‘In Praise of the Long, Lunatic Novel’: An Essay on The Rumpus

I wrote an essay about long, lunatic novels. Read it at The Rumpus.

If the great English novelist and linguist Anthony Burgess was onto something when he wrote, in A Mouthful of Air, that literature arose as an expression of “loneliness and exile—a cry in the dark, whistling in the dark”—then what are we to do with these writers of irregular and imperfect texts like Nádas and, for that matter, BolañoDavid Foster Wallace, David Mitchell? Does the narrative irregularity emerge out of their stylistic exile, or the other way around?

“My job as a novelist,” writes Nádas, “is not to come up with compact theories for interpreting the world, but to retain the narrative’s independence and spontaneity alongside existing theories or in opposition to them. The process should not break down, even though the world is not symmetrical and in theory the process should break down.”

Intertextuality, interconnectivity: we live in an age of overlapping narratives. Stories are told, no longer only in books, but in a cloud—that, at least, is what the ingenious techno-wizards of the age would have us believe. In a way, it’s true: stories infiltrate our lives and memories through a variety of ways—television, tablet, smartphone, dumbphone. Ads on subways, 3D banners on the infinite Internet: the words might try to sell something, but what we’re buying is story. And it’s inescapable. If we try to escape narrative, narrative finds us, sinks its mangled teeth into us, tries not to let go.

Continue reading “‘In Praise of the Long, Lunatic Novel’: An Essay on The Rumpus”

Believer Interview with Fred Tomaselli

I interview psychedelic painter Fred Tomaselli in the January issue of The Believer.

THE PROCESS

IN WHICH AN ARTIST DISCUSSES MAKING A PARTICULAR WORK

FRED TOMASELLI, NIGHT MUSIC FOR RAPTORS

The world according to Fred Tomaselli is a dark, druggy, visually lurid place: a swirling dazzle of eye-popping data. Influenced equally by SoCal surfer culture and New York City trash-punk, Fred’s best-known work—highly detailed, post-pattern paintings incorporating prescription pills and hallucinogenic plants under a protective layer of resin—grapples with deep, philosophical questions like “What is consciousness?” and “Is perception real?” More recently, as in Night Music for Raptors, he’s meandered deeper into a natural world of flora and fauna and, well, owls, as I found out when we met at his studio in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.

—Alec Michod

THE BELIEVER: Night Music for Raptors, like much of your work, must have required meticulous work to make.

FRED TOMASELLI: It was a bit labor-intensive, and the four-month process was sometimes mind-numbingly repetitious, but that’s what I had to do in order to see what I needed to see. I began the piece by plotting out the two points that formed the center of each of the owl’s eyes. I then set up a mathematical system of expanding circles, which became the armature for thousands of photographs of birds’ eyes. Then I started gluing them down. I made micro-decisions along the way, but not as many as I made on the piece that came right before it.

BLVR: This painting emerged out of another one?

FT: Night Music was very different from the piece that came before it. That work, entitled Starling, arose out of the chaos of an abstract-expressionist background. I was splashing and slashing paint all over the panel and not knowing where I was going. Eventually, an image emerged, and even though I was satisfied with the end result, the whole process made me feel sort of mentally ill. Night Music was a way to calm myself down. Also, I was in the middle of prepping a twenty-year museum retrospective, which gave me a reason to revisit my geometric, minimalist work from the early ’90s. I noticed how, over time, my work had become increasingly dense, narrative, and imagistic. I wanted Night Music to be a kind of bridge between my earlier work and what I was doing now. I came upon this idea of making this owl out of two conjoining sets of concentric circles, and then having them radiate out to fill up the space of the picture. The two big eyes, incidentally, are the same size as two LP records, and I imagined them as two turntables seen from above.

In Advance of an Ashtar Command Landing

Chris Holmes is a mad scientist of bustling beats, a necessary rock star in an age of diluted dilettantes, and one of the most brilliant and down-to-earth people I have ever met.

I met Chris at the University of Chicago, back when he was fronting a psychedelic grunge Chicago band called Sabalon Glitz, but I didn’t get to know him until 2001, when he started dating one of my best high school friends. I think we bonded over each other’s distaste of fakers. For me, this applied mostly to literary wannabes and pseudo intellectuals, whereas Chris’s vitriol was directed toward rock poseurs. There was also the fact that Chris had also hosted one of my favorite radio shows at the University of Chicago, “In Advance of a Landing,” in which he interviewed UFO experts about impending extraterrestrial occupation, a kind of “academic Art Bell meets Ira GlassThis American Life” type of thing, making Chris the Studs Terkel for the paranoid set. (Check some of the interview out here.)

At the time, Chris had also bought the film rights to The Illuminatus! Trilogy, just because he was such a huge fan. I mean who does that, right? A fucking genius, that’s who. But, mostly, I was drawn to Chris’s encyclopedic mind, fascinated as it was at the time with remote viewing, a paranormal psychic ability employed by various intelligence agencies. I was doubtful, but saw Chris use the telepathic mojo on numerous occasions in Reykjavik, where we hooked up for the Iceland Airwaves Festival. The mad science panned out, after all.

Now, Chris has released his first album with Ashtar Command, his ever-changing collective formed with the former Filter founder Brian Liesegang. It’s called American Sunshine and it’s one of the best albums of 2011–if not, in fact, of our fucked-up new millennium. Part Pet Sounds for Generation Whatever, part sonic Gravity’s Rainbow, it’s an infectious, genre-busting reservoir of mind-warping, sing-a-longy songs featuring indie stalwarts like Elizabeth (“Z.”) Berg (of The Like), Alex Ebert (of Ima Robot and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes), Joshua Radin, and Rachel Yamagata–“white-boy Human League stuff,” as Diddy calls it, though that doesn’t come close to capturing the sprawling sonic palette at work, which I’d argue is as expansive as any developed by a post-grunge musician.

Like the composers John Adams and John Cage, Ashtar Command grasps at the eccentricities and eclecticism of the American sonic palette and in the process delivers an approximation of the pandemonium inherent in being “American.” At the same time, there’s an innocence that seeps through at the heart of the album, evident on songs like “China” and “Requiem for Love.” “Love,” in fact–that labyrinthine, convoluted concept–might be the album’s leitmotif, but it’s not the corny, canned emoticon found in watered-down pop songs from Barry Manilow to Maroon fucking 5. On the contrary, Ashtar Command is unafraid to embrace complicated, antithetical matter, the all and nothingness. “Love will can satisfy your needs” and “love can cure your broken heart” and “love can break your heart” and “love will waste your time and make you lose your mind,” all at once. What other catchy, emotionally satisfying rock song will have you thinking of Hegel?

The more I listen to American Sunshineand, to be entirely honest, I’m listening to it on repeat–the more I realize I can’t pick a favorite song on the album. Every song is my favorite, which is what makes an album a classic, right? Nevermind, OK Computer, Fear of a Black Planet, The White Albumthis is the company American Sunshine aspires to keep, and it does a pretty damn good job of stating its case. There is, at least, something to please every musical fanboy yearning of mine. “Hello” strikes a buoyant, boyish Daniel Johnston chord. “Save Me,” featuring Alex Ebert, ventures off into the arena-rock ether of Queen and Radiohead, while keeping its musical feet firmly on the ground. And “Gravity,” bolstered by Z. Berg’s spookily cavernous vocals and Holmes’ hard-charging, plangent guitar riffs, gives off a rock-till-you-drop, almost metal vibe. No wonder disparate A-list musicians including Paul McCartney, Thom Yorke, and Diddy have all clamored to work with Chris Holmes. The dude apparently can strike just about any musical pose. But that’s the thing, man: there ain’t no posing going on here. This is real, heartfelt, gutsy post-rock that harkens back to New Wave as much as Neil Young, with a bit of Kerouac and Whitman thrown in for extra tang. But that’s what makes Chris Holmes–who was once the subject of Thomas Frank Harper’s article (“Pop Music In the Shadow of Irony“) some of us passed around with intellectual fervor usually reserved only for Michel Foucault–a necessary American Rock star.

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9/11

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was at my apartment in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. For some reason, I turned on the TV before leaving for work: I don’t know why, it wasn’t something I did regularly at the time. Images of North Tower burning were already on the air. After watching, dumbfounded, I actually left for work. Walked to the subway. The streets were eerily empty. Wasn’t let on, so I wandered around some more. A few stragglers, wandering around, blitzing down one block, then turning and heading back, without a sense of direction, guided, as I was, by some distant sense of dread and fear.

Eventually, I made it back home, turned the news back on. Went up to my roof, watched the towers fall, first one and then the other. Looked around. The roofs surrounding me were empty. It was eerie, like watching TV. And today, ten years on, they’re replaying that morning’s broadcasts. Eventually, as the ash and dust headed straight at me, I returned to my apartment, closed the windows, barricaded myself inside. 

I tried to write. I couldn’t write. 

But I wrote–not my own word, but the words I heard that day on the news. 

These words.

I HOPE I LIVE. I HOPE I LIVE. IT’S COMING DOWN ON ME.

THERE ARE REPORTS OF BODIES ON THE STREETS. THE DETAILS OF TODAY’S INCIDENTS ARE THESE.

8:48 a.m. ET—AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT 1167 FROM BOSTON TO LAX CRASHES INTO NORTH WTC TOWER.

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS.

9:03 a.m ET—UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT 175 FROM BOSTON TO LAX CRASHES INTO SOUTH WTC TOWER.

SEPARATE PLANES HIT TWIN TOWERS OF WORLD TRADE CENTER, PENTAGON.

I’M GETTING BEHIND THE CAR BECAUSE IT’S COMING DOWN ON ME.

WE DON’T KNOW NOW MANY PEOPLE ARE MISSING NOW. WE DON’T HAVE THAT NUMBER YET BUT WE’RE SURE THAT THERE IS. THERE ARE REPORTS OF PEOPLE TRAPPED INSIDE BUT WE CAN’T GO IN YET TILL THE FIRE’S UNDER CONTROL.

9:18 a.m ET—FAA SHUTS DOWN NY AREA AIRPORTS.

THE WORLD TRADE CENTER IN NEW YORK CITY IS ON FIRE AFTER AN APPARENT PLANE CRASH.

9:20 a.m ET—PRESIDENT BUSH DENOUNCES “APPARENT TERRORIST ATTACK.”

9:21 a.m ET—ALL NYC TUNNELS AND BRIDGES CLOSED.

WE’RE AT BROADWAY AND BARCLAY, GROUND ZERO. BUT LOOK AROUND. CAR AFTER CAR AFTER CAR, BUSES COMPLETELY OBLITERATED AND BURNED DOWN TO THE STEEL. BEHIND ME THAT GAPING WHOLE THAT’S WHERE ONE OF THE TWO TOWERS STOOD. IT’S NOT THERE. AS YOU CAN SEE ABOVE ME THE FIRE IN THIS ADJACENT BUILDING CONTINUES TO RAGE. IT’S ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO DESCRIBE.

10,000 EMERGENCY PERSONAL SCRAMBLE TO FIRES, EVENTUAL COLLAPSE.

CAN I GET A TOOT OFF YOUR RESPIRATOR? CAN I GET A BREATH?

THERE IS A MASS EXODUS—PEOPLE RUNNING MADLY THROUGH THE STREETS. IT IS SHEER CARNAGE. PEOPLE ARE JUMPING OUT OF WINDOWS TO SAVE THEIR LIVES.

PALESTINIAN ORGANIZATIONS, OSAMA BIN LADEN-LED GROUP DENIES RESPONSIBILITY.

9:45 a.m. ET—AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT 77 FROM DULLES TO LAX CRASHES INTO PENTAGON.

IF THE TALIBAN HARBORS OSAMA BIN LADEN, AND IF OSAMA BIN LADEN IS IN FACT RESPONSIBLE FOR THESE ATTACKS, THEN THE TALIBAN MUST BE HELD RESPONSIBLE.

10 a.m. ET—SOUTH TOWER OF WTC COLLAPSES.

THERE WAS A BIG EXPLOSION AND WE EVACUATED.

10:05 a.m. ET—WHITE HOUSE EVACUATED.

10:10 a.m. ET—PORTION OF PENTAGON EVACUATED.

10:10 a.m. ET—UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT 93 FROM NEWARK TO SAN FRANCISCO CRASH REPORTED IN SOMERSET, PENNSYLVANNIA.

IF AND WHEN WE CONSIDER MILITARY ACTION IT WILL HAVE TO BE A FULL INTERNATIONAL ATTEMPT, INCLUDING RUSSIA.

A MILLENNIUM ATTACK WAS THWARTED NEAR THE NEW YEAR.

10:15 a.m. ET—ALL INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS BOUND FOR US DIVERTED TO CANADA.

10:29 a.m. ET—SECOND WTC TOWER COLLAPSES.

THIS EXCEEDS ANYTHING THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY ANTICIPATED. THIS WAS TAKEN OUT RELATIVELY SIMULTANEOUSLY FROM DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE UNITED STATES AND WE WILL ACT WITH THE FULL EXTENT OF OUR RESOURCES.

ALL MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL GAMES CANCELLED TODAY, TONIGHT.

I WAS JUST LOOKING DOWN. THERE ARE LITERALLY LOOKING DOWN HUNDREDS, PERHAPS THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE JUST STANDING THERE AND LOOKING AROUND.

11:04 a.m. ET—UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS IN NY EVACUATED.

LOOKING AT A STREET THAT’S ALMOST EMPTY.

WE HAVE 500 PEOPLE HERE WAITING TO GIVE BLOOD AND WE ACTIVELY URGE OTHERS TO GO UPTOWN, TO GO TO OTHER HOSPITALS AT THIS TIME.

11:18 a.m. ET—AMERICAN AIRLINES CONFIRM TWO JETS LOST; 150 PEOPLE ABOARD.

11:59 a.m. ET—UNITED AIRLINES CONFIRM TWO PLANES CRASH; 110 PEOPLE LOST.

I WAS IN BUILDING ONE. WE HEAR A BIG RUMBLING, LIKE MOVING FURNITURE ON A MASSIVE WEIGHT. AND PEOPLE RUNNING, RUNNING AND PEOPLE WENT CRAZY. WE TOOK EVERYONE OUTSIDE TO THE LOADING DOCK AREA. WHEN I WENT BACK IN, I HEARD PEOPLE IN THE ELEVATOR TRAPPED AND WATER WENT IN AND PROBABLY THEY DROWNED. THERE WAS NO ELEVATOR SERVICE SO I WENT UP WITH THE POLICE OFFICER AND A LOT OF FIREMENAND IT WAS VERY DIFFICULT TO GO UP BECAUSE THERE WERE SO MANY PEOPLE COMING DOWN. IT WAS A BIG TIME. IT WAS A GAP. WE HEARD, WHILE WE WERE ON THE TWENTY-THIRD FLOOR—BECAUSE WE STOPPED THERE WITH THE FIRE DEPARTMENT BECAUSE THEIR EQUIPMENT WAS VERY HEAVY—WE STOPPED TO REST AND SAW A WOMAN WITH A WHEELCHAIR AND A PERSON IN A GURNEY AND WE HEARD ON THE RADIO THAT THE TOP FIFTY-SIX FLOORS COLLAPSED.

TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED.

IF A REGIME HAS SHELTERED PEOPLE WHO HAVE PLAYED A ROLE IN THIS, THEY CANNOT HIDE BEHIND SAYING THEY DIDN’T KNOW IT. THEY MUST ACTIVELY PURSUE THE PERSON WHO HAS DONE THIS.

OH MY GOD I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS IT’S AWFUL IN AMERICA YEAH.

THERE WAS A VIRTUAL STAMPEDE IN THE STAIRCASE. EVERYONE MAINTAINED CALM REALLY WELL. FOR MANY IT BROUGHT BACK MEMORIES OF THE BOMBING. MANY WERE THERE BEFORE. THEY KNEW WHAT TO DO. THEY SAID WE’RE GOING TO GET OUT OF HERE. WE HEARD BOOM AND WERE TOLD TO GET OUT FROM THE WINDOWS. WE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT WAS GOING ON. I HEARD LAUGHING. I THOUGHT THAT WAS STRANGE. ONCE WE GOT DOWN, THEY PUT US IN THE PLAZA LEVEL—WHICH WAS DISTURBING BECAUSE THERE WAS SO MUCH CARNAGE THERE. THEY SAID DON’T LOOK BACK! DON’T LOOK BACK! AND I LOOKED BACK AND SAW THE OTHER BUILDING COLLAPSE.

“CREDIBLE THREAT” FORCES EVACUATION OF THE WHITE HOUSE.

THE SPACE NEEDLE IN SEATTLE HAS BEEN CLOSED DOWN. WHAT HAS BEEN AN ENORMOUS AND EBULLIENT MILLENNIUM CELEBRATION IN SEATTLE HAS BEEN SHUT DOWN.

YES YES YES I CAN HEAR YOU.

ACROSS US CROWDS GATHER AROUND TELEVISION AT AIRPORTS, BARS, SHOPPING CENTERS.

IT’S LUNCH HOUR HERE.

EACH TOWER HAD 21,800 WINDOWS.

TWO ARE DEAD UNFORTUNATLEY, A FEW HAVE BRAIN INJURIES AND THERE ARE MANY BURNS. MANY NEED MICRO SURGERIES AND IN NEED OF PLASTIC SURGERIES.

TERROR ATTACKS AGAINST TARGETS IN NEW YORK AND WASHINGTONG.

AMERICAN AIRLINES OFFICIALS CONFIRM THAT THEY HAVE LOST ONE PLANE, FLIGHT 11 FROM BOSTON BOUND FOR LOS ANGELES.

UNFORTUNATELY I SAW FIVE WOMEN JUMP OUT OF THE BUILDING.

NYC MAYOR GUILIANI SAYS “TREMENDOUS NUMBER OF LIVES LOST” AT WORLD TRADE CENTER COLLAPSE

MAJOR FEDERAL BUILDINGS EVACUATED IN WASHINGTON AREA.

IN THE LAST LITTLE WHILE FIVE BATTLESHIPS HAVE LEFT NORFOLK AND HAVE MOVED OUT OF PORT AND HAVE BEEN DEPLOYED FOR SECURITY REASON ALONG THE EAST COAST. IN ADDITION TWO AIRCRAFT CARRIES HAVE BEEN MOVED OUT OF PORT AND ARE NOW AT SEA TRAVELLING TO THE NEW YORK AREA, NEW YORK HARBOR.

HE IS NOW LEAVING THAT SITE TO AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION. GENERAL POWERLL, THE SAME STORY THERE. MEMBERS OF CONGRESS HAVE ALSO BEEN MOVED TO UNDISCLOSED LOCATIONS.

OVER MY SHOULDER SMOKE CONTINUES TO BILLOW, SMOKE THAT IS SOMETIMES THICK AND SOMETIMES NOT AS THICK.

ISLAMIC JIHAD, HAMAS DENY RESPONSIBILITY, BLAME US POLICY.

THE FIREFIGHTING WAS HAMPERED BECAUSE HE SAID INSIDE THE BUILDING SPRINKLERS THROUGHOUT THE BUILDING HAVE BEEN HAMPERED WITH.

WE WILL NOW SHOW YOU WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE OVER ON THE WEST SIDE.

HE WAS WATCHING FROM ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA.

I WAS LOOKING OVER THE WINDOW. I HEAR JET ENGINES ALL THE TIME BUT THIS ENGINE WAS TOO LOUD. SO I LOOKED OUT AND I SAW IT HIT. MOST OF THE ENERGY WAS DISSIPATED ON THE IMPACT WITH THE GROUND. IT WAS A BOEING 757 AMERICAN AIRLINES NO DOUBT. WE WERE TOLD THAT IT WAS FLYING SO LOW THAT IT CLIPPED A BUNCH OF LIGHTBULBS ON THE WAY DOWN. RIGHT THEN I SAW THE AIRPLANE DISINTIGRATE. IT WAS A QUITE TREMENDOUS EXPLOSION. WHAT DID YOU SEE AFTER THAT? NOTHING. I JUST SAW SMOKE. THE BUILDING DIDN’T LOOK VERY DAMAGED. INITIALLY.

US OFFICIALS REPORT NO WARNINGS OF TERRORIST ATTACKS AND NO CREDIBLE CLAIMS OF RESPONSIBILITY.

WE ARE A GOOD WAYS AWAY FROM THE CRASH SCENE AND WE WILL SEE WHAT TRANSPIRES HERE.

US MILITARY PLACED ON “HIGH-ALERT STATUS”

I THINK THEY’RE TAKING THE PROPER STEPS. YOU HAVEN’T HEARD A LOT FROM THE LEADERS AS YOU’D LIKE TO, BUT I’VE BEEN TOLD THE PEOPLE WHO ARE TAKING CARE OF THEM ARE MAKING SURE THEY ARE SECURE BECAUSE WE DO NOT KNOW THE EXTENT OF THIS TRAGEDY. I’M A DEMOCRAT, AS YOU KNOW, AND I JUST WANT TO SAY THAT WE STAND TOTALLY BEHIND THOSE IN POWER AND WHAT HAPPENED TODAY IS THE SECOND PEARL HARBOR.

MR. KISSINGER, CAN YOU HEAR ME OKAY?

PART OF THE PENTAGON COLLAPSES AFTER AIRLINE ALLEGEDLY CRASHES INTO MILITARY NERVE CENTER.

IT’S AN INTIGRATED ATTACK AND MUST BE DEALT WITH IN AN INTEGRATED WAY. WELL, ANY ORGANIZATION THAT CAN PLAN SUCH AN EXTENSIVE ATTACK MUST HAVE RESOURCES TO PLAN THE ATTACK AND A HAVEN TO HIDE TO PLAN THE ATTACK.

WE MUST SURVIVE AND WE WILL SURVIVE.

NYC OFFICIAL DECLARES CANYONS OF LOWER MANHATTAN “LIKE A WAR ZONE.”

WHAT WE ARE NOW SEEING IS “MASSIVE-ATTACK TERRORISM.” THIS IS AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT THING. IF YOU LOOK AT THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THESE GROUPS, THERE ARE OTHER ENDS THEY WILL GO TO TO ACHIEVE THEIR MEANS. THESE GROUPS ARE NOT LOOKING TO MAKE ANY FRIENDS.

PATAKI ACTIVATES NY NATIONAL GUARD.

WHAT WE ARE SEEING AROUND THE WORLD IS THAT WORLD LEADERS ARE NOW SAYING, WHATEVER YOU WANT, AMERICA, IT IS OK. IF IT IS AN INDIVIDUAL RETALATION OR WHETHER IT WILL INVOLVE SOME SORT OF ALLIANCE, IT WILL BE INTERNATIONALLY SUPPORTED.

WHAT IS HAPPENING IS A MASSIVE RESCUE OPERATION, A MASSIVE TRIAGE OPERATION. HOSPITALS ARE INUNDATED. HOSPITALS ARE RUNNING VERY LOW ON BLOOD. WE KNOW THAT THE NATIONAL GUARD WILL RESPOND TO THIS ATTACK. MANY POLICE OFFICERS, MANY FIREFIGHTERS, MANY EMS UNITS WERE IN THE AREA WHEN THE BUILDINGS COLLAPSED AND WE DO NOT KNOW HOW MANY OF THEM SURVIVED.

WE ARE BEING HIJACKED! WE ARE HIJACKED!

THESE NUMBERS I AM GOING TO READ TO YOU ARE ONLY INCOMPLETE AND WE DO NOT KNOW WHEN WE WILL GET MORE INFORMATION.

EXECUTIVES HERE TELL US THEY HAVE ALREADY FERRIED THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ACROSS THE RIVER AND THEY WILL CONTINUE TO FERRY THOUSANDS ACROSS THE RIVER.

WE WERE FORTUNATELY IN MIDTOWN FOR A MEETING EVEN THOUGH OUR OFFICE IS DOWNTOWN.

PENN STATION HAS BEEN CLOSED AND GRAND CENTRAL STATION IS RUNNING ONLY ON A VERY LIMITED SCHEDULE. THEY ARE NOT TAKING FARES ON THE TRAIN TODAY.

MANY OF THE PEOPLE THERE EMPLOYEES OF THE WORLD FINANCIAL CENTER WHO HAVE ESCAPED WITH THEIR LIVES TODAY.

SEARS TOWER EVACUATED.

NEW INFORMATION CONTINUES TO COME IN. FROM ROME, POPE JOHN PAUL II HAS DECLARED THIS AN “UNSPEAKABLE TRAGEDY.”

SO DARK DOWN THERE, IT’S A DARK DAY ON THE LOWER END OF MANHATTAN TODAY. IT’S A MESS. SMOKE DOWN THERE. CARS ON FIRE. BUILDINGS FLATTENED. I DIDN’T SEE ANYBODY ALIVE. VERY DARK AND SOMBER DOWNTOWN. EVERYBODY’S ON EDGE NOW. WE STILL HAVE A BUNCH OF GUYS UNACCOUNTED FOR. I’M NOT GOING TO SAY, BUT THERE ARE A LOT OF OUR GUYS UNACCOUNTED FOR.

ONE HIJACKED PLANE CRASHED IN PITTSBURGH.

WE NEED TO BRING PRESSURE—SERIOUS PRESSURE—ON GOVERNMENTS THAT HARBOR TERRORISTS.

NYC IS ON FULL TERRORISM ALERT.

WE CANNOT LET THESE TYPES OF ACTS GO ONE. ONE OF THESE DAYS ONE OF THESE ROGUE STATES, THESE GROUPS, WILL GET A NUCLEAR WEAPON AND WE WILL NOT BE SITTING HERE TALKING ABOUT THIS.

WE GOT A WAR GOING ON AND YOU WANT SOME DUST!

PRETTY MUCH FELL STRAIGHT DOWN AND THERE WAS A BIG CLOUD OF DUST AND WE TRIED TO SHIELD OURSELVES FROM THE SMOKE SO WE COULD BREATHE.

THESE ARE BUSES RIGHT HERE THAT ARE BRINGING PEOPLE OUT OF THE FINANCIAL DISTRICT. WE JUST SAW A HALF A DOZEN BUSES WITH POLICE ESCORT.

WTC FOUNDATIONS EXTEND 70 FEET UNDERGROUND.

YOU’RE LOOKING AT PICTURES IN NEW YORK CITY IN THE MOMENTS JUST AFTER ONE OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTERS COLLAPSING. PEOPLE RUNNING IN UTTER HORROR.

EVERY FEDERAL BUILDING IN WASHINGTON ORDERED CLOSED.

EVEN AS LEADERS IN THE TALIBAN DENY ANY RESPONSE FOR THIS, A JOURNALIST STATIONED IN LONDON IS QUOTED AS SAYING FOLLOWERS OF OSAMA BIN LADEN CLAIMED THEY WILL CARRY OUT AN ATTACK OF THIS MAGNITUDE.

WE HAVE HUNDREDS OF POLICE OFFICERS AND RESCUE OPERATIONS IN EMPLOY IN LOWER MANHATTAN.

THE CITY OF NEW YORK AND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS MUCH STRONGER THAN ANY BARBARIC TERRORIST GROUP IN THE WORLD.

EVERYTHING IS SAFE NOW IN THE CITY.

IT’S AN ATTACK UPON THE WHOLE CONCEPT OF FREEDOM AND OUR WAY OF LIFE. WE MUST DO EVERYTHING IN OUR POWER TO PROTECT THE PEOPLE INVOVLED IN HELPING RESCUE PEOPLE FROM LOWER MANHATTAN.

WTC DATES: TOWER 1 1972, TOWER 2 1973.

OBVIOUSLY THE CITY IS NOW CLOSED. THE AIRSPACE AROUND THE CITY IS NOW CLOSED AND WE HAVE NO INFORMATION SUGGESTING FURTHER ATTACK.

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, THE FAA HAS ANNOUNCED THAT THERE WILL BE NO COMMERCIAL FLIGHTS ANYWHERE IN THE UNITED STATES UNTIL AT LEAST NOON TOMORROW.

BUILDINGS MADE OF STEEL WITH ALUMINUM AND STEEL SIDE FACINGS.

AT THIS HOUR, YOU STILL SEE A THICK CLOUD OF SMOKE. WE CAN SEE—OUR VIEWERS CAN SEE SMOKE CONTINUES TO BILLOW OUT OF THE BUILDINGS, WHERE THE BUILDINGS WERE.

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT NEW YORK IS, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS LOOK AT THE PEOPLE OF NEW YORK CITY WHO HAVE SURVIVED THIS AND WHO HAVE COME OUT FROM LOWER MANHATTAN AND SURVIVED.

I’M SURE THAT’S IT’S EXTREMELY BUSY AND IT’S REALLY AN EXTREMELY TRAGIC DAY BECAUSE WE HAVE LOST SO MANY INNOCENT CIVILIANS TO THIS COWARDLY AND DASTARDLY ACT. ONE THING I CAN SAY IS THAT IT TOOK A PRETTY SOPHISTICATED AND COMPLICATED NETWORK OR GROUP TO CARRY OUT THIS MOST TRAGIC ACT.

WE NOW HAVE LEARNED THAT THE PRESIDENT IS IN NEBRASKA PARTICIPATING INA NATIONAL SECURITY MEETING.

IF YOU FEEL ILL, OBVIOUSLY YOU SHOULD GO TO A HOSPITAL. BUT IF YOU JUST FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE YOU SHOULD DO WHAT WE DID, WHICH IS WE WASHED OUR FACES. GET RID OF YOUR CLOTHES.

IN THE MOMENTS BEFORE THE BUILDINGS COLLAPSED, HE SAW PEOPLE LEAPING, LEAPING TO SAVE THEIR LIVES BEFORE THE BUILDINGS COLLAPSED.

CITIES AROUND THE COUNTRY GO INTO FULL ALERT.

THEN WE HAVE TO LOOK AT OUR OWN SECURITY AND GIVE OURSELVES THE SECURITY THAT THESE PEOPLE WILL NOT STOP A STRONG AND RESIDUAL COMMUNITY THAT WE ARE.

WHAT’S LEFT IS A FIFTEEN STORY HULKING MESS OF PAPER AND PEOPLE AND CONCRETE.

AS A FORMER FBI, CAN YOU GIVE US YOUR INSIGHT?

HOSPITALS PUT ON “MAXIMUM ALERT” AS THOUSANDS OF WOUNDED ARRIVE. FIVER OTHER DESTROYERS AND FRIGATES HEADED TO SEA.

TERRORISM CAN’T STOP US.

LET ME EMPHASIZE THAT THE REASON FOR THE NATIONAL GUARD IS NOT BECAUSE OF ANY THREAT BUT TO HELP WITH THE RELIEF EFFORT.

AARON, UH, AGAIN, LISTENING TO WHAT YOU WERE SAYING, WE CANNOT EVEN BEGIN TO IMAGINE THE DEPTHS OF WHAT WE HAVE SEEN TODAY. WE WANT TO SHOW YOU SOME CONVERSATIONS WITH PEOPLE

THE ACTUAL AIRPLANE HITTING THE BUILDING AS WE WERE LOOKING AT IT IT LOOKED MORE LIKE A MOVIE THAN LIFE IT WAS SURREAL BOOM AND THERE IT WAS I SAW ALSO ABOUT SEVEN OR EIGHT BODIES FALLING THROUGH THE AIR FROM EIGHTY FLOORS UP I’M NOT AN EMOTIONAL PERSON BUT I DID FEEL SOME EMOTION AT THAT POINT I AM NOT EMOTIONAL IN THE LEAST I HAVE FEELINGS OF REVENGE AND I JUST HOPE THEY DON’T JUST RANDOMLY SELECT AN ENEMY BUT I DO WANT THEM TO FIND THE PERSON WHO DID THIS.

IT JUST BLEW OUT THE PLAZA WE WERE ON.

HE FLASHED A LIGHT AND WE WENT OUT OF THE BUILDING AND INTO THE STREETS COME ON EVERYBODY’S BLEEDING.

THE WHOLE THING CAME DOWN LIKE A GLASS HOUSE.

THE FRONT PART OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER HAS COMPLETELY SHEERED OFF AND EVERY FEW MINUTES YOU WILL HEAR A RUMBLING SOUND FROM HIGH UP AND THEN ANOTHER CHUNK OF THE BUILDING WILL FALL OFF.

US AIR FORCE FIGHTER JETS TO ATTACK FORCEFULLY TO ANY SUSPICIOUS FLIGHTS.

AT LEAST FOUR BLOCKS NORTH, REALLY FIVE BLOCKS NORTH BUILDINGS ARE COVERED WITH PIECES OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER. THERE ARE DESKS AND OFFICE SUPPLIES AND THERE’S ONE GIRL’S RESUME AND ARTICLES OF CLOTHING. ENORMOUS PIECES OF DEBRIS ARE FALLING ONE AFTER THE OTHER. FIREFIGHTERS ARE WANTING TO GO IN AND FIGHT THE FIRE BUT THEY CAN’T FOR SAFETY REASONS. THERE’S A SMALL ARMY OF FIREFIGHTERS AND POLICEMEN AND I EVEN SEE MEMBERS OF THE IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION.

CAPITOL AND SURROUNDING AREAS EVACUATED.

WE HEARD A BIG BANG AND THEN WE SAW PEOPLE RUNNING AND SMOKE COMING OUT AND THEN WE SAW THE PLANE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BUIDLING AND THEN WE SAW PEOPLE JUMPING OUT OF THE WINDOWS.

BUILDING 7 AT WORLD TRADE CENTER ON FIRE, MAY COLLAPSE.

I AM SURPRISED BY THE EXTENT TO WHICH THEY ARE KEEPING THE PRESIDENT MOVING—FROM FLORIDA TO LOUISIANA AND NOW NEBRASKA.

THIS APPARENLTY IS A NEW DIMENSION OF SUICIDE BOMBING.

THERE IS A SECOND SITUATION ROOM BEHIND THE PRIMARY SITUATION ROOM WHICH HAS VIDEOCONFRENCING CAPABILITIES.

DOES THE PRESIDENT HAVE ANY SAY AT THE MOMENT?

IT’S VERY STRANGE. THE AREA IS EMPTY. YOU JUST HAVE PEOPLE STROLLING IN THEIR SUMMER GEAR.

A MORGUE HAD BEEN SET UP ON THE WEST SIDE TO HELP WITH THE DEAD.

IN EVERY SCENE WE HAVE SEEN, ALL THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE LEFT THE SCENE OF THE TRAGEDY CALMLY WITH NO REPORTS OF TROUBLE.

CHILDREN ARE LEAVING AND ARRIVING HOME RIGHT NOW AND WE REALLY WANT TO TALK ABOUT THAT. HOW DO YOU TELL YOUR CHILDREN—IF THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT HAS HAPPENED OR IF THEY DO KNOW WHAT’S HAPPENED—HOW DO YOU TELL YOUR CHILDREN WHAT HAS HAPPENED?

THIS CLOUD OF DUST. PEOPLE’S EYES ARE FILLED WITH THIS DUST.

WHEN I SHOT THIS I DIDN’T KOW WHAT WOULD HAPPEN AND WHEN IT STARTED HAPPENING BEFORE I KNEW WHAT WAS HAPPENING THEY STARTED TELLING US TO COME AND LEAVE AND IT WAS MASS EVACUATION AND I FINALLY FOUND A PLACE OUT OF THE PLUME OF THE SMOKE BUT BY THIS TIME THE CARS AROUND US WERE COVERED WITH SOOT AND THEN I HEARD GUN SHOTS IT’S PURE SPECULATION BUT I THINK I HEARD YELLING AND GUN SHOTS.

YOUR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS RESPONDING EFFECTIVELY.

CERTAINLY THERE ARE PLANES THAT INDEPENDENTLY NAVIGATE. CLEARLY THEY AIMING STRAIGHT FOR THE WORLD TRADE CENTER AND MAYBE IT TOOK HALF AN HOUR, THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES DIRECT FLIGHT, DON’T YOU THINK? CERTAINLY THESE AIRCRAFT WERE FOLLOWED ON RADAR AND THE FLIGHT DATA RECORDERS IF THEY’RE RECOVERED INTACT WILL ALSO GIVE A LOT OF INFORMATION ON THE SUBJECT.

WE HAVE BREAKING NEWS. WE TURN TO KABUL, AFGHANISTAN. THE SKY IS ALIT WITH MISSILES AND TRACER FIRE. LOOKING ACROSS THE REST OF THE CITY THE WHOLE CITY IS LAID OUT ACROSS FROM US AND ACROSS THE HORIZON FLAMES ARE ROARING. I HEAR MORE DETONATIONS GOING OFF NOW. CERTAINLY WHAT WE’RE SEEING IN KABUL IS VERY FAR FROM PEACE. THERE ARE MULTIPLE EXPLOSIONS HAPPENING IN AND AROUND THE CITY. WE CAN HEAR DETONATIONS COMING FROM THE NORTHERN AREA NORTH OF THE CITY. I REMEMBER STANDING ON THIS BALCONEY FOUR YEARS AGO WATCHING JETS BOMB THE AIRPORT DURING PART OF THE ONGOING CIVIL WAR HERE. LOOKING ACROSS THE HORIZON IT APPEARS THAT THE AIRPORT IS ENGULFED IN A FIREBALL. WE SEE EXPLOSIONS AND THEN MOMENTS LATER HEAR THE DETONATIONS. THE ANTI-AIRCRAFT FIRE WE SAW A LITTLE WHILE AGO IS NOT COMING UP FROM THE CITY.

WE’RE GETTING THIS FROM VIDEOPHONE TECHNOLOGY, WHICH IS A VERY NEW TECHNOLOGY. IT IS NOT AS CLEAR AS REGULAR TV. IT IS A NEW TECHNOLOGY, SO IT’S NOT AS CLEAR AS THE TV YOU ARE USED TO.

IF NOT OSAMA BIN LADEN, THEN WHO?

…IN THEIR OFFICES. SECRETARIES, BUSINESSMEN AND WOMEN, MILITARY AND FEDERAL WORKERS, MOMS AND DADS, FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS. THOUSANDS OF LIVES WERE SUDDENLY ENDED BY EVIL, DESPABLE ACTS OF TERROR. THE PICTURES OF AIRPLANES FLYING INTO BUILDINGS, FIRES BURNING, HUGE STRUCTURES COLLAPSING HAVE FILLED US WITH DISBELIEF, TERRIBLE SADNESS AND A QUIET, UNYIELDING ANGER. THESE ACTS OF MASS MURDER WERE INTENDED TO FRIGHTEN OUR NATION INTO CHAOS AND RETREAT, BUT THEY HAVE FAILED. OUR COUNTRY IS STRONG. A GREAT PEOPLE HAS BEEN MOVED TO DEFEND A GREAT NATION. TERRORIST ATTACKS CAN SHAKE THE FOUNDATIONS OF OUR BIGGEST BUILDINGS, BUT THEY CANNOT TOUCH THE FOUNDATION OF AMERICA. THESE ACTS SHATTER STEEL BUT THEY CANNOT DENT THE STEEL OF AMERICAN RESOLVE.

YOU COULD SEE PEOPLE JUMPING FROM THE ONE TOWER. JUST JUMPING. JUST FLAPPING IN THE AIR.

CAN I GET A BREATH? HELLO, CAN I JUST GET A FEW BIG BREATHS. I JUST NEED A BREATH OFF YOUR MASK, OKAY. THANK YOU. OKAY, BACK TO YOU. LOOK, LOOK OVER THERE. SCREAMING. DO YOU NEED HELP? IF YOU NEED HELP, HERE, OH MY GOD, THIS MAN HERE IS COVERED IN SOOT HEAD TO TOE AND YOU CAN’T SEE HIM AT ALL. HE’S LIKE A WALKING DUST MAN. THIS IS THE CAR I HID BEHIND. SAVED MY LIFE. OR MAYBE IT WAS THIS ONE. YOU CAN GET A SENSE OF THE DUST HERE, LOOK. THERE ARE ALL THESE NOISES. I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS. THEY SAY SOMEONE NEEDS HELP. ANYBODY NEED A DOCTOR? I’M A DOCTOR. ANYBODY— HEY. THAT GUY NEEDS SOME OXYGYN. SOMEBODY SHOULD GET IT TO HIM. THIS IS WHAT’S USUALLY THE WEST SIDE HIGHWAY, NOW COVERED WITH DUST AND WRECKAGE. THEY TOLD ME JUST TO WAIT THERE. I’M A DOCTOR SO I CAN HELP BUT THEY TOLD ME TO WAIT HERE. THEY WON’T LET ME GO ANY CLOSER. YOU GOTTA WAIT TO GET THE PEOPLE OUT. THERE’S EXPLOSIONS STILL GOING ON. SO FAR I JUST SEE PEOPLE WHO NEED OXYGYN. WHEN I GO BACK I’LL GET IT TO THEM. I’M GOING TO GO WASH MY EYES OUT. LOOKING NORTH ON THE WEST SIDE HIGHWAY. YOU GUYS GOING IN? I’M COMING WITH YOU. YOU KNOW, WE MIGHT NOT WANT TO GET TOO MUCH CLOSER BECAUSE MORE BUILDINGS MIGHT COME DOWN AND WE’RE NOT GOING TO HELP ANYBODY. I THINK WE SHOULD SET UP CAMP RIGHT HERE. LET’S JUST WAIT RIGHT HERE. LET’S JUST STATION UP RIGHT HERE. WHY DON’T WE SET UP. LET’S KEEP THE GURNEY AND IVS HERE. WE JUST HEARD ANOTHER EXPLOSION. I HAVE A MASK ON. THE CONSENSUS IS IT’S TOO UNSAFE TO GO IN THERE. WE’RE GOING TO WAIT HERE TILL THEY BRING SOME PEOPLE OUT. I SHOULD HOOK UP WITH SOME FIREMEN FOR SOME FIRST AID STUFF. ANYTHING? WHY DON’T YOU GIVE ME A RIDE UP TO THE— OKAY, SO WE GOT SET UP HERE AND WE CAN GO TO WORK. IS IT SAFE ENOUGH HERE?

OF COURSE AS WE GET MORE INFORMATION WE WILL GET THAT TO YOU.

Susan Michod, “Shrouds”

My phenomenally talented mother, Susan Michod, has a new show of her Shroud paintings, which she started immediately after 9/11. She ended up painting them for the next four years. Haunting, filled with swirls of color and color’s absence, these paintings are among my favorite she’s done.

From the Artist Statement:

Shrouds. A shroud. Many shrouds. Paintings as garments, as veils. Paintings that conceal and in their concealing reveal new ways of looking at the world. 

Susan Michod, Azteca Shroud, 2003

My work, a series of paintings called “Shrouds,” combines my love of pattern with the face, creating the illusion of fabric folding, swirling and shifting over the contours of the skull. They were started before the events of September 11. But since that day the paintings appear more and more to me as crumpled facades. The spaces filled in with bright bursts of color, the textures deepened to incorporate differently hued whites. The white spaces are not so much empty as subdued and reflective. They are the eyes through which you view the storm. They are the silences between the lines. 

Each “Shroud” is a portrait of a self in continual change and a culture in crisis.

Susan Michod, Harlequin Shroud II, 2003

 

Susan Michod, Yazteca Shroud, 2004

 

 

Susan Michod, V Shroud, 2003

 

Susan Michod, Crumpled Shroud, 2001

 

 

Richard Powers letter about ‘The White City,’ circa 2003

I was recently at home in Chicago and came across an email I received from the extraordinary encyclopedic novelist Richard Powers. I forget, exactly, but I think I emailed him cold out of the blue, to ask if he’d blurb my then-forthcoming first novel, The White City. I also wrote to Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo, but that’s another story for another time.

Richard was kind enough to write back, even if he wouldn’t officially blurb the book, and we did an interview together a couple years later, which appeared in The Believer and The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers. Since enough time has passed, now, and not to toot the book’s horn, I wanted to share a bit of what he said in the correspondence dated September 30, 2003:

I spent the weekend reading through your finished work. You have written a very gripping story with some remarkably chilling scenes. What begins as a realistic, mimetic fiction gradually changes, by degree, against that remarkable historical backdrop that you portray so adeptly, into a resonant allegory of light and darkness, enlightenment versus degradation, the public glory and private horror of humankind. It’s a terrific set of images and events, very atmospherically depicted. I wish you all the critical success and many readers that your well-spun tale deserves.

Unfortunately, a certain other book written about the same subject hogged all the spotlight, and the novel didn’t get much attention, critical or otherwise. But the approval from one of my writer-heroes still brings a chill up my spine. So, all you aspiring writers out there, don’t hesitate reaching out to your heroes–they might write back.

 

The Voice

There was somebody else in him, another being who was not a person but who followed his every thought and movement. Whatever he missed, whatever he did or intended to do, this someone was watching impassively, voicing no opinion but not leaving him alone either.

Péter Nádas, Parallel Stories

John Sayles Interview

I interviewed John Sayles for The Rumpus, and like his incredible new novel, A Moment in the Sun, the interview was long and brilliant, an expansive, breathtaking portrait of one of our most fearless and daring storytellers. The entire thing ran to over 15,000 words, although the final produced clocked in at around 3,000–if anyone wants to read the whole thing, please let me know.

John Sayles is a force of nature, a do-it-yourself renaissance man—director, actor, screenwriter, script doctor, novelist. As far as we know, he wasn’t part of the Navy Seal Team 6 that nabbed Bin Laden, but his boundless creative energy and narrative marksmanship, not to mention his longevity, put him squarely in a most elite squad of storytellers. Melville, Whitman, Mark Twain, Robert Altman: like the greatest American originals, Sayles has crossed genres and warped minds for three decades now, unleashing classics such asReturn of the Secaucus SevenMatewanEight Men OutThe Secret of Roan InishLone Star, and Sunshine State on the silver screen, and the National Book Award-nominatedUnion Dues and Los Gusanos, two heavyweight novels that could duke it out with just about any other contemporary work of fiction. (Read the first chapter here.)

Now Sayles has unveiled his most ambitious project to date in any genre, A Moment In the Sun, a bloody, brilliant, nearly 1,000 page globetrotting epic set at the turn of the last century, a time not so different from our own, it turns out.

John recently took time out of his very busy schedule to talk to The Rumpus a block or so from New York’s Port Authority. He had to embark on a cross-country road trip promoting the book, but we still ended up talking for almost two hours, clocking upwards of a meaty 15,000 words by the time he had to go.

The Rumpus: Your new novel, A Moment in the Sun, is written in—I wouldn’t say English, exactly, because you’ve taken and twisted the language to make it your own. It reads like a tornado of voices.

John Sayles: Every character has their own language, voices and styles. There’s a chapter from the point of view of a correspondent, and it’s written like the correspondence of that time. I read a bunch of those guys, Richard Harding Davis, and picked up on their locutions, which aren’t locutions we use anymore.

Rumpus: You were channeling them?

Sayles: You get into it and pretty soon—when actors play a character on a TV show for a long time, they’ll just get the script back to the new writers and say, My guy does not talk like that, because they’ve internalized it. They know the vocabulary and the rhythm of that character, and that’s how I start writing with this—it’s a dialogue, how the character expresses themselves, so I can find out who they are.

Rumpus: Is this something you just turned on? Like it was fluid, when you’d sit down to write you’d be able to tap into that voice and all its idiosyncrasies?

Sayles: Once I developed the characters, the book evolved or the screenplay—it started as a screenplay that only dealt with the Wilmington story and the 24th infantry, so only Royal Scott. And when I decided to expand it, make it into a novel—because I had always felt I was cramming too much—I felt like, who else do I want to hear from? And I felt it’s important to hear what everyone in America is hearing, so I had to have something about the media. That’s the newspapers and the early film stuff.  Which was all bullshit, it was—

Rumpus: Bullshit as in propaganda?

Sayles: It was probably as accurate as most of what we’re getting today, unfortunately, but I went back and I looked at all the political cartoons of the time period, and there is this—when the Filipinos are drawn, they look just like Cubans and Mexicans, with sombreros, straw hats and raggedy clothes. Then within weeks of the Philippine–American War, they went for a Japanese look, and by the end of the first year of the war, they’re cold black savages with bones, literally bones in their noses, and grass skirts and wooden spears. So if you’re an American, that’s what you think a Filipino is, and there were these films—what we would call a documentary—and the filmmakers just rounded up some African-American guys over in East Orange and put white clothes on them and said, You’re the Filipinos, and this was like Star Wars but only a minute long, and it was amazing. It was the first time you could see a real battle on screen, even though it was the New Jersey National Guard and a bunch of African-Americans. And I wanted a character who was in one of those films, so that’s Niles Manigault, and then I wanted a white guy, a working stiff who ends up in the Philippines, in one of the volunteer outfits, and that’s Hod, and then Diosdado—I wanted him to have a lot of access to a lot of things and be good with language and start as a spy in the inner circle, then get pushed out when he becomes a guerilla, which is what happened to a lot of those guys. They were kind of peacocks and very proud of their European training but they ended up in this dirty war in the jungle with a bunch of guys who didn’t speak Spanish. And then you say, What is my emotional structure for this character? Where do I want Hod to end up? What’s the odyssey that Royal takes? Is he going to make it home or not? How’s he going to get out?

Read the rest here.

 

 

Lorrie Moore on the Memoir

I recently had a one-sided conversation with a certain writer and self-professed celebrity of middling repute, a former writer of fiction. “What’re you working on these days?” he asked. I told him I was working on a new novel. “It’s all about nonfiction now, son,” he said, and then he rambled on and on about how fiction is dead and there’s no point writing something nobody wants to read. His opinion struck me as ignorant and abrasive, and also nothing new, nothing, at least, David Shields and a thousand other bloggers haven’t touched on post-Reality Hunger, but it also made me think of what Richard Powers said in our Believer interview, about the importance of fiction:

Neuroscience has recently turned up evidence for these extraordinary circuits in the brain populated with “mirror neurons.” These things fire both when we perform an action and when we merely see someone else perform the same action. Other experiments suggest astonishing evidence that doing and imagining share the same circuitry. The primary visual cortex requires more blood when we merely imagine a scene than when we actually see it. Heart rates rise in subjects told to imagine running. Subjects who merely visualize physical exercise over an extended period can gain two thirds as much muscle strength as those who actually perform the same exercises. So fiction may be a far more potent thing than we think. Natural selection must have favored a love for fiction. Clearly, it has some survival value! Life is a complex and dangerous enterprise. Of course we’re going to love taking the thing out for a spin on a completely safe practice track where we can try out any threatening or thrilling maneuver whatsoever, without any consequence except experience.

But our need for fiction also betrays a desire for kinds of knowing that nonfiction can’t easily reach. Nonfiction can assert; fiction can show asserters, and show what happens when assertions crash. Fiction can focalize and situate worldviews, pitching different perspectives and agendas against each other, linking beliefs to their believers, reflecting facts through their interpreters and interpreters through their facts. Fiction is a spreading, polysemous, relational network that captures the way that we and our worlds create each other. Whenever the best nonfiction really needs to persuade or clarify, it resorts to story.

The other night I watched the new HBO movie based on the early-1970s reality show, An American Family, and since then I’ve been thinking a lot about story and the manipulation of story, especially with respect to so-called “real” narratives. Every story, of course, whether fiction or nonfiction, is manipulated by the author to a certain extent–the supposed “nonfiction” of the aforementioned middling writer is very, very manipulated and opinionated, by the way. But to what extent does that manipulation make a certain work “fiction” or “nonfiction”? And what are the moral implications of either tag? Should we expect our “nonfiction” to deliver the “truth,” as the critics of the controversial, possibly “fictional” nonfiction book Three Cups of Tea seem to argue? Or should we suck it up as a culture and just all agree that every text, whatever we call it, presents a version of the truth, not an absolute truth?

Being a novelist, I’m pretty comfortable in the foggy gray territory of writing fiction, and I’m not the only one. The great fictioneer Lorrie Moore seems to say a similar thing in a recent review of The New York Review of Books. Granted, she says it a lot better than the rest of us:

It is hard not to be impressed with Fran Lebowitz’s comedically acerbic dismissal of memoirs: when asked in the Martin Scorsese documentary Public Speaking whether she would ever pen one, she quickly replied that if your life were all that interesting, someone else would write a book about it.

Despite having some sympathy with this idea, or with caustic wit, or with avoiding writing, one can nonetheless assume that there are good reasons to embark on a memoir: the world and the self collide in a particular way that only you, or mostly you, can narrate; you would like a preemptive grab at controlling the discourse. For instance: Are you Winston Churchill? Are you Nixon in China? Are you Pat Nixon in China? Did you compose Nixon in China? (Its composer, John Adams, has in fact written an engaging memoir.) Are you connected to a fascinating and underexplored chapter in history in any manner whatever? Are you a professional storyteller with a beautiful prose style and some autobiography begging for reportage? Are you a trenchant thinker with incisive analytical powers? Do you have a social cause you would like to advocate strenuously? And if none of the above, are you Brigitte Bardot?

If not, wherefore the memoir? Are you helpless before your own life, and unsure of how to write the autobiographical novel that might exploit or explore or redream it into art? Do you have a case of what the literary critic Michael Wood has called “catastrophe envy”? Have you drunk the Reality Hunger Kool-Aid of David Shields’s current “anti-novel jihad” and joined him in chiding the limping dog of fiction as if it were an unfortunate habit of lying, an omnivorous pornography of the real, instead of the struggling but majestic thing that it is? Are you coming into the house of narrative through the back door because the back door is where the money is? Are you prone to what a recent article by Neil Genzlinger in The New York Times Book Review suggested might be the “oversharing” of inconsequential you? “Unremarkable lives” should go “unremarked upon, the way God intended,” Genzliger wrote, in what reads like a reversal of the final lines of Middlemarch—George Eliot on a perversely moody or perhaps drink-addled day.

That many young people are already writing their memoirs is no longer a funny thing to say but an actual cultural condition. Book buyers have nudged publishers in this direction: we love to read memoirs. Why shouldn’t we? At a dinner party is not the fiction, which consists predominantly and unfortunately of abbreviated film plots, protracted jokes, and urban myths, less mesmerizing than the real-life tales? It would be heartless not to be interested in memoirs. People are telling us their personal stories and speaking to us of their private lives and even if the structure is rickety and the prose has, to borrow Dick Cavett’s phrase, “all the sparkle of a second mortgage,” we are going to hang in there because it is true. That the facts and details of these jumbled confessions are occasionally fudged and embellished, however, seems inevitable, given the limits of memory and the demands of writing. (There are many things a storyteller must add and subtract to tell a good story.)

Dick Cavett, himself a first-rate memoirist, became the prompt for Lillian Hellman’s James Frey moment when in 1980 Mary McCarthy said on Cavett’s show that every word in Hellman’s memoirs was a lie. (A lengthy lawsuit ensued.) In 2006, James Frey had to account to Oprah for the fabrications in his memoir A Million Little Pieces, after which he began writing fiction, as if in penance. It is interesting for fiction writers who always alter and reimagine the facts of their lives to watch memoirists get in trouble for doing exactly that. That fiction prompted by the autobiographical is not the same as a memoir seems an idea that is either professionally or commercially inconvenient or just lamely and confusedly lost on many—though never on a novelist.

The first interactive book?

Ever since I read Umberto Eco’s propulsive doorstopper, Foucault’s Pendulum, I’ve been mildly obsessed with secret–well, secret anything: societies, conspiracies, books. When it comes to the latter, there’s really no other book quite as secretive as the Voynich manuscript. The Voynich is a handwritten book thought to be written in the early 15th century–in top-secret code. A code, it’s turned out, that’s largely unbreakable. And many, many American and British World War I and World War II cryptographers–along with the occasional lovesick writer–have tried to break the code. None have succeeded.

But like any old book written in a language you can’t understand–like any kind of titillation, I suppose–the lure has a lot to do with the visuals. This is the case with the brilliant, eye-popping panoply of  Henry Darger’s Vivian Girls, and it’s the case with the Voynich as well.

As in the Darger…

there is an intoxicating color palette at play in the field of the cyphers and cryptograms of the text. Almost seven hundred years later, the colors still look pretty vivid, right?

And who could pass up lots of naked ladies?

(This is a code, I presume, that doesn’t need to be broken.)

So what does everyone make of the Voynich? One of the common assumptions is that the book is some kind of medieval pharmacopoeia, but it could also be an astronomic guide or a biological text or… It could be anything–or everything. In a way, though, I think the most interesting way to view it is as the first interactive ebook. Sure, there’s no zoom and no scroll motion and no moving images, unless you drink some absinthe and blink your eyes really fast, but the geography the mysterious book seems to map strikes me as technologically adroit and futuristic. Not bad for an actual book.

Speaking of Eco, his controversial new novel drops this fall.