Author: Matt

Author, Registered Psychotherapist. Former circus animal.
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Book Review: Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse

We often lack depth when looking backward, particularly as it regards cultural history. For example, if I were to ask you “Name some book titles or authors whose style you would describe as hallucinogenic?”, you’d probably name the likes of William S. Burroughs and such books as Brave New World. And if I asked “What period would you pin the advent of this style to?”, you’d probably say, and without much pause, the 60’s. Because, you would reason, everything before then was formal and disciplined; rational if enlightened.

The problem is that this is entirely wrong. It is an assumption which benefits too much the artists of the mid-50’s to late-60’s 1 and by ignorance does disservice to those who came before and made such efforts feasible in the first place. Most people wouldn’t know that one of the most commonly-associated hallucinogenic novels, Brave New World, was not a product of the 50’s-60’s. It was written in 1932, nearly 50 years before Burroughs’ Junkie (1953).

Another of these books is Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse. Written in 1927, it is a cracker of a novel, injected with a dream-like existential narrative, intermingled with undercurrents of Eastern mysticism and Western philosophy.

The novel opens with a brief (although I would’ve preferred a briefer) forward by the son of a rooming house matron who describes his relationship with a mysterious boarder who had inexplicably left without notice one night. The tenant, a temperamental stranger in his early 50’s, named Harry Haller, left a manuscript behind which the son hopes will some day shine some light on the capricious personality of the tenant who disappeared. The manuscript which follows is a revelatory and harrowing first-person account of Haller’s self-discovery.

Harry Haller is a man out of place and out of step with his time and his country (in this context, post-WWI Germany). He has grown accustomed to referring to himself as the Steppenwolf: a wolf who has come down from the Steppes to live among men, and as such can neither fully be at ease with an increasingly bourgeois society nor, as a man, the divisively lonesome and eternally longing animal within.

Arriving at a nameless town, he finds himself trying to fit-in as best as possible, but always restless and battling with his duality and the thirst for an end to his seemingly infinite inner conflict. He can’t seem to relate to others and increasingly begins to loathe the life he has led. Just as he begins to obsess over the thought of suicide, he meets a mysterious and vibrant young woman, Hermine. Harry discovers that, unlike anyone around, she is able to understand him and, in a way that is once playful and scolding, is able to direct him away from self-destruction.

Hermine introduces Harry to a colourful and sensual existence with the help of her friends, yet this experience comes at a price. There is a tragedy beneath Hermine’s hedonistic demeanour, and Harry realises that the path she offers him is one not only of liberation, but necessary destruction. As the story proceeds, Harry is enveloped into a seductive world of physical pleasure which unleashes within him a mystical inspiration which serves to alleviate his natural displeasure with the world and his place in it.

However, Harry Haller is Harry Haller. He can’t help but feel as if he has stepped into a world that is not his, inspirational though it may be. As before, just as he feels freed from the shackles of his own prison, the Steppenwolf beckons; the conflict between righteousness and desire, formality and inspiration. He cannot help but grip his traditional way of thinking, torn as he is by the transcendent pleasure Hermine unfolds for him.

The story comes to an end, a hallucinatory multi-layered climax, as Hermine introduces Harry to the Magic Theatre, which becomes an existential funhouse mirror through which Harry comes face to face with his predicament. Face to face with death. Face to face with the nature of the Steppenwolf.

I’m not going to give anything away here – not that there are many “spoilers” to concoct out of this novel. Hesse injects a whirl of thoughts and feelings, sometimes painful and possibly autobiographic, from the necessary tragedy of Romanticism to the bewildering transcendence of Eastern mysticism. While the climax may be highly conceptual and perhaps too ambiguous for some, I must say that I ate this book as if it were my last dinner: reverently.

I will be writing separately about a couple of experiences which happened in relation to my reading Steppenwolf. It is a book that still haunts me and if you haven’t read it (and what I’ve written above doesn’t bewilder you too much) I strongly suggest you do.

Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse (ISBN-10: 0312278675) is available at a friendly independent bookstore near you. Or online at any number of vendors.

 

1. A problem compounded by the Baby Boomer generation’s evergreen self-obsession, combined with their control of the media.

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Blogger Update


Blogger, the blogging portal through which this site exists, has upgraded to a new version. I’ve been reticent to switch, particularly as it has been interminably stuck in a Beta stage (“beta” being the latest buzzword for “it doesn’t work but because we’re a publicly traded company we need to produce output for the sake of keeping the price of our shares consistent”). However, apparently, it’s out of Beta so I will be switching to it today.

What scares me is that the template – those bits of code which I’ve been polishing like gemstones for the last year – will require upgrading. I don’t have as much time to polish as I used to, so I hope the changes aren’t too heinous (let alone the hope that my site simply doesn’t break in half).

In any case, here it goes…

P.S. Coming Up: book reviews!

Update (05/01/07): the switch wasn’t too bad, but now that bloody Blogger Nav-Bar is at the top again. Bastards.

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Merry Christmas and More

Hello all.

Just a quick note (time, it seems these days, is nothing more than a patchwork of quick notes) to say hello to everyone who’s dropped by this little piece of cyber real estate since its launch in March. Some trivia about the blog:

– Seventy-one posts (now seventy-two)

– Anywhere between 6 and 12 thousand visitors (depending upon how you read those stats and allowing for the opinions of anonymous IT fascists)

– Nineteen original photos

– an excess of verbosity

– a reasonably low amount (considering some of the topics) of whining and solipsism.

More importantly (which I don’t group with trivia) are the comments I’ve received. I don’t have a tally, but that’s not really the point. It’s always good to get feedback, whether it be good or bad (and it’s typically been supportive). Your suggestions are always welcome.

There are a lot of people who consider blogging to be nothing more than a wank-fest extraordinaire; a self-regarding, self-aggrandizing, self-obsessed voyeur’s wet-dream-come-true. And for those who hold this opinion there are certainly a lot of blogs that satisfy this judgment – I won’t lie. But the existence of proof does not deny the existence of alternatives. I am happy to provide what I feel is a constructive alternative. Alternatives, generally speaking, are not cures. They do not prove viewpoints wrong. If anything, alternatives instill the ultimate provable reality: humanity is always more complex than how we consider it in our day to day lives. Like the world around us, humanity is nearly infinitely complex; it doesn’t deny explanation – it actually embraces explanation – but the summary truths of mankind and the world are always elusive. Without answers we must work on voicing the right questions to unlock the glimmering meanings of our existence.

On that note, have a great holiday. Get some sleep. Don’t let the newspapers scare you. Save your strength for the fights that truly matter.

mcc

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Article/Comment: Watch Your Language

(This post is currently in competition in the Philosophy Blog War. Feel free to cast your vote for it. If you like, you can vote directly by pressing this button.)

I read a very interesting essay on the BBC News website entitled “Chaotic world of climate truth”. It’s written by Mike Hulme, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and in it he criticises the hyperbole which casts a pall on the discussion of global warming.

This is not a partisan piece, in the sense that Mr Hulme is not one of a seeming endless army of paid-for voices in the climate change debate. By virtue of his office and his profession, he makes his argument clear from the outset:

Climate change is a reality, and science confirms that human activities are heavily implicated in this change.

But over the last few years a new environmental phenomenon has been constructed in this country – the phenomenon of “catastrophic” climate change.

It seems that mere “climate change” was not going to be bad enough, and so now it must be “catastrophic” to be worthy of attention.

The increasing use of this pejorative term – and its bedfellow qualifiers “chaotic”, “irreversible”, “rapid” – has altered the public discourse around climate change.

This blog entry isn’t about climate change (notice there are no stock images of ensuing storm clouds and other nature metaphors for imminent disaster). I’m not apathetic to the topic but, reading his essay, Mr. Hulme’s description of how hyperbole cheapens legitimate debate rang very true and has implications outside of the context of this particular subject.

We’re living in an increasingly ideological age. I cannot remember a time (I’m 36, so I gather there are precedents beyond “my years”) when words such as intolerance, fundamentalist, and radical were used so extensively (the trope intolerant fundamentalist radical, for example, is no longer the sole jurisdiction of religious persecution but rather has extended itself to include such diverse groups as environmentalists and, my personal favourite, secular progressives). I’ve written here about the decline of discussion and true debate in N. American society; it’s as if we feel that no one will listen to us unless we raise our voices to the sky and colour our points with invective. Nothing is important anymore: it’s imperative. Nothing is troubling anymore: it’s a crisis.

In exaggerating the situation with alarmist language (which is often disingenuously intended to get attention rather than be realistic/logical) we fall into a trap. Like the boy who cried wolf, if our standard for discussion is hyperbole, then who will truly believe us when there truly is something to be alarmed about?

I see this behaviour not only in the usual suspects (blogs, user groups, forums), but also emanating from supposedly respectable institutions (governments, scientific research institutes, charities). It’s in the newspapers, it’s on television, it’s in our RSS feeds. I suppose it’s the scale of it, and the feeling (or fear) that this is the “new normal” of discourse which concerns me.

The language of catastrophe is not the language of science.

Those words start Mr. Hulme’s summary. In the context of how I feel I would say that “the language of catastrophe is not the language of an evolved society”, but rather one that is becoming more and more tribal and classist.

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Book Review: Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, by Ludwig Wittgenstein

4.003    Most propositions and questions, that have been written about philosophical matters, are not false, but senseless. We cannot, therefore, answer questions of this kind at all, but only state their senselessness. Most questions and propositions of the philosophers result from the fact that we do not understand the logic of our language.
(They are of the same kind as the question whether the Good is more or less identical than the Beautiful.)
And so it is not to be wondered at that the deepest problems are really no problems.

 

I’ve been promising this review for some time. The problem has been – since this is a book not of philosophy but about philosophy – I’ve needed time for it to sink in. Furthermore, as much as I hate prefacing my opinion (or anyone else doing the same), due to the nature of this book I feel it fair to say a few words: I’m not an academic who specializes in philosophy. I do not have the names and concepts of all the world’s great thinkers at my fingertips. As such, I tackled this book as a reasonably intelligent layman. What I have to say about it should be seen through this particular lens. This is not a dissertation and most certainly this is not an academic exercise. So there.

Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico Philosophicus though only clocking-in at a svelte 108 pages, is a monster of a book. It is a perception-altering, densely laid treatise that attempts to clarify not a particular theory per se, but rather, pulls its focus back to comment upon the very scaffolding of philosophical understanding itself.

The way Wittgenstein sees it, there are too many fundamental errors and/or assumptions that sabotage philosophical propositions before they’re even written down on paper. The key is to first lay down exactly what a sound proposition is and to understand it in its elemental form. Technically, linguistically, even mathematically Wittgenstein has taken his understanding of what makes a philosophical proposition sound and distilled into a dense uber-logical lexicon.

It’s a fascinating (if insufferably semantic) approach: each point and sub-point are laid down like a revolutionary manifesto:

 

4.023    The proposition determines reality to this extent, that one only needs to say “Yes” or “No” to it to make it agree with reality.
Reality must therefore be completely described by the proposition.
A proposition is the description of a fact.
As the description of an object describes it by its external properties so propositions describe reality by its internal properties.
The proposition constructs a world with the help of a logical scaffolding, and therefore one can actually see in the proposition all the logical features possessed by reality if it is true. One can draw conclusions from a false proposition

 

Wittgenstein is intent on defining the way in which we attempt to interpret the world rather than the specifics of content. Wittgenstein’s reverence for the power and importance of how language is utilized in articulating the world is infectious. His approach, however, requires careful reading. I will be honest in saying that it’s difficult to review such a book without having spent a number of weeks re-reading it, making notes, checking out other people’s feelings about it, etc.. I have not had the time to do this, and have only managed to read Tractatus twice – however, I will say that while the first reading was a slog in the mud, during the second reading things became suddenly more clear and fascinating.

Who should read this book? Anyone interested in expanding their practical and theoretical understanding of language and logic. While Tractatus is dense and unsparing to the casual reader, those who give Wittgenstein’s treatise the time and effort it deserves will undoubtedly walk away richer for the experience (if not wiser). If Aristotle wrote the book on metaphysics, then Wittgenstein has written the book on metaphilosophy.

Tractatus Logico Philosophicus (ISBN 0-486-40445-5) is available at a fine independent bookstore near you. Also available online at various merchants. Note: this review is based upon the 1999 Dover republication (using the translation by C.K. Ogden, which is thought to be the definitive text).

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Defending Tideland

As well as working in the industry, I am first and foremost a fan of films. Films are just as capable of articulating the world (inner and outer) as any other art form 1. I’m taking it upon myself to defend a film which will undoubtedly appear on many Worst of 2006 lists, which is a shame.

Tideland is a film by Terry Gilliam, a director who has a reputation for being a maverick. He packs his work with unbridled fits of imagination and passion – often much to the chagrin of his investors. One only needs to research the making of films such as The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), Brazil (1985), and more recently his unfinished Don Quixote project 2 to understand that this is someone who doesn’t listen to reason if reason gets in the way of a neat idea. Tideland is no exception.

Though released only weeks ago it was actually completed in 2005 and spent a long time floating around festivals until it dropped into theatres unceremoniously in October. With few exceptions the film was summarily eviscerated by the critics and subsequently shunned by the movie-going public. It will go on Gilliam’s track record as yet another “ambitious failure” 3.

I’m here to say that I’ve seen Tideland, and it’s good. Beguiling at times, but good. The story concerns Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland), a ten-year-old girl whose abusive mother dies of a drug-overdose. Escaping the city with her scallywag father (played by Jeff Bridges), they wind up at a ramshackle house in the middle of the prairie that once belonged to her grandmother. It has since been abandoned and pretty soon – after her father suffers from a fate similar to her mother – Jeliza-Rose is left alone to fend for herself. The greatest weapon at her disposal, however, is a seemingly bottomless imagination (her friends, from the beginning of the film, are three doll heads she fits onto her fingers and engages in conversation with). Along the way, she encounters her neighbours (which, on the prairie, means a mile away), Dell and Dickens, a rather odd brother and sister; she (played by Janet McTeer) is a taxidermist with a witch-like demeanor and a dire fear of bees. Her brother (wonderfully rendered by Brendan Fletcher) had his brain operated on long ago to counter epilepsy and seems to be more child than man. Dickens and Jeliza-Rose becomes close friends, seemingly mental and emotional equals.

As much as I don’t like to say what a film (or any piece of art) is “about”, it’s clear – particularly given Gilliam’s repertoire – that one of the key messages of the film deals with the power of imagination in the face of bleakness. It is a bleak story, I won’t kid you (in case my synopsis didn’t get it across). However, the key difference between Gilliam and other directors is that his philosophy is never misanthropic; he always shows us a type of reality that is equal parts magical and bittersweet. Jodelle Ferland’s performance is this best I’ve seen this year and an astounding achievement for a child of her age; she is able to render the inner world and perspective of her character without ever being less than convincing.

I went into this film expecting a stinker and I walked away with a lot of haunting questions about childhood and the resilience of imagination. It’s a fair criticism to say that, in a film that so intimately (and disturbingly) inhabits a child’s world, there could have been an injection of objective perspective so that the audience had a better sense of what was real and what was fantasy. However, aside from that, the film stands comfortably on its own and proudly – in my opinion – beside the best of Gilliam’s work. This makes it all the more unfortunate that it got trounced in its theatrical release. While not the first time Gilliam has experienced such disappointment, it seems the price he has had to pay to give us some of the most inspiring and wild flights of fancy.


1. It was Sergei Eisenstein who said that editing is the only art form native to filmmaking (all its other elements originating in either theatre or photography)

2. See: Lost in La Mancha

3. Aside from Munchausen which reported a record-loss in its day, his last feature, The Grimm Brothers was characterized by the sort of producer-led sabotage the Weinstein brothers are famous for. It’s not a very good film and I don’t quite understand what the intent was behind it – but that’s another story. I’m a champion of Gilliam but I won’t stop short of staring at Grimm suspiciously.

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M is for Miscellany

Disparate notes for today…

First, this blog has hit (and since surpassed) 10,000 visits. I waited until there were at least a few hundred over the mark as I’m sure a lot are due to me being paranoid about spelling/grammar/formatting mistakes. Hoorah for me and, once again, a big vote of thanks to all of you who have passed through – particularly those who leave comments.

Secondly, photographs. Yeah…not many of them lately, huh? The answer is simple: no time, but certainly not for lack of interest and passion. Mind you, this autumn (Toronto at least) has been cold, grey, and wet – generally miserable for a season and a region known for some of the most beautiful autumn vistas in the world. In other words, even if I had the time, my output would’ve been slim (and if not, reflecting the dreary outdoors we’ve experienced since October began). I promise to publish some in the near future, even if they are not “fresh” (which is usually my preference). Thankfully, the forecast for today called for a high of 16 Celsius; I’m hoping we’ll have at least a month remaining of the autumn I’ve come to know, before the snow hits.

Thirdly, still reading Wittgenstein (book review forthcoming). I must say, there are great swaths of it that are about as easy to peruse as electrical schematics. Punishingly arithmetical. Yet, like the sun glimmering through clouds, here and there I happen upon oases of potent contemplation:

5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my world

Suck on that for a toothache, eh? Still, after this book I’m going to need an antidote – at this rate Anne of Green Gables will do.

UPDATE (02/11/06): It’s bloody 6 degrees outside…with a wind from the lake no less. Please disregard what I wrote about “hoping to have a balmy autumn”. Christ.

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