Wednesday, January 1, 2014
In a preface to his late novel The Place of Dead Roads, William Burroughs writes that "The only thing that could unite the planet is a united space program ... the earth becomes a space station and war is simply out, irrelevant, flatly insane in a context of research centers, spaceports, and the exhilaration of working with people you like and respect toward an agreed-upon objective, an objective from which all workers will gain. Happiness is a by-product of function. The planetary space station will give all participants an opportunity to function."
Later in the novel, the protagonist Kim Carsons speculates that space travel will necessitate "basic biologic alterations" of the human organism: "Kim knows that the first step toward space exploration is to examine the human artifact with biologic alterations in mind that will render our H.A. more suitable for space conditions and space travel ... We are like water creatures looking up at the land and air and wondering how we can survive in that alien medium." Science fiction writers always fail somehow to consider this basic problem of space travel, that the human being as designed is unfit for space travel: "Kim reads all the science fiction he can find, and he is stunned to discover in all these writings the underlying assumption that there will be no basic changes involved in space travel."
I learned a lot from The Place of Dead Roads and the other two books (Cities of the Red Night and The Western Lands) in the loose trilogy Burroughs published in the eighties, despite (or because of) their rambling, sprawling, incoherence; boundless profanity; and questionable authorship (which I learned about much later). Like many of my other teachers, Burroughs was and remains deeply problematic, but I can accept that. I won't reject my old mentors and tutors from high school, college and grad school because they turned out to be all-too-human; why should I throw out Burroughs for being the flawed, messy, and often thoroughly objectionable human being he was? His books (including also Naked Lunch, Junky and Queer--the latter of which is probably his most conventional and effective novel) changed the way I thought of the world and my place in it. That fact isn't changed by any of the troubling (and undisputed) facts concerning the author and his work.
One of the many things I learned from Burroughs is that we are truly on our own, and hopelessly earthbound. We like to dream of leaving this planet and colonizing other worlds, but I don't expect it to happen within my lifetime, for the simple reason that it is too hard, too expensive, and requires too much international cooperation. Imagine if NASA were to combine its efforts with those of the Russians, the Chinese, and the Europeans in a common Mars colonization project. It would be easier then to believe that human beings would one day settle Mars, but as it is, the only organization seriously discussing such a project is a private consortium that is actively looking for investors (and colonists). The Chinese space program is currently focused on landing a man on the moon. The Russian Soyuz has become the sole means to visit or leave the International Space Station (I have no idea what else the Russians have been up to lately). NASA has become, despite funding cuts, very adept at sending robots to Mars and beyond. Unless these parties (and others) can agree to common goals and pool their efforts, human exploration of space is probably dead for the time being at least.
Burroughs also prepared me to accept some of the eccentricities of Romantic writing, which I encountered much later. Reading Burroughs taught me to be flexible and open-minded, to simply go with what might appear to be pointless diversions or unfounded observations, flights of fancy, digressions that seem to lead nowhere, sudden breaks in a narrative, abrupt changes of location or style. The earthbound quality of his work also made me suspicious of Romanticism's recurring desire to escape boundaries or restrictions of all sorts.
I've been thinking about these issues a lot lately as I prepare to begin my sabbatical project, on musical improvisation in the work of E.T.A. Hoffmann and other Romantic authors. My basic premise is this: Hoffmann tends to speak out of both sides of his mouth when discussing music, not to mention a lot of other things. He always wants it both ways. As a fiction writer and music critic, he seems to give in to Romantic fantasies of freedom and boundless possibility; as a lawyer/judge and correspondent, he's a dogged realist and even a bit of a cynic (this trait is in his fiction too, but it's not as obvious there). I'll update my thoughts on this conflict as I proceed, but for now I'm laying down the first of several markers as I begin work on what I hope will result in at least two articles and perhaps a book.
I'll also post random comments on my reading and on other things, but the basic purpose of this blog is to keep myself honest and to elicit feedback. So give it to me if you've got it.
--Cagle
Later in the novel, the protagonist Kim Carsons speculates that space travel will necessitate "basic biologic alterations" of the human organism: "Kim knows that the first step toward space exploration is to examine the human artifact with biologic alterations in mind that will render our H.A. more suitable for space conditions and space travel ... We are like water creatures looking up at the land and air and wondering how we can survive in that alien medium." Science fiction writers always fail somehow to consider this basic problem of space travel, that the human being as designed is unfit for space travel: "Kim reads all the science fiction he can find, and he is stunned to discover in all these writings the underlying assumption that there will be no basic changes involved in space travel."
I learned a lot from The Place of Dead Roads and the other two books (Cities of the Red Night and The Western Lands) in the loose trilogy Burroughs published in the eighties, despite (or because of) their rambling, sprawling, incoherence; boundless profanity; and questionable authorship (which I learned about much later). Like many of my other teachers, Burroughs was and remains deeply problematic, but I can accept that. I won't reject my old mentors and tutors from high school, college and grad school because they turned out to be all-too-human; why should I throw out Burroughs for being the flawed, messy, and often thoroughly objectionable human being he was? His books (including also Naked Lunch, Junky and Queer--the latter of which is probably his most conventional and effective novel) changed the way I thought of the world and my place in it. That fact isn't changed by any of the troubling (and undisputed) facts concerning the author and his work.
One of the many things I learned from Burroughs is that we are truly on our own, and hopelessly earthbound. We like to dream of leaving this planet and colonizing other worlds, but I don't expect it to happen within my lifetime, for the simple reason that it is too hard, too expensive, and requires too much international cooperation. Imagine if NASA were to combine its efforts with those of the Russians, the Chinese, and the Europeans in a common Mars colonization project. It would be easier then to believe that human beings would one day settle Mars, but as it is, the only organization seriously discussing such a project is a private consortium that is actively looking for investors (and colonists). The Chinese space program is currently focused on landing a man on the moon. The Russian Soyuz has become the sole means to visit or leave the International Space Station (I have no idea what else the Russians have been up to lately). NASA has become, despite funding cuts, very adept at sending robots to Mars and beyond. Unless these parties (and others) can agree to common goals and pool their efforts, human exploration of space is probably dead for the time being at least.
Burroughs also prepared me to accept some of the eccentricities of Romantic writing, which I encountered much later. Reading Burroughs taught me to be flexible and open-minded, to simply go with what might appear to be pointless diversions or unfounded observations, flights of fancy, digressions that seem to lead nowhere, sudden breaks in a narrative, abrupt changes of location or style. The earthbound quality of his work also made me suspicious of Romanticism's recurring desire to escape boundaries or restrictions of all sorts.
I've been thinking about these issues a lot lately as I prepare to begin my sabbatical project, on musical improvisation in the work of E.T.A. Hoffmann and other Romantic authors. My basic premise is this: Hoffmann tends to speak out of both sides of his mouth when discussing music, not to mention a lot of other things. He always wants it both ways. As a fiction writer and music critic, he seems to give in to Romantic fantasies of freedom and boundless possibility; as a lawyer/judge and correspondent, he's a dogged realist and even a bit of a cynic (this trait is in his fiction too, but it's not as obvious there). I'll update my thoughts on this conflict as I proceed, but for now I'm laying down the first of several markers as I begin work on what I hope will result in at least two articles and perhaps a book.
I'll also post random comments on my reading and on other things, but the basic purpose of this blog is to keep myself honest and to elicit feedback. So give it to me if you've got it.
--Cagle
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