Re: LS Lets start from the first sentence.

From: Keith A. Gillette (gillette@ninepatch.net)
Date: Sun May 21 2000 - 22:42:02 BST


At 10:53 PM 5/14/2000 +0300, Jonathan B. Marder wrote:
>IMHO, that first sentence "Lila didn't know he was here." offers a lot
>of scope e.g. for discussing the Pirsig's views on perception and
>solipsism. Anyone want to play?

A late entry ...

"Lila didn’t know he was here. She was sound asleep, apparently in some
fearful dream. In the darkness he heard a grating sound of her teeth and
felt her body suddenly turn as she struggled against some menace only she
could see."

It really does take discipline not to rush through this stuff, doesn't it?
I've read this book 10 times and never really paid attention to the
passages enough to really think about what Pirsig is doing. I think
Jonathan is right that this opening offers a lot of scope. I don't know
that it has much to do with solipsism, as others have pointed out, but it
does introduce quite a bit of the book if you look closely.

Take the second sentence: Lila is sound asleep, in some fearful dream. This
is literally true here, but figuratively her situation throughout the book.
And our situation, as well. As Shakespeare says, "Life is but a dream ..."
I think Pirsig would agree. The epistemology he constructs demotes our
waking perceptions from the privileged position of direct apprehension of
reality to one possible pattern of belief, blurring the distinction between
dream and reality. Sanity is the culturally-approved pattern, the shared
dream. Any pattern that deviates too far from this pattern is "insane."
Forgive the forward references, but Chapter 25 makes this point clear:

"That was what was wrong with making a film about his book. You can’t film
insanity.
Maybe if, during the show, the whole theatre collapsed and the audience
found themselves among the stars with just space all around and no support,
wondering what a stupid thing this is, sitting here among the stars
watching this film that has nothing to do with them and then suddenly
realizing that this film is the only reality there is and that they had
better get interested in it because what they see and what they are is the
same thing and once it stops they will stop too.…
That’s it. Everything! Gone!!
Nothing left!!
And then after a while this dream of some kind going on, and them in it.
That’s the way it was. He’d gotten so used to being in this dream called
"sanity" he hardly ever thought about it any more. "

Of course, we slowly find out in coming chapters that Lila is mentally
unstable, teetering toward insanity. She is operating under a pattern of
belief different than the culture. She is struggling throughout the book as
a result. But the struggle is not one we can share, as it is "against some
menace only she could see." No one can see her adversary during this
opening, because she's asleep and the menace is in her dream. Similarly, no
one can see the menace she faces in 'real life' during her waking hours
because here, too, she's "sound asleep," "in some fearful dream," the
waking dream of her deviant patterns of belief. In Chapter 30, Pirsig tells
us, "She’s a culture of one. She’s a religion of one. " No one else share's
her particular "delusions," her waking "dream," the patterns of beliefs
that makes her insane.

It is interesting to note that "dream" appears 23 times in the course of
the book. Some of those instances are not significant, but a number of them
are. Dreams are important in this book just as they were in ZMM. We get
into both Phaedrus and Lila's dreams, his of "The Giant" in Chapter 17, and
of returning to Blake in Chapter 21. For Lila, it's her continuing lapses
into the dreamworld, her brushes with insanity. "Everything seemed so
dreamy", Chapter 10. Chapter 23: "It seemed to Lila that all this was some
kind of a dream she was in. " Chapter 25: "He watched her for a long time,
then saw she was getting dreamy."

So I see what I had not seen before: The entire course of Lila, the book
and the character, encoded in the very first paragraph; Pirsig's theory of
perception, his views on sanity and religion, laid down in their simplest
terms right here at the very beginning.

Best,
Keith
________________________________________________________________________
Keith A. Gillette <http://ninepatch.net/gillette/>

MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org



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