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.

Review: Why I Am a Catholic

Why I Am a Catholic
by Garry Wills
Houghton Mifflin, 2002

I used to think that the importance of religion was the personal, spiritual relationship with the Almighty, and that the various forms of organized religion were various forms of BS standing in the way. Lately, however, I've reversed this formula: I think that public, collective ritual is more important; a mystical relationship is secondary or, perhaps, delusional. For this reason, I thought it would be interesting to dabble in the Catholic Church. The saints, the rosary, no meat on Friday--Catholicism is rich with ritual. But after reading Garry Wills's Why I am a Catholic, I've decided to stick with boring old Methodism. This is not to say that I disagree with any of Wills's points; his goal here was not to convince me why I should be a Catholic. Rather, given the long list of papal abuse and misconduct, one would have to be a very loyal son, as Wills seems to be, to stick with the Church. In short, this book was no Catholic screed.

Wills begins with a biography of his spiritual life, beginning with Catholic grade school and boarding school, then Jesuit seminary. He eventually dropped out of seminary and pursued a secular academic career--he is a history professor currently at Northwestern. He has nothing but good things to say about his upbringing (no sexual abuse; only a little corporal mortification as a Jesuit novice). His teachers were all sincere and knowledgeable. He is arguing, as we soon see, that the average Catholic life differs wildly from, and is much more wholesome and worthwhile than, the exploits of the Pope.

The bulk of the book is a sprawling history of the Catholic Church, beginning with Peter and Paul. Do not use this book as a primer on church history, however: very little space is given to, for instance, the conversion of Constantine or the Reformation. Wills directs his focus on the papacy throughout. In the beginning, he demonstrates, there was no pope and Peter was not a bishop of Rome since there was no such office at the time. As the church organized and developed, the pope in Rome played second fiddle to bishops in the cosmopolitan, academic cities like Alexandria, Antioch, and later Constantinople. It was not until a millennium after Christ, once the west and the east were completely separate and the church began playing politics in Europe, that the papacy gained its primacy. This was done well outside the mandate of scripture, Wills claims. Although Peter was given authority over the church in a much-quoted passage in Mathew 16, this does not imply the necessity of the strict hierarchical structure that Rome established. Rather, Wills argues, this authority is merely a defense against the dissolution of the Church.

The history culminates in the Vatican II council which took place from 1962 to 1965. Wills calls this the "great rebirth" of the Catholic Church, finally eliminating some of the strictures that set Rome apart from the international Catholic community--especially the American Catholic community. The largest change effected was the recognition of the laity as the "people of God", a step up from the governed sheep they had been officially thought of before. Also important was the status given to Protestants and believers of other religions: "Baptized Protestants are members of the Body of Christ....Jews, too, are 'the people of God,' and not mere pre-Christians or Christ-slayers." Finally, Vatican II recognized the legitimacy of the separation of church and state. Five years after the election of John Kennedy, the Catholic Church officially declared that the American democratic system was not blatantly sinful.

Wills then heaps criticism on John Paul II--and his "doctrinal alter ego" Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now know as pope Benedict XVI)--for not only his subtle rejection of Vatican II and his opposition to contraceptives, female clergy and married priests, but also his support of Opus Dei (of Davinci Code fame), his canonization of Juan Diego, a man "who seems to never have existed", and his claim of martyrdom after an assassination attempt. But John Paul represents a small step backward for Wills. Vatican II cemented his belief that the sensible Catholic masses can correct any blunder, however ghastly, that the pope can make.

If Wills pulls no punches when it comes to the popes (leaving aside John XXIII, who presided over Vatican II), he ultimately defends the papacy. He claims that the Christian church should be a single community, and that the papacy, by way of Peter, represents the Christian church on earth. "Peter is not the master of truth or power or government. He is the center around which the other parts of the church cohere." Wills seems, finally, to have bought the line that the pope stands in for Peter.

I find this position, given the other arguments in the book, to be very weak, for three reasons: 1) Peter, when he was "running" the church, claimed no authority whatsoever. He was an expert go-between, a negotiator, a friend to all, who helped to knit together the Apostolic churches using not coercion or decree but patient conversation. This is what the leader (or leaders) of the Christian church on earth should look like. This is the heritage left to us from Peter. Others were able (and certainly not all of them were based in Rome), using similar techniques to hold the church together for a millennium without papal primacy. 2) The papacy's first act of primacy within the church was to excommunicate the patriarch of Constantinople, causing the schism between Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism. (This was done by Pope Leo IX in 1054.) Is this the kind of unity a church with papal primacy provides? Moreover, the popes' abuses of privilege were the primary reasons for Luther's split in the the sixteenth century. Would we have to contend with the Protestant/Catholic divide if not for the papacy? 3) Finally, until Vatican II, Catholics were officially dissuaded even from entering into organizations with non-Catholics, and freedom of religious expression was officially heretical (Leo XIII's Longingua and Pius IX's Quanta Cura, respectively). How can unity be possible in these circumstances, even within the Catholic church? Many Catholics disobeyed these dicta, to be sure, but how then is the papacy responsible for cohesion withing the church? Wills asks us to consider "just how much worse things would have been without [the papacy]." I'm not convinced things would not look a whole lot better.

Finally, Wills lays bare his own beliefs by way of the Apostles' Creed. He explains that the Creed is the core of Christian doctrine, the set of propositions you must believe if you call yourself a Christian. He dives right into the trickiest aspects of the faith and explains how he was able, in his own small way, to come to an understanding of them. For instance, his discussions of the Trinity and the Lord's Prayer are deep and wide-ranging; he does justice to the rich theology and history they embody. This is really the heart of the book, and a worthwhile read for anyone. In fact, it is striking how little of Wills's core belief is Catholic, as opposed to some other sort of Christianity. When Christians honestly sit down and compare notes, we all believe pretty much the same thing.

So, although I do not buy Wills's claim that the Pope represents Christian unity, I do agree that Christian unity would be a good thing. And I respect the sincerity, thoughtfulness and candor of his beliefs. So perhaps my criticisms have been too harsh. Rather than remain a Methodist, I'd prefer to just be Christian. If only Wills--and others--were willing to make a similar concession.

North Korea, from a North Korean Perspective: The Aquariums of Pyongyang

The Aquariums of Pyongyang
by Kang Chol-Hwan and Pierre Rigoulot
Translated by Yair Reiner
Basic Books, 2001 (new edition 2005)

For a book that documents, in graphic detail, the ten years the author spent in a North Korean labor camp, this was not overly disturbing to read. Let me clarify: Although some scenes, if properly imagined, can turn your stomach inside out, and although this is a book that you cannot put out of your mind perhaps ever, the author leaves you feeling somewhat removed from the action. His voice, filtered through interpretation and translation (the book was originally published in France) still holds a sort of numb calm that belies many horrors. It is as if his story, his years inside the camp, has been whitewashed: the contour of the facts remain, but the emotional color you would expect is absent. After he made it to South Korea, where he now lives, and told his story many times to the reporters, he writes "I occasionally felt I was trading my experience for a story that was no longer my own." It is as if Kang Chol-Hwan, the newspaper writer who owns Hyundai stock and a nice car stereo, was not really the boy who had been shipped from Pyongyang to the Yodok prison camp with his family thirty years ago.

In addition to detailing the camp, Kang explains how his family ended up there and how, after his release, he eventually escaped North Korea. His grandparents had immigrated to Japan during the occupation. In Kyoto, his grandfather had made a fortune running gambling halls while his grandmother helped run a Korean organization connected to Kim Il-Sung's government. They returned to Korea hoping to help build their homeland into a utopia. It is amazing how heedlessly Kim's regime could throw away its most capable and loyal subjects. But perhaps they were doomed from the start. One-party regimes work best ruling over a nation of peasants whose lives actually have been improved (through land reform, etc.) by the regime. Educated and skilled people notice when the country declines--they remember a better time and had hopes for a better life. So, these elements must be purged. But you cannot run a country with only peasants.

Kang is a good storyteller. The pre- and post-Yodok sections flow easily and coherently. But in the camp section he loses all narrative flow. The author repeats or gets ahead of himself. He sometimes introduces or dispenses with characters haphazardly. But this, I suppose, is how life goes, if you are living in a gulag. The entire family did hard labor for ten years, subsisting on a daily ration of corn supplemented by rats. They were forced to get used to death and forget about dignity. Still, Kang manages to remember and point out the little bubbles of hope and humanity in the people around him. Perhaps intended as an anti-Communist manifesto (Rigoulot is a journalist who has worked on The Black Book of Communism), the book is much more about the far-from-ideological struggle and will of Kang and his family. Kang's grandmother, in the end, still believes in Marx and Engels. But certainly not in Kim Il-Sung.

The book ends with a plea to do all we, the international community, can to help the North Korean people. Now, because of famines that have ravaged the country over the last decade, almost everyone in the country lives like he did in the camp. On the other hand, he wants to do nothing that could aide Kim Jong-Il (Kim Il-Sung's son) in any way. Unfortunately, Kim has ensured that we cannot really work on the former without also doing the latter. Still, Kang's testimony should give South Koreans pause before they rush to shake Kim's hand, as Kim Dae-Jung, then-president of the South, did in 2000. And perhaps we Americans should not be so eager to abandon our hard-line stance, as I had suggested we should in my previous post.