The Brooknerian

What [Mme de Staël] could not do was let go, which would mean doing without love. She is perhaps history's most outstanding case of Torschlusspanik : the panic at the shutting of the door. 'Corinne and Her Coups de Foudre ', Soundings Brooknerians also watch the shutting of the door - but they're often beyond panic. One thinks of Maud in Incidents in the Rue Laugier, or Mimi in Family and Friends , who mourns not the missing Frank but the missing factor in herself that might have brought him to her side. [Interviewer:] What all your characters are left with is a resignation which is not even stoicism of the classical order; it's merely learning to put up with the way life is inevitably going to turn out. [Brookner:] Yes, and the horror of that situation is profound. Haffenden, Novelists in Interview (1985) But as Forster tells us: ... some closing of the gates is inevitable after thirty, if the mind itself is to become a creative power. Howards E...