I
Back then I lived in a small house among several others, on an isolated sand hill sown with short, bright-green grass. I set out early every morning and headed for a restaurant visible a mile or so away, just across the road that hugs the Pacific coast. I loved to watch the cars as they streamed by silently below, skirting the open countryside, on that long ribbon of road. I enjoyed watching the windows of the restaurant too, still lit up for night despite the golden dawn. Shadows crossed the sheets of glass - cast by a car pulling up, or one or two people approaching a door. I strolled down the path on an easy slope, toward that life from another world; though at some point, its sounds became audible, gradually louder. The events of those peaceful minutes were little more than a bumper's sudden star, as it nicked a sunbeam; or the transient flare of a mustard field on the low blue mountain to my right. In short, I shared the everyday existence of the light: a bit as though I'd intruded on its privacy but found right away it reassured me and wished me well. The light was my friend, and would stay with me the whole day through.
But then, after all those mornings that had always been the same - a way for time to flow by noiselessly, like rivulets left on the beach by an ebbing tide - what a change took place on day, a Sunday. From my distant perch, the view was clear for miles; but now I couldn't see a single car. Instead of the usual traffic, today I made out what seemed to be children: countless groups of children, all walking in the same direction, spilling over the horizon from the north and dipping out of sight to the south. They appeared to spring from no humdrum reality: all the more since they spent their whole passage on earth amid a fantasy, moving huge balloons across the sky, staggered at different heights. Their colors were wildly varied, often bright, and their shapes were even more astonishing. Some were pure: the five solid bodies of geometry; a perfect beauty of planes and angles, formed from a lucid material - some kind of cloth, not doubt. Others were tangled and complex - even, at times, vaguely clownish. They sprouted growths that defied any purpose: arms adorned with bracelets, or legs wearing shoes of light. The children held on to these balloons with strings that allowed them a semblance of freedom, savored with bonhomie. While some of the frail aerostats merely coasted ahead, straight above their puny guides, others reeled and tottered with laughter, like clumsy, good-natured dragons. Still others seemed to wander here and there in the parade, or even to veer widely, on either side of the road. The silken strings glistened, and now and then a purplish blue, pomegranate red, or yellow turned opaque. The curving sheets bulged like sails, and some of the ballons jostled in midair.
On the ground, intermittently, a gap appeared - several feet of pavement, empty of anyone or anything. Children stopped, retraced their steps, or joined a different group; but the procession soon filled in again, as densely as before. More and more astounded the nearer I drew to the road, I now discerned the crowd was truly enormous. Its ranks held a range of small enigmas I hadn't suspected before. Some were not pedestrians but cyclists, tugging their string with only one hand; even so, the aerostat they trailed might be fairly immense - a kind of hot-air balloon, spitting fire. Other boys and girls were pushing or pulling open carts, where statues nodded and swayed. The shoulders of these effigies also gave off flames, or smoke at least - russet fumes, thick with an incense I could already smell. The line was endless, and so were the occasions for surprise. Still beyond my hearing, this grand cortege impressed me by its absolute strangeness; but my delight at the infinity I sensed in it was just as deep. Locusts sweeping down on the gardens of a city, the last before the desert, are no less mysterious, I imagine: tiny lives, eyes shut beneath their tiaras, like monarchs without a kingdom. Even more than amazement, what seized me was gladness, the joy that's born when something overtakes us that we have no way to grasp: the hope of breaking the chains of insights that always bound us until now - the joyous hope that by no longer knowing, we will at last more fully be.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
"To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience. It is to imposer yourself on places that in all noneconomic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing."
DFW - Consider the Lobster
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Commentary on Proust and Bartheleme (Swann's Way and Snow White)
Characterization in the Second Transcribed Passage from Swann's Way and in Snow White
The characters in Snow White are flat characters; shadow puppets that convey the action and the ideas of the novel without having any substance of their own. We approach them from a distance, and after a certain point, we cease to get any closer. In the larger scheme of things, they elicit reactions from us rather than empathy. As a result, we have feelings about the book (not with it), and those feelings are not connected to nor influenced by any form of identification with the characters. It’s almost as if the reader is intended to regard the characters as variables within a formula, and then, after identifying those variables, is intended to decipher the formula and thereby extract the ideas or sentiments it has been constructed by the author to convey. Only after this final step, after the contrivances of the characters and plot have been distilled into an idea, only then should the reader react to, empathize with, or dismiss what is in front of him.
In Proust’s novel, and in most books I’ve read that predate postmodernism, the function of fictional characters is very different. Characters in modern and classical literature are intended to engage the reader and secure his or her participation in the novel at a very fundamental level: “Next to this central belief… came the emotions aroused in me by the action in which I would be taking part, for these afternoons were crammed with more dramatic and sensational events than occur, often in a whole lifetimes. These were events which took place in the book I was reading… The novelist’s happy discovery was to think of substituting for those opaque sections [found in real life characters], impenetrable by the human spirit, their equivalent in immaterial sections, things, that is, which the spirit can assimilate to itself. After which it matters not that the actions, the feelings of this new order of creatures [fictional characters] appear to us in the guise of truth, since we have made them our own, since it is in ourselves that they are happening.” A character, in as much as we believe that he or she is real, is marginally the character that the author has given us and massively the character that we’ve constructed ourselves. Swann, for instance, is introduced to us as “almost the only person who ever came to the house at Combray, sometimes to a neighborly dinner (but less frequently since his unfortunate marriage, as my [the author’s] family did not care to receive his wife) and sometimes after dinner, uninvited.” Only a little bit more is said about him before his character is left untouched for thirty or forty pages, the effect of which, is to force us as readers to supply our own details, tentative and generic at first, since we’re barely acquainted with him, but more specific and elaborate, as new dimensions of his character are introduced by the author. Two hundred pages into the novel, the shame and sadness we feel as a result of his unhappy love affair is half his and half our own: the outline provided by the author having been filled out and bolstered by the millions of excuses, grievances, and elaborations that we’ve supplied ourselves. The effect is that his character is one that we are so intimately acquainted with that we have no choice but to feel his suffering (and elation) as our own.
The characters in Snow White, on the other hand, do not demand such participation on the part of the reader. They are much more mathematical in their precision. In many respects, they act as caricatured forms of classical characters. It’s not important for the reader to actually believe that they are real; it’s only important that the reader is able to identify what type of real character they were intended to represent. Take the following passage from Snow White:
“Hello Hogo.” “Hello chaps.” “The floor is yours Hogo.” “Well chaps first I’d like to say a few vile things more or less at random, not only because it is expected of me but also because I enjoy it. One of them is that this cunt you’ve got here [Snow White], although I’ve never seen her with my own eyes, is probably not worth worrying about.”
At no point are we expected to supply supplementary details to fill out Hogo’s character (What happened to him to make him so villainous? Is his chauvinism a form of compensating for some other deficiency? etc.), because we don’t need to believe in his reality; his only function in the larger novel is to be easily identifiable as a villainous character. It’s enough that we think to ourselves; “He’s the type of character that, in a Marcel Proust novel, would elicit feelings of hate and enmity.”
***
Anyway, the library is closing and I’m leaving London day after tomorrow, so I’ll have to finish this up when I get back to Bangkok. For now, I’ll end with this:
My gut reaction to the type of writing you find in Snow White is not a positive one. The flatness of the characters is something I’ve noticed for a long time in postmodern writing (I think I touched on it in my third post on David Foster Wallace’s “Interviews with Hideous Men”), but I’ve struggled to articulate to myself why I dislike it. Part of what I really liked about the second Proust passage, and something I’ll try to talk about later, is the case it makes for more traditionally engaging fiction.
The characters in Snow White are flat characters; shadow puppets that convey the action and the ideas of the novel without having any substance of their own. We approach them from a distance, and after a certain point, we cease to get any closer. In the larger scheme of things, they elicit reactions from us rather than empathy. As a result, we have feelings about the book (not with it), and those feelings are not connected to nor influenced by any form of identification with the characters. It’s almost as if the reader is intended to regard the characters as variables within a formula, and then, after identifying those variables, is intended to decipher the formula and thereby extract the ideas or sentiments it has been constructed by the author to convey. Only after this final step, after the contrivances of the characters and plot have been distilled into an idea, only then should the reader react to, empathize with, or dismiss what is in front of him.
In Proust’s novel, and in most books I’ve read that predate postmodernism, the function of fictional characters is very different. Characters in modern and classical literature are intended to engage the reader and secure his or her participation in the novel at a very fundamental level: “Next to this central belief… came the emotions aroused in me by the action in which I would be taking part, for these afternoons were crammed with more dramatic and sensational events than occur, often in a whole lifetimes. These were events which took place in the book I was reading… The novelist’s happy discovery was to think of substituting for those opaque sections [found in real life characters], impenetrable by the human spirit, their equivalent in immaterial sections, things, that is, which the spirit can assimilate to itself. After which it matters not that the actions, the feelings of this new order of creatures [fictional characters] appear to us in the guise of truth, since we have made them our own, since it is in ourselves that they are happening.” A character, in as much as we believe that he or she is real, is marginally the character that the author has given us and massively the character that we’ve constructed ourselves. Swann, for instance, is introduced to us as “almost the only person who ever came to the house at Combray, sometimes to a neighborly dinner (but less frequently since his unfortunate marriage, as my [the author’s] family did not care to receive his wife) and sometimes after dinner, uninvited.” Only a little bit more is said about him before his character is left untouched for thirty or forty pages, the effect of which, is to force us as readers to supply our own details, tentative and generic at first, since we’re barely acquainted with him, but more specific and elaborate, as new dimensions of his character are introduced by the author. Two hundred pages into the novel, the shame and sadness we feel as a result of his unhappy love affair is half his and half our own: the outline provided by the author having been filled out and bolstered by the millions of excuses, grievances, and elaborations that we’ve supplied ourselves. The effect is that his character is one that we are so intimately acquainted with that we have no choice but to feel his suffering (and elation) as our own.
The characters in Snow White, on the other hand, do not demand such participation on the part of the reader. They are much more mathematical in their precision. In many respects, they act as caricatured forms of classical characters. It’s not important for the reader to actually believe that they are real; it’s only important that the reader is able to identify what type of real character they were intended to represent. Take the following passage from Snow White:
“Hello Hogo.” “Hello chaps.” “The floor is yours Hogo.” “Well chaps first I’d like to say a few vile things more or less at random, not only because it is expected of me but also because I enjoy it. One of them is that this cunt you’ve got here [Snow White], although I’ve never seen her with my own eyes, is probably not worth worrying about.”
At no point are we expected to supply supplementary details to fill out Hogo’s character (What happened to him to make him so villainous? Is his chauvinism a form of compensating for some other deficiency? etc.), because we don’t need to believe in his reality; his only function in the larger novel is to be easily identifiable as a villainous character. It’s enough that we think to ourselves; “He’s the type of character that, in a Marcel Proust novel, would elicit feelings of hate and enmity.”
***
Anyway, the library is closing and I’m leaving London day after tomorrow, so I’ll have to finish this up when I get back to Bangkok. For now, I’ll end with this:
My gut reaction to the type of writing you find in Snow White is not a positive one. The flatness of the characters is something I’ve noticed for a long time in postmodern writing (I think I touched on it in my third post on David Foster Wallace’s “Interviews with Hideous Men”), but I’ve struggled to articulate to myself why I dislike it. Part of what I really liked about the second Proust passage, and something I’ll try to talk about later, is the case it makes for more traditionally engaging fiction.
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust (pt. II)
Upon the sort of screen, patterned with different states and impressions, which my consciousness would quietly unfold while I was reading, and which ranged from the most deeply hidden aspirations of my heart to the wholly external view of the horizon spread out before my eyes at the foot of the garden, what was from the first the most permanent and the most intimate part of me, the lever whose incessant movements controlled all the rest, was my belief in the philosophic richness and beauty of the book I was reading, and my desire to appropriate these to myself, what ever the book might be. For even if I had purchased it at Combray, having seen it outside Borange's, whose grocery lay too far from our house for Francoise to be able to deal there, as she did with Camus, but who enjoyed better custom as a stationer and bookseller; even if I had seen it, tied with string to keep it in its place in the mosaic of monthly parts and pamphlets which adorned either side of his doorway, a doorway more mysterious, more teeming with suggestion than that of a cathedral, I should have noticed and bought it there simply because I had recognised it as a book which had been well spoken of, in my hearing, by my schoolmaster or the school-friend who, at that particular time, seemed to me to be entrusted with the secret of Truth and Beauty, things half-felt by me, half-incomprehensible, the full understanding of which was the vague but permanent object of my thoughts.
Next to this central belief, which, while i was reading, would be constantly in motion from my inner self to the outer world, towards the discovery of Truth, came the emotions aroused in me by the action in which I would be taking part, for these afternoons were crammed with more dramatic and sensational events than occur, often, in a whole lifetime. These were the events which took place in a book I was reading. it is true that the people concerned in them were not what Francoise would have called 'real people.' But none of the feelings which the joys or misfortunes of a 'real' person awaken in us can be awakened except through the mental picture of those joys or misfortunes; and the ingenuity of the first novelist lay in his understanding that, as the picture was the one essential element in the complicated structure of our emotions, so that simplification of it which consisted in the suppression, pure and simple, of 'real' people would be a decided improvement. A 'real' person, profoundly as we may sympathise with him, is in a great measure perceptible only though our sense, that is to say, he remains opaque, offers a dead weight which our sensibilities have not the strength to lift. If some misfortune comes to him, it is only in one small section of the complete idea we have of him that we are capable of feeling any emotion; indeed it is only in one small section of the complete idea he has of himself that he is capable of feeling any emotion either. The novelist's happy discovery was to think of substitution for those opaque sections, impenetrable by the human spirit, their equivalent in immaterial sections, things, that is, which the spirit can assimilate to itself. After which it matters not that the actions, the feeling of this new order of creatures appear to us in the guise of truth, since we have made them our own, since it is in ourselves that they are happening, that they are holding in thrall, which we turn over, feverishly, the pages of the book, our quickened breath and staring eyes. And once the novelist has brought us to that state, in which, as in all purely mental states, every emotion is multiplied ten-fold, into which his book comes to disturb us as might a dream, but a dream more lucid, and of a more lasting impression than those which come to us in sleep; why, then, for the space of an hour he sets free within us all the joys and sorrows in the world, a few of which, only, we should have to spend years of our actual life in getting to know, and the keenest, the most intense of which would never have been revealed to us because the slow course of their development stops our perception of them. It is the same in life; the heart changes, and that is our worst misfortune; but we learn of it only from reading or by imagination; for in reality its alteration, like that of certain natural phenomena, is so gradual that, even if we are able to distinguish, successively, each of its different states, we are still spared the actual sensation of change.
Next to this central belief, which, while i was reading, would be constantly in motion from my inner self to the outer world, towards the discovery of Truth, came the emotions aroused in me by the action in which I would be taking part, for these afternoons were crammed with more dramatic and sensational events than occur, often, in a whole lifetime. These were the events which took place in a book I was reading. it is true that the people concerned in them were not what Francoise would have called 'real people.' But none of the feelings which the joys or misfortunes of a 'real' person awaken in us can be awakened except through the mental picture of those joys or misfortunes; and the ingenuity of the first novelist lay in his understanding that, as the picture was the one essential element in the complicated structure of our emotions, so that simplification of it which consisted in the suppression, pure and simple, of 'real' people would be a decided improvement. A 'real' person, profoundly as we may sympathise with him, is in a great measure perceptible only though our sense, that is to say, he remains opaque, offers a dead weight which our sensibilities have not the strength to lift. If some misfortune comes to him, it is only in one small section of the complete idea we have of him that we are capable of feeling any emotion; indeed it is only in one small section of the complete idea he has of himself that he is capable of feeling any emotion either. The novelist's happy discovery was to think of substitution for those opaque sections, impenetrable by the human spirit, their equivalent in immaterial sections, things, that is, which the spirit can assimilate to itself. After which it matters not that the actions, the feeling of this new order of creatures appear to us in the guise of truth, since we have made them our own, since it is in ourselves that they are happening, that they are holding in thrall, which we turn over, feverishly, the pages of the book, our quickened breath and staring eyes. And once the novelist has brought us to that state, in which, as in all purely mental states, every emotion is multiplied ten-fold, into which his book comes to disturb us as might a dream, but a dream more lucid, and of a more lasting impression than those which come to us in sleep; why, then, for the space of an hour he sets free within us all the joys and sorrows in the world, a few of which, only, we should have to spend years of our actual life in getting to know, and the keenest, the most intense of which would never have been revealed to us because the slow course of their development stops our perception of them. It is the same in life; the heart changes, and that is our worst misfortune; but we learn of it only from reading or by imagination; for in reality its alteration, like that of certain natural phenomena, is so gradual that, even if we are able to distinguish, successively, each of its different states, we are still spared the actual sensation of change.
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was comprised in the theater and the drama of my going to bed there, had any existence for me, when one day in winter, as I came home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called 'petites madeleines,' which look as though they had been molded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory -- this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?
I drink a second mouthful, in which I find nothing more than in the first, a third, which gives me rather less than the second. It is time to stop; the potion is losing its magic. It is plain that the object of my quest, the truth, lies not in the cup but in myself. The tea has called up in me, but does not itself understand, and can only repeat indefinitely, with a gradual loss of strength, the same testimony; which I, too, cannot interpret, though I hope at least to be able to call upon the tea for it again and to find it there presently, intact and at my disposal, for my final enlightenment. I put down my cup and examine my own mind. It is for it to discover the truth. But how? what and abyss of uncertainty whenever the mind feels that some part of it has strayed beyond its own borders; when it, the seeker, is at once the dark region through which it must go seeking, where all its equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? more than that: create. It is face to face with something which does not so far exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day.
And I begin again to ask myself what it could have been, this unremembered state which brought with it no logical proof of its existence, but only the sense that it was a happy, that it was a real state in whose presence other states of consciousness melted and vanished. I decide to attempt to make it reappear. I retrace my thoughts to the moment at which I drank the first spoonful of tea. I find again the same stat, illuminated by no fresh light. I compel my mind to make one further effort, to follow and recapture once again the fleeting sensation. And that nothing may interrupt it in its course I shut out every obstacle, every extraneous idea, I stop my ears and inhibit all attention to the sounds which come from the next room. And then, feeling that my mind is growing fatigued without having any success to report, I compel it for a chance to enjoy that distraction which I have just denied it, to think of other things, to rest and refresh itself before the supreme attempt. And then for the second time I clear an empty space in front of it. I place in position before my mind's eye the still recent taste of that first mouthful, and I feel something start within me, something that leaves its resting place and attempts to rise, something that has been embedded like an anchor at a great depth; i do not know yet what it is, but I can feel it mounting slowly; I can measure the resistance, I can hear the echo of great spaces traversed.
Undoubtedly what is thus palpitating in the depths of my being must be the image, the visual memory which, being linked to that taste, has tried to follow it into my conscious mind, But its struggles are too far off, too much confused; scarcely can I perceive the colourless reflection in which are blended the uncapturable whirling medley of radiant hues, and I cannot distinguish its form, cannot invite it, as the one possible interpreter, to translate to me the evidence of its contemporary, its inseparable paramour, the taste of cake soaked in tea; cannot ask it to inform me what special circumstance is in question, of what period in my past life.
Will it ultimately reach the clear surface of my consciousness, this memory, this old, dead moment which the magnetism of an identical moment has traveled so far to importune, to disturb, to raise up out of the very depths of my being? I cannot tell. Now that I feel nothing, it has stopped, has perhaps gone down again into its darkness, from which who can say whether it will ever rise again? Ten times over I must essay the task, must lean down over the abyss. And each time the natural laziness which deters us from every difficult enterprise, every work of importance, has urged me to leave the thing alone, to drink my tea and to think merely of the worries of today and of my hopes for tomorrow, which let themselves be pondered over without effort or distress of mind.
And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before church-time), when I went to say good day to her in her bedroom, my aunt Leonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or of lime-flower tea. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the interval without tasting them, on the trays in the pastry-cooks' windows, that their image had dissociated itself from those Combray days to take its place among others more recent; perhaps because of those memories, so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing now survived, everything was scattered; the forms of things, including that of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lost the power of expansion which would have allowed them to resume their place in my consciousness. But when form a long0distand past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.
And one I had recognised the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theatre to attach itself to the little pavilion, opening on to the garden, which had been built out behind it for my parents (the isolated panel which until that moment had been all that I could see); and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all weathers, the Square where I was sent before luncheon, the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took when it was fine. And just as the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little crumbs of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch themselves and bend, take on colour and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, permanent and recognizable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann's park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.
I drink a second mouthful, in which I find nothing more than in the first, a third, which gives me rather less than the second. It is time to stop; the potion is losing its magic. It is plain that the object of my quest, the truth, lies not in the cup but in myself. The tea has called up in me, but does not itself understand, and can only repeat indefinitely, with a gradual loss of strength, the same testimony; which I, too, cannot interpret, though I hope at least to be able to call upon the tea for it again and to find it there presently, intact and at my disposal, for my final enlightenment. I put down my cup and examine my own mind. It is for it to discover the truth. But how? what and abyss of uncertainty whenever the mind feels that some part of it has strayed beyond its own borders; when it, the seeker, is at once the dark region through which it must go seeking, where all its equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? more than that: create. It is face to face with something which does not so far exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day.
And I begin again to ask myself what it could have been, this unremembered state which brought with it no logical proof of its existence, but only the sense that it was a happy, that it was a real state in whose presence other states of consciousness melted and vanished. I decide to attempt to make it reappear. I retrace my thoughts to the moment at which I drank the first spoonful of tea. I find again the same stat, illuminated by no fresh light. I compel my mind to make one further effort, to follow and recapture once again the fleeting sensation. And that nothing may interrupt it in its course I shut out every obstacle, every extraneous idea, I stop my ears and inhibit all attention to the sounds which come from the next room. And then, feeling that my mind is growing fatigued without having any success to report, I compel it for a chance to enjoy that distraction which I have just denied it, to think of other things, to rest and refresh itself before the supreme attempt. And then for the second time I clear an empty space in front of it. I place in position before my mind's eye the still recent taste of that first mouthful, and I feel something start within me, something that leaves its resting place and attempts to rise, something that has been embedded like an anchor at a great depth; i do not know yet what it is, but I can feel it mounting slowly; I can measure the resistance, I can hear the echo of great spaces traversed.
Undoubtedly what is thus palpitating in the depths of my being must be the image, the visual memory which, being linked to that taste, has tried to follow it into my conscious mind, But its struggles are too far off, too much confused; scarcely can I perceive the colourless reflection in which are blended the uncapturable whirling medley of radiant hues, and I cannot distinguish its form, cannot invite it, as the one possible interpreter, to translate to me the evidence of its contemporary, its inseparable paramour, the taste of cake soaked in tea; cannot ask it to inform me what special circumstance is in question, of what period in my past life.
Will it ultimately reach the clear surface of my consciousness, this memory, this old, dead moment which the magnetism of an identical moment has traveled so far to importune, to disturb, to raise up out of the very depths of my being? I cannot tell. Now that I feel nothing, it has stopped, has perhaps gone down again into its darkness, from which who can say whether it will ever rise again? Ten times over I must essay the task, must lean down over the abyss. And each time the natural laziness which deters us from every difficult enterprise, every work of importance, has urged me to leave the thing alone, to drink my tea and to think merely of the worries of today and of my hopes for tomorrow, which let themselves be pondered over without effort or distress of mind.
And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before church-time), when I went to say good day to her in her bedroom, my aunt Leonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or of lime-flower tea. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the interval without tasting them, on the trays in the pastry-cooks' windows, that their image had dissociated itself from those Combray days to take its place among others more recent; perhaps because of those memories, so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing now survived, everything was scattered; the forms of things, including that of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lost the power of expansion which would have allowed them to resume their place in my consciousness. But when form a long0distand past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.
And one I had recognised the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theatre to attach itself to the little pavilion, opening on to the garden, which had been built out behind it for my parents (the isolated panel which until that moment had been all that I could see); and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all weathers, the Square where I was sent before luncheon, the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took when it was fine. And just as the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little crumbs of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch themselves and bend, take on colour and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, permanent and recognizable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann's park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Commentary on Three Lives by Gertrude Stein
(In response to comments by Daleyz)
When I first started reading the Melanctha section I couldn't help but think it was incredibly racist. To be fair though, Stein writes the white characters in the other sections in a similar way: everyone uses names a million times in every sentence, and the syntax is all messed up. It's really jarring, but after a while i started to like it. It's almost like she's creating her own language, which i thought was kind of cool (if nothing else, at least it's really original). The other thing that she does really well, which i couldn't capture with two passages posted out of context here, was the way she develops her characters. The book is primarily about that I think, and some of it is absolutely amazing. I think the weird commas and the flow, after a while, become less grating, and make you read the story in a certain way. They force you to sound everything out in your head, which counteracts most readers' natural inclination to conceptualize the plot and characters and themes. It's almost like she's trying to make you walk through a garden maze, (try one rout, get lost, try another etc.) instead of letting you find the correct path by looking at the whole thing from above. It makes for a pretty unique and new reading experience, even though the characters, the plot, the language, and the implicit racism/classism, at times, feel old and outdated.
I've given up a bit on posting passages that can stand alone, because i'm not sure it's really possible. The Savage Detectives lends itself to that kind of thing, since it's written as a series of individual anecdotes, but even that didn't hold up too well.
When I first started reading the Melanctha section I couldn't help but think it was incredibly racist. To be fair though, Stein writes the white characters in the other sections in a similar way: everyone uses names a million times in every sentence, and the syntax is all messed up. It's really jarring, but after a while i started to like it. It's almost like she's creating her own language, which i thought was kind of cool (if nothing else, at least it's really original). The other thing that she does really well, which i couldn't capture with two passages posted out of context here, was the way she develops her characters. The book is primarily about that I think, and some of it is absolutely amazing. I think the weird commas and the flow, after a while, become less grating, and make you read the story in a certain way. They force you to sound everything out in your head, which counteracts most readers' natural inclination to conceptualize the plot and characters and themes. It's almost like she's trying to make you walk through a garden maze, (try one rout, get lost, try another etc.) instead of letting you find the correct path by looking at the whole thing from above. It makes for a pretty unique and new reading experience, even though the characters, the plot, the language, and the implicit racism/classism, at times, feel old and outdated.
I've given up a bit on posting passages that can stand alone, because i'm not sure it's really possible. The Savage Detectives lends itself to that kind of thing, since it's written as a series of individual anecdotes, but even that didn't hold up too well.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Snow White by Donald Bartheleme
Bill is tired of Snow White now. But he cannot tell her. No, that would not be the way. Bill can't bear to be touched. That is new too. To have anyone touch him is unbearable. Not just Snow White but also Kevin, Edward, Hubert, Henry, Clem or Dan. That is a peculiar aspect of Bill, the leader. We speculate that he doesn't want to be involved in human situations any more. A withdrawal. Withdrawal is one of the four modes of dealing with anxiety. We speculate that his reluctance to be touched springs from that. Dan does not go along with the anxiety theory. Dan does not believe in anxiety. Dan speculates that Bill's reluctance to be touched is a physical manifestation of a metaphysical condition that is not anxiety. But he is the only one who speculates that. The rest of us support anxiety. Bill has let us know in subtle ways that he doesn't want to be touched. If he falls down, you are not to pick him up. If someone holds out a hand in greeting, Bill smiles. If it is time to was the buildings, he will pick up his own bucket. Don't hand him a bucket, for in that circumstance there is a chance that your hands will touch. Bill is tired of Snow White. She must have noticed that he doesn't go to the shower room, now. We are sure she has noticed that. But bill has not told her in so many words that he is tired of her. He has not had the heart to unfold those cruel words, we speculate. Those cruel words remain locked in his lack of heart. Snow White must assume that his absence from the shower room, in these days is an aspect of his not liking to be touched. We are certain she has assumed that. But to what does she attribute the "not-liking" itself? We don't know.
***
Now she's written a dirty great poem four pages long, won't let us read it, refuses absolutely, she is adamant. We discovered it by accident. WE had trudged home early, lingered in the vestibule for a bit wondering if we should trudge inside. A strange prehension, a boding of some kind. Then we trudged inside. "Here's the mail," we said. She was writing something, we could see that. "here's the mail," we said again, usually she likes to paw over the mail, but she was preoccupied, didn't look up, not a flicker. "What are you doing there," we asked, "writing something?" Snow White looked up. "Yes," she said. And looked down again, not a pinch of emotion coloring the jet black of her jet-black eyes. "A letter?" we asked wondering if a letter then to who and about what. "No," she said. "A list?" we asked inspecting her white face for a hint of tendresse. But there was no tendresse. "No," she said. We noticed then that she had switched the tulips from the green bowl to the blue bowl. "What then?" we asked. We noticed that she had shifted the lilies from the escritoire to the chiffonier. "What then?" we repeated. WE observed that she had hauled the Indian paintbrush all the way out into the kitchen. "Poem," she said. We had the mail in our paws still. "Poem?" we said. "Poem," she said. There it was, the red meat on the rug. "Well," we said, "can we have a peek?" "No," she said. "How long is it?" we asked. "Four pages," she said, "at present." "Four pages!" The thought of this immense work...
***
"So, summing up, there is a relation between what I have been saying and what we're doing here at the plant with these plastic buffalo humps. Now you're probably familiar with the fact that the per-capita production of trash in this country is up from 2.75 pounds per day in 1920 to 4.5 pounds per day in 1965, the last year for which we have figures, and is increasing at the rate of about four percent a year. Now that rate will probably go up, becuase it's been going up, and I hazard that we may very well soon reach a point where it's 100 percent. Now at such a point, you will agree, the question turns from a question of disposing of this 'trash' to a question of appreciating its qualities, because, after all, it's 100 percent, right? And there can no longer be any question of 'disposing' of it, because it's all there is, and we will simply have to learn to 'dig' it - that's slang, but peculiarly appropriate here. So that's why we're in humps, right now, more really from a philosophical point of view than because we find them a great moneymaker. They are 'trash,' and what in fact could be more useless or trashlike? It's that we want to be on the leading edge of this trash phenomenon, the everted sphere of the future, and that's why we pay particular attention, too, to those aspects of language that may be seen as a model of the trash phenomenon. And it's certainly been a pleasure showing you around the plant this afternoon, and meeting you, and talking to you about these things, which are really more important, I believe, than people tend to think. Would you like a cold Coke from the Coke machine now, before you go?"
***
"What is troubling me is the quality of life in our great country, America. It seems to me to be deprived. I don't mean that the deprived people are deprived, although they are, clearly, but that even the fat are deprived. I suppose one could say that they are all humpheads and let it go at that. I am worried by the fact that no one responded to Snow White's hair initiative. Even though I am at the same time relieved. But it suggests that Americans will not or cannot see themselves as princely. Even Paul, that most princely of our contemporaries, did not respond appropriately. Of course it may be that princely is not a good thing to be. And of course there is our long democratic tradition which is anti-aristocratic. Egalitarianism precludes princeliness. And yet our people are not equal in any sense. They are either... The poorest of them are slaves as surely as if they were chained to gigantic wooden oars. The richest of them have the faces of cold effete homosexuals. And those in the middle are wonderfully confused. Redistribute the money. That will not ameliorate everything, but it will ameliorate some things. Redistribute the money. This can be achieved in only one way. By making the rich happier. New lovers. New lovers who will make their lives exciting and 'rich' in a way that... We must pass a law that all marriages of people with more than enough money are dissolved as of tomorrow. We will free all these poor moneyed people and let them out to play. The quid pro quo is their money. Then we take the money and-"
***
Now she's written a dirty great poem four pages long, won't let us read it, refuses absolutely, she is adamant. We discovered it by accident. WE had trudged home early, lingered in the vestibule for a bit wondering if we should trudge inside. A strange prehension, a boding of some kind. Then we trudged inside. "Here's the mail," we said. She was writing something, we could see that. "here's the mail," we said again, usually she likes to paw over the mail, but she was preoccupied, didn't look up, not a flicker. "What are you doing there," we asked, "writing something?" Snow White looked up. "Yes," she said. And looked down again, not a pinch of emotion coloring the jet black of her jet-black eyes. "A letter?" we asked wondering if a letter then to who and about what. "No," she said. "A list?" we asked inspecting her white face for a hint of tendresse. But there was no tendresse. "No," she said. We noticed then that she had switched the tulips from the green bowl to the blue bowl. "What then?" we asked. We noticed that she had shifted the lilies from the escritoire to the chiffonier. "What then?" we repeated. WE observed that she had hauled the Indian paintbrush all the way out into the kitchen. "Poem," she said. We had the mail in our paws still. "Poem?" we said. "Poem," she said. There it was, the red meat on the rug. "Well," we said, "can we have a peek?" "No," she said. "How long is it?" we asked. "Four pages," she said, "at present." "Four pages!" The thought of this immense work...
***
"So, summing up, there is a relation between what I have been saying and what we're doing here at the plant with these plastic buffalo humps. Now you're probably familiar with the fact that the per-capita production of trash in this country is up from 2.75 pounds per day in 1920 to 4.5 pounds per day in 1965, the last year for which we have figures, and is increasing at the rate of about four percent a year. Now that rate will probably go up, becuase it's been going up, and I hazard that we may very well soon reach a point where it's 100 percent. Now at such a point, you will agree, the question turns from a question of disposing of this 'trash' to a question of appreciating its qualities, because, after all, it's 100 percent, right? And there can no longer be any question of 'disposing' of it, because it's all there is, and we will simply have to learn to 'dig' it - that's slang, but peculiarly appropriate here. So that's why we're in humps, right now, more really from a philosophical point of view than because we find them a great moneymaker. They are 'trash,' and what in fact could be more useless or trashlike? It's that we want to be on the leading edge of this trash phenomenon, the everted sphere of the future, and that's why we pay particular attention, too, to those aspects of language that may be seen as a model of the trash phenomenon. And it's certainly been a pleasure showing you around the plant this afternoon, and meeting you, and talking to you about these things, which are really more important, I believe, than people tend to think. Would you like a cold Coke from the Coke machine now, before you go?"
***
"What is troubling me is the quality of life in our great country, America. It seems to me to be deprived. I don't mean that the deprived people are deprived, although they are, clearly, but that even the fat are deprived. I suppose one could say that they are all humpheads and let it go at that. I am worried by the fact that no one responded to Snow White's hair initiative. Even though I am at the same time relieved. But it suggests that Americans will not or cannot see themselves as princely. Even Paul, that most princely of our contemporaries, did not respond appropriately. Of course it may be that princely is not a good thing to be. And of course there is our long democratic tradition which is anti-aristocratic. Egalitarianism precludes princeliness. And yet our people are not equal in any sense. They are either... The poorest of them are slaves as surely as if they were chained to gigantic wooden oars. The richest of them have the faces of cold effete homosexuals. And those in the middle are wonderfully confused. Redistribute the money. That will not ameliorate everything, but it will ameliorate some things. Redistribute the money. This can be achieved in only one way. By making the rich happier. New lovers. New lovers who will make their lives exciting and 'rich' in a way that... We must pass a law that all marriages of people with more than enough money are dissolved as of tomorrow. We will free all these poor moneyed people and let them out to play. The quid pro quo is their money. Then we take the money and-"
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