A Case of Identity

Is the desire to be immortal a universal constant?  I’ve never really thought about it like this before, but a combination of a short story by Hawthorne and a volume of short stories by Doyle, has me wondering about the desire for immortality.

Hawthorne’s “The Devil in Manuscript” is a quick tale of an author who cannot find a publisher (he lived in the pre-blog era) and in despair hurls his life’s work into a fireplace.  A fire roars up in the fireplace, sending flame onto the roof, setting the building on fire.  Commotion ensues throughout the town.  And the story ends with the author exclaiming, “Here I stand—a triumphant author!  Huzza! Huzza! My brain has set the town on fire! Huzza!” (Does anyone ever say “Huzza” anymore?)

It’s a nice little story that certainly captures the latent frustration of many an author.  Indeed, there is no doubt that the number of frustrated authors, those who believe that their own work deserves a much wider attention from the world than it has earned, is vastly greater than the number of satisfied authors, a set which is likely to be very small indeed.  Now that I think of it—I suspect the most widely known authors may be among the most frustrated—after all, there is always more acclaim and readership possible.

At roughly the same time I read the Hawthorne story, I was finishing up Doyle’s Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.  I decided a while ago to reread Holmes in order; this is the third book and the first book consisting entirely of short stories.  The first thing I noticed in rereading it—despite all the claims of Holmes’ amazing deductive powers, the deductions necessary to solve his cases are amazingly small.  He demonstrates vastly more deductive powers in the parlor trick of telling the person he is meeting something about said person’s activities or profession which Holmes deduced from some oddity in the person’s appearance or dress.  Said person is always dutifully shocked.  Watson expresses his amazement, at which point Holmes explains, allowing Watson to note with Chagrin that he (Watson) was just too daft to notice the obvious, unlike Holmes, who never misses a thing.  At any rate, as detective stories, there is surprisingly little detection in them.  As parlor tricks, there is no reality there—no way Holmes could pull off his trick in real life.

But, then, presumably because I had just read Hawthorne (ah, serendipitous reading, how I do love thee), I noticed something else which is rather odd in the stories of Holmes’ exploits.  Why is Watson there at all?  Now I know why we need him to write the stories, but imagine it is real.  Why does Holmes want Watson around?  Holmes keeps claiming that Watson is useful to him, but Watson is rarely even remotely useful.  Then it dawned on me.  Holmes wants Watson around not to help solve the crime, but to write about the solution afterwards.  Holmes, who labors in obscurity pretending to care only about logic and deduction, wants the immortality of having his exploits sent down in print.

So, what is it about immortality that so appeals to people?  What is this longing in the soul to want to live on after death?  Undoubtedly, it is a good thing—there is something hard-wired in living organisms to perpetuate the species by having offspring, and in humans that is obviously rationalized as a desire to have one’s DNA continue into the future.  But, sad as it is to relate, my children are not really exactly like me—I don’t think any of them are routinely mistaken for being me.  Now and then, one of them will say or do something which is the sort of thing I would say or do, and I get unreasonably happy about that.  But children are a poor vehicle for immortality.

Then again, so are books.  Consider Charles Dickens.  I know about Charles Dickens.  I know nothing about the kid who grew up one-quarter mile away from where Dickens lived when he was 7.  So, Dickens has lived on in a sense that this other kid has not.  Yet, what difference does that make to Dickens now?  He and that other kid are exactly the same level of dead.  I suppose if both are ghosts wandering around the world, Dickens gets to go to cocktail parties of the dead and laugh at the other little kids who are totally unknown, But unless that is the picture of the afterlife, it is hard to see what benefit Dickens derives from having his books on my bookshelf.

Then back up.  Why would it make an author happy to know that his books will be read over a century after his death?  That it would make an author happy is undeniable.  But why?  Why should that matter?  Why should it seem perfectly sensible that the author in Hawthorne’s story is thrilled that his work is having an effect even if the effect is undesirable?

Somewhere deep in the human heart, there is an obvious desire to live on and on and on.  That desire finds its way out in curious ways.  Homer’s heroes want to do acts of valor so people will still talk about them after they have traveled to Hades.  And (as Joe Gilman noted) Homer lives on and on by writing about those people.  So, now we know about both Achilles and Homer, but their paths to immortality were rather unalike.  Would their persistence after death bring equal amounts of pleasure?  Do people care why they continue to be known after death?  Is Benedict Arnold happy for being famous?  Is Pilate?  And, what about the subject of this song?