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korrick 's review for:
The Price of Salt, or Carol
by Patricia Highsmith
"They sound horrid."4.5/5
"They're not horrid. One's just supposed to conform.["]
One thing I've learned in the business of teaching writing is that the average reader of argumentative essays has the attention span of a two-year-old. If you don't constantly remind them what's going on when where why how and how long, they'll lose their train of thought entirely and come out of the reading experience but naught with a smugly self-reinforced view of whatever was rocketed around their skulls in the first place. For whatever reason, this reminds me of how easy it is to predict who is going to die based on demographic, regardless of whether one tackles the pop culture or the classics. Part gore porn, part tragedy porn, part attention grasping sensationalism: whatever the concentration, the average joe or jane loves being reminded of when where why hod and how long the status quo must be bred on the backs of others. Stories that fall along these lines could be horribly romantic, of course, but it's easier to mourn those outside the grasp of conformation than ensure their coexistence.
No, he only recognized the "miles-away" moods, she thought, when he felt himself deprived of her by distance. And she thought suddenly of the times she had gone to bed with him, of her distance then compared to the closeness that was supposed to be, that everyone talked about. It hadn't mattered to Richard then, she supposed, because of the physical fact they were in bed together. And it crossed her mind now, seeing Richard's complete absorption in his reading, seeing the plump, stiff fingers catch a front lock of his hair between them and pull it straight down toward his nose, and she had seen him do a thousand times before, it occurred to her Richard's attitude was that his place in her life was unassailable, her tie with him permanent and beyond question, because he was the first man she had ever slept with.It's so exhausting when people spout "of the times, of the times, of the times". Weimar Republic German was more liberal in certain respects than Trump Republic 2017 you self-righteously ignorant prats. You know what's of the times? Capitalism, and the power of making a writer choose between putting a story out to the public and putting food on the table. The fact that we get a movie around seventy years after we get the book attests to nothing but the whimsies of fame and fortune and the cold hard facts of controlling history and diverting the present down prescribed channels of what has come before and what is allowable now. The book is a love story, on a more self-controlled yet wildly erratic note than I had encountered before, and the fact that it feels so realistic has both everything and nothing to do with what I have been led to believe. There is still nosiness in the streets and obfuscation in the parties and one singly powerful family making the entire world feel small and bitter and dead. I'm not saying nothing has changed, but if a classic encompasses a banal human situation that must be relearned again, and again, and again, however the world has shifted or the genders reinvented or the sexuality circumscribed, this would be such a classic.
"You can just start and stop?"I left this review too late and now I'm afraid I'm too tired to do it full justice. Lucky for me that the quotes are so good, as it's near impossible for me to describe what I felt while reading this, how cold and yet joyous and how giddy and yet morose and how relieved and yet committed to the fight I was and am and will be in regards to this work. The line between loving men and loving women, and indeed men and and women, was drawn too sharply for my tastes, but there was no malice in it, and I feel Highsmith listened if there was ever a conversation. For now, I'm glad that I can finally watch the movie. Moving from Galadriel to Carol in film is not a trajectory I would have imagined back when watching the first iteration in theatres, but it is very much a welcome one.
"When you haven't got a chance."
"They're not the whole world."
"They are enough. And you have to live in the world.["]
"I love you, Carol."
"But do you see what it means?"
"Yes."