Read Online Boys and Girls Come Out to Play by Nigel Dennis - Free Book Online
Authors: Nigel Dennis
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Outside of foreign affairs, Divver’s interest was still in science. He liked plastics, the cushioning of automobiles according to some new device, germ-theories, heredity, the nature of genius, cotton-pickers; in his home an electric clock was linked synchronously to the radio in such a way that it automatically switched on Divver’s favourite news-commentators. But these were only a small aspect of Divver’s interest in science; they were not the science which elevated him into the sense of high excitement that was the nearest he could come to poetry; they were not the science that so fascinated him by reason of being so unpredictable and personal. Divver’s chosen science was the highest form of self-punishment through guesswork; an art that turned a general hypothesis into a personal shame. He had no scientific interest at all in such tangible things as the human brain and hand, but he was deeply concerned with the motives which impelled the hand; and with the psyche which, he believed, was actually divisible into a number of semi-detached, communicating residences, sothat it resembled the chart that had been used in grade school to teach him the geography of a section of the United States coastline. This chart had portrayed various land-levels, in various shadings, starting submarinely, rising almost to sea level here and there, and emerging, like anti-climaxes, as the hills and valleys of his native land. This world, as a whole, Divver referred to, as one might to a favourite dog, as “my ego.” Other people’s egos, he might feel were beyond praise or blame because they were victims of the Forces, but he fed, watched, praised and blamed his own ego with absorption, and rightly took for granted that all his friends had something like it on the end of a chain—as though there were at least two of each of them on display, and more, invisible, underneath. Often, he would talk as though psyches were little houses out of which figures popped to tell the weather: “Last night Jake’s masculine ego came out,” he would say, of a quarrel, and: “Her ego is built on oral optimism”—envisaging the emergence of detached, irresponsible lips. He had learned that the tendencies of perverts and maniacs are present in the best of people; but instead of concluding from this that it would be abnormal to be totally lacking in such tendencies, he believed that there was no real difference between having a trace of an abnormality and being in the throes of it—in fact, the only difference was that to have it badly was likely to be more honest than to have it slightly. By the time he was thirty he had learned to speak quite naturally of a feeling of hesitation as “schizophrenia,” of resentment as “paranoia,” or “a bit of paranoia,” and he knew that personal opinions were usually “resistance” to honest. He also knew that it was wicked and wilful to forget a face or a ’phone-number; that if he said “dog” when he meant to say “God,” he must chuckle, and quietly knock on Freud; that the greater the innocence, the greater the viciousness; that it is honest to rape an old woman but perverse to help her over a stile.
In other walks of life science had much the same special meaning for Divver—science was what you feared to admit, not what you could prove to be true. Divver took for granted that conduct is always suspect, and fantasy always scientific; that the greater the contrast between doing and dreaming, the greater the personal dishonesty, but that not to dream was most dishonest of all.
Divver would have denied how much misery he derived from science; he believed that education had been his salvation; there was no knowing, he often thought, what frightful mistakes he might have made in his career without science to guide him. For one thing, science had given him a vocabulary of symbols, metaphors and similes that gave point to every line he wrote. Old-fashioned writers made-do with hackneyed
Outside of foreign affairs, Divver’s interest was still in science. He liked plastics, the cushioning of automobiles according to some new device, germ-theories, heredity, the nature of genius, cotton-pickers; in his home an electric clock was linked synchronously to the radio in such a way that it automatically switched on Divver’s favourite news-commentators. But these were only a small aspect of Divver’s interest in science; they were not the science which elevated him into the sense of high excitement that was the nearest he could come to poetry; they were not the science that so fascinated him by reason of being so unpredictable and personal. Divver’s chosen science was the highest form of self-punishment through guesswork; an art that turned a general hypothesis into a personal shame. He had no scientific interest at all in such tangible things as the human brain and hand, but he was deeply concerned with the motives which impelled the hand; and with the psyche which, he believed, was actually divisible into a number of semi-detached, communicating residences, sothat it resembled the chart that had been used in grade school to teach him the geography of a section of the United States coastline. This chart had portrayed various land-levels, in various shadings, starting submarinely, rising almost to sea level here and there, and emerging, like anti-climaxes, as the hills and valleys of his native land. This world, as a whole, Divver referred to, as one might to a favourite dog, as “my ego.” Other people’s egos, he might feel were beyond praise or blame because they were victims of the Forces, but he fed, watched, praised and blamed his own ego with absorption, and rightly took for granted that all his friends had something like it on the end of a chain—as though there were at least two of each of them on display, and more, invisible, underneath. Often, he would talk as though psyches were little houses out of which figures popped to tell the weather: “Last night Jake’s masculine ego came out,” he would say, of a quarrel, and: “Her ego is built on oral optimism”—envisaging the emergence of detached, irresponsible lips. He had learned that the tendencies of perverts and maniacs are present in the best of people; but instead of concluding from this that it would be abnormal to be totally lacking in such tendencies, he believed that there was no real difference between having a trace of an abnormality and being in the throes of it—in fact, the only difference was that to have it badly was likely to be more honest than to have it slightly. By the time he was thirty he had learned to speak quite naturally of a feeling of hesitation as “schizophrenia,” of resentment as “paranoia,” or “a bit of paranoia,” and he knew that personal opinions were usually “resistance” to honest. He also knew that it was wicked and wilful to forget a face or a ’phone-number; that if he said “dog” when he meant to say “God,” he must chuckle, and quietly knock on Freud; that the greater the innocence, the greater the viciousness; that it is honest to rape an old woman but perverse to help her over a stile.
In other walks of life science had much the same special meaning for Divver—science was what you feared to admit, not what you could prove to be true. Divver took for granted that conduct is always suspect, and fantasy always scientific; that the greater the contrast between doing and dreaming, the greater the personal dishonesty, but that not to dream was most dishonest of all.
Divver would have denied how much misery he derived from science; he believed that education had been his salvation; there was no knowing, he often thought, what frightful mistakes he might have made in his career without science to guide him. For one thing, science had given him a vocabulary of symbols, metaphors and similes that gave point to every line he wrote. Old-fashioned writers made-do with hackneyed
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