I came across this passage today in some other reading and thought of our discussions in this class, so I thought I’d share. It is from Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler in the first few pages as the narrator speaks directly to the reader about sitting down to read If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino.
You are about to start reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. {1}
He, like DFW, puts reading in the context of other media distractions.
Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, “No, I don’t want to watch TV!” Raise your voice – they won’t hear you otherwise – “I’m beginning to read Italo Calvino’s new novel!”
A bit later on, in the passage I found apt, the narrator predicts how his audience see him or herself, their general attitude toward life and books.
It’s not that you expect anything in particular form this particular book. You’re the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store. But not you. You know all the best you can expect is to avoid the worst. This is the conclusion you have reached, in your personal life and also in general matters, even international affairs. What about books? Well, precisely because you have denied it in every other field, you believe you may still grant yourself legitimately this youthful pleasure of expectation in a carefully circumscribed area like the field of books, where you can be lucky or unlucky, but the risk of disappointment isn’t serious. {4}
Beside characterizing his audience, Calvino here is laying out what he sees as the cultural conditions into which he sees his book emerging. To me, this sounds like it describes the aloof, ironically distanced media consumers of DFW’s essay, but we are getting another side.
It is not irony that is lost in this passage, exactly, but expectation, desire, passion. There is a deep self-satisfied cynicism described here, however, it is not a fear of being found uncool as a result of revealing real emotion. It manifests in an inability to expect or want anything for fear of a disappointment that would be serious. This lead me to wonder if we find this side of contemporary cultural moment in DFW. What do you all think?
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ReplyDeleteI think I understand the reluctance to pursue experiences for fear of disappointment, and I've been trying to relate this to DFW for a while but I can't think of a specific example that fits quite right in my mind. I did think of Clipperton, though, who at first seems to represent the opposite of this phenomenon: he pursues success so vehemently that he threatens to destroy himself if he fails. (There is an element of fear of disappointment in this, I suppose, but he dives head first into the competition instead of avoiding the chance of failure altogether.) Because of his opponents' obvious objection to his suicide, he inevitably wins every match. Thus his achievements are void of real significance. A further critique of this tactic would suggest that in a sense, he evades the chance of failure in just the same way as someone who doesn't even try in the first place. Both inevitably escape failure: one does not try and thus cannot fail; the other cannot lose even if he deserves to. Neither achieves success. This fake success, however, seems to be acceptable to Clipperton until he finally achieves his goal of rank #1 and consequently take his life. Why does he kill himself when he's finally recognized as rank #1? Does he consider this the literal end goal, at which point his life is complete? Or is there another explanation for his suicide? One would think so, since he appears to have a purpose that day at ETA.
ReplyDeleteAs for most of the other characters, whether they are drug addicts or tennis players, they do seem to experience Calvino's description of lost passion in their single-track lives (overuse of drugs and usually the aspiration to quit/tennis as a competition in which one must do little other than practice if he hopes to succeed), but I don't see them confronting their fear of disappointment by refusing to even try. Instead they're stuck in a rote pursuit of end goals that they may never realize. The solution for new AA members trying to get clean who fear disappointment is to surrender themselves to the "cake box instructions"--this way they move towards their goal without having to understand the process.
I'd be interested to hear what examples the rest of you might find; I have a feeling there are some obvious ones that just haven't occurred to me.