Commentary on Proust and Bartheleme (Swann's Way and Snow White)

Characterization in the Second Transcribed Passage from Swann's Way and in Snow White

The characters in Snow White are flat characters; shadow puppets that convey the action and the ideas of the novel without having any substance of their own. We approach them from a distance, and after a certain point, we cease to get any closer. In the larger scheme of things, they elicit reactions from us rather than empathy. As a result, we have feelings about the book (not with it), and those feelings are not connected to nor influenced by any form of identification with the characters. It’s almost as if the reader is intended to regard the characters as variables within a formula, and then, after identifying those variables, is intended to decipher the formula and thereby extract the ideas or sentiments it has been constructed by the author to convey. Only after this final step, after the contrivances of the characters and plot have been distilled into an idea, only then should the reader react to, empathize with, or dismiss what is in front of him.

In Proust’s novel, and in most books I’ve read that predate postmodernism, the function of fictional characters is very different. Characters in modern and classical literature are intended to engage the reader and secure his or her participation in the novel at a very fundamental level: “Next to this central belief… came the emotions aroused in me by the action in which I would be taking part, for these afternoons were crammed with more dramatic and sensational events than occur, often in a whole lifetimes. These were events which took place in the book I was reading… The novelist’s happy discovery was to think of substituting for those opaque sections [found in real life characters], impenetrable by the human spirit, their equivalent in immaterial sections, things, that is, which the spirit can assimilate to itself. After which it matters not that the actions, the feelings of this new order of creatures [fictional characters] appear to us in the guise of truth, since we have made them our own, since it is in ourselves that they are happening.” A character, in as much as we believe that he or she is real, is marginally the character that the author has given us and massively the character that we’ve constructed ourselves. Swann, for instance, is introduced to us as “almost the only person who ever came to the house at Combray, sometimes to a neighborly dinner (but less frequently since his unfortunate marriage, as my [the author’s] family did not care to receive his wife) and sometimes after dinner, uninvited.” Only a little bit more is said about him before his character is left untouched for thirty or forty pages, the effect of which, is to force us as readers to supply our own details, tentative and generic at first, since we’re barely acquainted with him, but more specific and elaborate, as new dimensions of his character are introduced by the author. Two hundred pages into the novel, the shame and sadness we feel as a result of his unhappy love affair is half his and half our own: the outline provided by the author having been filled out and bolstered by the millions of excuses, grievances, and elaborations that we’ve supplied ourselves. The effect is that his character is one that we are so intimately acquainted with that we have no choice but to feel his suffering (and elation) as our own.

The characters in Snow White, on the other hand, do not demand such participation on the part of the reader. They are much more mathematical in their precision. In many respects, they act as caricatured forms of classical characters. It’s not important for the reader to actually believe that they are real; it’s only important that the reader is able to identify what type of real character they were intended to represent. Take the following passage from Snow White:

“Hello Hogo.” “Hello chaps.” “The floor is yours Hogo.” “Well chaps first I’d like to say a few vile things more or less at random, not only because it is expected of me but also because I enjoy it. One of them is that this cunt you’ve got here [Snow White], although I’ve never seen her with my own eyes, is probably not worth worrying about.”

At no point are we expected to supply supplementary details to fill out Hogo’s character (What happened to him to make him so villainous? Is his chauvinism a form of compensating for some other deficiency? etc.), because we don’t need to believe in his reality; his only function in the larger novel is to be easily identifiable as a villainous character. It’s enough that we think to ourselves; “He’s the type of character that, in a Marcel Proust novel, would elicit feelings of hate and enmity.”

***

Anyway, the library is closing and I’m leaving London day after tomorrow, so I’ll have to finish this up when I get back to Bangkok. For now, I’ll end with this:

My gut reaction to the type of writing you find in Snow White is not a positive one. The flatness of the characters is something I’ve noticed for a long time in postmodern writing (I think I touched on it in my third post on David Foster Wallace’s “Interviews with Hideous Men”), but I’ve struggled to articulate to myself why I dislike it. Part of what I really liked about the second Proust passage, and something I’ll try to talk about later, is the case it makes for more traditionally engaging fiction.

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust (pt. II)

Upon the sort of screen, patterned with different states and impressions, which my consciousness would quietly unfold while I was reading, and which ranged from the most deeply hidden aspirations of my heart to the wholly external view of the horizon spread out before my eyes at the foot of the garden, what was from the first the most permanent and the most intimate part of me, the lever whose incessant movements controlled all the rest, was my belief in the philosophic richness and beauty of the book I was reading, and my desire to appropriate these to myself, what ever the book might be. For even if I had purchased it at Combray, having seen it outside Borange's, whose grocery lay too far from our house for Francoise to be able to deal there, as she did with Camus, but who enjoyed better custom as a stationer and bookseller; even if I had seen it, tied with string to keep it in its place in the mosaic of monthly parts and pamphlets which adorned either side of his doorway, a doorway more mysterious, more teeming with suggestion than that of a cathedral, I should have noticed and bought it there simply because I had recognised it as a book which had been well spoken of, in my hearing, by my schoolmaster or the school-friend who, at that particular time, seemed to me to be entrusted with the secret of Truth and Beauty, things half-felt by me, half-incomprehensible, the full understanding of which was the vague but permanent object of my thoughts.

Next to this central belief, which, while i was reading, would be constantly in motion from my inner self to the outer world, towards the discovery of Truth, came the emotions aroused in me by the action in which I would be taking part, for these afternoons were crammed with more dramatic and sensational events than occur, often, in a whole lifetime. These were the events which took place in a book I was reading. it is true that the people concerned in them were not what Francoise would have called 'real people.' But none of the feelings which the joys or misfortunes of a 'real' person awaken in us can be awakened except through the mental picture of those joys or misfortunes; and the ingenuity of the first novelist lay in his understanding that, as the picture was the one essential element in the complicated structure of our emotions, so that simplification of it which consisted in the suppression, pure and simple, of 'real' people would be a decided improvement. A 'real' person, profoundly as we may sympathise with him, is in a great measure perceptible only though our sense, that is to say, he remains opaque, offers a dead weight which our sensibilities have not the strength to lift. If some misfortune comes to him, it is only in one small section of the complete idea we have of him that we are capable of feeling any emotion; indeed it is only in one small section of the complete idea he has of himself that he is capable of feeling any emotion either. The novelist's happy discovery was to think of substitution for those opaque sections, impenetrable by the human spirit, their equivalent in immaterial sections, things, that is, which the spirit can assimilate to itself. After which it matters not that the actions, the feeling of this new order of creatures appear to us in the guise of truth, since we have made them our own, since it is in ourselves that they are happening, that they are holding in thrall, which we turn over, feverishly, the pages of the book, our quickened breath and staring eyes. And once the novelist has brought us to that state, in which, as in all purely mental states, every emotion is multiplied ten-fold, into which his book comes to disturb us as might a dream, but a dream more lucid, and of a more lasting impression than those which come to us in sleep; why, then, for the space of an hour he sets free within us all the joys and sorrows in the world, a few of which, only, we should have to spend years of our actual life in getting to know, and the keenest, the most intense of which would never have been revealed to us because the slow course of their development stops our perception of them. It is the same in life; the heart changes, and that is our worst misfortune; but we learn of it only from reading or by imagination; for in reality its alteration, like that of certain natural phenomena, is so gradual that, even if we are able to distinguish, successively, each of its different states, we are still spared the actual sensation of change.

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was comprised in the theater and the drama of my going to bed there, had any existence for me, when one day in winter, as I came home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called 'petites madeleines,' which look as though they had been molded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory -- this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?

I drink a second mouthful, in which I find nothing more than in the first, a third, which gives me rather less than the second. It is time to stop; the potion is losing its magic. It is plain that the object of my quest, the truth, lies not in the cup but in myself. The tea has called up in me, but does not itself understand, and can only repeat indefinitely, with a gradual loss of strength, the same testimony; which I, too, cannot interpret, though I hope at least to be able to call upon the tea for it again and to find it there presently, intact and at my disposal, for my final enlightenment. I put down my cup and examine my own mind. It is for it to discover the truth. But how? what and abyss of uncertainty whenever the mind feels that some part of it has strayed beyond its own borders; when it, the seeker, is at once the dark region through which it must go seeking, where all its equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? more than that: create. It is face to face with something which does not so far exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day.

And I begin again to ask myself what it could have been, this unremembered state which brought with it no logical proof of its existence, but only the sense that it was a happy, that it was a real state in whose presence other states of consciousness melted and vanished. I decide to attempt to make it reappear. I retrace my thoughts to the moment at which I drank the first spoonful of tea. I find again the same stat, illuminated by no fresh light. I compel my mind to make one further effort, to follow and recapture once again the fleeting sensation. And that nothing may interrupt it in its course I shut out every obstacle, every extraneous idea, I stop my ears and inhibit all attention to the sounds which come from the next room. And then, feeling that my mind is growing fatigued without having any success to report, I compel it for a chance to enjoy that distraction which I have just denied it, to think of other things, to rest and refresh itself before the supreme attempt. And then for the second time I clear an empty space in front of it. I place in position before my mind's eye the still recent taste of that first mouthful, and I feel something start within me, something that leaves its resting place and attempts to rise, something that has been embedded like an anchor at a great depth; i do not know yet what it is, but I can feel it mounting slowly; I can measure the resistance, I can hear the echo of great spaces traversed.

Undoubtedly what is thus palpitating in the depths of my being must be the image, the visual memory which, being linked to that taste, has tried to follow it into my conscious mind, But its struggles are too far off, too much confused; scarcely can I perceive the colourless reflection in which are blended the uncapturable whirling medley of radiant hues, and I cannot distinguish its form, cannot invite it, as the one possible interpreter, to translate to me the evidence of its contemporary, its inseparable paramour, the taste of cake soaked in tea; cannot ask it to inform me what special circumstance is in question, of what period in my past life.

Will it ultimately reach the clear surface of my consciousness, this memory, this old, dead moment which the magnetism of an identical moment has traveled so far to importune, to disturb, to raise up out of the very depths of my being? I cannot tell. Now that I feel nothing, it has stopped, has perhaps gone down again into its darkness, from which who can say whether it will ever rise again? Ten times over I must essay the task, must lean down over the abyss. And each time the natural laziness which deters us from every difficult enterprise, every work of importance, has urged me to leave the thing alone, to drink my tea and to think merely of the worries of today and of my hopes for tomorrow, which let themselves be pondered over without effort or distress of mind.

And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before church-time), when I went to say good day to her in her bedroom, my aunt Leonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or of lime-flower tea. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the interval without tasting them, on the trays in the pastry-cooks' windows, that their image had dissociated itself from those Combray days to take its place among others more recent; perhaps because of those memories, so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing now survived, everything was scattered; the forms of things, including that of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lost the power of expansion which would have allowed them to resume their place in my consciousness. But when form a long0distand past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.

And one I had recognised the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theatre to attach itself to the little pavilion, opening on to the garden, which had been built out behind it for my parents (the isolated panel which until that moment had been all that I could see); and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all weathers, the Square where I was sent before luncheon, the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took when it was fine. And just as the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little crumbs of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch themselves and bend, take on colour and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, permanent and recognizable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann's park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.

Commentary on Three Lives by Gertrude Stein

(In response to comments by Daleyz)

When I first started reading the Melanctha section I couldn't help but think it was incredibly racist. To be fair though, Stein writes the white characters in the other sections in a similar way: everyone uses names a million times in every sentence, and the syntax is all messed up. It's really jarring, but after a while i started to like it. It's almost like she's creating her own language, which i thought was kind of cool (if nothing else, at least it's really original). The other thing that she does really well, which i couldn't capture with two passages posted out of context here, was the way she develops her characters. The book is primarily about that I think, and some of it is absolutely amazing. I think the weird commas and the flow, after a while, become less grating, and make you read the story in a certain way. They force you to sound everything out in your head, which counteracts most readers' natural inclination to conceptualize the plot and characters and themes. It's almost like she's trying to make you walk through a garden maze, (try one rout, get lost, try another etc.) instead of letting you find the correct path by looking at the whole thing from above. It makes for a pretty unique and new reading experience, even though the characters, the plot, the language, and the implicit racism/classism, at times, feel old and outdated.

I've given up a bit on posting passages that can stand alone, because i'm not sure it's really possible. The Savage Detectives lends itself to that kind of thing, since it's written as a series of individual anecdotes, but even that didn't hold up too well.

Snow White by Donald Bartheleme

Bill is tired of Snow White now. But he cannot tell her. No, that would not be the way. Bill can't bear to be touched. That is new too. To have anyone touch him is unbearable. Not just Snow White but also Kevin, Edward, Hubert, Henry, Clem or Dan. That is a peculiar aspect of Bill, the leader. We speculate that he doesn't want to be involved in human situations any more. A withdrawal. Withdrawal is one of the four modes of dealing with anxiety. We speculate that his reluctance to be touched springs from that. Dan does not go along with the anxiety theory. Dan does not believe in anxiety. Dan speculates that Bill's reluctance to be touched is a physical manifestation of a metaphysical condition that is not anxiety. But he is the only one who speculates that. The rest of us support anxiety. Bill has let us know in subtle ways that he doesn't want to be touched. If he falls down, you are not to pick him up. If someone holds out a hand in greeting, Bill smiles. If it is time to was the buildings, he will pick up his own bucket. Don't hand him a bucket, for in that circumstance there is a chance that your hands will touch. Bill is tired of Snow White. She must have noticed that he doesn't go to the shower room, now. We are sure she has noticed that. But bill has not told her in so many words that he is tired of her. He has not had the heart to unfold those cruel words, we speculate. Those cruel words remain locked in his lack of heart. Snow White must assume that his absence from the shower room, in these days is an aspect of his not liking to be touched. We are certain she has assumed that. But to what does she attribute the "not-liking" itself? We don't know.

***

Now she's written a dirty great poem four pages long, won't let us read it, refuses absolutely, she is adamant. We discovered it by accident. WE had trudged home early, lingered in the vestibule for a bit wondering if we should trudge inside. A strange prehension, a boding of some kind. Then we trudged inside. "Here's the mail," we said. She was writing something, we could see that. "here's the mail," we said again, usually she likes to paw over the mail, but she was preoccupied, didn't look up, not a flicker. "What are you doing there," we asked, "writing something?" Snow White looked up. "Yes," she said. And looked down again, not a pinch of emotion coloring the jet black of her jet-black eyes. "A letter?" we asked wondering if a letter then to who and about what. "No," she said. "A list?" we asked inspecting her white face for a hint of tendresse. But there was no tendresse. "No," she said. We noticed then that she had switched the tulips from the green bowl to the blue bowl. "What then?" we asked. We noticed that she had shifted the lilies from the escritoire to the chiffonier. "What then?" we repeated. WE observed that she had hauled the Indian paintbrush all the way out into the kitchen. "Poem," she said. We had the mail in our paws still. "Poem?" we said. "Poem," she said. There it was, the red meat on the rug. "Well," we said, "can we have a peek?" "No," she said. "How long is it?" we asked. "Four pages," she said, "at present." "Four pages!" The thought of this immense work...

***

"So, summing up, there is a relation between what I have been saying and what we're doing here at the plant with these plastic buffalo humps. Now you're probably familiar with the fact that the per-capita production of trash in this country is up from 2.75 pounds per day in 1920 to 4.5 pounds per day in 1965, the last year for which we have figures, and is increasing at the rate of about four percent a year. Now that rate will probably go up, becuase it's been going up, and I hazard that we may very well soon reach a point where it's 100 percent. Now at such a point, you will agree, the question turns from a question of disposing of this 'trash' to a question of appreciating its qualities, because, after all, it's 100 percent, right? And there can no longer be any question of 'disposing' of it, because it's all there is, and we will simply have to learn to 'dig' it - that's slang, but peculiarly appropriate here. So that's why we're in humps, right now, more really from a philosophical point of view than because we find them a great moneymaker. They are 'trash,' and what in fact could be more useless or trashlike? It's that we want to be on the leading edge of this trash phenomenon, the everted sphere of the future, and that's why we pay particular attention, too, to those aspects of language that may be seen as a model of the trash phenomenon. And it's certainly been a pleasure showing you around the plant this afternoon, and meeting you, and talking to you about these things, which are really more important, I believe, than people tend to think. Would you like a cold Coke from the Coke machine now, before you go?"

***

"What is troubling me is the quality of life in our great country, America. It seems to me to be deprived. I don't mean that the deprived people are deprived, although they are, clearly, but that even the fat are deprived. I suppose one could say that they are all humpheads and let it go at that. I am worried by the fact that no one responded to Snow White's hair initiative. Even though I am at the same time relieved. But it suggests that Americans will not or cannot see themselves as princely. Even Paul, that most princely of our contemporaries, did not respond appropriately. Of course it may be that princely is not a good thing to be. And of course there is our long democratic tradition which is anti-aristocratic. Egalitarianism precludes princeliness. And yet our people are not equal in any sense. They are either... The poorest of them are slaves as surely as if they were chained to gigantic wooden oars. The richest of them have the faces of cold effete homosexuals. And those in the middle are wonderfully confused. Redistribute the money. That will not ameliorate everything, but it will ameliorate some things. Redistribute the money. This can be achieved in only one way. By making the rich happier. New lovers. New lovers who will make their lives exciting and 'rich' in a way that... We must pass a law that all marriages of people with more than enough money are dissolved as of tomorrow. We will free all these poor moneyed people and let them out to play. The quid pro quo is their money. Then we take the money and-"

Three Lives by Gertrude Stein

Malanctha

Each One As She May

Rose Johnson made it very hard to bring her baby to its birth.

Melanctha Herbert who was Rose Johnson's friend, did everything that any woman could. She tended Rose, and she was patient, submissive, soothing, and untiring, while the sullen, childish, cowardly, black Rosie grumbled and fussed and howled and made herself to be an abomination and like a simple beast.

The child though it was healthy after it was born, did not live long. Rose Johnson was careless and negligent and selfish, and when Melanctha had to leave for a few days, the baby died. Rose Johnson had liked the baby well enough and perhaps she just forgot it for ahile, anyway, the child was dead and Rose and Sam her husband were very sorry but then these things came so often in the negro world in Bridgepoint, that they neither of them thought about it very long.

Rose Johnson and Melanctha Herbert had been friends now for some years. Rose had lately married Sam Johnson a decent honest kindly fellow, a deck hand on a coasting steamer.

Melanctha Herbert had not yet been really married.

Rose Johnson was a real black, tall, well built, sullen, stupid, childlike, good looking negress. She laughed when she was happy and grumbled and was sullen with everything that troubled.

Rose Johnson was a real black negress but she had been brought up quite like their own child by white folks.

Rose laughed when she was happy but she had not the wide, abandoned laughter that makes the warm broad glow of negro sunshine. Rose was never joyous with the earth-born, bounless joy of negroes. Hers was just ordinary, any sort of of woman laughter.

Rose Johnson was careless and was lazy, but she had been brought up by white folks and she needed decent comfort. Her white training had only made for habits, not for nature. Rose had the simple, promiscuous unmorality of the black people.

Rose Johnson and Melanctha Herbert like many of the twos with women were curious pair to be such friends.

Melanctha Herbert was a graceful, pale yellow, intelligent, attractive negress. She had not been raised like Rose by white folks but then she had been half made with real white blood.

***

(108)

Jeff Campbell never knew very well these days what it was that was going on inside him. All he knew was, he was uneasy now always to be with Melanctha. All he knew was, that he was always uneasy when he was with Melanctha, not the way he used to be from just not being very understanding, but now, because he never could be honest with her, because he was now always feeling her strong suffering, in her, because he knew now he was having a straight, good feeling with her, but she went so fast, and he was so slow to her; Jeff knew his right feeling never got a chance to show itself as strong, to her.

All this was always getting harder for Jeff Campbell. He was very proud to hold himself to be strong, was Jeff Campbell. He was very tender nto to hurt Melanctha, when he knew she would be sure to feel it badly in her head a long time after, he hated that he could not now be honest with her, he wanted to stay away to work it out all alone, without her, he was afraid she would feel it to suffer, if he kept away now from her. He was uneasy always, with her, he was uneasy when he thought about her, he knew now he had a good, straight, strong feeling of right loving for her, and yet now he never could use it to be good and onest with her.

Jeff Campbell did not know, these days, anything he could do to make it better for her. He did not know anything he could do, to set himself really right in his acting and his thinking toward her. She pulled him so fast with her, and he did not dare to hurt her, and he could not come right, so fast, the way she always needed he should be doing it now, for her.

These days were not very joyful ones now any more, to Jeff Campbell, with Melanctha. He did not think it out to himself now, in words, about her. He did not know enough, what was his real trouble, with her.

Sometimes now and again with them, and with all this trouble for a little while well forgotten by hi, Jeff, and Melanctha with him, would be very happy in a strong, sweet loving. Sometimes then, Jeff would find himself to be soaring very high in his true loving. Sometimes Jeff would find then, in his loving, his soul swelling out full inside him. Always Jeff felt now in himself, deep feeling.

...

Melanctha sat there looking very angry, when he came in to her. Jeff took off his hat and coat and then sat down by the fire with her.

"If you come in much later to me just now, Jeff Campbell, I certainly never would have seen you no more never to speak to you, 'thout your apologizing real humble to me." "Apologizing Melanctha," and Jeff laughed and was scornful to her, "Apologizing, Melanctha, I ain't proud that kind of way, Melanctha. I don't mind apologizing to you, Melanctha, all I mind, Melanctha is to be doing of things wrong, to you." "That's easy, to say things that way, Jeff to me. But you never was very proud Jeff, to be courageous to me." "I don't know about that Melanctha. I got courage to say some things hard, when i mean them, to you." "Oh, yes, Jeff, I knows all about that, Jeff, to me. But I mean real courage, to run around and not care nothing about what happens, and always to be game in any kind of trouble. That's what i mean by real courage, to me, Jeff, if you want to know it." "Oh, yes, Melanctha, I know all that kind of courage. I see plenty of it all the time with some kinds of colored men and with some girls like you Melanctha, and Jane Harden. I know all about how you are always making a fuss to be proud because you don't holler so much when you run in to where you ain't got any business to be, and so you get hurt, the you ought to. And then, you kind of people are very brave then, sure, with all your kinds of suffering, but the way I see it, going round with all my patients, that kind of courage makes all kind of trouble, for them who ain't so noble with their courage, and then they got it, always to be bearing it, when the end comes, to be hurt the hardest. It's like running around and being game to spend all your money always, and then a man's wife and children are the ones do all the starving and they don't ever get a name for being brave, and they don't ever want to be doing all that suffering, and they got to stand it and say nothing. That's the way I see it a good deal now with all that kind of braveness in some of the colored people. They always make a lot of noise to show they are so brave not to holler, when they got so much suffering they always bring all on themselves, just by doing things they got no business to be doing. I don't say, never, Melanctha, they ain't got good courage not to holler, but I never did see much in looking for that kind of trouble just to show you ain't going ot holler. NO it's all right being brave every day, just living regular and not having new ways, all the time just to get excitements, the way I hate to see it in all the colored people. No I don't see much, Melanctha, in being brave just to get it good, where you've got no business. I ain't ashamed Melanctha, right her to tell you, I ain't ashamed ever to say I ain't got no longing to be brave, just to go around and look for trouble." "Yes that's just like you always, Jeff, you never understand things right, the way you are always feeling in you. You ain't got no way to understand right, how it depends what way somebody goes to look for new things, the way it makes it right for them to get excited." "No Melanctha, I certainly never do say I understand much anybody's got a right to think they won't have real bad trouble, if they go and look hard where they are certain sure to find it. No Melanctha, it certainly does sound very pretty all this talking about danger and being game and never hollering, and all that way of talking, but when two men are just fighting, the strong man mostly gets on top with doing good hard pounding, and the man that's getting all that pounding, he mostly never likes it so far as i have been able yet to see it, and I don't see much difference what kind of noble way they are made of when they ain't got any kind of business to get together there to be fighting. That certainly is the only way I ever see it happen right, Melanctha, whenever I happen to be anywhere I can be looking." "That's because you never can see anything that ain't just so simple, Jeff, with everybody, the way you always think it. It do make all the difference the kind of way anybody is made to do things game Jeff Campbell." "Maybe Melanctha, I certainly never say no you ain't right, Melanctha. i just been telling it to you all straight, Melanctha, the way I always see it. Perhaps if you run around where you ain't got any business, and you stand up very straight and say, I am so brave, nothing can ever ever hurt me, maybe nothing will ever hurt you then Melanctha. I never have seen it do so. I never can say truly any differently to you Melanctha, but I always am ready to be learning from you, Melanctha. I certainly don't ever say no, Melanctha to you, I only say that ain't the way yet I ever see it happen when I had a chance to be there looking."

They sat there together, quite by the fire, and they did not seem to feel very loving.

"I certainly do wonder," Melanctha said dreamily, at last breaking into their long unloving silence. "I certainly do wonder why always it happens to me I care for anybody who ain't no ways good enough for me ever to be thinking to respect him."

Jeff looked at Melanctha. Jeff got up then and walked a little up and down the room, and then he came back, and his face was set and dark and he was very quiet to her.

"Oh dear, Jeff, sure, why you look so solemn now to me. Sure Jeff I never am meaning anything real by what I just been saying. What was I just been saying Jeff to you. I only certainly was just thinking how everything always was just happening to me."

Jeff Campbell sat very still and dark, and made no answer.

"Seems to me, Jeff you might be good to me a little to-night when my head hurts so, and I am so tired with all the hard work I have been doing, thinking, and always got so many things to be a trouble to me, living like I do with nobody ever who can help me. Seems to me you might be good to me Jeff to-night, and not get angry, every little thing I am ever saying to you."

"I certainly would not get angry ever with you, Melanctha, just because you say things to me. But now I certainly been thinking you really mean what you have been just then saying to me." "But you say all the time to me Jeff, you ain't no ways good enough in your loving to me, you certainly say to me all the time you ain't no ways good or understanding to me." "Tat certainly is what I say to you always, just the way I feel it to you Melanctha always, and I got it right in me to say it, and I have got a right in me to be very strong and feel it, and to be always sure to believe it, but it ain't right for you Melanctha to feel it. When you feel it so Melanctha, it does certainly make everything all wrong with our loving. It makes it so I certainly never can bear to have it."

They sat there then a long time by the fire, very silent, and not loving, and never looking to each other for it. Melanctha was moving and twitching herself and very nervous with it. Jeff was heavy and sullen and dark and very serious in it.

"Oh why can't you forget I said it to you Jeff now, and I certainly am so tired, and my had all now with it."

Jeff stirred, "All right Melanctha, don't you go make yourself sick now in your head, feeling so bad with it," and Jeff made himself do it, and he was a patient doctor again now with Melanctha when he felt her really having her head hurt with it...

Two Poems by Roberto Bolano

Despite the fact that Roberto Bolano always considered himself, first and foremost, a poet, I prefer his fiction (I think most people do). These two poems, however, blew me away.

Godzilla in Mexico

Listen carefully, my son: bombs were falling
over Mexico City
but no one even noticed.
The air carried poison through
the streets and open windows.
You'd just finished eating and were watching
cartoons on TV.
I was reading in the bedroom next door
when I realized we were going to die.
Despite the dizziness and nausea I dragged myself
to the kitchen and found you on the floor.
We hugged. You asked what was happening
and I didn't tell you we were on death's program
but instead that we were going on a journey,
one more, together, and that you shouldn't be afraid.
When it left, death didn't even
close our eyes.
What are we? you asked a week or year later,
ants, bees, wrong numbers
in the big rotten soup of chance?
We're human beings, my son, almost birds,
public heroes and secrets.


The Romantic Dogs

Back then, I'd reached the age of twenty
and I was crazy.
I'd lost a country
but won a dream.
As long as I had that dream
nothing else mattered.
Not working, not praying
not studying in morning light
alongside the romantic dogs.
And the dream lived in the void of my spirit.
A wooden bedroom,
cloaked in half-light,
deep in the lungs of the tropics.
And sometimes I'd retreat inside myself
and visit the dream: a statue eternalized
in liquid thoughts,
a white worm writhing
in love.
A runaway love.
A dream within another dream.
And the nightmare telling me: you will grow up.
You'll leave behind the images of pain and of the labyrinth
and you'll forget.
But back then, growing up would have been a crime.
I'm here, I said, with the romantic dogs
and here I'm going to stay.

Smaller Than Life - B. R. Myers (about Freedom by Jonathan Franzen)

A friend sent this article to me and I couldn't help posting it (thanks Caleb). Although I haven't read anything by Jonathan Franzen, Myers observations echo many of my sentiments about contemporary fiction in general. You can read the full article here.

Smaller Than Life:

One opens a new novel and is promptly introduced to some dull minor characters. Tiring of them, one skims ahead to meet the leads, only to realize: those minor characters are the leads. A common experience for even the occasional reader of contemporary fiction, it never fails to make the heart sink. The problem is not only one of craft or execution. Characters are now conceived as if the whole point of literature were to create plausible likenesses of the folks next door. They have their little worries, but so what? Do writers really believe that every unhappy family is special? If so, Tolstoy has a lot to answer for—including Freedom, Jonathan Franzen’s latest. A suburban comedy-drama about the relationship between cookie-baking Patty, who describes herself as “relatively dumber” than her siblings; red-faced husband Walter, “whose most salient quality … was his niceness”; and Walter’s womanizing college friend, Richard, who plays in an indie band called Walnut Surprise, the novel is a 576-page monument to insignificance.

Granted, nonentities are people too, and a good storyteller can interest us in just about anybody, as Madame Bovary demonstrates. But although the narrator of Freedom tells us on the first page, “There had always been something not quite right about the Berglunds,” one need read only that the local school “sucked” and that Patty was “very into” her teenage son, who in turn was “fucking” the girl next door, to know that whatever is wrong with these people does not matter. The language a writer uses to create a world is that world, and Franzen’s strenuously contemporary and therefore juvenile language is a world in which nothing important can happen. Madame Bovary’s marriage sucked, Heathcliff was into Catherine: these words fail the context not just because they are of our own time. There is no import in things that “suck,” no drama in someone’s being “into” someone else. As for the F word, Anthony Burgess once criticized the notion that to use it in matter-of-fact prose is to hark back to “a golden age of Anglo-Saxon candour”; the word was taboo from the start, because it stands for brutal or at best impersonal sex. “A man can fuck a whore but, unless his wife is a whore, he cannot fuck his wife … There is no love in it.” A writer like Franzen, who describes two lovers as “fucking,” trivializes their relationship accordingly. The result is boredom.

Franzen does not take his story very seriously, but the irony is indiscriminate and directionless; he hints at no frame of reference from which we are to judge his prose critically. Nor are we to imagine that a fool or semiliterate is addressing us. The same narrator who gives us “sucked” and “very into” also deploys compound adjectives, bursts of journalese, and long if syntactically crude sentences. An idiosyncratic mix? Far from it. We find the same insecure style on The Daily Show and in the blogosphere; we overhear it on the subway. It is the style of all who think highly enough of their own brains to worry about being thought “elitist,” not one of the gang. The reassuring vulgarity follows the flight of pseudo-eloquence as the night the day. Like the rest of these people, Franzen should relax. We don’t need to find a naughty word on every page to know that he is one very regular Joe.

But if Freedom is middlebrow, it is so in the sacrosanct Don DeLillo tradition, which our critical establishment considers central to literature today. The apparent logic is that the novel can lure Americans away from their media and entertainment buffet only by becoming more “social,” broader in scope, more up-to-date in focus. This may be the reason we get such boring characters. Instead of portraying an interesting individual or two, and trusting in realism to embed their story naturally in contemporary life, the Social Writer thinks of all the relevant issues he has to stuff in, then conceives a family “typical” enough to hold everything together. The more aspects of our society he can fit between the book’s covers, the more ambitious he is considered to be.

Every big fat new effort to “develop” the DeLillo model is thus hailed as important even before it is read, as happened with Franzen’s last novel, The Corrections (2001). No doubt the rave reviews for Freedom will evince the same reluctance to quote from the text that we saw then. Reviewers gave that book maximum points for sweep and sprawl while subtracting none for its slovenly prose, the short-windedness of each of its thousand “themes,” and the failure of the main story line to generate any momentum. (These flaws, too, were in the great DeLillo tradition.) There was no overlooking a certain determination to be impressed. I especially liked how the author got a pass for the first chapter, a soporific one even by postmodern standards, because a later line seemed to imply it had been a practical joke.

Not surprisingly, Franzen pushes his luck even further in Freedom. Patty’s memoirs start very early on in the book under the separate title Mistakes Were Made: The Autobiography of Patty Berglundby Patty Berglund. It gets worse. Here, referring to herself in the third person, Patty recalls her delayed reaction to having been raped.

"The indignity was that Ethan had considered her such a nothing that he could just rape her and then take her home. And she was not such a nothing. She was, among other things, already, as a junior, the all-time single-season record holder for assists at Horace Greeley High School. A record she would again demolish the following year! She was also first-team All State in a state that included Brooklyn and the Bronx. And yet a golfing boy she hardly even knew had thought it was OK to rape her."

Are we to chuckle at the adult woman for writing this in seriousness, or is she mocking her younger self, the teenage rape victim? Either way, she is too stupid to merit reading about. Mistakes Were Made is of the same subtlety throughout and can thus be easily summarized. Patty has two men in her life, “the great guy she’d married and the sexy one she hadn’t.” In vain does she yearn for husband Walter to “just bend her over the kitchen table some night and have at her from behind.” (And we wonder why young people would rather read about love in vampire fiction.) Their son, Joey, turns out “in the mold of Richard,” the sexy guy, which is why Patty is so “into” the boy. Everything is described in the most hackneyed terms imaginable. When her children leave home, Patty feels “the emptiness of her nest … now that the kids had flown”; and what should we read about when Richard drops by during Walter’s absence but “banging,” “doing the deed,” “scratching the itch.”

Comments on Savage Detectives Passage

I'm sure a lot of you aren't surprised to see this passage here, or if you are it's only because it didn't come sooner. This is one of my favorite passages from a book that has almost single handedly sustained my love of books for the last two years.

I've been thinking about this passage and what I want to say about it for the past week, and trying to articulate what I think about it has highlighted the absurdity of this undertaking. This passage comes from a novel that is 648 pages long and is written in forty-eight different voices. This is a four page segment written by one of those forty-eight narrators. There is no way to extract this small piece from its gargantuan host without losing some of its meaning, so i apologize to anyone who's reading this post and hasn't read The Savage Detectives, because to a certain degree, the electric won't flow unless the circuit is complete.

Nevertheless, I'll continue and I'll do my best to focus on what's here, because I think the passage has many intrinsic qualities that everyone can enjoy. One of the most stunning things about this passage is its pacing. It wasn't until after I read The Savage Detectives that I really started paying attention to the pace of the narrative in my own writing. There is one line in particular that sums it up for me: "And somehow all of us felt incredibly happy, I had forgotten all about Cesar, Maria was looking up at the stars that had miraculously appeared in the sky of Mexico City like holographic projections, and even the way we were walking was graceful, our progress incredibly slow, as if we were advancing and retreating to put off the moment at which we would inevitably have to reach the bus stop, all of us walking and looking up at the sky (Maria was naming the stars)." When I first read this passage, I felt exactly like they did as they walked to the bus stop. The narrative moves incredibly fast in sections and slows almost to a halt in others, to the effect that I, as a reader, felt like I was "advancing and retreating to put off the moment" at which everything came into focus. It was like I was alternately running and stumbling through this book while staring at the heavens.

For example, notice how sentences like - "And this went on for months, three or four months or even nine months, and one day I broke up with him." - accelerate the narrative and race through almost a year as if it were nothing, while sentences like - "and then I don't know why but I was sure he'd get lost and I said wait for me at the metro stop and when I went to meet him I found him sitting on some crates of fruit, leaning against a tree, really, the best place possible. You're lucky, I said. Yes, he said, I'm extremely lucky." - settle into a specific moment that couldn't have taken more than a few seconds. The moments that Bolano chooses to focus on make the passage that much more extraordinary, because they are unexpected. There is no way to anticipate when he will gloss over something and when he'll go into full detail, and as a result, you feel a bit disoriented and intoxicated, because you can't wrap your mind around the story or predict where it is heading - all you can do is live each moment at the mercy of the narrator. Which is what makes the final paragraph so powerful, in my opinion. After more than 100 pages of idealizing Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano and buying into Visceral Realism (even though you're skeptical at first, Bolano and his characters win you over), you're given someone's perspective who sees through it all, and it is not a character that you instinctively dislike: "The whole visceral realism thing was a love letter, the demented strutting of a dumb bird in the moonlight, something essentially cheap and meaningless." Just as you expect everything to come into focus, you're left more disoriented than before.


And then there is the wonderful line: "He told me that he'd like to read some of my poems, he told me that he loved the stars of both hemispheres, north and south, and he asked for my number." It reminds me of a line from a BIGGIE song: "Who they attractin' with that line, 'What's your name what's your sign.' Soon as he buy that wine I just creep up from behind and ask what your interests are." I almost feel like I should find it cheesy, but for some reason I don't. Somehow, something that in any other context would be trite, here, is beautiful. How does he do it?

The Savage Detectives, Roberto Bolano

(Background: The Savage Detectives loosely revolves around two poets, Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano, from Mexico City who start a literary movement called Visceral Realism. The book is split into two parts. The first part is comprised of journal entries by a third young poet, Juan Garcia Madero, who gets swept up in the Visceral Realist movement, and the second part is a series of anecdotes told by dozens of different narrators that relate to the two protagonists in varying degrees. This passage is from the second part, and the narrator and many of the characters mentioned in the passage are unfamiliar to the reader.)

Laura Jauregui, Tlalpan, Mexico City DF, January 1976. Before I met him I was dating Cesar, Cesar Arriago, and I was introduced to Cesar in the poetry workshop at the Torre De Rectoria at UNAM. That was where I met Maria Font and Rafael Barrios. That's also where I met Ulises Lima. His name wasn't Ulises Lima back then, or I don't know, maybe it already was but we called him by his real name, Alfredo something or other, and I met Cesar too and we fell in love or we thought we'd fallen in love and the two of us wrote poems for Ulises Lima's magazine. This was at the end of 1973, I can't say exactly when. It was at a time when it was raining a lot, I remember, because we were always coming in wet to meetings. And then we put together the magazine, Lee Harvey Oswald, what a name, at the architecture studio where Maria's father worked. Those were gorgeous afternoons, we would drink wine and one of us always brought sandwiches, Sofia or Maria or I. The boys never brought anything, although actually they did, at first they did, but then the ones who brought things, the politer ones, quit the magazine, or at least stopped coming to the meetings, and then Pancho Rodriguez showed up and everything was spoiled, at least as far as I was concerned, but I kept working on the magazine, or anyway I still hung around in that crowd, mostly because Cesar was part of it and mostly because I liked Maria and Sofia (I was never friends with Angelica, not real friends), not because I wanted my poems to be published, none were published in the first issue, though there was supposed to be a poem of mine in the second issue, "Lilith" it was called, but in the end I don't know what happened and it wasn't published after all. It was Cesar who had a poem in Lee Harvey Oswald, a poem called "Laura and Cesar," very sweet, but Ulises changed the title (or convinced Cesar to change it) and in the end it was called "Laura & Cesar." That was the kind of thing Ulises Lima did.

but anyway, first I met Cesar, and Laura & Cesar started dating, or something like that. Poor Cesar. He had light brown hair and he was tall. He lived with his grandmother (his parents lived in Michoacan) and I had my first adult sexual experiences with him. Or actually, my last adolescent sexual experiences. Or second to last, now that I think about it. We would go to the movies and a few times we went to the theater. It was around then that I enrolled at the dance school and sometimes Cesar would go there with me. The rest of the time we spent taking long walks, talking about books we were reading, and doing nothing together. And this went on for months, three or four months or even nine months, and one day I broke up with him. That I know for sure, I was the one who told him it was over, although I can't remember exactly why, and I remember that Cesar took it very well, he agreed that I was right, he was in his second year of medical school then and I had just started at the university, studying literature. That afternoon I didn't go to class, went to Maria's house, I had to talk to a friend, I mean in person, not on the phone, and when I got to Colima, to Maria's house, the gate was open and that surprised me a little, because it was always closed, Maria's mother was paranoid about it, and I went in and rang the bell and the door opened and a guy I'd never seen before asked me who I was looking for. It was Arturo Belano. He was twenty-one then, skinny and long-haired, and he wore classes, horrible glasses, although his eyes weren't especially bad, he was just a little bit nearsighted, but the glasses were still horrible. We only exchanged a few words. He was with Maria and a poet called Anibal who was crazy about Maria back then, but they were on their way out when I got there.

That same day I saw him again. I spent all afternoon talking to Maria and then we went downtown to buy a scarf, I think, and we kept talking (first about Cesar & Laura, then about everything in existence) and we ended up having cappuccinos at Cafe Quito, where Maria was supposed to meet Anibal. And Arturo showed up around nine. This time he was with a seventeen-year-old Chilean called Felipe Muller, his best friend, a tall blond kid who almost never spoke and followed Arturo everywhere. And they sat down with us, of course. And then other poets turned up, poets a little older than Arturo, none of them visceral realists, among other reasons because visceral realism didn't exist yet, poets like Anibal who had been friends with Arturo before he left for Chile and so had known him since he was seventeen. They were actually journalists and government officials, the kind of sad people who never leave downtown, or certain downtown neighborhoods, sovereigns of sadness in the area bounded by Avenida Chapultepec, to the south, and Reforma, to the north, staffers at El Nacional, proofreaders at the Excelsior, pencil pushers at the Secretaria de Gobernacion who headed to Bucareli when they left work and sent out their tentacles or their little green slips. And even though, as I say, they were sad, that night we laughed a lot. In fact we never stopped laughing. And then we went walking to the bus stop, Maria, Anibal, Felipe Muller, Gonzalo Muller (Felipe's brother who was leaving Mexico soon), Arturo, and I. And somehow all of us fel incredibly happy, I had forgotten all about Cesar, Maria was looking up at the stars that had miraculously appeared in the sky of Mexico City like holographic projections, and even the way we were walking was graceful, our progress incredibly slow, as if we were advancing and retreating to put off the moment at which we would inevitably have to reach the bus stop, all of us walking and looking up at the sky (Maria was naming the stars). Much later Arturo told me that he hadn't been looking at the stars but at the lights in some apartments, tiny rooftop apartments on Calle Versalles or Lucerna or Calle Londres, and that was the moment he realized that nothing would make him happier than being with me in one of those apartents, eating a few sandwiches with sour cream from a certain street stall on Bucareli. But he didn't tell me that at the time (I would've thought he was crazy). He told me that he'd like to read some of my poems, he told me that he loved the stars of both hemispheres, north and south, and he asked for my number.

I gave him my number and the next day he called me. And we made a date to meet, but not downtown, I told him I couldn't leave Tlalpan, where I lived, that I had to study and, he said perfect, I'll come visit you, that way I'll get to see Tlalpan, and I said that there was nothing to see, you'll have to take the metro and then a bus and then another bus, and then I don't know why but I was sure he'd get lost and I said wait for me at the metro stop and when I went to meet him I found him sitting on some crates of fruit, leaning against a tree, really, the best place possible. You're lucky, I said. Yes, he said, I'm extremely lucky. And that afernoon he talked to me about Chile, I don't know whether it was because he wanted to or because I asked him about it, although the things he said were mostly incoherent, and he also talked about Guatemala and El Salvador, he'd been all over Latin America, or at least to every country along the Pacific coast, and we kissed for the first time, and then we were together for several months and we moved in together and then what happened happened, or in other words we broke up and I went back to living at my mother's house and I began to study biology (I hope to be a good biologist someday, I want to specialize in biogenetics), and strange things started to happen to Arturo. That was when visceral realism was born. At first we all thought it was a joke, but then we realized it wasn't. And when we realized it wasn't a joke, some of us went along with him and became visceral realists, out of inertia, I think, or because it was so crazy that it seemed plausible, or for the sake of friendship, so as not to lose a whole circle of friends, but deep down no one took it seriously. Not deep down.

At the time I was beginning to make new friends at the university and I saw Arturo and his friends less and less. I think the only one I called or went out with occasionally was Maria, but even my friendship with Maria began to cool. Still, I always more or less kept track of what Arturo was doing, and I though: of all the stupid things to come up with, how can he believe this junk, and suddenly, one night when I couldn't sleep, it occurred to me that it was all a message for me. It was a way of saying don't leave me, see what I'm capable of, stay with me. And then I realized that deep down the guy was a creep. Because it's one thing to fool yourself and another thing entirely to fool everybody else. The whole visceral realism thing was a love letter, the demented strutting of a dumb bird in the moonlight, something essentially cheap and meaningless.

But that wasn't what I meant to say.

Commentary on "Hideous Men"

There have been some requests for commentary, so here it goes. In the future I'll put my comments at the end of the post, but for this one, just so it doesn’t get lost, I’ve created a separate post.

I almost wish I hadn’t started with a David Foster Wallace story, because the more I read him, the more I feel that he’s an endpoint rather than a beginning. I discovered him a few weeks ago because my friend/benefactor/roommate (Caleb for those of you who know him) was reading Infinite Jest and had “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” lying around the apartment. I’ve always heard him described as a postmodern writer, which is maybe why it’s taken me so long to get to him, but I think there’s an added dimension to his writing that you don’t find in writers like DeLillo and Pynchon.

In an interview with Larry McCaffery, he said, “Look, man, we’d probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is?” and I think that’s what sets him apart. The dominant tendency that I’ve uncovered in other postmodern literature is to highlight the absurdities and paradoxes inherent in modern society without trying to overcome them or pass moral judgment on them. For those of you who have read White Noise or watched Aqua Teen Hunger Force, you’ll know what I mean (maybe I’m being a bit harsh), and although Foster Wallace is certainly guilty of doing this at times, it doesn’t seem to be his ultimate intention.

The first story in “Brief Interviews” is a good example of what I’m talking about. It’s called “A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life”:

When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed extremely hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces.
The man who’d introduced them didn’t much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he as to preserve good relations at all times. One never knew, after all, now did one, now did one now did one.

This is his starting point for the book: a world where intentions, personalities, and underlying psychologies have been fractured and called into question to such a degree that it’s foolish to even try to see beyond the surface of things. In this respect, Foster Wallace is very similar to other postmodern writers, but you can’t blame him for that; it would be cheesy for him to return to the sentimental realism that was perfected by writers like Hemmingway and Fitzgerald. I love that kind of writing, but if I read someone who wrote that way today, I’d think it was absurd, the same way I’d find contemporary classical music written in the in the style of Motzart to be trash. There’s a time and place for everything, and David Foster Wallace was born a postmodernist.

At the same time, he once said, “Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being.” And that’s what I think is awesome about the story I posted. Without ignoring the absurdity and irony of contemporary American life, he manages to add a human element that’s largely absent in the other postmodern literature I’ve read, and he does it without being cheesy or returning to the sentimental realism of the Modernists.

So how does he do it?

I haven’t read nearly enough of his stuff to make broad sweeping claims, but what he does in the passage I posted is really interesting. First, I think it’s worth noting that he writes the passage in a very verbal style. You can’t help but hear the interviewee’s voice as you read it. Second, he keeps you in the dark as to what the point of Johnny One-Arm’s story is. It’s not until about half way through the story that you realize Johnny’s using his arm to emotionally dismantle women in order to sleep with them.

Delaying that realization is a very important part of how the story functions. It allows the reader to empathize with the character briefly before turning against him. The tendency to empathize, I would argue, forms the classical interior of the short story. When you think of all the great modernist writers of the past, they all created characters in their stories that the reader could identify with. That was their way of highlighting “what it is to be a fucking human being.” They tried to share universal human experiences with their readers by encouraging them (the readers) to feel with the central characters of the story. For example, when you lose yourself in a book like The Old Man and the Sea, you do so by diving into the fictional world and sitting side by side with the old man, braving the elements and feeling his thirst and his pain and his desire. And the space that the fiction creates in order for you to be able to do that is what I’m referring to here as its ‘interior’.

For the most part, the fictional interior disappears in postmodern writing. If you go back to “A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life,” you’ll see what I mean. In postmodern culture the very possibility of uncovering an underlying psychology with which to identify is called into question, and as a result the interior space collapses, and I think that’s what David Foster Wallace is playing on in “Brief Interviews.” Just as the reader begins to empathize with Johnny, the door is shut in his/her face. Not only does Johnny take advantage of women, he does so by manipulating their natural instinct to feel sorry for him, which is important, because the fact that he exploits other people’s sympathy makes the reader feel fully justified in withholding his/hers. All of a sudden, with that refusal of sympathy, the reader is expelled from the classical interior of the story and finds him/herself on the outside, unable to get back in. But it doesn’t end there. What is absolutely incredible about this story is that, instead of just leaving the reader stranded, as if to say, ‘isn’t this all absurd,’ the exterior of the piece becomes a kind of interior. David Foster Wallace has created a character that is meant to illicit a reaction rather than empathy, and the reaction we have - the revulsion we all feel for Johnny One-Arm - unites us as readers and reminds us “what it is to be fucking human.”

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, David Foster Wallace

B. I #40 06-97
BENTON RIDGE OH

'It's the arm. You wouldn't think of it as a asset like that would you. But it's the arm. You want to see it? You won't get disgusted? Well here it is. Here's the arm. this is why I go by the name Johnny One-Arm. I made it up, not anybody being, like, hardhearted - me. I see how you're trying to be polite and not look at it. Go ahead and look though. It don't bother me. Inside my head I don't call it the arm I call it the Asset. How all would you describe it? Go on. You think it'll hurt my feelings? You want to hear me describe it? It looks like a arm that changed it's mind early on in the game when it was in Mama's stomach with the rest of me. It's more like a itty tiny little flipper, it's little and wet-looking and darker than the rest of me is. It looks wet even when it's dry. It's not a pretty sight at all. I usually keep it in the sleeve until it's time to haul it out and use it for the Asset. Notice the shoulder's normal, it's just like the other shoulder. It's just the arm. It'll only go down to like the titty-nipple of my chest here, see? It's a little sucker. It ain't pretty. It moves fine, i can move it around fine. If you look close here at the end there's these little majiggers you can tell started out wanting to be fingers but didn't form. When I was in her stomach. The other arm - see? It's a normal arm, a little muscley on account of using it all the time. It's normal and long and the right color, that's the arm I show all the time, most times I keep the other sleeve pined up so it don't look to be even anything like a arm in there at all. It's strong though. The arm is. It's hard on the eyes but it's strong, sometimes I'll try and get them to armwrestle it to see how strong it is. It's a strong little flippery sucker. If they think they can stand to touch it. I always say if they don't think they can stand touching it why that's OK, it don't hurt my feelings. You want to touch it?'
Q.
'That's all right. That is all right.'
Q.
'What it is is - well first there's always some girls around. You know what I mean? At the foundry there, at the Lanes. There's a tavern right down by the bus sstop there. Jackpot - that's my best friend - Jackpot and Kenny Kirk - Kenny Kirk's his cousin, Jackpot's, that are both over me at the foundry cause I finished school and didn't get in the union till after - they're real good-looking and normal-looking and Good With The Ladies if you know what I mean, and there's always girls hanging back around. Like in a group, a bunch or group of all of us, we'll all just hang back, drink some beers. Jackpot and Kenny're always going with one of them or the other and then the ones they're going with got friends. You know. A whole, say, group of us there. You follow the picture here? And I'll start hanging back with this one or that one, and after a while the first stage is I'll start in to telling them how I got the name Johnny One-Arm and about the arm. That's a stage of the thing. Of getting some pussy using the Asset. I'll describe the arm while it's still up in the sleeve and make it sound like just about the ugliest thing you ever did see. They'll get this look on their face like Oh You Poor Little Fella You're Being Too Hard On Yourself You Shouldn't Be Shameful Of The Arm. So on. How I'm such a nice young fella and it breaks their heart to see me talk about my own part of me that way especially since it weren't any fault of mine to get born with the arm. At which time when they start with that stage of it the next stage is I ask them do they want to see it. I say how I'm shameful of the arm but somehow I trust them and they seem real nice and if they want I'll unpin the sleeve and let the arm out and let them look at the arm if they think they could stand it. I'll go on about the arm until they can't hardly stand to hear no more about it. Sometimes it's a ex of Jackpot's that's the one that starts hanging back with me down at Frame Eleven over to the Lanes and saying how I'm such a good listener and sensitive not like Jackpot or Kenny and she can't believe there's any way the arm's as bad as I'm making out and like that. or we'll be hanging back at her place in the kitchenette or some such and I'll go It's So Hot I Feel Like Taking My Shirt Off But I Don't Want To On Account Of I'm Shameful Of The Arm. Like that. There's numerous, like stages. I never out loud call it the Asset believe you me. Go on touch it whenever you get a mind to. One of the stages is I know after some time I really am starting to come off creepy to the girl, I can tell, cause all I can talk about is the arm and how wet and flippery it is but how it's strong but how I'd just about up and die if a girl as nice and pretty and perfect as I think she is saw it and got disgusted, and I can tell all the talk starts creeping them up inside and they start to secretly think I'm kind of a loser but they can't back out on me cause after all here they been all this time saying all this nice shit about what a sensitive young fella I am and how I shouldn't be shameful and there's no way the arm can be that bad. In this stage it's like they're committed into a corner and if they quit hanging back with me now why they know I can go It Was Because Of The Arm.'
Q.
'Usually long about two weeks, like that. The next is your critical-type stage where I show them the arm. I wait till it's just her and me alone someplace and I haul the sucker out. I make it seem like they talked me into it and now I trust them and they're who I finally fell like I can let it out of the sleeve and show it. And I show it to her just like I just did you. There's some additional things too I can do with it that look even worse, make it look - see that? See this right here? It's cause there ain't even really a elbow bone, it's just a -'
Q.
'Or some of your ointments or Vaseline-type jelly on it to make it look even wetter and shinier. The arm's not a pretty sight at all when I up and haul it out on them I'm telling you right now. It just about makes them puke, the sight of it the way I get it. Oh and a couple run out, some skedoodle right out the door. But your majority? Your majority of them'll swallow hard a time or two and go Oh It's It's It's Not Too Bad At All but they're looking over all away and try and not look at my face which I've got this totally shy and scared and trusting face on at the time like this one thing I can do where I can make my lip even tremble a little. Ee? Ee anh? And ever time sooner or later within inside, like five minutes of it they'll up and start crying. They're in way over their head, see. They're, like, committed into a corner of saying how it can't be that ugly and I shouldn't be shameful and then they see it and I see to it it is ugly, ugly ugly ugly and now what do they do? Pretend? Shit girl most of these girls around here think Elvis is alive someplace. These are not girl wonders of the brain. It breaks them down ever time. They get even worse if I ask them Oh Golly What's Wrong, how come they're crying, Is It The Arm and they have to say It Ain't The Arm, they have to, they have to try and pretend it ain't the arm that it's how they feel so sad for me being so shameful of something that ain't a big deal at all they have to say. Oftentimes with their face in their hands and crying. Your climatic stage then is then I up and come over to where she's at and sit down and now I'm the one that's comforting them. A, like factor here I found out the hard way is when I go in to hold them and comfort them I hold them with the good side. I don't give them no more of the Asset. The Asset's wrapped back up safe out of sight in the sleeve now. They're broke down crying and I'm the one holding them with the good arm and go It's OK Don't Cry Don't Be Sad Being Able To Trust You Not To Get Disgusted By The Arm Means So Very Very Much To Me Don't You See You Have Set Me Free Of Being Shameful Of The Arm Thank You Thank You and son on while they put their face in my neck and just cry and cry. Sometimes they get me crying too. You following all this?'
Q....
'More pussy that a toilet seat, man. I shit you not. Go on and ask Jackpot and Genny if you want about it. Kenny Kirk's the one named it the Asset. You go on.'

Intro and William Gass

This is for my enjoyment more than anything. The reason I'm making this blog public is because I'm poor and I was lying on my mat in the corner of my friend's living room where i currently live, dreaming of being rich without having to change my lifestyle, and I thought to myself what if i started a blog and i sent it to a few friends and they sent it to their friends and they to their's and all of a sudden everyone was reading it and someone from a publishing house saw it and really liked it and wanted to pay me to write it... wouldn't that be sick.

So here are some excerpts from books, poems, essays, and stories - little nuggets from bonafide, real-life published shit, transcribed here (by yours truly) for your and my edification and enjoyment. If I feel the urge, maybe I'll throw in my two cents worth, but mostly it's about the passages. I have a longstanding personal interest in literary trends and the evolution of writing from modernism to postmodernism to the as yet undefined next step, but like I said it's mostly about the passages. Read them and take them at face value. Ignore my commentary if it doesn't agree with you. More than anything, I hope you find something you like - maybe a style of writing, maybe a theme, maybe the way certain words roll off the tongue.

I'll leave you with an excerpt from a William Gass essay on Three Lives, by Gertrude Stein. I've never read Three Lives and I didn't immediately take to the passage Gass quotes here, but I was rocked to the core by what he had to say about it and the elegance with which he said it. His description of what distinguishes literature from the writing you read in blogs, magazines, and newspapers, is something I often come back to.

from "Three Lives" in A Temple of Texts, by William Gass

Although I had certainly heard the usual things about Gertrude Stein, and had encountered samples that made me think she might indeed be the fake that others had advertised, I did not read Three Lives until I was in graduate school at Cornell in - perhaps - 1948. I remember the room, the chair, the failing light in which I began the book, going straight through from Anna to Lena and then rereading "Melanctha" immediately after; reading right on through the night, in an actual sweat of wonder and revelation I would experience with this work and no other. My stomach held the text in its coils as if i had swallowed the pages. I am sure I would have taken it as an omen had I known that Three Lives had been published on my birthday, July 30. I never slept. First I paced as well as I could, for my room was very small, and then I went out in the foggy early morning to walk, carrying the library's copy with one finger squeezed between its pages and at the lines I'd return to again and again - to listen, verify, reassure - a paragraph I've commented on in another essay, and whose words are Rose Johnson's:

"I don't see Melanctha why you should talk like you would kill yourself just because you're blue. I'd never kill myself Melanctha just 'cause I was blue. I'd maybe kill somebody else Melanctha 'cause I was blue, but I'd never kill myself. If i ever killed myself Melanctha it'd be by accident, and if I ever killed myself by accident Melanctha, I'd be awful sorry."

In my stunned, sickish, and sleepless state, I didn't notice right away that Rose Johnson, when she is speaking about Melanctha's melancholy, says "just because you're blue" (in iambs), but when she is speaking about her own unlikely suicide, she says "just 'cause I was blue" (in spondees). "Because" and "'cause," "'cause" and "because." I felt a lot like Jeff Campbell, too. I felt slow and confused. Because: Why hadn't I known long before reading Stein - was I such a dunce? - that the art was in the music - it was Joyce's music, it was James's music, it was Faulkner's music; without the music, words fell to the earth in prosy pieces; without the music, there was only comprehension, and comprehension may have been analysis, may have been interpretation, may have been philosophy, but it wasn't art; art was the mind carried to conclusions ahead of any understanding by the music - the order, release, and sounding of the meaning. Not just because of a little alliteration, the pitter-patter of metrical feet, a repetition like a chant, or rhyme concealed the way Poe's letter was - in plain view - but because of complex conceptual relations made audible.