Carsblog

Wednesday, 15th of July, 2009 10:26 pm UTC

But Bluto said the tough get going

I had an hour of quiet yesterday, and got some good reading in. For a change.

One story, Toga Party by John Barth left me a bit disappointed. The characters, a bored and aging couple, were a little less intriguing than guests at one of Fraser Crane's house parties and in the end committed suicide jointly.

Eh. Am I too demanding? What do I want from fiction anyway? The couple opting for joint termination weren't unfaithful to life, just unsatisfying as protagonists. The ending was not instructive or heroic; nor did it seem particular sad or uplifting. It just happened, after a friend mourning the first anniversary of the death of his wife made a good stab (ouch) at committing hari kari at a party. Say, honey, Doc's on to something there -- let's kill ourselves, shall we?

By coincidence, a headline in today's paper:

With Help, Conductor and Wife Ended Lives

The controversy over the ethical and legal issues surrounding assisted suicide for the terminally ill was thrown into stark relief on Tuesday with the announcement that one of Britain’s most distinguished orchestra conductors, Sir Edward Downes, had flown to Switzerland last week with his wife and joined her in drinking a lethal cocktail of barbiturates provided by an assisted-suicide clinic.

Although friends who spoke to the British news media said Sir Edward was not known to have been terminally ill, they said he wanted to die with his ailing wife, who had been his partner for more than half a century.

The couple’s children said in an interview with the London Evening Standard that on Tuesday of last week they accompanied their father, 85, and their mother, Joan, 74, on the flight from London to Zurich, where the Swiss group Dignitas helped arrange the suicides. On Friday, the children said, they watched, weeping, as their parents drank “a small quantity of clear liquid” before lying down on adjacent beds, holding hands.

“Within a couple of minutes they were asleep, and died within 10 minutes,” Caractacus Downes, the couple’s 41-year-old son, said in the interview after his return to Britain.

So Barth's story (from a 2007 story collection) is certainly timely. An aging couple with all the advantages of life, riches and respect, decide to jointly end it all rather than contemplate life without each other. You want to sympathize with them; they cannot bear the thought of growing old alone. How sweet.

Perhaps I am a little less sympathetic than most, since I have been alone most of my life. Although it must be sad to lose a lifemate, there is something that strikes me as weak and immature as well as particularly cruel about this act. For one thing, I can't help but think that in a relationship, there is always one partner who is more easily swayed. Does your partner really want to commit suicide just because you do? Really? And what about everybody else? Is the indulgence of your own self-pity more important than charity? If your partner dies, how about dedicating the rest of your life to making other lonely people feel wanted. Is this really to be a world of babies until the last baby boomer is dead?

Richard, the aging man in Barth's story was given an easy out; his growing unease about the future, despite a relatively wonderful life, was paired with his wife Susan's aggressive vows to take her own life the day he dies. So when he pulls the car into the garage and leaves the engine running, and makes his intentions clear, she consents rather quickly.

It might have made a far more satisfying story if, when faced with the dreadful reality of actually taking her life, Susan had second thoughts despite her repeated vows. You know, a complication. There was no complication in this story, though; just complicity. Along the way, Barth often references the Hurricane Katrina disaster, for some effect, but the contrast between real disaster and the boredom of his couple never really seems to gel. Katrina just seems to be happening for no apparent reason.

Am I asking for my fiction to be too ham-fisted? Would it have been too lacking in subtlety to show a bit of the life of a Katrina-victim couple thanking God for life, while a privileged couple squanders theirs? I needed somebody to root for.

In view of (literally) today's headlines, Barth certainly can't be faulted for faithfulness to life. But just the same I ended up despising the people in his story, and felt that I had wasted a portion of my own life with what turned out to be the waste of two selfish and ungrateful upper-crust dullards.

Don't get me wrong; it's not that the fictional couple commits fictional suicide that upsets me. It's that they are clearly the only ones available to root for. Or to feel sad for. Or to feel empathy for. Maybe today's fiction works a little too hard to not be judgemental? I would have liked to have seen less of Richard's ponderous hand wringing and more of the after effects of his loutish decision. Some irony or unintended consequence. Or even justification. But the end was just an end:

The car engine quietly idled on.

"Shouldn't we at least leave them a note, send them an e-mail, something?..."

"So go do that, if you want to. Me, I'm staying put."

He heard her exhale. "Me too, I guess." Then inhale, deeply.

And, finally:

The overhead garage light timed out.

I am left with more sympathy for the overhead garage light than Susan and Richard. The overhead garage light, unlike Susan and Richard, will come back on. It does not take for granted its usefulness, its place, its function in life. It will not give up the ghost until it burns out. It won't unscrew itself and fall screaming to the floor because it misses the flourescents, or shatter itself because it feels vaguely discontented since somebody sold the Porsche.

Hmm... Britey the Overhead Garage Light; the story of a survivor...