Grief, Memory, Three O'Clock in the Morning: My Mavis Gallant Centennial Diary, June 25

The Next Chapter

The Next Chapter, with Shelagh Rogers

It was an honour and a pleasure to talk with Shelagh Rogers about writing these diary entries. It’s a short-term project on which I’m embarked, which is the kind I like; also the kind that, at this stage of life, is realistic, the long-term being a thing of the past. I began it on April 11, hesitantly, will wrap it up on August 11, which would have been Mavis Gallant’s (MG) 100th birthday, and will be my 67th, if I make it that far. If not, oh, well. That’s show business. If you’re new here, if you’re having a look for the first time, hello. (Hello as well to the habitués, natch. I’m grateful to any and all who pay this some mind.) This entry is intended as a quick gloss for newcomers or anyone who, like me, takes into account the footnotes.

First of all, the platform. All I understand of Substack is that it’s a way to blog. It seems to be a busy place, a clamour of voices up and down a long hallway, and probably I should be paying closer attention to what’s going on in the adjoining rooms, the plotting, the sedition, but all I do is enter, work, and leave. I don’t know how to exploit it or manipulate it or take advantage of what it offers — I am in receipt of many emails every day alerting me to how I could do it better, and haven’t opened any of them. I don’t even know how to make the alterations and corrections from which the writing would surely benefit. Part of the deal I made with myself was that I would let errors, other than the most egregious or libellous, stand. I’ve never aspired to perfection, which sad fact does me no credit.

I started out calling the diary OH, MG. When it was pointed out that Malcolm Gladwell had already planted his flag on that turf (he’s such a colonialist) I changed tack. It’s been known variously, depending on whether I’m getting it right or wrong, “Grief, Memory, Three O’Clock in the Morning” or “Memory, Grief, Three O’Clock in the Morning.” The reference is to the MG short story “The Moslem Wife,” which is a perfect (that word again) work of art. It’s set in a hotel, a favourite MG gathering ground for the feckless, the lost, the dispossessed. The Hotel Prince Albert and Albion, in the south of France, has been in Netta’s family for generations. Netta is married to her cousin, Jack. Netta loves Jack and Jack loves Netta but they love one another differently. Netta’s love is more encompassing, less conditional, doesn’t rely, as does Jack’s for her, on being in the same room. No love disregards limits, however. As war looms, and as Jack prepares to travel, Netta surveys the borders of her affection. I remember reading the story for the first time, and being stopped in my tracks by this:

“She suddenly knew to a certainty that if Jack were to die she would search the crowd of mourners for a man she could live with. She would not return from the funeral alone.

Grief and memory, yes, she said to herself, but what about three o’clock in the morning?”

Hence the title, which is also apt owing to my circumstances. I write here in the time available to me, which is before I go to work at the store where it was my good fortune to land during the early months of pandemic. Without it, absent that safeguard against isolation, I don’t think I would have made it through. This is to say that I get up at 3, and spill my guts for about 90 minutes. I usually have laid out the elements the night before — I always think of my father who would not go to bed without setting the breakfast table, who would count out the vitamins or whatever other meds had been prescribed, and place them carefully in view, to be taken with orange juice, probably. He would be appalled at the mess of books and papers I confront, to say nothing of how I grab my breakfast as I leave my apartment, a bagel, a banana, and eat as I walk the four blocks to the store. Come the day I have a regimen of pills to deal with, perhaps I’ll change my ways.

I write about MG — I wanted to post every day, but that proved impossible — because I was bothered that it was her centennial year and I wasn’t aware that anyone was making a fuss. I write about her because I feel comfortable in her presence, because there’s something in the tone of her voice, by which I mean the voice that enters my head via my eyes when I take in her words, that I find both challenging and reassuring. I never knew her, but I feel, somehow, that I know her. I’m quite, quite sure she would have had a few choice, sharp words to dismiss whatever it is I’m doing here. Would she have been interested that I’m interested? Maybe. It doesn’t really matter, I’d rather not dwell too long on the hypothetical, though that, too, attracts me. I’m not so noble that I don’t sometimes open the door to speculation about her whys, her wherefores.

The best thing that can happen from this is that readers think again, or for the first time, about Mavis Gallant, track her down, and enter her universe. I hope you will. I stress that I am not a scholar, not a biographer, not an authority, not aspiring to the innovative or definitive. I’m doing this because I want to, that’s all. There are a number of fine, detailed examinations of MG’s writing, and many interviews with her available for anyone to find. I’ve read and profited from may of them. And that’s enough for now, except to say thanks to Shelagh, who is her own national monument, and to her colleague Jacqueline Kirk for extending the invitation to talk on The Next Chapter. And, of course, thanks to you for reading. xo, B