Re: Today's Bad News
Reply #92 –
A book as wide-ranging as this one needs a governing metaphor to give it at least an illusion that all is well:
It was said in the old days that every year Thor made a circle around Middle-earth, beating back the enemies of order. Thor got older every year, and the circle occupied by gods and men grew smaller. The wisdom god, Woden, went out to the king of the trolls, got him in and armlock, and demanded to know of him how order might triumph over chaos.
"Give me your left eye," said the king of the trolls, "and I'll tell you."
Without hesitation, Woden gave up his left eye. "Now tell me."
The troll said, "The secret is, Watch with both eyes!"
Woden's left eye was the last sure hope of gods and men in their kingdom of light surrounded on all sides by darkness. All we have left is Thor's hammer, which represents not brute force but art, or, counting both hammerheads, art and criticism. Thor is no help. Like other gods, he has withdrawn from our immediate view. We have only his weapon, abandoned beside a fencepost in high weeds, if we can figure out how to use it. This book is an attempt to develop a set of instructions, an analysis of what has gone wrong in recent years with the various arts —especially fiction, since that is the art on which I am best informed— and what has gone wrong with criticism.
The language of critics, and of artists of the kind who pay attention to critics: […]
These are the opening words of John Gardner's (…no, the other one!) collection of essays titled On Moral Fiction, which I would have recommended to you before, Jaybro, had you not so thoroughly convinced me that your interests lay elsewhere… But the happenstance of Grass's demise, your mention of it and my faulty memory (beginning on page 9, and later starting at page 60: Gardner cites a William H. Gass…) had me rummaging through the few books I have left.
I started to type the quote above and soon realized I'd got two names confused.
I'll admit, I expected to have something negative to say about Grass. It appears I don't, not even second-hand. So, I will merely add my meager condolences.
And promise to read -if I live long enough- some of his work. (On your say-so? Not exactly; but as penance for my intended slight — and for its impulse! But you already know I can be a jerk.) What would you suggest I start with?
I confess, I've not too much to say about a teenager in Nazi Germany… The only way for the likes of me to understand his circumstances -the choices he made- is through fiction, or the kind of history that is extremely difficult to write and even more difficult to find, once it's written.
If your intent (in your "pedestrian" career…) was to steer your students towards understanding of their fellow man, I'd applaud it; and consider the remote possibility that you've -somewhat- educated me…
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Might I recommend another novel?
I can only give you a hint: A British author -obviously, an academic- re-wrote the Faust story. (Parts of it were despicable…) It was the ending that sticks in my mind:
Having connived the means to kill the Pope on Easter Sunday, he, Faust, crowed! But the Pope did not die…
The Host paten was to hold a poisoned wafer, secreted the night before in its sanctuary. But it turned out that transubstantiation was more than a dogma of the church…
The poison was gone -since the wafer was transmuted- and Faust was hoist upon his own petard!
(Much of the novel, I found offensive… But you know how the British -specially, the "upper crust" or their pretenders- think! Perversion is their main interest.
But they do, most of them, have an education: Would one of them write a whole book to make such a silly point? Of course, most would! Mere logic -based on premises- present the opportunity. And why not pursue it?
Me, I've been schooled as a Catholic. So, the "surprise" ending didn't surprise me.
But, if you can find it and read it through, let me know what you think…