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Our Capacity for Wonder: A Review

2016-07-12 · review / recommendation · John · 3:26 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Philosophy & meaning (also: Books & writing) · mode: Personal essay · tags: on location

John 'reviews' humans' capacity for wonder: Fitzgerald's Gatsby line is beautiful but wrong, since a leaf his toddler son Henry noticed showed that wonder depends on attention, not on what we see; he gives it 10 out of 10.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Greeting; still on vacation, more horizon

  • ★ John says he is still on vacation, so here is some more horizon. — 00:00:00

00:00:03 — Fitzgerald's 'capacity for wonder' line in The Great Gatsby and why it now feels wrong

  • ★★ John reviews 'man's capacity for wonder', a phrase from a line in The Great Gatsby where the narrator imagines Europeans first arriving in the Americas. — 00:00:03
  • ★★ John says the line, near the novel's end, has always seemed slightly out of place, as if Fitzgerald needed one zoom-out to the 'beginning' of his continent's 'history'. (hedged) — 00:00:29
  • ★★★ John says the line now feels wrong on several levels: its gendered language, the false notion that America was empty or pristine before Europeans, and humans reaching the moon within decades. — 00:00:43
  • ★★ John says that within decades of Gatsby humans glimpsed the universe just after the Big Bang by looking at 16-billion-year-old light. — 00:00:58
    • a number in question (doubtful): "16 billion" — check against the recording

00:01:03 — Beautiful lines mistaken for truth: Anna Karenina; lines both beautiful and true from Hurston and Vonnegut

  • ★★★ John says Fitzgerald's line is so good it is easy to mistake for true: beautiful, arresting observations always seem accurate, even when they're not. — 00:01:03
  • ★★ John calls Anna Karenina's first line ('All happy families are alike…') masterful but too reductive to be strictly true; we love it anyway. — 00:01:14
  • ★★ John says we love that line partly because most of us find comfort in the idea that if we can't be happy, we might at least be unique. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ John suspects most people, deep down, would rather be interesting than happy. (hedged) — 00:01:32
  • ★ John says he himself would rather be interesting than happy. — 00:01:32
  • ★★ John says the best literary observations are both beautiful and broadly true, citing Hurston's 'Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board' and Vonnegut's 'We are what we pretend to be'. — 00:01:37
  • ★★ John says that often a great line doesn't prove to be a great truth. — 00:01:47

00:01:53 — Henry and the oak leaf; beauty depends on how we look; attentiveness; 10 out of 10; sign-off

  • ★★★ John recalls a November woods walk when son Henry was about two: John held him up to admire the misty forest view, but Henry said 'leaf' and grabbed a single brown oak leaf. — 00:01:53 · Henry Green
  • ★★ John says he wanted to tell Henry that brown oak leaves are everywhere in the eastern US in November, but looking with him he saw red, orange and yellow veins too complex to take in. — 00:02:26 · Henry Green
  • ★★★ John says the leaf's intricacy reminded him that aesthetic beauty is as much about how and whether you look as about what you see. — 00:02:54
  • ★★★ John says from the quark to the supernova the wonders never cease; what is scarce is our attentiveness, our ability and willingness to do the work awe requires. — 00:03:06
  • ★★★ John concludes that he thinks Fitzgerald was wrong. (hedged) — 00:03:11
  • ★★ John thinks humans' capacity for wonder is nonetheless pretty great and gives it 10 out of 10, highly recommended. (playful, hedged) — 00:03:11

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: F. Scott Fitzgerald · Henry Green · The Great Gatsby · wonder (emotion)

Also: Americas · Anna Karenina · Big Bang · Kurt Vonnegut · Moon · Zora Neale Hurston

Only in the description or credits: Great Lakes

Also centred on F. Scott Fitzgerald: Oinkbarf Pandemic! An Intellectual Response to Swine Flu

Also centred on The Great Gatsby: Froghoppin' with Gatsby · Question Tuesday! Paula Deen Riding Me (and critical reading) · THE FAULT IN OUR STARS · Gatsby's American Dream: Reading The Great Gatsby Critically, Chapter 1 · The Great Gatsby: Living the Dream in the Valley of Ashes · The Best Books Get Better

Also centred on wonder (emotion): Beneath an Abandoned Hospital: Thoughts from Places · The Universe is Weird: A Song · Books, Movies, and Wonder: Thoughts from a Red Carpet

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