Acts of Random Ultrareality

In reading QSC's work I was reinforced in my belief that what the literary critics term 'realism' is not true realism at all. Even the characters in Jane Austen's books are just like mannequins, lifeless things who are trapped in an artificial world of customs and social graces, quite unaware of the mysteries and wonders of the wider cosmos. The puppet celebrities who appear on television soap-operas and in Hello or OK magazines are their descendents.

This comes from Mark Samuels's Foreword to Morbid Tales.

Morbid Tales was published in 2004, but the material in it dates back as far as 1996 and further. I have, for a long time, been aware of a great antipathy in me towards some nebulous entity that I have sometimes called 'realism', though that is necessarily an ambiguous term (though who love the term most probably think otherwise, since to believe something real is to leave little room for ambiguity).

Recently I took up meditation again after a break of some months, and found myself with fresh inspiration, for a story that has the working title of 'The Golden Bacillus'. I have been writing notes for this story, and will reproduce some of those notes here:

'Realism' is the disease of 'Das Man'. … The world … has been infected by the meaningless concept of 'normality', which is a plague of paralysis and death. Realism replaces imagination with knowledge. It is death. It is the 'evil matter' of Plotinus.

Says Niels Bohr, "Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it."

But why be shocked? If it were not for the existence of 'realism', this kind of shockingness would be inconceivable. What matters to realism is not especially what is real and what is not, it is that something should be real and something not, so that it may be possible to exist in the state of numb security designated as 'real'. More than anything, realism is this state of numbness. Any attempt to cure it is seen as shocking.

I'm tired of being reasonable and uncommitted. Reality must be destroyed.

To that end I would like to make my antipathy towards realism, in life and in literature, a little clearer here, though I am wary of definition, since the need for definition is something that I associate with 'realism', and, as such is antithetical to the spirit in which I wish to live and write.

Once I was on a long car journey – or perhaps someone else was – and I heard the immortal question, as someone consulted a map, "Where are we in relation to here?"

The obvious answer to this question might seem to be, "Eerrr… Here?" However, given the circumstances, perhaps the best answer would be, "Lost."

Against my better judgement, I have recently been watching television. The entire act of watching television has changed since I was last in daily contact with one of these machines. Now you have things like 'dial-up TV' (I think it's called). Anyway, recently I have been exclusively watching Lost. After I have watched it, I hope once more to renounce the ways of television. In the meantime, here are my thoughts on Lost. It is very well-made, and my initial prejudices against it have almost entirely evaporated. At first, Locke was my favourite character, and I thought it was unusual to see a spiritual dimension to television storytelling embodied in his character. Then he lost his way, rather, and I wondered whether the producers of the show were losing their nerve on that front. Locke is no longer my favourite character. That dubious honour now goes to Benjamin Linus, who is far and away the most interesting and most compellingly portrayed character in the show:

I think each series has been better than the last. One thing I noticed early on, however was this: Lost is an incredibly gripping and inventive show, but it is not at all interesting to re-watch old episodes, because you already know what is going to happen. Questions are posed – there is mystery – but the questions only lead to more questions. The mystery is empty. Rewatching without the suspense of not knowing what's next exposes just how empty it is.

Then I began to notice certain aspects in the show – such as the relationship between Locke and Mister Eko, and the life story of Desmond Hume – that made me think that, after all, the show is not entirely empty, the producers do have answers to some of the questions they pose, and they will not lose nerve and back out of really trying to answer those questions. Even so, I still notice that an episode I have already viewed, when re-watched, is distinctly flat. I think this is because the show relies on traditional Western story-telling, which is all suspense and no depth. If there is no depth, what is there to return to? The plotting of such story-telling is that of linear time (a line is one dimension only), of 'one damned thing after another'.

And yet, I have become quite fascinated by the show. There is something else to it. Recently, I found this:

"Only fools are enslaved by space and time."

I am very much hoping that in recording the above scene, the makers of the programme were actually performing a magic ritual to unravel the linear nature of the human experience of time. In any case, I wish us all to embrace the fact that such a scene can now be included in a mainstream television drama.

After finding that clip, I also read this interview with Michael Emerson. I quote:

[My wife] used to be one of those purists who didn't want any spoilers, didn't watch previews, didn't watch next week on "Lost." None of that stuff. She wanted the pure article. And at first she didn't want to hear any spoilers from me, things that I knew or things that I was shooting. But now, I think she's softened up a bit and she doesn't mind being on the inside and being a step or two ahead of the viewing audience.

This suggests a way of watching the programme that is not based on linear time. Other facts that support the existence of other ways to watch the programme are the preponderance of Lost 'Easter eggs' – little clues and nuggets of information about the Lost universe that are hidden in places that are not immediately obvious (such as the backwards recording of, "Only fools are enslaved by space and time"). The use of flashbacks and 'flashforwards' in the show is also quite sophisticated, and I approve of the time-travelling strands in the plot, which suggest the possibility of rewriting what at first seemed an immutable linear story.

In a sense, what an 'Easter egg' like those mentioned reminds us of (which many Eastern writers already knew) is that the conclusion of a story is not at the end, but somewhere hidden in the maze of the middle. The 'end' of the story is merely its edge, like the edge of a painting.

I mention Lost here because it serves well as an example both of what I dislike and what I like (in literature and in life).

Let me give a good reference point for what I don't like in literature:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one

For the most part, I disagree with everything written in this article. Those parts with which I agree are the exceptions rather than – so to speak – the rule.

The disease of realism, it seems to me, is all about rules. Not about rules as a map to get you somewhere, at which point they become superfluous, but rules for the sake of rules. Realism is about following precedent rather than imagining something new. Realism is about believing 'there is nothing more to life than this', and that 'everything has already been done'. I associate it with all that is most vile in the history of European culture. And when I say European culture, in actual fact, it seems to me the worst examples of 'realism' are to be found in Anglo-Saxon culture. In terms of literature this means either the anaemic comedy of manners so popular in Britain (and all the scions of this form) or the macho writing of 'the Great American novel'. Significantly, Elmore Leonard references Ernest Hemingway in one of his rules:

Avoid detailed descriptions of characters, which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants", what do the "Ameri­can and the girl with him" look like? "She had taken off her hat and put it on the table." That's the only reference to a physical description in the story.

There are strong overtones here of the Protestant hatred of beauty and decoration.

I don't think that writers like Elmore Leonard, Ernest Hemingway and Jane Austen have nothing to offer, but I'm tired of the cultural hegemony of that which is most superficial.

Later, I may review actual works in light of all I am saying in this blog post. For now I just want to provide a few reference points that will constitute, if you like, my declaration of war. As I intimated – it is not a war of extermination. I enjoy variety. It is a war that I undertake only to be in accord with my belief that the hegemony of 'realism' must be broken.

What does it mean, then, to be opposed to realism? In my view, in literary terms, it means to be dedicated to a more expansive and a truer literature. To illustrate what I mean, let me quote the words of the physicist Henry Stapp:

Everything we know about nature is in accord with the idea that the fundamental processes of nature lie outside space-time but general events can be located in space-time.

Too many writers, taking space-time for granted, produce the insipid 'realism' from which is absent the wonder of all that lies outside space-time. True literature, however, is rooted in such wonder, just as existence itself is rooted in transcendence. To all those writers whose work feeds into the wonder of transcendence, I say, "You have yuugen." To all those who take space-time so much for granted, as the only reality, that they neither describe it, nor wonder what lies outside it, I say, "You lack yuugen."

This is in regard to literature.

And in regard to life?

If we live life only in linear time, then the only real end of the story – of one damned thing after another – is death, which is no conclusion. I would like to admonish you all to do at least one thing a day to escape the bounds of space and time. Commit acts of random ultra-reality! (I was going to say, "acts of random unreality", but the fact is, I think what we call realism is insipid and therefore unreal. There's a character in a story by Borges the narrator describes as "suffering from unreality" like all Englishmen. That unreality is the unreality of 'realism'. England is the least transcendent and therefore the least real, most 'realistic' place in the universe.) You may ask me for examples of acts of ultra-reality. It's up to you, of course, but you could try starting a future conversation with someone, for instance – answer a question that they have not yet even thought of asking you. You could hide 'Easter eggs' in someone else's daily life. You could remind yourself, each day, that this is the last day of your life. Perhaps you can make much better suggestions than these. Feel free to. In any case, we must destroy 'reality'.