Monday, November 16, 2015

"Some one had blundered"

I hope I’m not the only one being driven by this question. If asked for a theme, an idea of what is trying to be asked, explained, understood, well this question or ... statement? seems it to me. I’ll take this definition for blundered: “move clumsily or as if unable to see," in this respect referring to really all the characters involved. That they all, in a way, are jarring against each other; always the constant collective tipping the easel (or almost) in ignorance. We are all of us just being a purple triangle trying to fill in the space of two masses with some harmony, but the colors are off, too little, too much. The picture displaces the frame, the mold doesn't fit the throne. Everyone is disconnected in their own way, unable to see beyond the hive. That even in the fluid motions of everyday life is that jarring inability, and not just between people but the common place as well. How terror would behold Mrs. Ramsay just by hearing the same shore she has for all the years preceding, and it's out of nowhere, a sound that seemed to soothe her suddenly taking this ominous form. We at best see through a veil, and perhaps clarity is not a virtue, perhaps to blunder in this way, to be blind and clumsy in our dealings with each other is better than true clarity, that clarity is terror and, because it seems to be a dying cliché, ignorance is bliss, or if not bliss at the least bearable. Bearable in the sense that ignorance allows infinite definition, that ignorance is pliable and apt to change, and that change is necessary that a set definition robs not only hope but imagination and fills it in with bricks. Can I be so bold as to say that this theme, this glorification of ignorance, of a definition, of a friend, a family member may even relate to "Modern Fiction"? To allow the same breadth of movement between words and lines and syntax as people do with their misinterpretations of each other? Maybe, or maybe Jasper blundered by interrupting Mr. Bankes and Lily, or Cam by running restlessly, or Mr. Ramsay in his vanity or the Mrs. in hers. Maybe it has a real solid point I need to get to, like a man-slaughter in the novel, although that seems highly unlikely, you never know. All I know for certain is that there is some rumpus in this blunder.


1 comment:

  1. Your title for this post, Josh, should have been "Some Rumpus in this Blunder"! Or maybe that should be the title of your first novel or book of poems! ... Seriously, though, I like your characterization of the novel via such phrases as things (people, ideas, memories) "jarring against each other" and seeing things, "at best through a veil." There's much you could do in a discussion/paper about this book by focusing on such ideas ...

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