Filed Under: Essays
July 28, 2009
Modern fiction is, by authority, a literature of anti-heroic impulse, anti-heroes, and the failure of mankind. Most primarily the dramatic action of the modern novel is dependent on a Freudian fallacy which pretends that human behavior is guided by sexuality, and as a subset, by greed as a form of sexual domination. After the misguided suppression of sexual matters in the Victorian age, this sort of ad hominem theorizing once appeared liberating to an intellectual community already estranged from the daily toil of the larger community. Don’t we all have these sexual feelings? Are we all not guilty of the original sin? The ‘hero’ does not save the damsel in distress for reasons of good will and humanity, but to rape her.
We have several generations of this sort of tripe polluting the academic mind at this point. I am 62. I was first introduced to a supposed sexual…
Filed Under: Essays
July 14, 2009
Words have meanings. This is a tautology to some. A word, by definition, has meaning–truly, but not a meaning. Words are used, worn, tattered, mended, soiled, and discarded. Some are harder than others and keep their shape but shatter when abused, others are soft, if not quite clay, at least putty-like.
For instance, as a writer I am very careful of what I see as my inner spirit. I can handle a great deal of worry and stress so long as my eye is on my purpose. And there have been moments in my life when the dimming of this sense of myself has caused despair and made me ill.
I used a word, ‘entelechy’ in Habits of the Heart (the novel posted here) which was misunderstood by someone else and I felt chastened. Much of what I write can be misunderstood if taken out of context, I…
Filed Under: Essays
July 8, 2009
So a friend of mine was telling me about a bit of behaviorist evolutionary theory and I found it very appealing. I have generally found most behaviorism as unscientific as any religion–drawing conclusions from insignificant or incomplete data and thence supposing whole worldviews. Thus the activities of ants might become a modus for human action or the pre-calculated terms of conduct of lab animals in a closed system become rules of human political order.
But all behaviorists are not so insane or inane. Their foundational methods are actually scientific and their discoveries can be enlightening. It is usually when they begin to extrapolate from mice to men that they go terribly wrong. Such pseudo-scientific theory is so 20th Century!
So I listened to my friend and found his proposition very appealing and immediately began to self-consciously wonder why. Why?
The idea was this: people are predisposed to…
When Andrew Wyeth died I found myself reviewing many past thoughts and realizing a few new ones. He was by far the preeminent painter of my time, one of the first living painters I became aware of as a youth. I cannot remember the exact text, but his work was the cause of the first argument I ever had about art, and subsequently many others. His father, the fabulous N.C. Wyeth, had filled the dreams of my childhood with colors that challenged the nature of the ordinary. And that path lead back and beyond to the great Howard Pyle. Andrew Wyeth’s personal life made the national and world news. Books of his work were bestsellers and helped pay my rent during the 1970’s as I started life as a professional bookseller. But his greater importance to me was, from the first, that he made me think.
I should note…
In his curiously bloodless memoir Books, Larry McMurtry says, “A bookman’s love of books is a love of books, not merely the information in them.” This explains as much as the author wanted if taken alone, but seen in the context of a life, it reveals a great deal more.
I say curiously bloodless because I have no doubt of McMurtry’s love, nor his ability to explain it. He is both an accomplished author and a successful bookman. His experience at those vocations is prodigious. Yet, he seems reluctant to bare his soul now in either calling. As if he is speaking to an unfriendly audience.
A few years ago I read McMurtry’s quest, Roads, with even less satisfaction. I love to drive. I was blessed with children who enjoy the journey, and my youthful joy at being on the road to somewhere was carried on through…
