wallace-l: the last moments...

Wed Sep 17 16:54:45 CDT 2008

Jonathan, thank you so much for what your shared earlier today, and welcome
- even under these circumstances.

I keep thinking of the dogs, too.

-c.

On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 2:38 PM, Jonathan Burden
<jonathan.burden at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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
>>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wallace-l mailing list
>> Wallace-l at waste.org
>> https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/wallace-l
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wallace-l mailing list
> Wallace-l at waste.org
> https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/wallace-l
>
>

-- 
**************************************
Christina I. Wilson
brainylagirl @ Flickr
xina on Twitter
exeuntomnes.vox.com
***************************************
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://waste.org/pipermail/wallace-l/attachments/20080917/4b71a2e4/attachment.htm 