The Prophet Speaks...

Sinfest.

Sinfest May 13 2010

 

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Honors Project: Thesis Statement V.1

Ken Kesey said, "Some things can't be true even if they happened." In considering this statement, (notes from) The Tourist would be a consideration that if accounts of history—even by the people involved in particular events—are subjected to the same rubrics with which literature is critiqued, history takes on a questionable veracity similar to that told by an unreliable narrator. Specifically, The Tourist would present the quest for understanding the Siege of Sarajevo (1992-95) and its confusing array of participants as analogous to the various methods with which we consider meaning in a given work of literature.

"Some things can't be true even if they happened."
To paraphrase Ralph J. Gleason:
Sarajevo was like that.


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Talkin Shop: Lingering Depth

I first read the following paragraph in the Atlanta Library. This is the opening of the book and it gripped me then and it grips my attention now. Something my friend Sean and I call the delicious morsels of writing: those tasty bits that explode with delight on the tongue and on the lips and in the heart-spirit center in the brain and linger wonderfully in memory's taste buds long after the meal/snack/dessert was first tasted.

Following the paragraph as it appears in the book, I included it again with some words underlined. These would (will) be what I would look up in a close reading/textual analysis, but also serve as the keyholes through which we'd peep (for if I were leading this critical mission, there would certainly be other voyeurs there beside me—I mean besides me...) to reveal what lurks beyond the edge of the page that is conjured there by referential association.

I also did this back in Fall 08 at Columbia, but I wasn't ready yet. Now, I think I am.


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"Had you asked your average hippie about beginnings, you would have discovered there were as many as there were hippies—everyone had a favorite chronology. Some preferred to begin the psychedelic story all the way back at the Rig Veda, the ancient Hindu text that spoke of the ecstatic visions obtainable from the plant soma; others began with the mystery cults of ancient Greece and the Middle Ages—the Rosicrucians, the Alchemists, the Illuminati. The lure of higher consciousness had exercised a fascination across the centuries, and whether it was Athenians being initiated at Elusis, or Balzac and Baudelaire smoking hashish at the Club des Haschischins, the hippies recognized them all as parents.

"But if the psychedelic story had a hundred beginnings, at some point all the plot lines converge on Basle, Switzerland, at a few minutes before five on the afternoon of Monday, April 19, 1943."

—Jay Stevens,
Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream

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"Had you asked your average hippie about beginnings, you would have discovered there were as many as there were hippies--everyone had a favorite chronology. Some preferred to begin the psychedelic story all the way back at the Rig Veda, the ancient Hindu text that spoke of the ecstatic visions obtainable from the plant soma; others began with the mystery cults of ancient Greece and the Middle Ages--the Rosicrucians, the Alchemists, the Illuminati. The lure of higher consciousness had exercised a fascination across the centuries, and whether it was Athenians being initiated at Eleusis, or Balzac and Baudelaire smoking hashish at the Club des Haschischins, the hippies recognized them all as parents.

"But if the psychedelic story had a hundred beginnings, at some point all the plot lines converge on Basle, Switzerland, at a few minutes before five on the afternoon of Monday, April 19, 1943."

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That's 101 unique words in two paragraphs totaling 147. 45 of those words are reference keys (18 are "the"). I love this kinda thing. Confectionery words. Tasty. Yum.


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Debate Closes Doors, Inquiry Opens Them

In reading an account of a recent Supreme Court argument, one of the Justices "peppered the lawyer with questions" about his argument and then admonished him to argue the case before them and not try to overhaul Constitutional Law in general. In an analysis commentary after the close of the day's arguments, it was stated by one critic that had the justice in question heard the attorney's recent talks at a Federal Bar Association enclave, the Justice "would better understand where [that attorney was] coming from."

This strikes me as a non-literary instance of a situation where New Criticism trumps all other forms of analysis. As an attorney arguing a case before the Supreme Court, needs must have it that you do not stray from the text (of the case for which you are present), as all outside references to other matters (unless they involve a previous Supreme Court case on the same subject, in which case those cases are part of the "text" over which you are arguing) are irrelevant and, lacking a more comprehensive and particular legal term, verboten. A Justice should not have to attend an attorney's speech outside of the court room to understand the point of their argument inside the court. That's a logical fallacy in terms of a debate.

So where does meaning come from then in this instance?

The meaning comes from—and is rigidly circumscribed to—the text of the case and from the text of the Constitution (as applicable to the case at hand).

Sometimes there are texts for which there is not an allowance for the "reader" to stray from the page.


(March 2, 2010)


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