the Abolition of Man

This book, a small primer against relativism by that intellectual giant of 20th-century Christendom, yes, none other than Clive Staples Lewis, wasn't as good as I'd expected. An interesting but entirely supererogatory pair of facts about the particular copy I read are that it (a) is 60 years old and (b) belongs to Portrush Presbyterian Church: my friend Dave accidentally stole it, brought it back from Northern Ireland to Sheffield where he goes to uni with me, read it, lent it to me, and now presumably intends to return it quietly to its rightful place across the narrow sea.

   The book itself is more academic and targeted than Lewis's usual nonfiction; rather than writing an uplifting and convincing Christian message to a general audience, here he seeks to resolutely sort out an important argument for a more educated audience. While he was without a doubt a formidable intellectual, I don't think this is his forté - especially given the subject matter. At the height of modernism which gave rise to post-modernism and the explosion of critical sociocultural theories that make winning arguments so much the harder, here we see him writing about the dangers of subjectivism in a compelling, but nowhere near tight enough, little mess of three essays.

   His first essay concerns education, and how values of subjectivism secretly embedded in texts will yield a nefariously relativistic pull on the consciences and judgements of the educated in years to come. His second essay considers how, through the modernistic reduction of things with values to mere things for scrutiny, such a relativistic hegemony could grow and win; he frames such a process as the continuation of man's dominance over nature into man's dominance over metaphysics. His third essay laments this predicted victory, as the prevalence of relativism as an intellectual and moral habit for human thinkers would, he sees it, be 'the abolition of man', as by separating from absolute value (a set of fundamental moral truths that he refers to, interestingly, as the Tao) our own capacity for decision and analysis, we're effectively surrendering to a free-for-all, a constructivist postmodern landscape in which anything goes, which means nothing goes. In an appendix, he leaves us with a compilation of snippets of wisdom* from a variety of civilisatons round the world, that he considers to contain something of the Tao: these universal values underpinning human moral agency, thinks Lewis, are something that have been noted and prized by almost every society, and that is reflected in their great wisdom texts.

   It's worth pointing out that largely, I agree with him. Objective truth does exist, modernism did seek in its quest for progress and human flourishing to prod questioningly at it, and this was reflected strongly in educational and intellectual developments. However, the breadth and simplicity of the points Lewis makes in this book reveal that he is actually just quite weak at doing analytical philosophy and very weak at writing about critical theory, so we can't expect his attempt to bring down major trends in both of them from within to be a resounding success. Even though a lot of it seems to make intuitive sense, his arguments are sloppy and even his framing and understanding of the philosophical and theoretical trends he's lambasting not nuanced enough to take seriously as a full critique. His style, which strives for openness and clarity while at the same time verging on metaphorical phrasing and depending too much on imagery and convention, doesn't help here at all. Subjectivism (not to mention its myriad offspring schools-of-thought) isn't, I don't think, the correct or best broad view we should have about morality or any sociocultural issue, but rejecting all critical and postmodernistic theories out of hand because they smell of it simply isn't an option. Reality, especially in this kind of normative realm, is incredibly horribly multifariously complex, and we need subjective viewpoints, we need a wide array of theories and responses, not only just to try to work out answers to these kinds of issues but to understand them in a helpful way at all.**

   So, this is a pretty interesting read, but I'm not sure what for. For a defense of objectivism, especially regarding morality, there are others that far better engage with the real intellectual climate and may even be easier-going. For a critical discussion of modern theoretical developments in the general field, there are literally thousands of better books. Christian readers might appreciate it as an often-unseen philosophical facet of the brilliant accessible apologist, though be warned, this is nowhere near as brilliant and nowhere near as accessible as his Christian writings. I'm not sure if it's even in print anymore, but here's a link to the full text online if you want to have a read:

https://archive.org/stream/TheAbolitionOfMan_229/C.s.Lewis-TheAbolitionOfMan_djvu.txt

* Some of the implied 'wisdom' here I find a bit suspect, but that's not a new surprise: C.S. Lewis's thinking has a few tendencies that I, were he alive and predisposed to converse with 21-year-old Yorkshiremen who think they're cleverer than they are and far less intellectually intimidating, would press him on. His writings reflect a patriarchal, militaristic, patriotic tendency that sit quite at odds with my effeminate cosmopolitan pacifism. Most of the 'wisdom' he's picked seems pretty legit though, and I do appreciate his sourcing it from more places than just Leviticus and Locke.

** I was a philosophy student, can you tell?

Albert Blows a Fuse

This book (sorry if the link's dodgy, this proved to be a hard one to track down online) was one that I read at least a dozen times as a child, lost (I think it was left behind when we moved to Sheffield when I was eight), didn't miss very much, but remembered fondly enough to buy the second-hand copy I found in a charity shop's bargain bin last week without a moment's hesitation. It's written by Tom Bower, also the vibrant illustrations by him are what brought this book to life to my younger self; neat-looking characters in busy colourful spreads - they're fun pictures.

   I'm gonna tell you the whole plot because I quite like it and you're unlikely ever to read it. The book's about a simple old man called Albert, who likes gardening and listening to the radio with his cat, but one day, his radio's fuse blows. Unable to find another one in the shop, he is coerced into buying a TV - and he becomes addicted to the glow of the small screen. He drinks in entertainment-based consumerism, rampantly buying more and more TVs and aerials and satellite dishes so he can get more channels and more entertainment, even selling his previously-beloved garden to fund his descent into couch-potatodom, of which he hits rock bottom when he moved a fridge and microwave into his television-room. At the book's low point, he has a wall of televisions blocking out the sun, and he just slouches there, watching/eating/sleeping/repeating. But then lo, he awakes one day and a bird has somehow flown into his room. It presents him with a flower, reminding him of his lost garden and his love for what had been his normal life, and then it starts pecking at his remote controllers, turning off each and every screen. Albert rushes downstairs, and with the neighbours' (his garden's now owners) help, tears down the fence and agrees to now share it with them, which they do, for the happy-ever-after of the book. The dozens of defunct television sets become reused as plantpots.

   It's a blatant cautionary tale, one that was needed when it was published in 1991, and one that's definitely needed in our current Netflix-age. Entertainment addiction, capitalist-driven materialism, the loneliness epidemic - these are all serious and densely-interconnected issues. Our culture is being moulded, twisted, by economic forces pushing distraction above mindfulness, isolation above community, endless acquisition for personal gain above contentment with enough for sharing. Exactly how these processes occur is far beyond the scope of a children's book (or for that matter for my blog post about aforementioned book) to explain fully, but the powerful gist of Albert's story, which I think had a somewhat underhandedly-profound influence on me as a kid, is that the solution to these problems comes down to the individual. Maybe our circumstances do drive us to loneliness, to laziness, to a passive screen-watching existence that barely resembles personhood. But we can choose to turn off the screen, to go outside, to start being productive and sociable again. And rightly. Maybe Albert needed an enigmatic bird to prod him in this direction, but we would hope that children, having read this, would learn to recognise with disgust when their lifestyles are veering too far toward that depicted but that which sadly resembles a great many people nowadays (including, I'll admit so as to avoid hypocrisy, myself at times). So, it's a very good cautionary tale and is also quite an entertaining read for children (assuming they're like me when I read it as a kid, cos I enjoyed it). Worth getting instead of another cartoon boxset for your attention-spanless nephew's next birthday, though you might be wasting your money. Cautionary tales, I find, seldom work on those who have already fallen off whatever cliff the book warns them about. Do kids even read nowadays?

Franny & Zooey

This book, the third by Jerome David Salinger to grace the pages of this blog and, no less, upon my third reading of it, is comprised of a long short story and a short novella that together explore a messy emotional incident that occurred, and was more or less resolved, between the two youngest siblings of the Glass family. Of Salinger's four books, it is I think the most spiritual in theme and content, if not in tone (though all of his works are somewhat spiritual in tone). In this post I would like to start sheafing through the hundreds of scribbled pages of mental notes that I've accrued over years of loving Salinger's writings, and organise them into a rough explanation of what I think makes his work so special, so unique, and how it can help its reader grow. I'm doing this in this post because I've already done a Salingeresque bleeding-heart post on the other Glass family novella-pair, and a cursory reviewer's overview of his collection of shorts, so I'll take this one to be my punchy, philosophical, hopefully insightful, tremendously precocious attempt at some literary insight, at least of how I've read him. Astute readers will note that I have not yet reread Salinger's most famous work and only novel, The Catcher in the Rye, but rest assured I will do soon (it's currently under my pillow with a bookmark nestled just inside the front cover, waiting). Seeing as his novel is more self-contained than these other three works, I'll here discuss how Franny & Zooey, as well as the other two, help us build up a framework in which to understand the driving motors, the soul, of Salinger's writing, which I feel manifests itself more tangibly in the other works - but understanding which is the key to properly getting any of them, including his novel, which works well as a stand-alone, but seen in the context of the worldview revealed by his others is an almost incomparably brilliant book.

   Note - if you're sketchy on the following point you'll probably have stopped reading already, but please bear in mind that I am not a scholar of literature by any measure. The following analysis is that of a purebred amateur (I haven't even read the Sparknotes for it, though to do so would be thoroughly against the spirit of the Glass family so who cares), and so please, dear reader, take no shame or pride in disagreeing, but I hope you find my thoughts on the matter at least interesting, as I feel that thinking them through has thoroughly deepened my appreciation of Salinger's books, and has thus also built character; and it may also do for others. But before I dive into self-indulgent theory I shall fulfil the chief obligation of this blog: to summarise the book and recommend it.

   There is first a long short story, called Franny, concerning a terrible date that Franny Glass, the youngest of the Glass siblings, has with her boyfriend Lane Coutell on a short return from college. She despairs at his ambitious student-like normalcy, rants against egoism and pretense, shrugs off any proper conversation and neglects to eat throughout their lunch date. The only thing that seems to perk her back into life is talking about a book that she's been obsessively reading, called The Way of a Pilgrim, about a Russian peasant who tries to learn a mystical method of prayer, and then travels, humbly sharing it with others. Lane doesn't pick up on the fact that this is the only thing his clearly damaged girlfriend is currently able to find any genuine interest in at all, and he doesn't listen to her explanation. She has a nervous breakdown in the bathroom and later faints.
   There is secondly a short novella, called Zooey, concerning the attempts of the second-youngest Glass sibling, Zooey, and their mother Bessie, to rouse Franny from some kind of emotional crisis that she's fallen into on the family sofa. He is depicted first bantering at his mother harshly from a bathtub, later neatening up to go to a meeting to discuss a poorish script he's been talked into acting in. Before leaving the apartment, he drops into the lounge, and talks to Franny at length about her predicament, angering and upsetting her considerably with his incisive tactless analysis of why she feels the way she does. After a couple of other fruitless tactics (pretending to be one of her other brothers by disguising his voice over the phone, dredging up many a memory of previous philosophy-induced breakdowns within the enigmatic precocious Glass family, briefly even attempting a vaudeville performance), he finally launches into an inspiring finale about the nature of faith and joy and the objects of these two phenomena, and though he delivers this with a rather blasé academic bent, it does seem to work in fixing his sister's mind.
   Summarising a Salinger text is more or less completely pointless. These are two of the most human, most thought-provoking, most honest, rambling yet blunt, raw yet verbose, sad and hilarious and weirdly engaging, pieces of writing that you will ever read. If you have a brain and a heart and a pair of eyes, please, I urge you, read these, as well as the other books.
   Well, now; what makes Salinger's books special? What is it about these works of literature that so imbues them with unique soul and personality, so able to perfectly bridge the gap between the mundane and the ripely spiritual?
   Disillusionment is the core theme, following two main threads. Firstly, an ideal for human relationships: sincere, mutual, trusting, spontaneous, positive, and fundamentally functional. We see this interpersonal approach embodied in classically Salingeresque characters; who are almost always sentimental and needy. The sad reality of our broken world means that this ideal model of relationships struggles, never quite clicks into place, and so in encounters, dark and mundane, with the egoism and pretense that taints social life with 'phoniness', these characters become alienated and cynical. Children feature heavily in Salinger's writings because they can be presented and understood as of an age whereby they haven't yet outgrown naivety and innocence: they much more naturally emulate this ideal.
   The second thread through which we encounter disillusionment is harder to pin down: an ideal for all value-laden pursuits that comprise a individual human life, seeking truth and beauty, striving for perfection, expressed most commonly through art and religion. Alongside the wounded childlike cynics mentioned above, Salinger's larger characters are often aesthetes or mystics of some kind; striving to capture, or even merely glimpse, absolute values that they know to exist. However, as with those trying to live in social harmony, those trying to acquaint themselves with perfection are far from indefatigable. Pretense and egoism pervade and spoil these spheres too, clouding the purity of the characters' pursuit, leading to further disenchantment.
   Evidence of both these prongs is evident in all of Salinger's notable characters. Holden Caulfield and Buddy Glass, his two most significant narrators, seem to embody a relatively neutral middle-ground between them, Holden veering more toward the former type of disillusionment and Buddy the latter, but ultimately not too burdened by these weights as we rely on them as narrators more to be apt describers of human character, which they are, in ways that do go on anyway to reveal much about these themes. Seymour, as he is presented, seems to me to completely capture the full tragic depth of both prongs. Franny and Zooey, both child-celebrity intellectuals struggling under the weight of their older brothers' ridiculous schemes of philosophical education, have both been dragged by the former into a deep antisociality, and pushed by the latter into a state of angst (which Zooey has come to terms with, and his helping Franny come to terms with it too is the main plot thread of Zooey). Non-Glass family characters bear much of these marks too: just flip through the short stories. Eloise, Selena's brother Franklin, the Chief, Jean de Daumier-Smith, Teddy - in varying states of joy and sorrow, these characters' lives stem from these twin motors that drive Salinger's works.
   His strong spiritual themes are present because of religion's capacity to underpin, justify and obligate these kinds of perfection and value that his characters crave; similarly his occasional sardonic references to psychoanalysis as a 'cure-all' for characters' problems shows a faith that rather than having to scientifically or therapeutically restructure our minds we can overcome these forms of alienation to some extent by collectively deciding to be nicer; his frequent use of unusual but fairly mundane social situations likewise demonstrates the all-invasive lack of these perfections in human life and thought. So his overall tone comes across as cynical; we know of truth and beauty and yet it is never quite here, as in reality, the world often does just suck. This disappointment runs deep and J.D. knows it. This is why his work has such an endearing quality to those who stick with it and listen to it: humans are seekers, we feel our existential absurdity and it stings, and this deep-cutting fact has massive implications for our character, behaviour, the way we converse and conduct relationships; and his unmatched eye for minute quirks enable him to capture and draw out these implications in scenes that come across as real with characters who seem neurotic and insecure enough to be like genuine people, just as self-conflicted, just as happy and sad at the same time. The brilliance of Salinger is that he connects the universal wont of humankind - as sketched out above - into the details of unique personality and circumstance. He does so gently but never open-handedly, in a complex but not obtuse manner, and the result is writing that clicks on a fundamental level with what it's like to be a person.