"Womb, a novel in utero," by Eric D. Goodman, Reviewed by Thomas Dorsett

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Eric D. Goodman. Womb, a novel in utero. Reviewed by Thomas Dorsett.

Eric D. Goodman, Womb: a novel in utero,  ISBN: 978-0990443292, Merge Publishing, 2017, 330 pages, $17.99.

1.
My heart leaps up when I behold
……A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
…..Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

Literature is replete with attempts to recover the innocence and spontaneity of childhood, as this fine example by Wordsworth attests. (In this case, however, the protagonist has never lost them.) Nature is seen as something numinous and pure; her indifference to human beings, however, is glossed over.

If we follow Blake’s example and attempt to divide poems into those of innocence and those of experience, Wordsworth’s poem eminently qualifies as one of the former.  There, is, however, a poem of experience that responds to this poem of child-like spontaneity:

‘The Child is father of the man.’
How can that be? The words are wild.
Suck any sense from that who can,
‘The child is father of the man.’
No, what the poet did write ran,
‘The man is father of the child.’
‘The child is father of the man.’
How can that be? The words are wild.

Gerard Manley Hopkins knew, of course, that Wordsworth didn’t mean the reversal of the parental relation literally. Wordsworth trusted nature and believed a deep connection with the natural world to be of extreme importance. Hopkins didn’t trust nature; for him, a man beset by homoerotic tendencies in an age when such tendencies were unacceptable, natural man was a born sinner and needed the discipline of the Church if he were to find salvation.

“The Child is father of the man.” What does this really mean? There can be no doubt that it is an example of the use of childhood as metaphor. It’s not a desire to return to one’s first childhood, much less to a second one; it is a desire to transcend what Buddhists and Hindus call “discursive reasoning,” the constant chatter of ignorance and estrangement that goes on and on in most minds nonstop. Life isn’t all about “the mania of owning things,” but about relationships—to nature, to others, to God, to ourselves. The child thus becomes a symbol of what we must discover, recover, or even recreate in ourselves.

I cannot resist giving one more example of the idealization of childhood. It’s by Thomas Traherne, a seventeenth-century poet who was a true master of this (inner) worldview:

How like an Angel came I down!
…..How bright are all things here!
When first among his Works I did appear
…..O how their Glory did me crown!
The World resembled his Eternity,
…..In which my soul did walk;
And ev’ry thing that I did see
…..Did with me talk.

This lovely stanza comes from a long poem called “Wonder.”

There seems to be a surfeit of poems of experience these days, some very good; songs of innocence, I suppose, strike many readers as naïve in this age which has witnessed the horrors and savagery of modern warfare of the present and last centuries; an age in which the optimism of the Enlightenment has been severely challenged; an age in which self has become selfie, and “we” merely a concatenation of “me. me, me”.

Is it still possible to write about what Hopkins referred to as “the dearest freshness deep down things?”

2.
In Goodman’s novel, Womb, a novel in utero, the effort to recapture youthful optimism, as the title suggests, is pushed back even farther. Here are two quotes from the book:

…I have access to memory greater than my own, and it takes ample time to explore…I know the great literature that has become part of the universal mind, but not the latest bestsellers. I know the themes of films and plays from years gone by, but not this week’s releases or last summer’s blockbusters. I can picture most of the masterworks at the Louvre, Hermitage, Met and National Gallery, but don’t have a take about what the girl across the street drew in art class this quarter. I can picture the Taj Mahal, locate the Nile on a map, and appreciate the calm atmosphere of a Buddhist temple, but couldn’t fill you in on this year’s hot architect or the latest designer religion…And I know that the greatest good lies in focusing on the here and now, and in helping one another.
                                                                 –page 19

Being an intellectual, I don’t want to come off as a simpleton. But after examining the major philosophies, studies, and religions, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is really quite simple. There’s no mysterious secret to a good life. The meaning of life is this: Chill. Relax. Enjoy it right now, because it will be over before you know it.
                                                                 –page 264

What would Hopkins or Martin Luther King have said about that?

“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. I just want to do God’s will.” If you had known that the purpose of life was to chill, Dr. Martin Luther King, you might be still with us. Yet where would we be today without your blood, without your sweat, without your sacrifice? Relaxing is important, yes, but the way to the promised land is not found during Happy Hour while sipping margaritas.

I found Goodman’s little fetal hippie brat to be insufferable, at least at first. As the novel progresses, however, despite occasional bromidic asides, the little guy more and more assumes the role of an all-knowing narrator, a transformation for which, I think, many readers will be thankful.

Goodman’s all-knowing fetus, is, of course, a metaphor as well. No one, even in California, attributes, I would hope, guru status to a fetus. It is used by Goodman as a literary device to help convey an important message to adults: stop stressing over nonsense and return to what is essential, the power of wisdom and love. When Li Po wrote, “We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains,” he meant that, once ego is transcended, one becomes one, as it were, with the whole world. He was not advising seekers to become a pile of dirt! We should not take the great Chinese poet’s metaphor literally; similarly, we must not take the wisdom of an unborn tyke literally as well. (Fetuses undoubtedly have some awareness, but it is limited. Nature limits brain size so that the baby can pass through the birth canal; significant brain development occurs after birth. An aside: infants are able to smile shortly after birth if they see a face close-up. Mothers are delighted, believing that this is an emotional response. It isn’t; it’s a trick of evolution to help secure bonding on the part of the mother. A baby will smile just as readily at a primitive mask; a newborn’s ability to relate to a caregiver is limited).

After a slow start, the novel picks up with a seduction scene. Here is where Mr. Goodman’s talent lies; he knows how to pace a story. Both Mom and Dad are Beautiful People who are in the process of learning what every fetus supposedly already knows. Yet Mom succumbs to the advances of a cad. How can a Beautiful Person ever sink so low? We find out why much later. This is but one example of the author’s ability to resolve situations gradually, and to provide the reader with just enough information to keep her turning pages with unchilled anticipation.

The characterizations are, however, not very nuanced. Mom and Dad and Fetus are a bit too good to be true; Mom’s boss and Stan, the seducer, are, quite simply, jerks. But the author certainly knows how to tell a story.

I do commend the author on the effort it took to write this novel. What came between a difficult beginning and a rather treacly ending is much more interesting than the first or final pages. The book’s design and layout are quite good. The style and the grammar are, for the most part, quite good as well, with only a few minor grammatical errors, e,g., “different than” instead of “different  from”; “for awhile,” instead of “for a while” or “awhile.”

This isn’t Flaubert, this isn’t Shakespeare, but it does have merit. For the general reader, especially for those who share the author’s presumptions, Womb might well provide an enjoyable and worthy respite from TV and cell phone.  For those who share the author’s aesthetics and worldview, I highly recommend Mr. Goodman’s novel.

© Eric D. Goodman and Thomas Dorsett

Eric D. Goodman has been writing almost since he emerged from the womb. In addition to Womb, a novel in utero, he is also the author of Tracks: A Novel in Stories, and Flightless Goose, a storybook for children. His short fiction, travel stories, and nonfiction have been widely published. Born in California, he has lived in Baltimore for nearly twenty years, where he writes about trains, exotic animals gone wild. and life in utero, among other subjects.

Thomas Dorsett is a retired physician and poet. Examples of his poetry have appeared in approximately five hundred literary journals. He is the author of four collections of poetry, two of which contain original poems, while the other two contain poetry in translation. His latest book, Letters Home, is a collection of letters translated from the German, originally written by a promising Austrian musician who died at the onset of World War l. Dorsett is an active blogger as well; his blog address is thomasdorsett.blogspot.com.

Ramana Maharshi, Pessoa, and Ninguem

1.

I recently read The Book Of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa. One cannot help but be moved and fascinated by the insights—the book is a collection of short, philosophical commentaries on his life and on life in general—of this solitary writer, one of the great literary masters of the past century. You can read the sections out of order; the sections are not progressive. Some of the passages are astonishingly profound.

On a recent trip that included a brief visit to Lisbon, I headed for the A Brasileira, the café that Pessoa had frequented.  I had read that there was a famous brass statue of Pessoa in front of the café; I wanted to see it. (Unfortunately, there was not time to visit his residence nearby, which has since been transformed into The Pessoa Museum. Next time!)

My wife, Nirmala, and I took some photos of the statue, one of which I include here:

At the base of the statue is the following quote from Pessoa's best-known work,The Book of Disquiet:

Ler é sonhar pela mão de outrem.

(To read is to dream while led by another.)

An interesting quote! It is, however, only the opening phrase of a passage of remarkable insight. This will be discussed at length in a subsequent essay.

I immediately began to play with the sentence in my mind, transforming it with a twist of non-duality into a philosophical statement regarding the human condition. (I asked our guide. Leonor, who is Spanish, what the Portuguese equivalent of “nadie,” ("nobody") is, a word without which the sentence, with my very limited knowledge of Portuguese, could not have have been written:

Viver è sonhar pela mão de niguem.

(To live is to dream while led by no one.)

This sentence provides, I think, a summary of Eastern thinking, a glorious worldview that is completely consistent with science. Leonor, an intelligent woman, didn’t get it; most are too captivated by their own identities and the necessary prose-colored glasses that their worldview provides, to see the world-play beyond the word-play.

Just what is the significance of this sentence?

2.

Pessoa’s quote is an opening phrase of a longer sentence which gives the whole quote a considerable degree of profundity; the phrase is, on a lesser level, complete in itself. Pessoa is informing us, at least in my interpretation, that reading, whether the material in question is fiction or nonfiction, is based on illusion. I don’t mean that merely a partial view of an only partially comprehensible world takes place during reading, I mean that our partial view of a partially comprehensible world is illusory on both counts.  The basic illusion of human existence, the belief that we are individuals, separate from nature, is a fiction, albeit an evolutionary advance of the utmost importance to human survival. If we did not imagine that we are separate from nature, how would we separate ourselves, as it were, from the world and create tools, culture, art—and, alas! war? There is no getting around this fact. If we are not wholly part of nature, we possess something which many traditions have referred to as a soul. Very few modern scientists, however, believe in the duality of soul and world.

If we are ultimately fictive, readers reading fiction or nonfiction must be illusory as well. (Illusion, however is strong, it comprises the majority of our identity. At the center of our identity, there is, at least according to my experience, something impersonal. It, however, comprises a small fraction of our identities).  I, for one, am convinced, as Buddha and Ramana Maharshi taught, that one of the central truths of our reality is anatta, that is, non-self. This doesn’t stop me, however, from living as if the little man inside my brain, really merely a concatenation of thoughts, were something more than that, an individual, a soul.

Pessoa, however, is also informing us how to read. We must leave our egos behind; we must  enter the world of the author without preconceptions. For instance, we must not approach Shakespeare with a point of view in mind, be it Christian, Hindu or secular; we must let Shakespeare overwhelm us. Attempting to put an ineffable experience into words comes later.

We must be guided by the hand of another, as Pessoa so aptly puts it. This applies, of course, only to authors who delight us. If we feel like we’re being guided by an idiot, we put the book down after a few pages and choose something else. Pessoa certainly would have agreed with that!

3.

When I told our Portuguese guide,  Rafaela, about the quote I copied off the base of the statue, she revealed herself to be an admirer of Pessoa.  She wrote in my notebook one of her favorite Passoa quotes;

Tudo vale a pena quando a alma não e pequena.

(which I translate us: Everything is worthy of effort once the soul is not small.  NB—Please don’t assert here that this great writer believed in the reality of the soul. He means the reference to be taken metaphorically).

This is an interesting quote. Everything is worth the effort once one has gone beyond effort. It is a paradox. Ramana Maharshi stated that once one realizes one’s true nature, there is no more volition; there is nothing more to accomplish. One thinks of Li Po’s poem in which he enjoins us to meditate before a mountain until only the mountain remains. This transformed human being would thus find everything worth the effort that is consistent with its true nature, that is, breathing, eating when hungry, sleeping when tired, serving as an example, helping others. I doubt Pessoa meant that once the soul isn’t small, viewing telenovelas or soap operas is worth the effort! (And if the man-mountain did, what would the man-mountain see?)

4.

I couldn’t help riffing in four languages on Ramana Maharshi’s teaching that once enlightenment is obtained, there is nothing more to do.

Freneh version: Quand l’alme est tellement grande, ce n’est pas nécessaire de faire quelque chose, parce que on est déjà le monde entier.

Spanish version : Cuando la alma es bastante grande, no es necesario de hacer algo, porque eres ya el mundo entero.

German version : Nichts muss man tun, wenn die Seele gross genug ist, weil man schon die ganze Welt ist.

English version: When one’s soul is big enough, one need not do anything, because one is already the entire world.

Note; You might think that these quotes foster passivity; they do not, however. Very, very few "individuals" permanently go beyond illusion; complete enlightenment is extremely rare. (Having episodes of cosmic consciousness, which inevitably delight, is not at all rare, however).

Once a man, in visible distress, approached Ramana Maharshi, Should he give up the world and become a sage, or continue to meet worldy obligations? Ramana smiled. If it were your destiny to give up the world, he told him, it would happen as naturally as a leaf falling from a tree.

Such leaves, however, very rarely fall.  Ramana Maharshi is telling us to accept ourselves as we are.  Not bad advice.  And since my bouts of cosmic consciousness do not last, my advice is: accept yourself, find yourself--and do good in the world.