Cosmopolitanism and Material Ethics 105sex. It is a failure. Bucking and clawing, she works herself into a froth
of excitement that in the end only repels him” (p. 9). Once more, tone
plays an important role here in conveying the rather callous attitude
Lurie has toward the women in his life, with the encounter being
described in the most flippant and curt terms. However, after the
attack on the farm, Lurie appears to display a surprising degree of
warmth (albeit still filtered through an irreverent and slightly disre-
spectful tone) toward the women with whom he becomes intimate,
most notably, Bev Shaw. Although the real weight of the disparage-
ment is aimed at himself, Bev is not treated with any visible degree
of respect, with Lurie lamenting the fact that she “has no breasts
to speak of ” and is “sturdy, almost waistless, like a squat little tub”
(p. 149). This deprecation is made all the more cutting by the ironic
tone that Lurie injects into his descriptions:
He tries to imagine her twenty years younger, when the upturned face
on its short neck must have seemed pert and the freckled skin homely,
healthy. On an impulse he reaches out and runs a finger over her lips.
[... ] She is lying under the blanket with only her head sticking out. Even
in the dimness there is nothing charming in the sight. (pp. 148–149)Weaving the romantic with the ungainly in this manner is by now
a familiar feature of Lurie’s humor, which he takes to absurd excess
when his descriptions begin to echo the passionate anticipation of
the Byron libretto on which he is working. Ridiculing Bev and him-
self even further, Lurie proceeds to wax poetic in mock-Byronic
style, histrionically lamenting the loss of his own virility: “Let me
not forget this day,” he says to himself, “after the sweet young flesh
of Melanie Isaacs, this is what I have come to. This is what I will
have to get used to, this and even less than this” (p. 150). While
being unrestrained in his disparagement of Bev, Lurie also shows he
is more than willing to make his own physique an object of similar
debasement: “He pushes the blanket aside and gets up, making no
effort to hide himself. Let her gaze her fill on her Romeo, he thinks,
on his bowed shoulders and skinny shanks” (p. 150). However, once
again the reader does not feel entirely confident in declaring that
Lurie has completely “changed,” because the bitter, sarcastic voice
that channels the protagonist’s thoughts remains potently intact.