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lettersfromgrace 's review for:
The Ballad of Peckham Rye
by Muriel Spark
From the exposition to the end, I saw Othello throughout this novel— Dougal Douglas is an iteration of an Iago, a Janus, this time with the heads of “a professor. . . a television interviewer. . . a man of vision”— who is simultaneously some sort of Devil and exorcist, as Iago can be suggested to show each character the truth of themselves. Deuce is like Othello, attracted to the idea of an Iago— also a masochist— driven thus to murder his Desdemona. I saw this similarly in The Driver’s Seat, analysing the parallels in my review of the novella. This is only further exaggerated in this text through Spark’s use of a higher proportion of dialogue.
The truth that Dougal Douglas reveals is of the everyday— as in the quote Boyd celebrates in his introduction, any human that does breathe is unnatural. Men want women they do not like, as Humphrey does not like Dixie, and so even though they will not marry them (to be frank), they will when given two months to wait out that wanting. The relationships between Dougal and Humphrey, Dougal and Deuce, Dougal and Trevor are so erotically charged to suggest the latent masculine mating rituals that underlay the heterosexual ones. Dougal and Trevor fight over the body of a dead nun who could almost be Beauty, Dougal is almost with Humphrey on his honeymoon— laying in the bed he and Dorothy should be consummating their marriage in— because Humphrey must set Dixie back in her splurge, must let her regain her sex— if Dougal is to be impressed with him, if the floorboards are to creek again. Dougal impresses Deuce so that he becomes envious and trammelled of and through Miss Coverdale; she must be removed. Alternatively, a man clinging to heteronormativity, never going far enough to meet Dougal in Soho, seeing Coverdale get exactly what he truly wants— must assert his sexuality through an essentially phallic killing that is the consummation of all of his earlier abuses. But really, it is Dougal he is thinking of in that moment. It is why the story ends so mundanely, as this, all this, is mundane indeed— the same stuff as medieval ballads.
Sex.
Spark is the Mistress of the Character Art. I adore her.
The truth that Dougal Douglas reveals is of the everyday— as in the quote Boyd celebrates in his introduction, any human that does breathe is unnatural. Men want women they do not like, as Humphrey does not like Dixie, and so even though they will not marry them (to be frank), they will when given two months to wait out that wanting. The relationships between Dougal and Humphrey, Dougal and Deuce, Dougal and Trevor are so erotically charged to suggest the latent masculine mating rituals that underlay the heterosexual ones. Dougal and Trevor fight over the body of a dead nun who could almost be Beauty, Dougal is almost with Humphrey on his honeymoon— laying in the bed he and Dorothy should be consummating their marriage in— because Humphrey must set Dixie back in her splurge, must let her regain her sex— if Dougal is to be impressed with him, if the floorboards are to creek again. Dougal impresses Deuce so that he becomes envious and trammelled of and through Miss Coverdale; she must be removed. Alternatively, a man clinging to heteronormativity, never going far enough to meet Dougal in Soho, seeing Coverdale get exactly what he truly wants— must assert his sexuality through an essentially phallic killing that is the consummation of all of his earlier abuses. But really, it is Dougal he is thinking of in that moment. It is why the story ends so mundanely, as this, all this, is mundane indeed— the same stuff as medieval ballads.
Sex.
Spark is the Mistress of the Character Art. I adore her.