Posted by Seema
on 10/7/2009, 12:27:31, in reply to "Re: The Sea"
168.122.34.219
Hi All,
I am not sure if any of you remember me but I posted here a few times a long time ago and then disappeared. Life got hectic and so on. The usual excuses. But I've reading your discussions and using this group to make my own reading choices all this time.
I am about halfway through The Sea and am absolutely loving it so far. I meant to read this earlier but one of my friends described Banville as dense, dry and dreary. But then I was encouraged by the reaction here which seemed so positive.
I needed a dictionary as well but I never got the sense that he was using the words to make a point but rather that he genuinely loves the language and enjoys the sound these words make as they roll of his tongue. Obviously, it's possible that I'm being too generous but I, like most of you I imagine, have a soft spot for people who are in love with language.
I am posting a few lines that I've come across so far that just sounded beautiful to me. Not so much to elicit discussion but just to see if they resonated with anyone else.
"She was still young then, they both were, my father and my mother, younger certainly than I am now. How strange a thing that is to think of. Everybody seems to be younger than I am, even the dead."
--- I agree with Steven's comment that the book seems to deal primarily with the idea of memory and language. But this and some other parts of the book also seem to talk about mortality and aging. I still haven't started Part II of the book, so I could be way off, but so far I get the feeling that part of this lingering in the past has to do with him not wanting to deal with his present life as an older man.
"I did not hate them. I loved them, probably. Only they were in my way, obscuring my view of the future. In time I would be able to see right through them, my transparent parents."
"Had it been in my power I would have canceled my shaming parents on the spot, my fat little bare-faced mother and my father whose body might have been made of lard."
I was struck by how impersonal and almost cruel he sounds while talking about his parents. His passages about Anna seem a lot more tender in comparison.
"I have developed too a queasy fascination with the processes of my body, the gradual ones, the way for instance my hair and my fingernails insistently keep growing, no matter what state I am in, what anguish I may be undergoing. It seems so inconsiderate, so heedless of circumstance, this relentless generation of matter that is already dead, in the same way that animals will keep going on about their animal business, unaware or uncaring that their master sprawled on his cold bed upstairs with mouth agape and eyes glazed over will not be coming down, ever again, to dish out the kibble or take the key to that last tin of sardines."
-- It's a ridiculously long sentence but I enjoyed reading it
.
"On all sides there were portents of mortality. I was plagued by coincidences; long-forgotten things were suddenly remembered; objects turned up that for years had been lost. My life seemed to be passing before me, not in a flash as it is said to do for those about to drown, but in a sort of leisurely convulsion, emptying itself of its secrets and its quotidian mysteries..."
-- This last one might be my favorite one so far. It's so vivid.
Anyway, really nice to be back here and to finally be able to contribute even. I hope to be here more regularly from now on. I read A House for Mr. Biswas as well earlier this year and loved it. I'll try and post about that as well later.
Thanks,
Seema
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