Vengeful Literature
I was reading William Gass write about writing out of anger or getting even. I found this interesting as I thought it was an underlying reason for many artists, but hardly admitted. Michiko Kakutani, reviewing Frank McCourt's second book, faulted the anger in the book. Cynthia Ozick in a controversy which I only heard about from a Professor based "the Cannibal Galaxy" on a the real-life principal of her daughter's school, his character awful and without vision, though very educated and intellectual. Is real literature supposed to rise above these petty sub-emotions of anger etc? And how about Kafka? A few of his short stories have a seething rage, though civilized.
July 15th, 2008 at 10:11 am
min hameytzar,
very good question, some would insist that author’s life, his motivations etc should never be considered when interpreting his work. I am not with those people. It seems to be a fact that some great literaure is partially an attempt to get even. It is said that in herzog Below wanted to settle score with valentine Gersbach, a real life person. Gersbach(I don’t know his real name) wrote his version of events, but his book is completely unknown, probably not worth reading. The point is that great writer can carry his “low” mtivations beyond and create a great work of art, like Herzog. Another example is Camus’s the Fall, where Jean Baptiste Clemence is modelled after Sartre, a despicable character.Dostoyevsky wrote many of his books cuz he needed quick cash, so what?
July 15th, 2008 at 11:25 am
then there are the spousal feuds, e.g. philip proth writing gainst his wife & vice versa.
much journalistic writing is in this vein. only l’achar moysom do we get to peer into e.g. kerouac’s yomanim & see what he really felt about his “friends.”
there seems to be a nervous stress built up in the head & fingers when the writer is frustrated/angry which is relieved by writing/typing. (there are sexual connotations here too, ala yoyseph & eyshes poytifar.)
as when someone i know was typing furiously ca. 1995 & literally smashed the keyboard apart.
we also must distinguish b/w the author’s rage & the rage of the author’s character, e.g. the aforementioned “cannibal galaxy” vs. “envy; or, yiddish in america.”
July 15th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Well, if it is taken as inspiration than why would it be a problem (i once posted here a thing about how creativity is a way artists deal with pain etc but transforming it into something eternal - in that line of thinking it can be a great way to “eternalize” revenge too). But if the anger ot urge for revenge etc. take over than it can sometimes end up being crap…
As kolbayar wrote, the artist takes the banal and transmutes it into something universal or meaningful beyond the individual – isn’t that the definition of art?
But you can still argue that the artist’s motivations and experiences should not come into play when interpreting the work itself…
July 15th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
“It is said that in herzog Below wanted to settle score with valentine Gersbach, a real life person. Gersbach(I don’t know his real name) wrote his version of events, but his book is completely unknown, probably not worth reading.”
I never knew that; just about Humboldt’s Gift and Delmore S. I read Hertzog and I didn’t like it. I know I can get crucified by almost every intellectual, but tthat is how I feel. Auggie March was cute. henderson the Rain King was funny. But Herzog had way too muc philosophy for a novel, especially those long boring letters he writes to newspapers. That takke reminds me of the character in Anna Karenina, who writes about serfdom…
July 15th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
about Gersbach (god bless wiki)
“The character of Valentine Gersbach is based on Jack Ludwig, a long-time friend of Bellow who had an affair with Bellow’s second wife, Sondra.”
July 16th, 2008 at 10:39 am
You mean Sviazhky…writing all about redundancy of serfdom and living off it. You compare this to herzog? I think this is an unfair reductionsit gesture:”intellectuals are full of it, because they inner convictions are diffrenent from their practice”. Yes, Herzog is suspended between those two poles, inner desires and “outer” convictions. Manichean bias, contempt for matter is a point of departure for both Below and Roth, as it is for the rest of western literature. “Herzog thought himself to be moralist, but the shape of woman’s breasts still mattered to him. ” But the fundamental diffrerence between him and Sviazhky or even Kepesh is that he undertakes the struggle to “whiten the red animal borshtch” as Agushewitz writes. Even if he ends up “under a veil of Maya”, Herzog IS a moralsit. In this resides the most FUNDAMENTAL metrhafisical gesture-to reach beyond the obvious, the mundane, not resign to the “fall into the quotidian”. The sublime lies in that vary leap. I know you like the dionysian characters, like kepesh, like Sabbath. But what do they tell you? That “man must dedicate himself to fucking like monk dedicates himself to God”. Kepesh wants to see Kafka’s prostitute’s crotch. At least Below stops at the second base…..
July 17th, 2008 at 10:50 am
To me the sections with the letters are boring. I did enjoy the sections with Gresbach and other parts. I don’t know if my requisite for a great work follows an exclusive dionisian criteria. Anna Karenina is to date my all-time favorite novel. it is just that part with the letters that I find boring. Is Philip Roth Dionisian? and another favorite of mine, Cynthia Ozick, who is an Orthodox Jew is hardly Dionisian.
A mutual friend once described Raish Lokish as a Jewish Dionisian.
Another question: does everybody consider morality to be sublime? I would think Gide and Genet would say the opposite.
July 17th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Mimaamakim,
I never said that your requisite for a great work is dionisian element. I said that you liked the dionosian characters, especially dionisian Jews. I said that cuz you wrote so yourself here on the cow some time ago.
I was only pointing out some dionisian elemnts in p.roth to expose the components of our discussion, to oppose his way of dealing with manichean obsession to the way Bellow dealt with it. No western writer is purely dionisian.
Your last question. I never meant sublime=morality. I meant that the sublime resides in the moment Sisiphus’s stone strarts falling back down, but he resolves to attempt to roll it up once again, in the moment when the immoralist realizes that he’s killing his wife and resolves to keep doing it. The sublime is a behinas “fun dested vegen”. Yes reality is idiotic, even absurd, yet we will seek beyond it. The sublime is the refusal to accept the immediate reality as final. It is a leap of our skin into the beyond, even if it ends up in failure.
July 17th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
gide, good hooreh
genet, not a man deomar by me
July 17th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
But Gide considered Genet to be a genius. I can’t stand Gide. Too much of an effeminate fag for me. Oscar Wilde I can handle.
July 17th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Stam, about Camus, of L’etranger I always jealous. He seemed to have control over feeling and to really not care because it so ridiculous and absurd. when I read it I thought there must be other underlying motives, not even sub-conscious, and goings on in his mind: fears anxieties, hopes, desires. When Camus’ diaries were published, it revealed a man with the mixed and complex emotions, very different of the man he wished to create or be or both. Or is the work of art separate from the creator - what a load of crock.
July 17th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
It seems the book is more about the absurdities of the reactions of everyone else than an exploration of the motives of the protagonist…he is the vacuum which throws their essential emptiness into relief…ad kan about the work of art itself. As for Camus, you can say it reflects his own struggle against the absurdities he found within himself…
(On another level it is quite possible that Meursault has feelings (though maybe not the feelings people expect him to have) but the novel is about the expectations and interactions between people and so we don’t see any eternal reactions…because essentially such a character does not and cannot exist…and that is the question - why not?)
July 17th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
I feel the same way about the work of art the artist. To me this whole formalist fetish of independence of the novel is total crap, not to mention the perversion of “there’s nothing outside text”. I am convinced of that ever since I read Lev Shestov’s book on Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche. He points discovers the underlying underground man under Alosha, father Zosima, Sonia. A man who saw all his convictions and beliefs in “the beautiful and the sublime” crumble, canot believe in the possibility of father Zosima.
I agree with atgate, that Meursault cannot exist. And why? because of Sisyphus, because Camus expect Sisyphus to be happy, when he discovers within himself the desire to undertake the absurd task once again. Absurdity for Camus does not have the final word. It’s been said that Camus rejected God out of love, because he could not stand his abandonment. I am with you de profundis on giving camus all the attention the noblest minds need and deserve.
He was a camplicated noble and profound soul, unlike the asshole Sartre.
July 21st, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Kolbayar,
The criticism of text as words on a page does demand “nothing but the text.” Of course there are things outside the text but they have no relevance for an interpretation of the text qua text. You can do it, but then it is not literary criticisms but epis andersh engantzen…
I liked The Stranger but wasn’t blown away…he just plays out the idea within a narrative structure…but no big chidushim…
Btw, regarding The Myth, (and a mutual friend agrees with me on this,) his kashis are way better than any of his terutzim and in a big way you can say that Camus coped-out…
July 21st, 2008 at 1:10 pm
atgate
point 1) and 2)
פשיטא
re point 3) also פשיטא
ועוד shestov says it too
July 22nd, 2008 at 11:46 am
I have yet to read anything of his…
I was looking through Camus’ Notebooks and found the following piece which connects The Stanger and The Myth:
On the Absurd?
There is only one case in which despair is pure: that of the man sentenced to death. (May I be allowed a short illustration?) A man driven to despair by love might be asked if he wanted to be guillotined on the following day and would refuse. Because of the horror of the punishment? Yes. But here, the horror springs from the complete certainty of what is going to happen – or rather, from the mathematical element which creates this certainty. Here the Absurd is perfectly clear. It is the opposite of irrationality. It is the plain and simple truth. What is and would be irrational is the fleeting hope, itself already near to death, that it is all going to stop and that this death can be avoided. But this is not what is absurd. The truth of the matter is that they are going to chop his head off while he knows what is happening – at the very moment when his whole mind is concentrated on the fact that his head is going to be chopped off.
Kirilov is right. To commit suicide is to prove that one is free. And there is a simple solution to the problem of liberty. Men have the illusion that they are free. But when they are sentenced to death they lose the illusion. The whole problem lies in the reality of illusion.
(Pg. 115-16)