Literary noodlings including a riddle

I'll start off with the riddle, though it isn't mine (and it's a bit more of a puzzle than a proper riddle).

I'm partway through Martin Amis' Other People.  It's hard to say exactly what is going on here.  It is written from the perspective of a patient with total amnesia, slowly relearning the rules of society.  While this may not be the intent, it feels very inspired by Clockwork Orange, in that society has largely broken down and citizen's homes are not particularly safe castles any longer. 

Anyway, the patient, who calls herself Mary, is taking in all the information she can (like a somewhat slower version of the alien (Milla Jovovich) in The Fifth Element):
Books were difficult.  She read The Major Tragedies of William Shakespeare.  It was about four men made up of power, mellifluousness and hysteria; they lived in big bare places that frightened them into speech; they were all cleverly murdered by women, who used an onion, a riddle, a handkerchief and a button.

The riddle is obviously the witches' riddle in Macbeth and the handkerchief is Desdemona's from Othello.  (As I thought I made clear, Othello is by far my least favourite of the four major tragedies.)

But who was killed by an onion (or even a leek)?  It sounds like something more appropriate for one of the comedies, the appearance of a leek in Henry V notwithstanding. Since there are only four kings (or three kings and a prince), this presumably excludes Julius Caesar and Anthony and Cleopatra from the "Big Four" tragedies.  Tears from onions, btw, do make an appearance in Anthony and Cleopatra, but not in any fatal sense.  Most likely it is the poisoned "union" which is dropped into the goblet in Hamlet.  Supposedly, this is a large pearl, which would look just like a pearl onion.  I wouldn't at all be surprised if there are editions of Hamlet that print onion instead of union, but I don't have time for any more literary sleuthing.

So this basically leaves Lear killed by a button?  I have to admit, this is particularly sly on Martin Amis' part.  As with all things Shakespearean, there are major debates about what is meant by Lear's next to last lines: "Pray you undo this button.  Thank you, sir."  Some people assume Lear is choking on some part of his outfit, whereas it could mean to undo a button on the cloth covering Cordelia or even to undo the buckle by which the fool was hung (though presumably he would have said buckle rather than button).  In many ways, this is fairly close to the last moments of Cervantes' Don Quixote, and here the old king throws off the raiment of madness, recovers lucidity and dies.  However, few people would assume that it was literally the button that killed him (or rather the only thing keeping him anchored to life) and even fewer would say that it was definitely Cordelia's button, which seems to be Mary's conclusion.  While Amis surely doesn't completely accept Mary's reading (or epic misreading) of the play(s), he is able to bring together some interesting ideas together, such as it's really always the woman's fault in Shakespeare no matter who carries out the deed (though this does not necessarily mean they have more power).  I found this about as interesting in its own way as what Caryl Churchill comes up with in Top Girls, but written with such economy.  So far, nothing else in Other People has been as brilliant.  I remember not really caring for Night Train (another relatively late Amis novel) but perhaps I will give it another shot next year.  On the agenda for mid July, however, is a one-day visit to Stratford to check out Lear (so I'll be able to see this twice in three years after never having seen it performed live).  I will certainly keep my eye on the button...

I have just about 150 pages left with Proust.  I am going to celebrate so much when this is over.  I am at a particularly bad section where he isn't satisfied with dropping hints about the madeline cookie, he needs to come up with other things that trigger his memory, like an uneven sidewalk reminding him of a trip to Venice or a stiff napkin reminding him of other parties at the Guermantes' mansion.  Each one of them reinforces the memories that the other one triggered.  Enough, we get it already.  While this wouldn't have been for everyone under the best of circumstances, it could have been boiled down to 400-500 pages of intense thoughts on memory, painting, literature (but cut the musings on music, which were never very convincing) and maybe a bit on how people allow their perceptions of artists and others in their social circle to be shaped and shifted by those higher in stature in these same circles, and possibly a bit on how difficult it was to find good servants in those days. I would have kept most of the material on Saint-Loup, cut nearly all the material on Palamède (which reeks very strongly of self-loathing), and maybe kept 25% of the Albertine saga (which is very troubling on other grounds).  That might have been a great piece of work.  But that's not what we are faced with.  I am truly at a loss why people feel Remembrance is the epitome of the novel.  To me it is far too mimetic, i.e. we are dragged along with the Narrator in these epic feats of remembrance, when in fact for the most part, we could be told about them once or twice, and say to ourselves, yes, this is something I too have experienced.  I do think it is an artistic failure on those grounds.  Anyway, I'll probably have one more post on this when I finally cross the finish line this weekend.  Then that will be it, and Proust will be out of my life -- forever.

I've now gathered the four volumes of Amphigorey.  I wasn't even aware until very recently of the final one (Amphigorey Again).  There is no question that they begin to drop off in quality after Amphigorey and Aphigorey Too.  The earlier ones have dark moments but also a lot of whimsey.  I find the later ones are kind of dark for darkness' sake, a bit of going through the motions, since it was so clear what was expected of him.  That doesn't mean I'm not glad to have the set after all these years, but I'll probably return to the first volume the most for inspiration.  I wonder if anyone has actually taken one of the books as a kind of storyboard (or springboard) and written a proper story with actual motivations.  I imagine it could be done, though it's not really the kind of exercise that would motivate me.

I'm not sure what will finally motivate me.  I have some good ideas, but am a bit burned out on writing longer pieces, since I am writing very long technical pieces at work (when I am not writing proposals), and I am having trouble facing writing anything longer than a blog piece when I am off the clock.  Hopefully, that will turn around soon, as I would much rather be doing mathematical modeling at work and writing other, more entertaining things at home.