ReadySteadyBook - a literary site

Friday 30 October 2009

Sontag on Simone Weil

Simone Weil by Susan Sontag (1963; and available in Against Interpretation and Other Essays):

The culture-heroes of our liberal bourgeois civilization are anti-liberal and anti-bourgeois; they are writers who are repetitive, obsessive, and impolite, who impress by force—not simply by their tone of personal authority and by their intellectual ardor, but by the sense of acute personal and intellectual extremity. The bigots, the hysterics, the destroyers of the self—these are the writers who bear witness to the fearful polite time in which we live. It is mostly a matter of tone: it is hardly possible to give credence to ideas uttered in the impersonal tones of sanity. There are certain eras which are too complex, too deafened by contradictory historical and intellectual experiences, to hear the voice of sanity. Sanity becomes compromise, evasion, a lie. Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness. The truths we respect are those born of affliction. We measure truth in terms of the cost to the writer in suffering—rather than by the standard of an objective truth to which a writer's words correspond. Each of our truths must have a martyr.

What revolted the mature Goethe in the young Kleist, who submitted his work to the elder statesman of German letters "on the knees of his heart"—the morbid, the hysterical, the sense of the unhealthy, the enormous indulgence in suffering out of which Kliest's plays and tales were mined—is just what we value today. Today Kleist gives pleasure, Goethe is to some a duty. In the same way, such writers as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Genet—and Simone Weil—have their authority with us because of their air of unhealthiness. Their unhealthiness is their soundness, and is what carries conviction. Little Bookroom / Savoir Fare London

Perhaps there are certain ages which do not need truth as much as they need a deepening of the sense of reality, a widening of the imagination. I, for one, do not doubt that the sane view of the world is the true one. But is that what is always wanted, truth? The need for truth is not constant; no more than is the need for repose. An idea which is a distortion may have a greater intellectual thrust than the truth; it may better serve the needs of the spirit, which vary. The truth is balance, but the opposite of truth, which is unbalance, may not be a lie.

Thus I do not mean to decry a fashion, but to underscore the motive behind the contemporary taste for the extreme in art and thought. All that is necessary is that we not be hypocritical, that we recognize why we read and admire writers like Simone Weil. I cannot believe that more than a handful of the tens of thousands of readers she has won since the posthumous publication of her books and essays really share her ideas. Nor is it necessary—necessary to share Simone Weil's anguished and unconsummated love affair with the Catholic Church, or accept her gnostic theology of divine absence, or espouse her ideals of body denial, or concur in her violently unfair hatred of Roman civilization and the Jews. Similarly, with Kierkegaard and Nietzsche; most of their modern admirers could not, and do not embrace their ideas. We read writers of such scathing originality for their personal authority, for the example of their seriousness, for their manifest willingness to sacrifice themselves for their truths, and—only piecemeal—for their "views." As the corrupt Alcibiades followed Socrates, unable and unwilling to change his own life, but moved, enriched, and full of love; so the sensitive modern reader pays his respect to a level of spiritual reality which is not, could not, be his own.

Some lives are exemplary, others not; and of exemplary lives, there are those which invite us to imitate them, and those which we regard from a distance with a mixture of revulsion, pity, and reverence. It is, roughly, the difference between the hero and the saint (if one may use the latter term in an aesthetic, rather than a religious sense). Such a life, absurd in its exaggerations and degree of self-mutilation—like Kleist's, like Kierkegaard's—was Simone Weil's. I am thinking of the fanatical asceticism of Simone Weil's life, her contempt for pleasure and for happiness, her noble and ridiculous political gestures, her elaborate self-denials, her tireless courting of affliction; and I do not exclude her homeliness, her physical clumsiness, her migraines, her tuberculosis. No one who loves life would wish to imitate her dedication to martyrdom nor would wish it for his children nor for anyone else whom he loves. Yet so far as we love seriousness, as well as life, we are moved by it, nourished by it. In the respect we pay to such lives, we acknowledge the presence of mystery in the world—and mystery is just what the secure possession of the truth, an objective truth, denies. In this sense, all truth is superficial; and some (but not all) distortions of the truth, some (but not all) insanity, some (but not all) unhealthiness, some (but not all) denials of life are truth-giving, sanity-producing, health-creating, and life-enhancing.

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: authors, philosophy

PermalinkComments (5)Related PostsEmail to Friend

Friday 30 October 2009

Thomas Bernhard's stories

Via Steve over at This Space:

In May 2010, the first translation of Thomas Bernhard's early stories is due from Seagull Books, distributed by the University of Chicago Press. The website provides the following information: "First published in German in 1967, these stories were written at the same time as Bernhard’s early novels Frost, Gargoyles, and The Lime Works, and they display the same obsessions, restlessness, and disarming mastery of language. Martin Chalmer’s outstanding translation, which renders the work in English for the first time, captures the essential personality of the work. The narrators of these stories lack the strength to do anything but listen and then write, the reader in turn becoming a captive listener, deciphering the traps laid by memory—and the mere words, the neverending words with which we try to pin it down. Words that are always close to driving the narrator crazy, but yet, as Bernhard writes 'not completely crazy.'"

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: blogosphere, thomas bernhard

PermalinkComments (1)Related PostsEmail to Friend

Thursday 29 October 2009

Steampunk

Anyone near Oxford should make the effort to head to the Museum of the History of Science's superb Steampunk exhibition. It is, we're told, "the world’s first exhibition of Steampunk art" and is a delight. One of the most enjoyable and surprising exhibitions I've seen in a very long time. Only two fairly small rooms, admittedly, but packed with some startling artefacts. Do it.

Imagine the technology of today with the aesthetic of Victorian science. From redesigned practical items to fantastical contraptions, this exhibition, curated by Art Donovan, showcases the work of eighteen Steampunk artists from across the globe.

Expect ’steam-powered’ computer mice, clockwork hearts, brass goggles and the latest state-of-the-Steampunk-art eye-pod (more...)

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: events

PermalinkComments (1)Related PostsEmail to Friend

Friday 23 October 2009

New translation of 'The Tin Drum'

Just out is a new translation, by Breon Mitchell, of Günter Grass's The Tin Drum -- to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Via the literary saloon, my attention is brought to Scott Esposito'a Q & A with Breon about the re-translation (over at Two Words).

The most powerful works of literature compel us to reread them—and often more than once. The effect they produce is a combination of linguistic artistry and richness of meaning. The Tin Drum treats universal themes (the father-son conflict, youth and art, sexual awakening, guilt and atonement) against the background of one of the most terrible moments of European history. The result is a stunning work of art—shocking and provocative, complex and innovative, richly rewarding more...

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: authors, language

PermalinkComments (0)Related PostsEmail to Friend

Thursday 22 October 2009

Neglected Classics at the BBC

The BBC's Open Book programme looks into some Neglected Classics:

There's nothing that Open Book likes more than browsing and discovering the forgotten treasures of the literary world - books that have been overlooked or become inexplicably out of vogue.

With Neglected Classics we're digging out some of the lost works and forgotten authors of the world of literature.

Ten of our best known authors have nominated the books that they feel most deserve to be re-read and reinstated onto our bookshelves.

We want you to vote for the title that most appeals to you and the winner will be dramatised on Radio 4 in 2010.

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: authors, internet

PermalinkComments (0)Related PostsEmail to Friend

Thursday 22 October 2009

The Cork-Lined Room: a new Proust blog

A new Proust-related blog is to launch next Monday:

You know you’ve been meaning to. You’re pretty sure that you’ve got a dusty copy of Swann’s Way sitting around somewhere. You’ve probably even read the book’s famous opening line, “For a long time I would go to bed early,” and thought to yourself, well, not now, maybe some other time.

That time has finally come. Next Monday, Publishing Perspectives is launching The Cork-Lined Room, a blog devoted to the reading, discussion and study of Proust’s masterpiece of 20th century literature, In Search of Lost Time.

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: authors, blogosphere

PermalinkComments (5)Related PostsEmail to Friend

Wednesday 21 October 2009

Luther Blissett is Wu Ming

You may recall Luther Blissett's Q from four or five years back. Well, because the Luther Blissett "shared name" is dead, the Italian anarchists who wrote Q under that moniker now write as Wu Ming. They have a new book out, called Manituana, following their earlier 54. More details about this via the Manituana website.

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: authors, internet, politics

PermalinkComments (5)Related PostsEmail to Friend

Monday 19 October 2009

The Catholic church is a force for good in the world: discuss!

I'm off out tonight to hear (and, hopefully, participate in) a debate between, on the one side, Archbishop John Onaiyekan (Roman Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, Nigeria) and Ann Widdecombe MP (Conservative MP) and, on t'other side, Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry. The proposal is: "The Catholic church is a force for good in the world." I suspect "a plague on both their houses" will be my considered view at the end of the affair, but it looks like it might be an interesting event nonetheless. Run by Intelligence Squared who seem to have quite a lot of decent looking events coming up.

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: personal, philosophy

PermalinkComments (10)Related PostsEmail to Friend

Monday 12 October 2009

The demand of reading

I have little idea where last week went. Apologies. I'm still trying to get used to the slightly mad rhythm of my new London life...

Back in May, I wrote a blog post called Like What You Like. In one of the comments, I said:

Liking whatever you like is a relativistic point about liking -- plenty of stuff out there, enjoy what you will. But my second point is a separate point, not an extension of my first, and it is an almost essentialist point noting that literature itself asks what literature is, and only literature can answer.

I wanted to come back to this again because it seems to me that (at least) two types of reading are being carried out by most readers most of the time. And only one of them is likely to allow readers to find what new literature might be out there now. I'm tempted to suggest that the two categories of reading could be called "reading for pleasure" and "reading seriously", but even to suggest as much strikes me as utterly absurd. I don't read for anything other than pleasure (although a deeper pleasure as opposed to a sugar-high might have to be conceded!) I wondered if "reading philosophically" versus "reading non-philosophically" might perhaps be the distinction, but that crumbles as soon as it is invoked. The suggestion that any reading is non-philosophical is risible. We've surely all got whiff of enough cultural studies to know that it is now widely recognised -- and bleedin' obvious -- that when folk are slumped in front of the telly watching some soap opera or other they are engaging with it on many different levels, and use it later to negotiate conversations about ethics, morals, narrative; same when they are reading an airport thriller. Both these attempts at describing these two types of reading also come perilously close to the idea that one type of reading is better than the other. Again, that strikes me as plainly daft.

In their excellent introduction to Maurice Blanchot, Ullrich Haase and William Large suggest that, particularly on the back of the thinking of Hegel (via Alexandre Kojève), Heidegger, and Nietzsche, and in (often silent) dialogue throughout his life with Bataille, Nancy, Derrida and Levinas, Blanchot has inherited a question...

... namely that of the finitude of our existence, expressing itself in a new, disturbing and seemingly meaningless experience of death. Here it is no longer the powerful subject that gives meaning to its world, but a passive human voice that listens to the anonymous voice of the other.

This means that the question of literature, in which at least for Blanchot this anonymity has its greatest force, is no longer a parochial question about values and tastes, but a directly philosophical question about the status of the human being, and that this question has a broader ethical and political significance.

This is the greatest impact of Blanchot's writings: to think about literature, to struggle with the question of literature, is to face the fundamental questions of our age.

The demand of literature, then. There is, thus, only one type of reading: reading! Something else is happening when we consume books, even if we think about them very seriously (our newspaper 'critics', our synopsis-writing friends in the blogosphere, myself often) or think about them hardly at all (our stereotype of a commuter reading his 'Dan Brown'). The continuum between active-passive, engaged-unengaged, is not where the demand is responded to. But it is that response, a response that should not need to be called anything other than reading, but is so much more than what we have begun to think reading merely need be, that is demanded of us if we want to begin to want "to think about literature, to struggle with the question of literature [and] to face the fundamental questions of our age."

Doubtless, there is sometimes a fearsome intelligence to the dinner-party guest who can hold forth about the latest Booker shortlist and their associated merits and demerits. And then there is someone, somewhere else, quietly reading in a corner, really reading, wowed and unnerved and silenced by the poetry of Celan. I've been impressed by that dinner-guest on many occasions (I think I may well have sometimes been a boorish version of that dinner-guest myself) and I have no doubt that s/he reads carefully, deeply, in an engaged and serious way. Equally, I have no doubt that, very often, they entirely miss the point not only of what they are reading at any particular time, but of what reading means and what a reader could or should be in response to Blanchot's demand -- or, rather, Blanchot's recognition of the demand of literature -- and away from the need either to see consuming texts as a legitimate leisure activity or a way to impress life's Greek chorus about your putative intelligence.

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: personal, philosophy

PermalinkComments (2)Related PostsEmail to Friend

Monday 05 October 2009

Musical Monday

A rainy and very busy Monday here... I have a few articles to put up on the site later today, and will do so as soon as I get a moment (should have been up already, actually; sorry 'bout that). In the meantime, I rather randomly took myself to one of North London's finer hostelries yesterday evening (The Lexington) and heard a very fine math rock / post rock band called Instruments doing their thing and doing it very well indeed. I wholeheartedly commend them to the House. They were very tight and remarkably funky for a post rock band. Their MySpace page does not quite do them justice, but it gives you a flavour. Personally, I'm very glad to have found them.

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: music

PermalinkComments (0)Related PostsEmail to Friend

Friday 02 October 2009

24 hour novel

Well, the world has been waiting for this, for sure (via the Future of the Book blog)!

Something is growing in South London... Spread the Word challenges writers to write and publish a book about London in just 24 hours

In collaboration with if:book, The Society of Young Publishers and CompletelyNovel.com, Spread the Word has commissioned The 24 Hour Book, a groundbreaking project to challenge a group of writers to write a new story about London in just 24 hours (more...)

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: book news

PermalinkComments (3)Related PostsEmail to Friend

Thursday 01 October 2009

Robert Chandler talks of Pushkin (tonight!)

Tonight, Thursday 1st October, at 7.00 p.m. at the Calder Bookshop (opposite The Young Vic; 51 The Cut, London SE1 8LF), Robert Chandler will be talking about his recent, short biography of Alexander Pushkin. Robert will talk about what he learned while writing his book, and also read passages of Pushkin's poetry and prose in English.

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: events, poetry

PermalinkComments (0)Related PostsEmail to Friend

Thursday 01 October 2009

Library Tapes

Slammed here today... Hoping to get Barry's piece about Orwell's 1984 up on the site later this evening. In the meantime, and proof that MySpace isn't entirely rubbish, I offer you Library Tapes.

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: music

PermalinkComments (0)Related PostsEmail to Friend