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Montag, 25. Juni 2018

Patrick Melrose and the Fall of the English Élite / Christopher de Bellaigue in: The New Yorker June 22 2018

Patrick Melrose is going to be all right. We know this from the final episode of the TV series of that name, itself an adaptation of a string of novels spun from the calamitous life story of its creator, Edward St. Aubyn. The episode in question, which aired earlier this month, closed with the former junkie, occasional alcoholic, and serial philanderer (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) heading out of his London flat to go for supper with his estranged wife and their two sons. His alternatives are to bed the ridiculously young waitress who gave him her number after his mother’s funeral, earlier that day; to drink himself into a stupor; or to commit suicide. Given his colossal appetites, he might fit in all three.
Instead, one of the most self-destructive forces in fiction steps away from the ledge. The light filtering through the front door toward which Melrose walks is redemptive, the opening bars of Blur’s “Tender,” which accompany him, suitably irenic. Here’s St. Aubyn describing the same moment in “At Last,” the fifth and final Melrose book: “Instead of feeling the helplessness, he felt the helplessness and compassion for the helplessness at the same time. One followed the other swiftly, just as a hand reaches out instinctively to rub a hit shin.” But we—the reader, the viewer—know that this instinct has been hard-learned. Self-preservation, compassion, and responsibility are not traditional Melrose qualities. ... [mehr] https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/patrick-melrose-and-the-fall-of-the-english-elite

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