As It Is
Regarding Tyromaven's comment on Tell Us About Real, I was just looking over an old favorite book of mine and found this amazing last few lines, which I think embody exactly what she was talking about and what I need to think about. If I don't tell you what book it is, it's not a spoiler.
"Knowledge of the facts of [the character]'s life and death changes nothing in the world. Our celebrating his life and grieving over his death, however, will. Good cheer and mournfulness over lives other than our own, even wholly invented lives—no, especially wholly invented lives—deprive the world as it is of some of the greed it needs to continue to be itself. Sabotage and subversion, then, are this book's objectives. Go, my book, and help destroy the world as it is."
I would love to hear anyone's thoughts.
posted by Gemma @ 10:46 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Gemma, you'll have to reveal to me offline what this book is--'cause otherwise how will I know to read it?
You're taking the conversation to another step. Let me think about this.
Maybe the knots of needs and wants, ramified into some interobjective- intersubjectivity start to get at "the greed it needs to continue to be itself." Sabotage and subversion are part, I think, of what art can do well and for useful ends. And I'm all about the "destroy the world as it is", comfort-the-afflicted-and -afflict-the-comfortable modes, but that can't be all. We'll reach a limit to our resistance.
We have to build, not just assault. I'd even venture to say that it's more worthwhile to build a real bridge for real conveyance between/among the comfortable and the afflicted than it is to assault the fortresses of intertia. Both together are great, and I usually resent false choices like the one I'm about to set up--but if I had to choose where to spend my energy, I'd put more into building the world that will be than into tearing down the world as it is.
And then, sometimes I'm in a bad mood and none of this applies. But actually, it's getting harder for me to be in a destructive space. More another time in other places.
I want the title/author of the book.
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