Fear The Strange Self

some further notes prompted by a question...	back to the book party
Fear The Strange Self

I’ve talked about the writing process as a kind of acting: “being” a character, assuming his or her voice, language, mannerisms, attitudes, choices. This is one of the really fun things about writing fiction, the short story in particular. The novel demands more patience, depth, and realism. But for the day or two it takes to write a short story, it’s possible to “be” just about anyone, no matter how outrageous, foolish, or sinister. It’s playtime, it’s dressing up. It’s putting on a show in the barn. To the extent a character is “unsympathetic” or an anti-hero, it’s a safe place—a fictional place without real consequences—to let out my darker (or sillier) side and let it run around for a while.

To me, all my characters are sympathetic, because the act of writing is necessarily sympathetic. It’s not that I have a big heart—anyone who knows me knows that isn’t true—it’s just that the character would not have arisen if he or she were not already some part of myself. Some characters in Bandidos are morally absent; others are morally priggish: I have both these traits inside me. To let loose a story, and give a voice free reign, the writer has to be willing to admit some strange sides of himself. Yes, I enjoy being a woman. Yes, I like being a thief and a con artist—if only for a few hours.

I believe something similar happens for the reader.

In the act of reading, the reader enjoys the imagination of the writer, but is also indulging his or her own imagination, along with the ability to sympathize, i.e., to indulge some part of him- or herself that resembles the character. In the arena of our common language, the collective imagination, the writer and reader meet, with the reader agreeing to accompany the writer on a sort of journey. “Here, take my hand,” the writer says, “I want to show you some weird things I discovered about us.”

The adventurous reader, like the adventurous writer, is willing to be taken just about anywhere, matching the writer’s playfulness and courage to act out, along with the sense of perspective—this is fiction, it’s only words on a page—which makes that courage possible. The unadventurous reader not only slams on the brakes—“No, don’t take me there”—but actually feels betrayed by the writer: “I trusted you, now look where you’ve taken me.” In most cases the reader just puts down the book, finds the story “disappointing,” the character “unsympathetic,” the language “offensive.” In extreme cases, the reader (a) hates the character, (b) hates the story, (c) attacks the writer, (d) tries to ban the book. When an unsympathetic character bears uncomfortable resemblance to some repressed part of the reader, there is also (e) decide the character is a malicious attack on someone else.

It is a commonplace that people who hate and fear homosexuals actually fear the homosexual inside themselves. Put less crudely, they would naturally like to entertain the freedom, sensuality, and campy fun of being gay—who wouldn’t?—but are afraid to. The homosexual is for them nothing but a mirror showing them their complicated, contradictory, not quite so pretty selves, and the mirror must be rid of, or smashed. I believe a similar dynamic may hold true in the act of reading—though usually with less serious consequences. It is rare anymore that books are banned, or words censored, or writers imprisoned or intimidated. What we have is more like indifference, or perhaps insulation: those kind of books just don’t get picked up to begin with, so no one has a chance of being offended—the marketplace takes care of the rest.

What we have, more than closeted, unadventurous readers, is three decades of timid, unadventurous writing, within a commercial culture which tells people only what they want to hear—generally, the good news—and has the demographic capability to pinpoint exactly which likeable character and which happy ending will please which sort of reader. So we have young women professionals reading about young women professionals—or how they would like to imagine themselves—black women reading about black women, only gays reading about gays, etc. It’s not surprising that readers become lazy, unable or unwilling to imagine a side of themselves—the human condition—that is not part of their marketing profile.

At the same time, it’s not surprising that readers become bored with all of that—as many writers have—and become more adventurous. Maybe I’m being optimistic, but I have to believe the more restrictive our culture and society becomes, the more people will want and need to break out of that, and go looking, once again, for the naked thrill of astonishment which is the primal joy of discovering—and creating—a story.

Martin Amis

We recognize this mental atmosphere [Political Correctness], and its name is anti-intellectualism. Noticeable, too, is the reemergence of sentiment as the prince of the critical utensils. Commentators respond not to the novel but to its personnel, whom they want to “care about”—in whom they want to “believe.” Such remarks as “I didn’t like the characters” are now thought capable of settling the hash of a work of fiction. A critical approach of this kind will eventually elicit what it fully deserves—a literature of ingratiation. And we will then have reached the destiny that Tocqueville predicted for American democracy: a flabby stupor of mutual reassurance. The simultaneous consolidation of “dumbing down” is not an accident. P.C. is low, low church—it is the lowest common denomination.