Yes, Justine is nonetheless a “master” work, but with the passage of time, Darley really doesn’t hold up all that well, nor do Durrell’s obvious prejudices toward a woman of a “whorish” nature. This is, in many ways, why Lawrence Durrell’s 1961 commencement to The Alexandria Quartet is so prescient, even if it is, more often than not, an extremely cynical view of love, and its recyclability–a polite word for disposability.ĭurrell’s protagonist, an Irishman who becomes referred to as Darley in subsequent novels of the quartet, is someone whose “evolved” view of love might have been impressive and avant-garde in its time, but now just comes across as garden variety fuckboy doublespeak. It’s a world that prides its bottom line on “the self”–improving it, bettering it, concerning one self with it. In the era that is now, it’s easy to be jaded about love. Justine is a novel that, in addition to being a part of a larger tableau–specifically The Alexandria Quartet–defies what most enthusiasts of literature have come to rely upon in depictions of love: that it lasts forever, that it can’t be broken or altered by what Days of Our Lives calls the sands of time.
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