Gordimer's "Which New Era Would That Be" (1956)

Nadine Gordimer (1923-2014)

Our last meeting of 2014 took place on November 24th.  The short story under consideration was "Which New Era Would That Be," by South African writer and 1991 Nobel literature laureate Nadine Gordimer.  "Which New Era Would That Be" is a vignette of a visit made under the apartheid regime by two white liberals, Alister Halford and Jennifer Tetzel, to the Johannesburg printing shop of Jake Alexander, who is of a mixed-race background. 

In the story, Maxie Ndube, a black trade unionist, relates two stories of his personal experience with the color barrier. The first is a visit with a white labor lawyer to an employer of workers he represents. Maxie describes being offered lunch at the man's home. As they are about to sit down in the dining room, Maxie is told that his lunch has been placed on a table on a veranda outdoors and he must eat separately.

The other story is of Maxie's dealings with a certain firm. He has several phone conversations with a white secretary there named Peggy that become increasingly flirtatious.  When he arrives at the offices and Peggy sees that Maxie is a black man, she tries not to look surprised but seems “terrified” that someone from the inner office might see her shaking hands with a black man.  Jennifer's response to the story is "Poor little girl, she probably liked you awfully, Maxie, and was really disappointed. You mustn't be too harsh on her.  It's hard to be punished for not being black."  It seems that Gordimer here implies that Jennifer is making a play for Maxie's affections or at least demonstrating to a roomful of men how "liberated" she is both sexually and politically.

Shortly afterwards, Alister and Jennifer make an exit from the shop, and Jennifer says to Maxie, "I feel I must tell you, about that other story -- your first one, about the lunch, I don't believe it. I'm sorry, but honestly I don't. It's too illogical to hold water."

Gordimer writes, "It was her final self-immolation by honest understanding. There was absolutely no limit to which that understanding would not go. Even if she could not believe Maxie, she must keep her determined good faith with him by confessing her disbelief. She would go to the length of calling him a liar to show by frankness how much she respected him -- to insinuate, perhaps, that she was with him, even in the need to invent something about a white man that she, because she herself was white, could not believe. It was her last bid for Maxie".

In other words, Jennifer must state that Maxie's story seems to be fabricated for a political agenda, but that she feels Maxie's pain to the extent that she even understands his need to embellish the truth. It is an acknowledgement on Jennifer's part that although there exists a deep racial divide in their country, she is in solidarity with the cause of political advancement for nonwhites.  She wants to bond personally with Maxie by calling him out on the story, yet by doing so commits “self-immolation.” (By the way, we the readers have no way of knowing whether Maxie’s story is true or not.)

Gordimer ends her description of their exchange by writing, "The small perfectly made man crossed his arms and smiled, watching her go. Maxie had no price." 

He will not allow Jennifer to heroize him in this fashion, and the two will, at best, be separate but equal political partners.

Frank O'Connor: "Guests of the Nation"

Frank O'Connor (1903-1966)

Our meeting Monday night takes up Frank O'Connor's "Guests of the Nation," a short story set during the civil war in Ireland during the 1920s.  Frank O'Connor (the nom de plume of Michael O'Donovan) was a combatant in this conflict, and in his first military action was taken prisoner. The story concerns two English soldiers, Hawkins and Belcher, who have been taken hostage.  There is a rebel leader named Jeremiah Donovan.  Readers with leanings towards literary-biographical interpretations would consider it not a coincidence that Jeremiah is "Donovan" and O'Connor's real name was "O'Donovan," and O'Connor's father, "Big" Mick O'Donovan, was a military man.  The text poses a problem to such a reading, however, in that the story's actual narrator is an Irish partisan known simply as "Bonaparte."

The original version of  "Guests of the Nation" was published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1931.  It launched O'Connor's career, and his reputation as a short story writer grew over the years in both North America and Ireland. O'Connor was a true man of letters and also wrote novels, autobiography, poetry translations from Gaelic, travel memoirs, and criticism.

Hayek and Rawls

Our discussion on Monday evening, September 22d, compared "Planning and Democracy," a chapter from the famous book The Road to Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek, and "Distributive Justice," a paper by John Rawls.  It was the first time we have tackled dual selections.  Hayek was an Austrian-born academic economist who spent most of his career teaching in the U.K. and the U.S.  Rawls was an American political philosopher.

These two apple pies were put out on the refreshment table at our discussion. The larger one (above) was sliced into an assortment of small and large portions.  The smaller one (below) had equal-sized portions. The pies were representative of Rawls's two differing principles of distributive justice, which respectively he calls "utiliarian" and "social contract" principles. Would you have guessed that the smaller but more equal slices would prove more popular with the group?  Are we just a group that likes to share in an equitable manner?

Our 18 attendees engaged in what might be characterized as one of our more heated discussions.  Both readings were concerned with the question of the equitable distribution of wealth (and power) in a democratic society.  Hayek did not believe democracy to be a suitable mechanism for managing the economy.  There is invariably too much dissension in the ranks of decision-making bodies for the making of important decisions.

"People will have either no definite view or conflicting views on such questions [both economic and moral], because in the free society in which we have lived there has been no occasion to think about them and still less to form common opinions about them," Hayek writes.

Rawls takes a different view.  His overriding concern is with justice, which is a moral imperative. He concludes with a call to put in effect his "difference principle," "a reasonable extension of the political convention of democracy once we face up to the necessity of choosing a complete conception of justice.  What is the "difference principle"?  It is an acknowledgement that there will be some inequality in society, however that inequality should not work against particular individuals, it should raise up everyone.

The bulk of the essay is abstract theory. How exactly would such a theory work "in action"?  Rawls writes:

"the [social] contract doctrine assumes that rational individuals who belong to society must choose together, in one joint act, what is to count among them as just and unjust. They are to decide among themselves once and for all what is to be their conception of justice.  This decision is thought of as being made in a suitably defined initial situation, one of the significant features of which is that no one knows his position in society, nor even his place in the distribution of natural talents and abilities. The principle of justice to which all are forever bound are chosen in the absence of this sort of specific information.  A veil of ignorance prevents anyone from being advantaged by the contingencies of social class and fortune; and hence the bargaining problems that arise in everyday life from the possession of this knowledge do not affect the choice of principles."

A fascinating construct is Rawls's "veil of ignorance."  Imagine a decision-making body in which no one was aware of anyone else's position, wealth, or hereditary status.  

Summer of 2014 Events

Synge

Carver

There were two meetings this summer.  On July 28th we covered Irish playwright John Millington Synge's "The Playboy of the Western World."  On August 25th we discussed "What We Talk about When We Talk about Love," by American short story master Raymond Carver.

Max Planck and "Physics and World Philosophy"

A group of 16 impressive in their collective scientific knowledge came over to the library on a fine midsummer night last Monday for "Physics and World Philosophy," by Max Planck.  The original German title of this piece is "Die Physik im Kampfe um die Weltanschauung," which translates (roughly) as "physics in struggle for a world outlook."  Published originally in 1935 in Leipzig by Barth, the essay represents Planck's effort to extend the epochal discoveries of theoretical physics in the first part of the twentieth century to philosophy.

He concludes as follows:

"There is a fixed point and a secure possession which even the least of us can call his own at all times; an inalienable treasure which guarantees to thinking and feeling men their highest happiness, since it assures their peace of mind, and thus has eternal value. This possession is a pure mind and good will. These afford secure holding ground in the storms of life and they are the primary condition underlying any satisfactory conduct, as equally they are the best safeguard against the torture of remorse."[Emphasis added].

The group consensus was that Planck did not build his bridge from physics to philosophy convincingly. When Planck speaks of a "pure mind" and a "good will" its sounds preachy not techie. He does, however, succeed in offering a framework by which to understand modern physics. No one was better situated to do so, as Planck was a key figure in the elaboration of quantum theory.

Max Planck sat for this portrait the year he won the Nobel Prize (1918).

A plaque posted at the building in which Planck taught at Humboldt University in Berlin commemorates his discovery of the physical constant that bears his name.

Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market"

Title page of First Edition of "Goblin Market"

When the Laura and her sister Lizzie leave their homestead to go "with pitchers to the reedy brook," Lizzie starts to hear the "fruit-call" of the goblin men whose temptation Laura had earlier been unable to resist, having gorged herself on many delicious fruits.

Till Lizzie urged, "O Laura, come;
I hear the fruit-call, but I dare not look:
You should not loiter longer at this brook:
Come with me home ("Goblin Market, Lines 242-245)

A participant at our discussion on Monday the 19th observed that Laura and Lizzie had altogether different interactions with the goblin men.  Laura gave in to their "fruit-call," Lizzie stood firm while the men tried to force feed her. Laura pays for the fruit with a lock of her golden hair. Lizzie pays in coin, which the goblin me toss back at her when she rebuffs them.  Laura is a pleasure seeker, Lizzie a pleasure refuser.

When Lizzie returned to the ailing Laura, they shared the juices. Laura experiences some kind of "meltdown":

Her lips began to scortch,
That juice was wormwood to her tongue,
She loathed the feast;
Writhing as one possessed she leaped and sung,
Rent all her robe, and wrung
Her hands in lamentable haste,
And beat her breast,
Her locks streamed like the torch
Borne by a racer at full speed,
Or like the mane of horses in their flight,
Or like an eagle when she stems the light
Straight toward the sun,
Or like a caged thing freed,
Or like a flying flag when armies run ...

She fell at last;
Pleasure past and anguish past,
Is it death or is it life?  (Lines 493-523)

Laura is now freed from her past experiences. Her meltdown led to a catharsis.

The first line of the next stanza reads: "Life out of death."  Laura is restored to health. Lizzie's heed of the "fruit-call" of the goblin men turns out to be act of self-sacrifice, which becomes for Rossetti a shining example of sisterly love.

Christina Rossetti is said to have maintained that the poem is not a "systematic allegory." I do not, however, consider it to be either nonsense verse or a 19th-century fairy tale.  "Goblin Market" says something profound about the transactions that take place between males and females as they look for the perceived pleasures of life.

Postscript to "Bartleby the Scrivener"

Herman Melville in an 1861 photo

Participants in last week's discussion on "Bartleby the Scrivener" by Herman Melville offered a range of perspectives on this enigmatic short story.  I was particularly taken with one member's recollection of working for the B. Altman department store in New York in the 1940's. She described a throng of middle-aged men, many still sporting their green office visors, who came pouring out of the Altman's back offices at the end of the day.

Melville may have written almost 100 years earlier, however the class of men depicted in "Bartleby the Scrivener" is the same. They are clerical workers in the era before office automation. They copy documents, count money, keep books.

"Bartleby the Scrivener" portrays alienation in the workplace because of the repetitive, seemingly meaningless work many human beings do in their jobs day in and day out. Given economic necessity and a need in every society to preserve a status quo, this alienation becomes a taboo subject.

When I started my professional career, I worked for a number of years for scientific publishing concerns in Manhattan. I can remember discussing Melville's short story with co-workers. Bartleby's attitude (encapsulated in his famous rebuke to his boss when given the task of comparison copy reading : "I prefer not to.") resonated for us, for we were young men contemplating our future financial prospects and the quality of work life that went with them.

The one redeeming grace of the story, which keeps it from being a total "downer," is the growth in the narrator's compassion for Bartleby. At one point he offers to take Bartleby into his home, and at the end of the story he visits Bartleby at the Tombs prison in lower Manhattan and tries to arrange with a Mr. Cutlets (!) for him to receive better quality food. It is too late, however, for Bartleby is already asleep "with kings and counselors."

In the final analysis, the narrator and Bartleby have what can be described as an "impossible relationship." Bartleby simply cannot be helped. The famous last line of the piece, which the narrator tellingly intones in the vocative case, is "Ah Bartleby, Ah Humanity".  Is it uttered as a sigh of resignation, a cry of rebellion, or the voice of compassion?

Poe's "Kingdom of Inorganization"

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

Many thanks to the 19 hardy individuals who came to the library on March 24th, a chilly evening, for our meeting on Poe's short story "The Fall of the House of Usher."  Opinions varied as to the import of the story.

One participant thought the scene in which Roderick Usher and the narrator pore over a litany of mystical texts -- e.g., Vervet et Chartreuse of Gresset, the Belphegor of Machiavelli, the Heaven and Hell of Swedenborg -- was evidence of Poe's interest in unearthing lost philosophical traditions.  Another participant maintained that Poe only wanted to spin a good scary yarn.

In the paragraph after the poem "The Haunted Palace" (which contains the lines "But evil things, in robes of sorrow/ Assailed the monarch's high estate), and preceding the one containing the litany of texts ("Our books -- the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of the mental existence of the invalid"), Poe interposes a paragraph about "an opinion of Usher's" concerning "the sentience of all vegetable things" (emphasis added).

The narrator says: "But, in his [Roderick's] disordered fancy, the idea has assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization."  (emphasis added, again). He goes on to describe Roderick's belief that this phenomenon, the "sentience of all vegetable things" explained the arrangement of the stones of his house and the fungi that had grown over them, the decayed trees around the house, and the murk within the tarn.

Perhaps Poe is offering a metaphor of the growth and decay of all things.  He may also offer it as a mirror of the decay of Roderick's psyche, and his "fall" into irrationality. The monarch of "The Haunted Palace" is reason itself.