Sometimes our own experience gives us unique insight and perspective that the world needs to know about. Sometimes it blinds us to the kernel of truth and leads us astray from it. In this movie, I would say that both are true. Stone's own experiences in Vietnam no doubt made him uniquely qualified to create this film, and justify the existence of yet another in the "War is Hell" genre, even after Apocalypse Now should have had the final word. Unlike that masterpiece though this film feels like it lost its way about halfway through. I could put no finger on exactly why or where, until reading Pauline Kael's analysis: "too much poetic license, and too damn much romanticized insanity ... The
movie crowds you; it doesn't leave you room for an honest emotion." That's it exactly. The film feels just grounded enough in authentic human experience and emotion, thanks in large part to Sheen's masterful performance, to promise something better--something real--but then loses itself in the effort to become Art. Each piece is a part of a slightly different puzzle, and they never come together in a way that feels whole. A good movie, but not great.
Tuesday, January 16, 2024
Platoon
Yunus
It is to be hoped that the return to opening with بِسْمِ اللَّهِ signifies something less of an invective than At-Tawbah.
1: It is somewhat surprising that Hulusi doesn't have much to say about opening with the mysterious الر ۚ. Perhaps he agrees that their meaning is to remain unknown.
2: One might call this the thesis statement of the book. In Western dialectic, it would be followed by some statement of connection or purpose, but hopes are slim for that here, and we will likely digress, only for the connection to be revealed later.
3-4: I expect to learn more about Hulusi's fixation with ق in the book that bears its name. For now, no other translator that I am referencing seems concerned with it here.
5-6 One begins to see where this is going. If Allah created the sun and the moon, surely it is no stretch for him to use a prophet. There is also the hint of a theme: the cycles of life, of creation and rebirth.
7-8: Another seeming non sequitur, no doubt to be connected later.
9-10: The sense is of one unbothered by the demands of so-called unbelievers, challenging them to fuck around and find out.
11: Hulusi consistently renders لِقَآءَنَا as "returning", which is a bit of a stretch, but consistent with the themes developed earlier.
12-13: The connection: this is not the first time a prophet has come, nor the fist tiime he has been doubted and rejected.
14: A bit problematic theologically, and not unique to the Quran. What need does the divine have to "see ho it goes"?
15-17: Sound logic, if one takes the victories of Mohamad as "signs".
18-21: So far all much sounder and gentler reproof than in previous books.
22-24: A new expression of an existing theme, and a reminder of the bigger picture. The mysteries of everything are revealed in nature, and there is no need for intercessors. Allah has created the moon and the sun both. The waves and the wind, the rain and the drought. All of these are signs, and one must have perspective to understand them.
25: This problem of predestination and divine appointment remains problematic and unsolved.
26-29: An almost comedic takedown of the idolators
30-36: So much for idols.
37-39: A series of persuasive, but subtly fallacious, arguments:
- This book is just a continuation of what has been revealed already. It must be from Allah.
- You think you can do better? Go ahead.
- Don't forget what happened to people who didn't believe in the past . . .
40-44: A bit of protesting too much. The more you say, "I don't care," the more we suspect that you do.
45-46: A bit of support for the theme of the meeting with Allah being a return, according to the natural order. This بِلِقَآءِ is mentioned rather a lot in this book, and I don't recall it being so phrased elsewhere.
47: This is the argument that I would use: there is always a prophet. If not me, then who is it?
48-52: Another more sound argument: "Oh, you want to see now, do you? Be careful what you wish for."
53-56: Hard to see this as anything other than demagoguery though.
57: Hulusi's interpretation of رَّبِّكُمۡ opens up quite a deep well here. If it is within us, as he maintains, then the return is simply a moment of clarity with one's self.
58-61: It remains unclear what the reasons for inventing certain proscriptions were.
62-66: A summary of the reasons for this book: don't forbid what Allah has allowed, and don't use idols. Eerily parallel to certain passages in the Greek scriptures. One definitely feels that this book was not entirely meant for a modern audience, and designed specifically to address concerns that are no longer relevant.
67-70: Fairly specific, and the target is clear.
71-73: I don't recall this moment in Genesis. One of my favorite things about this project is this sort of elaboration on existing stories.
74-87: This more closely parallels the Judaeo-Christian account.
88-90: I don't recall Pharaoh saying this haha. It brings one back to the literal meaning of Muslim.
91-92: This would be more convincing if the doubters had then been summarily eaten by snakes or something, a la Moses. This religion is less interested in such signs, however. It considers the witness of the natural world and that of our own higher self to be sufficient.
93-97: There can be no argument against this, especially as so succinctly put in 94.
98: What good are signs? That worked exactly once before: in Ninevah. Might as well stop asking. Actually, this brings me a moment of pause, as I evaluate my own spiritual practice.
99-101: So problematic. What is the point of any of this, then?
102-104: They really are asking for it . . .
105-109: Pretty solipsistic, if you ask me. But in keeping with the overarching theme of submission.
Konstantin Paustovsky: The Story of a Life
What am I? More specifically, what is the "I", any I among us? It is manifestly not the body, for I continue in the mind even when my body sleeps. It is not even, as Sartre observes, the mind, for the mind that thinks "I am" cannot be the same I of which it thinks. That I is the object, not the subject; it is rather a "me". It is inextricable from the biological and social forces to which it is subjected, and maybe even from the bacteria which inhabit its body. The only thing that can lay a claim to being the I, the subject, is that gaze which gives attention to one thing and not another. I have found the metaphor of a finger on a keyboard to be useful: I am not the keyboard, nor the music which it creates; I am the finger itself. I am the gaze.
Paustovsky masterfully demonstrates here that what is true for the individual philosophically is also true for the author literarily. The author is as much subject to his body and the society in which he lives as the individual is. It is only his gaze which is truly his own, and only by observing where and how that gaze falls can we approach understanding.
Perhaps it is my impulse as a scholar that compels me to take this idea further, and perhaps it is my instinct as a teacher that taxonomizes it for easy consumption and lecture. At any rate, Paustovsky's mastery and maturity eliminates the background noise, and gazes with such intention that certain functions of that gaze become clear:
- What he attends to: the details that he chooses to observe, out of infinite details that are available.
- What he ignores: those aspects of a scene which might have capture the attention of another author.
- How he judges it: it is in this that Paustovsky is especially judicious. His descriptions are usually so specific and objective, that the moments he lets an opinion or feeling in are startling and revealing.
- When he turns his gaze inward: it is again the care with which he chooses his moments that make them stand out. He is not prone to flights of reflection, so when he does it, the reader notices.
These are the only things the writer has to offer, and especially the autobiographer. Everything else is noise, just as the body, and even the mind are distractions from what is real: the self, which is only a disembodied gaze. An eye for an I.
Arthur Evans: The Evans Symposium
Inspiration is rare. My heart feels at times deadened by existence on this plane, and even poetry feels out of my reach, let alone joy. I am not alone in this, as a scroll through social media would easily reveal. What does it mean, this existence? I've even unlocked a new intrusive thought this week: "Why did I even bother to come out? It's not as though it has made any difference."
A posthumous thank you is due to Arthur Evans for reminding me that meaning built from institutions, from the mechanics of existence, will always be a desiccated husk. For millennia, we humans created meaning--and joy--from nature, and not the nature of botanical gardens, but that of the wild, virile, orgiastic forest and copse. To find meaning, one must surrender to the dance of the Fae, of Diana and Dionysos, and whirl around like Maenads in a frenzy. What care I that the world has no place for me? Gay culture has become as dead and mechanical as the institutions it once defied.
At a birthday party recently, a clutch of four queens stopped by to put in their appearances, and I was instantly uncomfortable. It struck me that their appearances were indeed all that they brought with them, being of the performatively attractive sort that serve as representatives to the straight world these days. As they prepared to leave the party, having completed their display, the lead hen announced, "Well, the gays have to go to the gay bar now," leaving me smirking at the assumption. He asked me, "Do you ever go to the gay bar?" I do, but only on alternative nights when Arthur Evans and the other Radical Faeries would have joined me in shedding the veneer of respectability and frolicking. I even dressed as The Green Man of legend on my most recent visit, and vibed with a stripper who understood the reference.
"On a normal night?" I answered. "Eww no."
His disgust was evident, and they departed in a dismissive "Whatever", no doubt with their own thoughts about what sort of gay I am. It is that which I must remember: I am an Arthur Evans gay--wild, horned, and joyfully rooted in the Earth.
Pablo Neruda: Canto General
I'm not certain whether Latin-American writers have a special ability to put together words in exciting and unexpectedly vivid combinations, or whether this is simply a function of reading in a non-native language. Neruda--along with Paz and Borges, among others--delights and startles on every page with the way he sees and describes the world. It feels at times that he is just introducing words to each other, and standing back to see how they interact. Let's conduct a little experiment, shall we? Here is a table of the combinations on a "random" diptych, to the extent that anything is random.
It is amusing that I can't even cite the specific pages from which these were taken, spanning two poems, the book having closed as I type. One can clearly see the interchangability of Neruda's descriptions, and that "desnuda tierra de un incendio" or "dulces racimos de mi patria" would be just as serviceable--and just as Neruda--as any other combination, in spite of never having occurred. What we are left with then, is not a specific moment or vivid image that defines Neruda, but rather a corpus of words that combined reveal the soul of his epic. He does not seem to be carefully selecting his juxtapositions--though of course he did. He seems to be pouring everything sharp, putrid, herbaceous, and mineral together into a boiling cauldron, and letting it boil over.
This is something of a mercy to the reader, proportionally to how closely the reader intends to look. A scholar could, and no doubt has, devote at least an essay to, for example, Neruda's descriptions of love in "El Hondero":
"Sólo un golpe de madreselvas en la boca,
sólo unas trenzas cuyo movimiento subÍa
hacia mi soledad como una hoguera negra" (606)
any one of which could be plugged into the above table and replaced with others. Neruda states over and over, however, that he did not write to enable such analysis. Rather, as he says in "Artigas", he writes because "Sumergí mi cabeza en tu arena y en la plata do los pejerreyes, en la clara amistad de tus hijos, en tus destartalados mercados" (251), and again in "Compañeros de Viaje":
". . . buscando
Cada tarde en mi pobre poesía las ramas,
Las gotas y la luna que se habían perdido.
Acudí al fondo de ella, sumergiéndome
Cada tarde en sus aguas . . . " (609).
He has submerged himself in the reality of nature and humanity, and presents it to us swirling and beautiful and cruel. Furthermore, he wants nothing back from us, as readers, scholars, or as members of the nature and the humanity he describes. As he reveals in "Que Despierte el Leñador",
"Yo no vengo a resolver nada.
Yo vengo aquí para cantar
y para que cantes conmigo" (473).
As in many works of greatness, the answer was there all along in the title. This cauldron bubbles over in a song that Neruda cannot help but sing. It is fitting that he invokes Mayakovsky at the end of this epic in "Testamento" (636). Like that poet, all he wants is to shine, and everything else can go hang.
Piers Anthony: Bio of a Space Tyrant Vol. 1--Refugee
I could almost have read this for pleasure. In fact, I could almost continue reading the other five volumes, and immerse myself in the world of Hope Hubris. Anthony is an absolute master on several levels, here as in other works: his characters are both compelling and believable, and the world he creates is vivid and consistent. At the end of this volume, I found myself wanting more, eager to see how each of the three siblings' stories progressed, and rooting for each of them to rise from the ashes of tragedy. What stops me, however, is the world itself. I don't remember Anthony being such a merciless writer. The trauma could have stopped at any moment, and it would have been more than enough, but in this world there is no reprieve. The only thing one can expect after trauma is more of the same, and it is no doubt intentionally ironic that the protagonist is named Hope in a world where there is none. There is no hope for the characters, and there is none for the reader. The only thing that could be expected from the remaining novels of this series is more rape--so much rape--and tragedy. If I wanted to immerse myself in that world, I need only step outside.
H.P. Lovecraft: The Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories
On the surface, it would be difficult to say why Lovecraft has commanded such an outsized influence over popular culture. It is surely not his skill as a writer. His prose is obscure, inconsistent, and needlessly precious. His characterization? Nonexistent. Plot? Pacing? Almost amateurish. He is often cited as a master of mood, but even if it were true--and I am not convinced on this point--it could scarcely be enough to account for his market share of the modern mind.
The argument can easily be made that his philosophy matches the current moment. What difference is there, practically speaking, between a crumbling, cruel, and ravenous world and the awakening of a ancient god? The only natural response to either is overpowering dread. This dread has become a hallmark of the current generation, and Lovecraft is a natural fit. However, his influence is not sudden and recent. It is more accurate to say that decades of influence have positioned him perfectly to speak to the current moment, and one returns to the question, "What is responsible for those decades of influence?"
If the discussion is limited to literary talent, then there is no good answer. To understand Lovecraft, it is necessary to stop viewing him as a writer at all. He is not, in reality, an author of fiction at all. He is a cultural anthropologist, whose chosen subject happens to be fictional. He is not, in this sense, to be compared to other writers with whom he shared an era: Conan Doyle, for example. He is rather analogous to the Doyle scholar Leslie Klinger, who immersed himself in the "gentle fiction" Of Doyle's world, and made it real.
What Klinger does for Doyle (and others), Lovecraft does for an entire dream world that exists in the human subconscious. He takes the works of his lesser known peers (Blackwood, Machen, etc.) and sees how they are not isolated expressions of creative minds. They are, rather part of a collective world that exists just under the surface of consciousness and in the corners of waking vision. He then integrates them with his own half-dreaming glimpses of that world, and reveals and analyzes it with an almost scholarly attention to detail. He even goes so far as to pin it to the greater reality in certain key places. He does this partly with both with geographical plausibility, creating places that may well exist and mingling them with places that actually do. In this way, he creates something like a prototypical Kcymaerxthaere, a world that is pinned to our reality, but just slightly out of phase with it. The most effective tethers to what we may perceive as reality, however, are figures like Robert Olmstead who see more of the shadows, and whisper to the reader, "What you see in the corners of your room are also real." This is, for lack of a better explanation, what gives him such inroads into our minds. He is not the entertainer who creates a fanciful world for us to enjoy; he is the reassuring, terrifying voice of a stranger who says, "I see it too."