Enjoy Im Expecting To Live Quite Soon Conceived By Paul West In PDF

hasnt been a whole lot more than a week since I reviewed Paul Wests ALLEY JAGGERS, the first novel in a trilogy revolving around the eponymous Mr.
Jaggers and those who revolve around him in kind, I made a point in that review of establishing that I have only come to know of Paul West very recently, and if this is to a certain extent lamentable, there is certainly ample cause nevertheless to employ that old commonplace which would have up prize late well above never.
West seemed like he was gonna be my sort of bloke, He is all that and more, I will happily confer upon him official rank alongside our foremost unsung, largely forgotten, or for whatever reason maudit masters, provided anybody imagine it within my power to do so, officially or otherwise.
ALLEY was raucous and sublime, Roman candles fired from a recklessly piloted motorscooter, a freewheeling language freakshow, proud of its connoisseurs gallery of ace deformities, something analogous true also of its social comedy, whereby hideous things are to become the bailiffs of trenchant commentary.
One of the great novels of thes, I would likely be the guy to end up making such statements, I did very much come to see in West something like what I went in looking for, this having to do with comparisons I came to make, in my ALLEY JAGGERS disquisition, between the former resident of Eckington, Derbyshire, and his American contemporaries Stanley Elkin and Robert Coover, writers I love about as much as love can love.
That previous review exits, probably aint going anywhere none too quick, Its consultable. For our present purposes, I will once again comment on the relative affordability of Paul West first editions, the fact that Ive ordered a passel, Happy to report: I now have all of the Jaggers trilogy in first edition I will be getting to the third, BELA LUGOSIS WHITE CHRISTMAS, after a little December idyll in Dickens BLEAK HOUSE.
Whereas Alley was the hero or antihero or split difference thereof in the novel named for him, the second novel, the profoundly great IM EXPECTING TO LIVE QUITE SOON, places Alley, the bold marauder to steal the title of a divine folksong from, appropriately, the mids, at the periphery, switching focus to putupon spouse Dot, who, however putupon, can sometimes be supremely forbearing, sometimes delightful venomous, her barbs liable to both draw blood and render the wound infected.
ALLEY JAGGERS culminates in a homicide committed in the strictest sense by calculatedly looneytunes Alley, though it is maybe, if you are available to the dubious consolations of philosophical outlook, in some sense a homicide, grotesque and grotesquely unnecessary, committed by all the goddamn humiliations polluting all of our stupid lives.
If Alley has turned his life against the worldhas undertaken to perform the vaudeville of madness in confrontation with a circumscribed existence in a tiny world with no exit signshis comedy act is already tragicomic from the outset, firstly because it is an alienated outlet that further alienates, and secondarily because it is engineered to sublimate unconscious forces that I believe we intuit very early on are going to eventually come out sideways.
In ALLEY JAGGERS, Alley is living with his wife, his mam, and his mams dachshund, The dachshund is a passive lapdog, but the other three are outrageously nasty to one another, We come to understand that this domestic arrangement is not the least bit uncustomary, The is one home inside a larger community where the general tendency is to work oneself up into a tizzy and then kick something comparatively helpless for no good reason.
The everloving triumph of what Nietzsche called reactive forces, I have already called what West is doing kitchen sink antirealism, and his depiction of dour Midlands miserablism is parodic not only of the communities indexed, but of theatre, literary, and cinematic culture in the United Kingdom of its day.
IM EXPECTING TO LIVE QUITE SOON came out in, the same year BBCstarted running “Play for Today, ” This fact alone brings a slightly wicked grin to my mug, These people are not nice to one another, even if it is not strictly one another that they hate, but rather the whole goddamn pitiful arrangement into which they were born.
Though we will come to understand and sympathize with Dot in ways we might not have imagined possible, very late in IM EXPECTING TO LIVE QUITE SOON we still have her haranguing her motherinlaw in a manner most merciless: “What sticks in my throat is that youre a flaming bleeding filthymouth bandybummed selfpissing pisspot of a hypocrite.
” It must be said: I half suspect this sort of invective might itself have a tendency to warm the English heart, famously a bit like a coal furnace.
That language is also vintage Paul West, Alley Jaggers himself the ultimate ambassador for this sort of stuff, Dot at one point referencing her husbands “wild, confettilike rhetoric,” almost sounding like a critic providing a blurb for a Paul West novel.
Alley is, as established, still with us on the periphery of the second novel in this trilogy, He is in the “security hospital,” testament to the efficacy of performed madness or performance which legitimately leads to madness, one character noting that Alley has basically gotten away with murder, or at least manslaughter.
An institution for the criminally insane aint exactly Mardi Gras, though a lot of that is up to the cognitive flexibility of the institutionalized individual, and I should know, having myself once been a habitué of psych wards and rehabilitation centres.
Folks dont get much more cognitively flexible than dear ol' Alley, Helping matters along are psychiatrists, one of whom is Doctor Withington, doubtlessly to become the enabling “With” alluded to in synopses of BELA LUGOSIS WHITE CHRISTMAS, Part of the clinical regimen involves “LSD abreactive treatments, ” Oh, joy! We have a couple sections here in which Alley holds court before medical professionals intent on transcribing his every pronouncement, Dot, our heroine, nowhere in the vicinity.
“In my book, chimpanzees have landing wheels for when they have to fly anywhere, Parrots have horns, horses have chests of drawers in their sides, pigs have reading lamps fitted into their skullsjust in case they get fed up and want to read the paper.
” In a much later bit of quality talking cure palaver we have Alley going on at considerable length imaging what would have happened if God had created the world on an off day, like, a really, really bad one, cows getting the rhinoceros horns instead of the rhinos, fish coursing hazardously through the sky.
Alley was wont to break into song in the novel named for him, and in the followup we have him serenading a psychiatrist, obviously now at the top of his game:

I wish I was in Timbuctoo sic.

Id Timbuc me, Id Timbuc you,
Id even Timbuc Timbuc too,
Down in Timbuctoo sic,

The wildness has only gotten more confettilike, and I suppose we very much ought to appreciate this stuff as a tantalizing indication of what awaits us in BELA LUGOSIS WHITE CHRISTMAS.
Now, we must return to Dot, as this is of course her novel, more or less, Alley is on her mind, of course, as is her father Tommy Croft, himself institutionalized at the Institution for the Aged and Infirm in Ollerton, Dot visits dad on Fridays, Alley on Saturdays, Shes still living with motherinlaw amp dachshund, Dot is not an especially hateful person, and her bitterness comes, in point of fact, to seem all too reasonable, If Alleys performance of madness comes to suggest that there is nobody home, no real Alley, this becomes dispelled late in ALLEY JAGGERS when we come to understand that a pitiful, hurt child very much obtains.
Dot is all too home, and in many respects IM EXPECTING TO LIVE QUITE SOON evokes a tradition grounding the woes of womankind in the constrictions of domestic space and its endless chores, patriarchal hierarchies relegating them to something worse than second class, nothing first class detectable in any direction whatever.
Living in these spaces is no kind of life, hence the novels title, Expecting to live It would require a complete overhaul of horizon, entirely new frontiers, ALLEY JAGGERS ends with Dot Jaggers getting on a bus so as to visit her father, IM EXPECTING TO LIVE QUITE SOON begins with her getting off the bus in Ollerton a very real onetime mining town in Nottinghamshire, on the edge of Sherwood Forest.
“Heavylegged, tall, and auburnhaired” Dot Jaggers visits her seriallybedwetting father, Tommy Croft, at the Old Folks, Ollerton carrying “the windborne reek of beer brew and sulphur,” the geriatric ward odiferous with “stale apples, disinfectant and a faint reek of greens being boiled.
” Dad, in his senescence, doesnt know if hes coming or going, begs his daughter not to marry Alley, even if the young man is off making a name for himself maybe actually almost sort of the case, apparently completely unconscious of the fact that this marriage has been a done deal for many a moon.
Dot reflects in her disconsolation: “All Ive got now is his mam and her cough and her little cryingdos and that dachshund, Just fancy, a dachshund! Not my kind of dog, Having that kind of dog is putting on airs, asking for an upset, ” Dot reflects on her own mother, Ethel, longdead, availing herself of the appropriate melancholy, Making the arduous, multilegged trek from Ollerton back to her depressing home in Shalethorpe, clinging to proverbs for the fleeting fortitude they might offer, otherwise completely exhausted, Dot appraises herself: “Ee, Im getting bitter, a sour old bitch not out of her twenties yet, but looking halfway to forty.
” Then she picks a fight with fellowpassenger Lady “Featherhat” Morfint, the two women trading insults and quickly becoming friends of a sort, Announcing her identity to Featherhat, mindful of surrounding ears, what with the local infamy of her husband and by extension herself, Dots posture straightens, her whole aspect taking on a “serene truculence,” a lovely bit of phrasing that captures our dear Dot perfectly.
There is a vehicular mishap, the bus colliding with a calf in the road, much ballyhoo ensuing, During the ballyhoo Dot takes passing visual notice of two men who will prove pivotal later, Major Eyeglass and Jimsmith Williams, In befriending so to speak “Featherhat” Morfint, Dot makes some

revealing statements about Alley, altering how we are likely to assess her and her marriage, She pities Alley, but she hardly could be said to despise him, She doesnt think that he can help himself, pitiful as he is, and she doesnt blame him for his crimes and misdemeanours, intending to wait for him.
Dot believes Alley is “helpless” because he is a “scatterbrain, ” This is about the time the bus hits the calf, Later in the novel Dot will aver that Alley has a “quarrel with life, ” This statement seems like it could apply to Dot herself and to the entire human population of Paul Wests trilogy, and in offering this principle sympathetically, Dot proves herself profoundly understanding, both compassionate and more than a little selfaware.
Its legitimately kinda moving. Featherhat will later come calling with intel on possible employment, The Duke, a public house, run by a fellow named Bernard Gambles, There may be a barmaid opening, Donna, Morfints daughter, works there and has expanded outward, done, uh, pretty well for herself, though Lady Morfint abstains from notifying Dot that Donna, as a matter of course, has come to be saddled by locals with the moniker Donnarrhea.
Dot takes the job. The lengthy chapter detailing her first night at work may be the finest postwar literary barroom setpiece after the opening of Pynchons V, Through the pub gig, Dot becomes embroiled in a kind of Bizarro World sex work, The reentry of Major Eyeglass, if that is his real name, exRAF flight sergeant, or so he says, Whoever else he is, hes definitely the Armpit Man, his kink probably selfexplanatory it was dealt with peripherally in David O, Russellsfilm FLIRTING WITH DISASTER, The armpit money is aright, Dot will also meet Jimsmith Williams, a black man, his vernacular positively berserk, to whom she is remarkably kind and who she takes in as a lodger, outraging mam and finally finding a possible grounds for personal liberation in the achievement of fullon pariah status, her racist neighbours so disgusted as to turn away from her altogether.
As this ribald and brilliantly conceived social comedy kicks along, we spend a good deal of time inside Dots head, Thats where our real trajectory is, We are told of how “auburn waves” of reminiscence and reverie “collapse against steel breakwaters, ” Early on: “Her mind, trying to elude itself, is simple, pentecostally just, For all she does, she pays, For all she does instead of doing what she wants to do, she pays doubly, And her mind quakes with what it has to do in order to elude itself, a sly and vain exercise for which she has no qualifications whatever.
” Shortly after this passage we have Dot lying in bed, alone, mind throbbing: “All fatigue and conscience, she talkatively waits, ” Just the wording, suggesting a womans talkative insomniac solitude, the waiting for naught, moves me, Over dinner with mam, momentarily not bickering: “you ever had the feeling that youre suffocating even when theres air enough Havent you ever felt that you were skidding around on ice, and when you look down your feet are on the ground large as life and not moving at all” To start living quite soon.
Where When How In the final sections, the fake domestic purgatory seems to give way for a moment to a truer purgatory, a groundless purgatory, a purgatory of flight, the tablecloth snatched away, table furnishings undisturbed.
There is even a child, a baby, its mere existence something of a conjurers sleightofhand, Coming back to her life, a death regrounding her, Dots enabling illumination is, in part, informed by the insight that “your lifes not where you are, it's what's in your head.
” ALLEY JAGGERS took place primarily in the days leading up to Christmas, IM EXPECTING TO LIVE QUITE SOON commences in May, Is there a correlation perhaps between International Workers' Day and the first editions jacket comparing Dot to Brechts Mother Couragehappened between ALLEY JAGGERS and IM EXPECTING TO LIVE QUITE SOON.
Is Dot a fellowtraveller, completely unbeknownst to herself, of the kids of Pariss May The ones who believed in taking your dreams for reality and seeing the beach beneath the paving stones The matter of beginning to live is, to steal a bit of verbiage from Dot, a question on unjailing, though, as West has it, in as lovely a bit of prosody as you will ever likely read, "the slackmouthed, finite asking will not end.
" Such is everforlorn desire its very self, .