Conversations

Is this fiction? Often it seems more like philosophy. Yes, I know the narrator says at one point that "everything is fiction" but that is meant as a salvo in a rhetorical battle and was countered with "everything is real."

Plato wrote philosophy as dialogues--i.e. conversations. And those conversations are with Socrates, who was, most people believe, non-fictional, as were (some?) others in the dialogues but of course these weren't transcripts of recordings so these dialogues were made up. And Plato thought nothing was real except forms which we perceive through their "shadows."

Did Plato see the forms or did he deduce their existence from their shadows? One idea that emerges during the conversation in this book is that the conventions of art so limit the possible that the whole of a work could be generated hologram-like from any part much as predictive text can complete my google search phrase or suggest responses to my email. This unity of all the parts explains how a work can have continuity errors (but reality cannot!) And yet this book seems to be arguing that, by sufficiently widening the context, something which appears to be such an error can turn out not to be one at all.

We perceive books through their words, or the words of their translators and the words of this book tell of conversations as remembered and that by someone who can't even tell us for sure if he ever sleeps. And in his memories are memories of memories--things forgotten which come to mind during the conversation. And that conversation is mainly about a work of TV fiction which is partly based on real world events and filmed on location, assuming that what we are told about the real world is not "fake news."

The plot of the TV fiction includes the making of a movie which is fictional, both in content and in the fact that it is a ruse for an espionage operation. And in the film, two characters have a conversation in some ways like the original conversation being remembered.

The actual plot (did I just say "actual?") is about a man whose life is a series of conversations and nocturnal memories of them. This man lives for conversation which makes him dependent of good conversationalists similar to the way we denizens of Goodreads are dependent of the writers of books to participate. The actual content of what is discussed is declared lesser than the relationship with whom it is discussed. "What did I care about stories! My task had only to do with friendship, the game of responses and understandings, facial expressions and tones of voice — in a word, everything that expressed a thought that was either rival or shared."

It is this choice--relationship over agreement as to what is real-- that solves the blind men and the elephant paradox. On a less philosophical and more practical level, the "blind men" may collaborate on a movie, losing the "personal unity of the imagination' of a single creator but gaining a "transpersonal unity." However, the book we read was written by just one person (not counting the translator) so our author doesn't bother with the superior transpersonal view his character extols. And I'm glad he does.