Re: to thine own self

Face Inthecrowd (facethecrowd@hotmail.com)
Mon, 25 Oct 1999 02:07:55 -0400 (EDT) 

I read Mordecai Richler and he has to be the most self-indulgent, 
self-loath/loving person I've ever read.  He's completely confident in the 
fact that he can't hide himself and so his writing seems natural, most of 
the time.  Mind you, if he had nothing to say except 'gold and dandylocks,' 
I'd have stopped reading from him long ago.  Whether his work stands as 
great art is subject to interpretation, and many people might disagree with 
his honest arrogance, but he writes powerfully and he never renegs on 
driving in a meaning, more than chronicling the Jewish experience, but 
comparing it with the attitudes of the people he grew up with in the very 
real suburbs of Montreal, Quebec.  Mordecai is the real thing, not a symbol 
or a metaphor, he's writing his heart out, in my opinion, and that should 
stand as great art.  His narcissism drove him to write, I believe, because 
writing is like looking at one's reflection in a pool, and then showing that 
still frame to someone else, preferably to many people.  And when people 
liked his work, he wrote more, and as most narcissists are perfectionists or 
competitors at least, he made sure that everyone sees the still frame as he 
does.  Personally, I find it hard to eliminate the number of I's in my 
sentences, so I might be naturally drawn to narcissistic people, like 
Salinger himself, and many other writers.

Japhe

>From: Scottie Bowman <rbowman@indigo.ie>
>Reply-To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu
>To: Bananafish <bananafish@lists.nyu.edu>
>Subject: to thine own self
>Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 19:26:06 +0100
>
>
>     I'd have thought, Jim, that 'history' suggests
>     the concentration necessary for the accomplishment
>     of anything of value - whether artistic, scientific,
>     social, or whatever - often entails a rather ruthless
>     disregard for the feelings & needs of others.
>     Many great artists, for example, were kindly
>     enough people - taking reasonable care of
>     their dependents & so on.  But they were,
>     to a man, quite ruthless in not allowing
>     consideration for others take priority over
>     their obsession with their own work.
>
>     I was always curious why I should be fascinated
>     with this powerful element of self-sufficient
>     self-absorption when I read about it or
>     encountered it.  I was lucky enough, quite early on,
>     to read Freud's essay on Narcissism -
>     a quality of personality that he suggests
>     is common to a great artists, criminal psychopaths,
>     beautiful women, animals, babies, & al.
>     Ever the most gullible of chaps, I found it
>     extraordinarily satisfying & illuminating.
>     Perhaps because it could be used to validate
>     the twists in my own infantile makeup.
>
>     Remember that for every Hitler there was
>     a Roosevelt (whose wife said after he died:
>     'I simply served his purposes ...')  And that
>     this list is devoted to an artist who doesn't
>     sound exactly like the chairman of the local
>     St Vincent de Paul Society for the Indigent.
>
>     Scottie B.
>

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