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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 6h

Curious to hear people's thoughts on the next two. Transit may be my favorite of the three.

Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 12h

Anne's crisis is frightful. She has lost "a native language of self." Words have become labels that reduce/nullify things and people, rather than bringing them to life. #rachelcusktogether

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 12h

I'm interested in how Cusk returns to the title word here in the last chapter. It appears on the first page with respect to the billionaire's narrative, a (confident) outline of his life; now Anne feels herself to be a negative outline created by another person's narrative. Hmm. #rachelcusktogether

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 12h

This line struck me too. There are people in my extended family who are distinctly reserved, and this is precisely what I feel about them: they are out of reach. I feel thwarted in my efforts to connect with them.

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 5d

Also, it seemed strange to me that they wrote these stories but instead of exchanging or reading them aloud in class, they just relate what's in them. That being said, Sylvia's contest with Mimi the dog makes me forget the contrivance. I'm absorbed in it, wondering who will prevail! (Neither?)

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 6d

Me too.

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 6d

I agree! Hinterland is a great word.

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 7d

From a couple days ago, but hmm...still thinking about it. Elena, perhaps because of her beauty, is wary of men, even lovers. She goes on the offensive. Melete has a point. But what's hiding in the hinterland is always cause for concern.

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 7d

"If a man had a nasty side...She didn't want it roaming unseen in the hinterland of the relationship: she wanted to provoke it... Melete laughed. 'According to that logic...there can be no relationship at all. There can only be people stalking one another.'" #rachelcusktogether

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 12d

Proust's narrator complains frequently of losing interest in women (and places) when their mystery has gone. The boatman is afflicted by the same problem. I like that the narrator calls him on it! (the "inexorable disenchantment" of knowledge--wonderful phrase; would have taken Proust a paragraph!)

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 14d

I feel like the conventional wisdom is to take the plunge, whatever it is, such that I feel ashamed when I don't, so I, too, am struck by this idea of such advice emanating from people who have no intention of doing any such thing themselves.

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 15d

Christos' story is my favorite...his phobia of dancing cured by 50s garb and the Lindy Hop. "I found myself not falling but flying, flying up and up, around and around, so fast and so high that I seemed to fly clear even of my body itself." #RachelCuskTogether

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 15d

Earthly Possessions and Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant have stayed with me as well. And she wrote many I've never read.

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 15d

Fantastic line. Not sure how it would work with all fears, but interesting to contemplate.

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 15d

I read those Anny Tyler books so long ago (though not Breathing Lessons); they made an impression. I remember the siblings in The Accidental Tourist had their own card game none of the spouses could figure out. I loved that.

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 17d

I couldn't pull onto the road with my parking lot downtown because a flock of Canadian geese was milling about there. Not crossing, even. Just hanging out in the road. I had to honk, at which they mustered some kind of collective agenda and waddled out of the way, not with any urgency.

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 18d

The faithless husband belting Carmen in the shower. 🤣 Gotta love it (unless you're the wife). #rachelcusktogether

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 20d

I was surprised when the narrator said she liked Angeliki at the end of ch. 5. She seemed to be presented as insufferable, dominating the conversation and the ordering of the food (then eating so little of it). But I realized it was partly Paniotis' attitude I was reacting to. #rachelcusktogether

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 22d

After reading Outline the second time, I described this episode to a friend in order to illustrate what I found compelling about the book. At the end of describing it, I found there was nothing to say. It is only itself.

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 22d

"That time spent swimming in the waterfall belongs nowhere: it is part of no sequence of events, it is only itself..." A spontaneous swim, intense and refreshing, after Paniotis and his children's harrowing experience. This has stayed with me. #rachelcusktogether

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 23d

Heavy statement, given that her own marriage is ending. I feel we are getting hints of the disorientation this is causing her.

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 23d

"I replied that I wasn't sure it was possible, in marriage, to know what you actually were, or indeed to separate what you were from what you had become through the other person. I thought the whole idea of a 'real' self might be illusory..."
#rachelcusktogether

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 23d

Why should she be punished for her immersion/unawareness that day? I think she feels like she's being punished--i.e. she is suffering--and it's giving rise to this idea (among others). Her sons' constant conflict could very well be a symptom, too, of the protracted breakup of this family.

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 23d

exhausted and dislocated the narrator herself is, apparently by what she is going through in her own life, namely the breakup of her marriage, which seems to be dying (to have died) a slow and excruciating death. There are other hints of it--and I think this is one of those.

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 23d

I woke up still thinking of this passage. Paniotis is "aghast" at her conception (says only a Catholic could come up with it), even though she seems to be lamenting that she didn't realize what he was feeling, and I think I agree with him. One thing that occurs to me this time through is how...

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