Living the Write Life

Scientific vs. Fictional Literature Revisited

2011-10-03T18:52:00.000-07:00

I've been rereading a previous entry on my blog "Scientific vs. Fictional Literature," and as so often happens, I ran across a related passage in a book I'm now reading: Next Word, Better Word: The Craft of Writing Poetry by Stephen Dobyns.

"As I said, we go to poetry and the other arts for knowledge, to expand our moral experience of the world, for sustenance, survival, and connection. The degree to which we get this necessary mixture from textbooks, biographies, memoirs, and journalism is limited. We see the apparent effects of a series of uncertain causes. These forms of nonfiction present us with the shadow, while the arts have the ability to present us with the living body. Doesn't one learn more about whaling from Moby Dick than from the best piece of nonfiction written on the subject?

"In Feeling and Form, Susanne Langer writes:

"Non-discursive form in art . . . [articulates] knowledge that cannot be rendered discursively because it concerns experiences which are not formally amenable to the discursive projection. Such experiences are the rhythms of life, organic, emotional and mental, which are not simply periodic but endlessly complex, and sensitive to every sort of influence. All together they combine the dynamic patterns of feeling. It is this pattern that only non-discursive symbolic forms can present and that is the point and purpose of artistic construction.

" . . . every work of art expresses, more or less purely, more or less subtly, not feelings and emotions which the artist has, but feelings and emotions which the artist knows; his insight into the nature of sentience, his picture of vital experience, physical, emotive and fantastic.

"Such knowledge is not expressible in ordinary discourse . . . . [T]he forms of feeling and the forms of discursive expression are logically incommensurate, so that any exact concept of feeling and emotion cannot be projected into the logical form of literal language. Verbal statement, which is our normal and most reliable means of communication, is almost useless for conveying knowledge about the precise character of the affective life."

Scientific vs. Fictional Literature

2009-06-27T08:52:00.000-07:00

Which Literature Type Offers More Human Insight: Fiction or Scientific?

"The highest problem of any art is to cause by appearance the illusion of a higher reality." Johann von Goethe

The question of which "literature" type offers more human insight: fiction or scientific—seems to me to be somewhat of an oxymoron.

What exactly do we mean by "scientific"--as opposed to "fictional"--literature?

The Oxford American Dictionary defines the term "literature" as "written works, especially those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit: a great work of literature."

The first bullet under the definition says "books and writings published on a particular subject: the literature on environmental epidemiology. (The third bullet says "leaflets and other printed matter used to advertise products or give advice.")

Again, what do we mean when we ask the question "Which literature type offers more human insight: fiction or scientific? What sense of the word "literature" are we referring to? It seems to me that when we speak of "fictional literature" we are using the first--and most general--sense of the definition. When we talk about "scientific literature" we are using the second sense of the definition.

As I said the term "scientific literature" seems to me an oxymoron when we talk about literature in the first sense of the word.

Scientific literature must refer to the second definition: books and writings published on a particular subject. Darwin's Origin of Species or other examples of scientific literatue would generally not be considered works of "superior artistic merit" such as Cervantes' Don Quixote or Tolstoy's War and Peace.

They are simply two different things. Each with their own merit. The comparative value of which probably depends upon the person who reads them and his/or her natural propensities. Which "literature" he is naturally able to receive and get the most out of.

It seems to me that this question is asking us to compare apples and oranges.

Immediately, the question comes to mind: does Newton's Law of Gravity offer us "human insight"?

The law of gravity is fundamental to how we live life on the planet earth. It is one of the most fundamental laws of nature. Life, in one sense, would be entirely different for us if we were in a gravity-less environment--think outer-space station. On the other hand, we would still love--possibly, unfortunately hate--still have ambition, still ponder death. All the themes that great literature addresses.

Newton's finding of the Law of Gravity and any "scientific" literature about it, is fundamentally important to life on the planet, but it's effect on our lives is different than pondering the themes of Tolstoy's War and Peace.

My hunch is that the question is fundamentally flawed. Although it does bring interesting questions to mind.

Are we asking, for example, which provides more human insight: Darwin's Origin of Species (I assume that falls under the category of scientific literature) or Tolstoy's War and Peace?

As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.[105](Source: Wikipedia)

This taken from Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection.

As I proceeded to read the entry on Darwin I came across the following:

Darwin’s book [on natural selection] was half way when, on 18 June 1858, he received a paper from Wallace describing natural selection. Shocked that he had been “forestalled”, Darwin sent it on to Lyell, as requested, and, though Wallace had not asked for publication, he suggested he would send it to any journal that Wallace chose. His family was in crisis with children in the village dying of scarlet fever, and he put matters in the hands of Lyell and Hooker. They decided on a joint presentation at the Linnean Society on 1 July of On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection; however, Darwin’s baby son died of the scarlet fever and he was too distraught to attend.[98]

Tell me, at that moment in Darwin's life what was more useful to him: a paper on Newton's Theory of Gravity or John Donne's Death Be Not Proud (OK, it's not fictional literature; how about Les Miserables?--or supply me with a better choice.)

When I was with my mother the last day of her life, I spent part of that day reading the final pages of Alice Walker's "The Color Purple." Coincidence? Maybe. Perhaps it was a diversion from issues too big for my mind to cope with. Or perhaps I felt solace connecting with another human being (the author) who was attempting to grapple with questions ("great emotion reflected upon in a time of great calm") too big for the mind to cope with.

I think the question places a dicohotomy--an either/or--that is not really useful.

I am a reader of literature--fiction and non-fiction. (Is this the real question: which gives us more insight into human nature: fiction or non-fiction?)

They both play an important part in my life. I am fond of both. They play different roles in my life and those roles are synergistic.

A writer who has a great understanding of science--or philosophy--does something different than the scientist or philosopher. Perhaps the quality of insight each gives into human nature depends on the "tendencies" of the receiver, the ability of the receiver to receive.

From C.P. Snow's The Two Cultures:

"Some of the very best scientists . . . had read everything that literary people talk about. But that's very rare. Most of the rest . . . would modestly confess, "Well, I've tried to read some of Dickens," rather as though Dickens were an extraordinarily esoteric, tangled and dubiously rewarding writer, something like Rainer Maria Rilke.

Remember, these are very intelligent men. Their culture is in many ways an exacting and admirable one. It doesn't contain much art, with the exception, an important exception, of music. Verbal exchange, insistent argument. Long-playing records. Colour photography. The ear, to some extent the eye. Books, very little . . . And of the books which to most literary persons are bread and butter, novels, history, poetry, plays, almost nothing at all. It isn't that they're not interested in the psychological or moral or social life. In the social life, they certainly are, more than most of us. In the moral, they are by and large the soundest group of intellectuals we have; there is a moral component right in the grain of science itself, and almost all scientists form their own judgements of the moral life. In the psychological they have as much interest as most of us, though occasionally I fancy they come to it rather late. It isn't that they lack the interests. It is much more that the whole literature of the traditional culture doesn't seem to them relevant to those interests. They are, of course, dead wrong. As a result, their imaginative understanding is less than it could be. They are self-impoverished."

To what are we referring when we speak of "scientific literature?

Are we referring to academic scientific papers? The Scientific American? Or any non-fiction work of a scientific nature?

The range of "literary fiction" is broad indeed.

The genre called scientific literature, however, seems to be very specific in nature and refers to a body of work that occupies a very small and specific band within the whole spectrum of what we call literature.

There is no denying that the field of science is powerful; it changes the way we live our life from day to day.

But when we talk about the quality and quantity of insight into human nature that scientific "literature" gives us—are we talking about the effect the New York Times Scientific Supplement has on those who read it?

What insight we gain from the latest book on quantum physics?

The terms "scientific literature" as opposed to "fictional literature" seems misleading.

Is this question really asking: Which field gives us more knowledge about human nature--science or art?

We all enjoy the benefits of the theoretical and applied aspects of science even though we may never have picked up a journal which explains how the electrical sockets in our house work.

However, the fields of science and art are highly dichotomized in our culture ( meaning regarded or represented as divided or opposed.) It's a curious fact that in today's culture—scientists and literary men might not be capable of having a meaningful conversation over dinner (see C.P. Snow's "The Two Cultures.)

As the scientific revolution has unfolded, it has required greater and greater degrees of specialization.

Even pure scientists and applied scientists belong to two very different sub-cultures within the field of science. Today even pure scientists and applied scientists belong to two very different sub-cultures within the field of science.

I once heard a talk by a scientist praising the work of one of the top physicists in the world. Everyone knew that the gentleman of whom he spoke was one of a handful of the most advanced scientists in the world. But at that level there were only about 8 people in the world who could understand what he was talking about.

Herein, I would like to make my case for the wide-reaching and powerful effect that fictional literature has on mankind

In great literature we can read about trends in world civilization and see them unfold intimately before our eyes. In the novel Moby Dick—fictional, however, that it may be—we learn a great deal about the whaling industry and the effects that whale oil had on an emerging world culture.

Certainly, Moby Dick is not "scientific" literature. But in the course of reading it, we do learn a great deal about the technical aspects of applied science and the effect that the ensuing industrial revolution had on the cultural values of that time.

Scientific literature, however, is not able to often convey as powerfully the effects of the science it describes upon the lives of men and their culture. Generally, that is left to the literary men and their novels. Art by its very nature takes knowledge from the realm of the purely intellectual and makes something of emotion--that touches the reader's heart. Gives him the experience. "The object of art is to crystallize emotion into thought, and then fit it in form," Francois Del Sarte.

I don't believe it is an either/or situation. I think a novel is going to be much more powerfully written by someone who has a deep scientific understanding--depending upon the subject matter of the writing, of course. Certainly Herman Melville was a much more powerful writer because he had experienced life on a whaling boat first-hand. Which is not to say that whaling is so terribly scientific, but I think we can grasp the idea.

Kurt Vonnegut got a B.S. in Chemistry from Cornell University. Reading his futuristic story "Harrison Bergeron" (I highly recommend it), one realizes that Vonnegut's scientific background added a great deal of rigor to the story.

I read an interview with Nabokov. When asked how to prepare oneself to be a writer, he answered: if you're going to be a writer, study something other than writing—that way you'll have something to write about. (Nabokov was a lepidopterist.)

To return to science: Science looks at life and identifies patterns, underlying principals of natural law. It's the nature of science to look at ever-deeper levels of nature and find more profound and fundamental laws of nature that unify life at its deeper levels (the law of gravity; the unification of electro-magnetic and weak and strong forces; etc.) It generally does not talk about the effect these laws of nature have on the human experience. Or if it does talk in an essay or a non-fiction piece about these effects--it does not give the experience to the reader of the effect, such as a work of fictional literature might. That is the field of fiction, to give an actual experience to the reader. We read a piece of literature and we feel the effect that the scientific discovery of electricity, for example, has on a whole population.

For a practical example, let's take a look at why two cells come together and create a new human being.

It would be exponentially mind-boggling to try to explain scientifically why those two particular cells come together, become an author and go on to write Hamlet, one of the greatest works of Western literature.

Aside: It's probably potentially possible, if one accepts the science of Vedic astrology (Jyotish.) [Vedic is a Sanskrit term which means "knowledge." This science of astrological prediction has its roots in India.]

But at what point do the boundaries between art and science break down? At what level of existence do they actually become unified?

Generally we look to literature to help us understand the great mysteries of life—birth, death, love, the bonds between parent and child. Science as we know it is, as of yet, only beginning to touch upon these issues

Science—the hard sciences—as of yet, generally does not talk much about love and address the emotional values of our life.

A scientist examines a rose and thinks: "carbon dioxide, hydrogen, oxygen." A writer looks at a rose, and creates a poem.

It will make life very "neat", and I certainly hope it comes to pass, if science—psychology, neuroscience, endocrinology, etc.—could help us understand and, thereby, hopefully gain some control over the great psychological complexities with which we are faced individually and globally.

But at this point, as we know all too well, having the capability to create an atom bomb or splice together a potato and a scorpion gene in order to create a potato that can repel insects (think Genetically Modified Organism,) for example, has not been able to help us better empathize with our fellow man

This is where literary fiction can help: by using the "untruth" to uncover deeper levels of "truth.

We take a story that a great master of literature has created out of his imagination—and we empathize, our vision becomes expanded.

I am not Madame Bovary, but by reading her story I can become her mind. I emerge from reading the novel enlarged, more aware of my own mind, feelings, tendencies than if I had never read Madame Bovary.

I see how capable I would be of making similar choices given that character's situation. I feel broadened—better able to understand the inner workings of my fellow man. Not so quick to jump to a moral conclusion when I read a headline in the newspaper. Things are no longer so black and white. There is now room for ambiguity. Fictional literature, among other things, helps us feel empathy with our fellow man, can help us understand what it's like to live in a culture half-way around the globe from us. Not a bad thing in this time of increasing globalization and ever-impending war.

I also experience that literature can provide a cautionary tale. When I see feelings or thinking come up in myself that are leading me down a certain path, I feel a warning light come on—hear the canary in the coal mine. I remember Madame Bovary's plight—and I become more reflective about the choices I make

I love science and the improved quality of life it gives us. With a better quality of life—a more affluent lifestyle—we are not (most of us) faced with the choices that the characters in Les Miserables and Oliver Twist were forced to make.

But still, reading those stories that touch on universal themes--emotions and quandaries of the human spirit such as loyalty, trust, love, for example, one is enriched by partaking of a broader reach of humanity than our own individual lives bound in our own space and time may afford us.

Isaac Babel

2009-06-24T15:55:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who's stopping by. I'm in the middle of a move right now and have had to take some time off to pack.

Some food for thought from Isaac Babel:

"Art implies a kind of freedom, the freedom of choice, of possibility, of the individual imagination.

The most important things . . . [are] observation and consciousness. Keep your eyes open. See clearly, think about what you see and ask yourself what it means.

The wider and deeper your observational range, the better, the more interesting and truthfully you will write."

Happy writing!

One prompt I've enjoyed: write about something you heard or overheard when you were a child, something someone told you or said to you that made a deep impression.

Photo: Luna moth at my front door beneath the porch light welcoming me home after vacation.

C.P.Snow's The Two Cultures: And a Second Look

2009-06-20T10:17:00.000-07:00

I'm reading The Two Cultures:and a Second Look by C. P. Snow. Briefly, it describes the "dangerous split that exists between our literary and scientific communities and warns that the West could lose the race in science and technology."

Even reading this blurb on the back cover inspires plenty of dialogue.

I'm definitely humanities oriented: the proverbial child who sat in 3rd grade math class with a novel tucked inside my open math book.

But through some strange twist of fate, I ended up transferring in my junior year to a college that was extremely science-oriented; and that, luckily for me, had a bent toward making science not only understandable--but actually fascinating--to a layman.

By my second year there, I was thinking about becoming a physics major.

However, not being able--by any stretch of the imagination-- to visualize myself spending the

next 40 plus years of my life in a lab coat, I let that idea drop and went on to research the right side of my brain.

I'm half-way through the book. Just starting the section called: "a second look" in which, as Snow explains in the preface (written September 23, 1963), he looks again at his original lecture in the light of various comments and the passage of four years.

This was written 46 years ago--and one consciously reads it with that perspective. It's a thought-provoking look at the direction that the U.S., U.K., and the U.S.S.R. educational systems were going at the inception of the space race.

This is a topic that stirs my imagination and if anyone reading this happens to know of other good writing on this topic, I'd appreciate hearing about it.

I find this topic personally relevant, because within me I've often felt this dichotomy and I imagine that if I could integrate these two pulls within myself, I'd be much farther ahead in all my endeavors.

Several years ago, I fulfilled a long-standing desire to take a portrait drawing class. Throughout my life, I've primarily pursued writing, but have long loved music and visual art.

As I worked with my very patient teacher, trying to get the photograph I was working from down on paper--I was struck by how I felt that what I was doing was basically scientific. The level of acute observation necessary (it was a class in "realistic" drawing) to accurately draw the figure--reminded me of nothing so much as a day in 10th grade chemistry class when my assignment was to watch a test tube into which we had mixed several liquids and I was asked to write down exactly what I saw happening as the two liquids mixed.

Last week, I discovered a family of Canada geese on the pond near my house. I went quickly with camera and notebook in hand to watch the 3 goslings being herded by the 2 parents into the water. Clicking my camera, I captured many photographs, then sat down with my notebook and started drawing what they looked like. Finally, I tried to write down what the geese looked like and describe their activities.

Again, I was drawn back to a memory of 9th grade Biology on a day we went notebooks in hand to a woods across the street from my high school and took notes about the flora and fauna we saw there.

Lately, I've been reading Ellen Bryant Voight's "The Flexible Lyric" and remembering the talk she gave on Frost at the Brattleboro Literary Festival last summer in Vermont.

She talked about Frost's use of the sound "b" in the early lines:

When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boys been swinging them.

But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.

She talked about so much more--another time, if I can locate my notes. But throughout the talk I felt like she was a detective, a scientist, a linguist.

She talked about the "weight" of words and what that did to the line--the effect it had on the emotion of the poem.

This, in turn, reminds me of my art teacher talking to another student in class who was working on an oil painting: "See what effect that has if you put aqua blue next to the ochre; see how the ochre looks different--how it's changed; now put lime green next to it--so how the ochre changes?"

Is this any different than science?

All of this is familiar to anyone who has tried their hand at any of the arts. Learning the technique of sentence structure: learning how an active verb sets off a different reaction than a passive verb. These seem to me to be the skills of a linguist. Albeit, many artists use these techniques instinctively, only to have a critic figure out afterword what makes the piece "work" so well--or, conversely, not work.

But this link between subjective feeling and the objective means to express the emotion, does seem to me to be a real science. As I've understood that physicists feel at the deepest levels of their work they need to draw on "intuition"--sudden leaps of imagination to come up with a new, more elegant theory.

Will we be seeing a coming age of scientist-artists as we used to talk of philosopher-kings?

Rumi

2009-06-17T20:50:00.001-07:00

"Let yourself be silently drawn

by the strong pull

that you really love

It will not lead you astray."

Rumi

She withdrew into herself

First writing just for one.

Then touching thousands.

She incarnated ghosts, hurt, and joy

Into paper-and -ink stories of wonder.

"One author said, 'I can get rid of anything by writing about it.,' meaning that the process of externalization could liberate him from the pain of his soul.

That realization produced a delicious dichotomy: to free himself, or to hold onto both joys and tortures by remaining silent about them.

Writers write because they must: They need to express something from deep within themselves. They hear voices that others do not. They listen urgently, and they must communicate what they hear."

I will try to get the source for this; I understand it's a commentary on the Tao Te Ching.

Ellen Bryant Voight: "The Flexible Lyric"

2009-06-16T20:46:00.000-07:00

"To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make."—Truman Capote

I've recently discovered a poet-critic whom I admire deeply: Ellen Bryant Voight. Last summer I heard her discuss--analyze, dissect--Robert Frost's "Birches" at the Brattleboro Literary Festival in Vermont.

When I listen to her, I feel I'm listening to a linguist. She is a scientist of rhythm, meter, alliteration. She makes me understand why I enjoy Frost as much as I do.

Happily, a writer friend of mine gave me a copy of "The Flexible Lyric" by Voight (University of Georgia Press, 1999, 226 pp., $19.95, paper.)

In her own words: "All but two of the pieces [in this collection] began as lectures [for] serious students of the craft of poetry. . . It is my presumption . . . that lyric is what most of us are writing these days when we write in lines . . . and it is my intention to counter our own genre-resistance . . . by refuting . . . some of the current restricted notions of what the lyric has been and can be."

In case this smacks of the "dry and dusty", I encourage you to read "In the Waiting Room," the first essay in the book:

"In Oxford, Mississippi, having cruised Main Street, going (as Benjy did not) the correct legal way around the square and its Confederate soldier, you make your way to William Faulkner's house, 'Rowanoak.' " And so it begins . . .

During her travels in Faulkner country, early on in the essay, Voight brings up the dictum expounded by William Butler Yeats: "that one cannot perfect both the life and the art--and how we take cover in it as unavoidable choice, an ethical loophole, the hazard in the vocation."

The counter-proposal Voight makes is that when, where and how you live your life has a great influence upon what you write--life and art go forth inextricably hand in hand.

Voight then, literally and figuratively, continues on her southern sojourn to "Andalusia," Flannery O'Connor's home in Milledgeville, Georgia, where O'Connor lived out her short adult life. Voight writes about incidents in O'Connor's life here and the bearing they had on the stories she wrote--particularly the story "Revelation" which, incidentally, takes place in a doctor's waiting room.

"O'Connor insisted on two crucial elements in fiction, mystery and manners, terms she borrowed from Henry James: 'the mystery of our position on earth, and . . . those conventions which, in the hands of the artist, reveal that central mystery . . . embodied in the concrete world of sense experience. . . . You get the manners from the texture of existence that surrounds you.' "

O'Connor continues: "The things we see, hear, smell and touch affect us long before we believe anything at all. . . . [O]ur senses have responded irrevocably to a certain reality. . . . What the . . . writer is apt to find, when he descends within his imagination, is the life . . . in which he is both native and alien. He discovers that the imagination is not free, but bound" (Mystery and Manners).

"Art," O'Connor said, "requires a delicate adjustment of the outer and inner worlds in such a way that, without changing their nature, they can be seen through each other. To know oneself is to know . . . the world, and it is also, paradoxically, a form of exile from that world. . . . And to know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility" (Mystery and Manners).

From the description of her travels in Georgia, Voight elides smoothly into the occasion of her attendance at "a convention of writers in Washington, D.C., at a glittery hotel, hard by an embassy seized that weekend by Mideast terrorists" where she listens to Elizabeth Bishop reading “as if from a newspaper” her poem "In the Waiting Room" which Voight describes as "a memorable poem about self and other, life and art . . . which sent me back to reread O'Connor as a grown-up."

She concludes the essay on O'Connor and Bishop: "Two 'home-made' heroes, then, with a lesson it took me years to recognize, a lesson I'm still trying to learn: that the 'life' is inextricable from the work; for a writer, they are the same thing."

The above photo is of Flannery O'Connor.

Vincent Van Gogh "Starry Night"

2009-06-14T13:14:00.000-07:00

WILD nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile the winds	5
To a heart in port,—
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.

Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!	10
Might I but moor
To-night in thee Emily Dickinson

Truman Capote: Writing Advice

2009-06-13T10:07:00.000-07:00

"I often use 'real' people in my work, and then create a story around them. You must get into the habit of writing even if it is only a paragraph a day. Try keeping a journal. One good exercise is to describe, in a page or two, some scene or person exactly as you see them: when I was your age I used to do this exercise religiously--it strengthens you, like piano practice . . . In any event, write about what you know about. Write a portrait of someone you really like very much, then one of someone you really dislike." Truman Capote, Capote: A Biography by Gerald Clarke, from a letter written to Alvin Dewey's son.

Vincent Van Gogh "Bedroom at Arles"

2009-06-12T20:09:00.000-07:00

Quiet nights

I go to sleep on one beach

Wake up on another

Boat all fitted out

Tugging against its rope.

Raymond Carver

I'm reading Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer. I think it's one of the most helpful books on writing I've found.

Tennessee Williams is one of my most recently acquired "literary interests." I started by reading "The Glass Menagerie." I read in the New York Review of Books that it is highly autobiographical. He is Tom, his sister Rose is Laura, and his mother Edwina is Amanda. Williams writes with great sensitivity and understanding about all his characters.

Buena Vista Social Club

2009-03-04T06:38:00.000-08:00

Guitarist Ry Cooder combed the streets of Havana in 1998 to find Cuba's foremost folk musicians--many now in their 90's. Director Wim Wenders captures the musicians reminiscing about growing up on the streets of Cuba in the early days of the 20th century.

Footage of the musicians walking around the streets of present-day Havana and their much acclaimed concerts in London and at New York's Carnegie Hall in the late 90's.

The video gives a candid glimpse of what Havana looks like today.

The film begins with shots of two rare photographs of Fidel Castro and Che Guevera playing golf together in the 1950's.

Someone off-screen asks the musician who owns the photos: "Who won?"

The musician answered, "Fidel."

Then he laughed. "Che let Fidel win . . . "

Milan Kundera

2009-03-02T23:00:00.000-08:00

"We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come . . .

There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always a sketch. No "sketch" is not quite the word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.

Einmal ist keinmal. What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all."

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Milan Kundera

Kavalier and Clay

2009-03-02T05:17:00.000-08:00

I just finished listening to Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon.

Loved it.

Josef Kavalier is whisked away from his family in Holocaust Poland to America in Houdiniesque fashion and ends up sharing a bed with his cousin Sammy in his aunt's Brooklyn apartment .

Together they plot their rise to fame and financial fortune in the comic book empire of Gotham City.

Yiddish humor, a love story and an inside view of the comic book industry--the birth of Superman and Batman and Robin--and life in New York City during the late 30's and 40's during the outbreak of WWII. What's not to like?

I got introduced to Chabon by reading The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (read "Jewish Mafia") and was eager for more.

It's easy to see why this one got a Pulitzer.

Looking forward to "The Yiddish Policeman's Union" . . .