Beginnings

When I think of memorable openings to books, one in particular springs to mind. Celia Green’s The Human Evasion is difficult to summarise or adequately explain, which is, I think, part of its charm. Actually, the word ‘charm’ may have misleading connotations, as The Human Evasion is the antithesis of whimsical reassurance as generally conceived. First published in 1969 and subsequently translated into Dutch, German and Italian, The Human Evasion is the most widely read of Green’s books and is perhaps the most ambiguous. Insofar as it’s possible to summarise the book, it’s a rumination on the human predicament in the face of uncertainty and, specifically, on how contemporary thinking entails a number of profound dishonesties and quite mad ideas. Written with striking clarity and the darkest possible humour, The Human Evasion is both funny and disturbing in more or less equal measure. It begins like this:

“On the face of it, there is something rather strange about human psychology. Human beings live in a state of mind called ‘sanity’ on a small planet in space. They are not quite sure whether the space around them is infinite or not (either way it is unthinkable). If they think about time, they find it is inconceivable that it had a beginning. It is also inconceivable that it did not have a beginning. Thoughts of this kind are not disturbing to ‘sanity’, which is obviously a remarkable phenomenon and deserves more recognition.”

More here and here. Update: Thanks to Fabian in the comments, the entire book can be read online here.

Comments

[Fabian Tassano]

The full text of The Human Evasion is online at deoxy.org:

http://deoxy.org/evasion/toc.htm

I'm - obviously - a huge fan of the book which I think is one of the most extraordinary things ever written. Reading it somehow causes a very strange (and unique in my experience) sensation. Though funnily enough, some people get it and others just seem not to.

I think the writer R H Ward (another neglected talent) put it rather well when he said: "Anyone who reads this book must be prepared to be profoundly disturbed, upset and in fact looking-glassed; which will be greatly to his advantage, if he can stand it."

[Marcus Barefoot]

You rant against Po-Mo but like Celia Green?
A sample from her blog:
"So I had been cheated out of everything that could make my life worth living and thrown out without a Professorship or an institutional (hotel) environment, with no tolerable way of earning money, nor with any claim on ‘social security’ when I had no money."
And:
"The money was not enough to provide for much of a hotel environment, but I spent as much of it as I could on part-time cooks, cleaners, etc., and began to gain experience of the difficulties of getting anyone to do anything useful in the modern world."
A classic lefty!

[David Thompson]

Marcus,

I’m not entirely sure what your point is, or who you regard as a “classic lefty.”

Strictly speaking, I expressed a liking for the book, not its author, or every comment made on her blog. And I’m not sure how you manage to fathom some implied contradiction between my views – sorry, rants - on PoMo politics (which are, I think, explained and substantiated in some detail) and the domestic affairs of an author who isn’t mentioned in any of those arguments.

Perhaps I’m missing something. One of us is, apparently.