that Transit doesn't have a plot. It does. Things happen in the book. So what does Cusk mean when she refers to plot or suspense? She must not mean plot as in "things happening" then, but rather as the construct of things happening in a string of necessary causations that lead somewhere definitive. Instinctively, we look for the next thing. It's a construct that implies a higher power (the author? the Judeo-Christian conception of god?) in that things happen for a reason, and there's a place for good and bad. Or if not good and bad, then at least some kind of value judgement descends on the scene. But there is no room for boredom or transcendence in this model, no room for just existing when one is pulled along by the sensitive fleshy parts of the nose. One must be able to sit and be comfortable sitting, as in a Kiarostami scene unfolding in real time, perhaps even in the mystery of absolute darkness, without having one’s gaze be directed toward the human.
This is a tricky balancing act and Cusk deftly navigates it by presenting moments to you as if independent from past moments. Cut off from a past or a future they are but observations. Theoretically you could randomly open this book and read any amount and still enjoy it as much as reading it from beginning to end. It is not that a past doesn't exist, or that memory doesn't exist, but personal history has intentionally been omitted and as Marianne Moore says about omissions, they are not accidents. The trauma that this narrator has [ dramatic pause ] suffered, the trauma that may have resulted in this sabotage on the personal, is instead infused and reflected outward into the conversations around her, stories that these others have carried with them and leave in their wake, transform into free agents floating about with the potential to connect in multiple ways.
These stories are free from an overbearing narrative, or seemingly so; maybe it's an illusion, but the form for this novel fits the meditation that follows in vignette after vignette:
"It wasn't a question of seeing my femaleness as interchangeable with fate: what mattered more was to learn how to read that fate, to see the forms and patterns in the things that happened, to study their truth. It was hard to do that while still believing in identity, let alone in personal concepts like justice and honour and revenge, just as it was hard to listen while you were talking. I had found out more, I said, by listening than I had ever thought possible."
Was it fate that allowed me to come upon this book lost in the stacks or a willingness to wander without an end in mind?
"I said that my current feelings of powerlessness had changed the way I looked at what happens and why, to the extent that I was beginning to see what other people called fate in the unfolding of events, as though living were merely an act of reading to find out what happens next. That idea -- of one's own life as something that had already been dictated -- was strangely seductive, until you realized that it reduced other people to the moral status of characters and camouflaged their capacity to destroy. Yet the illusion of meaning recurred, much as you tried to resist it: like childhood, I said, which we treat as an explanatory text rather than merely as a formative experience of powerlessness."
As much as the narrator wants to live in a world free from plot or suspense, she is surrounded by traditional structures which she cannot avoid (or maybe she is attracted to them): the stories everybody tells her all have a beginning middle and end, many of which have clear personal significances and many are told in a way that don't resemble the "reality" the novel struggles to enact. And the narrator herself, maybe on a deeper level is moving towards these narratives inside of a frame of blankness in order to find a communal likeness, some common ground to place herself within this transition. It's also worth noting that this love/hate relationship with structure is both symbolic and real. Throughout the novel, while she is wandering about, builders are renovating her house, one that we imagine her settling into after this transition.
Back to the interview:
"As children you're forced to harden yourself in order to not be a child anymore, and I relate suspense very much to that hardening process, if you take a true child, they hate it, they hate the idea of being led alone into fear and uncertainty, it's almost like an awful test, a hardening up, and I suppose part of what I dearly wanted was to free myself from it and to return to a prose where there was no danger ever, and there might be nothingness, there might just be nothing, you know suspense comes out of belief, and if you don't believe in anything then suddenly you're in a very very different world."
Children are most comfortable with uncertainty, just read a children's book and you'll see the type of freedom they're okay with. And yet the danger that Cusk is talking about here is one of the real world, of consequences. Otherwise I don't know what she's talking about. I think it's different than saying the danger of a plot which judges you. Rather, that judgement is a serious one enacted in daily life, in its values. I think she's talking about the danger of adulthood. Maybe children hate most the uncertainty of adulthood and consequences rather than the uncertainty of lightness and play.
“[Gerard] had spent two years living with Diane in Toronto, and even though he had felt liberated there ... his sense of guilt was more powerful. And once [his daughter] Clara was born, the dilemma got worse: the only thing more unimaginable than the idea that Clara should have a childhood that resembled his own was the idea that she shouldn't, that she might live her whole life in ignorance of everything that for Gerard constituted reality.
I asked him why he had used the word 'guilt' to describe what other people might have called homesickness, and what in any case was really just the absence of his own familiar world.
'It felt wrong to be choosing,' Gerard said. 'It felt wrong for the whole of life to be based on choice.'"
But you have to choose, that's the point. Paradoxically, there is no fate without choice. Nothing is purely chance. It might not even seem like a choice, but to be alive means you have to be somewhere, and to be somewhere necessarily limits your possibilities to a location and set of people you see on a daily basis. And your socio-economic status confines you inside of your myopic bubble.
Recently, I heard of a guy who developed an app that aimed to pierce this bubble. It allowed you to drop into other people's bubbles at random by finding public events on Facebook that you would not otherwise have looked for based on your interests/friends group. It seems like an interesting experiment in fate vs. choice. We think we are free but we're trapped inside of a bubble that we don't even see anymore, a bubble that is dictated somewhere along the way by a choice we made a long time ago. Afterall, choices do have consequences. There seems to be a push-pull going on in these pages, a negotiation between being an active participant in our lives (choices matter) and a passive experiencer of life as it happens to us (fate happens).
"For a long time, I said, I believed that it was only through absolute passivity that you could learn to see what was really there. But my decision to create a disturbance by renovating my house had awoken a different reality, as though I had disturbed a beast sleeping in its lair. I had started to become, in effect, angry. I had started to desire power, because what I now realized was that other people had had it all along, that what I called fate was merely the reverberation of their will, a tale scripted not by some universal storyteller but by people who would elude justice for as long as their actions were met with resignation rather than outrage."
Can you go through the world like a nature documentary, without saving the prey? Can you experience the world while leaving the nature around you unchanged? Maybe there is no fate but just a confluence of chance and wills that bend reality in this way or that. What remains of fate is the result of that bending, which often isn’t what we expected. We twist the knobs without knowing what we're meddling with, there are too many variables in this fluid world. The illusion of control reassures us, but thankfully, something always surprises us too.
Whatever the case, it's lead me to great reads before. I once stumbled upon James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, recalling the name vaguely from some late night conversations. The next morning I discovered that it was autographed, with a note seemingly to me: "For Jimmy, or be that James".
I found Rachel Cusk's Transit by chance in the PR6051 area of the library when it was cataloged as PR6053, which doesn't sound like a big difference, but it is in the labyrinthian scheme of the university library. I would have never found it otherwise, if I were looking for it under its correct call number.
Maybe it was in transit between a bookcart and a holds shelf when it fell in with the wrong crowd and lost its way. Surrounded by the wrong influences many aisles from its home, it would never have otherwise found its way back, so I pulled it out thinking "Rachel Cusk, where have I heard of this name before? Wasn't she on my 'to read' list a while back? Maybe it's finally time to read this."
In fact, I first heard Cusk on KCRW's Bookworm, where Cusk talks about eliminating dread:
"I think dread is a massive component of narrative and it's the thing that I've [long pause, obviously uncomfortable with the next word] suffered from ... for me it's the place where living and writing and reading become very interwoven and to make the book light and free of dread to have it go up rather than down and the sentences go up at the end not down that was a really absolutely crucial kind of morality, because this is a different morality, it's not a Judeo-Christian morality, I'm trying to get to something else, that feeling of... I suppose you can call it suspense, that--you know, people could read my book and complain there is no plot, but for me at this point plot has become a vehicle of dread, the absolute vehicle of dread."
At first I didn't know what dread she was referring to, but as she started talking about plot and suspense, I felt a kinship to what she was saying. This dread didn't come from the plot of the book but rather the way the plot unfolds in an almost constricting manner. It reminded me of something Abbas Kiarostami said about Hollywood movies, that they "took the viewer hostage". It's a similar feeling, a familiar construct ties you down and forces you to care in a way that is beyond your freedom to care. Instead of dropping you in and allowing you to look about of your own free will.
This does not mean that Transit doesn't have a plot. It does. Things happen in the book. So what does Cusk mean when she refers to plot or suspense? She must not mean plot as in "things happening" then, but rather as the construct of things happening in a string of necessary causations that lead somewhere definitive. Instinctively, we look for the next thing. It's a construct that implies a higher power (the author? the Judeo-Christian conception of god?) in that things happen for a reason, and there's a place for good and bad. Or if not good and bad, then at least some kind of value judgement descends on the scene. But there is no room for boredom or transcendence in this model, no room for just existing when one is pulled along by the sensitive fleshy parts of the nose. One must be able to sit and be comfortable sitting, as in a Kiarostami scene unfolding in real time, perhaps even in the mystery of absolute darkness, without having one’s gaze be directed toward the human.
This is a tricky balancing act and Cusk deftly navigates it by presenting moments to you as if independent from past moments. Cut off from a past or a future they are but observations. Theoretically you could randomly open this book and read any amount and still enjoy it as much as reading it from beginning to end. It is not that a past doesn't exist, or that memory doesn't exist, but personal history has intentionally been omitted and as Marianne Moore says about omissions, they are not accidents. The trauma that this narrator has [ dramatic pause ] suffered, the trauma that may have resulted in this sabotage on the personal, is instead infused and reflected outward into the conversations around her, stories that these others have carried with them and leave in their wake, transform into free agents floating about with the potential to connect in multiple ways.
These stories are free from an overbearing narrative, or seemingly so; maybe it's an illusion, but the form for this novel fits the meditation that follows in vignette after vignette:
"It wasn't a question of seeing my femaleness as interchangeable with fate: what mattered more was to learn how to read that fate, to see the forms and patterns in the things that happened, to study their truth. It was hard to do that while still believing in identity, let alone in personal concepts like justice and honour and revenge, just as it was hard to listen while you were talking. I had found out more, I said, by listening than I had ever thought possible."
Was it fate that allowed me to come upon this book lost in the stacks or a willingness to wander without an end in mind?
"I said that my current feelings of powerlessness had changed the way I looked at what happens and why, to the extent that I was beginning to see what other people called fate in the unfolding of events, as though living were merely an act of reading to find out what happens next. That idea -- of one's own life as something that had already been dictated -- was strangely seductive, until you realized that it reduced other people to the moral status of characters and camouflaged their capacity to destroy. Yet the illusion of meaning recurred, much as you tried to resist it: like childhood, I said, which we treat as an explanatory text rather than merely as a formative experience of powerlessness."
As much as the narrator wants to live in a world free from plot or suspense, she is surrounded by traditional structures which she cannot avoid (or maybe she is attracted to them): the stories everybody tells her all have a beginning middle and end, many of which have clear personal significances and many are told in a way that don't resemble the "reality" the novel struggles to enact. And the narrator herself, maybe on a deeper level is moving towards these narratives inside of a frame of blankness in order to find a communal likeness, some common ground to place herself within this transition. It's also worth noting that this love/hate relationship with structure is both symbolic and real. Throughout the novel, while she is wandering about, builders are renovating her house, one that we imagine her settling into after this transition.
Back to the interview:
"As children you're forced to harden yourself in order to not be a child anymore, and I relate suspense very much to that hardening process, if you take a true child, they hate it, they hate the idea of being led alone into fear and uncertainty, it's almost like an awful test, a hardening up, and I suppose part of what I dearly wanted was to free myself from it and to return to a prose where there was no danger ever, and there might be nothingness, there might just be nothing, you know suspense comes out of belief, and if you don't believe in anything then suddenly you're in a very very different world."
Children are most comfortable with uncertainty, just read a children's book and you'll see the type of freedom they're okay with. And yet the danger that Cusk is talking about here is one of the real world, of consequences. Otherwise I don't know what she's talking about. I think it's different than saying the danger of a plot which judges you. Rather, that judgement is a serious one enacted in daily life, in its values. I think she's talking about the danger of adulthood. Maybe children hate most the uncertainty of adulthood and consequences rather than the uncertainty of lightness and play.
“[Gerard] had spent two years living with Diane in Toronto, and even though he had felt liberated there ... his sense of guilt was more powerful. And once [his daughter] Clara was born, the dilemma got worse: the only thing more unimaginable than the idea that Clara should have a childhood that resembled his own was the idea that she shouldn't, that she might live her whole life in ignorance of everything that for Gerard constituted reality.
I asked him why he had used the word 'guilt' to describe what other people might have called homesickness, and what in any case was really just the absence of his own familiar world.
'It felt wrong to be choosing,' Gerard said. 'It felt wrong for the whole of life to be based on choice.'"
But you have to choose, that's the point. Paradoxically, there is no fate without choice. Nothing is purely chance. It might not even seem like a choice, but to be alive means you have to be somewhere, and to be somewhere necessarily limits your possibilities to a location and set of people you see on a daily basis. And your socio-economic status confines you inside of your myopic bubble.
Recently, I heard of a guy who developed an app that aimed to pierce this bubble. It allowed you to drop into other people's bubbles at random by finding public events on Facebook that you would not otherwise have looked for based on your interests/friends group. It seems like an interesting experiment in fate vs. choice. We think we are free but we're trapped inside of a bubble that we don't even see anymore, a bubble that is dictated somewhere along the way by a choice we made a long time ago. Afterall, choices do have consequences. There seems to be a push-pull going on in these pages, a negotiation between being an active participant in our lives (choices matter) and a passive experiencer of life as it happens to us (fate happens).
"For a long time, I said, I believed that it was only through absolute passivity that you could learn to see what was really there. But my decision to create a disturbance by renovating my house had awoken a different reality, as though I had disturbed a beast sleeping in its lair. I had started to become, in effect, angry. I had started to desire power, because what I now realized was that other people had had it all along, that what I called fate was merely the reverberation of their will, a tale scripted not by some universal storyteller but by people who would elude justice for as long as their actions were met with resignation rather than outrage."
Can you go through the world like a nature documentary, without saving the prey? Can you experience the world while leaving the nature around you unchanged? Maybe there is no fate but just a confluence of chance and wills that bend reality in this way or that. What remains of fate is the result of that bending, which often isn’t what we expected. We twist the knobs without knowing what we're meddling with, there are too many variables in this fluid world. The illusion of control reassures us, but thankfully, something always surprises us too.
October 1, 2018
Like many others of my Goodreads friends, I re-read just ahead of the publication of the concluding book of the trilogy which this book commenced. My original review of this and the first volume Outline is below – on this reading I enjoyed finding quotes which summarised for me either Rachel Cusk’s underlying technique in writing the trilogy, or the choice of title for the first two volumes.
---------------------------------------------------
Original joint review with Outline
Outstanding and innovative novels, the first two parts of a planned trilogy.
The books are narrated by a writer and now creative writing teacher, a recently divorced mother of two boys – this together with her name (Faye) mentioned only once in each book is almost all we know about her. Instead the book, narrated in the first person, is the record of various conversations with she has in which she plays a typically passive role listening to the other person’s life story and perhaps making a few comments and questions.
In the first book she visits Athens to teach a creative writing course, those she talks to include her neighbour on the plane (ex a successful shipping owner), the attendees at her creative writing course, friends, fellow teachers. The themes explored in the stories include the unreliability of other’s stories, storytelling itself, female identity, progression and improvement (and its inadequacy) but often basically people’s relationships with family.
All of the stories feature protagonists in not dissimilar positions to Faye and we realise that in some ways the stories and her reaction to them tell us about Faye by a process (one that Cusk in interviews refers to as “annihilated perspective” which is made explicit at the end of the book, when another teacher tells Faye about a conversation she had with her neighbour on the plane “the longer she listened to his answers, the more she felt that something fundamental was being delineated, something not about him but about her. He was describing … what she was not …. This ant-description … had made something clear to her by a reverse kind of exposition; while he talked she began to see herself as a shape, an outline, with all the detail filled in around it while the shape itself remained blank ….(which) gave her … a sense of who she now was”. In the book’s last paragraph, the Greek seat-neighbour contacts her and says (as she does not want to meet” that he will spend the day in “solicitude”, which she corrects to mean “solitude” – again a key part of the book’s theme.
The second book contains some slightly weaker elements – a key part of the book is Faye’s decision to buy a very run down flat and to bring it builders to renovate and soundproof it – her elderly and hostile neighbours downstairs are unconvincing and one dimensional (and oddly do not have any story of their own – almost uniquely across the two novels), however the overall effect is still compelling. Faye’s intervention in people’s accounts of their lives (her hairdresser, her builders, one of her students, some recently divorced and remarried friends), deliberately adding her own views and seeking their perspective on it, is much greater in this book – and as a result the accounts have more of a common theme looking at change and reinvention and its interaction with freedom. She also meets a man with whom she starts a tentative relationship – and has a feeling of pulling away from a precipice.
In those days he was a sketch, an outline; I had wanted him to be more than he was, without being able to see where the extra would come from. But time had given him density, like an assist filling in the sketched-out form.
They had arrived ... At the place where for each of them a relationship usually ended, and set out from there.
It's a bit like a revolving door ... You're not inside and you’re not outside
Reality ... could serve in the place of fantasy as a means of distracting people from the facts of their own lives
I said that if she was talking about identification, she was right - it was common enough to see oneself in others, particularly if the others existed at one remove from us, as for instance characters in a book do
They were more like thoughts, thoughts in someone else's head that she could see. It was seeing them that had enabled her to recognise that these thoughts were her own.
Sometimes it seemed that the junction was a place of confluence; at other times, when the traffic thundered constantly over the intersection in a chaotic river ... It felt like a mere passageway, a place of transit.
The translator was a woman of about my own age .... I had watched her create her own version of what I had written ... Sometimes talking [with her] about certain passages in the book, I would feel her creation begin to supersede mine, not in the sense that she violated what I had written but that it was now living with her, not me. In the process of translation the ownership of it .. had passed from me to her. Like a house.
My eye continually drawn ... To the strange cloudscape that appeared to belong neither to night nor to day but to something intermediary and motionless, a place of stasis where they was no movement or progression, no sequence of events that could be studied for its meaning
It suggested that the ultimate fulfillment of a conscious being last not in solitude but in a shared state so intricate and cooperative it might also be said to represent the entwining of two selves. This notion the unitary self being broken down, of Consciousness not as an imprisonment in one's own perceptions but rather as something more intimate and less divided, a universality that came from shared experiences at the highest level
For a long time, I said, I believed that it was only through absolute passivity that you could learn to see what was really there. But my decision to create a disturbance by renovating my house had awoken a different reality
I like it that you ask these questions she said, but I don't understand why you want to know
I remembered the feeling of tension in the room, which seemed to be related to the provisionality of the situation
When he thought about his life he saw it as a series of attempts to lose himself by merging with something else, something outside him that could be internalised
It was hard to listen while you were talking, I had found out more by listening, I said, than I had ever thought possible
I felt change far beneath me, moving deep beneath the surface of things, like the plates of earth blindly moving in their black traces
---------------------------------------------------
Original joint review with Outline
Outstanding and innovative novels, the first two parts of a planned trilogy.
The books are narrated by a writer and now creative writing teacher, a recently divorced mother of two boys – this together with her name (Faye) mentioned only once in each book is almost all we know about her. Instead the book, narrated in the first person, is the record of various conversations with she has in which she plays a typically passive role listening to the other person’s life story and perhaps making a few comments and questions.
In the first book she visits Athens to teach a creative writing course, those she talks to include her neighbour on the plane (ex a successful shipping owner), the attendees at her creative writing course, friends, fellow teachers. The themes explored in the stories include the unreliability of other’s stories, storytelling itself, female identity, progression and improvement (and its inadequacy) but often basically people’s relationships with family.
All of the stories feature protagonists in not dissimilar positions to Faye and we realise that in some ways the stories and her reaction to them tell us about Faye by a process (one that Cusk in interviews refers to as “annihilated perspective” which is made explicit at the end of the book, when another teacher tells Faye about a conversation she had with her neighbour on the plane “the longer she listened to his answers, the more she felt that something fundamental was being delineated, something not about him but about her. He was describing … what she was not …. This ant-description … had made something clear to her by a reverse kind of exposition; while he talked she began to see herself as a shape, an outline, with all the detail filled in around it while the shape itself remained blank ….(which) gave her … a sense of who she now was”. In the book’s last paragraph, the Greek seat-neighbour contacts her and says (as she does not want to meet” that he will spend the day in “solicitude”, which she corrects to mean “solitude” – again a key part of the book’s theme.
The second book contains some slightly weaker elements – a key part of the book is Faye’s decision to buy a very run down flat and to bring it builders to renovate and soundproof it – her elderly and hostile neighbours downstairs are unconvincing and one dimensional (and oddly do not have any story of their own – almost uniquely across the two novels), however the overall effect is still compelling. Faye’s intervention in people’s accounts of their lives (her hairdresser, her builders, one of her students, some recently divorced and remarried friends), deliberately adding her own views and seeking their perspective on it, is much greater in this book – and as a result the accounts have more of a common theme looking at change and reinvention and its interaction with freedom. She also meets a man with whom she starts a tentative relationship – and has a feeling of pulling away from a precipice.
September 4, 2019
Αυτό το βιβλίο αποτέλεσε για μένα τη "μετάβαση" από τις ξέγνοιαστες μέρες διακοπών, στην μελαγχολική καθημερινότητα της πόλης.. Πολλά από τα πράγματα που έχω πει για το πρώτο βιβλίο της τριλογίας της Cusk, ισχύουν και γιαυτό το δεύτερο μέρος. Το μοτίβο των ιστοριών που διηγούνται οι άνθρωποι της ζωής της Φαιη, επαναλαμβανεται και εδώ, η πλοκή όμως μεταφέρεται από την Αθήνα του "περίγραμματος", στο Λονδίνο. Κι ενώ λοιπόν όλα τα θετικά στοιχεία του πρώτου βιβλίου, υπήρχαν κι εδώ, κάτι ωστόσο έλειπε. Κάτι δε μίλησε μέσα μου τοσο όσο οι ιστορίες του "περίγραμματος".. Παρ'όλα αυτά, καμία αμφιβολία δεν υπάρχει σε μένα τουλάχιστον ότι η Cusk έχει μια σπουδαία ικανότητα να διηγείται ιστορίες και να περιγράφει καταστάσεις με έναν τρόπο μαγικό,οπου το πιο απλό και ίσως αδιάφορο περιστατικό, με τη δική της πένα γίνεται εξαιρετικά ενδιαφέρον. Σίγουρα ανυπομονώ για το 3ο μέρος και ευελπιστώ να είναι ακόμη καλύτερο. Χαρακτηριστικό αυτής της ικανότητας της είναι το τελευταίο κεφάλαιο του βιβλιου, με το οικογενειακό τραπέζι και όσα απίστευτα γίνονται εκεί...
3.5 αστέρια
3.5 αστέρια
January 2, 2019
çerçeve’yle peş peşe okuyunca müthiş bir bütünlük oluşturuyor.
ana karakter faye’in dinledikleri o kadar önemli ki... bu kez ana-baba ve çocukluk girdabına dalıyoruz.
dinlemenin ve anlatımın önemi bir kez daha ortaya çıkıyor ve cusk ustaca bir biçimde cümleleri eksilterek sohbetler yaratmayı beceriyor.
galiba bu kitaplar hakkında yazacağım.
oggito'ya yazdım :)
https://tembelveyazar.blogspot.com/20...
ana karakter faye’in dinledikleri o kadar önemli ki... bu kez ana-baba ve çocukluk girdabına dalıyoruz.
dinlemenin ve anlatımın önemi bir kez daha ortaya çıkıyor ve cusk ustaca bir biçimde cümleleri eksilterek sohbetler yaratmayı beceriyor.
galiba bu kitaplar hakkında yazacağım.
oggito'ya yazdım :)
https://tembelveyazar.blogspot.com/20...
February 17, 2021
This book is book 2 of a trilogy of books that I believe can be read by themselves although I am going to read all 3 in the order in which they were published (Outline, then Transit, then Kudos). I already read ‘Outline’ and although it started off slow for me, I grew to very much to like the book. This time around I liked it, but just a bit less—3.5 stars, and rounded up is 4. 😊
Each of the nine chapters consisted of a conversation with Faye, the protagonist in the novel, and one or more people she was with. It might be a contractor she had hired to do a major renovation of a flat she had just bought and was living in…or a conversation with a man who was her blind date but it turned out it was not a blind date (they had met before…that chapter was really good)…her interactions with several male authors at a literary festival she was part of…and conversations and interactions at a dinner party she was invited to (not people I would have cared to meet). In each chapter she does not do a lot of talking but neither is she silent…she interjects things here and there that we are privy too (maybe to make an observation on what a character has been talking about), but overall, the other characters in the chapters do most of the talking.
In ‘Outline’ she was teaching a fiction workshop and in two chapters she treated us to different students taking her class tell us stories about a certain topic. So we as readers were reading stories within stories and I like that style a lot. Here, there was one example of it that stood out for me…. a man in a fiction writing class talking about Salukis. (They certainly seem like extraordinary dogs!)
In my review of ‘Outline’, I made the observation that I do like Rachel Cusk but I would be afraid to meet her because of her vivid and sometimes not-at-all-flattering descriptions of people that form parts of her novel. I think she would really make me out to be an ogre with two heads. Although that may be the case, still, I’d appreciate it if she were a bit nicer to me. Anyway, here is an example of Faye’s description of her downstairs neighbor, Paula, who hates Faye because for one thing the people working on Faye’s flat are making too much noise (for Paula’s liking or disliking as the case may be) …
• “She was growing aroused: I watched her big body writhe slightly, her head twisting from side to side, as though something inside her was rising and unfolding, wanting to be born. … Her mouth was gathering itself and puckering and I sensed she was entertaining the idea of spitting at me.”
I’m telling ya, that was prototypic of her…Cusk can be pretty brutal in her descriptions of people. 😐
Reviews:
• https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/bo...
• https://torontoreviewofbooks.com/2018...
• https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
• https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...
Each of the nine chapters consisted of a conversation with Faye, the protagonist in the novel, and one or more people she was with. It might be a contractor she had hired to do a major renovation of a flat she had just bought and was living in…or a conversation with a man who was her blind date but it turned out it was not a blind date (they had met before…that chapter was really good)…her interactions with several male authors at a literary festival she was part of…and conversations and interactions at a dinner party she was invited to (not people I would have cared to meet). In each chapter she does not do a lot of talking but neither is she silent…she interjects things here and there that we are privy too (maybe to make an observation on what a character has been talking about), but overall, the other characters in the chapters do most of the talking.
In ‘Outline’ she was teaching a fiction workshop and in two chapters she treated us to different students taking her class tell us stories about a certain topic. So we as readers were reading stories within stories and I like that style a lot. Here, there was one example of it that stood out for me…. a man in a fiction writing class talking about Salukis. (They certainly seem like extraordinary dogs!)
In my review of ‘Outline’, I made the observation that I do like Rachel Cusk but I would be afraid to meet her because of her vivid and sometimes not-at-all-flattering descriptions of people that form parts of her novel. I think she would really make me out to be an ogre with two heads. Although that may be the case, still, I’d appreciate it if she were a bit nicer to me. Anyway, here is an example of Faye’s description of her downstairs neighbor, Paula, who hates Faye because for one thing the people working on Faye’s flat are making too much noise (for Paula’s liking or disliking as the case may be) …
• “She was growing aroused: I watched her big body writhe slightly, her head twisting from side to side, as though something inside her was rising and unfolding, wanting to be born. … Her mouth was gathering itself and puckering and I sensed she was entertaining the idea of spitting at me.”
I’m telling ya, that was prototypic of her…Cusk can be pretty brutal in her descriptions of people. 😐
Reviews:
• https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/bo...
• https://torontoreviewofbooks.com/2018...
• https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
• https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...
August 22, 2019
It was actually only 3 months ago that I read Outline - the first part of the trilogy of Rachel Cusk. That was a very awkward reading experience due to the dry sequence of conversations of a female writer with a number of friends and strangers, a woman who you only got fragmentary acquaintance with and of which you even heard the name - Faye - only at the end. Both Faye and her conversational partners remained largely sketches, ‘outlines’ (hence title of the book).
Part 2 was given the title "Transit", and it soon became clear that that title too says something about the focus of this part. Again Cusk presents a succession of conversations, again with Faye as the hub for a colourful group of very diverse "talkers". But this seems quite another book. Because in this part Faye herself comes into the picture and speaks more herself and about her stance in life. And she also takes some decisive actions, such as the complete renovation of her newly purchased apartment. It soon becomes apparent that "change", "transformation" (transit!) is a recurring theme, both in conversations, situations and metaphors. What does change do to a person? Is change good, or is stability more beneficial? Is the truth a fixed point, or is it variable?
As the book progresses, the philosophical content of the conversations increases and the most profound reveries about the things of life are discussed. But don't expect any line in this: Faye sometimes hears others tell the most absurd stories about their lives, she often gets involved in awkward situations, and the musings about life go in every direction. While the pace of the conversations is fairly slow at first, this book gradually turns into a chaotic cacophony of comments, reflections and situations.
Once again you are left with the question: what the hell is this book about? And again you have that unsatisfactory feeling that you have apparently missed something. My suspicion is that Cusk is doing this on purpose: she deliberately confuses the reader by breaking the "normal" rules of novel writing. In my opinion, this second part was of a higher literary level than the predecessor, and because you soon think you have found the key to reading this part (transformation, change!), the confusion in the end is all the greater. Hence the 3-stars upgrade. I am curious which trick Cusk is going to use in part 3 to unbalance her reader.
Part 2 was given the title "Transit", and it soon became clear that that title too says something about the focus of this part. Again Cusk presents a succession of conversations, again with Faye as the hub for a colourful group of very diverse "talkers". But this seems quite another book. Because in this part Faye herself comes into the picture and speaks more herself and about her stance in life. And she also takes some decisive actions, such as the complete renovation of her newly purchased apartment. It soon becomes apparent that "change", "transformation" (transit!) is a recurring theme, both in conversations, situations and metaphors. What does change do to a person? Is change good, or is stability more beneficial? Is the truth a fixed point, or is it variable?
As the book progresses, the philosophical content of the conversations increases and the most profound reveries about the things of life are discussed. But don't expect any line in this: Faye sometimes hears others tell the most absurd stories about their lives, she often gets involved in awkward situations, and the musings about life go in every direction. While the pace of the conversations is fairly slow at first, this book gradually turns into a chaotic cacophony of comments, reflections and situations.
Once again you are left with the question: what the hell is this book about? And again you have that unsatisfactory feeling that you have apparently missed something. My suspicion is that Cusk is doing this on purpose: she deliberately confuses the reader by breaking the "normal" rules of novel writing. In my opinion, this second part was of a higher literary level than the predecessor, and because you soon think you have found the key to reading this part (transformation, change!), the confusion in the end is all the greater. Hence the 3-stars upgrade. I am curious which trick Cusk is going to use in part 3 to unbalance her reader.
February 13, 2018
Een paar weken geleden woonde ik in het MAS in Antwerpen een lezing van Tom Hannes bij. Hij gaf een hele groep mensen in twee uur tijd inzicht in het boeddhisme — wat geen sinecure is. Zijn uiteenzetting was voor mij erg verhelderend. Tijdens de lezing plukte hij af en toe een voorbeeld uit zijn persoonlijke leven. Dat vond ik sterk en ook heftig. Zo zei hij dat hij in zijn vorige relatie niet een andere man was geweest dan in zijn huidige relatie, maar dat die twee relaties wel een enigszins andere man in hem naar boven hebben gebracht. Dat kwam bij me binnen.
Ik vat de gedachte die binnenkwam in twee zinnen samen. Dat moet ik eigenlijk niet doen. Gedachten hebben weerhaakjes. Tom Hannes zelf en — bijvoorbeeld — filosoof Emmanuel Levinas hebben er een hele filosofie over uitgebouwd. Je bent iemand, want je verhoudt je tot een ander. Je wordt iemand omdat je je tot iemand anders verhoudt. En nu heb ik het weer veel te kort samengevat.
Hoe dan ook: diezelfde week had ik via Saskia de Coster een boek getipt gekregen. Zij was er op Facebook zo laaiend over geweest dat ik haar vanuit boekhandel Athenaeum een sms stuurde: moet ik ‘Transit’ van Rachel Cusk echt lezen? Ja, was het antwoord, en ze voegde eraan toe dat het een boek was waaraan ik veel zou hebben.
In drie dagen (ik ben een erg langzame lezer) heb ik ‘Transit’ uitgelezen, en het feit dat ik nu Saskia en Tom en Emmanuel vermeld, zegt meer dan genoeg.
De stijl van Cusk heeft me overweldigd. Nog nooit heb ik de idee dat je een ‘ik’ wordt omdat je je verhoudt tot een ander zo duidelijk begrepen. Cusk geeft je als lezer inzicht in haar personage, in dit geval een schrijfster die tussen twee stoelen in zit. (Tussen twee stoelen in zitten is — voor de duidelijkheid — verschrikkelijk.) Het inzicht in Faye, zoals de schrijfster heet, doet Cusk niet door de gedachten van Faye weer te geven, maar wel door de gedachtengangen van anderen op te schrijven, weergegeven door Faye. Dat klinkt complex, maar dat is het niet.
In één roman tijd ben ik een lezer die uitkijkt naar Cusk geworden. Online begrijp ik dat ik ‘Contouren’ moet lezen, ook geschreven vanuit Faye die ik net heb leren kennen. Ga ik doen.
‘Transit’ is uit het Engels vertaald door Marijke Versluys.
Deze bespreking en andere tips vindt u onder BLOG op www.bartmoeyaert.com.
Ik vat de gedachte die binnenkwam in twee zinnen samen. Dat moet ik eigenlijk niet doen. Gedachten hebben weerhaakjes. Tom Hannes zelf en — bijvoorbeeld — filosoof Emmanuel Levinas hebben er een hele filosofie over uitgebouwd. Je bent iemand, want je verhoudt je tot een ander. Je wordt iemand omdat je je tot iemand anders verhoudt. En nu heb ik het weer veel te kort samengevat.
Hoe dan ook: diezelfde week had ik via Saskia de Coster een boek getipt gekregen. Zij was er op Facebook zo laaiend over geweest dat ik haar vanuit boekhandel Athenaeum een sms stuurde: moet ik ‘Transit’ van Rachel Cusk echt lezen? Ja, was het antwoord, en ze voegde eraan toe dat het een boek was waaraan ik veel zou hebben.
In drie dagen (ik ben een erg langzame lezer) heb ik ‘Transit’ uitgelezen, en het feit dat ik nu Saskia en Tom en Emmanuel vermeld, zegt meer dan genoeg.
De stijl van Cusk heeft me overweldigd. Nog nooit heb ik de idee dat je een ‘ik’ wordt omdat je je verhoudt tot een ander zo duidelijk begrepen. Cusk geeft je als lezer inzicht in haar personage, in dit geval een schrijfster die tussen twee stoelen in zit. (Tussen twee stoelen in zitten is — voor de duidelijkheid — verschrikkelijk.) Het inzicht in Faye, zoals de schrijfster heet, doet Cusk niet door de gedachten van Faye weer te geven, maar wel door de gedachtengangen van anderen op te schrijven, weergegeven door Faye. Dat klinkt complex, maar dat is het niet.
In één roman tijd ben ik een lezer die uitkijkt naar Cusk geworden. Online begrijp ik dat ik ‘Contouren’ moet lezen, ook geschreven vanuit Faye die ik net heb leren kennen. Ga ik doen.
‘Transit’ is uit het Engels vertaald door Marijke Versluys.
Deze bespreking en andere tips vindt u onder BLOG op www.bartmoeyaert.com.
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