Losers

“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 3:24 PM. 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.

Reading The New York Review of 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.