Lust vs A House of Flesh

“Lust” by Susan Minot and “A House of Flesh” by Yussef Idris are two of the short stories in which I discerned not only a pattern with regards to its thematic focus being the expectations and disappointments within the sexual relationships that are focused on, but also similarities and differences in style which in part I felt, could be attributed to the fact that the two authors - Susan Minot and Yussef Idris came from two different cultures and backgrounds, whilst both stories (as stated in the introduction in the Literature packet) were written and published in the latter decades of the 20th century.

Though a detail, when comparing these two stories, the fact that whilst “Lust” is presented to us as it was originally penned by Susan Minot, Idris’s “A House of Flesh” is translated into English by Mona Mikhail. (I wondered if the preciseness of the translation due to the difference in language may have any bearing on altering the original effect of the story but didn’t have basis for speculation on the success of the power of the plot that seemed to be executed intelligently even in the translation)

Sharing as stated before, a common theme of lustful sexual relationships and the longing for fulfillment which is based on the expectations of women who are commonly the main characters of the stories, both stories have a difference in that, the male characters in “Lust” are many, with fleeting appearances in the story as they occur in relation to the narrator’s life, while the male in “A House of Flesh” – the blind Muqri, becomes the singular focused-upon male character whose role becomes that of being the sexual mate, to all four women in the story. “Lust” in contrast has the protagonist young teenaged girl, having sexual relations with Leo, Roger, Bruce, Tim, Willie, Philip, Oliver, Johnny, Eben, Jamie, Andrew, Simon, Mack, Paul, and Eddie.

While “Lust” is written in a casual colloquial language in a first person narrative form in the backdrop of a liberal, modern culture which is supported by it’s relaxed “speaking voice” tone, “A House of Flesh” is narrated not as a personal experience but as a 3rd person narration of a story that details a different, traditional, conservative culture which involve norms and duties, which make it more intense in meaning than the former.

While “Lust” consists of a narration of the ongoing process of affairs and fleeting relationships, it has no rising action. “A House of Flesh” accounts more dramatic (yet subtle) turning points in its story in which one event (beginning with the death of the father and husband to the family) changes the mood and feeling of the characters until it leads quietly to the next event, the entrance of the Muqri which is a turning point in their lives until the next turn in the story.

Another feature that serves to compare these two stories is that of the narrator in “Lust” including a scene from her childhood - “when we were little, the next door tied up our ankles” while “A House of Flesh” does not include similar excerpts from the past as the nearest it goes, is to the accounting (at the beginning of the story), of the death which occured two years previously.

“A House of Flesh” begins with an exposition - an introduction which serves as an explanation to the background of the story at the point at which it stands. However “Lust” is devoid of explanation and minimalist in style, launching straightaway, into the thoughts of the narrator in a more informal manner “Leo was from a long time ago, the first one I ever saw nude”.

Although “Lust” is more direct, I personally found that the style in which “Lust” was written made me take a few seconds longer than it did while beginning to read “A House of Flesh”, to latch on to the subject matter of the story-teller. I felt that this too made the stories unique in their difference from the other. “Lust” was faster paced while “A House of Flesh” perhaps because of the language and the use of the personification of “silence” “patience”, “time”, waiting etc was more prolonged in its texture. Patience in fact, is “tried” as the story goes along.

Although Yussef Idris is detached from the events of the story and makes “A House of Flesh” a wonderfully clever plot in which the reader is left to ponder on the degrees of actual “ignorance” of the characters concerned while Susan Minot is more personally involved with the direction in which she guides the reader into realizing that she is expressing first hand, her feelings relating to her casual affairs, both these stories I felt, revolve around a de-humanized feeling experienced by its female characters. In “Lust” she seems to be reduced to “a body waiting on the rug”. Later, she begins to feel like “a piece of pounded veal”. In “A House of Flesh”, the three girls are “unattractive, having inherited their father’s dark, badly proportioned body, corpulent and flabby”.

Moreover both stories share the common characteristic of dreamy; almost sad, unspoken longings for what was not reality in their respective lives.” for they still dreamt of suitors” (“A House of Flesh”) “I never saw him again after that but I thought, I could have loved that one” (“Lust”). Both stories speak of a woman’s hopes with respect to a male counterpart/partner, high expectations which for most part of both stories, are either unfulfilled, shattered or met in disgrace.

Another comparison I could make is that Lust” and “A House of Flesh” share a common pattern of its character bearing up in silence – of putting up an act, of not letting the world see what the reader knows the characters to be actually feeling deep inside of them. This similarity being evident despite the contrasting cultures (one being a liberal American culture and the other being a traditional Egyptian culture), made me realize the degree to which both pieces of literature served to make we wonder on the fact that this secrecy could be a universal human experience that is shared by human beings, irrespective of background, difference in plot or nature of circumstance. Nothing is expressly said as is felt by each character. Although at surface value “Lust” seemed to be a narration by a girl living in times of modern openness and casual sexual relationships while “A House of Flesh”, seemed to be set in a traditional culture that would look down sternly on anyone who openly deviated from the expected norm and even though “Lust” has a very free, expressive casual manner of story telling while “A House of Flesh” derives its grimness of mood from the ‘silence” that befell everyone due to the nature of the guilt of conflict within themselves, I felt that “Lust” and “A House of Flesh” both contain human beings, bound by their inner reasoning that makes them stifle their giving verbal expression to their honest motives and innermost feelings. This is apparent in the manner in which they make pretences of what is actually true of what they really feel, when communicating with one another. “You wonder how long you can keep it up”/ “So I’d go because I couldn’t think of anything to say back that wouldn’t be obvious”/”You’d’ act like you weren’t noticing”/”I look at them and think, ‘As if’”/”You wouldn’t dream of saying that maybe you weren’t really ready to in the first place” (“Lust). “A House of Flesh”, with it’s ever present “silence” which returns in full force as the plot unfolds later, embodies this as the blind man appears to be happy yet “behind his loudness and happiness he is tormented by this silence, he is tortured by uncertainty . . . . so why doesn’t silence speak, why doesn’t it speak?”

Another similarity I recognized in the two short stories, is the manner in which its characters are forced to succumb to the situation as it is, despite their own dreams and expectations. There is the twin feeling of “legitimate duty” to not hurt and to not shirk responsibility (as perceived) by both the teenage girl in “Lust” and the mother in ““A House of Flesh”. “I laughed to be polite/”They dare to touch the button on your coat then they lose their nerve and quickly drop their hand so you – you’d do anything for them. You touch their cheek” (“Lust”); similarly: “A choking sob kept everything back. She held her breath and kept her peace”/”She whose only preoccupation was to feed them even if she were to go hungry, she the mother – has she forgotten?”
(“A House of Flesh”)

There is the hint of the human pursuit for sexual satisfaction in the face of there being but one person at the time. Briefly, the girl in “Lust” feels that both of the two boys Mack and Eddie, are “fightin”g about her. In “A House of Flesh”, the three girls all have their share of their mother’s legal husband.

Another common theme though different in nature that I felt these two short stories uniquely share, is the repeated quest to resolve the uncertainty that troubles two if its characters. One explicitly, the other in the recesses of his worrying mind - the teenage girl in “Lust” and the blind Muqri who sleeps with a wife who often times, doesn’t seem to be who he thinks she is. Both ask the singular question “who are you?” as they seek to unravel what appears to be hidden to them both, when they engage in sex with their respective partners.

Finally, a comparison of the short stories “Lust” and “A House of Flesh” made me also perceive a common pattern of the diminishing effect of the situation on its main characters, surfacing through the language that describes them. The narrator/teenage girl in “Lust” who is deeply entangled in the habit of casual sex, lustful relationships says at one point, “I could do some things well. Some things I was good at, like math or painting or even sports, but the second a boy put his arm around me, I forgot about wanting to do anything else, which felt like a relief at first until it became like sinking into a muck”
In “ A House of Flesh”, the mother whose face transforms into an unlit lamp which burst into light, electrified with laughter that lodged where cobwebs had taken refuge as she delighted in her husband - the blind Muqri, becomes a distraught woman with knots in her throat that deepen and choke her as she is sacrificial in her silence while again, in “Lust” she curls up like a “shrimp”, she feels herself “become a cave, filled absolutely with air, or with a sadness that wouldn’t stop” . The ongoing, unresolved ness of the problem is common to both women. Common to both short stories. As the ongoing situation in “Lust” plucks a petal off her, “each time”, the darkness “prevails” as even the seeing eyes go blind at the end of “A House of Flesh”.

In comparing, the parallel of similarities in the pattern of life-story and theme of the short stories struck me most, when I recognized that common to “A House of Flesh”, is the thought from Minot’s “Lust” - “the girl they were fucking is not there anymore. You seem to have disappeared” - “The blind reciter brought along this silence, with silence convincing himself that his companion in bed was always his legitimate wife, bearer of his ring, ever changing, unpredictable.” (Idriss’s “A House of Flesh”)

Thus through the comparison of style, culture and theme in Susan Minot’s “Lust” and Yussef Idriss’s “A House of Flesh, I perceived the pattern that was shared by both short stories (which both share sexual themes) alike.

The exposition of the fact that “after the briskness of loving, loving stops”.

© Slow Chills