James E Hartley

God of Small Things

“For who hath despised the day of small things?”

God says that. (Zechariah 4:10)

Arundhati Roy entitled a novel: The God of Small Things.

Is this a coincidence?

Hard to believe that it is, but Roy’s novel of India and Zechariah’s prophecies in Ancient Israel don’t seem to have any obvious similarities. Indeed, consider the context of that line for Zechariah:

Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,
The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it; and thou shalt know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto you.
For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth.

(That is the King James Version by the way (though you probably instantly knew that)—I don’t normally read the KJV, but I like the way the question in the middle there is phrased.)

Roy’s God of Small Things is introduced in a dream described thus:

“If he touched her he couldn’t talk to her, if her loved her he couldn’t leave, if he spoke he couldn’t listen, if he fought he couldn’t win.”

Yeah, I don’t know that that means either, and it isn’t clear the novel explains it.

Maybe there is no connection between Roy and Zechariah, but it seems weird that there isn’t.

All of which is a long way of saying that Roy’s novel is extremely good, but not because it provides an exegesis on the book of Zechariah.

(Though it is rather hard to believe Roy wasn’t referencing Zechariah, so maybe I am missing something….I need to stop pondering this…really, I need to just stop…)

Small things (to start afresh). Is there a moment in your life around which the whole of your life pivots? A moment to which everything you did before inexorably led and everything after necessarily follows? A moment that every small thing in your life was either a cause of or an effect of that single moment?

That is the thesis of Roy’s novel, and she does a marvelous job exploring it. This really is a book worth reading—indeed, it is one of those books I was surprised I had not read earlier in life. But thanks to a former student who was shocked I hadn’t read it and thus bought me a copy to remedy this failing, I finally read it.

The novel unfolds with the before and after circling around and around that central moment. We only find that central moment in the last chapter.

There is a very clever bit of plotting in the construction of the novel. The nature of the central event is tipped off early, so there isn’t a big shock at the end if you are paying attention.

But, and this is the really impressive part, the event that I assumed would be the pivot point, the event I assumed would be the final chapter, was contained in the penultimate chapter. The real central point, also not a surprise event, is only surprising because it comes at the very end. It is the moment to which the whole novel leads and follows.

As soon as you see it, as soon as you realize that this event and not the one you thought it was, is the real moment around which the whole novel circles, you say “of course.”

It is a marvelous feeling. Here you are enjoying one book, watching it all unravel to get to the middle and then you discover that the middle you that you were uncovering isn’t the middle after all, that an event which you thought was just a precursor to the middle was in fact the middle. All of the lives of all these characters all hinged on that one moment. All of the decisions reaching back generations led to that moment and all the things that happened afterwards happened because of that one exact moment.

So, great story, well written. But, is it right? Does your life have such a pivot point?

Disturbingly, Roy’s argument is that the pivot point may not actually be an event in which you participated or even witnessed. The pivot point of your life may not even happen to you and may not even happen until after you are dead and yet your whole life was just leading to that pivot point.

It is the idea of this pivot point in life that is intriguing me. In Christian theology, all of human history has a pivot point at the Crucifixion of Christ.

But, what about your life or my life? The reason this is so hard to decipher is that even if it exists, how would I know? What if my pivot point comes at the age of 57 or 74? What if it happened when I was 12? In either case, would I know?

Indeed (terrifying thought, this) what if writing these reflections on Roy’s novel are the unique pivot point of my whole life—that this moment is unique because it is the sole moment in my life in which everything I have done up until now led to this exact moment and everything afterwards happens because of this moment?

Here I have comfortably lived my life assuming that my life had a trajectory, that one thing followed another in a perfectly predestined fashion, but the inexorable nature of life never raised the possibility of a crucial moment in that life. Every moment is crucial.

This is Eliot’s argument in Burnt Norton, by the way. I guess I have lived my life assuming this is the case:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.

And in that reading, there is no unique pivot point. All time is unredeemable.

So, why does Roy’s hypothesis haunt me is much? In the universe of Eliot (and me), every moment is sacred and inviolable. But if every moment is sacred, then no moment is special.

In Roy’s novel, there is that one moment that is different.

What troubles me is this: if there was a moment that was special, shouldn’t I acknowledge it as such? Obviously.

But, what if there were two special moments? Well, then both should be thought of a sacred and special. Three moments? The same. Four? Five?

And adding up, what if every moment is sacred? What if every single moment is a fixed point, eternally present and unredeemable. Then should I be in awe at every moment in my life, holding onto the thing that makes this moment the moment of my life that everything has led to and everything will come from?

If I agree with Eliot (and I do) that every moment is The Moment, then why don’t I treat every moment as The Moment?

Does Life Have Meaning?

A history of human stupidity.

I am not about to write such a thing, but the idea is amusing.

Sadly, the book would be too long to read in a lifetime—and that is assuming you were just reading the abridged version.

But, we have the next best thing: Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle. It’s nominally fiction, but fiction of the sort that says something truer than non-fiction.

This is Vonnegut’s fourth novel. Insofar as there is a thesis in this book it is this: History is just one stupid human act after another and in the end we all die and it was perfectly meaningless.

Yet, this is no cause for despair. Because, when you look at it, when you really look closely at it, when you press your eyeball right up against history and stare as intensely as you can at it, then you see that all this human stupidity is really quite funny.

You just have to stop taking everything so seriously. You have to stop striving for some Big Think overarching narrative story that makes sense of the whole thing in terms of Grand Causes or Grand Cosmic Ends. Just chop up reality into really tiny parts (this Library of America version of this book is 183 pages long and has 127 chapters—you do the math) and look at each part on its own and realize that each part, which follows from what went before and leads to what comes after, each part individually is just another senseless act of stupidity in a long string of actions of senseless stupidity all leading to yet more acts of senseless stupidity.

In the end, we all die. But, don’t get all worked up about that either—even our death is just one more small little bit of human stupidity following inexorably from what came before. So laugh. Really, just laugh.

This is a brilliant book. Wrong, of course—there is a Grand Overarching Cosmic Narrative—but wrong in a useful way.

For example—take this moment. I want to, and truth be told, you Dear Reader also want to, imagine that this moment is larger than it is, that there is some Great Purpose to this moment, that this moment cannot be stripped out of eternity and held up like a 1.44 page chapter as an entity unto itself and laughed at. I (and you) want to believe that there is some larger meaning to all this, that I am not simply adding to the chronicle of human stupidity by writing this and that you are not adding an even greater stupidity by actually reading this. We, you and I, Dear Reader, want to weave this moment into something meaningful.

Yet, is it? Can I honestly say that by writing these rambling semi-coherent reflections I am adding to human wisdom? I am rehashing a book which I read before and promptly forgot because it seemed so purposeless and now I am calling it brilliant because I found some purpose in a purposeless book and you are reading my second-hand reflections on the book hoping to discover…what? What, Dear Reader, did you really hope to attain in the few moments you read this blog post? Did you honestly expect to become more wise, to lessen the amount of human stupidity in history by charging forth after reading this to revolutionize the world? Did you really believe that by reading this blog post you would make the world would a better place?

I just opened Cat’s Cradle at random. Chapter 98. We read in that chapter:
“I agree with one Bokonist idea. I agree that all religions, including Bokononism, are nothing but lies.”

Is that Bokonist Idea the truth or a lie? That of course is the Joke. As the Cretan said, “All Cretans are liars.” The apostle Paul said that. Now Paul was writing to Titus when he said that and Titus was ministering to the people of Crete and Paul used that joke to remind Titus about the sort of people he was serving. Paul wasn’t kidding; he added, “that statement is true.” Paul has a sense of humor too. So, opening up Cat’s Cradle at random, truly at random, I suddenly found Vonnegut and Paul sharing a joke and then I wrote about it, and you Dear Reader, read about it, and what did we all, you, me, Vonnegut, and Paul, just accomplish? This paragraph you are reading is 2000 years in the making, and we just advanced humanity…how?

So, while I believe in the Grand Cosmic Narrative, while I believe there is a teleological point to human existence, it is hard to escape the Vonnegutian Perspective. Moment by moment, history sure does seem like just one stupid thing after another. Moment by moment, those acts of stupidity are pretty funny. I am very amused that you are actually still reading this, Dear Reader. At what point did you miss the cue that there is nothing here worth reading?

Page 47. I picked that page number at random. (Was it truly random? Why 47? I have no idea.) I am about to turn to page 47 and will transcribe a sentence from that page. I note this to give you fair warning. Do you really believe there is any possibility that something on page 47 of this book will generate an observation which is worth your time, Dear Reader? Think of this as the Rorschach test moment. If your answer to that was “Yes,” then what, Dear Reader, gives you any hope that a sentence on a random page from a random book on a random blog written by Your Humble Narrator will have meaning? And, if your answer was “No,” then why are you still reading (that isn’t a rhetorical question)?

From page 47: OK. I’ll admit it, this is really quite eerie. The first thing on page 47 is the end of chapter 32:

But all I could say as a Christian then was, “Life is sure funny sometimes.”
“And sometimes it isn’t,” said Marvin Breed.

Here is the part I find seriously troubling. I really did just pick the number 47 at random, wrote the preceding paragraph and then turned to page 47 and there it was. I did not rewrite the preceding paragraph after turning to page 47. I, of course, have absolutely no way to convince you, Dear Reader, that this was, in fact what happened. Indeed, I suspect you think this whole thing is rigged.

Honestly, if I was reading this blog post I would think this whole thing was some lame attempt to make a point. I can’t think of anything the author could write that would convince me otherwise. But, as the writer of this blog post, I know something you, the Reader, don’t know. It really did happen. It wasn’t made up.

I am troubled. This is just too strange for my tastes. I mean I get that God has a sense of humor too, but to orchestrate things so that I would turn to that page at the end of this blog post and find those two sentences right at the top of the page…well, that is just a bit too much Grand Cosmic Narrative for my tastes.

I am seriously troubled. (Really, no joke here.)

Wait a Minute, Mr Postman

Will the US Postal Service survive for another 20 years? Should it?

Mail fascinates me. I have no idea why.

(Then again, I have no idea why I am fascinated by 90% of the things which fascinate me.)

It’s not that I like sending physical letters; I don’t. I have converted every bill I can to electronic payment. And it’s not that I get a lot of mail I like to receive. My Wall Street Journal is delivered by the USPS, but that is just an oddity. I get a few magazines once a month. An occasional letter; very occasional. Yet, every day when I get home, I wander down to the mailbox to get the mail and somehow this doesn’t seem like a tedious chore.

These ruminations are prompted by Bradbury’s “The Great Wide World Over There” all about an illiterate woman living in the middle of nowhere who is insanely excited and fascinated by getting mail. (Pretend there is a story surrounding that description—there isn’t, but it will make you feel better if you imagine there is a story.)

The idea of getting mail is exciting; but actually getting mail is rarely exciting. Why the disconnect?

Now e-mail, I like. Quick, efficient, easy. I understand why I like e-mail.

All of which prompts me to wonder: how much of the National Tolerance with US Postal Service is pure nostalgia? Growing up in California, I was mesmerized by the idea that “Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor hail” would ever stop The Mailman. I believed that. Then reality came crashing down on me after I moved to New England and mail delivery was cancelled due to a blizzard. Apparently Eastern mailmen are not as reliable as California mailmen. Either that or the saying…just wasn’t true.

But, as a business concern, the postal service is a mammoth joke. What kind of business promises to deliver letters to every single address six days a week for under 50 cents per letter? How does this make sense? Think about all the mail delivered on any given day. Now ask: if all of that mail had been delivered one day later, how much damage would be done? I can only remember once receiving a piece of mail which would have caused harm if I had not received it until the next day—we received our Visas for India the day before departing for India. Surely, there is time-sensitive business mail—but would anyone, anyone at all, send a time sensitive piece of mail via regular delivery by the US Postal Service? Next Day Mail. Cheap, guaranteed delivery the next day. Who wouldn’t use that for something which needed immediate delivery (besides the Indian Embassy, of course)?

Now if the Postal Service were to drop guaranteed delivery to every address from every day to every other day, that would be a rather dramatic cutting of costs—you would need only half the mailmen. (Does anyone call them mailmen anymore? I thought not.) A pretty obvious cost cutting measure, yet I have never seen it mentioned. Instead, they periodically talk about cutting Saturday delivery—and one would think not receiving mail on Saturday is a sign of the Apocalypse from the political outcry. The same goes for stamps—where did we get the idea that the price of mailing a letter should be below the cost of mailing a letter?

We treat the US Postal Service like a natural monopoly, and honestly, it probably is a natural monopoly. I think it is easy to make the case that the US Postal Service is also a Public Good. So, unlike the libertarian types, I am not fired up about abolishing the whole enterprise. Yet, even if I am right about the Public Good nature of the whole enterprise, I cannot see any reason for the size of the operation. Having the ability to send relatively cheap letters to anyone in the country is a good thing, but is there any reason that daily, instead of, say, weekly, delivery of mail is a public good? This is the sort of discussion we should be having, but strangely, we are not.

None of which explains why I like the idea of mail so much. I know my feelings are not universal. My wfe hates the mail—she viscerally loathes going to the Post Office and she would never remember to go collect the mail every day. And my kids? I am not sure they even know how the mail system works. I suspect there are quite a few people under the age of 25 who literally have no idea how to send a letter through the US Postal Service.

So, 20 years from now will daily physical mail delivery still exist? I am beginning to doubt it.

Courage

Define “Courage.”

Go ahead.  Try.  Really.  What is Courage?

I’d never given the matter much thought until I read Plato’s Laches, which is an extended discussion on the definition of Courage.

Reading the dialogue was easily more time spent thinking about the definition of courage than I had spent in the entire rest of my life until then. Courage is just one of those things that you know it when you see it. I never really tried to define it.

Having read Plato’s Dialogue on the matter, I have even less of an idea how to define it than I did before I ever tried to define it. Plato is like that. You don’t read Plato to Learn Something. You read Plato to realize you Know Nothing.

Then again, that isn’t entirely right. I don’t really read Plato to learn how little I know. I already know how little I know. I, like Socrates, happily embrace my ignorance, and I, like Socrates, love nothing more than trying to figure things out even when there is no hope of actually figuring them out. I like puzzling over things. So, I enjoy puzzling over the definition of courage even though I don’t actually care what the definition of courage truly is.

Indeed, the only time I ever personally encounter the idea of Courage is when I make critical remarks about Administrators at Mount Holyoke or publicly make some remark that indicates that I am to the Right of Center in politics or actually Believe my religious beliefs. Afterwards, someone will occasionally tell me that I was really brave to say such things. I always scoff. I have tenure. The Administrators cannot fire me no matter what I say. How much courage does it take to say things when you know there is no way to lose your job?

People who hold their ground while enemies are shooting explosives at them, people who dash out in the midst of gunfire to drag a fellow soldier to safety, people who stand up to oppressors at the risk of death, people who go into burning buildings to save others, those people have courage. To say what I do is in any way comparable is a mockery of the term.

But, to return to Plato. I read and enjoy Plato not because of the answer, but because it is fun to follow the meandering arguments leading nowhere.

For example, this particular dialogue, in true Platonic fashion, doesn’t start with the discussion of courage. It starts with trying to figure out whom one should ask for advice on a subject. Is it the person who is skillful in the accomplishment of the matter or the person who is skillful in the means of the matter?

Consider leadership: if you want to learn about leadership, should you consult the person who has led well or the person who has studied leadership well? If it is the latter, then surely you want to know who the teachers were. And do you evaluate the teachers by whether they led well or whether they studied leadership well? At the end of the chain, it gets pretty obvious that if you want to know about leadership, you should consult leaders.

But, do leaders know how to articulate what they know? There is no reason to assume they do.

If I want to study Courage, and I ask the Courageous about Courage, the will probably just say, ‘Well, my buddy was under fire and was going to die, so I went out and got him.” That’s courage.

The Leader would say, “Well, there was this problem and I got everyone together and we fixed the problem.” That’s leadership.

Is there any evidence that a study of leadership helps make leaders? Having taught a couple of classes on the subject, I feel perfectly safe in saying that studying leadership, while fascinating to be sure, does not in any way turn someone into a leader. You don’t have to take my word for it—many of my students said the same thing.

The same thing is true about teaching, by the way. The best teachers did not learn their craft in Education classes.

This is really obvious if you think about Courage. If you study Courage, will you become courageous? Would anyone think so? I doubt I am the least bit more courageous now that I have read Plato’s dialogue on Courage. Indeed, I don’t even have more knowledge about Courage now that I have read this dialogue.

Yet I have studied Courage for an hour or so. And I am glad I did so.

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Isn’t It Enough Just To Be Charming?

“A priceless part of our literary heritage.”

Thus the blurb reads on the front cover of the book in question.

Now that is the sort of accolade which obviously applies to a Great Book. Yet, the book in question in not in the Library of America series.

The blurb writer of this particular accolade is also noteworthy; many blurbs are written by the friends of the author, some by luminaries who write in the same genre (once can sense an undertone of “I praise your book, you praise mine”). But, this blurbist (is that a word? It should be; sounds better than blurber) fits neither of those categories.

Instead, this is a well-known personage, very well-known, who is not known for his literary efforts (for good reason). The Blurbist: George Lucas. The George Lucas. (If you don’t know that name, you live under a rock.)

The volume was written by Carl Barks, which is a name completely unfamiliar to most people.

So, here we have a book which George Lucas called a Priceless (priceless!) part of our literary heritage written by an author almost completely unknown. How can this be? Well, it turns out that while the name Carl Barks is little known, the names of the characters about whom he writes are incredibly well known.

But, enough of this exercise in trivial pursuit. The Book: Walt Disney’s Uncle Scrooge: “Only a Poor Old Man.” This is one of a series of the work of Carl Barks, the author and illustrator of Donald Duck comic books in the mid-20^th century. And Donald Duck comic books are unquestionably a priceless part of our literary heritage.

But, are they worth reading?

If one is not obsessed with Donald Duck, it is possible to be glad that this work is being republished in beautifully done volumes, but it does not immediately follow that the volumes are the sort of thing which should be read by one and all.

Curiously, there is a certain insecurity about the whole enterprise exhibited by the editors of the volume. The books in this series have at the back short, scholarly (well, really, pseudo-scholarly) essays about each comic book, showing how Barks was really (really!) doing interesting work here and (insert foot stomp) you should really recognize how incredibly important (important!) this work is because you might be tempted (you philistine, you) to think this is mere kid’s stuff.

The earnestness and vacuousness of these mini-essays makes me pause. I mean, I liked reading the comic book; it was fun. So, why do you need to beat me over the head with how important it is? Insecurity indeed.

Truth be told, these Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comic books are cute and interesting and not much more than that.

Sure, I have no doubt that in the history of comic books, these are groundbreaking; comic books as art medium were just being developed in the mid-20^th century, so somebody had to break new ground. And there is no doubt at all, that these characters are now iconic, and we can thank Carl Barks for that. So, I am glad these volumes are being published; I enjoyed reading Uncle Scrooge’s tales.

Why can’t that be enough? Does volume need more justification that simply saying it is a pleasant thing to read? Isn’t there something amazing in the fact that a volume of comic books published over half a century ago still can stand on its own as a pleasant thing to read? Yes, I don’t know many people to whom I would recommend Donald Duck comic books for their philosophical insights, they are not Great Books, but there is a large area between Great Books and Childish Trash.

So, why the pseudo-intellectual commentary at the end? That commentary not only made me sad, but curiously moving from reading an enjoyable comic book showing that the quest for money is ultimately not satisfying (which is, after all the whole point of Uncle Scrooge’s existence as a character) to a brief moralizing essay saying the obvious, made the comic book seem not more scholarly and elevated, but rather made the whole thing seem smaller.

Uncle Scrooge and Donald and Gladstone and the Nephews, well they are truly characters worthy of Dickens (which is saying a lot). Seeing them muddle through their days makes these book not all that different from some sort of comic book version of The Pickwick Papers. Not as great as Dickens to be sure, but all in all, not terribly different.

And that is the reason to read them: a seemingly desultory journey actually containing some moral lessons accompanied by some highly memorable and wonderful characters. If that description isn’t enticing, then there is nothing to see here.

On Technological Stagnation

“No city, no town, no community of more than one thousand people or two hundred buildings to the square mile shall be built or permitted to exist anywhere in the United States of America.”

Constitution of the United States, Thirtieth Amendment.

Thus begins Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow, included in the Library of America’s American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels: 1953-1956.

The first thing to note about this novel is that it does cause one to wonder (once again) about the definition of Science Fiction. When does a book deserve to be included in the genre? The only futuristic aspect of this novel is that the world has been decimated by nuclear war. Otherwise, no technological advance. Indeed, there is very little of what would traditionally be considered science; most of the book takes place in a world which could be considered pre-scientific.

The closest we come to science is a discussion on the merits of nuclear power—and therein lies the interesting place of departure for reflection.

Post-nuclear war, the remaining citizens of the United States blamed cities for the war, and vowed henceforth to live in the Amish manner. No electricity, steam engines or anything of the sort. Horses and buggies and small communities everywhere.

Our hero tires of this life, wanders off to find the rebellious, perhaps mythic, city in which they still use advanced technology. Upon finding it, well, they still live in a ridiculously primitive manner, but hey, they have a functioning nuclear power plant.

The discovery terrifies our hero (Nuclear Weapons = Bad; Nuclear Power = Nuclear Weapons = Bad). At which point we spend a small amount of time realizing maybe nuclear power isn’t so bad after all. At which point, the realization dawns: the Reader no longer cares at all about this novel.

Here we have a curious “Science Fiction” novel; when we are reading about people who have reverted to Olden Times in the aftermath of a nuclear war, there is something at least minimally interesting. When we find the town using nuclear power, the novel just dies.

One virtue of the novel: it shows how little the opponents of nuclear power have evolved in the last 60 years. They sound just like the opponents of nuclear power in this novel.

All of this got me wondering (shocking, to be sure), not about nuclear power (which, Truth be Told, I like—clean, safe, plentiful power), but about economic progress.

It is one of those facts which often surprises students when I mention it, but the age we live in when people expect rapid technological advances not just in their lifetime, but in the next decade, is a historical anomaly. For most of human history, technological advance was very slow.

Yes, things were more advanced in 1500 than in 500. But compare the shock of taking someone from the year 500 and putting them in a town in 1500 to the shock of taking someone from the year 1920 and putting them in a town in the year 2019. It’s not even close. Our current world would be overwhelming to someone from 1920. Literally overwhelming. And mostly unrecognizable.

Why do we prefer the Modern world to the Older world. Why is it obvious to us that people would be happier in the modern world than they would in a world in which the most advanced technology is something which predates the steam engine?

Yes, I have a hard time imagining going back to an earlier technological age—and it isn’t terribly hard to figure out why. (Think: no internet.)

But, now go the other way. Imagine the current state of technology would be frozen for the rest of your life. Nothing which exists now would go away. Would you be content with that state of affairs? I wouldn’t. I’d be sad about the cessation of technological advance, despite the fact that I have absolutely no idea what technological advance will make me happier in 20 years.

Two decades ago, I never imagined I would ever have anything like the iPhone XR. Now that it exists, why do I think that if it was still the summit of technology in 20 years, we would be really missing out on something?

Again, the curious thing to me is not that I think this way. It is that for most of human history, nobody thought this way. Does the rapid pace of technological innovation breed a hunger for itself?

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