fiction

Where Dreams are Found

christophernorthjr

Sonny’s Blues

Jean Redpath

 

Where Dreams are Found

 

Two people dressed like clowns stand by a house by trees with a full moon in the sky with three clouds

A Carnival Evening

Henri Rousseau

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Henri_Rousseau_-_A_Carnival_Evening.jpg

 

The song is about a young man who becomes an old man who never pursues his dreams because his mother needs him at home, sort of like Luke Skywalker’s uncle needs Luke about the farm. Later in the song we are told:

 

Sonny’s dreams can’t be real, they’re just stories he’s read

They’re just stars in his eyes, they’re just dreams in his head

And he’s hungry inside for the wide world outside

And I know I can’t hold him though I’ve tried and I’ve tried

 

The lyric tells us that Sonny’s dreams can’t be real because they are just stories, stories from books, stories he’s been told, or stories from films, television, and songs that are just made up. The school where I teach is reconsidering its curriculum. We are told on the one hand that the new standards require students to do more with non-fiction and real life type “stuff.” Fiction, of course, is all made up and therefore it can’t be real and cannot really tell us much about life and how it is lived, or so some would suggest to us. Of course it should be remembered that there is a great deal of non-fiction that, if read correctly, is going to be read for more than just the information it provides, that is a body of literature as worthy of study as any important work of fiction, but I fear non-fiction of this variety is seen to be as irrelevant to the school curriculum as the fiction that is being replaced.

They tell us that for the study of literature to have value it must provide students the opportunity to search and to find information. There is no point, for example, to studying Macbeth (or perhaps Edmund Burke or John Locke) if this study does not result in students learning facts they did not previously know; facts that will be useful to them in the future. The future, it seems, is all about gathering information and finding proper uses for it. I think Macbeth has much to teach us, but I do not know if there are many useful facts to be found.

The painting is of a clown and a woman standing under a cloudy, starlit sky. The title tells us it is a painting of a “carnival evening.” I am not sure what an evening must possess in order for it to be a carnival, but the painting captures whatever that something is. There was an article in the New York Times, “The Children’s Authors Who Broke the Rules”, about Maurice Sendak and other writers of children’s stories that did not play by the rules, whatever the rules are. There is much that is dreamlike, especially in Sendak, in the stories that these and other writers of children’s books tell. C. S. Lewis said of his Narnia books that they began with a dream he had of a faun standing by a lamppost in the middle of a snowy wood. On one level there is, of course, nothing real in a dream. On another, though, the stuff of dreams is immensely important and it silhouettes some of the deeper realities of our lives, realities that are perhaps too difficult to face in a more realistic setting.

Even if we do not believe what the likes of Jung and Freud tell us about dreams, the literature of the world, both sacred and profane, gives great significance to dreams. Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur is packed with allegorical dreams. I particularly enjoy all the dreams that the various knights seeking the Holy Grail have. They are dreams that contain important information, life and death information, and there is always someone, usually a monk or hermit of some kind, who can tell the knight what the dream means. On at least one occasion the interpreter of the dream is a fraud whose interpretation of the dream is also a fraud. Dreams being what they are, it is not difficult to spin them in a number of different ways, not all of which are enlightening. There is a message here as well; that it is not enough to dream, but it is also important to understand our dreams correctly.

 

Ships anchored in port at night with London's St. Paul's Cathedral silouetted in the backhground

Nightfall down the Thames

John Atkinson Grimshaw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grimshaw-NightfallThames.jpg

 

But what has all this to do with curriculum standards and the usefulness of fiction? Aristotle thought that poetry, and by poetry we soon realize he means story telling, has value because, unlike history, it does not tell us what has happened, but what might be. Aristotle also thought that stories show us how a philosophy of life might be lived out. They answer (or suggest answers) to questions like: What are the implications of our philosophy for our futures? How do our beliefs guide our choices? What does our philosophy teach us? The problem with non-fiction, or much of it and certainly the kind of non-fiction the proponents of the new standards seem to have in mind, is that it just presents information that we can accumulate, it does not make us wise, it does not teach us what to do with the information once we acquire it. The paintings above and below are of seaports, one on the River Thames and one on the River Clyde. This is suggestive because these seaports are not on the sea but on rivers that lead to the sea. What is important is not where we are, but where we can get to from where we are. What is important in what we read is not the information that is conveyed, but where that information can take us. A manual that shows us how to properly set up and configure our computers tells us nothing about why we would want or need to set up and configure that computer in the first place.

 

Ships anchored in port by a rain soaked city street at night

Shipping on the Clyde

John Atkinson Grimshaw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shipping_on_the_Clyde.jpg

 

Both of the seaports are shrouded in mist. This mist limits our vision, we cannot see as far in a fog as we can when the horizons are clear and sunlit. To read for information only, without a clear idea as to what the value of the information is, or to even care if it has value, is to read in a fog and at the end of the day all we will have is information without an imagination adequate enough to put that information to good use, or to pass judgment on it and discard it when it has no use or is, worse yet, deceptive or unhealthy. I was told when I was in school that medieval scholars believed everything they read in books, even when what they read in different books was contradictory. This was both a strength and a weakness; a strength because it prodded them to seek synthesis, to find a way to bring these contradictory ideas together to reveal a hopefully deeper truth. A weakness because it produced a kind of naiveté that gave greater value to some of what they read than was warranted or even wise. There is something of this medieval view in the attitude we are being encouraged to take towards non-fiction. It is what justifies the teaching of informational texts in place of literature. But reading for information only is not reading critically, it is premised on the belief that what is written in books must be true and therefore can be trusted.

I am sure that I am oversimplifying the new curriculum standard and the way it is being presented, but one of the things that reading literature does, if we read deeply and well, is to make judgments about characters and ideas and the implications of the actions of the characters in the stories. When we read books like The Catcher in the Rye or The Turn of the Screw we must evaluate the narrators and the validity of the stories they are telling us. For even if these narrators truly believe the stories that they tell and believe they are telling us what happened as it truly happened, we see throughout their narratives that they are not reliable witnesses. In many ways they are the most convincing witnesses against the truth of the story they tell. We in our lives will encounter every day people who will tell us stories that cannot be true, even though on occasion the people telling the stories may honestly believe in the truth of the tale they tell.

When we read fiction well we are learning from experience, from experiences we are having with other people who, even if they are fictional, are forcing us to make judgments about what they say and do and we avoid these judgments to our peril. If we read the books mentioned above for information alone all we know at the end of the story is that Holden Caulfield had a harrowing few days in New York City and a child died in a governess’ arms. What we do not know is whether the most harrowing events are taking place in the city or in the mind of the young narrator or if the governess is the child’s protector or his killer.

 

Painitng of a house viewed through trees at night

Château Noir

Paul Cezanne

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Paul_Cézanne_026.jpg

 

There is another value to reading fiction and that relates to Aristotle’s first point about the value of stories; that they show us what might be. They stimulate the imagination. Neal Stephenson in an article in the World Policy Journal, “Innovation Starvation”, suggests that many of the advancements in science and technology that took place in the 1950’s and 1960’s had their origins in science fiction novels that speculated about the future. And even where the predictions in these novels did not come to pass, they still stimulated the imagination. Stephenson talks about waking up early to watch the old Gemini mission launches. I remember waking up to watch not only the Gemini launches, but the Mercury launches as well and like Stephenson I followed the space program from its glorious beginnings to its more mundane ending. It seems to me that as our cultural imagination went into decline so did our cultural ambitions. We exchanged a dream of visiting other planets and solar systems for a fleet of celestial cargo ships. When the imagination necessary to pursue the dream declined and vanished, the dream died. It is not necessary that the new dreams that replace the old involve space travel, but they do need to involve something large, something that inspires and rekindles our enthusiasm for accomplishing the sublime.

 

What We Learned from 5 Million Books

TED Talks

 

The video is not just about collecting books digitally so that they will always be with us, but about the power of language and the value of preserving that language. Aiden and Michel in their presentation point out that much has been lost and is unrecoverable from antiquity. It may be that much, even most, of what has been lost has been lost for good reason. But we cannot know that for sure. There was a review of a new book by Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve, in the Guardian, “The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began by Stephen Greenblatt – review”. The book tells the story of the re-discovery of Lucretius’ book On the Nature of Things, a book that had been lost for many centuries and existed only as oblique references in the work of other ancient authors. The name of Lucretius was known as was the name of the book, but the book itself was lost. This book that was lost and was found went on to inspire many Renaissance writers, thinkers, and scientists. The Guardian is of the opinion that Greenblatt’s claims may be a bit exaggerated, but it recognizes the value of the book itself.

In another review in the New York Times, “The Almost-Lost Poem That Changed the World” (which you must be a subscriber to the New York Times to read) Greenblatt is quoted saying, “I am constantly struck,” Greenblatt told The Harvard Gazette in 2000, when he was named a university professor, “by the strangeness of reading works that seem addressed, personally and intimately, to me, and yet were written by people who crumbled to dust long ago.” And this is at the heart of why we read literature. Books are letters of a sort, a kind of correspondence where we communicate with those long dead because the content of the conversation will always have relevance if we take the time to understand what is being said to us. Maimonides, St. Paul, Confucius, Homer, Scheherazade, and all the other writers long dead who continue to inspire the living and, if given the opportunity, many generations to come, desire to chat (and I use this word not to be flippant but to suggest the intensely personal nature of the conversation) with us. Like Socrates in the Agora they engage us with questions about life and how it is lived and what gives it meaning.

And even if we do not agree with their conclusions there is value in letting them help us shape our own conclusions, if only by accepting the challenge to think as deeply about things as they have thought, so that our conclusions, though different, will be as acutely considered. Or as Sarah Bakewell, quoting Petrarch, pointed out later in her New York Times review of the Greenblatt book, “Gold, silver, jewels, purple garments, houses built of marble, groomed estates, pious paintings, caparisoned steeds and other things of this kind offer a mutable and superficial pleasure; books give delight to the very marrow of one’s bones. They speak to us, consult with us and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.” I wonder if a book can have an impact this profound if it is read solely for information, or what is worse, if the only books we read are those that provide information to be gleaned without inspiring the reader to do much of substance with what’s been found.

 

Painting of a tree with a reddish-brown trunk against a blue sky

Red Tree

Piet Mondrian

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/M/mondrian/mondrian_red_tree.jpg.html

 

One Day, Maybe

christophernorthjr


Longer Boats
Cat Stevens

One Day, Maybe

Pebble in the Sky Cover
Isaac Asimov
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pebble_sky_cover.jpg

I grew up in the 1950’s and 60’s, my father was an aerospace engineer and I grew up with the space program. I also grew up with science fiction and the belief that very shortly, probably in my lifetime, we would be visiting other planets with an eye turned to other galaxies. Many thought that before long we would be seeing photographs resembling this cover illustration from one of Isaac Asimov’s science fiction novels. But somewhere between then and now other things began to occupy the culture’s interests. The song Longer Boats enjoyed a bit of popularity in the early 70’s and it is, as the singer tells us, about space ships. But the space ships never arrived, except in the movies.

In the movies the space ships brought two kinds of folks. There were those like ET who looked frightening to us (as we looked frightening to him) and the alien with his robot from The Day the Earth Stood Still who were either just curious and met us no harm or were actively committed to our welfare and saving us from ourselves. On the other hand there were those, like the folks in the Twilight Zone episode “How to Serve Man” or The Invaders from Mars that were committed to our destruction. There were also creatures like The Blob who were just hungry and had no real thoughts for us at all.

Martian Sunset Spirit Rover
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/lib/aptree.html

This photograph probably comes as close as any to resembling the cover art found on the science fiction novels of my youth. It is of the sunset on Mars and was taken by one of the Martian “rovers” that have spent quite a long time exploring the surface of this planet. It takes my breath away every time I see it. This is not a painting but the actual surface of another planet as it looked on a certain day. There are no people there to share in this experience only the machines we have sent in our place, but this is the real dirt and dust and mist of Mars. There are some for whom the spirit of exploration has not died who would like to see this story taken a step further and to see people walk this land. But I am not sure that there are any longer enough who are committed to making this happen. Our budgets are smaller and our interests closer to home.

There were a couple of articles recently, one in the Los Angeles Times on the science fiction novelist Kim Stanley Robinson (“Kim Stanley Robinson maps the future’s gray areas”) and one in the Washington Post on “New science fiction and fantasy novels” that remind us that science fiction as a genre has not gone away even if the desire to make it fact has somewhat abated. These writers often focus on this planet and how life on it might be different in the future or, in the case of Robinson in the past in ways that affect the future. Science fiction writers have always enjoyed imagining a future earth that has been transformed by human misbehavior. There is one story I particularly enjoy about a man working on his doctoral dissertation who is coaxed through an opening in the wall of his apartment to a parallel universe. What fascinates me about this story is that nearly every character in it is the man writing his dissertation at different points in time. But it was Ray Bradbury’s journey to Mars that awakened my imagination to the possibility of one day doing on Mars what the Martian Rover is doing now.

Galaxy Photograph (Crossfield/Beletsky)
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/lib/aptree.html

The image above is a photograph taken of a distant galaxy. I think it was taken from the Hubble telescope orbiting in space, but I am not sure. But it, and others like it, resembles paintings made by Jackson Pollack, or at least these photographs suggest Pollack’s paintings to me. I do not know if Pollack had an interest in science fiction or astronomy but this resemblance interests me. Is the universe, like a Pollack painting, somewhat chaotic in its organization or do the kaleidoscopic displays of colors and patterns in both the painting and the universe suggest creative imaginations that think alike. The resemblance certainly suggests that art does not need to be representational to be beautiful.

Perhaps the imagination that sees beauty in random placements of color on canvas is not unlike the imagination that sees stories in the stars. We look at the stars and see bits of color on a dark night sky but our ancient ancestors saw bears and hunters and creatures of various kinds going about their business. Perhaps what we call mythology was a kind of ancient science fiction. That those that told these stories got the same thrill from them that I got from Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Robert Heinlein. I am told, and what I have read of the mythology suggest this is true, that the classical mythmakers believed the stories they told, that they were not merely the products of vivid imaginations but a kind of history. Plato believed (or suggested he believed) that those that told the stories of Homer and the other classical writers of myth were possessed, were not in their right minds, but a bit mad. Many think the same thing about Pollack and painters like him. Perhaps his is a mythic madness as well.

Lavender Mist
Jackson Pollack
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lavender_Mist.jpg

The stories change us though or at least they changed me. The myths from antiquity suggest we live in a universe populated by many strange and wonderful beings. The science fiction I read as a child and as a young adult and still read to this very day, suggest the same thing about the universe, that it is inhabited by strange and wonderful beings and if some of the beings that inhabit these stories are not kind or benevolent, well, the same was true of many of the beings that inhabited the popular myths of the ancient world.

But what makes a storyteller. As I have grown up I have seen film become the avenue of modern storytelling. I have seen its special effects grow from the sparks that propelled Flash Gordon’s space ship to the warp speeds of starships and the grace and elegance with which these starships moved. But it also seems that as the ability to make magic with special effects increased these effects started to replace the stories. Aristotle acknowledged the place of spectacle in story telling but he believed that spectacle oughtn’t to become the story but should always serve the story.

James Cameron TED Talk

James Cameron talks here about his love of science fiction and of how that love helped to shape him into a storyteller. Like many skillful storytellers he has been accused of borrowing his stories from others. There is probably some truth to this; there are only so many stories to tell, after all. But he creates worlds where wonderful and at times terrifying things happen. Do his stories exploit their special effects, does the spectacle over shadow the stories his films tell? Some think so. But even if they have their limitations they are powerful. Personally I have been more troubled by the limitations of some of his actors than by the inadequacy of his stories.

Three Suns (JPL)
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/lib/aptree.html

It probably does not matter that much of what happens in a good science fiction story uses flawed science, they are exercises in what might be and perhaps in the worlds they travel different rules apply. How would we be different if we orbited three different suns that appeared at different places against the sky? The three sunned landscape of this illustration has a kind of beauty and I wonder what kind of life could develop on such a planet. But how does imagining such things make life better on a planet with one sun?

There is something in the human character that is curious and wants to know even if there is no practical value to knowing a thing or in speculating about an outcome. Stories often help us to entertain this curious bent of the imagination. And it has often happened that in entertaining the mind with such nonsense great things have been accomplished. The space program may not have solved the world’s problems but it did give us Tang, microwave cooking, and the laptop computer. Jonathan Swift ridiculed the speculative scientists of his day by accusing them of attempting to pull sunlight out of cucumbers. Science may not have succeeded in pulling sunlight out of cucumbers, but they have given us ethanol, something not very different.

Is the object of science to make our lives better, to make us more comfortable, or to understand how to use our resources more effectively and to understand the forces of nature that have created those resources. If the former, science only has value if it can solve our problems. It must produce practical results or it is not worth the investment. If the latter the results are somewhat superfluous because the study of science is not about what it can do for us, but the knowledge it gives and the insights it provides into the universe we occupy. It has usually happened that this knowledge has brought with it practical applications that have solved many problems, but this is just a by-product and not a purpose. So, is the joke on Swift or on us? Perhaps it depends on whether we view science as an end or as a means to an end, as spectacle without much in the way of a story to tell or the intelligence, or an aspect of that intelligence, behind the scenes that drives the story.