Reading as text production: an introduction (and a Christmas carol)

I wrote that I was looking forward to a period of not writing, but here I am at my desk, on the second day of Christmas, trying to make sense of my notes about “A Christmas Carol” which this year happened to become my “Christmas special”. It is the most interesting case of Not Reading I have encountered so far, but I selected it mainly to introduce the sequel of my “thesis”.

Interesting because it was definitely one of these stories I never cared for – and that EVEN THOUGH I never read it. I am positive I never read it, or saw any production of it, when I watched the first Christmas special of “Doctor Who” with Matt Smith as the Doctor and didn’t even know that the Michael Gambon character was called “Scrooge” in the original story but instantly recognized it as an inspired version of “A Christmas Carol” transferred into the “Doctor Who” universe. This November, when a film with the rather clumsy title “Dickens – the man who invented Christmas” came to the cinema, I thought I’d watch it but didn’t even think about buying the book because I already knew that I didn’t care about the story - without knowing anything about it. I  MUST have known something about it to be so sure that I didn’t care about it, but I never discovered what this knowledge consisted of and where it came from.

I watched the film twice because it became extremely interesting for an entirely different reason, and I mended my ignorance by buying the book and the “classical” film version with Patrick Stewart. I still don’t care about it, but really reading it made a big difference, and, as it usually does, modified my prejudices which are the habitual outcome of Not Reading. They – and the fact that I didn’t care about the story - certainly had something to do with my own attitude towards Christmas which I judge to be overrated “humbug” – a time for lying to children and relatives, for being compelled to write meaningless Christmas cards and pretending to be delighted about dodgy presents, and, of course, having a bad conscience about not caring enough about people we have no good reason to care about. In spite of that I came to like Christmas these last years - not only for the many holidays – and was surprised to find such an unexpected explanation in “A Christmas Carol” why Christmas actually IS special.  

For me, the story “happened” when I read about Marley’s ghost telling Scrooge about his fate. The fate of all the spirits that hadn’t got round in the world enough and have to roam the earth for years before they can find peace. Of course it is all about meanness and charity, and Tiny Tim and so forth, but there is also an amazing explanation running through the story of WHY Christmas is important as this “window of opportunity” that opens once a year. Actually a modern interpretation of the ancient belief that the time around the winter solstice is a time where the “window” towards the other world opens – as an opportunity to look ELSEWHERE, not at what we are usually looking. Which means AT OURSELVES in the first place - at what we have been, at what we are, at what we might become if we don’t find a way of getting round in the world more. Of developing our own potential especially in striking meaningful and satisfying relationships with other people. Everything that might never be developed if we narrow down our life to one goal, one single way of thinking and looking at things, and people, which usually occurs when we are growing older. Perceived and “observed” like this, Christmas actually has the potential of making us “better”, and, accordingly, CANNOT be overrated – in the same way reading cannot.

This surprising insight didn’t make me fond of the story, and I didn’t really like the film either. Nonetheless I saw it twice, not for any aesthetical reasons but because I became fascinated by the degree of detail and truthfulness it applied to its subject: the genesis of “A Christmas Carol”. The film actually contains the most comprehensive and sophisticated description of a TEXT PRODUCTION PROCESS I ever came upon.

The story turns out to be a veritable fluke in this respect. We seldom know so much about how a work of fiction actually “came together”. It might even be possible to put figures to it: how much money Dickens expected to get out of this business venture, how much of this he wrote off as an investment, how much it actually made. As almost always with this kind of spectacular success there was a risk – quite considerable in this case because Dickens produced the book himself, on a very tight schedule. And in this case one thing is absolutely certain: “A Christmas Carol” would never have come into being if Dickens hadn’t been in dire need of money. “Christmas”, as we know it, might have been put off indefinitely … Not that there is anything surprising about this. Looking into it, we would probably find that economic circumstances are a more decisive factor in almost any cultural venture than any internal motivation. It is just a splendid example to show HOW BIG the part of text production that I am NOT concerned with in this blog actually is. Money – and time and pressure! – the preconditions of ANY successful capitalistic venture apply here as well as in any other line of business. And these external production conditions are by no means accidental to the content and structure of the fictional text that ensues. This is strikingly obvious for “A Christmas Carol” because the economic venture depended on Christmas as part of a marketing strategy as much as on its content. In this case, they are just two sides of the same coin. Without Christmas the story wouldn’t just never have been thought up or finished, it would never have made this kind of tidal wave which was the precondition of its spectacular economic success. In most cases this influence will be more complicated and less direct but it is always there. Even “Shakespeare” wouldn’t have become what it is without its author’s aptitude for making money out of words.

There is, of course, the personal situation of the author to consider when it comes to producing a fictional text. Its influence on the content of a single artistic venture is usually a big issue where these stories are concerned, and, in my opinion, is usually very indirect and uncertain. In this case – even though there is a lot of biographical stuff in the film – they didn’t even try to strike such a connection. It is always important, though, that the person we have become by decisive influences on our growing-up will have a decisive influence on all the choices we make – in the case of Dickens and “A Christmas Carol” his attitude towards economic success is certainly a key feature. There would have been no “Christmas Carol” without it, but that’s just because there was nothing, at the moment, Dickens really WANTED to write about.

These observations don’t apply to one particular part of the situation: other people. I suppose, depending on what kind of a text it is but even in the case of a “simple” story, there always is a considerable and decisive influence of other people in various capacities on the end-product of a writing process: people who are supportive, like Dicken’s best friend and agent, people who are annoying and obstructive, like parents, people who figure as readers, like the little housemaid who saved Tiny Tim. I am sorry, but with Tiny Tim dead the whole thing simply would have flopped … These additions and influences are certainly very real, very important and, in most cases, their impact on the story more specific than the impact of the economic situation. I think they are “real”, but in the present case probably inventions or elaborations – apart from the friend and agent. The point is to show that they are very substantial – a substantial part of text production that usually never comes into our reading and is certainly NOT a part of what I am dealing with in this blog.

 In the case of a fictional text with so many substantial characters there are probably always people coming into a story “as characters”. It is actually a great filmic illustration of the growing of a fictional world to let Dicken’s study, a discouragingly lonely place in the beginning, get so crowded and lively in the process that, sometimes, he just HAS to get out. But, on closer inspection, most of these characters are fictional, or partially fictional, and I am certain that they were right to assume that he never actually MET Scrooge. Great exemplary characters like him come out of fiction, not life, they are original inventions. In fact, NAMES became much more important than real people. And I think this is true: names and words conjure up fictional reality. They work on our imagination. In more general terms: the whole process of reality being transferred into fiction certainly is a substantial part of text production – which usually does NOT come into our reading, nor into this blog.

There is a part of it, though, that comes into it, I’d say: always, because it is at the centre of what made a fictional text so successful that it got canonized. With the outcome that we still know about it and may get inclined to “update” it for ourselves by reading. It is the SPECIFIC HISTORICAL SITUATION it referred to – or even just the specific reason that people at the time found it so relevant that they bought it and read it, and, in this case, got so much changed by it that they were willing to give more money to the poor than they usually did! THIS, I think, is what is most unique and special about “A Christmas Carol” – apart from the more sustainable outcome that it probably changed “our” way of thinking about Christmas, and reacting to it, permanently. But it is hard to actually PROVE this, unlike the measurable “cash flow”. I think, the fact that our reading is an update of some kind of a historical situation always comes into our reading of historical fiction in some way or another, most of the time much less spectacularly or consciously. (See my remarks on “timelessness” and “updating” on behalf of “Macbeth” and “The Merchant of Venice”.) In this case, I got to really read the story for the sole reason that I found the historical implications fascinating. That Christmas, as we know it, is shaped by Capitalism and THEREFORE, basically, still is THE SAME as it was at the time. As it still serves the same purpose, or became an answer to the same predicament. The combination of scary ghost story and the “Christmas spirit” still doesn’t appeal to me any more than it did in the beginning.

Though this process of conscious updating is fascinating in some cases, it is again NOT what this blog is about. I dealt with the film so extensively for the sole reason that I wanted to show how huge the text production process can be – ESPECIALLY for a text that became hugely successful, and which we are still reading because it had been so successful at the time. (Not always as a business venture in the first place, but quite often so.) It is huge already for a “tiny” work of prose like this one, and more so for big productions of international film or series. I often watch specials and find this big part of text production – the iceberg of which we only see the tip even in specials! – quite fascinating. But it is NOT what this blog is about. It is about a “tiny” part of text production which I dealt with in the fourth paragraph of this post and which I call READING. Tiny not even where numbers are concerned because something like “A Christmas Carol” has been read an infinite number of times by an infinite number of people but as to the meagreness of ATTENTION it receives. It is probably the most widespread and efficient PREVENTIVE therapy ever invented against stress, burnout, and depression caused by external overload that inhibits us from focusing on ourselves. (Or was, currently it is probably computer games and UTube – just as to numbers, not, I am afraid, efficiency!) And even though practically EVERY PERSON I know uses it - or did, at some time in their lives, use it - NOBODY appears to be aware of what they are doing and why they are doing it. In my opinion, the psychological reason for this is that modern capitalism isn’t really about money anymore but – increasingly! - about (quantifiable) ACTIVITY and ATTENTION. Which is good, by the way. But an “activity” that doesn’t burn any fat cells, usually goes unnoticed by any “twitter”, and is cheap as to the amount of funds, sweat, and labour it requires, is per se unlikely to be taken seriously. Even though “we” still KNOW that it is an ancient technique of improving ourselves which is easy to learn because we are using it on our children! It might be ridiculous indeed – and quite superfluous, of course – to want to know what it is, or try to promote it, let alone improve it  - which I don’t think it is, by the way! But nobody would probably oppose this, whereas it is certainly cheeky to consider it as A PART OF TEXT PRODUCTION, like writing, performing, illustrating, CGI, producing or directing films and so on – “serious” activities that are not designed JUST to produce text but to generate hashtags, jobs, and money!

Nonetheless, my theory about reading being a form of text production is not meant to provoke – who, by the way? There is no likeliness of any hashtag … On the other hand, it is certainly not some kind of established theory or customary way of thinking about it. It wasn’t FOR ME until I actually OBSERVED it. How this happened was one of the most interesting and productive “accidents” I have ever had which will be the focus of part two of my introduction and my next post. (That is, if “Anthony and Cleopatra” doesn’t get in the way which – fingers crossed! – I will see next Wednesday (!!!) in the Olivier Theatre. I just figured out how to get there and back again …)

A lot will come of Nothing

“Nothing will come of Nothing” (King Lear, Act 1,1)

My absolute favourite quote from “Shakespeare”, and I think it is very fitting that it is from “King Lear”, though my predilection in this case has not that much to do with its context in the play where it is just a cynical comment on Cordelia’s “inadequate” account of her love. As I usually try not to do, I isolated the quote from its context, and it took on a much larger meaning. In general terms Lear is right. It applies to all kinds of situations where people think they are owed without any previous effort or having anything to offer. Like “I wasted time, and now does time waste me” from “Richard II” it is this imaginary sticker on my fridge, and I think it belongs there. (No explanation, though, why I LIKE it so much …?)

The reason why I find it so apt that it is from “Lear” is that I finally got thrilled about the play when I got the idea that it might be about Nothing. The quote is certainly not a coincidence. Obviously Shakespeare got very much involved with the concept writing “King Lear”. The play is really big on “Nothing moments”. One of my favourites is of course “Not mad!” as Simon Russell Beale played it, catapulting the play from its historical pedestal into the 21^st century. Millions of people with a diagnosis of dementia would know the depth of it – and would certainly NOT have enjoyed seeing it on the stage. (I am rather sure I wouldn’t have understood “To be or not to be” at the time it happened to me, let alone appreciated it! This is not how “it” works. I still don’t know how it works, just THAT it does!) Nonetheless, my favourite “Lear” was not this one by the National Theatre but Ian McKellen’s, the one where he has this particularly close relationship with his fool played by Sylvester McCoy. Also one of these less conspicuous Nothing moments: when he is genuinely distressed about his fool’s death. Actually it is one of the biggest, most distressing, and most common in real life: losing people we depended on.

I know I should read the play again, make a list of all its big and small “Nothings”. Unfortunately I won’t get round to it because I have to move on swiftly to “Anthony and Cleopatra” which I am planning to see in the theatre (!) in London (!) in January (!!) (2019!!!). But I remember this as my deepest impression from seeing “King Lear” with Ian McKellen: that the play actually is ABOUT Nothing. So, instead of further looking into it now, I will make a synopsis of “great” Nothing moments acquired so far from “Shakespeare” in biographical order:

The biographical approach entails that I begin with a moment which I haven’t got from “Shakespeare” but which is linked to the moment of “initiation” from “Hamlet” and came up in the same context: the initial boredom when we are growing out of childhood. It is so important because it is really our first encounter with Nothing – at least if we have had a reasonably happy childhood, and - as most children do - tend to leave things we cannot understand – like the loss of loved ones and the possibility of our own death – unprocessed. The ridiculous intensity of despair children experience at being bored is not that ridiculous because it is this first and purest expression of our fundamental relation with Nothing. The realization that there can be nothing where something used to be. I just recently found out – not having been bored for a second in the last twenty years, except in the company of boring people – that I am still dealing with this. That I STILL believe that life should be filled with delightful adventures and lots of fun – and this is good! It is just that it is ME now who has to live up to these standards, NOT LIFE.

There definitely is a certain amount of juvenile depression to be found in “To be or not to be”, but also the EXPERIENCE that life can turn out different – not at all as what it is supposed to be. “We” will never ever understand it again, though – neither the deadly scare of boredom nor the existential crisis - when we have decided against topping ourselves, as we usually do, and have grown up, learning to need the things we never wanted in the first place (as in “Passenger”, or “Woody Allen”). Or, of course, have successfully chased our dreams … But there is a lot of trying and brutal competition “out there”, and the percentage of people who finally make “it” is somewhere very low in the one digits. So, there IS some kind of logic to what Macbeth does. Sometimes, maybe often, there is just this ONE chance … But, of course, there are limits! The bugger is to decide WHERE they are. Macbeth is not clever – not in the sense Hamlet is. (In fact, I already decided that Hamlet was clever and that was why I wanted to see Benedict Cumberbatch play him. He did play Julian Assange and Sherlock for a reason.) But it is not because he is an intellectual – because he talks loads of sophisticated rubbish. It is because he actually THINKS and comes to the conclusion that what will happen when he has killed Claudius will NOT be good. He actively tries to hold tragedy at bay – unsuccessfully though. In the end they encounter the same fate, but Hamlet retains the comfort of having tried and lived as a “good person”. And it appears as if Shakespeare thought that this counted for something. In fact, thinking about it, so do I. “I’ll fight till from my bones my flesh be hacked” is still strangely attractive (?). Actually it is rubbish, and not, in my opinion, because of giving up the “eternal jewel”. Not even because people might look upon us favourably instead of hating us. In fact, Hamlet succeeds where Macbeth fails, TAKING CONTROL of the last thing we have left when it comes to the worst: ourselves.

There is, in fact, an awfuI lot of life to come of Nothing. Investigating “Richard III” I find how this refers even to one of the most influential of human ambitions: the desire for POWER. In fact, as Richard unfolds, his desire to rule is triggered by existential boredom – the war being over, he doesn’t know what to do with himself – and the crucial fear of being diminished. As “a packhorse in the wars” at least nobody doubted his usefulness. At that point there certainly are decisive measures in order for Richard to regain control over his life, and he decides that power might work for him. He anticipates that manipulating people might be something he would be good at, which is true – and then it becomes some kind of game. I often ask myself why I actually have fun at work – my work clearly being so boring that I got stuck with it because nobody else wants to do it. The reason is, actually, that I PLAY TO WIN when I am working. As – what is playing but taking control of an area where it is easy to gain control? Or difficult, depending on how good or ambitious we are, but still something we know we can handle. So, one promising option of dealing with Nothing is to play, and the most “serious” and highly rated way of playing is certainly to exercise power. To experience that it is possible to take control of everybody and everything. It often doesn’t really work, though, especially not for people with human skills who might recognize limits which inhibit them from ENJOYING the game. (I guess I wasn’t really surprised to see how good Donald Trump is at it compared to Barak Obama – though I so hoped he would fail!) Richard REALLY enjoys it, therefore he is good at it, and singularly successful. Up to a certain point … Within “Shakespeare” the WHEEL OF FORTUNE is sufficient to explain something that infallibly happens when something has gone on “long enough”: ruling, career, playing, life … whatever. Things suddenly begin to go wrong. I stick to the belief, though, that, unlike the wheel of fortune, it isn’t some kind of law of nature. One of my favourite sayings is the French “Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.”  Not because I really know what it is supposed to mean but because it somehow refers to one of the very few things I believe in, disagreeable as it may be: that everything – and everybody - has to change into something/somebody else or ceases to exist. Richard’s frustrated rage is understandable: He doesn’t know what he has done wrong because he has done nothing different. He has just NOT CHANGED when it would have been necessary. The unfair truth about it is, of course, that it is not just really difficult to change. (“Never change a winning team” is probably even less valid than “Plus ca change, plus c’est la même chose”. What happened to the German national football team after they became world champions is not some kind of mishap but EXACTLY what was to be expected!) It is that we cannot know IN ADVANCE what kind of change will be beneficial, or necessary. Thence all the frantic changing just for the sake of something new, and politicians running amok about the wrong issues. When it comes to the really important things in life we never know WHEN the time is ripe for a change. IF we notice at all we are probably already half down the other side … Accordingly, the wheel of fortune continues to be a good METAPHOR, an expression of the fact that everything, at all times, is threatened by Nothing. And when Nothing strikes people will find somebody to blame for it – usually the person in power. So Macbeth gets dismembered – and I loved the open grave in the Almeida Theatre’s production of “Richard III” exactly for this reason. The pit is already dug, and people will find somebody to go into it. Only THEN the war will be over, and everybody can go home and get on with their lives. But this is not yet the worst …
 

Luckily, a big part of the worst I have already dealt with in my last post about “Being Nothing”. Now I come to the last things – which, as I have already concluded, are BEYOND death and destruction. (At the idea of “beyond” I actually remembered “House of Cards” and was amazed that there is already a sixth (and finally last!) season announced ON DVD. I hadn’t even checked yet if there would BE a sixth season! Without Frank Underwood, obviously, and I hadn’t checked because I was against it, but now I can hardly wait until March. The bugger with series is that they have the promise of “beyond” worked into their fabric. If nothing else, I want to see how Robyn Wright does. The reason why I suddenly remembered the series was the use they made of the concept of “beyond” in the 5^th series (if I remember this correctly). I was thrilled because Beyond suddenly emerged as some kind of reality  – something quite substantial, like a different “mode” of existence.) Fiction is, and always has been, the realm of Beyond. So, the most inconsistent bullshit as well as the utmost horror - like wanting to destroy oneself, finding in oneself no pity for oneself, or being nothing - becomes possible. We might even enjoy it! But almost all this might happen in real life as well where it is just impossible for us to process it completely. Like the death of loved ones and people we depend on – which also is a major issue in “Shakespeare”, of course, one that I usually refuse to read. Probably just because I have never lost a child or a partner, and am unlikely to do so. Of course there doesn’t HAVE to be some kind of concrete fear, or shred of experience, to “really read” issues like this, but sometimes it “helps”.

At least where last things are concerned in “King Lear” it did. Certainly when Simon Russell Beale scared me into finally embracing the play. His “Not mad!” moment compressed this deep fear of complete loss of control into one intense “stab” of truth. I think that everybody knows this fear, at least when we are old enough – and this is usually when our parents are getting old. In my case it’s not parents yet, it was my grandmother who died at the age of 93. It is not good, of course, but at that age it is almost always a relief. But there is this constant threat where parents are concerned, and, of course, the thought that, one day, it will be me … In any case, this is much, much closer to home than the fear of becoming nothing, or the possibility of total self-rejection. I loved how precisely Simon Russell Beale pinned down the worst bit – that’s what he does! To “sound” the personal abyss obviously is his thing, and of course I like that immensely, at least in fiction. I even think there is a “healthy” fear of Nothing at the bottom of it. To admit that “we” are afraid of it – as we should be! – but not beaten … And I like these “shortcuts” that convince me that I WANT to deal with the play. When I saw the RSC’s production on DVD I probably knew already what I was looking for and consequently found it. Such an amount of great “Nothings” I could hardly believe it … No wonder that I always felt the play to be weighing me down and didn’t want too much to do with it. But I also felt, for the first time, that it wasn’t JUST distressing. In this case, it was rather the genuine EMPATHY the other actors on the stage displayed towards Lear – even though he doesn’t deserve it! – that made me aware HOW MUCH of this there is in “Shakespeare” as well, and how essential it is. That there is, in fact, this flicker of hope, this little flame in a seemingly infinite darkness. There isn’t much to WRITE about it - reading it was much more beautiful. And there is certainly no less truth - or less beauty – to be found in this experience than in the depth of despair conveyed by Nothing. So, quite inadvertently, this turned into my Christmas post ***!

So, Merry Christmas to all the readers out there! (“Readers of fiction”, of course, not mine, thence the plural!) And I am looking forward very much to a period of NOT WRITING, and to “House of Cards” 6 in March, and - maybe? - “Humans” …