disappearance from the narrative
introversion masked as incandescence
There is a longtime cultural fascination with the solitary and stoic male protagonist. You can see this as far back as the Homeric idealization of a great man as one singularly possessed by the aim of returning to his wife in Ithaca (so what if there is a seven-year debauched sojourn with Calypso on the way), and as recently in the character of Elliot Alderson, whose isolation, depression, and substance abuse are often portrayed as simply "the price of doing business" when it comes to channeling greatness. And there are similar characters that fall somewhere in between on this vast spectrum- Hemingway's "Tenente", whose tragic arc concludes with a vanishing act into a rainstorm; Slothrop in Gravity's Rainbow, who spends much of the novel isolated and itinerant, with his many liaisons perhaps mirroring Odysseus', though they are a touch more lurid; and Johnny Truant in House of Leaves, who, like Slothrop and Odysseus, leads a life that is spent almost entirely alone in spite of the large number of sexual encounters (misadventures?) which he recounts in lewd (and possibly falsified) detail. Note that lonely men are admirable if (and only if) they are having sex, preferably often, and preferably indiscriminately. Henry in Arms is a clear exception to this, though his relationship with Catherine ends in a abrupt fashion, similarly to the method of human bonding endorsed by his literary forebears and derivatives.
I often think about this in relation to my own introversion. Hardly will I be the first man who picks up books by dead, dying, or aged misogynists and finds himself relating to the main character. "Look," all men say. "He is me!" It is the fate of all solitary men my age to- hopefully, briefly- draw haphazard comparisons between themselves and the rugged protagonists of these novels, because at least their solitude imbues them with some sort of meaning, and some dated notion of masculinity or masculine success.
And I'm not a masculine person. To be honest, I don't and never did relate to these characters. Nor am I particularly absorbed by the concept of searching for, engaging with, attaining, or idolising masculinity. Most, if not all, of these protagonists would certainly have looked upon my bisexuality, wiry frame, and bookish lifestyle with hostility, snickering, and maybe even physical violence in the case of the first one there. I wrote a sprawling and messy, but fundamentally honest, essay about Infinite Jest last week, mostly because in the three months since finishing it I can't stop thinking about it- specifically the characters of Hal, James, and Avril, whom it's no coincidence I invested time in dissecting. In the case of Hal, I can relate to a broad swathes of his lived experience- he talks too much, smokes in secret, likes calculus- though I could never play tennis (I was/am too short for anything other than climbing and running). With James, the comparisons are a little more obvious, and as a result more embarrassing- he's a physicist whose interpersonal relationships, especially with his own family, are typically strained, complex, and non-verbal or non-existent. He loves (and marries) someone who doesn't reciprocate these feelings, but whose intelligence and competence are both totemic and absolute (isn't it easier to love someone because they're smarter than you, rather than because they hold you in some high esteem?)- though it should be noted that I've never met any Quebecois professors with secret links to separatism.
More than the romanticised and unfailingly sexist introversion of the characters I referenced at the outset, I'm interested in the other form of introversion- the one that actually exists- the one that culminates in some disappearance from the narrative. We all know people like this. Almost all of you reading this will probably know me at least tenuously, many of whom will find it easy to agree with the statement that I have an odd and persistent ability to vanish entirely from people's lives without any guarantee that I'll spring back up again. I imagine that this is the type of introversion a lot of people experience. It's probably this precise form of solitary isolation that drives people like Hemingway to invent entire narratives whose sole purpose is to recast social rejection or loneliness as something necessary, honourable, and romantic. Thomas Pynchon is famously reclusive; Hemingway and Foster Wallace were both completed suicides. Their work is unmistakably autobiographical (almost all good fiction is). There is some indication, therefore, that their protagonists are not exemplars, but cautionary figures. Lights meant to lead you away from the rocks rather than onto them.
Disappearing from the narrative is an all-intensive, no-holds-barred experience, never more so than in an era where everything is digitised, instantly-accessible, and widely publicised. People's locations, friendships, diets, successes, are all a matter of self-published public record. There is a sixty-five-mile-long optic cable between the UK and the Isle of Man. Not so long ago, it was just rocks and fish. See now, instead, a pulsing, arterial monument to digital commercialisation. If you live in a world where you can read ones and zeros at literal light-speed from the end of a big cable, you obviously live in a world that is too absurd for some semblance of true isolation to survive- at least in the places where we are lucky enough to have these cables laid for us.
If PISCES were pursuing Slothrop across the Europe in the midst of some 21st century postwar interregnum, they would probably find him in under six hours using his SIM card, Starlink, government-mandated security backdoors, or logs of his cash withdrawals. After all, we're talking about a man whose best attempt at espionage was traipsing around Europe in a British uniform, sporting an American accent and sharing tales about his golden years at Harvard with anyone who'd listen, all while purporting to be a Guardian journalist. Presumably, he'd be equally as clueless in 2025 as he was in 1945. There is no disappearance from the narrative.
A PhD can be a good disappearance from the narrative. You can sit in the same room as fifteen people for a year and know fewer than ten things about them. One of my best friends is also a doctoral student, albeit in a different discipline and in a different city. He recently told me that he'd been calling his desk-mate the wrong name for eight months (his desk-mate never corrected him). You can work on the same project as twenty other people and only know, at most, their marital status, institution(s) of education, and country of birth. The most verbose verbal communication that you may have in a single day is with a Unix terminal. You may go several days without (really) talking to anyone. It can be very nice. It can be very strange.
You often only reach the conclusion that you have experienced narrative vanishment in medias res. You suddenly gain awareness of some level of social estrangement. It's as if a person will only realise they've fallen through the ice of a frozen lake after someone has dragged them back to the surface, clothed, fed, warmed, and slapped them. Fire and companionship, however, are not easy for everyone- at least not all of the time. No one asks you probing questions in the darkness of a frozen lake.
When I was a very young boy living in Connecticut, we had our fair share of harsh winters. In the six years I lived there, we were never disappointed for lack of snow. I remember one year- maybe it was 2006 or 2007- that we were underwhelmed by just a mere inch or two (a winter that would derail the UK industrial ecosystem for weeks, months, more). If you didn't have to carve your way to the car with a bulky snow shovel, if you didn't have to season the ground to taste with grit salt just to walk or drive in a straight line, you weren't experiencing Winter. You were experiencing a particularly rabid Autumn with delusions of grandeur.
We had lots of lakes and lots of ponds. These would almost always freeze up- thick enough to walk on, thick enough for drilling holes to stand or sit around with thermoses and to fish through for hours- you never see this type of thing in England. I walked out on one when I was about six, and fell through the ice. You could see for what looked like miles through a deep, monochromatic, icy blue, the shade of oceans on maps. The ice a long, laminar, frosty sky that vanished far off into a watery horizon. I was under for half a second- three quarters of one, maximum. I remember more about that fraction of a second than most of the rest of my life. Like all New England kids, I was a good swimmer from an early age. It was an easy matter of climbing back up to the surface and driving home in a Saturn Vue- that workhouse of American exurbia- to warm up in front of the TV, change clothes, eat something. I remember none of that. I only remember how beautiful it looked under that lake.