Quest Narrative in Razor's Edge

 Larry Darrell in Maugham's Razor's Edge is an enigmatic figure. Perhaps it is best described as a seeker who has a journey that cannot be foretold. Instead of settling down to a respectable job and marriage, he chooses instead to "loaf" in Paris. And it is here that we have a quest narrative quite different from one in which Fate (or destiny) is clearly set out (as in the two paths, virtue and pleasure, that Heracles needs to choose from). It is none other than the quest for a path itself, which makes this quest somewhat of a meta-narrative on the nature of quests themselves.

   I truly believe that this novel is a post-structural one, whose protagonist is similar to Walker Percy's protagonists-- many of whom are "loafers" in their own right. These stories contain a void or a blank space in their center, and it's for the readers to puzzle on where that blank space points to. I wouldn't exactly say that these characters are "anti-heroes" since calling them as such creates only an antithesis to a worn formula: instead, I would think of them as characters looking for the path to story, yet questioning the very foundation of the path itself. Larry is offset by the sight of dead bodies in the war he survived, but this sight could be something else--the sight of someone succumbing to an illness, for example. The point is that the death he witnesses during the war points to a void that can't be storied. It takes him beyond the point of story--since stories themselves somehow require the consolation (and security) of a path well-trodden and guaranteed to take us somewhere, to not be too abrupt as to end too soon, and to "teach us all a lesson", as it were.

    At that point, it doesn't matter whether Larry finds the path, as his realization truly is that there is no path. But this is not the end of this novel, only its starting point, as characters come to terms with his realization in different ways. And it is certainly a reminder that one person's stark realization impacts the social mannerisms of a well-trodden world.

A View of Medicine and Life

 If I were to organize my book collection and try to read them all in sequence, what sequence would it be? Would it be from easiest to hardest? Fiction first, then non-fiction? The way I think about reading these days is thematically. I often use fiction to find themes that are worthy of exploration or might be of value. One way of doing this is to cross-reference different books with similar themes, similar to a kind of research project?

    I have three books on my shelf that could qualify under a single "theme", namely health and illness. Two are fiction, two non-fiction. The two non-fiction are Michel Foucault's The Birth of the Clinic, and Aledander & Selesnick's The History of Psychiatry. The two fiction books are Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, and Albert Camus' The Plague. I can think of a lot of themes that can arise from reading these books together. But themes always arise from questions. For instance, what is the relationship between "physical" and "mental" disease? How did the idea of the body as "ill" emerge and evolve into the idea of mind as "ill"? What does the metaphor of illness entail? Can the mind's (and spirit's) illness be reduced to a spatial body, or does it have its own special categories? How can we observe mental illness, and when did it ever become something to be observed? These books also make me think about the birth of the idea of health. They also make me wonder, at what point did the concept of wellness shift from something that is spiritual to something that can be cured using drugs and other chemicals? Perhaps there is no straightforward answers to these questions and they may reflect trends in the way that histories might experience health.

   Thematically arranging books can help ensure focus as well as a more connected reading experience. It avoids the pitfalls of too much idiosyncrasy in reading. I believe that it's a good approach to start the reading adventure.