There is a wonderful, densely stunning essay called "The Nature of Knowledge in Short Fiction," in which the author, Charles May, discusses what formal characteristics all stories, short stories, and novels take in principal, according to many scholars. Among the really interesting sections, May discusses that storytelling "does not spring from one's encounter with the everyday world, but rather from one's encounter with the sacred (in which true reality is revealed in all of its plentitude) or with the absurd (in which true reality is reality is revealed in all of its vacuity)." So we can see the audience-pleasing joy of reading the former type, but what about the latter? Why read (or write) stories that reveal what is bleak?
May goes on to quote the Hungarian philosopher György Lukács, who says that absurdity in the short story is seen "undisguised and unadorned...and the exorcising power of this view, without fear or hope, gives it consecration of form; meaninglessness...becomes eternal because it is affirmed, transcended and redeemed by form."
Pause for a breath.
As I take it, if a dark story achieves truth, it has achieved meaning. As Arthur Miller said, "attention must be paid" to such dark characters (e.g. Willy Loman) and dark stories because truth is told - and truth binds us all, even if it is a truth that is difficult.
On a somewhat happier note, May's essay also discusses a concept by another philosopher and writer, Mircea Eliade: "Any aspect of experience, no matter how commonplace, can be come sacred..." May quotes Eliade's idea of "the paradox of hierophany": "By manifesting the sacred, any object becomes something else..."
A lot of fancy words here, massive philosophical name-dropping as well as "deep thoughts" for a Thursday, but I guess, George, what you and all writers do is show us the truly sacred meaning of this existence, wherever it appears. That all of this life is worth thinking about, and all of it has value. And that work, to me, is heroic.
Thank you for all of that! Now I understand better why my attempts with writing seem to be flying in formation with my partner’s endeavors in seminary!
Thank you for this. I especially liked the reference by Lukács to the “exorcising power” which is something I think truthful artistic expression has. It addresses (cleanses?) the soul. Artists and observers have and will continue to struggle to put this into words, searching perhaps for a unified field theory of art and meaning. It’s hard enough to quantify this in science, let alone art. For me, I find my attention (and heart) captured by resonance, which I suppose is connection, which points to the other comments about “always connect.”
On a marginally related note, I had one of those connected moments today where Story Club resonated in my life. I stumbled upon a 1997 PBS interview with Patti Smith where she describes music with a heart felt message as being spiritual, vs. performances based on showmanship being merely image.
I sat up straight and thought, “Hey, isn’t this what we’re discussing right now in Story Club? Is it a universal and timeless struggle?” Anyway, no profound answers from me but had to to share the serendipity….
I seem to be experiencing more and more of these serendipitous synchronicities since the Story Club began. Should I take it as a signal of being on the good track? Or is it really that I am slightly more aware now, enough to notice how the universe has always been working? Obviously I have been oblivious!
StoryClub is one of the best therapy groups I’ve ever been in. We start by talking about writing. Then we quickly drill down to feelings about the written word. And before we know it, we are sharing deep ideas of how our hearts engage the world. I mean really, who would have thought?
I appreciate everyone here and I deeply appreciate George for setting the tone, holding the space and being so candid about his own path. What. A. Gift. This. All. Is.
Kurt: I was trying to explain it to my husband today--why I keep coming here (and also telling him that I'm looking forward to the bit of a break George is about to give us, as sometimes I feel way too much on high alert around here). I said, where else can people like us gather and share like this? A truly safe environment to express our love for art as (mostly) expressed in the written word? Even when I was in a grad program, i didn't feel the way I feel here--connected and accepted in this beautiful way. I honestly feel like I could say almost anything here (within reason) having to do with art and my heart and people would listen. It is truly amazing. And yes, all thanks go to George who somehow knows exactly how to rein us all in so that we stay on the kind path with one another--actually so that we WANT to be on the kind path. That's his real gift. He makes us want to be kinder.
Hi Mary. It’s interesting, I learned about Story Club from an interview George did for Ezra Klein’s podcast. Klein titled it, “What it means to be kind in a cruel world.” In addition to clearly being a fan of George’s, Klein also mentioned that the comments section of Story Club was the kindest, most considerate one he had ever seen on the internet. That’s no small achievement. George models this and I am so grateful to see so many who respond in kind (I’m getting a lot of mileage from this word). It gives me hope to discover a community of intelligent, creative and compassionate folks.
I've listened to that interview twice now because i love it so much. He talks about a lot of the same things that he talks about here. I guess i have to hear these things many times over to really grasp them. Sometimes I can feel so slow! But then--since this is Story Club--i figure that's okay. I'm working on all of it, thinking about all of it, and living/writing/creating throughout. There's no clock ticking, no end point. What I think I've noticed the most about myself regarding this Club and my ponderings about writing, is that it all plays out in my daily life. I walk in the world and I want to think about things in a different way, a more loving and accepting way, i guess. It sounds so cornball, but there's a lot to be said for facing the world with a sense of awe, wonder, and respect.
Not so many of us allow that to be their gift. But the more, the merrier. Maybe that’s one more example of how good literature brings the sacred to life. (And vice versa.)
This has me thinking of Milan Kundera’s thought that “A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.”
Anybody have a link or know how I can rundown a copy of the Charles May essay ,"The Nature of Knowledge in Short Fiction"? MVM has me all riled up to read it and my local public library doesn't have enough clout to snag it for me :-).
Hi John. The essay can be found in May's book "The New Short Story Theories" which you can find on Amazon. Alternatively, you can sign on to the Internet Archive, find that book, and read the essay online.
Hi, Mary. Thank you. I looked up the ISBN for The New Short Story Theories on Amazon (978-0821410875) and then, with abundant glee, ordered it from my local bookseller. Now, for at least the remainder of the day, I must exercise great caution lest I trip over my own virtue.
Yeah. I got that far too but my local library doesn't have the mojo to bust down the doors of Proquest. I also beseeched the keepers of the now moribund Studies in Short Fiction journal to spring me a copy but they so far cleave to silence as stony as a Mayan god.
Maybe I'll walk over to my library and throw myself on the knees of an attending librarian. At this point, I feel a little melodrama—or is that "mellowdrama"?—is warranted. Otherwise, I could just throw myself at the knees of the librarian.
Hi MVM. I think (heavy emphasis on "I think" here) when Lukacs talks about absurdity, he is talking about the kind of story that is purposely written in an absurd style, the kind May says is "revealed in all of it vacuity," which is to say, its meaninglessness. Absurd stories are "redeemed by form" not content, according to this theory. So the story is revealed as having no meaning in its content, but when studied closer, its form is telling us something about life--usually that life has no meaning. So, neither is talking about dark or bleak stories, which find their meaning in their content. The form of a dark story may contribute to the story's overall effect, but a bleak story that is not written in the style of the absurd is not revealing itself in the same way as an absurd one. In a dark story, content counts. I agree that if a "dark story achieves truth, it has achieved meaning." I also think that is true for any story, dark or not. "One's encounter with the sacred" can be both dark or light or either one or the other.
Hi Mary: I absolutely see your point. In the context of this larger essay, May seems to be putting Lukacs' idea of "absurd" as an idea not merely of form, but in content/ending/the message revealed. There are a number of definitions of "absurd" in art and literature, so I am trying to follow May here as much as Lukacs; here, May uses it to discuss the overall psychological meaning and experience of what is "revealed." By form, he seems to mean artistic form.
Thanks for this. I think the main point of all of this thread is to hold up truth and honesty above all else. Sometimes that takes screwing around with "reality," which is why we love art so much. As George says, the stories of Hemingway and Babel are myths, but I think perhaps all stories are myths (all good stories anyway), revealing their true meanings beneath the words on the page in that space where feelings reside. And thereby connecting writer and reader in the ether.
I love this, Mary: "...revealing their true meanings beneath the words on the page in that space where feelings reside. And thereby connecting writer and reader in the ether." The "ether space".
From Virginia Woolf's "The Waves":
"There is a square: there is an oblong. The players take the square and place it upon the oblong. They place it very accurately; they make a perfect dwelling-place. Very little is left outside. The structure is now visible; what is inchoate is here stated; we are not so various or so mean; we have made oblongs and stood them upon squares. This is our triumph; this is our consolation."
I loved this particular line: "What is it we hope to have made, when all is said and done, and why does that thing have value?"
In fact, I loved the entire piece, George.
I tend to be an optimist, and sometimes, it feels like I have to put a LOT of effort into remaining one. But, I once received a piece of advice that I now have taped to the edge of my computer monitor. It says: "Whenever something doesn't work out the way you thought it would, instead of thinking that something went wrong, see it as something that went unexpectedly well, but for reasons that are not yet apparent. Everything plays in your favor."
“What a big edge you have on that computer monitor you are looking out of and into the wider world from Maureen!” Rob says simply, in gobsmacked amazement, before following up with this, incongruous, challenge: “Bet you can tape same around your tablet?”
“Geez Mo, you’ve gone and done it! You leave me amazed, but being as you are just such a so darned clever clogs here’s the rub: Go wrap same around your cell phone?”
Some time later . . .
“Thanks M. Just what I needed. Thanks for sending, so well wrapped, the magnifying glass. I give up: your 20:20 vision sure beats my myopia every which way, every time.”
A little, further, down the flowing streams of tide and time . . .
“No? You don’t say Maureen; that’s me beached as big and uselessly as a whale out of salt water! You read that quote by finger touch? Never realised that Braille was so screen edge sizeable and yet so tapeable.”
And then, at the last, this . . .
“So Mo, if I may call you Mo, why Braille tape this wonderful quote to a screen you can’t see?”
“It was a suggestion from my wonderful new friend Alexa. She said, in that silkily persuasive voice of hers, “Just tell me to “Read my favourite writing craft quote Alexa” and know that I will because your word is my command, just as it when you speak to the blank to your eyes screen telling me to talk you, tastily, through the present TV programme.”
I know! It struck me the same way when I first heard it. So much goes wrong in life...and it's so much better to think that "wrong" is just an interpretation, not a fact. The optimist in me heartens to the idea that 'everything plays in your favor':-)
A young boy who has been bullied by his parents into following an unrealistic and abusive set of rules and constraints sees his young neighbor in terrible danger, agonizes over what he could do to help, and finds within himself the bravery to break the rules and rescue her in a wonderfully spectacular way.
Sound familiar?
The reader reaches within, fishes around for some bravery, and knows that it will be there when required, whenever that may be.
"Why does that thing have value?"
Does the value of "that thing" depend 100% on the reader's response?
Of course not. The response is extra. Un-looked for. If it were looked for, the story would be worthless.
What is the job of the writer of stories? Is it to be neither optimistic or pessimistic? I don’t think so. I think the job is to write, from one’s place in the world, from one’s heart and mind. Sometimes, that work is going to be pessimistic! And if so, the writer can certainly sit with that a while and decide if that’s what they want to put out into the world. Sometimes we may need a little pessimism in order to be honest. Personally, I like hope at the end of my stories, but that’s my world view. I’m a hopeful person, despite all the evidence out there that we are fucked.
George writes: “art is an offering of sorts – a hypothesis for both writer and reader to take up and consider together.” And I think that is true. We’ve all heard “only connect,” and so we’re all familiar with the idea of connecting through art. But does that have to mean that you’re only doing it right if “the reader will feel she has a friend, in the story and its writer”? Art is more than an offering. Art is a personal explanation and a declaration. Art says “I exist.” George asks “What, ultimately, is the purpose of art?” And later says that one of the goals of his own art is to praise that which should be praised. And I think that’s a great goal. But art can also condemn (I know you all know this) and confuse and throw up its hands and cry and scream and shock and laugh way too hard. Art starts with a maker, a creator. And that creator has their own reasons for creating. It might be because if the artist doesn’t throw paint on that wall their insides may die. But once that paint is thrown—well, then, the viewer has to decide what it is and what it means. Art is a mystery. Art is the opposite of fear. Art is the great savior of all of us. It doesn’t have to be celebratory. It doesn’t have to be optimistic or pessimistic, or not optimistic or not pessimistic, but it certainly can be. It just has to honest. That’s the whole thing.
" Art is a personal explanation and a declaration." I like that. Because much of Art is saying the unsayable. But it cannot be a scream, which is also a declaration, as is a wrist cutting attempt. It must be persuasive and demand empathy towards the declaration. It must creare new understanding. In" My first Goose," although the narrator does horrible things, we are there with him, and rooting for him, but only when he reveals his creaking bleeding heart. I agree with you that it need not be pessimistic or optimistic, but must make sense either way. In the "Stone Boy" I felt for all the characters, and understood perfectly why they did what they did and yet felt very sad for the boy.
Hi KG. I think art can be a scream, and I don't think it necessarily has to be persuasive or demand empathy. Art is art. Art is one person communicating, in whatever manner works for them and for whatever purpose they give it. We may not like to see someone scream, but that doesn't mean it's not art.
This is my favourite post of yours to date, George, because it brings us towards an issue that lurks underneath Story Club, I think, and also the entire literary project: niceness.
I read a good number of spiritual books -- Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, that kind of thing. It's good for me (or 'me', as those schools would have it). I admire the writers. But even if I was spiritually well enough to write such books (I'm not) I wouldn't want to do so -- because they're *too performatively healthy*. Too well. Too nice. For my fallen tastes, too often there's a feeling of preaching to the converted, of relatively healthy minds conversing with other relatively healthy minds, a feeling that, as I see it, also frequently haunts the lit fiction world. Too many Zadie Smiths, not enough Dostoevskys (I like Zadie Smith, but still).
I was in a grumpy mood last night after finishing work and felt like slumming it for a bit. I thought about watching a film but then thought instead, "No, let's read some Ellroy." Don't want to offend any Ellroy fans here, or Ellroy himself, but I've never thought of the man as a particularly nice person. I suspect he's not especially spiritually evolved (his memoirs suggest not). But Christ, he can *write* and enthrall me even (or especially) when I'm not really in the mood for reading fiction. That's the kind of book I'd like to write.
My point: one reason for lit fiction becoming culturally peripheral may be that its high-profile practioners appear to becoming nicer and nicer, while the culture as a whole continues to darken. Performatively nice fiction has little to no shot at universality (neither has performatively transgressive fiction) and therefore little chance of attracting to the form that vast percentage of the population who proudly never touch a work of fiction, never mind literary fiction. I worked for years as a nightguard, and a word used by some of my colleagues about lit fiction was 'twee'. And I really had no way of disputing that.
Now, as everybody knows, you George are pretty much the anti-Ellroy. You are clearly a lovely guy, and the way you treat everyone in these threads is yet another example of this. You know redemptive, despair-defeating facts about human life and I want to hear them. I'll read anything you publish and enjoy it. That's why I'm here.
But at the same time I would also kill to read a George Saunders novel that, even just occasionally, has me wondering about your state of mind.
"For my fallen tastes, too often there's a feeling of preaching to the converted, of relatively healthy minds conversing with other relatively healthy minds, a feeling that, as I see it, also frequently haunts the lit fiction world" Love it ! Lol. Zadie Smith is too nice, so true. Thats why characters like Larry David in "curb you enthusiasm " are so popular. Everyone loves an asshole.....
Sean, thanks so much for this post. It strongly resonated with me. From time to time I also dip back into spiritual books of the type you mention. I generally come away feeling like I'm not up to the task of being nice enough - in life or in writing (although I have yet to commit any actual crimes).
For a reliably good read (and I certainly don't consider this slumming) I usually turn to Lehane, another author who, in my opinion, can also really *write* (I remain ignorant as to his level of spiritual evolution). It's the dark humour in his dialogue that hits that sweet spot for me. For (albeit more contentious and dated) 'comfort' reading, I also reread Wodehouse (his use of language was sublime). I like to laugh, you see. Goodness knows we need it. John Kennedy Toole is another. And George Saunders also provides bleak amusement in spades, which is why I inhale what he writes.
And in terms of questioning an author's state of mind, I'd contend than Mr Saunders has given us enough material to appreciate that it's quite a complicated place in there.
There's an electronic component called a feedback circuit that makes a system self-varying, or more specifically, varying from both external input and its own energy. Humans!
Oh dear. My apologies for using the term 'complicated.' I reflected later that it can have negative connotations, which I in no way intended (the irony/shame/cringe factor of trying to be a writer and shoving poorly chosen words out into cyberspace and having them very politely acknowledged by a celebrated author is not lost on me 😬).
"And in terms of questioning an author's state of mind, I'd contend than Mr Saunders has given us enough material to appreciate that it's quite a complicated place in there."
Nicely phrased, and you do of course have a point.
But if we can discuss our mentor's psyche on his very own substack: don't we have sufficient evidence by now that you could have trust in him as an evolved soul, i.e. as a bloke. In that sense he's always reminded me of Mercury Rev. There's pain there in the hinterland for sure, and extreme pain obviously features in much of his published fiction. But I'd trust Mercury Rev as people, were I lucky enough to know them, and assuming he doesn't now reply to these nosey posts with an email full of death threats, I'd trust George too.
Revere them them as I do, with Primal Scream and Lehane I wouldn't be so sure.
I have only recently started to suspect the possibilities within fiction for dark humour, partly prompted by Joy Williams' transcendent Harrow. It's one area where I really don't believe it's all been done before.
By the way, I have no idea where I'd place the Williams of Harrow on that fantasy scale of trustworthiness. It's the greatest eco-novel I've read, but it seems to me to be too despairing, if not utterly amoral, to be saying 'Let's save the planet'.
It has the Kafka thing of almost inhuman detachment combined with killer comedy. I don't laugh out loud that often with fiction, but I did so dozens of times while reading that book, sometimes at the wit and sometimes just at the volume of brilliance she packs into sentences that aren't that showy.
Agreed, Sean. We have conclusive evidence - in his writing and interviews and on this thread - that we are in safe hands with George. It highlights how desperately the world needs more thoroughly decent blokes.
It's heartening to hear that you feel the possibilities of dark humour are ripe to be further explored. When I write - and this harks back to the main subject of this thread - I always seem to end up in territory where stupid shit happens that makes me (at least) laugh. I've come to the hard won realisation (after decades of punishing myself for not writing for more auspicious reasons) that that's good enough.
Haven't read Joy Williams - will definitely check her out. Thanks.
I've heard more than one interview with obscure country song writers who explain their process as "going to a deep, dark place". And if you listen to the lyrics, stripping them from an often paradoxically up-beat melody written in a major scale, there's little question they have gone to and returned from a deep, dark place. Hank Thompson's Bubbles in my Beer is a frothy example. The persona in that song is sitting on a bar style watching the bubbles in his beer because he knows that his "life has been a failure". It is always more interesting when melody and verse run in counterpoint.
That’s been a - motto or what you will - for me since reading Howard’s End over 50 years ago. I thought of using it for my children’s Cold War novel, but I’m not sure they will be familiar with Forster! It was one of my formative literary experiences.
Ah - whenever they happen in our younger years - these early lodestones are wonderful!! Wonderful, too, is rereading them at different ages, like changing the lighting.
What you described, a level-headed and joyful writer, there is no greater example to me than the unparalleled Marilynne Robinson, who I place firmly on the Mt. Rushmore of American writers for exactly these reasons. Recommend anyone who hasn't read her works run (don't walk) to the nearest book store and pick up "Gilead" or "Jack," and let your world change altogether.
I haven't gotten to her later books yet, (on my list) but her first, "Housekeeping," has beautiful imagery and a story that seems, to me, to ask questions about one's life choices that haunt me.
Housekeeping is beautiful, too. A lot of haunting imagery in that one. You really should read "Gilead" though, it's in the absolute pantheon of American literature as far as I'm concerned. isn't she so wondrous
I liked the noodling in this post. I prefer ca-noodling, of course, but one must make do.
The post made me think of an anthropology professor I liked so much that I took several courses he taught. On the first day of each of these courses, the teacher entered after the students were seated. He wore faded, threadbare jeans and a western shirt of some kind. It wasn't a costume either. He just dressed that way. This teacher would then go to an old record player situated on a stool. He would plug the record player in and remove a 45-record from its sleeve. Without introduction, he let the needle drop on a Hank Williams tune. The teacher looked enraptured as the record played, and I believe he was. Enraptured, that is.
When he finally spoke, he mentioned his name and the fact that he was born and raised in Paris. Then he'd smile and drawl, "Paris, Texas."
He'd go on to explain how anthropology is an inquiry into what he called "the human secret;" that is, what makes us who we are? What separates humans from other perfectly good species? He thought country music—the old kind—came closer to answering the question than anything else. It was a good hanger on which to drape his teaching. But I think he believed it too.
Back to George's noodling on the essence, meaning, and purpose of art. Maybe the answers have something to do with that "human secret" notion.
How I love me a pompadour! I saw Robert Gordon several times when he was young (once with Link Wray) and his was magnificent. Looked especially cool with skin that had never been exposed to daylight. I’ll be on the lookout for the Derailers
"But mostly I am thinking of that feeling I got while watching it, which was the feeling of being lovingly comforted. That’s a feeling I’d like to give my future readers."
And that is exactly the feeling you give!! Every email from Story Club is like finding a giant hug in my inbox.
So there's no such thing as being "behind," but I am terribly behind with "My First Goose." Have been hosting family for the past few weeks and am now finally enjoying a bit of stillness where I get to rewind a bit and "catch up." What a blessing to be able to fill that stillness with your words.
OMG I wrote a story. This sounds like an odd thing to say in a group of writers, but it’s a big moment for me. I have not written a short story since I was in college. I was headed for a completely different academic track at that time, and then life intervened — marriage, kids including a special-needs child, graduate school, career — and now I am thinking about writing again. I realized I couldn’t follow George’s instruction to juxtapose any of my own works because I can’t even find any of those first stories (they are not gone, and someday I will find them). So I decided I was going to just get started. And I did! It’s not a great story, but it’s my own story and I’m … fond of it. It makes me happy even though I plan to revise it many times. And now I have a start. Buckling my seatbelt and really grateful for this ride.
"At a tender moment, the reader will feel she has a friend, in the story and its writer, even if that writer is long dead or from some faraway place. " After reading (and watching) your post, George, I thought immediately of “The Turkey Season” by Alice Munro. In 1983, I spent a week in my college Infirmary with assorted afflictions, surrounded by other sick young people in assigned beds. It was a depressing, silent place of suspended life. My mother sent me Munro’s collection "Moons of Jupiter" to read while I was there. When I read “Turkey Season,” –in which a young girl learns how to gut turkey carcasses in the killing barn, where bird-bodies hang upside down and limp—I had that true “feeling of being lovingly comforted.” By Munro, by my mother, and by the girl in the story who sings as she walks out of the barn of bodies into the snow. Munro’s "fundamental faith in humanity" turned the Infirmary into a memorable and even beautiful place. It was the first time a story ever befriended me in quite that way you describe, and yes, it did make all the difference.
There is no one for whom the world exists separate from all of us who experience it in relation to one another. So when we reflect life back to itself, we're not expressing some outside objective truth, because that outside truth does not exist (or if it does, it's not something that has relevance to us). But at the same time, there is always more outside of our own perspective than we can grasp. So the goal is neither one perspective, nor some objective, perspective-less state, but rather a confluence, a multiplicity of perspectives.
In writing, when we inhabit that intention-less state, we remain open to all those different ways of seeing. And in reading, we experience someone else's openness. A second-order multiplicity! (And then many people discussing a work together becomes a third-order multiplicity, and so on...)
By seeing things from many different angles, we can start to get a glimpse of that deeper truth that lies beneath all the seeming randomness of events. Things don't just happen arbitrarily. Everything is ultimately a result of many different factors coming together. And there are tendencies, patterns, in the ways these factors come together. So by comparing and contrasting many perspectives, we see what remains, what is eternal. And when we create art, we are creating an interpretation of the world that highlights those patterns and tendencies, that brings them to the fore.
And if the world is ultimately unfolding in certain patterns and tendencies (i.e. not static), then art teaches us not to know the world statically but to understand all the ways things might unfold in the future. We increasingly understand that the deeper truth of the world also includes all the ways the world *might be*.
"Nearly all of us have felt, at least in childhood, that if we imagine that a thing is so, it therefore either is so or can be made to become so. All of us have to learn that this almost never happens, or happens only in very limited ways; but the visionary, like the child, continues to believe that it always ought to happen. We are so possessed with the idea of the duty of acceptance that we are inclined to forget our mental birthright, and prudent and sensible people encourage us in this. That is why Blake is so full of aphorisms like 'If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.' Such wisdom is based on the fact that imagination creates reality, and as desire is a part of imagination, the world we desire is more real than the world we passively accept." (Northrop Frye)
It is important to be wary of those pitfalls. We are hanging out around that territory to be sure. But I think this kind of appreciation of process also entails a clear-eyed appraisal of where things are at any moment in time. We can't confuse possibility for actuality.
In a sense I think that conspiracy theories and such are a sort of passive acceptance, because they don't look for possible worlds and try to make them come about, they assert that the world already is that way, and so there's nothing for us to do. It removes our own active and fluid processes from the equation. It's a static interpretation.
Thankyou. I reread your full comment and enjoyed the idea of multiple perspectives and fluidity of process. The mystery of the truth of fiction remains. We believe it knowing it is untrue! We believe our feelings more than facts. That is why manipulation by media is possible. We trust our feelings. What are these feelings based on? an evaluation of information presented or on information hinted at, and projected onto by our own desires. Even court testimony isopen to interpretation. Witness Amber Heard -Depp trial. Stories upon stories or one against the other.
Sometimes I feel we are reading the body language of a story rather than the words and our belief lies in the trustworthiness of the writer. That occasional honest reflection is so delicious within the writing. It keeps us going!
It's striking to me that there is no villain. The sources of trouble are all innocent in their intentions. That plus the audience's being afraid on Chaplin's behalf led to a welling up in me of the heartening feeling/notion that we are all of us in this thing together.
As a lit nerd in high school, I made myself a T-shirt with this Moby-Dick quote:
"It's a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. We cannibals must help these Christians."
I'm sure you are right - a stress eater! Which is funny! My first response was different. I thought he was jaded and bored by the spectacle of life and death playing out above!
I wonder why I thought that now.
I once got stranded on a rock during high tide. It was one of those moments when the water conditions and weather change very fast and suddenly I couldn't get down on either side of this rock that I had climbed over a thousand times before without any problem. I had to decide really fast how to get down without being swept away by some pretty tumultuous ocean waves.
I was also holding my little dog in my arms.
Oh my gosh.
So while I'm trying to figure this out - I look up at the cliffs above, and see a man standing there looking down at us. And I see him - shake his head - in - disgust?? disapproval?? - and - walk away.
So much for that.
I ended up timing it so I was able to get down and wade through chest deep churning water holding my dog above my head, just about.
We both got soaked.
I walked home in my sodden squeaky shoes, marveling at everything.
Maybe the popcorn stuffer reminded me of that guy, who haunts me to this day!
You make a brilliant point for me to takeaway Amanda by sharing your thoughts in response to Chaplin's 'Popcorn Eater' and your recollection of finding yourself and your dog in a hard place between a slippery rock and the rollicking currents of an incoming tide.
In reality most people, most of the time do not notice what's going on beyond the end of their noses never mind in the wider world about them. If the artist Banksy happens across your anecdote I imagine he might well engineer the creation of a massive artwork on a White Cliff of Dover.
You and your dog, placed precarious in your predicament at the foot of the cliff with the real waters of the English Channel, will be looking upward; seeing the guy walking along the cliff top; waving, shouting, barking; desperately seeking his attention to trigger a call to the Coastguard. He will be looking with total absorption at his cell phone, entirely oblivious to the plight of the human and canine lives on the line, so he won't be stopping not even look haughtily down his nose in disapproval of you and thinking "Well that's a fine mess you've gotten yourself into!"
I like that my anecdote seems to be taking on a life of its own, Rob : ) You created a strong visual image that's for sure! I love Banksy. He's welcome to it!
But also what a great story. That ambiguity about what the man's shake of the head meant is fascinating. Reminds me (in this SC context) of all the ways we Story Clubbers have varied interpretations of a narrative, from each other and even from our previous ones. There's something dynamic and kaleidoscopic about that Story Club process/experience.
And, because I read it recently, it also calls to mind the set of posts on "An Incident," particularly the stuff George wrote about the dance between the reader and the narrator in this one: https://georgesaunders.substack.com/p/an-incident-part-two?s=r. But also the parts about framing, given the popcorn stuffer-man on cliff connection.
Seems like you have some great raw material for a story!
‘[I]f a story really is “an export of one human mind,” if it is really (just) a “psychological projection” – why should my story have any value or relevance to you?’
This is a really interesting question. I think there’s something about encountering another person’s imaginative take on the world that can prompt us to attend more closely to that world, to see it more clearly ourselves. I think very often we fall into habits of thought, ways of thinking about or seeing the world which may present themselves as objective but are often shot-through with our anxieties, biases, self-concern, and so on. But encountering the creativity of another consciousness can reawaken our own creative thinking and shake us out of the old habits of thought. And I think that experience can be very pleasing. It can feel to some extent like a kind of reintroduction to the world, a rediscovery of wonder--which it is.
I’m not sure what it is about human beings that explains why imagination and creativity can be such effective routes to truth, but I’m happy it is that way.
I think I ask only one thing of any artwork: is it alive? Does it live for me, whatever it is? If it is alive, then it takes me to a good place, in its own inimitable way.
"And I think that experience can be very pleasing." I totally agree that encountering another person's creativity can shake me up. But it's not always pleasing.
Isn't it the case, put simply, that the story teller invites those who listen or read her into the story world that they've created?
Doesn't the story maker returning to a story draft - to work on it further with enrichment and enhancement in mind - actually go through as process of 're-importing' the words of the story in the making that they've been away from for a time?
"A story is rather more than some mere 'psychological projection'." Not so much asserting this sentence as an argument but rather as food for thought.
I resonate a lot with this. I cherish those moments when habits of thought/self-concern kind of separate from so-called objective reality, like sloughing off dead skin.
Processing this for later but just wanted to say something about your reaction to watching Chaplin's "The Circus". You wrote "I experience this as just pure joy, the exquisite exploitation of a premise, that has the effect of showing us, really showing us, how we are, how we behave, how we think. And the result is something like love, or maybe the kind of love God must feel for us."
This could have described my reaction to reading/listening to "Victory Lap" (as read by you, the author). It was for me during a low moment in a conga line of low moments, that I turned to Alexa, the only housemate I have who can hear (sadly, the pug is now deaf) and asked her to replay "The Tenth of December".
Hearing and re-reading "Victory Lap" filled me with unbridled joy -- just lifted my mood. I listened again in my car on an errand and when I got out, I found myself standing in a parking lot smiling -- no laughing -- to myself. In public. I don't mean this to be the blowing-smoke-up-the-author's-ass post but a confirmation that art has this power you ascribe it. There is a simple, life-affirmation in the best of it. Which says, "you are not alone, friend. You are never alone."
There is a wonderful, densely stunning essay called "The Nature of Knowledge in Short Fiction," in which the author, Charles May, discusses what formal characteristics all stories, short stories, and novels take in principal, according to many scholars. Among the really interesting sections, May discusses that storytelling "does not spring from one's encounter with the everyday world, but rather from one's encounter with the sacred (in which true reality is revealed in all of its plentitude) or with the absurd (in which true reality is reality is revealed in all of its vacuity)." So we can see the audience-pleasing joy of reading the former type, but what about the latter? Why read (or write) stories that reveal what is bleak?
May goes on to quote the Hungarian philosopher György Lukács, who says that absurdity in the short story is seen "undisguised and unadorned...and the exorcising power of this view, without fear or hope, gives it consecration of form; meaninglessness...becomes eternal because it is affirmed, transcended and redeemed by form."
Pause for a breath.
As I take it, if a dark story achieves truth, it has achieved meaning. As Arthur Miller said, "attention must be paid" to such dark characters (e.g. Willy Loman) and dark stories because truth is told - and truth binds us all, even if it is a truth that is difficult.
On a somewhat happier note, May's essay also discusses a concept by another philosopher and writer, Mircea Eliade: "Any aspect of experience, no matter how commonplace, can be come sacred..." May quotes Eliade's idea of "the paradox of hierophany": "By manifesting the sacred, any object becomes something else..."
A lot of fancy words here, massive philosophical name-dropping as well as "deep thoughts" for a Thursday, but I guess, George, what you and all writers do is show us the truly sacred meaning of this existence, wherever it appears. That all of this life is worth thinking about, and all of it has value. And that work, to me, is heroic.
Thank you for all of that! Now I understand better why my attempts with writing seem to be flying in formation with my partner’s endeavors in seminary!
Thank you for this. I especially liked the reference by Lukács to the “exorcising power” which is something I think truthful artistic expression has. It addresses (cleanses?) the soul. Artists and observers have and will continue to struggle to put this into words, searching perhaps for a unified field theory of art and meaning. It’s hard enough to quantify this in science, let alone art. For me, I find my attention (and heart) captured by resonance, which I suppose is connection, which points to the other comments about “always connect.”
On a marginally related note, I had one of those connected moments today where Story Club resonated in my life. I stumbled upon a 1997 PBS interview with Patti Smith where she describes music with a heart felt message as being spiritual, vs. performances based on showmanship being merely image.
I sat up straight and thought, “Hey, isn’t this what we’re discussing right now in Story Club? Is it a universal and timeless struggle?” Anyway, no profound answers from me but had to to share the serendipity….
I seem to be experiencing more and more of these serendipitous synchronicities since the Story Club began. Should I take it as a signal of being on the good track? Or is it really that I am slightly more aware now, enough to notice how the universe has always been working? Obviously I have been oblivious!
StoryClub is one of the best therapy groups I’ve ever been in. We start by talking about writing. Then we quickly drill down to feelings about the written word. And before we know it, we are sharing deep ideas of how our hearts engage the world. I mean really, who would have thought?
I appreciate everyone here and I deeply appreciate George for setting the tone, holding the space and being so candid about his own path. What. A. Gift. This. All. Is.
Kurt: I was trying to explain it to my husband today--why I keep coming here (and also telling him that I'm looking forward to the bit of a break George is about to give us, as sometimes I feel way too much on high alert around here). I said, where else can people like us gather and share like this? A truly safe environment to express our love for art as (mostly) expressed in the written word? Even when I was in a grad program, i didn't feel the way I feel here--connected and accepted in this beautiful way. I honestly feel like I could say almost anything here (within reason) having to do with art and my heart and people would listen. It is truly amazing. And yes, all thanks go to George who somehow knows exactly how to rein us all in so that we stay on the kind path with one another--actually so that we WANT to be on the kind path. That's his real gift. He makes us want to be kinder.
Hi Mary. It’s interesting, I learned about Story Club from an interview George did for Ezra Klein’s podcast. Klein titled it, “What it means to be kind in a cruel world.” In addition to clearly being a fan of George’s, Klein also mentioned that the comments section of Story Club was the kindest, most considerate one he had ever seen on the internet. That’s no small achievement. George models this and I am so grateful to see so many who respond in kind (I’m getting a lot of mileage from this word). It gives me hope to discover a community of intelligent, creative and compassionate folks.
I've listened to that interview twice now because i love it so much. He talks about a lot of the same things that he talks about here. I guess i have to hear these things many times over to really grasp them. Sometimes I can feel so slow! But then--since this is Story Club--i figure that's okay. I'm working on all of it, thinking about all of it, and living/writing/creating throughout. There's no clock ticking, no end point. What I think I've noticed the most about myself regarding this Club and my ponderings about writing, is that it all plays out in my daily life. I walk in the world and I want to think about things in a different way, a more loving and accepting way, i guess. It sounds so cornball, but there's a lot to be said for facing the world with a sense of awe, wonder, and respect.
Not so many of us allow that to be their gift. But the more, the merrier. Maybe that’s one more example of how good literature brings the sacred to life. (And vice versa.)
You said it perfectly, Kurt!
Thank you for saying so much of what I’ve been feeling.
Hi, David. I enjoy this remark but rush to assure you your questions are of the rhetorical kind. In other words, yes, yes, and yes. John
The whole thread there is some darn good stuff. Nice to suddenly fall out of fall and land back in the midst of spring!
Thanks for posting this. I like learning these kinds of things. Also, the variety and abundance in Story Club comments never ceases to delight!
This has me thinking of Milan Kundera’s thought that “A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.”
Anybody have a link or know how I can rundown a copy of the Charles May essay ,"The Nature of Knowledge in Short Fiction"? MVM has me all riled up to read it and my local public library doesn't have enough clout to snag it for me :-).
Hi John. The essay can be found in May's book "The New Short Story Theories" which you can find on Amazon. Alternatively, you can sign on to the Internet Archive, find that book, and read the essay online.
Hi, Mary. Thank you. I looked up the ISBN for The New Short Story Theories on Amazon (978-0821410875) and then, with abundant glee, ordered it from my local bookseller. Now, for at least the remainder of the day, I must exercise great caution lest I trip over my own virtue.
Lol. This is excellent!
Awesome, Mary!
I am on life overwhelm right now but hoping to be back in the fray in a week or two. Hope you are well!
Yeah, I get it. Overwhelmed here, too! But it's all good.
Hi John: Where I am, you can register to use the university library even if you are not a faculty member or student.
Good question. I found the first page through Google. Looks like you have to have a way to log into Proquest to read it online.
Hi, David.
Yeah. I got that far too but my local library doesn't have the mojo to bust down the doors of Proquest. I also beseeched the keepers of the now moribund Studies in Short Fiction journal to spring me a copy but they so far cleave to silence as stony as a Mayan god.
Maybe I'll walk over to my library and throw myself on the knees of an attending librarian. At this point, I feel a little melodrama—or is that "mellowdrama"?—is warranted. Otherwise, I could just throw myself at the knees of the librarian.
John
Good luck. Are those the bee’s knees?
I'm not sure. The cocktail is though!
https://www.thespruceeats.com/bees-knees-cocktail-recipe-760010
Hi MVM. I think (heavy emphasis on "I think" here) when Lukacs talks about absurdity, he is talking about the kind of story that is purposely written in an absurd style, the kind May says is "revealed in all of it vacuity," which is to say, its meaninglessness. Absurd stories are "redeemed by form" not content, according to this theory. So the story is revealed as having no meaning in its content, but when studied closer, its form is telling us something about life--usually that life has no meaning. So, neither is talking about dark or bleak stories, which find their meaning in their content. The form of a dark story may contribute to the story's overall effect, but a bleak story that is not written in the style of the absurd is not revealing itself in the same way as an absurd one. In a dark story, content counts. I agree that if a "dark story achieves truth, it has achieved meaning." I also think that is true for any story, dark or not. "One's encounter with the sacred" can be both dark or light or either one or the other.
Hi Mary: I absolutely see your point. In the context of this larger essay, May seems to be putting Lukacs' idea of "absurd" as an idea not merely of form, but in content/ending/the message revealed. There are a number of definitions of "absurd" in art and literature, so I am trying to follow May here as much as Lukacs; here, May uses it to discuss the overall psychological meaning and experience of what is "revealed." By form, he seems to mean artistic form.
Thanks for this. I think the main point of all of this thread is to hold up truth and honesty above all else. Sometimes that takes screwing around with "reality," which is why we love art so much. As George says, the stories of Hemingway and Babel are myths, but I think perhaps all stories are myths (all good stories anyway), revealing their true meanings beneath the words on the page in that space where feelings reside. And thereby connecting writer and reader in the ether.
I love this, Mary: "...revealing their true meanings beneath the words on the page in that space where feelings reside. And thereby connecting writer and reader in the ether." The "ether space".
From Virginia Woolf's "The Waves":
"There is a square: there is an oblong. The players take the square and place it upon the oblong. They place it very accurately; they make a perfect dwelling-place. Very little is left outside. The structure is now visible; what is inchoate is here stated; we are not so various or so mean; we have made oblongs and stood them upon squares. This is our triumph; this is our consolation."
Oh, that is beautiful.
I loved this particular line: "What is it we hope to have made, when all is said and done, and why does that thing have value?"
In fact, I loved the entire piece, George.
I tend to be an optimist, and sometimes, it feels like I have to put a LOT of effort into remaining one. But, I once received a piece of advice that I now have taped to the edge of my computer monitor. It says: "Whenever something doesn't work out the way you thought it would, instead of thinking that something went wrong, see it as something that went unexpectedly well, but for reasons that are not yet apparent. Everything plays in your favor."
And that keeps me going.
“What a big edge you have on that computer monitor you are looking out of and into the wider world from Maureen!” Rob says simply, in gobsmacked amazement, before following up with this, incongruous, challenge: “Bet you can tape same around your tablet?”
“Geez Mo, you’ve gone and done it! You leave me amazed, but being as you are just such a so darned clever clogs here’s the rub: Go wrap same around your cell phone?”
Some time later . . .
“Thanks M. Just what I needed. Thanks for sending, so well wrapped, the magnifying glass. I give up: your 20:20 vision sure beats my myopia every which way, every time.”
A little, further, down the flowing streams of tide and time . . .
“No? You don’t say Maureen; that’s me beached as big and uselessly as a whale out of salt water! You read that quote by finger touch? Never realised that Braille was so screen edge sizeable and yet so tapeable.”
And then, at the last, this . . .
“So Mo, if I may call you Mo, why Braille tape this wonderful quote to a screen you can’t see?”
“It was a suggestion from my wonderful new friend Alexa. She said, in that silkily persuasive voice of hers, “Just tell me to “Read my favourite writing craft quote Alexa” and know that I will because your word is my command, just as it when you speak to the blank to your eyes screen telling me to talk you, tastily, through the present TV programme.”
That’s amazingly helpful, thank you!
I know! It struck me the same way when I first heard it. So much goes wrong in life...and it's so much better to think that "wrong" is just an interpretation, not a fact. The optimist in me heartens to the idea that 'everything plays in your favor':-)
it's similar to what I learned a long time ago--to look upon everything, good and bad, as a gift.
A very Taoist idea that I am still attempting to wrap my mind around.
Especially if you play it that way!
A young boy who has been bullied by his parents into following an unrealistic and abusive set of rules and constraints sees his young neighbor in terrible danger, agonizes over what he could do to help, and finds within himself the bravery to break the rules and rescue her in a wonderfully spectacular way.
Sound familiar?
The reader reaches within, fishes around for some bravery, and knows that it will be there when required, whenever that may be.
"Why does that thing have value?"
Does the value of "that thing" depend 100% on the reader's response?
Of course not. The response is extra. Un-looked for. If it were looked for, the story would be worthless.
That sounds like a pretty crazy story. 😉
This, and other wacky stories by the same author, are available in a wee village bookshop in the mountains of New Zealand, and lead me to this club.
Thank him from some far away place.
Could you say who wrote these "wacky" stories? I can't guess the author but would appreciate knowing. Thanks!
I LOVE that story. I am that boy. I am that girl. I am that perpetrator. So human, each. All
Someone needs to write that story! ;-0
What is the job of the writer of stories? Is it to be neither optimistic or pessimistic? I don’t think so. I think the job is to write, from one’s place in the world, from one’s heart and mind. Sometimes, that work is going to be pessimistic! And if so, the writer can certainly sit with that a while and decide if that’s what they want to put out into the world. Sometimes we may need a little pessimism in order to be honest. Personally, I like hope at the end of my stories, but that’s my world view. I’m a hopeful person, despite all the evidence out there that we are fucked.
George writes: “art is an offering of sorts – a hypothesis for both writer and reader to take up and consider together.” And I think that is true. We’ve all heard “only connect,” and so we’re all familiar with the idea of connecting through art. But does that have to mean that you’re only doing it right if “the reader will feel she has a friend, in the story and its writer”? Art is more than an offering. Art is a personal explanation and a declaration. Art says “I exist.” George asks “What, ultimately, is the purpose of art?” And later says that one of the goals of his own art is to praise that which should be praised. And I think that’s a great goal. But art can also condemn (I know you all know this) and confuse and throw up its hands and cry and scream and shock and laugh way too hard. Art starts with a maker, a creator. And that creator has their own reasons for creating. It might be because if the artist doesn’t throw paint on that wall their insides may die. But once that paint is thrown—well, then, the viewer has to decide what it is and what it means. Art is a mystery. Art is the opposite of fear. Art is the great savior of all of us. It doesn’t have to be celebratory. It doesn’t have to be optimistic or pessimistic, or not optimistic or not pessimistic, but it certainly can be. It just has to honest. That’s the whole thing.
"Art is the opposite of fear," is what I needed to hear today.
Agreed. But here the story for me felt like a gut punch, when a conversation would do just as well.
" Art is a personal explanation and a declaration." I like that. Because much of Art is saying the unsayable. But it cannot be a scream, which is also a declaration, as is a wrist cutting attempt. It must be persuasive and demand empathy towards the declaration. It must creare new understanding. In" My first Goose," although the narrator does horrible things, we are there with him, and rooting for him, but only when he reveals his creaking bleeding heart. I agree with you that it need not be pessimistic or optimistic, but must make sense either way. In the "Stone Boy" I felt for all the characters, and understood perfectly why they did what they did and yet felt very sad for the boy.
Hi KG. I think art can be a scream, and I don't think it necessarily has to be persuasive or demand empathy. Art is art. Art is one person communicating, in whatever manner works for them and for whatever purpose they give it. We may not like to see someone scream, but that doesn't mean it's not art.
"Art is a lie that tells the truth..." - Picasso
Q3 "A lie that the truth tells is art." Discuss. 🤔
verisimilitude^^
'Verisimilitudenitski' being the operative phonetic spelling of the present, possibly terminal, passing 'Moscow Moment'?
Mirror reflection^^
This is my favourite post of yours to date, George, because it brings us towards an issue that lurks underneath Story Club, I think, and also the entire literary project: niceness.
I read a good number of spiritual books -- Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, that kind of thing. It's good for me (or 'me', as those schools would have it). I admire the writers. But even if I was spiritually well enough to write such books (I'm not) I wouldn't want to do so -- because they're *too performatively healthy*. Too well. Too nice. For my fallen tastes, too often there's a feeling of preaching to the converted, of relatively healthy minds conversing with other relatively healthy minds, a feeling that, as I see it, also frequently haunts the lit fiction world. Too many Zadie Smiths, not enough Dostoevskys (I like Zadie Smith, but still).
I was in a grumpy mood last night after finishing work and felt like slumming it for a bit. I thought about watching a film but then thought instead, "No, let's read some Ellroy." Don't want to offend any Ellroy fans here, or Ellroy himself, but I've never thought of the man as a particularly nice person. I suspect he's not especially spiritually evolved (his memoirs suggest not). But Christ, he can *write* and enthrall me even (or especially) when I'm not really in the mood for reading fiction. That's the kind of book I'd like to write.
My point: one reason for lit fiction becoming culturally peripheral may be that its high-profile practioners appear to becoming nicer and nicer, while the culture as a whole continues to darken. Performatively nice fiction has little to no shot at universality (neither has performatively transgressive fiction) and therefore little chance of attracting to the form that vast percentage of the population who proudly never touch a work of fiction, never mind literary fiction. I worked for years as a nightguard, and a word used by some of my colleagues about lit fiction was 'twee'. And I really had no way of disputing that.
Now, as everybody knows, you George are pretty much the anti-Ellroy. You are clearly a lovely guy, and the way you treat everyone in these threads is yet another example of this. You know redemptive, despair-defeating facts about human life and I want to hear them. I'll read anything you publish and enjoy it. That's why I'm here.
But at the same time I would also kill to read a George Saunders novel that, even just occasionally, has me wondering about your state of mind.
"For my fallen tastes, too often there's a feeling of preaching to the converted, of relatively healthy minds conversing with other relatively healthy minds, a feeling that, as I see it, also frequently haunts the lit fiction world" Love it ! Lol. Zadie Smith is too nice, so true. Thats why characters like Larry David in "curb you enthusiasm " are so popular. Everyone loves an asshole.....
Sean, thanks so much for this post. It strongly resonated with me. From time to time I also dip back into spiritual books of the type you mention. I generally come away feeling like I'm not up to the task of being nice enough - in life or in writing (although I have yet to commit any actual crimes).
For a reliably good read (and I certainly don't consider this slumming) I usually turn to Lehane, another author who, in my opinion, can also really *write* (I remain ignorant as to his level of spiritual evolution). It's the dark humour in his dialogue that hits that sweet spot for me. For (albeit more contentious and dated) 'comfort' reading, I also reread Wodehouse (his use of language was sublime). I like to laugh, you see. Goodness knows we need it. John Kennedy Toole is another. And George Saunders also provides bleak amusement in spades, which is why I inhale what he writes.
And in terms of questioning an author's state of mind, I'd contend than Mr Saunders has given us enough material to appreciate that it's quite a complicated place in there.
Yes, indeed. :)
I think it's also interesting, the thought that the state of one's mind is always variable - I mean, even within the span of a few minutes.
... a few seconds.
There's an electronic component called a feedback circuit that makes a system self-varying, or more specifically, varying from both external input and its own energy. Humans!
Yes, it can be very interesting indeed to take the time to notice what the mind 'does.'
Oh dear. My apologies for using the term 'complicated.' I reflected later that it can have negative connotations, which I in no way intended (the irony/shame/cringe factor of trying to be a writer and shoving poorly chosen words out into cyberspace and having them very politely acknowledged by a celebrated author is not lost on me 😬).
"And in terms of questioning an author's state of mind, I'd contend than Mr Saunders has given us enough material to appreciate that it's quite a complicated place in there."
Nicely phrased, and you do of course have a point.
But if we can discuss our mentor's psyche on his very own substack: don't we have sufficient evidence by now that you could have trust in him as an evolved soul, i.e. as a bloke. In that sense he's always reminded me of Mercury Rev. There's pain there in the hinterland for sure, and extreme pain obviously features in much of his published fiction. But I'd trust Mercury Rev as people, were I lucky enough to know them, and assuming he doesn't now reply to these nosey posts with an email full of death threats, I'd trust George too.
Revere them them as I do, with Primal Scream and Lehane I wouldn't be so sure.
I have only recently started to suspect the possibilities within fiction for dark humour, partly prompted by Joy Williams' transcendent Harrow. It's one area where I really don't believe it's all been done before.
By the way, I have no idea where I'd place the Williams of Harrow on that fantasy scale of trustworthiness. It's the greatest eco-novel I've read, but it seems to me to be too despairing, if not utterly amoral, to be saying 'Let's save the planet'.
It has the Kafka thing of almost inhuman detachment combined with killer comedy. I don't laugh out loud that often with fiction, but I did so dozens of times while reading that book, sometimes at the wit and sometimes just at the volume of brilliance she packs into sentences that aren't that showy.
Agreed, Sean. We have conclusive evidence - in his writing and interviews and on this thread - that we are in safe hands with George. It highlights how desperately the world needs more thoroughly decent blokes.
It's heartening to hear that you feel the possibilities of dark humour are ripe to be further explored. When I write - and this harks back to the main subject of this thread - I always seem to end up in territory where stupid shit happens that makes me (at least) laugh. I've come to the hard won realisation (after decades of punishing myself for not writing for more auspicious reasons) that that's good enough.
Haven't read Joy Williams - will definitely check her out. Thanks.
Sean, just riffing what you've posted.
I've heard more than one interview with obscure country song writers who explain their process as "going to a deep, dark place". And if you listen to the lyrics, stripping them from an often paradoxically up-beat melody written in a major scale, there's little question they have gone to and returned from a deep, dark place. Hank Thompson's Bubbles in my Beer is a frothy example. The persona in that song is sitting on a bar style watching the bubbles in his beer because he knows that his "life has been a failure". It is always more interesting when melody and verse run in counterpoint.
Thanks for the tip on Ellroy and Zadie Smith.
John
John
When we write, I try to remember two words: "Only connect." (epigraph to E.M. Forster's Howards End.)
That’s been a - motto or what you will - for me since reading Howard’s End over 50 years ago. I thought of using it for my children’s Cold War novel, but I’m not sure they will be familiar with Forster! It was one of my formative literary experiences.
Me too, although not quite 50 years ago. I didn’t start reading literature until after I’d graduated from college.
Ah - whenever they happen in our younger years - these early lodestones are wonderful!! Wonderful, too, is rereading them at different ages, like changing the lighting.
What you described, a level-headed and joyful writer, there is no greater example to me than the unparalleled Marilynne Robinson, who I place firmly on the Mt. Rushmore of American writers for exactly these reasons. Recommend anyone who hasn't read her works run (don't walk) to the nearest book store and pick up "Gilead" or "Jack," and let your world change altogether.
I haven't gotten to her later books yet, (on my list) but her first, "Housekeeping," has beautiful imagery and a story that seems, to me, to ask questions about one's life choices that haunt me.
Housekeeping is beautiful, too. A lot of haunting imagery in that one. You really should read "Gilead" though, it's in the absolute pantheon of American literature as far as I'm concerned. isn't she so wondrous
It has traces of a William Faulkner feel in scope and feeling.....As I lay dying comes to mind^^
I mean to! It's on my night table.
Thank for this reminder and recommendation!
I liked the noodling in this post. I prefer ca-noodling, of course, but one must make do.
The post made me think of an anthropology professor I liked so much that I took several courses he taught. On the first day of each of these courses, the teacher entered after the students were seated. He wore faded, threadbare jeans and a western shirt of some kind. It wasn't a costume either. He just dressed that way. This teacher would then go to an old record player situated on a stool. He would plug the record player in and remove a 45-record from its sleeve. Without introduction, he let the needle drop on a Hank Williams tune. The teacher looked enraptured as the record played, and I believe he was. Enraptured, that is.
When he finally spoke, he mentioned his name and the fact that he was born and raised in Paris. Then he'd smile and drawl, "Paris, Texas."
He'd go on to explain how anthropology is an inquiry into what he called "the human secret;" that is, what makes us who we are? What separates humans from other perfectly good species? He thought country music—the old kind—came closer to answering the question than anything else. It was a good hanger on which to drape his teaching. But I think he believed it too.
Back to George's noodling on the essence, meaning, and purpose of art. Maybe the answers have something to do with that "human secret" notion.
Hi, Andy. You owe it to yourself to listen to The Derailleurs sing "All the Rage in Paris" at least once. John
Thanks, John. Good call. Love it.
Love that band. They're based in Austin. Catch 'em live at the Broken Spoke if you can. On stage, their pompadours almost graze the ceiling!
How I love me a pompadour! I saw Robert Gordon several times when he was young (once with Link Wray) and his was magnificent. Looked especially cool with skin that had never been exposed to daylight. I’ll be on the lookout for the Derailers
John, Robert Gordon died yesterday, October 18. Check him out. I mourn.
I would have loved that class! I feel the same way about country music. (At least, the older stuff.)
"But mostly I am thinking of that feeling I got while watching it, which was the feeling of being lovingly comforted. That’s a feeling I’d like to give my future readers."
And that is exactly the feeling you give!! Every email from Story Club is like finding a giant hug in my inbox.
So there's no such thing as being "behind," but I am terribly behind with "My First Goose." Have been hosting family for the past few weeks and am now finally enjoying a bit of stillness where I get to rewind a bit and "catch up." What a blessing to be able to fill that stillness with your words.
OMG I wrote a story. This sounds like an odd thing to say in a group of writers, but it’s a big moment for me. I have not written a short story since I was in college. I was headed for a completely different academic track at that time, and then life intervened — marriage, kids including a special-needs child, graduate school, career — and now I am thinking about writing again. I realized I couldn’t follow George’s instruction to juxtapose any of my own works because I can’t even find any of those first stories (they are not gone, and someday I will find them). So I decided I was going to just get started. And I did! It’s not a great story, but it’s my own story and I’m … fond of it. It makes me happy even though I plan to revise it many times. And now I have a start. Buckling my seatbelt and really grateful for this ride.
That's wonderful, Joan. Congratulations.
Hearty congratulations Joan. Some day this group of people clubbed together, by George, may produce an anthology or two!
Bravo, Joan! And if you're fond of it then your story is by definition great.
"At a tender moment, the reader will feel she has a friend, in the story and its writer, even if that writer is long dead or from some faraway place. " After reading (and watching) your post, George, I thought immediately of “The Turkey Season” by Alice Munro. In 1983, I spent a week in my college Infirmary with assorted afflictions, surrounded by other sick young people in assigned beds. It was a depressing, silent place of suspended life. My mother sent me Munro’s collection "Moons of Jupiter" to read while I was there. When I read “Turkey Season,” –in which a young girl learns how to gut turkey carcasses in the killing barn, where bird-bodies hang upside down and limp—I had that true “feeling of being lovingly comforted.” By Munro, by my mother, and by the girl in the story who sings as she walks out of the barn of bodies into the snow. Munro’s "fundamental faith in humanity" turned the Infirmary into a memorable and even beautiful place. It was the first time a story ever befriended me in quite that way you describe, and yes, it did make all the difference.
There is no one for whom the world exists separate from all of us who experience it in relation to one another. So when we reflect life back to itself, we're not expressing some outside objective truth, because that outside truth does not exist (or if it does, it's not something that has relevance to us). But at the same time, there is always more outside of our own perspective than we can grasp. So the goal is neither one perspective, nor some objective, perspective-less state, but rather a confluence, a multiplicity of perspectives.
In writing, when we inhabit that intention-less state, we remain open to all those different ways of seeing. And in reading, we experience someone else's openness. A second-order multiplicity! (And then many people discussing a work together becomes a third-order multiplicity, and so on...)
By seeing things from many different angles, we can start to get a glimpse of that deeper truth that lies beneath all the seeming randomness of events. Things don't just happen arbitrarily. Everything is ultimately a result of many different factors coming together. And there are tendencies, patterns, in the ways these factors come together. So by comparing and contrasting many perspectives, we see what remains, what is eternal. And when we create art, we are creating an interpretation of the world that highlights those patterns and tendencies, that brings them to the fore.
And if the world is ultimately unfolding in certain patterns and tendencies (i.e. not static), then art teaches us not to know the world statically but to understand all the ways things might unfold in the future. We increasingly understand that the deeper truth of the world also includes all the ways the world *might be*.
"Nearly all of us have felt, at least in childhood, that if we imagine that a thing is so, it therefore either is so or can be made to become so. All of us have to learn that this almost never happens, or happens only in very limited ways; but the visionary, like the child, continues to believe that it always ought to happen. We are so possessed with the idea of the duty of acceptance that we are inclined to forget our mental birthright, and prudent and sensible people encourage us in this. That is why Blake is so full of aphorisms like 'If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.' Such wisdom is based on the fact that imagination creates reality, and as desire is a part of imagination, the world we desire is more real than the world we passively accept." (Northrop Frye)
Very good observation.( Northrop Frye) It does lead to some side effects too, like believing advertisments and fake news.
It is important to be wary of those pitfalls. We are hanging out around that territory to be sure. But I think this kind of appreciation of process also entails a clear-eyed appraisal of where things are at any moment in time. We can't confuse possibility for actuality.
In a sense I think that conspiracy theories and such are a sort of passive acceptance, because they don't look for possible worlds and try to make them come about, they assert that the world already is that way, and so there's nothing for us to do. It removes our own active and fluid processes from the equation. It's a static interpretation.
Thankyou. I reread your full comment and enjoyed the idea of multiple perspectives and fluidity of process. The mystery of the truth of fiction remains. We believe it knowing it is untrue! We believe our feelings more than facts. That is why manipulation by media is possible. We trust our feelings. What are these feelings based on? an evaluation of information presented or on information hinted at, and projected onto by our own desires. Even court testimony isopen to interpretation. Witness Amber Heard -Depp trial. Stories upon stories or one against the other.
Sometimes I feel we are reading the body language of a story rather than the words and our belief lies in the trustworthiness of the writer. That occasional honest reflection is so delicious within the writing. It keeps us going!
You stunned me, and gave me chills, and hope, again. Thank you, Zoe, for your apparently boundless knowledge, wisdom, sparkle and enthusiasm!!
I’ve suspected for a long time now that when art really works it’s a kind of mind-meld between souls, lifting one another into the light.
That mysterious, elusive place between self and other is something I think about all the time.
Thank you for your somehow humbling praise. I am very glad to be here.
So glad that you are!
I loved watching that Chaplin clip you shared!
It's striking to me that there is no villain. The sources of trouble are all innocent in their intentions. That plus the audience's being afraid on Chaplin's behalf led to a welling up in me of the heartening feeling/notion that we are all of us in this thing together.
As a lit nerd in high school, I made myself a T-shirt with this Moby-Dick quote:
"It's a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. We cannibals must help these Christians."
So cool was I. 🤣
Did you see the guy eating popcorn while the other watchers were all up in arms?
No cannibals without Christians, and vice versa : )
Aye, but how frantically he was stuffing his mouth!
And was it addiction to popcorn or wrapt attention to the, potentially terminal for tightrope Charlie, unfolding events that fired his franticism?
And to which compass mark does the discerning needle of the patented ‘Ismometer’ does this new fangled ‘‘’Franticism’ point?
I did notice him! (And thought he was hilarious.) I identified with him right away because I took him to be a stress eater. ; )
I'm sure you are right - a stress eater! Which is funny! My first response was different. I thought he was jaded and bored by the spectacle of life and death playing out above!
I wonder why I thought that now.
I once got stranded on a rock during high tide. It was one of those moments when the water conditions and weather change very fast and suddenly I couldn't get down on either side of this rock that I had climbed over a thousand times before without any problem. I had to decide really fast how to get down without being swept away by some pretty tumultuous ocean waves.
I was also holding my little dog in my arms.
Oh my gosh.
So while I'm trying to figure this out - I look up at the cliffs above, and see a man standing there looking down at us. And I see him - shake his head - in - disgust?? disapproval?? - and - walk away.
So much for that.
I ended up timing it so I was able to get down and wade through chest deep churning water holding my dog above my head, just about.
We both got soaked.
I walked home in my sodden squeaky shoes, marveling at everything.
Maybe the popcorn stuffer reminded me of that guy, who haunts me to this day!
You make a brilliant point for me to takeaway Amanda by sharing your thoughts in response to Chaplin's 'Popcorn Eater' and your recollection of finding yourself and your dog in a hard place between a slippery rock and the rollicking currents of an incoming tide.
In reality most people, most of the time do not notice what's going on beyond the end of their noses never mind in the wider world about them. If the artist Banksy happens across your anecdote I imagine he might well engineer the creation of a massive artwork on a White Cliff of Dover.
You and your dog, placed precarious in your predicament at the foot of the cliff with the real waters of the English Channel, will be looking upward; seeing the guy walking along the cliff top; waving, shouting, barking; desperately seeking his attention to trigger a call to the Coastguard. He will be looking with total absorption at his cell phone, entirely oblivious to the plight of the human and canine lives on the line, so he won't be stopping not even look haughtily down his nose in disapproval of you and thinking "Well that's a fine mess you've gotten yourself into!"
I like that my anecdote seems to be taking on a life of its own, Rob : ) You created a strong visual image that's for sure! I love Banksy. He's welcome to it!
Wow. That's intense and scary!
But also what a great story. That ambiguity about what the man's shake of the head meant is fascinating. Reminds me (in this SC context) of all the ways we Story Clubbers have varied interpretations of a narrative, from each other and even from our previous ones. There's something dynamic and kaleidoscopic about that Story Club process/experience.
And, because I read it recently, it also calls to mind the set of posts on "An Incident," particularly the stuff George wrote about the dance between the reader and the narrator in this one: https://georgesaunders.substack.com/p/an-incident-part-two?s=r. But also the parts about framing, given the popcorn stuffer-man on cliff connection.
Seems like you have some great raw material for a story!
I noticed the popcorn eater and thought about how he was the precursor to a thousand not as interesting memes!
‘[I]f a story really is “an export of one human mind,” if it is really (just) a “psychological projection” – why should my story have any value or relevance to you?’
This is a really interesting question. I think there’s something about encountering another person’s imaginative take on the world that can prompt us to attend more closely to that world, to see it more clearly ourselves. I think very often we fall into habits of thought, ways of thinking about or seeing the world which may present themselves as objective but are often shot-through with our anxieties, biases, self-concern, and so on. But encountering the creativity of another consciousness can reawaken our own creative thinking and shake us out of the old habits of thought. And I think that experience can be very pleasing. It can feel to some extent like a kind of reintroduction to the world, a rediscovery of wonder--which it is.
I’m not sure what it is about human beings that explains why imagination and creativity can be such effective routes to truth, but I’m happy it is that way.
I think I ask only one thing of any artwork: is it alive? Does it live for me, whatever it is? If it is alive, then it takes me to a good place, in its own inimitable way.
"And I think that experience can be very pleasing." I totally agree that encountering another person's creativity can shake me up. But it's not always pleasing.
Yes, quite right Mary. It can also be unpleasant, challenging and all the rest.
'...disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.'
Isn't it the case, put simply, that the story teller invites those who listen or read her into the story world that they've created?
Doesn't the story maker returning to a story draft - to work on it further with enrichment and enhancement in mind - actually go through as process of 're-importing' the words of the story in the making that they've been away from for a time?
"A story is rather more than some mere 'psychological projection'." Not so much asserting this sentence as an argument but rather as food for thought.
I resonate a lot with this. I cherish those moments when habits of thought/self-concern kind of separate from so-called objective reality, like sloughing off dead skin.
Me too. And that's a great way of putting it! As if you're in contact with the world again.
"As if you're in contact with the world again." Lovely!
And, even the suffering in life seems to me easier to bear when this happens.
Processing this for later but just wanted to say something about your reaction to watching Chaplin's "The Circus". You wrote "I experience this as just pure joy, the exquisite exploitation of a premise, that has the effect of showing us, really showing us, how we are, how we behave, how we think. And the result is something like love, or maybe the kind of love God must feel for us."
This could have described my reaction to reading/listening to "Victory Lap" (as read by you, the author). It was for me during a low moment in a conga line of low moments, that I turned to Alexa, the only housemate I have who can hear (sadly, the pug is now deaf) and asked her to replay "The Tenth of December".
Hearing and re-reading "Victory Lap" filled me with unbridled joy -- just lifted my mood. I listened again in my car on an errand and when I got out, I found myself standing in a parking lot smiling -- no laughing -- to myself. In public. I don't mean this to be the blowing-smoke-up-the-author's-ass post but a confirmation that art has this power you ascribe it. There is a simple, life-affirmation in the best of it. Which says, "you are not alone, friend. You are never alone."
Hell, yes. And thank you.
Oh, thanks, Elizabeth - you made my day.
Ohmygodyoujustmademine.