Lands of Likeness: For a poetics of contemplation
University of Chicago Press, US$37.50 pb, 427 pp
Nothing but kestrel
There is a moment early on in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) – think of it as the novel’s opening gambit, the disturbance which sets its plot in motion – when the impish Clarisse McClellan attempts to rouse the book’s stolid and otherwise self-possessed protagonist, Guy Montag, from the partial oblivion in which he lives his life. She shadows him on his walk home from work one evening, verbally prodding him in the hope of puncturing what is evidently less a form of sincere conviction than it is a state of unthinkingness. After Montag rebuffs her questions one time too many, Clarisse finally complains, ‘You never stop to think what I’ve asked you.’
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Lands of Likeness: For a poetics of contemplation
by Kevin Hart
University of Chicago Press, US$37.50 pb, 427 pp
Comment (1)
It reminded me strongly of Bertrand Russell's attempts between the wars to find some calm. In one essay among many from the period, Russell pointed to the 'abysses of interstellar space' as a suitable focus for the thoughts of the suffering individual who has forsaken all hope for humanity.
It is not encouraging that intellectuals should be turning again to inner contemplation a century later.