Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Didion, Joan. Slouching Towards Bethlehem, 30: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968.

Joan Didion reads like a breath of fresh air. Each essay in Slouching Towards Bethlehem pulls the reader in early and keeps eyes fixed on the page until she is done weaving her magical yarn. This is always my impression of Didion’s work. She is spellbinding.

As a reader I am moved by her stories of home and places away from home. I am intrigued by her ideas of morality and self-respect. I tend to agree with her. As a writer I long for her clarity, her depth, her ability to convey meaning in brief sentences and passages. Her descriptions of John Wayne and Howard Hughes ring true—and right.

I can see the Duke in Durango and imagine he would have behaved just as she claims. I believe Didion when she quotes Wayne as saying, “I only hit one guy in my life,” and that it was an accident. I believe her in spite of having seen too many John Wayne movies and as a child having bought into his manly-man image. John Wayne would hit anyone, I knew that.

I believe her in spite of the fact that she tells me in “On Keeping a Notebook” that she feels no particular compulsion to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I envision Joan Didion essays as snapshots—images perhaps taken out of their immediate context and yet still heavy with meaning.

Her tone and attitude drip from the page and into one’s consciousness. It is difficult to read about Didion’s characters in Slouching Towards Bethlehem without walking away with them ingrained in your own memory—they become fodder for one’s own notebooks: Max, or Manny, Joan, The Duke, Hughes even Didion herself as we all slouch forward breathing easier for her insight.

Breaking Clean

Blunt, Judy. Breaking Clean. New York: Vintage Books, 2002.

Judy Blunt’s memoir Breaking Clean is a crisp, sharp, enjoyable read. Blunt carries her reader through a wide range of emotions as she travels through her youth in Montana. Her writing is engaging in its simplicity. Her subject matter, in many ways, familiar.

Though few of us experienced Big Sky country and all of the harsh realities that go with that life, especially as a child, we have all experienced isolation, disappointment, parental abandonment, and rebellions in one way or another. We have all experienced a sense of different-ness in our worlds, a sense of being disconnected from those to whom we should feel most connected. Or at least I did. Blunt captures the emotion of her turbulent youth eloquently.

Blunt carries her readers through the experience of her youth and while one is given the impression that the author has had to distance herself from this lifestyle it is deeply ingrained in who she is. Her rural youth defined her adult life. The life she lives today seems to always be seen through the lens of where she came from. In her discussion of feminism, and she sees herself as a feminist, Blunt writes of the women of her youth, whom she does not view as feminists, “I grew up admiring a community of women whose strength and capacity for work I have yet to see equaled, true partners in the labor of farming and ranching.” (153). She goes on in the next passages to flesh out these women as able to endure anything, in silence. While Blunt refuses to be silent she endeavors to carry forward the ideal of enduring.

In the end, this is a lifestyle from which she fled it is clear that it is this lifestyle that has shaped her views. The text is a vivid reminder of how we come to be who we are, by facing and owning who we were and from whence we came.

A supossedly fun thing I'll never do again

Wallace, David Foster. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments . New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1997.

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David Foster Wallace absolutely has a deep and abiding relationship with the language. Unfortunately, at least to me, he comes off as very masturbatory. Very. There are writers with just as much love for the language who leave the reader satisfied—they are making love to me (the reader) with their words: Joan Didion comes to mind. Maxine Hong-Kingston is another example. It is clear to me that Wallace is in love with his ability to use the language in a self-gratifying sort of way. Once I came to this realization (on about pg 11) I began to struggle. He frustrated me, as he seems to have every reviewer I have read. Then it dawned on me that the author here didn’t care about my reaction: except for my acknowledgment that he could write. That he was smarter, more articulate, intrinsically better, somehow. Ok, fine, Slug you can write. You have to wonder about a man who tells you his nickname is slug.

The question of audience cannot be overlooked when one considers Foster’s work. What I want from a writer is to invite me into a world they are creating – I want to be there with them. It doesn’t matter to me if it is Creative Nonfiction, fiction, sci-fi-fantasy—even poetry. In my own writing that’s my goal: to have the reader be there with me, whether I am writing about bar musicians in Ireland, drug addiction, family dysfunction, the importance of Eliza Haywood and Mary Hayes to the early feminist movement in eighteenth century Britain, the importance of Petrosky and Bartholomae to modern Composition programs, or even chickens chasing me around the yard; I want my reader there with me; seeing feeling, tasting owning what I am saying. Without drawing the reader in it really doesn’t matter what my point is the reader won’t care.

Wallace often writes about stuff I really don’t care about, at least in A Supposedly Fun Thing. Minutia. The TV shows in “E Unibus Plurium” were a blur. I watch about six hours of TV a month—and that’s usually CNN, as opposed to the six hours Mr. Wallace insists that the average American watches. And I am not a David Lynch fan; Twin Peaks confused me, as do the mathematical qualities of tennis. I have been to my share of state fairs and in a very East-Coast-feminist sort of way feel obligated to remind carnies that most women do not like the attention received from greasy-stoned-ogling men.

I enjoyed the short essay on deconstruction with reference to Derrida/Foucault/Barthes and Hix. I don’t know who he is and didn’t bother to Google him. I actually like Roland Barthes. Perhaps this essay appealed to me because it fell squarely into my comfort zone: academia, literary theory; edu-babble. I don’t understand why it is included in the collection; it is clearly an academic piece and, for me at least, the most powerful statement in the essay could be directed at DFW himself, “Wish Hix’s editor had helped him delete gestures that seem directed at thesis committees rather than paying customers.” (142) In the margin I have scrawled, like this entire essay?

His prejudicial commentary begins early on and from the start (in State Fair essay) it made me uncomfortable. Us and them—or more accurately me, David Wallace and them, the rest of humanity. White people in places black people simply would not go. There are Jews and WASPS. K-mart people. It made me uncomfortable. Not because I believe I don’t have an us/them thing in my own reality, I do, we all do. This to me was an under-current throughout the text. There is us, the white folks, the MFA-ers, the always-better-than-you-socially-intellectually-politically-ethically-morally-in-every-way-possible and you, the other.

David Foster Wallace writes, more than once, in this text about society’s inside jokes and I think he would be pleased if people didn’t get what he was saying that would reinforce his othering. We should congratulate ourselves when we get it. Well, I got it and his text left me feeling like I had been walking through the “Happy Hollow” of the Illinois State Fair for the Carnies are very masturbatory and really don’t care if they offend me either. In fact, all the better if they do. Wallace left me feeling like I had spent a day with Carnies, who in their own way, are very good at what they do. And now I desperately need a shower.

Finally, I think it is likely that David Foster Wallace is a genius. Bully for him. I have read the work of many geniuses and come away profoundly moved by their ability to manipulate the language and force me to stretch my brain just far enough to try to keep up with their thought process and vocabulary: Marlowe, the Pearl Poet, Jeffery Hill, and Alexander Pope, to name but a few. Jonathan Swift’s Battle of the Books is about fifty pages of brilliant-I’m-smarter-than-you writing that is difficult to put down. William Shakespeare used 54,000 different words in his work and yet one never feels looked down upon when reading Romeo and Juliet or Much Ado. It would never cross my mind that Shakespeare was not a genius –far above the likes of Wallace. David Foster Wallace is a flash in the literary pan—it is writers who eloquently invite the reader into their world, the writers who insist we exercise our brains along the way who endure. I am selling my copy to the used book store.

In the Shadow of Memory

Skloot, Floyd. In the Shadow of Memory. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003.

I found myself wondering throughout this text; exactly how brain damaged is this man? He is clearly articulate. His writing has structure, order, discipline and a “so what?” at the end. And it’s a good read. It is obvious to me that he has done extended research in his quest for finished polished prose Or his wife and daughter have. Once or twice I reached for my OED to check the exact meaning of a word only to discover entirely new layers and nuances to the writing in front of me.

So, how damaged is he? How long would it take me to write an essay in which I seemingly knew all the layers of all in my word/metaphor choices? Eleven months suddenly doesn’t look too long. I knew Whirlaway was a Triple Crown winner, I knew he had been jockeyed by Eddie Arcaro (the only jockey in history to win 2 triple crowns, which is why I know that) – but – it takes some serious research to find the horse that was both a champion and clumsy. Did he just happen on that? Luck? Is he more careful because of his perceived defect? Who does his fact checking? Would I have done the research to discover the particulars about this horse? Did he know them? The amazing nuance here makes it seems likely that he did, it makes us want to believe he did. But there have only been eleven Triple Crown winners and Whirlaway sounds fast, certainly faster than say, Sir Barton (1919) or Citation (1948) and that might have been enough for him. So, for me the possibility exists that he may have just gone with a name that sounded good (it is possible this is the lazy way I’d have done it).

I found myself wanting more concrete evidence about his disability because it wasn’t palpable in the prose (beyond the first section, “Gray Matter”). Had I not been routinely reminded that the author was brain damaged I would not have known throughout the majority of the essays in the text. What sort of virus did he contract? How does he know it was contracted on an airplane? Does it have a name? If so, why is that name not provided to the reader?

Skloot quoted reference upon reference and he did so very eloquently – but gave me nothing personal in the way of his own medical condition. None of his doctors were quoted (with the exception of the SSI psychiatrist). I wanted the author to provide me with something more specific to his condition—not broad generalities quoted from Harvard professors and vague references to failed drug studies.

Despite this, I found myself engaged in his story and this led me to wonder what else has he published? I did some checking and surprisingly, all but one of his seventeen books came out after the onset of his illness. I am curious to read the book published prior to his illness (Kaleidoscope, 1986) to see if I can detect any sort of radical changes in his style or subject matter. Do his wisdoms come from revelations about himself through his illness as he suggests or are his truths what they have always been and now that he has lost his immortality that he feels compelled to commit them to a print.

We all have an illusion—a perceived reality—and we are accomplices in each others’ illusions/perceptions. Immortality is one of the first stripped away. When our illusions disintegrate, what we are left with is often terrifying. When the chaos of the Universe invades the order we believe that we have created, through accident or illness or a million other variables, that invasion changes us more than the specific event. One has to work through anger, fear, disappointment, frustration, rationalization, depression; there are lots of steps to acceptance. I wanted to see more of the process that brings him to what he calls acceptance: because my mother beat me is, for me, not a concise, well thought-out argument. Did he have this feeling that maybe there are no answers; and if so, how did he work that through? I waited for him to get to that and he didn’t. Even with his mother there was a randomness to her behavior, her violence that easily lent itself to that layer or thread that he didn’t and perhaps can’t pursue. And I understand that; reasons are good. They lead to definitions that feed the illusion we call reality. Not having those definitions guides us in fundamentally different ways, not having reasons/answers and having to live with that is what he appears to have experienced on many levels and he does come to a Zen-like acceptance. But he didn’t give me the process of that.

A Million LittlePieces

Frey, James. A Million Little Pieces. New York: Anchor books, 2003.

James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces is difficult reading. I slogged through it—angrily and filled with resentment. Maybe, it is because I was addicted to cocaine for a long time that the book made me uneasy. Maybe, because so many have built their sobriety around the Twelve Steps and know that they work if you work them. His arrogance, his refusal to do something that has proven to be the only way for so many, proved to be annoying. Maybe, because so much of it simply didn’t ring true.

One of the primary principles of sobriety is honesty and he lied. One of the most common statements in the text was, “the truth is all that matters.” Well, apparently not so for to James Frey personally. That people in the Recovery community had latched onto this book is amazing.

I read the text slowly and deliberately—trying to place it into the context of my own abusive past. I discovered that, had I not known of his deception I would have come away from his work questioning his honesty, his program. The Rehab didn’t throw him out for his relationship with Lilly? Even though they are caught together outside of their Units likely after a curfew? The staff drove him to a crack house—allowed him to go in alone—and then brought him and Lilly back to the facility; she went to the medical unit and he just carried on, no questions, no search of his person, no urine analysis? I’ve been in rehab. None of this is believable. It simply does not work that way.

I found it difficult to believe that his mother—who had an older child—didn’t recognize the sound of pain in her child’s cry. Maybe because I have children of my own. I know what pain sounds like in a stranger’s child’s cry. Although Frey goes to great lengths to say that he isn’t blaming anyone for his addiction problem—his “Fury” is aimed at his parents throughout the book. I don’t feel he is being honest with his reader—and perhaps not with himself.

The text, because of its fantastic claims begs for fact checking to be done. Too much did not ring true. Yes, there were comments that reflected the thoughts of an addict entering recovery peppered throughout the text. “I feel heavy and slow but beneath there are the beginnings of something fast and needy and scared and shaky and fragile and anxious and angry and desperate” (59). I could have written that in the beginning of my recovery—in my withdrawal, although I likely would have added commas. I have, in the course of my recovery, been all of those things—sometimes in the same instant.

It is believable that James Frey is an addict. It is believable that he at some level knows that. But he has as yet not taken that first step and admitted his powerlessness: one cannot conquer addiction. One works through it— one does not challenge it. It is it interesting that the people in his book who do work the Twelve Steps fail—die—and that James survives. It is interesting that throughout the text Frey wants to skip the first eleven steps but works that twelfth step with everyone—although he admits he does not know what will work for him. And everyone listens to him; James Frey has written a book about what he believes to be recovery. But recovery is about honesty, working a program and having a clear workable plan.

James Frey may not be using today, but he is not in a program of recovery. And without that program he will slip. Without honesty one can easily begin to justify and rationalize behaviors and make fiction of a memoir. James Frey needs to get honest—or his addictions will overtake him. His book was his first step down that path of rationalization. From distorted reality it is a short walk to a crack house. Perhaps, one day, he will make amends to the reading public.