Dear diary,
I hope this entry finds you living the Good Life. I wish I could say that I’m writing to you from Asia, but I’m writing from Eagan. We touched on a lot of topics over our past few postings; now the question is: Can I avoid repeating myself? And the answer is: No. But I will feign as tho any duplication is intentional.
I think I mentioned that my sweetheart and I have been watching John Ford movies. His filmography is so vast that we’re STILL screening thru it. We are only now nearing the end. We have two films left. Even after skipping several that were too hard to find, we ended up watching probably 75 features altogether. There’s no way I could remember all the best titles – just now I looked over a list, with the aim of highlighting a few of my favorites, but, instead of doing so, I give up: I’d only repeat the same names that are currently circulated (even so, those popular titles deserve their fame). On the other hand, I might point out the weird projects that Ford haphazardly produces, which pop up here and there as one follows his career, for they were the works that made our journey most rewarding. But there are too many to relay, in either case. Yet there was something loveable about every one. Among the better-known titles, I really liked The Grapes of Wrath (1940) – and that’s despite my prejudice against the adaptation of classic books (films should instead adapt bad books to make them better): in fact, I say Ford’s picture is superior to Steinbeck’s novel. And, among the lesser-known films, I admired Wagon Master (1950), which is about some Mormon pioneers crossing the desert.
Before moving on to other thrilling news, I must share this anecdote from Peter Bogdanovich’s 1978 book on Ford:
‘We were making a picture,’ says cameraman Joseph LaShelle, ‘and the head of the studio sent his assistant down to the set to tell Ford he was a day behind schedule. “Oh,” said Ford, very polite, “well, how many pages would you figure we shoot a day?” “About eight, I guess,” the guy said. “Would you hand me the script,” Ford said, and the guy handed it to him. He counted out eight pages that hadn’t been shot yet, ripped them out, and handed them to the guy. “You can tell your boss we’re back on schedule now,” he said. And he never did shoot those eight pages.’
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Out of the blue, I’ve been re-reading Saint Augustine. I began with his Confessions. What a surprise: I used to hate him, but now I’ve fallen in love. The serpent beguiled me. This time around, I was impressed with his clear prayer-style; and I love what he says about reading in general, and how he presents his speculations about time and birth. Let me share a passage. This is from Book 1, section 6, in the translation of R.S. Pine-Coffin:
. . . all I want to tell you, Lord, is that I do not know where I came from when I was born into this life which leads to death – or should I say, this death which leads to life? This much is hidden from me. But, although I do not remember it all myself, I know that when I came into the world all the comforts which your mercy provides were there ready for me. This I was told by my parents, the father who begat me and the mother who conceived me, the two from whose bodies you formed me in the limits of time. [. . .] in those days all I knew was how to suck, and how to lie still when my body sensed comfort or cry when it felt pain. [. . .] Little by little I began to realize where I was and to want to make my wishes known to others, who might satisfy them. But this I could not do, because my wishes were inside me, while other people were outside, and they had no faculty which could penetrate my mind. So I would toss my arms and legs about and make noises, hoping that such few signs as I could make would show my meaning, though they were quite unlike what they were meant to mime.
I like Augustine’s way of describing this early experience. It makes me feel less alone – for I’ve never gotten beyond the state of yearning to make my wishes known to “the people outside of me,” and I’m still clueless how to do much more than flail.
I’ll copy a little more from the same passage, because I love this next part . . . Augustine demands of God, saying:
Answer my prayer and tell me whether my infancy followed upon some other stage of life that died before it. Was it the stage of life that I spent in my mother’s womb? For I have learnt a little about that too [. . .] But what came before that, O God my Delight? Was I anywhere? Was I anybody? These are questions I must put to you, for I have no one else to answer them.
This pondering of pre-life interests me even more than talk of the afterlife. I wonder why.
Then, after finishing Augustine’s Confessions, I read thru his City of God. That’s a huge tome – more than a thousand pages. I never attempted it before; but not only did I get thru, I actually found its style alluring. (What’s wrong with me!?) Considering that its stance, aim, and subject matter are all against my spirit, it felt somehow satisfying.
Then I read the biography Augustine of Hippo by Peter Brown, which was extremely good; and so was Augustine the Reader by Brian Stock.
My goal with all this was, once and for all, to tackle the question: Why is this man such a giant, here in the West?
And I’m also taking another look at the works of Sigmund Freud. So I picked up his Psychopathology of Everyday Life and finished it fast. And now I’m almost done with his dream book. All my friends hate Freud, but I’ve always esteemed him. I see him as an interesting essayist, whose worth is wholly literary & not scientific. Part of what attracts me to him, to tell the truth, is how angry he makes certain people. Anyone capable of inflaming his readership’s ire so deeply and thoroughly, by way of words alone, is worth my attention.
Regarding Psychopathology, I was shocked anew at how adamant Freud is in denying randomness any role in the workings of the mind. He seems to say that every error is, on some level, intentional. We humans are like computers: programmed in full shortly after being born. (Therefore apparently I’m mistaken in assuming that, when composing text for the sake of self-amusement, I gather my zany imaginations out of thin air: for one cannot even blurt out a multi-digit number without its components being strictly predetermined.) Here’s the man himself:
I do not believe that an occurrence in which my mental life takes no part can teach me anything hidden concerning the future shaping of reality; but I do believe that an unintentional manifestation of my own mental activity surely contains something concealed which belongs only to my mental life—that is, I believe in outer (real) chance, but not in inner (psychic) accidents. With the superstitious person, the case is reversed: he knows nothing of the motive of his chance and faulty actions; he believes in the existence of psychic contingencies; he is therefore inclined to attribute meaning to external chance, which manifests itself in something hidden outside of him. There are two differences between me and the superstitious person: first, he projects the motive to the outside, while I look for it in myself; second, he explains the accident by an event which I trace to a thought.
That’s from the chapter “Determinism—Chance—Beliefs,” in A. A. Brill’s translation. As I said, I’m taken aback by his thoughts on motive and “chance and faulty actions.” But Freud’s statements about superstition do ring true, at least for me, when I think about myth and holy scripture; I’ve often thought that myself: these things follow the logic of dreams.
So my reading-life has been dominated by the Doctor and the Saint. I usually just follow my whim when choosing what authors to absorb; but, in the case of these two, I reinforced my resolve by reading some essays about each. To my knowledge, the duo is not normally mentioned together; yet here’s something that Harold Bloom writes near the end of his book Where Shall Wisdom Be Found:
Augustine and Freud are totally antithetical to each other, except in one trait: they are the most tendentious writers I have ever read. Each has a palpable design on the reader, and knows precisely where he desires to take you.
Bloom also articulates what I now think is the most important element about the Bishop of Hippo:
Aside from his vast contributions to theology, Augustine invented reading as we have known it for sixteen centuries. [. . .] It is from Augustine that we learn to read, since he first established the relationship between reading and memory [. . .] Shakespeare, in my judgment, invented the inner self, but only because Augustine had made it possible, by creating autobiographical memory, in which one’s own life becomes the text. [. . .] But always we remain the progeny of Augustine, who first told us that the book alone could nourish thought, memory, and their intricate interplay in the life of the mind.
Also, elsewhere (in Genius), Bloom says:
If the age of the book now wanes (only for a time, I would hope), it is vital to recall that Augustine had much to do with making the book the basis for thought. [. . .] Any lifelong reader of the best books one can read is a disciple of Augustine . . .
I give all these excerpts in hopes that they will help to explain my obsession.
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