“One must constantly meditate upon the absurdities of chance, a subject even more edifying that the subject of death.” “Those who occasion loss of dignity are hard to forgive.” They have in the play of life, fewer good lines.” (written in 1973)ĭo we keep secrets from friends to make ourselves feel superior? Is it because “To see someone as not ‘in the know’ is to see them as diminished.” “Of course men play roles, but women play roles too, blanker ones. “One can see many men who live happily, possessed and run (indeed manned, the way a ship is manned) by women of tremendous will.” It revolves around the theme: is art supposed to be ‘difficult” or ‘fun’? He believes he ‘discovered’ the other writer so we have this complicated mentor/protégée relationship. He wrote one great book (his opinion) but his friend bangs one out every year. He’s in a rivalry with another male author. On art: our main character worked in a tax office but his real love was literary things – he wrote book reviews and one critically-acclaimed book.

Moreover to help their case the unmarried person often naively assumes that all marriages are happy unless shown to be otherwise.” And “People who boast of happy marriages are, I submit, usually self-deceivers, if not actually liars…There is nothing like the bootless solitude of those who are caged together.” I cannot stand the shows so often quite instinctively put on by married people to insinuate that they are more moral than you are. On marriage: “But there is a natural hostility between the married and the unmarried. “The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular one and its indifference to substitutes is one of life’s major mysteries.” The author tells us in an aside that few authors write about the experience of being in love and that is mainly what the story is about. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story.” It’s about falling in love with the emphasis on “falling.” It happens to this 58-year-old man instantaneously over dinner one night with a woman barely 20 years old a daughter of long-time friends of his. On love: Iris Murdoch made this famous quote: “Every artist is an unhappy lover. I’d say there are three main themes: love – the experience of falling in love and being in love the pros and cons of marriage, and art. And just like The Sea, we have a murder, an attempted murder and a suicide. These include his ex- and he assumes she wants to get back with him, which may or may not be true.

He has always ‘used’ women and treated them callously old flames return making theatrical appearances at his door at inopportune times. The similarities with The Sea: we have a just-retired divorced man who has rented an ocean-front cottage. For fans of the author’s The Sea, The Sea, here’s a great book that has a similar tone and structure.

The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch