What did I see today?

A few months back, I published a piece in the Los Angeles Review of Books about Yuri Olesha's memoir in fragments, No Day without a Line. At the end, I suggested that I planned to try the same experiment: keeping a notebook--offline--in which I wrote every day. The purpose was not only to recover a purer experience of writing in the midst of constant distraction, although that was part of it. I wanted to write in a way that placed me in a larger context than just inside my own head. I wanted to record, for better or worse, "the times."

I'm sure you've all been on the edge of your seats, wondering: How's it been going? Did she do it? Has she written every day? What are those little handwritten gems really like? Answers: So-so. Yes. No. I was amazed how quickly I regressed to my previous journal-writing habits, which is why I gave up the practice in, oh, 1995. The thing became, far more than I had hoped,  Compendium of Complaints. A Litany of Laments. A Chronicle of Cranky. It's not that I ever intend these pieces to be published in this form (unlike Olesha, who was ultimately writing for publication). It's the ease with which I tumble into the black hole of solipsism as soon as I believe no one is looking.

On one hand, I obviously need some space for blowing off steam, and perhaps writing it is better than dumping it on, say, one's husband night after night. On the other hand, I'm not convinced that "venting" is really all that helpful in and of itself. And the writing it produces is altogether useless.

What to do? The solution I've come up with is, no matter what I've written previously, before I close out the daily blurb, I ask myself: What did I see today? This is a variation on one of Olesha's fragments. And it forces me to think of something, even something very small, that I've observed. Often I find myself writing about it at some length. For example, yesterday I recalled seeing, during my daily walk around the neighborhood, a film crew setting up on someone's lawn. Why? I don't know. But then I began recalling details, like a man entertaining a child (his daughter?) by placing her in the driver's seat of his car. I presume he was trying to keep her out of the film crew's way. But who knows?

Anyway, I would have entirely forgotten about that if all I'd allow myself to do was grouse. Just a suggestion for those of you seeking a way to get words on a page.



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Monty Python as Self-Help, Lesson One: How NOT To Not Be Seen

Monty Python's "How Not To Be Seen" is a satire of 60s-era, government-produced educational films, which have their corollaries here in the U.S.



However, as an American, I am bound to derive a simple moral lesson from this absurdist sketch. And so I choose: Do Not Be Afraid.

OK, in all seriousness, I've been thinking about my own fear lately. Though I don't feel my life has been particularly traumatic, I've noticed how much fear has been the prevailing weather of my existence. It's mostly a matter of cultural heritage. My people are self-effacing. As Midwesterners we're accustomed to trudging out in two feet of snow to scrape off our car, and our neighbor's*--but not to sparking any form of controversy. In all situations, we keep our heads down.

I also don't doubt that being female has something to do with this. "Don't make anybody mad" has larger implications for us, as #yesallwomen has made so eloquently clear; that warning dovetails nicely with "No one cares what you have to say anyway."

So I tried to stay quiet. I really did. But then I wrote a book, and now I have to admit, I'm worried about what people will think.

Except, as Rachel Thompson reminds us powerfully, if you write through your fear instead of against it, people will thank you for your authenticity. Also, the people whose reactions you fear most may well surprise you with what they already understand and accept.

And, as Monty Python reminds us ridiculously, we're all going to die someday. More broadly, you will, in the end, be seen and (metaphorically) killed. The fact is, some people are going to dislike you no matter what you do. They won't like your hair, or your voice, or who you remind them of (possibly themselves). They won't like your role at work. In other words, by merely existing, you'll just rub some people the wrong way. As for others, perhaps you'll upset them more by your secretive, apparently withholding behavior. Why aren't you being more open with them? If you're a writer, why aren't you sharing your work?

In short, trying not to be seen is pointless and possibly even harmful in itself. So quit with the hiding, already.

*Note: I now live in California and haven't scraped off a car in nearly three decades.

Learning to trust the laughter

In selecting parts of my novel to read at events, I've been running up against a particular prejudice I didn't realize I harbored. It's actually really stupid. A lot of times, when I read my work to an audience, they laugh. Now, a lot of my work is satirical, which implies that if my audience laughs, I've succeeded. Besides, I personally like funny books, though my idea of funny may not be everyone's. Dostoevsky is funny. So is Richard Powers's new book, Orfeo. I didn't expect that, because these guys have long worn the mantel of Serious Artists who write about Serious Subjects.

So why does it make me nervous when people laugh? Because deep down, I fear the laughter means my work isn't serious. If you're laughing, you're making light of something, evading, skating on the surface rather than diving in.

But this isn't true! George Saunders talks about this all the time, possibly because the question comes up for him, too: are you really "just" making jokes? He recently said in Salon:

[Y]ou can’t play it large unless you play it small. And you also can’t eradicate one or the other. An amateur eradicates one or the other. A real writer would say, “No, both exist. Of course they do. Serious and funny. Hunger and satiation, they exist.” In a certain sense, you just have to see where you are in that cycle, and the story is an entity and response to itself.

The complexity is in saying, “Oh, this story is so funny. Is it a little too funny? Is it too silly?” And the writer goes, “Maybe.” Boom! And then something really significant happens, and the reader goes, “Oh, I misjudged you.” That’s a wonderful artistic feeling, when you’ve said to the artist, “I’m sorry, I misjudged you.”

There are different kinds of funniness, of course. What Saunders is getting at is that life's staggering complexity encompasses laughter as well as earnestness, and that one powerfully can set off the other--or incorporate it. Laughter isn't just a way of dismissing something--it can be a reaction of surprised recognition, a sign of empathy between reader and author. It can also contain deep darkness. I remember laughing hysterically with my mom at my dying father's bedside. But that's another story.

The point is, trust the laughter. Your own, and your reader/listener's.

Anyway, here's my cat, Bella, sitting on page proofs of Bigfoot and the Baby.

The "broken windows" theory of feminism?

I haven't read Lean In yet, because, until recently, I felt it didn't apply to me. I actually do work in corporate America, though as a consultant, and offsite, and for a small, woman-led company where all but one employee is a woman. Also, though I used to be "in management," I have since leaned out on that score altogether. I have determined that I do not like managing others. In my case, I would argue that this is not an entirely gender-based decision; my father always refused leadership positions throughout his career, preferring to focus on "the work itself." My mother stopped working outside the home after I was born. That is a whole other roiling kettle of fish and worms and what have you, which I will perhaps address elsewhere.

Anyway, I'm now thinking Lean In might have relevance for me, and for a lot of us, after all. As Frank Bruni put it in a recent column, we've received a deluge of reminders of "how often women are still victimized, how potently they’re still resented and how tenaciously a musty male chauvinism endures." But I still find myself shrugging my shoulders, thinking "what do you expect?," when I encounter such resentment and chauvinism personally. For me, such experiences feel like "no big deal" in the scheme of things. Millions of women deal with much harsher forms of belittlement and victimization than I do. Yet why shouldn't those of us who are relatively privileged stand up against those little, supposedly meaningless slights? Why wouldn't this lead, ever so quietly and gradually, to improvement, in the same way that repairing broken windows in crime-ridden neighborhoods seems to lead to a reduction in crime? Why not chip away, in our own small way, at the gigantic edifice of subtly demeaning rhetoric that we all participate in?

I'm thinking, for instance, of a moment a few months back when I went to observe a class of second-graders. The teacher introduced me to the class, and quickly asked me if I went by "Mrs." or "Ms." She actually might have offered "Miss" as the second option; I didn't quite hear. I have a Ph.D., so my correct honorific is "Doctor." But I felt I could not say that without sounding like a horrible snot. I don't use my husband's last name, so I can never be a Mrs. That left me with "Ms.," which I chose, hitting the "zzz" sound as hard as I comfortably could. The teacher introduced me, and the whole stupid moment was over in a second.

Except. Those second graders didn't get to see a woman called "Doctor." And I dismissed my own accomplishment in earning this degree, because I was afraid of looking obnoxious and possibly making the teacher herself feel diminished.

I gather that Lean In, though more focused on corporate settings, addresses these kinds of seemingly small snafus that professional women get entangled in all the time. Trying to avoid discomfort, our own and others' (and others' discomfort further contributes to our own, doesn't it?), we "lean out" of situations where we could be setting forth our qualifications and furthering our own--and other women's--interests.

Even now, I feel somewhat foolish for writing this post. Who cares what that class of second-graders thought my title was? I was only there for fifteen minutes; none of them will even remember me. And I did a nice thing, didn't I, by not contradicting their teacher in front of them?

But all these little stupid moments add up.

OK, once and for all: Is getting a Ph.D. in literature a waste of time?

Yes. No. Oh, who can say?

Well, in theory, I should be able to say. I got my Ph.D. in comparative literature [redacted] years ago, and I'm one of those twisted yet oddly grateful souls who didn't become a professor. I ought to have warnings and/or encouragement to offer those on the front end of the process--not to mention solace and/or encouragement to those, possibly drifting in adjunct limbo, who are now thinking of stepping all the way out. 

But I must start by saying: are we really still having these arguments? Really? Literally these same laments, and dismissals thereof, have been flying about for longer than the [redacted] years since I first ignored the warnings aimed at me. Nothing has changed. Tenure-track jobs still prove more elusive than starring roles in feature films. Universities continue to admit more grad students than they can ever hope to place in such jobs--because they supply cheap academic labor, because they represent the next generation of a culture and philosophy that at least some people hope to preserve, and because they still want to come. So it shall ever be, evidently. And while we non-professors--eventually--generally find satisfying alternative careers, we still seem to have no good answer to the question, What is a literature Ph.D. for?

My experience is just one experience. And even [redacted] years later, I find myself unable to wrap it in a comprehensive, persuasive ball of wisdom. Here, then, are some random questions and the answers I would give you, today, if you asked.

Would you do it over again, knowing what you know now?
No.

Are you still glad you did it?
Most days, yes. It has undoubtedly opened doors, though the person on the other side has often been surprised to see me there. I've learned to use that surprise to my advantage.

Did you learn to think better?
Probably. Yes. What kind of a question is that? I will say I learned to pay very close attention to language, although the attention was focused through a very narrow lens. Emotional reactions, including simply taking pleasure in an author's beautiful words, were right out. I hope that's changing. I now believe that this is a much better way to think about--and with--literature.

Did you learn to write better?
God, no.

Could you have tried harder to get a tenure-track job?
Yes. But the answer is always yes, isn't it? The best advice I ever heard was: If you can do something else, you should. I felt that I could, indeed, do something else, though it took me awhile to figure out what that was. Not everyone has the luxury of that kind of time, though.

Did others fail to warn you sufficiently?
I doubt it. We all think we're the exception. Sometimes we are. Warnings can scare off the ambivalent, but not the truly determined.

Is it necessary to humiliate your characters?

So I was happily reading this new and highly acclaimed novel. And then I stopped. Because, well, I had reached my limit on watching characters get physically humiliated. I won't go into detail, largely because I am squeamish. But the fact that I decided not to read any further got me wondering. Am I just squeamish? Isn't humiliation a powerful and real experience, which deserves a place in fiction just as much as any other emotion?

I would answer yes on both counts. But I sensed something else going on here, similar to what I've suspected any number of times while watching various movies and TV shows. The writer (or director) seems somehow to be gloating--if not outright enjoying the scene, at least calling attention to his or her daring in creating the scene in the first place. In other words, the characters suffer on behalf of the writer's quest for authenticity. This seems especially egregious when live actors must actually undergo the experience, or some convincing simulacrum thereof. I can't help thinking that a power game is going on, not only in the story, but in the making of the story. And I don't like it.

Maybe that sense of sadism is a natural side effect of depicting humiliation; the author is in the odd position of both creating the humiliation and sort of standing over it, watching, unable to help (because the story demands that the humiliation occur). The reader's in that position, too, because she imagines and therefore recreates the scene. I suppose this complicity can be an informative experience.

It also seems to me that the artistic depiction of humiliation (not to mention its comic counterpart in mainstream movies) is a recent trend that is only picking up speed. A humiliation scene is the equivalent of having your characters use smartphones--it shows you're contemporary. You "get" how the world works today. It's a calling card of realism.

I'm not speaking of stories about war and torture, in which humiliation has a different valence--it's acknowledged as a tool of an oppressive regime. I'm talking about "first-world" stories, garden-variety suburban tales of alienation, where this ugliness seems like an attempt to fulfill some function that the story otherwise might not manage. It's almost an insistence on the story's significance, and on the power of the author's words to stir strong feelings. Maybe suburban life *is* humiliating in a way that can only be expressed through the exaggerating airing of intensely private experiences. Anyway, it's only happening to fictional characters, right? And authors don't owe their characters any protection.

I still don't like it.

Revision: cutting out the boring parts

Elmore Leonard famously said the key to writing well is to "skip the boring parts." This is sound advice. Boring the reader is about the worst thing a writer can do. I also think that writers, with experience, can actually tell when their own writing is boring. In drafting such sections, they feel mildly persecuted, as if their boss has just told them to redo the budget. Similarly, in revising, they find themselves skimming over the same sections their readers will skim. Simply responding to this unease--whether or not you know its source--by cutting out these sections and finding something to replace them with will go a long way toward improving your writing.

But what, in the case of literary fiction specifically, counts as "boring"? I would say it's writing that does not stir emotion. More specifically, readers who read literary fiction seek emotional experiences that are both complex and powerful. This does not mean you need to be punching your unseen interlocutor in the gut at a rate of one hit per second. You want dynamics, as in music, fortes and pianos and everything in between. But it does mean that something emotionally interesting should be going on, virtually at all times.

This idea doesn't line up exactly with "show, don't tell." I believe "telling" (i.e., the well-done summary) can be emotionally satisfying. It also doesn't line up with "action," in the usual sense. Scenes of contemplation, descriptions of settings, and so forth can certainly move your reader. But you might ask yourself these sorts of questions: Is this section doing something, or just reporting something? Is this creating an experience, or is it merely duct tape holding the plot together? Above all: Do I feel anything here?

Is silence golden?

Insert usual excuses for not blogging here.

Plus:

I have been wondering lately about this whole imperative to say stuff on the Internet as often as possible. Where does this very recent, overwhelmingly powerful requirement to write in public come from? I think it's safe to say it comes from corporations, whose need to draw "eyeballs" to advertisements intersects powerfully with 1) the human need for connection and attention generally, and 2) writers' need to write and be read specifically.

Caveats:

1) This is not necessarily bad. There's a real discipline to rapid, public writing--which is still evolving, and whose shaky tenets many, many people don't practice. But still, discipline is good. Learning to write both reasonably well and reasonably fast is good. And who will finance this sort-of-real/sort-of-fake form of publication for aspiring writers, if not the makers of dangerous diet pills and fly-by-night, for-profit colleges?

2) My ambivalence about the compulsion to write is neither a satisfactory excuse for not writing, nor an indication I intend to give up blogging, or tweeting, or anything else.

3) I'm just saying.

What am I saying? I'm saying that last week I had in mind a post about the Ronco Rhinestone and Stud Setter, which was inspired by a pair of jeans I'd just bought at a thrift shop. They are Michael Kors, very nice, $14, but until I brought them home I was not fully aware of the large amount of studs adorning the front and back pockets. Normally I'm not a fan of adornments on jeans; I'm sure these will make my life a living hell if I forget and wear them through an airport scanner or if I happen to amble past a giant magnet. Also, they reminded me of Barbara Stanwyck in The Thorn Birds, stomping around the ranch with her dentures and bowed legs. By which I mean, too much stuff on jeans is either for 1) very young people or 2) old people trying to look young. Neither of which I 1) am or 2) wish to be.

But then the Sikh temple shooting happened, on the heels of the Aurora shooting, and those are just the awful happenings I happened to be paying most attention to, thanks to the Internet. A breezy post about the Ronco Rhinestone and Stud Setter had to be out of the question for at least a period of time (how long? Is now OK?). But was I supposed to say something instead about the shootings? Does saying something mean you are automatically more concerned than if you say nothing? I started to feel like the better move was to say nothing. Or, rather, that speaking just for the sake of speaking was not helpful. I don't know what *is* helpful. But maybe the traditional "moment of silence" is more than just a mask for "let us pray," when you're not supposed to say that publicly. I'd like to think it also means: let us shut our traps for just a second. Let us pause. Let us not jump and react and flail our arms and demand attention. Perhaps only silence is as enormous as certain events, and speech is too small a thing in such circumstances.

So there. I said something about saying nothing. You're welcome, Internet.

Introverts unite! (No, wait, not so close ...)

Susan Cain's book about introversion made quite a splash in January, and the ripples are still going strong. Her work came back to my attention recently, as I've been doing some consulting for schools that help children "come out of their shells." There's much to be said for teaching introverts to advocate for themselves, and to present themselves in ways that don't accidentally put others off. We need basic social skills to function in any society, and enabling people to master them is honorable work.

On the other hand, Cain's right--our culture does have an extroversion bias. When we talk about bringing kids (or adults) out of their shells, we often imply that introversion needs to be treated and overcome, rather than worked with or even celebrated. I notice, too, that Cain points out a difference between introversion and shyness, where shyness is a fear of social judgment, and introversion is simply a preference for less stimulating environments (a glass of wine with a good friend, rather than a big party). This definition of shyness does suggest a problem, a form of self-tormenting that isn't necessary and doesn't do anybody any good. Whereas introversion, properly recognized, can be a great thing for all involved. We like solitude, and we get a lot done that way. We also, as Cain points out, are not anti-social, but differently social (see wine, above). We think before we speak, which others tend to appreciate.

It really has been only in the last few weeks that I've started to consider introversion as a positive trait, rather than something to be "dealt with," i.e., concealed. Perhaps we introverts could have calmer and more productive lives (though many of us have these already, because we seek them) by minimizing the struggle to appear extroverted. That is, we still need to go out in the world sometimes and be friendly. But I suspect there's some wasted effort in dissing ourselves for not being more extroverted, and in trying too hard to conceal our inclinations.

I am the grumpiest optimist I know

Having weighed in on busyness the other day, I thought I'd take a crack at "optimism." This article, too, is from the NYT. It's by Jane Brody, who I generally think is a good person and a purveyor of useful advice, although the chirpy puritanism of her columns always puts me on edge. I also rather dislike the Good Examples she often serves up, as in this one--as if all we must do is be like these wonderful people (who often include Brody herself)--and all will be well.

OK, I know: would I take health advice from an ironic, crotchety health reporter? Yes, I would, but probably others wouldn't. And certainly the column format is part of the problem. In the piece in question, for instance, along with the Good Examples, we get a series of bullet points on how to be an optimist. To wit:

• Face your fears. [...]
• Re-evaluate events in your everyday life. [...]
• Practice mindful meditation. [...]
• Take control over how you feel instead of letting feelings control you. [...]
• Laugh. [...]
• Be fully engaged. [...]

All six points include1-2 sentence explanations, which I'm leaving out. So the program is not quite this simple. But, you know, bullet points.

Oh, palm to forehead! If only I had known about these bullet points! How could I have been so foolish, and been a pessimist? Optimism is so easy, and therefore I, a sometimes pessimist, am a jerk. If only I had known to laugh, to be engaged!

Here's the thing. I agree with these bullet points; and in the course of a lengthy treatment for depression, followed by finding a really cool guy to marry, and then very gradually figuring out what kind of life I wanted to live, and how to live it, I practiced all of them, and I continue to try to do so. I think being happy is better than being sad. But not because it's my duty to be happy. Being sad is not a failure--it's often an accurate and sensitive reading of your situation, and of the world more generally. If anything, being sad feels like the proper duty, except that it prevents you, often, from trying to make things better. And it sucks. So it's all kind of a feedback loop, and part of the problem is this terminology.

I propose we dispense with the terms "happy" and "optimistic" as the stated goals for ourselves and the surly loved ones we wish to help. As this article sort of gets around to explaining, what we are really talking about is "confidence" and "persistence." A book called The Growth Mindset also talks about the centrality of persistence, and the new, confidence-building feedback loop that's created when we train ourselves--over time--to persevere.

In other words, optimism is not an attitude, but a practice. Sayings like "It's all in your attitude" give us the wrong idea--that we are thinking or perceiving wrongly, and all we have to do is make ourselves see the glass half full. This leads, in my experience, to a whole lot of mental self-kicking (see above), which makes the pessimism and paralysis worse. But persistence is often not delightful or easy. It's hard. That is the point. It is not a matter of flipping a switch in your brain. It means sticking with it for the long haul. It means learning to tolerate the unpleasantness of slogging through obstacles, even or especially when a reward is not certain. Yes, there are ways to do that, including meditation and laughing and so on. But the difficulty of persisting, especially for those who aren't used to it, somehow gets left out of these "just do it" articles.

I speak, of course, for the less chipper beings of the universe. I gather some people are either born with or endowed early on with persistence and confidence and even sunniness, and they can't understand why people like me are talking about having to learn these traits. Why wouldn't you just go out and get what you want? I can't really answer. But I also can't see how this column could help the type of person whom it's aimed at. Sunny just-do-it-ism is either going to bounce right off them, or make them feel worse.

"I am the laziest ambitious person I know."

I very much enjoyed Tim Kreider's piece on busyness in yesterday's NYT. Mostly because it validates me, and the many hours I spend draped on the couch, with or without a cat on my sternum. I am valuable! I have insights, not despite but because of my staggering capacity for sloth! Lazy ambitious people, unite! Oh, never mind. It's too much trouble.

Only one little question nags at me. I used to spend equal if not more amounts of time in a very similar mode (couch, semi-dozing state, though no cat back in those days)--and it was a sign of depression. I do sense a difference in my current way of doing nothing, but the difference isn't quite clear enough to make me feel 100% confident in my new laziness. I suppose, in depression mode, my mind was actually racing and obsessing, rather than drifting and dreaming, as now. I also had a feeling pointlessness, of just wanting the day to be over--of lying low, till the storm that was the day passed--which I don't have now. I like my days.

Still, I continue to suspect my idleness. And I continue to admire the busy, even though Kreider suggests a great deal of busyness is an expression of fear. Idleness can be fear-driven, too.

But hey, at least I wrote a blog post about it!

"Show, don't tell" and hoarding

I spent the past two days purging old clothes from my closets. I hauled five bags of stuff off to Goodwill, and upon returning home, I felt ... awful. My sense is that one is supposed to feel liberated on such occasions, and also not a little holy for contributing to charity (though one is also aware that clothing donations from the first world can interfere with nascent clothes-making businesses in the third). While I kept reminding myself of how lame it is to hang onto stuff I don't wear, when others might be able to use it, when I drove away from the Goodwill container I felt almost like I was fleeing the scene of a crime I had just committed.

Yes, things are just things. And yet they are not. In the same way that in fiction, the specific, telling detail is a window into a character's psyche, things--in our consumer society, anyway--are portals to the past. To me, even the most trivial piece of clothing I heaved into the Hefty bag had some bit of memory stuck to it, along with lint and cat hair. I almost always remembered where I'd bought the thing, and what life was like at that time (I really have hung onto things far too long). If the piece of clothing was a gift, well, so much the worse. How ungrateful I felt for never wearing that jacket (even if it didn't fit, or made me look like Carmela Soprano, or both). How I felt like I was stabbing the giver in the heart, like I was tossing a kitten out of a car into the rain.

It's my guess that although I may be nuttier than many in this area, I'm not alone. (I am fortunate, too, that our condo is small enough that full-on hoarding is simply not possible.) Consumerism, I think, depends on this fear of loss, especially of the loss of memory. We buy to ward off Alzheimer's, and we give to keep others from forgetting us. Those aren't the only reasons, of course, but they come into play--maybe more so when we feel ourselves isolated, and people close to us start dying, and we start to think of how many people we've already lost track of over the course of our lives.

What will keep our memories for us, if not objects? Stories? Facebook? The Cloud? Fine, but we can't touch and see these things in the same way I could have--but didn't--wear that TV-test-pattern sweater I bought in England two-plus decades ago. You can tell stories to kids and grandkids, but if they're not connected to tangible things, those stories mutate and dissipate over generations, even if they're written down. Objects don't change, although they do decay, and their original appeal or function can become questionable.

This is where Buddhism is supposed to help, right? Impermanence, impermanence. Further: giving up clothing is nothing compared to giving up one's life, which is what Memorial Day is about. Yet Memorial Day is also about sales. It really seems like this endless circulation of stuff through our lives is really the presence (presents?) of death.

Anyway, I've moved more junk into the empty spaces in the closets, so there's lots more space in my office now. That's kind of nice.

In praise of the writerly surprise

I've been dipping into George Saunders's essays in The Braindead Megaphone. I've always admired Saunders as a writer of the kind of surreal, hilarious, and deeply sad fiction I wish I could come up with myself. But man, can he rock an essay.

I suppose that what makes his fiction great is something he also does--less often, and therefore perhaps more strikingly--in his nonfiction: He surprises us. I don't mean that his work is startlingly good, or shockingly original, though that's true. I'm talking about these little explosive surprises that he drops in, mid-sentence or mid-paragraph, that make you stop and go, Wow.

Case in point, from "Thank you, Esther Forbes." This is a celebration of Saunders's childhood discovery of Johnny Tremain, and with it, the fact that fiction did not have to be awful:

Before Johnny Tremain, writers and writing gave me the creeps. In our English book, which had one of those 1970s titles that connoted nothing (Issues and Perspectives, maybe, or Amalgam 109), the sentences ("Larry, aged ten, a tow-headed heavyset boy with a happy smile for all, meandered down to the ballfield, hoping against hope he would at last be invited to join some good-spirited game instigated by the other lads of summer") repulsed me the way a certain kind of moccasin-style house slipper then in vogue among my father's friends repulsed me.

Who on earth would think of comparing the mediocre prose in a 70s children's fiction anthology to a moccasin? But the thing is, I think we all make leaps like this. Only for must of us, these leaps remain in our subconscious. We'd never articulate them to ourselves or others, because it feels ridiculous that we get the same feeling--the creeps--from reading a stupid story as from looking at someone's slippers. Neither of these things should give us the creeps in the first place, right? The fact that both do is beyond wrong, even a little shameful. Yet it's true. I instantly recognized this feeling of getting the creeps from an apparently, indeed strenuously innocuous story. It's the insistence on innocuousness that causes the creeps to descend.

Later in the same essay Saunders drops a much more shocking bomb, quoting the bureaucratic prose of an SS officer on how it's better to leave the lights on in the gas chamber before turning on the jets, to keep "the load" from screaming and pushing against the door. Good God. Is it really a straight line from the story of the tow-headed boy, through the slippers, to this grotesque evasion of responsibility for mass murder? Well, Saunders suggests, kind of. An inauthentic relationship to language is no small matter. It means you can distance yourself from what you say, and what you think you mean. Using language well--giving it its full due--means taking responsibility.

Much better, then, to be honest about how a bad story reminds us of a house slipper, in that both made us feel deeply weird. That kind of honesty is a small salvo in the fight against the bureaucratization of the soul. Plus, when you say it out loud, it turns out to be so right, it's hilarious.



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Freaks and Geeks and mining your childhood

We just watched Episode Fifteen of the eighteen total episodes of Freaks and Geeks. As we near the end, it's all starting to seem darker and sadder, because we know there will never be any more episodes, ever, and also because the later episodes explore darker themes (addiction, accidental pet death, accidental/deliberate human almost-death).

Still, it's a beautiful show, possibly the best TV show ever made. And one reason for that is mentioned in one of the commentaries. For months before they actually wrote the scripts, the writers sat in a room and dredged up all their most painful/embarrassing/astonishing high school experiences and shared them with each other. They then used these in the scripts, as they actually happened, or seemed to have happened in memory.

Now, sitting in a room and trading high school horror stories sounds like something I would gladly forgo in favor of a two-hour visit to the dentist. I also have a problem with fiction that sounds too much like someone reliving his or her personal victimization. (The Missouri Review has a blog post on the related matter of defining characters by their traumas.) However, F and G avoids such maudlin pitfalls, and instead just feels perfectly real and honest.

How did they do that? My guess is that it came about precisely because the writers refused to protect themselves when telling their stories to each other, and thus refused to protect the characters. Of course we are not talking hideous tragedies here, only the ordinary but highly significant failures of adolescence. Yet, speaking for myself, I can well imagine wanting to somehow "spin" these excruciating memories either to make myself look better, or to punish my youthful self more severely (which is another form of self-protection). But what happens if you just tell the story without trying to steer the reader's or viewer's reaction one way or the other? The F and G writers, as they mention in other commentaries, often didn't set out ahead of time to write comedy or tragedy; they just let the stories play out. Some turned out to be funny, some were sad, and most of the time they were both.

I'm not sure what it would take for me to be able to tell such stories honestly in fiction or--god forbid--memoir. Perhaps the group process the writers used helped: they all must have realized that everyone had experiences that still gouged their insides out when they thought of them. Their personal disaster wasn't so bad in the great scheme of things. In the same way, when we see the stories on TV, as viewers, we find them funny, forgivable, and ordinary in the most redeeming sense. Maybe that's the best kind of group therapy (mass group therapy) of all.

Staying in touch with your writing

Over the last few weeks I've been fairly consumed with editing work. Which is good! Very, very good! But it has left me a tad depleted on the verbal front, not to mention reluctant to spend any more time in front of a computer screen than necessary. So I didn't work on my novel that much.

However, this wasn't the same kind of hiatus that I've allowed to happen in the past, because I recalled some advice I read years ago. I really wish I could remember who wrote this, but the gist was, even if you can't actually write, find a way to "stay in touch with your writing." So I decided to do that. At least once a day, for maybe fifteen minutes, I thought about my novel--specifically, the point where I'd left off on my revisions. I did this while making dinner, or just before going to sleep. I tried to fully inhabit that place in my novel, without rushing off to take notes or open the file on the computer. So as not to overload the experience with layers of worry, I told myself I'd recall what I'd imagined when the time came, and that the important thing was to be in that place, if only for a few minutes every day.

That seems to have worked. Later in the week, and yesterday, I found an hour here or there to actually open the file and work. And unlike in the past, when I just shoved my own work completely aside in favor of the paid stuff, I was able to dive right back in. I did remember what I'd thought of (and expanded on it). Also, I suspect that setting aside the anxiety about not writing actually helped me find time to work. I accepted that I might only have an hour, or less, but that I could still do something with that time. I didn't spend time lamenting the time I didn't have.


In short, I think worrying about not writing is worse than simply not writing. This doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing enterprise, i.e. either you have four hours a day to work, or you have nothing. Writing can happen in the interstices. So find a way to stay in touch. That's my advice for today.

On the thin ice of a new day (on Twitter)

Yes, I caved. My first day on Twitter was largely spent blocking a passel of unusually friendly young women who for some reason wish to follow me. It will take me awhile to get comfortable with the form, which seems to me less like birdsong, and more an endless series of hiccups and burps. But that is a human song, is it not? Besides, there are many great writers, like Colson Whitehead, who have mastered the form. So I will study, and learn.

Because it has come to my attention that the profession of "writer" means something quite different than it did just a few years ago. Competence in a wider variety of forms has become necessary. Saying I didn't use Twitter almost began to seem like saying I didn't use commas. I suppose I'll be using fewer of those now...

And so the leaky ship that is my online privacy springs another hole. The leaky vessel that holds my time, ditto. My first tweet was the title of an obscure Jethro Tull song that seems to have inspired exactly no one. Ian Anderson, are you out there?

Writing as meditation

At one time I had something like a real meditation practice. That has not been the case for awhile now, largely because I can't figure out how to meditate with cats either a) climbing on me or b) hurling themselves at the closed door. No, really: this is a good excuse.

At any rate, I am now applying meditation techniques to my writing. For the last several weeks I have just not felt good about anything I've written, which has led me to put whatever creative energy I have into thinking up excuses for why I don't have to write today. The bottom line is, I don't want to write if it's going to suck, and there seems to be a better than even chance these days that it will.

So what I've decided to do is institute my own personal NaNoWriMo, except without, necessarily, the "No(vel)" part. From now till the end of January, I am going to write 1,000 words per day which are nominally related to the story idea I am currently least repelled by. I am not going to craft my sentences or delete sections that seem irrelevant, and above all I am not going to pounce on the thing and strangle the life out of it by declaring: Aha! I know what this is about! This is definitely a novel/novella/short story, from the point of view of the alien baby, and there's a big shoot-em-up at the end! There is to be no, repeat, NO anticipation.

This is related to the technique in Insight Meditation in which you don't try to stop yourself from thinking, but rather notice the fact that you are thinking, without pursuing any particular thought. You notice, and then return to the breath, as they say. So I notice the anticipation (This is a novel! I know it! Ooh, I can really build on that scene!) but make no commitments to it. I just go back to churning out words.The words are the breath.

Like meditation, this process sometimes really feels like crap. But I have become aware of how little tolerance I have both for writing poorly, and for not knowing what I am doing--that is, not being able to anticipate the outcome. In the past, it seems like I have been able to work around this and get stuff done anyway, but now, for whatever reason, this is not so. Therefore I am resorting to the kinds of writing advice one always gets in beginning writing classes, and which I have generally scorned.

I really don't know what will happen, but at least I'm writing.

On finally finding Franzen's Freedom

So there's this book out? It's called Freedom? Jonathan Franzen wrote it and it's all the rage! Oh, wait, this isn't 2010. Heck, it's hardly even 2011 anymore. However, never let it be said that I don't follow literary trends. I just don't follow them at the same time as everyone else.

All this is to say that I am finally reading Freedom, an activity I'd actually been dreading. Having read the excerpt in the New Yorker, and then the zillions of sugar-and-or-bile-coated reviews, I had formed certain expectations, the most notable being that Franzen would be condescending to his characters, especially his female characters. As much as I loved The Corrections, I sensed this condescension, even contempt, and the New Yorker excerpt of Freedom seemed to have the same whiff about it, only in spades.

Well, this does turn out to be true in Freedom. With the caveat that I have not finished the book, I would say that the portrayal of Patty does seem to come from an on-high, nose-wrinkled perch. Her "autobiography" in particular is puzzling in its language. It's supposedly her own work, and seems to show an intentional lack of familiarity with the finer cultural attainments , but it also contains numerous Franzenian displays of wit and acuity that a character like this would, by the author's own definition, not be capable of.

And yet the damn thing is riveting. I cannot wait to sit down with the book at the end of the day, and as soon as I open it, I am absorbed. Why? How? First off, although the author seems unable to directly overcome his condescension, it also seems he has found a way to work with it, so that it becomes an integral part of the story rather than working against it. The novel so far is starting to look like the author's battle with his own schadenfreude toward bourgeois mediocrity. And I think that's a battle more of us are fighting than we might like to admit. Everyone, truly, knows about jealousy and the joy of discovering that one's seemingly perfect neighbors or coworkers or whomever don't have it all, after all.

But what are we to do with this embarrassing recognition of our own failings to be sympathetic and good and decent? A lesser author might revel in it, but Franzen does not. He seems to use this discomfort with his authorial stance to drive himself to find deeper compassion for his characters. Whatever schadenfreude he and we are experiencing does not reduce the characters to cartoons: quite the opposite. Patty and the other characters are portrayed with such careful detail, such nuance, such understandable ambivalence and contradiction, that I, at least, have ended up rooting for them more than I might have in a less overdetermined portrait.

Also, let's face it, the book is something of a soap opera. Neighborhood spats, filial dynamics gone terribly wrong, guilt-ridden yet passionate love affairs...Plus it's quite funny.

So, hey, check out this new book by this budding young talent. Remember, you heard it here last.



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On being a rereading chicken

Lisa Levy's post on The Millions about rereading reminds me of a class I taught at Stanford called "Does Literature Matter?" One of the assignments was to reread a story, book, or poem that meant something to you in the past, and write about how you and the story had both changed. This assignment always seemed to produce the best papers. As Levy suggests, I think that's because rereading generated multiple layers of reflection: yourself then, yourself now, yourself now seeing yourself then. And somewhere in the middle, the "text itself," which is always changing as its readers change. To reread is to consciously experience the fluidity of yourself, and all the things that surround and bolster your "self."

That all sounds great and important. And yet I, myself, am not that much for rereading. I suspect I'm afraid of being sucked into the past, and/or former selves, many aspects of which I would rather not dwell on or in. When I do reread, I tend to do it for some purpose other than pure pleasure: for the Borrowed Fire experiment, or to study techniques of a writer I admire (which is really the point of BF anyway). Those are partly the hazards of being a semi-professional reader.

What do I reread purely for pleasure? Popular science books mostly. Maybe that's because my own emotional history isn't bound up in them. There aren't a lot of places in them to deposit one's hopes, fears, and dreams for later--possibly blindsiding--retrieval.

Would you read hypertext fiction?

Paul Lafarge has a very interesting piece in Salon today about hypertext fiction. Like Lafarge, I remember that moment in the 1990s when it seemed like hyptertext fiction was really the next big thing--as important an invention as the novel itself. But then, as Lafarge puts it, nothing happened. To his credit, Lafarge still thinks it's a form worth pursuing, and to his even greater credit, he is writing a hypertext story himself, Luminous Airplanes.

I took a look at the story. It's very well designed, and the craft, so far, looks lovely. But I have to admit that my overall feeling, as soon as I began clicking through, was anxiety. I followed a link, hit "back," and did not know where I was going back to. Was it the same "back" as if I had not followed the link? It didn't seem so. I stopped reading, becoming completely concerned with the question of "where I was." I wanted a flow chart.*

Now, presumably, the more experienced reader of hypertext is not only accustomed to the loss of a single main thread--the handrail of linearity, if you will--but embraces that loss. Non-linearity is the point. So maybe it is just a matter of experience, and of being willing to let myself be lost, not unlike the way one is "lost" in a good, absorbing novel. Perhaps I am like those audience members who ran screaming from the oncoming locomotive in an early example of another new art form, film.

After all, I have spent the past few months trying to read Pynchon's Against the Day (75% done!) and have been lost, as in disoriented, plenty of times. I go leafing back through the heap of pages I thought I had already read, trying to find out who the hell Cyprian is, because apparently I have been introduced to him, but danged if I remember. Lafarge makes the further point that many proto-hypertext novels already exist, such as Hopscotch, Pale Fire, etc., in which flipping back and forth and all over the place is a necessary part of the reading experience.

So what is the difference? Maybe the still-unpleasant aesthetic experience of reading on a computer, which is already being fixed by e-readers and the iPad. After reading Lafarge's article, I do feel I ought to give hypertext another try, as a reader if not as a writer (probably, definitely not as a writer). But it does feel like a lot of work.

*I should point out that there is one, and also a fair amount of help/orientation text, which I was too unsettled to poke around in on my first visit.