I like where your going with this. Keep it up. In the context of what your saying, check out fiction. It is the same as Pirsig saying the moq is contradiction. Fiction is a metaphor where geography and dreams meet.
woods ----- Original Message ---- From: gav <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, October 17, 2008 7:22:37 PM Subject: [MD] the novel hi there fruitcakes, looks like there is a predominance of scientistic types out there in moq land - me included (seems like another age but i have a couple of scienty bits of paper). but pirsig, god bless his silver head, wrote novels; and he wrote novels, and not simply philosophy, because it was essential, intrinsic to the point he was investigating. the history of the novel is a parallel history of modern mankind; parallel to the scientific revolution sparked by gally and nico copernicus. as science was making its first tentative steps towards objectivity, so the novel began, with cervantes, to explore the world of objectivity's disconjoined twin - the subjective. but i think i haven't quite nailed it (by the way much of this is my own paraphrasing of milan kundera's 'the art of the novel'). the novel remains faithful not to the subjective (which is a fraught abstraction), but to lived experience, existential reality, the livingness of life - the dynamic. it is essential, in order to correctly conceptualise and contextualise pirsig's work, that we both have a good basis ain science and philosophy, *and the arts*, especially the art of the novel. this is why ZAMM is so important. so much misunderstanding and miscommunication on this list - YEARS OF IT - because it is obvious many didn't get ZAMM. i didn't get it at first. it took a second reading, in one sitting, 7 years later before it all clicked. anyway what can the novel tell us gav oh wise pretentious git? the novel is magical. out of the three people who have influenced me most intellectually/artistically, two have been novelists and the other is a songwriter. (miller, pirsig, tim rodgers). the novel is a rare thing. a novel is something that says something new about the human condition, and in doing so frees us from the chains of what was previously unnamed, unconscious. the novel is the exploration of meaning, value, truth, in life. the novel is born of the spirit of humour the novel is without limits and the novel reconnects us with the mythos, it reconnects the logos with the mythos and it unifies our schizophrenic souls - i and me fused together. it is the story that makes the world and we have to hear the story to know the world. this is why the aborigines call it 'the dreamtime'; remember dreams are private myths, myths public dreams (campbell). the dreamtime is the story that creates reality and goes on creating it. what the novel exemplifies is the individual taking responsibility for the collective myth and by doing so he evolves the myth. science does this as well but does so unconsciously. science needs philosophy and art to integrate the new terrain it opens up. people go on about kafka and proust and joyce and well i love kafka, like what i have read of joyce and haven't read proust, but i think the most important development in the novel in the last 100 years is that american colossus - henry miller. you see henry mythologised his own life. he obliterated the division twixt fact of fiction, he showed how fact is fiction and fiction is fact. his writing is alive, ebulliently alive because he taps the source - the wellspring. henry is an example, par excellence, of what campbell was on about in creative mythology: this next stage in human evolution: mythology as a creative personal exploration, rather than a received, overarching ethos of life that informs a society. it is still this as well, but this function is now to be integrated within this personal and creative relationship to myth. anyhoo.... Send instant messages to your online friends http://au.messenger.yahoo.com Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
