April 2, 2010 at 3:12 P.M. Several attempts to revise essays at my blogs were obstructed. I will try to get to Philosopher's Quest.
March 12, 2010 at 3:40 P.M. An advertisement was attached to this site, illegally, possibly meant to insult me or my writings as laughably unlearned or flaky. You decide.
"The Subconscious Mind Learn How to Jump Into Any Reality You Desire. ... For Real. http://www.quantumjumping.com/ " (Yuk, yuk, yuk.) "John Searle and David Chalmers on Consciousness."
February 25, 2010 at 1:47 P.M. This essay posted earlier this morning has experienced the usual attacks and alterations. I will do my best to make necessary corrections of all inserted "errors."
This essay was written "in a wood near Athens" in 2005 ... well, actually, uptown and about a block from the "A" train. With a little face-lift and push-up bra, I think this text is more timely and looks better today than when it first appeared. Enjoy.
Julian Barnes, England, England (New York: Vintage, 1998).
Helen Vendler, Invisible Listeners: Lyric Intimacy in Herbert, Whitman and Ashberry (Princeton: 2005).
Langdon Hammer, "Overheard Speech," (Book Review), The New York Times, Sunday, October 16, 2005, p. 8.
Why write? People who write because they "have to" find this question bizarre. You might ask yourself: "Why should I bother to breathe?" We just do in order to stay alive. Erica Jong said in an interview that being a writer today is like "becoming a blacksmith or an alchemist" (not a far-fetched analogy!), an expert in an activity that the majority of people no longer value very much. Yet it is the unavoidable fate of some of us to have to write every day. It doesn't matter if publishing opportunities are unfairly denied to us, if our manuscripts are defaced or destroyed, it doesn't matter if we are ignored or insulted. We "ink-stained wretches" will continue to write.
These days carpel-tunnel syndrome is more likely than ink-stains, together with cyberattacks from something called "Doubleclick." New Jersey? Hemingway said that he kept a number of rejection letters taped to the wall of his study. I guess they served as inspiration. Recently, I sent out letters to small publishers to see if any were interested in an essay collection that I am putting together. So far I have received one expression of interest that, I think, amounts to a "yes." I have also received a "no." In neither case can I say why the publisher came to a particular decision. I wonder whether they know why they accept or reject books. ("How Censorship Works in America.")
A number of publishers have not bothered to respond, so who knows? Perhaps they don't approve of my politics or just don't like what I have to say. Viruses, spyware, obstructions (this morning I can't read my work at Lulu) are a daily feature of my writing experience. I wonder whether Shakespeare had these problems? I doubt it. ("Serendipity, III" and "Master and Commander.")
It makes no difference in my case. I will continue to write and put the books out there somehow. It's nice that I now have a commercial publisher, I think, because the book will be more attractive and will be on shelves in bookstores. Anyway, real writers will write no matter what, regardless of discouragement or any other troubles. I am, once again, my own non-commercial publisher, when I can get into my Lulu account, and yes, I am hurt by that. It means that I will continue to write. ("How Censorship Works in America" and "Censorship and Cruelty in New Jersey" as well as "Burn Notice.")
Writing can be a life-saver, especially for the person who has a sense of being misunderstood or not understood at all. You write because you hope that there are others, located elsewhere in the literary landscape, who will recognize the emotions and experiences that you describe and react to them. I never know whether my computer will survive the attacks from one day to the next, nor whether I will be able to renew my security system. Writing, for me, is like living in the trenches of World War I -- long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of terror.
I was just reading a journal entry by Sylvia Plath addressed to her "demon," and I felt that I uncerstood her so well. A writer (or any artist) sometimes needs to fight off self-doubt and persist. The best thing to do, always, is to keep writing and reading while ignoring all insults as well as dismissals. The insults provide boredom; the defacements of my writings produce concern and sadness.
By "react," I do not mean to approve or agree with what I say. Any reaction is better than none -- and a strong reaction, including a negative review -- is preferable to non-comprehension or dismissal. Anything I publish will be subjected to politically-motivated and -financed attacks. Controversy sells. Go right ahead and attack my writings, as long as you do not alter or try to destroy them.
Writers tend to be eccentric or "weird" in their families and social circles. They are the person no one understood at the dinner table, who adopts -- as a surface persona -- the mores and masks of his contemporaries, but who really lives only in what I call the "Forest of Arden." The dull-witted reader and all lawyers -- who are made literal-minded by their unfortunate training -- will immediately ask: "What is the Forest of Arden? And do they need experts on property law?"
Well, the Forest of Arden is that imaginary space conjured by language where writer and reader meet, maybe where all artists meet the recipients of their works. Shakespeare evokes this magical landscape in several of his plays, especially in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "As You Like It." It is that strange territory, which is unique for each of us, where one is likely to run into Huck Finn or Peter Pan, also Prince Hamlet or Sherlock Holmes, or that Vampire from Steven King's Salem's Lot.
Myra Breckinridge discusses cinema with those who are interested, and Sidney Carton shares stories of unrequitted love in a pub. King Kong is always climbing the Empire State building and Fay Wray is always wearing that nightgown.You can play games with David Copperfield; while Oliver Twist steals your wallet. I can sit in a meadow and listen to Jose Marti read his poems and stories for children. Oscar Wilde shares some of his own poems in prose. George Bernard Shaw is making speeches in the "Speaker's Corner" of this landscape. George Orwell and H.G. Wells then take turns in responding. They are happy when you stop to listen or nod in agreement.
Cyrano is always dueling with someone, which can be very annoying. And Caruso sings duets with Callas. Luckily, any real politicians are forbidden entry to this territory, where lawyers, accountants and business consultants are feared much more than wolves in the forest. After all, some of those wolves have tenure and lecture on "Romanticism." Age is non-existent for the residents of this Arden, since all of them are children at heart -- like Wendy. ("A Review of the t.v. Series 'Alice.'")
In the athletes' territory, Joe Louis spars with Jack Dempsey. Some day, Ali will show them who is the greatest. The pick-up basketball games are great. The philosophers have named their grove "The Academy" and they argue all the time, even pretending to understand Hegel -- which is something that not even Hegel does! -- except for Socrates, of course, who insists on being puzzled by all of the others. Marx is planning a revolution. And Wittgenstein sits by himself, or hangs out with the people who like detective stories. "If a lion should learn to speak," he says. But then, in Arden, the lions do speak. ("A Philosophical Investigation of Ludwig Wittgenstein.")
Friedrich Nietzsche wears a "Superman" t-shirt and baggy pants, some big medallions, and likes to knock people down, while doing his own improvisational raps. Don Quixote and Sancho have destroyed all of the windmills. There are still nice cottages in what John Fowles describes as "the echanted grove." You cannot buy them, but you can have as many as you like. And Don Juan is always kissing the ladies behind one of those cottages. Every tree has a "Z" carved into it by Zorro. The most intimate conversations, which are sometimes whispered, take place with poets. All of the poets of the Harlem Renaissance, for example, recite their works. We often must overhear them ...
"John Stuart Mill memorably described poetry as 'overheard' speech. His image calls to mind the solitary poet so absorbed in conversation with himself that we are able to sneak up behind and listen in. Often, this means overhearing the poet talking not so much to himself as to someone who is not there. Vendler's study [Invisible Listeners] concerns a special type of overhearing in which the poet's addressee is not a distant lover or mourned-for child, but a figure more of fantasy, of purely poetic imagination. [Ms. Woolf's "ideal reader"?] Poetry of this kind begins in the poet's craving for a listener, a desire so keen it calls its object into being." (Langdon Hammer)
The Forest of Arden is the linguistic landscape "called into being" by writers and readers, by writers as readers. It is the place where all art lives. In England, England by Julian Barnes, we are asked to imagine an "England where all the pubs are quaint, where the Windsors behave themselves (mostly), where the cliffs of Dover are actually white, and where Robin Hood and his men really are merry. ... "
British Airways cannot "fly you there," only you can really do that. If you need some help to imagine this setting, then rent the film "Finding Neverland." For a mere $13.00, Mr. Barnes will be only too pleased to show you the way to Arden in his interesting story, with an ulterior motive or two. Novelists delight in ulterior motives. The one great requisite in Arden is a child-like quality of innocence which is, sadly, beaten out of most people early in life. One resident of Arden named Alice, tells a curious story of tumbling down a rabbit hole, landing in a dark space where she found a very small door --
"-- 'What a curious feeling,' exclaimed Alice. 'I must be closing up like a telescope.' ..."
That is exactly what happened to Alice. Many of us know what it is like, as children, to close up like a telescope. Sometimes the place that hurts inside seems to grow and we become only the wound, feeling only pain. If we can love someone so much that this love's reality is even greater than the pain, then the love becomes Arden. Love becomes this space of safety and peace, where they cannot hurt us anymore. Wonderland. Never, Never Land. A rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan. "Serendipity, III"?
I will take a deep breath, restart my computer and try (again) to read my work at Lulu, expecting those insulting comments and further computer viruses, alterations or destructions of my writings, as my daily experience of the hatred that deforms so many unfortunate people's lives. The challenge is not to give in to the impulse to respond in kind, while insisting on justice. I will not alter or deface the writings or creative expressions of others. I also will not hesitate to continue to speak freely, regardless of what New Jersey officials and other mafia members think of what I have to say.
"She was only ten inches high, and her face brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size to go through the little door into that lovely garden."
We must become small again to go through that special door to Arden. Mr. Barnes, in his novel, explains why this is so:
"... What held her attention now were the children's faces, which expressed such willing yet complex trust in reality. As she saw it, they had not yet reached the age of incredulity, only of wonder; so that even when they disbelieved, they also believed. The tubby, peering dwarf in the distorting mirror was them and wasn't them: both were true."
The distorting mirror is, of course, the text -- cinematic or literary texts, canvas or stone, even music and theater. You see yourself in this text by seeing me. Hegel is perking up again. And Miss Alice agrees. Like many of us ...
"This curious girl likes to pretend to be two people."
Alas, there is a problem for Alice:
" 'But it's no use now,' Alice thought, 'to pretend to be two people. Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make one complete person.' ..."
Immanuel Kant came to the rescue and explained to Alice all about the noumenal and phenomenal, the way in which we all exist on dual planes anyway. They went off together, then, to chat about philosophy. The two of us make one great person.
We write to invite others to join us in the Forest of Arden. If you have read this entry, then you must be a regular visitor to that territory already. Welcome.
