Strange bedfellows

I thought I had lost Mulhall's In Other Words, which I had begun this week. Losing In Other Words opened the way to hooks' All About Love. I thought I had left the book at Whaley's, but a few weeks from now I will find the book inside the chair of the living room in a deep crevice. This was before we moved everything around, before school started again. In addition, Lear's Imagining the End and Butler's Kindred are equally ripe for conjuring up the past, both autobiographically and philosophically. I am going to try really hard not to quote any texts here but just write about my thoughts on strange bedfellows, the strange bedfellows being Mulhall, hooks, Lear, and Butler to begin with alongside Coetzee, Makant, and Ricoeur.

                    I wish to take up Mulhall to talk about a metaphysical relationship. For the characters David and Simon (David is pictured above), there is neither a biological relationship nor a legal one. There is a relationship between this fictional world and the real one, especially with regards to displaced people, resettlement camps, migrants. There is also a relationship between literary realism and writing in a realistic spirit. Does the realistic impulse bring in a need or a lack like the need for music, light, or friendship (such as Ricoeur speaks of in Freedom and Nature p. 90)? The benefit of this approach to the realistic impulse is that I am creating thoughts through fiction that do not confront what Makant calls suffering in the same way. She told me how when she was writing her book, The Practice of Story, it was re-traumatizing to read about all of the violence and harm done in the world, especially to children. This is also the danger of writing about real people and conflicts. It is not that fiction avoids real issues, but rather by writing fiction one isn't having to confront trauma in the same way. I am gong to begin The Childhood of Jesus with Mulhall in the wings to write words that hopefully address these strange bedfellows. One entry a day.