Mary Shelley's Rearviewmirror

 



 

 

Dear Victor Frankenstein,

 

Shoulda, coulda, woulda, buddy boy. You made a man. Who killed your entire family. Mush on, sledge dogs. Mush.

 

 

Dear Frankenstein's Monster,

 

Whoops. You killed the only human who could stand your hideous face without trying to shoot it out from under your dark and beautiful, wind-whipped hair. Huh.

 

 

Dear Elizabeth Lavenza,

 

What was your major malfunction? You just walked right by Mr. Henry Clerval, didn't you? If only you would have been cast on a reality television show, this could have worked out better for you.

I Have Trouble Starting my Essay.

Me too, gentle writer. Me too.

So let's get right to the heart of the matter: do you have the same trouble starting a conversation?

With an old friend?

I didn't think so.

Ok. So what is different between a conversation with a buddy about sports, movies, music, dating, etc. and an expository essay about the "human position of suffering" as it is found in Auden's Musee des Beaux Arts?

Or the ironic tone displayed in chapter 12 of Grendel?

Or how two symbols from To Kill a Mockingbird are expressed with two different literary devices?

Or discussing what the nature of art actually is?

Miles. The difference is miles apart. Make no mistake, we are talking about apples and oranges here.

But let us not be daunted. I want to very seriously distinguish between product and process. Because while the product is different (a casual, informal dialogue with a friend v. a revised, formal analysis on paper), the process is not. And this is good news. When I start talking to my buddy, I just start. Because I know my audience, and my audience calls for informality. Casual is okay, expected. But this is not the case with essay writing. We must be formal, analytical. Ok. So be those things.

But don't over-shoot! "Formal" and "analytical" do not, should not translate to Shakespearean syntax. We shouldn't suddenly don a phony British accent (because that's how smart people sound in Hollywood) in our writing. We shouldn't confuse "formal" with "right-click my mouse to find synonyms I've never used before." To be clear, formal means things like:

1. no apostrophes
2. no slang (unless it is quoted and therefore something to analyze)
3. limited jargon (no one wants to read the definition of synecdoche. Ever :)
4. no :) like in the previous example
5. in other words, nothing you normally put in an email or text to a friend!

Voila!!! We just hit on it!!! How do you type to that old friend? Emails and/or texts and/or tweets etc.? Good! Then elevate the formality of your diction just above that, and you're set.

Now stop thinking and start typing.

Because there is no perfect beginning. And if you forget everything else we just discussed, remember that.

There is no perfect beginning. There are plenty of good ones, and just as many bad ones. But no perfect ones. So get over finding it.

And start.

Where Do They Eat?

Where does The Joker go to eat? McDonald's? Does he stroll in like he is the fast-food chain's clown? Different colors, more menace than whimsy, but still a clown? Camouflage-in-plain-sight? Number 13, crispy, with a large fry and a large Coke, please. No, not diet Coke, regular. Man, his cholestrol must be through the roof.

And where does Vader go for the maintenance of that Light-Brite torso of his? Sure, droids might perform the work, but surely there is a living creature/humanoid who ultimately owns the establishment or oversees the auto shop on the Star Destroyer, right? There's pressure for you; not just a Tuesday morning at all. And does Vader pack a sack lunch when landing on other planets, or does he trust to native cuisine? I can't imagine the burn wounds did any favors for his digestive tract.

Where does the Wicked Witch of the West get her clothes? I realize we are only talking about a fitted black sheet with room for her arms, but still. Is she spinning her own cotton looms? Does she knit? Is the WWW a knitter? With the monkeys coming and going, bringing fresh supplies, commenting on her patterns, her backstitch seams? Do the monkeys comment on her backstitch seams? And for goodness sake, does she run her designs by anyone else, or is she really so confident as to never, ever seek approval from others?  We are talking about fashion, after all.

And where is she eating? In the castle, every morning by herself with nothing but her coffee? Does she brew a full pot? Or just a K-cup single? Decaf? Probably not.

Where does Lady Macbeth shop for her hand lotion? She uses lotion, right? Just as a normal part of her daily hygeine regimen? Or hand sanitizer? Something, right? Who is supplying her with this? Does she receive free samples? Who is the shopowner audacious enough to charge her? Does she shop for any of this herself, or make this a job for servants? Does she ever borrow a smidgeon from someone else? Casual conversation, hey what's that it smells nice, it's my moisturizer do you want some, sure. But then it doesn't smell as good as she thought. There's trouble. Letting Lady MacB use some of your hand lotion. Trouble, that.

And who is cooking her food? Do they dialogue with her about her nutritional needs, or do they just cook her whatever she wants? Fried foods and ice cream every night? Heavy on the veggies, skimpy on the red meat? Would you ever use the word skimpy in front of her? No, gentle reader, you would not.

I tell you what.

World War Zzzz

I watched World War Z last night. The zombie moving starring Brad Pitt and 1,000,000,000,000 digital extras.

I went to bed. I did not have nightmares. I slept soundly. In fact, I did not really think much more of the movie outside of the fact that I had watched the movie. Actually, I thought a whole lot about what I was possibly missing from the movie----some underlying meaning, some deeper angle into ideas of humanness and humanity and what it means to be a human as opposed to being not human (or a zombie)----because I guess I wanted something to mull.

Something. Anything.

This morning I clicked on Roger Ebert's review of World War Z and eureka! I discovered words that described my own fuzzy opinion on this big-budget film that resonated such very small waves with me. (Read Ebert's full review here) Ebert aptly describes the camera shots as "panoramas of thousand of computer-generated zombies swarming ant-like up walls and over barricades and taking down computer-generated choppers while panicked generals watch on monitors from thousand of miles away and Forster's close-up camera wobbles and wiggles and swings all over the place to generate unearned 'excitement.'"

Unearned excitement. That's it. That's why this movie didn't stick with me.

It's not that this movie is bad. I enjoy zombie flicks, I'm a Brad Pitt fan, I like gratuitous violence for a cause sequences, but I also get bored fast with anything that belabors the fact that the main guy ain't dyin' no matter what. (Enter any Pirates of the Caribbean movie here...) And I also cannot invest myself in any character or conflict or moral dilemma which hasn't first been invested in elsewhere. Why am I suppposed to care? Even about the end of the world as we know it? HOW I am supposed to care, when it only takes 3 minutes and 49 seconds (I exaggerate?) of film time to present the swirl of emotion I am supposed to feel, compress it, and dab it in my eye, only it's not my eye, it's a digital eye, moving at a frenetic, zombie pace.

Unearned excitement indeed. Give me the book.

Right? Right, gentle reader? Isn't this precisely why the book beats Hollywood, always?

I'm not talking about a large percentage here. I am talking about a perfect record. Book beats movie 100% of the time. Close seconds allowed and expected, but ultimate winners will always come packaged in ink. Or at least digital ink.

Condition: You have to have read the book first. Because if you haven't, then the phrase "based on the novel/short story/etc. by _____" takes on such flimsy meaning and there's no going back. Enter the Bourne series here. Excellent movies. So very loosely based on Ludlum's novels. Miles apart different and both excellent fun.

Prove me wrong here. Need another example? Look at my previous post.

Look at the career that Tolkien handed to Peter Jackson even as he confidently stepped back up to the winner's podium.

Look at Harry Potter episode 3. Or the fact that it took them two movies to fully give us The Deathly Hallows.

Look at any of the clumsy attempts at Alice in Wonderland (weirdly creepy). Or any movie based on the writing of Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park the movie had 17 total good minutes). Or Stephen King, for that matter. The Stand miniseries, anyone?

And why is this? Why the difference? Why the superiority in writing? Unearned excitement. Hollywood provides us a cheaper route to adrenaline, emotion, even inspiration. 90 minutes of digital zombies cannot match 90 minutes of its page-turning equivalent. It's not bad, in fact it can be quite great. But not better. Our brains know better.

I could be wrong.

98% of All Literature=The Gatsby Dilemma

"I thought you knew, old sport. I'm afraid I'm not a very good host."


I'm Gatsby.

Gatsby's only legitimate problem was that he backed the wrong horse. Yes, Daisy is a horse in this scenario. What Gatsby should have done was back a winner, like Khartoum. But if Gatsby had backed Khartoum, then he would have run the risk of turning into something less than Gatsby and more like a typical power-hungry money-grubber who only interests himself with seeking more power and more money.

"I thought you knew, old sport. I'm afraid I'm not a very good host. And I wear silk pajamas."

I'm Jack Woltz.

 



So we need someone willing to back a tragic horse, who still has an edge, but not so much edge that dooms him to a less reputable spot on the good guy spectrum of characters. Someone with a sporting chance at victory.

"I thought you knew, old sport. I'm afraid I'm not a very good host. I'm not a host at all."

I'm Batman.

 

 

Still too much.

 

 

I'm Sam I Am.

 

Sam I Am does display the same kind of grit that Jay does in his respective story. The only key difference is that Sam is not too put off by the Other Guy in the story. Sam doesn't wallow in the past or attempt to recreate it in the present. In fact, Sam could be considered quite dull due to his inability to change gears, to "track with the rest of us," to move on. But it is this singular ability to remain, gentle reader, to not double back, to only see now that allows for his own personal happy ending.

 

Then again, I would hate to apply such a trite final objective as happiness to either story. Because I don't think either are quite that shallow. Not even that 2D fellow wearing a yellow Eurofit moomoo with the gangrenous protein.



Words...Human Suffering Pt. 2

In a recent post, I tried scratching the surface of a philosophical and psychological issue:

Are words the root of human suffering?

My initial conclusion was that they are not. After all, we have experiences and it is only after we are finished with these experiences that words even come into play. Anyone who has ever been "in the zone" knows about this phenomenon. Time, space, and certainly vocabulary all slow down while we have those experiences. What those experiences are demands a level of description, and so words fill in the blanks.

But only after the experience is finished. After. The root of anything cannot come after; therefore, words are not the culprit, merely the messenger. The conveyor.

I stand by this initial logic. (I think.) Instead of words, I am going to blame a scientific law for the suffering of humanity. Instead of words, I posit Inertia as the source of all bad things. After all, is it not one's ability to move forward (or sideways, or anywhere else) after destruction which dictates one's safety? It is much more about one unsticking oneself from the bad place, following the law that an object at rest tends to stay at rest; therefore get a move on, buddy!

Let's face literary facts:

1. Hamlet dies because he couldn't walk and talk at the same time.

2. The Underground Man lives in a world of spite because he chooses to never leave.

3. Gatsby polishes this law up to a rare shine and tries passing it off as something else--call it love or fate or something equally gorgeous--but he doesn't transform it because Daisy chooses Tom.

4. The Bundrens technically are moving in Faulkner's AILD, but they are more closely walking on a hamster wheel, displaying movement-as-stasis for they make no progress. Consider Anse's final proclamation: "Meet Mrs. Bundren."In a single line he resets the entire story back to its starting point, even further back, before Addie becomes sick.

5. Grendel feels slighted by the Danes and never moves on.

6. Holden feels terrible anguish over losing Allie and never moves on.

7. Mustapha Mond is charged with maintaining societal stability, and so he does not allow the world to move on.

8. Sydney Carton, anyone? It is a far, far better place indeed.

In his book On Moral Fiction, John Gardner states "life is all conjunctions. One damn thing after another, cows and wars and chewing gum and mountains; art--the best, most important art--is all subordination: guilt because of sin because of pain."

Life happens, and it moves on without fanfare. Ands and buts and ors fill our days. Only upon reflection, that most human of all achievements, can we elevate any of these events to art, and only once elevated can any of these events stand in a subordinated state. Guilt, sin, pain, acc. to Gardner, come after. They come with the art.

I would claim that even the words we attach to our events, the way we choose to describe them, are just another part of the and-train of life. I woke up and I felt crummy and then I drank coffee and I felt epic and... It is only after I sit down and think backwards over my day that I get to inject further emotion, further joy or suffering into the day's events.

One final thing to consider: I recently read the My Shot column in the September issue of Golf Digest, this one by Grant Rogers, a golf pro at Bandon Dunes in Oregon. Rogers says:

Course marshals should try driving up on a slow group and telling them, "I've been following you, and I see that you're picking up the pace. Great job." I saw a marshal take this positive approach, and it really got people moving. It also made the marshal feel better about his job, which can be a tough one. Who likes to see a marshal coming up on their group?

If words are the root of human suffering, then they absolutely must also be the root of human glory. And if that's the case, then I don't mind being out-debated on this issue. Speak on, gentle reader.

Processing Krakauer

Literary critic and Christian apologist G.K. Chesterton stated "[f]or children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy."

Huh.

Yep.

I agree with this and I struggle with this and I come out still agreeing with this. I can remember, not too long ago, when I fell into the children category. The world was black or white and I was good at identifying which was which. And boy could I weigh in with a healthy dose of moral authority. I can also attest to the wicked category, living comfortably in it right now, and I can state without exception that mercy rules.

But there are times when I feel myself slipping backwards into childlike innocence, backwards into my uninhibited moral authority, backwards where I am always right and that part of the world which stands against me is wrong.

Notice what I did just now, with the ironic use of backwards...? After all, only a Sith deals in absolutes.

Krakauer strikes a nerve

I bring all this up because I just finished Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild. I will be teaching this book second semester in the upcoming school year, and to be perfectly honest, I don't know what to do with it.

I am at a total loss as to how I want/need/ought to present this material to my high school seniors. Quickly, the book journalistically follows the life and ultimate death of Chris McCandless, a young, educated man who in 1992 decided to leave civilized life behind him and, with the ideals of his favorite Romantic writers as his guide, walk into the wild of Alaska to live off the land. The nonfiction account follows McCandless on his journey and attempts to come to terms with that peskiest of all questions: WHY?

Why did he live this way? Why did he die? Why did his ascetic walk have to take him away from his family? Why does that level of sacrifice stand as a prerequisite for experiential truth?

If McCandless died naively, arrogantly, foolhardily, then why are we still reading Thoreau?

Krakauer's use of the Chesterton quote is masterfully done. It is within the two categories--innocent children and the rest of wicked us--that carries the tension of this entire book. McCandless was young. He had ideals. He attempted to live an absolutely principled life. Can the rest of us say as much, especially while the rest of us live our comfortable lives out? Should the rest of us apologize for these lives?

Or bank on mercy? Two helpings for me, please.

I am a parent, and to that I mourn with the McCandless family. But I am a Romantic, and to that I celebrate Chris's spirit.

But I am a teacher, and to that I caution against Chris's path. Justice and mercy. Innocence and wickedness. A young man in a nonfiction tale who will never come home.

I am still at a loss, gentle reader, but perhaps less so. Perhaps my reaction to Chris McCandless and his fate will change depending on the day, the weather, the last song I heard, the last book I read. Like any good art, I believe Krakauer's book stands up to this necessary blurred vision, and, at the risk of typing out of turn, I think Chris McCandless would have been okay with this.

And so I act on what I believe. And so I type.

And you?

For more details from Jon Krakauer regarding Into the Wild, visit http://instagram.com/krakauernotwriting.

Words as the Root of Human Suffering?

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.

Anyone old enough to use this phrase knows how flimsy the logic really is, kind of like the rules to rock, paper, scissors. We only call upon sticks and stones when someone has attacked us with words, and we use the phrase to deflect, to diminish, to pretend at how the words don't matter. How they don't hurt. We use it to negotiate terms, both to our relationship with the attacker (you don't mean so much to me as to actually affect me) and to our own feelings (wow that stung, but I'm not going to cry, at least not in front of them). In short, words can hurt.

And this is no surprise, gentle reader. You've heard this before. Part of the growing-up process is coming to terms with the naivety of this children's phrase. But we know better. We know just how badly words can hurt. How truly twisted and evil words can be. It was with words that Satan, disguised as the serpent, convinced Eve to take the fruit; it was with words that Hitler rallied the fears of a nation into genocide; it is because of words that a growing number of drivers perish on the road while trying to balance a steering wheel and a text message. Words give voice to our own deepest fears and prejudices, our most honest and basest thoughts, whether spoken aloud or not. Words cause pain and suffering. Words, it would seem, have grave potential; even sticks and stones are no match.

Slow down, right? Perhaps not.

Hayes, Strosahl, and Wilson state in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy that "human language gives rise to both human achievement and human misery." They define human language as "symbolic activity in whatever form it occurs," so we may chronicle both our greatest triumphs and most epic failures with this symbolic activity (enter iPhone text symbol or Facebook update or profile avatar here). On a less technological level, this symbolic activity includes written words. Books. Novels. Poetry. That includes quite a lot, things like the low, slow ha-ha and the barbaric yawp and the one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them and to smile and smile and be a villain and to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield and it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

Hayes, Strosahl, and Wilson claim, broadly speaking, that this symbolic exchange is at the source of human suffering because it is concretely linked to human achievement, something that has been racing forward at light speed over the course of the past century. Consider, as Hayes & Co. point out,  that "[f]ifty years ago the Oxford English Dictionary weighed 300 pounds and... today, it fits on a 1-ounce flash drive." We as humans have evolved, and with this new potential comes the possibility of not achieving it. For every ball caught, this one thrown just a little higher than the last, there must be the possibility of dropping it. Otherwise, why play, right?

As an English teacher, I see it as my job to introduce lots of words to my students. Which words to use, and how to use them. Why this word fits better here and that word there. My entire job is words. So am I contributing to the general vastness of human suffering every time the bell rings? (A rhetorical question, gentle student!)

I'm not so sure. Dostoevsky's lead characters might rail against such a claim. After all Raskolnikov and the Underground Man seem to suffer due to their excessive consciousness, not in spite of it. Words are their burden. Yet how unable, how poorly equipped would Dostoevsky be if he could not call on all his words to fully articulate this suffering? Where would Hamlet be (or not be) with his slings and arrows and eating of crocodiles if Shakespeare didn't use so many words that he was forced to create his own?

Literature would certainly suffer. But, likewise, don't we? Because words give rise to suffering?

No.

I don't think the words themselves are the root of anything. The words are not the experience, merely our way of processing the experience. My day might be simply "good" or "bad" or it could be a "sliding vortex down melancholia" or "a fabulous jaunt through rainbow bliss" but the day doesn't change based on the extent of my own personal vocabulary.

Does it?

To be continued...

The Huh? of the Future

What is a Super PAC?

What does the Supreme Court mean when it says that it recognizes corporations as people?

Why is heroin so popular right now in quiet suburban communities?

How much does it cost to dig a well in a Third World country? And how much is one month's data plan on the most inexpensive smartphone?

What is our current minimum wage?

Is Amazon's new Lending Library the beginning of the end for our current Public Library system?

Why aren't windshields covered on anybody's bumper-to-bumper warranty plan?

Will my generation remember enough of its history to not repeat the bad parts of it?

And will yours?

...

I don't know either, gentle reader. But I want to know.

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World poses the conflict caught in the teeth of knowing too much and not enough. It displays happiness as an end while struggle is personified as the one thing to be avoided at all cost. In fact, World Controller Mustapha Mond goes so far as to liken the ideal population to the iceberg model, where seven-ninths of the population float safely below sea level. They live in the murk, and they are happy there.

I want to be part of the two-ninths. Or better, I want to raise the seven-ninths upward, to breathe the fresh air. I want to struggle. Together. I want to read and read and read and then discuss things, with defensive mode flipped off, and then go back and read some more. And I want to trust the fiction that I have read, because human nature hasn't changed. Because what motivated people in Othello and The Moon is Down and My Antonia are the same things that motivate our family, our bosses, our world leaders. I want to trust the fiction that I love, because it allows me to see my reality with sharper focus. Because I have seen many things already, safely in the pages of my books, or on the screen of my e-reader (yes, I can be a fancy pants now too, I suppose), like gazing into the proverbial crystal ball.

It is not our place to know everything. But the only way we will impact the world around us is to first know something about it. Personally, I am a fan of more than just "something," aren't you?

Go find the answers. Go ask the unasked questions. Go be the expert.

06/19/13: A Tribute to Vince Flynn

I was doing what teachers should be doing on a Wednesday in the summer: golfing. My brother and I had just finished 18 holes, and while he shot better, I was feeling pretty good about my own score. Such is the easy pleasure of golf, that you can be the loser of the day and still feel good about yourself, perfect for a non-doer.

As we were unloading our gear from the cart, I unzipped a pocket on my golf bag, grabbed my phone, and checked for messages. There was one message waiting for me. Only one, from my wife:

I have some bad news for you. Call me when you get a chance... Nothing too serious so don't panic.

Well, gentle reader, I panicked. You see, my wife is currently 7 months pregnant and she sometimes has a habit of understating things. My brother was mid-sentence talking about who-knows-what when I dialed home and held a hand up in his face, giving him the "not now" look. He understood, returned to loading his gear into his car, keeping a furtive glance my way for any sign of what was going on. "I have some bad news for you" was floating in the hazy dusk air, and I couldn't dial fast enough.

She picked up on the second ring and told me. No, nothing about the baby. No really, just listen. Vince Flynn died today. I'm so sorry. He's dead.

Gentle reader, this is upsetting. For those of you unfamiliar, Vince Flynn was a political thriller writer, author of 14 books--all best-sellers--which have sold over 15 million copies worldwide. Vince Flynn was a giant in the book world, and I loved reading his stuff. A real life author who maintained communication with his readership, who embedded real-world concerns into his fictitious reality of the CIA and American politics, who started off in the business by self-publishing and struggling and persevering. Flynn created the now famous CIA super-spy, Mitch Rapp, one of the coolest badman good guys in fiction. He was good at his craft, and he enjoyed it, and if you were a fan, you knew it.

My favorite authors list is not exclusive. I love Tolkien, Steinbeck, Lewis, Shakespeare. I love Gardner and McCarthy, Atwood and Crichton.

I love Flynn.

To all you other Vince Flynn fans, feel free to post your favorite Mitch Rapp moment in the COMMENTS section.

Why Unferth?

Someone recently asked me, "Why Unferth? I mean, if you're going to write about somebody from another story, at least pick someone we know!"

Well, there's the rub.  First, let us all agree that this "someone" could not have been one of my students. You faithful troops all know Unferth. You are forced to. We read and reread Beowulf's boast and counter-boast; we focus on Unferth to study his role as a foil. We dissect what he says and how he says it. In fact, we hit that section so hard that my classes are typically recast afterward as those who love Unferth and those (select few, Student H...) who hate him.

But to answer this question:

It is precisely because people don't know him that I chose him. And not to play some high-brow literati game with you, gentle reader. Consider this simple truth, one that is highlighted in the "Introduction" section of Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf: everyone knows the other myths (Helen of Troy, Jason and the Golden Fleece, killing the Kraken); and everyone knows the other heroes (Achilles, Hector, Odysseus), the other villains, etc. In short, everyone can rattle off, or at least nod at, the Greek and Roman canon of mythology. Very few recognize names like Hrothgar, Sigemund, Heremod, Unferth.

What happened to the English canon? Why don't we know about Unferth?

Beowulf stands as the oldest surviving story written in Old English. Our language. It is one of four pieces of literature captured in a single document now called the Nowell Codex. This document can still be viewed in the British Library in London. Important names like Shield Shiefson and Billa Celest and Hrunting are printed in that document. Names like Breca and Beowulf and Grendel.

Names like Unferth.

The Favorite

Jewel is Addie Bundren's favorite.

There. Now we can move forward.

Addie claims Jewel. The other children, according to her, "are his and not mine." It doesn't matter who his is (it's Anse), only that they are not hers. Jewel is hers. Only Jewel.

On the flip side, it is Jewel, way back in section 4, way back in the only section he narrates, who claims "[i]t would just be me and her on a high hill and me rolling the rocks down the hill at their faces." It doesn't matter who their is (Anse, Cash, Darl, Dewey Dell, Vardaman, Vernon, Cora, Kate, Eula, the rest of mankind), only that he and his mom are together. Just he and his mom. Just mom.

A great family is the best possibe kind of blessing we have a chance at on this earth. But families are tricky things. They are not always great, and even when they are, they sometimes represent poisonous things. Like competition. Exclusivity. Love itself, or at least a corrupted form of it, like needing it to the detriment of others, like an addict.

Addie Bundren, by the way, represents corrupted love. Or lack. Either way, she represents bad, gentle reader. Let us lean on the vague for a moment:

Jewel is the favorite son. For awful reasons. And I wonder if he knows that about himself. I wonder if that is the root of all his anger. I want to get on board with his absolute loyalty, his fierce love, his unequaled devotion. But I hesitate, because I worry about the source of these things.

If it is love, then I applaud you, Jewel.

I do not know that it is love.

Schizophrenic Narration or Something More

Onward and upward, gentle reader. Today we begin William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. My oh my, what a challenge. And what an easy target to call "the worst book ever written" (although my snobbishness must point to something else out there. How about Eastman's Are you My Mother? I mean, really, what a hackneyed, repetitive, plot-driven story complete with a Disneyesque cliche for an ending... worst book, indeed).

But Faulkner. What a crazy, right?

Maybe.

But what a grand example of what it truly means to be a great author. Two parts talent, and one part eyesight. Or the other way around. Probably there are more ingredients. In any event, the great authors shared a common trait: they observed humanity. Then they recorded it. But I argue that the observation is most important, because it is the method of observation, the individual lens of the author, that first dictates what ends up on the printed page. This is what makes Huxley different from Steinbeck, and both different from Austen. Huxley saw the world in decimal points and then wrote with them. Steinbeck saw the world along the lines of his moral compass and then wrote about all the directions represented by the needle. Austen, well. She knew more about getting into and out of relationships than anyone. And she described it to us.

And we are thankful to all of them. Because I don't think in science, or morality, or relational faux pas. At least not with the same level of dedication as Huxley, Steinbeck, and Austen.

But then there's Faulkner.

Now I don't imply that these other authors can't write different character types. They can. But Faulkner steps inside these different characters' heads in a way that Huxley, Steinbeck, and Austen do not. Different craft, not superior. But let us give Faulkner his due, and more importantly, let us recognize as readers the spectrum of humanity provided in As I Lay Dying.

If we flinch, perhaps it is because he writes for us. That is crazy.

Emotional, Not Just Depressing

I've had several students recently ask me "Why does everything we read in English have to be so depressing?"

Good question, gentle reader. But let's clarify the terms. Let's demand specificity, because that is precisely what our authors expect of us (remember, Blake told us that "to generalize is to be an idiot"). Instead of leaning on depressing as our umbrella term, let us instead consider the alternative emotional.

We will quickly find that emotional is more apt. I don't necessarily seek out depression in my reading, but I do need to be moved. Not merely entertained, but moved. Great literature lends itself to pockets of high emotionality. It isn't just that Holden is so damn depress-ed/ing; it is that even though he is, he still loves his sister unconditionally. And it isn't quite so important that Ros and Guil die(?) in the end of their play; it is much more important that we-as-audience are rooting against their demise and, therefore in the process, holding fast to our own humanity. Also, it isn't quite about the fact that Beowulf dies; it is that he (or anyone) cannot become legend until he (anyone) first stops moving. Of course Beowulf needs to die. Are facts depressing?

Make no mistake, I love happy endings. And, I am not a literary snob. I love reading fun and funny things. I love good guys winning well. I fell in love with Tolkien's epic quest, and I revisit it now and then because I know that it turns out okay in the end. But even this tale has sacrifice also, has darkness also. Because that's what great literature has: goodness, sacrifice, darkness. Parceled out in pieces. Jigsawing, jockeying, juxtaposing for footing in our hearts and minds.

I don't read McCarthy because I want to see the evidence of the deepest pits of hell on earth. Yikes. But when I read McCarthy, I am reminded of just how the abyss looks from where I am seated, and just how close it can sometimes be. And then I look around again and smile, because it's just a book, no matter how close to real life--on any plane--it strikes.

That is the glory of reading, yes? The smile just after.

13 Ways of Looking at an Underground Man

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the mouth of the underground man.

 

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

One of the blackbirds told me that unless
I shooed away the other blackbirds,
I would never act, and therefore,
Amount to nothing.

 

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

The underground man then pointed out all
The other parts of the pantomime.

 

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

Apparently one plus one does not equal two.
Deal with it, underground man.

 

V
Underground men do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

Because they are underground and
Never hear blackbirds whistling in the first place.

 

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
It is Russia. Why is this surprising?

 

VII
O thin heroes of St. Petersburg,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the muddy feet
Of the women about you?

 

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I will not share them, for I am

An underground man.

 

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

The circles are really squares.
When you put that one together,
Give me a call.

 

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Gatsby became dismayed because the
Green light was his.
Gatsby, may I borrow some money?
Says the underground man.

 

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For soldiers looking to

Punch him in his
Underground shoulder.

 

XII
The river is moving.
The underground man must be whining.

 

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
Yellow and murky snow.

Like the laws of nature dictate, or
Like a dog peeing from the frozen heavens.
Either or.

Heading Underground Once Again

Here we are gentle reader, heading somewhere but not here, steering our attention to heroes and mud and nothing in between, celebrating laziness so long as it is certainly present and accounted for.

We are going Underground.

Call it sickness, call it self-aware loathing, call it a whine-fest. Whatever. I am excited.

Here are my Top 5 Reasons for wanting to head Underground:

1. I like saying the author's name. It's like a verbal jungle-gym.

2. There is a shoulder duel. Just shoulders and spite. Something I have always wanted to do. In the hallway...

3.  I love puzzles, and page for page these Notes have more paradoxes to unravel than anything else we read.

4. Our unnamed narrator sounds crazy. And maybe he is crazy, but this is beside the point, because whatever he is, he is saying a whole lot of things. To be sure, I would never say some of the things he says, but there are some things he says that I would want to say. And probably never will. For whatever reason. But he says them, which means I am not alone in my thinking, and this comforts me.

5. Simply, I can leave. The Underground ends the moment I close the book. Thoughts and ideas and insults and laughs and headaches linger only if I allow them. Such is the awesome power of reading.

Who knew.