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The Essence of Tragedy
Sep. 2nd, 2022 08:34 amNot much to report.
I Remunerated. I hung out with the cat. I gardened.
That middle photo? All the weeds are gone now.
###
I’m making yet another attempt to finish The Mirror and the Light, the final installment in Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy.
This time I’m listening to it as an audiobook while I drive and tromp and garden.
I really loved Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, and in the early days of 2020, I was literally counting down the days till The Mirror and the Light was published.
But a few days after I raced to Barnes & Noble to buy the book (in hardcover, no less!), the world shut down.
You’d think the world shutting down would make it easier to read the book. Fewer distractions, right?
But what I found was that the world shutting down made it absolutely impossible for me to focus on anything, and Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell books are not what one might describe as easy reads, they require concentration.
I’m still struggling with it two and a half years later. I don’t know whether the fault is with the novel or with me—or whether that even matters.
The prose is still shimmeringly good; Mantel’s recreation of Cromwell’s stream of consciousness, still a genius demonstration of close observation—of the man, of his historical epoch.
But it’s not clicking for me—though listening to it more or less guarantees I will finally finish it.
I suspect the deal is that in the final four years of Cromwell’s life, very little of narrative interest takes place. The rise and fall of Anne Boleyn provided the dramatic arc for the first two volumes, a kind of string through the labyrinth of Mantel’s dense prose. Once Anne is dead, there’s very little in the story that interests me narratively, certainly not the Yorkshire Revolt (popularly known as the Pilgrimage of Grace), or the death of Jane Seymour, or Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne of Cleves (and subsequent divorce.). There are few hooks for my imagination.
The novel’s title suggests the novel is ultimately about hubris: Cromwell would be the “mirror,” Henry VIII would be the “light,” no?
But hubris is very difficult to pull off in a stream of consciousness since it depends upon convincing readers that your protagonist is over-confident. When you’re that far inside Cromwell’s head, it doesn’t seem as though he’s over-confident; it seems like he’s a whole lot smarter than the world around him.
Being a whole lot smarter than the world around you? Not the essence of tragedy.
###
What else?
I’m feeling a certain level of low-level anxiety.
I can’t tell whether it’s just me or whether I’m picking up something from the world around me.
It’s controllable.
But it’s putting a certain damper on my ability to enjoy these cool, golden days of early autumn.
I Remunerated. I hung out with the cat. I gardened.
That middle photo? All the weeds are gone now.
###
I’m making yet another attempt to finish The Mirror and the Light, the final installment in Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy.
This time I’m listening to it as an audiobook while I drive and tromp and garden.
I really loved Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, and in the early days of 2020, I was literally counting down the days till The Mirror and the Light was published.
But a few days after I raced to Barnes & Noble to buy the book (in hardcover, no less!), the world shut down.
You’d think the world shutting down would make it easier to read the book. Fewer distractions, right?
But what I found was that the world shutting down made it absolutely impossible for me to focus on anything, and Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell books are not what one might describe as easy reads, they require concentration.
I’m still struggling with it two and a half years later. I don’t know whether the fault is with the novel or with me—or whether that even matters.
The prose is still shimmeringly good; Mantel’s recreation of Cromwell’s stream of consciousness, still a genius demonstration of close observation—of the man, of his historical epoch.
But it’s not clicking for me—though listening to it more or less guarantees I will finally finish it.
I suspect the deal is that in the final four years of Cromwell’s life, very little of narrative interest takes place. The rise and fall of Anne Boleyn provided the dramatic arc for the first two volumes, a kind of string through the labyrinth of Mantel’s dense prose. Once Anne is dead, there’s very little in the story that interests me narratively, certainly not the Yorkshire Revolt (popularly known as the Pilgrimage of Grace), or the death of Jane Seymour, or Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne of Cleves (and subsequent divorce.). There are few hooks for my imagination.
The novel’s title suggests the novel is ultimately about hubris: Cromwell would be the “mirror,” Henry VIII would be the “light,” no?
But hubris is very difficult to pull off in a stream of consciousness since it depends upon convincing readers that your protagonist is over-confident. When you’re that far inside Cromwell’s head, it doesn’t seem as though he’s over-confident; it seems like he’s a whole lot smarter than the world around him.
Being a whole lot smarter than the world around you? Not the essence of tragedy.
###
What else?
I’m feeling a certain level of low-level anxiety.
I can’t tell whether it’s just me or whether I’m picking up something from the world around me.
It’s controllable.
But it’s putting a certain damper on my ability to enjoy these cool, golden days of early autumn.
