“That Note, that Broken Blow, as of Glass Splitting, a Wallop to the Brain…”

(Post #1: Chapters 1-19; pp. 1-86)

Welcome to The Big Book Project’s dual read of Cynthia Ozick’s Foreign Bodies and Henry James’s The Ambassadors. I’m so happy that you are reading with us. I will be posting twice weekly as we read these books, first Ozick and then James.

Before we dig into the plot of Foreign Bodies, I want to use this first post to talk about our protagonist, Bea Nightingale, and the two insufferable, bullying men who have had such an impact on her past and present: her brother Marvin and husband, now ex-husband, Leo.

Marvin and Bea grew up in a home that was very much about the family business, “a small shadowy hardware store.” Their mother was ambitious and wanted to expand, establish a chain of hardware stores but their father stood firm, saying one store was enough. Whenever there were no customers in the store he would hide away in the back with a book by George Meredith or (who else!?!) Henry James.

From a young age brother Marvin was a striver, a “fanatic” with careful plans for his own upward mobility. He gets a scholarship to attend Princeton and is the first scholarship student, and rare Jew, to get accepted into a fraternity. Marvin cast his sights on a rich friend’s sister, Margaret, and married her, not so much for the money, as he planned to make plenty on his own, but because she is demur and deferential.

At the novel’s start Bea has just returned from Europe. Prior to departing for her trip, she was instructed by Marvin to find his son, Julian, whom Bea has never met, and make him return to the US after three years in Paris. Julian has stopped communicating with his parents, and Marvin is desperate for him to come home.

What makes Bea do Marvin’s bidding and search for Julian during her European holiday and then return to Paris two months later to try again? Marvin and Bea are not close, barely communicate, and almost never see each other, Bea living in New York City and Marvin and his family in California. In his letters to Bea, Marvin is demeaning and insulting to her. Bea learns that his kids, Julian and Iris, cannot stand him. Bea takes pleasure in thwarting Marvin’s will in small, secretive ways, yet she seems to think it her duty to submit to Marvin’s insults and help him.

Also, puzzling is Bea’s marriage to the arrogant Leo who openly marries Bea for convenience and money and feels justified in being a kept man because he believes he is a once-in-five generations musical genius. He pushes Bea into teaching to support his career and his indolence. They purchase a grand piano that is much too expensive and large for their modest apartment and means. Leo also belittles Bea: “I have to have a piano, a Baldwin if not a Steinway, I need a place of my own—how many times do I have to say it? Especially when you’re in a position to help, and you do nothing.”

Although Leo and Bea are no longer together, Leo’s piano remains a physically cumbersome and emotionally symbolic presence in her life. She cleans and polishes it yet never causes even a single note to emit from it. When Iris visits Bea, she presses one key on the piano, and this simple act reverberates for Bea in profound and unexpected ways.

“That note, that broken blow, as of glass splitting, a wallop to the brain—she had thought of herself as content, reconciled, resilient, orderly days, an orderly life: until Iris’s finger hurled her into turmoil. The stab at the single uncanny key, a short-lived overturning looking-glass sound—it had a pitch, an accent, she would not recall whether bass or treble, book or screech, a splinter of glass that wormed through her veins and flowed with the flow or her blood…Leo’s untouchable instrument. The girl’s touch, a golden girl, and what was Bea, if not aging, ragged and low?”

Bea questions why she decides to return to Paris to bring home Julian, and this time, also Iris.

“To rescue whom? Marvin from his torment?...Bea from a low and ragged life?”

This week’s reading ends with Bea returning to the US from Paris, but this time she bypasses her home in New York City and flies direct to California. Will she confront Marvin? Confront Leo (who now lives there, composing music for popular movies)? Both?