Modernist Novel

Pitch Dark – Renata Adler

First published in 1983, this novel is narrated by protagonist Kate Ennis, journalist and novelist, coming out of, scarred, an affair with an inconsiderate, probably worthless, married man. She’s trying to find meaning in love. Or, in loss. And from love and loss, all other events, from disposing of sick raccoons (remember Lawrence having to do in the hedgehog?) to midnight escapes across rural Ireland. Anguish, the flight from herself and from others, the search for identity, mistrust in the world, suspicion that people have such anxiety that manifests in thwarted entitlement and disrespect for other people, the willingness to take all the air out of rooms with their anger, obtuseness, off-handedness.

And all kinds of asides in this book, filling the spaces, because even the most depressed and anxious among us hardcore readers need digressions and tangents and forays to feed that spark of interest, curiosity, we have:

What’s new? The biography of the opera star says she used to ask in every phone call, and What else? I’m not sure the biographer understood another thing about the opera star, but I do believe that What’s new. What else. They may be the first questions of the story, of the morning, of consciousness. What’s new. What else. What next. What’s happened here, says the inspector, or the family man looking at the rubble of his house. What’s it to you, says the street tough or the bystander. What’s it worth to you, says the paid informer or the extortionist. What is it now, says the executive or the husband, disturbed by the fifteenth knock at the door, or phone call, or sigh in the small hours of the night. What does it mean, says the cryptographer. What does it all mean, says the student or the philosopher on his barstool. What do I care. What’s the use. What’s the matter. Where’s the action. What kind of fun is that. Let me say that everyone’s story in the end is the old whore’s, or the Ancient Mariner’s: I was not always as you see me now. And the sentient man, the sentient person says in his heart, from time to time, What have I done.

In the midst of all this jumble, questions. Also the past, which comes back again and again. And her voice. Expressive, sensitive and intelligent. That she speaks to us, sometimes, with a keen sense of humor. And she confesses. And she rambles about life and writing while she examines her own reality.

With a fragmented narrative, Adler not only works on memory, which can be understood, kind of, despite the lack of signposts for certain memories and jumps across associations, but also delves directly into feeling, the emotions memory evokes. Her novel, fleeing from her hurtful affair is a tale of loss and search. It's about what we've all felt and what we know.

There are passages of suspense and overwhelming unease. The set piece of the midnight flight by car across rural Ireland is a tour de force, bringing to mind the nightmare journey in Fortress Besieged (1947) by Ch'ien Chung-shu. 

Getting into it takes perseverance, but at a certain point it grabbed me and not just because of the haunting narrative voice. Adler, I think, wanted me to think about how I read certain books, what I think are limits on what novelists can do and still regard their artifacts as novels.