Anyone in my Neo-Victorian Novel class can see, if surveying my location while we’re all on Zoom, that I’m in my basement. One could also notice, on basic inspection, that our basement isn’t finished; it’s also not entirely unfinished, I suppose. It’s framed with two-by-fours, prepared for drywall to be put up, primed for whatever type of flooring we want to install - but not quite. I would like to do some more electrical work first, and I would like to better plan out the plumbing for the bathroom we’ve imagined down there. The basement has existed in its current state for two years.
I have imagined more than just that bathroom. I see an office space for me: there’s my desk, some bookshelves built into the wall, an old record player equipped with new speakers, one of those globes that is brownish-tan for some reason. The imagined basement also has a playroom for the kids, a room with exercise equipment that is solely dedicated to working out, a family room with bar, a mud room for re-entry after working in the yard, and of course, an art studio for my wife. Oh yeah, and more storage space. I would love that basement to exist. Somehow, I envision this working without building a second basement where I can fit it all. For now, it’s the perfect place to discuss Julian Barnes’ Arthur & George, a fictional work about the true story of George Edalji, a man who is Parsee and British but mostly imagines himself as a middle-class solicitor. He is convicted of a crime but released before his sentence has elapsed. He is exonerated after a review by the Home Office, but not found deserving of compensation for his improper imprisonment. Some imagine circumstances in which he was guilty all along; some imagine the reasons he may have been persecuted; some imagine who is the true perpetrator of the crime for which George went to trial. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle imagines the last two circumstances in that list, and his efforts are what lead to the Home Office review. At the time George’s case piques his interest, he is a grieving widower who is also planning to marry a woman he has loved in a state of chaste infidelity for nearly a decade. He does not imagine himself as an adulterer. As he investigates Edalji’s case retroactively, some imagine him in the place of his indelible Sherlock Holmes, and he certainly thinks of himself as a masterful investigator, even when he makes basic legal mistakes. He is pleased that George regains his ability to practice law but incensed that George receives no remuneration and that no one is arrested in the case of the livestock maiming for which George once served three years in prison. Arthur and George are each what they claim to be. Doyle is in fact a British gentleman, and Edalji is in fact a solicitor. Each is also what he claims not to be. George is suspected in his small, rural town because he was different from the typical inhabitant – no matter how adamantly he insists that his arrest is not due to race prejudice, none of his misfortunate would have been catalyzed without prejudicial attitudes. And Arthur might not think of himself as bumbling amateur sleuth who discovers no new hard evidence but whose celebrity brings the attention of the nation to the problems with George’s case. That’s who he is, in this case. George and Arthur simultaneously are and are not what they and what others think of them, just as Jacques Derrida once claimed that his concept of “differance” both is and is not. I’m not going to get into much depth of discussion of “differance” in a blog post. It’s just too much for a blog. But if we think of it in terms of word definitions – a common example used to explain the concept – it is the undefined “space,” or “thought,” for lack of a more accurate terms (because the term is “differance,” I suppose), that makes one word not another word. Like, what is the difference between jogging and running – what is the thing that separates the two of them? When does one become the other? There is something there that separates them. It’s the same thing that brings them together; they wouldn’t be closely related to each other without that distinction, and they wouldn’t be separate from each other, either. That negative space, that indefinable thought, might be the most important thing about jogging and running. It’s what makes one not the other. And the fact that jogging is not running is what makes it jogging. I’m going to imagine, now, that you (patient reader) and I both understand that. Key to understanding the concept of “differance” is imagining it, as we cannot define it, and we cannot perceive it with our senses. Imagination may be the most important faculty a human being possesses because of the importance of the indefinable. Imagination is what allows us to understand the mysterious “something” that links people’s experience of life. Imagination is what helps us define, too, how we are individuals separate from others. We take it upon ourselves to imagine what is reality. Arthur imagines he’s faithful to two wives at once, that he solves mysteries as decisively as his fictional detective (who solves crimes that Arthur imagined in the first place), and that he has found the metaphysical solution to the irrationalities of religion in “Spiritism.” George simply imagines himself as a nondescript British solicitor. Some people believe one thing about each man while the men themselves believe another. Their own imaginations, though, are the tools they use to shape the way they live their lives. What they imagine into being might not be exactly what they want, but the shapes of their lives would be nothing if not for what they imagine. George, regarded as “half-caste,” imagines a simple British life. Though he never marries and is at the center of a legal debacle, a simple life is essentially what he gets. And Arthur imagines the nobility embodied by chivalric knights in old romances. He never slays any dragons, but he is knighted, he does fight in a far-off land, he excels at his chosen focus (writing), and he does participate in a pure and chaste love. It’s a “different” version of what he imagined as a child. Yes, these are the characters I’ve discussed for the last two weeks with my classmates while I sit in my unfinished basement on an office chair, watching and listening to everyone on my laptop, which is on top of a space heater designed to look like a fireplace. There’s no heat in our unfinished basement. I’ve imagined taking out a section of the wall down there to create a chimney and a fireplace, probably where I’m imagining that family room. Or maybe in my office. Either option seems delightful, but for now, it's all a fantasy. Retrofitting a chimney and fireplace on a house is a major project, and I have a lot on my agenda this year. It certainly is comforting to imagine that fire, though.
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April 2021
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