little acts

Two young fish swimming along meet an older fish swimming the other way, who says 'Morning boys, how's the water?' The 2 fish swim on and then one looks at the other and says 'What the hell is water?'

This little fable comes from a lecture given by the American writer David Foster Wallace, who committed suicide last week.

The lecture was reproduced in yesterday's Guardian, where an excellent commentary by David Tayler says he was part of a group of writers, the most advanced of our generation, that also included Jonathan Franzen and Richard Powers.

Shows how much I know - but I SHOULD know, because the lecture is marvellous and I admire the values of these writers as David Tayler describes them. He says they aim to give postmodernism a human face, taking what's good from high culture and pop culture. They risk being looked own on by the literary mandarins, risking sentimentality, melodrama and overcredulity in the name of promoting human values in as friendly and unpretentious way as possible. They risk attack from cynics and reductivists by addressing the big questions of life and death.

The fish fable caught my attention because it's about some of the things I've tried to write about - things which are so close to our centre of consciousness that we find it hard to focus on them.

His point is that, though we may not be conscious of it, we can't help worshiping something. If we don't worship God or Somesuch, we risk worshiping money, beauty, intelligence. He argues that if you worship money, you'll never had enough, if you worship beauty, you'll end up feeling ugly, if you worship intellect, you'll end up feeling stupid.

He recommends rather 'being able truly to care about other people and sacrifice for them, over and over again in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day'.

For me this raises a question. Why is the universe so constituted that these human values are responded to in this way, for good or for ill?

The implication, surely, is that the universe is not a universe of blind, impersonal forces, but that it has human values written into it. The human values that David Foster Wallace worked to introduce into literature are written in the stars, blowing with the wind.

His phrase quoted above echoes Wordsworth's famous phrase about the best portion of a good man's life  consisting in 'little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love' and St Therese of Lisieux's teachings and example.

My guess, just from reading this short lecture, is that David Foster Wallace shied away from recognizing the religious, supernatural content of his ideas. I hope not. Thinking about this stuff IS dangerous, but sometimes you can make out a light on the other side of the valley.

Comments

[Al]

The story of the three fish swimming reminded me of another 3 fish story found in "Tales of the Dervishes" by Idries Shah, the noted Sufi. One idea the Sufi's entertain is that the practice of loving your fellow being in a non sexual way, free of recompense will eventually turn you into that verb. Instead of being a person who loves his fellow human beings, you simply become love, and you show it to everyone and everything. It sounds to me, and I'm going from this post, that perhaps David Foster Wallace had this understanding, even if he did commit suicide, which makes me wonder, was it truly suicide? I bring to mind Thích Quảng Đức, who to most people committed suicide, but for those with a little more awareness realized what he did was an act of protest which put into action events that changed the Buddhist crisis happening with a particular regime.

[jonathanblack]

Thanks, Al - I've reaponded in part above. Is DFW a star in the States? He's not very well known here at all.

[Al]

Unfortunately I wasn't aware of DFW until your post. My ignorance on this writer is now being corrected. :D