How is religion, specifically Christianity, like a science?
I'm a little ashamed to be posting the following few sentences on the internet. I'm just starting to write in this blog again, for myself more than anything else. I suppose I should type this material in a private journal or something, but the attitude of the times is to make everything public, and who am I to disappoint?
I'm ashamed because to publish a piece of writing is to claim some belief in its contents. And I'm not sure I yet believe anything I'm about to write, in this post or any succeeding. So, if you happen to stumble on my journal here, please bear that in mind.
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The thought that occurred to me just now, as I was reading Les Miserables, followed from a fascination with the kind of people who become pastors or priests.
27 September 2012
10 February 2010
Vocabulary, part trois
Effulgent - Shining forth brilliantly/radiant
The sound of a million voices suddenly crowds my head and interrupts my thoughts. An effulgence, terrible in its glory, adds to the confusion and the clamor of it all becomes so great that I stumble off the landing.
And when the hour is right, I will walk outside and say to the effulgent moon, "Thank you for coming; you're right on time."
I was cast out of my home, abandoned on the side of the road. After a few nights of wandering, I stumbled upon the cloaca of the city, the place they like to pretend doesn't exist.
When I woke up, hours later, I found myself face to face with the cloaca of a swan. I decided to stare into it, in the hopes of reading the future in this bird's anus.
Trenchant - Incisive or keen - as language or a person; cutting
Gandhi's words left no room for any more excuses from the British. The trenchant speech had done its work, and all that was left to do was wait and see if the truth would prevail.
Shakespeare, at his most trenchant in As You Like It, holds nothing back as his characters mischaracterize the concept of love in every way imaginable.
Haughty - Disdainfully proud, snobbish, supercilious
And as for the last of the children to enter the factory, Veruca Salt, she was both haughty and filthy rich; in just these two characteristics, she embodied things most admirable about the human race.
Okay, well, while Dan thought her pleasant enough, I, myself, found her to be haughty and woefully out of touch with what we've been trying to accomplish in this organization.
Askance (adverb) - 1. With suspicion, mistrust, or disapproval; or, 2. With a side glance, sideways, obliquely
She looked askance at her partner; I wonder how helpful he'll be, she wondered, when the days grow shorter and the temperature colder than anything in his experience. For all his proclamations, he had yet to prove himself in any substantive way.
As I sat, I noticed askance that she was sitting at the far end of the table.
Gelid - Very cold, icy
The crisp gelid air that touched our bare skin brought proof enough that our lives had been spared.
After cooking the pasta for over three minutes in the microwave, I was less than ecstatic about finding a large hunk of gelid penne pesto in the middle of my bowl.
Delectation - Delight, enjoyment
There was a hint of delectation in her eyes, and I, much relieved, saw that she was enjoying the party.
I have fond memories of the delectation I once found in eagerly anticipating the next great event in my life. Especially when I was much younger, with so few years in my experience, a surprise hiding 3 weeks out of sight provided enough raw material for my imagination to revel in its mystery and build it to a mythical height.
Diaphanous - Very sheer and light; almost completely transparent or translucent
A light, diaphanous veil fluttered mildly in the breeze coming off the ocean. I had no thoughts of what lay on the other side; rather, I watched and breathed and listened, wondered about the mystery of there being no mystery at all.
I considered for a while and decided to by the more diaphanous curtain. I hate feeling claustrophobic when I take a shower.
Tawny - Dull yellowish brown
She had left a bunch of stuff in the attic, mostly boxed up except for the huge piles of old tawny packages which held our family pictures and old documents.
My desk is mostly a rich dark brown except for the few spots that time has worn away to leave a mild tawny.
Cant - Insincere conventional expressions of enthusiasm for high ideals and piety; 2. The phraseology of a certain class, era, group, etc.
I'm tired of the cant that is constantly being vomited up by politicians on either side of the aisle. I'm not disgusted, really, just tired.
This particularly priest was well-known in his principle role as the church fundraiser. He believed in the morals he preached little more than the most cynical trader on wall street. His homilies, cant as they were, were easily seen through and readily dismissed.
Comminate - To threaten with divine punishment or vengeance
The anti-gay marriage protest, bringing wrath upon their elected officials, deluded themselves into thinking they had the power to reenact the commination of the pharaoh.
As one walked through the small town, one would ultimately find the idyllic scene broken at the approach to the small chapel which held a loud, offensive, comminating preacher and a terrified congregation, lost of its critical faculties.
Maladroit - Unskillful, awkward, bungling, tactless
And here we find Edgar, maladroit, having been asked to help clean the house, he mops the floor in dirty sneakers and washes the dishes with laundry detergent.
How did we end up on the street? Outside, not in. Counting snowflakes instead of enjoying the Chandlers' Christmas party? Well, one maladroit comment from Theodore left all the partygoers with gelid (!) hearts and daggers in their eyes. We left promptly.
Mien - Air, bearing, or demeanor
Our server's mien teetered on the edge between crazy and dangerous. Mabel and I ate quickly, left a hefty tip, and got the hell out of there.
The effortlessness and compassion that radiated out of her performance bespoke a gentle, kind mien, a defining bit of her personality that was later confirmed in our early conversations.
Rapine - (ra-pin or ra-pahyn) The violent seizure and carrying off of another's property; plunder
The rapine alone that accompanied the soldiers' arrival in the small town was enough to discredit the idealistic cant spewing out of the army's talking heads on television.
America, with its long history of manifest hypocrisy and rapine, was, not surprisingly, gearing up for yet another war.
Cupidity - Excessive desire, esp. to possess something; greed; avarice
The future of mankind will be entirely dependent on the extent of man's ability to overcome the cupidity that is rampant in our current societal structures.
Her features were marred by an irrepressible cupidity; she could not live without the complete satiation of her ever-increasing desires.
Lambent - Running or moving lightly over a surface; dealing lightly and gracefully with a subject, brilliantly playful; softly bright or radiant
The lambent moves of the ice skater, embodying fluidity and grace, impressed the audience, watching on their TV sets.
When discussing the plays of Arthur Miller, however, our host came alive. Her conversation, witty and lambent, entranced us all.
Through the fog, the nearing coast could hardly seen. We thought all was lost until a soft point of light, lambent and lovely, appeared out of the nothingness.
08 February 2010
Vocabulary, cont.
Gormandize (both transitive and intransitive) - To eat greedily or ravenously
The body, a large amorphous heap of fur, with roughly defined face and arms, was found dead at the scene of the crime; witnesses report that approxamitely 1 hour before the murder, he was seen and heard gormandizing one T. Count's prized cookie collection. Lawyers for Mr. Count were unavailable for comment.
There's Charles, in the corner of the restaurant. Do you see him? He's hard to miss. This is where he squanders his family's fortune; he destroys his health every night, gormandizing until dawn.
Unctuous - Characterized by excessive moralizing or piousness, esp in an affected manner; smooth, suave and oily
Father Brown, expostulating on one or another of his favorite Catholic talking points, was sure to scare up the cash needed to close the budget gap. Unctuous to his very core, the priest, even still, believed every word he said.
The body, a large amorphous heap of fur, with roughly defined face and arms, was found dead at the scene of the crime; witnesses report that approxamitely 1 hour before the murder, he was seen and heard gormandizing one T. Count's prized cookie collection. Lawyers for Mr. Count were unavailable for comment.
There's Charles, in the corner of the restaurant. Do you see him? He's hard to miss. This is where he squanders his family's fortune; he destroys his health every night, gormandizing until dawn.
Unctuous - Characterized by excessive moralizing or piousness, esp in an affected manner; smooth, suave and oily
Father Brown, expostulating on one or another of his favorite Catholic talking points, was sure to scare up the cash needed to close the budget gap. Unctuous to his very core, the priest, even still, believed every word he said.
How do these people even get on television? Who cares to hear their unctuous screeds, demonizing the underground conspiracy of homosexuals and communists?
Peevish - 1. Cross, querulous, or fretful, as from vexation or discontent
2. Showing annoyance, irritation, or bad mood
3. Perverse or Obstinate.
Sometimes I get a peevish response from her. She doesn't like some of my jokes, I think.
Peevishness rises to the surface and pushes my closest associates still farther away from me. They know that something lies at the bottom of my bad temper, but I dare not let them get close enough to find it out.
Orison - A prayer
Orisons rise from the lips of a scattered species.
She need not speak for the orisons I find in her eyes.
Serried - Pressed together or compacted
A tin of serried sardines sits half-eaten on the dining table. The stench, four weeks building up, is overpowering. I die a little for the few minutes I spend amid the decay.
We wait outside for her to emerge from the backstage doors. Our bodies are serried to an extent which makes it difficult to breathe. I will realize much later that I might as well have gotten the autograph of the girl standing next to me; I could have left an hour earlier with at least one signature.
Incipient - Beginning to exist or appear; in the early stages
The decision in Brown v. Board of Education revealed to the nation's consciousness the incipient civil rights movement. One year later, Rosa Parks and the bus boycott proved that the times were changing.
Our incipient romance was riddled with cliches. My knack for conversation (whatever it may or may not have been) turned quickly into a knack for saying things I knew to be true only because I had seen them writ large on a movie screen.
Bevy - a large group or collection
[A bevy of DVDs filled the closet. I watched three of them this year. ] - This is the best thing I've written thus far in my blog.
A bevy of journalists crowded the press secretary. Would or wouldn't he acknowledge the will of the people? Of what use is representative democracy
Contumely - Insulting display of contempt in words or action
The contumely of jazz musicians is legendary. I've encountered it less than I would have expected, the attitudes of hack trumpet players having been a poor presage of reality.
I was determined to keep any sort of contumely from my thoughts and actions. If I were to succeed in that one thing then I could not possibly be defeated.
Our incipient romance was riddled with cliches. My knack for conversation (whatever it may or may not have been) turned quickly into a knack for saying things I knew to be true only because I had seen them writ large on a movie screen.
Bevy - a large group or collection
[A bevy of DVDs filled the closet. I watched three of them this year. ] - This is the best thing I've written thus far in my blog.
A bevy of journalists crowded the press secretary. Would or wouldn't he acknowledge the will of the people? Of what use is representative democracy
Contumely - Insulting display of contempt in words or action
The contumely of jazz musicians is legendary. I've encountered it less than I would have expected, the attitudes of hack trumpet players having been a poor presage of reality.
I was determined to keep any sort of contumely from my thoughts and actions. If I were to succeed in that one thing then I could not possibly be defeated.
05 January 2010
New words
Here I am, late at night, writing again. I'm trying to learn some more English vocabulary here at the start of 2010. I figure, if I'm not yet willing to put in the time to learn another language, the least I can do is actually know my own.
This blog entry may get a little tedious.
Here goes:
Gall - noun - impudence, effrontery - verb - To vex or irritate greatly
I'm trying to work myself up over the course of recent events, as, short of the adequate provocation, I'm not usually one to have the gall to insult my boss.
The scene set by these relics; my old house, the chain link fence surrounding the lawn, our neighbors' monstrosity of a building violation; now all reduced to a speck in my rearview mirror, nothing left to gall me except the prospect of returning once more and remembering what lies behind all my impostures.
Cynosure - Something that strongly attracts attention by its brilliance or interest; or something serving as a guide
I see it in the distance, the rot of modern civilization; shitpile to some, cynosure to me and my companions, the entire city's waste stains the horizon before us.
He reluctantly admits that she has become a cynosure to him, heralding the return of his set aside faith in humanity. He is tired of his judgments and tired of his disdain. Our time on the Earth may end, he thinks, along with the very concept of value, and the holding dear of even a single life. Yet still, even in that looming possibility, I will die with a prayer on my lips and not a curse, the most elegant skies for the wretchedest bile.
Fain - gladly/willingly
I had been seen by the pamphleteers. No time left for a quick escape, I ran towards them, insinuating by my gesticulations that I fain would speak to them for a while, but for my great haste and wild demeanor. They gave me a brochure, put in a kind word for jesus and reminded me that anything, ever, that I might need to know would be found in the bible. They were also taking bets on the date of the rapture. I put $20 on May 3rd, remembering that I had enough money left in my savings to double down, should my wager go south.
Surfeit - Excess, an excessive amount; and excessively full feeling (of food and drink); a disgust or unease at excess/fullness. Verb (no object) - to indulge to excess in anything - Verb (w/ object) To bring to a state of surfeit by excess of ____
We are surrounded by surfeit. Each American moment is saturated and spilling over. The spirit chokes and the soul starves. Poverty and violence, violence and poverty.
And as I stay weeks and months in the mountains, I surfeit on the feeling of solitude. The stale memory of the suburbs helps me to rationalize away my responsibilities.
The last days of the reunion serve only to surfeit Laura, as she finds herself yearning for the present; she is underwhelmed by the past.
finished at 4:15 am
This blog entry may get a little tedious.
Here goes:
Gall - noun - impudence, effrontery - verb - To vex or irritate greatly
I'm trying to work myself up over the course of recent events, as, short of the adequate provocation, I'm not usually one to have the gall to insult my boss.
The scene set by these relics; my old house, the chain link fence surrounding the lawn, our neighbors' monstrosity of a building violation; now all reduced to a speck in my rearview mirror, nothing left to gall me except the prospect of returning once more and remembering what lies behind all my impostures.
Cynosure - Something that strongly attracts attention by its brilliance or interest; or something serving as a guide
I see it in the distance, the rot of modern civilization; shitpile to some, cynosure to me and my companions, the entire city's waste stains the horizon before us.
He reluctantly admits that she has become a cynosure to him, heralding the return of his set aside faith in humanity. He is tired of his judgments and tired of his disdain. Our time on the Earth may end, he thinks, along with the very concept of value, and the holding dear of even a single life. Yet still, even in that looming possibility, I will die with a prayer on my lips and not a curse, the most elegant skies for the wretchedest bile.
Fain - gladly/willingly
I had been seen by the pamphleteers. No time left for a quick escape, I ran towards them, insinuating by my gesticulations that I fain would speak to them for a while, but for my great haste and wild demeanor. They gave me a brochure, put in a kind word for jesus and reminded me that anything, ever, that I might need to know would be found in the bible. They were also taking bets on the date of the rapture. I put $20 on May 3rd, remembering that I had enough money left in my savings to double down, should my wager go south.
Surfeit - Excess, an excessive amount; and excessively full feeling (of food and drink); a disgust or unease at excess/fullness. Verb (no object) - to indulge to excess in anything - Verb (w/ object) To bring to a state of surfeit by excess of ____
We are surrounded by surfeit. Each American moment is saturated and spilling over. The spirit chokes and the soul starves. Poverty and violence, violence and poverty.
And as I stay weeks and months in the mountains, I surfeit on the feeling of solitude. The stale memory of the suburbs helps me to rationalize away my responsibilities.
The last days of the reunion serve only to surfeit Laura, as she finds herself yearning for the present; she is underwhelmed by the past.
finished at 4:15 am
24 December 2009
Thoughts on Blood Meridian and Violence
I finished reading Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian a few days ago. I'm not sure what to make of it. Upon first setting the novel down, in the immediate aftermath of the murder in the outhouse and the gleeful pirouettes of the towering, albino Judge, I felt certain I had just finished reading something weighted with great meaning. I considered what, exactly Judge Holden stands for. Is it evil? Is it violence? Are these two things different (I think not...)
An interesting passage (the pontificating is Holden's, the laconic responses, the kid’s):
I tell you this. As war becomes dishonored and its nobility called into question those honorable men who recognize the sanctity of blood will become excluded from the dance, which is the warrior's right, and thereby will the dance become a false dance and the dancers false dancers. And yet there will be one there always who is a true dancer and can you guess who that might be?
You aint nothin.
You speak truer than you know. But I will tell you. Only that man who has offered up himself entire to the blood of war, who has been to the floor of the pit and seen horror in the round and learned at last that it speaks to his inmost heart, only that man can dance.
Even a dumb animal can dance.
The judge set the bottle on the bar. Hear me, man, he said. There is room on the stage for one beast and one alone. All others are destined for a night that is eternal and without name. One by one they will step down into the darkness before the footlamps. Bears that dance, bears that dont."
........
“The dance,” life and conflict, as seen through the Judge’s warped paradigm, is always a violent thing. Without war (can I use war interchangeably with violence? I think I can...), the dance is meaningless to him. This makes sense literally, if he is a personification of violence. Were life not inherently violent, he would, of course, not be any part of it.
The phrase starting, “And yet there will be one...,” is difficult to parse through. At first, it seemed sloppily written to me, but I think I’ve figured something out about it, so far as I have been able. The phrase is ostensibly self-referential, and this is reinforced by the kid’s response – “You ain’t nothin.”. If it is true, though, that Judge Holden is he “who is a true dancer,” then he is the less for it. For then he is only one man among many, and two things call this possibility into question. First, textually, the Judge’s response, “You speak truer than you know,” indicates that he accepts the kid’s charge of his being nothing, and by accepting this he imbues himself with the intangibility and omnipotence of a god. Second, we have already seen that the book sets him up as a symbol for violence, that it is of this that his godhood consists, and so he has long since ceased to appear to be only one man.
So, that “one” does not refer to the Judge, but instead, I think, refers to the kid. The Judge gives himself away when he says “Hear me man.” His last big speech is an entreaty to the only figure in the book not completely taken by his philosophy. It seems to me that, despite the fact that Holden wins the physical fight at the end, he fails here in his final attempts to persuade the kid to accept life by his rules, the rules of violence.
What good comes of this, though? The kid still ends his life little more than a mess left in the bathroom by the previous occupant. He rejects the logic of war only to become its victim.
Violence wins again. It dictates the order of nature. I wonder, this truism, that violence is inescapable, is it adult reality or childish fantasy? I can imagine Dick Cheney’s answer to this question. I can imagine the answer of the man who recently suggested to me that we should have sent the army into Iran during the hostage crisis, or that we should nuke the same country as a sort of punishment for their atomic ambitions, welcome them to the welcome them to the elite group of bomb-holding nations.
Is a world without war possible, I think, is what I'm trying to get at. If it is possible, then the book (or, at least, the Judge and all the characters subsumed by his all-encompassing violence-as-character) seems to lack the moral imagination necessary to conjure what such a world might look like.
To answer this question, it is necessary to understand what are the causes of war, of violence. This is a question that, by my first reading, doesn’t seem to be present in McCarthy’s book (written later- on second thought, the Judge's story about the salesman and the traveller delves into this territory). Violence is....what? Action without empathetic regard? Or action that works against what a moment of empathy would illuminate? I think I’ll take that. I prefer a broader definition than something that would be provided by a more physical definition.
So what causes a lack of empathy? Ignorance seems an obvious answer. Fear, too, comes to mind. And most importantly, violence is typically a reaction to violence, is it not? Fear, I think, is itself caused by violence. People fear terrorism because of violence. They fear illegal immigration because they fear losing their own jobs, a fear that is itself caused by the violence done upon them by their employers, cutting benefits, downsizing to maximize profit, etc.
Hmmm... Argument needs work. A good start, though.
Anyways, it has been commented that there is no interiority to any of the characters in this novel. There is no empathy for us to have, then. Any empathy we, as readers, feel depends on our constructing an inner life for these hellish men that simply isn't present on the page. There are a few moments that belie this point. I wonder if they do, truly, or if they are purposely misleading.
For example, the moment in which Toadvine threatens to shoot the Judge for murdering the Apache child. The scene is made more terrible because the Judge has acted lovingly toward the youth for a few pages or so; he bounces the child on his knee, plays with him, and he is scalped the next morning. An indignant Toadvine sticks a gun in the Judge’s face. Now, does he act out of a moral sense for the child’s well-being or out of societal assumptions that killing children is wrong? Seeing as Toadvine has, at this point, participated in the slaughter of whole camps of Indians, the first seems unlikely. Rather, it appears he has only been psychologically trained to be disgusted by the Judge’s breaking of a rule of civilization. The Judge's refusal to acknowledge any difference between murdering a child and murdering adults (I think I agree with this, by the way) reminds Toadvine that his morality is a fool's morality, and he lowers the gun.
I actually think the first of the two possibilities is true. True enough, Toadvine's decision not to kill the Judge, I think, is because he sees the hypocricy of his threat, comes to realize that his only reason for feeling disgust is that the Judge has broken a social convention by loving and then murdering a child and that this is little different from his (Toadvine's) own murderous activities (probably including the murder of children, without the knee-bouncing). However, as for his first impulse to confront the Judge, it is more the case that Holden’s display of affection served to humanize the child for a moment and this led to Toadvine's caring for his well-being. It is empathy that prompts Toadvine’s rebellion, but it is quickly suppressed, and he decides not to shoot.
This is what seems to happen.
I can’t decide if this moment is meant to emphasize the decision not to shoot (and the idea that morals are only social norms) or the urge to shoot in the first place (in which case there is a hint of empathy in the novel, however brief). I lean towards the first, but accept the second as possible.
A quick note: I recognize the contradiction that connects Toadvine’s urge to kill the Judge with empathy (and, therefore, peace, as I’ve defined it). Remember, though, the Judge is not a real being. He is violence personified, not a living, breathing man with thoughts and emotions of his own. Doing violence to him is not violence at all, since there is no interiority to be had there, and thus nothing to empathize with. It is worth mentioning that such a man does not exist in reality. A description of the Judge: “Whoever would seek out his history through what unraveling of loins and ledgerbooks must stand at last darkened and dumb at the shore of a void without terminus or origin and whatever science he might bring to bear upon the dusty primal matter blowing down out of the millenia will discover no trace of any ultimate atavistic egg by which to reckon his commencing” (309-10). I read this two ways. Either, the Judge – violence – has always existed and always will, or, by his own words, is nothing at all, a childish fantasy.
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Another thought-
If violence is a lack of empathy, then book, Judge, and violence are one in the same.
I like this idea, but I think it’s questionably true. If the book itself IS violence, then it's effect would have to be damaging to my psyche somehow (since what else could it affect?), and I'm not convinced that it is. Violence only begets more violence; does the book do this? Not as far as I can see.
And that leaves me puzzled. If the book is violent and ultimately vacuous, inflating its own self-worth, than I remain skeptical of its greatness; beauty, yes, and wealth of ideas, sure, but hollow, in the end. I’m unsure whether this is or isn’t the case.
Finished 12/27/09
An interesting passage (the pontificating is Holden's, the laconic responses, the kid’s):
I tell you this. As war becomes dishonored and its nobility called into question those honorable men who recognize the sanctity of blood will become excluded from the dance, which is the warrior's right, and thereby will the dance become a false dance and the dancers false dancers. And yet there will be one there always who is a true dancer and can you guess who that might be?
You aint nothin.
You speak truer than you know. But I will tell you. Only that man who has offered up himself entire to the blood of war, who has been to the floor of the pit and seen horror in the round and learned at last that it speaks to his inmost heart, only that man can dance.
Even a dumb animal can dance.
The judge set the bottle on the bar. Hear me, man, he said. There is room on the stage for one beast and one alone. All others are destined for a night that is eternal and without name. One by one they will step down into the darkness before the footlamps. Bears that dance, bears that dont."
........
“The dance,” life and conflict, as seen through the Judge’s warped paradigm, is always a violent thing. Without war (can I use war interchangeably with violence? I think I can...), the dance is meaningless to him. This makes sense literally, if he is a personification of violence. Were life not inherently violent, he would, of course, not be any part of it.
The phrase starting, “And yet there will be one...,” is difficult to parse through. At first, it seemed sloppily written to me, but I think I’ve figured something out about it, so far as I have been able. The phrase is ostensibly self-referential, and this is reinforced by the kid’s response – “You ain’t nothin.”. If it is true, though, that Judge Holden is he “who is a true dancer,” then he is the less for it. For then he is only one man among many, and two things call this possibility into question. First, textually, the Judge’s response, “You speak truer than you know,” indicates that he accepts the kid’s charge of his being nothing, and by accepting this he imbues himself with the intangibility and omnipotence of a god. Second, we have already seen that the book sets him up as a symbol for violence, that it is of this that his godhood consists, and so he has long since ceased to appear to be only one man.
So, that “one” does not refer to the Judge, but instead, I think, refers to the kid. The Judge gives himself away when he says “Hear me man.” His last big speech is an entreaty to the only figure in the book not completely taken by his philosophy. It seems to me that, despite the fact that Holden wins the physical fight at the end, he fails here in his final attempts to persuade the kid to accept life by his rules, the rules of violence.
What good comes of this, though? The kid still ends his life little more than a mess left in the bathroom by the previous occupant. He rejects the logic of war only to become its victim.
Violence wins again. It dictates the order of nature. I wonder, this truism, that violence is inescapable, is it adult reality or childish fantasy? I can imagine Dick Cheney’s answer to this question. I can imagine the answer of the man who recently suggested to me that we should have sent the army into Iran during the hostage crisis, or that we should nuke the same country as a sort of punishment for their atomic ambitions, welcome them to the welcome them to the elite group of bomb-holding nations.
Is a world without war possible, I think, is what I'm trying to get at. If it is possible, then the book (or, at least, the Judge and all the characters subsumed by his all-encompassing violence-as-character) seems to lack the moral imagination necessary to conjure what such a world might look like.
To answer this question, it is necessary to understand what are the causes of war, of violence. This is a question that, by my first reading, doesn’t seem to be present in McCarthy’s book (written later- on second thought, the Judge's story about the salesman and the traveller delves into this territory). Violence is....what? Action without empathetic regard? Or action that works against what a moment of empathy would illuminate? I think I’ll take that. I prefer a broader definition than something that would be provided by a more physical definition.
So what causes a lack of empathy? Ignorance seems an obvious answer. Fear, too, comes to mind. And most importantly, violence is typically a reaction to violence, is it not? Fear, I think, is itself caused by violence. People fear terrorism because of violence. They fear illegal immigration because they fear losing their own jobs, a fear that is itself caused by the violence done upon them by their employers, cutting benefits, downsizing to maximize profit, etc.
Hmmm... Argument needs work. A good start, though.
Anyways, it has been commented that there is no interiority to any of the characters in this novel. There is no empathy for us to have, then. Any empathy we, as readers, feel depends on our constructing an inner life for these hellish men that simply isn't present on the page. There are a few moments that belie this point. I wonder if they do, truly, or if they are purposely misleading.
For example, the moment in which Toadvine threatens to shoot the Judge for murdering the Apache child. The scene is made more terrible because the Judge has acted lovingly toward the youth for a few pages or so; he bounces the child on his knee, plays with him, and he is scalped the next morning. An indignant Toadvine sticks a gun in the Judge’s face. Now, does he act out of a moral sense for the child’s well-being or out of societal assumptions that killing children is wrong? Seeing as Toadvine has, at this point, participated in the slaughter of whole camps of Indians, the first seems unlikely. Rather, it appears he has only been psychologically trained to be disgusted by the Judge’s breaking of a rule of civilization. The Judge's refusal to acknowledge any difference between murdering a child and murdering adults (I think I agree with this, by the way) reminds Toadvine that his morality is a fool's morality, and he lowers the gun.
I actually think the first of the two possibilities is true. True enough, Toadvine's decision not to kill the Judge, I think, is because he sees the hypocricy of his threat, comes to realize that his only reason for feeling disgust is that the Judge has broken a social convention by loving and then murdering a child and that this is little different from his (Toadvine's) own murderous activities (probably including the murder of children, without the knee-bouncing). However, as for his first impulse to confront the Judge, it is more the case that Holden’s display of affection served to humanize the child for a moment and this led to Toadvine's caring for his well-being. It is empathy that prompts Toadvine’s rebellion, but it is quickly suppressed, and he decides not to shoot.
This is what seems to happen.
I can’t decide if this moment is meant to emphasize the decision not to shoot (and the idea that morals are only social norms) or the urge to shoot in the first place (in which case there is a hint of empathy in the novel, however brief). I lean towards the first, but accept the second as possible.
A quick note: I recognize the contradiction that connects Toadvine’s urge to kill the Judge with empathy (and, therefore, peace, as I’ve defined it). Remember, though, the Judge is not a real being. He is violence personified, not a living, breathing man with thoughts and emotions of his own. Doing violence to him is not violence at all, since there is no interiority to be had there, and thus nothing to empathize with. It is worth mentioning that such a man does not exist in reality. A description of the Judge: “Whoever would seek out his history through what unraveling of loins and ledgerbooks must stand at last darkened and dumb at the shore of a void without terminus or origin and whatever science he might bring to bear upon the dusty primal matter blowing down out of the millenia will discover no trace of any ultimate atavistic egg by which to reckon his commencing” (309-10). I read this two ways. Either, the Judge – violence – has always existed and always will, or, by his own words, is nothing at all, a childish fantasy.
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Another thought-
If violence is a lack of empathy, then book, Judge, and violence are one in the same.
I like this idea, but I think it’s questionably true. If the book itself IS violence, then it's effect would have to be damaging to my psyche somehow (since what else could it affect?), and I'm not convinced that it is. Violence only begets more violence; does the book do this? Not as far as I can see.
And that leaves me puzzled. If the book is violent and ultimately vacuous, inflating its own self-worth, than I remain skeptical of its greatness; beauty, yes, and wealth of ideas, sure, but hollow, in the end. I’m unsure whether this is or isn’t the case.
Finished 12/27/09
23 November 2009
Eroica
I have a memory of my Form and Analysis professor walking the class through the form of one of Beethoven's piano sonatas. It was interesting to see what rules he breaks, to read through an extended coda.... What stuck with me, though, was a comment our professor made regarding the ability of Beethoven's contemporaries (the audience, more or less) to hear the return of the tonic as it repeats throughout the piece. I'm still skeptical that the average Austrian listener could hear the changes going by in his symphonies; but on the other hand, I'm sure Haydn could hear the music progressing, or whoever else may have been listening with trained ears. I wonder if musical training in the early 1800s entailed learning to hear chord progressions. Were listeners able to hear what was going on on a first listen or only at subsequent performances? A difficult feat even in our time, but back then, who knows when you would get a chance to hear his first symphony again. Would you have to wait a year? Two? Maybe you could find a piano reduction? Or you could make your own reduction out of the score...? Ouch.
Hmmm.... A thought just occurred to me. Maybe the anger (anger?) or criticisms flung at great composers such as Beethoven stemmed from the audience's not being able to hear the changes. Maybe you learned to hear the theme repeat (at the dominant? relative minor? I don't remember the standard form...) in more typical classical works and when Beethoven's piece would modulate to the minor sixth, or something odd like that, it threw his listeners out of their comfort zone, giving them the experience I imagine everyone has now when they listen to a symphony; that is, they don't know what the fuck's going on. Even most musicians, I think, just hear themes repeating, recurring motifs; I'm sure some can hear that a modulation has taken place, but I'm also sure that few (at least, those without perfect pitch) could tell you to which key the orchestra has moved.
Did more people have perfect pitch in the nineteenth century? I guess that depends on when their musical training began and how much ear training was involved.
So, anyways, I've decided to try and get more out of my listening of classical music, starting with Beethoven's symphonies, starting with the Eroica, starting with the first movement....of the Eroica. Play, pause, play, pause, rewind, play, rewind, play. I'm trying to do it without a piano as much as possible, but a couple times I've given in. I finally know what the first chord is after the Eb major chord (a second inversion g diminished chord). This is exciting.
Two hours later.... I've finished with 6 minutes of the first movement (really, that's cheating, though, since the first 3 minutes repeat without any changes...), and I roughly know the chords as they're going by. The piece is really stunning. I'm pretty sure this project is going to be a success, since already I feel like I'm appreciating what I'm listening to a lot more. I wish I had learned this in school.
So many neat things. The dissonant large chords I now know to be (ready?) diminished chords on top of the tonic. So, F# diminished over Bb. I love how every section builds ineluctably to a chord you can't see coming. A lot of...chord, up a half step diminished, up a half step-chord, up a half step-diminished, and a lot of lines, even some rotations. Some of it reminds me of Charlie Parker. And I love the little punch on the last Bb7 chord right before the restatement of the...exposition? I think? I can't remember what it's called. And who cares?
I just had an interesting thought about music, tangentially related. I've been reading a number of essays about Ulysses that explore the relationship (or lack thereof) between signifier (word) and signified (that to which the word refers). I'm not as up on my literary theory as I'd like, but I think this has to do with post-structuralism.....? Anyway, the cool thing, I guess, according to these papers, about Ulysses is that it starts to dismantle the relationship between words and their objects in the "real" world. The words are, sometimes, content to refer to themselves, to gererate meaning through their sounds and their relationships to one another. I'm not sure I agree with all of this, or if I've got it all right (too, it is getting pretty late, so I'm not thinking totally clearly). Something about Derrida....
In any case, the whole idea about signifier and signified will, I promise, pull me back to Beethoven eventually. So Joyce's next book Finnegans Wake makes little immediate sense beyond the associations it pulls up in the reader's mind; the sound of the words, the portmanteaus, the vague undercurrent of the text, a collective unconscious recreated. My point is that, when reading it, I imagine one can make little sense of the signifiers (words) themselves but, at the same time, can get some general impression of what they collectively signify, or at the very least, create a signification of one's own, regardless of Joyce's intent (....well, honestly, this seems to be his intent). The result, with this book and with, to a lesser extent, Ulysses too for that matter, is very different from a reader's usual novel-reading experience. Here is what I'm getting at (blah blah blah blah): The reader doesn't understand the sentences (or even the words sometimes), but reaches a meaning, nevertheless.
Like music, right? Most listeners don't understand the harmony. Even most professional musicians don't follow the chordal movement of Beethoven's symphonies without some preparation first, and even then...
So, here we have a lay audience that is probably consciously missing even the repetition of motifs but still appreciates the beauty of the sounds, and we have an audience of musicians who recognize the musical ideas (words) but consciously are unaware of the progession of keys. Or, even if they are aware of the harmonic movement, they (myself included) don't know exactly what key they're in at any given moment.
So that's 99% of all listeners who aren't able to put the words they're hearing into sentences. How many books could you stomach reading in that manner? Concerts are only so long for a reason. Read beautiful nonsense for more than two hours straight and see how patient you can be.
So, a first step; now I can hear-read the sentences of the first 6 minutes of Beethoven's 3rd. Time for bed. Far past time for bed.
Hmmm.... A thought just occurred to me. Maybe the anger (anger?) or criticisms flung at great composers such as Beethoven stemmed from the audience's not being able to hear the changes. Maybe you learned to hear the theme repeat (at the dominant? relative minor? I don't remember the standard form...) in more typical classical works and when Beethoven's piece would modulate to the minor sixth, or something odd like that, it threw his listeners out of their comfort zone, giving them the experience I imagine everyone has now when they listen to a symphony; that is, they don't know what the fuck's going on. Even most musicians, I think, just hear themes repeating, recurring motifs; I'm sure some can hear that a modulation has taken place, but I'm also sure that few (at least, those without perfect pitch) could tell you to which key the orchestra has moved.
Did more people have perfect pitch in the nineteenth century? I guess that depends on when their musical training began and how much ear training was involved.
So, anyways, I've decided to try and get more out of my listening of classical music, starting with Beethoven's symphonies, starting with the Eroica, starting with the first movement....of the Eroica. Play, pause, play, pause, rewind, play, rewind, play. I'm trying to do it without a piano as much as possible, but a couple times I've given in. I finally know what the first chord is after the Eb major chord (a second inversion g diminished chord). This is exciting.
Two hours later.... I've finished with 6 minutes of the first movement (really, that's cheating, though, since the first 3 minutes repeat without any changes...), and I roughly know the chords as they're going by. The piece is really stunning. I'm pretty sure this project is going to be a success, since already I feel like I'm appreciating what I'm listening to a lot more. I wish I had learned this in school.
So many neat things. The dissonant large chords I now know to be (ready?) diminished chords on top of the tonic. So, F# diminished over Bb. I love how every section builds ineluctably to a chord you can't see coming. A lot of...chord, up a half step diminished, up a half step-chord, up a half step-diminished, and a lot of lines, even some rotations. Some of it reminds me of Charlie Parker. And I love the little punch on the last Bb7 chord right before the restatement of the...exposition? I think? I can't remember what it's called. And who cares?
I just had an interesting thought about music, tangentially related. I've been reading a number of essays about Ulysses that explore the relationship (or lack thereof) between signifier (word) and signified (that to which the word refers). I'm not as up on my literary theory as I'd like, but I think this has to do with post-structuralism.....? Anyway, the cool thing, I guess, according to these papers, about Ulysses is that it starts to dismantle the relationship between words and their objects in the "real" world. The words are, sometimes, content to refer to themselves, to gererate meaning through their sounds and their relationships to one another. I'm not sure I agree with all of this, or if I've got it all right (too, it is getting pretty late, so I'm not thinking totally clearly). Something about Derrida....
In any case, the whole idea about signifier and signified will, I promise, pull me back to Beethoven eventually. So Joyce's next book Finnegans Wake makes little immediate sense beyond the associations it pulls up in the reader's mind; the sound of the words, the portmanteaus, the vague undercurrent of the text, a collective unconscious recreated. My point is that, when reading it, I imagine one can make little sense of the signifiers (words) themselves but, at the same time, can get some general impression of what they collectively signify, or at the very least, create a signification of one's own, regardless of Joyce's intent (....well, honestly, this seems to be his intent). The result, with this book and with, to a lesser extent, Ulysses too for that matter, is very different from a reader's usual novel-reading experience. Here is what I'm getting at (blah blah blah blah): The reader doesn't understand the sentences (or even the words sometimes), but reaches a meaning, nevertheless.
Like music, right? Most listeners don't understand the harmony. Even most professional musicians don't follow the chordal movement of Beethoven's symphonies without some preparation first, and even then...
So, here we have a lay audience that is probably consciously missing even the repetition of motifs but still appreciates the beauty of the sounds, and we have an audience of musicians who recognize the musical ideas (words) but consciously are unaware of the progession of keys. Or, even if they are aware of the harmonic movement, they (myself included) don't know exactly what key they're in at any given moment.
So that's 99% of all listeners who aren't able to put the words they're hearing into sentences. How many books could you stomach reading in that manner? Concerts are only so long for a reason. Read beautiful nonsense for more than two hours straight and see how patient you can be.
So, a first step; now I can hear-read the sentences of the first 6 minutes of Beethoven's 3rd. Time for bed. Far past time for bed.
04 November 2009
Faheev
Regardless of the lateness of the hour, 2:53 AM Pacific Standard Time, what might Doug Carter say in response to a knock at the door, a casual greeting?
I did it! I finished rereading the Ithaca episode. One chapter to go, the early morning ramblings of Molly Bloom.Before proceeding, has he any thoughts regarding the penultimate episode of the ultimate modernist Irish novel?
He has.
And they are?
That his (Doug's) earlier apathy has diminished: that he (Joyce) is wickedly mundane in concluding his Odyssey, quite the opposite of his beautifully transcendent ending to "The Dead": that, to him (Bloom), all men and women should live in comfort, as much as possible, and thus is his humanism affirmed: that, to the other (Stephen), his comfort should come with the removal of all demands made of him by aforementioned men and women, and thus is his aestheticism affirmed.
Favorite passages?
Yes, many. All are too long too quote. Despite this, one will be reproduced, impractical though the reproduction may be.
Reproduced when?
Henceforth:
"Why would a recurrent frustration the more depress him?
Because at the critical turningpoint of human existence he desired to amend many social conditions, the product of inequality and avarice and international animosity.
He believed then that human life was infinitely perfectible, eliminating these conditions?
There remained the generic conditions imposed by natural, as distinct from human law, as integral parts of the human whole: the necessity of destruction to procure alimentary sustenance: the painful character of the ultimate functions of separate existence, the agonies of birth and death: the monotonous menstruation of simian and (particularly) human females extending from the age of puberty to the menopause: inevitable accidents at sea, in mines and factories: certain very painful maladies and their resultant surgical operations, innate lunacy and congenital criminality, decimating epidemics: catastrophic cataclysms which make terror the basis of human mentality: seismic upheavals the epicentres of which are located in densely populated regions: the fact of vital growth, through convulsions of metamorphosis from infancy through maturity to decay.
Why did he desist from speculation?
Because it was a task for a superior intelligence to substitute other more acceptable phenomena in place of the less acceptable phenomena to be removed.
Did stephen participate in his dejection?
He affirmed his significance as a conscious rational animal proceeding syllogistically from the known to the unknown and a conscious rational reagent between a micro- and a macrocosm ineluctably constructed upon the incertitude of the void.
Was this affirmation apprehended by Bloom?
Not verbally. Substantially.
What comforted his misapprehension?
That as a competent keyless citizen he had proceeded energetically from the unkown to the known through the incertitude of the void." (696-7)
In light of the lateness of the hour, was it worth typing the preceding passage?
Doubtful.
Why?
The extended quotation lacks context.
Any final thoughts?
It seems that, contrary to what I wrote earlier in this post, there are transcendent bits of writing, but all are couched in the unaffected questioning of the God-narrator.
Temperature?
It still leaves me a bit cold, notwithstanding the warmer moments spent examining the past in Bloom's mind, moments such as all sections concerning Milly's childhood. Warm yet sad is Rudolph Bloom's fragmented suicide note; Affecting, draining. It feels as if there should be a moment of silence, please, for the grief of Leopold, surviving son (of Rudolph) and surviving father (of Rudy). Cold and sadness envelop pockets of warmth. Modernism. Everyman (Bloom) in the modern world (Joyce's Ulysses).
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