These buildings house man. He
inhabits them and yet does not dwell in them, when to dwell means merely that
we take shelter in them. In today's housing shortage even this much is
reassuring and to the good; residential buildings do indeed provide shelter;
today's houses may even be well planned, easy to keep, attractively cheap, open
to air, light, and sun, but-do the houses in themselves hold any guarantee that
dwelling occurs in them?
…there rages round the earth an
unbridled yet clever talking, writing, and broadcasting of spoken words. Man
acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact
language remains the master of man. Perhaps it is before all else man's
subversion of this relation of dominance that drives his nature into
alienation.
-
Heidegger,
From Building, Dwelling, Thinking
Language is the house of Being
and in it man dwells.
-
From
Letter on Humanism
INTRODUCTION
 |
| Heidegger's Hut in the Black Forest |
In
reading Babbitt I could not help but notice its preoccupation with buildings
and language. The later Heidegger also makes these concepts – viz. of building,
dwelling, thinking (ie language) – central to his thought. Now I don’t want
this post to rely on a deep understanding of later Heidegger (which I at any
rate do not possess), but I would like to put Babbitt’s concerns on the same plane of seriousness as the existentialist
thinker. For Heidegger, a language and a building serve a similar function:
they are open spaces in which, when filled with the light of Being, man can
allow things to be what they are. This is no simple undertaking, and our words
and buildings are not always filled with light. Man spends most of his time in
oblivion of Being. With pacified day-to-day self-assurance, man thinks he
dwells upon the earth; but in moments of angst or boredom man’s
not-being-at-home – man’s “uncanniness” reveals itself. Language (which
includes silence) calls out to man in his homelessness: Man has not yet learned to dwell.
Along
with building and language, homelessness too is a central theme in Babbitt. It
goes beyond the fact that the “one thing wrong with the Babbitt house” is that
“It was not a home” (14), although this statement has resounding thematic
significance for the story (especially since Babbitt is a dealer in houses).
Homelessness, uncanniness, permeates the very stylistic form of the
novel as well; in particular, the pervasive use of irony ideally functions to
alienate, or, if I may, evict, the
reader from his feeling at home in the world. My post today will be about how
this irony works, how exactly we should read this irony to achieve the maximum
alienation, and how this all relates to the themes of building and language.
SATIRE
 |
| Dutch Colonial Frame House for Sale - Nine Rooms and a Porch!, Sears, 1928 |
I want
to claim that there are two ways of reading irony in Babbitt – one which I will
call the satirical, the other which I will call the grotesque. In making this
distinction, I may depart from the literary-technical uses of the terms, but I believe
it will be in keeping with their spirit, as well as a fruitful distinction to
have at hand in our reading and discussing of the text. I will now attempt to define what I mean by
these terms, and then go on to argue which reading I find preferable.
The
easiest way to do this will be to do a satirical analysis of an example in Babbitt. The opening passage proves a
great place to start:
“The
towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and
cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. They were
neither citadels nor churches but beautifully office buildings” (3)
Thus
Babbitt opens. To a first-time reader, the ironic tone of the book becomes
clear with the last noun-phrase of the first paragraph: “office buildings”. If
irony means that there is an implicit meaning that runs contrary to what is
explicitly said, then the dissonance between the implicit and the explicit here
– what I will call ironic distance – plays on the implied reader’s beliefs
about the categories of buildings as well as the kinds of descriptions that are
applicable to these categories. Upon envisaging buildings which “aspire” and
are “austere”, the reader’s presuppositions already rule out certain kinds of
buildings. So within the first sentence, not only has the reader already been
cued to employ a distinction between the sacred and the profane (or, at least
between the high and the low), he has also been cued to bring into play his
distinction between high/sacred buildings and low/profane buildings. This
distinction involves assumptions about what makes a building the kind of
building it is – namely, what purpose it serves or what it is for – and this in turn draws on
assumptions about what kinds of purposes are high/sacred and which are low/profane.
It
is because, by the end of the first sentence, that the reader already has
certain rather sophisticatedly arrived at yet dimly conscious expectations
about what kinds of buildings these are that the second sentence immediately
disabuses the reader of those assumptions: I know what you are thinking, but
no, these buildings are not citadels or churches. The surprise that comes from
the revelation of the function of these buildings (office buildings) is the
ironic distance travelled, and we are propelled upwards into the good company
of the “aspiring”, “austere” and “beautiful”, of “citadels” and “churches” –
not just the ironic distance between citadels/churches and office buildings ,
but the ironic distance between the functions of protection of a people/worshipping and commerce. The satirical humor here then is our reaction to the
preposterous, to a farcical imposter: the imposing Towers which dominate the
landscape are just office buildings. We are asked to consider: a world in which
the role played by office buildings (commerce) has replaced the roles played by
citadels/churches (retreat, protection: solidarity).
On
what I am calling a satirical reading, the effect is comic: office buildings
rising to the heights of churches? Ridiculous! Again the humor - the resistance
- is to the idea of something that has gone above its station. And like any
good observer of the social order, we are permitted – encouraged – to scoff at
this attempt and in the same gesture we place things back in their proper
place: office buildings are profane; and anyone who thought otherwise would be
missing a deep important point about the world! The ultimate effect is that we
identify ourselves as the upholders of the moral order who “get the joke”
precisely because we know that things
are exactly the opposite as they are stated. So to sum up the satirical
reading: the ironic distance is perceived as small things appearing very big (or trivial things appearing
serious, or low things appearing very high) and this is reacted to with
indignant humor, a mental lowering/returning of things to their proper sphere
of value, and consequently the reinforcement of one’s own self-conception as
possessing the right values.
Let’s
look at a second example of irony that pertains now to language. In almost a
continuous pan inwards from our skyline of towering office buildings (which is
interrupted only by a passage concerned with transportation, a third Babbittian theme beyond building and
language which would prove too much for this post to include) our attention is drawn
to “one of the skyscrapers [in which] the wires of the Associated Press were
closing down” (3). From the state of building, we zoom in to the state of
language: the Press; the media; Mass
Communication.
The
ironic distance that will be created around the media is not, as with building,
presented immediately, but is developed over the course of the next couple of
chapters. The first newspaper enters the scene thumping against the front door,
interrupting Babbitt’s sinking back into morning, dozing bliss, rousing him, filling
him with “alarm” (4). Its next appearance is as “clippings” that Babbitt
retains in his pocket notebook, “editorials from which Babbitt got his opinions
and polysyllables” (10). From there it bears an implicit contrast with the “standard
bedside book” (13) which “no one had ever opened.” The implication is that the
Word as literature is soporific, neglected, and effectively for show, while we
learn that his daily reading of the Advocate-Times
is a daily ritual comparable to an “exhilarating drug” (16). Already this
involves us in an ironic distance – between the derelict literature and the
daily use and even retention on his person of fragmented clippings of the
newspaper. But the passage I mean to examine is the one where Babbitt actually
sits down to read – in particular, Babbitt’s reactions to the various articles
in the paper.
As we have seen from its initial
thumping entrance on his front door, the newspaper represents a kind of
intrusion - an important intrusion from the outside world into the inside,
domestic world. The paper is how, each morning, Babbitt reconnects with the
wider world. And this reconnection is exhibited to us by his (one-sided)
discussion of the daily events with his wife. The perusal of the newspaper moves
from the headline to the society page. The very layout of the newspaper seeming
to reflect our priorities: going through three distinct phases – the mortal
(the “terrible big tornado”), the socio-political (bills banning socialism,
workers’ strike, elections, international affairs and rumors) and finally, the societal
(the Dance at Royal Ridge). The ironic distance is produced by a reversal of
this order. Babbitt dismisses the death and destruction of the tornado with an
indifferent, “Hard luck, all right”, and moves on without a pause to the socio-political.
Here he dwells longer – enough to express not just indifferent clichés, but his
own (clichéd) political opinions. But it is not until the Society page that he
actually reads aloud, and so presents to us, what the paper says: the only
page worth reprinting is the Society
page. His reaction to this “news” – the spacious lawns, the notable guests, the
baronial fireplace! – occupies his thoughts until the next textual break, viz.,
until the end of the chapter.
The
ironic distance is of course Babbitt’s elevating the importance of notable
guests and spacious lawns to the level of (or rather far, far above!) social
justice and the “weather”, that is, contingencies of the cosmos: life and
death. We might minimize this distance by pointing out that Babbitt knows these
people personally, and so is much more emotionally involved in their doings
than in strangers grappling with nobler battles; but this just begs the
question: for WHY on earth should we be more concerned about a trivial aspect
of a person with whom we are acquainted (and, as in this case, don’t much like)
than we are concerned with the most serious aspect of a stranger (his mortality
and his mortal needs) which moreover is common to everyone, everywhere, ever?
So
given my schema, this satirical reading can be summarized thus: the ironic distance between the
triviality/lowness of Babbitt’s animated, personal reaction to the Dance, on
the one hand, and his thoughtless, emotionless, perfunctory (non) reaction to
the Tornado (which, we should note, cause homelessness!) show Babbitt’s priorities and these are reacted to with
indignant humor; the reader returns things to their proper sphere – tornados
are more newsworthy than spacious lawns! – and the reader, who confirms the
authors values and is confirmed by them in turn, is reinforced in his
self-conception as possessing the right values.
THE GROTESQUE
 |
| Notre Dame Grotesque |
Next, by
contrast with what we’ve just characterized as a satirical reading, I want to
consider a reading style which I will call grotesque. My choice of this term is
not arbitrary and I would like to go into its accepted meaning a bit to start
off. Although having many valences in literary theory, all grotesque, like
satire, involves incongruity.
Grotesque characters are supposed to inspire both sympathy and disgust; perhaps
the most famous example of this is Shelley’s doubly-grotesque monster in Frankenstein – whose grotesque physical
form inspires disgust, as do
eventually his actions, but, when the perspective reverses and he is allowed to
tell his story, he elicits sympathy, and
so is a grotesque character. The grotesque is generally associated with the
monstrous, and indeed is the name for the monstrous statues or Chimera that
adorn Gothic cathedrals (a grotesque is just a gargoyle without a water spout).
Moreover, a chimera is a particular kind of monster: one composed of the parts
of several animals. As such, the grotesque, like the satirical, transverses a
certain distance in our expectations: where we expect the body of a lion there
is that of a goat; where we expect to maintain a disgusted stance toward an
individual, we find we also feel sympathy toward them.
But
how does this translate into a reading style? Let’s consider the effect a
grotesque has on a Gothic Cathedral. There is of course a dissonance between
the hideous/monstrous appearance of the statue and the exalted beauty of the
building. But the effect does not work on the observer like satire – that is,
the onlooker does not see the gulf between hideous twisted little monsters and
the glory of God and think how
inappropriate that such ungodly things should pretend to the sacred nature of
this building; and in turn reverse the transgression, placing the low and
high back in their proper places; that is, the grotesque statuary does not
merely exalt god through negative contrast in the same way the satirical
reaffirms the proper values through a negative contrast with their temporary,
ridiculous reversal; rather, the grotesque serves to enhance and expand one’s
former conception of what the sacred is, and in particular, to call into
question one’s presuppositions about the strict dichotomy between
small/ugly/monster on one hand and grand/beautiful/God on the other: perhaps
the Holy both rejects/excludes and contains the horrific; that it is
both threatened by and defined by the horrific.
To bring these considerations into
the light of our earlier discussion, while the satirical reading involves an
(1) immediate rejection of the inverted value-scheme, and in turn an immediate lowering
of the illegitimate, usurper values, which serves (2) to return things to their
former, obvious, taken-for-granted order and (3) affirm the reader in his own
values (which is to say, it makes the reader feel at home), the grotesque reading, on the other hand, involves (1’)
temporarily inhabiting the inverted
value-scheme and attempting to sustain the perspective in which the high is on
a leveled with the low; this occasions the reader to (2’) sympathetically
imagine the world in which this value-inversion is the obvious,
taken-for-granted order and (3’)
this in turn alienates the reader, as he experiences the contingency of what he presumed was high/low. This contingency
is not supposed to leave the reader rejecting his earlier values; it is rather
supposed to show that they are not eternal, necessary feature of our world:
that the frightening possibility exists that the we might live in such a way,
in such a world, where what we now take as most important and sacred, is
diluted and leveled off with what we take as trivial and profane. The grotesque
reading reveals that the meaningfulness of our world - which is oriented by,
stabilized by, our sorting things into the sacred/profane, the high/low etc. –
is fragile, vulnerable, and threatened.
With
this definition of the grotesque reading, we can see important differences from
the satirical. First, while the satirical reading involves the (illegitimate)
upward movement of the low, the grotesque reading sees the opposite: the
(tragic) downward movement of the high. Second, while the satirical involves
the immediate return of the low to its proper place, the grotesque is receptive
to the possibility of the widespread lowering of the sacred as a real,
imminent, or even actualized, possibility. Next, while the satirical leaves the
reader in his place throughout this motion, and indeed stabilizes him in his
belief that he is on the side of the good guys, the grotesque destabilizes him
by showing the contingency that threatens the reign of the sacred. While the
satirical ultimately, at best, involves the reader in a futile preaching to the choir, (teaching the
Good that their conception of good is good), at worst it serves merely to
reinforce the readers sense of superiority: the problems of the world come from
these fools who miss the point, and so much the worse to them. The grotesque,
on the other hand, asks the reader to sympathetically identify, to take dead seriously, the soul and world of a
person whose values are so inverted. It makes the grotesque character both an
object of disgust and pity: disgust because of their error;
pity because, by earnestly attempting to inhabit this morally-inverted
experience, the reader experiences the sense of loss involved in the grotesque character’s mistaking the low for
the high: what a small, low, sad
little world that forms the horizon of this character. The reader in turn dreads the possibility
that this horizon become the horizon of the actual world. Instead of being
confirmed in his moral superiority, the reader is moved to pity, and also is
called into question: how committed are you, really, to maintaining the sacred?
To preventing the darkening of the earth? To guiding those lost? How horrific
is this possibility, when taken dead seriously? Is it too late? Has human existence
become a farce?
To
summarize what I think is effectively the principle
difference between the satirical reading and grotesque reading: To approach the
text as something of a light joke, an exaggerated caricature on those who miss
the point regarding what matters in life means that the irony encountered will
serve to elicit derisive laughter:
and this concept already involves all that we’ve discussed under the heading of
satirical: putting the other back in
their place; a wholesale rejection of their experience as ridiculous,
unthinkable, impossible; and the self-satisfaction of perceived superiority of
those who have enough insight to see the other’s folly. To approach the text
grotesquely – as an illustration of an actual course the world may take (or has
taken) – neither as an exaggeration nor a caricature but as a serious threat to
meaning – will serve to elicit pity, as well as a desire to protect the sacred,
that is, will elict pathos. To put it
even more simply: the reaction to the
dissonance glimpsed through the satirical perspective is comic exclusion; the reaction to that glimpses through the
grotesque is pathetic inclusion.
A
Grotesque Reading of Babbitt
The city was full
of such grotesqueries…
(3)
 |
| Kertesz, 1972 |
Is
there any reason to approach the text grotesquely rather than satirically
(supposing I’ve made a strong enough case for what’s at stake in the
difference)? I think there is, both within the text and without. First, I want to claim that in general,
readers will tend by default to take the satirical approach to ironic
dissonance. I know that I for one began reading the book like this, inwardly
smirking at the exalted office buildings, at the barrage of noise of the modern
world that wakes Babbitt, rendering his alarm clock – so proudly possessed! –
redundant, at his preoccupation with the Society page and at his worry over
appropriate way to refer to a tuxedo jacket, etc. The experience was one of
drifting through a petty world that had been made quite grand. But I also found myself tempted to identify
with these characters with respect to their values: imagine if my thoughts
could only orbit the spacious lawns of the elite, or if the heights my soul
reached was pride in my alarm clock, in the new water cooler, or if an office
building inspired as much awe in me as Notre Dame. If we don’t laugh this off
we can see that these attitudes aren’t as preposterous as they seem – or more
precisely, they perhaps aren’t so far off –f rom society’s own attitude as a
whole, and, if I’m honest, from my own (To pretend I’ve never thought, right
along with Babbitt, not ironically but dead seriously, “There is character in
spectacles”!(9)). Materialism, which the satirical reader indignantly laughs
at, is a language – a system of
symbols – with which we all interact with each other, and which provides us
with a self-understanding; everyone is defined by the material objects
surrounding them, and few in the history of the world have truly rebelled from
this condition (though many an ascetic has defined themselves by the absence of
such objects, this move is still based on the assumption that identity depends
on one’s material arrangement. Now admittedly we are not wholly defined thus –
there is lofty side to us too– when we truly engage with others, with ideas,
with God; but Babbitt, when read grotesquely, enjoins us: imagine, not that the
petty has risen to the heights of the grand, but that the grand has diminished
until it became the petty; not that the profane metamorphosed into the sacred
but that nothing is sacred anymore – it has been forgotten, like all
forgetting, it has been forgotten that it has been forgotten, doubly buried. We
cannot laugh away that this is where the world is headed; we cannot laugh away
that possibility that this pigmy-world is the world we live in, and the only world we’ve ever known or will ever know.
These
doubts are the call of conscience: we question which side, matter or spirit, we
really stand on, and how firmly and squarely we stand there. Am I Babbitt? Do I live in zenith? We ask in a moment of lucidity. We are tempted to
say, of course not. I’m not perfect, but I have spiritual aspirations. But it
is not that easy – for Babbitt too believes he lives a life of the spirit – his
involvement in fraternities, his fondness for his city, his metaphysical belief
in the progress of the times and his being a direct, even integral, part of
that. For Babbitt too has his moments of doubt, his pangs of conscience, which
he too, we can presume, manages and minimizes, much in the same way we would
minimize our own suspected Babbitry. So when we’re brutally honest with ourselves,
when we sympathetically identify with Babbitt and Zenith, we cannot so easily
return things back to their previous order nor can we make the equation me/nonmaterialistic/good,
Babbit/materialistic/bad. Moreover, these
glimpses of the vacuity of his values – in the form of the dream fairy child,
in the abruptly returning doubts at breakfast, in his lecherous peering at his
secretary – also lend to a grotesque reading – because it is easier for us to sympathetically
identify with a lost character who is not hopelessly lost, but can admit the
error of his ways. Indeed, what a relief it is when, after all the tedious brochure-like
descriptions of the material composition of objects, or the advertisement-like
pitches detailing the features of things, at last we find Babbitt a doubting
and serious man, beginning to form the beginnings of a Real Question in his
mind. This also lends itself to pathetic
inclusion – Zenith is not a yet completely dark, just as it contains a trace of
moral guidance, so too our pangs, upon our grotesque reading, that we too fall
far short reveal that we too are not completely lost. We end up by taking a
grotesque approach to ourselves.
Thomas
Mann called the grotesque the “Genuine anti-bourgeois style”. And this vision
of the uprootedness of the bourgeoisie, the homelessness of the 20th century middle-class,
has been a pervasive theme for the entire century since Babbitt’s publication. Heidegger
(who you can just take as my mouthpiece for the 20th century
zeitgeist!) talks about the oppressiveness of lacking a genuine struggle. A people who have become altogether
pragmatic and utilitarian will, once their material prosperity has been
secured, have nothing left to do but struggle with their own ennui and angst –
which are sort of meta-struggles in a way that a tornado or a fight for social
justice is not. This homelessness, which is explicitly and symbolically stated
11 pages into the narrative (14), is not just a threat to a fictional character
in a fictional world, but is meant to call out to us in our homelessness: We
have not yet learned how to dwell.
Returning
briefly to our opening readings of the building/language imagery in Babbitt, we
can enhance this a bit with what has been discussed since. For instance, the opening image is not one of “aspiring”
“austere” office buildings – or rather, what these terms can now mean has changed – for without the touchstone of the sacred
and communal housed by the church and the citadel, these terms themselves lose
their ability to elevate the office buildings, and instead, are lowered to the level
of the office buildings. So too with the churches and citadels themselves. So
while, on a satirical reading, everything, and above all the spireless office
buildings, is “aspiring” in an upward motion, this is only apparent; the real
motion is downward, and it is of cathedral and citadels being razed to the ground,
where they will be covered in an all-forgetting mist. The symbolism, which the
grotesque reader shares with the satirical reader, is that what these buildings
stand for – the worshipping of a transcendent being, the haven to which a
united people retreats to defend itself – has been reduced to this lowest
common denominator: commercialism.
So too the vision of Babbitt
perusing his newspaper at the breakfast table is made more frightening and
threatening by a grotesque reading. Imagine if our ability to emphasize with
each other’s common, mortal and weak humanity – our exposure to the tornadic
elements, so to speak – was seen as no more important, or seen as less
important, than our ability to feel covetous envy of our neighbor’s baronial
fireplace. It is worth noting that although the writing style of the main
narrative is riddled with irony, the direct quotation of the Society page article
is actually meant to read as a real such page would read. That is to
say, the grotesque irony of the main narrative flows seamlessly into the
earnest tone of the article: the reader cannot help but read this article
ironically (because of the momentum of the narrative hitherto) when it is in
fact is a representation of a non-ironic output of the mass media. This continuity
producing re-contextualization allows the reader to ask: Is it not a bit
strange, even perverse, that a single
daily publication contains within it people faced with horrific untimely death
and loss, and just marginally margins away, the “deep comfy armchairs” of Royal
Ridge? Do we already invite this leveling, when a single sheet of paper
contains within it fragments of the gravest and most trivial events, and we
consume them all together over our muffin and coffee? How have we not seen all
along the deeply ironically dissonant nature of the mass media, with its leveling
juxtapositions? How could anybody
read this non-ironically? Perhaps Zenith is not laughable for its difference
from us. Perhaps it is pitiable precisely because of its similarities.
Afterthought:
on Bab—
Before Babbitt, I never had any trouble finding
an abbreviation for our subjects – Reading Partner, Midnight’s Children, Bruno’s
Dream: RP, MC, BD. But how to abbreviate Babbitt? Obviously “B” won’t do. So it
would be Bb or Bt – but which, I thought, that depends on which consonant, the
second b or the t, was more integral to the word. To me it was an easy
decision: Bb – two voiced, explosive consonants to represent this loudly vocal,
explosive man, this town, this time. But also for all the words for which it is
a seed, like baby, and bib (don’t these seem somehow descriptive of Georgie?),
but also bubble (diaphanous, unstable, about to pop, likea stock market bubble),
bobble (clumsily oscillating, not at rest)
and babble (as idle, chattering
speech, language without communication),
and last but not least: Babel – the
city in which that aspiring, towering structure goes unfinished because God
confounds the common language of the builders and scatters them across the
world.
Reading
on, I wonder: So how much of Zenith is Babel? And how much will history repeat
itself? The word ‘tower’ is conspicuously used twice within the first sentence.
Moreover, as we pan in, the scene reveals:
In one
of the skyscrapers the wires of the Associated Press were closing down. The telegraph
operators wearily raised their celluloid eye-shades after a night of talking
with Paris and Peking. (3)
The imagery
is rich with deeper meaning: we begin with our symbol of language – the Press –
closing down. The first seen occupants of our towers are the decoders of
messages, the telegraph operators – and we find them weary, and raising their
eyeshades which are historically associated with both journalists and accountants and indeed are even a
symbol common symbol of over-preoccupation with commerce. Finally, and most
tellingly, is the alliterative expanse of Peking to Paris – a dizzying pan back
out that has the effect of decentering Zenith, of bringing us out into the wide
world, of which this weary communication is just one instance of many, and moreover
just one of the many ‘confounded’ languages of the scattered peoples of the
world.
Their
intent of course was to build a tower from the earth to the heavens. Not only
do the Zeniths’ towers “aspire”, but the very word “zenith” itself means
highest point that something reaches before it makes its descent. A point of seeming
stability and balance on a constantly moving arc. But so too, is the zenith the point in the sky directly
over one’s head: the city itself points upward, and declares its intention to
reach from earth to the heavens: “A city built – it seemed – for giants (3)”. This
interjection –“it seemed”— is not a little foreshadowing of a biblical fate to
our city and its denizens. If Book I part one opens on the image of aspiring
towers, it closes on the image of toppling giants – not toppling over, but losing
their stature as we approach and look closer and see that their seeming height was
an illusion: Babel halted by a new perspective leaving us once again, as ever,
homeless. Man has not yet learned to dwell.
Thanks for once again meeting me here. Thanks for not giving up on me.
-Your Reading Partner, Justin
 |
| Pieter T the Elder, The Tower of Babel, 1563 |
