Wordplay as a key to understanding Grace notes by Bernard Maclaverty

Polina Kolosova

Tver State University

Wordplay As a Key to Understanding Grace Notes by Bernard MacLaverty

In contemporary literature the role of wordplay has changed drastically. For a long time the f orm of the device was considered to be its most essential aspect while the function was reduced to creating humorous effect or its pure aesthetic value. However, this point of view can hardly be applied to contemporary literary fiction. Samuel Beckett in his novel Murphy writes ‘ In the beginning there was the pun ’[Beckett 1957: 65]. Beckett’s witty allusion reflects not only postmodern world outlook but also the potential of wordplay for

creating space for multiple interpretations within works of contemporary literature.

Nowadays wordplay is used by authors to present complicated meanings. So, it is widely exploited to convey mystic and creative world outlook (as, for example, in Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie and Black Swan Green by David Mitchell) as well as peculiarities of a depressed person’s thinking which is the case with Grace Notes by Bernard MacLaverty.

The title of the novel is not only a music term referring to the main character’s occupation. If we look into the definition of ‘grace note’, we will find that it also introduces a much more complicated meaning:

A grace note is a kind of music notation used to denote several kinds of musical ornaments. When occurring by itself, a single grace note normally indicates the intention of either an appoggiatura or an acciaccatura. When they occur in groups, grace notes can be interpreted to indicate any of several different classes of ornamentation, depending on interpretation [Grace note. Wikipedia: URL].

Catherine, the main character herself calls grace notes the notes between the notes . In other words, the term itself implies multiple interpretations and can be roughly considered as a music equivalent of wordplay. Ironically, some of the Russian media covering the news of the novel being nominated for the Booker Prize translated the title Записки Грейс which is outrageously incorrect [Kuzminsky 1997: URL]. No such wordplay is implied by the author and the main character’s name is Catherine, not Grace.

Wordplay in MacLaverty’s novel comes from Catherine herself as well as from other characters but it always has psychological impact on the main character revealing her mental state, attitudes and relations. MacLaverty’s wordplay surprises readers not with its beauty and exquisiteness. It strikes us as odd, totally unexpected and even rough. Catherine who is suffering from severe depression tends to pick on words looking for double meanings in things that don’t imply anything at all.

The very first wordplay readers come across in the novel is based on a sign Catherine sees at the airport:

She needed the toilet. Beside the sign for LADIES and GENTS was one for a BABY CHANGING ROOM. If only it was as simple as that. ‘Don’t particularly like this baby, would you mind changing it?’ [MacLaverty 1998: 4].

Although the tone of the joke may seem light, the wordplay reveals Catherine’s attitude to children which results from her postnatal depression and the difficult situation she finds herself in after the break-up with her partner. The author returns to this topic by means of another wordplay later in one of Catherine’s flashbacks:

I’m thinking about what I do not want to think about.

Day after every day. Morning after every morning it goes on. Repeating. Repeat marks. Da capo means return to the beginning. Literally – from the head. The babby’s head. Where she stuck the penknife [MacLaverty 1988: 200].

In this extract the main character is trying to make sense of her dismal life after giving birth to her daughter through music terms, something she understands best being a composer. By means of some strange logic of hers she goes further to the allusion to the so-called song of infanticide ( ‘I stuck a penknife in the babby’s head ’) which all of a sudden comes from her reminiscences.

Some cases of wordplay in the novel belong not to Catherine herself but to the people around her – her mother, her grandmother, her boyfriend. They appear to be essential for understanding the characters. Besides, wordplay gives readers an idea of what their relations with Catherine are really like. It is something her mind being creative and depressed sticks to attaching great significance to the words. The puns seem to reveal her true feelings.

The wordplay of her mother and grandmother, turns of phrase sounding similar to folklore occur to Catherine now and again. It becomes an evidence of spiritual bonds between the women. Catherine who is cut off from her family and her people has still preserved deep-rooted connections with them, even though she tends to deny it. For example, we can see it in her recollections of her grandmother:

My granddaughter. Grand by name and grand by nature.

Did I ever tell you – on the day you were born I said –

SHE is mine. She’s my hen of gold.’ [MacLaverty 1998: 146].

‘That’s why they call it a Singer Sewing machine. Cause you have to sing when you work it.’ [MacLaverty 1998: 144].

At the same time she struggles to regard her boyfriend as her soul mate. Despite all her efforts, Dave’s simplicity and vulgarity finding reflection in wordplay cannot but hurt her feelings. So, in one of the episodes he makes an inappropriate joke about their new-born daughter:

Last night some joker had asked him if he had put her name down for Eton. And he’d said, ‘Aye, and for drinking as well.’ [MacLaverty 1998: 173].

Writing about the music that Catherine McKenna composes Bernard MacLaverty also resorts to wordplay. The name of her key work is ‘Vernicle’ which is a obsolete Christian term referring to an image of Jesus Christ that pilgrims used to carry. However, her friend interprets it in an unexpected way:

‘It’s hard to talk about music. This thing…’

‘Called?’

‘I don’t know yet. Maybe Vernicle. Everybody’s into one-word titles today.’

‘Sounds more like an ailment. Half-way between a verruca and a cuticle.’

‘At least it’s my ailment.’ [MacLaverty 1998: 254].

Both interpretations of the word appear to be actualized in the novel. Later on it turns out that the music is both the ailment and the cure for it as far as Catherine concerned. The music emerges from the severe ordeals that the main character undergoes bringing long-awaited healing, belief in the future and her own strength.

When Catherine is presenting her work to general public, the novel reaches its culmination. The author exploits wordplay to fulfill a difficult task – to verbalize the abstract art of music, to capture the intangible:

What happens next is difficult to explain. It is in sound terms like counterpoint – the ability unique to music to say two or more things at once. But it is not like counterpoint – more like an optical illusion in sound. The drawing was in psychology books – either an old woman or a girl. The eye could not accommodate both images at once. Either one or the other. The mind flicked. Grandmother? Girl? Girl. Grandmother. Another one was a chalice or was it two profiles staring at each other? The same thing could be two things. Transubstanation. How could the drum battering of the first movement be the same as the drum battering of the second movement – how could the same drumming in a different context produce a totally opposite effect? The sound has transformed itself. Homophones. Linseed oil. Lynn C. Doyle. Bar talk. Bartok – the same sound but with a different meaning. Catherine heard it inside her head and knew that it was possible to achieve it, once the idea was conceived [MacLaverty 1998: 275].

The effect that makes Catherine’s music a masterpiece is its ambiguous sound. To convey it Bernard MacLaverty refers to the linguistic term ‘homophone’ (homophones are words or phrases that sound exactly the same or alike and often serve as the basis for puns and wordplay in verbal communication) giving examples of the phenomenon and visual illusions used by psychologists.

As we see the functions of wordplay in Grace Notes cannot be narrowed down to comic and aesthetic. The wordplay we find is various and in the novel it becomes one of remarkable features of Bernard MacLaverty’s writing. Creativeness and depressed state of the main character are conveyed with the help of wordplay. It also serves to express a more complicated message of the novel which describes how Catherine overcomes a crisis and finds her own voice as a composer and can be regarded as a coming-of-age story (Bildungsroman) according to some critics [Gartner 1997: 115]. Nothing has one single meaning (just as grace notes and wordplay) as it seems when you are young. A failure may become a success; a soul mate may turn out a complete stranger. Understanding it means growing up. Being able to see multiplicity of interpretations is seen as a key to maturity, peace, happiness and success.