[ilds] Of course Tolkien was not being truthful

[James Gifford]

Hi Bruce,

I do think this is where we disagree -- I don't have any particular 
grudge against Tolkien for his misdirections, and I do think Durrell's 
contradictory truths are a genuine perspective.  For instance, the 
passage you point to in the Quartet, and others like it, gesture to the 
unresolvable nature of truth when we live in a world made up of subjects 
observing 'reality' from a multitude of perspectives.

As an example, did Justine ever love Darley, or was she merely using him 
as a blind for her political interests, or for Pursewarden?  It's 
probably not a question to be answered, since the perspective changes 
it, including Justine's retrospective self-observations.

I suspect this is also the appeal of the popularized notions of 
relativity or quantum strangeness for Durrell -- there are many 
contradictory perspectives from which to view the world, but there's not 
"godly" position at the centre from which to sort out absolute truth, 
and likewise there's no fixed point at which the Enlightenment subject 
is eternally fixed, instead leaving instead a protean process of 
subjectivity in its place.

There are other lies as well, such as Durrell's BBC years, which I see 
as an occasional part of his correspondences but a pervasive part of his 
interviews.  I suspect the interviews are almost all performance, and it 
would be speculation to ask how much of the bafflegab around the truth 
Durrell believed versus how much was a public persona for a private person.

However, I personally don't pick up fiction to look for truth, or at 
least not in any conventional sense.  I trust the telling more than the 
tale, if that's a fair way to put it, and the teller's involvement with 
the telling & tale is suspect.

All best,
James

On 2015-05-15 12:19 PM, Bruce Redwine wrote:
> James,
>
> Yes, authors lie, and so do many people.  They do it for various
> reasons, some excusable, some not.  Durrell’s motives, however, I find
> suspect.  In fact, I think they’re pathological — the man couldn’t
> distinguish between truth and fiction, or chose not to, and then turned
> that disposition into a philosophic principle:  “Truth is what most
> contradicts itself in time.”  In Haag’s /City of Memory,/ Eve Cohen says
> this about him — he’s not to be trusted; he’s a storyteller.  Bill
> Godshalk lying in order to describe lying, if I understand correctly, is
> an example of the “liars paradox.”  Statements about lying — “I am
> lying” — are insolvable in terms of truth value, just as
> Durrell’s/Balthazar’s statement about truth is contradictory.  Now, we
> can say this is a profound observation about the way things are, or we
> can say there’s something wrong with the person who says and believes
> it.  I prefer the latter.
>
> Bruce