Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their process for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, A. Natasha Joukovsky writes about The Portrait of a Mirror from Overlook Press.
+
Influenced by Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, where he tracks allusions to whales and cetology, I kept a running list of references to The Portrait of a Mirror’s four main themes: recursion, innovation, mythology, and glamour. These were not generally passages I sought out, but merely recorded in the course of reading whatever I wanted to read and watching whatever I wanted to watch — which is pretty emblematic of my approach to “research” overall. Inevitably, The Portrait of a Mirror is a self-portrait, and in writing a novel about Narcissus, my primary primary source was myself. Still, here are some of the fragments I shored, with the original extracts on the left, and their embedded echoes in The Portrait of a Mirror on the right:
+
NICK SMITH: Rick Von Sloneker is tall, rich, good-looking, stupid, dishonest, conceited, a bully, a liar, a drunk and a thief, an egomaniac, and probably psychotic. In short, highly attractive to women.
— Whit Stillman, Metropolitan
“So highly attractive to women was Wes that, at first glance, for the many (many) girls he had disappointed, it might have been tempting to paint a twenty-first-century Rick Von Sloneker — tall, rich, good-looking, stupid, dishonest, conceited, a bully, a liar, a drunk and a thief, an egomaniac, and probably psychotic.”
+
Above all, she wanted to look as though she had not given the matter a moment’s thought, and that would take time.
— Ian McEwan, Atonement
“She needed to look like she hadn’t given the dinner a moment’s thought, and this would take time.”
+
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
— Oscar Wilde, preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray
“THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A MORAL OR IMMORAL BAR. BARS ARE WELL STOCKED OR BADLY STOCKED. THAT IS ALL.”
+
Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse. Look at it — a mere hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach, without a background. There is more sand there than you would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper. Some gamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they don’t grow naturally; that they import Canada thistles; that they have to send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true cross in Rome . . . What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should take to the sea for a livelihood . . . these sea hermits, issuing from their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders . . .
— Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
“Nantucket! Go on Google Maps and look at it. See what an incredible corner of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, basking in the benefit of a little distance. Look at it — a storied hillock, and keenly conserved elbow of sand; a manicured wild, the ultimate background. Now double click, switch to satellite, then Street View — yes, zoom in. See the cedar shingles, cobblestones, and brick. Mosey down the Straight Wharf and examine its boats, the houses on stilts. Visit the Whaling Museum and learn of its history, how Nantucketers conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders. Is it any wonder, then, that now so many Alexanders of our watery world seek to conquer Nantucket?”
+
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“What had he done? Gone looking for something he wanted to seek but didn’t actually want to find. And for what? The thrill of the chase? Some orgastic, receding green light? Wes wished it had eluded him.”
+
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan”
“There was a splash in the midground off to starboard. A mighty fountain forced itself up in a swift half-intermitted burst, followed by a threshing flail.
— Oh my god! Is that, like, a whale?
— Very like a whale, Cort admitted, grinning at her.
— Look, there’s another! Or maybe it’s the same one.”
HAMLET: Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
POLONIUS: By the mass, and ‘tis like a camel, indeed.
HAMLET: Methinks it is like a weasel.
POLONIUS: It is backed like a weasel.
HAMLET: Or like a whale?
POLONIUS: Very like a whale.
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet
[Polonius’s line “Very like a whale” also appears in Melville’s Extracts to Moby-Dick]
+
Anna Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was unpleasant for her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people’s lives. She wanted too much to live herself . . . The hero of the novel was already beginning to achieve his English happiness, a baronetcy and an estate, and Anna wished to go with him to this estate, when suddenly she felt that he must be ashamed and that she was ashamed of the same thing. But what was he ashamed of? ‘What am I ashamed of?’ she asked herself in offended astonishment. She put down the book and leaned back in the seat, clutching the paper-knife tightly in both hands.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
“She had reached the part of the novel where Anna is likewise reading a novel on a train, but finds it unpleasant to read because she wants too much to live herself. The hero of Anna’s novel was beginning to achieve his English happiness, a baronetcy and an estate, and Anna wants to go with him to this estate, when suddenly she feels that he must be ashamed and realizes she is ashamed of the same thing — and Diana could tell that she, too, was supposed to feel ashamed here . . . So, then, what was she ashamed of? What am I ashamed of? She asked herself in offended astonishment. She put down the book and leaned back in the seat, clutching her Kindle with both hands.”
+
It was moreover a seat of ease, indeed of luxury, telling of arrangements subtly studied and refinements frankly proclaimed.
— Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady
“At first glance the scene behind the house was something of a Slim Aarons photograph, or a latter-day landscape out of Henry James: it was a seat of ease, indeed of luxury, telling of arrangements subtly studied and refinements frankly proclaimed.”
+
“But I shall leave you to your studies, my dear; for I must go and do some shopping.”
“Fred’s studies are not very deep,” said Rosamond, rising with her mamma, “he is only reading a novel.”
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
“ — Oh, no — no need to get up, it would wreck the tableau. Far be it from me to disturb your studies.
— Vivien’s studies aren’t very deep, said Gage, slumping into a nearby lounger. She’s only reading a novel.”
+
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
— John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
“Diana opened her mouth, panting inaudibly, a savage rejoinder suspended on her parching tongue . . . Dale looked at Diana expectantly, his forehead burning, but the savage rejoinder never materialized.”
+
Everyday life affords many curious illustrations of . . . the requirements of pecuniary repute. Such a fact is the lawn, or the close-cropped yard or park, which appeals so unaffectedly to the taste of the Western peoples.
— Thorstein Veblen, A Theory of the Leisure Class
So on he fares, and to the border comes
Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, Crowns with her enclosure green,
As with a rural mound the champain head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairie sides
With thicket overgrown, grottesque and wilde,
Access deni’d; and over head up grew
Insuperable highth of loftiest shade,
Cedar, and Pine, and Firr, and branching Palm
A Silvan Scene, and as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woodie Theatre
Of stateliest view.
— John Milton, Paradise Lost
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
— T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land [with noted reference to Paradise Lost]
“The Whipplepool Country Club was the kind of property irresistible to Veblenite brides. Its winding entry drive was marked by little more than a weathered sign reading private property, and was so overgrown with thickets as to resolutely deter those unfamiliar with the subtle signifiers of exclusion. The steep wilderness persisted for a little over a mile before a lush, sportive paradise presented itself, all the more beautiful in contrast to the nettled drive. The club’s immediate grounds had been landscaped in the Anglo-American manner of much pecuniary emulation, the green so thoroughly and sympathetically integrated with the natural environment as to suggest the smooth, dense turf regularly mowed itself. The Greek Revival clubhouse, imposing and symmetrical, seemed to exacerbate this impression, its sharp white lines throwing the verdurous hills in relief. The stateliest view, and indeed, the vantage point that, if the weather was fine, nearly all couples chose for their ceremony . . . was the front terrace, creating an aisle from the two-storied columnar facade to a floral arbor overlooking the golf course, as though a window gave upon the sylvan scene.”
+
For more about The Portrait of a Mirror’s extracts and allusions, see the novel’s three appendices and visit @imetovidsheirs on Instagram.
+++