A Rest Stop for the Road Dogs

We're on to chapter 32, "Endless Ascent", naturally. What a chapter. Taking a bit of a break and coming back, it's nice to get a fresh look at Greaves' writing. It's so different from what I usually read. She's really good at creating a sense made out of preponderance. I respect the hell out of a serial novel nonetheless building up this chapter's climax from the who's talking? and anomie on. I'm so curious how planned this plot was.

Actually Brief Recap

I had to kind of jog my memory about what it is I actually, do, in here.

I reread some of this trying to kind of get back in the mode of writing. I'm sort of tempted to go back and slash/burn a bunch of the posts that are a little, let's say rubenesque, some day. These aren't really edited at all, so alongside plain typos there are some real ruts I get into. It might have been useful for me to think about those topics for a long time but I'm kind of embarassed at the obsessive quality it turns out I can have. It's tough to avoid moment to moment if I do a kind of wandering recap, because many of these serialized chapters are taking a different perspective on the same subject matter. And that's one of the benefits of Greaves' ensemble format; it's rashomonic. But if I only have the same nonfictional response, over and over again, then it's kind of redundant. Hell, I wouldn't be shocked if I've written this very paragraph before. Maybe the AI people are right and I'm just a stochastic parrot -- caw caw "Kristine Eck" caw caw "Amartya Sen" caw caw.

But that's why this one is shaped different. I'm going to try to be a little more organized, I know some of my habbits are like, intensely tedious, and since I'm not trying to do 1/week anymore maybe I can, you know, improve.

Pre-Bethany is still working through a thought-process around goals. Specifically, goals-about-goals.
Shy and Liss reunite with Amy, whose aunt we learn is a big-wig TERF as a hobby.
Declan (I think we have evidence that's how he's still identifying from Val's perspective meeting "Dina", but expect that to change soon.)
Will throws a tantrum about being the main character or something.
Pre-Bethany and Maria talk about role models, I suppose.
We meet some trout-fuckers, Alistair and Henrietta.
BETHANY-ERIN! PWA PWA PWAAAAA!!
Val gets a ticking clock to act as a trainer.

Thoughts in Order of Urgency:

Bethany! Bethany Bethany Bethany!!

That's exciting. Reading Bethany work through this decision was a real treat for a few reasons.

The Crux

I know the title is literally "endless ascent," but this feels climactic for Bethany. Her struggle in this series has been oriented around a sense of anomie this whole time, and literalizing that is a really cool approach for Greaves to take. She got over her anomie by getting a name and/or got a name by getting over her anomie. It's also a nice twist that that literalization is still more of an internal struggle. Often that kind of trick is like "then the character had to climb a hill hurray metaphors!" and that can be powerful too, but this is a struggle that's about attitudes and I think it's cool that it gets to be that even as it's something else. I like it a lot as a piece of writing if that's unclear.

Bethany's struggle in the last few chapters (ever since the "who's talking?" line emerged, basically) has hinged so often on her relationship to herself. How she sees herself, how she feels about her past actions, etcetera. That this, at least moment of, resolution comes from the way she relates to others and visa versa felt cathartic. Also, Maria is basically Bethany's mom on Christmas. Just tracking the Jesusy bits, nothing to see here.

Nolens Volens

My friend gave me his copy of The Revolt of the Masses last time I was in Chicago and the author José Ortega y Gasset hangs a couple of his broader arguments on a nolens volens implication. The at-this-point kind of hackneyed first instance is in essence, you are doomed to make choices because in not choosing you are choosing to not. That's, it's a better book than that implies. Still a colonialist, "of its time" (read: incredibly Eurocentric) text, but one that has a lot of good meat on its bones if you can read through that.

I think it's fascinating how Greaves spends so much time focused on Bethany while she's still making a decision. That intermediary step Greaves shows for Bethany, of essentially having no name, of being on the precipice of choice, depcits a phenomenon that I think people leave underdiscussed.

Ortega y Gasset is, not necessarily wrong, but nonobviously simply right in his nolens volens claim. You can simply whittle away on your decisionmaking process until you expire, and then, no, you never chose. Or you chose to waste. And that choosing-to-waste is, sure, a kind of choosing, but one that is maybe distinct in its quality of inherent sadness. One of the cooler tricks that Greaves plays here is in making this moment of anxiety for Bethany a period of nurturing.

Classical logic kind of forms a background radiation in how we think about thinking, even though we're not classically logical creatures. It's (maybe) an impoverished language for discussing time, though. There are logics that are better at that, but they're not the ones you learn without actively trying to do so. You can model time with universes or extra parameters or whatnot in classical terms, but "there exists a time such that Bethany was not Bethany" undersells the loss of time and the process of growth that consumed that time. "Bethany decides" is an active and a final description.

Was it a stupid thing to say?

The self-doubt here along with the chapter title remind me of something John L Parker wrote about running, that training is like a gyre that you climb but that sometimes takes you back down even as you climb it harder than ever.

Wanting's the same as needing's the same as being, isn't it?

And that's the climb that Greaves is suggesting in this chapter, I guess; self-actualizing is a process, not an action, not a singular point of decision. That equivalence, between want and need and be, seems pretty key here, even though it's not a claim I'd have taken at face value out of context. And it's like, obviously true once reding it in context. So that's something to noodle on.

The question is the little crow hop from want to need, for me. How do you convince yourself you need what you do, in fact, need? And, follow-up, should you even have to do so? No, obvioulsy not; it should be okay to do things because you want to do them. But that line of questioning goes in a million directions, none of which are actually getting what you want and need. So, thinking of it in those terms of desire-as-destiny-as-fulfillment feels powerful, even thought it's phrased as a question.

The Will Show

God has a secondary character ever had more conviction that they are the protagonist of a novel than Will? I'm, you know, medium unsympathetic to him at this juncture, which is possibly medium uncool of me. He's throwing a tantrum, more or less, about how he hasn't transitioned with the power of passivity. And I think that's another thing to be taken in this chapter, that identity-formation is a staircase not an escalator?

So that's the clearest contrast right now I think, between Will and Bethany. Bethany kind of hones in on the want-no-need to be better, grabbing the tiger's tail, and holding on for dear life. Will stays in the basement. The literalization there struck me too. Will is trapped by his rage and his resentment of having to try to change, and so he is still locked in the basement. Whereas Bethany experiences a lot more freedom because she chose to accept that freedom. It's an ironic setup but I think it's also sincere; being free means taking responsibility for your freedom and responsibility is a burden. You can't get out of the rut you're in if you aren't willing to do anything.

I thought something really was happening, until I realised how badly I was fooling myself.

Will's kind of in a holding pattern, sort of expecting the basement itself to be a cure-all, when he probably needs to, like, try to do things.

I thought you useless fucks were going to fix me!

I may have mentioned that I have a young child many times, yes? This bit with Tabby coming in to talk Will down has the mark of some primo tantrum deescalation, props to her.

Goal Selection

This whole project of transforming from Nameless Holt to Bethany all rested on her encountering something to want to want. Aspirations are usually legible, if not always practically simple or feasible. This one seems different but maybe isn't?

"I want to finish writing this series so I can make https://esportz.blog/, a site that very badly misunderstands RCBG", just as an example. Maybe that's the same as "I want to be a person who finishes things," or "I want to want to finish this." And then, discovering an aspiration is something I think people all experience. My daughter wants to learn to play the saxophone, as of yesterday, anyway. She did not want that before she heard about the existence of the saxophone last week. And then there's this class of desire, a meta-goal, that Bethany expressed before she named herself.

First, is it a real distinction or is it a will o'the wisp? Will Bethany take a look back in 6 months and realize that "wanting to want to be a woman" was "wanting to be a woman?" If so, that's an interesting way for the attitude to develop and express itself.

When I develop notions and goals, they often kind of feel like this:

What's that?
That's neat.
I think I want to do that.
I'm doing that.

Discovery leads to appreciation leads to ambition leads to pursuit leads to, sometimes, achievement. But Bethany's path here seemed more complicated.

I pretty often think in terms of "wanting to have done something," and maybe that's my "in" to this kind of attitude, the want-to-want. Like, I run even when it's kind of shitty outside, and that's not always, moment-to-moment because I'm doing the next brute animal behavior that comes to mind, I don't think. Yeah, I think there's a difference there. Wanting a past condition, versus wanting an aspirant condition? Inertia vs momentum, sort of.

It's hard to write about this having read the whole chapter, because Bethany is Bethany now. The ambiguity falls away.

Role Models

I could decide on the person I think I should be, I can name her and I can describe the way she is and everything, and then all I have to do is be her, and keep being her until I am her. Right?

This exchange a little later between pre-Bethany and Maria shed some light on the matter. Bethany had spent so much time not choosing to be anything at all and not really knowing how to decide. And the trappings of Dorley kind of imply a lack of choices, but at least in this iteration she's finally got role models who can show her how to be a person on purpose.

2018-03-16

Why not do our best to emulate her, and see how we fare?

Why not grow wings and fly out of here?

I was surprised to see this flashback but I think it served well. Casting back, to the ways that these traditions developed, is important for understanding why e.g. everyone's so proud of Bethany. Anyway this little exchange was a nice, ironic bit of double entendre and I liked it enough to reproduce it here. It's presented as a subjective impossibility that we know turned out to be possible, and it rhymes so nicely with what Bethany's been doing.

I’m afraid that in our time with the colonials we’ve become used to grander things.

shudders

On a completely other note, these two are so heinous. Greaves has crafted the most punchable characters in contemporary literature with this pair. Alistair calls Val "Domestic (noun)." Surely humans don't do that sort of thing? Well, are aristocrats humans? All the modernity of the British aristocrat with all the class of the American Evangelical; truly a force to be reckoned with.

Anyway though, that term of address "domestic" reiterates what's so wrong with these people; thinking of people solely in terms of their depersonalized role and use. It speaks to that total inversion of values between the Dorothy/Bea eras; Bethany's internal mental state is the predominate source of dramatic tension this chapter (or maybe that's just me,) while the idea that Val has a mental state is so irrelevant that she does not have a name to these assholes.

Val makes a risky play and we get a ticking clock (3 months) for her to plan an escape. She risks pissing Dorothy off (and/or being summarily murdered), but gains some leverage over her by selling her pedigree as a Barbier and her expertise. I strongly suspect the Val portions will be a lot more fun for me as she has more power/agency/leverage.

Jane's Frustration

She's kind of sad, and kind of drunk, and has a lot to get off her chest. To go back to the frame Greaves gives us, of "endless ascent," Jane is climbing but also always looking down the ladder towards the ground. That's tough; she gets to aspire and to progress, but she's constantly reminded by her daily life of her previous condition, which is by definition in Dorley an unhappy one.

To choose womanhood, [...], even when you weren’t destined for it, when it wasn’t meant for you, ... it's strength

Jane might be drunk and sad but this has been weighing on her for awhile, one expects.

Because it's the only way

This is a tricky contrast to "weren't destined." That fragment "weren't destined" can mean "were destined not to," but could just be a lack of destiny altogether. Then again "it's the only way" kind of expresses a different kind of fate? The destiny that comes out of choosing something with profound commitment to it? So this whole manifesto is sort of wrestling with itself on who gets to have fate.

I think, really telos is kind of a silly notion in real life, but if you don't, or if you live in a book, then what you're "meant" to become or do or be is all subject to in whom fate resides that day. Jane's asserting her right to be destined/destiny. The climbers lower down look up and they see Jane. She looks down and sees them. So she is their destiny and was destined.

[A]fter Auntie went off the deep end without a life preserver she felt obligated to read up, and that’s something a lot of them say: that they were always… such-and-such a gender. But then others of them say they weren’t, and it’s a whole complicated thing that doesn’t seem, to Amy, all that important in the great scheme of things. She, Amy, was once a baby and now she isn’t, was once (briefly) into Busted and now (thank God) she isn’t, was once a university student but wasn’t even that for very long, and if she can reinvent herself that many times, both unavoidably and by choice, then if someone says they’re actually a girl or a guy or something else then who the hell is she to argue?

This, later, from Amy. When she says "both unavoidably and by choice," that's another slippery bit of language. I think it's clear that she mainly means "both unavoidably and/or by choice" and is just talking, but there's the more literal reading too; "unavoidable, simultaneously, by choice."

Speaking of, thank you Amy for telling those two that they're dating.

Get in the Beamer, Melissa

Earlier, going home to Shy's, and to see Amy, Melissa reacts to a BMW 7-Series being too showy. First off, can relate. The humble Nissan Leaf is basically a lawnmower and we have it because it's one of the cheapest and least visible vehicles available. Second, this ostentatious abundance is, kind of tweaking the core conceit of Dorley again in a fun way. "What if it was all taken care of? What if someone made you drive a fucking BMW?"

Wanting not to take up space (visual, physical, social, whatever) is, I was going to say universal, but familiar at least, and that's what Melissa hates about the car. I don't know if it genuinely is something to get over. I felt that way a lot more when I hated how my body looked but I still have days, and I bet most people do, where they really just want to be in a different dimension than everyone else. It's exhausting to be perceived sometimes.

Melissa has been dealing with shame a lot in this series, and/but I don't want to oversimplify her feelings here. I think she's also just feeling incongruous because of the tension between her upbringing and her life now. She's, like Bea, enfolded in this upper-class context but coming from this working-class sensibility.

Seeing Shahida's parents again is so nice.

Ah, 2019, such a simpler time. Wait, what?

Who's your mystery friend?

Something like this kind of happened to me since the last post. I went to a wedding and met a new-old friend from college at the rehearsal dinner. We were never incredibly close before, just friends, so I hadn't heard that she transitioned. You know, sometimes you fall out of touch with a person; you both get busy. Anyway, she transitioned and she seems so much more confident, now. I didn't recognize her until someone kind of pointedly clued me in that we knew eachother. It kind of underlines to me how extremely close Melissa was to her whole found family during her youth that they can all see her childhood in her face so clearly. Or maybe I'm just not very good with faces.

It's Melissa!

What a graceful lady. Good for you, Rupa, you've got class.

Stray Thoughts

Happy Clappy

Greaves calls American Evangelicals "happy clappies" which is funny, I'd only heard that from a Catholic friend use that term before, talking about basically the existence of youth pastors, as a concept.

Mugs

Do you ever feel like the mugs are a hindrance to your mission here?

I'm coming around to the mugs as a useful device. They kind of deflate the heightened, you'd want to call it almost supernatural importance that people place on their balls. And they're a clue that Bea is doing a bit with her "aunt" persona.

Steph da Best

She’ll just make sure not to refer to him out loud in the third person for the moment, which oughtn’t be hard

That, is a difficult thing to do. It's also a funny sentence of English since we get to hear (or at least see) her thoughts, and she refers to him in the third person.

What's the Fonz?

Jesus Steph, read a fucking book.

Opsdbhaweghadgsdhfs

Why am I in this chat? I'm right next to you.

Paige da best. Or Rupa. Tough competition this chapter.

Minima Moralia

Book recommendation, kind of along the lines of The Revolt of the Masses, but with less qualification. It's kind of, Theodor Adorno (lefty German, left Germany) being alienated from his country and his theory of history during the Second World War? And also resenting his place of exile. So he'll like, write rants about movies and how he hates the countryside of California, which seems at least to me to be just homesickness. Anyway it's a thin but collection of what would today be blog posts. Some of them are stupid, I think, and many of them are archaic. But it's worth reading, won't take long to read.