352. Reading Proust during a Pandemic

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Reading Proust during a Pandemic

Pvii “As early as 1890 (when he [Marcel Proust] was nineteen years old) he had also begun to take notes for an elaborate work which he was already projecting but none of his friends appears to have taken his literary pretension as anything more than the self-deception of a dilettante. He was universally liked because of a charm to which everyone who knew him has testified and because of a determination, carried to fantastic lengths, to do the considerate as well as the socially correct thing. He had not, however, written anything which displayed conspicuous talent and it was not thought likely that he would. Then, in 1905, his mother died and he began cutting himself more and more completely from the world which was to bring him at last to a strange self-imprisonment in the bedroom from which, after the most elaborate preparations, he only occasionally sallied forth in order to seek some bit of information from the head waiter at the Ritz or, as one lady remembers, to ask to see a hat worn some twenty years before.

“From childhood Proust had regarded himself as primarily a spectator. There were many things which he could know only by watching, and this fact doubtless encouraged him to make watching an end in itself. Nevertheless, contemplation became something much more than merely a substitute for the activities he could not indulge. His theory was that the quality of a direct experience always eluded one and that only in recollection could we grasp its real flavor. Now that the death of his mother had severed the only tie which bound him to the life of the world, he retired in order that he might discover and record what his experience had been...”

This is from the Introduction, written by Joseph Wood Krutch to the C. K. Scott Moncrieff translation of Remembrance of Things Past, or In Search of Lost Time, as it is more commonly called today. 

I don’t know that I’ve ever read this introduction. Usually I don’t read things like this until after I’ve read the book, and in this case by that time I’m a year on and putting down a different volume. So it’s quite possible I never have returned to it. But I think Mr Krutch did a commendable job here. This initial point is one of my favorite things about Proust. And maybe this time through I will remember to note the point in the work, around the time he first meets Saint-Loop I think, when Marcel reflects on how, while we long to share important moments with others, this would actually only detract -- distract us -- from appreciating the moment ourselves. It’s one of my favorite passages and I can never find it when I look.

I’m rereading this at an interesting time, and the paragraphs above remind me that it is in some ways a very appropriate time. Today is the first day of the fourth week we are Sheltering-in-Place due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike Proust, I have not chosen to isolate myself in my little studio, but the result is similar though far from the same. I go out walking every day. I occasionally put on my face mask and walk to one of the nearby markets for supplies or to restaurants for take-away food. I can’t wait to spend time in cafes and restaurants again. But for the moment I am forced into social distancing and this could be a perfect time to read Proust.

Pviii “...The first rule for reading him is... complete submission to an author who will certainly take you where you ought to go and who will give you, not only vivid descriptions, subtle analyses, precise portraits and full participation in a strange new sensibility, but also compose all these things into a vast symphonic structure which is probably the most amazing thing of its kind in literature...”

Yes, the connection with music is something that must be mentioned. There follows a sort of preview of what the work is about, precisely the thing I don’t want to read before, and don’t much care to read after, but this next part is interesting,

Px “...No one could possibly be more detached than he and no one could have less faith in anything. Indeed the story of the novel might with some justice be said to be the story of his disillusion with the only thing in which he made even an effort to believe -- namely, that tradition of noblesse oblige which the members of the aristocracy ought to follow but which, so obviously, they do not...” 

So this does go well with Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End. Last reading I went back and forth between these two authors and I think I probably will again.

“...Proust’s greatest invention was the invention of a form, of a method by means of which events could be arranged in a pattern having a formal beauty and a formal meaning capable of replacing the beauty and the meaning lost to those who, like himself, had no moral or religious faith capable of giving them any other kind.”

That reminds me of Adrian in Doctor Faustus.

“Externally the method is one in which the normal chronological order of narrative is often subordinated to a quasi-musical arrangement of material by means of which similar or antithetical persons, situations and moods are rhythmically balanced against one another so as to create a pattern which does not depend upon the order of time but the sense of recurrence. At the same time every presentation of material is dominated by the author’s obsession with Time and the need of the artist to escape it’s tyranny. The past must be recovered; but that is not all. It must be made permanent, and it can become that only when grasped by the imagination in such a way that every moment implies the past and the future because its true significance lies in its being part of a pattern extending from the past into the future. Living experience cannot be fully significant because it is isolated and transitory; it becomes significant only when it is contemplated in connection with those parts of the pattern which Time separates but which really belong together...”

“Proust himself spoke of the various themes whose full significance would not be clear until, in the later volumes, they had begun to combine. This remark of his suggests the analogy with music...”

Thanks to having read Doctor Faustus since I last read Proust, I see a bit of a problem with this, as Adrian points out, the secret of most music is to begin by imperfectly suggesting the theme, but holding off until near the end, the full development of that theme. Marcel’s desperate need for his mother may be the first hint of that theme here, but it is quickly followed by ‘Swann In Love’ which is the full development, later echoed -- but less interestingly in my opinion -- by Marcel’s passions for Gilbert and the others. But this is a quibble. Our Mr Krutch really hits the nail on the head on the next page,

Pxi“...the escape from Time is alluded to on page four where it is immediately followed by the incident of the magic lantern, which, as the first work of art introduced, serves to suggest the technique by which Time is to be transcended. One result of this arrangement is to make the novel in another respect like a piece of music, for of it may be said, more truly even than of most great novels, that the second reading is more rewarding than the first. To know what is coming does not detract from the pleasure -- is indeed necessary to the full enjoyment of it -- since each incident is, like a musical theme, only enriched by a knowledge of the variations to follow.”

And this is why it is so hard to get people to read Proust. I always tell people if you plan on reading it, plan on reading it twice because it is at its best when revisited. And how appropriate to Proust’s purpose is that.

“In the pages of the novel the commonplace fact that faces grow old and characters change becomes... something to be analysed with a fascinated terror. But this change in faces is only trivially important in comparison with that change which takes place in character. Hence it came at last to seem to him that it was folly to speak of Albertine, or Charlus, of himself even, as though any one of them were an entity maintaining its identity while time flowed past; and he realized that if his novel was to attain the full significance which he wished, it must manage somehow, not only to attain timelessness itself, but also to suggest the triumph of Time over the persons and the experiences which the novel alone could rescue.”

Now this I’m not sure I agree with. Do any characters really change over the course of the books? Their status in society changes. I think of them as staying largely the same as their positions change. Marcel’s artistic tastes do change in the course of his education, but he seems to be the same in his relationship with Albertine as he was with Odette or Gilberte or his mother.

Pxiii “Events become, even as he recounts them, already a part of legend and thus life is magically transmuted into art. He himself, as well as M. Swann and M. de Charlus, are no longer mere human beings but analogous to the figures painted upon the slides of the little magic lantern which had fascinated him so long ago... The suffering and the wickedness of his own characters have now ceased to have any significance except as parts of a formal design...”

Mr. Krutch contrasts Proust with Sinclair Lewis and Theodore Dreiser -- reminding us that the copyright for this edition is 1934.

“...it must be admitted that... the spiritual world of Proust has elements of charm lacking in most contemporary novels because of the fact that the sensibility everywhere exhibited is of an extraordinary sort. He was disillusioned enough with many things -- with morals, for example -- and he had neither any code nor any standards besides those which his taste supplied. [Is this a reference to homosexuality?] Yet in the midst of what might seem to be anarchy there were still capabilities and faiths which he retained... On the other hand, he never, like so many moderns, found himself in a universe limited and debased by the impossibility of escape from psychology, anthropology and Freudianism. The world was still absorbingly, still amazingly, interesting. Women -- most women -- were to him magical and mysterious...”

Pxiv “Most of the novelists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries felt constrained to take life seriously in a sense that Proust does not, since, and with a clear conscience, he permits himself to live the charmed life of a dilettante, not troubling himself much about the fate of civilization, acting as though there were nothing more important than the careful discrimination between shades of feeling, and devoting himself with the selfishness of the contemplative saint to the achievement of his own private salvation...”

And yet this reminds me of Montaigne and also, dare I say it, of Hans Castorp. This is precisely what Settembrini was always finding fault with. Also, isn’t 1934 rather early to be characterizing the novelists of the century?

“...Charlus, Saint-Loop, the Duchesse de Guermantes, Francoise and Madame Verdurin have definitely taken their places in the not very long list of characters who are more real than reality. Something -- both in the particular sense defined by Proust and in the more general sense in which the phrase is applicable to all great literature -- has been rescued from Time. It is not often that that can be said”

Curious that he leaves Swann off that list. I would add several other family members plus the wonderful M. Legrandin. I don’t imagine Proust and Jane Austen are often compared, but Legrandin ranks right up there with her finest minor characters. Forever captured in a single scene. 


I do believe I am ready to start reading.

146. Virginia Woolf

Previous - 145. Gertrude & Noam

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Proust Was a Neuroscientist

I need to get the rest of the book up before my book club meeting tomorrow, so I'm publishing a bunch of posts at the same time. Sorry. This should be on top, but below you will find posts on Gertrude Stein and Igor Stravinsky.

I don't know when I will resume but I will return to Vertigo and Candide.

Virginia Woolf - From Proust...

p169 ...Woolf's revelation was that we [as selves] emerge from our own fleeting interpretations of the world. Whenever we sense something, we naturally invent a subject for our sensation, a perceiver for our perception. The self is simply this subject; it is the story we tell ourselves about our experiences... "We are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself." ["In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John 1:1]
...

p170 ...she also acknowledged the strange utility of her [mental] illness. Her incurable madness -- this "whirring of wings in the brain" -- was, in some ways, strangely transcendental: "Not that I haven't picked up something from insanities and all the rest. Indeed, I suspect they've done instead of religion."
...

p171 ...After each depressive episode, she typically experienced a burst of creativity as she filled her journal with fresh insights into the workings of her own "difficult nervous system."... [Sounds like Adrian in Doctor Faustus.]

p172 What Woolf learned about the mind from her illness -- its quicksilverness, its plurality, its "queer conglomeration of incongruous things" -- she transformed into a literary technique... Although the self seems certain, Woolf's writing exposes the fact that we are actually composed of ever-changing impressions that are held together by the thin veneer of identity...
...

p175 ...The self emerges from the chaos of consciousness, a 'kind of whole made of shivering fragments." ... 
...

p176 Woolf's writing never lets us forget the precariousness of our being. "What does one mean by 'the unity of the mind.' " Woolf wonders in A Room of One's Own, "it {the mind} seems to have no single state of being."... Although the self seems everlasting -- "as solid as forever" -- it lasts only for a moment. We pass "like a cloud on the waves."

... He [T.S. Eliot] believed that the modern poet had to give up the idea of expressing the "unified soul" simply because we didn't have one... 

p177 ...Experiment after experiment has shown that any given experience can endure for about ten seconds in short term memory. After that, the brain exhausts its capacity for the present tense, and its consciousness must begin anew, with a new stream. As the modernists anticipated, the permanent-seeming self is actually an endless procession of disjointed moments.
...

Those interesting corpus callosum splitting experiments where there are actually two competing "selves" in our head, are mentioned here.

Emergence
p180 ...If we know nothing else, it is that we are here, experiencing this. Time passes and sensations come and go. But we remain. [Descartes's I think therefore I am]
...

...The secret, Woolf realized, was that the self emerges from its source. Emerge is the crucial word here. While her characters begin as a bundle of random sensations... they instantly swell into something else... The impersonal sensation is always ripening into a subjective experience, and that experience is always flowing into the next one. And yet, from this incessant change, the character emerges... In her fiction, the self is neither imposed nor disowned. Rather, it simply arises, a vision stolen from the flux.
...

p181 Woolf realized that the self emerges via the act of attention. We bind together our sensory parts by experiencing them from a particular point of view. During this process, some sensations are ignored, while others are highlighted. The outside world gets thoroughly interpreted... 
...

p182 But how do we endure? How does the self transcend the separateness of its attentive moments? How does a process become us? For Woolf, the answer was simple: the self is an illusion. This was her final view of the self... The self is simply our work of art, a fiction created by the brain in order to make sense of its own disunity. In a world made of fragments, the self is our sole "theme, recurring, half remembered, half foreseen." If it didn't exist, then nothing would exist. We would be a brain full of characters, hopelessly searching for an author.
...

p183 Lesions in the V1 only cause conscious blindness, a phenomenon [Lawrence] Weiskrantz named "blindsight." Although these patients think they are blind, they can actually see, at least unconsciously. What they are missing is awareness... blindsight patients are unable to consciously access what their brains know. As a result, all they see is darkness.


p184 ...On various visual tasks they perform with an aptitude impossible for the totally blind... While they have no explicit awareness of the light, they can still respond to it, albeit without knowing what they are responding to...

...their consciousness has been divorced from their sensations. Although the brain continues to "see," the mind can't pay attention to these visual inputs... Blindsight patients are sad evidence that we have to transform our sensations -- by way of the moment of attention, which is modulated by the self -- before we can sense it. A sensation separated from the self isn't a sensation at all.

I disagree with what is in bold in that paragraph. They are true statements for the "conscious self" or the "mind" but not for the totality of the being-in-our head. That may sound like a meaningless distinction, but unless you are willing to subtract all the unconscious aspects of our selves -- like how we can fall in love at first sight -- then I will stand by it.

These experiments, on the contrary, seem to prove the opposite: The brain (or under-mind) is aware of more than the self is aware of. Not only do these sensations remain, they are processed up to the point of their being made available to the self-consciousness. As strange as blindsight is, is the process of the brain passing information to the mind without the mind knowing where it's coming from really that different from other things we seem to "know" without understanding how -- like we can, apparently, know when a woman is ovulating or that the person across the dance floor would make a perfect life partner.

If anything, the blindsight experiments prove that there is a more profound level of intelligence below the level of our conscious selves.

Here's a BBC piece that makes a similar point.

... Your head contains a hundred million electrical cells, but not one of them is you or knows you or cares about you. In fact, you don't even exist. The brain is nothing but an infinite regress of matter, reducible to the callous laws of physics.
...

...and biology. I have in mind evolution. "You" may be a ghost riding a biological machine, but the cells of that machine follow the rules of evolution.

I was thinking about all this at the gym this morning and it occurred to me that multiple personality disorders, schizophrenia, amnesia and the like, should be collectively termed diseases of the self. "I think therefore I am" is the fundamental statement of the philosophy of the self, and this is true even if you have to add a MPD amendment like, "We think therefore we are." But this tells us nothing about reality in general, despite what Descartes intended. The statement is just as true if the self is no more than a helpful creation of the brain. The usual problems people have suggested for our being mentally unable to understand the mind of God, could equally well apply to our understanding the logic of the brain that creates "us." 

Lily

p185 The most mysterious thing about the human brain is that the more we know about it, the deeper our own mystery becomes. The self is no single thing, and yet it controls the singularity of our attention...
...

Coda
...

p196 We now know enough to know that we will never know everything. This is why we need art: it teaches us how to live with mystery... 

A little more about this book and this author. The book was published in 2007 -- so Lehrer hasn't been following my blogs and answering most of my questions about things like dissonance. And the dust jacket has this to say about Jonah Lehrer, "is editor at large of Seed magazine. A graduate of Columbia University and a Rhodes scholar, Lehrer has worked in the lab of Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel and in the kitchen of Le Cirque 2000 and Le Bernardin. He has written for the Boston Globe, Nature, NPR, and NOVA ScienceNow, and writes a highly regarded blog, The Frontal Cortex."  
 

Real estate sales in this Brave New World

When I consider a space to live in I try to imagine what I would do with it given my stuff and my abilities. I moved into my present (tiny) place largely because it was an interesting challenge. In over 20 years the place has had a number of different looks, as I accumulated family furniture. (Now I kind of wish I had followed young Marcel's example in In Search of Lost Time and found a nice brothel to give the furniture to.)

But (in so many different ways) I am not normal, and the thing to do now if you want top dollar in a hot market is to pay people to "stage" the space. I just toured the newly staged lower level unit in our building and it looks amazing. There's no doubt in my mind that it has never looked better -- and probably will never look this good in the future. There are some obvious (and some less obvious) shortcomings of the space, but what you see now is how bright and perfect everything looks. The staging acts as a distraction, you see the staging instead of the space.

If I was considering buying the unit I would have to mentally remove all the staging to try to get an idea of what I was really dealing with. Most people won't go to that trouble so they will judge the place by how great it looks now... which is not what they will be buying. None the less, at the price it's listed at, they will be getting a good deal, given the location, as long as they don't need a car. And just to give you an idea of how crazy the housing market is here, this, problematic, 450-480 sq ft space (a variety of number are floating around) is listed for a half million dollars. Though the regular association dues are very reasonable for Nob Hill. If I were the realtor, that's what I would plaster on all the signs.

Next - 147. Certifiably a Geezer

77. YouTube + Alice

Previous - 76. The New Financial Distric

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Same ole, same ole

Despite liking the space and having a pretty good veggie sandwich, I'm back at the Market Street Pete's because the WiFi on Pine was almost as slow as at the Bank Cafe. Too bad.

Trying to process the Trump election while reading a book about the Holocaust is either a bad or a very good idea. Still not sure which. But it certainly does get me thinking. 

A lot is being made here about Clinton winning the popular vote. Fair enough. But the difference is still tiny and I don't actually doubt Trump's claim that he could have won the popular vote if he had campaigned more in California and New York. But it's really even worse than that.

Trumps core constituency are the people who feel disenfranchised, left out of the New Economy and the New Values of our Brave New secular world. Many of these people don't vote at all. I would be willing to bet that if everyone was forced to vote, the popular vote would be way in Trump's favor. 

And it isn't just white men who bash gays or women or Jews or any other "privileged" group they feel they have social permission to attack. This is something people -- mostly, but not entirely men -- of color can participate in as well. Hate does a surprisingly good job of bringing people together.

By coincidence, I was rereading something I wrote about Ayn Rand in my previous blog (here) that is worth rereading with Trump in mind. It would be so sad if Nietzsche was again to be used to make the world an even worse place.


Which brings me back to... The Brothers Karamazov. I bet you thought I was going to say The Magic Mountain. Start with Lizaveta (who Google doesn't even include in the list of key characters). I still maintain that she represents the Russian, Orthodox Christian, ideal of goodness in the novel, so of course she is raped by Fyodor and then dies giving birth to Smerdyakov, who represents the new man unrestrained by traditional values. He longs for, but lacks the opportunity to participate in, bourgeois success. The new, Godless, Russia (Foyodor) rapes and kills traditional Russia (Lizaveta) and spawns Smerdyakov the striving man without values or restraints.

Crash Course Philosophy

I've been watching this series of videos since they started and am having so much fun. I don't remember how many of these courses I've followed so far, several literature ones, history, parts of the chemistry one, and some others. What seems to be different about Philosophy is the community of philosophy nuts in the comments. Like me, most of the commenters are watching not so much to learn something new but to participate in a conversation about topics we rarely get a chance to talk about. Sometimes it seem like half the comments for one episode are in anticipation of what is coming next. We went nuts in anticipation of Kantian ethics -- how often does anyone get a chance to say that? The shear number of Kant puns was something to see.

I accused us of acting like fan-boys and got the usual hostile internet response, which is actually pretty funny. About the same thing is happening on another YouTube channel with military history, the difference I think is that military history seems to be a more common interest in the world at large. (When guys geek out about military history I always think of Uncle Toby in Tristram Shandy, but I can't think of a philosophical equivalent.) That there are so many people out there who know and care about Kant (and are so eagerly anticipating Nietzsche) is a pleasant surprise. 

The problem with the Crash Course Philosophy series is that it is not going into the detail we would like. And the presenter just had a baby so it's unlikely that he will jump in with a user-requested extension of the course. Our only hope is that sleep deprivation will drive him to reconsider the very nature of our perception and existence. 

YouTube travel

I also use YouTube to live vicariously though others, something that saves me a lot of trouble and expense. I'm subscribed to one couple traveling around the U.S.A. in an RV, a couple building their Tiny House, a couple sailing around the world, and, as of last night, a second couple also sailing around who just completed a transit of the Erie Canal -- something I've thought of doing -- and are currently stuck on the Hudson due to engine problems with their sailboat.

I suspect (but it would be great to know for sure) that as many people watch these videos and think, "Wow, what a lot of trouble and expense" as think "Now that's something I want to do next." This is especially true, I think, for the Tiny House series. What a lot of work it is to build (yourself) even a tiny house. The guy is an electrician, which meant that he was qualified to do all the electrical work himself, but he also took the opportunity of being his own client to add every electrical feature he had ever imagined. The house is wired like a space ship. I can't help but think how I would do it all differently, and more simply, but the thought of doing all the work he's doing also makes me think, just, no.

I fantasize about gutting my apartment and starting fresh -- a much simpler task than building a Tiny House -- but the thought of how much debris would go to the dump and of how little of an actual improvement it would be in the end, makes me sure I would never actually do it.

A Century of Wisdom

As was the case with Musicophilia (obviously) and Doctor Faustus, A Century of Wisdom is largely about music. With Doctor Faustus in mind, it is particularly interesting how important Beethoven was to Alice -- even in the camp.  Especially in the camp. While Doctor Faustus is about the "taking back" of Beethoven's 9th, A Century of Wisdom is about the survival of the 9th even under the worst circumstances. 

I'm close to the end of the book now and there has still been no mention of religion as such. It seems that music has taken the place of religion in Alice's life -- something that makes much more sense to me personally. Religion frequently uses music -- from Bach to chanting -- for it's own purposes, but one has to wonder which has primacy in this relationship. (Another question I would like to ask Temple Grandin, besides how she visualizes music, is if her appreciation of music was similarly affected by the sheep dip chemical reaction that killed her religious feelings?) 

This is awkward, but there's something else one needs to say about Alice's experience of the Holocaust: For almost everyone else, life in the camps terminated, or at least suspended, their "normal" life. Alice and, to a lesser extent, Victor Frankl lost their freedom, but not their avocations or even their vocations. Their lives, in the most important sense, continued in the camps. And this was especially the case with Alice. Even in the camp she continued teaching and performing. After the war, while living and teaching in Israel, she didn't talk about her past -- to the extent that most of her students had no idea that she was a Holocaust survivor. In the book we at least get an account of her experience and of how she tried to protect her child from the reality of his situation (which reminds me of the plot of Life Is Beautiful, though I never saw the film). 

She claims that, after the war, her reasons for not speaking of her past were that she didn't want her son to remember, and didn't want any special consideration, but I have to wonder if she also felt a sort of survivor's guilt, not just at having survived but at having had such a freakishly mild experience of the Holocaust. In her place, I would not have wanted to compare experiences with survivors from other camps.

Does this matter? Yes and no. Her experience and her insights are as valid as anyone else's. But when you consider the questions posed by The Sunflower, I would include her in the class of people who would be in no position to forgive because they hadn't really been there. This is a little unfair, as I said, she lost her freedom and also her mother and husband, but she didn't have to face the full brutality of the camps. She had glimpsed the "elephant" but didn't actually come face to face with it.

Next - 78. Kant + Music + Wisdom

58. Beethoven's 9th recalled

Previous - 57. Why?

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Doctor Faustus

I'm now re-reading the XLV chapter, the one where Adrian says,

“I find,” he said,  “that it is not to be.”

“What, Adrian, is not to be?”

“The good and noble,” he answered me; “what we call the human, although it is good, and noble. What human beings have fought for and stormed citadels, what the ecstatics exultantly announced -- that is not to be. It will be taken back. I will take it back.”

In the summer of the Trump Presidential candidacy, one is tempted to agree with Adrian. Though it's worth noting that Mann was writing not much over 100 years after Beethoven wrote his 9th Symphony. He lacked the historical perspective we have today, the feeling that there may be a historical cycle with Napoleon and Hitler and today's madmen at the low point and Beethoven's 9th as a reminder that these storms in time do pass. If only for a time.  

Next - 59. Ryecroft + Landscaping

42. Apocalypse

Previous - 41. Dusty

Doctor Faustus

If chapter XXX. is the key to Mann's true attitude toward the Great War, then chapter XXXIV. does the same for the rise of Hitler and WW2. It is more than a little frightening to read about "the Kridwiss sessions" at a time when Donald Trump is running for President in this suddenly shaky democracy. Substitute "Liberalism" for "Wiemar" and they could be talking about today. And the bit about how science can't defend itself in this climate was seconded just today by a new Senator in Australia, of all places, explaining to his fellow Senators how climate change is a global conspiracy.  

Bank Cafe

At the Bank Cafe for my iced tea and muffin. Since I’m here so frequently, I’m familiar with both the bank staff and the cafe (Peete’s) staff. Of course I haven’t failed to notice two young women baristas who Jane Austen’s Sir John Middleton would undoubtedly describe as “such pretty girls” (the passage I have in mind is not in the original but in the 2008 mini-series, so maybe I should credit Andrew Davies instead) and Mrs. Jennings would be trying to marry them off as quickly as possible before the bloom is off the rose. Anyway, these two are often paired behind the counter and, now, they are both obviously in college -- as they can frequently be seen not working behind the counter but at a table with books before them. 

There are a number of colleges in this neighborhood, including a new campus of the gigantic SF City College. I was sitting here, waiting to get onto the WiFi (takes forever) and speculating where they might be attending when one of the bank employees walked up to the table -- where the blonde of the two was sitting. While it’s handy for them to have such a convenient place to study where they work, the downside is that everyone recognizes them and is tempted to chat them up. The bank guy (I’m two tables over so I could hear pretty well) was intending to be helpful only to discover, to his dismay, that she was studying calculus. He actually recoiled. Another employee, passing at that moment, when she got the news, added her own, “dear God” and they both fled into the elevator. 

I’m wondering if this would also work on planes to keep people from talking to you.

Dragon Boats

Tomorrow is Day 1 of the sadly reduced and relocated Dragon Boat Races here. Officially it’s the San Francisco Dragon Boat Festival but since they’ve lost the Treasure Island location, it will actually be held at Oakland’s Lake Merritt. First we steal Oakland’s basketball team and now we hold SF events in their public parks. No wonder they have so much gun violence.

That was my second favorite event of the year (the Alice radio free concerts in GG Park would be third favorite, and those have been abandoned entirely it seems). Lake Merritt is a lovely setting so I have a feeling the new venue will only be disappointing in comparison with the beauty of TI. And it should be easier to work because it’s a much smaller event now. Though probably hotter since it’s on the lake not in the middle of the Bay.

Dwelling on Dwell

Dwell magazine, from here, has been establishing itself in SoCal for some years now. The current issue of the magazine talks about a “content series” featuring mid-century LA residential architecture from around the Case Study period -- possibly overlapping with the time Thomas Mann was living in Pacific Palisades. That made me think how Faustian -- in Goethe’s sense -- SoCal is. The magazine says, “...they took advantage of the region’s pleasant climate by creating experimental spaces that blur the lines between indoor and outdoor living.” 

SoCal is almost magical -- and not a little Mephistophelian. At the end of Faust, Faust, with Mephisto’s help, reclaims land from the sea to build his new world. In SoCal, people reclaimed a desert with water stolen from other places. The lush beauty of SoCal residential landscapes comes with a high price. The Owens Valley is the equivalent of the simple people crushed by Mephisto’s men -- to fulfill Faust’s wishes, though Faust doesn’t want to know about it, just as Angelenos don’t wish to dwell on the consequences of their lifestyle. (Note second meaning of “dwell” played with there.)

And that’s before you even get to the oil that comes from below the city to fuel the cars that ravage the surface and the air above. And naming such a Mephistophelian place “the city of angels” is so perfect. What genius wrote this reality? 

Next - 43. 94 F

37. Tod

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Doctor Faustus 

It's finally come to this... I'm blogging about my blog about Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus. I'm rereading the post about Chapter XXX -- one of the most important chapters of the book -- covering the start of the Great War and Mann's fictionalized reaction to that event, but also On the Marionette Theater by Heinrich von Kleist. Having now read The Brothers K, I see the influence of Kleist's ideas about the "grace" of marionettes on Ivan Karamazov's "Grand Inquisitor" story. A marionette's grace comes from a lack of freedom. The very freedom the Grand Inquisitor wants to save the faithful from. Or you could call it a freedom from freedom. The same freedom the National Socialists would offer the German people. From this context it's easier to understand how the Germans in general, but even the devoted Nazis, did not feel guilt or responsibility for the Holocaust and the war in general, because they had surrendered their freedom and responsibility at the very beginning. That was what Hitler -- like the Grand Inquisitor -- offered them. That was the irresistible appeal. Which, when you think about it, isn't really that different from the appeal of Christian cults that focus on the ability of the Jesus to Save you from all your sins. Total faith in Jesus or Hitler absolves all your sins and responsibilities. Hallelujah! 

And then there's death, or in German, tod. Thinking about "all this" (which includes all my blogging to date), I was struck by the role death plays in "all this." In the beginning there is the Romantic idea of death in Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther -- something I still have yet to read -- which is picked up in The Magic Mountain through Schubert's Die Winterreise. Faust begins with the protagonist on the verge of suicide due to existential angst. The Birth of Tragedy is largely about how both the Olympian gods and Attic tragedy were intended to save man from the belief that a quick death was the best outcome to be wished for. 

I don't have a handy source to point to on the Japanese side (I'm thinking about WW2 now) -- there are lots of them, I just don't have them at my fingertips -- but the Imperial Death Cult was in many ways the most explicit in its desire for death. An "honorable" death, but still death. The Kamikaze fliers who didn't even seek out enemy ships but just crashed into the sea would be the most spectacular example here.  

And I wasn't forgetting Michel Foucault when I said the Japanese were the most explicit seekers after death. One troubled philosopher isn't nearly as impressive as an entire modern society. 

Even the Nazi true believers, as much as they may have sought annihilation, in most cases seemed to feel they had more important work to do first -- like Goethe's Faust, when you think about it. The Nazi dilemma was always the tension between Death and The Work. (Which, as I've pointed out before, is why the camps were compromised both in terms of providing slave labor and in eliminating what they viewed as sub-humans. In attempting to do two jobs at once, they failed at both.) And since this division of purpose -- or procrastination -- of necessity came from the top, what does that say about the people who took over the marionette strings of the German people? Is this a particularly bizarre and twisted example of absolute power corrupting absolutely? A society built on death but wanting just a little more life?

I should probably place an image of puppies here.

Getting close now

We are really at the fun part of the construction project now, things are racing to a conclusion. While I was at the gym the low area of the floor was built up with a fresh layer of cement. Almost all the trim is up in the unit, along with the heater and even the recessed lights -- I guess I'll never know how they did that. The hardware to repair the back door is sitting in the hallway waiting to be installed. 

I'm torn between wanting to keep an eye on everything and not wanting to get in their way, so I'm back at the Bank Cafe. I think I may have gotten over charged for my iced tea.

...An hour or so later

Arrived home to find them measuring the rear door to replace the whole thing because the outside bottom is a little rotten -- thanks to exposure after being crudely sawed off. Sent some rushed email and text messages to get the boss to re-think this. 

While getting a new door sounds like a great idea, this is not an easy door to rehang. There are at least three hinges, a door closer, and the alarm -- plus all the signs. And it would all need to be painted. The inside is going to be painted in any case, but the outside is still in good shape. I think I've saved it. We'll see in the morning. Otherwise everything looks good. The only bad news is that the electrician isn't coming back to hook everything up until next week. I really was hoping the laundry would be back in service tomorrow. I have a load of clothes to wash.

Next - 38. Pikachu?

32. Mann + retrofit

Previous -  31. Grids & Grahams

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Kaisersaschern dreaming...

A friend brought to my attention that Thomas Mann's house in Pacific Palisades is on the market and his German fans are concerned that someone will buy it, demolish it, and build something bigger and more up-to-date -- which is exactly what I imagine will happen. There were some poor photos of the house in the article. My first thought was to describe it as Mid-century Modern, but it's really more pre-Mid-century Modern. It isn't a Case Study style house but the architect was probably influenced by the Bauhaus. It's really more of a characteristically SoCal house of that time and neighborhood. 

That Mann wrote Doctor Faustus there is hard to keep in mind as I re-read my blog. Imagine if Proust had retreated to Tahiti to write In Search of Lost Time. Now I could easily imagine Mann writing "Snow" from The Magic Mountain -- or at least the dream within that chapter -- while on the cliffs above the Pacific. (Possibly with "Hotel California" or Natalie Merchant's "San Andreas Fault" playing on the stereo.) To sit there, between dog walks, turning the corruption of German culture into a Faust story can not have been easy. Now do you get my heading above?

Retrofit

For some reason (denial?) I was thinking we were at the point where the worst was past and we could just coast to the finish line from here. Now I'm noticing a whole cluster of things that could still bite us in the ass. I think it may be safer to just assume this is going to be as difficult as imaginable all the way to the end.

My new expectation is that by the middle of next week I will be back to focusing on what I can actually control -- getting the laundry room back in order. It does look like I will get my shot at painting (priming) the new wall (and my ceiling that they tore out and replaced again) before the electrical conduit and gang boxes go back on. That's something. 

I also have a scheme in mind for getting my hands on some of the plywood -- that's been covering the hall carpet since the very beginning -- for a shelf and a door. If this works we could finally have a way to block off and lock a section of the laundry room for more secure storage. Something we've talked about for years. We already have a nice "left behind" wall shelf I need to install. But a nice bit of plywood would give us a nice counter/work space in that secured area. And since that area is unlighted, it will give me an excuse to buy one of those cool, battery powered LED lights. They keep getting better and brighter and I don't really have any use for them in my own apartment. Frustration.

What I'm really looking forward to is cleaning out my webmail In and Send folders as soon as this is all over -- so many emails and I don't want to delete anything until the process is complete. I have been known to over-purge. That makes me sound like Karen Carpenter.

Next - 33. Derivatives an TA, again

29. Chatty

Previous - 28. Random

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Bad Swifty

One really should confess ones shortcomings, both to others and to oneself, so here goes: The other day I discovered a cache of longer versions of Glee covers (with lyrics) on YouTube. I finally made it to Santana's (Naya Rivera's) cover of Taylor's Mine and it was a revelation. I've heard Taylor Swift's version of her song many times and there are some great parts, but Naya's version was so much stronger. 

Mine is a classic Country song. This tune is from earlier in Taylor's career when she was still in Nashville, and it shows. But I never noticed just how good, and Country good, the song was until hearing Naya's version. Now, the virtue of Glee is that they most often framed their covers in an emotional context -- in this case the troubled relationship between Santana and Brittney -- so some of that rubs off on my reaction to Naya's singing. But I really don't think that's the key ingredient. It could also be that I'm just hearing the song with fresher ears in this new version. But, again, I doubt it. 

On We Found Love, Naya does an amazing job of capturing the little vocal things that Rhianna does that makes that song so memorable. I can't speak to her cover of I Love You Like a Love Song, because I don't know the original version, but Naya's cover, in its long form, is now one of my favorite Glee songs. 

Here's Naya's Glee version of Mine for your consideration: 

Faust

Really, Doctor Faustus. I'm re-reading my blogging of this book from February of last year. This is the first time I've reviewed this material since reading The Brothers Karamazov, and especially Ivan's dream sequence. I might as well say that it's the first time I've re-read it since the last time I read it, as you always bring that to a re-reading as well.

I envy my friend who is into the double digits of her re-readings of Proust, both because she started before me, and so can recall what it was like to first encounter this world as a quite young woman, but mostly because she can read it in French. 

Am I at four readings? I'm not entirely certain. But I can't imagine getting into it again for at least a decade. I'm much more likely to re-read Parade's End (almost certain, in fact) and even The Magic Mountain. I was thinking, after Doctor Faustus, that I didn't need to go back to TMM, but now I'm thinking it would be interesting. That was the original plan after all -- to tackle Goethe's Faust and Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy before blogging TMM. And instead Doctor Faustus and The Brothers Karamazov turned out to be even more important. 

I just realized I haven't blogged Parade's End, either. And that would be especially challenging as I would want to talk about Tom Stoppard's screenplay as well as Ford Madox Ford's original text. Just the other day I was thinking about some of the things Ford did in his final book that revised or undercut assumptions from the earlier books. And as wonderful as I think Stoppard's screenplay is, it couldn't capture the literary marvels of the text. What's compelling about Parade's End is both the story and the way it is told. 

My aunt, who passed away last year at 94, never read a book twice. She saw it as a waste of reading time. I could see going the other way and only reading books I had read before. Not that I would, there are still too many important books I've yet to read. But I do think that would be a reasonable plan. For one thing it would guarantee that you weren't wasting your time on books you wouldn't end up liking.

And, as long as I'm reflecting back on earlier blogs, a friend is traveling around the south of England and today posted photos of Exeter cathedral on Facebook. I immediately thought of the fictional Henry Ryecroft and his snug cottage not that far from Exeter. I really should go back and add links to my later posts about disease and genius in Doctor Faustus (what I was reading last night) and autism and genius in Thinking In Pictures. George Gissing and Mann, I suspect, would have gotten along just fine, but it's hard to imagine what Gissing would make of Temple Grandin, in her Western outfits, designing more efficient (and more humane) slaughterhouses in America. Would either Gissing or Mann have been receptive to her science based interpretation of her world? That is hard to imagine.

Tiny 

After attending my only boat show, in the mid-1960s, I became enamored of sailboat interiors. I still look at mid-size boat tours on YouTube, but have added RV tours and, more recently, Tiny Houses.

I think what appeals to me, beside the intimacy and efficiency of these spaces, is the attention to detail. In larger spaces you can waste space or not pay much attention to entire walls or even rooms. In a tiny space every cubic inch has to justify itself.

Of course I've also argued that often these spaces I see on YouTube are in fact over-designed. Intensely planned and crafted fixtures often mean that there is only one way to use the space. A Lamborghini is a thing of beauty and perfectly designed for its purpose, but if you need to pick-up a purchase or take friends to dinner, a Tesla X is far more flexible and -- dare I say it -- practical.

If I ever had the opportunity to design a tiny space (I forgot to mention container conversions, which may be my favorite) I would start by subtracting as many of the features you commonly see as possible. I would try to introduce functional minimalism as well as aesthetic minimalism (the decorative details of many of these designs would make the Victorians blush.) I could even demonstrate this concept in my own tiny apartment except that making marginal improvements in such an awkwardly small space simply isn't worth the bother. And so I read Dwell magazine instead.

Next - 30. Less chatty