Iris Murdoch: Under the Net

At this point perhaps I should say a word about myself. My name is James Donaghue, but you needn't bother about that, as I was in Dublin only once, on a whisky blind, and saw daylight only twice, when they let me out of Store Street police station, and then when Finn put me on the boat for Holyhead. That was in the days when I used to drink. I am something over thirty and talented, but lazy. I live by literary hack-work, and a little original writing, as little as possible. One can live by writing these days, if one does it pretty well all the time, and is prepared to write anything which the market asks for. I mentioned before that I am a short man, but slight and neatly built would describe me better. I have fair hair and sharp elfish features. I am good at Judo, but don't care for boxing. What is more important for the purposes of this tale, I have shattered nerves. Never mind how I got them. That's another story, and I'm not telling you the whole story of my life. I have them; and one effect of this is that I can't bear being alone for long. That's why Finn is so useful to me. We sit together for hours, sometimes without uttering a word. I am thinking perhaps about God, freedom, and immortality. What Finn would be thinking about I don't know. But more than this, I hate living in a strange house, I love to be protected. I am therefore a parasite, and live usually in my friends' houses. This is financially convenient also. I am not unwelcome because my habits are quiet and Finn can do odd jobs.

It was certainly something of a problem to know where to go next. I wondered if Dave Gellman would harbour us. I fondled the idea, though I suspected it was no good. Dave is an old friend, but he's a philosopher, not the kind that tells you about your horoscope and the number of the beast, but a real one like Kant and Plato, so of course he has no money. I felt perhaps I oughtn't to make demands on Dave. Also he's a Jew, a real dyed-in-the-wool Jew, who fasts and believes that sin is unredeemable and is shocked at the story about the woman who broke the alabaster vase of very precious ointment and at a lot of other stories in the New Testament. It's not this I mind, but the way he argues interminably with Finn about the Trinity and the unimportance of sentiments and the notion of charity. There's no concept Dave hates so much as the concept of charity, which seems to him equivalent to a sort of spiritual cheating. According to Dave, this notion simply makes for indirectness and the idea that one can get away with anything. Human beings have to live by clear practical rules, he says, and not by the vague illumination of lofty notions which may seem to condone all kinds of extravagance. Dave is one of the few people with whom Finn talks at length. I should explain that Finn is a lapsed Catholic, but Methodist by temperament, or so it seems to me, and he testifies passionately to Dave. Finn is always saying he will go back to Ireland to be in a country which really has religion, but he never goes. So I thought it might not be very restful chez Dave. I prefer it when Finn doesn't talk too much. I used to talk a lot with Dave myself about abstract things. I was pleased when I first got to know him to hear that he was a philosopher, and I thought that he might tell me some important truths. At that time I used to read Hegel and Spinoza, though I confess I never understood them much, and I hoped to be able to discuss them with Dave. But somehow we never seemed to get anywhere, and most of our conversations consisted of my saying something and Dave saying he didn't understand what I meant and I saying it again and Dave getting very impatient. It took me some time to realize that when Dave said he didn't understand, what he meant was that what I said was nonsense. Hegel says that Truth is a great word and the thing is greater still. With Dave we never seemed to get past the word; so finally I gave up. However, I am very fond of Dave and we have plenty of other things to talk about, so I didn't dismiss the idea of going to live with him. It was the only idea I had. When I had at last come to this conclusion I unpacked some of my books and left them together with the parcel of manuscripts under Mrs Tickham's counter. Then I left the shop and went to Lyons'.

Two

There are some parts of London which are necessary and others which are contingent. Everywhere west of Earls Court is contingent, except for a few places along the river. I hate contingency. I want everything in my life to have a sufficient reason. Dave lived west of Earls Court, and this was another thing I had against him. He lived off the Goldhawk Road, in one of those reddish black buildings which for some reason are called mansions. It was in such contexts, in my dark London childhood, that I first learnt the word, and it has ruined many pieces of prose for me since, including some Biblical ones. I think that Dave doesn't mind much about his surroundings. Being a philosopher, he is professionally concerned with the central knot of being (though he would hate to hear me use this phrase), and not with the loose ends that most of us have to play with. Also, since he is Jewish he can feel himself to be a part of History without making any special effort. I envy him that. For myself, I find I have to work harder and harder every year to keep in with History. So Dave can afford to have a contingent address. I wasn't sure that I could.

Dave's mansions are tall, but they are overhung by a huge modern hospital, with white walls, which stands next to them. A place of simplicity and justification, which I pass with a frisson. Now as I came up the dark stained-glass staircase to Dave's flat I heard a hum of voices. This displeased me. Dave knows far too many people. His life is a continual tour de force of intimacy. I myself would think it immoral to be intimate with more than four people at any given time. But Dave seems to be on intimate terms with more than a hundred. He has a large and clinging acquaintance among artists and intellectuals, and he knows many left-wing political people too, including oddities such as Lefty Todd, the leader of the New Independent Socialist Party, and others of even greater eccentricity. Then there are his pupils, and the friends of his pupils, and the ever-growing horde of his ex-pupils. No one whom Dave has taught seems ever to lose touch with him. I find this, in a way, hard to understand, since as I have indicated Dave was never able to communicate anything to me when we talked about philosophy. But perhaps I am too much the incorrigible artist, as he once exclaimed. This reminds me to add that Dave disapproves of the way I live, and is always urging me to take a regular job.

Dave does extra-mural work for the University, and collects about him many youths who have a part-time interest in truth. Dave's pupils adore him, but there is a permanent fight on between him and them. They aspire like sunflowers. They are all natural metaphysicians, or so Dave says in a tone of disgust. This seems to me a wonderful thing to be, but it inspires in Dave a passion of opposition. To Dave's pupils the world is a mystery; a mystery to which it should be reasonably possible to discover a key. The key would be something of the sort that could be contained in a book of some eight hundred pages. To find the key would not necessarily be a simple matter, but Dave's pupils feel sure that the dedication of between four and ten hours a week, excluding University vacations, should suffice to find it. They do not conceive that the matter should be either more simple or more complex than that. They are prepared within certain limits to alter their views. Many of them arrive as theosophists and depart as Critical Realists or Bradleians. It is remarkable how Dave's criticism seems so often to be purely catalytic in its action. He blazes upon them with the destructive fury of the sun, but instead of shrivelling up their metaphysical pretensions, achieves merely their metamorphosis from one rich stage into another. This curious fact makes me think that perhaps after all Dave is, in spite of himself, a good teacher. Occasionally he succeeds in converting some peculiarly receptive youth to his own brand of linguistic analysis; after which as often as not the youth loses interest in philosophy altogether. To watch Dave at work on these young men is like watching someone prune a rose bush. It is all the strongest and most luxuriant shoots which have to come off. Then later perhaps there will be blossoms; but not philosophical ones, Dave trusts. His great aim is to dissuade the young from philosophy. He always warns me off it with particular earnestness.