The Phenomenology of a Good Book: Elizabeth Costello
Elizabeth Costello
by J.M. Coetzee
Viking, 2003
The Sorrows of Young Werther
by Johan Wolfgang von Goethe (1774)
Translated by Michael Hulse
Penguin, 1989
What is it to read a good story? What is the feeling you get when you read something good?
With Werther, this: a slow march, a punctuated (by the letters, the dates, the entries) testimonial that serves only to set you in the right frame of mind (who's frame? yours or Werther's?), followed by a bolt, a commando assault on your heart (shock and awe, it seems, are the common effects of both warfare and fiction). This is the form, always repeated. First the lull (a lull but a purposeful lull, a displacing lull, a replacing lull), then the volley. First, through a gentle labor, the hill tops are constructed, and we, like Sisyphus, drag the cannons up and up the hill; then, with a well-timed blast, the general uses his position to pound us (down in the valley) with all his artillery. We've put in all this effort just to get blasted.
This is our fate as readers, which we share with poor Werther: to put in all this work just to get blasted. But, like Werther, like Sisyphus perhaps, we enjoy the tasks put before us. We enjoy the continued marches up the hill, struggling with the howitzer or arms full of shells. (Each day, in Werther, is another march.) Sometimes we regret the long halls, glancing out the window while stuck on a dreary paragraph, but we always cherish the moments on the top, and the journey back down. We forget, while we work, about the obvious conclusion to all of this, the obvious finale. We forget, that is, until the last armload and cartfull have been carted up, and, as we turned to walk back down the hill, looking over the valley we've created and cleared, the valley which is now empty (save for the giant target, right in the middle of which sits our favorite straight-backed reading chair), we are gripped by that spectacular mode of horror that compels us to stay the course (rather than, say, run in terror), the horror of the condemned man who nevertheless keeps his chin stuck out.
(Have you ever, I should ask, stopped reading a book right at this point? Have you every abandoned the project just when all the pieces are in place, as if toppling your king just as the opponent's fool-proof strategy becomes clear? This, this can never be the experience of a good book. It is merely a book that is capable of setting all the pieces in the right places, a book with a clear plan for victory. But the good book, and it's the good book I'm discussing here, sets the trap, clears the way for victory, and then compels you to play it out, kicking, screaming, squirming in your seat, following through until the victor has had his full sadistic fill--that is, following through 'til the checkmate.)
Marching down the hill to your outcome, if it is a good book, you see clearly what awaits you. Sometimes, the guns fire a few rounds to gauge their range, to warm up their engines. It is, then, with the shells booming around you and a darkened sky descending that you walk alone to your final encounter, an encounter impersonal except for the fact that you cannot forget that it is you, your hard work, that has brought you to this impasse and that compels you to proceed.
The pounding that awaits you at the bottom, if you have ever read anything good, should be familiar. Classic example: after setting up the hidden stand and fitting the rifle into it's niche, you steely wait as Joyce, in "The Dead", proceeds to plant a bullet between your eyes. And when Werther (poor Werther), plants a bullet in his own skull, we are waiting, sickened, tear-streaked, as Goethe sets about demolishing our position without remorse.
Well, that is the story. But, if I'm going to write anything worthwhile, here, we should dig a little deeper into why or how these books so devastate us. It is simply what good writing can do, you might say, and you'd not be wrong, exactly. But that does not explain to me why the New Testament, which was written in undistinguished Greek and translated into pure rubbish, can produce just the effect I've described. Even the Hebrew Bible, whose translations, at least, don't qualify as good writing, packs not one but hundreds of good stories into it's quite narrow confines. So, what is it?
An answer, perhaps, can be found in "Elizabeth Costello," a book, which, we shall see, is primarily concerned with the acts of reading and writing. (Perhaps these two pastimes are not as different as they seem...) Elizabeth, musing on Eros, mentions our desire to experience, through love, through sex, another realm: the beyond, the life of the gods. But, she notices, the gods for their part also (through their frequent romps with us) long to experience this low, dirty-but-passionate, mortal life. "She would like to think the gods admire, however grudgingly, our energy, the endless ingenuity with which we try to elude our fate."
So, perhaps this is a clue. We want our heroes, in our good books, to be creatures the gods could admire. We want big, bold creatures, like Werther, who are imperfect, flawed, dirty and passionate enough to make the gods envy us. We want our heroes to be, in a word, human.
We want our heroes to be humans who try to elude their fates. We want humans who think big, who build big, who love big--who stretch the limits. We want heroes who challenged the gods, who try to remind the gods of their limitations. We, we readers, we writers, want the gods to remember what we all, we humans, are capable of.
(Philip Larkin's narrator, in "A Study of Reading Habits" identifies himself with the losers, the characters who could not impress the gods. It is precisely for this reason, then, that he doesn't find any good books--"books are a load of crap.")
How to live? How to die? These are the questions our heroes ask. Together--writer, reader, hero--we are building, up on our hill, a sort of tower to heaven, a picture, a plan of how to live, how to die. We are creating an alternative life-scape, an ambitious picture of man's ability/capability.
We celebrate our heroes for dodging the fate the gods assigned. Oedipus ran from his fate. Hamlet (a more advanced character for a more advanced, and deeply penetrating religion) tries to take control of his fate, rather than avoid it. Werther (a character through whom, as Goethe puts it 'everyone felt he could be the Prince of Denmark') plots his own course for fate, and sticks to it.
And we long to strive with our heroes, we are uplifted by striving with them, building with them, building an edifice for them to climb and from which they, with us, can challenge the gods--or at least impress them. And, we are willing, like the best of squires, to follow our heroes to their demise, to join in their bloody last charge, wherein their polished armor and gallant steeds are laid low by the mechanics of the artillery, the bolt from Olympus.
But why must all our heroes end in failure? Why must we all die together? We like to see the hero suffer, but why? We are drawn to it, drawn to his passion, his drive, his defeat, his failure. We let ourselves be torn apart by it. Of success and strength and beauty, we say, Olympus has quite enough. It is this failure that impresses.
Kirlov, in The Possessed, regrets this state of affairs. There is no fate, no gods, he reasons. So, why do we always have to do penance? Why must all our heroes die? We can simply win. It's simple. All we need, he says, is a hero for man alone, a hero who does not impress the gods. I'll be this hero. A hero just for men. I will take all of that wasted energy and show it to be wasted. I'm not impressive. I'm just a man. A man with a bullet in his head, like Werther. Don't exult me because I defied the gods, he says. There are no gods to defy or exult. Just live, live free and die happy and rich.
But Kirlov, of course, was himself a failure. A little-noticed scape-goat, he reaches us only as a character, another tragic character, a character we can hold up to the gods and say, look, look at our failed ambition and ability. I will march with Kirlov.
What makes us cling, like this, passionately even, to a hero--and more, to a story with a hero, to a book, a physical book whose collection of letters give rise to a hero. It is not catharsis, our need for failures, or not simply that. We think, perhaps, that in identifying, feeling, with our heroes, we demonstrate our own interestingness. When we cry for Werther we are making the case for our own passion, our own humanity. The gods, we suppose, if we care to think about it, are impressed by Werther; they must also appreciate me, who suffered with him. Impressed by this example of human passion and ability, they will be at least a little impressed by one who can understand, who can feel that passion, can respect that ability. We feel, when we suffer and die with our heroes, that we have achieved something as well, something important and, simply, something interesting.
If you, like me, consider Elizabeth Costello to be a good book, then Elizabeth Costello must be a different kind of hero. She is no young Werther. Her passion does not impress us (or St. Peter). What impresses instead is the fact that she, as both reader and writer, has suffered with heroes, marched to the gallows with them and climbed into bed with them. She is a writer's hero, and a reader's hero. Her existential questions are 'How to read? How to write?' (To read or not to read...) In her, the reader's own role as a hero--impressive to the gods--is established. She is a hero, she is someone we are proud to walk to the gallows with, because she is a passionate reader, an energetic, ingenious, elusive reader. She wrestles with god, she lives an exceptional life, in the same way we do: by creating characters and sitting with them, listening as they read Emilia Galotti aloud to the night, waiting for the shot that is sure to come.
So, I walk with Elizabeth Costello as I walk with Werther. I'm engaged in her projects, her fate because she, like Werther, is making a case for the over-all cosmic worth of human life. And she, like most of us (all of us?) finds her struggles and passions between the covers of a book.
by J.M. Coetzee
Viking, 2003
The Sorrows of Young Werther
by Johan Wolfgang von Goethe (1774)
Translated by Michael Hulse
Penguin, 1989
What is it to read a good story? What is the feeling you get when you read something good?
With Werther, this: a slow march, a punctuated (by the letters, the dates, the entries) testimonial that serves only to set you in the right frame of mind (who's frame? yours or Werther's?), followed by a bolt, a commando assault on your heart (shock and awe, it seems, are the common effects of both warfare and fiction). This is the form, always repeated. First the lull (a lull but a purposeful lull, a displacing lull, a replacing lull), then the volley. First, through a gentle labor, the hill tops are constructed, and we, like Sisyphus, drag the cannons up and up the hill; then, with a well-timed blast, the general uses his position to pound us (down in the valley) with all his artillery. We've put in all this effort just to get blasted.
This is our fate as readers, which we share with poor Werther: to put in all this work just to get blasted. But, like Werther, like Sisyphus perhaps, we enjoy the tasks put before us. We enjoy the continued marches up the hill, struggling with the howitzer or arms full of shells. (Each day, in Werther, is another march.) Sometimes we regret the long halls, glancing out the window while stuck on a dreary paragraph, but we always cherish the moments on the top, and the journey back down. We forget, while we work, about the obvious conclusion to all of this, the obvious finale. We forget, that is, until the last armload and cartfull have been carted up, and, as we turned to walk back down the hill, looking over the valley we've created and cleared, the valley which is now empty (save for the giant target, right in the middle of which sits our favorite straight-backed reading chair), we are gripped by that spectacular mode of horror that compels us to stay the course (rather than, say, run in terror), the horror of the condemned man who nevertheless keeps his chin stuck out.
(Have you ever, I should ask, stopped reading a book right at this point? Have you every abandoned the project just when all the pieces are in place, as if toppling your king just as the opponent's fool-proof strategy becomes clear? This, this can never be the experience of a good book. It is merely a book that is capable of setting all the pieces in the right places, a book with a clear plan for victory. But the good book, and it's the good book I'm discussing here, sets the trap, clears the way for victory, and then compels you to play it out, kicking, screaming, squirming in your seat, following through until the victor has had his full sadistic fill--that is, following through 'til the checkmate.)
Marching down the hill to your outcome, if it is a good book, you see clearly what awaits you. Sometimes, the guns fire a few rounds to gauge their range, to warm up their engines. It is, then, with the shells booming around you and a darkened sky descending that you walk alone to your final encounter, an encounter impersonal except for the fact that you cannot forget that it is you, your hard work, that has brought you to this impasse and that compels you to proceed.
The pounding that awaits you at the bottom, if you have ever read anything good, should be familiar. Classic example: after setting up the hidden stand and fitting the rifle into it's niche, you steely wait as Joyce, in "The Dead", proceeds to plant a bullet between your eyes. And when Werther (poor Werther), plants a bullet in his own skull, we are waiting, sickened, tear-streaked, as Goethe sets about demolishing our position without remorse.
Well, that is the story. But, if I'm going to write anything worthwhile, here, we should dig a little deeper into why or how these books so devastate us. It is simply what good writing can do, you might say, and you'd not be wrong, exactly. But that does not explain to me why the New Testament, which was written in undistinguished Greek and translated into pure rubbish, can produce just the effect I've described. Even the Hebrew Bible, whose translations, at least, don't qualify as good writing, packs not one but hundreds of good stories into it's quite narrow confines. So, what is it?
An answer, perhaps, can be found in "Elizabeth Costello," a book, which, we shall see, is primarily concerned with the acts of reading and writing. (Perhaps these two pastimes are not as different as they seem...) Elizabeth, musing on Eros, mentions our desire to experience, through love, through sex, another realm: the beyond, the life of the gods. But, she notices, the gods for their part also (through their frequent romps with us) long to experience this low, dirty-but-passionate, mortal life. "She would like to think the gods admire, however grudgingly, our energy, the endless ingenuity with which we try to elude our fate."
So, perhaps this is a clue. We want our heroes, in our good books, to be creatures the gods could admire. We want big, bold creatures, like Werther, who are imperfect, flawed, dirty and passionate enough to make the gods envy us. We want our heroes to be, in a word, human.
We want our heroes to be humans who try to elude their fates. We want humans who think big, who build big, who love big--who stretch the limits. We want heroes who challenged the gods, who try to remind the gods of their limitations. We, we readers, we writers, want the gods to remember what we all, we humans, are capable of.
(Philip Larkin's narrator, in "A Study of Reading Habits" identifies himself with the losers, the characters who could not impress the gods. It is precisely for this reason, then, that he doesn't find any good books--"books are a load of crap.")
How to live? How to die? These are the questions our heroes ask. Together--writer, reader, hero--we are building, up on our hill, a sort of tower to heaven, a picture, a plan of how to live, how to die. We are creating an alternative life-scape, an ambitious picture of man's ability/capability.
We celebrate our heroes for dodging the fate the gods assigned. Oedipus ran from his fate. Hamlet (a more advanced character for a more advanced, and deeply penetrating religion) tries to take control of his fate, rather than avoid it. Werther (a character through whom, as Goethe puts it 'everyone felt he could be the Prince of Denmark') plots his own course for fate, and sticks to it.
And we long to strive with our heroes, we are uplifted by striving with them, building with them, building an edifice for them to climb and from which they, with us, can challenge the gods--or at least impress them. And, we are willing, like the best of squires, to follow our heroes to their demise, to join in their bloody last charge, wherein their polished armor and gallant steeds are laid low by the mechanics of the artillery, the bolt from Olympus.
But why must all our heroes end in failure? Why must we all die together? We like to see the hero suffer, but why? We are drawn to it, drawn to his passion, his drive, his defeat, his failure. We let ourselves be torn apart by it. Of success and strength and beauty, we say, Olympus has quite enough. It is this failure that impresses.
Kirlov, in The Possessed, regrets this state of affairs. There is no fate, no gods, he reasons. So, why do we always have to do penance? Why must all our heroes die? We can simply win. It's simple. All we need, he says, is a hero for man alone, a hero who does not impress the gods. I'll be this hero. A hero just for men. I will take all of that wasted energy and show it to be wasted. I'm not impressive. I'm just a man. A man with a bullet in his head, like Werther. Don't exult me because I defied the gods, he says. There are no gods to defy or exult. Just live, live free and die happy and rich.
But Kirlov, of course, was himself a failure. A little-noticed scape-goat, he reaches us only as a character, another tragic character, a character we can hold up to the gods and say, look, look at our failed ambition and ability. I will march with Kirlov.
What makes us cling, like this, passionately even, to a hero--and more, to a story with a hero, to a book, a physical book whose collection of letters give rise to a hero. It is not catharsis, our need for failures, or not simply that. We think, perhaps, that in identifying, feeling, with our heroes, we demonstrate our own interestingness. When we cry for Werther we are making the case for our own passion, our own humanity. The gods, we suppose, if we care to think about it, are impressed by Werther; they must also appreciate me, who suffered with him. Impressed by this example of human passion and ability, they will be at least a little impressed by one who can understand, who can feel that passion, can respect that ability. We feel, when we suffer and die with our heroes, that we have achieved something as well, something important and, simply, something interesting.
If you, like me, consider Elizabeth Costello to be a good book, then Elizabeth Costello must be a different kind of hero. She is no young Werther. Her passion does not impress us (or St. Peter). What impresses instead is the fact that she, as both reader and writer, has suffered with heroes, marched to the gallows with them and climbed into bed with them. She is a writer's hero, and a reader's hero. Her existential questions are 'How to read? How to write?' (To read or not to read...) In her, the reader's own role as a hero--impressive to the gods--is established. She is a hero, she is someone we are proud to walk to the gallows with, because she is a passionate reader, an energetic, ingenious, elusive reader. She wrestles with god, she lives an exceptional life, in the same way we do: by creating characters and sitting with them, listening as they read Emilia Galotti aloud to the night, waiting for the shot that is sure to come.
So, I walk with Elizabeth Costello as I walk with Werther. I'm engaged in her projects, her fate because she, like Werther, is making a case for the over-all cosmic worth of human life. And she, like most of us (all of us?) finds her struggles and passions between the covers of a book.
Labels: book review
posted by Brian at 3:12 PM
0 comments
