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[Properties ascribed by James Boyd White to Plato’s Crito]: “The effect of this dialogue… is not to offer the reader a system, a structure of propositions, but to disturb and upset him in a certain way, to leave him in a kind of radical distress.” According to White, Plato’s literary technique reflects his philosophical stance: “This text offers us the experience of incoherence partly resolved, then, but resolved only by seeing that in our own desires for certainty in argument, for authority in the laws—or in reason, or in persuasion—are self-misleading; that we can not rest upon schemes or formulae, either in life or in reading, but must accept the responsibility of living, which is ultimately one of establishing a narrative, a character, a set of relations with others, which have the kinds of coherence and meaning it is given us to have, replete with tension and uncertainty.”
- White, James Boyd. 1994. Acts of Hope: Creating Authority in Literature, Law, and Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p.40 quoted by Aronoff, Myron J. 2001. The Spy Novels of John le Carré: Balancing Ethics and Politics. New York: Palgrave. p.17Read more: http://filmsnoir.net/film_noir/plato-and-noir-%e2%80%9cincoherence-partly-resolved%e2%80%9d.html#ixzz1Cm3Jv0Nr Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEYS
Tony D'Ambra December 30, 2010 at 2:09 pm(Edit)
Thanks and a great post Jim! You have drawn all my jumbled threads together into an exciting and erudite tapestry.
As you rightly elucidate, as long as writers and film-makers continue to attempt at least a partial resolution from the tension of living, literature and cinema will continue to engage us in extraordinary journeys. Even in failure there is measure of truth if we are open and humble enough to see it.Read more: http://filmsnoir.net/film_noir/plato-and-noir-%e2%80%9cincoherence-partly-resolved%e2%80%9d.html#ixzz1Cm65kjHR Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
CAUSE FOR ALARM
Eric Ambler was a thriller writer whose best work was written during the late 30s and early 40s. His novels Journey into Fear (1943) and The Mask of Dimitrios (1944) were made into films noir during the war. In 1938 Ambler published ‘Cause for Alarm’ – not related to any movie with the same title – a story about a British munitions engineer, Marlow, haplessly caught up in espionage in Fascist Italy. The protagonist is aided in his escape from fascist death squads by a mysterious American, Zaleshoff, who may be a Soviet spy but is definitely a socialist. Caught in a snow storm just before crossing into Yugoslavia to freedom, the pair is given shelter for the night by an artist and her elderly father. It transpires that the father is a mathematician, a Professor Beronelli, whose career was destroyed after he refused to pledge a loyalty oath to fascism. The trauma has plunged the man into insanity. The two fugitives discover this after a reviewing the professor’s notes on a perpetual motion machine, and after they realize the daughter is helping them even though she is aware of their fugitive status. After the old man goes to bed, Zaleshoff says to Marlow:
‘Sure! That’s right. What a tragedy! We’re horrified. Hell! Beronelli went crazy because he had to, because it hurt him too much to stay sane in a crazy world. He had to find a way of escape, to make his own world, a world in which he counted, a world in which a man could work according to his rights and know that there was nobody to stop him. His mind created the lie for him and now he’s happy. He’s escaped from everybody’s insanity into his own private one. But you and me, Marlow, we’re still in with the other nuts. The only difference between our obsessions and Beronelli’s is that we share ours with the other citizens of Europe. We’re still listening sympathetically to guys telling us that you can only secure peace and justice with war and injustice, that the patch of earth on which one nation lives is mystically superior to the patch their neighbours live on, that a man who uses a different set of noises to praise God is your natural born enemy. We escape into lies. We don’t even bother to make them good lies. If you say a thing often enough, if you like to believe it, it must be true. That’s the way it works. No need for thinking. Let’s follow our bellies. Down with intelligence. You can’t change human nature, buddy. Bunk! Human nature is part of the social system it works in. Change your system and you change your man. When honesty really is good business, you’ll be honest. When rooting for the next guy means that you’re rooting for yourself too, the brotherhood of man becomes a fact. But you and I don’t think that, do we, Marlow? We still have our pipe dreams. You’re British. You believe in England, in muddling through, in business, and in the dole to keep quiet the starving suckers who have no business to mind. If you were an American you’d believe in America and making good, in breadlines and in baton charges. Beronelli’s crazy. Poor devil. A shocking tragedy. He believes that the laws of thermodynamics are all wrong. Crazy? Sure he is. But we’re crazier. We believe that the laws of the jungle are allright!’
Read more: http://filmsnoir.net/film_noir/still-cause-for-alarm.html#ixzz1Cm7W9p43 Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
