Thread of the Absurd

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Tiny genius
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Thread of the Absurd

Postby Tiny genius » Mon Aug 27, 2012 7:23 pm

I love the idea of the absurd, the unexpected, the scarily cereal. It's something that has always interested me. Random stuff that doesn't make sense, copletely disconnected views of reality. To give you two ideas of what I'm on about, I'll use examples of my own and Douglas Adams' writing.

In the book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, a horse was found in an upstairs bathroom. Apart from being the last place in the world one may expect to find a horse, the character Reg was absurdly nonchalant about it, saying, "Oh, it's alright. It's just a horse in the bathroom." His calm, reasonableness about such a thing was one of the most entertaining scenes in the whole novel.

An example of the "scarily cereal" or "disconnected view of reality" is in my own piece, in italics below.

FRIED EGGS AND MURDER

I’ll describe the scene to you because that’s all that’s left for me to do as my mind slips away. I sat there, looking it through the haze of my cigarette smoke. A man, my friend, bleeding on the floor. The holes in his chest exuding blood at an obscene pace, that blood cooling and coagulating on the floor. Drying into the carpet and staining it, running across the linoleum to stain my boots. Seemingly completely unconnected to all this, there were eggs, scattered across the floor. They were fried well, shaped in perfect circles. They too were stained by my friend’s blood. God knows why they were there, why I put them there. I knew five minutes ago but not now, not as I look down at the gun in my hand and the final bullet wound, the one in my leg. I bleed out as my friend did, his heart and my femoral artery both leaking life. I see the blood run down my legs and the chair leg and I die, confused about the eggs.



Let us know of your experiences with such things, I, at least, would love to hear it.
"Other universes may exist, but ours seems to be based on war and games" - William S. Burroughs

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Re: Thread of the Absurd

Postby jotabe » Mon Aug 27, 2012 8:36 pm

I think in the early XX, there was a trend among European playwrights called "the theater of the absurd".

I remember in the literature textbook they had a fragment of a hungarian play. There was three shipwreck survivors floating on a raft, one of them was pretty tall, another was medium height and the last one was short. As they had ran out of food they began to consider that they might have to eat each other. To decide democratically who should be eaten first, they agreed on holding an election among them, and each one of them would have to make an electoral speech, explaining why they should not be the chosen one. The tall and the medium guys encourage the short one to speak first. His speech is logical and articulated at first, but as he speaks, he begins to realize that the other two are starting to be in agreement against him, and it ends up as a plea.

At first sight, it's hilarious (you can't appreciate that from my description), because of the translocation of the language of the democratic elections to such an outlandish situation. As you analyze, there are more levels of meaning to this short play.

Edit: in a similar line, but less hilarious (though it has a punchline), it's one of the "scenes" of the novel The Hive, written by the nobel prize winner Camilo José Cela. In this picture, there is a couple who live in a very poor apartment on top of a bar. Because of the cheap food offerend, the whole building smells like onion. So the man begins to rave to his wife about how it smells like onion. I'll post here the translated fragment:

He was sick and didn't have a brass farthing, but killed himself because it smelled like onions.
-It smells like onions, it stinks, it reeks of onions.
-Shut up, man*, I don't smell anything, do you want me to open the windows?
-No, I don't care. The smell would not go away, it's the walls that smell like onions, my hands smell like onions.
She was the living picture of patience.
-Do you want to wash your hands?
-No, I do not want, my heart also smells like onions.
-Relax.
-I can't, it smells like onions.
-Come on, try to get some sleep.
-I couldn't, everything smells like onions.
-Do you want a glass of milk?
-I don't want a glass of milk. I would want to die, just die, die very quickly, it smells like onions more and more.
-Quit saying nonsense.
-I say what I please! It smells like onions!
The man began to cry.
-It smells like onions!
-There, there, man, it smells like onions.
-Of course it smells like onions! The stench!
She opened the window. The man, with eyes full of tears, started to shout:
-Close the window! I do not want the smell of onions to leave!
-Whatever you want.
The woman closed the window.
-I want water in a cup; a glass, not.
She went to the kitchen to prepare a cup of water for her husband.
The woman was washing the cup when there was a hellish howl, as if the man's both lungs had ripped suddenly.
The thud of body against the tiles of the courtyard, she did not hear. Instead she felt a pain in his temples, a pain that was cold and sharp as a very long needle.
-Ugh!
The cry of woman came through the open window; no one answered, the bed was empty.
Some neighbors leant out of the courtyard windows.
-What happened?
She could not speak. If she had been able to, she would had said:
-Nothing, it smelled a little like onions.


*"Shut up, man" in Spanish can be said in an almost affectionate manner. It's my experience that in English, this expression is almost always offensive... i just don't know how to translate the caring intention appropriately here.
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Re: Thread of the Absurd

Postby Tiny genius » Mon Aug 27, 2012 9:15 pm

I haven't got too much time on me right now, so I haven't read the "translated fragment" but what I wanted to say was that I'm aware of (and enjoy) Theater of the Absurd and the thread name is just a parody of that.

[edit] Okay, I had more time than I thought and so I read it. Definitely weird and a little confusing, but that's what this thread's for so thanks. I enjoyed it.

Unrelated note: I got intrigued trying to figure out what this smilie :grouphug: was. To my eyes, it appeared to be a skull sitting atop a pile of collyflour. I now know, thanks to the "More Smilies" list, that it is actually a group hug. Funny, the kinds of things that can enter your head when you're almost blind.
"Other universes may exist, but ours seems to be based on war and games" - William S. Burroughs


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