Fictional Beings

Coetzee, J. M., 1940-

Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, Volume 10, Number 2, June

2003, pp. 133-134 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/ppp.2003.0092

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ppp/summary/v010/10.2coetzee.html

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Fictional Beings
What Does It Mean,
“To Understand”?
A
TENNIS COACH IS teaching a young player
a forehand topspin drive. He does so
with a mixture of demonstrations (non-
verbal) and explanations (verbal), such as, “At
the moment of impact you roll the wrist over like
this” (demonstrates). The player tries the stroke
again and again, and each time the coach shakes
his head and says, “You haven’t got it yet.” Then
the player gets the stroke right. The coach says
“Now you’ve got it! Now you understand! Now
let’s do it again!”
Is this a legitimate use of the word under-
stand? I think it is. The coach intends the follow-
ing: At first you may have understood my words
but from your actions—the practice strokes you
played—I could not see that you had understood
my meaning. Then, when you got the stroke
right, and could repeat it, I saw that you had
finally understood the meaning behind my words.
Understanding is in this case the effective trans-
lation of words, or words plus demonstrations,
into actions, where effectiveness can be easily
measured. The translation is from a verbal, or
mixed verbal, system into an entirely nonverbal
system of electrochemical impulses.
Conversely, one can picture an exhaustive anal-
ysis of forehand topspin drives by André Agassi,
conducted by microphotography, implanted sen-
sors, and so on, to issue in a mixed verbal and
diagrammatic account of how Agassi plays the
stroke. In this case the physiologic system of the
© 2003 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
test 133
COETZEE / FICTIONAL BEINGS ■ 133
J. M. Coetzee
stroke has been successfully translated into a
(partially) verbal system. Again, it would be mean-
ingful to say that the sports physiologist who
does the analysis has come to understand how
the stroke is played.
Although in both these cases understanding is
conceived of as a translation process, I concen-
trate from here onward on the translation pro-
cess from the verbal to the nonverbal, exempli-
fied by understanding how to play a particular
stroke.
The coach says X and the player tries to “do”
X, but fails and fails, until finally he succeeds.
When the player has at last “done” X, he has
understood. Thereafter, by steps, the player ceas-
es to depend on the coach and the coach’s X: the
player can do X by himself; he understands X in
the sense that whenever he says X to himself he
can do X. He has made X his own.
I read The Sound and the Fury, the part devot-
ed to Benjy. Benjy says X and I don’t understand.
I understand the words on the page one by one,
many of the sentences I understand one by one in
the sense that I can translate them into other
English sentences, but I don’t understand the
logic that gets Benjy from one sentence to the
next, I don’t understand the references of many
words that are usually referential, and some-
times I am baffled by the syntax.
For whatever reason, I go on reading Benjy. In
a few respects I begin to understand better. For
instance, there are sentences that stop in mid-
stride, and I begin to suspect that such sentences
stop because Benjy does not want to think what
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 134 ■ PPP / VOL. 10, NO. 2 / JUNE 2003
comes next—that is to say, that the Faulkner
behind Benjy means me to understand that Benjy
lacks the wherewithal to face what would natu-
rally come next. Mainly, however, I remain in the
dark.
Then I begin to experience something interest-
ing. I find that I am, in my mind, going through
some of the movements of Benjy’s language. I
am, as it were, practicing the characteristic strokes
of his game. Although I remain, for the most
part, unable to translate his pages into connected
discourse—that is, into a discourse in which the
logical connection between one sentence and the
next is, however faulty, at least clear—I am bet-
ter and better able to “do” Benjy.
“Doing” Benjy in this case means more than
parrot-like repetition of Benjy’s words. I can now
speak of “entering Benjy” in a way that makes
sense. I am learning to inhabit and use his verbal
gestures in the same way that I might learn to
inhabit and use his tennis strokes, even while
Benjy’s language continues to be as private, in its
referential function, as before.
What Does It Mean,
“To Enter Another Mind”?
Storytelling is a universal and important ele-
ment of culture. Although it may be argued that
stories give access to no one’s mind but the story-
teller’s, the observable fact is that most stories
present themselves as being about other people
test 134
(and animals) and that most listeners gladly and
eagerly give themselves over to the fiction (if
fiction it be) that stories are not just about their
tellers.
A storyteller telling a story about a fox who
thinks crafty thoughts and does crafty things
knows, in some sense, that he has no access to
the fox’s mind, that he is merely performing an
imitation of what a fox, as conventionally under-
stood within human culture, would “think” if
foxes could think. The same storyteller neverthe-
less finds it convenient to think to himself that he
is telling his story from within the fox’s mind.
Writing The Sound and the Fury, William
Faulkner knows that he is not really entering the
minds of the four Compson children, merely
writing down verbal imitations of their thoughts.
Nevertheless he finds it convenient to think that
the Compsons are “real” and that somehow,
magically, he is inhabiting each of them in turn
for a while.
In the account preferred by storytellers, in-
cluding Faulkner, an account that we willingly
entertain when we read or listen to stories, story-
tellers (a) inhabit real beings and represent them
from the inside, and also (b) by this process
create them out of nothing and turn them into
real beings. It is a paradoxical position, but it
does appear to be a position of some importance
to human societies, which, in a paradoxical move-
ment of their own, both (a) entertain it, and (b)
dismiss it as nonsense.
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