The dude carries on for quite some time about how he doesn't care for literature and poetry because, well, it's not the flat out truth. Of course, the hilarity of this is that it's all done by way of an explanation of why he writing at all. "I'm not a writer or a poet. In fact, I laugh in the face of the liars! And I'm only writing this because I have to, honest man that I am."
which reminded me of Alice Munro's work, both fiction and memoir, where she remembers her Irish elders who frequently regarded literature as storytelling - aka lying. That struck me as interesting. I asked my mother if she'd ever heard of that, considering our family comes from a heritage much like Munro's. She hadn't. Gramps was quite a storyteller - and yeah, actually a great fibber. Which is to say: he's start with some kernel of truth and then fabricate things out of thin air, right there on the spot, in verbal storytelling. But I never got the sense as a youngster, nor did mom or my aunt, that gramps' storytelling/fibbing was morally wrong as Munro's ancestors did.
Anyway, later, as he's plotting to steal the work of someone who's not in sound financial shape and had actually come to him for money, he goes on and on about his special honesty. But Multituli (the pseud for Eduard Douwes Dekkar) has Droogstoppel leaking like mad, constantly saying "To tell the truth," and "To be honest," because, if you've never noticed, when someone says that in a context where you're assuming truth telling (i.e, where you're assuming people are being straightforward rather than evasive) and someone prefaces their conversation with "to be honest" or "to tell the truth," it's always jarring. There's a gentleman at work who does this all the time and I think, 'dang dewd, when you have to preface sentences like that, I'm pretty sure that now you've revealed that the rest of the time you aren't honest! Or maybe the reverse: it's a signal that you're lying!"
In short, Dry as Dust is, to my mind, a fine illustration of the petty bourgeoisie in 1860ish. It's really awesome -- and it'd probably make a funny movie if you could figure out a device for allowing the audience to be inundated with Droogstoppel's thoughts, just as you are inundated in the book. it's just this non-step self-commentary, running a mile-a-minute (or so it seems to me). It's like the guy's brain never shuts down for a moment.
Also, the thing that so struck me is something Carrol often talks about. The book basically opens with a petty bourg telling you that he doesn't read shit. So, immediately I was grinning to myself about how civilization was damn declining among the bourgeoisie already in 1860ish. And when Droogstoppel goes on and on about the lost morality of youth, you're thinking well, hello!
But catch this little gem and you'll see what Michael means by this book being hilarious. He tells the reader that she must read the book if a coffee broker or, hell, anything at all:
"Not only have I never written anything that resembled a novel, I don't even like reading such things, because I'm a businessman. For years I've been asking myself what is the use of them, and I am amazed at the impudence with which apoet or story-teller dares to palm off on your something that never happened,. and usually ever *could* happen. If I, in *my* line - I am a coffee broker, and I live at 27 Lauriergraht -- gave a statement to a principal -- a principal is someone who sells coffee -- which contained only a small portion of the untruths that form the greater part of all poems and novels, he would transfer his business to Busselinck & Waterman at once. They're coffee brokers too, but you don't need to know their address."
....
*Truth* and *common sense* -- that's what I say, and I'm sticking to it. Naturally, I make an exception for _Holy Scripture_."
LOL
To illustrate why literature is lying he writes (this is the part that made me bust a gut). He says it's not just books but the people of the theatre "who tempt young people into untruthfulness:
"The hero of the piece is pulled out of the water by someone who's on the point of going bankrupt. For this, he gives him half his fortune. That *can't* be true. A short time ago, on Prinsengracht, when my has was blowed -- Frits says: 'was blown' [1] -- in the canal, I gave a couple of stivers to the man who brought it back to me, and he was quite satisfied. I'm well aware I should have had to give him more if he had fished *me* out of the water, but certainly not half my fortune, because it's obvious that, in that way, you only have to fall into the water twice to be reduced to beggary. ... I am a man who loves truth; and I wanr whoever it may concern that I won't pay such a high salvage to anyone who fishes *my* person out of the water. Those not satisfied with less may leave me where I am. Only on a Sunday I'd be prepared to give a little more, though. Because then I wear my braided gold watch-chain a different coat."
lol
BTW, Dekker actually wrote this because he'd been refused a hearing by the Governor. He wanted to clear his name and have his post in Java restored. Gov wouldn't bother. So, Dekker wrote the book to finally get a word in and then used it to try to get his post back. That is, he got the manuscript ready to publish then said he wouldn't go through with publication if they gave him his post back, restored his tenure, etc. Gov refused.
I don't bring this up to diminish the book or the reasons why he wrote it. Rather, I thought it was interesting because this guy was fired up with some holy moly righteousness that made him take some pretty audacious chances. This is partly because he saw himself on a mission to return to his post and help the people in the colony.
Anyway, good book. Read it!
Also, Michael, I haven't figured out yet what this phrase means. It's repeated so often that it's got to be pointing at something but so far I'm not getting it. It's always some variation on, I've been here for a long time and "I've seen a good many firms go down!"
When I first read it, it evoked the sense of some folktale where there's a line refrained over and over: "I've seen a good many firms go down!" You know? Like tell a story with a verse, then the chorus. That line is like a chorus through out the first chapters.
I'm not much of a fiction reader and I've been told my thoughts on fiction are crap, but there you have it. I'll crap away. Like Droogstoppel!
shag
[1] he uses this device throughout. Frits who is, I gather, his 14 year old son?, occasionally corrects his grammar. But Droogstoppel shows you this to show you that he's well, kind of a philistine, a man of da people! authentic- and-all I guess. Not too learned and uppity. Once in a while, the em dashes will set off Frits' correction and then Droogstoppel's refusal altogether:
"But all those questions and answers made it more and more difficult -- Frits says: 'the more difficult'; but I don't -- more and more difficult, then, to shake him off."
The psychology here is just great. It's not enough to be rebellious and say, "but I don't" he goes and says the offending phrase *again*. Anyway, see what I mean? At 05:08 PM 3/19/2010, Michael Pollak wrote:
>On Fri, 19 Mar 2010, Michael Pollak wrote:
>
>>_Multituli_ by Max Havelaar
>
>How profoundly embarassing. I meant _Max Havelaar_ by Multituli.
>
>Multituli was a pseudonym for Eduard Douwes Dekker. It's famous, and his
>name isn't. It's latin I think for something like "I have suffered much."
>
>Michael
Michael also wrote:
> > Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Jungle seem to have advanced
> > specific policies.
>
>BTW, if anyone thinks a lot about the interaction of politics and
>literature, I can't resist a plug for a little known book of unique genius
>that I'd love to share: _Multituli_ by Max Havelaar. I'd love to discuss
>it with someone someday.
>
>It was written in 1860 in Dutch by a guy who was not a novelist. And
>besides being tremendously great IMHO -- and deeply funny -- I think it's
>the only book I've met that successfully marries an *extremely*
>modernist/post-modernist form with an extremely didactic advocacy of
>policy at the end -- it's literally impossible to imagine a more direct
>plea. It's quite uncanny that a book this surpassingly modern and this
>anti-imperialist appeared at this time. And it's mind boggling to me that
>here the two aspects seem to reinforce each other rather than vitiate each
>other.
>
>One reading note: the extreme postmodernism is not at all visible until
>the first page of chapter 5 (p 62. in the Penguin classic edition). Up
>until then it just seems like a satire of a pinched bourgeois Dutchman of
>long ago. When I thought that was going to be the only style, I began to
>get tired of it, and would have stopped had I not been warned that it
>changes. And not only does it change -- not only does it become suddenly a
>blend of literature, sociology, anthropology and economics of a very high
>order, and then flip back, and then become other things -- but when I
>personally went back midway through the book later and re-read the first
>pages in light of what comes later, I reacted to that first part very
>differently. It felt profoundly funny and rich.
>
>I might have ordered it differently if I was his editor. But then again,
>it was his first and only book written, he said purely out of a desire to
>change things after he came back from the colonies. (And it did cause a
>huge political flap and get him made persona non grata in the Netherlands
>-- and a hero to this day in Indonesia.) And to be fair, there are other
>great books, where authors insist on doing that with their first pages,
>making them dense with meaning you can't appreciate until afterwards, so
>that you might mistake what they're worth if people hadn't told you
>beforehand they were great.
>
>Michael