Reflections In A Golden Eye (2000) - Plot & Excerpts
This is a very touching and quietly profound novella. The plot involves the relationships of a small central cast, set in a peacetime army post. Two neighbouring senior officers, Captain Penderton and Major Langdon, live affluently, childless, with their wives: Leonara Penderton and Alice Langdon. A quiet private, Elgee Williams, is commissioned by the Captain to clear a space of woodland in front of his house and becomes obsessed with the Captain's free-spirited, child-like and often-nude wife. Captain Penderton represses his true sexual identity with obsessive workloads. Alice becomes increasingly unbalanced by knowledge of her husband's infidelity and confides in her Filipino servant, and best friend, Anacleto. Each character harbours secrets they are unable to share. McCullers major strength in this book is in how individually she writes each character's sadnesses, preoccupations and psychological blind spots. Her relationship with her characters is always sensitive and sympathetic, but primarily interested in how incompatible and incomprehensible peoples' true natures can be. The characters secrets draw you into the story in a suspenseful way, but the real theme is less 'secrecy'; more 'misunderstanding'. Especially wilful or indifference misunderstanding. In a way that seems very true to life, the characters appear constantly frustrated with their ignorance, but at the same time unwilling to confront reality. This is most obvious in the character of Captain Penderton, who exists in a pitiable state of simultaneous knowing-and-not-knowing, keeping his knowledge of his wife's adultery a secret, whilst hiding an even deeper secret: that he is almost indifferent to it.In lots of stories you have an identification of a human foible and then a solution of this through a character arc involving a character or event who drastically challenges this world view. However the sorts of unhappiness that McCullers observes are the lingering, niggling kind. Not car crashes but rust. Though all lonely and unfulfilled, the characters in 'Reflections in a Golden Eye', rather than realising their shared pains, only amplify each others loneliness, through a series of consequential misunderstandings. The book could be criticised for portraying the troubles of the affluent and privileged rather than, say, the Penderton's black servant, Susan. However the sadness in this book is the kind that comes from a privileged sense of great expectations, and the difficult task of squaring your illusions with your real prospects.Here are some excerpts: The sun and firelight were bright in the room. There was a dancing spectrum on one of the walls and she watched this, half-listening to Anacleto's soft conversation. 'What I find so difficult to realize is that they know,' he was saying. Often he would begin a discussion with such a vague and mysterious remark, and she waited to catch the drift of it later.--'Anacleto', she warned him softly. Anacleto had used the term 'woery woman' several times before she caught on to the meaning. At first she thought it might be a native term, and then it had come to her finally that he meant 'whore'. Anacleto shrugged his shoulders and then turned suddenly to her, his face flushed. 'I hate people!' he said vehemently. 'At the party someone told this joke, not knowing that I was near. And it was vulgar and insulting and not true!' 'What do you mean?' 'I wouldn't repeat it to you' 'Well forget it,' she said. 'Go to bed and have a good night's sleep'. Alison was troubled over Ancleto's outburst. It seemed to her that she also loathed people. Everyone she had known in the past five years was somehow wrong. Morris Langdon in his blunt way was stupid and heartless as a man could be. Leonora was nothing but an animal. And thieving Weldon Penderton was at bottom hopelessly corrupt. What a gang! Even she herself she loathed. If it were not for sordid procrastination and if she had a rag of pride, she and Anacleto would not be in this house tonight. --Private Williams ordered a glass and for the first time tasted alcohol. Three men, all old-timers, were surprised when Private Williams left his table to sit with them for a while. The young soldier looked into their faces and seemed to be on the point of asking some question of them. But in the end he did not speak, and after a time he went away. --A peculiar reverie had taken hold of him. As he always had been keenly ambitious he had often amused himself by anticipating his promotions far in advance. Thus, when he was still a young west-pointer the name and the title 'Colonel Weldon Penderton' had to him a familiar and pleasing sound. And during the past summer of this year he had imagined himself as a Corps Area Commander of great brilliance and power. Sometimes he had even whispered the words 'Major-General Penderton' aloud to himself - and it seemed to him he should have been born to the title, so well did the sound of it fit with his name. But now during the past weeks this idle dream had strangely reversed itself. One night - or rather it was one-thirty in the morning - he had sat at his desk in a trauma of fatigue. Suddenly in the room three words had come unbidden to his tongue: 'Private Weldon Penderton.' And these words, with the associations they engendered, aroused in the Captain a perverse feeling of relief and satisfaction. He now experienced a subtle pleasure in imagining himself as an enlisted man. In these phantasies he saw himself as a youth ... with a young, easy body that even the cheap uniform of a common soldier could not make ungraceful, with thick glossy hair and round eyes unshadowed by study and strain. And the background of all this was the barracks: the hubbub of young male voices, the genial loafing in the sun, the irresponsible shenanigans of camaraderie.
Ebook, read online, via Open Library.I was reading an essay which led me to wikipedia, and then, well as soon as I found this online I thought I'd just read a little, and then a little more - and then 30 pages into it I figured I should just give in and admit I'm reading the book. Which is odd, because originally I'd set out to read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.The setting is an army base in peacetime Georgia (US). For a quick version - the wikipedia page. There's a love triangle, but there's also more than that with onlookers (who also love/hate), and a sort of hate triangle, or square, or...actually since there's too much love and hate going on I'll pass entirely on using emotional geometry.I haven't seen the movie, so I had no idea what to expect, besides that there would be portrayal of homosexuality in it, since this was cited as one of the early 20th century Lost Gay Novels. (Note that's a book link, another to add to the list!)It was a struggle to figure out how many stars to give this - because I didn't like any of the characters, nor do I want to read it again. But there was a lot going on in the plot (in an interesting, good kind of way), and the quality of the writing was very, very good. The writing itself gets 3 stars from me, if I'd been able to enjoy the people this would have been an easy 4. However this is the kind of story that makes for a rousing discussion in a literature or criticism class, and makes me wonder why I never had McCullers on any past reading lists. (Because I definitely remember studying Southern Gothic.)Random thoughts and quotes:This started out as - well, as what I thought was going to be the story of Private Ellgee Williams, but we've hopped into multiple other lives and perspectives.At this point I really wasn't expecting this, at all, p. 32 - actually, no, I can't bring myself to quote it, let's just say that Mrs. Langdon (view spoiler)[cuts pieces off of herself - her nipples. (hide spoiler)]
What do You think about Reflections In A Golden Eye (2000)?
Carson McCuller's style of writing isn't what usually appeals to me but it works. She often goes into long descriptions of things or settings or people; sometimes engages in authorial intrusion and uses more adverbs than I would like to see but again, it all works and reads with a pleasing flow. She also tells you what someone's emotion or emotions are and again, it works for her.On the other hand, there are many paragraphs that consist of six or seven very simple declaratory sentences that could be Hemingway or Fante or edited Carter. These too work.By the time I had read the first ten pages, I knew I was reading the product of an extremely skilled writer. It was a pleasure to read her writing and continued to be enjoyable to the last word. My criticism of it would be that, after spending a great deal of time developing characters and doing a good job of describing events and experiences that are the near perfect set up for transformational character change; the novella ends with acts that seem pedestrian given the events leading up to them. I don't see any character change or growth or transformation, there's not even character shift; so it runs the risk of being a long character study or vignette (I haven't reached a final conclusion). Regardless, the writing is very good.I had never read any of Carson McCuller's work before and was very impressed with her writing. Her character development, dialogue and description are also excellent. Her descriptions are particularly good. I am less impressed with her plotting and failure to construct and finish with, a more credible and interesting character transformation. The novella runs the risk of being a description of "a bad day at the office."I highly recommend it based solely on the quality of her writing, there is rarely an extra word in the novella.
—Jay
I read Reflections in bus stops, busses, malls, and movie theaters in Nashville. I thanks Carson McCullers for this little gem, which enriched my life for a brief moment in the vast desert of car parking lots and needless and scary commercial enterprises. I thought often about what she would think of the South now.I read the last part of Reflections in the movie theater as I was being blasted with some preview stuff about upcoming films. Guns, space, bombs, armies, things blowing up, murders, blood... It was nice to have Reflections neatly and snugly spread out on my lap and McCullers' narration calmly describe a very alien life, one that was calm, boring, subtle, simple, yet intricately complicated, repressed, and ultimately violent. Then I read the afterword, where Williams defends the Gothic, defends the gruesome and "awful" things McCullers writes about. And it occurred to me, with renewed surprise, that we have come so far in how much awfulness and violence we assume and expect not only from life but from arts and entertainment. But despite the blood and gore in the film previews, the uneventful murder (which McCullers tells us about in the first paragraph of the book) seems so chilling. It touches something so fundamental. And that's what makes this book special.Unlike most people, I liked Reflections better than Member of the Wedding. Heart is a Lonely Hunter is certainly my favorite, though. It is hard to compare the two, as I think Reflections is entirely different from Heart. Reflections is meant to be short and minimalist, almost like a snapshot. Heart is a Lonely Hunter is a philosophy, a study of a whole era and peoples. McCullers' voice is clear in both of them, and it's the only thing that I can really see that's similar.
—Blue
I got this book for .50 cents at the thrift store. The edition I read has a picture of Elizabeth Taylor on the cover since she starred in the motion picture version of this and a horribly written introduction by Tennessee Williams. I enjoyed this book though. It was a fast entertaining read and was campy and trashy and politically incorrect. It was a lot like watching an old movie. An old movie filled with alchoholism, sexual innuedos, weird violence, stalkers, and horse back riding. The kind of old movies that are worth watching.
—Mel
