Khrushchev in love

There’s a Gogolian element to Aldiss’ storytelling: the use of lists: lists of objects, of actions, of movements, and most interestingly, of layers of glass. Gogol, though, would never do what Aldiss does – Aldiss uses lists like Tolstoy would have used lists had Tolstoy used lists (which I’ll get back to in a later post). For now, three examples of Aldiss’ love of the list:

His legs were doubled under him, so that he sat on the tawny planking with the following parts of his anatomy touching it: some of his right buttock, the outer side of his right thigh, his right knee, the outer side of his right calf, his right ankle, and his right foot, while his left leg copied the attitude of his right one, overlapping it so that from the knee down it also touched the planking and the tip of the left shoe pressed against the heel of the right shoe. The shoes were dusty. His right shoulder and part of the right-hand side of his body pressed against the brickwork beside the round window.

I like this one because its a weird way to use a list. He’s describing the position in which this guy was crouched by listing, in detail, body parts and proximities. It just gives you a funny sense, not of the croucher, but of the observer who is writing all this down.

On and in these shelves was a collection of articles belonging to or acquired by S, including three empty jam jars and a jar containing runner bean seeds; a bowler hat, in the rim of which lay a patent inhaler designed to fit up a nostril; a worm-eaten leg of an upright chair; a tartan plastic fountain pen; a perished hot water bottle; a brass handle off a drawer; a cotton reel containing brown thread; an empty pigskin purse; a china candlestick of an earlier age, on which was printed a representation of a devil breathing fire; a paperbound book entitled ‘Low Point X’, the cover of which was curled upwards, exposing brown pages; a broken coach lantern lying cheek-by-jowl with a group of three walnuts; a straw hat of the kind called ‘boater’, bound round by a red and blue ribbon; an umbrella with a handle representing a fox’s head lying under the boater; two enamel notices bearing the legend Beware of the Dog in black letters; a small collection of groceries and eating utensils, including a cracked blue and white cup and an unopened tin of sardines; a small brass crocodile; a bundle of newspaper; an enamel chamber pot with no handle; some shaving things lying in a small basin with floral decorations on it; a brass hinge and an iron key; an ancient tennis ball with most of its knap missing; a briefcase; the skeleton of a long-eared bat with its left ear missing; a pottery carthorse with its head missing; and a mousetrap still bearing a crumb of cheese on its single rusty tooth. Most of these articles were covered with a fine dust.

This one, to me, is notable not only for its obscene length but also because this isn’t the first occurrence of this list in the book. The one above occurs on 115-116. On 61-63 we see:

Some of this equipment still remained, though in the main the shelving was monopolized by articles belonging to or acquired by S.

Among these articles, the following could be distinguished: a storm lantern of antique design; a bowler hat; two empty jam jars; a patent inhaler made to fit the nostril; a streamlined pottery representation of a carthorse, the head missing; a pair of nail clippers; a collection of nail clippings, gathered in an ash tray; a mousetrap; part of the skeleton of a long-eared bat, discovered during an expedition to the chamber below; a brief-case purchased on the day that S had been given the post of secretary to Mr. Mary; the leg of an upright chair, worm-eaten; a fountain pen constructed of a tartan plastic; a hotwater bottle; a brass handle off a drawer; a cotton reel on which was wound brown thread, with a needle balanced on the top of it; a pigskin purse, lying open and empty; a chipped china candlestick on which had been printed a crude representation of the devil; a paperbound book with a curled-up cover entitled ‘The Penguin Handyman’; three walnuts; a coach lantern with its glass smashed; another empty jam jar; an umbrella, across which lay a straw hat with a red and blue band round it; an oval notice made of metal coated with enamel, on which was printed the legend Beware of the Dog; an oblong notice of the same materials bearing the same legend; a punched bus ticket; a comb with teeth missing; a hair brush with hair missing; an upright shaving mirror with the mirror missing; an elaborate iron key; a cigarette packet; a free luncheon voucher; another jam jar, this one containing purple runner bean seeds; a brass hinge; an oily rag; a small basin with a floral design containing a razor, a shaving brush, and a spoon; a rag; a slice of green soap; an enamel chamber pot without handle; a brass crocodile eight centimetres long; a small collection of groceries and eating utensils, among which a blue and white striped cup and a packet of tea were noticable; a row of books, including a ‘Typist’s Desk Book’; ‘Low Point X’; Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Miserables’; ‘Pickwick Papers’ without its cover; ‘Pregnancy–Conception’ To Childbirth’; Band I of Spengler’s ‘Der Untergang des Abendlandes’; ‘Toys Through the Ages’; ‘Living for Jesus’; ‘First Steps in the Bible’; ‘First Steps in Chemistry’; ‘First Steps in Philosophy’; ‘Understanding God’; ‘A Shorter Shorthand Manual’; ‘Sex in Practice’; ‘Black’s Picturesque Tourist of England’; ‘My Alps, by Mrs. Meade; and the ‘Boy’s Own Paper’ for the second week in August, 19–.

The lists of layers of glass and other objects between an observer and someone observed are by far the most interesting use of lists in Report on Probability A. These mostly occur when S is watching Mr. Mary’s wife (presumably Mrs. Mary?) through a telescope:

These lips were viewed through six thicknesses of glass, four consisting of the little lenses in the telescope, one consisting of the square of glass that formed the central panel of the nine glass panels together comprising the round window in the front of the old brick building, and one consisting of the openable but closed portion of the kitchen window. So near was this closed portion of the kitchen window to the moving lips that the breath issuing between them had fogged the pane, obscuring still further both the right cheek already obscured by the towel and a part of the towel itself.

and:

Between her head and the eye of the watcher were interposed the glass of the kitchen window, the glass of the round window in the old brick building that had once housed a gentleman’s private coach, and the four lenses of the telescope.