An Investigation
of the Critical Mind
.
.
It occurs to me that even when I'm fiercely
immersed in
something – hmm, when am I ever that? – I can't
think even
of a remote example: okay, let's say, when I
opine about
Henry James' 'late' writing, and try to explain
what I love
about its aural effects, I suppose I look for
easy and pleasurable
ways to reinforce or, en passant, add credence to a claim, but
all these observations are made in passing. What
they serve
.
is a poetic intent: to fashion a clarion call,
not not to "make
a point" (indeed I’m almost only ever
talking about a single
theme: unknowability), but to have it arise out
of whatever
is engagingly at hand. If I find myself suddenly
thinking up
an argument with a more scholarly scent (I
suppose that's
happened here and there), like a flash itch to
see something
in terms of what I understand to be semiotics –
I play fast
.
and loose with that, too: the aim is never consciously
to define
anything, but rather give a visceral take on the
sort of minute
limited breath of a thing that tends to interest
me. I love playing
just a few notes. Example: choose any two
contiguous sentences
James wrote after 1910 – like this, from a
letter to his niece Peggy:
“I glory in the piling up of complications of
every sort. If I could
pronounce the name James in any different or
more elaborate
.
way I should be in favor of doing it.” It’s
perfect, personal
and completely James. A kiss and a handshake. I
am driven
by whim to find and settle on whatever caters to
the whim. But
when the whim arises out of an immersion as odd
and wide
and full of suggestion as mine is in Henry
James, it will be a whim
with a built-in mission – certainly to
underscore my view of
the 'whole' – that is, my overall feeling called
up by reflecting on
.
something – someone – I love. Everything I
write, like each photo
I take of New York, amounts to a love letter.
But as with anyone
I love, I really do welcome departures – upsets
– incursions
of something unexpected. With whatever or
whomever you love,
you always want, I think, more truth. So it's
not an onanistic
return to a fond fantasy. The thing you return
to is alive,
not dead, and you seek in it and bring to it
evidence of the quirk,
.
the unforeseen, the untoward kick and slap. Actually,
James'
language gives this to me all the time. It's not
some dreamy sea
of cadence; it constantly surprises; at its best
it follows the mind
so closely that it recreates it. I find simply
by charting my reactions
to it, I establish as much of a relation with it
as I can imagine
having. Not that it may not rivet me to learn
the facts about
the Dreyfus Affair or Belgian soldiers in the
Great War,
.
but they will be the ushers at the wedding.
.
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