If You Like You Can Read [this Book], And A Lot Of Other Science Fiction, As A Thought Experiment. Let's
If you like you can read [this book], and a lot of other science fiction, as a thought experiment. Let's say (says Mary Shelley) that a young doctor creates a human being in his laboratory; let's say (says Philip K. Dick) that the Allies lost the Second World War; let's say this or that is such and so, and see what happens... In a story so conceived, the moral complexity proper to modern novel need not be sacrificed, nor is there any built-in dead end; thought and intuition can move freely within bounds set only by the terms of the experiment, which may be very large indeed. The purpose of a thought experiment, as the term was used by the [physicists], is not to predict the future [...] but to describe reality, the present world. Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive. Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying. The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the Rand Corporation will tell you what the twenty-first century will be like. I don't recommend that you turn to the writers of fiction for such information. It's none of their business. All they're trying to do is tell you what they're like, and what you're like - what's going on- what the weather is now, today, this moment, the rain, the sunlight, look! Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent in telling lies. [...] They may use all kind of facts to support their tissue of lies.They may describe the Marshalsea Prison, which was a real place, or the battle of Borodino, which was really fought, or the process of cloning, which really takes place in laboratories, or the deterioration of a personality, which is described in real textbooks of psychology; and so on. This weight of verifiable place-event-phenomenon-behavior makes the reader forget that he is reading a pure invention, a history that never took place anywhere but in that unlocalisable region, the author's mind. In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane- bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voice, we watch the battle of Borodino with them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed. [...] In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel- that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having met a new face, crossed a street we never crossed before. But it's very hard t say just what we learned, how we were changed. The artist deals with what cannot be said in word.
Ursula Le Guin, Introduction,The Left Hand of Darkness, 1976.
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Paul Cézanne, Le pont de Maincy, 1879-1880, huile sur toile, 58,5 x 72,5 cm, musée d’Orsay, Paris.
I Was Considering How i was considering how within night’s loose sack a star’s nibbling in- fin -i- tes- i -mal- ly devours darkness the hungry star which will e -ven tu- al -ly jiggle the bait of dawn and be jerked into eternity. when over my head a shooting star Bur s (t into a stale shriek like an alarm-clock)
E. E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems, 1959.
Il marchait sur un pied sans savoir où il poserait l’autre. Au tournant de la rue le vent balayait la poussière et sa bouche avide engouffrait tout l’espace. Il se mit à courir espérant s’envoler d’un moment à l’autre, mais au bord du ruisseau les pavés étaient humides et ses bras battants l’air n’ont pu le retenir. Dans sa chute il comprit qu’il était plus lourd que son rêve et il aima, depuis, le poids qui l’avait fait tomber.
Pierre Reverdy, “La saveur du réel”, Plupart du temps, 1915-1922.
“Muhammad Ali Trains in Hyde Park”, Gordon Parks, London, England, 1966.
Source: gordonparksfoundation.org
いざ行かむ Let’s go out 雪見にころぶ To see the snow view 所まで Where we slip and fall
Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)
For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied." We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you go forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.
Martin Luther King, Letter from Birmingham Jail, 1963.
Source: “BestSellers”, Book covers by Hugleikur Dagsson.
“Muhammad Ali, formerly Cassius Clay, boxing world heavy weight champion in Chicago, on a bridge over the Chicago river”, Thomas Hoepker, Chicago, USA, 1966.
Source: Magnum photo.
Odilon Redon, Le Bouddha, 1906-1907, pastel sur papier beige, 90 x 73 cm, musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Source: “Au delà des étoiles, le paysage mystique de Monet à Kandinsky”, 15 mars au 25 juin 2017, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Occasional traveller, full time dreamer. Teacher, optimist. Unicorns' lover and mail addict.
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