In a recent Harper’s interview, Ben Marcus (whose new book, The Flame Alphabet , is due out in January) mentions an idea that I’ve recently become obsessed with. The idea is that every writer has one essential story (also known as the "object") to tell—one fixation that must be explored again and again, revised and retold endlessly but never resolved.

For Marcus, the story is this: “A man is in a hole where bad things are happening to him.”

He explains that he has “to work to mask this basic fact,” work that I assume consists of the changes Marcus mentions earlier to style, tone, story or storylessness. I love this idea. If I could, without embarrassment, I would ask Marcus when he knew this story was the one. And yes, I would ask it with the same high-pitched giddiness a school girl asks about true love.

I’m familiar with the notion that all writers have their particular ticks—distinguishing characteristics that are separate from their particular style or voice. For me, it's hands. Hands show up all over the place in my fiction, touching things as a way of knowing, as reassurance. Why? Because hands are trustworthy, obviously. But the idea that they're part of my one story? Rather than feeling limited, I find the idea absolutely exhilarating. I’m not sure if I can entirely explain why, it feels both reassuring and stimulating. And I don't care at all if this idea is actually true or not; I’m still throwing myself in.

I understand that finding your story/object is a lot like asking the question, What’s wrong with you? Hours of psychoanalysis might actually be helpful in this pursuit. But could it be dangerous to know your story? As much as I’m fascinated by the idea, I’m also a little superstitious about answering the question. To miraculously behold my object? Then I’ll know what to do! Fuck. It’s almost like playing the field before getting married. I obviously date the same person again and again, but if I found the one I’d have to acknowledge this limitation in myself.

A part of me wants to know so I can just attack and attack and attack, but another part of me wants to keep my obsession to my subconscious, at least for a little while longer.

Photo: excursuses.wordpress.com

The White Review''s current issue has a stunning example of High Intellectual Preposterousness. Lars Iyer has written a manifesto calling for an acknowledgment of the end of literature:

The only subject left to write about is the epilogue of Literature: the story of the people who pursue Literature, scratching on their knees for the traces of its passing. This is no mere meta-gamesmanship or solipsism; this is looking things in the face ... It’s time for literature to acknowledge its own demise rather than playing puppet with the corpse.

Is he serious? This is silliness, this is absurd. From the style of the manifesto itself, it’s hard to judge whether he’s being satirical or sarcastic, or if he’s really asserting what he believes to be true. Manifestos are full of pomp and grandeur, drenched in language that is bombastic, declamatory. Iyer’s is no exception. So I hunted the internet in search of his true intention and found that no, he was not joking. In a  3AM Magazine interview, he elaborates:

It is not simply that the relationship between literature and community has collapsed, nor even that literature is no longer in contact with politics. For me, the meaning of literature itself—the very possibility of literature—has collapsed. Literature, like left-wing politics, seems impossible ... I can only say that it seems to me that literature has, in some fundamental way, run its course.

What does this mean, "literature has run its course"? Is that why Iyer's book, Spurious, is so interchangeable with his blog, Spurious? To me, this is like saying sex has been slain by pornography, that eating is over because of fast food. People will always fuck and eat. Fucking and eating aren’t destroyed by depravities and deformations in their use. Yes, there is history and influence and philosophy and modern practice and all the rest. But there is still choice and there is still necessity.

Literature does not die, there is no end in it, it is something we do.

Rather than spend more time in inquiry and exasperation over this high intellectual dreariness, I’d like to simply present some evidence to the contrary. For intelligent discourse concerning the interaction of literature and culture, primarily in terms of how some of the more powerful influences and gatekeepers of culture present literature, I suggest an interesting piece by Roxane Gay up at the Rumpus. To see the existence of a literary magazine partially initiated because “we are tired of hearing that literary fiction is doomed,” check out Electric Literature.  And to hear from a true professional about his interactions with the great beast of literature, I highly recommend this interview with Ben Marcus from Harper’s.

A quick glance at any one of these demonstrates that literature has not run its course, and, for a great number of people, does not seem impossible.

Photo: living.oneindia.in

Why are publishers often so bad at marketing? Daniel Menaker’s piece "Flap Rules" on BarnesandNobleReview.com points out some of the more grating redundancies slapped on recent fiction: always use "stunning," always use "deeply," find a way to work in "best-selling."

But as aggravating and uninformative as these phrases are, things could be worse.

On the back cover of a Freud paperback I recently purchased, I was astounded to read this (I’ve taken out some specifics so that the poor publishers might remain anonymous):

...widely considered to be one of his greatest works of all time. This great work will surely attract a whole new generation of readers who study Sigmund Freud. For many, [book title] is required reading for various courses and curriculums. And for others who simply enjoy reading on human psychology, this gem by Sigmund Freud is highly recommended...would make an ideal gift and it should be a part of everyone’s personal library.

The copy is almost mesmerizing in its continued propulsion of disappointment. This great work is really great. If you study Freud, reading Freud will be required. A gem, highly recommended, an ideal gift. Stripped of any specificity beyond the mention of "human psychology," this paragraph could have been written about Freud or a Rich Dad, Poor Dad title.

I understand that writing book copy must be a chore—not unlike the experience of writing a cover letter for an obscure job opportunity—but could it also be intentionally designed to greet the reader with a kind of anonymous familiarity? That if we read "stunning" and "deeply" enough we will come to desire those books described as "stunning" and "deep"? If these tricks aren’t effective, surely publishers would stop writing copy in this way. Do readers merely skim flaps and back covers waiting for the right words to affirm their choice?

Perhaps my reference to the heinous Freud copy is, in fact, a Freudian slip: perhaps we hark to book flaps for Father's approval.

Image: blogs.yis.ac.jp

With Charles Shield’s new biography of Kurt Vonnegut, And So It Goes, being reviewed all over town, I keep seeing the cartoon Vonnegut head. With each successive viewing, which is of course reminiscent of Vonnegut cartoon head encounters of the past, I become more and more convinced of the appropriateness of the image. Vonnegut has cartoon qualities: the downtrodden acceptance of fate, his unavoidable sentimentality, his common way of speaking for the utilization of common sense. Vonnegut was a bit of a goofnut. But I also see, in the vast proliferation of his image as cartoon, just a sliver of animosity. A certain satisfaction in our ability to put Vonnegut in his place—as a caricature.

One of the major concerns of Shield’s biography is to address the contradictions between Vonnegut’s image and how he was in real life (what pretty all biographies set out to explore, right?), but also to bring to light just how in control of his image Vonnegut really was. Not that Vonnegut was merely playing the fool in order to endear himself to an audience, but that he actively pursued an image that would sell. Which doesn’t fit all that snugly with the image of the good-hearted, simple-minded goofnut.

I’ve always been rather protective of authors’ private lives. I’m inclined not to care about the person but to behold their work. Yet with someone like Vonnegut, whose presence was so adamantly inserted into the page, distinctions between narrator and author, character and autobiography, blur. Should we be alarmed? Do we now have to question the narrator of Slaughterhouse Five as insincere?

Before such madness unfurls us, let me propose something. Reading Vonnegut had an extraordinarily positive effect on me as a teenager. Here was an author ready to tell you the true stupid shit about human beings but who still asks you to be decent. Vonnegut, as simple-seeming as he may have been, attained a kind of nobility to aspire to. As much as the true man may have failed in coinciding with his ideal image, isn’t it still significant that he sought out attempts at decency?

Photo: NYTimes

There’s been some talk on the internet about being embarrassed to talk on the internet. Htmlgiant has a post about being embarrassed over sharing one writer’s favorite poems in the context of htmlgiant, which spreads to a post on the writer’s personal resistance to participating in the kind of social/group context that htmlgiant inherently is. But htmlgiant is a particular literary online context, in which expressing one’s personal embarrassment is fairly common: there’s a recent post on the humiliation of being a writer, encouraging further confessions of other people’s thoughts on the humiliation of being a writer.

The general form that many literary posts take is one of confession: addressing first the writer’s justifications or apologies for speaking in the first place before moving on to discuss the issue at hand. To an extent, these confessions create a sense of intimacy between reader and writer, but they also tend to make the piece of writing more about the speaker.

Freud said, “...every individual is virtually an enemy of civilization, though civilization is supposed to be an object of universal human interest.” All groups press for the individual to fall in line. There’s no way around it. But there’s also the possibility of greatness in numbers, which I was surprisingly reminded of last month—an abrupt encounter with the New York City Marathon.

To add my own confessional preamble, I might have been in an emotionally delicate state due to my triumphant hangover. Nonetheless, when I rose up from the subway and heard the mass cheering, when I saw the crowd of strangers applauding and whistling for other strangers, I almost started crying. I do not like crowds, and yet here I was, ready to hug and weep with all of them.

Without doubt, a large, public group of strangers calls for very different codes of behavior than an anonymous gathering online. The street doesn't allow us access to every spectator's feelings about being there (only I get to do that). But maybe we could try emulating a similar kind of enthusiasm that lacks this uncomfortable, stilting sense of self-presentation that seems to be plaguing internet reviewers. Maybe we could pretend that the crowd is gathered for a different purpose than staring down whoever speaks.

Really, how hard would it be to inject pure, unabashed celebration into the internet? To simply cheer and gush over that which excites us? 

Photo: rosemis.com

“Okay, Mr. Shteyngart, can you please remove your pants?” Ever compliant, the Super Sad True Love Story author drops his designer jeans to reveal that he is wearing…what?

Does a certain contemporary Pushcart Prize-winner still wear Underoos? Does the latest Pulitzer-winner prefer the silkiness of Victoria’s Secret panties against his hairy nether regions?

Wouldn’t you like to know.

Recently the Financial Times and the New Yorker featured profiles of writers and their libraries, hoping to unlock some great secret about what book collections say about their curators. Voyeuristic bibliophilia at its geekiest. Yet we don’t learn anything new about writers: they own a lot of books; like to talk about books; think Chekov was a genius (fair enough); and feel like they haven’t read enough books.

So rather than invade writers’ libraries, why not launch a literary panty raid? Invasion of privacy issues aside, analyzing undergarments might reveal far more about our favorite writers and expose what kind of creative stuff they are made of. “Scandalous!” cries Oates. “Okay,” mumbles Roth, loosening his belt. “Undergarments?” queries Boyle.

Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows, supposedly changed his underwear only once a year.  Evidently his underwear became a type of protective second skin he was reluctant in shedding. And Jane Smiley writes in a robe—or perhaps even less. She’s rather vague about it.

Looking back, I imagine that Hemingway went commando or strapped on some sandpaper. Something rough and uncomfortable yet oddly liberating, the feeling of which helped him keep his prose economical. Tolstoy, too, probably free-balled it under his coarse peasant garb—a vain attempt to rid himself of impure sexual thoughts.

Other writers, however, must have required some type of confinement. Jean-Paul Sartre probably preferred Gauloises-singed tighty whities, something that undoubtedly irked Beauvoir’s more refined sensibilities. And I like to imagine Edith Wharton and Virginia Woolf shielding a secretive sensual side, burying sexy lace buried under heavy woolen skirts. Much like their prose, both women harbored fiery passions beneath stoic veneers.

Or there’s the curious case of John Cheever. As a young and poorly paid writer, Cheever donned his only suit in the morning to commute to the building where he rented a room in which to write. Upon arriving, he would undress and carefully hang his suit. Then he would sit down and write. “A great many of my stories were written in boxer shorts,” Cheever wrote in1978.

Our contemporary literary giants should be as forthcoming about their unmentionables. What was Underworld written in, or IQ84? Given the massive girth of his latest tome, I imagine Murakami required something roomy and durable. Perhaps a simple pair of cotton Hanes boxers or, ideally, his awesome red running shorts. 

Photo: Jaunted