Norman Mailer è morto il 10 novembre 2007 per un’insufficienza renale. Aveva vissuto a lungo e intensamente. Molto intensamente. Tanto intensamente che dovrà passarne, di tempo, perché il suo lascito venga riconsiderato in sé e per sé. Troppo ingombrante, per non dire sconcertante, è infatti l’ombra gettata dall’uomo sull’opera. Nei suoi ottantaquattro anni di esistenza in vita Norman Mailer ha pubblicato una trentina di libri. Romanzi, biografie, reportage, saggi, pamphlet, testi di ogni genere. La frenetica attività di scrittore non gli ha tuttavia impedito di sposarsi due volte, pugnalare la seconda moglie, mettere al mondo nove figli, adottarne uno, sfidare un campione di pugilato, fondare il «Village Voice», conquistare fama di accanito bevitore di whisky e fumatore di marijuana, dirigere film, diventare un «esistenzialista senza leggere Sartre» e un «simpatizzante del marxismo senza leggere Marx», mettersi alla testa di marce pacifiste, correre due volte per la carica di sindaco di New York, battersi per la scarcerazione di un omicida che tornò a uccidere poche settimane dopo essere uscito di galera, schierarsi contro il movimento per la liberazione delle donne. Essere scrittore, insomma, non gli ha impedito di essere Norman Mailer.
Alludendo al titolo del suo libro più noto potremmo dire che l’opera è come nuda – spogliata del suo valore letterario – al cospetto del morto, dell’uomo che tanto intensamente ha vissuto. Mailer era animato da ambizioni e passioni dirompenti, apparteneva a quel genere di romanzieri che considerano «più importante essere un uomo che un buono scrittore». Una filosofia che vede ovviamente in Hemingway il proprio modello e che Mailer ha magnificato in Pubblicità per me stesso: «Lascio decidere a voi quanto stupido apparirebbe Addio alle armi o meglio Morte nel pomeriggio, se fosse stato scritto da un uomo alto un metro e sessanta, afflitto da acne, che portasse gli occhiali, parlasse con voce stridula e fosse un codardo da un punto di vista fisico». È però una filosofia – una disciplina, come preferiva chiamarla il diretto interessato – che comporta il rischio di risultare «fatale al talento di un autore». Norman Mailer ambiva a cambiare «il nerbo e il midollo» della sua nazione e la «coscienza» del suo tempo. E voleva farlo scrivendo il «Big Book», il Grande romanzo americano, «un romanzo che Dostoevskij e Marx; Joyce e Freud; Stendhal, Tolstoj, Proust; Faulkner, e perfino il vecchio e putrescente Hemingway potrebbero essere interessati a leggere». Disponeva quasi certamente del talento necessario, ma non riuscì nell’impresa proprio a causa di un temperamento che lo portava a sacrificare l’opera sull’altare del vitalismo.

Un trionfo imprevisto
A soli trentacinque anni, consapevole della strada imboccata, aveva già intuito che la partita del Grande romanzo era per lui segnata: «Cominciai che ero un ragazzo generoso ma molto viziato, – scrive sempre in Pubblicità per me stesso, – ed ora sembra sia diventato un brutto attaccabrighe un po’ suonato, che sa combattere pulito o sporco, ma al quale piace combattere.» A queste parole seguirono molti libri, alcuni di buon livello, altri assai meno; nessuno resse però il confronto con Il nudo e il morto, quello che gli regalò la fama e l’unico con il quale si avvicinò davvero all’obiettivo del Big Book.
Il nudo e il morto marca un confine netto tra Norman e Mailer, tra il ragazzo generoso ma molto viziato e l’adulto attaccabrighe; tra lo scrittore dilettante e l’intellettuale sempre al centro dei riflettori. Come ogni confine, il libro è inoltre un punto di contatto tra i due estremi, uno specchio in cui queste due persone, all’apparenza tanto lontane, si riflettono e si toccano. Lo stesso autore, seppure a suo modo, vedeva il romanzo come una sorta di via di mezzo tra due modi di essere, due facce diverse di un medesimo individuo: «Una parte di me pensava che fosse il più grande libro scritto dopo Guerra e Pace. D’altro canto, pensavo pure: Non capisco niente di scrittura. Sono virtualmente un impostore». In questo strano miscuglio fatto di insicurezza e arroganza, la prospettiva di un trionfo travolgente era contemplata quanto quella di vendere meno di un migliaio di copie. «Ti rendi conto, – disse Mailer al proprio editor, – che se Il nudo e il morto non vende, dovrò scrivere romanzi storici per campare?» Andò in maniera affatto diversa: alla giovanissima età di venticinque anni, il generoso e molto viziato ragazzo ebreo di Brooklyn divenne ciò che si era prefisso: uno scrittore importante.
Il trionfo tanto precocemente raggiunto comportò però un prezzo. Un romanziere è tale in quanto è anche un osservatore. La narrazione presuppone una condizione imprescindibile, ovvero quella dello spettatore che assiste in disparte dal turbinio degli eventi. Il successo improvviso, invece, scaraventa dall’altro lato della barricata, quello del palcoscenico dove l’occhio resta accecato dalla luce dei riflettori. Oltre il confine del boccascena, il mondo appare come una gola nera. È il pozzo senza fondo nel quale gli attori si gettano ogni sera al momento di andare in scena e dal quale risalgono al calare del sipario. Uno sprofondare e risorgere assai meno congeniale per chi sarebbe destinato a stare seduto in platea. Il successo immediato obbligò Mailer a confrontarsi con il passaggio dalla condizione di chi osserva a quella di chi è osservato, «a vivere nel sarcofago della propria immagine», per usare parole sue.
Non è dunque un caso che la scrittura di Mailer si sia evoluta in una direzione opposta a quella del romanzo d’esordio. Se Il nudo e il morto si affida alla neutralità del tipico dicitore romanzesco, lo spettatore anonimo e onnisciente che narra in terza persona, il Mailer degli anni seguenti fa invece del proprio ego il termine di paragone dell’America del suo tempo, la lente privilegiata nella quale fatti e persone prendono forma. Questa sua sfrenata esaltazione dell’io gli ha conferito l’ardire, talvolta la sfrontatezza, di dialogare da pari a pari con la Storia e i suoi protagonisti. Nessun personaggio era troppo grande per lui. In alcuni casi optò per l’obiettività quantomeno formale della biografia, in altri per lo stravolgimento romanzesco, in altri ancora per soluzioni ibride. Restò però il denominatore comune della celebrità, della dimensione pubblica, del mito. Picasso, Marilyn, Mohammed Alì, Hitler e perfino Gesù: i personaggi prediletti delle sue pagine erano gente di questo calibro. Ma non fu sola vanagloria: le feroci invettive, le idee volutamente provocatorie, il modo paradossale di leggere la realtà e l’io debordante consentirono a Mailer di inventare quello che Tom Wolfe avrebbe poi chiamato New Journalism, un modo di guardare alla realtà che avrebbe fatto epoca, particolarmente adatto a catturare l’esuberanza degli anni Sessanta e che anticipò molti caratteri del decennio successivo che, sempre Wolfe, liquidò significativamente come la «Me Decade».
Il Mailer non ancora baciato dai raggi della fama ovvero il Norman che scrisse Il nudo e il morto era agli antipodi di quel genere di ego. Aveva anche lui le proprie ambizioni e presunzioni, tuttavia l’esperienza della guerra gli era servita da lezione, l’aveva costretto a un salutare bagno d’umiltà. La modestia del Mailer di allora, stando a quel che lo stesso autore asserisce, «fu la parte dominante durante la stesura del Nudo e il morto». Più concretamente fu la parte che determinò stile e punto di vista, ovvero quella cosa che in gergo letterario viene detta «voce del libro». E la voce di questo libro è quella di un giovane alle prime armi che si sente piccolo al cospetto della grandezza di ciò che intende raccontare, abbastanza piccolo da non preoccuparsi più di tanto dello stile, di scrivere qualcosa che non sia un «convenzionale romanzo di guerra».
Quella del Nudo e il morto è una voce franca e aperta, non abbastanza scaltrita da evitare inutili verbosità e sufficientemente libera da condizionamenti quali la scelta del vocabolo giusto a tutti i costi. È davvero la voce di un ragazzo generoso; generoso perché completamente abbandonato alla narrazione e alle idee di cui il racconto è portatore.

L’ambizione umana alla prova
Il linguaggio crudo e diretto, nudo, indusse molti a vedere il romanzo come un frutto dell’imponente filone del realismo. Com’è intuibile, Mailer era di altro avviso, e qui emerge un Norman alternativo al ragazzo modesto e generoso appena tornato dalla guerra. Un Norman forse meno determinante, ma che ebbe comunque un peso per nulla secondario. «Non penso a me stesso come a un realista, – dichiarò in un’intervista rilasciata poco dopo aver terminato Barbary Shore, romanzo del 1951 ferocemente stroncato dalla critica. – Quella terribile parola «naturalismo». È stato il mio retaggio letterario: quel che ho imparato da Dos Passos e Farrel». Ciò che Mailer intendeva era che, a suo modo di vedere, il romanzo era intriso di un simbolismo di natura mistica, alla Moby Dick. «Ero sicuro che ognuno l’avrebbe capito. C’era dentro un Acab, e suppongo che la montagna fosse Moby Dick». La montagna che il sergente Croft impone ai suoi uomini di scalare si erge nel romanzo, sopra l’intrico della vegetazione della giungla tropicale, come un mostro fuoriuscito dagli abissi. Il suo senso supremo sembra essere quello di mettere alla prova l’ambizione umana. Agli occhi del sergente, il cielo tenebroso che fa da sfondo alla montagna è un oceano, le nuvole intorno alla vetta sono come spruzzi d’acqua. La visione conduce Croft a un’estasi selvaggia quanto inesplicabile. La montagna è però anche il simbolo di un simbolo, la sua ombra prefigura quella che un Grande libro può gettare sulla carriera di uno scrittore. La battaglia contro l’ambiente circostante, inteso nelle forme più varie, finirà per diventare la morale dominante dell’intera esistenza di Norman Mailer. Tutto ciò che egli scrisse e fece nel corso della sua lunga e intensa vita prese forma nelle pagine di questa pietra miliare della letteratura americana del xx secolo, Il nudo e il morto. E comunque lo si voglia giudicare, l’uomo «era un vero americano, sempre consapevole di avere un pubblico di fronte a sé. Ma quando smette di essere americano, quando si dimentica il pubblico e ci dà semplicemente il suo modo di vedere il mondo, è meraviglioso, e il suo libro impone all’anima un sacro timore». Parole, queste ultime, scritte da D. H. Lawrence a proposito di Melville, ma che possono valere anche per Norman Mailer e il suo Big Book.

Tommaso Pincio

Il Manifesto

Sound crazy? Maybe, but secession has been proposed several times over the years.

In 1969, when writer Norman Mailer and columnist Jimmy Breslin ran for mayor and city council president on the Independent Party ticket, one of their ideas was to make New York City the 51st State. 

And in 2003, City Council member Peter Vallone introduced a bill that would allow the city to cut the state loose—because upstaters were sucking out too much of the city’s revenue.

But perhaps the closest New York City came to actually becoming sovereign was in 1861. The Civil War was pretty unpopular here because the city stood to lose so much money, since New York manufacturers wouldn’t be able to continue importing cotton from the South.

So Mayor Fernando Wood (looking dapper at left) proposed that the city form a city-state called Tri-Insula—that’s Latin for “three islands”—composed of Manhattan, Long Island, and Staten Island.

With Tri-Insula its own entity separate from the Union and the Confederacy, the Southern cotton trade wouldn’t have to stop.

In the end, it was just too radical an idea even for New Yorkers to accept.

Sometimes, I confess, I buy the paper and I forget to actually read it. It will probably be the Guardian and I’ll buy it – promising myself that I will consume it lovingly cover to cover and that it will somehow make me a better person, raising my mind from thoughts of X Factor and lasagne. Such good intentions…

The next day I will see my paper on the sideboard. I will consider reading it but by now it looks deflated - its stories less enticing. I turn on the radio – the next episode of life and death is already happening somewhere out there. What is the point of paper pulp that only screams the breaking news of yesterday? So my paper ends up discarded and my money-waster guilt lives on. 

The characters in Thompson’s novel also face the question of the precise literary value and meaning of journalism. Well, I say face. They are journalists so they encounter the problem of writing reality but never fully discuss this issue in so many words and then, in most scenes, they get really drunk and sleep with other people or each other.

But Thompson’s narrator Paul Kemp carries around The Times like ‘a precious bundle of wisdom, a weighty assurance that [you're] not yet cut off from that part of the world that was real.’ Maybe, his character suggests, literature could learn some new tricks from the field of the hack. Get a bit more real. The alcoholic 60s cohort of ‘New Journalists’, including Thompson and his characters, try out a range of narrative and journalistic modes of writing in order to test out this theory.

Thompson, most famous for writing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, paints a pretty debauched picture of Puerto Rico, its coin slots, fiestas, hotel parties and printing houses. Paul Kemp is portrayed as painfully aware he has only one drunken mind in a thousand with which to write reality. The Rum Diary stands as a record of a journalist-persona who writes reality ‘badly’ and offers us the job of doing better.

4/5 stars

Next I’m reading…Norman Mailer’s The Deer Park

                             Norman Mailer (1923-2007)

 (resenha publicada em 17 de novembro de 2007, de forma ligeiramente condensada)

    Nos últimos dias morreram Ira Levin e Norman Mailer. O primeiro era representante da excelência que o best seller podia alcançar, com as tramas engenhosas de livros como O Bebê de Rosemary ou Os Meninos do Brasil; já o segundo é um dos escritores fundamentais da ficção do século XX.

    Quando Os nus e os mortos apareceu em 1948, logo afirmou Mailer como um dos principais nomes de uma geração ímpar (Truman Capote, Saul Bellow, J.D. Salinger, William Styron, Paul Bowles, Gore Vidal, entre outros). É um livro de ímpeto caudaloso, polifônico, feroz, com uma cena que nunca me saiu da cabeça: dois soldados carregando um companheiro, que já está morto, entretanto eles nem mais ligam para isso, já perderam a noção de objetivo e da sua própria humanidade.

    Há uma grave lacuna no meu conhecimento da obra de Mailer, principalmente os títulos dos anos 50: não li, por exemplo, os famosos The Deer Park (O Parque dos Cervos) ou Advertsiments for myself (George Steiner já afirmou que ele merecia o Nobel por este último).

     Em compensação, considero sua obra-prima Um Sonho Americano (1965) um dos romances-chaves das últimas décadas, com sua mistura de paranóia, excesso e a possível poesia da prosa, que só os melhores artesões conseguem. Ele acaba de ser relançado no Brasil, em nova tradução.

    Mailer gostava de literatura e de jornalismo. Neste último filão, temos diversos livros, como Miami e O cerco de Chicago ou o recente O Super-homem vai ao supermercado.

    Mas ele era bom mesmo em fazer os dois juntos, o que resultou no impressionante Os Exércitos da Noite (1969), relato de uma marcha de protesto cujo clímax é a tentativa de uma multidão, embalada pela contracultura, no que ela tinha de mais generosamente, de mais intrinsecamente utópico, de fazer o edifício do Pentágono “levitar”.

    Apesar de ter construído uma obra por muitas décadas, e multifacetada ainda por cima, creio que esses dois títulos, Um Sonho Americano e Os Exércitos da Noite, se beneficiem da conjunção de uma época, de um vigor, de uma mirada renovadora, basicamente irrepetível.

     Nem por isso deixam de ser poderosos outros casamentos felizes com a vida “real”: nunca me interessei por boxe, só quando mediado pela magia das imagens do Scorsese de O Touro Indomável ou pelas palavras de Mailer em A Luta; e quem diria que, após A Sangue Frio, de Truman Capote, haveria o que se tirar da minuciosa narrativa de crimes verdadeiros, como provam as mil páginas (na verdade, não precisavam ser tantas) de A Canção do Carrasco (1979), sobre a vida e a execução de Gary Gilmore. “A gente era criado sabendo o que estava certo e livre para fazer o que estava errado”. Eis uma frase desse romance cuja ação se passa em Utah. De um lado, aquelas pessoas vivendo sob a égide da religião, achando que Deus fez o mundo para se viver assim, e que também não têm problemas com armas e com a exclusão social (aquele mito americano do “fracasso”), sabendo o que estava certo; e do outro lado, os perdedores, vidas fraturadas e errantes, gente dançada, meio algoz de si mesmo, meio vítima, livre para fazer o que estava errado, e que até viraram símbolo de uma boa parte da produção artística norte-americana

    Ainda sob o signo do excesso, Mailer produziu o exuberante, quase delirante, Noites Antigas (1983), sobre a reencarnação de um mesmo personagem no Egito dos faraós, um dos romances mais originais do fim de século; e uma história da CIA, um pouco cansativa, O Fantasma da Prostituta (1991). Com mais equilíbrio, tivemos o romance “policial”, se se pode caracterizá-lo assim, Os machões não dançam (1984), que segue um pouco a linha de Um sonho americano e foi adaptado pelo cinema pelo próprio autor, num filme estranho, não completamente bem resolvido, mas no mínimo interessante (sim, eu sei que esse termo pode significar qualquer coisa, mas não me ocorre outro); e também O Evangelho segundo o filho (1997). Temia-se que o imprevisível Mailer criasse uma história de Jesus irreverente, até mesmo caricata, com seu ímpeto celiniano. Nada disso aconteceu. Fundindo os diversos evangelhos, ele nos deu o romance mais sóbrio e elegante já escrito sobre o tema. Quase se poderia utilizar a palavra “puro” para descrever o texto, que flui com uma naturalidade assombrosa. Nem parecia o autor que gostava de romances “impuros” e cheios de virtuosismos extravagantes, dos quais Noites Antigas é, com certeza, o ápice.

     Mailer também gostava de biografias, daí ter escrito uma, memorável, sobre Marilyn Monroe, e uma outra, enorme, fruto de suas obsessões (e nós necessariamente não somos obrigados a participar delas), sobre Lee Harvey Oswald.

    Ainda não se traduziu no Brasil sua “biografia” de Hitler, cujo ponto-de-vista parece que é o do Inferno, e que vem sendo ridicularizada. De fato, o projeto é difícil de engolir. No entanto, com um escritor que conseguiu transformar num momento sublime a tentativa de fazer o Pentágono levitar, tudo é possível.

                           Mailer: a estrada perdida

(resenha publicada, de forma ligeiramente condensada, em 24 de novembro de 2007)

    A geração à qual pertencia Norman Mailer parece ter chegado ao auge do seu talento em meados dos anos 60: Saul Bellow com Herzog, em 1964; Truman Capote, com A sangue frio, em 1966; William Styron e Gore Vidal respectivamente com As confissões de Nat Turner e Washington D.C., em 1967. E Norman Mailer publicou em 1965 a obra-prima suprema do “grupo” (competitivos, eles detestariam ser arrolados assim), com a possível exceção de A sangue frio:  Um sonho americano, já competentemente traduzido no Brasil (por Waltensir Dutra), e que agora ganhou nova versão, dentro da série Pocket da L&PM, realizada pela responsável pelo Harry Potter brasileiro, Lya Wiler.

    Um sonho americano é narrado por Stephen Rojack, cujas raízes, “raízes de erva daninha” remontam a um “pai judeu, descendente de imigrantes” e a uma “mãe protestante, família de banqueiros da Nova Inglaterra, segunda geração” (em algum lugar ele falará da “velha cepa protestante de uma nação enlouquecida”). Ele mata a esposa, durante uma luta, encena um suicídio (atirando-a no meio do trânsito de Nova Iorque) e apesar da suspeita da polícia consegue se safar. A narrativa se concentra na noite do crime e no dia seguinte, quando ele se confronta com o sogro, um magnata, no seu andar privativo no Hotel Waldorf.

    É-nos servido o grande coquetel americano: luxúria, poder, dinheiro, violência. Desse mesmo material são produzidos best sellers às pencas. Desse mesmo material, Scott Fitzgerald construiu sua magnífica obra elevando a mito a obsessão dos EUA com sucesso e fracasso: nomes de família antigos, referências prestigiosas (Harvard, Princeton), a vulgaridade tolerada (Hollywood; no romance de Mailer, a televisão), o esporte como heroísmo, e arrivistas que vencem com a força do dinheiro, mas que, como Gatsby, serão sempre mantidos do lado de fora. Mailer adicionou a aura heróica da Segunda Grande Guerra (Rojack é um ex-combatente condecorado) e o carisma e status aristocrático do clã Kennedy. Daí o primeiro e emblemático parágrafo do livro:

Conheci Jack Kennedy em novembro de 1946. Éramos ambos heróis de guerra e havíamos sido eleitos recentemente para o Congresso. Saímos, certa noite, para um encontro duplo, que acabou sendo uma noite e tanto para mim. Possuí uma moça que se teria entediado com um diamante do tamanho do Ritz.

    A moça que se teria entediado com um diamante do tamanho do Ritz é justamente a esposa (católica) que ele assassina. E assim se inicia um relato sulfúrico, em que analogias se sucedem vertiginosamente, como acontece em nossos dias com o argentino Alan Pauls e seu O passado, romance que também cerca cada momento com uma imagem ou um símile. Só que Pauls parece “fechar” tudo harmoniosamente, numa formulação lapidar, enquanto Mailer sempre parece a um passo de desagregar sua narrativa, de destruí-la sem apelo, tal o revolutear dos seus leitmotivs, próximos da incoerência, tal o namoro com a frivolidade, a volubilidade e o exibicionismo.  Portanto, no sobrecarregado e abusivo texto de Um sonho americano, nem tudo é feliz, e às vezes pode ser detectado algo de inconseqüente. E daí? O acúmulo desgastante acaba se justificando pela imposição da desordem da existência sobre o sonho americano de organizar a vida em trajetórias, bem ou mal sucedidas. Poucas vezes, também, uma obra de ficção mostrou como a consciência pode ser afetada por sons, luzes, cheiros: quando Rojack está embriagado, sentimos isso no próprio âmago do relato, é quase como um bafo que nos entorpecesse.

    E além do rastro fitzgeraldiano deixado pelo fabuloso início acima citado, Mailer amarrou o seu genial romance com a lição aprendida em Hemingway: diálogos precisos e maravilhosos fazem a narrativa avançar sem que percebamos, e a conduzem com vigor, da claustrofóbica jaula urbana da insanidade da nação, para a grande tentação (e esta palavra  não poderia ser mais adequada ao mundo de um escritor) do imaginário americano: on the road.

______________________

Issa’s Untidy Hut has long been one of my favourite blogs, serving up some of the finest ‘little’ poems from the Lilliput Review, poetic explorations into the lives and art of poets and of course Issa’s Sunday Service. The Sunday Service features a song which bridges the gap between rock and literature in some fashion… it may be a reference, it may be the artist themselves or it may be that the words demand closer attention. However it happens, we all know music and literature are not as far removed as some would like to think.  And now, Issa’s Sunday Service has put the call out for submissions of your favourite LitRock Songs and to make it even sweeter, if yours is selected, you receive the two current issues of The Lilliput Review.

Now as you know, I am a huge believer in Ezra Pound’s famous words:

poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music

so here’s a few of my LitRock recommendations for you to dip into…

And please, drop your suggestions to me as a comment, I am always up for some listening and don’t forget to email them to the Lilliput Review for consideration (be sure to check out the first 27 tracks before emailing).

Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken? – Lloyd Cole & the Commotions

When it comes to Lloyd Cole, there are a number of tracks I could have selected – Rattlesnakes for it’s Simone de Beuvior reference; Perfect Skin for its lyric, Louise is the girl with the perfect skin/ she says turn on the light, otherwise it can’t be seen/ she’s got cheekbones like geometry and eyes like sin/ and she’s sexually enlightened by cosmopolitan; Weird On Me for using a line from Raymond Carver – but I have gone for the lesser known Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken? Originally recorded as part of the Rattlesnakes sessions, I chose this song for it’s wonderful Norman Mailer reference and all round lyricism. And with Lloyd playing Brisbane’s Powerhouse tonight, his words have been circling my brain. Be sure to watch the clip above…

Here’s a snapshot of the lyrics:

Pumped up full of vitamins
On account of all the seriousness
You say you’re so happy now
you can hardly stand
Lean over on the bookcase
If you really want to get straight
Read Norman Mailer
Or get a new tailor

Are you ready to be heartbroken?

(read the complete lyrics here)

It’s Hard to be a Saint in the City – Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band

Let’s face it, any song from Springsteen’s first few albums could be included and then there are the tracks from Nebraska & his much overlooked album The Ghost of Tom Joad. The man has penned some of the greatest lyrics of his era. And before I go further into the lyrics of Saint in the City, if you don’t get goosebumps watching this live clip of a young, hungry E-Street Band, tearing up The Hammersmith Odeon on their first tour of Britain, then you need to check your pulse. The way Bruce conducts the whole band here is intense and the guitar duel between he and Little Stevie is white hot. But back to why I chose It’s Hard to be  Saint in the City. Well, it’s purely on the lyric. Springsteen’s early work had that wild, sprawling, carnival feel… all shifting perspectives, haunted visions, streetwise toughness & heady romanticism. Saint is a classic and for mine makes the list every time.

Check out these lyrics:

And the sages of the subway sit just like the living dead
As the tracks clack out the rhythm their eyes fixed straight ahead
They ride the line of balance and hold on by just a thread
But it’s too hot in these tunnels you can get hit up by the heat
You get up to get out at your next stop but they push you back down in your seat
Your heart starts beatin’ faster as you struggle to your feet
Then you’re outa that hole and back up on the street

And them South Side sisters sure look pretty
The cripple on the corner cries out “Nickels for your pity”
And them downtown boys sure talk gritty
It’s so hard to be a saint in the city

(read the complete lyrics here)

Swan Lake – The Church

Steve Kilbey, like Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith, Bob Dylan et al. is a poet in his own right. Having released three books – Earthed, Nineveh/The Ephemeron & Fruit Machine – plus the broadsheet, Eden alongside more than 20 albums with The Church (not to mention the myriad other side and solo projects), Kilbey has more than proved his literary credentials. 1992’s Priest=Aura album was a turning point in my own personal history. The albums dense textures and sublime lyricism turned me inside out and set me off in search of poetry. I could have chosen any one of the songs from this album but for now, I will settle with the fragile beauty of Swan Lake.

One night your shoulders will ache
But next day when you wake
You’ll sprout wild wings, and fly high
Just like in Swan Lake

(complete lyrics here)

And for everyone in Australia, don’t forget the band is touring nationally throughout November. Full tour dates are listed on the band’s website.

L’intellectuel germanopratin par excellence

“Sorte de croisement entre Yves Montand et Jean-Paul Sartre“, BHL est résumé en trois mots par l’américaine Marianne Wiggins (1) : “grand, riche, beau et marié à un ancien mannequin. Selon elle, “son aura de philosophe a fait de lui un habitué des plateaux de télévision, mais il est aussi un journaliste accompli doublé d’un réalisateur de documentaires. Il n’est donc pas étonnant que le mensuel américain The Atlantic Monthly ait eu l’idée de génie d’engager M. Lévy pour marcher sur les traces d’Alexis de Tocqueville, qui, au XIXe siècle, avait parcouru notre jeune nation, puis rédigé son grand classique De la démocratie en Amérique (…) Tocqueville était un magistrat, un juriste imprégné de pragmatisme et d’idéaux moraux. M. Lévy est un intellectuel à paillettes, un beau parleur un peu snob (…) Même s’il reconnaît avoir eu pour compagnon de voyage Sur la route, l’ouvrage de Jack Kerouac, il devait également avoir sous la main la collection complète des Vanity Fair. Les Américains typiques sont pour lui rien moins que Barry Diller, Norman Mailer, Woody Allen, Warren Beatty. Tocqueville avait certes rencontré John Quincy Adams, Sam Houston, Daniel Webster et Andrew Jackson, mais aussi des fermiers, des artisans et des petits commerçants, et il avait débattu avec passion du système éducatif américain, de la poésie du pays, de sa langue et même de sa conception du mariage (…) La méthode de travail de Bernard-Henri Lévy consiste à faire jouer à des célébrités le rôle d’oracle local. Jim Harrison pour le Montana, Charlie Rose pour la Caroline du Nord, Sharon Stone pour Los Angeles. Parsemer un article de noms de célébrités rend sa lecture plus aisée et plus agréable, le problème, c’est qu’American Vertigo aurait pu s’appeler “Célébrités en Amérique” ou “Dans l’intimité des stars”. 

Encore plus sévère, l’Allemand Johannes Willms – qui s’appuie sur la lecture de Le b.a.-ba du BHL, enquête sur le plus grand intellectuel français, de Jade Lindgaard et Xavier de La Porte – trace un portrait au vitriol de notre BHL : “L’homme est une icône ambulante. Il est aussi connu en France que cette femme à la poitrine opulente par laquelle le peintre Eugène Delacroix a symbolisé la Liberté, celle au chemisier grand ouvert, qui franchit une barricade le drapeau tricolore à la main. Bernard-Henry Lévy – qu’en France on appelle BHL – a deux choses en commun avec cette créature emblématique : l’attitude narcissique et la chemise blanche ouverte jusqu’au nombril (qu’il porte sous un costume sombre). La tenue, qui met en valeur son torse de héros au bronzage permanent, fait son petit effet. C’est un élément non négligeable car, à l’âge de la télévision, l’apparence est le message. Le narcissisme et la chemise blanche ne sont donc pas une marotte mais un logo. Or l’effet que BHL a habilement construit pour accroître son prestige d’unique star des intellectuels français semble s’être épuisé. Une biographie vient de paraître, quatre autres sont en cours d’élaboration et toutes entendent détruire la magie, dépouiller BHL de sa chemise déjà grande ouverte et le présenter dans la “vérité” de sa nudité (…) [Son] réseau de connexions diverses si typique de l’“exception culturelle” française explique également pourquoi BHL reste toujours la star des intellectuels français : tous les médias d’une certaine importance, ou presque, sont à ses pieds, et ses rares détracteurs ont du mal à se faire entendre (…) Reste à voir si tout cela suffira à lui faire passer sans dommages la tempête qui se prépare avec les autres ouvrages, en particulier ceux de Philippe Cohen et Nicolas Beau, deux journalistes connus pour leur pertinence et pour leur virulence. Il serait de toute façon grand temps de démythifier ce comédien qui, en se faisant passer pour un intellectuel, ridiculise l’ensemble de cette corporation.”

Dans un article consacré à un ouvrage de BHL, Comédie, un autre journaliste allemand, Rudolf Walther (3), n’y va pas de main morte : “le cœur du livre est en réalité un monologue que mène BHL, le médiatique, avec un Lévy prétendument authentique et purifié. Inutile de souligner que ce dernier n’a pas souvent droit à la parole. Dès les premières phrases, la catharsis est annoncée : “Je les connais bien. Le théâtre. La bassesse. Ces gens qui vous tendent la main comme pour vous prendre le pouls.” Ce que l’auteur ne dit pas, c’est qu’il s’est précisément servi pendant vingt ans de ces gens-là pour sa propre mise en scène. Les “nouveaux philosophes”, tant dans leurs propos que dans leurs publications, n’ont jamais atteint un niveau d’élaboration critique ou théorique très élevé. Devant les caméras en marche, ils dictaient leurs commentaires sur les émissions de la veille, un “dialogue” avec les médias qui a fini par se tarir. Aujourd’hui, ils se contentent donc de soliloquer.” Ce qui ne l’empêche pas que “BHL ne travaille que là où le sang coule ou, du moins, là où tourne une caméra.” Fermez les guillemets !

Il serait toutefois faux de faire des journalistes allemands les critiques les plus sévères de BHL. Introduisant une traduction d’un article de l’écrivain consacré à l’Allemagne, Jürg Altwegg (4) rappelle l’apport du philosophe français : “il s’est fait connaître du grand public par sa mise en scène de la “nouvelle philosophie”, qui, dix ans après Mai 68, allait entraîner la fin de l’hégémonie marxiste dans la culture française et marquer le déclin du communisme. La contribution de Lévy à la critique du stalinisme et du marxisme a paru sous le titre la Barbarie à visage humain [Grasset]. Dans la foulée d’André Glucksmann, qui, dans les Maîtres penseurs [Grasset], revisitait les précurseurs du national-socialisme dans la pensée allemande, Lévy élargissait, dans l’Idéologie française [Grasset], l’approche antitotalitaire à l’analyse du terreau dont s’était nourri le régime de Pétain. A sa parution, en 1981, le livre souleva de fortes vagues et ouvrit les yeux sur la France de Vichy.” Faisant allusion à l’article de Lévy sur l’Allemagne d’après la chute du mur, le journaliste écrit : “Pour les lecteurs allemands, l’article de Bernard-Henri Lévy est plus qu’un résumé des récents débats : c’est un miroir français, un regard extérieur, plein de sympathie, plein d’injustice aussi, et non dépourvu de sens critique. Il montre qu’il existe un débat politique transnational sur le passé. Et qu’une sorte de conscience intellectuelle européenne est en train de voir le jour.”(1) Marianne Wiggins – Los Angeles Times – 02-02-06

(2) Johannes Willms – Süddeutsche Zeitung – 09-12-04

(3) Rudolf Walther – Tages-Anzeiger – 22-01-98

(4) Jürg Altwegg – Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung – 25-02-99

Questo intervento di Tiziana Lo Porto è apparso sulla rivista XL nell’aprile del 2007. Ve lo proponiamo oggi perché ricorre l’anniversario dello storico incontro a Kinshasa, nello Zaire (30 ottobre 1974), in cui Muhammad Ali batté George Foreman riconquistando il titolo mondiale.

di Tiziana Lo Porto

La prima cosa è la bellezza. Una bellezza talmente folgorante che a metà anni settanta portò il grande scrittore americano Norman Mailer a iniziare così il suo Il combattimento (Baldini Castoldi Dalai 2000): «Provi sempre una forte impressione quando lo vedi. Non dal vero come in televisione ma in piedi davanti a te, nella sua forma migliore. Allora il Più Grande Atleta del Mondo rischia di essere il più bell’uomo d’America, e un vocabolario iperbolico rischia di fare la sua comparsa».

Già, un vocabolario iperbolico che abilmente Mailer schiva evitando di fare della sua storia un mero racconto del giorno in cui Muhammad Ali, alias Cassius Clay, incontrò sul ring di Kinshasa, nello Zaire, George Foreman, vincendo e riconquistando il titolo di campione del mondo. E insieme a Mailer, molti si sono cimentati in dovuti e inattaccabili i tributi ad Ali, con narrazioni, celebrazioni e ricostruzioni degli episodi salienti della sua vita: la medaglia d’oro alle Olimpiadi di Roma nel 1960, il primo titolo di campione del mondo nel 1964, la vicinanza a Malcolm X e la conversione all’Islam che lo vide cambiare il nome Cassius Clay in Muhammad Ali, il rifiuto di prendere parte alla guerra in Vietnam perché «nessun vietcong mi ha mai chiamato negro», e il conseguente divieto di combattere per i successivi due anni e mezzo, il ritorno sul ring nel 1970, l’incontro con George Foreman nel 1974 e la riconquista del titolo mondiale, e poi l’uscita di scena come pugile nel 1981.
Sfociare nell’ossequiosa adulazione sembrerebbe quasi inevitabile quando si ha a che fare con chi più volte si è autoproclamato «il più grande» davanti a un pubblico stregato che non ha potuto che tacere e annuire. Non stupisce così la rilettura che ne fanno oggi alcune celebrità d’America esulando dal pugilato e dall’impegno civile, e incoronandolo padre fondatore del rap.
Un riconoscimento che ufficializza la validità del talento poetico-polemico del pugile, manifestato prima e dopo gli incontri, nelle conferenze stampa, nelle apparizioni pubbliche, trasformando ogni dichiarazione d’intenti in quelli che oggi vengono letti come rapidi, incisivi, indimenticabili rap.
A scendere in campo con un libro (Ali Rap, Taschen/ESPN, euro 19,99) e un dvd (Ali Rap, ESPN, $ 21,49), pubblicati in America lo scorso 17 gennaio per festeggiare i sessantacinque anni del pugile, sono indefessi ammiratori (come l’art director George Lois, curatore del libro), sportivi (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar il più autorevole ed eloquente), star hollywoodiane (da Sylvester Stallone a Sidney Poitier), attivisti politici (Al Sharpton) e rapper (Chuck D, Doug E. Fresh, Fab 5 Freddy e Ludacris tra gli altri). Un’operazione importante e bella, che, anche se da alcuni è stata con discrezione giudicata «un po’ azzardata», conferma le origini «black» della cultura rap, ridisegnandone però la cronologia e facendo arretrare di un decennio la nascita. «Se fosse vero vorrebbe dire che il rap non è nato (com’è credenza diffusa) nel South Bronx negli anni Settanta, ma nel Kentucky nei Sessanta», ha commentato Chuck Klosterman, editorialista di Esquire, aggiungendo poi che per quanto difficile da accettare, «l’ipotesi è interessante». E ancora una volta, con il tacito benestare di critici e platee, Muhammad Ali torna ad essere G.O.A.T., acronimo da lui stesso inventato e che sta per Greatest Of All Time, ovvero il Più Grande Di Ogni Tempo.
Non neghiamo che, dopo aver seguito con apprensione il decorso del morbo di Parkinson che dai primi anni ottanta affligge Ali, il riconoscimento rende orgogliosi e contenti, un po’ come se ci fosse concesso di rivedere Superman sfrecciare ancora una volta sui cieli di New York (paragone non azzardato: degli anni settanta il fumetto Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, che vedeva i due sfidanti impegnati in un incontro che avrebbe deciso le sorti del mondo, e la hit The Black Superman, dedicata al pugile da Johnny Wakelin). E poco importa se a questo giro nessun impostore verrà acciuffato, e nessun Foreman verrà battuto. Ci accontentiamo di rivederlo nei panni di eroe del rap, o ancora, in quelli di «Leggenda Vivente», titolo conferitogli lo scorso febbraio in Nigeria dall’ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) e dall’ACA (African Communications Agency) e in passato assegnato a personaggi del calibro di Nelson Mandela, Kofi Anan o Wole Soyinka.
Tornando poi al doppio tributo Ali Rap, ovvero libro e dvd, c’è da dire che si tratta di un’incoronazione dal basso. Il progetto si presenta infatti come un’importante operazione pop che mescola con sapienza e misura storia, sport e musica, creando un collage di parole, suoni e immagini che ha tanto valore artistico quanto di memoria. Ali Rap è uno spaccato di storia che colma le distanze tra cultura alta e cultura bassa, tra storia e puro entertainment, un’abile operazione che inizia al rap i cultori del pugilato e viceversa. Risultato questo che va ben al di là delle migliori intenzioni dei realizzatori (quella di tributo in primis). Eloquente la ricorrente presenza nel documentario di un televisore, oggetto pop per eccellenza, utilizzato come espediente per inserire filmati d’epoca (telegiornali, speciali, riprese di incontri e via dicendo) e come mezzo dal quale far parlare Muhammad Ali, conferendogli così più autorevolezza e collocandolo su un piano diverso, più alto. Un televisore come podio, dunque, spesso piazzato su una panca accanto al ring, a simboleggiare l’universalità del messaggio di Ali. E non è un caso che sia stato lo stesso pugile a dire, infischiandosene del limitato concetto di fedeltà alla patria, «Forse verrà il giorno in cui invece di dire: Dio benedica l’America, tutti e ovunque diranno: Dio benedica il Mondo».
Ci piacerebbe a questo punto rivedere Ali ancora una volta, come quando nel 1996, commuovendo il mondo, accese la fiamma olimpica ad Atlanta. E naturalmente anche le immagini dello storico incontro Ali vs. Foreman, per restare ancora una volta a bocca spalancata e senza fiato, pur conoscendone la fine. E se a malincuore abbiamo accettato che anche i supereroi a fumetti possono morire, ci sia concesso credere, davanti a queste immagini, che altri supereroi in carne e ossa vivono qui, proprio su questo pianeta.

Cormac McCarthy en route vers l’apocalypse

http://www.rue89.com/cabinet-de-lecture/cormac-mccarthy-en-route-vers-lapocalypse

Quelques mois après » Un homme » , de Philip Roth -autre géant vivant des lettres yankee-, Cormac McCarthy propose lui aussi une réflexion sur la mort. Et, un an après avoir revisité le western ( » Non, ce pays n’est pas pour le vieil homme » ), revisite le roman apocalyptique. Roman le plus étrange de son auteur, » La Route » obtint le Pulitzer 2007. Et est le premier coup de coeur du Cabinet de lecture en cette rentrée 2008.

Depuis la disparition de Norman Mailer, Philip Roth et Cormac McCarthy sont -avec Thomas Pynchon- les derniers géants de leur génération. Deux écrivains reclus, introuvables, quasi impossibles à interviewer. Aussi, en juin, quand le dernier accepta l’invitation télévisée d’Oprah Winfrey, ce fut le tonnerre. C’est que le roman venait de recevoir le Prix Pulitzer 2007. Quelques semaines auparavant, les frères Coen avaient projeté à Cannes l’adaptation de » Non, ce pays n’est pas pour le vieil homme » .

Ainsi, après une décennie de silence, l’auteur du capital » Méridien de sang » (1985) refaisait donc bel et bien surface. Et montrait à quel point ses fictions étaient utiles.

Le monde d’hier, le monde de demain : un roman de transition

» La Route » est un vrai roman de transition. Idéal pour passer d’un monde à l’autre. Les ombres y sont aussi vivantes que les hommes, et on ne sait pas où on est.

Nous voici dans un pays où les cendres fument encore, un pays que vient de traverser une tragédie (laquelle ? nous ne saurons jamais). Ne subsistent que des routes, des ruines, des palissades, des restes d’incendies.

Un homme et son petit garçon semblent être seuls survivants de la tragédie. En pleine apocalypse, ils marchent, avancent vers les côtes du Sud. Ils poussent un caddie orné d’un rétroviseur chromé, où est stocké le strict nécessaire. Ils croisent nombres de cadavres, de ruines, de carcasses. Tel un prédateur, le père quête les conserves pourries et les ramène comme nourriture à son fils. Le parcours est lent, très lent, dans la peur, la pluie, le vent, la neige, la nuit.

L’un comme l’autre vivent surtout la peur au ventre. Peur de la mort, certes, mais aussi peur d’eux-mêmes : quand l’adulte voit son reflet dans la glace, son premier réflexe est de pointer le revolver. Les dialogues sont rares. Ils matérialisent trop la peur. Et pour survivre ici, il faut marcher. Ils croiseront quelques » survivants » , êtres non-définis d’un monde en recomposition.

C’est que le couple est pisté. Sont-ils les derniers hommes du monde connu ? L’existence même de l’enfant devient une énigme : il est le futur incarné… Mais il reste quelques autres hommes qui ont survécu. Rares. Peut-être notre duo est-il, seulement, le dernier spécimen de » gentils » , de » ceux qui portent le feu » . Aussi doivent-ils échapper aux pillards.

Roman réaliste et new age

Dans » Le Méridien de sang » , dans » Non, ce pays n’est pas pour le vieil homme » -deux westerns-, comme dans ce dernier livre, McCarthy revisite des genres littéraires. Dans ces derniers -polar, western, SF-, il est souvent question de la fin d’un homme, de la fin d’un monde. D’une civilisation. Le genre a ceci de particulier qu’il angle, qu’il métaphorise. Qu’il offre la matière et l’anti-matière.

« La Route » est comme une métaphore plurielle. Globale. A l’heure où, allongement de la durée de vie et clonage faisant, l’homme a un rapport de moins en moins rationnel à sa vie et à sa mort, le livre de McCarthy agit comme le roman d’une autre rationalité. D’un monde où l’homme n’est plus seul, mais où il n’a pas conscience de ce qui l’accompagne. Il n’a plus conscience que de sa survie.

Ici, le père » ne savait qu’une chose, que l’enfant était son garant. Il dit : « S’il n’est pas la parole de Dieu, Dieu n’a jamais parlé’ » . Ici, les survivants sont » assis au bord de la route comme des aéronautes en détresse » .

McCarthy, dans son style toujours très resserré, allie roman réaliste et récit new age. Un livre narratif et puissamment philosophique. Qui unit le défini et l’indéfini : ici, peu de faits, peu d’histoire, seulement le souffle pur de ce qui fait survivre.

De McCarthy à Spielberg en passant par les Pink Floyd

Cela donne un livre où les deux garçons semblent fuir leur propre mort comme leur propre vie. Où tout ce qu’ils croisent (objet comme signe comme homme) semble symboliser la mort. En lisant » La Route » on pense beaucoup à  » Duel » , le premier téléfilm de Spielberg (1975), à cette course à la mort entre la voiture et le titanesque camion.

En lisant » La Route » , on se dit que » Wish you were here » , l’album de Pink Floyd sortit la même année que » Duel » -l’album de » Welcome to the Machine » et de » Shine on you Crazy Diamond » , l’hommage à Syd Barrett- a trouvé son histoire.

» La Route » se lira avec » Un homme » de Roth, paru en France à l’automne. Deux auteurs qui n’avaient jamais si profondément évoqué la mort. Roth est un urbain, et » Un homme » est un livre psychologique. McCarthy est un nomade, et ses romans sont des romans d’espaces.

Le souffle et la perspective qu’on trouve dans la dernière partie de » La Route » est titanesque. C’est le roman le plus dépouillé de McCarthy, un vrai roman car il est un espace-temps.

Sendung vom 25. Oktober 2009

Als Journalisten noch verklärte Helden waren, galt das Interview als Königsdisziplin der Gattung (Norman Mailer interviewte Ernest «Papa» Hemingway, George Plimpton Muhammad Ali). Bevor einer überhaupt zum Zug kam, brauchte er weder eine Ausbildung, noch einen Hochschulabschluss, keine Fachkenntnis und schon gar nicht brauchte man beim einzigen staatlichen Fernsehsender den wattierten Schutz einer einmaligen Eintrittsgarantie (die Austreter können an einer Hand abgezählt werden: Walter «Zeigefinger» Eggenberger und Werner Vetterli, bei SVP-Antipathiesanten auch gerne als Vetter Wernerli verballhornt).

In der Schweiz war aber schon immer alles ein wenig anders (hierzulande glaubt man selbstverständlich, auch dies habe mit der Demokratie zu tun, wie man hierzulande immer alles mit Demokratie erklärt, sogar warum Chüedreck stinkt). In der Medien-Demokratie der Schweiz, wo ein Sender dem Rest des Landes die Welt erklärt (und dabei immer ein wenig schmunzelt, ob im Telesguard oder in der Tagesschau), wird zum Interview gebeten, und weil es wie weiland in der DDR nur einen Sender und nur eine Sportsendung gibt (das Schweizer Sportfernsehen SSF ist ja nicht einmal eine Karikatur seiner selbst) kann eine Sportlerin nur schwer nein sagen. Audi drängt. Swisscom pusht. Raiffeisen stichelt. Alpiq mit seinem trendigen, tooligen und talentierten WebTV macht ebenfalls Druck. Da sagt auch irgendwann eine Fabienne Suter ja (Ali hätte nein gesagt: «My people ain’t free, I’aint going to your TV»). Wir wollen Fabienne Suter nachsehen, dass sie nicht Muhammad Ali ist; dafür kann sie einfach zu gut Skifahren.

Wenn aber der Cast vom SF auf die kleinen Leute losgelassen wird, dann tanzt der Bär. Dann sind wir, wie aufregend, live dabei, wenn Suters daheim in der Stube SF2 schauen! Hey, da geht die Post ab (ich höre noch den Tönler rufen: «Herr Suter, chönnted Sie einisch no ‘Hopp Fabienne’ rufen!?»)! Die Mutter, natürlich, sie ist in der Küche wenn Fabienne fährt (Älplermagronen, wetten?), weil sie einfach nicht zuschauen kann. Und der Göttibueb heisst nicht so wie ein Bub heissen könnte. Er heisst Jordan (also nicht so, wie der Jordan, über den ich dereinst gehen werde, sondern «Tschorden», ok!?). Die gestellten Fragen sind dabei so unglaublich real, dass man die Antworten schon gegen die verkochten Älplermagronen riecht (und die stinken bekanntlich wie Chüedreck) und schon wieder vergessen hat, bevor sie gegeben wurde. Und das schlimmste daran? Dass die arme Fabienne Suter gar nichts für diesen Unsinn kann, aber für den Rest der Laufbahn für diesen Schmackes Hiebe abbekommt (das Schlimmste für Tschorden war das unterlassene Winken vom Gotti am TV, aber das wurde ihr schon längst von Paddy oder einem anderen Hengst ausgeprügelt).

Blick in den Ski-Brother-Container vom SF (mit Piero Esteriore; in der Küche mit der Mutter)

Höhepunkt der Sendung? Fabienne durfte ein Maskottchen aussuchen. Hey, wie lässig! Und sie wählte, schmunzel schmunzel, «Quatschie». Quatschie ist von Kopf bis Fuss aus Haaren, trägt dennoch Ohrenwärmer und ist total zerzaust. Quasi eine Plüschhaargewordene Frisur von Daniela Milanese, übrigens aus Derendingen (und auch eine Meisterin des Interviews mit Leuten, die keine Wahl haben).

P.S. Einsamer Interviewhöhepunkt am Samstag in «Benissimo». Beni Turnheer übersetzt Robbie Williams Antwort auf Schwitzerteutsch und kalauert, ha ha ha, dass Robbie, ho ho ho, ein wenig Schweizerdeutsch lernen sollte. Robbie (auf Englisch): «Klar, Du kannst ja den Leuten irgendwas übersetzen, zum Beispiel dass ich ein Feigling bin mit einem kleinen Schwanz.» (Beni hat nicht übersetzt). (L.T.)

Detrás de buena parte de la literatura norteamericana del siglo XX se alistan dos recurrencias significativas: la primera, lo mórbido de un orden; la segunda, la inapelable referencia a Dostoievsky. Entiendo que estas instancias no sólo recurren, sino que también se imbrican. En lo que sigue, me ocuparé caprichosamente de la primera.

Nataniel Hawthorne anotó en 1835 la fuga ligeramente fantástica de un hombre llamado Wakefield; algunos años después Herman Melville insertó en otro hombre llamado Bartleby el evanescimiento paria de Wakefield trocándolo en conducta ética: Bartleby acepta su destino paria y a partir de él, hace manifiesta la idea de que, en un mundo errático, causal y definido, las infracciones conducen al silencio, al anonimato, a la muerte en vida. Sin embargo, Bartleby no sucumbe a la fuga como Wakefield; Bartleby resiste en una empecinada actitud. La labor de Bartleby consiste sólo en copiar, repetir un modelo del cual ya no existe original alguno (alguna de estas figuras, el difícilmente rastreable modelo o la labor del copista pueden antojársenos como metáforas del infinito; llamarles metáforas lo corroboraría). Bartleby tan solo copia y en cada copia el orden se afinca más y más, un orden secreto: orden que anida y se renueva en su mismidad –insalvable paradoja- dentro del inconsciente de cada ciudadano. Bartleby resiste, pero sobre todas las cosas, Bartleby no escarmienta. Se pronuncia taxativo en una respuesta unívoca: prefiero no hacerlo. Bartleby, consecuentemente, deja de copiar.

Probablemente alguien lo haya notado antes. Entre ambos relatos se extiende una notable similitud: tanto Wakefield como Bartleby ejecutan sus acciones allí donde el orden se manifiesta con mayor virulencia. Wakefield lo hace en el centro de la ciudad de Londres; Bartleby en la mismísimo Wall Street. La línea final de Wakefield dice: “En la aparente confusión de nuestro mundo misterioso los individuos se ajustan con tanta perfección a un sistema, y los sistemas unos a otros, y a un todo, de tal modo que con sólo dar un paso a un lado cualquier hombre se expone al pavoroso riesgo de perder para siempre su lugar. Como Wakefield, se puede convertir, por así decirlo, en el Paria del Universo.” Hacia el final de Bartleby, Melville apunta: “No puedo afirmar su fundamento; ni puedo decir qué verdad tenía. Pero, como este vago rumor no ha carecido de interés para mí, aunque es triste, puede también interesar a otros.”
Hay en la voluntad de estos hombres algo más que una toma de conciencia. Hay en parte una extraña predicción opuesta al posterior espíritu creador de Walt Whitman. Hay, en esa misma predicción, cierta vocación por la escuela trascendentalista. Whitman encarnó el nacimiento simbólico de una nación –tal como lo hizo Borges en Fundación Mítica de Buenos Aires- cuando lo que marcaba era el nacimiento de una literatura. Difícilmente las letras americanas puedan eludir la clarividente sombra de Walt Whitman; más difícilmente aún puedan soslayar el signo de Bartleby.

Restan algunas diferencias. Wakefield encarna un cierto tipo de hombre de acción; Wakefield resuelve olvidar el orden y lo olvida; puede verlo como algo ajeno, ridículo. Wakefield difícilmente perciba al orden como tal; sólo se siente presa de él. Bartleby, en cambio, ve como ese mismo orden se agrieta con su palabra, mira los ojos de enfado del sujeto al que se le dice No. Si Wakefield se avecina a determinar el campo de acción de un supuesto Adversario, Bartleby pelea a ciegas en él, con la ingenuidad suficiente que precisa cualquier forma de rebelión.

Entiendo que, en cierta medida, la literatura norteamericana se abre paso de esta manera: valentía e impermeabilidad, avance y reticencia. Algo mejor acaso: avance cauto, paso del francotirador. Lo que se escribe, lo que se enuncia, se ejecuta desde una trinchera móvil, condenada al pulso de un enemigo en permanente fuga, y a falta de certezas sobre su identidad, se intuye siquiera su presencia, su entidad, su olor. Lo que me alienta a seguir en esta línea es una intuición doble: que la escuela de todo escritor norteamericano consista en darse cuenta de que algo huele mal y que en buena medida cada escritor norteamericano sea un Bartleby, atento a una actitud fundamental: el hombre no ha de marchar a destiempo del orden que lo atenaza, sino contra él. Para ser más explícito: lo que impone el signo de Bartleby no es que Uno diga No como consecuencia de dejar de decir Sí; por el contrario, Uno dice No muy especialmente cuando todo indica que debería decir Sí.

Tomando como referencia esto último, pensaremos no con injusta soberbia que la literatura que se agrupe detrás del signo de Bartleby es cuantiosa mas no dispar. Ciertamente, cuantiosa es. Me pregunto si no dispar.

Este reciente siglo de madurez con el que carga la aún breve historia de literatura norteamericana –ese del que abrevamos con cierta ingenuidad, confiando en sus inicios y sus confines, como si las fechas vinieran a decirnos algo realmente- conoce de un Sherwood Anderson y de un Norman Mailer, de un Cummings y de un Chandler, de un Fitzgerald y de un Carver, todos tan sutilmente abigarrados en el signo de Bartleby y en el destino final de Wakefield. Algunos, como Bartleby, asumieron la valentía de oponerse al orden; otros, como Wakefield, pusieron al descubierto sus paradojas. La disparidad que media entre una y otra actitud determina dos caracteres más o menos evidentes: francotiradores y fugitivos tiñen lúgubremente la literatura norteamericana.

Pero algo más: que algo abigarre a los escritores norteamericanos en un signo y un destino paria no obedece –y esto se me antoja fascinante- a conocer fielmente aquello que les conduce a padecerlo. El orden de un imperio se distingue de otros órdenes en su sigilo: las jaulas jamás serán mencionadas como jaulas, los hombres jamás mencionados como prisioneros. El signo de Bartleby, por tanto, no designa aquello contra lo cual revelarse; prioriza tan solo las ansias de rebelión. Bartleby, como decía anteriormente, se revela a ciegas, es un ciego de la verdad. Pero no hay condición más eficaz al rebelarse que esta ceguera de saber a ciencia cierta que está dando en la tecla.

El caso Patchen resulta más que ilustrativo a este respecto. Patchen probablemente sea uno de los poetas al que menos justicia le han hecho las antologías y los exégetas. Patchen no nos resultaría olvidado si no fuera por la suerte de algunos de sus sucesores. Es lícito argüir que probablemente la literatura que vino después no fue sino variaciones del sentir de Patchen. En 1936, con la publicación de Before The Brave, Patchen vindicó como ningún otro poeta la ominosa sombra del signo de Bartleby, fue desapercibidamente el audaz preconizador del signo de Bartleby.

Fue Henry Miller quien en 1946 retrató fielmente –con la fidelidad que da la imaginación- a Kenneth Patchen. Mucho antes –y acaso también después- Patchen no se escondía sino detrás de algunos detalles biográficos: su nacimiento en Ohio, sus tempranos esfuerzos literarios, la vocación por el vagabundeo, publicaciones en algunos periódicos, en algunas revistas. Distinguiblemente, la numeración de estas efemérides no evoca a un hombre; podría evocar a cientos de norteamericanos. Miller apunta en Patchen: man of anger & light que Patchen era silencioso e inquieto, que su espíritu indócil no traficaba en manerismos, (”he is inexorable: he has no manners, no tact, no grace. He gives no quarter. Like a ganster, he follows a code of his own.”), que pasó la parte final de su vida confinado a una cama a causa de su invalidez. Miller dispone también una cualidad insoslayable: su inocencia (“innocents, precisely because they disavow all responsibility for evil are they accursed”).

Pero la mención de Patchen puede ser –a esto me ajusto- la de muchos otros escritores. Lo que importa en todo caso es el panorama, el entorno del cual se desprende, rebelde, el signo de Bartleby, y la significación de su impronta. Dispongo, lógicamente, de ejemplos literarios. En 1967, Norman Mailer propuso alguna variación al signo de Bartleby, variación que puede ser también pensada como desbarajuste. Algunas de estas digresiones se encuentran en un viejo artículo mío, “Norman Mailer y el Héroe Cómico.” Copio aquí algunas líneas de Mailer.
 

“marchó sobre un bastión que simbolizaba el poderío militar de la república, y marchó, no para capturarlo, sino para herirlo simbólicamente; y las fuerzas que defendían a ese bastión reaccionaron como si una herida simbólica pudiese ser tan mortal como cualquier otro desgarro en el combate”

El inocente, según Miller, no es tal tanto por inculpabilidad como por desentendimiento: él mismo acaba siendo marginado precisamente porque se desprende de la culpa, se desembarga de ella ya que ésta es el atributo que el orden dispone para anularlo, para reducirlo a objeto. El héroe, según Mailer, sólo debe operar en intervenciones lacerantes y las heridas no tienen sino que ensuciar las singularidades del orden, herir simbólicamente, dejar en manos del futuro un seco reguero de pólvora y no las consecuencias del estallido, la fórmula y no el resultado, establecer el conflicto ignorando la solución. Ningún orden se extingue porque una fuerza opuesta a él, de iguales magnitudes, se abalance a derrotarlo. Ocurre más bien lo que al modelo infinito de Bartleby: si nos enfrentamos en iguales condiciones –es decir, sin diferencias sustanciales entre ellos y nosotros, lo cual viene a decir también que todo lo que ellos hagan para ganar, nosotros lo haremos también- no estaremos sino copiando aquello que tanto nos atosiga. No habrá por tanto heroísmos, ya que la heroicidad se marca en lo particular, en lo diferencial, pero por sobre todo, en lo insólito y en la suma de las infracciones inesperadas por el orden que conducen a su abatimiento. Los Bartlebies, los Wakefields, no producen explosiones; por el contrario, son la huella intachable de la implosión, actúan desde y para lo inusitado, sobre lo que ha de perdurar para que el orden caiga desde lo alto con el exacto peso con el que se yergue; contribuirán a su erosión y a su ruina: le ofrecerán un espejo en el que pueda verse monstruoso.

El siguiente verso de Patchen, de apreciable influencia kafkiana, resulta iluminador al respecto.

¿Conocemos otra culpa que la espera?

Pero mucho más certeros fueron los versos finales de Have you killed your man for today?, de 1943.

Nuestra es la enfermedad del venado al que matan
Ya que la actividad de los cazadores es matarlo.

La pregunta por la literatura norteamericana pudo haber sido otra y pudo incluso el signo de Bartleby brotar sin circunscribirse a un solo orden, sino a todos. Todo orden menor importa uno superior y el camino de uno a otro siempre es infinito.
Nuestra también es la culpa de la espera. Pero lo que aguardamos tendrá algún vínculo con la verdad última de Bartleby –aquella que Melville prefirió no hacer pública-. Y será a través de ella que nos convertiremos en perfectos francotiradores o hermosos fugitivos. Algún día, probablemente mañana, cuando sin razón alguna, sin dirección que seguir, sin Adversario certero, despertemos y acatemos lo que dentro de nosotros señala el signo de Bartleby.

M.A

There was a lot of talk at the Mailer gala about the fact that my last name is Gilmore. I didn’t know, originally, what to expect regarding that. I did know that Mailer’s masterpiece The Executioner’s Song tells the true account of Gary Gilmore, the murderer put to death in Utah in the 70’s — the first person put to death in the country once the death penalty came back. I thought my name might work against me, as it could look like a ploy, or some sort of stunt. But, turns out, it was a completely blind reading, and the colony ended up putting some effort into checking my genealogy before they let me know I had won.

I understand why they would want to check on that. It would be odd to give the first Norman Mailer prize to Gary Gilmore’s nephew. That wouldn’t be very good at all. The colony swears it wouldn’t have mattered either way. Still, if I’m their PR guy, I say don’t give it to Gary’s nephew.

As it turns out, there is no relation, as I told Patty Cohen of the New York Times, and as she reprinted in Wednesday’s article on the gala.

Regardless, as it further turns out, I think my name is having quite an effect. And for me, it’s a really good effect.

Here’s the thing. I heard multiple literary lords and ladies at the gala laugh and comment about my name and Utah roots along the lines of, “Mailer did it!” shaking their fists at the ceiling, as if I had been selected by Norman Mailer from beyond the grave, for dramatic or ironic effect. This made them happy. They were glad for the irony, as if it keeps Mailer alive. I believe that some of the response I’ve received from the colony (they are treating me so well, I can’t even begin to describe) is bolstered by slight superstition that, through the Gilmore kid, they are helping Mailer, doing his will, perhaps.

Now, I, of course, think there is nothing supernatural about these events. There are quite a few Gilmore’s about. But, I can’t help but feel genuinely inspired by Norman Mailer’s attitude, his ego, his commitment to truth and lifelong writing. It does sort of feel I’ve been visited by a ghost. It’s all rather spooky. The shift in my attitudes, my sudden confidence—not in my current ability but in my potential.  And, in the same “I don’t really want to admit this” sort of way that I felt I might win the NM writer’s contest when I submitted “Final Cascade” in May (I told my wife I had a good chance), I think I’ll probably write and publish many books. So there it is. I do, in fact, have the ego. I’ve always wanted to be the best. I wanted to be a professional snowboarder. I wanted to storm the world with the high school punk band I sang for. I like the stage, performing. The attention charges me. I do want to write to the edge. I fell in love with narrative nonfiction before I’d yet heard of Norman Mailer. And I am invigorated to the bones that I get to drag his name around for a bit.

So, in the most un-superstitious way possible, I think this all is a little ironic, a little spooky. And even less superstitiously, I feel that through continuing to push nonfiction writing, continuing to promote young authors, and by jump starting careers, the Norman Mailer Writer’s Colony is, in fact, keeping the man alive.

This is a bunny on a leash.

]]> http://gilmorethewriter.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/norman-mailer-gala/ Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:47:10 +0000 John Gilmore http://gilmorethewriter.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/norman-mailer-gala/

NM trophy

First I want to let you know that you can be invited to, prepare for, attend, and even give a 60 second speech at a gala without ever figuring out how to pronounce the word gala. I open my mouth and it comes out different every time.

Sometimes it sounds like an apple. I think some site played it on a recording for me and it’s gaugh like God. Online dictionaries tell me it’s Ga”la. So now I go find another site to look up what those linguistic letters mean, right?

Maryssa and I got back from NYC last night late. The Norman Mailer Writer’s Colony stuff was absolutely perfect. I mean it. Just completely perfectly executed. Everything went really well. Like Calvin Trillin, MC at the gala, pointed out, Larry Schiller has a future as a party planner if he wants it. It was cocktails and hors d’œuvre from 7-8, then dinner, and awards ceremony throughout. William Kennedy, Pullitzer Prize winning author of Ironweed (1983), introduced me to the crowd of hundreds. It was quite fun.

Dinner was memorable most of all for the vegetables. The lighting was such that I wasn’t even positive about all the contents of my dish, or the preparation, but I know the mushrooms (shitake, I think) were absolutely fantastic. The halibut was great, and the lava cake for dessert was off the charts. I don’t even know if it was a lava cake, but I think so. It was just so fluffy and light that I thought it might be something I’ve never heard of before.

At my table were judges from the college nonfiction competition. Brilliant seating idea, in my opinion. My parents sat with the parents of the winner of the high school contest at a separate table, Emily Swanagin (who needs to email her essay to me!), and apparently some editors/agents/publication types, as my dad ended up with email addresses of editors who wanted to read my piece. But among the 10 or so seated at my table was my spouse, Maryssa, Barbara Lounsberry, former nonfiction editor of the North American Review and head of the final judges for the competition, Lee Gutkind, judge for the contest and founding editor of Creative Nonfiction, who was kind enough to walk and talk with me up to central park before his—I don’t know, six mile?—run before the gala, Judge for the contest Melissa Fay Greene (her voice and demeanor directly contrast her loud writing credentials), and Bonnie Sunstein, one of the contest judges who is currently a professor at University of Iowa, and to whom I just might be eternally grateful for somehow making Maryssa consider that, perhaps, maybe, maybe, she could stand to live in Iowa City, and therefore I, in Maryssa’s new opinion, probably ought to consider applying to the best writing program in the country.

The level of noise being such, it was tough to speak with anyone outside my direct proximity; I therefore talked a lot to Barbara Lounsberry during dinner, to Doug from the NCTE before dinner (he was also at the table), to Melissa Fay Greene by leaning hard across the table, and not at all to Lee Gutkind, whom I’d gotten a rather solid chance to talk to earlier.

Behind me ended up being a full table of publishing business types. Walking by, they congratulated me and introduced the entire table to me, but I can’t remember their names or their positions. I had the smarts to steal all the name cards after dinner so I can look them up.

A bit over was the big table, with Toni Morrison, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jhumpa Lahiri, David Remnick, and the rest. I made the decision before the event that I wouldn’t take the time to star gaze, as there were so many people here — like those at my table — with whom I might be able to form actual working relationships and friendships. I just couldn’t see the benefit in spending 20 minutes speaking to giants of the literary world. Maybe later. David Remnick did find and congratulate me, and I told him I’d send him something “in ten or fifteen years.” He said, “You don’t have to wait that long.” Then, a young couple found Maryssa and me, and reported excitedly that it was so cool that we were from Utah— “I’m from Utah!” said the girl, who is Tina Browns executive assistant, Leina (sorry, don’t know how to spell it), who graduated from the University of Utah, and her boyfriend, Trevor, a photographer (and former Mormon from San Diego) who shoots for the likes of JCrew. We chatted for a bit, actually, and then Trevor and I met after midnight and talked a bit more. I think that illustrates my thinking about this whole thing. There were so many people there who I was lucky enough to forge genuine, if small, connections with, and many of them have connections with the bigger types; it just didn’t make sense to go out and introduce myself to Salman Rushdie or Gay Talese. I did talk to Toni Morrison, and to Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals), who grabbed me as I walked by. Hopefully, hopefully, she’ll be at the Writer’s Colony next summer.

My last thought about the gala: There was multi-tiered awe going on. Many of us were in awe of our surrounding publishers, writers, and editors — people who’d won national book awards, who had multiple best sellers, etc.. But even that tier of accomplished writers seemed a bit in awe of the presence of many of the very most important writers and publishers in the world today. The fantastic and unexpected result of this was that Maryssa and I felt comfortable and accepted by this medium tier of professionals, as if we could all be a bit united in our mutual intimidation by the bigger names. Like Lee Gutkind said on our walk up to Central Park — it was something to this effect: “This whole circumstance is somewhat odd. Writers and editors at my level, in general, don’t hang out with the sort of literary figures attending tonight.”

Norman Mailer thought sex was meaningless, an incomplete act, unless unprotected and to orgasm. (A potentially dangerous philosophy, but maybe those were different times.) Due to his beliefs on the sexual act, he had a lot of child support (6 wives total). Later in his life he said that every time he made money on his books (and he made plenty; The Naked and the Dead was the first million dollar deal for an author), the money was instantly in the mail and out the door. He said this was a good thing. It made him write. He was always broke.

You ever force yourself to write? Or put yourself in conditions where you have to write?

(i.e. Once when I worked day shift as an RN, I took a night class at a local university, not really to learn craft, but to have someone say, “You must do this assignment.”)

Does that work?

there was a time he would not wear a shirt…

Norman Mailer wrote a lot of letters – I’m told that’s what people did back in the, oh, latter-half of the twentieth century. He wrote about to his parents about a new book (a little thing called “The Naked and The Dead”):

These are ordinary men asked to perform an extraordinary job which was not foreseen to be so unique, and of course they fail, but I think I can set up a little epic in the process and draw a few subtle morals—the mountain will be symbolic in the sense of man’s vision, and polar with it, the fear of reaching the summit of that ambition to have the vision.

To Time, about reviews of his books:

Barbary Shore may be a rotten book—I belong to that small club which thinks otherwise—but I know you’re a man of sufficient intelligence to agree that your answer, while effective for the audience, did not follow the strictest rules of logic.

And, most entertainingly, to Lillian Ross, about Ernest Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea:

I read the Hemingway thing…I know what it is about him I can’t stand. He is always saying in effect I am a man who happens incidentally to be a great writer. I know that all of you will be interested in my noble, strong, and beautiful attempts to exercise myself as a great man, and will be happy when I succeed except for professors, other writers, and assorted cocksuckers.

Anyway, I thought it was good and would have been better if it hadn’t been so full of shit.

More here.

As everyone learns in driver education, the counterintuitive can save your life. You’re in a skid, heading into the weeds, or a wall, and the thing to do is turn in the direction of the skid, not stand on the brakes, and certainly not haul the wheel over the other way, which is what your reflexes are having you do. These days most cars have anti-lock brakes, to override your reflexes, so no matter how hard you mash the brake pedal and hold it down, the wheels won’t lock up. The little computer thing will pump the brakes for you, in thousands of little micro-pulses, and it won’t sneer at you like your dork of a driving teacher. That’s nice. And if you gather your wits about you, and turn in the direction of the skid, while every fiber of your being says not to, the front tires will line up with the careening mass of metal that is your immediate problem, and you’ll actually be able to steer again. Yeah, you may still hit the wall, but you’ll at least have a fighting chance not to. Control is a nice thing, and later you’ll master the four-wheel power drift and hanging out the rear end in full-throttle oversteer to blast out of corners and leave the others behind you in the dust, but that’s for racers. First you learn that your immediate reflexes can kill you. Don’t trust them.

Of course few generalize from the specifics of winter driving to life in general. We all make snap judgments, based on what feels right, or what seems right, without thinking things through. That probably explains the nation’s divorce rate, and much of our political discourse – all the nonsense about death panels and how Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize is an awful thing, while Chicago losing the Olympics was a good thing. It’s all reflex, like many decades ago with the far left edge of the far left hoping America lost in Vietnam, and thus was thoroughly humiliated. Why would you want that? What was that but reflex? In the middle were those saying, that, well, maybe we ought to stay and make the best of it, and those saying a careful and responsible winding down of operations was probably best. They didn’t trust their reflexes. And now from the right it’s spontaneous reaction to Obama, without much reference to any details of much of anything – he seems bad, so he must be a socialist-communist-fascist clever man out to ruin us all, and stupid too, or the sly evil antichrist, or a completely atheist devout Muslim, born in Kenya or Indonesia, and not really one of us. No guys, you steer into the skid, and you don’t lock the brakes. Don’t lose control and end up in the weeds. Think it through. What are you trying to say? Yes, your passion is impressive – so noted. So what? You may want points for the passion of your beliefs, and not for the grounds of your beliefs. When your two-ton car skids across the ice and slams into that wall, you don’t get points for how hard you stood on the brakes. You still hit the wall.

And now we face a decision with Afghanistan, and people trust their reflexes again:

Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, said the White House would be committing “an error of historic proportions” if it doesn’t accede to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s request for tens of thousands more troops in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California upped the pressure for a major Afghanistan troop surge from the Democratic side, saying it makes no sense to stay in Afghanistan and not grant the general the forces he says are necessary.

Dianne Feinstein, the often befuddled Democratic senator from out here in California, was in rare form:

“I don’t know how you put somebody in who was as crackerjack as General McChrystal, who gives the president very solid recommendations, and not take those recommendations if you’re not going to pull out,” Ms. Feinstein said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

That’s pure reflex. Obama put McChrystal in charge of military operations there, and you’re either all in or all out, and if you’re all in, you do what you’re told. How could it be more complicated than that? Stand on the brakes, or give it the gun and see what happens. The idea of pumping the brakes, in order to regain control – what Obama seems to be doing in rethinking the whole mission – is counterintuitive. We can’t have that. We don’t do that. We could lose the war.

How would we know if we had? In the Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria argues that we actually might have already won:

At the heart of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s request for a major surge in troops is the assumption that we are failing in Afghanistan. But are we really? The United States has had one central objective: to deny al-Qaeda the means to reconstitute, to train and to plan major terrorist attacks. This mission has been largely successful for the past eight years. Al-Qaeda is dispersed, on the run and unable to direct attacks of the kind it planned and executed routinely in the 1990s. Fourteen of the top 20 leaders of the group have been killed by drone attacks. Its funding sources are drying up, and its political appeal is at an all-time low. All this is not an accident but rather a product of the U.S. presence in the region and efforts to disrupt terrorists, track funds, gain intelligence, aid development, help allies and kill enemies.

He does concede that the security situation in Afghanistan “has deteriorated considerably” – with large parts of the country are effectively controlled by the Taliban, and other parts effectively no man’s land, but “these areas are sparsely populated tracts of countryside.” But ignore your reflexes. Look at the reality:

All the major population centers remain in the hands of the Kabul government. Is it worth the effort to gain control of all 35,000 Afghan villages scattered throughout the country? That goal has eluded most Afghan governments for the past 200 years and is a very high bar to set for the U.S. mission there.

And he suggests security has gotten worse, but “largely because Hamid Karzai’s government is ineffective and corrupt and has alienated large numbers of Pashtuns, who have migrated to the Taliban.” And here your reflexes may do you no good:

It is not clear that this problem can be solved by force, even using a smart counterinsurgency strategy. In fact, more troops injected into the current climate could provoke an anti-government or nationalist backlash.

It might be best to wean the Pashtun tribes away from the most radical Taliban factions, as we did with the Sunnis in Iraq. And we might look at the big picture:

And when we think through our strategy in Afghanistan, let’s please remember that there is virtually no al-Qaeda presence there. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently acknowledged what U.S. intelligence and all independent observers have long said: Al-Qaeda is in Pakistan, as is the leadership of the hard-core Afghan Taliban. (That’s why it’s called the Quetta Shura, Quetta being a Pakistani city.) All attacks against Western targets that have emanated from the region in the past eight years have come from Pakistan, not from Afghanistan. Even the most recently foiled plot in the United States, which involved the first Afghan that I know of to be implicated in global terrorism, originated in Pakistan. Yet we spend $30 in Afghanistan for every dollar in Pakistan.

There’s little evidence that Pakistan’s generals have truly accepted that they must defeat all the jihadis in their country (as opposed to just those who threaten the Pakistani state). But they have been more cooperative and active in the past year than ever before. A civilian government, the jihadi takeover of the Swat Valley, a change in public attitudes and increased American aid have all contributed to a more effective U.S.-Pakistan relationship. Greater energy, attention, and resources will surely yield even more.

But that is counterintuitive. We really want to send more troops. It feels right, like steering away for the skid and slamming on the brakes. And if it feels right, then… what?

What about the argument that Osama bin Laden and his minions will simply shift back across the border if the Taliban is allowed free rein? Well, they haven’t done so yet, despite the pockets of turf the insurgents control. And it is easier for us to deny them territory than to insist that we control it all ourselves – we can fight like guerrillas, too.

But sending more troops feels right to us.

Maybe what we need is one of those driver education teachers to remind us what feels right is dangerous. To that end, William Astore, the author and retired lieutenant colonel who has taught at the Air Force Academy and Naval Postgraduate School, offers an interesting thought experiment – What if LBJ had listened to Norman Mailer on Vietnam?

This is not so far-fetched:

It’s early in 1965, and President Lyndon B. Johnson faces a critical decision. Should he escalate in Vietnam? Should he say “yes” to the request from U.S. commanders for more troops? Or should he change strategy, downsize the American commitment, even withdraw completely, a decision that would help him focus on his top domestic priority, “The Great Society” he hopes to build?

We all know what happened. LBJ listened to the generals and foreign policy experts and escalated, with tragic consequences for the United States and calamitous results for the Vietnamese people on the receiving end of American firepower. Drawn deeper and deeper into Vietnam, LBJ would soon lose his way and eventually his will, refusing to run for reelection in 1968.

President Obama now stands at the edge of a similar precipice. Should he acquiesce to General Stanley A. McChrystal’s call for 40,000 to 60,000 or more U.S. troops for Afghanistan? Or should he pursue a new strategy, downsizing our commitment, even withdrawing completely, a decision that would help him focus on national healthcare, among his other top domestic priorities?

Yes, Obama had boxed himself in – this is his “war of necessity” and he has ruled out any “reduction” option – so the options are few.

And he seems to be getting the reflexive conventional wisdom – military escalation:

To whom, we may ask, is Obama listening as he makes his decision on Afghanistan strategy and troop levels? Not the skeptics, it’s safe to assume. Not the freethinkers, not today’s equivalents of Mary McCarthy or Norman Mailer. Instead, he’s doubtless listening to the generals and admirals, or the former generals and admirals who now occupy prominent “civilian” positions at the White House and inside the beltway.

By his actions, Obama has embraced the seemingly sober conventional wisdom that senior military officers, whether on active duty or retired, have, as they say in the corridors of the Pentagon, “subject matter expertise” when it comes to strategy, war, even foreign policy.

Astore reminds us that General McChrystal’s strategic review was written by a “war-loving foreign policy community” (see Glenn Greenwald) and, per Tom Engelhardt, Obama’s “civilian” advisors include “Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired lieutenant general who is the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Douglas Lute, a lieutenant general who is the president’s special advisor on Afghanistan and Pakistan (dubbed the “war czar” when he held the same position in the Bush administration), and James Jones, a retired Marine Corps general, who is national security advisor, not to speak of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

These are not the counterintuitive types. Obama needs the late Norman Mailer, and Astore says that Mailer would argue this:

Don’t fight a war, and clearly don’t escalate a war, in a place that means so little to Americans. In words that apply quite readily to Afghanistan today, Mailer wrote in 1965: “Vietnam [to Americans] is faceless. How many Americans have ever visited that country? Who can say which language is spoken there, or what industries might exist, or even what the country looks like? We do not care. We are not interested in the Vietnamese. If we were to fight a war with the inhabitants of the planet of Mars there would be more emotional participation by the people of America.”

And he might argue this:

Beware of cascading dominoes and misleading metaphors, whether in Southeast Asia or anywhere else. The domino theory held that if Vietnam, then split into north and south, was united under communism, other Asian countries, including Thailand, the Philippines, perhaps even India, would inevitably fall to communism as well, just like so many dominoes toppling. Instead, it was communism that fell or, alternately, morphed into a version that we could do business with (to paraphrase former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher).

We may no longer speak metaphorically of falling dominoes in today’s AfPak theater of operations. Nevertheless, our fears are drawn from a similarly misleading image: If Afghanistan falls to the Taliban, Pakistan will surely follow, opening a nuclear Pandora’s Box to anti-American terrorists in which, in our fevered imaginations, smoking guns will once again become mushroom clouds.

Despite the fevered talk of falling dominoes in his era, Mailer was unmoved. Such rhetoric suggests, he wrote in 1965, “that we are not protecting a position of connected bastions so much as we are trying to conceal the fact that the bastions are about gone – they are not dominoes, but sand castles, and a tide of nationalism is on the way in. It is curious foreign policy to use metaphors in defense of a war; when the metaphors are imprecise, it is a swindle.”

Astore adds that that “in viewing countries and peoples as so many dominoes, which by the actions – or the inaction – of the United States are either set up or knocked down, we vastly exaggerate our own agency and emphasize our sense of self-importance.” We don’t exactly own these countries and peoples.

And the third Mailer point:

Carrots and sticks may work together to move a stubborn horse, but not a proud people determined to find their own path. As Mailer put it, with a different twist – “Bombing a country at the same time you are offering it aid is as morally repulsive as beating up a kid in an alley and stopping to ask for a kiss.”

Astore concurs:

As our Predator and Reaper drones scan the Afghan terrain below, launching missiles to decapitate terrorists while unintentionally taking innocents with them, we console ourselves by offering aid to the Afghans to help them improve or rebuild their country. As it happens, though, when the enemy hydra loses a head, another simply grows in its place, while collateral damage only leads to a new generation of vengeance-seekers. Meanwhile, promised aid gets funneled to multinational corporations or siphoned off by corrupt government officials, leaving little for Afghan peasants, certainly not enough to win their allegiance, let alone their “hearts and minds.”

This is going nowhere, and Astore takes us back to Mailer in 1965:

The image had been prepared for our departure – we heard of nothing but the corruption of the South Vietnam government and the professional cowardice of the South Vietnamese generals. We read how a Viet Cong army of 40,000 soldiers was whipping a government army of 400,000. We were told in our own newspapers how the Viet Cong armed themselves with American weapons brought to them by deserters or captured in battle with government troops; we knew it was an empty war for our side.

Astore gives the obvious:

Substitute “the Hamid Karzai government” for “the South Vietnam government” and “Taliban” for “Viet Cong” and the same passage could almost have been written yesterday about Afghanistan. We know the Karzai government is corrupt, that it stole the vote in the last election, that the Afghan army is largely a figment of Washington’s imagination, that its troops sell their American-made weapons to the enemy. But why do our leaders once again fail to see, as Mailer saw with Vietnam, that this, too, is a recognizably “empty war for our side”?

Mailer experienced the relentless self-regard and strategic obtuseness of Washington as a mystery, but that didn’t stop him from condemning President Johnson’s decision to escalate in Vietnam.

It was reflexes, not thought:

As Obama’s military experts wield their battlefield metrics and call for more force (to be used, of course, with ever greater precision and dexterity), I think Mailer might have replied: We think the only thing they understand is force. What if the only thing we understand is force?

Obama needs fewer generals and ex-generals and more Norman Mailers of course, or that hypothetical driver-education teacher.

But there is that other big problem:

An audacious weekend assault by Islamic militants on Pakistan’s army headquarters is again raising fears of an insurgent attack on the country’s nuclear weapons installation. Pakistan has sought to protect its nuclear weapons from attack by the Taliban or other militants by storing the warheads, detonators and missiles separately in facilities patrolled by elite troops.

Analysts are divided on how secure these weapons are. Some say the weapons are less secure than they were five years ago, and Saturday’s attack would show a “worrisome” overconfidence by the Pakistanis.

While complex security is in place, much depends on the Pakistani army and how vulnerable it is to infiltration by extremists, said a Western government official with access to intelligence on Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Analysts say a more realistic scenario would involve militant sympathizers getting work as scientists at the facilities and passing information to extremists.

Okay, but what if our reflexive terror at all this is misplaced? Michael Lind, at salon.com, argues that neither terrorists nor rogue states like North Korea are likely to use nuclear weapons. That’s just not how things work:

President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize has been justified by some because it draws attention to the goal he endorses of ridding the world of nuclear weapons. I share that goal, but not because nuclear weapons are uniquely horrible – if you’re a victim, it makes little difference whether you’re killed or maimed by nuclear weapons or conventional weapons, which sometimes can create lingering illnesses and poison the landscape, too. I support the abolition of nuclear weapons because, if it were successful, it would lock in the advantages of the small number of great powers like the U.S. that are capable of building and maintaining first-class conventional militaries.

Just look at history:

The goal of American liberal internationalism, since the days of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, has been what Wilson called “a community of power” – a great power concert whose members collaborate to keep the peace. This is different from the conservative vision of unilateral U.S. hegemony. But whether you think the law should be enforced by a posse or a single sheriff, you want the law officers to be better armed than the law-breakers.

Superior conventional forces are the weapons of the rich. Only the most advanced industrial states can afford to build world-class conventional military forces, and paying for them is much easier if an economy is large and dynamic. This is good news. Countries with large and dynamic economies tend to have relatively rational if not necessarily democratic governments and to be committed to the geopolitical status quo. Nazi Germany, rich but irrational, committed suicide in a short period of time, and the Soviet Union eventually fell apart because its economy could not support its massive conventional and nuclear forces. Today’s rapidly developing China is far more prudent and responsible than Mao’s China.

Nuclear weapons, by contrast, are weapons of the weak. They can be acquired by regimes that, because of poverty or ideology, are incapable of developing the world-class economy needed to support world-class conventional forces.

If this is so, then we have an odd problem:

As long as relatively poor and weak regimes like Iran and North Korea feel endangered, they will be motivated to obtain the cheap deterrent – nuclear weapons – rather than the expensive deterrent — first-rate conventional forces. That is precisely what Israel, Pakistan and India already have done. And even if every nuclear weapon on the planet were dismantled in the near future, the growing use of nuclear energy for domestic power production will ensure that many countries would be able to build new nuclear weapons in a hurry, if they felt a strategic need to do so.

But luckily, atomic bombs are pretty much useless except as deterrents:

Genuine great power status today requires massive, expensive conventional forces. Iran would be much more alarming if instead of trying to obtain nuclear weapons it were building up a first-rate navy, a long-distance air force and an enormous army capable of occupying one or more of its neighbors. The fact that it is not doing so suggests that the nuclear weapons capability it evidently seeks is for deterrence, not offense.

Lind asks us to think about this, and not just react, as they are crappy weapons of attack:

Why should a terrorist go to the trouble of trying to smuggle a nuclear bomb into the U.S., when it is easier to spread mass panic with guns, backpack explosives, suicide bomber belts or truck bombs? I’ve never understood why we devote so much attention to the remote threat of loose nukes, rather than worrying about more immediate threats like loose planes, loose guns, loose grenades and loose fertilizer. At an academic conference on U.S. foreign policy a few years back, I was one of two people in a working group who voted to urge the government to stop all terrorists from entering the U.S. whether they planned to use weapons of mass destruction or conventional weapons. Shouldn’t we want to stop terrorists who overstay their visas and then rent U-hauls to make truck bombs? We were voted down by the majority, who wanted the recommendation to focus only on WMD.

I think of it as the mutant factor. Weapons that conceivably could produce a ravaged landscape populated by cannibal mutant zombies – atomic bombs, lab-created pandemics – are far more frightening than dynamite and small arms, even though the latter are more likely to be used. The scenarios for mass casualty terrorism sometimes appear to have come out of Hollywood science fiction and thrillers. At another discussion, when I was asked what I thought of one expert’s hypothetical scenario in which jihadists infiltrated cosmetic factories to poison their products, I replied, “That’s exactly the sort of thing a terrorist would do … if he were the Joker.”

But Lind says we’re caught in the trap of our reflexive reactions:

My point is that, in our age of publicity-driven policy advocacy, experts who inflate threats obtain grants and get on TV. For a specialist to say, “Having examined the issue carefully, my conclusion is that we should not be overly concerned” is not only career suicide but also heresy. The patron saint of this day and age is Our Lady of Perpetual Alarm.

And you know her. She is your reflexes. Don’t trust her. You could get killed.

“The Neil Armstrong house was modest, with a high-pitched roof of brown shingles. It was a house like half a million other houses in suburbs combining modern and brand-new traditional style. It had hints of an English country inn, for it was a dark-colored warren with small windows and long eaves. Yet the house was situated on a street whose curve had come from no meandering cow but from favorable indices on graphs which showed the relation of income to cost for planned curved-development streets as opposed to planned straight-development streets. El Lago—the name of this suburb—like those others named Kingston and Timber Cover and Nassau Bay—was a soft checkerboard of carefully bent little avenues which ran at reasonable approximations of right angles into other paved prospects, a street occasionally dead-ending, a street just as occasionally completing a full circle. The realty layout-computer in its wisdom for random play in home-road curvature had designed the layout logic so comprehensively, so ready to take into account the variety of desire-factors expressed by consumer dweller groups oriented in at these precise income-purchase levels, that the effect—what a blow to the goodwill of the progressive designer who had doubtless opted for just once let’s have something better!—was as agreeable and sterile to the eye as a model department store living room for brides on a medium-high budget layaway.”

—Norman Mailer, Of a Fire on the Moon (1970)

“An important part of our information-gathering behavior has always been to find out what other people think. With the growing availability and popularity of opinion-rich resources such as online review sites and personal blogs, new opportunities and challenges arise as people now can, and do, actively use information technologies to seek out and understand the opinions of others. The sudden eruption of activity in the area of opinion mining and sentiment analysis, which deals with the computational treatment of opinion, sentiment, and subjectivity in text, has thus occurred at least in part as a direct response to the surge of interest in new systems that deal directly with opinions as a first-class object. This survey covers techniques and approaches that promise to directly enable opinion-oriented information-seeking systems. Our focus is on methods that seek to address the new challenges raised by sentiment-aware applications, as compared to those that are already present in more traditional fact-based analysis.”

—Bo Pang (of Yahoo! Research) and Lillian Lee (of Cornell University), in “Opinion Mining and Sentiment Analysis” (2008)

I love revising. Like other aspects of writing, it can feel daunting from a distance, but it’s quite invigorating once I’m actually sitting at the computer, or lying on the floor, printed pages becoming progressively .  . . inky?

I’m working on revising a fictional piece I wrote in February of this year, a short story about a young married boy and his complicated interactions with his new family in law. This was one of those pieces that sort of poured out quickly and nicely—I wrote it in about an hour, and revised it for a week, and since then, it’s held it’s general shape throughout. The first draft bears remarkable resemblance to the current draft, although I used single lines as place holders for full scenes. An earlier draft of the piece won the Utah State University 2009 undergraduate fiction contest. I don’t know what my competition was.

I feel I’m a relatively good judge of my own stuff. I think of everything I write as merely another thing I wrote, and hope that the last thing I write before I die is the best thing I ever write. By the time I’m done revising this short story, it will be as good as I can possibly make it for my current level of skill. I don’t plan to be the type to look back at something and cringe. Why? Why look back and cringe at earlier work instead of just writing something new, and better? I read over a personal essay I wrote as a senior in high school, and of course I would have written it differently today, but I was rather impressed with what had been conveyed by the 18 year old who wrote it. My high school teacher wrote at the end something like “I think you really might consider becoming a writer.” (Then she sat me down and tried to talk me into going to the University of Utah, as opposed to Utah State University [where I'd told her I was headed] because it had, in her opinion, a great writing program.)

I know in a couple of weeks I’ll get this absurd, dream-like chance to mingle (briefly, I presume) among some big names in publishing, and that will be even more true of next summer, during 28 days at the Norman Mailer Writer’s Colony. A part of me—the part proficient in networking, marketing myself socially and such—keeps thinking I need to write a marketable work between now and then to be finishing up or polishing at the colony, to be showing off to the editors and writers who will be there, etc. etc. etc. etc. —and then I realize that’s a rat race I don’t want to be in. I’m 23. Sure, I probably will never have as great of access to editors and publishers again in my life, but I don’t write to secure black tie invitations, I never started writing in order to get rich, I don’t believe it’s possible to get rich off of literary fiction or literary nonfiction, I don’t want to be rich, I don’t need to be a best seller, I don’t need to think a single bit about the business half of writing. Business half? Perhaps I should say the Business parasite, this capitalist bug. I accept and have no problem with facts: Writing must be seen as marketable if it is to reach a large audience. A large part of the publishing business is focused exclusively on bottom lines. These are not moral issues; they are issues of practicality. I am not cynical, I am a rational person. And a happy one. But sitting and thinking about becoming a best selling writer and reading the little bits in P&W where agents are interviewed turns out, for me, to be mostly an excuse to not be writing (or feeding the cat, or folding the laundry, or opening that GD mail).

So, what do I plan to do between now and next summer? How about between now and December for starters:

1. Revise the essay I won the NM contest with and get it published. I’ve had multiple people tell me not to touch it if it won, but I think that’s wrong—there are several issues with the piece as of now, including an entire section, and the ending (the second to last paragraph needs 1-3 more sentences, and the last paragraph might need one too). The beginning, to be honest, scares the hell out of me. I don’t know how the judges got past it. I know for a fact that  Southern Review and Tin House did not find it compelling enough to merit a personal rejection. I suspect they did not get past the first section, and I’m indebted to the judges of the NM contest for their stamina.

2. Revise the fictional piece I won the USU contest with and get it published. I’m going to enter it into a bunch of contests that publish the winner in their journals (this is my favorite way to purchase subscriptions).

3. Revise the new fictional piece I wrote two weeks ago and send it out. This piece is on step 2 of 10, about. It’s too long (5,000 words) and needs a lot more in it. I need to put less and more correct words in. Also, I need to figure out the main character, and decide if he’s 12 or 15. When I’m done, this piece needs to be 3500 words or less.

4. Revise the microfiction I wrote three weeks ago and send it out. I’m determined to keep this under 250 words, which it currently is. It’s really far from being finished; but, at the same time, it might just need about 6 words changed.

5. Write another piece of fiction, workshop it, and send it out by the new year.

6. Revise the memoir piece I wrote in April titled “Lie or Lose Them All” and send it out.

7. Consider entering a Utah college student contest with an essay about my great great great grandfather, the first mayor of Salt Lake City, and his 7 wives. The contest is associated with the USU history department and their lecture series, which, this past Thursday, brought an American religions expert (Dr. Flake) from Vanderbilt to Logan, Utah for an interesting lecture on “The Priestly Logic of Polygamy.” The contest carries a nice prize, but mostly, I’ve been really wanting to write about this story, and have already done preliminary research in the special collections of the library here on campus. I found some pictures of my great grandmother with her own grandmother, this one of seven wives, who, intriguingly, is pretty much slighted in the historical records (not being the first wife, and not being the wife who birthed Heber J. Grant, one of the Mormon prophets).

8. Read more Norman Mailer. I’m absolutely thrilled to find his personality and outlook so intriguing. I mean, how cool is this: he thinks masturbation is power-limiting. I totally agree. He understood his vices and accepted them. He was self-obsessed, or, I should say, he acknowledged that he was, as most people fear to do. I read an article from a 2007 Esquire, “The Last Man Standing,” that completely thrilled me. It contained this excerpt from Mailer’s last novel about Hitler’s youth, something my spouse and I have often talked about (we are convinced that no one is completely evil). I need to go read that novel now. The excerpt was fascinating. I guess I could say I can’t think of a more invigorating character to pretend I am somehow associated with.

from an interview with the late writer Norman Mailer by J. Michael Lennon for Creating Nonfiction: A Guide and Anthology by Becky Bradway and Doug Hesse:

“The form, the medium, determines the message. And the message you receive from a novel is different from the message—usually less interesting—that comes to you from nonfiction. Therefore, I like my nonfiction to read like a novel. By which I don’t mean that I fudge the facts. On the contrary, since I’m already out on a limb, I’m careful about the facts. When I’m writing nonfiction I have to be more careful than the average journalist.”

“Back in 1967 when I wrote The Armies of the Night I divided the book into fiction and nonfiction. I was saying, in effect, that they’re equal. When you write history, you’re writing a species of fiction. What one’s doing, ultimately, is giving one’s vision of life. And how one arrives at one’s vision of life is somewhat different in a history than in fiction, but they are much more alike than people recognize.”