Saturday commute lxxxvi: the smell test of daydreams

Circumstances confer upon us all,

if we care to notice, a recurring

exposure to youth under varying

degrees of intellectual trial and

release, and I find it fascinat-

ing to witness how the habits of

one of these modes influence the

conduct of the other. Not, I sup-

pose, that the comparison would

be much different among their el-

ders, except for their mastering

of escape from both estates.

A persistent threat of humour is

a great hazard to the occupation

of observing the young in compul-

sory study of philosophy and psy-

chology, but this has been so

since The Symposium and it would

only be vulgar to deny it. For a

Saturday commute, I thought some

compassion for that captivation

might be more seemly for the day,

and I beg not to be taken unser-

iously. Even you and I return to

Albert Camus.

    

That this writer was a specialist in the unthinkable has had a way of sustaining his vogue, regard-less probably of compulsion; but to win credits for the pursuit of temptation is not the least of the great lessons of the academy, per se. He remains as much at home on the escapist mountain peak as in the great fluorescent baths of academic sweatshops. Back in the day of reading in coffee houses, he was as ubiquitous as cinnamon, tincture of not a little allure of raciness, and succulent as a stick. What is the aromatic imprint of the Macbook Air?

The first thing to be noticed in the experience of reading Camus, not that anyone is willing to give the secret away, is the impression of being cast under observation, ourself, without apparent mercy or compassion, by invitation to examine morbidities which depend precisely on their suspension. In this frame of reference it would be indelicate to imply a bilateral seduction, with its telltale aromatic of appealing to the susceptible; but that Camus is a pleasure for the young while Nietzsche is not, I can neither deny nor fathom. He is, however, a poet, to Nietzsche's raconteur.

What I know, what is certain, 

what I cannot deny, what I cannot 

reject - that is what counts. 

I can negate everything of that part 

of me that lives on vague nostalgias, except this desire for unity, 

this longing to solve, 

this need for clarity and cohesion. 

I can refute everything in this world surrounding me that offends 

or enraptures me, 

except this chaos, 

this sovereign chance 

and this divine equivalence 

which springs from anarchy.

Consciousness and revolt, these re-jections are the contrary of renun-ciation. Everything that is indomitable and passionate in a human heart quickens them, on the contrary, with its own life. It is essential to die unreconciled and not of one's own free will.. 

The absurd man can only drain everything to the bitter end, and deplete himself. The absurd is his extreme tension, which he maintains constantly by solitary effort, for he knows that in that consciousness and in that day-to-day revolt he gives proof of his only truth, which is defiance.

I can understand 

only in human terms. 

What I touch, what resists me -

that is what I understand.

    

 As I suppose is well known,

 or ought to be, Gallimard

 published this essay in 1942,

 under a heinous occupation of

 France, made even more exquis-

 itely cruel by its permission

 to the arts to flourish, and

 contribute to illusions Camus

 took pains to refute elsewhere.

 But the open agitations in this

 work powerfully trigger a smell

 test of temptations it so forth-

 rightly addresses. It is stren-

 uous and arduously aloof, a tex-

 tual embodiment of the bread of

 indifference on which man feeds

 his greatness. I could trust a

 youth to get it.

Albert Camus

Le Mythe de Sisyphe

Éditions Gallimard, 1942©

Justin O'Brien, translation

Knopf, 1955©

Penguin, 1975©

Frederic Spotts

The Shameful Peace

  How French Artists and

  Intellectuals Survived the

  Nazi Occupation

Yale University Press, 2008©

And why was I not told?

  I think we have it

  wrong when we com-

  plain of the death

  of the past. Even-

  tually we deserved

  some revenge for a

  lack of toile cam-

  ou in our own play.

  We certainly could

  have worn it well.

  But was it fair in

  the end, to make a

  secret of Viet Nam?

      

Drench, the belovèd country

Beautiful and somber,

why does an emergency

deepen awe for places

we inhabit, as a gift

we can not fathom? Do

I know a way to spare

my home my mortality?

The New York Times

  via The Associated Press

J.C. Hong, photograph©

Banning, California

Suppose it were Friday lxxiv: would one be there for it

He knows better than

anyone how to use the

apparent nonchalance

of true strength to

give an impression of

drifting, and advances

with a half-open eye.

  And if one'd heard

  they'd found a new

  Orson Welles, what

  then?

              Had they given birth to

              an ordinary child, they

              would in any case have

              provided him with that

              refined liberal education

              in which the precocity 

              of the young prodigy was

              given the power to explode. 

i    Jean Cocteau 

       on Welles, in

ii  André Bazin

     Orson Welles

       A Critical View

    Foreword by François Truffaut

    Les Éditions du Cerf, 1972©

    Harper & Row, 1978©

André Kertész, archer, undated

We interrupt this lugubrious enterprise in favour of Fintan

Like you, dear reader,

I squirm at assertions

of personal privilege,

among those who assert

an empathy for customs

in common. Just now on

the other hand, Fintan

executed his signature

flying leap into a dir-

ector's chair which or-

dinarily accommodates

only your devoted ser-

vant, at this Louis XV

desk snaffled from the

auction of Mrs Hunting-

ton's things, eons ago.

My mother's cigarettes

embellish its descent.

But if you, as I some-

times do in Summer, re-

pair to the pantry for

a revivification of a

moderate gin and tonic,

and find your English

dog contesting your sin-

ecure in a bound which

tumbles it over into a

sarouk that shouldn't be

there, you are left with

the choice of marveling

at the élan of his geste,

or scolding an innocent

for his love.

Ah. Your verdict?

Ambiguity is an epithet

And usually off the

mark. It's an allu-

sion to a deferred

choice between two

possibilities. In-

stinctively, we re-

coil from ambiguity,

not with impatience,

but dissatisfaction. 

Its binary predicate

is inherently dogmat-

ic; it has nothing

to do with seeing,

nothing to do with

being, and degrades

a mind by coercion,

to adopt its habits.

I like the first 

photograph. The

flow of the white,

the black plinth,

belong to dynamics,

not dichotomy. Be-

low, the regularity

in the stitching is

offset, not opposed,

by natural symmetry,

articulately recep-

tive. Liquidity is

everywhere.

Is this fashion, or

is it freshening by

possibility? Is taste

a human right? Could

craft and play be our

riposte to force, and

are there fairer hab-

its?

Summer Liebling iii

A peril of the text.

Summer allows us all

a gainful lull in the

deliberations of our

elegant judiciary: a

time to kick back and

marvel at the valida-

tion of Senator Roman

Hruska's immortal pro-

phecy of the Nixon era,

defending his nomina-

tion of G. Harrold Cars-

well, a T-room hero of

the Larry Craig school

of redneck sanctimony.

How soothingly our ham-

mock sways in the wheeze

of antisemitism, usher-

ing in reconsiderations

of affirmative action,

school desegregation, 

one man one vote, and

gender equality in the

workplace.

Even if he were mediocre,

there are a lot of medi-

ocre judges and people

and lawyers. They are en-

titled to a little rep-

resentation, aren't they,

and a little chance? We

can't have all Brandeises

and Frankfurters and Car-

dozos.

Not that the afflicted

aryan male is not over-

due for sympathy, the

Court cannot apply that

balsam directly, with-

out courting complaint

of affirmative action.

And so, it finds (out

of thin air, and the

denying soul of its

openly confessed con-

stituency) that things

are better, now, and

so bordering on spiffy

as to end the redistri-
bution of blonds. Not

that there were ever

so many, as Senator

Hruska warned, to go

around. The thinnest

sampling is all the

austere republic can
spare, and they must
be reserved for impor-
tant occasions.

Scholars ask, what be-

came of this successor

of Warren Buffett's fa-

ther in Congress, this

guardian of the judici-

ary, this Nixonite ally

of discrimination's fav-

ourite syllogism? Radi-

antly fittingly, he is

remembered in a great of-

fice of our government,

the Federal Meat Animal

Research Center [sic],

in his native Nebraska:

getting big government

to do the heavy lifting

for private capital again.

How grateful we all must

be, for Clarence Thomas'

opinion for the Court 

last Term, against the

patenting of genes. We

might be cloned to blond-

ness, and its victimhood.

A.J. Liebling

The Eternally

  Kicked in the Pants

March 26, 1955

The New Yorker©

The Library of America, 2008©