Errata & Fugue

I have a habit of returning from holiday and foisting upon you good folk a review of a book I've read and liked while dipping my toes at the edge of some foreign beach. So it is again this year, and how could The Slicer avoid reviewing a 2012 book described as "a slice of comic genius" by one of the UK tabloids? However, by some weird synchronicity it resonates with not-at-all-funny real life on my return.

 

In the last couple of weeks I came back to find that a number of my friends' marriages were disintegrating. I have watched in sadness, with a strong sense of helplessness. Despite sometimes valiant efforts, this sort of situation is rarely dignified. Inevitably (although they may not be vocalised or shared), a list of errors and 'wrongs' is remembered by the parties concerned, each with regard to the other. Quite the opposite of what is often read at weddings. No-one involved seems to escape unwounded.  I have no expertise or particular insight to offer to people in such a situation. I know from personal experience that marriage requires work and, to the best of my knowledge, my own marriage is not in trouble. I hope that will remain the case. I am blessed with a tolerant wife,  but I don't know what mistakes or questionable choices either of us could make in the future which could jeopardise our relationship, so I don't feel in any position to advise others.  Still, it was my wife who suggested that I read the particular book I'm reviewing here, so maybe she's trying to tell me something! Anyway, in reviewing the book I felt it would be remiss not to mention that it covers territory which is actually causing great pain to friends. The humour in the book is gentle. It's certainly neither mocking nor exploitative. It's often poignant, and arguably redemptive.

Vaughan doesn't know that he's called Vaughan. He finds himself on a train in the London Underground, not knowing where he's going, where he's come from, who he is or, in fact, anything at all about himself. He checks into a hospital and learns that he's undergone a rare brain catastrophe known as a Psychogenic Fugue. It's a form of amnesia which can be precipitated by stress. Vaughan's amnesia doesn't recover spontaneously. With the help of a friend who finds him in hospital, he gradually re-educates himself about his life. He is told that he has children and a wife. He is introduced to his wife, who he thinks is absolutely gorgeous, but to his horror finds that he's in the final legal stages of divorce.

Most of the book is a story of discovery, as if for the first time, of what had gone before. He sees and appreciates his children in a way that he probably hadn't before. Obviously, I'm not going to reveal what happens ultimately. At one point Vaughan says "I felt like a born-again father, an evangelical family man; I wanted to knock on doors early on Sunday morning and ask people if they had ever thought of worshipping their partners. 'For yea, your wife did bring forth new life, and verily you did call him Wayne.'" (We humans do have a knack of ruining a thing which was "very good" before we got our hands on it). He remembers the sorts of things that made them laugh together. For example, when his wife was called up at home by a telephone salesman  and she pretended to be really, really stupid. "‘Yer wha?’ she kept grunting to every question, no matter how many times he repeated it. I pictured her being stopped by a chugger in the King’s Road, pretending to be deaf as she used rather unconvincing sign language to ask if he signed too…. "

He notes human happiness is a fragile and ethereal thing.

Throughout, there are many funny moments of (re)learning and self-realisation. The children that he had taught to swim offer to teach him to swim again as he thinks he's forgotten how. Even the swimming pool seems a strange place:  “Once inside I was struck by the scale of the place. It was an enormous post-modern cathedral built to the twin gods of water fun and athlete’s foot.” He then discovered that the ability to swim was still there. He had the same experience with cycling, so he figured he'd better get back driving too. “Forty minutes later the garage truck arrived to hoist the car off the ornamental wall at the front of number 23.” It turned out that the principle was right (things he’d learned to do before came back), the trouble was he had never actually learned to drive in the first place…

He watches his kids in old videos when they were younger, as if for the first time. “An angelic little Dillie sang a song in her brownie uniform, tho’ I can’t believe it was Brown Owl who taught her 'Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now.'” Watching family videos provided evidence that memories are continually revised and rescripted, such that they may not be a true reflection of what actually happened. Sweet & humorous family barbecue scenes are displayed on the TV descending into a marital battlefield. Vaughan also learns of the risk of "false memories."

He tries to analyse why his relationship with his wife had fallen apart: "I kept staring at the basic life events… wondering where the wrong turning had been taken. And then in a flash I saw what was wrong. I was only thinking about me… Could it be that the problem with my marriage had been… that I approached it as an individual, not as one half of a pair, or one quarter of a family?..."

He gets an opportunity for an amorous encounter with a work colleague, and tho’ he has had the foresight to put a condom in his wallet there is a fair bit of embarrassment at finding that, come the appropriate time, he doesn’t know how to put it on.  “The year 9 pupils [at the school in which he has just resumed teaching] had recently been shown how… but I had thought at the time that it might seem a little strange if I turned up to the lesson to find out myself.”

“Finally… I was ready to make love to her. Actually, ‘love’ was far too strong a word. I barely knew her, I quite liked her; I would be ‘making quite like’ to her.” The event was happening in the school gym, on whatever equipment could be found around to reduce discomfort. “The pile of exercise mats had a musty rubber smell, and there was a piece of blackened chewing gum on the top one…. Unfortunately my foot seemed to have got tangled in the netting of a folded up five-a-side goal…”

 

He does try to get back into his wife's good books, but the past is stacked against him. Still, his amnesia gives him a new objectivity of his past. He sees it from a new perspective, he sees potential for change, and he holds on to a hope for the future.  “I had found myself pondering how much my brain-wipe had altered my actual character…. What I’m trying to say is, when I had completely forgotten all the events of my life, was I suddenly no longer shaped by them?” His 'best friend' offers a philosophical analysis of this proposition: “Well, you were sh*t at football before, and you’re sh*t at football now. So what’s that tell us?” 

Nevertheless, he wonders if it’s possible that, with erasure of his past, he could start all over again.

 

Have you ever been guilty of waking up after a dream, angry with your spouse because of something he/she did in the dream, and taking some time after you wake to shake of the feeling of annoyance? Or maybe you've been the victim of that kind of scenario... Well 'new' Vaughan regularly felt this. "I was different now, she had acknowledged as much; but I was not going to be allowed to forget things I couldn’t remember.” It seems the new man couldn't shake off the consequences of the old.

 

Vaughan's fugue allowed him to view his past behaviour from a much more objective position. Wouldn't if be great if there was a way our memory and relationships could be "rebooted" to remove the effects and pain of previous mistakes? 

 

Errata differ from errors. They are a listing, an acknowledgement, a confession even. They tend to be presented post-printing of a book or document. But that isn't their only purpose - they serve to correct. Maybe once confessed they could be forgotten? Errata and fugue. Not forgotten in the sense that we risk repeating them, but forgotten as things which hold us in the past and prevent our transformation. That is my hope for Northern Ireland, and for other conflicts whether ethnic or familial. Maybe we can find creative new ways of doing things harmoniously.

Things could be achieved which we didn't think possible, or even imagine.

So, should you get the book? Yup.

 

“Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.”  Alain de Botton.

“Forgetfulness is a form of freedom.” Khalil Gibran.