In The Discreet Pleasures of Rejection, Martin Page explores themes of identity confusion in a dense narrative about a bemused misanthrope. Protagonist Virgil thinks he knows himself well enough to self-diagnose a deadly neurological disease, but he is so out of touch that a strange message on his answering machine sends him into a tailspin. The humorously improbable tale begins when Virgil discovers via voicemail that his girlfriend, Clara, has broken up with him. Unfortunately, he has no memory of her. And at various points throughout the book, readers may also forget about Clara as the symbol-packed book goes off on many tangents.
Virgil, it turns out, is a cosmopolitan man whose longest relationship has been with his therapist, Dr. Zetkin. But despite his many years of therapy, Virgil is no closer to learning any truths about himself. For example, he doesn’t realize that he’s a hypochondriac. Before each therapy session, he will go over “his anxieties of the moment, list the subjects to tackle, construct an infallible way of talking about them, and prepare some counterarguments to Dr. Zetkin’s probable challenges.” Virgil is an advertising copywriter, a man who convinces people they need things they don’t need for a living, and he has done a good job of convincing himself of many things: that he’s a gentleman and a good lover; that he’s considerate, smart, cynical, and creative; that he likes his job. Of course, readers will see this idea that Virgil has of himself unravel as he tries to find out who Clara is.
As word of his failed mystery relationship circulates among his friends, they rally around him, and this puzzled cynic begins to enjoy his life. He is “rediscovering the world as realer and more beautiful” and enjoying the fuss his friends make over him as he is offered a promotion and gets invited away for weekends. Virgil benefits from “the effects of breaking up with none of the heart ache.”
Virgil has built a cocoon for himself at the agency, which extends to the rest of his life. Page emphasizes this by constant references to soft, soothing foods like applesauce and yogurt. Rooms tend to be imbued with comforting aromas like tea and sweet incenses. Like so many people who require coddling, Virgil keeps to specific routine, going to the same café and walking home the same route. Obviously, with such a carefully plotted life, it seems unlikely that Virgil could forget something as important as a girlfriend, and so he takes this as a sign of a deadly neurological illness, a natural assumption for a hypochondriac. Once Virgil decides he’s dying, he cancels the lease on his apartment, arranges for his electricity to be turned off, and prepares for death.
Impending death, memory loss, and the end of a relationship are a lot for a book to handle, and what probably seemed like a comedy of errors to the author is just too large for this small book to sustain. Also, the book is plagued by an unfortunate choice in the use of the passive voice. There is very little dialogue in the book, making it sound like a narration of a silent film. The prose consists mostly of being told how Virgil goes about his day and how this changes after the mysterious voice mail message. Although one might see how the passive voice could work for a character who is so completely sheltered, it makes the book seem very slight.
The translation is also too noticeable. A sentence reads, “‘Don’t worry’ has to be the most alarming phrase in the entire French language.” Unfortunately, “don’t worry” is not a French phrase. There is this muddled metaphor: “[S]he’d learned the history and techniques of divinational artificiosa as she would have learned to play the piano. … Clairvoyance had become her instrument; using it she assimilated music theory, scales, the different styles and forms of the discipline; dream divination.” But she’s not “assimilating music theory, scales,” she’s learning occult theory. Sometimes the book changes from third person to second, suddenly readers will stumble on sentences like, “we love like we travel…” And what to make of this baffling sentence: “There is no better viaticum or diversion than consumption…” One can only supposed that viaticum comes from a French idiom; it’s certainly not a word commonly used in English.
Even with all the chewy symbolism and evocative imagery, The Discreet Pleasures of Rejection feels trivial as it moves towards an inevitable and unsatisfying conclusion. The passive voice, muddled plot, and the missteps in translation make this book seem insignificant and confused.
(March, 2010)
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