In the early '70s, after the break-up of the century, John Lennon spent a lot of breath badmouthing the Beatles. Finally an interviewer asked him, "Is there anything you miss about the Beatles?" John replied "I miss being able to raise my left eyebrow, and have them know what I mean." That, to me, is the Platonic ideal of conversation.
The Beatles were blessed. They shared a rare natural chemistry, and a whole other world of wordless electric understanding. When external pressures and internal rifts were tearing them apart, they could still walk into Abbey Road together and make harmony. We're less lucky, you and I and everyone in this diary. We haven't conquered and transformed the world of pop; we can't even see each other's eyebrows, or hear each other's tones of voice.
Don't get me wrong - I think we're doing pretty well. I come to Daily Kos, and spend time in Readers & Book Lovers diaries, because of the quality conversation here. Still, we must cultivate our garden. So I have to ask, how can I converse even better with you?
This question is so important, crucial to my purpose here and the quality of my work, that I'll give you 3 answers: Personal, Practical, and Profound.
1) Personally, I talk too much, and talking comes easy for me. So I need to listen more carefully to you all, to the comments and diaries you share with me. Balance, give and take, makes better, fairer, more mutually enjoyable and enriching conversation. I'm already talking too much. Look up. Here we are in the fifth paragraph and, so far, it's just me talking. So when you get to the comments, please leave several. Respond to all the other commenters, too. Make it so I can't get a word in edgeways ;~)
2) Practically, I could be more like cfk. She grows such fine conversation. It's not quite fair to single out cfk, when there are other diarists who contribute so much to our Readers & Book Lovers group. Check out all the [ weekly series] in my tip jar. If you, dear reader, write one diary on a book that matters to you, it will be a new kind of plant in our garden.
Cfk is a good example for me, because she excels in three areas I want to improve on. She really does the work: she has written 322 Bookflurries diaries. Conversation gets easier and richer when you build a place where everyone gets to know each other. Cfk is great at sticky memes: ideas that stick in our minds, make us think, and give us things to say. Her diaries catalyze conversation. Finally, cfk cares and pays attention, so she herself brings a lot of meaningful response, both to the ideas that everyone shares in her diaries, and to the many commenters she already knows. I'm not saying cfk's perfect. She refused point blank to give me any baksheesh for saying all these nice things about her :~(
The first thing I offered you today, before you even opened this diary, was 'Contemporary Fiction Views'. But I don't have any original ones, and my life's too discombobulated to focus on research. I'm just a substitute gardener here, filling in for bookgirl, whose life is even busier than mine right now. But I miss her. She reads so much, she knows so much about Contemporary Fiction. So, instead of spouting follies of my own, I'll examine some wiser things bookgirl's already said.
3) Profoundly,
Joan Didion's statement that "we tell ourselves stories in order to live" is one of my touchstones. Its truth is shown to me every time I try to figure out why someone believes even an absurd thing -- often because he has tried to form a narrative around something he wants to be true -- or that someone becomes a reader because a story resonated with her -- a cause for celebration.
The other touchstone is E.M. Forster's "only connect -- live in fragments no longer" from Howards End. The entire quotation, speaking of both connecting prose and passion, and of human love being seen at its height, is powerful to me precisely because of the connection between being able to write, to communicate, about the better aspects of human nature and one of those better aspects -- the ability to care for another, to love others.
Someone becomes a reader because a story resonated with her
Isn't that what we all want? A story that resonates, that speaks to different levels within us; that looks outward to the world's dazzling broken confusion, and shows us there a cosmos that's slightly clearer and more whole. An epiphany connecting the parts inside to the pieces outside. A pattern that turns some of the white noise into harmony.
These resonant stories are what hook us, getting us to finish whole diaries, and follow other Kossacks. If you hear enough of them in one place, you know that you've found a favorite author or a new friend, a club or a community to join. You feel less apart - you belong a little more than before. You realize yourself more fully, and you become more human.
Joan Didion was right, "we tell ourselves stories in order to live". And we listen to others' stories, hoping to find more of ourselves there. The highest levels of conversation are, just a bit, like playing in the Beatles. We learn to tell larger, more colorful stories together, in harmony.
"only connect -- live in fragments no longer"
This is a truth so vast, Dante wrote a book about it. He loved to play with the many levels of truth and storytelling. Consider Forster's quote as a creed. Religion, etymologically, means "The binding together of what's been broken".
Dante would say first, connect with God, love him directly and truly. Every sin, to Dante, was a failure of this primary relationship: Loving too little, or in the wrong direction. Secondly, connect with each other: live as humanity, not as enemies. "Love the neighbor as thyself". Thirdly, connect your own broken self, live wholly.
Now consider Forster's quote politically. Here we are, living in a divided Blue/Red USA with almost as much mistrust and enmity as our ancestors' North/South USA of 150 years ago. Still, we share the same common coins. Look through them, and you'll soon find Forster in Latin - not literally, but in spirit: "E Pluribus Unum"; Out of Many, One.
E. M. Forster, in his own words:
Margaret greeted [Mr. Wilcox] with peculiar tenderness on the morrow. Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is born...And it was here that Margaret hoped to help him.
It did not seem so difficult. She need trouble him with no gift of her own. She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die…
But she failed. For there was one quality in Henry for which she was never prepared, however much she reminded herself of it: his obtuseness. He simply did not notice things…he never noticed the lights and shades that exist in the greyest conversation, the finger-posts, the milestones, the collisions, the illimitable views. Once--on another occasion--she scolded him about it. He was puzzled, but replied with a laugh: "My motto is Concentrate. I've no intention of frittering away my strength on that sort of thing." "It isn't frittering away the strength," she protested. "It's enlarging the space in which you may be strong." He answered: "You're a clever little woman, but my motto's Concentrate." And this morning he concentrated with a vengeance.
With the sensitivity of a butcher, ignoring the irony, I have chopped five paragraphs into fragments, and squooshed them back into three. Forster said it with more music and grace, as you'll find if you follow
the link to Chapter 22 of
Howard's End.
I see three points here. You do too, now I've emboldened them. Either there are three points to everything, or Dante's influence is shaping this whole essay.
If you look at the last chopped paragraph, it contains a dichotomy that shapes all conversation: do you keep to a straight line, or do you wander like a cloud? Do you prefer explaining yourself clearly, or listening for the fine shades in others' words?
Mr. Wilcox is obtuse, but he calls it concentration. When Margaret draws his attention to "the lights and shades that exist in the greyest conversation", and other aspects of social connection that sensitive souls attend to, he retorts "I've no intention of frittering away my strength on that sort of thing." "It isn't frittering away the strength," she protested. "It's enlarging the space in which you may be strong."
This very relationship, and the difficulty of integrating it, recurs throughout fiction. Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay in To The Lighthouse spring to mind; also, it saturates the Romance genre.
Concentration and sensitivity are both strengths, of different kinds. Historically, our culture has encouraged and expected men to concentrate more, and women to be more sensitive. Eastern Wisdom sees further, and says all Yin contains a bit of Yang, and vice versa. Health is not one or the other, but balance and flow between both qualities. Higher conversation is a kind of dance, between these qualities, among us all.
Oops. I'm being kind of obtuse myself. If we're cultivating conversation here, with balance and flow, like a dance - then I shouldn't explain everything myself. I should leave some questions humming in your mind, so that you want to complete the picture.
We still have two points from Forster to address, and I'm going to leave the more resonant for you to respond to: "Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height." First, a story of my own, about feeling like a meaningless fragment, and being saved by the rainbow bridge of higher conversation.
I went to the oldest boarding school in England: The King's School, Canterbury. Picture me at 14, in black shoes, socks, trousers, jacket, tie and scholar's gown, white-breasted with a mandarin collar shirt and a starched, wing-tip collar. French children would come on school trips to see our cathedral. Always, when they first caught sight of King's boys, they'd point at us in our uniforms, and shout "Pingouin!"
Picture also my blocky National Health glasses, my spots, and the chip on my insecure shoulder, and you'll see one of the most unpopular boys in a school of 600. Senior boys I'd never met would introduce themselves just to insult me. I know what it feels like to be a "meaningless fragment, half monk, half beast".
My popularity had its ups and downs. I was utterly ostracized for less than a year. It felt far longer and colder than that. I had just one friend, Martin. He gave me the gift I needed most: he let me hang out with him. It made all the difference. I'm more human today, because of his acceptance.
One Sunday morning, after service in the Cathedral, we were lounging in Martin's study, reading the papers. We'd spent enough time together, talking of everything under the sun, listening fully, that we knew each other better than most friends ever get to. This Sunday, though, we were just comfortably silent in the same room. I have no idea what Martin did, what subtle body language spoke to me, but I found myself putting the kettle on. I didn't particularly want a cup of tea. I just knew that Martin felt like having a cup. And if he wanted a cup, I was happy to join him.
Such a small incident. But such a high level of conversation. Perhaps Martin just raised his left eyebrow, and I knew what he meant. This essay has wandered like a cloud, but it's all the same cloud: Conversation at its best.
When the Beatles read each other's eyebrows, or finish each others songs, or put down their arguments and pick up their instruments, that's Conversation. Consider the millions they speak to, whose lives get a little better because Beatles songs resonate so.
When I stop commenting on Daily Kos, until cfk does what she does so well that I start going to the Santa Monica Library every Wednesday evening, just to chat in Bookflurries, that's Conversation. When bookgirl knows so much about contemporary fiction that I start reading her old diaries, to see what I missed, that's Conversation.
Look around the Readers & Book Lovers Group, and you'll see we keep pretty busy, with fresh diaries appearing daily. Look behind us, at what we've already written: you'll find 2498 diaries tagged with R&BLers and 3134 tagged with books. That's the thin edge of the wedge. Every one of these diaries was inspired by books, with stories resonant enough to inspire a diary at least. We're the front end of a vast and echoing hubbub of Conversation.
Imagine, finally, Literature. Here we stand in the Grand Bazaar, with so many conversations going on that it's a buzzing, booming confusion. To hear the actual stories, each of us must search for the books that most resonate with us, and the authors who speak intimately to our selves.
Now it's your turn to join the Conversation. E. M. Forster said
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.
So whose prose touches the passion in you, exalts you, and shows you a higher vision? The vision could be love, hope, a world worth living in, or a character you just wish you could meet in the flesh. The prose could be in a book or a series, a diary or a comment, a chat with a friend or a rock song.
Who, when you read them or listen to them, makes you feel a little more human, a bit more clearly and fully yourself?