Reflections in a Golden Eye (Audible Audio Edition) Carson McCullers Christopher Kipiniak Audible Studios Books
Download As PDF : Reflections in a Golden Eye (Audible Audio Edition) Carson McCullers Christopher Kipiniak Audible Studios Books
Set on a Southern army base in the 1930s, Reflections in a Golden Eye tells the story of Captain Penderton, a bisexual whose life is upset by the arrival of Major Langdon, a charming womanizer who has an affair with Penderton's tempestuous and flirtatious wife, Leonora. Upon the novel's publication in 1941, reviewers were unsure of what to make of its relatively scandalous subject matter. But a critic for Time Magazine wrote, "In almost any hands, such material would yield a rank fruitcake of mere arty melodrama. But Carson McCullers tells her tale with simplicity, insight, and a rare gift of phrase." Written during a time when McCullers's own marriage to Reeves was on the brink of collapse, her second novel deals with her trademark themes of alienation and unfulfilled loves.
Reflections in a Golden Eye (Audible Audio Edition) Carson McCullers Christopher Kipiniak Audible Studios Books
When reading Reflections in a Golden Eye the first thing that struck me was the novel's opening line: "An army post in peacetime is a dull place." Written and published on the cusp of World War II, that observation sure changed fast by the time most readers took up the book. And of course Carson McCullers meant the line ironically since everything that follows shows there's hardly a dull moment on an army post during peacetime.McCullers' book is a complicated work, deceptively so being so short in length (a mere 140 pages in my 1969 Bantam paperback edition). I picked it up not knowing what to expect and was delighted to get much more than I ever anticipated. However, one thing I did not get is this theme of homosexuality that many reviewers claim is in the novel. That strikes me as readers imposing 21st century obsessions onto a mid-20th century novel. Never does the book state Captain Penderton was homosexual or bisexual. It could perhaps be implied by his fascination with Private Williams, but I offer a competing interpretation: Captain Penderton saw so much of himself in Williams, of what he might have been and become--the road not taken. At the climax when he sees this other self poised to usurp his life, Penderton knows instinctively that he has to destroy it in order to be free from its downward pull.
McCullers establishes early on that Captain Penderton was tightly wound while Private Williams was loose. Williams salutes Penderton half-heartedly, sprawls on benches lazily and drops a candy bar wrapper carelessly. That cast aside wrapper is such a disruption to the ordered life of Captain Penderton he is compelled after a few steps to turn around and pick it up. Penderton's life is so ordered--working until 2am each night, that Williams quickly learns the exact time when it is safe to slip into Penderton's home and Leonora's room.
The scene most open to what I believe is a misinterpretation is that set in the forest when Penderton is thrown from Firebird and is startled to encounter a nude Lt. Williams, who comes to tend to the horse. The nudity in that scene is non-erotic. It was earlier stated Williams was a naturist who found freedom from his many demons by laying naked on a rock far from camp. The free-spirited and serene Williams really stood in contrast to the huffing and puffing Penderton who try as he might could not bring Firebird under his control. I think that is why Penderton fixated on Williams--who is this calm, carefree man who enjoys the life of an enlisted man. Penderton--a career military man--even begins to envy the life of an enlistee and weeps while hearing the laughter coming from the barracks while he sits outside in the confines of his car and within the confines of his miserable life as an army officer.
I came away from Reflections in a Golden Eye thinking here was a novel about how the choices we make in life come to define us and can become our prisons. When confronted with an alternative, another path, we can choose either to change or to fortify ourselves against the possibilities. Penderton's noticing and becoming agitated by the mismatched furniture and random bric-a-brac indicates he was fortifying himself and imposing more order upon his already ordered life. The various threats posed by Williams had to lead to a confrontation. But it certainly isn't a novel about homosexuality (though perhaps one could argue an exception in the case of Anacleto, the Filipino houseboy whose relationship with Alison Langdon was certainly unorthodox but clearly asexual).
In his outstanding introduction Tennessee Williams praises Reflections in a Golden Eye and contends it's better than her celebrated first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, but notes it nonetheless lags behind Ballad of the Sad Café and The Member of the Wedding. This was the first book I read by McCullers and I'm eager now to read the rest of her works.
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Reflections in a Golden Eye (Audible Audio Edition) Carson McCullers Christopher Kipiniak Audible Studios Books Reviews
I had heard and read extravagant praise of this novella for so long that I decided, finally, to read it. My disappointment with it may be only a matter of its not being able to live up to all the superlatives that have been lavished on it. The narrative voice has a remarkable, spare beauty and the story is well-constructed, but its unfolding relies too much on suggestion and withholding. It neither shows nor tells. To me it reads as an interesting but failed attempt to foist the responsibility for both the completion of the story and for its significance on the reader 'make of this gruesome, claustrophobic little drama whatever you will'. I particularly disliked the veiled suggestions of the Captain's homosexual impulses towards the Major and Elgee if he has such impulses (repressed, closeted, whatever) let's at least have them on the table as impulses, acted upon or not, acceptable or impossible (or merely puzzling, or even unrecognized) and get on with it. Also, the character of the Filipino servant is a complete failure, and there's far too much of him in such a brief and otherwise tautly-constructed narrative. He would have profited, as a portrait, by being more lightly sketched.
This short novel, is extremely well written, not a word out of place. Carson McCullers I very economical with her descriptions, evoking a drama of odd circumstance that must have been a taboo topic when the book was first published. McCullers doesn't seem to really like any characters in the book but she treats them fairly as she surgically dissect each one, revealing repressed feelings, narcissism, shallow intellect, emotional fragility, and dangerous sublimation of emotion.
Repressed homosexual Army Major Penderton is the most complex character in the novel, an unloved and unlovable shell of a human, who is barely able to sustain a rigid mask of sanity as homosexual compulsions eventually, drives him to rash acts of violence against himself, his wife's horse, and others. He is the victim of Venus, the goddess who infects humanity with sexual obsession. He is struck by a vision of a handsome young man, Private Williams, and vacillates between fantasy of sexual encounters merged with combat and struggle. The Major's wife, Leonora, is not a complex thinker, but is a bold, beautiful spoiled military brat who has married a career officer with a repressed secret that undermines their entire relationship, making them enemies. As a sexually frustrated wife, she meets her sexual needs with an affair that is so open that everyone on the military base knows it is occurring, with the possible exception of Major Weldon Penderton. Major Penderton may know about her affair with Lt. Colonel Morris Langdon, their next-door neighbor, but he sees it as punishment for his dark secret. She releases some of her pent up passion through horseback riding on her beautiful white stallion, Firebird, an animal that her husband sees as somewhat of a rival.
Some may indicate that this is a dark Southern Gothic tale by a Southern writer. It takes place in a post-World War II army base in Georgia where officers and their wives make use of a stable of horses, maintained by the enlisted men. When riding, there are multiple trails in the southern forest that surrounds the Army base. It is here that Leonora and Colonel Langdon frequently go to have sex among the blackberry bushes. It is here that Private Williams, a handsome animal force from nature, rides a black mare nude. It is here that Major Penderton pushes his wife's horse into panic and frenzy in a wild ride of desperation to escape his life condition.
Private Williams is a fascinating character, his actions bring about the crisis of identity for Major Penderton for he becomes the object of male obsession. He is a force of nature drawn to nature and destined to appeal to the nature hidden within others. He is as one with horses and the forest where he takes off his clothes and either rides or naps in the nude. He recognizes in Leonora an animal instinct and animal passion that is unreleased and seething. As a voyeur, he observes Leonora taunt her husband while she is nude. However, Private Williams has his own secret, for he becomes obsessed with Leonora and enters the Penderton home nightly to watch her sleep and to smell her clothing. There could also be a Jungian interpretation of Private Williams, for he acts as a shadow archetype for Major Penderton. He nightly enters the home of Penderton (which is the symbol of the psyche) as if the repressed homoeroticism is breaking through the unconscious into consciousness.
Alison Langdon, the mentally disturbed wife of Colonel Langdon, watches as her husband courts Leonora, hating both but too weak to escape. As is many classics, she may be mentally ill but she sees all. She sees that her husband is unfaithful and she sees that Private Williams enters the Penderton home on a nightly basis. She is tended to by an effeminate butterfly of a man, Anacleto, who is the houseboy for the Langdons. Alison lost a female child in childbirth and mutilated her nipples afterward in an act of grief and an emotional break from reality.
Much story is told in this short novel. The weaknesses of every character are revealed. We are swept away by McCuller's beautiful writing into an odd story of repression and violence.
When reading Reflections in a Golden Eye the first thing that struck me was the novel's opening line "An army post in peacetime is a dull place." Written and published on the cusp of World War II, that observation sure changed fast by the time most readers took up the book. And of course Carson McCullers meant the line ironically since everything that follows shows there's hardly a dull moment on an army post during peacetime.
McCullers' book is a complicated work, deceptively so being so short in length (a mere 140 pages in my 1969 Bantam paperback edition). I picked it up not knowing what to expect and was delighted to get much more than I ever anticipated. However, one thing I did not get is this theme of homosexuality that many reviewers claim is in the novel. That strikes me as readers imposing 21st century obsessions onto a mid-20th century novel. Never does the book state Captain Penderton was homosexual or bisexual. It could perhaps be implied by his fascination with Private Williams, but I offer a competing interpretation Captain Penderton saw so much of himself in Williams, of what he might have been and become--the road not taken. At the climax when he sees this other self poised to usurp his life, Penderton knows instinctively that he has to destroy it in order to be free from its downward pull.
McCullers establishes early on that Captain Penderton was tightly wound while Private Williams was loose. Williams salutes Penderton half-heartedly, sprawls on benches lazily and drops a candy bar wrapper carelessly. That cast aside wrapper is such a disruption to the ordered life of Captain Penderton he is compelled after a few steps to turn around and pick it up. Penderton's life is so ordered--working until 2am each night, that Williams quickly learns the exact time when it is safe to slip into Penderton's home and Leonora's room.
The scene most open to what I believe is a misinterpretation is that set in the forest when Penderton is thrown from Firebird and is startled to encounter a nude Lt. Williams, who comes to tend to the horse. The nudity in that scene is non-erotic. It was earlier stated Williams was a naturist who found freedom from his many demons by laying naked on a rock far from camp. The free-spirited and serene Williams really stood in contrast to the huffing and puffing Penderton who try as he might could not bring Firebird under his control. I think that is why Penderton fixated on Williams--who is this calm, carefree man who enjoys the life of an enlisted man. Penderton--a career military man--even begins to envy the life of an enlistee and weeps while hearing the laughter coming from the barracks while he sits outside in the confines of his car and within the confines of his miserable life as an army officer.
I came away from Reflections in a Golden Eye thinking here was a novel about how the choices we make in life come to define us and can become our prisons. When confronted with an alternative, another path, we can choose either to change or to fortify ourselves against the possibilities. Penderton's noticing and becoming agitated by the mismatched furniture and random bric-a-brac indicates he was fortifying himself and imposing more order upon his already ordered life. The various threats posed by Williams had to lead to a confrontation. But it certainly isn't a novel about homosexuality (though perhaps one could argue an exception in the case of Anacleto, the Filipino houseboy whose relationship with Alison Langdon was certainly unorthodox but clearly asexual).
In his outstanding introduction Tennessee Williams praises Reflections in a Golden Eye and contends it's better than her celebrated first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, but notes it nonetheless lags behind Ballad of the Sad Café and The Member of the Wedding. This was the first book I read by McCullers and I'm eager now to read the rest of her works.
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