Think I’ll veer off course for a bit, addressing message in Fishbein, Ascending. Recall the old expression? If you must explain a joke, it’s not working – so, it’s not funny. What follows isn’t an explanation of Fishbein, but is an interpretation from Jungian canon, from the perspective of the late Marie-Louise von Franz of Zurich, one of Carl Jung’s professional confidants and dearest friends. Dr. von Franz would read the plot, perhaps, as a fairy tale through which Matt becomes aware of the world and himself in the process of individuating. Individuation is the conscious coming to terms with one’s inner center, or Self. Individuation generally begins in a phase during which the child or adolescent experiences several shocks, a typical one creating a sense that the youth is very different from others. Sometimes that youth will have a vivid recollection of an incident no one else thought consequential. Alternatively, that youth may suffer from severe boredom, underscoring that his life feels meaningless and empty. This feeling of uniqueness engenders a sort of sadness birthing loneliness among many youths. At times, wounding of the adolescent personality produces suffering that is a brand of “call.”
A crisis arrives when the developing individual seeks something about which little or nothing is understood, and solutions are difficult or impossible to encounter. That’s true until the youth turns toward that approaching obscurity, or “darkness,” a quest to discover the darkness’ intention – what it seeks from the youth. The hidden purpose of the oncoming shadow typically is unique and unexpected, one might describe it as uncanny. Then, one discovers the darkness’ purpose from exploring his dreams and fantasies welling up from the unconscious.
Fishbein, Ascending is a tale of individuation. Matt Fishbein encounters bullying in “The Drill Bit,” his public humiliation by football players Chago witnesses. Matt discovers in full his peculiarity – he stretches from chubbiness into an adolescent taller and skinnier than most teenage peers, and his divergent scientific interests further separate him from the rest. These facts underscore Matt’s sense of difference and its resulting isolation. Matt records his physical and intellectual “weirdness” and bullying in Chapter 8, weirdness confirmed by even his friend Louise (commenting on Matt’s personality) in Chago’s journal entry in October, 1970. Let’s not forget Mrs. Colby’s encouraging Chago at graduation to “stay quirky.” Matt’s sense of isolation is communicated to readers learning his occasional Peck friends depart too frequently in Chapter 2. Matt’s complaint of loneliness to Mrs. Colby (disclosed in Chapter 52, although Chapter 2’s ending informs readers of Matt’s growing sadness at losing friends just when Chago arrives in Peck), results in Matt’s beginning to record his daydreams and insights derived from them. This practice leads to his inventing Chago’s unbreakable bond of friendship, a fortress from potential assailants threatening inner and external difficulties. Matt’s talent to float becomes another part of his fortifications. The obscurity Matt confronts is how to deal with his isolation, to integrate into a small high school society from which he feels alienated – true as well of Chago, Matt’s alter ego.
The battlements increasingly dissolve as Matt reaches rapprochement with his Self, partly through attending college and having serious work experiences among adults, but mainly through meeting a woman he can love and share life with. Matt’s relationship with Serafina gives flight to the obscurity while affording meaning Matt seeks in life. Chago’s observation that Matt no longer needs his lost talent is as timely as insightful. What to make of the novel’s beginning with the adult Matt seeing his daughter Giulietta float over his back yard in Lazio? Perhaps there’s something reassuring in watching another person float aloft! (We’d want to ask Sylvaine for confirmation.) Finally, why is Matt in Lake Afton offended by adults counseling youth against taking solace from imaginary friends?
Readers of this blog wondering why there’s not more here on the consequence of Chago’s lucid dreaming in individuation should know Dr. von Franz felt generally that dreams are not primarily concerned with adaptation to exterior life but development by the ego of the appropriate interior attitude toward the Self. Second, at least in the 1960s, von Franz rejected the proposition of lucid dreaming: “Practical experience and accurate observation show that one cannot influence one’s own dreams.” Materialist! Así es.