How much is enough? How much is too much?
In "Enough," Beckett tells a story about someone who is totally submissive to a master. The story is couched in sexual metaphor, so it could be read with the narrator as a sexual submissive, but...
In class, Mike suggested that Beckett was up to his games again and that the narrator is a writer. This actually makes a certain degree of sense. Assuming that's true, it provides an interesting insight into how Beckett related to his writing enterprise. As many writers will probably agree, the muse can be cruel in her demands on the writer, especially when she is stirring, demanding a story be written. The writer is subjugated to the text.
This interpretation fits well with the text. It resonates with the imagery.
Of course, we know Beckett, as the narrator, did not throw off his master/muse, rather accepted this submission as part of his life.
This interpretation also makes me think of my midterm paper about "Texts for Nothing" which saw the fourth story as a struggle between character and writer. Here, the story is about the non-struggle between writer and muse. Still, it suggests that Beckett occasionally writes about writing, and that reading his stories in that context might reveal some interesting interpretations or reinterpretations of his work. Maybe Waiting for Godot is about a pair of writers waiting for the muse, feeling lost and non-existent without her. Maybe Pozzo is Lucky's muse, or vice versa.
Probably not entirely Beckett's intent, but it could make for an interesting paper. Besides, literary theory tells us the author's intent doesn't really matter.
Enough.
10 December 2008
09 December 2008
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 19: Ping
(Doing workbook entries out of order again.)
Another "out there" piece from Beckett, "Ping" is a string of words with somewhat arbitrary "sentence" endings that seems to describe one of Beckett's super-white bodies with long white hair and light blue eyes encased in a 3'x6' white box. The text is interspersed with the word "ping" at random (?) intervals.
At first I wondered if the ping was like a sonar ping, indicating something drawing nearer to or moving farther away from the subject of the text. It's possible, but if so, that something is not moving consistently toward the subject because the pings come slow, then fast, then slow, then about steady before coming fast again at the end.
Like the pings, many of the words or phrases repeat. I think it would be interesting to run a word frequency analysis on this. I suspect "white" is one of the most frequent words, definitely more frequent than "ping." Maybe later I'll see if I can find software to do the analysis. It would be nice if it looked for word clusters too. For example, the phrase "traces blurs light grey almost white," or variations of it, appear several times early in the text -- often enough that it jumped out at me.
"Traces blurs signs no meaning light grey almost white" (193) is one variation, and makes me question if Beckett used the repetition to focus on what was different. "Signs no meaning" seems to question language (a sign system) and linguistics (the study of language). Are signs without meaning really signs? Do they really have no meaning or is the meaning simply not known or not understood? Made me think of Orson Scott Card's categories framlings, utanlings, ramen and varelse for living things in Speaker for the Dead. Framlings and utanlings are categories of beings with whom one shares enough in common that communication is possible. Ramen and varelse are categories of beings who are either incapable of sentience or who are so alien that communication is impossible without some kind of transcendence or moving beyond one's world view.
"Ping" also made me wonder yet again about Beckett's fascination with pure-white bodies with long white hair and pale blue eyes. This figure appears several times in his stories -- here, "Imagination Dead Imagine," I'm pretty sure there was one in "The Lost Ones," and vestiges of the image in other stories and plays (for example, Nagg and Nell in Endgame). Is this an image of a ghost for him? Or is it something else?
The final sentence is also interesting. "Head haughty eyes white fixed front old ping last murmur one second perhaps not alone eye unlustrous black and white half closed long lashes imploring ping silence ping over." Early in the text the odd word, "unover" appears several times. In the last few lines (starting near the bottom of page 195 in our book), that changes to "over," ending with "silence ping over" as shown above. My thought is that somewhere in the text (I'd probably have to read it about 20 more times to figure out approximately where), there is a shift. This change from "unover" to "over" is obviously part of it, but there's a large chunk of text between the last appearance of one and the first appearance of the other. It is also probably worth noting that this final sentence introduces black, something that has not appeared before, though we're not sure where the black comes from (maybe the pupil of the eye?). While there have been murmurs before, this is the "last murmur." But I think the thing that jumps out is "perhaps not alone." What is Beckett getting at?
I guess one way to see this is as a metaphor for existential isolation. A 3'x6' space is about the minimum space required for an average, adult human. The body (Beckett persistently refrains from calling them a "person" in his texts) stands, boxed in, isolated, unable to connect outside the space. Isolated, as existentialism says everyone is. White surrounded by white, unable to sense anything because everything it can sense is one. Unable to sense, it is unable to be sensed, at least by others like it, so existence is in question (to be is to be perceived). Maybe the pings are the attempts by this isolated person/body to find proof of another in the surrounding space, a sonar cry hoping for a murmur of an echo. And the conclusion, "perhaps not alone," though there is no evidence that any of the pings returned any sign of anything outside.
I think Beckett, like Camus, may be hoping, maybe even praying, that he is not alone, that there is a reason for it all, even if he doesn't understand it and it makes no sense.
All I can say is, "I'm so glad I'm not an existentialist."
Another "out there" piece from Beckett, "Ping" is a string of words with somewhat arbitrary "sentence" endings that seems to describe one of Beckett's super-white bodies with long white hair and light blue eyes encased in a 3'x6' white box. The text is interspersed with the word "ping" at random (?) intervals.
At first I wondered if the ping was like a sonar ping, indicating something drawing nearer to or moving farther away from the subject of the text. It's possible, but if so, that something is not moving consistently toward the subject because the pings come slow, then fast, then slow, then about steady before coming fast again at the end.
Like the pings, many of the words or phrases repeat. I think it would be interesting to run a word frequency analysis on this. I suspect "white" is one of the most frequent words, definitely more frequent than "ping." Maybe later I'll see if I can find software to do the analysis. It would be nice if it looked for word clusters too. For example, the phrase "traces blurs light grey almost white," or variations of it, appear several times early in the text -- often enough that it jumped out at me.
"Traces blurs signs no meaning light grey almost white" (193) is one variation, and makes me question if Beckett used the repetition to focus on what was different. "Signs no meaning" seems to question language (a sign system) and linguistics (the study of language). Are signs without meaning really signs? Do they really have no meaning or is the meaning simply not known or not understood? Made me think of Orson Scott Card's categories framlings, utanlings, ramen and varelse for living things in Speaker for the Dead. Framlings and utanlings are categories of beings with whom one shares enough in common that communication is possible. Ramen and varelse are categories of beings who are either incapable of sentience or who are so alien that communication is impossible without some kind of transcendence or moving beyond one's world view.
"Ping" also made me wonder yet again about Beckett's fascination with pure-white bodies with long white hair and pale blue eyes. This figure appears several times in his stories -- here, "Imagination Dead Imagine," I'm pretty sure there was one in "The Lost Ones," and vestiges of the image in other stories and plays (for example, Nagg and Nell in Endgame). Is this an image of a ghost for him? Or is it something else?
The final sentence is also interesting. "Head haughty eyes white fixed front old ping last murmur one second perhaps not alone eye unlustrous black and white half closed long lashes imploring ping silence ping over." Early in the text the odd word, "unover" appears several times. In the last few lines (starting near the bottom of page 195 in our book), that changes to "over," ending with "silence ping over" as shown above. My thought is that somewhere in the text (I'd probably have to read it about 20 more times to figure out approximately where), there is a shift. This change from "unover" to "over" is obviously part of it, but there's a large chunk of text between the last appearance of one and the first appearance of the other. It is also probably worth noting that this final sentence introduces black, something that has not appeared before, though we're not sure where the black comes from (maybe the pupil of the eye?). While there have been murmurs before, this is the "last murmur." But I think the thing that jumps out is "perhaps not alone." What is Beckett getting at?
I guess one way to see this is as a metaphor for existential isolation. A 3'x6' space is about the minimum space required for an average, adult human. The body (Beckett persistently refrains from calling them a "person" in his texts) stands, boxed in, isolated, unable to connect outside the space. Isolated, as existentialism says everyone is. White surrounded by white, unable to sense anything because everything it can sense is one. Unable to sense, it is unable to be sensed, at least by others like it, so existence is in question (to be is to be perceived). Maybe the pings are the attempts by this isolated person/body to find proof of another in the surrounding space, a sonar cry hoping for a murmur of an echo. And the conclusion, "perhaps not alone," though there is no evidence that any of the pings returned any sign of anything outside.
I think Beckett, like Camus, may be hoping, maybe even praying, that he is not alone, that there is a reason for it all, even if he doesn't understand it and it makes no sense.
All I can say is, "I'm so glad I'm not an existentialist."
01 December 2008
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 17: Imagination Dead Imagine
Beckett's "Imagination Dead Imagine" shares a lot in common with "The Lost Ones."
First, it spends part of the time focused on the geometry and measurements of the space. "Diameter three feet, three feet from ground to summit of the vault. Two diameters at right angles…" and so on for several sentences. Several sentences may not seem like much compared to the lengthy descriptions of space in "The Lost Ones," but remember that this story is about three pages compared to 21 pages for "The Lost Ones" and suddenly those few sentences become more significant. Also note that the space is totally enclosed with no way in or out as in "The Lost Ones." Beckett says, "No way in, go in." Not only does this sentence establish the closed space, it seems to echo Beckett's "I can't go on, I'll go on," from his trilogy.
Then there's the light and the temperature. "The light that makes all so white no visible source," like the sourceless yellow light of "The Lost Ones." But wait, that light fluctuated, flashed several times per second. Well, a couple of sentences later we find, "… wait, the light goes down, all grows dark together, ground, wall, vault, bodies, say twenty seconds…" and then "Wait more or less long, light and head come back, all grows white and hot together…" So we see that the light in this story also fluctuates, though not as rapidly as in "The Lost Ones." Also in the last sentence cited we see that the temperature is increasing. This is after "the temperature goes down" at the same time as the light "to reach its minimum, say freezing-point."
There are two bodies in the space Beckett describes. A woman and a man lay back to back, squeezed into the small circular rotunda, their heads in opposite directions, knees folded, touching the perimeter of the circle, the roof arching up over them, but close. They are alive because a mirror before their mouth mists over. They are not asleep. They are merely laying in silence, never speaking. They are reminiscent of the bodies in "The Lost Ones," all of which eventually fell into immobility and whose mobility was utterly futile and pointless anyway.
The image that I get from this description is that of the interior of a skull. We've talked about Beckett trying to write what takes place inside the skull in various stories and plays. I think that here, he is literally figuratively describing the interior of the skull. The rotunda is the space wherein lies the two halves of the brain, joined at the middle by the commissural nexus.
A couple of other notes probably worth considering. Beckett describes "piercing, pale blue" eyes. I seem to remember something similar in "The Lost Ones" and perhaps other Beckett stories and plays. The other is in the first sentence of the story, wherein Beckett seems to call for the death of imagination before beginning. "… imagination not dead yet, yes, dead, good, imagination dead imagine." Why is it necessary for imagination to end before it can begin? Dunno. Finally, there was Beckett's description of the hair of the woman, which is white, but contrasts with the white background due to its "strangely imperfect whiteness." I thought this was a rather interesting turn of phrase.
First, it spends part of the time focused on the geometry and measurements of the space. "Diameter three feet, three feet from ground to summit of the vault. Two diameters at right angles…" and so on for several sentences. Several sentences may not seem like much compared to the lengthy descriptions of space in "The Lost Ones," but remember that this story is about three pages compared to 21 pages for "The Lost Ones" and suddenly those few sentences become more significant. Also note that the space is totally enclosed with no way in or out as in "The Lost Ones." Beckett says, "No way in, go in." Not only does this sentence establish the closed space, it seems to echo Beckett's "I can't go on, I'll go on," from his trilogy.
Then there's the light and the temperature. "The light that makes all so white no visible source," like the sourceless yellow light of "The Lost Ones." But wait, that light fluctuated, flashed several times per second. Well, a couple of sentences later we find, "… wait, the light goes down, all grows dark together, ground, wall, vault, bodies, say twenty seconds…" and then "Wait more or less long, light and head come back, all grows white and hot together…" So we see that the light in this story also fluctuates, though not as rapidly as in "The Lost Ones." Also in the last sentence cited we see that the temperature is increasing. This is after "the temperature goes down" at the same time as the light "to reach its minimum, say freezing-point."
There are two bodies in the space Beckett describes. A woman and a man lay back to back, squeezed into the small circular rotunda, their heads in opposite directions, knees folded, touching the perimeter of the circle, the roof arching up over them, but close. They are alive because a mirror before their mouth mists over. They are not asleep. They are merely laying in silence, never speaking. They are reminiscent of the bodies in "The Lost Ones," all of which eventually fell into immobility and whose mobility was utterly futile and pointless anyway.
The image that I get from this description is that of the interior of a skull. We've talked about Beckett trying to write what takes place inside the skull in various stories and plays. I think that here, he is literally figuratively describing the interior of the skull. The rotunda is the space wherein lies the two halves of the brain, joined at the middle by the commissural nexus.
A couple of other notes probably worth considering. Beckett describes "piercing, pale blue" eyes. I seem to remember something similar in "The Lost Ones" and perhaps other Beckett stories and plays. The other is in the first sentence of the story, wherein Beckett seems to call for the death of imagination before beginning. "… imagination not dead yet, yes, dead, good, imagination dead imagine." Why is it necessary for imagination to end before it can begin? Dunno. Finally, there was Beckett's description of the hair of the woman, which is white, but contrasts with the white background due to its "strangely imperfect whiteness." I thought this was a rather interesting turn of phrase.
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 16: Ohio Impromptu
Ohio Impromptu echoes Footfalls and perhaps Eh, Joe (though I'm less sure about the latter because it was a bit too "out there" for me). The play shows a man being read to by his double. The story the double reads seems to be a summary version of the man's life and revolves around the loss of a love. I plan to use this as one of the texts for my final paper, but here are a few thoughts (which will be more fully developed there).
One of the questions I had that isn't explained in the text is exactly what happened to the person the listener/reader loved. Did the woman die? Did she just leave him? The text tells us that he "moved from where they'd been so long together" (285) and that the loved one left him "unspoken words" (286) that "my shade will comfort you" (286). Shade implies death, but… There's nothing in the text that says that the "dear one" is a her, or even a person. Trees cast shade. So do buildings. Building have façades. Façade derives from the same root as "face". What if this loved one was a building whose façade was changed dramatically. Or a tree whose bark looks like a face -- or even not like a face at all, but only in the man's mind? Perhaps that's a stretch, but the text is ambiguous on this point. Why not? The "dear one" is always using "unspoken words" and sends an emissary instead of coming his/her/itself, wouldn't a ghost speak?
Another question is, which is the "real" person and which is the figment of the real person's mind? Is the listener the real person? Is he trying to hold back the end of the story with his knocks that cause the reader to stop and go back? If he wanted to drag out the story, why doesn't he let the reader turn back when he references "the fearful symptoms described at length page forty paragraph four" (286)? Surely going back and reading the paragraph again, perhaps several, would delay the end even longer? Or, is the reader the real person? Is he confessing to the listener, the figment, in an attempt at self-catharsis? Are the knocks he places where the reader subconsciously feels a need to reiterate a point?
Is the story even about the listener/reader? Or is the reader an author editing his work, reading it aloud to himself? Is the listener the manifestation of the editing part of the author, the knocks a pause to review words and make sure they're the right words. If the reader has been reading this story to the listener night after night for a long time, as the story suggests, why does he stumble on part of the text? "After so long a lapse that as if never been. [Pause. Looks closer.] Yes, after so long a lapse…" (286). Surely after reading the text the implied dozens of times he wouldn't need to double check words like that.
Finally, we watched a filmed production of the play in class. I think the film may have missed something by causing the reader to fade out at the end leaving the listener alone. The text does not either by stage directions or implication in the story told suggest that the reader disappears at the end. The story ends with the reader and listener sitting together, silent. The stage directions do the same. We can say that the stage directions are constrained by the limitations of theater vs. film, but why is the story likewise constrained? Couldn't the story end saying that after they sat for a while the reader disappeared? I think this ambiguity is in the text precisely to raise some of the questions above about which is the real person, and what's really happening in the story and play.
One of the questions I had that isn't explained in the text is exactly what happened to the person the listener/reader loved. Did the woman die? Did she just leave him? The text tells us that he "moved from where they'd been so long together" (285) and that the loved one left him "unspoken words" (286) that "my shade will comfort you" (286). Shade implies death, but… There's nothing in the text that says that the "dear one" is a her, or even a person. Trees cast shade. So do buildings. Building have façades. Façade derives from the same root as "face". What if this loved one was a building whose façade was changed dramatically. Or a tree whose bark looks like a face -- or even not like a face at all, but only in the man's mind? Perhaps that's a stretch, but the text is ambiguous on this point. Why not? The "dear one" is always using "unspoken words" and sends an emissary instead of coming his/her/itself, wouldn't a ghost speak?
Another question is, which is the "real" person and which is the figment of the real person's mind? Is the listener the real person? Is he trying to hold back the end of the story with his knocks that cause the reader to stop and go back? If he wanted to drag out the story, why doesn't he let the reader turn back when he references "the fearful symptoms described at length page forty paragraph four" (286)? Surely going back and reading the paragraph again, perhaps several, would delay the end even longer? Or, is the reader the real person? Is he confessing to the listener, the figment, in an attempt at self-catharsis? Are the knocks he places where the reader subconsciously feels a need to reiterate a point?
Is the story even about the listener/reader? Or is the reader an author editing his work, reading it aloud to himself? Is the listener the manifestation of the editing part of the author, the knocks a pause to review words and make sure they're the right words. If the reader has been reading this story to the listener night after night for a long time, as the story suggests, why does he stumble on part of the text? "After so long a lapse that as if never been. [Pause. Looks closer.] Yes, after so long a lapse…" (286). Surely after reading the text the implied dozens of times he wouldn't need to double check words like that.
Finally, we watched a filmed production of the play in class. I think the film may have missed something by causing the reader to fade out at the end leaving the listener alone. The text does not either by stage directions or implication in the story told suggest that the reader disappears at the end. The story ends with the reader and listener sitting together, silent. The stage directions do the same. We can say that the stage directions are constrained by the limitations of theater vs. film, but why is the story likewise constrained? Couldn't the story end saying that after they sat for a while the reader disappeared? I think this ambiguity is in the text precisely to raise some of the questions above about which is the real person, and what's really happening in the story and play.
19 November 2008
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 15: The Lost Ones
"Abode where lost bodies roam each searching for its lost one."
I think the thing that nagged me most throughout this story was that the story never really addressed the fundamental questions generated in the first sentence. What is the "lost one" for which each body searches? What is its significance? Late in the text, there is the suggestion that the lost one for which each body searches is another of the bodies, but this isn't entirely clear. Perhaps they just believe that their lost one is one of the others. Whatever, it is clear the bodies are missing something.
The majority of the text -- the longest Beckett piece we've read outside of the longer plays -- is spent describing the "abode" mentioned in the first sentence and the "lost bodies" that live there. Beckett is not exactly precise (several times saying he's talking in round figures) but is nevertheless quite detailed about the space. It is a cylinder, 50 meters around (about 16 meters across) and 16 meters high. Exactly how this qualifies as "vast enough for search to be in vain," I'm not sure. That's like saying you put 200 people (the text describes about 200 bodies) in a 50x50 room and you won't be able to find a particular other person. Or perhaps it suggests that the "life" of this space is short. Beckett also spends a chunk of text describing the temperature (which varies by about 20 degrees -- presumably Celsius -- on a cycle of eight seconds -- four up, four down) and the light ("dim yellow shaken by a vertiginous tremolo" cycling 5 times per second).
Yes, it is a truly bizarre space.
A few things I noticed in the text. Beckett mentions "harmony" several times. For example, the harmony of the cylinder's dimensions, the lack of harmony in the ladders' positions, the harmony of the niches locations -- and that's just the first three pages. So why is he concerned about harmony here? I'm not sure. Or maybe that's the theme of the piece since it seems to focus on the harmony of the space and the rules that ensure harmonious existence among the residents.
It's also worth noting that Beckett refers to the residents of the space as "bodies", not people. Was he perhaps looking for a connection to things dead? The original is French and it's probably worth noting that "body" is "corps" and "corpse" is "cadavre", so the French probably lacks the ambiguity of the English in this respect. But I suspect Beckett knew exactly what he was doing when he translated it and chose "bodies."
The text seems to move in circles. By that, I mean that it revisits itself several times. Beckett gives us a first overview of something, then moves onto something else, then loops back and provides more detail about a prior point, then goes on to something else, loops back to the first or second point, and so forth. For example, the opening describes the general space of the cylinder ending with "So much for a first apercu of the abode." Next we get a broad description of the bodies. "So much roughly speaking for these bodies…" Then we find more about the space, starting with a recap of the dimensions and the environment but with more detail on the light and temperature variations. This circularity pervades the text. So do the words "so much," for that matter.
Conformity, perhaps a variation on harmony, also seems to be important to this work. For example, when Beckett describes the rules that govern the space and its inhabitants, he makes it clear that there are certain points in any given flow of action where the inhabitants have a choice to continue or abandon, but those choices are relatively few. Failing to abandon a particular flow of action, the body is forced to continue it until the next decision point. For example, moving from the central space into one of the rings of bodies that move around the edges can only happen under certain conditions and following certain rules. Moving between rings can only happen according to certain rules. Once one is in line for a ladder, he must stay in line until he reaches the ladder. Once he sets foot on the first rung, he must climb the ladder to the top. The bodies must conform to the rules. Violations are severely punished. For example, "Woe to the rash searcher who carried away by his passion dare lay a finger on the least of [those in a queue for a ladder]. Like a single body the whole queue falls on the offender. Of all the scenes of violence the cylinder has to offer none approaches this." (p. 222 in "Collected Short Prose")
Ultimately, the space dies. One by one, the bodies give up the search, becoming "sedentaries" until the last finally stops and the space falls into darkness and deep cold. Entropy wins.
In searching for information on the French original, I ran across a paper by an FSU English student (http://www.english.fsu.edu/jobs/num07/Num7Murphy.htm). I was focusing on the French, so haven't read this yet, but I did note that the author suggests that the French title, "Le Depeupleur" means "the depopulator". In other words, the space is a killing machine, but one that grinds its victims down slowly at least, in their perception, as they seem to be able to for lines, climb ladders, walk around, etc. It is death by a thousand cuts rather than the guillotine.
A disorienting, blinding, deafening closed system that taunts some with hopes of escape but only delivers despair. A killing machine that slowly destroys those inside it. An endless quest for some "lost one" that is never found, whose significance is never explained, who the seeker wouldn't recognize even if they met. Bodies, dead already, but not having the good grace to lie down and be still. Perhaps Beckett's view of life on earth?
I think the thing that nagged me most throughout this story was that the story never really addressed the fundamental questions generated in the first sentence. What is the "lost one" for which each body searches? What is its significance? Late in the text, there is the suggestion that the lost one for which each body searches is another of the bodies, but this isn't entirely clear. Perhaps they just believe that their lost one is one of the others. Whatever, it is clear the bodies are missing something.
The majority of the text -- the longest Beckett piece we've read outside of the longer plays -- is spent describing the "abode" mentioned in the first sentence and the "lost bodies" that live there. Beckett is not exactly precise (several times saying he's talking in round figures) but is nevertheless quite detailed about the space. It is a cylinder, 50 meters around (about 16 meters across) and 16 meters high. Exactly how this qualifies as "vast enough for search to be in vain," I'm not sure. That's like saying you put 200 people (the text describes about 200 bodies) in a 50x50 room and you won't be able to find a particular other person. Or perhaps it suggests that the "life" of this space is short. Beckett also spends a chunk of text describing the temperature (which varies by about 20 degrees -- presumably Celsius -- on a cycle of eight seconds -- four up, four down) and the light ("dim yellow shaken by a vertiginous tremolo" cycling 5 times per second).
Yes, it is a truly bizarre space.
A few things I noticed in the text. Beckett mentions "harmony" several times. For example, the harmony of the cylinder's dimensions, the lack of harmony in the ladders' positions, the harmony of the niches locations -- and that's just the first three pages. So why is he concerned about harmony here? I'm not sure. Or maybe that's the theme of the piece since it seems to focus on the harmony of the space and the rules that ensure harmonious existence among the residents.
It's also worth noting that Beckett refers to the residents of the space as "bodies", not people. Was he perhaps looking for a connection to things dead? The original is French and it's probably worth noting that "body" is "corps" and "corpse" is "cadavre", so the French probably lacks the ambiguity of the English in this respect. But I suspect Beckett knew exactly what he was doing when he translated it and chose "bodies."
The text seems to move in circles. By that, I mean that it revisits itself several times. Beckett gives us a first overview of something, then moves onto something else, then loops back and provides more detail about a prior point, then goes on to something else, loops back to the first or second point, and so forth. For example, the opening describes the general space of the cylinder ending with "So much for a first apercu of the abode." Next we get a broad description of the bodies. "So much roughly speaking for these bodies…" Then we find more about the space, starting with a recap of the dimensions and the environment but with more detail on the light and temperature variations. This circularity pervades the text. So do the words "so much," for that matter.
Conformity, perhaps a variation on harmony, also seems to be important to this work. For example, when Beckett describes the rules that govern the space and its inhabitants, he makes it clear that there are certain points in any given flow of action where the inhabitants have a choice to continue or abandon, but those choices are relatively few. Failing to abandon a particular flow of action, the body is forced to continue it until the next decision point. For example, moving from the central space into one of the rings of bodies that move around the edges can only happen under certain conditions and following certain rules. Moving between rings can only happen according to certain rules. Once one is in line for a ladder, he must stay in line until he reaches the ladder. Once he sets foot on the first rung, he must climb the ladder to the top. The bodies must conform to the rules. Violations are severely punished. For example, "Woe to the rash searcher who carried away by his passion dare lay a finger on the least of [those in a queue for a ladder]. Like a single body the whole queue falls on the offender. Of all the scenes of violence the cylinder has to offer none approaches this." (p. 222 in "Collected Short Prose")
Ultimately, the space dies. One by one, the bodies give up the search, becoming "sedentaries" until the last finally stops and the space falls into darkness and deep cold. Entropy wins.
In searching for information on the French original, I ran across a paper by an FSU English student (http://www.english.fsu.edu/jobs/num07/Num7Murphy.htm). I was focusing on the French, so haven't read this yet, but I did note that the author suggests that the French title, "Le Depeupleur" means "the depopulator". In other words, the space is a killing machine, but one that grinds its victims down slowly at least, in their perception, as they seem to be able to for lines, climb ladders, walk around, etc. It is death by a thousand cuts rather than the guillotine.
A disorienting, blinding, deafening closed system that taunts some with hopes of escape but only delivers despair. A killing machine that slowly destroys those inside it. An endless quest for some "lost one" that is never found, whose significance is never explained, who the seeker wouldn't recognize even if they met. Bodies, dead already, but not having the good grace to lie down and be still. Perhaps Beckett's view of life on earth?
18 November 2008
ENG4013 - The Author and Monuments
Wow. Posting my thoughts on Dr. M's questions two weeks in a row. Something must be wrong.
The Author
Q: B&R propose that the "author is a sort of phantom." Explain what they mean and its implications.
A: The author is concealed from the reader by the characters and world that the author creates (the text). Even if the author writes in first person, the "I" of the story is arguably a character, not the author. Even if the author injects parts of his life and experience into the story, the story is still a conflation or reality and imagination. The reader has no access to the author other than through the text, and the text hides the author. So, while the reader may get a sense of the author through the text (for instance, it was fairly obvious to me that Orson Scott Card was a Mormon after reading a couple of his book), that "knowledge" is really the reader's idea of the author. The reader does not meet the author in the text -- or the author met is the particular face of the author presented in the text, a fragment of a larger whole.
Q: What is "the intentional fallacy."
A: Wimsatt and Beardsley proposed that the author's intent is "neither available nor desirable" for understanding or critically analyzing the text. Since everything is mediated by language, even if we asked the author, their answer would simply be another text open to interpretation. Given some of the other discussion in class regarding the psychoanalytical concept of the unconscious and its unknowable role in human actions, it is doubtful that even the author can give a complete explanation of everything they intended. Therefore, readers should not focus on the author's intention but their interpretation of the author's work.
Q: Identify one way in which "authorial intention" is problematized or "falters", according to BR.
A: See the sentence regarding the unknowable unconscious in the answer to the previous question. Also, modern linguistics theory suggests that language itself introduces limits and constraints on the author, predisposing him to certain paths and modes of speech (writing) and discourse and further limiting the freedom of his intent.
Monuments
Q: What is Frank Kermode’s definition of a classic, and what are its implications for notion of authorial intention?
A: Kermode defines a classic as a work whose "instrinsic qualities" endure but that is open to multiple interpretations and reinterpretations. The classic survives because it can mean different things at different times. This undermines the idea of authorial intention because later interpretations may have nothing to do with the author's conscious (or even unconscious) intentions at the time of writing. Kermode says that the text is subject to the reader's interpretation and is "not a message from one mind to another."
Q: The value of the monument and the process of monumentalization are driven by a double impulse: to remember and to forget. Explain what this double impulse means.
A: On the one hand, the monument seeks to remind those who remain of the thing it honors. On the other hand, it buries or conceals the thing it seeks to honor, putting it out of sight and causing us to forget. For example, in Milton's poem on Shakespeare, he points readers away from Shakespeare's physical body and toward his literary body. Don't bother looking at his grave. That body doesn't matter. Look at what he wrote. That's the important (and immortal) body. This directs us away from the man, making him accessible only through the texts he left us.
The Author
Q: B&R propose that the "author is a sort of phantom." Explain what they mean and its implications.
A: The author is concealed from the reader by the characters and world that the author creates (the text). Even if the author writes in first person, the "I" of the story is arguably a character, not the author. Even if the author injects parts of his life and experience into the story, the story is still a conflation or reality and imagination. The reader has no access to the author other than through the text, and the text hides the author. So, while the reader may get a sense of the author through the text (for instance, it was fairly obvious to me that Orson Scott Card was a Mormon after reading a couple of his book), that "knowledge" is really the reader's idea of the author. The reader does not meet the author in the text -- or the author met is the particular face of the author presented in the text, a fragment of a larger whole.
Q: What is "the intentional fallacy."
A: Wimsatt and Beardsley proposed that the author's intent is "neither available nor desirable" for understanding or critically analyzing the text. Since everything is mediated by language, even if we asked the author, their answer would simply be another text open to interpretation. Given some of the other discussion in class regarding the psychoanalytical concept of the unconscious and its unknowable role in human actions, it is doubtful that even the author can give a complete explanation of everything they intended. Therefore, readers should not focus on the author's intention but their interpretation of the author's work.
Q: Identify one way in which "authorial intention" is problematized or "falters", according to BR.
A: See the sentence regarding the unknowable unconscious in the answer to the previous question. Also, modern linguistics theory suggests that language itself introduces limits and constraints on the author, predisposing him to certain paths and modes of speech (writing) and discourse and further limiting the freedom of his intent.
Monuments
Q: What is Frank Kermode’s definition of a classic, and what are its implications for notion of authorial intention?
A: Kermode defines a classic as a work whose "instrinsic qualities" endure but that is open to multiple interpretations and reinterpretations. The classic survives because it can mean different things at different times. This undermines the idea of authorial intention because later interpretations may have nothing to do with the author's conscious (or even unconscious) intentions at the time of writing. Kermode says that the text is subject to the reader's interpretation and is "not a message from one mind to another."
Q: The value of the monument and the process of monumentalization are driven by a double impulse: to remember and to forget. Explain what this double impulse means.
A: On the one hand, the monument seeks to remind those who remain of the thing it honors. On the other hand, it buries or conceals the thing it seeks to honor, putting it out of sight and causing us to forget. For example, in Milton's poem on Shakespeare, he points readers away from Shakespeare's physical body and toward his literary body. Don't bother looking at his grave. That body doesn't matter. Look at what he wrote. That's the important (and immortal) body. This directs us away from the man, making him accessible only through the texts he left us.
12 November 2008
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 14: Footfalls
Footfalls is another bit of avant garde, but seems more approachable than Eh, Joe. Either that or I'm becoming more accustomed to avant garde strangeness. I'm still struggling to pull together a coherent understanding of the play, but I'll make some notes about things I noticed.
The play has two characters. One is May, who spends the play pacing up and down a short strip on the stage and talking. The other is a "woman's voice" -- whose isn't specified. The lighting directions seem to indicate that the visual is focused on May's feet and her face is basically indistinct and in shadow. This seems appropriate given the title. May has grey hair and is dressed in grey. Greyness seems to be a recurring theme in Beckett's work.
The lighting directions start the play in darkness and bring up the lights after a chime sounds. At three points in the play, the lights go dark for a brief span before coming back up dimmer each time.
The speech in the play starts with a dialog between May and the voice. Next comes a monologue by the voice. Finally there is a monologue by May. Each section of speech overlaps the others and establishes parallels that create questions about who each character is and suggesting some curious resonances between sections.
Thoughts...
May's pacing is described as a "clearly audible rhythmic tread." This calls to mind the image of a metronome or a clock ticking away seconds. When May is pacing, time is passing. When she stands still, everything transpires in a single tick.
Perhaps the greyness is to reflect Beckett's view that everything is shades of grey. There is no real black or white -- or maybe that should be, there is no white since we frequently have blackness too, though one could argue that even the blackest black is still not truly black, just a very dark grey.
The lighting seems to be doing two things. First, it seems to be acting as a curtain of sorts, breaking the play into three "acts," though that may be a stretch of the theatrical term. Second, the fact that it is dimmer each time suggests that May is fading. Indeed, the final lights-up direction says there is "no trace of May" on the stage.
In the first act (I'm going to pretend it is legitimate to call the parts acts), the voice is May's mother who hears May calling "in [her] deep sleep." What is this sleep? Is it just plain old sleep? Or is it something else? Death is often paralleled to sleep. A coma might be likewise. Maybe it is a sleep of consciousness in the sense that we could say that someone who is present but isn't attentive is "asleep". If so, what is the thing to which the voice isn't attentive as it is clearly attentive to May's voice.
There is an inconsistency in the voice's second set of lines. The voice is (as best I can tell) supposed to be counting in sync with May's steps, but only counts to seven between turns. This is inconsistent because Beckett's directions say May's path is always nine steps.
May asks the voice/mother several questions -- would you like me to inject you again (with what?) change your position (is mother immobile?) etc. To each of these, the voice/mother responds affirmative (she would like them to be done) "but it is too soon." I don't know if this is significant or not, but this made me think of time oriented vs. event oriented societies. In time oriented societies, people say, "We'll do that at 1:00PM," and mean it. Whatever else is going on, we'll drop it and do this at 1:00PM. In event oriented societies people say, "We'll do that after we finish this," meaning maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe even next week. Of course, some people combine the two -- "I'll meet you after my class that ends at 5:45 PM" establishes both event and time constraints. Class may end early or late, but this is primarily time oriented because it establishes a narrow band of time in which something will happen. The point of all this is just to say that the voice/mother is very conscious of time and doing things at the proper time as opposed to doing them when she feels like doing them. She wants to be injected, but it isn't time. She wants to be cared for, but it isn't time. She is time-oriented. And let's not forget that May's pacing marks time in the play.
The lines in the middle of page 240 introduce the first clear parallel between May and the voice/mother. They establish the voice/mother to be about 90 which prompts the question, "So much?" from the voice. May, on the other hand is said to be "in [her] forties" and asks, "So little?" These parallels will continue to grow throughout the play. It's also worth noting that this first act of the play begins with May calling, "Mother. [Pause. No louder.] Mother. [Pause.]" to which the voice responds, "Yes, May." Followed by "Were you asleep?" The act concludes with "May. [Pause. No louder.] May." To which may responds, "Yes, Mother." "Will you never have done?"
Earlier in the first act, as the voice was counting May's steps, it ended each set of seven (which I thought should have been nine) with "wheel" to call the turn. At the end of the first act, the voice is asking May if she'll ever quit "revolving it all," emphasizing the theme of looping, circling, repeating that is first established by May's pacing and is carried through the parallels in speech identified above and later in the play.
In act two, the voice (still the voice of mother? some other voice?) begins, "I walk here now." We never see the speaker for the voice. There is no evidence that the speaker is walking -- or even there other than the sound of the voice. (This point will become important later in the act.) The voice begins a monologue, presumably about May since it refers to her standing and May is directed to be standing still at one end of her pacing path at the beginning of the act. Remember that this suggests the first part of the voice's monologue is happening in a single tick of time.
The voice says May is pacing "in the old home … where she began." This made me think of some of the protagonists in the first four Beckett stories we read. For example, in both "First Love" and "The Expelled" the protagonists lived in their family homes until they were thrown out. In fact, both had stayed in their room, rarely venturing out, until they were thrown out. May seems to echo this theme, only now it seems that the room is more in her head than some physical place. (Maybe this suggests that the rooms in the first stories were the protagonists' heads.)
The voice says that May has been here pacing for a very long time, even "when other girls her age were out at… lacrosse…". Why lacrosse? I'm wondering if May is autistic or mentally handicapped or perhaps severely obsessive/compulsive. Beckett doesn't really talk in those terms and see discussion of voice/mother's consciousness above, but it's an interesting thought. Is May somehow mentally different than much of the rest of the world, turned so inward that she cannot function in the world at large? This could be supported by the idea that May doesn't really sleep -- or does so rarely and on her feet.
In the last half of the voice's monologue, we get a story about a dialog between a child named May (presumably the May of the play) and her mother (presumably the voice, though the voice doesn't identify itself as the mother in this act). The interesting thing is when May says that "motion alone is not enough, I must hear the feet, however faint they fall." This leads to someone removing the carpet from the floor so May can hear her footfalls as she paces. But let's go back to the need to hear the feet. This seems to echo Berkeley's philosophy that being is in being seen, only with the sense of hearing instead of sight. In this play, being isn't being seen, it is being heard. Which harks back to the earlier comment I made about the voice. We never see the speaker, but because we hear the voice, we know the speaker exists. Also, it is reinforced by the lighting directions which make May barely visible to begin with and increasing less visible with each light cycle. Being is being heard.
Along this line of thought, note that while May needs to hear her steps, she only speaks "when she fancies none can hear." May is defining her own existence and does not want others to do so for her. Also, when she speaks she "tries to tell how it was," defining her past as well as confirming her present existence by the sound of her voice. Also note that she "tries," doesn't necessarily succeed.
The third act is May's monologue. May begins with "Sequel." This is a little curious, but as we progress, we can see that May's monologue might be related to the story in the voice's monologue. In this section, though, the distinction between May and the voice becomes a little less certain. May talks about someone, presumably herself. Presumably we're hearing her "try[ing] to tell how it was."
There was a turn of phrase in the first part of May's monologue that I found interesting. "Some nights, she would halt, as one frozen by some shudder of the mind, and stand stark still till she could move again." I can't exactly say why, but the shudder of the mind is an interesting image for me. Also, when she stopped, the stop was involuntary. She had to wait until she could (was able) to move again.
Also in this monologue, there are references to her walking along "his poor arm" -- twice. I'm curious whose arm it is. She's in the church when she's walking. Perhaps this is a reference to Christ on the cross since many Catholic churches are laid out in cross-patterns Also, she somehow got into the church even though the door was "always locked at that hour," which makes me wonder how she got in. Did she walk through the wall? Is May a ghost?
At about the middle of the first half of her monologue may describes the pacer as "Grey rather than white, a pale shade of grey." This echoes the grey theme mentioned earlier. The use of "shade" also takes on a possible second meaning as we struggle to understand how May got through a locked door. Is it saying she is a ghost -- a grey ghost, not a white ghost?
Near the middle of the monologue, she talks about seasons and Vespers. May then begins to talk about Mrs. Winter (whose name is a season) talking to her daughter Amy (whose name is an anagram of May) about what she observed at Evensong (the Anglican name for Vespers). It seems there is a definite tie here to May going to the locked church and pacing along "his poor arm" "at certain seasons of the year, during Vespers." I'm just not sure what. Also, Is May Amy? Is this name change like Lulu/Anna in "First Love"? Is there an intentional relationship between Mrs. Winter (on a late autumn evening) and her daughter May (late spring)? It seems that there is a definite relationship, but it isn't clear. For one thing, the brief description we have of Amy implies that she is functioning in the world, talking to her mother, sitting down to dinner, arguably going to Evensong, not pacing a rut in the floor.
May's story tells of Mrs. Winter asking Amy if she observed anything strange at Evensong, to which Amy replies "I was not there." Mrs. Winter asserts that she must have been because "I heard you respond. I heard you say Amen." This is looping back to the being is being heard idea. Mrs. Winter is convinced she heard Amy, which certifies Amy's presence, but Amy insists she was not there. Amy never responds to her mother's assertion.
The final lines of May's monologue are Mrs. Winter speaking to Amy, echoing the voice/mother's words to May at the end of the first act. "Amy. [Pause. No louder.] Amy. [Pause.] Yes, Mother. [Pause.] Will you never have done? [etc.]" The play has looped around itself again.
I'm still not certain exactly what to make of this play. The themes seem to be about repetition and circularity, being is being heard (in contrast to being seen), and uncertainty of identity and existence, but I haven't managed to tie them all together yet into a clear picture in my head.
The play has two characters. One is May, who spends the play pacing up and down a short strip on the stage and talking. The other is a "woman's voice" -- whose isn't specified. The lighting directions seem to indicate that the visual is focused on May's feet and her face is basically indistinct and in shadow. This seems appropriate given the title. May has grey hair and is dressed in grey. Greyness seems to be a recurring theme in Beckett's work.
The lighting directions start the play in darkness and bring up the lights after a chime sounds. At three points in the play, the lights go dark for a brief span before coming back up dimmer each time.
The speech in the play starts with a dialog between May and the voice. Next comes a monologue by the voice. Finally there is a monologue by May. Each section of speech overlaps the others and establishes parallels that create questions about who each character is and suggesting some curious resonances between sections.
Thoughts...
May's pacing is described as a "clearly audible rhythmic tread." This calls to mind the image of a metronome or a clock ticking away seconds. When May is pacing, time is passing. When she stands still, everything transpires in a single tick.
Perhaps the greyness is to reflect Beckett's view that everything is shades of grey. There is no real black or white -- or maybe that should be, there is no white since we frequently have blackness too, though one could argue that even the blackest black is still not truly black, just a very dark grey.
The lighting seems to be doing two things. First, it seems to be acting as a curtain of sorts, breaking the play into three "acts," though that may be a stretch of the theatrical term. Second, the fact that it is dimmer each time suggests that May is fading. Indeed, the final lights-up direction says there is "no trace of May" on the stage.
In the first act (I'm going to pretend it is legitimate to call the parts acts), the voice is May's mother who hears May calling "in [her] deep sleep." What is this sleep? Is it just plain old sleep? Or is it something else? Death is often paralleled to sleep. A coma might be likewise. Maybe it is a sleep of consciousness in the sense that we could say that someone who is present but isn't attentive is "asleep". If so, what is the thing to which the voice isn't attentive as it is clearly attentive to May's voice.
There is an inconsistency in the voice's second set of lines. The voice is (as best I can tell) supposed to be counting in sync with May's steps, but only counts to seven between turns. This is inconsistent because Beckett's directions say May's path is always nine steps.
May asks the voice/mother several questions -- would you like me to inject you again (with what?) change your position (is mother immobile?) etc. To each of these, the voice/mother responds affirmative (she would like them to be done) "but it is too soon." I don't know if this is significant or not, but this made me think of time oriented vs. event oriented societies. In time oriented societies, people say, "We'll do that at 1:00PM," and mean it. Whatever else is going on, we'll drop it and do this at 1:00PM. In event oriented societies people say, "We'll do that after we finish this," meaning maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe even next week. Of course, some people combine the two -- "I'll meet you after my class that ends at 5:45 PM" establishes both event and time constraints. Class may end early or late, but this is primarily time oriented because it establishes a narrow band of time in which something will happen. The point of all this is just to say that the voice/mother is very conscious of time and doing things at the proper time as opposed to doing them when she feels like doing them. She wants to be injected, but it isn't time. She wants to be cared for, but it isn't time. She is time-oriented. And let's not forget that May's pacing marks time in the play.
The lines in the middle of page 240 introduce the first clear parallel between May and the voice/mother. They establish the voice/mother to be about 90 which prompts the question, "So much?" from the voice. May, on the other hand is said to be "in [her] forties" and asks, "So little?" These parallels will continue to grow throughout the play. It's also worth noting that this first act of the play begins with May calling, "Mother. [Pause. No louder.] Mother. [Pause.]" to which the voice responds, "Yes, May." Followed by "Were you asleep?" The act concludes with "May. [Pause. No louder.] May." To which may responds, "Yes, Mother." "Will you never have done?"
Earlier in the first act, as the voice was counting May's steps, it ended each set of seven (which I thought should have been nine) with "wheel" to call the turn. At the end of the first act, the voice is asking May if she'll ever quit "revolving it all," emphasizing the theme of looping, circling, repeating that is first established by May's pacing and is carried through the parallels in speech identified above and later in the play.
In act two, the voice (still the voice of mother? some other voice?) begins, "I walk here now." We never see the speaker for the voice. There is no evidence that the speaker is walking -- or even there other than the sound of the voice. (This point will become important later in the act.) The voice begins a monologue, presumably about May since it refers to her standing and May is directed to be standing still at one end of her pacing path at the beginning of the act. Remember that this suggests the first part of the voice's monologue is happening in a single tick of time.
The voice says May is pacing "in the old home … where she began." This made me think of some of the protagonists in the first four Beckett stories we read. For example, in both "First Love" and "The Expelled" the protagonists lived in their family homes until they were thrown out. In fact, both had stayed in their room, rarely venturing out, until they were thrown out. May seems to echo this theme, only now it seems that the room is more in her head than some physical place. (Maybe this suggests that the rooms in the first stories were the protagonists' heads.)
The voice says that May has been here pacing for a very long time, even "when other girls her age were out at… lacrosse…". Why lacrosse? I'm wondering if May is autistic or mentally handicapped or perhaps severely obsessive/compulsive. Beckett doesn't really talk in those terms and see discussion of voice/mother's consciousness above, but it's an interesting thought. Is May somehow mentally different than much of the rest of the world, turned so inward that she cannot function in the world at large? This could be supported by the idea that May doesn't really sleep -- or does so rarely and on her feet.
In the last half of the voice's monologue, we get a story about a dialog between a child named May (presumably the May of the play) and her mother (presumably the voice, though the voice doesn't identify itself as the mother in this act). The interesting thing is when May says that "motion alone is not enough, I must hear the feet, however faint they fall." This leads to someone removing the carpet from the floor so May can hear her footfalls as she paces. But let's go back to the need to hear the feet. This seems to echo Berkeley's philosophy that being is in being seen, only with the sense of hearing instead of sight. In this play, being isn't being seen, it is being heard. Which harks back to the earlier comment I made about the voice. We never see the speaker, but because we hear the voice, we know the speaker exists. Also, it is reinforced by the lighting directions which make May barely visible to begin with and increasing less visible with each light cycle. Being is being heard.
Along this line of thought, note that while May needs to hear her steps, she only speaks "when she fancies none can hear." May is defining her own existence and does not want others to do so for her. Also, when she speaks she "tries to tell how it was," defining her past as well as confirming her present existence by the sound of her voice. Also note that she "tries," doesn't necessarily succeed.
The third act is May's monologue. May begins with "Sequel." This is a little curious, but as we progress, we can see that May's monologue might be related to the story in the voice's monologue. In this section, though, the distinction between May and the voice becomes a little less certain. May talks about someone, presumably herself. Presumably we're hearing her "try[ing] to tell how it was."
There was a turn of phrase in the first part of May's monologue that I found interesting. "Some nights, she would halt, as one frozen by some shudder of the mind, and stand stark still till she could move again." I can't exactly say why, but the shudder of the mind is an interesting image for me. Also, when she stopped, the stop was involuntary. She had to wait until she could (was able) to move again.
Also in this monologue, there are references to her walking along "his poor arm" -- twice. I'm curious whose arm it is. She's in the church when she's walking. Perhaps this is a reference to Christ on the cross since many Catholic churches are laid out in cross-patterns Also, she somehow got into the church even though the door was "always locked at that hour," which makes me wonder how she got in. Did she walk through the wall? Is May a ghost?
At about the middle of the first half of her monologue may describes the pacer as "Grey rather than white, a pale shade of grey." This echoes the grey theme mentioned earlier. The use of "shade" also takes on a possible second meaning as we struggle to understand how May got through a locked door. Is it saying she is a ghost -- a grey ghost, not a white ghost?
Near the middle of the monologue, she talks about seasons and Vespers. May then begins to talk about Mrs. Winter (whose name is a season) talking to her daughter Amy (whose name is an anagram of May) about what she observed at Evensong (the Anglican name for Vespers). It seems there is a definite tie here to May going to the locked church and pacing along "his poor arm" "at certain seasons of the year, during Vespers." I'm just not sure what. Also, Is May Amy? Is this name change like Lulu/Anna in "First Love"? Is there an intentional relationship between Mrs. Winter (on a late autumn evening) and her daughter May (late spring)? It seems that there is a definite relationship, but it isn't clear. For one thing, the brief description we have of Amy implies that she is functioning in the world, talking to her mother, sitting down to dinner, arguably going to Evensong, not pacing a rut in the floor.
May's story tells of Mrs. Winter asking Amy if she observed anything strange at Evensong, to which Amy replies "I was not there." Mrs. Winter asserts that she must have been because "I heard you respond. I heard you say Amen." This is looping back to the being is being heard idea. Mrs. Winter is convinced she heard Amy, which certifies Amy's presence, but Amy insists she was not there. Amy never responds to her mother's assertion.
The final lines of May's monologue are Mrs. Winter speaking to Amy, echoing the voice/mother's words to May at the end of the first act. "Amy. [Pause. No louder.] Amy. [Pause.] Yes, Mother. [Pause.] Will you never have done? [etc.]" The play has looped around itself again.
I'm still not certain exactly what to make of this play. The themes seem to be about repetition and circularity, being is being heard (in contrast to being seen), and uncertainty of identity and existence, but I haven't managed to tie them all together yet into a clear picture in my head.
11 November 2008
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 13: Rick Cluchey Performance
I rather enjoyed Rick Cluchey's performance of Krapp's Last Tape. On the whole it was roughly as I'd expected, but there's a difference between seeing the performance and visualizing it in my head. (Especially since I'm more a novels and stories person than a plays and screenplays person.)
I did note a couple of things watching the performance that I hadn't seen reading the play.
First, I noticed how much of the "comic relief" of the play was compressed into the pre-speech actions. This isn't to say that there is no comedy later in the play, but the majority of it is crammed into the first few actions as Krapp eats his bananas.
Second… In class discussion, there was some question about whether the "last tape" referred to the tape to which Krapp listens or the tape Krapp begins later in the play before abandoning it to return to his memories of Bianca. Watching Cluchey perform, and later checking against the text, we find that the tape Krapp listens to is box three, spool 5. While searching for it, Krapp references boxes after three, making it pretty clear that he has continued to make tapes since the tape he listens to. So the "last tape" must be the tape Krapp makes.
Cluchey said in his talk-back section that, according to Beckett, not only was the tape Krapp's last, but so was the "night in the future" when he made the tape.
Interesting. Nonetheless, Beckett's title focused on the tape, not the night. This suggests that the content of the last tape was important, and leads me back toward my original reading of the play in my earlier workbook entry. Krapp is looking back on choices and regretting them, choosing to go back to them as best he can, even though it is far too late to return and take the alternate path.
Which basically ties into my notes on Herb Blau's lecture and the conclusion that, far enough down the road to regret the choice is probably too late to reverse it. Make your choices. Move forward. Live with them.
Maybe that's Beckettian in a way.
And I still think the play might also be Beckett looking forward to looking back and regretting a choice he was facing, as said in the previous entry. In fact, watching the play and realizing that Cluchey is acting much as Beckett directed him, it seems all the more certain to me.
I did note a couple of things watching the performance that I hadn't seen reading the play.
First, I noticed how much of the "comic relief" of the play was compressed into the pre-speech actions. This isn't to say that there is no comedy later in the play, but the majority of it is crammed into the first few actions as Krapp eats his bananas.
Second… In class discussion, there was some question about whether the "last tape" referred to the tape to which Krapp listens or the tape Krapp begins later in the play before abandoning it to return to his memories of Bianca. Watching Cluchey perform, and later checking against the text, we find that the tape Krapp listens to is box three, spool 5. While searching for it, Krapp references boxes after three, making it pretty clear that he has continued to make tapes since the tape he listens to. So the "last tape" must be the tape Krapp makes.
Cluchey said in his talk-back section that, according to Beckett, not only was the tape Krapp's last, but so was the "night in the future" when he made the tape.
Interesting. Nonetheless, Beckett's title focused on the tape, not the night. This suggests that the content of the last tape was important, and leads me back toward my original reading of the play in my earlier workbook entry. Krapp is looking back on choices and regretting them, choosing to go back to them as best he can, even though it is far too late to return and take the alternate path.
Which basically ties into my notes on Herb Blau's lecture and the conclusion that, far enough down the road to regret the choice is probably too late to reverse it. Make your choices. Move forward. Live with them.
Maybe that's Beckettian in a way.
And I still think the play might also be Beckett looking forward to looking back and regretting a choice he was facing, as said in the previous entry. In fact, watching the play and realizing that Cluchey is acting much as Beckett directed him, it seems all the more certain to me.
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 12: Herb Blau Lecture
I took a lot of notes at the Herb Blau lecture, but two things stuck in my mind.
First was Blau's assertion that Beckett wasn't a nihilist because he was too hopeful. I found this interesting because I don't really see a lot of hope inherent in Beckett's work. Generally, Beckett seems to be struggling with the extreme imperfection of life as we know it.
I guess the only hopeful element I see in Beckett's work is that he doesn't give up utterly. He's miserable and discusses that misery quite extensively. He sees no real hope -- all hope is artificial hope that we create ourselves to motivate us to persist either in meaningless inaction (Waiting for Godot, for example) or unsuccessful action (Film, for example). Life is all about waiting for the end (Endgame, for example) and struggling with our inner demons ("The Calmative", for example). I guess that is more hopeful than someone who says there's no point in the struggle, no point in bothering to wait -- a view that ultimately leads to the conclusion that suicide is just as viable an option as any other, and is probably more honest.
The second thing that stuck in my mind was Blau's response to Thomas' question about memory and how that seemed to stimulate a burst of intense introspection and possibly a struggle for words. We know he's writing his autobiography and is revisiting his life -- the things he's proud of and things he looks at and probably asks, "How could I be so stupid?"
This sticks because it resonates with some things I've said to other people over the past few semesters. As the 40-something student in the midst of mostly 20-somethings, I find myself realizing (perhaps slightly jealous of) the freedom the 20-somethings have as they are unattached, not tied down. It reminds me of something someone told me when I was a 20-something in college. "You have more free time to do what you want right now than you will later in life." True.
They could have also added, "In many cases, no matter what choice you make, you'll probably end up wishing you'd at least tried the other choice." And to that I should add, if I'd made the other choice, I probably would have wished I'd tried the choice I made. It isn't so much a "no win" situation as an aspect of human nature. We want what we don't have, and what we don't have is often a result of the choice we make, hence we end up wishing we'd made different choices so we'd have what we don't have.
That said, I look back at some of the choices I made of which I casually think,"I wish I'd chosen differently," and speculate about where the different road would have led and realize that, if I'd gone down that road, I'd still have regrets. Two roads diverged… and I chose the path I chose. Trying to go back and try the other way will get me nowhere. And if I run back and then down that other path and decide I was happier where I was before, will I have enough time to get back to where I was before it's too late? Is "too late" inherent in the first undoing?
So, Blau's reflection reinforced this line of my own thinking. I've made choices. Some I think I wish I'd made differently. That's normal. Keep moving forward. As Beckett said, "I'll go on."
Which is another example of Beckett not quite qualifying as a nihilist.
First was Blau's assertion that Beckett wasn't a nihilist because he was too hopeful. I found this interesting because I don't really see a lot of hope inherent in Beckett's work. Generally, Beckett seems to be struggling with the extreme imperfection of life as we know it.
I guess the only hopeful element I see in Beckett's work is that he doesn't give up utterly. He's miserable and discusses that misery quite extensively. He sees no real hope -- all hope is artificial hope that we create ourselves to motivate us to persist either in meaningless inaction (Waiting for Godot, for example) or unsuccessful action (Film, for example). Life is all about waiting for the end (Endgame, for example) and struggling with our inner demons ("The Calmative", for example). I guess that is more hopeful than someone who says there's no point in the struggle, no point in bothering to wait -- a view that ultimately leads to the conclusion that suicide is just as viable an option as any other, and is probably more honest.
The second thing that stuck in my mind was Blau's response to Thomas' question about memory and how that seemed to stimulate a burst of intense introspection and possibly a struggle for words. We know he's writing his autobiography and is revisiting his life -- the things he's proud of and things he looks at and probably asks, "How could I be so stupid?"
This sticks because it resonates with some things I've said to other people over the past few semesters. As the 40-something student in the midst of mostly 20-somethings, I find myself realizing (perhaps slightly jealous of) the freedom the 20-somethings have as they are unattached, not tied down. It reminds me of something someone told me when I was a 20-something in college. "You have more free time to do what you want right now than you will later in life." True.
They could have also added, "In many cases, no matter what choice you make, you'll probably end up wishing you'd at least tried the other choice." And to that I should add, if I'd made the other choice, I probably would have wished I'd tried the choice I made. It isn't so much a "no win" situation as an aspect of human nature. We want what we don't have, and what we don't have is often a result of the choice we make, hence we end up wishing we'd made different choices so we'd have what we don't have.
That said, I look back at some of the choices I made of which I casually think,"I wish I'd chosen differently," and speculate about where the different road would have led and realize that, if I'd gone down that road, I'd still have regrets. Two roads diverged… and I chose the path I chose. Trying to go back and try the other way will get me nowhere. And if I run back and then down that other path and decide I was happier where I was before, will I have enough time to get back to where I was before it's too late? Is "too late" inherent in the first undoing?
So, Blau's reflection reinforced this line of my own thinking. I've made choices. Some I think I wish I'd made differently. That's normal. Keep moving forward. As Beckett said, "I'll go on."
Which is another example of Beckett not quite qualifying as a nihilist.
ENG4013 - Beginnings and Uncanny
I've been failing to write up the answers to the B&R questions -- at least formally to post on this blog. This week, however… Dr. M asked the following questions for B&R.
The Beginning
What are peritexts and in what way do they complicate the notion of beginnings? Provide an explanation in addition to an illustration.
Peritexts are things that come before the "official" beginning of the story -- before the first line of the narrative in question. Some peritexts are inherent in the construction of a book, such as covers, tables of contents, etc. Many books include some kind of summary on the cover or end flaps that establish the basic premise of the story. Some include quotes from reviews and establish reader expectations (or predispose the reader to a particular interpretation) of the book. Some authors may include prefaces, dedications, quotations or prologues before the primary text. The preface to the English edition of ENDO Shusaku's "Chinmoku" ("Silence") provides historical context and predisposes the reader to a particular interpretation of the story. (It is better read as a afterword than a preface.)
Peritexts complicate the notion of the beginning by introducing elements between the reader and the beginning. For example, the cover image of a book, the title of a book, story or poem, dedications and other peritexts pull the reader into parts of the story or set the stage for the story -- in effect, beginning before the beginning. So, the translator of "Chinmoku" gives historical background for the story and, in doing so, tells a major part of the story which involves a priest who sneaks into Tokugawa Japan after the Shimabara Rebellion, when Christianity has been outlawed. That background, and the more detailed overview of Tokugawa repression of Christianity in the preface, effectively tells the reader the major strokes of the story. The preface even delves into the complex crises of faith that the priest faces as he struggles with God's silence in the face of Tokugawa treatment of Christians, addressing (and telling the reader how to interpret) several key issues in the story. (For these reasons, this peritext is better left for a post-text.)
Define intertextuality and explain how this concept provides a means of complicating the idea of a simple beginning.
Intertextuality is when the author incorporates, consciously or not, allusions, references, quotations and other elements from other texts. Even a title can be intertextual. For example, a story titled "Beloved Son" calls to mind the Biblical quotation, "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased," and establishes a subtext to the story. Other examples include Beckett using Proustian language in his early stories.
Intertextuality complicates the beginning by establishing these connections to predecessor texts. This calls into question whether the text at hand stands alone or whether it begins in the earlier texts.
The Uncanny
In B&R's discussion of Freud's notion of the double, B&R go on to identify a specific paradox associated with the double. What is the paradox and how does it illustrate the notion of the uncanny?
Freud says the double promises both immortality (through reproducibility) and death (of identity because now "I" can point to one outside "me" and say, "That's me"). B&R says this paradox of the double "undermines the logic of identity" -- making a sense of self uncertain, therefore being uncanny.
In what way is the word "uncanny" itself uncanny?
The root "canny" basically means to be skilled in something, but it takes on connotations of unnatural skill or knowledge. Therefore, because it carries the concept of unnaturalness, it carries its opposite within itself, making it doubled and therefore "uncanny."
The Beginning
What are peritexts and in what way do they complicate the notion of beginnings? Provide an explanation in addition to an illustration.
Peritexts are things that come before the "official" beginning of the story -- before the first line of the narrative in question. Some peritexts are inherent in the construction of a book, such as covers, tables of contents, etc. Many books include some kind of summary on the cover or end flaps that establish the basic premise of the story. Some include quotes from reviews and establish reader expectations (or predispose the reader to a particular interpretation) of the book. Some authors may include prefaces, dedications, quotations or prologues before the primary text. The preface to the English edition of ENDO Shusaku's "Chinmoku" ("Silence") provides historical context and predisposes the reader to a particular interpretation of the story. (It is better read as a afterword than a preface.)
Peritexts complicate the notion of the beginning by introducing elements between the reader and the beginning. For example, the cover image of a book, the title of a book, story or poem, dedications and other peritexts pull the reader into parts of the story or set the stage for the story -- in effect, beginning before the beginning. So, the translator of "Chinmoku" gives historical background for the story and, in doing so, tells a major part of the story which involves a priest who sneaks into Tokugawa Japan after the Shimabara Rebellion, when Christianity has been outlawed. That background, and the more detailed overview of Tokugawa repression of Christianity in the preface, effectively tells the reader the major strokes of the story. The preface even delves into the complex crises of faith that the priest faces as he struggles with God's silence in the face of Tokugawa treatment of Christians, addressing (and telling the reader how to interpret) several key issues in the story. (For these reasons, this peritext is better left for a post-text.)
Define intertextuality and explain how this concept provides a means of complicating the idea of a simple beginning.
Intertextuality is when the author incorporates, consciously or not, allusions, references, quotations and other elements from other texts. Even a title can be intertextual. For example, a story titled "Beloved Son" calls to mind the Biblical quotation, "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased," and establishes a subtext to the story. Other examples include Beckett using Proustian language in his early stories.
Intertextuality complicates the beginning by establishing these connections to predecessor texts. This calls into question whether the text at hand stands alone or whether it begins in the earlier texts.
The Uncanny
In B&R's discussion of Freud's notion of the double, B&R go on to identify a specific paradox associated with the double. What is the paradox and how does it illustrate the notion of the uncanny?
Freud says the double promises both immortality (through reproducibility) and death (of identity because now "I" can point to one outside "me" and say, "That's me"). B&R says this paradox of the double "undermines the logic of identity" -- making a sense of self uncertain, therefore being uncanny.
In what way is the word "uncanny" itself uncanny?
The root "canny" basically means to be skilled in something, but it takes on connotations of unnatural skill or knowledge. Therefore, because it carries the concept of unnaturalness, it carries its opposite within itself, making it doubled and therefore "uncanny."
24 October 2008
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 11: Krapp's Last Tape
Something somewhat different from Beckett – though not completely different perhaps. The thing that struck me most about KLT was that, while the main character was still old, miserable and alone, he isn't sociopathically so. Or perhaps I should say that the older Krapp – the Krapp listening to tapes isn't. The younger Krapp was. Which makes me wonder if this isn't Beckett self-critiquing some of his earlier work.
What do I mean by "sociopathically"? Well, if you look at the old, miserable, alone characters in the first four short stories, it's pretty clear that they're all rather sociopathic. They want nothing to do with other people. They are generally narcissistic misanthropes.
The elder Krapp is not a narcissist – or maybe I should say he's no more a narcissist than any normal person who fits into society reasonably well. Krapp is also not a misanthrope. He doesn't despise people in general. In fact, the primary misery he struggles with is that he has spent his life working on his writing (Krapp refers to selling 16 copies of one of his books during the play) rather than committing to the woman he loved. (Of course the other irony there is that, if Krapp is happy to sell 16 copies of his book in a year, he obviously isn't particularly famous. This harmonizes well with Beckett's general disinterest in fame.)
In contrast, the younger Krapp – the Krapp who speaks on the tape – is incredibly self-absorbed, to the extent that he leaves Bianca, the woman he loves, because he isn't willing to give up some other thing he's pursuing, presumably his writing. The younger Krapp spends much of the tape talking about other events that happened in the preceding year – many of them trivial compared to Bianca. It's fairly clear he's trying to displace his focus and convince himself that Bianca was just another fling.
The elder Krapp believes he was an idiot to leave Bianca. Perhaps he came to that conclusion some time ago and is reminded of it when he pulls the tape from 30 years prior to listen before recording the tape for year 69. He wishes he could go back to then and be with Bianca again, and does so in memory.
At one level, Beckett seems to be critiquing his earlier writing. The elder Krapp calls the 39-year-old Krapp on the tape "that stupid bastard I took myself for thirty years ago." He bashes the idiocy of his youth. At the time Beckett wrote the short stories, "First Love," "The Expelled," "The Calmative," and "The End," all of which focus on self-absorbed misanthropes, possibly in reaction to his experiences during World War II – at that time, he was 39 or 40. KLT was written twelve years later and projecting eighteen years into the future (hence "A late evening in the future," perhaps?). Beckett already saw the nature of his earlier characters – and perhaps his earlier self – and uses Krapp to describe them – self-absorbed, pompous, annoying.
But perhaps there's another issue in play. Beckett had been in a long-running relationship with Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil (about twenty years at the time of KLT). Three years after KLT, Beckett married her, though all accounts suggest he was more concerned with inheritance law than affection, bonding, and so forth. Since he never left her, presumably they were emotionally and psychologically married well before the ceremony, making it truly a formality. Perhaps KLT is Beckett struggling with the question of marriage. If he doesn't marry her, he is effectively leaving her (at least financially), as Krapp left Bianca. Perhaps he is struggling with the idea, something that is contrary to his philosophy and ideals.
In the end, Krapp, unlike most of Beckett's characters is at once likable, or at least pitiable. Krapp is also more concrete than many Beckett characters, for all the brevity of the text we have about him. This makes KLT a bit of an odd bird in Beckett's menagerie, but it's a good oddness.
What do I mean by "sociopathically"? Well, if you look at the old, miserable, alone characters in the first four short stories, it's pretty clear that they're all rather sociopathic. They want nothing to do with other people. They are generally narcissistic misanthropes.
The elder Krapp is not a narcissist – or maybe I should say he's no more a narcissist than any normal person who fits into society reasonably well. Krapp is also not a misanthrope. He doesn't despise people in general. In fact, the primary misery he struggles with is that he has spent his life working on his writing (Krapp refers to selling 16 copies of one of his books during the play) rather than committing to the woman he loved. (Of course the other irony there is that, if Krapp is happy to sell 16 copies of his book in a year, he obviously isn't particularly famous. This harmonizes well with Beckett's general disinterest in fame.)
In contrast, the younger Krapp – the Krapp who speaks on the tape – is incredibly self-absorbed, to the extent that he leaves Bianca, the woman he loves, because he isn't willing to give up some other thing he's pursuing, presumably his writing. The younger Krapp spends much of the tape talking about other events that happened in the preceding year – many of them trivial compared to Bianca. It's fairly clear he's trying to displace his focus and convince himself that Bianca was just another fling.
The elder Krapp believes he was an idiot to leave Bianca. Perhaps he came to that conclusion some time ago and is reminded of it when he pulls the tape from 30 years prior to listen before recording the tape for year 69. He wishes he could go back to then and be with Bianca again, and does so in memory.
At one level, Beckett seems to be critiquing his earlier writing. The elder Krapp calls the 39-year-old Krapp on the tape "that stupid bastard I took myself for thirty years ago." He bashes the idiocy of his youth. At the time Beckett wrote the short stories, "First Love," "The Expelled," "The Calmative," and "The End," all of which focus on self-absorbed misanthropes, possibly in reaction to his experiences during World War II – at that time, he was 39 or 40. KLT was written twelve years later and projecting eighteen years into the future (hence "A late evening in the future," perhaps?). Beckett already saw the nature of his earlier characters – and perhaps his earlier self – and uses Krapp to describe them – self-absorbed, pompous, annoying.
But perhaps there's another issue in play. Beckett had been in a long-running relationship with Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil (about twenty years at the time of KLT). Three years after KLT, Beckett married her, though all accounts suggest he was more concerned with inheritance law than affection, bonding, and so forth. Since he never left her, presumably they were emotionally and psychologically married well before the ceremony, making it truly a formality. Perhaps KLT is Beckett struggling with the question of marriage. If he doesn't marry her, he is effectively leaving her (at least financially), as Krapp left Bianca. Perhaps he is struggling with the idea, something that is contrary to his philosophy and ideals.
In the end, Krapp, unlike most of Beckett's characters is at once likable, or at least pitiable. Krapp is also more concrete than many Beckett characters, for all the brevity of the text we have about him. This makes KLT a bit of an odd bird in Beckett's menagerie, but it's a good oddness.
16 October 2008
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 08 - Note
Yes, I've skipped one for now. I wrote my midterm paper on a piece of Texts for Nothing, which is the subject of Workbook Entry 8, and am having trouble rehashing it into a workbook entry.
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 10: Film
Film is a screenplay for a silent film (surprise).
It includes several common bits of Beckettness – existence, being seen, pain and their relationship, repetitive action that would have any process engineer pulling his hair, etc. It is also avant garde, though I think it is a little less "out there" than Eh Joe – or at least I feel I could understand the basic idea of what was happening better. I don't know if that's because it is more approachable or if that is because Beckett spent almost as many pages in explanatory notes about what he was thinking or trying to accomplish as he did describing the action in the screenplay -- giving me a "director's commentary" track for this story (film?) instead of just the story (teleplay?). He also spent a bit of text here and there explaining his intended meanings were for several elements.
The world of Film is a world of pairs. Almost everyone has a companion with them. I assume this is so everyone always has someone to observe them and ensure that they exist, though maybe this is a tip of the hat toward what Michel Foucault would later describe as "panopticism" where observation is about power and controlling people -- making them adhere to the norm to avoid standing out.
The story follows two people who Beckett calls E (the eye, the observer) and O (the object, the observed). Whenever E's perspective on O reaches a certain angle, O cringes in pain and E quickly moves back into the "area of immunity". The film ends with E confronting O and we find that E and O are the same person – or at least look the same.
O seems to be an outlier in society. For example, everyone but O is going the same way on the street. I also think that Beckett is saying that only E's perception causes people pain. Whenever E observes someone their faces gradually become horrified, though their reaction is less sudden and dramatic than O's reaction.
So who is E that he alone causes people pain upon observation? Dunno. If only O were affected by him, I'd suggest that Beckett is talking about the discomfort and difficulty of self-inspection. But E's observation of others causes them pain too, so E is clearly different from all the other observers. Maybe he sees with a keener insight. Maybe he's giving them a vulture look instead of just looking casually. Maybe he's giving them with a creepy stare. If he is O and O is an outlier, E is also an outlier. Maybe they are the man who walks to the beat of a different drummer and causes society problems or makes people confront things they don't want to see. Maybe they are Beckett -- or at least Beckett as he saw himself.
I don't know. Beckett's commentary makes it clear that the story is about the pain of perceivedness. We know that Beckett tied this idea into Berkeley's concept that being seen made one exist. This means the pain of perceivedness is also the pain of existence. I think the repetitive action (when O evicts the dog and cat from the room) is probably a joke of sorts. Beckett routinely injects absurd humor to defuse a serious situation. He also describes the sequence as a "foolish suggestion" for how to handle the process. He does note that animals aren't affected by E's observation, though, so apparently only sentient beings are subject to the pain of existence.
Again, while not as off the wall as Eh Joe, Film is still a bit off the wall. (I mean, for Pete's sake, Film! What kind of title is that?) Or perhaps, better said, it's a philosophical piece more than a pure literary piece. Beckett is once again telling his story of the existential horror of existence and expressing his philosophy of life, the universe and everything – that 42 is probably just as good an answer as any other and existence is misery.
It includes several common bits of Beckettness – existence, being seen, pain and their relationship, repetitive action that would have any process engineer pulling his hair, etc. It is also avant garde, though I think it is a little less "out there" than Eh Joe – or at least I feel I could understand the basic idea of what was happening better. I don't know if that's because it is more approachable or if that is because Beckett spent almost as many pages in explanatory notes about what he was thinking or trying to accomplish as he did describing the action in the screenplay -- giving me a "director's commentary" track for this story (film?) instead of just the story (teleplay?). He also spent a bit of text here and there explaining his intended meanings were for several elements.
The world of Film is a world of pairs. Almost everyone has a companion with them. I assume this is so everyone always has someone to observe them and ensure that they exist, though maybe this is a tip of the hat toward what Michel Foucault would later describe as "panopticism" where observation is about power and controlling people -- making them adhere to the norm to avoid standing out.
The story follows two people who Beckett calls E (the eye, the observer) and O (the object, the observed). Whenever E's perspective on O reaches a certain angle, O cringes in pain and E quickly moves back into the "area of immunity". The film ends with E confronting O and we find that E and O are the same person – or at least look the same.
O seems to be an outlier in society. For example, everyone but O is going the same way on the street. I also think that Beckett is saying that only E's perception causes people pain. Whenever E observes someone their faces gradually become horrified, though their reaction is less sudden and dramatic than O's reaction.
So who is E that he alone causes people pain upon observation? Dunno. If only O were affected by him, I'd suggest that Beckett is talking about the discomfort and difficulty of self-inspection. But E's observation of others causes them pain too, so E is clearly different from all the other observers. Maybe he sees with a keener insight. Maybe he's giving them a vulture look instead of just looking casually. Maybe he's giving them with a creepy stare. If he is O and O is an outlier, E is also an outlier. Maybe they are the man who walks to the beat of a different drummer and causes society problems or makes people confront things they don't want to see. Maybe they are Beckett -- or at least Beckett as he saw himself.
I don't know. Beckett's commentary makes it clear that the story is about the pain of perceivedness. We know that Beckett tied this idea into Berkeley's concept that being seen made one exist. This means the pain of perceivedness is also the pain of existence. I think the repetitive action (when O evicts the dog and cat from the room) is probably a joke of sorts. Beckett routinely injects absurd humor to defuse a serious situation. He also describes the sequence as a "foolish suggestion" for how to handle the process. He does note that animals aren't affected by E's observation, though, so apparently only sentient beings are subject to the pain of existence.
Again, while not as off the wall as Eh Joe, Film is still a bit off the wall. (I mean, for Pete's sake, Film! What kind of title is that?) Or perhaps, better said, it's a philosophical piece more than a pure literary piece. Beckett is once again telling his story of the existential horror of existence and expressing his philosophy of life, the universe and everything – that 42 is probably just as good an answer as any other and existence is misery.
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 09: Eh Joe
Eh Joe? What was that Joe? I didn't get that Joe.
With Eh Joe, we've moved from the merely "modernist" strangeness of the first stories and plays to something more avant garde – perhaps a little too avant for my garde.
This text is a teleplay. The majority of the visuals involve a slowly closing closeup of a 50-something man (Joe) sitting on a bed. The audio is a woman's voice speaking -- to the man? a voice in his head? Don't know, Joe. The script makes it clear he's alone. That much I can make out.
But what's going on? Is anything going on? (I'm sure the latter question would amuse Beckett.)
The voice might be a voice of wandering memory. Meanwhile, there are a few points that are clear and echo Beckettian notions – an implied relationship between being seen and existing, between existence and pain, between life and death and the general annoying insistence of a physical body.
The only action I can make out is near the end, a "scene" (I use that term loosely) in which a woman commits suicide. Using a common Beckett motif, it takes her several tries to get it right. (There were similar motifs in Endgame and Waiting for Godot among others.) The text indicates that the woman and Joe knew each other, perhaps were lovers. There are some subtle suggestions that Joe wasn't the nicest guy when dealing with her (recommending a particular razor for her body hair, for example).
It seems this woman was one of many Joe has known, but was perhaps the woman he loved best – or at least came closest to loving. The whole issue of love and what it means to love someone comes up again as it has in other Beckett texts including Endgame and "First Love" and remains equally unresolved.
I also gather that the woman speaking (again, presumably in Joe's head) was not the woman who committed suicide because the voice says, "I found a better," and "But there was one didn't… You know the one I mean, Joe…"before describing the suicide girl. Which makes me wonder who the voice we hear (presumably in Joe's head, but maybe a voice he doesn't hear at all) is that isn't with him now and isn't the woman he loved (if he loved) best but is still talking about him, maybe even to him in his head.
We don't know why the woman who committed suicide actually committed suicide either. We don't know how it really affects Joe. We don't know a lot… Eh Joe? And on the whole, I don't understand a lot of Eh Joe.
But maybe that's Beckett's whole point.
With Eh Joe, we've moved from the merely "modernist" strangeness of the first stories and plays to something more avant garde – perhaps a little too avant for my garde.
This text is a teleplay. The majority of the visuals involve a slowly closing closeup of a 50-something man (Joe) sitting on a bed. The audio is a woman's voice speaking -- to the man? a voice in his head? Don't know, Joe. The script makes it clear he's alone. That much I can make out.
But what's going on? Is anything going on? (I'm sure the latter question would amuse Beckett.)
The voice might be a voice of wandering memory. Meanwhile, there are a few points that are clear and echo Beckettian notions – an implied relationship between being seen and existing, between existence and pain, between life and death and the general annoying insistence of a physical body.
The only action I can make out is near the end, a "scene" (I use that term loosely) in which a woman commits suicide. Using a common Beckett motif, it takes her several tries to get it right. (There were similar motifs in Endgame and Waiting for Godot among others.) The text indicates that the woman and Joe knew each other, perhaps were lovers. There are some subtle suggestions that Joe wasn't the nicest guy when dealing with her (recommending a particular razor for her body hair, for example).
It seems this woman was one of many Joe has known, but was perhaps the woman he loved best – or at least came closest to loving. The whole issue of love and what it means to love someone comes up again as it has in other Beckett texts including Endgame and "First Love" and remains equally unresolved.
I also gather that the woman speaking (again, presumably in Joe's head) was not the woman who committed suicide because the voice says, "I found a better," and "But there was one didn't… You know the one I mean, Joe…"before describing the suicide girl. Which makes me wonder who the voice we hear (presumably in Joe's head, but maybe a voice he doesn't hear at all) is that isn't with him now and isn't the woman he loved (if he loved) best but is still talking about him, maybe even to him in his head.
We don't know why the woman who committed suicide actually committed suicide either. We don't know how it really affects Joe. We don't know a lot… Eh Joe? And on the whole, I don't understand a lot of Eh Joe.
But maybe that's Beckett's whole point.
13 October 2008
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 07: Happy Days
This Happy Days has nothing to do with Henry Winkler or Ron Howard. Nope, this is Samuel Beckett in full Samuel Beckett style. Rather than go through the long list identifying all the things this play shares in common with Beckett's other works, I'm going to continue my effort to get beyond all Beckett's baggage and find something different, or at least something that maybe isn't so obvious.
Winnie is a wife suffering from depression and denial and maybe a little bit of self hate. Given that perspective, we can also reinterpret some of the symbols in the play.
So why do I say Winnie is a depressed wife in denial? Let's start with page 31, where Winnie talks about "something something laughing wild amid severest woe." This is a quote from Thomas Gray's "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College" from a list of things that try men including, "moody Madness laughing wild amid severest woe." Sounds like depression and denial to me.
Immediately after she asks Willy (the presumed husband, and God knows what else he would be to still be with her in the miserable state in which they live), "Was I loveable once?" Winnie believes she is not (and perhaps never was) lovable, meaning she is unloved (even by herself). If that isn't obvious enough, consider a few lines further where she says, "I am not asking you if you loved me, we know all about that, I am asking you if you found me lovable." She has given up on Willie loving her. She believes he stays with her out of force of habit, or because it is "the right thing to do" or some other such thing. We're not sure what she's looking for from him, but she apparently isn't getting what she considers to be love from him. If that isn't enough to make a wife depressed, what is?
On page 34, after another attempt to find something to shore up her self esteem and failing, she says, "Forgive me, Willie, sorrow keeps breaking in. Ah well, what a joy in any case to know you are there..." She says, in effect, "I'm horrifically sad… but I'll keep telling myself I'm happy because you're there," even though she's already admitted that she doesn't think he loves her. Maybe she's happy because he is staying with her and she is making him as miserable (she believes) as she is.
Another indication of Winnie's outlook is on page 41 where she refers to the people who stopped to look at her speculating that they were married, then saying, "no – they are holding hands – his fiancée more likely – or just some – loved one." Winnie is suggesting that, if they had been married, they wouldn't have been holding hands, would have abandoned the intimacy and love that unmarried couples share.
In a very Beckettian statement, Winnie says on page 42, "Ah well, I supposed it's only natural. Human. What is one to do?" Now, we might suppose that this is Winnie referring to Willie's indelicate action in the preceding lines, but given the stage direction "Break in voice" in the midst of this statement, this is more likely to be a commentary on something bigger. Winnie is saying that there is nothing to be done about being human. Humanity drags one down. To use a line from Beckett's Endgame, "We're on earth – there's no cure for that."
Winnie addresses her problem in the same the way many depressed housewives addressed their problem in the 1960s. On page 13-14, Winnie pulls out a medicine bottle and reads that it is for "loss of spirits" among other things and offers, "instantaneous improvement". She proceeds to drink the remaining contents of the almost empty bottle. The immediate response, "Ah that's better!" Ironically, the medicine is red. The term "reds" is 1960s drug slang for depressants.
So, Winnie is depressed. She's also in denial. Throughout the play she is trying to pretend she's happy as evidenced in some of the quotes above – telling herself she's happy because Willie is there, for example. She forces smiles. She constantly tells herself it will be a "happy day" even though she is far from happy. This is clear denial.
Let's use this thinking to look at some of the symbolism in the play. Willie spends most of the play behind the mound and seems, if not unresponsive to Winnie, certainly distracted by other things. One example, a postcard that Winnie finds scandalous (page 19). Perhaps Willie is using pornography in place of his wife. This also offers a different possible vision of Willie's offensive behavior on page 42. It's also probably worth noting that his name is a common British slang term for a penis, further suggesting his particular distraction. The mound that first encases Winnie to her chest and finally to her neck is an image of the depression slowly eating her. Eventually, she'll be completely buried, unable to breathe. The bell that tells her when to wake and sleep and Winnie's mechanical behavior suggest the ways a depressed person may force themselves to appear functional for as long as they can, mechanically making their way through the day, killing time until they can go to sleep when they can at least not be aware of how miserable they feel.
Thus we have Winnie, depressed 1960s wife, denying her depression and putting on a brave face as the steadily growing heap of misery consumes her.
Of course, this phenomenon isn't restricted to the 1960s. Today we have Prozac (and cousins) in place of older antidepressants, a wider acceptance of depression as a psychological condition instead of "crazy", and so forth, but it seems safe to say that Winnie still roams the wilderness of the world, probably many more Winnie's than many people suspect.
Winnie is a wife suffering from depression and denial and maybe a little bit of self hate. Given that perspective, we can also reinterpret some of the symbols in the play.
So why do I say Winnie is a depressed wife in denial? Let's start with page 31, where Winnie talks about "something something laughing wild amid severest woe." This is a quote from Thomas Gray's "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College" from a list of things that try men including, "moody Madness laughing wild amid severest woe." Sounds like depression and denial to me.
Immediately after she asks Willy (the presumed husband, and God knows what else he would be to still be with her in the miserable state in which they live), "Was I loveable once?" Winnie believes she is not (and perhaps never was) lovable, meaning she is unloved (even by herself). If that isn't obvious enough, consider a few lines further where she says, "I am not asking you if you loved me, we know all about that, I am asking you if you found me lovable." She has given up on Willie loving her. She believes he stays with her out of force of habit, or because it is "the right thing to do" or some other such thing. We're not sure what she's looking for from him, but she apparently isn't getting what she considers to be love from him. If that isn't enough to make a wife depressed, what is?
On page 34, after another attempt to find something to shore up her self esteem and failing, she says, "Forgive me, Willie, sorrow keeps breaking in. Ah well, what a joy in any case to know you are there..." She says, in effect, "I'm horrifically sad… but I'll keep telling myself I'm happy because you're there," even though she's already admitted that she doesn't think he loves her. Maybe she's happy because he is staying with her and she is making him as miserable (she believes) as she is.
Another indication of Winnie's outlook is on page 41 where she refers to the people who stopped to look at her speculating that they were married, then saying, "no – they are holding hands – his fiancée more likely – or just some – loved one." Winnie is suggesting that, if they had been married, they wouldn't have been holding hands, would have abandoned the intimacy and love that unmarried couples share.
In a very Beckettian statement, Winnie says on page 42, "Ah well, I supposed it's only natural. Human. What is one to do?" Now, we might suppose that this is Winnie referring to Willie's indelicate action in the preceding lines, but given the stage direction "Break in voice" in the midst of this statement, this is more likely to be a commentary on something bigger. Winnie is saying that there is nothing to be done about being human. Humanity drags one down. To use a line from Beckett's Endgame, "We're on earth – there's no cure for that."
Winnie addresses her problem in the same the way many depressed housewives addressed their problem in the 1960s. On page 13-14, Winnie pulls out a medicine bottle and reads that it is for "loss of spirits" among other things and offers, "instantaneous improvement". She proceeds to drink the remaining contents of the almost empty bottle. The immediate response, "Ah that's better!" Ironically, the medicine is red. The term "reds" is 1960s drug slang for depressants.
So, Winnie is depressed. She's also in denial. Throughout the play she is trying to pretend she's happy as evidenced in some of the quotes above – telling herself she's happy because Willie is there, for example. She forces smiles. She constantly tells herself it will be a "happy day" even though she is far from happy. This is clear denial.
Let's use this thinking to look at some of the symbolism in the play. Willie spends most of the play behind the mound and seems, if not unresponsive to Winnie, certainly distracted by other things. One example, a postcard that Winnie finds scandalous (page 19). Perhaps Willie is using pornography in place of his wife. This also offers a different possible vision of Willie's offensive behavior on page 42. It's also probably worth noting that his name is a common British slang term for a penis, further suggesting his particular distraction. The mound that first encases Winnie to her chest and finally to her neck is an image of the depression slowly eating her. Eventually, she'll be completely buried, unable to breathe. The bell that tells her when to wake and sleep and Winnie's mechanical behavior suggest the ways a depressed person may force themselves to appear functional for as long as they can, mechanically making their way through the day, killing time until they can go to sleep when they can at least not be aware of how miserable they feel.
Thus we have Winnie, depressed 1960s wife, denying her depression and putting on a brave face as the steadily growing heap of misery consumes her.
Of course, this phenomenon isn't restricted to the 1960s. Today we have Prozac (and cousins) in place of older antidepressants, a wider acceptance of depression as a psychological condition instead of "crazy", and so forth, but it seems safe to say that Winnie still roams the wilderness of the world, probably many more Winnie's than many people suspect.
29 September 2008
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 06: "The End"
On the one hand, "The End" is much like the other stories in this first set. The narrator fits the pattern of at least slightly crazy, expelled, somehow deformed or defective (keeps talking about people being horrified when they see his skull), etc., etc. At the end of "The End," it seems that the character either commits suicide or dies naturally. Another thoroughly happy Beckett story about the misery of existence in a world where there is no meaning.
But I'm going to try to take a slightly different approach. Partly because I saw an alternate reading that I thought might be interesting and partly because I do get tired of analyzing the existential drone of horror, boredom and hopelessness. Instead of seeing "The End" as the tale of the last days of an individual who is far from healthy or sane, I thought it might be interesting to look at it as a story of his life as a whole.
Beckett begins, "They clothed me and gave me money." Eventually, after several readings, I asked, "So who gives us clothes and money." In my case, the first people to give me clothes and money were my parents. (Well, my grandparents may have beat them to the punch, ever so slightly, but you get the picture.) This led me to the initial thought behind the idea above – this isn't just about the narrators end-of-life, it is about his whole life. So, starting from this premise, where else does it lead us?
The narrator says that the money was "to get me started." This part is the story of a beginning. The next sentences talk about how the narrator will need to get more money when this is gone, and shoes and so forth, suggesting a child leaving home for the first time to make his way in the world.
Then Beckett tells us that, "The clothes… were not new, but the deceased must have been about my size." He has inherited his clothes from a dead man, much as he inherited his ancestry, his genes and environmental effects on his psyche from a man who "died" (to use the term in the Shakespearean, Much Ado About Nothing sense). It's also worth noting that the dead man was "about [his] size" but "a little shorter, a little thinner." Children are often about the same size as their parents unless there is a marked disparity in their parents' sizes. This is simple genetics. It is also worth noting that, historically, humans have become taller over the centuries as food supplies and other health factors have improved, so it would not be unusual for a child to be slightly taller than his father, but not so much so that he couldn't wear his father's clothes.
The narrator asks for his old clothes back, but the institutions warders have destroyed his clothes. He cannot go back to them. They are discarded much as a caul might be discarded, or the afterbirth. Much as it is impossible to literally return to the womb. The removal of the bed linens and breakdown and removal of the bed (79) also fit this pattern. Perhaps a better analogy for these discarded components is the amniotic fluid, which is lost at the beginning of the birth process (when the mother's water breaks).
The narrator also uses this juncture to mention that he wants a different hat, one he can pull down over his face because he "could not go about bare-headed, with [his] skull in the state it was" (79). Infants are born with soft spots in their skull to ease the birthing process. This deformity of the skull suggests this condition. In most children, these soft spots close as the skull matures, but some children have a condition that leaves the soft spots open for years or permanently. Perhaps the narrator is simply referring to the usual case, or perhaps he has an effective soft spot in his skull that lets in things he would rather keep out.
Not wishing to leave, the narrator draws out his time in the institution. He asks if he could stay if he could make himself useful (80). His warder, Mr. Weir, tells him he cannot be useful and must leave. In a similar way, a child takes from the mother's body and offers little in return beyond possibly a sense of emotional wellbeing. At a certain point, the charity of the mother's body must cease. The child must leave. It is not useful to the body anymore.
Still longing to linger, the narrator gets permission to wait in the vestibule of the institution until the rain ends or until six o'clock. Likewise, a child in a difficult birth seems to linger in the womb or in the birth canal. Finally, an intern tells him that, with the rain ended, he must leave, and exits the institution, born into the world.
The next image is walking through a garden in the beautiful post-rain light and seeing a child "stretching out his hands and looking up at the blue sky, ask[ing] his mother how such a thing was possible" (81). This echoes the newborn's initial stretching, grasping motions. The doubtless amazement as it begins to process light that is unfiltered by the mother's body. The sensory rush that is the infant's first, direct observation of the new world, the new womb, in which it will live.
The mother's response is telling. "F--k off." Not only is the new world amazing, it is horrifying. Horrifying for its sensory overload. Horrifying for its dryness. Horrifying for its coldness. Horrifying for its silence – the absence of the steady sounds of the mother's body that the newborn has always known. Horrifying for its clamor of strange, sharp, loud, irregular, confusing noise. The child is effectively thrust into the world unprepared. It feels like it's mother has rejected it, told it to f--k off.
The narrator remembers he "[forgot to ask] Mr. Weir for a piece of bread." The newborn is suddenly without food. Everything it has needed was supplied by the mother directly. Now feeding is mediated by the mouth. It is soon hungry, looking for food, water. Even waste removal is more complicated. But there is no turning back. Departure is complete. There is no return to the mother's body. The child has been born.
But I'm going to try to take a slightly different approach. Partly because I saw an alternate reading that I thought might be interesting and partly because I do get tired of analyzing the existential drone of horror, boredom and hopelessness. Instead of seeing "The End" as the tale of the last days of an individual who is far from healthy or sane, I thought it might be interesting to look at it as a story of his life as a whole.
Beckett begins, "They clothed me and gave me money." Eventually, after several readings, I asked, "So who gives us clothes and money." In my case, the first people to give me clothes and money were my parents. (Well, my grandparents may have beat them to the punch, ever so slightly, but you get the picture.) This led me to the initial thought behind the idea above – this isn't just about the narrators end-of-life, it is about his whole life. So, starting from this premise, where else does it lead us?
The narrator says that the money was "to get me started." This part is the story of a beginning. The next sentences talk about how the narrator will need to get more money when this is gone, and shoes and so forth, suggesting a child leaving home for the first time to make his way in the world.
Then Beckett tells us that, "The clothes… were not new, but the deceased must have been about my size." He has inherited his clothes from a dead man, much as he inherited his ancestry, his genes and environmental effects on his psyche from a man who "died" (to use the term in the Shakespearean, Much Ado About Nothing sense). It's also worth noting that the dead man was "about [his] size" but "a little shorter, a little thinner." Children are often about the same size as their parents unless there is a marked disparity in their parents' sizes. This is simple genetics. It is also worth noting that, historically, humans have become taller over the centuries as food supplies and other health factors have improved, so it would not be unusual for a child to be slightly taller than his father, but not so much so that he couldn't wear his father's clothes.
The narrator asks for his old clothes back, but the institutions warders have destroyed his clothes. He cannot go back to them. They are discarded much as a caul might be discarded, or the afterbirth. Much as it is impossible to literally return to the womb. The removal of the bed linens and breakdown and removal of the bed (79) also fit this pattern. Perhaps a better analogy for these discarded components is the amniotic fluid, which is lost at the beginning of the birth process (when the mother's water breaks).
The narrator also uses this juncture to mention that he wants a different hat, one he can pull down over his face because he "could not go about bare-headed, with [his] skull in the state it was" (79). Infants are born with soft spots in their skull to ease the birthing process. This deformity of the skull suggests this condition. In most children, these soft spots close as the skull matures, but some children have a condition that leaves the soft spots open for years or permanently. Perhaps the narrator is simply referring to the usual case, or perhaps he has an effective soft spot in his skull that lets in things he would rather keep out.
Not wishing to leave, the narrator draws out his time in the institution. He asks if he could stay if he could make himself useful (80). His warder, Mr. Weir, tells him he cannot be useful and must leave. In a similar way, a child takes from the mother's body and offers little in return beyond possibly a sense of emotional wellbeing. At a certain point, the charity of the mother's body must cease. The child must leave. It is not useful to the body anymore.
Still longing to linger, the narrator gets permission to wait in the vestibule of the institution until the rain ends or until six o'clock. Likewise, a child in a difficult birth seems to linger in the womb or in the birth canal. Finally, an intern tells him that, with the rain ended, he must leave, and exits the institution, born into the world.
The next image is walking through a garden in the beautiful post-rain light and seeing a child "stretching out his hands and looking up at the blue sky, ask[ing] his mother how such a thing was possible" (81). This echoes the newborn's initial stretching, grasping motions. The doubtless amazement as it begins to process light that is unfiltered by the mother's body. The sensory rush that is the infant's first, direct observation of the new world, the new womb, in which it will live.
The mother's response is telling. "F--k off." Not only is the new world amazing, it is horrifying. Horrifying for its sensory overload. Horrifying for its dryness. Horrifying for its coldness. Horrifying for its silence – the absence of the steady sounds of the mother's body that the newborn has always known. Horrifying for its clamor of strange, sharp, loud, irregular, confusing noise. The child is effectively thrust into the world unprepared. It feels like it's mother has rejected it, told it to f--k off.
The narrator remembers he "[forgot to ask] Mr. Weir for a piece of bread." The newborn is suddenly without food. Everything it has needed was supplied by the mother directly. Now feeding is mediated by the mouth. It is soon hungry, looking for food, water. Even waste removal is more complicated. But there is no turning back. Departure is complete. There is no return to the mother's body. The child has been born.
24 September 2008
ENG4013 - Sexual Difference & Queer
Dr. M spent a lot of time talking about Lacan's extensions of Freud's ideas on desire last week. A couple of general notes. While Freud says that the original desire is the mother's breast (though note that shouldn't be seen as precisely literal, just for the things that implies – warmth, comfort, food, etc. – so single fathers or bottle-feeding mothers, don't feel you can't meet that) Lacan says there is no original desire. Desire is part of what we are and is never satisfied. When desire is satisfied, we have no reason to live. On the whole, I thought Lacan was a bit out on a limb, sawing on the wrong side, but, hey, this way of thinking apparently makes some people feel better. As the title of a Steve Taylor song says, "Since I gave up hope, I feel a lot better." (The song is full of such irony.)
This week, we're reading the chapters "Sexual Difference" and "Queer." Questions to consider:
Sexual Difference
As best I can tell "essentialism" is B&R's way of saying "fundamentalism" while avoiding the religious connotations that have attached to that term. According to B&R, essentialization of gender says that there is essentially one form of sexual difference – the anatomical or biological difference between male and female. B&R contend that gender stereotypes are built on top of that essentalist view. They then launch into a discussion of phallocentrism and phallogocentrism, which doesn't mean quite what one might think. Basically, these come down to the idea of "patriarchy" which B&R equate with the idea that there is some "unity of meaning" or "certainty of origin" that some meanings are "legitmate" and others "illegitimate" and that the author (and author's intent) actually matter. So, basically, the reverse (which seems to be "feminism") says that text can mean whatever you want it to mean (as long as it doesn't offend the feminist critics). Somehow I detect a whiff of inconsistency here. As far as significance, it means you can read whatever "gender" you wish into a given text and that literary works are not inherently "feminist… masculinist or … sexist" – which seems to say that however you read a text in terms of gender, it's all in your head and you'll never be able to prove it right or wrong (and shouldn't beat people over the head if they don't agree with you).
Dr. M explained that deconstruction is about identifying a "hierarchy" or relationshp where one side of the relationship has privilege or power over the other, then inverting that hierarchy and transforming the relationship. He noted that it isn't enough to just reverse the relationship, you have to break some part of the underlying assumption of the relationship. So, last week we talked about the triangular relationship where A and C both desire B and therefore B becomes a powerless object with no desire. Deconstruction would require us to refigure the relationship so that B gained power without totally disempowering A and C.
B&R identify the hierarchy in "The Yellow Wallpaper" in terms of the male/female relationship expressed and focusing on the male=rational/female=irrational idea that is developed in following: "John is practical to the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures." They suggest that this can be read to present rationalism as a type of superstition (John's dismissive attitude toward anything that challenges his beliefs or doesn't fit into them, his "horror" of superstition as a superstitious fear of superstition). So, while John is supposedly a rational man, he is inconsistent because he responds irrationally to the irrational. (B&R say this section is "concerned with a suspension of the logic of non-contradiction.")
Butler criticizes "identify politics" (associating oneself with a group, typically a minority group of some kind) because it is (she says) a form of essentialism that constrains the subjects it seeks to liberate and disempowers them because they must subjugate themselves to it.
If you think some of that seems convoluted or contradictory, I'm with you. Dr. M will probably clarify some of it during class.
Meanwhile, onto the idea that gender identity is performative. Butler says that gender identity (sexuality) is not biological (which ought to go over well with anyone who wants to find a "gay gene" or claim they were "born gay"). Rather, she says, it is created by a person's actions. So if you act straight or gay or bisexual or whatever, you are that. She also says that gender identity is learned and imitated (copies others who follow the pattern) and that, because gender identity is based on actions, it is all a "drag act."
Heady stuff. Ironically, it seems to say that gender identity is a choice. The actions we choose determine us, not genes, overbearing mothers, weak fathers, or the bully who picked on us. Wow! Who'd've thunk I'd find a liberal post-existentialist literary critic arguing that people are responsible for their actions, not things outside their control.
This week, we're reading the chapters "Sexual Difference" and "Queer." Questions to consider:
Sexual Difference
- Explain what essentialism and essentialization of gender signify
- Explain the two step process of deconstruction described for "The Yellow Wallpaper" or Daniel Deronda.
- Explain Judith Butler's critique of "identity politics."
- Explain what Butler means when she says gender identity is performative.
As best I can tell "essentialism" is B&R's way of saying "fundamentalism" while avoiding the religious connotations that have attached to that term. According to B&R, essentialization of gender says that there is essentially one form of sexual difference – the anatomical or biological difference between male and female. B&R contend that gender stereotypes are built on top of that essentalist view. They then launch into a discussion of phallocentrism and phallogocentrism, which doesn't mean quite what one might think. Basically, these come down to the idea of "patriarchy" which B&R equate with the idea that there is some "unity of meaning" or "certainty of origin" that some meanings are "legitmate" and others "illegitimate" and that the author (and author's intent) actually matter. So, basically, the reverse (which seems to be "feminism") says that text can mean whatever you want it to mean (as long as it doesn't offend the feminist critics). Somehow I detect a whiff of inconsistency here. As far as significance, it means you can read whatever "gender" you wish into a given text and that literary works are not inherently "feminist… masculinist or … sexist" – which seems to say that however you read a text in terms of gender, it's all in your head and you'll never be able to prove it right or wrong (and shouldn't beat people over the head if they don't agree with you).
Dr. M explained that deconstruction is about identifying a "hierarchy" or relationshp where one side of the relationship has privilege or power over the other, then inverting that hierarchy and transforming the relationship. He noted that it isn't enough to just reverse the relationship, you have to break some part of the underlying assumption of the relationship. So, last week we talked about the triangular relationship where A and C both desire B and therefore B becomes a powerless object with no desire. Deconstruction would require us to refigure the relationship so that B gained power without totally disempowering A and C.
B&R identify the hierarchy in "The Yellow Wallpaper" in terms of the male/female relationship expressed and focusing on the male=rational/female=irrational idea that is developed in following: "John is practical to the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures." They suggest that this can be read to present rationalism as a type of superstition (John's dismissive attitude toward anything that challenges his beliefs or doesn't fit into them, his "horror" of superstition as a superstitious fear of superstition). So, while John is supposedly a rational man, he is inconsistent because he responds irrationally to the irrational. (B&R say this section is "concerned with a suspension of the logic of non-contradiction.")
Butler criticizes "identify politics" (associating oneself with a group, typically a minority group of some kind) because it is (she says) a form of essentialism that constrains the subjects it seeks to liberate and disempowers them because they must subjugate themselves to it.
If you think some of that seems convoluted or contradictory, I'm with you. Dr. M will probably clarify some of it during class.
Meanwhile, onto the idea that gender identity is performative. Butler says that gender identity (sexuality) is not biological (which ought to go over well with anyone who wants to find a "gay gene" or claim they were "born gay"). Rather, she says, it is created by a person's actions. So if you act straight or gay or bisexual or whatever, you are that. She also says that gender identity is learned and imitated (copies others who follow the pattern) and that, because gender identity is based on actions, it is all a "drag act."
Heady stuff. Ironically, it seems to say that gender identity is a choice. The actions we choose determine us, not genes, overbearing mothers, weak fathers, or the bully who picked on us. Wow! Who'd've thunk I'd find a liberal post-existentialist literary critic arguing that people are responsible for their actions, not things outside their control.
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 04: The Calmative
"The Calmative." What to say? That's a tough one. The story starts with narrator telling us he's dead and proceeds through a surreal description of a bizarre city and its surroundings. The first time through, I thought of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dream-quest of Unknown Kadath." I read this story all the way through a couple of times and restarted it twice more. It was, finally, on the fourth time through that I made a few connections that helped me find a way to understand what was happening in the story.
First, let's note a few images or themes that are found in the other Beckett short stories so far. The narrator has been kicked out of at least one place, probably several. He remembers his father both fondly and with some ambivalence. His father was a significant presence in his childhood. The narrator has a hat. He seems slightly less insane that a "normal" person in the world outside the text. Near the end of the story, the narrator tries to see the stars to fix his position, but cannot see or find the stars for which he is looking. The narrator senses a group of unseen people watching him. Thus this story and its narrator share several points in common with other stories we've read so far and their narrators.
But, as I said, making sense of this one was hard. In part, this was because the narrator seems more disconnected from present reality than the previous narrators. The text is more wandering and disjointed than previous stories. What finally began to bring it together was the section in the second paragraph when the narrator says he is telling the story in the past tense even though it is happening now. While this could be a construct to beguile the reader into sensing the immediacy of the story, it seems an unlikely device. Using present tense for the story would accomplish this more effectively. Instead, I concluded that the narrator is saying that, what he is describing as if it were past tense is what is currently happening in his mind.
Then I connected that with the "assassins" the narrator fears and from which he is escaping into his refuge (the mental construct of the city and all that happens there). I tied these back to the sentence in the first paragraph where he tells about dreading several things. He talks about "the red lapses of the heart" – pauses in his heartbeat of which he is painfully aware (In a story I once wrote, one character tells another about hearing his heart stop and that he'd never really heard it beating before, and had not been able not to hear it beating since, so this idea resonates for me.) – and "the tearings at the caecal walls" – the feeling of matter moving through his intestines. This implies he is intensely aware of his body, which suggests his external senses or mobility or both are compromised. He also talks about "the slow killings… in my skull," which echoes a line from "The Expelled" where the narrator says, "Memory is killing."
From this, I developed an image of a person who has been immobilized by some physical trauma such as stroke, heart attack or paralysis. This is reinforced by the image of the sky falling upon him and him falling and calling for help (both in the first paragraph). His death is a figurative death. He is living dead, waiting to actually die. Or is this "death" from existential meaninglessness?
With that premise, the confusing opening begins to make more sense (at least to me) and the rest of the story, cataloging his travel through the city and what he saw there, becomes a journal of a wounded man's imagining as he attempts to lose that physical awareness that plagues his waking. In many ways, this makes the story into "The Dream-quest of Unknown Kadath" with a different center of horror. Or maybe not so different. Lovecraft seemed to dwell on the horror of void – of isolation and emptiness, and that is roughly where Beckett seems to go with this story.
So the question becomes, how is this story a "calmative," a tranquilizer, mood stabilizer, anti-anxiety drug? The narrator tells how his father would read him a story (the same story every night) to calm him, and talks about the calming power of stories. They soothe the mind by distracting it from present problems. I think this is where Beckett meant the title to lead. The story is the narrator's attempt to distract himself – to stop thinking about the present horror of his existence.
A couple of other points to note. Near the end of the story, the narrator falls in the midst of a throng. This seems to tie back to "the day I fell" in the first paragraph, suggesting that his story ends with the catastrophic event that left him as he is. He also refers to the light he stepped in that "put out the stars." This seems to tie back to "the sky with all its lights" falling on him in the first paragraph.
In conclusion, I think that, if the narrator actually found this story calming, his daily existence must be horrific. Or, perhaps his life before was so horrible that the narrator finds no relief in recalling it and reliving his youth and must instead make up stories like this to fill the time.
First, let's note a few images or themes that are found in the other Beckett short stories so far. The narrator has been kicked out of at least one place, probably several. He remembers his father both fondly and with some ambivalence. His father was a significant presence in his childhood. The narrator has a hat. He seems slightly less insane that a "normal" person in the world outside the text. Near the end of the story, the narrator tries to see the stars to fix his position, but cannot see or find the stars for which he is looking. The narrator senses a group of unseen people watching him. Thus this story and its narrator share several points in common with other stories we've read so far and their narrators.
But, as I said, making sense of this one was hard. In part, this was because the narrator seems more disconnected from present reality than the previous narrators. The text is more wandering and disjointed than previous stories. What finally began to bring it together was the section in the second paragraph when the narrator says he is telling the story in the past tense even though it is happening now. While this could be a construct to beguile the reader into sensing the immediacy of the story, it seems an unlikely device. Using present tense for the story would accomplish this more effectively. Instead, I concluded that the narrator is saying that, what he is describing as if it were past tense is what is currently happening in his mind.
Then I connected that with the "assassins" the narrator fears and from which he is escaping into his refuge (the mental construct of the city and all that happens there). I tied these back to the sentence in the first paragraph where he tells about dreading several things. He talks about "the red lapses of the heart" – pauses in his heartbeat of which he is painfully aware (In a story I once wrote, one character tells another about hearing his heart stop and that he'd never really heard it beating before, and had not been able not to hear it beating since, so this idea resonates for me.) – and "the tearings at the caecal walls" – the feeling of matter moving through his intestines. This implies he is intensely aware of his body, which suggests his external senses or mobility or both are compromised. He also talks about "the slow killings… in my skull," which echoes a line from "The Expelled" where the narrator says, "Memory is killing."
From this, I developed an image of a person who has been immobilized by some physical trauma such as stroke, heart attack or paralysis. This is reinforced by the image of the sky falling upon him and him falling and calling for help (both in the first paragraph). His death is a figurative death. He is living dead, waiting to actually die. Or is this "death" from existential meaninglessness?
With that premise, the confusing opening begins to make more sense (at least to me) and the rest of the story, cataloging his travel through the city and what he saw there, becomes a journal of a wounded man's imagining as he attempts to lose that physical awareness that plagues his waking. In many ways, this makes the story into "The Dream-quest of Unknown Kadath" with a different center of horror. Or maybe not so different. Lovecraft seemed to dwell on the horror of void – of isolation and emptiness, and that is roughly where Beckett seems to go with this story.
So the question becomes, how is this story a "calmative," a tranquilizer, mood stabilizer, anti-anxiety drug? The narrator tells how his father would read him a story (the same story every night) to calm him, and talks about the calming power of stories. They soothe the mind by distracting it from present problems. I think this is where Beckett meant the title to lead. The story is the narrator's attempt to distract himself – to stop thinking about the present horror of his existence.
A couple of other points to note. Near the end of the story, the narrator falls in the midst of a throng. This seems to tie back to "the day I fell" in the first paragraph, suggesting that his story ends with the catastrophic event that left him as he is. He also refers to the light he stepped in that "put out the stars." This seems to tie back to "the sky with all its lights" falling on him in the first paragraph.
In conclusion, I think that, if the narrator actually found this story calming, his daily existence must be horrific. Or, perhaps his life before was so horrible that the narrator finds no relief in recalling it and reliving his youth and must instead make up stories like this to fill the time.
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 05: Endgame
I'm assigned to speak in class about the second half of Endgame, so I'm going to build the structure for that discussion here.
Throughout the play, Hamm wants "this" or "it" to end. Presumably, his existence. His caretaker, Clov, is in general agreement with him and also wants to leave him, but can't. Clov constantly drops lines that suggest his imminent departure.
On page 46, Hamm and Clov are discussing how Hamm will know that Clov has actually left him. Clov suggests that, when Hamm whistles for him and he doesn't come, it means Clov has gone. "But you might be merely dead in your kitchen," Hamm objects, which leads to this exchange.
CLOV: Well… sooner or later I'd start to stink.
HAMM: You stink already. The whole place stinks of corpses.
CLOV: The whole universe.
Hamm and Clov are living in a grave. The only question is whether the death they're concerned about is physical death or some other kind. Death of the mind? Death of the soul? Death of hope? Death of meaning? And is Beckett suggesting that, even absent these things, we go on existing. But the question becomes, what's the point? I think Beckett's stories and plays struggle with that very question.
Insistent that Clov find a way to let Hamm determine if he is either dead or gone. "An idea," he demands. "Have an idea," echoing Pozzo's demand of Lucky to "Think, pig! Think!" as if ordering someone to come up with an idea will produce it. Clov paces for a while, thinking, and complains that his legs hurt and,"Soon I won't be able to think any more." Hamm replies, "You won't be able to leave me." Apparently this is incentive enough because Clov resumes pacing and eventually comes up with (a totally ineffective) idea that Hamm eventually accepts.
The thing that struck me about this set of lines, besides the obvious parallels between Hamm/Clov and Pozzo/Lucky, was the implication that Clov is not eternally incapable of leaving Hamm, just isn't able to leave yet. In some ways, I wonder if Hamm, here and throughout the play, isn't pushing Clov towards a level of "maturity" that will allow him to leave. Maybe the thing Hamm wants to end is his relationship with Clov. Maybe the thing he wants is solitude – perhaps so he can end (which will surely happen without Clov), or perhaps just solitude.
On page 50, just before he starts the story (which he calls an "audition" and for which he requires an audience), Hamm says, "Something dripping in my head, ever since the fontanelles." The "something dripping" refers to page 18 where Hamm says he has a heart dripping in his head – not beating, dripping, meaning it is dead and bleeding.
Initially we might think this means Hamm is having or has had a stroke or some other kind of brain bleed. But here he says the dripping has been going on "ever since the fontanelles." The fontanelles are the soft spots in an infant's skull that eventually close as the child matures (though, it may be worth noting that there is a congenital defect that causes some children's anterior fontanelle to close late or never). This suggests that the dripping has been going on in Hamm's head since he was an infant, so a traditional stroke seems unlikely. Instead, it suggests that this problem, this bleeding of whatever sort (Blood? Ideas? Thought? Something else?) has been a permanent feature of Hamm's life.
Hamm tells the story of a man who came to him wanting food for his son and, in the course of it, says, "It was an extra-ordinarily bitter day… But considering it was Christmas Eve there was nothing… extra-ordinary about that. Seasonable weather, for once in a way." This mirrors a line from "First Love" where the narrator says, "It was December already, if not January, and the cold was seasonable…". Eventually , we suspect this might be the story of how he came to have Clov as he suggests that, instead of giving the man food, the man work for him. The man asks him to "take in the child."
Hamm stops the story, but resumes it later in the play on page 83, where the stage direction says, "Narrative tone." Hamm tells the man he should abandon the child. "You want him to bloom while you are withering?" Hamm asks, as if it is wrong. "Be there to solace your last million last moments?" Selfishness is the only motive he can imagine. "He doesn't realize, all he knows is hunger, and cold, and death to crown it all. But you! You ought to know what the earth is like, nowadays." Hamm suggests that watching his father's decline is worse that hunger, cold and death. Or maybe it's the hint of hope the man hopes Hamm will offer his son that is, in Hamm's mind, so terrible. Is he saying, "The evils of Pandora's jar have free reign, let us not also loose hope upon your son." Is he saying he prefers hopelessness?
Throughout this final monologue, Clov is standing silent, dressed to leave, watching Hamm. The play ends with Hamm thinking he is alone except for the bloody handkerchief he places over his face, but with Clov still watching him. In the end, Clov is prepared to leave, but hasn't.
Throughout the play, Hamm wants "this" or "it" to end. Presumably, his existence. His caretaker, Clov, is in general agreement with him and also wants to leave him, but can't. Clov constantly drops lines that suggest his imminent departure.
On page 46, Hamm and Clov are discussing how Hamm will know that Clov has actually left him. Clov suggests that, when Hamm whistles for him and he doesn't come, it means Clov has gone. "But you might be merely dead in your kitchen," Hamm objects, which leads to this exchange.
CLOV: Well… sooner or later I'd start to stink.
HAMM: You stink already. The whole place stinks of corpses.
CLOV: The whole universe.
Hamm and Clov are living in a grave. The only question is whether the death they're concerned about is physical death or some other kind. Death of the mind? Death of the soul? Death of hope? Death of meaning? And is Beckett suggesting that, even absent these things, we go on existing. But the question becomes, what's the point? I think Beckett's stories and plays struggle with that very question.
Insistent that Clov find a way to let Hamm determine if he is either dead or gone. "An idea," he demands. "Have an idea," echoing Pozzo's demand of Lucky to "Think, pig! Think!" as if ordering someone to come up with an idea will produce it. Clov paces for a while, thinking, and complains that his legs hurt and,"Soon I won't be able to think any more." Hamm replies, "You won't be able to leave me." Apparently this is incentive enough because Clov resumes pacing and eventually comes up with (a totally ineffective) idea that Hamm eventually accepts.
The thing that struck me about this set of lines, besides the obvious parallels between Hamm/Clov and Pozzo/Lucky, was the implication that Clov is not eternally incapable of leaving Hamm, just isn't able to leave yet. In some ways, I wonder if Hamm, here and throughout the play, isn't pushing Clov towards a level of "maturity" that will allow him to leave. Maybe the thing Hamm wants to end is his relationship with Clov. Maybe the thing he wants is solitude – perhaps so he can end (which will surely happen without Clov), or perhaps just solitude.
On page 50, just before he starts the story (which he calls an "audition" and for which he requires an audience), Hamm says, "Something dripping in my head, ever since the fontanelles." The "something dripping" refers to page 18 where Hamm says he has a heart dripping in his head – not beating, dripping, meaning it is dead and bleeding.
Initially we might think this means Hamm is having or has had a stroke or some other kind of brain bleed. But here he says the dripping has been going on "ever since the fontanelles." The fontanelles are the soft spots in an infant's skull that eventually close as the child matures (though, it may be worth noting that there is a congenital defect that causes some children's anterior fontanelle to close late or never). This suggests that the dripping has been going on in Hamm's head since he was an infant, so a traditional stroke seems unlikely. Instead, it suggests that this problem, this bleeding of whatever sort (Blood? Ideas? Thought? Something else?) has been a permanent feature of Hamm's life.
Hamm tells the story of a man who came to him wanting food for his son and, in the course of it, says, "It was an extra-ordinarily bitter day… But considering it was Christmas Eve there was nothing… extra-ordinary about that. Seasonable weather, for once in a way." This mirrors a line from "First Love" where the narrator says, "It was December already, if not January, and the cold was seasonable…". Eventually , we suspect this might be the story of how he came to have Clov as he suggests that, instead of giving the man food, the man work for him. The man asks him to "take in the child."
Hamm stops the story, but resumes it later in the play on page 83, where the stage direction says, "Narrative tone." Hamm tells the man he should abandon the child. "You want him to bloom while you are withering?" Hamm asks, as if it is wrong. "Be there to solace your last million last moments?" Selfishness is the only motive he can imagine. "He doesn't realize, all he knows is hunger, and cold, and death to crown it all. But you! You ought to know what the earth is like, nowadays." Hamm suggests that watching his father's decline is worse that hunger, cold and death. Or maybe it's the hint of hope the man hopes Hamm will offer his son that is, in Hamm's mind, so terrible. Is he saying, "The evils of Pandora's jar have free reign, let us not also loose hope upon your son." Is he saying he prefers hopelessness?
Throughout this final monologue, Clov is standing silent, dressed to leave, watching Hamm. The play ends with Hamm thinking he is alone except for the bloody handkerchief he places over his face, but with Clov still watching him. In the end, Clov is prepared to leave, but hasn't.
15 September 2008
ENG4013 - Desire
Last week, the B&R chapter was about narrative, but Dr. M forgot to give us questions. I'll follow up with notes from class later.
This week, the B&R chapter is about desire. Dr. M gave us the following questions to consider while reading.
Freud says desire is incompatible with satisfaction. B&R elaborate on this when they discuss Lacan's extensions of Freud. Freud's position seems to be based on his theory that desire is mobile -- that it shifts objects over time. Whenever we get what we want, we no longer want it (because we have it -- "want" may also mean "lack"), hence we no longer desire it. Desire moves on to another object.
I think the real-world application may be a little more subtle. Let's say we find an object that sates our current desire, but as time goes by, what was once "enough" will become boring. Desire shifts to want something more or different. Unless the object can change or innovate to follow our desire, we will move on to a new object that can. My modification of Freud would be that desire can be satisfied and generate a new desire that keeps the desirer and desired together until the desired no longer satisfies the desirer or can no longer change to satisfy the changed desire, at which point the desirer will search for a new object that satisfies the desire.
For example, consider this little story. A new book by Joe's favorite author is due out in six months. Joe really liked this author's previous books. Joe desires the book. He's all over it, reading about it online, looking at advance reviews, pre-ordering at his local bookstore (because he can't wait for shipping time from Amazon), standing in line at midnight to buy it. He rushes home and reads it through in one sitting. It's great.
So here's the question. How long before he reads it the second time? Or how long before he reads it the tenth time? Does he even read it ten times? Does he keep the book forever? Or does he sell it to his local used bookstore few months later? Computers, cars, cell phones, apartments, jobs, favorite restaurants and sexual partners are other examples that follow the same basic pattern. Unless a new desire spawns from the original desire, fulfillment of the desire will eventually lead to boredom and abandonment of the object.
The idea that desire is imitative is based on arguments by Sedgwick . She says that desire is always a triangular structure with two parties desiring the same object and imitating each other, even in rivalry. In other words, it isn't that either A or C desire B because B is desirable, it is because C desires B that A wants B.
Personally, I find this falling into the chicken-and-egg dilemma. B was born at some point in time. At some point, no one desired B. Someone has to desire B first, but by Sedgwick's argument, that can never happen because no one desires B and for someone to desire B, someone else must desire B first and that person, by definition of "first", cannot be basing their desire on some other person's desire because there is no one to imitate. From a literary perspective, however, we rarely come in at the beginning of time, so from a purely literary perspective it is not entirely unreasonable to suggest that desire-triangles roughly follow this pattern. I think Dr. M will need to explain this a little more and deal with the holes I see before I buy this.
Homosocial desire is desire for "people like me" – which is basically what "homosocial" means. This feeds into the imitative desire idea to some extent because it explains the significance of rivalry and the kinds of respect-for-rival or rival-as-friend relationships that can develop (at least in some literature, maybe even in real life). Sedgwick also notes that certain prototypically male enclaves, such as locker rooms and board rooms, are homosocial environments. It's important to note that this desire is for the association, not necessarily sexual – usually cannot be sexual and still truly be homosocial desire. The final conclusion of Sedgwick's argument is that, in the "triangular relationship" scenario, the important relationship is between the two men, not between either of the men and the woman, and the woman is just a "token of exchange" (object) to the two men.
Of course, it seems to me that Sedgwick ignores the literature that reverses the situation with two women fighting for a man. Also, how does this play out in homosexual literature where all three characters can the same gender? In other words, while I see the basic logic behind Sedgwick's (feminist) interpretation, I think she's letting her feminism lead her to express her conclusion in a sexist way. The more proper expression would be to suggest that the object of desire becomes exactly that, an object and a token of exchange between the two desirers, regardless of the characters' genders. Sedgwick's discussion also seems to ignore the case where the object of desire is not human. For example, if the desire is to win a race or to excel in school in which case there may be multiple rivals and the objectification of the object isn't necessarily bad. And, yes, there are plenty of stories out there where this is the case.
So, that wraps up the discussion of B&R's Desire chapter. I need to get back to Beckett and trying to figure out "The Calmative".
This week, the B&R chapter is about desire. Dr. M gave us the following questions to consider while reading.
- B&R cite Freud saying desire is incompatible with satisfaction. Explain why and how?
- B&R contend that desire is always imitative. How?
- B&R present Sedgwick's ideas about homosocial desire. Define and explain the significance and implications.
Freud says desire is incompatible with satisfaction. B&R elaborate on this when they discuss Lacan's extensions of Freud. Freud's position seems to be based on his theory that desire is mobile -- that it shifts objects over time. Whenever we get what we want, we no longer want it (because we have it -- "want" may also mean "lack"), hence we no longer desire it. Desire moves on to another object.
I think the real-world application may be a little more subtle. Let's say we find an object that sates our current desire, but as time goes by, what was once "enough" will become boring. Desire shifts to want something more or different. Unless the object can change or innovate to follow our desire, we will move on to a new object that can. My modification of Freud would be that desire can be satisfied and generate a new desire that keeps the desirer and desired together until the desired no longer satisfies the desirer or can no longer change to satisfy the changed desire, at which point the desirer will search for a new object that satisfies the desire.
For example, consider this little story. A new book by Joe's favorite author is due out in six months. Joe really liked this author's previous books. Joe desires the book. He's all over it, reading about it online, looking at advance reviews, pre-ordering at his local bookstore (because he can't wait for shipping time from Amazon), standing in line at midnight to buy it. He rushes home and reads it through in one sitting. It's great.
So here's the question. How long before he reads it the second time? Or how long before he reads it the tenth time? Does he even read it ten times? Does he keep the book forever? Or does he sell it to his local used bookstore few months later? Computers, cars, cell phones, apartments, jobs, favorite restaurants and sexual partners are other examples that follow the same basic pattern. Unless a new desire spawns from the original desire, fulfillment of the desire will eventually lead to boredom and abandonment of the object.
The idea that desire is imitative is based on arguments by Sedgwick . She says that desire is always a triangular structure with two parties desiring the same object and imitating each other, even in rivalry. In other words, it isn't that either A or C desire B because B is desirable, it is because C desires B that A wants B.
Personally, I find this falling into the chicken-and-egg dilemma. B was born at some point in time. At some point, no one desired B. Someone has to desire B first, but by Sedgwick's argument, that can never happen because no one desires B and for someone to desire B, someone else must desire B first and that person, by definition of "first", cannot be basing their desire on some other person's desire because there is no one to imitate. From a literary perspective, however, we rarely come in at the beginning of time, so from a purely literary perspective it is not entirely unreasonable to suggest that desire-triangles roughly follow this pattern. I think Dr. M will need to explain this a little more and deal with the holes I see before I buy this.
Homosocial desire is desire for "people like me" – which is basically what "homosocial" means. This feeds into the imitative desire idea to some extent because it explains the significance of rivalry and the kinds of respect-for-rival or rival-as-friend relationships that can develop (at least in some literature, maybe even in real life). Sedgwick also notes that certain prototypically male enclaves, such as locker rooms and board rooms, are homosocial environments. It's important to note that this desire is for the association, not necessarily sexual – usually cannot be sexual and still truly be homosocial desire. The final conclusion of Sedgwick's argument is that, in the "triangular relationship" scenario, the important relationship is between the two men, not between either of the men and the woman, and the woman is just a "token of exchange" (object) to the two men.
Of course, it seems to me that Sedgwick ignores the literature that reverses the situation with two women fighting for a man. Also, how does this play out in homosexual literature where all three characters can the same gender? In other words, while I see the basic logic behind Sedgwick's (feminist) interpretation, I think she's letting her feminism lead her to express her conclusion in a sexist way. The more proper expression would be to suggest that the object of desire becomes exactly that, an object and a token of exchange between the two desirers, regardless of the characters' genders. Sedgwick's discussion also seems to ignore the case where the object of desire is not human. For example, if the desire is to win a race or to excel in school in which case there may be multiple rivals and the objectification of the object isn't necessarily bad. And, yes, there are plenty of stories out there where this is the case.
So, that wraps up the discussion of B&R's Desire chapter. I need to get back to Beckett and trying to figure out "The Calmative".
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