Collected Fictions
Weird literary — time patterns, pity, unreality.
Mechanisms
Secret shape of time: repeating lines
History rhymes structurally, not coincidentally — the pattern is the argument for a shape to time.
These (and other) parallels between the story of Julius Caesar and the story of an Irish conspirator induce Ryan to imagine some secret shape of time, a pattern of repeating lines.
Why it matters
History rhymes structurally, not coincidentally — the pattern is the argument for a shape to time.
Use when: Use when two distant stories rhyme hard enough to imply a pattern, not coincidence.
Pity trained on novels spills onto the self
Empathy practice has a rebound effect: trained feeling for fictional sufferers becomes self-pity.
From learning to pity the misfortunes of the heroes of our novels, we wind up feeling too much pity for our own.
Why it matters
Empathy practice has a rebound effect: trained feeling for fictional sufferers becomes self-pity.
Use when: Use when reading empathy becomes self-pity by transfer.
Never notice art/life parallels
Blindness to the rhyme between story and fate is itself the tragic mechanism.
Villari's previous life, but he didn't notice the errors, because the notion that there might be parallels between art and life never occurred to him.
Why it matters
Blindness to the rhyme between story and fate is itself the tragic mechanism.
Use when: Use when a character cannot see the rhyme between story and fate.
Concepts
Unreal in life; not even a ghost in death
A life of performed unreality cannot even produce a convincing ghost — the afterlife inherits the deficit.
In life, Ashe was afflicted with unreality, as so many Englishmen are; in death, he is not even the ghost he was in life.
Why it matters
A life of performed unreality cannot even produce a convincing ghost — the afterlife inherits the deficit.
Use when: Use when an English understatement of self needs a colder afterlife version.
Contradictions
Nostalgia for the unwritten book; fear the specter stays
Abandoned work leaves compound interest: grief for what was not written plus haunting by what was started.
Paradoxically, I felt both a nostalgie for the book I should have written, and now never would, and a fear that the guest, the specter, would never abandon me.
Why it matters
Abandoned work leaves compound interest: grief for what was not written plus haunting by what was started.
Use when: Use when abandoning a project leaves both grief and haunting.