Intermezzo

“With the braces on his teeth, the supreme discomfort of the adolescent. On such occasions, one could almost come to regret one’s own social brilliance. Gives him the excuse, or gives him in any case someone at whom to look pleadingly between the mandatory handshakes. […] Not without style in his own way. Certain kind of panache in his absolute disregard for the material world. Brains and beauty, an aunt said once. About them both. Or was it Ivan brains and Peter beauty.”

Peter opinion of his brother Ivan reveals the brothers’ complicated dynamic. Rooney hints at this by using a condescending tone in Peter’s indirect discourse to describe Ivan’s pitiable appearance, and then pulling back on the contempt that tone implies by trying to justify why Ivan looks that way in the first place. The passage ends with a dichotomy that cements this dynamic, stressing Ivan’s intelligence and Peter’s charm.

“Had believed once that life must lead to something, all the unresolved conflicts and questions leading on towards some great culmination. Curiously underexamined beliefs like that, underpinning his life, his personality. Irrational attachment to meaning. […] Couldn’t go to work in the morning if he didn’t think something meant something meant something else. But what is it all leading up to. An end without an ending.”

30-something Peter feels that he has lost his sense of direction in life. He didn’t always feel this way: The start of the passage references his earlier thinking, which is tinged with embarrassment and the insistence that his thinking was “underexamined” and “irrational.” This allows Rooney to draw a parallel between Peter’s view of his younger self and his condescending assessment of Ivan.

“He loved you, she says. He didn’t know the first thing about me, Sylvia. We were allergic to each other. Never had a real conversation in our lives. Folds the tissue up and puts it in his pocket. Oh, you take conversation too seriously, she says. Life isn’t just talking, you know.”

Sylvia argues that the premium Peter bestows upon conversation shapes his perception of love. By implication, she suggests that people might behave in ways they aren’t able to articulate. Rooney thus uses this passage to advance the theme of The Limits of Language, driving the idea that one cannot base one’s sense of reality on language.