The Self and its Sources Revisited

For those who have availed themselves of the Self and its Sources audio materials posted on this blog, the June 2014 edition of The Atlantic has an interesting essay by William Deresiewicz entitled "How the Novel made the Modern World". This piece reviews two recent scholarly books on the novel. Considering that Gil Bailie's 'reflections on the art of the novel' were done over 20 years ago it is intriguing to read echoes of his analysis in this essay.

It also includes this humorous critique of academic prose:

Buell (the author of one of the books under consideration), whose careful terror seems to be the possibility of saying something politically incorrect—the book does so much posturing, you think it’s going to throw its back out—appears to have absorbed every piety in the contemporary critical hymnal. You can see him fairly bowing to them in his introduction, as if by way of ritual preparation. There they are, propitiated one by one—Ethnicity, Globalism, Anti-Canonicity, Anti-Essentialism—like idols in the corners of a temple.

From the Archives: Part 50 of The Self and its Sources

A short overview of Virginia Woolf’s life and the Bloomsbury group. Her novel, the Waves, provides an insight into the social and psychological drama of the modern world. It is based on the experience largely that she had while at the center of this literary circle called the Bloomsbury group.

From the Archives: Part 49 of The Self and its Sources

Among the symptoms of the demise of systems of sacred transcendence: failure to comprehend the modern crisis, failure to appreciate the Biblical role in the cause and cure for this crisis.
René Girard discovered this process by reading novels.

From the Archives: Part 45 of The Self and its Sources

There is a mystery about identity that goes to the heart of personality itself.

Personality is not possible without faith

– Paul Tillich

The only true self is the converted self

– Renè Girard

From the Archives: Part 44 of The Self and its Sources

Continuation of a contemporary example of the novel as autopsy: Avant-garde and madness

“When I came to know her better, I thought of her as a new disease…”

From the Archives: Part 43 of The Self and its Sources

A contemporary example of the novel as autopsy: Avant-garde and madness

From the Archives: Part 42 of The Self and its Sources

The imperative of the novel is autopsy....it is documenting a slow death.

From the Archives: Part 41 of The Self and its Sources

The novel has run out of subjects…it has lost its subjectivity.

From the Archives: Part 40 of The Self and its Sources

The novel is a chronicle of the collapse of transcendence in the modern world and the rise of internal mediation.
Ortega y Gasset:

“When we are fascinated by a novel it is not because we a curious to know what happened to Mr. So-and –So. The subject of any novel can be told in a few words and in this form holds no interest. We want the novelist to linger and to grant us good long looks at his personages, their being and their environment until we have had our fill. The interest in the outer mechanisms of the plot is today reduced to a minimum. All the better. The novel must now revolve around the superior interest emanating from the inner mechanism of the personages.”

From the Archives: Part 34 of The Self and its Sources

Kingship participated in the distinction between the sacred and the profane. The old sacred system is compromised by the effects of the Gospel. The novel as an early symptom of modernity reflects these effects.

From the Archives: Part 20 of The Self and its Sources

The world that shaped the novel is dying and the novel is dying with it.

Pascal:

“We are not satisfied with the life we have in our selves and in our being; we want to live an imaginary life in the eyes of others. “ So, we try to make an ‘impression’.

From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 1

This excerpt begins a series of presentations Gil Bailie made in 1994 under the title "The Self and its Sources - Reflections on the art of the novel". The original series of recordings was made on six 90 minute cassette tapes.

The decline of religion made it necessary to invent the steam engine

from The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams

We didn’t stop burning witches because we had invented science, we invented science because we stopped burning witches.

from Things Hidden from the Foundation of the World by Rene Girard