DO INDIVIDUAL STORIES STILL MATTER?
- Speculations of a Literalist
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The poet Sylvia Plath wrote: The world is blood-hot/and personal, and yes, of course it is, but so what? Telling individual stories is foundational to literary narrative; when we read stories, we need characters to help carry us in. Yes, but into what? Into a reality that is only conjured by 26 letters and a space bar, if we are reading in English.
Fiction must create “the willing suspension, of disbelief” – I’m borrowing Samuel Coleridge’s overused phrase - whether for readers, viewers, or listeners. Believing a story requires our consent. We must want to be seduced.
On the screen, size seems to matter, or at least it used to, before we began to stare down the tunnels of our cell phones. (Sometimes I see young people looking at movies this way, and I’m thinking, really, he’s watching Dune on a phone?) In any case, we are more easily transported by visual images than by written ones, since words are already abstractions. One effect is that, in public discourse, we are becoming, increasingly, a world of hieroglyphics AND CAPITAL LETTERS.
CAPITALIZATION no longer indicates emphasis, it now indicates ANGER. And all those little weird marks on our glowing screens are not, I’ve slowly learned, random smudges (okay, I’m not that good at keeping the screen clean), they are doorways. Oops, that’s a metaphor.
When the first portable computers were released, I bought a Kaypro, which weighed some 40 pounds and was supposed to be portable, so I proudly brought it with me on assignments. It was fun to watch stewardesses (yes, flight attendants were all females back then and yes, they had weight requirements to make sure they were ‘attractive’) try to find a place to tuck my bulky machine. This scenario could not, of course, happen now, with cockpits protected by bullet-proof doors and guards in our airports carrying machine guns.
Anyway, the ‘software’ (whatever software was) for my first computer employed a platform (no, not a platform to dive from) for ‘word processing’ using a floppy disk (no, it wasn’t floppy) for something called Perfect Writer (which btw was so much better than Word). I still miss Perfect Writer, but here was one of the first obstacles I encountered in trying to use my Kaypro as a replacement for an electric typewriter: the word processing directions said to hit the ENTER button, but no matter how many times I studied the keyboard, there was no key marked ENTER. I finally went into an electronics store and stood patiently in line so I could ask this simple question: Where is the ENTER button on a keyboard? It’s the RETURN button, this young man said contemptuously. So, after I learned that ENTER now meant RETURN, I had to return to my tiny Southern-writer-tries-to-conquer-New York apartment and lie down for a few hours.
During my first years in NYC, I wrote the indexes in the backs of books for money. This process is now done by computer, but in the 1970s it was performed laboriously, by overeducated freelancers. I was first hired by an ABD from the University of Chicago to handle his excess assignments. He paid me in gold coins, in Krugerrands, which he said would be important if the banking system were to collapse and I had to pay my way out of the country.
Writing indexes taught me what being transported by the writings of literary figures like Faulkner, Tillie Olsen, Ford Madox Ford, and Dostoyevsky could not: No matter how brilliant the writing, no matter how magically it helped me see deeply into human experience, literary achievement could ultimately be reduced to the alphabet.
This was a hilarious realization.
In the NYTimes this morning, there’s a picture of Trump onstage, with Elon Musk jumping up and down behind him while proclaiming himself “dark Maga.” And now I’m wishing I still had a few of those Krugerrands tucked away.
Are you really that interested in linear writing? In argument? I’m not.
It is an essayist’s trick to create an ending by returning to an image from the beginning. So here goes:
Sylvia Plath wrote that the world is blood-hot and personal, and Adrienne Rich, one of the most influential 20th century American poets, wrote: The moment when a feeling enters the body/Is political. This touch is political.
The feminist slogan The Personal Is Political was actually a brilliant insight, and I remember how thrilling it was to march, chanting Out of the kitchens and into the streets, to spray-paint a feminist slogan on a bus, and to see feminists burning brassieres in front of the Miss America pageant. Now I watch demonstrations with a more worried gaze. What happens when the “I” gets lost in the crowd? What makes demonstrations into riots, protesters into mobs? Why has seeing Elon Musk on a stage beside Donald Trump turned my bank account into a wish for Krugerrands in a dresser drawer?
Apparently more than half of the American population now believe we will have armed conflict after the November election. I hope they’re wrong, but in my last novel Tomb of the Unknown Racist, the narrator, Ellen Burns, predicts something similar. Having finally located her fugitive terrorist brother, Royce Burns, they briefly debate their differences. “I bet you’re familiar with this line,” Royce says. “One death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic.” Ellen replies, “You’re quoting fucking Stalin to me?”
Royce can’t convince Ellen of the righteousness of his views, so he is planning to have himself drugged unconscious while his assistant disposes of her. He says sadly, about the prospect of losing her, “There’s no one else in my circle who would recognize a reference to Stalin.”
Like Ellen, I grew up in the right wing, and, like her, I know a lot about white terrorists: I know they have accumulated large caches of arms; I know it’s possible they have infiltrated the government and the military; and I know that at least a thousand organized militias already exist in this country. These may mostly be small groups, but all of them are armed. And did anyone besides me see that photo of a man walking into a fast-food place with a grenade launcher slung casually over his shoulder?
So, do individual stories still matter? Literature says yes, but history, unfortunately, says no. My wife thinks I’m a pessimist, and I hope it’s merely that. My fear is that I’m more like Cassandra, able to predict the future but unable to be believed, even by myself.
Another trick to making an essay feel finished is to tell a funny story, so I’ve been trying to think of one. Blonde jokes are offensive, but maybe we could remake a few into white supremacist jokes? Donald Trump is a blonde, and wouldn’t white supremacist jokes be fun to create? Extremists do hate mockery. So, how many Aryan terrorists does it take to eat a jar of pickles? Only one, because he can’t get his head out of the jar. Okay, not great, but what about this? How many Aryan terrorists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Two. One to hold the bulb and the other to walk around it in circles with a machine gun.
Right now I can’t even make myself laugh.
Wow. I want to be paid in a gold coin someday. Or gold jewelry. Either one! I have been paid in delicious food, questionable drugs, and stripper tips, but never Pirates of the Caribbean style.
Blanche, have you read “Sell Us the Rope” by Stephen May? I bet you are chuckling at the title already. It’s a satiric fantasy about what might have happened on Stalin’s (real life) first visit to London.
This is wonderful. Come to my election party. I will have rope and fireworks.
And dangerous......