As I sit here on my computer at 7:17am (when did I start getting up before 11 on my days off?) on a Tuesday morning in September (9/11 I am just realizing) writing my first blog ever, I come to the realization that, as my blog was created ninety seconds ago and has no followers, some writers and certainly myself, write as if no one is looking, as if no one is connecting the words and ideas to the person who wrote them. Certainly people connect Leo Tolstoy to the criticizing of war and the idea of humanity's ability to wage it. Certainly readers of Beloved associate Toni Morrison with a sensitive and poetic understanding of the history of our country's bigotry and cruelty. But, let's pause here for a second and think on that. Racism is BAD, War is BAD. OBVS (text speak for obvious).The themes of these books, while they contain characters of pure evil, are easy to pinpoint and rhetorically analyze...to a certain extent. By no means am I suggesting that the texts are simple to read or understand in full, God (if you believe in that sort of thing) War and Peace confused me just by being 7,000,000 pages long. Instead I am saying, with how much conviction I still don't know--this is a blog, not English 100--some texts fall outside the box of what I like to call Good VS Evil and these books come in ALL sorts of shapes and sizes. The question thus becomes: how do we, or do we, connect the author to a book where his/her ideas are less allegorical, where the point is less identifiable, and where the lesson might not be a pretty one? Again, I am not saying that Beloved or War and Peace are simple books, but their conflicts and themes therein are easy to identify. Some books are just harder to categorize.
When I was a child and only read Stephen King and C.S. Lewis I would sit on my bed at night, staring at my closet for fear and in hope that something was inside. I would ask myself, where do these guys get their ideas? This is really two questions and serves as an introduction to the answer of the questions in the above paragraph. Stephen King writes villains, so does C.S. Lewis. Stephen King has throat slitting, child kidnapping, prison raping, wife beating, world ending, scary-as-fuck-I-never-want-to-see-a-clown-again monsters. C.S. Lewis has a White Witch who gives children candy, and with no hint at being a sexual predator, invites said children to her home. There is a difference in the evil here. Where does Mr. King's mind go that C.S. Lewis's doesn't (the question could be asked in the inverse, but that's not the point here)? King's mind goes into the realm of horror, the grotesque and the realm of literature we refer to as shock. Now, shock can come in many forms, through violence, through sex, and even through ideas (think 1984 as it was published in, um... 1951? I'm not googling it). How do we, as readers, reconcile this man's beastly ideas, his utter adoration for horror and violence, to the man himself? That seems to be the question.
Let's take Ayn Rand now. More than an author, she is the founder, the creator, of her own philosophical discipline: The virtue of Selfishness. Atlas Shrugged, her most famous book employing the unique maxim of selfishness, contains ideas that, at the time and perhaps even now, are not only shocking, but divide readers' opinions with more precision than Moses on the Red Sea. But it is not just enough to disagree, proponents of Rand hold Atlas Shrugged up as the second most important book next to the Bible, while critics of her philosophy find the book to be abhorrent and full of ideas that are pure poison to the cause of human betterment. Now we are getting close to the point. How do we connect the ideas of the book to the author? Obviously there must be room for differing opinions, but what does that mean and to what end are the authors held responsible for their ideas? Rand, as a philosopher, would want to be held explicitly accountable for her words, that is why she wrote them, other writers might be scared of this heavy burden. Not sure about Nabokov, I never met the guy, but if someone came up to him and talked about Lolita as if it were the crutch keeping him afloat in this life, I think the author would say: "why do you take this seriously? I am not saying do this! I'm saying think about this. I'm saying this exists!" Writing is cathartic and this is a work of FICTION!
As of this morning, I have finished editing 99% of my first novel: A Much Older, Wiser Man Than I. And as I read, erase, re-write, page after page, chapter after chapter, I think a lot about accountability. I think a lot about Ayn Rand, George Orwell, Stephen King and C.S. Lewis. And thinking about them has led me to this: if you have a story to tell, tell it. If your story is ugly, tell it. If you are embarrassed by your words, don't be. And lastly, if you are embarrassed by the idea of being held accountable for the ideas in your work, stop writing immediately and get a job in an office building. Where do ideas for books come from? From curious authors who wonder what if...? and are brave enough to spend days, weeks, months, and even years searching for the answer to that question.
In closing (you are never supposed to identify the ending of your essay [or speech--for those of you who know] by saying: in conclusion, in summation, or, the end is this, but this isn't English 100. Sorry Professors Nemeth, Reinhart and Brantingham, you taught me better) I want to bring up an author who, though I didn't mention him at all in this blog, is responsible for it being written: Tom Wolfe (not Thomas Wolfe. Tom Wolfe = modern social satirist and genius. Thomas Wolfe = dead British dude). His books The Bonfire of the Vanities and A man in Full have opened my eyes to what a writer can do. A character can be horrible, honest, racist, pathetic, noble, and a criminal all at the same time. Because books aren't here to show us what we know, or what we know to be wrong, they are here to show us the error in what is wrong. Books show us how the error came to be, what formed it, how it can be changed, and why sometimes it never will be. Good vs Evil bores me. The willpower of good in the face of the temptation of evil, with a firm exploration of the development (and possibly a sympathy for the circumstances of the development) of evil interests me. Make me care about the characters and make me feel them as real people and you've got me.
Within the next few days I am going to begin posting sections of my book, starting with the introduction, which is first ten pages.
