`Formulaic Redundancy'

I remember three dreams from childhood, all bad, and the scariest involved a telephone. I was drifting down the stairs of our house, from the second floor where our bedrooms were to the short hallway leading to the living room and kitchen. I turned the corner into the kitchen, and on the left was the telephone, a heavy black rotary-dial model, as most of them were in the nineteen-fifties. At the center of the dial was a white paper disc printed with our phone number and covered with transparent plastic. In my dream, the disc was replaced by an unblinking but living eye, like the one atop the pyramid on a dollar bill. The dream was silent, and that, combined with the sensation of drifting toward the eyeball telephone was horrifying.

I remembered this dream unexpectedly while reading Kafka: The Decisive Years, by Reiner Stach. The book is laced with interesting digressions, including one on early telephone use, and on Kafka’s aversion to the device – an aversion I’ve always shared. I think of the telephone not as a means of communion, but a way to maintain distance, giving and receiving cold information without revealing much about one’s self. It’s protective and secure, and was even more so in the days before caller-ID. Here’s Stach:

“Kafka, who always sought closeness, preferred the slow and challenging medium of the exchange of letters, but he was reluctant to use the telephone, particularly with women, although this medium offers to a greater degree the illusion of physical presence The formulaic redundancy of many telephone conversations today proves Kafka right: neither speed nor directness of a medium automatically creates intimacy. The casual use of the telephone is a cultural development of recent vintage. . . . Telephones force us to respond, without necessarily knowing who is on the line, whenever the telephone rings, and there is no recourse if the other party suddenly hangs up.”

Fortunately, the other party has no recourse if we hang up. Kafka would be appalled by the faux intimacy of e-mail and instant-messaging, and the false sense of community some prophets of technology have claimed for them. The telephone still feels like a big, disembodied eye – or ear – that I have reluctantly permitted to enter my house.