The Inez Monologue
Major 20th Centuries Writers
Class
Jerry Hartman
December, 2000
This is written in the
voice of Inez Serrano, a character in "No Exit" a play by Jean-Paul
Sartre.Ý After introducing herself Inez will
address a specific character in each of the following books: Perfume, Mao
II, Red Azalea, God Dies by the Nile, The Stranger, Incest,
Tropic of Cancer, Black Water and Lolita.Ý She will then direct various degrees of
literary comment to the authors, respectively: Patrick Suskind, Don Delillo,
Anchee Min, Nawal El Saadawi, Albert Camus, Anais Nin, Henry Miller, Joyce
Carol Oates and Vladimir Nabokov.ÝÝ
I am Inez Serrano. If
you are very pretty, I wish I had some flowers to welcome you. If you are very
pretty I will be your candid looking-glass. I have your taste, my dear, because
I like you so much. But this is only if you are very pretty.
I am Inez Serrano. Iím
rotten to the core. Human feeling is beyond my range. I canít get on without
making people suffer.
Grenouille, you use
people solely for your personal gratification. You endear yourself to those you
temporarily need, then, after your aims have been achieved you leave. They die.
Grimal, dead the very day you left his tannery. Baldini, crushed in a
collapsing building and washed away the night you left his perfumery.
Grenouille, you take the very life from beautiful young girls to satisfy your
desire. Whatís more, it is not because of a testosterone-fueled lust for their
nymph bodies. It is not a misogynists need to control their minds, their being.
You objectify them yes. But you murder them only for their scent -- your
exigency. Grenouille, you are unable to love another human being. Grenouille
you love only yourself. You are so touched by yourself you proclaim, "I
thank you, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, for being what you are!" (266).
Grenouille I could adjoin with you; but Grenouille you are a miserable, puny,
self-centered man and thus I dismiss you. Your reign is nothing more than self-aggrandizement
and not worthy of my attention.
Bill Gray you seduced
the literary world with your work then withdrew. Scott was your sycophant and
you made love to his woman, much the same situation as I found myself with my
cousin and his wife Florence. You deserted them without warning or word. I
admire your modus operandi, Bill Gray. In the same way you did to those who
depended on you, I hope to beguile then abandon your daughter.
Ice Lu you are possessed
by the threatening spirit and coldness of the skull you sleep with, and this is
good. No one knows if you even have feelings other than your single-minded
ambition for power. Men in the company are afraid of you. But for all your way
of action, your attacking and invading style, you cling to political mantra while
Anchee and Yan lay together behind the mosquito netting. You were even an
instrument of their liaison, suggesting they share blankets together since they
were "cold." How naive you are. Ice Lu you are stupid. As you study
every comma and period in your Little Red Book their bodies entangle,
pretending to be man and woman. I want to be a part of the Red Guards. I, Inez
Serrano, want to command and control the women at Red Fire Ant Farm. They will
worship me and I will possess them.
Lu, come sit your slim
figure next to me as you read. Let me look into your eyes of thirst. Let me
watch closely as you bathe your feet. This need not be your only intimacy...
Mayor of Kafr El Teen
you too, like Bill Gray, have your hanging lackeys. The Chief of the Village
Guard, Sheikh Hamzawi and Haj Ismail all seek to curry your favor. Yet your
pleasure is not in their need for your benefaction. Your pleasure is in the
lustful indulgence of the flesh of the young women of the village. Circumstance
will cause them to yield to you, but they do not supplicate to you. They do not
respect you. You objectify them but it is only because of the petty power you
hold that this happens. It is because of your petty power that you have
anything. You are nothing but despicable. You ruin the lives of young women.
You are eventually brought down by one you destroyed. You and I have much in
common.
Meursault you fascinate
me. You have no sentiment, none until your end that is. You could own, posses
Marie, just tell her what she wants to hear, but you do not. Yet you do things
to win the favor of others. (You are very much like Garcin, with whom I am
stuck in hell. He could have Estelle, but it is my look of approval that he
needs.Ý And the approval of those he has
left behind on earth, in the pressroom.)ÝÝ
I do not understand this. Why, for example, did you write the letter for
Raymond? And your killing the Arab, what of that? Was the first shot
accidental? Was it to defend yourself? The other four shots that followed, did
you fire them into the motionless body because to you it did not matter whether
you shot one bullet or five, or none at all? To you did it not matter whether a
man lived or died? Most of all Meursault your Maman. "You only have one
mother," said Celeste (3,4). Yet to you that did not matter. You only
understood at your end -- the need for a beginning at the end. Yet you, like I,
would only relive what we had before: existence devoid of human emotion.
Anais, you are my
contemporary.Ý Anais, you are my
sister.Ý Anais, you are so weak and
confused that even I, who has black coal for a soul, I feel sorry for you.
Anais, on Christmas
night, 1932, you wrote of ìthe serenity of knowing what is supremely and
divinely right. The world is at last focused.îÝ
This was never true for you however.Ý
You never had a true sense of yourself, much less of a world outside
yourself.Ý Or what could be in that
world.
Anais, I have read your
words and listened to others talk about you. You struggled to assert yourself
as artist and a woman, yet defined yourself by the men in your life.Ý How sad.Ý
Estelle is very much like you.Ý
Yet I do not have contempt for you as I do for her.Ý For you try, unsuccessfully, but try
none-the-less, to find your place in the world. Such talent, such beauty, oh
that I, a lowly postal clerk, possessed these attributes of yours -- combined
with my strong will-- imagine the hell I could create!ÝÝÝÝÝ
Henry Miller you slush
around, you contribute nothing, you take from everyone. You are not lost like
Anais however.Ý She is truly an enigma,
seeking to find herself.Ý You are a
slut. You rave about Paris for it varieties of sexual provender and the added
spice of abnormalities that aggravate, what you (you beast) call, the natural
homeliness of the female acting as a stimulant for the jaded appetites of the
male (Miller 162).Ý Someday I will
encounter you along the Boulevard Beaumarchais, where you first met
Germaine.Ý It will take no effort you to
entice you, you who brags of having erections even with an empty stomach.Ý You will even be willing to pay me what few
francs you may have mendicated.Ý I will
go with you and make trophy of your testicles.ÝÝÝÝÝÝ
Kelly how can you be so naÔve? So gullible?Ý So utterly foolish?
Yes, you ARE going to die like this.Ý
Come back to save you???It never ‚ NEVER ‚ NEVER entered his mind!Ý
Do
you hear me???
What is it with you Kelly?Ý Are you looking for ìDaddyî in theseÖthese ‚
MEN!Ý
(PTTTTOOOGHHH !!!)
G----.Ý
G----.Ý Yes making love had
sometimes hurt you.Ý Maybe not so
unconsciously.Ý Certainly not far
beneath the conscious.Ý Now you cannot
even speak his name.Ý Better that you
had spat in his face and cursed him!
And now this self-absorbed omathon!Ý The ìSenator.îÝ A goddamn United States Senator in a freaking TOYOTA no less!
Such conceit, such need for you.Ý He needs you for arm-candy. He needs US ‚ christsakes,
goddammit ‚ HE NEEDS US TO FEEL WHOLE. Ý
Canít
you see that????Ý ÝÝ
On the beach you felt the urgency of his desire,
now you see the accelerated, reckless stupidity of his lust.Ý Yet you are too timid to speak-up. You are
afraid to offend the fool.Ý You must go
with him.Ý This is your only chance:
Your chance for black water to fill
your lungs.
AND SHE
DIED.
And finally we come to Lolita.Ý What does Inez
think about Lolita?Ý Or Humbert Humbert?
Or Mrs. Haze.Ý I think you know what I
think of each of them.Ý The better
question is which of the three will I choose to address here.Ý Whom will Inez single out for
chastisement?Ý
Will it be Lolita, the
young, not-so-innocent?Ý Do you expect
me to chide her for her foolish choices ?Ý
Will it be the desperate
Mrs. Haze who receives the rath of Inez?ÝÝ
Inviting a strange man into her home to live, to share her bed and
unknowingly also sharing her daughter?
Lolita, it seems, is the
sister of Kelly.Ý She is more
manipulative, for certain.Ý But she is a
young girl non-the-less, and in need of a ìfather-figure.îÝÝ That HH was the one who came into her life
is tragic.Ý
Mrs. Haze is the
pathetic woman in need of a man that Inez abhors.Ý Yet, in a way she is much like Anais.Ý She defines herself by men.Ý
She is ultimately destroyed by her belief in a man.
Humbert you, more than
any character I have discussed, you sicken me.Ý
Miller, for all his sloven ways, did not come close to you in terms of
being repulsive.Ý Even Grenouille, who
murdered young girls, was not a repugnant as you.ÝÝ Your cavalier attitude, your lets move on to the next thing,
your this is the way things are and the way things are supposed to be tone ‚ in
the midst of a perversion worse than I visited on my cousin, or Garcin visited
upon his wife ‚ this way of presenting yourself makes you even more despicable
than you horrid acts.Ý
You have the audacity at
the end to provide advice to your ìdaughterî concerning her husband.Ý You tell her, ìbe true to your Dickî
(Nabokov 309).ÝÝÝ That is certainly the
credo by which you lived your life.ÝÝÝÝÝ
Suskind, what a
delicious, horrid tale you unfold. Your monster had such a tragic beginning.
How masterful you are at reeling me, Inez Serrano, into the dark world of
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. A world not dominated by scent, but the world of an
"abominable personage" who lacked what I too am without -- the love
of others. This is summed up so well at the end of Chapter Thirty-eight:
Indeed,
human odor was not of importance to him whatever. He could imitate human odor
quite well enough with surrogates. What he coveted was the odor of certain
human beings: that is, those rare humans who inspire love. (Suskind 228)
Grenouille loved himself
so much because no one else loved him.
You chronologically
relate the life of Grenouille. As his life unfolds deeper and deeper the reader
submerges into the horror of your story. You seduce the reader with
well-researched drama that builds to a shocking climax.
Delillo, you are
acclaimed as a brilliant voice commentating on life in America. Yet I hate your
sentence fragments. You daze and confuse the reader. Your scenes obscure your
plot. You are indirect. I, Inez, prefer direct.
Anchee, what is real and
what is your imagination? Are you a kindred spirit with Al Gore, being
everything and everywhere in your country? Was the consummate Communist Chinese
experience truly your life? One thing that Inez will insist upon is that one is
true to their acts, to their choices, to their life. You create quite a novel here Anchee. I demand you account for the facts.
Nawal, the sun
menacingly beats upon such a dark world. Is it the translation, or your writing
or your intent that brings forth such a laboring effort? I plod through your
words and sentences, much like a buffalo on the way to the field each day. You
are a feminist.Ý The plot you use to
send out your message is a powerful one.Ý
While a tale of a strong, powerful and winning woman might be what some
would say is a better avenue, I agree with what you did. Show things as they
are, the horror of reality.Ý Build a
burning inside the soul so that the flames burst forth to overcome oppression.Ý Your words to me are dull, your story is
accurate, your message must be heard.Ý
Camus, The Stranger
is such a short work.Ý A short work with
short sentences.Ý A quick, easy read one
might mistakenly think. Certainly one can read through and in a straightforward
manner grasp the plot. But Camus you are cunning. Such simple prose, but prose
that one must read and read again to absorb your meaning. Your writing might
seem simple on the page, but like me, beneath the surface there is so much
more.
Anais, I spoke directly
to you earlier, but not about your writing style.Ý It works for me.Ý The
dream like diary, the relating of events, but events submerged in the poetry of
your mind.Ý I am able to relate to you
through your work, to seem like I am inside your head, watching this all
transpire as I read your thoughts. This is different for me, for I generally
prefer direct, but then you are very pretty. I have your taste my dear, I like
you very much.ÝÝÝÝÝÝ
Oh Henry, you had guts
enough to still be here and read this far?Ý
I would have expected you to be running back to Anais or wifey after my
earlier comments.ÝÝ So out of character
for you to intentionally come near a strong woman.ÝÝ This Tropic of Cancer, your ìclassic,î has been called a
defining work of American literature?Ý
Well it did give insight into the stream of your soul.Ý It is much more accessable than the work of
Joyce (which, try as she did, Inez just could not get through).Ý It does bring the reader into your world
Henry.Ý Certainly a very dysfunctional
world, but the work allows you to be emerged in it.Ý It is certainly not a place where I would want to stay.Ý It is the world of a man.Ý You capture the destituteness and debauchery
of men so well.ÝÝÝÝÝ
Oates, I dislike your
Kelly for what she is.Ý You have
portrayed her well.Ý So many women, and
not just young ones, fall prey to these wanton men.Ý You message is one that must be absorbed by women. Your style and
method of delivery is effective.Ý You
take the reader inside Kellyís head, her thought process.Ý You keep visiting the point of climax ‚ her
death ‚ and bring Kelly and the reader back just before it happens.Ý You make it such that even though the reader
knows it will happen, it is never sure until it happens.ÝÝ You tease like an experienced lover.Ý Your ending is not one of release
however.Ý You deliver a lesson and a
warning.Ý A lesson to needy women. A
warning about lascivious, licentious men.ÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝ
Nabokov, you, so much
more that Miller, are a master.Ý You
made me see your characters.Ý You
brought me inside you characters.ÝÝ I
felt the childish manipulations of Lolita, the scheming desperatness of her
mother, the leering letchury of Humbert.Ý
You use of vocabulary by Humbert so that he seemingly places himself on
a intellectual clay pedistle is brilliant ‚ ìI may be a pedophile, but Iím
smarter than youî ‚ it is nearly a schoolyard chant that runs through the
pages.Ý Miller was more graphic, your
work is more revealing ‚ there are fewer Henry Millers stumbling through the
sewers (and they are less of a threat) than the legions of Humbert Humbertís
leering at the schoolyard.Ý
Ý
Camus, Albert. The Stranger. New
York: Random House, 1988.
Delillo, Don. Mao II. New York:
Penguin, 1991.
El Saadawi, Nawal. God Dies by the Nile.
London: Zed Books Ltd., 1995.
Miller, Henry. Tropic of Cancer. New
York: Grove Press, 1961.
Min, Anchee. Red Azalea. New York:
Berkley Books, 1995.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. New
York: Vintage Books, 1997.
Nin, Anais. Incest. San Diego:
Harvest Book, 1992.
Oates, Joyce Carol. Black Water.
New York: Plume, 1992.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. No Exit and Three
Other Plays. New York: Vintage International, 1989.
Suskind, Patrick. Perfume. New
York: Washington Square Press, 1986.