Report on Probability A contains a lot of discussion of William Holman Hunt’s The Hireling Shepherd. Really, what it contains is a list of art criticism on it. And now, in an art history course, the damn painting popped up on the slideshow. Oof, its really bad.
According to librarything’s unsuggester, people who enjoyed The Joy of Gay Sex disliked the following books. It may be the most unexpected list I’ve ever seen.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (expected 29.3, found 0)
The time traveler’s wife by Audrey Niffenegger (expected 28.5, found 0)
The kite runner by Khaled Hosseini (expected 26.4, found 0)
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (expected 24.1, found 0)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (expected 21.8, found 0)
On the road by Jack Kerouac (expected 21.4, found 0)
The golden compass by Philip Pullman (expected 20.8, found 0)
The grapes of wrath by John Steinbeck (expected 19.6, found 0)
The poisonwood Bible : a novel by Barbara Kingsolver (expected 18.3, found 0)
The brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (expected 18, found 0)
The ultimate hitchhiker’s guide by Douglas Adams (expected 17.1, found 0)
The secret life of bees by Sue Monk Kidd (expected 16.9, found 0)
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (expected 16.9, found 0)
Snow crash by Neal Stephenson (expected 16.8, found 0)
The unbearable lightness of being by Milan Kundera (expected 16.7, found 0)
The subtle knife by Philip Pullman (expected 16.6, found 0)
The prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (expected 16.1, found 0)
The alchemist by Paulo Coelho (expected 16, found 0)
The historian : a novel by Elizabeth Kostova (expected 16, found 0)
Mere Christianity : a revised and amplified edition, with a new introduction, of the three books, Broadcast talks, Chris by C. S. Lewis (expected 15.8, found 0)
The amber spyglass by Philip Pullman (expected 15.8, found 0)
Persuasion by Jane Austen (expected 15.4, found 0)
Atlas shrugged by Ayn Rand (expected 15.2, found 0)
High fidelity by Nick Hornby (expected 15.2, found 0)
The princess bride: S. Morgenstern’s classic tale of true love and high adventure: the “good parts” version abridged by William Goldman (expected 14.9, found 0)
Blink : the power of thinking without thinking by Malcolm Gladwell (expected 14.8, found 0)
Dubliners by James Joyce (expected 14.4, found 0)
Eragon by Christopher Paolini (expected 14.4, found 0)
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into values by Robert M. Pirsig (expected 14.4, found 0)
Night. Foreword by François Mauriac. Translated from the French by Stella Rodway by Elie Wiesel (expected 14.3, found 0)
Beloved : a novel by Toni Morrison (expected 14.3, found 0)
Stardust by Neil Gaiman (expected 14.3, found 0)
The god of small things by Arundhati Roy (expected 14.3, found 0)
Atonement : a novel by Ian McEwan (expected 13.8, found 0)
The restaurant at the end of the universe by Douglas Adams (expected 13.7, found 0)
Fight Club : a novel by Chuck Palahniuk (expected 13.7, found 0)
Sophie’s world : a novel about the history of philosophy by Jostein Gaarder (expected 13.5, found 0)
The Screwtape letters by C. S. Lewis (expected 13.4, found 0)
The sound and the fury by William Faulkner (expected 13.2, found 0)
The Eyre affair by Jasper Fforde (expected 13.1, found 0)
A farewell to arms by Ernest Hemingway (expected 13.1, found 0)
Digital fortress by Dan Brown (expected 13, found 0)
The Republic of Plato by Plato (expected 12.9, found 0)
Girl with a pearl earring by Tracy Chevalier (expected 12.9, found 0)
A game of thrones by George R.R. Martin (expected 12.9, found 0)
Deception point by Dan Brown (expected 12.8, found 0)
The giver by Lois Lowry (expected 12.7, found 0)
The red tent by Anita Diamant (expected 12.7, found 0)
Gulliver’s travels by Jonathan Swift (expected 12.3, found 0)
Charlotte’s web by E. B. White (expected 12.2, found 0)
The Aeneid by Virgil (expected 12.2, found 0)
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (expected 12.1, found 0)
The trial by Franz Kafka (expected 12.1, found 0)
Coraline by Neil Gaiman (expected 12.1, found 0)
Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (expected 12.1, found 0)
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (expected 11.9, found 0)
The wind-up bird chronicle by Haruki Murakami (expected 11.9, found 0)
The adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (expected 11.8, found 0)
White teeth by Zadie Smith (expected 11.8, found 0)
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books by Azar Nafisi (expected 11.7, found 0)
Speaker for the dead by Orson Scott Card (expected 11.7, found 0)
The horse and his boy by C. S. Lewis (expected 11.7, found 0)
Life, the universe, and everything by Douglas Adams (expected 11.6, found 0)
Jurassic Park : a novel by Michael Crichton (expected 11.6, found 0)
She’s come undone by Wally Lamb (expected 11.4, found 0)
Gone with the wind by Margaret Mitchell (expected 11.4, found 0)
The voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis (expected 11.4, found 0)
The shadow of the wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (expected 11.4, found 0)
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (expected 11.3, found 0)
Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson (expected 11.2, found 0)
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams (expected 11.2, found 0)
Possession : a romance by A.S. Byatt (expected 11.1, found 0)
The silver chair by C. S. Lewis (expected 11, found 0)
Things fall apart by Chinua Achebe (expected 10.9, found 0)
Fear and loathing in Las Vegas : a savage journey to the heart of the American dream by Hunter S. Thompson (expected 10.9, found 0)
Really? Plato’s Republic?
Nabokov has, of course, written more on пошлость than what appears here. He wrote a book on Gogol, where he describes Gogol as a master of пошлость, as the man who took the profane and made it art. I think he’s probably right. But more importantly, to add to my collection (list) of lists, here’s Nabokov’s on пошлость:
“Poshlust,” or in a better transliteration poshlost, has many nuances, and evidently I have not described them clearly enough in my little book on Gogol, if you think one can ask anybody if he is tempted by poshlost. Corny trash, vulgar clichés, Philistinism in all its phases, imitations of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic, and dishonest pseudo-literature—these are obvious examples. Now, if we want to pin down poshlost in contemporary writing, we must look for it in Freudian symbolism, moth-eaten mythologies, social comment, humanistic messages, political allegories, overconcern with class or race, and the journalistic generalities we all know. Poshlost speaks in such concepts as “America is no better than Russia” or “We all share in Germany’s guilt.” The flowers of poshlost bloom in such phrases and terms as “the moment of truth,” “charisma,” “existential” (used seriously), “dialogue” (as applied to political talks between nations), and “vocabulary” (as applied to a dauber). Listing in one breath Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Vietnam is seditious poshlost. Belonging to a very select club (which sports one Jewish name—that of the treasurer) is genteel poshlost. Hack reviews are frequently poshlost, but it also lurks in certain highbrow essays. Poshlost calls Mr. Blank a great poet and Mr. Bluff a great novelist. One of poshlost’s favorite breeding places has always been the Art Exhibition; there it is produced by so-called sculptors working with the tools of wreckers, building crankshaft cretins of stainless steel, Zen stereos, polystyrene stinkbirds, objects trouvés in latrines, cannonballs, canned balls. There we admire the gabinetti wall patterns of so-called abstract artists, Freudian surrealism, roric smudges, and Rorschach blots—all of it as corny in its own right as the academic “September Morns” and “Florentine Flowergirls” of half a century ago. The list is long, and, of course, everybody has his bête noire, his black pet, in the series. Mine is that airline ad: the snack served by an obsequious wench to a young couple—she eyeing ecstatically the cucumber canapé, he admiring wistfully the hostess. And, of course, Death in Venice. You see the range.
In the preface to The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, Foucault has some interesting things to say about lists:
[I]t is not simply the oddity of unusual juxtapositions that we are faced with here. We are all familiar with the disconcerting effect of the proximity of extremes, or, quite simply, with the sudden vicinity of things that have no relation to each other; the mere act of enumeration that heaps them all together has a power of enchantment all its own: ‘I am no longer hungry,’ Eusthenes said. ‘until the morrow, safe from my saliva all the following shall be: Aspics, Acalephs, Acanthocephalates, Amoebocytes, Ammonites, Axolotls, Amblystomas, Aphilisions, Anacondas, Ascarids, Amphisbaenas, Angleworms, Amphipods, Anaerobes, Annelids, Anthozoans….’ But all these worms and snakes, all these creatures redolent of decay and slime are slithering, like the syllables which designate them, in Eusthenes’ saliva: that is where they all have their common locus, like the umbrella and the sewing machine on the operating table; startling though their propinquity may be, it is nevertheless warranted by that and, by that in, by that on whose solidity provides proof of the possibility of juxtaposition. It was certainly improbably that arachnids, ammonites, and annelids should one day mingle on Eusthenes’ tongue, but, after all, that welcoming and voracious mouth certainly provided them with a feasible lodging, a roof under which to coexist.
And that is one of the powers of lists: They provide that common locus and do the work of making the dissimilar similar; they glue things together into enormously complex structures in which we find meaning and utility. In fact, suppose I were to make a list of things that were dissimilar: cats, laundry baskets, water, sunlight. These dissimilar things, in the context of my list become similar through their very dissimilarity. We can begin to see in them the similarities we started by denying. We can even create a narrative through which these objects become similar above and beyond their dissimilarity, pushed along by the montage of things merely in proximity.
Now look back on Aldiss’ lists: The dissimilar things on the shelves become similar through their placement on those shelves and on the page. The things themselves and their proximity tell a story above and beyond what Aldiss is willing to come out and say. And their contrasts further that story: Why would S have a copy of ‘Pregnancy–Conception To Childbirth’ and an issue of ‘Boy’s Own Paper’? Why an oily rag and a chair leg? Aldiss doesn’t give any clues, beyond what the other characters in the book do with this information. These characters are in the same position as the reader – their task, and the reader’s, is to decipher the meanings of these lists.
There’s a Gogolian element to Aldiss’ storytelling: the use of lists: lists of objects, of actions, of movements, and most interestingly, of layers of glass. Gogol, though, would never do what Aldiss does – Aldiss uses lists like Tolstoy would have used lists had Tolstoy used lists (which I’ll get back to in a later post). For now, three examples of Aldiss’ love of the list:
His legs were doubled under him, so that he sat on the tawny planking with the following parts of his anatomy touching it: some of his right buttock, the outer side of his right thigh, his right knee, the outer side of his right calf, his right ankle, and his right foot, while his left leg copied the attitude of his right one, overlapping it so that from the knee down it also touched the planking and the tip of the left shoe pressed against the heel of the right shoe. The shoes were dusty. His right shoulder and part of the right-hand side of his body pressed against the brickwork beside the round window.
I like this one because its a weird way to use a list. He’s describing the position in which this guy was crouched by listing, in detail, body parts and proximities. It just gives you a funny sense, not of the croucher, but of the observer who is writing all this down.
On and in these shelves was a collection of articles belonging to or acquired by S, including three empty jam jars and a jar containing runner bean seeds; a bowler hat, in the rim of which lay a patent inhaler designed to fit up a nostril; a worm-eaten leg of an upright chair; a tartan plastic fountain pen; a perished hot water bottle; a brass handle off a drawer; a cotton reel containing brown thread; an empty pigskin purse; a china candlestick of an earlier age, on which was printed a representation of a devil breathing fire; a paperbound book entitled ‘Low Point X’, the cover of which was curled upwards, exposing brown pages; a broken coach lantern lying cheek-by-jowl with a group of three walnuts; a straw hat of the kind called ‘boater’, bound round by a red and blue ribbon; an umbrella with a handle representing a fox’s head lying under the boater; two enamel notices bearing the legend Beware of the Dog in black letters; a small collection of groceries and eating utensils, including a cracked blue and white cup and an unopened tin of sardines; a small brass crocodile; a bundle of newspaper; an enamel chamber pot with no handle; some shaving things lying in a small basin with floral decorations on it; a brass hinge and an iron key; an ancient tennis ball with most of its knap missing; a briefcase; the skeleton of a long-eared bat with its left ear missing; a pottery carthorse with its head missing; and a mousetrap still bearing a crumb of cheese on its single rusty tooth. Most of these articles were covered with a fine dust.
This one, to me, is notable not only for its obscene length but also because this isn’t the first occurrence of this list in the book. The one above occurs on 115-116. On 61-63 we see:
Some of this equipment still remained, though in the main the shelving was monopolized by articles belonging to or acquired by S.
Among these articles, the following could be distinguished: a storm lantern of antique design; a bowler hat; two empty jam jars; a patent inhaler made to fit the nostril; a streamlined pottery representation of a carthorse, the head missing; a pair of nail clippers; a collection of nail clippings, gathered in an ash tray; a mousetrap; part of the skeleton of a long-eared bat, discovered during an expedition to the chamber below; a brief-case purchased on the day that S had been given the post of secretary to Mr. Mary; the leg of an upright chair, worm-eaten; a fountain pen constructed of a tartan plastic; a hotwater bottle; a brass handle off a drawer; a cotton reel on which was wound brown thread, with a needle balanced on the top of it; a pigskin purse, lying open and empty; a chipped china candlestick on which had been printed a crude representation of the devil; a paperbound book with a curled-up cover entitled ‘The Penguin Handyman’; three walnuts; a coach lantern with its glass smashed; another empty jam jar; an umbrella, across which lay a straw hat with a red and blue band round it; an oval notice made of metal coated with enamel, on which was printed the legend Beware of the Dog; an oblong notice of the same materials bearing the same legend; a punched bus ticket; a comb with teeth missing; a hair brush with hair missing; an upright shaving mirror with the mirror missing; an elaborate iron key; a cigarette packet; a free luncheon voucher; another jam jar, this one containing purple runner bean seeds; a brass hinge; an oily rag; a small basin with a floral design containing a razor, a shaving brush, and a spoon; a rag; a slice of green soap; an enamel chamber pot without handle; a brass crocodile eight centimetres long; a small collection of groceries and eating utensils, among which a blue and white striped cup and a packet of tea were noticable; a row of books, including a ‘Typist’s Desk Book’; ‘Low Point X’; Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Miserables’; ‘Pickwick Papers’ without its cover; ‘Pregnancy–Conception’ To Childbirth’; Band I of Spengler’s ‘Der Untergang des Abendlandes’; ‘Toys Through the Ages’; ‘Living for Jesus’; ‘First Steps in the Bible’; ‘First Steps in Chemistry’; ‘First Steps in Philosophy’; ‘Understanding God’; ‘A Shorter Shorthand Manual’; ‘Sex in Practice’; ‘Black’s Picturesque Tourist of England’; ‘My Alps, by Mrs. Meade; and the ‘Boy’s Own Paper’ for the second week in August, 19–.
The lists of layers of glass and other objects between an observer and someone observed are by far the most interesting use of lists in Report on Probability A. These mostly occur when S is watching Mr. Mary’s wife (presumably Mrs. Mary?) through a telescope:
These lips were viewed through six thicknesses of glass, four consisting of the little lenses in the telescope, one consisting of the square of glass that formed the central panel of the nine glass panels together comprising the round window in the front of the old brick building, and one consisting of the openable but closed portion of the kitchen window. So near was this closed portion of the kitchen window to the moving lips that the breath issuing between them had fogged the pane, obscuring still further both the right cheek already obscured by the towel and a part of the towel itself.
and:
Between her head and the eye of the watcher were interposed the glass of the kitchen window, the glass of the round window in the old brick building that had once housed a gentleman’s private coach, and the four lenses of the telescope.
