The Keeper was definitely the best book Wordsmith ever published. Should have won the Booker. We was robbed!
Is this why Susie’s doing it? Not because she loves the bloke, but because she’s understood that her success is the only thing that keeps her parents together? She wants to blow us apart with this disappointment. She can’t choose her successful life because she feels we created it more for ourselves than for her. She damages herself to give us the coup de grâce.
Is that it?
The conditions of her arising. And falling.
Or is it that you don’t want to believe in her passionate love? Because you’re so incapable of it yourself. Passion shames you. Because when you should have walked off with T, you didn’t. You were in love with T and did nothing about it. You let your love die because you didn’t have the courage. You see Susie committing career suicide for love and you feel humbled, humiliated. You see the beauty of love, real love, sacrificial love, and you see your utter, utter failure to love.
She’ll save him and they’ll live happily ever after. Maybe.
Wasn’t the enigma in The Keeper that the three victims were embalmed years apart? The grandmother before the son, the son before the mother. So first the son, then the mother must have accepted the presence of a corpse/corpses on an armchair/armchairs around the house, for years, before falling victim themselves. Bizarre. But fascinating. Accomplices becoming victims. Even after seeing another accomplice become victim.
So what if the author borrowed the plot from some old fairy tale? Everybody else does. Wordsmith wouldn’t be on the brink if they’d given it the Booker.
Dasgupta says we must avoid mental proliferation/speculation/ daydreaming/second arrows etc., but how can I not speculate on the motives which are prompting my only child to throw away her talents to be with a drunken criminal the other side of the globe?
Is that inappropriate attachment?
Perhaps it’s our fault. She runs off for love because her parents show no love. She loves passionately because our togetherness is embalmed venom.
I should surely pay attention to something if it’s my fault.
Or is she clinically mad? Have her sectioned?
How can I benefit from the teachings of Dasgupta until this drama is behind me? How can anyone who is as involved in life as I am, as mixed up with others as I am, as bound to others hand and foot, how can such a person benefit from Dasgupta’s simplistic precepts, how can such a person MEDITATE when his wife is exploding in his head, his daughter is singing in his ears, his mistress is breathing on his neck, his wisteria is beckoning, his jasmine drenches the air with perfume, his beautiful lawn begs to be mown?
If only it was over. Truly over. The child dead, the mother eventually realizes she’ll have to bury him and let go. Pain is not pain when there is no alternative.
Maybe there’s really only one arrow, the second.
The first was hardly an arrow at all.
How can a newt suffer?
Talk about indecision. I can’t even decide which way to cross my legs now. Terrified before Strong Determination that I’ll choose the wrong position and be in awful pain. Do I tuck in the left first or the right? Meanwhile the guy behind me suddenly has a cold. At one point it felt like his wheezing was right inside my chest.
Dreamed of T. We were making love. Normal lavish rejoicing. Unbelievably vivid. Don’t know where my body ends and hers begins. Utter serenity. Until I realize we’re at home. We’re on the sofa at home, for God’s sake. L is walking by, she’s calling to the dog. Susie is tugging her sleeve. ‘Mum, look at Dad and Teresa. Look at Dad and Teresa! Why don’t you look, Mum?’ Susie knows. ‘Why don’t you see?’ But L doesn’t turn. L doesn’t want to see. L’s calling the dog. ‘Charlie. Charlie!’ And the dog is T’s husband. T’s husband is L’s dog!
‘I’m pregnant,’ T is saying. ‘I’m going to have your child.’ No, she’s already had it, it’s already there on her bosom. A tiny newt is crawling up her cleavage to suck on her nipple.
That’s my boy.
Bizarre moment after two-thirty session. I’d just about held my position to the end. I’m getting to my feet, fighting pins and needles, when suddenly I’m transfixed by the sight of my blanket that I’d let fall from my back on to the cushion. I honestly can’t move for staring at the folds of my grey blanket. I’m fascinated by how complicated all the curves and wrinkles are and the way the light plays over the whole tangle and by the realization that no blanket will ever again fall in exactly that conformation. An intense awareness that the moment is unique, that all moments are unique.
Yeah, wow, yawn. But this is another bit I could have written myself. We all get these moments at the Dasgupta.
The thing about The Keeper was definitely the house. He wanted to keep the family together because he loved the house. The point of the novel perhaps was to capture the essentially bourgeois spirit of the embalmer. The serial killer keeps a beautiful garden. The neighbours are admirers. ‘Very able with roses and climber plants,’ someone tells the BBC. ‘Quite the artist.’
I love the bay windows. I love the old fireplace. I adore the rose arch.
And the irises.
In the end all those murders never made much money. I’d have done better publishing porn.
The loo is full of smoke. Time to open a window. Cig four already. Two to go. But I feel calmer now. The more upset my diarist is, the calmer I feel. Maybe that’s why Jonathan read all those miserable books. Cormac something. Thomas Bernstein? The more other people are in the shit, the more the reader breathes easy.
Don’t think Mrs Harper would approve.
Started crying in the field. I was on my back in the grass. Suddenly the thoughts turned to tears, the thoughts streamed out of my head in tears. Kept muttering, I love my wife I must escape I hate my wife I must escape I love my wife I must escape I hate my wife I must escape. Life is unfair unfair unfair unfair unfair unfair unfair unfair unfair.
Instructive.
So there I am on my back in the field weeping and I realize I’m weeping for JOY. Yep. Lunatic. This meditation stuff has driven me mad. I’m a hopeless failure but I love life. I’ve thrown away my life, my marriage, twenty-five years, but I’m full of optimism. Criminal. Meditation should be banned. Definitely. It is dangerous for a mind to be left in silence for long. We need music, we need the radio, we need the television, we need parties. Even books. Good news, bad news, anything. Actually, nothing better than bad news. A tsunami an earthquake a flood volcano bomb anal rape female circumcision torture scandal atrocity. Send a donation write a letter post a comment make your point say your piece anything but this silence alone with your thoughts.
Not just me but all of us. Think. 150 people all desperate together in the same room. 150 desperate silences in the same room, ferocious seething cancerous silences.
300 stiff legs, stiff ankles, sore knees.
All the stories. Think of all the awful stories revolving in all these sick heads. Worse than my Master Murder list. Dissolve them in acid, silent acid, acid silence.