SPINE

Monday, April 30, 2012

America 101: Course for Martians

Leave it to Margaret Atwood to device a course on the essence of America for Martians.

The Martians have come to Atwood to "study America."

As somebody partial to the value of literary texts as the best window on society, Atwood suggests the following course materials:

The Maypole of Merrymount & Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Moby-Dick by Herman Meville

All three novels have to be interpreted allegorically.

Moby-Dick, for instance, becomes an allegorical hologram of ruthless capitalism, American style:

Moby-Dick is about the oil industry,” they said. “And the Ship of American State. The owners of the Pequod are rapacious and stingy religious hypocrites. The ship’s business is to butcher whales and turn them into an industrial energy product. The mates are the middle management. The harpooners, who are from races colonized by America one way or another, are supplying the expert tech labor. Elijah the prophet — from the American artist caste — foretells the Pequod’s doom, which comes about because the chief executive, Ahab, is a megalomaniac who wants to annihilate nature.
Nature is symbolized by a big white whale, which has interfered with Ahab’s personal freedom by biting off his leg and refusing to be slaughtered and boiled. The narrator, Ishmael, represents journalists; his job is to warn America that it’s controlled by psychotics who will destroy it, because they hate the natural world and don’t grasp the fact that without it they will die. That’s enough literature for now. Can we have popcorn?

But the course is more complex than meets the eyes. It is interspersed with Atwood's own take on America. 

"America", she teaches, is a placeholder for human fantasy, being many things to many people. It is also a nation that since its inception through to these times, is riddled with "internal contradictions". 

Atwood also dispenses real-life advice to Martians. The Martians want to do a full tour of the nation and propose visiting, among other sites, the Boot Hill Museum in Kansas.

Atwood dissuades such a plan because the Martians who look like diagrams of the female uterus, replete with fallopian tubes and ovary bunches, might be mistaken for human uteri.

The Martians are surprised by the hostility that the appearance of a group of human uteri might evoke in the breasts of American males, as a quick Google search of the term tells them that the female uteri is the source of creation.

Why would a representation of whence they come arouse anger?

Atwood doesn't know; in certain parts of America, she says, males are peculiarly obsessed with the female uteri. They perceive it as demonic. 

"It's a hangover from the Young Goodman Brown Days," she feels:

If they saw you [Martians] hopping around — worse still, eating popcorn [the Martians have taken an instant liking for these] — they’d go completely berserk, and pronounce you pregnant, and put you in jail.

Atwood suggests that her Martian students visit New York City and Radio City Music Hall instead, because in New York the Martians won't stand out, and if harassed, Martians can cry "specism!"

All in all, a lively course! 

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Profaning Faith

Lamenting a loss of vision, poet William Wordsworth famously wrote in Intimations of Immortality:
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;-
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen, I can see no more.
The poet hasn't gone blind literally, but has lost the gift of the child's eye, the child's natural ability to see the quotidian "apparell'd in celestial light."

The adult, they say, has to live with the burden of a particular kind of blindness which comes from experiencing life. Unlike the child, the adult can't see heaven on earth.

A recent New York Times bestseller in the non-fiction category, Heaven is for Real, celebrates the child's ability, not only to see heaven, but also to report back, with clarity, to his parents, all that he has seen, once he's back on earth.

But the child, Colton Burpo, is no Wordsworthian child; he doesn't see earth bathed in celestial brightness. He sees the heavenly light in heaven.

The story of a toddler's brief sojourn in heaven is summarized very well by Maud Newton:

At 3 years 10 months, Colton Burpo was a sunny child, a preacher’s son certain of his faith and his eternal fate. Then his appendix burst, and as doctors failed to figure out what was wrong with him, he lay in a hospital bed until his father, Todd, saw “the shadow of death” cross his face. “I recognized it instantly,” Todd, a pastor, recalls. With Colton’s face “covered in death,” Todd and his wife, Sonja, took the boy to another hospital, where he was wheeled into surgery. “He’s not in good shape,” the surgeon said. As Colton screamed for his father, Todd fled, locked himself in a room and railed at God.
Less than two hours later, Colton was awake, still shouting for his father. “Daddy, you know I almost died,” he said. But only over the months following his recovery did his parents hear his whole story: that while in surgery, he went to heaven and met Jesus, who assigned him homework; he also encountered angels, a rainbow-hued horse, John the Baptist, God the father, the Holy Spirit, a sister his mother miscarried (unknown to Colton) before he was born and his great-grandfather, Pop, as a young man. Everyone in heaven had wings; Colton’s were smaller than most. He learned that the righteous, including his father, would fight in a coming last battle.

So convinced is Colton that he was really in heaven during the time the doctors performed a surgical procedure, that he saw the doctor as a mere tool of Jesus' will:

"Dad, Jesus used Dr. O'Holleran to help fix me [...] Colton told his father as he asked him to pay the hospital bill which had amounted to a whopping 23k. 

It's easy to understand why in this day and age readers would take to this story. The average reader, despairing about the astronomical cost of basic health care, would have her anxiety assuaged by the thought of a Jesus that would come to her (financial) aid if she had faith enough.

With hyper-inflationary trends and the cycle of recession, stories of faith-based solutions to real social problems are attractive sellers.

Didn't Karl Marx once famously predict a relationship of inverse proportionality between poverty and religion? Else, how to account for the enormous popularity with the rapture stories, collectively titled Left Behind?

But Marx also spoke about change and the irresistible encroachment of modernity into our lives--the wheel of history will roll, he said, rendering into vapor all that was once "solid", and into lumps of profanity all that was once "sacred".

Books like Heaven and propagation of the virtue of absolute faith by politicians like Rick Santorum, is a fulfillment, not negation, of Marx's prophecy.

The wheel of history is rolling. What was revered as sacred even thirty years ago is now a commodity that is to be sold for money, media-attention and in the case of faith-based politics, votes.

Heaven's success has emboldened the Burpo family to expand into a multi-medium, million dollar empire, replete with bestselling picture books and a movie version in the making on the foundations of something quintessentially sacrosanct like faith. 

It's strange that the profaning of the sacred in this sense is not remarked upon, but innumerable bones are picked about the other, more obvious kind of profanation, reflected in yet another bestseller of our times, Fifty shades of Grey.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Junot Diaz

I liked how author Junot Diaz explains his artistic choices.

He writes his short fiction, Ms. Lora in the second person, instead of his customary first person.

Why write in the second person?
Second person, I’ve always noticed, has the distinction of being both intimate and repellent at the same time. A quick way of drawing the reader close but also hard to sustain for any length of time. Only so much a person likes being addressed as “you” by a complete stranger. I knew I’d lose people with the approach, but I was going to lose people anyway. That’s the nature of fiction: despite all our lofty claims of universality, no piece of art is for everyone—which is why we have so much art, so that everyone has a chance of finding something that moves them. I figured some people somewhere might connect with the tale even in second person.
Excellent response! 

Another super illumination: "Ms. Lora" is about the love affair between a minor--a 16 year old boy--and an older woman (Ms. Lora). Isn't Diaz apprehensive of being judged as "normalizing" a relationship that would be deemed "illegal" in our society (I found myself judging Ms. Lora as I read the story)?

Likely, yes, feels Diaz. But he's not seeking to redeem the Ms. Lora's of the world, just as he isn't seeking one-dimensional judgment. He aims for eliciting both reactions in the minds of the readers:
Sure, it would be swell if someone got to know Miss Lora before they judged her, or if their judgment was overturned by reading the story, but it’s also cool if a reader judges and knows the character simultaneously and neither of these experiences alters or counteracts the other. In a culture like ours, obsessed with its dichotomies, giving folks the opportunity to work out their simultaneity muscle is a worthy goal.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Susan Sontag's Likes and Dislikes

Came across a list of things that cultural critic Susan Sontag "likes" and "dislikes."

Let's play a little game and italicize all likes and dislikes that I might have in common with Sontag:

Things I like: fires, Venice, tequila, sunsets, babies, silent films, heights, coarse salt, top hats, large long- haired dogs, ship models, cinnamon, goose down quilts, pocket watches, the smell of newly mown grass, linen, Bach, Louis XIII furniture, sushi, microscopes, large rooms, boots, drinking water, maple sugar candy.

Things I dislike: sleeping in an apartment alone, cold weather, couples, football games, swimming, anchovies, mustaches, cats, umbrellas, being photographed, the taste of licorice, washing my hair (or having it washed), wearing a wristwatch, giving a lecture, cigars, writing letters, taking showers, Robert Frost, German food.

Things I like: ivory, sweaters, architectural drawings, urinating, pizza (the Roman bread), staying in hotels, paper clips, the color blue, leather belts, making lists, wagon-lits, paying bills, caves, watching ice-skating, asking questions, taking taxis, Benin art, green apples, office furniture, Jews, eucalyptus trees, penknives, aphorisms, hands.

Things I dislike: television, baked beans, hirsute men, paperback books, standing, card games, dirty or disorderly apartments, flat pillows, being in the sun, Ezra Pound, freckles, violence in movies, having drops put in my eyes, meatloaf, painted nails, suicide, licking envelopes, ketchup, traversins [“bolsters”], nose drops, Coca-Cola, alcoholics, taking photographs.

I don't have much in common with Susan Sontag's preferences and non-preferences. However, there are some modifications I can make and ask some questions:

From list #1 of likes: "Fires"? Is Sontag's fire a fire as in "something is on fire?" or is it fire as in a cozy "fire place?" If its the latter, I do like fire. I like tequilla, but I suspect Sontag, being the consummate Europeanist that she was known to have been (the ace avant garde), means "tequilla in the sunset," a pleasure that would be sought by many, not just myself. I like sunsets, but the sun has to set in a particular context, like when (and if) I, as a free spirited individual, can relax on some beach or on some roof top in another world perhaps, and lazily watch the sun go down, wondrously. I haven't smelled newly mown grass for a while, but I'd sure like to avail of that olfactory sensation one day (best if its the grass in my backyard, not somebody else's).

Haven't seen any Louis XIII furniture (though I've seen images of them and know they are phenomenally ornate and "elegant" and "classy").

From list #1 of dislikes: Doesn't bother me to sleep in an apartment alone. In these days of economic downturn, should be grateful to have an apartment to sleep in, even if its alone. It would be another matter if the apartment were ghost-infested, but even then were it to come cheap in a nice place, wouldn't mind...It's like they say how abandoned and semi-derelict houses (some of them quite sprawling and luxuriously architected) are being snapped up for dirt cheap in cities and suburbs across the nation. One has to learn to live with inconveniences like ghosts and burst pipes and overgrown weeds.

Actually, I do like anchovies!

On mustaches, I have no opinion to offer, and cats I could like if they were someone else's.

Overally, I see cats as evil, selfish animals who can only shed hair. One noble thing about them is their habit of moving out of sight when they are about to give up on their lives.

Umbrellas are a necessary evil, especially in New York City. But then again, so are they in Chicago and San Fran (and Denver).

I don't particularly "like" washing my hair, but its something I have to in case my hair gets stringy. We all like that little "bounce" in our hair, but I'd prefer a non-soap-based shampoo to instill that bounce. How about saying "I like to wash my hair" with non-brutal agents.

I understand why Sontag wouldn't like either washing her hair or being photographed. These two activities pertain to image instead of the real. Even when photography is for memories sake, it still is image, a Sontag's murmur of discontent in the essay "On Photography" suggests. When people make photographic memories of friends, families and vacations on Facebook or in a traditional album, they are still creating an image of the real in the sense that the photographs are all of fulfillment and joy ("fun"), not of real engagement with the context. 

I love writing letters and taking showers. However, the recipient of these letters have to be somebody I cherish in complex ways.

Taking showers? Just gives me a moment of escape from my immediate reality. Bathrooms can be fleeting sanctuaries, and when I'm in the bathroom I have to busy myself with bathroom-like activities, like taking a shower.

List # 2 of likes: I don't know how to "like" ivory. I've grown up seeing little ivory statuettes at home. My grandmother had almost a museum-like collection of ivory objects. They may have been objects of inheritance. When I behold them next time, I'll look at them with special eyes to see if I can "like" them.    

I can't quite get myself to think of "urinating" in a like/dislike frame. I really don't "like" urinating but neither can I avoid this very common bodily function, especially in the few hours following a coffee-consumption spree. Sontag sees urinating as a word, is my belief, not an activity per se. She was all for leaving the stamp of the "real" on the world in which she lived and encouraging other to do the same. We shy away from the real to an extent that we deny "urine," and "shit" (among other bodily primarities) as being human. It is as if, if you say "Excuse me, I have to urinate," then you are breaking up the earth beneath the feet of the listener by invoking a sacrilegious and "low-class" action.

But Sontag could also be saying that she likes the sensation of urinating--of releasing into the subterranean something that can't be held back and could become a burden if held back forcibly. One could be said to feel free--a primeval kind of freedom, that is--when one urinates.

Sontag likes paying bills, whereas I intensely hate this activity. But for some the fact of paying bills is an empowering activity, as is the act of simply paying off dues.

List #4 of dislikes: I love baked beans but hate the fartaceous condition into which it puts my intestines.
I want drops to be put in my eyes as I believe that the drops would cleanse my eyes and restore moisture balance into these precious balance. But it's a tough task to perform as eyes instinctively blink or pull their shutters down upon seeing a tube or bottle advancing toward them.

I like painted nails, but somehow I'm not currently in a phase where I think I should paint my nails. Of course I don't "like" suicide. But I read recently somewhere that there is something worse than suicide, which is to disappear. Suicide means one can't live with oneself, whereas to disappear is to pin blame on another: to disappear means "I can't live with you thus I am disappearing."