“A knowledge that another has felt as we have felt, and seen things not much otherwise than we have seen them, will continue to the end to be one of life’s choicest blessings.”
Robert Louis Stevenson‘s declaration about the importance of Art communicates the emotional resonance (and relevance) of reading. We all want to connect with others. We want to feel less isolated, less trapped in our secret conviction that we are really in this life alone. ‘Only connect’ suggested the writer, EMForster. Stevenson, here processes the impact of his reactions to certain forms of Art and beautifully articulates why such reactions are ‘blessings’. Stevenson belives that Art can bring us closer to our own humanity and that of our fellow travellers on earth.
I love being an English Tutor because teaching gives me the opportunity to read actively with lively, ‘fresh’ minds who are willing to respond to stories that affect their imagination. In my English Tuition I am hugely impressed by the honesty and emotional clarity of all my students’ insights. Without sounding too Californian, I frequently feel humbled by the emotional acuity of many students’ perceptions.
The other week a student told me that ‘there are two monsters aren’t there in A Monster Calls? There’s the monster who is the tree and then there’s monster inside Connor? ‘ I absoluely agreed. My student just knew. He ‘got’ the story. And I remembered that the short story writer, Grace Paley once claimed that in a (g00d) story there are always two stories. And the protagonist may never know, or may never admit what the ‘other’ story might be. But the reader must sense the existence of the other story and it must speak to him/her in some way. And my student heard the second story and like Conor recognised that he has to listen to both monsters in order to survive and even thrive. We all have a monster( or two! ) within!
In A Monster Calls, we can hear the protagonist’s emotional catastrophe through the rhythm of the writing. Reading feels like eavesdropping. Like Conor, we are ‘awake’ to the nightmare, to his fears of not being able to hold on anymore and of the emotional effects of letting go because ultimately, he has no choice. Life is temporary. Reality can often be a nightmare of terrible truth.
The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do.
Conor was awake when it came.
He’d had a nightmare. Well, not a nightmare. The nightmare. The one he’d been having a lot lately. The one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming. The one with the hands slipping from his grasp, no matter how hard he tried to hold on. The one that always ended with–
“Go away,” Conor whispered into the darkness of his bedroom, trying to push the nightmare back, not let it follow him into the world of waking.
“Go away,” Conor whispered into the darkness of his bedroom, trying to push the nightmare back, not let it follow him into the world of waking. “Go away now.”
He glanced over at the clock his mum had put on his bedside table. 12.07. Seven minutes past midnight. Which was late for a school night, late for a Sunday, certainly.
He’d told no one about the nightmare. Not his mum, obviously, but no one else either, not his dad in their fortnightly (or so) phone call, definitely not his grandma, and no one at school. Absolutely not.
What happened in the nightmare was something no one else ever needed to know.
Love the E M Foster quote and your points about how Art communicates. Also, further to the Stephenson, what we have in common becomes as a way to (kind of) experience what we haven’t known. I mean, I can’t actually experience what a female in the early 18 century experienced, but Elizabeth Bennet’s narrative is brilliantly emotionally involving. Also love notion of two stories, the immediate and the subterranean. Thanks for provoking blogging!