There are heroisms all around us
Oct. 13th, 2012 04:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustOver at the SF Signal Mind Meld, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
desperance is among those talking about what makes a hero - in the literary sense, a hero as opposed to a protagonist. No-one who has read anything by Chaz Brenchley (or Daniel Fox or Ben Macallan) will be surprised that he comes to the conclusion that just as no man is a hero to his valet, so no character is a hero to their author: "We know too much: their inner drives, their hidden yearnings, what actually makes them step forward into the night. No one's motives are ever really that clean, that simple, that self-negating." Fortunately, because that makes them all the more interesting to the reader.
What makes a hero in the real life sense is much the same: I hate the idea that a hero can have no flaws, cannot be criticised. Since ideas never come singly, I wasn't surprised to come across this aspect of heroism this morning, though the source was unexpected: "We elevate people to the status of heroes in order to let ourselves off the hook: 'I'm just a mere mortal – I could never even dream of doing something like that,'" says Jarvis Cocker in the course of an exemplary review of Hunter Davies's latest trawl through John Lennon's waste paper basket (and it is an exemplary review rather than a hatchet job, go read it and see).
The Edinburgh book sculptures are being exhibited in a nationwide tour. I wonder...
Back home means urgent shopping - but in an unusually successful morning I scored a couple of birthday presents, a ridiculously sparkly jacket and the last quince in Durham.
The fifth thing which makes the post is that there is no fifth thing.
desperance is among those talking about what makes a hero - in the literary sense, a hero as opposed to a protagonist. No-one who has read anything by Chaz Brenchley (or Daniel Fox or Ben Macallan) will be surprised that he comes to the conclusion that just as no man is a hero to his valet, so no character is a hero to their author: "We know too much: their inner drives, their hidden yearnings, what actually makes them step forward into the night. No one's motives are ever really that clean, that simple, that self-negating." Fortunately, because that makes them all the more interesting to the reader.What makes a hero in the real life sense is much the same: I hate the idea that a hero can have no flaws, cannot be criticised. Since ideas never come singly, I wasn't surprised to come across this aspect of heroism this morning, though the source was unexpected: "We elevate people to the status of heroes in order to let ourselves off the hook: 'I'm just a mere mortal – I could never even dream of doing something like that,'" says Jarvis Cocker in the course of an exemplary review of Hunter Davies's latest trawl through John Lennon's waste paper basket (and it is an exemplary review rather than a hatchet job, go read it and see).
The Edinburgh book sculptures are being exhibited in a nationwide tour. I wonder...
Back home means urgent shopping - but in an unusually successful morning I scored a couple of birthday presents, a ridiculously sparkly jacket and the last quince in Durham.
The fifth thing which makes the post is that there is no fifth thing.
