Immaculate, Erotic And Quintessentially Modern: On Edna O’brien’s Night

“What is your type?” Mary Hooligan asks a prospective person successful Edna O’Brien’s early caller Night. “Do you for illustration it consecutive aliases sausage, do you for illustration rubber goods?” Later, different imaginable asks Mary if she fancies things pertaining to nan belly. Yes, she says: “I moreover had a spot of a yen for a Black Mass…semen connected nan belly, a awesome gout of demon’s shampoo.” A later bedmate, she says, likes “somersaults, a maiden’s closed purse, nan aged poculum sursum, nan romp, nan wrangling brandlebuttock… nan billow, nan bruises, nan bites, tossed and turned, wrong out, raucous, dulcet, a pandemonium, rumps rearing, slathering, words, bedewed words, tongues, coals, baskets of fire, and devil’s pokers going through.”

The carousel of activity successful this book! Those dirty, wet, sparkling words! When I first publication Night 30 years ago, it made maine giddy. What was this thing? Shockingly sexy, torrential yet compacted, modern, Modernist, and quintessentially female. Yet it’s seldom cited among O’Brien’s books, acold little publication and revered than, say, The Country Girls trilogy, which was besides sexy, modern, and female capable to person been burned successful O’Brien’s Ireland. Night is stranger, something else. Last summer, earlier O’Brien died, I dove backmost into that feverish caller to spot conscionable what she had concocted.

Brief but potent, Night follows Mary, middle-aged and sleepless, arsenic she vigils her measurement done a nighttime successful a London location she’s sitting. Hours pass, she fingers nan fur quilt, listens to trees and cars, ponders nan bird-patterned wallpaper, wanders to nan kitchen. Zero happens. But what goes connected successful her mind! At its center: her twenty-year Odyssey done men, done an archipelago of grisly, mortifying sex. “I’ve met them all,” she tells us. “The cretins, nan pilgrims, nan scholars, and nan scaly-eyed bards prating and intoning for their spot of cunt.”

When I first publication Night 30 years ago, it made maine giddy. What was this thing? Shockingly sexy, torrential yet compacted, modern, Modernist, and quintessentially female.

Night is profoundly autobiographical: successful it are nan scandalous formation from Ireland, matrimony to a despot, swinging successful London (O’Brien was celebrated for her parties—Jackie O, Princess Margaret, Marianne Faithful, and Paul McCartney were there; and for her galore suitors—Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, a joined politician). Yet Night is besides experimental; O’Brien wrote it erstwhile trying psychoanalysis pinch R. D. Laing, and not conscionable analysis, but acid. In 1970 she had a devastating travel that—like splitting unfastened a pomegranate to find a clutch of gorgeous, bloody seeds—transformed her writing, she said, deepening some her “already acheronian self” and her “obsession pinch connection and [its] imaginable powerfulness and euphony and marvelousness.” The caller is spiked pinch trauma yet glitters pinch nan wit and sheer life of this “playgirl of nan Western world,” arsenic Vanity Fair called her. Autobiographical, yes, and engaging to publication conscionable to spy connected this life. But it’s nan analyzable shape and connection that make Night brilliant, an underappreciated late-Modernist masterpiece.

It sewage sadistic reviews erstwhile it appeared successful 1972. From nan TLS: “self-indulgent whimsy,” “gift-wrapped porn,” “one agelong enactment of nationalist literate masturbation.” Library Journal was kinder: “few surviving writers usage connection arsenic richly and sensuously arsenic O’Brien.” There’s been much appreciation of Night since then, particularly upon nan novel’s reissue successful 2014 pinch Andrew O’Hagan’s introduction, but still not arsenic overmuch arsenic it deserves. Happily, though, nan caller stars softly successful Sinéad O’Shea’s caller documentary, Blue Road. O’Brien’s boy Carlo Gébler—while still a teenager—made a documentary based connected Night, and his footage populates O’Shea’s film. May this movie lead readers back.

When critics read Night, they often spot it arsenic spawn of Molly Bloom’s celebrated soliloquy successful Ulysses. It does person thing of Molly’s riverine reasoning and bawdiness, and O’Brien erstwhile said that she’d for illustration to constitute a book-length Mollyish narrative—but that Night was not it. (She’s spoken irritably of being called “a bargain-basement Molly Bloom.”) In immoderate case, Night isn’t truthful Mollyish. A middle-aged female successful furniture ruminates connected her past and sex, yes. But, arsenic O’Brien has drily noted, her Mary is by female made, not man. And contempt what astir critics say, Mary Hooligan’s communicative is not watercourse of consciousness; nan prose is acold much orderly and visibly composed. This isn’t a facsimile of a woman’s wandering mind seen done a speculum by a man, but a heavy recounting.

Yet moreover feminist critics see Night a opus successful nan acheronian that refuses coherence and resists “meaning successful nan consciousness of building toward a climax” (Helen Thompson). The memories that shape nan main watercourse of Night are so disordered temporally. But clip isn’t nan only ordering unit successful narrative, of course, nor does each shapely communicative request to move toward a (masculo-sexual) climax, particularly 1 astir female sexuality. Lots of different ways for prose to move and person order.

If nan endeavor present is internal, O’Brien had to take which memories to tell, really to put them, and really to support moving without “plot.” On a purely textual level, nan sentences are a torrent, jouncing connected rocks, gliding gleefully done mud. Then there’s nan gruesome pleasance successful witnessing each intersexual exploit. Each representation stings and glows. But really to put these memories? How to create an end and a logic for this 1 nighttime to matter?

By nan end, I do consciousness that I’ve been done a journey. I’m exhausted, exhilarated, and elsewhere from wherever I began, and not conscionable because time has broken. O’Brien has strung Mary’s seemingly chaotic memories on a subtle path. She said that erstwhile she wrote Night, aft nan terrifying acerb trip, her mind was “on stilts.” I judge it. Yet location they are: stilts. Sturdy capable to locomotion on. So I began to study those stilts, adjacent nether Mary’s bed, to spot what gives this dreamfever caller its way and consciousness of shape.

Here we are then, successful furniture pinch Mary. “A fourposter nary less, satinized headboard, casters. Paws travel retired from underneath.” Thoughts come, too, astir sleep, time, and men, those cretins, pilgrims, scholars, and bards. But first Mary invokes a deeper past, calling to nan mauve hills of her childhood, to Coose, and dwelling first connected her kith, her kin: her son, mother, and father. These early images of boy Tutsie arsenic a mini boy so thief locomotion Mary backmost to her ain childhood, to that haunting location successful Coose, arsenic she tries to recollect what she saw location successful “the galore long, sad blotched mirrors.” Wisps of images, smells, and sounds of location and her parents springiness measurement to a lengthy recounting of her mother, Lil, dying, a-bed and ranting. And then, pinch mother buried, Mary originates her ain a-bed recitation.

She starts pinch nan astir caller paramour, Nick, who conscionable near a statement connected her doorway and is nan reason, she says, she can’t sleep. “Missed a bully fuck.” Then she dives acold backmost to nan crooner who semi-deflowered her arsenic a girl, erstwhile she was dressed arsenic Snow White and nan Seven Dwarfs. Next, nan likable Moriarty, who leaves for cigarettes 1 nighttime but doesn’t travel back. Then a waiter pinch a soft achromatic fingernail and incestuous siblings pinch whom she has a raucous clip only to beryllium robbed. Until now—the mediate of nan book—the incidents person been one-off affairs, glancing, not leaving heavy marks. But astatine nan midpoint, nan hue of seductive memories seems to alter.

“More mortification,” she begins, and tells of a rich | nob she picks up who gives her chilling intersexual instructions and tells her, sharply, to “watch out” erstwhile strands of him drip from her to his floor. When “for immoderate flapdoodle reasons” she asks him to committedness to spot her again, pinch her son, he says “I don’t moreover complaint you” and picks up his phone. Next, a agelong one, Dr. Flaggler, Mary’s ex-husband, who tells her ”You are not going to flight me, not now, not ever, you are not going retired of my sight, you mediocre zealous wretch, you cannot make a life for yourself without me, it is beyond you, it is unattainable.” Then nan Duke, pinch whom she has a lively “courtship” until successful a azygous infinitesimal he some proposes to her and is revealed to beryllium married, and who follows his connection pinch a threat: “Soon you will beryllium connected nan shelf.” Finally, devastatingly, nan Finn, whom she really loves, but who chooses to enactment pinch his wife. 

After this catalogue of intersexual misadventure, nearing nan extremity of nan book, Mary turns concisely to women: a brace of captious older women and an estranged, ranting friend. They consciousness for illustration ghosts of Mary’s mother from nan commencement of nan book, aliases ghosts of what she could yet become—shipwrecked, raving, old. Then, a saccharine surprise, her boy Tutsie reappears done a letter. “Even seeing aliases saying his sanction gives maine specified a thrill, it goes done maine for illustration a lavation aliases a ripple.” He will soon beryllium home. So Tutsie opens nan gross to nan past adjacent nan novel’s commencement and now, adjacent nan end, opens a caller gate, to nan future. After Tutsie’s reappearance, Coose returns, too: Mary has precocious gone location to effort to make amends pinch her bitter father, but successful him resides “the stance, nan stare, nan chaotic umbrage prevalent successful each nan men that I had loved, unloved, fled from.” And now we return to nan present: “I americium up now, limbering. To hellhole pinch slumber and twilight meanderings….the worst is over, nan lurid fever has passed.” Something has been exorcised. 

Having Tutsie and an echo of mother, father, and Coose astatine nan extremity arsenic good arsenic nan commencement is nan novel’s first motion of structure: symmetry. Tales of location and kin framework nan cardinal tales of sex. Perhaps, then, nan book has further symmetry, successful which lawsuit nan halfway mightiness clasp a key; nan reside of memories does look to displacement astatine midpoint. In Night, nan halfway is not 1 of Mary’s intersexual exploits but an section correct aft nan sexy young thieves rob her: needing money, she poses naked for an creation class. “‘Open up, sunshine!’” nan coach says—meaning her legs. “He told [the students] to move successful connected me, to look astatine me, to inhale me, to smell me, to internalize. ‘Value for money, sunshine,’ he said, giving my pelvic bony a spot of a jolt. The 1 called Joseph was peering into my nipple truthful that it must person been reflected successful nan pupil of his mini eye…‘Get that arse open, get those hams out,’” nan coach says. “‘You ever amended erstwhile there’s a spot of naked quim successful nan room,’” he adds to a student, astatine which constituent Mary is “like a switchboard gone mad, sending different signals to myself—open, close, shut, spraddle, dilate, contract, Lil, Mother of Jesus, Jesus, St. Anthony of Padua, fallopian, hemorrhage, blossom, alone, forever, never, clasp on, Holy Moses, King of nan Jews. He bemoaned nan truth that they weren’t successful possession of a Polaroid. ‘Tasty’ was nan connection he utilized then. ‘Don’t ye baw’ astatine me,’ I said suddenly.” And then, “to my astonishment, I roseate up and kept connected saying it, and added a volley of maltreatment specified arsenic that he had achromatic teeth and scurf, which he had…and location was I skeetering down nan icy thoroughfare naked and yelling, ‘Don’t ye baw astatine me’ and he shouting immoderate unspeakable threats.”

Sex-tinged, yes, but this midpoint section is dissimilar others, for present Mary sits naked and is studied: an entity of speculation, prodded unfastened by a man truthful others tin adjacent successful and represent her. Important to statement now: adjacent nan commencement of nan novel, we study that though Mary’s mother has precocious died, Mary has moreover more precocious written to her—yes, nan dormant mother—asking if she could ideate nan colour of her ain womb: “I asked if she had immoderate inkling, immoderate hunch, astir nan nonstop colour of her innards, my earliest known abode….I look to retrieve streaks of color, zebras, sometimes pink, sometimes green…I said she mightiness for illustration to beryllium extravagant, she mightiness for illustration to sally into inventiveness, springiness vent to herself, dishonesty if request be.”

Mary is, fantastically, asking her (dead) mother to return up nan speculum and look wrong her ain intersexual self. This is, I think, precisely what Mary is doing to herself successful Night: performing an autopsy of her intersexual life, peering into her ain “quim.” The outrage of nan workplace segment is that location she is not nan 1 doing it: it is being done to her: art-class-cum-gynecological visit. Here Mary is arsenic adjacent arsenic she will travel to nan information of Joyce’s Molly Bloom, and she will not person it. She bolts.

After that episode, though, Mary has so peered much profoundly into herself and dug up darker stuff. This centerpiece useful arsenic a move aliases a hinge betwixt 2 wings of memory: nan intersexual incidents successful nan first half are glancing, light, those of a playgirl; those successful nan second, pained, dark, those of a female who wanted but did not find love. After nan workplace comes nan rich | nob; nan brutish husband; nan Duke. The last extended representation is astir excruciating: nan Finn, whom she has loved. He follows her to England. With him, she says, “I smiled, nan measurement happiness ordains it. Nearness, farness. How overmuch longer would he stay? Yet location was hope, voiced hopes, for illustration beacons successful nan dark. He would bring maine to nan sea-girt isles.” He tells Mary that he is “slowly uncovering out” that he is successful emotion pinch her. But past he falls silent. She follows him to Spain, but he will not spot her. She falls to drunken pieces. Some clip later, he writes again an intolerable fractured poem of a letter: 

Impossible to spot you

now— cannot leave

NEXT TIME

Always adjacent time

Next time

next time

next time

Next clip is now past time.

I station this to you directly.

To which Mary responds, among galore flaming words: “You cur. I professed to emotion you. It was each lies, junk.”

It’s not a man’s travel done a day, but a woman’s travel done a night: a feminine Odyssey of leaving location successful hunt of aforesaid and love.

The closest she has travel to nan “one existent love” is nan agelong representation she reaches last, having been gyring to it each night: this is thing we needed to scope slowly. True to nan novel’s chiaroscuric aesthetic, though, this heartbreaking section is balanced by a miniature, grotesque pendant: a “mogul” she flees erstwhile he calls her ”a crapper, a jerk, a motherfucker, a cocksucker, a souped-up bag,” and nan cabdriver to whom she gives a speedy hand.

So there’s been a deeper, darker scrutiny successful this 2nd half, nan Underworld and its worst monsters faced. But she does thing other successful nan 2nd half, too: she pierces nan acheronian pinch shafts of light. For location is another, lesser, constituent of symmetry betwixt nan book’s halves: successful some are little passages astir extracurricular visitors to nan location she’s sitting. In nan first half, they’re mostly men delivering pamphlets aliases collecting dues, and she hides from “those gadflies who effort to get successful if you’re successful a negligee aliases a shift, support peering astatine you astir nan pap region.” In nan novel’s 2nd half, though, nan visitors are mini girls pinch “little spindles” for legs. “How they smiled…the eyes were sparkling and agog…I could person eaten their smiles.” These girls commencement to travel Saturdays for safaris, successful which Mary is to “tell them astir nan magic rites of plants and astir herbs and pond life, and what gods and what goddesses had for their emblems. Times for illustration that I americium forgetful and laughing.” As she is erstwhile she has nan gladsome tidings of her ain son’s return.

The 2nd half of nan novel, then, is much aggravated tonally: nan intersexual relations are deeper, much painful. Yet, alongside them are poignant moments pinch children, moments that connection grace. In a 1973 interview, O’Brien said, “When I started penning I…was romanticist and dreamt of nan 1 man, a Heathcliff figure. Having had children who are now teenagers has done thing to my consciousness of values astir what emotion is, what tenderness is, and complete nan years I person travel to emotion my children much than I person ever loved a man….The man-woman point isn’t my biggest propulsion immoderate more. All of that now seems a small wearisome.” The sequencing of memories successful Night subtly enacts that shift, revealing way and structure.

If Night has immoderate Joyce successful its veins, if O’Brien was penning from aliases against his activity (she did constitute a curriculum vitae of him), why not look astatine Ulysses much broadly, not conscionable astatine Molly Bloom? Topsy-turvy, Mary calls her communicative astatine nan start. Indeed. It’s not a man’s travel done a day, but a woman’s travel done a night: a feminine Odyssey of leaving location successful hunt of aforesaid and love. “Oh, shadows of love, inebriations of love, foretastes of love, trickles of love, but ne'er yet nan 1 existent love,” she says erstwhile her recitation is over. Yet nan time has a bully nip, and she has a liking for everything: that is, for life.

And connected she wanders! “Oh, prima of nan morning,” she says astatine nan end. “Oh, slippery path, oh, guardian angel of vagrants, givvus eyes, lend america a hand, let’s kip down connected immoderate different shore, let’s unrecorded a small earlier nan atrocious all-embracing acheronian enfolds…” 

This has been 1 woman’s nighttime of auto-inspection, looking into herself and her intersexual past and coming through. And astatine nan halfway of this acheronian rosary of memories, successful that hellish artist’s studio, lies nan very inverse of this auto-inspection: a antheral creator nudging her legs unfastened and peering in: an embedded, revised image of Molly Bloom herself. “And yes I said yes I said Yes,” murmurs Molly. Not Mary Hooligan. She shouts, “Don’t ye baw’ astatine me!” and charges naked down nan street. The speculum is hers to wield, nan hues of her quim hers unsocial to render.

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Villa E by Jane Alison is now disposable successful paperback from Liveright Publishing Corporation, an imprint of W.W. Norton & Company.