User Profile

Houellebecq is phenomenal. While his writing is undoubtedly full of ideas, it is not merely intellectual, for it never fails to provide an emotional punch to the kidney. Always bleak and painful, it presents the modern world in a rather fetishistically hopeless way. I cannot endorse this sentiment. My life has been one trauma after another. Yet, I ended up loving life in a holistic sort of way, with passion and without a tinch of resentment. But I do feel you, Michel, and you might not want to hear this, but yes, I do pity you.

They’ve all come
the boy and his brother
the screams have brought them running
To see their dying mother
They’ve all come
The wop and the bum
Bringing gifts
To their dear old mum

“I’m not Irish myself. I was born in Cambridge. I’m still very English, they tell me. People often say that the English are very cold fish, very reserved, that they have a way of looking at things—even tragedy—with a sense of irony. There’s some truth in it; it’s pretty stupid of them, though. Humor won’t save you; it doesn’t really do anything at all. You can look at life ironically for years, maybe decades; there are people who seem to go through most of their lives seeing the funny side, but in the end, life always breaks your heart. Doesn’t matter how brave you are, or how reserved, or how much you’ve developed a sense of humor, you still end up with your heart broken. That’s when you stop laughing. In the end there’s just the cold, the silence and the loneliness. In the end there’s only death.”

Ah, now, this is the soul I met in the Tropics. Yet, indeed, not the same man. Rather, this is a new man, for this man had fortunate enough to have found the will within him to grasp libration. In the Tropics, we were stuck in the dialectic of decadence and virtue, only allowing for an occasional, perhaps incidental glimpse at the transcendental. Black Spring is Miller's departure with the dialectic. At last, the spirit is free and has found the hole in the reality, the ripple gave it away, and the higher planes were reached. The mystical prevails. The dreams rain supreme. The truth is not to be found but experienced.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

"Define your terms and you’ll never use words like time, death, world, soul. In every statement there’s a little error and the error grows bigger and bigger until the snake is scotched. The poem is the only flawless thing, provided you know what time it is. A poem is a web which the poet spins out of his own body according to a logarithmic calculus of his own divination. It’s always right, because the poet starts from the center and works outward….”

"I am not a traveler, not an adventurer. Things happened to me in my search for a way out. Up till now I had been working away in a blind tunnel, burrowing in the bowels of the earth for light and water. I could not believe, being a man of the American continent, that there was a place on earth where a man could be himself. By force of circumstance I became a Chinamana Chinaman in my own country! I took to the opium of dream in order to face the hideousness of a life in which I had no part. As quietly and naturally as a twig falling into the Mississippi I dropped out of the stream of American life. Everything that happened to me I remember, but I have no desire to recover the past, neither have I any longings or regrets. I am like a man who awakes from a long sleep to find that he is dreaming. A pre-natal condition-the born man living unborn, the unborn man dying born."

"A Thursday afternoon and I’m standing in the Metro face to face with the homely women of Europe. There’s a worn beauty about their faces, as if like the earth itself they had participated in all the cataclysms of nature. The history of their race is engraved on their faces; their skin is like a parchment on which is recorded the whole struggle of civilization. The migrations, the hatreds and persecutions, the wars of Europe -all have left their impress. They are not smiling; their faces are composed and what is written on them is composed in terms of race, character, history. I see on their faces the ragged, multicolored map of Europe, a map streaked with rail, steamship and airplane lines, with national frontiers, with indelible, ineradicable prejudices and rivalries. The very raggedness of the contours, the big gaps that indicate sea and lake, the broken links that make the islands, the curious mythological hangovers that are the peninsulas, all this strain and erosion indicates the conflict that is going on perpetually between man and reality, a conflict of which this book is but another map. I am impressed, gazing at this map, that the continent is much more vast than it seems, that in fact it is not a continent at all but a part of the globe which the waters have broken into, a land broken into by the sea. At certain weak points the land gave way. One would not have to know a word of geology to understand the vicissitudes which this continent of Europe with its network of rivers, lakes, and inland seas has undergone. One can spot at a glance the titanic efforts that were made at different periods, just as one can detect the abortive, frustrated efforts. One can actually feel the great changes of climate that followed upon the various upheavals. If one looks at this map with the eyes of a cartologist one can imagine what it will look like fifty or a hundred thousand years hence.
So it is that, looking at the sea and land which compose the continents of man, I see certain ridiculous, monstrous formations and others again which bear witness to heroic struggles. I can trace, in the long, winding rivers, the loss of faith and courage, the slipping away from grace, the slow, gradual attrition of the soul. I can see that the frontiers are marked with heavy, natural boundaries and also with light, wavering lines, variable as the wind. I can feel just where the climate is going to change, perceive as inevitable that certain fertile regions will wither and other barren places blossom. I am sure that in certain quarters the myth will come true, that here and there a link will be found between the unknown men we were and the unknown men we are, that the confusion of the past will be marked by a greater confusion to come, and that it is only the tumult and confusion which is of importance and that we must get down and worship it. As man we contain all the elements which make the earth, its real substance and its myth; we carry with us everywhere and always our changing geography, our changing climate. The map of Europe is changing before our eyes; nobody knows where the new continent begins or ends."

"For him who is obliged to dream with eyes wide open all movement is in reverse, all action broken into kaleidoscopic fragments. I believe, as I walk through the horror of the present, that only those who have the courage to close their eyes, only those whose permanent absence from the condition known as reality can affect our fate. I believe, confronted with this lucid wideawake horror, that all the resources of our civilization will prove inadequate to discover the tiny grain of sand necessary to upset the stale, stultifying balance of our world. I believe that only a dreamer who has fear neither of life nor death will discover this infinitesimal iota of force which will hurtle the cosmos into whack -instantaneously. Not for one moment do I believe in the slow and painful, the glorious and logical, ingloriously illogical evolution of things. I believe that the whole world-not the earth alone and the beings which compose it, nor the universe whose elements we have charted, including the island universes beyond our sight and instruments-but the whole world, known and unknown, is out of kilter, screaming in pain and madness. I believe that if tomorrow the means were discovered whereby we might fly to the most remote star, to one of those worlds whose light according to our weird calculus will not reach us until our earth itself be extinguished, I believe that if tomorrow we were transported there in a time which has not yet begun we would find an identical horror, an identical misery, an identical insanity. I believe that if we are so attuned to the rhythm of the stars about us as to escape the miracle of collision that we are also attuned to the fate which is being worked out simultaneously here, there, beyond and everywhere, and that there will be no escape from this universal fate unless simultaneously here, there, beyond and everywhere each and every one, man, beast, plant, mineral, rock, river, tree and mountain wills it."

Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex

The Sexual Aberrations

Libido is hungry, most of us know this, and all Freud wants to add to this is that we have known it for a lot longer than we think. We have known it since childhood. But what led Freud to this conclusion and how does he argue for it?

Well, Freud begins by introducing 2 terms: Sexual Object, which refers to a person who induced the sexual desire, and Sexual Aim, which refers to the act one desires to perform with respect to the object. Freud proceeds to discuss how a deviation in either of these relates to the accepted norm.

The most common deviation in reference to the sexual object is the inversion, which is a desire for the same sex rather than the opposite sex. I do not like this terminology. Though Freud himself meant no harm, this terminology could be used and was used to cause harm. By using this terminology, Freud implicitly legitimized the status quo and made it incredibly easy for bigots to justify their beliefs. While this is undoubtedly unfortunate, I believe the text at its core is quite progressive.

I love the fact that Freud does not take a purely biological, inflexible, approach to sexuality which for some reason has been adopted as a modern mantra of sorts. Freud recognizes that inversion, as he calls it, can be something people are born with or something people develop, whether through environmental conditions or trauma. He does not pathologize it, in fact, he argues that there is no reason to think there is anything wrong with people attracted to the same sex, for they are just as capable of living and functioning as any straight person.

Though, we come to another part of this essay which I am not sure how I feel about. Freud argues that people who are attracted to people of the same sex are often attracted to the attributes that are usually associated with the opposite sex. Now, I am not going to outright negate this. This does happen for a multitude of reasons. For example, some people feel guilty about their urges, so they seek out people of the same sex who most closely correspond to the aesthetic ideal of the opposite sex, in turn subsiding their guilt about the act. Yet, in people who are fully accepting of their sexuality, we are unable to observe such a tendency. They seek out partners based on attraction, no matter their sex or gender. This only works to further prove that our understanding of sexuality, both subjective and objective, will continue to fluctuate until we hopefully hit an equilibrium at which sexuality as a concept will dissipate in disutility.

Let us shift our perspective towards a deviation in reference to the sexual aim. Freud states that the union of the genitals in the characteristic act of copulation is taken as the normal sexual aim. Some acts such as touching and looking are considered a natural precursor to the sexual act. Then, there are perversions and they fall into 2 categories. The first one would be an anatomical transgression, a tendency to include in the sexual act areas of the body not involved in the normal sexual aim, such as using of the mouth or anus in sexual behavior. The second one involves lingering in the intermediary behaviors that lead to the sexual aim, such as voyeurism.

It is sometimes simply too comical how quickly Freud jumps from a reactionary to a progressive, and vice versa. In one sentence he argues that men have a natural urge to dominate women in bed, and in the other, he proclaims that perversion is a natural part of existence present in all of us. And since it would appear the perverted tendencies are partly innate, they must be somehow present in children expressed in latent tendencies. Therefore, the investigation must turn to the examination of the sexual life of a child and its development.


Infantile Sexuality

Here Freud confronts our assumptions of childhood innocence directly. How could we possibly pretend that children lack sexuality when we have observed quite a few signs, such as erection and masturbation, which point in an entirely different direction? We, perhaps, do not recall these events due to infantile amnesia, but that does not mean they are not influencing us. Impressions stored in the unconscious, leaking into every thought of ours.

Freud is intelligent and he is quite aware that there is a big question mark around this whole theory of his. If we actually possess our sexuality from so early on, how come most of us did not practice it? Freud explains that this is all thanks to sexual inhibitions established in the form of loathing, shame, and moral and ethical demands, through the process of education which is largely organic in nature but is supported by cultural influences. I doubt this theory is an adequate explanation, but the question remains: What happens to all that latent sexual energy? Freud’s answer is sublimation which enables excessively strong excitations arising from particular sources of sexuality to find an outlet and use in other fields such as artistic activity.

Since that big question mark is no more, Freud proceeds to extensively discuss manifestations of infantile sexuality. He covers thumb-sucking and connects to the breastfeeding. He covers erogenous zones and, most interestingly, how everything can become an erogenous zone. Of course, the ultimate goal of an infant is satisfaction through stimulation of the erogenous zone. Why I believe Freud must be either partially or fully correct in his conclusions is because of the observation he made about the anal zone as a source of sexual pleasure. As a child, I withheld my fecal matter, sometimes even up to 3 weeks, simply because the pressure exerted upon my anus produced too great a pleasure. Even before finding out about Freud’s speculation, I suspected that my pleasure was sexual in nature. Quite rightly so, for to this day, the area of the body which brings me the most sexual pleasure is indeed my anal zone.

Freud asserts that the first sexual bloom is between 3 and 5 years of age. This is when children start sexually exploring their environment and inevitably find out that some people do not have a penis, inducing a reaction of fear, and creating a castration complex. This, I believe, is largely Freud being too much Freud. But, naturally, such a reactionary statement of his is always followed by a progressive one. Since there is always a risk of a child stumbling upon their parents having sexual intercourse and being traumatized by it, for to a child it appears as a violent act, it only stands to reason we should educate children on the matters of sex early on in their life. With this, I strongly agree, especially because it has been proven with time that early sex education can only work to improve people's lives.

Psychosexual development

Oral - (Birth - 1 year) - Mouth
Orally aggressive: chewing gum and the ends of pencils, etc.
Orally passive: smoking, eating, kissing, oral sexual practices
Oral stage fixation might result in a passive, gullible, immature, manipulative personality.

Anal - (1 - 3 years) - Bowel and bladder elimination
Anal retentive: Obsessively organized, or excessively neat
Anal expulsive: reckless, careless, defiant, disorganized, coprophiliac

Phallic - (3 - 6 years) - Genitalia
Oedipus complex (in boys and girls); according to Sigmund Freud.
Electra complex (in girls); according to Carl Jung. Promiscuity and low self-esteem in both sexes.

Latency - (6 - Puberty) - Dormant sexual feelings
Immaturity and an inability to form fulfilling non-sexual relationships as an adult if fixation occurs in this stage.

Genital - (Puberty - Death) - Sexual interests mature
Frigidity, impotence, sexual perversion, great difficulty in forming a healthy sexual relationship with another person

The Transformations of Puberty

With puberty, the sexual object is found in some other than a self and the sexual impulses are woven into a singular sexual aim while the genitals assume primacy over the other erogenous zones. This is when we start obsessively masturbating!

Freud proposes the idea that sexual excitation is derived not from the so-called sexual parts alone, but from all the bodily organs. This culminates in the idea of a quantity of libido - with a mental representation - the ego-libido, whose production, increase or diminution, distribution, and displacement explain observed psychosexual phenomena. This ego-libido is only accessible to study, though, when it has been put to use on objects, that is when it has become object-libido, but from this representation, the theory proposes, it should be possible to express all phenomena in terms of the economics of the libido.

From puberty onwards, the difference between men and women, and their distinctness have huge amounts of influence on the shaping of human life. The resulting sex differences include earlier and readier development of the sexual inhibitions in girls in contrast to boys, but auto-erotic activity is more of a masculine nature even as it manifests in girls.

In childhood, the main erogenous zone for girls is the clitoris, and for boys glans penis. As puberty hits, boys experience the heightening of the libido, while girls experience a heightening of repression, specifically focused on the clitoris. The denial of sexuality causes an overestimation of the sexual parts in a man, eventually resulting in the woman’s acceptance of her sexuality in submitting to the sexual act. This leads to the transference of focus from the clitoris to the vagina making it the new leading sexual zone. At least, that is what Freud claims. I do believe his views warranted critique, especially from the feminists. His views are phallocentric and require a complete disregard for a female point of view. This, while understandable considering Freud largely based his theories on heavy introspection, is still a huge failure on Freud’s part. I can perhaps sympathize with the reasoning since women are taught to repress their sexuality even to this day, but to then turn that experience and make out the whole of female sexuality to be based on submission to a man’s libido is asinine.

Terminology

Repression - of some of the components of excessive strength in the disposition - so their energy finds expression as symptoms.

Sublimination - which enables excessively strong excitations arising from particular sources of sexuality to find an outlet and use in other fields e.g. artistic activity.
Reaction formation could be described as a sub-species of this.

Accidental Experiences - the influence of which is hard to estimate due to their nature, however evidence for their interaction with these other forces is strong.

Precocity - manifested in the interruption, abbreviation, or bringing to an end of the infantile period of latency.

Temporal factors - whilst the order in which the various instinctual impulses come into activity seems to be phylogenetically determined, as is the length of time during which they are able to manifest themselves, variations do occur, which Freud argues exercise a determining influence on one's final sexual instinct.

Pertinacity of Early Impressions - Freud argues that a psychical factor of unknown origin, increases the importance of early sexual manifestations - to give increased pertinacity or susceptibility to fixation in persons who later become neurotics or perverts.

-----------

My overall experience with this book is solid. No matter how many times Freud overreaches and overgeneralizes, he always eventually humbles himself. He knew he was treading through unknown territory and had both courage to do so and reason enough to understand that his conclusions will hardly be final.

One Hundred Years of Solitude is Ulysses, except instead of following one peep while he rehashes a Greek epic in the span of a day, all while experiencing the whole of the Irish culture and the beauty of Dublin, we are following a whole family, generations, of odd peeps rehashing a very dramatized version of Colombian history and culture. Hope, imperialism, war, love, death, sex, the beginning, and the end. It is all in there and it all flows surprisingly well. I even dare say that what Márquez did here takes far more skill than what Joyce did in Ulysses. I admire it, especially for the anti-utopianism, I do, I just cannot love it. I suppose I did find Márquez's writing style a bit tedious. And although this admittedly is simply a preference, it did prevent me from truly immersing myself into the work. I must confess, at times I did wish that this book was written by some lunatic like William S. Burroughs on one of his drug-fueled benders, for at least then I could really feel like I was on some all-encompassing trip. Yeah, sue me, but this work could have, indeed, should have been more asinine. But then again, not every book is written for me. And from what I've heard, the people it was written for, they loved it. So there's that.

What is there to say about David Foster Wallace (full name is obligatory) that has not been said before? He is brilliant. Stories, you know, whatever, they don't matter to me, I just love how he thinks and how he manages to transpose that onto the page. Hell, as clearly shown in this book and as Lipsky rightly points it out, Wallace had a natural gift for shitting out prose straight out of his rima oris. Honestly, if I ever meet someone like Wallace, someone with such a keen capacity to discuss anything off the cuff in such a knowledgable and witty manner, I am locking them up in my basement to never allow for a chance to lose them. You are missed, David, you really really really are. I wish I locked you in my basement. If I did, you would still be here to enlighten me now and again. I badly needed to hear some of the stuff in here. The whole "using thousands of pages of continental philosophy and lit theory to prove that you a right just to regret it later" was dropped on my head old-school piano style. Maybe, sometimes, we are too clever for our own good, or maybe it's plain arrogance. I can't yet decide. But as I was emerging out of the rubble, recovering my composure, ridding my blazer off of the remains of the piano, I was blinded by a statement so obvious, so god damn obvious, yet so fucking true, that I immediately became enlightened. All the jest aside, who reads realism to experience the real? I hear it all the time, how great and timeless classics are. Great escape they might be, but they hardly feel real and timeless to me. Wallace put it well: "Life now is completely different than the way it was then. Does your life approach anything like a linear narrative?" This humble discretion made me rave for a day, and even after I thought through all the implications of this postmodern wisdom, I could not shake off the feeling that I will never be okay with it. I will never be okay with how true it is. And the worst part... I have no clue whether I am melancholy and lament the loss of the narrative or euphoric that I do not have to live life by some premade schematic and see it as linear progress with predictable story beats of the slow trip from a cradle to a crematorium. Thank you, David Foster Wallace, you fucked me up real good.