"Everyone is a story"
Mar. 16th, 2006 07:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ricardienneC. accosted me at dinner last night, which meant that I had to talk to him, and thus had to read Thus Spoke Z. later. On the other hand, he's the first person I was able to talk about Notes from Underground with in terms of a novel, and not as philosophy. That isn't entirely accurate, as it implies that in class, we looked at it purely as a non-fiction-esque commentary on society/nature of humankind. Which we did not. (We did, however, get hung up on lofty reason vs cheap happiness, which was utterly pointless, as everyone simply congratulated themselves on picking lofty reason, totally ignoring one of the central points of the novel (in my opinion) for one thing, and for another… I think I shall get into this more below.)
Now, cut and sectioned off for ease of ignoring:
I found Notes from Underground absolutely brilliant. It justififed so many of my ideas about the way people think. Not the way people are, or what they believe, or what motivates them, but how their thoughts are processed. I've always suspected that it must be pretty similar across the board, but the only thought process I really know is my own. But this, what Dostoevsky described in his narrator, was exactly what I know. Although, I identified with the narrator in many other ways, too. (So much so that I have put a quote on my profile page).
Something that really bothered me in discussion, though, was that everyone took the opinion that the narrator's problem is that he lives too much in books. "He thinks of his life as a book." "He's trying to plan out every little detail -- he does plan it out -- because he thinks that will provide resolution, when it won't." "When Liza tells him that he sounds just like a book, she's calling him on his problem."
For one thing, I think that this is a superficial reading, but for another, I think it is overly complicated. There are more layers to the narrator than simply that he "thinks his life is a book." All right, so maybe I just disagree with this reading. To me, all of that planning out, that second-guessing and doing things "knowing" that they won't turn out, knowing how it will end, but fantasizing about a possible rosier future anyway is, well, normal. The narrator is a first-class schlemiel. But isn't that how we all are, to some extent? It's certainly how I am. It's how I've always been. Maybe, I too, am guilty of living my life too much in books. Am I alone in this? Is this just the result of ever having had only a few (if any, at some points) friends and a love of reading? I can't think so, because I am used to thinking of myself as normal. But even this "thinking of his life as a book" doesn't seem correct to censure, to me. Even that phrasing is misleading, I think:
Granted, that the narrator is quite the ratiocinator. Granted, too, that he himself argues that this is not the best thing. But ratiocination must lead to something like this "thinking of yourself as a book." To step back from yourself, to examine yourself objectively, but still having all of the knowledge about your thoughts that you have: perhaps the best analogy is a book. But here, you are character, author, and reader all in one. There's a line from A Little Princess, where Sara says "Everything's a story. You are a story— I am a story. Miss Minchin is a story." People are stories, and people who do step back and examine themselves -- know themselves -- see the story in themselves, too. Perhaps the narrator's problem is that he has distanced himself so much that he no longer believes in himself as the character of the story, but only as the author and the reader. Of course, the character is the most natural part for him. He's flipped himself inside out.
The other greatest obstruction I see in the narrator is cynicisim. He's sophisticated enough not to believe the sentimental fictions he plys Liza with, but he isn't, well, sophisticated enough to similarly see through his own cynicism. (Some of you can probably tell that I'm going to embark on a pet rant here.)
This is perhaps arrogant of me to say, (no, it is arrogant), but there are at least three levels of understanding something. Levels is not the best word, as, though I do imagine some sort of a hierarchy, I don't have my system completely hierarchal. Firstly, there is naïvete. This is emotionality, sentimentality, trust, et cetera. It's taking things at face value, believing everything one hears, being overjoyed and thrilled with everything. It's having the "right" emotions and opinions. Then there is cynicism. This is, I would say a deeper way of understanding than the first. And it is logic, pragmaticism, denying the face value, looking for hidden motives. It's seeing a dark side with the status quo and being unhappy with it, and mocking the superficial and the ludicrous instead of taking them as they were meant to be taken. This is where I am, most of the time; this is where most, if not all of my friends, are, most of the time. But I posit (at least) one more way of understanding. I am not sure what to call it, skepticism, perhaps. This is questioning that cynical questioning. It isn't simply rejecting it, the way that cynicism rejects the obvious (often just to be contrary, I know from experience), but it is really considering it, and considering the original issue/work/idea/whatever. Through skepticism, sometimes the path comes around again and the opinion is the same as it was under naïvete. But it is for different reasons. Whatever the opinion ends up being, it is a considered, worthwhile opinion.
This is what I aspire to, I think. And even though I'm usually guilty of cynicism myself, it infuriates me when I see it en masse. It isn't just cynicism, but intellectual platitudes. Last year, in Humanities, when we read Brave New World and every discussion came down to "you can't really understand happiness/comfort/joy/good unless you've experienced sadness/pain/despair/bad." This week it was "Of course it's better to be knowledgable and suffer, than to be blissfully ignorant." (Why do I associate these with being cynical? But they are mildly cynical in the sense they demand recognition of the utility of something other than the good.) I don't know that I disagree with either. In fact, I think I agree. But no one would question, no one would consider the alternative. No one would say, "perhaps you don't need to understand happiness in order to be happy." No one would say, "with this short time we're here, why should be suffer?" There's never any discussion, because everyone agrees.
Romeo and Juliet is another example, a much better one, in fact, as far as cynicism goes. I don't know how many times I've ended up defending R+J to people who despise it. Because it just isn't cool to like that play. There are those naive, innocent sentimental fools who think it's The Most Romantic Thing Ever OMG, but the rest of us *know better* than to be sucked into the story of two foolish emo teenagers who act in a way that it totally selfish and stupid and basically Get What Was Coming to Them. Whenever Shakespeare comes up, so many people are ready to say, "Oh, I hate Romeo and Juliet!" So maybe I was spoiled by reading it alone before I was made to study it in school, and by seeing it on stage before I saw the Leonardo diCaprio version (which I have not yet seen, in fact). But it bothers me that so many are so unwilling to see anything worthwhile about it. No, it isn't Othello or Hamlet, but there's quite a lot of good there, even so. It's so sophisticated to dislike certain things and like others. And that "sophistication" and "cynicism" can be just as mentally freezing as automatically taking things at face value.
It's good to recognize the real world; I think everyone should learn to recognize the real world. But once that has happened, and one is able to acknowledge the hard truth, one doesn't have to a slave to it. There are still ideals; there are still things that are beautiful and things that are true; there are still worthwhile aspirations. The narrator from Notes from Underground has not realized this yet. He has rejected the ideality without coming around again to revalidate with the qualifications that his original rejection demonstrated.
Now, cut and sectioned off for ease of ignoring:
I found Notes from Underground absolutely brilliant. It justififed so many of my ideas about the way people think. Not the way people are, or what they believe, or what motivates them, but how their thoughts are processed. I've always suspected that it must be pretty similar across the board, but the only thought process I really know is my own. But this, what Dostoevsky described in his narrator, was exactly what I know. Although, I identified with the narrator in many other ways, too. (So much so that I have put a quote on my profile page).
Something that really bothered me in discussion, though, was that everyone took the opinion that the narrator's problem is that he lives too much in books. "He thinks of his life as a book." "He's trying to plan out every little detail -- he does plan it out -- because he thinks that will provide resolution, when it won't." "When Liza tells him that he sounds just like a book, she's calling him on his problem."
For one thing, I think that this is a superficial reading, but for another, I think it is overly complicated. There are more layers to the narrator than simply that he "thinks his life is a book." All right, so maybe I just disagree with this reading. To me, all of that planning out, that second-guessing and doing things "knowing" that they won't turn out, knowing how it will end, but fantasizing about a possible rosier future anyway is, well, normal. The narrator is a first-class schlemiel. But isn't that how we all are, to some extent? It's certainly how I am. It's how I've always been. Maybe, I too, am guilty of living my life too much in books. Am I alone in this? Is this just the result of ever having had only a few (if any, at some points) friends and a love of reading? I can't think so, because I am used to thinking of myself as normal. But even this "thinking of his life as a book" doesn't seem correct to censure, to me. Even that phrasing is misleading, I think:
Granted, that the narrator is quite the ratiocinator. Granted, too, that he himself argues that this is not the best thing. But ratiocination must lead to something like this "thinking of yourself as a book." To step back from yourself, to examine yourself objectively, but still having all of the knowledge about your thoughts that you have: perhaps the best analogy is a book. But here, you are character, author, and reader all in one. There's a line from A Little Princess, where Sara says "Everything's a story. You are a story— I am a story. Miss Minchin is a story." People are stories, and people who do step back and examine themselves -- know themselves -- see the story in themselves, too. Perhaps the narrator's problem is that he has distanced himself so much that he no longer believes in himself as the character of the story, but only as the author and the reader. Of course, the character is the most natural part for him. He's flipped himself inside out.
The other greatest obstruction I see in the narrator is cynicisim. He's sophisticated enough not to believe the sentimental fictions he plys Liza with, but he isn't, well, sophisticated enough to similarly see through his own cynicism. (Some of you can probably tell that I'm going to embark on a pet rant here.)
This is perhaps arrogant of me to say, (no, it is arrogant), but there are at least three levels of understanding something. Levels is not the best word, as, though I do imagine some sort of a hierarchy, I don't have my system completely hierarchal. Firstly, there is naïvete. This is emotionality, sentimentality, trust, et cetera. It's taking things at face value, believing everything one hears, being overjoyed and thrilled with everything. It's having the "right" emotions and opinions. Then there is cynicism. This is, I would say a deeper way of understanding than the first. And it is logic, pragmaticism, denying the face value, looking for hidden motives. It's seeing a dark side with the status quo and being unhappy with it, and mocking the superficial and the ludicrous instead of taking them as they were meant to be taken. This is where I am, most of the time; this is where most, if not all of my friends, are, most of the time. But I posit (at least) one more way of understanding. I am not sure what to call it, skepticism, perhaps. This is questioning that cynical questioning. It isn't simply rejecting it, the way that cynicism rejects the obvious (often just to be contrary, I know from experience), but it is really considering it, and considering the original issue/work/idea/whatever. Through skepticism, sometimes the path comes around again and the opinion is the same as it was under naïvete. But it is for different reasons. Whatever the opinion ends up being, it is a considered, worthwhile opinion.
This is what I aspire to, I think. And even though I'm usually guilty of cynicism myself, it infuriates me when I see it en masse. It isn't just cynicism, but intellectual platitudes. Last year, in Humanities, when we read Brave New World and every discussion came down to "you can't really understand happiness/comfort/joy/good unless you've experienced sadness/pain/despair/bad." This week it was "Of course it's better to be knowledgable and suffer, than to be blissfully ignorant." (Why do I associate these with being cynical? But they are mildly cynical in the sense they demand recognition of the utility of something other than the good.) I don't know that I disagree with either. In fact, I think I agree. But no one would question, no one would consider the alternative. No one would say, "perhaps you don't need to understand happiness in order to be happy." No one would say, "with this short time we're here, why should be suffer?" There's never any discussion, because everyone agrees.
Romeo and Juliet is another example, a much better one, in fact, as far as cynicism goes. I don't know how many times I've ended up defending R+J to people who despise it. Because it just isn't cool to like that play. There are those naive, innocent sentimental fools who think it's The Most Romantic Thing Ever OMG, but the rest of us *know better* than to be sucked into the story of two foolish emo teenagers who act in a way that it totally selfish and stupid and basically Get What Was Coming to Them. Whenever Shakespeare comes up, so many people are ready to say, "Oh, I hate Romeo and Juliet!" So maybe I was spoiled by reading it alone before I was made to study it in school, and by seeing it on stage before I saw the Leonardo diCaprio version (which I have not yet seen, in fact). But it bothers me that so many are so unwilling to see anything worthwhile about it. No, it isn't Othello or Hamlet, but there's quite a lot of good there, even so. It's so sophisticated to dislike certain things and like others. And that "sophistication" and "cynicism" can be just as mentally freezing as automatically taking things at face value.
It's good to recognize the real world; I think everyone should learn to recognize the real world. But once that has happened, and one is able to acknowledge the hard truth, one doesn't have to a slave to it. There are still ideals; there are still things that are beautiful and things that are true; there are still worthwhile aspirations. The narrator from Notes from Underground has not realized this yet. He has rejected the ideality without coming around again to revalidate with the qualifications that his original rejection demonstrated.
