Grim(m) for Grownups

Ben Marcus’s TheFlaming Alphabet was recommended by none other than George Saunders in an NPR interview.  Never read anything by Marcus, so why not give it a try?

 Well, it probably ranks among the top ten strangest books I’ve ever read.  This is a serious book by a serious writer, don’t get me wrong.  But such an unusual blend of genres: science fiction, apocalyptic vision, Jewish mysticism, traditional thriller.  The basic premise is that language itself (the element that elevated humans to a unique position of dominance in the animal kingdom) becomes toxic to human adults.  There’s just too much of it everywhere, and especially the speech of children causes adults to become severely ill, and in many cases to die.  The children themselves are mostly unharmed, but they will mature, and when they do they will be subject to the same curse.  Eventually all language (written, spoken, even thought) becomes deadly. Survival means giving it all up and ‘living’ in an uninviting, unrewarding, and utterly empty space. Or maybe that’s where we are now and we don’t know it?

Ben Marcus

What a strange idea: a novel (language in a particularly potent and seductive form) in which language itself becomes toxic. Ironies abound.  While in the early sections there is a slightly humorous approach to the dynamic of two parents living with a teenager (we’ve all been there and can relate), when that dynamic is exaggerated to the extreme things get ugly pretty quickly.  The remainder of the book is dark and gory.  Things go from bad to worse to awful damned fast, and there really is no way out.  Many places feel like holocaust literature.  It’s not a pleasant read.

Marcus indulges himself in many places, allowing himself to splurge in linguistic feasts that ultimately exhaust and defeat the reader.  For him there really is no way out.  Those miniature verbal orgies are upsetting but also very telling.  It’s a truly virtuosic performance, but a poignant portrayal of utter degradation and loss is not fun to read.  It was tough for me to get through, though I’m glad I did.

Think of it as a cautionary fairy tale:  what might happen if we don’t recognize and cherish the redemptive power of language.  If we continue to abuse our words we will forfeit their potential for enlightenment, growth, and expression, and we will be forced to live without language and its positive capabilities. We will retreat from our elevated human status. Perhaps the book could be shorter.  Maybe it’s really a novella or even a short story.  But just think of how much ‘fast food’ language surrounds us in our everyday lives, and how infrequently we protect ourselves from language inflation and devaluation.  No wonder that serious poetry is so far from the mainstream.  Too many words to consider any of them carefully and lovingly. Too much of a good thing.  Way too much.

Say it ain't so.  Please?

Boston

Organized road races for runners have always felt special to me.  Though I’ve never run a full marathon, I have run in many shorter races, and I’ve also provided support for other runners on race day.  The events are held on public roads and can be a major inconvenience for the local residents.  Nonetheless there is almost always a good spirit in the air.  There aren’t many such events where we set aside differences of class and race, smile a lot, help each other, and act like real community members. We leave our jackets and water bottles unattended and trust that no one will take them.  Maybe the feat of a human being (no equipment, no machines) running a long distance as fast as possible is just so obviously difficult and painful that we can’t help but empathize and therefore support.  Or maybe those that object simply go elsewhere for the day.

 

So the bombings at this year’s Boston Marathon are particularly poignant for me.  Such a shame that an event that consistently brings people together should be tarnished with chaos, grief, and sadness.  Security for an event held on the streets over 26 miles is a real problem.  At least in a stadium there are gates where people can be searched.  Here there can only be a significant police presence and large doses of common sense.

But on the other hand let’s not lose perspective.  Bombings have long been a part of our history; many of the worst in our past were deadly and remain unsolved.  Only since WWII do we seem to expect that such things cannot happen here.  Well, they always have, and they probably always will.  American exceptionalism is an illusion.  We’re just as vulnerable as any other country, and if we look around the world we realize that we’ve dodged a good deal of our fair share of political violence at home in recent years.

On the other hand, in the US over 100 people a day are killed in traffic accidents.  Another 100 die each day from firearms.  250 die every day from taking prescription drugs (as directed).  These are not natural deaths; they arise from human action or lack of action.  Yet we’ve come to accept them as unremarkable and inevitable, though they need not be, at least not to that extent. But when a small number die in a terror incident and the media run with it 24/7 for days, an entire city is paralyzed, and we all scratch our heads wondering what’s wrong with the world.  Terror just makes for a better narrative, and our thirst for narrative cannot be quenched.  Humans have probably always been addicted to narrative; it helps us to make sense of a confusing world.  But now technology gives us the opportunity to have stories at our fingertips at every moment.  And we can ‘enjoy’ everyone else’s narrative, too, not just our own.  In fact, we often just about stop living our own life because we’re too busy following someone else’s, or at least the version that that person is exposing, no matter how real or unreal that might be.

And as we eavesdrop on the amped up stories of others, the temptation is to view our own experiences in that bright stage light.  It’s so easy to get caught up in the drama.  One Watertown resident reported be ‘terrorized’ by the helicopters hovering over her neighborhood.  Well, I get it, but how much is her reaction conditioned by those stories, movies, and news reports of Apache attack helicopters in real war zones? We can get trapped in a feedback loop of drama and exaggeration that doesn’t seem to have an end.  An entire city is shut down in fear of a 19-year old who is bleeding and hiding in a boat?  Try living in Afghanistan or in Palestine.  There you justifiably wonder if that helicopter will blow up your house in the next minute.  And your fear is well grounded because that just happened to your friend down the street last week.  At some point you realize that you just have to go on with life, accept the risks involved, be courageous.

Facebook gives us the opportunity to transform countless simple everyday events into high drama.  I wonder if over time that makes it more difficult for us to differentiate between what matters and what doesn’t?  Can we tell the difference anymore?  Do we even want to?  Language is probably our only useful tool for maintaining perspective, a real-time view of our own lives which is realistic, humble, gracious, and meaningful. But language itself is being abused and devalued every day around us, and is perhaps losing its ability to grant us that view?  It’s our only chance at an ‘examined’ life, our only opportunity to see ourselves live as we live.  I wonder if a new kind of ‘language obesity’ is taking hold?  Modern fiction would suggest that is the case, witness much of DFW, for example, or White Noise, or The Flame Alphabet. We defend the need for fiscal austerity, and we understand that we must eat less and eat better.  Maybe it’s time for verbal austerity.  Let’s keep our own narratives in perspective.  Let’s not binge on media.  Let’s give ourselves space and time to think.  ‘Just say no?” At times perhaps ‘enough for right now’ would be helpful.

Magic Maugham

Back to Somerset Maugham for good storytelling, well defined boundaries, relief from anything remotely post-modern, and just plain good writing. I’ve read most of his famous novels, so I picked up ‘The Narrow Corner’, published first in 1932.  Never heard of it.

It’s quite unlike anything else by him that I’ve read.  Yes, it’s a bit of a seafaring yarn; the locale is exotic and the characters are odd and idiosyncratic.  But the action is slow, and the main character is fascinating in a mostly passive way.  What he doesn’t do is more interesting than what he actually does. Another important character is quite funny and quaint.  But what distinguishes the book for me is its consistent focus on ideas, on approaches to life and the consequences thereof.  It’s almost Maugham’s ‘Magic Mountain’, though it’s not nearly as long or pedantic.  Take these passages, for example:

“Do you really want to know? I believe in nothing but myself and my experience. The world consists of me and my thoughts and my feelings; and everything else is mere fancy. Life is a dream in which I create the objects that come before me. Everything knowable, every object of experience, is an idea in my mind, and without my mind it does not exist. There is no possibility and no necessity to postulate anything outside myself. Dream and reality are one. Life is a connected and consistent dream, and when I cease to dream, the world, with its beauty, its pain and sorrow, its unimaginable variety, will cease to be.”

Another character responds, “You’re content to wallow in the gutter.”

“I get a certain amount of fun watching the antics of the other creatures that dwell there.”

And later, “I have acquired resignation by the help of an unfailing sense of the ridiculous.”

And the very last sentence of the novel:

 “He sighed a little, for whatever it was, if the richest dreams the imagination offered came true, in the end it remained nothing but illusion.”

Those are not exactly traditional British (or even Western) views.  The novel takes place in the South Seas where Western and Eastern cultures collide and mix in interesting ways.  The ideas are downright subversive for the time.  It’s interesting to compare this work to Hesse’s ‘Siddhartha’. Both books attempt to present non-Western approaches to life in the guise of a Western novel.  It’s not an easy thing to bring off, and as a novel I’m not sure this one is entirely successful.  The plot has some dull stretches, and at times Maugham uncomfortably stretches our credulity.  Characters sometimes act in ways that don’t seem quite real or believable.  But they do so to make a point.  Indeed a few minor characters seem to exist only to represent opposing viewpoints in the larger debate about how to live life.

All this may not make the most compelling novel, but it does raise lots of interesting questions.  Is it really possible to be resigned to the circumstances and happenings that life presents, or is that a luxury reserved for those that can afford it? Does a strong moral imperative inevitably lead to disappointment and heartbreak? Are strong feelings necessarily self-defeating?  Is it easier to be resigned from the outset to whatever is and never take up the fight to make a difference?  What if everyone took that approach?  How would society function?  What does that mean about capitalism?  What does it mean for religion? Does it help anyone or anything to truly attempt to be good? To love strongly and fully?

[As we approach commencement season, it strikes me that these are not the ideas we’ll hear in those commencement speeches.  No encouragement here for those graduates. There can be no real success, so why even try?]

Well, there is some fine writing.  My favorite passage is one in which the main character (Dr. Saunders) sees a glimmer of something deep in another character, a young man who so far had seemed uninteresting:

“Perhaps it was his good looks that deceived him, perhaps it was due to the companionship of Eric Christessen, but at that moment he felt that there was in the lad a strain of something he had never suspected. Perhaps there was there the dim groping beginning of a soul. The thought faintly amused Dr. Saunders. It gave him just that little shock of surprise that one feels when what looked like a twig on a branch suddenly opens wings and flies away.”

Yes, “faintly amused’.  That about sums up Maugham’s approach here.  Sit back, relax, watch carefully, and accept what happens.  Perhaps the best one can hope for is to be ‘faintly amused’ or perhaps a ‘little shock of surprise’. Getting ruffled and agitated or having strong feelings of any kind never seem to get anyone anywhere here. Interesting to remember that writers like Faulkner, Mann, Joyce, and Virginia Woolf were gaining critical acclaim at this time. Though Maugham’s voice is by comparison traditional, at least some of the ideas are not.