RAMCAT READS #6.5: STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
2016 will be a hard year.
We can't avoid, in the words of the novelist Keenan Norris, being
"compelled to perform complex narrative gymnastics" or being glued to
metaphors which govern actions. What or who controls the compelling machinery?
Is breathing a performance?
What motions are not performances in the world we are limited to know ? Is
chewing a slice of toast or consulting a friend or squeezing the trigger of a
gun a performance? Is a performance
itself a performance?
In the time and space and consciousness of being, every
motion is not a performance. If in this
century, human beings are incapable of distinguishing a performance from its
logical opposite, they confront the damnation of being absurdity personified.
The purpose of reading is to beget narratives that liven up
daily conversations and assist us in making choices. Narratives bike through our minds and recycle
thought. Reading as such does not make
us more stupid or wiser. It does not
ensure that we shall be good or bad or liberated from deep confusion about our
morality and mortality. Reading just
increases the probability that we can recognize a nude platitude or cliché when it parades before us and immunize
ourselves against the cancer of spinformations.
Remember that many people who are not print literate employ other forms
of literacy to make their way through life, and we ought to value them as much
as we value those who blind us with verbal brilliance.
One purpose of the "Ramcat Reads" series is to
provide a finite spectrum of choices and to minimize the notion that any single
esteemed writer or any single necessary discipline in the universe donates THE
TRUTH to anyone.
In 2016, we may want to retreat a few hours from the paralyzing utterances of our
presidential candidates and the thought-murdering entertainment our public
intellectuals and enslaved mass media gleefully provide. We may want a recess from obscene but
inevitable disinformation. We may want to sample such books as Narrative
Sequence in Contemporary Narratology, edited by Raphaël Baroni and Françoise
Revaz and Narrating Space/Spatializing
Narrative: Where Narrative Theory and Geography Meet by Marie-Laure Ryan, Kenneth Foote, and Maoz Azaryahu. We may want to have spirit-shaking arguments
with the Qur'an, the Dao de jing, and the Bible (both the Roman Catholic and
Protestant versions thereof). We may
want to do battle with scientific treatises, legal documents and economic
spreadsheets, and poetry. We may want to
spend a cosmic nanosecond or two in renewing our minds.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr. December 21, 2015
