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Party Going

2000Tim Parks

4.6/5

"Not Too Much Ado About Nothing", or "Waiting For Fog-Gone", or "Life is what happens while you are talking about something else"? As for "Party Going", the title is slightly optimistic - mainly because the party is stuck at the train station, waiting for the dense fog to disappear, and also because the party fails to establish anything resembling a party - despite checking in to a hotel and having drinks while waiting. If Pirandello put his poor characters through the ordeal of looking for an author, the protagonists of this story seem to be left without a plot, - not worrying too much about it. All they can do is create an energy field, trying their best to establish some sort of time-space continuum for themselves.If this were a play, it wouldn't have to worry about the Aristotelian units of time and place at all. It all unfolds in the train station, over the course of a day of waiting for a train which will carry the English upper class party to Southern France. As for the action, you will need a looking-glass to find it. It partly consists in an undefined illness. Aunt May is honoured with various diagnoses, reaching from "being tight" to terminal illness. In the end, she is just a bit too weak to join the party when the fog dissolves on the last pages.As for further action, it consists in a rich young man's choice of women, leading to various bedroom scenes without inappropriate behaviour - if you do not count tiring dialogue. It remains ambiguous, and without any hope for closure in the near future:"As he sat there he realized he did not know if she was going to come or not. And if she did come out he did not know if she would stay or when she would get it into her head to start home which she might at any time. He realized without putting it into words he did not even know if he was glad she was going to come, or sorry she was going to stay at home..."And this only accounts for Max' feelings towards one of his three ladies, and those feelings change on the next page, adding the confused thought of "being sorry she was going to come". Let's not try to put into words what his women think. They wouldn't be able to themselves.As for minor, incidental action, it also consists of gossip and getting your luggage ready and taking a bath and defining your role in the non-party, mixing a drink and reflecting on who put a notice into a newspaper.That's it. Nothing much happens until the fog clears, leaving the reader to wonder what on earth the characters will do if they ever reach their destination. It also makes one curious to read Henry Green's novel Nothing as it seems rather impossible to fill two hundred pages with anything more appropriately called "NOTHING" than what (not-)occurs in "PARTY GOING".It is absolutely charming non-action, though, and the characters are masters of nothing-doing, so the party-going (or not-going, as the case may be) is really secondary, as far as their Living and Loving is concerned.Recommended! I'm off reading NOTHING!
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