Is Obama Moby Dick?

First of all, let me say that I would have been happy to vote for Obama regardless of his race. And I suspect that there are many out there who would have been happy to vote against Obama regardless of his race. Nonetheless, it would be disingenuous to pretend that his race isn't a factor in how he is perceived.

It's weird to me that Obama, who is half Caucasian, is always referred to as "black;" but, then, Tiger Woods is always referred to as "black" rather than "Cambodian," so I guess any percentage black still trumps all in the eyes of both blacks and whites. But what is odder yet is that the world's most famous black man seems to be turning into the world's most famous White Whale.

Now, by the nature of the job, the President of the United States can't help but be something of a symbol. But in Obama's case his symbolic capacity seems limitless; people project a bewildering array of attributes and motives on to him. At first this seemed simple enough: the liberals saw him as a symbol of hope and progress, and the far right saw him as a symbol of creeping socialism and of the first days of The Last Days.

I find it exceedingly peculiar that Obama is perceived by the right as being either anti-Christian or even Muslim, while the left seems to overlook his deeply Christian religious history. Obama has far more Christian credentials--and fundamentalist Christian credentials at that--than a poseur like George W. Bush. But I guess it isn't really that odd in America: people with no combat experience or real military service, like Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, are seen as "tough guys," while real combat heroes, like John Kerry or George Bush, Sr., are seen as "wimps." In light of all that, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised by Obama's White Whale status.

But the projections onto Obama seem to be at a whole new level of weirdness. I'll give just three examples.

1) Former New York Mayor Ed Koch, speaking to a crowd in Manhattan, described the Obama administration's push for a settlement freeze in East Jerusalem as an effort to "undermine the legitimacy of the state of Israel," and on Fox News (where else?) said, "I believe the Obama administration is willing to throw Israel under the bus in order to please the Muslim nations." Since every US adminstration I can recall has pressured Israel on the settlements issue, it's hard for me to understand this level of hysteria over something that is merely business as usual...except in the context of Obama as Symbol. Of something.

2) Listening to the radio yesterday, in the aftermath of the riots in Greece, a reporter was interviewing a young, angry business student who was criticizing the IMF's bailout terms. In broken English, which I won't attempt to render here, he said, "It's all because Obama wants to destroy the Euro so he can have a stronger dollar!"

Ill ignore the raw stupidity of the conjecture that the US is pushing for a stronger dollar at the time that we're trying to increase exports and cut imports. What's striking about this idea is that it's conceived of as Obama's doing. I've heard all manner of world-domination-via-the-IMF accusations hurled at the IMF and at perfidious American plutocrats or the shady New World Order, but I can't recall hearing anyone attribute US strategies vis-a-vis exchange-rate policy to the President personally. (I suppose this is something of a backhanded tribute to Obama. No one would ever have accused his predecessor of formulating international economic policy.)

3) Last week I was walking in downtown San Francisco and a young man with a clipboard accosted me on the sidewalk. At first glance he looked like a Greenpeace fundraiser, but he opened by saying, "Do you want to help save the US Space Program?"

Still walking, I offered that I had nothing against the US Space Program, but that I was on my way to an appointment.

He responded by shouting, "If you want to save the US Space Program, the first question we need to answer is: Where was Barack Obama really born?"

That makes my Top Ten Non Sequitur List--unless the young man was about to argue that Obama was in fact born on another planet and wanted to discourage space exploration for fear it might reveal his extraterrestrial origins. (That wouldn't be a non sequitur. Insane, maybe, but a logical train of deranged thought.) I almost regret not stopping to hear out his crackpot reasoning, but that would have violated one of the key commandments of living in California (#7: Never stop to talk to someone on the street in the Bay Area, even if you have to walk out into traffic to avoid them).


Critics have argued for decades now about the meaning of the White Whale, but, like any good symbol, Moby-Dick remains always present yet elusive. As for myself, I hope that I can some day introduce into one of my stories a symbol as powerful and yet open to interpretation as our first Black President.

The South, Part I

I haven't spent a lot of time in the South, and much of the time I've spent there has been in areas that aren't the "classic" South (like Oak Ridge Tennessee--the city with the highest per capita concentration of PhDs in the nation--or Miami, which is more Cuban than Southern, or Houston and Dallas and Austin and San Antonio, which are, well, how do I put this?--Texan. Which is a whole different animal or two .)

In the last month, though, we've had call to be in Central Florida (Orlando, Tampa, St Petersburg, and a whole passel of dinky places in between), and South Carolina. Now, that's the real South, and, what's more, the swampy part. Which is okay with me. As a SoCal desert boy, any place with large volumes of fresh water (although "fresh" might not be the right adjective for swamp water) is exotic.

I live in Huntington Beach, not far from Disneyland--yes, the real Disneyland, the original Disneyland, which was conceived about the same time that I was, though my gestation was about 12 months shorter. That's in Orange County, California. By some strange Doppelganger logic, the latecomer Disney World is in Orlando, which is in...wait for it...Orange County, Florida.

Now, we had no desire to visit Disney World. We were in Florida to attend a wedding, which was on the other side of that (very skinny, and apparently flaccid) state. But it's easier and cheaper to fly into Orlando than just about anywhere else, so that's where we arrived, and where we booked our very cheap lodgings.

In case you haven't heard, Florida is an economic disaster area. We've had an economic slump in California, but Florida has slid several rungs down the evolutionary ladder, and now survives by eating a diet typical of Fiddler Crabs: theatre popcorn, detritus, and, when they can get it, plankton. Here is a sign posted in Orlando, and it was only one of many similar do-it-yourself cries for help.

In case you can't read it, this is advertising a one-bedroom, one-bath condo unti for $19 K--that is, $19,000. At today's exchange rates, that's about 12,500 British pounds, or 14,150 Euros. In other words, you can buy a modest apartment for the price of a decent used car. (If you want the place, the phone number is right at the bottom. If it's already sold, there's plenty more available.)

I have no urge to leave Orange County, California, for Orange County, Florida, but the economics are compelling. Anything here--and I mean anything--would cost literally ten times as much. But if I were going to leave California for the South, it wouldn't be for Florida. I'd rather go whole hog and relocate to, say, Faulkner country.

Still, the swamps are tempting. I'm one of those people who's drawn as much by ecosystems as by culture. And swamps are fascinating. I'm not going to wax poetic about fecundity and the waters of life, but a subtropical swamp is something to behold. Here's a picture I took of an alligator, out in the wild, in Florida--a medium-sized lady about six feet long, protecting her young. "Alligator" is a mangling of the Spanish "El Legarto," the lizard, and I must say that these beasts are The Lizard indeed; even the Lizard King, displacing Jim Morrison of The Doors.


Anywhere on the planet you can encounter something like this outside a zoo has some redeeming features, even if the local cuisine consists mostly of breaded deep-fried balls of lard. And, hey, if you have $19,000, you could live almost next to El Legarto. (Or is that La Legarta?)

Next stop, Charleston, South Carolina, where I promise to say something more writerly, since it's a literary city. I'm afraid Orlando and its environs aren't really that literary.

Though if prices stay down, I can imagine it might become a destination for expatriate European artists and writers who need a cheap place to play bohemian. Picture it. Orlando: the Left Bank of the 21st Century.

The Problems of Feedback, Support, and Critiques

The always-readable Emma Darwin has a brilliant post on this broad topic. Anyone who has ever participated in a writing group, writing workshop, or writers' forum will find this interesting.

I was especially impressed by her insight that the critiquing style of the reviewer needs to match the listening style of the writer or the whole thrust of the critique may be missed or overinterpreted. This would be a good article to print out and distribute to writing groups or classes (and I plan to steer some of my acquaintances to it).

Evolutionary Benefits of Fiction

A recent article in the New York Times discusses the hot new trend in English departments--the study of why we read fiction in the first place.

This is still far from being a cohesive area of study. Some are pursuing the idea that fiction provides models for altruistic cooperation, or other patterns of human interaction. This, of course, is an old idea, which harks back to Colin Wilson's contention that a novel is a "philosophical experiment." (Wilson meant this in the most literal, scientific sense: he argued that fiction acted as a lab experiment where we could take certain kinds of characters, situations, and approaches to life, and set them in motion to see the results.)

Others think that fiction is innately attractive because constructing theories as to the inner workings of the minds of others--their "intentionalities," in the jargon of the studies--has an intrinsic evolutionary value to creatures as social as humans. Included are level problems of tracking who knows what--does Tim know that Jill knows that Bob knows about X? Scholars who puzzle over such things have decided that Virginia Woolf is often difficult because she is demanding that the reader track too many different minds and intentions.

A researcher with the marvelous (if implausible--but this is nonfiction, here) name of Lisa Zunshine claims that our ability to track states of knowledge drops off quickly when more than three minds are included. The article gives the example of "“Peter said that Paul believed that Mary liked chocolate” as a case that we can follow with some degree of ease; add another link in that chain, and our comprehension of what is happening drops off quickly.

Furthermore, Zunshine and others claim that following the interaction of three minds has an innate draw for humans. That's certainly true; while the protagonist/antagonist duo are the pillars of classical storylines, it's hard to get a story rolling without throwing in a third element to thicken the plot; and what's a love story without a triangle?

I've also read elsewhere that most primitive arithmetics use a counting system which itemizes as "One...Two...Three...Many." Some psychologists have argued that the brain has an innate understanding of one, two, and three, but that when we see larger numbers, we "re-chunk" them; that is, when we see three people walking down the street, we know instantly we are seeing three people, but when we see four people, our initial impression is that we see "many," which we promptly chunk into, say, two pairs of people to arrive at four. And why not? After all, we live in three dimensions.

The article also reports that some of the fiction researchers are hoping to deploy the current sexy science device, the MRI brain scan, to study changes in the brain while we consume fiction.

I have to confess a high degree of skepticism about MRI brain imaging. Last year Science News published a short review of the statistical and interpretive problems with such studies, highlighted by by a study where emotional reactions were traced in the brain of a salmon when it was shown humans engaged in various activities. It would be amazing if a fish were reacting to such stimuli in a predictable way, but what was truly fascinating about this particular experiment is that the fish was dead.

Either there are some basic flaws in how this data is analyzed (which the Science News article argues most convincingly), or fish consciousness survives death, and hangs around the region of the fish's body before passing to the Great Beyond.

In any case, we will soon have more pictures (possibly of questionable value) of Your Brain On Fiction. And, with a bit of luck, perhaps we'll also know how many levels of intentionality a fish can track.

What's up with "Could"?

I suppose the title of this post doesn't convey my question very well.

What I'm wondering about is why I see so many narratives where we are told that some "could see" or "could hear" something. For example:

She could see the ducks in the pond.

Or

He could hear the rumble of trucks on the nearby freeway.

Why "could"? (Which is one of those words that starts looking odd after you've written it too many times...)

In the case of the first example, the author might have instead written

She saw the ducks in the pond.

Or even, if we are clearly embedded in her POV,

The ducks paddled across the pond. (etc)

Why the "could see" construction? When I read it too many times, I find myself asking, "She could see? But what? She could, but chose not to? She could see, but instead put her hands over her eyes?"

Now, there are completely legitimate uses of this construction, especially when it follows a change in conditions:

Standing on the box, he could see over the fence

Or

Once he turned off the car's engine, he could hear the chirping of the crickets in the field.

But the longer I think about it, the less I like

He could hear the chirping of the crickets in the field.

all on its own. Obviously the writer is telling us that he heard them, not that he could have but overlooked them, or the writer would have said something like

Were he not so distracted by his mobile phone, he could have heard the chirping of the crickets in the field.

So why are some writers so tempted to avoid saying

He heard the chirping of the crickets in the field. ?

It has an air of the hypothetical case about it. Are people drawn to the "could" construction because it's a little weasely? My dictionary notes that could is sometimes used as "an alternative to can suggesting less force or certainty or as a polite form in the present ". In other words, yes, weasely (which in my opinion usually weakens fiction).

Or perhaps it simply has a fine, slightly archaic ring to it (as it were)? I was at a graduation ceremony not too long ago where I heard the slightly formal hypothetical used in an unending stream. As each graduate was announced, we heard something like

John Richard Smith...John would like to thank his parents, and Mrs. Jones at the school library.

Uh-huh. He would like to, but he can't? He'd like to, but is having us do it instead? I, well, could think of reasons he would like to but won't, and after I hear a speaker repeat 'would like to thank' a dozen times, I not only could think of reasons, but I actually do think of reasons. He'd like to, but at the moment he's too stoned to talk. He'd like to, but unfortunately they never helped him, and in fact were the major impediment to his success. He'd like to, but he was captured by Moorish pirates and had his tongue cut out.

(Hey, it helps pass the time. If there's any thing more boring than a graduation ceremony, I never want to attend it.)

I note that could and would are both similar, very old words. And when I think about it, should is pretty fuzzy, too. It must be those -ould words--shifty and circumlocutive.

Of course, I exclude from this category -ould words like mould, which is a very different matter. But perhaps that's why on this side of the Atlantic we spell it mold. I could believe that. I would like to believe that.

I should be ending this post now.

Working Titles

Over on his blog, Tim Stretton mentions that, despite possible uphill publication battles, he is immersed in his next Mondia novel (to which fans of Dog of the North and Dragonchaser, amongst whom I am numbered, can only say, Bravo and The Sooner the Better.)

He discussed many aspects of this venture, but the one that drew most comments was the fact the he hadn't yet chosen a working title. A couple of novelists I won't name (okay, he said, breaking down at the first threat of torture, they were Aliya Whiteley and LC Tyler) were a bit surprised that Tim didn't have a working title. Indeed, Tim himself seemed a bit surprised, though not really bothered.

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A digression: Working Title Films is a great Irish/British/Hollywoodish production company, whose name has always amused me. (Wingnut Films, Peter Jackson's production company, is equally well-named.) Working Title has produced big films like Atonement and Elizabeth and Pride and Prejudice, offbeat films like Bob Roberts and The Tall Guy, Richard Curtis' Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love Actually, the two wonderful Simon Pegg vehicles Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and most of the Coen Brothers films from The Big Lebowski and Fargo on down to their recent A Serious Man. (If you haven't seen A Serious Man, check it out. Truly original, peculiar, and delightful.)

I've always wondered how many of their films really had working titles different from their release titles. (Other than Atonement and Pride and Prejudice, of course.)
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Based on a highly scientific survey of the field I have ascertained that authors can be sorted into four classes on this issue:

1) Those who must have a title to proceed, even if it is likely to be changed. Aliya and Len fall into this camp. There is something admittedly seductive about a good title. It is fraught with potential and promise. Tim joked that he was calling his new novel War of the Midget Trolls, and I don't think there was a follower of his blog who didn't want to read that book. Of course, I can't see any way that a book with that title would fit into the aesthetic of Mondia, but it's an irresistable, pulpy, preposterous title that almost makes you want to write the book yourself if Tim won't. (War of the Albanian Dwarves is equally provocative, though that's off in Whiteleyland.)

Titles can be a kind of muse or irritant, and some writers flourish with them, flounder without them, and basically can't function unless they have them on at least a temporary basis. About half the writers I know seem to be in this camp.

2) Those who discover titles--sometimes many of them--somewhere along the way. I'm in this bunch. I don't mind calling it Untitled or My Current Book or Work in Progress or The Effing Novel until something leaps out and grabs me. And even then I'm not married to it until I'm near the home stretch.

And, as it turns out, however, even if I'm married to it by the end, I'm not really a till-death-do-us-part kind of guy on the title thing. I'm kind of attached to my title by the end, but, hey--was she really all that better than Untitled or My Latest Thing? Come to think of it, the other titles were less demanding, more affectionate, and didn't leave their pantyhose hanging on the shower-curtain rod to dry. So when my publisher suggests another title might work better, I'm quite capable of dumping the one that has emerged over the course of the novel.

In this I don't think I'm more of a sinner than the writers who have to have a title from the outset. Okay, I made a mistake, but we acted like adults, and our ways parted without a lawsuit or coverage in People Magazine.

I had a long lonely time in the world of Untitled before I discovered The Right Title, and then I dropped The Right Title for The New Title, who was younger and had fewer wrinkles, less emotional baggage, and support from my publisher, but I don't see that this makes me a bad person.

Well, okay, in fact it does make me a bad person, but it's certainly no worse than the writers in Category 1) above. They commmited to titles, real titles, knowing all along that those titles weren't Ms Right, just Ms Right Now. (Those of different genders and/or sexual orientations and/or states of feminist awareness are invited to insert Mr, Miss, or whatever title pleases into the previous sentence.)

I can live with the uncertainty of Untitled for quite some time. In fact, I fancy it gives me an air of mystery--sitting alone at a table in a cafe with no title beside me, a far-away look in my eye. It makes me want to adopt a slight accent, or perhaps obtain a good imitation of a Heidelberg dueling scar on my cheek.

"What are you working on?" they ask. "What's it called?"

A weary sigh from me. "I'm not sure yet." A languid, French throwaway gesture with an uplifted palm. "Ah. The title." Shrug. "She will come when she pleases."

This can also be done in Zen Monk form, with remarks about not pushing the river because it flows by itself.

Truth is, I wish I had a title before I started writing. It just doesn't work like that for me.

I believe I'm in about a quarter of all writers in this Untitled/Soon-to-be-Titled crowd. Which gets us to perhaps 75% of the writing community.

3) The third group of writers--almost another quarter of the whole, which gets us near to one hundred percent--claims they have working titles, but they aren't fooling themselves or anyone else who is beyond the age of believing in the Easter Bunny. A lot of famous writers fall into this class. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, even pop writers like Margaret Mitchell, all settled on titles--and sometimes title after title--that are so irredeemably stupid and unmarketable that they are either designed to make listeners change the subject, or are carefully constructed strategems to force their editors and publishers to think hard about a decent title and allow the writer to get on with his or her work.

Gone With the Wind. A nice title. But earlier she claimed it would be called Tote the Weary Load, or Pansy, or Tomorrow is Another Day. Yeah, sure. Those have bestseller written all over them.

The Great Gatsby. Iconic, no? Except perhaps when it was named Trimalchio in West Egg, or Hurrah for the Red, White and Blue, or The High-Bouncing Lover. Scotty was a master of language, so I have to believe he was having us on.

And, of course, Hemingway was the master of offering titles he could never have intended. A Farewell to Arms is good. But The Sentimental Education of Frederick Henry, or Those Who Get Shot, or Love in Italy...well, come on. Did he ever really believe those were the titles?

I'm not sure if the writers in this class simply rattle off titles as a way of telling folks to Go Away, or if they want to get their editors working on titles that fit the market, and hope to strike fear into their publishing hearts with preposterous possiblities. But it's pretty clear to me that this crowd of of writers are disingenuous. Their books are really called Untitled until the last minute, and in the interim they'll call them any damn thing that comes to mind, which amounts to the same thing.

4) David Thayer. As far as I know, Mr Thayer is the sole occupant of this class, though there may be others. David calls every new novel the same thing--in his case, An Aztec in Central Park--until the final title comes to him.

It's not that David's bad with titles. Some of the ones he's settled on for various books--Tossing the Jack, The Working Dead, Flamingo Dawn--are evocative and potent. But all of these at some point or another were An Aztec in Central Park.

Problem is, David recently wrote a novel that involved--you guessed it--a person of Mexican ancestry, with a good deal of Aztec blood, who spends some time in Central Park. And the title got attached to that book, because, well, it was a sort of irrevocable molecular attraction.

I'm not sure how David gets through his novels now that his Single Working Title has been abducted. It's the problem I'd face if I suddenly wrote a book and settled on Untitled.

But there you have it. Those who use titles as a sort of muse; those who grope for titles; and those who claim to have titles when they are still waiting for inspiration (or suggestions) to arrive.

And those who call everything An Aztec in Central Park.

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PS. I don't really call everything Untitled. Like the Jews after they'd settled down from their wanderings in the wilderness, and like the Christians ages later, I just call whatever I'm struggling with The Book.

Or, sometimes, The Goddamned Book.

Hey, come to think of it, that's not a bad title...

Failure and Experience

Ryan David Jahn has a stimulating post on the myriad ways our works fail, and the extent to which we can be embarrassed by our early efforts...or even, in retrospect, by our published efforts.

His assessment, like Paul Valery's observation about poems, is that a work is never really finished, only abandoned. The hope, I suppose, is that as we mature we do our reworking more completely and more expeditiously, and therefore abandon our fiction a little more closely to the ideal, unattainable, point of true completion.

I can't argue with that. But reading RDJ's description of his filing cabinets full of early stories and novels--works he now sees as having been nowhere near as good as they could have been--has made me reflect on the role of experience in our writing process.

I'm not talking about life experience here. I'm familiar with the belief that a wide experience of life and years of hard knocks are vital seasoning for a writer (though I'm not sure I entirely buy it. For every Ernest Hemingway or Jack London you can name, I can give you back a Stephen Crane or F. Scott Fitzgerald, or, best of all, an Emily Dickinson. Some writers get lifetimes of perspective from the merest crumbs of life experience.) What I think is often overlooked is writing experience--the sheer number and variety of works undertaken.

I've seen any number of writers spend years writing and rewriting the same novel, to the exclusion of all other projects, and this kind of dedication is often extolled as the kind of devotion that singles out the true writers--the Joyces, the Flauberts. Real writing is rewriting, we are told, and this is so widely repeated by writers that one must take it seriously. (Though I also take Byron seriously when he said, "...I can never recast anything. I am like the tiger. If I miss the first spring, I go grumbling back to my jungle again; but if I do hit, it is crushing.")

There are many metaphors and analogies for the novel, from Colin Wilson's "philosophical experiment" to the various architectural images on down to the concept of a journey or expedition. All are valid. And no one wants a sloppy experiment or a slapped-together cathedral or a stumbling-blind journey. Fair enough.

Yet there is a kind of knowledge and skill which cannot be gained by the meticulous reworking of a single novel. Failed novels and stories are, as RDJ notes, often blush-inducing (despite occasional flashes of quality). Yet I think these failures are valuable in terms of writing experience. The range of characters, the different approaches to style, the possible story structures--and all of the ways those can either fail or enhance a work--are the kind of bone-deep understanding that comes only from experience.

What's my point? I suppose I'm saying that, as everyone (except Byron) agrees, rewriting is vital. But so is first-draft writing itself. Most of us are standing atop a considerable stack of unpublished and unpublishable work. Do I wish I had stayed focused on improving that first novel I cranked out? Not really. I learned from my efforts at rewriting it, but I think I learned much more by moving on to the next, and the next...

And, who knows? Maybe I'll go back and do more rewriting on some of those old manuscripts some day.

Meanwhile, I'll go grumbling back to my jungle.