The Earth’s Mightiest Apologists

August 1, 2016August 1, 2016 / rewrites

THE EARTH’S MIGHTIEST APOLOGISTS

I recently read a book of the late German philosophy Hans-Georg Gadamer’s interviews by Riccordo Dottorri, a former student of Gadamer’s at Heidelberg University. Dottori is a well-known Hegel expert in his own right but conducted these interviews as a tribute to his teacher. I have always felt that Gadamer’s importance as a philosopher has not been properly acknoweldged; never a flashy or trendy public figure, he was a peacemaker at heart who reconciled German Idealism with Ancient Greek philosophy. The reading public, even when it comes to relatively niche topics like continental theory, tends to thrive on conflict and professional intrigue. We love to buy into the clannish, competitive dynamic between different schools of thought. Gadamer has always been kind of the antithesis of this pro-wrestling side of his field; he fostered dialogue with all of his contemporaries and, since he lived to over a hundred years old, this included most of the luminaries of twentieth century continental philosophy.

Gadamer’s insight into the distinction between pure rhetoric (rhetoric without regard to truth) and synesis (rhetoric and dialogue in pursuit of truth) allowed him to navigate complex ontological, ethical and political questions. His concept of “horizon-fusion” (wherein one must try to share the perspective of the dialogical other) meant that his debates tended to conclude in mutual agreement or, failing that, in an easy-going impasse. However, as far as his wider reputation is concerned, Gadamer remains caught in the shadow of his former teacher Martin Heidegger, who is, of course, one of the most deeply impressive and resented figures in modern philosophy. Heidegger’s infatuation with National Socialism is impossible to overlook or justify no matter how it is framed. At the same time, his writings must be considered one of the most important contributions to twentieth century thought both in terms of their originality and their influence. Unsurprisingly, most contemporary theorists do not openly admit their indebtedness to this work given the connotations that have been attached to it. As such, they have avoided Gadamer’s fate of being perceived as a perennial sidekick.

Gadamer rejected National Socialism. He even worked in East Germany for a time (prompting some others, including Karl Jaspers, to dismiss him as a Communist) but would not cut ties with Heidegger. Years later, Gadamer attempted to bring his former supervisor back into the academic system and to involve him in modern debates. This gesture of forgiveness and gratitude to his mentor proves that Gadamer was at least a true Platonist, though it did not improve the reputations of either man. Gadamer is sometimes said to have a conservative view of his field, a charge that is difficult to dispute given that his interest tended towards Plato and Aristotle or to Enlightenment thinkers like Hegel or Schleiermacher. Politically speaking, there is little reason to consider him conservative. He saw the inescapable value of historical context, not just for its own sake but as a way of addressing life’s transience. Change is essential but so is the ability to grasp the lessons of the past, whether it be the far-off historic past or a regrettable day last week. As Gadamer states:

In a particular instance I could ask myself, “Have I done the right thing?” —which I acknowledge after the fact — or, “Have I not done the right thing?” What I have done in each instance is just as true — it all happened in exactly the same way. But it’s not simply a question of the bare truth — whether or not I did this or that; instead, it’s a question of the way in which I can explain the action — that is, whether or not I did something right in the sense of something just, something that I can justify to myself and to the other. We can always try, of course, to give an answer in either the first way or in the second; but subsequently we become aware that it’s not simply a question of the sheer truth but of whether or not we can justify and take responsibility for our actions. This is what Protagoras wants to distinguish in his argument — it’s not a question of the sheer truth but of what is better or not. So it’s really a question of what is just and what is unjust. It’s correct to say that one cannot distinguish the Sophist from the philosopher through mere speech. But the difference is precisely that it’s not just about the truth of the speech!

On the one hand, actions cannot be evaluated without assessing justifications. On the other, reducing good and evil to technical distinctions or convincing speeches could be disastrous for society. A lawyer uses rhetoric to convince a judge that a person is morally culpable or blameless. An ethical lawyer will do so by appealing to ideas that he or she believes to be true while an unscrupulous one will employ rhetoric to persuade others of that which they do not themselves take to be true. In either case, however, our justifications involve rhetoric. We might prove that a person is responsible for a certain action but to prove that this act is just or unjust requires that we have a consensus regarding the truth of good and evil. This is a core issue in ethics: what if the particular situation that the person was in compelled them to act a certain way? It may be difficult to objectively judge their reasoning from our point of view unless we fully empathize with both perpetrator and victim. Of course, this resembles the classically liberal understanding of ethics that preaches open-mindedness instead of moral absolutes. Gadamer’s point is that our inquiries into justice can never be free of rhetoric and prejudice so to assume that rhetorical or prejudicial statements play not part in finding the truth is an idealistic fantasy. For Gadamer, the individual cannot arrive at pure truth by itself. Even the scientific method is built on principles of co-operation and cross-examination. We must properly understand our position and its incumbent biases, privileges and cultural blind-spots, not so that we can escape them but so that we can accept where we are coming from. One of the worst things one can do, therefore, is to preclude certain people from the dialogue. I mention these facets of Gadamer’s thinking to point out that, as far as he was concerned, rejecting Martin Heidegger would deny him the opportunity to arrive at truth through philosophical reasoning. In order to argue this case, we must first agree that Heidegger is worthy of our concern and that his rehabilitation would serve a higher purpose than merely restoring his reputation. As Dottori puts it:

…only later did I also understand Gadamer’s original intention. It was not just a matter of rehabilitating Heidegger’s stature or an attempt to retrieve him from the isolation into which he had been advised to go after his dismissal from the University of Freiburg. It was rather about the revival of his thinking, about going back to the path he had walked in his long dialogue with the ideas of the Greeks and the moderns.

What is clear is that although Gadamer did not agree with Heidegger’s support for Nazism (post-war investigations into German academic institutions cleared Gadamer of this) he sought a way to progress beyond historical guilt in order to obtain a productive future for philosophy.Even this is controversial. With all the potentially valuable human beings dead as a result of Hitler’s regime, why should we feel obliged to return to Heidegger’s work? It might be reflective of an age that exalted ontology and poetry without cherishing human life. On the other hand, if we refuse to acknowledge Heidegger, what does this mean for all those that have drawn from him? What does this mean for an entire generation of Germans, many of whom took far more active roles in the Third Reich than Heidegger did? Gadamer seems to have felt that blaming all collaborators equally for Nazi war crimes, and giving them no possibility of atonement is a self-righteous, myopic point of view:

If you had a little intelligence, you could behave like a human being. And, of course, you didn’t have to treat people who had become Nazis with a bad conscience by kicking them when they were down. You needed to show them some compassion, and that’s what I did. I didn’t condemn anyone who said to me, “You know I have a family…. What am I supposed to do?”

If this seems to be overly gracious to collaborators, one cannot deny that Gadamer would have been in precisely in the position he describes. To get a clearer picture, let us consider a few examples of how Heidegger’s Nazism is handled in the book to gauge the extent and validity of Dottori and Gadamer’s apologies for him. I will divide these into several categories, which will be discussed later:

ONE: JUDGING PEOPLE NOT ACTIONS / SITUATIONS

GADAMER: There was an assistant of Heidegger’s who was also a Jew; and on one occasion Frau Heidegger made several anti-Semitic remarks. Consequently, he went to Heidegger one evening and said to him, “You should know that I am Jew, and if you want to get rid of me, then please do,” Heidegger shook his hand and said, “That really changes nothing between us.” So, he was not an anti-Semite.

This anecdote is intended to show that Heidegger really did not have deep convictions regarding Jews at all. The story operates on the presumption that an “anti-Semite” is a type of person who exhibits a permanent, constant hatred for Jews. If Heidegger behaved towards his Jewish assistant in a tolerant way on this occasion, it follows that he could not have held (at this time or any other time) a hatred for Jews in general nor could he be considered anti-Semitic as a result of his later actions, including even the fact that he became an avid supporter of National Socialism. At any rate, Gadamer employs an almost religious concept of virtue here: either Martin Heidegger hated Jews throughout his life or he did not hate them at all. This is not wrong in a de facto sense at all – some Jewish commentators might agree that anti-Semitism refers to an aspect of a person’s being and not simply to practices or speech. Unfortunately, this logic is not applied at other times when it doesn’t suit Gadamer’s view of things:

DOTTORI:. And when Jaspers asked, “How you can believe in such an uncultured man as Hitler?” Heidegger answered, “Oh, culture has nothing to do with it, just look at what beautiful hands he has.” For Jaspers, that was the end of the friendship. Do you think Jaspers took him for a committed Nazi and anti-Semite, or did he just think he was fooling himself?

GADAMER.: No. I think after a few years he saw that Heidegger had just been fooling himself, and I think he thought Heidegger understood this as well. Jaspers, of course, understood that Heidegger had been dreadfully taken in, for there’s really no question about it — who wouldn’t have thought this? And he never really took him for an anti-Semite at all.

It would be interesting to see whether Jaspers would corroborate this. Rather than suggesting that servility or fundamentalism are permanent characteristics (as he implies anti-Semitism is), Gadamer describes Heidegger as having “been taken in” by Nazi ideology. Gadamer insists that Heidegger became disillusioned with the Nazi Party after he realized that his views of it as a celebration of German culture or the establishment of a global order were not accurate. Even if this were true, Gadamer’s account does not meditate much on Heidegger’s motives for first allying with and then distancing himself from National Socialism. From a detached perspective, in fact, Heidegger’s actions appear to be primarily self-serving. Gadamer does not consider the likelihood that Heidegger created an fetishist, ideological rationalisation for supporting Hitler (“his beautiful hands”) merely to disguise his own deep-seated belief in the superiority of German culture or his desire to become the leading philosopher of his age. Ultimately, for Gadamer, Heidegger was either an anti-Semite or he was not but his Nazism may was circumstantial. Dottori offers a more cynical depiction of events:

So he [Heidegger] went to Berlin in the hope of meeting Hitler and building a relationship with him similar to the one that existed between Giovanni Gentile and Mussolini. He did not even succeed in meeting the appropriate minister, however, and so he came back to his birthplace in MeEkirch to ponder this disappointment. Thus he wrote to his half-Jewish friend, Elisabeth Blochmann, “The whole thing would have been abysmal anyway.” The fact that he then still took up the rectorate and sub-sequently set in motion that discourse that Croce characterized as “stupid and, above all, servile,” should indicate, however, that his delusion persisted, at least in a small way.

That Gadamer blames the repressive culture of Hitler’s Germany for brainwashing individuals is understandable. The problem is that when it comes to Heidegger, he vacillates between two conceptions of ethical responsibility: are we to be attentive to the ways in which social context determines human behaviour or are we to focus on the moral agency of individuals? If the former, then we might say that Heidegger’s attitude towards his assistant (or his affair with Hannah Arendt) were also caused by his context – he could be an anti-Semitic person at heart who had ‘fallen’ into a tolerant mind-set regarding Jews because it suited him. If we focus on agency then Heidegger could be seen as a supporter of Hitler’s views who disengaged from them only because he realized that he wouldn’t profit from it in the long run. In Gadamer’s version of things, Heidegger’s tolerant acts show his underlying good nature while his reprehensible behaviour are caused by the general ‘madness’ that had fallen over Germany.

TWO: JUDGING TEXT NOT PERSON

I remember listening to a recording of a lecture from the American Heidegger expert Hubert Dreyfus where he claimed that all latter-day Continental philosophers are covert disciples of Heidegger (he even includes several staunch Marxists on this list!) He concludes that it is the Nazi controversy that led to this widespread disavowal of Heidegger and not some weakness in his system. We should not avoid the text purely on account of the author’s biography. This is true, to an extent. We needn’t entertain the possibility that Being and Time – like Lovecraft’s Necronomicon – can transform readers into evil zombies. Dreyfus makes no excuses for Heidegger’s personal failings but suggests that it is hypocritical to draw inspiration from Being and Time, while pretending to have had nothing to do with Heidegger. His point, I think, is partly related to the old, somewhat lofty idea in criticism that we should be sufficiently detached that we can separate creator and creation. It follows that there’s no contradiction for one to be devoted to a work of art or philosophy without sympathizing with the particular person who produced it. In practice, it is notoriously difficult to avoid thinking about a creator’s motivations or overall message when reading, especially when we read texts that explicitly broadcast such things. Being and Time is not one of these. It is malleable enough that its themes and methods can be reconfigured to suit most schools of thought. It doesn’t lead inexorably to a Fascist worldview. While the book is concrete in its focus on being-in-the-world and its foregrounding of manual labour, its lack of interest in human social interaction may be a proof that there is something lacking in Heidegger’s approach. For most readers, Heidegger’s references to “everydayness”, “das man” and “being-with” are not adequate confrontations with the social dimension of human experience. Dottori hints at this:

After the experiences of the twentieth century we can no longer pursue philosophy without worrying about what actually happens to us instead of simply posing the question of being as such, as metaphysics has always done. This is perhaps what Gadamer, in contrast to Heidegger, has always understood. To know how to pull on the threads of everything that surrounds us so as to discover the web from which reality is made, this spider’s web in which we are caught.

Both Gadamer and Dottori see Heidegger’s late-period infatuation with Nietzsche, at best as a turn towards a religiosity-without-God and at worst self-absorbed nihilism. Perhaps there is no obligation for every writer to tackle the big social and political issues of the day but in not talking about them, they will inevitably be seen as evasive and ambiguous. In some cases, a deliberate ‘unsaying’ speaks great volumes, anyone who reads Montaigne for example can guess what he really thought of Catholic persecution of Protestants. In Heidegger’s case, the focus on re-imagining the phenomenological experience of “being-there” remains stubbornly distant from the kind of practical issues that later existentialists such as Gadamer, Levinas or Merleau-Ponty are primarily interested in: love, dialogue, ethical responsibility to the other and so on. We may not encounter a defence of authoritarianism in Heidegger (unless one is looking for it and wants to locate it in concepts such as in “das man”) but his failure to extend his themes to properly contemplate issues related to human freedom, community and so on, have been seen as the major deficiency in his project.

Certainly, we do not need to know about or admire Socrates’ life (his marriage, his sexual orientation or his execution etc.) to learn Socratic philosophy. Nevertheless, these features help to animate his ideas and to prove them, in the rhetorical if not the logical sense of the word. Whether we like or it not, they fill in subtext. Later philosophers may have hesitated to refer to Martin Heidegger favourably in their own articles and essays – despite finding volumes of useful ideas in his body of work – because he is not able to enlighten them in what they consider to be their most important problems (which are invariably those that deal with the Other.) Their neglect of him, therefore, may not simply be because he was a Bad Man.

THREE: PUNISHING THE CULPRATE VS. PUNISHING OURSELVES

Related to the argument that we should be able to appreciate a great work without celebrating its maker is the claim that refusing all works by people who were think are unethical would be to deprive ourselves of potential sources of enjoyment or education. In his introduction, Dottori says of Heidegger: “Neither can one say that either his life or his philosophy served or influenced the history of National Socialism in any way.” The implications of this are that Heidegger’s behaviour did not harm anyone but himself and perhaps those associated with him. If we, with our scruples, refuse to engage with his work aren’t we only forfeiting the opportunity to develop ourselves How does our moral grandstanding undo the Holocaust or prevent its sequel? Whether or not this line of argument is true and fair, it is clear that by problematizing the general disapproval of Heidegger to this extent, we are shifting the burden of proof onto those who associate Heidegger’s Existentialism with Nazi Ideology. Common sense dictates that whether one wants to study Heidegger should be left up to personal inclination (to impose a ban or to make him required reading would be two extremes.) It’s harder to decide whether Gadamer was right to invite Heidegger to take part in his seminars. Much of Dottori’s book seems to present an apology for Heidegger and a tacit encouragement to acknowledge his stature and value.

WITH APOLOGIES…

In all honesty, the controversy around Heidegger has always been tedious. What makes this example interesting is the fact that Gadamer, generally admirable as a person and philosopher, put himself in the position of apologizing for another’s acts (Heidegger himself was not particularly contrite, entering into a period that has become known as “the great silence.”) Gadamer’s fear of betraying his own Platonic values (and his veneration of free speech, which was not really venerated consistently by Socrates despite his own “Apology”) led him to act as something like an defense attorney for a man whose political views he opposed. Gadamer can be thought of as an apologist, if only in the sense that he was dedicated to the task of bringing Heidegger’s philosophical system back into prominence.

The three subtle forms of apology we looked at so far, of course, can be applied to figures as diverse as Roman Polanski and Ezra Pound. Now that Heidegger is dead it seems strange to insist that his state of disgrace should persist. An argument could be made that the fact that he made a pariah deprived the world of what could have been a meaningful continuation of his efforts. I find this kind of speculation hard to take seriously – one might equally speculate on what his work might have looked like had Hitler won the war. In the end, Gadamer’s principles obliged him to provide his former teacher the chance to enter into dialogue with him. Whether or not he then went too far in legitimizing Heidegger or conceding to him is a different question. Perhaps the fact that we no longer necessarily need to turn to Heidegger for solutions to our philosophical problems proves that progress of some kind has taken place or perhaps we are wrong to emphasize a tradition that has now ossified (this could be extended to critique the perpetual veneration of Marx and Hegel as well.) The cliché holds that we must kill our heroes. In this case, it appears that Heidegger performed that task for us.

People Got the Power

March 15, 2016October 17, 2016 / rewrites

People Got the Power

Since I was a teenager, I’ve enjoyed reading reviews and analysis of books, films, albums that I hadn’t actually read, watched or listened to. I read manuals for appliances I didn’t own or obituaries of people I had never heard of. I wasn’t trying to hoard information in order to bullshit my way through conversations, it was just something I liked to do. Even now, as a subscriber to the BFI’s Sight & Sound Magazine, I read the full reviews (they come with plot summaries) of films that haven’t opened yet. Using what you know of the cast, director, the storyline and so on, you can usually play your own version of the film in your head prior to seeing it. The interesting part comes when you compare what you had predicted with what actually was made; sometimes you can discover something about the filmmaker’s style or the tendencies of the film critic who wrote the review. It might sounds unfair to knowingly deprive the filmmakers of the chance to hit you with something unexpected. But many people like read the last pages of a book first or rewatch certain films or reread classics over and over again. With adaptations of famous stories too, we know every beat in advance. The thrill of the unforeseen is undeniable but it has to contend with the satisfaction of getting what we want.

One development in television over the last twenty years has been a strengthening of the idea that viewers should have some way of shaping the product that they are consuming. I suppose this idea has been around in some form or other from the beginnings of mass produced popular culture (Charles Dickens’ second ending to Great Expectations may have been caused by fan pressure.) In order to get us to ‘buy’ into a story, we are more and more encouraged to see ourselves not as passive spectators but as empowered members of a democratic community that is constructing art and entertainment together. The image of the passive image-consumer (staring at the television set with mouth agape) that so alarmed theorists of the 60s, 70s and 80s may be a perpetual trope but I would argue a new form ‘the interactive spectator’ is on the ascendancy: the viewer who wants exert some power over what happens on the screen, the one who imagines endings for herself and writes her own hypothetical versions where her preferences are fulfilled.

At the same time, it is clear from the language we use to speak about this ‘democracy’ that we are speaking from a market-economy point of view. In a market that competes for both immediate attention and long-term ‘brand loyalty’, paying-customers are not just the lifeblood of any project but also must be considered shareholders, collaborators and co-conspirators. In extreme cases, this empowering of the spectator re-positions writers and performers as interpreters of the dreams of those that have invested themselves in their work. We no longer expect simply to be entertained; we want our entertainment to take on a specific form. This rejigging of our expectations has no doubt been influenced by videogames where we can guide the narrative in many directions – then hit reset and start again. Many news reports now feature tweets and comments sections, even on breaking stories. Of course, this spirit of collaboration can be constructive if it is well managed; there is nothing wrong with creators thinking of their audience as colleagues, especially if they wish to nurture a long-term relationship with them (in an abstract sense, one could argue that audiences have always been co-creators to the extent that all creative work presupposes the involvement of somebody to experience it.)

At any rate, audience members are no longer necessarily perceived as meddling outsiders but are increasingly considered experts on the material. What I am driving at is whether audience input necessarily means valuing the pleasure of the expected over the thrill of the unforeseen. As I’ve said, I’m guilty of favouring the expected myself. Not knowing ‘what happens next’ is rarely central to my enjoyment. But this does not mean that I don’t care about the quality of the plot. A sophisticated story, which low on clichés and sentimentality, will work just as well whether or not I know what is coming next. On the other hand, the feeling that the plot and its mechanism are propelled by a consistent logic conceived by the writers is, I think, still essential to fiction. The realization that the next event has happened only because I (or a fellow audience member) wants it to, strips the story of its independent reality whether or not any audience members have actually petitioned the writers or not. The closing of the gap between creators, interpreters and consumers has meant a blending of roles – writers try to think like fans and fans like authors.

When it comes to the audience having a little too much say, however, one can point to clear examples that can be read about online. In one case, the showrunners of a popular sitcom tried to respond to the fact that it had committed itself to ending with two characters in a relationship despite the growing realization that, over many years, its audience had become assertive in their support of a different coupling. The writers reacted in the worst possible way: it finished the series in the way that it had originally intended but added an epilogue where the wife of the lead dies and he is therefore free to shack up with the more popular alternative (supposedly this entire denouement took place in under an hour.) Yet, the writers found that the audience were less than impressed; their dissatisfaction showed that getting what they wanted felt empty or, possibly, that they did not entirely want what they thought they did. The writers made it obviously that they had caved to expectations and viewers were suddenly forced to realize that they were simply watching yet another mediocre sitcom, crammed with beautiful people who were pretending to fall in love. The best shows of this type manage to hide this illusion long enough for the curtain to fall.

In another case, a dramatic series cultivated mystery and suspense. It played up the idea that there would be a tightly resolved climax that would provide a huge payoff. Unfortunately, the popularity of the show during this build-up grew to the point where the network, listening to fans, decided to extend its run by several years, forcing the writers to add complications, replace characters and constantly tinker with their premise. The result was that the ending of the show could no longer work and ultimately provoked derision not vindication. There are times when we want to surrender to someone else’s imagination. The power to delay or deny gratification can be used to heighten the emotional experience of the audience in ways that they might appreciate. In reality, however, there are artists that develop projects (series of books, comics, bands etc.) over lifetimes and it is understandable for them to try to live up to expectations at certain points. It would be romantic to frame people-pleasing in a wholly negative light but, equally, it is futile to try and imagine how things might’ve been done differently; once the work exists it has to be taken for what it is, its successes and failures are fundamental to it. The investment of oneself as a creative partner in another person’s invention is, at best, a regrettable redirection of our own creativity, living out our own dreams by trying, as part of a mass of people, to exert influence. At worst, it is complacency at the expense of new flavours, places we’ve never been.

Four Eric Rohmer Films

January 17, 2016March 9, 2016 / rewrites

A Tale of Winter

“A Tale of Winter” (1991) is the second of Eric Rohmer’s “Tales of the Four Seasons” and it’s in keeping with the other three. It is about how relationships (real or hypothetical) have a way of revealing the beliefs and dreams of its characters. Rohmer is often labelled a Roman Catholic Moralist but this is absolutely wrong if taken in the conventional sense. He is not a cinematic Savonarola; he doesn’t push a strong, judgmental point of view. It’s dead accurate, however, if we take ‘moralist’ to signify interest in people’s true intentions, behaviour and the consequences of their actions. Rohmer’s Catholicism is not orthodox; it belongs instead to the eccentric religion of writers such as Pascal, Flannery O’Connor, James Joyce or C.K. Chesterton for it perceives all things aesthetically or philosophically rather than in legalistic terms.
In other words, his stories do not distinguish between and evil actions but between beautiful and ugly emotions. He is more interested in the question of whether we can live by our own, self-prescribed codes or whether we betray ourselves in the end. This type of perspective has the advantage of making personal taste and emotional experience the basis of virtue rather than submission to authority. Rohmer’s Catholicism has the capacity to be light and playful in nature even when his films engage with hefty theological concerns. Despite this conventionality, he is more accepting of human failings than most of the existentialist or Marxist filmmakers of his generation. If Rohmer, or his camera, are behavioural psychologists then it helpful that his tales always revolve around love and sex for these situations, while mysterious at first, ultimately involve a search for the truth. Love usually involves play-acting, sometimes even deceit – but if you never show your cards, you’ll lose the game in the end.

This is a winter tale because it unfolds over Christmas and New Year’s Day. It also catches the main character at the end of one cycle and the beginning of a new phase. The main character’s story can be seen as a romantic, marriage plot though the stakes are inherently moral, even spiritual. As suits her name, Felicite, the main character, exemplifies the idea of faith. From a Catholic perspective, one could say that faith is a source of grace for her in her ‘fallen state’ and it is also the quality that redeems her as the protagonist of a film. Her conviction and commitment to an ideal prevents her from becoming the kind of shallow lead character that cannot sustain the viewer’s emotional investment. In my experience, audiences are all too ready to say “well to hell with you then” at a certain point in a romantic drama or comedy, if the characters are too irredeemable.

Thankfully, the excellent central performance by Charlotte Very is strong enough to invite us to approve of and disapprove of her in equal measure. This ambivalence is intensified all the way up to the final minutes of the film. One difficulty within the role is that Very must make Felicite a compelling working-class character, a single mother who nevertheless seems entirely in charge of her own life (at times, she seems almost carefree.) She is prone to waxing lyrical on affairs of the heart even as she carelessly uses and discards the men in her life.
Our empathy for the character has much to do with Felicite’s attractiveness but also her bluntness and autonomy. More than this, perhaps, it stems from her blind commitment to her belief that the father of her child will return to her. The child’s father is a journeyman cook named Charles (she does not know his surname!) with whom she enjoyed a glorious, short-lived affair five years before the main plot kicks in. Her two current boyfriends, Loic and Maxence, are aware that Felicite still loves Charles above all others and that she hopes (against all odds) of being reunited with him. This seems impossible, since she accidently gave him the wrong address. The film opens with their holiday romance, a set of lingering, intimate moments at the seaside that are rather unconventional for Rohmer; firstly, because of the sunshine in a film with a wintery motif, secondly, because he employs a non-diegetic classic music score. Rohmer used music very sparingly in most of his films. His reliance on it here creates a somewhat dreamy atmosphere suited to the golden age they portray in a handful of short sketches.
Should Felicite face reality for the good of herself and her daughter? Should she choose one of her two current suitors both of whom are suitable but not ideal? Should she remain available should Charles magically resurface? The way Felicite manoeuvres into positions of power over her boyfriends (and the vindictive expression her face adopts when teasing them) makes her hard to like at times. Sometimes, she talks to them or about them in a hurtful, cold-blooded, selfish manner but they, as men often do, somehow interpret her hostility as a temporary resistance that must be overcome. Along the way, Maxence‘s increasingly pushy attempts to impose domesticity on her and Loic’s impotent compulsion towards over-intellectualization gives some justification to her unwillingness to commit to either them and give up the ghost of Charles.

On the problem of whether Felicite is a decent mother, the film is less clear. Her relationship with her daughter seems normal enough on the surface, though her own mother seems to shoulder most of the day-to-day responsibilities. What rankles is her willingness to change her daughter’s life on a whim as seen in her short-lived decision to move to another town with Maxence. Nonetheless, it is suggested that the child’s discomfort at being in this new setting might be the tipping point that dooms the entire adventure to failure. (Felicite does not use the child as an excuse though. She answers Maxence’s flabbergasted questions with vague replies that she does not love him ‘enough.’) Her decision to return is no less capricious than her original choice to follow Max. Ultimately, it is her habit of not taking responsibility for her choices that emerges from this episode even if it seems that her decision to break up with Maxence is really for the best.
Rohmer cleverly works with the audience’s likely prejudice against a woman who toys with several men at the same time. The fact that her lovers know about each other (and the mythical Charles) is revealed over time and suggests that their arrangement may be more sophisticated than it first appears. That said, it is inevitable that they begin to see her as a prize that must be torn away from her other lovers.
All of the characters in the film are believable in their own right but Rohmer, a lover of metaphysics, magic and coincidence is not inclined towards realism. Above all, he is an optimist, guiding the story in a more interesting and emotionally powerful direction than a more cynical direction might have taken.

Rohmer is sometimes characterized as the most conservative and bourgeois auteurs of the Cahiers crowd. In fact, his style operates equally well in this world of beauticians and librarians as it does in his films devoted to the college professors and artists. Felicite, if she spurns her suitors and waits for a man who will not appear (and if he does appear may no longer be right for her) may be stuck by herself for the rest of her life in a relatively low-paying job with a young daughter to support. This looming possibility is implied through shots of her difficult working day, which involves her rising early and traveling constantly on public transport. There is no need for this subtext to be over-emphasized, though, and the film does well not stress Felicite’s vulnerability beyond these fleeting suggestions. Throughout, she exudes strength and confidence even if she is not always fair in her use of the power she holds over others.

Made in the early 90s, Rohmer is much less reliant on long, verbose exchanges here than in his early films. One can still broadly classify “A Tale of Winter” as a talky picture but it is telling that Loic’s philosophizing is, by this point, presented as an unattractive trait. The montage that opens the film is a great example of the evolution of Rohmer’s ability to relate story and feeling through images, sound and physical performance rather than cerebral dialogue. Fans of Rohmer’s style will be satisfied, though, as the director slowly adds intellectual weight to Felicite’s experiences. Firstly, he evokes some of his early work in drawing parallels between her blind commitment to Charles (to the idea of him) and the spiritual faith espoused by Pascal and Plato. Pascal as a theorist of love, as unlikely as it may seem is central to Rohmer’s worldview as can be seen in “My Night at Maud’s.” A couple of scenes reinforce this thematic line, subtly suggesting that an overlap in romantic and religious sentiment must be discovered if either species of feeling is to be at all understood. Rohmer gently raises the possibility that Felicite gains some degree of secular spiritual wisdom through her devotion to Charles, who is emotionally ever-present yet physically absent.

Lest this all seem too much like Catholic philosophy translated into the idiom of the modern relationship drama, Rohmer includes references to the concept of reincarnation – a theory that Loic, the only devout Catholic on site, cannot accept. His rationalizations fail to convince Felicite, who compares metempsychosis to the resurrection of the dead, making the claim that it is just as likely that we each have a pre-existence as an afterlife. Her logic? Her instant, abiding love for Charles cannot be explained through reference to anything in her current existence. It must be a matter of their souls recognizing each other in their new forms. Loic responds in the only way he knows how, by reading to her from Plato. It is apparent that the concept of reincarnation has a deeper meaning for Felicite than quotes from a book: it is a concrete problem of determining whether one can regain what seems to be out of reach. Tauntingly, she explains that Charles must have been her lover in a previous life whereas Loic would only have been her brother or a dog or cat.

The film’s religious undertones, sometimes overtones, are less important to its meaning than its central reference point: the Shakespeare play from which it derives its title. Rohmer refers to some of his films as Comedies (in contrast to Proverbs, Moral Tales, etc) but not because they are humorous but in the Elizabethan sense of a story that has a happy because the characters exist in a universe that smiles upon them. All they require is faith in the cosmic order and in the invisible, almighty playwright who jots out their fates. Felicite and Loic actually go to see the play and Rohmer devotes a substantial amount of screen time to it. In “A Winter’s Tale” Shakespeare dramatizes how a trial of faith can make up for one’s earlier foolishness and return the discarded object to the one who has learned to truly value it. Leontes’ beloved Hermoine is restored by Paulina but only insofar as he is willing to believe in the possibility of her resurrection. Egghead Loic distrusts the play for its reliance on magic and irrationality. He mentions the ambiguity of whether Hermoine died or was simply hidden for sixteen years to teach Leontes a lesson. The resurrection scene is the one see played on stage. Felicite is rightly disinterested in this ambiguity: she knows that it matters little what the state of the lost object is, the crucial thing is the fact of its absence and the longing and the faith of the one praying for its return.

Rohmer plays with the formula that he employed in his early films: a person loves one thing, becomes transfixed by a different object but finally returns to the original desire. “A Tale of Winter” does not perfectly subscribe to this model but evokes it as an emotional pattern that constantly threatens to take over. After the outing to the theatre, Loic compares her stubbornness to Pascal’s wager: Felicite is betting on the slim possibility of great happiness over an attainable, less dramatic prize of security and contentment. More than this, however, Felicite stakes her present and future happiness not on luck but whether the nature of the universe itself is benevolent or indifferent to her situation. In a very Shakespearean sense, this is the familiar problem of the characters discovering whether they are in a comedy or tragedy. Luckily for her, Eric Rohmer is the one in charge here. His grace, at least, can always be counted on.

The Green Ray

“The Green Ray” is a low-key but fascinating film that makes absorbing viewing out of an extremely small-scale narrative. It contains no twists, revelations or climaxes. As always, Rohmer trusts in his cast, especially the superb Marie Rivere as Delphine, to find the humanity of their characters without ironing out the contradictions. This work, part of the “Proverbs” series, has a straightforward premise: Delphine is a Parisian secretary who has lost all confidence in herself following a protracted breakup with her fiancé. When a girlfriend ditches her before they are meant to go to Greece, she faces the prospect of spending her annual leave by herself. From then on the same pattern repeats: a friend or family member asks her to join them on their holiday, she senses that she is simply being pitied by them and breaks away, returning to her solitude until she can stand it no longer.

Along the way, Delphine overhears a group of elderly people discuss the phenomenon of the green ray (and the Verne book that describes it.) The green ray is a shade that can be seen in the light of the setting sun. Since it is normally imperceptible, the ray is considered to be an omen of sorts, akin to seeing a shooting star or solar eclipse. Delphine tries to team up with a hedonistic Swedish girl at the beach, presumably to hunt men together, but this too ends in failure. Finally, she makes an attempt to shack up with a friendly cabinetmaker that she meets at a train station. Could he be a miraculous green ray of hope himself, a way out of the endless repetition?
Deceptively slight, “The Green Ray” is attuned to experiences that are not often represented in cinema though they are quite common in literature. Conflict in this film is not really interpersonal (the other characters have little screen time) but internal. For the audience, the stakes are not high; they amount to whether or not Delphine has a nice vacation. Once we better understand her mercurial nature and her haughtiness, the fact that she is the cause of her own problems becomes obvious. Oddly, this film, where the protagonist keeps frustrating herself, is not in the least annoying to watch. The “practical” (how-to) side of screenwriting usually stresses the idea that the subject(s) of the plot must have clearly defined goals to pursue in the face of opposition. Conflict in this narrative, on the contrary, revolves around the compulsion to flee from what we think we want. The title of the “Green Ray” suggests that to know what this goal actually is in the first place is a major accomplishment in itself. The green ray, poeticized by Verne, represents the possibility that human beings are not too sensible (our hearts are too chaotic and inconsistent) and that we may require some alien revelatory power to reveal “our hearts and the hearts of others.”
Rivere’s Delphine is a malcontent who would rather play martyr than make a genuine effort to turn things around. In hopeful moments, perhaps, she can envision herself hooking up with a handsome young man or enjoying herself in a picturesque locale but these fantasies become suffocating when they appear right in front of her and she refuses them (often physically fleeing from them.) When a friend tries to interrogate Delphine on her paradoxical attitudes early on, she ends up hiding around the corner, crying by herself. We hear her ex-fiancé’s voice just once over the phone and he seems reasonable enough, far too nice to have been the primary cause of her insecurities.

An exchange between Delphine and an old man near the start of the film gives a clue. The man spent most of his life without having seen the sea (he was a taxi driver) but after seeing it for the first time in his aged state, he decided it was no better than Seine. One may as well stay in Paris for holidays, he claims. Yet, Delphine resists this advice just like she resists all the advice she receives. The lure of a holiday romance is too strong for her to give up on it, though her pessimism has virtually become part of her being. Rohmer has a way of fulling his shots of tourist traps beaches, forests and mountains with stagnation. Such settings are badly over-lit, the shots are held a little too long until they look like posters or brochures. Even without close-ups, the perspective taken on these wide areas creates a cramped, claustrophobic feeling. Delphine’s isolation is intensified by the framing of the shots and Rivere’s understated way of hinting at the character’s mounting desperation. Handwritten sign cards and awkward cuts bring us more and more into her point of view.

This does not mean that we ever understand Delphine. Surely, the miraculous powers of the green ray – which exposes the truth about all people – remains beyond us just as these powers are beyond her. But what of Rohmer? He can plead ignorance here. He does not have to provide us with the answers. The freeform story gathers pace naturally with none of the contrived prodding that he sometimes needs to develop suspense in the narrative. The ending resolves little. And how could it? Rohmer does not place Delphine in a moral quandary or love triangle. There is no prize on the horizon aside from a little bit of hard-earned wisdom. Rohmer lets us peak into her little world because, small though it is, it overlaps with our lives.

My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend

Although “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend” (AKA “Boyfriends and Girlfriends”) is one of Rohmer’s less striking films, it is still streets ahead of most other so-called auteurs. This is another naturalistic depiction of modern twenty-something Parisians and their muddled-up love lives. If anything, the plot combines the traditional romantic comedy’s plot (where lines of attraction, rejection and betrayal collide) with a rather adolescent view of friendship and dating. One could stage pretty much the same story with a cast of fifteen year olds. The film’s insistence on taking its rather immature characters seriously is its major strength and shortcoming; this is the variety of Rohmer that seeks a light atmosphere above all else. It presents human behaviour to us rather than investigating it. As such, the rather vacuous people and relationships that appear in this film remain vacuous. Rohmer neither criticizes them for this nor provides justification. We are given an almost neutral, detached perspective on events as they unfold, forcing us to accept the characters just as they are.
Of course, we all have an inner fifteen-year old so it is easy to get drawn into the story of Blanche’s growing attraction to Fabien, the boyfriend of her attractive but spoilt friend Lea. It’s an enjoyable film. After it comes to its conclusion, though, the story doesn’t leave much of a lasting impression. One might expect Rohmer to make the point that these relationships exhibit a generation of young French men and women that are no longer guided by the Romantic notions of authenticity that were once mainstays in their national literature and film. He refrains from explicitly commenting on their superficiality, treating scenes where characters gossip, drift apart or come together as matters of great importance. After all, as in “The Green Ray” these trifles are seen as emergencies by the characters themselves.
Rohmer offers no perspective external to the values of the characters. “Boyfriends and Girlfriends” lacks the references to philosophy, literature or classical music that he frequently uses to put his tales into context. The minor quality of the drama is reinforced by his aversion to cinematic techniques that direct the audience to respond in prescribed ways. As in most of his films, there is no extradiegetic music, very few close ups, no elaborately shot or edited sequences.
There are films that seek to capture the cynical way that twentieth-century people went about the business of lovemaking. Some of these, such as Billy Wilder’s “The Apartment” for instance, manage to balance cynicism with an underlying optimism that true love can still exist between people who are able to break free of dehumanizing conventions. Abstract Ideals such as Art, God or True Love don’t feature in “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend.” If we care about the characters, it is simply because they are so ordinary and not because they represent something precious. Not to say that they can’t be tiresome. One can feel a little sorry for Blanche when she cries because she is lonely and she blew an opportunity to get to know a handsome man better. At the same time, one could also think she’s overreacting (he is a pompous jerk.) But even this reaction shouldn’t make us glad to see her cry. While they are not exactly loveable, none of the characters are unlikeable or villainous (with the possible exception of Alexandre who we get to know the least.) It doesn’t help that we mostly witness them when they are talking about what they want and portraying themselves as they’d like to be seen. Though it highlights self-consciousness, this film is not interested in existentialism. It is not out to illustrate how society levels down individuality or diminishes authenticity. These characters don’t much care about preserving their individuality. They simply want to get what they want. In a way, this is a deliberately consumerist love story: the central characters’ main preoccupation is to define who comes closest to their ideal ‘type’ yet they never ever allow themselves to have a meaningful interaction with each other. They shop around for the right match and then they trade them like baseball cards.

The proverb that the film is based on “the friend of my friend is my friend” implies a kind of indiscriminate acceptance of other people even though this film is all about the narrowing down of options. A striking bit of vulnerability, however, arises in the final meeting between Blanche and Lea. A moment of pure Rohmerian insight hits us when we least expect it and for a minute or two threatens to tear down the façade that the characters have been hiding behind. Unfortunately, it is the result of a rather farcical piece of miscommunication and coincidence and dissipates almost immediately. Since the film ends here, the implications of the misunderstanding are not rendered onscreen.
If the film is somewhat less successful than many of Rohmer’s other efforts, we must not overlook his genius for observation. We are never too far from the rhythms and dramas of normal life. Even a minor work like this one never comes close to being stagey or tedious. The use of interior and exterior space mirrors the experiences of the characters in barely perceptible ways and although his choice to have the characters adopt matching colours in their clothing is immediately noticeable, I’d argue that this merely creates a tonal sensation of symmetry rather than it being to make any kind of heavy handed point. The sporty, elfin Blanche, portrayed by Emmanuelle Chaulet, could be either a good-hearted ingenue or a shrewd schemer. I’m not sure we ever find out.

Unlike Delphine in “The Green Ray” Blanche is fully prepared to play the game of seduction. She’s more modest and easy-going than her friend Lea, played by Sophie Renoir, who is blunt to a fault. From the first scene onward, Rohmer casts doubt on their friendship. Neither of them seems to care too much about the other’s happiness. Their wish to be a good friend stems more from a fear of being responsible for hurting another person, or more accurately, from a fear of being exposed as a person who steps over others to get what they want. It is possible that the real reason for their friendship is that one – or both – of them sees the other as a means to an end.
Blanche might see the glamorous Lea as a way back into the world of dating. Lea might have sensed that Blanche (who is Fabian’s type) might represent a way for her to separate herself from her boyfriend without her having to leave him. These possibilities raise hypothetical questions that make the film compelling viewing even if, like me, you never get to the point where you feel fully invested in the outcome. The ending seeks to satisfy the viewer in the clockwork fashion of a Jane Austen or Charles Dickens novel. Unfortunately the final impression is much less delightful since Austen and Dickens tended to reward the good or clever characters and punish the immoral, the dull and the undeserving. Rohmer is less didactic. He ends on a tone of clemency rather than handing down sentences. As in real life, no one really gets what they deserve.

Perhaps the real subject of the film is the modern world’s way of using emotion in service of another end. Emotion is not valued for its own sake but it is needed to bring about new relationships or to bring older ones to an end. Even relationships are not the real objective. The characters see the right partner as an important ingredient in the lifestyle they covet. Love becomes a process of marketing oneself and thereby increasing one’s exchange value, trading up and acquiring more desirable partners. Even Fabian, who is probably the most sympathetic figure here, assesses women according to how well they approximate his type. All summer colours, windsurfing, 80s shoulder pads and outlandish hairstyles, “Boyfriends and Girlfriends” captures something of how attitudes towards love changed in this period, especially if we compare it to French films from the 60s and 70s. For good or ill, the film wants to quietly observer this change rather than dwell on what is lost in the bargain.

Autumn Tale

“Autumn Tale” is a late period Rohmer that has been much praised, especially, perhaps because such a fine example of his style was made near the end of his life. This prompted many critics to laud him as an ‘evergreen’ or ‘eternally youthful’ artist, when in fact he was about 40 when he finished his first feature. His sensitivity to the behavioural psychology of people in love (most often women and of these mostly young women) has always been in place and age was never a factor. Thankfully, Rohmer has never come across as one who lives vicariously through the sex lives of young girls and boys. His attitude and gaze have rather reflect a more-or-less paternal attitude towards his characters be they young, old, male or female. “Autumn Tale” dramatizes the love lives of older people than he has ever focused on before (to my knowledge.) One would assume that this would mean a very different type of film, different than the young couples analysed in his earlier works. This isn’t the case at all. The complicated plot is driven by simple sentiments – loneliness in particular – which are more similar to those experienced by the younger protagonists of ”The Green Ray” and “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend” for instance. Instead of treating this film as a summing up of his career, Rohmer simply returns to his usual preoccupations and his favoured structural model: Shakespeare’s comedies.
“The Green Ray” makes a tidy comparison for two reasons. Firstly, because the star of that film Marie Rivere appears here too, although her character is not as neurotic as she was in the earlier film (Rivere also starred in Rohmer’s “Aviator’s Wife.”) Secondly, the story is about a woman named Magali (Beatrice Romand) who, with help from her friends, is trying to find a lover. As in “The Green Ray”, the biggest obstacle in Magali’s story proves to be her own insecurities and distrust of other people’s motives. It matters little that Magali has been married before and has two adult children, nor that she lives a pretty satisfying life as a winemaker in the provinces. She wants someone to share her life with but finds it hard to overcome her habits and her reservations. This theme works equally well with a cast of old or young people.

Despite the sweetness of the subject-matter, “Autumn Tale” ratchets up the suspense as much as any Hitchcock potboiler; it’s packed with false-starts, possible calamities, sudden complications, lies, mistakes and unresolved tensions. Rivere plays Isabelle, a close friend of the attractive and loveable Magali, who lives alone on a plot where she makes wine. The problem is that Magali has a personality that totally conceals how attractive and loveable she is. After making a request, the married Isabelle makes it her mission to find a man for Magali, using a singles ad. She plans to audition the men who respond herself and then turn the best candidate over to Magali and her daughter’s wedding. This social event however is the meant to be the climax of the other storyline. Magali’s useless son Leo has a bright, pretty girlfriend named Rosine who has just come off a long term affair with her former philosopher teacher Etienne. Rosine sees Leo as a temporary rebound boyfriend, whose presence can convince her teacher to give up on her. The person who is really is in love with is Leo’s mother Magali and she also decides to find her a man – her highest ambition being to get Magali to date Etienne, thus freeing herself from his lingering affection and doing a good deed for her new best friend. Naturally, she wants them to meet up at the wedding celebration.

Rosine’s plan is naïve and rather hare-brained but no more so than Isabelle’s gambit. If it is unclear whether Rosine’s scheming will be seized on by Etienne as a way back into her heart, it’s doubly uncertain whether Isabelle (who, though married, pretends to be her friend) will be able to disengage herself from Gerald, a pleasant divorcee who answers the lonely-hearts advertisement. Isabelle’s early exchanges with Gerald carry a tinge of cruelty. She flirts to keep him interested in pursuing a relationship – hoping to transfer his attentions to Magali at some point. Gerald’s sincerity is touching and their interactions go so well that it seems to threaten her scheme. When Isabelle comes clean at last, it is unclear whether she is in the wrong for lying to him or whether he lacks conviction in his willingness to shift his intentions to Magali. Of course, both Isabelle and Rosine eventually have to face up to the fact that giving up a person who is smitten with you is always difficult, even if you don’t want them yourself.

As in many of Rohmer’s films, there is quite a bit of discussion of the idea of having a ‘type’ or ‘ideal.’ Interestingly enough, we usually see a woman grilling a man or another woman in order to determine what their favoured qualities are in a man or woman; usually this interrogation is met with the (sincere or disingenuous) claim that they have no ‘type’ they are attracted to an individual: imperfect, unusual, irreplaceable. Gerald uses this defence, more or less, in “Autumn Tale” and it seems he means it, but why does the discussion of type again feature prominently here? Possibly because when French philosophers (from Sartre to Derrida) turn their attention to love it is often to distinguish between love as infatuation and love as an ideal. When one is in love is it an infatuation with the characteristics a person possesses or the pure singularity of their being? The implication being that the love of ‘type’ is general and is directed at one who best approximates the common type – and therefore, the infatuation can be transferred to a more suitable token of the lover’s description.

Felicite in “A Tale of Winter”, for all her brashness is a believer in idealized love, while Jean-Louis in “My Night at Mauds” and the partner-swapping couples in “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend” seek only a person who can best meet their preferences. It is difficult to say but the characters in “Autumn Tale” seem to take their attachments too seriously and feel them too powerfully to be guilty of the consumerist spirit displayed in “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend” (they are also older, wiser) or the obedience to a detached principle that marks the “heroes” of “My Night at Mauds” or “Claire’s Knee.” At the same time, it is difficult to know any of this for sure until the final scene. The camera films mostly from the front, a technique that Rohmer has stated he uses when characters are being dishonest in some fashion. He wants us to watch them tell lies or try to. When Gerald drives Magali home – and she begins to suspect that she is at the center of a grand conspiracy – the camera angle amplifies the awkwardness. A lesser film would make the emotional confusion of these characters (who are old enough to have experienced them before) too clear and easy to resolve, here we can only watch as people fail to make sense of contradictory feelings, among them loneliness, attraction and stung pride. In watching, we realize we like them. Rohmer’s ability is shown in his skilful heightening of the tension, using the actor’s performances to suggest at ambivalences that lurk as subtext and only surface into the overt drama at certain moments. Yet as humans ourselves, it is easy to sense what underlies small talk, little gestures, tone of voice. We have seen this all before, not in a film perhaps but in life.

Fantasy / Infantalization (Parts One and Two)

September 17, 2015March 15, 2016 / rewrites

Ishiguro’s latest novel “The Buried Giant”

I recently taught a class on Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 novel “Never Let Me Go” at the university. If you are unfamiliar with the book, be warned. This article will ruin the experience of reading it or watching the film version. One issue that “Never Let Me Go” tends to raise, whether in literature classes or in print reviews, is the problem of how to classify it in terms of genre. The story concerns three British youngsters who attend a peculiar school together and grow up as part of a special social caste – the full ramifications of which are revealed slowly and carefully by the narrator, a character named Kathy H. Despite the narrative being rife with uncertain reminiscences, omissions and delaying tactics, Kathyn comes across as a relatively reliable and sympathetic speaker. Ishiguro, born in Japan but culturally English, seems to have drawn his storytelling style here from a rich vein in British literature (works like Conrad’s “Lord Jim” and Maddox Ford’s “The Good Soldier” come to mind) as we are not given the full story – at least not directly or immediately – but t not because of some self-serving motive on Kathy’s part. Rather, it’s because she presumes that a shared context of understanding exists between her and the ‘you’ she addresses. Lacking this context, we must learn the truth of her and her friends’ predicament through digressions and casual slippages.
There are a number of reasons for this disconnect between the narrator and reader. The most obvious is that “Never Let Me Go” is set in alternative-universe version of 1970s and 80s UK. Kathy is part of a group of people that are cloned in order to donate their organs during their twenties. They continue this process until they ‘complete’ allowing the rest of society, with whom they have almost no contact, to extend their lifespans beyond normal human limits. Kathy is ‘one of the lucky ones’ not because her early demise is avoidable but because she is raised in relatively humane conditions. She attends a school named Halisham, where she can enjoy the company of other donors, can be properly cared for and educated by a group of ‘guardians.’ Halisham is not an overtly sinister place; there are no jumpsuits and armed guards or even explicit forms of surveillance. But it becomes clear that the school is little more than experiment in watered-down liberalism, an attempt to show how donors might be ethically treated. Ultimately, the experiment illustrates how many modern liberals wish to do just enough to offset their guilt at being beneficiaries of the exploitation of others. The unjust system remains intact and unchallenged. Even the donors submit to it completely, barely even dreaming of escape or resistance.

The premise of the novel is to examine how Kathy and her two friends find meaning and happiness in the face of doom, having known and accepted from an early age that they will not be allowed to grow old. Metaphorically, this struggle is a heightened treatment of real world issues altogether more basic than our views on social justice or bioethics; the donors, like all of us, must cope with the knowledge that they have limited time. What do we do with this knowledge? Do we live in a bubble of denial, distracting ourselves from this certainty? Do we find ways to try and defer our fate for as long as possible? Do we seek meaningful relationships and activity to carve out a sense of purpose? Ishiguro wants to dramatize these themes. He claims that the invention of an alternate universe where the dimension of science fiction or speculative fiction comes into play was not of interest to him. It was a way to thrust his characters into a precise set of circumstances. It is meant to represent the universal challenges that all human beings face. His contention was that the generic plot devices of dystopian SF were drawn on only to give a suitable background to traditional literary themes. For Ishiguro, SF tropes provided “the final piece of the puzzle.”

Of course, its worth noting that his comments suggest that many writers of SF genre fiction operate in the opposite manner: they create colourful alternative worlds or speculate on possible futures and develop the plots, characters and themes that these settings and situations imply. And indeed, it may be true that most long-running speculative fiction and fantasy books series do begin as exercises in world-building before inhabiting these places with characters and conflicts. Nevertheless, Ishiguro denies any familiarity with SF writers who do not work this way, such as Philip K. Dick or JG Ballard. In a sense, his assumption depicts SF writers as creators for whom the actual literary stuff (characters, themes and so on) come second to the process of make-believe. Given that he does not appreciate the more iconoclastic people working in the genre, his views can be seen as a bit of a reductive caricature of SF, adding perhaps to the acute inferiority complex felt by many of its fans, whether hard line or causal.

His statements regarding “Never Let Me Go” and his latest book “The Buried Giant” (a sword and sorcery tale) are rather controversial despite the fact that Ishiguro did not, as far as I could see, ever actually claim that his work as “literary fiction” has greater artistic than standard pieces of “genre fiction” like SF or fantasy. The actual problem is that the assumed difference between “literary” and “genre fiction” continues to be fiercely disputed. Ishiguro’s assertion that “Never Let Me Go” and “The Buried Giant” should be classified as the former not the latter has raised the ire of writers who feel that such distinctions are archaic – not only because they are seldom based on fair criteria but also because they usually serve to delegitimize genre fiction by placing it in the sphere of pop culture rather than art. The fact that some people have taken issue with Ishiguro’s description of his own work signals that so-called ‘post-modernism’ did not automatically erase the belief that there is a barrier between high and low art.

In a way, it is refreshing to see that this debate persists even if it usually rather dull. It reminds us we cannot pretend that the historical concept of “cultural value” was simply wrong and did not make an important contribution. It must be problematized, sure, but I think both supporters and detractors of the idea that “literary fiction” can be consider its own special category might take an opportunity to look closely at their assumptions. I don’t think we should treat artistic value and popularity (or sales) as equivalent concepts. At the same time, cloistered intellectual types have had a privileged authority over this territory for too long, attributing philistinism to all parties who have taste that differs from their own. Without broaching all of these topics at once, let’s take a look at the angry response of the great writer of fantasies Ursula Le Guin to Ishiguro’s “Buried Giant” which became available in May 2015. In a blog post, Le Guin took exception to a remark Ishiguro made in an interview concerning “The Buried Giant.” She wrote:

Mr Ishiguro said to the interviewer, “Will readers follow me into this? Will they understand what I’m trying to do, or will they be prejudiced against the surface elements? Are they going to say this is fantasy?”

Well, yes, they probably will. Why not?
It appears that the author takes the word for an insult.
To me that is so insulting, it reflects such thoughtless prejudice, that I had to write this piece in response.
Fantasy is probably the oldest literary device for talking about reality… Familiar folktale and legendary ‘surface elements’ in Mr Ishiguro’s novel are too obvious to blink away, but since he is a very famous novelist, I am sure reviewers who share his prejudice will never suggest that he has polluted his authorial gravitas with the childish whims of fantasy. Respect for his readers should assure him that, whatever the book is, they will honestly try to follow him and understand what he was trying to do.

Le Guin’s sensitivity to the underlying prejudice of Ishiguro’s comment isn’t surprising. She questions Ishiguro’s fear that the surface or genre elements of fantasy might make his work seem lowbrow. Fans and writers of genre fiction are quick to characterize those who perpetuate this perception as pompous, elitist snobs – hence Le Guin’s sarcastic talk of Ishiguro’s authorial gravitas having to survive the ‘childish whims of fantasy.’ Since day-dreaming and mythology are, for many people, most captivating in their childhood years and youth, it is a commonplace injustice to characterize books that contain otherworldly features as suited primarily to children and teenagers. Le Guin makes a strong case for the enduring significance of folklore, quest narrative and myth as major forms of literary creativity. Despite the stratospheric popularity and sales of fantasy series, many still set it apart from the serious, adult world of ‘proper’ literature. SF and fantasy sometimes come across like a former social outcast who goes to their high school reunion armed with the knowledge that they have been the most successful person from their graduating year. At the reunion, they find that they still are not welcomed into the old cliques. Of course, the outcast is, in a way, crazy to continue to desire approval from those they do not actually think of as their superiors. Since Ishiguro’s comments were ambiguous, he is able to simply disagree with the motivations that Le Guin ascribes to him. He responds in an article published in The Guardian books section.

At a Guardian event held at the Royal Institution in London on Sunday, Ishiguro said that veteran author Ursula K. Le Guin was “a little bit hasty in nominating me as the latest enemy for her own agenda,” after she had written a blog post accusing him of “despising” the fantasy genre. “If there is some sort of battle line being drawn for and against ogres and pixies appearing in books, I am on the side of ogres and pixies,” he said. “I had no idea this was going to be such an issue. Everything I read about [The Buried Giant], it’s all ‘Oh, he’s got a dragon in his book’ or ‘I so liked his previous books but I don’t know if I’ll like this one’. [Le Guin]’s entitled to like my book or not like my book, but as far as I am concerned, she’s got the wrong person. I am on the side of the pixies and the dragons.”

Ishiguro’s stance is not that he wants to avoid identifying himself with the fantasy genre. He is not very interested in labelling his books in terms of genre, which he considers to be a porous thing anyway. He suspects that this kind of classification would have too much influence on how readers engaged with his book. Since he is best known for period, realist works like “Remains of the Day”, he wondered whether a departure from that format would cause his audience to assume there would be a corresponding change in the style and themes of his books. He wants to reassure them that he is “still Ishiguro”, beyond the arrival of pixies and dragons. More to the point, he wants to sell books. He wants readers who liked his stuff in the past not to be put off by the fact that he is deviating from earlier formulas. In light of this defence, it seems a little harsh to conclude that he ‘despises fantasy.’

Except, Ishiguro has been through this all before with “Never Let Me Go” and he has chosen to repeat certain dubious claims about the difference between ‘surface’ and ‘core’ elements. In this respect, as hyperbolic as it may be, Le Guin’s critique makes a valid point. I don’t think it is useful for writers and readers to separate what they see as the core elements of a story from what they see as devices or embellishments. If we take “Never Let Me Go” as an example, we should not say that the feature of the story that portrays the individual character’s psychological responses to death are more important or essential than the construction of the ‘fantastical’ situation that they’re placed in. The two go together and operate in concert. If the setting and situation is interesting and well-established then it will have bearing on how we engage with characters. The belief that we can abstract a pure ‘message’ or point from a story is stuffy, old-fashioned, formalist thinking. We do not extract a kernel of emotional or intellectual truth when we read, leaving the fictional contrivances and inventions behind as sickly effluent. For Ishiguro, a text that has this kind of pure artistic kernel can be defined as ‘literary fiction’ irrespective of whether it provides it through the medium of noir, ghost story, SF, fantasy etc. In theory, this answer may sound sensible but it does not seem to resemble how we actually experience fiction.

While I think it is acceptable to speak of surface and depth, I think that to say that one can achieve depth regardless of the facets of the surface is misleading. Ishiguro’s new novel features dragons but he is afraid that this will make it seem equivalent to the endless proliferation of Tolkien rip-off paperbacks that appeal to teenage boys. Both might feature knights and magic but Ishiguro wants to suggest that his story will have something those paperbacks don’t have: a depth and profundity beyond the swords and incantation. He may be right in this conclusion but his argument does not stand up to much scrutiny. If “Never Let Me Go” lacked the so-called ‘surface’ traits borrowed from speculative fiction, it would not be able to express its deeper preoccupations in the same way. Readers would not feel the same things. A change in surface would necessity a difference in depth just as alterations in form have consequences for content, or vice-versa. Far from being interchangeable, the tropes and images that belong to certain genres have great inherent power especially when used in unconventional ways. They can multiply the power of an idea, provided that the writer does not become derivative and predictable. In this structural sense, we cannot ignore the concept of genre though we should avoid defining genre fiction simply as fiction that lacks depth. Genre is a specialized context for communication. Fantasy, for instance, can serve as a platform for readers to explore the pre-modern concerns of ancient legend and romanticism from new points of view. If Ishiguro does not want his work to be read in a specific way that’s a fair sentiment. But it was his choice to evoke the tropes that created this context of reception. The way his writing is labelled by others is not the decisive factor. According to The Guardian

Ishiguro said The Buried Giant’s fantasy setting served as a neutral environment to explore the idea of collective memory and how societies heal after atrocities by forgetting the past. He revealed that he considered Bosnia, America and post-second world war Japan and France as potential settings, but worried that sort of a recent historical scenario would make the story too political.

If this way of thinking works for Ishiguro, a highly accomplished writer, I suppose that lends it a degree of validity but I find talk of ‘neutral’ environments hard to swallow. I imagine he would concede at least that once the environment has been chosen, the way the ideas are dealt with evolves alongside them. The overriding implication, however, remains that “The Buried Giant” is set in Saxon Britain rather than the modern world only to avoid taking on contemporary political issues. As a whole, the article promotes a point of view that can be compared with ‘auteur’ theory in film. Lesser directors’ efforts in genre film-making belong to the genre. Master filmmakers (who are better known, more individualistic, more subversive perhaps) make films that belong to their oeuvre. There seems to be a tug of war between whether to think of “The Buried Giant” as an Ishiguro novel (with all the baggage that goes with that) or as a fantasy novel. Perhaps Le Guin is right to question, albeit in such a combative manner, why it cannot be considered both. Do writers that exclusively work in one genre not have individual styles and themes of their own? The Guardian adds fuel to this debate in his use of a comment from David Mitchell, a popular writer of literary science fiction and fantasy:

Mitchell himself appeared in Ishiguro’s New York Times interview, telling the newspaper by email that he hoped The Buried Giant would “de-stigmatise” fantasy. “Fantasy plus literary fiction can achieve things that frank blank realism can’t,” Mitchell wrote. “Bending the laws of what we call reality in a novel doesn’t necessarily lead to elves saying ‘Make haste! These woods will be swarming with orcs by nightfall.’”

These remarks, with their unnecessary skewing of Tolkien and his acolytes, certainly do not help Ishiguro’s case. Has anyone else been brave or foolish enough to call for the “de-stigmatisation of fantasy”? It is not difficult to see how the Ursula Le Guins of this world would take umbrage at this. In the end, does a genre that has such clout both in terms of its long history, vast readership and sales need this validation? Why should it convert anyone? Is there a more cultured audience out there that has yet to bestow its blessing on fantasy writers? Ishiguro has not asserted, without qualification, that SF and fantasy are valuable forms of literature. Perhaps he should, given that he is in a position to prove whether – if sides must be taken – he really is on the side of dragons and pixies.

PART TWO

Those who proudly identify themselves as geeks have been in a state of ascendency for years, though anyone older than 20 or so will no doubt remember a time when geeks were compelled to hide their unfashionable interests in cellars, attics or behind anoraks and closed-doors. Somewhere in the last two decades, the ideal consumer of entertainment changed from an aspiration logic (that is, companies tried to sell to the person you wanted to be) to a realist acceptance that people like what they like and want to spend their money on their actual interests. This phenomenon has been widely addressed by many smart people and columns so I don’t want to get into the particular reasons for this shift. As a start, I just want to say what everyone already knows: consumer products related to comic books, video games, ‘pulp fiction’ and so on have become some of the highest earning and most beloved cultural properties in the history of the world. While in-depth pieces on the ‘rise of geek-culture’ or ‘fandom’ often go into detail regarding the social-economic conditions that made various brands so amazingly lucrative, I’m more interested in the types of relationship that develop between the individual work and its audience. In general, I think this relationship has changed in some respects since fringe tastes began to take over the mainstream. As mentioned in the previous article, tastes that were once marginalized have swiftly taken over the popular imagination. Self-identifying geeks often have enormous power to decide what succeeds and what fails.
Yet many continue to view themselves as an unfairly marginalized and overlooked group whenever someone expresses dissent. Before I proceed, let me pre-empt a few points:

• Fandom is nothing new. Before Trekkies, there were people who acted like Holden Caulfield or Young Werther even if their fandom was not monetized in the same way.
• Just because something is a franchise and can appeal to children doesn’t necessarily entail that it lacks a political angle or intellectual heft. I covered this to an extent in the previous post. While I agree with it, generally, I would add that one cannot ignore the surface elements and only focus on the underlying ‘serious’ message. The Dark Knight Rises is neither a ‘pure’ superhero film nor a treatise on political philosophy. It’s a mixture. So if you’re only interested in politics, you should beware that there’s a fair amount of comic book stuff in it!

• Making critical comments (especially generalizations) of something means to disparage it or say it is worthless; it is smallminded and arrogant to disparage something that others value. This comment is ad hominem. It wants to focus attention on the motivations and personality of the person who is being judgmental. This leaves specific criticisms unanswered. Some judgmental remarks deserve a proper reply.

Putting those aside let’s get back to the basic problem: is being a fan the best way to engage with something? What is at stake is not merely matter of what one likes but how one likes. This is not a profound point, in fact, it’s ridiculously banal. But I am surprised at how often it is simply not considered. Certainly, the Ishiguro-Le Guin argument was about how to classify different types of literature and how to proportion value to these categories. The argument paid almost no attention to how we read different types of text.

The actor Simon Pegg received something of a backslash this year when he made a few chiding comments about geeks on a radio show. From his early series Spaced (about 90s geeks) to his involvement in the new Star Trek movies, Simon Pegg is known as the ‘king of geeks’ in some quarters. It would seem, however, that he has issues not only with this title but with the state of his kingdom:

Obviously I’m very much a self-confessed fan of science fiction and genre cinema but part of me looks at society as it is now and just thinks we’ve been infantilised by our own taste. Now we’re essentially all consuming very childish things – comic books, superheroes. Adults are watching this stuff, and taking it seriously. It is a kind of dumbing down, in a way, because it’s taking our focus away from real-world issues. Films used to be about challenging, emotional journeys or moral questions that might make you walk away and re-evaluate how you felt about … whatever. Now we’re walking out of the cinema really not thinking about anything, other than the fact that the Hulk just had a fight with a robot.

Sometimes (I) feel like I miss grown-up things. And I honestly thought the other day that I’m gonna retire from geekdom.
I’ve become the poster child for that generation, and it’s not necessarily something I particularly want to be. I’d quite like to go off and do some serious acting.

Naturally, these words sparked something of a controversy especially considering that they were spoken by the reigning monarch of geekdom. The royal opinion seemed to be that ‘society’ had lost its interest in grown-up ideas. He worried that many people have chosen to indulge in escapism rather than to manfully stand and up and revaluate ‘whatever.’ As a whole, we had become dumber and more childish than audiences had been in the golden age (he probably had 1970s Hollywood in mind.) It goes without saying that Pegg was swiftly chastised by his outraged subjects, notably by an online writer named Katharine Trendacosta in much cited response:

Not to play armchair psychiatrist to Pegg or anything, but this does sound dangerously as though he didn’t take anything away from The Avengers, Star Wars, or Star Trek — and now wonders if he’s thrown his whole life away on them. And that he thinks he’s been infantilized by his association with the genre.

The hyperbolic use of the word ‘dangerous’ notwithstanding, I don’t think this is playing armchair psychiatrist at all. This is pretty much what Pegg said in the interview. Fearing, if not regicide then at the very least calls for his abdication, Pegg counterattacked with a thorough statement. His article, rather simpering entitled ‘Big Mouth Strikes Again’ included references not only to DC Comics, Star Trek and Mad Max but to Jean Baudrillard (everyone’s favourite Gallic paranoid from the era of humongous shoulder pads.) Pegg starts by putting the idea of an extended adolescence into a historical context, framing Star Wars – the crown jewels of fandom – as a simplification of the Cold War era into a Manichean moral fairy tale. Where the New Hollywood auteurs sought to fashion compelling drama from darker, more sophisticated material, Star Wars used spectacle and special effects to pull us into its orbit. The human cost of violence and warfare as presented in the very adult films of Coppola, Peckinpah or Scorsese is simplified in Star Wars to good guys slashing at faceless Stormtroopers with lightsabers. Of course, this is not a new reading of American film history. The same observations have been made before, such as in Peter Biskind’s notorious ‘Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.’

Biskind cast Lucas-Spielberg as pioneers of a truly commercial film style that is rife with easy moral platitudes rather than provocation. In his narrative, they not only invented the summer blockbuster but helped create the mall culture that ruled America for decades. Pegg should be applauded for expressing an opinion that he did not need to say out loud, given that he himself continues to be involved with megablockbuster geek franchises like Star Trek. To his credit, arrested development is perhaps the main theme grappled with in the movies he has made with Edgar Wright. While I like Pegg and a much of his work well enough, his argument sounds rather like a college student who has read Althusser for the first time. He doesn’t follow through on his ideas to any kind of conclusion. He attributes near impotence to dark forces that somehow bend us to their will:

We are made passionate about the things that occupied us as children as a means of drawing our attentions away from the things we really should be invested in, inequality, corruption, economic injustice etc. It makes sense that when faced with the awfulness of the world, the harsh realities that surround us, our instinct is to seek comfort, and where else were the majority of us most comfortable than our youth? A time when we were shielded from painful truths by our recreational passions, the toys we played with, the games we played, the comics we read. There was probably more discussion on Twitter about the The Force Awakens and the Batman vs Superman trailers than there was about the Nepalese earthquake or the British general election.

Pegg does not feel explain how we are made passionate about things or who is responsible for this (probably corporations through advertising, which is, as well know, impossible to resist.) Nor does he see any irony in his practice of using social media discussions as an indicator of how much we care. People can care about several things at the same time, ranging in importance from global crisis to matters that really matter only to us alone: like getting hiccups or forgetting one’s lunch at home. In a way, he is making a rather Ishiguro-like call for a return to a type of ‘seriousness’ which is far more difficult to pin down than infantilism is. Does Pegg actually think discussing the Nepalese earthquake on twitter confronts the awfulness of the world? A reader of Baudrillard might surmise that this is another symptom of our modern self-absorption. We believe, without evidence, that our contemplation of the universe’s miseries is productive. In 99% of cases, our well-meaning angst is just as much of a solipsistic bubble as is a late-night screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Pegg passionately watches and makes SF fantasy films. If he can be the king of geeks while still finding time to feel compassion for others then he can’t deny that this balance may be achievable for others.

Still, I think we can be a bit more generous to people like Simon Pegg or Kazuo Ishiguro. Once again, let us remember that neither of them claims that genre or ‘geek’ culture is less worthwhile than True Art. Nor do they insist that geeky preoccupations necessarily turn good, conscientious individuals into spoilt children. What they are saying, perhaps, is we can afford to be less passive and more critical even when are partaking in our geekier interests. Pegg gets at this indirectly when he says:

I’m not out of the fold, my passions and preoccupations remain. Sometimes it’s good to look at the state of the union and make sure we’re getting the best we can get. On one hand it’s a wonderful thing, having what used to be fringe concerns, suddenly ruling the mainstream but at the same time, these concerns have also been monetised and marketed and the things that made them precious to us, aren’t always the primary concern (right, Star Trek TOS fans?) Also, it’s good to ask why we like this stuff, what makes it so alluring, so discussed, so sacred. Do we channel our passion and indignation into ephemera, rather than reality? Not just science fiction and fantasy but gossip and talent shows and nostalgia and people’s arses. Is it right? Is it dangerous?

Again, Pegg’s point seems to be that we are neglecting serious concerns because we devote an inordinate amount of attention to things that are relatively insignificant. He suggests that we have a limited amount of passion that can be channelled only into certain things. This is somewhat unfair. After all, even Trekkies can have meaningful demanding relationships with other lifeforms. They still can work and bathe and read the newspaper. In general, however, he is calling for fans to have higher standards, encouraging them to think about their habits of consumption with greater rigor. But can a fan be objective? Can their attachment to actions figures or comic books be put into context with the rest of the world?

Fans share the contentment of having their collective desires and appetites met. Or, if that proves impossible, they can comfort each other by sharing feelings of cathartic outrage and disappointment. These relationships, between fan and work, between fan and fellow fan, are insulating and communal in equal measure. Like any tribe, imposition from the outside is met with defensiveness. Writers that make snide comments about fantasy fiction incur the wrath of genre aficionados; actors who disrespect superheroes infuriate comic book fans. The tribe grows larger without acquiring largess. Cycles of investment and payoff (to some extent) keep them tied to universes of immense possibility. The fact that these universes often are quite unlike our own lives is, in all fairness, more of a black mark against reality than it is against fantasy. Big franchises build up anticipation exponentially. They depend on loyal customers. For our part, we want to know what we are going to get. We know what we like. Sameness is self-replicating and habit-forming. Even genre conventions tend to operate according to basic Pavlovian principles.

That said, I’m reluctant to invent some pathology to try and explain the modern impulse towards geekiness. As extreme as it might be nowadays, I can’t agree with those who think fandom is bad for society. I’m not sure that the alleged conflict between social consciousness and childish pastimes really exists. People are good at compartmentalizing. On the other hand, the fact that public figures are forced to defend themselves for making glib comments concerning people’s tastes illustrates the degree to which we all have taken our identification with the things we like a little too far. This cuts both ways. It is as futile to believe you have good taste for avoiding entire genres as it is to invest exclusively in one. Thankfully, it is not necessary for everything to be analysed and evaluated. Enjoy whatever you like. Just don’t assume that your private enjoyment is universally shared. Above all, don’t forget you are not what you love.

Ethics, Shame and Shamelessness

July 28, 2015October 17, 2016 / rewrites

In the past, people who were found guilty of minor crimes were placed in stocks or had their heads shaven or were tarred and feathered. Today, public humiliation tends to be dispensed through more efficient methods, like tabloid newspapers and television, websites and social media. The concept of using social shaming as corrective has been a part of our lives long before modern people could interact on the internet. Reviewers and critics, who once avoided moralistic rhetoric for fear of coming across as pious or schoolmarmish, now portray themselves as defenders of the public morality; shame is one of the strongest weapons in their arsenal. The allure of a bohemian, neo-Nietzschean stance ‘beyond good and evil’ has faded. All across the political spectrum we have writers and commentators upholding appearances and decorum with Victorian fervour (albeit with a decidedly not-Victorian set of values.) At the same time, online anonymity allows for the creation of new personas that are often indifferent to the power of shame and accountability, social pressures that have been a major part of human relationships for millennia.

Anti-social behaviour is a fact of life, particularly on the web. Websites tend to have their own mechanisms that are meant to preserve a semblance of politeness in their comments sections and forums. Online interactions become so abusive so often that they raise a thorny question: are the personas that ‘speak’ on forums just a kind of demented power fantasy that a real life person acts out? Or are they a real person speaking their mind through the one avenue where they feel it is permissible? Comment sections and forums may be ideal spaces for trolls to vent their spleen without facing any consequences but what about texts with identifiable authors such as blogs, articles, videos? On the one hand, there are those that express an obvious sense of entitlement: “you can’t make me feel shame for things that I choose not to feel accountable for.” On the other side, there are those who have made it their mission to punish those they believe are in the wrong but who have somehow gotten away with it.

Both types – or a combination of them – are common outside of internet culture too. Working at a University for several years, I’ve come to realize that there are certain courses that actually do, for better or worse, change the way students think. One is the first-year introduction to ethics, another is a post-graduate course that teaches critical theory. After taking the ethics program, students become convinced that right and wrong aren’t simply a matter of obeying decrees passed down to them by their elders. They’re a matter of arguing well, being dispassionate and grounding their moral sentiments in solid logic. The critical theory course equips them to do two things. Firstly, they’re meant to teach them how to expose the ideological premises that underlie our practices, conventions and institutions. Secondly, they can provide a better way to engage with context, to better understand the historical roots of the present moment. Both ethics and critical theory are indispensable if we can have any optimism that the future can avoid the calamities of the past.

Where critics and moralists go wrong, I think, is when their views become a cosmology; or – just as dangerously – when criticism and ethics blend together into a haphazard synthesis. Ethics courses argue that moral judgments should be based on solid, rational principles. If they are not (or we don’t bother to explain them properly) we become tyrannical: we expect people to act the way we want them to, no back-chat. Of course, in truth, our moral points of view are often based less on dispassionate reasoning and debate than on our personal tastes and life histories as well as on the nature of the institutions that surround us. After taking a course in ethics, many students realize that no one should tell them what to do without convincing them of it first (even if the given reasons aren’t the real reasons at all.) Ethics courses empower people to take seriously the idea that it is everyone’s job to uphold moral standards (once these have been determined.) Those of us who are not willing to spend years independently developing a personal moral system tend to pick a school of thought that we basically agree with and follow its lead. We learn to repeat its ideals, its justifications and, more importantly, we trust it. It starts to shape our lives and our relationships with other people (and animals.) Similarly, critical thinking provides a sharpness that allows us to find the subtexts lurking behind the everyday things people say, do and create. It becomes instinct.

Some theories key us into the importance of economic forces, some highlight the self-serving construction of racial and gender-based ideas of otherness. Some simply draw attention to our habits of thinking, to the invisible torrents of information that our brains bathe in at every moment. These subtexts are concealed and concretized in the objects we study which, like a good-natured drunk, always tell us more than they intend to. Now – anybody could see that these two intellectual ‘tools’ represent a kind of intellectual power that we hand over to our students. This is their purpose. They are meant to liberate us and, at the same time, they’re supposed to make us more accountable. Kept separately they allow us to see what is really happening in the world and to live principled lives. That said, a suitable system for determining what ‘is really happening’ is not automatically a good way for deciding ‘what ought to be done.’ When critical thinking and ethical judgment are mixed together carelessly, we begin to reduce all the nuances that we can discover through critical theory to simplistic value-judgments.

Marx and Engels wrote polemics that explicitly attacked other intellectuals and public figures. These articles often employed a combination of corrosive wit, philosophical rigor and insults to tear their opponent’s position to shreds. Yet, I doubt their purpose was merely to repeat the age-old religious practice of dividing people into categories of good or evil. This would have seemed feeble or boring to them; an appeal to the values of watered-down liberal humanism. In its heyday, Marxist criticism was not moral (at least not in the regular use of the term.) Instead, it intended to show how the things they wrote about were merely symptomatic of structural problems that face humanity. Likewise, for generations, feminists took aim at larger targets than the problematic individuals, books or films that they discussed. They weren’t content with apologies, they demanded that we either re-imagine or destroy many of our longest-standing, patriarchal institutions.

In many cases, modern critical thinking has become handmaiden to our ethical impulses. Today, we have many writers employing using Marxist or feminist or psychoanalytic concepts just to arrive at old-fashioned moral censure of individuals that we disagree with. Many writers and academics see no problem with this. Once a racist or misogynistic point of view is uncovered, why should those that hold it not be judged as well? Surely, they have brought this upon themselves. We should concentrate on protecting and supporting those who are hurt by their toxic vitriol. Most offenders refuse to learn from polite discussion anyway. They will continue to pollute our culture with their unacceptable statements and noxious ideas until they are decisively dealt with.

Unfortunately, the process of deliberating between right and wrong, though crucial, is only the first step in ethics. The second part lies in the question of how to enforce moral standards. Actual authority is needed to discipline someone in a concrete way – for instance, by taking away their property or freedoms. But what if we don’t have the authority to punish others? We can try to change them by influencing them. We can attempt to engage in debate with them.

More often, though, we resort to praising and shaming, the emotional version of petting or smacking a puppy. Being shamed can cause severe psychological and emotional damage but, just as commonly, it can bring about a desired change in someone who is reluctant to change. In shame-based religions like Judaism or Catholicism, is understood to be part of the development of conscience. The conscience takes the place of the original shamer, be it a parent or rabbi or priest. However, in many cases, shaming serves no function at all. It is just a form of bullying people into submission, making it painfully clear that their opinions are not acceptable.

In order to circle around to the modern trend of shaming others via the internet, which is an issue of increasing urgency, it might be best to briefly consider the supposed role that shaming plays in spiritual life. ‘The Crooked Cucumber’ is the name of a book by David Chadwick about his experiences at the famous San Francisco Zen Center, which was famously run by a Japanese Roshi in the 1960s named Shunryu Suzuki. The SFZC was one of the first Buddhist monasteries established outside of Asia. Chadwick’s website is an interesting collection of anecdotes and articles about the history of the Zen Center. Although I am not particularly interested in Buddhism, I have read and enjoyed all the interviews, especially those that shed light on this period where relatively conservative Eastern religions became a part of the American counterculture. The personalities and quirks of the individuals shine through in the informal interview format.

Recently, I read a two-part interview that Chadwick conducted with a man named Niels Holm. (Full interview part two: http://www.cuke.com/Cucumber%20Project/interviews/niels.html) Holm, now deceased, was a Danish carpenter, sailor and (to some extent) Zen Buddhist. He spends a great deal of the interview discussing the concept of shame.

NH: For a while I talked to everybody about shame. I talked to all my friends, people I meet, how was your relation with your dad? Did he shame you, or your mother shame you, or how was it with shame. It was very interesting. The two people that had been shamed the most, and one of them, his dad shamed him. . . were both psychiatrists, which I think is very interesting. I found that one psychiatrist that I knew myself in Port Townsend was very much of a shamer. He shamed his wife – it’s interesting how that is. And then I could see in – I look at religious leaders, even Zen masters, shaming the students. And then I asked the students and they say, well, that’s a technique he has, it’s a good way… I say, what is going on here? (Slightly edited for brevity.)

A quality that many of the interviewers show in their conversations with Chadwick is the ability to adopt a religious point of view that’s nevertheless open-ended and exploratory. Holm is not simply insisting on his conclusions but relating his discoveries. He goes on to explain his view that while shaming others (especially children) will usually have a harmful effect on their view of themselves, the ability to accept feelings of shame from within is a rare and important thing:

DC: But you speak about shame sometimes as being a good thing.

NH: Yes it is. It’s a good thing when you’re willing – the willingness to experience it is a good thing. That’s the bodhisattva vow. The willingness to experience shame is the Bodhisattva vow. The unwillingness to experience shame will lead you to evil.

DC: In what way?

NH: It’s like scapegoating. It’s blaming. It’s all the life-alienating things that you do to avoid feeling shame. Feeling shame is the same as being conscious of who you are. To admit who you are. When you see who you are, that’s like going through the doorway.

The act of shaming another person is, in this way, naturally linked to the refusal to endure shame. We often think of shaming another person as a powerful action or the act of a person with legitimate authority (moral or otherwise.) When it takes the form of punishment or rebuke it is supposed to be part of a process of educating and guiding others. At the same time Holm’s description makes a lot of sense when we consider both the feelings of the person being shamed and the person inflicting shame upon them. How can a person deliberately shame another without degrading themselves at the same time? Certainly the experience of shame must be unpleasant in order to dissuade people from transgression.

Yet, the person who inflicts shame suffers too, for they displace their shame onto others rather than acknowledge it. For Holm, being ashamed is not simply self-hatred or low self-esteem. He is not interested in self-help. Accepting feelings of shame is part of becoming responsible. It is the act of facing up to what we have tried to ignore:

NH: When you feel shame, be glad. I say that to myself when I feel – when I have been out doing something that is shameful. Sometimes it takes me two days, or maybe it takes a week, or maybe ten years, before I will look at it, it’s so shameful. Now, if you’re really willing to feel shame it wouldn’t take so long. And if you’re truly willing, truly practicing willing, you will be ashamed before you do it. That avenue, that opening to yourself and who you are, is so open that you never feel shame because you have nothing to be ashamed of. There would be no reason to be ashamed because you already are open there.

DC: And you don’t have something to protect.

NH: Yeah, there’s nothing to protect.

DC: You know who really had the least resistance to feeling shame was Suzuki Roshi. I’ve seen him a number of times, say start off a lecture by apologizing for having gotten angry and say I’m ashamed of myself, or apologize to people for something. Or very quickly at the snap of a finger he could say, oh, I see, I was wrong.

The willingness to experience shame or admit ignorance is not often thought of as a virtue. In fact, all too often it’s considered self-flagellation or self-involvement. No doubt, the kind of genuine shame that Suzuki Roshi was able to feel surely differs from phony displays of contrition but it’s often people who make the most of feeling remorse that are the first to repeat the same behaviour. Nevertheless, Holm’s remarks suggest at another point. Being critical is less important than being self-critical – although one does not necessarily preclude the other, it may be that our insistence on taking up moral positions (however righteous or altruistic they may be) is a way of deferring self-examination. Holm suggests that we can gain another form of power once we drop our aversion to failure:

NH: The sense of self as a failure – like I said the last four years, when this woman rejected me, then I really failed, completely. I let myself go down and feel it completely. Being a complete failure, and I went to hell with that, and felt I’m one-eighth of an inch tall, and there I was being nothing, worthless. I didn’t want this feeling my whole life – this thing about feeling shame, just feeling, through and through and through. All my life I tried not to feel that. And then, just accept and feel it, just accept yourself as a total fuck-up, a total failure, and just cry and grieve it. Grieve that feeling. And then when you express it and you tell somebody, they love you.

How can this acceptance of the self as total fuck-up not become yet another way for us to obsess over ourselves? Perhaps the best solution lies in an example from the past. We can turn to the first essayist Michele De Montaigne (who possibly invented the modern word “embarrassment”) for insight. Bodily embarrassment is a theme in Montaigne’s work. He wants to pin down the anxieties that prevent us from revealing our naked minds and bodies to the world. Montaigne was a committed Christian but he was sceptical of the intolerant ideology behind France’ religious civil wars. His cheerful, inquisitive, sincere personality seems completely at odds with the close-minded world of his time. Montaigne prioritized self-criticism above all else. He practiced it as a kind of inverted Socratic Method. The point of the essais was to record and consider what has happened in his life, and to contrast his findings with the wisdom of the ancients and other great writers. The essais discuss human problems but without becoming dogmatic. The concept of ‘epoche’ is a matter of suspending final judgment or certainty. Here is Emerson’s account of Montaigne’s method:

But I see plainly, he says, that I cannot see. I know that human strength is not in extremes, but in avoiding extremes. I, at least, will shun the weakness of philosophizing beyond my depth. What is the use of pretending to powers we have not? What is the use of pretending to assurances we have not, respecting the other life? Why exaggerate the power of virtue? Why be an angel before your time? These strings, wound up too high, will snap. If there is a wish for immortality, and no evidence, why not say just that? If there are conflicting evidences, why not state them? If there is not ground for a candid thinker to make up his mind, yea or nay,- why not suspend the judgment? I weary of these dogmatizers. I tire of these hacks of routine, who deny the dogmas. I neither affirm nor deny. I stand here to try the case. I am here to consider, to consider how it is. I will try to keep the balance true.

This is not to say we should not condemn bad institutions, bad theories, bad language, ‘bad’ people. Montaigne and Emerson and all great theorists would be horrified at this conclusion. Rather, we should speak against wrongdoing as ourselves, as the flawed people we are, not from the point of view of the flawless people as we would like to be. True change in our natures, if it is at all possible, I think, is possible only for those who voluntarily accept responsibility for how they use their words, deeds and time.

The Book I Read (2): Clothing in Hermann Broch’s The Sleepwalkers.

July 7, 2015July 13, 2015 / rewrites

Hermann Broch

Items of clothing from Can Themba’s suit to Gogol’s overcoat serve a number of purposes in fiction. Elizabethan drama famously used costumes as a means for actors to transform into characters and for characters to turn into other characters. While this kind of costuming relies on popular stereotypes (a man can only dress as a woman if there’s such a thing as ‘women’s clothing) it affirms the idea that a clever actor with a well-stocked closet can change identity as easily as he or she might change shoes. Modern literature tends to take a more Althusser-like attitude towards costumes: fashion is but one of many social practices that inculcate ideology into a subject, tailoring us to suit dominant social values.A good story takes details seriously, whether the character are using their clothes to express something or whether their clothes are using them. In ‘The Romantic’, the first part of Hermann Broch’s trilogy ‘The Sleepwalkers’ there is an passage that considers the importance of military uniforms occupy in Prussian ideology:

A generic uniform provides its wearer with a definitive line of demarcation between his person and the world; it is like a hard casing against which one’s personality and the world beat sharply and directly and are differentiated from each other; for it is the uniform’s true function to manifest and obtain order in the world, to arrest the confusion and flux of life, just as it conceals whatever in the human body is soft and flowing, covering up the soldier’s underclothes and skin, and decreeing that sentries on guard should wear white gloves. So when in the morning a man has fastened up his uniform to the last button, he acquires a second and thicker hide and feels that he has returned to his more essential and steadfast being… Yet this does not mean that the man in uniform has become blind, nor that he is filled with blind prejudices as is commonly assumed; he remains all the time a man like you and me, dreams of food and love, even reads his newspaper at breakfast but he is no longer tied to things, and as they scarcely concern him any longer he is able to divide them into the good and the bad, for on intolerance and lack of understanding the security of life is based. (Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir.)

This paragraph ties into a theory of the origins of uniforms that Broch articulates through the character of Bertrand (a friend of the novel’s hero.) His theory states that the military learned the power of uniforms from the church, finding it to be an excellent means of fusing the transcendent with the secular. This mix of practicality and idealism produced the particular form of Romantic patriotism that fuelled 19th Century nationalism. Ideally, uniforms reduce the world to a place where surface appearances are representations that tell us everything we want to know, concealing nothing. Of course, the real question is whether an individual person can truly become that which he represents. For Bertrand, the wearer comes to belong to his clothing more than he does to his family or community. Feelings of authority, pride, security, intolerance are enhanced. But this is not merely the result of indoctrination nor is it merely uniform fetishism.

Broch explicitly tells us that the uniform solider feels empowered for he is no longer ‘tied’ to life. This is not a total negation of the wearer’s ‘real self.’ The same person still exists beneath. Still, the wearing of a uniform creates a double consciousness: importance is no longer invested in ordinary, concrete matters while abstractions (such as duty or camaraderie) become concrete entities, imbued with absolute importance. The novel does not set up the usual existential opposition between a soldier’s ‘bad faith’ (his acting out the being of a soldier) and his authentic being. Instead, it depicts ideology in the style of the 19th Century novel, where personal transformation is largely a matter of learning new techniques of self-narration. The solider continues to have the same boring, everyday thoughts but his experience of them is fundamentally altered. A uniform is meant to offer the solider liberation from pettiness, from normalcy. Despite its demands, it offers a different framework through which the self can be perceived. In this way, the uniform contributes as much freedom as it deducts from the soldier. In a way, Broch’s theory combines the optimism of the Elizabethan costume as a tool for self-fashioning with the Marxist sense of the uniform as an instrument of dehumanization, of shaping the person to fit its context. Broch demonstrates this ambivalence more overtly in the next sequence, which shows the protagonist, Joachim von Pasenow’s neurotic reflections on his uniform:

He could almost have wished that the uniform was a direct emanation of his skin, and often he thought to himself that that was the real function of a uniform, and wished at least that his underclothes could by a distinctive pattern be made a component part of the uniform. For it was uncanny to think that every solider carried about with him under his tunic the anarchical passions common to all men. Perhaps the world would have gone off the rails altogether had someone at the last moment invented stiff, shirt-fronts for the civilians, thus transforming the shirt into a white board and making it quite unrecognizable as underclothing.

Joachim recognizes that the appeal of his uniform lies in the fact that it provides limitations, it forces him to inflict discipline upon problematic urges, to keep things on the rails. It remains a hard casing that relieves his insecurity. More interesting is his view of the modern civilian shirt as ‘a white board.’ The civilian wears clothes that stifle his individuality, doing so even without claiming prestige as compensation. In this, the average person is worse off than the soldier: they have chosen to stand for nothing. Yet, a society obsessed with order is also one that is obsessed with arbitrary formalities and soulless ceremony. Joachim says he believes the uniform is ‘decreed by nature’, but it is clear that he doubts that this way of life truly is natural. He grows anxious when his tunic is taken off. In these moments, he does not experience a loss of self but a loss of self-knowledge. He returns to his old narrative, which is no longer satisfactory. He is reminded that military garments do not grow out of his skin. Ideology has been mistaken for natural law. In uniform, Joachim’s underlying ‘passions’ are overmastered. He finds comfort in accepting and deferring them. He knows they may be gratified later when he’s dressed in other clothes, for this is a principle around which German military ideology is built: do not deny desire, confine it to situations where it can be indulged in without guilt or loss of control. Joachim, for instance, is well aware that officers may only visit brothels when in civvies.

Broch endured his own struggle with German Fascism but this digression is not meant to simply point out the obvious hypocrisy of the military caste. His purpose is to establish a tension between two romantic sentiments: Joachim is ruled both by passion and by principle. He idealizes both the Appollonian and Dionysian in equal measure. The two impulses are kept in separate spheres so that a balance can be maintained. As a trilogy, ‘The Sleepwalkers’ tells three stories using the literary styles of three periods, from the romantic to the realist to High Modernist avant-garde. The second section ‘The Anarchist’ picks up on certain, similar concerns, though its emphasis is much more on constructing a realistic impression of the lives of ordinary Germans. This first story has a classic love triangle plot. Joachim must choose between his lover (a beautiful, Czech prostitute named Ruzena) and a more appropriate match, an aristocratic woman named Elisabeth. This plot is strictly conventional but Broch uses it to explore how the emotionally charged sturm undt drang movement challenge a culture based on rigid adherence to regulations. A dichotomy of sex and chivalric love is pivotal to this issue. Broch uses clothing to intensify the eroticism of Joachim and Ruzena’s sexual encounter:

“Open that.” She whispered, tearing at the same time at his necktie and the buttons of his vest. And as if in sudden, precipitate humility, whether towards him or towards God, she fell on her knees, her head against the foot of the bed, and quickly unfastened his shoes. Oh, how terrible that was – for why should they not sink down together, forgetting the casings in which they were held? And yet how grateful he was to her that she made it easier and so touchingly; the deliverance of the smile with which they threw open the bed into which they flung themselves. But the sharp-cornered starched plastron of his shirt, cutting against her chin, still irked her, and opening it and squeezing her face between sharp angles, she ordered: “put that off” and now they felt release and freedom, felt the softness of their bodies, felt their breathing stifled by the urgency of emotion, and their delight rising up out of their dread. Oh, dread of life streaming from the living flesh with which the bones are clothed, softness of the skin spread and stretched over it, dreadful warning of the skeleton and the many-ribbed breast frame which he can now embrace and which, breathing, now presses against him, its heart beating.

Joachim, Ruzena, and the narration itself, fall into disorder as symbolic surfaces are abruptly removed. The sequence relies on verbs of motion and long lines to render their urgency but its atomistic treatment of the body itself is more ambiguous. Broch’s descriptions nearly tip over into body-horror as the stitching of the human caul is traced and examined. They feel dread. Joachim wants to embrace Ruzena’s bones, forsaking the outer layers of flesh and clothing. Her body becomes an ‘it’, the outer casing that holds her beating heart. Try as he might, Joachim can only make sense of Ruzena’s flesh as a living garment not as her total being. It continues:

Sweet fragrance of the flesh, humid exhalation, soft runnels beneath the breasts, darkness of the armpits. But still, Joachim was too confused, still they were both too confused, to know the delight they felt; they knew only that they were together and yet they must still seek each other.

Is this another instance of the longstanding superstition that holds that the corporeal is a false self? Is religion or metaphysics, once again, to blame? I think the implications go further than this. If clothing unties one from the world then nakedness is a necessary condition for emotional engagement. Even in nakedness, in physical union, the complete image or texture of the other cannot be found. It resides neither in clothing nor even in ‘dreadful’ flesh. They want to feel the loved one as a totality. No amount of uncovering can expose this. Perhaps it is clothing all the way down. Broch ends ‘The Romantic’ on a bittersweet note, as Joachim lies on his wedding night watching his new wife Elisabeth, whom he has not touched, fall sleep:

She had moved a little to the side, and her hand, which with its befrilled wrist was all that emerged from the bedclothes, rested in his. Through his position his military coat had become disordered, the lapels falling apart left his black trousers visible, and when Joachim noticed this he hastily set things right again and covered the place. He had now drawn up his legs, and so as not to touch the sheets with his patent-leather shoes, he rested his feet in a rather constrained postured on the chair standing beside the bed.

This is a victory for conservative values and appearances but it is, above all, a victory for security over vulnerability. This final moment of abstinence might be endearing in a way, if we had not been asked, along the way, to consider what clothes mean.

The Book I Read (1): ‘The Master of Go’ by Y. Kawabata.

June 17, 2015January 17, 2016 / rewrites

Y. Kawabata

Before starting ‘The Master of Go’, I was slightly familiar with Kawabata’s work. I had read a collection of his extremely short, short stories entitled ‘The Palm of the Hand Stories.’ The title of that collection captures the economy of the stories (most are between one and three pages in length) as well as the feeling that they typically provoke. Reading them is like holding something in hand for a moment, something miniature that can concealed in a fist or secretly palmed off to someone else. You don’t read them so much as hold them up to the light for a moment before moving on to the next. One or two stories made a lasting impression, though most came across in translation as rough drafts, marked by the constant, near-obsessional return to the same stock elements (sea life, snow, peasant girls, childbirth, illness.) The stories can also be thought of as textual versions of palm-reading, which is one of the arts of finding symbols in mundane things. Kawabata worked on these tales all his life. They are steeped in images and lore that are so pungently Japanese that some of the stories may be alienating to a non-Japanese reader (such as myself.) That said, it is really not the cultural differences that make Kawabata’s stories hypnotically weird but the nature of their construction, which wraps a tiny, hard nugget of narrative structure in layers of surrealistic impressions, folktales gone haywire, half-formed theories; imaginative sketches that might lose their narcotic effect if they’re drawn out a page longer or clarified, made reasonable.

Kawabata was a journalist for many years but these stories don’t really resemble, to my mind, Latin American ‘Magical Realism’ (originally the application of a journalistic form to wildly outlandish content – the treating of supernatural events as though they are quite commonplace.) Rather they are closer to the Japanese writer Murakami Haruki’s short works: willfully strange but making the point that the ‘real’ world we inhabit is pretty much devoid of normalcy too. I was surprised, therefore, that ‘The Master of Go’ adopts and sticks to a journalistic mode. The writing is entirely different from most of the ‘Palm of the Hand Stories’; there are no dalliances with surrealism, no sex, no obvious uses of symbolism or abstraction. The narrator is a newspaper reporter covering a Go match between an aged master and a younger challenger (think Carlsen-Anand perhaps?) The story is explicitly a slightly fictionalized rendition of Kawabata’s first-hand experiences. Like Uragami, the narrator, Kawabata recorded a similarly climatic Go match for a major newspaper. Uragami comes across as a bit of Nick Carraway-type, a mostly objective, relatively unimportant character on the periphery of the events he depicts. As with Carraway, there is also a sense that no one else finds the events that unfold quite as significant as Uragami does. His point of view is initially that of a typical 1930s Japanese gentleman. He is married, middle-class, well-mannered and extremely reverent of the previous generation. It is only later that his particular form of Romantic nostalgia begins to reveal itself and we can appreciate the depth of his investment in the Master and his doomed struggle against the modern world.

As in many Japanese novels (or even in the work of certain English-language writers like Henry James) the chief interest for the reader is to try and catch the unexpressed logic or emotion that links one perfectly ordinary observation with the next. It is only through careful attention to the invisible thread of implication that a sense of the narrator’s emotional life starts to peak out of the even-handed assessment of the characters. This is not to say that the writing is dull or pedestrian. The Go game – a simple but infinitely complex game of black and white pebbles – it anchors the plot, but the finest individual pieces of writing occur elsewhere, such as when the narrator goes for a walk or talks to his wife or fixates on some absorbing detail (a long hair sprouting from the Master’s eyebrow.) Such bursts of lyricism are kept in check, however, in order to generate and sustain tension in the main story. The final passages of the book work well precisely because the emotional build-up was barely released along the way. In a sense, the emotional stakes barely register until it becomes apparent that they have been voided, and the reader is only aware, though painfully, that we are in the aftermath of something, some event of monumental importance that slipped by in the casual manner of almost everything that ever happens.

Reading the novel, it struck me how readily nostalgia tends to cling to relatively unimportant things such as sports, games, advertisements, fashion trends and not life changing events, relationships or experiences. Perhaps our real battles go on being fought within us. We can’t detach from them, so we project our sentimentality onto those who win and lose in public arenas. ‘The Master of Go’ recognizes this truth – that a game always indirectly embodies the personal struggles of its spectators – it also reminds us of the inherent dignity of a world where a human being can plausibly dedicate his or her entire life to a board game without needing sponsorship or endorsements. Beyond the sentimentality, it is obvious that traditional Japan’s stultifying feudalism allowed for such aristocratic attitudes to thrive.That said, modern nationalism is equally inclined to attach an inordinate amount of symbolic importance on competitions. As a South African, I can remember being nine years old when the rugby team won the 1995 world cup. During the final, I played with some children my age in the basement and we only come up to watch the ending ceremony because one of us wanted to see the trophy. The much-vaunted catharsis that the game was meant to supply (as a supposed milestone in the transition from fascism to democracy) was lost on us. I could understand the match as a conflict between two teams but I lacked the historical consciousness to make anything more of it. The investment that passionate spectators have in another’s victory or defeat blends easily into the wistful, fantasy that there was once a time when competitions were fair, when the worthiest among us were counted among the winners and not beaten down through negative tactics. In the American context, the ‘long count fight’ between Dempsey and Tunney and the ‘Quiz Show’ scandals of the 1950s seem to denote a universe where winning is all that matters.

A short work, ‘The Master of Go’ epitomizes the notion (now a bit unfashionable) that discipline and craftsmanship are the most important qualities for a writer to possess. What is amazing to me, is that the same person wrote both ‘The Master of Go’ and the ‘Palm of the Hand Stories.’ I think it proves that Kawabata was an unusually complete talent, equally able to get at the strange and the ordinary, equally adept at slow-burn and quick-moving storytelling. The Master of Go’ can be defined by its complete obedience to formal conventions of realistic storytelling, lacking any experimentalism or self-indulgence. Even the shortest of the ‘Palm of the Hand’ stories are bursting with irrationally, hallucinogenic passages, compelling, subconscious impressions that force their way to the surface. Kawabata’s command over two types of writing makes him an artist at home in either of the two hemispheres of the Japanese imagination. He is also a rare type of Modernist writer who respects the both the truth of experience and the truth of impersonal fact. The excellent prose is due to the work of famous Japanese scholar Edward G. Seidensticker, the translator. Seidensticker’s translation captures the technicalities of the game, its suspense and pressure and the moments of relief felt by Uragami when he is away from the board. Much of the novel is devoted to the actual match between Shusai the Master and his challenger (called in this novel ‘Otake’ instead of the real life Kitani.) As suggested previously, however, the really interesting aspect of the storytelling lies in the narrator’s underlying view of what the game actually stands for. Like Ozu’s films or Mishima’s novels, Kawabata keys into the bittersweet feelings of many Japanese towards the modern world. Modernization began in earnest in the mid to late 19th Century with the decline of the feudal era and the start of a kind of theocratic imperialism. The novel’s period, 1938, must have also seemed retrospectively to be the dawn of a new, troubling world of problematic ‘modern’ attitude and, of course, the disaster of impending war. A prominent sequence dramatizes this, in an ambiguous way, when the narrator includes some notes regarding a day’s play, mentioning a ‘girl of the modern sort’, he sees in the garden:

From the veranda outside the players’ room, which was ruled by a sort of diabolical tension, I glanced out into the garden, beaten down by the powerful summer sun, and saw a girl of the modern sort inconstantly feeding the carp. I felt as if I were looking at some freak. I could scarcely believe that we belonged to the same world.

Naturally, Kawabata means to suggest that something is peculiar about the ritual of the Go match with its aristocratic, feudal tradition and not just to express a kind of obtuse, curmudgeonly disdain for the world of young people. It demonstrates the severe atmosphere of the Go tournament, using (as Kawabata does throughout the ‘Palm of the Hand Stories’ too) a young girl as a symbol of her whole generation. Despite his apparently critical treatment of the girl, and by extension the shallowness of modern Japan, he raises the questions of whether the ‘diabolic tension’ of the past is in any way preferable to the frivolous freedom of the young. The conflict in the novel arises not just the demise of old-fashioned, aesthetic thinking in favour of utilitarian convention (proven true, decades later, by the rise of computer chess!) but merely because different types of people have to co-exist in the same world despite having opposing conceptions of the good life. The carefree image of the ‘freak’ (really just a modern girl feeding carp) comes after Uragami praises the sight of a sleeping baby, whose peacefulness offsets the oppressive, spiritual aggression of the room: ‘It has been one of those days when a person finds it impossible to face an adult, and for me this little Momotaro has been a savior.’ Uragami associates the child with the folklore of Japan, referring to him as a ‘momotaro’ – the infant-hero who was born out of a peach in a fairy tale. Why does the sight of the infant provide comfort while the girl invites dissonance and disapproval? Japanese realism often centers either on melodrama or comedy of manners: excessive misfortune handled stoically or minor details causing hyperbolic reactions. This book skews towards the latter, implying that once you immerse yourself in the strangeness of Go or any pursuit of equivalent depth the ordinary world begins to feel unnatural. If it is reasonable to devote years to a game of black and white stones, how can normal life be justified? No doubt, the customs, mores and rhythms of a Go player’s life are stifling and belong to an archaic, Manichean worldview and yet, once immersed in it, nothing can seem more natural than a life dedicated to mastering it. Uragami’s glimpses at things outside of the combatants and their go-ban tend to either refresh or alienate him, so total is his focus on the plays. The sleeping infant seems a beacon of calm vitality while the girl’s indifference to the match and its customs startles and frustrates the narrator on some level, as it casts doubt on the significance of the story he writes.

Uragmai confesses that he has to write watered-down human-interest portraits of the players in his column instead of play-by-play accounts, since his readers probably won’t be interested in technical commentary. Thus, not even casual fans of Go really belong to the cloistered world of the ‘true way.’ He fetishizes this ‘way’ while producing an accessible, bastardized version of it for his readers. The position of the reader of the novel, who quite likely knows even less about Go than the newspaper readers, is even more ambiguous. On the one hand, the novel is clearly not just about Go. On the other hand, Kawabata is explicitly writing an elegy (he himself stated that he would only write elegies after World War Two) for the Master and for the pristine Go that was once played. Our inability to appreciate the game turns us into outsiders to some extent. Perhaps we belong alongside the insipid modern girl, feeding the carp. While Kawabata does not come across as a ultranationalist like Mishima, he admits to a nostalgia for old Japan: in one section, for instance, he claims the game of Go as something essentially Japanese despite its roots in China. That diatribe – sparked when the narrator plays Go on a train against a good-natured but uncompetitive American – is the closest the novel gets to jingoism:

One always found a competitive urge in a Japanese. One never encountered a stance as uncertain as this. The spirit of Go was missing. I thought it all very strange, and I was conscious of being confronted with utter foreignness.

Since Kawabata is committed to producing an authentic version of the story, he refuses to present simplistic caricatures of the players. It is clear that he finds Otake’s use of the sealed play rule can be considered a rather obnoxious act but this is tempered by a generally sympathetic treatment of him throughout the book. Otake is depicted as the kind of person who excels at these kinds of games: somewhat pedantic, resolute, overly sensitive to and prone to odd outpourings of feeling. Kawabata makes it clear that Otake does not prioritize victory at Go above all else in life – he is a family man and an attentive husband. In some senses, he represents the notion of professionalism more than the Master who is an artistic, romanticized figure. Otake lives in the modern world but takes his career seriously – the Master’s existence centers around Go. I recall one Russian Grandmaster described the play of the great Ukrainian chess champion Mikhail Tal as a ‘return to Romanticism.’ The improvisational, bohemian Tal can be contrasted with players like Anatoly Karpov who were obsessed with the achievement of victory through the resolute adherence to formulas. Like Tal, The Go Master is depicted as one who plays the game according to some internal fascination with its machinations and possibilities. Otake is more of a Karpov type; one who wins by not allowing the smallest advantage to slip by. The framing narration makes it clear from the start that the Master not only loses the final match but dies shortly afterwards (it is none other than Uragami himself who photographs his corpse.) As implied by the novel’s allegorical tone, Otake’s victory must in part be seen as the triumph of new ways over an older romantic or spiritual mentality. Yet, due to kidney problems, Otake is disadvantaged to a comparable extent as the Master. In a nice moment, Otake wonders aloud if the weak, spluttering rainfall means the sky, too, suffers kidney failure.

The Master plays according to the ‘sealed play’ rules for the first time, meaning that the last move will be kept secret until the next match day. The move is written on a card and kept by officials. Otake, however, deliberately makes a very unorthodox move as one of his sealed plays. This confers on him the advantage of spending the interval days planning his next phase of play. Since the matches are timed, the Master would have to formulate a new plan on the spot once play is resumed, while Otake would have had liberty to think ahead of his game-changing sealed move. The Master considers withdrawing in protest from the match while the general audience (and Uragami) clearly disapproves of Otake’s methods:

When a law is made, the cunning that finds loopholes goes to work. One cannot deny that there is a certain slyness among younger players, a slyness which, when rules are written to prevent slyness, makes use of the rules themselves… The Master, when he faced the board, was a man of old. He knew nothing about all these refined latter-day tricks.

With hindsight, however, Uragami comes to admit that it is natural for a competitor to try and bend new rules in their favour. He suggests that we cannot blame a player for trying to win by any means. The younger player also shows gamesmanship in his use of (what are assumed to be) intentional delays, the annoyance of which is amplified by his constant need to go to the bathroom. Uragami’s displeasure with the American he plays on the train, it is important to remember, arises from the Westerner’s enjoyment of the game as a game, free of any particular competitiveness. To condemn Otake’s competitiveness would be hypocritical. Otake is under at least as much pressure as the Master since he will either lose – and perhaps never be canonized as a master – or he will win and be remembered for ending the golden age of ‘true Go’, usurping it with a new age of prosaic, utilitarian play. Kawabata carefully expresses the significance of every move on the board. He never exaggerates or adds a forced sense of suspense to the proceedings. The narrative comes outwards from the titanic struggle that’s the centerpiece of the book to include the cruel but dignified world of pre-war Japan to include the wives, children, workers, all of were blissfully unaware that the soul of their nation was being decided in a game of Go. The ambivalence that Uragami comes to feel in the aftermath of the Master’s passing is best encapsulated in a quote he cites from the novelist Naoki Sanjugo: “if one choose to look upon Go as valueless, then absolutely valueless it is; and if one chooses to look upon it as a thing of value, then a thing of absolute value it is.”

RE Writes

R.E. Writes Re: Writers

Author: rewrites