Re: The new, improved Sophie's Choice...

John O. writes:
<< You write "peculiar needs" in quotes, as if I wrote it somewhere. Did I?
Where? I can't find it. >>

You did. In a message stamped Sun, 14 Dec 2003 09:29:40 EST, in reference
to my "peculiar need to defend [my] own subjective aesthetic." (Which
defending I don't think I was doing, incidentally.)

In the same message you call me "charming and loyal," and suggested that
what I had been talking about was "stuff in Bunny-profiles." You say that I
have a "desire that seems so strange to [you], so odd, so curious." You say
that it "fascinates [you] and makes [you] smile."

You also include a series of sentences, all referring to me and my "rhetoric
of a pleading rationality," that respectively begin: "Why would anyone [. .
 .]", "Who wants their [. . . .]", "Who wants to [. . . .]", "To what sort
of person [. . . .]", "And who would want to [. . . .]" You write that you
are neither "brave enough, [n]or foolish enough, [n]or young enough" to say
what you take me to be saying.

And it is this condescending tone, these pushes toward marginalizing your
interlocuters, sustained throughout this particular message of yours and so
many others, that makes it very difficult to believe your professed
indifference to such square concepts as better and worse and your own or
anyone else's marginalization. You come off like a hippy with a violent
temper, who for all his talk of the absurdity of war kicks his dog when it
spills the bong water.

Though in this same message you admit that "of course" you do not think that
Hunter S. Thompson "is as good as" Kafka, though insisting that there are
moments when reading Thompson is worth more to you, apparently expecting
that I have asserted or would assert the impossibility of those moments. Of
course I have not and would not, as I appreciate such moments as much as
anybody, and that standard by which we will agree that Thompson is of course
not "as good as" Kafka is doubtless the very standard I was talking about.

I'm sure you will again bring out your silver bullet and claim that, when
you said that you (of course) don't think Thompson is as good as Kafka, this
was all just short-hand for some longer sentence that pays proper obeisance
to dogmatic subjectivity. I don't doubt that when pressed you believe that
some other guy could think Thompson is better than Kafka (though some days
he'd prefer to read Kafka) in the same vague way that you think Kafka is
better than Thompson, and that neither of you would be right or wrong. The
question is purely subjective, of course. But nevertheless, when writing
off-the-cuff you were able to tell us that "of course" you think Kafka is
better than Thompson (though some days you'd prefer to read Thompson), and
you were able to say it without explicit qualification on goodness, and you
were able to take for granted that we would all understand that particular
sort of goodness.

It is precisely this understanding of this particular sort of goodness that
I was appealing to -- and, when encountering the hypothetical man (he seems
almost impossible to imagine) who sees this goodness in Hunter S. Thompson
more than in Kafka, it is precisely this understanding of this particular
goodness that we would be appealing to when most of us would then suspect
either to ourselves or aloud that this poor fellow must be missing something
big when he reads Kafka. In your same message you tell us that you
celebrate finding worth in "the unlikeliest places" and I have nothing but
respect for your celebration; though I wonder the standard by which you
suppose these places to be less likely than any others if not this very
understanding that I'm talking about.

<< And I think your choices relate to mine, in many ways, much as chocolate
does to vanilla. >>

If you hold by your own assertions, if they were not exaggerations and
rhetoric that you yourself do not believe, you have disallowed yourself from
qualifying with "in many ways" and "much as." If we are to take your claims
seriously, you are acknowledging that one can only say that Shakespeare and
Kafka are better than Stephen King and Danielle Steel insofar as one can say
that chocolate is better than vanilla. Purely subjective. If your man with
the dissertation saw in one of the novels with Fabio's chest bared on the
cover all the beauty and subtlety that you see in Kafka (and in Kafka he saw
pulp), his take must be seen no differently than your own. Even surprise
might be a square reaction, since his take is no less probable than the
particular arrangement of taste-buds on his particular tongue. PURELY
subjective.

I admit that this extreme disallows claims of better and worse, but hedge
however slightly and there's enough taint of the non-subjective to allow
them. Judging between Shakespeare and Kafka need not be easy or even
possible; judging between Shakespeare and Salinger, or Shakespeare and
Tolkien need not even be possible. If you acknowledge that there is an
objective gulf between Hamlet and a Danielle Steel novel, you've diverged
sufficiently from PURE subjectivity to be permitting into your world-view
every manner of claim that I've made in this discussion.

<< And I'm not at all "uncomfortable" with the questions -- I just see no
need to answer them and I also see and have seen the act of answering them
as often leading, as I said, to soft vagaries and sad reductivism in the
name of categories and measurements and the rhetoric of "more" and "less" --
none of which I see any particularly compelling reason to attach to art (or
love). >>

It seems that you not only see no need to answer them, but you see no need
to ask them -- I have contended here that asking and exploring even
fundamentally unanswerable questions can be a worthwhile endeavor -- and it
seems an understatement to say that you merely "see no need" since you in
fact came forward as an objector to what other people were discussing.

I wonder also if calling certain vagaries "soft" and certain reductivisms
"sad" does not require something of the very same or a quite similar
judgment concerning "categories and measurements and the rhetoric of 'more'
and 'less'."

<< In part, I say this because such strategies can lead us into the language
of competition, of winners and losers, as demonstrated quite nicely (and
better than I could have ever dreamed) in your own comparison between my
posts here and the writing of Lucretius. >>

You say that you are reluctant to do a thing that can lead us into "the
language of competition, of winners and losers," though it was not very long
ago that you told us about rhetorics of power and desire, suggested to us
their omnipresence and inescapability, and claimed to cherish and celebrate
them.

And I must admit that your own posts hold up admirably to your claims of
their omnipresence and your celebration of them, as above where you wave me
into the losers by saying that your point is in my last post demonstrated
"quite nicely" and in fact "better than [you] could have ever dreamed"
(though the frequency with which your dreams are surpassed by my and others'
posts leads one to doubt the sincerity of your oft-repeated formulation).
This tone is precisely what I would expect from someone who celebrates
rhetorics of power and desire, and who takes their inescapability as
self-evident anyway.

But it IS difficult for me to reconcile this tone, and the claims about such
rhetorics, with your reluctance with things that "can lead us into the
language of competition, of winners and losers."

<< Why you feel compelled to compare these two very different sets and sorts
of writings in very different places and as very different acts, other than
to get in a cheap and easy shot [. . .], is almost a mystery. >>

I compared them to illustrate that one piece of writing can unambiguously
and meaningfully be called better than another, and these particular
writings were chosen for their in several ways similar subject material. I
made no claim of one's being better at everything -- certainly on a rainy
day either might be more to my mood, so no need for a rebuttal there -- and
I made no claim of a capacity for making an easy judgment, or any judgment
at all, for any two pieces of writing -- so no need there, either. Only
that under many circumstances, one can be unambiguously and meaningfully
called better. As you yourself said that Kafka is better than Hunter S.
Thompson (or that you think the latter to be "of course" not as good as the
former).

That's really all.

-Robbie
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Received on Thu Dec 18 04:46:11 2003