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