This is not really a formal review, as I’m not sure how to go about one of those. For more on the film, including links to a bunch of formal reviews, go to the “The Tree of Life” page on the main Emeth Society site. Link here.
There’s little doubt that Terrence Malick loves the Grand Gesture. If it’s 4th & 12, he’s going for it; bottom of the 9th, no outs, down by a run with a man on 1st, he’s not looking to advance the runner. He’s swinging for the fences. Remember Kevin Costner’s character in “Tin Cup,” & what he does at the 18th hole every round? That’s Malick. And God bless him for it. When “The New World” washed over me the first time I saw it, I knew that here was a filmmaker who didn’t care what the cool kids were saying about him, or what kind of movies they wanted to see. He was thinking Big, & trying to adapt his chosen medium to his large ambitions. Andrei Tarkovsky, the legendary Russian director, knew this approach well, & articulated it perhaps better than any other recent artist. This from Sculpting in Time:
By means of art man takes over reality through a subjective experience. In science man’s knowledge of the world makes its way up an endless staircase & is successively replaced by new knowledge, with one discovery often enough being disproved by the next for the sake of a particular objective truth. An artistic discovery occurs each time as a new & unique image of the world, a hieroglyph of absolute truth. It appears as a revelation, as a momentary, passionate wish to grasp intuitively & at a stroke all the laws of this world—its beauty & ugliness, its compassion & cruelty, its infinity & its limitations. The artist expresses these things by creating the image, sui generis detector of the absolute. Through the image is sustained an awareness of the infinite: the eternal within the finite, the spiritual within matter, the limitless given form.
Forgive me if I take this as the best review yet of “The Tree of Life,” but it seems to capture the heart of the film, & without the histrionics present in so many of the reviews I’ve read. Certainly there are few who make, review, or watch films today who speak like this, at least without a cynical sneer curling their lip. Some of those latter folks spilled their sneers onto paper, with predictable results: “Massive pretensions—hubris—playing God—disingenuous posturing.” I hope Malick gets a kick out of those reviews. Perhaps they sting, & perhaps the expository demon within him, one which is lurking in the breast of many a great artist, is roaring its outrage. But I like to think that he appreciates that many of these reviewers who squawk their incomprehension are too busy reviewing several others films to fulfill their professional obligations to think twice about his film. I also like to think that Malick is a fan of Pixar, & recalls with fondness the words of that archcritic Anton Ego after his confidence was shattered by a culinary revelation:
In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talents, new creations. The new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something new; an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking, is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core.
Change food to film, & you’re on to something. Not that critics can’t dislike a film by Terrence Malick, or that they all produce bits of tedious sameness as they move from film to film. I don’t envy the critic, & am grateful I don’t have to write a formal review of “The Tree of Life.” Having read over a dozen reviews in the last few days, I’m deeply impressed with many of the insights from reviewers, even those with whom I disagree or not named Tarkovsky.
Yes, I recommend the film. Five stars, two thumbs up, big smiley face, road sign saying “See this film,” whatever device we use to indicate approval, I bestow that. I still need to see the film again a few times to figure some things out, which is a plus; how many films have you seen that you can say, “I’ve seen it twice, it rocked me each time, & I gotta see it again”? What remains fuzzy to me is the ending. Much of the discussion among reviewer concerns whether or not it “works.” Heck, I’m not even sure what’s going on, so I’ll prescind from evaluating its success. But I don’t think it is a vision of the afterlife, a glimpse of heaven. It does appear to be a scene of reconciliation, however. Maybe, maybe not. I’d also like to pay much closer attention to the score. This is, after all, a Malick film, & he understands as well as anyone how integral music is to the tale being told.
This last point deserves some mention, as a number of reviewers seem to think they’re evaluating an essay or, worse, a homily, & glide too easily past incidentals like the music score. Thus they read the film in terms of a spiritualistic, new age soup with a feel-goody god hiding out in the clouds above, leaving everybody down below to do as they will. Did they really not listen to the music? Did they not think that the choice of the “Agnus Dei” from Berlioz’s “Requiem” near the very end of the film was important? Agnus Dei, qui tollit peccata mundi. . .: what might those words mean, I wonder? Perhaps the film could have been paused & a clip of the director inserted, announcing that what we have in this piece is. . . . Oh, never mind. The point is, a film is not an editorial, essay, manifesto, catechism, etc. The tools required to watch attentively are different from those needed to read St. Thomas. Flannery O’Connor had a lot to say about this, & had the hard experience of people with wooden literary sensibilities blustering their way through reviews of her novels & stories. Here’s what she said:
“We hear a great deal about humility being required to lower oneself, but it requires an equal humility and a real love of the truth to raise oneself and by hard labor to acquire higher standards. And this is certainly the obligation of the Catholic. It is his obligation in all the disciplines of life but most particularly in those on which he presumes to pass judgment. Ignorance is excusable when it is borne like a cross, but when it is wielded like an ax, and with moral indignation, then it becomes something else indeed. We reflect the Church in everything we do, and those who can see clearly that our judgment is false in matters of art cannot be blamed for suspecting our judgment in matters of religion.”
Again, I have little quarrel with those who do not like “The Tree of Life.” But they should be able to articulate why they dislike it without criticizing it for not being the kind of film they think is needed. Criticize the film that’s there, not one that Malick should have made. As the playwright always says, if a Message is what you want, use Western Union.
Here’s where the issue of whether or not “The Tree of Life” is a “religious” or “Christian” film comes up. Somewhere I read that this was the most Christian film since “The Passion of the Christ.” Of course, others (see my comments on the review in the First Things blog by a Mr. Collins) go the other way, looking for the God Who Is Not There. My friend Rodney Howsare had an interesting take on the film after we saw it a few weeks ago, suggesting that it might be seen as a kind of answer to the new atheists. Not that it is an explicitly Christian film, or engages in any kind of apologetics that cries out “Ah ha! Got you there, Richard Dawkins; answer that, you Godless reductionist.” No, an impressionistic collage of images, words, & music appeals to us differently than even a more straightforward narrative film, so due caution is necessary when bringing up Christianity & atheism here. What Howsare meant was something broader, something like what Flannery O’Connor meant when she wrote:
“. . . if the writer believes that our life is & will remain essentially mysterious, if he looks upon us as beings existing in a created order to whose laws we freely respond, then what he sees on the surface will be of interest to him only as he can go through it into an experience of mystery itself.”
If a Christian film is one that leads us to a deeper recognition that our lives can only be understood properly in the context of the creation & sustaining of our world by the God celebrated in Berlioz’s “Requiem,” then, yes, this qualifies as a Christian film. When a film, or any work of art, is able to pierce the surface of our lives by its portrayal of our love, longing, & loss, & yields an experience of mystery which invites us to contemplate not only creation but he who takes away the sins of the world, what other kind of film can it be? The very structure of “The Tree of Life” says more than any of its characters, & while the many voiceovers are important clues as to how we should understand the film, we shouldn’t make the mistake of taking these in isolation from the rest of the film. To the new atheist dogma that we inhabit a planet intended by no one in a universe lacking meaning, “The Tree of Life” does counter with the best of knockdown punches by portraying the truth the Psalmist first uttered so long ago, & continues to proclaim among us:
O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth! Thou whose glory above the heavens is chanted 2 by the mouth of babes and infants, thou hast founded a bulwark because of thy foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. 3 When I look at thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast established; 4 what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him? 5 Yet thou hast made him little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor. 6 Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet, 7 all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, 8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the sea. 9 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth!
The heavens indeed are telling of the glory of God, & we can see & hear that glory in the lives of one, rather ordinary family in 1950’s Waco, Texas, as well as across our own street & in our own home. He who has ears to hear. . . .
Here are some comments on 2 reviews I didn’t much like, for reasons I spell out.
The first link is to the review from James Bowman. One reason I like his reviews (usually) is because he can be surly & crotchety, required characteristics if one is to be a movie critic. Go here:
http://www.jamesbowman.net/reviewDetail.asp?pubID=2103
The other review cited in the following comments is from the First Things blog. Go here for the review:
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2011/06/tree-of-life-yields-little-fruit
My impression is that Bowman wrote his review quickly & impatiently, as if he were bothered by having to waste his time with another Malick film (cf. his earlier reviews of “The Thin Red Line” & “The New World,” which sound a lot like his review of “The Tree of Life”). I wonder if his dislike of Malick led him to take shortcuts. When discussing the nature/grace voiceover, for instance, he quotes not the film itself, but the trailer for the film. This is significant, for the trailer goes: “There are two ways through life, the way of nature & the way of grace.” In the film, however, it goes: “The nuns taught us there are two ways through life. . . .” Bowman’s flippant response (“Really? It’s always seemed to me that most people follow both at different times”) should have been unnecessary, as the film actually demonstrates this very point. “Father. Mother,” Jack notes at one point. “Always you wrestle inside me. Always you will.” Later Jack paraphrases St. Paul’s famous lines in Romans 7: “I can’t do what I want. That which I do I hate.” Seems that there is a recognition here of the tensions inherent in a life pursuing grace, something Bowman missed. This is an important miss, as well, given the family drama that resides at the heart of the film’s (loose) narrative.
Related to this is Bowman’s too-quick dismissal of the claim that “no one who lives by the way of grace ever comes to a bad end.” “Absurd,” he declares. I’d agree, if this claim were actually meant to be taken literally as a blanket statement. It’s not, however, & on this point Bowman is not alone in missing something important about “The Tree of Life.” Kevin Collins in his review in the First Things blog badly misses many things, perhaps most importantly the nature of “Christian art.” For Collins this seems to mean something that explicitly evangelizes, or is at least openly Christological. He chastises Malick for not making a film that is openly & clearly Christian, as if such a thing requires rather clear catechesis of some sort. He goes as far to say that Malick gives us an impersonal god & new age spiritualism. C’mon; isn’t this a wearisome bit of nonsense, that Catholics especially should be able to avoid? For goodness’ sake, read Maritain or St. Thomas; read the essays & letters of Flannery O’Connor. To both Collins & Bowman, who have different concerns but make similar misjudgments, I think an appropriate question is: Does the quote from Job at the outset of the film, & the nature of so many of the voiceovers, not suggest that the Old Testament wisdom literature is the appropriate context for evaluating Malick’s film? This tradition contains many lines like the one Bowman claims is absurd. Consider Psalm 1. The 1st 3 verses say:
1 Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; 2 but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. 3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.
“Whatever he does prospers.” Whatever he does. Really? How many just men have taken a beating like Job? Any how many have watched the wicked prosper? The wisdom tradition is filled with contrast statements like this. Taken by themselves, as absolute statements of what is always the case, I’ll join Bowman & say “Absurd.” But they’re not taken by themselves. The Psalms alone contain any number of statements to the effect that the wicked prosper& the just are trampled underfoot & come to a bad end. “Bad end” must be taken in a particular way, however. The Church reads Psalm 1 as Christological; Christ is the just man who prospers. He’s also nailed to a cross. The fuller context of the wisdom writings includes the Gospels. Yet this doesn’t mean that an artist can’t treat wisdom themes apart from the fullness of Christian truth. Art is not theology. Here’s Maureen Mullarky on this topic:
“Art is an instrument thoroughly of this world; it is not revelation and has no theology. It is poorly suited to the spiritual burdens laid upon it. Artists themselves are not up to the task of defining or divining the Kingdom. In his small gem of a book The Responsibility of the Artist, Maritain defines the artist as ‘a man using Art.’ He is bound, like any other artisan, to the perfection of the work of his hands: ‘Art by itself tends to the good of the work, not to the good of man. The first responsibility of the artist is toward his work.’”
In other words, the artist is free to look at life in any number of ways. In a film, even one as ambitious & far-ranging as “The Tree of Life,” it’s silly to demand a catechetical lesson or a fully-worked out theology intended to please the theologians among us. It would be like criticizing the film “Amadeus” because Salieri has a childish, quid pro quo view of God & no one criticizes & corrects his theology. The artist takes people as they are, & tries to do justice to what Joseph Conrad called “felt life.” And the felt life of this film is life in Waco, Texas, with an ordinary family going to church, saying prayers, taking sacraments. Collins is unimpressed by all this, & criticizes the wishy-washy religiosity that the Catechism of the Catholic Church would surely correct if given a chance. So much for felt life, for attending to things like context. The Christian artist will artfully weave into the story or film elements that are consistent with the faith of the Church, but these will not always rest on the work’s surface. And hopefully he will be able to trust his audience to pay attention to things like setting, locality, etc. Utinam sit, apparently. For more on this, cf. the Blog page & my entries on Flannery O’Connor.
Salieri is an appropriate reference here, as Mr. O’Brien (Brad Pitt) seems to think like him. His understanding of God is close to that of Job’s advisers & Salieri. He expects life, & God, to work on his terms. When his plant closes & he loses his job, he complains: “I never missed a day of work. I tithed.” This is a central strand in the film, of course, whose drama is set in motion by the death of Jack’s brother at age 19. Bad things happen to good people, even those who do their job well, who pay their taxes, who follow the way of grace. There is, as Job discovered, no “answer” to this. Malick treats this with the highest respect, & dramatizes the whole sweep of creation in order to frame the story of the O’Brien family. In other words, death & tragedy are brought into dialogue with creation, & the viewer is thus forced to ask difficult questions about how we understand ourselves as mortal creatures who inhabit a world dangling in the heavens. This follows the pattern of the Old Testament, in a way; the creation narratives took their final shape, we’re told, only after the tragedy of the Babylonian Exile. The experience of death, then, leads to the contemplation of origins. It is neither absurd nor pretentious to use images, narrative, & music to dramatize this pattern. Nor is it subChristian or new age-y.
—Anthony DiStefano
Great stuff here, Tony. I agree with you completely on Collins’ review in FT. His review reminded me of why I dropped my subscription to that journal a few years ago. I also agree with your assessment of Bowman’s possible haste in his review. As I read both reviews, I was thinking of something you touched on briefly (I would have liked further consideration on this point). Both reviewers make no mention whatsoever of the passage from Job at the beginning. I believe this sets up the entire context of the story. It’s arguably one of the most important components of the film, akin to postscript in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Malick didn’t just “stick it” there for no reason. My guess is the whole concept for the film came out of Malick’s pondering that very passage from Job. The reviewers complain that God is silent in the film, but He is not in Job and the other wisdom literature of the Hebrew scriptures. Besides, isn’t the creation enough? What more need God say? Moreover, a voice for God is always problemmatic and often comical in film. Collins and Bowman complain vociferously about the voiceovers while simultaneously complaining that God is silent. You also touched on another important element in the film: the score. I was particularly moved by Malick’s deft use of Gorecki’s (sp?) Symphony #3, The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Have you listened to this? If not, I recommend headphones, a dimly lit room and high volume. Lots of great stuff on the purpose of art. I’m not sure I agree with art being primarily serving itself. This idea smacks of Dedalus near the end of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when he utters his non servium, prefering instead any mode of self expression he can find, divorced from any obligation to serve a higher purpose. I’d have to think more about your comments and quotes on art. It would have been effective I think to see a crucifix somewhere in this film.
I also haven’t heard anyone say anything about the tension between nature and grace playing out between the father and mother in the film. Father, of course, represents nature and mother represents grace. Nature seems to dominate throughout. Pitt’s character, symbolic of nature, does not seem to follow any arc. Nature appears just as incorrigible at the end of the film as at the beginning, even after the one feeble attempt of Mrs. O’Brien to defend her kids against the despotism of their father. This is difficult to understand.
A friend of mine also pointed out another interesting symbolic effect going on throughout the film. Sean Penn is constantly gliding silently up in elevators until the end, at which time he is seen descending. His environment is alarmingly sterile. I wonder what Malick was getting at there.
Tom Jay
Thanks for the comments, Tom. The idea of art “serving itself” is taken from St. Thomas & Maritain, & shouldn’t be equated with any modernist “art for art’s sake” agenda. Maritain is opposed to utilitarian understandings of art, in which art is forced to serve some “worthy” purpose, & the integrity of the process of artistic creation & the goodness of the finished project are ignored. Flannery O’Connor often comes back to this point in her criticisms of readers & critics who don’t pay any attention to the goodness of the story as story, instead focusing on the possible uses one can get out of a story (social criticism, “Instant Uplift” for Catholics, etc.). In other words, let’s judge a story, novel, film, painting, etc. not on whether it fits someone’s notions of truth, utility, social value, etc., but on whether it is well made. In an age like our in which utilitarian views are even more prevalent today, this is a hard, but necessary, message. (Go to the Quotes page for a few that pertain, & to the Blog page for some stuff on O’Connor.)
The Job opening, & the priest’s homily on Job, are of course important, as you note. So much of the film, I think, makes sense only in light of the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament, something especially Bowman pays no attention to. The contrasts found throughout the voiceovers are an expression of, among other things, the struggles the characters are going through, which strike me as similar to the struggles the Psalmists etc. are voicing.
I’d be careful to read the father as nature/the mother as grace. This seems to be the typical interpretation among reviewers, but this seems too easy for me. I don’t know; I need to think more about this. Why do you think they do represent these opposites? And I know I don’t agree with the view that the father is a despot. He seems a typical military father from the 1950′s; the scene of a neighboring father giving hell to someone is, I think, meant to be representative of what families were like. But Mr. O’Brien is also an affectionate father who genuinely wants to raise his children well, & the fact that Sean Penn’s character is conflicted about his dad suggests a more complicated relationship.
Perhaps the sterility of his environment represents the sterility of his life; can anyone look more glum than Sean Penn in those scenes?
Again, thanks for the comments.
Penn does look glum, until the final scene sequence, when he finally comes down from his seemingly incessant ride up the elevator and crosses that threshold (of grace?) on the beach.
A behavior that is widely practiced does not change the quality of that behavior. I don’t think Mr. O’Brien is a bad father. But, he is despotic. He insists his children call him “father” or “sir”, never dad. The fact that all the other men on the block do the same does not transform the behavior into something other than monolithic. The best you could say about it is that Mr. O’Brien is heavy handed. Again, I’m not saying he is a bad father. He cares deeply about his sons and he is teaching them what he believes they need to know to get along in life, which leads me to see him as representative of nature.
Mr. O’Brien’s favorite piece of advice to his sons is “You can’t be too good.” We know this because the line is repeated several times in the film. This is an important and necessary piece of advice for someone living in a world uninfluenced by grace. The only point at which grace seems seems to invade Mr. O’Brien’s life is when he is playing the organ or listening to Bach (though even in this there is something of frenzy – he almost tries to force his family to appreciate the beauty of it.) I think the father/nature – mother/grace analogy is demonstrated in the pivotal scene between the oldest son and the mother. She admonishes him and he turns on the porch and tells her point blank that he is not listening to her anymore. “What do you know about it?” he asks her sarcastically. “You let him run all over you, too.” Shortly after this we see the eldest son in a rare tender moment with his dad in which he tells his dad “I’m more like you than her.” It’s interesting he doesn’t say “more like you than MOM.” It’s a generic “her.” Why that indistinctness?
The mother/grace analogy is found primarily in two ways. First, she is the one giving the opening monologue about what she was taught about grace. Second, her “mantra” stands in clear contradistinction to her husband’s “you can’t be too good.” Mrs. O’Brien’s constant advice to her boys is to love always, the clear implication being that love is the only action that will keep one from becoming like those around one. This is exactly what is going on with the eldest son. He breaks windows, sneaks into a neighbor’s house and steals her underwear. It is at this point, when the boy’s nature is beginning to impose itself on his will, that we begin to hear the mother’s (grace’s) promptings. Again, these promptings are very different than dad’s. Lastly, it is Mrs. O’Brien who releases her son to God, not Mr. O’Brien. The latter is clearly still alive because we heard Penn apologize to him earlier in the film for something he said. The suggestion seems to be that the only way to peace is through grace.
So I don’t think it’s a stretch at all to see the nature/grace analogy in Father and mother. I think it’s very clear and it’s what drives the tension in the family. Why is Mr. O’Brien so unhappy? He is constantly complaining about how he’s has always missed his big chance to make good money. These are the legitimate, but very worldly, concerns of fathers (and nature). He also points out that he gave up his real love (music) to pursue a more practical course, like everybody else. The scene of the other father on the block only reinforces the dominance of nature in that setting and the lack of grace; or, we could say the dominance of practicality at the expense of beauty.
A brief comment on the purpose of art. Have you ever read George Steiner? I’m reading him now and the utilitarian view of art was something marxists embraced, first Lenin and later Stalin. There were what Steiner calls “para-marxists” who were a little more nuanced in their approach but they ultimately landed pretty much in the same place.
Tom
Steiner is wild; I’m not sure I’ve ever read anyone who makes more references to more authors, books, pieces of music, etc. He also makes David Bentley Hart sound like a preschooler with regard to vocabulary. The big words flow everywhere, at all times. At times I find this tiresome, like I’ve just walked in on a spelling bee for really cultured writers, but I will admit that “Real Presences” is one of the most provocative books I’ve read. Fascinating argument, with far-reaching implications. i need to reread that book. How about getting a few folks together. . .?
The utilitarianism of the later Marxists was rooted in the works of 19th-century Russian socialists, I think, which Dostoevsky famously railed against. The utilitarianism O’Connor objected to was less socially-&-politically oriented; the Catholics she accused of being utilitarian were looking for pietistic benefits & Instant Uplift (I love that phrase, which is why I always refer to it!). The brands of utilitarianism are legion; the utilitarians we will always have among us; etc. etc. The purposes of art: how about getting a few folks together. . .?
Good points on mom & dad O’Brien. Yes, dad is heavy-handed, materialistic, on the edge. The first time I saw the film I was on edge every time the family was together at table, as I was waiting for him to blow. When he did, though, he did seem to fight to restrain himself. I like how you note that even his enjoyment of Bach, Brahms, etc. was qualified. He sees music as a failed opportunity, I think, a dream he didn’t pursue & regrets his lack of action. Yes, grace does reach him through music, as I can’t help but think he is genuinely touched by something beyond schemes of profit & worldly success. This is why I hesitate to accept the either/or, mother=grace/father=nature thing. First, I don’t care for allegories, for reasons Tolkien articulated. Maybe Malick is giving us allegory here, & I am missing it. If so, I’ll turn & criticize him for the reason Bowman does & for which I criticized him. Secondly, Mr. O’Brien does seem at war with himself. When Jack claims that father & mother will always be at war within him, I think he is echoing what’s going on within his dad. Maybe I’m wrong. I like your phrase “the dominance of nature.” But surely that doesn’t have to mean “to the exclusion of grace”?
No, not the exclusion of grace. Father is open to the action of grace by because it is, in a sense, “natural” to man to have this receptivity, this capacity to be formed into something more than animal. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that father is mistrustful of grace, of its power to succeed in this world which is what he is preparing his sons to do.
A criticism I had of mom is that she is weak. She makes one attempt to defend her sons against their father’s tyranny but she is quickly subdued and is silent thereafter. Thus, her eldest, who witnessed all of this, son can say to her with confidence that she lets her husband “run all over” her, too. I think I used the word incorrigible earlier to describe Mr. O’Brien. That’s going too far, I’ll admit. There is a tension within him. Yet, we have to admit that his nature most often wins the day. His sons are left wondering if their father loves him at all. The only real connection we see happening is when the middle boy is playing guitar and his father accompanies him. Yet, as we also see clearly, this leaves the older son feeling left out. He has no way into his father’s nature, into his heart. The mother also is struggling, probably against her nature to take her boys and get the hell out of there, or to smack her husband or throw a plate at him for being such an asshole. She refrains.
Haven’t read the Steiner book you mentioned. I’ve only just begun to read a collection of his essays. I’m getting the sense you’d like to get a few guys together.