[ilds] pinching Spengler

[J. A. Kobayashi]

Charles et al.,

I'm writing my senior thesis at Reed College on *The Revolt of Aphrodite*,
including extensive sections on Oswald Spengler's *The Decline of the
West*and Otto Rank's
*Art and Artist* as source material (there will be smaller sections
explicating all of Durrell's many references in his novel).  I intend to
relate all of the above to Adolfo Bioy Casares' *The Invention of Morel*.  A
more precise statement of the thesis topic is that it will be on the
feminist implications of scientific and filmic immortality ideologies in *
Tunc*, *Nunquam*, and *The Invention of Morel*, under late capitalism.
Durrell said something absolutely fascinating on the topic in an interview:


"     What was concerning me about our culture was precisely the doing down
of woman who is after all the basic brick; if we have any future it depends
on her.  The most critical part of our civilization is not an atom bomb at
all but over-population.  But basically from an affective point of view the
kind of children that we’re going to make are going to be pretty sterilized
if women cannot be more respected and if their role cannot be more combined
with complete freedom, with also a functional freedom as the matriarch of
society."

Those statements are pretty progressive and I think that this attitude is
reflected in *The Revolt* in a number of ways, so much so that I think that
it has a lot of light to bring to more draconian literature and cinema with
similar manifest content but that collaborate with the male gaze to a far
greater extent. Since *The Invention of Morel* was inspired by Casares'
obsession with silent film siren Louise Brooks my thesis will also draw upon
some film relevant film criticism.  In addition, I have been delving a bit
into the dual literary and cinematic traditions that take as their subject
female automata.

Durrell's construction of The Firm as well (especially to the extent that
his conception of it and its influence in the world relies upon Petronius
Arbiter's description of the Roman empire in the *Satyricon)* constitutes a
complex, benignly equivocal, and creative critique of the state of
international capitalism during the period in which he wrote *The Revolt*,
in the context of previous stages of human civilization, a fact which would
most likely have been ignored by Edward Said and would be ignored by Terry
Eagleton, both of whom have probably neither read anything that Durrell
wrote following  *The Alexandria Quartet*.

Having already begun working on all of this, even though it is not due until
May 2011, I have been finding the project particularly exciting and
rewarding, and have certainly not been frustrated because there has been no
prior thesis or book length criticism on *The Revolt*.  Finally, I of course
have no clue what OMG's theme will be next year but felt that now might be a
good time to ask:  does it accept undergraduate submissions?  I am almost
%100 sure that my college would provide me with a full grant to attend and
present at it and I would love to do so.

Best wishes,

Julie

P.S.  There was an error in my last post to this list.  The word "same"
should have been "that" in order to eliminate object confusion.  Even
better, the entire descriptive modifier "of the same name" could be replaced
with "that was named after that phrase in *The Quartet*."

On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 8:48 AM, Charles Sligh <Charles-Sligh at utc.edu>wrote:

> Like others, I often neglect to include /The Revolt of Aphrodite/ in my
> thinking about Durrell's writings.
>
> The following made me hungry for clams and beer and a long afternoon
> with /Tunc/ et /Nunquam/.
>
> The time is some forty years back.
>
> The loss of Claude shadows Durrell's remarks, I think.
>
> Charles
>
> *****
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/13/specials/durrell-despair.html
> > March 20, 1970
> > Durrell in Despair Over Future of Man
> > By ALDEN WHITMAN
> >
> > Aut tunc, aut nunquam," said Lawrence Durrell in perfect ancient Latin
> > as he described yesterday a novelist's foreboding a world doom.
> > "Either then or never," he translated from "The Satyricon," indicating
> > that "never" is virtually upon us all because of our newly acquired
> > technological capacity for self-destruction.
> >
> > The 58-year-old author of "The Alexandrian Quartet" was also reciting
> > his Petronius because the title of his new book, which E.P. Dutton is
> > issuing this week, is "Nunquam." It is a sequel to "Tunc," published
> > here two years ago.
> >
> > Mr. Durrell, who is British and who thus pronounces his name "Durrl,"
> > is in the United States from his home in Nimes, in Provence, to
> > promote the book. One form of this will be a reading from the novel
> > Monday evening at the Poetry Center of the Young Men's Hebrew
> > Association, Lexington Avenue and 92d Street.
> >
> > Spearing a fried clam from his luncheon plate, Mr. Durrell said that
> > his fears for civilization sprang from man's ability to snuff himself
> > out with nuclear devices; or change himself into a conglomeration of
> > insentient monsters by tampering with the genetic code.
> >
> > "We may all become monsters," the author said dourly as he swigged his
> > beer and contemplated another clam.
> >
> > The only hope that the writer sees is that man can recover his wits in
> > time to avert disaster. "We should pray for rain," he prescribed in
> > allusion to a passage in "The Satyricon" that suggests, he said, that
> > sometimes rains falls in response to pious supplications.
> >
> > Mr. Durrell, a short, burly man with a large head, conceded that his
> > doomsday philosophy was not original. "Nobody nowadays reads Oswald
> > Spengler, the German philosopher who wrote "The Decline of the West,"
> > he said between puffs on his Gitane cigarette, "so I can pinch his
> ideas."
> >
> > The writer blinked his hazel eyes and turned the conversation to love,
> > about which he has been thought an expert because of the sexuality in
> > "The Alexandria Quartet." He proved coruscating about Anglo-Saxon love.
> >
> > "Its sentimentality disguises its brutality," he asserted. "Britons
> > and Americans weep over dogs and allow children to starve. This is not
> > conceivable in a Mediterranean culture."
> >
> > Far better, Mr. Durrell went on, "to weep over children and allow dogs
> > to starve."
> >
> > "That's the humane and tender attitude."
> >
> > Over coffee, Mr. Durrell took the opportunity to say a word about
> > himself. Observing that critics have suggested that his fictive
> > characters are terribly complex, he said that this was wrong.
> >
> > "Essentially, I'm a writer of shadow plays," he said. "My characters
> > are all one-dimensional; but I play with them in different lights, and
> > that gives them the appearance of depth."
> >
> > Mr. Durrell, who is also noted for his travel writing, said that he
> > would like to do the United States, perhaps with his brother, Gerald,
> > also a writer.
> >
> > At the moment, though, he's here for just a fortnight, with trips to
> > Chicago and the West Coast to see his old friend, Henry Miller. And to
> > Princeton, too.
>
>
>
> --
> ********************************************
> Charles L. Sligh
> Assistant Professor
> Department of English
> University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
> charles-sligh at utc.edu
> ********************************************
>
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