Nothing dictates my
reading, but a searching, a searching for a text, a stumbling through
texts, half-awake or half brain-dead, drunk or drugged, an oaf or
troll bursting subtle eloquent walls of thought, missing obvious
puns, not connecting the larger implications to our world today.
Feeling no less hopeless after I've read than before I've begun. My
reading solves no problems. Well.
What is the problem
I'm to be solving? The world has problems, certainly. Some: poverty,
inequality, capitalism, overworked/underworked, the oppression of
representation, black people killed in the streets not being enough
to direct any positive changes for black people not yet killed in the
streets, children sold into sex slavery, war in iraq, afghanistan,
pakistan, yemen, ukraine, and I'm not sure where exactly in africa.
Fucking climate change. The fact that we as a culture will not do
anything to prevent a three foot rise in sea-levels. My reading won't
change that. Reading isn't an equipment suited to the challenge of
these problems. Reading avant-garde poetry, critical theory, novels,
ancient epic, etc., none of it is any way to stop the morbid tractor
trailer from delivering its end-days cargo post haste. If I can't
give it up, does that make me as cruel and selfish as the freeway
full of Hummer-drivers? Does it damn me to the Koch brother circle of
hell? This is a question of ethics--what ought I do in the face of
evil--I can't answer. Worse, though reading could maybe help me
answer it, I still don't have an answer even though I read for much
of the day.
At some point, it
seems to me, the private life of reading I've been grumpily living
for all this time becomes as damning to me, if not directly damning
to the planet and its many civilizations--indirectly, one straw only.
Other strikes against me are the other straws I couldn't encourage
off the camel's back with me when I jumped. I understand if this
comes across as latent evangelism--not of a religious faith, but of
an environmental morality. I am not wholly comfortable with that
idea; I'd much rather have my own epiphany, run my own life, and
leave others to destroy themselves. If there's one piece of clarity I
have thanks to writing, it is the knowledge of our
interconnectedness. Without disturbing others it is impossible to
live one's life. That is, unless we can change the behavior of
others, there is no hope for our planet and no hope for us.
Reading--though
maybe I need to add some non-fiction to the mix--offers a
transmission of information. If I did add non-fiction to the mix, it
is likely I would know something--facts--about the imminent
destruction waiting at the end of our brightly burning, shorter and
shorter fuse. I could use those facts in turn to write my own
response, to blast out my own synthesis and make my own case and
argument. But who would hear my argument? Readers.
What if readers are
powerless to fix the problem? If readers are powerless, then writing
has no efficacy whatsoever. The black man calls the police, but they
don't show up. The black man calls the police and calls the police
and calls the police, but no one shows up. Calling the police is not
an efficacious solution for the black man, and, writing for readers
is no way to save the world, not even for a writer. At least, it
won't work the way I always thought it would.
I think of books
with direct effect--Uncle Tom's Cabin, at least given the stories I
know about it, fits this bill though I think it might be the only
one. Woodward and Bernstein busting open Watergate is another example
of how this should work, or used to work. American's aren't
stimulated any longer by novels, not to action or anything by
fleeting pathos. Journalism might as well be shelved alongside the
fiction--it has none of the immediate impact it once did. The
audience and spectators of the 21st century are de-sensitized to the
slow read, blind to the movements of that internal stage, cannot
sustain a complete sentence long enough to connect it to real action.
This is proven by the fact that our system continues on its happy
doomsday avalanche inspite of excellent journalism being conducted at
tremendous personal expense--both in terms of the journalist's own
cash and his or her life. It seems that the very power of narrative
has been so completely co-opted by the status quo that the dozens of
stories written and filmed of the fallaciousness of the American
blunder in the middle east (not to mention our environmental policy,
and on and on) cannot for even a minute contend with the idealogical
nightmare of something like American Sniper. Narrative is only
worthwhile to the bulk of American civilization when it enshrines the
party line. Subversive narrative is written only for the reader of
such narratives; Writing for readers will not save the world.
What then, do we
give up writing?
Of course not.
Change the way we write? Change where we write. Change who we write
to--if not for, exactly.
Is narrative dead?
Narrative, in its full nuance can never die. It is fundamental to the
human character--or, at least, to the linguistic patterns in which it
is engendered. This fundamental nature is in fact what allows the
narrative to fracture and shatter and spread, to remain open,
incomplete and unfinished, allows the world into the narrative.
Push and express
and share and subvert. This requires not just the writing of works,
but the dissemination of these same works (readings, printing,
digital realm, friendship). May I return to this topic of
dissemination soon.
