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1
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- Intimations of disaster: eros & thanatos in contemporary fiction
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2
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- A prolific writer, Thomas' career has been most successful when his
circumstances have allowed him to concentrate on writing. He is best
known for his somewhat fantastical novel The White Hotel (1981). Like much of his work, it is not
particularly popular in the UK, but has proved very popular in
continental Europe and the United States. It has also elicited
considerable controversy, as some of its passages are taken from Anatoly
Kuznetsov’s Babi Yar, a novel about the Holocaust. In general, however,
Thomas' use of such "composite material" (material taken from
other sources and imitations of other writers) is seen as more
postmodern than plagiarist.
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3
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- I had chosen to encompass the extremes of pleasure and pain, Eros and
Thanatos. A young opera singer, Lisa, is analysed by Freud in Vienna,
and writes for him what he calls an “inundation” of violent sexual
fantasy. The centrepiece of the novel is his analysis of her. Naturally
he traces her hysterical illness back to her childhood; later, it
appears that, being half-Jewish, her illness stems from a premonition of
the real hysteria of the Holocaust. Some readers hated the sex; others,
the violence. But a French woman, a journalist, told me my book appealed
to “les foux, les femmes and les juifs”. Of course not all madmen, and
certainly not all women and Jews; but enough to gain a great number of
readers. – D.M. Thomas on his book
- http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1291620,00.html#article_continue
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4
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- fantasy and psychological insight are mingled.
- ''pornographic writings,'' which under the spell of ''a severe sexual
hysteria'' to quote the imaginary Freud) she produced during the course
of her treatment.
- “'To endure life remains, when all is said, the first duty of all living
beings. Illusion can have no value if it makes this more difficult for
us.'' – Freud
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5
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- “Whatever else may be said of D. M. Thomas, he certainly knows how to
stir up the literary shit“
- “A remarkable and original novel… there is no novel to my knowledge
which resembles this in technique or ideas. It stands alone.” Graham
Greene
“I quickly came to feel that I had found that book, that mythical
book, that would explain us to ourselves.” Leslie Epstein, New York Times
“A novel of blazing imaginative and intellectual force” Salman
Rushdie, The Times
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6
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- The pervasive thread that binds together the very disparate contents of
The White Hotel is the eternal struggle between the life force and the
death instinct. This conflict is played out within individual psyches
and family and social groups as well as between nations, and is seen as
essentially beyond the control of rational thought.
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7
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- Discuss the use of repeating patterns throughout The White Hotel. How do
these motifs connect different incidents? What do they reveal about the
way Lisa senses time and the world around her?
- Based on what else you learn of Lisa in the novel, do you agree with
Freud's analysis of her? Why or why not? Consider how Freud's bias and
Lisa's lies shape the analysis.
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8
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- The point of view shifts throughout the book, depending on the story
being presented. Some chapters are meant to represent documents, so both
point of view in the document and the writer of the document in the
world of the story must be taken into account. In basic terms, the
prologue consists of a series of letters.
- Chapter 1 is a first person poem, Chapter 2 is third-person omniscient
narration, and Chapter 3 is first-person narration. Chapter 4 is
third-person limited omniscient narration and first person letters,
Chapter 5 is third-person omniscient narration, and Chapter 6 is
third-person limited omniscient narration.
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9
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- The opening passages of William
Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury offer perhaps the best-known example,
of this technique. The White
Hotel speaks to readers in the voice of an unreliable narrator, who is
either incapable of or averse to being truthful.
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10
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- We have to ask ourselves the question:
what if all of the hysteria, the fears & sex of the novel’s
plot, are correct? Is there a way
that the unconscious predicted the horrors of the Holocaust, and the
blight that Europe, in the midst of its “Eros” would run into? That fantastic element of the novel
bears serious consideration…
What if?
- You can consider the movie reference, Prelude to a Kiss: in the midst of their new love comes
death…
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Notes
