Desert-island reading

Miranda: O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in 't.

Prospero: 'Tis new to thee.

--Shakespeare, The Tempest [5.1]

In last month's New Criterion , there was an essay titled "Desert-island reading" by British medical doctor Theodore Dalrymple, who regularly contributes humorous and often insightful essays about literature and culture. This essay reflects upon and discusses two works of children's literature Dalrymple read when he was younger -- J.M. Barrie's (author of Peter Pan) obscure play The Admirable Crichton and William Golding's classic novel Lord of the Flies -- with the latter portion of the essay drawing parallels between Lord of the Flies and Nazi Germany in their representation of any given society's capacity for evil (this is obviously not the humorous part). Now maybe it's the fact that I loved Lord of the Flies when I was younger and haven't thought about it in over a decade, and maybe it's also because of the season, but generally speaking, desert-island literature seems an appealing theme for consideration this time of year. It also provides potential insights into the current geopolitical environment, as I'll touch on here and perhaps return to in-depth in the future.

So while considering Dalrymple's essay, Lord of the Flies, and the desirable climate of desert islands, I recalled all the stories with desert-island themes I read and enjoyed when I was younger, three of which Dalrymple touches on briefly in his essay: Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island, and, perhaps unfortunately, Swiss Family Robinson. In my teens, I enjoyed E. A. Poe's novella The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and about six years ago I read Melville's short story Benito Cereno, both of which center around violent revolts aboard slave ships at sea (near desert islands, we presume). And most recently -- this weekend, in fact -- I read for the first time Shakespeare's The Tempest, which again, has the desert-island theme. Until I read Dalrymple's essay, I had never considered grouping works of literature under this theme.

Interestingly enough, it occurred to me soon after reading Dalrymple's essay that, for the past decade, my favorite Pink Floyd song has been Marooned (on The Division Bell). This has never seemed strange to me for any particular reason; like many Floyd songs, it is strictly instrumental. However, in light of my recent ponderings on desert-island themes, I found it interesting I had a natural affinity for this song, especially since there are no words, except the title, to specifically tie it to this theme. Let me briefly offer my amateur interpretation. (You can listen to an excerpt by following the Division Bell link above.)

My impression has always been that the song is a subjective musical representation of slowly gaining consciousness on a desert island to find, as the title suggests, this person has been marooned. The song begins with soft, slow, almost random notes on a keyboard along with an underlying, restrained "white noise" -- a hushed "feedback" -- from a guitar. We also hear seagulls and the lull of ankle-high waves in the background. To my imagination, the random keyboard notes could signify eyes blinking as one wakes from unconsciousness. As the general tempo and volume build in power and resonance, and as the guitar(s) becomes decidedly more pronounced and chaotic (an artful kind of chaos), I think it could represent what would certainly be a growing confusion, panic, an almost nightmarish realization for this marooned person. I imagine her/ him lying unconscious in the sand at the beginning, just waking with blurry vision and fuzzy awareness of the surroundings, and by the end sprinting on the beach or through the woods in gathering fear and horror. (I think of the scene in Platoon where Elias stumbles through the field as he is shot by Viet-Cong, with his arms raised toward the helicopters lifting off, leaving him to die.) Essentially, a song Poe would have composed had he been a musician.

And so I've realized in the past few weeks upon reflection that I'm morbidly curious, and have been since childhood, with the desert-island theme. I'm not alone. Consider other representations of this theme in pop culture: the recent TV series Lost (which I haven't seen), Survivor (which I've never watched regularly), the movie Castaway (which I haven't seen), and Gilligan's Island. Consider island themes in literature: More's Utopia, Laputa in Gulliver's Travels (Chap. 3), Canto Two of Byron's Don Juan, Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before, et. al. That is just what pops into my mind, not at all an exhaustive list.

Golding's Lord of the Flies, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Melville's Benito Cereno, Poe's Pym, Shakespeare's Tempest, and even Barrie's third-rate Crichton are all attempts by an author in a specific historical and cultural moment to examine, critique, and explore the possibilities (good and evil, inspiring and frightening) underlying human "nature" and the human "condition." For instance, Shakespeare's Tempest has been read by a few as a critique of British empire (although this interpretation, in my opinion, is questionable in the context of his intended audience and historical moment: British "empire" really hadn't established itself yet; more on The Tempest related to current politics in another post, perhaps). Melville can be read as an allegory containing grave warnings about the destructive effects of slavery on master and slave alike.

This broad theme of traumatic/ tragic circumstance followed by people's attempts -- alone or collectively -- to then survive without the safety, comfort, and convenience of established laws, institutions, authority, technology, etc., it seems to me, is an especially effective plot to examine the multifarious ethical, moral, social, psychological, religious fabric of our collective being (if we can talk so broadly and assert such uniformity). Is there any truth to the myth of the noble savage, as Rousseau proposed (and, to a degree, as Shakespeare before Rousseau hints at through Caliban, and Montaigne before Shakespeare in his essays)? Is (wo)man naturally good or naturally evil? Regarding what type of governing system humans require, was Hobbes's proposal (totalitarian, in Leviathan) or Locke's proposal (libertarian, in Treatise on Government) more accurate? Or was Swift (Gulliver's Travels) most accurate about the good, bad, and ugly defects, humorous mishaps, and absurd paradoxes inherent to human "nature" and the human "condition"?

Instead of dancing around it, I should also add that this theme has relevant parallels -- on a very large scale -- to the current geopolitical circumstance in Iraq. Perhaps I'll return to this topic in another post.

Although I have many questions and angles I'll be wandering (and wondering) back to over the coming months, perhaps the most resonant, recurring question I had as I reflected on this theme stems not merely from literary representations but from pop culture representations (as listed above). Soon after the September 11 attacks, philosopher Slavoj Zizek wrote a controversial book titled Welcome to the Desert of the Real. One of the book's most infamous claims, as you can read in the synopsis, is "It proposes that global capitalism is fundamentalist and that America was complicit in the rise of Muslim fundamentalism. It points to our dreaming about the catastrophe in numerous disaster movies before it happened..."

I have no desire to answer that charge in this post, but I would like to pose the same question in relation to desert-island themes. Sure, it is a useful plot for philosophizing, satirizing, idealizing, and vilifying collective human nature and condition. But are we drawn to it equally, or even more so, because we enjoy fantasizing about this and other equally morbid themes? If so, why the desert-island theme, why by so many artists (in the broadest sense of the term) over so many centuries, and why so prevalent at this cultural moment (or is this moment no different from others previously)? What might this suggest about us generally (as collective individuals), and specifically about the forms of entertainment we choose? (...even as I write this in my new blog...)

(I have to admit: I'm drawn to this question partly because I am slowly wading through the first third of David Foster Wallace's book Infinite Jest. I wanted to allude to it but decline to comment myself -- yet. I know others have finished it and may be able to contribute some thoughts.)

And, fittingly, the epigraph probably rings bells about another work addressing our idle "entertainments": Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," the title of which came from that line.

I'll leave the first post there, comfortably open-ended, and see where (if anywhere) it leads.

So, welcome to my blog. You can expect more of the same types of posts in the future: a hodgepodge of philosophy, literature, politics, economics, "culture," etymology, etc. -- essentially, all the varied things that interest me. Rarely will I use this space to tell you what I ate for breakfast, how "Bush is an idiot," or how bad my childhood was (it wasn't, in fact; although I regret not being marooned for the character-building experience of outrunning cannibals, wrestling wild boars, and building fires without Matchlight). I do, however, hope to find plenty of time and space for satire, irony, wit, etc., and so if you're into that kind of thing, excellent. I'll try to make reading these long, rambling posts worthwhile.

Questions, corrections, comments, clarifications, observations, insights, critiques, counter-arguments, polemics, complaints, etc. welcome (especially counter-arguments and polemics, as I delve deeper into more controversial aspects of this topic and others; and I always want corrections if I misquote, misreference, misunderstand a concept, etc.). I will also gladly follow links back to your blog to read your responses and would love to have sustained conversations.

So welcome. Make yourself at home and stay awhile.

Cheers!

bdw (initially)