part0014

The literary reader will recognize a certain influence of Ezra Pound's How to Read and ABC of Reading on the following Socratic (and sardonics) set or rhetorical questions. There is also, less obviously, a strong influence of Korzybski's Science and Sanity and my first 125 acid trips.

I have added a postscript in which a few new insults are added to the injury already inflicted on the literal-minded reader.

Some say that reading consists in such elementary tasks as assembling the letters "c” "a" and "t" and forming the image of a certain furry quadruped that says "meow." Similarly, some imagine that thinking consists of observing an event, pinning a label on it ("communism," "sexism," "good honest Americanism" or whatever)and then reacting to the event as if it were the label.

To say that these mechanical processes do not contain true reading or true thinking will be found profoundly insulting to those people who do not know any other modes of thinking or reading.

Since I do not wish to insult anybody, and since simple-minded people are easily insulted, I will try to avoid flat statements in this epistle, and will merely ask some provocative questions.

Henry James's The Turn of the Screw appears, to those who regard reading as defined above, to "be" an ordinary, if somewhat nasty, ghost-story. It "is" about a governess who discovers that the two children in her care are being haunted and vexed by ghosts who are not only vicious but perverse (probably child molesters).

To those who think reading/thinking requires action or work, a second story appears: the novel then concerns a hysterical governess, sexually repressed, who projects her own illusions outward and manages, without intending it, to frighten one of the children to death. The "ghosts" are "in" her head.

If reading does not require thought and work, the second interpretation "is" just pretentious nonsense invented by critics after James published his book. If reading/thinking does require work, how do we decide which interpretation is correct? And what does "correct" mean in this context?

Yeats's great poem on the 1916 Irish rebellion contains the line, "A terrible beauty is born." Stress "terrible" when reading it aloud; then stress "beauty." Which meaning did Yeats intend? Or did he intend both?

Blake wrote, "May God us keep / From single vision & Newton's sleep." Leaving aside for the moment his animus against Newtonian mechanics, could "single vision" refer to what I have been calling mechanical reading and mechanical thinking?

What the hell did Gurdjieff mean by his remarkable statement, "Life is real then only when I am"? Is there any sense left if one modifies it to, "A book is alive then only when the reader is"?

Husserl disagreed with traditional philosophy (and anticipated modern neurology) in denying that we passively "receive" impressions. He insisted on an intentionality of consciousness, in which we vary from intense alertness, to moderate alertness, to weak alertness, to the total passivity that Occidental philosophers regard as normal.

Do we "see" more in life when we are intensely alert? Do we see more in books and art when we are intensely alert? Is normal mechanical reading a species of what mystics call dreaming or sleep-walking?

Racism, sexism and stupid prejudice in general consist, in logical terms, of ascribing predicates to groups. This takes the form, All k are x. K represents a class or set or group and x is the predicate quality (e.g., "crooked," "stupid," "great sense of rhythm," "wise," "honest" or whatever).

According to Korzybski (Science and Sanity ) there is one field, and one field only, in which it is legitimate to ascribe predicates to groups—namely, in pure mathematics. This is legitimate because the groups or sets of pure math are purely abstract and created by definition. All k are x, in a mathematical context, because k and x are defined that way, and because they do not exist outside of pure thought.

Once one leaves pure mathematics, the ascription of predicates to groups always introduces fallacy. Remarks about "all Jews," "all Blacks," "all women," "all men," "all plumbers," etc. are fallacies because the world consists of a phalanx of individuals. In Korzybski's handy notation, we never meet the groups; what we encounter are

When "mystics" etc. talk about ordinary consciousness as "sleep," "dream," "illusion," etc., are they talking about something very esoteric that only other mystics can understand? Or are they talking about the extent to which normal consciousness ("mechanical consciousness" in my sense) relates to fictitious predicates attached to groups and ignores (does not perceive) person1, person2, etc.?

Is there some connection between "waking up" in the mystic sense, and learning to read (or to see paintings, say) in an alert, non-mechanical way?

"[Rape] is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear." —S. Brownmiller. [Italics in the original.]

To what extent do these propositions ascribe predicates to groups? To what extent do they represent "sleep," which ignores (does not perceive) e.g. the existential differences between Jew1 , Jew2 , etc. man1 , man2 , etc.?

In San Francisco I read a review of John Huston's recent movie, Victory, which described it as "exciting." In the Irish Tribune yesterday I read another review which described it as "dull." Is the excitement or dullness "in" the movie, or was it in the nervous systems of the reviewers?

Colin Wilson argues that when we say, "Life is boring and meaningless," it means that we are boring and meaningless. Can there be any truth in this?

"Swift disoriented his readers by confusing the genre signals: critical tradition has taught us to call Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal 'satires,' but new readers were led to think the former a travel-book, the latter a projector's pamphlet, and were increasingly vexed as they turned the pages and found these conventions less and less helpful, which was part of what Swift intended."

The Turn of the Screw was not the first book in which the narrator's "honesty" is problematical. There were earlier examples—most blatantly Poe's story "The Tell-Tale Heart," in which the narrator insists repeatedly that he is not mad, but the story makes most sense if we assume he "is" mad. How far "is" it permissible to carry this device? If it requires work and re-reading etc. before the reader finds the clues that reveal the narrator is (consciously or unconsciously) deceptive, is that "unfair" to the reader? Is it unfair to try to provoke the reader to work and thought? Should all books be for the lazy?

(a) "is" in the critic's nervous system. (A relative and neurologically accurate statement, leaving open the possibility that it "is" something else in another nervous system.)

Since critics appear notoriously dogmatic and pugnacious, it seems that meaning (a)—admitting relativity—is not what they mean. Is criticism then a form of theology (the only other field that claims access to "the mind of God"?) Or are we to take it that they "are" all Platonists?

If the "is" in criticism is only a convention, a short-hand, why do critics act as if they mean is-in-the-mind-of-God when challenged?

Which of those appears more in accord with modern science? Which appears more in accord with medieval metaphysics (Aristotelian-Platonic ideas)?

Would you regard it as a monstrous satirical exaggeration on my part or a mere statement of anthropological fact, if I assert that art criticism is the only place in the modern world, outside the Vatican, where medieval metaphysics (the Aristotelian absolute "is") still flourishes?

All recent psychotherapy places great emphasis on "taking responsibility." Can this be done, at all, if meanings are "outside" and have absolute is-ness?

Is "responsibility" possible at all, before one realizes that meaning is not in events but in the evaluations of the nervous system?

I used to own what was called The Uncritical Inference Test; I used it in all my seminars. Somewhere I lost it, and I don't know where to buy another one.

In this test, you see one inference at a time, and cannot go back and correct the early ones. It always astounds me how many uncritical or incorrect inferences are made by even allegedly educated people.

Adapting from memory, here is part of one section of that Test: A doctor's car is parked in front of 2 Elm Street. Which of the following inferences are correct?

1) Somebody is ill in 2 Elm Street. 2) The doctor lives at 2 Elm Street. 3) The doctor parked there before he could find a better parking place. 4) The doctor, whoever he or she is, is somewhere in the neighborhood. 5) Somebody stole the doctor's car and dumped it there.

It is amazing how many people will check all of these, even though they wish they could go back and uncheck the earlier ones. Of course, all the inferences are uncritical; one cannot be sure of anything, except that the car is parked there.

In As I Lay Dying (Faulkner) black people are always referred to as "niggers." A) This proves Faulkner was a racist. B) This proves Faulkner was being accurate in representing the language of his narrators (Mississippi poor whites). In The Town (Faulkner) both "nigger" and "Negro" appear. A) Faulkner was recovering from his racism. B) Faulkner was indicating different speech patterns of different classes in Mississippi. (Are these alternative inferences certain or only more-or-less probable?) (Both books were written before "Black" became fashionable.)

It is a well-known idea, not just among "mystics," but among modern psychologists, that the sad person lives in a sad world, the angry person in an angry world, etc. Then the sad person reads sad books and the angry person reads angry books? Even if those books seem funny and optimistic, say, to other readers?

"This book is a mirror. When a monkey looks in, no philosopher looks out."—Lichtenstein. Does that refer to one book only, or to all books?

To quote Gurdjieff again, "Life is real then only when I am." If normal (mechanical) consciousness consists largely of uncritical inferences, projections, glandular-emotional reactions etc. then what it perceives, in art or in life, will have many traits of dream, will it not? If consciousness is intentional (Husserl), then making an effort to perceive will make both oneself and the surround more vivid, more meaningful, more "real," perhaps?

If you look at your watch, realize you still don't know the time, and look again, were you strictly speaking awake the first time you looked?

What the devil does that mean? Does it connect with my topic here?

Everybody who has taken a modern literature course, even if they've never read Joyce, knows that the last word of Ulysses is "yes" and that the whole book leads up to that affirmation. The first word of Ulysses happens to be "stately," which contains "yes" backwards (StatElY). Is this an accident? If not an accident, why did Joyce do it?

Hamlet's first three speeches (short ones, by the way) each contain a pun. Was Shakespeare just feeling whimsical when he wrote that, or is it a clue to Hamlet's problems and the problem of the play itself?

St. John's Revelations, St. Augustine's City of God, Crowley's Magick in Theory and Practise, among others, all have 22 chapters. Is this an accident? If not an accident, what does it indicate? (Why does the first sentence of Ulysses have 22 words, beginning with "stately" and ending with "crossed"?)

Krishnamurti distinguishes between thinking, an active process, and thought, the result of past thinking filed away in the memory of the brain, or in a library or computer, etc. Thought contains all the wisdom, and much of the folly, of the past; it's a great labor-saving device. Why does Krishnamurti regard thought as profoundly dangerous and the enemy of thinking ?

If a writer tries to provoke thinking, is this only because of "damned sadism" (cummings' joke) or is it an attempt to liberate readers from the mechanical repetition of dead thoughts?

Which column implies the medieval Aristotelian metaphysics (the "essence" theory) and which implies modern neurology and psychology (perception as the judgmental ACT of a perceiver)?