A Literary Discussion

Friend: I paint, write music, short stories, screenplays, and am generally "creative"
since creativity really has no more to do with those activities than business or what-have-you and have had an abiding interest in the creative process which tends to be my filter in most conversations - picking through the information for further insights

Sitaram: Robert Ornstein and Charles Tart describe consciousness as a moment to moment process of data reduction if we were equally aware of all internal and external stimuli at once, we would go mad

Friend: or enlightened!

Sitaram: and schizoprenia is involves a breakdown in the normal moment to moment synthesis of ordinary consciousness

Friend: which is something that the schizophrenia bit you mentioned reminded me of somebody said that madness was made up of lots and lots of bits of sanity and it occurred to me on a tonight-show introductory standup routine by the host how he connected one news item with an incongruous one to form an absurd, fictitious, third news item that it's good to have topical comedians because they show us how insane news is all these highly diverse bits of urgency assaulting you and often extremely difficult to assimilate

Sitaram: I saw on tv, one comedian in a greenwich village comedy club.... who got booed, for making a sexual joke that involves a minor in the joke, he is in the men's room, with a young nephew

Friend: how did he take it?

Sitaram: and the nephew says "your member looks DIFFERENT from mine"

Sitaram: so, the punch line is, "that is because mine is erect"

Friend: haha! hilarious

Sitaram: well, in a sense, we laugh but, many are also morally outraged

Friend: yes - humor often involves shock

Sitaram: because, laughing about sexuality and minors is quite taboo, and illegal

Friend: yes - I've noticed George Carlin has done it with fiercely unapologetic mannerisms and perfectly evil glee

Sitaram: I once commented that many start out as child molesters.... but they are children themselves

Friend: God - how true

Sitaram: I mean, when we "play doctor" at age 6 or 9
There is a funny movie "Little Miss Sunshine"

Friend: yes, and our patient might be a few years younger
I saw it

Sitaram: with an old grandpa, who asks the teenage boy, "are you getting any"
the boy says no

Friend: or the same age, of course

Sitaram: grandpa says "you are jail bait, she is jail bait, THAT IS THE BEST KIND" meaning, you fool, you SHOULD be trying to get some but, the most profound shot in the entire movie is in the car journey... a 20 second shot of the little girl, trying to manipulate a puzzle, that has a smiley face but, it is not quite solved and you realize that everyone in the movie is metaphorically working on that smiley face puzzle I mean, trying to find happiness

Friend: yes - I thought it was all a bit too obvious

Sitaram: but, many might not even notice

Friend: it's a good illustration movie I mean, one where you can discuss its elements

Sitaram: my wife was a CPA, but, she did not notice

Friend: to make points

Sitaram: I mean, she is not stupid but, she is not trained to make such observations

Friend: well, sometimes you block things out because they are so embarrassingly obvious

Friend: anyway, the audience should feel it. I think it won for best screenplay

Sitaram: Abraham Heschel said, in his book "The Prophets" (about the old testament), "we must learn to understand what we actually see, rather than to only see or find that which we understand

Friend: and I read an inspiring interview with the guy who wrote it

Sitaram: Annie Proulx was brilliant to think up the phrase "stem the rose"

Friend: yes - good quote - could cure a lot of anxiety

Sitaram: as a euphemism for anal

Friend: focusing on what is instead of what might be

Sitaram: I googled and it occurs nowhere else
and in the movie,... there is a scene, of the two men, years later, at a camp site, drinking "Old Rose" whiskey which is an actual brand

Friend: yes - I prefer, driving the hershey highway

Sitaram: but, that was not in Proulx's original short story

Friend: how is the phrase brilliant?

Sitaram: so, the director decided to enhance that image/metaphor

Friend: because the aureola on the sphincter is rosey?

Sitaram: BECAUSE, it obviously fits, yet, she coined it yes,.... there are references to "rose" previous to Proulx

Sitaram: but no one speaks of "stemming the rose" plus, she is a female writer

Friend: its horrible. absolutely horrible. lol

Sitaram: well, but, wait, look at the brilliance of Nabokov's lolita but, he never won a Nobel, because it is a taboo subject

Friend: I mean, stemming the rose is any number of times more obscene than some other things one might say

Sitaram: and, there is only ONE slightly prurient sentence, where Humbert speaks of "his shaft/lance" something like that yet, Nabakov masterfully crafts each sentence
The same with Proulx

Friend: Humbert's language was wonderfully giddy, but its brilliance also showed his ineffectual foppishness

Sitaram: but Proulx is not at the level of Nabokov So, it is like artistic "brinksmanship" You see how close you can come to the edge of the cliff of taboo, yet, not fall into the abyss of obscenity Same with "Brideshead Revisited"
Evelyn Waugh

Friend: there are instances where euphemisms are more offensive than blatancy

Sitaram: and, yet, all of Brideshead Revisited is an elaborate illustration of Cardinal Newman's coined phrase "illation illation means...

Friend: damn, I didn't read it or maybe only a few pages of it

Sitaram: years of experiences, which subtly bring someone to some conviction of faith
try to see the hour PBS production in which EVERY SINGLE LINE of the novel, becomes script there is NO page in the novel, no scene, which is not PRECISELY represented by that hour movie

Friend: but doesn't such a movie seem redundant?

Sitaram: well, for me, the movie was breathtaking....

Friend: I mean, they're two different animals

Sitaram: and years later, I purchased the novel

Friend: fascinating

Sitaram: some people love Tolkein,.... I cant stand Tolkein
Sitaram: I could not stand Tolkein when I was a young teenager

Friend: why not? I haven't read much of him
Too many precious brain children?

Sitaram: I tried, and his prose seemed juvenile

Friend: what is juvenile prose? didactic? watered -down vocabulary?

Sitaram: well, look at any page in harry potter, and compare the sentences with proulx, nabakov, virginia woolf.. childish, immature

Friend: but how can prose be immature unless it's the ideas behind it that are?
Carver or Hemingway, by contrast

Sitaram: I mean, once you acquire a taste for somone like, say Milan Kundera, you cannot easily go back to Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan series sentence structure and style can be immature

Friend: so the overall picture the author presents is trite and condescending

Sitaram: vocabulary can be immature

Friend: instead of humbly searching

Sitaram: plots and characters etc, can be immature

Friend: a lot of great books begin with apologies to the royalty who might be reading them

Sitaram: well, if you want to go for things like "humbly searching", then michael jackson is a poet, and mohammed was a saint, and the new york post is journalism

Friend: whereas one of these snoozy books might talk down to the average reader
no, I don't think so one who proclaims he knows the answers

Sitaram: I mean, one may take any mediocre author, and say that they are "humbly searching"

Friend: is often irritating

Sitaram: so, are you saying that every book in print, is a great book

Friend: but they're not! they're hacks who work a formula I mean, it's something you sense and usually they're humbly searching for better meanings

Sitaram: so, for me harry potter, and tolkien, are hacks that work a formula

Friend: not just how to write a complete sentence

Sitaram: I cant remember that one novelist, that recently sold his manuscripts for millions to an archive in texas but,.... DeLillo I remembered for years, he reworks a paragraph as much as or times Don DeLillo...

Friend: yes - I remember him compared to Pynchon

Sitaram: now, there is a book called "Critics Manifesto" which bashes DeLillo and Proulx and some others

Friend: and the import Haruki Murakami

Sitaram: Pynchon is an obvious craftsman, as is Rushdie I have not acquired a taste for DeLillo, I have not tried, but, I imagine he is a craftsman

Friend: can "obvious craftsman" imply pretentious? showoffy?

Sitaram: but, I disagree with that "Critics Manifesto" criticism of Proulx
and he picked the ONE passage, that I wrote pages about, in praise, analyzing it

Friend: do you have a favorite Proulx novel?

Sitaram: somethin about "furious dabs of tulips, stuttering"
I think it was in that .... oh, there goes my memory again, the fellow who fails in the usa, and goes to NewFoundland.... and writes

Friend: I started a novel by DeLillo - Underground or something like that

Sitaram: ah, Shipping News

Friend: just to sample the prose

Sitaram: you see how my memory fades

Friend: ok - I'll take a look at it
it comes back in the right circumstances

Sitaram: I mean, E.B. White is a master of what he did....

Friend: it's just that I must read slowly - these thick novels never seem worth their weight

Sitaram: Charlotte's Web is charming, thought provoking but, it is not supposed to be the prose of Nabokov

Hemingway whittled prose and dialogue down to the bare bone...

Friend: and often the novels only solve with bursts of inspiration the tedium they created in the first place

Sitaram: and received a Nobel for it Robert Rouarke, "Something of Value", was bashed for imitating Hemingway's style

Friend: I wonder what you think of the Fantes like john and his son dan

Sitaram: now, no one could pull off being an e.e. cummings, or a james joyce's Finnegan's Wake

Friend: did you think Rouarke was justified in his so-called imitation alleged, I mean

Sitaram: those people created something unique,.... but it becomes no-mans land
because they would by joyce wannabes or cummings wannabes

Friend: it becomes a signature and a trap for a lot of worthy successors who happen to be similar

Sitaram: yet.... didnt joyce invent stream of consciousness..... and one CAN employ that technique

Friend: it's amazing how many forgotten composers made works nearly equivalent to the quality of much of Beethoven

Sitaram: I mean, there were innovative things with st person, rd person, narrative, that do suffer emulation

Sitaram: which is NOT considered imitation

Friend: right

Sitaram: but then, there are things which are inimitable...

Friend: emulation is insightful

Sitaram: simply because the signature is too unique I mean, Plato was the first with dialogues

and Thespius, the ancient greek chorus leader, was the first to innovate a soloist dialogue in between the antiphonal choruses

Friend: humbly searching - an homage to his friend Socrates, right?

Sitaram: which is why actors are called Thespians yet, such stage or dialogue innovation suffers emulation perhaps Lady Murasaki, circa ce, was the first novelist, "Tales of Genji" but, it suffers emulation

Friend: look how many people don't want to watch Chaplin because Gilligan's Island has made them wary of slapstick or Marceau because street mimes have a bad name

Sitaram: we do not point at every subsequent novelist and say, "oh, look, a Murasaki Wannabe"

Friend: maybe any good novelist has to reinvent the novel

Sitaram: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner had their feuds, regarding what is literature, vs what is prostitution but, they all had to put bread on the table, as well

Friend: and has to cunningly fight off his rivals like a lot of rappers do in their lyrics Anais Nin's delta of venus contains such an apology

Sitaram: Nabokov took a big gamble with Lolita, and in some senses, won big time, and in other senses lost

Friend: about how the stories were commissioned by a pervert

Sitaram: the first person to "rap" probably seemed like an idiot Yes, now, everyone accepts it as a vehicle

Friend: it's the most obvious of its intentions of any art form that I know of...
"I want money. I want women. I want those sucker MCs who are taking my money and women and drugs dead"

Sitaram: times, they are a-changin

Friend: which to a lot of people is fairly refreshing

Sitaram: Bob Dylan's songs ran 10 minutes, when everyone elses singles were barely 3 minutes Dylan didnt care He just did his thing Emily Dickenson did not care, nor thoreau...

Sitaram: Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald cared in a significantly different fashion

Friend: this caring-not caring balance seems the essence of creativity

Sitaram: Camus speaks of "that paltry infinity called posterity"
in his "myth of sisyphus

Friend: and Borges distinguishes his aims from those of newspaper journalists
writing for posterity and not for oblivion like they do but Dylan cared intensely
so that he could appear not to care.

Sitaram: I mean, in Homer's Iliad, Diomedes and Glaukos meet on the battlefield, and have long speeches.... regarding how a generation of men is like the leaves which fall and are forgotten well, Dylan wanted success.... but he was determined to do it his way

Friend: Like Matisse organized his messes very secretly

Sitaram: Emily Dickenson did not even care for monitary success

Friend: sometimes one's own way is one's only hope for success.

Sitaram: nor that portuguese poet, Naruda... whats his name

Friend: fans sometimes think the artist could have done it any way when there was really only one path available

Sitaram: and every artist makes what is agonizing seem effortless, seamless

Friend: yes, the not-caring factor

Friend: like the japanese brush masters who did not make a single erasure

Sitaram: who was that ballet dancer, who did the Faun Fawn

Friend: and who painted their works in a matter of minutes with elaborate meditation and rituals preceding the act.

Sitaram: it is irritating that my memory does not work Nijinsky!

Friend: yes, what about him?

Sitaram: I mean, what an artist, yet, what an off the wall fruitcake I mean, like a Nnietzsche, bordering on genius and madness simultaneously Wallace Stevens is a great poet, but was also vice president of a hartford insurance company Stevens was hardly a Baudelaire, and Baudelaire perhas seems staid, compared to ... oh damn my memory

Friend: I've always been smitten by Manet, the revolutionary, whose paintings were dragged through the mud by critics, who was totally borgeouise in his manner and appearance.

Sitaram: the one who wrote Le Bateau Ivre The Drunken Boat

Friend: oh, yes, and charles Ives was an insurance manager I think executive

Sitaram: google helped me, Rimbaud

Friend: then you have picasso and henry miller who asserted an artist couldn't have a second profession

Sitaram: as crazy as Baudelaire was, I think he was conservative compared with Rimbaud But, I may be wrong

Friend: i've read that J.D. Salinger could be remarkably prudish

Sitaram: Woolf and Fitzgerald were quite unstable,.... but, frost, and many others I could name, were quite stable

Friend: which makes perfect sense when you consider that Holden wanted to erase all the fuk yous

Sitaram: good point, about Holden

Friend: and Hemingway seemed the paragon of stability maybe until

Sitaram: well, except for all the drinking and depression

Friend: in later years, yes one artist whose suicide seemed to nullify his body of work, to me,

Sitaram: I have Heminways "Nick Adams" stories arranged in chronological order

Friend: is Spalding Grey maybe a far more minor artist..
but a beloved one

Sitaram: and the very first story is about a young boy, with is dr. father, who thinks about suicide

Friend: does the chronology make more sense to you when you read them that way?

Sitaram: it is striking to read them in order, and see the ideation of hemingways suicide right at the beginning

Friend: oh ok

Sitaram: well, that is why they published that collection

Friend: dr. father?

Sitaram: doctor

Friend: the boy thinks about it?


Sitaram: Hemingway's dad was a doctor too... I think

Friend: ok the father talks about it

Sitaram: you would have to read the story

Friend: sure I might have it
Friend: today is friday?
Sitaram: and, in a way, Hemingway's preoccupation resembles "The Painted Bird" by Jerzy Kosinsky where the children like on the railroad tracks, while the train rushes inches overhead, and only in that moment of peril do they feel truly alive

Friend: the name of Hemingway's story

Sitaram: I cant remember

Friend: he has one called today is friday

Sitaram: I have it at home

Friend: but I'm sure that's not it

Sitaram: I will look when I get home
Friend: there's a beautiful movie called The Spirit of the Beehive
made in Spain

Sitaram: I did not see that

Friend: with two little girls standing at a railroad track


Friend: and the single shot of it passing is monumental
the train passing

Sitaram: oh, do you know why all those civil war photos look so stiff?
I mean, the people in the photo look stiff, rigid

Friend: yes, the long exposure

Sitaram: well, they had a brace behind , to hold them still

Friend: oh

Sitaram: so, yes, the brace was because of the long exposure

Friend: I see - that's practical

Sitaram: and all those 17th century and earlier where children look like tiny adults

Friend: the stiff remains
certainly make ancient civilizations look ponderous
corpses
ancient tombs
those profiled egyptians
easter island
It's hard to capture an ancient giggle
but
the roccocco age accounted for that
probably

Sitaram: their are Egyptian paintings in vivid color, showing dark-skined and light-skinned working side by side
well, Abraham's Sara laughs, when she is told she will have a child
in old age
so, we see some ancient humor

Friend: some
although it almost seems like a scoff
designed to show an obstacle in Faith

Sitaram: Homer has some comic scene, where there is a race, and someone falls with his nose in a pile of dung

Friend: How I long to have great belly laughs through Aeschylus