Vive Le Quotidien!

“Go ahead, deny up and down that the delicate act of turning the doorknob, that act which may transform everything, is done with the indifferent vigor of a daily reflex.”

The above is from Julio Cortázar’s story “The Instruction Manual,” which can be found in the book Cronopios and Famas. The back of that book has this to say:

“As the Saturday Review remarked: ‘Each page of Cronopios and Famas sparkles with vivid satire that goes to the heart of human character and, in the best pieces, to the essence of the human condition.’”

Ah . . . the human condition . . . One of the accusations often leveled against “great literature” is that it somehow describes or shows the reader “the human condition.”

When asked “so how are you really doing these days?” a friend of mine once responded, “You know, I’m just trying to be human.” To which I replied, “As opposed to what?”

Writing by humans cannot do anything but describe or show us the human condition. Even the most recondite of scientific papers describes the human condition because it is a record of how humans observed and manipulated certain phenomena (which, generally, is also a way of defining fiction).

I would love to read literature that somehow describes the canine condition, or shows the interior life of a doorknob, but until dogs and doorknobs can write, the best I can hope for is a literature about the human condition as viewed through the lens of the so-called canine condition, etc.

In the meantime, let us worry about the small things (such as turning a doorknob, and the consequences of that turning), and the big things will take care of themselves.