The sport of rowing is the
extended metaphor, and since I can find no reference anywhere yet that Berryman
ever engaged in the sport, I’ll regard it as made up or a dream. If I’m
mistaken, so be it.
“malgré lui” is French for “in
spite of himself”, which describes well enough Henry’s accidental heroism. His
seat in the rowing shell jammed, he completes the race on the rails, in pain,
and wins some accolades for it. “Rowing, rowing, rowing” might just as well read
“writing, writing, writing” and the metaphor comes into focus: With a jammed
seat at the start of his life (the grievous blow of his father’s suicide) he
keeps going, wins some accolades for the work he does.
“This afterworld” is interesting:
I take this to mean that the now of his life is a kind of afterworld, what
followed after the blow of that moment when he was a kid and nothing was ever the
same afterward. And it’s weird. It reminds me again that whatever mental or
psychological state B. found himself in, it wasn’t healthy or normal. It’s easy
to forget that. And yeah, that’s a constant wellspring of goading and pain,
which prompts the writing and doesn’t give a damn if life is embarrassing or
humiliating or painful: It’s all a bizarre mess anyway, and the conceits of normality,
orthodoxy, conventional conservatism are just as pointless and just as foolish
as anything else, so why all the fuss? There is also the realization, though,
that if you’re going to root for a winner, then “cheer for the foe” because probably
Henry isn’t your best bet—a tacit acknowledgement that there’s the strangeness
of normalcy and then there’s the really strange strangeness of this particular rower’s
bloody struggles. When the father is invoked right at the end, it puts it all
in perspective: There’s the issue. That he’s “blue” I read simply as the color
of the shell he’s rowing, through his own bizarre afterlife, and the son isn’t
in the boat with him, rather is watching, stopwatch in hand, replaced and not
part of the contest at this point. It’s the dream logic that throws the father
in a boat and has him timed by his still-living (sort of) son.
Back in the boat: I’ve never
rowed, but what must make the sport attractive is it minimalistic simplicity:
Arms, back, legs, muscles, and the elementary rhythm of the movements. Nothing
else matters when you’re racing. This project is teaching me something, which I’ve
heard from teachers, mentors, a hundred times, to no avail, but now I get it: The
potency of discipline. Put your head down and row, forget everything else, and the
more you do it the better you’re able to do it. It’s actually quite simple! The
race will be over soon enough and you can sit up and look around then if you
want to. But first, don’t think, don’t complicate it, just row. Anything else
is a distraction. Row.
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