the death of the author

by Rupert M. Loydell

A Review of Field Notes from Elsewhere, Mark C Taylor (Columbia University Press, $26.95)

If, like me, you know Mark C. Taylor from his brilliant media philosophy or postmodern theology books, then his new book Field Notes from Elsewhere will come as a bit of a shock and a surprise. Instead of taut critical thinking, we get a journal-cum-biography written on the back of Taylor surviving a critical illness and the arrival of cancer. The 'elsewhere' of the title can be taken in several ways: the place of illness, death, or the place Taylor now finds himself - alive and well, but acutely aware that the end of his life is not too far off.

The book is beautifully produced, and is organised in 52 chapters, each with their own A.M. and P.M. sections, though despite rereading I have yet to find any sense of morning or evening within them. Perhaps they are simply when he wrote them, although this is in no way a diary. Any biographical story here is gradually revealed once the initial premise of and reason for writing the book is given. But Taylor is definitely present in this book, along with his family, relatives and friends, as well as some strangers and colleagues who have been significant to his life. The reader meanders through various encounters, friendships and situations, with constant reminders of immortality and death, and some short, often mundane, philosophizing.

The only book I can think of that bears any similarity to Taylor's is Philip Toynbee's End of a Journey, but Toynbee's volume is much more contemplative and more traditional in it's ideas of 'faith' and 'belief' and how to cope with death. Taylor's is more removed because Taylor is way removed from the notion of a personal, loving God, let alone any idea of afterlife, but also because Taylor is more used to exploring cognition, social dynamics and philosophy; there's a real sense of distance here, however personal Taylor gets.

Toynbee's book ends, in effect, with his death; with final diary entries and of closure, a story ended. Taylor's ends with a rather maudlin set of aphorisms, rooted in ideas of community and the realisation that death comes to all who live. Like a lot of this book, it can seem trite if you're not in the mood, exceedingly obvious even when you are. Do we need another book articulating the fact that we are all going to die, or is it simply another author indulging himself on the back of a number of groundbreaking and authoriative books?

I don't know the answer to this; at least I don't want to dismiss this book if other people find it useful. As everyone does, sooner or later, I've had to deal with death close-up and at a distance, and am all too aware that I am middle-aged and gradually getting nearer the end of my life. Faith and doubt have always gone hand-in-hand in my struggle to believe, and I've always found theologians and thinkers like Mark C. Taylor challenging and useful to read. Life doesn't get any simpler as we get older, and most of us realise that in some way family and/or community are all that we have to leave the future.

Field Notes from Elsewhere articulates these familiar ideas in perhaps an all-too familiar way. It's the one book of Taylor's I felt ahead of, that I'd read before, with little surprise or newness to be found within it's pages. I didn't feel challenged, surprised or that interested. In the end, with no wish to disabuse Taylor, who has clearly struggled to articulate a very personal engagement with the idea of mortality, these aren't notes from elsewhere, they are notes from exactly where we all are, from here.