{"id":102691802,"date":"2023-02-15T13:30:29","date_gmt":"2023-02-15T13:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=102691802"},"modified":"2023-02-15T13:30:29","modified_gmt":"2023-02-15T13:30:29","slug":"it-doesnt-matter-if-the-ghosts-are-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=102691802","title":{"rendered":"It Doesn&#039;t Matter If the Ghosts Are Real"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">&#8220;&#8216;Who Janey tell him the naked woman was?&#8217; &#8216;Told him she didn&#8217;t see none.&#8217; &#8216;You believe they saw it?&#8217; &#8216;Well, they saw something.'&#8221; &#8211; Paul D and Stamp Paid, &#8216;Beloved&#8217;<\/h2><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Note: minor spoilers for Toni Morrison\u2019s novel <\/em>Beloved<em>, if you consider \u201cbriefly discussing the premise of the book\u201d spoilers. <\/em><\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On a recent The Line Break podcast\u2014maybe <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-line-break\/id1524056726?i=1000596311068\">this one<\/a> or possibly <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-line-break\/id1524056726?i=1000590743885\">this one<\/a>, listen to them both and let me know\u2014Bob and I lamented how there isn\u2019t more middlebrow literary criticism. Sometimes I wanna read more than a book review, but I <em>never<\/em> want to read professorial, university-level criticism someone wrote to fill their \u201cpublish work to keep your faculty position\u201d quota. Honestly, I kinda want to read, like, a Defector or The Ringer article. But, like, about a novel or poetry collection I just read. <\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When I finish a movie or TV show, there\u2019s a whole Al Gore\u2019s Internet at my fingertips, full of 1,500-word takes I can casually consume that deepen my understanding of the media I just casually consumed. Books need more of this. It\u2019s possible I\u2019m not reading the right places, if you know of anything like what I\u2019m describing, send it my way. <\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anyway, I was looking for some <em>Beloved<\/em> content, craving a way to experience the book as communally as I would if, say, I\u2019d just left the movie theatre with like six friends. I found my way to <em><a href=\"https:\/\/thecrashcourse.com\/topic\/literature\/\">Crash Course<\/a><\/em>, the Green Bros-created series designed to <s>help high schoolers cheat on AP exams<\/s> be a fun, 10-minute exploration of a topic. I absolutely adore <em>Crash Course<\/em>, but that\u2019s a blog for another time. Today, we\u2019re talking ghosts. <\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/86e4a6c7-13ec-4c78-bc3e-920cb4dcee37_447x599.jpeg\" alt=\"File:T\u00fdn nad Vltavou, Cellars, ghost 01.jpg\"\/><\/figure><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What struck me is John Green\u2019s \u201cMe From The Past\u201d character being confused about whether Beloved is a real ghost or not. Present-tense Green cringes, tries to pull his own eyeballs out of his sockets, and chides Me From The Past for always asking the <em>least<\/em> interesting questions about books. He\u2019s right, too. Whether or not Beloved is a real ghost absolutely does not matter and is wholly uninteresting. People get hung up on it, though. <\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Slavery, Ghosts, and Beloved: Crash Course Literature 214\" width=\"790\" height=\"444\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6lQyPgaakY4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wikipedia tells me there\u2019s actual, real scholarly debate over this. Some \u201creviewers\u201d \u201cfaulted\u201d <em>Beloved<\/em> as \u201ca confusing ghost story.\u201d The heroic Elizabeth B. House, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=6qXGBbSK5Y4\">pulling up like Nick Young from 25 feet<\/a>, offered a theory that <em>Beloved<\/em> is a story of two cases of mistaken identity, where Beloved is another runaway who misses her parents and finds Sethe, who misses her daughter, and the two form a parasitic stand-in family. Idk, I didn\u2019t do any research beyond the Wikipedia, because this sort of pedantry and literary fan theorizing is boring.<\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You know what\u2019s not boring? The fact that in 1812 or 1820ish, Francisco Goya somehow drew a perfect portrait of college-era Chris trying to make a go of it as a singer-songwriter. He even knew I was going to a Jesuit university. <\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/36407ff8-a477-479c-b0f6-9a5ca0ba1554_2740x3809.jpeg\"\/><\/figure><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It doesn\u2019t matter if the ghosts are real. One of the core tenets of Magical Realism is that there\u2019s an empirical explanation for what\u2019s happening and a more-real-seeming non-empirical explanation. Escaped orphaned sex slave or supernatural incarnation of Sethe\u2019s murdered baby? No matter what, Beloved is affecting the lives of the residents of 124. Personally, I prefer to take characters at their word. Sethe, Denver, and Paul D are all unreliable narrators in their own way. That doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re not experiencing a haunting. Even if you were to roll up on 124 (as Stamp Paid keep trying to) and <em>not<\/em> see anyone besides Sethe and Denver, that doesn\u2019t mean a ghost isn\u2019t there. <\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It feels silly and high schoolish to be like \u201cdon\u2019t forget to read for metaphor.\u201d It\u2019s also entirely possible that I am just attuned to a way of reading that\u2019s out of step with a lot of people. Certainly isn\u2019t the first time I\u2019ve been the weirdo who doesn\u2019t understand how the world works. But you\u2019re already reading a work of fiction, why not trust the text to take you on a journey and not worry about it too much? <\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/58d60234-7f42-48cb-9ad7-63785697ef69_486x491.jpeg\" alt=\"File:Ghost sketch creepy pencil sketch.jpg\"\/><\/figure><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This came up back in undergrad reading <em>100 Years of Solitude<\/em>, Gabriel Garcia Marquez\u2019s Granddaddy Of Them All Magical Realism novel which also has a <em><a href=\"https:\/\/thecrashcourse.com\/courses\/100-years-of-solitude-part-1-crash-course-literature-306\/\">Crash Course<\/a><\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/thecrashcourse.com\/courses\/100-years-of-solitude-part-1-crash-course-literature-306\/\"> video<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/thecrashcourse.com\/courses\/100-years-of-solitude-part-2-crash-course-literature-307\/\">two, in fact<\/a>). Some scholar whose name I\u2019m not looking up (already refuted his ass in an ENGL 395 paper) said Gabo\u2019s depiction of United Fruit\u2019s Banana Massacre did a disservice to victims. In the novel, the body count\u2019s higher than the actual probable figure in the 1928 event. Here\u2019s the thing: \u201cactual probable figure\u201d is an accurate description, because nobody believes what was reported. So Gabo wrote what it <em>felt<\/em> like, to great effect. <\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Besides that, <em>the number doesn\u2019t matter<\/em>. Workers were striking for the barest minimum of human condition were killed. Novels don\u2019t have to be <em>facts<\/em>, novels have to be honest. Same with <em>Beloved<\/em>. Whether or not she\u2019s a ghost doesn\u2019t matter, because the legacy of slavery still honestly haunts the world. How that haunting is perceived and experienced varies from person to person, but make no mistake: a haunting is happening. <\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sorry you got an email, <\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Chris<\/p><div class=\"subscription-widget-wrap-editor\" data-attrs=\"{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/shipwreckedsailor.substack.com\/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}\" data-component-name=\"SubscribeWidgetToDOM\"><div class=\"subscription-widget show-subscribe\"><div class=\"preamble\"><p class=\"cta-caption\">Thanks for reading shipwrecked sailor! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.<\/p><\/div><form class=\"subscription-widget-subscribe\"><input type=\"email\" class=\"email-input\" name=\"email\" placeholder=\"Type your email\u2026\" tabindex=\"-1\"\/><input type=\"submit\" class=\"button primary\" value=\"Subscribe\"\/><div class=\"fake-input-wrapper\"><div class=\"fake-input\"\/><div class=\"fake-button\"\/><\/div><\/form><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;&#8216;Who Janey tell him the naked woman was?&#8217; &#8216;Told him she didn&#8217;t see none.&#8217; &#8216;You believe they saw it?&#8217; &#8216;Well, they saw something.'&#8221; &#8211; Paul D and Stamp Paid, &#8216;Beloved&#8217;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102691802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102691802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=102691802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102691802\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=102691802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=102691802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=102691802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}