At the point where a project is well and truly headed for failure, that is the time to write the preface, because that is the point where the author is as confused, dubious and negative about the work as the people who need a preface. I’ve reached that point with In Country. It is a failure, but then so are most projects, and that is why it is easy for people to be critics, and hard for people to be writers, film makers, painters or architects. Because anyone can say “that is a failure,” while the effort involved in the failure itself is beyond most people.
In Country has been accused of being allegory. It is not. The story of Chryesie, Merc and Hampton is the story, in the end, of three little people and their problems. If anything, it is the reverse of allegory, it is not that the story is really “about” larger events played out in smaller terms, but, instead, that larger events are so overwhelming that the characters are like leaves blowing in the same autumn wind. They can’t help taking the shape of events, and they can’t help imposing their own bits of life and narrative on the events they have experienced, simply because they know no other way.
So what are the entry points to this novel? The first and most obvious is the story of how Iraq has been a morally corrupting force in America, how the war there has ceased to be even a war about oil, but, instead, a cataclysm where people are reduced to being looters and rioters in a place where law and order have long ago broken down, and even basic concepts of human decency and dignity are lost.
The second is that it is a meditation on memory, narrative and experience. Chryssie and Merc are, by the time of the opening of the novel, both Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder sufferers. They are both incapable of staying in the present for any length of time, but instead keep returning back to the moments which now define the shape of their unceasing now. They were not always this way, which is why the “Emerald City” section is as it is; Chryssie is not constantly shuttling through time and memory, because she has not yet been to the place that will rupture her hold on the present.
The other running theme of the book is the nature of neediness that comes from abuse. Before I decided to write about Chryssie’s abuse, it was clear that the character had been abused as a child. The author would have been false to the character to make it otherwise. For much of human history, we did not write openly about incest and molesting of young girls and boys, even though symbols like cherubs were everywhere in art. There has, correspondingly, been a flood of novels which make this a major point. It is not so here, it is merely a fact of Chryssie’s character and existence, and it would be a mistake to trace everything to that one traumatic moment, just as it would be a mistake to trace everything to the collapse of the WTC on 9/11. Chryssie does this in her mind, because she cannot help it. But this did not make her a cool professional, nor give her a literary touch to her words and thoughts. These come from other, deeper, experiences in her life.
These things are, then particulars of the characters, and they are only incidentally related to the facts of the larger backdrop: that our presence in Iraq is about looting the country for individual interests, and at this point only distantly related to getting the oil out of the country.
Chryssie’s descent into this evil, through her falling for Hampton after 9/11 and then following his instructions in Iraq, is not a parable for America in general, but an example of one American’s fall from grace, and struggle to regain it. Merc’s own ineffectuality in the face of facts which he recognizes, but cannot connect into the logical conclusions that are required are another example of how a professional and competent individual will take refuge in prejudice and personal narrative rather than accept the reality.
Hampton is just an All-American jerk, and I don’t pretend to even offer an explanation for why he is what he is, except perhaps Merc’s comment that most of the trouble that is made in the world is made by people who were sexually abused or physically abused as children..
The literary keys to the work are from the basic facts of the story: the work of Doctor Jonathan Shay, who has just received a richly deserved MacArthur grant, and thus the Iliad, and the apocalyptic literature of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. For this I am indebted to Jesus’ General. Once this is said, anyone who wants to look for how it is done will find abundant material.
Lastly, it is important to thank Dr. Juan Cole for his blogging on Informed Comment, and his books which explore many of the same themes in la larger way. There is indeed a strain of what the British would call “Orientalism” in our involvement in Iraq, most particularly in how the United States acts, on one hand, as if the Middle East is filled with sick countries that we can heal, while at the same time taking on the trappings and moral values of what the West sees as “Oriental Despotism” and its cult of personality, dynastic politics and rule by arbitrary and capricious will. This isn’t to ascribe these traits in particular to dictatorships and kingdoms in the Middle East over other places, but instead to say that involvement in the Middle East is used to give permission for people in the self-described “West” to behave in ways that are antithetical to the rules and ideas which they self-professedly place their faith in.
As for the role of sex in the novel, well people are themselves, and they take their problems everywhere. If some sex scenes are described in detail, it is because it is the best way to show, rather than tell, people what is wrong with the American psyche at this moment in time.
It is unfortunate that this novel has no audience, and that I’m finishing it to finish it. But that is the nature of having an iron butt: never let a heckler or dissertation get the last word in. However, that no one cares about the problems of three little people is something that Casablanca got right all those years ago, and I think, this once, I would have been happier had, on the night I started writing this, instead of sitting down to write I had oinked out on Ben and Jerry’s chocolate something or other and watched the DVD’s of “The L Word” that a friend had lent me.
Sorry for the bother, but having come through 50,000 words, 40,000 of them posted, it seems silly not to write and edit the last 20,000 words that will join the two ends of the bridge.
Front page
Give it a chance
If the work was something only you could write, and you wrote it, then you did not fail; the work has its own autonomy, in any case.
Also, in the blogosphere… It takes a long time to make an impact. But with persistence and connection, the impact will come.
I was very pleased to have this story at Corrente, both for the subject matter, for the good writing, and more generally because our part of the blogosphere should support writing in this form (serials). More like this, please!
We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan
You takes your chances...
All you can do is put it out there. In time, perhaps you will look at In Country again with a different perspective, and write a book from it that people will stand on line in bookstores to have you sign.
I don’t like to critique artist’s work, but I will offer one bit of advice, as stated by filmmaker Samuel Fuller. In an interview with Quentin Tarantino, he said there were three secrets to making a quality film: emotion, emotion, emotion. I believe the same applies to most, if not all, art.
++++
Chances
When something catches on blogs, it catches fast. This has not.
As for chances, I suppose that it is that I have come to know that chances aren’t worth taking.
But that’s not important, I am sick of the problems this has caused, the fights, the stress. I just want it done and over with, and it would be senseless not to finish it having come this far on it.
Hmmmm
Making fake art is hard too. I really need to get back to working on some things for media people who are waiting for delivery.
If the novel were good enough, it would be good enough. It’s not, and I am unhappy about that, but at this point nothing can be done to change that, and have no one to blame but myself.
making real art is hard, liberty
and you’ve just lived that truth for a while. i don’t think i know a single artist who doesn’t struggle, mightly, with their craft and its processes. just give it your best, and remember that the art itself is the thing of value, not people’s opinions about it. fwiw, i’ve enjoyed the series and look forward to reading it as a single book.
I'm quite serious...
… that I find these words from Jack Handey’s “Deep Thoughts” majorly sustaining:
When I create something, I try to keep in mind that there’s no agreement between me and the world, and I accept that as a “cost of doing business.”
Doesn’t mean I don’t feel hurt when no one salutes my latest masterpiece, but it’s the level-set I seek to get back to.
Also (indirectly) apropos are the marriage vows delivered by Donald Sutherland as the counterculture preacher in “Little Murders”:
Liberty, I have read it -- and it has made me think.
I cannot say I have enjoyed it — it’s too much like a documentary, and I’m not sure anyone ever really *enjoys* a good documentary. Appreciation, sure, but … there is no happiness; that comes when the story is stopped while the audience can still imagine a happy ending.
I’m quite sure you know what I’m rambling about. Let me make two suggestions: first, once it’s done, don’t look at it or think about it for 30 days or so. Then take it out, go somewhere quiet with it, read it and make all the changes that come leaping out at you.
Then go over it with a fine-tooth comb for spelling, grammar (and homophones!) and submit it. Not at Regency — someplace where good fiction is appreciated.
We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! Knowing that we’re not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
familiar words
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one of my best friends has been living those words for about the past 4 years, and it almost broke his marriage. he now has an agent and has high hopes that his book - a fictionalized memoir - will be picked up by a major publisher, possibly some time in 2008.
but more importantly, he has come to the realization that not denying his art in the end makes him a better husband and father, and denying it made him a worse one. and so, accommodations are made.
it’s The Work with a capital W - and, like any other aspect of ordinary life like getting out of bed in the morning, requires courage. to have even made the attempt is worthy of recognition, and i hope you can have some peace with that knowledge.
oops - what those words were
“I am sick of the problems this has caused, the fights, the stress. I just want it done and over with, and it would be senseless not to finish it having come this far on it.”
Documentary
When the subject is hard, documentary is one of the time honored options. Consider this story from the New York Times:
Secret legal opinions authorized torture.
Including “drowning and simulated drowning”
This is from a section written early but not yet posted:
America has gone down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass and whatever other cliche you want to use to describe a perverse moment where black is white and white is black. I don’t think that emotionalism or exageration, unless it is to the point of satire and parody, will be listened to, simply because the reality is worse than we yet have been told, and there are more things hidden than are yet to be revealed.
If Chryssie and Merc and Hampton’s story is told in relatively straight tones, with a relatively small amount of commentary, it’s because even that provides a fig leaf for the reader that, I feel, isn’t justified. This is because it invites the reader to pretend that they had nothing to do with this, that it is a vague them that sent our troops to Iraq, and an unnamed someone who made the decisions. In fact, we have met the enemy, and he is us.
I’m sorry this novel doesn’t grab people, but perhaps the novel people are looking for isn’t one that is ready to face the banality of evil.
Our evil.
Liberty, there's also the question of venue and time
My political blog-reading/writing time is locked in a death match with real-life concerns.
There are many blogs I would love to read, if I could find the time, and there’s a lot of real-life stuff I’d love to do if I could find the time.
When I see posts that are fictional, amid the commentary and news posts, it’s a matter of triage for me. So, without prejudice, I simply didn’t and couldn’t find the time to read the series. When I’ve got piles of fiction and non-fiction books around the house that I’m dying to read, and which I’m getting to very slowly, there’s serious competition for my eyeballs.