Scan barcode
A review by kbyanyname
Deaf Sentence by David Lodge
3.0
IRA GLASS: Deaf Sentence on This American Life: a story in three parts, for a novel that seems to be written in three parts. Act 1: Deafness. Comedy gold. Act 2: Age. Death freaks us the heck out. Act 3: Crazy postgraduates. Are they never not relevant? Next, on NPR.
Act 1: Deafness.
KYLE: Being partially deaf myself, I commiserate with Desmond. Unlike him, I still have about half my hearing, but it still leads to all kinds of hijinks, especially in loud, public places. There have been so many times I have been in a loud place, completely unable to understand anything that’s happening except by sight and the other slightly less crowd-useful senses, and someone has said something unintelligible to me, and I’ll say something vaguely approving and pithy in response. There is riotous laughter, and one of my friends will lean over and say very loudly into my ear, “He asked if you are an alien transvestite because you have bad taste in clothes!” Which is a very mean thing to say, I don’t care if you were drunk, John.
Desmond deals with the situation well, especially for an academic explaining it to hearing folk. It’s hard to describe how much of a difference it can have, but the opening scene with the half-conversation in a noisy party is basically something that happens in my life every day. People look at you differently when you’re hard of hearing or losing your hearing rather than if you were completely deaf, too. It’s not so much that they feel pity for you as they just expect you work harder, more often than not. Like Desmond, I have to work at being a part of a lot of public conversations. Especially poignant were the scenes with his wife, and his drive in learning to do some lipreading. I was hoping he’d explore some new territory in dealing with deafness, but more often than not it was a foil than a part of his life, and maybe I might deal better with my own deafness if I think of it as my personal foil. I’m certainly not going around wearing a little “out of order” sign.
Act 2: Age
KYLE: If there’s one positive thing that Desmond’s deafness does do, it encourages him to be introspective in his journal, sharing his thoughts on aging with us.
SARAH VOWELL: Uh, I thought this was my segment.
KYLE: Oh. Er, look! A historic American event that Americans don’t know anything about which needs an expertly-written and really funny book!
SARAH VOWELL: I’ll only fall for that once, you know. But fine.
KYLE: Whew. British spelling aside, Desmond’s life is very much about his age, and he’s uncomfortable in his growing years as his wife and others reach new peaks. While I enjoyed his comments about hearing and dealing with a hearing society making ties between death and loss of hearing (there are many more than you might realize), his thoughts on death wear thin on me quickly. It’s not that I don’t want to hear them as much as they seem to be stop-gaps in places where story should be. I understand that the “campus novel” is a style in play here, but I like a little less soliloquy, or at least less often than at the beginning and end of every plot point: Desmond’s story comes across sometimes as a 65-year old Clarissa Explains It All. That said, in comparison to other stories full of soliloquy, academic quotes and philosophical facts, I’ll take this over [b:Beatrice and Virgil|7176578|Beatrice and Virgil|Yann Martel|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1275621211s/7176578.jpg|7627945] any day. In fact, I love Lodge's plays on poetry in reference to death and deafness.
I think the problem comes from Lodge writing from actual episodes in his life (as he mentions in the afterword) – the thoughts really do ring true in several situations, but one or the other sounds distinctly hollow comparatively. Desmond considers eventualities in strange ways sometimes that actually makes me think he’s a man about 15 years younger than he is, which I suspect is when Lodge may’ve encountered some of these situations.
Also, and this leads into the next point, out of nowhere during his reminiscing on life and death comes, again, the Holocaust. Just as with the aforementioned Beatrice and Virgil, I’m led into one story and then blindsided by a sudden delving into the – of course – feelings associated with the Holocaust by any rational human. If this were two years ago, before I started running into this over and over in novels as a way to get knee-jerk emotion in relation to death, I would’ve been miffed, but okay with it. Lodge is a man of letters, so to speak, and should understand his responsibility as a writer much better than that. But then, so should all referencing writers.
Act 3: Crazy postgraduates
DAVID SEDARIS: I—
KYLE: No. You just – you just shut up right now.
The opening scene kicks off a third plot, Desmond’s poor hearing getting him involved with a shady young American postgrad who studies the grammar of suicide notes and may or may not be crazy, certainly capricious. She plays pranks and inserts herself into Desmond’s life both as a playmate and a possible kinky paramour, ultimately just about reaching blackmail. Compared to the first two standard plot excitement levels of the novel, this proposal is like lighting the fuse of fireworks next to a couple plot sparklers; but it goes off like a whimper, certainly.
As Lodge describes in his afterword, the character, Alex, inserted herself into the story when he was about halfway done with his original story. I am all about letting your characters drive the story – a little bit of insanity makes a story feel real and chaotic. She threatens his (deafly) quiet retirement and upends his own morals in a few situations, which is exciting and fun. But she ultimately falls completely flat. Not only does Alex not make good on some of the admittedly cruel things she promises if he doesn’t come through, she’s not even a good foil for Desmond in that she just allows herself to get talked out of being a villain. For a devious girl who was supposed to have planned out her moves (and certainly acts that way in a few plot points), she misses so many opportunities to play the wily seductress. And even that wouldn’t be so bad, except Desmond himself repeatedly tells us what she could possibly do to him, how she has him hamstrung even in his innocence. Please don’t let us know that there could be a really intriguing plot going on if you’re just going to make the characters act like a stern grandfather and a misbehaving granddaughter.
DAVID SEDARIS: Well, I liked Alex.
KYLE: No one cares.
Act 1: Deafness.
KYLE: Being partially deaf myself, I commiserate with Desmond. Unlike him, I still have about half my hearing, but it still leads to all kinds of hijinks, especially in loud, public places. There have been so many times I have been in a loud place, completely unable to understand anything that’s happening except by sight and the other slightly less crowd-useful senses, and someone has said something unintelligible to me, and I’ll say something vaguely approving and pithy in response. There is riotous laughter, and one of my friends will lean over and say very loudly into my ear, “He asked if you are an alien transvestite because you have bad taste in clothes!” Which is a very mean thing to say, I don’t care if you were drunk, John.
Desmond deals with the situation well, especially for an academic explaining it to hearing folk. It’s hard to describe how much of a difference it can have, but the opening scene with the half-conversation in a noisy party is basically something that happens in my life every day. People look at you differently when you’re hard of hearing or losing your hearing rather than if you were completely deaf, too. It’s not so much that they feel pity for you as they just expect you work harder, more often than not. Like Desmond, I have to work at being a part of a lot of public conversations. Especially poignant were the scenes with his wife, and his drive in learning to do some lipreading. I was hoping he’d explore some new territory in dealing with deafness, but more often than not it was a foil than a part of his life, and maybe I might deal better with my own deafness if I think of it as my personal foil. I’m certainly not going around wearing a little “out of order” sign.
Act 2: Age
KYLE: If there’s one positive thing that Desmond’s deafness does do, it encourages him to be introspective in his journal, sharing his thoughts on aging with us.
SARAH VOWELL: Uh, I thought this was my segment.
KYLE: Oh. Er, look! A historic American event that Americans don’t know anything about which needs an expertly-written and really funny book!
SARAH VOWELL: I’ll only fall for that once, you know. But fine.
KYLE: Whew. British spelling aside, Desmond’s life is very much about his age, and he’s uncomfortable in his growing years as his wife and others reach new peaks. While I enjoyed his comments about hearing and dealing with a hearing society making ties between death and loss of hearing (there are many more than you might realize), his thoughts on death wear thin on me quickly. It’s not that I don’t want to hear them as much as they seem to be stop-gaps in places where story should be. I understand that the “campus novel” is a style in play here, but I like a little less soliloquy, or at least less often than at the beginning and end of every plot point: Desmond’s story comes across sometimes as a 65-year old Clarissa Explains It All. That said, in comparison to other stories full of soliloquy, academic quotes and philosophical facts, I’ll take this over [b:Beatrice and Virgil|7176578|Beatrice and Virgil|Yann Martel|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1275621211s/7176578.jpg|7627945] any day. In fact, I love Lodge's plays on poetry in reference to death and deafness.
I think the problem comes from Lodge writing from actual episodes in his life (as he mentions in the afterword) – the thoughts really do ring true in several situations, but one or the other sounds distinctly hollow comparatively. Desmond considers eventualities in strange ways sometimes that actually makes me think he’s a man about 15 years younger than he is, which I suspect is when Lodge may’ve encountered some of these situations.
Also, and this leads into the next point, out of nowhere during his reminiscing on life and death comes, again, the Holocaust. Just as with the aforementioned Beatrice and Virgil, I’m led into one story and then blindsided by a sudden delving into the – of course – feelings associated with the Holocaust by any rational human. If this were two years ago, before I started running into this over and over in novels as a way to get knee-jerk emotion in relation to death, I would’ve been miffed, but okay with it. Lodge is a man of letters, so to speak, and should understand his responsibility as a writer much better than that. But then, so should all referencing writers.
Act 3: Crazy postgraduates
DAVID SEDARIS: I—
KYLE: No. You just – you just shut up right now.
The opening scene kicks off a third plot, Desmond’s poor hearing getting him involved with a shady young American postgrad who studies the grammar of suicide notes and may or may not be crazy, certainly capricious. She plays pranks and inserts herself into Desmond’s life both as a playmate and a possible kinky paramour, ultimately just about reaching blackmail. Compared to the first two standard plot excitement levels of the novel, this proposal is like lighting the fuse of fireworks next to a couple plot sparklers; but it goes off like a whimper, certainly.
As Lodge describes in his afterword, the character, Alex, inserted herself into the story when he was about halfway done with his original story. I am all about letting your characters drive the story – a little bit of insanity makes a story feel real and chaotic. She threatens his (deafly) quiet retirement and upends his own morals in a few situations, which is exciting and fun. But she ultimately falls completely flat. Not only does Alex not make good on some of the admittedly cruel things she promises if he doesn’t come through, she’s not even a good foil for Desmond in that she just allows herself to get talked out of being a villain. For a devious girl who was supposed to have planned out her moves (and certainly acts that way in a few plot points), she misses so many opportunities to play the wily seductress. And even that wouldn’t be so bad, except Desmond himself repeatedly tells us what she could possibly do to him, how she has him hamstrung even in his innocence. Please don’t let us know that there could be a really intriguing plot going on if you’re just going to make the characters act like a stern grandfather and a misbehaving granddaughter.
DAVID SEDARIS: Well, I liked Alex.
KYLE: No one cares.