Gibt es heute nicht viele zu schreiben. Ich bin krank. Alles das Ich wünche zu tun ist Tee zu trinken und Doktor Who zu bewachen.

-7:15 pm-
(the expanded English version)

The world shrinks into a snowglobe miniature when you've got a cold. Future events, previously weighing constantly on the mind, become meaningless -- nothing exists but the here and now, and even that closes in on itself. The senses are dulled, probably from the generous lining of mucous in the head. The body enters a state of suspended animation. Suddenly, the philosophical yearnings of yesterday, the higher impulses and the uplifting emotions are all swallowed up in the more immediate need of fuzzy PJs and something (possibly entertaining, but anything that changes position will do) playing on the TV screen. Doctor Who is good.

Note to self

When having an asthma attack, it is probably not a good idea to eat something with a name like "atomic fireball".

Wheeze.

Observation: when somebody wants you to vote for them, hire them, view them as having lots of character, or whatever, they frequently talk about how they are "self-made" or had a hard life that forced them to grow up strong. They present this as a qualifying feature.

And yet (particularly in the presidential elections), they then turn around and tell you that you that they want to prevent you from having that experience. They want to obliterate any and all hardships in your life.

Why? If pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps makes you such a good person, why are they so devoted to the cause of making sure nobody ever has to do anything hard in their lives?

I just wonder at the inconsistency. They just don't seem to understand suffering. (I mean, who does? But they seem even more confused than normal.)

the storyteller's power... and helplessness

It's a bit creepy to me how much control an author can exert over his readers. Once you get into the clutches of a skilled writer, it's like a roller coaster -- you hopped on at the entrance because the colors were so bright and attractive, and now you have no idea where you're going to end up or what loops you'll run. He can twist your being inside and out if he likes -- he simply has to make you fall in love with his world and the characters in it, and then let it all go to Hell. Your soul screams at the loss.

Well, mine does, anyhow. I love immersing myself in stories. In fact, being able to completely distance myself from reality is my one true accomplishment. (I wish I could somehow put this singular talent to use, but it's not very practical. All it's really done so far is make me try harder not to use it.) Which is why I feel so violated when I read a book that's wrong. Not badly written -- I can't establish a connection with the world of a badly written book -- but just wrong. The characters don't do what they ought to, and there's no point to their failure. They just fail and you're supposed to accept it. Or something unreasonably stupid and awful happens, and the point of the book ends up being "Thought everything was beautiful, huh? Well, this is real life. Beautiful things die all the time, arbitrarily. There is no reason and no comfort."

And I don't believe that. That's not true. I know that lots of people are not heroes. Lots of people are worse than heroes. Lots of people are flawed and broken and incomplete. But there's a BIG difference between, say, Brideshead Revisited (which is all about how God works through flawed instruments, how we, with all our imperfections, are part of something greater than ourselves) and a story that introduces a profound trial, a time for heroes to step forward, then shows how all the characters were selfish and stupid and seems to conclude that this is OK because they are human. And expects you to feel uplifted by it.

There's a kind of funny occasion, however, of an author who tried to create just the latter insipid story. His story had a real hero in it, and he admired the hero, and was inspired to write the story because of the hero -- but he thought that his readers would be attracted to the normal, self-interested, double-crossing, stick-his-neck-out-for-nobody character, because he was "like us". He thought that he had a certain charm and streetwise commonness that we would look upon indulgently because that's how we all are inside. Fortunately for him, poetry is a matter of inspiration, and not craft. He didn't realize the genius of what he was doing because it wasn't his own genius. If he'd been on his own, he could never have written A Man For All Seasons.

That's right. Robert Bolt thought that the Common Man was a cozy, sympathetic character, because he was "human". He thought he could get away without committing himself to one side or the other, and just admiring certain traits of St. Thomas More, but what he ended up doing (by accident, I think), was highlighting with even more striking clarity the heroism of the saint. Even the title of the play is multilayered. It is fairly clear what Bolt meant it to be, from the quotation at the beginning of the book:

"More is a man of an angel's wit and singular learning. I know not his fellow. For where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness and affability? And, as time requireth, a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes, and sometime of as sad gravity. A man for all seasons." (Robert Whittington)

This portrays him as changeable, yielding, affable -- "all things to all men", as St. Paul says. Not a flatterer, but a man who understands that for everything there is a season. Bolt's main point of interest with More is that he spent his whole life yielding to others, but one day, the king asked too much of him -- asked of him something that to give would be to give up himself, and he became as fixed as a star. That immobility is what I think of when I read the title. Instead of reading it as "a man who fits in with any surroundings", I read it as "throughout all seasons, still a man". In fact, before I read the play I never knew there even was another meaning. I still think it is the most striking of the two.

The Common Man is in direct counterpoint to this idea. He is a different man for every season, depending which way the wind blows. The way he changes his hat at every scene is a hint to this -- although, realistically speaking, the same man could not be butler, boatman and bartender all at once, still I think it is permissible and perhaps even intended for us to take his character as being continuous, though the roles he plays in each scene differ widely. He hardly drops his aside conversation with the audience throughout the whole play. But he has no identity. There is no part of his self, his allegiance, that cannot be another man's if the pay is good. He pretends -- or perhaps Bolt intended him to seem -- to be the one really informed person, the smart guy, the commentator, but in reality he is an outsider, a lack-luster, unreal person. More, smoked out of his quiet life like a badger from his den, is a hero because he sees no way out. His conscience carries him there, for to step off the track would be to lose his very soul. The Common Man makes one limp attempt to avoid being on the jury at the rigged trial, but admits almost at once (if reluctantly) that "the hat fits".

One of my favorite parts of the play is when the jailer refuses to grant More any time longer to say goodbye to his family. "You've got to understand, sir -- I'm just a plain, simple man," he pleads, and leads the Mores away. Thomas, overcome, bursts out passionately, "Sweet Jesus! these plain, simple men!" You can feel his desperate jealousy and contempt for the men who are free from the constraints of conscience, who are able to give up their principles so easily.

In the end, the Common Man is completely insignificant in the light of something much more great and wonderful. He's lost his control of the audience. Thomas More is martyred with an awesome finality. His act is complete. The play is complete. And yet, the Common Man (or maybe Robert Bolt?) tries to have the final word, tries to slip in a snarky epilogue. I've heard some interpret his line "If we should bump into one another, recognize me" as a warning about the power of the masses, but this doesn't compel me because the Common Man has been at best a tool, and never an agent of the schemes afoot. For me, his lines fall flat. He may have started out as a semi-sympathetic character, but by the end of the play the adjective "common" has ceased to have any connection with -- as Bolt intended -- the phrase "most often found" and has really come to mean "base". To me, he sounds as if he's trying to reestablish himself, but even he is a bit unnerved by the influence of something greater than himself. He's lost a bit of his complacency. He blames Thomas for what has happened ("If you must make trouble, make the sort of trouble that's expected"), but I think he's really trying to get his self-assurance back. (That's how I'd direct him, anyway.)

The Common Man is very human. He represents the underbelly of humanity, the stuff we're ashamed of and are trying to work off. Thomas More represents the good in the soul, the part that clings to the Lord. Because that is our true self.

How is this related to the original theme of my post? Well, mostly it's here because I felt so violated by that other book I read that I needed to think about something uplifting. But also, as my family will tell you, I just like to talk about A Man For All Seasons any chance I can get.