(the) American (Novel of)

86 Alison Leigh Brown
there be love when the beloved is dead? You miss the point even
though you recognize the primacy of language. In a late scene between
Erik and Riton, Riton says to Erik that he loves him more than he had
before. The lover, the narrator, comments, “No tenderness could have
been expressed, for as their love was not recognized by the world, they
could not feel its natural effects.” 10 This oddly gentle person, facing,
after all, a much more definitive end of the world than the one we face,
has certainty in love at every turn.
I loved those tough kids who didn’t give a damm about the
blighted hopes of a nation, whose distress in the heart of everyone,
as soon as he spoke about it, merged systematically with the
most beloved being of flesh and blood. And the armed youngsters
were perhaps thrilled at moving in the halo of shame with
which their treason surrounded them, but there was enough grace
in their gazes and gestures for them to seem indifferent to it. I
was happy to see France terrorized by children in arms, but even
more so because they were crooks and little rats. Had I been
young, I would have joined the Militia. 11
Now here is the thing. It is impossible to deny love in these
passages, even certain love. There is no complacency in these livings.
There is no attempt at metatheorizing this core coldness to which you
refer. There is the systematically aesthetic overlay through practices of
huge refinement and ethic. Who can forget the scenes where the lovers
so tenderly prepare each other for any bodily act, even one ending in
death? Who can deny that it is love with which the executioner showers
his young love? We can make these allowances. We can weep at the
vulnerability and strength of their codes. Why then is it so hard to be
generous to Edmund and Fanny? Is it that their war is at a remove? Is
it that their overlays are boring? Where do you get a position from
which to judge one overlay more boring than another? One can imagine
that eventually Erik and Riton tire of their forced brutality. That
even the phantastic overlay of the Führer becomes mundane and repetitious.
So choose better examples, my sweet darling. I think that you
are right that I demand silence on some things. Sometimes, when you
are feeling charitable you ascribe a respect to privacy to these acts on
my part and go so far as to say that these are the qualities that cause