Farrago

March 5, 2011
Farrago

I was talking with Tom Nashe, the writer – “not that anyone reads me any more” – which is unfortunate. We have a mutual acquaintance, an Episcopal priest who seems to both of us to think of herself as the center of God’s grace: Instead of “the waters,” let them come to her. “A functioning narcissist” is Tom’s term − like a functioning alcoholic. That sounds right to me; I’m nodding.

          “Like your friend Kierkegaard,” Sam says and laughs, knowing my affection and admiration for that sad, sad man.

          So I’m defensive: “Meaning what?”

          “Didn’t he break off his engagement to the lovely, patient Regina, because marriage might interfere with his plans? ‘It was intelligence and nothing else that had to be opposed. Presumably that is why I who had to oppose it was armed with such immense intelligence.’  From the Journals − do I have it right?  He might leak brain cells with his semen.”

          I shrug. Tom Nashe has an amazing memory − like Sherlock Holmes or Bobby Goren on TV − but he does make mistakes; he also makes things up.

We decide we are all narcissists to one degree or another. None of us quite believes in the reality of others apart from ourselves.[i] I don’t remember where − I’m not Nashe − but somewhere Ron Reagan writes about his sense that his father forgot all about him as soon as he walked out of his presence . . . off the set. All have their entrances and their exits; and when they exit, they are gone.

          Some of us, more thoughtful narcissists, may wonder for a moment what those that have exited are doing, but we can’t bear to leave the stage to find out. We may claim we do, but we never really tire of the play and wish we’d been given a smaller part. Some of us think of those others often − they may play a role in a monologue − but we aren’t thinking of them really, only of the purposes we intend them for. They aren’t people; they are purposes. “It’s thinking of people the way I think of golf” is Nashe’s formulation.

This is William Barrett on Kierkegaard: It is “when we advance from the aesthetic [through the ethical] to the religious level of existence, Kierkegaard says, [that] we become really serious; we are not really serious until we become religious.”[ii] But isn’t this an argument against religion − if we were not created to be serious?  Then, it is precisely when we become seriously religious that we begin to lose ourselves. We substitute a way of thinking for throwing a ball or a set of laws for laughter. It’s a poor, as well as an unhappy, trade. Adam and Eve give up extempore for being able to discern good and evil, improvisation to think everything through. They give up the joy of running around naked eating fresh fruit for the triumph of becoming like God. And who can be more serious than those that have, or that know, the mind of God? Who is more addicted to triumph?

          Tom says, “Triumph and joy are as far apart as the Pharisees and Pan. Triumph fills the heart until it would explode. Joy makes it light.”

So here’s Sergio Garcia climbing a tree, an oak, not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

p

(bicbw)

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[i] We have especial difficulty with those different from ourselves, but that may stem not from narciss- but tribalism, subject for another post another time.
[ii] Irrational Man: A Study in Existentialist Philosophy. You wouldn’t believe the old books I have around the house, this one worth keeping if for no other reason than the reproduction of Giacometti’s Tall Walking Figure on the cover.  See above.  Below . . . (you may − no you will! − have to turn up your sound).