ABSTRACT
Two key concepts hover within the picture illustrated in this chapter. The first one is challenge and the other is inertia. Inertia is an outer phenomena seen from within—the dead weight and opaqueness of "things"—and it is interplay between inner and outer rigidity in everchanging combinations. This chapter focuses on two writers, who may or may not have contemplated the word friction but illuminate it from two angles—Doris Lessing, working through the nitty-gritty of existence, and Rebecca West literally penetrating the concept as such. In art the experience of friction may lead to outwardly insignificant results, which suddenly illuminate by the thoughtfulness and thoroughness through which one arrived at them. A noble or at least trained mind will certainly help one bear, or make use of, friction. It is only if one can savor it that wrestling with something superhuman would leave broken and blessed with the identity from this encounter.
