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thank you for your kind words about epiphany! i'm glad it was meaningful for you, it was my first fanfiction and i had no idea what effect it would have on anyone.
as for recs, i gave up forcing people to enjoy things i like years ago because it's so disappointing when people don't appreciate them as i do. but all power to you! sometimes you find people who will and its lovely. but I'm glad to find a community of people who already love IM here :)
i always love to ask people... how did you come across In Memoriam in the first place?
so i'm very proud to say that once my friend read the book she verbatim said "okay i really should have listened to you and read it earlier" so i feel like i won <3 but yeah this is real and true, it is very typical that i read the books my friends rec and they don't really want to read what i rec, just because they... don't want to cry. and then this same friend finally read giovanni's room bc of me and she didn't like it very much... and that made me sad. but we live on, i suppose. currently i am spamming her with a bunch of in memoriam posts from tumblr, including a lot of yours, and she is a fan <3
i found in memoriam like totally by accident; i was bored and stuck in a town i did not like and wanted to see what books my local library had to read online... this was available and all i knew about it was that it was historical fiction and also gay, which like. my favorite things. amazing. tell me more.
in memoriam sequel but instead of a literary story of gauntwood processing all their trauma its a comedy sitcom about life at the british embassy in brazil in the style of Parks and Rec or the Office
gaunt looking judgementally at the camera while a colleague he hates gives a terrible presentation on translations
ellwood flirting with gaunt in the tearoom trying to ask him on a date even though they literally live together as life partners - gaunt not noticing it was flirting - ellwood withering against the tea kettle as if this is the greatest trial of his life
the embassy being overrun by marmoset monkeys one day. gaunt stays very still at his desk, frozen in place until its over (he's still there the next day and ellwood is Fed Up TM)
ellwood giving a dramatic talk to the camera about the Trials of Ellwood (its just something about which cut flowers to choose for an embassy event) and gaunt in the background just like . . .
a bottle episode of gaunt and luis hijinks when they get trapped inside the dumb waiter in their house. ellwood is going about whole his day oblivious, assuming gaunt is just chilling in the library reading thucydides
recurring character gideon devi who turns up every now and then to make ellwood's life hell. it doesnt make narrative sense as he shouldn't even be in brazil but no one questions it except ellwood and he never gets a real answer
and of course the obligatory cheesy/adorable/sexy scenes with gaunt and ellwood where gaunt eventually realises ellwood was flirting the whole time and then they sleep together in the copies room
i want to know what happened in ellwood's childhood that meant he interpreted gaunt stroking his eyebrow on divisional rest and calling him 'handsomer than ever' as a comment about ellwood's objective beauty and value (both of which he later believes are lost post-injury), rather than a comment about the way gaunt individually sees him
starting to think ellwood's mother was somewhat damaging, the kind of person to call their child a prince and insist they can never do anything wrong, which also makes the child think their surface level value (like good looks) is a cornerstone of their worth, both irrefutable but strangely disconnected from who they truly are inside. such pandering might be commonplace in well to-do families who had privileges that meant children could get away with things, but often such privileged expectation created a cage for the child instead of freedom (like gaunt, never good enough for his father). ellwood's kind of spoiling is seemingly not to do with class at all. maybe his mother needed to believe her son was infallible for her own reasons - perhaps seeing him as a reflection of her and needing to hide her own inadequacies. the generational trauma of it all.
Their outfits in the bar scene is so precious to me.
We have #ourshane who is dripped out in his "I'm in my millionaire hot shot outfit that I hired a stylist to pick out specifically to woo my man's pants off, you think this gives off 'I want you to rearrange my guts and then rearrange your opinions on us being together' " outfit, beelining to #ourilya who looks like death has warmed over despite wearing his "look at me, I am so nonchalant, in my floral print shirt and short shorts that I got as an inside joke only I know, #bitchface #russian-smoulder ...haha, I'm not pining for a man who's joggers I've shoved my face into to breathe in his scent after he made me meet god on my couch and left me there to rot in memories of us as our cum dried on my stomach" outfit.
Shane in his mind is already 5 steps ahead, he's had a honest talk about himself, has had his epiphanies and he's already quietly worked out a plan to execute in the background and is ready to have.a.talk.with.his.man. ain't nothing gonna stop him from bulldozing the wall that ilya has built up. He's determined šŖ he's got a one track mind. Win ilya back and Win the all stars game. PERIODT.
Ilya on the other hand is fucking bracing for impact going, awh fuck he's gonna break up with me and I'm wearing a floral shirt.... he's gonna tell me he's gonna marry rose landry and I'm wearing a floral shirt...he's gonna tell me he doesn't need me anymore and I'm wearing a floral shirt... I'm gonna lose him forever and I'm wearing. a .goddamed. floral. shirt. ....*record scratch* wait a damn minute, He what?
.....oh my fucking god, this beautiful fucking idiot got himself a stylist!?
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being too warm during the day: well, this sucks, but this temperature makes sense because the sun is up, and the sun is making me warm. i am unhappy but logically i can deal with it for now.
being too warm at night: what if i kill everybody.
cliff marlow eats for free at the panera bread nearest the arena in boston. yeah, heās a millionaire, but he didnāt grow up with a lot, and he fuckinā loves a bread bowl. on game days they have a corner booth saved for him. when customers want a bread bowl they order the marloaf. when he scores, everybody in the joint gets one for free. panera has made him a custom jersey with MARLOAF on the back and he wears it with pride because ālike my girl oprah, I love bread.ā
Ilya is in charge of the Centaurās secret Santa exchange every year. The year Shane joins he gets very serious about no one telling anyone else who they got. Turns out, every name in the basket was Shane (except Shane, who got Harris) and on exchange day heās laughing so hard he canāt breathe as everyone starts handing gifts to a beet red Shane.
If you were a traditional Russian peasant woman I bet it felt good as hell to become possessed by demons and scream obscenities in the face of a priest
ellwood's anger comes from a mix of resentment towards blase civilians, resentment of his idealism about war being exploited, survivor's guilt, and self disgust about his injury. but i'm interested in how these all compound on other layers of self-loathing that were always present in his character, before the war, yet more well hidden than gaunt's.
gaunt hid his self-loathing from others with stoicism, but because this is a novel that is from two characters' points of view, we are allowed to see through his walls immediately by being invited into his interiority. the book opens from gaunt's pov.
meanwhile ellwood, though also a pov character, manages to dilute his self loathing, hiding even from the reader, precisely because he is so forthcoming (or seemingly so) to other characters, unlike gaunt. because we get to see all his hidden thoughts about gaunt, which feel plentiful and vital, we allow him to more easily obscure his own internalised homophobia and his internal racial prejudice towards himself. but this comes out later on, when a facial disfigurement - that at first could be seen as just something he resents due to it sacrificing his beauty - becomes about his ancestry, too.
ellwood is always thinking about his jewishness - with his hair wax, (which he uses to hide his jewish curl type), with his money and generosity (which he shares to the extent of self-ruin in order to avoid being seen as stereotypically miserly), and with his understanding of the diaspora and exile (it was typical that because he wanted to belong to England, he would instead be forced to wander the continent like his ancestors, kicked from their homes). but these things could also be viewed only as vanity if one was to take a naive or deliberately ignorant pov, as much of ellwood's peers do, perhaps in order to avoid thinking about the fact that he is jewish at all. his obsession with his hair becomes simple vanity; his money dealings become about being a part of competitive high society amongst rich peers; his love of England becomes simple and understandable patriotism.
it would also be seen as improper, perhaps, to talk to ellwood blatantly about his heritage - either taboo or too vulnerable for him. the only references we have of this occur 'off screen' and are only referenced as past events: 1. gaunt knows ellwood is ashamed of his family's fortune origins (perhaps something he let slip while drunk, just as gaunt drunkenly let slip his insecurities about speaking to maud) and 2. gaunt doesn't fully understand the extent of ellwood's cultural loneliness (when he tries, as a younger boy, to comfort him about being seen as miserly, which forms a strong and meaningful memory for ellwood).
actually, there is one immediate scene, but it's complicated. its on divisional rest, after they see burgoyne, when ellwood justifies his contemptuous behaviour to gaunt by bringing up what burgoyne did - burnt his poems, called him a jew, insulted him. ellwood's pain compounds in this moment, but gaunt simply replies 'you are jewish', a technically true statement that completely - deliberately - avoids the emotional point. gaunt doesn't know how to explain to ellwood, in the face of righteous anger, how to suggest they submit to burgoyne for their own sakes. it goes against everything ellwood stands for, and in this sense, gaunt's 'death' was inevitable.
and yet importantly, we know gaunt isn't truly dismissing ellwood's pain when he says 'you are jewish'. we saw how hurt gaunt was by what happened to ellwood at school - 'each word splintered into me' + 'i imagine you joking to distract yourself and the trenches seem to close over me'. gaunt understands ellwood far more than he lets on, and all this comes out during divisional rest - but ellwood does not allow himself to 'put two and two together and come up with a number bigger than infinity', to quote another beautiful gay romance. when they meet burgoyne, gaunt seizes the lamented opportunity to 'try another tack with him', but ellwood cannot see past his own hurt. both positions are understandable, and their communication only breaks down because of how tense they are anyway; the battle looms, they are heartbroken and anxious to have to leave paradise behind and go back to war. so gaunt falls back on old habits: short, blunt phrases whose meaning is unclear. this coming from someone who later accuses ellwood of being cryptic! gaunto!
so gaunt says 'you are jewish', because he doesn't know how to say 'i love you so much that the only way i can imagine saving us both right now is to submit to this horrendous thing we're both a part of.' isn't it funny how ellwood is supposed to be more au fait with social fare, and yet when it comes down to it, he cannot play the game? there was talk at the start of the novel of licking someone's shoes to get what you want - well, here we are, with a metaphorical licking. 'you disgusting little suck up!' cries ellwood, and gaunt rounds on him, too angry to even light a cigarette, and despite the pain it's such a beautiful scene because they're actually talking to each other, comfortable enough to finally let some real feelings show, even though they still don't understand each other fully.
by the end of the book, ellwood is planning to leave england, and the passage about his disenchantment is so bleakly beautiful. the nature imagery is strong: instead of sweeping, vibrant colour and sensory delight, we have dullness, blandness and dilution, just like what is happening to ellwood himself as a result of the grief and shell shock. 'watery sunshine and clouded, milk-white sky... muddy fields and dreary sheep and clumsy, prehistoric rock formations'. it's the england that so many english people know, an apathy that so many people who both love and dislike their homeland will recognise. the novel had spent so much time making the reader fall in love with the magical england ellwood originally loved, even despite themselves, and to now see this slap of reality is very painful. but what of the jewishness?
well, we see his self-loathing that was there all along again, via his references to famous jewish characters in literature. they come easily to him, as though they were characters on the edge of his mind all along, who he subconsciously romanticised to make acceptable. Fagin, the caricature thief from Oliver Twist; Shylock, the Jewish moneylender and villain in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, a character who has made performances of this play tricky to perform inoffensively for modern audiences (and referred to previously when Roseveare mentions Ellwood's family being Venetian Jews, which shows Ellwood's cleverness in how to spin literature and art into influence); and lastly, the greedy, corrupt Barabas from Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, another figure who is still argued over today; was Marlowe a bigot or a satirist?
Ellwood finishes by falling out of love with poetry and literature itself, realising the limitations of an art form that relies on language rather than universal modes of communication. It's a surprising revelation for someone from his background, particularly considering that the power of words, particularly spoken words, goes beyond precise meaning. Visual art can be seen by anyone, music heard by anyone, but societies do not converse in paint or melody. Still, we can see how Ellwood arrived here: he has travelled continents, now, and seen how language breaks down, not only between people of different nationalities but between people of different classes, different sexes; even between people who should, by rights, be able to understand each other, like two men who were in the same year at school, and the very best of friends turned to passionate, desperate lovers. Elly and Gaunto.
And yet one of the last things Ellwood hears from Gaunt is that Gaunt never understood him: 'maybe if you used your own words for once, instead of talking in cryptic fucking quotations!' Like on Divisional Rest, Gaunt's communication broke down in a moment of absolute fear: he was to lose Ellwood, and his tongue seized up, even as Ellwood's came recklessly loose.
Hopefully, as they grow together in Brazil, there will not only be better communication but a desire to speak of all that they were before; Gaunt talking about his closed-off-ness, Ellwood speaking about his effusiveness and romanticisations. His skin tone may be easier to disguise in latin brazil, but he will still be a fish out of water culturally and religiously, two things intertwined for Ellwood whether he likes it or not.
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the idea of ellwood and gaunt providing an accidental legacy for questioning preshute boys
preshute can never keep a secret for long, and just as word got out about sandys and caruthers, those two boys who were caught and sent away, disappearing on a train never to be seen again, there's also the story of two boys who went to war and miraculously survived. they left the country - some say they left it together. There are whispers that they fled the war, whispers that they deserted, died, came back from the dead, but there are also whispers that they eloped. Ran away together.
No one at Preshute knew them in person - it was too long ago, and the war feels like a lifetime ago; it's a new decade, and the world is changing, even old Preshute, with its timeless traditions. But people don't forget stories. Sometimes the names of the boys are wrong, or more likely misspelled; mostly names are not mentioned at all, and the story is just a murmur or ripple, because everyone knows its not safe to talk about this kind of thing out loud, not even now, in the 1920s, unless you're ready to laugh cruelly about it all. But every now and then, a young boy - perhaps one in Hundreds, feeling on the cusp of something, or perhaps older, preparing to face the reality of adult life, or even much younger, already knowing who he is and wondering how he'll manage his own life whilst knowing it - hears the rumour of the two Preshute boys who ran away together after the war. They weren't sent away, or captured, or expelled, or dismissed - no, they left by choice, together, and rumour has it (and this is the part that these boys hope is true most of all) that they are still out there somewhere, making a life, even though all who knew them at Preshute are long gone.
thinking about divisional rest again... do you mean to tell me that all that time they were lounging and laying and kissing and speaking poetry and eating cherries and swimming and talking about mythology and touching each other all night long, gaunt thought ellwood was just 'using him' and just playing??! that he was simply getting the Ellwood Just Passing The Time At Preshute Experience??
This idiot
Ellwood out there pretending that chateau was his and gaunt's home, as if it was their bedroom where they'd picked out the furniture, pretending gaunt was truly in love with him, and Gaunt just like
shane would be so happy as an archivist (provided the climate control is good) bc like. sensory issues? hell nah, the papers are scared of light too and itās nice and quiet in there and youāre encouraged to wash your hands and keep them cleanā¦ everything is Organizedā¦ SO ORGANIZEDā¦ there is a finding aid and you know EXACTLY where things are and there is a SYSTEM (okay yes this is an ideal world please stay with me here)
meanwhile
ilya shows up for research purposes and is just disrupting original order and shane is doing his one accursed reading room shift and is watching ilya happily scoot around papers hyperventilating and going NO no NO NO NO
shane would be so happy as an archivist (provided the climate control is good) bc like. sensory issues? hell nah, the papers are scared of light too and itās nice and quiet in there and youāre encouraged to wash your hands and keep them cleanā¦ everything is Organizedā¦ SO ORGANIZEDā¦ there is a finding aid and you know EXACTLY where things are and there is a SYSTEM (okay yes this is an ideal world please stay with me here)
meanwhile
ilya shows up for research purposes and is just disrupting original order and shane is doing his one accursed reading room shift and is watching ilya happily scoot around papers hyperventilating and going NO no NO NO NO
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in memoriam movie but it starts really colorful and after they enlist it starts progressively loosing saturation the closer it gets to gauntās death/ellwoods injury, and then it starts slowly gaining color again after gaunt comes back, so when theyāre in Brazil itās closer to how bright it was at the beginning
some sort of tree @later2dae - Tumblr Blog | Tumlook
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