Jan’s Comments (group member since May 23, 2015)

Jan’s comments from the On Paths Unknown group.

What we have here is a "moralization gap:" I'm saying you've done something to me, and you're saying you've done nothing worth caring about and btw get over it. We are each seeing the situation in our own interests. If the situation was reversed, I might be the one denying while you wanted to be heard.

I think you're evading, but, OK, have it your own way, story. The bible is after all a big Rorschach blot, and you see something ugly in (that part of) it. There's a name for that. (Not what you're thinking.)

I already talked with Traveller, and this time I'm talking with you, Derek.

The tale within a tale is fiction.

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Not joking at all. The early parts of the Old Testament are a litany of ethnic cleansings by the Israelites."

It is a story, not history. Historically, there was war. In that time in the ancient near east, there was a lot of chest pounding by various tribes, claiming they had "destroyed the seed" of the other tribe, and so forth. But we cannot tell what happened from what is written in scripture. We can say the Israelites sometimes prevailed, but we cannot say they wiped out everybody. The last redactors of the Hebrew bible were the priests, and that was the idealization they wrote in as to what should happen, but still we cannot tell what part of what is written down has elements of history, and what part is cheer-leading. For example the Tel Dan stele: the 1st part of this rendition. I don't know if this is a particularly good rendition; it's just the first reasonable explanation I came across for this commonly known example. In a direct contradiction of a part of the Hebrew bible in which it's written the Israelites won and wiped out the seed, this other king(s?) is claiming his side won and "wiped out the seed (or house)" of David.

So for those who "choose to believe" this in such fundamentalist terms, we know about them than about what they are pointing to. Why is it so important to you to believe this? How is it different than white people who propped up their self esteem by the belief they were "better than" others?

In case you would like to say the new tradition brought a change in no longer following the old warlike ways, that would be a hard sell. It requires telling a story that makes the ongoing warlike ways "not you," and that's the hard sell part.

Better to start looking at the person in the mirror and not at "them."

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Traveller wrote: "Oh, and Derek - granted, the Jews were often on the receiving end too,"

That wasn't me... I'm 100% in agreement that the genocides of the Bible are on the Israelites' part. ..."

??? Are you joking, Derek? I thought we were through with that "us" and "them."

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "... the cryptic reference that originally made me believe Iris murdered Richard: "I doubt she ever said to you that I mur­dered Richard, how­ever. If she’d told you that, she would also have had to say where she got the idea." ..."

It truly never occurred to me while I was reading that Iris may have murdered Richard.

That would fit with--or explain--the title of the novel!

"Having long ago whispered I want to die, I now realize that this wish will indeed be fulfilled, and sooner rather than later. No matter that I've changed my mind about it.”

Traveller wrote: "Oh, the smiley - well, it's made by using Japanese characters, so what I've done, is I have saved a copy of it on my "notes", a desktop gadget that I keep open all the time, and I just copy and pas..."

...Ah.... I do that, too. :)

There are some characters not on one's keyboard one can make with the alt key and numbers on the right side of the keyboard. I was looking but didn't spot those.

These deep intellectual concerns must not be neglected, lol.

Extraneous comment:

Traveller wrote: "... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ..."

Very nice emoticon, Traveller. With what character did you make the sidewise smile? ...And the thrown-upward hands?

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "...When Laura first met Alex, Iris thought they were having sex. So, Iris felt her affair with Alex was cheating on both..."

She did??? Did she think Laura was capable of such, at that point?

Derek also wrote, "Then when Richard said Laura was pregnant, Iris was both confused and jealous. She thought Laura couldn't have been pregnant because Alex was with Iris; then maybe..."

Yes, I remember Iris' confusion. Who could imagine what Richard had been up to? It took her a while.

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "...Not even deliberately cruel, I think. Her father knew he was not going to be able to look after both his children, so he found a way that Iris would be taken care of (with that blindness men have, that Iris would be content with his arrangement), and left wh.... ...So, I agree it was cruel, but only in light of our current mores."

Derek's thinking is along the same lines as mine, here.

Traveller wrote: "Re Norval vs Richard:
I know it's easy when you're on the outside looking in, but to me Richard's utterances in his speeches that were cited in the newspapers should have spoken volumes about the..."

We have the benefit of hindsight. Back then many people had those sympathies. It's like today--noise and confusion without any handwriting on the wall that was accepted by all, not even by all good people. We saw Richard having to scuttle for cover eventually, after the war started.

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "...I think she is in fact directly responsible for Laura's death. I'm still not sure whether it's because she told Laura Alex was dead, or because she told Laura she was having an affair with him, but in either case it was that conversation that directly led to Laura's suicide...."

That is the type of thing people believe when a loved one commits suicide. They look back and think they "caused" it--that if only a word or two had changed, it wouldn't have happened. They think they are in control of what other people do. There is a temporal--and a narrative--connection here, but not causality.

Laura was already suicidal as a child. We don't know what her relationship with Alex was, do we? When she doctored the newspaper photo and cut it the two different ways--was that foretelling? For me it is as though there were aspects of classical tragedy playing out (assuming I understand what that is).

If anything, there is a cumulative effect of lack of love or kindness for these sisters, although it impacts them differently according to their character.

Think, too, of the corrosive impact of not knowing what's going on. I think it's mostly better to know.

So, no, I don't think Iris killed Laura, and I hope I would not look on real life situations that way, either.

Don't forget, the father had a lot of loyalty to his workers. In large part, he was trying to save the factory(ies) for them, not for the money or the family, or so I saw it. I didn't think he intentionally sought out an awful partner for Iris, or even that he knew what Richard was in any clear sense. His fault at this point was the decision to put the loyalty to the workers over that to his daughters, and of course the interesting ethical decisions are when it's not simply a choice between good, on one hand, and evil. Of course, too, his brain was likely half pickled by that point.

:)

This is a response to a comment of Derek's from an earlier thread. Posting it here b/c contains a spoiler!

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "...I think you have to realize that this is not just someone who is getting old. Iris is near-death. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to reflect on what you've lost and what you've missed at that point."

Especially if you've had one hot love affair in your youth and that's it! I used to call that "the Thornbird phonomenon" (but really I use that for the case where the protagonists have sex once, of course get pg, and it ruins their lives--so this is only a related plot development!).

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Jan wrote: "Some more thoughts came to me today re the age thing: re Iris constantly--or, rather, frequently--writing about her age issues, primarily in terms of drying up, at least per what sticks..."

Oh, darn. Can't reply here as it's a spoiler. Will try to find the last thread and post it there, Derek.

Magdelanye wrote: "so sorry about your friend Jan. I think that even more disquieting than the phys.... iris pushed away from closeness. even with Laura, she was weary of her role and occasionally reveals her malicious side in the course of her care."

Thanks so much, Magdelanye.
Re Iris, then immediately as you say that, I find myself wanting to exude sympathy toward her, for surely she was one unhappy person! Of course that's easy for me to say, since I only know her through a book. If I had to live with her in real life, I might not feel that way. In that case, the goal would be to handle unfinished business while one can. Don't let it fester.

Some more thoughts came to me today re the age thing: re Iris constantly--or, rather, frequently--writing about her age issues, primarily in terms of drying up, at least per what sticks in my mind. In the book I just finished, The Meursault Investigation, the main character, who is in his late 70s at the time of the writing, never refers to his age until halfway through the book. Granted he's a little younger, but I was already contrasting that with Iris' character when I was reading that.

I remember that at a certain point when my father was a little older than I am now, he saw a man in his 80s, all bent over, and voiced that's where he was headed. I now think that revealed a sense of depression or regret, and certainly sensed it at the time but not able to talk about it with him.

A glass half full position is usually better if and when I can achieve it, which was brought home to me in a powerful way by the sudden death in a car wreck of a friend two years younger than I am, back in April. So now when the unavoidable issues arise, it occurs to me what a privilege to be here and have those complaints, as she never will.

I think this also brings home what some of you have said about Iris' being lonely and cut off and not much thinking of others--not that we're going to a lot of the time, but her persona as the author has written her isn't much leavened by attention to others (even though we've known from the first line of the book that her sister is dead and she isn't).

Thinking about all the comments on Iris and age that y'all have shared. Yes, Traveller in Comment 39, I can see that. Maybe, though, it's when she's being confronted by her aged status, whether by inability to do something or by looking in the mirror, that she would remark on it, as otherwise I'd expect her to simply "be." So, I'm still turning it over...

I agree with Magdelanye as to Atwood's brilliance, not necessarily on how the plot is constructed, but on the way the character can so often condense life to pithy observations that demanded to be quoted. :) Congratulations on those classes (or class) with her, Magdelanye, you lucky dog!

Traveller wrote: "@ Jan: Oh good. I knew you were also a person who can't be conveniently tagged and shelved. I got that impression from snippets of conversation between yourself and others around here on GR. :).."

Thanks for noticing, Traveller. I find it's often a challenge not to be shoved into a cubbyhole. There's pressure to become polarized to fit preconceived and simplistic notions of "for us or agin' us."

I just came across an example of the above involving our author. I was looking up Atwood to see if she had the proverbial Jewish grandmother, wondering if that had had any impact on her writing in the novel-within-a-novel. She did handle a Jewish sub-theme well in another book, The Robber Bride, in a way I had found memorable. Well, whatever her ancestry, I could not readily find anything on that particular aspect. I did find, though, that in 2010 she accepted a literary award in Israel, stating that she did not believe in cultural boycotts, and for that she came under pressure in the most ugly terms, essentially a fatwa on her reputation. Subsequently, an accuser used the fact that she had criticisms of Israel to in essence "reclaim" her from the "dark side." In other words, a case where no nuanced view was going to be acceptable.