Foley’s world of absurdity
An Irish writer living in England as an IT lecturer is also a
novelist, poet and translator hugely admired by the Elite press. His
name is Michael Foley. He is amusingly funny and at the same time deeply
philosophical – a rare quality to achieve. His latest book is The Age of
Absurdity which my daughter in law Sharee bought for me recently in
Melbourne.
The author’s quest is ‘Why Modern Life Makes it Hard to be Happy’.
The 260-page book is neatly divided into five parts with a total of 14
chapters; each of them makes it entertaining reading, if not totally new
philosophical thoughts.
Since I cannot quote copiously from the book to justify my liking due
to copyright restrains, except for a few, I shall run through the titles
of the chapters that would give you some ideas about the writer’s goal
in writing this well-received book published only last year.
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Michael
Foley |
The writer’s themes are The Absurdity of Happiness, The Ad and the
Id, The Righteousness of Entitlement and the Glamour of Potential, The
Old Self and the New Science, The Quest and the Grail, The Undermining
of Responsibility, The Assault in Detachment, The rejection of
Difficulty and Understanding, The Atrophy of Experience, The loss of
Transcendence, The Absurdity of Work, The Absurdity of Love, The
Absurdity of Age and The Happiness of Absurdity.
As a lover of the humankind, I first turned to page 182 for his 19
page essay on “The Absurdity of Love”
Let me quote a passage:
“The primary illusion is that establishing a relationship is easy.
This is built into the very language: ‘to fall in love’, as though the
passive acceptance; to ‘be in love’, as though the passive acceptance
leads to a definitive, final state. Erich Fromm addresses the problem at
the start of his classic work The Art of Loving: “This attitude –that
nothing is easier than to love- has continued to be the prevalent idea
about love in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” And,
in order to fall in love and be in love, it is simply a matter of
finding the right person, who will immediately remove difficulties,
insecurity and loneliness by providing eternal, protective love.”
In his chapter on “The Absurdity of Age” Foley attributes the
following as symptoms: Memory Loss, Shrinkage, Stinginess, The
acceleration of Time, Metaphysical
Impatience, Uncertainty, Bowel Obsession, and The Death –in - Venice
Effect.
On page 25 the writer talks about Buddhism: “Another key word is
‘method’. Buddhism is not a creed but a method, as set of procedures for
dealing with the chain of consequences following from ignorance. But
Buddha refused to speculate on the cause of ignorance itself. So there
is no theory of the fall of a man, no original sin. In fact he refused
to answer any metaphysical questions, not because he himself did not
speculate but because such speculation was unhelpful”
More than half a century ago I was fascinated by the writings of
Yorkshire writer Colin Wilson who wrote “the Outsider” and “Beyond the
Outsider’. In the same way in the second decade of the present century I
am enamored by the philosophy, psychology, literature and the
information technology that Foley induces me to think. Among the
Existential writers I liked Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Michael
Foley says “So existentialism rejects team-player malleability,
emphasizes finitude rather than potential, advises making use of
whatever happens and embraces the difficult because it confers
intensity. No wonder this philosophy has gone out of fashion”
What fascinated me in the writer’s work is that he makes the
interested reader continue his reading because his articles are full of
realistic observations and wealth of considered views of great people
around the world. It is a mini-encyclopedia of philosophical thoughts on
the theme of Absurdity
I am yet to read his four novels and four volumes of poetry. The book
is published by Simon & Schuster, UK. You may like it with critical
reservation.
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