The Quickening Maze – Adam Foulds

A breezy book, easy to read and a unique and enjoyable style. I really hope he wins the Booker. I finished this book last tuesday and have not had a chance to write at all since then.

Well it is about this poet – John Clare, who is in a mental institution. Tennyson arrives in the neighbourhood with his brother and admits him in the same institution. (Yes! I mean the poet Alfred Tennyson. The author has beautifully blended the fact and fiction.) The paths of the two contemporary poets never cross really. But their lives are interwoven with the rest of the characters.

Perceptions are created and dispelled by the author. The hue of John Clare’s character has several variations throughout the book. One begins to empathize with him towards the end. Whereas Tennyson’s life is as amorphous and as dreamy as Tennyson himself. The Doctor’s (Dr. Mathew Allen who runs the institution) daughter falls in love with Tennyson and expresses herself to him. I love the way he has subtly dealt with the subject. Tennyson’s non-reaction explains it all. He simply does not understand that girl in the state of mind he is in.

In fact, the entire story is filled with subtleties. Margaret, an inmate, who thinks she is actually Mary, John Clare who thinks that Mary (his childhood sweetheart) is the one he is married to and not his own wife and the event that brings them together. Yet, John Clare yearns for his freedom to live with his real wife and kids. Also the part where Tennyson is preparing for his nobel prize is beautifully written. It is mind blowing the simplicity with which the author engages you in the scene and fires your imagination.

The author has intricately drawn a contrast between the good and the bad and the ugly (forgive my cliche!).  The man i.e. John Clare is incoherent, thinks he is Lord Byron, yet can see that the Caretaker of the inmates is abusing his power and is taking undue advantage of Mary. He gets out of the institution and also saves the girl whom he earlier thought was Mary (the childhood sweetheart) with the knowledge that she is not a part of his fantasies and desires. The supplosedly sane individuals like the caretaker, have crooked minds filled with evil as is demonstrated by the one incident which the author describes.

The title is apt. The Quickening Maze – is that which John Clare believes is engulfing him pushing him to ingeniously procure his freedom – the very maze that Tennyson is unable to see.

The Holocaust – An Essay by an Ignoramous

“It is as if, after a night of terrible dreams, one looked around the world, defeated, helpless.” – Imre Kertesz

One definitely cannot imagine what the victims of Aushwitz would have gone through. Of course, there is abundant literature on the subject and we get different views in each piece of work. I am going to outline the various things I have read or seen in that connection and may be reflect on the subject.

My first exposure to the Nazi treatment of Jews, obviously apart from word of mouth, came from The Odessa File by Fredrick Foresyth. He is, of course, a master story teller and the book recounts through the diary of one person who commits suicide and the horrors that the concentration camps were. Of course, then I was too young to understand the concept of mass killings or genocide. Let’s just say my sensitivities weren’t that developed.

There was one movie titled “Life is Beautiful” which put a positive spin on the gory past. It was about an intelligent Jew who refuses to let his son despair and manages to convince him that all this was but a game and if they won, they would be rewarded with a big tank. The bleak and horrifying situation around the concentration camp is turned into a game and despite everything, we can not help but smile at the antics of the Protagonist. The child ultimately is freed and one can’t help but feel joyous.

Then, years later I saw Schindler’s List. The movie moved me in many ways and I got a glimpse of what a horror the whole situation actually was. The abuse of power by one man as an example of all the Commanders of the concentration camps who device ingenious ways to torture people. Strangely these persons/German commanders find ways to benefit themselves in the midst of all this. Of course, we see how Schindler manages to let several escape and the historic list actually is the reason for the survival of the entire Jewish community.

Then I watched (not read) Sophie’s Choice. It is an intricate story of a young polish woman who was sent away without reason and without any explanation with her children. Towards the end of the story we learn that Sophie’s choice really relates to her having to make a choice between her two children – to be killed. She ultimately loses both her children and comes to be cared by a mentally challenged person.

An extremely varied perspective is that of “The Reader”, from the eyes of those who were part of the regime, and wish to continue a normal life. The trial, the embarrassment of the protagonist and her experiences at the time. She got little children to read to her before she sent them away! Was she postponing their destiny or was merely arbitrarily using her powers to put an end to their lives? No one can really tell.

I started writing this post in February and then shelved it. However, for some reason I saved it. Yesterday I watched Valkyrie, the movie. This was another perspective. Well, more than a perspective it was an example of hope. It is touching what some German Commanders and Generals tried to achieve for their Germany, who were sensitive to the obnoxious ways of Hitler.
They almost had him. But Hitler was not to be deceived and each of the members of the Valkyrie Operation was shot dead or hung to death.

Of all that I have read and heard of the Holocaust so far, Imre Kertesz’s one sentence (supra) summarises the anguish perfectly. It is difficult to say whose anguish it is – the sufferers, the people who caused the suffering, the silent witnesses or the generation that abhors the silent witnesses.

I wonder what was the command Hitler had over the people. Can a mass of people really, truly believe in the extermination of an entire race? Hitler’s antipathy towards the Jews is really indiscernible. Today, can a Hitler pull something off like that?

Today, possibly we are too factionalised for something like the Holocaust to happen. My only question is, are we today protected against such tyranny were it to be perpetrated by another mad man. Is it even today a possibility? I shudder to think, yes. Only it is a different set of people with a different agenda. Can we protect ourselves? Can we protect our next generation?

I shudder when I think, another holocaust is not impossible.

Coetzee – My favourite author of 2008

Of all that I have read and all the new authors that I had read in 2008, the one author who took me by surprise and affected me most was Coetzee.  The first book that I had occasion to read was “The Life and Times of Michael K.”

It seemed to me that the book was Michael K’s autobiography.  The book is a about a simple SouthAfrican/ African man and his attempts to live a life of freedom, choice and respect. Coetzee’s choice of words, the prefect description were the highlights of the book. Reading it was like walking on a stream of water. The reader is aware of the fluidity of the stream below him, yet the firmness of the surface allows him to tread over it. Over all it was a great experience.

Immediately, after “K” I picked up “Youth”.  I was amazed at the distinction in the language, descriptions of the setting and the people involved. This book is about a young man, a boy who has unfulfilled aspirations and in the end comes to terms with it. Coetzee suddenly transforms himself to an immigrant in London. I am not sure if any other author could have written a similar plot that would interest me.

After a break, I read, the “Master of Petersburg”.  The novel is of course based in Russia, Petersburg more specifically and Coetzee takes you to Russia with him. He spins a romantic story, that of a father and son. He builds a plot and as you watch in amazement, leads the protagonist to his fate. I am not sure whether the story is biographical. All I know is that it perfectly fits his mysterious hero – Fyodor Dostoevesky.

That the same person could write so beautifully three absolutely different novels in three unconnected settings is a display of his genius. I discovered a genius. I discovered creativity. I discovered all of this in 2008.

THE AGE OF REASON

Mathieu was truly condemned to be free.  Freedom does not mean freedom from one government or another. Mathieu was living in an ultra-communist society.  However, that did not change the nature of his freedom.

Mathieu is an example of why ‘freedom’ is not really sacrosanct as some make it out to be. Why some? Most make it out to be sacrosanct. It is the ultimate gift! It is worth dying for! Really? Think again.  Sartre was most misunderstood as was his phrase – Man is condemned to be free.  I imagine him saying it with a smirk, a chuckle and a cigarette dangling from his lips standing in a crowded subway, the crowd oblivious to his presence – he is thinking in his head and shakes his head and laughs – Man is condemned to be free.

While I was reading the book, I wondered why I was reading it. I heard something about a stream of consciousness and how that was Sartre’s style.  I couldn’t buy it. I knew there was something treasured, like a pearl from the ocean, something tiny that would come out of the whole exercise of reading about one man’s futility.  And then there it was, that sentence, that said it all. If Sartre were alive, I would go up to him and say, ye I get ya! And I am sure we would burst out laughing.

I laugh because there are very few people who can handle the weight of freedom. Very few who know what they really want. I realised this is the success formula for marriage I have been looking for. Being from India, I have seen loads of arranged marriages, and they all lack just one thing. Being together because the couple wants to, not just because they have to or because daddy said so and he/she never said no, because they had to. A couple mus want to be together and every moment spent together should be a conscious choice of wanting to be together.

The WEIGHT that freedom is. It weighs upon your shoulder, waiting for you to command, to say action, to give direction. Most people use their freedom to do what they feel like, at an impulse, but the real freedom is the making the difficult choice. Job, marriage, kids, career, hobby, wife, chilling, travelling. The list is endless, the choices limitless and man is in fact CONDEMNED to be free.

I have often wondered, why I who so violently protects my freedom is giving it away today. Is it for love? Is it for happiness? No, its because I want to and I know now that no other reason can come close.

I think its the same of people who are passionate about their jobs. Some say its just a job and others go all the way. Going all the way is the choice you make. You are free to go in at 9 and leave at 5, but what you make of it is your freedom. Do I work because my boss expects me to or do I work because I want to? Most times its the latter, sometimes its the former.

I know most people would tell me this is a warped connection. But I can see how Ayn Rand defined her characters. Her strongest characters were people who made conscious choices, exercised their freedom and lived by it. She distinguished her weaker characters as those who acted for no reason at all and she lets you choose. You become a powerful reader with Rand. You get the freedom to choose.

Romanticist Empericism

“Freedom posits free will; that is self evident. But Will can only operate when there is first a motive. No motive, no willing.  But motive is a matter of belief; you would not want to do anything unless you believed it possible and meaningful.  And belief must be belief in the existence of something; that is to say it concerns what is real.  So ultimately, freedom depends upon the real.  The outsider’s sense of unreality cuts off his freedom from the root.  It is as impossible to exercise freedom at the root.  It is as impossible to exercise freedom in an unreal world as it is to jump while you are falling.” 

I read this in the “Outsider” by Colin Wilson, a self educated man with insight that no education can guarantee.  He, himself becomes the example of free thinking and free will which is unconditioned by modern education.

However, that is not the point I seek to make here.  The problem of free will is impossible to solve without first understanding what “will” is.  It is the classic Shakespearean phrase – “What would you?” which becomes the real question.  The human will is not known to man in its purest form, but is infact clouded and convoluted by conditioning of education, society and so on.  Therefore, real freedom cannot be achieved by ordinary mediocre mortals, for any amount of freedom in their unreal world is also tainted with unreality - just as felt by the protagonist of the Stranger (Camus). 

It is an interesting thought that I stumbled upon while looking at orchids.  Every orchid has a distinct colour and distinct smell which is meant to attract a particular kind of insect in order that pollination takes place.  This implies that for every flower, there is an insect and for every insect there is a flower.  Similarly for every animal there is a certain plant or other animal which completes what is known as the food chain and creates a sort of ecological balance.  Man however, is the only creature who has the power and ability to create i.e. the power to take material and make something out of it.  Therefore man is the only one who could be good, bad, better and best.  No other animal can acquire these adjectives and if at all it will be wiped out in accordance with the survival of the fittest concept.  Man is the only one who protects his weak.  Is this a virtue? This though an important question is not the discussion today.

Thus, man himself is a disturbance in nature as he does not have a perfect balance in it.  He exploits nature because his mind gives him the ideas and his mind can think as compared to the other animals and creatures who live in harmony with nature.  Thus, man’s highest goal should be the seeking and finding of harmony with nature, whether you call it “salvation” or “nirvana”.  Unfortunately, man is unable at his lowest level i.e. the mediocre man who shies from thinking – to be at such harmony.  The good news is that there are people who have achieved that and who teach it to the world.  Even Ouspensky explains that the persons who recognize this need a teacher who will first make them unlearn everything they have learnt and show them the path to harmony.

But, the predicament of the person in an unreal world who wishes to be free and experience reality is the same as a blind man seeing colours.  A blind man who has suddenly gained vision would trust you when you point to something and say it is green, because no matter how much he is educated, he has never seen and sight is a novelty.  Similarly, the person seeking emancipation must have faith in his teacher like a blind man for their predicaments are not greatly different.  This is my opinion is true faith which though most scorn as blind, cannot but be so.

IMMUNITY FROM REASON?

“Science is not for the benefit of scientists, but for the benefit of humanity.” – Louis Pasteur (1870)

The above is what Pasteur tells his wife who worries that once his vaccine is seen to be successful, he will have no respite. Little did she know that the resistance to change especially of a set of beliefs comes much after the empirical evidence provided by the experimenter is established beyond doubt. We do not acknowledge our saints before we have burnt them at their own stake. Until then genius is met only by scorn.

When I had heard the condemnation of Pasteur by the French monarchy, I cannot but draw an analogy with Ibsen’s play – “An Enemy of the People”. Both lived around the same time period. In fact, his play is a parallel of the life of Louis Pasteur. Ibsen wrote the play in 1877 just a decade after Pasteur was condemned to leave Paris and settle down in the village of Arbois (where he experimented on the first vaccine for Anthrax). Dr. Stockmann was scoffed at for suggesting that their baths were polluted, just as Louis Pasteur was condemned for suggesting that the doctors who did not rid themselves of germs were actually killing their own patients! The concept of an organism which was a ten thousand times smaller than the humans could not affect humans!

In this age of virus, vaccine and antibiotic we have come to accept that we live in a world full of microbes, the very concept that was scoffed at as late as 1870s. The genius was driven to exile. Shaw follows Ibsen’s streak in believing that all genius is misunderstood and the imbeciles often decide public opinion. Ibsen also proves to you that the multitude is always wrong and science should not suffer at the hands of the common multitude. Shaw’s Joan of Arc meets her tragic death where she was burnt as a heretic. Shew preached exactly those sentiments that run all over the world – nationalism.

It brings us to the postulate – “No man is understood in his own times”. I understand Shaw and Ibsen’s disillusionment with the masses. For every genius existing, it takes another to recognize him, otherwise he will be scorned. However, Pasteur was recognized in his own times. The obstinate and proud academy of science succumbed to his genius. The chemist became a doctor! Though I understand the disillusionment of Shaw and Ibsen, I do not agree with them.

All Men Are Liars – Ouspensky

“To comment on the last paragraph: If you are writing and FULLY conscious of the fact that you are writing, can you still be writing? The same goes for reading. Once you become conscious of doing the activity, you are no longer “doing” it. I believe Sartre wrote on that, but I may be mistaken.” This was a comment to a previous post.
I was reading Ouspensky and he talks about a similar phenomenon – consciousness. What he says is that it is quite possible that a person is conscious for about two minutes or so while he/she is writing or reading, but what remains is the memory of the consciousness. However, the person thinks that he was conscious the whole time. Ouspensky has declared the whole of mankind to be liars. Not because they don’t speak the truth but because they don’t know that they are not speaking the truth, for they are unaware of the truth.
This is food for thought and I must thank my friend J. Bo for propelling me in that direction.

Rand – Her Style – Literary or otherwise.

I have always wondered what is it that is so captivating about Rand’s style, why does she make you look at your toes in shame sometimes and look at the sky in splendour.  I recently read a play by Henrik Ibsen, called “An Enemy of the People”.  The theme is the atrocities of the majority and their total immunity to the TRUTH.  Both Rand and Ibsen have conveyed objectivist beliefs and philosophies and have pitted individual conscience against the alleged soul of the community.

What i personally love about Ibsen is his simple style interspersed with humour that makes great reading.  For eg:- Dr Stockmann’s trousers are torn after his speech to the town and he says that no one should wear his best trousers to address a town full of brutes.  Yet his simplicity does not fully convey all that Rand conveys through her characters.

Rand is a teacher and she teaches you the philosophy of objectivist thought.  She does not ask you but displays through contrast what is and what should be.  I think of all the characters she has devised my favorite would have to be Peter Keating (never mind that I dont agree with him).  She has dressed him like fungus – so everytime you pit your actions/ reactions against Peter Keating and come close you need to re-think.  Ayn Rand does not advocate her ideal man just pits him in contrast to the complete opposite of the ideal man and lets her readers see the difference for themselves.  Her style is most hardhitting in The Fountainhead.  One see reactionary traits in “We the Living” and her other earlier works.  But she comes very close to Fountainhead in the “Night of January 16th”.  The entire play being placed in the Court of LAW where the law supports the criminal owing to his status – is very apt mirror of our society today.

Her style is not an author screaming to express himself, but calm and composed like her protagonists.  The turning points are described without any element of thrill and thats what makes her unique.  She does not advocate sex for the sake of it but shows the difference between animal sex which has the sanction of society as against sex that is pure for it is only based on an acknowledgment of animal instincts and is obviously without the sanction of scoiety.

Rand’s lead female in the Fountainhead – Dominique – displays Rand’s own style of proving by contrast though in the case of Dominique she could only achieve it by a path of self destruction.  However, if you ask me why she committed suicide I would never say that it was because she was like her female protaganist but rather like Gail Wynand.  I dont think a woman of her character can ever commit suicide because she was driven to it.  I think she chose that as an end.  She had acheived all she wanted to and chose that moment to end her life.

That is also in keeping with her style.