R.I.P. Holden

When Jerome David Salinger died last week, Arts and Letters Daily posted over fifty obits and recognitions on its web page, much more than for William Safire or Howard Zinn (who??). To put the event in perspective, Salinger wrote a bunch of short stories and two novels. His writing career was short–maybe fifteen years? His influence on literature is probably good for another fifty, or at least until all the baby boomers die out. He is so identified with his best-known work that farewells to Salinger often read like farewells to Holden Caufield.

The genius of Holden is that he gave adolescence a voice. It’s not a particularly compelling voice: cranky, petulant, self-righteous, wistful, sharp, idealistic. But before his appearance n the literary scene, the years between 12 and 19 were passed over as quickly as possible: a swift ride on the current, like Huck Finn, or a humorous concept personified by Mickey Rooney.

Yet his character today seems to have the most resonance not for teens but for those just past teenagerhood: the twenty- or thirty-somethings who have suddenly grown up and find themselves part of the establishment. From that near perspective, Holden is the kid they wish they had been: the noble soul in sneakers, echoed in subsequent fiction. The hero of one of this years’ Pintz Honor books (the Michael J. Printz award is given annually by the American Library Association for excellence in Young-adult literature) is a Holden knock-off: perceptive, funny, virginal and foul-mouthed, also victimized by adult phoniness.

Salinger probably didn’t intend his hero to become the icon of American youth. Holden has two brothers, one a worldly-wise screenwriter who stands as a bridge to adulthood, the other a sweet, other-worldly sort who’s dead. Between the two, Holden hesitates, longing for Allie’s serenity and innocence but moving inexorably toward D. B. The conflict is unresolved, with the sense that going on is not likely to solve anything for him: he’s met death, as all of us must, and the only options are to join Allie there or join the phonies who carry on their trivial pursuits as though the same fate does not crouch for them.

This is a human dilemma, not just a teenage one, but generations since have insisted on loading the poor kid up with the baggage of angst. Which, in my opinion, is more than he can bear. As the patron saint of adolescence, Holden is insufferable, both the litigator and the victim of his culture, looking down on less-evolved souls from the transplanted consciousness of his author. The postwar generation was moving on, starting families, taking refuse in sentimentality because they’d been through hell. They raised the first generation of teenagers, who embraced Holden Caufield as their model of transcendence. On his narrow shoulders they (okay, we) yelled that we wouldn’t trust anybody over thirty until we got to be thirty, then we raised the age of reliability by foisting Catcher In the Rye on our children and grandchildren.

Holden’s just a kid. Let’s let him be a kid, and the rest of us grow up.

Yes, I Saw Avatar

. . . in 3-D on an IMAX screen. In Las Vegas. At 11 p.m. That’s got to be the ultimate movie experience!
So what did I think? It’s breath-taking–literally, like when you’re tottering on the edge of a cliff with the hero and nearly plunge into the falls. Or taking a ride on a reptilian creature with a 12-foot wingspan. Avatar is what movies are all about: why D. W. Griffith re-imagined Babylon for Intolerance, or why William Wyler tore up the turf in the Ben Hur chariot race–Spectacle! Danger! Romance! Casts of thousands! Transporting viewers to other times and places! There’s no point complaining that the story is shallow, anti-American, or tree-huggy (just try hugging that mother tree!); it’s true James Cameron called it an ecology fable, but he was after spectacle, not proselytizing. Nobody is going to be converted to radical environmentalism or paganism who wasn’t there already. And it’s not conversion if you’re already there, is it?
Cameron spent a whole bunch of money and a whole lot of time on a gamble that paid off, just like Titanic. To me it was as emotionally engaging as a roller-coaster ride, that kind that when you get off you’re glad you did it but don’t particularly want to do it again. Some fans have expressed their feelings of letdown after leaving the theater, going so far as to seek group therapy on fansites. I understand this too: it’s possible to be so transported by cinematic fantasy it’s hard to slip back into your place in the world. Much harder if you’re not sure of your place. But this too shall pass, both the individual displacement and the buzz about the movie, and eventually the movie itself. What’s it going to look like on a flat TV screen? Blue kitties in space.

The Problem of Character

What is it, really? What is personhood? Can anyone say that he knows who he is–particularly, what’s original in him and what was contributed by mother, father, John Wayne, Homer Simpson, JFK, or the Marx Brothers? Or, do the people we know, watch, and emulate pour through us, leaving their sayings and ideals which we incorporate and make our own? The question is particularly important for a novelist, for the characters she thinks she is “creating” may have made several appearances in the books she’s read and movies she’s watched, and only seem original because she’s named them. The mind teems with stock characters: what may seem like Venus springing fresh to life in a spray of sea foam is actually a painting by Botticelli, reproduced in countless books and TV documentaries. It’s art trading with art, not drawing from life. As art surrounds us more and more it’s difficult to distinguish the two. Art swapping with art is increasingly shallow and bizarre, but life trading with life is mere biology. Art and life need each other: Hamlet draws from his audience a much as they draw from him.

The Birth of Irony

Back in the old days, when TV broadcasting was three networks and a local station showing old movies, the buzz around the elementary school lunch table was pretty homogenized (“Did you see The Beverly Hillbillies last night?” I never did because we always had to go to church.).  But there was one show everybody ooh’ed and ah’ed about, from fourth grade all the way through high school, and that was The Twilight Zone. Lucy, Rawhide and Route 66 are all part of our lost childhood, but TZ was something else–edgy before we even knew the edge was there. Envelope-pushing, before there was anything to push. But most of all, for children of the fifties gasping in shock at the dime-store spaceman being whacked by a broom, it was our introduction to irony.

Everybody my age has their most-memorable episode. Mine was “Eye of the Beholder,” which knocked the bobby socks off my set. It was ground-breaking: an entire drama shot, for the first half, without faces. What you saw was a) layers of gauze being unwrapped, as light very gradually increases, or b) hospital staff going about their business, picking up charts, pausing to chat. All the camera angles were odd: from the floor, from the ceiling, at doorway’s edge, as though we viewers were sneaking around corners to avoid being seen. What first-time pre-teen viewers didn’t realize was that it was the actors who weren’t supposed to be seen.

The story (for those who don’t have “Eye” in their Early Dramatic Experiences file) was about facial reconstruction. The character wrapped in gauze was born hideous, has suffered a life of rejection and is now staking all her hopes on a new plastic-surgery procedure. Inter-cut with the unwrapping layers are scenes of ordinary people going about the kind of ordinary life she wants so desperately. There’s nothing ominous in what they say or do, but a sense of dread gathers in those corners where the viewer lurks.

Finally, the gauze is almost gone, the light increasing to fever-brightness. Suddenly, the room is exposed, the moment seizes. Then a stab of violence: scissors hurled to the floor and the doctor’s voice, previously so soothing, now angrily shouting, “No change. No change!” A scream, and the patient hurls herself against the door. We see her from the back, knowing she’s about to turn around. Pure terror–we know she’s going to turn around, and we can’t look away! She turns–and her face is flawless.

Then the doctor turns, curtly ordering a hypodermic–and his face is hideous. CLAAAANG!

I mean, like WOW! All this time were expecting . . . well, exactly this. Once the point is not-to-subtly made, we realize that it was the only possible way to lead this story out of all those layers of gauze. To a kid it was shocking and yet (I hope I’m not reading too much into myself at that age) deeply satisfying. As if there is something in human consciousness that just knows when there’s more to a story than we’re being told. There’s one more twist in store: during the long letdown after that staggering climax, we learn that the doctors and nurses, at first so scary, are really sympathetic. They’ve prepared for the contingency that the reconstruction won’t work, and when Carol (Is her name Carol?) comes out of her sedative-haze they gently explain that there’s a place where she’ll be accepted as she is. It’s kind of an Ugly Colony, and a representative is waiting in the wings to take her there. He enters; after recoiling in horror, she agrees to go with him.

“I don’t know why not,” said a friend when we were talking it over later. “He was really cute.”  To which I thought, Don’t you GET it?!

“Getting it” was an artistic milestone for me, age ten.  TZ dumped the idea of irony right on our laps. Watch out, kids: Things are not what they seem. The farm woman we assume is one of us turns out to be one of them when she beats the crap out of a U. S. space ship. The young woman trapped in a department store after hours by sinister mannequins discovers that she’s a mannequin herself. A man finds a stopwatch that will actually stop time, and uses it to play his friends for dupes. But when he accidentally breaks the watch, time stops forever, leaving him Mr. Lonely, frantically searching the frozen streets for one animated human.

Some of those episodes that had such an effect on me probably don’t wear too well.  Even in memory, Rod Serling’s voiceovers have the ring of pretentiousness.  But I remember how struck we were, the excited chatter around the lunchroom table the next day.  Maybe it aged us a little before our time; television made us “knowing” before we really knew anything.  But TZ was an introduction to the land of pure story, where how it’s told matters as much as what it is.

Ladybug Invasion

This happens every year: they ball themselves up and work their way inside: little hard-shell tanks squeezing in through slits and cracks. Something draws them, some mysterious bait, like a smell, a color, a texture too small or esoteric for humans to comprehend. It’s a ladybug thing. Once inside they are at a loss–their little instincts have played them false. There are no rose bushes here, no grass blades, no aphids or cutworms to molest. They fritter away their remaining hours crawling from here to there, or buzzing–when they land they stuff their gauzy gray wings quickly undercover like a torn slip. I never see them in flight, only landing. It’s a clumsy business with the wings spinning like helicopter blades, hauling a bulky cargo. On their tiny pinstroke legs they’re neat and spiffy, reconnoitering for the home they’ll never make.

What I’m Doing Now

Now that I’m almost done with the first draft of my next novel, it might be time to ask if it’s a feasible project.

Here’s the thing: the story has nine main characters. In other words, no main character, but an ensemble of interacting parts. If it were a movie it would be something directed by Robert Altman, where a common narrative thread connects people from different backgrounds–except, in my case, all the people are kids, ages 11-13. The main narrative takes place on a school bus–talk about forward motion!–and unfolds over the course of a school year. Nine months, nine characters: each month will focus on one of them. The title is, Somebody on This Bus Is Going to Be Famous.

This is a rare case where I thought of the title first, then came up with the story. There’s a mystery embedded in the title, of course: who?? Each of the children has some potential for “fame,” but also some built-in limitations, and are we talking about fame or in-fame, and is it in the near future and the distant future, and is it possible that the “somebody” isn’t one of the nine at all? And, in an age obsessed with “celebrity,” is fame necessarily a good thing?

There’s another mystery in the plot, which comprises the main narrative thread and has to do with something that regularly happens along the route. But I won’t go into that.

My question about feasibility is . . . . NINE main characters?? I’ve been told it’s inadvisable to project more than two, although it was done successfully with four in E. L. Koningsberg’s The View From Saturday. Less successfully (some would say) in Lynn Perkins’ Criss Cross, even though that book won a Newbery Award.

With a first draft almost complete, the torch is lit and I’m running with it. I can’t help asking though . . . now that I have this blog it might be interesting to throw the idea out there. Otherwise I’m thinking in a vacuum. Characters welcome . . . comments, too.

A Modest Proposal

To tell the truth, I’m almost to my limit with the health care “debate,” but something stirred my interest the other day: a bill. From the doctor’s office. They said I owed almost $250 more than I already paid for a routine checkup.
So, after calling the office numerous times, we finally got it straightened out: the billing clerk didn’t realize that we are cash customers. Lacking health insurance, like, um, 47 million other Americans, we pay as we go for services rendered. Our status, understood at the main desk where I wrote the check, didn’t get back to the office where bills are processed. I paid $145 for the checkup and some blood work recommended by my OB/GYN, and thought that was that. But according to the bill, I owed an additional $243. Why? Because the billing clerk thought I had insurance. Once she understood that I didn’t, the $243 was struck from the record and I’m no longer a debtor.
But I’m thinking, why should having insurance more than double my bill? Fortunately, I had the answer: “How American Health Care Killed My Father,” an article in The Atlantic by David Goldhill. Below the catchy title is one of the clearest explanations of the current system I’ve ever read.
The essence of Goldhill’s argument is that, in the health care system as it’s evolved, patients are not customers. The insurance company or the US government is the customer, and are billed according to their deep pockets. It’s not that all doctors are rapacious, but simply that it costs money to shuffle papers in offices. That’s what insurance companies and Medicare do, basically: pay people to shuffle papers in offices, and some of that money sifts down to pay the actual bill.
So my modest proposal is this: why don’t those of us with moderate means pay for our own doctor visits and routine tests? That involves making decisions; for instance–in my latest visit, my doctor recommended a biopsy. I did some research and decided not to, and time, I believe, has proved that decision to be wise. The $145 I paid may seem a little steep, but I spend that much on two weeks’ worth of groceries or a month of gasoline. Why don’t we do health insurance like we do auto insurance, where you pay for your own oil changes and new tires, and let the insurance pay for the unexpected disaster?

It’ll never happen, though–it makes too much sense.

Who Put the “adult” in Young Adult?

Babies are born knowing how to cry, but they have to learn how to laugh.  Every mother knows this: by two months her baby can smile in response to attention, and by three or four months she begins making imitative noises.  But real, honest-to-goodness belly laughs don’t occur until five or six months.  Crying comes right out of the gut; laughter requires context. 

What makes a baby laugh is the essence of all humor; a sense of unexpectedness.  Her life is typically cushioned by adults who carry, feed, dress, and change her.  Grownups sometimes behave curiously, poking their faces in hers and making peculiar noises, but life is a serious business of getting one’s needs met, and grownups are the ones who meet it. 

Then one day a truly antic figure pops around the corner of consciousness, well past toddlerhood yet far short of adolescence.  He hangs upside-down, makes faces, grunts like a chimpanzee–and it’s hilarious.  Mother may say, “Stop acting silly, Johnny.”  But Baby is shaking with uncontrollable mirth.  It’s a sign that she understands congruity enough to recognize incongruity.  From such unsophisticated beginnings her sense of humor is on a speedy track to potty and underwear jokes.

Adolescence is a bit like going through a second babyhood, with zits.  From a relatively safe, womblike neighborhood, the world opens up dramatically, and it can bite.  Once again, life is serious business, which might be why teen readers often turn to grit-lit: death, despair and dystopia.  Periodically throughout the year, an especially controversial book is challenged on the grounds that it’s too much for kids to cope with.  The defense is always the same: kids today are having to deal with some pretty serious stuff.  They need literature to help them relate. 

I’m not sure about that . . .  Tender Morsels, a re-told fairy tale by Margo Lanagan, features father-daughter incest, an abortion, and a gang rape in the first fifty pages.  Is this the kind of stuff that young people normally face?  The story actually makes a good point amid the mayhem, but it might be a little difficult for an immature mind to track down that point.

Defense #2: kids shouldn’t be talked down to.  They’re a lot more intelligent than we give them credit for.  Okay, but I’m not talking about intelligence or street smarts, I’m talking about perspective.  Perspective is being able to take the long view, to face a bad spell and believe it’s going to get better, or at least that life is still worth living.  This only comes with time, and teens by definition haven’t had much time.  Teen years are difficult enough (even without incest, abortion, and gang-rape!), and most of the kids get through them okay, thank God.  They can add those years to their perspective-pool.  But a few can’t see their way past it, and they don’t need the desperation dump that some YA novels turn out to be.

So I’m just saying, writers for young adults have certain obligations.  The young applies, but not yet the adult.

The Race Card/Canard

I grew up in Dallas, in the fifties and sixties.  Things were different then.  I recall black signs on city buses reading, “Please move to the rear.”  It didn’t take me long to realize that those signs were not for me.  I recall the N word used casually by neighborhood kids and classmates even though we understood, like Attitcus Finch, that the word was “common.”  I recall the evening news regularly leading with civil rights marches, water cannons, Bull Connor with his dogs.  And I don’t see those things now.

I know that racism still exists.  I know, and have known, some actual racists.  But I’m not one.  I realize there are some people who won’t buy this; they seem to know what’s in my heart by the color of my skin. So I won’t protest.  But there’s one thing I can do.

This is a picture of my family:

 

It was taken last winter, on the occasion of my mother’s funeral.  Besides me, there’s my two children, my two sisters, one nephew, four neices, several great-neices and nephews, three in-laws, and one granddaughter (the little igrl at the lower left).  None of the young people are adopted; all are blood relatives.  I’m proud of this picture, and grateful for my family.  I’m not particularly virtuous or revolutionary–In fact, I’m pretty conservative.

And oh yes, I’m opposed to the health care plan President Obama is advocating.  I’d rather not question his motives or his intelligence or his background; I’m looking at the plan.  Illegal immigrants and “dealth panels” aside, I don’t see how layering another bureaucracy on top of an already-tottering bureaucratic structure will make health care more efficient and affordable.   Government does not tend to be efficient and affordable; that’s not the nature of the beast.  And the unimaginable burden of debt will crush all of our children, no matter their color. 

I share the President’s desire for affordable health care for all Americans.  But I believe there are better ways to meet that goal.

So I oppose the President’s policies, not his color.  I realize such protestations won’t satisfy Jimmy Carter, or Maureen Dowd, or Al Sharpton.  So I’ll just smile, and –oh yes: would you like to see a picture of my family?

The Science of Light, and the Light of Science

Some years ago it occurred to me that the first three verses of Genesis were very strange.  “And God said, ‘Let there be light!’ and there was light.”  What other creation account begins this way?  Most them begin with struggle, a molten mass of matter that somehow produces gods who destroy themselves while producing other gods.  Or else there’s some kind of malleable dough already in existence for the gods to work on.

But in Genesis, creation begins with light.  Light, even before sun.  The writers surely understood light to come from the sun, so why would they say light comes first, and record the creation of the sun four whole creation-days later? 

I like physics, in a very unscientific, artsy way–meaning that I don’t really understand it, but I get off on the poetic and spiritual implications.  Years ago, while struggling to learn something about relativity theory, I learned that the history of physics is largely about identifying forces.  Over time these forces reveal their relationship to each other, and come together as one.  (When I first started reading about this, science had identified four major forces.  Now there are only three, and the gold ring of physics is to find a way to unify them all in a single, “elegant” theory.)  Back in the mid-nineteenth century, Michael Faraday proved the relationship between electricity and magnetism by showing that a changing magnetic field produces electricity.  Then James Clerk Maxwell suspected that a changing electric field might also produce magnetism–leading to the discovery of electromagnetic waves.  Maxwell calculated the speed of these waves (don’t ask me how!) and the result turned out to be the known speed of light.

So what’s light?  Electromagnetic energy.  And if E=mc², then matter and energy are interchangeable.  Therefore, couldn’t “Let there be light!” be, in its way, a scientifically accurate account for the beginning of the universe?

Or is that just me stumbling around in near-total ignorance?  Maybe not.  I just heard about a new book, available in October, that sounds like a must-read: The Genesis Enigma: Why the Bible Is Scientifically Accurate.  With a title like that, the author must be a fulminating fundie!  But no–Andrew Parker is (according to Amazon.com) “a Royal Society University Research Fellow at Oxford University, and one of the eight ‘Scientists for a New Century’ selected by the Royal Institution (London).”  His thesis is that the order of creation as recorded in Genesis 1 has striking parallels with the most recent scientific discoveries.  “But,” (reads the book description) “the Genesis account has no right to be correct. The author or authors could not have known these things happened in this order, and with the highlights science has come to recognize.”

The basic questions were supposed to have been answered by now.  But as time goes on, the structure of the universe gets more mysterious, not less.  Personally, I like it that way. It gives new (or rather the old) meaning to the expression, “Awesome!”