97,196 Words: Essays by Emmanuel Carrere (2019)
97,196 Words: Essays by Emmanuel Carrere (2019)
Philip K. Dick
When I started reading him around 1975, I wore little round glasses, an Afghan vest, and a pair of beat-up Clarks on my feet, and I went around saying he was the Dostoyevsky of our time; in a word, the man who’d grasped the bigger picture. For me his books Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and A Scanner Darkly were as prophetic as The Possessed.
Some went even further: Around exactly the same time (but I found that out much later, when I was working on Dick’s biography), one of his French editors explained very seriously to Philip K. Dick that his novel Ubik was one of the five greatest books ever written. Not one of the five greatest books of science fiction, the editor insisted to Dick’s amazement. No, one of the greatest books of all time, along with the Bible, the I Ching, the Bardo Thodol, and I forget what the fifth one was. One of the books to which people turn, and will always turn, to catch a glimpse of the secret of their condition, the meaning of meaning, ultimate knowledge, et cetera.
Twenty-five years later, things haven’t changed. I recently participated in one of those book-fair debates, which are usually horribly boring. But this one wasn’t boring at all because it was about Dick, and talking about Dick-just talking about him, exchanging views about him-can suddenly become like taking a tab of acid: quickly you’re a long way from where you started. Participating in the talk were people who’d known him and other people such as me who’d read him when they were young and never gotten over it. We got excited, yelled at one another, agreed and then disagreed again. We had the impression that we were in one of his novels, where everyone’s private universe threatens at any moment to invade and devour that of his neighbor, the way the cryogenized child in Ubik invades and devours the minds of his half-life companions. To give an idea, the host, at his wit’s end, made this remark, which I think of often: “I think it would be good if we could agree on what we mean by reality, at least among ourselves.”
What everyone agreed on, nevertheless, is that with Dick you’re dealing with something other than a great science fiction writer, or even a great writer tout court. Something else, okay, but what (431)?
I don’t quite know how to conclude; with Dick there isn’t any way to conclude. So to wind up I’ll copy the quote I used as an epigraph in my book about him. It’s taken from the mythical speech he made in Metz in 1977. He thought that this speech, a condensation of the Exegesis, equaled the prophesies of Isaiah or Jeremy and was perhaps even their completion. For the honest French leftists in the audience it was like the ranting of a madman- which didn’t bother them, as madness was looked upon well in those days- doubled with those of a religious zealot, which went over a lot less well. Here:
“I’m sure you don’t believe me, and don’t even believe I believe what I’m saying. Nevertheless it’s true. You are free to believe me or disbelieve me, but please take my word on it that I am not joking; this is very serious; a matter of importance. I am sure that at the very least you will agree that for me even to claim this is in itself amazing. Often people claim to remember past lives; I claim to remember a different, very different, present life. I know of no one who has ever made this claim before, but I rather suspect that my experience is not unique. What perhaps is unique is the fact that I am willing to talk about it” (533).
Preface to Nouvelles, the French edition of the collected stories of Philip K. Dick (Denoël, 2000)
Nine Columns for an Italian Magazine
Right now both of us are single-well, not really single, but available, and happy to agree on the word. Both of us are in our early forties, divorced, with two children. I write, she’s a painter; our mutual friend told her that I was seductive and me that she was seductive, and we seem to be pretty much in agreement. The purpose of our meeting being clear, there’s no way we can pretend it didn’t occur to us, as is strangely the case with so much interaction between men and women: you think about nothing else, you both know it, but it’s as if it were something to be ashamed of, as if admitting it would make you weak, or laughable, or the butt of cynicism. I spent my youth getting all wound up over dinner dates that skirted around the question of seduction. I remember I envied the gays, for whom things seemed more simple and direct. Their desire seemed easier to express, whereas we heteros seemed to have come no further than Montaigne, who asked, “What has rendered genital action- an act so natural, so necessary, and so just-a thing not to be spoken of without blushing?” (Isn’t that perfectly put?) Tonight, then, in this Japanese restaurant, we examine the possibility of having sex, I won’t say with detachment, but with a sort of lightness accentuated by the resolve we’ve just made, pretexting the needs of this column, to say and comment on what usually remains unsaid. What are we hoping for, deep down, what are we after? Let’s be honest: true love, real love, love that will last. Him for her. Her for me. We’re more or less halfway through life, we’ve divorced, loved and stopped loving, left and been left, but we continue to believe, to want to believe, not just that it exists, but that it hasn’t really happened yet, that it’s ahead of us, that at one unpredictable, unexpected moment it will be there and we’ll recognize it without hesitation, without the shadow of a doubt. The idea that in fact it’s behind us, that perhaps it already happened and we weren’t able to hold on to it, is too sad, and we reject it with all our might. As for me, I have to admit something: as I’m inclined to believe in it, I believe in it a little too easily. They say you can’t be wrong about something like that, but that’s just the thing: I can. Then I snap out of it, and that can hurt the other person. I’m just coming out of such a situation: the two of us head over heels in love, absolutely certain, three ecstatic months telling each other that we’re so lucky, that what everyone dreams of happened to us, that we’ll never part, that we’ll grow old together… Of course I was being sincere, but you can be sincere and be wrong, or in any case you can persuade yourself that you’re wrong as sincerely as you persuaded yourself of the contrary (823).
You’ll say there’s a simple explanation, very simple even: she’s not attracted to me. That’s possible, very possible even, but I don’t believe it. First of all because if that were the case, it would be easy for her to tell me-or to tell me she loves someone else, or that she doesn’t want to ruin our beautiful friendship… Secondly, because if it were true, a woman who doesn’t say it one way or another would be a ridiculous tease, and this woman is anything but a ridiculous tease. Finally-this might make you laugh after what I’ve just said-because I’m certain she’s attracted to me. Not that I think I’m irresistible, not at all, but in her case I’m certain, otherwise I wouldn’t insist like that. I know that this conviction leads me dangerously close to an interpretation along the lines of she’s avoiding me because she loves me, and from there straight to denying reality the way Belise does in Molière’s Learned Women, explaining the silence of her imaginary suitors with the words “They have, up to the present time, respected me so much that they have never spoken to me of their love.” I’m aware of all of that, but I insist nonetheless. I continue to wait for a sign, and to while away the time I read Kierkegaard’s correspondence, which she translated into French. The key to this correspondence is the story of Regine, the young girl who was engaged to the philosopher before he broke off the engagement, perhaps because he believed his melancholy would prevent him from being a good husband, perhaps for another reason; he never said and no one will ever know. What we do know is that he was passionately in love with her, that he remained in love with her for the rest of his life, but that, one fine morning, without a word of explanation, he broke off all ties. From that moment on, he did his best to be as odious as possible, both so that Copenhagen’s fashionable society would blame him and feel sorry for Regine, and also so that Regine would have good reason to hate him. He thought that the hatred and disdain she would feel for him would make her an accomplished woman, and that by mistreating her like that he was secretly doing her a service. These letters, in which he tasks his best friend with spying on Regine and gauging her progress along the path of frustration, of resentment, and, at the same time, of self- consciousness, are rather delirious, but for me, looking as I am for information not about the author but about his translator, they’re also food for thought. Since everything was preferable to what was unfortunately the most plausible hypothesis-she had better things to do than answer my messages-I identified her with the devious Kierkegaard and myself with the innocent Regine, who finally got over the separation but nevertheless spent a good part of her life waiting in vain for an explanation, as I do. Not understanding is the cruelest thing, and not explaining the most indelicate. With that in mind I keep reading and come across this sentence, which floors me: “In every love relationship that reaches an impasse, delicacy is in the end the most offensive behavior.” (Except that here, I immediately say to myself, there is no love relationship, and so no impasse-and so I keep trying (869).)
It’s like the difference between eroticism-which thrives on experience, free choice, and the entire history of the body-and pornography-which is neutral, afraid to choose, and subject to the authority of the interchangeable (923).
Hey, that reminds me of a definition I read in the crosswords. Four letters: ‘young psychopath from the Carpathians.’ You give up? ‘Love.’ Because as Carmen says-and she should know-‘Love is a gypsy’s child. It has never, ever, known a law…’ So there you go: no age, no law, no generalities, that’s love. Or in any case, that’s desire” (932).
Published in Flair, December 2003-August 2004
In Search of the Dice Man
Oscar believes the die isn’t for nutcases or people with a death wish. He recommends a hedonist use, one that makes life more fun and surprising.
For that to be the case, he has three rules. The first is to always obey, to always apply the decision of the die. But obeying the die is ultimately obeying yourself, since you set your options. Hence the second rule, concerning the decisive moment when you list the six possibilities. Coming up with six ways of reacting to each of life’s challenges takes imagination, and to do it you have to examine yourself and try to find out what you want. It’s a spiritual exercise, aimed both at getting to know yourself, and getting a better grasp of the infinite possibilities offered by the real. The options you select have to be pleasant, but at least one-the third rule-has to be a little difficult, it has to make you overcome resistance and break with habit. It’s got to make you do something you wouldn’t normally do. You’ve got to surprise yourself and even be hard on yourself- but gently, with tact, knowing yourself and not going too far. When you throw the die, your desire has to be tinged with fear. Ever since he discovered the Spanish translation of The Dice Man when he was seventeen, this sort of small challenge has been second nature to Oscar. Like his father, he’s a tax lawyer, but since it’s not fun to be a tax lawyer, thanks to the die he’s also become a wine importer, a webmaster, a Go teacher, a fan of Iceland, and the publisher of the Mauritian poet Malcolm de Chazal (3499).
Published in XXI, fall 2015.
Philip K. Dick
When I started reading him around 1975, I wore little round glasses, an Afghan vest, and a pair of beat-up Clarks on my feet, and I went around saying he was the Dostoyevsky of our time; in a word, the man who’d grasped the bigger picture. For me his books Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and A Scanner Darkly were as prophetic as The Possessed.
Some went even further: Around exactly the same time (but I found that out much later, when I was working on Dick’s biography), one of his French editors explained very seriously to Philip K. Dick that his novel Ubik was one of the five greatest books ever written. Not one of the five greatest books of science fiction, the editor insisted to Dick’s amazement. No, one of the greatest books of all time, along with the Bible, the I Ching, the Bardo Thodol, and I forget what the fifth one was. One of the books to which people turn, and will always turn, to catch a glimpse of the secret of their condition, the meaning of meaning, ultimate knowledge, et cetera.
Twenty-five years later, things haven’t changed. I recently participated in one of those book-fair debates, which are usually horribly boring. But this one wasn’t boring at all because it was about Dick, and talking about Dick-just talking about him, exchanging views about him-can suddenly become like taking a tab of acid: quickly you’re a long way from where you started. Participating in the talk were people who’d known him and other people such as me who’d read him when they were young and never gotten over it. We got excited, yelled at one another, agreed and then disagreed again. We had the impression that we were in one of his novels, where everyone’s private universe threatens at any moment to invade and devour that of his neighbor, the way the cryogenized child in Ubik invades and devours the minds of his half-life companions. To give an idea, the host, at his wit’s end, made this remark, which I think of often: “I think it would be good if we could agree on what we mean by reality, at least among ourselves.”
What everyone agreed on, nevertheless, is that with Dick you’re dealing with something other than a great science fiction writer, or even a great writer tout court. Something else, okay, but what (431)?
I don’t quite know how to conclude; with Dick there isn’t any way to conclude. So to wind up I’ll copy the quote I used as an epigraph in my book about him. It’s taken from the mythical speech he made in Metz in 1977. He thought that this speech, a condensation of the Exegesis, equaled the prophesies of Isaiah or Jeremy and was perhaps even their completion. For the honest French leftists in the audience it was like the ranting of a madman- which didn’t bother them, as madness was looked upon well in those days- doubled with those of a religious zealot, which went over a lot less well. Here:
“I’m sure you don’t believe me, and don’t even believe I believe what I’m saying. Nevertheless it’s true. You are free to believe me or disbelieve me, but please take my word on it that I am not joking; this is very serious; a matter of importance. I am sure that at the very least you will agree that for me even to claim this is in itself amazing. Often people claim to remember past lives; I claim to remember a different, very different, present life. I know of no one who has ever made this claim before, but I rather suspect that my experience is not unique. What perhaps is unique is the fact that I am willing to talk about it” (533).
Preface to Nouvelles, the French edition of the collected stories of Philip K. Dick (Denoël, 2000)
Nine Columns for an Italian Magazine
Right now both of us are single-well, not really single, but available, and happy to agree on the word. Both of us are in our early forties, divorced, with two children. I write, she’s a painter; our mutual friend told her that I was seductive and me that she was seductive, and we seem to be pretty much in agreement. The purpose of our meeting being clear, there’s no way we can pretend it didn’t occur to us, as is strangely the case with so much interaction between men and women: you think about nothing else, you both know it, but it’s as if it were something to be ashamed of, as if admitting it would make you weak, or laughable, or the butt of cynicism. I spent my youth getting all wound up over dinner dates that skirted around the question of seduction. I remember I envied the gays, for whom things seemed more simple and direct. Their desire seemed easier to express, whereas we heteros seemed to have come no further than Montaigne, who asked, “What has rendered genital action- an act so natural, so necessary, and so just-a thing not to be spoken of without blushing?” (Isn’t that perfectly put?) Tonight, then, in this Japanese restaurant, we examine the possibility of having sex, I won’t say with detachment, but with a sort of lightness accentuated by the resolve we’ve just made, pretexting the needs of this column, to say and comment on what usually remains unsaid. What are we hoping for, deep down, what are we after? Let’s be honest: true love, real love, love that will last. Him for her. Her for me. We’re more or less halfway through life, we’ve divorced, loved and stopped loving, left and been left, but we continue to believe, to want to believe, not just that it exists, but that it hasn’t really happened yet, that it’s ahead of us, that at one unpredictable, unexpected moment it will be there and we’ll recognize it without hesitation, without the shadow of a doubt. The idea that in fact it’s behind us, that perhaps it already happened and we weren’t able to hold on to it, is too sad, and we reject it with all our might. As for me, I have to admit something: as I’m inclined to believe in it, I believe in it a little too easily. They say you can’t be wrong about something like that, but that’s just the thing: I can. Then I snap out of it, and that can hurt the other person. I’m just coming out of such a situation: the two of us head over heels in love, absolutely certain, three ecstatic months telling each other that we’re so lucky, that what everyone dreams of happened to us, that we’ll never part, that we’ll grow old together… Of course I was being sincere, but you can be sincere and be wrong, or in any case you can persuade yourself that you’re wrong as sincerely as you persuaded yourself of the contrary (823).
You’ll say there’s a simple explanation, very simple even: she’s not attracted to me. That’s possible, very possible even, but I don’t believe it. First of all because if that were the case, it would be easy for her to tell me-or to tell me she loves someone else, or that she doesn’t want to ruin our beautiful friendship… Secondly, because if it were true, a woman who doesn’t say it one way or another would be a ridiculous tease, and this woman is anything but a ridiculous tease. Finally-this might make you laugh after what I’ve just said-because I’m certain she’s attracted to me. Not that I think I’m irresistible, not at all, but in her case I’m certain, otherwise I wouldn’t insist like that. I know that this conviction leads me dangerously close to an interpretation along the lines of she’s avoiding me because she loves me, and from there straight to denying reality the way Belise does in Molière’s Learned Women, explaining the silence of her imaginary suitors with the words “They have, up to the present time, respected me so much that they have never spoken to me of their love.” I’m aware of all of that, but I insist nonetheless. I continue to wait for a sign, and to while away the time I read Kierkegaard’s correspondence, which she translated into French. The key to this correspondence is the story of Regine, the young girl who was engaged to the philosopher before he broke off the engagement, perhaps because he believed his melancholy would prevent him from being a good husband, perhaps for another reason; he never said and no one will ever know. What we do know is that he was passionately in love with her, that he remained in love with her for the rest of his life, but that, one fine morning, without a word of explanation, he broke off all ties. From that moment on, he did his best to be as odious as possible, both so that Copenhagen’s fashionable society would blame him and feel sorry for Regine, and also so that Regine would have good reason to hate him. He thought that the hatred and disdain she would feel for him would make her an accomplished woman, and that by mistreating her like that he was secretly doing her a service. These letters, in which he tasks his best friend with spying on Regine and gauging her progress along the path of frustration, of resentment, and, at the same time, of self- consciousness, are rather delirious, but for me, looking as I am for information not about the author but about his translator, they’re also food for thought. Since everything was preferable to what was unfortunately the most plausible hypothesis-she had better things to do than answer my messages-I identified her with the devious Kierkegaard and myself with the innocent Regine, who finally got over the separation but nevertheless spent a good part of her life waiting in vain for an explanation, as I do. Not understanding is the cruelest thing, and not explaining the most indelicate. With that in mind I keep reading and come across this sentence, which floors me: “In every love relationship that reaches an impasse, delicacy is in the end the most offensive behavior.” (Except that here, I immediately say to myself, there is no love relationship, and so no impasse-and so I keep trying (869).)
It’s like the difference between eroticism-which thrives on experience, free choice, and the entire history of the body-and pornography-which is neutral, afraid to choose, and subject to the authority of the interchangeable (923).
Hey, that reminds me of a definition I read in the crosswords. Four letters: ‘young psychopath from the Carpathians.’ You give up? ‘Love.’ Because as Carmen says-and she should know-‘Love is a gypsy’s child. It has never, ever, known a law…’ So there you go: no age, no law, no generalities, that’s love. Or in any case, that’s desire” (932).
Published in Flair, December 2003-August 2004
In Search of the Dice Man
Oscar believes the die isn’t for nutcases or people with a death wish. He recommends a hedonist use, one that makes life more fun and surprising.
For that to be the case, he has three rules. The first is to always obey, to always apply the decision of the die. But obeying the die is ultimately obeying yourself, since you set your options. Hence the second rule, concerning the decisive moment when you list the six possibilities. Coming up with six ways of reacting to each of life’s challenges takes imagination, and to do it you have to examine yourself and try to find out what you want. It’s a spiritual exercise, aimed both at getting to know yourself, and getting a better grasp of the infinite possibilities offered by the real. The options you select have to be pleasant, but at least one-the third rule-has to be a little difficult, it has to make you overcome resistance and break with habit. It’s got to make you do something you wouldn’t normally do. You’ve got to surprise yourself and even be hard on yourself- but gently, with tact, knowing yourself and not going too far. When you throw the die, your desire has to be tinged with fear. Ever since he discovered the Spanish translation of The Dice Man when he was seventeen, this sort of small challenge has been second nature to Oscar. Like his father, he’s a tax lawyer, but since it’s not fun to be a tax lawyer, thanks to the die he’s also become a wine importer, a webmaster, a Go teacher, a fan of Iceland, and the publisher of the Mauritian poet Malcolm de Chazal (3499).
Published in XXI, fall 2015.