“Pearl Grey Homburg”
Book 1, chapter 19; Book 2, chapter 10
Characters
1.19 Old man (unnamed) his niece (Claire), his wife, brothers and daughter (deceased, unnamed), his son in the army (unnamed)
2.10 protagonist, a literary type (unnamed), his girlfriend (Elaine) his other woman and Elaine’s friend (Jenny)
General Subject/ Plot
1.19: A man returning home has, as he does every time returns home, a renewed sense of his loneliness. (Suggestion that he had an inappropriate relationship with his niece, which he doesn’t repent of.)
2.10:
Motifs
1.19 Homburg (like new), suit, apartment, Claire, son in the military/ over seas, in dreams,
2.10 Homburg (dirty, worn), flowered skirt, apartment, alcohol, literature (Pierre/ Confidence Man; The Sacred Fount), black gabardine suits, women who are identical, infidelity, J.W. Dant
Notes
Both “Pearl Grey Homburg” chapters involve a man alone. In the second, he finds he’s only just found he’s been left. In the first, he’s been alone for sometime. Both feature a homburg. In the first, it is in perfect condition despite being very old and is the possession of its wearer. In the second, it is old and stained (recalling the first “Brothers”) and apparently has nothing to do with the unnamed man who’s found it, who is troubled by its appearance. The man in the first “Pearl Grey Homburg” is also unnamed but he has a niece named Claire, whom he harbors an intense feeling about; which gives one the suspicion that this might be Uncle Ray, who abused his niece, but various details complicate that view (that he has multiple brothers, for instance). The interesting detail is dropped that Claire would be sixty five at the time this chapter takes place if she had lived; so, assuming she had died at twenty three, this is forty-two years later. The man in this chapter seems to view the correctness of his clothes as proof of his own correctness — to dress properly is to be morally well. The second “Pearl Grey Homburg” is more openly literary than anything we’ve seen so far and also presents more explicitly than any other chapter yet the idea of “doubles,” and twins, of which the novel itself is replete of examples — things very like each other, almost exactly alike, which however are not at all the same as each other, or probably are not… A suggestion of “metafiction” here I think: an author unable to distinguish between his characters or find meaning in his symbols.
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