Moleskine modality III
The
madeleine is a source, a starting point, a literary device: the reality is in the fiction. In a sense, the Moleskine is my
madeleine. But then it is not the same sort of
madeleine: more something at the edge of a world I know little of, rather than evoking a whole world, giving entry to it - a little Venn circle attached to a bigger one.
It has become a talisman.
At the beginning, Moleskine, through Chatwin, led to a series of people, things, ideas. Starting at the beginning of something, it has become the beginning of everything:
degrees of separation.
small world phenomena
six degrees of separation
six degrees of Kevin Bacon
six degrees of separation : experiment
six degrees of separation : the movie (1993)
Squashed philosopher's website
Glynn Hughes has been beavering away to produce
Squashed Philosophers
This was popular (#15) on Blogdex today, which might mean plenty of people, who pretended to know lots more about philosophy & history of philosphy than they actually did, doing quick bone-up. Never mind, we will all know a bit more now.
Vaguely reminiscent of
The National theatre of Brent. Anyone remember? Jim Broadbent (Hollywood Film star, now) and Patrick Barlow: still doing a fine Desmond Oliver Dingle.
Olivia Manning: The Balkan Trilogy
Making rapid headway (100+) which is unusual: very often drop books, no matter how renowned, before p.50, then lots of explaining why I could not finish. For example:
Capt. Corelli's Mandolin. Saw the film first, which did not live up to expectarion, knew what is going to happen in book, and don't really like his style of writing, except in nuggets. Get through it one day soon, before winter's end.
Balkan Trilogy is based on Manning's life, so I was sorely tempted to Google, finding
Introduction to the Inventory
of The Olivia Manning Papers, 1947-79, University of Tulsa. Little snippets....Nothing directly about TBT, but some clues to her as a writer from her comments: for example, about other writers.
Sartre's Words - A sample
A quote from this book is now in the Sartre post below.
There are a lot of wonderful little pieces like this - if it is to you taste of course - which I see as film.... No script needed. Hand that to the director [oneself]: he will make a good job. The silence and the noise! Brilliant.
Moleskine modality II - Only connect !
It seemed the
Moleskine was a version of the madeleine: the dunked tea cake's smell evoked a world in a grain of sand from a taste/smell; the word Moleskine set off a desire to follow a snail trail wherever it led without much fore-knowledge even if a hypothesis.
I am visual: film is more interesting than writing. The frustration is the web has not developed enough for weblogs to be mindmaps + JPEGs. Spider-charts are, to me, the essence of what can be said: an easier way to explain where you have come from and where you think you are going. If two things appear to be connected - you draw the line between them - an idea has been effected: no need for long-winded explanations. If the person "reading" the diagram has similar knowledge to you, the message will get through.
Was it Goethe or E M Forster who used the expression, only connect?
43 was the starting point.
Jean-Paul Sartre's Words
A book I have had for a long time without attempting to read, suffering under the misapprehension it was some theory or other, is the autobiography - reminiscences of an excruciating post-facto analytical kind - of Sartre's life before the First World War, neatly divided into two halves: reading and writing. Each section given roughly the same number of pages: 85 and 68 : near enough: might even satisfy the statistical 0.05 level of significance. If I had written this book, it would have been exactly apportioned; making a film of it [impossible?] I would have used a stop watch to make both sections exactly the same length. By the time I have finished
Words there may be an explanation for the two developmental phases being unequal.
If you are going to attempt Sartre's work, this might be a good place to start: not because it is or is not, might or might not be, an especially good or well written book - it is extremely valuable for a writer - but for two reasons: one, you will then know where he came from physically, intellectually, psychologically, emotionally; two, because he uses a lots of colons and semi-colons. If you do not get - or like - what he is saying, at least you could use his writing as a model for how to use the [:] and [;], even if your writing course tutor tells you they are not so popular or necessary nowadays.
Colons, as a species, are a constant source of fascination: if you can get hold of this book, read a passage at random: almost any page contains dozens and dozens of these rare punctuation marks. Take a piece of your work. Re-write it in the punctuation style of this book. A strange thing: if you scan a page of
Words, the punctuation stands out; if you read it - silently or aloud - the punctuation magically disappears.
My punctuation is poor and will never be good: part, to be fair to myself, typo; part seemingly congenital inability. They always are in the wrong places according to other people.
So it goes [Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse 5 ?] The only punctuation mark I feel fairly certain about is the full-stop. If you feel anything I write could be re-written better, please post a new version. This whole text, by the way - if you have not noticed you ought to - is scattered with [neologim anyone?] an attempt at self-mockey through plastering the text with punctuation marks which I have no idea how to use.
21 January
The book is finished: skipping a few pages near the end, admittedly; no rule which says you can't go back! Scowering the web for an online Words to avoid the longuers of copying out my favourite quotes has come up with a few useful things:
J P Sartre
Brandeis U. - good. A complete "mini-essay" within a biog/bibliog. The section on Words, useful in assessing whether to read it if nothing else, in the context of his other work.
judged by Francis Jeanson in Sartre dans sa vie as "the most accessible, and doubtless the most successful, of all the non- philosophical works of Sartre."
Jean Paul Sartre The outsider looking in
Raya Dunayevskaya, 1973: Philosophy & Revolution, Chapter 6
Briefly mentions Words in context of his work. Fascinating to go back to that time when Marxism seemed important to understand, even just for the sake of getting the upperhand at diner parties.
J P Sartre
Stanford U. : links to other entries: de Beauvoir, philospophers connected.
Wiki: J P Sartre
Whoever wrote the piece on Words knows something the other sites didn't, or is claiming something that isn't true.
In 1964, Sartre renounced literature in a witty and sardonic account of the first six years of his life, Les mots (Words). The book is an ironic counterblast to Marcel Proust, whose reputation had unexpectedly eclipsed that of André Gide (who had provided the model of literature engagée for Sartre's generation). Literature, Sartre concluded, functioned as a bourgeois substitute for real commitment in the world. In the same year he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but, true to his views, he resoundingly declined it. This rejection hurt the prestige of the Nobel institution more than it did Sartre's.
(1) beginning: "I began my life as I shall no doubt end it: among books..." [p.28 Penguin]. Quote it in full, later, but for those willing to find the book: not to spoil the pleasure of reading it to find a gem hidden at the bottom of the paragraph
(2) about film (the transition, as he saw it in 1963, from a film-mind child to a writer-mind child).
If asked what I was right inside myself, it would be afilm-maker, though the only film I ever made was a short video * sequence which showed my three year old son running away, fast, then fallingdown....{CUT}.
I looked back in my life to find no writer till the age of 18, when in the middle of an exam, I gave the poor examiner the full works - jokes, puns, allusions, double-entres : I was bored with the questions in my General Paper, sat by all "A" Level students in those days to do "What it says on the packet": examines one's general understanding.
Words is full of snippets, amongst - for my taste - the rather too finely wrought analysis, which have already been filmed in my mind. It is surprising some French director hasn't done one of those typical movies of
Words: banal action superimposed upon by dense, relentless intellectual narrative. It could be done: but it would not be
Words. If someone give me £100,000, o'k. £50K, lets settle for 25, I'll make a start....quick working script..... hire a few actors... trial sequences....DVD....off to the producers. In my dreams.
25 January
I promised a quote. Here it is: page 28 of the penguin edition:
I began my life as I shall no doubt end it: among books. In my grandfather's study, they were everywhere; it was forbidden to dust them except once a year, before the October term. Even before I could read, I already revered these raised stones; upright or leaning, wedged together like bricks on the library shelves or nobly placed like avenues of dolmens, I felt that our family prosperity depended on them. They were all alike, and I was romping about in a tiny sanctuary, surrounded by squat, ancient monuments which had witnessed my birth, which would witness my death and whose permanence guaranteed me a future as calm as my past. I used to touch them in secret to honour my hands with their dust but I did not have much idea what to do with them and each day I was present at ceremonies whose meaning escaped me: my grandfather - so clumy, normally, that my grandmother buttoned his gloves for him - handled these cultural objects with the dexterity of an officiating priest. Hundreds of times I saw him get up absent-mindedly, walk round the table, cross the room in two strides, unhesitatingly pick out a volume without allowing himself time for choice, run through it as he went back to his armchair, with a combined movement of his thumb and right forefinger, and, almost before he sat down, open it with a flick "at the right page", making it creak like a shoe. I sometimes got close enough to observe these boxes which opened like oysters and I discovered the nakedness of their internal organs, pale, dank, slightly blistering pages, covered with small black veins, which drank ink and smelt of mildew.
moleskine modality
Voltaire, ruminating about immortality, concluded:
To rise again - to be the same person that you were - you must have your memory perfectly fresh and present; for it is memory that makes your identity. If your memory is lost how will you be the same man? *
*
Romances, p. 411
A spiritually invigorating chain of thought set in motion by the merest mention of a single word:
Moleskine, read by chance on the web. This word had not passed through conscious thought for at least five years: or, was it ten? Memory is a fickle friend. Stored in my brain in the first place while reading
a biography of a recently dead travel writer and novelist: a word which is now providing a rich seam. I will explain.
It is traditional amongst those wishing it to be known that they have read good books - or, at least, to attempt to create an impression they have done so - to invoke the mearest mention of a flake of a crumb of
madeleine: why departed from this tradition without good cause?
Try
Proust if
madeleine doesn't do it.
I distinctly recall the feelings of fascination and irritation reading
Nicholas Shakespeare's widely considered to be definitive biography of
Bruce Chatwin: there I first learnt of the notebooks
Chatwin and many other writers and artists set such great store by. From a minor interest it has become something much more. I will explain as much as possible.
