I have this thing I do, when there are gaps between books I’ve been wanting to read, where I go back to novels I’d dismissed despite critical applause. My inner literary snob wants to believe that any quality novel can sustain my attention, even if it deals with a subject I’m not interested in. Or am sick of. Or simply cannot bear to delve into for various reasons — perceived bleakness, ungodly length (Freedom, anyone?*), or because the author has taken a shortcut to fame (James “It’s a true story!” Frey).
World War II novels have fallen into my growing pile of neglected brilliance for no better reason than I’ve read a lot of them. It seemed my entire HSC English literature booklist was comprised of WWII books, both fiction and memoir, and although a decade — (cough) or two — has passed, the memories still haunt. I’d begun to feel that there was really nothing to say about Nazi atrocities, Jewish escape narratives, or London bombings that hadn’t already been said, and very eloquently for the most part. (Apparently Australia was also in the Second World War, although no one told the Year 12 English curriculum coordinator.) So I opened Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces (1996) with some trepidation — even the title suggested another bleak account of hatred and cruelty, followed by loss and displacement, culminating in stoic survival. The requisite arc for survival stories.
And then I read it.
Fugitive Pieces is written in two parts: Book 1 and Book 2. It opens with the fictional account of Jewish poet Jakob Beer who, as a young boy, escapes the horror of his parents’ killing in a village in Poland, by running through the dark forest at night and burying himself in the dirt to avoid detection during the day. The horrific but gripping depiction of his escape is over quickly however, as it primarily serves to set up the encounter that shapes the novel: the loving relationship between the boy and his rescuer.
“No one is born just once” Jakob tells us, in a novel that takes rebirth as its theme — even as it focuses on what we find under the ground. There is Jakob’s earthen burial, the dark, filthy hiding place from which he emerged to be rescued by the Greek geologist and humanist Athos Roussos, who wonders if this apparition were one of “Biskupin’s lost souls”. Athos is on an archeological dig when he sees this filthy boy, and takes the strange and courageous step of helping him escape, and giving him a new life.
“Lost soul” doesn’t touch the edges of the depths of the protagonist of this story. Jakob is both lost and beautiful, fragile and resilient, nurtured to health and a fragile peace in the capable arms of the loving father-figure, Athos. The story that unfolds as Athos takes Jakob to a Greek island to hide and, eventually, Toronto to migrate, is one of enduring love and the power of human connection to rekindle the spirit and renew life and hope. Michaels’ novel tells us that we are not complete as beings until we have loved, and been loved. That through this love, we can find rebirth.
A man of enormous wisdom, Athos gives the haunted Jakob another life, another language — two languages, in the end — and with this, a sense of history and humanity. Travelling across continents, struggling to find food, shelter and a place to call home, all the while grappling with having left his beautiful older sister to an unknown fate when he escaped, Jakob remains an almost mystical spirit, somehow separate and removed from the world around him, except in the stories and wisdom imparted by Athos. And in the lasting friendships this man brings to him.
After Athos’s death, having anchored his soul in the warmth of his mentor, Jakob turns to Athos’s words and history to escape his grief. He posthumously publishes Athos’s notes rejecting the Nazis’ falsification of history, in a book called, Bearing False Witness, and believes, for a time, that he's found love with Alex who he too quickly marries. But his darkness persists and the marriage ends, thrusting Jakob back into the search for understanding and peace in language, literature and scholarship. Saved by a friendship with a local family, Jakob is introduced to Michaela and, together, they return to Athos’s family home in Greece, complete and content, and finally at peace.
The second part of this novel deals with Ben, a Toronto-based professor who has grown up with parents haunted by the Holocaust, to the point that they seem unable to connect with him in the same way that they can connect with his wife, Naomi. Unable — or unwilling — to stop this from driving a wedge between himself and Naomi, Ben seeks out solace in separation, leaving his wife in his search for Jakob Beer’s lost journals. Ben had met Jakob before he died, and uses this quest as a means to avoid his damaged relationship with his parents, and his anger with his wife.
For a short time, this second section became an unwanted distraction from what I thought was the real story. I was completely caught up in Jakob’s life and quest for peace, and felt deflated and lost, initially, when I realised that his story, ostensibly, was over. I persisted, though, and gradually grew to care about Ben, who manages a difficult but eventual resolution to his own damaged soul, largely as a result of the truths he found in Jakob’s experience.
Michaels’ language is exquisite. The evidence of her poetry is as clear in the deft imagery in her sentences as in their brevity. Beautiful and simple, she waves an almost mystical sheen across the places and people who inhabit this novel, without ever compromising their inherent warmth. Graphic and grim in places, somehow even the most horrible scenes have a majesty about them as examples of humanity, both good and evil. She describes the Greek village, Kalavrita, following the German invasion, accordingly: “In the valley, charred ruins, blackened stone, a terrible silence. A place so empty it was not even haunted.” And Toronto: “A city of forsaken worlds; language a kind of farewell.” And in perhaps the most poignant observation, the universal experience of grief and loss is eloquently rendered thus: “The grief we carry, anybody’s grief, is exactly the weight of a sleeping child.”
Anne Michaels is a poet, literally and figuratively, but unlike much of the poetry that seems to monopolise contemporary poetry pages (wherever they’re hiding), Michaels’ language never loses site of humanity, warmth, and the exquisite complexity of the human condition.
* Two things: 1. I’ve now read Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom . 2. I am not opposed to the notion of a long book. Having said that, when I have to lug the bloody thing in a backpack already weighed down by manuscripts and endless parent crap, it reminds me, and I’ll remind you... Size does matter.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Saturday, April 9, 2011
The Poetry of Eddie Vedder
It’s a strange thing that whenever I confess my admiration — OK adoration — for Pearl Jam, it’s often met with a blank stare. Which is interesting enough, given the band’s profile, but more surprising is that sometimes I get the eye roll. When I query said eye-roller, they often can’t name a single song. Or they can name a song, but only from Pearl Jam's first album, and usually “Jeremy”. Either way, it’s an opinion drawn on little, if any, actual familiarity with their music.
(OK. I have no doubt there are people who hate Pearl Jam having given them a fair and reasonable hearing. I just haven’t met them, m’kay?)
The lack of familiarity comes from the fact that Pearl Jam do not benefit from regular airplay on commercial radio, nor do they have a string of memorable video clips on 24-hour rotation on Rage. (It’s probably called something else now. So I’m old. Sue me.) In fact, Pearl Jam have released only a handful of video clips, apart from those drawn from live shows, MTV unplugged performances, or the multiple bootleg YouTube offerings. Adding to their lack of broadcast opportunities, for a decade they eschewed the conglomerate Ticketmaster, using their own outlets and pioneering online ticket sales to distribute concert tickets to their loyal fans, in the process successfully keeping ticket prices comparable to the cost of a paperback novel but also, conversely, limiting the stadiums and venues where they could play. In theory they wanted to let their music sell itself. According to Rolling Stone, however, they seemed to have spent a lot of time “deliberately tearing apart their own fame.”
Quite successfully, my informal surveys suggest.
Musical taste is an incredibly subjective thing. One that often defies explanation, reason and logic. So I will not waste a moment trying to convince anyone here of Pearl Jam’s musical worth. You can click on the links and decide for yourself. (Or look at the impressive list of their collaborators, musical awards, number of fans, and body of work...OK. Couldn’t resist entirely.)
What I will do, though, is tell you why anyone who reads, writes, or appreciates language is missing out on some of the best poetry of my own fading generation. (The Xers, for those who haven’t caught up.) The reason they’re adored by so many and continue to sell out whenever they tour is because people — myself included — want to hear what Eddie Vedder has to say. As the lead singer and main lyricist, he is the driving force behind this band. But more than this, his lyrics transform an eclectic, grungey array of musical expression into something almost transcendental — a quality taken even further by his solo catalogue.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s give Eddie the pen for a moment.
What I’d like to do is just copy slabs of his lyrics and let him speak for himself. This, however, most likely breaches all kinds of copyright — quite apart from being all kinds of lazy. So what I’ll do instead is highlight selected extracts from his catalogue that I think best expresses why we — Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder fans alike — hang off his every word.
Perhaps the best place to start is with Pearl Jam’s first single — one of only a handful they’ve released over the years. (Yet another example of their anti-marketing strategy.)
“Alive” tells the story of a teenaged boy whose mother tells him that his father is actually his stepfather, and that his real father died.
“Son,” she said, “have I got a little story for you
What you thought was your daddy was nothing but a...
While you were sitting home alone at age thirteen
Your real daddy was dying.
Sorry you didn’t see him, but I’m glad we talked...”
Grim, shocking, and worse, in the next verse hinting at incest, this was eventually revealed to be autobiographical. Part of a trilogy that Vedder calls a “mini-opera” entitled Mama-san, it tells the story of a teenaged boy who has been lied to and betrayed by his mother to the point where he does not know what he’ll do next. But ends, initially, with the almost pleading declaration that he is “still alive”.
Then the story builds to a terrible crescendo in “Once”, part two of the trilogy:
Backseat lover on the side of the road
I got a bomb in my temple that is gonna explode
I got a sixteen gauge buried under my clothes, I play...
Once upon a time I could CONTROL myself
Ooh, once upon a time I could LOSE myself, yeah...
And culminates in “Footsteps” in which the youth having gone out on a shooting spree now awaits his death sentence:
Don't even think about gettin' inside
Voices in my head, voices
I got scratches, all over my arms
One for each day, since I fell apart
I did, what I had to do
If there was a reason, it was you...
Still blaming his mother for what happened to him:
Footsteps in the hall, it was you, you
Pictures on my chest, it was you, you
“Footsteps” eerily pre-empts “Jeremy” which details a high school massacre, arguably the song most frequently cited as a reason to dislike Pearl Jam. It is also, in my opinion, one of their least interesting. Despite this, it is the song that gets most frequent radio play and is one of the only video clips they’ve made. (A clip that Vedder has since admitted he regrets agreeing to.)
Ten was the start of the Pearl Jam story and, admittedly, the harshest of all the albums, lyrically speaking. It’s also, ironically, still their best album musically. Although there are better individual songs, each song from Ten is potentially a single in its own right. If they were into that, of course.
Since then, Vedder has moved away from this focus on difficult childhoods and fractured family life, covering everything from the political “Bu$hleaguer”
like sugar, the guests are so refined
to pithy social commentary:
It’s a mystery to me
we have a greed
with which we have agreed.
Vedder turns desire into a complicated battle:
The waiting drove me mad...
you're finally here and I'm a mess
I take your entrance back...
can't let you roam inside my head (“Corduroy”)
and transforms loss into something tangible:
Sheets of empty canvas, untouched sheets of clay
Were laid spread out before me as her body once did. (“Black”)
(Incidentally, “Black” was one of the first songs that forced me to listen beyond the music — to study the lyrics and wonder about the man behind them. Something about the next line grabbed me and changed how I listened to Pearl Jam forever: “And all I taught her was ... everything.”)
He ranges from stinging self-actualisation:
I did, what I had to do
And if there was a reason
Oh, there wasn't no reason, no
And if, there's something you'd like to do
Just let me continue, to blame you. (“Footsteps”)
To quiet self-determination:
Me, I figure as each breath goes by
I only own my mind. (“I am Mine”)
He is cynical about religion and the hypocracies committed by followers —
The selfish, they’re all standing in line
Faithing and hoping to buy themselves time... (“I am Mine”)
and yet has written an almost Messianic ode to the power of belief in “Given to Fly” :
Alone in a corridor, waiting, locked out
He got up outta there, ran for hundreds of miles
He made it to the ocean, had a smoke in a tree
The wind rose up, set him down on his knee
A wave came crashing like a fist to the jaw
Delivered him wings, "Hey, look at me now"
While both Vedder and Pearl Jam deny the Christian overtones — Vedder is an aetheist — there is blatant referencing of the Christ story:
He floated back down 'cause he wanted to share
His key to the locks on the chains
he saw everywhere
But first he was stripped
and then he was stabbed
By faceless men — well, fuckers
He still stands
Again, Vedder returns to the defiant advocacy of love, couched in anger and frustration, granted, but still, ultimately, a declaration that love is what makes us human, and allows us to soar:
And he still gives his love,
he just gives it away
The love he receives is the love that is saved
And sometimes is seen a strange spot in the sky
A human being that was given to fly...
It is surprisingly sentimental and decidedly lacking in cynicism. It is also very powerful as a consequence.
The simple wisdom of some of his lines requires no explanation —
And the young, they can lose hope
cause they can't see beyond today,...
The wisdom that the old can't give away... ...
Sometimes life
Don't leave you alone. (“Love Boat Captain”)
and yet so often these simple wisdoms aren't given the respect they deserve, or not in any meaningful way:
Sorrow grows bigger when the sorrow’s denied. (“I am Mine”)
In his grammy winning solo album for the Sean Penn film, Into the Wild, Vedder so artfully slots himself into the headspace of the story’s protagonist, Christopher McCandless — top athlete and college graduate who sells everything he owns to disappear into the Alaskan wilderness — that the film almost didn’t need dialogue, so clear was the narrative across Vedder’s lyrics.
The story is synopsised in Vedder’s Oscar-nominated song, “Guaranteed”:
Wind in my hair, I feel part of everywhere
Underneath my being is a road that disappeared
Late at night I hear the trees,
they’re singing with the dead
Overhead...
If you've seen the film, you’ll understand all the extra layers to this verse. But even without seeing it, Candless’ mixture of innocence and naivety, underlined by an unfulfilled desire to understand something bigger than the “normal” society he was expected to enter before he took off “into the wild”, is sweetly rendered by Vedder:
A mind full of questions,
and a teacher in my soul
and
I’ve got my indignation,
but I’m pure in all my thoughts
I’m alive...
as well as recognising Candless’ genuine feelings of remorse for having hurt the ones he loved by leaving, as well as his attempts to ease any feelings of guilt they might have:
If ever the was someone to keep me at home
It would be you...
Vedder understands the frustrations of youth, even now, at the ripe old age of 47. The cynicism is there, as is the sharp and witty social commentary — very rock-and-roll and very “alternative” (if there is such a thing anymore) — but what tempers Vedder’s stories — for they are all stories — is the persistent underlying theme that manages to force its way to the surface, if not in every song, then across each album, and certainly throughout his career...
That is, love.
Love is all you need. All you need is love.
The haunting "Black", already cited, gives us one of my favourite declarations of love:
I know someday you'll have a beautiful life,
I know you'll be a sun in somebody else's sky, but why
Why, why can't it be, can't it be mine?
In "Love Boat Captain", a song written in response to a fan’s request in the aftermath of a tragedy that almost forced Pearl Jam to disband, Vedder reminds us simply in this un-ironic quotation:
It's already been sung,
but it can't be said enough
All you need... ... is love
The incident that triggered the band’s crisis occurred at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark. During Pearl Jam’s act, the crowd surged dangerously toward the stage. In the crush, nine young fans (all men) were trampled to death, largely unseen by the other fans or the performers. On stage, Vedder had repeatedly pleaded with fans to move back, but it was only later, some way into their act, that they discovered what had happened. They cancelled the performance and left the stage. The festival continued without them, although no other acts appeared on that particular stage.
Vedder references the incident directly in “Love Boat Captain”:
Lost nine friends will never know,
two years ago today...
But it is in the question these deaths poses immediately after that we get to the heart of it:
...and if our lives become too long,
will it add to our regret?
The question suggests that this level of loss is never finished, never closed. That time doesn't make it any easier, just longer. During live performances, Vedder changes the lyrics from “two years ago today” to reflect the actual time passed — a poignant reminder that while life goes on, the families’ suffering is a continuum. As is the band’s. (Several of the band members, including Vedder, have remained in contact with the families of the nine dead men.)
Perhaps this is the greatest irony surrounding people’s misconceptions about Pearl Jam. Considered to be grunge and therefore somehow cynical, bitter, and angry, in truth, more recently, and perhaps all along, love shapes Vedder’s music. It is the question he most consistently asks and tries to answer, and the only consolation he willingly offers up when nothing else makes sense.
Once you hold the hand of love...
it's all surmountable. (”Love Boat Captain”)
The opposite of cynical, Vedder’s faith in love is the source of the most eloquent and original contributions to the genre, and, yes, I'll say it: the generation. Even when referencing his angry youth — the angry youth, more broadly — there is a hopefulness and optimism pervading everything he writes. Even if he wasn’t a recipient of it as a young man, he knew it was what he needed. What we all need. And he seems to have found it as an adult.
This is the opposite of the nihilistic ranting too readily associated with grunge music by its critics, and too frequently cited as the reference point for Pearl Jam detractors. Vedder unashamedly advocates the purest but most complicated of all desires in the simplest form possible. It’s all about love. The need to give it and receive it.
Enough from me, though. I’ll give Eddie the final word:
Hold me, and make it the truth,...
That when all is lost there will be you.
’Cause to the universe I don't mean a thing
And there's just one word that I still believe and it's
Love,... love. love. love. love.
(OK. I have no doubt there are people who hate Pearl Jam having given them a fair and reasonable hearing. I just haven’t met them, m’kay?)
The lack of familiarity comes from the fact that Pearl Jam do not benefit from regular airplay on commercial radio, nor do they have a string of memorable video clips on 24-hour rotation on Rage. (It’s probably called something else now. So I’m old. Sue me.) In fact, Pearl Jam have released only a handful of video clips, apart from those drawn from live shows, MTV unplugged performances, or the multiple bootleg YouTube offerings. Adding to their lack of broadcast opportunities, for a decade they eschewed the conglomerate Ticketmaster, using their own outlets and pioneering online ticket sales to distribute concert tickets to their loyal fans, in the process successfully keeping ticket prices comparable to the cost of a paperback novel but also, conversely, limiting the stadiums and venues where they could play. In theory they wanted to let their music sell itself. According to Rolling Stone, however, they seemed to have spent a lot of time “deliberately tearing apart their own fame.”
Quite successfully, my informal surveys suggest.
Musical taste is an incredibly subjective thing. One that often defies explanation, reason and logic. So I will not waste a moment trying to convince anyone here of Pearl Jam’s musical worth. You can click on the links and decide for yourself. (Or look at the impressive list of their collaborators, musical awards, number of fans, and body of work...OK. Couldn’t resist entirely.)
What I will do, though, is tell you why anyone who reads, writes, or appreciates language is missing out on some of the best poetry of my own fading generation. (The Xers, for those who haven’t caught up.) The reason they’re adored by so many and continue to sell out whenever they tour is because people — myself included — want to hear what Eddie Vedder has to say. As the lead singer and main lyricist, he is the driving force behind this band. But more than this, his lyrics transform an eclectic, grungey array of musical expression into something almost transcendental — a quality taken even further by his solo catalogue.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s give Eddie the pen for a moment.
What I’d like to do is just copy slabs of his lyrics and let him speak for himself. This, however, most likely breaches all kinds of copyright — quite apart from being all kinds of lazy. So what I’ll do instead is highlight selected extracts from his catalogue that I think best expresses why we — Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder fans alike — hang off his every word.
Perhaps the best place to start is with Pearl Jam’s first single — one of only a handful they’ve released over the years. (Yet another example of their anti-marketing strategy.)
“Alive” tells the story of a teenaged boy whose mother tells him that his father is actually his stepfather, and that his real father died.
“Son,” she said, “have I got a little story for you
What you thought was your daddy was nothing but a...
While you were sitting home alone at age thirteen
Your real daddy was dying.
Sorry you didn’t see him, but I’m glad we talked...”
Grim, shocking, and worse, in the next verse hinting at incest, this was eventually revealed to be autobiographical. Part of a trilogy that Vedder calls a “mini-opera” entitled Mama-san, it tells the story of a teenaged boy who has been lied to and betrayed by his mother to the point where he does not know what he’ll do next. But ends, initially, with the almost pleading declaration that he is “still alive”.
Then the story builds to a terrible crescendo in “Once”, part two of the trilogy:
Backseat lover on the side of the road
I got a bomb in my temple that is gonna explode
I got a sixteen gauge buried under my clothes, I play...
Once upon a time I could CONTROL myself
Ooh, once upon a time I could LOSE myself, yeah...
And culminates in “Footsteps” in which the youth having gone out on a shooting spree now awaits his death sentence:
Don't even think about gettin' inside
Voices in my head, voices
I got scratches, all over my arms
One for each day, since I fell apart
I did, what I had to do
If there was a reason, it was you...
Still blaming his mother for what happened to him:
Footsteps in the hall, it was you, you
Pictures on my chest, it was you, you
“Footsteps” eerily pre-empts “Jeremy” which details a high school massacre, arguably the song most frequently cited as a reason to dislike Pearl Jam. It is also, in my opinion, one of their least interesting. Despite this, it is the song that gets most frequent radio play and is one of the only video clips they’ve made. (A clip that Vedder has since admitted he regrets agreeing to.)
Ten was the start of the Pearl Jam story and, admittedly, the harshest of all the albums, lyrically speaking. It’s also, ironically, still their best album musically. Although there are better individual songs, each song from Ten is potentially a single in its own right. If they were into that, of course.
Since then, Vedder has moved away from this focus on difficult childhoods and fractured family life, covering everything from the political “Bu$hleaguer”
like sugar, the guests are so refined
to pithy social commentary:
It’s a mystery to me
we have a greed
with which we have agreed.
Vedder turns desire into a complicated battle:
The waiting drove me mad...
you're finally here and I'm a mess
I take your entrance back...
can't let you roam inside my head (“Corduroy”)
and transforms loss into something tangible:
Sheets of empty canvas, untouched sheets of clay
Were laid spread out before me as her body once did. (“Black”)
(Incidentally, “Black” was one of the first songs that forced me to listen beyond the music — to study the lyrics and wonder about the man behind them. Something about the next line grabbed me and changed how I listened to Pearl Jam forever: “And all I taught her was ... everything.”)
He ranges from stinging self-actualisation:
I did, what I had to do
And if there was a reason
Oh, there wasn't no reason, no
And if, there's something you'd like to do
Just let me continue, to blame you. (“Footsteps”)
To quiet self-determination:
Me, I figure as each breath goes by
I only own my mind. (“I am Mine”)
He is cynical about religion and the hypocracies committed by followers —
The selfish, they’re all standing in line
Faithing and hoping to buy themselves time... (“I am Mine”)
and yet has written an almost Messianic ode to the power of belief in “Given to Fly” :
Alone in a corridor, waiting, locked out
He got up outta there, ran for hundreds of miles
He made it to the ocean, had a smoke in a tree
The wind rose up, set him down on his knee
A wave came crashing like a fist to the jaw
Delivered him wings, "Hey, look at me now"
While both Vedder and Pearl Jam deny the Christian overtones — Vedder is an aetheist — there is blatant referencing of the Christ story:
He floated back down 'cause he wanted to share
His key to the locks on the chains
he saw everywhere
But first he was stripped
and then he was stabbed
By faceless men — well, fuckers
He still stands
Again, Vedder returns to the defiant advocacy of love, couched in anger and frustration, granted, but still, ultimately, a declaration that love is what makes us human, and allows us to soar:
And he still gives his love,
he just gives it away
The love he receives is the love that is saved
And sometimes is seen a strange spot in the sky
A human being that was given to fly...
It is surprisingly sentimental and decidedly lacking in cynicism. It is also very powerful as a consequence.
The simple wisdom of some of his lines requires no explanation —
And the young, they can lose hope
cause they can't see beyond today,...
The wisdom that the old can't give away... ...
Sometimes life
Don't leave you alone. (“Love Boat Captain”)
and yet so often these simple wisdoms aren't given the respect they deserve, or not in any meaningful way:
Sorrow grows bigger when the sorrow’s denied. (“I am Mine”)
In his grammy winning solo album for the Sean Penn film, Into the Wild, Vedder so artfully slots himself into the headspace of the story’s protagonist, Christopher McCandless — top athlete and college graduate who sells everything he owns to disappear into the Alaskan wilderness — that the film almost didn’t need dialogue, so clear was the narrative across Vedder’s lyrics.
The story is synopsised in Vedder’s Oscar-nominated song, “Guaranteed”:
Wind in my hair, I feel part of everywhere
Underneath my being is a road that disappeared
Late at night I hear the trees,
they’re singing with the dead
Overhead...
If you've seen the film, you’ll understand all the extra layers to this verse. But even without seeing it, Candless’ mixture of innocence and naivety, underlined by an unfulfilled desire to understand something bigger than the “normal” society he was expected to enter before he took off “into the wild”, is sweetly rendered by Vedder:
A mind full of questions,
and a teacher in my soul
and
I’ve got my indignation,
but I’m pure in all my thoughts
I’m alive...
as well as recognising Candless’ genuine feelings of remorse for having hurt the ones he loved by leaving, as well as his attempts to ease any feelings of guilt they might have:
If ever the was someone to keep me at home
It would be you...
Vedder understands the frustrations of youth, even now, at the ripe old age of 47. The cynicism is there, as is the sharp and witty social commentary — very rock-and-roll and very “alternative” (if there is such a thing anymore) — but what tempers Vedder’s stories — for they are all stories — is the persistent underlying theme that manages to force its way to the surface, if not in every song, then across each album, and certainly throughout his career...
That is, love.
Love is all you need. All you need is love.
The haunting "Black", already cited, gives us one of my favourite declarations of love:
I know someday you'll have a beautiful life,
I know you'll be a sun in somebody else's sky, but why
Why, why can't it be, can't it be mine?
In "Love Boat Captain", a song written in response to a fan’s request in the aftermath of a tragedy that almost forced Pearl Jam to disband, Vedder reminds us simply in this un-ironic quotation:
It's already been sung,
but it can't be said enough
All you need... ... is love
The incident that triggered the band’s crisis occurred at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark. During Pearl Jam’s act, the crowd surged dangerously toward the stage. In the crush, nine young fans (all men) were trampled to death, largely unseen by the other fans or the performers. On stage, Vedder had repeatedly pleaded with fans to move back, but it was only later, some way into their act, that they discovered what had happened. They cancelled the performance and left the stage. The festival continued without them, although no other acts appeared on that particular stage.
Vedder references the incident directly in “Love Boat Captain”:
Lost nine friends will never know,
two years ago today...
But it is in the question these deaths poses immediately after that we get to the heart of it:
...and if our lives become too long,
will it add to our regret?
The question suggests that this level of loss is never finished, never closed. That time doesn't make it any easier, just longer. During live performances, Vedder changes the lyrics from “two years ago today” to reflect the actual time passed — a poignant reminder that while life goes on, the families’ suffering is a continuum. As is the band’s. (Several of the band members, including Vedder, have remained in contact with the families of the nine dead men.)
Perhaps this is the greatest irony surrounding people’s misconceptions about Pearl Jam. Considered to be grunge and therefore somehow cynical, bitter, and angry, in truth, more recently, and perhaps all along, love shapes Vedder’s music. It is the question he most consistently asks and tries to answer, and the only consolation he willingly offers up when nothing else makes sense.
Once you hold the hand of love...
it's all surmountable. (”Love Boat Captain”)
The opposite of cynical, Vedder’s faith in love is the source of the most eloquent and original contributions to the genre, and, yes, I'll say it: the generation. Even when referencing his angry youth — the angry youth, more broadly — there is a hopefulness and optimism pervading everything he writes. Even if he wasn’t a recipient of it as a young man, he knew it was what he needed. What we all need. And he seems to have found it as an adult.
This is the opposite of the nihilistic ranting too readily associated with grunge music by its critics, and too frequently cited as the reference point for Pearl Jam detractors. Vedder unashamedly advocates the purest but most complicated of all desires in the simplest form possible. It’s all about love. The need to give it and receive it.
Enough from me, though. I’ll give Eddie the final word:
Hold me, and make it the truth,...
That when all is lost there will be you.
’Cause to the universe I don't mean a thing
And there's just one word that I still believe and it's
Love,... love. love. love. love.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
What's coming up...
Will get back to you re info regarding a new project I'm working on. I'm putting together a list of interviews with local and overseas authors and hope to start this new series in the next couple of weeks. Also have some reviews coming up - some new books and a few oldies.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Reason # 155 for avoiding my thesis...
...too many books to read, for a start.
Anyone else feel overwhelmed the moment they walk into a bookshop - liquidation and bankruptcy issues aside? The sheer volume of books there are to read has the double whammy of 1) reminding me that the world doesn't need another author (me, for example), and 2) making it impossible to choose one out of the million possibilities on offer.
There are whole genres I barely consider, let alone buy, and whole departments (self-help, I'm looking at you) in which I've never deigned to set foot. (I don't think I have. I actually don't know where that section is. So if you see me hovering near one, understand I am almost certainly lost.)
And then there are the books I already have - the ones that scream for my attention in a way that Cute American Husband has no hope of managing. Some of them are reputed to pertain to my research, but they're so tired and dusty looking that I struggle to read their titles, let alone their contents. Most of them, however, come in the form of distraction - from my children, my work, and most of all, my thesis. (From here on in to be known as The Beast.)
Most intimidating of all is the Dreaded Bedside Pile. The tower of knowledge and words that grows almost daily, never shrinking, despite the efforts of Father Gravity, the laws of logic, and my relentless desire to "get on top of things". (No chuckling in the back row, thank you.)
Still, you can't question my commitment to this pile, comprised of a mix of borrowed books, newly bought books, library books and old favourites awaiting a second (third, fourth, twentieth) read. (See this for specifics.) There are books I've begun but can't finish, nor can I give up on them confidently enough to re-shelve for another time. There are books I feel like I should read but don't want to, have read but can't remember, and won't read but have promised I will. You see, in my unique style of reasoning, as long as the book remains by my bed, there is some hope I'll get to it as promised, some day, eventually, and so it isn't a lie so much as a not-yet-fulfilled promise. (Yes, there's a difference.)
Quite apart from the Dreaded Bedside Pile are the various manuscripts of unpublished novels cowering on my hard-drive, weighed down by a promise of feedback, encouragement, support and/or editing - all shouting at me to be read the moment I fire up my computer.
So you can see why I'm behind on The Beast: all those books, with no time to read them. Sometimes it's difficult to remember that this reading business is fun. Sometimes it feels like hard work, and then I stumble upon a story that pulls me in so completely that I wish I didn't have to waste time eating, sleeping and washing. And I remember suddenly why I love reading.
Right now I'm halfway through the latest novel by Jon Clinch, author of the beautiful but harrowing Finn, whose new book, Kings of the Earth, has been listed among the outside shots at a Pulitzer.
It's always a cool thing when you knew the author before they were published, seeing the years of rejection end with a bang the way Jon's career did. It's even better when their second book lives up to the promise of their remarkable debut. I intend to post my review next week, so won't impart further details here, but if it continues at anything like the quality it's begun, be prepared for the kinds of superlatives I've saved for my favourites. Already it's the kind of novel you want to devour, and then re-read, slowly, carefully, to savour the language. The characters are distinct, believable, and eloquent, their voices as clear as a bellbird's song. So I'm taking my time with this one, almost despite myself, knowing that the towering pile will not allow me a second bite at this cherry for some time to come.
In the meantime, for those Australian readers who are tempted to give Kings of the Earth a shot, I'm afraid it's been deemed "too American" by local publishers, and so you can only buy it online or overseas.
I can only assume that local publishers haven't actually read it yet, because the novel I'm reading is as universal as the idea of storytelling itself. And, from the perspective of an aspiring author, as intimidating and as towering as the Dreaded Bedside Pile and my beastly thesis combined.
Anyone else feel overwhelmed the moment they walk into a bookshop - liquidation and bankruptcy issues aside? The sheer volume of books there are to read has the double whammy of 1) reminding me that the world doesn't need another author (me, for example), and 2) making it impossible to choose one out of the million possibilities on offer.
There are whole genres I barely consider, let alone buy, and whole departments (self-help, I'm looking at you) in which I've never deigned to set foot. (I don't think I have. I actually don't know where that section is. So if you see me hovering near one, understand I am almost certainly lost.)
And then there are the books I already have - the ones that scream for my attention in a way that Cute American Husband has no hope of managing. Some of them are reputed to pertain to my research, but they're so tired and dusty looking that I struggle to read their titles, let alone their contents. Most of them, however, come in the form of distraction - from my children, my work, and most of all, my thesis. (From here on in to be known as The Beast.)
Most intimidating of all is the Dreaded Bedside Pile. The tower of knowledge and words that grows almost daily, never shrinking, despite the efforts of Father Gravity, the laws of logic, and my relentless desire to "get on top of things". (No chuckling in the back row, thank you.)
Still, you can't question my commitment to this pile, comprised of a mix of borrowed books, newly bought books, library books and old favourites awaiting a second (third, fourth, twentieth) read. (See this for specifics.) There are books I've begun but can't finish, nor can I give up on them confidently enough to re-shelve for another time. There are books I feel like I should read but don't want to, have read but can't remember, and won't read but have promised I will. You see, in my unique style of reasoning, as long as the book remains by my bed, there is some hope I'll get to it as promised, some day, eventually, and so it isn't a lie so much as a not-yet-fulfilled promise. (Yes, there's a difference.)
Quite apart from the Dreaded Bedside Pile are the various manuscripts of unpublished novels cowering on my hard-drive, weighed down by a promise of feedback, encouragement, support and/or editing - all shouting at me to be read the moment I fire up my computer.
So you can see why I'm behind on The Beast: all those books, with no time to read them. Sometimes it's difficult to remember that this reading business is fun. Sometimes it feels like hard work, and then I stumble upon a story that pulls me in so completely that I wish I didn't have to waste time eating, sleeping and washing. And I remember suddenly why I love reading.
Right now I'm halfway through the latest novel by Jon Clinch, author of the beautiful but harrowing Finn, whose new book, Kings of the Earth, has been listed among the outside shots at a Pulitzer.
It's always a cool thing when you knew the author before they were published, seeing the years of rejection end with a bang the way Jon's career did. It's even better when their second book lives up to the promise of their remarkable debut. I intend to post my review next week, so won't impart further details here, but if it continues at anything like the quality it's begun, be prepared for the kinds of superlatives I've saved for my favourites. Already it's the kind of novel you want to devour, and then re-read, slowly, carefully, to savour the language. The characters are distinct, believable, and eloquent, their voices as clear as a bellbird's song. So I'm taking my time with this one, almost despite myself, knowing that the towering pile will not allow me a second bite at this cherry for some time to come.
In the meantime, for those Australian readers who are tempted to give Kings of the Earth a shot, I'm afraid it's been deemed "too American" by local publishers, and so you can only buy it online or overseas.
I can only assume that local publishers haven't actually read it yet, because the novel I'm reading is as universal as the idea of storytelling itself. And, from the perspective of an aspiring author, as intimidating and as towering as the Dreaded Bedside Pile and my beastly thesis combined.
Monday, March 14, 2011
John Irving and Me
I want a divorce.
There. I said it.
Before my mother panics, or my in-laws investigate cross-continent custody laws, please be assured, it’s not that kind of divorce. Not one from my actual RL husband, but a divorce from my literary husband. The man I fell in love with at the tender age of 16, when his story about an oddball frustrated writer with initials for a first name and a species of fish for a surname (albeit a fictional hybrid) made me laugh and feel smart and sophisticated while bolstering my budding feminist self — all in a single insightful sentence: “Jenny felt that her education was merely a polite way to bide time, as if she were really a cow, being prepared only for the insertion of the device for artificial insemination.”
The author was John Irving and the book was The World According to Garp. (I made the hybrid bit up, but what else would you call a gar-fish crossed with a carp?) Mr Irving (we were not yet on a first-name basis) had described how I cynically viewed the cohort of students’ ambitions at my Catholic girls’ school, in words both cutting and dry — the very tone I attempted to emulate for the rest of my teen years. (In between writing really bad Don Walker-inspired poetry.)
Thus began a love affair which outlasted a century and crossed several decades, through the good times (Cider House Rules, The 158-Pound Marriage, The Hotel New Hampshire) and the What the Fuck? times (Setting Free the Bears and The Water-Method Man), taking me to the cusp of my literary desire in the form of his 1989 novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany. Newly paroled from my convent school where the “three r’s” weren’t merely taught but canonised, Irving’s blatant disregard for punctuation and capitalisation was as deliciously rebellious to me as sex before marriage and Vodka and Passionfruit UDLs. I wanted to have “UNSPEAKABLE OUTRAGE” tattooed on my inner thigh, and experienced a giddy delight every time Owen delivered his unrelenting all-caps voice. I decided right there and then that John Irving had to be the most outrageous, experimental, and hilarious author there was. (I mentioned the Catholic convent thing, didn’t I?)
Better yet, the man was handsome — according to the book jacket anyway. (It is only in the process of having watched so many of my friends’ books get published that I’ve learnt the art/ifice of the author photo.) In short, I thought John Irving was creative, inventive, brave and original, and the only man I could ever truly love — literarily speaking, of course.
Did I mention that I didn’t read very widely at the time? Goes hand-in-hand with the Catholic education thing, no doubt. You see, I read voraciously and relentlessly, unforgivingly and repeatedly, but the depth of my reading had little to do with the breadth of it. If I liked an author, I stuck by him or her. I read all their works, from top to bottom, then started again. Anything or anyone I liked, I loved. My teen and early twenties seemed to consist entirely of a series of superlatives and extremes, loves and hates, “discoveries” and obsessions, but sadly, little in the way of range. When I loved an author, or a book, or a series, they loved me back. Soon I was them, and they were me. I wore them like a badge — proudly and ostentatiously, spouting quotations and memorising passages as though my own. Is there anyone better at obsession than a teenager I wonder? I’ve yet to meet one, if there is, and I took that to its monotonous extreme. I was obsession personified.
Along with the obsession, I was also fiercely loyal.
So, it was by drawing on this loyalty that I forgave John Irving A Son of the Circus, and feigned ignorance at his recycling of old stories in Trying to Save Piggy Sneed. My patience was rewarded with the solid A Widow for One Year, and the pending release of the film version of Owen Meany. Finally, I would get to hear Owen’s “wrecked voice”, see what I believed was his vaguely Mr McGoo-like qualities — the ghostly and improbable combination of wispy blonde hair, a cracked and shrieking voice and that permanently dwarf-like height. I faced the prospect of a Hollywood version feeling both eager and tremulous. How difficult to manage! How easy to go wrong! And then my beloved John resolved my dilemma for me, distancing himself — the screenplay having strayed too far from the original story — whereupon I duly cancelled my plans to see what later became known as Simon Birch, and have continued to live in ignorant bliss.
I was delighted by the integrity of this decision — that John Irving wouldn’t allow my beloved Owen to be changed beyond recognition, knowing how dearly we readers cared for him, how loyal and committed we were to our own imaginings.
After this near-disaster, I expected John’s resurgence — a return to the core of what we loved about him. I could not get enough of New England and Vienna, motorbikes, bears, and wrestling; beautiful dead mothers, and oddly innocent yet precocious young boys. Even Canada seemed mildly interesting in an austere and remote sort of way. Surely if I still loved them all, John would too.
I had moved past A Son of the Circus by then, could pretend Piggy Sneed had never happened, and bought The Fourth Hand the same week it was released. This was the moment the cracks truly emerged. Where was his loveable protagonist? The innocent boy, the beautiful dead mother? Even the bears had been replaced with a lion — a hand-eating one, no less — and suddenly all the things I knew and believed about John Irving’s world was being slowly ripped apart.
But worse was yet to come: he shifted from the third person to first in Until I Find You. I have nothing against first person (obviously) — have employed it in my own fiction a lot — but this is not the John Irving I know or love. The self-reflexiveness that seemed both coy and gentle was suddenly brash and loud. Let me explain — and stay with me, if you can: the main character of Until I Find You, Jack Burns, wins an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay the same year that John Irving really did win his Academy Award — 1999 — the same year that Jack loses the Supporting Actor Oscar which, in Real Life, was won by Michael Caine for his role in Irving’s adaptation of Cider House Rules. (Still with me?) And then Jack goes to school at the same place where A Prayer for Owen Meany’s narrator, Johnny Wheelwright, teaches English as an adult.
See what I mean?
Coy it ain’t.
Now, what began as possible separation has shifted irrevocably to grounds for a divorce. And the straw for this blessed, overburdened camel? Last Night in Twisted River.
I had so much hope for this novel when I first picked it up — we are back in “innocent young boy with mysteriously dead beautiful mother” territory; there’s Canada and logging, and New England and icy rivers... All the stuff that made Owen and Garp, Cider House and Hotel New Hampshire such riveting reads.
And yet, there’s no love. No warmth. No humour. And, frankly, too many logs.
The real sadness, though, is that I can’t finish it. I’m sure I will one day — as my father used to say when referencing our family’s refusal to quit our lazy attachment to Catholicism, “You don’t change teams mid-season.” I will make myself finish Last Night in Twisted River because I owe that much to John Irving. And I will continue to revisit Owen and friends whenever I need a literary jolt.
But there is no going back. The divorce papers are in and this party, anyway, has moved on: I am no longer in love with John Irving.
At least in this divorce, there’ll be no the custody battle.
There. I said it.
Before my mother panics, or my in-laws investigate cross-continent custody laws, please be assured, it’s not that kind of divorce. Not one from my actual RL husband, but a divorce from my literary husband. The man I fell in love with at the tender age of 16, when his story about an oddball frustrated writer with initials for a first name and a species of fish for a surname (albeit a fictional hybrid) made me laugh and feel smart and sophisticated while bolstering my budding feminist self — all in a single insightful sentence: “Jenny felt that her education was merely a polite way to bide time, as if she were really a cow, being prepared only for the insertion of the device for artificial insemination.”
The author was John Irving and the book was The World According to Garp. (I made the hybrid bit up, but what else would you call a gar-fish crossed with a carp?) Mr Irving (we were not yet on a first-name basis) had described how I cynically viewed the cohort of students’ ambitions at my Catholic girls’ school, in words both cutting and dry — the very tone I attempted to emulate for the rest of my teen years. (In between writing really bad Don Walker-inspired poetry.)
Thus began a love affair which outlasted a century and crossed several decades, through the good times (Cider House Rules, The 158-Pound Marriage, The Hotel New Hampshire) and the What the Fuck? times (Setting Free the Bears and The Water-Method Man), taking me to the cusp of my literary desire in the form of his 1989 novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany. Newly paroled from my convent school where the “three r’s” weren’t merely taught but canonised, Irving’s blatant disregard for punctuation and capitalisation was as deliciously rebellious to me as sex before marriage and Vodka and Passionfruit UDLs. I wanted to have “UNSPEAKABLE OUTRAGE” tattooed on my inner thigh, and experienced a giddy delight every time Owen delivered his unrelenting all-caps voice. I decided right there and then that John Irving had to be the most outrageous, experimental, and hilarious author there was. (I mentioned the Catholic convent thing, didn’t I?)
Better yet, the man was handsome — according to the book jacket anyway. (It is only in the process of having watched so many of my friends’ books get published that I’ve learnt the art/ifice of the author photo.) In short, I thought John Irving was creative, inventive, brave and original, and the only man I could ever truly love — literarily speaking, of course.
Did I mention that I didn’t read very widely at the time? Goes hand-in-hand with the Catholic education thing, no doubt. You see, I read voraciously and relentlessly, unforgivingly and repeatedly, but the depth of my reading had little to do with the breadth of it. If I liked an author, I stuck by him or her. I read all their works, from top to bottom, then started again. Anything or anyone I liked, I loved. My teen and early twenties seemed to consist entirely of a series of superlatives and extremes, loves and hates, “discoveries” and obsessions, but sadly, little in the way of range. When I loved an author, or a book, or a series, they loved me back. Soon I was them, and they were me. I wore them like a badge — proudly and ostentatiously, spouting quotations and memorising passages as though my own. Is there anyone better at obsession than a teenager I wonder? I’ve yet to meet one, if there is, and I took that to its monotonous extreme. I was obsession personified.
Along with the obsession, I was also fiercely loyal.
So, it was by drawing on this loyalty that I forgave John Irving A Son of the Circus, and feigned ignorance at his recycling of old stories in Trying to Save Piggy Sneed. My patience was rewarded with the solid A Widow for One Year, and the pending release of the film version of Owen Meany. Finally, I would get to hear Owen’s “wrecked voice”, see what I believed was his vaguely Mr McGoo-like qualities — the ghostly and improbable combination of wispy blonde hair, a cracked and shrieking voice and that permanently dwarf-like height. I faced the prospect of a Hollywood version feeling both eager and tremulous. How difficult to manage! How easy to go wrong! And then my beloved John resolved my dilemma for me, distancing himself — the screenplay having strayed too far from the original story — whereupon I duly cancelled my plans to see what later became known as Simon Birch, and have continued to live in ignorant bliss.
I was delighted by the integrity of this decision — that John Irving wouldn’t allow my beloved Owen to be changed beyond recognition, knowing how dearly we readers cared for him, how loyal and committed we were to our own imaginings.
After this near-disaster, I expected John’s resurgence — a return to the core of what we loved about him. I could not get enough of New England and Vienna, motorbikes, bears, and wrestling; beautiful dead mothers, and oddly innocent yet precocious young boys. Even Canada seemed mildly interesting in an austere and remote sort of way. Surely if I still loved them all, John would too.
I had moved past A Son of the Circus by then, could pretend Piggy Sneed had never happened, and bought The Fourth Hand the same week it was released. This was the moment the cracks truly emerged. Where was his loveable protagonist? The innocent boy, the beautiful dead mother? Even the bears had been replaced with a lion — a hand-eating one, no less — and suddenly all the things I knew and believed about John Irving’s world was being slowly ripped apart.
But worse was yet to come: he shifted from the third person to first in Until I Find You. I have nothing against first person (obviously) — have employed it in my own fiction a lot — but this is not the John Irving I know or love. The self-reflexiveness that seemed both coy and gentle was suddenly brash and loud. Let me explain — and stay with me, if you can: the main character of Until I Find You, Jack Burns, wins an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay the same year that John Irving really did win his Academy Award — 1999 — the same year that Jack loses the Supporting Actor Oscar which, in Real Life, was won by Michael Caine for his role in Irving’s adaptation of Cider House Rules. (Still with me?) And then Jack goes to school at the same place where A Prayer for Owen Meany’s narrator, Johnny Wheelwright, teaches English as an adult.
See what I mean?
Coy it ain’t.
Now, what began as possible separation has shifted irrevocably to grounds for a divorce. And the straw for this blessed, overburdened camel? Last Night in Twisted River.
I had so much hope for this novel when I first picked it up — we are back in “innocent young boy with mysteriously dead beautiful mother” territory; there’s Canada and logging, and New England and icy rivers... All the stuff that made Owen and Garp, Cider House and Hotel New Hampshire such riveting reads.
And yet, there’s no love. No warmth. No humour. And, frankly, too many logs.
The real sadness, though, is that I can’t finish it. I’m sure I will one day — as my father used to say when referencing our family’s refusal to quit our lazy attachment to Catholicism, “You don’t change teams mid-season.” I will make myself finish Last Night in Twisted River because I owe that much to John Irving. And I will continue to revisit Owen and friends whenever I need a literary jolt.
But there is no going back. The divorce papers are in and this party, anyway, has moved on: I am no longer in love with John Irving.
At least in this divorce, there’ll be no the custody battle.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
The Gender Divide
I just posted an extract from my blog on this groovy little gidget thingy called the Gender Genie and a weird thing happened. I turned into a bloke. (Just don't tell my husband.) According to the website, these people were inspired by a New York Times article that argued they could gauge the gender of the author of texts based on particular word choices and frequency of use. In other words, it's a question of mathematics. Or Algorithms, more specifically.
Here's the thing, I tried this test over and over, and no matter how many cutesy things I say, how fast I bat my eyelashes, or how high I like my heels, apparently I write like a bloke. Sixty to seventy percent male words over female ones, every single time.
Now, this might seem like a simplistic approach to understanding something as complex, fraught and slippery as the idea of gender, and gendered writing, but it interests me because it parallels other experiences I've had. You see, on every forum and bulletin board I've visited anonymously, no matter which country, subject, or field of interests, posters consistently assume I'm male. Not just some of them. All of them. Until I say something declaring my hand, something unambivalent or clearly gendered (like the fact that I'm a mum, or that I went to a girls' school), whereupon I am inevitably met with a chorus of, "Sorry! I thought you were a dude." (Bloke, if Australian.) Or, "You sound like a guy." And variations on that theme. Over and over, everywhere I go.
Now, I've always had interests in areas not traditionally associated with women - footy, politics and debating - so perhaps this shouldn't surprise me. Except that in my fiction, I deliberately and carefully write for women, about women, and about girls. I'm not interested in writing for men, don't choose subjects that would matter to the blokes I know. I actively and carefully target women. As readers, and as subjects.
So you can understand my confusion. And, frankly, concern. Because here's this mathematical theory essentially declaring me a man trapped in a woman's keyboard - a theory that seems to hold up when tested amongst real people - and now I have to wonder if maybe there's something to it. Or at least, something to the perception that there is such a thing as gendered writing. Even if that perception is among readers, rather than writers, or something we've learnt rather than imbibed. Either way, it's tricky.
So why don't you give the test a shot and tell me how it goes? Were they right, or were they wrong? Or are they as confused as you are? (Try to sample at least 500 words - that's the recommendation. But even when I cheated, posting half what they asked, they still pegged me as bloke.)
P.S. For those having trouble posting comments - sorry! I thought I could fix it - twitter me or send a message and I'll try to sort it out. Or post on your behalf.
Here's the thing, I tried this test over and over, and no matter how many cutesy things I say, how fast I bat my eyelashes, or how high I like my heels, apparently I write like a bloke. Sixty to seventy percent male words over female ones, every single time.
Now, this might seem like a simplistic approach to understanding something as complex, fraught and slippery as the idea of gender, and gendered writing, but it interests me because it parallels other experiences I've had. You see, on every forum and bulletin board I've visited anonymously, no matter which country, subject, or field of interests, posters consistently assume I'm male. Not just some of them. All of them. Until I say something declaring my hand, something unambivalent or clearly gendered (like the fact that I'm a mum, or that I went to a girls' school), whereupon I am inevitably met with a chorus of, "Sorry! I thought you were a dude." (Bloke, if Australian.) Or, "You sound like a guy." And variations on that theme. Over and over, everywhere I go.
Now, I've always had interests in areas not traditionally associated with women - footy, politics and debating - so perhaps this shouldn't surprise me. Except that in my fiction, I deliberately and carefully write for women, about women, and about girls. I'm not interested in writing for men, don't choose subjects that would matter to the blokes I know. I actively and carefully target women. As readers, and as subjects.
So you can understand my confusion. And, frankly, concern. Because here's this mathematical theory essentially declaring me a man trapped in a woman's keyboard - a theory that seems to hold up when tested amongst real people - and now I have to wonder if maybe there's something to it. Or at least, something to the perception that there is such a thing as gendered writing. Even if that perception is among readers, rather than writers, or something we've learnt rather than imbibed. Either way, it's tricky.
So why don't you give the test a shot and tell me how it goes? Were they right, or were they wrong? Or are they as confused as you are? (Try to sample at least 500 words - that's the recommendation. But even when I cheated, posting half what they asked, they still pegged me as bloke.)
P.S. For those having trouble posting comments - sorry! I thought I could fix it - twitter me or send a message and I'll try to sort it out. Or post on your behalf.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Fact or Fiction: Does it matter?
Australian director Peter Weir's latest film is finally out in Australia. Called The Way Back, it deals with the story of a group of Russian prisoners who make a grueling 4000 mile escape from a Siberian gulag during the Second World War. Based on a book by Slavomir Rawicz of the same title, it depicts what's been claimed to be a true story of the author's journey overland to India.
As so often happens for "true stories", questions have been raised about its veracity, and the likely role Rawicz played. Weir himself almost dropped the project on the basis of these claims, believing the only way the film could work was if it was a "true story". It does seem to have had a negative impact on its American release, having come out there in January, just in time for the 2011 Oscars (it's been nominated for Make Up), but died a quick and nearly silent death within weeks. Maybe it's the ruthless tentpole market that Weir talks about in the below interview, or maybe it was a direct response to the queries regarding the "true story" tag. Either way, the rumours couldn't have helped in a world that seems obsessed with the "true story" over the fictional one.
In the interview captured below, Weir decided to pursue the project, despite lingering doubts, largely because the research he unearthed suggested that there were many documented stories of escapes similar to this one; that the fact that they have happened in some form, in similar situations and with similar outcomes was enough to hang the "based on a true story" tag on The Way Back.
My question is, though, why the obsession with the "true story" label? Why does a dramatic feature film have to have its grounding in actual events? Is it less satisfying if it's fictional - made up, created in someone's head - rather than taken from their life? Actual experience? Real events?
Where do we draw the line anyway? If it happened somewhere, or we think it happened somewhere, is that "fact" enough? Even that it could happen somewhere - do we need to know to whom, when, and where?
How much non-fiction is true anyway? It's supposed to be true, of course, but how can we know? And why must we know? What is truth anyway, when all of these renderings come in the form of someone else's musings, their perspective, their slant? Always the story is viewed through a distorted or filtered prism. It is always someone's take - whether the screenwriter, the author, the director or even the producer. Maybe it's even the actors'. Or a combination of all of these. How can we know where the story starts and the facts stop?
Worse still, this push for "facts" in our stories could arguably be the reason for so many literary hoaxes of late, James Frey being probably the most widely vilified. He couldn't sell his novel as fiction, so he sold it as memoir. He really had spent an afternoon in jail for drug related offenses - didn't that qualify him to tell a "true account" of the life of a drug addict who, after a stint in prison, redeems himself and gets clean?
Did the fact that this "memoir" was plugged as self-help somehow make Frey's crime worse than had he written a "factual" account with no redeeming message of hope? No, "look what I did - and survived!" theme underpinning it? I'd guess if we asked Oprah, her answer would be yes. It's much worse.
My question is, are we kidding ourselves that we can somehow learn more from "non-fiction" than we can from fiction? That its message is somehow more reliable, more accessible, and more believable because the events "really happened".
Peter Weir believes that he'd found enough evidence in the research about other stories of long walks across the desert to justify his faith in the veracity of The Way Back as a "based on true events" story. Maybe he did.
My question is, does it matter?
Here's the link to the interview.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2011/3138933.htm
As so often happens for "true stories", questions have been raised about its veracity, and the likely role Rawicz played. Weir himself almost dropped the project on the basis of these claims, believing the only way the film could work was if it was a "true story". It does seem to have had a negative impact on its American release, having come out there in January, just in time for the 2011 Oscars (it's been nominated for Make Up), but died a quick and nearly silent death within weeks. Maybe it's the ruthless tentpole market that Weir talks about in the below interview, or maybe it was a direct response to the queries regarding the "true story" tag. Either way, the rumours couldn't have helped in a world that seems obsessed with the "true story" over the fictional one.
In the interview captured below, Weir decided to pursue the project, despite lingering doubts, largely because the research he unearthed suggested that there were many documented stories of escapes similar to this one; that the fact that they have happened in some form, in similar situations and with similar outcomes was enough to hang the "based on a true story" tag on The Way Back.
My question is, though, why the obsession with the "true story" label? Why does a dramatic feature film have to have its grounding in actual events? Is it less satisfying if it's fictional - made up, created in someone's head - rather than taken from their life? Actual experience? Real events?
Where do we draw the line anyway? If it happened somewhere, or we think it happened somewhere, is that "fact" enough? Even that it could happen somewhere - do we need to know to whom, when, and where?
How much non-fiction is true anyway? It's supposed to be true, of course, but how can we know? And why must we know? What is truth anyway, when all of these renderings come in the form of someone else's musings, their perspective, their slant? Always the story is viewed through a distorted or filtered prism. It is always someone's take - whether the screenwriter, the author, the director or even the producer. Maybe it's even the actors'. Or a combination of all of these. How can we know where the story starts and the facts stop?
Worse still, this push for "facts" in our stories could arguably be the reason for so many literary hoaxes of late, James Frey being probably the most widely vilified. He couldn't sell his novel as fiction, so he sold it as memoir. He really had spent an afternoon in jail for drug related offenses - didn't that qualify him to tell a "true account" of the life of a drug addict who, after a stint in prison, redeems himself and gets clean?
Did the fact that this "memoir" was plugged as self-help somehow make Frey's crime worse than had he written a "factual" account with no redeeming message of hope? No, "look what I did - and survived!" theme underpinning it? I'd guess if we asked Oprah, her answer would be yes. It's much worse.
My question is, are we kidding ourselves that we can somehow learn more from "non-fiction" than we can from fiction? That its message is somehow more reliable, more accessible, and more believable because the events "really happened".
Peter Weir believes that he'd found enough evidence in the research about other stories of long walks across the desert to justify his faith in the veracity of The Way Back as a "based on true events" story. Maybe he did.
My question is, does it matter?
Here's the link to the interview.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2011/3138933.htm
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)