“In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey.” Thus begins the song “Loser” by Beck. Then the chorus: “So, I’m difficult. I’m a loser, baby. So why don’t you kill me?” I’ve got this tune stuck in my head—for years now. Like the song “No Mercy” by The Stranglers, this music has a powerful affect on me. May I share just one line from it with you? It’s right here in my mental 80’s file: “Everybody has some secret wishes. Just keep your fingers crossed; maybe they’ll all come true. But don’t worry if they just remain a fantasy: life shows no mercy.” Artists innocently pop these tunes out never fully comprehending the influence they have on other people’s lives.
Be that as it may—and I’m not sure if it’s advisable to seek out connections in coincidence—recently, I’ve observed in myself an unrelenting desire to fail: that is, something in me sees beauty in those of us who manage to make it through life with dreams that allow no chance of achieving financial gain or, even more poignantly, no recognition. For such people failure is not the result of their inactivity, but the aim of their activity. They are the kamikazes of the soul, and in the realm of the soul they are heroes. For is it not the act of giving that we revere in people? And does giving not entail loss? Seen in this light, we come to realize that it’s the losers in life who pave the way to heaven.
Years ago on the island of Guam, I met a woman named Maria Yatar. She could be described as a local personality who made her way through the Chamorro fiestas and American ex-pat circles utilizing her skills as a musician, painter and tattooist specializing in Oceanic motifs. With her husband, an ex-merchant marine (tattooed from neck to heels) from San Francisco, she had amassed a collection of over 14,000 photos of tattoos on islanders from Puluwat to Vanuatu. As a 25-year-old waiting to begin his graduate studies (read: a young man who thought he had life by the horns), I was taken aback by the idea that all this labor was undertaken without funding, without the auspices of an institution, and indeed without a plan. “Why?” I thought at the time. “Could this be a strange expression of the love she shared with her ‘husband’—a man to whom, legally, she was not married?” She said she didn’t trust academics. “Okay,” I thought, “but who can you trust?”
And, by the way, who would you rather send off to war—a loser or a winner? If you care to win a war, I say send off winners to fight it: after all, winners are takers and warfare is about taking. Why losers? What good are these people who give themselves to causes that serve no one in particular, but inspire others to follow in their path?
Granted this announcement is a bit late, but beware: what you are reading is the literature of losers. As long as I remain unpublished, without an agent, without income and with no one to read this, I remain at the service of a project which can only end in disaster. And I will be the first to admit that at a certain level it is precisely this forlorn element in such writing that I find attractive. With every word I write, I put off my life one moment longer. Indeed, I am not living as long as I cry out on an island where no one hears me—and like a philosopher once said: if no one can hear me, how can we prove I exist? It’s tragic to witness the demise of a healthy individual: someone of sound body, worldly and aspiring to a degree of erudition, someone who could surely have served a function in society, spawned children and contributed to the community. And yet some of us will read on despite the warnings—some of us will be overcome with passion at the mere thought of another person sacrificing himself to an existence spent in the blackness of the intellect.
And herein lies the secret to this odd phenomenon: not all humans are born with the desire to fight. As a matter of fact, such individuals are proof that, in the evolutionary scheme of things, passivity and pacifism are genetic realities. From an early age we cower before the playground bully; in later years, we lunge at the opportunity to acquire any bit of wisdom that may alleviate the violence around us. We love anything that is impractical: we pursue college majors that send chills up the spines of our suburban moms and dads, we learn dead languages or tongues seldom heard, we become teachers instead of consultants, we become surfers, social workers and counselors, we create what we think is beautiful and rejoice in the idea that something beautiful must be useless. To be a doctor, lawyer or businessperson interests us little, though we are enthralled by the idea of medicine, law and trade.
We live in an inverted world where failure miraculously begets religion, although our allegiance is not to religion: we follow our “hearts,” which is to say that organ that physically doesn’t exist and yet metaphorically relates to a part of our mind some of us heed so dearly. Monotheism is not a genetic trait—it’s another one of those psycho-cultural constructs that swim along the surface of our consciousness. On the other hand, when a human steps into a gas chamber knowing what is to come, or burns himself alive in protest, or undertakes a hunger strike, something deep is happening—something so deep it defies nature: not religion, but pacifism is what divides humanity. If put in a corner, a Muslim pacifist will denounce a Muslim militant and stand by the Christian pacifist, even when there are discrepancies of belief.
Today is Monday. The time is . I should be at work right now—most men my age are—but I’m not: I’m on a train rushing through the hilly landscape of Franconia, looking out my window at the grayness and writing this message that may never be read. Yes, after long and thorough contemplation, I believe I know who I am: I’m a “péon au chommage”—a jobless peon. These words provided the epithet to a delightful film called Les Choristes, about a music teacher in a boarding school in Auvergne after WWII. It’s a story about the trials of a teacher in his attempt to create a choir from a raucous bunch of kids. In the end, he loses his job, but not without changing a few lives.
ReadingThe New York Reviewof Books last week, I stumbled upon an article about Somerset Maugham, which, somewhat serendipitously, referred to the novel The Moon and Sixpence. A light bulb immediately illuminated in the dusty attic of my mind, as the little man ran to a corner and picked up a video I saw at my father’s place last summer: same title as above. The movie, starring George Sanders, pleased me greatly, and not without frustration I’ve been racking my brains lately trying to recall the title.
The story is simple enough: it’s about a London stockbroker who abandons his family to lead the life of a bohemian painter, first in Paris, then in Marseilles, and later in Tahiti. If this sounds reminiscent of Paul Gauguin, you’re correct. The character, as far as I read it, is a composite of Oscar Wilde and Gauguin. He flees the parlors of London for the romance and squalor of Paris, grows a beard, and eventually heads off to the islands to build up a reputation as an upstart and recluse. In Paris, he befriends a Dutch painter (Van Gogh?) and proceeds to consume the man’s life in what appears to be a literary exploration into Social Darwinism.
“I have never failed to read the Literary Supplement of The Times,” Maugham tells us in chapter two. He then goes on to explain his fascination with the struggle writers face to produce their work: “Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experiences he has endured and what heartache he has suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours’ relaxation or to while away the tedium of a journey.” At this point, I couldn’t help from blushing, as I put the book down on the seat and glanced out the window at the landscape rolling by; and then, mulling these thoughts over in my mind, I came to the conclusion that even those writers I’ve perceived as winners—that is, the throng of men and women of letters who appear in The New York Review of Books every fortnight—are losers!
It is simply impossible to get a fair return on the investment of writing. Even with my own experience—wallowing in the darkness of a prenatal career—I’ve caught a glimpse of what my future holds: dissatisfaction and compulsion. I have now sold some 9,000 copies of my book on Californians. Granted, that’s more people than I’ve ever communicated with; and, I must admit, it feels good to have something to offer on Christmas and birthdays. I’ll declare that it was a pleasure to create, although, if I ponder more soberly those months of labor, there were more than a few stressful days. I will not reveal the pittance I received for that toil; and let us have no illusions, I am in no position to retire, let alone eat, on the capital gained by that little paperback.
Do I really mean to convince myself that publishing my novel will solve my problems? Can it possibly be that I think finding an agent will enhance my status as a human being—or turn me into a literary butterfly hovering above the chrysalis that was my unsuccessful past? Don’t answer. I know what lies ahead. I know what I am now, and I know that, no matter what happens, both of these conditions will be occupied by the same person.
Charles Strickland, the sphinx-like character from Maugham’s book, never once during his lifetime sold a painting. At one point, he offered one as collateral on a 200 franc debt. Later that same painting sold for 28,000 francs. What a pity, because for such a sum he could have bought a fashionable flat in London, one with a lovely parlor just like the one—well, like the one he left behind.
Milan Kundera has a particular and beautiful definition for the word vertigo: “an insuperable longing to fall.” It is the ominous pull that beckoned the character Tomas from a place of safety and well-being in Switzerland to return to a life of humiliation, to stand alongside his woman, with whom he shared a catastrophic relationship, in a country that had quite literally failed. Or, to use the words of a guy from LA named Beck: “So, I’m difficult. I’m a loser, baby. So why don’t you kill me?” That’s just what God does… But we keep coming.
In an article about the English author Charles Lamb (1775-1833), I stumbled across the following line: “He turned the reader’s attention to the persona, the unreliable mask of the “I,” not as an immutable fact of literature, but as a tool of the essayist in particular, who, if he or she wants to get personal, must first choose what to conceal.” I believe I’ve come to understand what I’m doing here.
But that’s not what I wanted to say. I wanted to say that I woke up this morning with an idea of his twirling around in my mind: “I love to lose myself in other men’s minds,” he wrote. “If I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me.” Is it not a miraculous occurrence when we read the thoughts of another person? Are we not entering this person while at the same time allowing him or her into us? Indeed, it is precisely for this reason that those who read are never alone, and those who write are drawn to it as a parent is drawn to a child. And what are you feeling now, dear friend, as these words flow across the page with the anodyne caress of opium, leading you further into the shadows of my psyche, further away from your own life and troubles? Magic is the only word to describe this numinous union we share; now you are familiar with my secrets and obsessions, you’ve been coerced into thinking the names and ideas of those who have influenced the very core of my being. By entering my mind, and relinquishing your own freewill, you have entered the collective unconscious and I can only imagine this happens not without a certain degree of curious amusement.
Back to Charles Lamb: “He turned the reader’s attention to the persona, the unreliable mask of the “I,” not as an immutable fact of literature, but as a tool of the essayist in particular, who, if he or she wants to get personal, must first choose what to conceal.” It’s worth repeating: after all, it’s the key to understanding Woody Allen’s movies and Milan Kundera’s books. Indeed, it could be said that their generation made a career out of upholding the first amendment and abusing the first person.
Most of us want to trust art: How are we supposed to feel when these guys declare that the narrator of a story or the protagonist of a film is nothing more than that! When watching Tarzan fight oversized crocodiles, ride charging rhinos and swing from vines, we do not imagine we’re seeing Edgar Rice Burroughs. We don’t even think Burroughs tried out these stunts as background research. We don’t feel like we know him. But when we watch the neurotic, fast-talking writer Harry (played by Woody Allen) in Deconstructing Harry, we think we’re seeing Woody Allen. And I can imagine that more than one reader has pondered the love life of Milan Kundera. How many times has he been asked whether he is an “epic” or “idyllic” womanizer? His wife must love it.
And worse yet, in 1967 how many people believed that Roman Polanski was in cahoots with the devil? Charles Manson (who thought he was Jesus Christ) apparently did, and when members of his cult descended on Polanski’s house and murdered his pregnant wife and friends, something beautiful and abstract became horrifically real. Yes, I use the word beautiful. For my part, Rosemary’s Baby (a movie about witches, murder, rape and the coming of the antichrist) is a beautiful film—of course, I must ask myself why (perhaps I’m demented). At least, I’m able to draw a distinction between art and life, and when I watch a movie, regardless of the content, I understand that it is a movie—indeed, when discussing a movie it usually takes a degree of coercion to get me to see a link with reality, even when there is one.
At the risk of sounding cliché, my interest does not lie in reality, but in truth. I see art as a form of aesthetic communication: that is, an innate quality of humans to see beauty in communication and, more importantly, to mix beauty with communication (that’s why, for me, after having read Thomas Mann, there was no returning to science: reading him was fun and learning became painless). And after watching Rosemary’s Baby, I don’t believe in witches (nor do I believe Polanski believes in witches) and I certainly do not believe there are apartment buildings in New York teeming with warlocks, doing what’s necessary to spawn the antichrist. I do believe, however, that Roman Polanski has a desire to share his opinions about the world, and I trust his intentions are good (although, in the final analysis, this is quite irrelevant).
The question to ask when watching Rosemary’s Baby is not “Do witches exist?” but “What does Polanski (and Ira Levin, the author of the novel) want to communicate to me?” I suspect they want to warn me, in an entertaining way, about the dark side of human nature: the ability of our neighbors to gang up on the odd man out, and of our paranoia that grows out of traumatic experiences. In Polanski’s case, he lived through the Holocaust (having lost his father in Auschwitz), as well as having come of age in communist Poland, a society where spying and betrayal was rampant, and subversives were defenestrated. Add to this the possibility that he is a fan of Kafka and enjoys stories with a nervous, surrealistic edge.
Miloš Forman, commenting on his film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) said, in so many words: “Every film must have a key image, a hook. In Cuckoo’s Nest it was Chief throwing the marble sink through the window and running away. It’s what we all felt in communist Czechoslovakia.” As an American, that was the farthest thing from my mind! Apparently this film was about more than an insane asylum. Nicholson’s lobotomized forehead suddenly looks like a symbol for the de-individualized masses. No wonder Ken Keasy (author of the book) had problems with the film version. The theme of drug experimentation, so dear to an Oregonian hippy, was all but absent. Forman lost both his parents in German death camps.
The first time I was allowed to watch a PG movie was in Lake Arrowhead, California. The movie was Woody Allen’s Sleeper (1973). I was seven years old. In hindsight, I’m thankful to have become conscious of film at a young age. On the other hand, today when I watch the film with its sexual jokes (an “orgasmatron”?) and references to marijuana and homosexuality, I try to recall what affect this had on me as a child (don’t answer that!). I remember the film quite well: I recall thinking the orgasmatron was funny—especially when Woody entered it alone and came out charred—even though I had no idea what it was supposed to be replacing. Moreover, did I grow up to become a perverted gay drug addict? I did fall in love with Berkeley—perhaps this is the reason.
When asked about his earliest memories of film, Woody Allen said: “It’s hard to say. It was probably Snow White or something like that; probably some Disney film.” Thanks to my father, I can say the same: my first time in a cinema was to see Snow White. I was two. Yesterday, I decided to write him and pose the same question. He said: “I can safely say it was ‘Samson and Delilah’—I was four years old. My father took me to see it in New York. Another one that stands out is ‘Phantom of the Opera’—both the Claude Rains 1943 version and the Lon Chaney 1920s version. It must have been a double feature as I had a very vivid nightmare containing scenes from both versions. I know I saw it in New York and I must have been about four or five. I also remember [later in Hollywood] my father taking me and my two best friends at the time to see a double feature of ‘King Kong’ and ‘I Walked with a Zombie.’ I was ten years old. Imagine the impression it had on me at that age, seeing Kong for the first time on the big screen—wow! I was always careful about the movies I took you to see when you were small, being mindful of what powerful images the cinema can conjure up.”
Recently at a party, an American explained that after learning about Woody Allen’s private life, she can no longer watch his films. My roommate at Berkeley hated Walt Disney because of his conservative politics during the fifties. Roman Polanski isn’t allowed back in the States, because he molested a thirteen year old girl (“If you had seen her, you would have thought she was at least eighteen.”). If guilty, I’d never support these people. Luckily I’m not a lawyer. I believe people should be judged by the law; artists should be judged by art. Perhaps the Marquis de Sade was a creative genius—in my opinion, we’ll never know. All we have is his art, and let me be the first to step up and declare: it really doesn’t make for good reading. And when Kundera (in Slowness) goes on for a page-and-a-half lauding the taboo joys of anal sex, (aesthetically speaking) I just don’t follow him. This seems to be a modernist syndrome: apparently, someone declared Sade a philosophical “insider tip,” and ever since, there has been a cult of Latin Quarter intellectuals, winking to him and their friends at every chance they get.
My friend at the party doesn’t differentiate the two—meaning art and the people who produce it—and, in my opinion, as a result she misses out on some excellent art. My writing does not reveal me, but what interests me—what moves me. There is a fine, but crucial, distinction here. When I say: “Just because something is written in a book, doesn’t mean it’s true,” this is a true statement. Of course, you may interpret this as a declaration of pathological mendacity, applicable to the words you’re reading, but this is not the case: my words may be paradoxical, but I trust my reader feels that I’m seeking the truth; and insofar as my limitations allow, my attempt is at being entertaining while imparting information.
How does one write in the first person without speaking of oneself? This is perhaps what Charles Lamb achieved 200 years ago. He was conscious of losing himself in other men’s minds. For is this not the joy of reading Kafka: to mistakenly believe that we are Kafka? Oscar Wilde remarked the strange affect literature has on people—with its ability to take someone’s life in its sinuous fingers and sculpt it against that person’s will. We read of a marriage on the rocks and imperceptibly we are overcome with the sensation that our marriage is deteriorating. We read Kundera’s character Thomas cheating on his wife, over and again, coming home late and lying next to his wife with “the smell of another woman’s sex organs in his hair.” Suddenly we’re struck with uncertainty, mesmerized by the desire to sniff our husband’s hair as he nestles next to us in slumber; and, before we know it, like Teresa, we find ourselves flirting with other men, not necessarily as a form of conquest, but led by an insidious curiosity to know what it’s like, to know why he does it, and—voilà!—our marriage is on the rocks!
When I was in San Diego last year, everyday I drove by a woman working as a parking lot attendant. On about the third day, after receiving many a smile and sensing this was a friendly person, I struck up a conversation with her. As it turns out, she was studying communications at San DiegoStateUniversity (so far so good) and had a six-year-old daughter: “Nova.” “That’s an interesting name,” I said, glancing at my watch. Now I learn this is the name of Charlton Heston’s companion in The Planet of the Apes. I think to myself: “I’m named after a Roman emperor, so why not a character in a movie?” But then I learn that Nova loves cinema, and, as a matter of fact, has a predilection for horror movies like Scream and Friday the 13th (that is to say stuff resembling instructional films used to train combat surgeons). Recently Nova had a problem because her friend Britney went home crying after seeing her Pirates of the Caribbean screensaver (a monkey’s skin ripping away to reveal a deteriorated skull). I made a joke about watching for Nova on the news, and went on my way.
A last word about identity: This seems to me to be non-existent at a personal level—at best we can end up in a minority, and those who discuss it most are just those people who are aware of its absence in themselves. Perusing the classified ads in The New York Review of Books, one is struck by the number of “Diane Keatons” seeking “Woody Allens” with “better looks, but a similar bank account.” Consciously or unconsciously, these people have lost themselves in another man’s mind. Indeed, one has the impression they’re morphing into their source of inspiration. If art has such a powerful affect on people, then we must show a degree of trust when succumbing to it (and prudence when exposing our kids to it). I’ve told you not to believe my words, but to trust that I’m speaking the truth—or, at least, am trying.
How do you thank someone like Woody Allen or Milan Kundera—when they have shared ideas with you that are no less than life-saving, when they have given you some of your happiest moments, sharing what they have learned like a parent or a friend? Do you hunt them down and shake their hand? Do you ask for their autograph? Would that even the balance? And how do you thank Orson Welles or Oscar Wilde—people who are no longer with us? There is only one way to show your gratitude; and that is to give their precious gift back, return it the way you received it: write.
