Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Solid & Salvific: "Saving Sourdi" : Part One
At some point today, I will write about May-lee Chai’s story, “Saving Sourdi,” but I’ll follow Emily Dickinson’s idea of the circuitous route in getting there.
I’ve always been a proponent of bringing a book with you wherever you go. This may not be such a grand idea for some folks, those perhaps used to subway drives into the city every morning. But for a kid who grew up in what used to be, in speaking of physical and geographical space, wide-open areas, bringing a book with me wherever I went was a lesson I had to learn and relearn.
The South I grew up in was a place where a parent took you to the library to get books. The library was a wondrous place, a place where all the books literally reflected light when you opened the door and looked at the shelves. I have a fascination and fondness for mylar covers to this day, probably, because I view them unconsciously as the brilliant nimbus surrounding a book, a piece of wonder itself that reflects in form the inspirational and fantastical fictional luminescence that the book holds within it. Libraries in my days didn’t have carpet on the floors. The floors were tile, hard and solid and sending the somehow reassuring sound of shoes and heels striking the floor when they did so (libraries can actually be too quiet for one’s concentration; sometimes I feel practically unsafe when I sit in a library now; I always have the feeling that someone is sneaking up on me, and the library has somehow short-circuited my sense of hearing’s ability to notify me of it), and I had at least two reasons to be thankful for this; it created more light (I will always remember the libraries in my youth as being very bright places) and, as an asthma sufferer, it lessened the presence of dust. The libraries I went to were also very clean; sadly, I can’t say as much for the brightness and cleanliness of modern public libraries. They have now lost a grand interaction with natural forces, they miss out on what could be a pastoral reading environment, and they seem like tombs and bureaucratic vaults rather than inviting temples to things sacred. And, yet, in spite of myself, I love our libraries still.
Now, however, people having books with them or reading and transforming mundane wait time into something so much better is a trend I am very glad to see changing. Begrudgingly, I have to admit that the electronic explosion has helped this tremendously. Now, almost everywhere I go, someone is reading a book or, more often than not, has an e-Reader. I’m firmly and forever in the give-me-a-real-physical-book camp. I’m also very sorry that so many authors have been cheated regarding profits made from electronically scanned versions of their works that major publishing houses don’t feel the need to pay them for (we would call this piracy were I to undertake such methodology to get an author’s work; somehow society always sanctions illegal methods for those with lots of money, power, position, and status but fine if not jail us little folks when we do the same thing). I am, however, thankful that Kindles and Nooks and whatever other devices are out there encourage the young and young-at-heart to read wherever they are and whenever they are threatened with minutiae and the boogey of boredom. I don’t know, because I’ve never done it, but it must be fascinating to want to read a book while sitting at the mall or at McDonald’s or while waiting for one’s license renewal, download said book in a few minutes’ time, and then read it. Because, although I see the physical book itself as a cogent technology and media, perhaps the greater and more important thing is simply to get people to read. I think we are edging out of the era in which, according to Philip Roth, people spent fewer than two hours a day reading. I see many people lost in books now, and I honestly think we’re a better world for it.
So it was yesterday that I found myself following my principles and reading a book that I received a reviewer’s copy of gratis, namely Literature & Composition: Reading, Writing, Thinking (edited by Jago et al., not to be confused with the many books that have similar titles, e.g. Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing edited by Kirszner & Mandell; it’s not that the titles are misleading – they’re all literature anthologies aimed for AP programs or college courses – it’s just that they’re trying to compete in a market place that decreases imagination by encouraging publishers to use titles that always and eternally let their readers know exactly what to expect; we used to call that Hell).
My mother told me that literature gives us windows into other times. One could say the same about people’s souls. And so it was that I got to look into May-lee Chai’s soul yesterday in the most unlikely of spots (not in heaven but in National Tire and Battery in Antioch, TN) for the most likely of reasons (trying to diagnose problems with a 2003 Kia Rio that has nearly 200,000 miles on the odometer); I had time to sit, and, having time to sit, I’ve trained myself - with tenacity that a dog-handler would appreciate – to do two tasks (sit and read) at once. All that to say: I was reading “Saving Sourdi.”
I’ve always been a proponent of bringing a book with you wherever you go. This may not be such a grand idea for some folks, those perhaps used to subway drives into the city every morning. But for a kid who grew up in what used to be, in speaking of physical and geographical space, wide-open areas, bringing a book with me wherever I went was a lesson I had to learn and relearn.
The South I grew up in was a place where a parent took you to the library to get books. The library was a wondrous place, a place where all the books literally reflected light when you opened the door and looked at the shelves. I have a fascination and fondness for mylar covers to this day, probably, because I view them unconsciously as the brilliant nimbus surrounding a book, a piece of wonder itself that reflects in form the inspirational and fantastical fictional luminescence that the book holds within it. Libraries in my days didn’t have carpet on the floors. The floors were tile, hard and solid and sending the somehow reassuring sound of shoes and heels striking the floor when they did so (libraries can actually be too quiet for one’s concentration; sometimes I feel practically unsafe when I sit in a library now; I always have the feeling that someone is sneaking up on me, and the library has somehow short-circuited my sense of hearing’s ability to notify me of it), and I had at least two reasons to be thankful for this; it created more light (I will always remember the libraries in my youth as being very bright places) and, as an asthma sufferer, it lessened the presence of dust. The libraries I went to were also very clean; sadly, I can’t say as much for the brightness and cleanliness of modern public libraries. They have now lost a grand interaction with natural forces, they miss out on what could be a pastoral reading environment, and they seem like tombs and bureaucratic vaults rather than inviting temples to things sacred. And, yet, in spite of myself, I love our libraries still.
Now, however, people having books with them or reading and transforming mundane wait time into something so much better is a trend I am very glad to see changing. Begrudgingly, I have to admit that the electronic explosion has helped this tremendously. Now, almost everywhere I go, someone is reading a book or, more often than not, has an e-Reader. I’m firmly and forever in the give-me-a-real-physical-book camp. I’m also very sorry that so many authors have been cheated regarding profits made from electronically scanned versions of their works that major publishing houses don’t feel the need to pay them for (we would call this piracy were I to undertake such methodology to get an author’s work; somehow society always sanctions illegal methods for those with lots of money, power, position, and status but fine if not jail us little folks when we do the same thing). I am, however, thankful that Kindles and Nooks and whatever other devices are out there encourage the young and young-at-heart to read wherever they are and whenever they are threatened with minutiae and the boogey of boredom. I don’t know, because I’ve never done it, but it must be fascinating to want to read a book while sitting at the mall or at McDonald’s or while waiting for one’s license renewal, download said book in a few minutes’ time, and then read it. Because, although I see the physical book itself as a cogent technology and media, perhaps the greater and more important thing is simply to get people to read. I think we are edging out of the era in which, according to Philip Roth, people spent fewer than two hours a day reading. I see many people lost in books now, and I honestly think we’re a better world for it.
So it was yesterday that I found myself following my principles and reading a book that I received a reviewer’s copy of gratis, namely Literature & Composition: Reading, Writing, Thinking (edited by Jago et al., not to be confused with the many books that have similar titles, e.g. Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing edited by Kirszner & Mandell; it’s not that the titles are misleading – they’re all literature anthologies aimed for AP programs or college courses – it’s just that they’re trying to compete in a market place that decreases imagination by encouraging publishers to use titles that always and eternally let their readers know exactly what to expect; we used to call that Hell).
My mother told me that literature gives us windows into other times. One could say the same about people’s souls. And so it was that I got to look into May-lee Chai’s soul yesterday in the most unlikely of spots (not in heaven but in National Tire and Battery in Antioch, TN) for the most likely of reasons (trying to diagnose problems with a 2003 Kia Rio that has nearly 200,000 miles on the odometer); I had time to sit, and, having time to sit, I’ve trained myself - with tenacity that a dog-handler would appreciate – to do two tasks (sit and read) at once. All that to say: I was reading “Saving Sourdi.”
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Mining Meinke, or Twenty-Six Years Later
Be forewarned regarding today's post. There will be digressions upon digressions . . .
Peter Meinke came to Belmont University sometime around 1993 or so. I am unsure of the exact date, though I could probably look it up had I the time and inclination. But soon my workaday world will start, and that will be the end of it all regarding the time I may put toward such things. Better to get the post written, I suppose. Meinke's visitation wasn't controversial in any way. The visitation, or, rather near-visitation, that was controversial was Dr. Jim Brock's attempt to get Joseph Brodsky to visit our campus. The administration thought Jackson Brown, the author of the Life's Little Instruction Books series would be a better choice. Evidently, from what I gathered in conversation with people through the years, Brodsky, upon hearing the school was convening on the issue of himself or Brown opted out of the contest altogether, perhaps upon principle that a culture deserves the results it gets, especially when one is as short-sighted and often as bigoted as enclosed religious groups become when erecting institutions and becoming associated with them and riding their coat tails (see the current controversy over religious groups asking for the right to exclude members at Vanderbilt University for more). I was enraged at Belmont, especially Dr. William Troutt (who was a friend of Brown's if rumors and information were true), regarded James Brock as a martyr for fighting the issue and undoubtedly hurting his career, and disappointed in deeply metaphysical ways that, with my limited resources, I had just missed seeing, hearing, and meeting one of the poets I regarded most highly in the world, in all of literature. Indeed, we got Jackson Brown. Of course, I refused to go. Had I been smarter, I would have attended and asked him what he thought about being Brodsky's replacement, as it were. I'm sure he would have had a pithy little anachronism for it all. And I suppose because I'm still writing about his, perhaps it shows what little I've accomplished in my own life and my fixation with this event speaks to an immaturity . . . but, on the other hand, how does one recover from having the opportunity to meet one of the most fascinating, powerful, and inspiring poets of one's time taken out from under you by the thing he spoke most often against: a bureaucratic behemoth that regulates our lives beyond our own small defenses? How does one get over the fact that you never got to meet the most humble of poets, a man who won the Nobel Prize in Literature, yet opened his acceptance speech reminding his audience of all the great poets who were more deserving of the award than himself, those who should have been recognized by the world, but, ultimately, weren't? I honestly don't think I will ever get over this. And Joseph is dead now, perhaps a step closer to the anonymity he saw in the world no matter how often he glossed it over with notions of his very own, self-styled version of Christianity or Christian notions in his work (the mere mention of which might have caused Belmont to send him our way). Anyway, all of that to say: Peter Meinke was the first good choice by the administration at Belmont in bringing a literary cultural experience to its campus. Spearheaded by the wonderful wizard of Belmont Boulevard, Dr. John H. E. Paine, Peter came to our campus and gave a reading of his works.
At the time of this reading, I was in my early twenties. And, for whatever reason, Peter had chosen to spend the evening reading selections of poetry. And, though I liked it, I truly didn't understand or appreciate it. At that time in my life, I was heavily steeped in either classics or contemporary authors that I viewed as banging on that door. I was collecting the Northwestern Newberry Library Editions of Herman Melville's works and would rather have done this and had funds for this more than anything else in the world. I would read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Bunin, Hawthorne, Emerson, and Poe any chance I could get. One of the saddest moments in my life was when I had to simply accept that fact that I would probably never be able to afford Hawthorne's Journals, because they simply weren't published in a way that made them within my range of purchasing power. I sat up on the night of my honeymoon, very early in the morning, actually, staring out a window and wondering why Nashville didn't have a poetic voice that could bring out some sort of meaning beyond the mundane reality it seemed to exhibit. (Later, I would learn of Randall Jarrell.) That sort of tells you where I was at. So, let's face it, Peter Meinke, as wonderful an author as he is, wouldn't have appealed to someone constantly looking into the face of that.
So, here I am, twenty-six years after its initial publication, approximately twenty years after I met Meinke, reading selections from The Piano Tuner for the first time. And the time doesn't matter. Because Meinke is a master. There's not a scarier, more literate story out there than "The Piano Tuner." There's not a more startling story out there than this one. If you're not scared at the end of that, you're lying. The only response I had was: this is why people need to carry weapons. A gun would have leveled the playing field; anything less, yes, the homeowner was a dead duck. If you've never read this work, I don't want to ruin it for you with spoilers. But the story subverts your expectations every step of the way. You think it's going to be a two-men-sharing-different-cultural-contexts story, then you think it's going to be a damaged war veteran teaching universal pity to a veteran who did well, then you think it's going to be an outright crime story, and then, well, it gets scariest with the last several words. As a literary product, it's simply amazing. And, yes, some people are going to criticize it for having a big bad Black man as the boogeyman, but you'd be foolish to do so. This is as fleshed-out of a character as you're ever going to get. You're only looking for racism (sometimes a type of reverse racism in itself, which, in this case, I think would be the only way one could fault this work on those grounds; finally, I'm saying: don't bring the charge of racism against Meinke; you'd be foolish to do so) if you find it here.
I was, after that point, overwhelmed with Meinke's great powers of characterization. I honestly would have to sit down and read and reread these works to discover the tools of the master craftsman behind these works. But each character seems as real as someone you've known. Each story is fully believable. Each story is powerful, hopeful, and sad in their own ways. And I know my descriptions are getting rather juvenile here, but Meinke is mining the everyday. And though, admittedly, these works aren't going to rival Herman Melville or even James Dickey any time soon, they contend with many and perhaps most of the contemporary fiction I read now. It's like a literary version of a George Foreman comeback. You stick these stories out there, and they're just as powerful as the day they were written. I knew women, my mother's relatives, as a matter of fact, quite like the women in "Ruby Lemons." And though I've never met a brother and sister like the ones in "Alice's Brother," the delineation of their vocal and mechanical movement toward truth and personal revelation that's been waiting a lifetime is, if not fully believable to me (because I've never had such an experience), resonant with a life experience you can nevertheless feel the impact of; the story leaves you with a feeling of emotional sadness for this pair as well as longing for their perhaps future consummation of an inclination toward a love we don't recognize as a society. If a story can make you do that, I'd say the author's done his job. (I can hear Philip Roth railing against the publisher, many years later and in absentia, of course, who said he wouldn't publish Nabokov's pornography as I wonder about the people who won't read this story now based on my description of it.)
Well, work just literally called via cell phone. The day's begun. Make sure you add some literature to yours.
Work Cited
Meinke, Peter. The Piano Tuner. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1986.
Peter Meinke came to Belmont University sometime around 1993 or so. I am unsure of the exact date, though I could probably look it up had I the time and inclination. But soon my workaday world will start, and that will be the end of it all regarding the time I may put toward such things. Better to get the post written, I suppose. Meinke's visitation wasn't controversial in any way. The visitation, or, rather near-visitation, that was controversial was Dr. Jim Brock's attempt to get Joseph Brodsky to visit our campus. The administration thought Jackson Brown, the author of the Life's Little Instruction Books series would be a better choice. Evidently, from what I gathered in conversation with people through the years, Brodsky, upon hearing the school was convening on the issue of himself or Brown opted out of the contest altogether, perhaps upon principle that a culture deserves the results it gets, especially when one is as short-sighted and often as bigoted as enclosed religious groups become when erecting institutions and becoming associated with them and riding their coat tails (see the current controversy over religious groups asking for the right to exclude members at Vanderbilt University for more). I was enraged at Belmont, especially Dr. William Troutt (who was a friend of Brown's if rumors and information were true), regarded James Brock as a martyr for fighting the issue and undoubtedly hurting his career, and disappointed in deeply metaphysical ways that, with my limited resources, I had just missed seeing, hearing, and meeting one of the poets I regarded most highly in the world, in all of literature. Indeed, we got Jackson Brown. Of course, I refused to go. Had I been smarter, I would have attended and asked him what he thought about being Brodsky's replacement, as it were. I'm sure he would have had a pithy little anachronism for it all. And I suppose because I'm still writing about his, perhaps it shows what little I've accomplished in my own life and my fixation with this event speaks to an immaturity . . . but, on the other hand, how does one recover from having the opportunity to meet one of the most fascinating, powerful, and inspiring poets of one's time taken out from under you by the thing he spoke most often against: a bureaucratic behemoth that regulates our lives beyond our own small defenses? How does one get over the fact that you never got to meet the most humble of poets, a man who won the Nobel Prize in Literature, yet opened his acceptance speech reminding his audience of all the great poets who were more deserving of the award than himself, those who should have been recognized by the world, but, ultimately, weren't? I honestly don't think I will ever get over this. And Joseph is dead now, perhaps a step closer to the anonymity he saw in the world no matter how often he glossed it over with notions of his very own, self-styled version of Christianity or Christian notions in his work (the mere mention of which might have caused Belmont to send him our way). Anyway, all of that to say: Peter Meinke was the first good choice by the administration at Belmont in bringing a literary cultural experience to its campus. Spearheaded by the wonderful wizard of Belmont Boulevard, Dr. John H. E. Paine, Peter came to our campus and gave a reading of his works.
At the time of this reading, I was in my early twenties. And, for whatever reason, Peter had chosen to spend the evening reading selections of poetry. And, though I liked it, I truly didn't understand or appreciate it. At that time in my life, I was heavily steeped in either classics or contemporary authors that I viewed as banging on that door. I was collecting the Northwestern Newberry Library Editions of Herman Melville's works and would rather have done this and had funds for this more than anything else in the world. I would read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Bunin, Hawthorne, Emerson, and Poe any chance I could get. One of the saddest moments in my life was when I had to simply accept that fact that I would probably never be able to afford Hawthorne's Journals, because they simply weren't published in a way that made them within my range of purchasing power. I sat up on the night of my honeymoon, very early in the morning, actually, staring out a window and wondering why Nashville didn't have a poetic voice that could bring out some sort of meaning beyond the mundane reality it seemed to exhibit. (Later, I would learn of Randall Jarrell.) That sort of tells you where I was at. So, let's face it, Peter Meinke, as wonderful an author as he is, wouldn't have appealed to someone constantly looking into the face of that.
So, here I am, twenty-six years after its initial publication, approximately twenty years after I met Meinke, reading selections from The Piano Tuner for the first time. And the time doesn't matter. Because Meinke is a master. There's not a scarier, more literate story out there than "The Piano Tuner." There's not a more startling story out there than this one. If you're not scared at the end of that, you're lying. The only response I had was: this is why people need to carry weapons. A gun would have leveled the playing field; anything less, yes, the homeowner was a dead duck. If you've never read this work, I don't want to ruin it for you with spoilers. But the story subverts your expectations every step of the way. You think it's going to be a two-men-sharing-different-cultural-contexts story, then you think it's going to be a damaged war veteran teaching universal pity to a veteran who did well, then you think it's going to be an outright crime story, and then, well, it gets scariest with the last several words. As a literary product, it's simply amazing. And, yes, some people are going to criticize it for having a big bad Black man as the boogeyman, but you'd be foolish to do so. This is as fleshed-out of a character as you're ever going to get. You're only looking for racism (sometimes a type of reverse racism in itself, which, in this case, I think would be the only way one could fault this work on those grounds; finally, I'm saying: don't bring the charge of racism against Meinke; you'd be foolish to do so) if you find it here.
I was, after that point, overwhelmed with Meinke's great powers of characterization. I honestly would have to sit down and read and reread these works to discover the tools of the master craftsman behind these works. But each character seems as real as someone you've known. Each story is fully believable. Each story is powerful, hopeful, and sad in their own ways. And I know my descriptions are getting rather juvenile here, but Meinke is mining the everyday. And though, admittedly, these works aren't going to rival Herman Melville or even James Dickey any time soon, they contend with many and perhaps most of the contemporary fiction I read now. It's like a literary version of a George Foreman comeback. You stick these stories out there, and they're just as powerful as the day they were written. I knew women, my mother's relatives, as a matter of fact, quite like the women in "Ruby Lemons." And though I've never met a brother and sister like the ones in "Alice's Brother," the delineation of their vocal and mechanical movement toward truth and personal revelation that's been waiting a lifetime is, if not fully believable to me (because I've never had such an experience), resonant with a life experience you can nevertheless feel the impact of; the story leaves you with a feeling of emotional sadness for this pair as well as longing for their perhaps future consummation of an inclination toward a love we don't recognize as a society. If a story can make you do that, I'd say the author's done his job. (I can hear Philip Roth railing against the publisher, many years later and in absentia, of course, who said he wouldn't publish Nabokov's pornography as I wonder about the people who won't read this story now based on my description of it.)
Well, work just literally called via cell phone. The day's begun. Make sure you add some literature to yours.
Work Cited
Meinke, Peter. The Piano Tuner. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1986.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
The Many Voices It Takes
Lately, I've had a predisposition toward buying old books, the older the better. And I don't do this with any eye toward collectible value. I'm looking for knowledge, definitely not resale value. I stopped that long ago when I sold Sherman Alexie's Water Flowing Home for a pittance so that I could afford my wife some earrings for her birthday. But by continuing to buy old books I've learned those lessons that historians warn us about when they use the now cliche but still quite true phrase: "Learn history or be doomed to repeat it."
Lately, I've been thinking about the voices in our society. We've had many voices speaking for and against the common people, trying to take their pay and benefits worldwide. And I'm speaking both literally and metaphorically, here. Our voices have never been more important. But we forget just how many voices it takes. One of the now long-forgotten voices in the fight for civil rights in America was Harry Roskolenko. I don't mention his name to suggest that he was more important than others; I do so to point out, rather, that he was just as important as the other voices that have now been engraved in our (again) literal and metaphorical cultural consciousness. Somehow, even for the best and worst endeavors, we always worship the figureheads and forget about all the mass of people it takes to make a movement move through the impediments forged against it. As we are now trying to change the world that we are living in (and Republicans in political positions - Bill Haslam in my part of the world - are the worst evidence that we're not vocal enough), we must remember that all of those Occupy Wall Street people are wonderfully necessary for their part in achieving change. And if the Occupy movement has moved on (which, evidently, it hasn't, because there is new legislation being created to make putting a mattress and sleeping materials on a public area illegal), then we need to find the next best thing.
But don't forget Harry. Go back and look at what this guy had to say and wonder why he's been forgotten. And perhaps use his body of work as a gauge to judge just how much work it takes to effect change as well as just how valuable one person can be in doing their part, whether they have a statue of themselves sitting on a hill or not.
Lately, I've been thinking about the voices in our society. We've had many voices speaking for and against the common people, trying to take their pay and benefits worldwide. And I'm speaking both literally and metaphorically, here. Our voices have never been more important. But we forget just how many voices it takes. One of the now long-forgotten voices in the fight for civil rights in America was Harry Roskolenko. I don't mention his name to suggest that he was more important than others; I do so to point out, rather, that he was just as important as the other voices that have now been engraved in our (again) literal and metaphorical cultural consciousness. Somehow, even for the best and worst endeavors, we always worship the figureheads and forget about all the mass of people it takes to make a movement move through the impediments forged against it. As we are now trying to change the world that we are living in (and Republicans in political positions - Bill Haslam in my part of the world - are the worst evidence that we're not vocal enough), we must remember that all of those Occupy Wall Street people are wonderfully necessary for their part in achieving change. And if the Occupy movement has moved on (which, evidently, it hasn't, because there is new legislation being created to make putting a mattress and sleeping materials on a public area illegal), then we need to find the next best thing.
But don't forget Harry. Go back and look at what this guy had to say and wonder why he's been forgotten. And perhaps use his body of work as a gauge to judge just how much work it takes to effect change as well as just how valuable one person can be in doing their part, whether they have a statue of themselves sitting on a hill or not.
Monday, January 16, 2012
The Ethical Wonders of Daniel Woodrell: Part Three
Every word resonates in Daniel Woodrell’s short story, “The Echo of Neighborly Bones.” This is assuredly not an easy task, but it is such an easy story to read that one is beguiled into taking the trip quickly and thereby missing most of the beauty and writer’s craft found in the work. (I also have suspicions that one day we’ll find – like we’ve found heavily worked and reworked manuscripts of Whitman, Keats, and Byron – reams of x’d and o’d and tic-tac-toed pages of these novels many years from now and realize that Woodrell’s task was monumental in its culling. The greater shock would be that he, like Vladimir Nabokov, worked the words out in his head and committed them to practically publishable form from the outset. I hope I'm still alive when such things are revealed.)
I’ve said something before about Woodrell being the last of the Laconic writers. And I’m using the term here in the sense of “effectively cut short” rather than “rude,” unless one takes the position, and one might, that Woodrell’s terseness is spitting in the face of some literary traditions. We’ve had our loquacious Southern and Southwestern and Midwestern writers (some of the categories people who decide such things attempt to place Woodrell into). Woodrell, however, manages to be just as powerful and capture the traditions of the geographic regions he pays homage to in books the size of or not much bigger than a poet’s first outing. The kicker is that Woodrell also manages to be much more poetic than most writers weaving books with larger looms and baskets upon baskets of thread. And the aforementioned spitting comment might be hyperbolic, but I promise you that several if not many writers are offended by or jealous of what Woodrell accomplishes in his typical word count. And my mixed metaphors aren’t doing my reputation any favors. And this is about Woodrell, anyway.
There’s not truly a protagonist in “The Echo of Neighborly Bones” unless, perhaps, we consider the dog, Bitsy, for that position. Everyone else has sinister issues and the only possible sense in which we may consider them the protagonists of the work is in the mere sense of being main characters. They are not morally superior. Or that's what a cursory glance's reading would lead us to believe.
Remember that in an earlier post, I told you how I, the long past twelve-year-old I, sent .22 rounds through a tree line because people rendered an animal I loved into an undignified state. In Woodrell's tale, the greatest indignity of cold-blooded murder is committed upon a beloved pet. And, let me tell you further, that there are many animals I've valued much higher than humans. And I've met nonhuman animals with nasty or violent predispositions. That's why I hate cats. Cats will hurt you for no reason; that's why their supposedly loving owners lovingly de-claw them. But as is always the case, it is the premeditated aspect of crimes, especially murder, that cause them to have greater penalties. And no one premeditates better than the human animal. And that's why the Minnesotan foreigner - he is more a barbarian in the full meaning of the word, much more barbarian than the less than Classic meaning associated with our current connotation and meaning associated with such phrases as barbaric acts (which would, though, accurately describe Boshell's desecration of a corpse, whether he views it as retribution or not). This story, indeed, pits barbarity (the notion of being outside the mores of a culture, of being crude because one doesn't follow a region's customs) against things barbaric (the notion of outright savagery).
Jepperson is a seemingly highfalutin (perhaps because he was, at one time, at the bottom of his social cast and, therefore, went looking for a social cast whose stature was viewed as being so low that he, upon his entrance into this society, could foolishly think himself above it) foreigner who begins as a barbarian in the social sense but then commits an act of barbarity and becomes, thereby, savage. Whose viewpoint we are talking about, of course, matters. In Jepperson's world, shooting a dog for eating one's guinea hens probably is acceptable legally, socially, and practically. But according to the customs of the society he now lives in, he went from foreigner-barbarian to savage-barbarian when he refused to participate in Boshell's forthright offer of wergild and, instead, shot Bitsy. In a way, it's a current take on the fight between Roman and Anglo-Saxon law. Boshell gets his ultimate comeuppance when he states: "They [guineas] go for about a dollar fifty a bird, neighbor - still seem worth it?" (7). Except for the fact that he's talking to a dead man who will never make reparations for his actions, it could have been argued that, indeed, Boshell has taught the Yank a lesson.
Ultimately, this approximately six-page story has a moral and/or ethical resonance that something this short just doesn't have a right to. That kind of alchemy is what is so beautiful about the best literature out there. Our expectations are constantly exploded like the most fascinating of fireworks displays if we only take the time to develop the eyes to see, the ears to hear, the minds to comprehend. Woodrell will be happy to have you, though I'm sure he'd like you to approach him in a neighborly way.
Succinctly, everyone should read the opener to The Outlaw Album (as well as the rest, of course).
Work Cited
Woodrell, Daniel. "The Echo of Neighborly Bones." The Outlaw Album. NY: Little Brown, 2011. 3-9.
I’ve said something before about Woodrell being the last of the Laconic writers. And I’m using the term here in the sense of “effectively cut short” rather than “rude,” unless one takes the position, and one might, that Woodrell’s terseness is spitting in the face of some literary traditions. We’ve had our loquacious Southern and Southwestern and Midwestern writers (some of the categories people who decide such things attempt to place Woodrell into). Woodrell, however, manages to be just as powerful and capture the traditions of the geographic regions he pays homage to in books the size of or not much bigger than a poet’s first outing. The kicker is that Woodrell also manages to be much more poetic than most writers weaving books with larger looms and baskets upon baskets of thread. And the aforementioned spitting comment might be hyperbolic, but I promise you that several if not many writers are offended by or jealous of what Woodrell accomplishes in his typical word count. And my mixed metaphors aren’t doing my reputation any favors. And this is about Woodrell, anyway.
There’s not truly a protagonist in “The Echo of Neighborly Bones” unless, perhaps, we consider the dog, Bitsy, for that position. Everyone else has sinister issues and the only possible sense in which we may consider them the protagonists of the work is in the mere sense of being main characters. They are not morally superior. Or that's what a cursory glance's reading would lead us to believe.
Remember that in an earlier post, I told you how I, the long past twelve-year-old I, sent .22 rounds through a tree line because people rendered an animal I loved into an undignified state. In Woodrell's tale, the greatest indignity of cold-blooded murder is committed upon a beloved pet. And, let me tell you further, that there are many animals I've valued much higher than humans. And I've met nonhuman animals with nasty or violent predispositions. That's why I hate cats. Cats will hurt you for no reason; that's why their supposedly loving owners lovingly de-claw them. But as is always the case, it is the premeditated aspect of crimes, especially murder, that cause them to have greater penalties. And no one premeditates better than the human animal. And that's why the Minnesotan foreigner - he is more a barbarian in the full meaning of the word, much more barbarian than the less than Classic meaning associated with our current connotation and meaning associated with such phrases as barbaric acts (which would, though, accurately describe Boshell's desecration of a corpse, whether he views it as retribution or not). This story, indeed, pits barbarity (the notion of being outside the mores of a culture, of being crude because one doesn't follow a region's customs) against things barbaric (the notion of outright savagery).
Jepperson is a seemingly highfalutin (perhaps because he was, at one time, at the bottom of his social cast and, therefore, went looking for a social cast whose stature was viewed as being so low that he, upon his entrance into this society, could foolishly think himself above it) foreigner who begins as a barbarian in the social sense but then commits an act of barbarity and becomes, thereby, savage. Whose viewpoint we are talking about, of course, matters. In Jepperson's world, shooting a dog for eating one's guinea hens probably is acceptable legally, socially, and practically. But according to the customs of the society he now lives in, he went from foreigner-barbarian to savage-barbarian when he refused to participate in Boshell's forthright offer of wergild and, instead, shot Bitsy. In a way, it's a current take on the fight between Roman and Anglo-Saxon law. Boshell gets his ultimate comeuppance when he states: "They [guineas] go for about a dollar fifty a bird, neighbor - still seem worth it?" (7). Except for the fact that he's talking to a dead man who will never make reparations for his actions, it could have been argued that, indeed, Boshell has taught the Yank a lesson.
Ultimately, this approximately six-page story has a moral and/or ethical resonance that something this short just doesn't have a right to. That kind of alchemy is what is so beautiful about the best literature out there. Our expectations are constantly exploded like the most fascinating of fireworks displays if we only take the time to develop the eyes to see, the ears to hear, the minds to comprehend. Woodrell will be happy to have you, though I'm sure he'd like you to approach him in a neighborly way.
Succinctly, everyone should read the opener to The Outlaw Album (as well as the rest, of course).
Work Cited
Woodrell, Daniel. "The Echo of Neighborly Bones." The Outlaw Album. NY: Little Brown, 2011. 3-9.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Ethical Wonders in the Fiction of Daniel Woodrell: Part Two
In yesterday's post (found here for you clickers who live to click and just won't scroll: http://mrdigressius.blogspot.com/2012/01/ethical-wonders-in-fiction-of-daniel.html ) I forgot to mention the best proof, perhaps, behind how my reading's real-life context of Daniel Woodrell's The Outlaw Album matched the ethical stance often found in his works. So, here goes:
The lady aforementioned was sitting by herself, received the phone call, and begins crying. Not loud. Not making a show of it. But unable to keep the cliche stiff upper lip, not that one ever should; why the British have made a national pride of not showing human emotion, I'll never know. But, as I'm sitting there, I'm wondering what my response should be. Should I go to her? There were a thousand reasons not to, the greatest of which was my own heavily guarded introverted personality, something that's been both a bane and a blessing all my life. I struggled with it: to go or not to go? And, while I was self-wrestling and to his credit, a man, who shattered every stereotype in a moment (except for the fact that he wasn't rich; had he been, it would have topped it all off), went to her, said something quietly kind to her, and then put his arm around her shoulder, said a few more nice words to her, and patted her shoulder and left her to grieve, now no longer alone, now embraced into a common human dignity, now, perhaps, feeling not so terribly bad after all. Her loss, of course, will always be the dull, gray nothingness of loss, but having one person come to you in such moments, may, indeed, be therapy through friendship, a healing commonality through the caduceus. (And I know I'm making an erroneous allusion here; it's the rod of Asclepius that deals with healing; but if the mistake has been made and continues to receive reinforcement as a symbol, and, if the caduceus is the symbol of the protection given to cheats, liars, and thieves, well, aren't we all one of those at some point in our lives and shouldn't we all at some point take wings and have god-given speed to move beyond our limitations? It seems only right and fair; we live so far beyond the pale of the shakers and movers and the divine that, at some point, we should partake of that world, too. And there's something about those two snakes entwined on the rod, looking at each other, hypnotized by each others' eyes that seems to be the opposite of the typical human response of looking the other way that deserves our attention, that deserves deep thought and interpretation.)
Perhaps I'm making too much mysticism out of Woodrell's work and my world. But the whole reason for this post was to show how what we think is an alien culture may very well touch upon something in our own lives and may, further, allow us to make responses in the real world based on the mistakes we perceive in the actions of characters in fictional constructs. No, I take it back. The real reason behind this post was to explain why I once sent .22 bullets ricocheting off trees surrounding my neighbors' homes. No, I take it back, the real reason for this post was to show how Daniel Woodrell . . . It's all of a piece, people. And it all - the stories, the life events surrounding our emergence into a text, the ramifications of reading - spins on some otherworldly wheel and creates new possibilities and moral mandates for us. That's what makes great literature.
You cannot read Winter's Bone without feeling Ree Dolly's pain when she is shown the completely beguiling facade of friendship (an Aunt approaching you on a cold day with a hot cup of tea or some such) and then brutally accosted with animal viciousness, beaten within an inch of her life (in fact, the women involved have their shovels in hand and are already digging her grave). You also cannot help but have an ethical and/or moral response to Ree's own beautiful doggedness, only spoken in the hope for children she has now in her care:
"Whatever are we to do about you, baby girl? Huh?"
"Kill me, I guess."
"That idea has been said already. Got'ny other ones?"
"Help me. Ain't nobody said that idea yet, have they?"
Ree's humiliation at this point is total in a physical sense. I could relate it to you, but reading Daniel Woodrell's description of it would be a million times more complete, satisfying, and moving. Ree, however, never gives up. She has to surrender. She's beaten into surrendering. But she never gives up. Because she cares for someone else, several someones else, actually, she cares for these innocent people relying on her more than she cares one iota about anything to do with herself. She forgoes everything for them. And another life's lesson related to this is this: Be careful for whom you sacrifice your own well-being. You may very well never be repaid and bring yourself to destruction in the process. That's why, if one asks me (and someone as great as Harlan Ellison would disagree with me), this is where literature is moral rather than ethical. In fact, this is where literature has to be moral rather than ethical. Ethics have to do with a rational and logical human construct, but there are forces out there that are irrational, illogical, and more than human. Although, now that I think of it perhaps the fact that humans have a sort of rite of conduct (rather than rite of passage) that brings us into a euphoric state based on right action, well, that seems damn refreshing and inspiring doesn't it?
Forgive me. I have digressed a thousand times in this post. Tomorrow, perhaps, I'll finally discuss "The Echo of Neighborly Bones."
Work Cited
Woodrell, Daniel. Winter's Bone. NY: Little Brown, 2006.
The lady aforementioned was sitting by herself, received the phone call, and begins crying. Not loud. Not making a show of it. But unable to keep the cliche stiff upper lip, not that one ever should; why the British have made a national pride of not showing human emotion, I'll never know. But, as I'm sitting there, I'm wondering what my response should be. Should I go to her? There were a thousand reasons not to, the greatest of which was my own heavily guarded introverted personality, something that's been both a bane and a blessing all my life. I struggled with it: to go or not to go? And, while I was self-wrestling and to his credit, a man, who shattered every stereotype in a moment (except for the fact that he wasn't rich; had he been, it would have topped it all off), went to her, said something quietly kind to her, and then put his arm around her shoulder, said a few more nice words to her, and patted her shoulder and left her to grieve, now no longer alone, now embraced into a common human dignity, now, perhaps, feeling not so terribly bad after all. Her loss, of course, will always be the dull, gray nothingness of loss, but having one person come to you in such moments, may, indeed, be therapy through friendship, a healing commonality through the caduceus. (And I know I'm making an erroneous allusion here; it's the rod of Asclepius that deals with healing; but if the mistake has been made and continues to receive reinforcement as a symbol, and, if the caduceus is the symbol of the protection given to cheats, liars, and thieves, well, aren't we all one of those at some point in our lives and shouldn't we all at some point take wings and have god-given speed to move beyond our limitations? It seems only right and fair; we live so far beyond the pale of the shakers and movers and the divine that, at some point, we should partake of that world, too. And there's something about those two snakes entwined on the rod, looking at each other, hypnotized by each others' eyes that seems to be the opposite of the typical human response of looking the other way that deserves our attention, that deserves deep thought and interpretation.)
Perhaps I'm making too much mysticism out of Woodrell's work and my world. But the whole reason for this post was to show how what we think is an alien culture may very well touch upon something in our own lives and may, further, allow us to make responses in the real world based on the mistakes we perceive in the actions of characters in fictional constructs. No, I take it back. The real reason behind this post was to explain why I once sent .22 bullets ricocheting off trees surrounding my neighbors' homes. No, I take it back, the real reason for this post was to show how Daniel Woodrell . . . It's all of a piece, people. And it all - the stories, the life events surrounding our emergence into a text, the ramifications of reading - spins on some otherworldly wheel and creates new possibilities and moral mandates for us. That's what makes great literature.
You cannot read Winter's Bone without feeling Ree Dolly's pain when she is shown the completely beguiling facade of friendship (an Aunt approaching you on a cold day with a hot cup of tea or some such) and then brutally accosted with animal viciousness, beaten within an inch of her life (in fact, the women involved have their shovels in hand and are already digging her grave). You also cannot help but have an ethical and/or moral response to Ree's own beautiful doggedness, only spoken in the hope for children she has now in her care:
"Whatever are we to do about you, baby girl? Huh?"
"Kill me, I guess."
"That idea has been said already. Got'ny other ones?"
"Help me. Ain't nobody said that idea yet, have they?"
Ree's humiliation at this point is total in a physical sense. I could relate it to you, but reading Daniel Woodrell's description of it would be a million times more complete, satisfying, and moving. Ree, however, never gives up. She has to surrender. She's beaten into surrendering. But she never gives up. Because she cares for someone else, several someones else, actually, she cares for these innocent people relying on her more than she cares one iota about anything to do with herself. She forgoes everything for them. And another life's lesson related to this is this: Be careful for whom you sacrifice your own well-being. You may very well never be repaid and bring yourself to destruction in the process. That's why, if one asks me (and someone as great as Harlan Ellison would disagree with me), this is where literature is moral rather than ethical. In fact, this is where literature has to be moral rather than ethical. Ethics have to do with a rational and logical human construct, but there are forces out there that are irrational, illogical, and more than human. Although, now that I think of it perhaps the fact that humans have a sort of rite of conduct (rather than rite of passage) that brings us into a euphoric state based on right action, well, that seems damn refreshing and inspiring doesn't it?
Forgive me. I have digressed a thousand times in this post. Tomorrow, perhaps, I'll finally discuss "The Echo of Neighborly Bones."
Work Cited
Woodrell, Daniel. Winter's Bone. NY: Little Brown, 2006.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Ethical Wonders in the Fiction of Daniel Woodrell
I received Daniel Woodrell's newest published work, The Outlaw Album, as my Christmas gift. Funds were few this year, and we made sure we fulfilled the obligations that Christmas, for me, is always all about - children's fantastical wish-fulfillment (and I don't see anything wrong, anti-religious, or Freudian about that, although I do see something inherently wrong with each of the things in that parenthetical list, especially as they are usually always combined when attempting to denigrate something innocent and wonderful). The context of my reading, which I somehow find apropos in a momentous way, was this:
My wife needed brakes for her car, and, not usually being the kindly sort, something came over me - Christmas joy and the pressing happiness of having a new book to read - I decided to while away the few hours the job would take at the McDonald's across the street, fattening up intellectually and physically. To be truthful, though, reading Woodrell is always a leaning out. His words are few and sparse, though powerful; he's one of the only Laconic writers we have left, though I'm not sure he could be accused of having the type of defensive and challenging humor of machismo Spartan society. He's just challenging. (The only thing I've ever found humorous in Woodrell is his description of a conjugal act - not that it has to be done in a marital sense; it could be illicit as well - as a stick eddying in a stream. It can be found toward the end of Woe to Live On.) He challenges your morals, beliefs, and view of humanity. Are we as inherently violent as the world he represents or reflects? Is the milieu found in Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, or Tomato Red (to name three that left me with many disturbing, troubling, and lingering ethical and worldview types of questions) created acts or wonderfully rendered sociological studies? Whatever the case, all of this meshed while I was engaged in a wonderful reading act while a homeless woman, a homeless newspaper vendor, actually, received the news that someone very dear to her had died. The information came through her cell phone while she was sitting in a McDonald's restaurant drinking coffee. The irony of the commonplace setting for such a tragedy, I hope, isn't lost on anyone. We live in a world where our tragedies are rendered practically worthless. The very marketability behind building structures that the planners and demographic-scrutinizing advertising associates and executives (they used to all be called executives until someone didn't want to pay them as much money for their services) who make such ridiculousness actual, well, the ulterior motives behind the physical structures that arise in our midst, mixed with the life events we often experience within them, tend to leech out their mystical aspects, their heavenliness, the universal elements that are sent our way in these strangely cleansing tragedies. And they will do so unless you prepare yourself for this happening to you one day, to counter-balance the blandness when it threatens to overtake your more ageless self. And so this beautifully beset woman learned that her dear friend or relative died before she could start eating her South American bred sausage housed in its bleached and cheapened-flour biscuit. The irony is painful, perhaps not as painful as the moment, but painful nonetheless. I suppose there might be better contexts for reading Woodrell's work, but I consistently think now that, from my experience, we learn much from the matrices (can we ever rescue the word matrix from the silliness of the instantaneously cliche movie media?) in which literature and our so-called real lives intersect.
In any case, Woodrell's work has always been about an alien culture for me until I read "The Echo of Neighborly Bones." I assume, perhaps wrongly, that it outlines an ethic, belief, and feeling that only a Southerner or someone from a truly rural culture could understand. Unless an animal has been as real and companionable and understandable and meaningful as a person to you in your life (and I'm not talking about those people who put their little doggies in designer clothes and diamond jewelry or those people who promulgate those asinine calendars every year with animals in postures and making faces that make taxidermists jealous), you'll never understand why someone would shoot someone else over a cruelty to an animal and/or disrespecting the dignity of an animal. You'll never understand why at twelve-years-old, I sent .22 bullets through both a rifle and a tree line because my idiotic neighbors dressed my German Shepherd in idiotic clothes and then sent her running for her life and humiliated back to me.
Work calls. I may continue this later. In fact, I should. Perhaps I will. In any case, if you want to spend some time reading wonderful work and pondering the nature of your own ethical stance in our universe, read anything by Daniel Woodrell.
My wife needed brakes for her car, and, not usually being the kindly sort, something came over me - Christmas joy and the pressing happiness of having a new book to read - I decided to while away the few hours the job would take at the McDonald's across the street, fattening up intellectually and physically. To be truthful, though, reading Woodrell is always a leaning out. His words are few and sparse, though powerful; he's one of the only Laconic writers we have left, though I'm not sure he could be accused of having the type of defensive and challenging humor of machismo Spartan society. He's just challenging. (The only thing I've ever found humorous in Woodrell is his description of a conjugal act - not that it has to be done in a marital sense; it could be illicit as well - as a stick eddying in a stream. It can be found toward the end of Woe to Live On.) He challenges your morals, beliefs, and view of humanity. Are we as inherently violent as the world he represents or reflects? Is the milieu found in Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, or Tomato Red (to name three that left me with many disturbing, troubling, and lingering ethical and worldview types of questions) created acts or wonderfully rendered sociological studies? Whatever the case, all of this meshed while I was engaged in a wonderful reading act while a homeless woman, a homeless newspaper vendor, actually, received the news that someone very dear to her had died. The information came through her cell phone while she was sitting in a McDonald's restaurant drinking coffee. The irony of the commonplace setting for such a tragedy, I hope, isn't lost on anyone. We live in a world where our tragedies are rendered practically worthless. The very marketability behind building structures that the planners and demographic-scrutinizing advertising associates and executives (they used to all be called executives until someone didn't want to pay them as much money for their services) who make such ridiculousness actual, well, the ulterior motives behind the physical structures that arise in our midst, mixed with the life events we often experience within them, tend to leech out their mystical aspects, their heavenliness, the universal elements that are sent our way in these strangely cleansing tragedies. And they will do so unless you prepare yourself for this happening to you one day, to counter-balance the blandness when it threatens to overtake your more ageless self. And so this beautifully beset woman learned that her dear friend or relative died before she could start eating her South American bred sausage housed in its bleached and cheapened-flour biscuit. The irony is painful, perhaps not as painful as the moment, but painful nonetheless. I suppose there might be better contexts for reading Woodrell's work, but I consistently think now that, from my experience, we learn much from the matrices (can we ever rescue the word matrix from the silliness of the instantaneously cliche movie media?) in which literature and our so-called real lives intersect.
In any case, Woodrell's work has always been about an alien culture for me until I read "The Echo of Neighborly Bones." I assume, perhaps wrongly, that it outlines an ethic, belief, and feeling that only a Southerner or someone from a truly rural culture could understand. Unless an animal has been as real and companionable and understandable and meaningful as a person to you in your life (and I'm not talking about those people who put their little doggies in designer clothes and diamond jewelry or those people who promulgate those asinine calendars every year with animals in postures and making faces that make taxidermists jealous), you'll never understand why someone would shoot someone else over a cruelty to an animal and/or disrespecting the dignity of an animal. You'll never understand why at twelve-years-old, I sent .22 bullets through both a rifle and a tree line because my idiotic neighbors dressed my German Shepherd in idiotic clothes and then sent her running for her life and humiliated back to me.
Work calls. I may continue this later. In fact, I should. Perhaps I will. In any case, if you want to spend some time reading wonderful work and pondering the nature of your own ethical stance in our universe, read anything by Daniel Woodrell.
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