Karinthy and Little Me

I received an email from a student with a passage from the book A Journey Round My Skull.
The book itself a sort of very early (1937) Jill Bolte Taylor's My Stroke of Insight. I am just now reading the book, which is good but not amazing, writing-wise. The content is interesting to me because I am interested in perception and neuroscience. As far as the writing goes, Karinthy's self-commentary is accurate, as Oliver Sacks notes in the introduction: he begins the book a bit over-analytical, and full of excess detail, so, while I enjoy the humor and insight, it often feels like he is showing off.

However, by the time he gets to the section my student sent me (3/4 way through the book), he has calmed down his narrative to a more straight-forward style, with plenty of self-awareness. This passage, in particular, is him interrupting his narrative to discuss the act of writing memoir itself. Amazing internal discussion.


A little bit of bio (from my student):

Karinthy was a well-known writer, playwright, and humorist in pre-WWII

Budapest. He pretty much diagnosed his illness himself, then sought treatment in

Budapest and Vienna and ultimately had his successful surgery in Stockholm. His

writing is lively, strikingly honest, often humorous and sometimes heart-rending.

In the excerpt that follows, he is laying in his hospital bed before the operation, wrapped

in a yellow blanket, racking his addled brain to figure out why his surgeon, the

prominent Dr. Olivecrona, seems so familiar to him. (I don’t think you’ll need any

explanation for his use of the term “Little Me” -- rest assured he’s not referring to the

Austin Powers movies.)

Excerpt:

Here I must interrupt my narrative for a moment.

As I write, Little Me has come butting in again, stopping my pen and upsetting my

train of thought. He insists that I must break off at once before the ‘writer’ – that other

part of me who produces the imaginative works – tries to go one better than reality. The

writer in me sometimes entertains an arrogant belief that he could improve upon the

truth by a little deliberate artifice. I have no wish here to discuss the relative value of art

and reality, but there is one thing I have learnt since I began to write this account of my

illness. Reality as a genre requires no helping hand from the artist. This is true both of

minor effects such as emphasis and ‘limelight’ and of literary composition in a wider

sense. I cannot explain, but I am obliged to admit, the fact that reality possesses its

own technique of composition. It composes as if it intended to say something, grouping

and arranging its subject matter like a professional novelist. I have described elsewhere

(and the popular biographies of the day bear me out) that every life-history is at the

same time a novel of a life. I now realized that this is true even of technical details such

as foreshortening and cross-references. It cost me some sacrifice to act upon my

lesson. Several times I had felt tempted to take an incident or reflection out of its proper

place and include it with others a few days earlier or later in date which would have

caused it to stand out in sharper relief and thus have thrown a more suggestive light on

my story. I came to realize, however, that this was not a wise plan. On arranging my

material I saw that it would be a mistake to alter the least link in the chain. Everything

would be more comprehensible, and therefore more effective, as it happened in reality,

and not as it might have happened. Reality knew, at least symbolically, what material it

was arranging, and why. 

I was grateful to Little Me for catching the complacent writer in me red-handed.

Henceforth, I should continue to dispense with ‘literary’ artifice, and should let the truth

speak for itself, however colourless it might seem. I dare say it would improve the story

and make the following pages more effective if I were to write that what turned out to be

the symbolical meaning of Olivecrona’s appearance in my life was obvious to me from

the moment when I lay under the yellow blanket, wondering why I felt that we had met

before. 

Yes, it would be much better if it had happened like that. But it just didn’t…

These sentences in particular really strikes me:

I came to realize, however, that this was not a wise plan. On arranging my

material I saw that it would be a mistake to alter the least link in the chain. Everything

would be more comprehensible, and therefore more effective, as it happened in reality,

and not as it might have happened. Reality knew, at least symbolically, what material it

was arranging, and why. 

When I read the passage, before reading the book, I felt an immediate revolt inside - no! That is too purist! Now that I read Karinthy and have more compassion for his experience as he is dismissed by doctor after doctor (often friends of his), I can see more from a personal perspective why it would be so crucial to him to be totally straight forward in his narrative.

I think there is value in sticking as close as possible to cause-and-effect, as close as we can to how it was at the time to not know what is coming next. However, I don't think it is the only way. I am also not sure that "reality" is as straight-forward as he depicts it, though I really admire his willingness to "let the truth speak itself" risking "colourless(ness)" for it. It's a fascinating debate, and one that obviously I am interested in deeply. Karinthy had his own personal, and I think quite emotional, reasons for depicting his story as it occurred "objectively" - not all stories are best told that way. Nor are all lives necessarily that way.

I am also intrigued by his implication that "literary artifice" is, in fact, lying - to say, for instance, that he knew his doctor before he did, or, to imply it by placing the incident meeting the doctor earlier in the narrative...this kind of lyrical time shifting, where stories are not always told from 1-10, I don't consider "artifice" really - literary, yes, or lyrical. But not fake. Sometimes reality is more closely depicted out of our "objective" time experience.