A Curious Excursion with Charles Lamb



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 Diego State University (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 five o’clock 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.

Why I Write

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.