Carnality.

[MANICHAEAN]

Literature has always had a hard time with carnality.

Take it back to Biblical usage where the verb “know / knew” encompasses in an overwhelmingly succinct manner, the entire subject matter i.e
“And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bore Cain.” Genesis 4:1.

How different from the male novelists of the last century; the Roths, Updikes & Mailers.

They seemed in their writing to want to defeat death by sex. It offered an escape, almost a reprieve from mortal living. All aspects were explored; inclusive the violence, the urge to dominate; not as demeaning or insulting to women, but as a basic part of the act: acceptable, (in many cases desired) by both participants. Lust viewed as an acceptable pre-requisite.

And then the inevitable occurred; they grew old and they realized that all you have to do is wait and life will teach you all there is to know about the mockery of impotence.

Which brings us to the younger writers and I ask myself “Are they too cool to deal with carnal instincts?” Has the politically correct, liberal climate made them big pussy cats?

Then again, have you ever noticed the wonderful way people talk in bed pre / post doing the “dirty deed?” Male aggression and urgency before, and tender endearments after, as the camera pans back and cigarette smoke curls upwards to the ceiling?

But I digress as usual from the meat and veg of this piece.

[Jacek Pudlo]

Big politically correct pussy cat is a spot-on description of David Foster Wallace. So, yeah, you're definitely on to something here.

[Pompey Bum]

Oooh, nice avatar, Jacek. Akhenaten was a seriously interesting character.

MANICHAEAN: It's interesting to remember the sexual revolution from my childhood and to have witnessed the nanny state backlash in middle age. I think the latter has just about run its course, at least in America (although the immediate political situation here is still unsettled at best). As far as Mailer v. PC goes, how meaningful is the choice between a braying jackass and--how did you put it, a big pussycat? I think most men are really just looking for an enjoyable and meaningful lay. Um, I mean read.

[MANICHAEAN]

I agree with Pompey on the Akhenaten comments. He was perhaps one of early history’s true individuals. Endowed with an original mind, he developed a vision of how God should be honoured, and had the ability / power to turn it into reality. It was extreme by the then existing norms; being the worship of the sun alone; involving by definition the razing of the Egyptian pantheon.

The Jacek avatar is impressive as well, likely from one of the colossal sandstone statues of the king carved for the temples of the Aten at Karnak. The face appears stretched, with high cheekbones and an elongated nose leading down to a pointy chin. One might ask is this a realistic portrait of a ruler wracked with disease, or a new vision of kingship scorched free of traditional visual clichés?


Let’s move on to David Foster Wallace and carnality. I’m ambivalent on whether or not he was a “pussy cat” on this subject despite his having a guilt-ridden sex life.

What is interesting is that he always seemed not to love his non-fiction as he did his fiction; perhaps it was too easy, too unencoded. There are clues that by his own standards he found that in fiction one can try too hard. “Pawing,” as he later wrote about Updike, “at the reader’s ear like a sophomore at some poor girl’s bra.”

All the things Wallace cared about: excellence, elegance, originality, trying while seeming not to try, the burden of life in human form, and the view of the stars from the gutter, were a road he trod but it never ended; except as it were in his suicide. The unfinished “The Pale King,” could be a testimony to this; a complex, saddening story to the sort of mindful, focused person that Wallace could never be.

Yet in non-fiction he seemed to me a natural, as witnessed by his essays relating to tennis; written about with passion, because life had given him involvement and some success in this sport in his earlier years.

It can be amazing how early in life some writers figure out what they are and start to see their lives as stories that can be controlled.

Was it the influence of Wittgenstein on him, who told us that reality is inseparable from language (“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”) Thus the danger of a writer, existing only in reflection, and being the most excluded from the highest realms.

[Jacek Pudlo]

Regarding Updike, I've always felt that the philandering of his male protagonists reflected the author's antinomianism. These men are redeemed by faith alone, not by following the Law of Moses.

Regarding DFW, let's not condescend the suicide. The man lived and died in pain, but he could "neither think nor write" (Harold Bloom). There are lengthy passages in both The Broom of the System and Infinite Jest that are so juvenile, they must be an embarrassment even to his diehard fans. Updike's writing was informed by a sinewy intellect. DFW's writing was informed by infantile jokes and rehashed urban legends.

[Pompey Bum]

I agree with Pompey on the Akhenaten comments. He was perhaps one of early history’s true individuals. Endowed with an original mind, he developed a vision of how God should be honoured, and had the ability / power to turn it into reality. It was extreme by the then existing norms; being the worship of the sun alone; involving by definition the razing of the Egyptian pantheon.

The Jacek avatar is impressive as well, likely from one of the colossal sandstone statues of the king carved for the temples of the Aten at Karnak. The face appears stretched, with high cheekbones and an elongated nose leading down to a pointy chin. One might ask is this a realistic portrait of a ruler wracked with disease, or a new vision of kingship scorched free of traditional visual clichés?

I went to the Karnak temple complex almost 40 years ago--a very remote place in those days. I don't remember there being an Akhenaten/Aton temple there and I doubt there would have been one that long survived his death (if at all). His cult center was Akhetaten--still a wild place--where he worshipped Aton sun drenched splendor. The priests of Karnak hated his guts for putting them out of business. In fact the Marxist/materialist view is usually that the whole Aton cult was an only temporarily successful attempt to stem their power.


Regarding Updike, I've always felt that the philandering of his male protagonists reflected the author's antinomianism. These men are redeemed by faith alone, not by following the Law of Moses.

Antinomianism seems an interesting way to dress up Updike's adulteries, although no doubt he would have agreed with you. Here is an interesting piece that states: "Updike’s religion involved inner contradictions that were resolved only by forging a Christianity subordinated to the spirit of the age."

http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/03/14457/

But since the sexual revolution was informed (at least in part) by academic antinomianism, it becomes a bird and egg problem: which came first, the zeitgeist or the antinomianism? The sexual revolution, of course, was also a result of new technologies. The article quotes a famous line in Updike's Couples: “Welcome to the post-pill paradise.” But in fact, or at least in my opinion, all this getting about actually hurt people.

[Clopin]

Regarding Updike, I've always felt that the philandering of his male protagonists reflected the author's antinomianism. These men are redeemed by faith alone, not by following the Law of Moses.

Regarding DFW, let's not condescend the suicide. The man lived and died in pain, but he could "neither think nor write" (Harold Bloom). There are lengthy passages in both The Broom of the System and Infinite Jest that are so juvenile, they must be an embarrassment even to his diehard fans. Updike's writing was informed by a sinewy intellect. DFW's writing was informed by infantile jokes and rehashed urban legends.

I read Brief Interviews With Hideous Men somewhat recently and it was absolute trash. Juvenile is about the best word you could find to describe it.

[Pompey Bum]

The Broom of the System is trash, too. I never bothered with him after that.

[ennison]

Updike the "antinomianist" was still a great writer. I read some of his short stories in my teens and still believe they were excellent. "Couples" was weird for a Presbyterian Teuchter like myself but Memories of the Ford Administration is a great novel by a great American writer.

[Jacek Pudlo]

Antinomianism seems an interesting way to dress up Updike's adulteries, although no doubt he would have agreed with you. Here is an interesting piece that states: "Updike’s religion involved inner contradictions that were resolved only by forging a Christianity subordinated to the spirit of the age."

From the article by Gerald R. McDermott, link kindly provided by Pompey Bum:


Updike was a man of many contradictions. Though he was both spiritual and religious, he was also a serial adulterer.

The whole point of antinomianism is that this doesn't have to be a contradiction. My problem with nomianism is exactly that which is implied by the author of the article, namely the fact that it reduces religion to morality. Once you've reduced religion to morality, you've deprived faith of its majesty.


It was a strange sort of Christianity that rejected the strictures of traditional faith, choosing divine comfort while rejecting divine commands. In other words, it was gospel without law, grace without repentance, the love of God without the holiness of God.

When you think about it, isn't nomianism stranger still, reducing faith to a list of antiquated moral commands? Was the God of David any less holy to him because David committed adultery with Bathsheba?


But since the sexual revolution was informed (at least in part) by academic antinomianism, it becomes a bird and egg problem: which came first, the zeitgeist or the antinomianism? The sexual revolution, of course, was also a result of new technologies. The article quotes a famous line in Updike's Couples: “Welcome to the post-pill paradise.”

I'm not sure I follow. Obviously, the idea of the primacy of faith (a.k.a. antinomianism) is much older than the sexual revolution. Are you saying that Updike used it as a pretext to rationalise his own adultery?


But in fact, or at least in my opinion, all this getting about actually hurt people.

True, but not relevant once you abandon nomianism.

[Ecurb]

Yet in non-fiction he seemed to me a natural, as witnessed by his essays relating to tennis; written about with passion, because life had given him involvement and some success in this sport in his earlier years.

.

I've never read Wallace's novels, but (being a sports junkie) I like his tennis essays. Updike also wrote about sports (and his sports essays are more famous than Wallace's), but I prefer Wallace's.

[Pompey Bum]

Thank you for your thoughtful response, Jacek.


My problem with nomianism is exactly that which is implied by the author of the article, namely the fact that it reduces religion to morality. Once you've reduced religion to morality, you've deprived faith of its majesty.

It would say it minimizes an individual's faith in God to supplant it by faith merely in Law. Perhaps that is similar to what you meant by depriving faith of its majesty, I don't know. My problem with nomianism is the implication that human beings are capable achieving justification without God's Grace. My experience with humans beings teaches me otherwise.


When you think about it, isn't nomianism stranger still, reducing faith to a list of antiquated moral commands? Was the God of David any less holy to him because David committed adultery with Bathsheba?

I took the article to be saying that Updike sought to forge "a Christianity subordinated to the spirit of the age," not antinomianism per se, but a marriage of antinomian Grace theology "subordinated to the spirit of the age," which included the Sexual Revolution. It cannot be speaking of antinomianism alone, since it specifies that Updike's theology was "gospel without ...grace without repentance, the love of God."

As a personal aside, and put as discreetly as I can, I was exposed to similar ideas as a young man, and at the same place Updike was; so I thought I recognized them very well. It may have been, of course, that I was merely reading my own experience into the article.

And as far as David and Bathsheba go, you're preaching to the choir--although I am not sure I would describe God's Law as "antiquated." I may gather stubble of a Sabbath, but I do honor my father and cherish my mother's memory. And unlike Updike I manage to stay faithful to my wife.


I'm not sure I follow. Obviously, the idea of the primacy of faith (a.k.a. antinomianism) is much older than the sexual revolution. Are you saying that Updike used it as a pretext to rationalise his own adultery?

See above. I didn't know Updike personally, so I can't assess all the article's claims. Here in Massachusetts academic antinomianism of Updike's kind certainly had some effect on the Sexual Revovution. But as the article suggests, Updike's theology was also affected by "the spirit of the age." So bird or egg was my question. But I imagine in Updike's case, there was an interplay.


True, but not relevant once you abandon nomianism.

Relevant to the family he abandoned for a mistress, no?

[mortalterror]

Sex scenes in movies and books are usually rather lackluster to be honest. Quite often the modern people writing such things are amateurs just trying to shock the reader and be edgy or in your face. "Look at me. I'm transgressing societal taboos." That sort of gimmicky stuff is pathetic. And if it's more than a gimmick, if that's all the writer wants to write about, then he probably has nothing worthwhile to say. Very few have pulled off that trick without seeming juvenile or shallow. Henry Miller or John Wilmot are the only one's I can think of who didn't come off half baked when they delved into that territory. But seriously, if you want to write smut for middle aged women to get their kicks go write a Harlequin Romance. Or maybe write honest erotica like Anais Nin and the author of Fanny Hill. Meanwhile, more serious writers will be tackling more serious topics. Parts of Chaucer or Boccaccio are ribald, picaresque, dirty, and burlesque from time to time, but their books are about more than that. Wanting to frame a piece of art just around the naughty bits kind of misses out on what's often the most interesting part of the narrative. It would be like an action film that was explosions from beginning to end with no build up or point.

Just to play devil's advocate, the movie Caligula was pretty cool.

[Jacek Pudlo]

It would say it minimizes an individual's faith in God to supplant it by faith merely in Law. Perhaps that is similar to what you meant by depriving faith of its majesty, I don't know. My problem with nomianism is the implication that human beings are capable achieving justification without God's Grace. My experience with humans beings teaches me otherwise.

I took the article to be saying that Updike sought to forge "a Christianity subordinated to the spirit of the age," not antinomianism per se, but a marriage of antinomian Grace theology "subordinated to the spirit of the age," which included the Sexual Revolution. It cannot be speaking of antinomianism alone, since it specifies that Updike's theology was "gospel without ...grace without repentance, the love of God."

You're right, of course. My reading was a tad simplistic. In Updike's case, it's a question of leanings rather than espousal.


As a personal aside, and put as discreetly as I can, I was exposed to similar ideas as a young man, and at the same place Updike was; so I thought I recognized them very well. It may have been, of course, that I was merely reading my own experience into the article.

And as far as David and Bathsheba go, you're preaching to the choir--although I am not sure I would describe God's Law as "antiquated." I may gather stubble of a Sabbath, but I do honor my father and cherish my mother's memory. And unlike Updike I manage to stay faithful to my wife.

There are plenty of atheists who cherish their mothers and stay faithful to their spouses. The most embarrassing thing about nomianism is its redundancy. God's Law is a crutch we don't need. But it's more than just redundant. It's self-defying as well. It seems to have been designed specifically for people who otherwise would have no moral compass. Let me put it this way. Had I needed a supernatural reason to refrain from murder, I'd say there's something wrong with my moral intelligence.

Nomianism is antiquated in the sense of stipulating moral precepts while withholding a moral discussion. Don't kill? Really? Not even in self-defence? Adultery is a big no no, but rape isn't even mentioned. This is more than just pre-Kantian. It's downright atavistic.



Relevant to the family he abandoned for a mistress, no?

This is indeed the moral conveyed by Rabbit Run, albeit unenthusiastically. The estranged Rabbit watches people go to church and decides to jilt his lover and return to his bitter wife and hateful son. Heart-warming. It's interesting to contrast The Centaur with the Angstrom novels. Caldwell never commits adultery, and yet it's easy to see that Updike's sympathies lie with the zigzagging rabbit, not the plodding horse.

[Pompey Bum]

God's Law is a crutch we don't need. But it's more than just redundant. It's self-defying as well. It seems to have been designed specifically for people who otherwise would have no moral compass. Let me put it this way. Had I needed a supernatural reason to refrain from murder, I'd say there's something wrong with my moral intelligence.

Face it: we are animals. You could say, as Augustine did, that we have an inherent moral flaw, or you could go modern and acknowledge that our bodies (including our brains) evolved through natural selection, an invisible and blind deity, who, as the old Talking Heads song has it, only takes along what he can use. In that equation, moral intelligence falls woefully behind survival instinct, sex drive, and aggression in general. I mean aggression as an instinctive form of problem solving.

A few years ago there was a terrible fire at the Channel nightclub in Rhode Island. People who should have easily been able to walk to safety burned alive in human plugs at the doors. You would think that moral intelligence would have ensured cooperation for the common good if not yielding and sacrifice for others. But the instinctive mind would have none of it, and all were incinerated together.

Perhaps you are a more moral than I am. I am not homicidal, but the thought of certain Isis atrocities have made me angry enough to wish the militants responsible horribly violent deaths. And like most men, I have felt lust for women other than my wife many times. In the immortal words of Jessica Rabbit: "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way."

I believe that a moral code like the Decalogue cannot save human beings from their/our predicament. Neither can "moral intelligence"--both will produce what you have called "mere morality." I certainly see free and thought-out moral choices as preferable, but I point out: 1) choosing to keep a commandment is in itself a kind a choice; and 2) mere morality beats mere immorality.

But the real issue is human sin. And trying to do anything about that requires: 1) a conscious turning from one's default nature; and 2) God's Grace. Turning from one's default nature has nothing to do with pietism as far as I am concerned (as those on this site have surely noticed).


Nomianism is antiquated in the sense of stipulating moral precepts while withholding a moral discussion.

Surely that is what the Talmud is for. :)

But I am only half joking. Rabbinic Judaism with its endless parsing and deliberations on Torah seems to me to have been a response to just such a need. One might also ask how much moral discussion is really involved in the doctrine/dogma of Christian orthodoxies, even (paradoxically) those with less legalistic approaches. No doubt prayerful reflection provides a recourse, but "the mind-forged manacles" can be difficult things to slip.


Don't kill? Really? Not even in self-defence? Adultery is a big no no, but rape isn't even mentioned. This is more than just pre-Kantian. It's downright atavistic.

It's more complicated. The commandment really says don't murder (I'm told--I don't read Hebrew); and there are other laws that actually require killing. Yes, these are antiquated Iron Age vestiges, but it isn't like there weren't distinctions being made. My belief is that the sometimes appalling letter of the Hebrew Law is subsumed/transformed in the gracious nature of Christ. But too many Christians still try to exploit the Law for their own purposes.