So I read an article on Slate the other day called "Notes Toward a Theory of Obama." It consists of Jacob Weisberg working through a series of observations of Barack Obama, trying to assemble a coherent picture of the man. I still admire him as a brilliant political thinker, and one of the few genuinely smart people who has the charisma and eye for opportunity put their complex philosophical ideas into practice. And there are signs that he might succeed to some reasonable degree in his plans to transform the American economy into a sustainable framework with a more comprehensive social safety net.
However, Weisberg makes some cutting observations that I've noticed about the man himself. Even though he's notoriously cool and continually depicts himself as a calm, tactful, caring man, there's a razor sharp edge to many of his off the cuff remarks, even to his friends and family. I first noticed this during his joke at a press conference during the transition. Regarding his consultation with past presidents, he mentioned that he wouldn't try to contact Nancy Reagan for a séance, and apologized the next day for his insensitivity. As he was boarding the train with his family to the inauguration ceremony, he told his daughter Sasha to mind the gap. "We wouldn't want you to fall underneath the train," he said. "That would really mess up our whole inauguration."
I first listened to those jokes, and felt quite amused. Finally, a politician with as black a sense of humour as mine. I was sure people wouldn't understand, but fortunately his critics are focussing on his actual policies instead of his knife-edge jokes. Then when I listened to his monologue at the Correspondents' Association Dinner, I observed what Weisberg would later write about in his piece.
All Obama's jokes about his cabinet and fellow politicians were insulting, sometimes cruelly personal. He never went as explicitly far as Wanda Sykes' jokes later, but he carried an implicit sting. The only one spared from his wit was himself, who he played up to be the most awesome human being alive.
His comments, his style of policy production, and his relations with political friends, opponents, and co-workers in cabinet has let me put together an even more nuanced picture of Obama than comes across in his two books. Dreams from My Father depicted Obama as an uncertain youth, adrift without a place in the world. The Audacity of Hope saw Obama in a stable place, articulating his vision for society.
Now that he has the validation of the presidential election and his high popularity throughout the country, he now sees himself as a Great Man of History. He makes the policy, forms the philosophies, and no one is above him. The problem is that he knows it, and acts like he knows it. An even bigger problem is what will happen if he makes a serious mistake. Men convinced of their own superiority can lose sight of their ability to stumble, and become unable to tell when they're falling. That denial can seriously exacerbate an error, compounding it into a disaster.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
An Alien in London, Overweight as an American
A few days ago, I decided I'd watch the revived Doctor Who over again on dvd, one episode a day, or thereabouts. I've been watching a few of my classic series dvds like this while I ate dinner for the past couple of weeks, and it's a damn good improvement over most of what else is on tv at 5.00 in the afternoon. I think it actually has been well over a year at least since I watched any of the Christopher Eccleston year, so it makes for a good visit to an old friend.
Saturday afternoon, I watched "Aliens of London," the fourth episode of Eccleston's season, and the first part of one of its least-liked stories. The premise of the main plot, as we're introduced to it, is that a group of aliens called the Slitheen have disguised themselves as humans in the British government and security services, and faked an alien invasion. The Slitheen disguise was that they killed people and turned the humans' skins into pressurized suits that they squeezed their large bodies inside, and removed by opening zippers concealed on the forehead and wriggling out.
The main problem people had when the episode first aired in 2005 was that the aliens were more laughable than menacing. They always had to release excess pressure within their suits, and did so by farting, which often led to a barrage of immature jokes that the aliens made themselves. And that immaturity was present in their personalities, vanishing only when they were out of their skin-suits actively snapping necks, which was not often enough to make them genuinely frightening as Doctor Who can make an enemy. Overall, they were quite underwhelming, completely incapable of generating any gravitas, usually coming off as childish alien jerks.
It was only after several years of watching the new show regularly that I realized that this was the idea. Chief producer Russell T Davies has worked out quite a few ideas through the stories of Doctor Who while he was in charge, and the Slitheen was the first iteration of what was actually a quite intellectually interesting villainous motivation: money. The Slitheen were actually an extended family of cash-strapped alien criminals. Their plan was to blow up a planet with a bombardment of nuclear weapons and sell the radioactive pieces on the black market as fuel. But they didn't have the money to buy a planet's worth of nuclear weapons and blow up a lifeless Earth-sized rock. So, after a little research, they discovered Earth, a planet with many antagonistic governments with enormous nuclear arsenals. All they could afford were a couple of transport ships, pressurized skin-suits, and some surgical equipment for a quickie operation on their fake alien, a pig. And with this cheap equipment, they enacted a plan to fake an alien invasion, gain the launch codes for one of the country's arsenals, and attack the other nuclear powers under the pretext of defending from an invading vessel in orbit. The retaliatory strikes would destroy the planet.
The Slitheen were a band of rather ingenious petty criminals, the Fat Tony of Doctor Who. Russell was interested in exploring how petty crime and greed on a galactic scale can cause civilization-ending destruction. It's an interesting idea that such a cataclysm could be inspired by petty greed, but ultimately it makes for a let-down in the drama. As we watch a story unfold, we see a world-destroying catastrophe being precipitated, and we expect a similar sense of majesty in the motivations of the villains. This is why I was so dissatisfied when I first saw the Slitheen acting like immature school bullies. These people are planning to destroy an entire inhabited planet! Could we at least make them aware of the scale of their actions?
It may be fascinating to consider the extreme selfishness that a character could have destroyed a civilization for some quick cash. I think Russell might have been trying to work through a banality of evil concept in a Doctor Who story, which is intellectually interesting, and morally terrifying. The problem is that while the concept is morally frightening, it's a dramatic letdown. Immense plans are being carried out by pathetic, petty morons. I respect Russell's ambition in trying to make this dynamic work, but the mismatch is just too great for anything but an intellectual consideration. As drama, it just doesn't work.
Saturday afternoon, I watched "Aliens of London," the fourth episode of Eccleston's season, and the first part of one of its least-liked stories. The premise of the main plot, as we're introduced to it, is that a group of aliens called the Slitheen have disguised themselves as humans in the British government and security services, and faked an alien invasion. The Slitheen disguise was that they killed people and turned the humans' skins into pressurized suits that they squeezed their large bodies inside, and removed by opening zippers concealed on the forehead and wriggling out.
The main problem people had when the episode first aired in 2005 was that the aliens were more laughable than menacing. They always had to release excess pressure within their suits, and did so by farting, which often led to a barrage of immature jokes that the aliens made themselves. And that immaturity was present in their personalities, vanishing only when they were out of their skin-suits actively snapping necks, which was not often enough to make them genuinely frightening as Doctor Who can make an enemy. Overall, they were quite underwhelming, completely incapable of generating any gravitas, usually coming off as childish alien jerks.
It was only after several years of watching the new show regularly that I realized that this was the idea. Chief producer Russell T Davies has worked out quite a few ideas through the stories of Doctor Who while he was in charge, and the Slitheen was the first iteration of what was actually a quite intellectually interesting villainous motivation: money. The Slitheen were actually an extended family of cash-strapped alien criminals. Their plan was to blow up a planet with a bombardment of nuclear weapons and sell the radioactive pieces on the black market as fuel. But they didn't have the money to buy a planet's worth of nuclear weapons and blow up a lifeless Earth-sized rock. So, after a little research, they discovered Earth, a planet with many antagonistic governments with enormous nuclear arsenals. All they could afford were a couple of transport ships, pressurized skin-suits, and some surgical equipment for a quickie operation on their fake alien, a pig. And with this cheap equipment, they enacted a plan to fake an alien invasion, gain the launch codes for one of the country's arsenals, and attack the other nuclear powers under the pretext of defending from an invading vessel in orbit. The retaliatory strikes would destroy the planet.
The Slitheen were a band of rather ingenious petty criminals, the Fat Tony of Doctor Who. Russell was interested in exploring how petty crime and greed on a galactic scale can cause civilization-ending destruction. It's an interesting idea that such a cataclysm could be inspired by petty greed, but ultimately it makes for a let-down in the drama. As we watch a story unfold, we see a world-destroying catastrophe being precipitated, and we expect a similar sense of majesty in the motivations of the villains. This is why I was so dissatisfied when I first saw the Slitheen acting like immature school bullies. These people are planning to destroy an entire inhabited planet! Could we at least make them aware of the scale of their actions?
It may be fascinating to consider the extreme selfishness that a character could have destroyed a civilization for some quick cash. I think Russell might have been trying to work through a banality of evil concept in a Doctor Who story, which is intellectually interesting, and morally terrifying. The problem is that while the concept is morally frightening, it's a dramatic letdown. Immense plans are being carried out by pathetic, petty morons. I respect Russell's ambition in trying to make this dynamic work, but the mismatch is just too great for anything but an intellectual consideration. As drama, it just doesn't work.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Dreams Are Not For Sleeping, They're For Flying
A few days ago, I finished reading a semi-autobiography of Federico Fellini, a book I picked up in a bookstore in Windsor last month, one of the best impulsive literature purchases I've ever made. Everything in the book except the forward and afterword are transcripts of interviews the author, Charlotte Chandler, had with Fellini talking about his life during their fourteen years of friendship. All you read, though, are Fellini's rants, and none of the questions he was asked that inspired those rants. They cover recollections of his entire life, and while you don't discover much trivia about the production of his individual films, you learn a great deal about the conceptions of the films, the thoughts, philosophies, and imaginations that went into them. It was like reading Fellini's blog entries, as if this loud, huge, joyous man were in the room with you telling these stories.
For the sake of full disclosure I will tell you that I have only ever seen one Fellini film, 8&1/2, and nothing more. But now I want to see them all. Intervista especially seems fascinating. It's his second last film, a meta-film about filmmaking itself. A Japanese documentary crew is making a film about Fellini while Fellini himself is directing an adaptation of Franz Kafka's Amerika. And at one point, Fellini begins to fly over the studio sets he's built in Cinecittá. It's a recurring image throughout the book, that Fellini flies in his dreams.
Listening to Fellini's voice, I've reconsidered the importance of dreams and dreamlike images in the works I'm planning to write in the future. A Small Man's Town is a very realistic book, its narratives all taking place in solidly ordinary life. And my Undesireables project fits my realist leanings neatly as well. But my untitled cyberpunk project has considerable room for this kind of perceptual bending.
I imagine realistic conversations shifting seamlessly into frightening dream logic, as the protagonist Gina is confronted by a novel idea and sets off exploring her psyche and her memories. She has a dark past of which she knows nothing, and her rediscovery of that past is terrifying, a great shock to her suburban sensibilities. Her fugues of rediscovery are to be explorations of a strange place in her brain and in the past of which she knows nothing, yet are disturbingly familiar. She eventually becomes comfortable in her strange surroundings, though what surrounds her is no less strange, and she is just as alienated from her dry dull life at the end of the story as she was from the terrifying dreamscapes at the beginning.
The story has changed quite a bit since its original conception, introducing the dreamscapes and science fiction elements, as it now takes place in a community I think of as cyberpunk suburbs. I'm not yet sure what they'll look like. There is a character of a detective who becomes Gina's unwitting guide to her past, who in my initial conception of the story was a regular jaded ex-cop. But now, I see him as a cross between Nick Fury and Dirk Gently. See if that makes any damn sense.
For the sake of full disclosure I will tell you that I have only ever seen one Fellini film, 8&1/2, and nothing more. But now I want to see them all. Intervista especially seems fascinating. It's his second last film, a meta-film about filmmaking itself. A Japanese documentary crew is making a film about Fellini while Fellini himself is directing an adaptation of Franz Kafka's Amerika. And at one point, Fellini begins to fly over the studio sets he's built in Cinecittá. It's a recurring image throughout the book, that Fellini flies in his dreams.
Listening to Fellini's voice, I've reconsidered the importance of dreams and dreamlike images in the works I'm planning to write in the future. A Small Man's Town is a very realistic book, its narratives all taking place in solidly ordinary life. And my Undesireables project fits my realist leanings neatly as well. But my untitled cyberpunk project has considerable room for this kind of perceptual bending.
I imagine realistic conversations shifting seamlessly into frightening dream logic, as the protagonist Gina is confronted by a novel idea and sets off exploring her psyche and her memories. She has a dark past of which she knows nothing, and her rediscovery of that past is terrifying, a great shock to her suburban sensibilities. Her fugues of rediscovery are to be explorations of a strange place in her brain and in the past of which she knows nothing, yet are disturbingly familiar. She eventually becomes comfortable in her strange surroundings, though what surrounds her is no less strange, and she is just as alienated from her dry dull life at the end of the story as she was from the terrifying dreamscapes at the beginning.
The story has changed quite a bit since its original conception, introducing the dreamscapes and science fiction elements, as it now takes place in a community I think of as cyberpunk suburbs. I'm not yet sure what they'll look like. There is a character of a detective who becomes Gina's unwitting guide to her past, who in my initial conception of the story was a regular jaded ex-cop. But now, I see him as a cross between Nick Fury and Dirk Gently. See if that makes any damn sense.
Friday, May 1, 2009
The Problems of Philosophical Argument
As part of my research, I've been working my way through an old anthology of essays under the title Deep Ecology. I'm discovering the name is something of a vague term, which I enjoy philosophically, but will make some of my philosophical writing more difficult. I had originally conceived of two projects in environmental philosophy: the extension of political/judicial rights to non-humans, which I think is a philosophical misstep; and re-systematizing our metaphysical and ethical understanding to understand the integration of all auto-assembling patterns with each other.
I thought of this more radical philosophical work as deep ecology, and the more conservative rights extension as deep ecology. Reading through the history of the field, I've discovered that all 'deeper' thinking about the environment has been referred to as 'deep ecology,' and there's no solid definition for the term. This is the kind of grey area of philosophy I enjoy working in, and think is the most fruitful. Unfortunately, it means any reviewers will likely say my account doesn't treat the concepts simply. It wouldn't matter that the concepts are nowhere near simple anyway. Perhaps I'm being too pessimistic.
Today, I found an essay in that anthology call "Discriminating Altruism" by Garrett Hardin. Hardin, an American, is a fascinating figure, one whose ideas for shaping a sustainable contemporary society through population control alienated both rightists and leftists. His endorsement of abortion as a suitable means for population control took care of conservatives, while his critiques of immigration as being a detrimental public policy and altruism as a laughably silly morality took care of liberals.
While I'm intrigued by the unsuitability of universal altruism (the "brotherhood of man," as John Lennon and a ton of others have said) as an attribute that would be naturally selected, the way he writes about it irks me. It's no more than an irk, a formal issue of philosophy. But the way one writes philosophy is at the centre of what precisely you think philosophy is. And the first important question you can ask anyone is what exactly it is they do.
Strict philosophical argument is a technique of writing suitable to start debates over increasingly small issues, but is unsuitable for a genuinely radical philosophical engagement. Hardin's argument in that paper begins from a series of premises setting up a network of definitions. The definitions are then analyzed so that you're led to infer step by step to his conclusions. The conclusions are elaborations on the definitions. This is very good for working out the results of a set of definitions, but I don't think it works so well for approaching what is normally called the Truth™, or for creating radical or transformative new ways of thinking.
An argument is always an argument for something, something that you believe in and want to convince other people. Your targeted belief can be a premise in your argument, and you would convince readers by showing how your premise leads to a widely accepted idea as a conclusion. Or your targeted belief can be a conclusion, and your argument would be structured on showing how widely accepted ideas are premises that support your conclusion. A reader's expectations about what is possible in thought are restricted, so any opposition or doubt of that which is argued for becomes silly, rejected, wrong. Relations between ideas may be worked out by examining arguments, and this is very valuable, because we can see how ideas can be made to fit together, or how they are incompatible. But truth is discovered by investigating the world, not by demonstrating compatibilities among ideas.
The most difficult task of philosophy is to create a new way of thinking, a new way of life. This has been done very rarely. Plato, Confucius, Friedrich Nietzsche are some names that come to mind. Perhaps the revolutionaries in logic at the start of the twentieth century as well. Gilles Deleuze made a living writing books that examined other philosophers to work out new ways of life that they inadvertently created within their investigations and arguments. This is creative philosophy, radical philosophy. This is done by an opening of thinking.
As yet, I'm not sure how to explain this beyond my vague gestures and invocations to read Deleuze and Ludwig Wittgenstein. But creative philosophy is the generation of a worldview, a break with traditions in understanding. This kind of philosophy requires an opening of thought, even embracing systems of thinking that contradict each other blatantly, if the mashing together of paradox is to create a new logic where such inferences are perfectly normal. The rhetorical arguments of philosophy – and to argue is rhetorical – narrows the possibilities of thought. Creative philosophy throws those possibilities wider than previously imaginable.
It is far more difficult to orient oneself in a groundless process of thinking, and the vast majority of people are scared shitless by this prospect. I've met philosophers who dismiss this way of thinking about philosophy as the techniques of a charlatan, creating excuses to get away with bullshit. But a creative philosopher only makes bullshit when he fails. When she crafts a worldview that intrigues, that offers useful re-creations of old premises, new approaches for the challenges of new times, then brilliant work has been done. And if the successful creative philosopher is lucky, that work will last longer than even the tightest, most comforting argument.
Is this a well-written defense of philosophical egomania? If you think so, I can't convince you otherwise. After all, an argument is only persuasive if some premise, or some conclusion, was acceptable beforehand. If you approach an argument and think it's all wrong, that it contains nothing of value, then you will pass it by, because it doesn't matter to you.
I thought of this more radical philosophical work as deep ecology, and the more conservative rights extension as deep ecology. Reading through the history of the field, I've discovered that all 'deeper' thinking about the environment has been referred to as 'deep ecology,' and there's no solid definition for the term. This is the kind of grey area of philosophy I enjoy working in, and think is the most fruitful. Unfortunately, it means any reviewers will likely say my account doesn't treat the concepts simply. It wouldn't matter that the concepts are nowhere near simple anyway. Perhaps I'm being too pessimistic.
Today, I found an essay in that anthology call "Discriminating Altruism" by Garrett Hardin. Hardin, an American, is a fascinating figure, one whose ideas for shaping a sustainable contemporary society through population control alienated both rightists and leftists. His endorsement of abortion as a suitable means for population control took care of conservatives, while his critiques of immigration as being a detrimental public policy and altruism as a laughably silly morality took care of liberals.
While I'm intrigued by the unsuitability of universal altruism (the "brotherhood of man," as John Lennon and a ton of others have said) as an attribute that would be naturally selected, the way he writes about it irks me. It's no more than an irk, a formal issue of philosophy. But the way one writes philosophy is at the centre of what precisely you think philosophy is. And the first important question you can ask anyone is what exactly it is they do.
Strict philosophical argument is a technique of writing suitable to start debates over increasingly small issues, but is unsuitable for a genuinely radical philosophical engagement. Hardin's argument in that paper begins from a series of premises setting up a network of definitions. The definitions are then analyzed so that you're led to infer step by step to his conclusions. The conclusions are elaborations on the definitions. This is very good for working out the results of a set of definitions, but I don't think it works so well for approaching what is normally called the Truth™, or for creating radical or transformative new ways of thinking.
An argument is always an argument for something, something that you believe in and want to convince other people. Your targeted belief can be a premise in your argument, and you would convince readers by showing how your premise leads to a widely accepted idea as a conclusion. Or your targeted belief can be a conclusion, and your argument would be structured on showing how widely accepted ideas are premises that support your conclusion. A reader's expectations about what is possible in thought are restricted, so any opposition or doubt of that which is argued for becomes silly, rejected, wrong. Relations between ideas may be worked out by examining arguments, and this is very valuable, because we can see how ideas can be made to fit together, or how they are incompatible. But truth is discovered by investigating the world, not by demonstrating compatibilities among ideas.
The most difficult task of philosophy is to create a new way of thinking, a new way of life. This has been done very rarely. Plato, Confucius, Friedrich Nietzsche are some names that come to mind. Perhaps the revolutionaries in logic at the start of the twentieth century as well. Gilles Deleuze made a living writing books that examined other philosophers to work out new ways of life that they inadvertently created within their investigations and arguments. This is creative philosophy, radical philosophy. This is done by an opening of thinking.
As yet, I'm not sure how to explain this beyond my vague gestures and invocations to read Deleuze and Ludwig Wittgenstein. But creative philosophy is the generation of a worldview, a break with traditions in understanding. This kind of philosophy requires an opening of thought, even embracing systems of thinking that contradict each other blatantly, if the mashing together of paradox is to create a new logic where such inferences are perfectly normal. The rhetorical arguments of philosophy – and to argue is rhetorical – narrows the possibilities of thought. Creative philosophy throws those possibilities wider than previously imaginable.
It is far more difficult to orient oneself in a groundless process of thinking, and the vast majority of people are scared shitless by this prospect. I've met philosophers who dismiss this way of thinking about philosophy as the techniques of a charlatan, creating excuses to get away with bullshit. But a creative philosopher only makes bullshit when he fails. When she crafts a worldview that intrigues, that offers useful re-creations of old premises, new approaches for the challenges of new times, then brilliant work has been done. And if the successful creative philosopher is lucky, that work will last longer than even the tightest, most comforting argument.
Is this a well-written defense of philosophical egomania? If you think so, I can't convince you otherwise. After all, an argument is only persuasive if some premise, or some conclusion, was acceptable beforehand. If you approach an argument and think it's all wrong, that it contains nothing of value, then you will pass it by, because it doesn't matter to you.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Hamilton, Ontario: Home of GI Joe
So while perusing Shortpacked! this evening, I discovered that the comic's creator, David Willis, is going to be in Hamilton on May 2 for the annual Canadian GI Joe convention. As it turns out, Hamilton hosts the convention every year, which is just plain awesome. I'm tempted to go down myself just to check out what happens at a convention based around a toy that is also a Real American Hero™ in Canada.
"Too bad your ass got sacked!"
"Don't just stand around when your house catches fire. Get the fuck out of there!"
•••
The manuscript for A Small Man's Town was officially completed Sunday night, and it took me a day to get over the weird initial high upon finishing such a large, consuming piece of writing. I've already started doing research and making inquiries as to publishing and getting an agent, but the key element of the job is done.
Also, I've been accepted to present a paper at the International Conference of the Book at University of Edinburgh this October. I was accepted on the basis of an abstract, which means that over the next month, I actually have to write my paper on the problems of peer review as encouraging orthodoxy and marginalizing genuinely revolutionary philosophical work. Even better is the fact that I'll get to visit my friend Ray and his wife/mind-melded life partner Erin while I'm there, and finally see something of a country other than Canada.
"Too bad your ass got sacked!"
"Don't just stand around when your house catches fire. Get the fuck out of there!"
•••
The manuscript for A Small Man's Town was officially completed Sunday night, and it took me a day to get over the weird initial high upon finishing such a large, consuming piece of writing. I've already started doing research and making inquiries as to publishing and getting an agent, but the key element of the job is done.
Also, I've been accepted to present a paper at the International Conference of the Book at University of Edinburgh this October. I was accepted on the basis of an abstract, which means that over the next month, I actually have to write my paper on the problems of peer review as encouraging orthodoxy and marginalizing genuinely revolutionary philosophical work. Even better is the fact that I'll get to visit my friend Ray and his wife/mind-melded life partner Erin while I'm there, and finally see something of a country other than Canada.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
"My Hands are Scarred with Papercuts and Stained with Curry Powder"
This was a phrase that occurred to me this morning looking at my own hands. Yesterday, I got one of those mysterious papercuts that appear from nowhere and didn't even hurt at the time. When you try to figure out precisely where it came from, you can get nowhere further than, some piece of paper. The curry stains come from what I cooked for dinner last night.
As I approach the end of the manuscript for A Small Man's Town, which is now the permanent title for the first novel I'm going to try to publish, I'm thinking about future projects and what to do next. But, as is expected, considering the way I do philosophy, I also see common themes and explorations among all my long fiction projects that are percolating in my brain and on my computer. I realize that I've fallen into a kind of mission statement, one I think is very suited for Canada on the Earth of the twenty-first century. All my ideas explore how Westerners can contribute to the world conversation, given that we will be mistrusted and marginalized by the new dominant cultures of the South. We've dominated the Earth for so long that our voices no longer have value. The West will be shut out of global discourse just as Westerners shut out everyone else, and in moralities based on fairness (almost all of them, really), we will deserve this treatment.
Of course, this will not literally happen. Europe and the US remain powerful enough economies that they will have important roles, though more as partners instead of authorities. But culturally, the excitement of the Earth will be in India, South America, East Asia, and eventually Africa. Cultural production will be focussed on those areas that were minor and ignored before. Cultural revolution and transformation will come from there, and it's happening already. Indian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese films are becoming the most influential on global cinema. The most exciting literature comes from writers like Roberto Bolaño the Latin American, and Orhan Pamuk the Turk.
The suburban narratives of white Western writers – of which I am one ethnically at least – are no longer important. The self-absorbed idiocies of Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt and John Updike's Rabbit are vanities to be set afire. Quite rightfully, the world should not care about these men dissatisfied with their picture-perfect families and lives that have rarely touched poverty. There are many more important problems in the world than rich white suburbanites having problems with their marriage and trouble communicating with their stuck-up self-absorbed spoiled idiotic children.
This is where my apparent mission statement comes in, what I think the new task of Western literature should be to suit best our new role as partners atoning for crimes of domination. The great Western literature of the twenty-first century will not revolve around the concerns of rich white people as if they were the most important things in the world. It will mock these concerns for their selfishness and stupidity. Bret Easton Ellis is a fine example of this. His greatest books, American Psycho and The Rules of Attraction, are about the emptiness, cruelty, and insularity of white Western life.
I think my own work fits into this as a positive contribution, where Ellis' are negative. The stories I want to tell in my fiction are stories of wealthy (in the global perspective) Westerners (not all of whom are white) who become aware that their own problems are selfish and meaningless, and try to find a new way to live. My characters are searching for a life beyond their insular environments.
A Small Man's Town is about a man, Joseph's encounters with two women. One, after she leaves him, becomes a global activist for free speech and ending poverty. The other, as they get married, is a nationalist Western politician, fighting for Newfoundland as if it were an oppressed, dominated nation. The novel ends as he weighs which life is more worthy.
I have two other stories which I might pursue, depending on circumstances. One is a subversion of cyberpunk motifs, about an ordinary suburban woman who slowly recovers from amnesia and rediscovers her old life as a government assassin. The setting is in a cyberpunk-ish suburbia. This story is of a woman who discovers the emptiness and cruelty of her capitalist society. I'd prefer to tell this story in a more visual medium than the novel, which will require collaborators, and possibly capital.
The other, which I've called Undesirables, is about a man who is persecuted in his quiet suburban community because when he was a young man, he committed an assault on a woman for which he feels immense regret and remorse. But because he's on the state list of sex offenders, the neighbourhood watch, led by a frumpy middle-aged woman with secrets of her own, tries to run him out of town. The protagonist, or maybe narrator, is a woman who becomes the persecuted former criminal's new partner, a young art gallery worker. She and his partner's persecutor both have the same first name, Jennifer. There is a side plot of an Arab family mistrusted in the community because of their race. This story is of a community that believes so strongly in its morality that it refuses to forgive any transgression.
Perhaps these stories are more negative than I initially thought of them. Aanyway, here, Orhan Pamuk talks about literature, culture, and life.
Despite the horribly antique opening graphics, this was actually filmed in 2008.
As I approach the end of the manuscript for A Small Man's Town, which is now the permanent title for the first novel I'm going to try to publish, I'm thinking about future projects and what to do next. But, as is expected, considering the way I do philosophy, I also see common themes and explorations among all my long fiction projects that are percolating in my brain and on my computer. I realize that I've fallen into a kind of mission statement, one I think is very suited for Canada on the Earth of the twenty-first century. All my ideas explore how Westerners can contribute to the world conversation, given that we will be mistrusted and marginalized by the new dominant cultures of the South. We've dominated the Earth for so long that our voices no longer have value. The West will be shut out of global discourse just as Westerners shut out everyone else, and in moralities based on fairness (almost all of them, really), we will deserve this treatment.
Of course, this will not literally happen. Europe and the US remain powerful enough economies that they will have important roles, though more as partners instead of authorities. But culturally, the excitement of the Earth will be in India, South America, East Asia, and eventually Africa. Cultural production will be focussed on those areas that were minor and ignored before. Cultural revolution and transformation will come from there, and it's happening already. Indian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese films are becoming the most influential on global cinema. The most exciting literature comes from writers like Roberto Bolaño the Latin American, and Orhan Pamuk the Turk.
The suburban narratives of white Western writers – of which I am one ethnically at least – are no longer important. The self-absorbed idiocies of Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt and John Updike's Rabbit are vanities to be set afire. Quite rightfully, the world should not care about these men dissatisfied with their picture-perfect families and lives that have rarely touched poverty. There are many more important problems in the world than rich white suburbanites having problems with their marriage and trouble communicating with their stuck-up self-absorbed spoiled idiotic children.
This is where my apparent mission statement comes in, what I think the new task of Western literature should be to suit best our new role as partners atoning for crimes of domination. The great Western literature of the twenty-first century will not revolve around the concerns of rich white people as if they were the most important things in the world. It will mock these concerns for their selfishness and stupidity. Bret Easton Ellis is a fine example of this. His greatest books, American Psycho and The Rules of Attraction, are about the emptiness, cruelty, and insularity of white Western life.
I think my own work fits into this as a positive contribution, where Ellis' are negative. The stories I want to tell in my fiction are stories of wealthy (in the global perspective) Westerners (not all of whom are white) who become aware that their own problems are selfish and meaningless, and try to find a new way to live. My characters are searching for a life beyond their insular environments.
A Small Man's Town is about a man, Joseph's encounters with two women. One, after she leaves him, becomes a global activist for free speech and ending poverty. The other, as they get married, is a nationalist Western politician, fighting for Newfoundland as if it were an oppressed, dominated nation. The novel ends as he weighs which life is more worthy.
I have two other stories which I might pursue, depending on circumstances. One is a subversion of cyberpunk motifs, about an ordinary suburban woman who slowly recovers from amnesia and rediscovers her old life as a government assassin. The setting is in a cyberpunk-ish suburbia. This story is of a woman who discovers the emptiness and cruelty of her capitalist society. I'd prefer to tell this story in a more visual medium than the novel, which will require collaborators, and possibly capital.
The other, which I've called Undesirables, is about a man who is persecuted in his quiet suburban community because when he was a young man, he committed an assault on a woman for which he feels immense regret and remorse. But because he's on the state list of sex offenders, the neighbourhood watch, led by a frumpy middle-aged woman with secrets of her own, tries to run him out of town. The protagonist, or maybe narrator, is a woman who becomes the persecuted former criminal's new partner, a young art gallery worker. She and his partner's persecutor both have the same first name, Jennifer. There is a side plot of an Arab family mistrusted in the community because of their race. This story is of a community that believes so strongly in its morality that it refuses to forgive any transgression.
Perhaps these stories are more negative than I initially thought of them. Aanyway, here, Orhan Pamuk talks about literature, culture, and life.
Despite the horribly antique opening graphics, this was actually filmed in 2008.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
More Proust, and An Astonishing Regret
Regarding my Proust reading schedule (I know this phrase is amazingly pretentious, but see the previous posts on Proust as to why it's unavoidable), I've decided to make a couple of changes. For one thing, 1300 pages of Marcel Proust is getting a little heavy, and I find myself in need of a change of style in what I read before I continue with this project. I found this semi-autobiography of Federico Fellini in a bookshop in Windsor last month, and when I finish Within a Budding Grove / In the Shadow of Young Flowering Girls in the next few days, I'll start on that instead of The Guermantes Way. The next volume of In Search of Lost time will follow the Fellini book, and I think I'll read the series like that over the next year, alternating between Proust and some other, shorter book. I picked up some cheap Faulkners in that Windsor bookshop along with the Fellini, and since I've never read any Faulkner before, I'll have to add them to my list.
I suppose that in a book this long and this psychologically complex, any reader is bound to find at some point a passage that strikes painfully close to one's own life. I found one such passage the other day. The narrator has made friends with a middle aged painter, Elstir, who lives in the resort community where he's spending the summer in volume two. Around page 600, he discovers that this wise painter was, as a young man, the arrogant prick painter who was barely talented, and who slept with Swann's girlfriend Odette. Elstir admits it freely, and does not try to justify himself, but simply explains.
"There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived a life, the memory of which is so unpleasant to him that he would gladly expunge it. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man – so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise – unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded. . . . We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world."
I think everyone has done some pretty terrible stuff, for the context of their environment, at some point in their lives. And if you don't think you've done terrible things to people in your past, that's a sign that you're still doing it. When you're first beginning to make your own decisions in life, a lot of those decisions are made for selfish motivations. In itself, selfishness isn't so bad, but selfishness is often articulated with callousness. It's from that callous attitude that emotional suffering can be inflicted on people. It's only when we're forced to perceive the suffering we've created that we can develop the wisdom that Proust is talking about there. Of course, once we understand that suffering, it's still possible to accept it just as much as renounce it. But I think the point of this kind of wisdom is to be aware of the power of your actions, so that you can keep their effects in control. What you decide to do with your knowledge of your power is still up to you.
Thoughts on the latest Doctor Who tv movie, Planet of the Dead, will come later this week. Or so I think.
•••
As a reward to myself for finishing my term's work without stressing out like a beast – despite some aggressive backs and forths with my philosophy of mind professor – I picked up the Fever Ray record. I've been a fan of The Knife since they dropped Silent Shout in 2006, and this is the solo record by that band's singer, Karin Dreijer Andersson. Strongly recommended by the Pitchfork set, and they once again steered me right. Not quite the pop record that Silent Shout was, but definitely high quality, haunting material.
I suppose that in a book this long and this psychologically complex, any reader is bound to find at some point a passage that strikes painfully close to one's own life. I found one such passage the other day. The narrator has made friends with a middle aged painter, Elstir, who lives in the resort community where he's spending the summer in volume two. Around page 600, he discovers that this wise painter was, as a young man, the arrogant prick painter who was barely talented, and who slept with Swann's girlfriend Odette. Elstir admits it freely, and does not try to justify himself, but simply explains.
"There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived a life, the memory of which is so unpleasant to him that he would gladly expunge it. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man – so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise – unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded. . . . We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world."
I think everyone has done some pretty terrible stuff, for the context of their environment, at some point in their lives. And if you don't think you've done terrible things to people in your past, that's a sign that you're still doing it. When you're first beginning to make your own decisions in life, a lot of those decisions are made for selfish motivations. In itself, selfishness isn't so bad, but selfishness is often articulated with callousness. It's from that callous attitude that emotional suffering can be inflicted on people. It's only when we're forced to perceive the suffering we've created that we can develop the wisdom that Proust is talking about there. Of course, once we understand that suffering, it's still possible to accept it just as much as renounce it. But I think the point of this kind of wisdom is to be aware of the power of your actions, so that you can keep their effects in control. What you decide to do with your knowledge of your power is still up to you.
Thoughts on the latest Doctor Who tv movie, Planet of the Dead, will come later this week. Or so I think.
•••
As a reward to myself for finishing my term's work without stressing out like a beast – despite some aggressive backs and forths with my philosophy of mind professor – I picked up the Fever Ray record. I've been a fan of The Knife since they dropped Silent Shout in 2006, and this is the solo record by that band's singer, Karin Dreijer Andersson. Strongly recommended by the Pitchfork set, and they once again steered me right. Not quite the pop record that Silent Shout was, but definitely high quality, haunting material.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Reading Update: Bloody Proust
So here is the deal with me and Marcel Proust. I've worked out that it's impossible to discuss anything about him without seeming incredibly pretentious. I have a suspicion that the reputation of the French people, their philosophers and writers in particular, as effete, snobbish, pretentious, self-absorbed twits is based on the reputation of Marcel Proust. I actually find the books themselves quite engaging, even if his attention to detail is so meticulous as to become obsessive compulsive.
I'm just over halfway through the second volume, the embarrassingly titled Within a Budding Grove. I think it was titled that way to avoid the more sexual connotations of the French title, À l'Ombre de Jeunes Filles en Fleurs, or In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower. Throughout this book, the teenaged narrator periodically lusts after a variety of women his age, most notably Swann's daughter Gilberte, and Albertine, though I haven't gotten to the Albertine sections of the book yet.
However, the incredible detail of description and slow pace of the story doesn't detract from how I've become involved with these characters, smug, self-centred, and idiotic that they are. So many of these characters, protagonists included, are thoroughly absorbed in their own bullshit, whether it's about how intelligent, genteel, or noble they are, or their constant frettings and nervousness about trivialities. Watching the insanely drawn out process of the narrator breaking up with Gilberte Swann for no reason other than that she seems to take him for granted saw me yelling at the book as I read it. This man was torturing himself over his relationship, and it would have all come to an end if he had the guts to speak his mind instead of playing games of visiting her house only when he knew she wasn't there, writing her passive-aggressive letters, and hanging out with her mom Odette more often than Gilberte herself.
Overall, it's a positive experience, though. I certainly consider myself intimately connected with these characters. In a book so detailed in its prose, it's easy to write so densely that one completely loses sight of the characters. It's to the credit of this massive narrative that the protagonists never disappear into their own voluminous descriptions. Its long, winding sentences exhibit a hypnotism that can draw an attentive reader in for hours. Of course, at its size, hours spent reading still only chip slowly through the whole work.
•••
I think I've taken the longest break in terms of writing my own novel since I started. I've been marking papers for my first year course, finishing my courses for the term, in particular the painful editing of a philosophy of mind paper such that all of what I thought were the best ideas were excised. And season three of The Venture Bros arrived last week, so I've been working through those episodes, and the commentary, which is always delightfully self-deprecating and absurd.
I want to finish A Small Man's Town this month. Really, I think I have to. There is only one scene left, and its introduction, where the protagonist Joseph arrives in Toronto for the first time, has been written. But this scene is a reunion of Joseph and the woman he hasn't seen in almost five years, the woman he used to love and who has become a successful human rights activist. The very next sentence, which I haven't written yet, is when he sees her walking into the room, and if I get this reunion and their conversation wrong, then I've pretty much wasted the last 17 months of my writing.
The scale of my project has also dawned on me. I have never spent this long working on a single project in my life. I have done other things while this is ongoing, but even my MA thesis didn't take quite this long. The basic idea for the book, or at least the basic idea that's turned into this book, I worked out in late 2005. It was another two years before I actually started writing, and now I'm on the verge of finishing it. Next will come the job, even harder in this economy, of getting the thing published and selling in a moderately successful number.
I don't think I've ever been this uncertain about my career, because this is the first time in my life that a writing career is actually staring me in the face. It's going to be hard enough getting a job in philosophy, because academic philosophy doesn't want the innovative ideas I try to craft in my work. Academic philosophy wants people who argue according to the established debates; not people who want to shake up the scene and spark people into thinking about traditional problems differently. I'm pretty sure now that no industry actually wants creative people at all, that we're an aberration, a weird presence, what no one normal knows how to handle.
It was very easy to dream about shaking up the world of philosophy and writing when I was 22 years old and finishing my undergraduate degree. It's much harder to hold onto your ambitions when you depend for your livelihood on whether an editor, an agent, or a reviewer looks at your work, sees that it's out of the ordinary, and rejects it because he doesn't understand it. In fact, I'm getting used to the idea that no matter how hard I work, I'll never be successful, because I simply cannot write or live like a normal person. And I doubt I can continually be lucky enough to stumble onto an agent or a patron who sees genuine innovation and not a crackpot. While I'm pretty sure I'll be a failure financially and that no one will read or find my work, I know I'll never stop doing the work I want to do. It's more painful to me to write like a normal person than to have my attempted innovations rejected.
I'm just over halfway through the second volume, the embarrassingly titled Within a Budding Grove. I think it was titled that way to avoid the more sexual connotations of the French title, À l'Ombre de Jeunes Filles en Fleurs, or In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower. Throughout this book, the teenaged narrator periodically lusts after a variety of women his age, most notably Swann's daughter Gilberte, and Albertine, though I haven't gotten to the Albertine sections of the book yet.
However, the incredible detail of description and slow pace of the story doesn't detract from how I've become involved with these characters, smug, self-centred, and idiotic that they are. So many of these characters, protagonists included, are thoroughly absorbed in their own bullshit, whether it's about how intelligent, genteel, or noble they are, or their constant frettings and nervousness about trivialities. Watching the insanely drawn out process of the narrator breaking up with Gilberte Swann for no reason other than that she seems to take him for granted saw me yelling at the book as I read it. This man was torturing himself over his relationship, and it would have all come to an end if he had the guts to speak his mind instead of playing games of visiting her house only when he knew she wasn't there, writing her passive-aggressive letters, and hanging out with her mom Odette more often than Gilberte herself.
Overall, it's a positive experience, though. I certainly consider myself intimately connected with these characters. In a book so detailed in its prose, it's easy to write so densely that one completely loses sight of the characters. It's to the credit of this massive narrative that the protagonists never disappear into their own voluminous descriptions. Its long, winding sentences exhibit a hypnotism that can draw an attentive reader in for hours. Of course, at its size, hours spent reading still only chip slowly through the whole work.
•••
I think I've taken the longest break in terms of writing my own novel since I started. I've been marking papers for my first year course, finishing my courses for the term, in particular the painful editing of a philosophy of mind paper such that all of what I thought were the best ideas were excised. And season three of The Venture Bros arrived last week, so I've been working through those episodes, and the commentary, which is always delightfully self-deprecating and absurd.
I want to finish A Small Man's Town this month. Really, I think I have to. There is only one scene left, and its introduction, where the protagonist Joseph arrives in Toronto for the first time, has been written. But this scene is a reunion of Joseph and the woman he hasn't seen in almost five years, the woman he used to love and who has become a successful human rights activist. The very next sentence, which I haven't written yet, is when he sees her walking into the room, and if I get this reunion and their conversation wrong, then I've pretty much wasted the last 17 months of my writing.
The scale of my project has also dawned on me. I have never spent this long working on a single project in my life. I have done other things while this is ongoing, but even my MA thesis didn't take quite this long. The basic idea for the book, or at least the basic idea that's turned into this book, I worked out in late 2005. It was another two years before I actually started writing, and now I'm on the verge of finishing it. Next will come the job, even harder in this economy, of getting the thing published and selling in a moderately successful number.
I don't think I've ever been this uncertain about my career, because this is the first time in my life that a writing career is actually staring me in the face. It's going to be hard enough getting a job in philosophy, because academic philosophy doesn't want the innovative ideas I try to craft in my work. Academic philosophy wants people who argue according to the established debates; not people who want to shake up the scene and spark people into thinking about traditional problems differently. I'm pretty sure now that no industry actually wants creative people at all, that we're an aberration, a weird presence, what no one normal knows how to handle.
It was very easy to dream about shaking up the world of philosophy and writing when I was 22 years old and finishing my undergraduate degree. It's much harder to hold onto your ambitions when you depend for your livelihood on whether an editor, an agent, or a reviewer looks at your work, sees that it's out of the ordinary, and rejects it because he doesn't understand it. In fact, I'm getting used to the idea that no matter how hard I work, I'll never be successful, because I simply cannot write or live like a normal person. And I doubt I can continually be lucky enough to stumble onto an agent or a patron who sees genuine innovation and not a crackpot. While I'm pretty sure I'll be a failure financially and that no one will read or find my work, I know I'll never stop doing the work I want to do. It's more painful to me to write like a normal person than to have my attempted innovations rejected.
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