I happened into a book store today and the spirit of Chilean literature led me to a copy of The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. When I got the book home, it opened to this (apologies in advance for any typos):
Odo al Diccionario Lomo de buey, pesado El gran mago callaba. |
Ode to the Dictionary Back like an ox, beast of The Great Magus said nothing. |
"...What about helping me with my book, and making a start on the next? Have you thought of an ending?"
"Yes, several, and all are dark and unpleasant," said Frodo.
"Oh, that won't do!" said Bilbo. "Books ought to have good endings. How would this do: and they all settled down and lived together happily ever after?"
"It will do well, if it ever comes to that," said Frodo.
"Ah!" said Sam. "And where will they live? That's what I often wonder."
—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
This little exchange, which happens early in the book (Rivendell), caught my attention and I meant to blog about it earlier. It seemed like a direct statement by the author, and what I've learned since about Tolkien's views on happy endings confirms it. Funny how it stood out to me and then I ended up quibbling with his happy ending.
I was reminded of how some people compare The Lord of the Rings with Wagner's Ring Cycle, and it occurred to me that I find the ending of the Ring Cycle far more satisfying than the ending of Tolkien's story. There are some similarities between them: the rings of power are both destroyed (or at least placed out of reach); and the rule of supernatural beings ends. In both, humans (or mortals in general) become free to decide their own destinies. How this comes about, dramatically, couldn't be more different, though.
In the Ring Cycle, it is the gods and demi-gods who are the main characters, not humans (or mortals, in the Tolkien). In the end they are destroyed, while the immortals in LOTR, as well as the central hero, Frodo, are rewarded with eternal life in what sounds like a Garden of Eden. In the Ring Cycle, salvation comes, inadvertently, from the gods themselves—the hero Siegfried defeats the king of the gods, Wotan (his grandfather), but is later killed by treachery, and the heroine Brünnhilde (daughter of Wotan) sacrifices her immortality and then her life, and relinquishes the ring of her own free will. The story ends with a great conflagration at Valhalla and incredibly beautiful music (which always gets me boo-hooing) heralding the age of freedom for humanity.
Obviously Wagner has an advantage in being able to use music to elicit emotions, but I still think the way he ends his story, with so much loss and sacrifice, but also unalloyed Joy (to use Tolkien's word), is much more powerful than Tolkien's romantic Happy Ending. I just can't figure out why, other than to suppose that Wagner was just better able to tap into the primal power of myth. I'm really not sure what that is, but I suspect it goes beyond both romance and tragedy; perhaps it is the best of both. Perhaps it is simply the art of catharsis. I know there are one or two of you out there who are familiar with both works—what do you think?
When I finished my last reading of The Lord of the Rings, I expressed some disappointment at how briefly and tidily Tolkien resolved such an epic tale. Thanks to Nick I learned of Tolkien's essay, On Fairy-Stories, which describes his philosophy on happy endings, among other things. [The essay is published in Tree and Leaf as well as The Tolkien Reader.]
The essay starts with an attempt to define the "fairy-story," a term which he prefers to "fairy tale" because the OED definition of the latter term did not suit his purpose, and he does not dare to quibble with the OED. Though he admits that it is part of the nature of fairy stories to be indefinable, he defines them as stories from the land of Faërie, where men are men, and magic is real. Faeries themselves are optional, but humans are not. He distinguishes fairy-stories from "beast fables," which involve only animals, and dream stories, which do not attempt to create a real "Secondary World." Stories with only magical beings he describes as rare and uninteresting, and science fiction is only briefly mentioned, and not too positively since he connects it with the ugly "robot-factories" of industrialism.
I just finished The Lord of the Rings, which I started way back in March as part of the Mythology Folklore Fairy Tale Fantasy Reading Challenge. This was my second reading of it and I enjoyed it as much as the first time, which is to say I enjoyed it a great deal. I did have some quibbles towards the end, though. I got a bit tired of the perfect nobility and capability of the main characters once they had defeated Sauron, and the emphasis on race, rank, and class, which seems at odds with the book's general theme of greatness coming from obscure and imperfect places. Yes, a mere hobbit saved the world but once that's done, and the royal favours have been handed out, everyone can go back to their stations, thank-you-very-much. I know it's a fairy tale but the concluding vision of feudal harmony seemed a bit simplistic compared to the rest of the book. I also thought the final chapters wrapped things up a bit too hurredly and conveniently, but I wouldn't blame Tolkien for wanting to end his monumental labour sooner rather than later.
Once the story is over, though, the reader's labour has not ended. There is the appendix, or rather appendices, six of them, 105 pages worth in my volume. Does anyone read them? I've made a start and have gleaned one or two tidbits to fill in some gaps the story, but I'm not sure I can make it through the "Chronology of the Westlands" or "The Languages and Peoples of the Third Age." I suppose I should read them once so I can feel that I've read the whole book, but it's a bit painful. Has anyone else out there read them?
It was a bit distracting reading The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie right after reading Muriel Spark's autobiography. Just about every page of the book contains some object, setting, or event that was part of Spark's own schoolgirl experience in 1930's Edinburgh. Certainly they have been transposed, modified, reworked to fit the fiction, but it was hard not to notice them as I went along—the musquash coat, the smashing saucer, the poor of Edinburgh, the charismatic teacher enamoured of art and Mussolini.
I found myself wondering which parts not mentioned in her autobiography were also from her real life and which were invented. Spark calls her school years "the most formative years of my life" and devotes a great deal of space to them in her memoir. It's no wonder that the environment that made such an impression on her has made such an impression on readers, even in its rearranged form.
What is this book about? That is the question I had in my mind after reading it, and I confess I can't come up with a good answer. The explanations in the book, mainly given through Sandy, just seem too easy. Or am I mistaken in thinking that a good book must be difficult? Is it as it appears, a story about the dethroning of a frustrated, fascistic, self-deluded woman who wrought havoc among men and girls during her "prime"?
After reading Muriel Spark's autobiography and her descriptions of the various "utterly abnormal" people she had known, it is certainly possible that Spark just wished to create her own species of mental case (inspired by one of her own teachers) and see what would happen when she was unleashed on a variety of vulnerable people. That would be very much like the obsessive observer of human idiosyncrasies that Spark was.
Though broader issues—Calvinism, fascism, Catholicism—feature in the story, I am inclined to believe that the book is more about people than ideas, or, at most, what happens when ideas impinge on personalities formed by nature and distorted by experience. Would Miss Brodie have come to admire Mussolini and Hitler had her lover not died in the war? Would Sandy have become a nun and psychologist were it not for Miss Brodie? How is that Rose was able to "[shake] off Miss Brodie's influence as a dog shakes pond-water form its coat" and the others were not?
As you can see, I seem to have more questions than answers, so I think I'd better go read the other Slaves' posts and learn a thing or two about this book. But before I do that, I'd like to announce that the next Slaves of Golconda read will be chosen by Stefanie of So Many Books. Anything but Clarissa, OK Stefanie?
For more Brodie questions, see ReadingGroupGuides.com.To read the other posts on The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie visit the Slaves of Golconda blog, and then join the discussion at MetaxuCafé.
I'm afraid I'm unpardonably late for the Slaves of Golconda's discussion of Owen Wister's The Virginian: Horseman of the Plains. However I have managed to get through it (as the Virginian would say) and will say a few words about it. The Virginian is a portrait of an exceptional cowboy, a proverbial diamond in the rough, whose coarse language and lifestyle belie his natural sense of gentlemanly honour and his mastery of life and men. But I believe it is also a portrait of the idealized America of boundless opportunity, where, as it is said, any boy (at least) can grow up to be President.
Wister expounds his feelings on class and competition directly in his "The Game and the Nation" chapters and indirectly through the romance between the Virginian and the high born Molly Stark. Neither the Narrator nor the Virginian believe that all men are created equal, only that in America all men have "equal liberty" to play the poker of life and rise or fall to the level of their "quality." He calls this "true aristocracy." The Virginian is most certainly a social climber for marrying Molly, but to Wister he is merely taking a wife of the same "quality," regardless of Eastern notions of class and worth.
Wister also seems to admire the ethic of non-interference in others' affairs. It's every man (and horse) for himself out West. Only in extreme cases does the Virginian get involved, but mostly he just watches (or goes on pining for Molly) while man and beast suffer their fates at the hands of evil men. The SPCA and the welfare department would be most unwelcome in Wister's Wyoming. On the other hand, when Molly has found out about the lynching of the cattle rustlers, Wister has a federal court judge explain to her why men must sometimes take the law into their own hands and deal out "justice" at the end of a noose. It seems that where economic interests are at stake, interference becomes a community obligation.
The high point of the cowboy code, if it's placement in the book is any indication, is a man's defense of his good name. The sunset showdown might seem honourable if it were not so very common. Every culture has a similar honour code somewhere in its past (or present), but those societies we call civilized have developed less violent and more ritualized ways of settling the score. However Wister idealizes the return to pagan ways. I use that word deliberately, since Wister deliberately brought in the Bishop at the last minute to represent Christianity's (supposed) impotence in the face of conflict. The Virginian has no use for God, the Prince of Peace, nor the Final Judgment; the only judgment he fears is that of his peers, and with no god to defend him, he must do it himself.
Then there's Molly. Her whole purpose, apart from representing aristocracy at odds with democracy, seems to be to demonstrate that men love a challenge and women really just want to be told what to do. The fact that she is spirited only means that she needs a spirited husband to master her. Naturally I find this, and Wister's many little insults to women throughout the book, quite detestable. The Virginian may have been gallant towards women, but Wister certainly was not.
I am no literary critic, but even I can tell that this book is no masterpiece. The use of the narrator is clumsy at times and the bits of exposition are out of place and probably unnecessary to make Wister's point. The characters seem rather wooden and remote, reminding me of Westworld. Even the Virginian, who displays the greatest range of emotions and whose actions we see the most of, still doesn't seem to me like a flesh and blood person. It is certainly a diverting story, with some philosophical notions that might be of interest to America-watchers, but it's real value is as the root of the Western genre of books and movies. For that reason alone it is worth reading, though perhaps only once.
For your musical enjoyment, the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
For the rest of the posts on The Virginian, see Box of Books or MetaxuCafé, and join in the conversation at the Metaxu Forum.
By the way, I'm glad I'm not the only one who sensed something queer about the narrator's admiration for the Virginian. It's hard to be objective after Brokeback Mountain... Maybe that quote I mentioned earlier was deliberate.
As my reading schedule was interrupted by a colony of noroviruses that imposed themselves on my hospitality last week, I had only time to read one version of The Picture of Dorian Gray by the Slaves of Golconda posting deadline. I chose to read the first version, published in 1890 in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, because it created a much greater sensation than the longer and slightly expurgated 1891 version.
That a few homoerotic suggestions would create such a stir seems absurd considering what else is alluded to in the novel, but given the time I can understand that the one was seen to lead to the other. Just before the story was first published, the British newspapers were full of scandals about high persons engaged in low acts with telegraph boys, complete with government cover-ups at the highest level and hints of royal involvement. The scandal, which had gone on for five months, finally died down about two months before Dorian Gray was published, so the public was no doubt fully refreshed and eager for another opportunity to be horrified and disgusted when Wilde's story appeared.
I must admit, however, that I also was horrified and disgusted by The Picture of Dorian Gray. I certainly would not agree with the Victorians that homosexuality is itself corrupt or leads to further corruption, nor that evil, or merely unpleasant, things should never be spoken of. Suppression merely punishes the innocent and protects the guilty. But I can't deny that from a moral standpoint there is much that is distasteful in this story. That is not to say that it is a bad story or that it shouldn't be read for itself, as well as for it's place in literary and social history, but I cannot agree with the story.
Oscar Wilde, in defending Dorian Gray, stated emphatically that art and ethics (or morality) must be kept entirely separate. He also felt that art and life were separate, and even that people were separate, that is, that art could not influence life, and that people could not influence each other. I cannot agree with any of these theses, and indeed The Picture of Dorian Gray seems to contradict him as well. Donald L. Lawler, editor of the Norton Critical Edition of Dorian Gray, calls the story "a sign of contradiction," and I believe this is what he is referring to.
If art and morality were indeed separate, why would Wilde include a "moral" in his story, and, moreover, call attention to this moral when defending his work against his critics? Art, as Wilde conceived of it, should need no moral; it's only subject should be Beauty. By that definition I am not sure that this story qualifies as art. That is the first contradiction.
The second contradiction is about the separation of art and life. In the book we see several examples of art influencing the characters, and not for the better. Basil, inspired by Dorian to create a new style of art, ends up in an idolatrous relationship that initiates the ruin of both. Dorian is captivated by his beauty as it is portrayed by Basil, and this fuels his vanity and desire to hold on to his youth. The vile book given to him by that devil Lord Harry accelerates Dorian's descent into depravity, and he returns to it often to fuel and validate his lust for "experience." If Wilde did not believe that art could influence life, The Picture of Dorian Gray, although fictional, does nothing to advance his cause.
The third contradiction concerns the most important element in the book, that of personal influence. The book begins and ends with it. Events are set in motion by the influence of Dorian's beauty of Basil and the influence of Basil's adoration on Dorian. There are hints that Dorian's nature was always inclined against virtue and that it was merely wakened by contact with Basil and then Lord Henry, but there is stronger evidence against that idea. Again and again we see Dorian, riddled with guilt and on the point of repenting and making amends, come under the subtle influence of Lord Henry and get turned completely against his initial impulses. But even Harry's influence is not enough to quell Dorian's moral instincts, and he must resort to mad obsessions with objets d'art and possibly drugs to avoid his conscience. When he has finally had enough and finally resolves to mend his ways, Harry places one final doubt into Dorian's mind that propels him towards his last desperate act. One might say that Harry failed in converting Dorian entirely, but that he influenced him is unquestionable.
I see this book as a work partly of self-defense and partly of self-doubt. To his critics Wilde said, more than once, that "the real moral of the story is that all excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its punishment." I read into this statement a wish to declare to the world that though he may appear depraved, he is not completely lost to morality and realizes that there must be limits to human behaviour. It stands to reason that he must reject "renunciation" (i.e. virtue) in order to accept his own sexuality, and we can hardly blame him for that. If he lived in a more liberal age I doubt that this book, with that moral, would have had to be written.
As for self-doubt, I refer to the contradictions listed above, as well as one more. In one of his public defenses of the book, he wrote:
One stands remote from one's subject matter. One creates it, and one contemplates it. The further away the subject-matter is, the more freely can the artist work. … An artist, sir, has no ethical sympathies at all. Virtue and wickedness are to him simply what the colours on his palette are to the painter. They are no more, and they are no less.
This is exactly the stance that Lord Henry encourages and Dorian cultivates, an "excess" of amorality that is clearly condemned in the book. Yet here is Wilde adopting exactly the same pose. I haven't read much analysis of this book but it almost looks like an act of self-sabotage, which was tragically completed when the book was used against him in court, to his eventual destruction. Did Wilde's unassailable wit and aplomb conceal an equally vigorous inner conflict that expressed itself in The Picture of Dorian Gray? Knowing something of what homosexual people go though even today, it is plausible that Wilde (who was, after all, a human being) succumbed to self-loathing and internalized oppression and that this carried over into his artistic life.
No doubt there are others who have a better idea about this than I do, and intend to carry on reading about this book and Mr. Wilde. Though I can't say I enjoyed the story— indeed I was thoroughly repulsed by Lord Harry's evil philosophy and Dorian's evil acts—I do appreciate Wilde's courage in facing the evils of homophobia and censorship. He helped us get to where we are today, and for that we owe him some thanks.
For more posts and discussion on The Picture of Dorian Gray, visit MetaxuCafé.com.
I wasn't planning to post about this book, since I was just re-reading it for "fun." However this "fun" little book gave me both nightmares and a few thoughts.
I was probably a teenager when I first read it and didn't know enough about history and politics to understand the relation between Orwell's major themes and reality. It makes sense to me now that Harcourt has published this book along with Animal Farm in one volume. Animal Farm shows how when the "middle" enlists the aid of the "low" to overthrow the "high" in the name of equality, they simply assume the high position until the next revolution, and maintain the hierarchy they formerly despised. It's a game of musical chairs, with the "low" forever consigned to stand. Nineteen Eighty-Four is a fantasy about how it might be possible for the "high" (the Inner Party) to maintain their position indefinitely through the use of technology and by controlling the minds of their only real threat, the "middle" (the Outer Party). As always the "low" (Proles) are used when it is convenient but are otherwise left to their backward, survival-level lives.
I can't help thinking that if Orwell had not died so young he might have seen socialistic progress in the world that would have made him doubt his Animal Farm thesis. Certainly the forces of oligarchy and oppression are still strong throughout the world but there are places, such as Canada, where equality has truly been increasing, and for several decades in a row. That might not seem like much in the context of human history, but it is reason to hope.
What might also surprise Orwell is that technology has served to increase equality and liberty, particularly telecommunications. Within hours or days the entire world can know of abuses happening in a fortified prison or a remote mountain village. You know that "optics" have become a real political force when the president of Iran cares what CNN reports.
Of course in Nineteen Eighty-Four, technology is used for exactly the opposite purpose, that of keeping people in the dark, particularly about "the enemy" (so as to permit blind fear and hatred) and about history (so as to abolish all memory of freedom). Nineteen Eighty-Four's hero, Winston Smith, whose job it is to rewrite newspaper articles to suit the Party's latest version of the truth, is particularly concerned with history. He yearns for both human memories and tangible evidence of a happier, more beautiful past. He needs a reference point to confirm his suspicion that life is getting worse, contrary to the party line that life is only getting better.
I think I share Winston's passion for history, not because I want to prove that life here is inhumane (it isn't, for most of us), but because knowledge of history is a sure way to prevent it from becoming so. (Technology helps us here too, particularly in the form of printing.) Furthermore, there is much of beauty contained in history, something Winston is also sensible to, as shown by his attraction to the cream-papered diary and coral paperweight he found in a Prole shop. While nostalgia can be as dangerous as ignorance of the past, there is much we can gain from studying how our ancestors solved the eternal human problems. We are in an especially enviable position in having access to the histories of many peoples, not just our own.
Another way the Inner Party controls the Outer Party is through the manipulation of language, which Orwell also touches on in his essay Politics and the English Language. The appendix on "Newspeak" in Nineteen Eighty-Four shows, I think, that Orwell was most concerned about the use of language for political purposes (not surprising for a writer). The general aim of Newspeak was to remove from the language all words dealing with freedom, equality, truth, and justice in order to remove those concepts from the consciousness of the people. It also sought to reduce the language to simple, monotonous, arrhythmic words to accord with the ugliness of life under "IngSoc," the principles under which the society was run. Pure Newspeak was said to sound like a duck quacking, and it was considered a compliment to say that a Party member was a good duckspeaker.
In this case I think Orwell would be unhappy with how modern political parties can now "frame the debate" to gain support while hiding the true nature of their beliefs and intentions. And I think he would be horrified at how certain words have been co-opted (Patriot Act) or denigrated (welfare) so that they can no longer be used for their original meanings. Due to the richness of the English language we are not in any danger of running out of words, but our political vocabulary does seem to be eroding.
In the book, not only does the Inner Party control language and history, it can control the mind directly through torture, mind games, drugs, and a technology that resembles electroshock therapy. By controlling the mind the Party can erase and prevent all perceptions that might call the Party's truth into question. Winston tries to hold on to his belief in objective truth but is vanquished by the mind-control techniques. The flaw in this system is that the human body is still able to register objective truth even if the mind cannot. Winston missed this entirely. I would say Orwell missed it too except that he makes a point of describing Winston's various ailments, how they clear up during his love affair with Julia, and how they return even worse after his "cure." The body doesn't lie about the conditions of life, as we well know in our age of the diseases of affluence.
The ultimate form of control was control of the heart. The Party is not interested in exacting confessions and accusations, though that is done through regular torture as a matter of course. The Party wants to own its people, body and soul. To complete this process they expose malcontents to their greatest fear, which inevitably leads to the greatest betrayal, that of wishing the punishment to be taken out one's the beloved rather than oneself. This is the last, irrevocable step towards total acceptance of IngSoc.
It's hard for me to put my thoughts together about this, but I keep thinking of the many Christian (and other) martyrs (if I can use a word that is denigrated today) who consciously risked and sacrificed their lives for others. The story of Winston Smith represents total despair—with no possibility of healing and forgiveness—the polar opposite of my faith and of many faiths. I appreciate the book as a warning against totalitarian control of life and mind, but I reject the idea that the soul or spirit or will can be controlled. It may be injured and hindered, perhaps, but never destroyed or controlled. Ultimately this is a work of fiction, and I am glad of it.
Wow. What an amazing book. I feel like I've been dazzled and bewildered by the tropical sun and a profusion of many-coloured birds and flowers. I find myself trying to unravel the layers of memory and put events into order but I think that is not what we are meant to do. I too find that my "linear habits" have "begun to spin around a single common anxiety...trying to give order to the chain of many chance events that had made absurdity possible."
In the case of the townspeople of this novella, that anxiety is, I believe, the desire to fit into a myth, to find "an exact knowledge of the place and the mission assigned to us by fate." In a lecture titled Gabriel García Márquez and the invention of America," Carlos Fuentes said:
One way of seeing Latin American history, then, is as a pilgrimage from a founding utopia to a cruel epic that degrades utopia if the mythic imagination does not intervene so as to interrupt the onslaught of fatality and seek to recover the possibilities of freedom. One of the more extraordinary aspects of García Márquez's novels is that its structure corresponds to the profounder historicity of Latin America: the tension between utopia, epic, and myth.
Continue reading "“Chronicle of a Death Foretold” by Gabriel García Márquez" »
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