Okay, I’m back momentarily. (I’ve been busy in my own world the last few weeks, writing.)
I had to pop in here to say to the Questioner that everything relates to writing! Your question is definitely a “writing-related” question! Especially as it concerns “comfort,” “lies,” and “truth.” We all know that a lot of writing is telling a lie in order to get to a truth. I mean, that is more or less the definition of fiction, no? And non-fiction as well, as one person’s memory or re-telling may vary distinctly from someone else’s. Who really knows the Truth? What is fiction and what is not?
When George told the boy that the plane wasn’t crashing, it was “true.” The plane wasn’t crashing. But George was offering the boy the comfort the boy needed in that moment. And by comforting the boy, George found some comfort himself—the comfort in knowing he’d offered comfort. May we all offer that kind of comfort to others!
Now, does “comfort equal truth” or did George mean that “Truth is comfort”? I think he meant the latter. And I don’t agree with him. Truth isn’t always a comfort, though it may be partially a comfort. I wouldn’t tell a clearly dying man that his wife just died if he asked if she was okay. I’d say, I’ll check soon, but let’s take care of you right now, or some such. Right? Sometimes you have to lie to comfort a person. I knew an old woman who’d slept with one man her whole life. She wanted to know if she’d missed anything and I said, No, they’re basically all the same. (HA!) She was glad to hear it. So. A friend who keeps kosher wanted to know if non-kosher pizza was better. I said, no, about the same. (HA!) Maybe I just like lying.
Anyway, comfort and truth—both are wonderful aims, but sometimes you have to let comfort win out.
Off to read the Robert Stone story. And then back to my writing. I don’t know if anything will come from all the words I’ve put on paper in the last three months, but I’m so happy (and comforted) by the release.
About comfort and lies: I think this is also somewhat determined by our own fears. If George had been consumed by his own terror, he would have had nothing to offer the little boy, other than perhaps a lie that was so unconvincing that the boy would know, and not be comforted. He might become more frightened because the adult was clearly as screwed up as the plane. So I think the ability to comfort, or to fib to provide comfort, is grounded in how honest we are with ourselves and how comfortable we are with the unknown, with disappointment, and with fear. Authentic comfort needs to be offered from a solid position.
It all depends on the situation. My dad had dementia at the end of his life. I remember him saying "I want to go home." Before I got my act together, i'd say, "Dad, you're home right now." (He WAS at home--he died in his own bed.) Later, I realized that the best strategy was to agree with him. I'd say, "I know, Dad. You want to go home." So it was a "lie," but not really. (Who knows what he meant? His childhood home? His after-death home?) I remember once comforting the woman next to me on a plane, as well. I was PETRIFIED, but I saw she was freaking out, so I held her hand and told her the turbulence was normal, no worries, we would be fine. It just seemed like the right strategy in the moment and, in fact, it worked. It actually calmed me to calm her. Anyway, I think everyone's saying the same thing here: We all do our best in whatever situation. We try to be good and that's all we can ask of ourselves. Thanks for welcoming me back!
My first thought was of Tobias Wolff's story "Leviathan." I wondered if he wrote it after hearing George's account. One of the characters in it tells a story about giving comfort in a dicey situation. It's a little different there because her own mortality is at stake from whether or not she succeeds, whereas George had nothing to gain. But for me it all comes back to the question of identity. Being an identical twin I've always had the sense of being more than myself, and I think the best stories do that too. By giving the boy comfort George was comforted, regardless of the facts. Same thing in "Master and Man." Vasily saves a life by giving up his own.
I just now found that story and read it and oh, wow, what a story. (Anyone who wants to read it can find it here: https://issuu.com/triquarterly/docs/62 Page 85) "Being an identical twin I've always had the sense of being more than myself" fascinates me. You should write about that, if you don't already. Thanks for leading me to that story. It's a keeper.
It's great to read you again! The murk and fog around all of this might be helped by placing everything into a couple of categories: not truth and comfort/falsehood (at which level? water is not ice, but it is below freezing, and it's not steam, but can be that, too), but honesty and technique. With others, technique is (often) required. (Writers, or those trying to write well, often must use 'technique' with non-writers to explain what they do.) With oneself, only honesty.
'Maybe I just like lying.' Maybe, that's technique, based on a person's development, the other person's development, and what they're aiming for in/with this life. 'Who really knows the Truth?' I guess that it depends at which level one is aiming--low, middle, high, higher, highest? Mr. Saunders, in his work, appears to be aiming for the highest (why we're here), but as we're in the low... This is a much longer discussion, though.
A person with a sloppy emotion might need comforting (technique), until she is strong enough, or stronger, for stronger medicine. We're all doctors in a way, of the mind, the soul, the spirit--randomness won't really do here, though.
The personality scores of those who read the nonfiction text remained much the same. But the personality scores of those who read the Chekhov story fluctuated. The changes were not large but they were statistically significant, and they were correlated with the intensity of emotions people experienced as they read the story. Chekhov’s story seemed to get people to start thinking about their personalities — about themselves — in new ways.
...The genre of the text — fiction or nonfiction — didn’t matter much; what mattered was the degree of perceived artistry. Those who read a story or essay that they judged to be artistic changed their personality scores significantly more than did those who judged what they read to be less artistic.
*
(All good things here, art vs. 'truth,' fiction vs. nonfiction, although one decade old now.)
Someone mentioned kindness, and not being insulting, which is another facet altogether... Manners do matter, as does the higher 'kindness' founding actions and attitudes. Also, a much longer discussion, though... anecdotes don't do this much justice.
Maybe you would want to reboot the writing club, only biweekly?
Hi Brian! Thank you for the welcoming words. What Now is not gone forever--I still hope to bring it back in some form. Hadn't even considered twice a month vs every week. Good thought!
hmmmm, he said, stroking his chin. now there's an idea i can get behind. Like, the first and third Mondays. You could rename it Odd Mondays, or there could be a band named that. mary g and the odd mondays.
Really, the only way I could return is if folks wouldn't mind if I wasn't as present as I've been in the past. It took so much time to read everyone's work and comment, even though my comments were usually short. If I could only post and then walk away until the next odd monday... Also, I'm obviously lead singer of that band, which is a punk band because I can't sing, only yell
Hi Mary! You would have many 'takers,' and you could ask for higher subscriptions, too. For long I could not take part, but wholly support what you've done, for so many here.
I like keeping all of my content free. Even when i had a paywall, that was only for the archive. All new posts were always free. Took a lot of pressure off of me to do it that way. And I could enjoy just being "tipped" by kind subscribers.
Mary G.! What a pleasure to see you here! In re your comments: I think kindness, true kindness, above all. Sometimes that means giving the bald truth. Sometimes it means giving a more nuanced version of the truth. It’s a task, departing from the truth, if you allow yourself to do it only as necessary. My folks used to go out when I was younger and because they didn’t want deal with our squalling, they sometimes slipped out and I only realized they’d gone a few minutes later. I felt utterly betrayed; a goodbye back then would have saved me some therapy bills years later.
One more brief note: I keep kosher and it’s fine that some foods I don’t eat are objectively delectable. Because this is something I choose to do. If it ever felt like a punishment, I might feel differently. So yeah, your kosher friends suspect that sausage pizza is awesome. We can handle it.
Thank you, Sharon! Yes, kindness is at the heart of it, definitely. Thank you for bringing that up. As far as kosher goes: I have many family members who keep kosher, and have eaten a LOT of kosher pizza in my life! I didn't mean for my earlier comment to sound glib or disrespectful. I choose to not keep kosher, but have ultimate respect for anyone's choice to do so. Apologies that my comments didn't convey that earlier.
No no no no no, you did NOT sound glib or disrespectful (you could never); I was just trying to say in my unartful way that you're very considerate of your kosher compatriots' feelings, and I bet they appreciate it, and that if they're adult they are probably cool with any way you approach it.
Thanks so much for this: “…he was trying, it could be said, to shock Boone into taking some responsibility for his actions, in the “wrathful deity” tradition, in which a teacher can be rough and crude and even insulting, if this is what it takes to dislodge a student from a harmful habit of way of thinking.”
I taught a professional practice class a couple of years ago, to masters students who I thought should be taking more responsibility and showing initiative instead of being purely grade driven and looking for shortcuts. Eventually I got sort of blunt with them about it and they were offended. They said I was too rough/disdainful/unfair/incompetent, etc. But now…..I can take solace in being in the tradition of the wrathful deities. Yes! Thank you!
The wrathful deity tradition only works if the student senses the love underneath it. Which, in a classroom, they usually can't. Not in the moment. Sometimes only later. 🐦⬛
Thanks Jennifer. I think you’re right. Hopefully they sensed the love, or will eventually. That was why I was even there, guest teaching. But I have to confess that my respect for them dropped when they started lying and cutting class. They were surprisingly sneaky.
I don't know if George's question relates to writing, and my answer doesn't, even though I've written about what I am about to relate. We live five blocks north of the World Trade Center, and we were here that day. Two of my kids were at a school only three blocks away from the site, and they were traumatized by what they witnessed. For one of my kids, the trauma lasted a long time. Each night, for many weeks that followed, I faced a set of questions, not always the same ones, but they were all in the same category. I won't list them here, but among other fears they expressed a need to know what it felt like to burn to death, and what it felt like to fall a hundred stories, etc. It was only when I realized I had the same questions in my own mind that I was able to answer them, and while my replies were careful, they were truthful, and my fourth-grader's fears abated to some degree.
That’s kind of you to say. I should add that we are all fine, unlike thousands of others. What we suffered pales next to those who lost loved ones or endured life-long injuries and illnesses. None of my family were injured or died, and my kids have grown up to be happy and healthy adults with children of their own. And we still live here, five blocks north, perhaps a bit stronger and wiser because of the experience. It took years to write about it well, and that’s something I was able to do for myself. My memory of that day and the months that followed is still quite sharp, filled with detail. Thank you Mary.
A different take on Truth vs Comfort: when I was a kid my eldest brother had a lot of problems and got into screaming matches with my parents on a regular basis, usually after midnight when he'd stumble home, drunk. I'd be there in bed absorbing it all (hearing every word). On the two occasions they called the cops to remove him, or at least calm him down, I was told in the morning to tell neighbors we had been broken into. So: I knew the truth, my parents knew the truth, the neighbors might have (houses were quite close together), but for some reason it was deemed more comfortable to lie. I know, making someone comfortable is different from comforting them, but still, the headspace required to experience those fights, then lie about them, was anything but comfortable for me. I don't think anyone was comforted by hiding the all-too-obvious truth. My parents finally kicked him out of the house, which was a reckoning of truth for him, but that's a different angle. (PS, I love, maybe that's the wrong word, but... I love how these things stay with me and furnish moments in my fiction where I don't tell this story but instead tell a story about the headspace of the kid in bed having to lie the next day.)
Once when flying from Dakar, Senegal, to Paris, seated in the vicinity of the wing, I saw a flash of light out the window. My thought—an engine has exploded—was immediately reinforced by the spectacle of stewardesses running up and down the aisle. I recall exchanging a look with the man seated next to me. We had not spoken, although the flight had left the airport, gained altitude, and was by now high above the Atlantic Ocean. And we didn’t speak now. But my overriding thought was: Is this man, this stranger, the last person I will ever see? I got the feeling he was thinking the same about me, and with this thought, the stranger was transformed into a companion—a comfort of sorts—in this temporary and shared acknowledgment of the truth of mortality.
Then my mind clicked into self-comfort mode, blocking the terror, telling myself: This can’t be happening to me. Soon we got word we would be returning to the airport, and life resumed.
For me, truth is ambiguous, an enigma. So, I use fiction, a kind of self-made fantasy, to seek a broader truth and learn to dance with ambiguity.
I just read 'Helping' by Robert Stone. What a story. I was in it the whole way. Such character development. Amazing. Grace wasn't even in the story for long, but boy did I know her. Maybe we could study 'Helping'? I would love to. Probably a copyright issue, but thanks for recommending it.
Wow - what a story Helping was. The entire thing built on no, you cannot help another person, it is all futile, and then the end: do the smallest thing and I will be helped immeasurably. Thank you for sharing it!
Oh that fine line between hope and no hope. A situation of danger passes from one to the other in, sometimes, a fraction of time. We sometimes kid ourselves there is still hope, we lie, to ourselves and others to preserve the delusion that we may get out of this alive. I think that is why some say that the most dreadful of all the furies can be Hope, It sidesteps truth if hung onto too long. Jills elevated self in Vigil over Boone hopes for his redemption through offering comfort but the old bastard is beyond that. Beyond hope. Hellbent. Yet an odd conundrum exists: sometimes when all seems lost and we give up on any hope of salvation, Booomba!, here it comes, like for dear old Vassily. At death.
Personally, i find it deeply uncomfortable not to be truthful, even in transient states. So at the moment i want to move and my partner doesn't, it will break her heart she said, but for various and complex reasons to do with my health it will not be good for me to stay here. We can't talk about it at the moment because there are immediate and highly stressful situations to be resolved before there is the emotional space for my partner to engage with this discussion, and as a consequence i am experiencing depression. For me i have come to recognise depression is self protective, a layer between me and the pain of not being able to have an honest conversation when i would like. My experience tells me that my difficulty with not being honest as soon as i recognise a problem that needs discussing is rare, most people i have met in life shy away from difficult subjects, things that need discussing. I am the sort of person who confronts a problem head on. I just find it hard not to. I think your reaction to the boy was necessary, and like you said in some ways truthful,but it was a very unique situation, but focusing on a child's needs is a very comforting act in many ways, i find. Have i overshared? 😉
Thanks so much! It isn’t lie versus truth at all, it’s contact. The moment you noticed the kid and turned toward him, that was it. Didn’t matter what you said. You weren’t alone with it anymore and something physical happened, some knot loosened.
The writing comment hits the same way. You know the draft is a disaster, you’ve known for a while. Some part of you has been screaming it and the anxiety is just what it costs to keep pretending otherwise. The moment you finally say it out loud there’s actual physical relief. Your shoulders drop. You can breathe. The truth doesn’t punish you, it frees you. Which is kind of the whole thing.
The questioner got there first, honestly. The lie becomes true, that’s the Vasily insight in four words. You circle it beautifully in your answer but he just said it clean.
The move from fear to outward attention, teaching instincts taking over, that's not just a good story about a plane. That's the argument for why we write. The self that was terrified a moment ago finds its steadier version by turning toward someone else. The sentence that isn't working does the same thing when you finally stop defending it and listen. 🐦⬛
I've been really immersed in a memoir by Belle Burden called Strangers. It's not a fancily-written memoir; rather a plain spoken account of her husband unexpectedly leaving her in the early days of the pandemic, and then the ensuing trauma of his increasingly cruel behavior toward her. He had insisted, when they got married, on a pre-nup that enabled him to keep all of his earned income, and half of any assets that were in both their names. She bought two homes for them with her own money and put them in both their names: he tried to make her sell both their NYC apartment and their summer home during the divorce, and in addition, he did not want to have much to do with their children.
Some people told her comforting stories during this process: "He will be ethical and kind during the divorce." He was not. He was not kind to her or the kids. He upended their lives and would never explain to her why he left. She had thought she was happily married. (At the very last minute, he said she could keep the houses, an hour before it went to trial. Maybe he never wanted those houses: he had said, the day he left, that she could keep them and the kids. So why did he put her through that torment of losing not only her marriage but her kids' homes?)
But in the end she arrives at a truth: she was a writer again, something she had wanted to be as a young woman. She understood that the self-deprecating voices in her head were "sexist." She realized she had been too compliant in some ways. She gained a lot of self knowledge, and a much more robust sense of who she really was. She had her own life by the end of the book, something she really had never had: she had always done what she thought other people wanted or expected of her, not what SHE wanted. Truth was better than comfort. Her former life was comfortable, but it was not very truthful.
the same thing as Sallie described keeps happening to me. I find it very uncomfortable to keep trying and I am a very patient dame. I do not need another magazine to buy so I guess I will just not try. So that is my honest moment. thanks George anyway.
The Stone story is great, and so is the Tobias Wolff story from TriQuarterly. I took time to read them today. Both will stay with me for a long time. Thank you all.
As a psychologist working with children and their parents, my suggestion for parents is to tell as much truth as you think the child can digest or a form of the truth that you think the child can digest, with the understanding also that you don't have to obsess over what exactly that is, because you are shooting for some estimation of what this child you know best of anyone can take in, and children will take in only what they can anyway. Truth and comfort?
About the lie to the child... It makes a difference only if the outcome is that the plane does not go down. (If everyone dies, nothing matters.) But in the future, the lie will prevent the child from being afraid of flying. Telling the truth (that the turbulence is not normal and a catastrophe might ensue) will make the child fearful of every getting on a plane again. You did the right thing.
Wow, that Richard Powers story. It was so immersive, I've forgotten what George's point was in linking to it. It shows with incredibly universal specificity how fucked-up human beings think and behave. These three paragraphs, where Elliot is sitting at his desk after hearing Blankenship describe a dream that reminds him of a black-sky vision from his war years in Vietnam :
*
Blankenship had misappropriated someone else’s dream and made it his own. It made no difference whether you had been there, after all. The dreams had crossed the ocean. They were in the air.
He took his glasses off and put them on his desk and sat with his arms folded, looking into the well of light from his desk lamp. There seemed to be nothing but whirl inside him. Unwelcome things came and went in his mind’s eye. His heart beat faster. He could not control the headlong promiscuity of his thoughts.
It was possible to imagine larval dreams travelling in suspended animation undetectable in a host brain. They could be divided and regenerate like flatworms, hide in seams and bedding, in war stories, laughter, snapshots. They could rot your socks and turn your memory into a black-and-green blister. Green for the hills, black for the sky above. At daybreak they hung themselves up in rows like bats. At dusk they went out to look for dreamers.
*
None of that illuminates "comfort," or truth vs. not-quite-truth, I guess—just how ideas and memory and imagination can collide and make a very compelling mess of your thoughts. The way the mess gathers force and pushes Elliot toward extremity is thrilling.
I feel like a more contemporary version of this story might feature Elliot's A.A. sponsor showing up, trying to get him to a meeting or something. How much more interesting it is to have him run into the neighbor we heard about earlier! Man, that whole confrontation is so disturbing.
It's kind of an obvious flip to have this damaged guy, whose job is to help others, do pretty much the opposite, while everyone in his life—coworkers, friend/librarian, wife, neighbor—all try to help him in one way or other. But Powers does this in such a unique, specific way, both within the mind of the character and his interactions with the world around him, it not only avoids cliché, but transcends that whole dichotomy. The long conversation with his wife is extraordinary—nothing at all like what you'd expect, yet so right, so human.
The story is a masterpiece. Thanks for sharing it, George.
Just a brief correction: the story is by Robert Stone, not Richard Powers. The three paragraphs you point out are stunning and I totally agree with you about the story being a masterpiece.
You're so right—not sure how I transposed authors. Thanks for pointing that out, Annemarie! Others were probably just embarrassed for me, or wondered what story I was talking about....
Okay, I’m back momentarily. (I’ve been busy in my own world the last few weeks, writing.)
I had to pop in here to say to the Questioner that everything relates to writing! Your question is definitely a “writing-related” question! Especially as it concerns “comfort,” “lies,” and “truth.” We all know that a lot of writing is telling a lie in order to get to a truth. I mean, that is more or less the definition of fiction, no? And non-fiction as well, as one person’s memory or re-telling may vary distinctly from someone else’s. Who really knows the Truth? What is fiction and what is not?
When George told the boy that the plane wasn’t crashing, it was “true.” The plane wasn’t crashing. But George was offering the boy the comfort the boy needed in that moment. And by comforting the boy, George found some comfort himself—the comfort in knowing he’d offered comfort. May we all offer that kind of comfort to others!
Now, does “comfort equal truth” or did George mean that “Truth is comfort”? I think he meant the latter. And I don’t agree with him. Truth isn’t always a comfort, though it may be partially a comfort. I wouldn’t tell a clearly dying man that his wife just died if he asked if she was okay. I’d say, I’ll check soon, but let’s take care of you right now, or some such. Right? Sometimes you have to lie to comfort a person. I knew an old woman who’d slept with one man her whole life. She wanted to know if she’d missed anything and I said, No, they’re basically all the same. (HA!) She was glad to hear it. So. A friend who keeps kosher wanted to know if non-kosher pizza was better. I said, no, about the same. (HA!) Maybe I just like lying.
Anyway, comfort and truth—both are wonderful aims, but sometimes you have to let comfort win out.
Off to read the Robert Stone story. And then back to my writing. I don’t know if anything will come from all the words I’ve put on paper in the last three months, but I’m so happy (and comforted) by the release.
Mary G in da house! Yay! Nice to see/hear you.
About comfort and lies: I think this is also somewhat determined by our own fears. If George had been consumed by his own terror, he would have had nothing to offer the little boy, other than perhaps a lie that was so unconvincing that the boy would know, and not be comforted. He might become more frightened because the adult was clearly as screwed up as the plane. So I think the ability to comfort, or to fib to provide comfort, is grounded in how honest we are with ourselves and how comfortable we are with the unknown, with disappointment, and with fear. Authentic comfort needs to be offered from a solid position.
It all depends on the situation. My dad had dementia at the end of his life. I remember him saying "I want to go home." Before I got my act together, i'd say, "Dad, you're home right now." (He WAS at home--he died in his own bed.) Later, I realized that the best strategy was to agree with him. I'd say, "I know, Dad. You want to go home." So it was a "lie," but not really. (Who knows what he meant? His childhood home? His after-death home?) I remember once comforting the woman next to me on a plane, as well. I was PETRIFIED, but I saw she was freaking out, so I held her hand and told her the turbulence was normal, no worries, we would be fine. It just seemed like the right strategy in the moment and, in fact, it worked. It actually calmed me to calm her. Anyway, I think everyone's saying the same thing here: We all do our best in whatever situation. We try to be good and that's all we can ask of ourselves. Thanks for welcoming me back!
My first thought was of Tobias Wolff's story "Leviathan." I wondered if he wrote it after hearing George's account. One of the characters in it tells a story about giving comfort in a dicey situation. It's a little different there because her own mortality is at stake from whether or not she succeeds, whereas George had nothing to gain. But for me it all comes back to the question of identity. Being an identical twin I've always had the sense of being more than myself, and I think the best stories do that too. By giving the boy comfort George was comforted, regardless of the facts. Same thing in "Master and Man." Vasily saves a life by giving up his own.
I just now found that story and read it and oh, wow, what a story. (Anyone who wants to read it can find it here: https://issuu.com/triquarterly/docs/62 Page 85) "Being an identical twin I've always had the sense of being more than myself" fascinates me. You should write about that, if you don't already. Thanks for leading me to that story. It's a keeper.
It's great to read you again! The murk and fog around all of this might be helped by placing everything into a couple of categories: not truth and comfort/falsehood (at which level? water is not ice, but it is below freezing, and it's not steam, but can be that, too), but honesty and technique. With others, technique is (often) required. (Writers, or those trying to write well, often must use 'technique' with non-writers to explain what they do.) With oneself, only honesty.
'Maybe I just like lying.' Maybe, that's technique, based on a person's development, the other person's development, and what they're aiming for in/with this life. 'Who really knows the Truth?' I guess that it depends at which level one is aiming--low, middle, high, higher, highest? Mr. Saunders, in his work, appears to be aiming for the highest (why we're here), but as we're in the low... This is a much longer discussion, though.
A person with a sloppy emotion might need comforting (technique), until she is strong enough, or stronger, for stronger medicine. We're all doctors in a way, of the mind, the soul, the spirit--randomness won't really do here, though.
This must have been mentioned here before:
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/opinion/sunday/how-writing-transforms-us.html
The personality scores of those who read the nonfiction text remained much the same. But the personality scores of those who read the Chekhov story fluctuated. The changes were not large but they were statistically significant, and they were correlated with the intensity of emotions people experienced as they read the story. Chekhov’s story seemed to get people to start thinking about their personalities — about themselves — in new ways.
...The genre of the text — fiction or nonfiction — didn’t matter much; what mattered was the degree of perceived artistry. Those who read a story or essay that they judged to be artistic changed their personality scores significantly more than did those who judged what they read to be less artistic.
*
(All good things here, art vs. 'truth,' fiction vs. nonfiction, although one decade old now.)
Someone mentioned kindness, and not being insulting, which is another facet altogether... Manners do matter, as does the higher 'kindness' founding actions and attitudes. Also, a much longer discussion, though... anecdotes don't do this much justice.
Maybe you would want to reboot the writing club, only biweekly?
Hi Brian! Thank you for the welcoming words. What Now is not gone forever--I still hope to bring it back in some form. Hadn't even considered twice a month vs every week. Good thought!
hmmmm, he said, stroking his chin. now there's an idea i can get behind. Like, the first and third Mondays. You could rename it Odd Mondays, or there could be a band named that. mary g and the odd mondays.
Really, the only way I could return is if folks wouldn't mind if I wasn't as present as I've been in the past. It took so much time to read everyone's work and comment, even though my comments were usually short. If I could only post and then walk away until the next odd monday... Also, I'm obviously lead singer of that band, which is a punk band because I can't sing, only yell
there was plenty of participation from the general public, so I think that would work, but only if you can keep working on what you want to work on.
Hi Mary! You would have many 'takers,' and you could ask for higher subscriptions, too. For long I could not take part, but wholly support what you've done, for so many here.
I like keeping all of my content free. Even when i had a paywall, that was only for the archive. All new posts were always free. Took a lot of pressure off of me to do it that way. And I could enjoy just being "tipped" by kind subscribers.
Glad you’re writing Mares
Love hearing from you, J.D.A! I miss you and your writing and hope you're still creating your amazing stories.
Doing a lot of staring. Post and Pre writing staring.
Do you remember fun?…writing for pure fun. That’s my favourite genre of writing. Do you think I should join a prompts group?
Or keep focusing on longer work? Or both?
Email me if you have any advice that’s not for all eyes.
I miss our little friendly supportive group
I will email you. Writing for pure fun is everything. I'm doing that now and it's been amazing. I miss our group, too.
Our group was adorable
TOTALLY
Mary G.! What a pleasure to see you here! In re your comments: I think kindness, true kindness, above all. Sometimes that means giving the bald truth. Sometimes it means giving a more nuanced version of the truth. It’s a task, departing from the truth, if you allow yourself to do it only as necessary. My folks used to go out when I was younger and because they didn’t want deal with our squalling, they sometimes slipped out and I only realized they’d gone a few minutes later. I felt utterly betrayed; a goodbye back then would have saved me some therapy bills years later.
One more brief note: I keep kosher and it’s fine that some foods I don’t eat are objectively delectable. Because this is something I choose to do. If it ever felt like a punishment, I might feel differently. So yeah, your kosher friends suspect that sausage pizza is awesome. We can handle it.
Thank you, Sharon! Yes, kindness is at the heart of it, definitely. Thank you for bringing that up. As far as kosher goes: I have many family members who keep kosher, and have eaten a LOT of kosher pizza in my life! I didn't mean for my earlier comment to sound glib or disrespectful. I choose to not keep kosher, but have ultimate respect for anyone's choice to do so. Apologies that my comments didn't convey that earlier.
No no no no no, you did NOT sound glib or disrespectful (you could never); I was just trying to say in my unartful way that you're very considerate of your kosher compatriots' feelings, and I bet they appreciate it, and that if they're adult they are probably cool with any way you approach it.
xoxo
Thanks so much for this: “…he was trying, it could be said, to shock Boone into taking some responsibility for his actions, in the “wrathful deity” tradition, in which a teacher can be rough and crude and even insulting, if this is what it takes to dislodge a student from a harmful habit of way of thinking.”
I taught a professional practice class a couple of years ago, to masters students who I thought should be taking more responsibility and showing initiative instead of being purely grade driven and looking for shortcuts. Eventually I got sort of blunt with them about it and they were offended. They said I was too rough/disdainful/unfair/incompetent, etc. But now…..I can take solace in being in the tradition of the wrathful deities. Yes! Thank you!
The wrathful deity tradition only works if the student senses the love underneath it. Which, in a classroom, they usually can't. Not in the moment. Sometimes only later. 🐦⬛
Thanks Jennifer. I think you’re right. Hopefully they sensed the love, or will eventually. That was why I was even there, guest teaching. But I have to confess that my respect for them dropped when they started lying and cutting class. They were surprisingly sneaky.
I don't know if George's question relates to writing, and my answer doesn't, even though I've written about what I am about to relate. We live five blocks north of the World Trade Center, and we were here that day. Two of my kids were at a school only three blocks away from the site, and they were traumatized by what they witnessed. For one of my kids, the trauma lasted a long time. Each night, for many weeks that followed, I faced a set of questions, not always the same ones, but they were all in the same category. I won't list them here, but among other fears they expressed a need to know what it felt like to burn to death, and what it felt like to fall a hundred stories, etc. It was only when I realized I had the same questions in my own mind that I was able to answer them, and while my replies were careful, they were truthful, and my fourth-grader's fears abated to some degree.
That's so hard, Josh. I'm sorry for what you and your children went through.
That’s kind of you to say. I should add that we are all fine, unlike thousands of others. What we suffered pales next to those who lost loved ones or endured life-long injuries and illnesses. None of my family were injured or died, and my kids have grown up to be happy and healthy adults with children of their own. And we still live here, five blocks north, perhaps a bit stronger and wiser because of the experience. It took years to write about it well, and that’s something I was able to do for myself. My memory of that day and the months that followed is still quite sharp, filled with detail. Thank you Mary.
A different take on Truth vs Comfort: when I was a kid my eldest brother had a lot of problems and got into screaming matches with my parents on a regular basis, usually after midnight when he'd stumble home, drunk. I'd be there in bed absorbing it all (hearing every word). On the two occasions they called the cops to remove him, or at least calm him down, I was told in the morning to tell neighbors we had been broken into. So: I knew the truth, my parents knew the truth, the neighbors might have (houses were quite close together), but for some reason it was deemed more comfortable to lie. I know, making someone comfortable is different from comforting them, but still, the headspace required to experience those fights, then lie about them, was anything but comfortable for me. I don't think anyone was comforted by hiding the all-too-obvious truth. My parents finally kicked him out of the house, which was a reckoning of truth for him, but that's a different angle. (PS, I love, maybe that's the wrong word, but... I love how these things stay with me and furnish moments in my fiction where I don't tell this story but instead tell a story about the headspace of the kid in bed having to lie the next day.)
Would love to read that story.
Same
Once when flying from Dakar, Senegal, to Paris, seated in the vicinity of the wing, I saw a flash of light out the window. My thought—an engine has exploded—was immediately reinforced by the spectacle of stewardesses running up and down the aisle. I recall exchanging a look with the man seated next to me. We had not spoken, although the flight had left the airport, gained altitude, and was by now high above the Atlantic Ocean. And we didn’t speak now. But my overriding thought was: Is this man, this stranger, the last person I will ever see? I got the feeling he was thinking the same about me, and with this thought, the stranger was transformed into a companion—a comfort of sorts—in this temporary and shared acknowledgment of the truth of mortality.
Then my mind clicked into self-comfort mode, blocking the terror, telling myself: This can’t be happening to me. Soon we got word we would be returning to the airport, and life resumed.
For me, truth is ambiguous, an enigma. So, I use fiction, a kind of self-made fantasy, to seek a broader truth and learn to dance with ambiguity.
I just read 'Helping' by Robert Stone. What a story. I was in it the whole way. Such character development. Amazing. Grace wasn't even in the story for long, but boy did I know her. Maybe we could study 'Helping'? I would love to. Probably a copyright issue, but thanks for recommending it.
Wow - what a story Helping was. The entire thing built on no, you cannot help another person, it is all futile, and then the end: do the smallest thing and I will be helped immeasurably. Thank you for sharing it!
Oh that fine line between hope and no hope. A situation of danger passes from one to the other in, sometimes, a fraction of time. We sometimes kid ourselves there is still hope, we lie, to ourselves and others to preserve the delusion that we may get out of this alive. I think that is why some say that the most dreadful of all the furies can be Hope, It sidesteps truth if hung onto too long. Jills elevated self in Vigil over Boone hopes for his redemption through offering comfort but the old bastard is beyond that. Beyond hope. Hellbent. Yet an odd conundrum exists: sometimes when all seems lost and we give up on any hope of salvation, Booomba!, here it comes, like for dear old Vassily. At death.
Personally, i find it deeply uncomfortable not to be truthful, even in transient states. So at the moment i want to move and my partner doesn't, it will break her heart she said, but for various and complex reasons to do with my health it will not be good for me to stay here. We can't talk about it at the moment because there are immediate and highly stressful situations to be resolved before there is the emotional space for my partner to engage with this discussion, and as a consequence i am experiencing depression. For me i have come to recognise depression is self protective, a layer between me and the pain of not being able to have an honest conversation when i would like. My experience tells me that my difficulty with not being honest as soon as i recognise a problem that needs discussing is rare, most people i have met in life shy away from difficult subjects, things that need discussing. I am the sort of person who confronts a problem head on. I just find it hard not to. I think your reaction to the boy was necessary, and like you said in some ways truthful,but it was a very unique situation, but focusing on a child's needs is a very comforting act in many ways, i find. Have i overshared? 😉
Sounds like you're operating with a deep level of self-awareness and also awareness and compassion for the needs of others.
Thanks so much! It isn’t lie versus truth at all, it’s contact. The moment you noticed the kid and turned toward him, that was it. Didn’t matter what you said. You weren’t alone with it anymore and something physical happened, some knot loosened.
The writing comment hits the same way. You know the draft is a disaster, you’ve known for a while. Some part of you has been screaming it and the anxiety is just what it costs to keep pretending otherwise. The moment you finally say it out loud there’s actual physical relief. Your shoulders drop. You can breathe. The truth doesn’t punish you, it frees you. Which is kind of the whole thing.
The questioner got there first, honestly. The lie becomes true, that’s the Vasily insight in four words. You circle it beautifully in your answer but he just said it clean.
The move from fear to outward attention, teaching instincts taking over, that's not just a good story about a plane. That's the argument for why we write. The self that was terrified a moment ago finds its steadier version by turning toward someone else. The sentence that isn't working does the same thing when you finally stop defending it and listen. 🐦⬛
I've been really immersed in a memoir by Belle Burden called Strangers. It's not a fancily-written memoir; rather a plain spoken account of her husband unexpectedly leaving her in the early days of the pandemic, and then the ensuing trauma of his increasingly cruel behavior toward her. He had insisted, when they got married, on a pre-nup that enabled him to keep all of his earned income, and half of any assets that were in both their names. She bought two homes for them with her own money and put them in both their names: he tried to make her sell both their NYC apartment and their summer home during the divorce, and in addition, he did not want to have much to do with their children.
Some people told her comforting stories during this process: "He will be ethical and kind during the divorce." He was not. He was not kind to her or the kids. He upended their lives and would never explain to her why he left. She had thought she was happily married. (At the very last minute, he said she could keep the houses, an hour before it went to trial. Maybe he never wanted those houses: he had said, the day he left, that she could keep them and the kids. So why did he put her through that torment of losing not only her marriage but her kids' homes?)
But in the end she arrives at a truth: she was a writer again, something she had wanted to be as a young woman. She understood that the self-deprecating voices in her head were "sexist." She realized she had been too compliant in some ways. She gained a lot of self knowledge, and a much more robust sense of who she really was. She had her own life by the end of the book, something she really had never had: she had always done what she thought other people wanted or expected of her, not what SHE wanted. Truth was better than comfort. Her former life was comfortable, but it was not very truthful.
I've searched the NYer for "helping" by Robert Stone, and couldn't find it. any possibility of a link? I have a sub and usually find old stories.
Try here:
https://biblioklept.org/2019/08/21/helping-a-short-story-by-robert-stone/
Thanks, George. Great story.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1987/06/08/helping-2
You can also get it here:
https://www.parrishbooks.com/pages/books/1974/robert-t-stone/helping#:~:text=Helping-,Robert%20T.,finalist%20for%20the%20Pulitzer%20Prize.
Or in the collection "Bear and His Daughter" -
https://bookshop.org/p/books/bear-and-his-daughter-robert-stone/08e08114859b6fe1?ean=9780395901342&next=t
the same thing as Sallie described keeps happening to me. I find it very uncomfortable to keep trying and I am a very patient dame. I do not need another magazine to buy so I guess I will just not try. So that is my honest moment. thanks George anyway.
You can also get it here:
https://www.parrishbooks.com/pages/books/1974/robert-t-stone/helping#:~:text=Helping-,Robert%20T.,finalist%20for%20the%20Pulitzer%20Prize.
Or in the collection "Bear and His Daughter" -
https://bookshop.org/p/books/bear-and-his-daughter-robert-stone/08e08114859b6fe1?ean=9780395901342&next=t
Try here:
https://biblioklept.org/2019/08/21/helping-a-short-story-by-robert-stone/
The Stone story is great, and so is the Tobias Wolff story from TriQuarterly. I took time to read them today. Both will stay with me for a long time. Thank you all.
As a psychologist working with children and their parents, my suggestion for parents is to tell as much truth as you think the child can digest or a form of the truth that you think the child can digest, with the understanding also that you don't have to obsess over what exactly that is, because you are shooting for some estimation of what this child you know best of anyone can take in, and children will take in only what they can anyway. Truth and comfort?
About the lie to the child... It makes a difference only if the outcome is that the plane does not go down. (If everyone dies, nothing matters.) But in the future, the lie will prevent the child from being afraid of flying. Telling the truth (that the turbulence is not normal and a catastrophe might ensue) will make the child fearful of every getting on a plane again. You did the right thing.
Wow, that Richard Powers story. It was so immersive, I've forgotten what George's point was in linking to it. It shows with incredibly universal specificity how fucked-up human beings think and behave. These three paragraphs, where Elliot is sitting at his desk after hearing Blankenship describe a dream that reminds him of a black-sky vision from his war years in Vietnam :
*
Blankenship had misappropriated someone else’s dream and made it his own. It made no difference whether you had been there, after all. The dreams had crossed the ocean. They were in the air.
He took his glasses off and put them on his desk and sat with his arms folded, looking into the well of light from his desk lamp. There seemed to be nothing but whirl inside him. Unwelcome things came and went in his mind’s eye. His heart beat faster. He could not control the headlong promiscuity of his thoughts.
It was possible to imagine larval dreams travelling in suspended animation undetectable in a host brain. They could be divided and regenerate like flatworms, hide in seams and bedding, in war stories, laughter, snapshots. They could rot your socks and turn your memory into a black-and-green blister. Green for the hills, black for the sky above. At daybreak they hung themselves up in rows like bats. At dusk they went out to look for dreamers.
*
None of that illuminates "comfort," or truth vs. not-quite-truth, I guess—just how ideas and memory and imagination can collide and make a very compelling mess of your thoughts. The way the mess gathers force and pushes Elliot toward extremity is thrilling.
I feel like a more contemporary version of this story might feature Elliot's A.A. sponsor showing up, trying to get him to a meeting or something. How much more interesting it is to have him run into the neighbor we heard about earlier! Man, that whole confrontation is so disturbing.
It's kind of an obvious flip to have this damaged guy, whose job is to help others, do pretty much the opposite, while everyone in his life—coworkers, friend/librarian, wife, neighbor—all try to help him in one way or other. But Powers does this in such a unique, specific way, both within the mind of the character and his interactions with the world around him, it not only avoids cliché, but transcends that whole dichotomy. The long conversation with his wife is extraordinary—nothing at all like what you'd expect, yet so right, so human.
The story is a masterpiece. Thanks for sharing it, George.
Just a brief correction: the story is by Robert Stone, not Richard Powers. The three paragraphs you point out are stunning and I totally agree with you about the story being a masterpiece.
You're so right—not sure how I transposed authors. Thanks for pointing that out, Annemarie! Others were probably just embarrassed for me, or wondered what story I was talking about....