The Difficulties of Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"

I just finished re-reading Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" and found it just as difficult to read as I did in both undergraduate and graduate school.  I am not quite sure why this novel has emerged as one of the tough ones for me, but I suspect there are elements in its distinct period language that act as a thin veil of (no pun intended) darkness that impedes my progress and understanding.  I doubted whether or not I would even write about my re-read here, mainly because I have little to say about it other than what I have just pointed out.  As a result, I have decided to type here my overly pretentious paper I wrote back in 1997.  I wish I didn't have to retype it but the file seems to have disappeared with the many floppy disks I had to throw out for lack of a drive to copy them into my new computer.  If the paper seems as incomprehensible to you as the text of the novel seems to me, it is no coincidence.

In Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," the protagonist Marlow and the infamous Mr Kurtz act as bipolar extremes to the overall meaning of the narrative.  One of the main reasons why these characters appear in such a disparate stance is because the different ways in which they absorb the environment around them; and, in particular, their very different interpretations of black and white.  It is this difference in interpretations of black and white images that in the end proves fatal for Kurtz while, on the other hand, Marlow survives "the horror."  The general association of images of blackness (dark) with savagery or evil behavior, and whiteness (light) with rightfulness and advantages of civilization are inherent in colonialist and imperialistic periods--one is rationalistic, intellectual, optimistic and religious; the other is sensationalist, materialistic, pessimistic and irreligious.  Marlow is somewhat plagued by these periodical assumptions of racial and cultural disproportions, but in contrast to Kurtz, these assumptions have a very different result on the man who does not "want to bother [the reader] much with what happened to [him] personally" (5).  Unlike Kurtz, who tends towards extremist moral illness, the unselfish Marlow is a Jamesian pragmatist at heart.

Marlow survives his experience of the darkness because of his pragmatic construction of the images he encounters in the jungle.  His interpretation of the values behind light (white) and darkness (black) stands in the middle ground between what William James calls "the tough-minded" and "the tender-minded" approach; this is precisely what helps Marlow survive "the horror" of the alien environment he encounters (4).  In contrast, Kurtz' extremist treatment of black and white, and his obsession with material gain represent what William James calls "the tough-minded" philosophy--a strictly empiricist column in the pragmatic stance (4).  This paper will explore the idea that Marlow's survival comes as a result of him adopting a pragmatic approach, while Kurtz' demise comes as a result of his one-sided obsessions.  Also, this paper will examine ways in which the pragmatic reading of Marlow helps elevate Conrad's novella above what Chinua Achebe denounces as a "racist and depraved book" (8).

The pragmatic approach, as per William James, holds that "[a] new opinion counts as 'true' just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock.  It must both lean on old truth and grasp a new fact; and its success... in doing this, is a matter of the individual's appreciation" (25).  The notion of pragmatism in "Heart of Darkness" develops early; Conrad's construction of Marlow's morality depends on it.  Marlow's inherent whiteness (old truth) accepts the African notion of blackness (new fact) without sacrifice of his European consciousness.  For example, he objectively find the red patches on the map of Africa good "because one knows that some real work is being done in there" (7).  And although Marlow understands that most imperialism is "robbery with violence," British imperialism is categorized and differentiated from French imperialism from the very start: "What saves us is efficiency--the devotion to efficiency" (4).  The use of the term efficiency--a scientific term--by Marlow is further evidence of his devotion to grasping the "cash-value" of an idea without sacrificing the subjectivity of its truth.  Marlow's statement defines in part the Mid-Victorian work ethic mentality.  John Stillinger states in "The Mid-Victorian Period (1848-70) Economic Prosperity and Religious Controversy" that "[t]he aristocracy [of the period] was discovering that Free Trade was enriching rather than impoverishing their estates; agriculture flourished together with trade and industry" (895).  While the first part of the Victorian Age was plagued with unfair labor practices and a struggle between manual laborers and technological advances, the Mid-Victorian period seems to have made a compromise between the rationalist and the empiricist vision of truth.  James states that in truth, "[one] must bring out each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of [one's] experience.... [T]ruth in our ideas and beliefs means the same thing that it means in science.  It means nothing but this, that ideas (which themselves are but parts of experience) become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relation with other parts of our experience, to summarize them and get about among them by conceptual short-cuts instead of following the interminable succession of particular phenomena" (21,23).

Marlow's perceptions of white (light) and black (dark) often transpose and challenge the traditional assumptions of the era.  Marlow states that Africa is no longer a "black space... a white patch" on the map he used to daydream while a child, "it had become a place of darkness" (5, bold mine).  Marlow's recognition of Africa as a "white patch" seems problematic when applying European cultural assumptions of superiority (whiteness as civilization).  Nevertheless, the pragmatic approach allows Marlow to construct a yin and yang-like representation of Africa and Europe.  "Yin and yang," states E.D. Hirsh in "The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy," are the "[t]wo forces of the universe... yin is the passive, negative force, and yang the active, positive force" (112).  Thus, both white and black blend in Marlow's perception to yield an Africa which suffers an "uncivilized" darkness inflicted by European "light."  Similarly, Patrick Brantlinger states in "Victorians and Africans: The Genealogy Myth of the Dark Continent" that "Marlow is right: Africa grew 'dark' as Victorian explorers, missionaries and scientists flooded it with light... [and] light was refracted through an imperialist ideology" (185, bold mine).

The darkness in Conrad's masterpiece is represented by the jungle, which, assisted by peripheral devices, includes all of that which Kurtz' obsessions succumb to, and that which the responsible Marlow pragmatically approaches.  This binary stance between the characters offers a starting point from which to argue for the pragmatic stance of Marlow.  These two different "columns" are clearly depicted in James' idea of pragmatism.  In the chapter from "Pragmatism" entitled "The Present Dilemma in Philosophy," William James presents a model of columns which epitomize Marlow's and Kurtz' positions:

"The Tender-Minded"                          "The Tough-Minded"
Rationalistic (going by principle)        Empiricist (going by facts)
Intellectualistic                                    Sensationalistic
Idealistic                                              Materialistic
Optimistic                                            Pessimistic
Religious                                             Irreligious
Free-willist                                         Fatalistic
Monistic                                              Pluralistic
Dogmatic                                            Skeptical

While Marlow shifts between both columns during the narrative and ends up absorbing both, Kurtz' position aims more towards the tough-minded.  Kurtz is not "physically" present for most of the narrative, but once the story winds up, the reader is aware of Kurtz' complete immersion into the tough-minded mentality.  But Marlow depends on this immersion in order to realize his position.  Donald M Kartiganer states in "The Divided Protagonist: Reading as Repetition and Discovery:" "On'y in contrived coexistence, in being situated as parallel [and opposites], can Marlow and Kurtz have meaning at all.  Each protagonist mediates and reenacts the other, each is a tenor and vehicle for the other.  Marlow appropriates Kurtz' adventure in the jungle as image for his own encounter with the darkness of meaning; at the same time Marlow submits himself as image through which Kurtz' actions can become intelligible--and in turn useful as image (163).

Possessing both the tender mind and the tough mind, Marlow's idealism and sensationalism are clear: "[w]atching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma.  There it is before you--smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, Come and find out" (10).  In contrast with the use of the "efficiency" earlier, Marlow's use of the word "enigma" evokes pragmatism's constant pursuit of truth by using both rationalistic and empiricist approaches.  James' proposal of pragmatism "primarily as a method of settling metaphysical disputes which otherwise might be interminable" again comes to mind--before pragmatism, all answers are possible (18).

Marlow's perception of the coast depicts a personification far from unfamiliar; it mixes the negative (black) with the positive (white)--the light with the dark.  The coast remains unknown to Marlow, but he is able to describe the coast quite eloquently, and even ascribe a "voice" to it.  Ironically, as the coast of Africa becomes more and more distinguishable to Marlow, he is unable to build on his earlier description of it.  In other words, Marlow is unable to produce a definitive description that takes permanent position between the tender-minded and the tough-minded.  The map of Africa on the wall from which Marlow develops his earlier constructions of meaning remains the same as he encounters Africa in real life.  Marlow states: "Once, I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast.  There wasn't even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush.  It appears the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts.  Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long six-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin masts.  In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent" (11, bold mine).  The man-of-war is not, under the circumstances, firing into something as large and as dark as Africa hoping to impose its will upon it; Marlow understands this.  Marlow's contemplation of the coast borders on a stream of consciousness narration.  In "An Inquiry into the Good," Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida states: "The will often takes action as its goal and accompanies it, but the will is a mental phenomenon that is distinct from external action, and action is not a necessary condition of the will" (20).  If the external action (firing of guns) operates independently from will as a mental phenomenon--something which could be interpreted as ideology--then Marlow's blending of both elements in his observation of the coast is truly an amazing pragmatic feat.  The ship is firing at all that Africa embodies; the prospect of enforcing intangible European ideology (will) and tangible material gain (external violent action).  Pragmatically speaking, while Marlow does not see the firing of the gun as an action entirely devoid of paradoxical absurdity, he is able to merge the empirical action (firing the gun) with the idealistic attitude (shelling of a possibly desolate area in order to prove an idealistic point) into one idea and abstract some truth from it.  Marlow believes that firing the guns at the continent is absurd because one will never be able to kill it; but he sees the symbolic action to the whole affair.  Along the lines of pragmatic interpretation, Anthony Easthope states in his book "Literary into Cultural Studies" that "'firing into a continent' is surely classic irony for it speaks of the action of the ship and the gun firing but, since strictly you cannot fire into a continent, it really implies a more general meaning: the uselessness of trying to subdue by mere force of arms a whole continent where millions of people live" (87).

Compared to Marlow, Kurtz' characterization takes on the proportions of a bestial man; yet, this bestiality holds an aura of sacredness to those who see Kurtz as a superior being.  The extremism with which Kurtz succumbs to the jungle epitomizes "the tough-minded" characterizations of William James' pragmatist critique.  In the article "Mr Kurtz, I Presume: Why Do Most Scholars Think There Was No Real Kurtz?  Zaire Is Full of Them," Adam Hochschild states: "A month after the voyage [into Dark Africa via Rio des Belges] ended, Conrad--suffering from malaria and dysentery, and with his view of human nature permanently altered by the brutality and greed he had seen among the white men around him--quit his job and started back to Europe.  He had come to the Congo expecting to find the exotic Africa of his childhood dreams; he found instead what he later described as 'the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience" (40).  Kurtz embodies a "disfigured human conscience" and in doing so plays the opposite of Marlow's pragmatic driving force.  In this sense, Marlow and Kurtz also resemble a Hegelian bipolarity; nevertheless, the synthesis cannot find a place in pragmatism because pragmatism does not believe in the triadic movement.  While some of the traits included by James under the banner of "the tough-minded" are not--by any extension of interpretation--negative, the way in which these traits are applied by Kurtz in "Heart of Darkness" can be seen as such.  Yet, these negative traits Kurtz possesses hold a fascination for all the characters which speak Kurtz' name.  For example, the harlequin states: "He [Kurtz] declared he would shoot me unless I gave him the ivory and cleared out of the country, because he could do so, and had a fancy for it, and there was nothing on earth to prevent him killing whom he jolly well pleased" (51).  Kurtz is beyond the rationale of other whites in the pursuit of ivory.  At the time, the collection of material goods from Africa was justified even if the end result of the profit included the massacre of entire tribes of natives.  However, because "[one] can't judge Mr Kurtz as [one] would an ordinary man," the action of killing a white man for the acquisition of material goods is justified.  What is behind the fascination Kurtz imposes on others that, even at the risk of death, men chose to follow it?  Perhaps the harlequin is a Shakespearean fool, in the midst of an irrational, desperate act comes to deliver the maniacal statement that turns out to be the missing link of the plot.

After his conversation with the harlequin, Marlow realizes that the fascination with Kurtz veers into the negative.  The welcoming sign for Marlow as he approaches the subject of his drive and obsession is a set of "round knobs [that] were not ornamental but symbolic" (52).  Pragmatism allows Marlow to see the factual objects (shrunken heads) as something with an ideological value (symbolism); yet, Marlow recognizes that "there was nothing exactly profitable in these heads being there.  They only showed Marlow that Mr Kurtz lacked restrain in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him" (53).  Nevertheless, Marlow's obsession with Kurtz remains strong: "I was anxious to deal with this shadow by myself alone--and to this day I don't know why I was so jealous of sharing with anyone the peculiar blackness of that experience" (59).  These passages are reminiscent of another great literary work which explores the damaging effects of men who can exercise power over others, and the thorny minds of those who fall victims to it.  In Herman Melville's "Moby Dick," Ahab states: "What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare?  Is Ahab, Ahab?  Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm?.... But heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass and Fate is the handspike.  And all the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea! (592).

When Marlow finds Kurtz is missing, his words convey the voice of a pragmatist:  "What made this emotion so overpowering was--how shall I say it?--the moral shock I received, as if something altogether monstrous, intolerable and odious to the soul, had been thrust upon me unexpectedly.... the usual sense of commonplace, deadly danger, the possibility of a sudden onslaught and massacre... which I saw impending, was positively welcome and composing.  It pacified me, in fact, so much, that I did not raise an alarm (59).

Much like Ahab's situation with the whale, Marlow's following of Kurtz is the result of the helplessness of his position.  The protagonist's statement after Kurtz' death binds him for life to an image of darkness: "He lived then before me; he lived as much as he had ever lived--a shadow insatiable of splendid appearances, of frightful realities; a shadow darker than the shadow of the night.... the heart of a conquering darkness" (68).  Again, Marlow blends the two columns and derives truth from it.  From that moment on, the "splendid appearances" (tender-minded) live within the "frightful realities" (tough-minded) of the protagonist.

Marlow is tied to Kurtz even after the latter's death.  Pragmatism helps Marlow survive the corruption that Kurtz' philosophy offers, but it does not help the protagonist avoid lying to Kurtz' fiancee.  Does Marlow lie to Kurtz' fiance because at the time it seemed like the thing to do?  As Marlow prepares to visit Kurtz' fiancee, he takes again into his absorption of the environment in order to survive the experience: "The tall marble fireplace had a cold and monumental whiteness.  A grand piano stood massively in a corner; with dark gleams on the flat surfaces like a somber and polished sarcophagus" (68).  Furthermore, Marlow's perception of "the heart of a conquering darkness" is a "vision [that] enter[s] the house with [him]" (68).  Yet, the ever-heroic Marlow fights against the vision and wins with "an invading and vengeful rush which, it seemed to [him]... [he] would have to keep back alone for the salvation of another soul" (68).  The protagonist realizes that he does not need salvation; he is saved inasmuch as pragmatism has saved him.  It is Kurtz and his fiancee who need salvation.  This salvation is in part non-deliverable for Kurtz because the latter is far gone into "the tough-minded" philosophy.  Marlow realizes that Kurtz statement, "[l]ive rightly," implies that he himself could no longer do so (63).  Marlow lies to Kurtz' fiancee, but in doing so, he is only exercising his ability to put into practice the extraction of "cash-value" of ideas in order to offer her salvation from what he considers "would have been too dark.... too dark altogether...." (72).  In short, the "cash-value" of Marlow's idea to lie to Kurtz' fiancee is based on truth.  "[A]n idea is 'true,'" states William James, "so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives" (30).  Marlow's lie yields the most benefit--in his opinion--of a very unfortunate situation.  As a result, Marlow's lie, in a sense, becomes truth.  Fred Marden states in his essay "Marlow and the Double Horror of Heart of Darkness," that "by the act of lying, [Marlow] admits to himself that he is corruptible and, by implication, mortal" (79).  But Marlow does indeed survive because, after all, "[t]he heavens do not fall for such a trifle" (72).

Pragmatism fails to elevate Conrad's novella about the racial criticism because, as a story-teller, Marlow fails to use pragmatism as a tool to rid the narrative of unfair, prejudicial stereotypes.  As stated earlier, the inherent racism of the period sets the fate of the novella as propagating unfair constructions of race.  This is evident in Marlow's use of sexual undertones connected to women and the exposure to the unrestrained darkness (black) of Africa: "Girl!  What?  Did I mention a girl?  Oh, she is out of it--completely.  They--the women I mean--are out of it--should be out of it.  We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets worse.  Oh, she had to be out of it" (44).  Marlow's tone bespeaks an underlying threat to the purity of the "tender-minded" white woman: the "tough-minded" black man.  In this case the columns are unable to meet; Marlow won't allow so.  This is one "old fact" that Marlow will now allow merging with "new values," for the old European establishment would not allow him to do so.  Europeans and Westerners "see Africanism," states Toni Morrison in "Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination," "used as a fundamental fictional technique by which to establish... unrestrained potency and degenerative sexuality" (80).  In other words, everything that steps out of the darkness of Africanism does not come forth to share the light of civilization, but rather to corrupt it.  Similarly, in her essay "Taking Tarzan Seriously," Marianna Torgovnick examines the abundance of abduction and implied rape of white women in the William Borrogh's classic tale: "Everyone involved in it--Terkoz [the gorilla that abducts Jane], Tarzan, Jane, the reader--anticipates Jane's violation, referred to, discreetly, only as 'Terkoz' intentions....'  Scenes like this suggest certain rules: qualities like lust belong to animals and blacks, not to Euro-Americans, except when they are renegade, outcast; flirtations with miscegenation, especially between white females and nonwhite males, must never occur" (53).

Marlow's pragmatic moral inclination collapses after closer examination of his unbending "old truths;" they are simply embedded in his consciousness; he suffers from selective judgment.  The protagonist is able to blend old truths with new facts, but the European tendency of holding old truths as only truths emerges in the end.  It is not enough to say that pragmatism fails to show Marlow as a level-minded individual, or that it helps Conrad's construction of color borders against the numerous accusations of being racist; the defense of the text collapses due to historical racist assumptions.  The overwhelming evidence is simply too much.

Marlow's voice is torn between compliance to the call of European "superiority" and compassion for all that he sees as injustice.  Passages like, "They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now, nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom," echoes with Conrad's own perception of African conquest as "the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience" (14, 40).  Nevertheless, critics like Chinua Achebe--who incidentally argues for Conrad's novella to be dropped from the Western canon--concentrate on passages which, in his rightful opinion, perpetuate the stereotype of Africa not only as inherently dark, uncivilized and savage, but also as "the antithesis of Europe and therefore civilization.... a place where a man's vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality" (125).  Achebe condemns the following passage as utterly racist: "We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet.  We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance.... a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet stumping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling under the droop of heave and motionless foliage.... The prehistoric man was cursing us, praying on us, welcoming us--who could tell?  We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings... as sane men would be before the enthusiastic outbrake in a madhouse.... The earth seemed unearthly.  We were accustomed to look upon the shacked form of a conquered monster, but there--there you could look at a thing monstrous and free... and the men were.... No they were not inhuman.  Well, you know that was the worst of it--this suspicion of their now being inhuman (32).

Conrad's construction of color borders--which in turn represent the struggle between civilization and savagery--abandons pragmatism and juxtaposes European rationalist thought and African irrationality and sensationalism.  In terms of literary formula, James Snead's comments of racial divisions in literature come to mind.  Snead's categories could be used to determine how true Achebe's indictment is:  "1--Economy of stereotype: This allows the writer a quick and easy image without the responsibility of specificity, accuracy, or even narratively useful descriptions... 2--Metonymic displacement: Color coding and other physical traits become metonyms that displace rather than signify... 3--Metaphysical condensation: Allows the writer to transform social and historical differences into universal differences.  4--Fetishization: Especially useful in evoking erotic fears or desires and establishing fixed and major difference where difference does not exist or is minimal.  Blood, for example, is a pervasive fetish: black blood, white blood, the purity of white female sexuality, the pollution of African blood and sex."  Using Snead's categories, the reader can determine that Conrad's construction of white (light) and black (dark) breaks well beyond the mark of the European racist ideology of the period; the pragmatic voice of Marlow is then left behind, nowhere to be found.  The answer is then clear; pragmatism does not save "Heart of Darkness" from being categorized as a racist portrait of Africa; it only saves the protagonist.  Nevertheless, there are more promising options to Achebe's extremist approach of dropping "Heart of Darkness" from the canon altogether.  Toni Morrison closes her study of race in American literature by saying that [literary racial studies] are not about a particular author's attitudes towards race" (90).  Whether truthfully pragmatic or not, Conrad's construction of color boarders lives within the confines of the author's historical experience; that is to say, he is not alive today to blend his old truths with new facts.  Authors should not be condemned for what they wrote--further even, for what they failed to write; it is an "extraordinarily wrongheaded way of reading them" (128).

Pragmatism, Pluralism and Academic Freedom

It took me a long time to finish the re-read of "The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America" by Louis Menand but I finally got through to the other side.  One would figure that a re-read of a book I had first read in 2001 would be a quick review of ideas that were relatively fresh in my mind (I've studied American pragmatism extensively since 1995) but it was not to be.  Presently, I have responsibilities in my life that were not even a figment of my imagination back in 2001.  In fact, I struggled most of the time trying to make sense of why I had underlined a passage or marked an entire page for review.  The enterprise ended up being a fresh-from-the-press read instead of a review of areas of academic interests.  Nevertheless, I am glad I re-read this volume and hope that eventually I can go back and reference it if I am challenged for having misunderstood any of it.

William James's pragmatism caught my attention as an undergraduate.  In graduate school, I ended up writing my thesis on Jamesian Pragmatism and defending it orally in front of a room of dumbfounded professors.  I remember distinctively an Assistant Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences whose first question to me was something to the effect of "how the hell did you come up with such an idea... no one writes about pragmatism anymore."  I was actually very glad for the question because it sent the tone of exposing my fundamental ideas about pragmatism and how it applied to the work I had chosen.  The defense lasted four hours (with two 15 minute breaks) and I emerged victorious, albeit almost life-less.  I never looked back from that experience and continue reading and studying pragmatism as a tool for literary interpretation.

American pragmatism is credited in name to William James, but she was a daughter of many thoughtful contributions from top-notch American scholars such as Charles Pierce, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Chauncey Wright, among others.  Personally, James gave an immense amount of credit to Holmes for its theoretical basis, but the bulk of his gratitude went to Charles Pierce.  At the time, most of these "heavy-hitters" were engaged in developing (or at least thinking heavily about) a system for answering seemingly unanswerable questions.  Charles Pierce early essay "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" was the early catalyst of the push to "concretize" subjective thinking.  From William James's "What Pragmatism Means" the method of answering the unanswerable gained momentum; or, more specifically, how not to get tangled in metaphysical questions without being able to yield some concrete result/answer.  The anecdote of the camping party observing the squirrel going round the tree seems an awkward way to start off in such an enterprising aim, but it does work as the text develops.  Basically speaking, the method for obtaining such concrete results is based on the "cash value" of ideas; that is to say, for an idea to be true, it must yield some practical benefit.  There were, of course, many detractors; chiefly among them was Oliver Wendell Holmes.  But Holmes did not object to pragmatism on the basis of challenging James' academic caliber (or anyone else's for that matter).  For Holmes, meddling in such methods was an attempt to inject the metaphysical into matters of logic, reason and objectivity and this for him was a fool's errand.  Why, then, did William James give so much credit to Holmes?  This is not a mystery, really, but we must move to today's state of academia to discover an answer (in order words, we have to be pragmatic).  These men were not in the "business" of trying to destroy one another's work.  The challenge was not that of personal attacks or attempts to jockey for position, for these men the exercise of intellectual inquiry was an art.  These gatherings of intellectual powerhouses were designed with the requirement that the opposition was as important as the gathering itself.  In other words, unlike today's academic circles--where everyone sits around for the most part parroting each other ideas and patting each other's back in self-assured comfort--these men (James, Holmes, Wright, Pierce, and others) gather or corresponded with each other with rigorous opposition/challenge to the ideas they presented.  No wonder the originality of the ideas developed during this epoch of American scholarship was so fruitful and far-reaching.

William James's main ideas are nicely encapsulated by Menand, making the reading a pleasure not only on the wealth of its historical content, but also in the facility of digesting the difficult or out-of-reach philosophical substance.  Menand explains, "Pragmatists think that the mistake most people make about beliefs is to think that a belief is true, or justified, only if it mirrors 'the way things really are'--that (to use one of James's most frequent targets, Huxley's argument for agnosticism) we are justified in believing in God only if we are able to prove that God exists apart from our personal belief in him.  No belief, James thought, is justified by its correspondence with reality, because mirroring reality is not the purpose of having minds.  His position on this matter was his earliest announced position as a professional psychologist.  It appears in the first article he ever published, 'Remarks on Spenser's Definition of Mind as Correspondence,' which appeared in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy in the same month that 'How to Make Our Ideas Clear' was appearing in the Popular Science Monthly--January 1878.  'I, for my part,' James wrote, 'cannot escape the consideration... that the knower is not simply a mirror floating with no foot-hold anywhere, and passively reflecting an order that he comes upon and finds simply existing.  The knower is an actor, and co-efficient of the truth... Mental interests, hypotheses, postulates, so far as they are bases for human action--action which to a great extent transform the world--help to make the truth which they declare.  In other words, there belongs to mind, from its birth upwards, a spontaneity, a vote.  It is in the game."  The clarity of this passage underlines the complexity of the dilemma of the value of ideas.  I ran this passage by a friend of mine (a man of deep faith with no college experience) and he agreed wholeheartedly.  The way he phrased it was enlightening to me because, as both a man of faith and academic interest, I never really saw the distinction with clarity.  My friend gave credence to the belief that agnostics or even atheists are at a liberty to believe as they do, but that they should also acknowledge that the Judeo-Christian principles that forged the morality of modern society is of benefit to them in their lack of belief or skepticism.  That is to say, the moral functioning of American society (if it can be said to be credited to those Judeo-Christian principles as so many conservatives believe) allows for the agnostics/atheists to live in a relatively safe environment where crime is minimal (compared with other countries, he was keen on qualifying).  As I understood his example then... the "cash value" of a belief (even when you are not holding that belief at all) is that what gives credibility to the belief itself.

As the pragmatism segment of the book came to a close, a neatly detailed account of Charles Pierce's follies and sad fate came into brighter focus.  William James did a great deal trying to help Pierce get a foot-hold inside academia again, but it was not to be.  Nevertheless, the men continued correspondence and James even set up a fund to help Pierce in the last days of his life.  Pierce was certainly not forgotten or eclipsed, but his influence in academia had been damaged beyond repair since his dismissal from Johns Hopkins.  It is hard to understand how administrators (still to this day) can make or break the career of a brilliant mind simply on the merits of mistakes or poor judgments made outside the classroom.

The last two segments of "The Metaphysical Club" cover some historical account of the path to academic freedom and how pluralism helped define culture in early 1900s America, and the role of academic freedom in higher education.  Academic freedom in higher education is a war that, in my opinion, was lost years ago.  The very same progressive minds, the so-called liberal activists, who tore down the walls of censorship, of excessive administrative oversight, are the same clowns that today have turned our campuses into totalitarian states.  I don't take this stance as a conservative or even as part of the same liberal movement; my intention is to disclose a very well-kept secret about American colleges and universities and that is that the overwhelming liberal bias has seemingly destroyed academic freedom in the United States.  Particularly, as a member of a liberal arts/humanities program, if you don't tug the liberal ideology, you either do not get tenure or don't even get a position to begin with.  What we have is a compartmentalized academia, where it is in vogue to be a conservative if you are in the business or economic departments, but not so much if  you are, say, an English professor.  An English professor, it seems, is expected to advocate the liberal causes in their teaching, to make their teaching an extension of their scholarship, whereas a business professor (whose audience by nature of his/her field appear to be more conservative as conventional wisdom holds) pitches the corporate rhetoric of practical capitalism and political expedience.  I am convinced we've lost that war and the members of "The Metaphysical Club" (particularly John Dewey) would die of embarrassment, really.  There's no pragmatism left in American academia (let alone American politics), and the loss is irreparable.  No wonder that Assistant Dean had to start with the question he did during my oral defense.

"The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America" was a volume written before the events of September 11th, and, as a result, it ends on a very positive note (as opposed to my previous paragraph).  It would be interesting to see what Louis Menand would say, for example, about the totalitarian turn the Federal government has taken since with the Patriot Act (Bush) and the National Defense Authorization Act (Obama).  Menand expertly studies how Oliver Wendell Holmes walked a very thin line regarding First Amendment issues and their relation to the Espionage and Sedition Acts at the outbreak of World War I.

I enjoyed re-reading this book very much.  I will return to it, I am sure, as the demands of remembering what I've read about pragmatism over the years returns to me.

The Law Explained: Oliver Wendell Holmes and the Limits of Concrete Reason

The frightening thing about American law is how dependent it is on strictly individual opinions.  A jury of your peers can be questions to really not be categorically correct.  At the risk of sounding like an elitist, I will venture to ask an important question... Who exactly qualifies as your peer?  Is it people with advanced degrees in philosophy or any other liberal art, or people whose concept of the law comes from watching re-runs of Judge Judy on television?  And what about the judges?  A judge who is up for reelection might be inclined to think of his career first and send an innocent man to prison simply to have a record that is tough on crime.  I am not suggesting that this is the case all of the time, but human nature is a funny squirrel and it open the door for formulating these types of difficult questions.  With some of the decisions made at the Federal level lately, I wouldn't be surprised one bit if a Federal judge renders an opinion one way or the other based on advancement opportunities.  At least I can say that I am not pulling this out of the abyss of my non-exercised academic brain.  Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes held such ideas about the law and went as far as suggesting (rather firmly I might add) "that law is nothing more or less than what judges do."  

"The Path of the Law" was Justice Holmes' most definitive insight into the processes of the law.  In it, Holmes explains the law as a series of experiences, but his concept of experience was riddled with non-concrete categorical imperatives.  For example, Menand points out the problematic: "It is often hard to distinguish, in Holmes's writing, between the descriptive and the prescriptive--between what Holmes believed the law was in practice and what he thought the law ought to be.  Holmes didn't do a lot to help his readers make this distinction, but the reason is that his favorite method of argument was to show that what the law ought to be is what it pretty much already is, only under a wrong description....  Whose experience?  The experience, Holmes said, of 'an intelligent and prudent member of the community.'  He didn't mean by this a particularly prudent and intelligent person--a judge, for instance.  He meant, precisely, a person who is neither particularly prudent nor particularly imprudent, an 'average member of the community"--in other words, a jury.  Could we count on these so-called members of the community to know how to judge, considering the aversion to anything logical and reason-based in today's society?  With political correctness running amok in just about every single region of American life, who could even begin to count with anything resembling a fair trial?

I'm not in any way criticizing the contributions of Oliver Wendell Holmes to American jurisprudence.  What I am trying to advocate here is a departure point for a critical analysis of the American justice system.  This is something that perhaps a few of us actually think about, or would even consider until we're knee-deep into some legal issue that takes us to court.  For many years I never understood the general public's aversion to jury duty, and, not having served on a jury myself, I cannot speak from experience.  Yet the amount of weight that falls on the shoulders of people like you and me (intelligent and prudent members of society) in, say, a criminal case seems to require more than just emotional thought or intelligence and I dare say NOT ALL people are prepared or even equipped to go through such an experience.  Wave a jury of your "peers?"  Then pray the judge assigned to your case is not up for reelection, or on the fast-track to an upper court appointment.

Henry James' "The Portrait of a Lady"

It is believed that William James (the other half of the American genius brothers) told his brother that his novel "The Europeans" was, as I quote here from literary article included in my edition of the novel, too "thin."  Henry James did not leave a written reply to his brother, but literary minds speculate what the response might have been (a very not pleasant one).

I am re-reading this novel for the first time since my junior year of undergrad (quite a few years ago).  It reminds me of another novel, "Anna Karenina" by virtue that the title doesn't fully describe what the reader will find inside the covers.  "The Portrait of a Lady" is certainly about Isabel Archer; the narrator explains this early on.  Yet, as the novel becomes more and more dense with female characters establishing their will and freedom, the title of heroine could fit any number of them.  With "Anna Karenina" the same thing happens.  The novels is not simply about a heroine, but about every single connection to characters and their motivations.  In "The Portrait of a Lady," the portrait could very well be (besides Isabel Archer) Mrs. Touchett, Madame Merle, Henrietta Stackpole, Pansy Osmond, etc.  I would even go as far as pointing out that the portrait could very well be about Lord Warburton's sisters, their "cameo" appearance in Chapter 9 notwithstanding.  The portrait could exalt or criticize the new liberation of female roles, as well as push several of these characters into "pigeon holes" of Victorian standards.  But sticking to the theory that the portrait is all Isabel Archer, the narrator pushes the character through a plethora of extreme changes, efficient in terms of the plot and realism of the character but perhaps disappointing to some for the large jumps between the same changes.  The reader meets Isabel as she arrives in England; she is portrayed as an independent, hungry for freedom young lady that is full of idealism and itches to exercise her power.  Yet, as the novel turns back the clock and relates Isabel of yore, the reader begins to discover a very different Isabel.  She is the youngest of the Archer sisters, not yet married.  Isabel, a voracious reader of literature, is full of vistas of a life of adventure.  When her aunt, Mrs. Touchett, "rescues" her from her life in America, Isabel takes that as a "sign" to exercise her freedom and power.  The problem the reader is left with here is that of whether or not Isabel knows what she is doing.  In turning down Lord Warburton's proposal, Isabel is not simply turning down the English nobleman because of the precipitous offer, but rather because it is a new experience for her--the opportunity to say "no," for "no's sake."  It is with this in mind that the reader later sees Isabel confront Caspar Goodwood, her original beau who's come all the way from America to try and see if he cannot convince her of the sincerity of his marriage proposal.  Apparently, as we learn from Henrietta's conversation with Isabel, Caspar had been "told" to wait a few years and "see."  Caspar and Isabel meet in Chapter 16 and their conversation doesn't simply remind the reader of her refusal of Lord Warburton, but it takes into a severe form of language all its own:
"Are you enjoying your visit to your uncle?"
"Very much indeed," She dropped, but then she broke out. "What good do you expect to get by insisting?"
"The good of not losing you."
"You've no right to talk of losing what is not yours. And even from your own point of view," Isabel added, "you ought to know when to let one alone."
Yet, in saying this, the reader sees Isabel commit a blunder of intentions by telling Caspar Goodwood:
"Until when?" [Caspar asks Isabel how long will she take to make up her mind].
"Well, for a year or two."
"Which do you mean? Between one year and two there's all the difference in the world."
"Call it two then," said Isabel with a studied effect of eagerness. [bold mine].
"And what shall I gain by that?" her friend asked with not sign of wincing.
"You'll have obliged me greatly."
"And what will be my reward?"
"Do you need a reward for an act of generosity?"
"Yes, when it involves great sacrifice."
"There's no generosity without some sacrifice.  Men don't understand such things. If you make the sacrifice you'll have all my admiration."
The issue here is not simple.  Isabel is not suffering from "having her cake and eating it too," but the reader is somewhat sympathetic of Caspar.  It is only later, when Isabel succumbs so quickly to Gerald Osmond's proposal that her conversation with Caspar Goodwood becomes problematic inasmuch as Isabel's real sense of freedom and power.  Yet, the reader understands that there are forces beyond Isabel's control here--the same way that there were powers behind her acceptance of Osmond, as Madame Merle orchestrate the union based simply on the benefit to Osmond of Isabel's inheritance.  Lord Warburton also comes to mind, but the reader is not yet to the point of disappointment; Isabel is still calling the proverbial shots.  Her inheritance offers so much freedom that poor Isabel is blinded by its intense shine.  It's not immediate freedom, but freedom in the future, just beyond the Italian horizon.

What strikes me in this re-reading of the novel is that of the sincerity of the language.  What I mean by this is that James at 30-something (when he wrote "The Portrait of a Lady") had already mastered the many variables of language spoken by his characters.  That is to say, he wrote in the "proper" American English of the 1800s for Isabel Archer, Ralph Touchett, Pa' and Ma' Touchett, Caspar Goodwood, and Henrietta Stackpole, at the same time mastering the language system of the Victorian English and the American Expatriates (including the Touchetts); all of these share a single sphere of beautiful dialouge and to add to that, the masterful descriptive passages by the narrator.

There's a great deal of sincerity being offered in the novel, particularly in the dialouge.  There are several clashes between characters that border on the insulting, or at least it does to a 21st Century reader.  The truth is that there's no insulting intended whatsoever, just absolute radical honesty.  Of particular importance is the point-counterpoint of Mrs. Touchett and Henrietta Stackpole:

"We judge from different points of view, evidently," said Mrs. Touchett. "I like to be treated as an individual; you like to be treated as a 'party.'"
"I don't know what you mean," Henrietta replied.  "I like to be treated as an American lady."
"Poor Americans ladies! cried Mrs. Touchett with a laugh.  "They're the slaves of slaves."
"They're the companions of freemen," Henrietta retorted.
"They're the companions of their servants--the Irish chambermaid and the negro waiter.  They share their work."

A couple of things become evident here besides the fact that the women do not like each other very much.  The reader has to theorize how people could talk to each other like that and not come to blows.  The answer, while not evident, can be assessed by the reader as the story enters its Italy chapters: the European Victorians had a penchant for the brutally honest, even if it drove people to feuds or suicide--our American Victorians, while mastering the language, seem to the reader to lack the certain "ring" of it.  Yet, all Victorians retained their civility quite remarkably.  Henry James captures this so well, it is really a testament of his genius.

In the next entry, I will write about Isabel's succumbing to Gerald Osmond, Madame Merle's cruel dealings, Lord Warburton and Pansy Osmond (and particularly Isabel's role as step mother to Pansy and what it all means), and Isabel's final resolution.

Literary Detours: Henry James' "Daisy Miller and Other Stories"

Why in the name of all that is sane and logical did I begin reading James' "Daisy Miller" days from Paul Auster's "Sunset Park" being released? The only answer to this dilemma, I believe, can be found in my reading list for next year. I will be re-reading "The Portrait of a Lady," a novel, which, having the displeasure of remembering how difficult it was to read, gave me many problems of readability. That's not to say James is a bad writer--far from it! Perhaps it was a combination between my inability reading serious literary fiction (I was a very late starter) and the lack of reading practice (the proverbial, "I just finished this paragraph/page and I have no clue what I just read"). What escaped me then--that doesn't now--is the idea that becoming a reader is very much like lifting weights or playing an instrument: the more you practice, the better the chances that you will do it better in the future. Well, after all of these years teaching--and years as a grad student--I've come to the conclusion of giving Henry James' work the attention and respect it deserves.

"Daisy Miller and Other Stories" has been a delight to read; the characters are fresh, albeit the fact that they all suffer from undertones of psychological insecurity/apprehension. What I loved the best is Henry James' style of description of both characters and settings. As a Europhile, Henry James wrote both intelligently and authoritatively about the great cities. When it comes to the characters, Daisy Miller's persona is as complex as she appears coquettish. The most difficult part of understanding a character like her, I believe, stems from the fact that her mind traveled 100 miles per hour. While it was hard to keep up with her changing preferences and attitudes, this was precisely what Henry James' masterfully weaves and depicts. She is a young woman of her age. Daisy's complex behavior not only reflects rebellion against Victorian rules of society but also her own fabric as an imaginary person made "flesh" by a master writer. When it comes to those psychological undertones, one is quick to realize the influence of Henry James' brother (William James) in his works. William James was a professor of philosophy, psychology and even theology at Harvard, developing many epistemological treaties including his major achievement, Pragmatism. Henry James' no doubt benefits from a constant and rich correspondence with his brother (James having established himself permanently in England). Interesting bits of information about these genius brothers can be found in Linda Simon's "Genuine Reality: The Life of William James").

It isn't like "Sunset Park" has had to wait. I've read the first chapter, slowly (painfully so). I am taking in every word and nuance of sound, rhythm, in this flawless prose. Paul Auster is one of these writers that when they die, they leave a large hole in contemporary literature. That's not to say that there aren't better writers than him (although, being a fan, I can't pretend to be an objective reviewer). For example, the empty space left by the suicide of David Foster Wallace might give us some glimpse into the tragic end of a genius writer being missed for all the works he didn't have the opportunity to write. I wish nothing but blessings and eternal health to Paul Auster. Do live to be 110+ years old, dear sir, and enlighten us with many more novels, films, nonfiction, reviews! Dare I say the world depends on it. :-)