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version seven. http://demongin.org |
T.H. White: Still Mad at the World
On TH White, The Once and Future King, Alan Alda and professional obligations to one's own feelings.
Wednesday, 2004-09-01 | Classic Gin, Literature
I'm a little older now--about three and one half years, to be exact--and I know a little bit more about one or two things. I've learned a bit about people who used to live in the Mediterranean basin and some of their neighbors to the north. I've picked up one or two words and phrases in the languages that they spoke and continue to speak, in one form or another. Chalk it all up to a liberal arts education.
As I've travelled, as I've picked up these bits of knowledge, certain things have become less impressive--less awesome. For instance, the fairer sex and the spicy orifice through which they have become famed in song and story hardly hold any fascination for me any more--the mystery is gone and only the dull throb in my lower body remains, curiously at odds with my intellect. I'm seldom surprised when I'm told of what were once inconceivable acts of inhumanity; slaughter, torture and other forms of physical abuse. Ditto for acts of kindness and nobility--it's rare that I'm humbled and awed at some towering and exemplary act of grace or charity. Less awesome to me are well-crafted words; I've had the luxury to spend no small amount of time in the presence of some of the finest authors who have ever walked on this planet, Earth.
And that's where we pick up to-nite.
On a whim I cracked open my well-worn copy of T.H. White's The Once and Future King and thumbed to the page whereupon incipit liber quartus and I was amazed.
I was awed again in spite of my cursory training in and general familiarity with humanity; the one I have gained through my studies of the so-called Humanities. Indeed, I was shocked at the sheer virulence and contempt that White was able to convey with mere words.
Seldom coming across as sneering or scornful, I revelled in his subtle and marvellous arrangements of bitterness and disdain. I read and re-read his long, winding and, most importantly, incredibly well-balanced social injunctions. I smiled as he reminded me of his decision to forsake narrative cohesion every so often. I smiled because he was as keenly aware as I was in the moment of composition of what he was doing. Behold! The Author is present!
Alan Alda's seminal portrayal of Hawkeye is the closest analogue in my experience: A man to whom the injustice and callousness, the ignorance and callowness and the inequality and capriciousness which characterize the business of life are so contemptuous, so worthy of scorn, that he slips from his finely wrought moorings. The careful attention paid to every subtle detail of his own training and learning, the care given to every aspect of his personal and professional lives... for a moment, these things mean nothing to him.
White reminds the reader that he's forsaken the narrative as he rails against the casual dissolution and cheerful faithlessness of his fellow man for the same reason that Alda's finest rants (arias, he's fond of calling them off-camera) as Hawkeye occur at the operating table: moral outrage is most keenly felt when one is hard at work, attempting to better the world in what small way he is able by practicing his trade, his profession.
We get mad at the world when we see our efforts wasted and our powers laid waste. White's fulminating contempt is so powerful in the fourth book of King because he's momentarily dropped his detritus (i.e. left the narrative aside momentarily). When Alda's Hawkeye sets his scalpel aside to condemn the senseless slaughter of the Korean War, we're forced to understand just how important his condemnation is to him.
To witness the weary and well-worn professional as he lays down his trade to speak his sorrow is indeed a powerful thing.
