Hello Gentle Reader
Childhood is both prison and paradise. A place of adventure but only because of the ignorance of one’s own small grasp of life, itself. Never truly an adventure for what one would hope or demand it to be. And yet childhood is that state of life that we all have to go through once in our life; and sometimes when it passes, one misses that sense of freedom – limited freedom yes; but that ignorance of the freedom that one has. That sense that once upon a time as a child, you were not looked on with such a suspicious attitude; but rather looked on with a more as a cute little pet. Something adorable that people were more than happy to gawk at rather then, want to take home. But then as one gets older, they tend to lose that childhood charm. Where once people admired you, you now have that look of suspicion falling on to you. When your parents, were once guardians and gods, you now seem them as pests. Cockroaches who do not understand you and are there to be tyrant and dictators, enacting their will upon your own sense of freedom. Your friends become allies; but are also quick to turn on you to up their own social game or move up the social ladder, only to leave you at the bottom rung. Childhood is a place of paradox’s and confusion. Friend and allies become our rivals and our enemies. Parents become the tyrants and the jailers who hold the key to ones freedom. Alcohol becomes an escape route. The sensation of being drunk and intoxication, that blissful feeling of euphoria becomes something of a desire. Achieve it over and over again. It is then that one realizes there is a conspiracy against them. That the police and other authority figures are all against them. That there is nothing else for them to do but to ruin the good fun, impose their values upon ones younger self. But then as one grows older, there comes that realization that maybe they were right. Maybe they were all right in there authority, being pushed down upon us. Telling us to get home, when were on the verge of alcohol poisoning. Maybe they were all right, and us as so young were to blind by our own arrogance to truly see it. To truly see the fact that maybe they were right. Childhood though still remains a nostalgic paradise but also a deep and resentful prison. A place that we wish we had achieved more, or had a bit more time with, but also a place that we were happy to get out of there as soon as possible. To be done with the ignorance. To be over with it all.
In Samuel R Delany’s “Erik, Gwen, and D.H. Lawrence’s Esthetic of Unrectified Feeling,” he explores childhood, profanity, experimentation with the body, the scatology and profanity of the English language – more of a bastardized form of it; and art. It would be interesting to call this “autofiction,” (autobiographical fiction – yes an oxymoron) or a work of fiction with autobiographical elements. All of which it’s easiest or best to say is that it does not really comprehend the entire concept of the novella. Really in fact, what Samuel R Delany has done, is a fictional snippet of memory, of growing up, of experimentation and the discovery of sex and masturbation. But Delany also discusses art – and by art I mean the artistic achievement of the visual pleasure of something painted or drawn; it also discusses his enjoyment of music, and his violin lessons that lead to a completive measure with his own father, and may have left them both bruised and scraped and begrudgingly blaming the other for the others own defeat in the matter. Then there is his growing enjoyment of science but his own bone laziness of the subject and seeing it as interesting but nor comprehending the entire work of it more or less or not being able to really do the work of it.
There were no postmodern writing techniques. No fireworks, no experimentation in the literary form. But it was still a nice read. Why it was a nice read, was the poetic even literary form in which Delany wrote in. His discussion of childhood moments that are written in, about Eric the milkman and the art teacher Gwen – both of which are discussed in the title.
Discussing Eric the milkman is perhaps the most homoerotic one in this entire novella. The man himself speaks the most bastardized language of the English language, with such profanity is perhaps the most times that I have ever read something so disturbing with such profanity. Eric puts a new spin on the concept of swearing like a trucker. None of which I’ll ever repeat on this blog, because it’s just rather well . . . a profanity and destruction of the English language.
However the language in which Eric uses around the boys in his truck is perhaps the most interesting part of this novella, on the discussion, of Sam – the main character; and his growing budding sexuality he is beginning to recognize as his own. The language that Eric uses is important; it’s a form initiation into an entirely different use of language and the profanity of it. The most important part of it, though for the young Sam is when Eric pulls over to take a piss on the side of the road, and talks to the boys and challenges them to a piss fight which the boys back away from though, in good humour. However Eric tells them to get out of the truck and relieve themselves, as a, percussion so they do not have to take a piss down the way where there weren’t any place for them to go. Which both boys do accordingly – perhaps it’s about the authority of Eric in which they do. Samuel R Delany best describes the experience as follows:
“Eric did not have an iota of the child molester in him….. But if he had been so inclined, the sad and simple truth (at least I thought so then) is that I would have been the happiest, most willing, most gratefully molested child one might have asked for. There was simply no sexual act, whether or not I'd tried it already with the guys after swimming, I wouldn't have happily performed with him.”
Then there is the art Gwen. She’s eccentric and to be frank in many ways an oddity in her own right. She gets rid of all things that most “artistic,” people know and are taught in how to draw and paint. The rules and laws of artistic achievement and art itself with the use of a horizon, and depth and dimensions are the basics of artistic drawing and artistic achievement. They are like the laws of nature. Gravity keeps us down. The water rises when is put in it. One plus one equals two. However with Gwen the odd and eccentric art teacher, there is nothing more wrong then these fundamental artistic laws and rules.
The most important rules for Gwen in her art class is not horizon or dimension – its colour and shapes. Shapes and colours. Circles, squares, triangles of all different sizes can create a picture; but that’s just a picture. Colour that is what brings life to the photo. If Prometheus the Greek Titan, who created human beings from clay, and stole fire from Zeus in order to sustain the life he had created; then so is Gwen’s shapes and lines the clay of her creations and the colour the fire that brings the life to the skeletal structures.
Both Eric the milk man and Gwen the art teacher have incredible influences on the young Sam, whose enjoyment of the artistic and the aesthetics help shape him for who he is. The innocent though profane language of Eric, and the childlike structures in which she paints and finds herself to have the greatest artistic achievements all help shape the young Sam. But also there are other moments that shape same. His after swimming class, where he and the other boys participate in a little game – though very sexual in nature. There is the competitiveness (to the point of holding a grudge against each other) simply over music and the violin.
All of these aspects of childhood and early adolescents all shape the young Sam, and his realization of the aesthetic world. Especially when he sees a painting painted by Gwen, at the school and he realizes there that she is great painter and an artist. Compared to the other paintings by the other teachers. There were impressionist paintings, realistic paintings, and so on. Yet it was Gwen’s that evoked the strong understanding of the art itself, and he himself declared she was an artist.
Not to mention Gwen’s discussion of Roberts (a friend of Sam’s) painting where lines, colour and shape were abandoned to reveal just a swirl of intense colours as “pure sex,” and it is there that Delany first realizes that sex is just the movement and vibrations and energy of life – and art should not truly try to depict the surface detail of reality and life, but rather to evoke the movements swirls and vibrations and intensity’s of life itself.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
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