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24 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
An infant's primer in Existentialism, we find in this book a weighty treatise on the personal politics of agency and empowerment, taking ownership and authorship of one's own life.
Such is the force with which this Heideggerian hero is hurled into the world that he has not stopped bouncing since. This is Mr Bounce's facticity - the set of circumstances, both of himself and his environment, in which he finds himself as a subjectivity. That is, his ceaseless bouncing is the hand that life has dealt him, owing to his unique position in time, in history, as a conscious being in a sensory world.
The phrase above is the key to this tale - 'he finds himself as a subjectivity'. In the early stages of the story, his experience is more that of an object as he randomly bounces his way through his life, exerting next to no control. It is important to be aware, as ever with Hargreaves, that this is not merely a matter of the physical, the material. The most crucial passage of this masterwork is where Mr Bounce is beaten around like a tennis ball by two players who appear to lack any concept of his personhood. This is just as we are all to some extent shunted to and fro by the whims and vagaries of das Man, The They - the unthinking, amorphous collective abnegation of Will. Here we confront Bad Faith - inauthentic existence.
Unlike many though, perhaps due to his particularly vivid and immediate experience of this phenomenon, Mr Bounce is spurred into action. In a visit to a doctor (of philosophy?), Mr Bounce is presented with the perfect solution - a pair of heavy boots.
Acknowledging his facticity he also transcends it, through choice - the active exercise of free will. Newly grounded in the uniqueness of his being, his bouncing ceases - the emancipatory conclusion of this work is the achievement of agency, authentic being.
Such is the force with which this Heideggerian hero is hurled into the world that he has not stopped bouncing since. This is Mr Bounce's facticity - the set of circumstances, both of himself and his environment, in which he finds himself as a subjectivity. That is, his ceaseless bouncing is the hand that life has dealt him, owing to his unique position in time, in history, as a conscious being in a sensory world.
The phrase above is the key to this tale - 'he finds himself as a subjectivity'. In the early stages of the story, his experience is more that of an object as he randomly bounces his way through his life, exerting next to no control. It is important to be aware, as ever with Hargreaves, that this is not merely a matter of the physical, the material. The most crucial passage of this masterwork is where Mr Bounce is beaten around like a tennis ball by two players who appear to lack any concept of his personhood. This is just as we are all to some extent shunted to and fro by the whims and vagaries of das Man, The They - the unthinking, amorphous collective abnegation of Will. Here we confront Bad Faith - inauthentic existence.
Unlike many though, perhaps due to his particularly vivid and immediate experience of this phenomenon, Mr Bounce is spurred into action. In a visit to a doctor (of philosophy?), Mr Bounce is presented with the perfect solution - a pair of heavy boots.
Acknowledging his facticity he also transcends it, through choice - the active exercise of free will. Newly grounded in the uniqueness of his being, his bouncing ceases - the emancipatory conclusion of this work is the achievement of agency, authentic being.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
'Mr. Bounce' is either a short but entertaining picture book, or alternately a metaphor for the artist whose visionary nature makes it hard for him to fit in with the world around him. Mr. Bounce, disturbed by constant uncontrolled bouncing, goes to a doctor (representing the bourgeois rationalist mindset) who gives him a heavy pair of boots to stop him bouncing. But the boots lead to his downfall as an artist - they are so heavy that he crashes through the floorboards.
Conclusion: artists should never listen to the advice of the rationalist types who seek to restrain their spirit. It's better to bounce unpredictably than crash through the floor like a ball of lead. But better still is the artist who has learned to CONTROL his bouncing, like Goethe, and that is what Mr. Bounce should have tried to do. Sadly, he chose to listen to a two-bit doctor instead.
Conclusion: artists should never listen to the advice of the rationalist types who seek to restrain their spirit. It's better to bounce unpredictably than crash through the floor like a ball of lead. But better still is the artist who has learned to CONTROL his bouncing, like Goethe, and that is what Mr. Bounce should have tried to do. Sadly, he chose to listen to a two-bit doctor instead.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Wonderful books, and the last page of this one caught me by surprise and had me laughing harder than my nieces I was reading it for
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