In my review of Blindness I touched on the idea of sight being a floating signifier meaning that having sight is always seen as a good thing and being blind is always seen as being a bad thing, but those states can refer to any number of different things.

The book’s subtleties come from the fact that you have to piece what Raymond is getting at together by the emotional content of the text as relating to different vignettes and characters.

“Most people live with their eyes shut, but I mean to die with mine open. We all instinctively try to make death less difficult for ourselves. Personally, I’ve got two ways. First, I drink. I drink for oblivion, and then a fall of some kind or a blow, once I’m beyond thinking or feeling. That’s how I’d die, with my eyes shut. My other way is to rationalise my experience. But, no matter how logically you think, you soon get in a muddle. Existence is blind – neither for you nor against you. This impartiality contradicts everything in human experience; there is neither love nor hatred, caresses or assault, in your dealing with the everyday. Existence is like a stock exchange – you can make as big a fool of yourself as you like, and go on until you’re hammered.”

That’s his goal, he achieves it, whether it was worth achieving though, that’s a question I think the book leaves somewhat open. Maybe, there is a heroic quality, but maybe not, to return to your opening para ‘The horror! The horror!’”.

I definitely think you’re right about the Detective becoming infected. You can see it in his relationship with Barbara and the fact that he initially comes on strong, knowing how to deal with her so as to get information out of her, but then, like Stanisland he falls for her and ultimately disgusts her. There are suggestions that Stanisland and Barbara’s relationship was not always the twisted mess it was towards the end. I can imagine her respecting his intellectual combativity and courage.

That also explains the weird scene in which the detective speaks to his superior almost in tears, crying that he doesn’t understand what Stanisland achieved. Indeed, it’s never made completely explicit what he did achieve other than the hint given in the book’s title.

Staniland despairs, but his despair is itself a protection, his embrace of pointlessness is itself a meaningful response, there is a paradox there as well possibly as a simultaneous act of courage in recognising reality and of cowardice in failing to live his own life.

The sculptor recognises his own irrelevance, he knows his work will be destroyed on his death, but he lives regardless and he is part of life.

Indeed, perhaps there’s something in that, some characters in the novel are unthinkingly part of life, some are thinkingly so, and some in various ways cease to be so. Staniland, Barbara, the Poet’s wife.

I think there’s a lot by way of possible interpretations, more than we’ve canvassed between us in all likelihood. Like you, when I blogged it I felt frustrated at the impossibility of fully capturing its subtleties.

Agree on the Cavalier by the way, and the ending is a bit rushed. I think I’m right that he’s trying to suggest the policeman is infected by Staniland’s viewpoint and in understanding it approaches Staniland’s fate, but Raymond doesn’t wholly succeed and the ending is not the part of the book that lingers in the memory.

He Died With His Eyes Open was the first of Raymond’s books to be published after a long French hiatus. It was his second work of crime fiction. All his previous works were more mainstream and literary and so I think the idea of his struggling to coax HDWHEO into a genre shape is understandable.

Regarding the idea of being crushed by light, I think that this is the idea that Raymond is trying to get across but yes, different characters do react differently to it. But I don’t think that Raymond is happy with all reactions. He definitely sees Barbara’s denial of emotions and regrets as somehow mentally unhinged and while he is not entirely hagiographic in his depiction of Stanisland (The Drunk) I do think he favours that reaction.

Indeed, I think that Raymond’s subtle distancing from Stanisland is what allows the book to be so incredibly melancholic without ever feeling as self-indulgent as you might expect from a book that grieves at length over a dead representation of the author.

Oh, for an edit function.

The policeman sees a value to life despite it’s fragility and ultimate irrelevance, he pursues truth despite there being no good reason to do so and plenty of reasons not to, he creates order and meaning from chaos.

Staniland ultimately despairs and pisses away his own life, albeit eloquently. Barbara carries out empty acts of revenge which make her no happier, the sculptor’s wife is in an asylum. The detective, and for that matter the sculptor, engage with the world on its own terms and carve meaning from its indifference, they live within the world but expect little from it.

What these characters have in common, unlike the other detectives, is their recognition of reality. The other policeman have no such awareness, and notably are happier for it. I don’t think though the book holds that happiness out as itself laudable or something to aim for – in part as if you’re aware it exists you are viewing it from outside and it’s already too late for you to aim for it.

Not sure about Raymond being crammed into genre bit by the way, Raymond is distinctly a crime writer, the fact he’s also an author of real talent and with something profound to say doesn’t remove the fact he wrote about murderers and policeman and was quite happy to work within the constraints of genre. His themes are ones I see as classic to noir fiction, as found also in McIlvanney, Peace, McCoy and others.

I agree with you on the sculptor’s wife, I do think though the book bears other analyses. The protagonist spends much time contemplating the absurdity (used non-technically) of his own self-awareness, he is crushed in part by the realisation of his own irrelevance as an animal doomed to a knowledge of its own demise.

The ending is one of the book’s weaker parts, but I think what it’s aiming at is that by the end the detective understands what the drunk is saying, and having that knowledge he too is consumed by it. By the pointlessness of it all.

I think the book isn’t about how existence is filled with light so much as it’s about different ways of responding to existence. For the sculptor’s wife, the significance of it all is too much, the sculptor captures transitory moments in stone but knows his work will not outlast him, the drunk despairs and in doing so abandons things that could have given his life meaning, the detective finds meaning through his work and the drunk casts doubt upon that, Barbara seeks revenge for it all. There is no single narrative, there are multiple narratives, multiple responses to a lack of extrinsic meaning and multiple answers to the possibility of intrinsic meaning.

I definitely see noir as existentialist literature, I think it would be a mistake though to see it simply as a defence or refutation of particular philosophers, I see it more as a continuation of a conversation about implication. McIlvanney, whom I urge you read, has a very different response to that of Raymond, seeing instead the absence of god as a call to arms – we must love each other or die.