the worst vice is advice

if you could meet your young self, what would you tell him?

are we talking about “culture” or biographical advice?

culture. where would you point him? what would you have him study?

oh, i see. i’ve thought about this, actually, because i’m always writing (in a way) for my younger self.

what would you emphasize?

i would push the satanic-byronic hero, the archetypes (jungian), and language philosophy.

let’s tackle them one by one. why the satanic-byronic hero?

well, you know my hero myth theory. the writer himself is a satanic hero. he’s the pope of his own religion. that religion is his personal glory, you might say.

essentially narcissism?

right, but it something to live up to. the great motive is personal glory. don’t misunderstand that as simply fame. fame is nice, i would think, but it’s more important to truly love oneself.

to convince the mirror is more important than to convince the crowd?

right, and i would guess that no one convinces crowds until the mirror has long been convinced.

so you see a secret root of narcissism in all greatness.

yes, i think spirit and vanity are synonymous.

why does vanity have such negative connotations?

“vanity” means empty. we criticize the proud who have not impressed us by calling them empty.

by implying that there’s nothing beneath the fancy wrapping paper?

right, but if we like what someone does we call them “proud” or “dignified.”

so the difference between “pride” and “vanity” is just a matter of taste?

for me, yes. that’s what the words mean to me.

do you think a writer must be narcissistic?

i think a writer who wants to do something new must, yes. of course a person full of guilt might pen a confession that sells millions. it might be well written. so there’s an exception. i’m simply dwelling on writers who see themselves as artist, not as talkers on paper.

what’s the difference?

they pride themselves on it. they claim (in their heads at least) a certain mastery, a certain expertise. the kind i’m talking about want to stand out, be significant. they want to be the opposite of a second rate imitation.

whereas others may just want their story told.

right. there’s the simple human need to communicate and then there’s the artistic need to make something beautiful that is also new, distinct, personal.

but that could be nonfiction, i assume.

right, just think of henry miller or charles bukowski or jack kerouac.

how do you rate them?

i put miller and bukowski above kerouac, but jack has his moments.

any other nonfiction writers you care to mention?

henry roth is something special. his “mercy of a rude stream” is bold. he confesses his narcissism, his aggression, his incest even.

i’ve heard about that.

it’s good. he writes about joyce in those books. also the jews in general. he is an old old man facing death, knowing, trying to get the facts down and what they meant to him. quite good.

anyone else?

not at the moment. not autobiographical.

miller and bukowski seemed to see themselves as “satanic” heroes. would you agree?

certainly. i remember being shocked by miller’s frankness. he was frankly a thief at times. bukowski is frankly a narcissist. he would joke (or not) about rape quite freely. yet the both let us know how tender they could be. they weren’t ashamed of their “good” or “evil.” they wanted to give us the whole of them.

where does kerouac fit in?

in the “subterraneans” he’s also pretty open like this. he just has suych a tendency toward this buddhism and self-abnegation. it bothers me. it turns me off, though a younger me was more amused by it.

so the “satanic” hero, i assume, gets its name from john milton’s version of satan, in “paradise lost“.

right. satan denies the authority of god. he’s the under-dog. he takes chances in the name or “vanity” or “pride.” in fact, he battles omnipotence. he’s the cosmic narcissistic underdog.

i see. and “byronic” comes from the poet lord byron.

right, because byron himself as well as many of his characters are the same narcissistic underdog. but the narcissism was only one element. there was also a nature mysticism.

could you go into that?

i’m not an expert on it, but i’ll try. they saw infinity and serenity and purity in nature, i suppose you could say. instead of alexander pope writing about the idle rich, you had the romantics writing about the power and beauty of landscapes, which were experienced in solitude.

this “solitude” connects the nature mysticism to the narcissism, i presume.

right. you could break it down to the individual and nature. romanticism was much about private feelings. instead of reporting on the observed and often satirized habits of man (the neo-classicists), they were forced to use nature imagery and various symbols to get across their inner states.

so the feelings of the solitary individual become more important than the behavior of mankind in general.

right, pope had said that the “proper study of mankind was man.” pope wrote “the rape of the lock” which was a satire of the idle rich. but wordsworth popped in with these poems about daffodils or pretty little tragic poor girls. some of the romantics used a more direct language, a less “literary” style.

why do you focus on the narcissistic satanic element more than the others?

i think it ages better than the other factors. i do care about writing style of course, but it’s not as important spiritually as the satanic hero.

would you say that the satanic hero functions as your religion?

yes, it does, but not without irony. satanism, the way i mean it, is not the worship of satan but rather the worship on oneself.

it’s more about the emulation of satan.

right, just as a christian is supposed to imitate christ.

but organized religion will often present him as an object of worship.

they do, but i see that as a corruption of christ. of course christ is a fiction. interpret him how you will. i simply prefer the satanic element in christ. he too was an underdog. the jews accused him of blasphemy, of implying that he was god, or the son of god.

so satan’s fall from heaven and the crucifixion of jesus are somehow parallel?

yes, exactly. they are similar heroes.

that idea would surprise most folks.

wouldn’t it? but only the superstitious, i would think.

but what about the sermon on the mount?

the self-sacrifice element in jesus is the major difference. jesus is a strange mix of the satanic and the altruistic. it’s such an unlikely mix that i view it as questionable. did the church tamper with these gospels? in the end, i don’t care what actually happened, whether jesus ever lived. for me he’s a character, someone like socrates, who also wrote no books but was often quoted.

jesus and socrates…was socrates satanic?

yeah, he has satanic qualities. he constantly improved himself. he was ironic. he was probably motivated by self-love. it seems pretty obvious. then he dies in a dramatic way, in quite a smart ass way.

you think his death was sentimentalized?

yes. it’s ridiculous. what was he, 80? not only that but he chose to die. he insulted the jury in a smartass way. he was looking for death. i can only suppose that the real socrates was too complex, too ironic for his contemporaries to understand him. it’s just a guess, of course.

ok, let’s move on to the jungian archetypes.

sure.

what is an archetype?

we see the world through mythological goggles.

what do you mean?

we are programmed to make something our god, for instance. it’s the same with mother and wife.

where does the archetype fit in?

if you look at various cultures you will always find some christ type for instance: buddha, krishna, lao tzu, jesus. they all seem to fit into the same slot. these slots are called archetypes.

why is it important to understand them?

the more conscious we are of our evolutionary program, the more we can modify it, i guess.

what’s so special about the jungian vision?

well, i guess jung is no more important than freud to me. the essence is to study psychology, our built in programming. our human nature is quite malleable, but it’s reasonable to assume a certain structure. the archetypes would constitute this structure.

why would this help a young you?

let’s talk about what jung calls the “anima.” he thinks that the soul of man is an inner woman. if a man thinks that he had this built in inner woman, he won’t fight against it. he will use it. if, on the other hand, all he has to go on is working-class homophobia, he’s going to fight his soul, which is also his muse.

so jung points us to our inner woman?

right, and so does freud of course, in a different way. but jung is more explicit about the value of knowing our “unconscious” self. just as nietzsche points us toward the value of pride, so does jung point us to the value in what we might otherwise repress.

both encourage us into taboo territory that can enrich our lives…

exactly.

let’s move to the language philosophy you mentioned.

sure.

what’s the essence of that?

to know what words are, how they work.

how do they work?

the work is done to a large degree with metaphors.

what’s so important about metaphors?

all the abstract words we live and die for were born as metaphors. let a young person trace the etymology of all the abstract words on one page of his favorite book and he will understand their significance.

i still don’t get it.

let’s imagine cave men, very primitive people.

ok.

they only have words for objects. they have a word for tree and for mammoth and fire and so on.

ok.

at some point they are going to want to talk about their feelings. they are going to get ideas about “spirits.” where will the words for such things come from? they aren’t invented yet. the best they can do is use a word for something literal in a new way. that’s all metaphors are. we put a new twist on an old word.

ok. i see what you mean now. so what comes first, the thought or the metaphor that expresses it?

they come at the same time. thought comes as metaphor. we think metaphorically.

that seems like an overstatement.

if you look at the history of religion or philosophy, you will find that the breakthroughs are always fresh metaphors, that or a new emphases on an old metaphor. in any case, one metaphor (or symbol) is replaced by another. or two are sown together. the pieces are metaphors.

what’s the difference between a metaphor and a symbol?

a symbol is a metaphor with the extra energy that comes from “activating” an archetype. if we put a metaphor in one of those programmed mystical slots, it becomes a symbol.

can you give an example?

the cross, for instance. maybe the crown of a king. it’s not an exact science. it’s what i call a soft science.

what’s a soft science?

well, hard sciences use measurements and equations. they are based on math. soft sciences are based on taste and metaphors.

which is psychology?

psychology is both. i think it’s mostly a soft science though. anything based on words is necessarily soft.

because of the slippery nature of words?

right, because words are a complex web of relationships. if you change the meaning of one word, you sometimes are changing the meaning of another.

how so?

if you change the meaning of the word “god” for instance, you have changed the meaning of the word “sin.”

i see.

then of course we always determine what a word means by look at the sentence we find it in. we experience words in groups, usually. context is anything but secondary.

so words effect one another like chess pieces.

right.

what good is it to understand all this?

it makes sense for a painter to understand paint. it makes sense for a writer to understand words. we think in words. to understand the nature of words is to understand something essentially human. also, it protects us from manipulation.

we are less the victim of words.

right, when we understand that we are only hearing metaphors and symbols, we are less likely to throw ourselves away after hearing a good speech.

so let’s wrap it all up. you would tell your young self about the devil, our biological programming toward gods, mothers, and women, and then also the nature of language.

right. i would give him himself as a new religion. i would give him his soul as a cave to explore, as a woman to love. i would give him the key to writing in general, which is the understanding of metaphor.

and from there he could do the rest himself.

hopefully.