The Worm at the Core

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10/03/2015

The Worm at the Core

A decade ago, on the recommendation of a friend, I tried to read Ernest Becker, who wrote about, to quote one of his book titles, the denial of death in everyday life. It was tough going, and didn’t sink in.

Now, I have an empirically validated, extended, and entirely readable version in The Worm at the Core. It’s one of the most enlightening books I’ve ever read, making the point that we construct our way of life to hide the debilitating fact of our impending death from ourselves. I write this on a Saturday, for example, and the fact that a last Saturday and a next Saturday and so on are mapped out masks me from the uncertainty of my existence. Saturdays, no matter how certain they feel, are just a part of our invented scheme of things.

“The scheme of things is so deeply ingrained that virtually everything we think, feel, and do is shaped by it. It not only provides each of us with our knowledge and explanations of the world, it also supplies the fundamental structure of our conscious experience. Right now, your current author and professor of psychology is writing this important book on Friday, October 10, 2014, at 1:55 P.M. sitting in his office in the United States of America. What could be more meaningful than that? But if he peers in from outside his cultural worldview and the meanings it provides, he sees just a warm-blooded animal pecking at a piece of plastic in the midst of an undifferentiated flow of experiences that will, sooner or later, inevitably be interrupted by a heart attack, cancer, car accident, or the ravages of old age. What time is it now for you, the reader? What does it mean that it’s some day of the week, some month, some year? Isn’t that all an illusory structuring of your conscious experiences provided for you by your culture to help you impose order and permanence on something chaotic and fleeting? If this is a Thursday, how comforting an illusion it is that there will be another Thursday, and another one after that” (p. 36).

"the fundamental structure of our conscious experience" Wow!

--Julian

Posted at 08:37 PM in Books | Permalink

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Is the implication here that we would somehow be better off if we spent our Saturdays and every other day sitting around stewing about our impending deaths? If so, I can't agree, because of course it's only religious people, people who believe they still somehow exist after the demise of their bodies, who have any reason to worry about death.

Posted by: Only a Blockhead | 10/06/2015 at 08:21 AM

Good points. Let me finish the book and I'll get back to you.
--Julian

Posted by: Julian Bamford | 10/09/2015 at 08:11 AM

お待たせしました。

Implication isn’t that death is better stewed over. It’s that we can become aware of how our worldview and self-esteem are ways we keep thoughts of our inevitable death at bay.

The promise of the book, to quote from the final page, is, “the vast knowledge we have now about the pervasive influence of the awareness of death on human affairs may give us some purchase on how we can get better at living out our mortal lives.”

Posted by: Julian Bamford | 11/01/2015 at 05:58 PM

Kafka said it better: "The meaning of life is that it stops."

But once that "meaning" (a word with which I'm still uncomfortable) is understood (and it's not hard to grasp; most of us get it in our teens) it seems to me that ought to move on to other things.

You are what you do, and the things I do as I move through the years are not "ways to keep thoughts of my inevitable death at bay." They are ways to milk whatever pleasure I can from my time on earth, pleasures I enjoy even as I'm aware that there will be a stop. If I didn't know I was going to die, or thought I was going to continue to exist after my death, I might not relish these pleasures as much as I do, but again, I really think that, with the possible exception of those afflicted by religion, even the C-students get that we're all going to die, and that it's really no big deal.

Posted by: Only a Blockhead | 11/02/2015 at 12:07 PM

“It seems to me that we ought to move on to other things.”

But awareness of and fear of death operates mostly unconsciously. “We may take it for granted that the fear of death is always present in our mental functioning.” (Gregory Zilboorg, Fear of Death). We couldn’t move on if we tried. And the consequences are the news headlines:

“Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death.” James Baldwin The Fire Next Time

I hope I can become more conscious of my unconscious. And one benefit is as you say: “If I didn’t know I was going to die… I might not relish these pleasures as much.” Samuel Johnson: “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

Posted by: Julian Bamford | 11/04/2015 at 11:42 PM

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Books David Finished in 2024

Duncan, Dennis: The Oulipo and Modern Thought
My last faculty talk is coming up. Maybe I'll do it about Oulipo, that group of nuts, one of whom put down a whole fiction without using the symbol also missing from this short blurb.
Milne, A.A.: The Red House Mystery
Raymond Chandler, for unsurprising reasons, didn't like A.A. Milne's Red House Mystery, but I enjoyed it. It is light and funny and sharp. There's an amateur detective and a sidekick who see the humor in setting themselves up as a Holmes and Watson duo, and Milne has fun with that. I wish he'd written more about the pair, but I guess he was more interested in bears.
Walsh, Colin: Kala
This is a dark and well-done coming-of-age novel. The author skillfully moves between three voices to create vivid pictures of these three central characters as teenagers and as the adults they become, and also creates a vivid picture of the bleak Irish town in which they live, and in which the center of the group, a girl named Kala, dies.
Saknussemm, Kris: Enigmatic Pilot
Why had I never heard of Kris Saknussemm? In Enigmatic Pilot, Mark Twain meets Thomas Pynchon. The language is rich and lively, the story surprising and rich in things wonderful enough to make us gasp. It's a road novel through the American 1840s but has absolutely none of the fustian that besmirches so much historical fiction. There's a boy and an escaped slave on a boat, a riverboat gambler with a prosthetic hand, a female gunslinger who would put Annie Oakley to shame, and much more besides. And best of all, this is, apparently, the second book in a series, and the author, Kris Saknussemm, has written a stack of other books, too. There's lots to look forward to.
Connelly, Michael: Lost Light
Bosch has a private detective license now, but he's not using it. Then an an old cop colleague, confined to a wheelchair after being shot, drops something into his lap. He pursues it (you knew he would) and it's a twisty compelling story. His ex-wife Elizabeth is back in the picture, too, leading to some additional emotional complexity. I'm glad Connelly wrote a lot of these.
Collins, Wilkie: The Woman in White
The novel reached its apogee during the Victorian years, and Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White is a perfect example of the kinds of excellence that Victorian novels display. The plot keeps one turning pages, and the characters are fine, particularly the archvillain Count Fosco. You wouldn't want to share a drink with most of the other characters—they're too namby-pamby—but an absinthe with Fosco would be a treat. As is the rule with "sensation" novels of this type, there are lots of plot twists and reversals, but two, which I was expecting as I neared the book's end, never came to pass. I believed that the protagonist, Walter Hartright (name symbolism much?), would somehow shed himself of the insipid Laura Fairlie with whom he was besotted for her much more worthy half-sister, Marian Halcombe. Likewise, I expected that Laura Fairlie, who Walter insists upon marrying, would, in the end, turn out to be instead her look-alike, the woman in white. My expectations were surely formed by the many more modern novels I've read, novels not published in serial form in monthly magazines for popular audiences.
Carey, Louise: Inscape
The protagonist of this cyberpunk thriller in which corporations control the world is so naive at the beginning that it's cloying, and this nearly made me put the book down. Reading on, I understood the reason she is that way, and that made it palatable. I'm glad I stuck around because the book gets better as it goes. It is fascinating to see how the author, Louise Carey, and the character both deal with that naivete and the sinister reason for it.
Cabrera Infante, Guillermo: Guilty of Dancing the Chachachá
Nobody has more fun with language than Cabrera Infante, and the fun is infectious. Each of the three stories in this collection begins with a couple in a restaurant, but as each is associated with a different kind of music, they are not identical. The final, a foray into the chachachá, is a delight. Let's dance!
Connelly, Michael: City of Bones
One of the best in the series so far. The bones from below the city of light surface, and Harry Bosch finally decides to leave the LAPD—which makes sense, because somehow I'd remembered him as a private eye rather than a policeman from the few entries in the series I'd read before starting this systematic traversal.
Newby, Eric: A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
In the amateurism of the two adventurers who set out on this "short walk," in Newby's dry and self-deprecating humor, in the stoicism and dry wit with which Newby and his companion (barely) survive the walk, this book strikes me as quintessentially English, or at least quintessentially English of its time. I'm a colonial, though, so what do I know? Evelyn Waugh agrees with me on this, though, so there's that. At the tail end of their journey, our adventurers cross paths with the legendary Wilfred Thesiger. He gives them dinner, at the conclusion of which he watches them blowing up their air mattresses and, in a line that closes the book and serves as is exemplary, remarks, "God, you must be a couple of pansies."

Books Julian Read Recently

Alice McDermott: Absolution
In this absorbing novel, the wife of a US engineer dispatched to Vietnam in the Kennedy/Diem early 1960s recalls expat life centering on various attempts at altruism. It is masterful storytelling with vivid characters, inviting us to make up our own minds about how cynical or otherwise is one character’s description of that altruism as “a disappearing generation’s efforts at inconsequential good.”. (****)
Anne Enright: The Wren, The Wren
Why didn’t I get into this portrait of an Irish family/celebration of nature? The scattered structure: first person/third person? The dark places it sometimes went: self-harm; child abuse; animal abuse? Because it seemed the author was clearing a bunch of disparate good ideas out of her notebook? For this reader, in spite of its verve and sensitivity and surprise, it didn’t hang together or really go anyplace. (**)
Paul Lynch: Prophet Song
I don’t note books I don’t finish, but here’s an exception: a finely written account of a family facing totalitarianism and war. It was relentless: I continued reading as a training in empathy, but it was finally too upsetting to continue. The horror is knowing the events of the story are being lived in Ukraine, Palestine and anywhere migrants are in flight.
Chris Broad: Abroad in Japan
A serviceable entry in the foreigner-fish-out-of-water/my-adventures-learning-to-love-Japan genre. The UK author gives it a high taboo-word-per-page ratio, with some variants that must have arisen since I lived there ("Double fuck!"??). (**)
Barbara Kingsolver: Flight Behavior
An absorbing novel about an east-coast rural family and a surprise ecological event. Mesmerizing, entertaining, thought-provoking. (****)
Junot Diaz: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
A thrilling balls-to-the-wall account of a Dominican family in the US, and their prior life and later returns to the homeland, which – in its agony and ecstasy – is the real star of this tale. Laid back and electric, both. Superb. (First read 9 years ago, and almost totally forgotten.) (****)
Barbara Kingsolver: Pigs in Heaven
What a surprise: here are characters from Kingsolver’s debut "The Bean Trees," developed, deepened, facing life’s challenges, with the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma as a backdrop. A glorious marriage of hyper-realism and outrageous coincidence, this is top-notch socially conscious storytelling. (****)
Elizabeth Chatwin & Nicholas Shakespeare (Eds.): Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin
Letters carefully linked with background comment as necessary. There are also footnotes, sometime by the person addressed in the letter, expanding, explaining, and occasionally – when his wife Elizabeth – contradicting what was in a letter. Chatwin, gifted and complex, was a hard-working and compelling correspondent. The result here is a sensitively edited, enlightening account of a life both awe-inspiring and tragic. (***)
Lafcadio Hearn: Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan
Hearn arrived in Japan 130 years ago, and the essays penned here are of a new and thrilling world discovered. The tone is sepia for his first trip down kanji-filled and lantern-decorated streets, and on a rickshaw excursion to Kamakura and Enoshima, but when he’s in his garden with the plants and insects it might be yesterday. The strangeness of Japan does cause overreliance on adjectives like “tiny,” and on the multiple myths and legends and ghostly tales related at length. My only great surprise was his support of his students’ vows to die for their emperor (“That wish is holy”). Hearn was a fascinating character, and this is a fascinating book. (***)
Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar
The hijinks of college teens on an expenses-paid stay in New York take a dark turn when the narrator, driven all her life, loses her way mentally. (*)

Books Mark read recently

Scanlan, Kathryn: The Dominant Animal: Stories
This is a book of super-short fiction. Of the 40 or so stories, most are less than two pages. Nothing in the writing here is beautiful or kind, but somehow I whizzed thought it all. Some stories leave out points that would have made them more accessible. What the heck happened? A lot of the stories end on a sudden whim of observation and leave one wanting to read more. Most of the stories focus on a negative experience with a male, with strange detail, and after finishing a story, I often wanted to take a hot shower to get clean. I did enjoy "Design for a Carpet" and "Mother's Teeth." (**)
Woodrell, Daniel: Woe to Live On: A Novel
Confederate soldiers on a journey to fight Yankees in Missouri and Kansas. Woodrell's voice in this novel is similar to Cormac McCarthy's. Lots of brutal killing and torture and the story seems to float along on southern dialog and an internal monologue of fear by the speaker. There are moments of occasional humanity, but for the most part the plot is a thin gruel of spilt blood, wandering, waiting, and revenge. (***)
Munro, Alice: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
There are three standout stories in this very fine collection by Alice Munro. She has a real knack for creating a variety of believable characters. The title story was my favorite: two teenagers pull a sour trick resulting in a surprising ending. In the story "Queenie" we see a young woman scrambling to make her way in the world, using a bad marriage as a way to make some progress. The final story, "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" veers off into occasional long-winded reflection, as one man struggles with the loss of his wife to Alzheimer's. Munro is a master story teller. (*****)
Waters, Sarah: Fingersmith
Sarah Waters: Fingersmith Such a good story: the get rich scheme of a handsome scoundrel twists and turns into... Two women in the story are quite duped into role playing. A lot of playful sex is talked about, but not much happens in the way of happiness or fulfillment. As always, Waters is right on target with the voices and the atmosphere in this London area thriller. (*****)
Barry, Sebastian: The Temporary Gentleman: A Novel
What a sad story. This novel takes place on the Gold Coast in Africa, where an Irish soldier/engineer recounts his life growing up near Galway and Sligo. Back and forth we go between Ireland and Africa. Like an unseen shadow, in Ireland, what slays the characters in this novel is alcohol. Back in Africa, the memories of the homeland, and the attempt at living again are equally daunting foes. Excellent story telling. (****)
Donna Tartt: The Little Friend
Donna Tartt's second novel does not disappoint. The story of a young girl, Harriet, who seeks to revenge the death of her brother, Robin. The backdrop is a small town in Mississippi, and the goings on of 4 or 5 sisters, whose lives all changed with the murder of young Robin; hung from a tree. Harriet wants to solve the mystery. Who killed him? She gathers clues, and encounters the wrath of the local druggies. Quite a page-turner, and like Tartts' other two novels almost nothing is left out or glossed over. There were times in the novel where I felt her writing fell short; places where I couldn't actually see what was happening from the writing, as is the case when she encounters the villainous brother, Danny Ratliff on top of the water tower. The writing perspective seemed off (who was where and when?) as a battle ensued. But one is so caught up in the narrative we read on and on. Also, who is the little friend who is suggested in the title? Harriet? Hey? Robin? I don't think it is the best title she could have thought of for such a wonderful and awful story. (****)
Strout, Elizabeth: Olive, Again: A Novel
A wonderful sequel to an earlier collection of stories, Olive Kitteridge. Clearly, Strout is a masterful writer; each of the characters in her stories I can see clearly in my mind. These stories span Olive's life from middle-age to old-age, with thoughtfulness, kindness, reflection, and regret. In a general way of summing up, this collection tells us that life sends us problems that are most times not of our own making-- and that we do our best with what we have to work with, and what we think is best to do at the time. The prevalence of loneliness that comes with old age is a dominant theme in the later stories here. Read this book. (*****)
Strout, Elizabeth: Olive Kitteridge
It's been more than a few years since I first read this wonderful collection of stories. As a prelude to reading her next collection, Olive, Again, I read these stories again. Wonderful insight into a community in Crosby, Maine and how they encounter each other. Henry and Olive Kitteridge function as the main characters, and each story includes them if in even a small way. Prior to my second reading, my favorite story was The Piano Player, but this time I enjoyed Incoming Tide most. Her stories can veer into a local gossipy mode, yet there is always tension lurking in the next sentence. (*****)
Alan Hollinghurst: The Folding Star: A Novel
Edward Manners goes to Belgium to teach English to two boys who are getting below average marks in high school. When not teaching, he helps out at a museum focused on a Jewish painter who was hidden from the Nazis during WWII. Manners falls in love with one of his students, and a lively adventure ensues as Manners undertakes to seduce him. The narrative is fun, at times cynical of gay life, and there is a lot of sex. One also learns a good deal of personal history of growing up in post-war England and Belgium. Hollinghurst is a brilliant writer, and I learned many new words. (*****)
Alison Moore: The Pre-War House and Other Stories
After reading the Booker Prize nominated The Lighthouse, I was excited to read this earlier collection of 24 short stories from Alison Moore. They are a little underwhelming; as if written by a grad student. Moore is great at creating tension and awkward scenes. She is an artist when painting a picture of place and atmosphere. Some stories are creepy, and one longs for a hot bath. However, I found them to be a bit formulaic. By the third or fourth story, I was keeping my eyes open for the one clue in the narrative that I would return to in climactic ending sentences. I like Moor's sparse style, and I will read more of her work (written after The Lighthouse) in the future. (***)

Films Julian Watched Recently

Wim Wenders: Perfect Days
This tale of days in the life of a Tokyo blue-collar worker makes a credible stab at the perhaps impossible task of depicting the extraordinary within the ordinary. Rich. Insightful. Life-affirming. And I learned to empathize with people and places I normally ignore, so there was that, too. (*****)
Killers of the Flower Moon
The 1920s: the oil-rich Osage Nation Reservation in Oklahoma is awash with con-artists trying to grift a piece of the action. And the murders begin... The acting is powerful: De Niro and Lily Gladstone are effectively subdued, leaving the histrionics to DiCaprio. Every frame of the bloated running time adds to the atmosphere, but a more disciplined director than Scorsese could have brought this story in at a reasonable 2 hours, saving the excess for a director’s cut or TV version. As it is, the initial horror is unrelenting and exhausting, making you wonder if you want to continue through the 206 (count ‘em; we did) minutes. (Streaming) (***)
Oppenheimer
This story of the man and the weapon is told with flair and imagination. It’s shattered into fragments of time and space for added mystery, suspense, impact and sometimes irony. Surprising and sometimes shocking. (I avoided the 3hrs-no-intermission at the theater, so was glad to see it on DVD.) (***)
The Holdovers
1970: an elite New England prep school over the Christmas holidays. Sure, it’s by-the-numbers, but this artfully shot, warmly acted, smartly written, big-hearted tale of pain and redemption is a touching pleasure. (DVD) (***)
Kill Your Darlings
A recreation of the birth of the Beats in the 1940s. War rages in Europe. Ginsberg has a troubled family. He meets the charismatic, transgressive Carr at staid Columbia University who introduces him to Kerouac and Burroughs, and a New Vision is born. Then there’s the murder. Entertaining if you already know all that, but probably not otherwise. (DVD) (**)

Things NC Consumed Recently

F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
More than forty years on since my last reading, this classic novel is remarkable not so much for its romantic longings as for its emphasis on American violence, its depiction of a country in which California hardly matters and its meeting of the Mid West and East Coast. Plus its succinct nine chapters, its elegant prose and its almost noirish tone: Tom breaking Myrtle's nose would seem to foreshadow Lee Marvin throwing hot coffee in Gloria Grahame's face in The Big Heat - and the use of flashbacks helps too. I'd like to thank the publicity for the recent film version and my current cold for sending me back to the novel (and my young self).
Isabelle Eberhardt
In 1904, Isabelle Eberhardt drowned in the desert, leaving behind, among other things, various writings in French (a novel, travel notes, a journal, short stories), Islam, Lake Geneva, a husband, debauchery in kif, sex and alcohol, and a small collection of male clothing, which she wore habitually, along with her man's name. The lazy say she was an early hippie, because of her nomadic, hedonistic life, and being the first one to die at 27. Lindqvist has her in a line from Villon, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Celine and Genet. Her story can only get stranger and more fascinating. "In The Shadow of Islam", "The Passionate Nomad", "The Oblivion Seekers" and Annette Kobak's biography are one way in. You'll find there an apt fatal romanticism for vast desert spaces and a depiction of Islam to ponder. Among other things.
Listen to Britain - Humphrey Jennings
Terence Davies is surely right to say Listen to Britain is in part an attempt to define the nation on the eve of its being invaded. But that invasion never came. A little prematurely, Humphrey Jennings's film records what left later, with something messier, less defined usurping through the back door. Terence Davies is surely right to say Listen to Britain is one of the greatest things these islands have produced.
Patience (After Sebald)
Grant Gee's documentary uses a palette of pale black and white, maps and talking heads to comment on W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, an account of his walk through Suffolk. Unlike the book, where a variety of genres (and photographs) coheres to make a recognisable whole, the film suffers slightly from a lack of direction. It is too specific to serve as an introduction and lacks an overriding arc that might describe a thesis. However, with its archival footage, interviews with the author and shots of the route taken, it is essential viewing for those already in thrall to all things Sebaldian - even if the ending, alas, veers close to Conan Doyle and fairies-in-the-garden territory.