Womb-like Place

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 4 August 2014.

He isn't Tommy

"Womb-like place" makes sense.

I would bet that Arthur would pick up on his mother's issues as a teenager but like you said be fed by the charity. Kids trust their moms, and young Arthur wouldn't cause her much grief--she'd probably be affirmed in her works by the fact that her young son loves the Lord so much.

Incidentally, how could Lena make Will vow to make Arthur a star on her deathbed?

Because she can't stand to see Arthur suffer and without realizing it puts her family's security ahead of her relationship with God. Her relationship is in so many ways about protecting the family. That's the issue that has to be worked off in Purgatory. And the oddest thing about Arthur in the family's eyes is that family doesn't seem like that big of a deal to him. That's partially because his eyes are on God, not his home, and partially because he loves everybody--even people who abuse him. Somehow this self-made immigrant family had a kid with seemingly no survival instincts at all! He's intensely generous but not philanthropic because worldly wealth is worthless to him, and he loves everyone but can barely communicate with anyone without music because his vision of reality is so different than everyone else's--there's very little common ground.

Still, he isn't Tommy or a high functioning autistic. He's a mystic.

I never made the connection between Augustine and Kierkegaard, but it makes a ton of sense. I'm not sure if the world we're creating has any of those noble Romans in it! But I do see how lots of people I would characterize as living in the moral are probably closet aesthetes. I've probably just let too many of my Catholic educational experiences harden my appreciation for the moral.

I think the most important thing we can do in Catholic education is lead kids to the Eucharist, but instead we work like crazy to mandate good behavior. The result seems to be a lot of kids who don't get caught doing bad things frequently and don't have much interest in a personal relationship with Christ. Parents want us to help raise good kids, but are terrified that we'll raise Jesus freaks. People fear the scandalous side of Christ. But I think there might be some adventure in following the scandalous Christ that would appeal to the aesthete.

"Catapulted" into the Religious Sphere

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 4 August 2014.

As for messages getting buried: That was one of the issues that I thought would get handled by taking the emphasis off mimesis and taking a diegetical approach--or at least more diegetical. We can talk about the story just like we do in our emails and, by extension, the blog. I was actually of the opinion we should go totally diegesis in our podcast. I think it lends itself to our strengths of telling not showing and it is a classical, Platonic solution to the problem of having the opposite of our desired, edifying effect on our audience.

Where is Jimi Hendrix located?

In deference to St. Augustine, I'm going to disagree that the ethical sphere is absurd and banal (I'm of the opinion that Kierkegaard got his ideas for the spheres of existence from Augustine's City of God). Augustine just betrays too much admiration for the highly ethical Romans he uses as examples of how close some pagans came to the kingdom. I would say that most churchgoers are actually in the aesthetic realm trying to work around or bargain with the ethical when absolutely necessary. The ethical realm is characterized by a willingness to die rather than to sin. I think ethical is rightly considered the realm from which one is "catapulted" into the religious sphere.

So where are Jimi and Arthur and prostitutes and Carlton Farthington located? It might be difficult to locate. But modern artists and would-be mystics might consider the ethical sphere impossible to stomach without the more complete revelation of the religious. They are different than the aesthetic types who just want to burn their eyes out on Netflix every weekend and buy a cottage someday.

For this reason, I also think Arthur would have picked up on the unnaturalness in Lena's charitable activities. The Sweet World is way bigger than that. It wouldn't feel as natural as breathing to him, but it might have been a womb-like place where he found some nourishment.

A False Vision of God

The following is excerpted from the June 2014 email exchange between Will and Art.

Art:

Saint Augustine in his Study by Botticelli

I like that last part about the "blade of grass." 

That's C.S. Lewis artistically rendering the Augustinian doctrine of evil not having being in the usual sense. Elsewhere, Lewis describes the damned soul as being "nearly nothing." Heaven is literally experiencing the Source of Being in the fullest possible way. So it would be a superabundant, unexcelled experience of being. Hell, since it is the experience of being cut off from the Source of Being, must be as close to nonexistence as is possible for created beings with immortal souls.

The fact that Lena made Will pledge to make Arthur famous on her deathbed makes it a no-brainer that she's going to Purgatory at best. 

Saints don't say those sorts of things!

Will:

True. 

I think what makes Lena seem saintly to a modern audience is that she's always doing good things. But, then again, she's an old-world Catholic. She might have more fear of God than an all-consuming love of Him. 

She might think that she's protecting the family from its wealth through her acts of charity. That fear would be consistent with a false vision of God as a scale measurer, a pretty common misconception. Still, I think she genuinely loves the poor and sees Christ in them, although not perfectly or mystically. Perhaps she does it because of her own childhood poverty. So this loving the person of Christ in the poor keeps her from going to Hell, while her bargaining and manipulating is what needs to be burnt off on Purgatory. 

Although the family doesn't really need Arthur to become a star for financial reasons, maybe she also wants to protect Arthur from the bullies or wants him to show the world. 

Or maybe she has been partially converted to the gospel of the American Dream as preached by Stan.

Just Try to Be a Good Person

C.S. Lewis

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 24 June 2014.

I like it a lot. All of it. Having Stan in Hell works on so many levels, and Will's vision of his torment before committing murder would account for years of Will shutting down, giving up on redeeming Arthur through the American Dream, and viewing himself as damned.

And paradoxically, understanding the reality of Hell could move him to believe in the reality of Heaven.

Also, in a world that has watered down Catholicism to "just try to be a good person," having the "saintly" Lena in Purgatory--not in the Heaven where all mothers go by virtue of being mothers-- fortifies the morality play aspect of the story.

I also love that both lend credence to the glowing lodestone vision of The American Dream!

In the midst of all this, however, Heaven is still much bigger than Hell.  In The Great Divorce, a tour guide on the outskirts of Heaven shows a tourist on his way from Purgatory and Hell that the whole vastness of the Hell he had experienced was only the size of a hole left behind from plucking a blade of grass in Heaven.

That doesn't minimize Hell...it just suggests the enormity of Heaven.

That Ocean of Flames

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 25 June 2014.

I guess I'm more cynical than you are (and impressed by the book I mentioned).

Last Judgment (detail) by Hans Memling

I would continue to consider the idea, though, from the artistic perspective. As I said, it has already figured prominently as a motif. One possibility would be that Arthur had a vision of his father and/or mother. One of the more disturbing visions that occurs again and again in Fr. Schouppe's book is when a friend or family member is seen in Hell's torment. Hell seems to be an all too common destination for people.

If this is true, many of us are in serious danger of experiencing something way, way, way more agonizing than anything on this earth and--oh yeah--for all eternity. Here's one from the book, which is highly readable due to it being more or less a catalogue of shocking accounts:

St. Peter Damian speaks of a worldling who lived only for amusement and pleasure. To no purpose was he advised to think of his soul; to no purpose was he warned that, by following the life of the wicked rich man, he should reach the same end; he continued his guilty life unto death. He had scarcely ceased to live when an anchorite (hermit) knew of his damnation. He saw him in the midst of a fiery pool; it was an immense pool like a sea, in which a great number of people, howling with despair, were plunged. They were striving to gain the shore, but it was guarded by pitiless dragons and demons, who prevented them from coming near it, and hurled them far back into that ocean of flames.

Could Stan Witkowski be in Hell? Perhaps Will has a vision of that down in the tunnels as he tries to retrace his steps and figure out who he killed. That could have some interesting resonances. We could create a Lazarus and the rich man type story, with the buried worker going to Heaven (not "Abraham's bosom" as in the original) and Stan Witkowski going to Hell. Could Stan be in Hell and Lena be in Purgatory, with Lena returning to warn Arthur about her deathbed pact with Will because, from her now-eternal perpective, she sees where it leads. I like at least one character to go Hell, and not just for being an out-and-out villain, like Farthington or perhaps Steffi. Perhaps Stan followed the American Dream straight to Hell.

In the book, the damned are able to do actual damage to the living. For example, one licentious man came back to a rich woman he had been flirting with and grabbed her wrist, burning it all the way down to the bone, such that she had to wear a wide bracelet the rest of her days. These damned are not trying to save anyone usually, they're just pissed as Hell (literally!).

As Miller puts it, "the possibility of victory must be present in tragedy." I think the inverse of that statement is also true: "the possibility of defeat must be present in comedy." As you've mentioned before, you want this to be a comedy, but we need some darker shadows to ground and provide relief for the redemptive elements.

A Natural Conduit of the Eternal

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 24 June 2014.

You are right about Hell, but I think you're underselling the startling power of beauty in the postmodern age.

Virgin and Child appearing to St. Francis of Assisi

I was struck by something my sister told me. A kid asked one of her mentors if there was anything left that could shock him in an art exhibit. He said one thing: genuine beauty.

I've never thought that Arthur's words inspire anything other than fandom. It makes sense to me that hardened skeptics could see visions of Hell through Arthur, but it's always made sense to me that people with soft but unsatisfied hearts could have visions of heaven or Mary through Arthur.

Also, these visions are nothing Arthur can communicate particularly well; my thought is that he sometimes unknowingly discharges them through touch. People who touch him sometimes see The Sweet World--or, if we follow your suggestion, Hell.

I've always seen Arthur as having miraculous powers but not because of anything he does.

It's really more that he is a natural conduit of the eternal, and because of that, he naturally gravitates toward the beautiful and doesn't fit in with earth-bound things. His mom's daily charity visits seemed completely natural to him. He didn't have to muster up some sort of virtue to appreciate their value. They just seemed like how things were done in The Sweet World, whereas the family cement business seemed like outer space.

Speaking of heaven and hell, I just read The Great Divorce...very helpful!

A Higher Order of Creation (Part 1 of 3)

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 14 May 2014.

Circe Invidiosa by Waterhouse

I see your point.  I like the Steffi idea, especially since it's a twist and TV needs twist, but archetypically, she could easily default to a Scylla/Circe figure.  Not that I mind that.

I see a lot of promise in Agnieczka as a character...we just haven't talked about her much because of her loose connection to an ex of yours and partially because of the awkwardness that happens if you play Arthur White and have to have a relationship with an actress. The problem goes away if we pursue the TV show option and don't play the parts ourselves.

Linda is a heroic figure, but she's kind of saved by Arthur, which lends her to a few stereotypes...the redeemed fallen woman Mary Magdalene type, which again, is not a huge problem for me since the men are fairly archetypical, too.  I'm not on a quest to eliminate archetype...I don't think any of us are.  I think we just want to sharpen the archetypes.  Archetypes are really useful for helping people process truth...they just fail when they are presented in a hackneyed manner, unless the point is farce.

Arthur's parents are interesting contrasts. There's probably that problem of the Victorian thing where the wife is the moral head of the household and the dad is the economic head, but I do like the idea in which Arthur's mother's ambitions toward heaven rival and even outstrip his father's economic ambitions.

The big female character you left out is the Virgin Mary. In my eyes, the whole story is about Arthur's relationship with Mary...she's the central figure of his mystical connection to heaven.

In so many ways, Arthur lives in a feminine world, and there's a little bit of a feminist undertone I see in the way that Will and Farthington's aggressive masculinity screws so much up, and if the world could accept Arthur on his own terms instead of trying to butch him up and measure his music in terms of money, it would be a much better place. It's not that Arthur is effeminate...it's that the world can only recognize his gifts--creativity, intuition, love, a profound appreciation of beauty, a life-giving disposition--in feminine terms. Really, though, they are divine.

The idea of Steffi adds an interesting spin on maleness.

One other crazy idea: Joe Lazarus, Jr.  could be Josie Lazarus. Sorry, Joe! But really, there's your female on a heroic quest if we just change his gender.

3-D White Guys

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 14 May 2014. 

"native and indued unto that element"

You know, as I'm looking at our pictures, I'm realizing that we don't have many well-developed women written into this story.  There's The Woman in the Sweet World; Lena, Will and Arthur's mom; Agnieszka, Arthur's wife; Linda, Will's girlfriend in the later years...

This concern comes out of my AP English class where I noticed that most of our tragedies consist of a 3-D white guy suffering against the 2-D backdrop of non-white and non-male characters. I wonder if it would make sense to develop a convincing Virginia Wolff- or Simone de Beauvoir-type character, who, maybe just by her presence, satirizes the seriousness of what is going on with these self-important men. I'm having a real hard time imagining who it could be, but I think that shows just shows my narrow-mindedness.

The same narrow-mindedness that had the original (female) teacher of the class choose all books that are by white men, about white men.

The "stage" is already crowded with men angling to be the tragic hero. One thought is that current-day Carlton is Oberlin student/cult member Steffi Humboldt. In that case, Carlton Farthington did die and only appears in public dressed as the mascot. Steffi is the one who has taken over all of his material, including the material that he appropriated from Arthur White and Will. Maybe Steffi has some connection to Arthur that she would want to appropriate him, taking him into herself as it were, and bringing forth new life (okay that's problematic, but I'm trying here!).

But it does make sense to me that she or some other woman could be the sea devil. It might be interesting if we were able to write an entire story for her, where our story becomes just one small part of her universe. Unfortunately, my mind can only envision her having an Ophelia/Edna Pontellier/Virginia Wolff-type demise: she walks back into that element to which she is "native and indued." I suck.

Have a great day!