The staging of a confession
Señor C
Finally “Diary of a bad year” has been published in the US. On Sunday the NY Times Book Review published an essay, which questioned Coetzee’s motives for immigrating to Australia and in this week’s New Yorker there is a lengthy review by James Wood.
There are quite a few interesting remarks in this review. Mr. Wood emphasizes the difference between the protagonist, Señor C and its author J.M. Coetzee. He points out that Señor C is seven years older than J.M. Coetzee; a detail that I had completely overlooked.
Mr. Wood claims that Señor C ‘sounds like a bull with a bullhorn, and is very different in tone from the more feline Coetzee, who would surely rather have his claws pulled than commit to print the phrase “It’s déjà vu all over again.”'
Maybe. But even in Dostoyevsky’s oeuvre one can find sentences that are extremely mundane.
Mr. Wood writes: “We can hear the same note of personal anguish in Coetzee’s fiction, even as that fiction insists that it is offering not a confession but only the staging of a confession.”
Can fiction by nature offer anything else than the staging of a confession?
Nevertheless Mr. Wood asks an important question.
How much consistency do we need in our ideas? It’s painful to fall out of love with a human being, but to fall out love with your own ideas and your sense of morality might be even more painful.
Sometimes we stick to our ideas even after the love has disappeared for the same reasons as people stick to their marriages: out of convenience and a sense of responsibility.
consistency
Consistency is overrated. It may be a good methodological virtue (in science, for instance), but nothing guarantees that it is even possible to consistently describe (complex) reality in human language. Rationality should not be confused with consistency (as James Wood seems to do).responsibility
"The best way to avoid responsibilities is to say: "I've got responsibilities."Jan T
I'm not badmouthing convenience.Krista
But Krista, don’t we need a certain amount of consistency to survive, if there is no connection between who we were at 11:34 AM and who we are at 10:32 PM life has become extremely difficult, to say the least.Arnon
Although the 11.34 AM "I" was a strict vegetarian, the 10:32 PM "I" really enjoyed eating a bloody steak. This behaviour could be labeled as inconsistent, or as incoherent, but the connections between the two "I"'s are very strong (they share almost all their history, social relations, thoughts, ...). I think this kind of behaviour is called ... human. A assertion as "We tend to think of ourselves as intellectually stable, the oaken pile of principle driven reassuringly deep into the ground." (James Wood), makes me curious: who is the 'we' he is talking about? Intellectual posers?noa fenenga
Yes, noa.Krista
People can change their minds -- yes, this is probably not yet incoherent.But what if the person at 13:34 claims to have almost nothing in common with the person at 12:34?
J.M. Coetzee wrote in Diary of a bad year a chapter about after life that is dealing with these issues, Mr. Wood mentions it in his review as well.
Your example is problematic. Of course you can up give up certain beliefs and moral convictions, I assume that vegetarianism is more a conviction or a belief than a habit, but if you claim at 11:34 to be a vegetarian, while enjoying lamb chops one hour later your claim at 11:34 can be considered for good reasons fake.
When we think of a double life we, at least I, think right away of a person cheating on his wife or her husband. Maybe you can cheat on your convictions as well. Graham Greene wrote a powerful novel about a woman cheating on God. Even she has problems staying coherent.
When it comes to criminals we tend to see the life of the criminal through his criminal act, Manès Sperber has written insightful about this. One act changes the way he is perceived by others and maybe even the way he perceives himself.
Your ideas about coherency feel like the lukewarm leftovers of a postmodern meal, which was not too tasteful to begin with.
By the way I have to admit your comments manually to the site, follow the instructions or contact Sander when you are having technical problems
Arnon
I apologize for the inconvenience. I followed the instructions, so how can I contact Sander?Thanks for offending me (postmodernist flavour). What I was referring to is called dialetheism (plato.stanford.edu/entries/dialetheism/), and is simply hard-boiled logic.
Science is a good example of where it's rational to entertain inconsistent beliefs. Scientists belief that current best theories are true, while fully expecting that they'll be proven false and replaced by better theories. Moreover, scientists believe in incompatible (and hence globally inconsistent and incoherent) theories. A straightforward example of this phenomenon: quantum theory and relativity theory. But maybe this doesn't count either, because it feels as an icecold leftover of hard science. To paraphrase Canetti: every spoken word is wrong, every written word is wrong, every word is wrong, so what’s left, without words?
Krista
Have you entertained the rather inconsistent idea that you are a man and a woman? Have you ever felt the urgency before to call this idea scientific? Or are you known for entering night clubs with the words: “My penis is a vagina and my vagina is a penis. This is hard-boiled logic.”Please contact Sander for all your technical problems at Johannes@arnongrunberg.com -- also for all your problems regarding inconsistency.
you seem to use an argumentation style that is quite particular: always going straight for the old 'ad hominem'. It reminds me of the discussions in the playground. Your style reveals the sweet smell of youth. Feast on your ignorance, it is encyclopedic.
Krista
There is a difference between a rhetorical question and an ad hominem attack.In case you happen to be a transsexual -- this is something I could not know -- I apologize.
