LitLetter 232: Identity Dilemma

James Meek's Guide to the question Who am I?

See the Contours of Life in the Background Design!

Dear friends and subscribers to The LitLetter

Introduction

The fact that I have not posted recently does not mean I have not been writing, nor that I have nothing to say. The habit of weekly posts on poems and their purpose has receded, but the need to reflect on matters internal and external to me still presses. The dry patch was bound to cease, but how exactly?

I followed Stanley Kunitz’s advice of ‘returning to the masters because they infect me with human possibility’.

So my reading list of last ten months has included: Pride and Prejudice, Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Anna Karenina, Little Women, Sense and Sensibility, and…

…To Calais, in Ordinary Time by James Meek (2019)

Identity Dilemma

I have written about this last book before, and will probably do so again. None of the reviews I have read of this book have in any way interpreted it as I do; I assure you that when you have finished reading here, you will admit of no doubt that the reviewers were too quick to comment. Time will tell if it belongs on Stanley Kunitz’s reading list. But why not? Knowing how superficial book reviews can be, why not might I, having read it at least six times, be different, even more accurate?

Not only is it one of the most interesting modern novels written, yet more urgently – for me at any rate - its theme transcends all, unshackles all, redeems all. Its theme is identity dilemma.

If I had to measure how long it has taken me to arrive at those two words, that would be long. I have been alive today for 25 790 days, and it seems I have lived in the penumbra of those two innocent little words for every day of my life.

It is not something trivial like ‘how many hats are you wearing?’, nor ‘I hold the following roles in my life’. Oh no, it’s an implacable, iron-hard grip of an inescapable obsession, the life-long, daily, hourly, minute-to-minute struggle to say – with clarity, precision, and compassion – who I am, what I represent, what meaning and purpose I make. In short, who am I and what life have I lived, will I live?

My wife said to me last night: ‘It’s who I am’, as she insisted to pay more money on a family commitment than required. Her self-identity demanded her behaviour. Not even how other people see her, it is how she sees herself that takes precedence, defines her identity. No dilemma there! Crystal clear!

Though it may be I have come only to the margins of these identity-defining questions in the latter thousand or so days of the many thousands lived, I am sure they have now assumed a predominant position in my soul, my spittle, my sinews. I cannot leave them alone. I pick at them like a person going gently insane picks at a wem on their face, making a scab, a scar. Cannot help themselves. And, of course, if an answer should present itself, soon it shifts like the colours of the rainbow in the moving light. Soon it sneers back at me with a contemptuous, dismissive wave of the hand, as if to say: ‘Ha! You didn’t think you were going to get that right, did you?’ Still, after all those days.

Yet it’s not a crisis. The outcomes are not schizophrenic behaviours. It’s a dilemma shared by millions of people who seek perhaps merely to understand the purpose of life, that is one’s own life, what is it for, what will a satisfactory beginning, middle, and end look like? These seemingly insignificant questions are in fact remorseless pursuers. Yet their immensity can cause us to set them aside – ‘I’ll deal with it in the early new year’, or ‘after the vacation’, allowing us to forget they are typical examples of Quadrant 2 questions, you know, the Important/Not Urgent questions populating the Eisenhower Matrix. This Matrix, developed first by President Dwight Eisenhower and later made popular by Stephen Covey, helps people and organisations prioritise actions according to their perceived importance and urgency. In other words, it helps people make better decisions, to deal with hard to assess problems in a systematic, sustainably consistent pattern. If you like, this is exactly why I am in the dilemma in the first place – to work out responses to the situations of my life as productively and successfully as possible.

People who have a longer term perspective on life tend to make better decisions. Now, that’s a statement, perhaps judgemental, please fact check it, what do you think? I have reflected, and find the word ‘tend’ not inappropriate. Longer term makes for more conscious decision-making, not necessarily always well planned, but certainly falling within a sector of aspiration or vision that is consistent. My own vision statement – doing good things with good people – is a case in point; for thirty years these words have helped me make decisions - roughly - that in a non-sequential manner have seemed to work and still seem to work. My behaviour patterns support these decisions – that’s why it’s so important to define the parameters – so all seems consistent, sustainable, and happy for me. The ’for me’ deserves emphasis because what works for me will not work for the next person, or the next one, and so on. But that does not really trouble me as these factors are only ever about an individual. My outcomes must work for me before I can ever consider being part of an interconnected world, as you probably know I think we all are.

Is identity dilemma after all so surprising? Think about a typical drive to work, suburban to urban surroundings, varying levels of traffic, variable weather patterns. No matter how calm you make yourself before engaging the clutch, I warrant you have become embroiled in a temper or confrontation before your destination. Immediately on show are various identities. Who is the real you? The courteous person? The angry one? The patient one? You may say these are merely emotions, temporarily on show, yet who is the combining person, you, how do you define yourself as you drive into the city to work? If you misbehave, it will corrode you.

Identity dilemma seems a good definition. There is dilemma aplenty in the previous paragraphs. No one has all the answers, everyone is prone to error, looking backwards has never been a satisfactory process for predicting future success. Well, at least not with life nor with stock-picking. Yet the total quantum of compassion on the earth now must be more than it was in the past. This is not particularly an auspicious time to make that statement, what with populism rife, borders closing, eyes closing to atrocities in newspapers, and so on. Yet all my good friends, especially the young ones, are telling me to choose hope. Do they know something I don’t? So I do choose hope because I trust them and respect them. Am I hope? Is that my identity? There are dilemmas at every corner.

Let’s examine why, contrary to many learned reviewers, none of whom mention anything about identity in their reviews, I believe that To Calais, in Ordinary Time offers itself – is offered by the author, James Meek – as an exemplar (its proper meaning of something fit to be imitated, a model, NOT an example which merely means something representative of all such things in a group) for a deeper understanding of our sense of identity, and how we may better address that sense, and be less encumbered with doubt and even perhaps fear of who we are and how we act. In short, how to deal successfully with this dilemma.

The Book

Now, to the book. To Calais, in Ordinary Time engages exactly these questions, inserting them (largely unnoticed) into the lives of a group of people in the Middle Ages who are under fierce pressure from mainly external forces, yet which have a bearing also on their internal selves. Does this sound familiar? It should – most of us spend all our lives internalising external forces, opinions, expectations, and so on. This is where we live!

The group is journeying from the countryside in Gloucestershire in the south-west of England to the seaport of Melcombe, under the Portland Bill, there to take passage to Calais, France. The date is August 1348, and the plague, the Black Death, is sweeping into England almost into their faces from ships bringing cargo – and plague infested rats – to the southern shores of that island. The author, James Meek, has set a superb scene here. The plague’s effects are to be seen everywhere, especially in the second half of the book, yet it is invisible and strikes at random, not capturing all and of those it does capture, not killing all. The random chance here is like Russian Roulette, one bullet in a chamber of six, spin the chamber, and pull the trigger. Yes, it’s as exciting as that, never knowing who’s next to fall prey to the death, and whether permanently or to survive. The characters must choose how to answer the questions: ‘How must I behave? What end must I wish for?’

The internal dynamics in the group are likewise hectic. There are high-borns (Lady Bernadine Corbet and Laurence Hacket) and low-borns (Will Quate, a ploughman for the manor, and Hab/Madlen, the village pig boy), archers (a motley crew), a captive woman (French, raped and held captive by one of the archers after the Battle of Crecy), and an ecclesiastical cleric (Thomas Picketto). Of the two lads from the village (Will and Hab), one is bound to the archers (thus securing his freedom from servitude), and the other is bound to his friend, in love. This second lad likes to cross-dress, and has stolen the Lady Berna’s wedding gown, a crime for which she could be taken back to the village to be hanged if captured. Yet the Lady Berna is actually fleeing from an arranged (by her father) marriage to an elder man (a friend of her father’s), Berna’s father hoping for a reciprocal promise from his friend regarding his own daughter to him! The rampant old man (he is only fifty, my, how times have changed!) will be foiled by his daughter, but only by the skin of her teeth. This headstrong young woman’s preferred paramour is Laurence Hacket, the squire who has put the score (ideally twenty men, though that figure is never attained) of archers together. Laurence and the archers are headed to France to fight the French, and to take possession of a house and a living outside Calais of which Laurence is the feoffee. If this paragraph seems complex, it is! Is it not representative of life? Do things not occur like this? The story line mirrors life.

In Lady Bernadine Corbet (Berna for short), James Meek has created one of the most alluring female characters in recent fiction. In the book’s opening scene Berna is talking to her cousin, Pogge, in the garden of her home in Outen Green, buried deep in Gloucestershire. Only 21 years she is clever, beautiful, proud, and prejudiced. She is absolutely clear on her station – high – and the station of all others around her, mainly low. She is bemoaning her impending arranged marriage. Disgusted by her father’s patronising machinations she talks of flight, especially with her lover, Laurence Hacket, close by. However, Laurence has already proven himself somewhat fickle, having fathered a child on a woman in the village. Is he a friend or fiend? One letter is all it may take to disturb his identity. Pogge most charmingly urges restraint upon Berna, but you know the latter will pay no attention.

So begins a saga of adventure of horror on one hand, and joyful discovery on the other. And almost everything in between. The only constant is change, sometimes of clothing, sometimes of role-playing, sometimes of circumstance, all the time of sexuality, occasionally of rank, always of self-discovery. The group comes across a castle at Mere emptied of people by the death. Will and Madlen, now lovers, raid wardrobes for dress-up fun, and almost inadvertently invest themselves with high-born style and grace by virtue of their beautiful raiment. Only to be invaded by Berna who sees two strangers of beauty and rank – until she recognises her error and explodes in anger at their temerity to assume her rank. The very idea, two serfs dressing as high-borns. Beyond prejudice, Berna is a bigot. And here is part of the identity dilemma – she is not a bigot all the time, she even sees her way to forgive them her rancour later in conversation with Thomas. It’s just…that’s who she was, and she cannot throw that mantle off so quickly. How often do you find yourself knowing what to do/say/express – yet unable to do it? You know it, yet cannot do it. Or you did it, and cannot undo it; are you so labelled for ever?

In the final scene of the book, Berna is dressed as a man, finding to dress so is the only way to travel alone through England without attracting attention. She has attained the boat taking the remnants of the group to Calais, and is as changed from her earlier personhood as can be.

En route to Melcombe, Berna encounters at a fair Dame Elizabeth, the niece of Queen Isabella, the mother of the king, Edward III. Elizabeth and Berna engage in as entertaining a conversation as one could hope to read. Full of challenge and counterchallenge, the two women, one elder the other young, delight each other and the reader with their eloquence, wit, and mutual life stories. At one point, Elizabeth says – only partly in jest – ‘So ingenious, and so serious! I may fall in love with you myself, be you so frank with me.’ Elizabeth continues the mind-broadening of Berna that has already started courtesy of the acquaintance of the other members of the group, by happily talking about the homosexual affairs of the previous king, Edward II, and other tittle-tattle of the royal family. In return, Berna tells her story to Elizabeth.

The Frenchwoman, Cess, has a complete epiphany at the conclusion of the book. Throughout she is called Cess – as in cess-pit, a holding tank for faecal matter. Her real name is beautiful – Cecily de Goincourt, easily shortened to Cess. But she cannot assume her real name as long as she is the thrall of John Softly, the man who murdered her father after Crecy and abducted her, a sex slave, a bondswoman in moral and mental servitude. In almost the last scene of the book Softly succumbs to the death. As they leave his body to the carrion crows, Cess can declare: ‘I am Cecily de Goincourt’. This rebirth – from a tank of faecal matter to a woman of birth and station - is poignant and permanent; no one stops her henceforth from attaining the ship in Melcombe, back to her homeland and her family.

Hab starts out in life as a foster child, no known parents. The village pig boy, and a mate of Will’s from long back. No clue is given how long Hab has harboured homosexual tendences, but he enjoys dressing in Berna’s stolen wedding gown from the outset of the adventure. It may be that the wedding gown is so beautiful, it distracts attention from other detail. It may be that no one really fussed over a homeless lad dressing as a girl. Madlen desires Will as her ‘loveman’ from the first, and so begins one of the most bewitching love stories in fiction. Will only sees Madlen as a friend, until gradually the friendship becomes so intense that Will is prepared to give up his freedom, risk his life even, for his friend. The emotional component of their relationship, the friendship, precedes considerably any consummation of it.

Both – just – survive the black death, to leave the reader in mid-Channel (so to speak) en route to France for a future neither can possibly have ever foreseen. Will boards the boat to France and promptly falls sick, whether to the black death or seasickness is not clear. He recovers, throws off his ailment, and declares in the last sentence of the book: ‘Death ne needed me, now I know not who I am’. It’s like the passage of events has given him the opportunity for a reboot, a reframe of his identity, a whole new definition of who he is.

The evidence continues to pile up for my assertion that this novel is about identity dilemma. The last piece of evidence is (always!) the finest.

Thomas Pitkerro is a Scottish proctor, a qualified practitioner of law in ecclesiastical courts. His motive for joining the group is to attain Avignon where he has lived, and desires whither to return, his panic to see his home again rather than die in an unbeloved England causing him to assume ungraciously many responsibilities in the group.

Thomas is almost like a Greek chorus in an Aeschylean tragedy, tracking events, commenting, never intervening, wringing his hands incessantly, and in general adding insights no other mechanism could quite so easily have delivered. His narrative parallels that of the author, who IS the author? one finds oneself often asking. He reluctantly takes confessions of the dying men and women around him, reluctantly as he is not ordained. Nobody really cares; the gravitas of his demeanour at death is seemingly all that is required to ensure comfort in the one about to take that final journey. AND he confesses continually – to Judith and Marc, an unmet couple in Avignon who have worked for him in the past, who have given him friendship which he fears he has betrayed, and who may for all he knows be dead already. As the book gathers pace, so do the self-recriminations of Thomas gather heat, until he is admitting of lust for Judith and contempt for Marc. Who is Thomas?

More evidence of Thomas’s identity dilemma, which by the way is  somewhat unresolved as it is left unclear (probably deliberately) if Thomas is swept up by the death or not. Here follows Thomas’s final contribution to the book:

I am lachrymose. Why? Hugo assumes I weep for the archers, for Cess. No. I weep for Will and Madlen and Bernadine, for their courage in abandoning their former lives.

More honestly: I weep for those they abandoned.

More honestly still: I weep for my own courage, that I dared relinquish the country of my birth.

With absolute honesty: I weep for the brutality of the courage, the courage of the brutality, of he who steals himself away from his origins.

Oh mother, forgive me!

To all people engaged in the dilemma of unresolved or unresolvable identities, Thomas declares allegiance, and blesses them. All immigrants, all pilgrims, all refugees whether deliberate or by poverty, all people forging new pathways with brutal courage and courageous brutality, Thomas weeps for you. And thereby signifies his love and compassion for you.

The Promise

Identity dilemma is the place to be, with cognition and self-respect. If you are not there, you deny yourself the opportunity to grow, to change, to live out loud (is that what lol stands for? I think not).

And if that is the place to be, how best to facilitate insight? By story. By the telling and listening to stories. Stories encompassing the multitude of identities, lives lived, paths connected and disconnected, mistakes and failures committed, and their renaissance. It is now clear – this is why we write, why we read, what we talk about. Tolstoy, Woolf, Faulkner, Lawrence, just four names almost at random, and each with a piercing gaze into the core of life. Goodness, what a treasure trove!

My thesis ends here for now – that it is in story that we explore the bravery of the brutality to cleave from our known zones. It is brutal – Thomas begs forgiveness from his mother, as did I 45 years ago when cleaving myself from England. Story becomes reality for some. Who knows how or whom?

I shall venture some stories here forward. For your entertainment and my learning. The stories may be personal, or from literature, or from creative imagination. Mediated by me. I look forward to your company on the journey.