Re: Sentimentality & Cruelty and Apocalyptic Longings

Henry P. Mills (henm@MAIL.UTEXAS.EDU)
Sun, 6 Apr 1997 14:44:35 -0500

On Sun, 6 Apr 1997 16:37:39, Ted Atkinson wrote:

>Oh, yes. Sentimentality is essentially manufactured emotion. The
>"tenderness that leads to the gas chamber" is also sentimental because the
>"tenderness" has been robbed of meaning. As O'Connor notes, sentimentality,
>like pornography, is a distortion: one circumvents reality to arrive at a
>false (and often theoretical) state of emotion. Sentimentality is
>necessarily cruel because it is a dangerous imposter in the realm of
>feeling. After all, what is more cruel than some 14-year-old, pregnant by
>her uncle, being "consoled" by Jerry Springer? He bows his head in
>disbelief at her story; he offers her a pat on the hand as consolation; he
>doesn't give a damn as long as the ratings are good. Even more dangerous?
>What about contemporary campaigns? The new rite of passage for candidates
>is to "show the emotional side" by recounting some difficult moment from the
>past, to shed a tear or two while the cameras are rolling. Later some
>blow-dried reporter intones with perfect unfeeling enunciation, "It was an
>emotional moment." Far from it.

I can't help but being struck by the pointedness of Ted's observations, and
immediately want to connect them to Lost in the Cosmos for several reasons.
The obvious one is the Donahue episode (pp.48-59) as parallel to Springer
and the voyeruistic quality present to talk shows of the like he describes
(pornography, too, as a false "emotional participation" seems applicable
here, especially if it is the >subject< of a talk show a la Geraldo style).
Both seem like focused examples of selves attempting to "circumvent
reality" by various modes of "transcendence" and "immanence." Yet of
course the strange realness of the whole matter is that I myself
particiapte in the same predicament. And this may be the most profound
revelation of Walker Percy's life and work, and one which Lost in the
Cosmos so well documents albeit its use of very "unreal" discursive methods
(e.g, "thought experiments", "multiple choice fiction", etc.)
Then again, the recent "Heaven's Gate" cult tragedy seems
profoundly relevant at the moment, too. Convinced of the coming
apocaplypse; webbed into and guided by the most advance technologies of the
day; awaiting the transportation of their souls (these having been planted
in their bodily "containers" by extraterrestrials) to the "mothership"; all
lead by a "prophet" named "Do": To me, Percy's work resonates deeply in
all cases. As for the fact that "Do's" fullsize photograph is portentously
situated on the front of the current issue of Newsweek (with no less the
caption "Follow me"), I can't even begin to speculate here on what that
means. It is most certainly a sign of something, though, and I offer it to
the list as grist to gnash upon, by which I intend to affirm that Walker
Percy's work is indeed most relevant and insightful in nothing less than an
"ongoing" and very "real" way.

Henry Mills