I recently had an email exchange with an artist whose work I admire greatly.  She’s an accomplished photographer whose work, in recent times, she feels is getting lost in the swamp.  It seems everybody with an eyeball is snapping away with their digital cameras and calling themselves professional photographers these days, just like everybody with an ability to form even the simplest of sentences is self-publishing and calling themselves writers. (Heck, even some folks who can’t form a simple sentence do that.) She says there’s so much good photographic work being produced now, she wonders why she should bother trying to contribute something new?

Well, I’ve certainly felt that way about writing, too.

I remember what Flannery O’Connor said when asked whether she felt university writing programs stifled young writers. She replied, “It doesn’t stifle nearly enough of them.” Snort. LOVE that.

Flannery O'Connor and her peacocks

But when I start thinking that way I know it’s because, once again, I’m focusing on things which are none of my business. I’ve come to believe that almost everything is none of my business, to be honest. I’ve had to adopt that philosophy for the sake of my sanity. Other people’s work, what prizes/grants they’re winning, what reviews they’re garnering, etc., are none of my business. What other people think of me is none of my business. The only thing that’s my business is my relationship with my creative source (call that God or Spirit, or, as I do, The Ineffable) and my own response to the world, the people in it, and my work.

Of course, in my less-than-perfect moments, I do get lonely and I despair. ( I also get restless, irritable and discontent.) However, those feelings signal something’s out of whack somewhere, that I’m off balance in some way.

Generally it means I’m not focusing on my own voice, my own path. It means I’ve got my eyes on some other writer’s trajectory.

When I’m spiritually balanced, I understand that the source of my need to write comes from something much greater than me, and is to be honored and approached with faith. I do the work I’m urged to do, to the best of my ability and leave the outcome in the hands of The Ineffable. I also understand that my work is filtered through my subconscious, my perspective and my experience. This means it is utterly unique to me, and no matter how many other people are writing, they are not capable of writing what I write (and vice-versa, of course). So, when it comes down it it, the only useful comparison is between what I wrote yesterday, and what I’m writing today.  It is better?  Good, then keep going!  Is it not quite as good?  Then revise, and keep going.

I remember a story I heard about the actor/comedian Danny Thomas.  His daughter, Marlo Thomas, was about to open in her first play on Broadway.  She was nervous and afraid of what the critics might say.  Danny sent a package to her dressing room, containing a pair of blinders — the sort used on horses — with a note saying, “Always run your own race, kid.  Don’t worry about the other horses.”

Try not to get distracted.

Imagine yourself walking down the street.  You see a crowd harassing a man, pushing him, calling him vile names, bullying him… the man looks frightened.  Perhaps he is trying to protect someone he’s with, perhaps his wife or child.  The crowd, more of a mob now, past reason and spurred on by the force of its own numbers, becomes increasingly violent, both in word and deed.  What will you do?  Will you have the courage to speak out, to speak up, to stand beside the victim and face the mob?

Or will you slink away, frightened, hoping the mob doesn’t notice you?

They might be coming for you, next.

Or will you join in, because even though you’re not a bully, certainly not like THOSE people (and you can fill in whatever “those” you’d like — Nazis, KKK members, Spanish Inquisitors…), the mob actually has some truth on its side and you don’t like people like that man, and his wife and his child…

What will you do?

I don’t know what I’d do, only what I hope I’d do.

I was the victim of such a mob, once.  I remember all too clearly the terrible, baffling, agonizing realization that truth and justice no longer mattered, that I was utterly alone and that the mob saw me as something less than human.  And so, remembering, I hope I would stand on the side of the victim, that I would somehow find the bravery.  In my case, a lone man came to my rescue, and it was his sanity and moral courage that defused the mob and quite possibly saved me from harm.  I will never forget him.  I’d like to think I would do what he did.

And now, it seems, I may have my chance.  Because even though I am not on a street, still, I see a mob forming, and if I do nothing, if I say nothing, how can I expect anyone to come to my aid, if the mob someday turns in my direction?  More importantly, how can I be silent when I know being silent is a form of complicity, that it is, in short, wrong?

We all know, surely, the quote from Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) regarding the failure of intellectuals in Nazi Germany when group after group was targeted for persecution:

They came first for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Well, as writers, we have to speak up.  It’s our job.  I tell my students that writing is dangerous.  I tell them writers are powerful.Words count and they matter.  This is what Eric Maisel, a cognitive therapist who specializes in writers, says on the matter:

In many places, the men and women who put out the anti-government newspapers and the anti-gangster leaflets and pamphlets, who dispute the powerful and point a finger at everyday evil, show real bravery and this bravery can and does make positive things happen.  That this change is not long-lasting is a testament to the dark underbelly of human nature, but these brave writers are still the human race’s best hope – the best hope for the exploited child worker, the discarded and forgotten prisoner, the threatened democracy, the arrested dissident.

For all of a writer’s weaknesses, for all the ways in which a writer is challenged, this is still his or her supreme strength:  to be able to point a finger.  It takes no great feat of strength to point a finger, only great courage.  For that finger may well get chopped off.  But when a writer stands up and pens the words, “I accuse. . . .” the whole world trembles.  Governments prepare to topple.  Scoundrels run for cover.  The small voice of truth clears its throat and the whole world stops and prepares to listen.

It is with this in mind that I think about the shameful, fear-driven, ignorant-heavy rhetoric surrounding Muslims in America these days. I hear about the Qu’ran burnings, demonstrations, hate crimes, incendiary websites, opportunistic politicians… and my heart breaks.  Is this who we are?  Is this the democracy, founded on principles of tolerance and freedom that I so admire?  Is this the face we want to show the world?  Is this what we want other, perhaps less tolerant, less democratic societies to emulate?

This is not the Christianity I try to practice

What are we doing?

Oh, we can justify our intolerance, our violence, our racism and ignorance with all sorts of nonsense about “Those People.”  We say they pray to a different god.  (They don’t, it’s just that the Arabic name for God is “Allah” as the French name for God is “Dieu.” Muslims also revere Abraham, Moses and Jesus Christ.) We say they don’t value life like we do. (And yet we drop enormous bombs on them, although we justify that, too, and we have the death penalty in this country, too, and although some of them do terrible things  — think World Trade Center bombing –  some of us do as well — think the Oklahoma City bombing.)  We say they don’t love their children the way we do. (Although certain Catholic priests seem to be “loving” them a bit too much, wouldn’t you agree?)  We fan the flames of separation, of otherness, and in doing so we immolate our own humanity.  We turn ourselves to bitter ash.

If we want a peaceful world, we should practice peace. If we want kindness, we should be kind. If we want justice, we should be just. If we want someone to stand beside us, when we are set upon, we must be willing to stand beside them, as well.  Will you join me?  Will you speak out against racism, against this sort of fear-mongering?  Will you join these 9/11 families, these people of moral courage?  If you have a blog, if you have a column, if you have a FB page, don’t let the mob win.  Send the scoundrels running for cover… join me; raise your voice.

Will you stand between him and the hate-filled mob?

Allow me to end on this note:

Once a week, I teach creative writing in a correctional facility for men.  We meet in a classroom on the lower floor of the prison, which one gets to by negotiating the usual labyrinth of corridors, past armed ‘threshold guardians’ of various sorts, descending flights of stairs going down, down, down, and a number of clanging gates.  The classroom has a noisy window air conditioner – a GREAT luxury in this place — a clutter of locked cabinets and battered chairs with built-in writing shelves that look far too small for many of the big-footed, hulking men who must fit into them.  (I always forget how SHORT I am, until the end of the class and they all stand up!)

This is NOT my classroom... then again, it kinda is

Last week,  we talked about conflict in fiction, and about how, sometimes, what’s stopping us from getting what we want is, … well… us.  We were talking about the kinds of flaws our characters might have, and I suggested writers might want to take a look at the seven deadly sins:  lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride.  The issue of pride generated some discussion.

“You have to have pride,” someone said.

“You don’t have pride, you don’t have anything.”

“What’s wrong with pride?”

One of the many things I admire about these men is the way, for the most part, they handle life in this extremely difficult environment. They have little or no say as to what happens to them, much of the facility has no air conditioning and in the summer hovers around 100 degrees, the corridors smell of drains and too many people packed in one space, the food is only fair, the noise is excessive, the tensions run high, they’re often moved from one environment to another, they are often lonely although conditions are crowded and they must maintain an attitude of submission, which isn’t easy for young men at the best of times… But they handle it.  I’m not sure I could.  Some in the class are talkative, some naturally funny, some hesitant, some more easily frustrated than others, but all are deeply respectful not only of me but of each other. They are all smart and kind and supportive. One or two hold themselves with a natural air of leadership.

“Exactly,” I said, “What’s wrong with it? If pride can be a reasonable self-respect arising from something you’ve achieved, say, that might not be a bad thing.  So why, if that’s so, would it be considered a sin?  Can you feel pride without being arrogant, without acting superior?”

One particularly thoughtful young man said, “You might feel pride, and that’s fine, but then you think you’re better than someone else.  You get arrogant.  You make somebody else feel bad.  You’re flashing it around.”

“So when we do something that negatively affects someone else, that’s where the problem is.”  I said maybe if one was truly confident one didn’t NEED to flash it around.  Maybe people who walked around all puffed up with themselves, always throwing their weight around, weren’t really confident, since it seemed they had to prove it all the time. Maybe confidence is knowing you’re all right, no matter what happens to you, no matter where you are.  Maybe it has something to do with believing in something greater than yourself.

I talked a little about how writers are always asking for other people’s approval — agents, editors, readers, critics — and how it can be hard to remain confident in the face of a lot of rejection and criticism.  Sometimes writers get arrogant as a sort of self-defense, hollering about how brilliant they are, loud as bull-horns, as though trying to convince everyone, maybe even themselves.

“Look like fools,” someone said.

“Certainly can do,” I agreed, thinking of one or two spectacularly blow-hard writers I’ve had the misfortune of meeting.

The particularly thoughtful man said, “Yeah, you have to be confident enough in yourself so you’re not comparing yourself to other people.  It’s not about you and them.”

No, it’s never between you and them. I learn a lot about humility and self-containment, those great antidotes for inappropriate pride and arrogance, from teaching in a prison.  This week I was reminded of the prayer attributed to Mother Teresa:

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.
What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.
Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.
In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

As writers, we might add to that — If, for years, you pour your heart and soul into writing a book, publishers may still reject it, critics may flay it.  Write it anyway.

There are worse things than the difficulties of the writer’s life.  Be grateful for things like freedom, and the power to choose how you’ll spend the day, and the great gift of a quiet room, or a walk outside…

I wonder if you, like me, have ever found yourself sitting in the dark, tear-stained and brittle with anguish, listening to Tom Waits, perhaps, emptying a bottle of scotch, or a pot of coffee, maybe smoking cigarette after cigarette, staring out a fractured glass into the night, your soul blank, your stomach churning, your thoughts a tsunami of confusion, your skin burning with grief, your fingers tingling with longing for something you know you’ll never hold again.

At the bottom of the well

Descent to the underworld.  The dark night of the soul.  The belly of the whale. Meeting the dark goddess.  Depression.  There are many names for it.  And what is ‘it?’  That moment when everything we thought we knew for certain turns out to be false.  The lover we trusted betrays us.  A death rips us apart. The career we thought was assured vanishes.  The belief we thought was beyond belief — was certain knowledge — proves no more solid than marsh gas.

I remember my first time.  I was young and my heart had been broken, not for the last time.  I lay on a brown couch in a gray room and understood I was at the bottom of an impossibly deep well.  There, a skyscraper’s height above me, was a pin-point of light.  It was quite evident I would never be able to climb my way up to it. It was too far.  I was too tired.  I didn’t care.  The pain would kill me first.

But, of course, it didn’t.  It took a long time, but I eventually clawed my way out, although, looking back now, I’m not sure I handled it properly at all.  I think I was so consumed with getting out of there I neglected to learn much about that landscape, and so took little of use away with me.  The model I was working from was that particularly North American (and masculine) model which says time spent in the dark is time wasted. We must yearn for and attain the light.  Now! We must succeed! We must overcome and be happy again!  Happy!

It didn’t work for me, and I think my unwillingness to sit with the darkness and learn from it, my insistence on fleeing from it, may actually have contributed to my later miseries with addiction and failed relationships.  So I wonder. I wonder if there isn’t something more, something valuable at the bottom of the pit.

Celtic knot tree

As a child, I began having a recurring dream about riding the roots of a great tree down, down, down, into the underworld, where…  well…  a number of varied and remarkable things were likely to happen.  I still have that dream from time to time, and I take it to mean something profound is happening in my subconscious life. As a writer it’s the sort of thing, I pay attention to, since it’s the material I work with.  It took me a long time to realize that the ride down the tree roots took me to the same place I landed when I fell into the dark well.  When I realized that, however, I realized that perhaps the point of being there was not to claw my way out, but to recognize it as a sacred journey.  It’s the old journey-myth of Demeter, Persephone and Hectate.  It is Inanna’s descent.

The dark journey is, I  believe, a sort of initiation into a world of deeper meaning, a deeper self.  I’ve repeated the experience a number of times over the decades. I’d rather not, to be frank, but it happens whether I want it to or not.  I certainly don’t seek it out, but when it happens, what choice do I have but to put one foot in front of the other?  Every time it surprises me, and although I have come to recognize the blasted landscape, it is never quite the same blasted landscape.  Every journey has its own root, its own challenges, its own gifts.

A few years ago, I found myself once again in the bottom of that pit.  All was blackness and grief.  Meaning was lost, purpose was lost, faith was thin as thrice-watered milk.  Being a writer, I tried to read my way out, reading everything I could by other writers who had suffered, and overcome.  But that was the problem.  All these narratives about metaphoric battles won, demons conquered, and summits attained rang false.  Okay, so this writer had ten years when she couldn’t get published… but…. then went on to win the Pulitzer!  Or became J.K. Rowling.  Or the writer suffered terrible depression, but then got help and won the Nobel, or some such thing.

None of that felt like the coat that fit me. Surely not every writer who suffers this way snaps out of it and wins the Pulitzer!  Are the rest all failures?  Is there no meaning past the neon-lit North American version of success – fame and fortune and your photo in the glossy magazines?  That narrative was unsatisfying, for me.

And so I had to find deeper meaning.  Even with a companion (and thank God for companions, for they keep you alive and nourished, and can even act as North Stars during the worst bits), it seems the journey, the descent, must be taken alone.  But this time, rather than immediately trying to rock climb, I tried to breathe deeply, and not panic, and let my eyes adjust to the dark, and see what there might be down here with my name engraved on it. I found allies and guides down there.  I found a great deal of my self, which I didn’t know I’d lost.  I’m still finding bits of myself, actually.

It turned out to be a rewarding, if excruciating, experience and one which set me on a path I can’t imagine I would have taken otherwise.  For one thing, being less afraid of the underworld in general, I now teach in a prison, which is a sort of weekly descent into the underworld (even physically in the case of this particular prison, since the stairs to the classrooms lead, down, down, down…) full of threshold guardians, gatekeepers, shapeshifters and so forth.  I’ve also begun work on a novel about such things, which I never would have found otherwise.

All this to say, if you find yourself riding the tree roots down into the dark, don’t panic, don’t despair.  What you find down there might surprise you, might, in fact, be exactly what you’re looking for, especially if you’re a writer, and if you’re not a writer, try writing about it anyway; writing creates an excellent map and compass.  Could be that’s just what was waiting for you in the heart of the earth, the seed-jewel that belongs to you, and you alone.

Who knows what treasures lie below?

Robert Olen Butler

Robert Olen Butler, in his book FROM WHERE YOU DREAM, says the one thing missing from almost every student manuscript he reads is a sense, in the beginning of the work, of what the main character yearns for.  He says fiction is “the art form of human yearning” and that  writers needs to place an epiphany, illustrating the protagonist’s yearning, in the first few paragraphs or pages of a short story or novel.

I agree.  As a creative writing teacher, in every class I see emerging writers repeat the same mistakes over and over.  The don’t write from the senses, they use FAR too much summary, and not enough scene, and they don’t let me know what their characters want.  Heck, if I don’t know what someone wants, how can I care whether they get it or not, or whether getting their heart’s desire will fulfill their lives, or destroy them?  And if I don’t care, I’m not going to keep reading.

Then again, what a character wants is often a symbol for something more, isn’t it?  In Fitzgerald’s THE GREAT GATSBY Jay Gatsby, for example, wants to win Daisy’s love, but it’s quite obvious that what Gatsby truly wants is what Daisy represents — all that wealth, carefree (careless) attitude, privilege and entitlement.  In short, the American dream, albeit one which proves not only shallow and false, but decadent and dangerous.

Jane Eyre may want Mr. Rochester, but what does he represent?  Home.  Belonging.  We know Jane wants these things, because in the opening of the novel the cruel treatment she receives from her aunt and cousins illustrate her sense of alienation, and of being an outcast.

Charles Baxter, the author of many good books indeed (you can see my review of his splendid book, THE ART OF THE SUBTEXT, here)  was interviewed for “Glimmer Train” and he said there are five questions a writer asks:

1. What do these characters want?
2. What are they afraid of?
3. What’s at stake in this story
4. What are the consequences of these scenes or these actions?
5. How does the language of this story reflect the world of the story itself?

He goes on to say:

Charles Baxter

Now, if a writer is writing a story and looks at you and says, “I don’t know what my characters want; I don’t think they want much of anything,” then the story is in trouble. If you don’t know what’s at stake in the story, it means that nothing stands to be gained or lost in the course of it. Something has to be risked. The characters have to want something or to wish for something. They have to be allowed to stay up past eleven o’clock and to make mistakes. If there’s a flaw that many beginning writers have, it is that their characters don’t risk enough. They are just sitting in chairs having ideas. I had a student a few months ago, when I was in residency at a university, who said, I don’t want my characters to do anything, I just want them to think through the problem of nature vs. culture.

That’s not exactly a story, is it? (asks the interviewer)

That’s what I tried to tell her. But she was determined to write a story about issues. I mean, this is an old thing to say, but if you want to write something about issues, write an essay. That’s what essays are for. If you want to see the consequences of ideas, write a story. If you want to see the consequences of belief, write a story in which somebody is acting on the ideas or beliefs that she has. But that’s why it’s important to have a sense of what your characters want.

Aimee Bender, in an essay entitled “Character Motivation” in the book THE WRITER’S NOTEBOOK, takes exception to the comment that you should know what your characters want.  She says:

“For many writers, it’s probably a very useful comment , but I find it trips me up, because I don’t always know what a character wants.  I know some things about the character, but to know what he or she wants feels like the final answer, why I’m writing in the first place.”

Aimee Bender

Now, my problem with that is that it sounds to me as though she’s writing character sketches.  I do a lot of writing before I start writing the actual novel, and much of it is taken up with sketches about character and back-story and motivation and so forth.  I do this, so that when I finally sit down and actually start writing the novel/short story, I know what I’m writing about.  In short, I know what question I’m asking.  In THE STUBBORN SEASON, it was how does someone survive, or not, the tyranny of mental illness?  In THE RADIANT CITY, it was, having had a catastrophic disillusionment, is a person doomed to cynicism, or is it possible to maintain a compassionate heart?

From there, I don’t think it’s necessary to provide the reader with the answer to the question, but rather to pose the question, through the sense details of the narrative, so the reader draws his or her own conclusions.  And of course, there should always be a way to read the story without being aware the BIG QUESTION is being asked, since such things seem to give some readers headaches.  Will, in the case of THE STUBBORN SEASON, Irene escape her crazy mother and find love?  Will, in THE RADIANT CITY, Matthew recover from his war wounds and learn to live again?

I do think it’s interesting that Aimee Bender goes on to say:

Whenever I try to think about what my characters want — especially in novel writing — if feels very confusing to me.  When I was writing my novel, AN INVISIBLE SIGN OF MY OWN, I asked myself, What does the character want? And the answer was, She wants not to want.

Aha! So, in fact, her character does want something — to be released from desire — and the writer knows what it is. Finding it a confusing process, doesn’t mean you can avoid it.

Look, I agree, we write to find out what we think, to understand what we don’t understand, but still, I contend when we finally sit down to write the novel/short story, and not the prep work for that novel/short story, we have to know what it is we’re writing about, what we’re trying to understand.  We do that by placing representative compelling characters, like the dolls we used to play with (or the toy soldiers) on the living room carpet or sandbox, and putting them in situations where they want something, and then we see what happens around them and to them and inside them, when they try and get it.

An image of psychoanalytic sandplay, which could just as easily be a representaton of the writer's process.

This book is part of The Art of series, put out by the excellent Graywolf Press. Each book in the series examines, I am told on the back of the book, “a singular, but often assumed or neglected, issue facing the contemporary writer of fiction, nonfiction or poetry. The Art of series is meant to restore the art of criticism while illuminating the art of writing.” If this book is an example of the rest of the series.. bravo!

In The Art of the Subtext: Beyond Plot, Baxter explores what lurks beneath the obvious in fictional works — which is what imbues great fiction with its emotional power. When captured elegantly on the page, what the characters don’t say, what they suppress, and the secrets they keep, add a dimension to the work in a way nothing else can…

“those elements that propel readers beyond the plot of a novel or short story into the realm of what haunts the imagination: the implied, the half-visible, and the unspoken. That subterranean realm with its overcharged psychological materials…”

The New York Times Book Review said this about Baxter’s Burning Down the House:

“It is a pleasure to read, and it performs an important function — by mucking around in the problems that plague contemporary fiction, Burning Down the House may spur both readers and writers first to a recognition of guilty complicity and then to constructive thought.”

Something similar might be said about this excellent book — it is the sort of book that certainly gets one thinking, and what’s better than that for the writer who aims to improve her work?

…the discrepancy between what you ask for and what you get constitutes a story…these discrepancies are at the core of many great stories, and myths. This of Oedipus, famous forever for wanting the wrong thing, and getting it.

The vast scope of Baxter’s knowledge is one of the many pleasures of this book. He draws on works by Melville, Fitzgerald, Rainer Maria Rilke, Freud, Cheever, Katharine Ann Porter, Faulkner. Flannery O’Connor, J.F. Powers, Edward P. Jones, Lorrie, Moore, Dostoyevksy, Paula Fox…. well, the list goes on and on. One of the reasons it took me so long to read The Art of the Subtext was that I kept going back to my bookshelves, pulling out one of the works referred to, and re-reading it, with new understanding.

The book is also, at least in part, as much an extended essay on morality as it is on writing. The excellent essay, Loss of Face, at the end of the book exemplifies this. Baxter discusses how the description of physical attributes in fiction, faces specifically, have changed over the years. Baxter says his thoughts were triggered by a student who, when challenged on what Baxter considered to be an inadequate physical description of one of his characters, sort of crumbled:

“I can’t do that,” the student said, reluctantly but firmly.
“Why not?” I asked.
There was a pause, as the student – a thoughtful person – tried to explain. He had come up against a wall of some sort. Finally he said, “It’s too hard.” I was about to say to him that that was really no excuse, that the entire process of writing naturally brings everybody up against what is too hard to do and therefore has to be done, when he interrupted my thoughts by saying, “Besides, no one does that anymore.”
Ah, I thought, now that’s interesting. Our imaginations are failing us.

Baxter goes on to talk about how some artistic skills and practices are lost through “neglect or distaste or their inability to concentrate their imaginative forces.” He remarks that the student seems to be saying that people his age have forgotten how to describe faces, or are uncomfortable doing so. While admitting losing this skill is somewhat disturbing, since so much of our interaction has (at least until recently) been face to face and our ability to ‘read’ another person’s face is useful for far more than simply good fiction, he also investigates the problem of cultural project and racism. Can we, in this age, use physical attributes as a way to imply psychological, or even moral, characteristics?

Whose faces do we put into our stories, and whose faces are we able to read? Some faces we see often, others not at all. We are permitted, even compelled, to see the faces of certain public figures almost every day, but we are not particularly encouraged to see the faces of many others, whom we can describe as the dispossessed, the disinherited, and the vanquished. Sometimes we don’t want to see those faces at all because of the demands they place on us. In this way, a literary question quickly becomes a political one.

And later:

The problem of seeing a face, of acknowledging its reality, its connection to a human being who has a separate identity from ours, leads to the problem of obligation, which makes many people uncomfortable. Obligations are often unpleasant and difficult to discharge. This is a point make repeatedly by the French philosopher Emmanual Levinas in his meditations on the face. If I understand him correctly, Levinas argues that the face is the unique physical presence that provokes the subject’s obligations to the Other. The face is not abstract. There would be, by implication, always the necessity therefore to see the face of my enemy, to acknowledge it, and all those to whom I wish to deny a face; my humanity requires such a recognition, particularly in moments of social crisis.

One of the many useful tidbits Baxter provides is in the essay, Unheard Melodies, about we chose not to hear, what we filter out.

It may seem strange to say so, but the great fallacy of most written dialogue in fiction of our time is that all the characters are listening. But everyone knows that we have grown into a nation of nonlisteners. What gives the writing of Eugene O’Neill, Tony Kushner, Lorrie Moore, Paul Fox and William Gaddis its particular distinction is the notice it has taken of what people do no notice. In truly wonderful writing, the author pays close attention to inattentiveness, in all its forms.
In fiction, the forms of evasion are every bit as interesting, conversationally, as truth telling.

That’s the sort of writing-about-writing that gets me fired up, and I plan to ask my students to read this book.

Charles Baxter is the author of ten books, including The Feast of Love, a finalist for the National Book Award, and Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction. He is also a professor at the University of Minnesota. Lucky students.

Into Inkwood

I was twenty, and it was somewhere round three o’clock in the morning.  I sat at a battered desk in the corner of the bedroom in my basement apartment in Montreal.  The floor was warped from one of the unending water leaks in the ancient plumbing and the desk wobbled. Charlie Mingus’s music played from a small radio.  The shelf above the desk was stuffed with books and paper, pens, a empty glass, an overflowing ashtray, and a plate covered in toast crumbs.  The air smelled of damp and cigarettes, and ever so slightly of drains.  I was hunched over a notebook, pen scribbling furiously.  I was writing about a man on a bridge on a foggy night, waiting for a woman to appear from the other side.  He didn’t know if she would come and if she didn’t he didn’t know if he’d go after her because the bridge, once crossed, disappeared forever, exiling everything on the other side to the mists of memory.  My body was heating up with creative energy.  I had to pause, pen between my teeth, and take my sweater off.  I had to slow down, or else I wouldn’t be able to read back what I wrote tomorrow.  And then, I knew what would happen next.  I laughed out loud.  I kept scribbling.

I was a file clerk in the Registration Office of Concordia University in those days and I had to be at work at nine, which meant, even if I went to bed right then, and fell asleep instantly (which I never do), I’d only get four hours sleep.  But I wasn’t going to bed.  While some of my friends might still be out at the clubs, I was partying in my own way…I was writing, careless of  tomorrow’s exhaustion, pallor and dark under-eye circles.

Looking back on it now, I realize I wasn’t just writing, I was playing.  I made up worlds, moving my characters around the way I used to move my dolls as a child.  I dashed into the woods of my wild mind, and to hell with a breadcrumb trail.  I dove into the wave of words and came up laughing.

That went on for a long time.  (Well, until the booze, which had once given me wings, took away the sky…but that’s another story.)  And then I started publishing.

Look, don’t get me wrong.  I am grateful to be a 4-time published author, stunned with gratitude, in fact, since like most writers, I suffer from a lot of self-doubt.  Still, before I started publishing I was writing as an innocent, unaware of how damaging publishing can be to the writer’s soul.  I had no critics.  I had no agents or editors hovering over me with sharp red pens.  I had only my own imagination and my dreams.

Now, I know how much rejection can burn; I know how precarious the approval of publishers can be — based as it is these days almost solely on sales, and not on things like the quality of the work, or even good reviews.  I know, too, that the approval of others can be addictive, and not in a good way (so few addictions ever are).  If you liked that, the insecure part of my mind says, then I’ll try and do it again…do you like me now?  Now?

In fact, although writing is always a psychologically risky business (since we go down into the murky, mucky morass at the bottom of the subconscious), like those annoying teenage vampires so popular right now, publishing can sink its fangs into you and suck out all the life.  Which may be why so few writers publish a second book — having run the gauntlet once, they realize they don’t want to run it again. Consider what Anne Lamott said in an address to a writing conference:

I always end up feeling guilty at writing conferences because I know that mostly the participants will not get published, and no one seems to be willing to tell them this. I have heard that 1 percent of writers at these conferences ever get a book published. One percent!

Also, they believe that if they do get published, a wonderful new life is in store. It will turn out that deep down they are really valuable people and will have lots of money from now on and really cool people like Ethan Hawke will be dropping by all the time. But it’s a lie. Being a published writer will make them long to be ONLY as mentally ill as they are now. Their current level of obsession and doubt and self-loathing will look like the good old days. Honest.

Portrait of the writer as a grown up

And so, what’s the remedy to the Catch-22 of the working writer’s life?  We all want readers, yes?  But in order to be the kind of writers who are readable, prolific and sane, we need to encourage not our marketing and self-promotion skills, but our joy of writing.  We need to keep in touch with the ‘play’ of writing and creativity, we need to lock the editors/agents/critics/marketing departments out of our creative spaces and delight in the joy of creating-without-expectation.

Whereas we know it’s  important to become proficient at our craft so we can effectively communicate our literary intentions to the reader, we also need to create in a environment free of the emotional, psychic toxicity of the publishing business world.

The more we try and please someone other than our own inner voice, the less authentic our work will be, and therefore — in that circular way of  things — the less readable. So, forget the ‘industry’ for a while.  Remember what it felt like to write for the sheer joy of it.  Try writing a fairy tale, or take a fairy tale you know and rewrite it using a modern-day setting.  Try some magic realism like Ben Okri or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Pay attention to your dreams and base a short story on one of them — use a dream setting, or write about a recurring dream figure.

Who knows where in the wild wood you might travel, when there’s no one saying you shouldn’t go there?

Let me know how you keep the ‘play’ alive in your work, won’t you?

The other day I visited the  Rescue Mission of Trenton, with the group, People & Stories, to talk about literature and life.  Diane, a volunteer organizer drove me there.  When we arrived we entered an unmarked steel door in the side of a cement block building and when the woman behind the glass saw us, she buzzed us through a second door.  The hall before us was interchangeable with a thousand other such institutions: florescent lighting, steel water fountain, cinder-block walls painted pale pink and yellow, tan lino on the floor.  Diane led me through a maze of  hallways smelling faintly of bleach, past poorly-lit rooms in which men and a few women lounged on uncomfortable-looking chairs or sat around folding tables; through a ramshackle courtyard in which  mission trucks were parked, past loading docks, and storage rooms full of broken furniture, pots and pans and stacks of plates. Finally we entered a somewhat cavernous room with wood paneling and linoleum tile, nine blue tables set up in a T-shape, and a large wooden cross hanging on the wall.

Poet Paul Muldoon with People & Stories at the Rescue Mission of Trenton

One by one the men drifted in and sat at the table.  Many were recently released from prison, and most had substance abuse issues. Some black, some white.  Some in their fifties, some in their thirties, some in between.  One young man had a shaved head and beard, another the sort of muscles I suspect came from working out in the prison yard.  A couple had the watery eyes and flushed skin of the recently sober.  Some met my eyes and smiled, shook my hand, while others found a seat as far down the table as possible and merely nodded.  I got up and shook everyone’s hand, asking their names.  I asked if maybe we couldn’t sit closer together.  They agreed.  We joked a little, got iced tea and cookies.

The program with People & Stories is designed so that we read a short story together and  we talk about it, and then do a little writing.  I had decided I would read a story I’d written called “Neighbors” which is about a father coming to terms with the overdose death of his son, and about wanting to wreak deadly revenge on the person who’d sold his son the drugs.  It was written after both my brothers committed suicide, as a result of alcoholism and drug addiction.

When I finished, one by one, the men talked about their own histories with addiction and grief.  One man shared that while he’d been in prison he’d been eaten alive by revenge fantasies against someone who’d betrayed him.  He’d filled three journals with writings about his thoughts, and then ritually threw the journals away, and the need for revenge with them.  A man talked about how it was in his neighborhood, how his cousins dealt drugs, and how he wanted to be like them.  He shook his head.  It had seemed like the right thing to do.  He hadn’t been out of prison long. One man, the one with the big muscles, told us his brother had died of an overdose less than a year ago.  He’d heard about it while he was in prison.  He was still dealing with it, trying to find a way to grieve.  “I was his older brother, and I should have taken care of him.  Our father wasn’t ever around,” he said.  “I have to live with that.”  Another man asked me to read a piece he’d written about the suicide death of his mother.

One by one we told our own stories.  Stories trickled out, little streams of our lives, gathering force as they joined together; trickles to streams, to creeks, to rivers… overlapping, blending, mingling, until we were all in the same river together, possibly still floundering a little but maybe forming a human chain across the turbulent waters to safer ground.   We’re all treading the same water together.  All swimming for our lives.

Finally someone asked me how long I’d been a writer.  I said I’d always wanted to be a writer.  It was the only thing, other than cooking a mean lamb tagine, that I did even remotely well.

A guy to my left said, “You got a recipe for that lamb?  I’m the cook here and Ramadan’s coming up.  We’re talking about cooking lamb.  I’d love to try that recipe.”

“Absolutely!” I said.  “When’s Ramadan this year?”

The man looked down the table at a man with a shaved head and a big beard.  “When’s Ramadan, K____? Couple of weeks, right?”

“Starts August 11th, I think,” said the bearded man.

I gave him the recipe and said I hoped I’d be invited.  I’ll help with the cooking, too.  It would an honor.  I’m looking forward to sharing food with my new friends.

If things don’t work out at the mission, there aren’t many more options for these guys.  As Diane and I left we drove down the street behind the mission where men sat on the ground, some with black plastic garbage bags, one or two with rolling suitcases.  It was blisteringly hot and the men looked wilted and exhausted.  If they couldn’t get a bed inside, they’d probably sleep right where they now sat. As we passed by, I couldn’t help but wonder what their stories were.

Hoping for shelter in Trenton

A young woman asked me once why I teach in prisons and go to places like the Rescue Mission.

“My God,” she said, eyes wide, “Do you know what it’s like in these places?  Do you know what these people are like?”

“Sure, I do,” I said.  “They’re just like me.”

I was in England recently, where there is an ongoing debate about how much folks are drinking.  If you Google “binge drinking” and “UK” a depressingly long list of sites pop up.  The Brits are trying a number of things to curb the epidemic – physicians now ask their patients directly about their drinking habits, cheap booze prices are under threat, bars and pubs that stay open after 11pm will have to pay a “law and order” fee due to concerns over the levels of drink-fueled disorder, and a shocking (and rather good, I think)  PSA campaign is underway.

Poster from the recent anti-binge drinking campaign in the UK

Will all this work?  Probably not, I’m sad to say.

And here’s a good example of why — while I was sitting in the Cotwolds, sipping an excellent cup of tea, I saw a show on the telly, as they say.  In it, a British actress/personality was on a panel with three other women, chat-show style.  I wish I could remember her name, but I can’t…Jennie, or Janey or something like that.  I recognized her face, but that’s all I’m afraid.  (If anyone recognized her or the clip from reading this I’d be grateful if you’d let me know.)  She talked about how she had gone through a hideous divorce some years before and found herself drinking out of all control.  She was, she said, in complete denial about it and would never have told her doctor how much she was really drinking, not even if he asked her directly.  She was so much in denial she drank in secret, until she passed out, hiding bottles everywhere, even in boxes of clothes detergent powder.

I doubt she drinks for the flavor.

“Right,” said her panel-mate, “That’s precisely the problem.  Alcoholics won’t admit they’re alcoholics.  That’s part of the pathology of the disease.”

“Hold up, now!” said, Jennie/Janey.  “I wasn’t an alcoholic.”

Blank looks all round, including, no doubt, on my face.

“No, not an alcoholic” she said.  “You have to understand that.  It wasn’t as though I drank because I liked it.  I never liked the taste of alcohol.  Good heavens.  I want to make that clear.  I was NOT an alcoholic. I never drank because I liked it.”

More blank looks, until someone finally said, “Well, but if you were hiding bottles and drinking to oblivion…”

“It was a bad time.  I don’t drink that way anymore.  Honestly I don’t.  And I never liked alcohol.  I was drinking because I wanted to stop the pain.  I just couldn’t stand how much it hurt.  But I was never an alcoholic.”

Oh dear, I thought, is alcoholism still so little understood? Look, maybe Joanie/Janey isn’t/wasn’t an alcoholic.  Not for me to say.  But I will say this: Alcoholics don’t drink because we love alcohol, although some of us might.  We drink for the effect of alcohol, not the slight hint of blueberry under-note in that impudent little Cabernet.  Back in the day, I would have drunk pond scum if it got the job done.

Alcoholics drink because we want to be prettier, smarter, funnier, more confident, and alcohol makes us feel that way.  Deludes us, in other words.  We drink because we want to stop the pain, enhance those hilarious high-jinks (you know, like projectile vomiting and pissing ourselves, and tossing furniture about the room). I drank because once I took the first drink I couldn’t stop — or at least not for long.  I drank in part because I hated my life, and hated myself, and wanted to stop the crushing anxiety and panic and depression… all of which I had because I was drinking alcoholically.  But of course you couldn’t tell me that.  I had a list of justifications and excuses long enough to circle the graveyard.  Long enough to hang myself with, which is exactly what both my brothers did.  I don’t think they drank because they liked the taste either.

Alcoholics drink in spite of the consequences.  Simple as that.  And alas, for many of us, we won’t stop at all…drinking will kill us.  For others, we won’t stop until something unspeakable, something horrendous, happens … like the young woman I met who killed someone while driving drunk … or the man I know who beat his son to a bloody pulp while under the influence… or the woman who fell asleep drunk with a cigarette in her hand and burned down her house, with her three children inside.  (She escaped, but wishes she hadn’t.)  Or the countless others who ruined their marriages, the careers, their health, their reputations.

People with drinking problems don’t think straight.  We get into cars drunk, we hit our kids, we pick fights, we may even write obscene words on our fingernails when going to court for probation violations.

I'd say this photo would be considered a 'consequence,' wouldn't you?

The bottom line is — if you’re drinking in spite of the consequences, you’ve got a problem.  Get help.  You’re not alone.  Here’s the good news — You don’t have to feel this bad again.  I promise.

I am thrilled to announce I’ve begun creative writing workshops in Princeton – last Saturday of every month! I invite you to join us. Although we’re just beginning. We are already a group of friendly, supportive writers — some just starting on the writer’s journey, others already well published.  Fiction, memoir, poetry, flash fiction, creative non-fiction, there’s something for everyone.

Sharpening the Quill Workshops are based on a creative writing course I developed for the American University in Paris, back when I lived in France.  I also taught it at WICE in Paris, and have adapted bits of it for the Geneva Writers’ Workshop, and various other workshops. In France the course was popular, with a waiting list to get in, and turned out some great writers, among them Joanne Proulx, author of Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet.

Now, I have found a wonderful new teaching ‘home’ at Camillo’s Cafe in the Princeton Shopping Center, 301 N. Harrison Street, Princeton, New Jersey.  We meet in the private ‘party’ room, overlooking the garden.  We begin at 10:00, work until noon, when we break for lunch (cooked by Chef Camillo himself), and then regroup at 1:00, for reading and critiquing until 3:00.  You can get more details on my website’s teaching page.

I’m excited by this new endeavor for a couple of reason — first, teaching has always kept my own writing fresh, and second, I believe a writer needs a community of support.  We writers live isolated lives, and often we’re alone in our own heads too much.  Having people who understand what we’re trying to accomplish and who support our efforts is invaluable.

And as part of my class preparation, I read a ton of books on craft.  Here are a few I’ll be drawing on in the coming months:

Writing Fiction, by Janet Burroway

From Where You Dream by Robert Olen Butler

One Year to a Writing Life by Susan Tiberghien

Archetypes for Writers by Jennifer Van Bergen

The Pocket Muse by Monica Wood

Naming the World, ed. by Bret Anthony Johnston

The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler

Word Painting by Rebecca McClanahan

The Writer’s Life by Eric Maisel

The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri

And SO many more…. (the shelves are groaning with writing books old and new!)

There’s room at the table for a few more folks.  Doesn’t matter where you are on the path, we all have much to learn and much to offer.  Send me an email, or post a comment with your email address and I’ll send you a registration form.

In the meantime, here’s a writing prompt to get you going:

Look at this Edward Hopper painting:

"Hotel Room" by Edward Hopper

Set a kitchen timer and write, for the next 20 minutes (or more) about this image.  Who is the woman?  What’s happened?  What’s about to happen?  What does it smell like in this room?  What are the sounds?  What’s seen, and what’s unseen?  What do the sheet feel like?  (Use sense details — smell, sound, taste, touch, sight — and be specific!)

Look forward to seeing you on July 31, and/or August 28…September 25 …..