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On August 10, 2024, Kasie and Rex took on ‘thisness’ at Rex’s urging. It might get weird and meta and philosophical. Here are the show notes:

Theme for the day

Thisness

Agenda

• Quick Catch Up
• What is thisness?
• What does it have to do with writing?

Segments 1 & 2

The term is haecceity which is from the Latin haecceitas which translates to “thisness.” According to Wikipedia, it’s a term from medieval scholastic philosophy, first coined by followers of Duns Scotus to denote a concept that he seems to have originated: the irreducible determination of a thing that makes it this particular thing.

Um. What? It’s the difference between a concept “man” and a particular example of that concept such as “Glenn Powell.” Essentially, it’s about separating a concept into its individual parts. For what purpose? Evaluation? Examination? Replacement?

Alternatively “thisness” can mean just here, just now, with just what is at hand – a kind of limited existence but also immediacy – not later from now or in the continuing life, just the current circumstance.

Literary critic James Wood refers to “thisness” to address excessive or conspicuous detail. 

As a philosophical concept, thisness recognizes that while two things might be identical in appearance, they nevertheless have fundamental differences that keep them separate. According to Wikipedia, “Haecceitism challenges the idea that an individual can be fully described or defined by its properties or relations. Instead, it suggests that there is an irreducible aspect to each individual that makes them uniquely themselves.

According to this link, “for any particular thing, its thisness is the property of being identical with that particular thing and distinct from all other particular thing.”

What “thisness” is not – it is not “suchness” which is a universal and can refer to many things with specifying any individual thing (this link). 

Author and blogger Chuck Lang describes it on this link. He’s quoting the literary critic James Wood, mentioned earlier, “Thisness, Wood explains, is “any detail that draws abstraction toward itself and seems to kill that abstraction with a puff of palpability, any detail that centers our attention with its concretion.” Lang then breaks it down:

• Abstraction – it’s basically metaphor, not the specific detail, but a relatable one that helps the reader get the gist of the thing without the exact accuracy that seeing with one’s own eyes might provide.
• Palpability – this is making the detail relatable and specific for the reader, it makes the reality concrete and sensory.

Examples (palpable details that immerse you in the experience of the character):

From Heart of Darkness – “my feet felt so very warm and wet that I had to look down… my shoes were full; a pool of blood lay very still, gleaming dark-red under the wheel”

Segment 3

Thisness in practice focuses on the specialized extraordinary of a particular moment. Literature articulates thisnesses of time within its construction of an everyday time. Everyday time imposes, at each criss-cross of thisness, implicit parameters of mortality and of normal human ‘lifetime’.

Thisness as an artistic feature is related to Gerard Manley Hopkins’ notion of inscape, the term he coined to describe the spiritual perception and subsequent revelation of the innate uniqueness of all things. It is also related to JamesJoyce’s concept of the epiphany and the epiphanic moment: 

“First we recognise that the moment is one integral thing, then we recognise that it is an organized composite structure, a thing in fact: finaIly, when the relation of the parts is exquisite, when the parts are adjusted to the special point, we recognise that it is tlult thing which it is. Its soul, its whntness, Leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance. The soul of the commonest object, the structure of which is so adjusted, seems to us radiant. The object achieves its epiphany”  James Joyce, Stephen Hero 

Within this framework, the mundane can become spiritual. The everyday nature of an object, a person, a concept, an “ah-ha” moment becomes the character’s connection to an awakening of a spiritual, or near-spiritual experience. It is more emotional; its ‘radiance’ is all-consuming as an intensely subjective encounter, a moment of insight for fictive characters, 

Thus it has a two fold purpose, to act as a revelation both to the characters and the reader. This is achieved by using specifying details and juxtaposing senses. This creates a guided dream in the reader’s mind and the more detail, revealing detail, the more real the dream becomes. 

The Dutch call it ‘beeldspraak’, which translates to ‘image-speak’ An example of this is from the Wind in the Willows: 

“On either side of them, as they glided onwards, the rich meadow gro;ss seemed that morning of freshness and greenness unsurpassable. Never had they noticed the roses so vivid, the willow herb so riotous, the meadow sweet so odorous and pervading.”

Douglas Adams:

• “The spaceship hung in the air in the same way a brick doesn’t” 
•  “My mind is like the Queen Alexandria Butterfly, colorful, flutters out and about and is alas almost completely gone”.

Terry Prachet: 

• “Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day, but set fire to him and he’s warm for the rest of his life.”
• “Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It’s the difference between using a feather and using a chicken.”
• “There are times in life when people must know when not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this.”

Raymond Chandler: 

• “She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.” 
• “I called him from a phone booth. The voice that answered was fat. It wheezed softly, like the voice of a man who had just won a pie-eating contest.” 
• “Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.” 
• “The streets teemed and wriggled with life like a cheese filled with maggots.”

Alexis Kennedy:

• “This is my body. There are other bodies, but this one is mine, and my mind needs it as a fungus needs soil”

Segment 4

Wanna create visceral reactions in your writing? Try this blog’s advice:

• Use concrete, sensory language
• Connect the action or motion to the character’s feelings
• Leverage all the senses – not just what the reader could see (colors, shapes) but what they could taste, smell, feel

Use this link to review some unexpected (and classic) metaphors and similes written by the best in the business:

• Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides: “We didn’t remember putting [the photographs] up, but there they were, dim from time and weather so that all we could make out were the phosphorescent outlines of the girls’ bodies, each a different glowing letter of an unknown alphabet.”
• Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian: “They crossed a vast dry lake with rows of dead volcanoes ranged beyond it like the works of enormous insects.”