Proust on how to write a great big book

Continuing from last time ... Twelve tips from the master:

1. All this writing and just one book?

“I explained to Albertine that the great men of letters have never created more than a single work ...”

2. The grind gets it done:

“it is not the desire to become famous but the habit of being laborious that enables us to produce a finished work ...”

3. The effort can even be tiring:

“Perhaps some of the greatest masterpieces were written yawning.”

4. Don’t admit to being unoriginal:

“In this book ... there is not a single event which is not fictitious, in which there is not a single personage “a clef”, where I have invented everything to suit the requirements of my presentation ...”

5. Just because I use the first person, doesn’t mean it’s me!

“As soon as she was able to speak she said: “My ——-” or “My dearest ——” followed by my Christian name, which, if we give the narrator the same name as the author of this book, would be ‘My Marcel,’ or ‘My dearest Marcel.’”

6. It’s really about YOU:

“every reader, as he reads, is the reader of himself.”

7. Obsessive writer, obsessive reader:

“the writer, in creating each character, would have to present it from conflicting standpoints so that his book should have solidity, he would have to prepare it with meticulous care, perpetually regrouping his forces as for an offensive, to bear it as a load, to accept it as the object of his life, to build it like a church, to follow it like a régime, to overcome it like an obstacle, to win it like a friendship, to nourish it like a child, to create it like a world, mindful of those mysteries which probably only have their explanation in other worlds, the presentiment of which moves us most in life and in art.”

8. Don’t be preachy-preachy – or at least don’t admit to it:

“that vulgar temptation of an author to write intellectual works. A great indelicacy. A work in which there are theories is like an object upon which the price is marked.”

9. They won’t understand!

“I was soon able to show an outline of my project. No one understood it.”

10. Be your own favourite author:

“I read the article [that I had written] forcing myself to imagine that it was written by some one else. Then all my images, all my reflexions, all my epithets taken by themselves and without the memory of the check which they had given to my intentions, charmed me by their brilliance, their amplitude, their depth.”

11. Just reveal the great universal laws of human nature:

“It is the feeling for the general in the potential writer, which selects material suitable to a work of art because of its generality. He only pays attention to others, however dull and tiresome, because in repeating what their kind say like parrots, they are for that very reason prophetic birds, spokesmen of a psychological law. He recalls only what is general.”

12. And remember, for the publisher it’s all about the money:

“the impenetrable solidity of certain commercial houses, booksellers’ for example or printing presses, where the wretched author will never succeed, notwithstanding the diversity of the persons employed in them, in discovering whether he is being swindled or not.”

Marcel the joker

In search of lost laughs

I have just finished reading Proust’s “In search of lost time”, in the translation by CK Scott Moncrieff (vol 1-6) and Sydney Schiff (vol 7), Centaur Editions, available on Kindle.

Literary types argue over the merits of this translation, and it has been contended that it is better than the original French – a mischievous wit suggested that, if so, it should be translated back into French.

Proust could have fun:

... he began once more to cough and expectorate over me. “Don’t tire yourself by trying to speak,” I said to him with an air of kindly interest, which was feigned.

... he said of one of M. Verdurin’s footmen: “Isn’t he the Baron’s mistress?”

“... You must know far more than I do, M. de Charlus, about getting hold of sailors.”

... his stock of Latin quotations was extremely limited, albeit sufficient to astound his pupils.

... he had that detailed knowledge of Paris only to be found in people who seldom go there.

She looked like an exhausted swimmer far from shore who painfully manages to keep her head above the waves of time which were submerging her.

... the Duchesse de Guermantes’ cheeks which had remained remarkably unchanged though they now seemed compounded of nougat ...

His formerly brick-red skin had become gravely pale; silver hair, slight stoutness, Doge-like dignity and a chronic fatigue which gave him a constant longing for sleep, combined to produce a new and impressive majesty.

Somebody mentioned a name and I was stupefied to know it applied at one and the same time to my former blonde dance-partner and to the stout elderly lady who moved ponderously past me.

... the Princesse de Guermantes’ locks, when they were grey, had the brilliance of silvery silk round her protuberant brow but now having determined to become white seemed to be made of wool and stuffing and resembled soiled snow.

He declared that I had not changed by which I grasped that he did not think he had.

... for three years she had been taking cocaine and other drugs. Her eyes deeply and darkly rimmed were haggard, her mouth had a strange twitch.

“You took me for my mother,” Gilberte had said and it was true. For that matter it was a compliment to the daughter.

For this American woman, dinner-parties and social functions were a sort of Berlitz school. She repeated names she heard without any knowledge of their significance.

So people said: “You’ve forgotten. So and so is dead,” as they might have said: “He’s decorated, he’s a member of the Academy,” or — which came to the same thing as it prevented his coming to parties — “he has gone to spend the winter in the south ” ...

Hearing that Mme d’Arpajon was really dead, the old maid cast an alarmed glance at her mother fearing that the news of the death of one of her contemporaries might be a shock to her; she imagined in anticipation people alluding to her own mother’s death by explaining that “she died as the result of a shock through the death of Mme d’Arpajon.” But on the contrary, her mother’s expression was that of having won a competition against formidable rivals whenever anyone of her own age passed away.

Messing with LCN DNA

The delights of Bayesian probability reasoning are sufficient to draw from me another case comment!

Our Court of Appeal, in Manoharan v R [2015] NZCA 237 (11 June 2015), has said that a likelihood ratio of 20 (meaning 20 to 1, or in context, 20 times more likely under the prosecutor's hypothesis than under the defendant's) is “not strong” [52].

This was an LCN DNA analysis and obviously compared to the usual DNA results of likelihood ratios in the many millions, 20 is not high. But in the context of a case it can be, as can be seen from the results of applying Bayes’ Theorem (this was a single-issue case involving independent items of evidence).

I should emphasise that the single-issue nature of this case ("who did it?", an actus reus issue) simplifies the use of Bayes' theorem. Where several elements of the offence charged are in issue, the theorem must be applied to each separately, and only evidence relevant to that issue is used in each application. This prevents, for example, a huge scientific LR on the issue of identity from swamping the issue of intention. For each issue the "probability of guilt" means the probability that that issue is proved to the standard required for it to be established.

The likelihood ratio used by the scientists in declaring a match is not necessarily the same as the likelihood ratio for the activity evidence used by the fact-finder in the trial. This is because the defence may have an innocent explanation for the match which brings the denominator of the likelihood ratio (the probability of getting the match on the assumption that the defendant is innocent) close to the value of the numerator. Then, the probative value of the test result for the prosecutor would be very reduced or even extinguished.

We can compare what the probability of guilt would have been if the scientific LR had been in the millions and the trial LR numerator approximately 1, with what the probability of guilt would be under the revised scientific LR and corresponding new trial LR, for priors-in-combination (by which I mean, the ratio of probability of guilt to probability of innocence, based on all the other evidence in the case and the starting assumption about the probability of guilt and the probability of innocence, for this single-issue case) of various levels. (For multi-issue cases the priors will be assessed separately for each issue.)

A perspective on the size of a LR of 20 is obtained from considering a case where the evidence is not given, compared to one where it is.

• If, without the evidence, the probability of guilt is 0.90, then with the evidence that probability increases to 0.99.

• If, without the evidence, the probability of guilt is 0.60, then with the evidence that probability increases to 0.96.

• And, if, without the evidence, the probability of guilt is 0.30, then with the evidence that probability increases to 0.89.

These 3 examples show that evidence with LR = 20 can have strong probative value.

Perhaps the Court under-emphasised the strength of the DNA evidence in this case. It approved defence counsel’s submission that the jury should have been told that in New Zealand it was likely that there are 200,000 people who would have the same profile. The fallacy is to include people who had no opportunity to commit the crime.

Update: on 28 October 2015 the Supreme Court refused leave to appeal: Manoharan v R [2015] NZSC 156. The Court could see no basis to indicate that the Court of Appeal had been wrong when it had held that there had been no miscarriage of justice.

Another update: Bernard Robertson has commented on this case in"Likelihood ratios in evidence" [2016] New Zealand Law Journal 22. He points out that the Court at [39] correctly describes the witness's evidence as stating a likelihood ratio, but earlier in the judgment, at [17], it had transposed the conditional when referring to the same evidence. Mr Robertson also points out that the "20 times more likely" assertion should have been clarified because juries will not know what to do with a likelihood ratio, and that in this case source level propositions (where the sample at the scene came from) were mixed with activity level propositions (how it got there).

Search seminar

Notes for the talk on the law of search that I gave at the Auckland District Court on 1 July are available here. They are complementary to the more detailed paper that has been distributed to lawyers, and now is available here.

Proportionality and the Rule of Law

As you know – although I’m sure you wouldn’t admit it in front of your drinking buddies – there are few more enjoyable ways of spending a wet Queen’s Birthday holiday weekend than by struggling to understand a book written in technical language that you feel you should understand.

So it is with Proportionality and the Rule of Law: Rights, Justification, Reasoning (CUP, 2014), a collection of essays by 18 contributors, edited by Grant Huscroft, Bradley W Miller, and Grégoire Webber.

I can only speak of the Introduction, as the book is rather expensive, and even the ebook seems over-priced. At least Amazon gives us a free sample, which includes the very excellent (as opposed to sort-of excellent?) Introduction by the editors.

So my little game, if you think of it like that, is to translate into ordinary lawyers’ English the technical language of the Introduction. But beware of the risk that I do this with a clarity born of misunderstanding.

“Proportionality” has a range of meanings and can refer to a method or to a goal of decision-making. I wouldn’t want to confuse it with other kinds of decision-making, such as logic, formalism (the application of rules to facts), morality (what would be the morally right decision), pragmatism (what result would work), although there can be some overlap.

Balancing of competing values is a proportionality method of decision-making. So is the rather different ends/means balancing, but this can be seen as a method or as a goal. Using reasonableness to limit what is acceptable is also a proportionality method. Sometimes proportionality endangers rights, in balancing them against other values, and sometimes it compromises moral values, where what is right yields to a greater right or some greater interest.

What happens to rights in proportionality reasoning can vary. Rights are not necessarily eroded in the balancing process, which will usually recognise their enhanced weight by virtue of their status as rights, but if an issue of limitation is being considered then there is a risk of erosion if proportionality requires that.

Proportionality can require recognition of the autonomy and dignity of the person, and this may guide the interpretation of legislation. Legislators, however, may have a greater awareness of rights and social interests than do courts, so executive decisions should be judged by their method rather than their outcome. This concern would limit the role of proportionality reasoning. Indeed, it is arguable (although I am not convinced by this) that proportionality is too abstract a method to be of use to judges.

You could say that morality is important and that proportionality reasoning is not a complete method for judicial decision-making. There are risks attending proportionality reasoning: irrelevancies may be taken into account, things that are doubtful may be treated as certainties, a judge may yield too much to extraneous determinations, aspects of the public good may be ignored, and a judge may have resort to a personal political philosophy.

In their conclusion to the Introduction the editors ask some pertinent questions, which the essays apparently leave the reader to consider. I put these in my own words, sacrificing the subtleties. Does proportionality erode rights? What about absolute rights? Should judges take more account of the reasons that motivate enactments? Should legislators, rather than the courts, use proportionality reasoning? Where proportionality reasoning includes morality, does it prefer some moral theories over others? How should the dangers of proportionality reasoning by courts be overcome?

Well, it’s a shame that the book is so expensive. Too expensive to read. Hopefully my clumsy summary of its Introduction will make some of the essayists’ interesting ideas more accessible.