Saturday, May 12, 2018

NOVELS AND OTHER NONSENSE



The novel is a literary genre whose history is 1000 years old; and this history is not without its controversy. Lady Murasaki, a well placed court figure in a Japanese emperor's retinue, is said to have written the first 'novel'. The Tale of Genji, is a long narrative with some development of character, plot, and place. Whether this story is the first novel or not is in dispute. Cervantes' classic, Don Quixote, a work from the 16th century is another early example of the form.

From the Encyclopedia Britannic comes this definition: A novel is an invented prose narrative of considerable length and a certain complexity that deals imaginatively with human experience, usually through a connected sequence of events involving a group of persons in a specific setting.1

The novel is just one of several forms that literature might take: poetry, drama, short prose, and non-fiction are other common genres. In the Greek classic tradition there were but two types: tragedy and comedy. Our penchant for division is inexorable. These days we further split the categories into subcategories and, no doubt, there are categories of the subcategories. Splitting hairs seems to be what our feeble intellects prefer. While this discrimination can be useful in understanding the nature of the beast we are dealing with, such labeling can also be detrimental when it comes to a clear view of the work. Clarity is often obscured by sentiment.

Meet an old man with a young wife and what do you have? Cradle-robber. Gold digger.


from The New Yorker
Samuel Beckett, Paris, April, 1979. Photograph by
Richard Avedon. © The Richard Avedon Foundation.

Someone who picks up a novel by Samuel Beckett inevitably comes to the reading with preconceived notions. Disappointment follows. This will be especially so with his early 'novels.' Tedious, boring, repetitious are three of the kinder epithets often applied to Dream Of Fair to Middling Women (1932), his first novel, as well as to Murphy (1936). The reason for this criticism may be quite simple: Beckett's intention was never to write a conventional novel. He was convinced that Joyce had worked the form for all that it was worth. He wrote:

"I realized that Joyce had gone as far as one could in the direction of knowing more, [being] in control of one’s material. He was always adding to it; you only have to look at his proofs to see that. I realized that my own way was in impoverishment, in lack of knowledge and in taking away, in subtracting rather than in adding."2

His prose smacked more of drama than not. Reading Beckett's 'novels' with this in mind produces a different outcome.

Are they then anti-novels? Literature noir? Prose-drama? None of the above? Ultimately, these are just more labels. The key point here is this: Avoid conceptions, labeling, discrimination. Yes, you must stop on the red and go on the green. But ... And whether the discussion is about Samuel Beckett or The Muppets, best to remember that inevitably an object labeled 'cigar' is always just an object labeled 'cigar.' Anything else is just smoke and mirrors.


1 https://www.britannica.com/art/novel
2  Samuel Beckett, as related by James Knowlson in his biography.



Tuesday, May 1, 2018

CONVERSATIONS




A year ago, I began this weblog. The description for CONVERSATIONS was this:

CONVERSATIONS is a weblog ('blog' is an ugly word) for wordsmiths. The site is also a vehicle to give my books (my ideas?) a hearing. I have selected a 'free' platform to begin this project. Advertising, apparently, will happen. If this becomes intolerable, I will simply stop. My goal with the weblog is to post weekly some 300 words of intelligent 'conversation' without error or inanity.

After a brief hiatus, the conversations begin anew. Thus far no advertising has appeared. The reason for this is probably due to the paucity of active readers. No point in wasting copy if no one is there to snap at the bait.

This works for me. The usual advice to writers is to find an audience and tailor the verbiage to suit the reader. Advertising makes this point admirably. Ad nauseam. My advice for writers (and for all other sapient creatures) is to use intellect guided by experience to satisfy one's self (or, oneself if you prefer) as one creates not only written work but a life as well.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
photograph taken from OSHUNews article 11/08/2016

The basic premise, of course, is that we create our own reality. As noted in the second installment of CONVERSATIONS, Wittgenstein it was who wrote: In most cases, the meaning of a word is its use.1 This phrase from Philosophical Investigations, published after his death in 1953, is often given as: The world we see is the words we use. Wittgenstein may or may not have written or spoken that version of his famous dictum. In short, we create our own reality.

So. What is to follow over the next few weeks is a discussion of the novel in general and Samuel Becket's novels in particular. In addition, I intend to begin serialization of a work of my own that has begun but not yet ended. The Blind Geisha may or may not be a novel. It is intended to be a novel, but one never knows.

1Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Anscombe translation, Basil Blackwell Ltd, Oxford, 1958, # 43.

Thursday, January 11, 2018

THE HANDSHAKE


If this is your first visit to CwHD, a brief introduction is available. Click on the CwHD Intro link in the sidebar. To return, click the Home link. Older editions are archived and listed by date.

Greetings between humans are many and varied. Arabs may hug like bears. The French might kiss a cheek. In the Andaman Islands, weeping is not uncommon. The ancient Egyptian cowered, while the knights of medieval England went to one knee. For the Japanese, etiquette demands the bow. Despite the disparity, one of the most common greetings for all humans is the handshake.

All forms of greetings have their origins in antiquity. Grasping hands or forearms was for Greeks, Romans and even ancient Hindus a means of showing friendship or partnership. The joining of hands was a symbolic act which sealed a pact or confirmed a peace. Dextram dare, for the Roman, was a pledge of faith. It means to give the right hand.

If the handshake is a symbolic act, what lies beyond the symbol? Why is the right hand given, and not the left? And what is the relationship between the grasping of hands, the embrace, the kiss?

90% of all people everywhere are right handed.1 It becomes the knife hand, the spear hand, the sword hand. Power resides in that right hand. Though "handedness" is still a controversial subject scientifically2, traditionally the right hand was considered the magical or lucky side. Conversely, left handers were looked upon as odd. Southpaws are tagged with nicknames, and the origin of our word sinister comes from the Latin meaning to the left. They bump elbows when they eat, and they can never find a decent set of golf clubs. Mea dextra, by my right hand, vowed the gladiator as to battle he went. And so today all men and women reach out with the "right" hand when they meet.

Ma-ai, in Japanese, means distancing, keeping the correct spacing between oneself and one's opponent. The opponent, the stranger, must be kept at a safe distance until intent can be discerned. In general, that safe distance was at least an arm's length. If the opponent had a weapon, the distance was increased proportionately.

We feel uncomfortable with people who "get in our space" or "get in our face"; but friends are invited inside an arm's length by an extended hand. In effect, by offering a hand we make ourselves vulnerable, we trust. By offering the hand, we open the heart.

What then of the embrace, the kiss? At each point from hand to lips more is offered, and the more vulnerable we become. With the kiss, such a casual greeting in today's world, a person enters what Chinese martial artists call the death ground.3 In the streets of San Francisco, no one gives it a second thought. The origin and symbolism---the reality?--- of these greetings, if known at all, apparently do not concern us. The need for such wariness in today's world seems, for the most part, slightly ridiculous. And yet ...




Grammar Note: The phrase "get in our face"; appears in the next to last paragraph. This note turns on the position of the semi-colon in relation to the quotation marks. American usage would have the punctuation inside the quotation marks. I prefer British usage, and place the semi-colon (or comma) outside the quotation marks. After all, the punctuation is distinct from the quote, and its position should reflect this.


1https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/29/left-handed-facts-lefties_n_2005864.html
2https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-are-more-people-right/
3 Griffith, Samuel (translator), Sun Tzu The Art of War (Oxford Univ. Press, London), 131.

Wednesday, January 3, 2018

A SIMPLE ARGUMENT


If this is your first visit to CwHD, a brief introduction is available. Click on the CwHD Intro link in the sidebar. To return, click the Home link. Older editions are archived and listed by date.

Argument, perhaps, is the wrong word. Regardless, the discussion that follows is quite simple. The main points are these: No one is right, no one is wrong. No one wins. No one loses. An argument demands at least two sides and polarity. Integrity has no sides.

Change makes argument futile. Everything changes. Everything is finite. By definition, finite means to have definite, definable limits; or to have a limited nature of existence. Change inevitable follows.

There it is. Simple

Unfortunately, the implications of finiteness are most complicated. Humans seem hard wired to judge and contend. Though aware that nothing stays the same, that everything changes, they insist that if it changes THIS way, it is good; if it changes THAT way it is bad. Polarity.

Both those for THIS and those for THAT seem to agree on the notion of progress. An imperative of western civilization is that problems can always be resolved and that change can be beneficial. That is progress. That is improving mankind's lot. If things don't change for the better, it is going to be bad.

Polar bears are dying in the Arctic. Starving to death. Falling to disease. A few biologists agonize over solutions. Species are disappearing all over the planet. Something must be done, but what? What is the right thing to do?

Think globally, act locally. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Go green. Save the planet.

A broad view suggests that this is chasing our tails. There is nothing to do. Environmentalist understand this. They understand that the more one does to manage the planet, the more that has to be done. Clearly the thing to do is nothing. Step away and let the earth heal itself.

Step away and heal ourselves.

The universe is complex and interconnected. The Earth and its biomass is equally complex and interconnected. Billions of humans doing this and that make for further complications. It is a tight fit with all of us here, and getting tighter. Most of us are feeling the pinch.

Feeding those starving bears, for example, kills them. Unless feed is provided forever. And then the bears become dependents, become something akin to domestic stock. And what is wrong with that? Live domesticated animals are better than dead wild animals? But remember, the more one does, the more that needs to be done. Move the bears to reservations? Breed seals to feed them? Teach them to ring bells or dance for their dinner?

And there is this: Humans are all too finite themselves. Everything that should be done cannot be done. Humans are only human after all.

Changes will come. Good, bad or indifferent. The Earth will abide, in all likelihood, far beyond the brief tenure of homo sapiens. Do nothing. Carry water, chop wood is the ancient Chinese dictum. Eat, sleep, go to the bathroom. Do nothing more. The planet could use the respite.

Simple as that.