## Metadata - Author: [[Michael Foley]] - Full Title: Embracing the Ordinary - Category: #books ## Highlights - the most important champions of the everyday were James Joyce and Marcel Proust and these will be my principal exemplars and teachers. Though their work is now almost a century old, no fiction before or since has included more ordinary life, drawn more useful lessons from it, or made it more numinous, funny and strange. No one has examined ordinary life with more intense curiosity than Proust or celebrated it with greater delight than Joyce. And each combines in a single oeuvre the Holy Trinity of Re-Enchantment – the imaginative vision that discovers beauty, the comic vision that relishes absurdity and the spiritual vision that venerates mystery. ([Location 324](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=324)) - the ‘task is to restore continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience that are works of art and the everyday events, doings and sufferings that are universally recognised to constitute experience. Mountain peaks do not float unsupported; they do not even just rest upon the earth. They are the earth in one of its manifest operations.’ ([Location 339](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=339)) - Many readers of À la recherche have commented on the strange feeling, the certainty, that nothing in this huge book, absolutely nothing, has been invented. Characters have been amalgamated (and occasionally had their genders switched), settings have been changed, and events moved around in time – but everything in it, absolutely everything, happened in real life somewhere at some time. This kind of certainty is one of the most mysterious aspects of reading. Proust’s Belle Époque Paris is utterly remote now – so how can we be sure that every detail is authentic? Yet it is possible to read any novel, no matter how exotic the characters and setting, a tale of Chinese silk workers or Chilean copper miners, and know immediately whether it is the real thing or made up. It must be that life is so wondrously peculiar it defies any attempt to produce a convincing forgery – and this is a wondrously encouraging thought for everyone except professional novelists. ([Location 565](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=565)) - morality itself is based on empathy, the realisation, which came to several different cultures almost simultaneously in the axial age, that others are also conscious and therefore we should do unto others as we would wish them to do unto us. ([Location 593](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=593)) - Successful imaginative fiction requires a rare combination of personal vision, intense observation, accurate recall, empathic understanding of character, psychology and social interaction, a sure instinct for the telling detail and, last but not least, a masterly prose style to make all this swing. ([Location 635](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=635)) - Analysis is not a luxury extra for detached intellectuals but the core activity of every living organism. To ban ideas and explanation may have seemed excitingly liberating in the heady early days of modernism but now it looks like an unnecessary restriction, a fashion that became in turn an orthodoxy as stifling as those it replaced. ([Location 1614](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=1614)) - For William James theorising was nothing less than the meaning of life: ‘The world must not be regarded as a machine whose final purpose is the making real of any outward good, but rather as a contrivance for deepening the theoretic consciousness of what goodness and evil in their intrinsic natures are. Not the doing either of good or of evil is what nature cares for, but the knowing of them. Life is one long eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.’ ([Location 1632](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=1632)) - ‘One lies all one’s life long, notably to lovers, and above all to that stranger whose contempt would cause the most pain – oneself.’ ([Location 1740](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=1740)) - According to Bergson, Western culture preferred to think in terms of space rather than time because space seemed reassuringly inert.135 And the view of time was also essentially spatial (and hence structural) because it quantified time in units extending forward and backward in a dimension like the three dimensions of space. But lived, experienced time is not like this. It is qualitative rather than quantitative and, rather than being measured out in fixed units, it flows. We do not measure it but feel it. Bergson used the term ‘duration’ to distinguish lived time from abstract time. ([Location 1904](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=1904)) - And as consciousness emerges from neuronal activity to confer on the mad flux a necessary illusion of unity and continuity, so the self emerges from consciousness to provide the necessary illusion of order and control.138 The self is a master of self-deception and its greatest ruse is convincing itself it exists. ([Location 1928](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=1928)) - The most astounding revelation of physics is that at the heart of all that exists there is only some sort of unimaginable dance – and investigation of the self also finds not a dancer but a dance.139 ‘How can we know the dancer from the dance?’ wondered W. B. Yeats,140 and the answer is that such separation is impossible because the dancer is the dance. ([Location 1932](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=1932)) - In both matter and the self there is nothing there. Yet matter is solid and the self is real. Bergson got round this problem by locating the self in memory as a synthesis of all past states of consciousness, in other words as experience and character, and this conditions but does not determine all subsequent action. ([Location 1936](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=1936)) - The physical world is a continuous flow and the concept of here and now is a useful but artificial construct of human consciousness. And if, as many anthropologists believe, consciousness evolved as a successful adaptation because of its ability to predict and plan,141 then its default mode is anticipation. And if, as many also believe, there is an evolved human tendency to see the future as better than the present,142 then the default mode is further reinforced. So appreciating the present is a struggle against two immensely powerful effects – the gravitational pull of anticipation itself and the delightfully rosy tint of what is anticipated. ([Location 1940](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=1940)) - In other words, the only resistance to the tyranny of words is an even greater fealty to words. No one is more obsessed with language than writers determined to transcend language. So Montaigne invented the essay form to escape the straitjacket of concept and logical argument and follow the meanderings and digressions of actual thought – and the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty described Montaigne as a writer who placed ‘a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence’.144 ([Location 1950](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=1950)) - Far from being barely conscious, as was once thought, infants ‘are more conscious than we are’. And Gopnik supports this claim with much evidence, including the surprising fact that babies need higher doses of anaesthetics than adults to knock them out. ([Location 2022](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=2022)) - William Hirst, one of the neuroscientists who worked on the 9/11 research, has suggested that frequently retrieving memories makes them more convincing.159 So memory perpetrates an incredible double con – the more often an experience is remembered the less accurate the memory but the greater the belief in its accuracy. ([Location 2112](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=2112)) - (Bergson wrote that the purpose of social life is to foster ‘an admiration of ourselves based on the admiration we think we are inspiring in others’165). ([Location 2223](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=2223)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - The human animal is certainly superior at feeling superior. Every town is the centre of the universe, every religion is the one true faith, every group is the ideal community and every individual is superior to everyone else. The need to feel superior must be absolutely fundamental – and Hannah Arendt has argued that it is an inevitable consequence of consciousness itself, which ‘confirms beyond doubt the reality of sensations and of reasoning’.169 ([Location 2268](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=2268)) - It may be that the conviction of superiority is so fundamental and implicit – like awareness of having two hands and feet – that it is difficult to acknowledge, much less consider or challenge. ([Location 2278](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=2278)) - In the lower-middle class social snobbery is at its most intense because these people are closest to the working class and in constant terror of dropping down into it. ([Location 2350](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=2350)) - The problem with snobbery is not just the damage snobs do to others but the damage they do to themselves. Can a snob have an epiphany? Can a snob even understand anyone else? Feeling superior may seem like an enviable advantage, the key to well-being and a delightful simplification that avoids tiring observation, analysis and empathy, but it is really a grievous limitation because everything inferior is regarded as homogenous and therefore of no interest. The price of superiority is blindness, deafness and ignorance. And possibly also isolation and outrage – because the world frequently declines to defer. ([Location 2393](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=2393)) - The problem is that specific superiority quickly becomes general. It is remarkably easy to go from feeling superior in one way to feeling superior in every way. And from there it is another short step to self-righteousness and universal contempt. And contempt tends to generate anger and disgust, and anger and disgust make it difficult to get any pleasure from life. ([Location 2406](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=2406)) - When I sat the 11-plus, candidates were not supposed to have seen even sample questions – but my parents cheated, acquired full sets of previous papers and coached me comprehensively and relentlessly. For them, education was the only route to greater social status. Like Socrates, they believed in the examined life, though not in the same way. ([Location 2411](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=2411)) - Love is process – or, rather, three processes in one, the two uniquely weird and complex processes of the partners combined in a relationship process that is not just weirdness doubled but weirdness to the power of two, weirdness squared. ([Location 2420](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=2420)) - As comforting as the certainties of classical physics, are the reassuring clichés of the human heart. At the beginning of the twentieth century love and sex in literature were still, mostly, treated as high drama, romance and passion, thrillingly tempestuous and conveniently lacking in sordid detail. Then Joyce and Proust, the quantum physicists of the heart, revealed that most everyday love is petty, manipulative and devious and most everyday sex is furtive, squalid and perverse. ([Location 2423](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=2423)) - The long relationship encourages, indeed demands, what Hannah Arendt defined as the most important human attributes – the ability to control the past by forgiveness and the future by promises. ([Location 2562](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=2562)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - Urban pluralism undermines most forms of traditional group superiority and reassurance, replacing community with isolation, security with vulnerability, importance with insignificance, recognition with anonymity, tradition with change, simplicity with complexity and certainty with doubt. The city raises questions as the country raises cows. But many of these existential terrors may be reinterpreted as advantages. Allegiance to city is more benign than allegiance to country because it is based on a welcome for difference rather than similarity and for mixing rather than separation. Indeed city allegiance is so unassuming that it has never been given a name – there are many nationalisms but no cityism. Maybe cityists should become more vociferous (so I’ll admit that I feel more allegiance to London than to England). And the city as the concrete representation of process (pun intended), a continuous creation of the unpredictably new, demands an acknowledgement of the individual as a similarly creative process, and stimulates curiosity, empathy, engagement, learning, the examined life. Socrates: ‘I’m a lover of learning, and trees and open country won’t teach me anything whereas men and the city do.’178 If the city dweller belongs to a group it is often the group of those who do not wish to belong to a group (one reason why cityism has never developed is that no true cityist could sit through meetings). The rise of the city and the individual are inextricably linked. ([Location 2708](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=2708)) - Why do some mundane images have meaning while most others do not? This is one of the mysteries of personal vision. And rather than trying to fathom this mystery it would be better to try to emulate it, in whatever limited way possible. It is not so much a question of finding a way of seeing paintings as making use of paintings to find a way of seeing. ([Location 2868](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=2868)) - The concept of the weed has been created entirely by snobbery, with ‘weed’ a term of abuse for any plant considered undesirable. (This is a special case of a rule formulated by Bergson: ‘Disorder is simply the order we are not looking for.’ ([Location 2932](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=2932)) - ‘Stare. It is the way to educate your eye and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long’ ([Location 2971](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=2971)) - Like most ruins, it is even more impressive now at dusk, the broken panes hoarding rich light against the darkening façade. What could equal such splendour? This is my Taj Mahal. I stand still and silently scream myself into a hernia of admiration. ([Location 3031](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=3031)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - The city is most beautiful and mysterious at this hour of serene dusk, when the lights come on in buildings lifting geometric silhouettes against a lurid, flowing sky. In the brief interlude between the tyranny of the God of Work and the equally tyrannical God of Fun there is a moment of meditative gentleness. ([Location 3033](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=3033)) - A majestically silent foyer combines the spiritual power of the cathedral with the secular power of the palace, and inspires awe by means of redundant space – the amount of space a corporation can afford to waste is a measure of its majesty. ([Location 3079](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=3079)) - In those days the desk was dominated by the Anglepoise lamp and to seize the lamp head and feel the joints and springs of its three-way adjustability conform immediately to one’s wishes was inspirationally symbolic. Illumination was no longer institutional and remote. Everyone could acquire, adjust and direct an entirely personal and private illumination. ([Location 3143](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=3143)) - In The Third Policeman MacCruiskeen studied for two years the cracks in the ceiling of his bedroom in the barracks and suddenly realised that these formed an accurate and detailed map of the local district, including even the lane from the main road to Gogarty’s outhouse. And after scrutinising the map for another five years he discovered a tiny crack that seemed to have no counterpart in reality, but, on investigation, was a path to a hidden world beyond time. So studying a characterful ceiling may reveal the way to eternity. ([Location 3443](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=3443)) - Approaching a closed door stirs the primeval fear of entering a hidden space and so provides a frisson of alerting and attention, a priming of all the sensors, but especially the eyes, for interpreting a new force field. ([Location 3636](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=3636)) - Why this reverence for the jug? There are several possible reasons. The reassurance of things is their illusion of permanence, their symbolic denial of process and time, and the jug is the only household object to remain unchanged for thousands of years, preserving, immune to fashion and change, its traditional form of rounded body, handle, narrow neck and flowering aperture with spout. When you are getting drunk on a jug of margaritas next Saturday night a useful exercise would be to remember, before the delirious oblivion, that Homer probably got drunk from a receptacle essentially the same. The key to this survival was remaining anonymous. The jug avoided attracting attention by appearing to be only a humble servant. Yet all the time it guarded in the dark interior a secret self. For the glory of cradling its resonant darkness, the jug was prepared to appear a drudge. ([Location 3743](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=3743)) - ‘Prose is not to be read aloud but to oneself alone at night, and it is not quick as poetry but rather a gathering web of insinuations . . . It should slowly appeal to feelings unexpressed, it should in the end draw tears out of the stone.’ ([Location 3767](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=3767)) - The lessons of the champions of the ordinary are crucial – but difficult to apply. We get worn down, exhausted, dispirited. The sense of dreariness and futility returns. It is so easy to resent and complain and dismiss and so hard to appreciate that the miracle of consciousness has only a limited time to wander in the gallery of marvels. It is difficult even to remember the champions themselves. ([Location 3819](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VJN182&location=3819))