Kalman's Hubris

 

Matthew Spear

Dr. Juniper Ellis

EN346D.01 Seminar: Humor Studies

20 March 2023

The Principles of Uncertainty

            Maria Kalman’s The Principles of Uncertainty cries out to me as a desperate attempt to portray a faux reconciliation with death which the author may not be as comfortable with as she might like to believe. Kalman returns to the theme of death, and more specifically, the finite nature of life, multiple times during this book of illustrations and thoughts, For example, in the first section she uses exclamations such as “POOF” and “Goodbye *blank*” multiple times to refers to the passing or extinction of species and people such as Dodo birds, Baruch de Spinoza, and Johannes Kepler. In this manner I see the thin veil of Kalman’s nonchalant demeanor slipping. I believe based on my impressions from this boom that Kalman would like to believe herself to be and portray herself as someone who is comfortable with mortality, comfortable enough even to make light of it through jovial quips about the passing of other beings, despite the death of her husband from cancer in 1997. Her meditation on having tea and cake with her aunt by the seaside in Tel Aviv where she suggests her aunt’s kitchen is her own immediate heaven again suggests to me an aloof and false humility. She has her moments of humility, but even these seem to me to be merely employed by her as part of her ethos, part of her rhetoric by which she portrays herself as a wise and simple and unselfish being who is contented with her lot in the world. Well, I don’t buy it. I think she is just as scared as the rest of us, if not more scared, about her mortality and the inevitable death that awaits us all. Additionally, I do not appreciate her attempts to portray herself as if she isn’t, I find it insincere and vulgar. The end of things is not something to be grappled with lightly.

 

 

 

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