“Finistère” by Kevin Barry, appears in the April 15, 2024 issue of The New Yorker. Here we present excerpts from Colin and Jennifer’s discussion about the story, edited for length and clarity. Also, check out our essay, ‘”Finistère”: A Tale of Outsiders, Authenticity, and the Modern Superfluous Man’.
▶ Initial thoughts on the story
Colin: I read this story a few times. The first time it was very subtle, and I wasn’t 100% sure what the message was here and what to take from it. I was a little bit perplexed. So my very first impression upon reading this story about this 50 something year-old guy, who’s just gotten out of a relationship, on a ferry to France, and who meets a teenage girl, was the sense that I’m getting a Humbert Humbert/Lolita vibe. And I’m guessing you got the same impression. This was interesting because I completely expected some illicit liaison between this 50 something year-old guy, and this 16-year-old teenage girl. And this didn’t happen. So this defied my expectation. I felt it was going there until about three quarters through to the end of the story. Then it seemed like this isn’t really going to happen. But I still thought this was possible.
Colin: So, then I finished the story. I think I read it expecting that, and when this did not culminate, I [wondered] what is this story? So I went back and I read it again, very carefully, and I took notes. And to me, it was a completely different story the second time. I knew he wasn’t a Humbert Humbert. And I realized this is a very interesting story told in third person, but it’s very close, third person limited, omniscient. It is very close to the protagonist.
Jennifer: Yeah, Colin, I am right there with you. So, when I first read the story I was like, what is going on in this story? This feels completely inappropriate. On my second read, an entirely different picture emerged in my mind of what was really going on. That first paragraph felt like an entire flash fiction story for me. He packed so many details in about his mental state, his relationship status, where he was. He used these really interesting phrases like “thrilling remorse” and “He was brokenhearted again at 55, and loving it”.
Jennifer: The author created a very clear sense of place with that local Irish vocabulary, and also by telling us it was on the Celtic Sea. I felt the use of profanity was so effective in creating this authentic conversational flow. I believed them. Each time, I believed this is a conversation that really would happen, even when it was profane.
Colin: And, by the way, I love this story, because at the end it really became a story. As George Saunders says, you’re always asking, is it a story yet? And I believe, yes, it really becomes a story in that last paragraph. I love this story. It was more subtle than the other two and there’s plenty to talk about.
Colin: I went into [this discussion] thinking that we’re going to disagree on all things in this story, but I’m 100% on the same page. I think you nailed it there. I mean, there’s so much going on in this story that is not apparent on the first read, is it? This is the beauty [of the story]. This story begs for re-reading, doesn’t it, because it is so much clearer what’s going on. And I actually find myself agree[ing] with everything you said. There’s just so much going on in this story and in my case, it defied expectations.
▶ The opening paragraph
Jennifer: We have no shortages of things to discuss, but I wanted to start with the very first sentence, because this just knocked me back a little bit. Who is this guy? And what is this about?
The big man was in a condition of thrilling remorse. He was brokenhearted again at 55, and loving it.
Jennifer: This passage was just so vivid for me. What is he doing here? Who is loving being broken hearted? The author timestamps Cian’s experience that at 55, you would hope one would have their romantic life sorted. In that first paragraph, he talks about Sylvia. He talks about the seasons and that she will be over him by the time the trees lose their leaves. It’s September. So by November she’s over it, and he acknowledges he’s never going to get over himself. The author is toying with us with this idea that Cian is not emotionally okay. And that was something that we will discuss further.
Colin: This sets the tone of the story. This is instrumental to the story. This is the thing that stands out immediately. Well, what is going on here? These are the first two sentences. This is a fantastic way to open the story. But immediately, [we are wondering] what is this? As you said, he’s brokenhearted again, and loving it, he’s in a condition of thrilling remorse. These are beautiful phrases, right?
Colin: So questions like this create immediate interest and attention. What is this about? So I go [back] and I look at it again. We have this this idea of his character:
He leaned against the rail on the top deck of the Cork-Roscoff ferry and shook woefully from side to side his heavy, handsome ginger head and the cries of a seal pup rose softly from the hollows of his chest.
Sylvia had been abandoned that morning in County Clare and would get over him before the leaves were off the trees; Cian John Wynn would never get over himself.
Jennifer: I really appreciate that the author did an amazing job of pulling us in, cementing us into a time, a place and the physical characteristics of this man. He is named Cian John Wynn. In some of our stories, some character’s don’t even get named. He named the girlfriend and he named where they broke up.
Colin: We have some serious contradictions or irony going on here, right? It makes us ask, what is wrong, exactly? Why this strange contradiction of moods? How can these two things coexist at the exact same time? We see this repeatedly, these weird, contradictory phrases. The author is immediately showing us that we have a complex character. This is a complicated character holding contradictory, countervailing sentiments. It moves simultaneously, not even one sentence after the next. I love the style here.
Colin: He didn’t just change his mind. This is within the same sentence. This is a complex character holding contradictory traits simultaneously. He’s loving it. He’s heartbroken. I mean if we’re going to psychoanalyze this character, this is grist for our psychoanalysis.
He raised his head and wiped away the tears and watched Ireland recede into the afternoon haze and he prayed that it would stay there. He knew it would be a long time before he went home again.
Jennifer: This brings me back to all of those beautiful phrases that are very contradictory. That cognitive dissonance we just don’t understand. Like, wait, what? You’re happy. You’re sad. You’re brokenhearted. You’re thrilled. You have remorse, but now you’re happy. As a reader, you are emotionally confused. The author is emotionally confusing me because I can’t follow where Cian is coming from as a character, and that gave me a reason to care. Now my curiosity is engaged. I am fully on board with wherever the story takes me because I want to know what’s up. There’s just so much packed into the first paragraph.
▶ Elements of the story
Colin: If you look at the story structurally, there’s 13 marked sections in this story. It starts in the present and each subsequent section is a flashback. So it’s present, flashback, present, flashback and there is this back and forth until the actual flashback and the present converge in one particular section. I think this is an interesting thing I’ll talk about later. In terms of the structure of this [story], it is interesting.
Colin: Here’s something interesting. Our last story that we read “Bozo” was a first-person narrator. We were very close. We identified very strongly with the narrator and part of that was because of the first person [narration]. We’re literally seeing through the eyes of this narrator. We are literally hearing the thoughts, seeing through the eyes, we are extremely close. This is a third person limited omniscient narrator, that is positioned so close to the character that this is a free and direct discourse. We are hearing the narrator. So this is not the narrator talking. This is not the third person narrator. These are the thoughts and we are in the mind of the protagonist here through free and direct discourse, right? This is not an objective commentary by the narrator. These are [his] thoughts: he knows this is inappropriate.
A man traveling alone in his morbid fifties does not talk to a girl in her teens without family or guardian insight, especially not in this black, romantic mood, and certainly not with a bottle of chateau Despair on the go.
Colin: This isn’t the narrator telling us this is inappropriate. This is the narrator, through free and direct discourse, giving us the sentiments of the character. And I think this is beautiful. This is an example of very close third person limited omniscient narration. It’s very emotionally close. It almost reads like a first person, doesn’t it?
Jennifer: Yes, and for someone who, like myself, may not have picked up on that distinct difference, I appreciate you calling that out. This feels like we too, now are in the mind of Cian. We were in [this situation] with him. We are watching his thoughts unfold.
Jennifer: Originally, when I first listened to the audio narration, it was not entirely obvious to me that the structure of the story has those little breaks in it where you’re flashing between time. I needed to see those breaks with my eyes to fully understand [that] this isn’t a continuation of the scene above. Instead, this is a flashback to him hanging out sexually with his girlfriend, because that’s where I got the weirdo vibe of like Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! How did we get to a romantic interlude here when we’re talking to the girl on the ferry? So I just thought that was just an interesting distinction.
Colin: Yes, it was.
Jennifer: And as you said, we are so close that we are mind reading Cian. We are in his presence.
Colin: Exactly. And this is really nice. The narration style is technically extremely well done here. This is like a masterpiece of third person, limited omniscient narration with free and direct discourse.
Colin: You know, I love talking about narration style.
Later he couldn’t remember anything they talked about. He could not remember a single fucking word of it.
Colin: This is what I love about this story. That’s not the third person’s narrator’s term “a single fucking word of it”, that is Cian. That is him. That’s this beautiful direct discourse. These are not the narrator’s words. These are the character’s words. I love this really close third person freedom, where we get the best of both roles. We get the closeness of the first person, but we get to move around a bit. Although it’s very close to him, it doesn’t really move that much. I really love the narration style here. How his language is incorporated into the narrator’s. We know this is not the narrator. Sometimes it’s ambiguous: is this the narrator speaking, like with Flaubert. That was what the big innovation: we can’t tell if this is the narrator/author speaking, or is this the character? That was what was brilliant in this case. It’s very clearly the protagonist’s words in the third person. I love it.
Colin: We have so much grist, in terms of these beautiful phrasings throughout this story. We have these sentences where these manifest contradictions are. And again, this really makes an interesting, complex character.
▶ Relationship between Cian and the girl
Colin: I thought he was a Humbert Humbert kind of sexual predator, or something like this. But no, you’re right. Who is this guy? He’s emotionally immature. The [two of them] are confidants. They are talking almost on the same [level]. He has some life experiences, and he tries to impart them. But then he admits, look, I don’t know either. That was a very key point. He seems emotionally quite immature. He’s like an adolescent in his emotions. And the fact is that they’re relating to each other almost on [that level]. I mean, she calls him Daddy in this weird kind of sexual, flirtatious kind of very inappropriate [way]. She is a 16 year-old, so I mean, you can’t, right. Beyond all this weird flirtatiousness, they are basically confidants. They’re confiding in each other. They are outsiders. These are two outsiders who [are] basically confiding each other.
Jennifer: That felt authentic, but I am going to go back to the fact that it was completely inappropriate. Yes, it was a true exchange of authenticity and shared experience but he should not have had that conversation with that girl. That was not an appropriate thing to do. You don’t talk about your sex life with a child. He even acknowledges her as a child, and yet he proceeds to talk to her about the frequency in which he had sex with his partner and then he counsels her to put off [sex] as long as possible, because it loses its magic.
Yes,” he said. “And this may be a very negative view, but it’s what I believe—the glow of romantic love only lasts for about thirty . . . encounters.”
“You mean fucks?” the girl said.
“Yes,” he said. “You’ve an awful tongue in your head.”
“Thank you,” she said. “But how do you know thirty?”
“I’ve counted,” he said.
Jennifer: And I appreciate that he said all of those things, and that was kind of a fatherly thing to do.
Colin: He acknowledges it’s not appropriate. There’s something really a little bit sinister about this relationship. Yet, at the same time, he doesn’t have any kind of predatory intentions. My sense is that he actually is trying to dissuade her. He’s like, look, sex is overrated. This is by no means an appropriate conversation. But just to go back to what I said, so that it’s not taken out of context: I don’t identify with him in that respect. I identify [with] him in a different respect. We’ll talk about the way I found him relatable later.
Jennifer: For me, it felt like a super inappropriate connection because of the topics they were discussing. These are not appropriate topics between an adult and a under 18-year-old person of either gender, in any circumstance. It felt like he was compelled to have this conversation with her, because he states it right to us.
He knew not to continue the conversation. A man travelling alone in his morbid fifties does not talk to a girl in her teens without family or guardian in sight, especially not in this black romantic mood and certainly not with a bottle of Château Despair on the go.
Jennifer: And in the very next words out of his mouth, he’s engaging her on a piece of content that she brought up about a television show. I agree, they both had a similar maturity level, which is not something that is a positive for Cain. That was not something I would be excited about. Curiously, here is another unnamed girl, a random person on the street, so to speak. As the story unfolds, both the unnamed girl and Cian acknowledge they both get a strange vibe off of each other. [In a sense] they say to each other: You are kind of weird. Yeah, you are kind of weird, too. And it was just an interesting idea of like reflecting like, they recognize a bit of themselves in each other.
A bit off, he thought. Some kind of spectrum. He tried not to engage but couldn’t help himself.
“There’s a kind of weird energy off you,” she said.
“This is not an original observation,” he said.
“I imagine not,” she said. “And maybe you’re a tiny bit scary, actually?”
“Really?” he said. “You think so?”*
Jennifer: She starts out by calling him “man”, then “fella”, then “daddy”, then “Dad”, and finally “Father”. This progression of names is curious. She never addresses him by his name. The author chose to capitalize Father, as if it was in a confessional and I just thought that was very interesting. What’s that about? So that raised some questions for me. What was that evolution [of names she called him] about? And I agree with you, Colin. She was being a punk 16-year-old, being derogatory in a whatever old man, what do you have to say to me? kind of way that I found to be authentic.
Jennifer: Is it okay if I take a slight sidebar? At the start of the conversation, in our initial first impressions, we are questioning if this a Humbert Humbert situation. Is this going to get weird? Well, it got a little weird because the sexual aspect did come up, but it was also weird by the similarities between the woman he left and girl on the ferry, and I’d like to explore that further.
He talks about the thrilling chase of this woman. He finds the women, then he’s seduced by her. He makes her laugh. She’s scowling at him, right and he is smitten.
He had taken one demeaning scowl too many from her direction and was like a dog after a stick.
I wanted to come back to the scowl, because the first thing we see from this teenage girl is:
She flipped open a MacBook and scowled into it for a few moments and then looked vaguely in his direction.
Jennifer: And then the next thing he talks about is that he knew Sylvia, and she was out of his league, and you know she had him at the first scowl. For him, it as like a dog with a stick (he will endlessly chase). He tells us that when she gave him the scowl, he was hooked. I thought: Cian, don’t go there again with this girl! The story is bringing attention to this disdain from both of these women, which I found interesting. I’ll just leave that as interesting.
Colin: An excellent observation.
▶ Relationship between Cian and Sylvia
During those first weeks they talked extravagantly. constantly. There were gales and gales of talk, and they found delight and comfort in their shared positions, intrigue and interest in their disagreements. They talked busily over breakfast all through the day, while they cooked when they walked at night, after making love now, and not the length of the season. Later he couldn’t remember anything they talked about. He could not remember a single fucking word of it.
Jennifer: Cian talks about this endless supply of words in the beginning, and as the relationship unravels, the words dry up, they just evaporate. It’s in sharp contrast to the girl on the ferry, where they have an instantaneous, effortless conversation. They bond over their similar interest in the media they watch.
Jennifer: I want to read this quote to point out Cian’s disdain toward his girlfriend.
And he would beam in compliance at some dancing fucking cat or some episode of domestic slapstick in Athlone or someplace horrendous and think, Yeah, well, we might not actually see the Christmas out of this one.
Jennifer: And author is just peppering us with those examples. And I was so curious because it started out with this beautiful love story. He said things were going so well, and they had this magical summer on the lakeside, and thy saw the dragonflies and all that those beautiful quotes, and it just goes downhill. It just goes so far downhill, to the point where he’s literally showing contempt and disdain for who she is. And this is why I don’t believe this guy is mental healthy or that he’s having a very healthy relationship with himself or with others. He states:
… the laughter seemed out of character. Or at least there was something about the way she laughed. She always tossed her head back when she did so and now every time she did it he thought, A show pony. She’s tossing her fucking head again like a fucking show pony.
Jennifer: I don’t know, but in a relationship when you pick on a physical trait of your partner, like of someone laughing, and you repeat the word “fucking” twice in one sentence, I have to think that [this relationship] this isn’t going well.
Colin: No, exactly.
Jennifer: And I was like, isn’t that curious? And so, I really started getting curious about him.
And there was the way she insisted on sharing whatever bullshit was making her laugh on her phone. She would approach gagging with laughter, almost folding up with it, and she’d say, “You’ve got to . . . You’ve just got to . . . This . . . This is going to destroy you, Cian. . . .”
“It’s probably not really, Sylvia.”
“No, seriously. . . . You’ve just got to . . .”
Jennifer: So again, he’s very dismissive of her sense of humor, which is kind of a relationship killer, right? And it seems to go both ways:
She accused him of the most heinous things—of being pat and flippant and blithe and of faking suicidal ideation for effect. He said in turn that he believed her character was essentially vampiric and that he could not be her sustenance.
In the wake of lovemaking Cian John Wynn was a sobbing, grateful mess and usually had to be consoled for several minutes. After two months with Sylvia this had begun to take its toll. She accused him of affectation, and worse. In the bed she now turned her back to him and flung accusations over her shoulder.
Jennifer: For me, this is all disdain, on both sides.
Colin: You had some good points. But again, we were talking about Sylvia and the relationship. I think his habits are made pretty clear and this is clearly not his first relationship. This guy is a creature of habit. He’s in these short-term relationships that don’t last. This is relayed repeatedly throughout, thematically. It is like the seasons. Everything indicates how short term these relationships are. They go with the seasons: in the spring, everything’s amazing. By the fall, they are literally decaying. It’s imprinted on the seasons, right?
Colin: This is reflecting in that way we often see in literature: born again in the spring, things kind of decaying in the fall and finally going into the winter. We’re seeing this kind of seasonality in these relationships, too. I think that’s important. Sylvia, to me, is just the last of a long list of these kinds of relationships. So she’s almost like an example. Maybe she’s not even particularly important in his life, she is just the latest.
Jennifer: Colin, can we go back to that for just 1 second? He proposed to her after a big fight, and she accepted. Why? What was that about?
Colin: Yeah. Good, point. I think I know what’s going on there. So, going back to Sylvia, what do we know about her? Really, not much. She’s attractive. She seems cultured. She’s involved in the art gallery scene, or something like that. She is involved in some kind of cultural events.
Jennifer: She is also a do-gooder because she’s trying to get the wolves back to an environmental place, right? There’s that.
He had been aware of Sylvia for some time as an aloof presence around the edges of openings and first nights. He knew that she was involved with design, with live poetry, and with a scheme to reintroduce the wolf to the province of Connacht. She was pale and tall and really very good-looking, superbly dressed, and forbiddingly difficult to flirt with.
Colin: But we also get the sense that she has an affect about her. Now, we have to trust his thoughts here. But he sees her as going into the relationship more for pretenses, more for affect, more for image. She seems to be one of these people who, from his point of view anyway, is more likely to be in things for how they look and maybe what she’s going to get out of it. We don’t really know much about her. We really only know her from his [perspective].
Colin: So why did why did he propose [after a dramatic fight]? Here’s my theory. I think he’s had a reckoning, and we see that reckoning. He’s 55, and he has these countervailing feelings of going through these 4-month relationships. We assume this is just a habit, and maybe he’s thinking, you know what, maybe it’s time to settle down. Maybe I’ll be happy if I settle down. And then they get in a fight. And he’s like, you know, I maybe had a reckoning. He wants to change himself. Now this is the intertextuality. Let’s talk about the last story [Bozo]. [Specifically] when she thought about getting the house by this age. She obviously had a negative kind of image about this. And I think he harbors one as well. But he’s also probably feeling lonely and adrift. So what does he do (like many people do)? He thinks Let’s get married. It’ll fix all our problems.
Jennifer: Let’s hit some milestones. And Sylvia responds with Yes, this sounds great. Let’s do it. I’m on 100% on board. Now that was in August, right? And they broke up in September. So that was a very short celebratory period of their engagement:
On the Saturday of the August bank-holiday weekend she bit his chin in a way that went beyond playful. He left the house with the eyes of a small wounded deer and gunned his Tesla and vowed that he would never return. He was back at twenty past five the next morning roaring into her letter box.
She let him back in the house by breakfast and he proposed over the shakshuka eggs. Tearfully Sylvia accepted at once. There were two of them in it. They clasped each other’s hands and stood trembling together in the brutalist kitchen extension.
He could not have expected the histrionics of that morning’s final breakup with Sylvia. He thought the situation would simply exhaust itself—he had exhausted many another before.
Jennifer: He had had so many unravelings before. This was their final break up. And I just thought that was so brilliant and validating of what you said, this is not his first rodeo. He has a habit. He knows how to disentangle himself. He knows how to break these connections, and Sylvia wasn’t having it, right? She was very angry, and she physically harmed him. And I thought this is going off the rails in a way that is not relatable to me. This situation has just taken a turn:
At that she climbed over the kitchen island and cornered him among the crockery and the pans and he told her that their time together had been a wonderful gift and she hit him on the ear with a box grater.
▶ The seasons of an adult relationship
Jennifer: I am pulling us back to the relationship with Sylvia. I want to go back to Sylvia when we’re talking about compatibility. We’re talking about adult relationships. We’re talking about how that goes in the beginning. I just want to read this.
During those first weeks they talked extravagantly, constantly—there were gales and gales of talk—and they found delight and comfort in their shared positions, intrigue and interest in their disagreements; they talked busily over breakfast, all through the day, while they cooked, when they walked, at night after making love. Now and not the length of the season later he couldn’t remember anything they’d talked about—he could not remember a single fucking word of it.
Jennifer: And so again it’s that feeling of being swept up, they are so enamored, they get along so well and everything about their partner is so interesting and endearing.. And then, as that relationship starts to unfold, he talks about the seasons.
The situation took fully in May and was ecstatic in all the usual ways by early June. Mostly it was a lakeside romance back at her place in north Clare with dragonflies and sunlight through the reeds at dusk and all that.
As August proceeded the vicinity took on a swampish jungle heat that was ominous as it drifted across the fields and somehow had the reek of the grave to it and what was left of his sleep was dispersed to the four winds.
By August, he was starting to lose interest in her. They started having fights, and by September they were out, and he mentioned:
In the course of the love affair he had gone through five seasons of “Yellowstone” without regret and, in truth, by September he was not unaware that a new season of “World’s Toughest Prisons” was about to drop.
Jennifer: And then shortly thereafter, he can’t even watch her watch a cat video, because he thinks both she and the videos are ridiculous.
And he would beam in compliance at some dancing fucking cat or some episode of domestic slapstick in Athlone or someplace horrendous and think, Yeah, well, we might not actually see the Christmas out of this one.*
Jennifer: He clearly projects: I’m not interested in you or your interests.
Colin: Okay, don’t lie to me, Jennifer. You’ve been there. I’ve been there. I’ve had that sense where this is great, this is amazing and two months later, it is like, what the hell, right?
Jennifer: Well, the good news is that we’ve never had to be there together!
Jennifer: The thing that comes up for me is “buyer beware”. In this story, Cian meets Sylvia, and after a very short period of time they become intensely involved in a romantic, sexual, fully encompassing adult relationship. He’s basically living in her house and they are in the thick of it. For me [this situation] is a clear reminder of the adage: slow and steady wins the race. When you’re in a rush, you are heading towards catastrophe at a high rate of speed. You can still proceed at that pace, just know the end is coming quicker than you may think.
▶ Existentialism and suicide
Jennifer: I keep going back to his conversations with the girl again and again. I can’t get away from it. Specifically, the conversations where they mention suicide. He is very frank with the girl. Can I take us there?
“Suicide!” the girl sang.
“It’s not like it’s never crossed my mind,” he said. “But I don’t know. . . . There’s a kind of showiness about it that I would ultimately find gaudy.”
“Know what you’re saying,” the girl agreed.*
“And generally speaking,” he said, “we must turn our eyes from death.”
“Yes, Father,” she said.
“It’s the sort of thing you’ll find will look after itself.”
“Got you,” she said. “So you just look away?”
“Until the last possible minute,” he said.*
“O.K.,” she said. “But how will you tell that it’s the last possible minute? Or tell that it isn’t? I mean, could it even be right here, right now, on this fucking boat?”
He leaned forward a little and lowered his freckled patrician brow.*
“You think you’re looking at the big fool who’s got all this figured out?”*
Jennifer: And in that moment, when she’s talking about suicide, mentioning that it could happen right here on this boat, right now in this minute, I was waiting for him to leap over the edge and end it. This felt like this could be his end, because he’s been so preoccupied with his sleep disturbances, and death and his assorted morbid thoughts. I just thought that this guy is not stable and I silently begged the girl: Please do not push him in that direction. Please stop talking about this.
Colin: Interesting you mentioned [that]. I didn’t think so at all. He’s rejecting suicide. Actually, he rejects suicide.
Jennifer: He told the girl he didn’t want to be too showy, or too gaudy. I keep going back to the idea of suicide and his current mental state.
His moods were swift and ever changing and the thrill of his escape fell away now on a quick grade to emptiness. A familiar void opened up within. He gave out to himself a little and then some more and in fact for a while he argued half seriously against his own existence.
Jennifer: So, as you mentioned, this is a man who has grappled with suicide. He has put thought into it and came out on the other side of it. He has made a determination that he does not want to go there now.
“It’s not like it’s never crossed my mind,” he said. “But I don’t know. . . . There’s a kind of showiness about it that I would ultimately find gaudy.”
“Know what you’re saying,” the girl agreed.
“And generally speaking,” he said, “we must turn our eyes from death.
Jennifer: He states to us, because it’s “too showy” as one reason he gives against ending his own life, but I think there’s of a vibrancy to him that he does not want to extinguish. He feels he has not given all of his love away yet. He’s been kind of pushed down. He’s trying to get somewhere, but he’s never quite made the journey to real love.
Colin: I want to interject that in existentialism, suicide is obviously [there]. We have Camus and the other existentialist who tackled suicide as a big, important theme. It comes up in existentialism deliberately, explicitly, and again suicide was rarer. This is a story with these very, very explicit existentialist references and themes and suicide. Yes, he brought it up.
He convened all night with the dreary troops of his significant dead.
He wondered if he had not in some fundamental ways laid waste to his life. He was not a serious man, he said. And yes sometimes it all became very bleak, especially in the small hours, and sometimes, in truth, he could only see one way out.
Jennifer: He talks about being morbid. He’s kind of going through this whole list of people he had loved and lost. It is just so dark, so brooding, so sad. It was just so incredibly sad.
Colin: This question comes up in existentialist literature. It came up in stoicism. Cian is making a stand on suicide. He’s saying he’s rejecting it. He’s saying let nature take its course. The Stoics had a notion of it, and they said the door is always open, but be very, very careful about your decision, because obviously there’s no turning back.
Jennifer: You can never take it back.
Colin: The main character rejects suicide. I believe he’s being completely honest about this notion. He’s not just saying this to dissuade the girl from such thoughts. He is saying he has thought about it, and he rejects suicide. He clearly rejects suicide. Of course he has considered it, and he said, no.
Jennifer: Thank you, Colin. You took us right back to authenticity, to vulnerability. Generally speaking, one does not admit to anyone outside the therapy room that you have seriously considered suicide. That is not a thing that gets discussed.
Colin: Right, and but ironically he says it’s too showy, which is badly enough, that you’re not committing suicide because you don’t want people to think you’re being overly dramatic.
Jennifer: It’s a bad look for me, so I’m not going to do it.
Colin: So again, this this story is rife with irony, isn’t it? Which also makes it a fantastic story.
He knew that there was nothing good coming, and this was a tremendous relief. Unseen across the sea—miles yet but ever closer—the white and green cliff tops of Finistère were waiting.
Jennifer: Who is excited that nothing good is happening? Who is relieved that there’s nothing good that’s going to interfere with his morbid, depressive, lonely wallowing? What is that about?
Colin: Well, I have a couple of thoughts on that. First of all, this character has this propensity for these explicit contradictions within [himself], these completely countervailing notions. I’ve considered that he’s maybe paying a penance. Maybe he has regrets for the wreckage of his past relationships, right? Maybe he feels he was unfair to Sylvia. Maybe he was leading people on. Maybe he feels that he deserves to suffer. Some people do, right? They feel like suffering because of what they’ve done. He’s obviously left a string of emotional wreckage and wrecked relationships. This guy obviously was leading Sylvia on. He knew in his heart, this wouldn’t work out. We know that he knew that and he did it anyway. Then he gets bored, frankly. He feels ennui. He’s bored again so he’s got to be dramatic and leave and the thing fails. Maybe he’s had a bit of a reckoning here, and this is my interpretation that he feels that he deserves to feel bad because of the pain he’s inflicted on others through this kind of superfluous man lifestyle that he’s led.
▶ Religious symbolism
Jennifer: There’s this weird juxtaposition that occurred to me when you talked about penance. Earlier, I talked about the feeling of being in a confessional and the use of the word Father.
“Know what you’re saying,” the girl agreed.
“And generally speaking,” he said, “we must turn our eyes from death.”
“Yes, Father,” she said.
Jennifer: And now I just picked up this passage:
He turned on a lamp and picked up some literature and read that the ferry at capacity carried some fourteen hundred souls. They lay sleeping in the sardine-tin cabins all around and above and below him, their dreams echoing in the low drone of the air system.
Jennifer: That’s a beautiful scene. But to call them souls, is curious. It’s not bodies, it’s not people, it’s not humans, it’s not cargo, it’s souls.
Colin: You hit the nail on the head. I took note of that as well. I thought, this is very ominous phrasing: sardines in a can, souls. Obviously, this is ominous. This is emotional valence here. It’s loaded. You hit the nail ahead. You drew the connection. There is a penance, he may be religious, a Catholic or a Protestant, perhaps. He is Irish, right?
Jennifer: Yes, there is a lot of religion here.
Colin: Let’s just say it is a religious [theme]. He is kind of priestly. You picked that up, when the author capitalized Father. Cian is a kind of priest, but he’s also paying a penance for the emotional wreckage [from his past]. I think we’re justified in this interpretation. I think this is great. I think this has come together in a really nice way, and you’re right about the word souls. This is language which sticks out. There’s something conspicuous about this. It’s beautifully worded, yes, but it’s not simply for aesthetics. This is a specifically chosen word, and it ties together with this notion of him feeling guilty, or him feeling like he deserves to suffer, in this religious aspect of the Father. This is all coming together.
Jennifer: Colin, I have one more thing to say about this.
… while Sylvia beside him slept entirely without effort in a summer night shroud made of hemp. He listened to the even calm of her repose, almost breathless it seemed, and he watched her perfect profile as she lay on her back, hands clasped at the belly as though arrayed for a burial, like some holy martyr, and he took this performance as a personal affront.
Jennifer: Again, religious words abound in this scene: Sylvia in a summer night shroud as though arrayed for a burial like some holy martyr.
Jennifer: Cian paints this as: Sylvia, stop being showy even in your sleep. You’re being dramatic.
Colin: Right. And but we’re getting this imagery again, this burial imagery, this religious imagery.
He raised his head and wiped away the tears and watched Ireland recede into the afternoon haze and he prayed that it would stay there.
Jennifer: It’s woven in.
Colin: It’s replete. We can see why The New Yorker published this story. This isn’t a simple narrative. There’s a lot going on. This is multi-layered and very complex. Now we’re seeing this [aspect] which wasn’t immediately apparent until we discussed this.
Colin: I’m going to go in on a limb. Can we say that there is a reading and interpretation where he is, as you pointed out, a priestly figure, a self-penitent, priestly figure? He is not a religious person. This, to me is patently obvious. He seems like a nihilist, or like an atheist. It’s never said. He’s never mentioned any spirituality or anything, but he’s taking on through the word choice, through the imagery in in the story. He has taken on [religion] whether he likes it or not. A sort of priestly role, a fatherly role, where suicide is a sin, right? Although I don’t want to go too far into the religious aspect, but if he is a priest, if he is a fatherly figure, suicide cannot be the answer. He has rejected suicide, and yet he is penitent. Is he a fatherly, priestly figure in an ironic way, in a modern ironic sense?
Jennifer: Yeah. And when you said that I’m thinking of the tradition in certain religions to wear the hair shirt, to constantly be irritated to prove their faith, like self-flagellation. He admits his weaknesses and his attributes are not working out for him. He says that was his biggest curse, having an abundance of love to give, but I don’t think that’s right. I believe that is completely his worldview, but I think that is contrary to my understanding of how love is universally accepted.
Colin: This is amazing. I’ll speak for myself, not you. But this conversation has uncovered what I think is the heart of this story. This whole angle we just talked about is not in my notes, really just some notions of this kind of imagery, but that’s it. Through our discourse, our dialogue here we have opened up a very important part of this story, which wasn’t apparent to me when I read it.
Jennifer: Nor to me, Colin. I think this does speak to the beauty of a dialogue. Each person brings a little bit, and we can cement ourselves back into the text. I’m really happy where we landed on that. Now that my eyes are opened to this religious theme, I can’t not see it.
▶ Things you do not say in polite company
Jennifer: Colin, I want to go back to the thing you said about relatability, and take it right back to something Cian says to us in here in the conversation with the girl when they talk about going to therapy,
“You?” she said. “Have never been? To therapy?”
“I wouldn’t see the point of it,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because there’d only be a point to it if I was to fully engage and be entirely present in the process and truthful. I’d have to tell the person what was going on in my head at all times. And I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’d have me committed to a locked facility and they’d throw away the key.”
“Please don’t take my daddy away!” she cried.
“O.K.,” he said.
“Anyway, that’s not how therapy works,” she said. “Like, telling them everything in your head? Are you fucking crazy?”
Jennifer: So you and I are both having this public declaration of identifiable things in this story that in polite company you generally do not state, because it does not reflect well in general. While it’s great in a story, it is a little less great in your personal life. This is a tremendous opportunity for growth.
Colin: Let’s talk about vulnerability. Let’s talk about these two characters not willing to be vulnerable, especially this guy. He’s there’s a confiding going on here, and we feel this may be the first time. Earlier, you talked about emotional maturity or lack thereof.
Jennifer: We will definitely revisit vulnerability, because I have the exact opposite idea for you, Colin.
Colin: Now let’s come back [to mental health].
Jennifer: Earlier, we were talking about these two characters being able to mirror each other. In the story, Cian and the girl are talking about therapy and she mentions her experience with her parents and her therapists:
“I mean, they haven’t put a name to it precisely but it’s generally agreed that I have a tendency to”—she did the air quotes again—“ ‘obliterate the social contract.’ ”
Jennifer: Well, she is giving us a pretty clear indication that she also has her own emotional disturbance, or her own unique perspective on how to interact with the world.
Before they had parted at Le Café there was a last exchange of unusual candor_. She told him that the recent meds had fucked up her sex drive and now if she was attracted to anything it was to duvets. He told her that once when he was about her age his sense of himself had got so loose and wild that his mother and father had to tie him down to the bed at home in Rooskey, County Roscommon, and with every justification.
“And look at me now,” he said.
Jennifer: And he talks to her. He says, well, when I was young my parents tied me to a bed, and it was well deserved, and they really need to do that. And then he goes on to say “… look at me now”. Like the idea of, well, look at me no, take me as an example of overcoming my past. I’m totally fine. I’m here with you on this ferry. However, those of us who experienced him from the start of the story up until that point are like dude you are messed up, you are the opposite of okay. You proposed to somebody. You crashed your car. You broke up with your fiancée on a whim. You are not okay. You say you have an excess of emotion, right? He thinks that’s his problem: that he has too much love to give.
What he’d got was too much love in his heart and too much love even yet to deliver. His capacities were in this way overburdened, he told the girl. An excess of feeling was the most terrible curse. He had sold himself to emotion young and never found the receipt. He was essentially in a type of eternal adolescence.
Jennifer: He is full of something, but I don’t think it’s love, right. It’s an interesting dichotomy with the girl stating something like Oh, Father, tell me more. You’re a smart guy with some wisdom. And it is Cian who actually tells her that he is a fool who doesn’t have life figured out.
“You think you’re looking at the big fool who’s got all this figured out?”
Colin: Let me go back to that passage:
Before they had parted at Le Café there was a last exchange of unusual candor. She told him that the recent meds had fucked up her sex drive and now if she was attracted to anything it was to duvets. He told her that once when he was about her age his sense of himself had got so loose and wild that his mother and father had to tie him down to the bed at home in Rooskey, County Roscommon, and with every justification.
“And look at me now,” he said.
Colin: That’s funny you mentioned [that passage]. I read it ironically. I thought he was saying, look at me now. I’m a kind of this bum, who’s single on a boat at 55 who has been through all these failed relationships. I read it ironically, and when she said, Daddy, tell me more, that was a playfulness. They are kind of playing with each other. I read that as he was being ironic.
Jennifer: And I was hoping you would, because, Colin’s I want you to save me from my literal viewpoint and my Pollyanna view of the world.
Colin: But I am not sure, though. But my initial sense is he is being ironic and saying like, look at me now is I’m this kind of failure, if you know what I mean.
Jennifer: He states that the girl herself is at a critical juncture, and she could go either way.
He felt that things might go either way for her yet.
Jennifer: So, for me, that felt like he was very cognizant that he survived that situation with his parents in his adolescence, and he can say look at me now. I’m doing great. But we know Cian, that you’re not great. But I want to go back to his thrilling remorsefulness and his loving his broken heartedness. So, was that also sarcastic or ironic? We don’t know.
Colin: Well, let’s go back to what John Sutherland says about what makes literature canonical, or what gets into the cannon. HE said one of the great things about [literature] is ambiguity. great literature is not strictly literal. Look at Hamlet. There’s so much ambiguity, right? This is ambiguity [is key]. We can read this both ways.
▶ Relatability of the characters
Colin: Here’s the thing, and this is something we might not want to admit, that there are certain relatable things about this character. And I think you’ll agree with me, and I’ll talk about that [further]. I think that one of the great things about fiction and one of the first things we want to look [at] when we read a story is, how do we identify with this character or not? And I have to say, there is something identifiable about Cian. I’m going to get into this more later, and I think this is, of course, the heart of the story.
Jennifer: I believe that I understood exactly where you were coming from. We both individually, separately related with this character. This is the opposite of our last story, where it was the female perspective on longing, desire and relationship dynamics where you stated I’m not a woman, but I am able to relate to this character.
Jennifer: While I am not a 55-year-old man, a lot of the things he said were extremely relatable to me and my life. I really appreciated the power of the author to transpose gender. It was not a specific key indicator that you needed to follow along with, you just needed to have true human emotions. I thought that was really great.
Colin: But you’re right. This was a weird relationship. It was inappropriate. And there’s a lot going on this whole daddy idea. In a way, they’re two outsiders. He seems emotionally immature. They’re confiding in each other, but at the same time, he’s almost like a mentor. She’s calling him “Daddy”. I mean, there’s so much going on here. They talk about mental health. But what came back to me here was both of them are clearly outsiders. They don’t conform to the expectations of society, and this is again something I want to talk about, and how the character is relatable.
Colin: This is a relatable character. I can feel and I can understand these contradictions in his mind. I can [understand what] he’s feeling.
▶ Emotional resonance
Jennifer: And I really want to go back to what you said about emotional vulnerability and what was happening there between Cian and the girl.
Verbally dexterous, she maintained as carefully as she could her front—the hard lines of tension that showed in her neck betrayed that front. He felt that things might go either way for her yet. She looked up now with a flick of anxiety.
Jennifer: So there are peppering sequences through this whole story of severe emotional changes. We are very aware of what a person is experiencing emotionally, in very strong ways. I’m just going to read this passage because it was that was so brilliant, and shows that mentoring playfulness between them. Cian challenges the girl:
“You’re unstoppable,” he said. “But do you know, by the way, what profanity is?”
“I’ve a feeling you’re going to tell me, Dad.”
“Profanity is a defensive use of language,” he said. “It’s a shield. So what are you defending yourself against?”
“What have you got?” she said.*
Colin: It’s the Rebel Without a Cause, right? What are you rebelling against? Whatever you got.
Jennifer: What have you got? Just bring it on? I’m taking on all comers. I just love that he’s mentoring her. I think he’s being very caretaking of her in a non-creepy way, just in a very human-to-human interaction. Sharing a little bit of his experience about his adolescence at a pivotal point where she is now. She is [currently] the age he was when he’s reflecting back. I just thought that was really beautiful, how the author and the narrator bring our attention to the idea of using your words to be defensive. What are you doing with your words and the use of profanity? I think the profanity sprinkled through here was very effective. We’ve used a lot of F Bombs in this reading of this of this particular piece, and they felt completely authentic, not rude, not obscene, and completely appropriate.
Colin: Let’s go back to what you said there. You hit the nail on the head. She is the age when he looks back when he hears that song. What is this relationship? This is not a creepy Humbert Humbert relationship it appeared to be on the first read. It didn’t culminate. Really, he identifies with her. She is his past, and he sees she can go his way, or she can go, presumably, the better way.
Jennifer: The happy way.
Colin: The happy way, right [or] the stable way, but is a stable way, the happy way? Let’s talk about that in a bit.
Colin: But let’s be clear. What is the real nature of the relationship? It’s not a creepy Humbert Humbert thing, although superficially, it looks like a Lolita thing. But when we look at it more deeply, he identifies with her. He sees her as his past. As you said, it’s not a coincidence the age matches perfectly. He is trying to impart some advice, but he admits himself that he doesn’t know the answers. She is at this juncture where she could become a female version of him or she could become the Bozo lady, right?
Jennifer: She could become the Bozo lady.
Colin: Or she is the Bozo lady. We don’t know. This is the heart of the relationship. This is really one of confiding, one of being vulnerable, one of expressing things these characters don’t express. He never talks to psychologists, according to him. She has but doesn’t actually tell what’s on her mind. He said, [therapy] is not worth it, because I can’t speak my mind. They can’t express themselves. This is probably the closest in their lives, maybe, that these two have expressed themselves, and it’s two outsiders who have a kinship with each other who are expressing to each other. He is sort of mentoring her, but she is also a kindred spirit. They both recognize this. This is the nature of the relationship.
Jennifer: Exactly, Colin. It is that moment of shared vulnerability with a stranger in which they both tell very intimate secrets. You know, the teenager says I haven’t had sex yet. Cian shares You know, I was tied to my bed by my parents because I had a mental disorder. Generally in polite society. You don’t make those disclosures to someone you’ve just met. That is not something we are trained to do, but it’s authentic and real, and very necessary for both of them to have that validating moment of: you see me, you hear me, you accept me. There’s nothing that either one of them said that the other ran away from the scene, right? They went deeper into finding out what was going on with that person.
Colin: And that’s the beauty. You said the word authentic. What is authenticity? Let’s talk about existentialism. This has repeated references to existentialism. My sense of the universe in the narrator’s head is one of meaninglessness. He doesn’t seem to have any really strong values or spiritual beliefs, or anything like this. They look forward, and he says, preparing for what’s to come. It’s a very dark, somber worldview that he holds. And this idea of authenticity is core to existentialism, isn’t it? Is he living his authentic life or not, by doing this? Maybe it is actually, right.
Jennifer: Sadly, it might be.
Colin: We can talk about this [story] from an existentialist point of view. It has very strong existentialist notions. Absolutely, authenticity is is very central to this, and this is part of the power of this story.
Colin: It really is easy to disregard the story on the first read superficially by saying this is a Humbert Humbert/Lolita thing when it’s not. And you know what I love about this story? It’s risky. The author took the risk of writing a story that an editor might look at and say, Nope, we’re not touching this.
Jennifer: #MeToo, right?
Colin: Right. But when you look at it [this story] is not about that at all. This is the first story I’ve read from this author and I love it. It is very confident and I appreciate that.
Jennifer: Yeah, Colin, I’m going to take you back to something, to circle this back to Cian mentoring her.
What he’d got was too much love in his heart and too much love even yet to deliver. His capacities were in this way overburdened, he told the girl. An excess of feeling was the most terrible curse. He had sold himself to emotion young and never found the receipt. He was essentially in a type of eternal adolescence.
Jennifer: I appreciate those beautiful phrases and the idea that I sold myself to emotion as a as a youngster, and I have yet to find the receipt. I cannot put that emotion back in the bottle because I’m already ruined.
Colin: I wrote down that same quote. As George Saunders [says], I cannot help but notice when wording seems extremely overblown. He’s putting on airs. He’s being very sentimental and mockish. He’s almost playing up this sentimentality, right? And I love it, but then this is also a valid introspection.
Jennifer: I think he’s really feeling it. I don’t think he’s showing off.
Colin: He is [stuck in] adolescence, and he knows it. He knows that this is a reckoning, and it’s important for a complex character in a story like this. This is character development. He’s having a reckoning here. He is not blind to this. He knows his faults. This overflowing of emotion almost seems like a cognitive dissonance. What is he, Young Werther? He is not Young Werther. He is this guy who’s been through a series of the same thing, over and over. He’s not fully admitting it, but he’s admitting it, right? There is a little bit of cognitive dissonance with this overflowing approach. This rings untrue, doesn’t it?
Jennifer: I disagree. For me, this was completely true. He feels that the reason his relationships are not working out is that he has so much love to give. He’s so overburdened with it. He just can’t find the right vessel. You just can’t handle the love I’m bringing to you because it’s so big, and in reality it’s like, no, it’s not so big. It’s so messed up. You ran into your girlfriend’s mailbox with your Tesla, you show contempt and disdain towards your girlfriend when she laughs. You don’t even like how your girlfriend laughs! You don’t have too much love to give, because that is not love. So I am just very passionate about this point, because I think he has a delusion about his capacity. But he also wants to have this capacity for love. He hasn’t given up, but he’s afraid of it. It’s like when he is on the ferry at the very end of the story:
France appeared first as a blinding whiteness made of the low September morning sun and he felt once more in his life that he had been rescued.
Jennifer: Now, did he get rescued by fleeing that relationship, or did he get rescued by the girl who saw him, who validated his humanity, who validated his vulnerability and gave him that invigoration and the will to try again?
For the first time she smiled and it was a wide-open and beautiful and death-defying smile.
Colin: Yes, let’s talk about the ending, but not quite yet. I want to go back to this sense again, this overflowing love business. Again, I love this because it is ambiguous. Again, this is a third person narration with a lot of free discourse, this overflowing over burdened capacity. These are Cian’s words coming out of narrator’s mouth, but at the same time there is some ambiguity. Is this being objectively told about the character, or is this his view of himself? We see a mixing here. So, what is this? I love the writing for this [story].
Colin: Let me just mention one thing: this reminds me of a superfluous man in Mikhail Lermontov’s novel A Hero of Our Time. This idea of the superfluous man, this kind of Byronic, romantic hero. Cian is a modern, superfluous man. Yes, I love Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time. This guy is kind of a modern Pechorin. In a way, he really is a superfluous man. I just wanted to mention that this really does pick up on the tradition of the superfluous man. This isn’t a new thing, these people who are living a lifestyle like this. Right? The superfluous man lifestyle, is not a new thing, is it?
Jennifer: No, it’s not. And it’s so interesting, Colin, that you’d say that.
▶ The ending
He approached with a rippling heart the Tesla. He carried his broad shoulders square and proudly. There was a crackle of illicit energy from the big man. There was something kinetic, something labile in his air. His lips moved softly with old emotions as the ferry docked and he sat waiting behind the wheel. He recited the names of all those he had loved—this was a familiar and settling routine and he was a good while at it.
Jennifer: To me, this mumbling under his breath, this recitation of the people he has loved and lost is similar to the counting of rosary beads or reciting the names of the saints. It is this ritualized comfort that he is seeking by revisiting his past.
Colin: Again, this religious element. He’s a superfluous man who is an unwitting priestly figure. isn’t it?
Jennifer: And I bet he would deny it and would buck against it, 100%.
Colin: He doesn’t see it. I’m sure he doesn’t see this. We see it with the help of the narrator’s language. Now we see it. Again, I’ll say, this is kind of like a super modern, a superfluous man who is us at the simultaneously a fatherly, priestly figure, a self-penitent one.
There was a crackle of illicit energy from the big man. There was something kinetic, something labile in his air.
Colin: The crackle of illicit energy, these words and the wonderful phrase, kinetic. This is vibrancy. This is life force right at the very end. After all this, he seems depressed. He’s been through this non-ending cycle, of the same thing, of a habitual routine of these quick relationships that fail, and he’s embarking on a new land with a crackle of kinetic energy, an illicit energy.
Jennifer: That was, I was like, wait a minute. What’s that about, right?
Colin: Proudly square.
Jennifer: I’m back!
Colin: He’s back. He’s reborn. He’s reborn once again.
Jennifer: I’m in it. I’m starting fresh in a brand-new land. And he starts out by telling us he doesn’t know if he’s ever going to go back home.
Colin: But what is his home, really? I mean, he really is a wandering, superfluous man of relationships.
Colin: We have the last sentence. Do you mind if I read the last one?
France appeared first as a blinding whiteness made of the low September morning sun and he felt once more in his life that he had been rescued. He drove patiently and slowly through the yards of the port until the ferry’s traffic began to disperse, and the roads all opened up, and the morning, too.
He would drive fast now all day south and into the darkness and at the end of it there would be shellfish and cold white wine and the lovely cool dim of a single room, and maybe something just a little bit like sleep.
Colin: And in my mind, this makes it a story. Why? Because he’s accepted himself. He’s accepted who he is, he is not a man of box sets. He’s not a man of long-term or of conventional relationships. He’s accepted himself despite it all. He accepts himself, and he goes forward with a kind of warmth, tranquility, and maybe even optimism.
Jennifer: Peace. He is at peace.
Colin: That’s right. He is at peace.
Jennifer: He can finally sleep right. That undercurrent of sleep disturbances he mentioned throughout his last relationship. The more comfortable Sylvia got with him the worse his sleep became. So, she’s settling in and is oh, this is so great! We’re in a relationship. Whereas he’s like, oh, no! I’m losing my freaking mind because I’m in a relationship. He is constantly riddled by the lack of sleep. Why don’t people sleep? There’s something going on that is keeping him awake.
Colin: Exactly, and that’s it. Tranquility is the word. He’s found it, and I think again, he’s had a reckoning. He’s been grappling with this. And I think what makes this a relatable guy is that he said You know what, it’s not for me. You know he’s jumping from relationships. It’s not satisfying in the long run . He looks at other people, says maybe they’re happy, with their house with their box sets. And he’s realized, it’s not him. It’s never going to be him. and he accepts it. He accepts himself for who he is, and that’s his reckoning, and that’s the resonance of the story, he finally accepts himself.
Jennifer: Yes, Colin. And the sun comes up, and it’s the dawning of a brand-new day. There’s a new white country ahead of him, and he is going for it. And I just love that. The sun comes up and you get another chance. I just really appreciated the hopeful tone of leaving it there. This is a chance for him to be himself.
Colin: Exactly.
Jennifer: And he hasn’t given up.
Colin: And that’s his authentic being.
Jennifer: Owning who he is.
▶ Box Sets
Colin: Let’s talk about the phrase “box sets”.
“And what happens after the glow?”
“After the glow,” he said, “it’s all just box sets and nonsense.”
“Box sets!” she said. “My ‘folks’ have some of those.”
Colin: This idea comes up in the previous story Bozo, doesn’t it? Not exactly box sets, but the same thing. This is funny, right? [In that story], we have a female narrator who seems to be kind of like this guy, right? She hasn’t settled down. She thinks in a kind of negative way about people who get married at 20, they have their house by 30, they have their affair by 40 and they are divorced by 50, just for kicks, or whatever she said. These two should get together!
Jennifer: Wait, are now international New Yorker author matchmakers?
Jennifer: I love it. What you said was very good. It’s the death knell of relationships when you get to that complacent point of box sets. When the girl states her parents have box sets, it landed like a thud. That’s exactly what you do when you settle down, and you’re boring and old, and you don’t have sex, but at least you have you box sets, right? To me a DVD series is a box set. And I love that you brought us here to talk about television watching and the viewing of media and these kinds of this distraction, that both he and the girl could relate to. Cian was disdainful of Sylvia’s watching habits, and he had no interest in her or what she was watching.
Jennifer: In contrast, the girl talks to him about the sixth season of a show she’s watching that her parents don’t approve of. He talks about, in his relationship with Sylvia, that he has watched 6 seasons of a particular show, and he’s aware that the fall is coming and there’s going to be a new season released. And for me, he was also released in the fall, right? He was like, I got to end this like, there’s nothing left here. Time to start a new season.
Colin: Oh, yeah, and on that point, he uses in a flashback that a new season was about to drop. That’s a very specific phrase that is echoed.
In the course of the love affair he had gone through five seasons of “Yellowstone” without regret and, in truth, by September he was not unaware that a new season of “World’s Toughest Prisons” was about to drop.
Colin: Those are also her words, right? He’s incorporated that phrase, through the third person, free discourse
“ ‘World’s Toughest Prisons,’ ” she said. “Season 7 just dropped.”
Colin: Again, this is almost like a first-person story, right? But there it is, it’s he’s kind of incorporated the thing.
Colin: I just can’t get off this idea of these relationships and box sets. This is what I believe is extremely relatable. And this goes back to what I said initially, that I can identify with him. And again, I have to say, [I relate to him] not in this weird whatever he’s doing sense, but the sense that he’s in a position that I think a lot of people can relate to, and they may not admit it. But in their life, they’re like, Yeah, I settled. I live a box set Bed, Bath and Beyond life. It’s stable and I’m conforming to society’s expectations. Now don’t get me wrong: I don’t want to paint people with this brush, but I do sense that the relationship is so thrilling at the beginning, isn’t it? It’s just the honeymoon phase that everyone knows. And then there’s what [The New Yorker story] Bozo talked about: you move in, get a house, do this, and then [unfortunately] a lot of marriages do end in divorces. Something like half, right? And I think he’s speaking to a lot of people who just won’t admit that. Now again, I’m not preaching here. I’m just saying I can understand what he’s talking about. There is a thrill in finding a new relationship, going through the passions, and all of that. Isn’t it exciting? Isn’t it one of the greatest thrills that we ever experience falling in love and going through that? And isn’t it hard to sustain?.
Colin: Isn’t he speaking the truth? Not for everybody, but I think that’s a widely identifiable thing, for [maybe] a lot of people. And it’s hard for me to admit this publicly, but I can identify with that. I can see where he’s coming from.
Colin: When George Saunder says, Is this a story yet? At the end, yes, this is a story, and it relates to these contradictions, this inner struggle. He’s having a conflict. Should I be normal? Should I settle down, get married, and have a box set? He tried it and it didn’t work. He didn’t solve his problems. His ennui, his sense of despair, his existential dread, only got worse. His sleeplessness only got worse. It didn’t solve his problems, right. I think this is universally relatable. He wants the best of both worlds, and you can’t have it.
Jennifer: And I’m going to just follow up on one thing. He doesn’t have the skills to bring his part to it. He hit her mailbox with his Tesla! Grow up, you’re 55 years old, what are you doing here?