The Sea, The Sea (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) | Iris Murdoch

The Sea, The Sea (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) | Iris Murdoch | Philosophic, metaphoric, and highly readable.

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The Sea, The Sea (...

	The Sea, The Sea (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) Iris Murdoch Penguin Classics, 2001 - 528 pages average customer review:based on 42 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Charles Arrowby, leading light of England's theatrical set, retires from glittering London to an isolated home by the sea. He plans to write a memoir about his great love affair with Clement Makin, his mentor, both professionally and personally, and amuse himself with Lizzie, an actress he has strung along for many years. None of his plans work out, and his memoir evolves into a riveting chronicle of the strange events and unexpected visitors-some real, some spectral-that disrupt his world and shake his oversized ego to its very core.

A must-read Murdoch

The Sea, The Sea is my favorite Iris Murdoch novel. I read it first 20+ years ago, laughed out loud, grimaced and cringed, and re-read it this spring with just as fresh a response as the first time.

Murdoch tells her story from the point of view of a retired London theater personality, Charles Arrowby, who moves from London to a place of solitude by the coastline. He soon discovers he is not at peace, but haunted and hunted by various persons, as well as apparations, most of which he tries to explain away in his "got the world by the tail" style.

The author captures the precise lines and colors of his narcissism with inimitable skill. He is not only stuck on himself, he is in complete denial of his own mortality. He can't seem to see how life has narrowed its choices as he has aged; he still has a 20-year-old's illusion of a vast future in which he can do and be whatever he chooses. So when he runs into his childhood sweetheart in the nearby village, his subsequent unrequited pursuit of her (despite her frumpy, aged looks and her husband)
makes for a hoot of a tale. The image of this egotistical retiree stalking his 60-ish former girlfriend as she waddles through the town is tremendously entertaining, not to mention the depth of psychological analysis Murdoch aspires to, which will leave even the most cynical reader squirming.

The story is told from a setting that lends itself to philosophical depth. The sea itself is an inconquerable, untamable force that Charles Arrowby nevertheless sets himself to owning and ordering, unsuccessfully of course. His retirement abode itself is forboding and forbidding. It is cold, uncomfortable and not hospitably equipped for what you and I might call a comfortable nest!

As always, Murdoch plays with the minds of her readers. The steady stream of Arrowby's visitors from London seem suspiciously accessorial. They serve Arrowby to show the reader his desirability, his great fame, his power -- or do they? Are we perhaps duped by Arrowby himself? Her characterization is brilliant, the plot is absolutely delightful, and there is plenty of food here for the mind hungry for depth and meaning in a novel.

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Philosophic, metaphoric, and highly readable.

He who Binds Himself to a Joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity's sunrise.

The above is from William Blake, a mystical poet and artist, with a very untraditional Christian outlook. Iris Murdoch referred to herself as a Buddhist Christian, or Christian Buddhist. Her Booker Prize winning novel, The Sea, the Sea, is about the struggle to deal with the delusions of the ego. It is about desire, and how those obsessions and cravings chain us to delusion. It is only when we make an effort to rid ourselves of the ego and it's cravings through understanding and compassion, that we can escape from those bonds, and by letting go, set ourselves on the pathway to Enlightenment and Truth. This is the Buddhist principle.

The ego in question belongs to Charles Arrowby, a theatrical director who retires to a remote outpost near the sea, to escape his past, write his memoirs and attempt to live the "true" life. The sea in Murdoch's novel is really a metaphor for the mind, whose hidden depths can unleash monsters, such as the one Arrowby encounters early on. He thinks that by physically removing himself from society, he can escape from all the b.s. that he has had to deal with in his professional life. He learns the hard way, that the past keeps encroaching on the present, in the form of old lovers and colleagues, and particularly in the form of a lost love from his youth (the love of his life) whom he finds living near his retreat as an old, worn out woman, named Mary Hartley, now married to a man named Fitch.

How Arrowby gets lost in the quagmire of his past, how he becomes deluded by that past, how the cravings of his ego distort the present reality, and threaten to ruin his life and the lives of others, and how finally, he is rescued by his cousin, who happens to be a practicing Buddhist, is the gist of the novel.

I think Dame Murdoch, has done an excellent job expounding her philosophical and moral ideas, in an engrossing and very readable book. I highly recommend it.

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Perplexing

Murdoch's characters in The Sea, the Sea are not your everyday folks, but they're not the caricatures of Flanner O'Connor either. Consequently, it's not easy to identify with them; they are neither ordinary enough to identify with their flaws and foibles, nor grotesque enough to identify with their pathologies. They are rather odd people with some bizarre behaviors.

I expect to learn something about myself from a great work of literature; I will be working at this one for a while . . .

I don't see!

I have to say that this book is not an easy read and not for the beach. The late Dame Iris Murdoch was not a bisexual. She married to John Bayley for half-century and according to his book. Iris never really cared for the act of sexual intercourse. The book is about Charles Arrowby and I write "Why should be like him in the first place?" The book is about is self-imposed retirement and people's obsessions about their sexuality. I think Iris would be bewildered by the attention that sexuality has gotten in our lives. It's become so central in defining our identities. Anyway, Charles Arrowby is a theater personality and his new lifestyle is something that he must become accustomed. He rediscovers the love of his life, Hartley, and kidnaps her away from her husband. Hartley is never really clear. She adopted a son, Titus, and her husband is nothing like Charles Arrowby, he's quite average and normal and common. Maybe that's why Charles can never get over Hartley in the first place, Iris brings these unusual set of characters together and there is a tragedy but I think the real tragedy is the lack of emotion, love, selflessness, and kindness to one another in general. I hate what happens to Titus and I can't imagine Hartley's own reaction or her husband's belief that Titus wasn't adopted. I won't say more than that. I love the cover of the novel and I always keep turning to it sometimes. It's a good book, well-written, and yes, I can see why it won th Booker Prize but it's not a book that I would return too in the first place. I love and respect Iris Murdoch wherever she is now. I think Iris was above a lot of human nonsense. She should be celebrated for being a cerebral human being. Somebody who cared about humanity and people's inhumanity and actions toward one another. Iris and John had a marriage that some of us desire where one spouse is not afraid of losing the other to another person. Marriage itself has become a broken institution. You wonder what keeps people who might be wrong for each other. Then the answer might be Hartley's marriage--one of convenience and ordinary. People keep trying to fix me up and I have to say that I'm not miserable being single. I wondered what happened to Hartley and her husband. I don't think Charles would ever get over her even though she has convinced herself that she was over Charles and married the next man to come along. Has marriage become a business arrangement rather than a love arrangement? Still we see unhappy people, married or single or having affairs. We'll never know what makes somebody happy. Maybe psychic Sylvia Browne was right in saying that you have to be complete first before seeking a partner and that's absolutely true.

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Egotistical to a Fault

This novel is a portrait of egotism in the form of the diary of an individual so self-centered that, as in an earlier novel of Murdoch's, The Black Prince, even the accuracy of his narrative is suspect. This can be fascinating or not. In any case, Murdoch's realization of the central character, mercilessly sustained over the course of 500 pages, is convincing and must be definitive.

For those not interested in exploration of egotism per se, unfortunately, the novel's dramatic development is far from convincing. Opinions seem to be divided as to whether this is explained and compensated for by Murdoch's using the narrative events as an artifice to explore philosophical views. I tend to think not.

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