Robyn’s Blog

When talking about Robert Nathan in the introduction, Peter Beagle comments that there is a “muted sense of loss, of something just recently out of reach, that haunts most of his characters…”  That’s basically exactly how I’ve been feeling all day after finishing Portrait of Jennie.  I feel like as I’m reading the book,it’s not the words, or the plot, or the situation exactly that matters; it’s this feeling the book creates for me that I can’t quite grasp but it reminds me of a million things I can’t remember and I’ve been frustrated all day about it.   There’s something really important in my mind about this book that I can’t get yet to.  I feel like this book itself isn’t important; it’s these ideas that the book presents that repeat themselves in a lot of literature and movies but come through in Portrait of Jennieas particularly troubling.

I’m hoping for a breakthrough but in case it never comes (I’ll spend forever waiting just like Eben, terrific) I’ll try and explain a little bit.  Whatever it is that is driving me crazy has to do with belonging to someone  you can’t get to.  I came up with about a million examples of books and movies that this reminded me of but not the one I really mean, yet.  Jennie and Eben don’t really know much about the world, but they do know that they belong to each other.  Eben says that “perhaps there was something strange about it; but just the same, it felt altogether right, as though we belonged just there, where we were, together.”  They are two lost characters, but they hold on to one thing–that they belong with each other.

And that’s a really great thing to hold on to, except they can’t get to one another.  They can’t be together.  So they are holding onto an idea that doesn’t really mean anything.  And Eben spends his life waiting for her, waiting to catch a glimpse or a day or a sign of her–and all he can do is wait.  He can’t track her down, he can’t rely on her to be there.  He spends his life waiting because he knows that he belongs with her.  I’m just so bothered by this.  I’m really, really bothered and when I come up with what I’m really trying to say I’ll post again.