Arthur Schopenhauer: Religion: A Dialogue, and Other Essays

 In the margin of "Psychological Observations", one of the essays in this collection, next to the sentence "It is true, indeed, that character always forms a consistent and connected whole; but the roots of all its qualities lie too deep to allow of our concluding from particular data in a given case whether certain qualities can or cannot exist together," I have scrawled angrily, "Ummm . . . then why do you do it so often?" (64).  This was neither the first nor the last time that Schopenhauer inadvertently revealed his blind spot in this collection, but it was the most suitably anecdotal.  The perceptiveness, objectivity, and rational acuity that he brings to bear resonate nicely with my own skeptical, even cold, nature.  He lacks, however, a certain quality, of which deficit he seems unaware, even as he sings its praises: perspective.  

I have written before about Schopenhauer being imprisoned in his own experience, but the irony in this collection is that he specifically praises the virtues of a broad perspective, even while failing to notice the walls of the well in which he is sulking.  He seems incapable of noticing the inconsistency of claiming that women are incapable of patience, and then on the same page proclaiming, "The course of our individual life . . . may be compared to a piece of rough mosaic.  So long as you stand right in front of it, you cannot get a right view of the objects presented.".  He proposes that "we can get a general view only from a distance," while stubbornly refusing to adopt such a distance himself (65-66).  

Thus is it that we find such glories of reason and objectivity as the titular dialogue on religion--incomparably and shockingly fair in its treatment--in the same volume as such grievously outdated items as "On Physiognomy", wherein he asserts that everything you need to know about a man is visible in his face.  When it comes to things he knows, Schopenhauer is incisive, fearless, and to my belief correct.  When he speaks of things of which he doesn't know, the results are far more mixed.  This is, of course, so normal and human as to be a solipsism, and not a problem in itself.  The problem is that Schopenhauer doesn't know what he doesn't know, and thus treats himself as an authority in areas where he is laughably oblivious.

Which fault makes me think about my own blindspots.  Both by nature and by nurture, I am pretty sympathetic to Schopenhauer.  I too look at the world, and see it as objectively evil and cruel, and furthermore especially evil and cruel to those like me who can see it clearly.  I too despair of reality, of human existence at least, and cannot keep quiet about it.  It's possible that I see one layer beyond what Schopenhauer can, that where my reasoning, education, or intelligence trail his, at least my perspective is broader.  I wonder, however, if I am falling into the same trap. Surely there is yet another exponent of this fractal that we inhabit, one beyond what I currently take into account.  What is it that I don't know I don't know?

Giacomo Leopardi: Canti

 Reality wears many faces.  Although I see it differently from Leopardi, rather as a diseased tree bearing poisonous fruit than a singing girl, the effect is the same.  We are seeing the same thing.  The void.  The unbearable pain of existence against which all we can do is wail out in the wilderness, bereft even of the hope that we will be heard.  

Which is my characteristically melodramatic way of saying, although I cannot relate to the specific triggers of Leopardi's existential angst--frustrated love, life in a dissolute world that shames the glories of the past, imprisonment in a body that will never do me credit . . . oh.  Yes, I see now.  Oh my. 

Mercifully, it is not only this despair that Leopardi and I share.  Like so many who face the void, we both can see something inside of it.  There is peace to be had, as he says, in helping others, in seeing our place, in drifting anonymously in a meaningless sea, and, although he mentions it surprisingly little, there is also peace to be had in writing something wonderfully melodramatic and throwing it to the wind.

Thomas Mann: Buddenbrooks

 "But little Hanno saw more than he was meant to see, and his eyes, those shy golden brown eyes ringed with bluish shadows. observed things only too well."

Little Hanno.  What could have happened if he had lived?  What would his life have been?  It's such folly to ask what happens after the final act of a play, after the curtain has drawn for the final time at night.  The answer is, of course, "The actors go home."  And yet we cannot but wonder what could have been for Hanno, if another life was possible for him, or for any of them.  If perhaps Tony could have been happy with her doctor, of Thomas with his flower girl.  We are even programmed to expect such an ending, to see in the gentle foreshadowing the possibility of some small happiness--in spite of the subtitle's warning: "The Decline of a Family".  No, happiness was not possible.  The world, and the book,  that they lived in would not allow it.

And yet, suppose it was possible for Hanno to escape.  I do not propose another ending of the book, but rather that Hanno escaped the pages of the book, the doomed story that was written for him.  If he were trapped, not in the pages of a novel, but rather in the real world, it's entirely possible that after his father's death, and the liquidation of the family business, his mother whisked him away to Munich.  There, safe from the pressures of business and the keeping up of burgher appearances, he could pursue work in a field more suited to his sensitive nature, perhaps studying writing or journalism.  Perhaps at the Technical University of Munich.  

Perhaps his writing would be well-regarded.  He might even publish a novel in his twenties that would later be cited as a reason for his being given the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Ah, dare we suppose that his sensitive nature might even find liberty in romance?  That his apparent love for the young Count Kai might find its adult expression?  No, this would be too much, even for the real world.  He would likely meet the external pressures of society and the internal pressure of his forbidden desires by marrying, perhaps a Jewish woman from an educated, well-regarded family.  Even this would likely not give little Hanno any rest, however.  A marriage of escape and denial is happy for neither party.  Besides which, the world would soon be at war.  

If not in marriage, perhaps there would be joy in parenthood, then.  As many as six children, what a joy!  And all of them marvelous, writers, actors, scholars, and one marine biologist who would go on to be known as The Mother of the Oceans for her tireless work in their behalf.  What joy this would bring, unless the world once again went to war.  Hanno's Jewish wife, and his refusal to compromise his morals, would surely make this period difficult as well.  They would have to escape, perhaps to America.

Finally, in America little Hanno would be free of the cruel European world that had held him under its thumb for 65 years.  That is, if it were not for the rise of McCarthyism.  He would be so many of the things they would hate, fearless, staunch, sensitive, and egalitarian.  No, this new world would offer no peace to a boy like Hanno.  He would have to return to Europe.  No doubt he would die there, aged 80.  

And so it was that Thomas Mann died twice.  He sealed himself in a book at the age of 25, and stayed there until his body caught up 55 years later.  His extensive journals reveal the upsetting ways his heart stayed, and will stay, forever in Lubeck, aged 15, holding the hand of his young friend the count, seeing more than he was meant to, and in the only small solace, finding a way to write it down.

Octavia E. Butler: Parable of the Sower

 I really wanted to like this book.  The characters were so vivid, the writing so fluid and honest, and the main character in particular so relatable. 

Like her, all I really want is to be heard.  My ideas make perfect sense to me, and I have devoted a lifetime to thinking them out, writing them down, and testing them in the brutal laboratory of life.  I'm not even attached to the idea that they are True or Right.  I would just love for someone to hear them without laughing or scoffing or backing away slowly, as though from a madman.  This world is terrifying and cruel, and at times seems to be teetering on the brink of exactly to the sort of collapse Butler describes.  In fact, her account of the fall of America seems entirely plausible.  The only thing that keeps me going most days is the possibility that I understand something real, something to which others are blind, and that I may have not entirely wasted my time here.  In so many ways, I am Lauren.  I feel her pain, her drive, and her clarity.  I would even be her if it were not for one thing:

Her ideas are sooooo stuuuuupid.

If there were any ring of truth in the ideas of Earthseed, which Butler presumably means to be taken in earnest, I would convert right now.  I'd change my official religion from Bokononist right this moment.  Where the book succeeds on every other level, however, it fails in this: to provide a philosophy any deeper than a flimsy NYT self help book.    I wanted so badly to get on board, to form an Earthseed cult and start recruiting.  At the very least, I wanted to enjoy this book.  But I  . . . seriously, I just can't.

Dances With Wolves

 I still remember the awe with which this movie was received when it was released, and being specifically struck with the gumption it must have taken for Kevin Costner to reveal his own bare buttocks (gasp!) on screen.  Some years after its release, I sat down to watch it with some friends on a battered VHS tape.  I fell asleep a quarter of the way through.

At least twenty-five years later, I can appreciate what I was unable to at the time.  The slow, vaguely European way the camera makes love to the scenery, in particular, was probably what put me to sleep at that first viewing, but finds a sympathetic audience in me now.  Unfamiliar as I was with the way indigenous people were usually treated in film, the novelty of a respectful treatment that gave agency to its subjects was also lost on me at that time.  

But I have missed the sweet spot where I might have truly appreciated this film.  I am too old and jaded to accept lovely cinematography as a justification for a film;  to me it is now merely frosting.  Likewise, I have become far too aware of the realities of Native American life to accept what was, at the time, rather a progressive approach.  The film is not as deplorable in its treatment as its predecessors, but still bears the marks of the white gaze, the noble savage trope, and the sanitization of complex issues. This film probably earned its accolades at the time, but while I am now prepared to stay awake for it, I cannot bring myself to bestow laurels today.

Mario Vargas Llosa: El Hablador

 When I last visited Llosa--has it really been over a decade?--I was tickled by the way I allowed myself to be confused by the identities and names of the different characters.  Was I an obtuse reader, who missed obvious markers early in the book and labored under an unintended misconception?  Was it a trick of language and/or translation?  Or was Llosa really clever enough not only to trick me, but to leave me wondering if I had actually tricked myself?

It is edifying to be able to report that not only is Llosa that clever (and correspondingly that I am not hopelessly obtuse), but that this cleverness has a theme, one that I merely suspected was intentional in La Ciudad y Los Perros, but occupies the very heart of El Hablador. It is, in fact, taken even further.  "Who is a person in relation to their name?" is broadened until the reader asks along with the various Habladores of the book, the writer, the narrator, and the eponymous speaker, "What is reality in relation to what is said about it?"

Llosa's answer, to the extent that he can be said to offer such a thing, is from a certain perspective, "Reality is what we say it is."  The stories that we tell about ourselves, our family, our culture, or reality itself, become real by virtue of the speaking.  Coy as ever, though, Llosa also allows himself a certain amount of wiggle room by offering multiple viewpoints and variations on the stories he tells here.  The central figure in the matroyshka of speakers, Saul, even peppers his stories with "Eso es, lo menos, lo que yo he sabido," a hedge that acknowledges the implicit fuzziness of the reality we create by speaking.  Which version is correct?  Which speaker is telling the truth?  And, as an important substrate, which view of important cultural and political issues is right and just?  It is no surprise that Llosa's answer is a non-answer, an irresolution, a return of the reader's gaze inward to ask "What has been said, Escuchador, what did it create for you?"