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Milty's Mag, December 1941
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Milty's Mag Page five -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How many stories can you recall in which takes place an interview, or cross examination, in which the hero, a superior person, is the defendant? The courtroom scene of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, the psychoanalysis scene of Flight From Destiny come to mind. The delight which the reader gets from such a scene is obviously the identification which the reader makes between himself and the protagonist. How many times have you rehearsed in your mind a scene in which you took the witness chair and so cleverly told off the crossexaminer? There is no denying that the attraction of the superman story lies n the personal identification. The narrator of The Hampdenshire Wonder says, in regards to his mental state during association with Victor Stott: "I was fiercely, but quite impotently, eager at such times to demonstrate the futility of all the philosophy ranged on the rough wooden shelves in my gloomy sitting-room. I would walk up and down and gesticulate, struggling, fighting to make clear to myself what a true philosophy should set forth. I felt at such times that all the knowledge I needed for stupendous a task was present with me in some inexplicable way, was even pressing upon me, but that my brain was so clogged and heavy that not one idea of all that priceless wisdom could be expressed in clear thought...... I felt that it must be possible for me to come to the surface, but I could do nothing but flounder." Does not the reader of superman stories sometimes get that feeling? Perhaps the most important thought in the book is this: "I have learnt that a measure of self-pride, of complacency, is essential to every human being. .....The Wonder was completely and quite inimitably devoid of any conceit, and the word ambition had no meaning for him. ..... He had no more common ground on which to air his knowledge, no more grounds for comparison by which to achieve self-conceit than a man might have in a world tenanted only by sheep. ..... But the result of all this, so far as I am concerned, is a feeling of admiration for those men who are capable of such magnificent approval for themselves, the causes they espouse, their family, their country, and their species; it is an approval which i fear I can never again attain in full measure. I have seen possibilities which have enforced a humbleness that is not good for my happiness or conductive to my development. Henceforward, I will espouse the cause of vanity. It is only the vain who deprecate vanity in others." It would be nice if the science fiction fan could imagine that because of his proximity to the superman through his readings, he has lost that complacency, self pride, and assurety which is possessed by the ordinary person. It would be wishful thinking to believe that, however, and I did believe that for a while. The disillusionment came when I found that Thomas Wolfe, in You Can't Go Home Again, said more real things that did Stapleton in Odd John and Beresford in The Hampdenshire Wonder. You cannot obtain a true picture of the world merely by a lofty, imaginative, superficial point of view. You must get down on your hands and knees and know people, events, reality!
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Milty's Mag Page five -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How many stories can you recall in which takes place an interview, or cross examination, in which the hero, a superior person, is the defendant? The courtroom scene of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, the psychoanalysis scene of Flight From Destiny come to mind. The delight which the reader gets from such a scene is obviously the identification which the reader makes between himself and the protagonist. How many times have you rehearsed in your mind a scene in which you took the witness chair and so cleverly told off the crossexaminer? There is no denying that the attraction of the superman story lies n the personal identification. The narrator of The Hampdenshire Wonder says, in regards to his mental state during association with Victor Stott: "I was fiercely, but quite impotently, eager at such times to demonstrate the futility of all the philosophy ranged on the rough wooden shelves in my gloomy sitting-room. I would walk up and down and gesticulate, struggling, fighting to make clear to myself what a true philosophy should set forth. I felt at such times that all the knowledge I needed for stupendous a task was present with me in some inexplicable way, was even pressing upon me, but that my brain was so clogged and heavy that not one idea of all that priceless wisdom could be expressed in clear thought...... I felt that it must be possible for me to come to the surface, but I could do nothing but flounder." Does not the reader of superman stories sometimes get that feeling? Perhaps the most important thought in the book is this: "I have learnt that a measure of self-pride, of complacency, is essential to every human being. .....The Wonder was completely and quite inimitably devoid of any conceit, and the word ambition had no meaning for him. ..... He had no more common ground on which to air his knowledge, no more grounds for comparison by which to achieve self-conceit than a man might have in a world tenanted only by sheep. ..... But the result of all this, so far as I am concerned, is a feeling of admiration for those men who are capable of such magnificent approval for themselves, the causes they espouse, their family, their country, and their species; it is an approval which i fear I can never again attain in full measure. I have seen possibilities which have enforced a humbleness that is not good for my happiness or conductive to my development. Henceforward, I will espouse the cause of vanity. It is only the vain who deprecate vanity in others." It would be nice if the science fiction fan could imagine that because of his proximity to the superman through his readings, he has lost that complacency, self pride, and assurety which is possessed by the ordinary person. It would be wishful thinking to believe that, however, and I did believe that for a while. The disillusionment came when I found that Thomas Wolfe, in You Can't Go Home Again, said more real things that did Stapleton in Odd John and Beresford in The Hampdenshire Wonder. You cannot obtain a true picture of the world merely by a lofty, imaginative, superficial point of view. You must get down on your hands and knees and know people, events, reality!
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