War is a Force: Just the Sound of Birds

Since Richard brought up Vonnegut on Sunday, I thought this passage from Today's Writer's Almanac was still valid for the last book:

It was on this day in 1944 that the Battle of the Bulge began. It took place in the Ardennes forest, a snowy mountainous region of Belgium, France, and Luxembourg and lasted for more than a month. It was the last major German offensive, and it was the bloodiest battle of World War II for Americans troops. While estimates about the number of American casualties differ, the U.S. Defense Department lists 19,000 killed, 47,500 wounded, and 23,000 missing.

Among those taken as prisoner of war by the Germans was a young infantry scout named Kurt Vonnegut. (books by this author) He'd only been in the front lines for five days when he got trapped behind enemy lines and taken prisoner. Within a month, he was sent over to Dresden and put to work in a factory producing vitamin-enriched malt syrup for pregnant women. He and his fellow American prisoners were detained in and slept at an underground warehouse in Dresden that had been a meat-packing facility and storage locker before the war. The building was marked "Schlachthof-fünf": "Slaughterhouse-Five."

Then, in February 1945, about two months after the Battle of the Bulge began, British and American forces started firebombing Dresden. The firestorm created by the massive Allied bombings killed nearly all of Dresden's residents, but Vonnegut and other POWs survived because they were three stories underground, in that meat-storage locker.

Vonnegut published his novel Slaughterhouse-Five in 1969, a quarter century after he was captured at the Battle of the Bulge and a witness to the Dresden firebombing. In it, he wrote:

"It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.

And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?"

The Battle of the Bulge ended on January 25, 1945, after Hitler agreed to withdraw German troops from the Ardennes forest. Less than two weeks later, Allied leaders met at Yalta to discuss occupying post-war Germany.

Phantom Limbs, Anne Michaels

In honor of the next book selection .... I spent the day haunted trying to recollect my connection with Anne Michaels. Then I remembered (well, I searched my journal) and found from 1998 the poem below, which I love.

Patrick

Phantom Limbs, Anne Michaels

So much of the city
is our bodes. Places in us
old light still slants through to.
Places that no longer exist but are full of feeling,
like phantom limbs.

Even the city carries ruins in its heart.
Longs to be touched in places
only it remembers.

Through the yellow hooves
of the ginkgo, parchment light;
in that apartment where I first
touched your shoulders under your sweater,
that October afternoon you left the keys
in the fridge, milk on the table.
The yard - our moonlight motel -
where we slept summer’s hottest nights,
on grass so cold it felt wet.
Behind us, freight trains crossed the city,
a steel banner, a noisy wall.
Now the hollow diad
floats behind glass
in office towers also haunted
by our voices.

Few building, few lives
are built so well
even their ruins are beautiful.
But we loved the abandoned distillery;
stone floors cracking under empty vats,
wooden floors half rotted into dirt,
stairs leading nowhere, high rooms
run through with swords of dusty light.
A place the rain still loved, its silver paint
on rusted things that had stopped moving, it seemed, for us.
Closed rooms open only to weather,
pungent with soot and molasses,
scent-stung. A place
where everything too big to take apart
had been left behind.

War is a Meaning Forced Upon Us

Easy read, some good insights, too quick of an end: too pat. Love is all you need doesn't work after the prurient voyeurism of violence that makes up most of the book. It did make me go find my copy "War Music" and "All Day Permanent Red" by Chistopher Logue, so that was a good thing. The Illiad is still one of the best war books going. I loaned out my copy of Hedges so I am going to just give a few general comments. Hedges spends a large amount of time cataloging the horrors of the wars he has encountered, doing little to justify his conclusion, other than God I hope Love is the answer because hate sure is nasty. I liked the differentiation of Mythic and Sensory view of war and war reporting. His idea of Mythic reminds me of the "magic' idea of glamour: a dazzling that makes others believe what is really not there. I guess it is that desire to be a part of something bigger than yourself that attracts us to the "myth" of war, because no one really wants the reality of war in their part of the neighborhood. Blood is messy.

The End and the Beginning

by Wislawa Szymborska


After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.

Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.

Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.

Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

We'll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.

From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.


Reading the introduction of "War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning" made me think of this poem.

The Berlin Wall Fall Anniversary

Wow. We read Niebuhr, discuss his anachronisms re. communism on Sunday, then hear today of the 20 year anniversary of the Berlin Wall Fall today. Poignancy.

The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr

I have heard that this was/is the most significant contemporary book on American foreign policy. To some extent, it shaped our cold war policies, and perhaps it needs to shape American policies toward a u/dystopian Islamic movement, as it did toward Soviet communism.

The Road

I will occasionally allow myself to revisit a valued novel, play or other piece of written word. There are usually a few stipulations that I require for such an engagement. After all, there are a lot of books out there to read and it seems silly to just trivially read something over (and over) when the new is waiting.

Such stipulations include:

a) a commitment to do so quickly, very quickly
b) a need to get something out of it, a reason
c) a desire to look to add to my previous experiences, search the headphones for sounds once missed
d) a creative need to clear the palette with .... well ..... perhaps not exactly clear, but at least sate the palette
e) a creative need to remind myself how well something can be done, a vicarious roll in the creative dirt

I have read my favorite play Art no less than 30 times. In it I am usually seeking a re-education in simplicity, effective translation of worlds (French to English holds up) and the child-like nature of adult human relationships.

After reading White Tiger I had an uncontrollable urge to revisit The Road. I know, I know .... but I think it's amazing. Of all the forms of art I claim to appreciate, I consider it to be an instantiation of perfection.

In my mind, in my experience The Road is more of an enormous life-sized painting than a novel. I say that with a complete inability to really understand or see the painted form as most experts can. I think it's a color thing.

Standing far, far back you see the purpose, the big picture of The Road. Sure, it's about obvious and well-trodden themes: apocalypse, savagery, survival, a race against odds and time. It's about a father, sure. It's about a son, sure. It's about the crystalline fragility of this tottering empire we call society. Sure. Whatever.

As you begin to walk closer and closer to the enormous canvas, however, the big picture becomes less distinct. The parts even begin to lose focus. You see more and more of the paint strokes themselves. The original texture of the suspended and hued mass as it was slavered across its native substrate. In those details, in those cracks the real purpose begins to emerge. It's about questions. Are there uncrossable lines that separate who we might consider man to be from a matching organism without a unique internal fire? What are the consequences of straying across those lines? Forever? In a world that tells you, that demands it of you, are you a fool for holding to the side of light? Just how easy is it for anger, fear, or disgust to catalyze us over and beyond? Do we gain something in the fight against it or remain the same with a bit lost in each battle - a little less capable of fighting the next time we are challenged or required to do so? So many questions - so little time, frequently tested. Then and now. Always then, always now.


Hold your hand in front of the flame.
Don't let it go out.
He rose and took the pistol from his belt.
This door looks like the other door, he said.
But it's not.
I know you're scared. That's okay.
I think there may be things in there.
And we have to take a look.
There's no place else to go.
This is it.
If you want to help me.
If you don't want to hold the lamp.
You'll have to take the pistol.

I'll hold the lamp.

Okay, this is what good guys do.
They keep trying.
They don't give up.
Okay.


It is this subtlety of purpose that disappointed me most about White Tiger. I cannot believe this book is beloved by so many much less considered worthy of such an award, any award. The setup was adolescent in structure and tone. I machete-chopped my way through the first 30 pages on sheer will alone hoping to God the author would stop the self-aggrandized tone of the faux-conversation. Good luck with that. What then emerged was a character and story without purpose. This was not a unique man, this was not a good man - this was an opportunist not unlike anything he saw or smelled around him. No questions were asked of lines crossed, no investigation into the damage points possibly taken on by choices and actions. This was a man and story no different from any modern tale - any modern day. There are those that have and there are those that wish to have ... and given the opportunity the wishers will say and do anything to join the other club. Thanks for that 300 page insight there, Mr. Award Winner.

Werds about The White Tiger

This book moves very quickly, the rich/poor disparity does not get into too much detail, only to support the narrator's indomitable desire to leave his "coop" and become a survivalist, which in India means get a real job where you're not someone's bitch. My initial thoughts before reading were very high, I thought it would be this intricate novel evincing the complexities and hidden travails of India. What it does is tell a story about someone coming out of this Darkness that is Bangalore, but doesn't really give him an encompassing life, just just a mere existence predicated on menial success, He is agonizingly free at the end, yes, but the path was very linear and terse. It worked in the vein of the narration because it was an intense story, which I liked. I saw Balram really trying to figure out the Light in Delhi, and I became frustrated when he was the scapegoat for his driver's wife. But this guy's supposed to be a pretentious dick, this character, and the author attempts to create this love/hate personality. Unfortunately, at the end, you're just saying, "good job, buddy. Now what's next to read."

Why Did It Win the Booker?

I finished The White Tiger last week. It was a fast read; a narrative push drives the book. I found it to be a fairly simple, if not simplistic, novel. Not that I didn't enjoy it, but I do wonder why it won the Booker prize. I found the structure and story to be fairly mechanical and predictable. The social justice themes were also fairly stock. A review I read on line called it an Indian novel without the overdone style of most Indian novels (I guess a jab at Rushdie), but what I wanted was a bit more "beauty in the writing. There are some good lines and description, as noted in the two previous posts, but not enough for my tastes. I would write more, but Horn has my copy so I can't refer to the text, or use it as a jumping off point for my rambles. Maybe more later if I can get the book back.

The problem with cellular phones....

My favorite line so far..."I don't keep a cell phone, for obvious reasons--they corrode a man's brains, shrink his balls, and dry up his semen, as all of us know...."

We all know, don't we?

Second favorite line: "Iqbal, who is one of the four best poets in the world--the others being Rumi, Mirza Ghalib, and a fourth fellow, also a Muslim, whose name I have forgotten...."

Yeah, my fav too...a name I have forgotten.

Quote of the Day from Mr. Adiga

"Here's a strange fact: murder a man, and you feel responsible for his life - possessive, even. You know more about him than his father and mother; they knew his fetus, but you know his corpse. Only you can complete the story of his life; only you know why his body has to be pushed into the fire before its time, and why his toes curl up and fight for another hour on earth."

I wonder what he was thinking when he wrote these lines. I know for sure, I've never thought of murder like this, but now I do.

Watch your back, Kelly.

That sent chills down my spine.

For our next meeting, we should just sit in silence, and when someone walks by, recite these words and then continue to sit in silence. If the person hears it, just glare at them longingly, then look away. No one will mess with us...no one.

It's all in a name

Really? The name of the main character is Balram? Like Willie Lowman?

Hypocrisy

I once took great pride in my opulent writing style.

Some of it came from self-worship, re-reading what was written so very self-impressed.
Some of it came from emulation, who wouldn't want pieces of William Gibson on the self-made page?

Most of it came from insecurity.

Too much to prove.
Too little time to do it.
Too much stepping outside and wondering how others will perceive.
Too little time simply using my own voice; no matter how simple, convoluted, weird.

Oh, the arbiters on constant watch.

I have struggled with L.E.

She works much too hard (a laughable charge from me).

Review from Visual Bookshelf

Kelly told me that if I didn't cut and paste my review of this book, that he was going to hunt me down. So here it is:

I'm glad I was introduced to this book, this was something I wouldn't normally pick. On the positive, her style was what really emanated in her stories. She was able to intermingle the plight of the Native American with every day malaise. I read this for book club, but I wish that I had more time to read it. I liked picking it up and reading a short story or two everyday, learning about the brutality of the nunnery (St. Marie) or the depression of broken relationships. On the negative, she is variant in her writing style, and she wistfully magnified Northwestern life in a highly intense miasma of inorganic leisure insofar as for me to lose interest in the characters. I know, it's the malaise I must subscribe to, but for the most part, I had to take a break from the airy, discursive vibe she was creating. I tried reading Love Medicine, just to see how she expanded on the short stories, and I liked that. I think I would enjoy it more as if I lived in Argus, or even Fargo.

Favorite Story?

What is your 'favorite' story in THE RED CONVERTIBLE thus far?

What is Beautiful?

The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.
-- John Cage

The Problem with Talk on Beauty

I have been in a quandary over which of the multitude of topics to pick from this book to address. So: I opened the book at random and read a passage and wrote about what came out of that passage.

Here is the passage:

“There, son. It’s better out than in, isn’t it,” said Harold quietly. Howard laughed softly at this phrase: so old, so familiar, so utterly useless. Harold reached forward and touched his son’s knee. then he leaned back in his chair and picked up his remote control.
“She found a black fell, I spose. it was always going to happen, though. It’s their nature.”
He turned the channel to the news. Howard stood up.
“Fuck,” he said frankly, wiping his tears with his shirtsleeve and laughing grimly. I never fucking learn.” He picked up his coat and put it on. :See you, Harry. Let’s leave it a bit longer next time, eh?”
“Oh, no!” whimpered Harold, his face stricken by the calamity of it. “What are you saying? We’re having a nice time, ain’t we?”
Howard stared at him, disbelievingly.
(p.301 of my edition).

One of the multitude of problems the people have in this book with each other is their inability to see beyond their own perspectives and their inability to escape their discourses. (Suggested Reading: Chapter one of Social Linguistics and Literacies, you can find it here ).

Howard and Harold cannot understand the other because each are speaking from a different ideological perspective. Howard and Monty can not speak civilly to one another because their discourses create a climate where one can only see the other through stereotypes of the other. Zora argues passionately for the admittance of nontraditional students at the university from her social justice perspective, but Carl doesn’t understand that perspective. He becomes defensive and sees her and the college as patronizing, patrician, and hypocritical. Levi understands what it means to be black only as far as he is allowed to by whatever media outlet he has access to; while the Haitian, Choo, (Levi cannot even allow him his own name), sees Levi in a seemingly clearer light; yet even his perspective is slanted by his view of the oppressive colonizing West. The climax of the book occurs when Kiki is shaken out of her take on the “stolen” picture (who it is stolen by is determined by whose perspective you follow), when Levi, now at least a little bit shaken out of his own middle-class perspective, reminds Kiki of her more youthful beliefs. Fittingly, Howard has his own epiphany and the hope of reconciliation with Kiki in a moment of silence. The slide show of Rembrant’s paintings where Howard does not talk and lets the power of the Art and the 30 year relationship between he and Kiki speak in a louder voice than either of the spouses could on their own.

This is only one of the many interlaced themes which washed over me in this incredibly lovely, dare I say “Beautiful,” book.

Beauty and Consumption

I finished the book last week. I sensed the theme of the book might be captured in Simone Weil's observation in ‘Waiting for God’: "It may be that vice, depravity, and crime are nearly always, or even perhaps always, in their essence, attempts to eat beauty, to eat what we should only look at." Cf. her last section: On Beauty and On Being Wrong. Eros drives us to consume that thing we desire. Yet, in the consumption we lose the object of desire, and are unhappy. Like Plato in ‘The Phaedrus,’ it is the longing for the true, good, or beautiful (or for Augustine, the divine) that we must be content with. The quest of philosophy and literature and theology is more about desire and the journey, than the arrival. We are repulsed by those who 'have arrived' seeking to impose upon us their visions of eternity or truth. And, perhaps, to in the appreciation beauty is the consumption.

Just finished the book...

Just finished the book and decide to pick up Howard's End to read, investigating the suggested similarities. More like identities. I had never read Howard's End before (don't really remember how the 90's Thompson/Hopkins movie was even though I watched it) and I know that thoughout history authors have paid "homage" to others by using their plots and devices but come on... Otherwise, a very well written book but I need to look back into it because I am not certain what I got out of my reading of it.

Thank God I am not a Writer

http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/tom-shone/when-novelists-sober

Suplexed by Eloquence

So On Beauty...very different read from our previous reads - not that that's a bad thing, I'm just getting adjusted to the intense, eloquent language and pace Zadie has prepared for us. It's interesting because her characters are ostensibly depicted in a glittered, happy life with an obvious display of despondence and discord. Lot's of "D's" I did that on purpose - because, as of now, the story is getting a "D." The writing, on the other hand, is phenomenal. Every sentence, every word, meticulously pinpricked to make sure the blood drips out ever so gentle. Every character has their own particular preponderance over whomever they speak about, or even to. These are charaters that seem plausible in a MA. setting, but I don't buy it. I guess in the Literati world, we can finagle our injustices within our family by simply avoiding them and conversing with our other intellectuals, therefore disparaging the family circle. Damn, now you have an image of "Family Circle" in your head, I should've not used that. Anyway, what I really enjoyed was the dialogue, it made it real, but how they handled the issues were faulty. Maybe things will change, I'm on page 200. Just wanted to put a "On Beauty" post on here before Subtext usurps the entire page.

I am he as you are me and we are all together

We are served by organic ghosts, he thought, who, speaking and writing, pass through this our new environment. Watching, wise, physical ghosts from the full-life world, elements of which have become for us invading but agreeable splinters of a substance that pulsates like a former heart. And all of them, he thought, thanks to Glen Runciter. In particular. The writer of instructions, labels and notes. Valuable notes.

p. 796


All very platonistic, things reverting to their previous forms, yet the forms retaining some aspect of the thing from which it is reverting. There is nothing new in the world. The full-life world being comparable to the ideal world of Plato of which everything in the world we live in is but a shadowy reflection. Additionally we are a dream within a dream within a dream: the dreamer and the dreamed infinitely regress into one another like reflections of mirrors facing one another. I also thought about during the quoted passage above, about M. Adler’s idea of the Great Conversation where writers talk to one another across the centuries about ideas and the world which have become for us invading but agreeable splinters of a substance that pulsates like a former heart.” This of course echoes Plato’s Ideals as well. We are but “walking shadows, poor players who strut and fret their moment upon the stage and then are heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”


I question the end. Kind of like adolescent writers who bring an end to a complicated plot by saying, “and then I woke up.” Does Dick work this cliché in an effective manner? Or is it just a cliché?

Make a Connection?

I thought I would try to make a connection between two quotes, wound up being three, that Dick puts into the novel near the beginning. But I couldn't. At least not off the top of my head, where I do my best thinking. So anyone want to make a stab at it.

"I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, cheated of future by dissembling nature, deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world, scarce half made up, and that so lamely and unfashionable that dogs bark at me as I halt by them."

from Richard the Third, the beginning: The Winter of our discontent speech. Can be read in its entirety here


Also the music playing at the mortuary in Switzerland. Here are the translations:

Beethoven: Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world
Complete lyrics here

Verdi: Day of wrath, day that
will dissolve the world into burning coals,
as David bore witness with the Sibyl.

Complete lyrics with translation here

Matryoshka Dolls

I am quickly rereading Ubik. As I go I am going to have a running commentary (or at least that is my plan), a kind of dialectical journal. I will write a quote and then digress on whatever comes to mind. This seemed to bother some of you when I did this during “Till We Have Faces,” but “Oh, Well.”

All quotes come from The Library of America edition of Ubik, unless otherwise noted.

“Is a stranger tuning in on you? Are you really alone? That for the telpaths . . . and then the queasy worry about precogs. Are your actions being predicted by someone you never met? Someone you would not want to meet or invite into your home? “ p. 616

Eerie parallel to spybot software, and unauthorized wiretaps. I wonder, as did Herbert at this point in the novel, if the fear in our world is a manufactured control that has no basis in fact. Similar to Foucault’s panopticon, where because we think we are being watched we act as if we actually are being watched thus nullifying the need to be watched because we act the way we are “supposed” to act, or rather how we are told to behave.


“In the earphone words, slow and uncertain, formed: circular thoughts of no importance, fragments of the mysterious dream which she now dwelt in.” p. 619.

Again, I am rereading Ubik, so I tend to notice details in quotes that echo/inform themes which coalesced, at least for me, more as the novel came to a close. I think this line about Runciter’s “half-life” wife is a fairly good description of the “advertising” epigrams which begin each chapter. “Ubik” being the generic name for whatever product is being sold. The ads, like advertising and news bits in which we are imbued, are of “no importance” they are simply fragments which surround our waking lives, and perhaps send their tendrils into our dreams as well. It is like the idea of James Gee in which we are all a member of a discourse community where we take on the language and the implicit and tacit ideologies of those communities. It is not that there is a formalized dogma that must be followed; but, even more insidious, we simply take on the belief systems as we take part in the community or the dream in which we dwell. This plays out in the novel as Runciter’s wife’s half-life is influenced by another stronger half-lifer and as well as who is in control of who’s reality as the novel plays out its Russian doll-like panopticon of control.

Finished!

Ok, so I finished Ubik, and I absolutely loved it. I recently finished Androids and I was intrigued, but not astounded by Dick's style, but after reading Ubik, I can see why people are so fascinated with him. I will save my comments for our day (which day is it? the 12th?) But I do have some questions. I didn't want to post the questions on the page, insofar as to not distract other readers who haven't finished the book. So, if you want to help, just go to the comments section to read the questions. Thank you.

Take only as directed.

July book (or is it August book?) as chosen ever so carefully by Carlitos

On Beauty. by Zadie Smith (Really thought about Lolita, but I am just too afraid to even touch her.)

Movie Rec. from Gripp

As I was reading Ubik I thought of a movie you guys might want to check out. It's called Primer - it focuses on the same ideals of time travel and creating time paradoxes and the like. One of the most complicated movies I've ever watched. Let me know if you watch it.

wine and cheese party at Trovall's, Sat. June 20

Sorry to clutter the bloglines, but I do want to remind you that you are all invited, along with significant others (and we are kid friendly, too, if that makes a diff), to our house (17223 Village Glen Road in Pflugerville) for a wine and cheese party. Just a get-together with no formal plan. Just bring a bottle of wine and cheese to go with it. We'll start about 6 or so this Sat..... We hope it evolves into a every third Saturday of the month event.... Carl

Since I will not be able to join y'all in July, I was planning to not read UBIK (mythologically incorrect split infinitive!). Surprisingly, even to myself, I finished it last night. Couldn't put it down, if nothing else, because I wanted to see how it was going to wrap up.

Amazing how Dick can predict something akin to a web browser with instant access to up-to-date information, yet still describing analog tapes, phonographs, and LPs.

One somewhat pedantic and unsurprising line (on this edition's pp. 81-82) particularly hit me because it expresses my own, daily, ambiguous relationship with technology and machines : "One of these days," Joe said wrathfully, "people like me will rise up and overthrow you, and the end of tyranny by the homeostatic machine will have arrived. The day of human values and compassion and simple warmth will return. . . ."

Technology is no longer our tool, but our matrix.

Angels and Annihilation

. . . for I was old enough to know that a man. . . can find comfort in words coming out of his own mouth. ( Till We Have Faces, p.86)

Several times as I read “Till We Have Faces,” the beginning of Rilke’s Duino Elegies came to mind. Here is the beginning of the poem:

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?
and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.

Rainer Maria Rilke, from the first “Duino Elegies”

Looking back at my markings in “Till We Have Faces,” I could only quickly find two times specifically when I thought of this poem. Here they are:


Till We Have Faces

(p.112):

Sister, do you think young gods have to be taught to handle us? A hasty touch from hands like theirs and we’d fall to pieces.


(p. 307):
The God comes to Judge Orual.

If Psyche had not held me by the hand I should have sunk down. She had brought me now to the very edge of the pool. The air was growing brighter and brighter about us; as if something had set it on fire. Each breath I drew let into me new terror, joy, overpowering sweetness. I was pierced through and through with arrows of it. I was being unmade.


Not that I think Lewis was quoting from Rilke, I just found the parallels interesting. The destruction of the self when in contact with god/beauty/angels. And it is terrifying to stand on the abyss and realize that we are a rather insignificant moment in time.

Anosognosia

I finished "Till We Have Faces" a few days ago.

First Reaction


“the primitive thinking of the supernaturally inclined amounts to what his psychiatric colleagues call a problem, or an idea, of reference. An excess of the subjective, the ordering of the world in line with your needs, an inability to contemplate your own unimportance. In Henry’s view such reasoning belongs on a spectrum at whose far end, rearing like an abandoned temple, lies psychosis.” (Ian McEwan, Saturday, p.17).

A fairly straightforward mechanical reflection on the binary nature of faith/belief/god and rationality/reality/”greek thinking.” It ends, rather predictably from the start with the solution to the binary being “god is the answer,” which I feel is kind of a cop out: “I can’t figure it out so there must be something greater than what can be thought out there who can figure it out.” The assumption being is that there is an answer, and that the search for an answer isn’t enough. There must be some end point, in time (end of the world/our selves), but without the ability to accept that end point without some way to get out of it (all united in the godhead after death which is life everlasting).

Other aspects of interest:

* Storytelling, and who gets to tell the story. Psyche’s story told by the priest in contrast to Oural’s version in the book. Additionally her view of her relationship with Bardia and Bardia’s wife’s version. “I must try at any cost to write what is wholly true. Yet it is hard to know perfectly what I was thinking while those huge, silent moments went pst. Byu remembering it too often I have blurred the memorey itself.” (C.S. Lewis, p.117).

An unreflective self caught up in what is true, without questioning the ground on which you stand.

“How restful it must have once been, in another age, to be prosperous and believe that an all knowing supernatural force had allotted people to their stations in life. And not see how the belief served your own prosperity - - a form of anosognosia, a useful psychiatric term for a lack of awareness of one’s own condition.” (Ian Mcwan, Saturday, p.74).

* Eros telling Orual that she is Psyche as a punishment. Then the consequent unfolding of Orual not being aware (blinded, not able to see) of the love of Bardia, the Fox, Redival, and how their love for her crushed out aspects of them. Orual became the devourer. “Some say the loving and the devouring are all the same thing.” (C.S. Lewis, p.49).

Appetizers

Here are some links I found the other night concerning "Till We Have Faces:"

http://www.spectrummagazine.org/reviews/book_reviews/2009/02/17/lewiss_favorite_till_we_have_faces

This one is a review of C.S. Lewis "Till We Have Faces."

It comes from an interesting site if you back up to spectrummagazine.org

Additionally here are two more sites that were interesting enough to pass along. Just something to keep you engaged while you wait for the book to arrive.

http://www.montreat.edu/dking/lewis/TILWEHAV.htm

http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12321

Till We Have Faces, Introduction

... Lifted from "Bareface" ... an analysis of TWHF I once read:

Far and away the best I have written”—this is how Lewis described
Till We Have Faces, or, as he originally titled it, “Bareface.”
He added ruefully, “That book… has been my one big failure both
with the critics and with the public” (Let, 492).

Certainly Till We Have Faces is a radical departure from the beautiful
fantasies and religious teaching that loyal readers are accustomed
to associate with Lewis. The reader who picks it up expecting
a mental holiday in a strange and wonderful place like Narnia—or
Perelandra, for that matter—instead finds a squalid little “kingdom”
where two “princesses” play in the barnyard, sliding on the
frozen urine of the domestic animals. Similarly, the reader who
expects witty, poetic, inspiring arguments for Christianity will be
disappointed. Orual, the narrator and main character, was born
before Christianity existed. She alternates between cynical disbelief
in her tribal religion and hatred for its gods. Her opening lines are
quarrelsome and abrasive; many people read no further.

Other people love the novel and read it over and over; for a few,
it is not just Lewis's best novel, but the only one they enjoy. It would
be arrogant and schoolteacherish of me to define why others love
this book, but I can speak for myself. From the first, I became deeply
involved in Orual's personality and experience. She is so ugly, and
so ashamed of her ugliness, that she wears a veil; she never goes
bareface. She is angry. In her father's eyes, she is a worthless female,
not even marriageable. She is frustrated with the narrowness of her
environment, the barbarian kingdom of Glome. She loses the love
of her life, her half-sister Psyche. She will never have a man of her
own or be a real wife and mother. It is not that these specific things
happened to me, but that my experience has the emotional resonance
of hers.

It also has the emotional resonance of Lewis's experience. In his
nonfiction books about Christianity, and especially in his letters,
Lewis seems very frank, very open; those who read these writings
come to feel that he is a personal friend. Yet there is something hidden
about him. He refused to go bareface, so successfully that one
friend commented that his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, should
have been entitled, “Suppressed by Jack.” In Orual we see much of
the real Jack Lewis—his loss of his mother, his disrespect for his
father, his desire for closeness, his struggles with disbelief. Again,
although Orual's experiences are quite different from his, they ring
true. Something similar happened to him.

It is Lewis's last novel, and in some sense he worked on it all his
life. He first read the story of Cupid and Psyche from Apuleius's
Roman novel, The Golden Ass, when he was eighteen. After World
War I, as an undergraduate at Oxford, he tried twice to write his
own version of the story, “once in couplets and once in ballad
form” (AMR, 266). As he wrote to one friend, “So, though the version
you have read was very quickly written, you might say I've
been at work on Orual for 35 years. Of course in my pre-Christian
days she was to be in the right and the gods in the wrong.”2 From
the beginning his attention centered on the elder sister as narrator,
but her motivations became more complex as Lewis matured. For
example, in the poetic versions she was not jealous, but simply
unable to see Psyche's palace. In the mature version, she was not
only unable to see the palace, but also blinded by jealousy. And in
his remark about his pre-Christian assessment of Orual we see why
the novel consists of two parts, the story as Orual first experienced
it, and then the same story retold.

Metonymy Not Fragments

“Richard Rorty suggests that ‘ solidarity has to be constructed out of little pieces, rather than found already waiting, in the form of an ur-language which all of us recognize when we hear it.’ (Bhabha p. 336)


Foucault suggests that the sign of modernity is a form of decipherment whose value must be sought in petit recits, imperceptible events in signs apparently without meaning and value - - empty and eccentric - - in events that are outside the ‘great events’ of history. (Bhabha p. 348).


“. . . the figure of the ‘human’ comes to be authorized.” (Bhabha p. 339)



For years, and since I am 49 years old I mean decades, I have sensed that there is something to be found in the minutia of life which when pieced together allowed a meaning to unfold which provided a deeper understanding of the world than one would expect. I will show you fear “in a handful of dust,” as Eliot pontificated. Or Blake’s more positive eternity in a grain of sand. And this might be a mundane story, but then that is the point: When I was in elementary school, I felt there was some kind of grand meaning maker (a godlike creature) because whenever we were studying something in class, like Greek Gods, or looking at how prisms fragmented light into rainbows, then somewhere else in the world I would see the same thing or something similar. On TV there would be a show about the Gods (Clash of the Titans kind of thing) or I would notice in “The Golden Book Encyclopedias” my parents had bought for us a picture of Newton with a prism, so I would read the entry on Newton. The godlike creature I have come to realize was me. (No, I am not being narssisistic; yes I know I have that tendancy). It was just my brain taking notice of the patterns presented to it. The brain is a pattern seeking organ; and mine was working just fine at the time. I was beginning to piece together the meaning of my world with what I had at hand: a bricoluer to use a fancy academic word.

It is in the small events; the atoms and molecules that slip through the membrane seperating one space from another, where the meaning, the difference, occurs. The cumulative whole of the details create the meaning, not neccessarily the frame of the “great events of history” although that as well can be seen as one of the petit recits. Although in many ways it is the great events that become the dominant force through which we, as individuals and as a culture, become (in that incredibly violent expression) authorized. We are written into existance by the empty and eccentric signs that we read; a language that no one speaks but ‘which all of us recognize when we hear it.’ And it is this ur-language we (italics mine) all recognize that is the third space, it is neither created by us or upon us as individuals or hegemonic culture onto the colonial (interpreted) culture, but rather it is all of the bits, all of the atoms, and quarks and Clash of the Titans and pictures of Newton in interaction with one another where the Location of Culture resides. “Every atom of me is an atom of you,” -- Walt Whitman.

Talkin' With My Homi (Bhabha)

http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bhabha/interview.html


Here is a link to an interview with Homi Bhabha. There is also a nice short description of "Location of Culture" at the Bhabha entry on Wikipedia.

Bhabha

"So far, I think I do get his central thoughts, at least has he has expressed himself in the Preface and Introduction (and the first part of Chapter 1)."

Yes, although I'm far from done with this book and it may well yet surprise me, it does seem that once you've read the Preface and Intro you've gotten his message and he's simply expanding it thereafter.

I like to imagine this book as being narrated by John Cleese as I read.

Nathan

Lost in Space, or Who’s on Third

“We should remember that it is the inter - - the cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the inbetween space - - the carries the burden of the meaning of culture” (Bhabha 56).


Somewhere between the speaker and the addressee meaning occurs. I think that was coming from Bordieu: the assumption that what I have to say is worth hearing and that the person to whom I am speaking is worthy of hearing it. It is not only my words and my intentions that give the utterance meaning, but the person to whom I am speaking.
I believe there is “a there there,” a meaning that is the “true” meaning, although I am not sure that if it is there or not is of any real importance at all. The interpretation is of more importance than what is being interpreted. I believe how we interpret the world, whether it is there or not, occurs somewhere between what I see and what everyone else sees. In an astrophysics class as an undergraduate, the professor described how the moon only appears to revolve around the earth. In fact, the earth and moon each revolved around a common point; it was just that the point around which they both revolved was inside the earth, not the center of the earth, but inside off center somewhere, that made it appear that the moon revolved around the earth. The same was true of any stellar bodies; the one with the greater mass was closer to the center point, often encompassing the center point. This is how I see the socially-constructed interpretation of reality- - the group with the most mass, or power, is closer to the point of revolution, yet it is still not the center. We all have an influence in how the world is viewed, yet not an equal or just influence. Somewhere in this astronomical, (starry-eyed?) tangent, I think is an analogy to Bhabha’s “third space of enunciations which (he) has made the precondition for the articulation of cultural difference” (Bhabha 56). It is not the hegemonic culture, nor The Other that makes the meaning of culture but the dynamic space between the two. Each of the polarities need the other for the meaning they give themselves, yet the meaning for the whole comes about in the liminal space between the two.

Werewolves Live Close to the Border

It's as if;
Metamorphosis:
in probability,
improbability
to transformulate.
Translate the form;
refine, define
the infinite:
cross boundries- - -
land to land a step,
the word changes.
Is metaphor logic,
being different,
irregular when compared
like it's as if?
Similiar to, yet
dissimiliar enough
to a simile to
name names like
It's as if.



In lieu of a real post I leave this.

Coincidentally I ran across a clipping (NYT 17 Nov) I had filed away in my mestizaje (aka hybridity) materials back in 2001. Subtitle: Do Any of Homi K. Bhabha's Devoted Disciples Know What He's Talking About? Marjorie Perloff, emeritus professor at Stanford said, "he doesn't have anything to say."

So far, I think I do get his central thoughts, at least has he has expressed himself in the Preface and Introduction (and the first part of Chapter 1).

As far as I can make out, it helped me to read his work more like poetry than prose...and I take each page as a poem, letting it evoke a central idea--hybridity.

I had no idea that my own work on mestizaje (Latin American and Mexican cultural blending between the Spanish and Indigenous - and also between Anglo and Mexican in the borderlands) would parallel this so much. I realize there are no new ideas, but the figure I am working with did his writing in the 70s. This is what I see Bhabha saying: Essentially, new peoples and cultures are born at every encounter between 'others'. This cultural space is a location of renewal, liberation, creativity, and power.

Favorite part so far: The prostitute penis pocket poem about religious identity. Who am I?

Enough for now.

Pjk, I detect a certain evolution in your argument........ which I agree with but struggle with since I am guilty of the same "evolution" you describe. Why do we expect this sacrifice only of our artists? Why do we not expect the same from ourselves in our daily lives. I completely agree with the analysis that mediocrity often results from our caving to outside pressure and am cognizant of it every single day. I see the same thing in art though, especially your last point about being overly concerned with how they are viewed or received. It may not be fair to ask of them what we ourselves are unwilling to do. Artists seem to be especially exposed to this pressure since their very livelihood depends on this acceptance. That's the same pressure that leads us to change the way we teach or write our dissertations. (Though never having even come close to writing one I would like to think that I would resist such urges) I haven't read more than a paragraph of our book yet, got it today, and I hope that is one of the things we get some insight into. I hate thinking of myself as a product of this culture but there seems to be no denying it. "We are the hollow men, the stuffed men...." I have a feeling I may be out of my league but I will proceed as if I am not. I enjoyed your first remarks and look forward to more.

Book Arrived

My book finally arrived yesterday.

I always like the way that used books have a distinct extra olfactory component (in addition to factory-supplied book smell).
(at no additional charge)

This is a silly thing to start with but I will go ahead. The second PPG of the acknowledgments comments that "the evolution of this book owes ...". I always find the artistic use of that term a bit fascinating.

The majority of what we do professionally is the product of our impetus mixed with exogenous pressures. Sometimes more of the former wins, sometimes the latter. In the case where pressure from outside directs the flow, content, feel, purpose, or impact of something we create ... then that work has truly evolved in the scientific meaning of the word. The parts of the work that have survived this outside pressure have emerged and likely gained more dominance. This can be content or style. For example, I long ago had to learn that in scientific writing exposition of this very nature is not allowed; strongly frowned upon. Thus, my dissertation at the time evolved in response to the external pressure of expectations.

Great, so all I have said is that work often does respond to external pressure and expectations and in that sense does evolve.

But should art?

I have always thought that art is the one domain that should resist external pressures. Expectations often lead to mediocrity; a state of the union where everything is distilled down to a common form that is neither glorious nor horrible. We look for glory and horror in art, however, and should thus encourage artists in some ways to not let their work evolve unless the pressure comes from them. Even this is tricky as pressure directed at work from only the artist can easily be the byproduct of their perception of external pressure, insecurity, and a desire for acceptance.

Thus, I'd like to read a prologue or hear the opening lyrics to an album someday be: This work has not evolved. Deal with it.

That's all I have for now.

Pjk

I have ordered the book and should get it in about a week. Carl

The Location of Culture

The first book we are reading is "The Location of Culture," by Homi Bhabha. Any comments?