Ilse’s Reviews > Transit > Status Update

It is striking coming back to this trilogy through your updates. Now I read and relate the words to the narrator. We see her travelling a lot - is she trying to escape. Is the life that she is trying to buy in London really one that she wants?

Jan-Maat wrote: "It is striking coming back to this trilogy through your updates. Now I read and relate the words to the narrator. We see her travelling a lot - is she trying to escape. Is the life that she is trying to by in London really one that she wants?"
Good question, I have the impression the narrator tries to want that life in London, to find an anchor, but that is not wholeheartedly, that she indeed has her doubts on her choices, but makes them because it is impossible not to make choices (even more so because she is a parent - the whole building hell to settle down in London seems mostly a choice she made to house the children?) - what her interlocutors tell her on their choices rarely turns out something they or she would want from life, isn't it?

Ilse wrote: "Jan-Maat wrote: "It is striking coming back to this trilogy through your updates. Now I read and relate the words to the narrator. We see her travelling a lot - is she trying to escape. Is the life..."

Yes I agree, with the house in London it is not really a question of what she wants, excepts in so far as she wants custody sharing of the children to work.

The interlocutors are complex, they could be like the people that Dante meets in the Divine comedy, but there seem to be parallels between stories, patterns (listening to a more wealthy man on an aeroplane, and groups (writers and people in the book business). Butvfew if any of them seem to represent desirable ways of living happy and fulfilled lives- perhaps a couple of the characters in Kudos?

That house is so ambivalent, it is not a home, not a place one can relax - apart from the upsetting construction works, there are the trolls...

Those patterns are fascinating, and therefore I'll try to get back to 'Kudos' as soon as possible - few desirable ways of living in the first two books indeed!

On the function of the interlocutors, this passage struck me as key to the trilogy and Faye's way of interacting with the people she meets:

"It was hard to listen while you were talking. I had found out more by listening than I had ever thought possible."

Ilse wrote: "That house is so ambivalent, it is not a home, not a place one can relax - apart from the upsetting construction works, there are the trolls...

Those patterns are fascinating, and therefore I'll t..."

That quote reminds me of the teaching sessions in both transit and outline in which she is mostly listening to her students talking

Yesterday the daughter reminded me how some professors take it easy to fill their lessons, by asking the students to present their papers - or even teach part of the material themselves!

Cusk's teaching sessions struck me rather as therapeutic sessions - and psycho-analytical - rather than lessons, but maybe in their artistic parcours such is more fitting and helpful than a top-down lesson ex cathedra, wording their thoughts helping the students to get insight in themselves and their writing? Not that it seemed planned in any respect by Faye..

Ilse wrote: "Yesterday the daughter reminded me how some professors take it easy to fill their lessons, by asking the students to present their papers - or even teach part of the material themselves!

Cusk's t..."
My impression too was that her teaching seemed very close to therapy - particularly in Transit. Maybe that is just how it is at that level, but maybe not.
This is a trilogy in which the central character is a writer, but the teaching struck me as another example of her doing anything but writing or engaging with writing.

From the first encounter with the neighbour on the plane in 'Outline' on, many of the scenes reminded me of therapeutic sessions, monologues of unburdening provoked by the 'right' question. I haven't imagined a writing class before, only read one story (of Julian Barnes) thematising it, maybe Cusk's gives an idea how they are indeed.

You make me wonder if other authors chosing writers as their protagonist or mouthpiece actually focus on the activity of writing itself - I recall reading A Horse at Night: On Writing in which the protagonist's writing is constantly mentioned, but in a way I found hard to believe - while I take Faye being a writer for granted, even if she doesn't write :D.

Ilse wrote: "From the first encounter with the neighbour on the plane in 'Outline' on, many of the scenes reminded me of therapeutic sessions, monologues of unburdening provoked by the 'right' question. I haven..."

I took it for granted too, even though it is unclear what she has written or if she is still writting. You are right about the therapeutic/ confessional nature of the conversations too, and perhaps in the hairdressers and the ghastly dinner party in Transit she is observing is presenting to us the relationship dynamics of those family situations, and all the time the person that nobody seems to be lustening to is Faye - she has to bump along through life and doesn't get to unburden herself