A library, a pterodactyl and a communist walk into a bar

All hands on deck, front and centre (except you guys on the right and left), double time. Threat level: Cold War. All of it. Yes, the whole war. Just imagine you're under attack by capitalists or communists or global warming for you kids - whatever works. The crisis: I. 'I' am the crisis. 'I' am a crisis on the scale of the Cold War, capitalism, communism and global warming, and you are asking inane questions. Like, whether the Cold War and global warming are related. Kids. Psssht.

Just be glad I have put aside the d_st_pi_n fiction long enough for one post. Big Brother is hiding behind that lamppost next to my car and monitoring every piece of communication, except telepathy, and I need to throw them off the scent. Metaphorically.

Yes, I am kidding. You kids, you're a crisis all on your own.

This 'I' is the rabbit that philosophy pulled out of a hat a few hundred years ago. Or so they teach us in varsity. (Useful information, this.)

So apparently, before Shakespeare (yes, there was Chaucer) people did not have a concept of their 'selves'. They were part and parcel of their environments, like a child, whose selfishness is linked to the fact that they think the world is an extension of themselves. I'd hate to be you (again), kid, when you find out the truth. This explanation is a glorious mash-up, but that's why Google exists. True story. Only this last bit and not the rest.

I'm confusing myself just trying to write this. Revert to metaphor.

So this rabbit is easy to catch but difficult to hold. Nonetheless various philosophers manage to get hold of Rabbit and label him (with non-toxic paint, don't worry). The rabbit is labelled ontology and metaphysics and existentialism and Picasso - hey! - and other labels I can't read because they're in point 2 font and this rabbit is, as I mentioned, difficult to hold. And no I didn't label him with my name. Run free, Rabbit!

I want to be a library. Sorry, I couldn't find a solid foothold down from the metaphor's ledge, so I jumped. In the past, I have wanted to be a spreadsheet, a data capturer and a municipal grass cutter, so on the bright side, this is an improvement. As you have noticed (I assume nothing less of you), all are passive sponges whose water is instruction (my metaphors are mixing again - they get out too much).

The aforementioned improvement is that this option is more possible. Right? C'mon, you have to admit that being a library is far more possible than being a spreadsheet. Unless there is a reverse process of machine to AI and Pinocchio to little human kid (heavens above do I dislike that story). I mean, I could sew the books to my clothes, for example, but I would probably fall and get a hundred papercuts. Or I could learn the words of every book as in Fahrenheit 451.

Who am I? What am I (review on Neuromancer pending)? And more practically (apparently; personally, I'm in favour of the previous question so don't cry on my shoulder when you wake in the underbelly of the earth wearing scratchy clothes and AI thingimabobs are on your tail, because Descartes and I, we beeen dere), who do 'I' want to be?

Darn these books. The ones I have read and haven't and never will read, but not the ones I don't want to read because, well, I don't care enough to darn you. They really mess with your head. Although, mine was a little messy to start with. Nya nya I never make my bed so there. These books (pssssht) had me convinced that being a grown-up meant sailing through life and over bumps with elegant prose flowing from one's mouth. My mouth at least.

I had written my book of life: I had a goal and a plan and both involved books because, you know, if I were allowed to, I'd build a fort out of books and only come out once every two weeks to go to the library. I distinctly remember having a goal and a plan, but I've tippexed over them so many times I've forgotten them both now. But on the acknowledgements page of my book, it says: books do not teach you how to live; they teach you how to live in a book. Which I would do, if one would offer.

Two paragraphs later and I know what I can't be: a spreadsheet, a library or myself in a book. And don't tell me everything is possible, you, unless you want to show me how to physically morph into a tabby pterodactyl or be a library!

Life teaches you how to live life - a pity the librarian didn't read over the terms and conditions with me. I mean, I was like six. I doubt I could spell library. Don't defect! My fort of books is still standing. In here, life is elegant (unless you count Michel Houllebecque or Aryan Kaganov), even the bumps, which are more like speedbumps than the fins of mako sharks. A school of them. Have I mentioned that I dislike the ocean?

How about this: if I stop posting about That Kind of Fiction, can I be a pterodactyl? C'mon, I live in a literary fantasy, so all you need to do is write a character who morphs into a giant leathery bird into my book of life. I'll throw in my laptop.

Doris Lessing, 1919-2013

A dull yellow (impersonating gold) trade paperback, in library-grade plastic and accompanying Dewy-decimal-system label on the spine. This was when I first met Ms Doris Lessing. (Disclaimer: it was not The Grass is Singing, because a BA degree is an overdose in colonial and post-colonial fiction. Even Gabriel Garcia Marquez is tainted by my grand nemesis The Heart of Darkness - Mr Achebe, while I'm with you about the layers upon layers - no, actually, just one deep layer - of racism, it is also one deeper layer of boring.)

The Golden Notebook. My first handshake with Ms Lessing. Not literally. Read above, please. Read the title. Focus!

I was about 20, in my gap year between one degree and the next, naively contemplating the theme of my adult life (naively because, as you know, dear reader, that theme snaps at your heels, accuses you, does back flips and takes your spot on the couch endlessly - right? Or is this just me?).

In brief (this book is anything but brief), the novel is comprised of five, different coloured (not literally, fool) notebooks and a binding story set in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. The protagonist is a middle-aged woman named Anna Wulf, living in London. (For those who know Ms Lessing's own story or have the power to Google, the plot(s) resonate.)

The book was written in 1962. We could ascribe the politics of the novel to the time - and this probably didn't hurt sales - but these themes could be traced back to the novel of the singing grass and Ms Lessing's liberal but tempered temperament. The themes (of both novels) include feminism and socialism (loaded terms, but that's why there's Wikipedia (again, encyclopaedia is spelt with an 'a', open source dorks).

Even as a teenager, perhaps even a tot, I have gravitated toward these liberal movements - I shudder as I type 'liberal' - literature tells me liberals are too impassioned to be rational, misguided and unfocused, appealing to human nature rather than the greed, envy, lust and basic selfishness that natural selection rewards. Trust me, I went to a politicised university and have seen two riots. Wait, now I'm a voyeuristic, liberalesque pseudo-intellectual. Still, call me a liberal and I will... moderate your comment. You.

The novel stalks the measure of the terms - from the perspective of the times, obviously; I later learnt more about the revolutions before and after (and no I'm not talking about #Occupy-a-park) - setting my principles in some sort of shape, like water in an ice block (just way more haphazard). Feminism was the one that immediately appealed to me. Given that a comment about women drivers is still enough to incite me to violence - or wait, my favourite "She's a smart cookie." Do I look like a gingerbread woman?

Today, when I think about the novel, some shadow of the experience of reading projects on the back of my head. Of sitting on a forest-green couch in a room painted yellow. Of the view from a kitchen window of a London street. The aura of importance that being involved in grand ideas provokes. Of a mother and her children, with the realisation that a child is a separate being to her. Of gritted teeth as a man, of common mind, tells a woman what feminism means.

None of these are necessarily written in the book - but they are what I see when when I think of it. They are a set of first dates with the world around ideas I thought were mine. A world which the mass media do not quite grasp.

Ms Lessing passed away about two months ago. The literary world is reeling. AS Byatt and Margaret Atwood have written tributes to her. Did you know she won the Nobel Prize for Literature five years ago? Did you know she had the same effect on me as touching a bell as it swings? Why is the whole world not reeling?

I had ordered two of her novels online and they were delivered the day before she passed: Mara and Dann and The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog. Predictably (for me) they are dystopian novels, predictably (for her) written to explore political and social issues. Reading them feels like a ritual honouring her and her effect on me. What else will she teach me? What other ideas will she help me shape?

Doris Lessing was one of the greats, unassuming but influential. This post is my tribute to her and acknowledgement of her influence on me. And an assuaging of my guilt. I confess I have undervalued the author over the last few years. Read my archives and she doesn't appear, except as a passing reference. As often happens, it has taken her death and the reeling of my world to make me appreciate Doris Lessing and The Golden Notebook.

Footnote: Stay posted (har!) for reviews of Mara and Dann and its sequel. I will try to keep the soppy to a minimum.

A Beautiful Mind

Sometimes, meaning is hidden in what isn't there. You've heard this vague explanation before. I've heard it. Usually from a pretentious sot. Sorry, sirs and ma'ams and doctors and such. But most of what you spew (at least a plantation's worth) means as much as a politician's apology speech. Although, that in itself proves the original premise. ... So what is hidden in a premise about what isn't there? Would there be something there if we weren't here to read it? Folks, I'm bored by the laziness of that last question. You?

Ah-hah! Your boredom has propelled you unawares into my waiting... Point (I don't have real arms here, on my white and your grey screens, and the whole thing would be weird. Is weird).

Ah-hah! What is missing in the title A Beautiful Mind? That isn't rhetorical. It's time to work, you (pl.).

The movie is based on the book, this book we are stripping. So I'm going to assume the title fits the book better than the movie. > Yes, Dr? a pretentious sot is flashing hypertext at the blogger I'm going to interrupt your long and circular speech to agree with you: that you can't use words like 'better' to compare things like this. The title fits the movie in a different way. downloading app to delete hypertext 

'Different', it fits the book differently. (Where 'different' means better. I'm reviewing here, not writing a thesis! Or an apology speech.)

Ah-hah! Have you worked out my interpretation of the title as better applied to the book than the movie? The book is a biography of man who experiences severe psychotic episodes. Oh and by the way he is a brilliant mathematician, a bit like Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting, without the janitor-ing and without his good looks. Also without his endearing personality (on and off screen).

Aside on that note, Matt Damon casts the same light on Jason Bourne, where in the book he's a wild card. A card covered in blood and mud, and that growls like a creature in the dark.

John Nash is calculating and nasty, according to the book. Not a horrible person, mind. The author, Sylvia Nasar, treats the man with respect and seems almost surprised by what she finds. But (and this is my reading not hers) it is almost as though he is lopsided - his intelligence is a parasite (not a negative but biological term) sucking away at his sense of empathy.

Is this only my reading though? The stereotype of the 'mentally ill' (or 'creative'...) is of some lowborn character in a Greek myth, given the gifts of intelligence and creativity in return for... how to say this... emotions. (There is always a catch.) How romantic, right? Or Romantic? This myth is much easier to translate into a movie and scale the box office. Here's a vague comment: People tick different boxes on the same checklist and we can draw correlations but sometimes the correlations are just superficial and blinkered.

Ah-hah! That is just to wake you up. Diatribe over. That one at least.

Because you have been scribbling away at the answer, let's get to the Point. The title points to one part of the body: the mind; not 'soul' or physique or personality. Because we know what to expect, a tale of genius and 'madness', we don't notice that hiding place. There's another: 'beautiful'. Not usually a term we apply to the sparks within that wrinkled sponge knocking around in our skulls. Ideas, yes; emotions, yes; physique, definitely. Especially since you don't get much prettier than 'beautiful'.

But Nasar, an intelligent and experienced author (the book is 900-and-something pages long, in this size font, with footnotes), must have known what growling creatures live in the title. But she rarely invokes the Romantic myth, and when she dabbles with it, it's to see how it fits. The only section I suspect contains unfairly subjective judgements is the marriage between Nash and his first wife. She suggests their marriage rewarded them both with gifts of social acceptance: she is 'high-born' and he rising among the intellectual elite.

Then there are the opinions of the subjects themselves. Apparently the family withdrew their support for the book during the manuscript phase. Who wants to be described as calculating and nasty (my words) and a social climber? Even if the next breath you are brilliant. That's one of the hazards of biographies. Advice: rather don't authorise your biography, ever.

I called off one diatribe, but here is another. See it as intermission. As a writer, I struggle with the ethics of portraying other people. Even if I stitch on other limbs, I have appropriated something from that person. If a journalist takes a photo of you, she has to get your ok.  I don't, but does that give me the rights? You could argue in certain circumstances that a character constitutes libel. In this case (to refer to previous diatribe), lazy readers will jump straight into the stereotype while looking for the movie-like action.

I watched the movie before the book, which explains my surprise at the tone of the book. Measured, researched, considered and consciously objective. The life of John Nash is not Romantic; it is tragic, in the Aristotelian sense. It is not a story: if it is, it is deeply unsatisfying. And it uses the stereotypes of mental illness as shorthand. There are creatures here so stop looking! I enjoyed the movie, I cried, I can remember shots and scenes from it. But as bibliophiles before me have cried, it's not the book!