The Most Annoying Thing I Have Read
This is the most annoying thing I have read in a really, really long time. I found it hard to breathe while I was reading it. And I found it nearly impossible to finish reading it. Don't worry: it doesn't get any better.
posted by Charles P. Everitt at 11:55 AM
4 Comments:
I think it would be worthwhile to go through this thing and identify the obvious mistakes.
I'll start.
(I'm going to skip the first paragraph, especially the claim that "all knowledge was unproblematic" in Edwardian Britain. Maybe we can return to it later.)
¶2, first sentence: "This probably explains why there was never much writing about wine in those days". "This" presumably means something like "the fact that Edwardian Britons were puzzled when someone said that one thing was like another thing". Since that is obviously false, it doesn't explain (even probably explain) why there was never much writing about wine in those days. And that's to assume (what is also probably false) that there was never much writing about wine in those days.
¶2, second sentence: This sentence is false. Wine is not always described as being like something else. When I say that the wine I'm drinking is a Riesling, and that it is sweet, and delicious, I'm not saying it's like anything else.
¶2, third sentence: The false observation that wine is always described as being like something else is not appealing at all. It might be postmodern if postmodernism is characterized by the fact that it makes false claims.
More later.
¶2, fourth, fifth and sixth sentences: Mr. Bower says "If a chardonnay tastes a bit like a peach, what then does the peach taste like? A chardonnay?"
Is tastes like a symmetrical relation, like resembles? It's not obviously wrong to say that if x tastes like y, then y tastes like x.
But Mr. Bower is missing the point of the comparison between the taste of the chardonnay and the taste of the peach. Everyone knows what a peach tastes like. So it provides a way of describing the taste of the chardonnay that is immediately intelligible and informative.
We might say that a peach tastes like a chardonnay if we are trying to compare the taste of peaches with one another. We might say a slightly unripe peach tastes like a chardonnay while a ripe peach tastes like a Madeira.
But then Mr. Bower asks "And if [a peach tastes like a chardonnay], what does either taste like?"
He doesn't give an answer, but I think you might answer by tasting a peach, or some chardonnay, and just demonstrating what it tastes like. He seems to think that because we might describe a chardonnay as tasting like a peach and a peach as tasting like a chardonnay that we don't have any way of saying what their tastes are except in viciously circular terms. But that is ridiculous.
¶2, seventh and eigth sentences: "If you must describe the Van Loveren 2001 limited edition Merlot as being “chocolately”, does it mean that chocolate tastes like the Van Loveren Merlot? And if we like the Merlot on account if its tasting like chocolate, why don’t we eat chocolate instead of drinking wine?*"
You might want to describe chocolate that way.
And if you like the Merlot simply "on account of its tasting like chocolate", then it's true that you might be better off eating chocolate than drinking wine. But that's to give an unbelievably strong reading to the idea that someone can like a wine because it tastes like chocolate. It is to assume that that is the only reason the person likes the wine. And that's just silly.
Someone who says that he likes a merlot because it tastes like chocolate will have other reasons for liking it as well, like the way it goes well with the lamb. And that reason wouldn't be a reason for just eating some chocolate (it wouldn't go well with the lamb).
I can't believe I am taking the time to say these ridiculously obvious things.
Here's the article Nat and I were talking about. An additionally annoying fact is that I found out about it from 'Arts & Letters Daily', which means someone there thought it was a good essay.
Language, truth … and wine
by Colin Bower (Feb. 2007)
An early reviewer of the writings of DH Lawrence remarked with some degree of accuracy and exasperation: “For Mr Lawrence, everything is always like something else”. In the belle epoque of Edwardian Britain, when a kind of debonair confidence made all knowledge unproblematic, it must have been puzzling for a stolid Times of London reviewer to have a chap come along insisting that things could only be understood by appreciating their likeness to other things.
This probably explains why there was never much writing about wine in those days. Wine is always described as being like something else. This is appealingly post modern. If a chardonnay tastes a bit like a peach, what then does the peach taste like? A chardonnay? And if so, what does either taste like? If you must describe the Van Loveren 2001 limited edition Merlot as being “chocolately”, does it mean that chocolate tastes like the Van Loveren Merlot? And if we like the Merlot on account if its tasting like chocolate, why don’t we eat chocolate instead of drinking wine?*
These are questions of a profound epistemological weight. They reflect the uncertain status of anything we claim to know and understand. If I don’t understand the meaning of a word, and I look it up in the dictionary, I see it explained in other words. Those other words, in case I don’t understand them either, are explained by yet further words. There is no absolute point of reference. So where does knowledge begin? Aren’t we all just refracting meaning around from one word to another in a pleasant verbal gavotte to fill in the time as we wait for death?
Such are the existential problems confronting the wine writer. It is my purpose to solve them by describing the experience of drinking a bottle of wine using facts alone. Nothing will be like anything else; everything will be simply itself. Take this wine here, for example. It is a Malbec 2004, from the Ashanti estate, in the Western Cape near Paarl. This is a fact. See, already I prove my point. (Did I write “Western”, by the way? By what galactic point of reference can it be considered “western”? Planet Earth is round; where does “western” begin and end? Does the infinitude of the universe, of which the Cape is a part, admit of having a western end?). But anyway, here I go opening the bottle. Fact. I pour the wine into my glass, and it gurgles, pleasantly. Fact. Well, OK, fact spiced up with “pleasantly”, no more than a little adverbial seasoning. Although now that I think of it, I see that “gurgles” likens the sound of my pouring wine unto a babbling brook. Oh dear – “babbling”? Is “gurgling” like “babbling”, or is “babbling” like “gurgling”? This gavotte is an intricate dance. What colour is my wine? It is red, deep red, with a hint of beetroot, and yes, if you look at the wine where it touches the glass, a suggestion of brown is apparent, because this wine has done a little aging. Fact.
Fact? But what then is “red”? Can you describe what “red” is in words? Well, only if you make it like something else that is red. In fact, red is, to use the name of a band that I believe exists, simply red; it has no meaning of its own, in it adheres no fixed truth, it defeats definition. Red is nothing but a mysterious code word which can never be deciphered. We all speak in a code without ever knowing what the code encodes. Language is nothing but a shadow, and – like the denizens of Plato’s cave - we never get to see the substantive shapes that cast the shadow. We think it makes sense; but what sense does it make? No-one can say what redness is, we can only agree that the colour we see when we look into a glass of Ashanti’s finest Malbec is much the same as the colour of congealed blood, and as a matter of opportunistic convention, we agree to call it red. I’m already beginning to feel the certainty of knowledge evanesce, and I understand the infinite regression by metaphor of Lawrence’s world.
I swirl the wine in the glass. Ah, see how the wine remains clinging to the sides of the glass. This suggests to me that the wine has a notable sugar content. Now there’s a fact. So, explain again: how do I know that the wine has a notable sugar content? Well, from the way it leaves legs on the inside of the glass after being swirled around. Legs! There’s another metaphor for you, one you can’t get away from, moreover, because if I tried to explain “legs” in scientific language, the attempt would fill half a page, and you probably still wouldn’t know exactly what I meant.
What does the wine taste like? Like? Why, the metaphorical approach to truth is already embedded in the question! We do not ask: “what is the taste?”, we ask: “What does it taste like”. The question predetermines me to provide a metaphorical reply, so I will: like a black velvet ball gown that hath been delved a long age in my grandmother’s bottom drawer, or, say, like the inky ejaculate of a Pacific tossed squid (for instance). “Ah” I hear you say, “but you strain credibility, for it’s impossible to taste a ball gown, and as for a squid’s ejaculate – come come, be reasonable”. Be reasonable! That’s my whole point, there is no reason to this business of describing things. If I can’t say what the taste of a banana is, but only what it’s like, and what it’s like will in any case only be like something else, then what difference does it make if I compare my Malbac with the taste of things no-one has ever tasted, like ball gowns or squid ejaculate? I am merely obeying the metaphorical imperative.
I’ve had to give up on so-called facts. They don’t exist. It took wine writers to prove this to me. Nothing is ever knowable for what it is. Admit it, you can no more say what a taste is than you can say what a colour is or what a feeling is.
I’ve drunken quite a lot more from the open bottle in front of me whilst wrestling with this problem (wrestling?), and with the challenge of describing my experience by reference to facts alone, but my resolve - to say nothing of my capability – now seems somewhat diminished. One fact that I think I’m sure of is that I’m feeling strangely euphoric right now, and it doesn’t matter much to me any more what this Malbec is like at all. Apart from the fact that it is spare, regal, well-structured, and delivers more than it promises (that glowing feeling that enshrouds your consciousness 30 seconds after you have swallowed - that is what it delivers). And so I pose myself the question: what, after all, is truth? The answer is quite simple Mr Wittgenstein. The veritas is simply in the vino.
* Along with the Ashanti Malbac also mentioned, Van Loveren 2001 limited edition Merlot is a pretty good South African wine. You can substitute your own preferences in order to get the flavour of the piece.
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