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.

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.