In search of sleep in literature
Sleep in Literature
The oblivion of sleep is a parallel of death. Time stands still. In sleep, we remain in the cocoon of eternity. And yet, the idea of sleep holds within it the promise of an awakening, a resurrection.
States of pre-adolescent sexuality, psychological disorder, drug- or alcohol-induced stupor, and even some diseases are all variants of the sleep experience.
But its more than oblivion: sleep connects us to other worlds. Hamlet says, “To die, to sleep;/ To sleep: perchance to dream”. In sleep , we swim in the vast ocean of the unconscious, where our deepest drives, fears, regrets, and wishes churn around us.
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Cicero’s Tusculanae Quaestiones, “On the contempt of death” (45 BC)
In his philosophical writings, Cicero touches on the Greek myth of Endymion. It goes something like this: Selene, the goddess of the moon, is said to have fallen in love with the mortal, Endymion, whom she spied asleep in a cave on Mount Latmos. So that he might never grow old, she begged Zeus to keep him that way always, and the powerful God agreed.
Keats further immortalizes Endymion in his poem of the same name:
A THING of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
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Gregory of Tours, The Legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus (Sixth Century)
As legend has it, around 250 AD, Jambilicus, Martinian, Constantine (also known as Exacustodianus), Anthony, John, Dionysius & Maximillian, seven youths fleeing an Imperial slaughter, hide in a cave on Ochlon Hill outside Ephesus. The Emperor slyly orders the cave’s only entrance to be walled in. More than 200 years pass. One day, some shepherds disturb the stones from the entrance. The youths wake up refreshed and in full health, as if they have slept but a night. After a week, they re-enter the cave and fall asleep again, this time in the sleep of death.
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William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1623)
Lady Macbeth’s guilt over her role in the murder of the innocent king is deeply rooted in her unconscious—to such a degree, in fact, that it brings about a psychological disorder in her personality and she begins to sleepwalk. But Shakespeare intends not only to reveal the guilty conscience of one character. He wants to lay bare the entire tragic process in its extremity: how evil repays.
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Charles Perrault, “La Belle au bois dormant” (1697)
Writing at the time of Louis XIV, Perrault’s “La Belle au bois dormant” is the earliest known version of this fairy tale. In the story, a King and Queen are blessed with a longed for daughter, whom they call Aurora. Unhappily, the evil fairy Carrabosse curses the infant, declaring that one day Princess Aurora will prick her finger on a spindle and die. However, one of the seven good fairies called on to bless the infant is able to mitigate the curse. Princess Aurora will not die after all; she will merely fall into a deep sleep for one hundred years, from which she will then be awakened by the kiss of a dashing Prince.
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Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle (1819)
Early Americans established a literary tradition in which civilization conflicts with freedom. The male characters are often seen fleeing from the civilizing influence of towns and women. In this story, Rip Van Winkle, a colonial Dutch villager, escapes his nagging wife by wandering into the forest to hunt. He drinks elves brew and falls into a deep sleep from which he awakens twenty years later to a changed and bewildering world.
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Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers (1836)
“The object that presented itself to the eyes of the astonished clerk, was a boy—a wonderfully fat boy—habited as a serving lad, standing upright on the mat, with his eyes closed as if in sleep.”
In the ‘wonderfully fat’ character of Joe, Dickens describes the main symptoms of Obesity Hypoventilation Syndrome (OHS), a condition related to sleep apnea. The condition was originally referred to as Pickwickian Syndrome after its appearance in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, the first of Dickens’ many novels.
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George Eliot, Silas Marner (1861)
Variants of sleep figure in this gorgeous moral tale: On New Year’s Eve, the desperate Molly, carrying her sleeping child, walks through a blizzard to find the husband who has disowned her. Tired and cold, Molly seeks comfort from a phial of opium, succumbs to a stupor outside of Silas Marner’s cottage, falls asleep in the snow. In the meantime, Marner stands in a cataleptic fit at the open door of his cottage, grieving the loss of his gold. Molly’s child, a toddler, attracted by the fire in Marner’s house, wanders through the snow and falls asleep in front of the hearth.
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Anton Chekhov, ‘Sleepy’ (1888)
In this short story, Chekhov presents sleeplessness as a kind of madness. A young nursemaid must tend to a wailing child all through the night and, then, in the morning and through the rest of the day, complete many other chores. At nightfall, she must take up her duties with the baby once more, who wails again hour after hour. The screams of the infant conspire with the calls of birds and animals in the darkness and the shadows in the room and the poor nursemaid’s own sorrowful memories until she can bear it no longer. She must sleep—she must—and she does.
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Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939)
Schemes, greed, nymphomania, betrayal, drug abuse, lies, double-crossing, more lies, more greed, more betrayal. All on the way to “sleeping the big sleep”.
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Oliver Sacks, Awakenings (1973)
In this work of non-fiction, Sacks chronicles his efforts in the late 1960s to help patients at a New York hospital who had been victims of the 1920s encephalitis lethargica epidemic (a form of ‘sleeping sickness’). He used an experimental drug called L-DOPA, which had the effect of waking the patients. This awakening was tragically short-lived, however. All of the patients eventually returned to their frozen ‘sleep’ state.
Review: The Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
A view from the bottom of the stairs
As an admirer of Lorrie Moore’s short stories, I’ve long looked forward to the publication of The Gate at the Stairs, her first novel in fourteen years.
Tassie Keltjin, a naïve student at a university in the Midwest, takes a job as a babysitter for a couple in the process of adopting a child. The time she spends with them and with their little girl, Mary-Emma, gives her a view outside her own restricted upbringing. She gets glimpses of a sophisticated but dark adult world with complicated relationships and deep sorrows. She also becomes increasingly aware of a new, bewildering America—one born on 9/11, a country now full of suspicion, racial profiling, and preparations for war.
There is much about this book to love: Moore is verbally dexterous, capable of spinning vivid passages that are comedic and poignant at once, scenes–in Moore’s own words–full of “idle spirals and desperate verbal coils”. As a whole, however, the work flounders. Innovations that are fresh and effective in a short story, when stretched to fit the dimensions of a novel, begin to feel gimmicky. This is off-putting, drawing the reader out of the story to puzzle over technique.
Then, it’s never clear what the story is about. Even Moore seems confused. The opening mother-daughter thread quickly frays. The theme of immanent war flashes, replaced quickly by a succession of others: insolvable race-relations, implacable jihad, the complexities of a rotten marriage. Tangled asides on food, flowers, music, politics, and religion appear, but none are woven into any pattern. The Gate at the Stairs is less a novel than several mismatched short stories masquerading as a novel. Not only is this disappointing from a writer of Moore’s flair and expertise, it’s devastating.
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A version of this review first appeared in The Courier-Mail in October 2009.
Review: Don’t Look Behind You, But . . . by Peter Allison
Peter Allison’s sparkling new book, Don’t Look Behind You, But. . . is a companion to his first foray in travel writing,Whatever You Do, Don’t Run. Both books recount his adventures as an African safari guide.
These are campfire tales of the best kind: rollicking, often ridiculous, terrifyingly funny yarns. There’s the one about the amorous rhino smitten with the safari jeep full of startled travelers. And the one where Allison loses sight of two tourists in the Namibian desert. And the time he feels a tickle only to discover a rhombic night adder (the slowest moving of snakes) crossing his foot. Allison is a terrible driver who regularly gets lost. The batteries of his torch fail in the worst moments. He’s afraid of heights and forgets important warnings, which, in one situation, puts him in a field of landmines.
The voice of the hapless hero is fun, but beyond the hilarity, Allison touches on issues of great seriousness. He shows the heartbreaking—but correct—practice of non-interference in the lives of the animals the guides have grown to love. He gives us glimpses of gorgeous habitats that are diminishing at a stunning rate. The guides are constantly dismantling poachers’ snares. On every page, Allison’s deep love of the continent and the rare wildlife that populates it shines through.
Don’t Look Behind You, But. . . is an engaging, fast-paced romp. For anyone who’s ever been on safari, this book will stir your memories. For anyone who’s ever wanted to go, it may be just the encouragement you need to finally get there.
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Review first published in The Courier-Mail in September 2009.
Performance Anxiety
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First off, I have to mention that I’m not a performer. I’m a writer. In my case, that means I’m very uncomfortable getting up, standing in front of real people, being looked at, and speaking. All my life I’ve found ways to hide in, among and behind words. I’ve used written words as an escape from all sorts of things: everyday life, housework, a ‘real’ job. I can’t count how many times I’ve turned to a book or a lovely blank page to avoid boredom, anxiety, embarrassment, facing some general unpleasantness. As for spoken words, well, I’m tempted to mention my ideas really fast, to talk a lot, to shoot them out, because they are just going to disappear, fade, dissolve, and be forgotten anyway. On those rare occasions when I do find myself speaking in front of others, every instinct I have screams out to grab paper and books, and to hold them up in front of me as a shield. Every instinct tells me to clutch the typewritten speech in my sweaty palms and read it out. To fling about big words so no one notices how really nervous I am.
Years ago, I went to a talk by Oliver Sachs. He was introduced by Susan Sontag in glowing terms. As she spoke, his cheeks grew more and more red, and he sunk more and more deeply into his chair. When at last he stood, he could only stammer a few words of thanks and apologise haltingly for “being more comfortable with the written word than the spoken one”. I understood just how he felt. He tried again, and again the words didn’t quite take shape. They seemed to drop to the floor like lead balls. By this time, the audience was thick with empathy. Sachs persevered, however, and his fascination with the workings of the human brain and body—what we were there to hear about—eventually took over. Soon he was speaking fluently and unselfconsciously, giving amazing accounts of neurological phenomena. He was splendid.
I’ve never forgotten that talk or the transformation that occurred before my eyes. I often summon the memory when I’m called on to speak and end up stammering. Because what we think of as a shield might really be a cage. If we hide behind written words or by spoken words that are uttered too fast, too formally, we might end up caging off our experience, our personality, the very point we are there to make. We remain distanced from the content, and the audience that much more so. Each talk holds in it the potential for that perfect moment when our words fade into the background and the subject matter rises up, when the speaker and the content and medium of language merge with audience; when the moment itself becomes a work of art, existing as an artefact of experience, no less significant than material artefacts, even though it remains transient and ephemeral. For here I am twenty years on recalling that talk by Oliver Sachs. It never really disappeared.
This idea of the performative nature of words has been given new focus in the last few years. Initially based on the work of J.L. Austin, who wrote in the middle of the last century, the adjective ‘performative’ has come to be applied to much more than speech acts. There is performative writing, which is used when describing writing in which the subject and the object are a fluid composition, when the audience responds viscerally as well as cognitively to what is written. There is performative ethnography in which the investigator of other cultures neither calls the shots nor stands back out of sight but becomes part of the investigation. Norman Denzin, a social scientist who has published widely on this way of approaching ‘the subject’, speaks of ‘the performative sensibility’ that infuses the present moment and focuses on that indefinable quality of engagement, whether in an interview, a conversation, a text or–might I add?–a presentation.
I recently attended a lecture that addressed this very issue both in content and in demonstration. The subject wasPerformative Research, and it was given by Dr. Brad Haseman of the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT. With his first words, I was engaged. He mentioned his background in drama, and the fact that he situated himself in an academy in order to “wonder about wonder”, and that he came to see in all this wondering how creative practice fits into the bigger picture of research and in which ways it extends knowledge. The whole time he spoke, I kept thinking how there was an interesting layering going on – a synthesis of experience: The actor, the dramatist in him, may have been altered by all the wondering and theorizing and hypothesizing, but the performer was there in front of us—bigger than life. The lecture itself was an engaging, inspiring, entertaining performance, and it embodied Haseman’s many roles and interests, as well as much of his experience and personality. He poured all of this into the moment and brought the moment to life. He was demonstrating exactly what he was there to talk about. Another ephemeral artefact. But not so ephemeral really because like watching Oliver Sachs overcome his shyness, it’s made an impact and stayed with me.
One of the most striking performative moments I can think is the example of the young Gertrude Stein. It’s probably the best known anecdote about her. At Radcliff College in the 1890s, she became a student of William James. On a particularly nice spring day during final exams in James’ course she wrote at the top of her paper: “Dear Professor James, I am sorry but really I do not feel a bit like an examination paper in philosophy today.” The next day she received a postcard from James saying, “I understand perfectly how you feel. I often feel like that myself.” He gave her the highest mark in his course.
I can hear even now the gasps in the lecture hall when a philosophy professor of mine told that story. The other students and I were impressed with Stein’s gustiness. I’m sure a few of us wished we had thought of the idea ourselves. I know I did. Though, of course, our professor was quite clear that we wouldn’t be so lucky if we pulled such a stunt. At the time, we paid more attention to Stein’s rebelliousness, her blithe dismissal of classroom convention, come what may.
What became clearer to me later was the perfection of her act, both in its philosophical nature and in her exquisite performance of it. Stein was an exceptional student. She knew her stuff. She could have written the exam. And she would have done it brilliantly. William James knew this. But there was something stridently philosophical in her refusal to be the good student and in her preference for the loveliness of the spring day. She had taken all that she had learned about philosophy in the course with James and brought it up to another level. Her response to the day and to the exam was also a comment on the subject of philosophy. Her act, part wit, part whim, remains a delightful artefact even 120 years later.
I’m pondering all of this because I have a talk to give. Even though I take comfort in the bravery of Oliver Sachs, and in the fact that our academies are now embracing the performative in scholarly inquiry, my knees still shake. I still feel inclined to write out a formal speech and read it word for word.
But I won’t. Instead, when I stand in front of the crowd, I’ll keep a little of Gertrude Stein’s spirit by me, her witty come-what-may attitude. I may not succeed. The audience may not become engaged. The moment may not transcend the subject matter. But unless I give it the chance to succeed by putting myself out there, by allowing the subject to speak through me, I’ll never know what might have been. I’ll only know the stiff formal words on the page in front of me read out in a shy halting voice. And that’s all the audience will know. The event won’t have any chance to live, and we’ll all miss out on that layered, ephemeral, shining moment trying to break through.
This article was first published in Arts Hub in 2006. I’m proud to say that, since that time, I’ve had the opportunity to speak publicly a number of times. So far no one had turned to stone, and I haven’t embarrassed myself–well, at least, not too much.
Journey through the centre of things
- A narrative bridge
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The Middle as a Bridge Much attention is given to story beginnings. Writers craft first scenes with great care and deliberation in the attempt to compel the reader to turn the page. This section of a story may be written over and over, each word weighed, images carefully juxtaposed.
Similarly, writers usually have an idea of the way they want the story to end and give a great deal of thought to where the characters end up in relation to each other.
The beginning of a story is the embarkation point, the start of a journey. The ending, of course, is the destination. The journey itself, with its twists and turns, its rugged terrain and changing weather, happens in the middle. The most demanding part of a story to read, the middle can also be perilous to write: the plot might lead to cul-de-sacs and dead ends; pacing can lag and stall; characters might lose motivation, acting illogically or unbelievably; inspiration could abandon you; the tedium of writing make it difficult to journey on.
It’s useful to think of the middle of a story as a suspension bridge over a high gorge. The reader can’t travel to the other side without it. It’s your job as the writer to craft the bridge with enough knotted rope and wooden slats to span the gulf, bear weight, withstand high winds, and look picturesque both from a distance and close up. If it isn’t strong enough or woven together carefully, it might sag, even collapse, leaving your readers hanging.
The Way Forward The middle of a story sustains interest by building tension. Escalating conflict is key. Throughout the middle section, the main characters undergo a series of complications and difficulties. There are different ways to approach this.
One of the classic story structures, most often seen in comedies, romances and mysteries, is to set up a situation in which the hero’s first attempts to solve the problem actually make it worse. Misunderstandings abound. This failure heightens the drama, offering an added sense of relief when the hero finally resolves the crisis and order is restored.
Another pattern, found more often in tragedies, is that in which each complication leads to a crisis that is temporarily resolved but which leads inexorably towards the ultimate crisis, the final undoing—in other words, the climax. Throughout, hope alternates with disappointment. The characters hold on tight, believing they have some influence over events, but as the story unfolds, it becomes clearer and clearer they will be forever altered by what’s happening.
Middles deal with the primary struggles of a story. The ‘dark moment’ occurs in this section. This is when the main character reaches a decision point after which there is no going back. Supporting characters play key roles by underscoring flaws, causing divisions or providing opportunities for confrontations that intensify the conflict.
This section is also the place in the story where you have the best opportunity to elaborate on motivations, offer insights into behaviours, and reveal critical aspects of the emotional journeys of your characters. Throughout the middle, you have the chance to weave images and forge connections in order to make the story stronger, to point out the interesting features in the narrative landscape, and to move the plot forward step by step.
Travel Tips After promising beginnings, middles often become muddled. Most of this is the result of insufficient conflict, unmotivated characters or not enough intensity of action. To avoid a sagging centre, try these methods:
- Continually raise the stakes on your characters’ emotional struggles. Create a sense of desperation: characters must feel compelled not only to act but to act now.
- Give your hero conflicts he can’t avoid, temptations she can’t resist, problems that underscore personality flaws.
- Advance both inner and outer conflicts—they work together. External problems seem solvable but become insurmountable.
- Look for ways to chart the progression towards self-knowledge. Psychological insight that is initially missing from a character is unavoidable by the end of the story.
- Elicit emotional responses from the reader. Depending on the story you’re telling, look for ways to summon anxiety, excitement, fear, a sense of foreboding, or delight. Beginnings are designed to elicit the spark of interest in your characters; middles are where the reader learns to care about them.
- Use the element of surprise, unexpected turns, and shifts in storylines, which serve to control the narrative so that all the action presses towards a conclusion that becomes more and more inevitable.
The Journey Itself The story is not simply about crossing the expanse step by step. Concentrating too much on the mechanics of storytelling—the muscles required to take the next step, the fuel you’ll need, the weight of your pack—misses something crucial. Take the time to look around and enjoy the view. There is delight in the journey itself, in the sense of adventure, of being somewhere new, taking in a view rarely seen. Seek pleasure in the process as a writer, and you’ll have a greater chance creating something similar for the reader.
Maps, itineraries, reservations are tools to make the experience of travelling happen more smoothly, but they don’t guarantee a successful trip. Creativity is a mysterious force. All the tips and techniques in the world won’t necessarily yield a good story. Trust in the process is paramount. It’s what allows the magic to happen. As Leonard Cohen said, “If I knew where the good songs come from, I’d go there more often.”
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This article first appeared in the Perilous Adventures Newsletter in 2008.
In search of whales in literature: postscript
The psyche is an ocean to be fished
I learned too late about Carl Jung’s mysterious Red Book, or I would have featured it in the “in search of whales” list. Over several decades, Jung used the Red Book as the medium within which to explore his deepest unconscious, giving the earliest glimpses of his best known concepts–that all of humanity shares a pool of ancient wisdom he called the collective unconscious. Jung saw the psyche as “an ocean that could be fished for enlightenment and healing”. The Red Book is both the place where Jung originated this idea and where he situated his own soul for such enlightenment. There, he sought and battled and tamed many unusual creatures.
(In The New York Times Magazine (26 September 2009), Sara Corbett explores the history surrounding the book and why it took so long to reach the public.)
In search of . . . whales in literature
To scan the treatment of whales in literature is to track the growing confidence of man upon the harsh and unforgiving seas. Early man’s knowledge of cetacea came first from the observations of sailors. Naturally, the appearance of a frolicsome creature of ten feet or so that seemed to play and smile was a welcome sight to those aboard lonely vessels; in most early myths dolphins are represented as the merciful side of a dangerous environment. The appearance of a massive 70-foot creature spouting ‘vapors’ and then quickly submerging elicited other emotions; in the early myths, whales often represent the terrifying and mysterious aspects of the ocean. Sightings of whales by early sailors were the basis of stories across cultures that described ‘monsters of the deep’, dragons, and other terrifying creatures.
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The Book of Jonah (written after 530 BCE)
In Judeo-Christian stories, the belly of the whale is often used to represent Hell, and the whale’s jaws as Hell’s gates. The image of the mighty whale is connected with the terrifying biblical sea monster, Leviathan. The ‘big fish’ that swallowed the sinner Jonah is commonly interpreted to be a whale, which also connects the image of the whale with the idea of rebirth. God’s awesome power and his willingness to forgive are united in the story of Jonah: God calls up a storm and commands the most frightening creature of the sea: the whale vomits Jonah safely onto the beach, reinvigorating his faith and obedience. In ancient Islamic folktales, Jonah’s whale is one of only ten animals allowed into Heaven.
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Manilius, Astronomica, 1st century AD, Book 5
Manilius tells of the drama of the sea-monster, Cetus, coming to devour Andromeda: “Now had a heavy surge begun to rise and long lines of breakers were fleeing before the thrust of the massive monster. As it cleaves the waves, its head emerges and disgorges sea, the waters breaking loudly about its teeth and the swirling sea afloat in its very jaws; behind rise its huge coils like rings of an enormous neck chain, and its back covers the whole sea. Ocean clamors in every quarter, and the very mountains and crags quake at the creature’s onset.”
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Norse myth, 11th century AD
Thor went fishing with the giant Hymir. The two did not get on, and when Hymir refused to provide Thor with bait, Thor decided that the head of Hymir’s largest ox would have to suffice. They rowed to a point where Hymir often sat and caught flat fish. Then, in a show of might, Thor drew up two whales. After this, Thor demanded to go farther, even though Hymir pleaded with Thor to return. They had traveled into the realm of the fearsome Serpent. Thor ignored him and, to Hymir’s horror, they rowed out even further.
Thor then prepared a strong line and a large hook, and the monster, Jörmungandr, took the bait. Thor pulled the serpent up; the two faced off, Jörmungand dribbling poison and blood. Hymir went pale with fear, and as Thor grabbed his hammer to kill the serpent, the giant cut the line, leaving the serpent to sink beneath the waves.
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East Asian mythology
In Chinese mythology a whale with the hands and feet of a man is thought to rule the ocean. The Chinese also connected the single spiral tusk of the Narwhal, an Arctic-dwelling whale, with the horn of the sacred Unicorn. In Tibet, images of whales frequently appear near statues of the Buddha.
There is a Tz’u poem from the Song Dynasty (10th to 12th centuries AD) that describes an encounter between the moon and a whale: The moon is said to:
…float under the bottom of the sea/ but how could this be?/ Somehow, one sorrows and is disquieted/ To think that the big whale, ten thousand li long,/ Would butt the moon sidewise and shatter to pieces/ Its jade palaces and jasper towers!
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Scrimshaw (from 1817 until the ban on commercial whaling)
Scrimshaw is the term given to the handiwork of bored whalers, who carved pictures on the teeth of whales. The earliest known piece of scrimshaw dates from 1817 and was inscribed with the following: “This is the tooth of a sperm whale that was caught near the Galapagos Islands by the crew of the ship Adam and made 100 barrels of oil in the year 1817.”
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Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851
Moby Dick is both the most famous and the most infamous of literary whales.
Two real life events inspired Melville’s tale. In 1820, a sperm whale rammed the Essex, a Nantucket whaler, off the coast of South America. One of the eight survivors, First Mate Owen Chase wrote about the experience in Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex, which was published in 1821. Nearly 20 years later, tales surfaced about an albino sperm whale of unusual ferocity with the name Mocha Dick. In May 1839, an article appeared in the New York magazine The Knickerbocker by Jeremiah Reynolds that reported a battle in which “an old bull whale, of prodigious size and strength… [that] was white as wool” attacked a ship in premeditated fury.
However, Melville’s brilliance is in connecting these events to the earlier mythologies, when Ahab says, for example:
Look ye, Starbuck, all visible objects are but pastecard masks. Some inscrutable, yet reasoning things put forth the molding of their features. The white whale tasks me—he heaps me, yet he is but a mask. ‘Tis the thing behind the mask I chiefly hate; the malignant thing that has plagued and frightened man since time began. The thing that maws and mutilates our race, not killing us outright but letting us live on with half a heart and half a lung.
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Carlo Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio, 1883
The story of the wooden puppet Pinocchio was a unique literary melding of genres for its time. Collodi had not intended the novel as children’s literature when it was first serialized. At the request of his editor, Collodi added another twenty chapters in which Pinocchio arrives home after many adventures to find his ‘father’ Geppetto missing. Pinocchio goes in search of him, encounters the hideous whale, Monstro, and ends up, Jonah-like, in the whale’s belly. It is after feats of bravery and self-sacrifice that Pinocchio is resurrected, a real boy at last.
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William Tyler Olcott, Sun Lore of All Ages, 1914
“There is a curious custom found in many parts of the world, which relates to the sun’s influence on young maidens entering on womanhood. According to this superstition, these maidens must not touch the ground nor permit the sun to shine upon them. In Fiji, brides who were being tattooed were hidden from the rays of the sun, and in a modern Greek folk tale, the Fates predict that in her fifteenth year a princess must be careful not to let the sun shine on her lest she be turned into a lizard. A Tyrolese story tells how it was the doom of a lovely maiden to be transported in the belly of a whale if ever a sunbeam fell on her.”
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Jack Henry Abbott, In the Belly of the Beast, 1981
Between the ages of 12 and 37, Jack Henry Abbott spent all but nine months imprisoned. Abbott heard from his prison cell that Norman Mailer was writing a book about the executed murderer Gary Gilmore (Executioner’s Song). This led to a celebrated correspondence between the two men, which was eventually published in 1981 as In the Belly of the Beast. The publication of the book coincided with Abbott’s early release from prison. Only six weeks later, on the very day a favourable review of In the Belly of the Beast appeared in The New York Times, he stabbed and killed a waiter in Greenwich Village.
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Witi Ihimaera, The Whale Rider, 1987
By the late twentieth century, whales had become something to defend rather than something to fear or commodify. In this beautiful novel by the New Zealand writer, Witi Ihimaera, Maori tradition is broken when Kahu, a young girl in a patriarchal society, reveals she has the whale rider’s ancient gift of communicating with whales. The novel was made into a moving film in 2002.
Under the stairs
As a teenager, the Nigerian author, Chris Abani published his first novel, Masters of the Board, to unexpected acclaim but also, unfortunately, to much suspicion. The imagination of a boy writing about a make-believe coup was somehow seen as a credible threat to the Nigerian government. Abani was imprisoned at the age of 18 for inciting treason. This early trauma served to deepen his political sensibilities. When he was released after six months, he continued writing, but with sharper political intent. This, of course led to further arrests and more time in prison—much in solitary confinement—and even a death sentence. Eventually released through the efforts of well-connected friends, Abani lived in London until even that became too dangerous. He fled to the US, where he has lived and worked for the past decade.
After all the terror and punishment his words created for him, it’s remarkable that Abani continued writing at all. But continue he did. He spent a ten-year period writing without publishing, bursting onto the literary scene in 2001 with Kalakuta Republic, a volume of poetry, which led to the first of many awards.
At a recent workshop for writers, Chris Abani, began by speaking of his long struggle as a writer. “I had all these manuscripts of novels and poems that had been rejected over and over. I used to be so mad about it. But now I look back, and I think I should send those publishers flowers in thanks.”
The writer he is now is the writer he was meant to be. Abani considers all those unpublished manuscripts as part of his apprenticeship. After a decade or hard work–and silence–he is now the master of intelligent, poetic, tender, poignant, important works, poetry and fiction he’s proud of.
“Try, but don’t be afraid to put aside,” he encouraged. “Move on to the next thing. You have many stories inside you. If you keep reworking the same story over and over in an attempt to get it published, you’ll never write those other stories.”
Someone asked where he got the idea for his latest work, the mesmerising Song for Night. He laughed and, with the flair of a master storyteller, shared the anecdote.
Years before, when he moved to LA, he had shoved a number of unpacked boxes under the stairs in his house. Like many faced with working on a PhD thesis, he looked around for a way to procrastinate. He tidied the house. He did yard work. Then, he remembered the old boxes and decided to unpack them at last. Inside of one, he found some of his old manuscripts. He picked up one at random, flipped through it, and landed on a page in which a boy named My Luck helps an old man across a river. Accident led to inspiration, and inspiration to weeks of furious work. The result? His novella, Song for Night, the haunting story of My Luck, a child soldier who has been separated from his platoon.
Song for Night was inside of Abani all along, hidden under the stairs, closed up in an old manuscript. My Luck was frozen there, but the idea of him was inside of Abani, biding time, gestating for eight long years before he was ready to appear in the world.
In Australia, Song for Night is published by Scribe Publications.
Exile, my friend
I arrived in Brisbane with my young family twelve years ago already. On a whim, my husband applied for a job setting up a groovy new department at QUT. To our astonishment, they hired him and offered to relocate us to Australia with all of our belongings. At our first social engagement—some sort of university gathering, I think—a fellow guest, learning we came from New York City, raised an eyebrow, shook his head, and with a strong note of irony asked, “What crime did you commit?”
I laughed, but I understood his point: Why would anyone willingly leave New York City for a paler, less cultured life in sleepy Queensland? There must be some mysterious and compelling reason behind our move. A crime. Flight from the mafia. At the very least, insanity.
What he didn’t know and, being a single man who had never lived in a big city, couldn’t know, was that New York is particularly inhospitable towards parents with young children. You try hailing a cab with an infant strapped to your body in a snugly and a toddler in a stroller. Taxi drivers just don’t stop. For some reason they prefer the fare of an agile businessman (late for a meeting and tipping well for a speedy arrival) over a frazzled woman with shrieking children, who needs the boot popped and—don’t forget!—help dismantling the inscrutable stroller. Indeed.
But my new friend also couldn’t know how our move appeared to us. To New Yorkers, the antipodes is a wildly exotic place, where day is night and summer is winter. Australia seemed to us a harsh land filled with strange wildlife, empty landscapes, and golden athletes. When the job offer came, I wondered aloud: Just where is Queensland? What’s the weather like? Will a crocodile eat my children if I let them play outside? My ignorance was remarkable.
So it wasn’t flight from a crime or any sort of delusion that brought me here. It was the lure of something exotic mixed with something practical. We saw moving to Australia as a better solution to the problems of raising children than moving to one of the suburbs around New York (which is what everyone else was doing). How much more interesting to pack up a decade’s worth of possessions along with the babies and bash off to the ends of the earth. We weren’t like anyone else. We were doing something really worth writing home about.
Twelve years on, after much resistance, I’ve realised that Queensland is home. And New York, unchanging and no doubt still unsleeping, is a place I only occasionally visit. Like the man at the university gathering, I have had moments when I considered my life here to be one of exile. And it hasn’t helped that I’ve been constantly bombarded with images of New York, from shows like Seinfeld and Friends and 30 Rock to practically every film made in the US, not to mention a half dozen news items each evening. But I’ve lately come to see a different side of living here, and one that has forged my identity just as powerfully as that decade in New York. Because it’s here I became a writer.
Many times in the years I’ve lived here, I’ve been asked (and asked myself as well), What would you be doing if you had stayed in New York? That’s hard to answer. In New York, while I earned my living by writing, I wasn’t ‘a writer’ in the sense that I am here. Having written two novels and about to begin a third, I think I can say with some degree of certainty that I understand the process. And I can say as well that while I might be working as a writer in New York, I would most likely not be one.
The hustle, the pace, the frantic darting from here to there, the lively distractions, not to mention all the expense just wouldn’t allow for the reflection required for me to be creative. I couldn’t have found there the capacity to remain apart. So inadvertently, our choice to bash off to Australia was a necessary first step. Moving to a house on acreage took the isolation further. Having a third child tipped me over.
Mine is just one of innumerable journeys. There is no set formula. Except that, I believe, some form of exile is required. For me, it’s one of place, but this is only symbolic. Some people find isolation surrounded by crowds. My point is that writing requires separation. Distance from one’s subject, distance from the crowd, distance from the business and ‘busy-ness’ of everyday life.
Virginia Woolf offered it up nicely, saying, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” That wisdom applies equally to men. A writer must have the opportunity to write, to be relatively free from want, to be to some degree liberated from the kind of toil that saps creativity. This is where the money comes in.
But the other part of her argument has to do with space. A writer needs a room, a garden, a shack—or even another country if that’s what it takes—to be free from distractions. A place to remove oneself. A place to go everyday in order to develop discipline and creative practice. Reflection, thought, discipline, even longing, are all required for creative writing, for producing day after day the page or two that in a year becomes a novel.
There is a quote by Nadine Gordimer that I like to remember when I get a little misty and ‘homesick’ for New York. I think it captures nicely the tension a writer must accommodate internally. In the Introduction to Selected Stories,she says: “Powers of observation heightened beyond the normal imply extraordinary disinvolvement: or rather the double process, excessive preoccupation and identification with the lives of others, and at the same time monstrous detachment . . . The tension between standing apart and being fully involved: that is what makes a writer.”
I say, wherever you are, seek out exile and let it work for you. If you happen to live in a big city, you’ll need to find that room of your own and carry the exile within. If you live on acreage in Queensland, space for exile is more readily available. But don’t be disheartened when someone asks, rolling his eyes, what crime you committed for ending up there. Just smile to yourself and know that you have one piece of the puzzle—the chance for solitude. Know too, as Northrup Frye said: “The center of reality is wherever one happens to be and its circumference is whatever one’s imagination can make sense of.”
If that’s true, for writers, exile is an awfully big place.
First published in Arts Hub.
Gorky in America
In Russian, Gorky means ‘bitter’
In 1906, after a botched insurrection the previous year in which he was briefly imprisoned, Maxim Gorky crept out of Russia illegally and made his way over continent and ocean to America. The Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party was behind the trip; they hoped that Gorky’s popularity as a writer and revolutionary would win friends to the cause, prevent the Tsarist Government from obtaining a loan from the United States, and most importantly, secure desperately needed funds for the revolution.
It began well. The foremost literary figures of New York—Jack London, Upton Sinclair, William Dean Howells, and Mark Twain—formed a committee to welcome Gorky. In particular, Twain’s sympathies were well-known: “It is to be hoped that the roused nation, now rising in strength, will presently put an end to [the Government] and set up a republic in its place.” Though this statement might seem naïve to us a hundred years on (and especially after the events of the 20th century), at the time, the American Revolution served as a successful model for how Russian society might be transformed.
Gorky arrived in New York on April 10th in the company of Mme Andreeva and met up with his stepson and other Russian émigrés. He was immediately impressed. In a letter dated April 11, he wrote to a friend:
Well, Leonid, here is where you must visit. I mean it. It is such an amazing fantasy of stone, glass, and iron, a fantasy constructed by crazy giants, monsters longing after beauty, stormy souls full of wild energy. All these Berlins, Parises, and other ‘big’ cities are trifles in comparison with New York. Socialism should first be realized here—that is the first thing you think of when you see the amazing houses, machines, etc.
That evening, Gorky and Andreeva were honoured at a dinner hosted by the New York literary brahmins. Twain was the main speaker, and The New York Times covered the event:
“If we can build a Russian republic to give to the persecuted people of the Czar’s domain the same measure of freedom that we enjoy, let us go ahead and do it,” said Mark Twain. “We need not discuss the method by which that purpose is to be attained. Let us hope that fighting will be postponed or averted for a while, but if it must come—“. Mr Clemens’s hiatus was significant.
“I am most emphatically in sympathy with the movement now on foot in Russia to make that country free,” he went on. “I am certain that it will be successful, as it deserves to be. Anybody whose ancestors were in this country when we were trying to free ourselves from oppression must sympathize with those who now are trying to do the same thing in Russia.”
Through a translator, The Times also reported Gorky’s response:
“I feel at home, though the language of New York is not my own, and I do not understand a word of it. I never visited a place so kindling to my imagination. I had not been here one hour before I felt that this was the biggest city and the United States the greatest country on the face of the earth. This is the country of all countries to which the social revolutionists can look with hope. In this will be worked out the salvation of humanity.”
There was some talk that night that Gorky would be received at the White House.
This honour, however, never came to pass. In fact, Gorky was shortly scorned, abandoned by many of the literary community—Mark Twain among them. The American trip was cut short, and Gorky, having raised less than $10,000, considered it to be a complete failure.
On October 13, Gorky and Andreeva left New York. Two weeks later, he arrived in Naples and gave a brief statement to the press. The New York Times quietly reported that Gorky “was not dissatisfied with his trip” to New York and that he was, in fact, “sorry he could not remain there longer”. He announced his plan to spend several weeks in the Italian countryside writing a three-volume book on America.
Based on the series of sketches he wrote while in upstate New York (under the title V Amerike), there was some cause for trepidation. In these sketches, Gorky deplored the situation of the American worker, stating that American society enslaved man’s creative instincts by transforming the people into a machine-like mass. The three volumes he promised never appeared, but Gorky did express his disgust for the time he spent in America in a series of stories, most famously, The City of the Yellow Devil.
It should be noted that Gorky had visited other places he later excoriated. Before arriving in America, he stopped in Germany with the same mission, writing bitterly: “The law is a fetish here, a religion. This is why the Prussian is so repulsive and stupid. Only a revolution could save this self-satisfied race from spiritual death. But they do not want a revolution.” A few weeks later, angry that the government of France agreed to loan money to Russia, Gorky wrote in militant, uncompromising, emotional terms about the betrayal of the French. In this context, some negativity regarding America would not be out of character. His stories and articles about America went beyond this, however.
So what exactly happened?
Very simply, Gorky’s arrival in America triggered a cultural collision. A few well-placed comments by his political enemies, the rampant American press, a society of puritanical values, and Gorky’s inflammatory ways all combined to create cultural misunderstandings on both sides.
In Maxim Gorky: A Political Biography, Tova Yedlin writes: “The outcome of his mission was pretty well decided by two photographs that appeared on the front page of the World on April 14th. One was of Gorky and his ‘family’, the other of Andreeva with the caption: the so-called Mme Gorky who is not Mme Gorky at all but a Russian actress Andreeva, with whom he has been living since his separation of his wife a few years ago”.
America’s puritanical sensibilities required immediate action. Gorky and his party were swiftly evicted from their hotel and, in Yedlin’s words, “found themselves in the street, in the middle of the night, with their belongings piled up on the pavement in the rain”. The scandal was played out in the press much like scandals today on cable news programs, with a clamour of voices on both sides attacking, defending, ridiculing, stirring trouble, accusing, and calling for moderation all at the same time.
Gorky’s treatment by the American press was strongly condemned by many. HG Wells, a visitor to New York at the time, weighed in:
I do not know what motive actuated a certain section of the American press to initiate the pelting of Maxim Gorky. A passion for moral purity may have prompted it, but certainly no passion for moral purity ever before begot so brazen and abundant torrent of lies.
But there were deeper issues at play. To the well fed and politically naïve Americans, revolution was still a popular term. What it meant to them, however, was vastly different from Gorky’s ideas of revolution. The Americans believed that political change would bring about the establishment in Russia of a liberal and constitutional order. To Gorky it meant the overthrow of the despised Russian political system by whatever means necessary, followed by the complete transformation of Russian system—from serfdom to socialism.
More significantly, Russia was considered a ‘friendly’ government to America. Politicians and diplomats were unwilling to support a campaign to raise money for a cause that intended its overthrow. In fact, contrary to the rumours of a visit to the White House, President Theodore Roosevelt made his opinion quite clear when he wrote to Upton Sinclair on March 15th (less than a month before Gorky’s arrival):
The abortiveness of the late revolution in Russia sprang precisely from the fact that too much of the leadership was of the Gorky type and therefore the kind of leadership which can never lead anybody anywhere save into a serbonian bog.
Perhaps more than anything else, this sarcastic warning shows that the Gorky mission never had a chance. The President allowed the literati to play out their grand welcome, knowing that the deeply puritanical American society would soon put everyone in their proper place.
There’s no question that Gorky was bitter about his experience in America, but then, he was bitter about many things. His stay deepened his resentment of the economic inequalities of the capitalistic system. He wrote to friends that he had previously been only a reformer; the trip made him a true revolutionary.
The rest, as they say, is history.
