The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch, the winner of the 1978 Booker Prize, is told in the first-person narrative of Charles Arrowby, a renowned theatre director. To the astonishment of his theatre colleagues, Charles decides to retire to a secluded seaside home to pen his memoirs. He relishes the quiet life of a small village, celebrating the isolation, the occasional dip in the sea, and the simple meals he prepares for himself. He appears content, sensible, and likable. His prose is elegant and captivating.

All is well until he crosses paths with an elderly woman who, by the strangest of coincidences, turns out to be Hartley, his childhood sweetheart, the first woman he ever loved, and the memory of whom has haunted him for decades. And thus, the games commence.

Hartley is now significantly older and no longer the blushing schoolgirl who was the love of his life. Charles convinces himself that she is unhappily married and that she has never ceased loving him. Despite her desperate pleas to be left alone, he feels duty-bound to rescue her from an unhappy marriage. He is determined to revive their love and goes to extraordinary lengths to persuade her to flee with him, even temporarily imprisoning her in his upstairs bedroom. He becomes increasingly delusional, living in an alternate reality where everything Hartley says and does is distorted to fit his vision.

Charles' quest to rescue Hartley is interrupted by unannounced visits from theatre acquaintances, former lovers, his cousin James, and Hartley's estranged adopted son. Charles' cottage transforms into a virtual stage, with a diverse cast of characters entering, reciting their lines, staying for extended visits, and exiting. They are portrayed as unique, fully developed individuals, some of whom are prone to histrionics and have a penchant for the dramatic. They are realistically drawn and inject vitality into Charles' life. Charles attempts to direct their entrances and exits as a play director would.

Adding to the mix is Charles' vision of a sea monster, a series of improbable coincidences, an accidental death, an attempted homicide, and you have the makings of a maelstrom of dramatic activity.

From a sane, articulate, and likable narrator, Charles gradually evolves into a completely unreliable and emotionally unstable individual. He is narcissistic, ego-driven, selfish, manipulative, cruel, delusional, obsessive, irritating, insanely jealous, and a pathological liar. His unmasking is masterfully handled. Murdoch does not hold back on him. By compelling us to inhabit his mind, we witness firsthand his delusions and warped rationalizations.

In Charles, Murdoch has crafted a complex character who has the gravitational force to draw people into his orbit, exploit and manipulate them, while being completely oblivious to the suffering he causes. He is a sympathetic character in that he desires to resurrect the innocence and promise of young love. But his insanity lies in believing that he can forcibly resurrect it through the sheer force of his will.

A gripping exploration of love, friendship, and jealousy in their various manifestations, as embodied in a delusional protagonist and his colorful cast of characters; set against the backdrop of a wild, tempestuous sea; and seasoned with drama, humor, and irony.

A compelling novel that is highly recommended.

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This great work vividly demonstrates how literary works, in their prime, can fulfill a moral function. It shows that they can achieve this without blatant moralizing or taking sides in ideological battles. It does so by shedding light on the illusions and fantasies that are intertwined with the self-knowledge process.

Specifically, it reveals to us that much of what we consider self-knowledge, as well as knowledge of others and God, is ultimately a consoling illusion. Our faith, love, and knowledge are invariably oriented towards an ego-affirming illusion. Each one only serves to strengthen and affirm the prison walls that enclose us within our personalities.

Murdoch takes on a subject here that is arguably among the most difficult in the literary, spiritual, and moral realms, and one that is still not well understood. This is why the work is existentially necessary. Its focus is on exploring a way out of the self-enclosed system of illusions that nourishes our ordinary sense of self.

An aging actor, Charles Arrowby, abandons his fame and worldly status to retreat by the sea and gain perspective on his life. Shakespeare's Prospero, who gave up his magic to experience reality, looms in the background of Arrowby's story. Arrowby has been a successful Prospero, using his charm to earn fame, prosperity, and sexual success. He has spent a lifetime weaving a glittering web of illusions that has left those around him spellbound and completely under his control. Now, he wants to step out of the game of illusion-making and see if he can live outside of it.

However, the steps he takes out of the overt illusionism of his youth and into consciousness only deepen the illusion or push it to a deeper level. His attempts to gain self-knowledge by piecing together a story from the senseless and chaotic events of his life only involve him in a tyrannical revisionism of the past.

He meets people from his past, including his first love, and tries to force and insidiously compel them to fit into his solipsistic pattern. We are accustomed to a simplistic, nostalgic image of the dreamer, but here, Murdoch reveals the dreamer as a tyrant fundamentally opposed to life, unable to reconcile with it, and more than willing to brutalize it if it refuses to submit to his pattern.

I think we can better understand the significance of Arrowby's character if we look at what Murdoch says in her philosophical work, The Sovereignty of Good, about learning to truly see the world. She writes that "it is in the capacity to love, that is to SEE, that the liberation of the soul from fantasy consists." The freedom that is a proper human goal is freedom from fantasy, which is the realism of compassion.

Moreover, "it is the peculiar subtlety of this system that, while constantly leading attention and energy back into the self, it can produce, almost all the way as it were to the summit, plausible imitations of what is good." It is precisely this inability to truly see anything as it is and to liberate oneself from the self-centered, self-constructed fantasy world that characterizes Arrowby.

The actor can only meet life on his own terms. And once the story is told, we realize that we are all actors, sharing in Arrowby's very human predicament. Like him, we find that we cannot love anything unless it is first coated in our illusions. We cannot accept the reality of others unless we first successfully coax them to act according to our image of them.

Arrowby has spent his whole life consumed by his private fantasy of what love should be, yet ironically, it is this very fantasy that has prevented him from ever truly seeing any of his many partners. He has the hollow, chilling feeling that after a lifetime of encounters, he has never really met another person.

Illusion not only perverts interpersonal relationships but, more fundamentally, our relationship to the ground of our being itself. "If even a dog's tooth is truly worshipped it glows with light. The venerated object is endowed with power, that is the simple sense of the ontological proof."

Being involved in Arrowby's unfolding narrative, I often felt a sense of claustrophobia. Murdoch effectively captures the obsessive mind's broken record as it repeatedly recycles its absurd interpretations of events that seem to have no connection to the meager evidence we are given.

Murdoch presents Arrowby's cousin James as a wiser counterpart who has gained some insight into this whole illusion-making process that is human life. James tries to show Arrowby that he is pursuing a counterfeit eternity that only imprisons him further.

Arrowby does have moments of realization. He lies on the shore at night by the sea and manages to see "the universe turning itself inside out." There are times when, mercifully, he catches glimpses of a world outside his solipsistic construct.

“However life, unlike art, has an irritating way of bumping and limping on, undoing conversions, casting doubt on solutions, and generally illustrating the impossibility of living happily or virtuously ever after.” Art itself falsifies the real by trying to present it as something that can be completely accounted for.

Perhaps it is that Murdoch's work ultimately reveals its truth when it shows its own insufficiency and falsity. Like Wittgenstein's ladder, her story gives us a means to climb, but one that we must discard once we have ascended.

This is yet another addition to the "What were they thinking?!?" shelf. In fact, it's doubly so. It's not merely another misstep by the Booker selection committee, whose judgments we already know to view with a healthy dose of skepticism. But to be so dreadfully let down by Dame Iris, someone we know has the ability to write interestingly, albeit sometimes at the cost of verbosity. Regrettably, in "The Sea, The Sea," we witness her giving full rein to her numerous vices, with little of the compensating acuity that is present in some of her earlier works.

There are poor writing choices aplenty. Or at least none that benefit the unfortunate reader. So we are subjected to the first-person narrative of a single-minded narcissist. One who is delusional (sea-serpents haunt him when he swims) and who appears determined to torment us with the strange details of every peculiar meal he prepares for himself in his decaying "squalid to a degree only an English person would tolerate" surroundings. Such as this:

"Felt a little depressed but was cheered up by supper: spaghetti with a little butter and dried basil. (Basil is of course the king of herbs.) Then spring cabbage cooked slowly with dill. Boiled onions served with bran, herbs, soya oil and tomatoes, with one egg beaten in. With these a slice or two of cold tinned corned beef. (Meat is really just an excuse for eating vegetables.) I drank a bottle of retsina in honour of the undeserving rope."

I don't know about you, but a few paragraphs of this drivel are enough to drive me to the end of my patience. Even if I could overlook Dame Iris and her editors' astonishingly dull catalog of the dietary fancies of a narcissist, those parenthetical comments ("basil is of course...") are simply unforgivable.

After forty pages. And not another character in sight? Well, then! It's time to abandon ship. Or perhaps seek bail.

In the words of a more talented reviewer than I: "This is not a book to be set aside lightly. It should be forcefully thrust aside."

In some ghastly corner of the library of the damned, a doomed subcommittee is being compelled to deliberate on the question: "Does 'The Sea, The Sea' represent a more shameless crime against innocent readers than 'The Infinities'?" Discuss.

Iris, Iris, Iris.... How the mighty have fallen.

5 Jungian Stars!

2015 Gold Award - Tie (First Favorite Read)

Over the weekend, I was sitting with a dear friend, enjoying a cup of tea and engrossed in reading. She curiously asked, "How is the Murdoch book?" I looked up without hesitation and simply said, "Simply wondrous." With an adorable tilt of her head, she inquired, "What's it about?"

I took a moment, let out a sigh, and exclaimed, "Everything." This book is truly a psycho-spiritual masterpiece of the highest caliber. I decided to sit down and list out all the things it encompasses:

- The stars and the earth, representing the vastness and connection of the universe.
- Isolation, connection, misunderstandings, and avoidance, which are common human experiences.
- Narcissistic men and histrionic women, highlighting different personality traits.
- Misunderstood boys and romantic girls, adding a touch of youth and naivety.
- Wine, cheese, mushrooms, and biscuits, creating a sense of indulgence and comfort.
- Tea, even when not drunk, symbolizing a moment of relaxation.
- Buddhist demons and Christian saints, exploring different spiritual beliefs.
- Dreams, concussions, drownings, and death, delving into the mysteries of life and the afterlife.
- Petty cruelties, belittlement, and acts of supreme generosity, showing the duality of human nature.
- Heterosexual passions and homosexual cravings, embracing the diversity of love.
- Theatre, woodworking, cooking, and music, representing different forms of creativity.
- Merboys, seals, ghosts, and sea dragons, adding an element of fantasy and magic.
- Vengeance and apathy, reflecting the range of human emotions.
- Interpretations, neurosis, and delusions, exploring the inner workings of the mind.
- Minutiae and momentary insights, emphasizing the importance of paying attention to the details of life.
- Sullen villagers and grandiose urbanites, highlighting the differences between rural and urban living.
- Dogs, cats, and many roses, bringing a sense of warmth and beauty.
- Lost loves and childhood musings, evoking memories and emotions from the past.
- Churches, taxis, and pubs, representing different aspects of society.
- Murderous rages and spiritual awakenings, showing the extremes of human experience.
- Vulgarities and tender exchanges, adding authenticity to the story.
- Stagnation, repetition, and momentary joy, reflecting the cycle of life.

Most of all, it is about the depth and changeability of the Sea. The Sea that can, with one powerful swoosh, take away all that we hold dear, yet also teaches us that we never truly held it in the first place. This book is absolutely amazing. Thank you, Ms. Murdoch.