wallace-l: the last moments...

[Jonathan Burden]

Thanks everyone.  I'm glad I joined this group, to be able to share what I
was able to share earlier today and to listen and be a part-of.  This is all
still very unreal to me as it must be to everyone else.  One thing I keep
going back to that also triggers emotion (and I almost hate to say it out
loud) is what he must have done to sequester the dogs.

On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 3:25 PM, Brenda Dallaway <brengun at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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