SOURCE: "Shields' Swann," in Room of One's Own, Vol. 13, Nos. 1 & 2, July, 1989, pp. 136-46.

In the essay below, Smyth explores the meaning of identity for the protagonist in Swann.

We believe we are at home in the immediate circle of beings. Beings are familiar, reliable, ordinary. Nevertheless, the lighting is pervaded by a constant concealment in the double form of refusal and dissembling. At bottom, the ordinary is not ordinary; it is extra-ordinary.

      (Martin Heidegger, Origins of the Work of Art)

Who is Swann? This question haunts the text, teasing readers and characters into laughter, frustration, recognition. Bittersweet mysteries of life. Shields insists on them, on us as mysterious creatures, riddled with doubt and anxiety, shot through with a capacity for concealment, for relief in the warmth of the body next to us in the bed, in the small pleasures and ceremonies of everyday life, in the song the...