The October
2019 meeting considered the concept of time.
From fiction to French philosophy to collectible pocket watches, members
shared a spectrum of books interpreting the theme of time.
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| Time and Narrative, Volumes 1-3 |
In three
volumes of Time and Narrative, French philosopher Paul Ricoeur sets
forth his phenomenological description of the relationship between time and
narrative. He posits that humans
experience time in two different ways: as "cosmological time"—a linear
succession of hours, days, months, etc.—and "phenomenological time"—time
expressed in terms of past, present, and future. As self-aware beings, humans experience time
not only chronologically but also in terms of what has been, what is, and what
will be. "Human time," then,
is the complex experience of the integration of cosmological and phenomenological
time.
Ricoeur,
Paul. Time and Narrative. Volume 1.
Translated by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
Ricoeur,
Paul. Time and Narrative. Volume 2.
Translated by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Ricoeur,
Paul. Time and Narrative. Volume 3.
Translated by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
In
Volume 2, Ricoeur examines the relationship between time and narrative as
experienced in fiction and theories of literature. He analyzes three novels about time—Virginial
Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, and
Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (or In Search of Lost Time)—to
argue how fiction depends on the reader's understanding of narrative
traditions, which necessarily include a temporal dimension. He explains, using examples from fiction, how
the reader experiences distortions in time within the narrative. He shows how, for example, an entire, lengthy
novel may cover only a very brief amount of time in the fictional linear story,
or how a vast amount of time may be condensed to only a few short paragraphs.
In Graham
Greene's "A Day Saved," the main character, a hired killer, ponders
the repeated advice unwitting characters give his intended victim as he tracks
and follows him. Well-meaning people suggest
ways the man might speed up his travel and arrive at his destination earlier:
"If you fly, you will save a day."
Throughout the story, the narrator contemplates the futility of a day
saved:
I ask you, I
should like to ask all who are listening to me, what does a day saved matter to
him or to you? A day saved from what? for what?
Instead of spending the day traveling, you will see your friend a day
earlier, but you cannot stay indefinitely, you will travel home twenty-four
hours sooner, that is all. You will
begin work a day earlier, but you cannot work on indefinitely. It only means that you will cease work a day
earlier. And then for what? You cannot die a day earlier.
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| Nine O'clock Stories |
Fourteen
Authors. Nine O'clock Stories. London: G. Bell & Sons Ltd., 1934. First edition. An anthology of short stories broadcast by
the BBC in the National Programme during the nine o'clock hour. The nameless radio program began with a voice
asking, "Who's got a story to tell?"
A narrator would then read a story by such authors as Walter de la Mare,
Peter Fleming, Richard Hughes, Graham Greene, and Dorothy L. Sayers. Harcourt Williams narrated "A Day Saved" for the radio program. This is the story's first appearance in print.
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| Nineteen Stories |
Greene,
Graham. Nineteen Stories. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1947. First edition. Signed by the author on the title page.
The
publication history of "A Day Saved" poses its own time issue. In the short story collection Nineteen
Stories, Greene dates the story as having been written in 1935, the year it
was published in this first short story collection The Basement Room. The story, however, first appears in book
form in 1934 in Nine O'clock Stories.
The story, therefore, had to have been written in or before 1934. Scholarship has since shown that Greene
incorrectly remembered when several of his short stories were written, not just
"A Day Saved."
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| Three by Finney |
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| Forgotten News |
Finney,
Jack. Forgotten News: The Crime of
the Century and Other Lost Stories.
New York: Doubleday, 1983. Finney
returns to an earlier time in this non-fiction volume filled with forgotten
happenings from the 1800s. Illustrated
with drawings taken from newspapers of the period, Forgotten News reconstructs
true stories best described as mysterious and lurid. It took Finney three years to pull these
complex stories together. An overarching
theme may be how easily time layers over time. Forgotten News shows how
things happen, things are forgotten, and time continues.
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| Period newspaper drawings illustrate Forgotten News |
