Berger Talk

An intriguing and occasionally inspiring talk with John Berger earlier this evening, and one I would urge everyone to listen to. He was interviewed By Philip Dodd, who I once thought a vainglorious media goon, but who did ask some pertinent and searching questions (or questions that invited Berger to search). At one point he put to Berger the old Brechtian adage about starting with the bad new things rather than the good old things. Dodd suspected that Berger tarried with and loved the latter. 'The Europe you are drawn to is the good old Europe' prompted Dodd, to which Berger replied: "I suspect that you are a little right, although I would like to be with Brecht."



Berger spoke with inviting and eloquent precision of our provincialism not in space but in time, historically - this little province of history called the Present which we tend to imagine is the whole of space and time.

Berger's eloquence is of a certain sort. There is little connivance, embellishment, virtuoso's display. It is as if he is not so much trained on the language he is using, and trying to formulate 'memorable' and arresting phrases, but rather he is trained so intently on what he is thinking about that the words obey the call of this thinking.

He spoke of the influence (too dilute and familiar a word) of D.H. Lawrence; not at the level of literary 'technique,' for as Berger said: ' a writer can exercise profound influence on your imagination and your nerve without him necessarily exercising a stylistic influence.

Many have commented on the mixture in Berger of the mystic and the materialist. Dodd broached this issue. Berger mentioned Jacob Bohme, in whom a similar mystic materialism is discovered: 'In order to talk about metaphysics he uses material which is completely material and sensuous. Smell colour light.". The mystical adheres to and can only be found within the material. A lovely apercu, Berger talks about drawing a reindeer, and the drawer 'obeying the visible rhythm of the reindeer's dance'. This 'obedience' to the visual world, this attentive mimesis, and the conviction that in this quality of attention there dwells a Sense not to be found elsewhere, is perhaps at the root of the mystical-materialism to which Dodd refers.

This relates also to the ways in which Berger describes the process of his writing. There is a playing down of intentionality, and a stress on attentiveness and reception. Speaking of his new book, he says 'This fiction imposed itself upon me', elsewhere I have heard him speak of 'listening' to voices which solicit him, of receiving from the visible world the full weight of the Unsaid.

Today, literary style is often inseparable from self-advertising, and ends up as a knowing technique which processes and imprints everything which it comes into contact. In so far as 'style' is, or has become, a marketable signature (as it can be, I think, in writers like M.Amis), Berger is style-less and eschews style.

Berger recently had published in several European newspapers and at Open Democracy a short meditatitive piece on the poor.

The poor are collectively unseizable. They are not only the majority on the planet, they are everywhere and the smallest event speaks of them. This is why the essential activity of the rich today is the building of walls - walls of concrete, of electronic surveillance, of missile barrages, minefields, frontier controls, and opaque media screens.

It came up in the course of the interview that all the English newspapers to whom Berger had offered his article had refused it. "very beautifully written, but we can't find a place for it." In my head, I repsponded angrily: 'Yes - there is no place for this because critical thinking and anything not assimilable to the currency of the marketplace has left these shores. Anything not tailored to some perceived category of consumers or designed to promote a day's 'controversy' before being consigned to oblivion cannot be granted space. If a Hari is granted column space, but a Berger refused, all hope has left Albion. I must leave here as soon as possible.'

[To find out the relevance of the picture, you'll have to listen the the program]