Will we ever have Lookout Cartridge or Plus finally available? Won't Dzanc reprint other titles in the foreseeable future?

Edit: Sold (will update this post if that changes)

I have a copy of the Overlook Press paperback edition of A Smuggler’s Bible that I’m ready to part ways with, and I wanted to post about it here before selling it at a used bookstore in case anyone’s having a hard time finding a copy. Mine’s in pretty good shape—just some minor wear to the corner of the back cover. Will be cheaper than the going rate online. DM me if you’re interested and I can send pics.

I have a hardcover copy of the dzanc edition from last year in perfect condition . Am located in Australia. Dm me if interested.

Did anyone know there’s a copy at Philly IKEA for display purposes? Truly a diamond in the rough…

and I just did a bunch of research, got very excited about his work, read up on the best place to start with his fiction and decided to go online and buy a used copy of Smuggler's Bible. LOL. Guess I'll be picking any other place to start with his work.

I'm late to the Joseph McElroy game and at this point all pressings including the Dzanc editions seem to be thoroughly out of print. I'm guessing Dzanc probably isn't looking to do another reprint...anyone have any ideas on how else to track down a copy of this? Anyone read the ebook version? I really struggle with those as they usually have all kinds of issues (formatting, spelling, etc.) but anyone know if this one is any good? I guess my best bet is just to keep watching eBay in case a reasonable copy ever shows up.

To my surprise, I found that on a sentence by sentence level A Smuggler’s Bible is unique among McElroy’s body of work by actually being very easy and simple to read and comprehend. As his debut novel, I suppose it shouldn’t come as a shock. McElroy employs no wild syntactical trickery here seen in his later work, but the structure of his novel is certainly bizarre and challenging to follow. Our main character David projects his consciousness into a series of people he knows from throughout his life, some closely and some distantly, and writes 8 “autobiographies” from their perspectives, in which he occasionally features, in an attempt to define his own life and self. Interspersed between each of the 8 stories he grapples with ordering and structuring them while a voice in his head attempts to force him in different creative directions.

McElroy openly plays with the theory of solipsism, the idea that we can only be sure of our own existence. David struggles throughout the book with really knowing people, and by framing outward into their lives McElroy draws a sometimes infuriating, sometimes touching portrait of a man who, in spite of himself, is surrounded by people who care for him as he feverishly investigates the epistemological ramifications of every encounter and thought, missing the forest for the trees routinely as a result. It’s an extremely weird plot, and honestly I’ll say it doesn’t really work as one.

What drives the experience of McElroy’s books most successfully is his unearthly syntax and prose, the feeling of downloading another consciousness into your own, as the sentences twist and contort in impossibly unique ways, delivering their message in disparate threads that only form a whole in retrospect, pieces of thoughts accreting in the readers brain until he closes the book and realizes new thoughts have been shaped in his head he didn’t even realize were forming. This doesn’t really happen in Smugglers.

Maybe that’s not entirely true, as the conceit of reading as accretion is still present, it’s just more simple and straightforward. We hear snatches of sentences, jokes, ideas, theories, that return fully formed the deeper into the book we go. Structurally McElroy is still attempting his magic trick, but as a first novel it does come across as one practicing, not yet really grasping how best to make it happen, due to this lack of prosaic pyrotechnics. I will say that his structure is still fun and engaging to attempt to “solve” in a sense, but it features one of his most languid plots, and lacks the sentence by sentence excitement of his later novels.

One thing McElroy does succeed at right away is his trademark interest in conveying simultaneity, and for his lack of prosaic flair it’s an impressive feat. A constant stream of fact and history and memory and emotion batter the reader, McElroy turns a single moment into a deluge, a brilliant rendering of every thought possible all at once, the classic impossibility of “learn to use 100% of your brain, not just 15%” actualized in novel form. It is too much at once, and a sensation both overwhelming and intoxicating in equal measure. At his best McElroy simulates another life crashing over you in relentless waves, beautiful and incomprehensible, dangerous and exhilarating.

We are attuned when reading and living to separate signal from noise, to delineate the important and unimportant into two very uneven piles. McElroy, in all his novels, dares us to reject the idea of noise by refusing to differentiate at all. Every idea, plot thread, memory, feeling, and statement is given equal weight in his books, from start to finish. There is no rising action, no climax, because everything that happens is equally important. This methodology frankly tends to make for weaker novels in a conventional sense, but always serve as fascinating prose experiences, and it works in concert wonderfully with his simultaneity. For McElroy life explodes in every second all around us, and to just allow ourselves to be swept along, making sure to stay above water and absorb what we can of life as he depicts it is a wholly unique, rewarding reading experience.

Ultimately, Smuggler’s Bible, his first book, serves as a Rosetta Stone for his entire corpus. Nowhere else is he this clear, this straightforward with his themes and ideals while still delivering, to a degree, his trademark style. By the same token that also makes it one of his weaker novels, as the lack of complexity and bombast in his prose lowers the heights he is capable of reaching, and this straightforwardness, coupled with his usual plotlessness, can render the book a slog at various points, giving the reader little impetus forward. On the whole I would say it’s a valuable book for a McElroy fan to experience and a book that I personally relished throughout, but would not be a good choice to convince someone to dig deeper into his works.

How did everyone else who read it find this novel?

I don't know about everyone else, but I enjoy making reading plans and goals and ambitions at the start of a year that I never adhere to. For 2024 is anyone planning on reading McElroy? Which of his books, and why?

Finally broke down and got Women & Men (New) after not being able to find it at any used bookstores around me (and I’m in a pretty popular metro city in the Midwest). Have yall had lucky finding copies out and about?

Only $7 too. I already have a copy… so I left it for one you.

Hey, y'all!

I am looking to sell my hardcover 1st Edition of Lookout Cartridge. If anyone has an offer, please feel free to DM me!

I've read 4 and have 6 to go! Debating on Lookout or Plus for my next McEl-read. Of the ones I've read I'd rank them Cannonball - Actress in the House - Hind's Kidnap, with Women and Men existing in its own unrankable and indescribable sphere. I've greatly enjoyed each and every one and can't wait to move deeper still into his oeuvre.

I don’t have anyone in my life who can really appreciate how unbelievable of a find this was. I went into a crappy little coffee shop today and was browsing their free bookshelf when I spotted a familiar name, my heart skipped a beat when I realized what I had found. A first edition paperback copy of McElroys most elusive work! And for free?! Still can’t believe it!

Synopsis

The section begins with Becca and Daley falling asleep in bed together after their fight and conversation. Daley’s mind wanders across more history with his brother Wolf and the time he was stabbed on a morning jog, specifically his brother’s wrecked knee that prevented him from joining the war and his wife’s strange reaction to his stabbing, which was to go back to bed and ignore him.

He wakes up and takes a call from Helen, who’s surrogate son has been nasty to her, he takes her money and is cold towards her, which Daley deems abuse. Then Becca awakens and joins him, saying she wanted to talk to him before he left. Daley tells her he has to go, prompting her to strike him, the two wrestle briefly, then Becca gives him back his spare key and leaves in a taxi.

Daley finishes a morning run days later to find Bruce Lang waiting for him on his front step, who thanks him for encouraging Becca to stay on with the play. He asks why Bruce told her about his chopper accident, who replies that she discovered it herself. He then asks Daley to dismiss her primary residence case, and the two discuss Bruce’s work and history and Daley’s wife while Daley prepares for work.

Daley recalls visiting Della’s diving practice in secret and witnessing Ruley, as her coach, striking her after a poor dive. Bruce reveals that he was closer to Daley’s accident than Daley had known and interrogates him about it, then Becca comes back to retrieve a forgotten book and argues with Bruce, causing him to leave.

She then goes into the basement and speaks to Daley. The two of them go for a drive, and the final paragraph flashes forward to show them in the future still together chatting, Becca getting up to leave for a play she has to get to.

Analysis

“What we think about it is History,” Daley said. “Is that your contribution?” “That’s my contribution,” said Daley. “Plus a house,” said Becca.

Right at the end we come full circle on the concept of structures, with the final story of Wolf’s abalone, discovering an incredibly solid structure in nature, a house of sorts, and his interest in converting that concept, that science, into a human structure. The idea of what a house is, the purpose of a structure, and the way in which our relationships themselves are structures in which we retreat to for warmth, safety, solidity, comfort are all at the heart of Actress in the House.

McElroy’s earthquakes throughout warning signs, threats to our solidity, our structures, our support. Daley seems to have so many interpersonal shortcomings, his awkwardness, his passiveness, his coldness, but what he does bring to everyone around him is stability and a quiet strength that is so necessary to have in life. Wolf is still searching for solid structure but Daley is quake proof, and Becca comes back to him in the moment for small, seemingly ridiculous reasons, she sees him stretch a certain way and remembers that she loves him. He similarly recalls that he loves her once he realizes she is leaving.

Regardless of all the abuses they’ve undergone and abuses they’ve inflicted upon each other, shocks or quakes or whatever McElroyism fits, in the end their relationship, their house, is more than an act, it is performance that informs reality, and the two simply realize that despite everything they want that structure, that love.

I mentioned it in my comment last week, but I remain amazed at how McElroy put together this book, a structure in itself, a living, breathing, quiet, complex, impossibly layered experience of falling in love as an older person. They way he captures the struggles and neuroses and baggage and expectations and frustrations that go with it, alongside the joy and pleasure and vitality and sexuality and excitement is remarkable. Thanks all for reading, hopefully you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Questions

McElroy’s novels are collaborative between him and the reader to discern meaning, he expects us to bring our own lived experience and beliefs to his books in order to mine them for meaning and purpose. What did you take away from Actress in the House?

Synopsis

Chapter 4

This chapter flashes back to Daley and Lotta’s visit on Saturday night. Daley talks about watching Della’s dance troupe’s practice sessions, musing over contemporary dance styles, particularly the incorporation of “talk”—voiceovers?—and we also learn that Daley also traveled to some of the out-of-town dance performances. We also learn that Ruley first appeared the night before Daley was mugged, then the narrative shifts to a survey of Ruley’s various escapades, notably his Bingo fundraising venture and his addiction to betting on jai alai. The stream of memories shifts, from Lotta’s dealings in the American Southwest to Daley hinting at an event in Vietnam, then on to Della’s agency.

Pigeons also make an appearance, calling back to chapter two.

Chapter 5

This brief chapter takes place after one of Della’s dance performances. Ruley tells a group of people, which includes the beautiful young woman Isobel, how he facilitated the giant tent at the Jedda airport. He then tells Daley’s mugging story to the crowd. Daley thinks about the unpredictable and intrusive friendship that developed between Ruley and Della; their swimming/diving sessions make Daley remember Wolf’s injuries from the tanker explosion.

Chapter 6

Daley, in bed with Becca, “tried to wake up to tell her something,” and his mind wanders through different parts of his conversation with Lotta: fights with his brother, their separate skills/”gifts,” Daley and Lotta’s various business interactions with Ruley over the years, leading Daley to remember the early days of his relationship with Della. We see that Delay showed good judgement in business and had a habit of “being right.”

Chapter 7

Still in bed with Becca, Daley thinks about Della’s time with her agency, watching her former dance company’s new performance style, the increased frequency of her swimming sessions. Daley then remembers when he met Della in a crowded subway car, how they bonded over the travel brochure he was reading. The were both smitten: “first love revealed.” Daley moves to get off the train at Penn Station, but when a woman goes to sit in his seat, he sits back down and continues his ride with Della.

Chapter 8

Daley, in bed talking to Becca, talks about the archaeologist from the Cambodia digging case and the time when she was working on a shipwreck in the Black Sea, her background, and a supposed meeting she attended that featured Noam Chomsky. The mention of Chomsky prompts Becca to say “He’s why I’m here” ambiguously, with references to his opposition to the Vietnam War. Daley then misremembers some biographical details about Chomsky, and questions who “sent” Becca to see him. There are two options, a Scylla and Charybdis: Ruley and “someone else” (365).

Becca drifts in and out of sleep. Then, we get another doubling: This time it’s Becca pointing out that Daley and the archaeologist were “arranged” to meet, peppered with more Vietnam references, and the mention of a “deposition.”

Becca then provides a frontloaded description of people being pushed out of a helicopter several hundred feet in the air.

Chapter 9

Becca tells Daley his helicopter story: In Vietnam, Daley is selected as backup pilot for a mission transporting three men (Vietcong), a teenage girl, and woman named Than, “someone Daley valued” (373). Daley feels “offended, annoyed now, abused” listening to Becca narrate the event, usurping his story.

Chapter 10

During the flight, there’s commotion in the back, and the pilot goes into the back to help, leaving Daley to fly. After he realizes the three men have been pushed out, he lowers and tilts the helicopter to force the soldiers, Than, and the girl farther inside, but the pilot grabs the stick and takes them straight up, after which the woman and girl are pushed out of the helicopter. From the conversation, it’s clear that Dale’s attempt to save the women was officially attributed to incompetence, not intentional actions that could’ve endangered the lives of American soldiers and an officer.

Daley gets fed up with Becca’s narrative style of speaking through questions, an interrogation. Becca describes herself as “a hinge” for Daley to pass his story through. She tells him he’s not a “sympathizer,” but he says he kind of was with Than.

They redirect to Becca and the various dysfunctions of her family: the sexual abuse from her brother, her father’s alcoholism, her mother’s frequent “visits” to Becca’s half-brother.

They circle back to the helicopter, which Daley calls “A pretty common incident over there” (382). He also finds out Becca’s brother Bruce is the one who told her this story.

Analysis

This section features a lot of co-opting/blurring of relationships, memories, stories. As we find out more about characters, we find out how entangled they all are in terms of relationship and narrative function. Becca “sent” to New York because of? Chomsky—or the opposition to Vietnam he represents—narrates a Daley’s pivotal story to him.

Similarly, Ruley co-opts Daley’s mugging story, hyping it up with an emphasis on Daley suffering a severe wound and going home instead of the hospital. Daley doesn’t get to narrate his stories of strength and bravery. They’re taken from him. He is the raw _material_ for their narratives.

Daley gets to keep the story of meeting Della; however, that relationship is eventually disrupted when Ruley shows up.

The helicopter incident also illustrates the difference between history and story/memory. The “story” Becca tells from the “historical” account in official records and presented in _The New York Times_ does not line up with Daley’s memory. He adds to Becca’s story and augments details. Her story feels sterile, at times sarcastic. Daley’s additions add depth and feeling: words exchanged, looking into Than’s eyes, his desperate attempt to save them.

Questions

1. Do these chapters make you doubt Becca’s relationship with Daley?

2. What do you think Becca’s interest is in telling the helicopter story?

3. What performative moments stood out to you?

Synopsis

Becca and Daley return to his house, upon which they begin arguing, Becca angry at him and asking why she came at all. After a while the two calm down, and they brush their teeth and go to bed, continuing to discuss their past traumas and histories obliquely, along with philosophy and their veiled, continued frustration with each other.

First Love starts with a chapter of a combined unconsciousness between Becca and Daley, perhaps as they sleep, as they reflect on history and abuse in a more detached and free association style. It then focuses on Daley and his deceased wife Della, her and his relationship with Ruley Duymens and each other, and her dancing and their relationship before her passing.

Analysis

Here in the span of a few days we’ve hit a crisis point in this relationship. Becca is angry, feeling that Daley is a man who is uninterested in really hearing her, instead patronizing her, treating her like a charity case, she feels dehumanized and like he is abusing her in a sense. At the same time Daley is struggling with getting through to her, and is growing frustrated at seemingly always having the wrong answer to Becca, and the sensation of being held at arms length, giving but not being able to receive any personal history. he himself refers to this as a form of abuse as well.

Both Becca and Daley have valid frustrations, and that heart of all this seems to be unprocessed trauma, Becca’s childhood abuse and Daley’s wife’s death have caused them both to close off and struggle to make an intimate connection that a relationships such as theirs requires in order to continue. McElroy seems to be playing with abuse in a tangible sense through repeated mentions of impact, or shock, and absorption. One party is always delivering a shock and the other absorbing, and in a sense he seems to be teasing out how integral and inseparable this constant process is from communication, from relationships. We are always hurting and being hurt, we are always trying to form nonverbal connections and understandings. To be together as people is to be able to reckon with all of these, to limit our shocks and handle our absorptions. It remains to be seen if their traumas are too much to overcome this series of small abuses and failure of communication.

The beginning of First Love takes us interestingly into a colloidal unconsciousness style of chapter, in which Becca and Daley seem to merge and in first person plural reflect on the nature of abuse, the abused, and abusers and how they inform and can define relationships. This chapter has some of the flavor of Women and Men as we circle and spiral through a multiplicity of thought and history and memory, but doesn’t seem to linger too long.

Questions

How is Daley’s relationship with Becca mirrored in what we know of his relationship with Della?

What would you point to at the root cause of the joint anger between Becca and Daley?

Chapter 5

We see Becca working on her one-woman show, making adjustments—constructing/building her narrative, adding new material —with references to how she developed an interest in acting. Becca’s friends are at the house, and Daley seems annoyed at times, stewing over the inevitable slap awaiting Becca at this night’s performance. He makes several trips to the backyard to speak with Isabel. The phone rings a few times, and Barry shows up. Daley goes back in the house to find Becca making an omelet for Barry. Becca and Daley leave together, grabbing a cab to swing by her apartment.

Chapter 6

They arrive at her apartment, and Daley remains fixated on the impending slap, wondering what is expected of him now that he and Becca are intwined. We see Daley morphing into a protector, “a buffer zone” for Becca. The building’s super comes by to take measurements for the painters scheduled to revamp the apartment for the next tenants, after Becca is evicted. Daley confronts the super and tells him nobody will be painting until the apartment is officially vacant. They talk about Beck, Becca’s brother’s trips to New York, and Ruley.

Chapter 7

The two walk out of the apartment, grab a cab shortly after and go to a movie, Becca buying sandwiches and drinks. After, the grab another cab back to Daley’s house, where the driver nearly runs over Isabel’s kids, who had been playing football in the street. There’s a note for Daley; Becca grabs it, reads it, crumples it up. They have sex, then Becca rushes out to make it to the theater. Daley gets a call from Lotta, announcing that she’s right near his house.

Chapter 8

We get some of Lotta’s backstory, particularly abuse when she was a child. She tells Daley about a conversation with Ruley, flinging insults about her work and furious that she didn’t call him a thief in her memoir. We get a reference that Daley could’ve helped her friend who was escorted away Iraq. Daley and Lotta talk for quite a while about a range of topics, much of it centered on art and how things are built and shaped, then she leaves.

Chapter 9

Daley grabs a cab to head to the jazz club to see Sid’s band, and we find out he’d met a woman, Anna, at the club the previous Monday (the day of Becca’s phone call), and they’d caught a cab together after the show and had sex. Daley sees Lotta a few blocks ahead trying to hail a cab. They stop and pick her up, heading to her place before going to the jazz club. She invites him in, but he declines. Daley decides he’ll got to Becca’s play after all, foreseeing that he’ll only stay for a few minutes. When he gets in the theater, Beck and Becca’s brother Bruce are leaving and stop to talk with Daley. Beck says, “Hey, I saw you brought your friend again; wondered where you were,” possibly referencing Helen in the audience. Daley leaves in the same cab in which he arrived.

Chapter 10

Becca arrives home late after a few drinks, upset that Daley came to the show then left her alone. They argue/ talk about her brother, Beck, and Ruley, also discussing Wolf and his daughters, Daley’s relationship with them, and Wolf’s work. They go to sleep, and in the middle of the night, Daley wakes up to the sound of voices in the house. When he reaches out for Becca, he hits her in the ear, “smacking her by mistake” (285). The next morning, Becca leaves to do laundry.

Chapter 11

Becca returns with clean laundry and a plum, fur-collared coat that she wears that evening during their date at Waters, the jazz club. Becca shows genuine interest in the music and talks with Sid after the performance. Sid immediately recognizes her as the woman on the phone who interrupted his meeting with Daley. Daley leaves them to catch the Dutch sax player, who makes a brief comment about Daley and Wolf then leaves. On the way home, Daley tells Becca about the “Amsterdam story, fiasco or good fortune really” and meeting Sid for the first time, in Holland.

Analysis

The primary theme I noticed in this chunk of the book is intrusions/penetrations: social, sexual, narrative. We get several actual instances of sex, as well as a proposition from Lotta, and Daley wondering who has had sex, notably whether Ruley had sex with Lotta the night he stole her figurines. We find out Daley seems to have sex regularly with various partners. If my math is right, it’s three partners in three (maybe four) days. We’ve gotten numerous hints throughout the book about commitment issues. Even while Daley was at the fence talking to Isabel, he was thinking about her sexually and struck by her jasmine scent drifting toward him.

Social intrusions were very interesting: We get Daley’s house overrun by artsy kids, a potential rival (and the man who frequently smacks his girlfriend) in Barry, Lotta popping into his house, then getting into his cab later; the super interrupting the apartment visit. The complex relationships are driving the action, and we still don’t know the full details about who is actually doing what and why. We also get several stories/conversations that are named or begun, but they’re cut off, not finished, or a character simply doesn’t reveal the important point of the story/conversation (the cab driver pointing out that Anna revealing she’s pregnant isn’t what she really wanted to say).

It feels like this might be a case of Daley being paranoid, or it could be a result of McElroy’s technique of making vague gestures at plot elements, character histories, and relationships and not drawing attention to when pieces come together. Even Anna, the pregnant woman from the jazz club, is referenced vaguely several times earlier in the novel. But this expository method, as in the previous novels in our group reads, feels so true to the stream-of-preconsciousness approach to memory and cognition. When Daley remembers an incident, he doesn’t immediately call to mind every detail of the event. We get snippet here and there as he thinks throughout the day/week.

I’m excited to see where else Joe’s going to take us. There were so many references to backstory we haven’t seen yet. I’d like to do a page count on the chapters. McElroy has periods in this book in which he presents a sequence for fairly short chapters. I wonder if they map onto a larger structural feature of the novel.

Questions

How’d you see the theme of “acting” develop in these chapters?

How does the inversion of the slap affect Daley’s standing in the novel? He went from dreading all day the impending slap in the play, but it turns out he’s the one who smacked her that night.

Synopsis

Daley opens this section taking Becca back to his home, reflecting on their talks, her relationships with others and whether she has one with him. She stays at his house for a few days, and he remembers cooking for her the first night, and a brief statement she makes about her parents, coupled with a number of voices and impressions she does that seems to open for Daley a series of borrowed memories or murky conceptions of familial molestation and violence done to her in the past that flashes in his mind. These seem to also come to her, as she breaks into sobs during what was on the surface a light and flirty conversation, and Daley brings her to a bed where she sleeps.

Leander goes for a swim and then goes to Daley’s office to discuss the work he had been offered, not finding him he goes for a walk and hides behind a dumpster when he sees Daley and Becca walking, and watches them interact from afar.

Later Helen calls Daley and tells him the show is moving uptown and the producer needs to know if Becca is in. The two of them continue to sleep and live together as the week goes on, with Daley feeling increasingly concerned with what he feels is an impending end to their arrangement.

Analysis

Becca’s one woman show Daley is audience to is her scarred family history, a troop of people who formed and deformed her. A really heartbreaking display of the way in which trauma can subconsciously rush us when we least expect and overpower us, seen in this scene through the eyes of Daley instead of the afflicted Becca. This is a real challenge for any relationship, trying to find a way to support someone with past trauma, and figuring out how to engage with them and possibly help them, and we can see Daley’s trepidation to address it since he to this point is unable to get Becca to tell him much at all about herself in a casual way.

To this rough midpoint, Actress seems to be McElroy attempting to distill the central conceit of his prior novel, Women and Men, as he strips away everything to dive as deeply as possible into the moments that make up a budding relationship. Actress also seems to have even less plot centric momentum than usual for McElroy, which is already a low bar. That being said I don’t think it’s a bad thing, I’ve been really enjoying the almost meditative pace of Actress, the way we sit and steep in a moment, just observing, just gathering all the hundreds of seconds and thoughts and impressions and misinterpretations therein.

Becca also serves as a catalyst to revisit Daley’s preconceptions and memories, an example earlier on was stating his mother’s childhood no really meant time. While he cannot thus far get her to open up the wound that is her past, her conversation is effective at opening his, a revitalizing mental connection not just romantic but transformative, an ability of really positive, thought provoking people to rewire how we see and approach the world and our mind. Becca gets Daley to reconsider and reframe the house of his past, in the same way that we are encouraged to read and think differently about the book itself by McElroy’s prose.

Questions

How did you feel reading the scene of Becca’s one woman show? What did you take away from it?

Do you agree with Wolf that Daley is the real risk taker of the two?

Summary:

Chapter 15 -

Daley and Becca's conversation continues as they keep walking out on the streets. They discuss various things, including architecture, their family, civil war, and land development. A real estate agent also stops and talks with the pair. Eventually, the conversation comes to a sort of mini climax when they both deluge to the other a tab bit more of their respective relationships with Duymens. There’s a lot of tension here as neither is telling the whole truth about him.

The chapter ends when the horse they keep hearing about finally shows up behind them.

Chapter 16 -

Becca and Daley are passed by the cop on horseback. Becca gives more information about Lincon and the time period in which he lived. They continue on to find a place to eat. As they walk Duymens is mentioned again. Duymens has a fixation with “giving things back” when they are given to him, a sort of repayment. More details arise as to Becca's relationship with the man: He provided her with a cheap apartment and got her the audition at the theatre, It seems that since he is a land developer, he also makes himself a patron of the art, so as to better the neighborhood (as Becca sees it). Daley had figured out a while back that the issues she was having with the apartment were related to her quitting the play and now he knows that Duymens is involved in both. Also, Daley’s antagonistic relationship with the man comes out more and more. Perhaps Duymens slept with his wife?

The chapter ends with Daley telling Becca more about his family and then they go back to his house.

Chapter 17 -

Lotta calls… More information about who she is and what she does, art dealing, is given. It talks about her character a lot, how Dela knew her just from the little she would take in of what Daley would tell her. More memories of Dlea crop up and we find out the Duymens is the stranger who was staying in the guest room.

Daley tells Lotta about when he almost got mugged. This is a big deal for Daley who tends to not speak of these kinds of things with anyone as he has learned not to because of his mother’s No’s.

We soon find out that Duymans stayed with Daley’s wife in his house when he went to Australia. They have a few encounters with each other in which Daley becomes increasingly annoyed with Duymans. Daly tells Duymans the story of his attempted mugging. Duymans tells him about a large tent construction in Sadi Arabia. We also learn more about Sid the jazz drummer.

Daley asks for Duymans help with an extradition case that’s come up through his client Lotta.

Lotta writes a book about the whole thing, including the cleaning woman to whom her husband was writing love poems.

Thoughts:

Chapter 15 -

Right in the start, the question of who you are vs. how others see you and which is your identity comes to the forefront with Daley proving (to whom? himself?) that he is more than his mother saw in him (“It was you that was being doubted” p119); More than her distrustful no’s. A lot of these feelings steam from the family relationship which has been seen throughout the book so far, both in their actual lives and in the play. I wonder, since the title is… in the house if there is a very intentional setting up of a house vs home theme. In which the difference like self-identity is hard to explain/justify; the very problem Becca’s legal situation presents: Is it her home/main residence if she is not there for the majority of the year? How does one prove where one calls home?

My own feeling is that it is very hard for one to justify one's self in the abstract. We contain a sense of who we are but to explain it we must juxtapose ourselves with the Other. But something is lost in this notion, as a house is where others see where you live, where you sleep at night, and a home is something only we ourselves know; oft times indelible.

Becca has also brought up the idea of country, government, and history a few times. Mostly all through a critical lens. Though I believe in the last section Daley says/thinks something about how Becca’s Stage Character loves her country. I think maybe there is more identity at play here, especially with the early ambiguity of Becca’s nationality. All of this makes it interesting for her to have more knowledge than Daley about the American civil war, a fact that has irritated him a bit.

Chapter 16 -

Aside from the themes mentioned above, I think that the idea mentioned in last week’s post about the diver and the one that needs pushing comes back again as Daley questions who brought who to the restaurant/bar. And when Becca asks Daley if his wife was a diver, creating a sort of double entendre, with literal and metaphorical meaning.

Chapter 17 -

Appropriation of indigenous cultures and subjugation of Africans have both come out now, There is quite a bit about inherited identity, nationality, names, etc. All of which play into the themes mentioned above.

There are also some other things peaking out here and there about art, who’s an artist, what art is.

We also find many ponderings of the ideas of structure. I have a sense that the structural arguments help bind together both the talk about art and the creative and the musing on the Self. Each is built by the person themselves, but in what configurations? What stresses? What strengths and Weaknesses?

Questions

Does anyone else feel there are concentric circles being made in this book? Kinda like a spiral of information where each time we pass around we learn that much more about the situation.

Does anyone have any major unanswered questions, here now, at the closing of the first Act?

Is this book largely a conflict of internal struggle or external? It seems we have had a bit of both thus far. More than one knife fight. And much internal thought and questioning. Is McElroy saying that the two are inexorable?

Synopsis

Daley recalls a trip with his brother Wolf to Australia to a dam Wolf was hired to look at, and he is frustrated at it’s current construction and argues with the engineers. Their visit lasts a few days and Wolf antagonizes the engineers and workers over the quality of their work, ultimately leading to a bar fight in which Daley has to step in to protect him and get both of them away safely.

We then jump back to Daley leaving the theater, he stops to chat with a fellow theater goer named Leander outside who intimates that he has knowledge of Becca and potential danger she may face, and in their conversation Daley tells him his wife Della died years ago of fibrosis. He goes in and watches the rest of the play with Helen, and the two leave, Daley getting Helen a cab. He goes back to the theater, goes backstage, and asks the actor Barry about the slap, who brushes him off and leaves. Daley then goes on to the empty stage and sees Becca, the two flirt and go for a walk, discussing their families and personal histories indirectly.

Analysis

The focus so far seems to be trying to outline the variety of ways people do and do not communicate with each other. Wolf says things people don’t need to hear, communication through bravado. Daley communicates by saying very little, communicating by listening. Becca seems to operate so far on a similar register as far as inferring and interpreting, their conversations are somehow circular while also expansive, saying little of note but still peeling back layers of each other. This seems to be a natural contrast to Daley’s relationship with Helen, interested to see how Becca and Daley interact as they continue to learn each other better, we can see with Helen and Daley that sometimes intimacy does not breed closeness but rather creates division, a topic McElroy mined a great deal in Women and Men as well.

Daley feels like he belongs on the stage at the beginning, and now after everyone leaves he goes on and feels intoxicated by it, he badly wanted to join Becca, be not an audience to her but with her for an audience. However when they do finally take the stage together, they are unwatched. Will have to keep an eye on the stage/audience dynamic and see how their actions changed based on the stage they occupy and the audience they may or may not have. McElroy gives us some reflection on life as an experience dictated by the witness of others. Our lives are what the audience sees, they dictate who we are. This seems to be part of our character’s struggle, the idea of life in ourselves and others versus actually experiencing it, and can we even separate those two things?

Also last thread to keep an eye on is McElroy’s boundless love of diving and water, Daley is “diving” by taking the stage, and knows how Becca can learn. Becca asks to be pushed earlier on the phone with him. Shades of what he goes on to develop in Cannonball much more deeply, a dive we take versus being pushed, the idea of a dive being interrupted or reversed through other’s interference or aid. How will this continue to dovetail with our characters and their struggles, their relationships, and their “stage presence?”

Questions

What motifs and themes do you notice McElroy developing so far?

What significance, if any, do you see in the play itself relative to our characters?

How do you feel about McElroy’s unconventional dialogue?

Sorry it’s a little long.

Chapter 1

We begin with the slap. Bill Daley and his (girl?)friend Helen attend “a halfway mediocre” play during which a male character viciously strikes a female character, drawing (real?) blood. Daley spends much of the chapter interpreting and analyzing the responses of the other members of the audience and dissecting the blonde actress Becca Lang’s and the male actor’s motivations and responses. Much of his analysis focuses on who is or has experienced physical abuse/violence, as well as assessing threat levels. We see Daley express frustration with members of the audience for interrupting his analysis.

We learn a little about Helen: She travels frequently for work, she and Daley often attend plays together, and Daley sees her as someone he could be with, “the whole package.”

At intermission, the cast of characters in the audience share their responses to the slap.

We find out Daley booked the tickets after receiving a phone call several days ago from the actress, Lang.

Chapter 2

This chapter is a flashback several days to the phone call. While sitting with Kid Knox, a drummer, Daley answers the phone, expecting it to be a call from one of his long-time legal clients Lotta, but it’s a woman who says, “It’s you.”

Daley, his interest piqued, talks with her for some time, being told he was recommended to the woman by a Mr. van Diamond to address a housing issue she’s facing. She’s an actress subletting a place, but she spends significant time abroad, raising questions over her “primary residence.” She mentions “threats” against her.

Daley repeatedly thinks she doing a “voice-job” on him. We get frequent references to acting, drama, playing roles, performances.

Daley, while they’re talking, tracks the behavior of pigeons and an “out-of-place” brown dove outside his window.

He tells her he’s not a real estate lawyer, but he gets sucked into finding out more about her case. She tells him her name and that she’s a stage actress. The conversation grows friendly, and they joke with each other. She tells him van Diamond called him a good listener, a giver, a fool. Daley thinks she has “a gift for toil.” She mentions Daley’s “employment agency.”

Becca tells him, “We’re of the same blood, you know?” She mentions van Diamond’s “vile cufflinks” and gets Daley to agree to a short meeting.

Donna, Daley’s secretary comes into his office to check on him, having overheard the conversation, especially the mention of “threats.”

He stops at the supermarket on the way home to get a paper and track down the play Becca is in. He talks with his next-door neighbor about the mugging of a young boy on the playground at night. When he gets home, he books two seats for Becca’s play.

Chapter 3

The play resumes, and we’re filled in on some of the plot and character dynamics. The play features periodic pauses for voice-overs of Becca reading letters her character sent to her brother in Connecticut during her time in Nepal. The had a close relationship until he got married to a “noisy” redheaded woman. Becca then joined the Peace Corps and left for Africa.

The brother has developed “noise-cancellation technology,” but he faces potential legal problems for “professional improprieties.” He’s also having an affair with his secretary, whom the sister (Becca) knows.

The brother summons Becca home from Nepal, where she’d had a “spiritual experience” and been involved with the son of a Sherpa. The redhaired wife, leveraging power over Becca, pulls out the letters Becca wrote to her brother, at which point Becca tells her of the affair. She then runs to her brother to let him know she outed him, at which point we get the slap.

Chapter 4

Flashback 12 years to an earthquake in Manhattan. Daley wakes up around 3 a.m. to a phone call from his client Lotta, asking if she can sue Connecticut—which she claims was the origin of the quake—over the damage to two figurines that fell during the tremor. He tells her there’s no case to be had.

At this time, Daley is married to Della, a dancer in the process of retiring, and she is out of bed (reading, he thinks, but later thinks she went for a run instead).

He calls his little brother Wolf in Seattle to ask a structural engineering question related to one of Daley’s clients. We learn about Wolf’s history of error-proneness/unluckiness. He was literally blown out of the water when a nearby ship exploded in a harbor in Osaka, Japan; he collided while riding a dirtbike with the contents hanging off a moving truck. Daley was on vacation in India with his wife at the time of the Osaka harbor explosion, and the trip was cut short so they could attend to Wolf in the hospital.

On the phone, Wolf invites Daley to join him as legal consultant on a trip to inspect a dam in Australia in a week.

Daley gets up to check the house. He sees their house guest, a European financier Della hopes will fund a business that helps creative people find day/night jobs, lying in bed with his eyes open a slit. Daley answers a second call from Lotta, during which he hears the front door, and his wife comes upstairs. He had been thinking about how she would smell. They talk for a while; she encourages him to go on the Australia trip. He thinks about the letters her received from Wolf’s associates during his many travels.

Della says she thinks Lotta has been abused. Her rationale is that Lotta is abusing Daley: “No, she’s over the line, she’s abusing you, why does she do that?”

The couple turns sexual, we see a scar that runs from Daley’s wrist to elbow. As the couple gets going, the house guest may be standing in the doorway. Possible implications of an affair? ###Analysis So far, we see McElroy establishing a number of key themes: acting/performance, house/housing, violence (slap, jolt, explosions), absorption. As in Hind’s Kidnap, McElroy plays on the multiple usages of many words:

Absorb dominates the first chapter and appears in the other three, characters in the novel and in the play within absorb one another, absorb blows, are absorbed in their work

Chapter two builds on voices in terms of accents, playing characters, and being out-of-place (reflected in the dove outside the window.

Chapter three explores noisiness in the redhead, the brother’s “noise-cancelling technology,” the “noise” of industrial warehouses (a callback to Daley’s observation of the poor acoustics in the renovated warehouse in which they’re watching the play). I also see it as a reference to the noisy aspects of the character’s lives, the affair, messy relationships, professional indiscretions.

Chapter four focuses on premonitions, Daley’s “prophetic” gift. I first noticed this in chapter two. Having begun the book with the slap, we get a flashback in chapter two that makes multiple references to a “jolt.” I don’t know of a term for this technique. Post-facto foreshadowing? But in chapter four, dreams, memories, fears (of physical danger to people he knows), and hopes are blended in the narration, and we have a chapter set more than a decade in the past, but the text remains conscious of present.

McElroy’s prose feels smooth, even in the play chapters when he’s transitioning between the stage action, audience associations, and meta-commentary on the action and devices of the play.

We also see the beginnings of McElroy using intratextual intertextuality: Within the novel, we get interplay between the “real” people and the characters. Daley analyzes the relationship between Becca and the male actor through the performance on stage. We see multiple analogues: the secretaries both referred to as “girl Friday,” characters face legal trouble over professional improprieties, a sibling leaving with the married one staying at home, and I suspect more of the play’s plot elements will appear in the “real” character’s lives. ###Questions

1. Blood is mentioned multiple times. How do you see the interplay of violence drawing Becca’s character’s blood with the slap, the family ties, and Becca’s insistence she and Daley are “of the same blood”?
2. How are you tracking McElroy’s persistent use of layered meanings?
3. What do you make of the numerous points at which the narrative shifts to the second person?
4. What are some of the “roles” you see developing in the novel/play?

For next Saturday, we will be reading chapters 5 through 14, up to page 118.