The protagonist in David Lodge's
Deaf Sentence, Desmond Bates, is a retired linguistics professor who is well on his way to going deaf, a handicap that leads to, among other things, a not-quite-sexual involvement with Alex Loom, a graduate student who is working on her doctorate at the university where he taught. Others prominent in the story are Fred (Winifred), Desmond's wife, and his ailing father. The pace is leisurely, but eventually I became involved in both the humor and the action. My biggest regret was that there wasn't more of Alex, a conniving character, the type I love to hate.
Specifics:
1) Desmond Bates and I both dislike cell phones. When getting on a train, he chooses the "Quiet Coach" where they are not allowed. They are, of course, used anyway, and frequently he interrupts the people using them. They in turn react, and one response the author pretty much sums up my dislike of the chronic cell phone user. "Some, usually women, simper and smile and nod, and extend a placatory hand, as if admitting they are at fault but craving indulgence, while blithely continuing their telephonic conversation with others …" (page 40) GRRRRRRRR! Cell phone up their ear!
2) A-ha! "I envy religious people their belief and at the same time I resent it. Surveys have shown that they have a much better chance at being happy than those whose belief systems are totally secular. Everyone's life contains some sadness, suffering and disappointment, and they are much easier to accept if you believe there's another life to come in which the imperfections and injustices of this one will be made good; it also makes the business of dying a much less depressing prospect." (page 75) That explains so much.
3) Looking for something good about deafness, Desmond thinks the following about Goya: "The critic said it was as if his deafness had lifted a veil: when he looked at human behaviour undistracted by the babble of speech he saw it for what it was, violent, malicious, cynical and mad, like a dumb-show in a lunatic asylum." (page 79) Makes me wanna watch an episode of
The Andy Griffith Show with the sound turned off and check out the theory. Maybe this afternoon.
4) Alex tells Desmond about "a man who paid for panties that had been worn but not laundered. You sent them through the post, sealed up in a freezer bag, once a week, and three days later back came a cheque." (page 91) Yep. David Lodge could have gotten a lot more mileage out of this character than he did. Trust me.
5) "To me the treatment of books is a test of civilised behaviour." (page 106) Yes! Yes! OK, I dog-ear pages but only in books I own.
6) "I remembered that Evelyn Waugh used to signal his boredom by laying aside his ear trumpet …" (page 118) Good plan, and I admit that sometimes in order to really "get" someone, I have "play cripple." Works like a charm.
7) "Aural experience is made up of quiet, sounds and noise. Quiet is neutral, the stand-by state. Sounds are meaningful, they carry information or they give aesthetic pleasure. Noise is meaningless and ugly." (page 134) Interesting theory. Such a breakdown never even crossed my mind.
8) Desmond and Fred visit his father who has had a stroke.
While Fred and I went through a pantomime of hospital visitors chatting away to a responsive patient his eyes were following the unformed nurses and ancillaries who went to and fro past the end of his bed with a kind of feral attention, as if he knew these were the people on whom he depended for food, drink, and other physical needs. It seemed to me that he'd regressed even past infancy on the evolutionary scale and that his reflexes were disturbingly like an animal in captivity.
Fred was shocked and dismayed by what she saw. (page 269)
No doubt. Well written, IMHO, and scary.
Since
Deaf Sentence is British, I found at least the usual number of unfamiliar words.
1) autodidact: "a person who has learned a subject without the benefit of a teacher or formal education; a self-taught person." (page 57) Dang! Learned that one all by myself, I did.
2) Stroppy: "bad-tempered or hostile; quick to take offence." (page 232) Well. Imagine that.
Bottom line: two thumbs a little more than halfway up.
