Stylistics [1]

Stylistics [1]

Richard Ford - Great Falls

'If loneliness is the disease, the story is the cure'

Rock Springs (1988) is a collection of short stories by Richard Ford, one of the great names in modern American storytelling. The ten stories in Rock Springs are near perfect; Ford's realism shows his ability to dive into the human mind to dig up the most stunning revelations that are as much matter-of-fact as they are poetical in a strange and lucid way.

How to define the quality of good writing? One way - old and decent, never lets you down - is to realise how much you enjoy it and how many times you like to re-read it. 'You should not write about something you haven't re-read' said Emile Cioran in an interview, and I can only agree. I have re-read the stories in Rock Springs several times, even though I bought this collection only a few months ago. I like to re-read them because I love to savour Ford's words, I want to read them again and again, slowly make them my own, look at them from every possible angle. Not that they are difficult - mysterious maybe, but definitely not difficult. Let me give you an example from the second - and for me the best - story in this collection: Great Falls.

"Your life's your own business, Jackie," she said. "Sometimes it scares you to death it's so much your own business. You just want to run."

These line are simple and beautiful. And they are mysterious in that respect that they invite the reader to stop for a moment, to think them over, to reflect upon what they tell us about the person who has spoken these words.

The above lines come from the mother of fourteen-year old Jackie. His father has taken Jackie out hunting ducks. Instead of stopping for his usual drink at The Mermaid on the way back, his father decides to drive straight home. "We'll surprise your mother," he said. "We'll make her happy."
But his father takes a little detour so they approach the house from the other direction. Without knowing what exactly to expect, the reader feels the tension building up. When Jackie and his father arrive back home, they see a strange car parked in front of the house. When his father goes into the house, the young man whose car it is walks out. His name is Woody and while Woody and Jackie try to have a little chat, we know that something is going on inside of the house, but Ford only offers us the snippets upon which the reader has to add his imagination. Without even noticing it, Ford makes us work but efforts like these belong to the most pleasant I can imagine.

'It is the fiction writer's duty to put into words what people can't always express for themselves,' Richard Ford said in an interview in 1990. Rock Springs is a perfect example, as it is full of the most stunning examples. 'And in any event, I know now that the whole truth of anything is an idea that stops existing finally.'

One more quote on writing: 'It's a writer's obligation and his privilege to make up the terms of drama out of the experience he sees. I don't know if it necessarily exists in the landscape or if it exists in human affairs, as much as you perceive it to exist. You make it exist.' - [Richard Ford in an interview in 1987]

[All the quotes on writing can be found in Conversations with Richard Ford, University press of Mississipi.]

The consolation of Philosophy (1)

Emile Cioran - from History and Utopia [1960]

The very notion of an ideal city is a torment to reason, an enterprise that does honor to the heart and disqualifies the intellect.

[from the essay Mechanism of Utopia]

In many of his works the French/Rumanian philosopher Emile Cioran (1911-1995) warns against the dangers of utopias. They may seem harmless and many will even attribute positive qualifications to them. However, utopias are an insult for the intellect as mankind is incapable of retaining their neutral status. 'In itself, every idea is neutral, or should be; but man animates ideas, projects his flames and flaws into them; impure, transformed into beliefs, ideas take their place in time, takes shape as events: the trajectory is complete, from logic to epilepsy...whence the birth of ideologies, doctrines, deadly games', as he writes at the beginning of Genealogy of Fanaticism, the first essay in his main work A short history of decay. Man suffers from 'a refusal to look reality in the face', he says in the same book, and man has 'a mortal thirst for fictions.'

'Human kind/ cannot bear very much reality' said T.S. Eliot in Four Quartets. Reality is too bleak, too frightening and most of all in the end we understand it is impossible to use it towards our own advantage. Better to twist reality, to let ourselves be deceived by the promise of utopia, to keep on dreaming of an ideal even though that idea will be shattered if we dare to give ourselves one look at history. In spite of the millions of victims Communism has caused in the 20th century - in spite of all his hideous crimes Hitler only occupies third spot in the list of 20th century mass murders, the top of the list is for Mao and Stalin - it is easier to blind ourselves and to continue dreaming of an ideal world. In spite of all the evidence that shows we have to look Islamist militancy in its ugly face to be able to conquer it, it is easier to blame ourselves, the horrible West: we have too much freedom, we treat women and homosexuals as equals. The sheer disgrace!

A mortal thirst for fictions...

Dear Reader

Dear Reader,

Welcome to my new blog. I will start posting messages in the coming days, and my messages will be about the things that have been on my mind on that specific day: sounds, words and ideas.

Hope to see you back sometime soon,

The Clog from Oz