Pity, Thinkers & Sloths

Finished Humboldt's Gift this morning. Three thoughts on pity, thinkers, & sloth and this book will close.

- - - - - - - - - - PITY - - - - - - - - - -

Previously I complained how HG was inaccessible but on p.320 there was something familiar -- Charlie Citrine's pity. Citrine suspects his girlfriend, Renata, has run off but cannot confront her scheming mother, the Señora.

I couldn't argue with the Señora. I had seen her one morning before she was made up, hurrying toward the bathroom, completely featureless, a limp and yellow banana skin, without brows or lashes and virtually without lips. The sorrow of this sight took me by the heart, I never again wanted to win a point from the Señora. When I played backgammon with her I cheated against myself.

Citrine sees a person who doesn't have what they value most. Never again will the Señora be beautiful or young (firm, bright skin; full lips; lashes and brows) and for a person that trades on looks, this must crush her daily. Would the Señora be pissed to know Citrine's pity is why he cows to her? Damn rights! She would hate him to shreds for patronizing her and for assuming her weakness. Perhaps the Señora has accepted aging and moreover, doesn't care if her daughter's sugar daddy sees her without makeup. Besides it must be a hoot for her to look like a bag and still get Citrine's money.

Pity is a way for Citrine to think himself in control and his thoughts can never be challenged because they without doubt, quietly assume.

- - - - - - - - - - THINKERS - - - - - - - - - -

Renata does elope with another man and writes her thoughts on the human condition in a farewell letter (p.430):

As a beautiful woman and still young, I prefer to take things as billions of people have done throughout history. You work, you get bread, you lose a leg, kiss some fellows, have a baby, you live to be eighty and bug hell out of everybody, or you get hung or drowned. But you don't spend years trying to dope your way out of the human condition. To me that's boring.

To this Citrine thinks (p.431):

Yes, when she said this, I saw thinkers of genius throwing skeins of belief and purpose over the heads of the multitude. I saw them molesting the race with their fancies, programs, and world perspectives.

At the base of this statement is our friend Karl. Yup, the Marx one. The thoughts of intellectuals are no better than regular people and it's mental tyranny for them to keep thinking, saying, pressing to continually keep the positions of know-it-alls/ banishers of anomie/ leaders to utopia.

Ok good for Citrine. He's just reached the post-modern conundrum:

• we better not be oppressors like our predecessors
• we can't speak for the oppressed because we cannot know them and so it's injust to rally for change on their behalf
• we still want to do the above and secretly think we can
• we want to know the oppressed because their views can help us make a better society
• 'we' are intellectuals though nowadays the club is not exclusive to old white men.

(For these same conclusions on p-mod stretched over many readings see Subaltern Studies or Gayatri Spivak)

- - - - - - - - - - SLOTHS - - - - - - - - - -

A word on sloth because I started my blog with this sentiment, see A Slothly Start http://bookwash.blogspot.com/2006/05/slothly-start.html

Citrine admits to being slothful and explains to his childhood sweetheart that it's hard work (p.306):

"Some think that sloth, one of the capital sins, means ordinary laziness," I began. "Sticking in the mud. Sleeping at the switch. But sloth has to cover a great deal of despair. Sloth is really a busy condition, hyperactive. This activity drives off the wonderful rest or balance without which there can be no poetry or art or thought -- none of the highest human functions."

At first I thought ooh yes, I too suffer from a condition of sloth, but then I realized this bit on sloth masks and romanticizes procrastination. Keeping busy doing things other than what you must is plain old procrastination and making excuses just ain't cool.

Can't we let a sloth be a sloth?





One sentence sum up: The protagonist, Charlie Citrine, is boring for 400 pages and the last 87 pages doesn't warrant the long windup.