As I'm sure everyone has noticed, I have not posted anything in several weeks. This is partially by design and partially by necessity.
In recent weeks, my impulse to write has ebbed. I am not ashamed to say it. To the contrary, I think it is only natural for me to take a long break after writing almost 3000 pages over the past 20 months. Spring and summer traditionally tend to weaken my urge to write. They always have. I've also been coping with crippling migraine headaches lately. But my reasons for curtailing my output now are more substantial than that.
About two months ago, I literally ran out of money. So for the last two months, I have scrambled to find ways to stave off my inexorable creditors. That cut into my writing routine. It also sapped my energy, since commercial venturing took my best time from me. In the past, I had all the time I needed to write. Now, I spend my freshest hours pursuing economic stability. That denies me my most creative time.
I do not regret this in the least. I have doggedly attended this blog since before Obama became President. I think I have largely addressed my life philosophy. I have done what I set out to do. This blog encapsulates my views on so many subjects. It is a living testament. I am proud of it.
On the other hand, I am not exactly the same person I was when I began writing this blog. In some ways, I feel like I am no different than I was on September 11, 2008. But so much has changed in my life since that day. While my core thoughts on many subjects have remained consistent throughout that time, my circumstances and life expectations have changed dramatically. I see no need to continue addressing issues that I have largely addressed in the past. I don't like repeating myself.
Yet my blog will never die. I will return to it from time to time in order to mark evolutions in my thinking. I do not want to obsess about it as I once did. Rather, I want to use my blog to annotate my life when I must. I want to control my blog, not the other way around.
I say that to clear the way for a larger endeavor. If my blogging experience instilled anything in me, it was writing discipline. When I get an idea, I follow through with it. I commit it to paper. And then I've captured it for all time. Applying that discipline, I assembled a formidable array of familiar themes that will guide me in future projects. I plan on writing three large pieces in the coming few years. In large part, they will draw from thematic material I have already explored in this blog. In that sense, I have already written the large pieces: You have already seen their roots right here in this blog. I just need to fill in the blanks now.
I have no intention to ever stop writing for good. I can't. I must do it. Convention appalls me too much to merely go through life in silence. No matter the literary medium I choose, I promise to continue critiquing, observing, satirizing, reminiscing, lamenting, analyzing and philosophizing.
I apologize to all those who have grown accustomed to daily posts. I have simply reached a new phase in my life and it is time for me to modify my writing accordingly. From today on, I plan to post on recent news when I can. I also plan on jotting down the occasional satire when something really tickles me. But I will conserve my main efforts for my larger works. Even then, I will give myself a very long break to reflect on what I plan to do before I sit down to write again.
I am grateful to everyone who has taken the time to read my posts. You have gained an insight into how I think and how I perceive the world. And when my larger works appear, you will feel yourself in familiar territory. It all stems from this source. This is my testament. Thank you for sharing it with me.
Oesterhoudt
Showing posts with label Literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Literature. Show all posts
Monday, June 7, 2010
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
HEALTH CARE REVOLUTION : MY LONG-TERM PLAN
A REFLECTION
I’ve been doing some promoting lately. Whenever I meet people, I try to get a feel for their social leanings. If I think they might like my blog, I tell them about it. I’m even thinking about advertising in some newspapers. But I know everyone won’t like it. In fact, I like that idea.
When I talk to people who have spent some time reading my catalogue, I hear familiar refrains: “Do you plan on writing anything for mass consumption? Do you plan to write a novel? A play? A book?” In truth, I have never wanted to be popular. I don’t want to be John Grisham. I don’t want to compromise my ideas in order to write something that is “conventionally pleasing.” I don’t want anyone to transform my writing into Hollywood adaptations, and I don’t care if Oprah Winfrey finds my essays compelling. She’s welcome to enjoy my essays; I just don’t thirst for her recognition. That’s all I mean. She’s welcome to like my writing. But nothing will make me write a lighthearted romantic comedy, like the New York Fire Department Captain who wrote a feel-good novel in his spare time. I just can’t do it. It’s hard for me to be frivolous. It makes me sick, actually.
Still, I have larger designs. For one, I want to compile all my satires into a “pamphlet.” I think my satires all dwell on consistent themes. They all mock powerful people and their pretentious, condescending arguments. I plan on editing my satires and organizing them in such a way that they could be read as a “book.” My essays travel over more varied ground, but I think they, too, could be organized into a relatively consistent format. In this sense, I think my blog already qualifies as a “book.” I just need to hash the ideas together and bind it up.
Second, I want to write a longer piece. I really like novels. But I don’t like English and American novels (with some exceptions, of course). I like German and Russian novels. There is an immense difference. German and Russian novels generally have loose, skeletal plots that merely provide a framework for dark, philosophical expositions. English and American novels generally go heavy on plot and light on philosophy. I’ve written before that I don’t like plot. If I want plot, I’ll read a newspaper or police report. When it comes to literature, I want something more, something challenging and daring. Sappy love stories don’t interest me, nor do swashbuckling commercial success stories. These are conventional stories. When I talk about love and commercial success, I’m usually mocking them. Dostoevsky and Kafka did, too.
So what kind of novel will I write? For two years, I’ve been mulling a novel about a new American revolution. What better way to make mordant observations about society than through a fictional revolution? I’ve said before that revolutions excite me because they represent times during which old orders collapse and the law fails. They spark radical changes in values. They make powerful people scurry and run. They force people to rethink their lives. That’s exciting. By the same token, I’ve written that revolution will not happen in America because too many people are “relatively pleased” with their lives; they don’t want to think differently. After all, enough people have homes, cars and televisions to risk everything for a shot at “something better.” So they let existing power structures persist, no matter how subtly pernicious.
But this broaches a question: What would push Americans over the edge? What would make Americans risk everything to reshape their society? What kinds of pressures and injustices would spur significant numbers to risk armed revolt against the old order? And how would the old order respond to those revolts? I always thought health care would be a good metaphor here. I envisioned an America—maybe forty years from now—in which wealth and power disparities grew to intolerable levels. In this unequal society, some people have access to miraculous medical treatments, while others die on the streets. I thought injustices involving health care would provide a good literary vehicle for a “fictional revolution.” Eerily, I thought these things long before the current “health care crisis” and the irrational debate it has unleashed in recent months.
My novel will pursue familiar, satirical themes. I often write about health care on my blog because it is a proxy for numerous subsidiary themes, including inequality, fairness, justice, death, money, commerce, profit, American life, hypocrisy and compassion. It touches upon life, yet it intertwines with money and profit. It touches upon our deepest humanity, yet it is also a commodity. No matter how you slice the health care issue, some people live and die because they can’t pay. That provides plentiful opportunities for commentary. Emotions run high in the health care debate because people worry about getting sick and dying. They become irrational when they think government might impede their access to a doctor, or because government tolerates a system in which they cannot afford to ever see one. I can envision emotions running so high over this issue, in fact, that revolution could ensue. We just need the right internal and external circumstances to make enough people angry and desperate. My novel will describe those circumstances.
I don’t think my novel will be gloomy. I often worry that readers find my writing too bitter and too scathing. Yet every time I try to make it less biting, I find I do not fully address the issue. I write satire because I see hypocrisy and injustice everywhere. You can’t take down injustice and hypocrisy with kid gloves. My writing might appear bleak because it reflects a bleak world. I don’t intend to depress when I write; I follow the old Russian tradition in this regard: I laugh through tears. I find so many injustices perversely funny. Maybe I’m unusual for thinking that. I don’t know. But I know I don’t intend to be gloomy. I can control my intentions, and every time I write a satire, I intend to provoke laughter about something that is really quite abominable about our society. When I write my novel about “the American revolution of 2048” it will aim to provoke laughter as much as it provokes a good, hard look at our society.
Anyway, these are my long-term plans. In the meantime, I plan to continue posting on the blog as I always do. This blog is my laboratory. Here new ideas spring forth and bubble up to the surface. Sometimes they are rough and undeveloped. Other times they pick up where an earlier one left off. No matter what, they are insights into my mind. I am proud that I have created this testament. I have reduced so many thoughts to writing over the past year. If I hadn’t, who knows how many thoughts would simply have vanished into time? Thoughts tend to do that. If you don’t seize them and develop them, they escape you. My blog helps me rein them in and keep them. After all, life is one immense distraction. It can blow you off course before you even know what’s happening to you.
Thanks to everyone who tunes in to read my latest stuff.
I’ve been doing some promoting lately. Whenever I meet people, I try to get a feel for their social leanings. If I think they might like my blog, I tell them about it. I’m even thinking about advertising in some newspapers. But I know everyone won’t like it. In fact, I like that idea.
When I talk to people who have spent some time reading my catalogue, I hear familiar refrains: “Do you plan on writing anything for mass consumption? Do you plan to write a novel? A play? A book?” In truth, I have never wanted to be popular. I don’t want to be John Grisham. I don’t want to compromise my ideas in order to write something that is “conventionally pleasing.” I don’t want anyone to transform my writing into Hollywood adaptations, and I don’t care if Oprah Winfrey finds my essays compelling. She’s welcome to enjoy my essays; I just don’t thirst for her recognition. That’s all I mean. She’s welcome to like my writing. But nothing will make me write a lighthearted romantic comedy, like the New York Fire Department Captain who wrote a feel-good novel in his spare time. I just can’t do it. It’s hard for me to be frivolous. It makes me sick, actually.
Still, I have larger designs. For one, I want to compile all my satires into a “pamphlet.” I think my satires all dwell on consistent themes. They all mock powerful people and their pretentious, condescending arguments. I plan on editing my satires and organizing them in such a way that they could be read as a “book.” My essays travel over more varied ground, but I think they, too, could be organized into a relatively consistent format. In this sense, I think my blog already qualifies as a “book.” I just need to hash the ideas together and bind it up.
Second, I want to write a longer piece. I really like novels. But I don’t like English and American novels (with some exceptions, of course). I like German and Russian novels. There is an immense difference. German and Russian novels generally have loose, skeletal plots that merely provide a framework for dark, philosophical expositions. English and American novels generally go heavy on plot and light on philosophy. I’ve written before that I don’t like plot. If I want plot, I’ll read a newspaper or police report. When it comes to literature, I want something more, something challenging and daring. Sappy love stories don’t interest me, nor do swashbuckling commercial success stories. These are conventional stories. When I talk about love and commercial success, I’m usually mocking them. Dostoevsky and Kafka did, too.
So what kind of novel will I write? For two years, I’ve been mulling a novel about a new American revolution. What better way to make mordant observations about society than through a fictional revolution? I’ve said before that revolutions excite me because they represent times during which old orders collapse and the law fails. They spark radical changes in values. They make powerful people scurry and run. They force people to rethink their lives. That’s exciting. By the same token, I’ve written that revolution will not happen in America because too many people are “relatively pleased” with their lives; they don’t want to think differently. After all, enough people have homes, cars and televisions to risk everything for a shot at “something better.” So they let existing power structures persist, no matter how subtly pernicious.
But this broaches a question: What would push Americans over the edge? What would make Americans risk everything to reshape their society? What kinds of pressures and injustices would spur significant numbers to risk armed revolt against the old order? And how would the old order respond to those revolts? I always thought health care would be a good metaphor here. I envisioned an America—maybe forty years from now—in which wealth and power disparities grew to intolerable levels. In this unequal society, some people have access to miraculous medical treatments, while others die on the streets. I thought injustices involving health care would provide a good literary vehicle for a “fictional revolution.” Eerily, I thought these things long before the current “health care crisis” and the irrational debate it has unleashed in recent months.
My novel will pursue familiar, satirical themes. I often write about health care on my blog because it is a proxy for numerous subsidiary themes, including inequality, fairness, justice, death, money, commerce, profit, American life, hypocrisy and compassion. It touches upon life, yet it intertwines with money and profit. It touches upon our deepest humanity, yet it is also a commodity. No matter how you slice the health care issue, some people live and die because they can’t pay. That provides plentiful opportunities for commentary. Emotions run high in the health care debate because people worry about getting sick and dying. They become irrational when they think government might impede their access to a doctor, or because government tolerates a system in which they cannot afford to ever see one. I can envision emotions running so high over this issue, in fact, that revolution could ensue. We just need the right internal and external circumstances to make enough people angry and desperate. My novel will describe those circumstances.
I don’t think my novel will be gloomy. I often worry that readers find my writing too bitter and too scathing. Yet every time I try to make it less biting, I find I do not fully address the issue. I write satire because I see hypocrisy and injustice everywhere. You can’t take down injustice and hypocrisy with kid gloves. My writing might appear bleak because it reflects a bleak world. I don’t intend to depress when I write; I follow the old Russian tradition in this regard: I laugh through tears. I find so many injustices perversely funny. Maybe I’m unusual for thinking that. I don’t know. But I know I don’t intend to be gloomy. I can control my intentions, and every time I write a satire, I intend to provoke laughter about something that is really quite abominable about our society. When I write my novel about “the American revolution of 2048” it will aim to provoke laughter as much as it provokes a good, hard look at our society.
Anyway, these are my long-term plans. In the meantime, I plan to continue posting on the blog as I always do. This blog is my laboratory. Here new ideas spring forth and bubble up to the surface. Sometimes they are rough and undeveloped. Other times they pick up where an earlier one left off. No matter what, they are insights into my mind. I am proud that I have created this testament. I have reduced so many thoughts to writing over the past year. If I hadn’t, who knows how many thoughts would simply have vanished into time? Thoughts tend to do that. If you don’t seize them and develop them, they escape you. My blog helps me rein them in and keep them. After all, life is one immense distraction. It can blow you off course before you even know what’s happening to you.
Thanks to everyone who tunes in to read my latest stuff.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
REUNITED WITH AN OLD FRIEND : FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
A REFLECTION
I was waiting for a friend in an office two days ago. Unlike most waiting rooms, this one actually had a bookcase with some good books, not just a table stacked with magazines about celebrity sightings. I looked over the titles. I saw familiar names: Kafka, Orwell, Dostoevsky, Bronte, Tolstoy, Woolf.
When I was younger, I loved literature. I dove into books, even did not fully understand them. I really thought literature would make me a better person; I thought it was good to read books. I even took pride in it. I went to school at Columbia in New York. They force you to read “classic literature” there. It’s called the “Core Curriculum.” Many of my classmates resented the compulsion to read so much. I actually enjoyed it; I disregarded the compulsion. I read for myself. I didn’t care what my teachers said; most of them were just graduate students anyway who had to teach the course to get their own degrees. I just conversed with the authors. I even read more over the summer because I liked the themes and ideas I encountered. I wanted to develop them in my head. I didn’t turn off my brain when the school year ended.
All these old impressions came back to me as I looked at that bookcase. A comforting feeling came over me, especially when I saw the name Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky was my favorite author from my first year at Columbia. I dedicated the rest of my college days to reading just about everything he wrote. I read all his classic novels: Crime & Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, The Demons, The Idiot. I also read most of his short stories, like Notes from Underground, The Double and The Gambler. Taken together, these books profoundly influenced me. I even used Dostoevsky’s ideas to measure every other philosopher and writer I encountered. Not surprisingly, I liked philosophers and writers who echoed Dostoevsky, like Nietzsche, Kafka and Foucault. By contrast, I reviled philosophers and writers whose ideas stood in contrast to Dostoevsky, like Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Dante and St. Augustine.
Dostoevsky was my heroic standard. But then I graduated from college and he faded from my mind. Forced to contend with commerce, I had no time to read Dostoevsky, or anyone else for that matter. My concerns simplified: Work, make money, go home, try to make more money next year. There was no need to think or to be creative. You just needed to put in time. I went to law school in an effort to boost my earning potential and finally get over the commercial hump. Of course, that didn’t happen; twentysomethings dream big but do not have life experience to know that nothing ever pans out as anticipated. True, I might know more now than I did when I was 22. I’m just knee-deep in debt for it.
During law school, I read more than I have ever read in my life. But I did not read any Dostoevsky. In fact, I read books that Dostoevsky would have detested. I read books and judicial opinions that posited “truth” and “objective standards,” two things Dostoevsky routinely criticized in his works. At the time, I did not reflect on the dissonance between the doctrines I was learning and the ideas I absorbed earlier in my life. Not until recently did I uncover that dissonance. It took heartbreak, suffering, reversal, humiliation, rediscovery and self-evaluation to recognize the foolishness in seeking “truth,” “objective standards” and “commercial success.” In short, it took life experience to bring my intellectual focus full circle. Law school doesn’t teach that. And in college, you are too young to amass it. Yet after law school, I contended with personal trauma after personal trauma. The ideas I absorbed in college started to make a lot more sense than they did before I had experience. By the same token, life experience made me deeply question the law and its orderly, well-polished claims to truth. Contrary to every statute, case and order, there really were no objective standards in life. Life was mysterious and unpredictable, not codified and discernable. No legal test could measure it or even judge it. Right and wrong were not juridical concepts; they were nebulous power judgments.
I slowly recognized that my “radical” college ideas were not so far-fetched. Satire became my stock in trade. Satire helped me reconcile my old learning with the absurdity I saw all around me. Satire helped me dethrone the law simply by referring to life. In short, satire helped me “get back to Dostoevsky.”
All these things swarmed my mind as I looked at that bookcase. I picked up a book: “Dostoevsky’s Short Works.” For the first time in almost ten years, I was opening a Dostoevsky book. I perused the contents: Notes from Underground and The Dream of a Ridiculous Man. I had always wanted to read The Dream of a Ridiculous Man when I was in college. I never got around to it. I was 21 then. Now, at 31, here was my chance. I began reading. Within seconds, I was transported to another world, a familiar one.
I was ready to read Dostoevsky again. At first, I was somewhat embarrassed when I noticed how much he had influenced my own writing over the years. I recognized at once that I had unwittingly become a Dostoevsky imitator. His sentence structures and ruthlessly satirical attacks on “powerful people” obviously made a deep impression on me. His style won me over when I was young and I internalized it over many years. It has become so engrained that I can’t avoid sounding like Dostoevsky, at least in some ways. I can think of many things I have written in this blog that directly appropriate Dostoevsky’s style. For that reason, as I read The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, I eerily felt as if I was reading something I had written. After that passed, I simply felt content. I was just reading my mentor’s words. I felt as if I had been reunited with a dear friend. It was a wonderful feeling after such a long absence. On the other hand, it made me feel good to know that I had been carrying Dostoevsky’s banner on my blog all along, even if I hadn’t known it.
What is it exactly about Dostoevsky that influenced me so much? There are several key ways. For one, he is darkly satirical. He exaggerates details to mock “powerful people”—especially those with ranks and “high standing” in society. At the same time, he calls his heroes “ridiculous” when in fact they are quite noble. In The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, for instance, Dostoevsky calls the protagonist “ridiculous,” “absurd,” “a madman,” "laughable" and “reclusive.” He is poor, lives in a one-room, partitioned apartment and has hundred-year-old furniture. Everyone laughs at him. But later on, we learn that this “ridiculous man” simply wants to treat others as he would like to be treated. For that, society calls him a blathering fool. That is dark satire—this is a man who has noble sentiments. He is not really ridiculous at all; he is only “ridiculous” in the judgment of a broken society. Society is ridiculous, not the good man it calls ridiculous. Dostoevsky knows irony. His sarcastic misanthropy definitely left a solid mark on me.
Second, Dostoevsky deeply understood that “truth” is an elusive—and judgmental—concept. He was one of the first authors to dig deeply into his characters’ conscious thought patterns. His narration, too, recurrently suggests that “things are not what they seem.” He stresses subjective impression and individual reaction to sense, not objective truth. He uses phrases such as “as if,” “even,” “somehow,” “in a way” and “some kind of” when describing people, events, feelings and recollections. This creates an overall impression that there is no “truth,” but rather only fleeting impressions in the minds of those who “were there” to sense something. The Dream of a Ridiculous Man abounds with these “uncertain recollections.” In fact, the reader consciously feels that everything is dark, muddled and indeterminate. When the protagonist recounts his dream, for instance, we have no idea what “actually happened.” In short, Dostoevsky understood that “truth” is in “the eye of the beholder.” Nietzsche picked up on this, too, when he argued that “there are no facts or truths, only interpretations.” In Dostoevsky’s works, every detail is an interpretation. Dostoevsky leaves it to the reader to put the pieces together—and that, too, is an “interpretation.”
Finally, Dostoevsky always tempered his sarcasm and satire with hope. This, too, influenced my writing. In The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, for example, the protagonist—who once gave up on life because “nothing mattered to him anymore”—ultimately declares: “I will not and cannot believe that evil is the natural condition of people.” He goes on to say: “’Knowledge is higher than feelings…[t]he consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness’—that is what must be fought!” The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (Pevear/Volokhonsky trans., Bantam 2008) at pp. 338, 342. In short, Dostoevsky takes a stand against “juridical, rule-based” approaches to existence. “Feelings” are better than “knowledge,” and “happiness” is better than “the rules of happiness” because “feelings” and “happiness” intuitively flow from within the individual. By contrast, “knowledge” and “rules” must be “learned according to an extrinsic system.” They are “objective standards.” Yet the protagonist is “ridiculous” for making these discoveries. He is “ridiculous” for daring to oppose “the rules of happiness” and deciding simply to be happy. This is the ultimate satire: It is “ridiculous” to be happy and to savor individual intuitions.
These last ideas struck a familiar chord with me. They seem to mirror my entire opposition to juridical thinking and the objective standards that the law attempts to foist on human beings. How true that we live our lives attempting to mold our behavior to “the rules of happiness” rather than allowing ourselves to simply feel happiness in our own way. Rather than “feeling,” we seek always to “know” some extrinsic rule. In so doing, we forget our own emotions and subject ourselves to an “objective standard.” Someone else laid down the “rules of happiness;” we struggle to learn them. When we fail to reach them, we feel bad. In conforming to those rules, we steadily lose our capacity to form our own impressions about happiness. That is tragic.
Yet Dostoevsky’s message is not entirely pessimistic. After all, the “ridiculous man” does not mind being called “ridiculous.” He resolves to fight the “rules of happiness.” In essence, Dostoevsky holds out hope for those strong enough to fight against objective thinking. He offers support to all the “ridiculous people” who think and feel for themselves in a world that discourages individual approaches to happiness and meaning.
That is a beautiful message. After all, I am a “ridiculous man,” too. I actually consider it a compliment, not an insult. Ridiculous people survive though the ages, not those who merely follow the “rules of happiness.” In fact, ridiculous people might even find their own happiness somewhere along life’s way. The important thing is not to mind being labeled ridiculous. Ridiculous people are special, even if they are not “successful.” Dostoevsky knew that, and that’s one big reason he influenced me so much.
I was waiting for a friend in an office two days ago. Unlike most waiting rooms, this one actually had a bookcase with some good books, not just a table stacked with magazines about celebrity sightings. I looked over the titles. I saw familiar names: Kafka, Orwell, Dostoevsky, Bronte, Tolstoy, Woolf.
When I was younger, I loved literature. I dove into books, even did not fully understand them. I really thought literature would make me a better person; I thought it was good to read books. I even took pride in it. I went to school at Columbia in New York. They force you to read “classic literature” there. It’s called the “Core Curriculum.” Many of my classmates resented the compulsion to read so much. I actually enjoyed it; I disregarded the compulsion. I read for myself. I didn’t care what my teachers said; most of them were just graduate students anyway who had to teach the course to get their own degrees. I just conversed with the authors. I even read more over the summer because I liked the themes and ideas I encountered. I wanted to develop them in my head. I didn’t turn off my brain when the school year ended.
All these old impressions came back to me as I looked at that bookcase. A comforting feeling came over me, especially when I saw the name Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky was my favorite author from my first year at Columbia. I dedicated the rest of my college days to reading just about everything he wrote. I read all his classic novels: Crime & Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, The Demons, The Idiot. I also read most of his short stories, like Notes from Underground, The Double and The Gambler. Taken together, these books profoundly influenced me. I even used Dostoevsky’s ideas to measure every other philosopher and writer I encountered. Not surprisingly, I liked philosophers and writers who echoed Dostoevsky, like Nietzsche, Kafka and Foucault. By contrast, I reviled philosophers and writers whose ideas stood in contrast to Dostoevsky, like Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Dante and St. Augustine.
Dostoevsky was my heroic standard. But then I graduated from college and he faded from my mind. Forced to contend with commerce, I had no time to read Dostoevsky, or anyone else for that matter. My concerns simplified: Work, make money, go home, try to make more money next year. There was no need to think or to be creative. You just needed to put in time. I went to law school in an effort to boost my earning potential and finally get over the commercial hump. Of course, that didn’t happen; twentysomethings dream big but do not have life experience to know that nothing ever pans out as anticipated. True, I might know more now than I did when I was 22. I’m just knee-deep in debt for it.
During law school, I read more than I have ever read in my life. But I did not read any Dostoevsky. In fact, I read books that Dostoevsky would have detested. I read books and judicial opinions that posited “truth” and “objective standards,” two things Dostoevsky routinely criticized in his works. At the time, I did not reflect on the dissonance between the doctrines I was learning and the ideas I absorbed earlier in my life. Not until recently did I uncover that dissonance. It took heartbreak, suffering, reversal, humiliation, rediscovery and self-evaluation to recognize the foolishness in seeking “truth,” “objective standards” and “commercial success.” In short, it took life experience to bring my intellectual focus full circle. Law school doesn’t teach that. And in college, you are too young to amass it. Yet after law school, I contended with personal trauma after personal trauma. The ideas I absorbed in college started to make a lot more sense than they did before I had experience. By the same token, life experience made me deeply question the law and its orderly, well-polished claims to truth. Contrary to every statute, case and order, there really were no objective standards in life. Life was mysterious and unpredictable, not codified and discernable. No legal test could measure it or even judge it. Right and wrong were not juridical concepts; they were nebulous power judgments.
I slowly recognized that my “radical” college ideas were not so far-fetched. Satire became my stock in trade. Satire helped me reconcile my old learning with the absurdity I saw all around me. Satire helped me dethrone the law simply by referring to life. In short, satire helped me “get back to Dostoevsky.”
All these things swarmed my mind as I looked at that bookcase. I picked up a book: “Dostoevsky’s Short Works.” For the first time in almost ten years, I was opening a Dostoevsky book. I perused the contents: Notes from Underground and The Dream of a Ridiculous Man. I had always wanted to read The Dream of a Ridiculous Man when I was in college. I never got around to it. I was 21 then. Now, at 31, here was my chance. I began reading. Within seconds, I was transported to another world, a familiar one.
I was ready to read Dostoevsky again. At first, I was somewhat embarrassed when I noticed how much he had influenced my own writing over the years. I recognized at once that I had unwittingly become a Dostoevsky imitator. His sentence structures and ruthlessly satirical attacks on “powerful people” obviously made a deep impression on me. His style won me over when I was young and I internalized it over many years. It has become so engrained that I can’t avoid sounding like Dostoevsky, at least in some ways. I can think of many things I have written in this blog that directly appropriate Dostoevsky’s style. For that reason, as I read The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, I eerily felt as if I was reading something I had written. After that passed, I simply felt content. I was just reading my mentor’s words. I felt as if I had been reunited with a dear friend. It was a wonderful feeling after such a long absence. On the other hand, it made me feel good to know that I had been carrying Dostoevsky’s banner on my blog all along, even if I hadn’t known it.
What is it exactly about Dostoevsky that influenced me so much? There are several key ways. For one, he is darkly satirical. He exaggerates details to mock “powerful people”—especially those with ranks and “high standing” in society. At the same time, he calls his heroes “ridiculous” when in fact they are quite noble. In The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, for instance, Dostoevsky calls the protagonist “ridiculous,” “absurd,” “a madman,” "laughable" and “reclusive.” He is poor, lives in a one-room, partitioned apartment and has hundred-year-old furniture. Everyone laughs at him. But later on, we learn that this “ridiculous man” simply wants to treat others as he would like to be treated. For that, society calls him a blathering fool. That is dark satire—this is a man who has noble sentiments. He is not really ridiculous at all; he is only “ridiculous” in the judgment of a broken society. Society is ridiculous, not the good man it calls ridiculous. Dostoevsky knows irony. His sarcastic misanthropy definitely left a solid mark on me.
Second, Dostoevsky deeply understood that “truth” is an elusive—and judgmental—concept. He was one of the first authors to dig deeply into his characters’ conscious thought patterns. His narration, too, recurrently suggests that “things are not what they seem.” He stresses subjective impression and individual reaction to sense, not objective truth. He uses phrases such as “as if,” “even,” “somehow,” “in a way” and “some kind of” when describing people, events, feelings and recollections. This creates an overall impression that there is no “truth,” but rather only fleeting impressions in the minds of those who “were there” to sense something. The Dream of a Ridiculous Man abounds with these “uncertain recollections.” In fact, the reader consciously feels that everything is dark, muddled and indeterminate. When the protagonist recounts his dream, for instance, we have no idea what “actually happened.” In short, Dostoevsky understood that “truth” is in “the eye of the beholder.” Nietzsche picked up on this, too, when he argued that “there are no facts or truths, only interpretations.” In Dostoevsky’s works, every detail is an interpretation. Dostoevsky leaves it to the reader to put the pieces together—and that, too, is an “interpretation.”
Finally, Dostoevsky always tempered his sarcasm and satire with hope. This, too, influenced my writing. In The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, for example, the protagonist—who once gave up on life because “nothing mattered to him anymore”—ultimately declares: “I will not and cannot believe that evil is the natural condition of people.” He goes on to say: “’Knowledge is higher than feelings…[t]he consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness’—that is what must be fought!” The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (Pevear/Volokhonsky trans., Bantam 2008) at pp. 338, 342. In short, Dostoevsky takes a stand against “juridical, rule-based” approaches to existence. “Feelings” are better than “knowledge,” and “happiness” is better than “the rules of happiness” because “feelings” and “happiness” intuitively flow from within the individual. By contrast, “knowledge” and “rules” must be “learned according to an extrinsic system.” They are “objective standards.” Yet the protagonist is “ridiculous” for making these discoveries. He is “ridiculous” for daring to oppose “the rules of happiness” and deciding simply to be happy. This is the ultimate satire: It is “ridiculous” to be happy and to savor individual intuitions.
These last ideas struck a familiar chord with me. They seem to mirror my entire opposition to juridical thinking and the objective standards that the law attempts to foist on human beings. How true that we live our lives attempting to mold our behavior to “the rules of happiness” rather than allowing ourselves to simply feel happiness in our own way. Rather than “feeling,” we seek always to “know” some extrinsic rule. In so doing, we forget our own emotions and subject ourselves to an “objective standard.” Someone else laid down the “rules of happiness;” we struggle to learn them. When we fail to reach them, we feel bad. In conforming to those rules, we steadily lose our capacity to form our own impressions about happiness. That is tragic.
Yet Dostoevsky’s message is not entirely pessimistic. After all, the “ridiculous man” does not mind being called “ridiculous.” He resolves to fight the “rules of happiness.” In essence, Dostoevsky holds out hope for those strong enough to fight against objective thinking. He offers support to all the “ridiculous people” who think and feel for themselves in a world that discourages individual approaches to happiness and meaning.
That is a beautiful message. After all, I am a “ridiculous man,” too. I actually consider it a compliment, not an insult. Ridiculous people survive though the ages, not those who merely follow the “rules of happiness.” In fact, ridiculous people might even find their own happiness somewhere along life’s way. The important thing is not to mind being labeled ridiculous. Ridiculous people are special, even if they are not “successful.” Dostoevsky knew that, and that’s one big reason he influenced me so much.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
I DON'T CARE ABOUT PLOT
A REFLECTION
I often talk to people about writing. Interestingly, I rarely get consistent advice. Some people say I should write less. Others say I should revise more. Still others think I should take everything I’ve written, put in on paper and turn it into a book. A few have even said I should write a novel. Basically, I can’t possibly accommodate all these suggestions at once. If I did, I would be contradicting myself.
I still learn from these conversations, even if I cannot follow them all. Most importantly, I have learned that “blogging” might not be the best medium for my writing. I turned to blogging without really knowing what it was. I just wanted a regular forum in which to post my thoughts, satires and views. My blog provided the discipline I needed to keep writing, as well as to develop coherent themes. After writing several hundred pages, however, I began to see that most “blogs” are not really “literature-based” or even “text-based.” To the contrary, many “popular blogs” are more picturebook than book. One successful blogger told me that internet users don’t want to read. Rather, he said they want to check, peruse, skim and maybe type LOL. He said that if I wanted more hits, I would have to write much, much less—and post more pictures.
This depressed me. I had more faith in people than that. I believed that people want more from life than to look at pretty pictures and laugh. I know that I like to read provocative essays and stories. I thought that people felt the same way. The day after hearing the successful blogger’s advice, I thought I had failed. But my spirit soon rebounded. No matter how well picturebooks work for the “successful blogger,” they don’t work for me. I declared my independence from “internet thinking.” I apologize to everyone who can’t read a page for more than 20 seconds, but I don’t write twitter-sized bites. If you want vacuous brevity, you won’t find it here. I write here as if I were writing a book. I am laying bare my thoughts about issues I care about. I can’t do that in 140 characters or less. If that makes me unpoetic, so be it. Still, I never feel that I waste words. I might write a lot, but only because there is a lot to say about important questions. Style is essential to me. It just isn’t a 4-word-per-sentence/quarter-page style.
I do not mind being an outlier. I eschew convention in most life matters, anyway. It should not surprise anyone that I defy internet convention, too. Nonetheless, I can be realistic when I need to be. I understand that my content would find better expression in paper form. In that light, I plan on printing out everything I write here, tightening it up and transforming it into a printed package. I like seeing words on paper more than on a screen. That might show my age. But it also shows my belief. I don’t shrink from it. I only have one opportunity to say how I really feel today. When I write, I take that opportunity. In this sense, I am taking the advice to turn my blog into a book.
This does not mean I will close the blog. To the contrary, the blog is my laboratory. Here, I merge my creative impulses with discipline. The blog gives me a ready forum in which to post my thoughts immediately after formulating them. That is a fantastic resource. My ideas first see light on the blog. I let them season here, then decide whether to tinker with them further. Ultimately, the well-seasoned stuff will make it into the book, with revisions and probably some additions. I want my book to present a relatively coherent picture about my views. To that extent, my blog archive is a huge help. In some sense, I have already categorized my thinking in many areas. I don’t like to say I am a categorical person. But I won’t deny that I can “categorize” subjects I like to write about.
I will not write a novel. At least, not a traditional one. I won’t write a novel because I don’t like writing plots. Plots are too ordinary for me. I will only dream up a plot to the extent necessary to create a framework for satire. I have always resisted entreaties to “think up cute stories” or “love tales.” I can understand why some people suggest this, because most “literature” and “entertainment” centers heavily on plot. Audiences take comfort in “exciting stories” about men, women, events, romances, turnarounds, developments and resolutions. Trash novel writers make millions writing insipid plots lines and banal dialogue. They know what people want. Plot pays.
But I need more than plot to get excited about writing. I need messages. I need criticism. I need observations. I need irony. I need opinion. I need ambiguity. If I want plot, I can watch the news or buy the New York Post. Plot is ordinary. It is about who, what, when, where and how. This is not to say that great novelists do not weave messages, criticism and observations into their plots. Dostoevsky did that masterfully. But that’s why they were “great novelists;” they did not just recite a plot line. The difference between “literature” and “plot writing” is the ability to make lasting observations about humanity while entertaining the audience with a good story.
Yet literature does not sell as well because it is harder to read: Grisham will outsell Dostoevsky any day. In that sense, literature mirrors the problems I face contending with “internet convention.” Internet reading parallels “plot reading.” Like plot readers, conventional internet readers want quick, easy-to-follow “factual” reports about people and events. Facebook and Twitter prove this. Most internet writing—and many blogs—discuss what some random individual “does” on a certain day; and there is nothing profound about it. “I went shopping.” “I saw Kim.” “Billy is soooo cute XD XD.” “OMG I have a math test next period.” This is internet writing. It is “plot-like.” It is easy to read. It does not dwell on lasting issues, nor is it intended to make a rhetorical impact. It just tells you what someone is doing. If you don’t know the person, you can be forgiven for saying: “Who the fuck is this and why should I care if they got a haircut today?”
I have the same reaction when I read plot-based writing. What do I care? What does this writer want to say? If I do not have an emotional or intellectual connection to the events being described, there is no reason why I should follow it. Hollywood makes money on plot by interspersing routine events with explosions, good-looking people, violin flourishes and special effects. But without the bells and whistles, most Hollywood plots are instantly forgettable. They don’t really say anything. They just provide easy-to-follow entertainment.
When I write, I consciously try to avoid that fate. I do not want my writing to last only for the brief moment in which I write it. I want it to make a statement on an issue that will be just as important next year as it is today. That is why I don’t write plots, unless I am satirizing conventions that use plot. I acknowledge that my writing may not achieve great “popularity” because it does not spin plots, but that does not bother me. I am content to put my beliefs, impressions and thoughts on paper. I comment on issues that confront us all. In the process, I challenge my own assumptions; in the end I usually conclude that I know very little. I prefer ideas to events, even though events in many cases provide the philosophical fodder for ideas. I take my time in developing ideas. If it takes five pages some days, then I write five pages. I cannot squeeze them into Twitter-sized morsels. That is just the way I write.
As always, I am thankful for everyone who takes the time to savor what I write. I know it takes time. I certainly make no claim to be a great writer, nor do I want fame. I just know that I care deeply about transcendent issues that go beyond “what I’m doing today.” It makes me feel good to inscribe my thoughts upon them, if for no other reason than to say: “This is what I believed; it doesn’t matter whether it’s right.” Whether I attack issues satirically or ponder them in an essay, my attitude toward them is the same. Genuine issues deserve genuine discourse. I use my blog to generate that discourse. I am developing a way to look at the world. I am using my time to understand what I really think. Amazingly, I really did not know that until I started writing in earnest.
I never would have discovered my own thoughts if I just wrote plots. That’s why I don’t like them. They contribute nothing to self-discovery, enrichment or individual personality. They just pass time. And we don’t have much.
I often talk to people about writing. Interestingly, I rarely get consistent advice. Some people say I should write less. Others say I should revise more. Still others think I should take everything I’ve written, put in on paper and turn it into a book. A few have even said I should write a novel. Basically, I can’t possibly accommodate all these suggestions at once. If I did, I would be contradicting myself.
I still learn from these conversations, even if I cannot follow them all. Most importantly, I have learned that “blogging” might not be the best medium for my writing. I turned to blogging without really knowing what it was. I just wanted a regular forum in which to post my thoughts, satires and views. My blog provided the discipline I needed to keep writing, as well as to develop coherent themes. After writing several hundred pages, however, I began to see that most “blogs” are not really “literature-based” or even “text-based.” To the contrary, many “popular blogs” are more picturebook than book. One successful blogger told me that internet users don’t want to read. Rather, he said they want to check, peruse, skim and maybe type LOL. He said that if I wanted more hits, I would have to write much, much less—and post more pictures.
This depressed me. I had more faith in people than that. I believed that people want more from life than to look at pretty pictures and laugh. I know that I like to read provocative essays and stories. I thought that people felt the same way. The day after hearing the successful blogger’s advice, I thought I had failed. But my spirit soon rebounded. No matter how well picturebooks work for the “successful blogger,” they don’t work for me. I declared my independence from “internet thinking.” I apologize to everyone who can’t read a page for more than 20 seconds, but I don’t write twitter-sized bites. If you want vacuous brevity, you won’t find it here. I write here as if I were writing a book. I am laying bare my thoughts about issues I care about. I can’t do that in 140 characters or less. If that makes me unpoetic, so be it. Still, I never feel that I waste words. I might write a lot, but only because there is a lot to say about important questions. Style is essential to me. It just isn’t a 4-word-per-sentence/quarter-page style.
I do not mind being an outlier. I eschew convention in most life matters, anyway. It should not surprise anyone that I defy internet convention, too. Nonetheless, I can be realistic when I need to be. I understand that my content would find better expression in paper form. In that light, I plan on printing out everything I write here, tightening it up and transforming it into a printed package. I like seeing words on paper more than on a screen. That might show my age. But it also shows my belief. I don’t shrink from it. I only have one opportunity to say how I really feel today. When I write, I take that opportunity. In this sense, I am taking the advice to turn my blog into a book.
This does not mean I will close the blog. To the contrary, the blog is my laboratory. Here, I merge my creative impulses with discipline. The blog gives me a ready forum in which to post my thoughts immediately after formulating them. That is a fantastic resource. My ideas first see light on the blog. I let them season here, then decide whether to tinker with them further. Ultimately, the well-seasoned stuff will make it into the book, with revisions and probably some additions. I want my book to present a relatively coherent picture about my views. To that extent, my blog archive is a huge help. In some sense, I have already categorized my thinking in many areas. I don’t like to say I am a categorical person. But I won’t deny that I can “categorize” subjects I like to write about.
I will not write a novel. At least, not a traditional one. I won’t write a novel because I don’t like writing plots. Plots are too ordinary for me. I will only dream up a plot to the extent necessary to create a framework for satire. I have always resisted entreaties to “think up cute stories” or “love tales.” I can understand why some people suggest this, because most “literature” and “entertainment” centers heavily on plot. Audiences take comfort in “exciting stories” about men, women, events, romances, turnarounds, developments and resolutions. Trash novel writers make millions writing insipid plots lines and banal dialogue. They know what people want. Plot pays.
But I need more than plot to get excited about writing. I need messages. I need criticism. I need observations. I need irony. I need opinion. I need ambiguity. If I want plot, I can watch the news or buy the New York Post. Plot is ordinary. It is about who, what, when, where and how. This is not to say that great novelists do not weave messages, criticism and observations into their plots. Dostoevsky did that masterfully. But that’s why they were “great novelists;” they did not just recite a plot line. The difference between “literature” and “plot writing” is the ability to make lasting observations about humanity while entertaining the audience with a good story.
Yet literature does not sell as well because it is harder to read: Grisham will outsell Dostoevsky any day. In that sense, literature mirrors the problems I face contending with “internet convention.” Internet reading parallels “plot reading.” Like plot readers, conventional internet readers want quick, easy-to-follow “factual” reports about people and events. Facebook and Twitter prove this. Most internet writing—and many blogs—discuss what some random individual “does” on a certain day; and there is nothing profound about it. “I went shopping.” “I saw Kim.” “Billy is soooo cute XD XD.” “OMG I have a math test next period.” This is internet writing. It is “plot-like.” It is easy to read. It does not dwell on lasting issues, nor is it intended to make a rhetorical impact. It just tells you what someone is doing. If you don’t know the person, you can be forgiven for saying: “Who the fuck is this and why should I care if they got a haircut today?”
I have the same reaction when I read plot-based writing. What do I care? What does this writer want to say? If I do not have an emotional or intellectual connection to the events being described, there is no reason why I should follow it. Hollywood makes money on plot by interspersing routine events with explosions, good-looking people, violin flourishes and special effects. But without the bells and whistles, most Hollywood plots are instantly forgettable. They don’t really say anything. They just provide easy-to-follow entertainment.
When I write, I consciously try to avoid that fate. I do not want my writing to last only for the brief moment in which I write it. I want it to make a statement on an issue that will be just as important next year as it is today. That is why I don’t write plots, unless I am satirizing conventions that use plot. I acknowledge that my writing may not achieve great “popularity” because it does not spin plots, but that does not bother me. I am content to put my beliefs, impressions and thoughts on paper. I comment on issues that confront us all. In the process, I challenge my own assumptions; in the end I usually conclude that I know very little. I prefer ideas to events, even though events in many cases provide the philosophical fodder for ideas. I take my time in developing ideas. If it takes five pages some days, then I write five pages. I cannot squeeze them into Twitter-sized morsels. That is just the way I write.
As always, I am thankful for everyone who takes the time to savor what I write. I know it takes time. I certainly make no claim to be a great writer, nor do I want fame. I just know that I care deeply about transcendent issues that go beyond “what I’m doing today.” It makes me feel good to inscribe my thoughts upon them, if for no other reason than to say: “This is what I believed; it doesn’t matter whether it’s right.” Whether I attack issues satirically or ponder them in an essay, my attitude toward them is the same. Genuine issues deserve genuine discourse. I use my blog to generate that discourse. I am developing a way to look at the world. I am using my time to understand what I really think. Amazingly, I really did not know that until I started writing in earnest.
I never would have discovered my own thoughts if I just wrote plots. That’s why I don’t like them. They contribute nothing to self-discovery, enrichment or individual personality. They just pass time. And we don’t have much.
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