site author: Anthony Wheeler email: anthonywheeler72@hotmail.com
Review of Genese Grill's World as Metaphor
Genese,
Perhaps you remember me; we met at the Inn in Westport (formally The Inn on the Library Lawn) some years ago. As I recall, you were teaching at the University of Vermont. Is that right? Hopefully this note finds you well.
Anyway, we own a bookstore here at the Inn, and we shared an interest in Robert Musil during your visit. You told me about your book, and I purchased it on line (a new copy - so a benefit). As I finish re-reading ‘The Man Without Qualities’ (I am on chapter 52 in the second volume) I wanted to read your book while I was currently enmeshed in Musil’s novel. I just finished your book, and really enjoyed it. What follows is a detailed response.
So much to say. First of all, we share a strong affinity for the subject, and for the many writers you feature, most prominently Nietzsche and Proust. You also quote Walter Benjamin and George Steiner, along with Adorno (his Aesthetic Theory in particular, one of my favorite books on the topic), thinkers at the center of my intellectual interest. So my first question to raise: why aren’t more people as deeply interested in the subject matter (more on that later) and what these writers have to say? For you, an academic career and the opportunity to work directly with Burton Pike. For me, a casual, non-systematic reader irresistibly drawn to the literature these Europeans produce. With few exceptions (Proust being one of them), the thinkers that attract me work within a German-language tradition. I find this inexplicable, as I can discern no cultural or intellectual influence in my early life that would steer me in that direction. Instead, I am drawn by the willingness and the ability for these thinkers to address the most important questions of our age. In comparison, English and American thinkers seem quite lame. I am currently reading a set on Philosophy of the 20th Century (published in 1962) and finishing a re-reading of Nietzsche in the order he wrote (halfway through The Will to Power) and it’s almost embarrassing as an American to compare William James on his version of Pragmatism with what Nietzsche left unpublished in his notes a bare decade before. Another example: the relative shallowness of Bertrand Russell and the near limitless potential in Wittgenstein, or even the more prosaic Karl Popper. For some reason American and English intellectuals (Emerson a noted exception, the one American thinker Nietzsche admired) seem limited.
I am not asserting that either of us is somehow intellectually superior because we read and think about these writers. Not at all. It’s just that the content of these thinkers thoughts are so compelling and relevant, I don’t get it. Or perhaps this simply speaks to my sheltered intellectual social life.
Second topic. I read hyper-critically. Even with my favorite writers I can argue. Countless passages in Nietzsche are simply wrong (for me), particularly his willingness to advocate violence (and Nietzsche is for me central). Sure, some of the context may point to wars within oneself to overcome one thing or another, but there are several points where his meaning cannot be misunderstood. And take George Steiner. His constant critique of modern society strikes my as fundamentally similar to critiques I have read from every age, beginning with Plato, and therefore, unoriginal. According to so many, Western culture has been declining so long it’s remarkable we aren’t sitting in the lowest ring of Dante’s inferno (although the argument can be made this place was achieved at times in the 20th century). And finally Walter Benjamin. When I fully understand what he writes (that is, on occasion) he strikes me as gloriously mistaken, in just about every conclusion he draws.
But after finishing ‘The World as Metaphor’ I can’t criticize a thing about it. Not once did I find myself shaking my head and making a note. I found the book well-written and pertinent, and myself fully sympathetic with your point of view. Don’t get me wrong: I learned a great deal, and you presented many aspects of the work I never would have otherwise realized. Only that nothing struck me as unreasonable or counter to my non-studied impressions. So what follows is a reflection of my thinking in response to your work, without the ability to make an argument that differs from yours.
One of the pleasant surprises for me was your identifying certain traits of the novel that made it so compelling for me. For example, on page 56 you write:
Why else does Sartre’s Roquentin decide that his only possible path to a purposeful life lies in writing a novel? Why else does Ulrich lay out his possibilities similarly under the trio: suicide, going to war, writing books? All to often Nietzsche’s epigones seem to have listened to only the first part of his message, and are so excited by the destruction of values and traditions and the thrill of the imminent abyss that they do not stay long enough to take in the all-important next step after the iconoclastic orgy. After the idols are smashed, Nietzsche encourages us to create more forms—forms that, as long as we constantly remind ourselves that we have created them ourselves, do not become idols but are, nevertheless, beautiful and meaningful in their very affirmation of creative energy.
For me, writing literary novels is fundamental. Some years ago, I wrote an (unpublished) book called ‘The Literary Novel: Why (and How) You Should Write One. The following passage lies at the center of my argument:
Which brings the discussion back ‘round to the center of our concern: the literary novel, and the imperative to write one. According to Terry Eagleton, what the novel “reflects most importantly is not the world, but the way in which the world comes into being only by our bestowing form and value upon it. The novel on this view is most deeply realistic…because it reveals the truth that all objectivity is at root an interpretation.” This view supports the notion that our particularly individual lives owe their unique existence to that which we have created. Eagleton does not consider this particularly good news:
If the only world we know is one which we have created ourselves, does not all knowledge become a pointless tautology? Aren’t we simply knowing ourselves, rather than a reality independent of ourselves? Don’t we only get back what we put in? Anyway, if form is what we impose, how can it have authority? The fact that I help to bring the world into existence makes it more precious; but it is also what threatens to undermine its objective value….
Terry Eagleton has revealed the nexus, the fundamental core, the salient point of this entire discussion, as the moons of consciousness and spirit revolve in a frighteningly tight orbit around the solid planets of ‘value’ and ‘meaning’, the only substantial entities within the human universe. Eagleton goes on to say,
If value and meaning reside deep inside individuals, then there is a sense in which these things are not really ‘in’ the world at all. This leaves value arbitrary and subjective. It also reduces [actuality] to a realm of objects which have been drained of meaning. But if the world is drained of meaning, then human beings have no place in which they can act purposefully, and so cannot realize their value in practice. And the less they can do this, the more they begin to disintegrate from the inside. As [actuality] is bleached of value, so the human psyche begins to implode. What we are left with is a human being who is valuable but unreal, in a world which is solid but valueless. Meaning and value are driven from the public world, which is now just a soulless expanse of neutral facts, and thrust deep into the interior of the human subject, where they all but vanish. The world is thus divided down the middle between fact and value, public and private, object and meaning.
This divide creates “the alienated condition of the modern age, which the novel reflects in its inmost form.” And the novel not only reflects this condition, the writing of one acts as a potent antidote to the fundamentally nihilistic nature of actual existence:
Alienation is the condition in which men and women fail to recognize the objective world as their own subjective creation. Yet the very act of writing a novel offers an alternative to this condition, since a novel’s ‘objective’ vision of the world is one rooted in the subjectivity of its author. The act of writing crosses the border between subjective and objective. The novel is one of the few objects in a reified society which manifests in its every detail the subjective freedom in which it was born. In this sense, its very existence can be seen as an imaginary solution to the social problems which it poses.
Or, to turn Eagleton’s coin over and view the flip side, it might be said that the actual writing of a novel can be considered as a real solution to our imaginary social existence.
So like Musil, I consider writing novels as the primary means for getting to the center of things. You write of his experimentalism, and where he may have settled on the ‘Other Condition.’ This is how I characterized my creative experience in my ‘Retirement Letter':
I began writing novels with a general idea of what I wished to accomplish; twenty years later I exceeded those expectations by a full magnitude. I have succeeded far more than I ever hoped.
I wrote novels because I admire them. I would be happy having written any one of the five. I like all of them. Each one is a favorite, in a different way.
Kafka insisted we shouldn’t write books that “make us happy”, but I did. He goes on to say that “A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.” I strove to do that as well, by engaging what I consider the most important questions: What is the meaning of life? The nature of good and evil? The future of humanity? The proper way to live one’s life? What values should we pursue? What really matters?
Not everyone considers such things, or believes they are important or even decidable. Often they simply accept what they learn in nursery school. Or later in life they adopt a system wholesale (Christianity the most obvious example in our culture, but Marxism or Rand’s Objectivism might also serve). Some people struggle with these questions their entire life, and ultimately decide that answers do not exist. “It’s the journey that counts, not the destination.”
Well, I found answers. Made discoveries. Learned the truth. After twenty years, five novels, and millions of words, I know what matters. What makes evil, and why. What it all means.
For me.
That’s right – for me. While the questions are universal, the answers brutally personal. Singular paths, distinctive destinations. My long creative journey was unique, as unique as the novels themselves. While I carefully planned each novel, I didn’t plan—or necessarily expect—the subsequent discoveries.
Not that I claim any particular originality, in thought or fiction. Certainly what I have expressed has been expressed before, has been thought before, in ways arguably similar.
What I now know doesn’t necessarily pertain to anyone else. Pieces of it might. But you cannot simply be told the truth; probably can’t be told anything of genuine value. Such things must be created within. The material for the internal construct might come from elsewhere; another mind, a striking experience, a treasured book. But before a crucial insight can be harvested, it must be fertilized and grown within one’s own internal fields.
In other words, unlike Musil, my work comes to an end. In fact, each novel can be read alone, as they stand within a traditional structure (beginning, middle and end). Our purpose as authors, however, was similar, which helps explain my attraction to his novel.
The question that Musil dances around concerns the central meaning for humans: what truly matters, and why? As you point out, art figures prominently in the potential answers for Musil, and points to the close relationship between him and Proust, another connection I didn’t explicitly make until reading your book. I consider In Search of Lost Time the greatest novel ever written, and characterized it’s relationship to The Man Without Qualities in this way:
Robert Musil’s Man Without Qualities is one of the few exceptions to my critical requirement that a novel stand as an ‘integrated whole’. Most of what happens takes place in Ulrich’s head, or within a more or less domestic environment. Musil never finished this wonderful book, so there is no final meaning, no coming together in the end of all the fictional threads that have been woven in the narrative, no holistic theme. Yet I am compelled by this novel, every page and every paragraph, even the unfinished material at the end. I don’t believe that he ever would have completed it, based on the substance of these notes. Perhaps he didn’t even understood how it should end. Musil is one of three authors—Proust and Powys are the other two—whose world I love to visit just for the sake of the language, substance, characters and sensibility. Proust and Powys, though, provide more narrative completion and thematic purpose than Musil, making their novels, I suppose, ‘better’.
Another critical juncture. Precision and Soul; Art and Politics. Something Musil struggled with extensively. Using Eagleton once again as a foil, the section below is drawn from a letter I wrote to him (and despite the critical nature of it, one he graciously acknowledged) after reading The Event of Literature:
Concerning...the relationship between literature and politics, you have consistently mixed your political philosophy in with your literary theory and criticism. I have always found this quite odd. In comparison, the Marxist critic Walter Benjamin never makes overt political statements, or anything specifically economic anywhere within the four volumes of his collected works. He employs Marxist terminology, and he closely associated with members of the leftist Frankfort school, but he doesn’t make one substantive statement that touches specifically upon a political object. He appears to be something of a ‘cultural Marxist’, and writes within a Marxist historical paradigm, but never writes explicitly of political economy. More so than any non-political economist I read, you are quite specific in advocating a political agenda. For example, on page 179 you write (and this is just a recent example – I could go back to any of your books and find plenty more):
The most desirable future is one in which we would be less in thrall to practical necessity than we are at present. If this is more than a wistful yearning on Marx’s part, it is because he believes that the resources accumulated by the drearily pragmatic narrative of class society might finally be made available for this end. The wealth which at present we toil to produce might be used to free us from toil.
I never understood why this was so, why you would infuse such political commentary within a literary context. In my view, political philosophy is distinct from aesthetic theory. They could be studied, written about, and appreciated quite separately, so it seemed odd to find such blatant political content in books primarily about literature. Your recent book helped me understand why this might be so, why you so readily express your political vision (this from page 60):
…if the work of art is morally exemplary, this is not least because of its mysterious autonomy—of the way it seems freely to determine itself without external coercion. Rather than stoop to some external sovereignty, it is faithful to the law of its own being. In this sense, it is a working model of human freedom.
And this, from page 142:
[Works of art] incarnate the essence of human freedom not by pleading for national independence of promoting the struggle against slavery, but by virtue of the curious kind of entities they are. One should perhaps add that as images of self-determination, they reflect less the actual than the possible. They are exemplary of what men and women could be like under transformed political circumstances. If they point beyond themselves, what they point to is a redeemed future. In this view, all art is utopian. [italics added]
You assert on page 54 that “Political theory, to be sure, is supposed to guide our action in the world.” Alternatively, I would assert that political theory represents the method of getting one group of people to compel another group of people to do something that they would otherwise not do: give up their resources in the form of taxes and levies (used in ways many citizens find reprehensible – foreign wars, drug intervention, for example); prevent them from engaging in one form of activity or another (gambling, marrying the wrong people, starting a business, traveling to a different state, entering into mutually beneficial arrangements the state takes exception to [prostitution, for example]); forcing them to give up their land or property (eminent domain).
But you don’t agree with any of this, or believe it desirable [I listed several specific examples]. You believe the state represents some form of ultimate salvation. You believe that if the state employs some form of Marxist/socialist solution, humans will be able to fully fulfill their potential, and be the better for it. You believe that the proper application of a socialist economy will reduce the burden of mindless toil on the multitude, allowing more quality time for self-fulfillment.
But from a practical perspective, this can only come about by radical means, by the application of systematic violence, both to bring such a state into being, and to maintain its existence once it becomes viable. And in that effort to bring about such a political solution, and to maintain it, any artistic expression, particularly literature, is profoundly important. Certain things must be honored and celebrated, and others repressed. Some attitudes are constructive, and others damaging to the cause.
For me, artistic expression is always a free activity (or should be) completely unhindered by the attitude of others. Any others. “[Works of art] incarnate the essence of human freedom…” Exactly.
For you, however, every work is potentially supportive of your agenda, or a radical critique. So like Plato’s Republic and Stalin’s Soviet, all art must be carefully controlled, if it’s allowed to exist at all.
And that’s why your literary literature is strewn with overt political theory. Final example, from page 224:
Is every literary work the handmaiden of a governing ideology, resolving conflicts in ways it finds convenient? To imagine so is to take far too negative a view of them. The work of art, whatever its capacity to collude in forms of oppression, is an example of human praxis, and therefore of how to live well.
All my fiction is a radical critique of that which is. I am not sure how anyone engages in serious literature without questioning the world in which they live. My work is overtly political and philosophical, but that doesn’t make them works of political philosophy, because they are not tracts; they are works of literary art. If a serious critic were to comment upon them, I would expect a judgment of artistic value (to the extent that any existed), not a political or philosophical critique. “What of works that resist a sovereign power?” you ask on page 224. I say those are of the utmost importance, and the first to disappear should your political desires be fully realized. You, like Plato’s Socrates, would not be welcome in the world you envision, as you are far too bright, original and sincere.
Reading Musil, I suspect he strengthened the convictions I expressed to Eagleton concerning the relationship between politics and art. You wrote about his time in exile, and his struggle to maintain his intellectual independence, and his commitment to write for another time, given the restrictions he faced. He had genuine political trouble, stuck as we was between National Socialism and Stalinism - unlike what most of us experience today.
One final comment. I extract quotes from what I read, and Musil ranks third on my list (in volume) after Nietzsche and Proust, indicating how much I have drawn from his work.
Hopefully this missive expresses the depth of my appreciation for your work, and why it meant so much to me. Very nicely done.
Anthony Wheeler
