For Your Brain.

A professor gave me this speech in a class this summer and it occurred to me that everyone should read it – most especially writers. Enjoy.

William Faulkner’s 1950 Nobel Acceptance Speech

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work — a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed — love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

The Art of….Well, Art.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published an article on July 30^th by Vivian Nereim entitled “Line from T.S. Eliot poem intrigues literature buffs: Graffiti writer paints poetic on Carnegie Library.” She talks about Oakland’s Carnegie Library, which was recently vandalized with three phrases: “I wish I were a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas,” “for freedom enter here” and, most hilariously, “This is not a good way to handle my problems.” While the last one may be a little off topic, the first tag – a bastardized quote from T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” – shows something different than what we normally think of when graffiti is involved. I’ve heard of “graffiti artists,” who pride themselves on making vandalism into an art form, but rarely do we hear of graffiti that quotes poetry, especially poets as renowned and complex as T.S. Eliot. The second line – despite how grammatically challenged it may be – refers to the liberty that education allows individuals, and also seems out of character for graffiti. So why then, are these lines seen? And why does the third line, a self-admonishment concerning the actions of the perpetrator, show such self-awareness and wit? None of these traits are what we usually connect with something deemed vandalism. So are we all wrong about mediums that are generally not even considered art?

The article made me think of the argument currently happening concerning graphic novels as an art form. Most people think that comic books and their big brother, the graphic novel, are reserved for superheroes, but books like Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale and Ice Haven by Daniel Clowes, suggest that the majority may be wrong. Maus is widely known and even won a Pulitzer Prize, but Ice Haven is harder to find and argues the very issue at hand – can comic books be considered art? In my eyes, any person who seriously considers and tries to communicate the human condition – no matter the medium – is creating art. Isn’t the point of art to connect with human emotions and express the complex ideas and struggles that every human must have and face? I can remember being a teenager struggling with my sexuality and staying up until dawn reading the “X-Men” comic books because they made me feel normal – the characters in those books understood the struggle of wanting to fit in when everyone says you can’t. At that point in my life, no one else was telling me it was okay to be different and the only things I could connect with that told me I was just as human as everyone else were comic books. So if art’s purpose is to connect humans through their emotions, then “X-Men” has already proved itself (because I know I’ve never heard a number of people that must be touched for something to be considered art). So why are so many people reluctant to have this belief? The stigma that comic books and graphic novels have for being “kid stuff” is disproven time and time again (if you don’t believe me, go look up the two listed above and “Promethea,” written by Alan Moore and illustrated by J. H. Williams and Mick Gray, which follows a superhero as she explores the boundaries between the mind and body, reality and imagination – something no other comic that I know of has ever done – and has some of the most beautiful illustrations I’ve ever seen). Yet people are still stubborn as can be concerning a medium that really combines two different art forms (illustration and literature) and borrows heavily from another (film – comics are so driven by dialogue and visuals that they probably come closest to screenwriting). Is it because prose writers cannot bring themselves to accept that their own medium may be recognized alongside the comics their kids are reading (though, to be fair, most comics with merit should be read only by adults)? Or has it simply become a cultural tradition, akin to the way many literary writers scoff at pulp writing, which – if it’s good (a rather big factor) – takes just as much effort, creativity, time, craft and attention to detail as literary writing? Have we become ignorant art snobs without even realizing it? Or, perhaps more importantly, are we more like the graffiti artist who watches their hands do what their mind knows it should not?

Whether it’s a conscious decision or the effect of a widespread social stigma, the idea that comics cannot be art needs to be reconsidered. Of course, issues of selectivity must be a concern (you wouldn’t place da Vinci’s paintings alongside a three year-old’s scribbles and say they have the same artistic merit) and surely some comics are better than others, but to write off an entire medium without consideration is nothing more than ignorance (much like seeing that three year old’s scribble and deciding that all drawings are trash). Most artists would have serious problem with their medium being cast aside because some individuals lack the dedication that they do. So why are we so willing to do it to comics?

All I’m saying is, don’t be surprised if the next time you read the words “for freedom enter here,” they’re on the stoop of a comic store. But don’t come questioning me, either – I still stick to the paper and ink.

On Floating Downstream and Swimming Up.

I read an article that was posted on a blog the other day from guardian.co.uk titled “The Great Chick Lit Cover-Up.” The author is talking about how books by female writers are all beginning to be styled after chick lit covers because of how well they sell. Pink backgrounds with swirly text and women on beaches have become the new “in” covers, apparently, and publishers simply won’t stop trying to market female authors (or even male authors who write sympathetic female protagonists) in this way. This can be extremely inappropriate on a book about, say, spousal abuse – as one can imagine. So why is this happening? In the phone interview with Bob Gray of Northshire Books, we actually discussed book cover trends – how a few years ago, it was popular to have random female body parts adorning the cover, no matter the book’s subject matter; or how every cover went beige for a while. So why do publishers try to make every book look alike? Just because a cover sells well on one book doesn’t mean it will on another. Take the cover of Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, with the red curtain pulled aside to reveal blue sky. If any other book had tried to copy this aesthetic, I’m not sure it would have or could have worked (of course, Eggers’ title couldn’t have worked for another book either, but that has far more to do with his talent than any decision his publisher made). I certainly wouldn’t want my book to be marketed with a cover image similar to that one – partially because I see it as a cop-out and partially because I would rather not compare myself to Eggers – and I’m not sure I would even buy a book with a cover that I had seen before. The reader in me, I feel, would consider that book already read and shy away for something more attention-grabbing than a cover I had seen again and again. But publishers must be onto something – certainly they wouldn’t continue to create such trends year after year if there wasn’t some payoff. And similar covers can work to help readers find what they’re looking for – the “Fabio romance cover” is generally not given to another genre and allows readers to see exactly what they’re getting into before they even flip to a page. But do readers even want all their books to look the same? And I would think publishers would be getting nervous about trying to pin the same cover on books that are, in all reality, completely dissimilar. Surely it’s better marketing to use a striking image that no one has ever seen, something that makes the reader curious as to what could be inside the book and hopefully keeping their attention until the book is bought and read, rather than using an image that betrays what the book is about – or worse, lies about the content of the book. Perhaps, though, this is their whole strategy – true, all books by female authors or containing female protagonists will look the same, but does it also widen the market until fans of chick lit are buying three or four genres rather than their preferred one? Or will we simply see a higher rate of book returns and less interest in books in general as readers feel more and more betrayed? I suppose we can only wait until this trend is over to find out. But no matter the results, it’s still far better in my eyes to be recognized for moving against the current than be forgotten by moving with it.

An Assessment of Myself.

I think it’s healthy sometimes for artists to step away from their work so they can consider it from a distance rather than in the close proximity that creation places us. I think looking at one’s own work in this way allows the artist to have a more realistic approach to – for writers – the publishing side of writing, and allows us the ability to step back and market our own work with far more ease. When looking at my own work, I see that it targets adult audiences (especially due to language and some situations/ subject matter presented in my fiction) and that audience is further narrowed because of my penchant for writing gay characters. Also, the fact that some of my work experiments with style, structure and traditional narration reduces my market further, meaning that in all likelihood, I will have to pursue small, independent presses to get my work published and then I will have to market my own work tirelessly if I expect large groups of readers to see it (like Bob Gray said – experimental fiction readers are not many, but they are extremely loyal). I’m very okay with marketing my own work, and to tell the truth I’m kind of excited about it – anyone who’s a fan of experimental literature is a friend of mine and someone I’d like to know. They can suggest books I need to read which will in turn, influence my work and view of experimentation, and I can recommend books to them that I’ve read that experiment with the traditional elements of craft in ways my writing doesn’t. Any marketing or self-promotion I can do, I’m willing to – this is why I’m here. To not market and promote myself seems kind of silly to me, like tossing myself to the wolves, especially in an industry like this, with so many people who want to be recognized so badly. All writers must self-promote as it is simply the nature of what we do. This need for self-promotion appears especially in cases of fiction that bend the traditional rules of narrative. During this self-promotion, I also have to get several people to assess the quality of my writing so that I can sell my writing for the quality and not the experimentation – not only will more people buy it, more people will be willing to buy it and spread the word. Quality literature knows no bounds, so marketing myself with a focus on quality writing rather than a focus on the fact that I like to alter elements of craft will definitely attract more people and may introduce some people to literary experimentation who have never considered such writing. I can only hope I will be accepted well, especially because I don’t experiment to confuse people or “just to do it,” but rather because my experimentation helps me to understand the story better, and so is part of how I express it to other people. Even if I could disconnect from the experimentation, I wouldn’t – it is a part of how I understand stories and the world and the interactions of people – and it makes my voice on the page immediately recognizable while helping to express the way some people of my generation see this fragmented, quickly spinning place that we must call home. I know I can overcome the obstacles that will lead me to a life of letters – no matter what that life of letters is – and I am excited to do it because we as writers must do the same thing our work must if we expect anyone to hear our voices – above all, we must persevere.

E-Books: Not My Favorite.

I recently had my first run-in with the notorious new trend of e-books. Both Random House and Simon & Schuster have e-books available online for purchase online (at randomhouse.com, adult tiles run for $11.99 and kid’s books run for $4.99; at simonsays.com, the list price is generally $11.99 – they only have adult titles in e-book format – but the online price is $7.99), but I was searching for a free e-book. Some sites offer a limited selection of free e-books, and they do have them – once you pay the subscription fee – and other websites like free-ebooks.net do offer free e-books once you become a member. I, however, had a major problem with the downloads at free-ebooks.net. I downloaded the necessary reader program with ease, but when I tried downloading actual e-books, all of the files were corrupt and none of them would play (I tried 3 different titles). Many websites offer free e-books but only provide a small preview of the book for free, with full viewing available after payment. The website I ended up finding was sharewareebooks.com, site with a pretty good selection of e-books, especially in the children’s section, where I navigated through several classic titles until I found one that piqued my interest: The Story of the Pig by Ion Creanga. I can’t say the story was too interesting, but the process of getting and reading the e-book was fascinating. After downloading the DNL Reader (simple to install and use, which was nice, and on DSL, it only took a moment) I downloaded the actual book title to my computer (which also took only a minute or two). I clicked on the file and the e-book automatically came up, looking like a one-page spread with the cover displayed from the top of my screen to the bottom (it didn’t go wide-screen, but took up the proportionate amount of space on the screen). One thing I personally was perturbed with was that the program does not cover your desktop, so I had a picture of a Russian-ish royal court and a pig perched on a stair before a princess with all my icons and my buddy list behind (for me, it was distracting). The image was crisp and clear, as if I was looking at the physical book’s illustrations, and on the edge of the page I could see the shadow line from where the book was held open to be scanned (which I found nice as a fan of paper books – it made me feel more in my element to have that detail of the physicality books possess). After studying the image quality, it took me a few moments to realize that the only control is a forward page flip, activated by clicking on the book’s image (there are no directions or control panel, which I always find helpful when attempting a new media, as we can all agree e-books are). When the book is clicked on to advance a page, the image literally rolls over to the left (not expanding the program window, so I was still looking at a one-page spread, but one image rolled away as a book page does, a nice visual effect for those of us used to paper books) which I enjoyed and, since it is a children’s book, an effect I think children would like (like when you’re reading a book to a little kid and they seem more fascinated by the motion of the images and pages as they turn than the actual words of the book). One major problem I did have, considering the fact that it was a children’s book, is that the book’s online location was not accessible to children – the key words used to search for the book would be too complicated and the main site itself was full of text, while the search bar was relatively hard to locate. One of the glorious things about being a kid in a bookstore is the ability to look around and flip through each title to see the different pictures and characters in each book, before deciding which one you want your guardian to buy and read to you. In my opinion, an online “Kid’s Section” would be more appropriate, perhaps where previews of the children’s books are available for the kids to peruse, with downloads only accessible in the parent’s password-protected section (this seems the most logical set-up to me). This online format seems better suited to children’s learning books, which parents more often select without the children’s input. For an adult, however, it was pretty quick and easy to navigate and find a children’s book – so perhaps if parent and child work together in the selection, it does provide the quick convenience of not having to leave the computer chair to find a bedtime story.

I think I will stick to paper books, though. There’s still something about the smell of the pages and the mobility of a paperback I appreciate far more than a digital book collection (what happens if your computer crashes? You lose your whole library! And especially if the service is not free, this seems like a looming problem to me. Or what if you’re in the middle of a great read and your laptop dies?). So you can still find me curled up on the couch, not plugged into anything, immersed in the good old paper and ink.

Music: the Missing Link or Just Another Ape?

I read an article from The Los Angeles Times today about singer-songwriter James McMurtry (from July 21, 2008 by Geoffrey Himes). He says that his lyrics are character-driven and always have been, something that comes as somewhat of a surprise to anyone who listens to popular music nowadays. But when we look back at songs that have lasted — “Hurricane” having been performed by Bob Dylan, Ani DiFranco and the Milltown Brothers — many of them are character-driven. Even if you look back at popular music from the Jazz Age, many of them describe people to present social attitudes or situations (and further back than that — even Medieval music describes humans interacting with mystical things, not just the mystical things themselves). When people think of ancient myths, the Greek gods pop into mind, but it isn’t the gods we connect to — beings who play with us like pawns — it is the victims of the gods, because we all feel like we’re being toyed with at times (who hasn’t looked up at a time of tragedy and asked “why?”?). We cannot connect with something inhuman because of just that — it is inhuman. It would be akin to god trying to comprehend the mind of a mortal: He could never, in his wildest imaginings, hope to understand how it feels to be finite or scared or alone. Likewise, we cannot connect with anything that doesn’t feel these same things because we cannot imagine existence without them. Any lyrics that aren’t at least somewhat character-driven — a song about a teacup, for example — would likely not last a month in the minds of listeners, unless the teacup draws us into the aging woman drinking from her fine china at the mahogany table that never seats more than one. That song is likely to strike us twenty years from hearing it as we stir milk into chai, waiting for the phone to ring as we discover ourselves alone at the table. So why, then, as a writer, am I surprised that a musician would recognize this (and not just any musician, the son of novelist Larry McMurtry)? Perhaps I listen to too much pop, with the “I” and “you” always undefined, waiting for the listener to do the work.

Another part of the article that drew my attention was McMurtry’s act of discovery in writing the characters he sings. The act of discovery, to me, is one of the reasons story-telling is still around. Not only does the listener/reader learn about the characters (and hopefully themselves) from the story, but the story-teller learns to find something like meaning in the randomness around us. It is the purest part of story-telling, the truth at the core of all art. So why, if discovery helps all involved and characters are such a staple of our perception of the world, don’t we typically hear more music with a focus on the characters involved? Is it the massive amounts of vague nonsense being spewed through our radios? Is it a lack of attention spans long enough to allow for full character development? Whatever the reasoning is, I think we, especially in the art world, need to start working against this overflow of vague ideas and start working toward something definable, something tangible. I’m tired of songs that rely on music videos to provide meaning for abstract lyrics. If your song is about love, show me the lovers, why they argue, what they do when no one is around! I want you to tell me about myself through other people, not draw indiscernible figures in the air that melt as soon as the music fades! Specifics are the key to good art — we cannot connect to someone who is “Everyman” (thus, the reason why the Everyman plays died hundreds of years ago). So why are we still inundated with music that has the “I and you” format — this vague set of undefined people who apparently interact in everything from love-making to break-ups to drug trips? Why are we surrounded by art that doesn’t do the work, in fact depends on the listener to do the work for the artist? The intent of all art is to make the viewer/listener think (thereby working), but when I have to fill in the blank you didn’t even consider? No way. And pop artists wonder why people refuse to pay for a CD of tracks that mean nothing more than “I have a FABULOUS publicist.”

That James McMurtry, though? Expect to see that disc in my collection. Any artist who still does his share of the work is worth paying for in my book.

The Fight for Truth is the Artist’s Most Joyous Battle.

“Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.” Niccolo Machiavelli

I saw this quote today and could not help but ponder how it applies to the arts (and, in turn, the artists). Must the artist truly be at the mercy of society’s ever-changing tastes? We have reached a time when to be politically incorrect is to be a terrorist, but the artist’s very job is to be politically incorrect, stimulating the masses into thinking for themselves and considering why things happen/people act the way they do. So then, should we censor ourselves before the critics can, making sure not to step on any toes if we expect recognition for our efforts? Why must we de-humanize our work in order for the contemporary world to accept it? It seems silly to me that artists, who turn reflectors on society (for whatever reason), must paint pretty pictures over the images in the mirror to keep the public from getting ruffled. We have become a society that cannot even look at itself without make-up and hair extensions (look at all the beauty ads out there and how well the fashion industry is doing and tell me I’m wrong). Instead of trying to envision a better future to work toward, we now tell ourselves we’re the best we could possibly be and punish anyone who challenges us. The beauty of humanity lies in the fact that we build and create to make the world as good as we think it can be — when did that change? When did everyone decide that to grow is to be corrupted? Still waters run deep, yes, but they also stagnate. And in the cultures we have molded, it is the artist’s job to ripple the surface, overflow the edges a little bit and create streams in new directions. So how can the arts survive in a world that challenges our most basic mission? Is it our job to wake everyone up, shake the sleep from their eyes and show them how still we have become? Or, if we expect recognition of any kind, must the artist now alter his conduct and become still himself, matching his tastes to those of society and the popular media? I agree with the quote only because of the words “constant success,” here meaning success in the eyes of one’s peers, but I disagree from a writer’s standpoint because my idea of success lies in honestly reporting the human condition. Personally, if I must find other ways to support myself and find “success,” so be it — I will. But bending to the will of popular tastes just to get a paycheck doesn’t make me an artist — it makes me a fraud. So I suppose the question becomes: How hard will you fight for your passion?