Tu, was du willst (Rough)

I am sure almost everyone who is reading this is familiar with The Neverending Story. For most of you, your exposure to it is probably the movie, but I don't hold that against you. You did certainly miss out, because the end of the movie is only the midway part of the book, and the second half is orders of magnitude more exciting than the first. You probably liked the movie quite a bit, but if you read the book, you loved it. It was impossible not to; the book may have been the perfect fantasy adventure. The fantastic images and ideas flowed ridiculously and realistically, and if you cared to pry, each had a coherent symbolic meaning, which rarely felt contrived or tacked on. It was a giant imaginative whole that all added up to, as the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung puts it, "a impassioned, audacious, wonderfully artistic plea for fantasy's right to exist: in literature and in us." I want to talk about some of the ways that The Neverending Story pleads for fantasy, by making us experience all sides of its wonder, as the reader and the writer, the partaker and the creator.

Just as a side note, and really not intending to brag, but should I happen to make any quotations, they will be poorly translated from the German by me. You probably noticed that the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung is not English, and that is because the version that I most recently read was the original German, as practice. It was really neat to see just how it was originally written, but I don't think reading it in German brought too much extra to the book; the translator, Ralph Mannheim, was very good, and very faithful. There were only a few occasional nuances that were lost in English. For instance, the three sages who are called The Deep Thinkers in English are called Die Tief Sinnenden in German. The word "Sinnen" in German is somewhat close to the English word "think", but it more accurately means "to find meaning". Since Yisipu the Fox is the only one of the three who thinks rationally to discover his truths, the broader German word is particularly appropriate, and avoids the potential thematic ambiguity. But foibles like that were fairly uncommon, and not detrimental to appreciation of the story.

One other nuance that got lost in translation was an interesting pun on the author's name that enhances the basic timelessness of the Neverending Story. The author is Michael Ende, and even if he were not placed below the translator Ralph Mannheim on the cover, an English reader would not necessarily associate his name to the Neverending Story, the story without End. In German, the title is Die Unendliche Geschichte [I swear it sounds nicer than its spelling], the story "ohne Ende". Of course, not every German reader would necessarily notice the joke either, but someone clever enough to invent a thousand stories in one book would certainly notice a simple pun, and he left it right there in the title for anyone to stumble over. The book has no end and no author. It simply exists, a story for all time and all people.

That's a big claim for an author to make, especially as the first potential interaction a reader has with his book. Even if it was intended almost wholly as a joke, it is a bold, almost cocky, joke and one has to wonder if it is justified. Ultimately, I think the joke and the Frankfurter Zeitung's assessment of the Neverending Story are justified, because the two halves of the book accurately depict the series of responses a reader and writer have to a work of literature, and can even be taken to represent the relationship of any partaker or creator of a work of fiction.

The first half of the novel, where Bastian steals and begins to read the Neverending Story, chronicles the journey a reader takes as he enters a good book for the first time. With its frequent interjections from Bastian in "the real world" [More on that later], it gives itself an opportunity rare in fiction: the chance to explicitly experiment with how the reader encounters a work of imagination. While it is abundantly clear that the Bastian's theft and flight to the school attic is more than simply a frame to the actual narrative of the book, the story that Bastian reads in the first half of the Neverending Story stands is fairly self-sufficient, and Bastian's concerns are exaggerated versions of the concerns of the typical reader. He struggles with his concern for the time and his ever-growing immersion in the book. He must eat, drink, and go to the bath room, even though he does not want to put the book down. And he gradually begins to identify more and more with the story.

He eventually starts feeling his own impact on the story. Perhaps the most common metaphor used for the joy of reading is that "Books take us to other places and let us experience things we couldn't otherwise experience". We sort of accept this definition, though when he look at it at all literally, it's a load of horseshit. Most metaphors are. Everybody knows that a book has never brought to a different world, and the only experience it involves is turning pages and seeing letters. Bastian, however, has the real deal. He screams, and it echoes through a chasm, startling the hell out of everyone involved. He experiences the Neverending Story in a way we never can. But we don't get jealous and feel out experience with literature cheapened when it's inadequacy is pointed out so blatantly. In fact, we feel the truth of our feeble metaphor even more strongly when it is challenged.

Clearly something else is going on when we appeal to this image of travel, and towards the end of the first half of the book, we are given a possible interpretation of the phenomenon. To reach the Southern Oracle and find the secret of the Childlike Empress's illness [Another benefit to German: Kindliche Kaiserin sounds so much better] Atreju must pass through the Magic Mirror Gate, which reveals his inner self. Most cannot face this stress, but he passes through with ease, because his inner self turns out to be nothing more than a chubby boy reading a book in an attic. Why this is no big stress to a great warrior might confuse us, but we recognize Bastian, and we are given an even more accurate image for why we can become so involved in great books. They obviously don't take us to different places or really give us new experiences, but we can see ourselves reflected in the characters. They resemble us in certain ways, and we can relate with them. Thus, their adventures become our adventures, and reflect back on our lives and experiences. We go on journeys vicariously through them, and they benefit by becoming more than merely a collection of words through their resemblance to us.

[Incidentally, this is why I think so many young girls are so obsessed with Twilight, that harlequin romance with less erotica and more sexism, if that is possible. The main character Bella has no real definable traits, except that she is basically a good girl, with some flaws. I don't think I am exaggerating when I say that almost everybody in the world thinks of themselves as basically good, with some flaws, or, if they have low self-esteem, wishes they could. So when Bella is thrust into situations that seem favorable - people at a new school get to know her and like her, a strong but silent boy is really into her - her vague characterization allows girls to see themselves in her entirely, and to desire the strong emotion and great love affair she is given. Were she more realistic, like any character in the Harry Potter series, the resemblance would be less complete, and she would instead be a distinct person whose life we can experience only partially. Seen as she is, through a glass darkly, her basic shape could literally be anyone, and anyone can have what she has. Or it could just be that people will eat up anything you tell them is popular.]

Once Ende gives us this definition of what it means to be a reader, Bastian literally enters into the story, and we begin to see what it means to be a writer. He is pulled into Fantastica by the Old Man of the Wandering Mountain, who lives in a golden egg and is the writer of the Neverending Story. The scene seems to me one of the richest and most problematic in the novel, but it is getting late and I have miles to go before I sleep. Unfortunately, I think I will have to move more quickly through the rest of the book. When I eventually come in and overhaul everything I have rambled onto this site, I will expand anything that needs it, but until then, you will live with what I give you. [Also, I think this is already my longest post and I am just about half-way through my plan for it. That's what happens when you take a whole semester to read a kid's book.]

Anyway, to bring Bastian into the story, the Kindliche Kaiserin convinces the Old Man to reread it from the very beginning. He is loath to do so, for such a repetition will destroy Fantastica. I am not quite sure what to make of that fear. I would like to think he is saying that self-reference is a sure way to kill a story, but that would just make Mr. Ende the cheekiest Arsch on the planet. What is just as confusing, but I think I can get a grip on, is what happens when he does start to read. The book starts over, from the very beginning. Not simply the 'story', what Bastian has been reading, but the whole book, including the parts that take place in the real world.

This is startling, because it is the first time we realize that the world we thought was so distinct from Fantastica, except when Bastian's emotions bled through, is apparently a part of the same story. It's a mind fuck. It means that "The Neverending Story" is not a story within the novel it is named after, or a novel named after the book it is about. The story and the novel are the same. As you sit reading your book, looking in on Bastian reading his, you are, in fact, reading the same book he is, even if you see a little more. It begs the question, "If his real world is only part of a neverending story, might ours be too?" I don't think that question is definitively answered, but a yes is strongly implied.

Even more concerning for me is the fact that when the Old Man rereads the story, it is clear that the story is, in fact, only the parts about Bastian and Atreju. Whenever I read the book, I assume that the Neverending Story is an all-encompassing book of fate that includes the stories of everyone in Fantastica, but this is wrong. The story follows Bastian and Bastian alone. Everyone else is only read into it as they come in contact with him. This is problematic for me. I want Engywook, and Cairon, and even Gmorg to have their own stories. But of course they can not. No matter how real or broad it seems, a story is never anything more than what the reader encounters upon reading it. And all of this is determined by how the writer writes it.

Ende is a writer, and clearly knows well how writers work, to produce such a good book. In the second half, he gives us something of a window into one possible way to produce fantasy. Bastian is plopped down into Fantastica and given Auryn, the amulet that contains the power of the Kindliche Kaiserin [I can use whichever name I want. Suck it], the power to "Do what you Wish" and influence the world in anyway he can imagine. He primarily uses this power in three ways: by naming objects, by telling stories, and by wishing for things directly.

The proper name for something is absolutely vital to its existence in Fantastica. In fact, the dilemma of the first half of the book, and the reason Bastian is needed, is that the Empress needs a new name, and only a human child can give her one. He sees her only briefly, and decides on the name Moon Child [Or Mondenkind, though one is not really better than the other]. This naming is representative of the way an author creates fantasy by giving accurate names and descriptions to things he can not necessarily describe. When Bastian names the Empress, he has not attempted a complete survey of her powers and attributes, and could probably not really explain exactly why he gave the name. Yet it feels right to him; it expresses in an image everything he feels about her. When he gives it, it becomes right, and the Empress is later described by her name as much as the name was originally chosen to fit that description. Similarly, when Bastian names the beautiful forest of luminous plants Perelin, the Forest of Night, he does not realize that he is relegating it to life at night and death in the morning, but this becomes an essential trait of it.

The fantastic author must likewise have a gift for naming. Not simply for the relatively straightforward of assigning Linnaen nomenclature to his creations, but of giving names and descriptions that explain more than he could give with mere explanation. The author is entirely different from me, the critic. My job is to explain as precisely as possible what I mean [though I may stumble frequently] to avoid confusion, whereas the author, if he wishes to inspire the imagination and give his creations life, need not explain too much. He must simply suggest and give room for his creatures to grow and expand into the space he has given them.

The process of telling true stories is very closely related to the idea of naming. In fact, as I think about it in my droopy-lidded excitement, I realize that the one may even be an extension of the other. It is not enough for a writer to simply give a name to a character; he must also give a life, and it is through stories that he does this. A good, original story is like an imaginative name. It defines an object of fantasy without forcing too much upon it. For instance, when Bastian tells the story of the terrible dragon for Hero Heinrich, he does not explain everything that happens in Heinrich's quest, or even foretell that the princess Oglamar will be captured. He simply gives the story and allows it to develop.

Unfortunately, story-telling is not always as easy as it sounds. In the process of creating a plot and showing the interactions of a bunch of Names, it is easy for unintended consequences to develop. When Bastian thinks up the Acharai to cry the sea of tears around the silver City of Amaranth, he does not realize that he has created an entire race of depressed caterpillars, but it is a logical consequence to his story. The writer must also always be in control of his story, and aware of its possible ramifications. If a story is to be real, everything in it must have actually happened within the world, and the writer must be aware of this.

Of course, to create a novel, and not just a book-length string of images and interesting ideas, the writer must have some idea of where his book is going, and how to finish the stories he creates. This is where the third facet of Auryn's power - the pure Wish - comes into play. As long as Bastian is in Fantastica, he is the writer, able to create as he wishes and explore to his heart's content the world he has dreamed up. But the longer he stays there, and the more he uses his power, the harder it is for him to return to the real world. He runs the risk of drowning under his own imagination, and not being able to leave it. The writer also faces this danger. It is too easy for him to simply create willy-nilly, with neither purpose nor thought of an end. If he does this however, he may create a wonderful playground for himself to explore, but he can not be said to have written a story.

To leave Fantastica, and reemerge into the light of reality [or reburrow into the dark] the writer needs a wish. He need not know what that wish is, but he must have it, and some memory of the outside world to fuel it. There must be a reason for his creation, and he must be working towards some sort of goal. Without this underlying desire for his creation to do something, he can not hope to achieve anything with it, or even bring it to the eyes of anyone else.

So what's the point? Ende seems to have given us a very good schematic for the roles of readers and writers in literature, but why do we need it? If people could content themselves with remaining in the real world, we wouldn't have to worry about figuring out how we interact with books we read, and no one would bother creating them. The trouble is that that is impossible. In The Neverending Story, Fantastica isn't simply a construct of some person's mind. It is a real place that is dependent on the world, just as the world is dependent on it. In less metaphorical terms, people can not help imagining. They do it all the time, to help them deal with the real world, and just because they find it fun. If we do not have a realm of fantasy [I hope it has been clear that throughout this fantasy has not simply meant books with unicorns and wizards. It is anything that has not happened in the real world, anything born of the creative power of the imagination] to let that imagination roam in, it will fester and consume us. When creatures of Fantastica enter the real world they become lies. It is easy to say "Of course they do. They are not real, and are just intended to fool people. Of course they are lies", but they only become lies when they enter our world and are left untended. In their world, they live and love and are beautiful. We need Fantastica and fantasy so we have a place to live our imaginations outside of the real world, so they do not become lies and do harm.

All of that is lovely, and seems true, and we want to believe it, but it is still circular reasoning. Michael Ende's "plea for fantasy's right to exist" is played out in a fantasy world, with fake characters. It could just be a load of heart-wrenching, gut-busting, goofy smile-inducing bullshit. But we don't want it to be, and I think that is exactly how we know it is not. Ende has pulled the ultimate fake-out on our cold, logical hearts. We can't call baloney on the journey he has just described, because it happened to us. This is sort of difficult to describe precisely, because everyone obvious has their own reactions to a book, and I could be basing this entirely on my own journey. I have a few examples that I think will make it clear just what I mean.

The first is the distinction between Real Life and Fantastica that I foreshadowed that I would talk about. In the American version of the book, this distinction is signalled by the use of Italics for RL and straight font [curse my lack of typographical jargon!] for Fantastica. This is nice and effective, though I don't like it as much as the German solution. In the original work, RL is denoted by red ink, and Phantasien by blue-green. This works surprisingly well; both are easy to read, though green is admittedly more so, and it doesn't imply that Fantastica is the "normal" setting of the book and RL is simply a diversion. In both books, however, you quickly learn to identify the setting with the font. You are absorbed into the world of the book. The font gives an easy way to find your bearings and distinguish between locations, just as Bastian must be able to. The dichotomy of Fantastica and RL quickly becomes as real to you as it is to the character of Bastian, even though you experience them as patterns of ink on a page, and he lives in them.

The frequent use of the phrase "But that is another story and will be told another time" to close of the stories of secondary characters is the most concise way in which Ende shows how a writer can create complex and true stories from simple Names or Stories. In the beginning stages of the book, this device seems to broaden the scope of the narrative. It is an apology for the necessary focus of the story on Bastian, and hints at a huge web of interconnected stories that make up the Neverending one. While you probably don't completely picture the whole other story every time one is mentioned, you know that they exist, and can imagine how they occur, even though you are only given a brief summary. You are sure that each one could be written.

Once Bastian is given Auryn and is a 'writer' of stories himself, this device becomes an excuse, a way that Bastian, who is often not a very good creator, closes off consequences that he can not be bothered to handle. When he sends Heinrich off against the dragon, it occurs, and you realize that you are missing out on a whole story. Whereas before it had only been used to suggest an obvious end, now whole plots are becoming 'Other Stories' and you feel that you are missing out. Of course, you probably don't stop to figure all of this out intellectually [I didn't think of it quite like this until just now], but you can feel what is wrong. I don't want to dictate your response too much, but I literally cried out in frustration when Bastian foisted his trusty mule Jicha off into Another Story. It is only when Bastian realizes that he can not control everything precisely, and begins to seek the overriding Wish that will send him back to his world, that these other stories become hopeful again. One of the last is a classic story of renewed life, in which a magpie finds the remnants of his magic belt and flies off with it to his next. Here again we see a simple story that does not need complete explanation, but whose consequences seem right and which accords perfectly with the larger whole.

Well, this has been long [Almost 4,000 words by the time I wrap it up], and I have to get up soon, so I am not sure how to conclude it. If you haven't read the Neverending Story, read it, and don't react like I told you to just because I told you to. Read it, and love it, and then read something else, and see yourself in it, and wish.

Ivory Tower Onanism (Rough)

Again I find myself in this position, sitting down to write something as I know I should be going to bed. Things get bad this late at night. Every homophone is accidentally replaced with a different spelling of itself, earning the hatred of grammar nerds everywhere, which is a great shame, because some of my closest friends are grammar nerds. With luck, the hour will push me to keep things short, as I tell myself that as soon as I finish this I can go bed. Unfortunately, Blogspot is interacting poorly with the Facebook chat with Kieran F(The first personal name mentioned in this blog? I think so) in another tab, so I may not even get that far. Perchance I will simply introduce my topic, go to bed, and return another day to finish it. Perchance it will be tomorrow, but more likely two weeks from now.

Actually, I think I am going to just come back to this whole thing tomorrow. Why, you ask, would I then leave this whole irrelevant introduction lying around when anyone can come upon it and judge it? Well, this whole blog is just an excuse to get me writing, and so I would like to preserve everything I do write, however useless. So this introduction remains. See you later, when I will talk a little about philosophy, and maybe mention another personal name.

Huh. Last night, I thought I was making a cliff-hanger, but with only a line of blank space between where I left off then and where I start now, the suspense doesn't end up being very effective. Anyway, I was talking a while with Sophie K about philosophy, and how generally useless it is. Well, she was talking about how generally useless it is, and I was trying valiantly to defend it. Unfortunately, there wasn't very much I could do.

We had just read an article by Bertrand Russel about the limited proof we have that anything outside our minds really exists. The basic argument was that there is no way we can know that the people and things we see around us are actually there in a physical sense, or if they are just constructions created by (thinking philosophically) our mind or (thinking in science-fiction) a giant computer simulation. She wondered why anyone should be concerned with the reality of outside objects as long as they appear to exist for us. I admitted that there was indeed no way of being certain, though the apparent consistency of the world we experience implied that there seemed to be. I said philosophers generally admitted that we could not be certain of outside reality, and they are usually concerned with what to do in case we are. They want to know how we should think of ourselves and our relationships with others, if those others are not as real as we are.

She said that was all well and good, but repeated her objection. Who cares if everything around us does not exist, as long as we can still interact with it as though it does? There was no good response to that. I tried to argue that we without the presence of other people, we would be lonely and unfulfilled. She said that even if other people were constructions of her subconscious, she could still interact with them as though they were distinct from her, and so she had no reason to be lonely. I asked if sex, the most physical and intimate human sensation, would be as satisfying if she were not actually experiencing with another person, and if, in fact, she had no material body to actually experience it. She said it might not, but she could never know that for sure, and even if she could, the mental stimulation she had when she perceived herself as having sex was everything the physical act could be, so there was no loss.

We were probably missing some deep philosophical nuance in our argument. As I think about it now, I am sure we had some fundamental difference on definition on some point, though I can't put my finger on where. I am also finding objections to the idea that we could be entirely alone and without other people; in what sense are figments of our imagination less real than we are if they have all of the experiences and apparent complexities we do? Regardless of how philosophically rigorous we were being, the conversation made me realize that this sort of philosophy, the staple of all of the Greats - Plato, Descartes, Kant - did not lend as much as its creators might imagine to the everyday average life of most people.

Philosophers tend to think, in my experience, that they have their finger on the pulse of the times, that their theories can explain everything and make things simpler for everyone else. In Martin Heidegger's Being and Time, he explains the ontological priority of his existential analytic of Dasein (I had to)as its ability to provide a firm foundation for all of the other sciences. He said that without the complete understanding of the meaning of Being that he was developing, any investigation of individual beings was incomplete. Heidegger only ever got a third of the way through his project, but I don't think that is why it is not required reading for every new scientist or scholar. It's because despite his sense of his own importance, we really don't need to have a complete theory of ontology before we can begin to investigate the things we see. Scientists have been doing it very well since the Greeks, even without a philosophical framework for what they were describing. Ordinary people can live in a world they don't entirely understand without freaking out. So why does anyone bother to philosophize?

The answer I came up with, and I am probably not the first, is that some people just have to. The great mass of humanity can sleep at night not knowing for sure why they are on this planet, or not being assured that they only believe the sun will rise tomorrow because of habit, not because of any deductive proof that the law of cause and effect will continue to hold. They may have doubts or confusions now and again, but for the most part, people can take the comforts of religion, or their family convictions, or even a constitutional optimism and feel secure. They don't need to doubt their senses, because their senses explain things better than their intellect. In fact, they often tend to distrust rational attempts to explain such things as foolish or unnecessary. Why justify the world when it seems perfectly content to justify itself? You'd have to be an idiot.

The thing is that such idiots exist. There are people who, for one reason or another, just can't rest content with what they have. They are curious, they strive for certainty. They might go a variety of directions. People like Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman fall under this category as much as Schopenhauer and Hegel. They all possess that germ of curiosity that needs something more than what it can see to be secure in its existence. Scientists look more closely outside themselves for strict laws to give order and coherence to their lives, while philosophers are introspective and search themselves for the answers they speak. Nonetheless, they are kindred temperaments and believe as a group that "you've got to stop and think about the complexity, to really get the pleasure" or security.

That explains why they do it, for sure, but it doesn't really explain the point and why anyone but this small caste of people should care. Scientists are obviously useful, because they give provide us technology and ideas that will affect how we live, but what do philosophers really do for us? Who needs 'em anyway?

And I think, the answer is that no one really needs 'em, just like no one really needs painters or composers or all of the other people who make human creativity manifest in the world. It's not necessary, for sure, but it is a uniquely human activity to be able to think rationally about grand questions of reality, and it is by doing so that we assert our consciousness and prove that we are more than simply organic machines that simulate intelligence. You could argue that people are in fact nothing more than bundles of cells that seem to function as something greater than the sum of the interrelationships between their parts, and you would be right as long as everyone believed that. Philosophers seek to justify the human place in the world with logic, and even though they may fail, their efforts are their own justification. Or so we tell ourselves.