Paul Auster - I Want to Tell You a Story

What is the purpose of fiction? Lovers of art ask this question all the time. Humanists claim that great art can make us better people. I think this can be true. Great authors, filmmakers, and artists have made me more perspicacious. But I've encountered avid readers and erudite professors who are miserable people. The most common view is that art offers us escape. This is a superficial view. If this is the case, art is a thoughtless and mindless endeavor.

Paul Auster, author of "Man in the Dark," wrote about this age-old question in "The Guardian," in 2006. Auster offered a surprising opinion; rather than claiming novels can be life changing, he claimed that fiction is completely "useless." Fiction has no purpose in the "real world," he wrote. "A book has never put food in the stomach of a hungry child. A book has never stopped a bullet from entering a murder victim's body. A book has never prevented a bomb from falling on innocent civilians in the midst of war." I post a larger section below:

"Some like to think that a keen appreciation of art can actually make us better people - more just, more moral, more sensitive, more understanding. Perhaps that is true - in certain rare, isolated cases. But let us not forget that Hitler started out in life as an artist. Tyrants and dictators read novels. Killers in prison read novels. And who is to say they don't derive the same enjoyment from books as everyone else?

In other words, art is useless, at least when compared, say, to the work of a plumber, or a doctor, or a railroad engineer. But is uselessness a bad thing? Does a lack of practical purpose mean that books and paintings and string quartets are simply a waste of our time? Many people think so. But I would argue that it is the very uselessness of art that gives it its value and that the making of art is what distinguishes us from all other creatures who inhabit this planet, that it is, essentially, what defines us as human beings.

To do something for the pure pleasure and beauty of doing it. Think of the effort involved, the long hours of practice and discipline required to become an accomplished pianist or dancer. All the suffering and hard work, all the sacrifices in order to achieve something that is utterly and magnificently ... useless."

The key word in Auster's writing is work. Don Delillo said, to paraphrase, that writing is a extreme form of concentrated thinking. Writers live a crazy life. They live and breathe in small rooms and they devote their lives to solitude. Fiction writers spend countless hours creating stories. Why? "For the pure pleasure and beauty of doing it." Struggling to find clarity. Reaching for understanding. Devoting yourself to deep concentration. All for something without obvious utility.

And we should read for the same reasons. To work. To concentrate.

Jean Renoir and Improvisation

I love to read quotes from artists about their working methods. Jean Renoir, the french film director, offers a great description of improvisation:

"I'm a bit like a man who is in love with a woman and who goes to see her with a bouquet of flowers in hand. In the street he goes over the speech he is going to make; he writes a brilliant speech, with many comparisons, talking about her eyes, her voice, her beauty, and he prides himself in all this, of course. And then he arrives at the woman's house, hands her the bouquet of flowers, and says something completely different. But having prepared the speech does help a little."

Renoir prepared tirelessly, but he also opened himself up to improvisation. His films, as a result, have an air of spontaneity and playfulness. His best characters are also improvisers; they act out in theatrical ways, bending and shaping themselves.

In "Grand Illusion," Boeldieu, a prisoner of war, sacrifices himself, allowing his fellow prisoners to escape. His sacrificial act becomes an improvisational performance. He puts on white gloves, as if he was a dignified butler in a play. Renoir, moreover, injects moments of artificiality, transforming the prison camp into an imaginative stage. While Boeldieu distracts the German guards, Renoir uses a non-diegetic score; and the guards’ searchlights resemble stage lights. Renoir’s directing highlights the theatricality of the moment, while transforming Boeldieu’s actions into creative gestures that help him play the role of a selfless hero.

The Valley of Ellah

“The Valley of Elah,” directed by Paul Haggis, focuses on Hank (Tommy Lee Jones), a former military investigator, as he searches for Mike (Jonathon Tucker), his youngest son, who is AWOL from his military base. The police soon find pieces of Mike’s dead body—burned and stabbed—on military property. The narrative swerves in multiple directions, as Hank and Emily (Charlize Theron), a local police detective, follow false leads. Did drug dealers kill Mike? Did bar patrons kill him? Or did his friends kill him? As the mystery unfolds, the bureaucratic authority of both the military and the police are called into question: the indifferent police are happy because the body is outside their jurisdiction and the furtive military are relieved because the investigation is in their control.

Haggis tries to be both politically and socially conscious. To his credit, he avoids soapbox commentary, by keeping the war in the background. War reports from unseen televisions and radios resonate, as characters go about their everyday lives. The town residents, in effect, are construed as a half-engaged society: life at home carries on, while life overseas becomes increasingly violent. The police, in another scene, ignore a young wife whose husband, a recently returned soldier, murdered their dog. The police department’s indifference, unfortunately, leads to a future tragedy.

Haggis uses the biblical story of David and Goliath—referenced in the film’s title—as a moral lynchpin. David (Devin Brochu), Emily’s young son, hears the story twice; it’s first told by Hank and then by Emily. When Hank tells the story, the underdog’s valiant fight against Goliath amazes young David. But when Emily tells the story, David questions Saul’s rationale: Why would Saul allow a young boy to fight? His response, of course, is the moral question that Haggis wants viewers to ask: Why are we sending our young boys to fight in Iraq?

Haggis, in this respect, takes a familiar myth and reexamines its ideology. Many people, like Hank, interpret the myth as an example of courage. Haggis questions this rhetoric, by examining the story’s social implications. Joan (Susan Sarandon), Hank’s wife, briefly hints at Mike’s motivation for joining the army, in a phone conversation with Hank. She refutes Hank’s claim that enlisting was Mike’s decision, blaming it instead on Mike’s insecurity about being a “man” in a military household. Joan’s dialogue, despite its brevity, is not dubious. The equation of masculinity with courage is infused in our culture— especially films— but often it goes unnoticed.

If this seems far-fetched, just compare “Elah” to another recent film, “3:10 to Yuma,” directed by James Mangold. In “Yuma,” Dan (Christian Bale) helps transport a dangerous prisoner (Russell Crowe) for a railroad company. No matter how dangerous the mission gets, Dan carries on, despite putting his family at risk. His motive, however, is finally revealed at the end of the film: his recent bravery is an attempt to atone for past cowardice. By withholding this information—or by revealing it at all—Mangold, by effect, equates morality to bravery. Dan’s redemption, albeit violent, is seen as morally good.

Haggis fortunately avoids this. While Mangold appropriates the traditional western’s bravado, Haggis questions King Saul’s rationale; or more specifically, he examines the negative cultural ramifications of the biblical story. The military, we learn, played a central role in the Deerfield family: both of Hank’s sons served and died in the line of duty. Haggis, by including this information, transforms the biblical story into an exploration of guilt. Throughout the film, we hear snippets of a conversation—while Hank sleeps— between him and his son. At first, we hear the voice without a context of time or of place. Haggis, as the film progresses, reveals more and more of the conversation. Mike, we finally learn, cried to his father to get him out of Iraq.

This revelation works on two levels. First, it places Hank in a position of guilt and of responsibility. Secondly, it raises another question— what caused Mike’s breakdown? The solution to this mystery is Hank’s burden. In the beginning of the film, he steals his son’s cell-phone at the barracks and pays to get the corrupted video files removed from the phone. The images—shot during Mike’s tour of duty—contain digital artifacts. Hank tries to piece together these distorted images for clues about his son’s death.

The narrative, at this point, is expanded into two levels: First, there is the mystery that surrounds the murder itself and, secondly, the mystery that surrounds the events in Iraq. The images—both video and photographs—contain the answer to both. In one muddy video, it looks like soldiers are abusing a prisoner, which is eventually validated: Mike and his friends tortured a prisoner. Another shocking moment, the film’s most powerful scene, is the murder confession, in which Mike’s murderer coldly recounts the brutal events without any affect.

These shocking moments, however, are actually lessened by the limitations of the mystery genre that Haggis cultivates. The mystery, by definition, warrants a solution. So when the two stories diverge—the Iraq incident and the murder— they become connected as cause and effect. Unfortunately, despite Haggis’s best efforts, this seems like simple psychology. The war changed Mike and his friends.

This is not to say that this is implausible. War is an atrocious force when it comes to human psychology. It erodes morality. And this loss of moral identity becomes unbearable. Haggis makes this perfectly clear. But, in the end, the genre’s limitations stifle him because he fails to reconcile his dual intentions. He tries to have the best of both worlds; he wants the narrative intrigue afforded by the mystery and wants the social awareness provided by the subject matter.

In the end, all that remains is a message-laden attempt at social consciousness that is as obvious as the symbolic, upside down flag seen in the last shot of the film: America is in distress.

Reading

Whenever something new enters our lives, we begin to question its merits. It happens all the time: rock and roll is corrupting our children, television is killing brain cells. Now we have the internet. In a recent article, Motoko Rich explains a growing fear of educators, in the New York Times:

As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.

The problem is not the internet. It's not television or movies. It's easy to blame the medium. Yes, it's more enriching to read a novel than to scroll through pages of meaningless web pages. But there are garbage novels too. There are plenty of writers who produce money hungry works of worthless art. And I have news for you. Must of the art in the mainstream is horrible. It bows to our demands, while promoting accepted ways of thinking. Beware of art that panders to you. Avoid art that preaches accepted values.

The internet is a symptom of a much larger issue. Many people may be literate, but they don't know how to read. There is a major difference. Reading is an act of discernment; it's an active experience. Reading is struggling with a text. While reading fiction, we should pull apart its form, deducing meaning from the author's tone, style, diction, structure, etc. While reading a persuasive essay, we should follow the author's train of thought, wrestling with our own ideas and preconceptions. This is reading. Reading is work, just as writing is.

No one seems to stop and ask themselves the obvious question: Why read? Many educators will tell you that reading improves a student's education. Reading makes students more literate. They will learn to read and write well. But these are stupid PC answers. The problem is cultural. For whatever reason, high-culture is ignored in our society. At worst, people denigrate it. The media avoids it because Don DeLillo and Joyce Carol Oates are too difficult. They don't match up with advertisers' demands. They're right. They don't. But we're better off for it. They question and challenge the systems we are accustomed to. Reading DeLillo or Oates, watching Robert Bresson, will make us more perceptive to these things too. But only through deep concentrated reading. We can only reach a higher knowledge, by wrestling with words and images. We need to study works closely and intimately.

We can start, by changing the way literature is taught. We probably all remember our high school days. I always talk with people who say, "I hated high-school English." The popular belief is that literature should be dealt with on a figurative level. We are told: authors hide meanings, so look for symbols and metaphors. This is bullshit and it's ruining arts education in America. If you teach literature, film, painting this way, you're lazy. In no way is this reading; it's mindless interpretation. It's turning art into an abstraction. This is why people get confused and disillusioned. Why not teach the mechanics of writing? Teach students about form; give them the tools to deal with a text on a surface level. Why don't we do this? Because it's difficult. It's easier to make something into what we think it should be; it's challenging to push students away from symbolism and toward more profound methods of reading.

This is the way our culture operates. We're supposed to respect everyone's opinion. And literature, unfortunately, is no different. "No interpretation is wrong," I've heard teachers and professors say, "as long as you can back it up." This is inaccurate. There are wrong interpretations. We shouldn't be buttressing our ideas with examples from the text. This leads to foolish accusations. One could criticize Joshua Ferris for not ending his novel, "Then We Came to an End," with a dazzling denouement. The novel, in fact, does fizzle at the end. When the crazed, recently fired Tom returns to the office, we believe the plot has thickened. Oh the suspense! But the "gun" turns out to be a paint ball gun. The scene is sad, not suspenseful. Sorry. But that's the whole point. Ferris illuminates the human psychology of office culture, particularly how we often invent plots, pull practical jokes, and exchange gossip to overcome the dullness of our office lives. And as the novel progresses, the humor begins to fade. It's not funny anymore. But that's the point. Ending the novel with a suspenseful plot point would be counterintuitive. Attacking Ferris for not living up to your expectations is ludicrous. Deal with the text first. Read.

The internet could be a valuable tool. Without space constraints, our news coulbe be more detailed and informative. Movie reviews and book reviews could be longer. Critics fear the end of newspapers, but the internet could be their savior. I'm sure advertisers will argue against it. "Who has the time to read a long essay or a large book review?" Yes, we have access to more information, but will we take advantage of it? Will we read?

Charlie Chaplin

Chaplin was our first film star. What is it about him that is so great? Yes, he's hilarious. He moved like a ballerina. But why is his comedy so effective? Chaplin, in his own words:

"In my antics, my clothes, my horseplay, my illogical movements and comic pathos, I show mankind itself as it must look to spectators higher up."

Well said. This is what all comedy should strive for.

Chaplin Interviews (47).

Alex Ross - The Rest is Noise

This is a great quote from the preface of Alex Ross' "The Rest is Noise." Since Ross' mission is to explore twentieth century history through the scope of music, he attempts the impossible: to explain our love for music and its vitalness to our culture. Music, of course, is ubiquitous. IPods are everywhere. Music is entirely transportable. But why? Ross elevates music listening to an essential experience:

"Music unfolds along an unbroken continuum, however dissimilar the sounds on the surface. Music is always migrating from its point of origin to its destiny in someone's fleeting moment of experience-- last night's concert, tomorrow's solitary jog."

Visit the New Yorker's classical music critic's personal website

Don DeLillo Quote

Have you ever wandered why some novelists make reading their books such an arduous process? Below is a quotation from America's best novelist, my favorite, Don DeLillo. He argues why difficulty should be a novelist's obligation:

"Making things difficult for the reader is less an attack on the reader than it is on the age and its facile knowledge market. The writer is driven by his conviction that some truths aren't arrived at so easily, that life is still full of mystery, that it might be better for you, Dear Reader, if you went back to the Living section of your newspaper because this is the dying section and you don't really want to be here."

Denis Johnson Interview

Here's a link to a rare interview with Denis Johnson about "Tree of Smoke."

BAJ: In a country such as ours, where reading is in such a state of crisis, what is the role of the fiction writer? Does being a finalist for such a prestigious award affect how you view yourself in that role?

DJ: Storytellers have enjoyed quite a wide audience over the last few centuries. Now it's dwindling, and if the world's leaders have their way they'll probably return us to an era when we tell tales around small fires in caves. But we'll always have stories to tell. It's nice to be doing it when folks still think it's something worth giving out awards for.


National Book Award

Jesus' Son - Denis Johnson

Over the past year, I have encountered amazing reviews of Denis Johnson's "Tree of Smoke." I was intrigued. Jonathan Franzen, the author of "The Corrections," offers us some hyperbole on the back cover: "The God I want to believe in has a voice and a sense of humor like Denis Johnson's." Who could resist? But I wanted to start small. I started with "Jesus' Son," a collection of short stories.

Fuckhead, the narrator, is careless and scatterbrained; his stolidity belies the craziness of his life and the horrifying stories he tells. In "Crash While Hitchhiking," he calmly recalls a fateful car crash. A family, with a young baby, pick him up by the side of the road. While Fuckhead sleeps, the car crashes. After running from the family's car, Fuckhead surveys the other car:

"Somebody was flung halfway out the passenger door, which was open, in the posture of one hanging from a trapeze by his ankles. The car had been broadsided, smashed so flat that no room was left inside it even for this person's legs, to say nothing of a driver or any other passengers. I just walked right on past (8)."

Johnson never has Fuckhead question his life. He just tells his stories. Similar events pass by, like a reel of images, throughout the book. The people, to borrow a phrase from a dementia patient, who appears later in the book, "are like meat." All the events, from Fuckhead's perspective, seem predetermined. It is as if this life, in all its craziness, is his destiny. This is the way his life is supposed to be.

In "Emergency," Georgie, Fuckhead's co-worker at the hospital and a fellow addict, walks into the emergency room with Terrence Weber, whose wife stabbed him in the eye; the knife is embedded in his brain. While the ER staff scatters to call numerous specialists, a doctor implores Georgie to prep the patient. When Georgie returns, he, as Fuckhead recalls, had the hunting knife in his hand! The next day, Georgie, numb from drugs, can not remember who Terrence is.

Johnson makes it difficult for us to firmly grasp the narration, because of Fuckhead's pithy descriptions. Fuckhead is transient; he mentions shocking events but then discards them. The effect is as mind-numbing as the mind-altering drugs Fuckhead takes. While the stories astound us, Fuckhead's apathy flabbergasts us. In "Out on Bail," Fuckhead recounts hanging out with Jack Hotel, a friend, who evaded a conviction for assault. They separate after divvying up their heroin purchase. They both overdose. Fuckhead's friends nurse him to good health. Jack's fate is worse:

"The people with him, all friends of ours, monitored his breathing by holding a pocket mirror under his nostrils from time to time, making sure that points of mist appeared on the glass. But after a while they forgot about him, and his breath failed without anybody's noticing. He simply went under. He died.

I am still alive (66)"

Johnson's achievement is a rarity; he explores the dangerous underworld of drug addicts, both insane and perspicacious, without sermonizing. Although these are Fuckhead's memories, we detach ourselves from his perspective gradually because of the form. We're are left with the question: how can someone be so numb to feeling? But the novel is not cynical; rather, it is a search for feeling. At the end of "Car Crash," Fuckhead hears a woman, the wife of the dead man, scream, after a doctor informs her of the husband's death:

"... from under the closed door a slab of brilliance as if, by some stupendous process, diamonds were being incinerated in there. What a pair of lungs! She shrieked as I imagined an eagle would shriek. It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I've gone looking for that feeling everywhere" (11).

Fuckhead may be unsuccessful, but we feel it.

No!No!No!

I read MiddleSex two years ago. And it has failed to leave my imagination. I tried to spread the greatness all around, by convincing both friends and family to read it. I smiled every time I saw it on the shelves of bookstores.

The other day my worst nightmare was fully realized: "Middlesex" was chosen as the latest selection of Oprah’s Book Club. My main concern is with her approach to literature, which is as shallow as her materialistic ideals that she expresses on her show. Consider this question on her website about the book: "Is gender nature or nurture? Can you be born in the wrong body? Come back later to learn more about gender identity."

Oprah's approach to Faulkner is exemplary of this problem. Faulkner's novels selected for the club-- "The Sound and the Fury,"
"As I Lay Dying," and "Light in August"-- are masterworks of the use point of view. The energy of these novels springs from Faulkner's inventiveness with literary form. The same event is often told from multiple perspectives. Sometimes characters' relay their respective accounts of the same event; often they display conflicting emotions or different opinions. In Faulkner's work, truth is fragile-- history and self are intertwined. This was dealt with only marginally.

Instead of an exploration into Faulkner's view of life, we get an interactive tour of his fictional Yoknapatawpha County. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on Oprah. She is just the most visible example of the commodification of art. Oprah is the billionaire version of a friend we all have or a person we have regrettably overheard at a coffee shop.

Recall this funny scene from Annie Hall. While waiting in line for a movie, Woody Allen is subjected to the self-important banter from the man behind him. As the man waxes intellectual about Marshall McLuhan, Woody leaves the line and comes back with McLuhan himself, who puts down the man's opinion on McLuhan's work.

You know the type: They are the friends who don't not hesitate to list the canonical books they have read and that they are currently reading-- from Joyce to Faulkner to Eugenides. We measure one's intellect by perusing their bookshelf. Punch your literary card here.

"Middlesex," like all of Oprah's past selections, will be considered from a specific point of view. In Middlesex, Calli-- the main character and the story narrator--is a hermaphrodite. Gender issues, admittedly, are present in the novel. But this is a superficial view. It's the high-school method. What are the main themes? Is gender nature or nurture? These may be important questions to ask, but they ignore the complexity of the novel.

All of Eugenides' work deals with the provisionality of selfhood. And what better way to explore consciousness than by constructing a novel about "gender conflict." Calli is not so much a human character as she is a literary device. She is the vehicle by which Eugenides drives into questions of self-hood, family, and history.

There is little doubt in my mind that Oprah will deal with the novel as a way of understanding those who are different. But how about dealing with the novel as a piece of literature? Why focus a novel on this type of character? What does it tell us about ourselves?

Maybe I'm being cynical. But I can see the audience now. They will feel empowered, by their newfound understanding of hermaphrodites. Maybe some genuine tears will be shed. A medical specialist will be called in to explain the ins and outs of the condition. Maybe we should just read a medical dictionary instead...