Glyph by Percival Everett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Boredom of Infantile Leisure

Babies lock on to language because they are literally bored to tears, even in their dreams. Having been hooked on language, they are so immersed in it that they have no memory of ever having been without it. The world of language is, so to speak, the only one they know and they treat it as if it is the only one there is. It is shocking to then discover that what looks solid language, is mostly hot air. Nevertheless, there is no way back. Boredom drives them ever deeper into the language which hides reality. But refusing to speak keeps language at a safe distance. The smartest ones talk latest; the best not at all.

The one word in language, the only one really, worth taking seriously is ‘death.’ Death is both inside and outside language (unlike ‘God’, and ‘truth’, and even ‘reality’ which are purely linguistic and must be taken cum grano salis). Death is the worm hole that facilitates the passage from words to not-words. It doesn’t lead back into some pre-linguistic paradise but it goes in a different direction and leads somewhere else. Death is a destination one can rely on. As infants mature, they become increasingly aware of this. Frightening at first, the more that they have to deal with language, the more appealing death becomes.

The form which has no substance that we call language is after all a rather stressful place. A highly precocious baby who is adept at language at birth but doesn’t let on is in a privileged position to notice this. His parents are being driven personally and professionally mad by their obsessive need to express what they call ‘themselves.’ Ralph, the baby, doesn’t fall for that. Ralph knows that transforming oneself into language is worse than death; it is hell. He reads, he takes notes, and he writes poetry to his mother. But none of this is Ralph. Ralph does not speak so isn’t absorbed by language. He formulates his own Ontological Proof to make the point:

“a) assume: Ralph does not exist.
b) Ralph is not Ralph.
c) therefore: Ralph exists.”

He has no delusions about the importance of his thinking. Like a young Richard Rorty he can say “all my meaning is surface.”

Being born with a complete language set, as it were, has definite advantages, as Ralph recognises: “because I lacked the prelinguistic clutter, the subtextual litter, I actually understood language better than any adult. Talk of time never threw me for a loop. Pronouns never confused me. I used me when I was supposed to and never once wondered when my mother used I whether she was speaking of me.” Even better, there is no epistemological gap between words and things. Language for Ralph is simply unproblematic: “For me, there was no gap, as there is no gap for anyone.”

But anyone who is being OK with language can’t be OK with a world that isn’t. Everyone wants to know how it’s done. And that precisely is why they aren’t OK with language. They think there’s some trick, technique, or theory, that is to say, more bits of language that will allow them to conquer the thing. Not going to happen. Ralph knows we live in a story; he’s comfortable with that. But academics, and scientists, and literary critics (to name but a few professions which do have a problem with language) are not. This makes them wild beasts.

Linguistic analysis has become the new theology. Exactly the same problems arise as with the old theology: no one has ever found a way to talk about the Absolute, whether God or Language, sensibly. Both have infinite potential and therefore can’t be defined or limited by what is inferior to them, namely words and creatures. This drives the new theologians as crazy as the old ones. Ultimately both theology and linguistics fall back on metaphor, the thing they hate the most.

The idea that we are like dimensionless points on a line-segment of infinite slightness and fragility, seeking to connect with other segments in order to create the shapes we call stories is a pretty good metaphor by Ralph. It’s certainly enough to be getting on with. Everett is terrific with new shapes. And through him Ralph gives some great advice for a four year old: “Tell your ideas not to talk to strangers. Don’t let your ideas play in the street. Don’t give your ideas any toys with pieces so small that they might choke on them.”

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