Final Paper

Gnosis of the Literary Snob

I have arrived at an understanding of the literary elite. They are, as they initially seem, snobbish. But this is not to be held against them, for their only vice is that of inquisition. And an addiction to language, to the exploration of texts, to finding the patterns of recurring themes is the conduit. How is one to immerse themselves in such an overwhelming occupation, and not adopt a potentially demeaning air in the process? They are the true victims, those who are aware of the illusions and mechanics, have been exposed to the limitless cycles of myth. They have been trapped by the matrix of language and are resented for their convoluted, elevated thinking. Would I consider myself one? I am young in my questioning, and would not wish to be so presumptuous. Nonetheless, I feel myself engaged along the same eternal path.

I feel it is necessary, though, to back up a bit. To start at an earlier time, when the status of literary elitist would nary apply. Back when I still thought of nonfiction and mystery novels as highbrow. I was content then in my ignorance. A literature lover no doubt, but believing books were something to study, not something to live by. I was confident in my grasp on reality, reserving thoughts concerning the purpose of human existence, timelessness, and the divine, for the bitter, unsatisfied scholar. For how could such musings, while interesting in there own right, produce any tangible meaning? I dismissed it as wishy-washy time wasting, convincing myself I knew what mattered. It took opening the book that contained everything, followed by a book that contained nothing, to realize I had no clue.

After such a revelation, what does one do? The first impulse is to look around the room, and feel immediately allayed that you are not the only one experiencing this. The grimacing, bemused faces of your fellow students say it all. You want to dismiss it, pretend like you never heard of this nonsense called highbrow literature. But it is already too late, Professor Sexson has launched into a seemingly irrelevant yet wholly captivating recount of a tarantula, and if you left know you’d know what you were missing.

The revelation itself is not a wholly uncomfortable one though; it is allied by a sense of familiarity. It’s as if I always knew something greater, something underlying, existed, but denied simply its contemplation. But I no longer am denying it. It. Whatever “it” is. That which seats itself in our darkest depths, that exists to the core and origin of our being. That “it” of which not enough questions can be asked, yet to which questions can hardly be formed. I struggle even to name it here, for whatever that “feeling” is, it is nothing. And it is everything. And most pertinently, it is coaxed out of our ignorance through the themes and language of our class.

And now that it is here, at the forefront of my mind, what better have I to do than examine it? I feel wary, anxious—often the feelings of those embarking on an endless journey. But once you’ve gotten a taste, there is no turning back. Is there somewhere that I start? I feel as if I know nothing of myself. Nothing of my past or my present, certainly not my future. Endless questions are ringing and convulsing, they are the conduits of my confusion. I need to be emptied.

“In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance,
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at where you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.” East Coker

So I look to Beckett. I have no choice but to rely upon that which lead me thus into this state.

I have been enthralled by this text throughout the semester, in several stages. Before even opening it, I reveled in carrying around a real highbrow text, even though I was clueless to its contents. I was then frustrated, yet intrigued by this author and his characters and the seeming pointlessness of it all. Shortly after, my affection grew and I came to love this book that made me laugh through the most lewd and subtle of circumstances. And I find myself now at a stage of appreciation, for the trilogy’s profound messages and peculiar guidance.

Beckett’s text contains invaluable notions of what it means to “be”. When you empty something out, I figure you slowly extract the excess, the things in which you do not find yourself. I will cite Molloy’s bicycle for this example. His bicycle, we shall not call it a bike, was green and had a little red horn. We prescribe an importance to this bicycle, for Molloy says “if I were obliged to record, in a roll of honour, those activities which in the course of my interminable existence have given me only a mild pain in the balls, the blowing of a rubber horn—toot!—would figure among the first” (Beckett 16). But then what happens to this beloved bicycle? “I left her my bicycle, which I had taken a dislike to.” He shed it. His transfixion transforms to disdain. It becomes so unimportant as to flirt with an ascription of revulsion.

It is slowly discarded along with any notion of plot, time, identity, and the bodily. As the decrepitude of the character advances in the trilogy, so it is mirrored in the writing. Beckett unmasks the storyteller, revealing the mechanisms of fiction and myth. In the first book we are given a quirky character, crutches, some sucking stones, and the premise of a trip to mother’s house. Which is quite the generous sum compared to the poking stick and exercise book we are allowed in the second, and the nothing, save for a bodiless voice, in the third. Beckett rids us of any need for trivialities or order. All that remains is the text, which speaks for itself, and requires no intermediary.

I have no choice, then, but to identify with what the book has left: an impending death, a clarification of thoughts in a most unintelligible, tedious form, and ultimately purification. But it does not end there, nor does my meditation end with the words “I’ll go on”. No. I am renewed. Rather, my thoughts begin with “I’ll go on”. I delve into the darkness with no thoughts of reappearing in the light. There is no looking forward like that. There can only be now. I immerse myself in the darkness to satisfy the urge, the inkling, that ‘feeling’…that there is something more, or perhaps nothing more. And if the latter is the case, I will go into the dark anyway, for the end cannot come soon enough.

And I am not yet empty, but I feel that I am getting there. Still the only way I can see to proceed, is to presume that I know nothing. I must go by a way of ignorance, in order to arrive at what I do not know. In such conditions, there is no other way. If the world around me is all myth and illusion, whom would I be in presuming to know a reality? I am cultivating the curse of the literary snob. I am certain of nothing. But that is the key. To be assured that you assuredly know nothing. Those who appear to know everything, do so by not knowing, by never ceasing to explore the questions. That is how they continue on the cyclical rollercoaster, confidence followed by complete insecurity. And that is why they might appear snobbish, for their toils never end. They have engaged themselves in an occupation that only grows more mystifying, the greater the immersion. It is a burdensome, yet necessary task, and difficult to conceive unless you too have drank the kool-aid.

“We have to think of them as forever bailing,
Setting and hauling, while the North East lowers
Over shallow banks unchanging and erosionless.” The Dry Salvages.

I am committed to learning something out of this nonsense. And when I do, I have figured it will be out of self-reflection. After all, that is how the journey began, and should rightly continue. And I have come to the realization that I will never know these themes, but recognize them through self-contemplation. I shall cling to them, though I can hardly conceive of their value beyond my own detection. They are the beacons and I am forever swimming towards them. I am engaged. I am bemused. I am grateful to have taken a real first step towards the elucidation of my existence.

I am shifting all of this around. My mind is the greatcoat, and they are my stones. I suck, one, turn and turn about. And once I am done sucking, I take the stone out of my mouth and replace it with another from my pocket, while pocketing the first stone in another location as to draw upon it again when the urge to suck takes hold. But after a succession of sucking and replacing, what is to say that I had not been sucking the same few stones all along? They are only stones, after all, and what difference should it make if I had happened to suck the same one?

Yet I concern myself. Though I know none of this matters. And perhaps it is not the stones themselves with which I should concern myself, but my pockets. Is it not they which hinder a flawless rotation of the stones? I think if there existed more, my distress concerning the equality of sucking time would be appeased. I could suck confidently, and revel in the brilliance of order. But where does order lead? For if I miraculously achieved this multiplication of receptacles, I would undoubtedly meet with the urge to acquire more stones. My voracity may never end. And certainly the other tragedy remaining, would be that of my happiness. For there is not such a thing. And in every stone having a pocket, therefore any concern of mine being alleviated, I could have nothing further to do than face that disillusionment.

But this is all so pointless. They exist, numbered as they are. I can assemble a solution, though surely it will not ascend to its potential. What is the point of even sucking the stones? I continue to ask, but in vain. I am helplessly consumed with my desire to turn them about.

Perhaps someday my pockets will fill themselves with some other objects, and a new compulsiveness will take hold. But for now they are stones. And I am content to suck with abandon. I will resolve to have no concerns of an order, an end, or a beginning. For they will be here long after I, and all will go on.