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Niccolò Machiavelli
New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, (originally published in 1957).
ISBN 0672602318.
★★★☆☆
This was a fun read, but not a great read. The 'high' farcical comedy of this style is entertaining, but not challenging.
The premise aligns with Machiavelli's concerns about morality and power. A
young man with some wealth lusts after a beautiful married women. In fact, as he closes in on her, he expresses his fear of failure:
… anybody who says waiting is a hard thing is telling the truth. I'm losing ten pounds every hour thinning of where I am now and of where I may be two hours from now, fearing that something may suddenly happen to upset my whole plan: if that should happen this would be the last night of my life, for I'll either throw myself in the Arno, or I'll hang myself, or I'll fling myself out of those windows, or I'll stab myself on her doorstep. Something or other like that I'm bound to do, to end it all… (4.4.).
And the writing is very easy to read. And I might have given it another star if the Machiavelli had honoured the object of the lusting protagonist, who was frequently cited by the various characters as being intelligent and moral. Instead he has her capitulate to the young lover and the morals of her family and church and embrace being a lover.
I guess I'm getting old, because I just don't quite believe the credibility of the characters' behaviours. But then if this is high farce — which this most certainly is — then the characters are given the freedom to be incredible. However, if that belief doesn't work, then the incredible behaviours fail.
The book brought more than one smile to my face, and there was an snippet of an economic comment that I may well find excellent to include in my economics course. That, and very easy writing, earns it 4 stars. However, the failure of Machiavelli to fully honour Lucrezia's intelligence docks it one star.
Today's book blog is a bit of cheat. It relates to books — it's not that kind of cheat. No, the cheat is that I'm doing this on an old long ago read book instead of blogging book reviews of the two books I've recently finished — Noam Chomsky: A Philosophic Overview by Justin Leiber and Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein. I've been writing the review of the former, but haven't finished it yet. I just finished the latter, and it has left me bereft of a coherent review at this time: I'm still mulling over this powerful and very sad book.
No, the cheat was prompted by my friend BH with whom I have been coming to know creatively in the last few months since we have begun exploring the meaning of dreams as they relate to the expression of personal creativity. During the course of our discussions I have suggested to BH that she seriously overestimates the significance and importance of formal education. We have been discussing how creativity can get boxed in by the perceived requirements of formal schooling. I point out that that the thinkers and social critics I most respect have all unequivocally castigated formal education, even though all of them were in fact well educated.
Isn't that an odd conundrum or Catch-22? That reminds me of the movie Educating Rita. Rita doesn't understand that her desire to be educated is a fool's path, despite her professor of English expressing his concerns about it — and being himself a drunken fool.
Anyway, I have been, with hit-and-miss consistency, noting anti-education quotations over the last fifteen years or so. I told BH that I'd send her some. This I began to do tonight. Then I thought that some of them are quite likely worth sharing with a larger audience because they are sometimes very funny as well as meaningful. This I also decided to do, hence this blog 'cheat' because my first clutch of quotes comes from Sheldon Kopp. After I thought of doing this, I realized with bemusement that my doing so moves me outside of my 'box' of creativity that I'd comfortably stuffed this book blog into. I chuckle at the thought of BH's reaction to how its metaphorical structure echos our discussions!
And as I wrote that the strangest of fushigis exploded in my face. Laurie Brown, the CBC Radio2 host of The Signal tells the following story:
… We all know people that talk a lot about themselves. All the time. … But I do know somebody who [talks about herself] all the time. And I remember at a party, she was talking to my father over in the corner. And she was telling him ALL about her hair, and the problems she's had with her hair, and this new hair cut and blah blah blah. And then she said to him at one point, 'Oh! But enough of me talking. Tell me, what do you think about my hair?' (The Signal Podcast #53 11.07.21 @ 18:29).
What makes this a fushigi is that when BH and I started talking about dreams she also described that her hair had begun to fall out. I suggested that she may find it interesting to see if her dreams might help stop her hair from falling out.
So, over the next few weeks, I will be posting old stuff read as it pertains to the value (or not), of formal education. As mentioned, here is Sheldon Kopp, from Even a Stone Can Be a Teacher:…
I hate having wasted more than twenty years going to school. Formal education left me little of personal value other than elementary language skills and professional credentials. Much of what was taught cluttered my mind with irrelevant information. Arbitrary injunctions inhibited my imagination in efforts to learn anything new and different.
Families raise children in conformity with the conventional wisdom of their communal culture. Years of formal schooling funnel individual diversity into the same narrow channel. The intended outcome is a well-adjusted adult who will not make trouble.
In school I always felt inadequate. I was bright enough to master assigned studies, but what I was learning made no sense to me. Unaware of alternate courses of unbounded study, it took me a long time to undertake a solitary search for the particular meaning of my personal life. The uncharted explorations of this independent voyage of self-discovery involved avoiding regular routes and scrapping scheduled stopovers. In the absence of an assigned curriculum, answers offered by my earlier education were often useless.
Once I gave up pursuing the predicted proof of explanations imposed by others, unexpectedly I happened on intuitive understandings. This encouraged my voluntary suspension of disbelief in all that till then I had been taught to ignore. The immediacy of my own imagination turned out to be the most reliable touchstone for what was worth learning. It served me better than reality agreed on in advance by other people. To my delight, I discovered that openness to the undetermined meaning of each individual moment transformed ordinary external events into extraordinary personal experiences.
In an extended adolescence, the alternate routes I explored included doing dope while hanging out in Harlem jazz joints and Greenwich Village coffee houses. I spent much of my time either alone or in the company of other misfits. Fascinated by the seedy underside of life, I lost my emotional virginity by screwing around with hipsters, hustlers, beats, and any other characters queer enough to be cited by the community as crazy or criminal.
As a young adult I began listening to songs and stories form long ago times and faraway places. Hearing strange voices awakened my ears to the sounds of everyday life. Seeing shapes and colours of statues and painting opened my eyes wide enough to watch the drama and dance performed both in the theatre and on the city streets.
Eventually I explored land- and seascapes raw enough to shake the foundations of my urban upbringing. Summers spent on North Atlantic capes and offshore islands began a lifelong romance with the sea. Wanderings alone along empty beaches, I picked up shells and pebbles. Attending to each one individually allowed instruction by a single stone unique even among a million others.Late in life, I set out on more organized alternate paths. I entered psychotherapy as a patient, participated in encounter groups, and underwent instruction in yoga meditation. For a time, I chanted mantras, visualized yantras, and tried tantras. I gave up these practices only after recognizing that life itself was to be my guru.
Once having restored a beginner's mind, I found that almost anything I encountered extended my education. Avoidance of social contacts empty of personal meaning left the unfilled space of solitude equivalent to touching moments of contact with a few close friends. The mirages of marriage opened onto oases of domestic intimacy. Raising irreverent children kept life lively. Working as a psychotherapist, supervisor, and writer also allowed continuing the lifelong work on my Self. Ironically, often I am both the best therapist/teacher and the worst patient/student I have ever had.
...
A tale is told of an Indian holy man who lived in a forest with his disciples. He taught them to see God in all things. One day, while deep in the forest gathering wood for a sacrificial fire, the disciples heard a voice of shouting: "Out of the way! Out of the way! A mad elephant is coming!" All but one young man ran for their lives. Kneeling in the path of the lumbering beasts, he sang its praises.
The mahout who drove the elephant screamed at him to run away, but the disciple would not budge. Seizing the stubborn student with its trunk, the elephant tossed him aside and charged on down the forest path. Bruised and unconscious he had to be carried on back to the hermitage by the other disciples.
When he began to recover, the injured young man was asked by his teacher why he had not run from the charging elephant. The battered disciple protested: "You taught us that all creatures are manifestations of God. Why should I have made way for that elephant? I am God. The elephant is God. Should God be afraid of God?"
The holy man smiled. Speaking softly, he said. "Yes, my child, it is true that you are God and that the elephant is also God. But why did you not listen when God's voice called out from the mahout telling you to run away?"
[This story reminds me, of course, of the joke about the devout Christian who refused to leave his flood-threatened house. After drowning and going to heaven, he asked Gabriel why God hadn't saved him from the flood. Gabriel replied 'Why do you think that? God sent you the emergency rescue team, the people in the boat and finally a helicopter.']Kopp, Sheldon. Even a Stone Can Be a Teacher: Learning and Growing from the Experiences of Everyday Life. Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, Inc., 1985, p vii-x.
Addendum 2012.01.31:
One of Betty's dreams was that she was in an elevator pushing the numbers, with the #7 standing out for some reason. That evening I read Al's blog post Oops from January 26th. In it she wrote:Sorry, this is a pretty lame post tonight. I did have a strange dream last night. Anyone ever had a dream about a certain number being repeated over and over in the background of your dreams? It was super annoying. I had a dream about going to the gallows...I've got to stop reading A Tale of Two Cities before I go to bed...wait, wasn't that a guillotine?
Not sure if it counts, but I found it an amusing tiny fushigi.
Addendum #2 2012.02.11:Today, after running around doing grocery shopping and other car related chores, I got home to a late lunch / early supper with my wife. She turned on the TV and flipped around until she saw Matt Damon on the screen. We began to watch the movie, which I'd not seen before. She said she had, and that it was odd but okay/good. The movie was Hereafter directed by Clint Eastwood. What created the fushigi link was the young boy, Marcus: in the movie, shortly after we began watching it — we tuned into it about 40 minutes in, I think — stumbles into a YouTube video of eastern mysticism or philosophy. Which i also did, yesterday, for my very first time, when I was editing this blog to include links and images. Specifically, my search for the Zen concept 'Beginner's Mind' took me to a YouTube video narrated by the actor Peter Coyote. To my surprise I actually felt surprise that philosophy / spiritual lectures would be YouTubed. So I was very amused to see the boy duplicate, in effect, my first time experiences with such a thing.
Addendum #3 2012.02.11:
This morning I was amused by another fushigi-ish thing, which came via a piece of e.mail spam that made it through my corporate e.mail system. Here it is:Subject: Deal-mantra: New Deal:
…
Description
Spent all your money in buying gift for your sweetie? Trying to hide your old watch from her? Relax! Give your watch a makeover by buying new inexpensive watch bracelet for just $12.50 at Murdoch Jewellers. Whether you want to give illusion of an expensive gold watch with a gold-plated one or you like stainless steel, choice is yours but you need to rush as only limited quantities available. Spend the money savings by taking her for a romantic dinner. She will adore you for that. So panic time is over and it’s time to wear a thinking hat to plan how you two would indulge in after-dinner fun.
Thank you for agreeing to receive promotional and product-related emails from www.deal-mantra.com. To keep the emails coming, please add subscribe@deal-mantra.com to your address book or safe list now. If you no longer wish to receive future emails, please click here to unsubscribe.
Yesterday I edit this blog to include a link to 'mantra' and today I get a spammer e.mail with 'mantra' in the subject line from a mantra dot com site. Weird.
Today's *fushigi collection began over a week ago when I began struggling to write a poem in response to a visual prompt supplied by Rose Mary Boehm at Houseboat, the Photo/Poetical blog RMB is moderating — and which I am extremely happy and surprised to be a part of.
As the poem evolved I decided that I required something from the Chinese book of Changes, The I Ching. I grabbed my copy of the Richard Wilhelm / Cary F. Baynes Princeton University Press edition and flipped it open at random to see what came out. I was disappointed, initially, to see that my random flip had put me outside the hexagram readings and inside the section called Ta Chuan / The Great Treatise. However, what I read there could not have been more on point to complete the poem and tie in with what I was reading in Noam Chomsky: A Philosophic Overview by Justin Leiber.
This is what I read from The I Ching:2. The Master said: Writing cannot express words completely. Words cannot express thoughts completely.
Are we then unable to see the thoughts of the holy sages?
The Master said: The holy sages set up the images in order to express their thoughts completely; they devised the hexagrams in order to express the true and the false completely. Then they apprehended judgments and so could express their words completely.
(They created change and continuity, to show the advantage completely; they urged on, they set in motion, to set forth the spirit completely.) (pg 322)
I've emphasized the bit I incorporated into the poem. After undergoing the group's critical eye, and being severely pared down, it evolved into a piece of flash prose that I titled What Cannot be Expressed:Far from urbane strictures, while passing through yet another distant land, I paused, stopped reading, marked my page. Unexpectedly I remembered the day that I read 'live life as a tourist' on the bumper sticker of a rusted VW van in rain. I was a young man then and, because I could read, I thought I understood. And when I became that well-booked tourist I thought I was happy.
The bus slowed at a corner crowded with raggedly-dressed ebullient villagers. Behind them my word-drunk eyes mistook the makeshift grain bag windbreak as a soiled deconstructed yin-yang art-piece. I laughed at how easily the eye is fooled by false appearance and because the book in my hands was the I Ching. With a bemused shake of my head at this odd coincidence I returned to the book, where I read Writing cannot express words completely. Words cannot express thoughts completely.
At that moment the stony weight of verbiage I had made myself blind to left my heart and in an animal panic I pushed my way past the press of shoulders and jabs of elbows. With my hands grasping my mouth and books I stumbled down the bus's step-well and crashed though the rickety doors to splash down on the rain-soaked earth.
Now silent, the villagers' heads turned and their eyes watched my hands flail uselessly as my body wordlessly heaved its stomach into the muck.
The idea of the problem of words not containing the 'real' meaning of existence was the point I was making in the poem, of course. This is not an unfamiliar theme with me, as both Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu discuss this problem. However, I did not think of going to them when I wanted to include a quotation, which is whom I normally would go to. For some reason the manner which I thought of the photo as a deconstructed 'yin-yang' symbol nudged me towards The I Ching,which is where I went, this time. And proceeded to flip open to that exact page on which was exactly what I was writing about. Curious.
But now here is where things become curiously fushigi. And, I apologize for what is to follow because it is a rather complex discussion on philosophical issues of language. But one that is truly fascinating, and makes for a very subtle fushigi.
Long after I'd started writing What Cannot be Expressed, but in the morning before flipping to The I Ching I was continuing to read with great fascination Leiber's description of the problems and proposals in establishing what would constitute a universal language generation mechanism, basically an effort to address how humans can learn language let alone learn how to speak. (It is not an exaggeration to say that Chomsky's effect in revolutionizing the philosophical science of linguistics was at the same scale as Einstein's effect on physics: it was forever changed.) What Chomsky proved was that a list of all the words and all the sentences of a language cannot describe how a language works because meaningful sentence generation is infinite and so cannot be captured by any list. The consequence of this, which is still being argued by some die-hard empiricists, is that an empirical study of language-constituents will be inadequate to explain the language. Chomsky has argued that meaning, called semantics by linguists, plays an important, perhaps even pre-verbal role, which he assigned to something called deep structure. Without quite saying it, at least in Leiber's overview of Chomsky's work, Chomsky is saying that meaning pre-exists words, and words pre-exist sentences.
Wow, when I write it out like that, there would appear to be virtually no significant difference between what the Chinese Master said about language 2500 years ago and Chomsky is saying today!
But to solidify the fushigi here is what I read that morning, and even flagged with a little sticky note on which I wrote A[nswer]: because the 'deep structure' is preverbal. What was I answering? A series of questions Leiber posed on behalf of those hoping to keep language empiricists alive by arguing that Chomsky is incorrect. Paraphrased, they argue that within deep structure meaning and syntax are synonymous, and as such if the right syntactical form can be discovered there a natural language generating mechanism capable of creating meaningful sentences will have been ascertained. Anyway, here's the paragraph. I have italicized the particular questions my sticky note was addressing:The general thrust of the generative-semanticist proposal for improving transformational grammar is very simple: if some semantic features of sentences can be specified in their syntactical deep structure why can not all such features be specified? Why split the syntactic and semantic components at all? Why not equate ultimate syntactic deep structure with semantic representation? Or, more speculatively, one can ask, why not take the system of semantic representation to be something like the familiar predicate logic (with perhaps a few additions), and the base to be such a system supplemented with a relatively small number of "atomic predicates," or semantic primitives, universal to human thought? The words of particular languages, just as their surface syntactical structures, would decompose into extremely abstract and complex syntactic-semantical deep structures; the features constituting the lexical-syntactical peculiarities of a language would be given as a series of transformations relating the syntactic-semantical deep structures (or "natural logic formulas") of the "universal base" to their particular realizations in the language in question, similarly for the peculiarities of other human languages (122).
Like I said, complex language to argue that syntax might be enough to create a language if it is at a 'deep' enough level in the 'deep structure' of what ever it is in being human creates language. (Does not that sound very much like Jung's idea of the collective unconscious — which Jung argues is preverbal or even non-verbal and is expressed in archetypes that struggle to express their meaning in dreams and stories?)
Well, that is the main fushigi, but another one cropped up that I'll throw in. It began yesterday, when I used Photoshop Elements — which I almost never use because it is counter-intuitive to me — to play around with my poem version of What Cannot be Expressed and Rose's photo. After playing with it for an hour or two, I came away dissatisfied with the result, as was RMB. But here's what I did:
I think I could have refined it using individual pixel adjustments to make it more readable, but I don't really have the time for it. Today, while I was preparing to do this blog, I went to the Houseboat blog to get links and text and was suddenly struck by something very, very peculiar. I re-read RMB's excellent poem, Magic Markers on Houseboat, and noticed, now, something fushigi-ish with the poem's title and how it closes:…
Wondrous transformation:
sackcloth and ashes
become precious lace
with the help of magic markers.
What stood out this time,when I read Magic Markers, is how it connects to the font with which I chose to use in my overlay onto the photo.The font I used is … can you guess? Marker Felt, which I picked from over a hundred available fonts.
To close on an even more peculiar note: last night, as I was beginning to work on this blog, I turned on CBC R2's The Signal, with Laurie Brown. And typical of me when I'm working, the music is more background entertainment than the locus of my attention. (If a particular song or artist grabs me, then I will concentrate). At some point, I guess about half way through the show, Brown began talking about one of the artists. I didn't pay attention until she commented that the composer stated in an interview that the last person to ask about what their music means is the composer. That is for others to decide.
Well, a few days ago I picked up and looked through one of my latest and most delectable book finds: Volume 15 of the Collected Works of C.G. Jung, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, and found an amusing little comment he'd made about poets. I was amused initially because of my participation with the Boathouse/Houseboat poetry group, and our critiquing each others poems as to their structure, impact, meaning, etc.Poets are human too, and what they say about their work is often far from being the best word on the subject. It seems we have to defend the seriousness of the visionary experience against the personal resistance of the poets themselves (p.94).
Fushigi Addendum 2012.01.01.
RMB today sent me a link to an announcement that there is an immanent paradigm shift in how the world's economy is going to be managed because of an expanding spiritual awareness on the part of our economic and political leaders. A New Global Economic Restructuring is an announcement presented by James Martinez of recent recognition by some important economic and business people that if humans are to survive they cannot continue to do what they are doing. During the somewhat disjointed discourse my ears picked up when I heard him say, citing President Obama, … And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. But here's the problem: It doesn't work. It has never worked. It didn't work when it was tried…' Funny, that, because that is what my poem was about, from a personal spiritual level and used bumper sticker in the exact same way: as being too small to contain real wisdom, but which was acted on as if true.
It is bemusing that Obama was cited in a delivery that was given in the context of a spiritually motivated human change in economic behaviour. And, even funnier, is that this quotation comes from the Osawatomie speech given by Barrack Obama December 7, 2011, in which he avers that Reagonomics a là Milton Friedman is wrong.
Thank you, RMB, for helping to initiate and cap off a truly bizarre collection of fushigis.
Samuel Beckett.
Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts.
New York: Grove Press, Inc. 1954. [Now Grove/Atlantic: ISBN 978-0-8021-4442-3.]
I am struggling to begin this review. But, before I do, WfG gets from me a solid ★★★★★ out of ☆☆☆☆☆. In fact, it was so good that as soon as I finished it the first time, I promptly re-read it.
My struggle is between being too glib: "This is a brilliant metaphor for the condition our human condition has conditioned us to unconditionally accept" — to being too dismissive, such as was expressed by a co-worker who, upon learning I was reading Godot, said "I watched it on TV. It was great! A great play about nothing." Now I suspect that because he reacted to 'nothing' so strongly that his unconscious did not in anyway find it to be empty.
And so it, is, that despite an ostensible appearance that it is about nothing, nothing is further from the truth. WfG is definitely not about nothing. The metaphors are nearly endless, from the simple ones such as the too small boots pinching the feet — constricted understanding hobbles psychological/emotional movement. Beckett even extends that to include putting on another's boots in the hopes of acquiring the ability to walk with less discomfort, metaphor for putting on another's ideas.
I haven't gone onto the web to search for the likely endless reams of ideas this play has generated. Nor do I want to do a review of the play, as such. Instead I would like to briefly concentrate on the character Lucky. [Note: I will discuss this role in some detail, so if you want to be surprised by Lucky in the play, do not read on before reading the play.]
Lucky comes onto the stage with a noose around his neck carrying a collection of stuff. The end of the rope extends out of sight, off stage, making Pozzo, Lucky's master, initially invisible. (Is that the smallest of hints of Adam Smith's Invisible Glove?) Pozzo controls Lucky with the use of the noose, via jerks (Lucky has open sores from it), and with a whip and short, usually one word, commands such as the On! and Back! that introduce the pair. Later, Pozzo wants to put Lucky's intellectual prowess, specifically his ability to think, on display for Estragon and Vladimir, the pair waiting for Godot:POZZO: Stand back! (Vladimir and Estragon move away from Lucky. Pozzo jerks the rope. Lucky looks at Pozzo.) Think, pig! (Pause. Lucky begins to dance.) Stop! (Lucky stops.) Forward! (Lucky advances.) Stop! (Lucky stops.) Think!
(Silence.)
LUCKY: On the other hand with regard to—
[I blogged this section more extensively as part of a peculiar fushigi @ Godot, Ballet, Pocket Watch & Alice.]
This has particular resonance for me because of a recent employee motivational propaganda campaign I (and at least several thousands of others) were subjected to. It was comprised of a series of 3 posters and their electronic facsimile being festooned across the offices. The posters were comprised of two parts. The top half was a single word, a command: Say, Stay, Strive. The balance were terse reasons for obeying the command, for the last two, and what to say for the first one.
Less specifically, the extended thinking that Lucky expresses is, of course, a perfect metaphor for what passes for thinking through the news media and many official journals: a huge pile of impressive sounding phrases that at best hide the truth but at worst promulgate false truths and ideology. And all co-mingled with a curious obsession about sports. [I wonder if Beckett was influenced by some of George Orwell's pointed criticism of the media and much intellectual thought, such as he delineated in Homage to Catalonia? Wikipedia does not reference such a connection.]
But why does Lucky stay with the physically and verbally abusive Pozzo? He is, ostensibly, a free man. Pozzo even ascribes to him freedom. Well, the answer is an interesting one, and reminds me of the current batch of presidential candidates who blame the poor for being poor because if they didn't want to be poor they could work themselves out of it. Here's Pozzo's reasoning for Lucky's enslavement to him:POZZO: Ah! Why couldn't you say so before? Why he doesn't make himself comfortable? Let's try and get this clear. Has he not the right to? Certainly he has. It follows that he doesn't want to. There's reasoning for you. And why doesn't he want to? (Pause.) Gentlemen, the reason is this.
VLADIMIR: (to Estragon). Make a note of this.
POZZO: He wants to impress me, so that I'll keep him.
ESTRAGON: What?
POZZO: Perhaps I haven't got it quite right. He wants to mollify me, so that I'll give up the idea of parting with him. No, that's not exactly it either.
VLADIMIR: You want to get rid of him?
POZZO: He wants to cod me, but he won't.
VLADIMIR: You want to get rid of him?
POZZO: He imagines that when I see how well he carries I'll be tempted to keep him on in that capacity.
ESTRAGON: You've had enough of him?
POZZO: In reality he carries like a pig. It's not his job.
VLADIMIR: You want to get rid of him?
POZZO: He imagines that when I see him indefatigable I'll regret my decision. Such is his miserable scheme. As though I were short of slaves! (All three look at Lucky.) Atlas, son of Jupiter! (Silence.) Well, that's that, I think. Anything else?
(Vaporizer.)
VLADIMIR: You want to get rid of him?
POZZO: Remark that I might just as well have been in his shoes and he in mine. If chance had not willed otherwise. To each one his due.
VLADIMIR: You waagerrim?
POZZO: I beg your pardon?
VLADIMIR: You want to get rid of him?
POZZO: I do. But instead of driving him away as I might have done, I mean instead of simply kicking him out on his arse, in the goodness of my heart I am bringing him to the fair, where I hope to get a good price for him. The truth is you can't drive such creatures away. The best thing would be to kill them.
(Lucky weeps.)
ESTRAGON: He's crying!
POZZO: Old dogs have more dignity. (He proffers his handkerchief to Estragon.) Comfort him, since you pity him. (Estragon hesitates.) Come on. (Estragon takes the handkerchief.) Wipe away his tears, he'll feel less forsaken.
(Estragon hesitates.)
VLADIMIR: Here, give it to me, I'll do it.
(Estragon refuses to give the handkerchief.)
(Childish gestures.)
POZZO: Make haste, before he stops. (Estragon approaches Lucky and makes to wipe his eyes. Lucky kicks him violently in the shins. Estragon drops the handkerchief, recoils, staggers about the stage howling with pain.) Hanky!
(Lucky puts down bag and basket, picks up handkerchief and gives it to Pozzo, goes back to his place, picks up bag and basket.)
ESTRAGON: Oh the swine! (He pulls up the leg of his trousers.) He's crippled me!
POZZO: I told you he didn't like strangers.
Interesting. Lucky has enslaved himself in order to appease his master, to be liked enough to be seen as worthy by Pozzo.
So why did Lucky kick Estragon in the shins? As I have been thinking about this, it struck me that Lucky's behaviour corresponds exactly with those who have fully submitted to their lot in life. My first realization of this tickled out from Noam Chomsky's reference to the 'benevolence' expressed by industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie to 'his' workers in 1896:
These are the fruits of the fierce corporate campaign undertaken as soon as American workers finally won the right to organize in the mid-1930s, after long years of bitter struggle and violent repression unmatched in the industrial world. Perhaps we may even return to the days when the admired philanthropist Andrew Carnegie could preach the virtues of "honest, industrious, self-denying poverty" to the victims of the great depression of 1896, shortly after he had brutally crushed the steel workers union at Homestead, while announcing that the defeated workers had sent him a wire saying, "Kind master, tell us what you wish us to do and we will do it for you." It was because he knew "how sweet and happy and pure the home of honest poverty is" that Carnegie sympathized with the rich, he explained, meanwhile sharing their grim fate in his lavishly appointed mansions fn37 (37. Sexton, Patricia Cayo. The War on Labor and the Left Westview 1991, p83f.)
So a well-ordered society should run, according to the "vile maxim of the masters." (Year 501: The Conquest Continues, pg. 56-7).
Eventually, the people brutalized recognize the futility of fighting it, and so beat anyone who might offer them hope as being trouble makers or a threat to the status quo. Social critic and comic Bill Maher makes frequent reference to the American labourer who descries as a kind of evil the benefits European workers get in terms of time off, health, paternal benefits, etc. instead of struggling to achieve them for themselves.
Similarly, in the movie Guess Who's Coming for Dinner the parents actively dissuade the interracial couple because there would be trouble for the couple and their parents, too. Freedom roped off with fear.
Lucky is Estragon and Vladimir. Lucky is enslaved to Pozzo by choice — more specifically having chosen willingly or not to accept the lack of choice — not the rope. Estragon and Vladimir are enslaved to the hope of Godot providing them their direction in life.
The metaphors are obvious: we make our choices to remain as we are, whether we are societally successful or not, by accepting the situation we find ourselves in by submitting to choices others have made for us, then hoping that abandoning our Selves to those seen or unseen others will bring us succour.
The challenge, here, is twofold. The courage to see things exactly as they are within ourselves and in the society, and the wisdom to know what can and cannot be changed. I have no idea how either of these things are done.
This play is endlessly rich in meaning. I would now like to see it, and to produce an amateur production of it — or perhaps a reading. Hmmmm.
Started 2011.10.22
Finished 2011.11.12
John Mortimer.
The Dock Brief & Other Plays.
New York: Grove Press Inc., 1962.
The two other plays are I Spy and What Shall we Tell Caroline? With Caroline I experienced two tiny but distinct *fushigi. The first one began with a conversation with my used bookseller of our both having extensively read Hardy Boys. (Click Caroline to go to an extract of the play. Click fushigi #1 to go to fushigi #1. Click fushigi #2 to go to fushigi #2. Click Dockbrief to go to an extract from Dockbrief.)
★★★☆☆
I stumbled into this book of three plays while looking for something else. I was both excited and surprised to learn that the author of the excellent Rumpole of the Bailey series and books had also written plays.
I came to these comedies with very high expectations, and so it is unlikely anything would have met them. However, these plays were far less than I thought they'd be. I have given them three stars instead of the two I was tempted to confer in order to compensate for dishonourably possessing those unrealistic expectations. Sadly the best writing came in the introduction Mortimer wrote:"Comedy is, to my mind," writes John Mortimer, "the only thing worth writing in this despairing age, providing it is comedy which is truly on the side of the lonely, the neglected and unsuccessful.... In all plays, as in any sort of writing, what seems to me important is the moment of recognition: the small time when you realize, sitting in a theatre, with a shock of excitement and unease, that you are watching yourself."
I've been wrestling with what it was about the plays that didn't engage me and it comes down to believability and sympathy.
I didn't believe the situations, especially for The Dock Brief and What Shall We Tell Caroline? And I found the writing within the prescribed situations to have humour but lacked what ever it is in writing that takes completely unbelievable characters and makes them believably human. I was unable to empathize with them.
Finally it struck me that the characters, male and female, all had a very similar voice. At least that was I how I interpreted my reaction/feeling about what I'd read. But when I re-read that, that wasn't really the case. What gave me that impression was a common feeling of flippant irreverence in the characters language. I suspect that seeing a production with competent actors would largely eliminate this 'problem,' but as I read it came across monotone.
In 1961 Lewis Funke in his New York Times review of What Shall We Tell Caroline? and The Dock Brief closed his mostly negative review with "The Dock Brief has been done with reported success in other cities abroad. It would be interesting to know how that was accomplished."
Perhaps my reaction is simply a measure of my getting older. I have become jaded because in my real life experience I have certainly seen incompetent boob-heads successfully rise into positions of real authority and power. And since truth is stranger than fiction, and with my now living this kind of boob-head truth, its written portrayal is stuck competing against that unbelievable truth.
Anyway, a very easy and marginally fun read. I did see flashes here and there of what was to come from Mortimer with Rumpole of the Bailey, and 'she who must be obeyed.'
I've included three extracts, one from The Dockbrief and two from What Shall We Tell Caroline?The Dockbrief
...
MORGENHALL: [barrister] Now. Let's get our minds in order.
FOWLE: [accused of murder] Sort things out.
MORGENHALL: Exactly. Now, this wife of yours.
FOWLE: Doris?
MORGENHALL: Doris. A bitter, unsympathetic woman?
FOWLE: She was always cheerful. She loved jokes.
MORGENHALL: Oh, Fowle. Do be very careful.
FOWLE: I will, sir. But if you'd known Doris. . . . She laughed harder than she worked. "Thank God," she'd say, "for my old English sense of fun."
MORGENHALL: What sort of jokes, Fowle, did this Doris appreciate?
FOWLE: All sorts. Pictures in the paper. Jokes on the wireless set. Laughs out of crackers, she'd keep them from Christmas to Christmas and trot them out in August.
MORGENHALL: You couldn't share it?
FOWLE: Not to that extent. I often missed the funny point.
MORGENHALL: Then you'd quarrel?
FOWLE: "Don't look so miserable, it may never happen." She said that every night when I came home. "Where'd you get that miserable expression from?"
MORGENHALL: I can see it now. There is a kind of Sunday evening appearance to you.
FOWLE: I was quite happy. But it was always "Cat got your tongue?" "Where's the funeral?" "Play us a tune on that old fiddle face of yours. Lucky there's one of us here that can see the funny side." Then we had to have our tea with the wireless on, so that she'd pick up the phrases.
MORGENHALL: You're not a wireless lover?
FOWLE: I couldn't always laugh. And she'd be doubled up across the table, gasping as if her lungs were full of water. "Laugh," she'd call, "Laugh, damn you. What've you got to be so miserable about?" Then she'd go under, bubbling like a drowning woman.
MORGENHALL: Made meals difficult?
FOWLE: Indigestible. I would have laughed, but the jokes never tickled me.
MORGENHALL: They tickled her?
FOWLE: Anything did. Anything a little comic. Our names were misfortunate.
MORGENHALL: Your names?
FOWLE: Going down the aisle she said: "Now we're cock and hen, aren't we, old bird?" Coming away, it was "Now I'm Mrs. Fowle, you'll have to play fair with me." She laughed so hard we couldn't get her straightened up for the photograph.
MORGENHALL: Fond of puns, I gather you're trying to say.
FOWLE: Of any sort of joke. I had a little aviary at the bottom of my garden. As she got funnier so I spent more time with my birds. Budgerigars are small parrots. Circles round their eyes give them a sad, tired look.
MORGENHALL: You found them sympathetic?
FOWLE: Restful. Until one of them spoke out at me.
MORGENHALL: Spoke—what words?
FOWLE: "Don't look so miserable, it may never happen."
MORGENHALL: The bird said that?
FOWLE: She taught it during the day when I was out at work. It didn't mean to irritate.
MORGENHALL: It was wrong of her of course. To lead on your bird like that.
FOWLE: But it wasn't him that brought me to it. It was Bateson, the lodger.
MORGENHALL: Another man?
FOWLE: At long last.
MORGENHALL: I can see it now. A crime of passion. An unfaithful wife. In flagrant. ... Of course, you don't know what that means. We'll reduce it to manslaughter right away. A wronged husband and there's never a dry eye in the jury-box. You came in and caught them.
FOWLE: Always laughing together.
MORGENHALL: Maddening.
FOWLE: He knew more jokes than she did.
MORGENHALL: Stealing her before your eyes?
FOWLE: That's what I thought. He was a big man. Ex-police. Said he'd been the scream of the station. I picked him for her specially. In the chitty I put up in the local sweet shop, I wrote: "Humorous type of lodger wanted."
MORGENHALL: But wasn't that a risk?
FOWLE: Slight, perhaps. But it went all right. Two days after he came he poised a bag of flour to fall on her in the kitchen. Then she sewed up the legs of his pyjamas. They had to hold on to each other so as not to fall over laughing. "Look at old misery standing there," she said. "He can never see anything subtle."
MORGENHALL: Galling for you. Terribly galling.
FOWLE: I thought all was well. I spent more time with the birds. I'd come home late and always be careful to scrunch the gravel at the front door. I went to bed early and left them with the Light Programme. On Sunday mornings I fed the budgies and suggested he took her tea in bed. "Laughter," she read out from her horoscope, "leads to love, even for those born under the sign of the Virgin."
MORGENHALL: You trusted them. They deceived you.
FOWLE: They deceived me all right. And I trusted them. Especially after I'd seen her on his knee and them both looking at the cartoons from one wrapping of chips.
MORGENHALL: Mr. Fowle I'm not quite getting the drift of your evidence. My hope is—your thought may not prove a shade too involved for our literal- minded judge. Old Tommy Banter was a Rugger blue in '98. He never rose to chess and his draughts had a brutal, unintelligent quality.
FOWLE: When he'd first put his knee under her I thought he'd do the decent thing. I thought I'd have peace in my little house at last. The wireless set dead silent. The end of all that happy laughter. No sound but the twitter from the end of the garden and the squeak of my own foot on the linoleum.
MORGENHALL: You wanted. . . .
FOWLE: I heard them whispering together and my hopes raised high. Then I came back and he was gone.
MORGENHALL: She'd. . . .
FOWLE: Turned him out. Because he was getting over familiar. " I couldn't have that. " she said. " I may like my laugh, but thank God, I'm still respectable. No thank you, there's safety in marriage. So I'm stuck with you, fiddle face. Let's play a tune on it, shall we?" She'd sent him away, my last hope.
MORGENHALL: So you . . . .
FOWLE: I realise I did wrong.
MORGENHALL: You could have left.
FOWLE: Who'd have fed the birds? That thought was uppermost.
MORGENHALL: So it's not a crime of passion? (28-31)
Now, an extract from What Shall We Tell Caroline? And, oddly enough, it includes a tiny fushigi. To go directly to the fushigi click here, otherwise, carry on reading.What Shall We Tell Caroline?
…
TONY: Many, many, happies, Caroline dear. (He stoops to kiss the top of her head. Caroline lifts her face and kisses him on the mouth. She is still expressionless. He sits down, disconcerted, patting his lips with his handkerchief.)
LILY: Caroline, my baby. Don't grow up any more. (Lily hugs Caroline like a child and then sits down.)
ARTHUR: She didn't like you saying that.
TONY: She didn't mind. (Pause while Lily begins to cry.)
ARTHUR:
(suddenly loses his temper) Will you provoke me, Bin, with these bloody waterworks?
TONY: Look. She hasn't noticed her presents yet.
ARTHUR: She was upset.
TONY: No she wasn't. (Caroline looks down at her place and lifts her hands in amazement. Her face is still without expression.)
LILY:
(recovering) She's seen them now.
ARTHUR:
(eagerly) She may open mine first.
TONY: Well, of all the selfish....
ARTHUR: She's going to. I hope you didn't notice me buying it, Caroline, in the High Street yesterday. Creeping out ofW. H. Smith's.
TONY: Now you've given the game away.
ARTHUR: What are you hinting?
TONY: The mention of W. H. Smith. Now she can rule out stockings or underwear or any nice toilet water. (Caroline shakes the parcel.)
TONY: Now she's guessed what it is.
ARTHUR: I don't believe she has. (Caroline shakes her head.)
ARTHUR: No, she hasn't. (Caroline opens the parcel, it contains a Halma set and three boy's adventure books.) [Here's the fushigi, which began October 22, Saturday, with my talking to my local used bookseller about our childhood reads. The conversation turned specifically to the boys adventure series, The Hardy Boys. And I read this on Monday, October 24th.)
TONY: Same old things. She's bored with Halma.
ARTHUR: No she's not.
TONY: Yes she is.
ARTHUR: Anyway it's a wholesome game, Peters, unlike the indoor sports you're addicted to.
TONY: And these books. You only buy them to read them yourself. Three midshipmen stranded on a desert island. (Picks up one and starts to read.) "Give over tickling. Harry, giggled his chum, little guessing it was the hairy baboon that had crept up behind the unsuspecting youngsters...."
ARTHUR: She appreciates it.
LILY:
(soothingly) Of course she does, don't let's quarrel. Not on the birthday.
TONY:
(putting down the book) I suppose it takes all tastes.
LILY: Perhaps now she'll open mine. (Caroline picks up a parcel.)
LILY: I made it for you, dear. It took so long. It seem to have been making it all my life.( Caroline opens the parcel. A long sweater, white and endless with the school colours at the neck. She holds it in front of herself. It's far too long.)
LILY: Oh Caroline. There's too much of it. I had far too much spare time.
TONY:
(putting his hand on Lily's shoulder) She likes it. She thinks it'll keep her warm.
ARTHUR: Warm? Keep her warm did you say? I tell you it's perfectly warm here, all the year round.
TONY: There now. Headmaster. Lily's right. We shouldn't quarrel on the birthday. And look. She's knitted in the school colours. That'll cheer you up, you know. When you see those colours always round your daughter.
ARTHUR: At least it shows some sense of loyalty.
TONY: Of course, not being, strictly speaking, a parent my present, gets opened last.
ARTHUR:
(resentfully) A treat saved up for you. (Caroline picks up Tony's present. Holds it against her cheek. Listens to it.)
TONY: I believe.... Yes. I think I am right in saying (radio commentator's voice). "The ceremony is just about to begin. It's a wonderful spectacle here to-day. The Lady Mayoress has released the pigeons. The massed bands are striking up. The Boy Scouts are fainting in unprecedented numbers and...." (Caroline undoes the parcel, produces a gilt powder compact).
ARTHUR: What can it be? (Caroline opens the compact and sprinkles powder on her nose.) (81-3)
And now, for fushigi #2. Again, small, but directly on point. On October 26th, Wednesday, I did something I haven't done in more than 3 years. I had lunch with SJ. We were talking about various things, catching up. The conversation turned to personal growth and the interpersonal challenges of living with spouses. I suggested that a book I found very helpful, perhaps the most helpful because of its absolute basic approach to living, was Thirsty Swimming in the Lake by David K. Reynolds. There are two basic components to his approach: do what needs to be done and acknowledge and appreciate the efforts of others, including parents no matter how flawed, for contributing tangibly and realistically to your being alive. This was a quite extensive conversation.
Well, that night I resumed reading What Shall We Tell Caroline? and within a few minutes of opening the book I read the following:…
ARTHUR: But you don't know why she didn't speak? I told you, Peters, all the terms of endearment start shouting and screaming when I utter them. When I love someone all my love turns to irritation. I lost my temper with Caroline! I hit her! I actually hit her!
LILY (crossing towards him): No dear. You didn't.
ARTHUR: How do you know?
TONY: We were here in the room. You didn't hit her, Headmaster.
ARTHUR (deflated): I did. I wanted to hit her. After that, I thought she didn't speak. The nervous shock. Was it the nervous shock do you think, either of you?
LILY: Perhaps she didn't want to.
TONY: Or she had nothing to say to us. Although we had enough to say to her ….
LILY: Who shall we talk to now?
TONY: Each other. Lily. Always to each other.
LILY: Caroline! Why should she have to go. Tony?
TONY: She has to go sometime.
ARTHUR: I made her go. I hit her. I must have hit her. There's no other explanation.
TONY (sits down in the basket-chair and picks up his ukulele): How shall we ever know?
ARTHUR: What do you mean. For God's sake explain what you mean?
TONY: Was it your temper or her temper that
stopped her speaking? Was it just the complete lack of interest that overcomes all children at the thought of the parents who gave them birth?
ARTHUR: I wasn't responsible?
TONY: What's responsible for Caroline as she is? What you told her? What you didn't tell her? The fact we told her a lie? The fact we told her the truth? Look back, Arthur. Look back. Lily do. What made us what we are? Anything our fathers and mothers said? More likely something that happened when we were all alone. Something we thought of for ourselves, looking for a passable disguise in a dusty attic, or for a path that didn't exist in the hot summer in the middle of a wood that smelt of nettles.
ARTHUR: Is that how you found things out?
TONY: My dear old headmaster. I've never found out anything. I'm not a parent, but in my weak moments, like this afternoon, I've wanted to tell things to the young. Why do we do it? Not to give them information, but to make them repeat our lives. That's all. It's finished with us and we don't want it to be finished. We'd like them to do it for us—all over again. It'll be better for Caroline to work in the bank. If only her adding weren't quite so shaky. Let's hope she errs. Headmaster, on the side of generosity. (Lily gets up and begins to put things on a tray.)
ARTHUR: What are you doing. Bin?
LILY: Clearing away the tea. (She goes out with the tray.)
TONY (looking at his watch): Just ten minutes and the boys have to stop their so called " free time " and be hoarded into prep. I shall sit with them in silence (113-114).
