| Eyes of the Beholder Beholden |
August 28, 2009
Willem Elsschot's Cheese is very funny (I laughed out loud throughout) and also very acute: while it blazes with truisms of middle-class aspirations and satisfactions, it also simmers with the universal condition of mankind: we all care about how we appear to others. It is not a desire to impress but instead the desire not to distress, disappoint, disillusion. In fact, this motivation to match up to others' expectations may be the primary motivation of humankind: does man aspire upward or does he just not want to look the fool in front of those who aspire upward for him? If no one expected anything of us, would we still strive and reach for the big cheese (no pun intended) or would we be happy with fast food fries? Let's all remember that the so-called "French" fries were actually created in Belgium, that the best fries are still to be found in Belgium, and that our redoubtable hero Laarmans is a Flemish fellow from Belgium. Frites will suffice so why the big fuss over cheese? Because other people say we should go for the cheese.
Laarmans is the kind of guy who feels most comfortable in the background, not making trouble for others but most importantly, not making trouble for himself. When he is called to wait on his ill and possibly dying mother as he gets ready for bed one evening, getting the message just as he has removed one sock and is starting to remove the next, he dutifully answers the call and sits with his other siblings until his mother is most certainly dead and then returns home to his wife: "It was three o'clock by the time I was back in our bedroom holding one foot in my hand and taking off my first sock. I was asleep on my feet, and so as not to have to tell the whole story I just said there was no change." Sleep is more important than a death, and why disturb the wife?
At the same time, Laarmans most certainly does not want to give a bad impression to others. When he travels on the tram he is careful not to push other riders, because one could be a potential client of the firm where he is a lowly clerk and upsetting the client would mean an upset for Laarmans himself. Laarmans would look bad, the firm would look bad, and he might not be liked by client, firm, or even himself. When he enters a shop looking for a used desk and typewriter, he feels so overwhelmed by having imposed his desires on another person that even if the store does not have what he needs he buys something; at one point he even purchases a religious statue rather than offend the shop keeper, then he leaves the statue furtively on the windowsill of a nearby house and scurries off, not wanting to be found out nor wanting to show up at home with such an item. Laarmans has acted so as not to offend the shopkeeper, not be found out by the owner of the home newly-adorned with religiosity, and not to be discovered by his family as purchasing yet another un-needed item and with no desk or typewriter in sight.
Laarmans puts clerking on hold and takes on the cheese business, despite the fact that he knows nothing of the business of selling nor does he even like cheese (he has choice words for those who do, such as "cheese-worms"). Nevertheless, the opportunity must be taken: how can he say no to "my dreadful friend who wants me to get on in the world"? His benefactor Van Schoonbeke offers entry into the world of success, measured by car ownership, restaurants visited, and, most importantly, title and appearance versus actual function and ability. The evenings Laarmans spends with Van Schoonbeke's successful cronies are especially funny and eviscerating scenes of upper-class strivings: Laarmans gains respect due wholly to titles gained (head of "General Antwerp Feeding Products Association" -- a name he has come up with as prestigious and not stinking of cheese -- and "president of the Association of Belgian Cheese Merchants" -- a title Van Schoonbeke secures for him and which he actually deserves in a hysterical scene involving tariff negotiations) and not at all due to cheese sales (you can guess how that goes) or an actual improvement in financial security (to say the least).
But happiness is denied our Laarmans: "wandering round with a load of cheese, pleading for some Christian soul to relieve you of the burden, it something I just can't do. I'd rather be dead." He chalks up his upward strivings not to trying to improve his family's future ("That would be noble but I'm not that much of a saint") nor to trying to impress anybody ("I'm far too vain to be satisfied by such a thing") but understands that he took on cheese because someone else wanted him to. He hits the nail on the head when he laments, "I'm too easily led. When Van Schoonbeke asked me if I would take it (the cheese operation) on, I didn't have the guts to reject him and his cheese, as I should have done. And I'm paying the price of that cowardice. I deserved my cheese ordeal."
As funny and insightful as this novel is, it is also sad. At one point Laarmans wishes himself back to the early days of his marriage, imagining that he and his wife "are alone again, without children, in a secluded place, the way we were thirty years ago when we sought out a quiet spot where we could cry in peace." This sentence is unexpectedly raw, vulnerable, and moving. Laarmans has let down his guard and underneath is misery. Elsschot wrote in the original introduction to the novel (first published in 1933 but as fresh and modern and accurate as if it were written yesterday) that "Everything about the human condition is tragic." In this novel, the human condition is presented as a contradiction of two desires, the desire to define oneself and the desire to fit in with others' definitions. While Elsschot acknowledges the tragic aspects of this contradiction and exhorts the comic to great success, he also presents the striving itself -- the struggle of the contradiction -- as one I recognized, and understood, and one I choose to celebrate. I take Cheese as both a commiseration and a celebration, and a great book about life.
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