Shel’s Comments (group member since Mar 05, 2009)

Shel’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

First, for anyone who isn't aware of Tolstoy's autobiographical details as they might relate to this story, check out the Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy). It gives a more complete picture of the man's history, beliefs, etc. although I imagine it's cursory given all that he accomplished in his lifetime.

I started by looking for information about Tolstoy's life when he wrote/published this story.

According to the site on which I found the story, Three Hermits was published in 1886, around the same time as the following other works:

+What I Believe (also called My Religion) (1884)
+The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886)
+How Much Land Does a Man Need? (1886)
+The Power of Darkness (1886), drama

During this period in his life, Tolstoy had recently finished Anna Karenina and had begun focusing on Christian themes.

Notable from the Wikipedia entry: "Tolstoy believed that a true Christian could find lasting happiness by striving for inner self-perfection through following the Great Commandment of loving one's neighbor and God rather than looking outward to the Church or state for guidance and meaning." Tolstoy influenced everyone from Gandhi to Martin Luther King, Jr., with his doctrine of non-violence.

So those are a few facts about his life that stood out for me after I had read this story. Now, on to the story itself.

Here is the URL for everyone...

http://www.online-literature.com/tols...

Discussion forthcoming.

How cool that we can do these things for each other... it's like a real community or something... :-)

Congratulations to everyone...!

Announcement: if you love the original old Star Trek shows, or even kind of like them, get thee to a movie theater and see the new Star Trek movie.

Great fun. The first time Spock put those fingers up and said Live long and prosper, both of my kids looked at their hands nearly simultaneously and started to try to figure out how to do that thing with their fingers...

Jen, when I was a kid, American movies took forever to get to where I lived, and so did the candy.

The only American candy we ever got was stale... stale Hot Tamales. And by stale I mean... really, really stale.

I mean... painful to chew stale. Twizzlers that crunched like Heath Bars stale. (I remember having American candy in an American theater for the first time and thinking that the candy tasted weird. Maybe that's because it was under a year old.)

We used to have contests. Who could put the most in their mouth without crying.

I think I got to 15. I was 9 at the time. That's a lotta candy in a little mouth...

In the midst of all of the birthday wishes... I can't remember if there are any members who live in the DC/MD/VA area, but I will be there from June 20 through about the 25th. If anyone lives around there and wants to get together... let me know in email...

Happy B-day, hot tamale.

Don't eat too many hot tamales at one time. If you put more than 5 in your mouth they make you cry...

http://www.hottamales.com/

That's ok. He'll have at least a couple of women who will have to be convinced to stop holding the baby or doling out all manner of assistance.

I plan to hold the little tyke as much as I'm allowed, anyway....

It's all a part of my evil plot to take over the world. We all know that where Hugh goes, the smart people follow, so now I will have more action in my thread.

But probably not from the Hermeneutic twins.

Interesting you would say, Hugh, that the postmodern label seems to be about dismissing the work... my experience is sort of the opposite... the label usually means "work-you-puny-mortal-can-never-comprehend-so-go-back-to-your-pathetic-life-bound-in-historicity."

Maybe that is its own sort of dismissing of the work, or dismissing the idea that reading to really understand is difficult, so why don't we all just give up. Or maybe it's a response similar to Rothko or Louis' color fields ("my six year old could do that") without seeking to understand what they are about. Intellectual laziness...?

Boy, its been a long time since I tossed around words like hermeneutics and historicity. Soon the Derrida will make its way upstairs, and then it's all over.



So back to the story. How is it that the children speak with what appears to be a more advanced - at least outer vocabulary - than Edgar?

That's what makes the kids vaguely threatening, to me - or at least, not as believably children. The story almost had an Oryx and Crake feel to it.

Patty wrote: "I really don't get the anti-postmodern sentiment, what's it all about? Why does this seem to have a negative connotation for so many people?

I found a really cool course guide about postmodern fic..."

Hmmm... good question. I guess it's just because I was inundated with it, nearly drowned in it, in college. And people who loved postmodern lit seemed to have such disdain for that which came before. It's totally a personal problem.

While I haven't read Barthelme and I quite enjoyed the story (and now, thanks to Hugh's comments I have a better appreciation for the story), I have read quite a bit of Pynchon, Ashbery, Barth... I'm missing a ton because my bookshelf is downstairs... and sometimes I get tired of the gaming aspect of it. Just tell me the damn story, I want to say. Screw the hermeneutics.

So, The Fly and The School.

Both are in media res. We are dropped in to figure out what is happening.

Both use setting almost entirely to drive every aspect of story... characters seem... I don't know. I find the boss in The Fly more memorable than Edgar, but perhaps the point is flat narration to describe a horrifying situation.

Edgar - seems to have no feelings about all of this death. The Boss tries to deny his.

Sorry I've been a wee bit out of it, guys. Just wanted to also say that I will be more active again starting this week... I feel like I gave Flannery short shrift. I may head back over there...

"And they said, is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said no, life is that which gives meaning to life. Then they said, but isn’t death, considered as a fundamental datum, the means by which the taken-for-granted mundanity of the everyday may be transcended in the direction of – "

So.

I read the story two ways - either the earth and people are dying around them, or they are the cause of all of the death.

Either way, Edgar never addresses the cause directly, so we can't know.

If it's the earth that's dying, the children are simply watching the inevitable happen, and the request to have Edgar and Helen make love at the end is a request to see something life-affirming occur -- "we require an assertion of value, we are frightened."

If it's the children killing - if it is like a children of the corn situation, then somehow the whole world is a really messed up place and a horror movie could easily be made. The children need their data about life and death, and seek meaning in life from death. And Edgar is afraid to say it directly - "it's not really their fault, they're just kids and it was inevitable."

I have to let this one steep a little more before deciding where I fall. The quote from above, and the coercive "make love to Helen" bit, make me think the second interpretation might be true.

But the part of me that's like "children would never" ... I don't know...

I reserve that level of anal retentiveness for menus in Chinese restaurants and even then I do not carry a red pen for copy markup.

Wodehouse was British, right? When I lived there, the ground was called the floor. I can't remember if there was a different word for floor or not.

I wouldn't do that in a book, though. That's just kinda... I don't know. Odd.

Patty wrote: "what an incredibly strange thing to say, shel."

Sorry. My kids have a nasty stomach virus and the smell is affecting my brain... I feel like I'm in Stand By Me...

URL:

http://www.npr.org/programs/death/rea...

I have a feeling I may not be a giant fan of Barthelme, if only because I'm not an abject, unquestioning fan of postmoderinism... but I'll give it a shot... :-)

My favorite teacher of all time was Bob Ganz, who taught a bunch of my literature classes in college. Considering my 'issues' with authority it's odd that he was my favorite because he was a professor who believed that he was in charge of the knowledge that he would be imparting to us.

He used to lecture, like old-fashioned lecturing (he was in his 70s), call on students to make sure they did the reading (gasp!) -- you couldn't get away with coming to class the first day, and on the day of the final, and expect to pass -- he kicked so many students out of the finals...

When he got excited about something he had this great stutter ... as class progressed his hair became more and more disheveled until he resembled a nearly bald Einstein. He talked with his hands in a nearly Sherwood Anderson-esque way. After class we would go to his office, which had towers of books constantly threatening to topple over and a manual typewriter, and talk about the readings because I always had more questions.

From him I learned respect for great literature, how to read it as a great conversation throughout time between writers and thinkers. As a result I began to eschew all of the literary criticism that I was being indoctrinated with... leading me to ask frustrating questions like, "Shouldn't we actually read it, before we toss it aside as the irrelevant work of a dead white male?"

But my favorite thing he used to do... when Dante was was getting a bit dry... he would step up on a chair, then step onto the table, squat down, put his hands in his hair and yell, "Vagina!" as loud as he could.

Then, "I was just checking to see if you were awake."

"And by the way, I'm the only one allowed to use that word in here. Your other professors want you to be their friends and let you curse in class, but goddammit, you won't pull that fucking bullshit here."

You know, it's kind of like binding women's feet so that they can't run away! It could work!

Coconuts? Ew. That's like... elephantiasis or something.

I agree that anything sex-positive is great. I mean anything, in this weird-ass society.

But what I take issue with probably sounds like an old feminist mantra - the circumstances in which all this sex takes place...

That said, I haven't read a Harlequin since I was 13 and my friend had picked out all the dirty parts. It may be totally different now.