search for the sublime
Scottie Bowman (bowman@mail.indigo.ie)
Tue, 13 Jan 1998 23:16:36 +0000
'..Faith and even holiness,' writes Will, '.. is in rubbish
as it is everywhere...like seymour, I find some of my best
ideas in ashtrays and garbage...bless rubbish everywhere,
even on this list!
To which D. responds :
'...In fact, one could say that many of the prominent
American (fiction) writers since WWII have seen "waste"
or "rubbish" as just as important, particularly as an
"inversion" ....of our glitzy and glamourous twentieth
century culture.'
I find this hard to believe. If words are to mean anything,
then "rubbish" should surely only be applied to that which
has ceased to have any value. If one were a mystic or
a Redeemer (which Seymour may or may not have been)
I could imagine one might go searching for the infinitely
valuable - such as a human soul - in the neglected or
empty places of the world - the Wastelands. But I'm not
at all clear what can be meant by the blessed nature of
"rubbish" itself - which seems to be implied in these two
quotations.
Maybe I should be flattered that a throwaway line by myself
seems to have prompted these - to me - paradoxical thoughts.
There's something very seductive about paradoxes.
Rubbish is valuable. Loss is gain. The rejected are the found.
Only the dead shall live. And so on.
Not so much the sublime, perhaps. More the corblimey.
Scottie B.