The Cantara Star-Tribune

Parody, Sequel - What's the Difference?

Cantara Christopher — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:49:13 +0000

J.D. Salinger hasn’t published much fiction in the last half-century, but the guy can still crank out a lawsuit when he needs to.

The latest: Salinger, 90, has sued to enjoin the publication of a sequel of sorts to his most famous and celebrated novel,Catcher in the Rye. The sequel, called 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, is written by a purported American living in Sweden named John David California. The novel portrays a 76-year old Holden Caulfield — the famed protagonist of the original work — wandering the streets of New York after having escaped from a retirement home.

Reads the lawsuit: “The Sequel is not a parody and it does not comment upon or criticize the original . . . It is a ripoff pure and simple.”

Reached by the AP, a man identifying himself as California said that he lived outside of Goteborg, Sweden. He called the legal action “a little bit insane.” Said California: “To me, this is a story about an old man. It’s a love story, a story about an author and his character,” adding that John David California was his pen name. “I did not mean to cause him any trouble.”

Dow Jones Newswires’ Chad Bray on Tuesday reached Fredrik Colting, the book’s publisher at Windupbird Publishing Ltd. Colting conceded that his is a small publishing outfit without a lot of resources, but said they plan to respond to the lawsuit. “We believe in the book,” said Colting. “We believe it’s a story of its own. We believe it has a right to be here.”

Click here for the complaint, filed in Manhattan federal court by lawyers at Davis Wright Tremaine.

So does Salinger’s lawsuit stand a chance? To explore the question, we checked in with Marc Reiner, a copyright lawyer and partner at Dorsey & Whitney in New York.

Hi Marc. Thanks for taking the time. So what are the prevailing issues in the suit?

It looks to me like the plaintiffs will have to prevail on two big issues — the first of which is probably easier to win than the second. The first is whether the character of Holden Caulfield is copyrightable. That issue — whether a fictional character is copyrightable — is a little unsettled. It’s most readily applied to characters that are graphic, like Mickey Mouse, or if the character has been in a series, like Tarzan.

I’d probably lean toward thinking that Holden Caulfield is fleshed out well enough to be copyrightable.

Really?

Well, the character appeared in works aside from Catcher in the Rye and, perhaps most to the point, the parts that appear to be used in 60 Years seem to reflect the parts of Holden Caulfield that are perhaps the most developed.

Okay. So this hurdle the plaintiffs probably pass. What’s next?

The next real issue is whether or not the work constitutes fair use. Fair use is a statutory defense to the copyright law, and while there are a few different ways a work can qualify as a fair use, in this context, the purportedly infringing work probably has to be a parody in order to pass muster.

A parody?

Right. And there’s a difference between a satire and a parody. It’s not okay to remake Catcher and the Rye and use it to make a comment on adolescence or old age or something else. That’s not fair use. Rather, to qualify as a parody, the work has to comment on the original work itself. That’s what the Eleventh Circuit found in regard to the Wind Done Gone — that it was a parody of [Gone with the Wind] in the legal sense, and therefore non-infringing.

But this book describes itself not as a parody, but as a sequel. In my mind, those are two pretty different concepts, right?

Not necessarily. First of all, a parody doesn’t always mean funny, of course. Second, it’s very common for a court to find a parody even when there’s no outright statement of parody.

And you could see how this might work here — how this book could be construed as a parody of Catcher in the Rye. What the author has done here is cast Holden Caulfield as a cranky old man. That could be seen as a parodic view of Holden Caulfield as originally portrayed, much in the same way that a Saturday Night Live sketch involving a bunch of old and beaten down super heroes would likely be considered a parody of the underlying works.

Okay, so how do we determine whether this qualifies as a parody?

Courts look to a four factor statutory test. The main factor, the first one, examines whether and to what degree the allegedly parodic work “transforms” the original. The more “transformative” a work is, the more it’s likely to get protection.

In this instance, we really don’t know how transformative the book is since it hasn’t come out yet and the public hasn’t had a chance to read it. We know there are similarities — at least judging from the complaint. But we know there’s some transformation too. Here we have Holden Caulfield as an older man in the twilight of his years.

Okay. And the other factors?

Well, I should say that here that while there are other factors, once a court has found that a work is transformative, it’s typically unlikely to deem it infringing.

That said, the second factor is whether the nature of the copyrighted work is truly artistic. The third is the amount copied. Here, I get the sense that while there were some similar aspects, they probably didn’t borrow too much. The fourth factor is the degree to which the applicable market is affected.

But the bottom line is that it’s probably going to turn on the “transformative question.” And on this point, while I think Salinger seems to have a reasonable case, courts do tend to find on the side of defendants on these claims.

There’s a third cause of action, right? Unfair competition?

Right. And here I think the Salinger camp might have a good leg to stand on. The book allegedly claims to be a sequel, a word that typically implies that the work is authorized by the creator of the original work, which it was not here.

Good stuff. Thanks for taking the time.

The pleasure was mine.

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/06/02/a-closer-look-at-the-jd-salinger-lawsuit/

Peace, War and the Devil

Cantara Christopher — Mon, 25 May 2009 19:40:13 +0000

"In peace we can make many of them ignore good and evil entirely; in danger, the issue is forced upon them in a guise to which even we cannot blind them. There is here a cruel dilemma before us. If we promoted justice and charity among men, we should be playing directly into the Enemy's hands; but if we guide them to the opposite behaviour, this sooner or later produces (for He permits it to produce) a war or a revolution, and the undisguisable issue of cowardice or courage awakes thousands of men from moral stupor. This, indeed, is probably one of the Enemy's motives for creating a dangerous world—a world in which moral issues really come to the point. He sees as well as you do that courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality."

—C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Fiction Reaches a New Level in Video Games

Cantara Christopher — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:00:24 +0000

T S Eliot wrote of Dante that “there seems really nothing to do but point to him and be silent”. How very wrong T S Eliot was. In perhaps the most bizarre literary cameo since Geoffrey Chaucer was shown singing along to Queen tunes in the 2001 film A Knight’s Tale, Florence’s most famous son will soon be crashing into your living room as the growling, cross-wielding hero of his very own video game. Yes, in 2010, as the frankly mad-looking trailer for Dante’s Inferno has it, you too will be able to “Go to Hell”.

Anyone expecting a faithful interactive representation of the Commedia’s sorrow and pity will be somewhat taken aback. Made by the developers of last year’s outer-space zombie shooter Dead Space, the game recasts Dante as a muscle-bound anti-hero, carving his way through the Nine Circles with a scythe and a cross to liberate his girlfriend from Lucifer.

As he lies around, “punishing” or “absolving” the damned souls surrounding him, the disembodied voice of Virgil provides instructive quotations from the poem. The creators have even promised to recreate the topography of the Inferno, an uncannily good fit for the levels of a computer game. In short, it sounds like amazingly good fun.

Dante’s Inferno may not herald a new era in literary gaming, but connoisseurs of story could do worse than watch the area for developments. A recent survey of American teenagers revealed that 97 per cent of the consumers of the future now play video games.

What’s more, certain independent games are entering a phase – familiar to historians of jazz, comics and indeed 20th-century literature – of vigorous experimentation with techniques of narrative. (An evening with the frightening and baffling The Path, rather like an Angela Carter story siphoned through The Sims, will show you what I mean.) And with book sales falling, it may not be long before prose writers jump ship for a medium that offers some of the most exciting possibilities of the new century.

It’s happened before. Veterans of home computing in the eighties and nineties may recall knotting their brows over the game of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, written by Douglas Adams himself. Adams also wrote Bureaucracy, a game in which the paper-shuffling protagonist’s most pressing task is to avoid succumbing to a brain haemorrhage from stress. And the veteran sci-fi novelist Harlan Ellison delivered I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, a game whose vision of eternal torture remains more shocking than most of its high-resolution descendants.

A vague interest in literary form has hovered for some time at the edges of contemporary gaming. Fans of H P Lovecraft jumped at the appearance a few years ago of a game based on his story The Call of Cthulhu, in which the player guided a detective through a town of boggling fish-men while trying to keep him from going insane. Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl, released in 2007, owed considerably more to the Strugatsky brothers’ seminal Roadside Picnic than it did to the Tarkovsky film it was supposedly based on. And Bioshock, an adventure set in a decaying art-deco city beneath the sea, won rapturous praise for its dramatisation of the more sinister aspects of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism.

But the most challenging questions posed by games strike at the roots of written narrative. Players used to follow a prearranged story, dragged in the wake of plot events triggered by specific actions within the game world, but the new generation of games flirts with a different model. Here, “low-level inputs” – the way the player interacts with non-essential characters, or the cumulative effect that his or her actions have in the world – are far more important. So the writer’s emphasis shifts from mise-en-scene to character interaction; from constructing grand set pieces to fleshing out a malleable and dynamic world.

Our experience of stories is, by and large, a lateral one, in which the writer commands every aspect of the world the reader inhabits as well as the process by which it reveals itself. Fine; it’s worked for centuries. But it’s hard to shake the feeling that gaming – which increasingly promises a narrative space for the player to make his own way, never having the same experience twice – is where at least some of the great writers of tomorrow will make their names. At which point, as with comics, everyone will get a terrible headache over trying to think of a new name for the medium.

On Building a Universe

Cantara Christopher — Sat, 16 May 2009 20:55:41 +0000

First, before I begin to bore you with the usual sort of things science fiction writers say in speeches, let me bring you official greetings from Disneyland. I consider myself a spokesperson for Disneyland because I live just a few miles from it—and, as if that were not enough, I once had the honor of being interviewed there by Paris TV.

For several weeks after the interview, I was really ill and confined to bed. I think it was the whirling teacups that did it. Elizabeth Antebi, who was the producer of the film, wanted to have me whirling around in one of the giant teacups while discussing the rise of fascism with Norman Spinrad... an old friend of mine who writes excellent science fiction. We also discussed Watergate, but we did that on the deck of Captain Hook's pirate ship. Little children wearing Mickey Mouse hats—those black hats with the ears—kept running up and bumping against us as the cameras whirred away, and Elizabeth asked unexpected questions. Norman and I, being preoccupied with tossing little children about, said some extraordinarly stupid things that day. Today, however, I will have to accept full blame for what I tell you, since none of you are wearing Mickey Mouse hats and trying to climb up on me under the impression that I am part of the rigging of a pirate ship.

Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful. A few years ago, no college or university would ever have considered inviting one of us to speak. We were mercifully confined to lurid pulp magazines, impressing no one. In those days, friends would say me, "But are you writing anything serious?" meaning "Are you writing anything other than science fiction?" We longed to be accepted. We yearned to be noticed. Then, suddenly, the academic world noticed us, we were invited to give speeches and appear on panels—and immediately we made idiots of ourselves. The problem is simply this: What does a science fiction writer know about? On what topic is he an authority?

It reminds me of a headline that appeared in a California newspaper just before I flew here: "Scientists Say That Mice Cannot be Made to Look Like Human Beings". It was a federally funded research program, I suppose. Just think: Someone in this world is an authority on the topic of whether mice can or cannot put on two-tone shoes, derby hats, pinstriped shirts, and Dacron pants, and pass as humans.

Well, I will tell you what interests me, what I consider important. I can't claim to be an authority on anything, but I can honestly say that certain matters absolutely fascinate me, and that I write about them all the time. The two basic topics which fascinate me are "What is reality?" and "What constitutes the authentic human being?" Over the twenty-seven years in which I have published novels and stories I have investigated these two interrelated topics over and over again. I consider them important topics. What are we? What is it which surrounds us, that we call the not-me, or the empirical or phenomenal world?

In 1951, when I sold my first story, I had no idea that such fundamental issues could be pursued in the science fiction field. I began to pursue them unconsciously. My first story had to do with a dog who imagined that the garbagemen who came every Friday morning were stealing valuable food which the family had carefully stored away in a safe metal container. Every day, members of the family carried out paper sacks of nice ripe food, stuffed them into the metal container, shut the lid tightly—and when the container was full, these dreadful-looking creatures came and stole everything but the can.

Finally, in the story, the dog begins to imagine that someday the garbagemen will eat the people in the house, as well as stealing their food. Of course, the dog is wrong about this. We all know that garbagemen do not eat people. But the dog's extrapolation was in a sense logical—given the facts at his disposal. The story was about a real dog, and I used to watch him and try to get inside his head and imagine how he saw the world. Certainly, I decided, that dog sees the world quite differently than I do, or any humans do. And then I began to think, Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world, a world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans. And that led me wonder, If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn't we really be talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some more true (more real) than others? What about the world of a schizophrenic? Maybe, it's as real as our world. Maybe we cannot say that we are in touch with reality and he is not, but should instead say, His reality is so different from ours that he can't explain his to us, and we can't explain ours to him. The problem, then, is that if subjective worlds are experienced too diffrently, there occurs a breakdown of communication...and there is the real illness.

I once wrote a story about a man who was injured and taken to a hospital. When they began surgery on him, they discovered that he was an android, not a human, but that he did not know it. They had to break the news to him. Almost at once, Mr. Garson Poole discovered that his reality consisted of punched tape passing from reel to reel in his chest. Fascinated, he began to fill in some of the punched holes and add new ones. Immediately, his world changed. A flock of ducks flew through the room when he punched one new hole in the tape. Finally he cut the tape entirely, whereupon the world disappeared. However, it also disappeared for the other characters in the story... which makes no sense, if you think about it. Unless the other characters were figments of his punched-tape fantasy. Which I guess is what they were.

It was always my hope, in writing novels and stories which asked the question "What is reality?", to someday get an answer. This was the hope of most of my readers, too. Years passed. I wrote over thirty novels and over a hundred stories, and still I could not figure out what was real. One day a girl college student in Canada asked me to define reality for her, for a paper she was writing for her philosophy class. She wanted a one-sentence answer. I thought about it and finally said, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." That's all I could come up with. That was back in 1972. Since then I haven't been able to define reality any more lucidly.

But the problem is a real one, not a mere intellectual game. Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups—and the electronic hardware exists by which to deliver these pseudo-worlds right into the heads of the reader, the viewer, the listener. Sometimes when I watch my eleven-year-old daughter watch TV, I wonder what she is being taught. The problem of miscuing; consider that. A TV program produced for adults is viewed by a small child. Half of what is said and done in the TV drama is probably misunderstood by the child. Maybe it's all misunderstood. And the thing is, Just how authentic is the information anyhow, even if the child correctly understood it? What is the relationship between the average TV situation comedy to reality? What about the cop shows? Cars are continually swerving out of control, crashing, and catching fire. The police are always good and they always win. Do not ignore that point: The police always win. What a lesson that is. You should not fight authority, and even if you do, you will lose. The message here is, Be passive. And—cooperate. If Officer Baretta asks you for information, give it to him, because Officer Beratta is a good man and to be trusted. He loves you, and you should love him.

So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing. It is my job to create universes, as the basis of one novel after another. And I have to build them in such a way that they do not fall apart two days later. Or at least that is what my editors hope. However, I will reveal a secret to you: I like to build universes which do fall apart. I like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem. I have a secret love of chaos. There should be more of it. Do not believe—and I am dead serious when I say this—do not assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a universe. The old, the ossified, must always give way to new life and the birth of new things. Before the new things can be born the old must perish. This is a dangerous realization, because it tells us that we must eventually part with much of what is familiar to us. And that hurts. But that is part of the script of life. Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs, habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can live. And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable, elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new.

Of course, I would say this, because I live near Disneyland, and they are always adding new rides and destroying old ones. Disneyland is an evolving organism. For years they had the Lincoln Simulacrum, like Lincoln himself, was only a temporary form which matter and energy take and then lose. The same is true of each of us, like it or not.

The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides taught that the only things that are real are things which never change...and the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that everything changes. If you superimpose their two views, you get this result: Nothing is real. There is a fascinating next step to this line of thinking: Parmenides could never have existed because he grew old and died and disappeared, so, according to his own philosophy, he did not exist. And Heraclitus may have been right—let's not forget that; so if Heraclitus was right, then Parmenides did exist, and therefore, according to Heraclitus' philosophy, perhaps Parmenides was right, since Parmenides fulfilled the conditions, the criteria, by which Heraclitus judged things real.

I offer this merely to show that as soon as you begin to ask what is ultimately real, you right away begin talk nonsense. Zeno proved that motion was impossible (actually he only imagined that he had proved this; what he lacked was what technically is called the "theory of limits"). David Hume, the greatest skeptic of them all, once remarked that after a gathering of skeptics met to proclaim the veracity of skepticism as a philosophy, all of the members of the gathering nonetheless left by the door rather than the window. I see Hume's point. It was all just talk. The solemn philosophers weren't taking what they said seriously.

But I consider that the matter of defining what is real—that is a serious topic, even a vital topic. And in there somewhere is the other topic, the definition of the authentic human. Because the bombardment of pseudo-realities begins to produce inauthentic humans very quickly, spurious humans—as fake as the data pressing at them from all sides. My two topics are really one topic; they unite at this point. Fake realities will create fake humans. Or, fake humans will generate fake realities and then sell them to other humans, turning them, eventually, into forgeries of themselves. So we wind up with fake humans inventing fake realities and then peddling them to other fake humans. It is just a very large version of Disneyland. You can have the Pirate Ride or the Lincoln Simulacrum or Mr. Toad's Wild Ride—you can have all of them, but none is true.

In my writing I got so interested in fakes that I finally came up with the concept of fake fakes. For example, in Disneyland there are fake birds worked by electric motors which emit caws and shrieks as you pass by them. Suppose some night all of us sneaked into the park with real birds and substituted them for the artificial ones. Imagine the horror the Disneyland officials would feel when they discovered the cruel hoax. Real birds! And perhaps someday even real hippos and lions. Consternation. The park being cunningly transmuted from the unreal to the real, by sinister forces. For instance, suppose the Matterhorn turned into a genuine snow-covered mountain? What if the entire place, by a miracle of God's power and wisdom, was changed, in a moment, in the blink of an eye, into something incorruptible? They would have to close down.

In Plato's Timaeus, God does not create the universe, as does the Christian God; He simply finds it one day. It is in a state of total chaos. God sets to work to transform the chaos into order. That idea appeals to me, and I have adapted it to fit my own intellectual needs: What if our universe started out as not quite real, a sort of illusion, as the Hindu religion teaches, and God, out of love and kindness for us, is slowly transmuting it, slowly and secretly, into something real?

We would not be aware of this tranformation, since we were not aware that our world was an illusion in the first place. This technically is a Gnostic idea. Gnosticism is a religion which embraced Jews, Christians, and pagans for several centuries. I have been accused of holding Gnostic ideas. I guess I do. At one time I would have been burned. But some of their ideas intrigue me. One time, when I was researching Gnosticism in the Britannica, I came across mention of a Gnostic codex called The Unreal God and the Aspects of His Nonexistent Universe, an idea which reduced me to helpless laughter. What kind of person would write about something that he knows doesn't exist, and how can something that doesn't exist have aspects? But then I realized that I'd been writing about these matters for over twenty-five years. I guess there is a lot of latitude in what you can say when writing about a topic that does not exist. A friend of mine once published a book called Snakes of Hawaii. A number of libraries wrote him ordering copies. Well, there are no snakes in Hawaii. All the pages of his book were blank.

Of course, in science fiction no pretense is made that the worlds described are real. This is why we call it fiction. The reader is warned in advance not to believe what he is about to read. Equally true, the visitors to Disneyland understand that Mr. Toad does not really exist and that the pirates are animated by motors and servo-assist mechanisms, relays and electronic circuits. So no deception is taking place.

And yet the strange thing is, in some way, some real way, much of what appears under the title "science fiction" is true. It may not be literally true, I suppose. We have not really been invaded by creatures from another star system, as depicted in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The producers of that film never intended for us to believe it. Or did they?

And, more important, if they did intend to state this, is it actually true? That is the issue: not, Does the author or producer believe it, but—Is it true? Because, quite by accident, in the pursuit of a good yarn, a science fiction author or producer or scriptwriter might stumble onto the truth... and only later on realize it.

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words. George Orwell made this clear in his novel 1984. But another way to control the minds of people is to control their perceptions. If you can get them to see the world as you do, they will think as you do. Comprehension follows perception. How do you get them to see the reality you see? After all, it is only one reality out of many. Images are a basic constituent: pictures. This is why the power of TV to influence young minds is so staggeringly vast. Words and pictures are synchronized. The possibility of total control of the viewer exists, especially the young viewer. TV viewing is a kind of sleep-learning. An EEG of a person watching TV shows that after about half an hour the brain decides that nothing is happening, and it goes into a hypnoidal twilight state, emitting alpha waves. This is because there is such little eye motion. In addition, much of the information is graphic and therefore passes into the right hemisphere of the brain, rather than being processed by the left, where the conscious personality is located. Recent experiments indicate that much of what we see on the TV screen is received on a subliminal basis. We only imagine that we consciously see what is there. The bulk of the messages elude our attention; literally, after a few hours of TV watching, we do not know what we have seen. Our memories are spurious, like our memories of dreams; the blank are filled in retrospectively. And falsified. We have participated unknowingly in the creation of a spurious reality, and then we have obligingly fed it to ourselves. We have colluded in our own doom.

And—and I say this as a professional fiction writer—the producers, scriptwriters, and directors who create these video/audio worlds do not know how much of their content is true. In other words, they are victims of their own product, along with us. Speaking for myself, I do not know how much of my writing is true, or which parts (if any) are true. This is a potentially lethal situation. We have fiction mimicking truth, and truth mimicking fiction. We have a dangerous overlap, a dangerous blur. And in all probability it is not deliberate. In fact, that is part of the problem. You cannot legislate an author into correctly labelling his product, like a can of pudding whose ingredients are listed on the label...you cannot compel him to declare what part is true and what isn't if he himself does not know.

It is an eerie experience to write something into a novel, believing it is pure fiction, and to learn later on—perhaps years later—that it is true. I would like to give you an example. It is something that I do not understand. Perhaps you can come up with a theory. I can't.

In 1970 I wrote a novel called Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. One of the characters is a nineteen-year-old girl named Kathy. Her husband's name is Jack. Kathy appears to work for the criminal underground, but later, as we read deeper into the novel, we discover that actually she is working for the police. She has a relationship going on with a police inspector. The character is pure fiction. Or at least I thought it was.

Anyhow, on Christmas Day of 1970, I met a girl named Kathy—this was after I had finished the novel, you understand. She was nineteen years old. Her boyfriend was named Jack. I soon learned that Kathy was a drug dealer. I spent months trying to get her to give up dealing drugs; I kept warning her again and again that she would get caught. Then, one evening as we were entering a restauant together, Kathy stopped short and said, "I can't go in." Seated in the restaurant was a police inspector whom I knew. "I have to tell you the truth," Kathy said. "I have a relationship with him."

Certainly, these are odd coincidences. Perhaps I have precognition. But the mystery becomes even more perplexing; the next stage totally baffles me. It has for four years.

In 1974 the novel was published by Doubleday. One afternoon I was talking to my priest—I am an Episcopalian—and I happened to mention to him an important scene near the end of the novel in which the character Felix Buckman meets a black stranger at an all-night gas station, and they begin to talk. As I described the scene in more and more detail, my priest became progressively more agitated. At last he said, "That is a scene from the Book of Acts, from the Bible! In Acts, the person who meets the black man on the road is named Philip—your name." Father Rasch was so upset by the resemblance that he could not even locate the scene in his Bible. "Read Acts," he instructed me. "And you'll agree. It's the same down to specific details."

I went home and read the scene in Acts. Yes, Father Rasch was right; the scene in my novel was an obvious retelling of the scene in Acts...and I had never read Acts, I must admit. But again the puzzle became deeper. In Acts, the high Roman official who arrests and interrogates Saint Paul is named Felix—the same name as my character. And my character Felix Buckman is a high-ranking police general; in fact, in my novel he holds the same office as Felix in the Book of Acts: the final authority. There is a conversation in my novel which very closely resembles a conversation between Felix and Paul.

Well, I decided to try for any further resemblances. The main character in my novel is named Jason. I got an index to the Bible and looked to see if anyone named Jason appears anywhere in the Bible. I couldn't remember any. Well, a man named Jason appears once and only once in the Bible. It is in the Book of Acts. And, as if to plague me further with coincidences, in my novel Jason is fleeing from the authorities and takes refuge in a person's house, and in Acts the man named Jason shelters a fugitive from the law in his house—an exact inversion of the situation in my novel, as if the mysterious Spirit responsible for all this was having a sort of laugh about the whole thing.

Felix, Jason, and the meeting on the road with the black man who is a complete stranger. In Acts, the disciple Philip baptizes the black man, who then goes away rejoicing. In my novel, Felix Buckman reaches out to the black stranger for emotional support, because Felix Buckman's sister has just died and he is falling apart psychologically. The black man stirs up Buckman's spirits and althought Buckman does not go away rejoicing, at least his tears have stopped falling. He had been flying home, weeping over the death of his sister, and had to reach out to someone, anyone, even a total stranger. It is an encounter between two strangers on the road which changes the life of one of them—both in my novel and in Acts. And one final quirk by the mysterious Spirit at work: the name Felix is the Latin word for "happy." Which I did not know when I wrote the novel.

A careful study of my novel shows that for reasons which I cannot even begin to explain I had managed to retell several of the basic incidents from a particular book of the Bible, and even had the right names. What could explain this? That was four years ago that I discovered all this. For four years I have tried to come up with a theory and I have not. I doubt if I ever will.

But the mystery had not ended there, as I had imagined. Two months ago I was walking up to the mailbox late at night to mail off a letter, and also to enjoy the sight of Saint Joseph's Church, which sits opposite my apartment building. I noticed a man loitering suspiciously by a parked car. It looked as if he was attempting to steal the car, or maybe something from it; as I returned from the mailbox, the man hid behind a tree. On impulse I walked up to him and asked, "Is anything the mattter?"

"I'm out of gas," the man said. "And I have no money."

Incredibly, because I have never done this before, I got out my wallet, took all the money from it, and handed the money to him. He then shook hands with me and asked where I lived, so that he could later pay the money back. I returned to my apartment, and then I realized that the money would do him no good, since there was no gas station within walking distance. So I returned, in my car. The man had a metal gas can in the trunk of his car, and, together, we drove in my car to an all-night gas station. Soon we were standing there, two strangers, as the pump jockey filled the metal gas can. Suddenly I realized that this was the scene in my novel—the novel written eight years before. The all-night gas station was exactly as I had envisioned it in my inner eye when I wrote the scene—the glaring white light, the pump jockey—and now I saw something which I had not seen before. The stranger who I was helping was black.

We drove back to his stalled car with the gas, shook hands, and then I returned to my apartment building. I never saw him again. He could not pay me back because I had not told him which of the many apartments was mine or what my name was. I was terribly shaken up by this experience. I had literally lived out a scene completely as it had appeared in my novel. Which is to say, I had lived out a sort of replica of the scene in Acts where Philip encounters the black man on the road.

What could explain all this?

The answer I have come up with may not be correct, but it is the only answer I have. It has to do with time. My theory is this: In some certain important sense, time is not real. Or perhaps it is real, but not as we experience it to be or imagine it to be. I had the acute, overwhelming certitude (and still have) that despite all the change we see, a specific permanent landscape underlies the world of change: and that this invisible underlying landscape is that of the Bible; it, specifically, is the period immediately following the death and resurrection of Christ; it is, in other words, the time period of the Book of Acts.

Parmenides would be proud of me. I have gazed at a constantly changing world and declared that underneath it lies the eternal, the unchanging, the absolutely real. but how has this come about? If the real time is circa A.D. 50, then why do we see A.D. 1978? And if we are really living in the Roman Empire, somewhere in Syria, why do we see the United States?

During the Middle Ages, a curious theory arose, which I will now present to you for what it is worth. It is the theory that the Evil One—Satan—is the "Ape of God." That he creates spurious imitations of creation, of God's authentic creation, and then interpolates them for that authentic creation. Does this odd theory help explain my experience? Are we to believe that we are occluded, that we are deceived, that it is not 1978 but A.D. 50... and Satan has spun a counterfeit reality to wither our faith in the return of Christ?

I can just picture myself being examined by a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist says, "What year is it?" And I reply, "A.D. 50." The psychiatrist blinks and then asks, "And where are you?" I reply, "In Judaea." "Where the heck is that?" the psychiatrist asks. "It's part of the Roman Empire," I would have to answer. "Do you know who is President?" the psychiatrist would ask, and I would answer, "The Procurator Felix." "You're pretty sure about this?" the psychiatrist would ask, meanwhile giving a covert signal to two very large psych techs. "Yep," I'd replay. "Unless Felix has stepped down and had been replaced by the Procurator Festus. You see, Saint Paul was held by Felix for—" "Who told you all this?" the psychiatrist would break in, irritably, and I would reply, "The Holy Spirit." And after that I'd be in the rubber room, inside gazing out, and knowing exactly how come I was there.

Everything in that conversation would be true, in a sense, although palpably not true in another. I know perfectly well that the date is 1978 and that Jimmy Carter is President and that I live in Santa Ana, California, in the United States. I even know how to get from my apartment to Disneyland, a fact I can't seem to forget. And surely no Disneyland existed back at the time of Saint Paul.

So, if I force myself to be very rational and reasonable, and all those other good things, I must admit that the existence of Disneyland (which I know is real) proves that we are not living in Judaea in A.D. 50. The idea of Saint Paul whirling around in the giant teacups while composing First Corinthians, as Paris TV films him with a telephoto lens—that just can't be. Saint Paul would never go near Disneyland. Only children, tourists, and visiting Soviet high officials ever go to Disneyland. Saints do not.

But somehow that biblical material snared my unconscious and crept into my novel, and equally true, for some reason in 1978 I relived a scene which I described back in 1970. What I am saying is this: There is internal evidence in at least one of my novels that another reality, an unchanging one, exactly as Parmenides and Plato suspected, underlies the visible phenomenal world of change, and somehow, in some way, perhaps to our surprise, we can cut through to it. Or rather, a mysterious Spirit can put us in touch with it, if it wishes us to see this permanent other landscape. Time passes, thousands of years pass, but at the same instant that we see this contemporary world, the ancient world, the world of the Bible, is concealed beneath it, still there and still real. Eternally so.

Shall I go for broke and tell you the rest of this peculiar story? I'll do so, having gone this far already. My novel Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said was released by Doubleday in February of 1974. The week after it was released, I had two impacted wisdom teeth removed, under sodium pentathol. Later that day I found myself in intense pain. My wife phoned the oral surgeon and he phoned a pharmacy. Half an hour later there was a knock at my door: the delivery person from the pharmacy with the pain medication. Although I was bleeding and sick and weak, I felt the need to answer the knock on the door myself. When I opened the door, I found myself facing a young woman—who wore a shining gold necklace in the center of which was a gleaming gold fish. For some reason I was hypnotized by the gleaming golden fish; I forgot my pain, forgot the medication, forgot why the girl was there. I just kept staring at the fish sign.

"What does that mean?" I asked her.

The girl touched the glimmering golden fish with her hand and said, "This is a sign worn by the early Christians." She then gave me the package of medication.

In that instant, as I stared at the gleaming fish sign and heard her words, I suddenly experienced what I later learned is called anamnesis—a Greek word meaning, literally, "loss of forgetfulness." I remembered who I was and where I was. In an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, it all came back to me. And not only could I remember it but I could see it. The girl was a secret Christian and so was I. We lived in fear of detection by the Romans. We had to communicate with cryptic signs. She had just told me all this, and it was true.

For a short time, as hard as this is to believe or explain, I saw fading into view the black prison-like contours of hateful Rome. But, of much more importance, I remembered Jesus, who had just recently been with us, and had gone temporarily away, and would very soon return. My emotion was one of joy. We were secretly preparing to welcome Him back. It would not be long. And the Romans did not know. They thought He was dead, forever dead. That was our great secret, our joyous knowledge. Despite all appearances, Christ was going to return, and our delight and anticipation was boundless.

Isn't it odd that this strange event, this recovery of lost memory, occured only a week after Flow My Tears was released? And it is Flow My Tears which contains the replication of people and events from the Book of Acts, which is set at the precise moment in time—just after Jesus' death and resurrection—that I remembered, by means of the golden fish sign, as having just taken place?

If you were me, and had this happen to you, I'm sure you wouldn't be able to leave it alone. You would seek a theory that would account for it. For over four years now, I have been trying one theory after another: circular time, frozen time, timeless time, what is called "sacred" as contrasted to "mundane" time... I can't count the theories I've tried out. One constant has prevailed, though, throughout all theories. There must indeed be a mysterious Holy Spirit which has an exact and intimate relation to Christ, which can indwell in human minds, guide and inform them, and even express itself through those humans, even without their awareness.

In the writing of Flow My Tears, back in 1970, there was one unusual event which I realized at the time was not ordinary, was not a part of the regular writing process. I had a dream one night, an especially vivid dream. And when I awoke I found myself under the compulsion—the absolute necessity—of getting the dream into the text of the novel precisely as I had dreamed it. In getting the dream exactly right, I had to do eleven drafts of the final part of the manuscript, until I was satisfied.

I will now quote from the novel, as it appeared in the final, published form. See if this dream reminds you of anything.

The countryside, brown and dry, in summer, where he had lived as a child. He rode a horse, and approaching him on his left a squad of horses nearing slowly. On the horses rode men in shining robes, each a different color; each wore a pointed helmet that sparkled in the sunlight. The slow, solemn knights passed him and as they traveled by he made out the face of one: an ancient marble face, a terribly old man with rippling cascades of white beard. What a strong nose he had. What noble features. So tired, so serious, so far beyond ordinary men. Evidently he was a king.

Felix Buckman let them pass; he did not speak to them and they said nothing to him. Together, they all moved toward the house from which he had come. A man had sealed himself up inside the house, a man alone, Jason Taverner, in the silence and darkness, without windows, by himself from now on into eternity. Sitting, merely existing, inert. Felix Buckman continued on, out into the open countryside. And then he heard from behind him one dreadful single shriek. They had killed Taverner, and seeing them enter, sensing them in the shadows around him, knowing what they intended to do with him, Taverner had shrieked.

Within himself Felix Buckman felt absolute and utter desolate grief. But in the dream he did not go back nor look back. There was nothing that could be done. No one could have stopped the posse of varicolored men in robes; they could not have been said no to. Anyhow, it was over. Taverner was dead.

This passage probably does not suggest any particular thing to you, except a law posse exacting judgment on someone either guilty or considered guilty. It is not clear whether Taverner has in fact committed some crime or is merely believed to have committed some crime. I had the impression that he was guilty, but that it was a tragedy that he had to be killed, a terribly sad tragedy. In the novel, this dream causes Felix Buckman to begin to cry, and therefore he seeks out the black man at the all-night gas station.

Months after the novel was published, I found the section in the Bible to which this dream refers. It is Daniel, 7:9:

Thrones were set in place and one ancient in years took his seat. His robe was white as snow and the hair of his head like cleanest wool. Flames of fire were his throne and its wheels blazing fire; a flowing river of fire streamed out before him. Thousands upon thousands served him and myriads upon myriads attended his presence. The court sat, and the book were opened.

The white-haired old man appears again in Revelation, 1:13:

I saw... one like a son of man, robed down to his feet, with a golden girdle round his breast. The hair of his head was white as snow-white wool, and his eyes flamed like fire; his feet gleamed like burnished brass refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters.

And then 1:17:

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand upon me and said, "Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last, and I am the living one, for I was dead and now I am alive for evermore, and I hold the keys of Death and Death's domain. Write down therefore what you have seen, what is now, and what will be hereafter."

And, like John of Patmos, I faithfully wrote down what I saw and put in my novel. And it was true, although at the time I did not know who was meant by this description:

...he made out the face of one: an ancient marble face, a terribly old man with rippling cascades of white beard. What a strong nose he had. What noble features. So tired, so serious, so far beyond ordinary men. Evidently he was a king.

Indeed he was a king. He is Christ Himself returned, to pass judgment. And this is what he does in my novel: He passes judgment on the man sealed up in darkness. The man sealed up in darkness must be the Prince of Evil, the Force of Darkness. Call it whatever you wish, its time had come. It was judged and condemned. Felix Buckman could weep at the sadness of it, but he knew that the verdict could not be disputed. And so he rode on, without turning or looking back, hearing only the shriek of fear and defeat: the cry of evil destroyed.

So my novel contained material from other parts of the Bible, as well as the sections from Acts. Deciphered, my novel tells a quite different story from the surface story (which we need not go into here). The real story is simply this: the return of Christ, now king rather than suffering servant. Judge rather than victim of unfair judgment. Everything is reversed. The core message of my novel, without my knowing it, was a warning to the powerful: You will shortly be judged and condemned. Who, specifically, did it refer to? Well, I can't really say; or rather would prefer not to say. I have no certain knowledge, only an intuition. And that is not enough to go on, so I will keep my thoghts to myself. But you might ask yourselves what political events took place in this country between February 1974 and August 1974. Ask yourself who was judged and condemned, and fell like a flaming star into ruin and disgrace. The most powerful man in the world. And I feel as sorry for him now as I did when I dreamed that dream. "That poor poor man," I said once to my wife, with tears in my eyes. "Shut up in the darkness, playing the piano in the night to himself, alone and afraid, knowing what's to come." For God's sake, let us forgive him, finally. But what was done to him and all his men—"all the President's men," as it's put—had to be done. But it is over, and he should be let out into the sunlight again; no creature, no person, should be shut up in darkness forever, in fear. It is not humane.

Just about the time that Supreme Court was ruling that the Nixon tapes had to be turned over to the special prosecutor, I was eating at a Chinese restaurant in Yorba Linda, the town in California where Nixon went to school—where he grew up, worked at a grocery store, where there is a park named after him, and of course the Nixon house, simple clapboard and all that. In my fortune cookie, I got the following fortune:

DEEDS DONE IN SECRET HAVE A
WAY OF BECOMING FOUND OUT.

I mailed the slip of paper to the White House, mentioning that the Chinese restaurant was located within a mile of Nixon's original house, and I said, "I think a mistake has been made; by accident I got Mr. Nixon's fortune. Does he have mine?" The White House did not answer.

Well, as I said earlier, an author of a work supposed fiction might write the truth and not know it. To quote Xenophanes, another pre-Socratic: "Even if a man should chance to speak the most complete truth, yet he himself does not know it; all things are wrapped in appearances" (Fragment 34). And Heraclitus added to this: "The nature of things is in the habit of concealing itself" (Fragment 54). W. S. Gilbert, of Gilbert and Sullivan, put it: "Things are seldom what they seem; skim milk masquerades as cream." The point of all that is that we cannot trust our senses and probably not even our a priori reasoning. As to our senses, I understand that people who have been blind from birth and are suddenly given sight are amazed to discover that objects appear to get smaller and smaller as they get farther away. Logically, there is no reason for this. We, of course, have come to accept this, because we are use to it. We see objects get smaller, but we know that in actuality they remain the same size. So even the common everyday pragmatic person utilizes a certain amount of sophisticated discounting of what his eyes and ears tell him.

Little of what Heraclitus wrote has survived, and what we do have is obscure, but Fragment 54 is lucid and important: "Latent structure is master of obvious structure." This means that Heraclitus believed that a veil lay over the true landscape. He also may have suspected that time was somehow not what it seemed, because in Fragment 52 he said: "Time is a child at play, playing draughts; a child's is the kingdom." This is indeed cryptic. But he also said, in Fragment 18: "If one does not expect it, one will not find out the unexpected; it is not to be tracked down and no path leads us to it." Edward Hussey, in his scholarly book The Pre-Socratics, says:

If Heraclitus is to be so insistent on the lack of understanding shown by most men, it would seem only reasonable that he should offer further instructions for penetrating to the truth. The talk of riddle-guessing suggests that some kind of revelation, beyond human control, is necessary...The true wisdom, as has been seen, is closely associated with God, which suggests further that in advancing wisdom a man becomes like, or a part of, God.

This quote is not from a religious book or a book on theology; it is an analysis of the earliest philosophers by a Lecturer in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Oxford. Hussey makes it clear that to these early philosophers there was no distinction between philosophy and religion. The first great quantum leap in Greek theology was by Xenophanes of Colophon, born in the mid-sixth century B.C. Xenophanes, without resorting to any authority except that of his own mind, says:

One god there is, in no way like mortal creatures either in bodily form or in the thought of his mind. The whole of him sees, the whole of him thinks, the whole of him hears. He stays always motionless in the same place; it is not fitting that he should move about now this way, now that.

This is a subtle and advanced concept of God, evidently without precedent among the Greek thinkers. "The arguments of Parmenides seemed to show that all reality must indeed be a mind," Hussey writes, "or an object of thought in a mind." Regarding Heraclitus specifically, he says, "In Heraclitus it is difficult to tell how far the designs in God's mind are distinguished from the execution in the world, or indeed how far God's mind is distinguished from the world." The further leap by Anaxagoras has always fascinated me. "Anaxagoras had been driven to a theory of the microstructure of matter which made it, to some extent, mysterious to human reason." Anaxagoras believed that everything was determined by Mind. These were not childish thinkers, nor primitives. They debated serious issues and studied one another's views with deft insight. It was not until the time of Aristotle that their views got reduced to what we can neatly—but wrongly—classify as crude. The summation of much pre-Socratic theology and philosophy can be stated as follows: The kosmos is not as it appears to be, and what it probably is, at its deepest level, is exactly that which the human being is at his deepest level—call it mind or soul, it is something unitary which lives and thinks, and only appears to be plural and material. Much of this view reaches us through the Logos doctrine regarding Christ. The Logos was both that which thought, and the thing which it thought: thinker and thought together. The universe, then, is thinker and thought, and since we are part of it, we as humans are, in the final analysis, thoughts of and thinkers of those thoughts.

Thus if God thinks about Rome circa A.D. 50, then Rome circa A.D. 50 is. The universe is not a windup clock and God the hand that winds it. The universe is not a battery-powered watch and God the battery. Spinoza believed that the universe is the body of God extensive in space. But long before Spinoza—two thousand years before him—Xenophanes had said, "Effortlessly, he wields all things by the thought of his mind" (Fragment 25).

If any of you have read my novel Ubik, you know that the mysterious entity or mind or force called Ubik starts out as a series of cheap and vulgar commercials and winds up saying:

I am Ubik. Before the universe was I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them there. They go as I say, they do as I tell them. I am the word and my name is never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik but that is not my name. I am. I shall always be.

It is obvious from this who and what Ubik is; it specifically says that it is the word, which is to say, the Logos. In the German translation, there is one of the most wonderful lapses of correct understanding that I have ever come across; God help us if the man who translated my novel Ubik into German were to do a translation from the koine Greek into German of the New Testament. He did all right until he got to the sentence "I am the word." That puzzled him. What can the author mean by that? he must have asked himself, obviously never having come across the Logos doctrine. So he did as good a job of translation as possible. In the German edition, the Absolute Entity which made the suns, made the worlds, created the lives and the places they inhabit, says of itself:

I am the brand name.

Had he translated the Gospel according to Saint John, I suppose it would have come out as:

When all things began, the brand name already was. The brand name dwelt with God, and what God was, the brand name was.

It would seem that I not only bring you greetings from Disneyland but from Mortimer Snerd. Such is the fate of an author who hoped to include theological themes in his writing. "The brand name, then, was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be; no single thing was created without him." So it goes with noble ambitions. Let's hope God has a sense of humor.

Or should I say, Let's hope the brand name has a sense of humor.

As I said to you earlier, my two preoccupations in my writing are "What is reality?" and "What is the authentic human?" I'm sure you can see by now that I have not been able to answer the first question. I have an abiding intuition that somehow the world of the Bible is a literally real but veiled landscape, never changing, hidden from our sight, but available to us by revelation. That is all I can come up with—a mixture of mystical experience, reasoning, and faith. I would like to say something about the traits of the authentic human, though; in this quest I have had more plausible answers.

The authentic human being is one of us who instinctively knows what he should not do, and, in addition, he will balk at doing it. He will refuse to do it, even if this brings down dread consequences to him and to those whom he loves. This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this resistance. Their deeds may be small, and almost always unnoticed, unmarked by history. Their names are not remembered, nor did these authentic humans expect their names to be remembered. I see their authenticity in an odd way: not in their willingness to perform great heroic deeds but in their quiet refusals. In essence, they cannot be compelled to be what they are not.

The power of spurious realities battering at us today—these deliberately manufactured fakes never penetrate to the heart of true human beings. I watch the children watching TV and at first I am afraid of what they are being taught, and then I realize, They can't be corrupted or destroyed. They watch, they listen, they understand, and, then, where and when it is necessary, they reject. There is something enormously powerful in a child's ability to withstand the fraudulent. A child has the clearest eye, the steadiest hand. The hucksters, the promoters, are appealing for the allegiance of these small people in vain. True, the cereal companies may be able to market huge quantities of junk breakfasts; the hamburger and hot dog chains may sell endless numbers of unreal fast-food items to the children, but the deep heart beats firmly, unreached and unreasoned with. A child of today can detect a lie quicker than the wisest adult of two decades ago. When I want to know what is true, I ask my children. They do not ask me; I turn to them.

One day while my son Christopher, who is four, was playing in front of me and his mother, we two adults began discussing the figure of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. Christopher turned toward us for an instant and said, "I am a fisherman. I fish for fish." He was playing with a metal lantern which someone had given me, which I had nevel used... and suddenly I realized that the lantern was shaped like a fish. I wonder what thoughts were being placed in my little boy's soul at that moment—and not placed there by cereal merchants or candy peddlers. "I am a fisherman. I fish for fish." Christopher, at four, had found the sign I did not find until I was forty-five years old.

Time is speeding up. And to what end? Maybe we were told that two thousand years ago. Or maybe it wasn't really that long ago; maybe it is a delusion that so much time has passed. Maybe it was a week ago, or even earlier today. Perhaps time is not only speeding up; perhaps, in addition, it is going to end.

And if it does, the rides at Disneyland are never going to be the same again. Because when time ends, the birds and hippos and lions and deer at Disneyland will no longer be simulations, and, for the first time, a real bird will sing.

Thank you.

—Philip K. Dick

("How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later", a speech given by Dick in 1978)

More Blood, Sweat, Toil and Tears

Cantara Christopher — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:01:08 +0000

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright 
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can 
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return. 

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire 
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

- W.H. Auden, "September 1, 1939"

Cantaraville is On Someone or Other's Shitlist

Cantara Christopher — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 23:16:50 +0000

There are people who believe that somewhere out in cyberland there exists one great amorphous but singular Writers Community—sort of a cohesive “nation” of writers possessing certain rights, rules of conduct, avenues of redress, etc. simply because its inhabitants are writers. This would be harmless fantasy if it weren’t for a few people who take this idea very seriously, perhaps because of misplaced idealism, a personal grudge magnified, or simply to make one’s mark as a sort of industry provocateur.

It won’t have much of an effect on what we’re trying to do with Cantaraville and Cantarabooks, but last Friday we got an email at Cantarabooks with the subject line in caps: COMPLAINT. It went on to address us with, well, not only our mailing address, the full names of our editors (me and Michael), but our domestic relationship as well. I’m going to do my best to obscure the name of this person and her writers forum because, frankly, I don’t want to throw any more publicity in her direction. She doesn’t need it.

This was a long email. In it, this person spoke of an “investigation” being launched into a complaint made by a writer who submitted a batch of poems to us. This writer “alleges you sent a deeply insulting, threatening and unprofessional email simply because the author hesitated at your non-paying contract offer. See complete allegation under my signature."

In actuality, the “allegation” was simply her reprint of the last email I sent this writer.

“All correspondence for our investigations,” it went on, “must be in writing and is subject to publication. If you do owe this person money, we strongly suggest you read this article before responding: (and here was a URL pointing to one of the forum’s articles written by this person)... We appreciate your prompt response in this matter.”

I responded this morning in, I believe, a measured tone that matched the tone of the “official complaint” form letter email:

-----

Thank you for your interest in this matter. On Wednesday, April 15, I— K— sent us five poems for consideration. Although they were not sent in the format we request in our guidelines, we nonetheless read them. As we happened to have one slot open in an upcoming issue and his poems were deemed good enough for inclusion, we accepted them.

- On Friday, Apr 17, K— wrote back: Thanks for the acceptance. I’ll have to mull it over since this is without remuneration.

Our payment policy—one author’s copy—is stated clearly in our guidelines and in the Author-Publisher Agreement we email an author upon acceptance of his work. This agreement is an informal, unsigned agreement, more of an acknowledgment that a relationship has started with the author.

In the body of this same email, he then went on to include an unsolicited 1200-word pitch to our small press, Cantarabooks, for his translation of a novella by the minor early 20th-century Russian author, Mikhail P. Artsybashev, which ended:

- If you are to have it as a paperback, I am more than certain that at least 300 U.S. libraries with Russian literature interest, plus college libraries, would be potential buyers.

In our guidelines for Cantarabooks, we state in the first paragraph: “At the moment we are open only to unsolicited submissions of novellas, story collections or literary reportage 20-30,000 words for our ebook series of new writing in English.” Not proposals—full manuscripts.

NINE MINUTES LATER, before we even had a chance to reply to this email, K— sent us another one, stating:

- I can also have my illustrator supply some superlative pictures for this novella. But it will cost some.

We state clearly in our guidelines, “No photos or illustrations, please."

That was the last straw. It was clear that the submitter of this unsolicited material had no interest in being published in Cantarabooks/Cantaraville other than to get remunerative work for himself and his “illustrator”. Since that is not what we are in business for—our aims are clearly stated on our website—his importuning was taken as an insult.

On April 23 I wrote him the email you quote in its entirety, to which he replied the same day:

- Didn't know that some e-publishers are so touchy, but thanks for your advice. Best of successes to you and your publication. PS: Indeed, word will get around and writers do have some rights as well...

I’m assuming from that last intimation he felt driven to contact you to help him get some sort of redress. But in our opinion there’s nothing here that needs redressing.

-----

Our accuser’s advocate was swift in her reply:

-----

Hi Cantara,

Despite the emails you received from the writer, which were all friendly and professional, and despite what appears to be your obvious misunderstanding of his intent, your email to him was, in our opinion, over-the-top unprofessional—downright mean in fact.

We will be issuing a warning about your firm.

-----

I’m sure that by this time this warning will have been turned into a topic thread at her forum with the entire exchange of emails—or possibly just my email—posted, so if you want to read the whole thing or the offending email I wrote to I— K—, you’re just going to have to go and find it there. It’s not too hard to figure out the identity of the woman or her forum. I believe that she was one of the several owners of writers forums recently sued for defamation by the agent Barbara Bauer. (I have absolutely no public opinion on Bauer’s professional career.)

So there it is, time wasted swatting more ants at the picnic. Back to the sandwiches.

The Odd Duck Encounter

Cantara Christopher — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:06:37 +0000

If I could make one wish for the members of my profession, college and university professors of literature, I would wish that for one year, two, three, or five, we would give up readings. By a reading, I mean the application of an analytical vocabulary—Marx's, Freud's, Foucault's, Derrida's, or whoever's—to describe and (usually) to judge a work of literary art. I wish that we'd declare a moratorium on readings. I wish that we'd give readings a rest.

This wish will strike most academic literary critics and perhaps others as well as—let me put it politely—counterintuitive. Readings, many think, are what we do. Readings are what literary criticism is all about. They are the bread and butter of the profession. Through readings we write our books; through readings we teach our students. And if there were no more readings, what would we have left to do? Wouldn't we have to close our classroom doors, shut down our office computers, and go home? The end of readings, presumably, would mean the end of our profession.

So let me try to explain what I have in mind. For it seems to me that if we kicked our addiction to readings, our profession would actually be stronger and more influential, our teaching would improve, and there would be more good books of literary criticism to be written and accordingly more to be read.

In my view—a view informed by, among others, William Blake, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Matthew Arnold—the best way to think of a literary education is as a great second chance. We all get socialized once. We spend the first years of our lives learning the usages of our families, our neighborhoods, our religions, our schools, and our nations. We come to an understanding of what's expected: We come to see what the world takes to be good and bad, right and wrong. We figure out ways to square the ethics of our church with the ethics of our neighborhood—they aren't always the same, but one reason that religions survive and thrive is that they can enter into productive commerce with the values present in other spheres of life. Kids go to primary school so that they can learn their ABC's and math facts, certainly. But they also go to be socialized: They go to acquire a set of more or less public values. Then it's up to them (and their parents) to square those values with the home truths they've acquired in their families. Socialization isn't a simple process, but when it works well, it can produce individuals who thrive in themselves and either do no harm to others or make a genuine contribution to society at large.

But primary socialization doesn't work for everyone. There are always people—how many it's tough to know, but surely a minority—who don't see their own natures fully reflected in the values that they're supposed to inherit or assume. They feel out of joint with their times. The gay kid grows up in a family that thinks homosexuality is a sin. The young guy with a potent individualistic streak can't bear the drippy collectivism foisted on him by his ex-hippie parents and his purportedly progressive school. The girl who is supposed to be a chip off the old legal block and sit some day on the Court only wants to draw and paint; the guy destined (in his mom's heart) for Princeton is born to be a carpenter and has no real worldly ambitions, no matter how often he's upbraided.

To be young is often to know, or to sense, what others have in mind for you and not to like it. But what is harder for a person who has gone unhappily through the first rites of passage into the tribe is to know how to replace the values she's had imposed on her with something better. She's learned a lot of socially sanctioned languages, and still none of them are hers. But are there any that truly might be? Is there something she might be or do in the world that's truly in keeping with the insistent, but often speechless, self that presses forward internally?

This, I think, is where literature can come in—as can all of the other arts and in some measure the sciences, too. By venturing into what Arnold memorably called "the best that has been known and thought," a young person has the chance to discover new vital possibilities. Such a person sees that there are other ways of looking at the world and other ways of being in the world than the ones that she's inherited from her family and culture. She sees, with Emily Dickinson, that a complex, often frayed, often humorous dialogue with God must be at the center of her life; she sees, with Charles Dickens, that humane decency is the highest of human values and understands that her happiness will come from shrewdly serving others; she likes the sound of Blake and—I don't know—forms a better rock band than the ones we've been hearing for the last decade and more; he seconds Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke and becomes a conservative, in his way twice wiser than NPR-addicted, Prius-proselytizing Mom and Dad.

In short, the student reads and feels that sensation that Emerson describes so well at the beginning of "Self-Reliance": "In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty." The truth of what we're best fit to do is latent in all of us, Emerson suggests, and I think this to be right. But it's also true that we, and society, too, have plenty of tricks for keeping that most important kind of knowledge out of reach. Society seems to have a vested interest in telling us what we should do and be. But often its interpretation of us—fed through teachers and guidance officers and priests and ministers and even through our loving parents—is simply wrong. When we feel, as Longinus said we will in the presence of the sublime, that we have created what in fact we've only heard, then it's time to hearken with particular attention and see how this startling utterance might be beckoning us to think, or speak, or even to live differently.

Everyone who teaches literature has probably had at least one such golden moment. I mean the moment where, reading casually or reading intently, being lazy or being responsive, one is shocked into recognition. "Yes," one says, "that's the way it really is." Then often, a rather antinomian utterance comes: "They say it's not so, but I know it is. I always have."

One of my own such moments occurred reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X. It didn't really figure: That shouldn't have been the book (as it was at least for a little while) for a white, Irish-Catholic kid growing up outside of Boston. What Malcolm had to say about race resonated with me: There was a low-grade race war on in my school at the time, and he changed my thoughts about it pretty directly. In sum, I began to see how scary it must be to be black in America, and to be in real danger much of the time from white officials and white cops and white kids (kids not altogether unlike me and my pals).

But what really struck me in that book, oddly enough, was Malcolm's hunger for learning. By now, nearly everyone knows the story of how Malcolm, in prison, found himself unfit for the arguments that proliferated in the prison yard (or at least one quadrant of it) and took in all subjects under the moon and sun: race, sex, politics, history. He had opinions, but he couldn't back them up. He had almost no facts in his mental files. The answer was simple: He needed to start reading. So he loaded his cell with meaty works from the prison library. But of course, smart as the then Malcolm Little was, he hadn't had much formal education, and the books were loaded with words he didn't understand, placed like landmines in every paragraph. He looked them up in the dictionary, but there were simply too many of them. In the process of running around in the dictionary, he'd forget what the paragraph at hand was supposed to be about.

But this didn't induce him to give up. Instead, Malcolm sat down with a dictionary and a notebook and began copying down the dictionary—starting maybe with aardvark and moving on down the line. It took a while and it wasn't the most scintillating of pastimes, but when it was over, Malcolm Little could read.

And he read ferociously. The whole world of thought came into being for him: history, philosophy, literature, and science. He vowed then that he would be a reader for the rest of his life, a learner; and in time he would vow to use his book-won knowledge, along with a considerable quotient of street-smarts, to help himself through life and to do what he could for his people. In the beginning, doing what he could for black people meant bedeviling the white man; in time, it meant doing his part to serve all of humanity.

I was thrilled to read this. It turned out that I—despite being about as impatient with formal schooling as Malcolm was—had some intellectual aspirations, too. I was curious about things, after my fashion. Malcolm was black, I was white. Still, my 17-year-old self saw him as someone I could, in certain regards, try to emulate. I could read to satisfy my thirst for knowledge; I could use what I learned to make my life a little better, and maybe help some other people along the way. It was an unlikely conversion experience, maybe. But ultimately that's what it was.

I suspect that virtually everyone who teaches literature has had such an experience and maybe more than one. They've read Emerson or Orwell or Derrida or Woolf, and been moved to change the way they do what they do—or they've chosen another way of life altogether. And even if they don't change, they've had the chance to have their fundamental values challenged. Sometimes a true literary education appears to leave a student where he was at the beginning. But that state is only apparent. Confronted by the best that's been thought and said, he's gotten to reconsider his values and views. What was once flat dogma turns into lively commitment and conviction.

I think that the experience of change is at the heart of literary education. How does it come about? For me, it had a long foreground, to be sure, but most immediately I was guided by a teacher. He told me that I—I in particular—might get something worth keeping out of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. And I suspect that's how many of us teachers found the books that have made us who we are. Teachers who've been inspired by great works have been moved to pass the gift on. "What we have loved, others will love," says Wordsworth, addressing his friend Coleridge in The Prelude, "and we will teach them how."

I think that the highest objective for someone trying to provide a literary education to students is to make such moments of transformation possible. Teachers set the scene for secular conversion. These conversions may be large scale—like the one that Whitman seems to have undergone when he read Emerson's "The Poet," and realized that though Emerson could not himself become the American poet prophesied in the essay, he, Walt Whitman, actually could. But the changes that literary art brings can be relatively minor, too. Reading a book may make a person more receptive to beauty than he otherwise would have been; might make him more sensitive to injustice; more prone to be self-reliant. Granted, books can have negative effects, too. One has read Don Quixote; one has read Madame Bovary. But a prerequisite for sharing literary art with young people should be the belief that, over all, its influence can be salutary; it can aid in growth. No one would teach history, after all, if he believed that all, or most, forms of historical knowledge were destructive deceptions; one would not teach music if one felt, as Plato did, that most of it disrupts the harmony of the soul.

I said that transformation was the highest goal of literary education. The best purpose of all art is to inspire, said Emerson, and that seems right to me. But that does not mean that literary study can't have other beneficial effects. It can help people learn to read more sensitively; help them learn to express themselves; it can teach them more about the world at large. But the proper business of teaching is change — for the teacher (who is herself a work in progress) and (pre-eminently) for the student.

Nor do I think that everyone who picks up a book must seek the sublime moment of unexpected but inevitable connection. People read for diversion; for relaxation; to inform themselves; to stave off anxiety in airplanes, when the flight attendant is out of wine and beer. A book can make a good door stop; and if you find yourself especially angry at the cat, have a good throwing arm, and a good angle — well, there's no end of uses for a book. But if you're going to take a book into a room, where the objective is to educate people—education being from the Latin educere, meaning "lead out of" and then presumably toward something—then you should consider using the book to help lead those who want to go out from their own lives into another, if only a few steps.

If this is what you want to do, then readings will only get in your way. When you launch, say, a Marxist reading of William Blake, you effectively use Marx as a tool of analysis and judgment. To the degree that Blake anticipates Marx, Blake is prescient and to be praised. Thus the Marxist reading approves of Blake for his hatred of injustice; his polemic against imperialism; his suspicion of the gentry; his critique of bourgeois art as practiced by the likes of Sir Joshua Reynolds. But Blake, being Blake, also diverges from Marx. He is, presumably, too committed to something akin to liberal individualism; he doesn't understand the revolutionary potential latent in the proletariat; he is, perhaps, an idealist, who believes that liberation of consciousness matters more, or at least must precede, material liberation; he has no clear theory of class conflict. Thus Blake, admirable as he may be, needs to be read with skepticism; he requires a corrective, and the name of that corrective is Karl Marx. Just so, the corrective could be called Jacques Derrida (who would illuminate Blake the logocentrist); Foucault (who would demonstrate Blake's immersion in and implicit endorsement of an imprisoning society); Kristeva (who would be attuned to Blake's imperfections on the score of gender politics), and so on down the line. The current sophisticated critic would be unlikely to pick one master to illuminate the work at hand—he would mix and match as the occasion required. But to enact a reading means to submit one text to the terms of another; to allow one text to interrogate another—then often to try, sentence, and summarily execute it.

The problem with the Marxist reading of Blake is that it robs us of some splendid opportunities. We never take the time to arrive at a Blakean reading of Blake, and we never get to ask whether Blake's vision might be true — by which I mean, following William James, whether it's good in the way of belief. The moment when the student in the classroom, or the reader perusing the work can pause and say: "Yes, that's how it is; Blake's got it exactly right," disappears. There's no chance for the instant that Emerson and Longinus evoke, when one feels that he's written what he's only read, uttered what he's only heard.

Nor, it's worth pointing out, does Marx get much real opportunity here either. He's assumed to be a superior figure: There are in fact any number of Marxist readings of Blake out there; I know of no Blakean readings of Marx. But the student who has heard the teacher unfold a Marxist reading of a work probably doesn't get to study Marx per se. He never gets to have a potential moment of revelation reading The Manifesto or The Grundrisse. Marx too disappears from the scene, becoming part of a technological apparatus for processing other works. No one asks: "Is what Marx is saying true?" "Is Foucault onto something?" "Is what Derrida believes actually the case?" They're simply applied like paint to the side of a barn; the paint can go on roughly or it can go on adroitly, with subtle variations of mood and texture. But paint is what it is.

It should be clear here that my objection isn't to theoretical texts per se. If a fellow professor thinks that Marx or Foucault or Kristeva provides a contribution to the best that has been thought and said, then by all means read and study the text. (I've worked on these figures with students and not without profit.) But the teacher who studies, say, Foucault probably needs to ask what kind of life Foucault commends. Is it one outside of all institutions? Is it one that rebels against all authority? Can that life be in any way compatible with life as a professor or a student? These are questions that are rarely asked about what are conceived of as the more radical thinkers of the era. It is not difficult to guess why this is so.

I've said that the teacher's job is to offer a Blakean reading of Blake, or an Eliotic reading of Eliot, and that's a remark that can't help but raise questions. The standard for the kind of interpretation I have in mind is actually rather straightforward. When a teacher admires an author enough to teach his work, then it stands to reason that the teacher's initial objective ought to be framing a reading that the author would approve. The teacher, to begin with, represents the author: He analyzes the text sympathetically, he treats the words with care and caution and with due respect. He works hard with the students to develop a vision of what the world is and how to live that rises from the author's work and that, ultimately, the author, were he present in the room, would endorse. Northrop Frye does something very much like this in his book on Blake, Fearful Symmetry; George Orwell achieves something similar in his famous essay on Dickens. In both cases, the critic's objective is to read the author with humane sensitivity, then synthesize a view of life that's based on that reading. Schopenhauer tells us that all major artists ask and in their fashion answer a single commanding question: "What is life?" The critic works to show how the author frames that query and how he answers it. Critics are necessary for this work because the answers that most artists give to major questions are indirect. Artists move forward through intuition and inference: They feel their way to their sense of things. The critic, at his best, makes explicit what is implicit in the work.

This kind of criticism is itself something of an art, not a science. You cannot tell that you have compounded a valid reading of Dickens any more than that you have compounded a valid novel or a valid play. When others find your Dickensian endorsement of Dickens to be of use to them, humanly, intellectually, spiritually, then your endorsement is a success. The desire to turn the art of reading into a science is part of what draws the profession to the application of sterile concepts.

Perhaps an analogy will be helpful. Let us say that a friend of ours has been seriously ill, or gone through a bad divorce, or has fallen wildly, unexpectedly in love. The friend tells us all about it, from beginning to end, with all the sensitivity she can muster. The story is long and complex, and laced with nuance. We listen patiently and take it in. Later on we're faced with explaining this situation to a third person, a mutual friend of us both. Our confiding friend, our first one, wants this to happen: She wants her friends to know the story. How do we proceed? Surely we proceed as sensitively and humanely as possible. We honor our first friend's way of understanding the illness or the love affair. If we are a good friend, we tell the story such that, were the first friend there in the room, she would nod with approval and gratitude.

We may not believe the first friend's entire sense of the story. We may have a different idea of what happened and why. But we honor our first friend by keeping true to her insofar as we can. We do not, say, begin with a Freudian or Marxist reinterpretation of what it is she has told us. If we do, we are no friend at all. We have not given someone we care about due consideration.

Just so, we need to befriend the texts that we choose to teach. They too are the testaments of human beings who have lived and suffered in the world. They too deserve honor and respect. If you have a friend whose every significant utterance you need to translate into another idiom—whose two is not the real two, as Emerson says—then that is a friend you need to jettison. If there are texts that you cannot befriend, then leave them to the worms of time—or to the kinder ministrations of others.

In a once-famous essay, "Against Interpretation," Susan Sontag denounced interpretation and called for an "erotics of art." She wanted immersion in the text, pleasure, the drowning of self-consciousness. She sought ecstatic immediacy. To be against readings, as I am, is not to be against interpretation, and it is not to be against criticism. If interpretation means the work, often difficult, often pleasurable, of parsing the complexities of meaning a given text offers, then interpretation is necessary before we decide what vision of the world the text endorses.

To be against readings is also not to be against criticism. Once the author's vision of what Stevens calls "How to Live, What to Do" is made manifest, it's necessary to question it. In time, I learned to ask whether Malcolm X's views about Jews and women were conducive to a good life for anyone. His sense of race relations, early and late in the book, also needed some examination and some skeptical questioning. But this sort of questioning needs to occur once the author's vision is set forth in a comprehensive, clear, sympathetic manner. Criticism is getting into skeptical dialogue with the text. Mounting a conventional academic reading—applying an alternative set of terms—means closing off the dialogue before it has a chance to begin.

You may find that after you've listened to your friend's story about her love affair or her divorce that you can't buy everything she says. Her vision is self-idealizing or skewed. Then, as a friend, you need to bring your reservations forward and to discuss them with her. So it is with the text: The teacher and students inquire into it, and often they too answer in its behalf. But it all begins with a simple gesture. It all begins by befriending the text.

That gesture of befriending should have a public as well as a classroom dimension. The books that we professors of literature tend to write now are admirable in many ways. They are full of learning, hard work, honesty, and intelligence that sometimes, in its way, touches on brilliance. But they are also, at least in my judgment, usually unreadable. They are composed as performances. They are meant to show, and often to show off, the prowess of the author. They could not conceivably be meant to provide spiritual or intellectual nourishment. No one could read a representative instance of such writing and decide based on it to change her life. Our books are not written from love, but from need.

I think that it is possible to write books and essays in behalf of literature that will demonstrate its powers of renovation and inquire into the limits of those powers. Such books can and should be inspiring not only to members of the profession but to educated (or self-educated) and curious members of the general public who are willing to do some hard intellectual work. As a profession, our standing in and impact upon society beyond our classrooms now is minuscule. Yet we are copiously stocked with superb talent: Some of the best young minds in America continue to be drawn to the graduate study of literature. But unless we as a profession change our ways and stop seeking respectability and institutional standing at the expense of genuine human impact, they are destined, as Tennyson has it, to rust unburnished, and that's a sorry fate for them and for all of us.

One must admit that it's possible to develop too exalted a sense of the transforming powers of literature and the other arts. What worked for me and you and you may not have a universal application. It's probable that most people will be relatively content to live within the ethical and conceptual world that their parents and their society pass on to them. Burke and Johnson thought of common-sense opinion as a great repository of wisdom stored through the ages, augmented and revised through experience, trial and error, until it became in time the treasure of humanity. Perhaps the conservative sages were right. But there will always be individuals who cannot live entirely by the standard dispensation and who require something better—or at least something else. This group may be small (though I think it larger than most imagine), but its members need what great writing can bring them very badly indeed. We professors of literature hold the key to the warehouse where the loaves lie fresh and steaming, while outside people hunger for them, sometimes dangerously. We ought to do all we can to open the doors and dispense the bread: We should see how far it'll go.

—Mark Edmundson

Mark Edmundson is a professor of English at the University of Virginia. He is author of The Death of Sigmund Freud: The Legacy of His Last Days, published in 2007 by Bloomsbury.

From http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i33/33b00601.htm

A Young Writer's Dilemma

Cantara Christopher — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 21:49:24 +0000

There must be some lofty, godlike place from which all people could be judged alike, not pitted against each other, as in some lifelong hockey match, but seen noisy jostling together in all their glorious imperfection. If such a place existed, she was not worthy of it...

Trapped between the urge to write a simple diary account of her day's experiences and the ambition to make something greater of them that would be polished, self-contained and obscure, she sat for many minutes frowning at her sheet of paper and its infantile quotation and did not write another word. Actions she thought she could describe well enough, and she had the hang of dialogue. She could do the woods in winter, and the grimness of a castle wall. But how to do feelings? All very well to write, She felt sad, or describe what a sad person might do, but what of sadness itself, how was that put across so it could be felt in all its lowering immediacy?

—From Atonement by Ian McEwan

To Roxana Saberi, Iranian with an American Passport

Cantara Christopher — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:50:25 +0000

I just got this email from an acquaintance in New York, the documentarian Howard Weinberg:

I have been dismayed for several days by news of the arrest of Roxana Saberi. I want to share with you an email I just received from The Flaherty Film Seminar’s executive director. I attended this annual international meeting of filmmakers, film historians, film lovers and film students last year at Colgate University. The highlight of the conference was a live teleconference with the very talented Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi, whose extraordinary work we had screened. It was amazing to think we could be connected with him via Skype Video.

His translator was his Iranian-American girlfriend who is now imprisoned in Iran. It is inconceivable to me or anyone who saw her that she could be a spy. This was a great moment for International Cultural Communication – how fortunate is Iran to have such an accomplished filmmaker, I thought. Roxana was lovely, in love, sharing her sense of humor and preciseness in communicating how Ghobadi’s films were made. Her work as a reporter for NPR was a further connection for Iran to the world. The increasing disregard for the importance of journalists and artists who communicate across cultures is frightening. We all thrive if we are interconnected and can acknowledge differences, not repress them. I send you this in the hope that somone of you might be in a position to do something to alleviate this tragic situation.

Here is the Flaherty message:

As many of you may have already heard, Roxana Saberi has been arrested, tried, and convicted of spying for the US in Iran. Roxana was a translator for Bahman Ghobadi, via Skype, at the 2008 Flaherty Seminar. A website has been set up to campaign for her release and includes the most up-to-date information on the situation at freeroxana.net. Below is an open letter from Bahman Ghobadi following Roxana's conviction.

To Roxana Saberi, Iranian with an American Passport

If I kept quiet until now, it was for her sake. If today I speak, it is for her sake.

She is my friend, my fiancée, and my companion. An intelligent and talented young woman, whom I have always admired.

It was the 31st of January. The day of my birthday. That morning, she called to say she would pick me up so we would go out together. She never came. I called on her mobile, but it was off, and for two-three days I had no idea what had happened to her. I went to her apartment, and since we had each other's keys, I went in, but she wasn't there.

Two days later, she called and said: "Forgive me my dear; I had to go to Zahedan." I got angry: why hadn't she said anything to me? I told her I didn't believe her, and again she said: "Forgive me my dear, I had to go." And the line was cut. I waited for her to call back. But she didn't call back. She didn't call back.

I left for Zahedan. I looked for her in every hotel, but nobody had ever heard her name. For ten days, thousands of wild thoughts came to my mind. Until I learned, through her father, she had been arrested. I thought it was a joke.

I thought it was a misunderstanding and that she would be released after two or three days. But days went by and I had no news from her. I started to worry and knocked on every door for help, until I understood what had happened.

It is with tears in my eyes that I say she is innocent and guiltless. It is me, who has known her for years, and shared every moment with her, who declares it. She was always busy reading and doing her research. Nothing else. During all these years I've known her, she wouldn't go anywhere without letting me know, nor would do anything without asking my advice. To her friends, her family, everyone that surrounded her, she had given no signs of unreasonable behavior.

How come someone who would spend days without going out of her apartment, except to see me; someone who, like a Japanese lady, would carefully spend her money, and had sometimes trouble making a living; someone who was looking for a sponsor to get in contact with a local publisher so her book would be printed here (in Iran); could now be charged with a spying accusation?! We all know - no, we have all seen in movies - that spies are malicious and sneaky, that they peep around for information, and that they are very well paid. And now my heart is full of sorrow. Because it is me who incited her to stay here. And now I can't do anything for her. Roxana wanted to leave Iran. I kept her from it.

At the beginning of our relationship, she wanted to go back to the United States. She would have liked us to go together. But I insisted for her to stay until my new film was over. She really wanted to leave Iran. And I kept her from it. And now I am devastated, for it is because of me she has been subject to these events. These past years, I have been subject to a serious depression. Why? Because my movie had been banned, and released on the black market. My next movie was not given an authorization, and I was forced to stay at home. If I've been able to stand it until today, it is thanks to the presence and help that she provided me with.

Since I had no authorization for my last movie, I was nervous and ill-tempered. And she was always there to calm me down.

Roxana wanted to leave Iran. I kept her from it. She is the one who took care of me while I was depressed. Then I convinced her to stay, I wanted her to write the book she had started in her head. I accompanied her, and thanks to my friends and contacts, I knocked on every door and was able to set up meetings with film makers, artists, sociologists, politics, and others. I would go with her myself. She was absorbed by her book, to the point that she could stay and bear it all, until my film would be finished, and we would leave together.

Roxana's book was a praise to Iran. The manuscripts exist, and it will certainly be published one day, and all will see it. But why have they said nothing? All those who have talked, worked and sat with her, and who know how guiltless she is.

I am writing this letter for I am worried about her. I am worried about her health. I heard she was depressed and cried all the time. She is very sensitive. To the point she refuses to touch her food. My letter is a desperate call to all statesmen and politics, and to all those who can do something to help. From the other side of the ocean, the Americans have protested against her imprisonment, because she is an American citizen. But I say no, she is Iranian, and she loves Iran. I beg you, let her go! I beg you not to throw her in the midst of you political games! She is too weak and too pure to take part in your games. Let me be present at her trial, sit next to her wise father and gentle mother, and testify she is without guilt or reproach.

However, I am optimistic about her release, and I firmly hope the verdict will be cancelled in the next stage of the trial.

My Iranian girl with Japanese eyes and an American ID, is in jail. Shame on me! Shame on us!

_____

Contact: Mary Kerr, Executive Director
International Film Seminars
ifs@flahertyseminar.org
212 448-0457
flahertyseminar.org

6th Annual Authors In Kind Literary Luncheon

Cantara Christopher — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:00:00 +0000

Calling all bibliophiles and philanthropists! Read any good books lately? Given to a good cause? You can do both at an up-coming luncheon and you can donate to charity! God's Love We Deliver is hosting the 6th Annual Authors in Kind Literary Luncheon at the Plaza Hotel Grand Ballroom on Thursday, April 23rd. Come meet guest authors Wally Lamb, William D. Cohan, and Giulia Melucci and watch acclaimed legal expert Linda Fairstein as Master of Ceremonies. Each guest will receive a complimentary signed copy of one of the author's books, and all titles will be available for purchase and signing at 11:30am prior to the 12:00 luncheon. For more information, please see our website or contact Susan Oher at 212.294.8162 or aik@glwd.org.

American Women Writers and the Marketplace

Cantara Christopher — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:10:02 +0000

It's time to move on to the next stage of assessing women's literature. That's Elaine Showalter's message in her new book, A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers From Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx (Knopf), a 600-page survey of known and not-so-known authors. The title comes from an early 20th-century play-turned-short story by a Des Moines reporter, Susan Glaspell. In it, two farm women accompany county officials to the home of a miserly recluse who has been strangled in his bed. The men look for clear signs of whether the victim's wife killed him - physical evidence, an obvious motive, weapons. The women spot more subtle indications of psychological abuse: erratic sewing indicating her state of mind, a half-cleaned table, a murdered pet canary stuffed in a sewing basket. Understanding what drove Minnie, the wife, to the madness of murder, they act as a jury of her peers - and hide the evidence.

Why was that story forgotten until the 1970s? Why are so many works by women, best sellers in their day, still unknown?

Because, says Showalter, despite almost four decades of feminist criticism and the "recovery" of women's literature and rediscovery of individual authors, there's been little attempt to pull together writing by women into a defined literary tradition. As a result, female American writers, for the most part, aren't as widely known as might be expected, at least outside of academe.

Showalter is a doyenne of feminist literary studies: professor emerita of English at Princeton University, a past president of the Modern Language Association, author of several pathbreaking books. In her introduction, she writes in the tone of a manifesto: "I believe that women writers no longer need specially constituted juries, softened judgment, unspoken agreements, or suppression of evidence in order to stand alongside the greatest artists in our literary heritage." That, she acknowledges, may not sit well with some literary critics, men and women. The Chronicle Review talked with her about why she thinks the time is right for the kind of broad survey she's undertaken and why it's taken so long to get it.

Q. What do you mean by a women's literary history?

It's a narrative that selects, organizes, and evaluates literary works over a period of time: a story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And a point of view, an argument. That approach has been unpopular in literary studies, in general, and in feminist literary studies, in particular.

Q. Why?

Literary histories, themselves, have become unpopular. There's a whole theoretical debate, for example, about whether it's even possible to combine genres, to write about history and literature together.

Then many feminist critics are very much opposed to any kind of selection, ranking, even chronology. They think it's premature to establish a canon. Especially in the beginning of feminist literary studies, the feeling was: Women can't get a fair evaluation ? so let's not have a trial.

Americanists aren't even sure there is an overview. They talk about postnationalism, and the idea that there may be a unifying vision of national identity is highly suspect. Where do you start? With the Spanish? The Native Americans? The Puritans?

Inasmuch as we have literary histories, they primarily include men. When John Updike died, there was a lot of speculation about who the next Great American Novelist would be. Most of the names were male. American women writers, as individuals, have been addressed. But the impact of all the work feminist critics have done is more limited than many had hoped for.

Q. What is the beginning, middle, and end of your story?

Women's writing is not determined by biology, anatomy, or psychology. It comes from women's relation to the literary marketplace, from pressures to live public and private lives, from literary influence. That's a more limited approach than trying to look at every kind of verbal expression. It's why I start with the Puritans.

American women writers were influenced in the beginning by European writing. Then gradually, as the men wrote sermons, women's literature began to follow its own themes. Look at a poet like Anne Bradstreet. Her poetry starts out very formal, very classical in its structures and themes. But living in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, she begins to write out of her own experience ? about pregnancy, childbirth, marriage, grandchildren. Her work is still readable today and is emotionally affecting.

With Mary Rowlandson, you see the beginning of the American novel. She's not a highly educated woman, and she might never have become an author had she not been captured, along with her three children, by the Narragansett Indians and held hostage. But she was a born writer. Her memoir of captivity and ransom really is a novel. She's observant, has an eye for detail, an ear for dialogue, a sense of suspense and of characters. And ? this is very American ? she has courage and resilience.

The middle period of American women's writing runs roughly from the 1850s to the Civil War. The critic F.O. Matthiessen once called the 1850s the American Renaissance. He meant it was a period when writing came of age aesthetically ? in the work of men (Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, Thoreau, Whitman). The concept applies to women, too. New themes, like abolition and the image of the household as a prison, emerge. But in 1857, The Atlantic Monthly was founded. While it published women writers, it drew the line between what it considered elite and popular literature, and increasingly women were seen as "popular" and left out.

In the 1850s, you had the emergence of different types of women writers: the American Brontes - Laura Curtis Bullard, who edited her own newspaper in New York; Mary Virginia Hawes Terhune, who grew up in Richmond, Va., and published stories, essays, and even her autobiography under pseudonyms; domestic novelists like Susan Warner, whose The Wide, Wide World, about the claustrophobic world of a little girl, was a great best seller. By the end of the decade, African-American writers appear - some of whom were published and widely read, some ignored. It was only in the 1970s that we found out that Harriet Jacobs was the author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself.

This was also a period when women's poetry flowered, although in a way that revealed the constraints women worked under. Few of Emily Dickinson's poems were published. Julian Ward Howe's Passion-Flowers, about her unhappy marriage, was brought out anonymously; when her husband found out, he threatened her with divorce.

And the end of the story? In an earlier work, I talked about the phases of British women's literature: "feminine" (bowing to male expectations), "feminist" (rebelling), and "female" (articulating women's experience). By the 1980s and 90s, I think, we'd entered a new stage: "free." Women had joined the juries, as publishers, critics, reviewers, authors. No longer restricted to certain subjects, they could, for example, write about violence and boxing, as Joyce Carol Oates does. They could, like Raymond Carver, be minimalists (look at the understated style of Amy Hempel or Ann Beattie). They could write from any perspective, even a male one. They were multiculturalists.

That doesn't mean that their work has become fully integrated into our literary culture: That's why I wrote the book.

Q. What is distinctly American in this tradition?

From the beginning, women writers were interested in the interactions of race and culture - romance with Native Americans, abolition, and slavery. And more than male writers, they engaged with those issues in terms of their everyday lives: What did it mean - for domestic life, for children, for relationships - to live at the juncture of cultures?

There's also a real difference from the British literary tradition that I wrote about some time ago. There, the women writers had servants or some kind of household help. In the United States, women did the housework, or at least they were expected to know how it should be done. That gets transformed into questions about how the house imprisons women. And you get complaints. American women hated housework.

Q. You say a literary history has to make judgments. Give us an example of whom you see as overrated, whom underrated?

Overrated: Gertrude Stein. She played an important role in the development of modernism, but she played it for men. And she is just not readable. She became viewed as a "sister": That doesn't sanctify her work. We can criticize it.

I look with a critical eye at contemporary poetry, too. There are a great many talented woman poets today, but I don't think any of them measure up to a Sylvia Plath or Adrienne Rich. I don't feel any male poets do either.

Underrated: In the 19th century, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her reputation got overwhelmed by the political debates over Uncle Tom's Cabin, but you need to look at Stowe as a novelist. Dred is a powerful analysis of the possibilities of violence and insurrection.

In the 20th century, Jean Stafford has become known for her venomous attacks on the women's movement in the 1970s. (I once got a really rabid letter from her denouncing my work.) But accounts of her frustrations, childhood anxieties, bewilderment over finding her own voice are worth reading. We also need to pay more attention to Shirley Jackson. She wore the public face of a best-selling novelist, wife of a distinguished literary critic, happy mom. But the private face of a "bad girl" - morbidly obese, alcoholic, agoraphobic - revealed in a series of her writings is compelling.

Q. What was it like to work on such a huge survey?

When I did my book on English women writers, I had been working on it since my dissertation. I spent time in England, traveling all over to archives and libraries. A lot of the material wasn't even indexed. Sometimes it was indexed under a husband's name. It was an adventure: It was something you had to do when you were young.

I've got to admit that the prospect of writing about an American women's tradition seemed overwhelming. To start with, America is so much larger than England. But working on the book turned out to be much easier than I expected. Everything's indexed; much is digitized - you can sit at your computer, call up a text, and there it is! I found that this was, indeed, a project I could do at this point in my career.

Q. You're in the middle of a book tour. How are people responding?

This may be the right moment for this kind of book. We're in a new century. Some of the old taboos of political correctness have receded. It's possible to say, "This is someone who has talent, and this is someone who doesn't." The quality of women's writing is such that it can take that kind of criticism.

I've been going to both bookstores and college campuses. Particularly at the bookstores, I find that people are "getting it." They're asking about books by authors from their region, about what to read in their book clubs. But so far, especially when I talk to nonacademics, I find myself mainly talking to women. I think we need literary history to break that boundary down.

Academic reaction develops more slowly. When I speak on college campuses, people are responsive. But it takes a while for academic reviews to come out. That's when the debates will start.

People can dispute my choices. They can argue with my narrative. But at least they have something to contend with. That's a start.

EXCERPTS

I had eight birds hatcht in one nest,
Four Cocks were there, and Hens the rest.
I nurst them up with pain and care,
No cost nor labour did I spare
Till at the last they felt their wing,
Mounted the Trees and learned to sing.
Chief of the Brood then took his flight
To Regions far and left me quite.
My mournful chirps I after send
Till he return, or I do end.

Anne Bradstreet, From "In Reference to Her Children" (1659)
___

One might almost imagine that there were no such thing as absolute truth, since a change of situation or temperament is capable of changing the whole force of an argument. We have been accustomed, even those of us who feel most, to look on the arguments for and against the system of slavery with the eyes of those who are at ease. We do not even know how fair is freedom, for we were always free. We shall never have all the materials for absolute truth on this subject, till we take into account, with our own views and reasonings, the views and reasonings of those who have bowed down to the yoke, and felt the iron enter into their souls.
___

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dred: A Tale Of The Great Dismal Swamp (1856)

I always wanted a brother and I liked the things that men did; when I was growing up, women didn't go skiing, or hiking, or have adventurous canoe trips, or any of that sort of thing. I felt the lack of a brother whom I imagined could introduce me to the vigorous outdoor activities that my sisters were not particularly interested in. If you live in a woman's world and that's all there is, the other side of the equation looks pretty interesting. ...

I find male characters interesting. Because much of my writing is set in an earlier period, they do things that women could not appropriately do.

E. Annie Proulx, quoted in "A Conversation with E. Annie Proulx," by Katie Bolick, The Atlantic online (November 12, 1997)

- Karen J. Winkler

From http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=yq3wny99v1lhxh68w9y811tljpqq9pt8

Stephen Gyllenhaal's New Post at Huffington

Cantara Christopher — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 16:11:07 +0000

For whatever reason—I suppose they thought I was being too personal or off-topic—my comments on Stephen’s first piece at Huffington in 15 months didn’t pass the monitors. Read his piece, then read my comments below (I submitted it cut for length, this is the uncut version):

-----

Stephen—Ambiguity of meaning is best achieved in poetry and novels. You are a fine poet and a fine novelist, but one thing you have yet to master is the art of political writing. Put Orwell’s essays on your reading list and forget about whales for a while, will you? The only thing clear in this piece is your own present state of mind, which seems to be conflating your personal financial anxiety not only with our nation’s financial anxiety, but with our nation’s present dishonor in the world for being greedy unjust warmongers, and your conviction that, for all of it, Somebody Must Pay.

So let’s get straight to what you’re really trying to say. One: Guantanamo should be closed down and its prisoners given the justice that has long been denied them. (My own opinion is that the ACLU—the organization which, by the way, awarded you, Naomi and the kids the Torch of Liberty Award in 2002—should have been on this case years ago.) Two: Most of Gitmo’s prisoners are probably harmless and have done far, far less damage to America than the cunning bankers and CEOs who have systematically robbed our country of its future (in terms of jobs, education, infrastructure) to line their own pockets. Three: You, Stephen, are no better than they, because had you the cunning to do so you would have been as big a thief—but possessing this same ruthlessness and cunning would also mean that you were a true son of the “American Way of Business” and, like they, would be entitled to avoid punishment.

Juxtaposing all these conflicting ideas with false self-incrimination does not make you a good citizen, an aware citizen, and it certainly does not make you a persuasive writer. Your brother Anders, an excellent newspaperman, would be ashamed to read this drivel. Please remember when you file your piece that it’s not as if you were tossing off an email—there’s a real audience out there that you have the means and the potential to move with your words.

Judging from the comments before me, I’m relieved to see that Huffington readers are not to be hoodwinked by your status as a “celebrity blogger”. They read for content. They are not to be underestimated.

Literary Restructuring

Cantara Christopher — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:01:39 +0000

I’m willing to go along with Lorin Stein’s proposal that American book critics be given their share of government bail-out money, provided a few conditions are established and observed:

No money shall be given to print-based publications “that already review” unless the current slate of editors and most prominent reviewers agree to resign. These are, after all, the very people who have plunged print criticism into its current crisis through their decisions to write and publish vacuous reviews of no long-term merit, and should the publications they represent continue to print book reviews, these people should not profit from their past violations of the public trust.

If money is provided for “funding start-ups in the spirit of the New York Review, those entrusted with editorial decisions in these new entities cannot be the same old hacks who elsewhere have plunged print criticism, etc. They should not be allowed to convert these publications into forums for political and social commentary easily enough handled in other kinds of publications not called “book reviews” and to exclude fiction and poetry so thoroughly from consideration that eventually only the occasional nod to well-known writers or biographies of same are ever printed in these organs. They should hire reviewers who actually like fiction and poetry, and these should be “start-up” reviewers as well, not tied to the superannuated publishing and critical establishments whose depradations the bail-out money is meant to counteract.

All parties receiving bail-out money will pledge to resist the idea that criticism is part of the “commerce of culture." If the the purpose of literary criticism is, as Ms. Stein suggests, to separate “quality from hype” and to serve a “free press devoted to books,” the notion that either literature or literary criticism has something to do with what’s called "commerce" must be disregarded at all costs.

Finally, if literary criticism is conceived by either editors or reviewers as part of an effort to allow readers "to find out what’s actually good, short of reading the books themselves,” the entire bail-out program must be immediately terminated. No money should be expended on “criticism” as consumer guidance, criticism that actually discourages readers from “reading the books themselves” and making their own judgments. Only book reviews that accurately and fairly represent the books under review without rendering judgments appropriate to the courtroom but not to the “free” experience of literature will be allowed under this program.

—Daniel Green

From http://noggs.typepad.com/the_reading_experience/2009/03/im-willing-to-go-along-with-lorin-steins-proposal-that-american-book-critics-be-given-their-share-of-government-of-bail-out.html

Swedenborgianism's Answer Lady

Cantara Christopher — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 01:15:18 +0000

Candace Frazee is a friend of mine who is tirelessly dedicated to ensuring that the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg remain accessible and understandable to all. As Madam Chair of SILA (Swedenborg Information of Los Angeles), she writes and distributes SILA's newsletter, which I regularly receive. The bulk of each issue of the newsletter is devoted to answering questions about Swedenborg and Swedenborgianism, as for example this very first one from 1992:

Dear Candace,
Who is Swedenborg and why should I read him?

Dear JA,
Emanuel Swedenborg was a wealthy scientist who went looking for the human soul in cadavers and ended up finding it in the Word of God. For a rich man he lived modestly, mostly in rooming houses in various countries. He wrote over fifty science books and pamphlets in fields ranging from chemistry, mining, physics, mathematics, mechanics, anatomy, geology, hydraulics, optics, botany, magnetics, mineralogy, and astronomy to acoustics.

Swedenborg was an exceptional man of science who drafted many inventions such as the earliest model for an airplane...

Interest in Swedenborg often stops at his scientific knowledge... When he was 56, in 1744, the Lord God came to him and said that He had chosen Swedenborg to explain to people the spiritual sense of biblical scripture. From that day on Swedenborg “talked” with angels and spirits till the day he died in 1772—twenty-eight years later.

Swedenborg asked his employer for early retirement when all this happened. He was offered a promotion instead, but turned it down in order to have time to write his spiritual “findings”. He eventually wrote 30 books on Christianity.

Emanuel Swedenborg claimed that the Lord God Jesus Christ told him a “New Church” of Christianity would be formed, but he did not establish one.

Swedenborg gave his books away for free—which he published at his own expense—to the universities and to the clergy of Europe.

He was born in Sweden and died in England.

JA, I think you would benefit by reading Swedenborg's theological books because they answer life’s questions and offer truths and tidbits. Besides, the things he wrote about will blow you away—there is marriage (with sex) after death, God is love and wisdom (female and male), what angels’ and devils’ homes are like, the Bible as allegorical, the creation story as evolutional, and staying as a teenager for eternity.

He was a remarkable, prolific writer of psychology and religion which will serve as building blocks for future generations. Swedenborg’s influence is enormous. The amazing blind, mute, and deaf Helen Keller...was a Swedenborgian and she wrote:

“When Swedenborg’s message was revealed to me, it was another precious gift added to life. Heaven, as Swedenborg portrays it, is not a mere collection of radiant ideas, but a practical, livable world. I plunge my hands deep into my large Braille volumes containing Swedenborg’s teachings, and withdraw them full of secrets of the spiritual world.”

As Swedenborgianism, with all its branches, has never had a huge number of adherents (probably no more than 30-50,000 throughout the world at one time), it’s not one of the world’s best-known religions, but its theology, as outlined by Swedenborg, is rich and deep and immensely rewarding to explore. His most famous book, Heaven and Hell (full title: Heaven and its Wonders and Hell, from Things Heard and Seen) can be read as a work of sustained imagery and poetry—not unlike the Bhagavad Gita—as can his other works: Heavenly Secrets, Conjugial Love, and the dozens more he wrote in Latin. All have been laboriously and lovingly translated into several languages by scholars for over two centuries.

For those who would like to sample this eye-opening interpretation of Christianity/man’s relationship with God and heaven—in particular the heavenly nature of marriage—Candace has published There Is an Answer: Living in the Post-Apocalyptic World (available at her website). It’s a friendly, sensible, at times humorous compilation of her newsletters and recounts of her visits to Swedenborgian landmarks, complete with photos, as well as a warm memoir of her life growing up in a Canadian household of Swedenborgians, her early life as a showgirl (catch a glimpse of her the next time the classic “Polynesiantown” sketch on SCTV comes around), her girlhood as a student in the Swedenborgian enclave of Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, and her current life as curator of the delightful Bunny Museum, the Guinness record-making collection in the home she shares in Pasadena, California with her husband and Swedenborgian soulmate, Steve Lubanski.

To get an idea of how far-reaching Swedenborg’s influence has been, click here to glance at the names of just a few hundred of the men and women in history, and in our times, who have either been brought up in the teachings of Swedenborg or found his teachings later in life. (List courtesy of Candace—it’s in her book.) Martin Luther King, Jr. is on the list,as is Johnny Appleseed, Robert Frost, Bill Wilson the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Walt Whitman, Henry James Sr. and his son William James, Norman Vincent Peale, Walt Whitman, Dr Mehmet Oz (of Oprah fame)...

From http://cantarasnotebook.blogspot.com

Waiting for Toothy, Not JakeWatch

Cantara Christopher — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 16:49:00 +0000

In August, 2008 the Association for the Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) sponsored a conference in Denver, Colorado entitled “Difficult Dialogues: Theatre and the Art of Engagement”. During the segment “Dishy Dialogue: Gossip, Gender and Performance”, a paper exploring certain avenues of gay-oriented gossip on the internet was presented by Frank Miller of Georgia State University, entitled “I Dish, Therefore I Am: Performing Toothy Tile and Ted Casablanca”. It is available to read here.

A false assumption was made in Dr. Miller’s paper which I would like to correct. In “I Dish”, he lumps the fanblog JakeWatch! in with Waiting for Toothy as being two of a kind. Waiting for Toothy (begun by a woman in Columbus, Ohio who currently wishes to distance herself from the fan world) went defunct late in 2007—its archives are now private—and replaced in January 2008 by a WFT fan who called the new blog Waiting for Toothy, Part 2. A spinoff blog in the same vein, Oh My Godot, has been in existence since August, 2007. These three fanblogs are pointed to on the hotlinks page ToothyTile.com.

However, JakeWatch, from its inception early in 2006, was never intended to be anything but a fanblog to be enjoyed by both sexes, although its main audience has been heterosexual women of all ages. Its main objective was to appreciate the good looks and acting career of Jake Gyllenhaal. One steadfast rule they maintained from almost the beginning: There was to be absolutely no discussion about Jake’s sexual relationships. This rule was constantly breached by cross-posters from Waiting for Toothy (the comments sections of both blogs always remained open to anonymous postings) and was the deciding factor in JakeWatch becoming inactive in late 2007; although closed to comments, its online archives are still accessible. (“The Dastardly Uncle Jack Nasty”, a hilarious account of life in Jake fandom written by the co-administrator of JakeWatch, can be found in the Summer issue of my literary quarterly, Cantaraville, which can be read here.)

What differentiates the Toothy Tile blogs from other, more conventional fanblogs like JakeWatch is the sexual innuendo encouraged by them. For in the world of Waiting for Toothy, Waiting for Toothy 2 and Oh My Godot, their object of interest, Jake, appears to be a closeted gay. Further, in Oh My Godot, the actor Austin Nichols also appears to be a closeted gay, and it is speculated that he and Jake have been a secret couple in Hollywood for some years. Other subjects, and actors, are discussed at the Toothy Tile blogs, but the sexual orientation of these two and their possible romantic connection are the most prevalent. It is these particular idees fixes which have made it extremely difficult for the Toothy Tile blogs to be integrated into mainstream Jake fandom—but then again, I doubt that this is their intention.

For the uninitiated, let me explain: These fanciful speculations were inspired by a pseudonymous character who, since 2005, has made several appearances in the gossip columns of Ted Casablanca, E! Online’s reporter. The character is named Toothy Tile, and while Casablanca has stated over and over again that he will never reveal Toothy’s true identity, he does drop a good number of clues for his readers to interpret as they wish. Jake is not the only candidate for Toothy Tile. But there’s a significant part of Jake fandom willing to believe that this is so, and will roundly defend this idea in whichever fanblog they’re allowed to voice it in, no matter what the dominant subject of that fanblog might be. This has invariably led to confusion, misunderstandings and quite a lot of name-calling.

To lay it at Ted Casablanca’s door would be to miss the point. There will always be a part of the internet audience that indulges in idle gossip. It’s when passions run high in justifying unjustifiable speculation, that mischief begins.

From http://cantarasnotebook.blogspot.com