Zestful Blog Post #245
My friend Jay, who is a change ringer, turned me on to
Dorothy Sayers’s The Nine Tailors,
which features change ringing. (Change ringing is a form of church-bell ringing,
where an array of tuned tower bells is rung by a team of pullers, or ringers,
in precise mathematical sequences. The effect can be hypnotic and possibly even
transcendent, as prolonged, repetitive chanting can be in many religious
cultures.)
I’m just getting going on this read, and am ashamed that I haven’t
devoured anything by Sayers before now, in spite of recommendations from
knowledgeable friends. Almost as soon as I started this one, I knew I had to do
a Close Reading on it. I’m only on page 49 out of 397, and I haven’t read any
plot summaries, so I’m still a virgin reader to the story. OK, we’re going to discuss one little word in the following
excerpt, from page 7:
[excerpt begins]
“My dear sir, pray don’t think twice about it. Not but what I
am sure Mrs. Tebbutt here would be delighted to take you in and would make you
very comfortable—very comfortable indeed; but her husband is laid up with this
dreadful influenza—we are suffering from quite an epidemic of it, I am sorry to
say—and I fear it would not be altogether convenient, would it, Mrs. Tebbutt?”
“Well, sir, I don’t know as how we could manage very well,
under the circumstances, and the Red Cow has only one room—”
“Oh, no,” said the clergyman, quickly, “not the Red Cow;
Mrs. Donnington has visitors already. Indeed, I will take no denial. You must
positively come along to the Rectory. We have ample accommodation—too much,
indeed, too much. My name, by the way, is Venables—I should have mentioned it
earlier. I am, as you will have gathered, rector of the parish.”
The key word here is ‘quickly’. Did you note that? A tiny
granule of the story—but instantly telling. Many readers would skip right over
that inconsequential little word, buried as it is among all the verbiage being
spewed by the clergyman. Careless philistines, such readers would be, but
perceptive ones will pause and think.
Hm, OK. There’s a reason the rector doesn’t want the visitor—as
it happens, Sayers’s serial character Lord Peter Wimsey—to go to the Red Cow
inn. Further reflection yields the possibility that perhaps the Red Cow is of
no significance, but that perhaps the rector wants the stranger to come with
him instead of anywhere else. We don’t know which possibility is right, and we
don’t know what the reason is, but we know there is one. So we are on a little
bit of alert with this rector. We shall watch him, and we shall attempt to
discern his motive for keeping the stranger either away from the Red Cow, or
with him in his rectory, on this evening.
[I might note that Sayers is as much a stylist as she is a
technician. Some gorgeous prose to be enjoyed in this book, besides the more
workaday passage we’re discussing here…]
We know that the author might have thrown that little adjective
in as a false clue, so we must withhold judging the rector as treacherous right
away, and on that basis alone. And it’s also possible that the rector has a
secret yet benevolent reason to steer Lord Peter one way or another tonight. We
do not wish to be made fools of!
But do you see how goddamned entertaining and enjoyable it
is to read closely? We are really matching wits twice over: with the
characters, and with the author. Because we wonder what the author’s motive is
here: To clarify or obfuscate? To enlighten or temporarily confuse? To reward or
to trick? Whatever the case, we know the author is thinking about us as well as
her story. And so, engaged, we read on, our intellectual senses whetted,
knowing we’re being considered equals.
The takeaway for readers is that attentiveness is always
rewarded, when the author is a trusted professional. And for authors—the power
of a word! One word, to color a moment, to intrigue the reader, to direct your
story, if only a tiny bit! O, let us luxuriate in the gorgeous utility of the
English language, even when we are so moved that we must swear!
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