Daniel Silverman: "The Charioteer" by Mary Renault

This is cheating; going off the rails, really, as, of course, I never knew Mary Renault. Nonetheless, this is the book I keep coming back to. How ironic that a work that so accurately captures the remarkable subtleties of psychological states and their interpersonal ramifications should be so withholding when it comes to dialogue, so demanding, requiring so many readings. Here, a character might utter the most mundane of sentences, and yet Renault is able to dislodge torrents of meaning. It is sadly telling for me and my psyche that in this book--ultimately an exploration of love in its myriad manifestations--a paragraph of unbridled hate best captures who I am:

"The party had warmed up by this time. A momentary detachment came upon Laurie as he looked on. After some years of muddled thinking on the subject, he suddenly saw quite clearly what it was he had been running away from; why he had refused Sandy's first invitation, and what the trouble had been with Charles. It was also the trouble, he perceived, with nine-tenths of the people here tonight. They were specialists. They had not merely accepted their limitations, as Laurie was ready to accept his, loyal to his humanity if not to his sex, and bringing an extra humility to the hard study of human experience. They had identified themselves with their limitations; they were making a career of them. They had turned from all other reality, and curled up in them snugly, as in a womb." (p.132)