What Homer Can Tell Us About Modern War

Charlotte Higgins on the continuing relevance of a 3,000-year-old poem.

From Charlotte Higgins (The Guardian):

Many wishing to make sense of wars in their own time have reached for The Iliad. Alexander the Great, perhaps the most flamboyantly successful soldier in history, slept beside a copy annotated by his tutor, Aristotle. "He esteemed it a perfect portable treasure of all military virtue and knowledge," according to Plutarch's biography. Simone Weil's essay, "L'Iliade ou le poème de la force", published in 1940, holds that "the true hero, the true ­subject at the centre of The Iliad is force", which she defines as "that X that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing".

Her contemporary Rachel Bespaloff, a Geneva-raised philosopher who wound up in the United States, also turned to Homer's poem as a "method of facing" the second world war. For her, it tells a profound, human story – "Suffering and loss have stripped Hector bare," her essay "On The Iliad" begins.

We are still turning to The Iliad, amid our own wars: the Australian writer David Malouf's recent novel, Ransom (Chatto & Windus), is about the encounter between Priam and Achilles in The Iliad's final book, while Caroline Alexander's new study of the poem, The War that Killed Achilles (Faber), sees it as a meditation on the catastrophic effects of conflict. While she does not indulge in crass equivalences, it is hard not to be alerted by her reading to the devastation caused by the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

[...]

The Trojan war – a more or less mythical event – was a 10-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greeks, its purpose to restore Helen to her Spartan husband, Menelaus. The Iliad charts not the famous causes of the conflict (the Trojan prince Paris's abduction of Helen) nor its ­spectacularly bloody end (the Greeks' ruse of the wooden horse and the brutal sacking of the city). Instead, the subject of the poem is menis, fury – specifically, the wrath of the Greeks' best warrior, Achilles.

That wrath is provoked by his ­commander-in-chief Agamemnon's misguided decision to seize Briseis, Achilles's captive woman, as compensation for his own bit of living loot, Chriseis, whom he has been obliged to restore to her Trojan father. Achilles, his pride and honour outraged, withdraws from the fighting and persuades his mother, the goddess Thetis, to ask Zeus to turn the tide of war against the Greeks, knowing that they will suffer appalling losses. He stubbornly resists all appeals to return to battle, but ­eventually agrees to send his beloved comrade, Patroclus, into the fray.

When Patroclus is killed by the Trojans' best fighter, Hector, Achilles whirls into a frenzy of redoubled, re­directed rage. He joins the fighting, and begins a lengthy and pitiless slaughtering spree. Finally, he kills Hector in single combat and attaches the corpse to his chariot, dragging it triumphantly around the walls of the city. (In 2004, the bodies of American contractors were attached to the backs of cars and dragged through the streets of Fallujah.) At the end of the poem Hector's frail and eldery father, Priam, enters the Greeks' camp and persuades Achilles to restore to him his son's body.

[...]

[...] The Iliad still has much to say about war, even as it is fought today. It tells us that war is both the bringer of renown to its young fighters and the destroyer of their lives. It tells us about post-conflict destruction and chaos; about war as the great reverser of fortunes. It tells us about the age-old dilemmas of fighters compelled to serve under incompetent superiors. It tells us about war as an attempt to protect and preserve a treasured way of life. It tells us, too, about the profound gulf between civilian existence and life on the front line; about atrocities and indiscriminate slaughter; about war's peculiar mercilessness to women and children; about friendships and sympathies across the battle lines. It tells us of the love between soldiers who fight together. Most of all, it tells us about the frightful losses of war: of a soldier losing his closest companion, of a ­father losing his son. [Read More]

Beckett and Animals

A new collection of essays edited by Mary Bryden

Beckett and Animals, ed. Mary Bryden

Beckett and Animals
Edited by Mary Bryden
University of Reading

20% discount if ordered before 28 February 2014
Order online at www.cambridge.org/beckett14
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The animals that appear in Samuel Beckett's work are diverse and unpredictable. They serve as victim and persecutor, companion and adversary, disconcerting observers and objects oblivious to the human gaze. Bringing together an international array of Beckett specialists, this is the first full-length study to explore the significance of the animals that populate Beckett's prose, drama and poetry. Essays theorise a broad spectrum of animal manifestations while focusing on the roles that distinct animal forms play within Beckett's work, including horses, sheep, cats, dogs, bees, insects and others. Contributors situate close readings within a larger literary and cultural context, drawing on thinkers ranging from Aristotle to Deleuze, Foucault and Agamben, and on authors such as Flaubert, Kafka and Coetzee. The result is an incisive and provocative collection that traverses disciplinary boundaries, revealing how Beckett's creatures challenge conventional notions of species identity and, ultimately, what it means to be human.

Hardback £55.00 Discount price £44.00

Contents

List of Contributors; Acknowledgements; List of Abbreviations
Introduction, by Mary Bryden

Part I: Animality

1. Shane Weller, ‘Forms of Weakness: Animalisation in Kafka and Beckett’;
2. Yoshiki Tajiri, ‘Beckett, Coetzee, and Animals’;
3. Mary Bryden, ‘The Beckettian Bestiary’;
4. David Wheatley, ‘”Quite Exceptionally Anthropoid”: Species Anxiety and Metamorphosis in Beckett's Humans and Other Animals’;
5. Naoya Mori, ‘”An Animal Inside”: Beckett/Leibniz’s Stone, Animal, Human and the Unborn’;
6. Ulrika Maude, ‘Pavlov's Dogs and Other Animals in Samuel Beckett’;
7. Yoshiyuki Inoue, ‘Little Animals in the Brain: Beckett's “porteurs de la mémoire”’.

Part II: The Specificity of Animals

8. Jean-Michel Rabaté, ‘”Think, Pig!”: Beckett's Animal Philosophies’;
9. Linda Ben-Zvi, ‘Beckett's “Necessary” Cat(s)’;
10. Steven Connor, ‘Making Flies Mean Something’;
11. Joseph Anderton, ‘”Hooves!”: The Equine Presence in Beckett’;
12. Angela Moorjani, ‘The Dancing Bees in Samuel Beckett's Molloy: The Rapture of Unknowing’;
13. Chris Ackerley, ‘”Despised for Their Obviousness”: Samuel Beckett's Dogs’;
14. Julie Campbell, ‘Beckett and Sheep’;
15. Maximilian de Gaynesford, ‘”Eyes in Each Other's Eyes”: Beckett, Kleist, and the Fencing Bear’;
16. Brigitte Le Juez, ‘Words Without Acts: Beckett's Parrots’.

Index

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Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Samuel Beckett
• Who is Beckett's Godot?
• A Companion to Samuel Beckett
• University of Reading: Beckett Conference 2009

Simon Critchley on the Tragic and its Limits

An interview with The White Review

John Douglas Millar (The White Review) interviews philosopher Simon Critchley:

To Critchley, one attraction of tragedy lies in ‘its savage and troubling beauty, its conflict with and superiority to philosophy, and its massive and unacknowledged relevance to the contemporary psychical and political situation.’ Since the beginning of his career he has been concerned with the antagonism between literature and philosophy, telling me earlier this year that ‘Literature was always my passion. It was what philosophy was meant to serve in a sense . . . Literature was served by philosophy rather than the other way around.’ His work on tragedy may be read in this light, and can also be seen as a model for reading the present state of permanent war in which we find ourselves. In the following interview we discussed the significance of tragedy for him, his use of collaboration as a working method, and how his latest obsession has lead to the new book. [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Philosophers: Simon Critchley
• Continental Philosophy
• Simon Critchley on Critical Theory
• The Big Think Interviews Simon Critchley
• How to Stop Living and Start Worrying

Simon Critchley on Contemporary Art

An article for The Brooklyn Rail

Al Held, 'The Big A' (1962)

Philosopher Simon Critchley shares his thoughts on contemporary art: '[...] despite such confusions of reference and the horrors of the contemporary art business model—or perhaps even because of it—I want to defend contemporary art, up to a point. It is simply a fact that contemporary art has become the central placeholder for the articulation of cultural meanings—good, bad, or indifferent. I am middle-aged enough to remember when literature, especially the novel, played this role and when cultural gatekeepers were literary critics, or social critics, often from literary backgrounds. That world is gone. The novel has become a quaint, emotively life-changing, and utterly marginal phenomenon. The heroic critics of the past are no more. I watched this change happen slowly when I still lived in England in the sensation-soaked 1990s and recall, as a kind of cultural marker, the opening of Tate Modern in 2000 and immensely long lines queuing up to see a vast spider by Louise Bourgeois in the Turbine Hall. It was clear that something had shifted in the culture.' [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Philosophers: Simon Critchley
• Francis Bacon: Five Decades
• Damien Hirst on Francis Bacon
• David Lynch on BBC's The Culture Show

Simon Critchley on Greek Tragedy

Philosopher shares his current obsession

Greek vase depicting a production of Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis

In a post for The Believer, Simon Critchley shares his latest obsession for Greek tragedy (link via ReadySteadyBook): 'I have always tended to work obsessively on one topic at a time to the exclusion of everything else. I don’t consider this a virtue. For the past 6 months, that topic has been ancient tragedy: its nature, its savage and troubling beauty, its conflict with and superiority to philosophy, and its massive and unacknowledged relevance to the contemporary psychical and political situation.' [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Philosophers: Simon Critchley

Philosophy and Failure

Why do we think of Plato and others as great philosophers?

Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse on the failure of philosophy: 'Some philosophers are nearly unanimously considered great. Plato, Aristotle, and Kant make the short list. But that happy unanimity does not persist when the question is which is right. Of these three, at most one is. Likely none is. And so it is appropriate to ask: How can we consider someone to be a great philosopher yet mostly wrong? By many lights, Plato was wrong about ethics, politics, knowledge, and the basic structure of reality. That is, Plato was wrong on most of the big questions that philosophers try to answer. Yet Plato was a great philosopher. Why?' [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Critchley: 'What is a philosopher?'
• Philosophers in Winter
• Aristotle and Etiquette

David Mamet on Drama and Film

2008 interview with American director and playwright

David Mamet appears on Bloomsberg's Night Talk (2008) to discuss Redbelt, dialogue, dramatic conflict and tension, character development, directing and the filmmaking process.

Rainer J. Hanshe, The Acolytes

Eyecorner Press publishes first novel by Hyperion editor

Rainer J. Hanshe, The Acolytes

Some of you will already be familiar with Rainer J. Hanshe for his critical essays, or as the senior editor of Hyperion. What you might not know is that he has just published a novel, The Acolytes, released through Eyecorner Press:

Synopsis: The Acolytes depicts the yearning of the young artist for success, acceptance, fulfillment. Gabriel starts as a naive young man full of dedication to high art and to the transformative powers of the imagination. In Amos, the renegade of American letters and cult figure, Gabriel thinks he has found his guiding star, but Ivan, the charismatic yet sinister theater director exerts a strange, mesmeric power over the author and his entire coterie. Terence, the unobtrusive moral fulcrum of the novel, and a cast of others are unable to escape from the welter of exploitation to which their lack of self-knowledge condemns them.

Praise for The Acolytes

Hanshe’s Aristophanic critique of Amos Latimer and his acolytes and two different modes of discipleship articulates something that can be seen in many other regions of life and society: Plato and Aristotle, Leo Strauss and Arendt, Malcom X and the Nation, and the cult of fame. The fascinating thing, and part of the reason why his account is archetypical in a profound and broadly historically applicable manner, is that the contrast between sharing in speech shamelessly and not sharing is what differentiates the two modes of aesthetics in classical antiquity: the misanthropic and the philanthropic. The Acolytes is a brave work that says something of extraordinary importance for our understanding of political culture and culture more generally. Hanshe faces the issue of sex ontologically in a way that other American writers do not. He joins Burroughs in critically addressing the depths of the question of sexuality and control and brings the parallel that Burroughs wrote about in colonialism and militarism and the CIA to the left wing, avant-garde. A moving and impressive book.

Rachael Sotos, New School University

The Acolytes is a riveting, slightly surreal portrait of the bohemian underworld of New York and it exposes the sinister underside of the ever-beckoning dream of art. It shows with fascinating nuance the multi-faceted nature of artistic ambition, illuminating a range from lofty yearning to diabolical craving for power. It is the kind of work one would not expect from a young American writer today. It is a powerful novel that reverberates in the inner spaces of the self.

Walter H. Sokel, The Writer in Extremis; The Myth of Power & Self: Essays on Kafka

The Acolytes flies in the face of mainstream publishing with its eye on something bigger and vaster than the conventional marketplace. In mode its allegorical approach is so different than the types of Jonathan Franzen “family sagas” that publishers pick up on nowadays. It’s quirky, weird, and mannered and many of the scenes have the strange power of dreams. They proceed according to their own logic, stately as yachts, moving irrevocably, like Time. Like John Cowper Powys, Hanshe has the talent for making other species come to life.

Kevin Killian

Publisher

Eyecorner Press

Top 10 Books About Books

John Sutherland on classic works of literary criticism

Roland Barthes

The Guardian's John Sutherland guides us through his list of essential literary criticism, ranging from Greek philosophy to contemporary critical theory. To read more about his selections, click on the link below.

1. Aristotle, The Poetics (Ingram Bywater translation)
2. Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation (1966)
3. Stanley Fish, Is there a Text in this Class? (1980)
4. Elaine Showalter, A Literature of their Own (1978)
5. Roland Barthes, S/Z (1977: Richard Miller translation)
6. Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending (revised edition, 2000)
7. Terry Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism (1976)
8. Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning (1980)
9. Christopher Ricks, Milton's Grand Style (1963)
10. Henry Louis Gates Jr, The Signifying Monkey (1988)

Source: John Sutherland, 'Top 10 books about books', guardian.co.uk, 30 December 2010

Greek Philosophers in Dante's Inferno

The place of Greek philosophers in Dante's dark, poetic vision

Dante and Virgil encounter the Greek philosophers in the First Circle of Hell, from The Divine Comedy:

So we went on in the direction of the light,

Talking of things of which it is well to say nothing,

Although it was well to talk of them at the time.

We came then to the foot of a great castle,

Encircled seven times by lofty walls,

And around which there flowed a pleasant stream;

We went over the stream as on dry land;

And I entered seven gates with those wise men:

We came into a meadow where the grass was cool.

And there were people whose eyes were slow and serious,

Of great authority in their appearance:

They were not talkative and their voices were gentle.

We moved away a little to one side,

To an open place, well-lit, upon high ground,

So that I could see the whole group easily.

There, straight in front of me, on a green background,

There were presented to me those great spirits,

Merely to have seen whom is an exhaltation.

[...]

And, when I raised my eyes a little higher,

I saw the master of knowledge, Aristotle,

Sitting there with a company of philosophers.

All looked to him, and they all did him honour:

I saw there Socrates, as well as Plato,

The two who stood out and were nearest to him;

Democritus, who thought the world came by chance,

Diogenes, Anaxagoras and Thales:

Empedocles, Heraclitus and Zeno;

[...]

I cannot give account of all of them,

For my main theme hurries me on,

So that I often have to tell less than I saw.

The company of six was cut to two:

My skilful guide led me another way,

Out of the quiet, to where the air trembled:

And I came to a part where nothing is luminous.

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Canto IV

Translated by C. H. Sisson.

Aristotle and Etiquette

Greek philosophy and reflections on how to live

When I was twelve or thirteen I started buying The Times newspaper for its daily chess column: I would follow a grandmaster game by reading the notations and making the corresponding moves on a chessboard at home. Afterwards, I would rearrange my pieces into the configuration of that day's chess problem, and sit under my window until it was solved. This was the sole reason I ever bought The Times newspaper, and it proved a reliable source of information for a young chess player looking to hone his skills.

I distinctly remember that on the same page as Raymond Keene's daily chess problem there was an etiquette advice section, presided over by an expert on correct social conduct. It struck me then, and now, as an incongruous feature for any newspaper, but I could see its aspirational appeal. I would read the column for my own amusement whenever the chess problem became too much, and was often astonished by the way the etiquette section promoted very traditional and elitist codes of conduct. The column ended suddenly when its writer was involved in a tragic car accident: I believe he was killed while crossing a busy London street.

I've been reading a little Aristotle lately, one of the key thinkers in the history of Western philosophy. I don't know whether it's a nuance of the 1950s English translation, or a projection of mine, but while reading The Ethics I am under the impression that I'm reading an etiquette column in a newspaper. Perhaps The Ethics, wonderful though it is, is in fact the most grand, the most established etiquette column of all; perhaps it is the source text for those in the know, receiving readers' letters and responding through columns in broadsheet newspapers. Or perhaps I've taken this too far.

Aristotle is both engaging and accessible, and makes some compelling points alongside some wonderful observations. But there are aspects of his discourse that are amusing to me; for instance, in distinguishing the humour of the educated and un-educated man, Aristotle defines the characteristics of the 'Old' and the 'New' comedies: one known for its sense of ribaldry, the other for innuendo. I can easily imagine Aristotle's words being repeated today, perhaps for the benevolent purposes of instruction, and yet forever tied to its socially elitist foundations.

There is no question of Aristotle's value to us, but while we can all learn a lot from his teachings, I think we can also gain understanding and insight from an active questioning of those teachings.

I thought I'd finish with a quote from The Ethics, which underlines three intermediate human characteristics on the subject of humour and correct social behaviour. Whether it is a profound philosophical insight into humankind, or a ready-to-hand cultural guideline, is for you to decide:

Conversational qualities: wit, buffoonery and boorishness

Since one part of life is relaxation, and one aspect of this is entertaining conversation, it is considered that there too there is a kind of social conduct that is in good taste: that there are things that it is right to say, and a right way of saying them; and similarly with listening. And it will be an advantage if those in whose presence we talk and to whom we listen accept such standards. Clearly in this field too it is possible to exceed or fall short of the mean.

Those who go too far in being funny are regarded as buffoons and vulgar persons who exert themselves to be funny at all costs and who are more set upon raising a laugh than upon decency of expression and consideration for their victim's feelings. Those who both refuse to say anything funny themselves and take exception to the jokes of other people are regarded as boorish and sour; but those who exercise their humour with good taste are called witty, as one might say 'nimble-witted', because witticisms are considered to be movements of the character, and characters, like bodies, are judged by their movements. As material for humour is ready to hand, and most people like fun and ridicule more than they should, even buffoons are called witty, as being good company; but that there is a difference between the two, and not a small one, is clear from what we have said.

The intermediate disposition also has the property of tact, and the mark of tact is saying and listening to the sort of things that are suitable for a man of honourable and liberal character; because there are certain things that it is appropriate for such a person to say and allow to be said to him in fun, and the liberal man's sense of humour is different from a servile person's, just as an educated man's is from an uneducated man's. One can see this even from a comparison of the Old and New comedies; because to the earlier writers humour consisted in ribaldry, but the later ones preferred innuendo. There is no little difference between these two in respect of decency. Should we, then, distinguish the man who uses ridicule rightly by his ability to use language that is not unsuitable for a well-bred person, or by the fact that he does not annoy the person about whom he is speaking, but actually gives him pleasure? (Probably the latter qualification, at any rate, is still vague; because different people have different likes and dislikes.) The humour to which he listens will be of the same kind, because he is regarded as actually making the jokes that he tolerates hearing. Now he will not go to all lengths; because ridicule is a sort of defamation, and some forms of deformation are forbidden by law, and presumably some kinds of ridicule should be forbidden too. The cultured and well-bred person, then, will exhibit this disposition, acting as a law to himself. This is the sort of man who observes the mean, whether he is called witty or tactful. The buffoon cannot resist a joke, sparing neither himself nor anybody else provided that he can raise a laugh, and saying things that a man of taste would never dream of saying, and some that he would not listen to either. As for the boor, he is useless for any kind of social intercourse, because he contributes nothing and takes offence at everything, whereas relaxation and amusement seem to be necessary in our life.

So, in our social life there are three intermediate dispositions as we have described them; and they are all concerned with participation in some sort of conversation or action, but they differ inasmuch as one is concerned with truth and the other two with pleasure. Of the latter, one is exercised in the sphere of recreation and the other in the associations that belong to the rest of life.

Aristotle, The Ethics, Book Four, viii

Critchley on Heidegger's Being and Time: Part 2

One of a series of articles published in The Guardian

The second of Simon Critchley's articles on Heidegger's Being and Time has been published on The Guardian website:

Metaphysics is the area of inquiry that Aristotle himself calls "first philosophy" and which comes before anything else. It is the most abstract, universal and indefinable area of philosophy. But it is also the most fundamental.

With admirable arrogance, it is the question of being that Heidegger sets himself the task of inquiring into in Being and Time. He begins with a series of rhetorical questions: Do we have an answer to the question of the meaning of being? Not at all, he answers. But do we even experience any perplexity about this question? Not at all, Heidegger repeats. Therefore, the first and most important task of Heidegger's book is to recover our perplexity for this question of questions: Hamlet's "To be or not to be?"

For Heidegger, what defines the human being is this capacity to be perplexed by the deepest and most enigmatic of questions: Why is there something rather than nothing? So, the task of Being and Time is reawakening in us a taste for perplexity, a taste for questioning. Questioning – Heidegger will opine much later in his career – is the piety of thinking.

Simon Critchley, 'Being and Time, part 2: On 'mineness''

guardian.co.uk, 15 June 2009

Read part one: 'Being and Time, part 1: Why Heidegger matters'.

Simon Critchley on the Pursuit of Happiness

British philosopher publishes short essay in the New York Times

Once again, However Fallible has picked up on a great article in the New York Times. This time, it's British philosopher Simon Critchley pondering the philosophical route to happiness:

'What is happiness? How does one get a grip on this most elusive, intractable and perhaps unanswerable of questions?

'I teach philosophy for a living, so let me begin with a philosophical answer. For the philosophers of Antiquity, notably Aristotle, it was assumed that the goal of the philosophical life — the good life, moreover — was happiness and that the latter could be defined as the bios theoretikos, the solitary life of contemplation. Today, few people would seem to subscribe to this view. Our lives are filled with the endless distractions of cell phones, car alarms, commuter woes and the traffic in Bangalore. The rhythm of modern life is punctuated by beeps, bleeps and a generalized attention deficit disorder.

'But is the idea of happiness as an experience of contemplation really so ridiculous? Might there not be something in it? [...]'

Simon Critchley, 'Happy Like God'

New York Times, 25 May 2009

Pure Anecdote

On my fascination with biography

French philosopher Jacques Derrida once introduced a seminar on autobiography with a quote by Martin Heidegger; speaking on the life of Aristotle, Heidegger had said, 'he was born, he thought, and he died. The rest is pure anecdote.' And it's an interesting point to make. Regardless of what Aristotle may or may not have done during his lifetime, all that is relevant to us is the work he left behind.

Aristotle's ideas form some of the central touchstones of Western philosophy, and continue to influence our understanding of who we are and where we are going. Do we really need to know what the man ate for breakfast?

While visiting art galleries in Berlin during his youth, Samuel Beckett made a point regarding conjecture and speculation in history books. He wrote in one of his travel diaries:

"I am not interested in a 'unification' of the historical chaos any more than I am in the 'clarification' of the individual chaos, and still less in the anthropomorphisation of the inhuman necessities that provoke the chaos. What I want is the straws, flotsam, etc., names, dates, births and deaths, because that is all I can know."

The rest, as Heidegger suggests, is at best pure anecdote; at worst, wild speculation. The lives of historical figures will always remain a mystery to us, despite our best efforts to uncover hope for the contrary. I can read a biography of Franz Kafka. I can read two, or three. I can read Kafka's private journal. If I was so disposed, I could even read letters to his friends, family and loved ones. But all the details I would accumulate, and all the facts I could list, would still read cold off the page. They don't bring me any closer.

But what is it that makes me scurry off in search of these biographies, authorized and unauthorized alike? Is it my attempt to get to the heart of a man or a woman that has held my attention so closely, and do I really think I'll succeed? Does it really make a difference if there's a selection of black-and-white photographs from someone's personal archive on the central pages? Will I know them any better? Do I really want to?

I suspect that I track down autobiographies when I feel an affinity for someone's art. That's where it all begins. I might listen to a Miles Davis or a John Coltrane record, and hear something that speaks to me in some way. I wonder what this sensation is, this sense of recognition, and hope that knowing the artist in more depth might reveal something more. Perhaps it will explain something to me about myself, and why I am drawn to it.

I often I feel I can identify with the people I read about, and it gives me a sense of comfort and satisfaction to find a kindred spirit with similar preoccupations. But the end result is always the same: at the end of the book I become at least partly disillusioned with the life and return to the original work. What is it people say about meeting your heroes? Ultimately, it's not Miles Davis that holds my interest, but his music.

I'm currently reading James Knowlson's biography of Samuel Beckett, Damned to Fame, and I'm repeating the same process all over again. I'm a huge fan of the writer's plays, novels, poetry and short stories, and for years I've been interested to know more about the creator. His work has, like Kafka's, always felt close to me, so I was keen to discover whether I would form a similar impression of the man himself.

I'm finding that there are dozens of facts about Beckett's life that I identify with very strongly, from similar personal experiences to shared opinions and outlooks. And these small details accumulate to form a satisfying feeling. However, before I even finish the book I can tell you that there's something missing. Not only is there a vast wealth of detail that I do not relate to, and on some level choose to overlook or ignore, but the facts ultimately do little more than emphasize Beckett's absence. The biography, after all, is not the man. More shocking still, neither is the work.

It is often tempting to uncover what an artist thinks about their work, to gain a greater appreciation of the qualities that drew you to it in the first place. But it's easy to forget that we might not agree with the author's interpretations of his or her work, and that it might conflict quite strikingly with opinions of our own.

Interviewed by Mark Cousins in the late 1990s, director David Lynch was asked for his interpretation of scenes from some of his films. The releases shown included Blue Velvet, Elephant Man and Fire Walk With Me, a film that accompanies the Twin Peaks television series. Lynch admitted that all of his films have meant something deeply personal, but declined to reveal anything on camera. Instead, he focussed on the importance of the audience becoming involved with the films for themselves, and drawing their own conclusions. 'It's a beautiful thing,' he said.

And I can't help but agree. That's not to say I won't stop reading biographies, mind you. Old habits die hard, after all. But I'm no longer in search of any authoritative answers to my big questions. After all, a biography can only offer us the facts, pure anecdotes and wild speculations. Why settle for someone else's when you can have your own?