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A few years ago, I formulated a working hypothesis that has guided my professional efforts as an editor ever since. It goes something like this: The more widely reported the remarks of a significant religious leader are, the less consequent they are likely to be.I’ve since come to the conclusion that the likelihood of this hypothesis being true increases exponentially if the religious leader in question happens to be the pope.
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It is hard not to resent Flaubert for making fictional prose stylish—for making style a problem for the first time in fiction. After Flaubert, and in particular after Flaubert’s letters, style is always mirrored, always self-conscious, always a trapped decision. Style became religious with Flaubert, at the same moment that religion became a kind of literary style, a poetry, with Renan. Flaubert himself admired Rabelais, Cervantes, and Molière as if they were beasts of mere instinct: ‘they are great… because they have no techniques.’ Such writers 'achieve their effects, regardless of Art,’ he wrote to his lover Louise Colet in 1853. But Flaubert could not be free as those writers: 'One achieves style only by atrocious labour, a fanatic and dedicated stubbornness.’ He was imprisoned in scruple, and he imprisoned his successors in scruple. He is the novelist from whom the Modern, with all its narrow freedoms, flows.
If James Wood is right about this, then perhaps we have Flaubert to blame for the ceaseless whining of writers about how miserable their work is, how agonizingly painful — so painful, indeed, that only someone whose calling is divine and whose spirit is pure can bear up under it. If so, then Flaubert has a lot to answer for. (Notice also his diminishment of the achievement of earlier writers: It was easy for them. What an ass. A genius, yes, but an ass, and evidently the creator of a template for literary asses-to-come.)
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The odds of computers becoming thoughtful enough to decide they want to take over the world, hatch a nefarious plan to do so, and then execute said plan remain exquisitely small. Yes, it’s in the realm of the possible. No, it’s not in the realm of the probable. If you want to worry about existential threats, I would suggest that the old-school Biblical ones — flood, famine, pestilence, plague, war — are still the best place to set your sights.
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[gallery columns=“1” size=“full” ids=“18378”]
drawingarchitecture: Nicole Marple, Capture to Catalog, Mixed Media 2014.
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[gallery] momalibrary:
Elsbeth Heddenhausen. Bucher (n.d.) in Das Deutsche Lichtbild, Jahresschau 1933 (Berlin: Robert & Bruno Schultz, 1933). -jt
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[gallery] ryersonlib:
Promotional booklet for Lincoln Automobiles, located at 39, Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Printed by Draeger Frères in Paris, 1931.Includes price list for various models.
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[caption id=“attachment_14519” align=“alignnone” width=“800”]
One of the first Bibles set in Roman type[/caption]
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[gallery] One of the earliest Bibles in Roman type