“Dear Sir,
In Stuart Jeffries piece “What lies beneath Austria’s surface” he refers to Robert Musil’s classic novel as “A Man Without Qualities”.
The novel is in fact called “The Man Without Qualities”.
Thanks a lot,
Ronan Fitzgerald”
“When I remember as far back as I can, I’d say that there was hardly any separation between inside and outside. When I crawled towards something, it came on wings to meet me; when something important happened, the excitement was not just in us, but the things themselves came to a boil. I won’t claim that we were happier then than we were later on. After all, we hadn’t yet taken charge of ourselves.
In fact, we didn’t really yet exist; our physical condition was not yet separated from the world’s. It sounds strange, but it’s true: our feeling, our desires, our very selves, were not yet quite inside ourselves. What’s even stranger is that I might as easily say: they were not yet quite taken away from us.
If you should sometime happen to ask yourself today, when you think you’re entirely in possession of yourself, who you really are, you will discover that you always see yourself from the outside, as an object. You’ll notice that one time you get angry, another time you get sad, just as your coat will sometimes be wet and sometimes too warm.
No matter how intensely you try to look at yourself, you may at most find something about the outside, but you’ll never get inside yourself. Whatever you do you remain outside yourself, with the possible exception of those rare moments when a friend might say that you’re beside yourself.
It’s true that as adults we’ve made up for this by being able to think at any time that ‘I am’- if you think that’s fun. You see a car and somehow in a shadowy way you also see ‘I am seeing a car’. You’re in love, or sad, and see that it’s you. But neither the car, nor your sadness, nor your love, nor even yourself, is quite fully there.
Nothing is as completely there as it once was in childhood; everything you touch, including your inmost self, is more or less congealed from the moment you have achieved your ‘personality’ and what’s left is a ghostly hanging thread of self awareness and murky self regard, wrapped up in a wholly external existence.
What goes wrong? There’s a feeling that something might still be salvaged. Surely you can’t claim that a child’s experience is all that different from a man’s? I don’t know any real answer, even if there may be this or that idea about it. But for a long time I’ve responded by having lost my love for this kind of ‘being myself’ and for this kind of world.”
Isn’t that the most incredible description of growing up you’ve ever read?
From Robert Musil’s “The Man Without Qualities” which still captivates me like no other work of art. Maybe I should make this blog entirely about Musil.
I am currently reading these, having only flitted in and out of Dublin Waterstones and Piccadilly Waterstones.
Gustave Flaubert-Sentimental Education and Hermann Broch-The Sleepwalkers. I didn’t have anything for breakfast this morning, in case you were wondering. Though a Berocca and a banana is the ultimate breakfast of champions.
I got 110 Euro in book vouchers today, as my bonus from when I worked in Waterstones. Anyone got any tips on what to buy?
I’ve been reading spaced out philosophical stuff, Thomas Mann, Robert Musil obviously and Elias Canetti. At least that’s what’s been working for me so far. These are all fiction too. But feel free to suggest anything really. Or else I’ll exchange them for HMV Vouchers and buy Guitar Hero on the Nintendo Wii. And we wouldn’t want that would we?
“ATTENTION BUDDING PHOTOGRAPHERS/DIRECTORS/JOURNALISTS/MEMBERS OF SOCIETY”
Am I the only one who hates the use of the word “budding” in this context? Perhaps not, yet it’s ubiquitous!
In fact “budding” is seldom if ever used in any other sentence. And it’s always preceded by “attention” or “calling all”. Why not just say “Do you want to be a photographer?” Or “Do you want to be a painter?” Or “Attention Photographers”. Or if you really want youth, say “Attention Young Photographers”. All of these are less annoying and less clichéd.
Can anyone find me a common use for the word “budding” outside of this? (Oh look the picture above has one, not so common though) I mean, excluding its actual use in relation to trees? I can’t think of any. From now on whenever you see this word used in this way you must furiously attack the mother or father hen that has used it. Or else just seethe silently. The choice is yours, budding pedants.
PS: I am reading this for the last few weeks, but I promise that “budding” has annoyed since long before I started.
“Knowledge and truth were for him identical terms. You draw closer to truth by shutting yourself off from mankind. Daily life was a superficial clatter of lies. Every passer-by was a liar. For that reason he never looked at them. Who among all these bad actors, who made up the mob, had a face to arrest his attention? They changed their faces with every moment; not for one single day did they stick to the same part. He had always known this, experience was superfluous. His ambition was to persist stubbornly in the same manner of existence. Not for a mere month, not for a year, but for the whole of his life, he would be true to himself.”
So I already posted about this book right? Well I have a different angle this time!
When you read the above excerpt, what do you think? Do you think that that person sounds courageous? Do you think that they are heroic? Or that they are obsessive, that they are stubborn and unwilling to change?
In the context of the book, that character (Peter Kien) is more a psychiatric case than a hero. But I’ve been thinking about the ideas in the above paragraph a lot of late. When re-framed as the viewpoint of a man who obviously has psychiatric problems, a man who needs to change, they really lose their lustre.
With the US Presidential Election back in the news, I remembered John Kerry being constantly attacked last time around by the right for “flip-flopping”. Their idea was that somebody who changed their mind on key issues should not be president.
It’s a pretty common indictment. The idea of being true to oneself at all costs seems to be too entrenched in us, to the point where it’s really misunderstood. What if your “self” is actually a damaging force? How can you be sure you shouldn’t change, at least some attitudes?
It seems silly to praise people for not changing, to have a societal meme that seems to suggest blindly resisting change and the times is worthy behaviour. I mean, isn’t it just as likely that somebody who does this is stubborn or just prejudiced?
It’s one thing if you are Martin Luther King, and your life is spent pursuing racial equality or something, even though he surely changed too, as we all do. But there are just as many deluded fundamentalists and fascists who “stay true to themselves” as there are freedom fighters who do so.
It strikes me that it takes even more guts for somebody to admit they were wrong about something, than to plough on after the same goals relentlessly. Similarly, the older you get, isn’t it harder to change than to stay the same?
People should change, I think. Obviously not non stop, all day everyday, but doing the right thing often means acting against instinct. I mean, does anybody wake up every day and think “I am perfect”? I doubt it. People give up bad or negative habits constantly, even if it’s something like smoking or overeating. There’s nothing wrong with this, it’s positive change.
Similarly, people should feel free to change their ideas about art or politics or life. You have 80 years or so on this rock, there are millions of perspectives and ideas to adopt, and so it’s always worth challenging the ones you already have. Forget “being true to yourself”, just take each event logically as it comes, you should be putting yourself on trial just as much as everybody else. I mean personally, the more I find perspectives that make my existing ones require more thought, the more I’m learning.
I mean, all that’s pretty lofty, I’m no philosopher and god knows I’m as stubborn sometimes as anyone. But even acknowledging that this is not something to be proud of seems a better starting point than this weird innately conservative distrust of change, or of people who change. It’s better in personal life and in politics.
I mean, come on! Shouldn’t we save the real respect for a politician or person who has the grace to say “I thought this then, but I was wrong”? And isn’t it more natural or “true to ourselves” to change our views than for them to stay the same? Think of the words we use to describe people who don’t change, almost all imply it’s a coercive process.
Similarly, doesn’t anyone who works for liberalism and tolerance risk being wrong more than somebody who promotes “values” or “the family” ad infinitum?
So sure, politicians can curry favour with the electorate by changing their stance on an issue, but it’s probably more important to decide whether you agree with their new stance than whether you are happy with the motivation for their change of mind.
As far as I can see it, the right will always benefit from this “flip-flopping” argument, because the entire problem with wanting politicians (or people) to be utterly consistent is that it’s easy to stay the same if you don’t want any change, and very difficult not to make make mistakes if you do.
“Knowledge and truth were for him identical terms. You draw closer to truth by shutting yourself off from mankind. Daily life was a superficial clatter of lies. Every passer-by was a liar. For that reason he never looked at them. Who among all these bad actors, who made up the mob, had a face to arrest his attention? They changed their faces with every moment; not for one single day did they stick to the same part. He had always known this, experience was superfluous. His ambition was to persist stubbornly in the same manner of existence. Not for a mere month, not for a year, but for the whole of his life, he would be true to himself.”
Meet Peter Kien, a sinologist who has dedicated his entire life to amassing a collection of rare philosophical literature. He is the chief protagonist in Elias Canetti’s 1935 novel “Auto-Da-Fé”, which I’m currently reading.
Kien is so consumed by books that he personifies them. He despises all the people around them precisely because they are not books, or they fail to treat books with respect, or they haven’t read books. He judges a person solely on the reverence with which they treat books. He has lurid nightmares in which his library is burnt to the ground and he must be its saviour, as if in some vision from the Book of Revelations. His visions of “judgement day” mention nothing of human suffering. Instead masses and masses of books are burnt.
Yet despite his misanthropy, his obsession ultimately makes him completely naive to the schemes of those around him, who ironically seem to vindicate the negative view he has of humanity. It’s interesting to see how misanthropy and naivety sit together in Kien. Others swindle him at every juncture, even as they too are oblivious to the possibility that every person may not be as vicious as they are.
The first of many characters distinguished by this greed and malice is Kien’s housekeeper, Therese. She’s a far less sympathetic character than he is. That’s not to say he’s a hero either. This is a book where nobody is a warm or likeable person so much as a collection of neuroses, insecurities, or hatred. Does that mean Kien was right in the monologue I cited above? Perhaps Canetti is just suggesting that ugliness collides with ugliness.
It doesn’t take long before Therese attempts to climb the social ladder from housekeeper to “lady of the house”. Ultimately through a bizarre conjunction of misunderstandings (he believes she loves and reveres books as he does, she believes he’s rich) they get married, which leads to more misery and Kien’s eventual ejection onto the streets and into the underworld of the city.
It’s the first of many such misunderstandings, in a book where every character is so oblivious to their own insularity that watching them collide is fascinating, and very real. Nobody is grand or pompous in Auto-Da-Fé, practically everyone is seedy or damaged or on the make. It’s an intensely bleak and strange book, as it drops you into minds that are mentally unsound, yet serene and clear in their madness. In fact, nothing I’ve ever read paints the inside of the mind so vividly, or makes ostensibly small minds seem so vast and complex and 3-dimensional.
Fore example Kien’s deep fear of women and even misogyny (though he is physically assaulted by her, not vice versa) is particularly interesting. Here he compares Therese’s properly starched stiff skirt to a mussel shell. (Quite a long excerpt but if you’ve read this far I’m hoping you’ll keep going!)
“Her skirt was a part of her, as the mussel shell is of the mussel. Let nobody try to force open the closed shell of a mussel. A gigantic mussel as huge as this dress. They have to be trodden on, to be trampled into slime and splinters, as he had done once when he was a child at the seaside. The mussel yielded not a chink. He had never seen one naked. What kind of an animal did the shell enclose with such impenetrable strength? He vowed not to stir a step from this place until he had broken it open. The mussel took a different view. She would not allow herself to be seen. Why should she be so modest, he thought, I shall let her go afterwards, as far as I’m concerned I shall shut her up again, I shan’t hurt her, I promise I shan’t. If she’s deaf then God can surely explain to her what I’m promising.
He argued with her for several hours. But his words were impotent as his fingers. He hated roundabout methods, he liked to reach his goal the direct way. Towards evening a great ship passed by, far out to sea. His eyes devoured the huge black letters on its side and read the name Alexander. Then he laughed in the midst of his rage, pulled on his shoes in a twinkling, hurled the mussel with all his strength to the ground, and performed a Gordian dance of victory. Now her shell was utterly useless to her. His shoes crushed it to pieces. Soon he had the creature stark naked on the ground, a miserable fleck of fraudulent slime, not an animal at all.”
Ugly stuff isn’t it? Yet written beautifully.
Auto-Da-Fé won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981. It’s a book that describes ugliness beautifully. Maybe that’s why it’s considered a classic. It’s readily available at most bookstores and also on Amazon or Book Depository.
Setting - Scottish Borderlands, Chevron Hills, 1379 — Beginning with a descriptive prologue the reader will at once see that Lady Maude Darnley has reason to have acquired her reputation as being cold, difficult, and despising the male species. Fergus, the healer who found and nursed her physical body back to life, now seven years later, lay dying and disturbed with the knowledge that he hadn’t completed the healing. Fergus knew he had no choice but to send his apprentice, the minstrel Ronan Fitzgerald to complete the task he’d left undone and without telling him exactly what he had to heal after having sworn an oath to Lady Maude’s father that he would never reveal to another living soul that Maude had been violated.
Ronan Fitzgerald had been a traveling minstrel, with a gift for healing, and promised Fergus that he would go to Lord Darnley and do what was asked of him. His introduction to Lady Maude was less than auspicious as with her cutting tongue she did her best to drive him away. Ronan saw beyond the rapier sharp tongue and having an innate sense that made him such a good healer, he saw beneath the bravado and recognized her terror by listening, really listening to the music he heard her play. As he came to care deeply for her, and with the clans ready to annihilate one another at the least provocation, Ronan would have to reach her before her terror would drive her completely over the edge and her father calling an all-out war against the Kirallen’s.
THE LINNET is a powerful story of bitter rage and survival. Maude who was depicted in the previous novels (BORDER BRIDE and LAIRD OF THE MIST) as cold and self-centered, in this last of the trilogy is fully exposed and dissected. Ronan, the wandering minstrel, whose loyalties were with the Kirallen’s is forced by his oath to Fergus to go to the Darnley’s where he happily discovered that there is more to the Lady Maude than most people knew. Intrigued, even though at first attracted by her beauty, he fell in love with her strength and bravery and prays that what skill he has can show her the way to love and trust.
While the author does an admirable job with the characterizations and motivations in this book I, didn’t find as much action and adventure in this as the first two novels. What I thought might prove to be a key suspense and motivational factor of a proposed betrothal between Maude and a neighboring laird, it was never developed and just lay there. However, the love story with Ronan was lovely, as Maude learned to trust again, but unlike the first two novels of this series, it does not rate a WOW but simply a good read.
I’m scared too.
If you look in the humour section in a big bookshop, you’ll probably see a rash of variations on the above theme. Each has a review on the cover or on the back that makes it sound like there is something risqué or shocking about misanthropy. When you read 20 or so of these reviews that fallacy is powerfully blown away. (This is a wonderful thing about working in a bookshop, it’s like the physical manifestation of a Google search, collected information yields really interesting results.)
I suppose this particular book, “Is It Me Or Is Everything Shit” is a pretty definitive milestone for the modern middle class rant, with a second edition out in time for Christmas, featuring James Blount and Chantelle on the cover. What lofty and revered sacred cows these brave intellectuals have chosen to denigrate! I mean, come on. Isn’t it crystal clear after a few years of ceaseless disgust, that anyone who hates on James Blount passionately is seeking musical identity through negativity? Unfortunately Blount is as boring to hate as he is to love.
Don’t get me wrong, like anyone who lives in a world with bus stops and tube stations and the DART and rain, I occasionally am tempted to think that a huge number of things are shit, or that everyone is a moron, or whatever. It’s the kind of thing you might make a joke about in the pub. But don’t go believing it. Whether or not humanity has made “progress” is hard to say. Just as hard as whether we’re in decline. Perhaps there are more directions for us to travel in rather than up (progress) and down (decline.)
However, the “everything is shit” meme or its close relative, “everything is in decline” should be included in any genuine “everything is shit” rant. . “James Blount is shit” is shit. “Chantelle is shit” is even shitter than Chantelle. “Celebrity culture is shit” is shit. “Celebrity culture is shit” is celebrity culture. In short, “Everything is shit” is shit
If someone feels there is a total lack of quality in art, in society, or in life, then they should make no aesthetic statements whatsoever, they should go and chop logs on a mountainside, or write of a longing to do so. Is this how the authors of “Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit” feel? Do they have zero faith in absolutely every element of modern living, every cultural product, every brand and building and way of life? Hardly.
If that were really the case they wouldn’t be able to write a book about what they think is shit, with an aesthetic so clearly defined you can guess it from the front cover. Those who define themselves by what they dislike or by what they hate just attach themselves to those artefacts. A really great creator or writer would make something new to counter the all pervasive “shitness”. Or at least attempt to do so.
However the idea of a book that isn’t a creation at all but depends on the trend it attacks for its very existence is about as symptomatic of the worthless referential culture we’re living in as you can get.
Is it just me or is “Is It Just Me, Or Is Everything Shit” shit?
