Red Dragon
by Thomas Harris
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Book Summary Information
Author: Thomas HarrisEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-01-06
ISBN: 0425228223
Number of pages: 464
Publisher: Berkley
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780425228227
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Red Dragon
Book Review: A PSEUDO-PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW
Summary: 5 Stars
NEW RED DRAGON REVIEW, a pseudo-philosophical reflection
THE FUNDAMENTAL DUPLICITY OF LANGUAGE: Part 3
`Language is duplicitous in several senses.'
If `rhetoric' as Aristotle describes it is essentially the philosophy of language as Heidegger infers["When a Greek reads, he also hears . . . We are better off since we possess the Aristotelian RHETORIC rather than a philosophy of language. In the RHETORIC, we have something before us that deals with speaking as the basic mode of the being of the being-with-one-another of human beings themselves, so that an understanding of the legein also offers the being-constitution of being-with-one-another in new aspects", Heidegger, BASIC CONCEPTS OF ARISTOTELIAN PHILOSOPHY, trans Metcalf and Tanzer, University of Indiana Press, 2009, pages 74 and 80], then all language in one sense or another is always and in every case a presentation of words to another person. It can never be truly in any sense `private' to oneself except in the sense of hiding publically understandable statements away from others. As `presentation', the context of speech or writing always has a kind of `preparedness' about it, a `justification' of the way it is said or written. Even if words just `pop' out of you, they take on the form, structure, schema, of instant reaction and therefore it is a judgment of the situation whether they are later judged to be appropriate in the total context or not. So saying a word is the making of a judgment. And if the structure of language is necessarily logical, then it has some logical form. But simply having a logical form in no way guarantees its truth because truth always depends on inductive premises of some sort.
That, however, does not mean that a process of self-discovery cannot be found in narrative where old premises are found inadequate in the midst of it, and, as the narrative evolves from the questioning and evolution of the old premises to new ones, essentially a dialogue between two selves develops, that is, between what one `use' to believe, one then thought on solid grounds, that has now become a going towards new discoveries of placing old words into new contexts that completely change their meaning. The idea of a set speech as usually nominated in rhetoric goes completely against this. But that is because a set speech is formed for a very specific audience in a very specific time and place with a severely limited time frame, and restricted message, in order the point and object of the speech is not lost on the audience. That is, the composition of a narration necessarily includes an element of `rambling' depending upon the intent of the author, a searching around to establish a plot and bring it to a satisfying conclusion but without the severe restrictions of a public speech.
A narration as in a novel begins as a draft where the author is, at least to some degree even at first, uncertain as to exactly where they are going even if they have composed beforehand a detailed outline of how the book should be formed. It is necessarily uncertain because when the author actually attempts to set down the full verbal structure of the narrative word by word, there is necessarily the adding of detail to flesh out and make satisfactory reading for the targeted reader. But details as words have a life all of their own. They `always already' have a past history in the writer's mind quite possibly going back to semi and very subconscious associations so that in a real sense the voyage of discovery in writing a narrative confronts the old premises of the old self with the modified premises leading up to the present self of the writer.
The `self' is always historical. But it is the inductive self of exploration that is actually writing the narration for a specific purpose. However, it is with the necessary inclusion of old words with old meanings. After all, what can one use besides the words one knows, the old words? Constantly finding new words would make narrative clumsy and disjointed, and should be specifically used to make a new point by using a new word which would only happen occasionally in an explicit statement. But the explicit statement with the new words has to be led up to, essentially as a sort of informal rhetorical syllogism, an enthymeme, so that the new words are the result of deduction from the observations of old words. Therefore the new words come out of, develop from the old words being put into a new situation.
Sometimes, right in the middle of the novel's narration in the writing by the author, the author discovers he is coming to unexpected conclusions because the details put into the story, to make it real, do in fact `make it real' on its own account, because new associations have been created. These associations reveal the reality of the writer to himself as a stranger, a suspected shadow kept well in the closet by convention which essentially forms the same language we all more or less learn in order to be able to communicate with each other at all. There are already a multitude of diversions and confusions in everyday language where meaning, as an everyday matter, is at least distorted if not completely mislead. When talking `to oneself', one is talking to a multitude of varying historical selves grounded on specifics experiences at the specific time. But a narrative writer necessarily `mixes up' these selves within his creation because, though his language is `one' language in a single time line of experiential connection, it is a language as historical self in which all the historical selves simultaneously exist to some degree, with different degrees of respect - one does not respect the infant's voice from the point of view of the `mature' person's voice BY SOCIAL CONVENTION - but it is still `there'.
This is what has happened in Thomas Harris' RED DRAGON. It is a typical thriller but it has gone astray. The villains become heroes. They hear different voices and, in different circumstances, come to challenge the dominant voice because they become intensely aware of other values usually kept to the margins of the usual `self' but now intrude upon the main stage. This can also happen to the writer himself when his reason demands that a `usual' character is boring in its typicality, in its expectedness, in its average confirmed historicality. A real serial killer is NOT interesting in his real motivations. This is why `profiling' is so successful. The general case of the matter becomes assured very soon, and simply needs to be filled in with facts to discover the killer. The `usual' character can become `unusual' possibly because the character that is questioning himself brings up questions in the writer. For instance, when regular serial killer motives are exchanged for rational, pragmatic motives, or even motives derived from `normal' emotions and valuations, then the chain of profiling can be broken because it no longer fits a `type' of person restricted to a narrow band of thinking but someone in the real world of chance and specifics like the rest of us where crime becomes an act to solve a logical problem and not a blind compulsion. Reason demands certain things of an `interesting' character. It must show something new that is not arbitrary and irrational in itself. So the tendacy to change the typical mode is already there in the intelligent and creative writer. The writer's explanation of this character may well bring into question usually unquestioned - and unquestionable! - premises within the writer's self. The expected `decent' goes out the window with the discovery that there can be a logical chain of understanding that leads to socially unacceptable facts. Possibly it even leads to the conclusion that, if we truly understood the facts that exist in every factual situation, decency, good, evil, may become terms that emotionally hide things that none the less persist in existing as they must be and are. In the excellent film ROUGH RIDERS directed by John Milius, the director makes an explicit point through Sam Elliot that the American soldier is being trained not to be just a killer but a murderer. That is the fact of the matter. And it was the same for Ludwig Wittgenstein in World War I whose language I am echoing.
It is true there is compulsion to do the things we do as Doctor Hannibal Lecter says toward the end of the novel writing to Will Graham, the nominal `hero' of the book. But as Will Graham and the author learn people can, with great hardship, change whether they want to or not to new circumstances. Aristotle called this `habituation' and it is the only true kind of free will that actually exists. Fate can be defeated but at a price. It is called tragedy - as the Greek tragedians really meant the word.
Heidegger And Aristotle: The Twofoldness of Being (Suny Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy (Studies in Continental Thought)
Summary of Red Dragon
A second family has been massacred by the terrifying serial killer the press has christened ?The Tooth Fairy.? Special Agent Jack Crawford turns to the one man who can help restart a failed investigation?Will Graham. Graham is the greatest profiler the FBI ever had, but the physical and mental scars of capturing Hannibal Lecter have caused Graham to go into early retirement. Now, Graham must turn to Lecter for help.
Lying on a cot in his cell with Alexandre Dumas's Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine open on his chest, Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter makes his debut in this legendary horror novel, which is even better than its sequel, The Silence of the Lambs. As in Silence, the pulse-pounding suspense plot involves a hypersensitive FBI sleuth who consults psycho psychiatrist Lecter for clues to catching a killer on the loose.
The sleuth, Will Graham, actually quit the FBI after nearly getting killed by Lecter while nabbing him, but fear isn't what bugs him about crime busting. It's just too creepy to get inside a killer's twisted mind. But he comes back to stop a madman who's been butchering entire families. The FBI needs Graham's insight, and Graham needs Lecter's genius. But Lecter is a clever fiend, and he manipulates both Graham and the killer at large from his cell.
That killer, Francis Dolarhyde, works in a film lab, where he picks his victims by studying their home movies. He's obsessed with William Blake's bizarre painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun, believing there's a red dragon within him, the personification of his demonic drives. Flashbacks to Dolarhyde's terrifying childhood and superb stream-of-consciousness prose get us right there inside his head. When Dolarhyde does weird things, we understand why. We sympathize when the voice of the cruel dead grandma who raised and crazed him urges him to mayhem--she's way scarier than that old bat in Psycho. When he falls in love with a blind girl at the lab, we hope he doesn't give in to Grandma's violent advice.
This book is awesomely detailed, ingeniously plotted, judiciously gory, and fantastically imagined. If you haven't read it, you've never had the creeps. --Tim Appelo
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