From Overhead in a Balloon: Twelve Stories of Paris (1985)
intimations of the postmodern
how to read the story? as (1) end of stories; or as (2) ideological mini-narratives
Ideological notes
"Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence" (Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," in Lenin and Philosophy, 1971)
Simulacra
"It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real, that is to say of an operation of deterring every real process via its operational double, a programmatic, metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that offers all the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes. . . . A hyperreal henceforth sheltered from the imaginary, and from any distinction between the real and the imaginary, leaving room only for the orbital recurrence of models and for the simulated generation of differences." (Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser, 1994, p. 2-3)
citations:
p. 151: "I am thinking of the patches of distant, neutral blue" suggests impersonality, detachment. The tourists who come too early: "Overhead there are scrapings of a color that carries no threat and promises all." Why be reminded of tourists? Consider tourists as alienated visitors; the death of Juliette threatens to reveal to this speaker his alienated position, a tourist of his own life.
p. 152: "The sixteenth-century map of Paris I bought for her birthday": a map as a simulation, an orienting device, placing us historically and geographically; but here not picked up, and bought for a birthday (failed insertion into the present of a fragment of a no longer relevant culture). Alienation (again).
p. 152: energy crisis, introduction of daylight saving: people "needed sedation to help them through the altered day. A doctor was interviewed ..." A malaise for which there is a supposed medical solution, the comfort of authority pasted over a real alienation (-- once more).
-- hence, tangential, absent-minded moments in narration: suggest cracks in facade of the way of life represented in the story. Projects an alternative account, but one that is inconceivable by the narrator.
Distance between man and wife: window image from apartment being L-shaped (151); conversation over first wife, not coming to watch the television discussion (152).
Imaginary no longer possible: "I had once, long ago, imagined for myself a clandestine burial with full honors after some Resistance feat" (150). "my five-hour television series" (151).
The narrator's beliefs: perhaps symbolized in the last sentence. Patches of wool that make up a blanket: "those who outlasted jeopardy had to be covered."
Thus, inauthenticity of way of life shown. Is this sufficient to suggest a critique of a culture as a whole?
Consider Gallant's own remarks and quotations from two critics as contributions to one or the other of the above positions:
"What is Style?" (Geddes 356-8)
-- style intrinsic; -- to sense of impermanence
-- "Is it dead or alive?" -- mortality?
-- style an author's thumbprint, uniqueness ofTwo critics:
Grazia Merler observes in her book, Mavis Gallant: Narrative Patterns and Devices, that "Psychological character development is not the heart of Mavis Gallant's stories, nor is plot. Specific situation development and reconstruction of the state of mind or of heart is, however, the main objective." Frequently, Gallant's stories focus on expatriate men and women who have come to feel lost or isolated; marriages that have grown flimsy or shabby; lives that have faltered and now hover in the shadowy area between illusion, self-delusion, and reality.
-- http://collections.ic.gc.ca/heirloom_series/volume5/226-227.htm
Gallant's stories of men and women--and these include a few tales of trusting men let down by untrustworthy women--follow a basic pattern: Someone (possessing a naiveté perhaps reminiscent of the 27-year-old who ran off to Paris to write) offers someone else his or her love and is let down, but still manages to get up in the morning for the next several decades. These stories are the tightest and the best designed, and they yield her most memorable lines, dark, ironic compressions of incompatible worldviews. Netta, for instance, "took it for granted, now she was married, that Jack felt as she did about light, dark, death, and love," and from that we understand that separation is inevitable.
-- http://slate.msn.com/BookReview/96-09-30/BookReview.asp (link appears to be defunct)
Document created November 4th 2002 / revised March 14th 2004