Iris Murdoch Puns

I like The Sea, The Sea

I'm currently reading this book and I would really like to know people's thoughts on the Protagonist/Antagonist Charles Arrowby. At times I love the guy and his insightful look on life down to the vainist details of the human psyche. Most of the time I'm wondering, do I like this guy, or is he just a pompous, narcissistic ass, or do I genuinely feel sorry for him?

It is apparent he's an obsessed lunatic, but I do love his dynamic character, and it really does resonate with me (minus the quixotic, obsessed lunatic he is) because I feel that we as humans can at times be very bold and hard headed scoundrels,and at other times, weak yet, self-seeking spirits yearning for more. Wanting what's not meant to be. Resting (and obsessing) upon our laurels.

The book is absolutely amazing and the imagery is whimsical and this book really left me soul searching in an attempt to come to terms with my own egotistical, yet at times, deep nature. I'm still a little confused with myself and never had a novel ever make me question my existence like this. Needless to say, Iris Murdoch is a genius writer. This is my first novel written by her --and the first person (and third person?) diary style writing, and the character building is stunning. What are other people's thoughts and feelings about this Novel? And have you read anything else by her?

I'd be more interested in her fiction but I I'd give one of her philosophy books a try if it's worth a gander.

Incredible read here. Very much enjoyed.

https://www.academia.edu/19852225/_There_is_no_Such_Thing_as_a_Sexual_Relationship_Lacanian_Principles_in_Iris_Murdoch_s_The_Sea_The_Sea

Lolita is one of my favorite novels, mostly for the writing itself. Recently, I listened to the audiobook version, read by Jeremy Irons, which is fantastic. He gives a brilliant performance. Anyway, it got me thinking about another novel I read a while back, Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea. I had an audible credit I needed to use, so I decided to listen to that one as well.

It occurs to me now how similar these books are, as far as the narrators go. Both are obsessive and narcissistic, fixated on some original lost love from the past, prone to lyrical flights of fancy and overwrought descriptions, manipulative and self-deluding, viewing other people mostly as objects in their dream. They rarely consider the feelings of others (although they think they do), and only care about them to the extent that they can play a role in the fantasy. Otherwise they’re expendable or merely a nuisance. Obviously, in the case of Lolita, Humbert Humbert being a pedophile adds a whole extra disturbing layer to it.

Thing is, I understand why someone wouldn’t want to be trapped for 300+ pages with a narrator like this (pedophilia in Lolita aside), but when it’s done well I find it super entertaining. Maybe it’s because there is a pretentious/overly romantic side to my own personality, and so I find totally unhealthy depictions of it to be darkly funny in a way, although I can’t relate to the more destructive elements. For example, the way Charles Arrowby forces himself into people’s lives, creating chaos and drama, his casual cruelty and sense of entitlement, his constant push/pull dance with people he senses he has emotional power over.

I do enjoy his fussy descriptions of meals (“Fresh apricots are best of course, but the dried kind, soaked for twenty-four hours and then well drained, make a heavenly accompaniment for any sort of mildly sweet biscuit or cake.”). He’s insufferable but it genuinely makes me laugh out loud at times.

I’m trying to think of other novels with this kind of narrator. I might put Ignatious from A Confederency of Dunces in a similar category, but he doesn’t quite have that melancholic “starring as Hamlet in the tragic play of my life” thing.

My God, that bloody casket has fallen on the floor! Some people were hammering in the next flat and it fell off its bracket. The lid has come off and whatever was inside it has certainly got out. Upon the demon-ridden pilgrimage of human life, what next I wonder?

Have any of you read The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch? To me, it's a masterful portryal of what it's like to be limerent. From Wiki:

>The Sea, the Sea is a tale of the strange obsessions that haunt a self-satisfied playwright and director as he begins to write his memoirs. Charles Arrowby, its central figure, decides to withdraw from the world and live in seclusion in a house by the sea. While there, he encounters his first love, Mary Hartley Fitch, whom he has not seen since his love affair with her as an adolescent. Although she is almost unrecognisable in old age, and outside his theatrical world, he becomes obsessed by her, idealising his former relationship with her and attempting to persuade her to elope with him.

It was a sickening and profoundly disturbing read for me, as someone who was/is both limerent and limerent object. Charles interprets every action Mary takes as confirming his suspicions that she might one day run away with him, that she is secretly in love with him.

I found it pretty helpful to gain some perspective on my own limerent episodes and being on the receiving end of my ex's limerence. Definitely recommend it - it's a really engrossing and enjoyable read, too!

After reading two books by Iris Murdoch -- Under the Net and The Word Child -- I have fallen completely in love with her writing. Although I'm a slow reader, I'd like to read all of her novels eventually; but because I'm a slow reader I'd like to ask for your help in finding out which of her other books are most similar to these two.

By similar, I mean books

(1) which centrally feature a witty, dissolute, self-absorbed, but caring protagonist;

(2) in which said protagonist navigates a series of slightly absurd (and often funny) situations;

(3) and in which, despite (2), the central conflict is resolved ambiguously or tragically, though not altogether without any hint of hope for the protagonist's future.

EDIT: If you can think of novels by other authors that fit this description, I'd love to hear about them, too. (The closest I can think of is Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim, which I loved as well.) Thanks!

Don't worry, you're in good company people. It seems that some of the most intelligent people ever to have lived decided that having children wasn't necessary, prudent or wise.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/mar/15/why-philosophers-make-unsuitable-life-partners

I only recently learned about Iris Murdoch.

One article describes her like this :

>People who met the British novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) tended to want to describe her. She had big, round blue eyes, strawlike hair and a broad face with high cheekbones. She resembled a lioness or, in one observer’s view, the actress Falconetti in the 1928 silent “The Passion of Joan of Arc.” The intensity of Murdoch’s gaze, boring into you from the dust jackets of her many novels, seemed a promise of the books’ contents. For decades this remarkable writer delivered prickly, sophisticated and somewhat unearthly fiction about good and evil and sex and morality. She trailed a large, large muse. She deftly moved her ideas about, positioning them like the slabs used to build Stonehenge.

Also...

>She had many liaisons with both men and women throughout her life, even during her long and happy marriage to the shambling and abstracted English literary critic and writer John Bayley.

And...

>Murdoch was a staunch feminist, and a pioneer in putting complex and believable gay and lesbian characters into novels. But she also wrote six novels from the point of view of male characters (these are, in fact, some of her very best) and none from a woman’s first-person perspective. Nothing about her was ever simple.

According to this article, Murdoch's writings suggests she believes that "good exists independently of our will; that it is something we recognise, rather than something we choose". And while she holds a high opinion of science, she deems it subservient to human needs :

> We are men and we are moral agents before we are scientists, and the place of science in human life must be discussed in words. This is why it is and always will be more important to know about Shakespeare that to know about any scientist.

She believes that...

> *We ought to know what we are doing. We should aim at total knowledge of our situation, and a clear conceptualisation of all our possibilities. Thought and intention must be directed towards definite overt issues or else they are merely daydream. 'Reality' is potentially open to different observers. What is 'inward', what lies in between overt actions, is either impersonal thought or 'shad

Apparently they were very close early in their careers, before Murdoch was more attracted to mysticism and Platonism while Anscombe was more attracted to Aristotelian virtue ethics. Anscombe and Phillipa Foot's virtue ethics have often been compared positively.

I am wondering how Murdoch's moral philosophy(which she developed long after her connection with Anscombe and Foot faded) compares, both in terms of similarities and differences. I find in interesting how Anscombe asserts the paramount importance of moral psychology(in her article on modern moral philosophy), something which Murdoch seems to be focused on as well, especially with her focus on Simone Weil.

I did find one note in this short article: https://www.womeninparenthesis.co.uk/anscombe-foot-midgley-and-murdoch-a-female-philosophical-school/

" Anscombe’s interest in overt physical action contrasts with Murdoch’s interest activity of the inner life. " Even that I'd love to see elaborated on!

Who likes Iris Murdoch ?