Monday, December 14, 2009
Monday, November 30, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Some last thoughts on Sampson
One comment that Hugh made late struck me: that the secret of Samson's power is a riddle for Delilah. Yes. Except that I might again insist that it's not really a riddle--that riddles deal with universals. The secret of Samson's power (like the secret of the lion and the honey) is what we usually call a mystery: a singular circumstance or set of circumstances that like a riddle, defies us to find an explanation.
The main so-called riddle in the Samson story is the part that attracted me most in our reading and the part I found most wanting. I was comparing the Samson legend with the Oedipus legend, and I thought all of the advantages were with Oedipus. Better characters. Better events. Way better riddle. And of course with Sophocles, a master storyteller with skills far beyond those of whoever shaped the Samson materials.
But the more I think about it, the more I see these two stories as having something in common, and the more I think that if the Samson story had found its Sophocles, it may have ended as something much more powerful than the three loosely connected anecdotes that have come down to us. I think this because both stories really are mystery stories, stories in which the driving engine is the main character's search for the answer to the mystery of who he is. Sophocles has polished his materials so well that we see this acutely: Oedipus, the master riddle-solver, has everything he needs to solve his mystery right at the start of the play, but fails to do so until almost all is lost.
The Samson chronicler hasn't done as well with the shaping of his materials, but we can still see the outlines of the same kind of mystery story here. God has posed this question to Samson: Who are you? And here's the kicker: God has even given Samson the answer in a message transmitted to his parents before his birth. Only Samson never really believes it. Or believes that the power that has been granted to him is for his use alone, for the settling of his private slights and affronts. The arc of the story is one of forgetting and failing to learn, and when Samson trifles in his last answer to Delilah, he has at last relinquished his knowledge of everything of who he is. His later recovery is not a crowning success as much as it is a narrow return to his initial condition. At the end, Samson knows only what he knew at the beginning, which is still not nearly enough. At the end Samson is seeking vengence for his eyes rather than freedom for his people.
In Samson's blindness, there is a powerful echo with the condition of the Israelites. Because Yahweh has set the same question for them as he has set for Samson: Who are you? The answer for the Israelites is: the chosen people of the true god. If the Israelites knew that answer, they'd see that in Sampson, the release from all of their earthly troubles was already among them, waiting to be used. They have yet to learn that answer, and so their deliverance is only just beginning.
The main so-called riddle in the Samson story is the part that attracted me most in our reading and the part I found most wanting. I was comparing the Samson legend with the Oedipus legend, and I thought all of the advantages were with Oedipus. Better characters. Better events. Way better riddle. And of course with Sophocles, a master storyteller with skills far beyond those of whoever shaped the Samson materials.
But the more I think about it, the more I see these two stories as having something in common, and the more I think that if the Samson story had found its Sophocles, it may have ended as something much more powerful than the three loosely connected anecdotes that have come down to us. I think this because both stories really are mystery stories, stories in which the driving engine is the main character's search for the answer to the mystery of who he is. Sophocles has polished his materials so well that we see this acutely: Oedipus, the master riddle-solver, has everything he needs to solve his mystery right at the start of the play, but fails to do so until almost all is lost.
The Samson chronicler hasn't done as well with the shaping of his materials, but we can still see the outlines of the same kind of mystery story here. God has posed this question to Samson: Who are you? And here's the kicker: God has even given Samson the answer in a message transmitted to his parents before his birth. Only Samson never really believes it. Or believes that the power that has been granted to him is for his use alone, for the settling of his private slights and affronts. The arc of the story is one of forgetting and failing to learn, and when Samson trifles in his last answer to Delilah, he has at last relinquished his knowledge of everything of who he is. His later recovery is not a crowning success as much as it is a narrow return to his initial condition. At the end, Samson knows only what he knew at the beginning, which is still not nearly enough. At the end Samson is seeking vengence for his eyes rather than freedom for his people.
In Samson's blindness, there is a powerful echo with the condition of the Israelites. Because Yahweh has set the same question for them as he has set for Samson: Who are you? The answer for the Israelites is: the chosen people of the true god. If the Israelites knew that answer, they'd see that in Sampson, the release from all of their earthly troubles was already among them, waiting to be used. They have yet to learn that answer, and so their deliverance is only just beginning.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Monday, November 2, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Is "The Path to the Cemetery" an allegory?
If so, can you elaborate on its correspondences? If not, how do you explain character names like Praisegod and Life?
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Some Themes in Hound of the Baskervilles
Here are a few themes or issues we weren't able to spend much time on at the reading group meeting:
Landscape as character and symbol:
As mentioned in the reading group, the landscape is a central character in the story. From the arrival of Sir Henry and Watson at the scene of the crime, the landscape creates an atmosphere of foreboding:
"there rose in the distance a gray, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance, like some fantastic landscape in a dream."
"...behind the peaceful and sunlit countryside there rose ever, dark against the evening sky, the long, gloomy curve of the moor, broken by the jagged and sinister hills."
It is a landscape that humans have not tamed, that is wild and treacherous. It is home to possibly supernatural forces (the hound), is like something out of a dream (nightmare), and weighs down on people's spirits just by its presence. It swallows the moor ponies unfortunate enough to take a wrong step. In one of his letters to Holmes, Watson calls the area "this most God-forsaken corner of the world." In a word, it is evil, and we may get the feeling that something of that evil has seeped into the Baskerville clan, starting with Sir Hugo.
And yet, the landscape is a complicated character, not just the backdrop of a Gothic horror novel. For one thing, it is a place of refuge (for ancient humans, for animals on little "island" in the middle, for criminals like Selden). It is a home for butterflies. The hound in the legend is supernatural, but not so much evil as an agent of vengeance against the evil perpetrated by a human, Sir Hugo Baskerville. Selden and Stapleton, who are murderers, both presumably die on the moor, but not Sir Charles, the victim. There is also an odd parallelism between the site of Sir Hugo's death on the moor, and Baskerville Hall:
"We found a short valley between rugged tors which led to an open, grassy space flecked over with the white cotton grass. In the middle of it rose two great stones, worn and sharpened at the upper end until they looked like the huge corroding fangs of some monstrous beast."
"Suddenly we looked down into a cuplike depression, patched with stunted oaks and firs which had been twisted and bent by the fury of years of storm. Two high, narrow towers rose over the trees. The driver pointed with his whip. "Baskerville Hall," said he."
Since both the stones and the towers have been erected by humans, it could be understood as suggesting evil resides in humans, not in the landscape.
Since these complications make any simple identification of the moor with evil forces problematic, I would suggest another kind of symbolism at work. The untamed and wild landscape, crossed by paths where any misstep can mean disaster, could be understood as (using a cliche) "the minefield of the human heart." The Baskervilles are described at one point as "that long line of high-blooded, fiery, and masterful men." Sir Hugo's passions led to the first crime, and like a family curse (a staple of Gothic horror novels) that passionate nature has been passed on through the generations, to finally end with the crime of Stapleton and his (presumed) death.
The ancient people
Numerous mentions are made of stone ruins left by Neolithic people who lived on the moor. Like the landscape and the family curse, both staples of the Gothic horror novel, the reminders of the "ancient people" help create a mood of foreboding and danger. When Watson first sees the criminal Selden on the moor he gives this description:
"...an evil yellow face, a terrible animal face, all seamed and scored with vile passions. Foul with mire, with a bristling beard, and hung with matted hair, it might well have belonged to one of those old savages who dwelt in the burrows on the hillsides."
Several mentions are made that the area is "God-forsaken" and that "saints have never flourished in those parts," and the stone ruins suggest that something pagan or pre-Christian is still present. It's not hard for the reader to connect this with Sir Hugo's pledge "he would that very night render his body and soul to the Powers of Evil..."
And yet Watson undermines this symbolism of the stone ruins at another point when he wonders about why the prehistoric people would settle in such an inhospitable place, and imagines that "..they were some unwarlike and harried race who were forced to accept that which none other would occupy." One of their homes shelters Holmes for a time. Frankland, the amateur astronomer and lawsuit fanatic, even has plans "to prosecute Dr. Mortimer for opening a grave without the consent of the next of kin because he dug up the Neolithic skull in the barrow on Long Down." So we move from horror to farce. Either way, it adds another interesting layer to the story.
Theories of criminality
Several different understandings of criminality appear in the story.
(1) Dr. Mortimer is a student of phrenology, who is obsessed with the shape of people's skulls. Selden the criminal is described by Watson as having a "beetling forehead" and "sunken animal eyes." In a Wikipedia article on criminology, it mentions that in the late Victorian period "physiological traits such as the measurements of one's cheek bones or hairline, or a cleft palate, [were] considered to be throwbacks to Neanderthal man, [and] were indicative of "atavistic" criminal tendencies."
(2) Stapleton looks exactly like his ancestor Sir Hugo Baskerville. While Holmes is surprised at his mild-mannered appearance (although prim, hard, and stern), Holmes goes on to say: "Yes, it is an interesting instance of a throwback, which appears to be both physical and spiritual." While similar to the atavism mentioned before, it seems more directly related to heredity.
(3) Selden's sister, Mrs. Barrymore, offers another explanation for criminality:
"Yes, sir, my name was Selden, and he is my younger brother. We humoured him too much when he was a lad and gave him his own way in everything until he came to think that the world was made for his pleasure, and that he could do what he liked in it. Then as he grew older he met wicked companions, and the devil entered into him until he broke my mother's heart and dragged our name in the dirt."
Actually there are three theories here: upbringing, bad companions, and the devil...
(4) Finally, the sinister and foreboding landscape might be understood to contain an evil force that seeps into the humans living there. But this is the theory most consistently undermined by the story, along with any suggestion of supernatural beings.
Role of intelligence
From the beginning, Holmes realizes he is dealing with an adversary who has a very powerful mind. As with Moriarty, his arch-nemesis, there is no guarantee intelligence will side with the good in humans. In fact, as readers we have no reassurance that there is anything holding Holmes back from becoming a master criminal himself. It is hard to see a moral foundation to his activities, or something that motivates his tireless efforts to solve crimes, other than his fascination with solving puzzles. His drug addiction (in other stories), secretiveness, and arrogance enforce that rootlessness.
I would argue that the moral and emotional anchor of the story is, instead, the character of Watson, who represents a whole host of human values like common sense, decency, kindness, good-heartedness, courage, etc. Without him, we could never reach one of the deeper satisfactions of a good murder-mystery story, which is the final restoration of the moral and social order after crime has violently disrupted it.
Landscape as character and symbol:
As mentioned in the reading group, the landscape is a central character in the story. From the arrival of Sir Henry and Watson at the scene of the crime, the landscape creates an atmosphere of foreboding:
"there rose in the distance a gray, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance, like some fantastic landscape in a dream."
"...behind the peaceful and sunlit countryside there rose ever, dark against the evening sky, the long, gloomy curve of the moor, broken by the jagged and sinister hills."
It is a landscape that humans have not tamed, that is wild and treacherous. It is home to possibly supernatural forces (the hound), is like something out of a dream (nightmare), and weighs down on people's spirits just by its presence. It swallows the moor ponies unfortunate enough to take a wrong step. In one of his letters to Holmes, Watson calls the area "this most God-forsaken corner of the world." In a word, it is evil, and we may get the feeling that something of that evil has seeped into the Baskerville clan, starting with Sir Hugo.
And yet, the landscape is a complicated character, not just the backdrop of a Gothic horror novel. For one thing, it is a place of refuge (for ancient humans, for animals on little "island" in the middle, for criminals like Selden). It is a home for butterflies. The hound in the legend is supernatural, but not so much evil as an agent of vengeance against the evil perpetrated by a human, Sir Hugo Baskerville. Selden and Stapleton, who are murderers, both presumably die on the moor, but not Sir Charles, the victim. There is also an odd parallelism between the site of Sir Hugo's death on the moor, and Baskerville Hall:
"We found a short valley between rugged tors which led to an open, grassy space flecked over with the white cotton grass. In the middle of it rose two great stones, worn and sharpened at the upper end until they looked like the huge corroding fangs of some monstrous beast."
"Suddenly we looked down into a cuplike depression, patched with stunted oaks and firs which had been twisted and bent by the fury of years of storm. Two high, narrow towers rose over the trees. The driver pointed with his whip. "Baskerville Hall," said he."
Since both the stones and the towers have been erected by humans, it could be understood as suggesting evil resides in humans, not in the landscape.
Since these complications make any simple identification of the moor with evil forces problematic, I would suggest another kind of symbolism at work. The untamed and wild landscape, crossed by paths where any misstep can mean disaster, could be understood as (using a cliche) "the minefield of the human heart." The Baskervilles are described at one point as "that long line of high-blooded, fiery, and masterful men." Sir Hugo's passions led to the first crime, and like a family curse (a staple of Gothic horror novels) that passionate nature has been passed on through the generations, to finally end with the crime of Stapleton and his (presumed) death.
The ancient people
Numerous mentions are made of stone ruins left by Neolithic people who lived on the moor. Like the landscape and the family curse, both staples of the Gothic horror novel, the reminders of the "ancient people" help create a mood of foreboding and danger. When Watson first sees the criminal Selden on the moor he gives this description:
"...an evil yellow face, a terrible animal face, all seamed and scored with vile passions. Foul with mire, with a bristling beard, and hung with matted hair, it might well have belonged to one of those old savages who dwelt in the burrows on the hillsides."
Several mentions are made that the area is "God-forsaken" and that "saints have never flourished in those parts," and the stone ruins suggest that something pagan or pre-Christian is still present. It's not hard for the reader to connect this with Sir Hugo's pledge "he would that very night render his body and soul to the Powers of Evil..."
And yet Watson undermines this symbolism of the stone ruins at another point when he wonders about why the prehistoric people would settle in such an inhospitable place, and imagines that "..they were some unwarlike and harried race who were forced to accept that which none other would occupy." One of their homes shelters Holmes for a time. Frankland, the amateur astronomer and lawsuit fanatic, even has plans "to prosecute Dr. Mortimer for opening a grave without the consent of the next of kin because he dug up the Neolithic skull in the barrow on Long Down." So we move from horror to farce. Either way, it adds another interesting layer to the story.
Theories of criminality
Several different understandings of criminality appear in the story.
(1) Dr. Mortimer is a student of phrenology, who is obsessed with the shape of people's skulls. Selden the criminal is described by Watson as having a "beetling forehead" and "sunken animal eyes." In a Wikipedia article on criminology, it mentions that in the late Victorian period "physiological traits such as the measurements of one's cheek bones or hairline, or a cleft palate, [were] considered to be throwbacks to Neanderthal man, [and] were indicative of "atavistic" criminal tendencies."
(2) Stapleton looks exactly like his ancestor Sir Hugo Baskerville. While Holmes is surprised at his mild-mannered appearance (although prim, hard, and stern), Holmes goes on to say: "Yes, it is an interesting instance of a throwback, which appears to be both physical and spiritual." While similar to the atavism mentioned before, it seems more directly related to heredity.
(3) Selden's sister, Mrs. Barrymore, offers another explanation for criminality:
"Yes, sir, my name was Selden, and he is my younger brother. We humoured him too much when he was a lad and gave him his own way in everything until he came to think that the world was made for his pleasure, and that he could do what he liked in it. Then as he grew older he met wicked companions, and the devil entered into him until he broke my mother's heart and dragged our name in the dirt."
Actually there are three theories here: upbringing, bad companions, and the devil...
(4) Finally, the sinister and foreboding landscape might be understood to contain an evil force that seeps into the humans living there. But this is the theory most consistently undermined by the story, along with any suggestion of supernatural beings.
Role of intelligence
From the beginning, Holmes realizes he is dealing with an adversary who has a very powerful mind. As with Moriarty, his arch-nemesis, there is no guarantee intelligence will side with the good in humans. In fact, as readers we have no reassurance that there is anything holding Holmes back from becoming a master criminal himself. It is hard to see a moral foundation to his activities, or something that motivates his tireless efforts to solve crimes, other than his fascination with solving puzzles. His drug addiction (in other stories), secretiveness, and arrogance enforce that rootlessness.
I would argue that the moral and emotional anchor of the story is, instead, the character of Watson, who represents a whole host of human values like common sense, decency, kindness, good-heartedness, courage, etc. Without him, we could never reach one of the deeper satisfactions of a good murder-mystery story, which is the final restoration of the moral and social order after crime has violently disrupted it.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
More erudite contribution
This from the friend I emailed for commentary last night as we spoke:
Nietzsche is one of the most intriguing and provocative thinkers ever, and he ismuch too complex to answer that question briefly and summarily. I will need toaddres this at greater length to do it justice, i think. However, in anutshell, there is ambiguity in Nietzsche, I think, because he was trying toassassinate Religion (God) and couldn't quite bring himself to do that. Hedeclared Theism (the worship of a divinity figure) "dead," but then turnedaround and entertained an escape hatch from the utterly desolate Universe bysuggesting that the Universe endlessly recycles, and by giving Man the hope offashioning an ethical Universe in "his" image (instead of "His" image).Furthermore, he deified "egoism" of Homo negotiander's evolved capabilities indismissing egalitarianist moralities in favor of pure nonsentimentalizedstriving and assertion of actualized potential. You could consider that a"Darwinian" spin. Acrually, coincidentally, I am going to give a paper on this topic on August 6in Toronto at the American Psychological Association Convention. I will use the1932 Freud-Einstein exchange of letters to discuss Darwin and Nietzsche. Hereis the blurb I put together last November (see Attachment) to capsulize thetopic. If you are interested, I have a superb paper (about 30 pages) by a brilliantcontemporary Nietzschean artist who is among my fondest commentators.
Nietzsche is one of the most intriguing and provocative thinkers ever, and he ismuch too complex to answer that question briefly and summarily. I will need toaddres this at greater length to do it justice, i think. However, in anutshell, there is ambiguity in Nietzsche, I think, because he was trying toassassinate Religion (God) and couldn't quite bring himself to do that. Hedeclared Theism (the worship of a divinity figure) "dead," but then turnedaround and entertained an escape hatch from the utterly desolate Universe bysuggesting that the Universe endlessly recycles, and by giving Man the hope offashioning an ethical Universe in "his" image (instead of "His" image).Furthermore, he deified "egoism" of Homo negotiander's evolved capabilities indismissing egalitarianist moralities in favor of pure nonsentimentalizedstriving and assertion of actualized potential. You could consider that a"Darwinian" spin. Acrually, coincidentally, I am going to give a paper on this topic on August 6in Toronto at the American Psychological Association Convention. I will use the1932 Freud-Einstein exchange of letters to discuss Darwin and Nietzsche. Hereis the blurb I put together last November (see Attachment) to capsulize thetopic. If you are interested, I have a superb paper (about 30 pages) by a brilliantcontemporary Nietzschean artist who is among my fondest commentators.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Nietzsche
As someone else put it at the end of group tonight, "G-d is dead" presumes he ever existed. Do "atheists" believe that g-d ever existed? I hadn't thought so. Anyway, I found this online:
Is Nietzsche's "God is dead" misunderstood?
Many people don't seem to realise that Nietzsche's "God is dead" speech was directed at atheists. The point is that if you "kill" God, what then? If you destroy that which was most holy, the fulcrum of belief of billions of people, do you just shrug your shoulders and declare yourself to be a liberal humanist like Richard Dawkins? Dawkins would have nauseated Nietzsche with his bland and banal statements about "morality". Nietzsche's position was that if you kill God you must live up to that astounding act by doing astounding things yourself. "We are the new, the unique, the incomparable, those who impose on themselves their own law, those who create themselves," he said.God is the creator and if we kill him we must become creators in his place. In fact we must become gods in God's place to justify our assassination of him. In short, we must become ubermenschen. Can anyone seriously imagine that a world of atheist ubermenschen would in any way resemble a world of Dawkins-style atheists?So, where do others stand on the Nietzsche/Dawkins atheist spectrum?Do you believe, like Dawkins, in God without God (liberal humanism is morally indistinguishable from Christianity hence can be described as "God without God"). Or do you believe in creating new values, challenging all conventions, proposing radical new moralities - like Nietzsche.How about a new book: The Liberal Humanism Delusion? Or is that too radical for the likes of Dawkins?
I have heard read Dawkins and heard him speak: sounded to me as if he had created an anti-religion religion of his own.
Is Nietzsche's "God is dead" misunderstood?
Many people don't seem to realise that Nietzsche's "God is dead" speech was directed at atheists. The point is that if you "kill" God, what then? If you destroy that which was most holy, the fulcrum of belief of billions of people, do you just shrug your shoulders and declare yourself to be a liberal humanist like Richard Dawkins? Dawkins would have nauseated Nietzsche with his bland and banal statements about "morality". Nietzsche's position was that if you kill God you must live up to that astounding act by doing astounding things yourself. "We are the new, the unique, the incomparable, those who impose on themselves their own law, those who create themselves," he said.God is the creator and if we kill him we must become creators in his place. In fact we must become gods in God's place to justify our assassination of him. In short, we must become ubermenschen. Can anyone seriously imagine that a world of atheist ubermenschen would in any way resemble a world of Dawkins-style atheists?So, where do others stand on the Nietzsche/Dawkins atheist spectrum?Do you believe, like Dawkins, in God without God (liberal humanism is morally indistinguishable from Christianity hence can be described as "God without God"). Or do you believe in creating new values, challenging all conventions, proposing radical new moralities - like Nietzsche.How about a new book: The Liberal Humanism Delusion? Or is that too radical for the likes of Dawkins?
I have heard read Dawkins and heard him speak: sounded to me as if he had created an anti-religion religion of his own.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
One more question on the Carver reading
So what do we talk about when we talk about love? That would have been my choice for a question for the Carver story. And my first attempt at an answer would have been: prodigies, mostly. Most people if you asked them what they thought about baseball, wouldn't reply with a George Will/Ken Burns/Roger Angell prose poem about the game's eternal springtime and the Ages of Man. Most people if you asked them about baseball would tell you about the no hitter they saw, or the game the other night where a guy hit three home runs, or that incredible play by the shortstop that you just wouldn't believe.
It's the same way with love, I think, and I certainly think it's that way with the characters in this story. Terri wants to tell us about Ed. No doubt Ed was the most intense experience of her life, but for a lot of the reasons brought out at our discussion, Ed's feeling for Terri might not be the best example of love and might not even be love at all. Likewise with Mel's story about the old couple, and not just because Mel starts talking about it when they're into the second bottle of that lousy cut-rate gin. The old people have made a big impression on Mel. But Mel knows next to nothing about them: they're practically mummies. Yet despite two marriages, several children, and more than forty years on earth, for Mel the old guy says more about love than anything he cares to offer from his own experience.
Most people talk about love the way they'd talk about baseball but with this one big exception: nearly everyone wants to be able to say they've played in love's major leagues and that they know something about it. Mel's quick to validate the bona fides of everyone in the room: You're in love, we're in love, he says. But are they really? And if they are, what explains the bleak picture of four drunks sitting silently in the darkness at the end of the story with one of them just wanting to walk out alone into the desert, one of them recalling with no aversion those wonderful days when her head was being banged on the floor, and one of them more than a little bit envious of an eighty year old in a full body cast?
But that's what talking about love can do, because when we talk about love, we're talking about what must be our deepest hopes and dreams, and given the usual shortcomings of the human condition, for most of us those will be hopes and dreams that are largely unrealized.
At the end Laura says she's never been hungrier in her life. It's not for food.
It's the same way with love, I think, and I certainly think it's that way with the characters in this story. Terri wants to tell us about Ed. No doubt Ed was the most intense experience of her life, but for a lot of the reasons brought out at our discussion, Ed's feeling for Terri might not be the best example of love and might not even be love at all. Likewise with Mel's story about the old couple, and not just because Mel starts talking about it when they're into the second bottle of that lousy cut-rate gin. The old people have made a big impression on Mel. But Mel knows next to nothing about them: they're practically mummies. Yet despite two marriages, several children, and more than forty years on earth, for Mel the old guy says more about love than anything he cares to offer from his own experience.
Most people talk about love the way they'd talk about baseball but with this one big exception: nearly everyone wants to be able to say they've played in love's major leagues and that they know something about it. Mel's quick to validate the bona fides of everyone in the room: You're in love, we're in love, he says. But are they really? And if they are, what explains the bleak picture of four drunks sitting silently in the darkness at the end of the story with one of them just wanting to walk out alone into the desert, one of them recalling with no aversion those wonderful days when her head was being banged on the floor, and one of them more than a little bit envious of an eighty year old in a full body cast?
But that's what talking about love can do, because when we talk about love, we're talking about what must be our deepest hopes and dreams, and given the usual shortcomings of the human condition, for most of us those will be hopes and dreams that are largely unrealized.
At the end Laura says she's never been hungrier in her life. It's not for food.
