by Mark Dorset |
Digression
Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; — they are the life, the soul of reading; — take them out of this book for instance, — you might as well take the book along with them; [. . .] restore them to the writer; — he steps forth like a bridegroom,—bids All hail; brings in variety, and forbids appetite to fail.
There is a passage in Catcher in the Rye [PURCHASE OPPORTUNITY] in which Holden describes his high school English class. when students give reports and stray from the main point, anyone can jump up and yell, “Digression!” Holden says the digressions were his favorite parts.To digress, then, you must begin by traveling a route that will get you where you intend to go. You must have a goal and a plan for achieving it in order to depart from it. You cannot digress from the right path unless you are already on it. The easiest path to digress from is the straight and narrow, the straight and strait, rather than the broad way that rambles on its own. The slightest deviation from the straight and narrow is a digression, but the broad way allows a a good deal of wandering within it, so that one may amble a meandering course and still be within its limits, not really digressing at all. The digressive thinker is by nature an explorer. What is the opposite of a digressive thinker? Someone like Phileas Fogg as Jules Verne portrayed him in Around the World in Eighty Days[PURCHASE OPPORTUNITY]: He gave the idea of being perfectly well-balanced, as exactly regulated as a Leroy chronometer. . . .There is attached to digression a strong suggestion of weakness of character in the digresser. The digresser is digressive, inclined to stray from the right path, the point, the main subject, the intended direction, and the goal, and this tendency to stray is considered by many to be a fault, which characterization makes digression nearly equal to transgression. Progression, on the other hand, is generally regarded as a virtue. The progresser, if you will allow me the term, is progressive (not in the political sense, usually, but in the forward-marching sense), never straying from the path or plan, always moving toward an established goal step by step. To go off course by choice, or to be lured from the right path by a seductive roadside attraction, is regarded as a fault, but to be forced off course is not. The sailor blown off course by mighty Aeolus is guiltless, a victim, but the sailor drawn off course by the Sirens’ song is a fool who ought to have stopped his ears with wax and stayed the course. [more to come]
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Copyright © 2005 by Eric Kraft
A Topical Guide to the Complete Peter Leroy (so far) is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, dialogues, settings, and businesses portrayed in it are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this guide may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. Portions of A Topical Guide to the Complete Peter Leroy (so far) were first published by Voyager, Inc., as part of The Complete Peter Leroy (so far). The illustration at the top of the page is an adaptation of an illustration by Stewart Rouse that first appeared on the cover of the August 1931 issue of Modern Mechanics and Inventions. The boy at the controls of the aerocycle doesn’t particularly resemble Peter Leroy—except, perhaps, for the smile. |
COMPONENTS OF THE WORK REVIEWS OF THE ENTIRE WORK AUTHOR’S STATEMENT LITTLE
FOLLIES
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IGRESSION
is antithetical to, but dependent on, the intention to progress along the
straight and narrow way. In order to digress, one must first be progressing.
One cannot be sidetracked unless one is first on track. One cannot
stray unless one is first on the right path. One cannot turn aside
unless one is moving straight ahead. Proust famously pointed out
that we cannot remember what has not occurred. He might just as well
have pointed out that we cannot digress from a route that we had not intended
to take. If one’s honest answer to the question, “Where are you trying
to go?” is “I don’t know,” then one cannot digress.
