Have you noticed that only in time of illness or disaster or death are people real? I remember at the time of the wreck—people were so kind and helpful and solid. Everyone pretended that our lives until that moment had been every bit as real as the moment itself and that the future must be real too, when the truth was that our reality had been purchased only by Lyell's death. In another hour or so we had all faded out again and gone our dim ways.
-Kate in The Moviegoer
Years ago (maybe around the time of Midnite Vultures?*) Beck gave some interview—I thought I had this written down somewhere, but it appears that I was mistaken—in which he said something to the effect that people assume that the crying you is "realer" than the laughing you, but that he didn't see why that ought to be true. And I'm with him 100%. Is the crying you, or the angry you, or the post-apocalyptic monster-battling you relevant? Sure. Is it revealing? Of course. But is it like pulling back a curtain and seeing the "actual" person you "secretly" "are"? No. An ex-girlfriend of mine was also instrumental in making me realize this: she was pretty smart in the head† and pointed out that what one might dismissively call the "mask" you wear is also very relevant to who you are. Think about it. How you choose to present yourself: is that not relevant to your personality?
the real you?
I've come around to thinking that the idea that you're being more yourself when you're unhappy or in some kind of danger is a fundamentally anti-humanist attitude—also maybe weirdly limited and myopic, not to mention fundamentally opposed to the notion of free will. Makes me think also of the idea of the whole human being (as opposed to something more like a Cartesian split) and the thing that I think I first realized when I was a "tween,"‡ that any division between "natural" and "human" requires turning a blind eye to the fact that human beings are animals and part of nature, such that whatever concrete and steel we erect is as much part of nature as an anthill...
But I'm getting distracted and confused (writing in an L.A. coffee shop, which is not the norm for me: I'm spoiled by silence). My whole point is actually pretty small: you are more than your behavior in any particular circumstance, and there's no good reason to trash or trivialize the way you behave when things are good and you're happy. That's you, too.
* Back when he was still good.
† You heard me: smart in the head.
‡ Back before the term tween existed (as far as I know).
2 comments:
Except this quotation has been completely decontextualized: Percy is only noting the outpouring of emotion in contrast to Binx's habitual state of malaise.
Sure we're the sum of our emotions/personae, but in "The Moviegoer" this moment is more an observation of the rare perceptibility of vulnerable, untempered human feeling in the face of the purposeless, numbed existence that Binx leads and the prose reflects.
I'm not saying anything negative about Percy: I'm talking about the character of Kate and evaluating what she is saying per se, which is necessarily a completely decontextualized affair. But either way my point is rather that if Binx leads a purposeless, numbed existence, it would be silly to suggest that that isn't him: in fact, it says rather a lot about him. Put it another way: if you're buried deep inside yourself, to act as if the buried part is the only part that defines you is like pretending we're all in some kind of Swedenborgian otherworld. I do not assume that anyone knows what I mean by "Swedenborgian otherworld" means, but do I care? No. I'm a maverick.
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