Some Writers I Haven't Understood, and Some I Have

It goes without saying that when I think I've understood a writer, I could be completely mistaken.

To begin with, writers I know I haven't understood:

-- In the past few days I gave up on my most recent, and only, serious attempt to understand Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. There was one moment when I was prematurely optimistic: I opened Hegel's Philosophie der Geschichte at random and saw that he had a chapter dedicated to the Crusades. Some further skimming revealed statements about the Crusades which actually seemed fact-based, down to Earth and accurate. But when I settled down to read the entire chapter, I discovered that there were only a few lines' worth of this sort of narrative in the entire chapter, embedded in a murky sea of the objective teaching of Christianity and the immense idea of coupling the finite to the infinite and so forth, and I really just can't.

-- Speaking of Kant --

yeah, I don't understand him either. I apologize for having occasionally pretended that I did.

-- Heidegger: whoosh! he goes over my head.

-- Any theologians whatsoever. I still seem to share the New Atheists' problem with theology: theologian says, "God[...]," I respond, "[...]," theologian says, "That's not what I mean when I say 'God," and I've already lost interest. I don't even have the energy to angrily ask, "Well why don't you try saying what you mean when you say 'God'?!" because I despair of getting an answer which isn't even worse.

Writers whom I think I've understood:

-- William Gaddis. The only writer of realistic dialogue known to me. Because apart from literature, most people don't speak in complete sentences which resemble those written in books. And each one of Gaddis' characters is speech-impaired in his or her specific way, which again is realistic, and allows the reader to tell them apart even in a book like JR which is about 98% unattributed dialogue. Even the few characters who are able to speak quite elegantly while sober lose their verbal form, in a quite realistic way, as they get drunk.

Jean-Paul Sartre: I believe I understand: the world, the universe, is devoid of inherent meaning, and so therefore each of our lives is as meaningful as we are able to make it. Communism, with its goal of everyone working for the common good, is more noble than capitalism with its goal of he who dies with the most toys wins.

William H Gass: His prose is pure music, prose poetry. I never found it difficult.

Gertrude Stein: Hers either. Her joy in her experience with language is as pure and beautiful as the joy of a toddler, except that where a toddler toddles around a backyard and is astounded by a pebble, Stein traveled quite a bit, and took joy in her own wide knowledge, experience and vocabulary. Emulating her, writing as well as she did? Excruciatingly difficult, maybe impossible. Reading her? Never anything but joy as pure as a toddler's smile.

More On My Problems With Buddhism

Either Buddhism has been erroneously called a religion by very many people for a very, very long time, or it is a religion which recently has been very successfully marketed to atheists.

Just today in an online discussion, I was saying Yu-huh it is too a religion, and this other person, possibly a Buddhist, I don't know for sure, was saying no it's a philosophy, and I indicated that I was tired of the discussion, and the other person said Okay if you don't want to discuss religion...

*sigh* I pointed out that -- *sigh*

I'm so sick of them. "Buddhism is not a religion. We don't worship deities or preach any sort of metaphysics. Now if you'll excuse me, it's time for me to go to a temple and kneel in front of a statue of the Buddha alongside some Buddhist monks, and chant and meditate in my quest to attain eternal bliss."

This little tiff started off with a quote from the Dalai Lama: "I believe that the only true religion consists in having a good heart." I replied: "I don't think you need any religion to be a nice person."

The other person tossed me an LOL and said that that was exactly what the quote meant, because Buddhism isn't a religion, and we were off.

It's one thing if you think that the Dalai Lama is a great person and a powerful force for good in the world. Maybe he is. I admit that I can't really judge his personality or his effect on the world objectively, because all of this it's-not-a-religion sticks in my craw.

I happen to like Pope Francis very much. (I didn't right at first, as you can see by reading what I wrote about him in this blog immediately after he was elected Pope. But part of that, of course, was just my own personal disappointment because I hadn't been elected Pope.) I like him more and more.

I'm not sure whether I would like him if he and/or some of his followers started to claim that Catholicism is not a religion and never has been. If, for example, Catholics suddenly started to claim that the belief in the Resurrection isn't really a belief in the Resurrection and never was such a belief, the way that some Buddhists have suddenly begun to claim that Buddhists beliefs in reincarnation -- reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, for example -- are not actually beliefs in reincarnation and never have been.

If you're a Catholic and also an atheist, that's fine with me. Just don't try to tell me that no Catholics believe in anything supernatural and that none ever have.

If you're a Buddhist and you don't believe in reincarnation, I have no problem with that.

If you're trying to tell me that "Buddhists don't believe that the Dali Lama has been reincarnated, they believe that aspects of one Dali Lama are transferred to the next, because they all share one heart," and that I'm just silly for thinking this is a religion and not a philosophy, and for thinking that what you just said has anything to do with reincarnation, then I don't want to talk to you any more.

Not about Buddhism, not right now anyway.

Why? Because I'm always struggling to make sense, and that struggle is difficult for me under the best of conditions. Maybe it's actually much harder for me personally because I'm autistic. Perhaps if I were neurologically-typical I wouldn't loath theology so because it wouldn't pose such a threat to me. Perhaps if I were neurologically-typical and someone were to say to me: "Buddhists don't believe that the Dali Lama has been reincarnated per se, they believe that the ideals of the last Dali Lama have been transferred to the new one. The one who owns the heart," I'd find it fascinating, and we'd be able to discuss it all day and all night and I'd find it all ever so delightful. I seem to remember a line from a poem by Jack Kerouac about Buddhism being delightfully empty baloney any way you slice it. I'm sorry, I can't find that line right now. And often I remember lines completely wrong. (Is that also because I'm autistic?) But assuming that Kerouac did actually write something more or less like that -- is this a matter of some people finding a perfectly good and healthy sort of nonsense in religion?

Is it possible that it's similar to the wonderful stuff I find in Gertrude Stein, which so many people have had to explain so laboriously to each other but which no one ever had to explain to me, which I loved from the first instant?

Maybe. Or maybe I simply have a very good point here and I'm right to call some Buddhists on their nonsense.

[PS, 20. March 2016: Another thing has occurred to me lately: how seldom anyone seems to wonder whether the feats of archery described by Eugen Herrigel in his famous book Zen in the Art of Archery were faked. (Herrigel tells of a Zen master shooting an arrow at a faraway target in the dark and hitting the center of the bulls-eye, and then shooting a second arrow which splits the first one right up the middle.)]

Gertrude Stein's How To Write Haz Arrived --

-- and therefore I haz a happee!

I can't recommend this book, because over and over, reviewers -- writers of positive reviews, rave reviews -- call it "difficult."

Therefore, I know that I do not react to this book in the same way that humans do. Nothing I say here will be of use to humans in deciding whether or not this book is for them.

How to Write by Gertrude Stein is the exact opposite of difficult to me -- it is a great relief. Life in general is often difficult for me: puzzling, frightening, intensely unpleasant. How to Write is a break from all of that.

No offense to Patricia Meyerowitz, for all I know she may be a delight, and her Preface and Introduction may be sublime -- to humans. But right there in the first paragraph of the Preface, there she is, trying to tell me that this book is difficult -- and apparently it is, to most of you. No offense to Ms Meyerowitz, but How to Write is right there in the same volume. So, I gotta go. ARTHUR A GRAMMAR is my very favorite chapter -- except for some of them which are even better, wow!!!!

Ms Stein writes:

"Successions of words are so agreeable.
It is about this.
Arthur angelic angelica did spend the time."

Are you hooked already? No? Well, then maybe Ms Meyerowitz can help you. I can't. If you're not hooked after the first 3 lines in ARTHUR A GRAMMAR, I simply don't know what to say.

I also like Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. I've never found Finnegan's Wake difficult -- I've only ever found it to be pure pleasure. This is why I think Joyce may have been autistic -- and come to think of it, maybe Stein too.

Or maybe neither of them was autistic in the slightest, and maybe I actually don't "understand" How to Write or Tender Buttons or Finnegan's Wake or Portrait of the Artist at all, and the ecstasy I receive from them, or from looking at Cezanne, whom I also don't want anyone to "explain" to me -- maybe my experience of all of those artworks has nothing at all to do with the artists' intentions.

I seriously doubt it, but maybe. Anyway, there is that thing about "difficulty" which I somehow completely missed.

That's all for now, I must read this thang! Yr verr nice person, thnk yu verr mutch pleez!

(Seriously. I don't know what to tell you. Sorry.)

Yes, Dear, You're Smart. Of Course You Are

Robert McAlmon's memoir Being Geniuses Together,about the community of artsy folk in Paris in the 1920's which included Gertrude Steinand Alic B Toklas, Picasso, Pound, Joyce,Hemingway and, yes, Robert McAlmon, never gave me any indication that McAlmon was actually a genius, and it did give me several strong hints that he was not. Then suddenly this morning, it became clear to me how the interaction between McAlmon and the geniuses worked: those of the geniuses who, like for instance Joyce, were not wealthy, got lots of free meals and drinks and "loans" and no doubt many other assorted handouts from rich boy McAlmon, who in turn got to feel like a genius, when in fact he was plainly a bonehead. Much the way writers and painters in ages past, as recently and with as much spine as Kant,flattered princes for a living. (Have you read the dedications to Prussian royalty in Kant's books? Disgusting!)

Stein was the center of this community, and most certainly a genius, and wealthy, and formidable in every which way -- say it with a French accent, please -- but presumably not even she could do everything all by herself. Enter the well-married and deluded McAlmon: ah, how convenient. I don't know why it took me so long to figure that out.

Who need to be constantly reassured that they are smart? Stupid people, of course. Don't you ever -- EVER! -- call me stupid! Who need to be reassured that they are wondrously virile studs? Impotent men.

Although it seems to be the opposite when it comes to looks: supermodels and other stunningly-beautiful people seem so often chronically insecure about their looks -- some actually say things like, My earlobes are hideous. Or, My navel. Honey, put the mirror down, sit down and listen to me: if you have to search yourself all over until you get to your earlobes or your navel before you find something you don't like, you're gorgeous. Just trust me, you are. Try to enjoy it. You're gorgeous, and you probably haven't spent a lot of time carefully looking at average-looking people. People probably generally tend to like you a lot, because, well, c'mon. But if you could stop whining about your tiny, barely-perceptible, probably mostly imaginary appearance problems around the rest of us, who have never looked nearly as good as you and never will, that'd be swell, that'd make you much more likable still. If in addition to realizing that you're beautiful, you could also realize that sometimes you're not as intelligent or witty as people tell you you are, because, well, c'mon -- (McAlmon was once a nude model) -- then you'd be way ahead of the curve. The world would pretty much be yours.

Plainer people, on the other hand, often have the attitude of, I know, I'm ugly. Can we move on? Not like with other things. Impotence must be widespread, judging from the sales of medications for it, but you don't often see a guy come into a bar and say to everyone, Man, I just can't do it at all! I am one limp-dicked loser! Give everybody a round on me! You don't often hear the stupid say, Yes, I'm stupid. Perhaps it's partly that Socratic I-know-that-I-know-nothing paradox. Perhaps it's mostly or entirely that.