Alan Catlin

On Seeing a Photo of Iris Murdoch in The NYTBR

Looking for all the world like
a still from a David Lynch film
never released.  From that nebulous
time between Eraserhead and Twin
Peaks, where everything is black and
white and free floating like a dream
inside a nightmare. There Iris is,
standing in the shadows, well behind
this weird standing lamp with hanging,
balled tassels, something Dali would
have in his studio that would turn
up as a detail in innumerable pieces
with titles as long as novellas.
A lamp that would not be out of place
in a blind grandmother’s living room,
as anyone who could see would know
better than to buy it. While Iris, what
of her? She seems like an afterthought?
A person who stepped into a frame and was
captured there, out of focus, very much
like the ice queen, the public persona,
she cultivated, while the book, under review,
her collected letters, reveals a woman with
omnivorous, even enormous, sexual
appetites she was not shy about indulging.
One letter in particular, reveals a woman
disdained by her lover for being the submissive
in a roll playing game with a future Nobel
Literature Laureate. The games people play,
the books that they wrote.

 

(Originally published in Abbey.)