More from Iris Murdoch

I came home from a get-together and couldn't wait to read more from Iris Murdoch, so I went to amazon.com and pulled up pages from her first novel, Under the Net, published in 1954 (I am really ignoring my messy household, and besides, hubby made popcorn). Three pages into it, and I laughed at a phrase that is very much like one I found in the first book I read by her just the other day, a novelette called Something Special. The phase here is "Women give me heart disease." The phrase in the novelette was, "This place gives me heart disease." I wonder how many other authors, either knowingly or not, repeat themselves like that. Here's an excerpt from p. 3 that I really liked:

Here we were, sitting in Earls Court Road on a dusty sunny July morning on two suitcases, and where were we to go next? This was what always happened. I would be at pains to put my universe in order and set it ticking, when suddenly it would burst again into a mess of the same poor pieces, and Finn and I would be on the run. I say my universe, not ours, because I sometimes feel that Finn has very little inner life. I mean no disrespect to him in saying this; some have and some haven't. I connect this too with his truthfulness. Subtle people, like myself, can see too much ever to give a straight answer. Aspects have always been my trouble. And I connect it with his aptness to make objective statements when these are the last things that one wants, like a bright light on one's headache. It may be, though, that Finn misses his inner life, and that is why he follows me about, as I have a complex one and highly differentiated. Anyhow, I count Finn as an inhabitant of my universe, and cannot conceive that he has one containing me; and this arrangement seems restful to both of us.