Oakland picture time!
Inside Dona Thomas, on Telelgraph Ave. in the Temescal District- my friend Tommy!
I had neither charm, beauty, nor wit, but only the ambition to be the klieg light of my social
milieu.
"Who cares about literature in an age of chaos, collapse de fond en comble? Oh, once upon a time it may have mattered when somehow it seemed to bear on life. But culture today, in so far it exists at all, is mass produced on the assembly line of purely socioeconomic values….Alas, the world has ceased to be creative; it trails social life like a supply column behind a victorious army. It regurgitates the same material, never inventing anything new. Not because the number of words is limited, not because we have run out of radically new concepts, but because of the deeper wells of creativity have been exhausted; because the human personality has faded, withered on the vine."
This is the second part of the two part notes and impressions of Insatiablity, by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz.
After all, Insatiability is a difficult novel to write about, because it spans so many ideas that it would take another book to explain it all. It doesn't deal with the development of characters, rather, the characters- like Zip, are an unfolding of a reaction. What happens when a young, freedom seeker comes into contact with decadence, artistic ideas, unfettered sexuality, and war? It is as though Witkiewicz decided to conduct an experiment in a future world where values and intimacy and been replaced by lust and neurosis, and the novel has became the document. Witkiewicz wrote Insatiability during the two world wars; the erosion of idealism and the political anxiety for the future are apparent. Witkiewicz throws his combating constructs of art, politics, and individuality into the word mix which make up this novel. A painter, playwright, philosopher, he used his novels as a hulking receptacle where these raucous conceits run amok.
I can imagine a near future where Witkiewicz's novels, and aesthetics, become fodder fir the academic mill. His work is perfect for the loveless deconstructions of a perspired graduate student. Perhaps it has already begun. There's so much to analyze, even in just this novel. Topics for papers could include: insatiability as a mind state, the multiple references to cocaine and drug use, aberrant sexuality, women as savior and destroyer, and, the dehumanization of Zip. I hope these droll papers are never doled out. I hope people just discover this book and want to read it. Because it is a crazy and fascinating read.
For more in depth info on Witkiewicz:
http://info-poland.buffalo.edu/classroom/witkacy/witkacy.html
And some other views into this novel:
http://www.amazon.com/Insatiability-Stanislaw-Ignacy-Witkiewicz/dp/0810111330/ref=cm_lm_fullview_prod_1/102-5419651-7991302?ie=UTF8
http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/birs/bir19.htm
