Leland, who is both acutely sensitive and detached from his feelings, believes he can perceive the deep sadness that lurks behind the placid surface of everyday life, a delusion Mr. Hoge seems to share.
In a banalised and depthless American postmodernity he saw Miltonian struggle: devils swarming into classrooms, the slow gears of ancient conspiracies churning beneath the surface of everyday life, a world so much grander and more cosmic than it actually is.
Guided by Will Youngren, a funeral director preoccupied with the death of his twin sister, Boyd takes Freddy on a dark field trip to a cave, literally below the surface of life, to a nether world that offers the child a chance to act out a search for her hidden father.
This collection is a perfect, witty riposte to that casual dismissal, and a lesson in how much goes on beneath the surface of everyday life; through a series of interwoven narratives, Infidelities explores the unspoken betrayals of those who, either suddenly or over time, find themselves leading lives of dissatisfaction or quiet desperation from which they seem unable to break free.
In many of these stories, inquisitive and ambitious characters seek to explore beneath the surface of life – at which point life drags them under.
Beckett, whose influence on Walsh is palpable, and Pinter would recognise that idea that beneath the surface of everyday life lays a gaping black hole: indeed Pinter from his youth frequently quoted a phrase of Cardinal Newman that creation is a vast "aboriginal calamity".
Bland, banal and weirdly repulsive, Simon Fujiwara's latest video installation is all surface, plumbing the shallows of a life gone slightly wrong.
Doig offers a gentle appreciation of the secrets beneath the surface of everyday life, set against a Western landscape that is described in concrete detail: a field is ready for plowing "when you can't see the frost on the ground by the light of the first full moon after the equinox"; a mixture of snow and dirt is called "snirt".
Below the antic surface of family life was an indigestible anxiety.
When a defect was located near the surface of a part, its fatigue life was shorter in comparison with that located far from the surface, indicating that defect location is critical to the fatigue strength of the part.
