I hear William James is bringing nitrous oxide. And be sure to use the secret handshake at the door. One must be so careful these days…

Also, I sort of do think that history is a tea party thrown by Gertrude Stein.

Is this a reflection of our culture or simply unconscious male bias on my part?

2. Here’s my favorite Updike [non] poem (reproduced, I’m afraid, imperfectly):

LOVE SONNET
John Updike

In Love’s rubber armor I come to you;
b
oo
b.
c,
d
c
d:
e
f –
e
f.
g
g.

I read Woolf’s novels a long time ago. I found them really odd. Frankly, she sounded like a nutter, if you want to know the truth. Brilliant and sensitve, yes. But bonkers, that’s all.

I noticed the comments that Dylan’s sense of the ‘truth’ was deeper than Lennon’s. “Gimme Some Truth” was written during John’s political Yoko phase; you can’t go entirely by that. I agree Dylan is subtle and brilliant, but Lennon certainly is his equal, especially if you listen to outake recordings in which Lennon deliberately imitates Dylan–he gets him absolutely spot on, and I’m sure you’ve heard Lennon’s satire of Dylan’s “Serve somebody.”

Thank you for sharing Woolf’s actual words. We can argue all day about her worth, but it’s really helpful to look at her actual writings and attempt a judgment which people seem so cowardly about making–it seems they’d rather believe in some well-placed authority, so I REALLY appreciate you linking to her work. We do not have to agree here; that’s not my aim, I’m OK with disagreement, and I welcome it, because I can’t ‘rhetoric’ very well with agreement; Disagreement had a baby and they called it speech.

OK… Take it away, my dear lady…

Ladies and Gentlemen, Virginia Woolf:

Very few people in the whole of England ever reach Q. Here, stopping for one moment by the stone urn which held the geraniums, he saw, but now far, far away, like children picking up shells, divinely innocent and occupied with little trifles at their feet and somehow entirely defenceless against a doom which he perceived, his wife and son, together, in the window. They needed his protection; he gave it them. But after Q? What comes next? After Q there are a number of letters the last of which is scarcely visible to mortal eyes, but glimmers red in the distance. Z is only reached once by one man in a generation.

“Very few people in the whole of England ever reach Q.”

Is this meant to be funny? I find it funny; inane, really.

“Here, stopping for one moment by the stone urn which held the geraniums, he saw, but now far, far away, like children picking up shells, divinely innocent and occupied with little trifles at their feet and somehow entirely defenceless against a doom which he perceived, his wife and son, together, in the window.”

I had to read this sentence over a number of times before I grasped it. She is comparing the man’s ‘wife and son, in the window’ to ‘children picking up shells, divinely innocent and occupied with little trifles at their feet and somehow entirely defenceless against a doom which he perceived…’ I’m not sure why she needs this comparison–figures in a window cannot be occupied with trifles at their feet, because you don’t see figures in a window so preoccupied since you tend to see only the upper body of someone in a window. Secondly, isn’t the innocence of ‘wife and son’ enough? Why do we need the ‘children picking up shells?’ This is milk-and-water type composing. The good writer will reject this at once. ‘defenceless against a doom which he perceived’ also strikes me as vague and hyperbolic.

“After Q there are a number of letters the last of which is scarcely visible to mortal eyes, but glimmers red in the distance. Z is only reached once by one man in a generation.”

Finally, is she seriously pursuing this sequential idea as a symbol of great thought? I find this faintly ridiculous. And why is the end “glimmering red?” This seems absolutely mad. Are we supposed to get from this that the “end” of “knowledge” is “hell?” Yet she doesn’t seem to be using irony; she seems to be really trying to convince us of this man’s intelligence and humanity, but in such an odd way. And finally this: “Z is only reached once by one man in a generation” seems painfully blinkered and elitist.

Do you feel this is a sample of her best writing?

Tell me if I am being unfair, because this is my sincere impression.

Perhaps we can look at something else. I don’t wish to rush to judgment.

Thomas

Plato didn’t think the world was flat. Read “The Timaeus.”
Read Plato, in fact. It sounds to me like that’s what you need. Aristotle’s fun, but Plato is far more grounded, far more interesting.

Nothing sinks a literary discussion faster than shallow politics and religious prejudice.

“Ranking is relative.”

Precisely.

Thomas

Not true, but even if it were, it would be easily correctable, Thomas. Simply take a work of hers and point to its merits.

Have you read any of her novels?

The description of the father thinking in “To the Lighthouse” has always blown me away — so incisive, witty, humane (and, so I’ve read, probably a portrait of her own father at least in part). It’s too long to quote here, but if anybody is interested, I quoted it at length on my blog a few years ago while thinking about Dylan & Lennon’s differing conceptions of truth.

http://utopianturtletop.blogspot.com/search?q=woolf+meltzer

Terreson, I often want to turn off my “judgment button” too. Nice description. Thanks — and thanks to Daisy.

Imagine the spectrum of human intelligence and creativity being an inch long from the lowest to highest IQ.

Then think of the Intelligence beyond a mile long and then 10 and a 100 and 1M ad infinitum. In the cosmic scale, our minds are paltry things, always getting it wrong, thinking the erarth flat till Newton came along.

But we cannot help it, we have to have the pecking order, Leavis the sneery cheeerleader ass lickin Eliot ushering in the 20C version of it. Major and minor, all designed to exclude, whilst the real artists take no part, just doing what they do.

I blame Plato, Aristotle and Socrates, who were that dumb they only had men in their gang. And look at the churches. I saw a picture of an old man in a strange ornamental dress, standing by a wall in Palastine, eighty and more years of age, in control of billions, claims he speaks for the God we all share and him, unmarried, a single bachelor. That’s what the pecking orders lead to, fights and death under a guise of doing waht’s right, what’s in our best interests, to go kick ass, do the Taliban the US created when it’s short term view was on the reds, telling the rest of us what’s important and all along, selfish singular interest.

If i had my way, no one would be allowed to judge and free love and hugs would be the order of the day. I’d be at the head, dispensing wisdom texts and having a gang of fawns agreeing with all i said. Isn’t that the truth, we all wanna be a benevolent dictator, global rulers and what we say respected, carved into brick, our forms made into statues, our minds hailed as the prophetic source of the cosmic creator – with all the rest just, conversation.

Please! I wouldn’t want you to take leave of your senses on my account! I’m not worth it!

I would like to say a word, if I may, on sorting and ranking.

The philosopher in us often rejects ranking systems as too competitive or small-minded.

But not so fast, says MY inner philosopher.

I recall that Arnold’s “Touchstone” idea really is nothing more than a variation of ‘ranking.’ It admits that we know little until we compare. There is nothing wrong with this, I think.

It really is nothing more than another form of organization, and it does not mean there is a final answer, but that’s just critics keep doing it to keep their senses alive, rather than merely accept some authority which says ‘this author is great and you shall not question it.’

Also, it is valuable, given that there is SO much to read and ponder, especially for young students, to be given works and writers of high quality. And how do we know which ones are important if we don’t compare (i.e., rank) them?

To say why something is important is to rank it, really. We can’t get away from this completely. Ranking may not be the only method, but it is helpful, and I don’t think we should run away from it in the name of some misplaced superior-sounding prejudice.

Thomas