[lit-ideas] Sunday Twofer
- From: David Ritchie <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2012 10:23:54 -0700
Sometimes you come up against a proposition that just stops you. In Julian
Barnes' latest there's this moment when a character asserts you can infer
reasoning from behavior. Which is to say that because this person behaved in a
certain way, you can figure out what was going on inside his head. One bit I
thought impressive in law school was that in order to be convicted of most
kinds of crime, you must not only have done the thing-- "actus reus"-- you must
also have intended to do the thing-- "mens rea." But Julian Barnes' character
is more in tune with normal primate behavior; we infer thought from action.
I do this, I know I do: that fool who ran a red light can have no brain cells
left in his head, that student who failed to turn in the work must be...
Inference is dangerous. You often discover there's a perfectly good reason...,
something that explains... What a thing inference is.
I used to caricature the smell and taste of Islay whiskies. "Give me a swig of
those fine old socks." And when I'd read of peat and seaweed I'd pooh pooh,
dismiss... like the Leith police. Similarly I swore when I read "Clarissa,"
Dante also, that having got through that lot I was just plain done with them.
Never again. Ha! First job in graduate school, "Go teach the Divine Comedy."
(No one has ever asked me to teach "Clarissa." Who else on earth has read
that?) This evening I thought, "I'd really quite like a whisky...," not a
thought I'd have in the days of teaching Dante. I developed a taste for what
it amuses me to call as "ardent spirits" long after I was particularly ardent
about the world's rights and wrongs. But nowadays whisky pokes through evening
thoughts now and again. "Jeeves," I command, "bring me a snifter."
"Certainly, sir." "Pick one with a hefty dose of hiking socks, there's a good
chap." And now here one is, to hand. The hour being late, I'm about to hie me
to bed when I hear the garage door open; daughters returning from Pok Pok
dining. They take one whiff of what's in the glass. "Urghh," they agree.
That once was me. But now here I am, over here.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
