Quotable

Ah to be famous and thus worthwhile. People hanging on your every word, desperate for a quote. And if you'd said something graceful and witty, people would report it but correctly punctuate it and make it aesthetically pleasing and add adverbs like "stoical" to the end of the quote to emphasise how majestic you'd looked as you'd said it. And if you'd said something a little less piquant, people would include the "er"s and erm"s (or "uh"s and "um"s, if you're that way inclined) you'd actually uttered in order to make you look indecisive and confused, as though even spouting that verbal shit had required untold cerebral effort.

This is an unappetising prospect. Thus, if I were notable, I'd be very conscious of the prying eyes and expectant ears and I'd never stop planning my next quip. Desperate to avoid the dreaded "er" and "erm" press tactic, I'd need to have something good to hand. In and amongst this constant plotting of the next witticism, I'd find myself unable (through lack of time) to continue with the activity which made me notable in the first place (the first image which came into my head as I thought of what the activity might be was plate-spinning, so let's say that). I'd then be in limbo, a celebrity without portfolio. Maybe if I was lucky and displayed great sarcastic aptitude I could make a name for myself as a "wit", a minor career change whilst still parading under the celebrity umbrella (and less physically arduous than plate spinning). Except then of course the stakes would be higher. A single slip could be fatal. Suddenly if I stumble over a carefully-plotted amusing anecdote, I'm not just a graceless clod, I'm bad at my job (or rather that activity for which I am notable).

What does this sort of pressure do to a person? To know that if you can't say anything sparkling, don't say anything at all, certain that 'tis better to be silent and be thought a Jedward than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Does it turn you into a stressed, balding, sweating pun-machine incapable of a genuine human reaction which hasn't been painstakingly filtered? How does one cope with a mind that runs like a small looping school's educational electrical circuit, frantically flapping about until the lightbulb flickers? After a certain amount of time, the pressure would prey on my tiny mind and it'd submit and I'd be reduced from a blubbering stuttering mess into something altogether worse: a collapsed-brain imbecile whose mind has severed itself from the conversation.

Therefore, I've decided that if I should become notable I'll take the low-standards approach and say nothing which might be construed as witty or biting (and thus quotable). It'll be a tricky task, for sure, but I'm willing to resist the temptation. Many of my acquaintances would legitimately argue that I've been resisting the temptation for years.

Last and First Men

What a fantastically ambitious and far-reaching novel Olaf Stapledon has written. I've just finished reading this. It's like H G Wells but more satisfying because fewer people know about it. It reads like high literature but tackles issues of time and space. Is it literature or sci-fi? Who cares, it was written in 1930 and the distinction would be nonsensical, because sci-fi didn't quite exist as a separate entity. The afterword informs me that the author himself would find the attempted division ludicrous, and that was good enough for me. Anyway, that's enough of a tangent.

The basic premise of the book is a brief history of time, from our own (1930s) era through world conflict, a simple story based on an imagining of the future. But it goes on, and on, through different species of human, their different ideas and characteristics. In all, 18 species of human exist, first on the Earth, then on Venus, then on Neptune, where the race ends. I'm not really one for synopses. Even that one has exhausted me.

Reading this so long after it was written is cruel to the author, because of the inherent difficulties an author has in trying to predict a possible future without framing everything in the context of his own times. Hence even the most advanced species rely heavily on "overalls" and "hoes and spades", because the author isn't aware that all future races actually wear foil and spandex, and he hadn't encountered the rudimentary robots which would have fed his imagination with new ideas for mechanical domestic help. And although some of the species of human eventually achieve varying levels of telepathic ability, there is no intermediate technological advance in the fields of communication to match this. Could it have been so hard to predict and augment the Internet? Luckily, he wrote after the advent of aviation, so that advanced races do experience the luxury of personal "flying craft", and even the occasional "ether ship".

But of course these facetiously-noticed petty peccadilloes take nothing away from the genius of the book, which has inspired so many. Arthur C Clarke said of it: "no book before or since has ever had such an impact on my imagination." It is a hugely imaginative cosmological journey that Stapledon takes us through, but the highlight for me is the sentence-by-sentence structure, vocabulary and, dare I say it, poetry. To pick one (almost) at random, when speaking of one of the species' view on the death of their fellow man, he describes it as "an irrevocable tragedy, an utter annihilation of the most resplendent kind of glory, an impoverishment of the cosmos for evermore." This one stuck with me so I made a note of it.

Not only that, but he teaches us important life-lessons:

"There is something else, too, which is a part of growing up - to see that life is really, after all, a game; a terribly serious game, no doubt, but none the less a game. When we play a game, as it should be played, we strain every muscle to win; but all the while we care less for winning than for the game. Ad we play the better for it."

But, but before we gain too much levity, we are also reminded that "thus the whole duration of humanity, with its many sequent species and its incessant downpour of generations, is but a flash in the lifetime of the cosmos."

I noticed that after reading substantial portions of the book, I looked at the world with a distant gaze, smiling wryly at the minutiae of every day life. Early in the book, our "First" humans stashed a huge vault-full of human knowledge in a cave, that it should never be lost. I thought that the retention of that knowledge would be pivotal to the cultural survival of man. It mattered slightly for a few thousand years, or perhaps 30 pages, but it meant nothing once hundreds of generations had passed, each with their own ideas of what's important, indispensable, sacred. In the end, it mattered not. It was a strangely liberating thought, not getting bogged down in the little things. I felt almost Buddhist. I didn't even bother shaving that day, such was its ascetic appeal.

So I would agree with Mr Clarke on the novel's influential properties. For example, I learned that life is an insignificant game. Life may be "but a flash in the lifetime of the cosmos", but it's still a game.

Last and First Men

From Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men, written in 1930, a description of Americans in a fictionalised history of the ages:

For the best of America was too weak to withstand the worst. Americans had indeed contributed amply to human thought. They had helped emancipate philosophy from ancient fetters. They had serviced science by lavish and rigorous research. In astronomy, favoured by their costly instruments and clear atmosphere, they had done much to reveal the dispositions of ther stars and galaxies. In literature, though often they behaved as barbarians, they had also conceived new modes of expression, and moods of thought not easily appreciated in Europe... Their best minds faced old problems of theory and of valuation with a fresh innocence and courage, so that fogs of superstition were cleared away whenever these choice Americans were present. But these best were after all a minority in a huge wilderness of opinionated self-deceivers, in whom, surprisingly, an outworn religious dogma was championed with the intolerant optimism of youth. For this was essentiallty a race of bright, but arrested, adolescents.

Mark Twain: The Ugly Years

I've written before about the delights of Mark Twain in his latter, misanthropic years. But now I've been studying him in a little more detail, reading a rather good biography by Ron Powers - Mark Twain: A Life. Unfortunately, as with all of one's heroes, studying Twain reveals his ugly side, his human flaws and weaknesses, which shatter the illusion that I've had of him as a faultless machine of pure satirical incision.

For example, in his early 30s, Twain became engaged to his first wife, Olivia Langdon. And he fell in love in the most clichéd and humiliating way that anyone can fall in love, complete with the worst and most offensive love-letters ever crafted, their appalling nature magnified when contrasted with his otherwise sterling verbal and written performances at the time.

Here are a few excerpts:

"Livy, Livy, Livy darling, it is such a happiness, such a pleasure, such a luxury, to write you, that I don't know when to stop."

"P.S. -- I do LOVE you, Livy!
~
P.P.P.S. -- I do love, LOVE, LOVE you, Livy, darling.
~
P.P.P.P.P.S. -- I do love you, Livy!"

"You are so pure, so great, so good, so beautiful. How can I help loving you? ... [H]ow can I keep from worshipping you, you dear little paragon?"

"I send a thousand kisses -- pray send me some."

And so on, and so forth.

Now, I value historical accuracy as much as the next graduate, but I can't help but think that Powers has done Twain a great disservice by faithfully reproducing these inane scribbles. In a new edition, perhaps he would consider striking out all references to love and replacing them with filth and bile. Mark "the truth is the most valuable thing we have, so I try to conserve it" Twain would, I'm sure, approve.

Right now, I eagerly anticipate the time, in a few years, when multiple members of his family will start perishing so that he might unlock the genius of his latter years. No one writes their best work when they're happy and complacent.

"Nationalism is an Infantile Disease."

The title of this post comes from Einstein, who was often critical of blind patriotism because of its inevitable descent into jingoistic violence.

Friday is St George's Day, the day which commemorates the patron saint of about half the known world, "as well as a range of professions, organisations, and disease sufferers." (Thanks, Wikipedia). I feel no connection with the man, who appears to be a semi-mythical, barbaric zealot. Since I was born in England, however, he is apparently my patron saint too.

This could be rather daunting, except England doesn't feel the need to wrap itself in flags and blind nationalism in the same way that the USA does. This is a good thing. Patriotism, regardless of its actual worth, has been disfigured by its close association with the worst, lowest elements of society. Crude racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and all-round xenophobia are the cornerstones of English nationalism, and I am glad that St George's Day receives comparatively little attention.

Apart from anything else, patriotism is completely unnecessary and unwarranted. I have no particular love for my country (although I enjoy residing in parts of it, and will happily pay for its upkeep), and I genuinely can't see why anyone else would. What is there to love? Our political system? It's certainly reasonable, and a lot better than many countries'. Our history? Like most other countries', largely shameful. The people? I like a lot of them, but only because of them, not because of their "Englishness". There's nothing inherent to England which means I should love it, any more than I should love one of perhaps ten to twenty of the most developed and progressive nations.

Perhaps, instead, patriotism is just a crude form of gang mentality. We can band together, and feel stronger in unity. I suppose that has a warm, fuzzy feel to it if you, say, decide to support England in the football World Cup (god knows why you'd want to) The downside of this gang mentality is its inevitable decline into right-wing violence. In an arguably enlightened age, I think we can dispense with this, along with the whole despicable relic of nationalism.

Mark Twain: The Misanthropic Years pt.3

Okay, you'll have to bear with me on this final quote, which is how The Mysterious Stranger ends. It's a bit long, but rewarding, if you're a fan of grim, misanthropic speeches, as I am. "Satan", once again, is the speaker, delivering Twain's own damming verdict on religion, and perhaps also showing his ideas on the general futility and bleakness of life.

Life itself is only a vision, a dream... Nothing exists; all is a dream. God - man - the world - the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars - a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space - and you!

Strange! that you should not have suspected years ago - centuries, ages, eons, ago! - for you have existed, companionless, through all the eternities. Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane - like all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell - mouths mercy and invented hell - mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honourably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!

It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream - a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought - a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities! 

The book then ends with the protagonist reflecting on this: "He vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew, and realised, that all that he had said was true."

Mark Twain: The Misanthropic Years pt.2

A couple of quotes from "Satan" in The Mysterious Stranger, which (put criminally simplistically - I'm tired) show Twain's dissatisfaction with the human race, among other things:

For a million year the [human] race has gone on monotonously propagating itself and monotonously reperforming this dull nonsense - to what end? No wisdom can guess! Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touched them; would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not ashamed of it, but proud; whose existence is a perpetual insult to you and you are afraid to resent it; who are mendicants supported by your alms, yet assume toward you the airs of benefactor toward beggar; who address you in the language of master to slave, and are answered in the language of slave to master; who are worshipped by you with your mouth, while in your heart - if you have one - you despise yourselves for it. The first man was a hypocrite and a coward, qualities which have not yet failed in his line; it is the foundation upon which all civilisations have been built.

Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race - the individual's distrust of his neighbour, and his desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbour's eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. 

Mark Twain: The Misanthropic Years

From Twain's unfinished The Mysterious Stranger, published posthumously:

Every man is a suffering-machine and a happiness-machine combined. The two functions work together harmoniously, with a fine and delicate precision, on the give-and-take principle. For every happiness turned out in the one department the other stands ready to modify it with a sorrow or a pain - maybe a dozen. In most cases the man's life is about equally divided between happiness and unhappiness. When this is not the case the unhappiness predominates - always; never the other. Sometimes a man's make and disposition are such that his misery-machine is able to do nearly all the business. Such a man goes through life almost ignorant of what happiness is. Everything he touches, everything he does, brings a misfortune upon him. You have seen such people? To that kind of a person life is not an advantage, is it? It is only a disaster. Sometimes for an hour's happiness a man's machinery makes him pay years of misery.

So says "Satan", anyway.

Thomas Paine

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his own enemy from repression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

- On the Propriety of Bringing Louis XVI to Trial.

If only the various global revolutions and counter-revolutions had heeded Paine's advice. Damn you, France!

The Idiot (iii)

And yet another quote, but it is a damned fine book:

I hate you, Gavril Ardalionovitch, simply because - this will perhaps seem marvellous to you - simply because you are the type, the incarnation, the acme of the most insolent and self-satisfied, the most vulgar and loathsome commonplace. Yours is the commonplace of pomposity, of self-satisfaction and Olympian serenity. You are the most ordinary of the ordinary! Not the smallest idea of your own will ever take shape in your heart or your mind. But you are infinitely envious; you are firmly persuaded that you are a great genius; but yet doubt does visit you sometimes at black moments, and you grow spiteful and envious. Oh, there are still black spots on your horizon; they will pass when you become quite stupid, and that's not far off; but a long and chequered path lies before you; I can't call it a cheerful one and I'm glad of it.

The Idiot (ii)

There is nothing more annoying than to be, for instance, wealthy, of good family, nice-looking, fairly intelligent, and even good-natured, and yet to have no talents, no special faculty, no peculiarity even, not one idea of one's own, to be precisely 'like other people'... There is an extraordinary multitude of such people in the world, far more than appears.

This bland multitude are subdivided by their intelligence, "some of limited intelligence, some much cleverer":

Nothing is easier for 'ordinary' people of limited intelligence than to imagine themselves exceptional and original and to revel in that delusion without the slightest misgiving... Some have only to meet with some idea by hearsay, or to read some stray page, to believe at once that it is their own opinion and has sprung spontaneously from their own brain. The impudence of simplicity, if one may so express it, is amazing in such cases.. this unhesitating confidence of the stupid man in himself and his talents...

The second category has it much tougher:

 [Gavril Ardalionovitch] belonged to the class of the 'much cleverer' people, though he was infected from head to foot with the desire for originality. But that class... is far less happy than the first; for the clever 'commonplace' man, even if he occasionally or even always fancies himself a man of genius or originality, yet preserves the worm of doubt gnawing in his heart, which in some cases drives the clever man to utter despair... His passionate craving to distinguish himself sometimes led him to the brink of most ill-conceived actions, but our hero was always at the last moment too sensible to take the final plunge.

Dostoevsky: The Idiot

There is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one's idea for thirty-five years; there's something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you for ever; and with it you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps, the most important of your ideas.

..and they say that strange fictional teenagers with consumption don't give good advice.

Yay, Capitalism: Tom Morello

"When you live in a capitalistic society, the currency of the dissemination of information goes through capitalistic channels. Would Noam Chomsky object to his works being sold at Barnes and Noble? No, because that's where people buy their books. We're not interested in preaching to just the converted. It's great to play abandoned squats run by anarchists but it's also great to be able to reach people with a revolutionary message, people from Granada Hills to Stuttgart."

Is a quote from Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello, who's justifying the band's use of capitalist media to promote their anarchic music. It's half fifth column and half realism. Personally, I'm a fan of capitalism, but that's a topic for another more cerebral discussion.

Gustave Flaubert

Madame Bovary on love:

'She did not speak; he was silent, captivated by her silence, as he would have been by her speech... To him she stood outside those fleshly attributes from which he had nothing to obtain, and in his heart she went on soaring and became farther removed from him after the magnificent manner of an apotheosis this taking wing. It was one of those pure feelings that do not interfere with life, that are cultivated because they are rare, and whose loss would afflict more than their possession rejoices.'

V for Vendetta

'People should not be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people'.

So says V in V for Vendetta.

Hitchens

From Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian:

"Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you."

Voltaire

From Candide:

'A great work must be novel without being far-fetched; frequently sublime, but

always natural. The author must know the human heart, and how to make it speak; he must be a poet, without letting any of his characters speak like poets; and he must be a master of his language, using it purely and harmoniously and not letting the rhyme interfere with the sense.'

'Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part, I read only to please myself, and like what suits my taste.'

-----

Which seems relevant, seeing as I will probably never write a great work, or even attempt to. Still, it's a nice quote to start this off with.