Bedbugs, by Clive Sinclair

BIOGRAPHY
There is another famous Clive Sinclair, the one who was an entrepreneur and an inventor. He’s known for having produced the first pocket calculator, and then, the home computer ZX Spectrum.
But our Clive Sinclair is the author.
He was born in London in 1948. He was of Jewish origin, and his surname was Smolensky. He studied at different universities: East Anglia, California and Exeter.
He defined himself as a short stories’ writer. Even his first novel, Bibliosexuality, was originally a collection of short stories linked one to another.
He won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1981 for his collection Hearts of Gold.
Asked about what he wrote, his answer was “Sex, death and Jews”, but he was also fascinated with cowboys and the Far West, and True Tales of the Wild West is a collection of stories in the Western style.
He also was compared to Kafka, Borges and Nabokov. In 1983 he was chosen as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists alongside with Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan and Graham Swift.
He died aged 70 in London.
 
SUMMARY
Joshua, a university English teacher with a marriage in failure, is offered to give a summer course in Cambridge about First World War Poets to a group of German students, mostly girls. He accepts the offer because of the money and also because, as he is a Jew, can avenge his people and forefathers calling mentally his course “Rosenberg’s Revenge”, being Rosenberg one of the poets who was Jewish. But, although Cambridge is only thirty miles from his place, Bury St Edmund, he has to sleep in the college because he is also going to provide the students some entertainment, not only lessons. But the rooms the university has provided for him and his students are infested with bedbugs coming from a nearby building, recently demolished.
So he starts the lessons, where he finds some unfriendly students and some acolytes. One night, for the evening entertainment, they went to the theatre where they could see The Lesson, by Ionesco, a controversial play since it’s an allegory against the Nazis. After the play, Inge, his main devotee, goes with him to a pub where she proposes to produce a similar play. Then, at the college, Inge goes to Joshua’s room with the excuse of exterminating his bedbugs, but there she has an accident going down the modernist stairs, and they get laid.
On the last Saturday, Joshua takes his students on a visit to Bury St Edmund, where he lives and where Rosenberg trained before going to the front. Inge has a minor accident, and he decides to take her home to cure the small scratching; there they find his wife, and, as if his wife doesn’t show any suspicion about their affair, they had a nice dinner.
On Tuesday they have the show, but before the performance, Joshua has a strange vision: he sees, or dreams to see, his wife dead in their kitchen with a knife stuck in her belly. The play is a very singular one: it’s similar to Ionesco’s because there are only three characters, but in our case, Joshua is dressed up as a woman, Inge as his husband, and another student is a TV set. The story ends when Joshua disguised as a housewife shoots her husband six blanks, shouting madly “Daughter of Germany!”
 
QUESTIONS
-What do you know about…?
            bedbugs, lice, fleas, ticks, mange
            Rosenberg (Great War Poet)
            Bury St Edmund
            The Lesson, by Ionesco
            Baader-Meinhof
            Martin Buber
-Do you think Germans are still anti-Semites?
-Anti-Semitism is something you find in a lot of countries and in a lot of epochs? What can be the reason?
-“Women not interested in War? What nonsense! War involves everybody.” Debate: do you think women have to be involved in military conflicts? Or: if you want to stop a military conflict, you mustn’t take part in it?

VOCABULARY
congress, bantam, looms, concerns, rubbed the cow’s nose, routed, phony, counterfeit, lop off, rash, hives, louse, prowler, spunk, pardon my French, Aussie, hatch, sulks, loony, crannies, Spreadeagled, supine, agape, gibbering, cavorts, comes, props, blanks

Funny Little Snake, by Tessa Hadley

Funny Little Snake in The New Yorker

SUMMARY

Gil (or Gilbert) a 50-year-old history professor, divorced and remarried, feels his duty to invite her only child, a 9-year-old daughter with his first wife and whom he hasn’t seen for 5 years, to spend a few days with him and his new young wife, Valerie, in their house in the north of England, away from London, where his ex-wife lives.

Gil drives to pick up his daughter Robyn, but then, once he’s at home, leaves her to the absolute care of his wife, with the excuse of too much work. Valerie, who didn’t know anything about her nor about children in general, can see now that Robyn is a poor very underdeveloped shy child and is puzzled about how to deal with her. But she tries to do her best.

The day to take her back to her mother arrives, and Gil again, with the excuse of too much work, asks Valerie to do the errand and take the girl back to London by train, and that isn’t a short trip.

So to London they go. There Valerie discovers what kind of person is Marise, Robyn’s mother: a sophisticated ex-hippie who is living with a much younger musician, Jamie, and who doesn’t know her anything about the duties of a parent. Now Valerie understands why the girl is so immature in body and mind.

Valerie has to spend the night at her mother’s intending to go back home the next day, but the next day is snowing, and the trains aren’t working very well, so she has to wait in London. She doesn’t like being with her mother and doesn’t know what to do in the meanwhile. She goes for a walk, and her steps, or her tube, takes her unconsciously to Marise’s. Not knowing why and how, now she’s standing near the house. Robyn is looking out of the window and, after a while, sees Valerie and starts to wave frantically at her. Suddenly, Valerie is thinking about rescuing her.

But we aren’t going to be spoilers…
Is she really going to try and rescue her? What will Marise say and do? What about Jamie? And Gil, would he like Valerie’s idea?

QUESTIONS

How does the narrator show that Robyn is a defenceless child?

Is there any irony in the character’s names? Robyn, Valerie, Gil (Gilbert) Hope, Marise, Jamie…

What kind of relationship is there between Gil and Valerie? How do you know?

And with Marise? Why did they get married, and why did they separate? Why does Gil hate Marise so much now?

Do you think it’s possible to be leftist in politics and traditional or rightist in personal questions?

Gil married two uneducated wives: Why do you think he did so, being himself so educated?

What do you think about this: is a self-made man more or less tolerant with people who haven’t been able to go up in life?

What does Gil think about his mother? And Valerie about hers?

What kind of toys did Robyn have? What games did she play?

In your opinion, why does Gil talks about himself in the third person when he’s asking for a favour to Valerie?

According to Valerie, “important men had to be selfish in order to get ahead”. What is your point of view about this?

What are the differences between sitting room and drawing room? And about tea (in the afternoon / evening) and supper or dinner?

Why do you think Marise and Jamie are partners? Is there love between them?

Does Marise love her child? How do you know?

Do you think Valerie has different manners with Gil when she’s at home from when she’s at Marise’s?

What is the relation of the title with the story?

What is the symbolic meaning of the “stuffed birds and that horse” at Marise’s?

What is the meaning of “Gilbert sitting there steering along in the little cockpit”?

Does the snow and the end of the story work as a symbol? What symbol?

Why, according to your view, does Valerie go to rescue Robyn? And why does Jamie help her? Why does Robyn want to get away with Valerie?
In your opinion, what is going to happen when Valerie gets home with Robyn? How is Gil going to react?
The last sentence says: “Just for the moment, though, the child was inconsolable”? Why was she so?

Another summary

Mother's Son, by Tessa Hadley

SUMMARY, by Montse Puigvert

 

Christine, Thomas’s mother, works as a literature teacher at the university and lives on her own in a flat in London. She is working at home, as she usually does on Thursdays, when she suddenly remembers about what someone told her the previous evening while having dinner with some friends of hers: Alan, Thomas’s father, is going to get married to a young girl half his age, in fact she could be his daughter.

Immerse in her thoughts, she receives by surprise the visit of Thomas. He’s got himself in a bit of a mess and needs to talk. He usually doesn’t tell her about his worries, which means that something important must be going on. At first, she thinks it is concerning Alan’s wedding, but it is not, he’s actually happy about it. He’s having an affair with a girl she met at work called Annie, curiously the same name as his girlfriend, Anna. He feels so comfortable talking with this girl, she is very bright, but not as good-looking as Anna. He hasn’t told anything about it to his girlfriend yet, as he wants to be sure, rather than upsetting her for no good.

Furthermore, he is not quite convinced with his work as an assistant of a Labour member of parliament, whom he really doesn’t believe in. Due to that, he is thinking about leaving the job and going away by himself to live abroad, in Prague or Budapest.

He starts to be impatient to leave. Christine knows he is going to meet Annie without even telling her. Remembering the way he has talked about her before, she feels he is so infatuated.

She feels herself reflected on Annie and revives the relationship she had with Alan. They had an affair by the time he was married and with two children. For a short period of time, Alan left his family to live with Christine, and that’s when Thomas was conceived. The relationship hadn’t worked out because they quarrelled continuously and Alan missed his children. So he came back home, leaving Christine alone while she was pregnant. They only kept their relationship from time to time to manage things about Thomas. In one of those meetings, they had a huge discussion on how to educate his son. From that day, their relationship broke definitely.

In the following morning after Thomas went to see his mum, Anna visits her at the university and tries to know what’s going on. Obviously, even caring about her, Christine feels that her loyalty is towards Thomas’s confidence. That’s why she only tells Anna about his worries concerning his job, whether he was doing the right thing working on it. But Anna keeps jostling for more, in fact fighting for their relationship. Christine only adds what he said about the possibility of going on holiday to Europe, and supposedly on his own. Anna is very sad, and she will try to talk to Thomas to get the truth.

Deep inside, Christine envies the Anns for having this struggle over him, the game of pursuit and being pursued, and the feeling of possession, a possession which she, as a mother, had from the very first moment when Thomas was born and which is now no longer available for her.

QUESTIONS

-She had the news about Alan, she forgot them, she remembered next day, but then she only thinks about her place. Why remembering Alan make her meditate about her place and how she likes it?

-Why did she use Mondrian to decorate her flat?

-How do you know she liked her son’s visit?

-Can you make a summary of Alan’s love live?

-Why does the narrator give us information about the husband if the key history it’s his son’s?

-“Being good might be another kind of lie”: When or where can you apply that?

-Why does he prefer Annie to Anna?

-Christine longed those storms caused by her relationships long time ago. Why can anyone miss some herd times in their lives?

-Could that mother (stormy in her youth) be a good adviser?

-For our children, what is it better, a simple or a complicated life?

-Bearing a child is always a good experience?

-Could you say the Alan was a bit sexist, or he was a product of his time?

-What would you say to a child who asked you about death?

-Do you think parents can / have to solve love problems of their children?

-Is “being extra nice” a sign of a lie?

-Do you think Anna pays too much attention to her body?

-What is the meaning of the rotten egg at the end of the story?

-When you had a mess, is it a good idea phoning somebody to tell the about it to try to forget it?

VOCABULARY

bristling, thriving, entertained, slate, cost the earth, brogues, pull a sickie, cropped up, wagged, dummy, popped, slick, BFI, tame, pebbles, dabble, prig, mew, truce, patching, moody, jostling, swivel, rump, shallot, bleached

Buckets of Blood, by Tessa Hadley

 

SUMMARY AND OPINION, by Begoña Devis

Hilary and Sheila are two sisters, both daughters of a vicar's large and poor orthodox family. The memories of their childhood and youth are not exactly happy: endless queues to use the bathroom, scant food, a heater that hardly heats up, fear of his belongings being stolen by his brothers, and, especially, the figure of their mother, overwhelmed, permanently dishevelled, pregnant and with a wild appearance that made people look at her in the street.
For all these reasons, when they both confess to each other that they no longer believe in God, they decide that, in no way, they are going to follow the family model, to have a conventional family, or pregnancies, or children, or anything that remotely reminds them of how their childhood has been. As escaping from this pattern is not so easy, because of their status as women, they decide that Sheila, always more courageous and determined (and probably the older one) will be the one to lead the way by going to the university, so that, later on, Hilary would be also able to move away from the place where they still reside.

When Sheila is already at the University of Bristol, Hilary embarks on a hopeful bus trip to visit her. It is her first time away from home, she is shy and rather unfriendly with people because she doesn't know how to interact with them, and the trip makes her sick, but, despite this, she feels happy. She hopes to meet her sister waiting for her at the station, and then to go together to the Manor Hill residence, where she will be happily ensconced.

But nothing goes as she expected. Instead of her sister, a young man who seems ugly, short and very inattentive, comes to pick her up at the station. She is forced to follow him through innumerable streets, leaving behind the tower of the University, to reach a filthy building, poorly lit, with hardly any water, where her sister and a group of friends live illegally. Sheila is suffering great pains at this time, and everywhere there are small buckets of blood, because she is having a miscarriage. The discovery that her sister has had sexual relations, has become pregnant (by Neil, the ugly boy who has been waiting for her in the

station, and who is not helping at all in that situation) makes Hilary to be in shock, and changes their relationship forever. On the other hand, her classmates seem to her unattractive, and more concerned with drinking in pubs and consuming joints than studying. Hilary has a great disappointment. She can’t understand how people who are on the lucky side of life can behave so rudely and inappropriately, and she can even less understand the attitude of her sister, always willing to please Neil, despite the fact that he did nothing for her during her miscarriage, and that he is always arrogant and pretentious. Hilary can’t recognize in Sheila the girl who had always been her sister.

Finally, after a few days, Sheila accompanies her sister to the station for the trip back home. They have made it very clear that the family will never know anything about what happened, and they won’t ever talk about it again.

On her way home, Hilary thinks that her life will never change as much as her sister’s has, and she feels bewildered. Suddenly, the landscape that she sees from the window seems beautiful to her, and she is saddened by thinking that, when she'll die, she will stop seeing it; then she thinks that she is already dead, and she cannot see it any more, but somehow she is allowed to return to life, and so she decides to enjoy everything while she has the opportunity to do it, down to the smallest detail.

 

PERSONAL OPINION

I think that Hilary and Sheila are very different, even though they are sisters.

The only thing that unites them is the fact of not wanting to form a family that follows the pattern of which they belong, and the need to flee from there.

When Hilary visits Sheila at the University, her hopes are dashed and her wishes changed. That was not the kind of life she expected there, and much less the life she wanted for herself. For this reason, during her trip back home, she suddenly finds herself appreciating the present: she doesn’t like the past, and the future is uncertain, so she decides to appreciate every second and every opportunity that the present offers to her.

QUESTIONS

-“She worried that she smelled of home.” Does every house / home have a different smell? Why does she say “home” and not “house”?

-What do you think of priest getting married and having a family? (Have you seen the film “Keeping the Faith”, “Más que amigos” in Spanish)

-How can you notice that someone has dressed up to be admired?

-Why did both sisters want to get far away from their home and not to become like their mother?

-But Sheila is studying Classics, a bit as her father. What kind of relationship is there between her and her father?

-Has religion or your opinions of the existence of God to be a private question? Why do you think so?

-Do you think there is trust in a family when the children don’t tell one another?

-In your opinion, why is their mother so disarranged?

-Why their mother’s pregnancies were humiliating for both sisters?

-How can you define “provincial”?

-Why does the author describe the hospital as something “sobering and impassive”?

-What do you think of the squatter movement?

-What do you know about Bluebeard story?

-Did you feel a difference between secondary school and university in the students’ attitudes in front of subjects and exams?

-To go to university is being in the “lucky side”?

-What is for you the event that changes a child or a teenager into an adult?

-In the story, Neil seems to be the “alpha male” because of his intellectual power or his coolness? Is this kind of rank going to disappear in the future?

-What do you know about the Oresteia? Do you think it’s a kind of symbol in our story?

-When Hilary goes back home, the weather is cheerful. What is the use of this for the story?

 

VOCABULARY

drawstring, navy school, school mac, Mothballs, Germolene, spots, dribbled out, remonstrated with, fleshpots, flaunt, surreptitious, reading, permed, hand-me-down, wellingtons, paltry, picked, palsy, entrist, beach rounders, twin-tub washing machine, playpen, dun, larked, ropy, maimed, pinstriped suit jacket, blue-rinsed, embossed, Brownie belt, squeak, dogged, daunting, quaint, racked, bundling, toppling, leering, shifty, Hills, Shuggs, kicked out, mould, reel, buckings, the halls, fractious, potties, tummy bug, studded, jug ears, lumpish, duffel coat, perfunctory, estate, fumy, slum, debunking, beeting, harrowed, heaved over, Brummie, small talk, shrank, gawky, lectures, skeins, haze, hummocky

The Enemy, by Tessa Hadley

SUMMARY, by Alícia Usart

This is a story about a girl named Caro, who met a boy named Keith in a meeting of the Revolutionary Socialist Student Federation, at her university.
She had bought a new trouser suit for the occasion; she was very proud because this dress made her feel sure of herself and attractive at the same time. In addition, she was approved by some of her companions.
When she met Keith for the first time, she found him very attractive and charismatic; furthermore, his Welsh accent made women melt.
Unfortunately for Caro, when he approached her, he reproached the way she was dressed (not appropriate in a Revolutionary meeting).
She felt humiliated; however, she remained calm, but she kept thinking how she could take revenge. Since then, he was her enemy.
After the meeting, all the visitors went to an old house where Caro and Keith had a long night arguing together.
When everybody went to sleep, Keith disappeared, and, the next morning, she was shocked to find him sleeping with her older sister Penny.
Later on, Penny and Keith had a relationship during twenty years in which Penny had struggled with him, bearing all his bad behaviours towards her and their children, changing his behaviour to a softer one, after she finished with him, and he started a new relationship. Caro had supported her sister in all difficult moments she lived with her husband, to the point of moving where they were living, in Cardiff, Wales. 
Finally, Penny ended this relationship after she had a third baby and moved near where she and Caro were born.
Keith met another girl, Lyne, and they lived between London and Dordogne. In the end, it was Caro who was left living in Wales.
And then, one day he had to come to Cardiff to talk to some people about a new film project, and she received him at her house.
She spent all day shopping and preparing a meal which was eaten in an hour or so, but she enjoyed all this work.
They talked about old times and old idealisms. After all, she realized that she was not the same person now at her age of fifty-five.

QUESTIONS

Keith was a revolutionary, but now he understands in wines. All the time there has been a debate: Can a revolutionary eat delicatessen, own luxury cars, wear expensive clothes? What do you think?

Why was Keith an enemy for Carol, according to Carol?
Are there clothes for activists, and clothes for posh people?
What do you know about lefty parties, as Trotskyists, Maoists…?
What was Caro wearing at the revolutionary meeting?
Did you stop seeing someone because of your different political views or religion beliefs? Have you read Fred Ullmann?
Are boys more revolutionary than girls?
Are science students less revolutionary than art and humanities students?
Is still there machismo in the revolutionary ranks?
What do you think of wolf whistles and catcalls?
Can students (they usually come from middle class or rich families) be truly revolutionary?
Being a revolutionary leader, was something like being an alpha macho?
Why do you think Keith choose Penny and not Caro?

They mention "the way that men chose women". What is that way?
Is marriage a fatal destiny for most of the women?
Can you remember the incident with the gun? What can this tell us about Keith character? What is the meaning of this incident in the story? Why does the authoress decide to tell us about it?
Personality versus artistic talent: Does the personality of a writer create a bias in his or her works or in the way we read his or her books?
What are your lost illusions?
What do you do in your hairstyle o dressing style to keep you young?

Are patriarchal systems linked more to human evolutionary biology than to cultural environment? Give your reasons.
She accommodated his enemy in her house, but she cooked him an elaborate meal. Why? Did she feel she was receding to the traditional female role?

VOCABULARY

yawn, faltered, restless, stir, upset, prowled, PA, thane, eke, grant, trendy, fug, wolf whistle, Agit Prop, currency, muddled, scalding, mock-, motley, politicos, hassle, sparring, Enoch Powell, overstating, squeamishness, countenance, obnoxious, teasing, sheer, auburn, cosy, council house, bleak, estate, raucous, predicament, feted, basking, stern, pithead, winding gear, leads, tenants, pottered, DIY, gnawed, maudlin, skittles, rag, dreary, infighting, welfare, Black Dwarf, brimming, spills, fug, jacknifed, rangy, quaked, tuiles, bara brith, thwarted

The Surrogate, by Tessa Hadley

The Surrogate

SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS, by Nora Carranza

Carla is twenty years old and studies at a college. Patrick is a Shakespeare and XVII century poetry lecturer. He is seven or eight years older than his students.

He is tall and thin, has a small beer belly and wears glasses. Maybe he isn’t particularly good-looking, but Clara, in the circle of chairs of the lecture room, loves all his gestures and body details.

Despite her feelings, the girl is aware that she is only an average student, although sometimes the professor remarks some of her sharp views. She has no expectations; she believes she is not beautiful: at school, the kids called her “frog face”.

Clara, after the reading of an old moving poem, understands that she is shut out the professor’s life.

Anyway, Clara dreams about Patrick permanently, she spends hours imagining varied situations that would allow them both to meet, and that eventually he would fall in love with her. In her favourite scene, they walk through a green meadow and reach a gate that opens to a wood. The scene has a romantic atmosphere, and crossing the gate represents the passage from their single life to their life together. However, when the fantasy reaches the moment of kissing, Clara gets lost, confused, and she cannot go ahead. This is not the real thing.

At the second year at college, Clara was short of money and got a job in a pub, not at all a fashionable place like the old traditional pubs. No students or lecturers go there for a beer, but groups of men to watch sports in the TV screens.

One evening, while attending normal duties, Clara for a moment believed that Patrick was there, and she panicked. But the man there only looked like Patrick, in many aspects. Nonetheless, he didn’t have the educated accent of the professor and seemed very shy.

Yet the man came back with his friends again and again. She knew that he (whose name is not mentioned) wanted to see her, and his friends made fun of it.

The differences between the pub visitor and Patrick were evident for Clara, but all the same, she initiated their singular relationship.

For a couple of months, they didn’t really go out together, they did only one thing together, until she went on holidays. She pretended that it was Patrick who made love to her, but eventually admitted he wasn’t. In fact, the lover was Dave, here is the name he had.

Surprisingly, the story changes a lot because, after some time, Patrick and Clara got married! He had always loved his student, and one day he went for her. The dream came true.

With the time and life together, love changes, ideals disappear and everybody has to deal with real persons. Clara accepts that, and thinks she loves her husband, and they make a good couple.

She never met Dave again, she doesn’t even know his surname. When she remembers that time, Clara feels quite embarrassed, thinking how she treated him, wondering why he accepted that, what feelings he had.

A new surprise arrives with the end of the story: Clara is having fantasies again; this time Dave goes to her house, as the gas engineer he was, and, instead of repairing the boiler, audaciously starts kissing Clara.

Is this another dream to come true?

Does Clara need to escape her everyday life changing protagonists in her fantasy? Does Clara want to compensate her previous behaviour with fantasies?

Do we need fantasy to cope with real life? Do we always have fantasies about hidden desires and keep them secret?

QUESTIONS

-Does being in love with one’s teacher improve one’s learning? Why so? Why not?

-Why do you think we move our hands when we speak?

-What details that aren’t particularly attractive did the narrator like in her teacher?

-What do you know about Much Ado About Nothing? What “freedom of choice” is there in the play?

-Do teachers prefer getting in love with clever students or with attractive ones?

-What do you know about the Henry King and his poem mentioned in the story?

-Do you like reading poetry? Do you have a favourite poem / poet?

-What was the meaning of the image of the field with “bullocks jostling and clambering on to one another’s back”?

-What could be a difference between infatuation and real love? Was Carla only infatuated, or was she in love? How do you know?

-Tell us about Patrick and Carla’s personality and physical appearance.

-Why wasn’t any sex in her dreams?

-What do you know about Coleridge and The Ancient Mariner?

-Have you ever been to an English pub?

-What kind of job is a waiter / waitress? Is it well paid? Is it a qualified job?

-The surrogate was shy and so perhaps not very clever, according to the narrator. Do you think there is a relation between character and talent?

-What could be the difference between sexual harassment and seduction?

-“People come in physical types.” How true is this sentence?

-According to the narrator, flirting with the surrogate wasn’t dangerous because she wasn’t in love with him. Why love could be dangerous?

-What do you think about cleaning your car / flat in expectation of a flirt?

-She was bored when the gas engineer told her about his job. What is the kind of conversation that bores / bothers you most?

-“He was a man: he didn’t turn me down.” Is it always true? Is it a cliché? Have a look at this: No means no in older times: scene of Love for Love, by Congreve (Act II, Scene XI)

-What is your opinion about the theory that says love only lasts three years?

-Would it be a good idea to tell Patrick about Dave? Why?

-Why, in your opinion, does she dream now about Dave?

-Why was there in her dreams a transition from romanticism to pseudo pornography?

 

VOCABULARY

lectures, smitten, moonly, picked --- out, average, quirky, insight, delude, singled --- out, strip lights, bullocks, exacting, investment, stranded, calling, muggers, aftermath, Dispiriting, gloomy, atmosphere, quaint, local, old-timers, optics, besotted, cap sleeves, demeaning, heated-up, seeped --- in, lurches, hurtling, infatuated, hoarded up, pliably, contrive, hover, serve up to, reckless

The Family Man, by V. S. Pritchett

V. S. Pritchett at the Wikipedia: click here

The Family Man: analisis (text and audio)

Summaries of other Pritchett's stories: click here

PRESENTATION, by Rafel Martínez

BIOGRAPHY

Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett, was born in Suffolk, on 16 December 1900, he was the first of four children of Walter Sawdon Pritchett and Beatrice Helena. His father, a London businessman, started several businesses, but due to his insecurity and his tendency to credit and embezzlement, had to close the businesses and disappear, so the family was forced to change their address to different cities, such as Ipswich, Woodford, Essex or Derby, which forced the children to change schools frequently, all to circumvent the persecution of the numerous creditors of Walter, the father.

The family moved to East Dulwich and he attended Alleyn's School, but when his paternal grandparents came to live with them at age 16, he was forced to leave school to work as a clerk for a leather buyer in Bermondsey. The leather work lasted from 1916 until 1920 when he moved to Paris to work as a shop assistant. In 1923 he started writing for The Christian Science Monitor, which sent him to Ireland and Spain. Pritchett, along with his friend and writer Gerald Brenan, is one of the few Englishmen who, in the early 1930s, toured the Spanish territory. From that youthful experience, Pritchett wrote Marching Spain, which appeared in 1928. However, it was not until 1954 that, already a consecrated writer, he published The Spanish Temperament, an excellent travel chronicle about our country.

In 1936 he divorced his first wife and married Dorothy Rudge Roberts, by whom he had two children; the marriage lasted until Pritchett's death in 1997, although they both had other relationships.

During the Second World War Pritchett worked for the BBC and the Ministry of Information while continuing to write weekly essays for the New Statesman. After World War II he wrote extensively and embarked on various university teaching positions in the United States: Princeton (1953), the University of California (1962), Columbia University and Smith College. Fluent in French, German and Spanish, he published acclaimed biographies of Honoré de Balzac (1973), Ivan Turgenev (1977), and Anton Chekhov (1988).

Sir Pritchett was appointed a Knight Bachelor in 1975 for "services to literature" and a Companion of Honour in 1993, in addition to other multiple decorations and mentions throughout his life, which makes him the best English author of his time.

Sir V. S. Pritchett died of a stroke in London on 20 March 1997.

THE STORY

This work, written by V.S. Pritchett, like all the other tales of him, are considered masterpieces that make their author to be considered as the best writer in England of the 20th century.

Like all his works, these are stories of normal people, with ordinary lives and that the author deals with that typical English irony, the well-known English humour. In most cases the actors are put in scenes that we all recognize as picturesque and that the author deals with his fine vision of double meaning and irony that the reader finds so funny.

In this case it is one story of a middle-class promiscuous man called William Cork with the pet name ‘Bunny’. He is a womanizer, a professor at a college, a married man with children, and a compulsive flute player. He has affairs with numerous women. The story is told from the viewpoint of one of his mistresses from the college, a jewellery designer called Berenice. In the story, Berenice comes face to face with Florence Cork, the obese wife of William. Mrs Cork has come across a letter sent to William in secret and she presumes Berenice is the sender.

The author fills with constant hints, especially sexual, the interpretation of his actors, with comic scenes such as when Bernice and Mrs Cork treat the theme of William's flute, one referring to her husband's musical instrument and the other, Bernice, understanding the flute's reference as William's penis, her lover.

ANALYSIS

I have to confess that it is my first approach to a work by V. S. Pritchett and when I chose the title The Family Man, at first I confused it with the American film, A Family Man, directed by Mark William, and with main actors, Gerard Butler, William Defoe, that is about a businessman who must choose between promoting himself running a large Chicago company or tending his family life.

After reading three times Pritchett's work, I have ended up understanding many phrases and its double meaning that are the characteristic of its author, where he mixes simple events of normal lives with his fine humour and typical English irony.

Now that I have known a work by Pritchett, I promise to look for and read other works, to confirm that in his genre he was the best author of his time.

QUESTIONS

William Cork: appearance, personality, job...
Benerice Foster: appearance, personality, job...
Benerice's flat
Benerice's father
What is a Quaker?
Sexual allusions in the story
Florence Cork: appearance, personality, job...
Benerice's talent for lying / telling the truth
Describe the affair between William and Benerice
When Benerice thinks about marriages going on holiday, she imagines "the legs of their children running across the sand". Why the legs?
Who was Rosie?
How does the relation between Benerice and Florence progress?
What does William usually do after making love with Benerice?
The necklace
Mrs Cork said: "Don't be jealous of Mrs Glowitz, dear. You'll get your turn." What's the double meaning of this sentence?
Can you tell the difference between "swoosh her hair" and "put it up"?

VOCABULARY

dawdle, piquancy, blob, droop, lurch, flourish, soft-soap, twaddle, flopped, rummage, harass, bicker, slapdash, hang-dog, wisp, dab (dabbing), pushy, talk somebody's head off

SOME NOTES ABOUT V. S. PRITCHETT

He had a terrible handwriting and his manuscripts were so full of corrections and blots that only his wife was capable to decipher his texts and type them. She used an Imperial typewriter, and she typed with such a speed and strength that it sounded exactly as a gun machine.

V. S Pritchett was born in 1900, so he used to say that he was as old as the century, or that the century was as old as he. He wanted to be called V.S.P. because he didn’t like his first name Victor. His mother would rather like a girl and she would name her after the queen Victoria, but, as he was a boy, he was called Victor.

When he was a child his family used to move house frequently, and he sometimes lived with his grandparents near York. His father never lasted long in a job and changed employment very often.

Pritchett couldn’t go to university (his family were poor) and he had to work in a leather company, but he could work for the firm as a clerk in Paris. However he wanted to be an artist. He started to paint because in 1921 Paris was full of artists. He did his first picture in two weeks, but when he looked at it he saw was a failure, so he abandoned his painting career after fifteen days. Then he decided to write, but one has to have something to write and he didn’t have anything to say. However, by chance, he had a lucky strike: there was a jokes contest in a newspaper; you had to write a joke and send it to the paper. His joke (it was a regular joke) was published and, although he didn’t get any money, he was very happy. Now he knew that if you don’t have anything to say, at least you can tell what others say, and he started his career as a writer.

To write well he thought he could imitate what writers did before him, and he discovered that some writers used to walk a lot, and so he walked very long walks. Also he read that Barrie (the author of Peter Pan) said the best thing to do to start writing was to write about small things or about things that are near you. Following this piece of advice he wrote about his room, send the text to the newspapers and... three newspapers accepted his articles. Now he could say he was a real author because he earned money with his texts.

He didn’t like to reread his articles or his stories because afterwards he found them very poor, and so he got very sad about his talent; but then he discovered that this was a common feeling in lots of writers: it’s the depression after the work is done. So some writers, as himself, get satisfaction in the act itself, and not after the text is deemed finished.

After Paris, in 1923 he travelled to Ireland (after obtaining the independence from Great Britain and in the middle of a civil war) and became a newspaper’s correspondent. There, in that country fond of beer and whiskey, he discovered that drinking alcohol don’t make you write better, but exactly the other way round, and he banned liquors forever when he wrote.

He wrote his first short stories in Ireland, where from an Irishman he got the inspiration for the short story Sense of Humour, and in Spain, about where he wrote a pair of books.

The Family Man was published in 1979 in his collection of short stories On the Edge of the Cliff.