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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