The Aging of Shakespeare – to ‘Late Style’ – to Catfish: Life as a novel “in progress”

With this blog in (and for) April 2009 I hope to facilitate rapprochement with the importance and influence of William Shakespeare, especially concerning the notion of ‘late style’, and with related concepts in the study of the aging process. But that’s not all, from ‘late style’, I then make the leap to literary work of the late Larry Brown (The Miracle of Catfish).

         

Wow, that is quite the leap. Yep, just another day at the office of Rogue Scholarship on Aging.

You may say: “But excuse me…what does one thing – have to do – with the other?”

Stay with me now and follow the breadcrumbs on how I will connect a path (a way to find ourselves through the fog as it were) on these 3 items:

• the recent unveiling of a portrait that is claimed to be that of William Shakespeare {Dude, is that You?}
• a further look into the notion of “late style” – or late writing (or late anything creatively speaking) for and aging Shakespeare and a few select others
• and then end up paying homage to one of my favorite writers (out of hundreds) – Larry Brown with an evolving and flourishing career of writing magnificent portraits of life itself. Larry Brown had sent the nearly completed manuscript of his sixth novel (The Miracle of Catfish) to his literary agent (Nov. 2004) and a week later was dead at the age 53 due to a massive heart attack.

Bur first a little background {sorry, no brevity, and perhaps no wit}.

Although, I think the collective works of Shakespeare is not ( I repeat – NOT) the best place to go for seeking refuge from the changes of senescence nor is it the first stop for finding sugary platitudes about “getting older.” In fact, there is a certain blunt in-your-face ambivalence and regret about aging throughout most his works. For example, Covey (2000) in a refreshing (because it represents scholarship sui generis) article – “Shakespeare on old age and disability” (Int’l J. of Aging & Human Development) does a good job of creating an selective inventory of how Shakespeare portrayed aging and disability in his works – and the overall assessment is truthful, yet heavy on the negative side of the ledger. For example, if we were to use some lines from Shakespeare for contemporary uses, such as the next time someone wants to accuse me of being “deadwood” in the academy, I would prefer to hear the following (from Henry IV, part 2, act 1, scene 2):

{Scott}…”You are as a candle, the better part burnt out.”  Yes, this paper-dagger I see coming to me in an e-mail from the Dean (at some point) and at least I would take home the message much better (thus the preference), knowing that administration at least used a little Shakespeare to deliver the news.

I could counter that sharp-edged comment by telling them that I am “in transition” and evolving to a “late style” in my works. That my deadwood status is but the winter of my discontent, and that my glorious summer of publications is near (if I can just get through the spring of allergies) -

Scott said, “You know…like Shakespeare did. He, like many others…” – (and here I would reel off the laundry list and heavily borrowed from Edward Said’s (2006) book, On Late Style: Music and Literature Against the Grain) – “…who took on the second wind, and who delivered the goods while pending “retirement” (or death), and there was also: Claude Debussy, Rembrandt, Matisse, Adorno, Bach, Wagner, Picasso, Thomas Mann, Richard Strauss, and the exemplar of all time (perhaps) – of Beethoven.”

And then for the final coup de grace (hmm, maybe poor choice of words here) I would solicit the potential for my possibility by mentioning Kubrick and Polanski in the film domain – not to mention Bergman and Jean-Luc Goddard (see James Morrison in Raritan) –

But alas, their quick and icy rebuttal -as hurtful as the paper wasp sting upon my neck: “All well and good Scott – for them – but for you…’You yourself, sir, shall grow old as I if like a crab could go backward’”.

And that would do it. Game over.
No more “slings and arrows” – no more outrageous fortune – They brought out the big guns with Hamlet.

And speaking of Hamlet, we shall look closer at this business of “late style” with you and me – but we shall use Shakespeare as our north star for the concept – not so much how we wrote about aging per se, but how he, as a writer, might have been influenced by his own aging process.

And why not. April is here! Shakespeare born April 26, 1654 – died April 23, 1616 (or as some would want – pretty much on the same day, close enough) (not to mention that The Tudors start Season 3 on April 5 – lots of fodder for Shakespeare in that series)

 

Hang on a second. Shakespeare? Why? - Well, it’s personal and professional.

It’s necessary and sufficient for ontology and history. And it’s just flat out – THE – source for being human.

Oh, you mean you would you call his writings perfection? Of course not.

But therein does reside the affinity and the perennial attraction that pulls in the vast array of humanity – human comedy and tragedy that defies easy and convenient boxes and labels to use. The works of Shakespeare are not anywhere close to the utilitarian “widget” – rather they combine the earthly organics with a “spiritus mundi.” Using Shakespeare’s works to re-examine and to serve as a touchstone (lux et veritas) for the aging process is a “natural.” Speaking of “natural” – that brings to mind the “dazzling line” (Bloom, 1998) of Shakespeare:

Light seeking light doth light beguile:

I can assure you, my friends, that – light – was all I could think about – as a mantra – as an antidote –as a prayer – to keep me from going over the deep-end as I was exploring a deep cave in Arkansas (The Natural State) with my brothers and we got drop-dead lost – with two out of four headlamps still working.

I will never take for granted light – light seeking light – ever again. And as I spoke the words, I did believe that I would die in a cavern – a natural grave. And I thought of those words and had the epiphany of hell being a place where there was no light – not just me not seeing – but me knowing there was no hope for light –anywhere. Why in the midst of razor panic did a line from Shakespeare come to saturate my brain as I contemplated the utter stupidity of dying with my brothers in the crushing apathy of a limestone cave? –

Well, then it is no wonder that there exists a book (simply a marvel to behold – and to hold and read; especially since we made it out of the cave – hours later) to examine the connection:

The Bard on the Brain: Understanding the Mind Through the Art of Shakespeare and the Science of Brain Imaging. (2003). By Paul Matthews and Jefferey McCain (with forward by Diane Ackerman).

This book is both bench science and literary alchemy. The authors: Professor of Nuerology and Literary Studies. And then to have Diane Ackerman (A Natural History of the Senses) write the forward completes the book into one that is one of my most “used” books – off the shelf to reference and reflect – and than back in a reverent spot. I would have never thought to see functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) intersect with the theatre – but it here it makes complete sense (common and lofty both).

So – why? Because –

At every stage of my life, at every transition, at every corner, and as close as my soul and as far as the eye can see on the road that goes on forever, there has been Shakespeare.

At every blessing, at every curse, and with each sin, with the gravity of being first born, and with exoneration, there is Shakespeare.
At every love and with every death, with every birth and at every breath -
At the myriad of jobs – cook, janitor, roofing, farming, and teaching – there is Shakespeare.
And in my current domain – Academics – there too?

Are you kidding me?

There is enough comedy and tragedy in the university system to nourish an entire industry for five more William Shakespeares (and throw in a few more for James Joyce).

Perhaps that is what keeps me going in the circus of wisdom and folly – one can read about the Tudors and the Stuarts – or you can sit in on the Academic Senate or attend a committee meeting deciding the fate of someone’s tenure. You can be assured of the same spectacle. Something is bound to be rotten in the state of the academy – along with plenty of ghosts too – and enough books to make Prospero weep with envy. Ah yes, envy
And greed. But also integrity and bold leadership. Shakespeare as the north star and the lodestar and the sphinx and the chimera.

Shakespeare, that old fool? Really?

Well, listen up you hip/hop texting freak that goes Zen on your head with your veganized multigrain Buddhistic ‘low and slow’ style that be hating them fancy words that don’t mean me nothing – cause I truck the long haul and I ain’t got no time for flowered script as I multitask my family to and from here and there based on the line up that would make the Secretary of State blush out of shame, But still – that dead white guy? Romeo, where art thou? Like who gives a shit. I mean I’m tired of the world, the bosses, the know knothings {sic}, the hacks, the players, the suck-ups, the assholes, the wannabes – I just want to escape to a place where you don’t have to think about money, power, fame, and sometimes even about family – with all its trials and tribulations, or the group and the band…I mean in the end is it all worth It? What’s the point? Do I put up with all this bullshit or just kick back and drown in a fog of smoke or breathe in the elixir of crystal illusion? Or do I cowboy up and face the shit storm? What to do? Take on the bullets and the memos – or drive right off the cliff? Do I still love – if love be just a cruel joke? The machinations and the intrigue. The faded beauty and the pungent sigh of impending death -

Hey, wait a second – are you saying Will Shakespeare talked about those things too? Even way back then? Wow, but here is the big question:

Would Shakespeare Text and Twitter? (WSTT?) If he did, perhaps that ‘person” would reveal through cryptic messaging the truth about the identity “mystery” once and for all!

r u really Oxfordian? Can u get Hamlet down 2 140 characters?

Hold it! Can we move back to the topic?- thnx

Which was connected to William Shakespeare and aging – right?

Correct -

This blog posting is think further about our lives, our creativity, and our desire to engage the mysteries of life while knowing time is of the essence. For some, it is proposed that our creative products and outcome can and will CHANGE with time and that death creates a formidable counter-muse in the sense that the sense of approaching mortality quickens the “style” and changes the content to something althogether different when compared to the oeuvre of work produced so far. This shift and break with the continuity of the past and into something quite novel and unique (bold, daring, abstract) is known as “late style” which has been addressed by many writers for many decades. The question before us is this; is there merit to such a concept in the aging process? Is late style the result of the procerss of aging (stage-theory like) or does it have more to do with mortality – such that DEATH is the key factor (and motivator) rather than age per se.

Case closed: The potentiality for creative ability is to be found and expressed across the life course. How we measure and value creative ability is variable and multifactorial. “Late style” is neither epigenetic nor a universal trait of old age; rather, “late style” may be preferred, rewarded, desired, and above all latent – how and when it may be manifest is as much the gestalt effect as it is organic drive to disrupt the path to oblivion.

With this blog posting we shall take a closer look at these issues – and then end with the case of Larry Brown – whose life ended way too short to express late style – but nevertheless deserves a closer look in terms of the novel – The Miracle of Catfish.

Okay, let’s see how you pull that rabbit out of the hat.

• Bread Crumb # 1: the recent unveiling of a portrait that is claimed to be that of William Shakespeare {Dude, is that You?}

Dude, is that You? – which is my reaction to the primary article which was titled, “Is That Really You, Sweet Prince?” published in the New York Times on March 14, 2009, by Charles McGrath that caught my interest because of my lifelong interest in all things Shakespeare (just this side of Bardolatry).
Why? Well, perhaps it has to do with my involvement (and taking on the role of many secondary parts) in the play Macbeth in the my high school years – and me realizing how that created a interesting connection to several lady friends – but one in particular, who thought I was a “genius” for simply being able to memorize all those lines in the play. Well, I took full advantage of that “opening” which led to me to think I could then actually write sonnets just like “him” (William Shakespeare –and what a joke… but hey, I tried!) and she was thrilled with being the recipient of my amateurish attempts at ‘wooing’ her soul – and her body.

One of my prized possessions is – Reduced Shakespeare: The Complete Guide for the Attention-Impaired [abridged] by Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor (2006). I fell off my chair laughing at their “reduced message” about the tragedy King Lear:

One-sentence plot encapsulation: Lear tries to control his daughters and ends up losing them all.
Moral: It’s hell getting old.
Essay Question: How far along are you in your estate planning? Do you have a will or trust?

Good one. I needed the (gerontological) laugh after reading King Lear (see Garber’s 2008 book – listed below for a little bit more on King Lear; especially as it relates to aging).

One of my other prized possessions is the book (published in 1911), The Tudor Shakespeare – MACBETH edited by Arthur C.L. Brown by Macmillan & Co. New York. Of course, I also say that about And I will always know that it was the Three Witches that open the play (see The Three Fates above) – and that I had the pleasure of opening up the whole damn thing with my role and my line(s):

Where shall we three meet again? In thunder, lighting, or in rain?

Like many others before me, I was accustomed to only a few “images” of what William Shakespeare might have looked like, and I was none too impressed with some of the portrayals. For example, this engraved portrait of Shakespeare makes him look like and appear to be some foppish bean-counter at AIG – no thanks, this guy could write himself out of wet paper bag – no way. Crome-dome with the pencil thin mustache and a look that makes George Costanza look like George Clooney.

{from Holden’s (1999) book: “…Martin Droeshout’s portrait, the only image of Shakespeare approved by those who knew him.”}

Hah!… We shall see about that…..

Unfortunately, this image shows up as the front cover for several books in my library (now I do this listing and inventory not to showboat, but to provide evidence for how insane this obsession is with things Shakespeare – I can’t help it; see the book, buy the book, read the book, add it to the shelf) such as:
Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies – A Facsimile of the First Folio, 1623. Routledge, New York (which strangely enough lists the THE TEMPEST first in all of the works – when in many others books the Tempest is treated as one of the last (LATE STYLE) works of Shakespeare). This image is also on the front of The Shakespeare Wars by Ron Rosenbaum (2006) and for Anthony Holden’s William Shakepseare: The Man Behind the Genius (1999).

What else you got?

Then there is the ‘Flower Portrait’ with a dubious provenance but shows up on the cover of a great book by A.D. Nuttall (2007) Shakespeare –The Thinker, Yale University Press. Which is a slight improvement, but still we have Shakespeare as more the tax accountant, the glorified chancellor, than the man about the world.

What else?

Then there is the Chandos portrait which elevates the stature and the man to a level that says – “ I write the comedies and the tragedies. It is a vast improvement (at least to me) and carries the more classical, studious, and hint of the rogue going with the “pirate” look which says “been there and done that.”

This image (to some degree or another) was used on several books such as Shakespeare and the Arts of Language by Russ McDonald (2001); Players: The Mysterious Idenity of William Shakespeare by Bertram Fields (2005) but on the inside the image ‘regresses’ to the Droeshout portrait. It appears on the cover of Michael Wood’s (2003) book Shakespeare (the companion book to the PBS series); on Stephen Greenblatt’s (2004) book, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, and the awesome publication by Stanley Wells (2003) Shakespeare for All Time.

Okay, I’m with you so far – the Chandros Portrait…robust, earthly, and looks like a writer (for God’s sake) – even though this portrait is still a stretch to the “movie” imagery from the film, “Shakespeare in Love”

and then having represented Will in this fashion – {Joseph Fiennes}

but then – no wonder William Shakespeare could crank out the sonnets and the plays and bazillion lines of verse of comedy and tragedy – the Muse was The Swan – the Angel – a goddess – she was….{the Swan Muse – Gwenyth Paltrow}

Now, here is where you supply the songs – Strawberry Letter No. 23 by The Brothers Johnson and then play – “Use Me” by Bill Withers – then go to the YouTube video for Bruce Springsteen “Fire” -

Romeo and Juliet….
Baby you can bet their love they didnt deny…

Well, enough said there. It was time to write – early style, middle, or late – hell, it didn’t matter – just write.

I think I knew at that point that writing is the essence of being possessed by dæmons (of ancient origin) that could help 

   (The Three Fates) 

energize and maximize one to float effortlessly above the keyboard and where the fingers could not keep up (or just barely) with the mind and its thoughts – and it connections – and its drive – (and pardon the pun here) the Will – to weave enchantment and romance and grief and hate and revenge and lust and sorrow – and love. Demons, you say? – Yes, the sense that one cannot but help to place pen upon paper, keystrokes to move the cursor onward while behind its blinking pace – waiting- the crystals, the seeds, the bricks, the country lanes, and star tracks of the mind mixed with the heat of the blood.

(A quick break from flow of blog – and a proposal = someone should do the screenplay Dante in Love and create the movie; my resume for wannabe writer is available upon request; and may I suggest Eva Green as Beatrice;

      

I’m also available to play the role of Dante (in the middle years – and of course “lost, in a dark woods” – searching….for Beatrice).

(sorry Scarlett Johansson, you had your painting completed by Vermeer).

Okay, where was I, ah yes. Dæmons and the Muse. But before I get too carried away with that factor in writing – let us not forget two other books that bring the microscope closer in own William Shakespeare and his “intimate” connections: one fiction and the other a monumental revisit to the marriage of Will and Anne Hathaway. Muses? You be the judge. The work of fiction is titled Mistress Shakespeare by Karen Harper (2009) and the other selected as The New York Times Book Review – Notable book of the Year by Germaine Greer’s (2009, paperback edition) Shakespeare’s Wife.

Back to images and few other books of note.

Stephen Orgel’s book, Imagining Shakepeare is highly recommended with a great chapter on on Shakeapseran portraiture and just when I thought that Droeshout’s portrait was the low bar (in my opinion) of representation – that was then I saw (or it was a revisit) to the funeral omunment to Shakepseare at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-Upon-Avon.

  

With all due respect – and I am talking about THE MAN here – this does not capture the writer at all – even with writing instrument in hand. It seems to me cartoonish – and I keep waiting to hear that the monument will have William saying something (from an audio recording within) and the mouth moving like a bad scene with ventriloquism – and to top if off, you could toss coins in to make a wish.

Moving on.

Other books to complete the profile and lead onward via the bread crumbs – Chasing Shakespeare (2003) by Sarah Smith (fiction); Shakespeare in Charge: The Bard’s Guide to Leading and Succeeding on the Business Stage by Norman Augustine and Kenneth Adelman.

Now I confess to having the super-density book – Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom (1998) and the postlude companion piece of Hamlet: Poem Unlimited by Harold Bloom (2003) – automatic reading to being with you if you plan on being a castaway in the still-vexed Bermoothes, but yet these three must be there as well (what do I got now? 2 + 3 = 50 +) and they would be: Shakespeare’s Philosophy: Discovering the Meaning Behind the Plays by Colin McGinn (2006) with the great cover design of Vanitas (the requisite skull placed on top of books – how much better can you get with “meaning” ?) and these two that must – I beseech you ! – be on your shelf – Shakespeare: Above All by Marjorie Garber (2004) and then Shakespeare and Modern Culture also by Marjorie Garber (2008). Garber (2008) has a great chapter on the imagery of Shakespeare and presents the Sanders portrait as the template for the Joseph Fiennes avatar.

Which then leads to the catalyst for the current blog topic and psot – as I have already mentioned, it was the article: “Is That Really You, Sweet Prince?” that was published in the New York Times on March 14, 2009, Charles McGrath {for an interesting video clip – movie – go to the iTunes store and see the University of Warwick production with commentary by Stanley Wells}

“We know so little about Shakespeare that we don’t even know for sure what he looked like. Scholars have been quarreling over various purported portraits of him for years. The latest, the so-called Cobbe portrait, was unveiled last week by the Shakespeare expert Stanley Wells, who claimed that it was the only authentic likeness to have been painted in Shakespeare’s lifetime, igniting yet another fuss among the dissenters….That Droeshout engraving has always been a bit of a downer; if it is a likeness of Shakespeare, it’s a likeness of the cranky, worn-out Shakespeare who had stopped writing and retired to Stratford to carry on lawsuits. The Cobbe portrait, like the Donne painting and some portraits of the poet courtier Philip Sydney, is of a young man full of himself in the best sense. We can believe he has the whole world stored inside that high, capacious forehead.”

So this contrast, this “apple” to the left and the “orange” to the right clicked into a series of neuronic firings – a synaptic firestorm (fMRI style) – that created the catalyst to blog on Shakespeare NOT as the person in the “Droeshout engraving as a cranky, worn-out Shakespeare who had stopped writing and retired (emphasis mine) to Stratford to carry on lawsuits”, but rather as the person in the Cobbe portrait who went on to shatter the myth of ‘retirement’ (or being put out to pasture by the upstarts in London) by seeking a new path in writing – a late style – or better yet – late writing. All of which could say to you and I: Writing is ninety percent attitude; the other half is mental (apologies to Yogi Berra).

• Bread Crumb # 2: a further look into the notion of “late style” – or late writing (or late anything creatively speaking) for Shakespeare and a few select others

Bread Crumb 2 then lead me to two books on “late style” because I had an interest in what motivated, inspired, or otherwise influenced Shakespaere into the “later years” of his life as an “aging individual.” Did he just want to fade into sunset-upon-Avon and collect from his substantial Elizabethan 401-K? Was it time to disengage and rest on one’s laurels (contra Petrarch)?

Did he decide to hang up his pen and paper and then fulfill the autumnal decline in Sonnet 73 as though a bare tree now a heap of ashes? When I see the Droeshout portrait, I see the resignation and the condo on the Gulf shores of Tampa-St.Petersburg, the early-bird special, the white belt and shoes, matching the cheesy polyester pants.

 

With the Chandos or Cobbe portrait, I see someone who would say, “To hell with the critics and spies, blast the bank and shoal of time, I shall smash the cage that holds the Free Bird (thanks Lynyrd Skynyrd ! – and you thought I would never connect Ronnie van Zant with King Lear) – Once more into the breech, sure a little slower, but I hear the blast of retirement and I become the tiger of Borges, I stand like greyhounds in the slips, no better make that like a Rottweiler on guard, and you ask me, but surely the fire has gone out? The flesh less than willing? And I say, remember what I wrote when I was of youth – I am still a bolt of lightning looking for a place to strike! – And wisdom say you – What’s wisdom to me, or I to wisdom?”

Well, therein lies the rub….

The questions are for us – you and me: Is there the potential for a “late style” – as we age? Can we break out of the patterned expectations and round out the journey of life with something different in our writing, painting, and music – any artistic endeavor? Some may say, well, what does it matter? There was never any style or creative activity to begin with, it’s too late, why bother with it at this point? Even if there was, I ain’t no Shakespeare.

Okay, fair enough, but:

To thine own self be true.

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie;
Which we ascribe to heaven.

Our doubts are traitors,
And makes us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt.

And even if the goal is modest and manageable, then make it so. And as Edward Said would see it happen, it does not even have to be the stereotypic late work that people assume to be at the magnum opus level nor works that necessarily,

“reflect a special maturity, a new spirit of reconciliation and serenity often expressed in terms of a miraculous transfiguration of common reality…Each of us can readily supply evidence of how it is that late works crown a lifetime of aesthetic endeavor. Rembrandt and Matisse, Bach and Wagner. But what of artistic lateness not as harmony and resolution but as intransigence, difficulty, and unresolved contradiction? What if age and ill health don’t produce the serenity of “ripeness is all.”…I’d like to explore the experience of late style that involves a nonharmonious, nonserene tension, and above all, a sort of deliberately unproductive productiveness going against.”

To which Edward Said did in his book, On Late Style, thus the notion of going against the grain. Then back to Shakespeare. What was his style in the late period? In the mature years? As he aged? Did Shakespeare go all Finnegan’s Wake on us?

Or was the late writing like the early writing and like the middle writing – Alls well that ends well?

There are two books that recommend for you to consider in this regard:

1. Shakespeare’s Late Style by Russ McDonald (2006). Cambridge University Press.
2. Shakespeare and the Idea of Late Writing by Gordon McMullan (2007). Cambridge University Press.

The territory of works for what constitutes the portfolio of Shakespeare’s “late style” is controversial and problematic. Many people (and naturally so – given the symbolism of the ‘end of the road’ for writing) would assume that THE TEMPEST as the final say on the matter – that is, the last hurrah, the swan song of Shakespeare given the tone of Prospero (and thus synecdoche for whole lot of Shakespeare and his works?) – and then with added of bonus of picturing Sir Arthur John Gielgud in the role – to the point that some probably thought Geilgud was Shakespeare – or Shakespeare was Geilgud – and no wonder that the late Geilgud (as the late Shakespeare?) is on the cover of McMullan’s book !

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
                             The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158

Boy, that sure sounds like THE END {as the curtains close}.

But not so fast Horatio. The Tempest was not the last work per se – not finis. In fact, Russ McDonald groups Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, Henry VIII {side note – HENRY VIII – yes, you could watch The Tudors on Showtime/DVD/On Demand, and did I mention Season 3 begins on April 5 , but still….

and The Two Noble Kinsman as the plays of the “late style.” McDonald also notes that when all is said and done,

“Shakespeare’s style still seems elliptical, roundabout, crowded, and extravagant, but he sense of possibility no longer appears to obtain. He seems to be changing his mind again” (p. 254).

I recommend McDonald’s book for when you need the microscope for analyzing Shakespeare’s “late style”, but if you prefer (which I do0 the landscape, the macro-perspective, and the larger context of things with Shakespeare, then go with McMullan’s book, “Shakespeare and the Idea of Late Writing.” In fact, it should be on the shelf of all gerontologists and all person interested in the intersect of art, writing, authorship and aging. This is an outstanding book. In fact, the roguish style of McMullan offers a contrarian view (but not outlandish) of the whole notion of “late style.’ There is the direct challenge that it is not OLD AGE that is the catalyst, but rather – proximity to DEATH.

“Quite the contray to the claims of Woodward and the humanistic gerontologists, it appears to be not old age itself, but proximity to death at any age – along, perhaps, with an awareness of that proximity – that is the key to late style.” (p. 273).

Agreed. But it is hard to grasp the sheer power of this proposal by McMullan, that is – until you think of the personal instance by which you had the close brush with death – the near death experience – or the instance where life vanished with a loved one – or the witnessing of the tragic accident in which the numbers of the dead and dying overwhelm the comfortable footing of life….

I have often thought: what is it that INSPIRES the writing? Why?

Money? Fame? – You have got to be kidding –

Is there a MUSE? Yes, of course. And in the spirit of Dante and Petrarch, I can see how a woman can make the soul of a man catch fire with the essence of creative fuel – the words are effortless and flowing, the symmetry natural, the blood boils into the brain – and the neocortex enters into new realms powered by the limbic system – the gray matter is awash in fireworks thanks to the endorphin rush of lust and desire.

But there is something else. There is Death – there is mortality. And there is the finiteness of it all – where the terrible certainty of the “undiscovered country” is your map – the knowing – the earnestness of death (thanks Kierkegaard!) is now your propeller.

Please do not think there is the obsession and the fear that permeates all; rather, it is the needed and necessary spark to cut complacency in half.

Procrastination? – Fuggetaboutit

Inspiration? – you are running out time; if you are gonna do it, now is the time.

Why? – see Dylan Thomas -

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Oh man, what a weird coincidence – dying of light – Light seeking light doth light beguile: holy crap! – that near death thing in the cave – when all was lost. I tasted it – the gray murky cave that oozed apathy to me and my brothers – death was so clean and real; it was laughing – mocking me with disdain; what did it care? You are going to fucking die – right here – and right now. This is this – one shot (see The Deer Hunter); I sat there on a rock in the middle of cavern that was a tomb. One minute it was all joking and shooting the shit about the mud and quartz crystal formations- the next minute we were scanning our lives for meaning and significance to counterweight the heaviness of the monochromatic rock – like a gravestone.

  Scott w/ brother Donald leaving “hell” – to the “light”

When I escaped certain stupid death, I fell to the ground outside the cave – the green of the plants, the shocking blue of the sky, I even saw ants on the ground – every little freakin one of them – a beautiful mystery, a blessing, their bodies seemed to be glowing – my eyes were glowing because of the LIGHT.

Late Style. I got it. When I was 51 years of age. Outside the cave. Never again to take “it” for granted. Time for something different. Against the grain? Not quite. Time to write about the glowing presence of life in light. Don’t wait. Just get to it. Better late than never…

Who else showed me the way? A much needed catalyst? Meet Mr. Larry Brown.
An author who poured his heart and soul into the written word – as though late style – was every day. The words are filled with direct connection to life and the unfolding of the subtance of what matters – no really – what really matters. Day to day. There is both against the grain and with the grain. There is a little William Blake set in the deep south with Larry Brown –

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

• Bread Crumb # 3: An homage to one of my favorite writers (out of hundreds) – Larry Brown with an evolving and flourishing career of writing magnificent portraits of life itself. Larry Brown had sent the nearly completed manuscript of his sixth novel (The Miracle of Catfish) to his literary agent (Nov. 2004) and a week later was dead at the age 53 due to a massive heart attack.

My first encounter with the writing style of Larry Brown was with Father and Son (1996) {winner of the Southern Book Award} and was stunned. The writing was crisp and austere but visceral and too authentic to be fiction – but was. From there I went back to earlier works – and then awaited the latest.

And I knew this was writing was from the gut – honest and riveting. When John Grisham said of Larry Brown that,

“He has an ear for the way people talk, an eye for their habits and manners, a heart for their frailties and foibles, and a love for their struggles and triumphs.”

I also was able to build an emerging bridge back to the style of Shakespeare. And before you start screaming heresy and reaching for the pitchforks and begin setting up the guillotine for my head – ease down. Trust me. Larry Brown is not too happy about it either – I can see him reaching for his side-by-side with birdshot.

Larry Brown? Really? Stay with me now.

Larry Brown’s style was at the edge – always at the edge. As though the minutes left in life could be counted on one hand – and writing was the “quintessence of dust.” Mr. Brown seemed to me to have answered the question for Hamlet and as Hamlet – “ To be…every day…that is the way…until there is no more.” As William Shakespeare covered his domain and “created the human” (a la Bloom), I believe Brown has taken the geography of the Deep South with all it’s rhythms and nuances to create an attentive and razor-sharp prose that is genuinely human in every way. Brown never moved from Oxford, Mississippi, where he was born. He served in the Marines and then came home and became a fireman.
Although I am a huge fan of Daniel Woodrell (see Give Us a Kiss – A Country Noir, 1996) for delivering the southern flavor (Ozark-style), Larry Brown has given us – all of us – the comedy and tragedy that will stand the test of time – both as timeless and timely. And alas, Larry Brown is dead.

His writing style ended at the age of 53 (in 2004). And as David Abrams expressed it so well, the unexpected loss is best captured as, “The Day the Words Died.” And I wonder – and as I reflect more – on the book previously mentioned, Shakespeare and the Idea of Late Writing by Gordon McMullan (2007), and his proposal that it is the sense of death – the proximity of death – that serves as catalyst for “late style.” But even after Brown’s death, readers were given the chance to read more of his heart and soul – as his publisher, Algonquin Books, delivered his nearly finished sixth novel, The Miracle of Catfish (2007) to us about three years later.

And it is this book that will help to connect all three breadcrumbs we have followed so far.

From (1) Shakespeare to (2) late style to (3) catfish.

Beverly Lowry, in a review of the book in the New York Times (and ironically published on April 29, 2007 – going with my April “coincidence” here) wrote,

“A Miracle of Catfish’ takes place in Larry Brown’s world, northern Mississippi. He begins by tracking the thoughts of an old farmer who, while in his fields dodging copperheads and bashing at spiderwebs, envisions the catfish pond he plans to have dug and stocked on his land. In the South, catfish ponds were big business for a while, and to the 72-year-old Cortez Sharp, this plan represents a new prosperity and, at his age, a triumphant adventure. Not that Sharp gives much to age. He raises okra and tomatoes, operates a tractor and Bush Hog, milks and breeds cows, shoots deer that invade his vegetable garden, cares for his wife, who uses a wheelchair, and worries about his daughter’s life in Atlanta with a man who as Tourette’s syndrome.”

For someone who would find exemplars within the intergenerational tensions in King Lear and the inner turmoil of the psyche in Hamlet and the evil and the consequences that haunt us as in Macbeth – and many others – as key elements in one’s literary experience and development, then may I also suggest reading Larry Brown’s novels as out contextual and conceptural equivalent.

The Miracle of Catfish was Brown’s last work, but was it really a “late style”? Not a first glance. There is much artisitic continuity – theads from across all of his previous novels that were present in his last book, but yet….I wonder.

I find it intriguing, at least from a gerontological perspective, that Brown was working on his sixth-novel and was writing about a 72 year old man {Cortez Sharp} – a figure well into the “lateness of life.” And this leads to an interesting insight by Rick Bass in a tribute (from The Southern Review) to Larry Brown,

“I have always found great affinity with Larry’s keen regard for a certain rightness of things his respect for the elegance and sophistication and just plain mystery of a wilder, farther nature so much older than our own.”

So much older than our own. And indeed that is what makes Brown’s words as quintessence – as natural as breathe – one can read and feel and see and believe in the connections between people and their immediate milieu – their world as big as a pond with catfish. And all else whirls about – the seasons and the stars.

It is signficiant to me that the book ends “unfinished” and the publisher has left only hints as to what was to come. I now see it as a perfect “ending” – the real “late style” – a representation that we all wished for more – for the words not to die.

But look at the inside title page for The Miracle of Catfish where it says, “A novel in progress”
And how ironic. Such is our life at any stage – a work in progress.

And perhaps even after we are long gone.

From portraits that have recently emerged of William Shakespeare to the notion of a late style in writing, to the boat that rides upon a pond full of catfish. We drift on the waters – and I can see Larry Brown with a fishing pole sitting in a wooden boat…dreaming of catfish…a miracle.

Words. Goodnight sweet prince.

May we all see the lesson here: “where are your “words?” Begin now…it is all a novel in progress – even if unfinished.

Better late, than never – at any age.

Thanks, Scott D. Wright

The Curious Case of the Arrow of Time: The Vagaries of Preternatural Aging (Section 3)

Section 3

Readers are welcome to use this posting series (No. 1) for educational purposes and I welcome the proper citation/reference back to this source:

Wright, S. (2008). The Curious Case of the Arrow of Time: The Vagaries of Preternatural Aging, Occasional Paper Series, (No. 1), December. University of Utah, Gerontology Interdisciplinary Program, Salt Lake City, UT. 84112 

Section 3: Continued from Sections 1 and 2 (see previous postings in this series)

The Curious Case of the Arrow of Time: The Vagaries of Preternatural Aging (Section 3)

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Contra-aging (aging-in-reverse) and Time’s Arrow

As a gerontologist, I have always been intrigued by the observation of Hegel in the preface of his book, Philosophy of Right (Wood, 1991) where he stated,

When philosophy paints its grey in grey, a shape of life has grown old, and it cannot be rejuvenated, but only recognized, by the grey in grey of philosophy; the owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the onset of dusk (p. 23).

This statement reflects Hegel’s supposition that a culture’s philosophical understanding reaches its peak only when the culture enters its decline. In other words, philosophy is by design “backwards looking” because it is not supposed to be prescriptive (forward-thinking), rather, it understands best while looking into the rearview mirror of time and place.  In relation to things gerontological, I have wanted to build a bridge from Hegel’s insight to the interdisciplinary study of aging so that the flight of the “wise” owl of Minerva might have a symbolic significance (and application) for the later stages of human development (into the dusk of life) as well. There is something about the quote that strikes me as less a Hegelian aphorism and instead more about the potential gain or outcome or benefit for living long and reaping the rewards of maturity and the experience of the passage of time.

In other words, the owl of Minerva begins its flight with the onset of the second half of life – and only with time passed through many years of experience. While this proposition has some correlation with the theoretical perspectives of both Jung and Erikson and perhaps to the prospect of “reminiscence work” as described and fleshed out by Gibson (2004), and with Kotre’s (1996) substantive work on the links between generativity and transmitting values through the flow of culture (see also McAdams & de St. Aubin, 1998), and finally with Said’s (2006) “late style,” the key here is that aside from the prospect of later life evolving into living in the land of “geritopia” (see Blechman, 2008), there is the alternative path of social/community/civic engagement to be found in the intimate connections and embeddedness with all generations (Freedman, 2000; 2007).

In the grey of life, the symbolism of both Minerva (Athena) and the Owl connotes a supposed “wisdom” to be had based on the experience flow of time forward, but the wisdom to be had is conditional upon the ability to cultivate cultural treasures via cognitive and emotional discovery through time experienced backward. The literature has addressed the nuances of wisdom as something that is both culturally and contextually bound (Le, 2008), and is not an automatic outcome of old age per se, but takes active cultivation and preparation (Gluck & Baltes, 2006), and can be expressed through competence, pragmatics, integration, interconnections, and the plentitude of critical life events (Webster, 2007). Wisdom, as the possible crown jewel in a life lived long, is understood as a combinational process of many factors over the course of one’s life,but at the end of the day, the likelihood of wisdom increases with age (Gluck & Baltes, 2006) and reflects an Emersonian self-reliance along with an Eriksonian integrity. And even though Bloom (2004) offered that wisdom is to be found in both our sacred and secular contexts, he observed it as something very personal,

The mind always returns to its needs for beauty, truth, and insight. Mortality hovers, and all of us learn the triumph of time. We have an interval, and then our place knows us no more (p. 1).

And so to answer Bloom’s (2004) question: Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? - I would offer that wisdom is very much a latent resource in the aged individual and is a gift to be harvested and shared because of time’s arrow. Perhaps this relates closely to Kierkegaard’s aphorism: While life has to be lived forwards, it can only be understood by looking backwards.  And again with Schopenhauer’s (2000) insight into the significance of later life as having the potential and ability to weave life experiences, but to also to see the connections that make up the fabric of social interaction and the transmission of culture,

Life can be compared to a piece of embroidered material of which everyone, in the first half of his time can see the top side, but in the second half the reverse side. The latter is not so beautiful, but is more instructive because it enables one to see how the threads are connected together (p. 482).

And these connections are eloquently captured in the insights of Kotre (1996),

Whether one looks at the stories we tell about ourselves or whatever one looks at the marks we leave when we die, culture inevitably appears. In the chill of death, dew forms on the web of significance on which collectively live our lives and for a time reveals its outline (p. 269).

But I am also in agreement with Said (2006) who offered that wisdom in later life does not necessarily always lead to reconciliation, resolution, and serenity; rather, there may be a desired dialectical tension and an “unproductive productiveness going against…”. In other words, wisdom can raise more questions than answers; there is heroism, but there is also a degree of intransigence. There may not be transcendence involved nor may there be any great epiphany or grand unity discovered. In fact, for Said, “late style” may actually reflect and encourage anachronistic creative behavior so that “late style is in, but oddly apart from the present.” (p. 24). Said’s “late style” helps us to understand the role of being a part of the Zeitgeist (spirit of the times) and the sharing in cultural progression, yet also trying to maintain a creative “self-making” in the flow of time. It is an expression of stepping outside of time all the while acknowledging the fate of one’s being – as time will (and does) end.

And it is here I am making the invocation to the grand quintessence a long-lived life and the establishment of the fruits and the crystallization of time’s arrow in human developmentthat inspire a theoretical and assumed higher order of contemplation, insight and eudaimonia for the benefit of the individual, for the peer cohort, and for generations to follow (Freedman, 2000; 2007; Kotre, 1996; Roszak, 1998; 2001).

A few examples of how the cinema has addressed the mythic qualities of a long life and the older adult as the fountain of wisdom (and tall tales) can be found in Jack Crabb in the film Little Big Man (1970) based on the book by Thomas Berger (1964) and it is believed that Dustin Hoffman holds the record for portraying the greatest age span of a single character, playing Jack Crabb from the age of 17 to 121. And there was Obi-wan Kenobi in Star Wars (1977) with Merlin mentoring Arthur in Excalibur (1981) and Gandalf (the Grey) in the Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) trilogy.

But if wisdom is proposed to be honorific laurel wreath of time’s arrow in the aging process, it is also no surprise that the allure of reversing time’s arrow (contretemps: contra + temps = against time) such that one could trade-in all of the wisdom and laurel wreaths of the world for a chance to go back in time. It is a measurable and sustainable theme in both the literature and cinema. Although related, I am not referring to the reversal of time’s arrow in terms of short-term memory loss as portrayed by Leonard Shelby in the movie Memento (2000) where Christopher Nolan (the director) has offered a backwards-moving plot (through time?) with the color scenes told in reverse chronological order while the black and white scenes are done in chronological order. In essence, the viewer is caught up in a “remembering the future” experience (see Goh, 2008; Heise, 2000; Parker, 2004). ⁵ A similar theme is found in story told backwards through time with Ray in Reverse written by Daniel Wallace (2000) ⁶ where the main character, Ray Williams, is in heaven trying to sort out the significant events in his life going back to about ten years old (or young).

But these are not necessarily artistic examples of reversing time’s arrow in the context of the aging process.  As you recall, I began this essay with a brief look at two movies that have been recently released (but both based on books published many years ago) that portray a reversal in time’s arrow and thus a movement backwards through time from senescence and toward youth (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Youth Without Youth).  And I presented them as benchmarks for our targeted discussion. And so, we arrive closer to the mark with the example of Martin Amis’s (1991) book,Time’s Arrow, with its short-on-pages but long on fictive plot considering the thermodynamics of history where the protagonist and the narrator share the same body and experience time passing in reverse. The beginning of the book is the death of the main character (the doctor Tod T. Friendly, and then into others: John Young, Hamilton de Souza and Odilo Unverdorben) but becomes younger and younger during the course of the novel and the ending of the story is when he enters his mother’s womb. But it is the story in between the start and the end, which has the doctor revisiting the Auschwitz death camp, and with twisted logic, and the backward narration, history is indeed vastly different and the narrator “dies” when the protagonist is born (see Glaz, 2006; Menke, 1998).

And closer still to our target of portraying a comprehensive (but not quite) reversal in aging is found in the book The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer (2004). Greer has created in Max a character who is born quite old and ages backward physically (thus getting younger each year), but mentally and emotionally he progresses forward as do other children. In this case, Max Tivoli was born in San Francisco in 1871 looking like a 70 year old man, but on the inside still a child. John Updike (2004) provided an interesting book review on Greer’s work and noted that, “Max differs from Benjamin Button in that Button begins with a fully stocked old brain and ends with newborn’s tabula rasa; whereas Max learns as he goes, as do those of us not condemned to age in reverse.” The meaning (and the confusion) of it all is that Max’s condition is both a blessing and a curse (“Inside this wretched body, I grow old. But outside – in every part of me but my mind and soul – I grow young,” p. 5), especially as he tries to navigate the turbulence of love (with Alice) and all the while, as Updike (2004) phrased it, “growing against the grain of time.”

Greer further builds an interesting bridge (see page 5) via a connection to the Shakespearean play Hamlet by having Max see his condition as similar to the “ancient curse” as highlighted in the odd and cryptic dialogue between Hamlet and Polonius in Act II, Scene II where Hamlet is reading from a book (“words, words, words”) and Polonius wants to know more about the book that ostensibly has so much of Hamlet’s attention. The book that Hamlet had his nose in was claimed to be a satire of old age and Hamlet (after some ageist commentary) then says to Polonius,

“…for you yourself, sir, shall grow old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward.” 

Despite the temporal paradox within Hamlet’s lines, the crab is an interesting allegorical device (to which Polonius thought at least representing method in the madness of even thinking about it) to dramatically capture the motion and symbolism of going backwards and is portrayed in Greer’s novel and in Shakespeare’s play (at least) as a bittersweet experience (at least) and as a curse (at most). Going backwards and against the grain is bound to create an “out of joint” existence for the individual within time’s arrow, which brings along all else with it: family, friends, culture, and social structures, except the protagonist. The crab motif in effect conveys a going against nature and an oddity that is exceptional in life, and yet, not at all pleasing or desired. For example, I think of the derogatory comment to describe the person in the later years of life (a crabby old man/woman) who is unwilling, reluctant, irritable, dour, and basically an unpleasant person. Too much concern with going back and embracing backwardness reminds me of Nietzsche’s aphorism, “By searching out origins, one becomes a crab. The historian looks backward; eventually he also believes backward.”

I also interpret being-as-a-crab as someone who cannot break out of their shell and move forward; instead, the person is perceived to be “holed up” and Rip van Winkle like, out of date and out of time. The crab image and its attendant allegorical layers have also eerily served as prominent threads to several temporal issues in T.S. Eliot’s poem The Love Song J. Alfred Prufrock (see also North, 2001 and comment about connection Marvell’s poetry). For example, Eliot’s verse about Prufrock (who also ironically said that he was “not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be”) is at once sad and frail in its connotations, “I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas,” in large part as it seems to me, because there is the inability of Prufrock to connect with others, and thus is disconnected with intimacy. He is seemingly crustacean-like in his inability to cultivate relationships and instead is only aware of the minutiae in his life as his life as it is “measured out in coffee spoons.” Eliot also makes reference to things crab-like (along with our elemental words of “dust” and “sand”) “An old crab with barnacles on its back,” from the poem “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” (see Eliot, 1991) which only reinforces Eliot’s preoccupation with the themes of time, aging and the spectacle of existential angst and catharsis (“I grow old…I grow old…”) into the landscape of the second half of life. The cross-weaving of these themes are like flares in the sky to indicate a lesson, a warning, a message about the aging process that carries with it both loss and fragility, but there is also the opportunity to exact what makes us (more) human as we age (forward) and to re-examine our lives and redefine superannuation. The point here is that there has been much written about the allure of shifting time’s arrow by contemplating the journey of life in reverse and that the voyage back (theoretically) in time is much more “rewarding” than movement toward the inevitability of decline and death.

Ah yes, to be young again – to be vigorous and splendid in physical perfection (think of the The Eagles song “Twenty-One” and “strong as I can be and there is no reason why – I should ever want to die”). Instead of wondering, like The Beatles (1967) did, if someone will still need me when I’m sixty-four, we could, instead, go the route of Nirvana (1991) and don’t care or mind if we’re old. Or better yet, is there a way to have both the wisdom and peak of physicality so that George Bernard Shaw’s assertion, “Youth is wasted on the young,” could be flipped on its head by expressing it this way, “Wisdom is wasted on the old.” Could we reap the rewards of time’s arrow and yet have it reversed so that we can have our cake and eat it too? This is not just averting “this bank and shoal of time” by holding back the years as sung by Simply Red (1985; see also Templeton, 2007) or like jumping in swimming pools with cocoons (in Florida – of course!) from extraterrestrials (Antereans) in order to escape “the mortal coil” (see Haycock, 2008) of illness, aging, and mortality (see movies, Cocoon, 1985 and Cocoon: The Return, 1988). Even though Epstein (2007) describes the aging process as where Narcissus has been asked to leave the pool (“time passes, the day darkens, the grave yawns”), in contrast, the people of the high country town of Springhill, Colorado, and based on the novel by Clifford Irving (1996), The Spring, were really doing quite well despite their “age” and have decided to stay in the pool a little longer (maybe something in the water?).

No, instead of fantastical accounts and fairy tales we are seriously exploring the prospect of “the possibility of an island” in time where there is both immortality and the perpetuity of the same, which is beyond Decrepitude and Senioritude, and death itself (see Houellebecq, 2005). We have now reached the point of breaking time’s arrow in half and the crucible for extended and eternal life is no longer science fiction (see Slusser, Westfahl & Rabkin, 1996). The pursuit of prolongevity is now on our doorstep (Cole & Thompson, 2001/2002; Post & Binstock, 2004). And the target of the arrow is no longer found within mythology, fictional stories, and the magic of special effects in film, rather it is purported to be found at the macro and systemic level of the body/mind/spirit connection (see Chopra, 2002), and perhaps deeper into the microbiological and the phylogenetic levels. Whether you belong to the evolutionary or mechanistic camp, (see Hughes & Reynolds, 2005) (or see both as complementary), or you buy into SENS (De Grey, 2007; see also Templeton, 2007) or SENSE (Rose, Rauser, Benford, Matos, & Mueller, 2007; Rose, 2008) as representing the most current scientific revolution in gerontology, or whether you are the futurist, the optimist, or the realist in regards to aging and mortality (Carnes & Olshansky, 2007) the message is clear: time’s arrow in aging may have been seen as thermodynamic, but in the 21^st century we may come to see time’s arrow for the human species become more the domain of biological engineering. Furthermore, it makes me wonder if the primary role of gerontologists in the year 2060 will be to primarily serve as historians of time – in the way that it used to be – back in the old days.

Gerontology is dead. Long-live gerontology.

Speaking of time and aging and going way back, Sophocles and Ovid shall have the closing commentary on our topic,

Dearest son of Aegeus, none but the gods
Escape old age and death: all else 
time in its relentless flood sweeps away.      
                       Sophocles – Oedipus at Colonus

Time glides away and we grow older through the silent years;
the days flee away and are restrained by no rein.     
                       Ovid

We shall see – and time will tell.

Notes from all sections of posting (1,2,3)

1. Let us not forget Alan Sokal’s now infamous 1996 article, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” that was published in the cultural studies journal Social Text, and then soon after, revealed to be a hoax. It was deliberate satire and parody. Sokal was apparently exposing the cavalier way in which constructs of science could be twisted and co-opted to fit postmodern rhetorical and political agendas (see Sokal, 2008 for a comprehensive examination of the issue) and as a result there was (and is) the proliferation of the Frankensteinian beast known as “pseudoscience.”
2. In the edited book by Michael North (2001), The Waste Land: T.S. Eliot, W.W. Norton & Co.; New York, there is a insightful footnote about the connection of verse in Eliot’s “III. The Fire Sermon” and Andrew Marvell’s poem, “To His Coy Mistress” first published in 1861, where the following lines by Marvell were adapted by Eliot into his poetry, “But at my back I always hear/Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.”
3. Speaking of eternal recurrence, I reviewed one blogging site that was titled, “Time Loop” and naturally the blog entry presented how the blogger felt like they were going in circles and where “every day is exactly the same” (see Nine Inch Nails/Trent Reznor from the album “With Teeth”) and the blogger had their entry in a repeating pattern – over and over again – as the web pages were scrolled downward. Absurdly funny and/or ironically apropos.
4. As creative and insightful examples of capturing the moments of time, I recommend reviewing Thomas Pynchon’s (1997) book, Mason & Dixon,and what I believe to be one of the finest openings to a book and the setting of the stage and scene not only “back in time” but the flowing of time by using a descriptive sequence of words that unfold much like a visual walk using a camera to capture the context and temporal dimensions of the novel. There is also Katagiri’s book (2007), Each Moment is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time, where it was stated that Dogen Zenji said that most people are not able to acquire the way-seeking mind of spiritual awareness without deeply understanding that a day consists of 6,400, 099,180 moments. A moment is called ksana in Sanskrit. “The numbers associated with moments in a day are not so important, but we should have a sense of how quickly time goes” (pp. 3-4).
5. Another movie that grapples with time’s arrow and memory is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004; for a provocative analysis of similar films such as Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible and Martin Amis’s book,Time’s Arrow, see Goh, R. (2008). Myths of reversal: Backwards narratives, normative schizophrenia and the culture of causal agnosticism. Social Semiotics, 18, 61-77.
6. Wallace also wrote the book (1998): Big Fish: A novel of mythic proportions which was used as the basis of the movie by Tim Burton, Big Fish released in 2003 which has its own interesting story of time and reflections on the past.

 

 For a complete list of references: please contact Scott Wright or please see the full
PDF version of this paper