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#Post#: 655--------------------------------------------------
The Stone
By: night_train Date: October 13, 2018, 5:40 pm
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The Stone. It is not a long read, but man, is it a challenging
one. It is esoteric, full of symbolism, and weaves
unpredictably in and out of dreams, visions, and alternate
realities. We are never really sure where the narrator is at
any point in the story. Nevertheless, I feel there is some
meaning to be found in this labyrinth of a book. We owe it to
Hardy to at least attempt a discussion of it.
I re-read the book recently, and I took notes along the way
hoping to capture a summary of each chapter while at the same
time, highlighting relevant details. The only problem is, each
chapter is full of potentially relevant details. My “summaries”
ended up being ridiculously long which made the whole endeavor
rather pointless. The one thing it did, however, was cause me
to read the story more carefully than I otherwise would have. I
managed to catch certain details that I missed the first time
around.
Someone suggested analyzing this chapter-by-chapter, but that
will likely not get us very far. With each new chapter brings a
new revelation that alters our perception of what transpired
before. We would likely struggle trying to understand each part
in sequence. I recommend focusing on the characters and piecing
the fragments of their stories together into a coherent whole.
I know this board is not very active, and a new Residents album
just came out, so this thread might just end up being me
rambling alone in a pathetic attempt to make sense of the whole
thing. If you have any insights, please share them.
[quote]"I found that there was nothing remarkable about it at
all. It looked like any old parchment book with decorative
initials, it seemed quite ordinary to me. I could not understand
how it could ever have affected me as supernatural. It was
written in Hebrew and therefore, completely incomprehensible to
me." - Chapter 11, The Stone[/quote]
#Post#: 656--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Stone
By: night_train Date: October 14, 2018, 1:19 am
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The Stone is about a spiritual journey. That much is clear.
Many of the characters that Charles Bobuck encounters seem to
have religious significance: They are compared to angels, or the
Buddha, or God, or a monk, etc., and they appear to act as
spiritual guides for Charles. Maybe it is no surprise that many
characters are doctors (e.g. Dr. Hill, Dr. Coleman, Dr. Hulbert,
Dr. Wasser, Dr. Savioli), and that Charles (presumably) dies in
the end. If this whole opus is simply Hardy Fox's way of
retiring his Charles Bobuck persona and leaving his past behind,
then he sure put a tremendous amount of effort into it. There
is a lot of theology here.
Where to begin? At one point in the story, The Book of Ibbur is
introduced. I think "Ibbur" provides the biggest hint as to
what the whole story is about. According to Wikipedia, Ibbur is
"one of the transmigration forms of the soul and . . . is the
most positive form of possession, and the most complicated. It
happens when a righteous soul decides to occupy a living
person's body for a time, and joins, or spiritually
'impregnates' the existing soul . . . to complete an important
task." With this definition in mind, the righteous soul that
occupies Charles' body is likely the ghost described in Chapters
1 and 2:
[quote]"From nowhere, a naked man appeared at his side and
purposely sat down on top of Charles head until the results
appeared more like a centaur than any human ever seen. At one
point the mans penis perfectly aligned with Charles' nose. The
resulting image was quite funny though no one was around to
appreciate it but Jesus hanging there on the altar. Then he
stretched out, slowly being absorbed into the sleeping human,
until all that was left was a sleeping Bobuck." - Chapter 2, The
Stone[/quote]
Notice that the moment the ghost enters Charles' body, he hears
Dr. Hill's voice. The narrative then immediately flips from 3rd
person to 1st person. Here we can get an idea of how the plot
is structured. The "Father Peter" reality is Charles Bobuck's
external world (which may not necessarily be the real external
world), while everything else, described in the 1st person, is
Charles Bobuck's inner world. The spiritual journey begins when
the ghost enters Charles, and speaking as Dr. Hill, guides
Charles to his ultimate purpose.
And what is that purpose? Well, the book is titled "The Stone."
Compare the following two quotes:
“Congratulations, your rock is a piece of liver.” - Charles
Bobuck in the first chapter
vs.
"Finally, the stone that was not a piece of liver. The stone
was not a piece of liver, it never had been." -Charles Bobuck in
the last chapter
The purpose is to see the stone as a stone, and not as a piece
of liver. This alludes to the Buddhist parable Charles recalls
in Chapter 3:
[quote]"I had been reading about the life of the Buddha before I
went to bed, and one passage kept coming back to me in a
thousand variations, going back to the beginning again and
again:
A crow flew to a stone which looked like a piece of liver,
thinking perhaps it had found something good to eat. But when
the crow discovered that it was a stone and not a piece of
liver, it flew away to seek food elsewhere.
Like the crow that left the stone, so do we abandon Siddhartha
Gautama, the ascetic, because we have lost our appreciation of
his simplicity." - Chapter 3, The Stone[/quote]
The stone represents the ascetic embrace of simplicity in life
(and the rejection of life's distractions). Here is Charles'
experience as he falls from a tall building:
[quote]"I was falling. And the stone, loosened by my hand was
falling too. We fell together and the stone, near my face, was
the only thing in focus. Somehow it made sense that the world
would be a blur other than the stone, the stone that looked like
a piece of liver." - Chapter 14, The Stone[/quote]
It is not easy to get distracted when you are about to fall
headfirst into the ground.
#Post#: 657--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Stone
By: night_train Date: October 16, 2018, 12:49 am
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I'm convinced that if we understood the inspiration and source
material to The Stone, then all characters in the story would
fall perfectly into place like puzzle pieces. Unfortunately, I
don't think that is ever going to happen. Not enough people are
going to read the book to figure it all out, and only Hardy will
know what it really means. I suppose there is a chance that he
made it illogical and nonsensical on a literal level just to
make it more dreamlike, but I doubt it.
Anyway, time to speculate again...
Dr. Hill
In my last post, I suggested that the church ghost is the Ibbur
that merges with Charles and then speaks to him as Dr. Hill. If
there is any character in the story that acts as the voice of
God, it would be Dr. Hill. He appears as a benevolent,
omniscient being that steers Charles towards self-actualization
("I know everything. I have known for a long time. Do not worry,
and do not fear."). He has significant control over Charles,
but guides him rather than coerces him. In Chapter 9, Mary
mentions that many of the tenants in the building "are his
collection of oddities." He looks after them all.
One of my favorite passages in the book is from Charles' dream
in Chapter 3:
[quote]The image of the stone that looked like a piece of liver
multiplied in my mind to become a dried-up riverbed.
I am walking along, picking up smooth pebbles, bluish-grey ones
with specks of glittering dust. I rack my brains, but I still
have no idea what to do with them. Then I find black ones with
patches of sulfurous yellow, like the petrified attempts of a
child to form crude, blotched salamanders.
I want to throw these pebbles, far away from me, but they keep
falling out of my hand, and I cannot force them from my sight.
All the stones that ever played a role in my life push up out of
the earth around me.
Some are struggling clumsily to work their way up through the
sand to the light, like huge, slate-colored crabs when the tide
comes in, as if they were doing their utmost to catch my eye, to
tell me things of infinite importance. Others, exhausted, fall
back weakly into their holes and abandon all hope of ever being
able to deliver their message. - Chapter 3, The Stone[/quote]
Charles sees the one, true stone as a multitude of stones of
different shapes and colors that beckon to Charles in different
ways. Perhaps they are the voices, inclinations, feelings that
have intruded his mind. He then hears a voice, presumably Dr.
Hill's, telling him to remember the stone that looks like a
piece of liver. He guides Charles onto the right path, despite
his subject's resistance. He even stops Charles from committing
a murder later in the story. In Chapter 7, Dr. Hill hands
Charles a Rubik's Cube and tells him. "When you feel distress,
look at this cube and remember that as complicated and random as
it seems, there is a pathway to order.”
Portraying God as a man of science who does not believe in the
supernatural ("Introducing magic or gods into explanations works
against any understanding.") is a very Hardy approach to the
idea. Dr. Hill tells Charles that Charles has a power of
creation that some cultures would consider god-like. We can see
that, rather than ask for subservience, Dr. Hill empowers
Charles. Charles feels rejuvenated and clear-headed after his
encounter with the doctor, and later speculates that Dr. Hill
might just be in his imagination. This reinforces the notion
that Charles' journey is an inner journey. He finds God within
himself.
#Post#: 658--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Stone
By: moleshow Date: October 19, 2018, 3:04 pm
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yknow? in retrospect, it became quite clear to me that i
actually have and had no idea what exactly was going on in The
Stone- it seemed kind of like a pseudo-religious experience,
being enforced upon a baffled Bobuck who was falling in and out
of assorted identities to an extent almost comparable to
slapstick.
you seem like you might have the right idea, though.
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