The author is Karen Armstrong, former nun, historicist of religions, blower of minds.
In her book, she argues that we've lost the ability to think (if "think" is the right word) mythically. One hopeful conclusion she comes to: artists and writers can perhaps help us to return to this lost way of experiencing the world.
The surrealists worried about this loss, too (if, that is, the surrealists can be said to have "worried" about anything).
There is a nightingale in the middle of a thick wood. It sings though its throat is torn out.
No children go to that forest to play or to be menaced. They know better, or they have lost the instinct for being drawn to life-illuminating danger.
This is the nightingale's song:
I think, though I am now a bird, that I was once a child. I can't remember what I thought, when I stood on the carpet and looked around at the sea of legs belonging to adults. Even their legs were taller than I was.
I can't imagine that I went on to grow up. I can't imagine that I made decisions that affected the fate of oceans, that influenced tribal wars on the other side of the globe. I don't believe that I broke someone's heart and then lied about it.
The nightingale listens to the echo of its song coming toward it through the dusk.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Alice Munro: Hypnogogic Realist
Having declared my dissatisfaction with realism, I have to figure out how the hell to label Alice Munro, whom I love so very very much. I also have to figure out what it is that connects her with other writers whom I love so very very much. And so, here is a list of some of the contemporary writers who sweep me away:
Penelope Fitzgerald, Hilary Mantel, John Berger, Toni Morrison, Leslie Marmon Silko, W.G. Sebald, Roberto Bolano, Grace Paley, Italo Calvino, Kathryn Davis, Bruno Schulz, Peter Carey, Flann O'Brien, Jim Crace, Ursula K. LeGuin, Chinua Achebe, J. M. Coetzee, Ben Okri, Don DeLillo.
I list them because in my mind, a wonderful, barely visible halo exists around each of them. I can't say exactly what I love about them because when I read them I am transported to a place beyond words. I immerse myself in these novels and stories; I experience them, simply and transcendently. The pleasure is so acute that at times I stop reading in order to savor and wonder at it.
My instinct is to say that it has something to do with the way these authors train their gazes on their subject. They may be exploring psychological realism, fantastic realism, postmodernism, what have you. And yet, as they write, they disappear into the writing. That, anyway, is what I imagine. In the course of writing these works, they give themselves up. And in the course of reading their works, I give up myself.
Hypnogogic Realism. The allure of the liminal; the eluding of boundaries. To be seduced, and not disappointed.
Penelope Fitzgerald, Hilary Mantel, John Berger, Toni Morrison, Leslie Marmon Silko, W.G. Sebald, Roberto Bolano, Grace Paley, Italo Calvino, Kathryn Davis, Bruno Schulz, Peter Carey, Flann O'Brien, Jim Crace, Ursula K. LeGuin, Chinua Achebe, J. M. Coetzee, Ben Okri, Don DeLillo.
I list them because in my mind, a wonderful, barely visible halo exists around each of them. I can't say exactly what I love about them because when I read them I am transported to a place beyond words. I immerse myself in these novels and stories; I experience them, simply and transcendently. The pleasure is so acute that at times I stop reading in order to savor and wonder at it.
My instinct is to say that it has something to do with the way these authors train their gazes on their subject. They may be exploring psychological realism, fantastic realism, postmodernism, what have you. And yet, as they write, they disappear into the writing. That, anyway, is what I imagine. In the course of writing these works, they give themselves up. And in the course of reading their works, I give up myself.
Hypnogogic Realism. The allure of the liminal; the eluding of boundaries. To be seduced, and not disappointed.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
On Earnestness
Seriously! Or do I mean sincerely? (Reading John Gallaher on a Poet Gang I'd never heard of, associated with a thang called "The New Sincerity.") I myself am so tired of the ironic pose.
After all, this is it, right here, right now.
A shout-out to all my students, who in spite of the end-game desperation that engulfs us all at this time of the semester, have been staying after class to talk excitedly about a number of really vital things. In the last few days, we have discussed the importance of fighting to preserve the environment, the joys and satisfactions of writing, and how utterly cool it is that they can now begin to see how much they've learned over the last three months. They tell me about new movies, new links, new slang, new trends. This is the great thing about teaching. You learn so much.
(I know, I know, Hallmark moments, but it's late, today I had a 12-hour day of classes and student meetings, and then watched Jon Stewart and Colbert. Colbert talked about two of the politicians vying to take over the House Energy Committee, John Shimkus (R-Ill.), who refuted global warming by quoting the Bible (god promised: no more floods) and Joe Barton (R-Texas), who explained that wind, which is necessary to cool off the world, would be slowed down by wind turbines and so the world would get hotter if we transitioned from fossil fuels to wind energy. OMFG.)
After this I had to watch two episodes of Family Guy, the sheer weirdness of which helped me to detox from the surreal nightmare that is our current political shitstorm. After the election I told myself no more politics. Do I ever listen to myself? Evidently not.
Should we listen to ourselves? We tell ourselves some seriously crazy shit. The left brain keeps on reassuring us that our narratives make sense. But more on left brain's shenanagans another time.
After all, this is it, right here, right now.
A shout-out to all my students, who in spite of the end-game desperation that engulfs us all at this time of the semester, have been staying after class to talk excitedly about a number of really vital things. In the last few days, we have discussed the importance of fighting to preserve the environment, the joys and satisfactions of writing, and how utterly cool it is that they can now begin to see how much they've learned over the last three months. They tell me about new movies, new links, new slang, new trends. This is the great thing about teaching. You learn so much.
(I know, I know, Hallmark moments, but it's late, today I had a 12-hour day of classes and student meetings, and then watched Jon Stewart and Colbert. Colbert talked about two of the politicians vying to take over the House Energy Committee, John Shimkus (R-Ill.), who refuted global warming by quoting the Bible (god promised: no more floods) and Joe Barton (R-Texas), who explained that wind, which is necessary to cool off the world, would be slowed down by wind turbines and so the world would get hotter if we transitioned from fossil fuels to wind energy. OMFG.)
After this I had to watch two episodes of Family Guy, the sheer weirdness of which helped me to detox from the surreal nightmare that is our current political shitstorm. After the election I told myself no more politics. Do I ever listen to myself? Evidently not.
Should we listen to ourselves? We tell ourselves some seriously crazy shit. The left brain keeps on reassuring us that our narratives make sense. But more on left brain's shenanagans another time.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Agons of Writing
Some writers suffer from a deficit of courage, often combined with a devastatingly acute ability to see flaws (in others' work, and in their own). I know many brilliant writers or would-be writers who are afraid to write because they can't bear to produce shit. That fear prevents them from starting their novel or their essay or their story or their poem. Or, if they do manage to start, the fear prevents them from finishing.
For me the problem is patience. I have learned to slog, I have learned to face the shit that comes out of me, and I know it's shit. But what I need to do now? Listen to the real beat of my real heart and let its beating carry me through. To where? No fucking clue. I hope that with patience I'll see my way through the shit and maybe glimpse where I'm going. I really hope that will happen. However, I also understand that, even with patience, I might never see a thing. The whole myth of progress, scaled down to a single human life: it may be one more pile of crap. I may never see, we all may never see.
But still I listen, and still my heart beats. So I try to keep looking. The vision directed inward somehow meeting the vision directed outward.
For me the problem is patience. I have learned to slog, I have learned to face the shit that comes out of me, and I know it's shit. But what I need to do now? Listen to the real beat of my real heart and let its beating carry me through. To where? No fucking clue. I hope that with patience I'll see my way through the shit and maybe glimpse where I'm going. I really hope that will happen. However, I also understand that, even with patience, I might never see a thing. The whole myth of progress, scaled down to a single human life: it may be one more pile of crap. I may never see, we all may never see.
But still I listen, and still my heart beats. So I try to keep looking. The vision directed inward somehow meeting the vision directed outward.
Monday, November 15, 2010
The Literary Fantastic
Literary fantastic fiction is difficult to classify, and goes by many names: magical realism, slipstream, sf, the new weird, among others. Over the last few decades, literary fiction containing elements of the fantastic has gradually become more accepted by mainstream publishers and readers, as Jordan E. Rosenfeld notes.
But why are so many contemporary authors turning to the fantastic? To my mind, the fantastic allows us, members of a world that is first and foremost secular, access to realms of the sacred and profane. Like Gogol and Kafka before them, contemporary writers use the fantastic to explore and describe our alienation and our longing for something more, something meaningful, something magical. Next semester I'm going to teach a course on the subject, but to start thinking about it I present six novels I love that invoke the fantastic. It's not a stretch to say that these are all novels that I hold sacred.
Angela Carter: The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (British title: The War
of Dreams)
This 1972 novel explores the war on reality conducted by its eponymous character, Dr Hoffman, who strives to release our lives from the straightjacket of reality by freeing up imagination via his “desire machines.” These machines literalize dreams and fantasies, often with disturbing results. The ambivalent protagonist, Desiderio, a bi-racial outsider to his society, is sent to defeat the doctor but ends up in love with the latter’ s daughter. Albertina herself is an agent of imaginative chaos, in part because of the love she inspires in and feels for Desiderio, in part because of her dedication to the enactment of unfettered imagination. Carter’s allegory explores the '60s love-in mentality by taking that decade’s slogans to their logical conclusion. In doing so, she asks us if we really want to live in a world where the imagination is literalized without our consent or control. The chaos that results from this literalization is full of sexual depredation, tyrannical expressions of the will-to-power, and an unconscious reversion on the part of individuals to stereotyped notions of those who don’t belong to their tribe. The book suggests that part of imagination’s appeal is its status as imaginary. Yet the longing felt by all visionaries to see their visions realized is also acknowledged here, as well as the disastrous results that such realization can have for civil liberties.
John Berger: Here Is Where We Meet: A Fiction (2005)
Narrated by a man named John Berger, this novel, though entitled “ A Fiction,” teasingly presents itself as a (fictionalized) memoir. Though the book lacks a traditional plot, Berger sets the chapters of this novel in different countries of Europe, following John on his travels around the continent. In each country he visits, John encounters an important person from his past who is now dead, and the two interact and converse. Interspersed with John’s conversations with the dead are memories of the living person John knew in his past. Frequently, the dead are quietly amused by John’ s consternation at meeting up with them; especially moving is the tenderness John feels as he talks with these people as an older person, appreciating them now that he is elderly (Berger wrote the novel in his early 70s) in a way he could not when he was younger. Interestingly, the novel feels remarkably youthful, in part because it returns to the younger John’s past, but also because of the wonderful attention paid to the physical world that is the backdrop for John’ s conversations with the dead. This quiet novel makes concrete our continued relationships with the people who are important to us, in spite of the fact that they may not be physically with us, and brims with reverence for life and for the importance of the past in our negotiation of the present.
Hilary Mantel: Fludd (2000)
Set in 1950s Midlands England, this novel is steeped in the bleak economies and deprivations of that postwar era. Its characters’ lives are regulated by small-minded town officials who enforce rigid social and religious rules to oppress those who long for a life of imaginative and social freedom. Catholic parish priest Father Anguin, whose sympathetic outlook could be a force for liberation, can’t act because he has lost his belief in god, though he still believes in the devil. As a result, he lets the Reverend Mother at a nearby convent exact a tyrannical rule over young women whose families can’t afford to support them. Sister Philomena suffers the most under the Reverend Mother’s iron hand because she is kind and generous girl and possesses a spiritual charisma that enrages the head nun. The soul-blasting tedium of life in this town is disrupted by the appearance of “Father” Robert Fludd, who seems to be the reincarnation of a 17th-century alchemist and scientist by the same name. Fludd’ s mysterious spiritual presence and powers have a transformative effect on the good hearted people of the town. The leaden souls of characters who yearn for a way out of their dull, life-deadening circumstances are changed into gold, and the spiritual freedom they achieve is accompanied by enlightened attitudes toward sexual expression, love, and social mobility. Especially surprising about this book by the recent Booker Award winner are its playful exuberance and joyful willingness to believe in miracles and their positive effect on human tolerance.
Penelope Fitzgerald: The Gate of Angels (1998)
Set in pre-World War I England, a young physicist-in-training collides with a young woman of the lower classes while the two are bicycling, much like the collision of the atoms that he studies. The wife of a Cambridge don mistakes the unconscious pair, who are strangers, for a married couple, thus Fred and Daisy wake up in bed together. Fred finds himself helplessly in love with the lower-class Daisy, while Daisy, one of the most generous and feisty female characters in the British canon, fearfully flees him, because everyone she knows has used her and manipulated her, even if they’ ve genuinely cared about her. The book’ s sophisticated analogy between atomic physics and the seemingly random trajectories of human lives hints at a deeper meaning to both, one which human consciousness is too limited to comprehend. The miracles and ghosts that fill its pages point to the transformative power of faith and love, charging the novel’ s prose with a grace that comes as near to the divine as we are likely to find in the secular realm.
Kathryn Davis: The Thin Place (2007)
In Varennes, a small town in New England, three girls find a man lying face down on a beach, apparently dead. But one of the girls, Mees Kipp, seems to possess a mysterious power that brings him back to life. The novel moves from Mees’ s consciousness (she knows she has a mysterious gift), to that of other inhabitants of the town (including non-human denizens, such as Mees’s dog, beavers, and plants). In this way, the narrative ripples through the minds and lives of this rural community in a manner that is both matter-of-fact and electrifying. The shifts in perspective can also leave the human realm far behind: Davis notes, “ If the earth is just a ball, no one place on it is any more important than another. Human time is much too thin to be discerned. The slow steady march of geologic time is punctuated with catastrophes.” Yet the thin but evocative human realm brims with it a dramatic action that runs in counterpoint to the novel’s cosmic vision. The result exalts the tiniest details: a dog savoring the smell of porcupines; a 92-year-old nursing-home-detainee, Helen Zeebrugge, who is infuriated by the stupidity of her caretakers; her son, Piet, who is sexually restless and on the prowl for his next wife. These homely details juxtaposed with the novel’ s flexible, wayward narrative turn the matter-of-fact elements of human lives and the natural world into a force as mysterious as Mees’s supernatural gift, and the result ignites a sense of wonder in the reader.
Donald Harington: The Choiring of the Trees (1991)
In 1914, Nail Chism is framed for rape and sentenced to death by electrocution. When he is about to die, he “ hears” the trees near his homestead in Stay More, Arkansas, singing to him from many miles away. Nail is bewildered by this, but also comforted; he is also mysteriously saved from dying by a malfunction in the electrical system. The Ozarks town that is the setting for most of Harington’s fiction allows him to create a vivid snapshot of rural life that is wonderfully realistic and detailed. Yet the trees’ choiring is also a fantastic element that gives Nail hope and speaks to a deeper connection between humans and the landscape in which they make their homes. This connection, moreover, is one that is supernaturally charged; in addition to the mysterious accidents that prevent Nail from being executed, the singing trees seem to act through a woman named Viridis Monday who befriends Nail. Viridis’s artistic vision (she does death-row sketches for a Little Rock newspaper, but was trained by Parisian artists) allows her to recognize Nail’s innocence and motivates her to try to help free him. The novel’s lyrical intensity is accompanied by a documentary-style record of the brutal condition of Arkansas prisons; the combination creates a stunningly hopeful testimony to human faith and imaginative power in the face of tyranny and oppression.
But why are so many contemporary authors turning to the fantastic? To my mind, the fantastic allows us, members of a world that is first and foremost secular, access to realms of the sacred and profane. Like Gogol and Kafka before them, contemporary writers use the fantastic to explore and describe our alienation and our longing for something more, something meaningful, something magical. Next semester I'm going to teach a course on the subject, but to start thinking about it I present six novels I love that invoke the fantastic. It's not a stretch to say that these are all novels that I hold sacred.
Angela Carter: The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (British title: The War
of Dreams)
This 1972 novel explores the war on reality conducted by its eponymous character, Dr Hoffman, who strives to release our lives from the straightjacket of reality by freeing up imagination via his “desire machines.” These machines literalize dreams and fantasies, often with disturbing results. The ambivalent protagonist, Desiderio, a bi-racial outsider to his society, is sent to defeat the doctor but ends up in love with the latter’ s daughter. Albertina herself is an agent of imaginative chaos, in part because of the love she inspires in and feels for Desiderio, in part because of her dedication to the enactment of unfettered imagination. Carter’s allegory explores the '60s love-in mentality by taking that decade’s slogans to their logical conclusion. In doing so, she asks us if we really want to live in a world where the imagination is literalized without our consent or control. The chaos that results from this literalization is full of sexual depredation, tyrannical expressions of the will-to-power, and an unconscious reversion on the part of individuals to stereotyped notions of those who don’t belong to their tribe. The book suggests that part of imagination’s appeal is its status as imaginary. Yet the longing felt by all visionaries to see their visions realized is also acknowledged here, as well as the disastrous results that such realization can have for civil liberties.
John Berger: Here Is Where We Meet: A Fiction (2005)
Narrated by a man named John Berger, this novel, though entitled “ A Fiction,” teasingly presents itself as a (fictionalized) memoir. Though the book lacks a traditional plot, Berger sets the chapters of this novel in different countries of Europe, following John on his travels around the continent. In each country he visits, John encounters an important person from his past who is now dead, and the two interact and converse. Interspersed with John’s conversations with the dead are memories of the living person John knew in his past. Frequently, the dead are quietly amused by John’ s consternation at meeting up with them; especially moving is the tenderness John feels as he talks with these people as an older person, appreciating them now that he is elderly (Berger wrote the novel in his early 70s) in a way he could not when he was younger. Interestingly, the novel feels remarkably youthful, in part because it returns to the younger John’s past, but also because of the wonderful attention paid to the physical world that is the backdrop for John’ s conversations with the dead. This quiet novel makes concrete our continued relationships with the people who are important to us, in spite of the fact that they may not be physically with us, and brims with reverence for life and for the importance of the past in our negotiation of the present.
Hilary Mantel: Fludd (2000)
Set in 1950s Midlands England, this novel is steeped in the bleak economies and deprivations of that postwar era. Its characters’ lives are regulated by small-minded town officials who enforce rigid social and religious rules to oppress those who long for a life of imaginative and social freedom. Catholic parish priest Father Anguin, whose sympathetic outlook could be a force for liberation, can’t act because he has lost his belief in god, though he still believes in the devil. As a result, he lets the Reverend Mother at a nearby convent exact a tyrannical rule over young women whose families can’t afford to support them. Sister Philomena suffers the most under the Reverend Mother’s iron hand because she is kind and generous girl and possesses a spiritual charisma that enrages the head nun. The soul-blasting tedium of life in this town is disrupted by the appearance of “Father” Robert Fludd, who seems to be the reincarnation of a 17th-century alchemist and scientist by the same name. Fludd’ s mysterious spiritual presence and powers have a transformative effect on the good hearted people of the town. The leaden souls of characters who yearn for a way out of their dull, life-deadening circumstances are changed into gold, and the spiritual freedom they achieve is accompanied by enlightened attitudes toward sexual expression, love, and social mobility. Especially surprising about this book by the recent Booker Award winner are its playful exuberance and joyful willingness to believe in miracles and their positive effect on human tolerance.
Penelope Fitzgerald: The Gate of Angels (1998)
Set in pre-World War I England, a young physicist-in-training collides with a young woman of the lower classes while the two are bicycling, much like the collision of the atoms that he studies. The wife of a Cambridge don mistakes the unconscious pair, who are strangers, for a married couple, thus Fred and Daisy wake up in bed together. Fred finds himself helplessly in love with the lower-class Daisy, while Daisy, one of the most generous and feisty female characters in the British canon, fearfully flees him, because everyone she knows has used her and manipulated her, even if they’ ve genuinely cared about her. The book’ s sophisticated analogy between atomic physics and the seemingly random trajectories of human lives hints at a deeper meaning to both, one which human consciousness is too limited to comprehend. The miracles and ghosts that fill its pages point to the transformative power of faith and love, charging the novel’ s prose with a grace that comes as near to the divine as we are likely to find in the secular realm.
Kathryn Davis: The Thin Place (2007)
In Varennes, a small town in New England, three girls find a man lying face down on a beach, apparently dead. But one of the girls, Mees Kipp, seems to possess a mysterious power that brings him back to life. The novel moves from Mees’ s consciousness (she knows she has a mysterious gift), to that of other inhabitants of the town (including non-human denizens, such as Mees’s dog, beavers, and plants). In this way, the narrative ripples through the minds and lives of this rural community in a manner that is both matter-of-fact and electrifying. The shifts in perspective can also leave the human realm far behind: Davis notes, “ If the earth is just a ball, no one place on it is any more important than another. Human time is much too thin to be discerned. The slow steady march of geologic time is punctuated with catastrophes.” Yet the thin but evocative human realm brims with it a dramatic action that runs in counterpoint to the novel’s cosmic vision. The result exalts the tiniest details: a dog savoring the smell of porcupines; a 92-year-old nursing-home-detainee, Helen Zeebrugge, who is infuriated by the stupidity of her caretakers; her son, Piet, who is sexually restless and on the prowl for his next wife. These homely details juxtaposed with the novel’ s flexible, wayward narrative turn the matter-of-fact elements of human lives and the natural world into a force as mysterious as Mees’s supernatural gift, and the result ignites a sense of wonder in the reader.
Donald Harington: The Choiring of the Trees (1991)
In 1914, Nail Chism is framed for rape and sentenced to death by electrocution. When he is about to die, he “ hears” the trees near his homestead in Stay More, Arkansas, singing to him from many miles away. Nail is bewildered by this, but also comforted; he is also mysteriously saved from dying by a malfunction in the electrical system. The Ozarks town that is the setting for most of Harington’s fiction allows him to create a vivid snapshot of rural life that is wonderfully realistic and detailed. Yet the trees’ choiring is also a fantastic element that gives Nail hope and speaks to a deeper connection between humans and the landscape in which they make their homes. This connection, moreover, is one that is supernaturally charged; in addition to the mysterious accidents that prevent Nail from being executed, the singing trees seem to act through a woman named Viridis Monday who befriends Nail. Viridis’s artistic vision (she does death-row sketches for a Little Rock newspaper, but was trained by Parisian artists) allows her to recognize Nail’s innocence and motivates her to try to help free him. The novel’s lyrical intensity is accompanied by a documentary-style record of the brutal condition of Arkansas prisons; the combination creates a stunningly hopeful testimony to human faith and imaginative power in the face of tyranny and oppression.
I Know What I'm Doing (or so I think)
Heather Wax in The “Uncertainty” Effect notes that people who are reminded that they can’t always control the outcomes of situations register diminished belief in Darwinian evolution.
Fascinating. We want to believe that we can control what happens to us, and if we can't, we want there to be something else out there that can.
It's one of the main functions of the left brain hemisphere: through creating coherent narratives that explain our behavior (to ourselves!) we control the experience of what happens to us. Numerous experiments have been done on patients whose corpus callosa have been cut. In all these patients, even when the left brain has been prevented from knowing what the right brain has seen (say by blindfolding the right eye), the left brain will invent a story to explain otherwise inexplicable behavior.
We need to believe we know what we're doing.
Hence our need for stories.
Fascinating. We want to believe that we can control what happens to us, and if we can't, we want there to be something else out there that can.
It's one of the main functions of the left brain hemisphere: through creating coherent narratives that explain our behavior (to ourselves!) we control the experience of what happens to us. Numerous experiments have been done on patients whose corpus callosa have been cut. In all these patients, even when the left brain has been prevented from knowing what the right brain has seen (say by blindfolding the right eye), the left brain will invent a story to explain otherwise inexplicable behavior.
We need to believe we know what we're doing.
Hence our need for stories.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
How I got conned in Turkey
I am fascinated by con-artistry, and by the cognitive dissonance that seems to help some con artists be their best and most persuasive selves. Some are very calculating and fucking smooth, it's true, but with some there seems to be a kind of grey area they can inhabit.
For years I prided myself on having never been conned, despite my travels and life abroad and my years living in New York City. That is a kind of self-con, as I discovered when I went to Turkey to do research for a novel. 40 years old and I got taken! It wasn't a bad episode, but what was humiliating was that I knew what was happening, all along, yet at the same time was engaged in cognitive dissonance. They got my number.
I was walking down a street in Istanbul, and had a scarf over my head for the sun because it was so strong (among my many paranoias is a concern with UV rays). A man stopped me, asking if I was wearing the scarf to look Muslim. I said no, it was for the sun, and he, in his excellent English, began to chat casually with me. So we talked, and when he found out I was from southeast Michigan, he began naming towns. He knew all the towns in my area. So I told him the name of my town, and he knew exactly where it was. He said he did business in the area, that he was a wholesale goods importer.
Mohammed then told me that among the many goods that he imported were rugs. My warning bells went off: I laughed and said I was too poor to buy a rug. He nodded, said he was waiting for his American friend, Gene, who was working there in Istanbul and wanted to practice his Turkish. Gene and Mohammed were friends from the States, because Mohammed was in business with Gene's family. On cue, up walks Gene, the American guy. The three of us talk for a while, then Mohammed says to Gene, take her to the warehouse and show her the difference between good and bad rugs, in case she wants to buy one while she's here.
This was the con -- bringing this American guy in. Gene was very nice and funny, and had an educated American accent. We walked along through the streets, and I began asking Gene what he was doing in Turkey. He said he worked for an import/export company. His explanation sounded kind of vague; it had weird holes in it. But I just let the uneasiness I felt pass, because I'd been traveling by myself for 6 weeks, researching and writing, and was lonely.
When we got to the warehouse I saw it wasn't really a store; no one on the street would know that it was a place where goods were for sale. But it was full of spectacular, luxurious, sensually-overwhelming goods: glass lamps decorated with iron filigree; intricately-carved chairs of shimmering wood; draperies of heavy silk and satin, as well as light and fleecy hangings that looked like they'd been woven of delicately-hued cobwebs. Maybe they'd intentionally made it look like a scene out of The Arabian Nights.
Several more men materialized, and, with Gene at my side, they brought me upstairs to the rug room. They sat me down, brought me tea. Then I was inundated with rugs. Kilims, carpets, rugs, hangings. The men brought them out one after the other, unrolled them, let me admire them, watched my face, nodded when my eyes widened and put the ones that I loved aside. Then they showed me the differences between cheap ones and good ones. They showed me how to tell real wool from synthetic fibers. Organic dyes from synthetic dyes. How to appraise thread count. How to spot fake aging that made brand new rugs look antique.
After an hour of this Mohammed showed up. He and Gene and I talked in a strange aimless fashion, but underneath the seemingly random talk, I felt a pressure, a mounting tension. I asked more questions, as casually as I could, and noted more and more inconsistencies in the stories they told me of how they'd met, how they came to work together, Mohammed's business. But the rugs were so beautiful.
But what it came down to? I didn't want to be an ugly American. That was what the con hinged on. Mohammed figured out that in my travels, it was very important to me not to be an ugly American. He had understood how I envisualized this stereotype and was using it to frame our interaction. He was brilliant, skillful. He probably even knew that I knew I was being conned, but that it was impossible for me to let my awareness show without insulting him. And so, in order not to be an ugly American, I bought a rug.
It's a nice rug. It's sitting on the floor in my living room. I paid $800 for it. It's worth, maybe, $200 (if I'm being nice to myself and thinking that I don't want to be a conniving ugly jerk-off cut-throat American, out to rape the locals in a grasping, fuck-you sort of way, by driving them down to the lowest possible price they can afford to accept).
After I bought the rug and left, I freaked out. Full-blown panic attack. And this, simply because I saw, very clearly, how expertly I had been manipulated. How, through the extended talk (which was facilitated by Gene, the friendly "trustworthy" fellow American), Mohammed figured out how I wanted to see myself. And went to work on it and me.
As I said because I did manage to ask a few questions, I was able to put the whole thing together later. I realized that Gene was just an American drifter living at a youth hostel, who helped Mohammed out by telling his marks that Gene's hotel-designer family worked with Mohammed back in the US, because Mohammed was their supplier. It was all a set-up.
And yet, Mohammed did know a shitload about American geography, culture, and spoke with an excellent, refined American accent.
What's true? What's not? Who knows? But I know that they saw right through me. And so I had to buy the rug.
For years I prided myself on having never been conned, despite my travels and life abroad and my years living in New York City. That is a kind of self-con, as I discovered when I went to Turkey to do research for a novel. 40 years old and I got taken! It wasn't a bad episode, but what was humiliating was that I knew what was happening, all along, yet at the same time was engaged in cognitive dissonance. They got my number.
I was walking down a street in Istanbul, and had a scarf over my head for the sun because it was so strong (among my many paranoias is a concern with UV rays). A man stopped me, asking if I was wearing the scarf to look Muslim. I said no, it was for the sun, and he, in his excellent English, began to chat casually with me. So we talked, and when he found out I was from southeast Michigan, he began naming towns. He knew all the towns in my area. So I told him the name of my town, and he knew exactly where it was. He said he did business in the area, that he was a wholesale goods importer.
Mohammed then told me that among the many goods that he imported were rugs. My warning bells went off: I laughed and said I was too poor to buy a rug. He nodded, said he was waiting for his American friend, Gene, who was working there in Istanbul and wanted to practice his Turkish. Gene and Mohammed were friends from the States, because Mohammed was in business with Gene's family. On cue, up walks Gene, the American guy. The three of us talk for a while, then Mohammed says to Gene, take her to the warehouse and show her the difference between good and bad rugs, in case she wants to buy one while she's here.
This was the con -- bringing this American guy in. Gene was very nice and funny, and had an educated American accent. We walked along through the streets, and I began asking Gene what he was doing in Turkey. He said he worked for an import/export company. His explanation sounded kind of vague; it had weird holes in it. But I just let the uneasiness I felt pass, because I'd been traveling by myself for 6 weeks, researching and writing, and was lonely.
When we got to the warehouse I saw it wasn't really a store; no one on the street would know that it was a place where goods were for sale. But it was full of spectacular, luxurious, sensually-overwhelming goods: glass lamps decorated with iron filigree; intricately-carved chairs of shimmering wood; draperies of heavy silk and satin, as well as light and fleecy hangings that looked like they'd been woven of delicately-hued cobwebs. Maybe they'd intentionally made it look like a scene out of The Arabian Nights.
Several more men materialized, and, with Gene at my side, they brought me upstairs to the rug room. They sat me down, brought me tea. Then I was inundated with rugs. Kilims, carpets, rugs, hangings. The men brought them out one after the other, unrolled them, let me admire them, watched my face, nodded when my eyes widened and put the ones that I loved aside. Then they showed me the differences between cheap ones and good ones. They showed me how to tell real wool from synthetic fibers. Organic dyes from synthetic dyes. How to appraise thread count. How to spot fake aging that made brand new rugs look antique.
After an hour of this Mohammed showed up. He and Gene and I talked in a strange aimless fashion, but underneath the seemingly random talk, I felt a pressure, a mounting tension. I asked more questions, as casually as I could, and noted more and more inconsistencies in the stories they told me of how they'd met, how they came to work together, Mohammed's business. But the rugs were so beautiful.
But what it came down to? I didn't want to be an ugly American. That was what the con hinged on. Mohammed figured out that in my travels, it was very important to me not to be an ugly American. He had understood how I envisualized this stereotype and was using it to frame our interaction. He was brilliant, skillful. He probably even knew that I knew I was being conned, but that it was impossible for me to let my awareness show without insulting him. And so, in order not to be an ugly American, I bought a rug.
It's a nice rug. It's sitting on the floor in my living room. I paid $800 for it. It's worth, maybe, $200 (if I'm being nice to myself and thinking that I don't want to be a conniving ugly jerk-off cut-throat American, out to rape the locals in a grasping, fuck-you sort of way, by driving them down to the lowest possible price they can afford to accept).
After I bought the rug and left, I freaked out. Full-blown panic attack. And this, simply because I saw, very clearly, how expertly I had been manipulated. How, through the extended talk (which was facilitated by Gene, the friendly "trustworthy" fellow American), Mohammed figured out how I wanted to see myself. And went to work on it and me.
As I said because I did manage to ask a few questions, I was able to put the whole thing together later. I realized that Gene was just an American drifter living at a youth hostel, who helped Mohammed out by telling his marks that Gene's hotel-designer family worked with Mohammed back in the US, because Mohammed was their supplier. It was all a set-up.
And yet, Mohammed did know a shitload about American geography, culture, and spoke with an excellent, refined American accent.
What's true? What's not? Who knows? But I know that they saw right through me. And so I had to buy the rug.
Online profiles-R-us?
I love facebook. It's true; I love the way conversations can happen when I post on friends' pages and then their friends post too, and through our mutual posting we strangers become friends. Or facebook friends. Or facebook "friends." Whatever emphasis you prefer, it's really fun to meet cool, smart people I'd never come into contact with otherwise. I'm not so freaked as some people by the faceless nature of the contact. For one thing, when we interact online, we use the same neural pathways that we employ when interacting in real space (I hate the term "meat space"). But as many people have said better than I can, unusual things happen online. One scholar of the online interaction phenomena is Aaron Ben-Ze'ev.
Rector of Haifa University, Professor of Philosophy, and Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Emotions at the University of Haifa, Aaron Ben-Ze’ev is also the author of two meditations on emotions, Love Online: Emotions on the Internet (2004) and The Subtlety of Emotions (2000). I wasn't able to find out a lot about Professor Ben Ze'ev, but the titles of his papers and the focus of his books lead me to conclude that he is not just a stuffy academic. He publishes papers on topics such as emotional intensity; in my book, that makes him the kind of philosopher with whom one would want to have lunch.
Professor Ben Ze'ev maintains a discursive style that is rather dryly academic: I assume that this is to give his at times sensual and provocative subjects academic legitimacy. Indeed, in spite of the dryness, he can be quite witty at times, and he is extraordinarily open to manifestations of virtual desire. He is particularly astute in exploring the ways in which online culture is changing the social expression of humans' desire for community. He also discusses ways in which online culture is changing our understanding of intimacy: Ben-Ze'ev describes online romantic relationships as being characterized by "detached attachment" or "detattachment" (sic), because on the one hand many people become more intimate than they would if they met in person, yet at any point any participant can turn off the computer and walk away forever. Presumably.
From Love Online:
I’m especially interested in his claim that online desire is different from other forms of desire, and that it may in fact change who we are in the world, when we let ourselves play with it. This seems to me to capture the essence of why we are involved with the virtual. Because we are all participating in the experiment. Because, on some level, we know we will all be changed by it. That's what we want.
Cyberspace is similar to fictional space in the sense that in both cases
the flight into virtual reality is not so much a denial of reality as a form of exploring and playing with it.
—Aaron Ben Ze’ev
the flight into virtual reality is not so much a denial of reality as a form of exploring and playing with it.
—Aaron Ben Ze’ev
Professor Ben Ze'ev maintains a discursive style that is rather dryly academic: I assume that this is to give his at times sensual and provocative subjects academic legitimacy. Indeed, in spite of the dryness, he can be quite witty at times, and he is extraordinarily open to manifestations of virtual desire. He is particularly astute in exploring the ways in which online culture is changing the social expression of humans' desire for community. He also discusses ways in which online culture is changing our understanding of intimacy: Ben-Ze'ev describes online romantic relationships as being characterized by "detached attachment" or "detattachment" (sic), because on the one hand many people become more intimate than they would if they met in person, yet at any point any participant can turn off the computer and walk away forever. Presumably.
From Love Online:
The Seductive Space:Is Ben Ze’ev right? Are we in fact more attached and detached at the same time? I’m not sure, though it feels right, somehow. And it certainly seems to me to be true that virtual desire is very sexy.
"In cyberspace, people do not merely read or watch a romantic affair undertaken by others, but in a sense they are actually participating in it. As one woman says: 'It's almost as though you were reading erotica, except you are also writing the erotic story, and you don't know what's going to happen next.' Karl Marx once said that people 'make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please.' In cyberspace, they can finally make it exactly as they please." (3)
The Paradoxical Nature of Online Relationships:
"In online relationships people can be partially or fully anonymous: people can conceal their true identity or important aspects of it. Anonymity in online relationships facilitates full disclosure as it reduces the risks involved in disclosing intimate information about oneself. People can express themselves more freely since they are more anonymous, less accountable, and hence less vulnerable. Because of our sensitivity regarding our loved ones, the person closest to us may never know our deepest secrets or desires. A woman may be nervous about telliing her spouse her sexual fantasies--for fear it may ruin their relationship. However, she may readily tell her online lover about such fantasies without fear of repercussions." (34)
I’m especially interested in his claim that online desire is different from other forms of desire, and that it may in fact change who we are in the world, when we let ourselves play with it. This seems to me to capture the essence of why we are involved with the virtual. Because we are all participating in the experiment. Because, on some level, we know we will all be changed by it. That's what we want.
Inter-Species Friendships
But human-canine (and human-feline) aren't the only inter-species friends that fascinate me. For example, there's the lovely friendship between Hippo and Tortoise. And below, Elephant and Dog.
Here is a wonderful slide-show of inter-species friendships, sent to me by my friend Rene Spencer Saller (a gifted music critic as well as connoisseur of cats and other furred types).
These odd-couple friendships happen in the wild, too, but receive strong tribal discouragement. For example, this video from Animal Planet of the lioness who adopted a baby gazelle (eventually it was eaten by another lioness).
It's hard to cross these tribal lines.
On Being Too Disciplined
So, a bit about me as an author. I have a literary novel called NEW LIGHT out with Black Heron Press (2006). Alan Cheuse said very nice things about it. But the press was small, publishing was on the verge of the Great Ice Age, and the fate of NEW LIGHT was similar to the fate of most literary novels published by small presses. No big deal: it got me tenure. Now I can write and read and teach. These are wonderful things and I know that I am very lucky.
But then of course, if I call myself a writer, I have to produce finished work, right? And that can be, umm, hard. When I write, I think of it as a waltz between the conscious and unconscious parts of my mind. (Yes, I believe in the unconscious. I had a prof in grad school who declared with a satisfied smile that he did not in fact believe in the unconscious. I think it was a way of being cutting-edge. It's too boring to say you don't believe in the soul nowadays. I guess not believing in the unconscious was the new thang.)
But I believe in the unconscious, and in fact, far too often I don't listen (okay, "listen") to it. Of course, one's conscious mind generally needs to lead in the writing process, or one produces gibberish. But one of my problems is actually that I can be too disciplined. At times I don't give my unconscious the reins.
This became clear to me through the work I've done on a novel I've been working on for 11 years. A BOOK OF MIRRORS has gone through two distinct incarnations and is now entering a third. That equals a hell of a lot of time. Now mind you, I've been doing other things while working on MIRRORS. I wrote a YA novel (SKYRIDER) which is now at my agent's (waiting to go under the knife for the third time). I've taught many classes in lit and creative writing, worked with lots of students, things I almost always love. And then I've gone bankrupt and tried to be supportive of my husband when his advertising job left the great state of MI and moved to Chicago. Bravely he went back to school and in 4 years got an MBA in Information Systems (which is a weird supplement to his MFA in photography). And, impressively in this economic landscape, he landed another job 14 months ago, and did well in it, though he isn't really a cubicle sort of guy. But then the company went under, and since then, no jobs on his horizon. And then we went bankrupt.
But back to A BOOK OF MIRRORS. I have a few other novels on the back burners as well, but MIRRORS keeps on demanding that I get it right. So I keep on working at getting it right. It's really hard.
But there's a bright side to all this. Over the past ten years, as my husband and I trudged along our sometimes rocky road, I've discovered I go into overdrive sometimes. I get so fixated on what I need and want to do that I don't listen to my unconscious mind. I am so hyper-disciplined in my work habits that I keep working even if something feels off. So this entry is about not being disciplined. Sometimes it's important to slow down, let the work nudge you in different directions, directions you haven't even considered. Let your mind run along different possible scenarios, let yourself be surprised. Writers always talk about the importance of discipline, but I'm here to say: I forced myself to finish MIRRORS (twice!) and neither time got it right. So now I'm not doing the forced-march thing. I'm working a lot more slowly, and wow. It's really weird. And cool. That's all I can say. These characters are suddenly having a lot more fun in their lives than they were when I was pushing them around and telling them what I thought they should do. And really, when it comes down to it, what the hell do I know?
But then of course, if I call myself a writer, I have to produce finished work, right? And that can be, umm, hard. When I write, I think of it as a waltz between the conscious and unconscious parts of my mind. (Yes, I believe in the unconscious. I had a prof in grad school who declared with a satisfied smile that he did not in fact believe in the unconscious. I think it was a way of being cutting-edge. It's too boring to say you don't believe in the soul nowadays. I guess not believing in the unconscious was the new thang.)
But I believe in the unconscious, and in fact, far too often I don't listen (okay, "listen") to it. Of course, one's conscious mind generally needs to lead in the writing process, or one produces gibberish. But one of my problems is actually that I can be too disciplined. At times I don't give my unconscious the reins.
This became clear to me through the work I've done on a novel I've been working on for 11 years. A BOOK OF MIRRORS has gone through two distinct incarnations and is now entering a third. That equals a hell of a lot of time. Now mind you, I've been doing other things while working on MIRRORS. I wrote a YA novel (SKYRIDER) which is now at my agent's (waiting to go under the knife for the third time). I've taught many classes in lit and creative writing, worked with lots of students, things I almost always love. And then I've gone bankrupt and tried to be supportive of my husband when his advertising job left the great state of MI and moved to Chicago. Bravely he went back to school and in 4 years got an MBA in Information Systems (which is a weird supplement to his MFA in photography). And, impressively in this economic landscape, he landed another job 14 months ago, and did well in it, though he isn't really a cubicle sort of guy. But then the company went under, and since then, no jobs on his horizon. And then we went bankrupt.
But back to A BOOK OF MIRRORS. I have a few other novels on the back burners as well, but MIRRORS keeps on demanding that I get it right. So I keep on working at getting it right. It's really hard.
But there's a bright side to all this. Over the past ten years, as my husband and I trudged along our sometimes rocky road, I've discovered I go into overdrive sometimes. I get so fixated on what I need and want to do that I don't listen to my unconscious mind. I am so hyper-disciplined in my work habits that I keep working even if something feels off. So this entry is about not being disciplined. Sometimes it's important to slow down, let the work nudge you in different directions, directions you haven't even considered. Let your mind run along different possible scenarios, let yourself be surprised. Writers always talk about the importance of discipline, but I'm here to say: I forced myself to finish MIRRORS (twice!) and neither time got it right. So now I'm not doing the forced-march thing. I'm working a lot more slowly, and wow. It's really weird. And cool. That's all I can say. These characters are suddenly having a lot more fun in their lives than they were when I was pushing them around and telling them what I thought they should do. And really, when it comes down to it, what the hell do I know?
Why do puppies whistle and salamanders flick their tongues?
I don't know, but I love that they do.
I've never blogged before, but I've been accumulating pictures and articles I love and why not compile them and present them to the world?
In the meantime, I can muse (or rant) about the writing life. And while I start churning, please enjoy the whistling puppy and the rather enormous salamander below. (NB: he might not technically be a salamander, but then, neither is the Protest BP tattoo of a salamander I got on my arm this past summer in Montreal. We work with what we've got here. Please feel free to send me pics of real salamanders flicking their real tongues!)
I've never blogged before, but I've been accumulating pictures and articles I love and why not compile them and present them to the world?
In the meantime, I can muse (or rant) about the writing life. And while I start churning, please enjoy the whistling puppy and the rather enormous salamander below. (NB: he might not technically be a salamander, but then, neither is the Protest BP tattoo of a salamander I got on my arm this past summer in Montreal. We work with what we've got here. Please feel free to send me pics of real salamanders flicking their real tongues!)
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