Milan Kundera is nothing short of amazing - in this book anyway - i've read other stories, such as Identity, where this amazingness is perhaps questionable. The most attractive thing about Unbearable Lightness of Being is the exploration of Nietzschean writing and philosophy. The author takes time out to discuss Nietzsche (sometimes from characters' perspectives, sometimes the narrator's) which feels like something one shouldn't be able to do but which is great. It carries the danger of making the story inaccessible, or too diffracted (think Sartre's Nausea) but I am confident that he does it well. As well as the Nietzschean excursions, Kundera also likes literary excursions, discussing the plot of Anna Karenina and the meaning of coincidence in literature and hence life. Particularly emotive, is the image of Tereza, the unappreciated wife, carrying Anna Karenina under her arm, almost like a security blanket as she embarks on an out of character affair. She is afraid, and clings to the book, thinking that since this guy has it on his shelf, it must be okay. It really is quite sad... which brings me to what I think I don't like about Kundera, although I can't say I'm sure.
It feels like this book is trying to challenge the reader's sense of goodwill. Like - there's nothing philosophically wrong about infidelity, if people are badly affected by it that's their own problem. The book is trying to promote this "lightness" where we don't have to carry the burdens of action, the heaviness of others' emotions and our own regrets - and I just don't buy it. It feels all too much like an excuse for being an apathetic person. Similar criticisms exist about The Outsider, I guess, however although society's values are challenged there, the human experiences is not. In discussing this with my friends, I think I usually lose the argument - and that what Kundera purports may indeed be the truth of the matter. Some sympathy is shown for Tereza, having to deal with her husband's hair constantly smelling like vaginal juices (this is the part of the book the friend who gave it to me kept asking if I was up to), however the sympathy seems contrived and inauthentic. I was probably reading this at a bad time as well, when these issues would have been particularly annoying to deal with.
To the discussion of coincidence, which I did love: the story of Anna Karenina is summarised through its beginning and end, namely the recurring theme of the train. Kundera here, gets in touch with our sense of sentiment and our desire to see things symbolically. We can attribute importance to coincidences, symbols etc., not from any suggestion of a higher being (God wanted me to see this... etc.), but rather, since it's there, it plays a role in our psyche. I might meet a girl who I fall in love with on the train, and she may not have talked to me if I'd not been reading Kafka - so I project meaning onto Kafka, onto books, and the love is in turn tied to a sense that Kafka is special. There's no transcendental meaning it, but some secret promise is shared between hearts - something like that.
So yes, Kundera, good, but I'm not sure I like him. There's definitely something post-modern about him, and perhaps I prefer something where meaning is still important.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Sunday, August 12, 2007
descendents of Darwin
Having only a basic understanding of Darwinism and a vague understanding of Genetics and related science in general, I read books like The Origins of Virtue and Birth of the Mind more from a philosophical perspective on mind and identity. I wish to take the former to task for many things, whilst the latter constitutes the closest thing to my understanding of God and the Universe.
The Origins of Virtue is none-the-less interesting, presenting examples from game theory (the famous prisoner's dilemma "tournaments"), historical anecdotes concerning altruism etc. A particularly undesirable chapter concerns Australia's aboriginal people, stating firstly that they had nothing resembling "law" when settlers arrived. This view, inherently racist, was well discredited with the Mabo case (years before the book was published). The central tenet of the book is the old "we are only altruistic through selfishness" argument, utilising the desire for genes to propagate themselves as its main advocate. I think, philosophically, this is a redundant argument. Socialogically, I think it is a stupid argument. Any talk of virtue has to relegate itself to our own preconceived ideas of what it means to say something is selfless and how this impacts our outlook on the world. Once this talk is buried in "selfish genes", we are reverting to radical determinism, where talk of virtue means nothing. Once we take this line, ideas of individuality and agency become meaningless, which in turn makes any talk of ethics meaningless. The fact is, we choose to do things for a variety of reasons, and an overriding "good-intention" is still something that should be valid as a philosophy. As an upshot of this: I wonder why books like this bother publishing themselves.
The Birth of the Mind, on the other hand, I found clearly expressed and very fascinating. The book traces the development of the mind to the (chance) mutation of dna and this makes so much sense as to make obselete any discussion of an eternal soul, a creator, or anything such. I take the absurdist stance that we can can still have meaning in our lives in this framework - because our minds have developed to a point where we want to make sense of the world, giving that yearning its own importance.
So, both these titles obviously stem from the Darwin work, each looking into different aspects of existence based on this relatively new way of looking at the human condition.
The Origins of Virtue is none-the-less interesting, presenting examples from game theory (the famous prisoner's dilemma "tournaments"), historical anecdotes concerning altruism etc. A particularly undesirable chapter concerns Australia's aboriginal people, stating firstly that they had nothing resembling "law" when settlers arrived. This view, inherently racist, was well discredited with the Mabo case (years before the book was published). The central tenet of the book is the old "we are only altruistic through selfishness" argument, utilising the desire for genes to propagate themselves as its main advocate. I think, philosophically, this is a redundant argument. Socialogically, I think it is a stupid argument. Any talk of virtue has to relegate itself to our own preconceived ideas of what it means to say something is selfless and how this impacts our outlook on the world. Once this talk is buried in "selfish genes", we are reverting to radical determinism, where talk of virtue means nothing. Once we take this line, ideas of individuality and agency become meaningless, which in turn makes any talk of ethics meaningless. The fact is, we choose to do things for a variety of reasons, and an overriding "good-intention" is still something that should be valid as a philosophy. As an upshot of this: I wonder why books like this bother publishing themselves.
The Birth of the Mind, on the other hand, I found clearly expressed and very fascinating. The book traces the development of the mind to the (chance) mutation of dna and this makes so much sense as to make obselete any discussion of an eternal soul, a creator, or anything such. I take the absurdist stance that we can can still have meaning in our lives in this framework - because our minds have developed to a point where we want to make sense of the world, giving that yearning its own importance.
So, both these titles obviously stem from the Darwin work, each looking into different aspects of existence based on this relatively new way of looking at the human condition.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Simon James - Stumbling toward the singularity
This was submitted (unsuccessfully) to a journal and was written as a sequal to an Andrew David Stapleton short story.
Stumbling toward the singularity, my feet crash against the sleepers and rubble but my momentum keeps me upright. Even after I have passed 17 sleepers the view stretched out before me is the same: the shape of the tracks, the number of discernible planks, the reflection of the early morning sun on the steel. Altering my point of reference changes nothing.
I wonder whether a train will come.
I try to remember whether I have ever seen a train along these tracks.
The tracks’ convergence would force the train to derail. I consider this and then try to stop. Gravity or some other kind of acceleration finally gets the better of me and buries my knees in the blue rubble. I rise quickly and dust myself off, glancing around, pre-emptively embarrassed, and ensuring that no-one has seen me pelt randomly down the train-tracks and dive just as suddenly into the space in-between.
I try to remember whether I have ever seen a train along these tracks.
The tracks’ convergence would force the train to derail. I consider this and then try to stop. Gravity or some other kind of acceleration finally gets the better of me and buries my knees in the blue rubble. I rise quickly and dust myself off, glancing around, pre-emptively embarrassed, and ensuring that no-one has seen me pelt randomly down the train-tracks and dive just as suddenly into the space in-between.
Only the cat.
Motionless, I cast my eyes toward the horizon and imagine the train. It does not derail. It gets smaller. At every point its wheels are as wide as the planks of wood that stitch these tracks together, and those stitches become infinitely smaller as they get closer to that point.
I am smaller.
Turning around, I realize that the cat too is has become less of a cat – more so because of the distance between us.
Carefully, (because I don’t want any part of my body to become smaller by itself) I bend down and grasp a handful of stones. Once again turning my back on the town I hurl them toward the end of the tracks. I watch closely as they rise, fall, and become tiny as they get further away.
If I continue to convince myself that the tracks meet, how much will change? The cat may have brought others, and I’m sure that it is at this point that they headed back, deciding, once and for all, that there was nothing so important she could show them that was worth jeopardizing a job, a lover or the start of a French play.
I press on, perhaps less enthusiastically than before, knowing that by the time I reach the point of infinity both the cat and I will have diminished to almost nothing.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
So good i read it twice
Having seen the BBC series and the movie, it was difficult to realise that I was reading Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe unnecessarily, since I'd read it. It wasn't until some kind of "Gosh, by jove" statement from one of the kids that I realised I'd come across this before.
Since so many comparisons are drawn between Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, I found it hard to be too sympathetic towards this book. It's nowhere near the poetic masterpiece written by Tolkien - although I suppose it's not intended to be... but I always remember something about Tolkien being ridiculed by his writing/reading friends for his ideas as he was writing.
This book is very English... very proper English, so it's easy to get annoyed at the characters. Some of the morals also seem a little dated, and it's hard to accept that the gender roles allocated to the children are only a fault of the time and not of the author - afterall, many of the females in LOTR are happy to get their hands dirty.
Having said this, perhaps the most resonating passage in this book is the folklore concerning the stone table - although it is a bit awkwardly phrased. But I like the parallels with the Christ story, and that since Aslan is goodness, he's not something you can get rid of - still a bit trixsy and deceitful one might say though.
Since so many comparisons are drawn between Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, I found it hard to be too sympathetic towards this book. It's nowhere near the poetic masterpiece written by Tolkien - although I suppose it's not intended to be... but I always remember something about Tolkien being ridiculed by his writing/reading friends for his ideas as he was writing.
This book is very English... very proper English, so it's easy to get annoyed at the characters. Some of the morals also seem a little dated, and it's hard to accept that the gender roles allocated to the children are only a fault of the time and not of the author - afterall, many of the females in LOTR are happy to get their hands dirty.
Having said this, perhaps the most resonating passage in this book is the folklore concerning the stone table - although it is a bit awkwardly phrased. But I like the parallels with the Christ story, and that since Aslan is goodness, he's not something you can get rid of - still a bit trixsy and deceitful one might say though.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Alain de Botton's own philosophy: Status Anxiety
A had heard of The Consolations of Philosophy from a few friends, but it seemed too introductory to be of interest. My Dad (A man quite interested in introductions and dot points) showed me the six-part TV series Philosophy: A guide to Happiness, which I did watch and found fairly interesting. Alain de Botton's take on philosophy is nice and accessible, allowing some of these thinkers to be introduced to those who may not usually take any interest in philosophy.
Where episodes concerned thinkers I knew more about (e.g. Nietzsche) however, I couldn't help but feel that aspects of their philosophy was being misinterpreted (or at least misrepresented). I'm not arrogant enough to think that I know more about these thinkers than de Botton, however it seems that in simplifying an idea (whose beauty may lie in its innate complexity), something may be lost - particularly the ideas of someone like Nietzsche - wasn't it a misrepresentation of his ideas that was used to promote fascism?. So whilst entertaining, the shows are about as interesting philosophically as a certain book-come-movie (about anagrams) is interesting mathematically.
However! Although, for an introduction to philosophy I would recommend Solomon, I was interested to see how rigorous Alain de Botton's own philosophy was - hence my purchase and subsequent reading of Status Anxiety. I had really hoped a lot from this book, as I believe the concept of status anxiety is important to the philosophical ideas concerning the individual and identity. For example, to create a sense of self, we associate many ideas with who we are and reject many others, which may or may not be true of ourselves. We associate ourselves with certain dreams, however these dreams are sometimes more associated with societal expectations or associations between happiness and the success of others: i.e. status anxiety - this is what I was hoping for anyway.
Unfortunately, the exploration is somewhat banal, lacking depth and originality. This is not to say I did not somewhat enjoy it - I just don't consider it to be a philosophical work, which is perhaps not the intention. Perhaps de Botton's main concern is with pop-society and issues like consumerism, in which case this book might be better considered alongside Affluenza, than The Gay Science. Some history to modern thoughts is given, and then philosphical anecdotes are used to guide the reading.
My main concern with Status Anxiety is this: Status anxiety is equated with the pursuit of material wealth. Especially today, status can be understood in many more forms. I think of myself, and how much of my dedication to obtaining a PhD is tied to my desire to be seen as intelligent. Think of people who believe "to travel" means "to be somebody" (interestingly, travel is presented as something which might assuage status anxiety). Consider people with little interesting in writing who feel they "must write a book", men who'd rather be seen with a pretty wife than one that makes them happy and that they are faithful to. This is perhaps a more important failure of the book than what is focused on by the philosophically inclined.
Status anxiety, in my opinion, is that complex of external influence and internal projection which leaves us wanting. It is where we orient ourselves towards achievements and experiences for reasons other than what they provide in of themselves. Status anxiety can be considered alongside that existential yearning to be someone of significance as we are faced with an indifferent and infinite universe.
Where episodes concerned thinkers I knew more about (e.g. Nietzsche) however, I couldn't help but feel that aspects of their philosophy was being misinterpreted (or at least misrepresented). I'm not arrogant enough to think that I know more about these thinkers than de Botton, however it seems that in simplifying an idea (whose beauty may lie in its innate complexity), something may be lost - particularly the ideas of someone like Nietzsche - wasn't it a misrepresentation of his ideas that was used to promote fascism?. So whilst entertaining, the shows are about as interesting philosophically as a certain book-come-movie (about anagrams) is interesting mathematically.
However! Although, for an introduction to philosophy I would recommend Solomon, I was interested to see how rigorous Alain de Botton's own philosophy was - hence my purchase and subsequent reading of Status Anxiety. I had really hoped a lot from this book, as I believe the concept of status anxiety is important to the philosophical ideas concerning the individual and identity. For example, to create a sense of self, we associate many ideas with who we are and reject many others, which may or may not be true of ourselves. We associate ourselves with certain dreams, however these dreams are sometimes more associated with societal expectations or associations between happiness and the success of others: i.e. status anxiety - this is what I was hoping for anyway.
Unfortunately, the exploration is somewhat banal, lacking depth and originality. This is not to say I did not somewhat enjoy it - I just don't consider it to be a philosophical work, which is perhaps not the intention. Perhaps de Botton's main concern is with pop-society and issues like consumerism, in which case this book might be better considered alongside Affluenza, than The Gay Science. Some history to modern thoughts is given, and then philosphical anecdotes are used to guide the reading.
My main concern with Status Anxiety is this: Status anxiety is equated with the pursuit of material wealth. Especially today, status can be understood in many more forms. I think of myself, and how much of my dedication to obtaining a PhD is tied to my desire to be seen as intelligent. Think of people who believe "to travel" means "to be somebody" (interestingly, travel is presented as something which might assuage status anxiety). Consider people with little interesting in writing who feel they "must write a book", men who'd rather be seen with a pretty wife than one that makes them happy and that they are faithful to. This is perhaps a more important failure of the book than what is focused on by the philosophically inclined.
Status anxiety, in my opinion, is that complex of external influence and internal projection which leaves us wanting. It is where we orient ourselves towards achievements and experiences for reasons other than what they provide in of themselves. Status anxiety can be considered alongside that existential yearning to be someone of significance as we are faced with an indifferent and infinite universe.
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
wonderful wizard
Unlike most people my age... or younger, I don't think I've seen The Wizard of Oz (the movie) the whole way through. It was interesting, then, to read the book and understand the story. Baum apparently avoided writing the Wicked Witch as a haunting character - aiming the story at children, and believing he knew how a children's story should be.
As an important story culturally, I guess I focused on the elements of the story and symbolism that have subsequently pervaded other literature. Each of the characters is on a quest to see the wizard, to gain something about themselves they see as lacking. The Lion's desire for courage and the Tinman's yearning for a heart, I think are done particularly well - the sentiment that courage is to act despite fear, and that to love is to see the world beautifully and to care, come across nicely. Perhaps the only real reservation I have is that the Scarecrow gets a degree as a substitute for a brain... perhaps this idea was less loaded back in the day. By the way, there's an interesting story about the movie: on receiving his degree, Scarecrow decrees "The square of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side" - which is false in all cases. Obviously based on pythag. thrm which concerns right-angle triangles, and the square of the hypotenuse, not the square root... but there's some dispute as to whether this was deliberate, accidental, or just stupid.
The main thing I noticed here was the lack of description - particularly of action sequences. The group are surrounded by hounds, all of a sudden, the Tinman cuts their heads off, the end. Done deliberately to avoid frightening the young children. I remember writing a very similar descriptive passage in my story "The Three Missile Men", which I wrote at the age of 6.
The Wizard of Oz is not a story like The Hobbit, The Little Prince, or even Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, all of which are well crafted, interesting stories in themselves but also hold deeper meanings for adults. Perhaps of this lot, The Little Prince stands above the rest - but I am biased towards that particular book.
As an important story culturally, I guess I focused on the elements of the story and symbolism that have subsequently pervaded other literature. Each of the characters is on a quest to see the wizard, to gain something about themselves they see as lacking. The Lion's desire for courage and the Tinman's yearning for a heart, I think are done particularly well - the sentiment that courage is to act despite fear, and that to love is to see the world beautifully and to care, come across nicely. Perhaps the only real reservation I have is that the Scarecrow gets a degree as a substitute for a brain... perhaps this idea was less loaded back in the day. By the way, there's an interesting story about the movie: on receiving his degree, Scarecrow decrees "The square of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side" - which is false in all cases. Obviously based on pythag. thrm which concerns right-angle triangles, and the square of the hypotenuse, not the square root... but there's some dispute as to whether this was deliberate, accidental, or just stupid.
The main thing I noticed here was the lack of description - particularly of action sequences. The group are surrounded by hounds, all of a sudden, the Tinman cuts their heads off, the end. Done deliberately to avoid frightening the young children. I remember writing a very similar descriptive passage in my story "The Three Missile Men", which I wrote at the age of 6.
The Wizard of Oz is not a story like The Hobbit, The Little Prince, or even Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, all of which are well crafted, interesting stories in themselves but also hold deeper meanings for adults. Perhaps of this lot, The Little Prince stands above the rest - but I am biased towards that particular book.
Thursday, December 7, 2006
Audrey Hepburn doesn't play herself so well
I can't remember whether I read Breakfast at Tiffany's because I'd just seen Capote, or because I'd just read A Streetcar Named Desire. Must be the former, because I remember thinking of Audrey while reading Streetcar. I had not seen the film.
It was the sort of love story I could relate to - being in awe of a person, cherishing their friendship, not being able to help but love them but knowing that you don't belong together. An interesting, and relatively light read considering the content of In Cold Blood. I found a lot of parallels between the characters Holly Golightly, Sally Bowles (Cabaret) and Blanche from Streetcar. The latter two caught up in the tragedy of not being able to attain that Golightly presence in the world. There is still something sad about Holly - despite how beautiful she is, she seems to understand that everything's not quite as nice as it should be. The book's ending has her fulfilling the role of the undomesticated cat - far far more appropriate than the "you belong to me" ending sequence of the film. Indeed, the strongest them in the book is perhaps focused on the protagonist's longing for the unobtainable Holly, rather than she herself. In life, you just have to realise that some things must be let go.
The story of Blanche, however is more focused on her. Some people seem to ready to dismiss her credibility, getting caught up in her desperation to make an impression as representing her vanity and childishness. I don't know whether any discussions of this book have interpreted her character as one affected by Bipolar disorder (she exhibits most of the classic symptoms - especially leading up to her madness). Sometimes it feels like the difference between how characters like Sally, Blanche and Holly are perceived, merely depends on their success and apparent attractiveness. A Holly Golightly with a few more setbacks and disappointments could easily wind up like Blanche. In all characters there's a determined independence and a trend of compensating for unfulfilling emotional relationships with economic stability and excess. It's easy to admire and pity them all. For obvious reasons, I pictured Audrey Hepburn while reading Tiffany's - but then in the movie she didn't really seem to deliver with the same grace. And yet the part is her all over - so it's as if she doesn't play Audrey Hepburn as well as she might.
I do particularly like the titles of these books, and the framework they give for interpretation of the characters.
It was the sort of love story I could relate to - being in awe of a person, cherishing their friendship, not being able to help but love them but knowing that you don't belong together. An interesting, and relatively light read considering the content of In Cold Blood. I found a lot of parallels between the characters Holly Golightly, Sally Bowles (Cabaret) and Blanche from Streetcar. The latter two caught up in the tragedy of not being able to attain that Golightly presence in the world. There is still something sad about Holly - despite how beautiful she is, she seems to understand that everything's not quite as nice as it should be. The book's ending has her fulfilling the role of the undomesticated cat - far far more appropriate than the "you belong to me" ending sequence of the film. Indeed, the strongest them in the book is perhaps focused on the protagonist's longing for the unobtainable Holly, rather than she herself. In life, you just have to realise that some things must be let go.
The story of Blanche, however is more focused on her. Some people seem to ready to dismiss her credibility, getting caught up in her desperation to make an impression as representing her vanity and childishness. I don't know whether any discussions of this book have interpreted her character as one affected by Bipolar disorder (she exhibits most of the classic symptoms - especially leading up to her madness). Sometimes it feels like the difference between how characters like Sally, Blanche and Holly are perceived, merely depends on their success and apparent attractiveness. A Holly Golightly with a few more setbacks and disappointments could easily wind up like Blanche. In all characters there's a determined independence and a trend of compensating for unfulfilling emotional relationships with economic stability and excess. It's easy to admire and pity them all. For obvious reasons, I pictured Audrey Hepburn while reading Tiffany's - but then in the movie she didn't really seem to deliver with the same grace. And yet the part is her all over - so it's as if she doesn't play Audrey Hepburn as well as she might.
I do particularly like the titles of these books, and the framework they give for interpretation of the characters.
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