What is your Aesthetic Philosophy?

[waalkwriter]

I promised to make this thread, so here goes. Whew, gotta admit I am bit a worn out by the energy all those replies on the The Road thread have worn me out, but I think I have enough to make my point well here.

Basically this is a thread that sort of cuts down to the central issue that every discussion and debate had here centers around: what do you believe art is, what do you think it should do, and why do you think that. Cutting away all the silly extraneous discussions that get lost in simply arguing styles such as post-modernism or minimalism or romanticism or modernism of all these extraneous, and frankly meaningless trappings.

So how do I start...perhaps I will start by getting a bit Faulknerian, as he often made a statement with a similar gist: I believe the point of the writer is to lie, and do it so convincingly the reader doesn't know or care really that he's being lied to.

This is where Umberto Eco falls flat when he says, "You cannot say 'I love you madly', but you can say, 'According to Barbara Streisand I love you madly.' You certainly can, that's what writing is.

Art is solely about lying, lying to the reader that you came up with what he is reading and didn't just assemble it from a montage of randomness in your own life. You are lying to the reader that some basic element of your plot is new, or is your own, you are lying to them that a character is something you made up and not just some interpretation of yourself or rewriting of a character that struck either in fiction or real life. Without the lie there is no art, only science, so frankly what Eco and post-modernists do, for me, threatens the very purity and existence of art itself by trying to remove the lie from art and to focus on removing the lie and writing to let the reader know along the way that the whole thing is a lie, that it is always a lie.

But it's also about destroying reality. A French New Novelist, Robbe-Grillet I believe, was obsessed with the fact that if he used the word mountain, he couldn't use it to give a specific meaning, that each reader would see it differently. He could not fundamentally get over the fact that the word "mountain" is not a mountain and never will be, (in a way it is just part of the lie).

In doing so he missed what is really beautiful about it; that it is not a mountain, but a basic packet of information, a basic bit of programming that cannot be simplified anymore, it is a deconstruction of a mountain, a mountain is destroyed in the eye of the writer into the word and the recreated in the eye of the reader in infinitesimal different ways which is so beautiful because the word is unbound, unzipped, the basic information unfolded and it becomes a billion different combination's, this is what makes art so vast, so infinite in its depth. Art is, through the lie, destruction and then creation again, creation in so many ways, countless ways, ways that don't really matter, (and this is the really cool thing). This is something that truly touches me on personal level about art and what art does, so of course you should have no trouble understand why I am passionate in attacking any mode of thought that threatens it.

Art is destruction, very importantly it is destruction. To quote the Apostle Paul, "Life is meaningless" and I am using that quote for differing reasons than the original context. Life is a somewhat base, simplistic, and monotonous exercise in futility, art is just something we've created to help us cope with the fact that as we go along there is no ultimate beauty in reality, in what can be quantified, that there is no happiness in understanding everything or anything. I always declare quite proudly that I want to know everything but understand nothing at all.

Art is something that inserts a temporary feeling of meaning, a temporary collection of chaos into organized patterns. It doesn't matter what that feeling is, how it's done, what the interpretation of it, just so long as it does it, beyond that nothing else is important within it. It's so important to be reminded that we are human, to, in this increasingly desensitized age make us feel alive to help us once more join Icarus and transcend the world before falling back to it, to help us transcend not only ourselves, but the ordinary limitations of our normal feelings and experiences.

Life is a box, the purpose of art is postulate what is outside of that box and help us cope with being stuck in it.

Therefore I don't need writing that fails this transcendental task, this elevating task. I read to find some real people, people in some way idealized, made to transcend their petty day to day versions, and find some plot where action has meaning where place has meaning. I write for much the same purpose; to try to create this, find some new pocket of this, make a personal exploration into trying to find something greater than what is on the surface of our daily lives. And again, to return to the central theme, thus the lie.

Literature will only come to be more important I feel, because as Religion slowly dies literature will replace it as a means of coping. Literature will be a venue for people to find something that gives them hope their lives mean something, that they will accomplish something universal with their lives, that their solitary existence can have an impact and elevate them above the masses of people that surround them. So that man will not cry to an empty and cold universe of gravity and stars and space and energy locked in a unending passionless cycle, a lone voice crying in the depths to unhearing ears and echoing in the everlasting darkness of being.

So to try to stop wandering along with my thoughts, I am a hopeless romantic in my view of art. Therefore I am very antagonistic to whatever movements I view as avant garde, as more interested in ulterior aspects rather than the end result, the creation of something meaningful, something that makes the viewer feel more alive, feel refreshed and ready again to turn his eye to the vast horizon of reality in all its many shades of gray.

This philosophy is very important to me, so I do argue it passionately where I feel it is threatened. Indeed I wrote an entire bildungsroman when I was an high school dealing pretty much with defining an artistic outlook I could not grasp at the time.

Perhaps this stringent and militant romanticism is hopelessly out of place in a modern age of skepticism, restraint, and rationality. It seems odd, or maybe it is the reason, that a person like me, for whom the rationality of an opinion or a debate is the absolute key to its validity and existence, should view art as an escape valve for that, art as something purely beautiful, purely emotion and feeling and displaying universal human truths. Something to know but not have the slightest clue where to begin understanding.

All this philosophy requires of art is that it be in good intentions, as long as it doesn't fail to bring about that honest emotion and feeling of life, or doesn't fail to mock the very institution it is, it is fine by me, even if it's not a piece I enjoyed I have no problem with it. I think this is the distinction that wasn't clear in the several recent discussions had on the issue.

Because literature should be this:

"I turn on my side and look at the ocean look into its waters. It’s black, liquid ink filled the pens of countless imaginations, of a million wonderful dreams of adventure and escape dreams of a true reality a reality where the monotony of the understood could be lost within danger and mystery, fodder for a million fantasies, once...when there was such thing as mystery."

I will leave it at this, not perfect but it covers the basic extent of it, the rest can be more thoroughly discussed in future discussion if there is any. I'm interested to here about your philosophies on art, how they compare, how you would agree or disagree, etc. Because the only way we can ever more past really, I think, just saying, "Okay, you're wrong and you're wrong" etc, and trying to find ubermeinung is to break down the innermost feelings of literature and simply come to terms of understanding with the differing personalities here, otherwise it really is just beating around the bush and it can only be dealt, I feel, through this sort of thing...sorry, it is too late and I'm really having trouble keeping this all together for a worthy conclusion, so I'm just gonna cut it here, good as any place, shouldn't keep rambling....

So, your thoughts? :)

[Igu Soni]

Criticism of your view of Eco: we've become so well-read that the only way to lie to us convincingly is to admit a small lie and make a bigger one in the hidden machinations inside.

More to come, in all probability, but not today.

[Galatea92]

So, your thoughts? :)

I don't have an aesthetic philosophy. I just like reading.

[waalkwriter]

Well reading and writing are so important to me that I have made the effort to find and search myself and what makes me tick, not to understand persay, but to know it at least, and it's been a rough task because its so buried in emotion and vagueness, but it's been one of the most rewarding things I've done, to come to know myself and form a larger outlook on literature and art in general.

It seems completely natural to have a view of beauty when you spend most of your passions being preoccupied by that beauty.

I don't know Iqu, take Tarrantino for isntance, a filmmaker, his movies are complete lies, every step of the way, but what makes them wonderful is that they don't care they are lying, they are so careless and bold that they can even lie about the small things and make you overlook the lie completely and be astonished by it as if it were truth.

[Eric]

I don't have an aesthetic philosophy. I just like reading.

An eminently sensible approach to literature in this age of pseudo-intellectual theories. As I have said on another thread, maybe the Hermeneutics School has something to offer. But otherwise a lot of so-called literary theory is sterile posturing.

As neither the USA or UK really have very much input into their fish tank of thought from beyond Anglophonia-Xenophobia, we English-speakers have hardly any access to what the majority of the world thinks. A philosophy as arid as Arizona, or as wet as the Lake District, is hardly anything to boast about.

[Mirabell]

An eminently sensible approach to literature in this age of pseudo-intellectual theories. As I have said on another thread, maybe the Hermeneutics School has something to offer. But otherwise a lot of so-called literary theory is sterile posturing.

As neither the USA or UK really have very much input into their fish tank of thought from beyond Anglophonia-Xenophobia, we English-speakers have hardly any access to what the majority of the world thinks. A philosophy as arid as Arizona, or as wet as the Lake District, is hardly anything to boast about.


I never know whether you're ironic or really ignorant?

In this case, I suspect that 99% of the theory you so abhor (you fail to give descriptions) is actually French or German theory, first imported en masse during the 1960s. One of the best and major literary theorists in the US is a Belgian ?migr? (now dead), and from the Frankfurt School (named after Frankfurt, Germany), to Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, to name just a handful, those are all Europeans. Spivak and the wonderful Bhabha are Indian. Etc.

In fact, in my experience, the critics who share your attitude are most often the insular ones, trying to find "the American strain" in lit crit. A terribly dull, vague, sentimental waffle about literature, purity and Art (mark the capital A) ensues, that could lead weaker souls than I to re-instate book-burning. It's in theory where you find international interaction more than in your area of, oh, why not call it 'thought'.

[waalkwriter]

Well I suppose I one of the suckers who is obsessed with art. Not Art, not "aht" just art. I don't think I have ever gotten over studying Tolstoy and other romantics like Shelley and Rimbaud and Whitman. Except I'd say I tend to be a lot more bitter than they were, and I don't contain any sympathy or liking for religion.

[Refus de Sejour]

On the subjective level of personal taste, I value texts that generate a sense of physical space. This sensation is difficult to describe, but I?ll do my best; often when reading a narrative I get the impression that the text is opening out onto a physical landscape that extends beyond the words on the page, a landscape in which it is possible for me to exist somehow on an imaginative level. In a scene set on a river for example, I?ll feel that even those areas of the river not described in the text are somehow accessible to me ? as are the landscapes beyond the river, which the writer may not even mention. In a way it?s similar to dreaming; I both ?observe? the events described and myself become a character in (and beyond) them.

Neurological studies have shown that, when reading a description of a physical action, sections of the reader?s brain will light up as if the reader were performing that action. That seems a nice biological illustration of how reading enables special kinds of imaginative experience.

These personal aesthetic values segue into a more objective interest in reading in general. Just the act of reading itself - that fact that we can fluently transform little black squiggles into concepts and images - is incredible; the different ways that we read different texts is even more remarkable. Because of this, I?m not interested in subscribing to normative theories of what literature should be; I?m interested in what it is, in all its variety. For that matter, I don?t attach any intrinsic value to the term ?literature? - I?m just as interested in journalistic modes of writing, say, as I am in literary fiction.

Or to put it another way:

http://www.topatoco.com/graphics/00000001/spdr-beaton-reading-sm.gif

[waalkwriter]

Hmm, interested, so you are a big fan of suggested space? Are you fan a of noir and and Dashiell Hammett?

[Refus de Sejour]

Not particularly - haven't read any Hammett in years.

I think this experience of space isn't really tied to any specific style, it's more a symptom of me being absorbed in a text. I suspect many books that do this for me wouldn't necessarily do it for other readers.

[Igu Soni]

I don't know Iqu, take Tarrantino for isntance, a filmmaker, his movies are complete lies, every step of the way, but what makes them wonderful is that they don't care they are lying, they are so careless and bold that they can even lie about the small things and make you overlook the lie completely and be astonished by it as if it were truth.
He references, using cinematic methods that you might not notice. A lie, but a big lie behind a small truth.

Also, one thing you should know:
The letter that looks like 'q' is the one that sounds like a synonym for 'line'.
The letter that looks like 'g' is the one that sounds like the exclamation Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz would make.
Now, read my name.

I hate over-theorising about art, Art or "aht". Surely it's accepted as an attempt to communicate via appeal to emotions?
Derrida in particular rouses my ire, though qualifiedly because I'm not particularly acquainted with his work, because he seems to be saying that we should abandon whatever we feel art is communicating to us and try to 'deconstruct' it. Criticism is not a science.

[Bjorn]

"To read makes our speaking English good."

[saliotthomas]

When beauty is abstracted, then ugliness has been implied; When good is abstracted then evil has been implied, *noise of genitals scratching*........*fart*.........*more genitals scratching*........... - Tao de Ch'ing

[Mirabell]

Criticism is not a science.

Not a natural science. But in German, for example, the discipline is called "Literature science" (Literaturwissenschaft) and the humanities are the Geisteswissenschaften.

[Igu Soni]

Not a natural science. But in German, for example, the discipline is called "Literature science" (Literaturwissenschaft) and the humanities are the Geisteswissenschaften.
Let me modify that: Criticism is not a natural science.

[Mirabell]

Let me modify that: Criticism is not a natural science.


Good thing Derrida doesn't treat it as one, then. The scientific method is largely absent from his work, mostly because he understands that the knowledge it produces doesn't fit the subject.

[Liam]

This is where Umberto Eco falls flat when he says, "You cannot say 'I love you madly', but you can say, 'According to Barbara Streisand I love you madly.'Wrong Barbara. Cartland, not Streisand. Young man, learn your stuff, :)!

On the subjective level of personal taste, I value texts that generate a sense of physical space. This sensation is difficult to describe, but I?ll do my best; often when reading a narrative I get the impression that the text is opening out onto a physical landscape that extends beyond the words on the page, a landscape in which it is possible for me to exist somehow on an imaginative level.Refus, what with being a Kiwi, I wonder if you've ever heard of Gerald Murnane (http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/writers/7276-gerald-murnane.html), who is my favorite living Australian writer? He's all about those mental landscapes, although oftentimes he's more busy analyzing than describing them.

[Eric]

Mirabell, theories I hate or am ignorant about could well be German. But I don't dislike them because they are German or European. I've read things in a good Swedish series, now defunct, called Kontrakurs, collated by someone called Kurt Aspelin. I thought that the essays would do me good in the 1970s when I first tried to read them. But maybe I just didn't have the patience. Or my Swedish was not yet good enough to grasp the essentials.

I always thought you were rather a logical kind of person. But I fail to understand what you say here:


In this case, I suspect that 99% of the theory you so abhor (you fail to give descriptions) is actually French or German theory, first imported en masse during the 1960s. One of the best and major literary theorists in the US is a Belgian ?migr? (now dead), and from the Frankfurt School (named after Frankfurt, Germany), to Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, to name just a handful, those are all Europeans. Spivak and the wonderful Bhabha are Indian. Etc.

Who's your Belgian? Paul de Man? I'm afraid I've never read any of his work, so I know nothing about it. The ones I've tried are Marcuse, Luk?cs, Lotman (he has some interesting things to say - but I'm biased, he lived in Estonia), Eco (about James Bond), Derrida, a little Barthes, Bhabha on postcolonialism and a few others. I'm willing to give any of them a try again. But I just didn't get anything out of them when I read them years ago. Even Lotman seemed to be good at analysing texts at a close level, but I couldn't grasp any overall scheme he was trying to build up (if he was). I also tried a Russian or two and a Czech. I don't remember those names without Googling.

[Liam]

In fact, in my experience, the critics who share your attitude are most often the insular ones, trying to find "the American strain" in lit crit. A terribly dull, vague, sentimental waffle about literature, purity and Art (mark the capital A) ensues, that could lead weaker souls than I to re-instate book-burning.
There's also the philological approach (more appropriate for Classical, medieval and Renaissance literatures, naturally) where you pay extra-careful attention to language and its "historicity" and try to figure out why the author/poet chose to write in a certain style.

Why is it, for instance, that Chaucer's The Reeve's Tale, is the only piece in the collection that is written in a Northern dialect of English, as opposed to the standard London-influenced English of the rest of the tales? How much of the language in Beowulf is actually pagan, how much Christian? Why does D. H. Lawrence choose to describe sexual intercourse using distinctly ecclesiastical metaphors (rapture, grace, ascent, light, etc)?

To a degree, philology in this case becomes tied up with New Historicism and Cultural Studies, but that's still better and more productive, I think, than to sit there and obsess about the mirror stage or the "always-already deconstructive nature of every text" ad nauseam.

[Liam]

I also tried a Russian or two and a Czech. I don't remember those names without Googling.
The Russian may well be Mikhail Bakhtin. A tough cookie, that one, but he did write a few things on medieval literature that I like. I've never read his long study of Dostoyevsky though.

Who's the Czech? You sure you're not talking about Zizek or Todorov?

[Colette Jones]

Last edited by saliotthomas; Today at 11:30.

Oh no, I liked what you said, saliotthomas. Now it's gone. Maybe I am the only one lucky enough to have seen it.

[Igu Soni]

Good thing Derrida doesn't treat it as one, then. The scientific method is largely absent from his work, mostly because he understands that the knowledge it produces doesn't fit the subject.
Good to know. A short tour of wikipedia makes it seem that he's suggesting that we should take things and rigorously analyse their meanings.
Does he discount emotional understanding, though? If he does, I have a problem with him. This idea, which I found abundant in the wiki article, is what prompted my statement.

Also, now you see why I added this:

though qualifiedly because I'm not particularly acquainted with his work,

[Igu Soni]

Good to know. A short tour of wikipedia makes it seem that he's suggesting that we should take things and rigorously analyse their meanings.
Does he discount emotional understanding, though? If he does, I have a problem with him. This idea, which I found abundant in the wiki article, is what prompted my statement.

I just visited the wiki article to refresh my memory and found that I was horrribly mixed up. Sorry about it, everyone (especially Mirabell who rightfully raised his virtual eyebrow at me -- and thanks for that too). Deconstructionism actually sounds pretty nice.
I mixed it up with some other school I read about, in that Routledge classics series.

[Galatea92]

Deconstructionism actually sounds pretty nice.

Don't be fooled. It isn't. What it means in practice is that the critic gets to invent whatever meaning he/she likes about the text. The text just becomes a (pre)text for ranting about whatever your special interest happens to be that week.

[Mirabell]

Deconstructionism actually sounds pretty nice.



It is. I recommend, as always, Jonathan Culler's primer on the topic.

[Igu Soni]

Don't be fooled. It isn't. What it means in practice is that the critic gets to invent whatever meaning he or she likes about the text. The text just becomes a pretext for burbling away about whatever your special interest happens to be that week.
I'll leave you to battle it out with M. then?

Waalk: I think the problem with you is that you define your philosophy in terms of negatives. Define a positive, and you may see it in a maximally subversive way in things you right now reject.
Or, y'know, don't define it at all. Read on for explanation.

My aesthetic philosophy? I should have an immersive experience which is also beautiful as a whole, in a way specific to each book. A cynical writer might make his book non-immersive, and I may still accept that, innasmuch as I am immersed in the non-immersive nature of the book.
To be taken with a pinch of salt, as always, because a diferent expression might mean something different; the only thing which makes it valid for me to say so is that I know the feeling this comes from. Lookat what happened to poor Refus; he tried to define it, and got immediately got misconstrued (not the miscontruer's fault).
This is why I have any respect for reviewing on a book-by-book basis; that forms a picture of the writer's aesthetic philosophy without a conscious effort on his part to articulate it, which is better than the other way for articulation is basically simplification.

"We mustn't live by our philosophies; our philosophies must live by us." - Ronak M Soni

[Igu Soni]

It is. I recommend, as always, Jonathan Culler's primer on the topic.
Thanks for the recommendation.

[Igu Soni]

Waalk: I think the problem with you is that you define your philosophy in terms of negatives. Define a positive, and you may see it in a maximally subversive way in things you right now reject.
Or, y'know, don't define it at all. Read on for explanation.

My aesthetic philosophy: I should have an immersive experience which is also beautiful as a whole, in a way specific to each book. A cynical writer might make his book non-immersive, and I may still accept that, innasmuch as I am immersed in the non-immersive nature of the book.
To be taken with a pinch of salt, as always, because a diferent expression might mean something different; the only thing which makes it valid for me to say so is that I know the feeling this comes from. Lookat what happened to poor Refus; he tried to define it, and got immediately got misconstrued (not the miscontruer's fault).
This is why I have any respect for reviewing on a book-by-book basis; that forms a picture of the writer's aesthetic philosophy without a conscious effort on his part to articulate it, which is better than the other way for articulation is basically simplification.

"We mustn't live by our philosophies; our philosophies must live by us." - Ronak M Soni
Taken from my iGoogle:
"Language is the source of misunderstandings." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery


What it means in practice is that the critic gets to invent whatever meaning he/she likes about the text. The text just becomes a (pre)text for ranting about whatever your special interest happens to be that week.
Isn't that all criticism? While I'm not well-acquainted with too much of the literary variety, I have some acquaintance with the cinematic, and as Jim Emerson says:
"Whenever I feel a profound connection to a work of art, I can't help but see signs of it everywhere, all around me." - Jim Emerson
The closest I'd go to defining the effect of art on us.

[lenz]

Don't be fooled. It isn't. What it means in practice is that the critic gets to invent whatever meaning he/she likes about the text. The text just becomes a (pre)text for ranting about whatever your special interest happens to be that week.

Not necessarily, Galatea. I've just posted a recommendation to Eric to get The Art of Fiction by David Lodge for a simple guide to deconstruction and literary criticism. It's mainly about logic and objectivity.

[Galatea92]

What it means in practice is that the critic gets to invent whatever meaning he/she likes about the text. The text just becomes a (pre)text for ranting about whatever your special interest happens to be that week.
Isn't that all criticism? While I'm not well-acquainted with too much of the literary variety, I have some acquaintance with the cinematic, and as Jim Emerson says:
"Whenever I feel a profound connection to a work of art, I can't help but see signs of it everywhere, all around me." - Jim Emerson
The closest I'd go to defining the effect of art on us.

In a sense, yes. But the practice of deconstruction leads people deliberately to look for the things that aren't in the text, to uncover the text's hidden dichotomies. The author's conscious intentions are irrelevant, because it's your task as a deconstructionist to find the things even the author wasn't aware of. And in practice, for most academics, that just means constructing a fairytale castle of syntactically garbled nonsense around your own pet theory.

(The nicely ironic thing is that Derrida was always complaining that people kept misunderstanding what he meant by deconstruction :)).

[Galatea92]

Not necessarily, Galatea. I've just posted a recommendation to Eric to get The Art of Fiction by David Lodge for a simple guide to deconstruction and literary criticism. It's mainly about logic and objectivity.

I don't think Derrida would have had much truck with those two words logic and objectivity.

[Igu Soni]

In a sense, yes. But the practice of deconstruction leads people deliberately to look for the things that aren't in the text, to uncover the text's hidden dichotomies. The author's conscious intentions are irrelevant, because it's your task as a deconstructionist to find the things even the author wasn't aware of. And in practice, for most academics, that just means constructing a fairytale castle of syntactically garbled nonsense around your own pet theory.

(The nicely ironic thing is that Derrida was always complaining that people kept misunderstanding what he meant by deconstruction :)).
I have a deeper problem with the aforementioned method. What is the use of an interpretation if it is impersonal enough that it needs to be looked for?
Or are deconstructionists against acknowledging their own existence and -- more importantly -- sentience?
Both deep problems -- especially the second --, worse for me than unlikely interpretations. Let me reiterate: We mustn't live by our philosophies; our philosophies must live by us.

[lenz]

Forget Derrida. He lived in his own little world. Deconstruction does not have to be so far-fetched. It can be logical and objective. I heartily recommend David Lodge, who brings it all down to earth and doesn't try to make the writer's words mean anything but what they were intended to say but does offer you the opportunity to read the text in a wider context.

[Mirabell]

There's a simple misunderstanding involved here.


to uncover the text's hidden dichotomies

does NOT mean going about discovering


the things that aren't in the text,

That's just nonsense. These dichotomies ARE in the text, that#s the point. and incidentally, much of deconstructive practice revolves around the fact that dichotomies are conventionalized restrictions on reading and that, beyond simple dichotomies, much is to discover, IN THE GODDAMN TEXT.


even the author wasn't aware of

training as a linguist tells me that any author can impossibly be aware of all that is going on in his text, and the intentional fallacy has been pointed out LONG BEFORE deconstruction. Intentional fallacy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_fallacy)

Deconstruction is one very specific METHOD of reading a text or a theory. It does not mean abandoning responsibility to the text in question. The best deconstructive readings are basically just very close readings. The attention that a good reading can bring to a text is very thorough and one that you'll rarely find in other criticism. And every single fucking reader brings something personal, individual to the text, every critical text reflects the stance of the reader, deconstructive or not. I have read volumes and volumes of criticism and there is no difference in this respect. None.

[Mirabell]

I don't think Derrida would have had much truck with those two words logic and objectivity.


Derrida's obsessed with logic and objectivity, his work revolves around finding a method of describing things that isn't flawed, fallacious or otherwise distorted by language. This intense obsession leads late Derrida to waffle nonsense, sentimental, dull nonsense. Early in the 1990s, his brain seems to have given out because after that, he writes entertaining pieces of little to no value.

[Mirabell]

Sorry. Igu, here is a tip, if you have the time. I will amend my reading recommendation, and tis my last word on this tedious issue (I feel like a democrat having to explain that the health care bill does not contain provisionbs for a Death Panel, and feel like quoting Barney Frank)

Here are a couple of books that are no-nonsense and will actually educate you about the phenomenon instead of about soem odd counterfactual projections of it


Culler's "On Deconstruction" and Geoff Bennington's study of Derrida are both excellent, in a field where few aedequate discussions of Derrida exist, because he can be difficult.

CAREFUL!! Spend as little time with critical readings of deconstructivists as possible before starting to read the real stuff. This is true for all philosophy.

I recommend, as first books written by actual practicioners, Paul De Man's "Blindness and Insight" (which contains the single best essay on derrida ever written, and sheds light on how deconstruction works) and Barbara Johnson's book "The Critical Difference: Essays in the Contemporary Rhetoric of Reading".

If, in a third step, you want to understand the reaction by some here to the theories, I recommend both of these authors, but different books. Johnson's "The Wake of Deconstruction" is excellent, and De Man's essay "Resistance to Theory", collected in the book that bears the same name. The essay is extraordinary and, again, one of the best essays ever written on this particulart phenomenon.

[Galatea92]

Deconstruction is one very specific METHOD of reading a text or a theory. It does not mean abandoning responsibility to the text in question. The best deconstructive readings are basically just very close readings. The attention that a good reading can bring to a text is very thorough and one that you'll rarely find in other criticism. And every single fucking reader brings something personal, individual to the text, every critical text reflects the stance of the reader, deconstructive or not. I have read volumes and volumes of criticism and there is no difference in this respect. None.

It's not that I have a problem with close reading, or even transgressive reading, to use the deconstructionist term, it's the dull, sociological generalisations that deconstructionists go in for, as in this passage from Barbara Johnson:



The possibility of reading materiality, silence, space, and conflict within texts has opened up extremely productive ways of studying the politics of language. If each text is seen as presenting a major claim that attempts to dominate, erase, or distort various "other" claims (whose traces nevertheless remain detectable to a reader who goes against the grain of the dominant claim), then "reading" is its extended sense is deeply involved in questions of authority and power. One field of conflict and domination in discourse that has been fruitfully studied in this sense is the field of sexual politics. Alice Jardine, in Gynesis (1985), points out that since logocentric logic has been coded as 'male' the "other" logics of spacing, ambiguity, figuration, and indirection are often coded as "female," and that a critique of logocentrism can enable a critique pf "phallocentrism" as well....

The writings of Western male authorities have often encoded the silence, denigration, or idealization not only of women but also of other "others." Edward Said, in Orientalism (1978), analyzed the discursive fields of scholarship, art, and politics in which the "Oriental" is projected as the "other" of the European. By reading against the grain of the writer's intentions, he shows how European men of reason and benevolenced could inscribe a rationale for oppression and exploitation within their very discourse of Enlightenment.

(from "On Writing" in Lentricchia and McLaughlin, eds, Critical Terms for Literary Study)

Or this one from Jonathan Culler (the quote is extracted from this sympathetic web page Deconstruction (http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/4F70/deconstruction.php)):



Take, for example, the sorts of conflict Jonathan Culler suggests in On Deconstruction that the critic is on the lookout for:

1. the asymetrical opposition or value-laden hierarchy (e.g. host and parasite, logocentrism and nihilism) in which one term is promoted at the expense of the other. The second term can be shown to constitute or signal the condition for the first, and the hierarchy up-turned (this is not a simple reversal, as the reversal is then in the condition of reversibility, and so forth).

2. points of condensation, where a single term brings together different lines of argument or sets of values (and hostilities to hosts hosting the Host).

3. The text will be examined for ways in which it suggests a difference from itself, interpretations which undermine the apparently primary interpretation.

4. figures of self-reference, when a text applies to something else a description, figure or image which can be read as a self-description, an image of its own operations. This opens up an examination of the stability and cogency of the text itself. An example of self-reference is in the vines and parasites in place of the erased (, i.e. under erasure) antique and learned imagery of Shelley's "Epipsychidion" in Miller's "The Critic as Host," the natural images themselves an image for and replacement for (every image of is also a replacement for) the tracing of writing, which is itself the writing that constitutes the poem; the images of the poem themselves attempt to naturalize what cannot be naturalized, writing itself, in a recuperation in which the act of naturalizing reveals itself as an ancient strategy of meaning, so the imagery is an image of itself.

5. conflicting readings of a texts can be see as reenactments of conflicts within a text, so that readings can be read as partializing moves simplifying the complex interplay of potential meaning within the text.

6. Attention to the marginal, and that which supplements -- as with hierarchized oppositions, the margin in fact encompasses or enables the rest, so that a marginalized figure, idea, etc. can be re-read as the 'center', or controlling element; similarly the supplement re-centers and re-orients that which it supplements, as the fact of supplementing reveals the inadequacy, the partiality/incompleteness of the supplemented item.

[Galatea92]

There's a simple misunderstanding involved here.


to uncover the text's hidden dichotomies

does NOT mean going about discovering


the things that aren't in the text,

That's just nonsense. These dichotomies ARE in the text, that#s the point. and incidentally, much of deconstructive practice revolves around the fact that dichotomies are conventionalized restrictions on reading and that, beyond simple dichotomies, much is to discover, IN THE GODDAMN TEXT.


Honestly, Mirabell, I was quite sympathetic to the notion of deconstruction until I started reading some essays. Then I was struck by how simple-minded they all seemed to be, how they always tracked down the same dichotomies, whatever the text (the dichotomies are always to do with either gender or race - which would be fine now and again, but every fucking essay :mad:).

So there's the simple-mindedness. Then there's the language, oh, the horrible, convoluted language. I've given enough examples in the other post (and Barbara Johnson and Jonathan Culler are some of the better writers) - I don't want to clutter up more of the thread with rubbish writing.

Whatever Derrida's intentions (and after much reading and re-reading, I'm still not sure what those were :)), the deconstructionist approach is just so full of temptations to bullshit. If you take the theory seriously then you don't have any criteria for judging one reading of a text from another ("every reading is a misreading" - is that Derrida or Culler?), you don't have any criteria for judging bullshit from genius. You have to step outside the analysis to make that judgement, and Derrida is constantly insisting that you can't step outside.




even the author wasn't aware of

training as a linguist tells me that any author can impossibly be aware of all that is going on in his text, and the intentional fallacy has been pointed out LONG BEFORE deconstruction. Intentional fallacy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You've got me there. That was just part of a rhetorical flourish :). I'm sure there's a lot more going on in a text than the author's intention.

[Refus de Sejour]

Wrong Barbara. Cartland, not Streisand. Young man, learn your stuff, :)!
Refus, what with being a Kiwi, I wonder if you've ever heard of Gerald Murnane (http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/writers/7276-gerald-murnane.html), who is my favorite living Australian writer? He's all about those mental landscapes, although oftentimes he's more busy analyzing than describing them, :rolleyes:.

L.


I haven't, but then you have to understand that a gaping chasm separates New Zealand and Australian literature, despite our being neighbours. It's a weird phenomena that's been noted on both sides; aside from a few big names like Patrick White or Keri Hulme, we're oblivious to each other.

I'll take a look a Murnane, thanks for the tip!

[Eric]

Galatea brings up an interesting point: the way that totally irrelevant but trendy feelgood categories can be smuggled into intellectual debate (or discourse, as it is sometimes known). So academic gurus, feeling guilt at being a privileged part of society with high and secure salaries, decide that we've got to be nice to people of a different race and that women are equal to men. These spoilt children of academe then proceed to stuff every essay, review and talk with pat poco lectures.

This is not debate, this is lecturing - the only form of discourse that these people know. One of the names that put me off serious literary debate years ago was that culler of minds that Galatea mentions. After a dose of him, I was put off litcrit for years. That is why I get so fed up with theorists. And I found derring-do completely unreadable. For these literary fascists, any "reading" which is not their own is wrong. That's how postmodernism sinks into a morass of half-baked theory. If you have an opinion, it is disarmed, rendered harmless, by saying that everything goes in postmodernism. Everything, that is, except when you contradict the master, the guru, the god. It is a pity that otherwise intelligent young people convince themselves that nonsense is sense because their charismatic professor has mesmerised them into thinking it is, and they want to get their course marks for the semester.

Any theory has to fulfil a number of criteria of logic and consistency. You can't just go around talking of numinous luminacy and vibratory emanations unless you want to join the Alfred Rosenberg category of pseudo-science.

[Liam]

...you have to understand [what] a gaping chasm separates New Zealand and Australian literature, despite our being neighbours...Gotcha. Don't worry, I wasn't exactly fooling myself--it's not like Americans are so knowledgeable about Canadian literature, either.

I've only read one Kiwi author to date (if you don't count Katherine Mansfield), namely: Janet Frame. I like her a lot.

...a few big names like Patrick White or Keri Hulme...White is one of my favorite 20th-century novelists. I never tire of recommending his work to my friends.

Keri Hulme I found to be unreadable (sorry), so I stopped reading The Bone People around page 15.


It is a pity that otherwise intelligent young people convince themselves that nonsense is sense because their charismatic professor has mesmerised them into thinking it is, and they want to get their course marks for the semester.Hmm. Didn't get to ME, yet. Unless I don't qualify as either intelligent or young. I did have to write soporific Marxist critiques of Conrad and Kate Chopin to get a good grade in my LitCrit class, but what can you do? Honesty won't get you an A+, will it?

[Refus de Sejour]

we've got to be nice to people of a different race and that women are equal to men.

What outrageous beliefs! :D


If you have an opinion, it is disarmed, rendered harmless, by saying that everything goes in postmodernism.I very much doubt anyone would say that. And they certainly wouldn't say it now, as postmodernism is generally considered to be a late 20th Century concept itself now subject to critical scrutiny.

[Mirabell]

I very much doubt anyone would say that.

It's called "straw man". ;)

[lenz]

It's not that I have a problem with close reading, or even transgressive reading, to use the deconstructionist term, it's the dull, sociological generalisations that deconstructionists go in for,

I think you're being very unfair in quoting scholars who are simply explaining, presumably for students new to the subject, what it is they do.


you don't have any criteria for judging bullshit from genius. You have to step outside the analysis to make that judgement, and Derrida is constantly insisting that you can't step outside.

It was Derrida who couldn't step outside. Leave him in there. Deconstruction can start from any number of different discourses; race and gender are most typically used in introductory courses, but Marxism, historicism, environmentalism (yes!), sociology, romanticism, ... these disciplines all make use of deconstructive reading. Read what you need or want and make of it what you will. Happy reading!

[Bottle Rocket]

My aesthetic couldn't be simpler: Does.It.Work??

YES: then it's literature (maybe minor, but lit)
NOPE: then burn it


:) BRocket :)

[Igu Soni]

On a transgressive reading, I find that there are actually six threads here:


(Sq)waalk's thread, which no one's actually bothered to even try to answer for more than one sentence.
Refus', about space-creating fiction, answered by waalk and Liam.
The argument about deconstruction.
The race to recommend books on the same (M: I don't have time now, but I can always learn to make space for good crit, which I love almost as much as the art itself, so thanks again).
My little diatribe (second in two days) on how we don't actually know what's going on in our heads, and how over-ardent articulation can be a danger to that most precious of processes.
This thread deconstructing the thread.






My question, basically, is: do these deconstructionists feel, do they go along with the flow, or do they just go around carrying out dry mental exercises like the one above (more complex of course)?
Anyone?

I'll be reading them anyway, but I'd like answers for now.

EDIT: Generalise above questions for all litcrit. I know that most cinema critics openly talk about their feelings.

[Igu Soni]

My aesthetic couldn't be simpler: Does.It.Work??

YES: then it's literature (maybe minor, but lit)
NOPE: then burn it


:) BRocket :)
And if someone disagrees?
I hate people narrowing the definitions of art to include only what they feel is good.

[Galatea92]

Forget Derrida. He lived in his own little world. Deconstruction does not have to be so far-fetched. It can be logical and objective. I heartily recommend David Lodge, who brings it all down to earth and doesn't try to make the writer's words mean anything but what they were intended to say but does offer you the opportunity to read the text in a wider context.

David Lodge is a traditional, and very readable, literary critic (and comic novelist) - he's doesn't use deconstruction in the sense we're using it here (in fact his novels Small World and Nice Work contain some nicely biting satire about deconstructionists).

What Mirabell, Igu Soni and I are discussing is the particular technique of Deconstruction that Derrida introduced and that was very popular amongst literary critics and sociologists for a while. That's why I keep going on about Derrida.

[Mirabell]

It was Derrida who couldn't step outside. Leave him in there!

Actually, Derrida's point is valid and one that represents a significant philosophical, cognitive and linguistic concept. In fact, I find it odd that you people single D. out like that because D. is the colorful and poetic re-tread of ideas that have been around at least since Hegel and Nietzsche. The diff?rance and trace are great concepts, but they are not original, just very handy.

[titania7]

Actually, Derrida's point is valid and one that represents a significant philosophical, cognitive and linguistic concept. In fact, I find it odd that you people single D. out like that because D. is the colorful and poetic re-tread of ideas that have been around at least since Hegel and Nietzsche. The diff?rance and trace are great concepts, but they are not original, just very handy.

Derrida has been one of my favorite philosophers for over a decade. I wondered the same thing about why Derrida has been singled out at this forum, particularly since no one here appears to be citing specific passages from his texts, which makes me skeptical about most of the people here (at least those who have been criticizing Derrida) having more than the vaguest understanding of his work.

This attitude reminds me of why I made this statement a couple of days ago:

Information is not knowledge.

Information about Derrida and/or deconstruction in philosophy does not give someone knowledge on either of this subjects.

Similarly, it does not impart understanding.

Unfortunately, many people make assumptions about authors and those author's theories and ideas even before they've read any of the author's work.

Obviously, Derrida is not going to be appreciated by everyone. However, it is always wise, I think, to read an author somewhat extensively before speaking about him/her with even the slightest degree of authority.

I would say this applies to Roland Barthes' work as well.

And to address something that I said earlier (on the thread that was originally dedicated to McCarthy's The Road),

these two premises:

Information is not Knowledge

and

Opinion is not truth.

Do not add up to waalkwriter's conclusion:

"If that is so, then all would be meaningless."

I could go through the steps that would show why the two premises I presented do not add up to the conclusion that was suggested by waalkwriter, but I have more effective ways to use my time other than giving a lecture on Logic.

Alexis


"It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows."
~Epictetus

[Colette Jones]

And to address something that I said earlier (on the thread that was originally dedicated to McCarthy's The Road),

these two premises:

Information is not Knowledge

and

Opinion is not truth.

Do not add up to waalkwriter's conclusion:

"If that is so, then all would be meaningless."

I could go through the steps that would show why the two premises I presented do not add up to the conclusion that was suggested by waalkwriter, but I have more effective ways to use my time other than giving a lecture on Logic.

Absolutely! Glad you didn't take the bait.

[Bjorn]

@titania: Very much agreed. That particular fallacy ("If argument X is faulty, then all is meaningless") is one of my pet peeves. And it's very relevant to this thread, since it presupposes that there must be a fixed meaning which is imposed upon everything from an outside source, it rather than arising from and changing with experience. Ie that you can have a perfect philosophy by which every new experience that doesn't meet your standards is immediately dismissed.

[learna]

"It's All Relative." - Albert Einstein.

[Igu Soni]

Can someone answer my question in #46?

[Galatea92]

My question, basically, is: do these deconstructionists feel, do they go along with the flow, or do they just go around carrying out dry mental exercises like the one above (more complex of course)?


It's a bit complicated :). According to Derrida's notion of diff?rance you can't extract the complete meaning of a text just from the words on the page; each word needs an understanding of other words, and those words need an understanding of other words, and so on, ad infinitum. So the meaning of any text is constantly deferred; you can never get a complete understanding. The word diff?rance also carries a second meaning, that words only achieve meaning in contrast with or in opposition to the things that they don't define; so in the sentence 'The cat sat on the mat', you only understand the word 'cat' in contrast with the things it's not, like 'dog'.

So far, so uncontroversial. For those of us who aren't Derridean's, there are couple of potential problems here (e.g. what would a complete understanding be, and is it something different from just understanding? do words really have meaning only in contrast to other words - doesn't a word also have reference to something existing in the world?), but we'll let those go for the time being.

The project of deconstruction is to navigate through the spaces in a text, the traces left by the missing words, the deferred meanings, the excluded terms.

So, I suppose the answer to your question is, No. They don't just go along with the flow - in fact they do the opposite, deliberately. They usually start by turning the meaning upside down, then seeing where that leads.

I must admit, having written it down, it all sounds rather exciting. I wish they really did explore with such a sense of adventure, but unfortunately all the essays I've read sound really formulaic. Once they abandon the text they always seem to go off in the same direction - hunting down evidence of gender politics or post-colonialism (the evidence being in what's missing of course). They're always looking for the marginalised figure, the other, the big elephant missing from the text.

I'll let Mirabell or titania give the positive spin :).

[titania7]

It's a bit complicated :). According to Derrida's notion of diff?rance you can't extract the complete meaning of a text just from the words on the page; each word needs an understanding of other words, and those words need an understanding of other words, and so on, ad infinitum. So the meaning of any text is constantly deferred; you can never get a complete understanding. The word diff?rance also carries a second meaning, that words only achieve meaning in contrast with or in opposition to the things that they don't define; so in the sentence 'The cat sat on the mat', you only understand the word 'cat' in contrast with the things it's not, like 'dog'.

First of all, realize that these are my own thoughts that I am expressing.

I consider that all words are meaningless and that it is only the CONCEPT we attach to a word that gives that word its meaning.

For instance, let's take a simple word like LOVE.

It is misused and exploited through this misusage in countless ways by a plethora of people every day.

IF you were writing a book on say, the philosophy of love, deconstruction could be an effective strategy in that it would enable you to have a wide area of sources from which to draw from.

Ultimately, the word LOVE will still have the meaning that YOU attach to it. As a philosopher, we cannot change the concept you attach to a word unless you CHOOSE to allow us to do so.

You create the concept of each word yourself in your own mind.

I don't think you can get a complete understanding of ANY text,
and I think the very fact you can't is what makes literature, philosophy, poetry, etc., such endless subjects of fascination.

Once you completely understand something, it offers you nothing.
As long as you can still discover hidden meanings within texts, whether they are valid or not, you will be expanding your own grasp of the world, of knowledge, of human nature, of people. . . and so forth.

I hope I'm making sense.

For me, life is like a laboratory. I enjoy playing around with words, concepts, ideas, and meanings. It's as if I am constantly conducting scientific experiments. Hence the appeal of Derrida's work for me.





So far, so uncontroversial. For those of us who aren't Derridean's, there are couple of potential problems here (e.g. what would a complete understanding be, and is it something different from just understanding? do words really have meaning only in contrast to other words - doesn't a word also have reference to something existing in the world?), but we'll let those go for the time being.

There is no "complete" understanding.

Nothing is every final.

You must continue to unlearn, re-learn, discover, re-discover.

It's a process.

Understanding, no matter how seemingly profound, can only achieve a certain level of depth, just as there are very few things that any one can say with any degree of certainty are "absolute" Truths.

We can say, for example, that this appears to be a Literature forum and that your user name is Galatea. . .these are Truths. We can fully understand both of these things.

But, I'm digressing and offering simplistic analogies in order to make my points, which is something I try to eschew as much as possible lest someone think I am behaving with condescension towards them.

I condescend to no one.

I know no more than you or anyone else, Galatea.

I only share my thoughts, ideas, and impressions with those who do me the honor of listening.




The project of deconstruction is to navigate through the spaces in a text, the traces left by the missing words, the deferred meanings, the excluded terms.

This is an overly simplified definition of Deconstruction and I am uncertain it is entirely objective, though your efforts to sum up an entire philosophical movement in two bare sentences are laudable indeed.




I must admit, having written it down, it all sounds rather exciting. I wish they really did explore with such a sense of adventure

Ah. . . but the adventure is theirs, Galatea, and not yours. Deconstructionists do what they do because they are passionate about it. . . because, for them, it is rewarding.
If they did not write for themsleves, they would be only pandering to the expectations, desires, and approval of the public. And, I would say that most of them would consider this approach a compromise of their artistic, creative, and philosophical integrity.

Alexis

[Igu Soni]

Thanks, Galatea and Titania, you two have brilliantly answered my question indeed. Deconsructionism does sound exciting now.

[Mirabell]

Deconsructionism does sound exciting now.

It is, and less problematic than G. suggests, because he created these problems by de-contextualizing derrida. Derrida builds upon terms established, among others, by de saussure and doesn't need to explicate everything. In fact, that is what makes him so maddening for some: Derrida often assumes we know what he knows.

[Galatea92]

I consider that all words are meaningless and that it is only the CONCEPT we attach to a word that gives that word its meaning.

For instance, let's take a simple word like LOVE.

It is misused and exploited through this misusage in countless ways by a plethora of people every day.

IF you were writing a book on say, the philosophy of love, deconstruction could be an effective strategy in that it would enable you to have a wide area of sources from which to draw from.

Ultimately, the word LOVE will still have the meaning that YOU attach to it. As a philosopher, we cannot change the concept you attach to a word unless you CHOOSE to allow us to do so.

That's cheating :). CAT is a simple word because it has a concrete referent; the word LOVE represents an abstract concept and is therefore anything but simple.

Words have conventional meanings. That's why I can read your posts and understand them. Now I might not have a complete understanding of your words (whatever that means), but I have an adequate enough understanding to make a reply.

[titania7]

That's cheating :). CAT is a simple word because it has a concrete referent; the word LOVE represents an abstract concept and is therefore anything but simple.

Galatea,

I never cheat, not even when I play chess.

Those who win by subterfuge must resign themselves to
self-betrayal, and far better to betray others than to betray
oneself.


Now, answer me a question, if you will.

When you hear or read the word, "CAT," does a specific image/concept come to your mind?

I will address part 2 of your post separately.

Alexis

[titania7]

Words have conventional meanings. That's why I can read your posts and understand them. Now I might not have a complete understanding of your words (whatever that means), but I have an adequate enough understanding to make a reply.

The answer you seek is found within your own belief system.
Derrida's "truth" is antithetical to your truth. Whereas you see
certain words as having "conventional meaning," Derrida did not.

My posts may or may not mean what you think they mean. They are subject to many various interpretations. In this way, language is like human nature--it contains many facets, meanings, levels, and layers.

The word "adequate" is not applicable to understanding, since we can never have an adequate understanding of anything . . . or anyone. Thus, we are forever trapped within the Inadequate, just as there will be many questions that we are never able to provide answers for.

Alexis

[titania7]

Thanks, Galatea and Titania, you two have brilliantly answered my question indeed. Deconsructionism does sound exciting now.

Thank you very much, kind sir. Although I daresay my attempts at an explanation of Deconstructionism were inadequate, at best, if I have made it sound more exciting to you, I have at least achieved some measure of accomplishment.

Alexis

[Galatea92]

Galatea,

I never cheat, not even when I play chess.

Those who win by subterfuge must resign themselves to
self-betrayal, and far better to betray others than to betray
oneself.


Now, answer me a question, if you will.

When you hear or read the word, "CAT," does a specific image/concept come to your mind?

I will address part 2 of your post separately.

Alexis

It doesn't matter. All that matters is that in context you understand what I mean when I use the word. So, when I say 'I have to go now, my cat wants some food', you get a pretty clear idea what I mean. We don't have to have the same prototypical image of a cat in our head, or the same set of memories about individual cats. All it takes is that we share a conventional understanding that the word CAT means those lazy, hairy things that look at you as though you're an idiot.

(Of course, I might be lying when I use the cat as an excuse to go. And you might understand that I'm lying. But that's life for you :))

[Galatea92]

The answer you seek is found within your own belief system.
Derrida's "truth" is antithetical to your truth. Whereas you see
certain words as having "conventional meaning," Derrida did not.

My posts may or may not mean what you think they mean. They are subject to many various interpretations. In this way, language is like human nature--it contains many facets, meanings, levels, and layers.

The word "adequate" is not applicable to understanding, since we can never have an adequate understanding of anything . . . or anyone. Thus, we are forever trapped within the Inadequate, just as there will be many questions that we are never able to provide answers for.

Alexis

That's just nonsense, titania. If words don't have any conventional meaning there's no way Derrida can say anything to me or you; there's no way you can agree with him, and there's no way I can disagree with him.

The fact that your posts have many interpretations doesn't preclude me having an understanding of them. You're making a false dichotomy between complete understanding and not understanding. We only have our ordinary understanding, which can never be complete. You can call it Inadequate with a capital I, but it's what we have, and it's not something to be sneezed at.

[titania7]

That's just nonsense, titania. If words don't have any conventional meaning there's no way Derrida can say anything to me or you; there's no way you can agree with him, and there's no way I can disagree with him.

The fact that your posts have many interpretations doesn't preclude me having an understanding of them. You're making a false dichotomy between complete understanding and not understanding. We only have our ordinary understanding, which can never be complete. You can call it Inadequate with a capital I, but it's what we have, and it's not something to be sneezed at.

It would seem that you do not read my posts carefully enough.

Please review my penultimate post and see whether it was myself or Derrida whom I said did not attach "conventional" meanings to words.

What I said (in a previous post on this same thread) is this: it is the concept we attach to a word that gives that word meaning for us. I use the word "meaning" broadly in this context, and it incorporates "conventional" meaning as well.

It has always amazed me how quickly those who cannot or choose not to understand something will grab words like "nonsense" and use such words to define that which they fail to grasp.

However, neither I nor any of those who make use of Deconstructionism and/or appreciate its form are asking you to agree with us.

It is for YOU to find what works for you--your own truth, if you will.
It is immaterial to me whether you aesthetic philosophy is similar to mine. . . or not.

Read, relish, and enjoy the philosophers and authors who speak to you, Galatea. . . those whom you find to be of value.

Alexis

[titania7]

I want to clarify one small issue pertaining to words and their inherent meaning.

A word cannot actually have meaning within itself. This is my opinion. It's rather akin to saying that a color doesn't have meaning within itself. A color's meaning comes from our impressions of that color. Yes, we define it with a word (blue, red, yellow, etc.), yet we only do that in order to differentiate from other colors.

We use words in a similar fashion.

On the surface, it appears that I am saying that all words are meaningless.

However, that isn't exactly what I said.

What I said is that the concepts we attach to words give those words their meaning. Big difference.

As for conventional meanings. . . .

hmmm, how can I say this?

I like to think outside the realms of convention, which means that conventional meanings do not really exist for me in any tangible way.

I can view them abstractly. . .but this would only be for purposes of evaluation.

I hope it's clear, Galatea, that I am not trying to push my views on you or anyone. I oftentimes evade this sort of discussion because it can so quickly turn from something interesting that I and others can learn from into a pedantic debate where everyone is trying to prove he/she is "right." The reason the latter doesn't interest me is for the simple reason that it's pointless and mostly just offers an opportunity for people to engage in personal attacks and combative, aggressive, and bombastic behavior.

And. . .I tend to think that Life is enough of a battleground as it is without turning it into a playground.

Alexis

[lionel]

And. . .I tend to think that Life is enough of a battleground as it is without turning it into a playground.

Ah, Alexis, in these tender years such as I'm living now, I'm inclined to think that Life is enough of a playground as it is without turning it into a battleground. ;)

Tony

blog (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)

[titania7]

Ah, Alexis, in these tender years such as I'm living now, I'm inclined to think that Life is enough of a playground as it is without turning it into a battleground. ;)

The life of the thinking man is a battleground, though, is it not, for in the deep recesses of one's soul, it there not anguish, pain, and heartache?

To be human is to suffer. Thus, life (from my vantage point) can be nothing outside of a battleground.

A playground can be attractive from a superficial perspective. . .yet, there is a fine line between play and reality, and when this blurs and
we become children rather than responsible adults, we can end up trapped in a cycle of self-deception, imagining our beliefs as being more important than they are and seeing ourselves as authorities when, in truth, we know nothing.


As children, we can imagine ourselves as kings and queens, the heroines and heroes of our own fanciful imaginations and therefore immune to any sort of authority. We do as we like, regardless of the consequences.

Adulthood brings a new perspective. We see the struggle that is part of human existece. . .the war within the soul that makes life a battleground, immaterial of circumstances or experiences. And if we can, we wish to help others as they struggle, too. . . not by tearing down or negating their pain but rather by facing the hard truths of life with them as part of the collective journey of the human spirit.


Alexis

[Galatea92]

I want to clarify one small issue pertaining to words and their inherent meaning.

A word cannot actually have meaning within itself. This is my opinion. It's rather akin to saying that a color doesn't have meaning within itself. A color's meaning comes from our impressions of that color. Yes, we define it with a word (blue, red, yellow, etc.), yet we only do that in order to differentiate from other colors.

We use words in a similar fashion.

On the surface, it appears that I am saying that all words are meaningless.

However, that isn't exactly what I said.

What I said is that the concepts we attach to words give those words their meaning. Big difference.

As for conventional meanings. . . .

hmmm, how can I say this?

I like to think outside the realms of convention, which means that conventional meanings do not really exist for me in any tangible way.


I don't think anyone thinks of words as having meaning in themselves. Words are something we use to communicate ideas to other people - they just need to carry the sense of what it is we want to express.

My experience is private to me, and your experience is private to you. My day isn't spent just manipulating words - I live in a physical body, moving through the world, seeing, hearing, smelling stuff, experiencing the world in my own private little way. But now and again I need to communicate: to ask my wife to pass the phone; to tell my daughters to stop climbing all over me; to argue with my boss because he's giving me too much work; to argue with you about Derrida. And in those short periods I need to depend on the words to carry a shared meaning: what the phone is, and what passing it means; what "Get down!" means (to impish little schoolgirls), and so on.

All of this is just what it means to share a language - you learn the conventions as a child and you need them if you're going to live in society. That's what I mean by the conventions of language - they're inescapable - unless you become a hermit and stop posting on this forum :).


I hope it's clear, Galatea, that I am not trying to push my views on you or anyone. I oftentimes evade this sort of discussion because it can so quickly turn from something interesting that I and others can learn from into a pedantic debate where everyone is trying to prove he/she is "right." The reason the latter doesn't interest me is for the simple reason that it's pointless and mostly just offers an opportunity for people to engage in personal attacks and combative, aggressive, and bombastic behavior.

And. . .I tend to think that Life is enough of a battleground as it is without turning it into a playground.

Alexis

I'm fine with it. I like the to and fro of debate. I like taking a position and arguing it as strongly as I can - it helps me work out where I do stand. If I'd been arguing with waalkwriter I probably would have defended Derrida to the death :).

[waalkwriter]

i personally can't stand deconstructionism because it seems to be the most dehumanizing thing to literature, nothing dehumanizes a story then to start analyzing and interpreting it so thoroughly. It's probably the one thing I'd agree with post-modernists on, that at some point literature cannot be taken so seriously and the search for truth cannot exceed beyond finding the broadly painted views of humanity contained within a work, but to try to find the authors intentions, or create a universal interpretation of a work is just folly and removes one of art's greatest attritutes, ambiguity.

Then, again, I also personally find that understanding something, understanding why I like it, takes away the sort of simple joy of liking it. I'm far more interested in just knowing I like a text, than doing a line by line analysis and deconstruction of it's word choice, influences, origins, and interconnections, personally.

[Galatea92]

It is, and less problematic than G. suggests, because he created these problems by de-contextualizing derrida. Derrida builds upon terms established, among others, by de saussure and doesn't need to explicate everything. In fact, that is what makes him so maddening for some: Derrida often assumes we know what he knows.

Thanks for the pointer, Mirabell. I haven't read anything about de Saussure since I was at college (and obviously I was taking too many drugs to take any notice then :)). I found a useful thread that gave me a little more of that context - I think I understand Barthes and Derrida a little better now:

Semiotics for Beginners (http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem02.html)

[Bottle Rocket]

Personally I find theories to be utter wastes of time (though often interesting to contemplate)

There is only one exception: theories that can be tested against the Scientific Method. Gravity is a fact. God is a conjecture.

This renders Deconstruction, the Laffer Curve, Marxism, Catholicism, and Pacifism necessarily imprecise, unprovable matters of opinion, admittedly studded with wisdom and fascinating talking points. Nor am I maintaining that they're not immensely important historically and culturally.

However, the common denominator of -isms is that they place a higher value on ideas than on humans. This occurs in (at least) two ways:


the logic of the -ism/theory/doctrine invariably encounters cases in which the people they are intended to benefit are actually harmed. In a scientific setting, such a result would negate the theory; in "scienciness" it's just ignored (or at best acknowledged as a anomaly, "the exception which confirms the rule," which if you've ever thought about it is a completely stupid expression.)


Logical systems are incapable of factoring in human nature. Communism's a great system, except lots of people aren't interested in equal distribution of goods; also, there's always a Lenin or a Stalin out there ready to oppress the people in the people's name. Catholicism (assuming you're ready to believe in God) is a fine idea, if not for the Borgia popes and the pederast priests and their enablers. But the survival of "The Idea" is more important than any raped baby (or 200 raped deaf kids, or umpty-million kulaks) so the no-brainer response gets twisted and tortured out of shape -- you simply CANNOT call yourself a Christian if you collude in sexual abuse (I'm not talking about the rank-and-file faithful, but the abusers and their supervisors). Yet not only do they call themselves Christians, they actually run the store.


This isn't to say that each of the -isms I've cited (and many more) doesn't contain much wisdom and thought-provoking arguments; they do. But they're not THE truth. Personally I think deconstruction is arrant foolishness, but it does raise interesting questions about the nature and "ownership" of texts. I prefer reading to other creative arts because I feel it's the least mediated among them: me and a book. A good play can be wrecked by bad direction or an inept cast (same for movies, opera, etc.) ... by the same token, a great actor can turn a lousy play into something more than it is. I've seen a few great stage performances (such as George C. Scott in "The Fox," adapted from Jonson's "Volpone") where the actorly genius and joy shone through and turned a performance into an unforgettable experience. But I've also seen him blustering, chewing the scenery, and generally playing the fool.

But when I sit down with a book, it's really up to me. Jane Austen or Suetonius or Proust or Houellebecq have already done their part. If I read Emma today and then again next year, the book is the same; if there's any change, it's in me. I hope I keep growing, so the next time I read, say, Lord Jim, I'll find something new which I didn't have the equipment to appreciate the last time. Occasionally I even change my mind about a book or a writer. I like to think I have some reason I can adduce for why I like or dislike certain works, but the reasons always come down to some form of preference, not the revelation of some Truth.

I tend to side with Galatea over Titania in the issue of "common usage." Somewhere I learned that Titania is much interested in quantum physics, as am I, but quantum physics has almost nothing to do with my "human-scale" life even though without those quanta there'd be no me -- I think deconstruction bears somewhat the same relationship to reading and writing. If Derrida hadn't existed, nobody would have had to invent him, but some of his notions are interesting, if only to focus my disagreement more clearly.

But even when you simplify a la Galatea (to terrorize the tots, say ;) ) the next step is to start recomplicating -- why use "red" every time when "crimson," "scarlet," and "vermilion" are out there (especially since each describes a slightly different red)? To loop back to earlier posts, what bugs me about CMcC and his ilk is not that they'll use "vermilion" but that they'll use "vermilion," "scarlet," "crimson," "carmine," "claret," and "garnet" all in the SAME sentence. My feeling about writers like that is that I'd rather read Roget's Thesaurus, which at least doesn't demand that I track a plot and characters through the thickets of verbiage.

So call me contradictory; you're right. My tastes are catholic and quirky, and my "philosophy" is entirely ad hoc. My view of literary quality is like Potter Stewart's remark about hard-core pornography: "perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly [defining it]. But I know it when I see it."

I don't like it all, by any means, but that doesn't make it bad.


:) BRocket :)

[Bottle Rocket]

Deconstruction is one very specific METHOD of reading a text or a theory. It does not mean abandoning responsibility to the text in question. The best deconstructive readings are basically just very close readings. The attention that a good reading can bring to a text is very thorough and one that you'll rarely find in other criticism. And every single fucking reader brings something personal, individual to the text, every critical text reflects the stance of the reader, deconstructive or not. I have read volumes and volumes of criticism and there is no difference in this respect. None.
I know we go head to head now and then (and for the record, I don't have a whole lot of use for critics even though I do plenty of criticizing myself), but I have to agree with you 100% in this passage. It alone makes this whole thread worthwhile, IMO.


:) BRocket :)

[Galatea92]

I was in two minds whether to open another thread with this post. I already seem to have diverted this topic into a discussion of deconstruction, and it seems a bit impolite of me to continue. But I realised that what I wanted to say here related back to waalkwriter's complaint in the opening post that postmodernist techniques, by breaking the illusion of traditional narrative, destroy the power of fiction.

I dismissed that comment when I first read it - I like postmodernist fiction, by and large, so I don't really see the problem. But over the past few days, reading around structuralism and post-structuralism, I've started to wonder whether the arguments in favour of breaking that illusion have any justification.

The extracts I'm going to quote are from an academic web site (http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.html) (run by the University of Aberystwyth, I think) providing an introduction to semiotics. The site is very well-written and very entertaining, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about semiotics. In the chapter on Syntagmatic Analysis, there's an example given of the analysis of expository prose (formal prose giving instructions or presenting an argument), which, to my mind shows the real weakness of some of the semiotic analysis practised by academics (deconstruction is a form of semiotic analysis, and shows the same weaknesses).

So here's the first extract:


The conventions of expository prose in English have been listed as follows: 'A clearly defined topic, introduction, body which explicates all but nothing more than the stated topic, paragraphs which chain from one to the next, and a conclusion which tells the reader what has been discussed... no digression... is permitted on the grounds that it would violate unity' (R B Kaplan & S Ostler, cited by Swales 1990, 65). Such structural conventions are associated by some theorists with 'masculine' rather than 'feminine' modes of discourse (Goodman 1990; Easthope 1990). Masculine modes are held to involve clearly observable linear structures with 'tight', orderly and logical arguments leading to 'the main point' without backtracking or side-tracking. They can be seen as 'defensive' structures which seek to guard the author against academic criticism. As such these structures tend to support 'masculine' modes of discourse and to exclude 'women's ways of knowing'.

Daniel Chandler, Semiotics for Beginners: Syntagmatic Analysis

I'm sure this kind of argument will be familiar to those of you used to reading a certain kind of academic paper - it's often one of the opening gambits in deconstruction. But let's subject these claims to a little analysis ourselves, shall we?

Firstly, in what way are 'linear structures with tight, orderly and logical arguments leading to the main point without backtracking or side-tracking' to be considered 'masculine'. Is it because they're orderly and linear? That doesn't really describe most men I know, who tend to be pretty slobby and careless. Is it because the structure of the argument is so controlled? Well, maybe I just mix with a strange crowd, but most women of my acquaintance are just as controlling and controlled as the men. What real justification is there for talking about 'masculine' and 'feminine' prose styles? I might as well talk about 'Cancerian' and 'Sagittarian' prose styles.

Secondly, note the hint of moral censure there (it gets more obvious as the argument goes on): 'masculine' is beginning to be equated with 'bad', 'feminine', with 'good'. Where does that come from? There's some assumption here that isn't being made explicit, an assumption we're meant to accept without question. But where's the justification for it?

Now for the second passage (it's a bit long I'm afraid - you can skip to the last paragraph if you like :)):


One of the features which Anthony Easthope characterizes as stereotypically 'masculine' is a concern for seamless textual unity (Easthope 1990). Formal writing in general tends to have less obvious 'loose ends' than does casual discourse. Whilst, for the existentialist at least, there are always loose ends in the interpretation of experience, in most expository writing 'loose-ends' are considered to be 'out of place': stylistic seamlessness, unity and coherence are expected. A writing teacher asserts that 'in a finished work... the flimsy scaffolding is taken away' (Murray 1978, 90-1). Another author, drawing attention to this, remarks: 'the seams do not (I hope) show' (Smith 1982, 2). Seamlessness has a particularly high priority in science: 'the scientific article is expected to be a finished and polished piece of work' (Hagstrom 1965, 31). A cohesive structure reinforces a sense of the argument as 'coherent'. The tidiness of academic texts may also misleadingly suggest the enduring nature of the positions which they represent.

The basic three-part structure of introduction, main body and conclusion is satirized in the sardonic advice: 'First say what you're going to say, then say it, then say what you've already said.' Whilst this formulation masks the inexplicitness of academic writing, it highlights its structural closure. Structural closure suggests that 'the matter is closed' - that the text is 'finished'. Seamlessness and sequential structures reinforce an impression of the ground having been covered, of all the questions having been answered, of nothing important having been left out. Though it is a lie, closure suggests mastery of the material through its control of form ... Conventional academic textual structures frame the issues and guide the reader towards the author's resolution of them. Academic discourse uses univocal textual closure as a way of both controlling the reader and subordinating the topic to the author's purposes. Such closed textual structures can be seen as reflecting authorial attempts to create worlds whose completeness, order and clarity demand our recognition of them as somehow more absolute, more objective, more 'real', than the dynamic flux of everyday experience. Academic authors first fragment that which is experienced as seamless, and then, in conforming to various conventions in the use of the printed word, seek to give an impression of the seamlessness of their creations. The drive towards formal seamlessness suggests an imitation of the existential seamlessness, and hence 'authenticity', of lived experience.

In any expository writing, literary seamlessness may mask weaknesses or 'gaps' in the argument; it also masks the authorial manipulation involved in constructing an apparently 'natural' flow of words and ideas. For instance, the orderliness of the scientific paper offers a misleadingly tidy picture of the process of scientific inquiry. Representation always seems tidier than reality. Seamlessness in writing is a Classical and 'realist' convention which may seem to suggest 'objectivity': whereas Romantic craftsmanship typically features the marks of the maker and may even employ 'alienation' - deliberately drawing attention to the making. Robert Merton argued for the reform of scientific writing, suggesting that 'if true art consists in concealing all signs of art [the Classical convention], true science consists in revealing its scaffolding as well as its finished structure' (Merton 1968, 70).

Daniel Chandler, Semiotics for Beginners: Syntagmatic Analysis


Again, note the moral censure. We're expected to understand that aiming for 'seamlessness' and 'structural closure' is a bad thing. We're meant to accept without justification that all prose in all circumstances ought to be open, ought to reflect the complexity of life, ought to draw attention to the process that produced the finished work. But isn't there something paradoxical here? We're being exhorted to produce this more 'realistic' prose by people who keep insisting that it isn't possible for any description of the world to be complete; if no description can be complete, then all we can ever produce are incomplete fragments artificially closed by the constraints of production and consumption. By opening the prose up, by leaving the scaffolding in place, you're not getting any closer to a 'true' description - all you're doing is irritating the people who want the information that the expository prose is designed to provide.

So back to postmodern techniques in fiction and the breaking of waalkwriter's 'necessary illusion'. The justification for using such techniques generally follows the same line of argument I've outlined above: that traditional narrative is an artificially closed structure, aiming for a seamless mirroring of the real world; that it fails to show the reality of the process that produces the illusion; that leaving the scaffolding in place somehow (I don't quite know how) makes the whole enterprise more 'authentic'. I think that's bunk. Leaving the scaffolding in place just creates a new closed structure that happens to contain scaffolding.

Personally, I like the scaffolding. Waalkwriter doesn't.

[Bottle Rocket]

And if someone disagrees?
I hate people narrowing the definitions of art to include only what they feel is good.The question was about "My" aesthetic; you and everyone else are perfectly entitled to your own.

However, it's a fallacy to assume that "Does It Work" means "What I Like"; lots and lots of things "work" which I don't like. Perhaps you can't separate your subjective preferences from an objective assessment, but it's what I've done for a living for 35 years (and I'm considered fairly good at it by people who have a lot more riding on it than you do).

What it really boils down to is this: I don't believe it's possible to "define art" in any meaningful and adequate way. To me, art is sort of like God; I'm reasonably sure both exist in some (or many) forms, but anyone who claims to understand their attributes and qualities is deluded.


:) BRocket :)

[Amoxcalli]

To me, art is sort of like God; I'm reasonably sure both exist in some (or many) forms, but anyone who claims to understand their attributes and qualities is deluded.

May I just compliment you on wording that very eloquently? It also sums up my Aesthetic philosophy to a large extent. Thank you.

[Bottle Rocket]

These two premises:

Information is not Knowledge

and

Opinion is not truth.

Do not add up to waalkwriter's conclusion:

"If that is so, then all would be meaningless."

Why is it so unthinkable that all might really be meaningless? It seems eminently possible to me that the need for meaning is a purely human quality, like the phenomenon we call love.

That everything may be meaningless does not, as far as I can see, nullify the value of our attempts to find or impose patterns. Even if there really is meaning in "what is," I doubt we can ever apprehend it completely.

As I recall, there's a Borges story about cartographers who set about making as accurate a map as possible of their country. In the end, as they added details, the map grew to the exact size of the country. The same is true of any depiction of reality; to be truly complete it must be the thing described, because anything less necessarily leaves something out and is hence incomplete. Furthermore, because of the effects of time, you can only describe a past state of existence, not the present one, because formulating the description, no matter how quickly you do it, requires some infinitesimal period of time during which things will have occurred that invalidate your description.

To me, it's not at all threatening to suppose that we supply whatever meaning that may exist. Whether it's "true" or not isn't even important unless its "untruth" runs up against demonstrably true phenomena that contradict it. A mirage in the desert may appear to a thirsty man to be a lake, and he may therefore try to reach it to slake his thirst. And unless he actually reaches his (illusory) destination and finds only sand, the mirage "means" water to him just as though it really was a lake.

In a way, seeking the secret to "what it all means" may be like chasing that mirage. Not only will you never get there (find an ultimate answer), but you may, in chasing the illusion, miss the real well (however brackish its water) which is a hundred yards in a different direction.


:) BRocket :)

[Omo]

Why is it so unthinkable that all might really be meaningless? It seems eminently possible to me that the need for meaning is a purely human quality, like the phenomenon we call love. [...]

It's a quality of life, that finds its current top in us humans.

[Bottle Rocket]

It's a quality of life, that finds its current top in us humans.I'm not quite sure what you mean here, Omo. Could you explain a bit more?


:confused: BRocket :confused:

[Omo]

The need for meaning is analogue to the need for life. The only human thing about it is that it's us who are able to express it and consciously search for meaning, everyone else simple reacts, incapable of reflection.

[Eric]

I tend to side with Galatea in this debate. I mean: words do refer to things, actions, moods, feelings, etc. Words are not just a ragbag of sounds that mean, as in the Humpty Dumpty analogy that is often used, anything that anyone wishes. We could not live in such an anarchy of meaninglessness.

Galatea says:

If words don't have any conventional meaning there's no way Derrida can say anything to me or you; there's no way you can agree with him, and there's no way I can disagree with him. Logic must be applied. Because Derrida can only be a guru if indeed his words have some sort of validity which you can agree with or fight against.

The question "do words mean anything?" is ultimately sterile. Not least because you have to use words to ask the questions. You can play around with metalanguages, but we all live in the real world. Because when you return to real life from your musings, language is indeed a system of signs that, by convention, points to things. Why does this need complex philosophical debate to establish? People with minds that are no more than Brownian motion cannot function in real life. If every thought, word and deed were random, or totally autonomous, there would be no world.

I too like some postmodernist fiction and have even translated some. But you can't live a normal life as a postmodernist hero (or a postmodernist fragmented personality). Who are these strange sexist people who try to promote the liberation of females from straight linear masculine thinking, as if women have to somehow escape from logical thinking to liberate themselves? What will these people at universities, people on regular salaries paid for by taxes (all from the real world) think of next? Sexist clich?s which pigeonhole men and woman are no way of setting about describing the world or changing it. Why should logical structures be "masculine"? Has no one here ever met a logical woman? What sort of 19th century twaddle is being churned out under the guise of liberationist philosophy?

Also, those people who think along the lines that everything is meaningless end up, sooner or later, in a mental hospital. (A real building in the real world.) I think that too many people confuse and conflate a heady mixture of Kafka, Borges, Pynchon, and a few other authors and then try to build a religion on a kind of yearning for proof that life is real. They will then explore avenues of the disintegrated personality (i.e. we are different persons depending on which role in society we are playing) and other such unhelpful trains of thought.

I love Borges' literary tricks, such as the man who wrote Don Quixote again by going through the exact life of Cervantes. And Funes the Memorious who could only sleep when turning to a blank patch in his memory. But these are all the tricks of a fiction writer. They have no ethical value. And the real life I live in, at least, is a fusion of aesthetic things and ethical things. Life is more than sitting on a bench and demonstrating that the world around exists. Let's assume it does, and get on with life!

[Bottle Rocket]

Also, those people who think along the lines that everything is meaningless end up, sooner or later, in a mental hospital. (A real building in the real world.) I think that too many people confuse and conflate a heady mixture of Kafka, Borges, Pynchon, and a few other authors and then try to build a religion on a kind of yearning for proof that life is real. They will then explore avenues of the disintegrated personality (i.e. we are different persons depending on which role in society we are playing) and other such unhelpful trains of thought.Perhaps I'm being hypersensitive here, Eric, but as the most recent commenter to entertain the possibility of meaninglessness I can't help thinking this paragraph refers in part to me.

If so, you misconstrue what I'm trying to say. In no way am I attempting "to build a religion on a kind of yearning for proof that life is real." Indeed, I maintain that no proof is possible either way -- meaning or meaninglessness -- and that looking for such a proof is a complete waste of time. Life is obviously real, because each of us is experiencing it. I suppose it's possible to make the solipsistic argument that I'm real but all the rest of you are just figments of my imagination, but this is just as unprovable as speculation about the meaning of life (or lack thereof); moreover, it seems like a very complicated way to go about baffling us when we're already baffled anyhow.

My main point -- with which I think you agree -- is that the whole line of inquiry is irrelevant as a practical matter. Even if existence is meaningless, this doesn't demolish the practical necessity for ethical standards; by the same token, many people who profess to believe absolutely in a meaningful existence actually behave in egregiously unethical ways (eg the Pope, to take just one among many high-profile cases) I'd describe this as the behavioral version of Galatea's observations about language -- I find it excellent mental exercise as well as great fun to contemplate meta- stuff, but not until the plain old stuff is taken care of, and certainly not instead of the plain old stuff like buying groceries, writing posts on WLF, or putting the wee bairns to bed. For all the pleasure to be derived from soaring about in the aethereal realms of pure thought, my experience is that simple, homely activities are at least as rewarding if not more so.

On one point, though, I take issue with you, to wit:

"the disintegrated personality (i.e. we are different persons depending on which role in society we are playing) and other such unhelpful trains of thought."

I submit that we are at least partly "different" persons depending upon the role we are playing in society. For instance, when I'm called to jury duty the social role I'm playing is explicitly designed to eliminate the biases and prejudices to which we're all subject, and replace them with a strictly construed set of principles we call "law," which may or may not accord with my personal beliefs. In New York State we have the death penalty, which I oppose absolutely, but it's conceivable that I might be selected for the jury in a capital case even if I expressed my opposition (as I would -- I'm not talking here about nullification by subterfuge) and in such a case I would in effect be a different person from the one who signs petitions against capital punishment. This is less far-fetched and hypothetical than it may sound; I was selected as a juror in a murder case (not capital) even though nearly everyone in my family is a lawyer or a judge and I myself have been the victim of more than one crime, each issue -- supposed legal "knowledge" and personal experience of crime -- almost always causing one side or the other to disqualify you. I was surprised to be chosen, but once selected I did my best to apply the law as written to the evidence as submitted. (For the record, we convicted, but that's beside the point.)

I tend also to believe that our society suffers from some sort of centrifugal quality that works against the kind of personal integration you advocate (and with which I agree whole-heartedly). There's an awful lot of cognitive dissonance out there, at the most basic level, which IMHO often works to dis-integrate people's personae, and I think that a good deal of PoMo lit is trying to describe and/or explore those psychic effects. By no means all of it attempts this, and not very much of it really succeeds, but I think it's both a real issue and a legitimate subject. All too often this leads to a kind of hermetic, frustrated isolation, whether written down in a book or actually lived out day by day. As you observe, this is the very opposite of integration -- and becoming too preoccupied (not to say obsessed) with this disintegrative phenomenon will indeed lead, if not to the madhouse, at least to the psychiatrist's couch or the publican's table.


:) BRocket :)

[Galatea92]

I tend to side with Galatea in this debate. I mean: words do refer to things, actions, moods, feelings, etc. Words are not just a ragbag of sounds that mean, as in the Humpty Dumpty analogy that is often used, anything that anyone wishes. We could not live in such an anarchy of meaninglessness.

Words generally refer to concepts, though, not things directly. The word CAT refers to a category of things, a concept, rather than any physical instance of a cat. SMUDGE - the name of my wife's ex-cat - refers to a thing, but CAT refers to a concept. (Mirabell's reference to de Sassure sent me off to brush up on my linguistics, as you can tell :)). It's why translation can be such a problem, as you know; the categories in two languages don't necessarily correspond; for example, the category CAT in English can include big cats like lions and tigers (but not bears :)), in another language it may only include domestic cats.

The disadvantage of a language that referred directly to things can be seen in this satire from Jonathan Swift (which I lifted from the the semiotics site (http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem02a.html) I linked to earlier):


A Scheme for entirely abolishing all Words whatsoever... was urged as a great Advantage in Point of Health as well as Brevity. For it is plain, that every Word we speak is in some Degree a Diminution of our Lungs by Corrosion, and consequently contributes to the shortning of our Lives. An Expedient was therefore offered, that since Words are only Names for Things, it would be more convenient for all Men to carry about them, such Things as were necessary to express the particular Business they are to discourse on. And this Invention would certainly have taken Place, to the great Ease as well as Health of the Subject, if the Women in conjunction with the Vulgar and Illiterate had not threatned to raise a Rebellion, unless they might be allowed the Liberty to speak with their Tongues, after the manner of their Ancestors; such constant irreconcilable Enemies to Science are the common People. However, many of the most Learned and Wise adhere to the New Scheme of expressing themselves by Things, which hath only this Inconvenience attending it, that if a Man's Business be very great, and of various kinds, he must be obliged in Proportion to carry a greater bundle of Things upon his Back, unless he can afford one or two strong Servants to attend him. I have often beheld two of those Sages almost sinking under the Weight of their Packs, like Pedlars among us; who, when they met in the Streets, would lay down their Loads, open their Sacks, and hold Conversation for an Hour together; then put up their Implements, help each other to resume their Burthens, and take their Leave.

But for short Conversations a Man may carry Implements in his Pockets and under his Arms, enough to supply him, and in his House he cannot be at a loss: Therefore the Room where Company meet who practise this Art, is full of all Things ready at Hand, requisite to furnish Matter for this kind of artificial Converse.

Another great Advantage proposed by this Invention, was that it would serve as a Universal Language to be understood in all civilized Nations, whose Goods and Utensils are generally of the same kind, or nearly resembling, so that their Uses might easily be comprehended. And thus Embassadors would be qualified to treat with foreign Princes or Ministers of State to whose Tongues they were utter Strangers.

(Jonathan Swift [1726/1735]: Gulliver's Travels, Part III, 'A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib and Japan', Chapter V)

[Mirabell]

Words generally refer to concepts, though, not things directly. The word CAT refers to a category of things, a concept, rather than any physical instance of a cat. SMUDGE - the name of my wife's ex-cat - refers to a thing, but CAT refers to a concept. (Mirabell's reference to de Sassure sent me off to brush up on my linguistics, as you can tell :)). It's why translation can be such a problem, as you know; the categories in two languages don't necessarily correspond; for example, the category CAT in English can include big cats like lions and tigers (but not bears :)), in another language it may only include domestic cats.

Ha. Here's a borderline stupid post of mine on the topic Pu das B?r. An Examination of Gender and Translation in a Cognitive Linguistics Framework shigekuni. (http://shigekuni.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/pu-das-bar-an-examination-of-gender-and-translation-in-a-cognitive-linguistics-framework/)

*blush-in-shame*

[Galatea92]

Ha. Here's a borderline stupid post of mine on the topic Pu das B?r. An Examination of Gender and Translation in a Cognitive Linguistics Framework shigekuni. (http://shigekuni.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/pu-das-bar-an-examination-of-gender-and-translation-in-a-cognitive-linguistics-framework/)

*blush-in-shame*

It's a perfectly respectable paper, Mirabell - I even managed to follow some of it :). (I enjoyed the use of Pooh Bear as an example.)

So German doesn't have a general term that you can use for both male and female cats - it's either der Kater (male cat/tomcat) or die Katze (female cat)? In English we have the terms tom for a male cat and molly for a female cat - curiously these are also the common terms that Victorians used for lesbian and male homosexual.

[Omo]

So German doesn't have a general term that you can use for both male and female cats - it's either der Kater (male cat/tomcat) or die Katze (female cat)? In English we have the terms tom for a male cat and molly for a female cat - curiously these are also the common terms that Victorians used for lesbian and male homosexual.

Katze is used both for a cat in general and for a specifically female cat. Cats are seen as feminine animals over here.

[Galatea92]

Katze is used both for a cat in general and for a specifically female cat. Cats are seen as feminine animals over here.

Ah, I was wondering about that. Over here cat is a fairly neutral word, but in common usage we only generally distinguish the male cat (with the word tomcat). Despite the words I mentioned in my previous post, people don't generally distinguish the female cat with a separate term. I had to look up the word molly - I've never heard any one use it. My wife came up with the alternative term queen spontaneously, but I'd never heard that before either.

So I guess we also have a slight tendency to think of a cat as a feminine animal by default.

[Bottle Rocket]

Words generally refer to concepts, though, not things directly. The word CAT refers to a category of things, a concept, rather than any physical instance of a cat. SMUDGE - the name of my wife's ex-cat - refers to a thing, but CAT refers to a concept. (Mirabell's reference to de Sassure sent me off to brush up on my linguistics, as you can tell :)).But surely SMUDGE and CAT are both contextually determined -- in a linguistic vacuum, SMUDGE would refer to the "concept" of blotted copybooks, so to speak, and even in your own kitchen a stranger would require "Smudge the cat," whereas the addition of a definite article to category CAT would produce a "default sense" of "the particular CAT who frequents our house" ... I'm just thinking aloud here; the terms of semiotic art are mostly foreign to me, but is it even possible to conceive of or refer to "CAT" in isolation? What I mean is that there's always a context of some kind and it seems to me that we proceed from the specific to the general -- when a baby says CAT, the first instance will invariably refer to a specific cat, whether the family Tabby (which in passing is a word I think of as being the feminine counterpart of Tom) or The Cat in the Hat; the same baby, encountering a random cat in a shop, say, will not necessarily identify it as categorically akin to Tabby.



It's why translation can be such a problem, as you know; the categories in two languages don't necessarily correspond; for example, the category CAT in English can include big cats like lions and tigers (but not bears :)), in another language it may only include domestic cats.
But even when there is such a distinction -- housecat v. leopard -- there will be some rubric which describes both (FELINE, say). It stands to reason that the inhabitants of a remote tropical island are unlikely to have a word for "snow," since for all practical purposes snow doesn't exist in their "context." And I can imagine a typology that doesn't necessarily organize things by species -- you could group things as "little animals" versus "big animals" or "domestic animals" versus "wild animals" (and indeed we do group them thus in certain contexts) but such distinctions would not long survive actual exposure and experience, by which I mean that any culture with feline and canine companion animals will almost certainly make the default groupings of CATS and DOGS, rather than THE SMALL(ish) DOMESTIC ANIMAL THAT SLOBBERS as opposed to THE SMALL DOMESTIC ANIMAL THAT PURRS. Or so it seems to me.


@Mirabell: from a purely amateur, unschooled perspective, I found your paper very interesting, and like Galatea, enjoyed your use of the Pooh characters as exemplars.

I never really thought about it before, but my own gendering assumptions would be CATS and TIGERS as feminine, but LIONS as masculine. In general, though, at least in English, isn't the masculine traditionally the privileged, inclusive form? (I realize that this is a sore point in gender politics, but that's a whole nother discussion for some other time)


:) BRocket :)

[Galatea92]

But surely SMUDGE and CAT are both contextually determined -- in a linguistic vacuum, SMUDGE would refer to the "concept" of blotted copybooks, so to speak, and even in your own kitchen a stranger would require "Smudge the cat," whereas the addition of a definite article to category CAT would produce a "default sense" of "the particular CAT who frequents our house" ... I'm just thinking aloud here; the terms of semiotic art are mostly foreign to me, but is it even possible to conceive of or refer to "CAT" in isolation?

Yes, of course, context is everything. I was just simplifying so that I could contrast a word used to point to a category with a word that pointed to a thing. SMUDGE was just an example of a proper noun, an individual name of a particular cat - maybe my wife should have called him TIDDLES to save the confusion :) .


What I mean is that there's always a context of some kind and it seems to me that we proceed from the specific to the general -- when a baby says CAT, the first instance will invariably refer to a specific cat, whether the family Tabby (which in passing is a word I think of as being the feminine counterpart of Tom) or The Cat in the Hat; the same baby, encountering a random cat in a shop, say, will not necessarily identify it as categorically akin to Tabby.


A Tabby is a particular type of cat - the stripy one that looks like a tiger. It's funny you should think of it as the feminine counterpart of Tom.


...but such distinctions would not long survive actual exposure and experience, by which I mean that any culture with feline and canine companion animals will almost certainly make the default groupings of CATS and DOGS, rather than THE SMALL(ish) DOMESTIC ANIMAL THAT SLOBBERS as opposed to THE SMALL DOMESTIC ANIMAL THAT PURRS. Or so it seems to me.


They're the same categories, though, aren't they? It's just that in the first case the category has a single convenient word attached to it, whereas in the second you need to use several words to describe the category.

[Igu Soni]

However, it's a fallacy to assume that "Does It Work" means "What I Like"; lots and lots of things "work" which I don't like.
I tried this on for size for a while last year, then was brought to earth by the fact that for a vast majority of readers, Dan Brown works.


The question was about "My" aesthetic; you and everyone else are perfectly entitled to your own.
What do you see as an 'aesthetic philosophy'? To me, it is not so much a formulation of taste as a formalisation of what has the potential to be to my taste.

[Bottle Rocket]

A Tabby is a particular type of cat - the stripy one that looks like a tiger. It's funny you should think of it as the feminine counterpart of Tom.As a diehard dog person, I confess that my knowledge of cats is proudly, Palinishly deficient :D




Quote:
Originally Posted by Bottle Rocket
...but such distinctions would not long survive actual exposure and experience, by which I mean that any culture with feline and canine companion animals will almost certainly make the default groupings of CATS and DOGS, rather than THE SMALL(ish) DOMESTIC ANIMAL THAT SLOBBERS as opposed to THE SMALL DOMESTIC ANIMAL THAT PURRS. Or so it seems to me.

They're the same categories, though, aren't they? It's just that in the first case the category has a single convenient word attached to it, whereas in the second you need to use several words to describe the category.Well, I think that was my point, too, in response to your observation about category-mapping from language to language. Maybe there's a better example than your big-cat/little-cat dichotomy, but the central issue is a valid descriptor that points to a real whatever. And there are really only two possibilities: an individual (what we've called a "thing" in earlier posts) or a group (a "category" or "concept.") Individuals are pretty straightforward -- you can give them Proper Names, even with intangibles like the Third Law of Motion; categories, on the other hand, are infinitely mutable -- set theory meets semantics, if you will. All cats, three-legged cats over five years old, cats whose names begin with the letter "Q", etc etc. My admittedly clunky examples were attempts to iterate possible-but-unnatural alternatives (like your hypothetical language with no catch-all term for all cats regardless of size). Practically speaking, though, I think your hypothetical language is an impossibility, because although there may be no ready-made, one-word, quality-for-quality synonym available, there will ALWAYS be a descriptive combination to denote category X that excludes all other categories. I guess what I'm driving at is that All Real Things Are Describable, and that this is a property common to all languages. My tropical islanders may have no word for snow, but if their proa were blown far enough off course to encounter a North Pacific snow flurry they'd find a way to describe it. And, I suspect, the more common a phenomenon is in any given community of speakers, the terser its most common descriptor will be (ie, CATS instead of ANIMALS OF THE FELINE PERSUASION); I'd bet the ranch that this is a kind of natural law of linguistic economy.

This, of course, doesn't address the elegance of a translation, nor, I suppose, the problems posed by extreme differentials of context (my tropical islanders' folktales would probably be much harder to translate into Inuit than into Arabic, for instance) -- at some point, the explanatory elaboration would become intolerably unwieldy. But I think that at least in principle, what is expressible in any language is expressible in all languages.

Or is that a misapprehension on my part?


:) BRocket :)

[Bottle Rocket]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bottle Rocket
However, it's a fallacy to assume that "Does It Work" means "What I Like"; lots and lots of things "work" which I don't like.
I tried this on for size for a while last year, then was brought to earth by the fact that for a vast majority of readers, Dan Brown works.Well, yes, there's the rub, and I tend to agree with you. But we're skating very close to the idea that something very successful must necessarily be "lowest-common-denominator." By nature and by training both, I am pretty elitist, but spending three decades in commercial publishing exposes one to examples of just about everything, willy-nilly. I can't address Dan Brown, because I haven't read any of his books because in my snobbish way I think (at second-hand) that he is at best Eco-Lite and even Eco-Real tries my patience. But I confess that when my tolerance for jingoism is at its most robust, I can enjoy myself reading Tom Clancy, cuz I like military hardware and he's aces at that, although in every other respect I'd rather read a cereal box than his brand of no-dimensional characters and unspeakable writing. I'm also at a complete loss to account for the continuing success of zombie Robert Ludlum, whose awful prose, preposterous plotlines, and rampant paranoia represent for me a Perfect Storm of bad-and-stupid. I mean, there are really good spy thrillers out there, so why waste time on bloated trash?

I'm not really sure how to answer your question, except to say that you and I read more critically than the average reader, and enjoy thinking about it. I'm not convinced that we are therefore more virtuous, but I'm absolutely certain that we're more discriminating than most of "them." It's sort of like those American tourists who go to Paris and then eat at McDonald's and Taco Bell. WTF?? I'm not a big foodie, but really ... I can only conclude that such people have entirely different goals than I do when they travel.



What do you see as an 'aesthetic philosophy'? To me, it is not so much a formulation of taste as a formalisation of what has the potential to be to my taste.Well, I sort of prefer to avoid formalizing, as I think it's apt to be exclusionary and I'd rather be open to anything. Rules bug me, even when I'm the one making them.

But I guess I do have a seat-of-the-pants aesthetic of sorts. I dislike stuff filled with magic, spells, dragons, and vampires, because I feel that they're actively anti-rational and there's way too much of that abroad in the world right now. I don't like sensationalism (the commonest sort, I think, is violence) because I rarely feel that it captures the truth, which is more often tawdry than triumphal; by the same token, I don't care for horror, because I think it's a cheap thrill -- if you want to be horrified, volunteer at a homeless shelter or something. I do like writing that takes me somewhere I've never been, as long as it relates in some substantial way to who and where I already am. I prefer irony to earnestness, as long as the irony is integral and not attitudinal. I enjoy being challenged by what I read, but I want a payoff that's proportional to the effort I've expended. I value exuberance of expression, but when all's said and done I prefer the relative quiet of, say, Joseph Conrad to the pyrotechnics of Tom Wolfe or Hunter Thompson. Above all, I want something that seems true to life, whatever the hell that means -- realism isn't the issue, some confection of contradiction, surprise, wonder, sorrow, fear ... whatever. It can come in just about any shape and size -- and for every like and dislike I've cited I can find at least one or two exceptions, which is why I don't like to make any hard and fast rules and pronouncements.

Not sure if this is really any kind of answer, though. In a way, "Whatever" seems almost too much by way of explanation; at the same time, I could go on and on and still not come close to a complete explication. So this'll have to do.


:) BRocket :)

[Mirabell]

So I guess we also have a slight tendency to think of a cat as a feminine animal by default.

It's the folk use of gender I talk about in the paper, yes.

[Galatea92]

Practically speaking, though, I think your hypothetical language is an impossibility, because although there may be no ready-made, one-word, quality-for-quality synonym available, there will ALWAYS be a descriptive combination to denote category X that excludes all other categories. I guess what I'm driving at is that All Real Things Are Describable, and that this is a property common to all languages. My tropical islanders may have no word for snow, but if their proa were blown far enough off course to encounter a North Pacific snow flurry they'd find a way to describe it. And, I suspect, the more common a phenomenon is in any given community of speakers, the terser its most common descriptor will be (ie, CATS instead of ANIMALS OF THE FELINE PERSUASION); I'd bet the ranch that this is a kind of natural law of linguistic economy.

Although I'm not sure that language entirely determines how we can think about the world, I do think that our ability to think about things is limited by the language we speak (this notion that language limits or determines the way we thing about the world is normally known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/whorf.html)). Here's an anthropological example from Wikipedia:


Research carried out by Stephen C Levinson and other cognitive scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics has reported three basic kinds of spatial categorization and while many languages use combinations of them some languages exhibit only one kind of spatial categorization and corresponding differences in behavior. For example the Australian language Guugu Yimithirr only uses absolute directions when describing spatial relations — the position of everything is described by using the cardinal directions. A speaker of Guugu yimithirr will define a person as being "north of the house", while a speaker of English may say that he is "in front of the house" or "to the left of the house" depending on the speaker's point of view. This difference makes Guugu yimithirr speakers better at performing some kinds of tasks, such as finding and describing locations in open terrain, whereas English speakers perform better in tasks regarding the positioning of objects relative to the speaker (For example telling someone to set the table putting forks to the right of the plate and knives to the left would be extremely difficult in Guugu yimithirr).

Linguistic Relativity, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity)

There's an almost infinite number of categories we could use to partition the world; there is no essential reason for choosing one category over another. In the cat example we've been using, for example, one can imagine a society that distinguishes primarily between domestic animals and wild animals, with no individual terms for the different types of animal in each group. In such a society you would think of cats and dogs as being part of one group (they would be referred to by the same linguistic term), while lions and wolves would be part of the other group. In such a society it would be quite hard to conceive of cats and lions as the same kind of thing - you just wouldn't have the conceptual framework to do it. Equally it would be quite hard for us to understand the literary productions of this society without understanding the different conceptual framework within which it was produced. (I say quite hard rather than impossible in both these cases because I believe that our conceptual frameworks are quite malleable, that we're pretty skillful at recategorizing the world).

[Omo]

[..] I do think that our ability to think about things is limited by the language we speak [...]

I agree with what you say but one thing: language is a singular, but it should be languages. There are many languages we have developed: the normal everyday speaking language, but we top this with many other languages like foreign human languages, the language of music, of mathematics, of tastes, smells etc. pp. and each of these languages bring in a new system of thinking, that, if synthesised with others lead to new languages (perception, gnosis, awareness, however you like to call it). That's the vicotry of intelligence, evolution in action. :)

[Bottle Rocket]

Thanks, Galatea, that's fascinating. Now I'll have to spend an hour or so trying to explain setting a table for six in Guugu Yimithirr (In grade school I was the one who had to spend a week trying to trisect an angle using only a straight-edge and a compass ... although some of my editorial work has involved writing instructions, and it seems to me that it's one of the more challenging tasks to accomplish; a clear, systematic, step-by-step manual for tying your shoelaces was extremely hard, at least for me.) I certainly agree that the structure of a language will play an important role in the structuring and concept of the world-view it describes, but how does one determine which is cause and which is effect?

As to the latter part of your post, I'll have to think about that for a while. Clearly one could organize fauna along "wild v domesticated" lines instead of "canine v feline" lines or "big v. little" lines. Where you lose me is at the point where you stop categorizing: would it not be more natural and/or intuitive to continue, so that primary category "wild" is divided into "big-wild" and "small-wild" and so forth? The end-point of this process will be the detailed description of any given individual such that it is adequately distinguished from any or all other individuals in its class. Is there some other way to distinguish them that I simply fail to see?

Forgive me if I seem to be reinventing the wheel here. Perhaps we're starting from different fundamental assumptions; mine is that language(s) arose from the usefulness of providing ever-more-detailed information -- to oversimplify for argument's sake, in a pre-verbal hominid "clan," there would be an all-purpose alarm call, for instance. As time went on, a proto-verbal clan would tend to select for the capacity to make distinctions, ie, taking category "alarm" and refining it into, say, "alarm-wooly-mammoth" as opposed to "alarm-puff-adder;" the evolutionary advantage of more detailed threat-assessment seems self-evident to me, and I'm pretty sure I could find other instances where more detail provides a competitive edge..

In similar fashion, suppose we are a pair of Masai herdsmen, each responsible for some cattle. Won't we need some practical way to distinguish your cattle from my cattle? (I do realize that a society without private ownership is possible, but my instinct is that the natural progression is from communal to private, not vice-versa. Is that incorrect for some reason I haven't discerned?) A society where child care is a communal task is, I think, fairly common, and under such conditions I can see that the primary allegiance might well be tribal rather than immediate-familial, but then how do we account for the fact that many animals exhibit a pronounced mother-child symbiosis? Isn't it equally plausible that humans are such creatures, and the communality of child-rearing is the "artificial" social construct, adopted for purely practical reasons having to do with division of labor -- the most immediately obvious division being between the sexes, with women being the only sex biologically capable of nourishing a new-born?

Finally, although I haven't worked through the implications (if any), it seems significant to me that your example of Guugu Yimithirr is drawn from what may well be the most long-sequestered set of societies in the history of our planet. Is it mere accident (or even actually false) that aboriginal societies almost always succumb to more developed and sophisticated "invaders"? (I don't mean to equate "more developed/sophisticated" with "better," but it does seem to me that the more developed, the more durable, almost as though contact with other competing groups somehow "inoculates" a social group, whereas an isolated aboriginal culture develops no such immunities and remains essentially fragile when compared to groups constantly tested and culled by contact with other systems.

If all of these questions are considered settled, can you point me in the direction of "Linguistics for Dummies"? I find all of this very engrossing, but I don't want either to waste your time or to hijack the thread.

Thanks.


:) BRocket :)

[mesnalty]

Most linguists today tend to think the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is only true in a limited sense. A lot of the experimental data has not supported it (e.g. Berlin and Kay's studies of colour terminology), but there have been recent results supporting the theory, though only in a fairly weak form. Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct is an excellent and accessible introduction to linguistics in general, and it talks about the problems with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, though I think he's a bit biased against Whorf.

On the flip side, there's the work of George Lakoff, especially Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. Daniel Everett's work on Pirah? will also have important implications for the relativism/universalism debate, but we'll have to wait for the dust to settle. His paper, "Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirah?" is interesting, although I have my doubts about his analysis. I read it a while ago, and I don't remember how accessible it is to non-linguists.

[Bottle Rocket]

Most linguists today tend to think the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is only true in a limited sense. A lot of the experimental data has not supported it (e.g. Berlin and Kay's studies of colour terminology), but there have been recent results supporting the theory, though only in a fairly weak form. Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct is an excellent and accessible introduction to linguistics in general, and it talks about the problems with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, though I think he's a bit biased against Whorf.

On the flip side, there's the work of George Lakoff, especially Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. Daniel Everett's work on Pirah? will also have important implications for the relativism/universalism debate, but we'll have to wait for the dust to settle. His paper, "Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirah?" is interesting, although I have my doubts about his analysis. I read it a while ago, and I don't remember how accessible it is to non-linguists.Thanks -- and welcome.

:) BRocket :)

[Bottle Rocket]

Oh, and plus ...

If Sapir-Whorf is the jumping-off point for all this stuff, I propose that instead of something arcane like Guugu Yimithirr or prosaic, like English, we select our future examples from Klingon.

:) BRocket :)

[waalkwriter]

I find it odd that in a discussion on what you find beautiful in art, on what your definition of beauty is, a vast discussion on deconstructionism arises. I supposes my feelings are patently obvious in that I cannot even work up the enthusiasm to care about deconstructionism, it bores me hopelessly. Literature, writing, is not word engineering, it is emotion and creative expression and it is defined by its ambiguity and its lack of immutable meanings.

Deconstructionism is not only a hopeless fallacy, it's the work of technical-minded people not interested in what makes a novel different than a science experiment or the plans for a new bridge. Anyway, interesting that a discussion on beauty ends being mired in such a long and frankly boring discussion of trivial technicalities about word functions, deconstructionism and discussions of semiotics and attempts to assign universal interpretations to certain styles and give them immutable meaning.

:confused:

[Mirabell]

though I think he's a bit biased against Whorf

that's putting it a bit mildly, eh? Pinker is completely useless on Whorf because he doesn't bother to engage with Whorf. He would fail any logics class whenever talking about people he dislikes. I strongly disadvise from reading Pinker until you know your way around the topic well. Pinker's on a permanent soapbox. Same applies to Lakoff, although I think he's right.

The single best book on Linguistic relativity is Rethinking linguistic relativity, edited by John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson. It was published in 1997, but it still holds up pretty well.

But then, Berlin and Kay no longer are cited as evidence by anyone worth their salt, mostly because studies with the same fucking corpus have been done that showed something else. I'M pretty sure the book I just mentioned goes into that, too.


in a fairly weak formeh. depending on who you ask. Ren? Dirven has pushed a stronger form for a decade now and he dredges up interesting studies.

Generally speaking, it's been a really really long time since I did thorough readings in the area, and my mind's going, as it is.
but yes, there is a strong resistance to linguistic relativism in linguistics, but I always thought that this corresponded to the resistance of disciplines like philosophy to other forms of relativism.

[mesnalty]

that's putting it a bit mildly, eh? Pinker is completely useless on Whorf because he doesn't bother to engage with Whorf. He would fail any logics class whenever talking about people he dislikes. I strongly disadvise from reading Pinker until you know your way around the topic well. Pinker's on a permanent soapbox.

I don't think he's all that unfair to Whorf, especially considering that The Language Instinct was published back in 1994. But yeah, as much as I admire the work of Pinker and Chomsky, they have a tendency to dismiss out of hand people who disagree with them. In any case, Whorf is far from the best representative of linguistic relativity - modern researchers are much more rigorous and empirically bound than he was. In that sense, many of Pinker's critiques of him are accurate.

The Gumperz and Levinson book sounds interesting, I'll have to check it out. Thanks for the recommendation.

As for Dirven, sure, there are of course linguists who push very strong forms of linguistic relativity, but I think they're far from representative.

Personally, I think linguistic relativity is true in some sense (not a strong one, but not an especially weak one either), but I tend to argue against it because the lay conception of it is so poisonous.

[Mirabell]

Whorf is far from the best representative of linguistic relativity - modern researchers are much more rigorous and empirically bound than he was.


He was crazy! Like, totally. Have you read The Language Instinct?
It's zany fun. Whorf is a total Catholic (I think) nutjob, and his broader language theory...he's quotable, and I tend to think that a mildly strong formulation of LR is correct (none of that 'thinking for speaking' nonsense), so the fact of his work is a good thing, but it's utterly nuts. Bad science, too. Poor Sapir.

I am German, and German linguists are big on Construction Grammar, and so I have heard lots of very good attacks of Chomskyite linguistics. If they are right, he's very wrong. But it's a very young direction, who knows where they'll end up.

[mesnalty]

He was crazy! Like, totally. Have you read The Language Instinct?
It's zany fun. Whorf is a total Catholic (I think) nutjob, and his broader language theory...he's quotable, and I tend to think that a mildly strong formulation of LR is correct (none of that 'thinking for speaking' nonsense), so the fact of his work is a good thing, but it's utterly nuts. Bad science, too. Poor Sapir.

Yep, I totally agree. Reading his work, you can tell he's a brilliant mind but you can also tell he's not a very good scientist. He could have benefited from formal training in linguistics, I'm sure.

[Igu Soni]

While I don't think the linguistics is trivial at all, but I would like to raise a question, one that I already have but in a very garbled form: do these guys aim to find the meaning in art or the meaning of art? In other words, is art in service of life or is life in service of art? And, less importantly, doesn't a view of the second form trivialise the possibilities of art, and in fact even completely castrate the poor form?


Secondly, what relevance does analysing the form of words and the effect of context (as has been talked about by Galatea, Alexis and BRocket) have to the discussion of art that was formed with those words as context?

[Igu Soni]

waalk: That a discussion of one thing 'devolved' into one of another thing doesn't imply a connection in our conceptions of the two things. We started from 'what is beautiful' and got sidetracked (due to a throwaway comment by me, now that I think of it) to one of the prevalent methods of analysing it. Today, my friend and I were talking about epistemology and got sidetracked into the complexity of his assignment program, and don;t try to tell me that that implies anything deeper than the surface about our conceptions of epistemology.

[Igu Soni]

Well, yes, there's the rub, and I tend to agree with you. But we're skating very close to the idea that something very successful must necessarily be "lowest-common-denominator." By nature and by training both, I am pretty elitist, but spending three decades in commercial publishing exposes one to examples of just about everything, willy-nilly. I can't address Dan Brown, because I haven't read any of his books because in my snobbish way I think (at second-hand) that he is at best Eco-Lite and even Eco-Real tries my patience. But I confess that when my tolerance for jingoism is at its most robust, I can enjoy myself reading Tom Clancy, cuz I like military hardware and he's aces at that, although in every other respect I'd rather read a cereal box than his brand of no-dimensional characters and unspeakable writing. I'm also at a complete loss to account for the continuing success of zombie Robert Ludlum, whose awful prose, preposterous plotlines, and rampant paranoia represent for me a Perfect Storm of bad-and-stupid. I mean, there are really good spy thrillers out there, so why waste time on bloated trash?

I'm not really sure how to answer your question, except to say that you and I read more critically than the average reader, and enjoy thinking about it. I'm not convinced that we are therefore more virtuous, but I'm absolutely certain that we're more discriminating than most of "them." It's sort of like those American tourists who go to Paris and then eat at McDonald's and Taco Bell. WTF?? I'm not a big foodie, but really ... I can only conclude that such people have entirely different goals than I do when they travel.
Is reading critically really a better thing? Shouldn't 'great' art engage something fundamental in each of us?



Well, I sort of prefer to avoid formalizing, as I think it's apt to be exclusionary and I'd rather be open to anything. Rules bug me, even when I'm the one making them.
.
.
.
Not sure if this is really any kind of answer, though. In a way, "Whatever" seems almost too much by way of explanation; at the same time, I could go on and on and still not come close to a complete explication. So this'll have to do.
Yeah, about this:


Waalk: I think the problem with you is that you define your philosophy in terms of negatives. Define a positive, and you may see it in a maximally subversive way in things you right now reject.
Or, y'know, don't define it at all. Read on for explanation.

My aesthetic philosophy? I should have an immersive experience which is also beautiful as a whole, in a way specific to each book. A cynical writer might make his book non-immersive, and I may still accept that, innasmuch as I am immersed in the non-immersive nature of the book.
To be taken with a pinch of salt, as always, because a diferent expression might mean something different; the only thing which makes it valid for me to say so is that I know the feeling this comes from. Lookat what happened to poor Refus; he tried to define it, and got immediately got misconstrued (not the miscontruer's fault).
This is why I have any respect for reviewing on a book-by-book basis; that forms a picture of the writer's aesthetic philosophy without a conscious effort on his part to articulate it, which is better than the other way for articulation is basically simplification.

"We mustn't live by our philosophies; our philosophies must live by us." - Ronak M Soni

I'm sorry for one-lining your essays yet again, but those were the basic concerns that came up when I read them.

[Igu Soni]

I tend to think that a mildly strong formulation of LR is correct (none of that 'thinking for speaking' nonsense)
I don't know too much (anything) about the linguists you guys talk about, but I'd agree with this statement (if you'll allow me the temerity), because of the fact that we change the expression of our stand much more easily than our stands themselves, which means that we have thoughts at least somewhat separated from language.

[Galatea92]

Thanks, Galatea, that's fascinating. Now I'll have to spend an hour or so trying to explain setting a table for six in Guugu Yimithirr

I look forward to reading your explanation :).


I certainly agree that the structure of a language will play an important role in the structuring and concept of the world-view it describes, but how does one determine which is cause and which is effect?

Ah, that's the question, as you can see from the response of the real linguists here.


As to the latter part of your post, I'll have to think about that for a while. Clearly one could organize fauna along "wild v domesticated" lines instead of "canine v feline" lines or "big v. little" lines. Where you lose me is at the point where you stop categorizing: would it not be more natural and/or intuitive to continue, so that primary category "wild" is divided into "big-wild" and "small-wild" and so forth? The end-point of this process will be the detailed description of any given individual such that it is adequately distinguished from any or all other individuals in its class. Is there some other way to distinguish them that I simply fail to see?

But there are also advantages in not categorizing too finely. The world gets too confusing if we have too many categories. Isn't that the whole point of having categories in the first place, that it allows us to simplify the world so that we can make effective judgements about it? If you carry on dividing categories indefinitely you just end up with the individual instances, the individual things themselves.

[Galatea92]

I find it odd that in a discussion on what you find beautiful in art, on what your definition of beauty is, a vast discussion on deconstructionism arises. I supposes my feelings are patently obvious in that I cannot even work up the enthusiasm to care about deconstructionism, it bores me hopelessly. Literature, writing, is not word engineering, it is emotion and creative expression and it is defined by its ambiguity and its lack of immutable meanings.

I didn't realise you just wanted us to say what we liked and didn't like. The fact that you used the phrase "aesthetic philosophy" in your thread title made me think you were interesting in thinking around the notions of "beauty" and "meaning" in art.


Deconstructionism is not only a hopeless fallacy, it's the work of technical-minded people not interested in what makes a novel different than a science experiment or the plans for a new bridge. Anyway, interesting that a discussion on beauty ends being mired in such a long and frankly boring discussion of trivial technicalities about word functions, deconstructionism and discussions of semiotics and attempts to assign universal interpretations to certain styles and give them immutable meaning.

If you want to argue your point about there being universal aesthetic values you need to know who your enemies are. Deconstructionists don't believe in "universal interpretations" or "immutable meaning" - that's kind of the whole point. They're not at all scientific; everything for them turns on language, which for them is a closed system of signs pointing to other signs.

[Bottle Rocket]

I look forward to reading your explanation :).Still TK ... I think I've worked out several possible ways but haven't actually iterated them yet.


But there are also advantages in not categorizing too finely. The world gets too confusing if we have too many categories. Isn't that the whole point of having categories in the first place, that it allows us to simplify the world so that we can make effective judgements about it? If you carry on dividing categories indefinitely you just end up with the individual instances, the individual things themselves.No argument there ... I wasn't suggesting that one should go on making distinctions just for the sake of making them, only that regardless of where you start or stop, the conceptual framework exists to be as detailed or as general as is useful in any given situation -- what, if I understand the terminology aright, we'd call "granularity" in IT terms, is basically infinitely adjustable up or down.

Indeed, it seems to me that both ends of this spectrum, if you will, are encapsulated in the most basic nature of human perception. "I" (the individual) as opposed to "not-I" (the most inclusive external category: "everything else") Without this differentiation, is self-awareness even possible?


:) BRocket :)

It occurs to me that we might have a very interesting thread/discussion on analogies, too -- they are at the very heart of my personal way of understanding the world, but I really have no clue whether this is a universal trait or not. I know that there's some difference of opinion about their usefulness as predictors in standardized testing, but not much beyond that.

[Bottle Rocket]

While I don't think the linguistics is trivial at all, but I would like to raise a question, one that I already have but in a very garbled form: do these guys aim to find the meaning in art or the meaning of art? In other words, is art in service of life or is life in service of art? And, less importantly, doesn't a view of the second form trivialise the possibilities of art, and in fact even completely castrate the poor form?I'm not sure I understand your question (not much sleep :() ... my off-the-cuff reaction is, why is this necessarily an either/or question? Can't we approach it as a both/and? I suspect there is no way to arrive at a definitive answer; what do you make of "ars longa, vita brevis"?



Secondly, what relevance does analysing the form of words and the effect of context (as has been talked about by Galatea, Alexis and BRocket) have to the discussion of art that was formed with those words as context?Again, I must just be too tired to think straight, but this seems awfully meta-meta to me (bear in mind also that unlike Mirabell, Mesnalty et al, I'm flying completely by the seat of my pants even when all my cylinders are firing.) But in an over-simplified, completely non-theoretical sense, it seems to me that words are building material -- atoms, bricks, fieldstone, whatever -- which are organized architecturally to define spaces used for a variety of purposes (sometimes several or many at once -- think school gymnasium/dining hall/auditorium). The structures and spaces exist independently, but are essentially only potentialities until actually put to use. So the big rectangular room with stripes painted on the floor becomes a basketball court when you add a ball, two hoops, and some players; the same space is turned into a dining hall if you fill it with food and people who consume it; and an auditorium when you put a speaker and a podium in front of an audience. Overlap is perfectly possible: what is a room full of monks eating in silence while a reader declaims Scripture? And does it matter whether any given monk is single-mindedly eating or listening, doing both at once, or just spacing out without eating or paying attention?

Certain conventions may exist -- the cruciform shape of a cathedral, which is basically symbolic in nature, for instance -- and certain limitations as well, like flying buttresses, which are in the first instance load-bearing necessities without which the structure would collapse. But what about a modern, reinforced-concrete structure in which an architect establishes context in part with buttress-like details, which are not structurally necessary but nevertheless "quote" the history of religious architecture? Is a cathedral a work of art in and of itself? Or do you need to fill it with plainchant and incense before it attains its end? And what if it's repurposed -- as a fortress, say, or a sanctuary? What about a church turned into a home, or a brothel; does it matter whether you describe it as "desacralized" or "desacrated"?

I submit that each of these questions can only be discussed in context -- otherwise, all you have is a pile of bricks, not a cathedral. But structure in itself is only part of the story -- a stone-for-stone replica of Chartres cathedral is essentially different from the original, not only because it's in a different place but because it's a quotation. And if you put it in Euro-Disneyland its meaning changes again. Or a Campbell's soup carton: how do you figure out if it's a "real" Campbell's soup carton printed and die-cut by the millions and available in any supermarket; or a priceless Warhol? What if it's a Warhol, but the horrid man didn't sign it -- is it art or commerce? Or is the whole point that you're forced to consider such questions instead of just looking at it and reacting?

I can't really answer any of these questions, and I'm doubtful that anyone else can either -- we can discuss it forever and not come to an agreement. And if we can't even settle on a definition of art, how can we possibly define the next order of magnitude, "great" art?


:) BRocket :)

....

[Omo]

While I don't think the linguistics is trivial at all, but I would like to raise a question, one that I already have but in a very garbled form: do these guys aim to find the meaning in art or the meaning of art? In other words, is art in service of life or is life in service of art? And, less importantly, doesn't a view of the second form trivialise the possibilities of art, and in fact even completely castrate the poor form?


Secondly, what relevance does analysing the form of words and the effect of context (as has been talked about by Galatea, Alexis and BRocket) have to the discussion of art that was formed with those words as context?

Igu Soni, you are a wonderful person. I enjoy reading your posts here more than anyone else's because you are the person on board thinking the most. :)

re 1) they have stopped finding meaning in art, and are trying to find it of it, i.e making the analysis of art more important than the art itself - that means: more stress on logical analysis than on emotional and thus unhealthy focus on theory rather than on practice. It can trivialise, but if applied right, it leads to better understanding.

re 2) Perhaps: being able to see the context clearer enables us to see other things clearer as well, it's the start of an analysis, that is unfortunately hardly finished, but if it was it could be very rewarding. Study of context (=the most obvious surrounding) as example for surrounding in general.

[waalkwriter]

I didn't realise you just wanted us to say what we liked and didn't like. The fact that you used the phrase "aesthetic philosophy" in your thread title made me think you were interesting in thinking around the notions of "beauty" and "meaning" in art.



If you want to argue your point about there being universal aesthetic values you need to know who your enemies are. Deconstructionists don't believe in "universal interpretations" or "immutable meaning" - that's kind of the whole point. They're not at all scientific; everything for them turns on language, which for them is a closed system of signs pointing to other signs.

Well, first off let me just say this; I view much of criticism, though an intellectual exercise, as a threat to very artifice which it builds itself from. I joke with my ideological sparring buddies that they are lucky I'm not religious because I'd be burning people at the stake. I'm a person, for better of for worse, defined by what I'm against rather than what I'm for. I tend to be apathetic, normally, about anything I believe in, and very passionately against anything I don't believe in.

Now to address your other points, I consider aesthetics in a nutshell, to be beauty, what is beauty, not why is it beautiful or how is it beautiful, but what is it about it that makes it beautiful. This is not beautiful:

S http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/8/5/5/8558a668c3dd3fe346c448d980f33d6c.png ABSS http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/8/5/5/8558a668c3dd3fe346c448d980f33d6c.png ε (where ε is the empty string)BA http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/8/5/5/8558a668c3dd3fe346c448d980f33d6c.png ABBS http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/8/5/5/8558a668c3dd3fe346c448d980f33d6c.png bBb http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/8/5/5/8558a668c3dd3fe346c448d980f33d6c.png bbAb http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/8/5/5/8558a668c3dd3fe346c448d980f33d6c.png abAa http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/8/5/5/8558a668c3dd3fe346c448d980f33d6c.png aa

That is merely an attempt of technical minds to understand the beauty, they fail to realize that what really defines beauty is its undefinable quality, recall Whitman's poem the Learn'd Astronomer, which contrasts the beauty of looking up into the night sky and seeing the stars and how beautiful they were, and sitting in an astronomer class with formula's, facts, figures, and information explaining the beauty to you.

I confound many people with my ideology, it may not strike some as rational, but I believe with defining beauty nobody can be correct, but you can still be wrong; which leaves me with a sort of outlook that is far more defined by the negatives, by what is wrong/incorrect. Personally this provides me with a sense of orientation which I desperately need, I cannot go about thinking 'nothing is good or bad, nothing is right or wrong. The wrong is all the stuff that strips literature of what makes it great, its ambiguity, its mystery, its creativity, the very essence of what gives it its humanity.

As for the second part of what you said:


Deconstructionists don't believe in "universal interpretations" or "immutable meaning" - that's kind of the whole point. They're not at all scientific; everything for them turns on language, which for them is a closed system of signs pointing to other signs.That seems self-contradictory. In one paragraph you claim deconstructionists don't believe in "immutable meanings" in literature, and then in the next sentence you confirm that by saying that literature for them is a closed system of signs pointing to other signs, which is fairly suggestive of putting forth an immutable meaning of literature by revealing those signs, those giving a set and absolutely analyzed meaning to a work.

It seems to me the entire point is to relegate literature to nothing more than word engineering; add this word here, add the next one here, order them like this, and you will get a sentence that connotes this this and this and implies this. Ugh! The day writing becomes word engineering is the day creativity dies and one of the last genuine, untainted experiences of being alive that man still has dies with it.

[Galatea92]

I tend to be apathetic, normally, about anything I believe in, and very passionately against anything I don't believe in.

Why do you think that is?


Now to address your other points, I consider aesthetics in a nutshell, to be beauty, what is beauty, not why is it beautiful or how is it beautiful, but what is it about it that makes it beautiful. This is not beautiful:

S http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/8/5/5/8558a668c3dd3fe346c448d980f33d6c.png ABSS http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/8/5/5/8558a668c3dd3fe346c448d980f33d6c.png ε (where ε is the empty string)BA http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/8/5/5/8558a668c3dd3fe346c448d980f33d6c.png ABBS http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/8/5/5/8558a668c3dd3fe346c448d980f33d6c.png bBb http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/8/5/5/8558a668c3dd3fe346c448d980f33d6c.png bbAb http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/8/5/5/8558a668c3dd3fe346c448d980f33d6c.png abAa http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/8/5/5/8558a668c3dd3fe346c448d980f33d6c.png aa


It could be. It depends what it means. Logic can be beautiful, and mathematics, and science.


That is merely an attempt of technical minds to understand the beauty, they fail to realize that what really defines beauty is its undefinable quality, recall Whitman's poem the Learn'd Astronomer, which contrasts the beauty of looking up into the night sky and seeing the stars and how beautiful they were, and sitting in an astronomer class with formula's, facts, figures, and information explaining the beauty to you.

Keats said a similar thing in his poem Lamia:


Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine -
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade.

But the problem isn't science as such, or analysis, or philosophy, but the notion that your analysis describes the whole of reality, as when someone arrogantly talks about a rainbow being merely the reflection of light off the back of raindrops, or the night sky being merely a mathematical formula. An analysis of a poem, however crass, doesn't have any effect on the poem itself; the poem, like the rainbow, like the night sky, is still there, still beautiful, still itself.

[Igu Soni]

But the problem isn't science as such, or analysis, or philosophy, but the notion that your analysis describes the whole of reality, as when someone arrogantly talks about a rainbow being merely the reflection of light off the back of raindrops, or the night sky being merely a mathematical formula. An analysis of a poem, however crass, doesn't have any effect on the poem itself; the poem, like the rainbow, like the night sky, is still there, still beautiful, still itself. A rainbow is merely the relections; the problem actually arises when you start thinking that that is the only worthy description.

[Bottle Rocket]

A rainbow is merely the reflections; the problem actually arises when you start thinking that that is the only worthy description.I think what Galatea92 is objecting to/pointing out is the dismissiveness of "merely" ... this is the when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail fallacy.

In fact, if one looks past the [*yawn*] unicorns, rainbows, sparklies [/*yawn], the rainbow leads to leprechauns in one direction and Newtonian optics in another, with vectors to practically all creation (and Celtic superstition) in between. I'm not sure "worthy" is an adequate word to apply to the actual fact of a rainbow, let alone the universe of its implications.

I'd be willing to bet that if you dared talk of "worthiness" to Isaac Newton in this context, he'd think you were an idiot (understand, please, that I'm not suggesting the irascible old fella would be right -- only that most of us, upon being bopped upside the head by an apple, would say "oh, ****!!" instead of "GRAVITY!!")


:) BRocket :)

... and yes, I know the whole apple story is probably apocryphal, but to me that makes it more interesting, not less.

[Galatea92]

A rainbow is merely the relections; the problem actually arises when you start thinking that that is the only worthy description.

That's why I italicized the merely. As a former chemist, I don't have a problem with scientific explanations.

[Igu Soni]

That's why I italicized the merely. As a former chemist, I don't have a problem with scientific explanations.

OK.
Why 'former' chemist? Are you retired?

BRocket, I think it's safe to say, after multiple rereads, that I don't understand your last post.

[Galatea92]

OK.
Why 'former' chemist? Are you retired?


No, I'm not that old yet :). I decided there was more money and fewer carcinogens in programming, so I jumped ship. (And programming's more fun.)

[Igu Soni]

Susan Sontag agrees with me:

http://www.susansontag.com/SusanSontag/books/againstInterpExcerpt.shtml (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Interpretation)

Though the actual developments in many arts may seem to be leading us away from the idea that a work of art is primarily its content, the idea still exerts an extraordinary hegemony. I want to suggest that this is because the idea is now perpetuated in the guise of a certain way of encountering works of art thoroughly ingrained among most people who take any of the arts seriously. What the overemphasis on the idea of content entails is the perennial, never consummated project of interpretation. And, conversely, it is the habit of approaching works of art in order to interpret them that sustains the fancy that there really is such a thing as the content of a work of art.

3

Of course, I don't mean interpretation in the broadest sense, the sense in which Nietzsche (rightly) says, "There are no facts, only interpretations." By interpretation, I mean here a conscious act of the mind which illustrates a certain code, certain "rules" of interpretation.

in place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.

[Bottle Rocket]

OK.
BRocket, I think it's safe to say, after multiple rereads, that I don't understand your last post.Well, you were pointing out that "a rainbow is merely ..." (which leaves "merely" in place).

But IMO "merely" functions as a swipe at the cliche-ed stereotypical associations of rainbows (my "unicorns, rainbows, sparklies" -- unicorns are a pretty neat symbol when you encounter them in tapestries and Books of Hours, but New Agers have largely co-opted and devalued them)

My point is that for all its cliche-ed quality, a rainbow is a first-rate springboard for a leap into everything from an essay on Celtic superstition like the leprechaun's "pot of gold at the end of the rainbow" to a whole novel based on arcs (Gravity's R.) and much more.

Finally, my Isaac Newton digression was intended to point out that true genius doesn't think in terms of "worthy" ... it does something else, though not being a genius myself I can't describe it and probably if I were a genius I'd have better things to do than analyze my own gift. All I was really saying is that most of us would regard being hit on the head by an apple as being "merely" an "unworthy" irritant, a sort of Random Insult from Mother Nature, whereas at least apocraphally Newton turned it into the Theory of Gravity.


:) BRocket :)

[waalkwriter]

My convos here have really helped me understand and feel out where I stand on everything. It pretty much just comes down to basics really; I believe in just telling a story, form is merely how you tell it but not the story itself. Style and form are pretty much the same in my mind, and both add an element of insincerity in writing, of the writer telling you its a story and he's fooling with it, breaking the lie. I'd prefer not to notice any sense of form or style at all but just a good, appealing story. So reading for voice is quite strange for me; even writers I really like I don't seek their work out in general. Instead I look through all their works and pick books with plots that appeal to me, because that's what I get my real kicks from--I enjoy any Dean Koontz book more than any Pynchon or McCarthy book because I'm uninterested in reading a work because of an intriguing or well formulated voice. A lot of people can't appreciate that, that sheer desire for plot and for story, maybe I can't defend it, but I think that I can, or at least have gotten to the point of maturity where I don't feel like I even have to anymore, where as I once gripped with a fiery passion to lash out at those I perceived as criticizing that aesthetic.

Personally I'm quite tired of lofty talk and meandering discussions on nothing with people who have no concept of the simplicity I seek in writing and reading. I am very much capable of looking at something and saying, "hey, that is interestingly written, it seems smart" I'm capable of appreciating it. But I don't want to. That's a mild amusement. That's sitting and reading and knowing all the while that you are reading and making observations about it as you do it. It's a skin deep pleasure to pass a boring afternoon. I prefer to seek rarer and totally engrossing pleasures of utterly forgetting you are sitting in a chair reading a book; a story so good that when the book is finished you are left so restless the only thing you can do is to go take a 5 mile walk and add onto the story you just left of because its so jarred in your mind.

But anyway, I appreciate how my discussions of many of you have helped me get to that point of security. Especially you Bottle Rocket, though I've felt you certainly don't share my great ache for purity in literature. I looked at a book of sketches recently, and its made it difficult to look at writing the same way. Words seem to be nothing but tacky instruments of displaying emotion and action, inevitably making a commentary on what they describe more so than just describing it. Something I've been looking for personally lately is a way to achieve that sort of perfection in writing and it seems to me the books that closest achieve it are the books most sincerely and simply written; children's books in other words. So I'm going to spend most of the summer refreshing my memory of a lot of children's books, like The Little Prince and The Jungle Book, to even some more recent, contemporary works.

As BR probably knows after reading my painfully long discussant messages :D this is an issue I have been really pounding on for a while now, and it took me a long time to find the obvious answer, but I'm glad I did. I'm sure most of you probably have a completely different taste than me, but that really doesn't bother me anymore at this point, thankfully.

[Refus de Sejour]

I am very much capable of looking at something and saying, "hey, that is interestingly written, it seems smart" I'm capable of appreciating it. But I don't want to. That's a mild amusement. That's sitting and reading and knowing all the while that you are reading and making observations about it as you do it. It's a skin deep pleasure to pass a boring afternoon. I prefer to seek rarer and totally engrossing pleasures of utterly forgetting you are sitting in a chair reading a book; a story so good that when the book is finished you are left so restless the only thing you can do is to go take a 5 mile walk and add onto the story you just left of because its so jarred in your mind.


Nice post, Waalkwriter. I, too, am a strong believer in getting engrossed or absorbed in a book. The thing which makes this a little unreliable as a literary gauge, however, is that everyone has a different "absorption" point. I recall some people here (can't remember who) writing that they can't get absorbed in Rushdie due to the nature of his style and voice; I, however, dissolve in Rushdie like a sugar crystal in hot tea. I'm not claiming to be smarter or more literary-hip than them; his books obviously just work on me in a different way.




So I'm going to spend most of the summer refreshing my memory of a lot of children's books, like The Little Prince and The Jungle Book, to even some more recent, contemporary works.



I love children's books. My recommendations:

J.P. Martin's Uncle books (hard to find but worth it - look them up on Wikipedia)

Tove Jannson's Moomintroll books.

Dino Buzzati's The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily.

[Mirabell]

hard to find

these books have been reprinted by the invaluable NYRB series of publications

Amazon.com: Uncle (New York Review Children's Collection) (9781590172391): J.P. Martin, Quentin Blake: Books (http://www.amazon.com/Uncle-York-Review-Childrens-Collection/dp/1590172396/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1272925116&sr=8-1)

[Refus de Sejour]

True, Mirabell, although, alas, they have only reprinted the first two books - there are five or six in the series in total. Better than nothing though!

[Bottle Rocket]

Pippi Longstocking, Lindgren
Swallows & Amazons, Ransome
Wind in the Willows, Grahame
Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak (Max is so totally my inner two-year-old!!)
Harold and the Purple Crayon, Johnson


Also there are the Tintin and Babar books, which are great fun but not entirely politically correct any more as I am told. On the other hand, deep familiarity with either series will qualify you to teach a seminar on Beloved Children's Books as Colonialism: A Post-Colonial, Post-Literary Analysis, with Commentary Appended



:) BRocket :)

[waalkwriter]

Pippi Longstocking, Lindgren
Swallows & Amazons, Ransome
Wind in the Willows, Grahame
Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak (Max is so totally my inner two-year-old!!)
Harold and the Purple Crayon, Johnson


Also there are the Tintin and Babar books, which are great fun but not entirely politically correct any more as I am told. On the other hand, deep familiarity with either series will qualify you to teach a seminar on Beloved Children's Books as Colonialism: A Post-Colonial, Post-Literary Analysis, with Commentary Appended



:) BRocket :)

lol, I didn't mean that early along. Though I have always loved Where the Wild Things Are, from the time I was small child. Found what portions I saw of the Eggers book disappointing, surprisingly dry for a writer like him.

Wind in The Willows though is something that has been recommended to me many times, so I will probably have to pick it up this summer ^^

Maybe some Dahl. I never loved Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, but I'm thinking about trying out James and the Giant Peach.

[Refus de Sejour]

lol, I didn't mean that early along. Though I have always loved Where the Wild Things Are, from the time I was small child. Found what portions I saw of the Eggers book disappointing, surprisingly dry for a writer like him.

Wind in The Willows though is something that has been recommended to me many times, so I will probably have to pick it up this summer ^^

Maybe some Dahl. I never loved Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, but I'm thinking about trying out James and the Giant Peach.

Hey, don't knock th' lil' kids' books; Harold and the Purple Crayon is a great combination of images and words (as is Where the Wild Things Are, it goes without saying).

I loved the Swallows and Amazons books when I was a kid; they're 'realist' in the sense that there's no dancing at the top of burning pinetrees ? la Pipi or talking elephants in dressing gowns - there aren't even, as I recall, any smugglers or robbers as in Blyton - they just immerse you an exciting childrens' world of summer holidays, small boats, lakes, mock wars and afternoon expeditions up backwaters.

[Mirabell]

The Phantom Tollbooth!

[Refus de Sejour]

Waalkwriter, something has struck me as odd. I thought Faulkner was one of your favourite writers; but now you're talking, here and elsewhere, about disliking style in favour of simplicity. Are you claiming that Faulkner was not a stylist?

[waalkwriter]

I don't know how I feel about him know. I haven't read him lately, and I've had a pretty dramatic turnaround the last few months. Basically the deal was for many years I read a heavy load of "literary works", I packed it in through high school. Boris Pasternak, Graham Greene, William Faulkner, Doris Lessing, Thomas Mann, among many many others. But you over college, maybe in partial reaction to college, I've had a personal breakdown with this kind of writing and so I've reached back out to the sort of stuff that made me love, truly and sincerely love to read in the beginning.

But I think I would still like Faulkner, because I don't think of him as a stylist so much as a force of nature. But I think, personally, I am done emulating him as a writer. I am seeking for a greater simplicity, a greater sincerity in what I write and read lately. I want that sense of looking at a book of sketches, the purity of that art and experience of story, I want to hear music and feel it in the words I write and read, I don't want style. Not at the moment at least. Can't really keep going into it. That should be the basic gist. Don't really feel like going on.

[Refus de Sejour]

I am seeking for a greater simplicity, a greater sincerity in what I write and read lately. I want that sense of looking at a book of sketches, the purity of that art and experience of story, I want to hear music and feel it in the words I write and read, I don't want style. Not at the moment at least. Can't really keep going into it. That should be the basic gist. Don't really feel like going on.

Fair enough. I confess, I don't understand you very well, because I suspect your definition of 'style' is different from mine. There is no such thing as style-less writing or art; they're intrinsically stylised and artificial. There is nothing pure and straightforward about a book of sketches, as the history of pictorial representation should make clear. Even the deliberate suppression of 'style' is a stylistic choice, and, at most, merely avoids a certain type of style in favour of another.

[waalkwriter]

Fair enough. I confess, I don't understand you very well, because I suspect your definition of 'style' is different from mine. There is no such thing as style-less writing or art; they're intrinsically stylised and artificial. There is nothing pure and straightforward about a book of sketches, as the history of pictorial representation should make clear. Even the deliberate suppression of 'style' is a stylistic choice, and, at most, merely avoids a certain type of style in favour of another.

We do view things differently. I can't explain, or at least I don't want to explain it. That is my problem; utterly fed up with explaining and defining feelings and experiences and breaking them down into their base components for purposes of analysis. Just think of it this way: I came to a realization that I had spent 4 years reading for status, status...how stupid I was. I spent so much time reading "great works" for purposes of showing off my knowledge and intelligence for purposes of praise to shore up my insecurities that I forgot the very things I loved in the first place.

I have no desire to get into an argument over specifics about style in art. When you no longer have to think of style and are only thinking terms of story and experience, then it's no longer stylized in my opinion. I would definitely disagree with you about sketches as well...definitely disagree. And I don't really think it would do any good going into vast detail over this, or that I could, or that it would make me happier to define it in a less vague way, to break it down. My friend Brian has the same issues, brings up the same points, but at the end of the day I have to inherently leave the statement at that.

[Eric]

Personally, I don't favour either a complex sentence structure or a simple one. Different authors try out different things, with more success or less. The novel I'm translating now is full of hesitancies and complex reasoning, moving back and forth between Germany and Estonia. But Jaan Kross was not trying to do the same thing as, say, the Fleming Felix Timmermans or the northern German Theodor Storm, whose pared down simple, slightly sentimental style I also appreciate.

Nor do I feel the urge to read a lot of "greats" one after the other. Who are people trying to impress when they cite a list of names and works? Themselves?

I tend to agree with Refus de Sejour that every piece of creative writing has its style. You don't need to analyse it, you can just read the book. But sometimes close analysis can help you appreciate the next book you read by the same author more. But when university lecturers make you write nonsensically entitled essays, which completely ruin books for you by taking them to bits for no apparent reason, then they are not educating you, but creating turbulence and going through the motions of education to keep their rather pointless jobs.

[waalkwriter]

It might be more simple to say I'm getting back to my roots and leave it at that. It's the natural place to go when you feel like you've lost some sort of connection to something, and I'm not just talking in literature but any passion really. I feel a lot of people run into this sort of general feeling at times. In my case its recapturing that early sense of reading and imagination that I recently "remembered" so to speak.

I'm well aware about your points on style, but try not to take it that far, while its valid and completely correct to say such things it is not necessary to get speaking in absolutes on the subject, to take a line of thought so far--if that makes sense. When I discuss stylism I mean nothing other than anything that obscures what the writing is saying to reader. I've wanted nothing more lately than some sincere, pure works that say what they mean and are more concerned with telling a story for the reader than with adding an element of internal complexity. I'm burnt out personally on the big 400 page tomes of literary genius that take weeks depending on how consistently my interest holds up. I remember a time when it was difficult to get me to stop reading to eat, or in some cases, sleep. So in effect, the goal is to try and recapture that sense, if only for a little while.

[Eric]

Waalkwriter, you seem to bear a grudge. I'm not sure who you are aiming your barbs at, but the question does arise: who is forcing you to wade through 400-page novels that you don't like? Are you enslaved to the university system that will give you a degree which won't get you a job, or are you trying to prove to someone (your partner, mum, or bank manager) that you really are an intellectual, not just a dosser or tosser?

Style, i.e. the way the book is written, is very important. You can write the same plot in many different ways. We are all born, live, and then die, but even that universal story can be served up, dressed up, told, in many different ways. What is interesting is why some ways of presenting the same material work, are interesting, while others are boring and dead.

Style can make a difference between a sensationalist journalist's way of telling the same plot as a sensitive novelist. There are novels where you know from the first page who murdered the body in the river, but the whole novel examines motives and psychology. Only a crude whodunnit saves up the solution (the butler did it) until the last page. The difference between these two approaches to the same material (body in river) is what constitutes style.

[waalkwriter]

Waalkwriter, you seem to bear a grudge. I'm not sure who you are aiming your barbs at, but the question does arise: who is forcing you to wade through 400-page novels that you don't like? Are you enslaved to the university system that will give you a degree which won't get you a job, or are you trying to prove to someone (your partner, mum, or bank manager) that you really are an intellectual, not just a dosser or tosser?

Style, i.e. the way the book is written, is very important. You can write the same plot in many different ways. We are all born, live, and then die, but even that universal story can be served up, dressed up, told, in many different ways. What is interesting is why some ways of presenting the same material work, are interesting, while others are boring and dead.

Style can make a difference between a sensationalist journalist's way of telling the same plot as a sensitive novelist. There are novels where you know from the first page who murdered the body in the river, but the whole novel examines motives and psychology. Only a crude whodunnit saves up the solution (the butler did it) until the last page. The difference between these two approaches to the same material (body in river) is what constitutes style.

That's strange, because the post you are referring to was actually very tame for me. I was actually trying in that post to be straightforward. I don't want to debate the point with you if you think that was a barb, there's nothing I can then, because the point of it was utterly missed, unfortunately.

In what is possibly beside the point if your discussion on style. I already said I don't want to get into it, quit pressing it. For my purposes style holds a different meaning, one that does not necessarily refer merely to the concept of how something is written.

I really can't say things any better.

[Omo]

I don't quite understand your approach to literature, waalkwriter. You like to read, analyse, compare, and most of all discuss about what you have read. I like to do this as well, although I have probably a different order of priority. But if I think about which literary texts I have enjoyed most, and I assume it's the same for everyone, I name the texts that have shaped me as a person, in my thinking, knowlegde, in my eloquence of expression etc., i.e. works that have helped me broadening my horizons in one way or the other. And so for me "back to the roots" is impossible, because one cannot go back to the person one were.

What I want to say: seeing that there is also a road not taken doesn't mean everything you learnt on the road you took is wrong. Introversion is important as well. Reflect a bit, relax, read for your own joy, and find pleasure in that before you share your views with others.

[Eric]

Omo says:


I don't quite understand your approach to literature, waalkwriter. You like to read, analyse, compare, and most of all discuss about what you have read. I like to do this as well, although I have probably a different order of priority. But if I think about which literary texts I have enjoyed most, and I assume it's the same for everyone, I name the texts that have shaped me as a person, in my thinking, knowledge, in my eloquence of expression etc., i.e. works that have helped me broadening my horizons in one way or the other. And so for me "back to the roots" is impossible, because one cannot go back to the person you once were.
I agree with that to a large extent, as we develop our tastes. But I go round in a kind of spiral. I'm now reading a number of authors I read decades ago, ones I enjoyed, then ignored for a decade or two, and now appreciate again - but with the new insights that life brings. For instance, Strindberg means as much to me now as his work did in the 1970s. But I am now broadening my view of him by reading his prose instead of his plays.

I have a certain amount of sympathy with Waalkwriter, because I too have had a decades-long battle with whether I should on the one hand read the book and relax, forgetting things like stylistics and so on, or on the other hand examine the book through some intellectual prism, which would help me to understand other books better.

As I am a translator, I am a special sort of reader of certain books, someone who has to agonise about what every sentence means. (And that's quite a few when you are translating a 300-page novel!) That is a bit of a professional handicap when you just want to read other books and relax. You have to switch off the "how would I say that in English?" machine in your head. But if you really get into the book and feel for the characters, follow the plot avidly and so on, you forget your analytical self when reading for pleasure.

With complex poetry, such as that of Wallace Stevens, I do tend to reread and examine. But then a genie inside me says "relax!" and I will read some poetry or prose by someone else, work that does not require so much close examination and rereading.

Both translating books and reading them to write essays for your tutor can damage that part of your mind and soul that just wants to read, enjoy, relax, soak up. But perceptive critics, whether by way of close reading or more discursive essays, can focus your mind on things you've never thought of before, and add value to your reading.

[waalkwriter]

Not going to continue that argument, or debate the validity of a statement that says, in effect, that understanding a work helps you enjoy it more, (I certainly don't find it makes me enjoy the stars more to know the physics behind them, the opposite in fact), but I ran across an old song I love, by Supertramp, and I thought they said something similar, quite nicely, at least the general romantic sentiment is there, even if it is far from the same.


When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful,
a miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical.
And all the birds in the trees, well they'd be singing so happily,
oh joyfully, oh playfully watching me.
But then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible,
logical, oh responsible, practical.
And then they showed me a world where I could be so dependable,
oh clinical, oh intellectual, cynical.

There are times when all the world's asleep,
the questions run too deep
for such a simple man.
Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned
I know it sounds absurd
but please tell me who I am
I said now watch what you say they'll be calling you a radical,
a liberal, oh fanatical, criminal.
Won't you sign up your name, we'd like to feel you're
acceptable, respectable, oh presentable, a vegetable!
Oh Take it take it yeah!

[Eric]

I recently translated a novel that makes fun of the idea of sticking labels on any old garbage and then getting smoothie art critics from the big city to exploit the artist (a rather simple soul) and drag him round all the biennales so that, in effect, the critic gets all the praise, while the simple artist is plied with drinks to keep him quiet.

That, to me, sums up the way art is heading, with another angle being the fakery and charlatanism generated by people like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin in Britain, who produce well subsidised rubbish, paid for by patrons or art funds.

Back in about 1973, a Finland-Swedish friend of mine, Johan "Jonna" Smeds and myself, on emerging from an art exhibition of what must have been early conceptual art, discussed whether the lamp posts along some road in Norwich couldn't actually be regarded as art. Maybe they could have. But the pressure nowadays to intellectualise every piece of junk and write reams of waffle guiding the innocent viewer into thinking of it as a work of genius is, in my opinion, very sad.

[Mirabell]

I think it's very sad when rank incomprehension leads people who should know better, people who should be part of the intellectual elite, to label writing that is probably often insightful (I've read some excellent essays on Emin's work, so...) as "waffle", which is a way of ending debate, of handing over the tools of reason for a level of discourse that resembles drunk ranting in badly-lit pubs. This is profoundly sad.

A suggestion: instead of tarring a whole profession of writers with the same ignorant brush, why not refer to specific writers and/or texts? That would, in my opinion, be infinitely helpful in a discussion. we would all know which writer you refer to, and could discuss more rationally.


My favorite writer on art is still Nelson Goodman, but he's more someone who provides frameworks for discussions than actual discussions

[waalkwriter]

What I look for in literature and poetry is insights or glimmerings of insights that the author has expressed well. Often this may simply be an understanding of the author’s surroundings or circumstances. If a novel or poem doesn’t teach me anything, I’d rather not read it. I don’t generally read authors compulsively or for entertainment. Fantasy can have its moments, but there is always a real world to contend with. This is why most reading adults prefer non-fiction to fiction: non-fiction comes closer to the earliest functions of speech and lyric poetry than most of the manufactured fiction in circulation today. Ultimately, I’m a Darwinian about art: it must serve a purpose.

This is our main sticking point. Here we veer apart rather radically. Pleasure is its on end. I firmly believe this. I write to tell people a good story, on an emotional level, though I like to think I try to incorporate ideas in the background that have their appeal. Basically, I feel that life is not very long. We live, and then we don't exist anymore. In that short time in between we should seek out entertainment and meaning in equal balance. So while I like many of your premises, I always, once we get deeper, feel you've taken those premises too far, to a rather highfalutin zone I don't care to enter.

Such as "There is always a real world to contend with," when I view the real world to be merely our communal delusion. It also misses the point of good fantasy literature which is to redefine the boundaries of the world, in order to highlight certain ideas and to show a human reaction that is set within different parameters, a fact which goes a long way to installing a certain kind of understanding in human behavior. What's more, so much supernatural fiction uses it's supernatural elements as symbols for other issues and ideas, providing a literalization of certain themes. Personally, as a writer, I find writing something which doesn't force me, the writer, to be uncomfortable and writing within an unknown, imaginary landscape with different parameters than the boring, overly familiar world I'm forced to drudge through day after day, insufferably boring to write.

Even the earliest cave paintings show great hunts, with vast herds of animals; in other words they represent dreams, joy, hope, and pleasure and seek to interact with them through a form of pure impression. But I also don't believe art is something unchanged since cavemen. We've advanced. The only thing that holds true, to me, is that art expresses an element of human interaction, character is the primary element of art. Through science we learn how the world functions, and through art we learn something about how we function. Another way I've put it is that science gives us physical power, and art gives us an idea of how we should use that power.

It kind of saddens me that, although it may be elegant, you hold such a dreadfully dreary and limited view of art as pure communication. I think it's much subtler than that. It's joy, a visceral connection to the idea of being alive and being human, and that mystical experience of transcending words. It's about wonder; a sense of wonder that can't be totally expressed and may not even be apparent, but is there nonetheless.

And I hate to break it to you, but most reading adults prefer non-fiction to fiction because of America's insufferable obsession with practicality, and because most of the reading public are still lazy and would prefer to tackle a direct, easy truth than a subtle work of fiction. So many adults are too serious to deal with "fiction" which they view as childish and a waste of time when there are things to that could be making money, or getting a nicer car, a nicer house, etc. These people might only read a work of fiction that is very successful, like The Da Vinci Code, in order to say that they've read a successful book like that and more to the point, to appreciate it's success. Other than that they'll read non-fiction, if only to be able to say they read.

[waalkwriter]

I'm not saying that as a writer you're not allowed to psych yourself up this way. I mean, as a critical reader, I'm thinking "What does Waalkwriter have to say?" If I see an artificially constructed story about pixies or Martians as stand-ins for humans, I'm going to think "What's the point?" "Why not humans?" Even worse, if I'm required to learn about imaginary pixie or Martian existences that bear no relationship to humanity, I'm likely to just chuck the book. Furthermore, if you're able to see deeper than others into the "boring, overly familiar world" and shed new light on it, that might make you a great writer. That world is just as much a construction as anything else.

I disagree with you here. I think these 32,000-year-old drawings are as good as anything contemporary, though perhaps more difficult to fully understand: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/may/04/werner-herzog-cave-forgotten-dreams/.

I think real communication, which includes "joy, a visceral connection to the idea of being alive and being human" is more difficult than you suppose. For example, there's an awful lot of poor communication on this site even though it's populated with articulate and well-educated people.

I'm not an apologist for philistinism and tend to agree about the low intellectual and aesthetic standards that people set for themselves. But making a buck is as natural as life itself, and even the best writers write for money.

This is very good response. I'd like to give it a thorough run when I have the time. I would like to make an objection on your martians and pixies schtick. The point then is solely to force the reader and the writer to deal with a world that's the same internally, and completely different externally. It creates a situation when the actual physical interaction with the world changes, and allows us to see a fascinating and different angle to said interaction. I don't know if I've explained this before, but I find the world to be an exceptionally boring and depressing place. If not for my joy of reading and writing I'd almost certainly be suicidal, to speak frankly, (and they provide the most divine and powerful coping method imaginable), or if not suicidal then a sociopathic, egotistical wannabe politician mired in their own neurosis. For similar reasons, I hold all literature to be escapists, it's just some of the stuff I like most is more completely removed from the limited possibilities this world provides. In other words, our imaginations far exceed the world, which is what makes them so beautiful.

Making money is not the most important thing in life to me. I'd like to live comfortably, and make a good living, but I don't care about making tens of millions of dollars. The bigger reason I write is to bring other people happiness, bring them a good book, or an interesting poem. The satisfaction I get out of one enthusiastic reader is far greater than I get from money.

More on the rest later.

[Eric]

One subject I've hoped to read much more of than I have so far in life is aesthetics. Because I suspect that there is more to a proper approach to an art object or other item of artistic endeavour than a mere initial gut response.

For instance, when I first listen to an item of classical music, it can sound flat, even slightly boring. But as you build up an acquaintance, not only with that symphony or whatever, but with the whole body of a composer's work, you build up a network of cross references and similarities. So that each symphony will end up bolstering the others. This kind of view can also be approached to writing, where you "get into" an author as you read more of their novels or poems.

Also painting benefits from longer viewing than the glimpse you get when striding through a crowded gallery. A painting that has taken weeks or months to paint is initially taken in through the eye in a matter of seconds. But contemplation may be necessary to get the most out of the work.

The problem is that everyone is so rushed nowadays, and you consciously have to brake yourself, so that you don't merely say "very good" or "not bad" then rush on to the next art object. I have now gone through the novel I've translated (which is very close reading indeed) for the umpteenth time, and each time I notice something that I didn't before. This may be a connection in the story, or some other ahah encounter with some tiny aspect of the novel. (I even found mistakes, such as the painter Mantegna, who had been rendered as Montagna and Montegna in the original and translations, but that is at another level of re-reading.) As I implied about music in the first paragraph, depth of appreciation depends on thoroughness and making connections.

[Eric]

To link up with my previous posting, I am getting quite a lot out of a book called simply "Aesthetics - an introduction to the philosophy of art" by Anne Sheppard, originally published back in 1987.

What is good about the book is not only that she focuses on literature, but that she divides up the things she wants us to think about into rational chapters: Why bother about art? Imitation; Expression; Form; Art, beauty and aesthetic appreciation; Criticism, interpretations, and evaluation; Intentions and expectations; Meaning and truth; Art and morals.

As she goes along, she acknowledges difficulties, contradictions, and so on, so this is not a mere run through a lot of subject matter, but she highlights problems. And she does not try to blind the reader with science, so the number of terms is kept to a minimum.

[waalkwriter]

I think perhaps where I'm most differentiated from you Paul is that your view of the matter is so intensely serious. Which is a vague statement, but I think it comes to close to touching at where we split paths. There is a specific, and innate seriousness to your larger opinion, laced with a very narrow definition of practical importance which I'm not sure is feasible.

[waalkwriter]

Yes, I tend to be serious, which puts some people off. But I'm not completely dogmatic about practicality. I have more or less the reductionist view that most of the skills and tastes we possess came about through the process of natural selection and therefore have survival functions. We don't notice it most of the time because of our sense of free will. But this doesn't mean that we can't think of random things that have no usefulness that we find entertaining.

As a case study, I've been thinking about the role of humor in our lives. The last couple of nights I watched Jay Leno, and I've watched Jon Stewart many times. On the surface of their monologues, they're just trying to be amusing. At a deeper level, they're telling their audience how to interpret the day's news, chastising those who deserve it. Jon Stewart has amazingly morphed from a comedian to a de facto news anchor.

On a side note, Jay Leno mentioned a survey in his monologue: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/08/us-humour-nationalities-idUSTRE7563XB20110608. Germans are "the least funny nationality," which I've noticed on WLF (no offense, Mirabell).

Now we need a German humor thread. I must defend the Germans; while the Japanese are perhaps the funniest peoples, the Germans have a very unique blend of humor their own. Mirabell is very funny, if you understand his humor and his sarcasm.

[Eric]

Intense seriousness is an excellent quality to combine with a genuine sense of humour. All the really great comedians, such as Chaplin and the Monty Python team, often examined serious issues. For instance, Chaplin laughed at Hitler in a mocking way. The jokes of the stand-up comedian are often funny, but tend to be thrown out, one after the other, to keep the evening going.

Why I like "Harry & Paul" is because their humour is perceptive, as is that of the sketch show "Little Britain". The sketch there called "The Only Gay in the Village" is funny because it demonstrates perfectly the way some people want to be exclusive about something they are or have, and although they spend all their time preaching about it, they feel threatened if anyone else exhibits the same tendency. So the fat gay Welshman in the sketch is quite shocked when the barmaid suggests that there might be another gay in the village, as the gay in the village wants to retain his status as the only one. The sitcom "Keeping Up Appearances" is also excellent as it examines the snobbery and sleaze of the British class system.

I'm not so happy with Jon Stewart, as I feel he guides the audience too much, assuming them to need Uncle Jon to guide them when interpreting the day's news. He is maybe more of an American thing, because he jars somehow. He keeps mentioning his Jewishness as often as Stephen Fry over in the UK mentions his being gay. Being Jewish isn't as big a thing in Britain as in the USA, so maybe that also doesn't resonate with me.

But let it never be forgotten that most German humour came from Jews, as, indeed there are a large number of assimilated Jews in both the USA and Britain who in the comedian and wit business, everyone from Phil Silvers to Woody Allen.

Where Mirabell falls down as a "comedian" is that he makes personal attacks, but does not always realise when you get back at him in a more subtle way. He also gets entirely obsessive about a number of politically correct things such as racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and so on. He appears to feel that ladies need chaperoning, which is an amusing trait in itself. But he may be wrong there. I do believe that ladies can stand up for themselves. And he tries to convince himself that I am an anti-Semite, which is not so hilarious when you consider the fact that I, a goy, have actually learnt basic Yiddish. What does he think I want to do with it? Infiltrate Jewish circles? No, humour must be observant, subtle and should not involve baying hounds and personal attacks.

That last paragraph also fits in with my aesthetic credo. As I suggested above, seriousness and humour have a symbiotic relationship.

[waalkwriter]

Intense seriousness is an excellent quality to combine with a genuine sense of humour. All the really great comedians, such as Chaplin and the Monty Python team, often examined serious issues. For instance, Chaplin laughed at Hitler in a mocking way. The jokes of the stand-up comedian are often funny, but tend to be thrown out, one after the other, to keep the evening going.

Why I like "Harry & Paul" is because their humour is perceptive, as is that of the sketch show "Little Britain". The sketch there called "The Only Gay in the Village" is funny because it demonstrates perfectly the way some people want to be exclusive about something they are or have, and although they spend all their time preaching about it, they feel threatened if anyone else exhibits the same tendency. So the fat gay Welshman in the sketch is quite shocked when the barmaid suggests that there might be another gay in the village, as the gay in the village wants to retain his status as the only one. The sitcom "Keeping Up Appearances" is also excellent as it examines the snobbery and sleaze of the British class system.

I'm not so happy with Jon Stewart, as I feel he guides the audience too much, assuming them to need Uncle Jon to guide them when interpreting the day's news. He is maybe more of an American thing, because he jars somehow. He keeps mentioning his Jewishness as often as Stephen Fry over in the UK mentions his being gay. Being Jewish isn't as big a thing in Britain as in the USA, so maybe that also doesn't resonate with me.

But let it never be forgotten that most German humour came from Jews, as, indeed there are a large number of assimilated Jews in both the USA and Britain who in the comedian and wit business, everyone from Phil Silvers to Woody Allen.

Where Mirabell falls down as a "comedian" is that he makes personal attacks, but does not always realise when you get back at him in a more subtle way. He also gets entirely obsessive about a number of politically correct things such as racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and so on. He appears to feel that ladies need chaperoning, which is an amusing trait in itself. But he may be wrong there. I do believe that ladies can stand up for themselves. And he tries to convince himself that I am an anti-Semite, which is not so hilarious when you consider the fact that I, a goy, have actually learnt basic Yiddish. What does he think I want to do with it? Infiltrate Jewish circles? No, humour must be observant, subtle and should not involve baying hounds and personal attacks.

That last paragraph also fits in with my aesthetic credo. As I suggested above, seriousness and humour have a symbiotic relationship.

Jon Stewart has a persona, the funny, quirky Jew, if you will. It's not because he's Jewish, but that he's turning himself into the object of sarcasm, he is a part of the humor. I think it's quite brilliant, when the comedian is a part of the act, and his persona is part of the humor, it adds more layers.

[Mirabell]

And he tries to convince himself that I am an anti-Semite.

Actually, I don't. Actually, I said that this was, and I quote myself, "obviously not" the case. Of all the things I think you are, anti-semitic is not it. Clearly, you make use of some patterns, but let's be fair: you're not an anti-semite, and I said so repeatedly. For example in this post http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/showthread.php/1921-Yiddish-Literature?p=16644#post16644. Yes, I used the word, but look at what I actually said. Magic.

Please stop lying. It's so much more constructive. Lying is not expressing an opinion, you know. It's just lying. Didn't your mother teach you that?


So the fat gay Welshman in the sketch

You realize that he's not actually gay? Is this a pattern? You claim to have seen/read/heard something, but if you scratch just a bit, there's nothing but witty veneer covering a rotting block of wood?

[waalkwriter]

I don't think Eric lies. Perhaps sometimes his opinionatedness gets the better of him, but that's the extent of it. As far as anti-Semitism is concerned, that's ingrained in British culture (and many others), and there's no escaping it. You seem particularly sensitive about Judaism and Zionism, while some of us are not. Frankly you seem ready to blow your top about almost any statement about Jews. No one can say Jews are good writers, because that's a form of racism. No one can say they oppose Zionism, because that's a form of racism. Although technically you may not have called Eric an anti-Semite, you're insinuating it with your actions.

Now I think you're inserting words into mirabell's mouth as well. I think of Eric as a high-brow form of Sarah Palin; it's not that he's lying, it's just that he says whatever is convenient for his purposes and doesn't really care if it is factually accurate or not. The fact that when mirabell does take the time to provide new sources, (more accurate ones), or correct the lie, Eric is merely unphased and continues making his inaccurate assertions, is what makes him so frustrating and unsatisfying to debate such points with, (in politics at the very least). It's sort of like Sarah Palin mangling the accepted history of Paul Revere continuing to argue the point, or to continue to repeat disproven statements merely because they fit his convenience and preexisting world view.

Either way, this isn't the place for another personal pissing match between the two. This is about people's personal esthetics. I really don't agree with your evolutionary literary theory. Can you even defend such a theory? Highlight it's truth? Etc?

[Mirabell]

Although technically you may not have called Eric an anti-Semite, you're insinuating it with your actions.

I don't think he is one, and he never says the things you list here; your comment has nothing to do with the things Eric writes, whatever he's guilty of, this is not it (GOd I don't want to defend him). I may be insinuating that other people have antisemitic tendencies, but not Eric.

[Mirabell]

It's sort of like Sarah Palin mangling the accepted history of Paul Revere continuing to argue the point, or to continue to repeat disproven statements merely because they fit his convenience and preexisting world view

Very accurate assessment.

[Mirabell]

You just called Eric a liar, which is a very strong claim..

No, man, it's simple logic

For example. One of the two cannot be true: 1) Eric reads German newspapers regularly and 2) he can't find analysis of the nuclear power situation there

he claimed both, but both cannot be true.

there are two solutions to this: 1) he's too stupid to read, or 2) he's a liar.



Or this: he claims 1) I called him an antisemite and 2) he remembers the post I linked to above.

he claimed both, but both cannot be true.

there are two solutions to this: 1) he's too stupid to read, or 2) he's a liar.



It's his pick, but it's not about opinions. Let's be clear about this.

I cannot be fucked to debate this any longer. But there are many more of those.

Simple logic. Opinions are not facts. Facts are not opinions. Eric keeps building his opinions on inaccurate information, although I'm sure he knows better sometimes (and now and then there's proof of this fact), which invalidates his opinions to an extent. Facts are not opinions. Just repeat this a few times.

[Eric]

Now back to the subject of the thread.

[Mirabell]

If this is all you're really saying, fine. Just remember that it's much harder to change an opinion that you consider to be incorrect than reciting facts. Debate isn't simply a matter of reciting facts.


No, but without everyone keeping to the facts, debate is impossible. How can I discuss where to put the wallpaper, when we can't agree on where the walls in this apartment are?

I don't want to change people's opinions (although I enjoy debate), but I'm afraid I react very badly to people disputing the facts without anything to back up their claims. These kinds of people are described in this segment (can you see which one's Eric?)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7GBwO3_czc

[Mirabell]

If this is all you're really saying, fine. Just remember that it's much harder to change an opinion that you consider to be incorrect than reciting facts. Debate isn't simply a matter of reciting facts.


I think opinions can't be incorrect. I think your logic may be faulty, whatever, but only fact can be incorrect. I think that these days, by Palin, Eric et al, the line is blurred too much. You can also debate facts, but the burden of proof is different. For debating an opinion, all you need is reason. For debating facts, you gotta have sources and stuff. It's worth remembering the distinction. Palin and Eric keep presenting false facts, and when called on it, say that they have a right to their opinion.

[Eric]

Now, to get back to our aesthetic credos, I, unlike Paul from what I gather, am a Christian. In other words, I believe in God and those things in the Creed and the Bible. This isn't the place to start a whole debate about whether God exists, as this would indeed be a form of thread-spoiling, something I don't like.

Being a Christian does not mean you have to automatically start reading tons of mediaeval poetry or T.S. Eliot because he was CofE. Even though I do so on occasions. I like to keep my religious views, like my political ones, separate to a large extent from my aesthetic ones.

As a somewhat right-wing person, I do occasionally have to convince myself that, for instance, a poet who has been a Communist most of his life, like the Finland-Swede, Gösta Ågren, can be read as a poet. He can. He covers everything from political matters, rights, to mysticism and nature poetry. Another Finland-Swede, also with a Communist background, writes in far too simplistic and overtly political a manner for my taste. This is Claes Andersson, who probably did more good for the various parties he represented in parliament than as a poet. Here, I feel I am making an aesthetic judgement: Andersson preaches too much in his poems. That is legitimate in a speech in parliament, but becomes trite as poetry.

[Eric]

Paul says in #162:



My point is that these are what caused imagination to become a prevalent human trait. Other aspects of imagination, such as those manifest in the arts, can be seen as side effects from an evolutionary standpoint. My argument boils down to the basic idea that you wouldn't have the arts at all if the same skills weren't already there for survival purposes.


Until we actually die (and I have no intention of doing so just yet) we will not know whether there is an afterlife with nice little Swedenborgian bungalows, or whether this is all the fantasy of a Swedish scientist. But both the fact that we are conscious of anything at all, and the fact that we create art, a useless activity for direct survival, are mysteries that intrigue me too.

*

[Mirabell]

Only boors and misfits ... pretend "it was all a joke".

Of the two of us, who keeps backing out and claiming 'humor'? I haven't done it once. Clearly you know yourself well, since you describe yourself in perfectly accurate terms.

This is not about opinions, it is about facts. I have not contested your opinions, I have contested facts. I think mixing the two is contemptible and pre-enlightenment. The Palin example wasn't mine, it was Jake's (just a few posts earlier). I like to debate within contexts. It's sad that you don't.

I will repeat this one last time


without everyone keeping to the facts, debate is impossible. How can I discuss where to put the wallpaper, when we can't agree on where the walls in this apartment are?I presented a logical case for my opinion, you rant, and use red and blue fonts. For an adult, it's a bit odd. Are you sure you're not Eric Dickens' 12 year old son/daughter? You sure behave like a 12 year old who does not get his or her lollipop. Would an adult react like that? Would an adult have such difficulties understanding the difference between facts, fiction and opinion? I don't know.

[Mirabell]

Sorry, I thought you were talking about Sarah, but you meant Michael Palin. You should be more explicit. Wasn't it Marie Antoinette (not Sarah Palin) who said: "Let them eat fruitcake!" And who was it, maybe Napoleon (?), who said: "An army marches on its fruitcake"?

By the way, who is Jake? I can't see a post by him. We shouldn't divulge the identities of our comrades, even though the man aspiring to take over the world is indeed called Eric (though not Charles) Dickens.

This is much better. I like you when you're more the harmless old man in the retirement home, firing 'clever' shots, while taking meds so he doesn't forget where to go number 2. =) See? This we can handle.

[Eric]

So, who is Jake?

[Eric]

Thank-you, Paul. I've cleaned my postings here up a bit in the spirit of reconciliation. Hope other people do likewise. Let's focus on our personal aesthetics.

[Eric]

To continue where I left off on #168, I'd like to add a few things about my aesthetic credo. So ultimately, religion and politics can be taken out of the equation, but a key thing for me is whether an author has got his or her heart in the work. So even if the book is not innovative or brilliant, it can satisfy me if it is somehow the whole and wholesome work of someone who believes in what they are writing.

I like a novel to be multilayered. So however stark and simple the text may look at first glance, I like there to be an inkling of something more than the mere plot. So anything from hints at mysticism to an underlying scheme of psychological examination can make a novel for me. I can read postmodernist novels (have indeed translated a few) but I am just as happy to read more realistic works. I very rarely read any form of strip comic nowadays, except the occasional bit of Tintin for relaxation. I find that when people turn a famous novel into pictures in sqaures, they are only able to tackle one aspect of the novel, as often happens when filming one, leaving a host of nuances untackled.

But poetry demands a number of diiferent things. For me, a poem is usually short and has to compress things. I am not keen on long ballads and poems of the length Whitman of Ginsberg's, as I feel that Dickinson or Frost manage to say as muh in what are mostly much shorter poems. Most of my favourite poets write poems up to about ten stanzas. This is no hard and fast rule, but tends to repeat itself in poets I enjoy most, such as Trakl, van de Woestijne, de la Mare, Mörne, Yeats, Lesmian and perhaps a dozen or so of my favourite poets.

That's a few things. I'll try to return to this subject as it is food for thought.

I do not like reading plays much, the exception being Strindberg. I feel that plays are for the theatre.

But I like essays, as they can highlight aspects of life and letters. They remind us that there is criticism and analysis beyond our soundbite world of the newspaper review, however useful such things are.

[waalkwriter]

I recall your assertion Paul that something written by a completely alien species would be utterly incomprehensible to us. Contrary to that, I think it would be difficult and frustrating, but fascinating at the same time.

I also want to make some comments on your last comment Eric, but don't have time right now. I do you think you hit at something that's hard to put in concrete terms, which is that natural and easy-flowing confidence does show in writing, as does the heart the writer put in it. So much modern American fiction comes off as very forced to me, as lacking the, I feel crucial, ingredient in good writing: a healthy dose of arrogance and a healthy dose of imperfect prose. Too much conscientious working and editing on prose might make it a technical masterpiece, but it can also make it stifling. I'm sure mirabell might burst a blood vessel at this statement, and some other people snicker in derision, but this is the problem I have with George Saunders.

I've said it before, but I've never had poor writing throw me off a story and character I liked and was interested in. Never. Even in the midst of some pretty terrible writing. But there have been plenty of times, too many in fact, where excellent writing did nothing for me because I didn't like/lacked interest in the character and story being told by that writing. That's simply an inevitability of personal taste, and I might be a bit on the picky side. I do love works with some sort of supernatural element, or science far beyond our understanding. I say this because when you encounter such works, they mean that you're not entering a world where the machinations are predictable; the fictional world doesn't work as you understand our world to, and it has a way of engaging the reader and pulling them farther into the fiction, as well as offering opportunities to show/imagine differing human environmental interactions that say a great deal about human behavior, sometimes making rather non-intuitive points.

[waalkwriter]

I increasingly prefer essays to fiction. I never liked reading poetry or plays much, though some poems, or parts of poems, possess a unique beauty that can't be found elsewhere. The irony is that, for a picky reader like me, it's no easier finding good essays than it is finding good fiction. It seems that very few writers can write anything well on a sustained basis. I know this offends some people, but I don't mind being labeled a snob.

Gore Vidal never disappoints, the same with Lionel Trilling and Edmund Wilson. And G.K. Chesterton, (did i get that right?), is also often worth reading. But that comment confirms my opinion. You suffer from a deplorable excess of seriousness. But that's just me. I couldn't make myself want to get out of bed each day if all I had to look forward to was reading essays. Imagination is the essence of life for me, if not life itself.

[waalkwriter]

I've read most of Vidal's essays and don't think he holds up well. He has interesting things to say about politics because he came from a political family and grew up in Washington, D.C. I find him better as a conversationalist or interviewee, which allow him to express his wit more spontaneously. He's a shameless name-dropper, but has known an awful lot of important writers.

It's pretty normal for someone your age to get all fired up about imaginative things - fanciful stories, harebrained ideas, etc. Eventually you'll come back to earth, if it hasn't been blown up by then.

That's the problem; you're so dripping with disdain for anything that doesn't match your serious view that it's maddening. Do you want to know the main thing I've discovered over the last few years? It's that our everyday world is nothing but an imagined reality of commonplace perceptions. There is no coming down to earth; everything is human delusion, most of it quite universal. I'm far airier and less down to earth than I was 4-5 years ago. I see no reason not to. When there's need, I can always float back down a for a little while, but most of time is spent as you term it, in the clouds. Your viewpoint is thoroughly depressing to me. You totally lack spontaneity, wonder, and open-mindedness, not in taste per say, but in the worldview you hold toward art in general.

I think Vidal never has interesting things to say about politics; almost never. He's a bitter, bitchy political columnist, mainly carrying out and acting out his silly childhood grudges against the Roosevelt's and the idea of the U.S. as internationally involved country. He rarely makes acceptable or logical arguments, and his conspiracy-theory flaming, isolationism, and friendship with people like Timothy McVeigh make him a a LaRouche/Nader/Ron Paul idiot. While I can read his political essays because of how well and forcefully he writes them, I'd never go so far as to call them 'interesting.' I read Vidal for his literary criticism. It's there that he has interesting things to say, and makes brilliant points, though he still comes off as a tremendous bitch of an asshole. His best essay is probably American Plastic: Matters of Fiction.

Of course, I shouldn't complain about his politics. They are more sensible than Noam Chomsky's, an exceptionally overrated intellectual, vague and colossally absurd idea of anarchistic socialism, wherein society runs through a hundred thousand different worker owned enterprises with no central authority to organize resources or force necessary sacrifices to be made.

[waalkwriter]

I actually like his bitchiness. Very, very few smart people speak out articulately and honestly about anything these days. It's almost as if there's a national contest to see who can deliver a message with the greatest amount of obfuscation, the least content, well-hidden disingenuousness and the most platitudes, with a couple of crowd pleasers for applause. This seems to apply to everything, not just politics. Truman Capote was a great bitch too.

And almost as arrogant as Vidal. I don't like his bitchiness on serious political issues, but I do kind of like it on his culture wars essays and discussions of the vapid, narrow-minded and boring beliefs of middle class middle Americans.

[waalkwriter]

As you might expect, I kind of like Vidal's Euro-snob attitude. I'm amused by Mirabell's apparent awe of American writers (though I can understand disliking Germany on multiple levels). For the most part, this is still the Wild West, complete with fart jokes. Whatever his views, Vidal exhibits a polish you don't often see here.

Mirabell has never expressed a dislike of Germany or German literature. On the contrary he's shown a deep appreciation of various modern and past German poets, from Goethe to Celan, as well as fondness for popular children's writers like Kaestner and Ende, and other modern writers like Boell and Gunter Grass.

[waalkwriter]

Yes, but he seems to be studying American poetry and often expresses envy towards those who are studying it here. Apparently he's unhappy with his advisor, too.

There's nothing wrong with American poetry, and it would seem logical that the place to study it would be America.

[waalkwriter]

But I still don't see how you can't see that Gore Vidal's opinions have more to do with his own petty grudges; he's perhaps the most vindictive human being I've ever come across. He's opinions seem to be more his ways of expressing that. Why else would he be such a prominent defender of McVeigh? I'm surprised someone like you likes Vidal; politically he represents the worst traits of European leftism, coupled with his own unique stringent American isolationism, which wouldn't seem to be something that would sit well with you, who is always referring to America as a cultural backwater and as not interactive enough.

But really the way you constantly bash America is massively ignorant in it's own manner. America is not a cultural wasteland, there are a wide spread of cultures here, all working together quite peacefully and almost seemlessly, something that isn't imaginable in most European countries. Beyond that, I think your point is that blue collar/white collar American culture doesn't appeal to you, but that doesn't make it an inferior culture. No, it doesn't take many risks, and yes, it's more based on the idea of attaining material rather than intellectual comfort, but neither of those things justify the crude and continuous cultural bashings you dish out. I'm hardly a defender, or some avid patriot, but it gets on my nerves. I live in the middle of the deep south, in a middle class white community. And I don't think you have even the beginnings of an idea as to what it's culture is or how things function socially here, which makes it ridiculous to me that you label areas you dn't know and understand as deficient, and label other areas not to your liking and therefore also culturally inferior. You seem to just like Europe because it's, by a degree of perhaps 5%, culturally different than America and therefore fresh to you. That's fine, but try to make a point with your bashing. As it is it's aimless, frivolous, and not backed up by anything you say, it's just a platitude you toss around. This is an issue for another thread, but I wanted to make that note here. If you want to discuss it, I'd love to debate the matter on a separate thread.

[waalkwriter]

Not to keep up with this personal criticism, but I find it ironic that you, who always complains about America's cultural insularity and lack of ideological diversity, are retiring in perhaps the most racially and culturally homogenous area of the United States, (not that I don't think Vermont is a lovely place). It's a place that suits you; quiet, beautiful, out of the way, extremely well educated, artsy, politically almost all liberal, so you're effectively settling down in an enclave of people you feel more of a connection with. That's an insular attitude of it's own, but a natural one, one that is part of being human. I don't see any other part of America as being different than that. It's not that I disagree with you; I have so many criticisms to make on the cultural state of America, but the point is I think you take your callous remarks too far to be reasonably defensible, and they are far too subjective, (yet you don't treat them as subjective). It's better to criticize specific elements, and to do so with understanding and open-mindedness, rather than to resort to snobbish, whole-hearted dismissal.

[waalkwriter]

I would likely agree with your take on all of those. I would only disagree with the conclusions you make from them.

[Eric]

There have been a lot of postings on this worthwhile subject since I last wrote, so I will start with #175:

An alien species, whether made out of 1,000 degree Celsius gas or conglomerations of bacteria, would have to have roughly similar joys and miseries to be comprehensible to us. For me, most science fiction, however good or bad, is a kind of costume drama of human (Earthling) problems, with species from another planet acting out human plays. That is why I read so little of it, as you can get the same drama without the green slimy creatures in Jane Austen or Thomas Mann.

Tepid writing doesn't necessarily put me off. I have explained that heart and region can impinge. But because people who are three times as old as Waalkwriter, like myself, have less time left on this planet, I don't feel like reading too much mediocre stuff.

I personally have no bone to pick whatsoever with American literature. The literature over there is simply different to that of Europe to an extent, and I have largely ignored the USA, busying myself with several European countries and a fairly random selection of authors over the past 35 or so years.

I do think it essential for American scholars and literary people to learn at least one non-English European language while young. And learn it beyond the dabbling stage. Because in my case I now get a lot out of being able to read German (which is by no means my main foreign language) so as to be able to see what Germans say about Germany, as well as read Thomas Mann and so on.

As for the USA being insular, it is pretty ironic that the last two novels I translated and the two forthcoming ones (all from tiny language Estonian) are being published by Dalkey and Northwestern, both in Illinois, as my fellow Brits seem indifferent to Estonian novels. I'm sure that there are lots of things wrong with the USA, but it's not all doom and gloom, as I have found out.

I don't read much American poetry, but I like Stevens, Dickinson and Frost, by my criteria of having their heart in what they say. But I cannot stomach the ramblers, i.e. Ginsberg and Whitman, whose volume is far too large for their subject matter and end up writing pick 'n mix catalogues of everything they perceive.

As for arrogance, I simply don't care whether I come across to some people as arrogant or bumptious. I try to honestly express my opinions, and with some elegance, rather than starting every posting with a "wow" or a "huh" and slagging people off, like certain people not to be named here.

I fear that Mirabell (I've mentioned him now) likes to excel in every field where others debate with him. He maybe can't stand it that some amateur sitting in Sweden actually reads things in German newspapers; he likes to be the WLF sole arbiter of everything German. This need for exclusiveness is much in evidence in his Shigekuni persona who doesn't deign to post considered appraisals to us plebs on this website, but writes long, often too long, reviews of books that he has read. Mirabell is a very serious person, and there I can accept him. But when a person starts ranting about "lies" as if I am an evil demon trying to trick fools, then I inevitably get annoyed. And I get exceedingly angry when he interrupts the flow of serious discussions with inane drivel. There is something unbalanced about someone who desperately wants to be taken seriously, then puts his foot in it at every juncture. Enough.

[waalkwriter]

There have been a lot of postings on this worthwhile subject since I last wrote, so I will start with #175:

An alien species, whether made out of 1,000 degree Celsius gas or conglomerations of bacteria, would have to have roughly similar joys and miseries to be comprehensible to us. For me, most science fiction, however good or bad, is a kind of costume drama of human (Earthling) problems, with species from another planet acting out human plays. That is why I read so little of it, as you can get the same drama without the green slimy creatures in Jane Austen or Thomas Mann.

I think it would be fascinating if they shared a totally different perspective than us and different set of environmental interactions. It would be incredibly difficult, but fascinating.

Besides that, have you ever thought that the reason for the, as you put it, "green slimy creatures" and "costume drama" is to turn the reader's eye to a subtly different part of the drama than you get out of Mann and Austen? The whole point is to change the human environment and investigate the human reactions in a different setting. It's not difficult to comprehend, in fact it's obvious at a very visceral level. I'll get back to you mirabell ranting later, because it requires a more extensive response than I feel like writing this late at night.

[Mirabell]

Mirabell has never expressed a dislike of Germany or German literature. On the contrary he's shown a deep appreciation of various modern and past German poets, from Goethe to Celan, as well as fondness for popular children's writers like Kaestner and Ende, and other modern writers like Boell and Gunter Grass.

I have a strong dislike of Germany, but I love German literature madly.

[waalkwriter]

I have a strong dislike of Germany, but I love German literature madly.

Huh. I thought you liked the country you lived in.

[Mirabell]

Huh. I thought you liked the country you lived in.


Nope. If I got a job at a college or sth. anywhere else, I would live there. I live here because I have to.

[Mirabell]

Huh. I thought you liked the country you lived in.


I stopped because I was bored of it, but I used to blog about my dislike http://shigekuni.wordpress.com/category/die-guten-deutschen/

[waalkwriter]

I fear that Mirabell (I've mentioned him now) likes to excel in every field where others debate with him. He maybe can't stand it that some amateur sitting in Sweden actually reads things in German newspapers; he likes to be the WLF sole arbiter of everything German. This need for exclusiveness is much in evidence in his Shigekuni persona who doesn't deign to post considered appraisals to us plebs on this website, but writes long, often too long, reviews of books that he has read. Mirabell is a very serious person, and there I can accept him. But when a person starts ranting about "lies" as if I am an evil demon trying to trick fools, then I inevitably get annoyed. And I get exceedingly angry when he interrupts the flow of serious discussions with inane drivel. There is something unbalanced about someone who desperately wants to be taken seriously, then puts his foot in it at every juncture. Enough.

This annoys me. So I'm going to go ahead and respond to it, and I'm going to call it out for the pile of narcissistic drivel that it is. I can't help but rude in responding to that kind of shtick, because there's no other way to deal with something like that. What Mirabell called you out for was that assertion. Quit playing the victim card for one. And for two, Mirabell pointed out that if you really know German so well, and follow German newspapers, you wouldn't be making such inaccurate assertions on major German issues that were covered in various major newspapers, (which he linked), and then you basically admitted that you only thoroughly follow one newspaper, and, surprise, it turns out to be a controversial far-right paper that even more conservative elements of the CDU have distanced themselves from.

That you go on to criticize his well-written and interesting book reviews covering every imaginable field and style of literature, most of which you haven't even read, if not almost all, is yet anther sign of your double-standard. You constantly claim to want serious debate, which is good, I'd support you if that were the case. But it isn't. A serious debate implies that you are engaging with other people's ideas, and in that field, you simply ignore them. When mirabell takes the time to post a link that discredits something you said, you simply continue on and repeat the same sentiment without even bothering to deal with the factual evidence presented against you. That is not a constructive serious debate, of the sort you claim to enjoy so much. Mirabell's not ranting, he's just frustrated by your constant hypocrisy. It's difficult to argue with a person who constantly strikes up long-winded debates and yet doesn't listen to the information and ideas given to him by the other side of the argument for whatever reason.

The fact that he makes off-topic statements sometimes is irrelevant. What's relevant is you of all people sending out personal emails to all the members bitching, bitching in the forum issues section, and telling other people to grow up in large multi-colored text because some people gave you a little prodding/off-topic sexual joking on a few threads in the general chat room. The only one I see who desperately wants to be taken seriously is you Eric, and you constantly put your foot deep in it by making statements that are easily proven to be factually inaccurate. The fact you feel you're in a position to call other users puerile, ignore their other, on-topic additions to discussion here, and then rant at mirabell, tells me you are the one who is unbalanced on this issue. All Mirabell is requiring of you is that you present honestly framed debates, and actually engage in them instead of pontificating and then pretending that you're interested in dealing with the factual assertions other people make, (or even in the fair logic that they're making), oh, and that you quit making ill-informed, racist, or at the very least, imperialistic, assertions about other cultures and nationalities.

Quit with the insults unless you want to make an honest attempt to be more constructive and to actually listen to other people and the ideas and information that they put forward. Cease bitching you two; it does nobody any good. At this rate we'll need a Yalta conference to settle things and get it calmed down to only a Cold War. It doesn't help invigorate the site as a community that is of interest for new users or old ones. It's not even interesting.

[Eric]

From what I can see from my newspaper perspective, Germany is going through a bad patch psychologically, despite having a good economy relative to many European countries.

But is it really that bad to live there? The danger with moving to get away from things is that it may be parts of yourself that you are running away from, and once you've settled down in your new country, you may realise that little has changed and that you are now hating the new country as you did the old one. I warned Lionel about this when he claimed to be hating Britain, and for him France had become the bee's knees. I have no idea whether he moved to France in the end.

Three years ago I never would have dreamed of moving back to Sweden full-time. I hated the country when I started to live more in Holland in the late 1980s. But I started to realise during the 2000s that I could see myself living permanently in Sweden. It had grown more cosmopolitan, less boring. The people have become somewhat easier to make contact with. And one key factor is speaking the language reasonably well. If you are Waalkwriter's age, you can move anywhere and have time to learn the language properly. But I feel too old for experiments. I've gone through those situations far too often where you hardly know the language and feel socially excluded.

But Mirabell, you are still relatively young. You could move to the States, Israel, Russia, or even another country where they speak German. Or one where they speak English. But as I said above, you must be realistic and not expect to be moving to paradise away from the perceived shithole where you live now. (Beethoven managed to stick it out for some while, though he died in Vienna.) You can escape to almost wherever you wish if you've got a good degree and have set your sights on academia.

[Mirabell]

From what I can see from my newspaper perspective, Germany is going through a bad patch psychologically, despite having a good economy relative to many European countries.

But is it really that bad to live there? The danger with moving to get away from things is that it may be parts of yourself that you are running away from, and once you've settled down in your new country, you may realise that little has changed and that you are now hating the new country as you did the old one. I warned Lionel about this when he claimed to be hating Britain, and for him France had become the bee's knees. I have no idea whether he moved to France in the end.

Three years ago I never would have dreamed of moving back to Sweden full-time. I hated the country when I started to live more in Holland in the late 1980s. But I started to realise during the 2000s that I could see myself living permanently in Sweden. It had grown more cosmopolitan, less boring. The people have become somewhat easier to make contact with. And one key factor is speaking the language reasonably well. If you are Waalkwriter's age, you can move anywhere and have time to learn the language properly. But I feel too old for experiments. I've gone through those situations far too often where you hardly know the language and feel socially excluded.

But Mirabell, you are still relatively young. You could move to the States, Israel, Russia, or even another country where they speak German. Or one where they speak English. But as I said above, you must be realistic and not expect to be moving to paradise away from the perceived shithole where you live now. (Beethoven managed to stick it out for some while, though he died in Vienna.) You can escape to almost wherever you wish if you've got a good degree and have set your sights on academia.

It's different. I know German culture and history really well, to a degree that I am in permanent rant mode about this country (see the blog link above), and it's hard to imagine me loathing another country as much. I am half Russian, and I have never met as many antisemites as when I traveled through Siberia with a random assortments of strangers on a train, but I guess I can see how every detail of public life here is pervaded by German present and past attitudes etc. Again, see the blog link I posted earlier. I wasn't kidding when I said that I live here because I have to.

[Eric]

And now Waalwriter's plaints.

German. My spoken German doesn't really exist. I am tongue-tied and get all the genders and other grammar wrong. My active vocabulary is poor. However, as you will discover as you learn languages to a serious degree of proficiency, there can be a remarkable gap between one's spoken knowledge and one's reading knowledge. Because I already know Dutch, which is a great boost, I have been able to work at my German on and off. And I can now read the papers, and even literature, though more slowly, as the vocabulary needs building up.

*

The newspapers I consult ("read" is the wrong word, as it implies cover to cover) are as follows: the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; the Sueddeutsche Zeitung; Die Welt; plus the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung. I cannot physically cope with any more, but frequently look at the websites of these four, almost daily, to see whether there is anything worth reading in more detail. As yesterday I found, for example,thwhile interview with the historian Winkler, who suggested that something I have earlier, namely that Germany expects others to get the chestnuts out of the fire, whilst doing little herself in Libya. So I don't feel alone in my opinions or eccentric. Others are on the same wavelength. And I even peep at Neues Deutschland occasionally to see what the others are thinking.

German just happens to be the language I'm concentrating on. I read articles in Spanish papers too, but I'm still at a lower level of language there.

*

Now, opinions. I don't mind people saying my opinions are drivel, as long as they analyse where they are. What I find unacceptable is when people call me a "liar" and then don't produce one shred of evidence. Calling someone a liar is an insult unless it happens to be true. I have never consciously fabricated anything on these threads to bolster my point of view. I could well have misinterpreted things when reading them too hastily. But a liar is a person who is deliberately misleading others, a serial criminal. Do you seriously think that such people would be posting here?

It is essential, in civilised debate, not to make generalised statements that amount to "it's obvious to anyone that you're wrong". Point out the precise mistake. Both Mirabell and Waalkwriter seem to avoid saying what is wrong. For instance, my more conservative points of view are not automatically wrong because I utter them, or because they are not what the Americans call "liberal". They are my opinions. You cannot claim logically that everything you say is the truth, while my utterances are falsehoods per se.

*

Reviews. I don't always appreciate many of Shigekuni's reviews because they are too long and rambling. A reviewer, especially one working for a newspaper, must seek to hone down what he says so that people can read it. Long-windedness is the bane at the other end of the continuum that starts with soundbite opinions. I've told Mirabell this on a number of occasions, so I hope something sinks in. I never say that Mirabell is a liar, as reviews are opinions. A review must stick to the point and not drag in too many irrelevancies.

*

I do object to a surfeit of off-topic statements. If you want to start a thread on a subject, then fine. And we do wander off the topic at times. But you should always have at the back of your mind: am I writing so frequently about other things that I am undermining the original topic of this thread and a discussion of it?

*

Shouting others down. Some recent contributions have been the equivalent of shouting others down, then sticking your fingers in your ears and saying la-la-la, as small children do to avoid hearing what their opponent has to say.

[Bubba]

That's the problem; you're so dripping with disdain for anything that doesn't match your serious view that it's maddening.

For all his "serious view," Waalkwriter, Paul's "disdainful" posts almost always make me laugh.

[waalkwriter]

For all his "serious view," Waalkwriter, Paul's "disdainful" posts almost always make me laugh.

No doubt they're always interesting.