Fritz Lang, Das Testament von Doktor Mabuse
Packet Two: The art of fiction is a weird activity
Because Henry James and weirdness were issued on the same breath the Rubicon has brought us successfully to Packet Two. Borges thought James’ The Abasement of the Northmores one of the weirdest things he’d ever read. I think that’s weird. I mean, we’re talking about Jorge Luis Borges! And the other things he could have compared it to! But now maybe there’s something fundamental, something at the foundation of the art that’s intrinsically weird, and the best way to see it is not to look at what on the surface everyone admits is weird, but to look at something that is unquestionably staid. I was reading James’ The Beast in the Jungle recently and had a moment that made me drop the book in bafflement. In part III the narrator suddenly and without warning says, “I” after using a conventional third person omniscient voice, and now this “I” had without explanation broken into the minutiae of Marcher’s mind. It’s one thing to be the omniscient narrator—everybody knows who He is, that blow-hard know-it-all (or as we read on p 36 of Invidicum: “Any fool can be all-knowing”). But to be drifting merrily along in the Big O.N.’s raft only to be thrown off by somebody’s “I”—and right when you’re in the rapids of Marcher’s convoluted thoughts—seems to tear through the whole fabric of the art. He makes another brief appearance near the end of the story, but no light is shed on who he is or why he appeared. And who is he, who is this “I”? It’s only so shocking precisely because James is so precise a craftsman. But why shouldn’t the omniscient narrator say “I”? Does it really change who he is? Yes. No. But who is he?
Now, Invidicum is on the surface weird, but the same questions are raised. At one point he—whoever he is—is even referred to as the Beast: “There’s got to be a Beast running this show. Master—Iago—Some Body—is simply too kind an appellation for this destroyer of storyland/characterland plausibility on behalf of His own eternalization.” (p 324) So, he (that guy who wrote Invidicum) says it outright. Except he puts it in the mouth of one of his characters. That’s weird—and then some.
Packet Three: My taste was me; or Consciousness as a sledgehammer
We’re on a roll now. The theme of self-consciousness. Maybe this packet thing wasn’t necessary. Or it’s still one packet masquerading as three. No matter. Let’s keep going. Brodsky mentions the phrase, “my taste was me” on p737, quoting the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins:
I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me….…. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.
Near the end of the novel he uses the phrase “sledgehammer of consciousness”. It’s a given in Brodsky’s world. If there is an ideal reader for this book, or—let’s tiptoe up to the phrase—a “target audience” (my quotes) for it, they are someone who, probably from an early age, experienced self-consciousness to a high degree and, if they are like me, it was torture. As they have grown, they have had to learn to deal with it as best they can. Some become writers.
The thing about self-consciousness is, it’s tied to hyper-awareness of others. And this of course is the envy theme. Excess in either direction—obsessive thought about oneself or about others—leads to unhappiness. A balance must be sought.
At this point I could go in one of two directions. I only hope that, as Frost put it, it’ll make all the difference. I could talk about the other attributes of an ideal reader. Or I could go on a bit more on the self-consciousness theme. Hmmm
Or maybe it’s time for another packet….
Judy Holliday and Broderick Crawford in Born Yesterday
Packet Four: The envy theme
I wasn’t long into Invidicum before I looked up “envy” and thought about what it means. Tip: it’s always a good idea to look up words, even when you think you know them. Here are those notes:
Definition of “envy” as a noun: “feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else’s possessions, qualities or luck.” As a verb: “Desire to have a quality, possession or other desirable attribute belonging to someone else.” —almost the same as “covet”: “Yearn to possess or have something.” Coveting becomes envy when the thing yearned for belongs to someone else and only if it is accompanied by a feeling of discontent or resentment because, belonging to someone else, I can’t have it. If I covet someone’s Seiko watch it is not envy because I can buy my own. But if I covet someone’s Patek Philippe it could become envy for their wealth because I cannot afford one. Envy involves unpleasantness, a sickness at not being in a position to take possession of what another has. If I covet someone else’s wife it becomes envy when the desire becomes unpleasant due to the degree of its intensity combined with the fact I cannot have her. Envy comes into play most intensely when it is a matter of qualities of character—if one imagines, for example, that someone else is happier or less self-conscious—these are the sorts of intangible assets that Invidicum is concerned with.
Envy may not be crippling but it can easily become a hinderance to growth and as such should be avoided if possible. If there is a level of human relations where desiring what others have operates as a fundamental existential component of being human, envy goes beyond this, goes beyond desire to a crippling obsession. It is not possible to exist without experiencing the dynamic interplay of human desires. A human is always a human in society, never in isolation. Being an individual—defining individuality—always means how one marks oneself off from the interplay of desires, how one attempts to insert breaks or pauses into the flow of interhumanity. This is a dynamic process and always understood by an individual in his relations to others. If Invidicum the drug is the break, the pause, the comma in the text of life then it stands to reason one of its side-effects is articulate loquaciousness. It induces a talking cure. The reason the main characters are named after known historical figures is that Brodsky has bigger fish to fry than the convention of “character development” or “background.”
The Mockingbird Sings 