Sipped Ink vol 3 issue 7

A Little Life — Week 7

Last week I noted that Yanagihara had debated with her editor, during the process of composition, ‘the idea of how much a reader can take’. In conversation with some of our number recently the feeling might be that in these latest revelations of Jude’s past that boundary has been transgressed. It is likely to be different for every reader, of course, but the addition of captivity in the home of Dr Traylor (and its attendant abuses) to an already full catalogue of abandonment, mistreatment at the monastery, kidnapping, an extended campaign of rape and prostitution, and (chronologically dislocated but known to the reader) domestic violence, threaded through with decades of self-harming and at least one serious suicide attempt… is a lot to accept. I think this will be an interesting point of discussion once all is said and done, and when we’re able to take the novel in sum. (Word has reached me of only one of our starting number whom has retired from the running; counter to which, I know of two or three whose intention is to sprint from here to the finish and await the rest of us at the line.)

Personally, I found one of the most difficult passages to read thus far has been that in which Jude prepares and then carries out his most elaborate act of self-harm to date. Yanagihara shows his inner struggle, in acceding to the part of himself that desires the pain and the lack of noise that comes with it:

You do know that this is how mentally ill people make their plans, says the dry and belittling voice inside him. You do know that this planning is something only a sick person would do. Stop it, he tells it. Stop it. The fact that I know this is sick means I’m not. — 509

It’s interesting to note that Jude is particularly struggling here with the element of secrecy that the act entails; he is now not just harming himself but aware that, in doing so, he is also harming Willem. The effort to keep his actions secret from Willem, in and of itself, is another source of pain to Jude.

This latest act — the intentional setting alight of his deliberately oil-soaked arm — is a new frontier for Jude. Elsewhere Yanagihara has written of how his body is now so covered in scars that Jude struggles to find any new place to cut himself. Both the alteration of methodology then, and the severity of the act, show the predicament of the addict: the tipping point at which the same is no longer enough, and things must escalate for the desired effect to be attained. For his part, Jude is aware at least that in engaging with this futile pursuit he is overstepping a boundary:

until that point, he had never thought himself capable of hurting himself in a way that couldn’t be fixed. — 511

Another reason for this escalation, is that elsewhere in Jude’s life the stakes have been raised. His having ended up romantically involved with both his best friend and the closest thing his narrative has to a fairytale prince (all in one person) is, by Jude’s estimation, ‘an embarrassing bounty’ (p.560). One which leads to his adopting a new mantra:

Don’t you dare ruin this. Don’t you dare complain about what you don’t even deserve. — 502

But things are not even as clear cut as that. Mixed in with his understanding how lucky he is in his relationship with Willem, and his self-recriminating over the prospect of his destroying it, is Jude’s enduring fear of co-dependence. We see it manifest, as we have on many occasions before, in his unwillingness to ask for help:

Then help me, he wanted to say. Please help me. But he didn’t. He was too ashamed. –539

This week, however, we see the first explicit inclusion of some causal reasoning behind this attitude beyond simple pride and the desire for acceptance on equal terms. Between the monks, Brother Luke, the clients (against whom Jude admits to having never conceived of putting up a fight), Dr Traylor, and presumably starting — by way of omission — with his absent parents, Jude conceives of the shape of his life as having been determined almost entirely for him:

he had simply let his life be dictated to him by others — 545

We recall again his mania for lockable spaces that he can clean and control, and for things that he can call his own. We think also of the characterising of self-harm as a statement of ownership of his own body. By this same logic Jude has retained his secrets both out of fear that they will separate him from others (that he will be seen as a freak), and out of the fear that opening up will make him, once again, co-dependent: no longer the sole keeper and controller of his history, or alone in shaping his future.

Despite this closed-circuit of self-perpetuating, destructive logic (the thorough, nuanced construction of which is Yanagihara’s great achievement in A Little Life), we see Jude making further progress. The increased severity of his self-harm might seem indicative of a downward trajectory, but I read it as quite the opposite. Those hyenas and shadow-dwellers that inhabit Jude’s psyche are more active precisely because they fear for their own efficacy. If Jude St Francis is able to piece together some kind of contentment for himself, a life of relative comfort in the company of someone he loves, what then for those monsters that have heretofore kept him at heel?

And Jude is opening up further. In the course of the week, as his relationship with Willem has continued to evolve, he has moved away from conceiving of himself as ‘a demon who has disguised himself as a human’ (p.497), past praising himself for keeping his secrets from his best friend, and to a place where he is able to feel ‘genuine pride […] that Willem should trust him so much and that he is actually getting to tell him the truth’ (p.506).

The day of talking in their closet, in which Jude finally reveals to Willem all that he has kept from him (and from the world), is a moment of great release for the reader. We, like Jude, feel the lifting of an enormous weight of secrecy, and the clearing of a path towards something brighter that could lay ahead. But, just as Jude is nagged by his own fears for the future, the reader is burdened with having eavesdropped on those conversations that are still to come between Willem and Harold: harbingers perhaps of yet further tragedy.

I also enjoyed, this week, getting to spend a bit more time with Willem, and seeing his relationship with Jude from his perspective. During the brinksmanship towards that revelatory conversation we are given an important insight into Willem’s own thinking, as he — like Jude — fears the consequences of absolute clarity between them:

What if the next question he asks is the question that finally opens the gates, and everything he has ever wanted to know about Jude, everything he has never wanted to confront, comes surging out at last? — 523

He too, worries about what co-dependency might mean; he feels keenly ‘Harold’s unspoken but […] unshakable expectation that [Willem] will always know what to do about Jude’ (p.530). And, when voice is finally given to the unspoken parallel:

“I’m not Hemming, Willem,” Jude hisses at him. “I’m not going to be the cripple you get to save for the one you couldn’t.” — 529

We see Willem mired in doubt as to the veracity of the comparison:

He thinks: Is he right? Do I see him as Hemming? And then he thinks: No. That’s Jude’s delusion, because he can’t understand why anyone would want to be with him. It’s not the truth. But the explanation doesn’t comfort him, and indeed makes him more wretched. — 531

That, towards the end of the week, we see Willem engaged in his own (self-)deceptions is a perhaps overdue complicating of the role he plays, and is to play, in Jude’s life. Having been open early on about my wish to see them together, let me state openly now that if it’s to be some action or inaction of Willem’s that finally breaks Jude St Francis, that Ms Yanagihara, will be more than this reader can take.

• As I like to when these things crop up in the text: a performance of Schumann’s ‘Fantasy in C’ for your enjoyment.

As we’re nearing the end here, let me remind you that there’s still a chance to win yourself a tote bag. There have been some really insightful contributions in the responses to each week’s post, but I have a feeling the best may be yet to come. Your contribution, whatever form it may take, could yet see you the envy of all your friends. I’ll be announcing the winner in the final letter in two weeks’ time.