wallace-l: the last moments...

[Brenda Dallaway]

Thanks for this, George. For me, this feels like the crux of the whole
thing. The Whole Thing.

I used to have this article taped above my drafting table about how if you
really wanted to succeed in something you had to "kill the futures of
everything else. All those other futures, taken out behind the barn like a
dog and shot." [paraphrased.] My future as an artist would mean I'd have to
abandon studying the French Revolution, or HAM radio, or seriously learning
German and Russian, or learning about every mythology on the planet,
understanding what the hell the Haldron Collider means for us all, or/and
etc etc. It's like the AA Crocodiles are laughing (and coughing) and
laughing again.

It's unsettling thinking that the final chapter of his life is really the
final chapter to everything he ever wrote. I mean, it is in all cases like
this, but somehow maybe he thought about that, thought that suicide would
suddenly clarify his writing in ways words never could. God, think of that!



On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 1:02 PM, George Carr <georgecarr at gmail.com> wrote:

> Oh, Brenda, you got me thinking again, and that's dangerous in this
> state I'm in.  I got to thinking about anhedonia and its paradoxical
> result: how the lack of feeling becomes a feeling of pain.  I went
> back to looking through my notes on IJ (which is all too easy with
> Gmail) and found my discussion of anhedonia from more than two years
> ago.  Even though it's in the archives, I'll repost it here in its
> entirety, because I latched on to something while writing this that
> excited me, and I want everybody here to remember that feeling of
> exultation and excitement that can result from fucking brilliant
> literary work:
>
> ===================================
> Then we get into the Hal dilemma (p. 838): how Hal is becoming more
> 'hidden' as he grows older.  The real dilemma is the central one that
> philosophers have puzzled over: how can anyone ever see another's true
> self?  Expressed here, it's the paradox between the JOI/Schtitt
> attitude that self-denial is the path to success (Stephen Burn writes
> trenchantly about this w/r/t all the references to successful people
> being 'machines'), and the pragmatic effect of this self-denial:
> anhedonia.
>
> And this paradox exists at all levels of maturity and accomplishment:
> JOI-wraith makes clear that the only way to truly communicate is to
> "concoct something the gifted boy couldn't simply master and move on
> from to a new plateau." (p. 838-39).  And that deep engagement, as
> we've discussed on this list before, is the hallmark of true art: that
> even when divorced from its author, it creates a new dialogue with its
> audience, every time it is experienced.  E.g. see a brilliant
> painting, or read a brilliant book, or see a brilliant play, or
> whatever, at five widely spaced times in your life, and you'll have
> five different experiences that change you, alter you, give you new
> insight.  And that challenge to artists is also a challenge to
> audiences, that one can't close down and fall into repetition and
> reiteration; engaged audiences must always seek new things, reconsider
> assumptions and long-held beliefs, and actively dig into what it means
> to be human.
>
> And Gately and JOI-wraith agree, then, on a major danger to this
> communication and engagement: abstraction (p. 839).  To JOI and
> Gately, the major philosophical function of AA is to shut down the
> abstraction function, the dreaming of levels and layers of meaning,
> and to focus on One Day At A Time.  That anti-abstraction loops back
> into the authorial project, then, for DFW, as DFW's nonfiction
> writings emphasize that literature that changes readers' lives has its
> feet on the ground, doesn't get too complex or meta-fictional, and
> simply tells a Great Story.
>
> And so then Gately asks the question we've all asked during IJ: once
> the wraith knows how to travel and affect the quotidian affairs of
> still-living people, why doesn't it visit Hal and do something? (p.
> 840).  And just then, once the question is asked, Gately is forced to
> confront his own not-yet-a-wraith life, why he didn't do something
> about his mom, or about her boyfriend, or about his schooling, or
> about putting maimed houseflies out of their misery, or about anything
> that he arguably could have influenced.  And that extends right up
> into the present: why didn't Gately do something about Lenz that would
> have influenced the unfortunate situation he's just experienced? (p.
> 843).
>
> And then Gately wakes, from the dream and the memories and the
> wraith-conversation, and gets a visit from the sober guys.  This focus
> on the real moment distracts him from the worries and regrets he's
> been harping on, and makes him realize that he's more in control of
> his own attitudes than he realizes.  And yet, even with his newfound
> control, he's still just a citizen of an insane world: he gets forced
> in and out of sleep (p. 845), he gets forced in and out of
> conversations and visitors, he gets forced in and out of situations.
> But his challenge for the future is to avoid mute figurant status: to
> talk and mean what he says, and to listen to what other are really
> saying.  JOI maybe lost touch with Hal b/c both of them were getting
> solipsistic: communication is a two-way street, after all.  And here,
> after contact with the wraith, both Gately and the reader are starting
> to glimpse the shadows of DFW's ambitious Project: to quit living in
> regret and abstraction and shallow communication, and instead to focus
> on love, companionship, communication bewteen souls, and influence
> over the course of events.  To wake up, and live.
> ===================================
>
> I'm going to take a break now.  The weeping is coming back.
>
> George
>
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