"Life comes first, an art not rooted in human experience is not worth a damn, but different kinds of minds have different kinds of experience, and all I ask of any man is validity; and there should be a place for every type and kind of mind. I don’t want to lose any testimony; it may be necessary for one man to sit wound up in his own vitals in order to find out what he needs to know, and his discoveries will be valuable if he is capable of telling the truth. Another must be wound up in the world around him . . . some must be active, and some contemplative."
Katherine Anne Porter
In “Old Mortality” Miranda and her sister Maria struggle to exert their individuality while dogged and pressured by family history, particularly that of Aunt Amy. Part 1 shows the two girls learning that the family demands unthinking acceptance of its legends, even in the face of contradictory facts. They are astonished, for instance, to hear their father claim that there were never any fat women in the family, when they know full well the size of their great-aunt Keziah, “who quite squeezed herself through doors, and who, when seated, was one solid pyramidal monument from floor to neck” ( CSP 174). The two girls see that “something seemed to happen to their father’s memory” ( CSP 174) when he talks about the family; they soon realize that the family legends dictate “truth” no matter what contradicts them. It is analogous to Porter’s witnessing the Germans claiming Mozart as German—the legend has become fact. If Maria and Miranda at first find the family stories intriguing and mysterious, they eventually understand the extent to which the stories restrict their lives. Rather than infusing the world with mystery, the legends sap mystery from it.
"Ah, but there is my own life to come yet, she thought, my own life now and beyond. I don’t want any promises, I won’t have false hopes. I won’t be romantic about myself. I can’t live in their world any longer, she told herself, listening to the voices back of her. Let them tell their stories to each other. Let them go on explaining how things happened. I don’t care. At least I can know the truth about what happens to me, she assured herself silently, making a promise to herself, in her hopefulness, her ignorance."
From The Fourth Ghost
Because literature is psychotherapy for those who can't afford it.
Y'know, expatriates, on the run from their nationality and the officiaries of family, England and the Church of England.
[My father] "did a wonderful thing - he forgot his hearing aid". http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/dec/13/my-mother-insisted-i-was-gay-but-im-not
First he took the piss out of my wording - "How did it land?" despite its being directly borrowed from the catchphrase of his favourite preacher, the ebullient youth man Mike Pilavachi with the Greek hair and the Nigerian shirts. Unlucky word to be the target this time. He picks at things to redirect the attention, reroute his discomfort. He picks at the skin to distract from the meat.
When that didn't work he simply went, 'I've forgotten'. What we talked about. Forgotten. "I didn't find it all that significant."
A wonderful thing.
I'm almost 30 now. I'm knocking on the sills of their window on the world, for the first time. I was going in to establish a meaningful relationship, or communicate, or both. The things I've intuited - their incapacity for that - i've seen demonstrated. I knew it was a windowsill, but it's the first time i've heard it thunk, i suppose. I suppose if you spent 60 years living in a spaghetti western set, without once walking round to the other side, so physically simple, just to keep your eyes open and walk, so psychically untenable. To see it's all cardboard and kickstands, you wouldn't want to start now. Is this the threat of regret? 60 years wasted on insubstance, worth wasting the rest to avoid the realisation. Surely such a complicated act, refusing to see without acknowledgement of refusal, compared to just - seeing what's there? It's mind-boggling. What do you do if your life, your whole life, has had no substance?
The Saloon has liquor and brigands, the brothel is full of whores, and the dust is the soil of the great USA, not some Italian backwater, no i've never been in, i don't have to, i can hear it and see it, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, Arwen, you idiot, it's a terrible thing to speak from ignorance
