The wordplay in Ali Smith’s new novel reminded me of Shakespeare crossed with Ira Gershwin. It’s verbal vaudeville put to the service of a nervy, upper educational caste British novel. It’s Cambridge in prose.
As for that fragmentary title, if you Google the whole phrase to find out the source of that everyday expression, you’ll find that no one knows for sure where it comes from. And I’d never, never, never give you the whole familiar quotation. Ali Smith thinks that some thoughts/feelings are too difficult to state so she just suggests them. Not that she lets you escape from what’s she’s suggesting. There But For The is in four sections named after: You guess.
It’s Broadway grafted onto the London street grid. It’s a London/New York fusion and it works. Broadway show tunes sing through the plot. A mother doesn’t tell her kid to dress warmly. She writes a note, button up your overcoat.
What a prosaic mind you must have, if all you can think of is that loving show tunes is a gay stereotype! That comes up in the plot. When Mark, who is gay, steps out of a dinner party in the style of “hell is other people” and then stops just before the threshold on his way back, he can eavesdrop on how “gay” the straight guests think he is acting. And stalwart business type, Richard, mutters “pansy” when a character over dinner explains how the octave leap opening Somewhere Over the Rainbow makes the song work.
It made me think of Ali’s anecdote of filling the windshield containers of your car with urine instead of water. That’s so when you turn them on while driving, the car will spew urine out over the roof onto any attendant bicycle riders.
Mark brings his wordplay loving new friend, Miles, sometimes called Milo, to the dreary dinner party by the house-proud Lees and their philistine friends. In There But For The, the more you love wordplay, the more uplifting a character you are. And Miles is a master. He writes Mark a letter on what the word and means. The word is a conjunction. I hope you got that because I’m not helping you with it. There is also a fine sentence later on that uses the word the five times at the beginning of a sentence. The the the… I can only handle three iterations. That’s my limit.
Sometime during the dinner, Miles steals a salt shaker. Only Mark sees. Miles has apparently also lifted a knife and fork.
There’s method to Miles’ cutlery madness. He excuses himself upstairs…everyone presumes to use the bathroom… but locks himself in the guest bedroom instead, behind a certified antique door. I told you the Lees were house proud. They won’t break down the door. Besides they are too polite to use force. They entertain often and like to invite interesting guests. This guest, in the spirit of The Man Who Came to Dinner, refuses to leave.
Milo is passed food under the door and from his growing crowd of camp followers who have set themselves up in a back lot outside his window. The Lees pass him some ham under the door hoping he’ll leave because he’s a vegetarian. It doesn’t work.
Miles/Milo is the story’s empath. All the key characters are tethered to his graceful sympathy.
Anne, in a flashback to her teenage years, was the winner on a school essay contest. The prize is a continental holiday. But Anne feels out of place in France with her provincial Scottish background. All the other student winners are urban types from the southern counties. But one of those students is Miles who takes her under his wing, charming her with wordplay. You’ll love Miles for cheering the awkward Anne out of her shyness without embarrassing her, helping without humiliating.
Miles helps in the best way, just by being Miles. There’s Anne and Mark. May Young, an elderly invalid who Miles reads to. And there’s Brooke, the most word-besotted ten year old girl in all of literature, who forms an platonic friendship with Miles. It’s a marriage of minds between the two wordsmiths.
The novel concludes with a Joycean anthem to the power of language to astonish and delight. It’s spoken by ten year old Brooke who sounds like she easily has the capacity to earn several post-graduate degrees by the time she’s eleven.
Brooke is a cleverist. That’s a new noun that Smith invents for this novel. Did you hear the one about the optometrist’s son? He made a spectacle of himself. That’s in the novel too. Sorry about the spoiler but you’ve probably heard that joke before. It’s been running through my head since I’ve read There But For The. At least I’m not retelling the knock knock jokes. You can read them for yourself.
Imagine that Noel Coward married Ludwig Wittgenstein and they had Harpo Marx as their child. Then you’re ready for There But For The by Ali Smith. Due in September from Pantheon.
