28 Comments

So many layers of narrative unreliability and entanglement here. Love how the key turns but not necessarily the pins of the lock--this time.

Expand full comment

The pins of the lock are key. Entanglement is key. Thank you, dear Alisa!

Expand full comment

I think your story takes an important turn here, as we realize the complex tangles in Isaac's life. Seems like he's getting caught in a web of his own making and struggling to understand events, histories, himself. He has theories about everything, but are any of them grounded? All this along with Robert's journey and his role as narrator of unknown reliability. He has theories too. You weave so much together here -- it is fascinating how you do that. It has the makings of tragedy? redemption? something else? Can't wait to see where it goes.

Expand full comment

Ah, the layers of life, the levels of life ... We'll see where narrative takes us, Robert searches for answers ...

Expand full comment

Mary, this is stunningly good. I know your talents as a writer -- and still. It's your style -- it's Taboresqe -- but to a refined degree of accomplishment that's wowing me, just finishing the chapter. The web of interconnected, relative thoughts, associated sensations, quantumly entangled memories across time and space from one person to another, how they follow with no logically necessary but in absolutely natural procession. I couldn't begin to write like this. If by some miracle, for an instant, I managed to hold in my mind a full vision of all these relations -- the subtle characterology, the small behavioral distinctions, the invisible personal acts of falsity and authenticity you make visible, and what provokes their ordering -- immediately they would begin to float off into the mental ether and out of range to pull them back. I couldn't. You can.

I bow, M'Lady.

Expand full comment

Jay, your stunning to my heart words came exactly at a time when I have been seriously considering leaving Substack--even with the friends I've made, you being one of them. Things have slowed dramatically and others are leaving as well, as the famed hold court and get paid. Any chance you would consider restacking your comment?

Not that that will help much, but as we both know every little nudge helps a bit. Not that I think I'll ever hit big or be chosen for Substack reads or even be read by Sam Kahn, who is one of my collaborators on Inner Life. Hard to believe, but he won't read me.

So this super personal comment is to tell you how much your words here mean to me. I do see others leaving .... And that has become a thought that consumes me. Maybe time to do so? Well, perhaps after November 4 when I post the lyric essay about my son ... xx ~ Mary

Expand full comment

Mary, I checked the box for the comment to appear on Notes. Or is something else your asking? I hear the rest of your comment — let’s talk more personally about it when you’re able.

Expand full comment

Yes, checking that box does it. Text me when you have time to talk.

Expand full comment

Yes, and it’s there, so you can do something with that. I have to get ready early for an evening out but I’ll text when I’ve done.

Expand full comment

This chapter is so good, Mary. The narrator’s complexity is intriguing, his imagination, his relationship with his mother, the way his angry at his wife’s lover’s betrayal of her. The flirtation scene is fantastic on its own. add the perspective in. And damn. Can’t wait to see what comes next.

Expand full comment

Oh, Holly, So glad the novel seems to have caught you. Your words give me hope. xx ~ Mary

Expand full comment

I’m beginning to feel that the narrator lives in so much regret he’s lost touch with the realty of his relationship with Lena. Spending more time thinking upon his mistakes, dreaming up scenarios that may or may not have happened, following his wife’s lover… it’s become such an obsession that I worry for his sanity and am curious how or if he ever lets it all go. And if he does, what is left of his own life?

Expand full comment

Yours are the key questions. Robert is driven by his desire to know, but what is this doing to him?

Expand full comment

It’s funny, I’ve been so absorbed in Lena, Isaac, and Evan that it’s just now dawning on me that the narrator will have his own arc as well. I’m so intrigued!

Expand full comment

Yes, that arc must be key to the humanity of the story because Robert is the teller and, ultimately, the center of the novel. The obstacles he confronts and how he handles them, what happens to him hold the tale and its heart.

Expand full comment

Forgive me for my slowness! I don’t know why this took me so long to feel. It’s as if I was reading him almost as a reporter. I mean, it’s not entirely black and white, I did feel his pathos. I think I was just so caught up in the ‘telling” of the story over his own story. But wow, I see what you’re saying now about how he holds the heart.

Expand full comment

I save these chapters for when I have time to sit down and appreciate them, not just run through them, hit the heart button and move on. How you craft the intricacies of relationships, of affairs we are taught to never explore outside of marriage, of the complicated emotions of the characters, it all astounds me. I imagine we all like to think we are above infidelity, and reading about these people and their intertwined relationships reminds me of how powerful the basic need to love and be loved runs through us all.

Expand full comment

Susan, love, the very fact that you don't simply hit the heart button and move on, but actually read and then give me this comment that is so insightful -- my dear, that's called "making a writer's days"! Heart to heart ~ Mary

Expand full comment

Mary - your writing deserves time to be savored! XO

Expand full comment

"Vermeer used orthogonals, the right angles that can be drawn in the pattern on the floor to a vanishing point, and that point provides the key to the painting.

The eye is directed to the couple, student and teacher, at the far side of the room, behind the cello, behind the table in the foreground. The table in the foreground is large and formidable with the heavily detailed pattern in the Persian rug that covers it. But the vanishing point, the place where the eye lands, is the woman’s sleeve."

The way you set up this point about the vanishing point painting in this chapter and then come back to it is just wonderful, Mary. The timing felt just perfect. Brava!

Expand full comment

Oh, lovely Jeffrey, your comment makes my heart sing.

Expand full comment

Mary, that's exactly what your writing does!

Expand full comment

The Music Lesson - I love the connection with the art - beautifully woven.

Expand full comment

oh, thank you so, Juli. I do think we were meant to connect. Looking forward to your guest post for me on Inner Life--and hope to see more of you here.

Expand full comment

I love the "feels like I'm there" specific intimacies. And, of course, the Vermeer.

Expand full comment

So glad, Russell: Means so much.

Expand full comment

Beautifully written and the art and audio is a plus to the reading experience.

Expand full comment

Ah, Isabelle. Yes, the art and so glad you enjoyed the audio.

Expand full comment