Writing during the apocalypse -- part five-ish

Obviously it's not easy. That my previous post was in late January speaks volumes. The last few months have felt like years, and doing any work voluntarily, as opposed to under strict instructions or deadlines, has seemed close to impossible.

Nevertheless, here I am.

In the last few weeks I've tweeted rather proudly that I've started writing for 20 minutes a day. Rather than focusing on word- or even page-counts, the only thing that matters here is the time spent. You can just open your file and stare at it for 20 minutes and close it again. But if you're like me, you'll at least start seeing sentences you'll want to change, and from there get a few ideas on how to proceed.

So far, my new--yes, dystopian--novel is eight pages long and has the meandering format of a mostly un-outlined freewriting exercise. But so what? At this point the process is as much about note-taking and idea-generating as actually writing a story. And I find I have ideas in the hours I'm not at the computer, which means there's a there there, and that's reassuring.

The closest thing I can relate the T___p era to is watching a close family member slowly, inexorably, painfully die. It's hard not to feel helpless and sad and frustrated and angry, and to suspect that one's little acts--political, artistic, social, professional--make no difference whatsoever. But my greater fear is of allowing myself to give up, and of looking back on myself in a few years--if we're all still alive--and realizing I rolled over. And wasted the time that still belonged to me.

Persist.

On writing during the apocalypse--part three or four of many more

A few weeks or months ago (time in the T__p era is already a blur, events and hours run together as if in a dream), I lamented one of the many problems of writing in the beginning of the end times for America. The particular problem concerning me was the need--I felt--to give all stories and novels an explicit totalitarian context. Anything written before November 8, 2016--especially written *right* before--seemed newly non-credible. How could anyone write about, say, a family coming apart at the seams or vampires falling in love without acknowledging that it all takes place under a completely fascist regime? But then again, how to stay out in front of all that this regime can and will do, so that even your worst predictions don't end up seeming quaint by publication time?

This, as you might imagine, has proven a mostly paralyzing mindset. Trying to plan a new novel and a new story, I found myself adding layer upon layer of complexity, trying to inject government perfidy into every aspect of my character's lives. Too many threads competed with each other and the gears of narrative ground to a halt.

So now I'm thinking of starting very small. As Jonathan Franzen said in a Powells.com interview years ago, "The real pleasure in writing [The Corrections], for me, was discovering how little you need." I'll begin with one character, one story line and work outward, rather than first attempting to create a whole world system that will never be as strange or sinister as the one we now inhabit.

I have a feeling the larger totalitarian context will arise of its own accord.

More thoughts on writing and living during the apocalypse, which is not going away

This article on Flavorwire, "How Do We Comfort Ourselves When Staying Vigilant (and Anxious) Feels Like The Only Responsible Option?," really spoke to me. Three-plus weeks into the Upside Down, I'm still mostly unable to concentrate on anything but scouring Twitter for any sign of hopeful news (occasional!), confirmation of my worst fears (frequent!), and concrete actions I can take (quite a few, though I never feel sure they are "helping").

I've also read several articles by members of marginalized groups saying something to the effect of: "Feeling anxious and voiceless, white liberal? Welcome to my world." This is very true. It's now clear that one effect of privilege is the ability to relax on a regular basis, to assume that everything will be more or less OK in the end--because it usually is, more or less, for most of us. So now we know. And it isn't fair or reasonable to expect sympathy for the shock and sadness and weariness we suddenly feel--though solidarity is a different matter. We can bond over these feelings, and channel them into collective action.

But what does it mean if I still want to relax sometimes? Is that a slippery slope to relaxing all the time, to assuming other people are taking care of it, to deciding that my daily phone calls to Congress or my petition-signings or my donations are too-small drops in the bucket anyway, so why continue? And what about when I'm called upon to do something larger--as I now doubt will be?

Is accepting the same as "normalizing"? No, this and other articles tell me. Accepting on some level is even necessary for action. We must know something is real before we can take real steps against it. But accepting also feels scary, because it means we really can't go back; the world and life we had are truly gone. Yet, can we recover anything of that old life? And what does it mean to try to do so?

This leads me to a problem I'm having with resuming my writing. My basic assumptions about the world I'm depicting--even if it's a not-quite-real world to begin with--have overturned. Everything now seems to require a dystopian frame, an overarching totalitarian menace above and beyond, say, the standard dysfunctional family or workplace. Something like the Eye of Sauron, perhaps, or Nazi Germany. Raise your hand if The Man in the High Castle now looks completely different than when you first watched it.

So in addition to not really feeling like writing (though I am getting there), I don't yet know how to write in this new (to me) world. But part of accepting--and not normalizing--means learning to do that.

On (fiction) writing during the apocalypse

I've seen a lot of discussion online about whether fiction writing still matters, post-November 8. I have wondered the same thing. Who cares about our carefully crafted worlds, our beautiful sentences, our quirky yet lovable characters, when the American experiment may be at an end? Shouldn't we be doing something with a more immediate effect, that reaches out to more people than those who already agree with us?

Here's the provisional conclusion I've come to. We need to keep writing, no matter what it is that we write. We're going to need good stories to get through this, including stories that aren't overtly political. (And by "good," I mean by the same definition as we used before November 8--nuanced, not overly didactic, respectful of the reader's intelligence, etc.) Let's not censor ourselves. Someone else may try to do that soon enough.

However. Let's also not kid ourselves that fiction writing represents a sufficient form of defiance in this new era. We're all going to have to be braver than we ever were before. We're going to have to feel scared and sick a good part of the time, as we push ourselves beyond our previous limits. I had to fight with myself just to call my liberal Democratic Congresswoman's office yesterday--I'm that phone shy. And I'm going to have to do a lot more than that. I'll have to be ready to protect people who are being harassed or threatened or even physically attacked (even as I may be a target myself, though that's less likely). I'm going to have to march, and do many other things I haven't even thought of yet, but which will scare the hell out of me, and which I may try to find excuses not to do, because I'm so scared, and still partly unwilling to believe that any of this is really happening.

So I must not use my "liberating" or "subversive" writing to excuse inaction in other areas. But I also must keep writing and reading--for respite as well as inspiration. We will all need both, in abundance.

Thoughts on Day Two of the Horror Clown Show

Like almost everyone else, I believed the polls and the polling aggregators. They said don't worry; I didn't worry. I worried a little, only because the unlikely outcome was so awful and unthinkable. I donated money to Clinton and the DSCC repeatedly, but I didn't phone bank. I should have. Maybe it would have helped. But I was pretty confident that we would pull this out, and that on Wednesday I'd be giddy with relief and proud of electing our country's first woman president.

Then the impossible happened. And now that I have finally managed to get some sleep and choke down some food, I'm beginning to get my head around how and why this was not only possible but highly probable. Of course, there isn't one simple reason. This was a perfect storm of reasons, absent any one of which we'd probably have another President Clinton. White racism and sexism. White women who, it turns out, feel their race privilege is more important than their bodily autonomy. Media false equivalence. A Democratic candidate who embodied the establishment, against a Republican propped up by the establishment but authentically voicing (because he really feels it) inchoate anti-establishment rage. Cowardly, opportunistic, dissembling Republican leaders. Pollsters who missed the true story, badly, and those of us who wanted to believe them, so we did. Comey. Russia. Wikileaks. Clinton's strategic missteps. On and on.

Of course, as many writers and thinkers I respect have already started doing, we need to talk about what to do next, and then act. Not once, but over and over and over till we are sick of acting, but still we must. Life as we knew it is now over. It not only can happen here--it did happen here. It is happening. How do we stop it?

Slate has posted a number of articles with concrete suggestions, like this one and this one. We can also donate to the ACLU, and Greenpeace, and numerous other organizations protecting human rights and the planet. Blue Staters  and even Red Staters can push their legislatures to do what California's has already done: vow to resist the regime and protect all residents.

If we're in relatively privileged positions, it also behooves us to listen--really listen--to those whose very lives a Trump presidency immediately threatens: people of color, LGBTQ people, religious minorities, sexual assault survivors, immigrants, disabled people. Do not say, "Don't worry, it will be OK." It will not be OK for these people. Do not say, "I know exactly how you feel" and then start detailing your feelings at length. Listen quietly. Offer a hug. Then promise that you will work to stop this shit.

And then stop this shit. Every day.

Joseph Welch: Have you no sense of decency, sir?

Now might be a good time to re-watch this.

Must unconventional female characters be punished?

So I just finished reading Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger. I almost didn't buy it because of this cover:


Shop Indie Bookstores

Someday I will write a screed about literalism and book covers, but, OK, it was the 80s. And Moon Tiger won the 1987 Booker Prize, which struck me as a good sign.

Still, when reading the back cover copy, I had my doubts: if this was "the life of a strong, independent woman, with its often contentious relations with family and friends," was I in for a tale of this woman's eventual comeuppance? As Claudia Hampton "lies alone in a London hospital bed," reviewing her life, will she come to regret her choices--her aloneness, above all, showing how wrong she has been?

[SPOILER]
No. And, therefore, yay!

Claudia, a best-selling history writer, worked as a war correspondent in Egypt during World War II, where she met the love of her life and, soon enough, lost him. And while this love affair is presented as the heart of the story, and of Claudia's life, it doesn't represent Claudia's one chance to settle down and have the normal life she secretly wanted--it wasn't, and she didn't. Her loss doesn't impede her from going on to a successful career, despite the obstacles that stopped less determined--and less abrasive--women at that time. The affair ultimately is no more and no less than heartbreak, which all of us, conventional or not, will experience at some point in this life.

Claudia does have a child with another man, whom she never marries. But motherhood doesn't change her. She doesn't find it, or her daughter, Lisa, very interesting--and here's where I think Lively does an especially good job of criticizing without condemning or pitying. The story is told from multiple points of view, so we sense the daughter's pain as her mother once again brusquely dismisses her. But we are also discouraged from making easy judgments. We come to understand that these two are simply made of different stuff, and they're doing the best they can under those circumstances. Lisa craves convention as much as Claudia loathes it. Perhaps Lisa's conformity is her rebellion against her mother, much as nonconformists rebel against their straight-laced families, but no matter. As the novel unfolds, we see both of them accepting their own and each other's limitations, while not being exactly happy about them.

And in the end Claudia [SPOILER] does die alone. But this is not a punishment or comeuppance, but, as I read it, a kind of triumph. Lively suggests that aloneness can be beautiful and satisfying--at any rate, no more imperfect than "proper" family life.

This is where Moon Tiger departs from another, more recent story with a non-conforming female protagonist, Claire Messud's The Woman Upstairs. This book sparked a much-needed conversation about "likable" female characters; in a now famous interview, Messud sharply pointed out that "likability" is an absurd, sexist, and shallow demand that male authors and characters don't have to contend with. Still, I read The Woman Upstairs as ultimately supporting traditional definitions of female success. Nora defies conventions for female protagonists, but not convention itself: she is angry because she hasn't been able to get married and have kids and succeed as an artist by her early forties. Lively, in contrast, allows her protagonist to suffer the downsides of defiance while still showing that defiance was worth it.

I don't mean to suggest that novels should have a particular political agenda, or that Moon Tiger is "better" than The Woman Upstairs because the former is more radical. But I do think that more books like Moon Tiger would be good for us all.



Shop Indie Bookstores

Where does self-reflection come from?

This post on the Zimmerman verdict by William Saletan makes the insane suggestion that both parties in the murder of Trayvon Martin were equally at fault because each made a snap judgment about the other. Yes, Saletan says, Zimmerman "profiled" Martin, but Martin also "profiled" Zimmerman, assuming he was a pervert out to get him. Well, Zimmerman was out to get him--expressly so. Martin's assumption that Zimmerman was dangerous was entirely correct.

Nevertheless, Saletan did make one point that got me thinking:

In Zimmerman’s initial interrogation, the police expressed surprise that he hadn’t identified himself to Martin as a neighborhood watch volunteer. They suggested that Martin might have been alarmed when Zimmerman reached for an object that Zimmerman, but not Martin, knew was a phone. Zimmerman seemed baffled. He was so convinced of Martin’s criminal intent that he hadn’t considered how Martin, if he were innocent, would perceive his stalker.

Saletan wants us all to be more reflective, to pause to see ourselves as others might see us before we go flying off the handle and shoot somebody, or maybe call them a name. That's all well and fine. But what could have happened differently in Zimmerman's life that would have enabled him to consider how Martin might have seen him?

Here's where people like me often go into a high-minded spiel about the value of a humanities education. Sure, it won't get you a job, especially in this economy, but it's these intangible things that make the study of literature and philosophy so worthwhile. Studying fine literature (as opposed to, say, genre fiction populated by vigilante cop-heroes), presumably under the wise tutelage of an expert in the field, would have helped Zimmerman take a step outside himself. He would have thought, "Aha--if some stranger were chasing me and reaching for something, I might feel threatened! Therefore, I ought to back off!" Or, even better, he would never have blended the rather modest position of neighborhood-watch volunteer with his Dirty Harry fantasies. He would know the difference between life and (bad) art.

But that all sounds rather feeble to me right now. Because what would motivate someone like Zimmerman to take such classes in the first place? Why would he even care how he appears to others? (And by "how he appears" I do not mean Do I look cool? Do I look manly?--which he plainly does care about in abundance. It means genuinely seeing another person's point of view as legitimate and important.) Self-reflection holds little appeal in our culture; it seems opposed to action and suggests dithering and weakness. Why would someone who feels weak to begin with want to become more so?

Does it all come down to parenting and one's earliest experiences? And if so, what would motivate parents to teach their children empathy, as opposed to always being tough and, you know, standing your ground (which somehow seems to imply encroaching on others')? I don't think God and religion help here, either, since Zimmerman said his killing Martin was "God's plan." A different interpretation of God might help, but then we're back to asking where that interpretation comes from. So, what to do? How to make reflection--that least visible of human activities--cool? We can't make TV shows about people thinking. Even I would be bored by those. More shows that suggest negative consequences of violence and vigilantism might be nice. But, again, how to interpret those, assuming one already loves that craggy old vigilante sheriff in the battered old hat?

So I guess education--free, excellent, public education, from pre-k through, oh hell, college--remains our best bet. I still hope that education can help people use words rather than guns to solve conflicts.

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.

A brief but passionate rant about education

I break my usual Monday silence to share some thoughts that came to me after reading this article. Its overall point is that homeschooling must be more closely regulated. While the author, Kristin Rawls, acknowledges that few formal studies have been done on the matter, anecdotal evidence suggests many homeschooled kids, particularly in fundamentalist movements like Quiverfull, are not achieving even basic levels of literacy. The reasons this may be happening look compelling: overwhelmed mothers with large numbers of children to educate, along with full responsibility for household chores and an ideology that holds "moral" (i.e. religious) education far above the factual and intellectual kind.

Fair enough. But it's also true that public (and probably even private) schools across the country are also turning out illiterate kids at an embarrassingly high rate. The fact is, this country has always had a ferociously conflicted attitude about education: parents' aspirations for their children to better their circumstances crash head-on into the old frontier suspicion of "book learning" (you don't want some weakling with his nose in a book next to you when a bear, or an Indian, is charging). Although I have no evidence for this myself, I suspect our ongoing debates about education policy, and the current fad for threatening and punishing educators, speak directly to this ambivalence. American individualists (and I'm one, in my own way) hate that we need education and educators. We hate that someone else knows more than we do about something, and that we have to subordinate ourselves, or our kids, to that person's expertise. Hence the appeal of homeschooling: it says that no one knows what's better for kids than their own parents do--no matter what the subject. The rugged individual merges with the expert.

But it's not just homeschoolers who feel this way. The recent decision by the New York City Public Schools to publish their highly problematic rankings of teachers gives non-experts another weapon to attack those who think they're so damn smart. Look, I get that there are bad teachers who are hard to root out of the system. I get the need for some objective (or close to objective) measure of students' success, and for accountability to both the school system and parents. I was lucky enough to attend excellent suburban public schools, and I still had a handful of teachers who were out-and-out lunatics, who traumatized me. But in this country there's a deep suspicion and even loathing of anyone who dares to educate others. And while I lack expertise in education policy, let me suggest these two culturally based efforts, which all of us can apply this very moment and into the future:

1. Encourage the aspirations of children and adults who seek education. Do not mock them.

2. Encourage the aspirations and work of educators. Do not humiliate them.

What art is for: yet another explanation

Reading Adam Hochschild's review of Laurent Dubois's new book, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, in the NYT Book Review, I was drawn to these lines: "American officials declared, accurately enough, that the Haitian government was in bad shape and needed reform. But as the troops on the ground discovered, like their counterparts in Iraq and Afghanistan, no one likes to be reformed at the point of a foreigner’s gun."

We've all read sentences like that last one hundreds of times in the past, oh, ten years, right? The point seems simple enough, and yet, as stark as that reality is, the failure of huge numbers of policy makers to understand it is more so. This problem goes beyond the well-known failures to become familiar with the invadee's language, history, culture, religion, etc., though these are encompassed by the overall problem: the failure of imagination itself.  In Haiti as in other misadventures, invading powers could not--or would not--imagine what they might do if some other country tried to impose its values on them by force, even if they agreed with some or most of those values.

In literature classes I've taught over the years, we've often discussed the role of fiction in fostering empathy. In fiction, we are given direct insight into the minds of other people, albeit fictional people, a position we are absolutely denied in real life. (In fact, even in nonfiction works in which the author tries to reconstruct the thoughts of, say, George Washington, that Washington is necessarily fictional, because we cannot know the real thoughts of the real Washington.) Martha Nussbaum, for one, has argued that this experience of putting oneself in the place of another (or another in the place of oneself, maybe) transfers to real life: for Nussbaum reading fiction, at least certain realistic kinds of fiction like Dickens's, makes us more empathic, i.e. better.

Personally I would not go that far. In my experience, it is possible to voraciously read the most refined literary fiction while remaining an asshole. And I don't think reading Hard Times would have done anything for all those who jittered with anticipation to invade Iraq; it would have fallen on blind eyes, as it were. Something else is involved in making that leap, in having both the ability and the desire to make that leap. But this thought did occur to me: if nothing else, the existence of fiction and other forms of art remind us of the importance of the leap--that is, of imagination. Where imagination is valued--widely praised, engaged in, and made available in the richest possible variety of forms--the leap is valued. Trying to picture what it is like to be someone else, even someone not obviously similar to oneself, will come easier. Will seem like a more obvious thing to do. Will not seem silly or beside the point in deciding what to do and how to live.

So bring on the art--art we hate, art we love, art we aren't sure about. The more the better.

About that gender gap...

Interesting piece on Salon today by Laura Miller, reflecting on the Vida survey on women in literary publications. Bottom line: the most respected journals in the country have far fewer female contributors than male, and review far fewer books by women than by men.

This is an old story, as Miller points out. But Ruth Franklin and her colleagues at The New Republic took a closer look at the numbers, and confirmed what many already suspected: the root problem is that fewer books by women are being published, despite the fact that women continue to buy and read far more books than men do.

However, as Miller explains: "If women were only -- or even primarily -- interested in books by women, the logic of the marketplace would dictate that publishers should release more titles by female authors." But it doesn't, because women are willing to read books by men; whereas the reverse...not so much.

That's certainly true in my case. My own Borrowed Fire series provides a most egregious example--which does bug me, but thus far not enough (and this is most telling) to make much of an effort to be more inclusive. These days, apart from BF, I'm reading popular science books rather than fiction, and I am pleased to report that the one I'm currently reading, Einstein's Telescope, is by a woman, Evalyn Gates. But I'm trying to remember a contemporary novel by a woman that I've really enjoyed recently, and keep coming up with Rivka Galchen's Atmospheric Disturbances--which I read two years ago.

Since then I have read at least one other contemporary novel by a woman, a major award winner, which I won't name because, well, I didn't really like it that much. I mean, it was fine. It did what it set out to do, which was explore the complex intergenerational dynamics of a family. The characters and situations felt precise and real, impressively so. But. That subject matter in and of itself just doesn't interest me. I'm sure that's partly because my own life doesn't really mesh with that pattern; at any rate, what's currently called "women's fiction" or "book-club fiction" for the most part doesn't grab me. I want a stranger reading experience--odder structures, more far-out themes. Even *if* a family story remains at the center. (See The Brothers Karamazov.)

I remember reading a review of Atmospheric Disturbances that commented on--or marveled--at the fact that women don't often write novels like this, with unreliable narrators and scientific, even science-fictional premises. Actually, I think the reviewer was making the point that women may very well write books like this, but they don't often get published. Women writers are largely funneled into the category of "women's fiction," i.e. domestic, realistic fiction, whereas I suspect men are not at all constrained in this manner. Which means women who have other tastes will end up reading male authors to satisfy them.

On Vida, Percival Everett points out (as others have before him) that had a woman written Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, it would have been received and packaged very differently. I can definitely picture that. Instead of "the Great American Novel," "a sweeping saga of American life," or whatever, it might have been called "a heartbreaking tale of a mother struggling with her wayward child, unsatisfying marriage, and a brutal secret from her past." And I probably would not have wanted to read it. Mind you, I myself have not yet read Freedom, although I dearly loved The Corrections--I think mainly for its intricacy and its complex voice, though I can't be certain that if it had been packaged as "women's fiction" I wouldn't have liked it less. (I also liked the DeLillo-esque drug that was all things to all people. A little sci-fi touch always helps for me.)

So what can be done? Are female readers (and writers) like me just oddballs, outliers of the literary marketplace? As long as that market keeps generating money for those who already have it, change will be more a matter of principle than of economic pressure.

But I, for one, will make more of an effort to seek out non-"women's fiction" by women.

Posted without comment

An interview with David Kato, the Ugandan gay-rights activist, who was recently beaten to death with a hammer.

Dracula: An E-pilogue

Having just bid a fond (and somewhat relieved) farewell to Dracula, I see Bekka Black has taken the novel's fascination with communications technology, and run with it. iDrakula retells the tale via email, text messages, and web pages. (What, no Twitter?) As Black points out, this is entirely in the spirit of the original. Also, she's given Mina more agency.

The original really does seem to cry out to be rewritten for contemporary times. While reading it, I continually had the feeling it was on the cusp of our own age, both aesthetically and culturally. It seems clear that a sense of radical change in the air inspired Stoker's story in the first place, and Dracula embodies the inchoate fears of same.

Interesting that societal change is represented, in Dracula, by a being who cannot change, i.e. age or die--though he can take different forms, which means one must constantly be on the lookout for him. The fear is: he will change us; he will make us the same as him; but he is so radically "other" that we can do nothing to bring him into "our" fold. New technologies inspire those kinds of fears. Technology makes us less human, we think; we seem less sure that we can humanize technology. Maybe racial or sexual otherness sparks the same horror in some: if we intermingle, we'll turn into them. It's a one-way street, always leading straight to hell. "They" can never be like "us."

So the vampire is the threat of change, but also the wish that things never, ever will change. Maybe it's even an acknowledgment that the fantasy of changelessness--immortality--is dangerous and monstrous. In fact, change is human. But no one wants to admit that up front.

Today's terrified Tea Party casts Obama in the vampire role. The fact that his campaign made great use of new technologies probably made him even more frightening to those on the wrong side of history. Never mind that the Palins of the world, true parasites, have also mastered these communications tools. What's really scary is the combination of implacable fear plus access to technology. Information, reason, appeals to our common humanity--nothing seems to stop this kind of fear. Maybe a better economy would help. But the fear is still there, buried, but not dead.

Anyway, I really just meant to note the Black book in this post. But now that I think about it, I'm more convinced than ever that Dracula is a book for the ages, literally.

Borrowed Fire: Does Dracula have a psychology (part 2)? Or: the Gothic John McCain

As we make our way toward the final confrontation with you-know-who, we are once again treated to one of Van Helsing's patented info dumps, i.e. stuff it might have been good to know earlier. I suppose I should not complain. After all, I've been on Van H repeatedly for always going off to do research at the very moments when he ought to be vigorously pursuing Dracula with a stake. So now he's found out something kind of interesting about Dracula's psychology, and I guess it's better late than never. Besides, don't we all have the same problem--preparation vs. action? Research vs. writing? No matter what we're doing, it seems like the wrong thing at the wrong time, doesn't it?

Anyway, here's what he's learned:

"I have studied, over and over again since they came into my hands, all the papers relating to this monster, and the more I have studied, the greater seems the necessity to utterly stamp him out. All through there are signs of his advance. Not only of his power, but of his knowledge of it. As I learned from the researches of my friend Arminius of Buda-Pesth, he was in life a most wonderful man. Soldier, statesman, and alchemist--which latter was the highest development of the science knowledge of his time. He had a mighty brain, a learning beyond compare, and a heart that knew no fear and no remorse. He dared even to attend the Scholomance, and there was no branch of knowledge of his time that he did not essay.

"Well, in him the brain powers survived the physical death. Though it would seem that memory was not all complete. In some faculties of mind he has been, and is, only a child. But he is growing, and some things that were childish at the first are now of man's stature. He is experimenting, and doing it well. And if it had not been that we have crossed his path he would be yet, he may be yet if we fail, the father or furtherer of a new order of beings, whose road must lead through Death, not Life."

As before, this is not exactly a psychology. We're learning this info primarily so we can see what a formidable enemy Dracula is. He's extremely smart, and, for the first time, we understand he has a Plan.

Interestingly, vampirism seems to be akin to a brain injury--it causes faculties usually present in adults to vanish. I'm not quite sure what the reference to his being childlike means, but we might assume it's a radical narcissism, which doesn't recognize the existence of others as others. That obviates the need for any conscience, and explains his desire to populate the world with mini-Dracs. In his mind, everyone is either him, or should be him.

Yeah, this is overstated. Van Helsing's insights don't raise Dracula beyond the level of extra-scary monster. However, this description put me in mind of another character who could become a truly tragic monster, if someone wants to write that particular novel. I am thinking of John McCain. I have no evidence one way or the other to indicate whether he once was smart. However, like Dracula, he was a proud warrior. He was laid low by his enemies. At some point--perhaps as a result of torture, or that combined with years in the strange and stultifying castle of the U.S. Senate, plus two (or more?) failed runs for president--he developed a burning desire for vengeance. What he may once have been, he is no longer. He bides his time, learning and plotting as his conscience withers away. Until one desperate day, faced with what could be his final defeat, he makes a bargain with the devil. And unleashes a red-suited, bee-hived demon upon the earth...

More Fun with Problems

I have not read Robert Stone's new story collection, Fun with Problems, which Antonya Nelson reviewed in yesterday's NYTBR. However I am heartened and intrigued by Nelson's review, particularly the last paragraph:

Reading guides sometimes encourage us to diagnose the faults of characters who display their “unlikability,” as if diagnosis might helpfully lead to dismissal. It’s true you might resist wanting to know the people in “Fun With Problems” or, maybe more tellingly, seeing yourself in them. You might turn away from the uncomfortable truths you don’t wish to receive, from the mature, dissolute, ultimately heartbreaking rites of passage that fill these pages. But a genuine coming-of-age story demands that its subject resist the experience. No book is for everyone, but some books can be fully taken in only when the reader is ready. “Fun With Problems” is a book for grown-ups, for people prepared to absorb the news of the world that it announces, for people both grateful and a little uneasy in finding a writer brave enough to be the bearer.

Yes, I'm harping on the "likability" issue again, only this time, I have allies! (Or at least I have an ally in Nelson--I can't say at this point what Stone may be up to.) To recap: I have often wondered about, and been peeved by, the "likable characters=good writing" equation that seems to go unquestioned in book reviews and writing workshops. Critics are wont to dismiss books out of hand for having unlikable characters--regardless of whether those characters are realistic, and / or well-drawn. Witness, for instance, Michiko Kakutani on Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City, which I ranted about here. Also--unsurprisingly--she doesn't like Fun with Problems either:

Similar cynics populate Mr. Stone’s novels, of course, but in the most persuasive of those books, he not only maps the sources of his heroes’ malaise and the fallout it has on their lives but also dramatizes their flailing efforts to grab after one last chance at a big score or even a whiff of love and salvation. In the stories in this volume we are not given the full arc of his people’s lives; we get only snapshots of their drunken nihilism and puerile self-pity. It’s certainly not enough to make us care, not even enough to engage our voyeuristic curiosity; it’s simply dismal and depressing.

The view that morally bad=artistically bad also faintly implies that an author's characters reflect on his own moral character. An author who won't give us the "good" characters we seek perhaps harbors some moral failings of his own. At the very least, Kakutani suggests, authors owe characters and readers some kind of redemption--or "whiff of love and salvation" as she puts it. The failure to offer redemption is both an artistic and moral one (by the author as false messiah? How dare he promise us salvation and not deliver!). Also, Kakutani's assumption seems to be that all lives follow this redemptive arc; so not showing it results in a portrait that's either unrealistic, or else not worth the reader's engagement.

Nelson turns these assumptions inside out by suggesting that characters function as narcissistic mirrors for readers. Because we identify with fictional characters--especially, perhaps, if they are well drawn--we want them to be good, or else redeemed from their ultimately illusory badness (show us the arc!). Otherwise, it seems the author is telling us that we are bad. That we cannot be redeemed--at least, not by this author, in this story. Unredeemed characters keep us from using fiction as a mirror of Narcissus, which may be the reason a great many people read in the first place. In Nelson's view, Stone's collection is more like the Queen's mirror in Snow White, which tells us, to our shock, that we aren't the fairest of all. Grown-ups can handle that information. (The Queen was most certainly not a grown-up; come to think of it, she's like tea-partiers who can't stand hearing any, any criticism of America, especially the kind that suggests other countries maybe do one or two things better than we do. America is their fiction, their mirror of Narcissus.)

Of course, this brings up the larger question of why we read fiction at all. If we read for pleasure, then surely seeing ourselves as good is more pleasurable than what Stone seems to offer. Or, to put it another way, fictional pleasure depends on this arc of redemption. If we don't see our better angels in literary characters, we're no longer experiencing the pleasure of fiction per se, but undergoing something else--a highfalutin scolding, perhaps. I will go on record as saying I like redemption in general, and hope, and being told I'm good. I'm not sure I want to read Fun with Problems. But I'd also like to think that I'm not reading fiction for pats on the head, or that I consider the failure to bolster my ego sufficient reason to call a book bad.

Attention AP and Yahoo News

It is not Obama's speech to students that is "sparking controversy." It is the media, who come running every time right-wing racists set their hair on fire.

Question of the day

Are Republicans really willing to let people die so insurance companies can live?

The horror, continued

No, I don't have anything better to do on the 4th of July than write about Sarah Palin. Yes, that is a sad state of affairs. It was less than a year ago that I sacrificed several days of my hard-earned vacation to scouring the Internet for any and all information about John McCain's new running mate. I am sure I did not shower or change clothes during that period. I don't recall whether I ate.

I now recognize that uncontrollable urge as nothing less than terror. I simply couldn't believe it. Was this country, as unhinged as it had become, going look itself in the eye and say up was down, ignorance was virtue, teen pregnancy was admirable--in fact, why not flush young Tiffany's box of condoms and tell her to go out and create her very own little blessing? It seemed so. But then a miracle happened. Enough people--just enough--said no. And after the election, when it seemed clear that this media-galvanized monster was not going to go away, I made some suggestion, like, maybe we should ignore her. Because, as an alien parasite from Star Trek, she feeds on strong emotions, both positive and negative. So our job (I thought) would be to ignore her and go about our business. Do not indicate, especially to the media, that we want any more news about her--don't buy magazines, don't click on links...and slowly, slowly, she would shrivel up and blow away, perhaps emitting a tiny, helium-voiced whimper as she fluttered into the empty cosmos.

Well, I tried. And since she's not in a position to do any immediate damage, except to the overall culture--which is already ruined--I have this to say. I believe she is planning to run for president. She is that grandiose, that delusional. She is pulling a Nixon, complete with the "you won't have me to kick around anymore" self-pity. She is Nixon in pantyhose, with all the horror that mental image stirs up (writhing swirls of squished, black leg hair, for instance). It may be that we are about to learn of a major scandal; and the fact that she did this news-dump on the Friday of a holiday weekend suggests something of that nature. But any scandal will just feed into the persecution complex that whips her supporters into a spittle-flinging frenzy.

On the other hand, perhaps it's wrong to abandon ridicule as a weapon. Yes, among certain people it will make her stronger. But it also seems that Tina Fey, almost single-handedly at first, kept Palin from getting elected. We did come very close to having this goon for our president. So what will work better, ignoring or mocking? It may seem funny now to think that she'd have a another real shot at the presidency, but we may not be laughing in four years. I remember (even though I was very! very! young at the time) people laughing hysterically at the idea of Reagan becoming president. It was even a joke on All in the Family, and elsewhere. So if laughter's the right tool to bring her down, then let's do it; but let's not laugh dismissively. Stay. on. Guard.

That is my patriotic post for July 4th.

Terrorist fist bump day

Happy Terrorist Fist Bump Day! Wish it could have been my birthday; missed it by a day.