Readings: A Sop for Philosophers

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Here is an excerpt from author Robert Coover’s exemplary postmodernist book of fictions, Pricksongs and Descants, presented here as a critical comment on hyper-philosophizing bloggers and hairsplitting combox nitpickers—not excluding myself—and the tangled argumentative webs we all weave. The excerpt is from part 5, entitled “Klee Dead” of the narrative, Seven Exemplary Fictions.

As for Wilbur Klee, I’ve not much more to say about him either, you’ll be glad to know, just this: that he jumped from a high place and is now dead. I think you can take my word for it. The proof is, as it were, in the pudding. Need I tell you from what high place? Your questions, friend, are foolish, disease of the western mind. On the other hand, if you wish to assume a cause-and-effect relationship—that he is dead because he jumped from a high place—well, you are free to do so, I confess it has occurred to me more than once and has colored my whole narration. Certainly, there is some relationship: the remains of Klee, still moist, are splattered out in their now several and discontinuous parts from a point directly below the high place from which he jumped only a moment before. But that’s as far as I’ll go, thank you. I refuse to be inveigled into any of the almost endless and no doubt learned arguments which so gratify and absorb the nation’s savants. I don’t mean to belittle, a man must take his pleasures where he finds them, it’s only that, if I weren’t careful, one would think before they’d had done with me that Klee had died to save physics. That Klee is dead, however, leaves less room for dissent: he’ll never be the same again and only the worst sort of morbid emotionalism could imagine a suitable future for him in his present condition. So here is where I’ll stand my ground: Klee is dead. As for the rest of it, if you wish to believe as I do that he took his own life, fine! It certainly will make it easier for me as we wind this up. But I won’t be dogmatic about it.

NB: the phrase “disease of the western mind”.

Also consider, as a core element in my use of this excerpt as a critical comment on typical blog comment threads, Coover's clause, "...one would think before they'd had done with me that Klee had died to save physics."

Do you catch my drift here?
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Reflections: Bedfellas

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Hear the Good News! If you can rid yourself politically of those butchers who advocate reproductive rights for women, you will rid yourself at the same time of fairies in the barracks and at the altar; you will purge those peaceniks who would rather live under a caliphate than defend their nation’s honor; you will cleanse this land of the godless socialists who would use YOUR money to feed, house, clothe and heal the undeserving poor, and who would force your children to swim with Negroes and hear Spanish spoken in the public schools by illegal aliens.

Best of all, each of these things can be accomplished without your ever having to even think about the face on the poster taped to the inside of the closet door in that dark back room of the place where you live...
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Readings: Don't Look Back

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Franz Kafka’s Zürau Aphorisms differ from most of his other writings in several ways. Two important deviations from Kafka’s normal practice found in these aphorisms are that: 1) the aphorisms deal directly with matters of the spirit; and 2) while Kafka normally wrote in notebooks, in great run-on bursts of prose, the aphorisms were discovered to have been neatly inscribed, one to a page, on separate, loose sheets of paper, and consecutively numbered.

This morning I encountered the aphorism numbered 106. It is more wordy than most of the others. Also, unlike the majority of the others, it is divided into two sections.

In contemplating the meaning of aphorism number 106, I have found it instructive to go back and to consider the first section in light of the second, reversing their order. The second section is:

Can you know anything that is not deception? Once deception was destroyed, you wouldn’t be able to look, at the risk of turning into a pillar of salt.

Tough stuff. So, keeping that under your tongue, consider the longer first section:

Humility gives everyone, even the lonely and the desperate, his strongest tie to his fellow men. Immediately and spontaneously, too, albeit only if the humility is complete and lasting. It does so because it is the language of prayer and is both worship and tie. The relationship to one’s fellow man is the relationship of prayer; the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; out of prayer is drawn the strength with which to strive.
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Can you know anything that is not deception? Once deception was destroyed, you wouldn’t be able to look, at the risk of turning into a pillar of salt.

Well, can you, huh?

No, I didn’t think so. Neither you, nor I.
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Reflections: On Humility and Bathroom Etiquette

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The following two excerpts seem to be complementary:

1. Description of the work-life of a men’s room attendant, from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace:

The trick of his demeanor is to appear only provisionally there, to exist all and only if needed. Aid without intrusion. Service without servant. No man wants to know another man can smell him. Millionaires who do not tip. Natty men who splatter the bowls and tip a nickel. Heirs who steal towels. Tycoons who pick their noses with their thumb. Philanthropists who throw cigar butts on the floor. Self-made men who spit in the sink. Wildly rich men who do not flush and without a thought leave it to someone else to flush because this is literally what they are used to – the old saw Would you do this at home.

2. A briefer, but more universal, description of the proper attitude towards man's lot in life, from The Zürau Aphorisms of Franz Kafka, No. 52:

In the struggle between yourself and the world, hold the world’s coat.

In other words, in this life, a little humility is called for.
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Readings: On Cosmic Distance

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Having previously conjoined the names of Franz Kafka and Simone Weil here, I was struck—when reading the essay on Kafka in the Joyce Carol Oates book, New Heaven, New Earth—by the similarity of the following passage excerpted from Kafka’s "A Message from the Emperor," to the passage below it, from Simone Weil’s Gravity and Grace.

First, Kafka:

The emperor…has sent a message to you, the humble subject, the insignificant shadow cowering in the remotest distance before the imperial sun…The messenger immediately sets out on his journey; a powerful, an indefatigable man; now pushing with his right arm, now with his left, he cleaves a way for himself through the throng… But the multitudes are so vast; their numbers have no end. …how vainly does he wear out his strength… Nobody could fight his way through here, least of all one with a message from a dead man. But you sit at your window when evening falls and dream it to yourself.

Now, Weil:

God wears himself out through the infinite thickness of time and space in order to reach the soul and to captivate it. If it allows a pure and utter consent (though brief as a lightening flash) to be torn from it, then God conquers that soul. And when it has come entirely his he abandons it. He leaves it completely alone and it has in its turn, but gropingly, to cross the infinite thickness of time and space in search of him whom it loves. It is thus that the soul, starting from the opposite end, makes the same journey that God made towards it. And that is the cross.

…the sense of distance; the sense of cosmic loneliness; the sense, nonetheless, of the urgency of the journey that each passage evokes…
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Quote du Jour: A Shadow World?

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This is worth thinking about:

The joys of this life are not its joys, but our fear of climbing into a higher life; the torments of this life are not its torments, but our self-torment on account of this fear.

~ Franz Kafka, Zürau Aphorisms, No. 96; tr. Michael Hofmann
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Reflections: Did Michael Jackson Die for Your Sins?

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I will state at the outset that I am not a fan of pop music; my tastes run much more to rock, blues, jazz, and R&B. I have never purchased a Michael Jackson recording, and can't recall ever having voluntarily listened to a whole Michael Jackson song. Involuntary exposure has, however, inevitably, been considerable.

All disclaimers out of the way, having watched several hours of MJ coverage last night, I've become convinced of the high intelligence beneath the surface weirdness of the guy. What is not clear to me is to what degree that intelligence was in contact with reality. If, for instance, the Jackson family father was truly the brutal monster that Michael portrays, why wasn't he stopped? If Michael is the biological father of "his" children, why do none of them show any physical evidence of being mixed-race children? Does he believe that he is the father? How can he believe that his behavior with young boys was appropriate even if there truly was no sex involved? Earth to Michael!

Michael Jackson has many high profile protectors and defenders and I have to respect their obvious love for Michael as being based on very real positive qualities which transcend his musical genius. That said, why did they enable his unacceptable conduct and his debilitating drug use? Did they all need him more than he needed them? Were they afraid to lose him if they confronted him with it? Liza, for one, knows all about drug dependency, from both first- and second-hand experience in her own life. Where was she in all of this?

It would seem that Michael Jackson most resembles Elvis in having been surrounded by enablers: every important person in his life can be reduced to the status of a hanger-on by his/her inability to manifest and enact any life-saving tough love for the poor man.

Finally then, the question becomes: would Michael (Off the Wall) have been Michael (Thriller) without that tragic element? Did he have to live as he lived (Bad) in order to satisfy our cultural jones (Dangerous) for the sensational? Did Michael Jackson need to die for our collective sins?
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