the enemies of life
19 Aug 06
Watts, Alan. The Way of Zen. New York: Vintage, 1957.
Reasonable—that is, human—men will always be capable of compromise, but men who have dehumanized themselves by becoming the blind worshipers of an idea or an ideal are fanatics whose devotion to abstractions makes them the enemies of life. (30)
Posted by pzed on August 19, 2006 at 10.56am
I Ching
18 Aug 06
Watts, Alan. The Way of Zen. New York: Vintage, 1957.
Indeed, an exponent of the I Ching might give us quite a tough argument about the relative merits of our ways for making important decisions. We feel that we decide rationally because we base our decisions on collecting relevant data about the matter in hand. We do not depend upon such irrelevant trifles as the chance tossing of a coin, or the patterns of tea leaves or cracks in a shell. Yet he might ask whether we really know what information is relevant, since our plans are constantly upset by utterly unforeseen incidents. He might ask whether we really know when we have collected enough information upon which to decide. If we were rigorously “scientific” in collecting information for our decisions, it would take us so long to collect the data that the time for action would have passed long before the work had been completed. So how do we know when we have enough? Does the information itself tell us that it is enough? On the contrary, we go through the motions of gathering the necessary information in a rational way, and then, just because of a hunch, or because we are tired of thinking, or because the time has come to decide, we act. He would ask whether this is not depending just as much upon “irrelevant trifles” as if we had been casting yarrow stalks. (14-15)
Posted by pzed on August 18, 2006 at 10.40pm
The Great American Novel
18 Aug 06
Wharton, Edith. “The Great American Novel.” 1927. Edith Wharton: The Uncollected Critical Writings. Ed. Frederick Wegener. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1996. 151-159.
More quote mining. . .
It would appear that in the opinion of recent American reviewers the American novelist must submit to much narrower social and geographical limitations [than the European] before he can pretend to have produced the (or the greatest, or even simply an) American novel; indeed the restrictions imposed appear to differ only in kind from those to which a paternal administration subjects drinkers of wine, wearers of short skirts, and upholders of the evolutionary hypothesis. (151-152)
First of all, the novelist’s scene must be laid in the United States, and his story deal exclusively with citizens of those States; furthermore, if his work is really to deserve the epithet “American,” it must tell of persons so limited in education and opportunity that they live cut off from all the varied sources of culture which used to be considered the common heritage of English-speaking people. (152)
“Main Street” has come to signify the common mean of American life anywhere in its million cities and towns, its countless villages and immeasurable wildernesses. It stands for everything which does not rise above a very low average in culture, situation, or intrinsic human interest; and also for every style of depicting this dead level of existence, from the photographic to the pornographic—sometimes inclusively. (153)
As she [America] has reduced the English language to a mere instrument of utility (for example, by such simplifications as the substituting of “a wood,” or, mysteriously, “a woods,” for the innumerable shadings of coppice, copse, spinney, covert, brake, holt, grove, etc.), so she has reduced relations between human beings to a dead level of vapid benevolence, and the whole of life to a small house with modern plumbing and heating, a garage, a motor, a telephone, and a lawn undivided from one’s neighbor’s. (154)
It is not because we are middle-class but because we are middling that our story is so soon told. (154)
The idea that genuineness is to be found only in the rudimentary, and that whatever is complex is unauthentic, is a favorite axiom of the modern American critic. (155)
. . . keeping in mind, of course, that this article was written in 1927.
Posted by pzed on August 18, 2006 at 3.01pm
The Vice of Reading
3 Aug 06
Wharton, Edith. “The Vice of Reading.” 1903. Edith Wharton: The Uncollected Critical Writings. Ed. Frederick Wegener. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1996. 99-106.
Wharton argues that there are two kinds of readers: natural and mechanical. The natural reader engages intuitively with a text, probing, learning, and taking full enjoyment in the complexities and nuances of literature. The mechanical reader, who is the focus of the essay (guilty of the titular vice) reads out of a sense of responsibility, believing that reading alone will in some way improve them. Sadly, mechanical readers require mechanical writers, and as a direct result the publishing industry produces mostly crap. There’s more to her argument, of course; certainly an enjoyable read, and a gold mine of pithy quotes of which my favourite must be:
All forms of art are based on the principle of selection, and where that principle is held of no account in the sum-total of any intellectual production, there can be no genuine criticism. (105)
Others, somewhat at random (and I don’t wish to imply I’m in complete agreement):
That reading trash is a vice is generally conceded; but reading per se—the habit of reading—new as it is, already ranks with such seasoned virtues as thrift, sobriety, early rising and regular exercise. There is, indeed, something peculiarly aggressive in the virtuousness of the sense-of-duty reader. (99)
To read is not a virtue; but to read well is an art, and an art that only the born reader can acquire. The gift of reading is no exception to the rule that all natural gifts need to be cultivated by practice and discipline; but unless the innate aptitude exist the training will be wasted. (100)
Here is a book that every one is talking about; the number of its editions is an almost unanswerable proof of its merit; but to the mechanical reader it is cryptic, and he takes refuge in disapproval. He admits the cleverness, of course; but one of the characters is “not nice”; ergo, the book is not nice; he is surprised that you should have cared to read it. The mechanical reader, after a few such experiences, learns the potency of disapproval as a critical weapon, and it soon becomes his chief defence against the irritating demand to admire what he cannot understand. (102)
Posted by pzed on August 3, 2006 at 4.57pm
convergences
14 Jun 06
Moore, Alan. Watchmen. New York: DC Comics, 1987.
(XII: 27)
One of the many beautiful things about the study of literature is the way in which almost any two texts can be found to resonate with one another. Moore’s Watchmen is a thoroughly enjoyable read, although I’ve never been a fan of superhero comics and could certainly point to a number of problems in this one. (Why, for instance, rewrite history entirely, making Nixon president-for-life? It seems a rather lazy strategy if the point is to indicate that corruption is endemic to American politics, or that presidential power has become increasingly imperial.) However, I did find a certain richness in the multilayered quality of the storytelling. By incorporating a number of subplots, often overlapping them even in the same frame, Moore maintains a compelling tone throughout.
The characters are a little two-dimensional, although they exhibit a certain moral complexity. The superhero is fundamentally a vigilante, a morally problematic position at best, and Moore’s exploration of this problem is central to the story. The frames excerpted above show two of the “good” superheros conferring after the resolution of the plot’s major crises. Ironically, it’s the blue guy, whose powers have made him godlike (he experiences all time simultaneously, and even contemplates going off somewhere to create life) who must explain the simple, universal truth to the victorious vigilante: nothing ends. It seems to me this is one of the fundamental misunderstandings of the vigilante. In addition to the belief that their moral superiority places them above the law (or the even deeper error that an absolutely correct moral position is even possible), vigilantes must believe that things can be made right, once and for all, if only the world could be made to see things their way.
In A Short History of Myth, Karen Armstrong discusses the opposite perspective; one that I have always held to be closer to the truth. She is discussing neolithic religions, those which developed alongside the invention of farming:
The god of the dead is often also the god of the harvest, showing that life and death are inextricably entwined. You cannot have one without the other. The god who dies and comes to life again epitomizes a universal process, like the waxing and waning of the seasons. There may be new life, but the central feature of the myth and the cult of these dying vegetation gods is always the catastrophe and bloodshed, and the victory of the forces of life is never complete. (51)
I was perhaps a little hard on Armstrong in my previous post. The chapter on the neolithic period is stronger, generally, than the chapter on the paleolithic. Even PZ Myers acknowledges Armstrong “has interesting ideas about religion,” and I’m looking forward to her chapter on what she calls the axial age, essentially the period during which the so-called great religions of the world were born. I’m hoping for insight as to how and when our society lost the knowledge that nothing ends, that life is a constant struggle, that there is no ultimate victory. This is the irony in Moore’s all-knowing god character reminding us that nothing ends: it is precisely in the historic creation of all-knowing god characters whose faithful believe in beginnings, ends, and ultimate victories that that old knowledge has been lost.
Posted by pzed on June 14, 2006 at 7.28pm
a complete architectural meal
1 Jun 06
Wharton, Edith. The House of Mirth. New York: Scribner’s, 1905.
The man who built [that house] came from a milieu where all the dishes are put on the table at once. His façade is a complete architectural meal; if he had omitted a style his friends might have thought the money had given out.
Posted by pzed on June 1, 2006 at 12.39pm
the paleolithic period
30 May 06
Armstrong, Karen. A Short History of Myth. Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2005.
The fate of the Sky God reminds us of another popular misconception. It is often assumed that the early myths gave people in the pre-scientific world information about the origin of the cosmos. The story of the Sky God represented exactly this type of speculation, but the myth was a failure, because it did not touch people’s ordinary lives, told them nothing about their human nature and did not help them to solve their perennial problems. The demise of the Sky Gods helps to explain why the Creator God worshipped by Jews, Christians, and Muslims has disappeared from the lives of many people in the West. (22-23)
Armstrong’s book begins with a brief definition of the nature of myth: she reminds us that in ancient and traditional societies, the sacred and the profane are almost indistinguishable, that “[t]he very existence of the gods was inseparable from that of a storm, a sea, a river, or from. . . powerful human emotions (6)”, that myth functioned as a sort of culturally embedded psychology: “It not only helped people to make sense of their lives, but also revealed regions of the human mind that would otherwise have remained inaccessible.” (10-11)
Her chapter on paleolithic mythologies is interesting. All of what we know about paleolithic societies is based on conjecture, but Armstrong makes a convincing case for certain patterns of religious experience that seem to arise frequently in hunter-gatherer societies. Sky gods, almost always male, are found in almost every polytheistic pantheon; they are typically viewed as creator gods, responsible for having made everything, but for various reasons now removed from the world, absent from the daily lives of people. Sky gods are also normally disposed of by their successors, as in the example of Ouranos and Kronos in the Greek pantheon. What struck me about the excerpt at the head of this post is that Armstrong specifically states that the assumption “that the early myths gave people in the pre-scientific world information about the origin of the cosmos” is a misconception. If so, why does the Sky God represent this type of speculation? She seems to suggest that the Sky God was in fact a paleolithic attempt to provide information about origins, but that the Sky God was in turn doomed to fail because of a modern misconception about the nature of paleolithic myth—or perhaps a paleolithic misconception about the function of their own myths. I imagine little is known about exactly why the Sky God is almost universally dethroned, but Armstrong’s suggestion here that it’s because in some way the myths didn’t work seems facile. The parallel to the gods of western monotheisms is fascinating, nonetheless, but difficult given the weaknesses in Armstrong’s analysis of the Sky God’s demise.
The first great flowering of mythology. . . came into being at a time when homo sapiens became homo necans, ‘man the killer’, and found it very difficult to accept the conditions of his existence in a violent world. Mythology often springs from profound anxiety about essentially practical problems, which cannot be assuaged by purely logical arguments. (30)
Here, Armstrong seems to suggest that mythology can provide a mechanism to help humans cope with the ugly realities, not of life as it happens to us, but of the ugly things we have to do to survive. Admittedly, for paleolithic humans who might identify with animals in a way inconceivable to modern humans, one can imagine that hunting and killing a powerful and majestic creature might cause a certain anguish. And in our times, I suspect a considerable number of people would reconsider the casualness with which they eat meat if they were required to do the killing themselves. Nevertheless, I’m a little worried by Armstrong’s suggestions that mythology helps assuage our guilt. Returning to the parallel between the paleolithic Sky God and the modern monotheist gods, it isn’t difficult to find mythologies within the modern religions that justify and even promote atrocities. Here, for instance, is a video game promoted by dominionist christian Rick Warren. True, video games aren’t quite parallel to mythologies, but the dominionist vision behind this one arguably is. And if the function of a mythology is to help assuage the anxiety and guilt we felt as paleolithics when confronted with the need to kill big game to survive, it can also function to increase the comfort we feel as moderns when called upon to kill other people.
Thanks to Secular Front for the video game link.
Posted by pzed on May 30, 2006 at 4.33pm
vive la différence?
8 May 06
Wharton, Edith. The House of Mirth. New York: Scribner’s, 1905.
“Ah, there’s the difference—a girl must, a man may if he chooses.” She surveyed him critically. “Your coat’s a little shabby—but who cares? It doesn’t keep people from asking you to dine. If I were shabby, no one would have me: a woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself. The clothes are the background, the frame, if you like: they don’t make success, but they are a part of it. Who wants a dingy woman? We are expected to be pretty and well-dressed till we drop—and if we can’t keep it up alone, we have to go into partnership.” (12)
The character Lily Bart speaks these words to an acquaintance in the first chapter of the novel. Pointedly, although their conversation is somewhat intimate, she never refers to him as other than Mr. Selden, nor does the narrator reveal to the reader his first name. Miss Bart has taken up Mr. Selden on his impromptu offer for a cup of tea in his apartment, but we realize by the end of the chapter that this was an indiscretion. Social mores were such that for an unmarried girl (albeit, who is 29 years old) to visit a bachelor’s apartment would be considered scandalous. Mores have changed considerably on this issue, but arguably not so much on the matter of appearance that is the topic of the fragment quoted above. Evidence? Check out some of these tv news anchors ratings and reviews. Ah, well, it’s only been a hundred years or so.
Posted by pzed on May 8, 2006 at 2.48pm
the trouble with writing
25 Apr 06
Fischer, Tibor. The Thought Gang. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.
The trouble with taking writing seriously, is that the more seriously you take it the harder it is to write. Possible I take writing more seriously than any other human being that has ever lived. That could explain a lot. (83)
Posted by pzed on April 25, 2006 at 6.51pm
essais
22 Apr 06
Fischer, Tibor. The Thought Gang. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.
Sitting down in his vast library around 1560 [Montaigne] asked the question: what do I know? His zetetic method: to choose questions and then to skewer together chunks of thought like a kebab, morsels taken from top commentators and cogitators, spiced with a few opinions and experiences of his own. Mr. Database. The interrogator of history and letters. And not giving an answer, but giving them all. . . .
Montaigne’s task was herculean, but possible. Now you could spend your whole life trying to decide where to start. I heard one of the university librarians wistfully talking of the need for a good book-burning dictatorship. There is hardly an epoch or region whose intellectual door I can’t kick down if I want to search for their customs, findings, ruminations. Whether it’s a zaotar or the parasites in a pottoo’s intestine, I can biblio my way in and demand: “Give me your information, hand over your profundities.” My vision is wider, deeper, longer than Montaigne’s. Your whole three score and ten could vanish without a trace in one wing of the university library. There comes a stage with knowledge, like a city, where it becomes unmanageable, where it boils over. And even our data-dogs shepherding facts for us won’t be able to cope. Word overflow. Shelves of neglected books pleading for readers. Shelves, shelves and shelves. The forests are hiding in our buildings. (10)Posted by pzed on April 22, 2006 at 2.59pm
