Source of book: I own this
I purchased this book with a
Barnes & Noble gift card I got for Christmas a few years ago. It is a huge
book: over 700 pages of very small print, heavy enough to work as a doorstop or
a weapon in a pinch. It represents nearly four decades of work by the author,
in a way his vanity project, but also a fascinating perspective on
stories.
I am not entirely sure where to
start with this post, which will be long, although not as long as the book. I
have been reading this book a bit at a time since the beginning of the year, so
I have lots of notes, and lots of thoughts.
I have mixed feelings about the
book, particularly the last two chapters, as well as about the author.
First, perhaps, let’s start with
some good things. And there are a lot of really good things about this
book.
Booker’s basic idea, that many,
perhaps most, stories can be broken down into seven basic plots, is pretty
solid. This framework, like Joseph Campbell’s analysis of mythology in The
Hero With a Thousand Faces, can indeed be helpful in understanding
literature, and stories wherever they are found.
Likewise, Booker’s use of Jungian
psychology as a way of understanding the central issues in stories is quite
helpful and interesting.
There are a LOT of stories
discussed, some briefly, others in great detail, in this book. To me, that is
always fun. I love to hear other perspectives on the meaning of particular
books, even if I do not always agree.
Booker also has some great
analysis of the stories of Western religion, far better than the tripe you hear
from Evangelical pulpits, honestly. I do not get the impression that Booker is
religious, but he respects the stories, and does a good job of looking at them
in terms of what they say about human nature.
So, as a preliminary conclusion,
understand that I definitely recommend this book for anyone who enjoys delving
into the underlying psychology of stories and why we tell them. Don’t let the
negative stuff scare you off. There is a lot more good than bad in this book. A
lot.
Now, about the less good stuff.
One should be obvious: any attempt to reduce the whole of human storytelling -
the whole world, in fact - into a particular framework will by its very nature
involve oversimplification, selective omission, and some definite stretches.
Campbell’s book has the same flaws, for the same reason.
In order to make things fit,
Booker leaves out a lot of stories. For the most part, he concentrates on the
Western canon, with only a few mentions of other cultures. And for these, he
uses ancient writings, not more modern literature.
Thus, understand that this will be
a very white male way of reading the literature. And, perhaps also a British
white male sort of sensibility, even though Booker does cite a lot of
American writers for his modern examples.
Even with these limitations, there
are some glaring omissions that can lead to no other conclusion than that
Booker left things out because they didn’t fit his thesis.
Most notable to me is that there
is NO mention of The Canterbury Tales. Had he discussed these, I suspect
some of his bile late in the book about modern forms might have been blunted -
his pet peeves about modernity turn out to have always existed.
That brings me to the problem of
Booker’s own politics.
Throughout the book, but
particularly in the later chapters (which seem to have been written later as
well), Booker lets his own political views cloud his judgment and prevent him
from seeing how his own ideas as set forth earlier in the book contradict his
political commitments. I’ll try to explain some of these as I get to them in
this post.
By the end of his life, Booker had
taken a pretty hard right turn (although definitely not into fascism, unlike
many right-wing writers of today.) One of his better-known later books was
essentially shilling for the fossil fuel industry, and his position in general
shifted to anti-feminist, anti-liberalism, anti-change, although not
anti-diversity, if that makes sense. Think crusty old man shaking his cane.
(And then imagine the passage on why the 1960s were a hellscape, and you could
probably write a spoof yourself.)
It is not a coincidence that in
the worst passages, Booker departs from his main idea - the plots of stories -
and starts talking about things he is ignorant about.
As the old saying goes, “better to
remain silent and be thought a fool, than open one’s mouth and remove all
doubt.”
Booker should have just stayed
entirely out of modern domestic politics, for example. (He was, surprisingly,
not as bad about foreign policy - his brief analysis of the Israel Palestine
conflict comes to mind as thoughtful.)
He also should have never talked
about music. As a classical musician, I can say that he is full of shit on just
about everything he says about music. Sure, Beethoven was great, maybe the
greatest. But dissing on Brahms (in detail!) while getting it all ludicrously
wrong sounded like trying to put a justification on his own musical
dislikes.
Too much of the last two chapters
are “modern stuff bad, old stuff good,” without even any good-faith effort to
figure out why the old plots don’t address modern culture sufficiently.
As Adam Mars-Jones put it,
"[Booker] sets up criteria for art, and ends up condemning Rigoletto,
The Cherry Orchard, Wagner, Proust, Joyce, Kafka and Lawrence—the list
goes on—while praising Crocodile Dundee, E.T. and Terminator
2." Modern culture is condemned because it doesn’t fit the template
Booker prefers, and thus to him is trash.
UPDATE 9-8-2025: I can’t believe I
forgot this, but I didn’t have my pen handy. There are a couple of spots where
Booker’s omissions rise to the level of disingenuous and misleading. I cannot
remember one of them – I think it was a partial quote that left off the key
part. But the other one is this: in an attempt to paint the Nazis as
non-religious (a favorite lie of the Right, and why a non-religious person like
Booker repeated it is beyond me), he mentions Hitler’s “soft eugenics” program,
the one to force women back into the roles of homemaker and reproduction
factory, and its propaganda slogan, but he leaves off one of the “Ks.” He lists
“Kinder” (Children) and “Kuche” (kitchen), but leaves out the third: “Kirche.”
(Church) This is hugely problematic. While Hitler, Goebbels, and the rest were
probably no more religious than Trump, Bald Goebbels (Stephen Miller), and the
rest, Nazism, like MAGA, was essentially a religious movement, supported and
enabled by the German Protestant Church.
At this point, maybe I should get
into his ideas, then talk about the specifics of where these ideas are and are
not helpful.
First, the seven basic plots:
Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy,
Tragedy, and Rebirth.
I won’t get into all the details
of how these work, but you can get the basic idea. Booker goes into detail
about the necessary and the common elements of these plots, and discusses many
examples in each chapter.
In addition to the plots, there
are character types. This, again, is helpful as a way of seeing stories.
Everyone can think of the helper characters: the wise old man, the wise old
woman, the helpful assistant, and most of all, the female inspiration and
better angel, which Booker calls the “anima.” (There is a lot of Jung in
this book…)
And there are the bad characters:
the dark masculine (the overbearing father, the villain, etc.), the dark
feminine (the temptress, the witch, etc.)
Following from there, Booker
posits that Jungian psychology explains the motivating forces in the
story.
He contrasts the “ego,” which is
sometimes called the “shadow,” - the selfish, darker human traits - with the
“self,” - the unified combination of masculine and feminine, individuality and
collectivity, the unselfish, mature human.
Thus, the arc of every story - at
least the ones he likes - represents a battle for the self to overcome the ego.
Success leads to a happy ending, failure to tragedy.
In order to become a complete
person, the protagonist (male or female) must reconcile these traits to become
complete. Thus, a young man must embrace both his masculinity and the feminine
virtues that will make him complete - he must become one with his anima in the
psychological sense, not just a literal marriage. A female protagonist must do
the same: embrace her femininity while adding the masculine virtues.
(“Masculine” and “feminine” in
this context are, as the author notes repeatedly, cultural constructs. Their
gender is built into the story itself, essentially, not human nature per
se.)
This is all very much in line with
Jung - and indeed, taking a little time to review Jung’s ideas help with
understanding this book. I found this way of thinking to be useful in
understanding stories and the reasons humans tell them.
That said, one of the strange
things about the last two chapters is how far Booker goes to try to avoid the
obvious implications of these ideas for his own politics. More on that
later.
With that, let’s dive in to some
detail. In the introduction, Booker notes that he is hardly the first to see
these patterns and surmise that the patterns are due to human psychology. Adolf
Bastian, for example “put forward the theory that the human mind seems to be so
constituted that it naturally works in certain forms or grooves, and round
certain basic images.”
This psychology is very much
apparent in the “overcoming the monster” plot. Monsters are never just fantasy;
they are rooted in human vice. Booker notes that monsters come in three
varieties, usually in sequence.
And the point about these three roles is that they represent
all the main aspects of the way human beings behave when acting in an entirely
self-seeking fashion. When people are at odds with the world, behaving
selfishly or anti-socially, they are either ‘after something,’ as Predators;
wanting grimly to ‘hold onto something,’ as Holdfasts; or, as Avengers,
resentfully trying ‘to get their own back.’
Feel free to insert MAGA or other
fascist movements in the role of monsters, where they very much fit. (This is
an example, by the way, of where Booker later goes wrong. In condemning social
programs, he fails to note that capitalism rewards selfish and antisocial
behavior - it breeds monsters and punishes the mutuality necessary for
wholeness.)
I’ll note here that my
father-in-law’s favorite movie, High Noon, is discussed as an example of
this plot.
Moving on to the “voyage and
return,” which includes some of my very favorite stories, by the way, Booker
has a fascinating insight. (As I said, the first part of the book is very good
indeed.)
When we say that the ‘other world’ is abnormal, what
precisely do we mean? Our sense of normality, even of what is real, is to an
enormous extent of course governed by what is familiar to us. We make sense of
the world through a whole framework of largely unconscious assumptions of what
is normal, based on everything we are used to - socially, culturally, morally,
geographically and physically, in terms of scale, space, and time. Such things
play a central part in giving us our sense of outward identity in the world,
telling us who we are. And the whole point of the Voyage and Return story is
that, in some important respect, it takes the hero or heroine out of that
framework of the familiar.
For the protagonists of this plot,
the voyage to the unfamiliar exposes their own flaws, their egocentricity. To
become whole, to return to the familiar in a changed form, they must overcome
their own inner darkness.
The real victory of such Voyage and Return heroes is not over
the forces of darkness outside them. It is over the same dark forces within
themselves.
Not all stories with this plot
have happy endings, however. One could include Hadestown
and the underlying myth as an example. By failing to overcome his weakness,
Orpheus fails to bring his anima back with him.
They have been put to some very fundamental test - and they
have failed.
I found the chapters on Comedy to
be quite enlightening. I enjoy the classic Shakespeare comedies a great deal,
and this book helps explain why.
Sure, there are the usual
elements: the misunderstandings which must be dispelled, the lovers reunited,
the darkness banished or at least punished. But I thought this insight was
interesting:
At the heart of Aristophanic comedy lay an agon or
conflict between two characters or groups of characters. One is dominated by
some dark, rigid, life-denying obsession. The other represents life, liberation
and truth.
This conflict often represents
generational conflict: the dark, rigid father figure denying the next
generation the love they deserve. (Think Romeo and Juliet.)
Ironically, late in the book,
Booker seems to have completely forgotten this idea in favor of whinging about
anti-war protesters and their failure to properly respect their elders. I mean,
this whole plot is often about telling the older people to stop being so square
- or even immoral.
As Aristotle put it, the happy
ending in a comedy comes from Recognition, “the change from ignorance to
knowledge.” The central characters gain this knowledge, and are able to realize
their fullness and happy ending.
Not so much for the dark
characters, who end up with one of several potential fates.
The first is that any characters who have become dark because
they are imprisoned in some hard, divisive, unloving state - anger, greed,
jealousy, shrewishness, disloyalty, self-righteousness or whatever - must be
softened and liberated by some act of self-recognition and a change of heart.
They must in effect become a ‘new’ or different person (‘come to themselves’)
and if they do not change in this way, the only alternative, as we shall
shortly see, is that they shall at least be shown up and paid out, by
punishment or general derision, so they can no longer cause harm to
others.
You can contrast, for example, the
repentance of Duke Frederick in As You Like It, with the comeuppance of
Malvolio in Twelfth Night. A change of heart means a happy ending for
the villain; refusal means humiliation and punishment.
It is in this chapter that the
concept of “above the line” and “below the line” is introduced, and I think it
is a very helpful lens for seeing things. Not just in stories, but in real
life.
The “above the line” characters
and events take place in the respectable part of society. Upper crust people,
conventional behavior, and so on. “Below the line” are the marginalized, the
stuff that goes on out of sight. In Shakespeare, this is often a bright line:
the “above the line” of the kingdom, the “below the line” of the forest,
whether with fairies or silly love notes.
Much later in the book, Booker
also - correctly - notes that Christianity originally was a “below the
line” religion. And at its core - the real stuff, not the horseshit that
organized religion has been since Constantine - it still is. The Kingdom is
upside-down, with the “below the line” where it is happening.
Booker also observes that in
classic comedy, the darkness usually comes from the male characters, who are
blinded by their egos. It is left to the feminine characters to see the truth,
and eventually, when the men deal with their own darkness and grow up, the
feminine characters are able to make all right again.
I have been fascinated by Tragedy
since I was in high school, and had a great teacher illuminate how the
structure works. Believe it or not, way back in the day when I was part of a
home church where we rotated “preaching,” I did one on the structure of Tragedy
as a way of understanding the life of King Saul. I’m still pretty proud of
that. My ideas have aged really well on that topic.
For Booker, the names for the
parts of the tragic arc are a bit different than I learned, and Booker’s
version may be even more descriptive.
After the inciting events of the
tragedy - the “anticipation phase,” the plot enters the “dream phase,” where
everything seems to be going unbelievably well. Macbeth is crowned king.
But things start to go wrong, a
bit at a time. Next is the “frustration stage,” where success seems to be
slipping out of the hero’s grasp. And then the “nightmare stage,” where
catastrophe upon catastrophe piles up. Finally, destruction, where often the
hero experiences a death wish, and dies at their own hand.
One of the better parts of the
book, by the way, is where Booker shows exactly how much Hitler imitated art -
specifically the tragedy. Usually, stories aren’t meant to be literal, but….
As I noted many years ago in that
sermon, while other stories might see the hero experience “the call” -
something that inspires them to take action that they should take, in a
tragedy, “the call” is really just a temptation. It appeals to a fatal flaw in
the protagonist’s personality. When it is given in to, it leads to
destruction.
Here is another interesting
observation about tragedies:
At the beginning of a full five-stage Tragedy, the central
figure is always part of a community, a network of relationships, linked to
other people by ties of loyalty, friendship, family, or marriage. And one of
the most important things which happens to such heroes and heroines as they
embark on their tragic course is that they begin to break those bonds of
loyalty, friendship, and love (even if, initially, they may form other
alliances.) It is the very essence of Tragedy that the hero or heroine should
become, step by step, separated from other people. Often they separate
themselves in the most obvious, violent and final way possible, by causing
other people’s deaths.
You can see this in the tragedies
unfolding in our own world. That gradual separation of the ties that should
hold us together.
After discussing all seven plots
and their elements, Booker spends a good bit of the middle of the book looking
at the commonality of all the plots in their psychological landscape.
The significance of this can hardly be exaggerated. For what
it means is that whenever any of us tries to create a story in our own
imagination, we will find that these are the basic figures and situations
around which it takes shape. We cannot get away from them because they are
archetypes. They are the elemental images around which the whole of the
storytelling impulse in mankind is centered. And the reason for this is that
these underlying patterns and images are somehow imprinted unconsciously in our
minds, so that we cannot conceive stories in any other way.
As I noted earlier, I think Booker
stretches a bit too far here, but he isn’t exactly wrong. There are indeed
archetypes that fill our stories, and our psychology is a huge determinant in
how we tell them. The weakness of the author is to fail to see how these
archetypes manifest differently in different cultures and situations - and
understand how modern stories look at the same archetypes from different
perspectives. Specifically, modern stories have to address the understanding
that true villains and heroes don’t exist often in real life, and that the good
guys don’t necessarily win.
This bit is good, though, and is a
great example of how the classic story form works. If one looks at the story as
a metaphor of the psyche becoming whole, it does ring true.
The nature of the story’s ending then depends entirely on how
its hero or heroine have aligned themselves to the dark power. If the central
figure has remained or ended up in opposition to the dark power, we see that,
in this final act of liberation, there is a prize of infinite value to be won:
a treasure to be won from the darkness; a captive ‘Princess’ or ‘Prince’ to be
freed from its clutches; a community to be redeemed from its shadows. We see
that the hero or heroine have ended up fulfilled and complete, in a way which
through most of the story would have seemed unthinkable. They have reached some
central goal to their lives.
If, on the other hand, the hero or heroine have become
irrevocably identified with the dark power, the story will end in their
destruction. But even this comes about according to the same rules which govern
stories with a happy ending. So much have the central figures of Tragedy become
the chief source of darkness in their story that only when they are removed by
death can the light again emerge from the shadows. For all those forced to live
in that shadow, this in itself can end the story on the familiar note of
liberation. The wider community is restored to wholeness. Just as in a story
which comes to a happy ending, it is a victory for life.
Thus in any story which is completely resolved, the basic
pattern remains the same. In the end, darkness is overcome and light wins the
day. In fact what ultimately distinguishes each of the basic plots is simply
that each looks at this common theme from a different angle. Each lays emphasis
on a particular aspect of that universal plot which lies behind them all.
One of the reasons that Booker
seems offended by modern stories is this lack of moral clarity and reward. I
have certainly heard this a lot from the Fundies in the subculture I grew up
in. The problem is, real life doesn’t end with the good guys winning and the
bad guys punished. There is no cosmic justice. Stories may satisfy, but they
aren’t the whole truth.
That said, I continue to be
astonished that MAGA people and Evangelicals (but I repeat myself) are
completely unable to recognize themselves as the villains in our ongoing story.
They have aligned themselves with darkness and are going about destroying the
community. They have become the monster.
The essence of the monster, in short, is that, dressed up in
symbolic form, it is a hugely magnified personification of the human capacity
for egotism, which is invariably shown as immensely powerful, unfeeling for
others but also in some crucial aspect blind, lacking in understanding.
My favorite chapter in the book is
the one on “seeing whole” - embracing both the “masculine” and “feminine”
values to become a complete person.
Booker starts with the “negative”
version: the tragedy, to illustrate the issue. The tragic protagonist fails to
embrace the “feminine” virtues, instead doubling down on the darkest version of
masculinity, until he is blinded to the true nature and value of people and
ideals.
As the light part of the tragic hero or heroine falls further
and further under the shadow of the darkness which has taken root in them, and
they slip into ever greater egocentricity and lack of feeling for others, we
see how their judgement, their ability to see the world straight and whole,
becomes increasingly clouded. In fact their vision becomes so distorted that
they actually come to see everything at the reverse of its value. The light
values increasingly become a threat to them; light characters come to seem only
as obstacles to their egocentric desires.
Again, this is MAGA in a nutshell.
A lack of feeling for those they see as outsiders has led to a complete
inability to see reality. Hence they burn down the government they rely on,
incinerate public health, terrorize the people who feed them. And anyone who
preaches empathy is seen as the enemy.
Unsurprisingly, toxic masculinity
is a huge factor in this descent. Booker describes what is necessary for that
happy ending: balance.
In order to reach a full happy ending, the story must
culminate in an act of liberation from the dark power which produces a final
image of integration with life. The great prize can only be wrested from the
darkness when the hero or heroine, or both together, have been transformed in
such a way that they are potentially whole. That means that, between them, they
must represent a balance of certain specific qualities: those qualities we can
identify as ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine.’
This needs to be more than just a
wedding, but an internal transformation. And not merely internal, but in
community.
But this could not have been
achieved unless the hero had been able to join up with the other characters
around him, in a state of mutual sympathy and co-operation.
Related to this is the imbalance
of the incomplete, unhappy state, which Booker argues are characterized by
these four things:
The aggressive and oppressive use
of power
Disorder and things not being as
they should be
Things being obscured or hidden,
so that nobody can see clearly or whole
A lack of proper feeling, love, or
mutual affection
I think these four apply to every
state of disorder, from broken relationships to a crumbling society.
In contrast, the happy ending
should result in power being used wisely and justly - and indeed free from ego.
People should be in harmony, which requires that they see accurately, seeing
everything necessary. And friendship and love and reconciliation should be the
order of the day.
For me personally, this has been a
way of evaluating ideas from politics to religion. Does this promote harsh
power, or benevolence? Does it create chaos by disrupting people’s lives, or
does it enable them to thrive? Does it require suppression of truth and
reality, or does it flex as needed? Does it promote love, or does it feed fear
and hate?
Another facet that Booker looks at
is how many stories mirror family dramas of some sort or another.
A striking feature of the myths and folk tales of the world
is how often their central figure is an orphan.
Booker sees this as part of the
central plot: the child must become an adult. Rather than have a benevolent
parent, then, the child - or more often the young person on the cusp of
adulthood - will have to overcome negative versions of parents, who feel threatened
by youth, and do not want the protagonist to grow up. In a footnote, Booker
gives some interesting examples of this archetype.
Procleon is a typical example of that stock character who was
to become familiar in later Roman comedy as senex: the dried-up,
judgmental old man, opposed to the flow of life, who has continued to play the
role of the Dark Father or Tyrant through the history of storytelling. In fact,
senex characteristics are so well-defined that they constitute an
archetype, which can affect older women just as much as men, as in the fearsome
Granny-figure, constantly complaining about the younger generation and the
modern world, made famous over many decades by the British cartoonist Giles.
It is ironic, then, that Booker
spends much of the last part of the book being a senex, shaking his cane
at change, the flow of life, the younger generation, and the modern world.
(Also, good god my mom is this archetype….)
After examining these negative
characters, Booker looks at the positive ones. The wise old person, male or
female, is common in stories. Here is how the wise old man is described:
But the essence of the Wise Old Man is always the same: he is
a male figure who represents a state of complete maturity. He is someone who
has travelled the full road of personal inner development (he may not even be
particularly old, although he is certainly not young). In fact, although
outwardly a man, he represents the masculine and feminine in human nature in
perfect balance. He is strong, autonomous and authoritative. There is no doubt
about his masculinity. But he also, to a marked degree, embodies the inner
feminine qualities of protective feeling for others and intuitive
understanding, the ability to see whole.
The wise old woman is similar -
think Athena, who is no simpering female stereotype.
There are the others, of course -
Booker makes a little chart which I won’t repeat here, but I’m sure any avid
reader will recognize the types, both positive and negative.
One of the most fun parts of this
book are the sections where he goes through well-known stories in light of his
ideas. For example, there is a bit on Don Quixote, which is a book far
too few have read - it’s hilarious and also sharply witty.
The whole purpose of Cervantes’ tale is to show the
foolishness of a man who projects onto the outside world the struggle which
should be fought inside him.
I wonder how much of the evil we
see in the world comes down to this: people projecting their own demons onto
the outside world, and fighting other human beings (or wind turbines) rather
than addressing the issues inside.
This is why Tragedy can be so
powerful. All of us have our demons, our fatal flaws. They can be our undoing.
Aristotle recognized this - as did the greatest of the Greeks, which is why
their works still resonate today.
The essence of a tragic hero or
heroine, said Aristotle, is that they must not be shown as wholly good or bad,
but that they must be shown as being brought from ‘prosperity to misery’
through some ‘fatal flaw.’
Nobody would care about an evil
Hamlet, after all. We see ourselves in him.
I think Booker also nails it when
he describes what turns a hero into a tragic protagonist.
But what happens if a hero remains centered not in the Self
but on the ego? Firstly, his manly strength, instead of being turned inward to
give him control over himself and his appetites, is turned outward. It becomes
merely an egocentric desire to win power, to assert himself over others.
Secondly, his inner feminine, that which connects him to others, instead of
expressing itself in selfless, unbounded love, turns into the selfish,
exclusive love of passion or erotic desire.
I am hoping later this year to get
around to reading The Possessed by Dostoevsky. That book is briefly
discussed, and I found the idea about how a dark character corrupts all those
around him to be on point for our times.
Verkhovensky infects his little group of followers with his
revolutionary vision, so all their individual egos are merged and given a dark
energy by a negative inversion of the power of the Self. They imagine - or
Verkhovensky imagines for them - that by destroying all the existing corrupt
social order, they are going to bring Russia in some distant future back to a
glorious state of wholeness, even if this requires appalling bloodshed and the
deaths of millions along the way.
It would not be an exaggeration to
say that Dostoevsky foresaw Lenin and Stalin. But then again, every
apocalyptic revolutionary movement says the same thing. Just destroy “those
people” and usher in the new golden age. That is Trump’s promise, and what his
followers believe. But it doesn’t lead to glory, only to bloodshed and
destruction.
At the halfway point in the book,
I felt that Booker started to stretch things a bit to fit his own politics. In
trying to distinguish between the stories he prefers and the more modern ones,
he introduces the term “sentimentality” as an epithet to use for stories he
feels are somehow too emotional. I’m not sold on the distinction, although in
some of the specific stories he cites, the idea is plausible. Here is how he
puts it, so judge for yourself:
When we talk of ‘sentimentality,’ we mean the false version
of something real; the counterfeit of something which can inspire proper human
emotions. Sentimentality plays with our emotions. When we see a sentimental
film or hear a sentimental song, our heartstrings may be tugged. We may be
moved to tears. As Noel Coward said, ‘extraordinary how potent cheap music is’.
But we may also be aware that our emotional responses are only being outwardly
manipulated, in a way which does not correspond to any genuine personal
reality.
I don’t think the idea itself is
wrong. I also think he is correct that a lot of throw-away pop culture is of
this nature, giving a quick thrill, then being forgotten the next decade. It
has always been this way, though. I agree that shallower books are
shallow because of the lack of development of characters - and I have written
about that plenty on this blog.
Where we tend to part ways is in
which works we consider to be “sentimental.” I think Booker dismisses a lot of
worthy and thoughtful literature because it doesn’t fit his theory, and
“sentimentality” is his way of dismissing it.
One of the ways he expresses this
is in his chapter on Thomas Hardy. Yes, Hardy gets a whole chapter! For the
most part, the discussion is fascinating. The progression of Hardy’s writing is
quite a subject for analysis, as his novels go from fairly conventional and
optimistic(ish), to deeply despairing and bitter. For Booker, unfortunately, he
sees it as a loss of the classic story form, rather than a reflection of
Hardy’s own disillusionment with the ideals of his youth and his discovery of
the profound gap between the promises that conventionality makes and the
destruction it wreaks on those who lack privilege.
That said, I do think that Booker
has an insightful description of the gap in perception regarding Hardy.
When in the late 1960s a film version of Far From the
Madding Crowd (1967) launched Hardy’s stories back into vogue, one
explanation offered for this was that these colorful evocations of life in the
English countryside before it was disrupted by all the disintegrative pressures
of the modern world appealed to the late-twentieth century’s almost insatiable
appetite for nostalgia. But obviously the last thing that can be said about
Hardy’s books is that they convey any cosily nostalgic view of the past. On the
contrary, there are few stories so bleak in the English language: a sense of
gathering gloom and despair hangs over the sequence of novels like a
cloud.
After this chapter, Booker argues
that modern literature (or at least most of it) is all about the Ego, with the
Self nowhere to be seen. This, I think is incorrect, and the problem is that
Booker is unable to see what he isn’t looking for.
As the result, he is really
negative about authors like Beckett (marginally defensible) and Chekhov
(seriously?). I feel like Booker is either so caught up in his theory that he
is unable to understand the message of modern works, or he is so reactionary as
to wish every story had a moral improvement message and cosmic justice. Maybe
both?
Anyway, some of his points are
useful, such as this observation about Chekhov’s characters.
None of them ever look inwards, to know and change
themselves. There is no growth in Chekhov’s characters, except that of foolish
dreams and decay. No one even begins to embark on that voyage of internal
discovery which leads to transformation. We merely see weak, static figures,
creatures of circumstances, without self-knowledge, doomed to the eternal round
of youthful energy and optimism pinned on false, external goals, slowly souring
into non-comprehending exhaustion and futility.
Here we can see the problem,
right? Somehow, despite Booker’s opinion, Chekhov’s plays continue to resonate
for audiences. I personally find them to be profound commentaries on human
nature. For every potential hero who takes that voyage of internal discovery,
most of us know a dozen who spend their lives untransformed. Sure, the girls in
Three
Sisters could have gotten off their asses and gone to Moscow. (Yes,
that is literally in this book as an argument!) But that wasn’t the
point of Chekhov’s work. It isn’t inferior or less worthy just because it
rejects the template.
One of the chapters in this
section that I did find more thoughtful was the one on sex and violence. To be
clear here, there is plenty of sex and even more violence in the old
stories. What Booker talks about here is the use of sex and violence to get a
transgressive thrill. I agree with him that when you use sex or violence for
its effect, it does work like a drug needing ever-stronger doses for the same
effect.
I personally do not enjoy graphic
violence, one reason certain kinds of movies are not fun for me. Sex is a mixed
bag. I don’t find it as problematic, but I also think it should serve the
story, not the other way around. (Unless we are talking about the bad sex writing
awards. Those are just fun.)
Booker has a great point that
impersonal fantasy doesn’t mesh well with real human characters, and ordinary
life is insufficient to provide the drug hit.
The one state from which impersonal fantasy cannot derive
gratification is in imagining that state of humdrum ‘normality’ in which the
vast majority of the adult human race has always existed: a secure,
unquestioned, lasting marriage.
To be fair, writing a story about
a good marriage isn’t always the most interesting topic anyway. As Oscar Wilde
put it, it is “airing one’s clean laundry in public.” On the other hand, in
line with what Booker says, functional and happy relationships can indeed be
good in real life, and occasionally make it into great stories.
Perhaps here I will ignore
Booker’s subtle heteronormativity, and instead take the point that
transgression for titillation may give a momentary high, but the deeper
exploration of more functional human relationships brings more satisfaction in
the long run. (Hence why I love books that portray the complexity and nuance of
functional relationships.)
I mentioned that Booker looks at
stories from the Bible in a few contexts. I’ll eventually look at a Genesis
story, but I do want to mention that I think he completely botches the
story of Job. And for the same reason that most preachers do a terrible job of
it. To read Job as the story of a rebellious man who gets slapped down by the
Supreme Being is, in my view, a shallow misreading. Rather, the point is a
challenge to the idea that there is cosmic justice. Not only is Job denied
answers, but his friends (who assert that there is cosmic justice) get
the harsher rebuke from God than Job does - they have not spoken truth like Job
has. If you miss that part, then you miss the argument of the story
itself.
Booker’s analysis of totalitarian
systems (as expressed in Brave New World and 1984 and embodied in
Nazism and Communism) is far better. All authoritarian systems are more alike
than different - Nazism and Communism are kissing cousins. Booker understands
this truth, that they really aren’t about left or right politics, but about a
vision of total control.
One particular insight about
Communism that I loved was that Communism promised to be an integration of both
the masculine and feminine virtues, but that was really just a lie.
But this was no more than a colossal act of make-believe.
There was no genuine balance to Communism. Certainly it represented power and
organization, but only as expressions of collectivized egotism, to be imposed
on others. It had no life-giving feminine qualities at all. It was utterly
heartless and soulless. It represented the ‘dark masculine’ in the grip of the
‘dark feminine,’ the ego masquerading as the Self.
Look at any system, and see if
this is familiar. As with Communism, so with late-stage Capitalism, which has
eschewed the “feminine” virtues, rewarding only the dark masculinity of the
ego.
Likewise, all such systems contain
the seeds of their own destruction.
All over the Soviet empire, from Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov in
Russia to Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement in Poland, individuals would
see how the claims of that ruling consciousness represented by the Party did
not match up to the bleak, heartless, soulless reality based on lies they saw
all around them.
This is reason to hope that
eventually, the bleak, heartless, soulless nature of MAGA will eventually bring
it down as well.
Booker also explores the mystery
plot a bit, although he considers it inferior, mere fluff. As one who enjoys a
good mystery, I think that Booker may be missing the point a bit here. Sure,
there are plenty of fluff mysteries, which are the junk food of books. But the
better writers do a lot more than just set up plots to solve.
I did appreciate in this section
that he laid out the history of the mystery plot, starting with Hoffman, then
Poe (the first English language mystery) and Wilkie Collins.
There is a chapter on origin
stories, and the way that we humans explain who we are. This was really good.
Unlike the shallow misreading of Job, here Booker does a fantastic job. He runs
through a variety of creation myths, showing how they are similar and different
both from the Genesis story we Western Christians are familiar with and the
current knowledge of the origin of the universe. A number of myths came a lot
closer to the truth, interestingly.
The best part, though, is the
discussion of the story of The Fall. Pretty much every sermon I have heard
about this has been moralistic blither, carefully constructed to come to the
conclusion that blind, unquestioning obedience is good, questioning is always
bad.
This ignores crucial elements in
the story, particularly the name of the forbidden tree. Perhaps we call
it an apple to distract from that. Or just go with “forbidden fruit.”
But what the hell IS
“knowledge of good and evil”? And why is it bad?
Booker’s explanation is a lot
along the lines of how I have understood the story.
At some point in our evolution,
humans gained a unique form of consciousness of themselves and others. As a
result, we became moral creatures. The idea of good and evil makes no sense to
an animal acting on instinct. But with the dawn of the ego - understanding
ourselves as individuals - and the Self - our relationship to human society and
the universe - came moral responsibility.
This relationship between our
consciousness and our unconscious, instinctual self, became complicated. As did
our newfound understanding of the past and the future.
Although many other species can learn from experience, only
human beings can rise above the present moment altogether, to cast their mind’s
eye forward and back in time: to imagine events which have not yet happened or
to summon up memories of that which happened in the past.
This is not just another image for humanity breaking loose
from the confines of nature. It unleashes into the world a range of wholly new
troubles, from envy and lust to hatred and war. And all these are byproducts of
the emergence of the human ego. It is precisely this sense of having a separate
ego-centered existence which cuts human beings off from each other, potentially
setting them at odds with each other and with nature itself, to a degree which
marks them out from any other species. When Prometheus steals ‘fire’ from the
gods, what he is really stealing is that divine spark of consciousness which
distinguishes humanity from all those other forms of life which live in
unconscious thrall to instinct. Yet for all the new freedom this gives, there
is a terrible price to be paid, symbolized in the image of Prometheus stretched
out in agony on that Caucasian rock, having his liver eaten away every day by
the insatiable eagle. It is the state of perpetual nagging discontent which
must follow from that most crucial of all the new faculties that
ego-consciousness brings with it: the ability to imagine that things might be
different from what they are.
And this passage:
The history of mankind shows that he has formed societies,
propagated his kind, preserved the chain of life from generation to generation,
just like any other species. However, in human societies as in not other, an
element of instability has crept in. Human societies are not governed by an
unchanging framework of order. They are in perpetual flux. Men do not obtain
their food, build their dwellings, order their relationship with the rest of
nature according to strict unchanging patterns and laws. They have the power to
make choices.
This applies to more than just how
we find food and shelter.
The difference between men and animals thus lies not in our
physical instincts but in all the ways we order our relationship to the world
outside us. When it comes to forming social organizations, animals have no
choice. The way they relate to each other to promote their common purpose,
whether in an ant colony or a herd of elephants, must always follow the same
model. When human beings form communities, societies, tribes or nations, the
way these are structured becomes infinitely more flexible. Their social
groupings can take on a bewildering variety of forms, from a totalitarian
dictatorship to a local golf club.
We organize, but we also
disorganize.
But then there intrudes that other component in their psychic
makeup which is continually urging them away from this unity of purpose. It is
this which explains why, to a degree not remotely experienced by any other
animals, we see how human beings, individually and collectively, fall prey to
every kind of disitigrative impulse: greed, envy, lust, bad temper, hatred,
cruelty, violence, the breaking up of families, loneliness, depression,
insanity, crime, social injustice, political divisions, revolutions, wars; in
short, all those peculiarly human problems which, as the Greek myth had it,
were released into the world by the opening of Pandora’s ‘box.’
From this discussion, Booker talks
about the archetypes, and how they derive from the roles humans play in
families. The comment about the Dark Mother is particularly interesting to
me.
In this case, the ego has intervened, and her role has become
not to promote the child’s development but in some way to stifle it and hold it
back.
Yeah, that resonates more than a
little for me.
There is also a great footnote in
this chapter that I have to quote.
Hence the irony by which, when human beings behave
particularly badly and selfishly, they are likened to ‘animals.’ They are
described as behaving like ‘brutes’ (or more specifically like ‘pigs,’
‘monkeys,’ ‘asses,’ etc.) when it is precisely the peculiarly human rather than
animal part of them which lead them to behave in such an ‘inhuman’ (i.e. all
too human) fashion.
True that. It is in fact our own
internal darkness that is our greatest threat. Hell is empty, and all the
devils are here.
The essential message of storytelling all over the world is
that there are two centres to human nature: and that to become reunited with
the totality of life it is necessary to make the long and difficult transition
from one to the other. From our earliest years, the first point the unconscious
tries to make through stories is that the greatest danger to the human race is
its own capacity to think and act egocentrically. This is why those first
properly-formed stories which make sense to us as a child tend to show a little
hero or heroine, much like ourselves, venturing out into a mysterious outside
world, such as a great forest, where they encounter some terrifying dark
figure: a witch, a giant, a wolf or some other monster. The purpose of this is
to introduce the child to a personification of that dark power of egotism which
it must learn to recognize as its most deadly enemy.
Failure to make this growth leads
to tragedy. Which is what we see unfolding in real time around us as I write
this: immature, selfish people following a man-toddler obsessed with his own
ego and inspiring others to join his egocentricity.
For many people, of course, it is quite possible to go
through the second half of life without really embarking on this process at
all, so that they remain fundamentally immature and ego-centered, having not
really moved forward from where their development stopped in the first half of
life. Inwardly they are frozen in a kind of perpetual adolescence, hanging onto
the values of youth, as we see in the puer aeturnus, the ‘boy hero who
cannot grow up,’ who often then slips over into that other form of immaturity
we see in the archetype of the senex: that which characterizes those
unfulfilled older people who take out their disappointment in life in querulous
moralizing about the world and reminiscing how much better things were in
former times.
Now this one is a real
double-edged sword. Absolutely it applies to MAGA. And it very much applies to
my parents, who seem to have stopped developing sometime in their 30s, opting
for nostalgia and moralizing instead. But it also, ironically, applies to the
author, who becomes a senex of his own when it comes to modernity.
The final (if rather large)
section in the book tries to relate all of this to the real world, and it is
here that the ideas become a real mixed bag. There are some great insights, and
some real clunkers. This one, for example, is really good.
[A]s we see whenever people imagine they can escape in an
outward fashion from some way of life that has become like a prison to them.
They may imagine that, by bailing out from an unsatisfactory marriage or job
without properly understanding the reasons why their life has been
unsatisfactory, they can ‘make a new start,’ which will solve all their
difficulties. They may imagine that if they in some way ‘project a new image’
or elect a new government their fortunes may be miraculously transformed, simply
because they are changing the externals without identifying the true cause of
their problems. And nowhere does the power of this projection become
potentially more damaging and disillusioning than when the ego becomes
unconsciously possessed by the archetype of the Self, usually as the result of
being drawn into identification with the collective ego of some religious or
political group. The victims imagine they have gone through some profound
religious or political ‘conversion’ and for a while enjoy the Dream Stage of
viewing the world in a dramatically new way, convinced they have ‘seen the
light.’ But all this ‘ego-Self confusion’ has really brought them is an
inflation of the ego, without properly discovering their inner self at
all.
Hot. Damn. That is 100% my parents
and Bill Gothard. They were both going through significant mental health
struggles at a time when I was growing into adulthood. And they found a new
religion, a cult whose ego they could identify with. They saw everything new,
and it was great. Except it was really just self-indulgence at my
expense.
Oh, and wow the passage on how
dominant personalities take over groups and cause tremendous destruction seems
on point. It’s long, but worth quoting in significant part.
This is precisely the effect we can see in real life whenever
any social group or organization becomes dominated by one strongly egotistical
personality. We can see it in a family, a place of work, a village, street or
town, any form of community, even a whole nation. The power of such egotists to
dominate the lives of all those around them is enormous. They may do it in a
‘dark masculine’ way, by open bullying and aggression, in a ‘dark feminine’
way, by devious scheming and plotting, or by a combination of both. They may be
aided by a group of accomplices or toadies around them, who act like extensions
of their ego. But the effect of their behavior is exactly as we see it
reflected in so many comedies. It casts a malign spell on everyone in its
shadow. It makes other people uneasy, miserable, fearful. It makes it hard for
them to act to their full potential. And it wastes their time. Whenever we come
across people who represent an extreme case of egotism, one of its most
noticeable consequences is the strain this imposes on other people’s time and
energy, as they try to meet the egoists’ demands or to operate around them, to
an extent of which the egotists themselves are blithely unaware.
Yeah, I have experienced this at
the family level, and now the whole country gets it at the national level. The
more technical term for people like this isn’t “egotist” but Narcissistic
Personality Disorder, and it is tremendously destructive wherever narcissists
gain power. It spreads misery everywhere.
This is of course because, in being taken in by their own
self-image, such egotists are largely unconscious. By definition they are
blind. And one of the things to which they are particularly blind, as we have
noted, is what other people say and think about them behind their back. They
live in a little bubble of self-esteem, either imagining that others take them
at their face value or heedless of what these others think anyway, because such
people are ‘below the line.’ The views and feelings of these others are
therefore of no account. Unconsciously, the egotist sees the world around him
in exactly the terms in which we see it presented in a Comedy. He himself (or
she) is ‘above the line’ and therefore, to those whom he sees as similarly
above the line, he can be polite, humorous, generous, even deferential. But
everyone else, ‘below the line,’ can be disregarded, bullied, exploited or
treated with contempt. And it is they, his victims, who see most clearly just
what a blindly self-centered and immature human being they are having to cope
with.
All too true. Note how Trump acts
around Putin versus how he treats women. This holds true at the family scale
too - note the difference in how the narcissist treats those he/she sees as
peers, versus subordinates.
The lesson here, I think, is that
we as humans need to do better at dealing with narcissists. We should never
give them power.
The chapter on stories and
religion was pretty fascinating. One thing I like is that Booker, unlike the
Fundies I grew up with, understands most religious stories as metaphors about
the psyche, not literal history. Hence why the old Greek myths are still such
meaningful stories. No, I don’t worship Athena: but I admire what she
personifies.
And it is here we see that the true purpose of these
supernatural beings is to personify all those dynamic forces in the psyche
which govern human emotions and behavior.
This comes to a solid point when
Booker discusses Christ. And again, even though he is not religious, he gets
the point about Christ’s example and teaching so much better than Evangelicals
do. In speaking of the kingdom that is not of this world, he says:
What was revolutionary about this message was that it was
directed so precisely to that central problem of human psychology at which,
because it is also the central problem addressed by storytelling, we have been
looking at all through this book. He was not concerned with his hearers’
outward status, or to which race or social grouping they belonged. He was
addressing each as an individual, on that inner level where all human beings
start off on completely equal terms (exactly as we see them portrayed in stories).
On this level, the only question which matters, whether someone is ruler of the
Roman empire or a humble fisherman, is what sort of person they are. How do
they measure up inwardly to the challenge of what it is to be human? Are they
centered on the ego or the Self? Are they weak, self-centered, heartless,
greedy, vain, proud, cruel, treacherous, mean-spirited, lustful, bad-tempered,
vengeful, intolerant, narrow-minded, humorless, lazy, irresponsible, and
ultimately immature? Or are they centered on that deeper ego-transcending level
of the personality which can make them strong, selfless, loving, generous,
modest, self-effacing, compassionate, loyal, understanding, good-humoured,
self-disciplined, even-tempered, merciful, tolerant, hard-working, responsible
and ultimately mature?
Certainly food for thought. It is
fascinating that many of those who challenged Christ came from the perspective
of social hierarchies, and wanted to know who they could disregard. And Christ
kept returning to the heart, the inner level of the man. What kind of person
were you? That was the question - and still is. By their fruit…
The discussion of Divine Comedy
was quite interesting. I have only read the first
third, but would like to read the rest. One thing I had forgotten is that
Usurers - those who preyed on others through moneylending - were far lower in
hell than the mere adulterers. In absolute contrast to the religious people of
today, who celebrate and worship those whose wealth has come on the backs of
the poor, while reserving their only true condemnation for those who have sex
they don’t approve of.
This chapter also quotes Troilus
and Cressida - one of the few Shakespeare plays I haven’t yet seen live.
The Utah
Shakespeare Festival plans to do it next year, though, so maybe… Anyway,
there is a good quote here:
Every thing includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite,
And appetite, an universal wolf
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself.
The last chapter, entitled The Age
of Loki, contained more passages that made me want to throw the book than any
other. And yet, there is a lot worthwhile in there too. His central premise
that the destructive technology of the 20th Century resembles the children of
Loki is excellent. And I can see the analogy to the nihilism of much of our
politics.
There are several points on which
I strongly disagree, however. These are rooted in what I believe is a serious
historical blindness that Booker shares with right wingers in general. This
stems from taking a white male viewpoint - or perhaps even more to the point,
an upper or upper-middle class viewpoint.
Thus, Booker sees feminism as
something new and dangerous, an abdication of feminine virtues by women. What
he fails to see is that, in addition to severing most humans from the land and
the means of production, the Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions also
severed women from the economic life of society. Instead of owning industries
like brewing and textiles, or being equally important to farming, they were
relegated to unpaid domestic labor and grossly underpaid care labor. Feminism
was a reaction to that change, not some new-fangled invention where women
suddenly forgot their place.
Likewise, seeing social programs
as merely “feminine” is historically ignorant. For much of human history,
society has cared for its vulnerable members in various ways. What Booker
should have noted was that Capitalism (and the industrialism that came with it)
rewarded only the masculine - indeed, the dark masculine traits - giving its
greatest benefits to those ruled by the ego.
Society had to find ways of
counteracting that, and big government became an
important counterweight to big capitalism.
So no, Mr. Booker, the problem
isn’t that we stopped telling the “right” stories. The problem is that our
institutions have changed, and our stories have had to change as well. Look
closely, and the same themes are still there - particularly the battle between
the ego and the Self. They are just told differently, with less individual
choice and more of a look at society. They are realistic that cosmic justice
doesn’t exist, and that change can’t occur merely in the individual, as
important as that is.
All this said, there are some
excellent insights even in this chapter with its cane shaking. While Booker
mentions communism in this one, the point holds well for MAGA and religious
cults too.
Every group fantasy - such as Communism - depends on three
factors. The first is the particular dream or collective act of make-believe
which binds its followers together. The second is its need for ‘dream heroes’
who are inflated to superhuman stature because they embody and act as
projections of the fantasy. The third, playing a crucial role in reinforcing
the sense of collective identity of those caught up in the fantasy…is the need
for ‘enemies’ and ‘hate-figures’: those outside the fantasy against whom they
can work up feelings of aggression. Caricaturing the ‘enemies’ as darkly and
negatively as possible plays a key part in helping those within the fantasy to
see their own role in a heroic, idealized light.
You can definitely see MAGA here,
right? The enemies to be hated, the senile old man elevated to hero, and the
collective fantasy that America was great before all these brown people ruined
it. Or in fundamentalist religion that sees the infidels as the source of
evil.
There is another passage where
Booker gets so close to the truth, before missing it. He notes that the
scientific age has led to an overemphasis on “masculine” values. This is true.
He also notes that we are missing the sense of belonging and other of the
“feminine” virtues. His mistake is to blame women for this, rather than
looking in the mirror, and seeing how toxic masculinity, capitalistic greed,
and the worship of power - in other words, the ego - are the problem. Far more
women fulfil Booker’s idea of “completeness and maturity” by combining the
masculine and feminine than men do. Far too many men are little toddlers,
refusing to grow up and embrace the feminine virtues as well, to become whole
and mature.
I think I will end with a brief
mention of Israel and Palestine, which Booker addresses in a footnote. To a
large degree, he blames war on ego - which is true. In the case of Israel and
Palestine, he notes the displacement and the complexities of how that came to
be. He then argues that the big mistake when Israel was founded was to deny
Palestinians full participation in democracy and society. It then became a
battle of egos, with each side retrenching into self-protection and seeing the
other as an opposite. What should have happened was what has happened time and
again during times of migration: the groups should have intermixed and become
something entirely different.
You can see this in white America
- can you even tell which European country most of us came from? We are so
intermixed that people like me are just generic “white.” Here in California,
this is becoming the case across skin colors - interracial marriage is the
norm, not a rare exception.
It is only because of ego and
exploitation that we haven’t melded more. Without our history of enslavement
and genocide and exploitation, “Americans” would be a unified group, not
warring factions.
I realize this is, again, an
oversimplification of all these scenarios. But I think Booker is correct that
assimilation has happened throughout human history, and, absent strong efforts
to keep people apart, they will tend naturally to mix and become a new group.
(See The
Color of Law for so many examples of how black and white have been
separated here in America by the force of law and violence.)
Well, those are my thoughts on
this book. I could have written far more because there is so much there. Yes,
it has its flaws, and it is disappointing that Booker himself became what he
warned against: the old man unwilling and unable to accept cultural change and
learn from it. But overall, there are a lot of insights into stories, people,
and society.
