5 Attempts to Explain Myself

WISE AND FUNNY

Once, many years ago, I went to a talk given by a famous writer. Or, not really a famous writer, not, I mean, someone whose stories were made into movies or so-called prestige television, not someone who appeared on talk shows or whose tweets went viral as a matter of course, but still a writer famous enough to be asked to give talks at writers' conferences like the one I was attending when I heard this talk. (And although to mention that I was at this writing conference not as an attendee but rather as part of its  staff will, I'm sure, seem like an excuse or defense, it's nevertheless true: I was, at the time, an intern for the magazine that hosted this conference, and I volunteered to help at the conference in large part because I'd been told I'd get a free lunch, and so most of my time at this conference was spent handing out name tags, eating free lunch, and writing in rooms that weren't being used for the conference. I did go to a couple of talks, but after the second talk, which was the famous writer's talk, I didn't go to any others.) The subject of the famous writer's talk was the writing process, her writing process, though she presented it to those in attendance as the writing process: Here, she said, is how you write a short story. First, think of a memory you have, preferably one from long ago, and write it down, in as much detail as possible. I think her example, her memory, had something to do with waiting in a car with her family while a tornado passed them by, although this might have been the story that the memory inspired instead. The famous writer then explained, step by step, the process one ought to use to turn one's memory into a short story: focus on one of the people in this memory; give them some psychological trait they didn't, as far as you remember, have; and so on. All around me, in the audience, there were people listening to what the famous writer was saying and taking notes. Later, I thought, some of these same people would write down one of their memories, focus on someone in that memory, give that person some trait they didn't have, and, after some further time had passed, the results would be published in a magazine like the one I was interning for. This new writer's work would be called wise and funny by people like the famous writer giving the talk at the conference, and the wise and funny new author would then be asked to give talks at conferences like the one I was then attending. Everything, in other words, would turn out fine. I remember I could only volunteer at the conference two of its four days—the other two days, I had to work; at the time, I worked as a waiter. Much later, after I'd published my first two books and after my first teaching job had ended, when I'd returned to being a waiter, I interviewed for a second teaching job. The professor who was in charge of the interview asked: How do you teach students your writing process? This question surprised me; I don't teach my students my writing process, I said, and then of course I didn't get the job. In that interview long ago, when I was asked how I taught my writing process to my students, I hadn't thought to say that I didn't want my students to turn out the way I had. I didn't say I wanted better, much better, for my students, although, if I were to invent a psychological trait I didn't have in that moment, it would, I think, be that purest kind of solicitude.

CLASSIC

Wikipedia says that the Latin maxim de gustibus non est disputandum is usually translated as "There is no accounting for taste," and, as far as that goes, Wikipedia is, I think, correct; "There is no accounting for taste" is a common idiom in English, and the thought expressed in it quite clearly comes from that much earlier maxim. The authors of the article (that there exists an article on Wikipedia about "De gustibus" is, to me, at least a little remarkable) also give a more literal translation, "In matters of taste, there can be no disputes," but, if one looks into the history of this article, one finds that the degree of literalness of this translation is a common thread in revisions of the article. There are, fifteen years after the creation of this article, over 500 revisions logged by Wikipedia, and one may, reading through the log of those revisions, see "literal" translations given, disputed (one of the earliest changes made to the article is the correction of the misspelling of the word "disputed," apparently spelled, by the original author, "disptuted"), and then defended, made into parentheticals, brought back out into the main text of the article, and then replaced altogether. Next to many of those revisions, there are notes, e.g.: "I teach Latin professionally. The previous literal translation was not so literal, in fact." The idiomatic rendition is, it seems to me, not especially close to what the Latin original intends. It isn't that one can't account for taste—in fact, taste is one of the simplest things to account for, a thing all artists do as a matter of course—but that arguing about taste doesn't offer much reward. But look, we argue over everything that appears on the internet, seemingly without end, as though anything published there was only a provocation, the beginning of an argument, and the internet itself is a world in which one speaks up solely in order to encourage others to dispute, a world in which it seems clear we ought not to spend much time if we value our time. "In Latin, the verb always comes at the end of an utterance," one revision tells another. "It is probably not necessary to add a link to the entry on the English language in an article written in English," another tells another. "Found various sources where this is cited as an adage," another tells another. "It is not necessary nor appropriate to cite every passing use of the phrase," another tells another. "Pointlessly subjective," reads another. What more is there to say?

POSTERITY

If it is as they say that the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will reduce so-called cognitive ability (one of many euphemisms we use in order to avoid saying that one refrigerated truck bringing frozen conveniences to one supermarket this morning will, in time, contribute to making thousands of future children measurably more miserable and dull and less capable of coping with the many other effects of climate change; wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, sea level rise, heat, drought, etc., because it is precisely those critical thinking skills—more euphemism—shared between our response to emergencies and our appreciation for art, that will be most affected), there really is no reason to consider writing for posterity anymore. What is misunderstood today will be worse than gibberish tomorrow. (And anyway, even the simplest texts of today won’t be read in the decades to come. Who then will have the time to read?) Pound said it took a writer twenty years to be recognized for what they’ve written. One really ought to consider the worst case scenario, scientists say. And then of course anyone reading this—is there anyone?—must contend with the fact that all of this has been written by someone already affected by the impairments mentioned above, based on summaries and analyses—written by people already affected by the impairments mentioned above—of studies done by people already affected by the impairments mentioned above.

VENN

I awoke in the middle of the night last night because of a worry I had while I was asleep. I mean, I guess, that I had this worry while I was asleep, even though now, awake, I'm not quite sure how that would work, how, I mean, I could have had a worry while I was asleep, but, um, that might just be a matter of semantics, I mean that it would be boring to hear me talk about it, so let's just say it was a worry, a worry that, worryingly, persisted even after I woke up. The worry? Right, yes. I should say what the worry was. The worry was that I had, without intending it, become a treasure trove of data. I couldn't sleep with this worry on my mind, and so I thought about it, or, I guess, I thought about the meaning of that phrase, treasure trove of data, and, for that reason, couldn't sleep. Was I part of a key demographic, I wondered, half asleep (which is really not asleep at all, but awake; I think there's no actual gray area there)? No, I thought, I was no longer part of a key demographic, was too old to be part of a key demographic, and yet, some of my online activities, I thought, maybe even some of my offline activities, must have been similar to those of members of this key demographic because I couldn't be so completely estranged from the rest of society, could I? couldn't, I mean, be so completely unique, and so, because there I was, in that cross-section of people not in the key demographic who nevertheless found some of the key demographic's favored activities appealing, was or could be considered, by some, to be a treasure trove of data. I didn't want to be a treasure trove of data, didn't, in other words, want to be someone who was spied upon by advertisers and companies that provided data to advertisers, and still I knew I was spied upon by advertisers and companies that provided data to advertisers. There was, I knew, little I could do to protect myself from being spied upon. Or, no, there were a number of things I could do to protect myself from being spied upon, every newspaper and magazine reported on them, but these were things that, if I did them, my wife would make fun of me, especially if I explained I was doing these things to avoid being spied upon. I don't want to be a treasure trove of data, I wanted to tell her. Please tell me, I wanted to ask her, that I'm not a unicorn, and I'm sure she would have done it if I'd asked. She loves me, I mean I think she does, and she doesn't think I'm special, not special in that way, anyway, just special to her, but not special to advertisers or companies that provide data to advertisers, because, look, I rarely buy anything, in fact sometimes make mild disapproving noises when she tells me she has bought something, and so the thought that I might be a treasure trove of data when I buy almost nothing was really pretty silly, and if I were in any respect a unicorn, I was a unicorn for waking in the middle of the night because of worries I might be a treasure trove of data when in fact I was not a treasure trove of data, and could I please just go back to sleep, which is what she'd done when I accidentally woke her, tossing and turning with my worries about being a treasure trove of data. She usually slept well, very possibly because she was younger than me and so still part of the key demographic and maybe also because she buys things and so she was almost certainly a treasure trove of data and could feel confident about her status. The space in the middle of the bed between us had, I realized then, over the course of our relationship grown literally—we'd first slept together in my double bed, then bought a queen when we moved in together, and now we had a king—and figuratively, too, or maybe I should say, demographically, since when we'd first met, we'd both been in that key demographic, but now only she was, and the empty space there, because we'd been sleeping on the mattress we had for too long and ought to have bought a new one, was now higher than either one of the two sides, a tiny hillock there in the middle of the bed.

GENRE

I'm reading this book about painters, a series of stories about painters or really about painters' subjects, about, I mean, the people painted by painters, when it occurs to me that writers—in general—seem to think painters are seducers. I don't mean that there's something seductive about painting and I'm not interested in creating some silly metaphor about painting being a variety of seduction, no, I mean what I've said—that most of the fiction I've read about painters has involved the painter seducing his subjects (it's seemingly always a he, though just yesterday I read a story about a female painter seducing her male subject, so really it seems that, for writers, this trait is more universal, or else that the writer whose story I read yesterday wanted to turn the stereotype around without also altering the fundamental formula on which it relies, which is to say, without actually altering or breaking the stereotype in any way). I haven't done a survey of the literature, but it does seem as though painters, to writers, are lotharios (and, as a sidenote, composers, to writers, are mentally ill), but—and I maybe ought to add here that I'm the son of a painter and the brother of a painter, and I've read many interviews with painters—I'm not sure that painters have any thoughts about writers. Writers have, I know, occasionally been the subjects of paintings, though I think much more rarely than painters have been the subjects of fictions, but it isn't clear to me that, when painted, writers are treated by painters as substantially different from their other subjects (by which I certainly don't mean that they're seduced by these painters; I persist in thinking that's an absurd caricature), and now it occurs to me that, in fact, almost no one thinks about writers, it's not just painters, and that I even have at least some empirical data to draw on when it comes to this conclusion, which is that, again and again, among my students and even more commonly among people I meet at so-called literary events, those who aren't writers really have no idea what writers do. There's this strange and pervasive misconception that the writer's life is either filled with nothing—laying on the couch, taking long walks, complaining, etc.—or filled with writing, which is to say that others have really no idea what a writer's life is like, have no idea that writing is, for everyone but dilettantes, the guilt one experiences after giving in to the impulse to stay home rather than go to the event at which one was expected to appear, and the need, forever after, to justify that arbitrary and cowardly decision, to others and oneself. This constant weighing of one's priorities is the work the writer does, I could tell them; I know they would be bored, as really anyone is when the subject of writers and their work comes up. Still, look, the other day, I saw someone on social media tweeting a series of very stupid jokes that played on the title of a famous novel and my thought wasn't that these were stupid jokes but that the famous novel's author, had he still been alive, would have been mortified, because after all, he'd almost certainly spent some real time working out what to call this novel, had possibly also fought to keep that title when agent, editor, publisher had suggested others, and that he'd done all that instead of doing something that might have brought him pleasure or happiness, and now here was this person who the author might have counted upon, as a fellow writer, to be more sympathetic, instead making all that effort and thought the subject of very stupid jokes, so that now I'm not sure that anyone really thinks about writers, including, I mean, writers, who are taught, after all, not to write about writers, whose writers, when that commandment is broken, are typically miserable (rather than, I mean, concupiscent or mad), very possibly because they're largely ignored, even as they expend all this energy in what are, in the end, attempts to communicate.