MONDAY MORNING

MONDAY MORNING

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: MR. FOX BY HELEN OYEYEMI

  When  I finished Helen Oyeyemi's novel, I immediately turned back to the opening chapter. It wasn't that I had so enjoyed it that I planned to read the whole thing over. I was just trying, although it had been only a matter of a couple of days, to remember how on earth this thing had begun.

In the first chapter, Mr. St. John Fox, who despite his highflown name appears to be the successful author of violent potboilers, receives a visit from Mary Foxe. When he hears her come in, he assumes at first it must be his wife Daphne, a woman we will learn later spends much of her time in her room, depressed and suicidal. Mr. Fox has not seen Mary for six or seven years. He tells her he loves her. They have a brief, odd conversation which ends when Mary says, "You don't love me. You love that." She bares her breasts, lifts her dress up over her crotch, pulls her hair, and slaps herself on the face.

How could I have forgotten such an opening? In my defense I can only say that a lot happens in Oyeyemi's brief novel. In the next pages, Mary appears as an importunate fan and fledgling writer vying for Mr. Fox's attention in an exchange of letters dated 1936. There is another narrative thread involving Mr. Fox and Daphne. There are interpolated stories, apparently the work of Mr. Fox, although a couple may be Mary's and some may appear just for effect. And Mary, by the way, is not a real human being. She is Mr. Fox's muse, a constant cause of Daphne's jealousy, at least until they get to know one another toward the end of the novel.

Novel is probably not the right word here. This is imaginative writing of a very high order, with intertwined themes that may appear as either moments in the characters' lives or the plot lines of additional stories. Animals and spirits interact with the characters in fanciful if dangerous ways. World War One is a memory for some of the characters and World War Two is approaching. Mr. Fox either loves or is obsessed with Mary, and even though he treats her badly he loves his wife as well. Or he thinks he does, He may just be worried he might lose her. I believe her suicide only occurs in one of the "fictional" narratives.

This is not a book for readers fond of narrative closure. You can check out other reader reviews for confirmation. I am with those who wonder just what all this adds up to and what exactly has happened by the end of the story. But Helen Oyeyemi writes a kind of fiction where we have to assume that whatever happens on the page, happens.

(Looking over this review, I think I was overwhelmed by this book. For a more thoughtful, intelligent review, look here )

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SELECTED ENDNOTES (6)

Page 7: 7.155. The epitaph appears in the Anthology in a tract of poems attributed to Isidorus of Aigae, sixth century BCE. The actual century of its composition is uncertain.

Page 11: 7.621. Sardinian celery. Ranculus sardous. According to the American poet Keith Waldrop, "a poisonous herb, whose bitter taste could draw the lips back in a grin or sarcastic snarl, sardonic, like a dog's." See A Windmill Near Calvary, University of Michigan Press, 1968. p 21.

Page 16: Friedlander, no. 135. This appears to be the oldest extant epitaph in elegiac couplets. It's four verses stood on a pillar along the main road running from Athens through the suburb of Sepolia. It seems to date from 575 - 550 BCE.

Page 17: Clairmont, no. 24, plate 12. Another very old example, the lines accompany a gravestone cameo depicting an exuberant horse and its youthful rider (perhaps about to be thrown).

Page 18: 7.325. Sardanapallus. The epitaph reads well on its own but rests on a complex allusion. In Greek legend, Sardanapallus, the last in the line of thirty kings of Assyria, is emblematic of the scandalous and slothful life. Herodotus, Ctesias, Diodorus Siculus, Aristophanes and others tell his story or allude to him. Aristotle cites him as the lowest category of human existence, the "Life of Enjoyment," suitable only for beasts. In 682 BCE Sardanapallus's capital Ninevah was besieged. Two years into the siege, the Tigris river undermined his palace walls. Rather than live as a captive, he collected his wives and his treasure and set fire to them and himself.

Page 32: 7.248: The epitaph was inscribed on a monument dedicated to all the Greeks who fell while attempting to hold the pass against an invading Persian army at Thermopylae in 480 BCE. The size of the Persian army is exaggerated here ten times or more. The size of the Greek defense, which included about a thousand Spartan slaves, is accurate.

Page 42: 7.268. Minos. A legendary king of Crete, a great lawgiver, he was made a judge in Hades.

Page 65: 7.170. He's sleeping still. The epitaph may have been carved into the base of a stone depicting a woman holding a child.

Page 80: 7. 454. The ancient Greeks considered it barbaric to drink undiluted wine. They had no beer or distilled spirits.

Page 92: 7.545. As this epitaph points out, the road to the Grecian underworld divided into a right-hand path that led good souls down to Elysium and a left-hand path for those less worthy, who went to sufferings in Tartarus. Hades' three judges, Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus, met the dead at the crossroads and passed judgment.

Page 149: 7.744. The epitaph concerns a form of prophecy and fortune telling associated with bulls.

Excerpted from Cut  These Words Into My Stone, Ancient Greek Epitaphs

translated by Michael Wolfe

Johns Hopkins University Press,  2013

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MONDAY MORNING