This blog is going on summer vacation. It plans to return in the fall with entries on two memoirs--What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami, and All Souls: A Family Story From Southie, by Michael Patrick MacDonald--followed by a slice of non-fiction life--Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer.
Hope you like!
Monday, June 14, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
More sound and fury, signifying something
The Signet Classic's short bio of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley tells us that Mary wrote Frankenstein as a result of a story-writing competition among the Shelleys and Lord Byron. In the Author's Introduction to a re-issue of Frankenstein in 1831, Mary Shelley more than confirms this.
First of all, Mary puts herself in a community of Romantic poets amid the majesty of Nature that first shines, and then rains, upon them, thus confining them to the house--and ghost stories. (Shelley, viii) Then, after they read these ghost stories, Byron proposes that each of them write a ghost story (ix); then, after she listens to a conversation between Byron and Shelley related to galvanism in which "the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and endued with vital warmth," Mary announces that she has thought of a story (x); then, after she writes a "few pages, of a short tale...Shelley urged me to develop the idea at greater length...." (xi) Two things stand out here. One--at every point, before and during the genesis of Frankenstein, relationship to another person, or persons, was crucial to the development of Mary Shelley's work. Two--Nature plays a pivotal role in the course of events. Not coincidentally, I suspect, both the importance of relationships and the centrality of Nature make a recurring significant appearance in Mary Shelley's novel.
At the very start of Victor Frankenstein's narrative, the focus is on family, marriage, and friends. Frankenstein says of his parents that "they seemed to draw inexhaustible stores of affection from a very mine of live to bestow them on me." (33) When he is about five, his parents adopt a peasant girl, Elizabeth, who becomes "my more than sister--the beautiful and adored companion of all my occupations and all my pleasures." (35) After his parents settle in Switzerland, he unites himself in the "bonds of the closest friendship to one among [my schoolfellows, Henry Clerval]." (37) Loving relationship with another is clearly the goal of existence, perhaps even the pinnacle of emotional health.
After Frankenstein leaves behind family and friends for the university at Ingolstadt, he develops a habit of solitary scientific pursuit. From asking himself, "Whence...did the principle of life proceed?" (50), Frankenstein then examines and analyzes "all the minutiae of causation, as exemplified in the change from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me." (51) At first, this "sudden light" waxes into "the first enthusiasm of success" (52), but soon it wanes into "my person...emaciated with confinement" as he pursues his goal of animating lifeless matter "in a solitary chamber...separated from all the other apartments by a gallery and a staircase...." (53) The result of all this isolated activity is a monster whose life is, in turn, utterly confined and defined by isolation.
The monster tells his creator that, in his wanderings, he soon discovered that people either fled from him or attacked him. Consequently, he creates for himself a "hovel" (102), from which he then observes a girl, a young man, and an old man. Especially, he observes that "they enjoyed one another's company and speech, interchanging looks of affection and kindness." (106) In addition, he hears the story of the beautiful woman from Turkey; he learns that she, Safie, and the young man, Felix, are in love--a love that was nearly thwarted by Safie's autocratic father. Far from being thwarted, their love is augmented by the study of language (presumably, French). Study does not, however, improve the monster's condition. On the contrary--"Increase of knowledge only discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was." (125) More and more, the monster longs for what 20th century psychologist Abraham Maslow called belongingness. High stakes. And, of course, the monster loses. Once again, people (the girl/Safie) either flee him or people (the old man/Felix) attack him. So, now unquestionably isolated, the monster commands his creator: "My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects. This being you must create." (137)
Meantime, throughout, relationship to Nature is as important as relationship to another. Initially--although he has created the monster--Frankenstein can still take pleasure in "happy, inanimate nature.... A serene sky and verdant fields filled me with ecstasy." (68) The monster also initially takes pleasure in Nature, particularly in the moonlight and in birdsong. (99) But soon, utterly alienated and enraged, the monster kills Frankenstein's much younger brother William and then implicates the devoted family servant, Justine, in the murder. Upon the deaths of William and Justine, Frankenstein cannot take pleasure in Nature, but rather considers drowning himself in a "beautiful and heavenly" lake. (87) There are a few times, later, when Nature can still please, divert, or console Frankenstein, but predominantly he feels like "a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul...." (153) Frankenstein's friend Clerval, who does not feel like "a blasted tree," feels invigorated by the country around the Rhine:
...I have seen the mountains of Le Valais, and the Pays de Vaud; but this country, Victor, pleases me more than all those wonders. The mountains of Switzerland are more majestic and strange, but there is a charm in the banks of this divine river that I never before saw equalled. (148)
And so on. The literary critic, Howard Bloom, in his Afterword to Frankenstein, suggests that Mary Shelley based Clerval on the Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and I suspect that he is right. Nature is absolutely no footnote to Henry Clerval...
...and neither is it a footnote to Elizabeth (Lavenza), who says to Frankenstein on their honeymoon:
Observe how fast we move along and how the clouds...render this scene of beauty still more interesting. Look also at the innumerable fish that are swimming in the clear waters.... What a divine day! (183)
Very apparently, unity with another and harmony with Nature are inextricably intertwined, in a novel, in the early 19th century. And they still are, for the non-fictional rest of us, in the early 21st century.
First of all, Mary puts herself in a community of Romantic poets amid the majesty of Nature that first shines, and then rains, upon them, thus confining them to the house--and ghost stories. (Shelley, viii) Then, after they read these ghost stories, Byron proposes that each of them write a ghost story (ix); then, after she listens to a conversation between Byron and Shelley related to galvanism in which "the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and endued with vital warmth," Mary announces that she has thought of a story (x); then, after she writes a "few pages, of a short tale...Shelley urged me to develop the idea at greater length...." (xi) Two things stand out here. One--at every point, before and during the genesis of Frankenstein, relationship to another person, or persons, was crucial to the development of Mary Shelley's work. Two--Nature plays a pivotal role in the course of events. Not coincidentally, I suspect, both the importance of relationships and the centrality of Nature make a recurring significant appearance in Mary Shelley's novel.
At the very start of Victor Frankenstein's narrative, the focus is on family, marriage, and friends. Frankenstein says of his parents that "they seemed to draw inexhaustible stores of affection from a very mine of live to bestow them on me." (33) When he is about five, his parents adopt a peasant girl, Elizabeth, who becomes "my more than sister--the beautiful and adored companion of all my occupations and all my pleasures." (35) After his parents settle in Switzerland, he unites himself in the "bonds of the closest friendship to one among [my schoolfellows, Henry Clerval]." (37) Loving relationship with another is clearly the goal of existence, perhaps even the pinnacle of emotional health.
After Frankenstein leaves behind family and friends for the university at Ingolstadt, he develops a habit of solitary scientific pursuit. From asking himself, "Whence...did the principle of life proceed?" (50), Frankenstein then examines and analyzes "all the minutiae of causation, as exemplified in the change from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me." (51) At first, this "sudden light" waxes into "the first enthusiasm of success" (52), but soon it wanes into "my person...emaciated with confinement" as he pursues his goal of animating lifeless matter "in a solitary chamber...separated from all the other apartments by a gallery and a staircase...." (53) The result of all this isolated activity is a monster whose life is, in turn, utterly confined and defined by isolation.
The monster tells his creator that, in his wanderings, he soon discovered that people either fled from him or attacked him. Consequently, he creates for himself a "hovel" (102), from which he then observes a girl, a young man, and an old man. Especially, he observes that "they enjoyed one another's company and speech, interchanging looks of affection and kindness." (106) In addition, he hears the story of the beautiful woman from Turkey; he learns that she, Safie, and the young man, Felix, are in love--a love that was nearly thwarted by Safie's autocratic father. Far from being thwarted, their love is augmented by the study of language (presumably, French). Study does not, however, improve the monster's condition. On the contrary--"Increase of knowledge only discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was." (125) More and more, the monster longs for what 20th century psychologist Abraham Maslow called belongingness. High stakes. And, of course, the monster loses. Once again, people (the girl/Safie) either flee him or people (the old man/Felix) attack him. So, now unquestionably isolated, the monster commands his creator: "My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects. This being you must create." (137)
Meantime, throughout, relationship to Nature is as important as relationship to another. Initially--although he has created the monster--Frankenstein can still take pleasure in "happy, inanimate nature.... A serene sky and verdant fields filled me with ecstasy." (68) The monster also initially takes pleasure in Nature, particularly in the moonlight and in birdsong. (99) But soon, utterly alienated and enraged, the monster kills Frankenstein's much younger brother William and then implicates the devoted family servant, Justine, in the murder. Upon the deaths of William and Justine, Frankenstein cannot take pleasure in Nature, but rather considers drowning himself in a "beautiful and heavenly" lake. (87) There are a few times, later, when Nature can still please, divert, or console Frankenstein, but predominantly he feels like "a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul...." (153) Frankenstein's friend Clerval, who does not feel like "a blasted tree," feels invigorated by the country around the Rhine:
...I have seen the mountains of Le Valais, and the Pays de Vaud; but this country, Victor, pleases me more than all those wonders. The mountains of Switzerland are more majestic and strange, but there is a charm in the banks of this divine river that I never before saw equalled. (148)
And so on. The literary critic, Howard Bloom, in his Afterword to Frankenstein, suggests that Mary Shelley based Clerval on the Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and I suspect that he is right. Nature is absolutely no footnote to Henry Clerval...
...and neither is it a footnote to Elizabeth (Lavenza), who says to Frankenstein on their honeymoon:
Observe how fast we move along and how the clouds...render this scene of beauty still more interesting. Look also at the innumerable fish that are swimming in the clear waters.... What a divine day! (183)
Very apparently, unity with another and harmony with Nature are inextricably intertwined, in a novel, in the early 19th century. And they still are, for the non-fictional rest of us, in the early 21st century.
Monday, May 31, 2010
More sound and fury, from Gaston
Just as, these days, Europe and the U.S. et al. think of Iran as a source of terror, spearheaded by Iran's President Ahmadinejad, so Persia is a source of terror for Paris in The Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux. The Phantom has come back to his birthplace, France, from Persia via Turkey (also a threatening region of the world, when The Phantom of the Opera was published in 1910.) In Persia, the Phantom has turned his architectural skills toward the construction of a torture chamber; he is employing his skills of construction for purposes of destruction. Similarly, he builds a palace for the Shah that allows the Shah to move about unseen and even to disappear utterly; that is, the Phantom has built a defensive weapon (against, quite possibly, the Shah's enemy, the Emir of Afghanistan). Thus, the Phantom perfects his evil in Persia and, after a Persian police chief rescues him from execution, he is able to take this perfected evil back to France, specifically, the Paris Opera.
This Persian police chief, known throughout as the Persian, is inextricably linked to the Phantom (Erik). He knows the Phantom well, as he points out frequently but most specifically and at length in this paragraph, in his narrative:
I knew my Erik too well to feel at all comfortable on jumping into his house [in the cellar of the Opera]. I knew what he had made of a certain palace at Mazenderan [in Persia]. From being the most honest building conceivable, he soon turned it into a house of the very devil, where you could not utter a word but it was overheard or repeated by an echo. With his trapdoors the monster was responsible for endless tragedies of all kinds. He hit upon astonishing inventions. Of these, the most curious, horrible and dangerous was the so-called torture chamber. (179)
The Persian describes the torture chamber as a hexagon lined with mirrors and containing a tree that "was absolutely true to life and was made of iron so as to resist all the attacks of the 'patient' who was locked into the torture chamber." (192) The Phantom's other inventions well-known to the Persian include the ability to create certain sound effects--such as the roar of a lion or the pattering of rain--intended for torture to the point of insanity and death.
The Persian is well aware of the Phantom's utterly destructive nature. He knows and says that "[Erik] is a real monster--I have seen him at work in Persia, alas..." (171) and "...he was restrained by no scruples and he employed his extraordinary gifts of dexterity and imagination...to prey upon his fellow men." (219) Nevertheless, this Persian police chief rescues Erik/the Phantom from execution by the Shah, thereby allowing this "real monster" who is "restrained by no scruples" to travel out of Persia first to Turkey, where he constructs deceptive devices for the Sultan's use, and then to Paris, where he assists in constructing the Opera--which he later decides to make his home--and from where he terrorizes the Opera managers, singers, and dancers et al., and ultimately, secretly, threatens the lives of hundreds of opera-goers.
The Persian, eventually realizing his terrible mistake, decides to lead the jealous, enraged Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny, to the Phantom's house in the cellar of the Opera, in order to kill this monstrous Phantom, after all. Instead, the Phantom nearly kills both Raoul and the Persian--who maintains contact with the Phantom even after the near-death event. And especially meaningful contact, too.
The Persian is writing his narrative of events for the Paris newspapers, when the Phantom visits and tells the Persian that he is going to die "of love for [Christine Daae], I...I tell you!...If you knew how beautiful she was...when she let me kiss her...." (211) This kiss is a radical event for this man, whose hideousness drove away his own mother. For the Phantom, this kiss means that a woman has loved him for his own sake, and it is this perpetually frustrated desire, to be loved for his own sake, that has obsessed and driven him all his life. He confides this over-riding desire first to the Persian (on p. 175) and then to Christine herself--"And yet I am not really wicked. Love me and you shall see! All I wanted was to be loved for myself." (182) No question then--at the core of this story is a universal longing, to be loved for oneself versus being loved for one's good looks--definitely demonstrated by Christine's other admirer, Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny.
And yet, it is the Persian who concludes The Phantom of the Opera and so it is the Persian and, consequently, Persia that stays in the reader's imagination. In this way, the melodramatic horror of The Phantom of the Opera manifests itself within a context of East-West tension--tension that has escalated again especially sharply since 9/11. The tension might be described in this way: the East (Iran, Iraq et al.) terrorizes the West (Europe and the U.S. et al.) which then seeks to conquer, or at least control, the East. But then, on second thought--just as the Phantom initially comes from France--so, clearly, terror can come from anywhere...and so, perhaps, today terror is coming not as much from the East as from the West's persistent portrayal of a maniacal East, which, like the Phantom of the Opera, must then be hunted down....
This Persian police chief, known throughout as the Persian, is inextricably linked to the Phantom (Erik). He knows the Phantom well, as he points out frequently but most specifically and at length in this paragraph, in his narrative:
I knew my Erik too well to feel at all comfortable on jumping into his house [in the cellar of the Opera]. I knew what he had made of a certain palace at Mazenderan [in Persia]. From being the most honest building conceivable, he soon turned it into a house of the very devil, where you could not utter a word but it was overheard or repeated by an echo. With his trapdoors the monster was responsible for endless tragedies of all kinds. He hit upon astonishing inventions. Of these, the most curious, horrible and dangerous was the so-called torture chamber. (179)
The Persian describes the torture chamber as a hexagon lined with mirrors and containing a tree that "was absolutely true to life and was made of iron so as to resist all the attacks of the 'patient' who was locked into the torture chamber." (192) The Phantom's other inventions well-known to the Persian include the ability to create certain sound effects--such as the roar of a lion or the pattering of rain--intended for torture to the point of insanity and death.
The Persian is well aware of the Phantom's utterly destructive nature. He knows and says that "[Erik] is a real monster--I have seen him at work in Persia, alas..." (171) and "...he was restrained by no scruples and he employed his extraordinary gifts of dexterity and imagination...to prey upon his fellow men." (219) Nevertheless, this Persian police chief rescues Erik/the Phantom from execution by the Shah, thereby allowing this "real monster" who is "restrained by no scruples" to travel out of Persia first to Turkey, where he constructs deceptive devices for the Sultan's use, and then to Paris, where he assists in constructing the Opera--which he later decides to make his home--and from where he terrorizes the Opera managers, singers, and dancers et al., and ultimately, secretly, threatens the lives of hundreds of opera-goers.
The Persian, eventually realizing his terrible mistake, decides to lead the jealous, enraged Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny, to the Phantom's house in the cellar of the Opera, in order to kill this monstrous Phantom, after all. Instead, the Phantom nearly kills both Raoul and the Persian--who maintains contact with the Phantom even after the near-death event. And especially meaningful contact, too.
The Persian is writing his narrative of events for the Paris newspapers, when the Phantom visits and tells the Persian that he is going to die "of love for [Christine Daae], I...I tell you!...If you knew how beautiful she was...when she let me kiss her...." (211) This kiss is a radical event for this man, whose hideousness drove away his own mother. For the Phantom, this kiss means that a woman has loved him for his own sake, and it is this perpetually frustrated desire, to be loved for his own sake, that has obsessed and driven him all his life. He confides this over-riding desire first to the Persian (on p. 175) and then to Christine herself--"And yet I am not really wicked. Love me and you shall see! All I wanted was to be loved for myself." (182) No question then--at the core of this story is a universal longing, to be loved for oneself versus being loved for one's good looks--definitely demonstrated by Christine's other admirer, Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny.
And yet, it is the Persian who concludes The Phantom of the Opera and so it is the Persian and, consequently, Persia that stays in the reader's imagination. In this way, the melodramatic horror of The Phantom of the Opera manifests itself within a context of East-West tension--tension that has escalated again especially sharply since 9/11. The tension might be described in this way: the East (Iran, Iraq et al.) terrorizes the West (Europe and the U.S. et al.) which then seeks to conquer, or at least control, the East. But then, on second thought--just as the Phantom initially comes from France--so, clearly, terror can come from anywhere...and so, perhaps, today terror is coming not as much from the East as from the West's persistent portrayal of a maniacal East, which, like the Phantom of the Opera, must then be hunted down....
Thursday, May 20, 2010
What's with all the sound and fury, Robert?
It's back to the nineteenth century with a vengeance, in the dangerously imbalanced world of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson. It's a world that could well bring to mind Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), which was originated by Marsha Linehan to treat Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), a disorder characterized by identity disturbance, impulsivity, suicidality, and anger (characteristics indubitably evinced by Jekyll/Hyde!). In DBT, the desired outcome is integration of Reasonable Mind ("Vulcan" logic) with Emotion Mind (passionate reaction) bringing about Wise Mind (serene intuition). In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one might say that Emotion Mind overwhelms and destroys Reasonable Mind, consequently destroying any possible emergence of a Wise Mind.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde begins not with Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde but with the lawyer Mr. Utterson, assuredly the novel's representative of reason who no doubt drinks that transformative drug, wine, in moderation. But why do I mention wine? Let me count the reasons. 1) The second sentence of the first chapter tells us--"...when the wine was to Utterson's taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye." (Stevenson 37) 2) When Utterson has to make a difficult decision, he summons his head clerk and "a bottle of a particular old wine that had long dwelt unsunned in the foundations of his house." (68) And this is no incidental bottle of wine but rather--
...the acids were long ago resolved; the imperial dye had softened with time, as the colour grows richer in stained windows; and the glow of hot autumn afternoons on hillside vineyards, was ready to be set free and to disperse the fogs of London. Insensibly the lawyer melted. (69)
3) When Dr. Jekyll's butler Poole visits Utterson in a state of terror, Utterson gives him a seat and a glass of wine that, Utterson observes with astonishment, "was still untasted when [Poole] set it down to follow [Utterson back to Jekyll's house]." (79-80) Very apparently, Utterson has learned to turn that transformative drug, wine, to his own satisfying ends, while staying in the realm of Reasonable Mind. In clear contrast, Dr. Jekyll creates a transformative drug that turns against his Reasonable Mind while driving him into his Emotion Mind.
Near the start of the story, Jekyll's "fanciful" will offends the conservative Utterson (46), while Jekyll's "fanciful" ideas offend the scientific Dr. Lanyon (47). Then, somewhere between that night and the early morning, after conversing with Lanyon about Hyde, Utterson finds himself besieged by the very fancifulness that he despises and distrusts, specifically, "...now his imagination also was engaged, or rather enslaved." (48, italics mine) Unquestionably the imagination is a danger to be avoided, as opposed to a framework of system and logic, which is to be carefully constructed and maintained. And so, Utterson sets out to remove the danger of imagination, an aspect of Emotion Mind, by examining the mystery, an activity of Reasonable Mind--"From that time forward, Mr. Utterson began to haunt the door in the by-street of shops...by all lights and at all hours of solitude or concourse, the lawyer was to be found on his chosen post...And at last his patience was rewarded." (49) Similarly, from that point in the book forward, Utterson's methodicalness of investigation contrasts sharply with both Dr. Jekyll's loss of control over his own experiment and Mr. Hyde's impulsive, aggressive, and criminally violent behavior.
In a letter to Lanyon, Jekyll uses the word "reason" several times, twice, dramatically, in the first short paragraph:
There was never a day when, if you had said to me, "Jekyll, my life, my honour, my reason depend upon you," I would not have sacrificed my left hand to help you. Lanyon, my life, my honour, my reason, are all at your mercy...." (94, italics mine)
Then, at the end of the letter's third paragraph, Jekyll refers to the potential "shipwreck of my reason." (95) Reason is an essential commodity for Jekyll (and Lanyon and Utterson, et al. and so on). So is--as Jekyll himself puts it, in "Henry Jekyll's First Statement of the Case"--"the balance of my nature" (113) or "those balancing instincts" (116) or "the balance of my soul" (118). Dialectical Behavior Therapy is surely concerned with balance, specifically, tempering extremes of Emotion Mind with consistent application of Reasonable Mind (for instance, noticing the experience but not evaluating it).
Certainly, Emotion Mind is not necessarily a dangerous, poisonous thing. Without Emotion Mind, there would be no romance, no art, literature, or music--for a start. Rather, there isn't much place for Emotion Mind in the Victorian world of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or--let's not kid ourselves--in the technocratic, bureaucratic world of 2010...and Hell hath no fury like Emotion Mind scorned!
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde begins not with Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde but with the lawyer Mr. Utterson, assuredly the novel's representative of reason who no doubt drinks that transformative drug, wine, in moderation. But why do I mention wine? Let me count the reasons. 1) The second sentence of the first chapter tells us--"...when the wine was to Utterson's taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye." (Stevenson 37) 2) When Utterson has to make a difficult decision, he summons his head clerk and "a bottle of a particular old wine that had long dwelt unsunned in the foundations of his house." (68) And this is no incidental bottle of wine but rather--
...the acids were long ago resolved; the imperial dye had softened with time, as the colour grows richer in stained windows; and the glow of hot autumn afternoons on hillside vineyards, was ready to be set free and to disperse the fogs of London. Insensibly the lawyer melted. (69)
3) When Dr. Jekyll's butler Poole visits Utterson in a state of terror, Utterson gives him a seat and a glass of wine that, Utterson observes with astonishment, "was still untasted when [Poole] set it down to follow [Utterson back to Jekyll's house]." (79-80) Very apparently, Utterson has learned to turn that transformative drug, wine, to his own satisfying ends, while staying in the realm of Reasonable Mind. In clear contrast, Dr. Jekyll creates a transformative drug that turns against his Reasonable Mind while driving him into his Emotion Mind.
Near the start of the story, Jekyll's "fanciful" will offends the conservative Utterson (46), while Jekyll's "fanciful" ideas offend the scientific Dr. Lanyon (47). Then, somewhere between that night and the early morning, after conversing with Lanyon about Hyde, Utterson finds himself besieged by the very fancifulness that he despises and distrusts, specifically, "...now his imagination also was engaged, or rather enslaved." (48, italics mine) Unquestionably the imagination is a danger to be avoided, as opposed to a framework of system and logic, which is to be carefully constructed and maintained. And so, Utterson sets out to remove the danger of imagination, an aspect of Emotion Mind, by examining the mystery, an activity of Reasonable Mind--"From that time forward, Mr. Utterson began to haunt the door in the by-street of shops...by all lights and at all hours of solitude or concourse, the lawyer was to be found on his chosen post...And at last his patience was rewarded." (49) Similarly, from that point in the book forward, Utterson's methodicalness of investigation contrasts sharply with both Dr. Jekyll's loss of control over his own experiment and Mr. Hyde's impulsive, aggressive, and criminally violent behavior.
In a letter to Lanyon, Jekyll uses the word "reason" several times, twice, dramatically, in the first short paragraph:
There was never a day when, if you had said to me, "Jekyll, my life, my honour, my reason depend upon you," I would not have sacrificed my left hand to help you. Lanyon, my life, my honour, my reason, are all at your mercy...." (94, italics mine)
Then, at the end of the letter's third paragraph, Jekyll refers to the potential "shipwreck of my reason." (95) Reason is an essential commodity for Jekyll (and Lanyon and Utterson, et al. and so on). So is--as Jekyll himself puts it, in "Henry Jekyll's First Statement of the Case"--"the balance of my nature" (113) or "those balancing instincts" (116) or "the balance of my soul" (118). Dialectical Behavior Therapy is surely concerned with balance, specifically, tempering extremes of Emotion Mind with consistent application of Reasonable Mind (for instance, noticing the experience but not evaluating it).
Certainly, Emotion Mind is not necessarily a dangerous, poisonous thing. Without Emotion Mind, there would be no romance, no art, literature, or music--for a start. Rather, there isn't much place for Emotion Mind in the Victorian world of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or--let's not kid ourselves--in the technocratic, bureaucratic world of 2010...and Hell hath no fury like Emotion Mind scorned!
Sunday, May 9, 2010
What's going on, Jon?
Several years ago, a rather Buddhist supervisor of mine asked me, "What are you believing?" A momentous question, it stayed in a corner of my brain. The question re-emerged as I read There Is No Other, a stunning collection of short stories by Jonathan Papernick.
Initially, the first short story of the collection ("Skin for Skin") reads like a letter to the (now defunct) "Ask Beth" column in The Boston Globe. Girl arranges to be alone with boy, who, thereupon, wants to do more than make out. She does not want to do more than make out, but she does not want to be a "cocktease," either. What's a girl to do? Especially--and here ends any resemblance to "Ask Beth"--when the girl is Jewish and the boy is not. This matter of faith is neither light-weight nor easily surmounted. Although the boy quotes Friedrich "God is dead" Nietzsche, he lifts the crucifix "over his head with great difficulty, as if he were bearing the True Cross on his narrow shoulders...." (Papernick 10) Although the girl defines herself as "not Jewish" but rather "a secular humanist [who believes] in self-determination," she is nevertheless shocked to see the boy's uncircumcised penis against his thigh, "like the emergence of a sea monster from a bathtub." (11) Indeed, she is so shocked that she feels compelled--well, never mind the particulars--the point is, what she believes compels her toward what she ends up doing.
If the first story is like "Ask Beth" with a twist, then the second story ("There Is No Other") is like NCIS with a twist: the suicide bomber is a black Jewish 7th grader, Junius Barker, who promises not to blow up the classroom if someone can tell him why the Jews are the Chosen People. The "someone" who could tell him is the teacher, Aaron Needle, but the boy has decidedly turned on him--"And you, Needle, zip it." (24) Rising tension between Junius and Needle is dissolved in a prayer--
"You shall know today, and take to heart, that Adonai is the only God, in the heavens above and on earth below. There is no other." (27)
The word "other" is what resonates. The concept of "the other" meaning "the alien"--a concept crystallized by Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex--is at the heart of this story. Despite the prayer uniting Junius and Needle, Junius feels very much like "the other," a feeling he pours forth in this rant:
"I want to know which half of me is chosen, the top half or the bottom, the inside or the outside, or the other way around? Why is it so hard to figure out? If God separated Jews from the other nations and gave them a different destiny, which half of me is chosen, which half of me bows down before the King of Kings, and which half can go fuck himself?" (29)
After throwing his arms around Junius in an embrace, which Junius resists, calling Needle a "homo" (yet another "other"), Needle whispers, "I believe in God. There is no other." (32) Needle's belief leads him--and Junius--to death, an ecstatic moment for Needle.
Another story in this collection ("The Miracle Birth") brought to mind a piece of Nurse Apple's Cookie Speech in the Stephen Sondheim musical Anyone Can Whistle--"My name is Apple, A-Double P-L-E, a fruit well mentioned in the Bible, that best seller of many miracles. I cite the Ten Commandments and the Burning Bush, to name only two." And I cite the Immaculate Conception (of Jesus), which is preceded, in the Old Testament, by the miraculous birth of Isaac to the exceedingly post-menopausal Sarah. Unquestionably, childless Shira Bavli in "The Miracle Birth" feels the weight of Biblical history: "Every time Shira came up to Jerusalem, she realized that [its] gravitational pull...was a hundred times that of the rest of the world, rendering even the simplest encounter as heavy as a stone cut from Solomon's Quarries." (50) Or, is Shira believing something about Jerusalem that endows it with this "gravitational pull"? In any case, Shira does give birth, at 40, to a girl, who, at 18, gives birth to a boy who, Vered believes, is the Messiah. Either of these births could be "The Miracle Birth" of the title, but, what I'm wondering is, does Vered really believe that her mother has "no faith that tomorrow can be better" (71), or is that just an angry retort in a mother-daughter spat of Biblical proportions?
In all these stories, belief in someone or something--could be "yer darling sweetheart baby" or "baseball for the Palestinians"--surely transforms the believer. All these stories repay a belief in the transformative power of stories.
Initially, the first short story of the collection ("Skin for Skin") reads like a letter to the (now defunct) "Ask Beth" column in The Boston Globe. Girl arranges to be alone with boy, who, thereupon, wants to do more than make out. She does not want to do more than make out, but she does not want to be a "cocktease," either. What's a girl to do? Especially--and here ends any resemblance to "Ask Beth"--when the girl is Jewish and the boy is not. This matter of faith is neither light-weight nor easily surmounted. Although the boy quotes Friedrich "God is dead" Nietzsche, he lifts the crucifix "over his head with great difficulty, as if he were bearing the True Cross on his narrow shoulders...." (Papernick 10) Although the girl defines herself as "not Jewish" but rather "a secular humanist [who believes] in self-determination," she is nevertheless shocked to see the boy's uncircumcised penis against his thigh, "like the emergence of a sea monster from a bathtub." (11) Indeed, she is so shocked that she feels compelled--well, never mind the particulars--the point is, what she believes compels her toward what she ends up doing.
If the first story is like "Ask Beth" with a twist, then the second story ("There Is No Other") is like NCIS with a twist: the suicide bomber is a black Jewish 7th grader, Junius Barker, who promises not to blow up the classroom if someone can tell him why the Jews are the Chosen People. The "someone" who could tell him is the teacher, Aaron Needle, but the boy has decidedly turned on him--"And you, Needle, zip it." (24) Rising tension between Junius and Needle is dissolved in a prayer--
"You shall know today, and take to heart, that Adonai is the only God, in the heavens above and on earth below. There is no other." (27)
The word "other" is what resonates. The concept of "the other" meaning "the alien"--a concept crystallized by Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex--is at the heart of this story. Despite the prayer uniting Junius and Needle, Junius feels very much like "the other," a feeling he pours forth in this rant:
"I want to know which half of me is chosen, the top half or the bottom, the inside or the outside, or the other way around? Why is it so hard to figure out? If God separated Jews from the other nations and gave them a different destiny, which half of me is chosen, which half of me bows down before the King of Kings, and which half can go fuck himself?" (29)
After throwing his arms around Junius in an embrace, which Junius resists, calling Needle a "homo" (yet another "other"), Needle whispers, "I believe in God. There is no other." (32) Needle's belief leads him--and Junius--to death, an ecstatic moment for Needle.
Another story in this collection ("The Miracle Birth") brought to mind a piece of Nurse Apple's Cookie Speech in the Stephen Sondheim musical Anyone Can Whistle--"My name is Apple, A-Double P-L-E, a fruit well mentioned in the Bible, that best seller of many miracles. I cite the Ten Commandments and the Burning Bush, to name only two." And I cite the Immaculate Conception (of Jesus), which is preceded, in the Old Testament, by the miraculous birth of Isaac to the exceedingly post-menopausal Sarah. Unquestionably, childless Shira Bavli in "The Miracle Birth" feels the weight of Biblical history: "Every time Shira came up to Jerusalem, she realized that [its] gravitational pull...was a hundred times that of the rest of the world, rendering even the simplest encounter as heavy as a stone cut from Solomon's Quarries." (50) Or, is Shira believing something about Jerusalem that endows it with this "gravitational pull"? In any case, Shira does give birth, at 40, to a girl, who, at 18, gives birth to a boy who, Vered believes, is the Messiah. Either of these births could be "The Miracle Birth" of the title, but, what I'm wondering is, does Vered really believe that her mother has "no faith that tomorrow can be better" (71), or is that just an angry retort in a mother-daughter spat of Biblical proportions?
In all these stories, belief in someone or something--could be "yer darling sweetheart baby" or "baseball for the Palestinians"--surely transforms the believer. All these stories repay a belief in the transformative power of stories.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Yo, Reinaldo!
From the very beginning of Before Night Falls, by Reinaldo Arenas, a primary tension is between what Arenas does not have and what he does have, between absence, loss, or lack on the one hand and benefit, sensuality, and enjoyment on the other. For much of his life--and therefore for much of this memoir--the things that Arenas does not have increases, while what he did have or came to have decreases, until it seems he cannot survive the resulting privation. Although, fortunately, privation is succeeded by liberation, there is no happy-ever-after in which benefit outweighs loss. Arenas does not provide a narrative arc in which the tension, after reaching a climax, is resolved.
In the beginning was a father who left a mother who "did not have enough practical sense to be raising a child" (1, 3, Arenas), a house "filled with abandoned women" (4), and a God that did not answer prayers (5). Meanwhile, he was "a skinny kid with a distended belly full of worms from eating so much dirt." (1) In sum--a childhood characterized by abandonment and poverty. Then, at the start of the second chapter, Arenas transitions to those things that sustain and nourish him: "I think the splendor of my childhood was unique because it was absolute poverty but also absolute freedom, out in the open, surrounded by trees, animals, apparitions...." (5) Especially trees, about which Arenas writes this rhapsody:
I used to climb trees, and everything seemed much more beautiful from up there. I could embrace the world in its completeness and feel a harmony that I could not experience down below.... To climb a tree is to slowly discover a unique world, rhythmic, magical, and harmonious, with its worms, insects, birds, and other living things...telling us their secrets. (5-6)
Also at this time, Arenas develops a world of "almost mythical and supernatural characters and apparitions." (6) And--"I created and performed a series of endless songs and staged them all across the fields." (17) In a childhood characterized by poverty and abandonment, Arenas nevertheless discovered both the magic of the natural world and the world of his own imagination.
Arenas' early discovery of the natural world leads, at age six, to his discovery of his homosexuality. "This was the river," he writes, "that gave me a gift: an image that I will never forget" of "over thirty young men bathing in the nude...all those naked bodies, all those exposed genitals...I realized, without a doubt, that I liked men." (8) His sexuality is one of the things that Arenas does have, that benefits him and gives him enjoyment, during a short life marked by loss. Sex is a source of enjoyment, as in "I had switched from possessor to possessed and enjoyed it fully." (70) or "...I was able to enjoy those excited guys...." (165) Sex is an adventure, as in his recurring use of the phrase "erotic adventures" (80, 92, 159). Sex is a topic requiring focused attention, as in two chapters titled "Eroticism" (18-20, 93-116). Throughout the book, Cuban politics and homosexuality inevitably and frequently intersect.
The other thing that Arenas certainly has, that benefits him and gives him enjoyment, is his writing. His first story, a two-page story titled "The Empty Shoes," gets him out of "Fidel Castro's sphere" and gives him access to the "magical world of the National Library...." (71-73) His novel Singing from the Well brings him into contact with the Cuban writer Lezama Lima who, in turn, gives him inspiration for more writing--a felicitous cycle. Writing is central to "...a great feast. We would all bring our notebooks and write poems or chapters of our books, and would have sex with armies of young men." (101) In New York, a few years after getting out of Cuba, Arenas and friends created a magazine, Mariel, in which they could freely write what they really thought. Arenas assures the reader that, although "the magazine folded," it left behind "issues that are a real challenge to the literature of exile and to Cuban literature in general." (298-299)
Nevertheless, the collapse of Mariel magazine is a loss in a series of many losses for Arenas: the loss of a father, of previously loyal friends, of his manuscripts, and, ultimately, of his freedom. His imprisonment in Morro Castle in the Port of Havana, terrifying to read about (177-201, 207-217), must have been all the more terrifying to experience.
Arenas barely survives imprisonment in Cuba, only to find "really no solace anywhere" (308), including New York, which he experiences more as a place of painful exile than as happy haven. As opposed to, say, the fictional autobiography David Copperfield, depicting the triumphal march of David Copperfield, the memoir Before Night Falls does not present a rosy future for non-fictional hero Reinaldo Arenas.
In the beginning was a father who left a mother who "did not have enough practical sense to be raising a child" (1, 3, Arenas), a house "filled with abandoned women" (4), and a God that did not answer prayers (5). Meanwhile, he was "a skinny kid with a distended belly full of worms from eating so much dirt." (1) In sum--a childhood characterized by abandonment and poverty. Then, at the start of the second chapter, Arenas transitions to those things that sustain and nourish him: "I think the splendor of my childhood was unique because it was absolute poverty but also absolute freedom, out in the open, surrounded by trees, animals, apparitions...." (5) Especially trees, about which Arenas writes this rhapsody:
I used to climb trees, and everything seemed much more beautiful from up there. I could embrace the world in its completeness and feel a harmony that I could not experience down below.... To climb a tree is to slowly discover a unique world, rhythmic, magical, and harmonious, with its worms, insects, birds, and other living things...telling us their secrets. (5-6)
Also at this time, Arenas develops a world of "almost mythical and supernatural characters and apparitions." (6) And--"I created and performed a series of endless songs and staged them all across the fields." (17) In a childhood characterized by poverty and abandonment, Arenas nevertheless discovered both the magic of the natural world and the world of his own imagination.
Arenas' early discovery of the natural world leads, at age six, to his discovery of his homosexuality. "This was the river," he writes, "that gave me a gift: an image that I will never forget" of "over thirty young men bathing in the nude...all those naked bodies, all those exposed genitals...I realized, without a doubt, that I liked men." (8) His sexuality is one of the things that Arenas does have, that benefits him and gives him enjoyment, during a short life marked by loss. Sex is a source of enjoyment, as in "I had switched from possessor to possessed and enjoyed it fully." (70) or "...I was able to enjoy those excited guys...." (165) Sex is an adventure, as in his recurring use of the phrase "erotic adventures" (80, 92, 159). Sex is a topic requiring focused attention, as in two chapters titled "Eroticism" (18-20, 93-116). Throughout the book, Cuban politics and homosexuality inevitably and frequently intersect.
The other thing that Arenas certainly has, that benefits him and gives him enjoyment, is his writing. His first story, a two-page story titled "The Empty Shoes," gets him out of "Fidel Castro's sphere" and gives him access to the "magical world of the National Library...." (71-73) His novel Singing from the Well brings him into contact with the Cuban writer Lezama Lima who, in turn, gives him inspiration for more writing--a felicitous cycle. Writing is central to "...a great feast. We would all bring our notebooks and write poems or chapters of our books, and would have sex with armies of young men." (101) In New York, a few years after getting out of Cuba, Arenas and friends created a magazine, Mariel, in which they could freely write what they really thought. Arenas assures the reader that, although "the magazine folded," it left behind "issues that are a real challenge to the literature of exile and to Cuban literature in general." (298-299)
Nevertheless, the collapse of Mariel magazine is a loss in a series of many losses for Arenas: the loss of a father, of previously loyal friends, of his manuscripts, and, ultimately, of his freedom. His imprisonment in Morro Castle in the Port of Havana, terrifying to read about (177-201, 207-217), must have been all the more terrifying to experience.
Arenas barely survives imprisonment in Cuba, only to find "really no solace anywhere" (308), including New York, which he experiences more as a place of painful exile than as happy haven. As opposed to, say, the fictional autobiography David Copperfield, depicting the triumphal march of David Copperfield, the memoir Before Night Falls does not present a rosy future for non-fictional hero Reinaldo Arenas.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
And now for something completely different
Why a mouthful of a name for a book club? Why a novel made up entirely of letters? There are reasons, good reasons. Let me count them.
1) This book club was born (of scary, hasty necessity) as the Guernsey Literary Society. Then, insisting on refreshments at book club meetings, a book club member "concocted a potato peel pie: mashed potatoes for filling, strained beets for sweetness, and potato peelings for crust." (Shaffer and Barrows 51) Thus--the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Fair enough (as my trainer might say) but why a potato peel pie in the first place? This brings me to--
2) Very importantly, this novel is set on the English island of Guernsey during German occupation in World War II. No doubt because of the occupation, butter, flour and sugar--the usual ingredients for a pie--were scarce, and so this book club member, Will Thisbee, made do with beets, potatoes, and potato peelings. Thus was necessity the mother of invention, of a potato peel pie.
Actually, a similar necessity gives birth to the invention of the book club at all. German patrol officers are about to arrest Amelia Maugery and friends for breaking curfew, when one of Mrs. Maugery's friends, Elizabeth McKenna, claims that "we had been attending a meeting of the Guernsey Literary Society, and the evening's discussion of Elizabeth and her German Garden had been so delightful that we had all lost track of time." (29) Necessarily fast thinking brings about the invention of a literary society.
3) This entirely epistolary novel--a form of novel I associate with the 18th century--makes possible a focus on significant anecdotes, like the anecdote about the creation of the Guernsey Literary Society, an anecdote demonstrating the bravery of Elizabeth McKenna, an aspect of her character that is demonstrated in other anecdotes in other letters throughout the novel. Interestingly, at one point, the book publisher for the protagonist, Juliet Ashton, tells her, "Strings of anecdotes don't make a book" (200), and yet anecdotes do make this book.
There are many anecdotes about the German occupation of Guernsey in World War II, in which it is shown that necessity is the mother of invention, in grave--and less grave--circumstances. A couple such anecdotes inform us about making soap from pig's fat (80) and a way to stalk German soldiers with intermittent whistling (172). There are anecdotes about the members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, an especially memorable anecdote having to do with Isola Pribby's determination to read head bumps (224). Then there are letters in which the letter-writer's choice of anecdote tellingly reveals the character of the letter-writer: letters of recommendation (or not) for Juliet Ashton, from Lady Bella Taunton and Reverend Simon Simpless, and letters from Guernsey resident Adelaide Addison, warning Juliet away from the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. (Adelaide Addison--who signs off with the absurd "Yours in Christian Consternation and Concern" (67)--reminds me of the persistently proselytizing Miss Clack in The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins. Miss Clack, however, is a more fully realized, and therefore more sympathetic, character than Adelaide Addison, who is only, briefly, a thorn in the side.)
In the same letter in which he declares that strings of anecdotes don't make a book, book publisher Sidney Stark tells Juliet Ashton that the core of her book is Elizabeth McKenna. He writes--
I'm sending back the ms and your letters to me--read them again and see how often Elizabeth is spoken of. Ask yourself why. Talk to Dawsey and Eben. Talk to Isola and Amelia. Talk to Mr. Dilwyn.... (201)
I see Sidney's point (Mary Ann Shaffer's point?), and yet, once again, I do not agree with him (Mary Ann Shaffer?). I came to dread yet another story about the spirited Elizabeth. She is as un-believably heroic as Little Dorrit (in Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens) is un-believably saintly.
It seems to me, the core of this book is the importance of reading. Early on, Juliet makes clear to Sidney "my interest in their interest in reading" (93), an interest that has a significant impact on the lives of the members of the literary society. For instance, an interest in Thomas Carlyle brings about a new friendship, while an interest in Marcus Aurelius nearly ends an old friendship. Reading is not an incidental thing to do for these Guernsey residents.
In sum--although the voice of the protagonist, Juliet Ashton, can veer towards perkiness-overload, Juliet's focus on the act of reading (and writing, and story-telling), explicit and implicit throughout, is wonderfully obdurate in the era of the iPhone and Windows 7.
1) This book club was born (of scary, hasty necessity) as the Guernsey Literary Society. Then, insisting on refreshments at book club meetings, a book club member "concocted a potato peel pie: mashed potatoes for filling, strained beets for sweetness, and potato peelings for crust." (Shaffer and Barrows 51) Thus--the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Fair enough (as my trainer might say) but why a potato peel pie in the first place? This brings me to--
2) Very importantly, this novel is set on the English island of Guernsey during German occupation in World War II. No doubt because of the occupation, butter, flour and sugar--the usual ingredients for a pie--were scarce, and so this book club member, Will Thisbee, made do with beets, potatoes, and potato peelings. Thus was necessity the mother of invention, of a potato peel pie.
Actually, a similar necessity gives birth to the invention of the book club at all. German patrol officers are about to arrest Amelia Maugery and friends for breaking curfew, when one of Mrs. Maugery's friends, Elizabeth McKenna, claims that "we had been attending a meeting of the Guernsey Literary Society, and the evening's discussion of Elizabeth and her German Garden had been so delightful that we had all lost track of time." (29) Necessarily fast thinking brings about the invention of a literary society.
3) This entirely epistolary novel--a form of novel I associate with the 18th century--makes possible a focus on significant anecdotes, like the anecdote about the creation of the Guernsey Literary Society, an anecdote demonstrating the bravery of Elizabeth McKenna, an aspect of her character that is demonstrated in other anecdotes in other letters throughout the novel. Interestingly, at one point, the book publisher for the protagonist, Juliet Ashton, tells her, "Strings of anecdotes don't make a book" (200), and yet anecdotes do make this book.
There are many anecdotes about the German occupation of Guernsey in World War II, in which it is shown that necessity is the mother of invention, in grave--and less grave--circumstances. A couple such anecdotes inform us about making soap from pig's fat (80) and a way to stalk German soldiers with intermittent whistling (172). There are anecdotes about the members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, an especially memorable anecdote having to do with Isola Pribby's determination to read head bumps (224). Then there are letters in which the letter-writer's choice of anecdote tellingly reveals the character of the letter-writer: letters of recommendation (or not) for Juliet Ashton, from Lady Bella Taunton and Reverend Simon Simpless, and letters from Guernsey resident Adelaide Addison, warning Juliet away from the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. (Adelaide Addison--who signs off with the absurd "Yours in Christian Consternation and Concern" (67)--reminds me of the persistently proselytizing Miss Clack in The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins. Miss Clack, however, is a more fully realized, and therefore more sympathetic, character than Adelaide Addison, who is only, briefly, a thorn in the side.)
In the same letter in which he declares that strings of anecdotes don't make a book, book publisher Sidney Stark tells Juliet Ashton that the core of her book is Elizabeth McKenna. He writes--
I'm sending back the ms and your letters to me--read them again and see how often Elizabeth is spoken of. Ask yourself why. Talk to Dawsey and Eben. Talk to Isola and Amelia. Talk to Mr. Dilwyn.... (201)
I see Sidney's point (Mary Ann Shaffer's point?), and yet, once again, I do not agree with him (Mary Ann Shaffer?). I came to dread yet another story about the spirited Elizabeth. She is as un-believably heroic as Little Dorrit (in Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens) is un-believably saintly.
It seems to me, the core of this book is the importance of reading. Early on, Juliet makes clear to Sidney "my interest in their interest in reading" (93), an interest that has a significant impact on the lives of the members of the literary society. For instance, an interest in Thomas Carlyle brings about a new friendship, while an interest in Marcus Aurelius nearly ends an old friendship. Reading is not an incidental thing to do for these Guernsey residents.
In sum--although the voice of the protagonist, Juliet Ashton, can veer towards perkiness-overload, Juliet's focus on the act of reading (and writing, and story-telling), explicit and implicit throughout, is wonderfully obdurate in the era of the iPhone and Windows 7.
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