hey!

i hope this is allowed, if not, please reprimand me accordingly!

i wrote this story as part of my uni coursework and i'm scared that it's rubbish. it's based on t.s.eliot's poem, 'the love song of j. alfred prufrock.' i'd like some feedback if you can be bothered to get through it!

The True Story of J. Alfred Prufrock

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1.

“Pass me that coffee cup won’t you Victoria?”
“There.”
“I do think tonight was a complete success. Everybody got on so well together!”
“I can’t think of a night I’ve enjoyed better in a long time. You always have been a wonderful hostess when I come to think of it, Anne”
“Thank you. I was a little disappointed to notice how little effort several guests had made with their appearance though. I know I shouldn’t, but I always take it as a personal slight when people arrive at my home sloppily dressed.”
“Oh you mustn’t think like that. It’s just a lack of manners. Nothing lacking on your behalf! I did think, though, that Lizzie looked particularly dreadful!”
“That dress!”
“Didn’t they look a sight sitting together at dinner, Lizzie and James?”
“A dreadful sight. He looks so scruffy these days. I can‘t work out what it is about him that makes him look so…unkempt!”
“I think it must be his hair. It’s growing so thin!”
“Oh we mustn’t Victoria!”

2.

Oh, I can just imagine them now, clearing away the night’s debris together. Anne and her little sycophant, Victoria, dissecting everybody and everything for hours and hours. Revelling in the fact that nobody knows they’re doing it, pretending that they feel bad about it. “Oh, we’re so bad Victoria! We mustn’t!” I can’t help but wonder what they’re saying about me. Or rather, I think I can guess and I’d like to know whether I’m right about it. I think they’re saying, “And James! He looked a sight this evening didn’t he? He used to be so handsome in his day. Have you noticed how thin his hair is getting lately? Emma had a lucky escape there! Do you know, I heard that he wanted to marry her!” Yes, that’s probably it. Something along those lines anyway. Although, aren’t I as bad, leaning out of this window, smoking this pipe, ripping them both to pieces? At least they have somebody to talk about people with!

I wanted to say something all night. Something that would disturb everything, anything to shut them up for a minute. Just for a minute, until somebody said something else to make them all forget. (Although they’re likely to just lapse back into a conversation about Michelangelo, reminding me of how un-David-like I am, or have become.) I was just so tired of making the right faces and choosing the right responses. I seem to waste so much of my time doing that these days but I don’t think they’d like me too much if they knew me. Anyway, it gets tiring and it makes me want to do something out of the ordinary in front of them. It could be contagious! Dinner guests everywhere, pulling faces, clowning, saying what they really mean, what they’ve wanted to say since they arrived, or for longer than that. That would be living, I suppose.
It’s difficult though. If I did that, made that bold move, did something crazy like speak my mind, it may not be very well received. Then where would I be? Especially in front of the women. Those dreadful, beautiful women that paralyse me with fear and enjoy watching me squirm under their gaze. I’ve decided though that I had my chance with women. Well, a woman. I could have asked her but I never did. Would it have been worth it if she had said no? Or even if she had said yes? I do think about her sometimes, never enough to think very fondly though. In fact, these days, she hardly seems like a person at all. Just a collection of arms, dress and perfume. Do you think that’s strange? What I find strange is how I mark my life in a different way from my married acquaintances. They have significant dates to remember with their significant others. Things like anniversaries. They can think of time as before and after: before marriage, since marriage, before the birth of their second child, after they moved into their first house. I suppose, in a way, where their lives can be filed neatly, I have no such dividers of significance. Lunch dates and afternoon teas aren’t classed as significant are they?

When I come to think about it, I’m not really a person of significance either. Despite my indecision, I’m certainly no Hamlet! I have a bit part in life. My friends appreciate the advice I give them. Some even say that my advice helped them in some way. I help them to move forwards whilst remaining entirely still. My role in my social circle is to provide some relief. I say the right thing, I can handle difficult dinner party situations with skill. I’m admired for my skill with language, even though sometimes it leads to misunderstandings. Despite all this though, I do worry that I’m also the Joker. The unintentional Joker mind. “Isn’t James Prufrock funny? I never know quite what to say to him, do you? He doesn’t seem to have much in common with any of us. What do you think of him, living in that apartment all alone? How eccentric!” Alas, poor Yorick!

I have a dream sometimes, I’m sure Freud would have a field day with it. I’m at a beach somewhere, does it matter where? I’m old and it embarrasses me when I wake up to remember that the legs of my trousers were rolled up to just above my ankle. A desperate attempt to create a youthful, carefree look. I can hear singing coming from the sea. It’s actually coming from a group of mermaids. However, when I look more closely, I realise that they’re not singing to me. I remember when I wake that I’m not very surprised by this. I’m trapped beneath the sea with these mermaids who don’t sing to me until I drown. What would Freud say about that I wonder? Repression of sexual desire probably. Although it saddens me to say that it’s less repression and more rejection of my sexual desire by others that leads to such dreams! It makes me realise how old I’ve grown without realising it. When I look in the mirror upon waking, it is a shock to see a face more like the old James Prufrock of my dream than the last time I had it, or the time before. Probably not as old as next time, but getting there.

I wonder how this could have happened, how I could have lived most of my life without realising that I was living it. I think I may have come up with the answer. I’ve never been very good, at just deciding to do something and then, well, doing it. The thinking happens, sometimes even the deciding happens but the execution of the deed always eludes me. James Alfred Prufrock is not forward moving creature. I’m more of a…sideways moving creature. A crab, perhaps. It struck me the other day how life is often represented as a journey. People generally move forward through their lives, making choices that take them places. I don’t seem to have done that. It seems difficult to say exactly what I have done. I suppose I always thought there’d be time to do everything I needed to do. Maybe I was even stupid enough to think that somebody somewhere would make time for me to do it all. All that matters really, though, is that I’ve discovered there isn’t time. Not now anyway, not now that my hair’s growing thin.

3.

“I know Anne. But it’s so hard not to! He’s become such an odd fellow in the last few years.”
“Well, certainly time hasn’t been kind to our dear friend. Did you notice how thin his arms and legs have grown? It really is quite shocking!”
“I mean despite his appearance, he’s quite strange. At times this evening, it seemed as though he was straining even to stay awake!”
“Perhaps he thinks himself above our conversations. You know how he is. How he likes to sound like an intellectual.”
“Perhaps. Although I kept looking at him and at certain points, he really did seem like he wanted to say something. I was looking at him, expecting, but nothing came out! In a way I was quite relieved. I’m not sure why.”

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thank you so much if you bothered with it!

love x

remember the crash test dummies?

didn't they reference prufrock in a song? i read that somewhere. i don't listen to them though. x

where's the etherised patient sky?

what do you mean?

i looked for a way to work that in somewhere but i couldn't do it without it sounding like i was just trying to shoehorn it in. any ideas?

x

what did eliot mean by it? it's one of the oddest things

i love to edit and to help other writers. so by way of being an editor i will suggest something...about the way your story hit my eye. keep in mind, my background is in journalistic editing, so the way conversations and stream of consciousness flows makes a certain kind of sense to me -- or does not.

---

1.

“Pass me that coffee cup won’t you Victoria?”

“There.”

“I do think tonight was a complete success. Everybody got on so well together!”

“I can’t think of a night I’ve enjoyed better in a long time. You always have been a wonderful hostess when I come to think of it, Anne.”

“Thank you. I was a little disappointed to notice how little effort several guests had made with their appearance though. I know I shouldn’t, but I always take it as a personal slight when people arrive at my home sloppily dressed.”

“Oh you mustn’t think like that. It’s just a lack of manners. Nothing lacking on your behalf! I did think, though, that Lizzie looked particularly dreadful!”

“That dress!”

“Didn’t they look a sight sitting together at dinner, Lizzie and James?”

“A dreadful sight. He looks so scruffy these days. I can‘t work out what it is about him that makes him look so…unkempt!”

“I think it must be his hair. It’s growing so thin!”

“Oh we mustn’t, Victoria!”

2.

Oh, I can just imagine them now, clearing away the night’s debris together. Anne and her little sycophant, Victoria, dissecting everybody and everything for hours and hours.

Revelling in the fact that nobody knows they’re doing it, pretending that they feel bad about it.


“Oh, we’re so bad Victoria! We mustn’t!”

I can’t help but wonder what they’re saying about me.

Or rather, I think I can guess and I’d like to know whether I’m right about it.

I think they’re saying, “And James! He looked a sight this evening didn’t he? He used to be so handsome in his day. Have you noticed how thin his hair is getting lately? Emma had a lucky escape there! Do you know, I heard that he wanted to marry her!” Y


es, that’s probably it. Something along those lines anyway. Although, aren’t I as bad, leaning out of this window, smoking this pipe, ripping them both to pieces? At least they have somebody to talk about people with!


--------------------------
do you see the only changes i made? also i stuck a comma and a period in. stupid editor tricks.

it seems a lovely story, i want to go and read the pome agin...


but mostly i remember that eliot flows, lyrically,
and comes off of the page in a certain way.

his being too dead to add more, adding a sense of breathing room via spacing as i have demonstrated might create more sense of relation between what you have done and the original poem. 'swot i think.

--
but i can tell just from having read a bit that you understood, related to, got something out of the poem.