My last post today, good night!
Helm:
“Elsewhere, Power writes, “Bleikasten stresses the fact that Faulkner was
astoryteller in both senses of the term.”
In my previous posting, I was wondering if Bleikastenshould have spent some
time reading Grice – “Senses should not be multipliedbeyond necessity.” Who
says ‘storyteller has TWO senses? It is obvious whatPowers thinks Bleikasten
means by two ‘senses’ here, but a Griceian should seeno reason to speak of the
expression ‘story-teller’ having two of them!
Helm quotes from Powers:
“Faulkner loved writing complex stories of ‘the human heat in conflict
withitself’ (a phrase he used in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Stockholm
in1950), and he compulsively embroidered the bare facts of his own prosaiclife.
Writing later about the months he lived in New Orleans in 1925,Falkner claimed
that he supported himself by “working for a bootlegger. He had a launch that I
would take down [Lake] Ponchartrain into the Gulf to anisland where the rum,
the green rum, would be brought up from Cuba and buried,and we would dig it up
and bring it back to New Orleans. . . . AndI would get a hundred dollars a
trip for that.’ “Nothing about this story wastrue, but just as remarkable is
where he told it – in an American lit class atWest Point in April 1962, about
two months before he died. “Yet bigger lieswere told about his eventless months
with the Canadian Royal Air Force; afterthe war he limped from imaginary
machine gun wounds suffered, he claimed, inaerial duels over the fields of
France. Faulkner was still in flightschool when the war ended, was never sent
to France, was never wounded incombat as he claimed, and never even took up a
plane alone until years later. .. Bleikasten is blunt about Faulkner’s
fabrications and writes that ‘he lied tohis parents, his brothers, his friends,
and later his son-in-law, hismistresses, his editors, his colleagues in
Hollywood, and his doctors.””
Helm comments:
“Howjudgmental Bleikasten and Powers are being is unclear because
immediatelyfollowing the above, Powers writes “In time Faulkner told fewer tall
tales andhad the deeper pleasure of constructing elaborate fictions in prose.””
Indeed. Helm goes on: “A reader might be excused fromconcluding that if he
learns to lie well enough perhaps he too can incorporatehis lies into stories
and perhaps one day win a Nobel Prize.”
As Borges would say, what is literature but a ‘fiction’? Ispoetry a fiction,
though? “Fiction” possibly has just ONE sense – as any otherexpression. And
it’s not clear how Powers makes the passage. Powers seems to beimplicating that
there is a flouting here of Grice’s ‘qualitas’ conversationalcategory – “do not
say what you believe to be false.” Novelists are expected,whether they get the
Nobel or not!
Helm: “Anthony Trollope in his Autobiography writes“Whether the world does or
does not become more wicked as years go on is aquestion which probably has
disturbed the minds of thinkers since the worldbegan to think. That men have
become less cruel, less violent, lessselfish, less brutal, there can be no
doubt; -- but have they become less honest?”
Meaning ‘truthful,’ in this context. (“Honesty is the bestpolicy, says I --
This proverb is first found in the writings of SirEdwin Sandys, the English
politician and colonial entrepreneur, who wasprominent in the Virginia Company
which founded the first English settlement inAmerica, at Jamestown, Virginia.
In Europae Speculum, 1599, Sandys wrote, “Ourgrosse conceipts, who think
honestie the best policie.”
Helm endshis quotation from Trollope:
“If so, can a world, retrograding from day to day inhonesty, be considered to
be in a state of progress? We know the opinionon this subject of our
philosopher Mr Carlyle. If he be right, we are allgoing straight away to
darkness and the dogs. But then we do not put verymuch faith in Mr Carlyle –
nor in Mr Ruskin and his followers. Theloudness and extravagance of their
lamentations, the wailing and gnashing ofteeth which comes from them, over a
world which is supposed to have gonealtogether shoddy-wards, are so contrary to
the convictions of men who cannotbut see how comfort has been increased, how
health has been improved, andeducation extended – that the general effect of
their teaching is the oppositeof what they have intended. It is regarding
simply as Carlylism to saythat the English-speaking world is growing worse form
day to day. And itis Carlylism to opine that the general grand result of
increased intelligence isa tendency to deterioration.”
Helm comments:
“I am apparently typically American in not liking Faulkneror his novels. Not
liking him because his lies sounds a bit archaichowever. Lying has been worked
upon by politicians. “Spinning” and“Spin Doctors” are a fact of politics and
not considered lying.”
Well, the conceptual definition of lying is quite a trick.Grice makes fun, for
once, of Kant, in “Aspects of reason,” which is fun,because in “Logic and
Conversation” he is echoing Kant and calling himself ‘enoughof a rationalist’
to be ‘echoing Kant’. In “Aspects of Reason” Grice isbringing up the ridicule
Kant received in the English-speaking world. Kant’ssystematic refutation of
lying as regarded as too ‘rigouristic’. It’s, granted,all different with
Faulkner’s archaic white lies.
Helm concludes his interesting post: “When a famouspolitician is caught in
flagrante delicto, he doesn’t admit that hedid anything wrong, nor does he
admit that he was lying about it up until thevery time he was caught. He says
“I made a mistake.” Lying was notinvolved. Carlyle and Ruskin were clearly
wrong. Modern man spinsand makes mistakes. He does not lie.”
I would think the Griceian approach to this is complex, andperhaps relying on
his “Intention and uncertainty.” It seems ‘intention’ isessential. Violating
the maxim pertaining to the category of ‘quantitas’ (“Donot say what you
believe to be false”) seems central in communication. Yet ofcourse, most
figures of speech (qua conversational impicatures) are a sort of
‘lie’:‘metaphor,’ ‘hyperbole,’ ‘litotes,’ ‘irony’. If the intention is there on
thepart of the utterer that the addressee will recognise that the utterer is
‘flouting’the maxim, things seem okay, even for Kant.
Faulkner, granted, lied. If following philosopher D.F.Pears in “Motivated
irrationality,” see see Faulker as believing his lies, afurther caveat is
needed. Faulkner may have ended up believing his lies. It isobvious that his
novels were a way to ‘legitimise’ those lies into ‘fictionalnarratives’ that
perhaps only a die-hard Oxonian (from Oxford, Mississippi)would regard as a lie!
Cheers,
Speranza
REFERENCE
Grice, H. P. “Aspects of Reason,” Oxford, Clarendon Press.(On Kant on lying).
