"Some say it's just a part of it;
we've got to fulfill the book" (Bob Marley)
At no time had I attempted more than a certain portrait, or a presentation of a certain spirit. If I have forced the meaning ... of the author (which I do not grant without queery [sic]) I have not forced it beyond the character of the author. ~ Ezra Pound
What, exactly, is the "character" of an author? One may speak of style, certainly, and even a sort of uncanny autobiographical element that creeps into the text. Take, for example, Donna Tartt's overwhelming display of nearly bygone virtuosity. She writes, in a section of her text, The Goldfinch, that made me nod my head in agreement, as though the words were her own and not the inner mental meanderings of her opiate-addicted main character:
But depression wasn't the word. This was a plunge encompassing sorrow and revulsion far beyond the personal: a sick, drenching nausea at all humanity and human endeavor from the dawn of time. The writhing loathsomeness of the biological order. Old age, sickness, death. No escape for anyone. Even the beautiful ones were like soft fruit about to spoil. And yet somehow people still kept fucking and breeding and popping out new fodder for the grave, producing more and more new beings to suffer like this was some kind of redemptive, or good, or even somehow morally admirable thing: dragging more innocent creatures into the lose-lose game. Squirming babies and plodding, complacent, hormone-drugged moms. Oh, isn't he cute? Awww. Kids shouting and skidding in the playground with no idea what future Hell awaited them ... (p. 476)
I would be a liar if I said I'd never experienced those same thoughts / revulsions. This is, of course, classic existentialism, fully expressed in the "heat of the moment," as it were. So do we separate author from character(s); reader from author; dramatic expressions from personally held views? I simply can't say.
The "dry spell" in my writing that I am now experiencing is not due to lack of external stimuli (perhaps too much). It is that my Romantic vision of the great writer has not gone away. Irving Babbitt -- whose work I read about 30 years agao -- still sticks in my craw. My old Professor Bloom, a self-proclaimed "Jewish Gnostic," tried his best to turn Yahweh (Jehovah) into a literary character equal to Agamenmnon or Iphigeneia. Such foolishness is, at best, ignored; but if one must read (for your syllabi, this nut-case) , I'l quote Bob Marley: "emancipate yourself from mental slavery ..."
We live now in an age in which anyone can get published instantly. And the politically correct response to the "mushroom" works (for they pop up like those wonderful fungi after storm) -- unless the work in question is a neo-Aryan screed or a call for jihad -- is to do exactly what the baby-lovers in Tartt's unforgettably sarcastic section effuse: "Oh, isn't [s/he] cute. Awww." There is nothing admirable about lack of talent, which is why I avoid like the plague so-called "slams" (poetry and writing). A writer is not -- goddamnit! -- a performer but a quiet visionary, one who criticizes life while loving it at the same time.
I took a walk in the woods this morning with my girlfriend (she is quite an intellectual herself) and we marveled at how childish we'd become. We fed the ducks and the geese, admired a hidden stream that you'd need x-ray eyes to find, so deeply hidden was it in the verdure. We watched a blue heron catch fish -- inevitably pulling out our phones to take photos (yes, even the most nature-loving of us invade that territory with our diabolical "smart" phones, caveat lector); and we, of course, fed the little critters with crackers and stale bread that we'd brought. So what is there really to write about? My experience was of evolution at its current stage -- laughing, as I did, at the antics of the geese and ducks -- nevertheless, I saw nothing but life emerging: beautiful, innocent, lively, ready for a row (geese can become quite unsociable). My girlfriend (bless her sweet heart) on the other hand saw the -- ahem -- hand of god at work in all of this. But there is no need to put god in the center of a perfectly realized natural event. This is not to say that we remain stone-cold in the face of natural beauty, no less than I remain immune to the beauty of The Beatles singing "Hey Jude" (as I write this), nor fail to shed a tear -- as I did last night when I read, to my girlfriend, Santayana's poem on reaching the age of 50. As the late, great Christopher Hitchens wrote: "We [atheists] are not immune to the lure of the wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare, and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books" (God is not Great, p. 5).
The world assaults us on all sides with beauty: a hidden stream; a woman slowly removing her Herrickian silken clothes; a piano solo by Bobby Timmons, a poem like this one:
I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
~ Ernest Dowson, Cynara
So to answer my own semi-rhetorical question: the character of an author ranges from opportunistic spouters of whatever sells, to genuine artists like Donna Tartt. But some dwell in the middle: this guy - Yours Truly -- who, like the character in Le Fanu's tale -- has the red bright eyes always upon him, demanding ...
Well, if I knew what was demanded of me, I'd write the motherfucker. Until then, I spout what I spout ...
* * * * *
I feel forced, often, to write what needs to be heard: a critique of Mormonism (a waste of time); a defense of the the numerous neglected, oppressed and suppressed young ladies in the Middle Eastern countries, who will never exerperiece the life-changing thrill of a first kiss ... The women and children getting their arms and legs chopped off by Boko Haram in nothern Nigeria ... the young men getting mutilated (sexually), and burned alive by these followers of the One God.
But when one snorts klonopin and tops it off with a nice strong beer, these things tend to fix their disapproving gazes far away, like on the other side of my wall, where Gimli and Legolas are now dancing a waltz.
In closing, all you "clean" people out there, who've never taken the smokey path of mental dissolution while rockin' out to the Dead -- you know not the glories of mental exit.
Sometimes I wonder if I've been forced, as Ezra Pound put it, beyond my character as an author. But, briefly -- before I do another line -- allow me to get recondite for a moment. The Greek term kharaktêr (Hebrews 1:3) often translated as "express image," is one of the key the Catholic texts supporting the dogma of the Trinity, if one cares to do the the homework (and asuming one knows koinê Greek [going to extinction in America]) ... Anyway, before this pill-addled drunk runs out of steam, I shall give you this.
But the Son of God is the Logos of the Father, in idea and in operation; for after the pattern of Him and by Him were all things made, the Father and the Son being one. And, the Son being in the Father and the Father in the Son, in oneness and power of spirit, the understanding and reason (nous kai logos) of the Father is the Son of God. But if, in your surpassing intelligence, it occurs to you to inquire what is meant by the Son, I will state briefly that He is the first product of the Father, not as having been brought into existence (for from the beginning, God, who is the eternal mind [nous], had the Logos in Himself, being from eternity instinct with Logos [logikos]); but inasmuch as He came forth to be the idea and energizing power of all material things, which lay like a nature without attributes, and an inactive earth, the grosser particles being mixed up with the lighter. (Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians 10 [ANF 2]).
Such mythology is maudlin. The fact that it brings tears to my eyes means nothing. There is nothing special about humanity except to say that Janet Koh sucks; that nature and animals deserve our protection; that there is nothing more satisfying than monogamy: Kurt Cobain (rest his soul) often attested to the erotic fulfillment of monogamy (even with Courtney Love; imagine that!). In all fairness, there is not a single sentence in the Book of Mormon that remotely suggests polygamy. Yet we know, as historical record, that both Joseph Smith (still looking for those gold plates, bossman) and Brigham Young not only condoned but encouraged (especially the latter) the practice of marrying little chickadees still playing with their dolls and learning how to braid their hair (cf. "Mormonism and Polygamy" on wikipedia.org). Yet I must play fair, and in the spirit of intellectual honesty I will give you this:
Wherefore, my brethren, hear me, and hearken to the word of the Lord: For there shall not any man among you have save it one wife; and concubines he shall have none" (Jacob 2:27).
I don't feel like writing anymore, except to leave you to (hopefully) sing this with me:
"Won't you help me sing,
Redemption songs,
It's all I've ever had ...
These songs of freedom." (Bob Marley)
