R.I.P. 2023 Review

When I was spending a fair amount of time in Manhattan in the 1980s, Martin Amis was a name I heard a lot.  My friend Michael Shain, then a reporter for the New York Post, designated a different Amis novel for each of his friends. (Mine was The Information, which I still have not read.)  I followed the Amis career without ever really becoming engaged with his novels.  But in interviews he would often say something that hit me directly, as when he mentioned being ambushed by memories that were accompanied by searing regret, just walking down the street and thinking of something else.  This was an experience I often had, but which I’d never heard anyone else confess.

 When Amis died last May I noticed how he was almost universally praised as a literary eminence.  (He was Sir Martin by then.)  So I went back to his more famous novels (Money, London Fields), neither of which I could finish once again, and I read entirely his last novel (Inside Story) and his collection of essays and reviews, The War Against Cliché.  In both I responded to gems of insight and stylish writing, but on first reading I couldn’t experience Inside Story as a whole novel, for all its shining parts.  So I remain a frustrated reader of a writer with whom I nevertheless felt an odd bond, as much for many differences as for similarities and sympathies.  The tension of that seems productive and affectionate.  

 Another novelist much talked about in the 1980s was Milan Kundera, principally for one book: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, now a classic of the era.  I read it with fascination, and found his previous novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, published in English through the auspices of Philip Roth and his series of works by Eastern European authors.  More recently I read Kundera's Slowness, and wrote about it here.

 With the paradox of its title, The Unbearable Lightness of Being seemed to become fashionable mostly because of the sex, though Italo Calvino pointed out that its virtues were the liveliness and intelligence of the writing.  I doubt I understood or endorsed a lot of it, but I liked its rhythms and it did feel like something I hadn’t encountered before in fiction.  I better understood the meditations on the speed of life today and the paradoxes of memory in Slowness.   

 Cormac McCarthy was a controversial and respected novelist over several decades. Though his fifth novel in 1985, Blood Meridian, became recognized over time, his first commercial success was All the Pretty Horses in 1992.  Probably his biggest and most enduring literary, cultural and popular success was the haunting post-apocalyptic tale, The Road.  

some of the books by Garcia Marquez translated by Edith Grossman

 Harold Bloom called Edith Grossman “the Glenn Gould of translators,” because she too was a precise virtuoso.  Her translations of Latin American authors, together with those of Gregory Rabassa, helped fuel the boom for these novelists in the 1970s and 80s.  In particular she translated seven books by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who once said that he preferred reading her English translations (and Rabassa’s) to his Spanish originals.

 

Russell Banks was a prolific American novelist and story writer who detailed working class lives but also wrote about Jamaica and Haiti and The Magic Kingdom.  He was especially beloved by fellow literary writers.

 Robert Brustein was a titan of modern theatre in America, founding both the Yale Repertory Company and the American Repertory Company at Harvard. He backed his work as a producer, director, actor and playwright with essays and books from The Theatre of Revolt (1964) and Who Needs Theatre? (1987) to Winter Passages (2014.)  He engaged in many controversies, such as his debates with playwright August Wilson.

 British Jungian psychologist Anthony Stevens wrote several books on Jung and his theories, particularly on archetypes and dreams.  I remember reading with pleasure Ronald Steel’s sterling biography of journalist Walter Lippmann, and D.M. Thomas’ novel The White Hotel.  I recall enjoying Francois Gilot’s reminiscences of her uneasy life with Picasso when I read them in the 1970s, and Jonathan Raban’s Old Glory: An American Voyage in the 1980s.

 As the last veterans of World War II fade away, so do the authors who examined aspects and outcomes of that war.  Japanese author Kenzaburo Oe wrote about the legacy of the atomic bomb in Japan, while Selichi Moriura exposed Japanese wartime atrocities. Marga Minco wrote about the ramifications of the Holocaust and the war in postwar Europe.   

 Also among the writers who passed on in 2023 were poets Louise Gluck, Charles Simic, Naomi Replansky, Robert Pack, Benjamin Zephaniah, David Ferry, Saskia Hamilton, Park Je-chun, Amy Utematsu, Trienke Laurie, Antonio Gala, Asad Gulzoda, R.H.W. Dillard, Robin Mathews, Maria Laina and Wendy Barker; playwrights Tina Howe, Megan Terry, Robert Patrick, John Mairai and Ama Ata Aidoo; eminent screenwriter Bo Goldman; novelist/playwright Fay Weldon, story writer Edith Pearlman, novelists AS Byatt, Herbert Gold, Ted Morgan, Eve Bunting, Meir Shalev, Martin Walser, David Benedictis, and Amy Schwartz.

 In genre fiction: Carol Higgins Clark (mystery), K.C. Constantine (master of the police procedural--more about him later), John Dunning (detective fiction and books on old time radio), John Jakes (historical), Julie Garwood (romance); Michael Bishop, Michael A. Banks and Richard Bowes (science fiction.)

 Artist and writer Linda Salzman Sagan, sociologist and communitarian visionary Amitai Etzioni, historians Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie, Eugenio Riccomini and Marceli Kosman; feminist scholars Dale Spender and Jean F. Yellin, psychologist Alice K. Ladas, philosophers Harry Frankfurt and Ian Hacking; crime writers Anne Perry and Mary Willis Walker; satirist Dan Greenberg.

 Writers William Howarth, Gail Tremblay, Phillipe Sollers, Luca di Fulvia, Doris Gregory, Michael Denneny, Zaleka Mandela, Echo Brown, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Ramzi Salame, Darchhawna and Ronald Blythe.

 Journalists Betty Rollin, Kevin Phillips, Victor Navasky, Michael Parkington, Paul Bradeur, Warren Hoge, James Reston, Jr., Bernard Kalb, Hugh Aynesworth, Eva Hauseserova, Howard Weaver, Edwin Wilson, Michel Ciment, Jack Anderson, Colin Spencer, Bill Shipp, Mandy Jenkins, Ian Black.

 Apologies for misspellings and misappropriations.  May they and all the writers who died last year rest in peace—their work lives on. 

The Deptford Trilogy (and More) by Robertson Davies

As in his previous trilogy, each of these three novels focuses on a character from a small Canadian town (in this case Deptford, Ontario, said to be based on Davies' birthplace of Thamesville), though this time all three of these characters appear in all three of the novels.

  As in the Salterton Trilogy, the first book takes place in the town, while the third takes place overseas (largely in the previous trilogy, entirely in this one) and is the story of the character's education, artistic and otherwise. This time the middle book also takes place in Europe.

As the author himself said, the trilogy follows the consequences of a single act: a boy throws a snowball with a stone hidden in it at another boy, who dodges, and it instead hits a pregnant woman.  Those consequences are followed over the subsequent sixty years.

Fifth Business is narrated by the boy who dodged the snowball, Dunstan Ramsey, who becomes a teacher and scholar, with a special interest in the topic of saints.  There is an especially haunting portrayal of the woman hit by the snowball, which bears on Ramsey's acute interest in saints. This novel more than any other established Davies as an important novelist, and though it continues particular Canadian concerns, as a novelist with international appeal.

The Manticore is the account of the son of the rich and powerful man who as a boy threw the snowball.  This is the first Robertson Davies novel I read, some 25 years ago.  It is the account of this character's analysis with a Jungian therapist in Zurich.  This narrative, along with a few other odd fragments and personalities that crossed my path at the time (an article on James Hillman, the Jung that Chris Stevens quoted on Northern Exposure, etc. ) first got me interested in Jung.  I now have nearly all of his books, as well as many about him, and have even read some.

Books as it turns out were as close as Davies got to Jungian analysis.  Though Jungians were convinced he had been analyzed, and even guessed by whom (the famed Marie von Franz--her book on creation myths was another of my avenues to Jung), Davies claimed he'd never had a single analytical session with anybody.

World of Wonders is the story of the boy born prematurely because of the trauma induced by that snowball blow.  He became a famous magician, but his hero's journey is harrowing--and told at length.  The Jungian influence is important throughout (even "the fifth business" is a term about archetypes on the stage), and there is a dramatic unity--the first novel ends very dramatically, and the rest of the trilogy follows more or less in chronology.

Re-reading this trilogy led me to a book of interviews with Davies and especially his collection of speeches, One Half of Robertson Davies.  This is a remarkable book I read with great profit.

  He spoke highly (and therefore bravely) of the much maligned dramatic form of melodrama. His immense knowledge of books and historical context was enlightening.   Davies turns out to be a champion of feeling, especially in the arts.  His series of four lectures on Evil is an eloquent corrective to some of the main intellectual currents of his time.  Regardless of how much one agrees with him on religious matters for example, it was intensely valuable to hear what he had to say with such clarity, fairness and good humor.  I'm happy to have known him in this way.

Jung at Heart


I've been reading Carl Jung, and reading about him and his work, for only about a decade now. In fact I've read very little out of all that exists. His writings and writings about him could easily occupy the remainder of my years. I enjoy the experience of reading him; I enjoy his voice. And of course I learn a great deal.

When the millennium turned there was some mild media attempt to name the most significant figures of the 20th century. Names like Churchill and Einstein were usually at the top. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I firmly believe that if humanity in some civilized condition manages to survive this century, historians of the 22nd century will look back and judge Carl Jung as among the two or three most important figures of the 20th century. Partly because, if our civilization doesn't learn what Jung knew, it's very unlikely to get past this century.

I don't profess to any special insight or authority, and certainly not background, to evaluate his work. Apart from my draft physical, I've never seen a psychologist or psychiatrist as a patient. I've never wanted to be an analyst, and I don't seem to have the knack for dream analysis or insights. I took psychology in college for about a week---I dropped out almost immediately, appalled. Reading the opening chapters of Anthony Stevens' book called Archetypes, I realized why. In the mid-60s academic psychology was in the throes of what Stevens' calls "neobehaviorist fundamentalism." All that was real was observable behavior. Stimulus and response, reward and punishment, humans as rats in the maze. The psyche had literally been taken out of psychology. No wonder I fled for my life.

I read some Freud and R.D. Laing in college and afterwards, some Maslow, May, Erikson, Fromm, Karen Horney,etc.  The closest I got to Jung was reading Robertson Davies' account of a Jungian analysis in his novel The Manticore.  This de-mystified analysis for me.  All I'd known about was Freud, and he seemed too dogmatic and, well, fixated.

Much of this was interesting and intriguing.  But what really hit home was when somehow I glommed onto James Hillman's formidable work in the early 90s. I think it started with a magazine article in which he was quoted, and maybe also by way of Robert Bly and his poetry readings for men (he and Hillman and Michael Meade edited an excellent anthology of poems, The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart). I do remember my first conversation about Hillman---it may have been how I heard about his books--- was with a ceramics artist. Artists, he said, especially male artists, and most especially depressed male artists, like Hillman.

I read as much Hillman as I could find. By now I've read almost everything in book form, though one reading is generally just a fly-by, with moments of startling recognition, affirmation or shocking not-what-I-want-to-hear insight . His earlier work in particular referred back to Jung. I was additionally initiated into Jung by Joseph Cambell's interviews with Bill Moyers, and by Chris in the Morning on Northern Exposure, and even Counsellor Troi on The Next Generation, and probably lots more I've forgotten. And so I started reading Jung. I was amazed that I seemed to understand much of it, what I seemed to understand made sense, and I enjoyed reading a good deal of the rest as well. So that kept me reading.

I began with the usual anthologies, such as Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Psyche and Symbol and the Portable Jung. Eventually I got to his Memories, Dreams and Reflections, a kind of soul autobiography,which is one of the most amazing and important books I've ever read.

Over the years I'd buy whatever I found by or about Jung at used bookstores, thrift stores, library sales, etc. I managed to assemble a nice little collection that way. Jung is famous for the women who studied and worked with him, and who had distinguished careers on their own that continued after his death. I have books on Jung by five of them, some now hard to find.

In recent years I've scavenged for volumes in the Princeton/Bollengen series, which is the closest you can get to his collected works in paperback. And I've searched out a few books I'd read about, such as the one I just finished reading, Laurens van der Post's memoir, Jung And the Story of Our Time.

This Vintage paperback from the 70s (which I found on the Internet at a quite reasonable price) is just about the only one available. Even with an ineradicable staleness wafting from its yellowing pages, it was compelling. Van der Post knew Jung for the last 16 years of his life. This book contains recollections and a few anecdotes, but is really van der Post's brief on Jung's importance, to the journey of his own life and for the human prospect.

Van der Post is a fascinating person in his own right: a soldier, traveler and much admired writer and filmmaker. But as a white South African who was repelled by racism, and a soldier dismayed by war, he had a lonely time of it. In this book he writes movingly about Richard Wilhelm, the westerner who re-discovered and translated the I Ching. For this service Wilhelm was generally treated as a madman, and apparently began to wonder if perhaps he was, until Jung took up his cause, collaborated with him, and befriended him. There's a clear sense here that Jung did something similar for van der Post. Just as Jung recognized kindred spirits in Wilhelm and this traveler who spent months each year traveling among tribal peoples in remote areas of Africa, finding his heart of enlightenment, they found in Jung a philosophical paterfamilias, beacon of hope and genius of their times.

Van der Post considers Jung one of the most important religious thinkers of the century, as well as a great healer. He praises Jung's insights in practical terms as well. He finds in Jung's psychological concepts the keys to communication across differences, and ultimately to the end of war. He quotes Anatole France: "Human beings are forever killing each other over words, whereas if they had only understood what the words were trying to say, they would have embraced each other." Van der Post adds, " After Jung's Psychological Types, I am convinced, we no longer have any valid excuse for not realizing that we are all ultimately trying to say the same things and express the same longings in terms of our own unique natures." Together with Jung's theories of the unconscious---of its methods and manifestations, and of the balances necessary between conscious and unconscious-humanity had the tools to match the sophistication of self-understanding to the power of its deadly machines...even to emerge from this period of what Jung called our "technological savagery."

Once when Jung seemed disconsolate, van der Post tried to convince him of all this. But in a letter soon afterwards Jung told him, "I am an increasingly lonely old man writing for other lonely men."

Recently I found at the Humboldt University Library several videotaped documentaries about Jung (including the one van der Post did for the BBC, with the eerie moment that Post is in Jung's house, describing that at the moment of his death there was a peal of thunder . And as he says this, there is a peal of thunder. Not dubbed in later. ) Several of them used parts of a series of taped interviews with Jung done by Richard Evans of the University of Houston. HSU also had the programs originally edited from these interviews. Their transcripts were published in a handy little Insight paperback; mine is a 1964 edition in great shape (printed on better paper than the van der Post.)

These interviews reveal other aspects of Jung that van der Post and others write about: his warmth, his humanity, maybe a little of his temper, and certainly his humor.

One of the documentary series' using the interviews is called "The Wisdom of the Dream," made in the late 1980s for England's Channel Four. Psychologist Merrill Berger and TV producer Stephen Segaller who created the programs also co-authored a book based on them, published in paperback by TV Books in 2000. (In a postscript, we learn they're a married couple.) Though it has the earmarks of the TV series in repetitions and fragmentation, it works remarkably well on its own. It allows for more detailed and sensitive exploration of Jung's work and its significance, and especially for more extended quotes from the people interviewed---including many of the last people then still alive who worked with Jung himself (he died in 1962) and some of Jung's children and grandchildren.

One anecdote reminded me of something I said to a class of mostly nurses taking an evening literature course many years ago---I was subbing for their regular instructor. Somehow I got to talking about words and the physical world. "Impacted" was a big word then, and I guess still is. Something is always impacting on something. But that's not always what's really meant. Impact means to hit hard, like the impact of one car smashing into another. But what's meant sometimes is closer to the word "influence." Influence is fluid, it has to do with flow: it's right there in the word.

So here is something one of Jung's grandsons remembers from a day on the lakeside, where rivulets were combining to flow into the lake:
"In the main stream it was cloudy. There something had been moved. And then a tributary came, very fresh and clean water. We saw that picture of this pure and limpid water going into the cloudy one and it made a special kind of design. And then I said to him 'Look at this interesting phenomenon' and then he looked and he said 'Yes. That is influence.'"

Today Jung's influence is considerable, though his impact may not be so obvious. The practice of psychology has embraced a new kind of mechanistic approach that mirrors behaviorism in that it sees the psyche as meaningless: namely matching the drug to the diagnosis. No more talk! Why try to understand the psyche when you can just take a pill to make it behave efficiently? Gene therapy and other interventions are just around the corner. That many in the field and in general can't figure out that you can have better drugs without negating the need for a better understanding of yourself, that you don't have to choose one or the other, that you can have gene therapy and use the tools and skills of Jungian analysis, as well as meditation, etc.---it all just proves Jung's point, that until we acknowledge the reality of the psyche and the conflicts within it, we're doomed to lurch back and forth from one one-sidedness to another, in perpetual dizzy stupidity.

On the other hand, Jung's influence is everywhere, from the cheesiest self-help books to the most complex attempts to reconcile and unify new and old knowledge-quantum physics, chaos theory, ecology, spirituality, neuroscience, myth, evolution...all that stuff. It's in Thomas More and his Soul books, Robert Johnson's little volumes, and it used to be on TV every week via Northern Exposure and Star Trek: The Next Generation. I hope this influence grows fast enough. I don't know if his ideas are a way to universal peace. But I'm pretty sure the conceptual tools he provides, and the skills to use them, are likely to be essential if humanity is to have a civilized future.

Berger and Segaller pretty much agree with van der Post on the meaning and significance of Jung's work: "In Jung's life, the buried treasure was the human soul, was the deeper dimension of the unconscious which could be united with the conscious life and thus help to make a person whole."

I have most of Jung's actual work yet to read, and read again. (Reading it again is another opportunity to learn what I missed. For example, a feature of extraversion jumped out at me the most recent time I saw a certain passage---that extraverts "definitely are more influenced by their surroundings than by their own intentions." Of course! Since--as other researchers maintain--some 75% of the American population are extraverts, this explains a lot. For instance why people are taking polls all the time to see what they think.)

Several memoirs (Barbara Hannah's for example) and books on Jung's psychology (Anthony Storr's) also await. Van der Post recommends Jung's letters. But I think the next volume I'll peruse is Gerhard Wehr's biography of Jung-a chronological view from the outside, just for the perspective. Knowing that it's only one kind of context, and not the most important. Not the heart of Jung.