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One of the attractive features of writing one’s own blog is that one is free to state an opinion without spending a lot of time substantiating it with extraneous material. One can simply say “I think such-and-such” and then go ahead and say such-and-such. If somebody wants to contest what you’ve said, they can do so in the comments. At that point you can either defend your opinion, or not, depending on whether you find your reader’s objections to be interesting, or not.
In the following consideration of Cartesian Sonata and other Novellas by the amazing William H. Gass, I am going to cite a few passages that I particularly liked from the last of the four novellas contained in the volume. The title of the work is “The Master of Secret Revenges.”
The first three novellas are all excellent as well. Each is slightly different in form from the others, but also similar in that each is a character study. Here comes my first unsupported opinion: “The Master of Secret Revenges” is a study of ressentiment as exemplified by the title character, Luther Penner. Both the first and the last name of the protagonist (or anti-hero) are significant clues to the character’s significance (that would be unsupported opinion #2, if you’re going to number my transgressions.) He is a clever weakling who spends his life perpetrating increasingly grandiose acts of revenge against those whom he feels to be putting him down. Finally he is martyred in the production of his greatest of all revenges: that of founding a new religion, of which he is the prophet.
As a child, the precocious perpetual victim of schoolyard bullies, Luther Penner temporarily develops the ability to see the souls of his tormentors, from which he gleans the following insight:
We are born morally pure, Luther Penner realized, but life dirties us, and we darken over time, so a self that might have been once radiant within, lightening our skin and shining through our eyes, becomes besmirched by anger, fright, and pride, by pettiness and mean designs. Over time our inner sun will dim, we shall be less and less morally alive, and one day night will pull down its blind, and we shall do a Dirty which leaves us at last with no more guilt or remorse than a squirrel feels for stealing the birds’ seed, and we shall find ourselves finally without humor or indignation or passion or desire or any inner heat whatever. It was what was meant by “the dark night of the soul.” We shall be zombies of the spirit. Like politicians too cynical to bother feeling the cynic’s superiority or even showing the cynic’s sneer.
Luther Penner is projecting like a bandit there (#3), but we note also that he is employing the second person in expounding his nascent philosophy. The next excerpt, although expressing rank bigotry, is presented here because I find it to be, nonetheless, funny (#4). In addition to being funny, it beautifully demonstrates Penner’s understanding of pervasive ressentiment:
He didn’t like fairies much. But he did believe every homosexual was getting even with a parent or two. The gay guy has got his father’s balls in a basket and is carrying them to grandmother’s house to wait for the wolf, he said.
The final excerpt is taken from the book’s closing pages. It is spoken by the novella’s fictional narrator; a man who befriended Luther Penner while both were students at a junior college, and who later researches Penner’s life by collecting his writings and by obtaining an oral history from his family and associates:
…I believe Luther Penner presented us with a mordant yet magnificent metaphysics: life perceived not simply as if it were lived amid a maelstrom of conflicting and competing myths, but as if it were dressed up in illusions deliberately designed by those who have been previously misguided, and who are now getting even as only secret enemies secretly can. How many in one’s own home or neighborhood—to examine a small sample—have been betrayed by isms and ologies of one sort or other, have given money to nutcase causes, and squandered much of the precious time of their lives in vain spiritual pursuits?
It is difficult to argue with that. But, by all means, have at it if you can show evidence to the contrary.
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Showing posts with label William H. Gass. Show all posts
Showing posts with label William H. Gass. Show all posts
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Readings: A Natural Gass
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Some backstory: When I was growing up in Ann Arbor, I knew this kid named Johnny Jones. I knew him first as a member of my little league baseball team, when I was eleven years old. Then I lost sight of him for a few years, because he attended different schools that I did. I attended the public high school, but Johnny Jones went to the University of Michigan’s 12-grade laboratory school, known as “U High.” He was a star guard on their basketball team, and I saw him play a couple of times, because I had a friend from the neighborhood who was a student at U High.
Like me, Johnny Jones attended the University of Michigan, as an English major. In my freshman year at Michigan, I met the kid who had played center on the U High basketball team , and through him got back in touch with Johnny Jones. It turned out that Jones could play guitar. He did a better finger-pickin’, bottle-neckin’ version of “Panama Limited” than did Tom Rush, according to some. Jones was also wildly enthusiastic about the writings of a guy named William H. Gass. He was particularly enthralled by the novel Omensetter’s Luck. And then there was the story collection, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country. Going on the assumption that anybody who could drain a jumpshot and play guitar the way Johnny Jones could must also have superior judgment concerning matters of contemporary fiction, I eventually acquired and attempted to read both of those books. And I was disappointed. I didn’t get it. My estimation of Jones plunged below the radar.
Jump now to the present. Forty-five years have passed under the bridge. In the course of investigating the fiction of Stanley Elkin, I borrow from the library a short-story anthology entitled “Stories from the Sixties” edited by Elkin. The fourth story in the collection is “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country” by William H. Gass. Having developed an admiration for Elkin, I shrug and decide to give it a shot.
And it blows me away, folks. How could I have ever doubted a renaissance man like Johnny Jones? What was I thinking? This isn’t prose—it’s poetry; deep, insightful, poetic narrative. The set-up is this: the piece is narrated by man, presumably a poet, who is deep in contemplation of his hometown, described as “B… a small town fastened to a field in Indiana.” The story is divided into sections, titled “A Place” or “Weather” or “My House” or “A Person” etc. The one I have chosen to excerpt, I have chosen because, although it was first published in 1967, it still so well fits what might be called “the American condition." Replace the reference to the John Birch Society, with a reference to the Tea Party, and you could publish this in next week’s edition of Time Magazine:
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxPOLITICS
Sports, politics, and religion are the three passions of the badly educated. They are the Midwest’s open sores. Ugly to see, a source of constant discontent, they sap the body’s strength. Appalling quantities of money, time, and energy are wasted on them. The rural mind is narrow, passionate, and reckless on these matters. Greed, however shortsighted and direct, will not alone account for it. I have known men, for instance, who for years have voted squarely against their interests. Nor have I ever noticed that their surly Christian views prevented them from urging forward the smithereening, say, of Russia, China, Cuba, or Korea. And they tend to back their country like they back their local team: they have a fanatical desire to win; yelling is their forte; and if things go badly, they are inclined to sack the coach. All in all, then, Birch is good name. It stands for the bigot’s stick, the wild-child-tamer’s cane.
This is not the most poetic section of the story. But I don't want to spoil those for you. Surely, you won't want to waste 45 years as I did; and based on the recommendation of Johnny Jones, you will want to read those for yourself.
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Some backstory: When I was growing up in Ann Arbor, I knew this kid named Johnny Jones. I knew him first as a member of my little league baseball team, when I was eleven years old. Then I lost sight of him for a few years, because he attended different schools that I did. I attended the public high school, but Johnny Jones went to the University of Michigan’s 12-grade laboratory school, known as “U High.” He was a star guard on their basketball team, and I saw him play a couple of times, because I had a friend from the neighborhood who was a student at U High.
Like me, Johnny Jones attended the University of Michigan, as an English major. In my freshman year at Michigan, I met the kid who had played center on the U High basketball team , and through him got back in touch with Johnny Jones. It turned out that Jones could play guitar. He did a better finger-pickin’, bottle-neckin’ version of “Panama Limited” than did Tom Rush, according to some. Jones was also wildly enthusiastic about the writings of a guy named William H. Gass. He was particularly enthralled by the novel Omensetter’s Luck. And then there was the story collection, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country. Going on the assumption that anybody who could drain a jumpshot and play guitar the way Johnny Jones could must also have superior judgment concerning matters of contemporary fiction, I eventually acquired and attempted to read both of those books. And I was disappointed. I didn’t get it. My estimation of Jones plunged below the radar.
Jump now to the present. Forty-five years have passed under the bridge. In the course of investigating the fiction of Stanley Elkin, I borrow from the library a short-story anthology entitled “Stories from the Sixties” edited by Elkin. The fourth story in the collection is “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country” by William H. Gass. Having developed an admiration for Elkin, I shrug and decide to give it a shot.
And it blows me away, folks. How could I have ever doubted a renaissance man like Johnny Jones? What was I thinking? This isn’t prose—it’s poetry; deep, insightful, poetic narrative. The set-up is this: the piece is narrated by man, presumably a poet, who is deep in contemplation of his hometown, described as “B… a small town fastened to a field in Indiana.” The story is divided into sections, titled “A Place” or “Weather” or “My House” or “A Person” etc. The one I have chosen to excerpt, I have chosen because, although it was first published in 1967, it still so well fits what might be called “the American condition." Replace the reference to the John Birch Society, with a reference to the Tea Party, and you could publish this in next week’s edition of Time Magazine:
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxPOLITICS
Sports, politics, and religion are the three passions of the badly educated. They are the Midwest’s open sores. Ugly to see, a source of constant discontent, they sap the body’s strength. Appalling quantities of money, time, and energy are wasted on them. The rural mind is narrow, passionate, and reckless on these matters. Greed, however shortsighted and direct, will not alone account for it. I have known men, for instance, who for years have voted squarely against their interests. Nor have I ever noticed that their surly Christian views prevented them from urging forward the smithereening, say, of Russia, China, Cuba, or Korea. And they tend to back their country like they back their local team: they have a fanatical desire to win; yelling is their forte; and if things go badly, they are inclined to sack the coach. All in all, then, Birch is good name. It stands for the bigot’s stick, the wild-child-tamer’s cane.
This is not the most poetic section of the story. But I don't want to spoil those for you. Surely, you won't want to waste 45 years as I did; and based on the recommendation of Johnny Jones, you will want to read those for yourself.
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