Exhibit 1.6.4

Instead of Posting My Entire Exam Essays

I'm posting the book I'm reading next. Because clearly putting this on Facebook wasn't enough.

I can't tell if I'm getting better at using Paint or worse as a person.

Let's say both.

Exhibit 1.6.3

Nadirs, or: Songs That Almost Single-handedly Ruin Great Albums


* Spoon's Girls Can Tell - "Fitted Shirt"

* The Replacements' Let It Be - "Gary's Got a Boner"

* Talking Heads' Fear of Music - "Electric Guitar"

* The Beatles' Revolver - "Taxman"

* Elvis Costello's This Year's Model - "Pump It Up"

* Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever - "Zombie Zoo"

* The White Stripes' White Blood Cells - "I Think I Smell a Rat"

* Billy Bragg and Wilco's Mermaid Avenue - "Hoodoo Voodoo"

* Tom Waits's Frank's Wild Years - "Straight to the Top"

* Tom Waits's Frank's Wild Years - "Straight to the Top" (the other version)


I'm willing to debate some of these.

Others?

Exhibit 1.6.2

So

I know I said I was making that James Baldwin quote my mantra, but I've thought it over and I'm now making this video that's popping up everywhere my mantra:

I really want a mantra, apparently, despite having no idea what one is. It's like a Mothra, right?

Seriously though, I think we all relate to this guy. And this mustache. And this lady. And this mirror. And this bed. And this director.

Exhibit 1.6.1

John Barth

Stepping from the treacherous passage at last into the mirror-maze, he saw once again, more clearly than ever, how readily he deceived himself into supposing he was a person. He even foresaw, wincing at his dreadful self-knowledge, that he would repeat the deception, at ever-rarer intervals, all his wretched life, so fearful were the alternatives. Fame, madness, suicide; perhaps all three.

From "Lost in the Funhouse"

Exhibit 1.5.27

Italo Calvino

Long novels written today are perhaps a contradiction: the dimension of time has been shattered, we cannot love or think except in fragments of time each of which goes off along its own trajectory and immediately disappears. We can rediscover the continuity of time only in the novels of that period when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to have exploded, a period that lasted no more than a hundred years.

from If on a winter's night a traveler

Exhibit. 1.5.26

On Bad Guys

So for a lot of reasons--reading dozens of books for comps, teaching a literature class, re-watching Fringe, Rex Ryan, everything else--I've been thinking a lot about "bad guys." Previously, it had been an easy category to ignore in fiction or leave to movies and TV shows, forms of art where the old good vs. bad, white hat vs. black hat narrative structures exist a bit more clearly and persistently.

(Perhaps they weren't quite as ravaged by modernity/post-modernity? Perhaps what we now call literary fiction, by definition, has always left these categories to whatever era's popular forms? Or it's both, that writers and readers don't need or want a Dickens?)

In literary fiction, however, there's rarely a clear antagonist, at least in the sense of being totally, irredeemably bad. It's maybe a stupid distinction. Of course fiction still deals with these plots, just that those books tend to be bought at airports or marketed to children. There's still the same impulse in genre work there's always been--to entertain, thrill, titillate--and we still crave the escape of this even if now we prefer to take it over a screen with pretty actors. And, of course, a good deal of literary work does use and play with this same dichotomy, this same old plot, especially as every hot young (male) writer since Chabon seems to want to make a case for comic books and pulp novels as art.

Even then, however, things are rarely allowed to devolve into that clear relationship between good and bad. It's simply not literary. Whatever qualities we want that word to carry--complex, layered, stylized--they're the opposite of such a defined way of looking at the world and of plot. Anything else is genre stuff. And, as I said, it's a binary that's mostly breaking down--maybe one of the last after decades of trying to stomp these things out--but even as genre work creeps into the literary, it's not able to bring the full starkness of contrast between its characters with it.

Far more often, the bad guy is anything but a person. The bad guy is government or a corporation or a religion or any other institution we're comfortable calling into question when we know that to call a person such a word is silly and shallow and, with a few terribly notable exceptions, typically fails to grasp anywhere near the whole truth of a human being. And it's not that there aren't bad characters--there are--it's that they're caught up in the same problematic system as the protagonist and so their agency isn't their own, they're acting out learned behaviors, their sin is, unlike the protagonist, in being unable to see or separate themselves from what is corrupting them.

And this is interesting to me not because I care about having bad guys in literary fiction--and I know, I know they are out there--or even making a case for literary fiction as a category (which I certainly don't care to do) but because the first thing most students seem to do is shift characters into these roles no matter how earned or unearned. It's fascinating, both as a teacher and as a person who realizes how often this gets done in life as well.

For students, they typically don't say "bad guy" but they often will come into class having read a complicated story without clear roles and say, "I was rooting for her." or "He's a jerk. I wanted bad things to happen to him." And they say these things not because they're misreading the story, but because most are coming from those genre narratives where these roles still exist and identifying them is the first step in understanding a plot.

(Teaching a class of high school aged students this summer who were obsessed with The Avengers, they would often assign characters--and themselves--the roles. So a particular strain of good guy would be "a Thor" and a bad guy "a total Loki". For a few texts and films, it actually sort of worked).

So I was thinking about this when my class read A.M. Homes's story "Do Not Disturb", a perfect example of a story with a bad guy and of how literary fiction these days chooses to complicate that idea. It's a story about how we lean on that narrative in real life, and it offers it to us itself in such a way that it's almost impossible not to take the bait.

(Ha, I googled to see if the story was online--it's not, I don't think--and saw that Dave wrote about it here. I'm not going to read that yet, but I'm sure his thoughts are better)

In sum: wife is a mean person, gets cancer, gets meaner, husband tries to run away, can't, the end. It is, frankly, a remarkably depressing story for anyone to read, especially for anyone who was in, is in, or plans to be in a relationship. And there's this whole reversal of gender roles dynamic, too. The wife takes on all the traditionally masculine qualities while the husband the traditionally feminine. My students were so good at pointing out examples of this that I actually started to think a little less of the story. There are also times--the husband does not know how many ovaries a woman has; the version of femininity who finally comforts the husband is literally (though subtly) a French maid--where it's more than a little ridiculous and on-the-nose.

It's a very heavily constructed story in this sense, for good and bad. It begins and ends with a character writhing in pain and stuck on the floor, there's the body of a husband who has jumped from a building our husband is compared to then later he gets the chance to jump from a great height himself, there's a Ferris Wheel on which they are (again with this word) literally going around in circles, etc.

But to say these are fatal flaws or even flaws would be to miss the humor of the story. It's very funny. And it's meant to be over-the-top given that an essential element in understanding the story is putting weight on the husband's narration. In his telling, the wife is certainly the bad guy. She's uncommunicative, withholding, demeaning, sarcastic, cold, etc. All the words you might throw at a bad partner or hear from a friend post-breakup.

(I initially said post-divorce there until I realized none of my friends are divorced. Yet. See you back at the bar someday, guys!--is that a terrible joke? Feels like a terrible joke. Fine, fine, I'm the bad guy of my own blog post).

And god is she really those things. The students, rightly, hated her in the same way they hated a lot of characters who did far less to deserve it. She was the bad guy. The end. So I asked, does that make the husband the good guy? This they didn't seem to want to grant--he's whiny and ineffectual--but ultimately they decided yes, he has to be. She's that bad and this is how these things work.

But it's impossible that this is truly the case because if we accept, at the end of the story, that the wife is bad then we have to accept that the French maid is good. Call it a hunch, but I simply refuse to believe this is what A.M. Homes intends to say about what it means to be a woman. That the wife can really be summed up, as the husband seems to think and as she herself says, as simply "a bitch." That what our highly sensitive, feminized male narrator really needs is for a sexualized woman to rub his feet and feed him chocolates so he can be a man again. I know in summary it seems ridiculous to think one could ever believe these things--that even by virtue of it being a "literary" story we know it can't possibly be arguing for such politically incorrect reductions--but what allows that reading, what allows students (and I'm sure many others) to take the bait of hating her, is how completely that narrative pushes her into that bad guy role. And it needs her there because it's only by coming to the brink of accepting that hate that the careful reader is able to see Homes's far more complicated narrative.

And this, I suppose, is where we come back around to how bad guys are getting used most often in literary fiction these days. As a sort of a red herring, as one who throws those old narratives back into question. As critiques of institutions not people. Because the wife is unquestionably a selfish, awful person, but to fall into the trap of labeling her the bad guy is to miss the moments where is not those things. Her concern for having children. Her trauma of having that, and the very organs that make her a woman, stolen from her by her own body and a male-dominated medical establishment she's a part of. Her own peevish, needy husband who wants something from her she cannot give, at least not now, maybe not ever. To miss these things is to deny her the full access to her own humanity. It's to fail to understand that this is a story not solely about a sick wife or a put-upon husband but about a marriage.

And it's not that to know this makes her anything but the bad guy or excuses her actions or her words. This is not some kind of "rewrite the fairy tale so the wolf is the victim" reading. It's simply one that finds the subtle points among all the hyperbole because having even a modicum of sympathy for her throws the husband's entire narrative into question. It's to understand that structurally the story wants us to feel that closed loop suffocating both of these people. It's to bemoan this marriage specifically, perhaps the whole institution generally, and certainly the ways gender roles, even if reversed, lead to trauma, miscommunication, and division. Her femininity is in crisis--likely always has been given her ambition and demeanor, her being "a bitch"--as is his masculinity (he's not literally impotent--though god knows it wouldn't surprise anyone--but he's both denied sex and denies himself sex). Their marriage--all marriages?--is dependent on finding a balance in this dynamic and is, therefore, in crisis itself. The sickness only brings it to a head, cements their roles (her "bitch"; him "unappreciated caregiver").

That his story has a bad guy, that it's her, is not surprising. It's still how we want to shape our narratives. We have to. We need to. I see it in both students in the classroom and in grad students understanding of a particular administrator. It's simply easier than looking for the truth of the situation. More than that, it feels more natural when we're all the heroes of our own stories. There's nothing revelatory about that, I suppose--really, that Didion quote I gave the other day says more or less the same thing about shaping narratives only without the good/bad/selfish dynamic--but it's an important thing for writers and readers of literary fiction to look for and be suspicious of.

And, of course, it's an even more important thing for us as people to be suspicious of.

But for "Do Not Disturb", understanding that impulse is essential to understanding the story and, if not accept or even forgive the wife, to see her (and not just her sickness) with sympathy she's done nothing to earn and definitely wouldn't want. We need to not take the bait of hating her because to do so is to accept the fantasy of definitions, the world as knowable, women as "Bitch" vs. French Maid, our struggles, our relationships with each other, as good vs. evil. We need to acknowledge that, once again, there are no bad guys though there are certainly bad things made worse, unthinkably worse, by being more complicated than that label. By being unfixable in all senses of the word.

Exhibit 1.5.25

First Cuts Are the Deepest

So I can't say I typically read a lot of essay collections--so maybe this is standard--but I've been running into this problem where the first essay is so good I don't want to go on.

From Didion's essay "The White Album":

We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.

Or at least we do for a while.

And, the last line of which has become a kind of personal mantra, the end of James Baldwin's "Autobiographical Notes":

I consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get my work done.

I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

Exhibit 1.5.24

A Primer on the Rules of Cricket, Pt. 6

51. God's spilt tea--or "rain"--shall cause a cessation of play known as a nilly. Refreshments of no less than one banger a man shall be served until play resumes after consultation with the hygrometer. Should the field be of sufficient antiquity so as to lack a hygrometer, an expedition shall be undertaken to recover its treasure for the National Museum.

52. After consultation with the Worshipful Company of Cordwainers, all players shall relinquish their bootery and take up the plimsoll.

53. Players having bowlen with THE DEVIL'S HAND sacrifice to the Rector one MALE CHILD for each accursed throw with gibbleys awarded to the Godly team in the form of a reliquary brought by one FEMALE CHILD. Should the condemned player lack the children or the means of producing them before the hour of the hanging, street urchins shall be lured to the grounds with food until they are no longer required or the demonic team expires its muffins.

54. Per decree, the game shall henceforth be known as Pope's Chess. 

55. Befallen by shipwreck, any able-bodied man washed ashore must set about constructing a pitch for the challengement of any cannibal natives who shall be given two score minutes for the memorization of these rules, formation of a team, and the preparation of adequate bangers to be served in event of a nilly. The winning seaman shall claim all land and monsters on behalf of the crown. The losing seaman shall no longer be welcomed at Diameter Society in the event he returns uneaten, having lost something even more valuable in his civility.

56. As there shall be no sunset there shall be no gloaming and any player, official, or groundling who remarks upon it shall have the choice between forfeiting their wit or eyes.

57. In the event of each team ending week one with an equivalent number of quinces and gibbleys, the tie shall be broken by means of a knightly tournament proceeding in the North Newcloferwich manner, i.e. archery to melee.

58. Wesley, having proven himself a thorough woncer, shall no longer be allowed to play.

59. All beverages shall be served at a temperature of no less than four marks above a June Tuesday and failure to do so will result in the home team's use of Swede's Balls--or "ice"--with all subsequent dampening of their choler or other relevant humors a fair punishment.

60. Should a femalelady be discovered in the colors of a maleman, play shall cease and a council be convened in Ghent, of which any player is welcome to take part should they be able to procure passage and have grey in their beards. The remaining shall make CAMP on though grounds though not embark on any industry, taking meals from the charity of locals who will be expected to remain spectators until such time as the return of the Greybeards who shall by then have formed their own team to compete against the witch. Should they prevail, they have claim to challenge the Crown upon conclusion of the prior game.

Exhibit 1.5.23

Selling


I like any ad that's pitch is basically, "Look, you probably want things you don't really want. We'll help you achieve those maybe dreams."

Exhibit 1.5.22

Look

It's a video I spent 30 minutes making after seeing a spider burying its spider buddy/lover/parent.

Or eat. It also could have been trying to eat its spider buddy/lover/parent. There's that.

Exhibit 1.5.21

Two Links

* I have a short piece giving some flash fiction bylaws over at Nano Fiction for their State of Flash series. I really do mean all of them. Especially the ones about poor, poor Doug.

* My short short "Biologists Study Grace" is over at Paper Darts and the entire page will soon be tattooed onto my back. Not really. probably. Maybe. Sort of. We'll see. But it is quite pretty.

Exhibit 1.5.20

Beard

Almost three years ago I let my facial hair grow for a couple weeks to see if it could, through some previously unseen alchemy, produce a beard. You can follow that experience along here. It was a simpler time, back when I was somehow better at both Photoshop and the decency that allowed me not to post photos of myself on the internet.

Short summary: No, no I could not grow a beard.

This year, with a couple of weeks between a moment of bored despair and the semester beginning, I decided to try again. Here's as good as it got.


The Aubrey Beardlessly



So not good. Better than before--it was prickly, at least--but still worse than guys I knew in middle school. That said, I could at least shave it into some nearly acceptable facial hair configurations.


The Walter Notquite



The Muske-tears



The Billy D-Minus Williams



The Ask for ID



Who am I kidding, none of those are acceptable. My apologies to everyone who had to look at me for the past two weeks. So pretty much just you, Taco Truck Lady.

Exhibit 1.5.19

New Cupboard Website



So, this is the most exciting news this blog has failed to break in months: The Cupboard has a new website which you can access right here. Things to note:

* We're now publishing original content every couple of weeks called Sideboards. Go read our first then submit one of your own.

* The announcement for our next year's cycle of four volumes. They're really great. Damn. We're excited.

* And, most importantly, we've got the entire year on sale. $12! That's practically $10!

Please read, spread the word, and subscribe.

Thanks.

Exhibit 1.5.18

Tattoo Ideas for Someone Else Sorted by Decreasing Likelihood


James Van Der Beak




En Passant Explanation




Disturbingly Sexualized Corn




Birdo As Problematically Described by Mario 2 Instructions




Lukewarm Review of Most Recent R. Kelly Album




Map of Ansley, Nebraska, for Ansley, Nebraska, Emergencies




The New Cupboard Logo

Exhibit 1.5.17

I Might Be the Only One



who is obsessed with the moment in "Hard Headed Woman" when he belts out that line.

In any case, my early Cat Stevens cover band--The First Cat Is the Deepest--will definitely use that song as the closer of our second encore.