Writer, Reader and Humpty Dumpty

When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said to Alice in "Through The Looking Glass", it meant exactly what I want it to mean. If he said so, that is what it meant.

I am reading David Markson's "This Is Not A Novel" in which he refers to himself as Writer. (I'll refer to myself as Reader, although I am also writing). In it he mentions the abstract artist Robert Rauschenberg who said about one of his paintings: "This is a portrait of Iris Clert [ Paris gallery owner] if I say so". Markson also writes, "This is a novel if Writer or Robert Rauschenberg say so". Later he writes, "This is even a poem, if Writer says so". And then, " This is even an epic poem, if the Writer says so".

Markson was considered an experimental writer.

I have come across people who don't like looking up the meaning of words in the dictionary because it ruins it for them. It's as though the dictionary is telling them how to think. They want to discover the meaning of words for themselves. The dictionary, they think, is telling them how to think. But unlike some, I don't think Humpty was bothered by the fact that a meaning of a word was defined prior to his using it. Humpty was into pragmatics, where the meaning of a word could take on different meanings depending on the context. He knew he was dealing with the English language, a democratic language open to interpretation and flexibility, not like other languages that remained inflexible and their usage policed by some central committee.

Speaking of being told how to think, I had an acquittance who said she didn't like reading the editorials in the newspaper because she felt that they were telling her how to think. Imagine feeling so easily influenced and so insecure about one's convictions.

I was hoping Markson might have made reference to Humpty Dumpty in his not-a-novel for my sake, since I had been thinking about him. His book is peppered with blurbs about notable people throughout history, e.g., Freud suffered from chronic constipation. But nowhere did I find even mention of Lewis Carroll (a.k.a Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) who employed Humpty as one of Alice's foils.

In his book "Voltaire's Bastards" John Ralston Saul evoked Humpty Dumpty to express his annoyance with the hijacking of 'capitalism' , that the term is often used to mean nothing of the kind.

Reader is wrong. Markson did mention Lewis Carroll, that he wrote standing up. Donald Rumsfeld, Bush’s inept Secretary of Defense, worked standing up. “Truman Capote wrote lying down.”

Howard Kainz wrote that Marx's dialectic was eclectic.

According to a Dutch physicist, the theory of everything may be found in thermodynamics, which I supposed. Erik Verlinde believes ‘that gravity is a consequence of the venerable laws of thermodynamics’.

Markson writes, "Lavoisier was guillotined in the Reign of Terror". Reader discovered Lavoisier was a French scientist known for his study in, what was at the time, the young field of thermodynamics. He demonstrated that the shift of matter from one state to another happens without loss or gain. Matter that is destroyed emerges as something else, in the same amount, though different. Jean-Paul Marat, Lavoisier's denouncer and a French revolutionist, may have understood this principle and also wanted to demonstrate it, so felt no qualms about authoring Lavoisier’s death.

One of Reader's favorite saying is 'Litigation creates Civilization'. (Reader doesn't know whether he made up that phrase or he read it somewhere.) Reader doesn't just mean the litigation that occurs in court rooms, between lawyers or clients, but the litigation that occurs on a daily bases between people and institutions. Reader is reading a book on orchestra conductors and he is thinking about the litigation and proceedings that occur between them and the musicians they conduct. The back and forth that transpires between these two parties does have a creative effect in that it results in a civilizing, harmonious development. In fact, the discourse and clashing that occurs between notes in music is a form of litigation, which also results in creation.

The litigation or argument that occurs between the conductor and musicians, like that which occurs between the notes of a score, can create glorious music if ultimately they come together in harmony. Humpty Dumpty may have called such a happening a 'glory' if he found the outcome satisfying and refreshing. In fact that is what he and Alice were discussing. He used the word glory to mean a "nice knock-down argument". Alice questioned and objected to that usage, prompting Humpty's famous line, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less”.

Sad as the French Revolution was for all, the litigation that occurred during it eventually helped lead to the civility we see today in Europe and throughout the world.

Today Reader learned that the elegant, Australian conductor Charles Mackerras died at 84, July 14, 2010. As a young man Mackerras found himself bowled over by the music of Janacek, the Czech composer.