IN SNOB CASTLE 2
I recently finished reading two non-fiction books. After Babel by George Steiner and Spinal Catastrophism by Thomas Moynihan. They were both so dense and filled with complicated detail that there is no way I will be able to give a good review or encapsulation here, but Iâll try to say something.
Steiner who is now deceased, when he was alive was a professor and writer who grew up in a trilingual household. I think he was one of those people who from the age of like 2 could speak English, French, and German. He grew up in Europe (I may or may not fact check this later). So this book After Babel is about linguistics and translation. It took me years to finish reading. I got stuck partway through and couldnât pull myself out until just recently. I back tracked two or three hundred pages and took a running start and then finished the book.
What was the book about? I donât remember picking up a clear thesis. It wasnât that type of book. Rather it was just filled with Steinerâs painfully erudite thoughts about how language behaves on its own, in all its manifestations around the world, with plentiful examples of unusual factors and facets, like how the language of the Hopi Indian tribe is better suited to explain certain concepts of quantum mechanics than English is, because of its particular verb structure that allows for more indeterminacy somehow. Languages treat time in peculiar ways. Steiner points out how although animals seem to have a rudimentary form of language (frogs croak, birds sing, bees dance to illustrate the distance and directions to nearby nectar-bearing flowers), animals lack a linguistic conception of the future. Iâm not certain this is 100% true but Steinerâs explanations are wildly imaginative and filed to the brim with intellectual power and learning. This is not even the tip of the tip of the iceberg of where the book goes.
The book came out in the mid-70s and is buried deep under the shadow of Noam Chomskyâs efforts to formulate an understanding of the âdeep structuresâ that unite all human languages. Steiner tears Chomsky apart, saying that his linguistic studies and understandings are fundamentally flawed because Chomsky and his colleagues at MIT are essentially good with computer models but their sentences, the grammatical units they process and study are mainly in a kind of generalized, generally translated English, with unconsciously English biases. The Chomsky school is monolingual but is claiming to study and represent all languages and to Steiner this is an incredible limitation.
The bulk of the second half of the book is Steiner going from poem to poem like a chimpanzee swinging from tree to tree: effortlessly, rhythmically, examples of French and German poetry are analyzed but never translated themselves for the English reader, which I am. I had to use my smartphone to translate the French and German, which was a laborious process but it did yield up some illustrative gold. Except when the poets were difficult and playing by another set of compositional rules, like Paul Celan and Stephane MallarmĂ©. Steiner uses untranslatable poets to make points about how dense and idiosyncratic some poetry can be, and how the expressive quality of language often depends on factors beyond syntax and rules. Also he is saying something about how modernism, or roughly the era of literature begun in the 19th century and extending like an oil spill into the 20th century, will morph language into something more unforgiving and alienating, hence why the poetry is so resistant to comprehension in one language and by extension otherworldly in all. Again, this is just my rough memory of what I read. I would have to reread After Babel and provide specific examples to make a clearer point about what Steiner was trying to do. Some critics of Steiner say that he wasnât really about nothing except trying to show off his broad reading and mastery of detail, and the beautiful prose he fashioned, beyond a certain depth that would appeal to middlebrow intellectual readers of the New Yorker, was somewhat empty. I donât think thatâs 100% true either. I underlined many passages in After Babel: not so many that the underlinings were meaningless because they lacked discernment (see my copy of Swannâs Way which after my first reading was practically all underlined) but not so few that there was no engagement with the text. I recommend this book to adventurous readers interested in the subject of language and translation who are looking for a cerebral thrill and who are also willing to punch long passages into Google translate to get answers.
Moynihanâs Spinal Catastrophism is a good companion piece to After Babel because it also gives your mind a serious workout. I donât know enough German Idealist philosophy or hardcore science to really get the finer points of the book, but I could grasp enough to know that Moynihan was playing a kind of cheeky game with the reader. Iâve heard the term âtheory-fictionâ a few times, and while I donât know exactly what it is, my guess would be that it is fiction that depends heavily upon a knowledge of philosophy, literary criticism, arcane science. Or if not fiction, a kind of loose creative writing that has disappeared into the arcane, highly rarefied world of academic-ese. Moynihan through heavily footnoted text tells the tale of how scientists through the ages have drawn conclusions about the evolution of man, specifically how man came to stand upright on two legs, his spine erect. âFalling upâ over millions of years of development, learning to see the natural world beyond the narrow, small field of vision of four-legged animals that can really only see each otherâs hind-ends, acquiring language: these all spell something about humankindâs purpose on earth. The spine is at times treated like a puppet master moving the physical body around, a parasite, and even a kind of relic of a potentially long-past alien encounter whereby some other organism inhabited single-celled organisms and set in motion an awful pathway to âvertebraeization.â If that word appears clumsy and risible to you, it is nothing compared to the vast storehouse of scientific jargon that Moynihan draws upon to talk about the excursion of spines lifting through prehistory. I could find literally hundreds of examples for you but Iâm too tired and cold to go find the book.
The scientists and philosophers who have through the centuries written about spine ailments and guessed at the larger reasons for the spineâs development are joined by speculative writers such as Burroughs, Ballard, and Bataille. These three âB-boys,â along with other figures from literature, apply a healthy (or is it unhealthy?) dose of imagination to animate the scientific papers with an unholy fire. While the book is about how we have been moving up in the world since the dawn of man, it is a downer. Moynihan does not have good news about our larger fate. The book is a clinical series of repetitive implications that we should all just kill ourselves because the forces that caused hominids to stand up straight were a cosmic mistake. Youâve heard teenagers complain âI didnât ask to be born!â before stomping off to their rooms? Humankind didnât ask to gain consciousness, didnât ask to develop a nervous system that could feel suffering, and yet those things came to pass and itâs just the horrifying anatomical situation we fell upwards into. This book is a towering example of âpessimistic literature.â Nuclear apocalypse, a cleansing fire wiping out humanity, is a consummation devoutly to be wished in Moynihanâs world, seemingly. He apparently considered this book a failure and wrote another one about the history of manâs concept of extinction that promises to be a real page turner.
And yet Iâm as glad I read Spinal Catastrophism as I was about reading After Babel. I see them as a pair of dumbbells in a gym composed of mental exercise equipment. I donât remember everything about the books, except the occasional feeling that I was managing to partially understand something abstruse and daunting. I didnât have to completely absorb the books, or buy into their conclusions. It was a leisure activity. I read through the spine book in a fraction of the amount of time I read Steiner. In many ways it was actually the more clearly written book. Certainly it is more recent, being published in 2019, whereas After Babel came out in the mid 1970s, like I said. Check out these books at the brain-gym and get pumped up!
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Side note: without going into too much detail, I have been thinking about my involvement with the arts and culture magazine The Last Estate, where I have written a few articles and book reviews. The online publication is going through some personnel changes and is causing some restructuring to happen. I joined the ranks of contributors to the Last Estate in 2022 and have been a sometime lackadaisical participant in the decision-making there. Iâm trying to be careful what I say. Several of my subscribers also work there so I should be circumspect. Iâll just say that there has been a need to do some soul-searching about what kind of content the magazine has offered. My contributions have mainly been book reviews and touched on issues regarding the field of literature, specifically, I guess, indie lit. This isnât the only thing the Last Estate publishes; if you check out the website,
https://last.estate
(hope the link works) youâll see that they steer in the direction of âunusual, irreverent cultural criticism with a lively, humorous twist.â Their purview is wide, and selection of texts comprehensive and ecumenical. Theyâve published articles about the creepy relevance of Bobâs Big Boy, the iconic restaurant at the heart of so much American popular culture; chess tournaments; Netflix shows like 1899 and the philosophical speculations they inspire over âwhether we are living in a simulationâ; cartoons like Family Guy; and all sorts of cultural flotsam and jetsam. The current debate, which I find myself somewhat embroiled in, is whether the Last Estate should lean into its content dealing with indie lit, which is the kind of thing I have an interest and a curiosity in. When I write about books, I have tried (sometimes failing Iâm sure) to find the cultural significance of the work, to tie it into something beyond âwow, that was such a good book.â Iâve written book reviews at a variety of places beyond the Last Estate, and no matter where they are published, always I have tried to communicate to a potential reader what has excited me or piqued my curiosity about the book.
But, as Iâve said here and other places, book reviewing can be an ethically murky activity. How do you know youâre not just kissing ass to network with writers? Or to make a name for yourself on a quest upwards in a career that hopefully ends with a book deal? What is the code of arms for a book critic? Christian Lorentzen in todayâs substack post talks about all this. Itâs fascinating reading if you can get there behind the paywall.
I have to painfully admit that the thought has crossed my mind, that if the Last Estate doesnât generally want book reviews, maybe I shouldnât try to force them to take them from me. This has the risk of sounding passive aggressive, which I donât really intend. I went to work for the Last Estate because I thought Iâd be doing book reviews. And I can say, without breaking a nervous sweat on my brow, that I thought I was providing them with content as professionally polished and strong as any I would try to get published at any other place, because I really loved the venue and was proud of it. None of this is making me any money, or anything more tangible than a publication credit that will frankly probably fade away into the digital horizon with time. But I felt like the Last Estate was exactly the type of place that my book reviews would fit in. I didnât quite understand until very recently, just how much the direction of literary commentary, book reviews, that I was heading in diverged from the larger editorial vision of the publication. And Iâm not mad about this new apprehension of the divergence which is more starkly highlighted. It does lead one to think introspectively, however.
Book reviewing doesnât require you to leave your house. I have some pretty strong agoraphobic tendencies. I donât live in a city with a lot of cultural activities. I donât go to movies or watch much television or play video games. I know nothing about computer science. I am not tapped into certain rich mother lodes of the zeitgeist. I donât really want to do much of anything beyond read books. And that itself becomes something of a chore. I am learning that I canât be committing myself to telling people I can review their books so much. My time management abilities are very poor. I have two part time jobs that actually pay me. Iâm disabled. I have life stresses that are linked to this. Reading books and sometimes writing about books, when itâs working right, is a calming and satisfying activity that enhances my life. I like writing book reviews.
Itâs a weird game to play though, getting other people to read them. Iâll be blunt. I have a fear of trying to submit book reviews to places, to arranging that, to getting an editorâs attention and approval. Itâs different than trying to get a poem or short story published. Itâs fraught with some kind of other energy. The feeling of being on a high wire is more pronounced, Iâd say, because youâre dealing with someone elseâs book. So imagine that you have this fear, but then you are then made aware that your friends have an arts and culture magazine thatâs starting up. You start thinking this could be a mutually beneficial situation. They must be in need of book reviews, right? And youâre in need of a safe place to maybe contribute that kind of thing. Wheels start turning, and calculators start calculating. Itâs not something Iâm proud of, exactly. But I think you can see how water runs downhill and naturally seeks the lowest point. Or opportunities arise. Is this bad? I think in all honesty there is a likelihood Iâm not alone in thinking these kinds of thoughts in a world where itâs hard to get published. But it is opportunistic. Book reviewers, if theyâre going to put out a series, a continuous flow, will gravitate to a place they can return to. Itâs as natural and animalistic as Moynihanâs nervous systems seeking uprightness. Book reviewers are maybe like those underwater creatures that linger around superheated crevasses under the sea where hot sulfurous water is released and because of these factors thereâs food in that water the creatures can live off of. Or letâs just go there and say it: maybe book reviewers are like rats that stowaway on ships â or websites â because they are seizing an opportunity and theyâre living off the environment that someone else is maintaining and designing. Publishing is a hot crevasse that biological life invades, maybe, because it senses it can live there unmolested. The conditions are right.
Well maybe itâs time for the creature to be dislodged from the safe, warm, sulfurous zone, and try to live elsewhere. To fend for itself. This âwild kingdomâ extended metaphor may snap like a rubber band soon. Maybe the book reviewer should try to expand and explore and try to occasionally go to some other venues, where there arenât any friends. So the interaction is less prone to be affected by relationships that are ripe for abuse or exploitation or emotions or guilt. You know what I mean? Not that I feel Iâve been exploitative, I hope I havenât, not to a terrible degree, but if I tried to go somewhere else, somewhere less safe, it would be even less so than what it may be right now. Publication would be more based upon its own intrinsic merit, perhaps. Itâs something to think about. If thereâs going to be a slackening of need in one area, less of a demand, less of a forced vacuum thing⊠Iâm just full of science metaphors I guess. I can try to send book reviews somewhere else, and hopefully this wonât hurt my friends or insult them. I have a fear of that, and of letting them down.
Iâm also fascinated by languages, how they shape thought, how translations are imperfect because they canât capture all the baggage behind the words. Great post Jesse.
Enjoyed this a great deal.