From: rhogan@aludra.usc.edu (Ron Hogan)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Historical Figures was Re: It fills us...
Date: 13 Dec 1992 21:41:59 -0800
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: aludra.usc.edu

Fiona Webster has written:
(in response to John McCarthy's comments on Conrad's potential opinions
about Wilde's ideas and personality)

>Actually, I'm more interested in knowing why you think that
>question is interesting, than I am in the question.  Why?  Because
>Conrad, unlike Wilde, was not a critic, and so his putative ideas
>about Wilde's writing wouldn't necessarily be interesting at all.

Just a small caveat-- a critic's opinion of Wilde isn't necessarily
interesting either.  And Conrad was a practicioner of fiction writing,
so his opinion of fellow practicioners might have some interest, as a
way of establishing how Conrad saw himself in relation to other writers.

>Hmmm....what does your question spring from?  A kind of Borgesian
>playfulness, like wondering what Wilde would think of William S.
>Burroughs--or better yet, wondering what influence Burroughs had
>on Wilde's writing?

Well, we know what you mean in the last clause.  The Borgesian idea is
a good one.  I think what we've got here is something like the literary
trope ...damn, I can't remember the exact term.  It's from the Greek,
has a form of 'poieta' in it, and is roughly akin to a synedoche, except
that here an historical or imaginary figure is made to stand in for an
idea or a body of thought.  Hence this pondering of Wilde and Conrad is
as much about the intersection of their writings as it is about the
intersection of their biographical lives.  The key to the confusion
being the assumption that the lives can be found in the writings.

A lot of fiction within the past few decades has been predicated on this
kind of assumption, the most obvious example being Doctorow's RAGTIME.
Film is, of course, loaded with this-- the current Malcolm X movie is
as much about Malcolm's philosophy as it is about the biographical figure.
For me, anyway, the manipulation of the past in this fashion drives home
the point that it really doesn't matter whether event X happened or not,
but how the public memory of that event is represented.  What's the line
from "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance":  When the legend becomes fact,
print the legend.  That's close-- I'm selectively blanking out on things
I should know, dammit.

The great thing about the novel of ideas that employs historical figures
is that it provides an opportunity to imagine how ideas are debated within
our culture, but substituting people for those ideas-- like Diderot's
dialogues, but with a plot.  And to imagine that the results of this debate
are the reason why the world is the way it is today.  It transforms the
process of intellectual debate into a process of action.

So, yeah, I'm interested in whether or not Conrad and Wilde had opinions
about each other.  There's a great novel by Peter Ackroyd, "The Last
Testament of Oscar Wilde", in which a fictional Wilde, dying in Paris,
writes his memoirs and comments on his contemporaries.  He doesn't mention
Conrad, but the things he does say... well, suffice to say that I would
recommend it to anybody that can find it.

Ron Hogan
(finally getting something into r.a.b. besides wiseass one liners)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books