‘Avoiding the Unmentionable’: Agonised Silence in The Elected Member
‘ It seems to us that without exception the experience and behaviour that gets labelled schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unliveable situation’ – R.D Laing
One reason I loved the look of the LRMH course was due to its emphasis on the dialogical nature of texts and the ways in which books about mental health present readers with vulnerable fictional subjects as to incite a process of identification (though unknowability is an essential part of meaning identification is not ever completed, as to allow for difference) which may allow the reader to both sympathise and also understand how they themselves may be vulnerable. In The Elected Member Rubens presents us with characters who are vulnerable in quietly devastating ways and I have to admit it put me into a state of vulnerability I had perhaps not expected, though it was welcomed of course.
I partially grew up in North West London, a predominantly Jewish area where everyone is dressed in activewear walking a cockapoo, talking about their two-and-a-half children who study PPE at Oxbridge. Riveting, I know. I have friends, who like Norman, have suffered mental destabilisation due to the pressure to be the Elected Member of their families, expected constantly to achieve greatness and exceed any former achievement with a better one. They have instead ended up being the Elected Member who has somewhat ‘failed’ in comparison to their siblings. Amazing how damaging pressure can be…. The way this book also confronts the strictures of religion is really powerful, particularly in regard to the notion of divorce and interfaith marriage. It really demands we think about the point at which the upholding of religious commitment begins to cancel out personal ethics and personal relationships. I also think it demands we consider how ‘good’ the communal good of religion really is in relation to individual authenticity (Sartre certainly has a lot to say on this – love his stuff). So what we have in this book is a multi-pronged questioning of religious, psychiatric and familial institutions as well as an investigation of the governmental institution portrayed through the Minister’s insane play of government in the asylum. Foucault would have an absolute field day.. This being said, it’s significant that the novel is split on its presentation of the aforementioned institutions: the family do love and yet damage Norman, the asylum does provide care whilst also asserting control and its intriguing that the Minister of ‘Ealth is insane, demanding we question governmental definitions of health and sanity altogether.
How mental decline is linked to pressure, expectation and the effect of familial (s)mothering is something I’m deeply interested in. In fact just as I became obsessed with theorising ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in Good Morning, Midnight and the word ‘pureness’ in The Bell Jar, I couldn’t help but try to engineer an understanding of Norman’s silverfish hallucinations. Why silverfish specifically? Silverfish invisibly invade the home and remain alive by feeding off starchy material; they grow in vast numbers and destroy food, clothing and furniture. I think perhaps reading the silverfish in line with Sarah Zweck’s destructive and invisible post-death presence both within the house and within Norman’s psyche could therefore be a valuable reading that allows us to see how Rubens may be addressing the psychoanalytic theory of the schizophrenogenic mother. It also chimes with Laing’s emphasis on the need to contextualise patients, and by diagnosing their individual cases in relation to their individual lives rather than attempting to diagnose them by using generalised medical guidelines such as the DSM. It is also not so much that the silverfish embody Sarah Zweck herself, but rather they symbolically represent the pressures she imposed which haunt Norman’s psyche. Yes, seeing silverfish everywhere is mad but if those silverfish are drug-induced projections of Norman’s psychic distress or trauma, then they become less insane and far less dismissible.
I am also interested in the way that Rubens explores the effect that caregiving has on caretaking family members as whilst my own brother is not addicted to amphetamines (that really would be the cherry on top) he is severely disabled and so I found Rubens’ nuanced presentation of Bella, Esther and Rabbi Zweck’s attitudes towards Norman really fascinating. In particular something this novel engineers so delicately is that unspeakable and agonising antagonism between love and resentment for a family member who presents a family with something unexpected, unknowable and fairly unliveable. Certainly I felt this schism on a profound level and actually showed my dad the R.D Laing quote at the start of this blog to suggest that we’ve done well not to be absolutely raving mad given the circumstances (though he questioned the truth of this and it bizarrely led to a conversation about my brother that we’ve never had before, so I silently thank Rubens for that). Thus, whilst it is Norman who would be considered the schizophrenic, I do actually suggest that the schisms of feeling in this book reveal a set of characters who could be considered really very unwell. To love and resent at the same time is after-all distressing to a point of illness. It’s also worth noting that I didn’t necessarily sympathise with Bella’s scapegoating treatment of Norman but that I found the presentation of complex honesty woundingly refreshing:
She had to admit she missed him for her own sake. Now there was no one to punish, no one to diminish, no one to target her own bitter feelings of inadequacy’ …. (86)
So, perhaps then this novel presents us with an exploration of how to love that which is a ‘source of [ones] troubles and pain’ (10), captured beautifully in the line: ‘it was all he had to live for and he loved it now with a love that was killing him (216) (has to be one of the most devastating I’ve read in a while. God she’s good!)I think to an extent this paradox of love/pain is cathartically resolved – Rabbi Zweck dies and is therefore freed, the family somewhat reconcile around the dead body of the paternal figure which allows Norman to be freed to find a new spiritual father through prayer. In this sense I think Norman’s realisation that he must ‘pray alone’ (251) can be correlated to Sasha’s holy triad of ‘yes..yes…yes’ as both endings indicate an affirmative belief which allows both Sasha and Norman to continue on their own terms, even if that continuance isn’t necessarily all sunshine and rainbows. I think half of life’s victory is just being able to continue against the odds – anything else is a bonus.
More than anything though, I was fascinated with the narrative style and its sway between lyricism and then an almost nihilistic flatness as if the narrative voice itself couldn’t quite express the emotive intensity of the characters. Unlike Invisible Man, which can be understood as a novel of voice concerned with communicating the unknowable, demanding our attention through first person narration, this novel may be better understood as a novel that enacts the process of ‘avoiding the unmentionable’ (61). Whilst there is dialogue, many of the most poignant moments appear almost as perforative vignettes without sound (twatty but how else to describe it), in which the descriptive presentation of body language alongside focalised insight into characters’ interior thoughts reveals a sense that some situations are so painful that they elude words and thought altogether. The most obvious instance of this is Rabbi Zweck’s continual repetition of the pre-linguistic ‘Ach’ (52) used throughout in moments of despair (page 52 is when he is looking through Sarah’s draws, it’s a moment of grief but all that can be uttered is ‘Ach’). Then take the focalisations of Bella’s thoughts below:
She saw the men handle her brother into the back of the black car … ‘Its raining outside'(32)
‘She didn’t try to fight it, she wanted to opt out of it all for a while (14)
There’s a sense of utter nihilism and helplessness somehow captured and produced in so few words. The feeling of just wanting to opt out, to stop, is actually replicated in the syntax. Such voiceless helplessness is reinforced but from the focalised perspective of Norman:
He heard his voice breaking with the pain … He didn’t want the stranger to see his helplessness. Haven’t you any white ones he pleaded?’ (56).
There are so many moments of silence in this novel, which I always find interesting given that words fill a blank page i.e create meaning and speak to fill the ‘silence of the page’ so to produce a sense of utter voicelessness through the narrative voice itself is impressive in my opinion. This all being said I think it is interesting that as the novel continues, the dialogue increases, perhaps suggesting the gradual reconciliation of social relationships which allows for connectivity rather than division. More to be said on that but this is, as usual, already far too long…
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I think this song more or less speaks for itself. It discusses themes of losing faith,of feeling trapped, of suffering internally and of yearning for escape. The bit on nightmares seemed apt as well. More than anything though it communicates, like this book, that underneath what ever we see on the surface we must remember people are just vulnerable human beings who may be in pain, who may be suffering and who might just be suffocating a little bit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAL9jFznlxE
Little bit of 1970s with Gil Scott-Heron’s ‘Home is Where the Hatred is’- voice as a clean as can be but you get a real sense of the pain here, as well as the correlation between addiction, suffering and unliveable home situations. Killer guitar as well…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vcfjIHdEX0
*** artwork = I adore all of Nicole Eisenman’s work, particular her stuff on dysfunctional families, masculinity and alienation – interesting that she draws on Emily Dickinson considering that we’ve studied Good Morning, Midnight ***
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