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Desperate Characters: An Essay


Paula Fox’s novel Desperate Characters features that of a Sophie Bentwood, in which case in the opening scene of the novel, falls prey to the whims of a stray, sustaining a bite to the hand and a paranoia that stays throughout the entirety of the novel.


On the surface, on that explanation alone, it may seem of that of the simple sort, an A to B with a one-layered type of paranoia, like that of a children’s story, lovely in its morals and simplicity in deliverability and readability but Fox makes it into much more of that, pulling at strings and piling them in lovely knots about the room, so that you can see it, see it plainly, but what of all those knots?


A marriage gone wryly astray, the falling apart of a business partnership, and the small failings and truths of everyday life, coming and fleeting as they may, all centered and budding and flowering upon that of a bite to the hand, a paranoia that spreads and festers upon the Bentwood’s lives like a big open wound; a bite to the hand should suffice?


And then, beneath, deeper, an observation of Fox’s blend of animalistic qualities and descriptions blending in with the grotesque can find the reader in that of an observatory lense, standing right outside the door, noses pressed against glass, watching the battle of prey vs predator, aggression and violence, correlating and conducting havoc in all the little ways, knocking at your door over and over again in small little knocks.


The hole digging of cats marks a small catastrophe, a small injustice found in the dirty little corners of the world where the dirty hide, on page 98…of little or no consequence or note next to the bite of one, a turn of predator and prey, a turn and flip of the page, a turn of the screw.


And then, on page 100, chin hair like little antennaes looking for a feast, a victim, “The hair on her chin were like little metal filings; they appeared to vibrate like antennae in search for prey,” (Fox, 100)


“Bare spots in the even texture of the gravel testified to the hole digging of cats,” (Fox, 98)


“Described the manner in which a certain larva managed to insinuate itself into the brain of a songbird in order to complete its metamorphosis,” (Fox)


And then, under the roof, within that of a cottage home turned city, overlooking that of overgrown streets, swamped with afternoon traffic and midnight beggars, the use of animals to describe humanistic features and tendencies, filling gaps in empty rooms. A goat, a monkey, and toads falling out of mouths. Chairs of bears and now the…the people are bears, tall and rearing big heads against the sky and walls full of roaches of the ugliest sort, in the following:


“sometimes I think there’s a goat quartered in this kitchen,” (Fox)

“a monstrous chair with a kind of brown bearlike fuzz,” (Fox)


Alpargatas

“Al-par-ga-ta / noun / a light canvas shoe with a plaited fiber sole; an espadrille,” (Oxford Languages)


“Passionate selflessness until he jumps on you like the old monkey he is" (Fox)


Roach caravans


“Leon is right. When I open my mouth, toads fall out. I’m sorry,” (pg. 116)


And, amongst these, descriptions and vocab of the grotesque/aggressive nature of the natural world so often referred to with a sloth for a friend and llamas biting like old moldy laundry, left rotting in a pile at the door, in a forgotten shoe, in a closet half-open, half-closed:


Hectoring tone

“Adjective / talking in a bullying way,” (Oxford Languages)


Effluvium

Ef-flu-vi-um / noun / an unpleasant or harmful odor, secretion or discharge


Ignominious

“Ig-no-min-i-ous / adjective / deserving or causing public disgrace or shame,” (Oxford Languages)


“She hesitated and turned toward the kitchen, where they could both see Leon cleaning up with the single-minded, controlled ferocity of a performing bear,” (Fox, 114)


“A llama bit me once,” said Leon in a dreamy voice.’ I reluctantly took Benny to the children’s zoo…and a dirty demented llama reached over the fence and clamped its jaws on my hand/ It was like being bitten by dirty laundry,” (Fox)


“Ah, the truth at last! Behind all that frantic energy I thought was so admirable is nothing but monstrous sloth. It takes energy to live with someone else.”


And, as Fox seems to have a pattern of doing, tells that of a hint of this through narrative, stating:

“I cannot bear the grotesque, lying piety of my own unhinged contemporaries.”


And then, a friend’s home, that very same cottage home in the city above the city, with “ceilings the color of rotten peaches.”


It becomes unclear of the story Fox wishes to teach but of the story of victimhood and the unjust, the solidity and cruelty of the natural world, and by default, our own.

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