Great Novel: The Known World by Edward P. Jones

The Known World by Edward P. Jones
Amistad/HarperCollins, 2003

I had heard very good things about Edward P. Jones’s novel The Known World and I had thought of reading it at different times, though I had a reservation to believing that a novel depicting slavery would be as original or as satisfying as I wanted any novel to be. Jones’s book is, in fact, as near perfect a novel as I have read in quite a while, a book that allows the reader to confront a complex, difficult history (a time of slavery, in which some of the slave-owners are black), and a book in which the writer adds enough beauty and wisdom that one can bear it.

Wisdom cannot exist without the acceptance of the facts of human life, and The Known World seems a wise book. Edward P. Jones makes American history his, illuminating public practices of power and private deceptions of the psyche. Edward P. Jones’s The Known World presents an appreciation of nature, unique economic and social relations, and subtle movements among people: a freshly imagined world. It is a book of small, brilliant enchantments but also horrific reversals of fortune that read like justice delivered. Jones possesses an easy mastery of difficult matters of craft and of human relationships, of style and of content. Jones suggests the diversity of black life even during slavery. Jones presents a world in which an unexpected African-American refinement is achieved and sustained, though achieved with some moral contradictions (these are people whose refinement does not preclude owning other people); and it is a world in which the decencies of people of European descent include ignorance and prejudices that can seem infinite. The Virginia writer captures the cruelty of families broken and separated as property.

Edward Jones tells stories within stories within stories, and has the interesting (and yet gratifying) oddity of naming the destinies of his characters long before the novel’s end. There is extraordinary foreshadowing: a father shakes his young son in angry disappointment, and later when that son is a man the father, again in angry disappointment, hits him and hurts him (the father cannot believe his son would accept and perpetuate slavery). It is a bitter irony that the father, a man who bought his own freedom and that of his family is sold again into slavery by a hateful (white) man who resents the father’s pride. (That is historical fact and also allegory: as with much else in the novel, such things did occur.) The violations of the social order—when “races” mix—can be so unnerving to some that they themselves feel crazy. This is a book full of history, imagination, and life.

Even the incidental characters are interesting: a boy who rules his country family with honesty and rudeness; an exploited woman who becomes a prostitute and who inadvertently brings disease to a great land-owning family. In Moses, a slave separated from a woman he loved, and made an overseer, there is suffering and pride—and a frustrated hope when he becomes involved with someone who could free him if she chooses.

Yet, despite the writer’s significant talent, the book’s ending—which involves nearly cataclysm as well as deliverance and revelation—is a stretch of the imagination that may be a little too much. I am not sure about that ending, and it is worth thinking about, as is so much of this novel, Edward P. Jones’s The Known World.

Politics, Culture

I had not been paying much attention to New York politics, which has been roiling recently: apparently, the New York state senate is in conflict, with the Democrats and Republicans fighting over governance. The Democratic governor has appointed a lieutenant governor, Richard Ravitch, as part of a strategy to break the tie-vote between the parties (as well as have him preside over the senate). There are legal challenges to the appointment being planned or made.

Massachusetts is contesting the federal “defense of marriage” legislation said to discriminate against same-sex partnerships (its attorney general is suing in regard to the denial of federal benefits, according to the New York Times, July 8, 2009).

Sarah Jessica Parker is planning with Bravo a television series on obscure artists competing for a gallery exhibit, cash grant, and museum tour, according to The Art Newspaper. (It is rarely a bad idea to focus on good but obscure artists; and yet I cringe at the possibility that this project will be too much like other reality television programs that emphasize the worst in its participants. Apparently there is a concern for quality content and art experts will participate.)

In the July 7th Rex Roberts Film Journal International review of the movie Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno, about a gay journalist search for fame, the critic stated, “Cohen’s targets are so broad, there’s little sport in skewering them,” and the reviewer asked, “Does Cohen want to have his strudel and eat it, too, in the sense that he promotes the very stereotypes he purports to mock?”

I heard some songs from the music group The Mars Volta’s album Octahedron, and am curious to hear more: the music sounds spacious, and the singing wildly expressive. More on the music beat: The new album by the singer Maxwell, BLACKsummers’night, is apparently doing well in terms of sales (though I have read mixed reviews of the album, though I liked the single I heard). It is Maxwell’s first album in eight years; and Maxwell is one of the few neo-soul artists who seem to have returned (other artists making their mark when he did years ago included Dionne Farris and D’Angelo). Filter magazine has reported online that Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval will release an album, Through the Devil Softly (Nettwerk), in mid-September.

Books Set in the South

Charlaine Harris, Dead and Gone
Berkeley/Penguin, 2009

James Wilcox, Heavenly Days
Viking, 2003

Tim Gautreaux, The Next Step in the Dance
Picador, 1998


I have been reading a book on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson’s Liberalism, by Neal Dolan, and looking at a second book on classicism and African-American literature, Ulysses in Black, by Patrice Rankine, two very serious books (scholarly and seemingly good) from the University of Wisconsin Press, but the three books that I have completed reading are novels that are set in Louisiana, the most effective of which is The Next Step in the Dance, although the book with the most progressive (socially critical, honest) vision may be Dead and Gone, a fantasy fiction.

Dead and Gone, a novel by the Arkansas-resident Charlaine Harris, focused on the telepathic Louisiana waitress Sookie Stackhouse, is full of action, possibly too much action (a lot of physical confrontations and grisly events). Harris’s earlier Sookie Stackhouse novels carried more detail about character and southern life as well as the gothic entertainment of a narrative featuring vampires and werewolves. This new book is still a page-turner but what is fascinating here is how the supernatural divisions mirror recognizable prejudices: a group of spiritual separatists resorts to brutal violence in the service of social apartheid. That is genuinely scary—the hatred suggested is believable, as a corollary to racism and homophobia.

James Wilcox’s comic novel Heavenly Days is centered on a group of unstable relationships: no marriage fits established patterns and the sexual orientation of several characters remains ambiguous. A southern social world involving elegant properties, university life, women’s concerns, weight watching, religion, and unique businesses is presented. It is a fast-moving novel. The most serious aspect may be its treatment of a conflict involving political correctness in the filling of an academic position, but, for me, the novel is amusing without carrying a correspondent compelling heft. The book is an appealing satire, one that may benefit from reading a second time, and it is an accomplishment (the book achieves an aura of sophistication not typically identified with the south), but I wish that it had more impact when I closed the last page.

The Next Step in the Dance has a lot of believable texture, really creating a sense of a real though unique world: one in which marriage, family, place, and religion are important. The book is full of cousin and cousin that—the kind of thing that pleases many southerners but stresses my nerves. The two central characters Paul and Colette, a mechanic and bright pretty girl, are vivid, as they tug against their limitations and yearn toward their possibilities. This is a genuine novel—it allows the writer to introduce us to people we would not know otherwise, and we see them struggle for love and forgiveness, for money and stability. The writer creates a vision of community that is both redemptive and convincing (I must say, it brought tears to my eyes several times: but thinking of it now, I am a bit wary of that effect). Rather than a comedy of remarriage, it is a drama of remarriage, showing the tests people must go through to know, accept, and love each other. It is a conservative book, in that it affirms staying in the world one is born in.

Michael Jackson Spoke to Our Spirits

Our spirits are frustrated, if not repressed, in different areas of our lives: and art is a realm of freedom and confirmation.

For days after the announcement of Michael Jackson’s death it still seemed like a mean-spirited rumor, or a painful dream, regarding this man, a man of great talent and great conflicts, a man who wanted to be less and less real and more and more art.

I remember being a boy, and with my sister and cousins, listening and dancing to Michael Jackson’s music, enjoying his televised performances, and devouring magazines featuring he and his brothers—we knew their names, likes, and dislikes. When I was 18, I liked French film, modern art, rock music, Chekhov, jazz, John Irving, Toni Morrison, Gore Vidal, African music, Tennessee Williams, Bob Marley, Diana Ross, and Michael Jackson. Now, years later, I no longer read John Irving or listen to much Bob Marley, but I still like the music of Michael Jackson. Two weeks ago, I was lying in bed in my mother’s house, after many years of being away, and looking out the window, trying to think about goals for my future, listening to NPR when the news came on, Thursday at 6pm, that Michael Jackson had suffered cardiac arrest at his rented home, been taken to a hospital, and pronounced dead.

I liked that immediately radio programs hosted by Brian McKnight and Keith Sweat contained tributes to Jackson’s music. Flipping the radio dial, I was amused to hear the song “Pretty Young Thing” played over and over; and I wondered if anyone had a sense of irony about that (I recognized that it was being heard, very obviously, as a heterosexual male affirmation of desire). The Steve Harvey show on Saturday also contained warm tributes. (NPR had good interviews with Ann Powers, Jason King, Lenny Kravitz, Bryan Monroe, and Kelefa Sanneh, who was perceptive enough to note a particularly inventive song on the Invincible album.)

However, some media took it as an opportunity to revisit in detail whatever controversy and scandal had existed in Jackson’s life. Of course, public reputations are developed not only in response to observations and reported facts but by the monotonous repetition of certain attitudes and myths that force human ambiguity and complexity into caricature or demonology. The tabloid trash the public (and journalists) had dined on for years was being vomited up and digested anew.

In an interview Al Sharpton insisted that Michael Jackson was a genius not a freak—a claim that was made with a voice of strength rather than sentimentality, even more touching for that reason, but not entirely convincing. Does anyone know a black man is gifted if he doesn’t turn himself into a spectacle, into some kind of freak? I mean, Little Richard, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, and Prince all loudly announce their difference—yielding larger than life images and larger than usual spaces in the dominant culture.

Yet, and yet again, it is Motown that produced black artists who embodied a recognizable humanity, a fullness of personality and potential: Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, and Marvin Gaye. Their work embodies an intelligence, sensitivity, and sensuality—not only significant artistry but a humanity and civility—that is the very best of virtues available in any civilization. That was Michael Jackson’s inheritance. Did he claim enough of it?

Great claims have been made for Michael Jackson’s ability to surmount barriers, but others hurtled across some of those barriers before he did: not only the greats of Motown but also Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and Nat King Cole and Lena Horne and Ethel Waters and …. It is not necessary to diminish or disrespect the accomplishments of others in order to praise Michael Jackson, who was great and whose greatness is only beginning to be defined or understood. Michael Jackson was, for instance, both a subtle and a passionate singer, as he was both a subtle and dynamically expressive dancer. He was a maker of new images and a synthesizer of old images. He seems to have sold more recordings than anyone in history. It is humbling, as well, to realize that often, for an artist, the same amount of belief, energy, and time goes into a work that is perceived as a failure as goes into one perceived as a success.

It was startling to hear on the day of Jackson’s memorial service a discussion on NPR featuring rock critic Bill Wyman and music journalist Nelson George in which Wyman claimed that Jackson was less significant than Elvis Presley because Elvis had created rock and roll: such a ridiculous assertion—that dismissed (black) Ike Turner, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Fats Domino, on behalf of a popular (white) latecomer; and which flies in the face of Presley own declaration that he was doing what the colored people had been doing for years; such a ridiculous assertion should have been enough to disqualify Wyman from any further comment: but when has arrogant stupidity ever disqualified a white man from anything? One can look around and conclude that arrogant stupidity is a job requirement. Speaking of which: the vain and spiteful Robert Christgau, who produces online posts full of dumb self-obsession and uncontrolled self-promotion and makes a habit of complimenting well-placed colleagues and disdaining less successful ones, made a statement in which he suggested that based on the claim that he and his wife did not hear any Jackson music or discussion while on vacation in Vermont, Michael Jackson is less universal and universally acclaimed than has been declared by some. What an idiot! Christgau and Wyman and their ilk should have retired long ago. Luckily no one depends on these people for fundamental insights of any kind. Nelson George spoke of Jackson’s distinctive use of his voice, of his innovative creativity in video, of his cultivation of a global audience.

It is important to critique both the artist and his audience and his critics—as the values brought to art are ideological as much as aesthetic and personal. Some critics use (white) rock music to affirm white male appetite and privilege and they find various claims with which to dismiss black popular music. Black music tends to be valued for its relation to roots (a form of primitivism—a celebration of the noble savage, though this is masked by dubious notions of authenticity) and it is also valued for commercial sales (the ability to make money, rather than the ability to carry a style and content—values and virtues—that appeal to many). Often, Black music is valued in ways that do not support black authority or black intelligence. And, black critics tend to abandon black artists who are embraced by mainstream culture—though this is often when black artists need them most, both for their loyalty and for their critical clarity. How many black artists and black critics have a recognized critical authority—able to define ideas, styles, standards, and projects, as important? Wynton Marsalis insisted on his own critical authority and infuriated many, including arrogant stupid white men and black musicians who wanted to work without thinking of a wide range of concerns. The brilliant, idiosyncratic (and sometimes troubling) Armond White has infuriated many for similar reasons. Few black artists and critics are brave enough to make critical assertions in as direct a manner: rather, they hope that the work they do will speak for them, though that work sometimes goes unread or unheard and is sometimes, not infrequently, misperceived and misrepresented…

Michael Jackson has inspired much attention, emotion, and thought; and he will inspire more. Why? He was unique, he was great. Why? Our spirits are frustrated, if not repressed, in different areas of our lives: and art is a realm of freedom and confirmation.

The Unbearable Success of Michael Jackson

The first music recording that was given to me was William Bell's "You Don't Miss Your Water (Till the Well Runs Dry)," but the first music recordings that were bought for me were Diana Ross's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and Michael Jackson's "I'll Be There." I do not recall if I'd requested the Diana Ross and Jackson 5 songs or if they were surprises that went with the new record player, my first record player, which I received for a birthday. I listened to the Bell song, the first song I played, and which I still remember, but I loved "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and "I'll Be There" and I love them still.

Michael Jackson was a singer, a songwriter, a producer, he was a businessman and a philanthropist--he was a great artist of popular music. It is hard not to be ambivalent about people who are great, as they are often strange: it is sometimes strangeness that compelled them to be great, and sometimes it is greatness that made them strange. I have not stopped liking Michael Jackson's music, the old or the new music; but, although I felt a measure of concern and sympathy, I had become ambivalent about Michael Jackson the man. The changes in his face and the constant rumours and scandals made him too strange to me--I accepted that he would be unpredictable, but unpredictability is not a quality I value in others.

Michael Jackson wanted transcendence, as many of us do. The idea of transcendence is a beautiful idea, an important and seductive idea, but it may be a false idea, a lie. Instead of a moment of connection and illumination, it may be only temporary forgetting of all the things that make us who we are--very particular human beings in this time and this place. No one can live in a place of forgetfulness always---without becoming mad or monstrous.

What it means to be black is perpetually discussed but rarely accurately described or honestly expressed. I would name W.E.B. DuBois, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, and Toni Morrison, with a few others, as people who have come close to explaining and exploring what it means with authority and insight. As surprising as it may be to some, Michael Jackson expressed better than most what it means--it was in his voice, in the tenderness and rage that can be heard in many of his songs, in the ambition and terror that we could perceive in him and in his work. He was a man of tremendous pride, talent, and vulnerability. He was unique but he was also one of us. He was innocent--and there are many ways for the innocent to be broken in this world: and the most obvious is to become like the world, to change one's self to fit someone else's idea of value. Michael Jackson belonged to a tradition of blackness that was about both assimilation and self-improvement (and it can be hard sometimes to tell the difference between the two). I think it was James Baldwin who said that it is difficult to live with a bad reputation and that every black child is born with one. Indeed it is hard to live with people willing to believe the worst of you, even after you have given them the best. The meaning of what it means to be black may be changing (and evidence for that may be the election of the American president, Barack Hussein Obama, a man of intellect, masculinity and sensitivity, with private commitments rooted in love and public power founded on ethics); and it is sad to think that Michael Jackson will not live into that new time--although Jackson may have been, already, like too many of us, too much shaped by the past.

I love Michael Jackson and I love his music more--and I am sorry to say goodbye to him so soon: but I am glad that he is done with the trouble of this world, no more weeping, no more wailing, he is done with the trouble of this world.

Iran

I have been thinking about my own alienation, my own sense of terrible drift, but the larger matters of the world, such as the recent election in Iran and the claims of vote tampering, the resulting street protests, the punitive violence...produce a sense of both tragedy and possibility...


On the web site of Qantara.de, about the prospects for dialogue between Iran and the west (specifically the United States), Peter Philips states, “Too much conflict material has accumulated over the course of the past 30 years and as a result, another four years should not and cannot be allowed to pass without addressing these problems, especially because no-one actually knows what will happen at the end of this period. What is more, grounds for a dialogue already exist: Iran does not want to be told what to do and this is exactly the line that Obama has adopted” (“No Alternative to Dialogue,” June 15, 2009).


The online newsletter Flavorpill’s managing editor Leah Taylor writes of a timely New York exhibit: “The Chelsea Museum presents what has to be one of the timeliest exhibitions in its history: Iran Inside Out. With violence and political unrest roiling in that country, this exhibit takes a closer look at its inherent contradictions, tradition, culture, identity, and struggle — especially as faced by its younger generation of artists. Fifty-six Iranian artists (including those still living in the country, as well as those scattered across the diaspora) present 210 works, organized around themes like gender and sexuality (‘From Iran to Queeran’), or war and politics (the satiric ‘In Search of the Axis of Evil’)” (Flavorpill, June 2009)


Meanwhile, Iranian.com offers the perspectives of some Iranians, those “Iranian expatriates who care about their identity, culture, music, history, politics, literature and each other, as well as friends and family living in Iran.”

Random Thoughts On A Very Hot Day

Artists love the content and craft of art rather than the business of art, though fame and fortune grant an artist various forms of authority and security and are aided by the business of art (and the whole machinery of marketing and sales). Funnily enough, hype is effective because it mimes genuine enthusiasm and passion…True criticism involves identifying, exploring, and evaluating the structure, content, and spirit of a work—and it is forever in danger as it works with knowledge against ignorance.


I heard an interview with Woody Allen yesterday on National Public Radio (NPR). His voice was pleasantly deep, and it was amusing to hear him distinguish himself from his characters (he claims he is less intellectual, more ordinary—the guy on the couch with a beer watching a sports game). Woody Allen said that people like to them of him as an intellectual, and that an intellectual image might add to the enjoyment of his films for some. It is true that human beings are referred to increasingly as brands—reputations, products; and that’s the triumph of capitalism: an enslavement to marketing and public opinion...Woody Allen’s new film is Whatever Works, starring Larry David...I recall many years ago having an argument with a couple of friends about whether the very famous Woody Allen was an independent or mainstream filmmaker—they said the former, I said the latter, though now he seems to me to have been both, which may be one definition of a good and successful artist. Meanwhile, there is a bicycle film festival tonight at the South Street Seaport in Manhattan, featuring bike movies and parties (the film festival is from June 17 through 21).


I used to know someone who tried to dismiss science fiction as a matter of course—she was trying to take a superior attitude to a genre she was ignorant of, a genre that imagines possible futures in both human relations and technology (imaginings that often come true), a genre that requires imagination and intelligence to be rewarding to the viewer or reader. Science fiction puts vision to hope and fears, problems and the knowledge needed to address them. Reading recently Daniel Shaw’s Film and Philosophy: Taking Movies Seriously, I was pleased to see these lines: “Science fiction is the most philosophical of literary genres, because it so often concerns itself with questions about the criteria for personal identity, the difference(s) between humans and machines, the implications of present trends for the future of the human species, the dangers of technology and social control mechanisms, and the possibility and significance of contact with alien species” (page 44). Some works are so good they exclude people who do not have the sensibility to appreciate their qualities.


Thirty years ago the Rolling Stones were controversial for claiming in a song that black girls wanted to have sex all night long: now black rappers call black women whores and bitches...Some Girls was a great album—is a great album, as were Diana Ross’s The Boss and the first Rickie Lee Jones album, all music from that time, the late 1970s.


The crisis in health care is like every other crisis—manufactured, claimed one conservative radio talk show this week. These conservative shows—whether devoted to religion or politics—spend a great deal of time misrepresenting the president of the United States, Barack Obama. The constancy of their dishonest, hateful, ignorant, manipulative talk is an example of evil, a far from banal evil...In an article on bitterness and its reasons and roots, a professor of literature, Christopher Lane, writes in Psychology Today in “Bitterness: The Next Mental Disorder?” about politics: “The Bush administration led the country into a protracted, illegal war, based on trumped-up evidence; ignored memos that said the country faced credible terrorist threats; locked up large numbers of suspects afterwards without trial or due process; lied to its citizens about the widespread use of torture; eliminated every sensible, necessary check on financial regulation to prevent a fiscal meltdown; mocked the facts of climate change; and sat on its hands as Hurricane Katrina devastated a large city” What did the conservative talk show hosts have to say about any of that?

Encore: United Daughters of the Confederacy

Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, and he is the forty-fourth president; and much has been made of him being the first African-American president, a distinction trumpeted so much on his inauguration day that it sounded like an official title. I thought the iterations of the man's ethnicity were a sign of how simple rather than how sophisticated Americans are, but days ago, I was in a south Louisiana library that is getting rid of some of its magazine stock and I saw copies of the United Daughters of the Confederacy magazine being sold for ten cents, and I looked through some of them and bought two copies as historical items. The United Daughters of the Confederacy publications are dated 1972 and they are reminders of how recently racism has been a proud fact of southern life.


The members of United Daughters of the Confederacy were not only old women whose fathers or grandfathers were involved with the American civil war on the side of slavery, but individuals who were very young, and both female and male, in 1972 (there are photographs of members in the magazine; and, I wonder, where are they now?). The September 1972 United Daughters of the Confederacy magazine issue features a "Beliefs of Our Forefathers" article on page 29 under the rubric "Children of the Confederacy," a regular feature of the publication. In the article on confederate beliefs, the writer, who goes by her husband's name, and styles herself "historian and news editor," Mrs. Charles L. Deevers, discusses a confederate "catechism" that includes a defense of states' rights, saying that what led to the war between the states was "the disregard of those in power for the rights" of the southern states, the right to self-regulation. She, Mrs. Deevers, asserts that the "people of the south did not believe that slavery was right, and many felt that the south could work out their own problems and would eventually free the slaves because they were becoming the white man's burden." The writer discusses the economic concerns of slave holders (the economic loss if enslaved Africans were freed; and the high tariff proposed by northerners) and the "historian" Mrs. Deevers insists that enslaved Africans were well-cared for because they were valuable property ("They were well cared for because they were important to their owners") and goes on to note the "many stories" of kindness shown to Negroes; but, she says the Dred Scott decision "caused more trouble" and Abraham Lincoln's election "was the final blow." These unreconstructed views are interesting to read, though repellent; and I am reminded--thanks to Wayne Parent's book Inside the Carnival: Unmasking Louisiana Politics, from LSU Press, 2004, that even after the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution were passed, the south resisted respecting Africans and African-Americans; and southern states passed laws to disenfranchise blacks and prevent voting and civic participation, an exercise of states' rights, matters that made necessary the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. (I recall, too, W.E. B. DuBois's commentary on the south's behavior after the civil war in The Souls of Black Folk.)


In the November 1972 issue of the United Daughters of the Confederacy magazine, in an article under the heading "Children of the Confederacy" on education by "historian" Mrs. Charles L. Deevers (page 27), the author Mrs. Deevers notes that there were no public schools in the south before the war, that planters' children were educated at home, that northern textbooks drove "intelligent" southern male teachers out of the teaching profession (just as later, southern boys were inclined to leave the classroom for the battlefied), that a southern or confederate teaching assocication was formed in 1862, that girls schools were expensive, etc. It is a rather feeble attempt to affirm white southern intelligence and education, the kind of thing that is rebutted with even small research or logical thinking. For instance, in the book The History of Southern Literature, edited by Rubin, Jackson, Moore, Simpson, and Young, from LSU Press, 1985, Lewis P. Simpson in "The Mind of the Antebellum South" and Elisabeth Muhlenfeld in "The Civil War and Authorship" discuss the limits of southern intellectual and literary life. The south did have artists, intellectuals, and scientists, but because of their irrationalism and pride--because of their commitment to refusing to register or respect the humanity of Africans, and the southern dependence on and defense of slavery--the antebellum south had few lasting or significant intellectual or literary accomplishments. It is a great example of how response to others can lead to self-betrayal: limiting the empathy and imagination with which we view others can lead to intellectual limits that curtail what we can think and do.


It was just a few years after 1972, when Jimmy Carter was inaugurated, an event I watched with my class: and one of the students, a southern white boy, said something on the order of, "Well, we have the niggers to thank for that." (It may have been the same white boy who wrote me, just weeks ago, wanting to get in touch with me, his old classmate. I wonder sometimes, more and more, if other people do not remember the things that I recall.)


Politics, the struggle over resources and values, a struggle that determines the social order, is a realm of compromise and reconciliation at its best; and Barack Obama is a figure of reconciliation. Obviously the election of Barack Obama is a sign of enlightenment, though it does not augur a perfect age or a perfect people: for one thing, the United Daughters of the Confederacy remains an active group, with an online presence, and its current leader states, "I am a member of The United Daughters of the Confederacy because I feel it would greatly please my ancestor to know that I am a member. It would please him to know that I appreciate what he did and delight his soldier love to know that I do not consider the cause which he held so dear to be lost or forgotten."

(Original Post: January 29, 2009)

Southern Ignorance, Louisiana Hate

I grew up in Louisiana, so it is impossible for the state to disappoint me: I left as soon as I could, and, after decades away, I have been back for almost a year--more than enough time to be reminded of all of the reasons I left. I took a long walk home from St. Martinville the other day (June 8), walking on La. highway 347, and turned down a road, La. highway 680, that I think marks the half-way point of my walk and I heard the word nigger. I thought I might have been mistaken--I looked around and I saw a man and two children outside a brick home, the third house facing highway 680 from the turnoff, after the houses with mailboxes 1010 and 1020 in front of them: a brown brick house with a blue truck and a small boat in the yard (box 1030? box 1034?). As I neared the home and people, I saw the (white) man playing golf with the two tanned (white) children, boys, and the man loudly sang out, "In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight" and I knew his voice could carry the distance and he had wanted the attention, wanted me to hear him--and I knew the word had come from him. There were no other people outside at any of the nearby homes. I wondered if something in my perceived attitude had brought this on--but realized this man doesn't know me, will not know me. I thought it odd that someone would enthusiastically, at this late date, display hate and ignorance before his own children: and then I thought it funny that in the age of Obama--when more (black) children will be committed to education and high aspirations--that this white man and his people have committed themselves to ignorance and hate--and will be lost in an educated, multicultural world.


[SUBSEQUENTLY, I wrote:


A Letter to the Editor

To Whom It May Concern: On Louisiana Racism

(c) 2011



It was April 12th, an anniversary, the one-hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the American civil war, the military conflict inspired by the South’s commitment to the enslavement of Africans and those of African descent. I had read an article on the war in Time magazine (April 18, 2011) about the ongoing disagreement about the interpretation of that war, but other than that had not given the day much thought. It was history and I had my own concerns—getting an agent for a novel I finished about a struggling African-American woman filmmaker, submitting a survey article on recent films to a web magazine, sending out notes for freelance assignments, and getting in touch with diverse friends in far-flung places, all things I worked on when I walked into the Louisiana town of St. Martinville on April 12 and visited the library, which has an internet connection I lack out in the country. The internet is a connection to news of real civilization, to cosmopolitan life and the intellectual conversations and great museums and foreign films and serious literature and ordinarily sophisticated newspapers I miss, all things that were easy to access when I lived in New York. I had finished writing a short piece the week before on Amede Ardoin (Mama, I’ll Be Long Gone, a new retrospective recording), the great early twentieth-century Louisiana Creole musician whose work is the foundation on which many Cajun musicians built their songs and whom, reportedly, was beaten viciously by white men after a white woman gave Ardoin a handkerchief with which to wipe his brow during a dance performance; and I had submitted that article on Ardoin, with other varied music commentary, via electronic mail to an editor. On Tuesday, April 12th, I read an e-mailed note from an acquaintance asking me to read his online article on jazz and race and to give my opinion; and I, who have studied and written about international culture, read his jazz and race essay and told him that I thought it was an important subject but that I wished that African-American writers would demonstrate getting beyond race by thinking and talking about other things—and actually getting beyond race. I would be reminded a few hours later why that is impossible.



I had arrived in town in the late morning, and left town in late afternoon; and I was almost halfway on my walk back home when I was looking away from the oncoming traffic for a minute toward the road on which I would turn—and, though my thoughts tend to be the solitary, melancholy complaints and considerations of most artists who are not rich or famous and find themselves in a cultural backwater, I was thinking that the walk felt easier and quicker than I had anticipated, and there would be less traffic after I turned onto the next road, and of what I would do when I arrived home. I was wearing light green pants with a dark green shirt, and I had a walking cane in my right hand and twirled it; and rather than poor and tired, for a moment I probably looked carefree. Suddenly, I felt a hard hit against the upper part of my stomach, just below my ribs, and I looked down to see liquid on my shirt and lower arm—then I looked behind me and saw an open can of orange soda leaking on the ground, and looked further back to see a sleek, small black car driving away. Unfortunately, I did not see the license plate. (Would reporting it to the St. Martinville sheriff’s office do any good, the sheriff’s office to which I had reported the theft of my bike without results, the sheriff’s office that had stopped me previously on one of my walks, for no good reason? Note: I conflate the sherriff's office and the police department: the uniform of the officers who stopped me were dark, as was that of the officer to whom I reported the theft; whereas the sherriff's office uniforms are usually pale.) I was near the spot where someone, months before, had called out “nigger” as I walked. I took the towel out of my pocket, and began to wipe my shirt and arm, then looked back at the car driving away, and realized that this had been intentional. Some sick, stupid person was offended by the sight of a young-looking African-American male who seemed free and happy: the myth of the happy Negro is one the old South promoted for years—but the thought of a free and happy Negro is one some in the new South still find vexing, apparently. (You would think that someone riding in a nice, new car would be confident enough to ignore someone compelled to walk—but no.) Of course, some people dislike angry Negroes, happy Negroes, sad Negroes, intelligent Negroes, ignorant Negroes, well-dressed Negroes, shabby Negroes, any Negroes. I had been warned that other people of color riding a bike or walking had been attacked by bigots, some in big ugly trucks, with small ugly minds; and although I hoped to be exempt from that kind of experience, a lifelong hope and a hope not disillusioned for the first time, I cannot say I was surprised. Anyplace in which citizens have to be wary of that kind of behavior on an ordinary day is a stinking, swampy cultural backwater. Who knows what drives such hostile people? How often do blacks and whites have an honest conversation about anything of consequence in Louisiana? I grew up in Louisiana, spent decades in New York, and returned for different reasons, one of which was to finish a book project, and nothing like what occurred that afternoon on the Louisiana road had happened to me in New York, a place in which—whatever its difficulties—some equal and honest conversation is possible and happens daily. Of course on this particular afternoon, it did not matter what my attitude or thought might have been—it never does with prejudice: you simply fill in your own attitudes and project them onto the other person. For instance, you abduct people from the country in which they live, love, and work, and you force them into a chattel state, exploit their labor for your lasting economic benefit, creating family and industrial wealth, and beat and rape and kill these enslaved people and their descendants, and then convince yourself that your victim is the immoral one. Unacknowledged guilt, like disrespected pain, can turn into rage, I suppose.



In Louisiana, the civil war continues, though its skirmishes are often personal and petty; however, ignoring the presence and repressing the power of African-Americans in civic and political life are prevalent and more significant. While one can hear the insane conservative talk on the radio, and read the lying and vile conservative commentary (of people who voted for notorious racist David Duke but did not vote for eminently qualified and well-intentioned native son Barack Obama) presented as respectable editorials in newspapers, one rarely hears the cogent and critical perspective that many African-Americans have in public. There are few political representatives who embody and articulate the lasting concerns of African-Americans: the desire for equal opportunity and treatment, and the need for good education for children and decent jobs for adults, so that good futures are possible. The irony is that blacks and whites, especially Creoles and Cajuns, have things in common: a relationship to the land and similar foods and music (and sometimes listening to black and white voices on local public radio, one of the few resources for complex consciousness and culture in the state, it can be hard to discern significant differences—the kind of thing that happens when there have been common experiences). Neither silences nor words ensure safety and security; and yet an individual can live in a perfect hell and think of it as heaven.



It is obvious that black people think so much about race because white people do. I was reminded of the kind of question one of my favorite authors, the late great writer James Baldwin, used to ask: what is it that white people do among themselves to make them so evil, so crazed and cruel, when dealing with other people? Certainly people who are happy, or who have spiritual peace, do not act like that. (I am not religious, but I imagine that if a moral god did exist he would damn such a people with hurricanes and floods, with crop drought and pestilence, with the breaking of industrial machinery leading to the spoiling of water and wildlife and even human fatality—things that never happen in Louisiana.) I tried to imagine what that person in the little sleek black car might have been feeling. Hatred? Cruelty? Mockery? Humor? I do not know—I cannot know. I only can speculate. That afternoon, I had to force myself to remember the people of different ages, ethnicities, and genders who have been kind to me on various days as I walked, someone they did not know, offering a ride or simply waving at someone who has lost that habit of hand. I felt a certain danger and worry but I continued walking, thinking about other things, but I returned to what happened. The pain in my chest returned me to what happened, even as my dark green shirt dried while I walked under the hot sun. (There seemed to be no stain on my shirt, but the next morning there would be a bruise on my chest.) For several weeks I had been thinking that many people do not know that black men have feelings; and this was more proof. However, I was glad that I did not cry when I arrived home that afternoon or later that night, as I was half-afraid I might—dealing with cruelty and stupidity day after day, month after month, is dismaying and exhausting. I want to be let alone: my lifelong anthem, and, of course, a song that no one will help me sing. Tears do not do much good, whereas thinking often does. I recall what I told the jazz writer before that afternoon experience of mindless and reflexive racism: the most important thing is to see and appreciate the differences in the abundance of human existence and natural life. April 14, 2011]

Culture, Here and Elsewhere

President Obama’s recent trip to Saudia Arabia and Egypt acknowledges the importance of the Muslim world and makes possible a new dialogue, encouraging new politics. Interestingly, “Muslim Voices: Arts & Ideas,” is a ten-day festival, June 5 through 14, 2009, devoted to Muslim culture, involving important New York institutions: Asia Society, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and New York University Center for Dialogues.


The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts with The Museum for African Art has an exhibit, June 4 through September 14, on “Perspectives: Women, Art and Islam,” and on June 6th there is a talk at the Contemporary African Diasporan Arts museum in downtown Brooklyn by the exhibiting artists from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.


“The art, the history, the traditions and the geographies of the Islamic world from the Far East to the Iberian Peninsula are the subjects of the exhibition The Worlds of Islam in the Aga Khan Museum Collection,” reports ArtDaily.org from Madrid, Spain.


The American Folk Art Museum on 53rd Street in Manhattan will be open, free, tonight for three hours, beginning at 5:30 p.m. Meanwhile, The Art Newspaper reports that museum shows in different parts of the United States, dependent on funding by private patrons, are being cancelled, due to the economic downturn and its effect on wealth.


Blues singer Koko Taylor and actor David Carradine have died, and both will be missed, and while Taylor is more important to her art form that Carradine to his (she is considered the queen of the blues and though respected he does not have anything resembling a similiar place in film or television), it is he who has been getting the network television attention, although NPR has noted her passing.


Amy LaVere’s album Anchors & Anvils begins with the most dramatic song—“Killing Him,” about a woman who kills the man she loves, a man whose responses have been making her crazy—and there are other songs on the album about domestic conflicts: ending the album with the song would have given the entire album the scope of an unfolding tragedy, but in our time, artists (in literature and film as well) are encouraged to present the most dramatic scene first—to engage public attention—whether or not that works aesthetically.


I saw, one evening this week, a PBS special featuring European classical musician David Garrett, blond, youthful, very casually dressed, performing live from Berlin before a large audience, a performance interesting for his commitment to blending classical music and rock. He is a very good musician and an even better entertainer (it’s obvious he loves sharing his music, which is key to entertaining).


It looks like singer Mariah Carey has been getting some good reviews for her acting performance in the new film Tennessee. (I have had a fondness for Carey for a long time.)


The International Federation of Film Critics—FIPRESCI—offers online reports on film festivals, including this year festival in Istanbul in April: “…The new Turkish cinema, as seen in the festival, shows an astonishing diversity of themes, styles, handwritings; and it shows an amazing number of debutants — such as Asli Özge, whose first fiction feature Men on the Bridge (Köprüdekiler) won the main prize, the 'Golden Tulip' in the national competition, over new films from established directors like Yesim Ustaoglu, Reha Erdem, Semih Kaplanoglu and Erden Kiral. Without any doubt, Men on the Bridge is an excellent debut which should make its mark, and which deserves the prize ... even if it seems a little unfair to prefer it to new films from Ustaoglu (Pandora's Box) and Erdem (My Only Sunshine)…” (May 2009 report)


David Hudson at IFC’s The Daily continues to produce a film digest worth reading, covering everything from festivals to film criticism to film productions plans. [Writer's note: Hudson, formerly of Greencine Daily, announced in late June 2009 that he would no longer proceed with The Daily at IFC in its existing format.]


C.D. Wright has won the 2009 Griffin Prize for international poetry: the prize, given every year, is estimated at a value of $50,000.


Newsweek has an article on Oprah Winfrey’s giving air time to people involved in alternative health therapies, a critique; and, Winfrey, is number two rather than number one on the list of powerful media people put out by Forbes: and last night talk show host Craig Ferguson attributed both facts to the need for controversy to sell magazines in an age when print media is suffering great declines. It’s fascinating how transparent that is.


Two CW shows “The Game” and “Everybody Hates Chris,” both featuring black characters, are being cancelled; and fans of both programs are outraged: they are entertaining shows, and, apparently, popular, but the network seems to want a different demographic. (Erin Evans at the online magazine The Root has an article on the subject.)


There was a local Louisiana television news report about Chinese drywall that has caused a problem for residents, and the legal issues involved (people will sue). It is another in a series of problems with Chinese products—everything from dolls to toothpaste has been an issue in the last few years, suggesting a lack of care and an equal lack of proper regulation. It’s an irony that a culture once known for craft has grown slack in an age of mass production—and fascinating that the Japanese seem to have found a way to continue high standards with new technology. (The subject is worth more research and thought.)


Louisiana State University may have to eliminate as many as 1900 jobs, due to state budget cuts, reports Louisiana’s Independent Weekly and television station WAFB. Education and health care are often sacrificed in difficult times, an unfortunate choice as that will affect the future...

Footnote: Derek Walcott on human nature, race, and writing

There are many things to be discussed, important and trivial, such as the president's Supreme Court nomination and Kris Allen as the winner of American Idol, the probability of global warming and the possibility of significant local hurricanes and the fun of summer, but for me and for the moment some singular comments from Derek Walcott (though not about any of those particular topics) will stand in for some of the available complexity...


“It’s wrong to blame the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade entirely on the whiteman,” he (Derek Walcott) stressed. “That’s a lie; it does not tell the complexity of what happened. The reality is the opposite. It’s a two-way evil. The African-American has to get beyond that lie or exaggeration of blaming all the oppression on the white man. There were blacks, who owned slaves in America. It's a perverse nuance of human nature to blame the other man.” Derek Walcott blames not race but human nature. What else does Walcott say? “Plato did not want writers and poets in his Ideal Republic because they criticise too much,” Walcott stressed. “They find it difficult to keep quiet. It’s not necessarily courage that makes poets to criticise; it’s just inevitable that they have to criticise. That’s what is admirable about poets and writers. Writers are not very courageous by nature; all of us are cowards. But there’s a point at which the cowardice is not important. There’s a point where he says ‘the voice that I’m hearing in my head cannot be suppressed; so, I'll put it down in a corner of my cell or in a toilet paper or in a matchbox’. I’'s still cowardice; he’s still afraid he'd be caught. Poets and writers are guardians of heritage; they preserve heritage but heritage is an examination of the truth.” (“Reparation Is An Absurd Concept – Walcott,” by Anote Ajeluorou, Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2009).

Odds and Ends

“How the Light Gets In: A Philosophical Festival at Hay” is being held in the United Kingdom, May 22 through May 31, 2009. Featuring Simon Blackburn and Anthony Grayling among others, it is billed as the United Kingdom’s first philosophy and music festival. Obviously, this seems a good way of bringing philosophy to the people.


Next April in 2010, there is scheduled to be a two-day conference, April 5 through 7, in Australia, at the University of South Australia, on emotional geographies: the public notice I received said that “We invite papers that interrogate emotion, society and space from diverse disciplinary and multidisciplinary backgrounds. We are interested in specific case studies as well as theoretical examinations of the nature of connections among these terms. The conference will be an exciting place to think about new ways of studying the natures, cultures and histories of emotional life. We welcome individual papers as well as panel proposals. We are happy to receive papers that engage in experimental as well as traditional formats.” I like the focus on the emotions, which remain mysteries and powers despite centuries of contemplation and trouble. Queries or abstracts of 300 words can be sent to CPCSGlobalisation -- at unisa.edu.au by July 17, 2009.


“I detest theory in criticism. Theory killed poetic criticism in France and Derrida’s Deconstruction theory has had a disastrous effect on criticism in this country and has completed the ruination of English departments by continuing what had started as a misreading and misunderstanding of the “New Critics”. Robert Graves said once that a poet writes poems for his friends, and I agree. And he also writes criticism for those same friends. The friend for whom I write is my ideal reader, intelligent, informed, sensitive, objective, and possessing above all sound and tasteful judgment,” declares William Jay Smith, in interview with the Contemporary Poetry Review (May 2009).


The New York Times recently had three different articles on novelist Colson Whitehead (Sag Harbor). Clearly, the paper has adopted him (it is a demonstration of how establishment power works).


With a poetry gathering at the White House and Mrs. Obama’s appearance at a ballet event in New York, the Obamas consistently seem to be affirming culture.


There is a Francis Bacon exhibit at the Metropolitan museum in New York, now until August 16th, a centenary exhibit, saluting the painter’s birth and his accomplishment.


The music group Green Day is at the top of the Billboard magazine charts, according to an online May 20th Billboard article, with the album 21st Century Breakdown, “selling 215,000 in an abbreviated three-day sales week.”


The Hartford Courant’s Thomas Kintner on Diana Ross, May 17: “Even in her middling moments, Ross was a more than able singer, gently kneading the notes of her 1973 hit "Touch Me In The Morning," and applying a precise yet informal caress to the slinky “It’s My House,” even when the song became repetitive while floating toward its finish. The pliability of her voice showed in the way she worked out “Love Child,” and she applied a crisp edge to the juicy bob of “More Today Than Yesterday.”……The day before, May 16, in an article “Becoming the best” in Nigeria’s publication Punch, Gogo Majin had written about Ross: “I watched Diana Ross perform live on television during her last visit to Nigeria. I took note of several things, some of which include the fact that she looked really great for a woman her age, and the ease and effortlessness with which she performed (she was completely at home on stage). But most important to me was the fact that despite several years of performing at shows around the world, her voice was still in great shape. The quality of her voice, live on stage, was as good as listening to her on CD. I am talking about the smoothness of her tone, the ability to hit all her high notes and her voice control.”


I heard Louisiana writer-musician David John (Dege) Legg interviewed on radio station KRVS yesterday (he writes for the Independent Weekly and has the band Black Bayou Construkt). It was a smart, amusing interview, though possibly too infatuated with ideas about “cool” and the cultural “underground.”


There is a lot of talk now about the television program “American Idol” and whether Adam Lambert or Kris Allen will be selected. I had not watched “American Idol” until recently, in the last several months. I can see how Lambert’s win would have some social significance (for his androgynous iconography, which some might consider transgressive) but I prefer Allen’s sound and look.

Encore: "Trouble, according to James Carter" (Fiction)

(c) Written by DG, 2002

1.

“There are some things that are certain—not only death and taxes, but also fucking, eating, and shitting, greed, exhaustion, and poverty,” said the managing editor, an overweight, ruddy-faced bore who imagined himself a wit. James smiled tightly at him, hoping this little lecture had a point that had something to do with his own work. As far as James knew, the editor seemed to imagine that these epigrams were to be taken in by James and remembered and would someday become one with the very structure of James’s mind—but James knew this would not happen.

“With the way things are in the economy, businesses closing, people being laid off, dire predictions, the homeless shelters and food pantries and soup kitchens are crowded. I’d like you to do a story on this,” said the managing editor.

I really do not want to do this, thought James. Give me an executive who has lost his job, or someone trying to keep a company going, or a labor union leader or secretary struggling to pay her bills—somebody with hope. I don’t want to visit a homeless shelter or a soup kitchen. What is there to say? People are suffering. People are always suffering. Why pretend this is new, and why pretend to care? Give people education and opportunities to work and reduce the reasons for their suffering, and give me a political scandal, a fashion show, an innovative computer, an alcoholic sports star, a literary masterpiece, a film premiere, a historical discovery, or a new building going up: those are my subjects.

James returned to his desk, wondering where to start. He logged onto the internet to do a quick search of resources—institutions, experts, books, and articles. He called the office librarian to tell her what he was working on, what he’d found, what he thought he needed, and his deadlines for research, active interviewing, and various drafts. James then called his friend Pete and asked him if he wanted to have dinner later, but Pete said, No, that he had to work late. When James looked up again, he saw Calvin at his desk putting things in a box, looking angry, determined, and sad.

James stood and walked over to Calvin. James was apprehensive, fearful.

“What’s going on?” asked James.

“I’ve just been fired,” said Calvin.

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t turn in my expense reports on time. Because I yelled at the receptionist for mixing up my messages. Because I took a too adversarial stance toward corruption in my reporting. Those are some of the things the Redface told me. They’ve wanted to fire me for a while—I’m not acquiescent enough for their taste; so they just wracked their brains to come up with a bunch of junk to accuse me of,” said Calvin.

“I can’t believe it,” said James, though he knew there was a clique of people in the office who were always trying to make everything as simple as their own minds. “The idiots.”

The two looked at each other; they’d miss working together.

“Do you want to have lunch? I can walk out with you,” said James.

“Would you do that? It’s not a very politic thing to do,” said Calvin.

“I want to—and I’m hungry,” said James.

Calvin laughed.
When Calvin had gathered his things, and the two men walked out, all eyes were on them; and when James looked back at the looking eyes, the eyes looked down or looked away. The Redface was the only one who held James’s gaze.

James and Calvin ate at a small sushi bar. Calvin liked sushi, and that was why they chose the place, but once they began to eat—standing, hunched over their food, people all around them in the small place—they realized that they had made a mistake. If they’d gone to a larger, quieter place, they both would have been more comfortable. Yet, neither said anything about the place; they talked to each other beyond their discomfort about the work they had hoped to do in the office, about trying to deal with the pettiness there, and about what Calvin was going to do now. “It’s amazing how quickly a man’s life can change,” said Calvin, who said he thought he would try freelance writing and editing. “As long as I’m working, you can use me as a reference, and if you need money, let me know, and if I have it, it’s yours,” said James. Calvin was glad to hear that, and a smile crossed his face, banishing for a moment his more intense feelings.“What are you going to do?” asked Calvin.

“I’m going to try to do my job,” said James, both of them knowing this would not be easy, as James’s sense of mission was not entirely that of his editor’s, and his editor’s mission was not entirely that of James. But then, what drove James was not simple—news, truth, pleasure, meaning, a critique of power, history, prophecy—and what drove his editor—beating the competition in being the first to deliver the news, surprising the reader, raising the number of subscribers and newsstand sales, impressing the publisher—was also not entirely simple, though it was possibly much more obvious.

“I know Sharon will be glad that I’m not there anymore,” said Calvin.

“Her only goal is to try to make the office safe for her unquestioned inadequacies,” said James.
James laughed, and said, “I don’t know how people like that get so far and stay so long. She delegates most of her work to others and spends most of her time on the phone,” said Calvin.
When they said goodbye, neither James nor Calvin was happy, neither was relieved.

James made an appointment to interview the executive director of a homeless organization, and after work he stopped by a poetry and music event organized for attendants of a mental health program that worked to get people off the streets and into homes and jobs. He thought the music was good—very rhythmic—and the poetry plain and dull, but he liked the sense of camaraderie between the attendants. He didn’t introduce himself or take notes; he knew he would be back. Leaving the building, located on the edge of Manhattan’s East Village, above the bowery, James thought about the tickets he’d bought for a music concert for the coming weekend. His friend Pete had backed out because of work, and James hadn’t found anyone else yet to go with. He couldn’t ask Gail without asking her husband, and he didn’t have a ticket for her husband, nor was he fond of the ill-informed, blunt man. Too often, when you had a married friend, you were forced to deal with the spouse as well despite lack of rapport.

On his way into his office the next day, he stopped by a couple of churches to ask about their soup kitchens, coat drives, and food pantries. Most of the church offices were closed and he left notes, but one church office was open, and the woman there was direct: “We see all kinds of people—high school dropouts and college graduates, different ethnicities, married couples, singles, whatever. People are hungry, and we feed them,” she said. “They need clothes and we give them the clothes our parishioners leave with us. We shouldn’t have to do this, and they shouldn’t need to come here, but that is the way the world is, that’s the way it’s been, and maybe that’s the way it will always be.”

With that summarizing impulse she’d get on with the Redface, thought James. Yet, he could not say she was wrong. She was trying to be clear, and she was; and James realized once more that we’re all trying to produce knowledge or wisdom and it might be too late. If a child hasn’t learned wise and generous ways, he may not be able to adapt to them when he’s a man—his bad habits may be his very own nature: this may be why it’s so hard to change anyone, why it’s so hard to change the world.

Leaving the office, he reconsidered this conclusion. He thought that children were sometimes limited in their perspectives because of lack of experience, and because information was kept from them, but that men and women had the perspective and freedom to change—to change themselves and others.

James waited in the open air on a square marble bench near a bulbous sculpture in a cement park surrounded by seven office towers, one out of which he had come after leaving his desk and its work, and another his friend Gail would leave to join him. James was pleased the sun was shining, as the breeze off the nearby water was cool. He wondered what kind of mood Gail would be in. She had been up for a job at a small television station committed to social issues, but had not been given the job. A personnel committee made up of two managers and two support staffers had reviewed her work, resume, and colleagues’ response to her, and they recommended Gail for the job. The executive director in her office had not agreed, and so she did not get the job. Gail and the executive director had disagreed before, disagreements that were matters of policy, procedure, and personality. Instead the job Gail wanted had gone to someone who had been eliminated earlier in the process, someone the committee had decided was not even one of their top three choices, a man Gail had not considered a friend but a friendly colleague. Yet when Gail arrived, she smiled and said, “How is my friend, the misanthropic humanist?”

James laughed. “I’m well, though you seem, amazingly, in a much better mood than I am.”“It’s their loss,” said Gail. “I applied, I was found gifted and worthy, and I was not appointed, so it’s the organization’s loss. I still have my televised nightly discussion program and I’m going to continue to do my work.”

James listened and thought about what she said. She was in a better mood than he was. He was still thinking about Calvin, still thinking about the injustice of that, of how Calvin’s good work had meant nothing, and now Gail was giving him further evidence of injustice. Where would they eat?

James was having a salad at his desk. The salad was full of chunks of chicken, croutons, thin slivers of carrots and other vegetables, olives, and a thick dark oriental dressing—delicious. He was thinking about his lunch date with Gail the day before, about Calvin, about the office he himself continued to work in and the exaggerated exclamations of pleasure and outraged complaints over minutiae there, the indifference to genuinely important matters, the jockeying not so much for relationships with the powerful but for appearances of relationships with the powerful—no one really wanted to know the publisher, but they wanted to seem to be in his favor. Once James and the man were in an elevator together, and, James, incapable of thinking of anything to say after briefly describing the story he’d been working on, went on to describe an Italian film retrospective he was attending, having seen four of twelve scheduled films. The two of them spent the remainder of the elevator ride talking about the difference in the mood of Italian films compared to American films. James knew he had squandered an opportunity to advance a professional goal, but he was pleased that he had the kind of conversation with the publisher that he might have had with a friendly acquaintance. James smiled upon thinking that it was not the kind of conversation he could tell most of his coworkers about; they wouldn’t understand why it pleased him. He smiled; and then the grimaced, for this was another example of how and why he was something of a misfit. He finished his salad, and then went to work on his afternoon story, the retiring of a French designer after thirty years of big business and bigger headlines, headlines about nervous breakdowns, drugs, ill-chosen lovers, and great clothes.

James called his friend Pete, whom he had been invited to see the Italian films, and who had said he’d try to see something, but Pete had managed not to see a single film. James doubted Pete would be interested in going to the Whitney for a free exhibit, but James would ask him anyway, and when he did, Pete said “No, I have to work.”

James asked, “Do you have to work, or do you choose to work late?”

Pete said, “I have to—I have a project I have to finish and there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to do it.”

“Do other people there work such long hours?” asked James.

“Some people do,” said Pete.

Pete said they’d get together soon, and told James to stay in touch.

James left several messages for Calvin, and when they finally talked, Calvin explained that he hadn’t been seeing anyone, that he was trying to assess where he was, and what he wanted to do. He found it painful to talk about being fired, even to someone who respected him and understood that he hadn’t done anything wrong of significance. He also said that he didn’t see any available job that he really wanted and felt as if he had to choose between getting an important job he didn’t like that might be overwhelming or getting an unimportant job he didn’t like but could easily manage. He decided to try to get work proofreading, but wanted to avoid temporary office clerical assignments. He said, “I’m not that desperate yet. Some people think any job is better than none, but I disagree: some jobs undermine who you are.”

When James and Pete got together, they went to a comedy club, where women comedians insulted men in general and those in the audience in particular, and the two men, drinking and making comments between the comedy sets, had a great time, honest, intimate, and thoughtful.
James had begun publishing a series of articles on the unemployed, the hungry, and the homeless. James thought the best piece was on a mother’s attempts to keep her children in school with good grades despite the family’s living in a homeless shelter. He was still interviewing people for the series. Reading over the interview transcripts of a man who had come out of jail and was depending on soup kitchens for daily sustenance, James sat in the company cafeteria not far from Sharon, a managing editor, and her staff, two young women and a man. It was supposed to be a casual editorial meeting they were having but sounded like a gossip session, with professional evaluations mixed with ignorant perceptions. At one disturbing articulation, James looked at the group and they looked at him, seeing his disapproval. He soon left the table, and on his way back to this desk stopped by the mailroom to get express mail envelopes and overheard the mailroom supervisor’s comments to his staff. The supervisor was tall and slim with thinning blond hair and a pimple near his mouth, and James thought he looked like photographs of Paul Verlaine, the poet who left his wife for another poet, Rimbaud. It was obvious to James that the African American assistant, Jerome, was being given menial tasks while the Irish American, Michael, was being given tasks requiring more thought and management skill. James knew both men had begun working there around the same time, and he’d had conversations with them, and he knew the African American was ambitious to move up in the company. Jerome was confident but not a braggart; he was boyish and quick, with sensitive eyes, and James imagined he could be easily disappointed—wasn’t I easily disappointed at his age? James asked the supervisor if Jerome might help Michael, suggesting this would cut the time it took to get the assigned work done. He knew this suggestion might be seen as intrusive but thought what it entailed possibly had not been imagined and might be helpful. Jerome looked hopeful, while Michael merely waited. The supervisor looked offended, and said, “I’ve made my assignments, but I’ll consider more task-sharing in the future. In the meantime, I’ll think up a list of story ideas you might want to pursue.” James smiled and left. Well, that didn’t help, James thought.

James took a cab ride from Greenwich Village to the Metropolitan Museum. He never grew tired of observing the city and its people.

His thoughts drifted from the city to a conversation he’d had with the Redface, a conversation that could only worry him.

The Redface had said, “I’ve tried to influence you, to point you in a direction that complements me and serves this office, but you seem sometimes to resist that. It’s as if you’re determined to be independent.”

James, hearing the complaint, had smiled without joy.

“When I hired you, you seemed so grateful for the job,” said the Redface.

“I was glad that you hired me and excited about the work,” said James.

“Aren’t you grateful now?” asked the Redface.

“I’m still glad that you hired me and I still feel I have something to contribute,” said James.

“We’ve gotten good responses to a lot of my stories, even a couple of award nominations—and you had no complaints of significance at the time of my last performance evaluation three months ago.”

“I’m always re-evaluating everyone,” said the Redface with a smile.What a stupid face, thought James, who watched the man’s face show in quick succession surprise, alarm, and a sense of accomplishment in response to what he’d seen in James’s face. He wants to alienate me now, thought James. Why do I know enough to know that, and not enough to change my responses?
James heard the taxi driver say something. “What?” asked James. The man repeated his pleasantly empty question. James answered, and they rode on to the museum.

There were a lot of people outside the Metropolitan Museum, some of them invited guests who were just arriving but many of them simply there to watch the celebrities arrive. James disliked making his way through crowds, but he had been looking forward to this event for months. He had on a new black suit, new white shirt, new black tie, new shoes, and new cologne.

Inside, he saw faces he had seen on movie screens and in magazines, some he’d seen walking in Soho or entering the stage door of a Broadway show, a few he had interviewed, and some he had worked with who had gone on to bigger things. James saw statesman Henry Kissinger and journalist Christopher Hitchens sharing cigars together in one part of the large hall, laughing and puffing away, and he saw former vice president Al Gore and activist Ralph Nader in another corner, with Gore patting Nader’s shoulder affectionately as he spoke. James saw the model and businesswoman Iman talking with her husband David Bowie, a musician James had liked since he was a boy, and James hoped he could think of something smart to say later to Bowie. James heard someone say that he’d had a 1958 Cabernet Sauvignon at dinner the previous night. James saw one of New York’s grand ladies, Brooke Astor, elderly and frail, but with an utterly joyous look on her face, and he vaguely remembered reading something about her foundation’s plan to give away its remaining assets. When had he read that—a year ago, two, five? Walking past another society lady, Nan Kempner, he heard part of actress Catherine Deneuve comments and realized she was talking with film director Andrew Techine, whose work he liked. James saw singer Diana Ross talking with the model Naomi Campbell, their faces excited, and he wondered what they were talking about—war in Africa, poetry, cosmetics? Or perfume? The place was full of scents. James saw waiters passing by with trays of champagne, which they brought to the famous faces first. He was curious as to whether they were also serving wine, which he would prefer. “I loved Pamela Todd’s book, Celebrating the Impressionist Table—great paintings, very good recipes,” someone said. James looked around and saw someone with a glass of red wine, asked him where he got it, and went in that direction. Not far from tables filled with glasses, he saw novelist Toni Morrison and the essayists Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates Jr. huddled together. He said hello to them, and Gates nodded. James understood that violinist Joshua Bell would perform and he wondered where and when that would be. Walking away form the wine table, James saw Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter and one of his writers, David Kamp. James sipped his Chianti. He saw the painter Ross Bleckner and music executive David Geffen talking with singers Natalie Merchant and Michael Stipe. What was that thing Stipe was wearing? James saw the journalists Utrice Leid and Clayton Riley and stopped to ask them about their latest projects, sipping as he listened. Golfer Tiger Woods was talking with boxer Muhammad Ali—how Calvin would like that, as he was wild about golf—wild about golf? Sounds like a perversion, but Calvin had become an enthusiast of the sport. That was Marisa Berenson! Were those two the Hilton sisters? James recognized in the crowd Bill Gates, Alan Greenspan, Richard Parsons, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, Gore Vidal, John Updike, Caryl Phillips, Wynton Marsalis, Cassandra Wilson, Valerie Simpson and her husband Nick Ashford, Jude Law, Charlize Theron, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett, and Giovanni Ribisi. On James’s way to a table to pick up grilled slices of chicken, which he wanted to couple with bits of blue cheese, James saw and avoided Percival Everett, who hadn’t liked the profile James had done of him a couple of years ago. The piece was something James had thought would please the writer but Everett had said it was more concerned with his personal life than his work. When James reached the food table, he forgot about the chicken and put on his plate scallops glazed and topped with almonds and shallots, and a small serving of a gratin of peas, tarragon, and pistachios. Before the night was over, James would see and hear Rudolf Guiliani, David Dinkins, and Ed Koch, New York mayors, break into an aria from Tosca, seeing who could hit the highest note.


2.

Weeks after the museum gala, James entered the Redface’s office, thinking about the previous night’s celebration of Calvin’s new job and wondering what this meeting with the Redface would be about, barely noticing the sound of Frank Sinatra singing “That’s Life” that was playing low on the stereo behind the man’s chair. James hated surprises.

James sat down and opened his notebook, poised to write. The Redface affected seriousness but James could see he was pleased with himself, fatuous; he almost hoped that James would share the enthusiasm he felt for what he would say. The man was quick, direct, and he said, “James, you’re being here is no longer working. I’ve been trying to put together a team here and you aren’t a team player and your work has suffered because of it—it expresses you more than it expresses this institution. We have to let you go.”

“You have to?” asked James.

“Yes,” said the man, disliking the editorial implications of the question as much as the logical correction it suggestion. He went on. “I’ve asked the personnel office to extend your insurance benefits for three months and to give you whatever reasonable support you might need upon your separation from this office, which will be effective in one hour. A security guard can help you gather your things, if you like.”

“No, I don’t like,” said James, standing up. “I’ll gather my own things.”

James put resumes in the mail, and he made phone calls; his life was now not about work but about seduction—trying to interest employers in what he had to offer as a worker. He spent his days following up on job possibilities he found in newspapers and on the internet; and he sometimes went to films or museums for the distractions and took long walks at the end of the day to use up his extra energy and to think.

One day James found himself being extraordinarily polite to everyone he met, a newspaper vendor, a waitress in a breakfast diner, and a subway booth clerk. James realized this was a false benevolence that had come out of his own sense of injury; he was offering care to others when he wanted it for himself. He restrained himself.

James was in a bookstore one night, browsing, his friend Pete having backed out of a plan to meet for a drink. James bumped into a woman he hadn’t seen in years. They went to a bar for drinks, a bar full of Polish-American locals, and he told her what had happened to him, and she told him about her own disappointments and frustrations. She had been hired for what seemed a dream job, but the company went through a sudden downturn and she was reassigned to the kind of job she’d had when she first began her career. The newspapers were full of similar stories—of innovations that undermined traditional sectors of the economy, of new companies begun in good times that didn’t produce enough of a profit when things went bad, and of dwindling consumer confidence that affected consumerism that then affected staffing levels. The woman’s face, pale, with baby fat at her cheeks but tiny lines at the corner of her eyes, was well intentioned, sensitive, and hopeless; she had not thought of how to change her life. They talked past midnight, and he woke up the next morning in her bed, remembering everything, miserable. He thought about sex more often now, and when he pursued it, it brought a sense of adventure and a quick sharp pleasure, but it solved nothing.

After putting two hundred resumes in the mail at the post office, James went back to the clerk’s window to get a money order check for a telephone bill he wanted to pay. Soon after handing over a fifty-dollar bill, a man in a wheelchair asked James to move back so the man could pass, but James hadn’t received his change yet and was afraid of a mix-up if he moved away from his money or out of the clerk’s line of vision. The man in the wheelchair—middle age, bearded, short, with a somewhat thick though not fat body—looked at James, who had only moved a little, and said, “Some people are so rude.” James looked down at the man as he rolled away—should James swallow the presumption and the shock of pain he felt? James called out loudly, “You crippled idiot.” A woman near James looked disapproving, while a man nearby laughed.

James often used a copy center downtown to reproduce his portfolio, and the first time there he argued with a young woman behind the counter. She didn’t seem in the mood to be helpful, and he wasn’t in the mood to tolerate the slightest disrespect. Their argument was short and ugly and they repeated it on two or three of his visits. Once he heard her say to her supervisor, “We’re going to have trouble with that one.” Weeks passed and James didn’t say anything at all to her and finally he tried ordinary greetings and she returned them. One day he’d been working quietly, collating materials, and felt something and looked up and saw she was staring at him and he smiled. She blushed. She was a small pretty woman, Venezuelan, with a slight accent; and, to him, her face was sensual and surly—passionate. James began talking to her when he was done with collating, and he asked her when her break was, and if she’d like to go out for a coffee, and she said yes. He was surprised at how easy they found their way to bed, but realized that because his mind was full of so many things—culture, philosophy, and politics—sex was usually not the first thing he thought of; but for his generation and those younger, many of whom were concerned with a lot less than he was, sex was one of the few things they thought about. In bed, she was like a woman both begging for and fighting her own pleasure, afraid and demanding, and James found this very exciting, though a part of him observed it from a distance, as if for later consideration.

Before his friend Gail had called him with the news, James had heard it over a local arts radio station he listened to. The program director and the executive director of the television station she worked for had been fired, along with several of their assistants, and Gail had been appointed interim program director. James was pleased for her, but not as happy as he would have been if his own life had been as he wanted; and so he saw her ascension also as if from a distance. The appointment had been made not by an executive director or a personnel committee, as was customary, but by the chairman of the board of the corporation that owned the station. There were already protests outside the station’s offices of people who feared corporate intervention would weaken the station’s programs. The station had been known for its independence—for its coverage of the arts, progressive politics, eccentric personalities, obscure news, and advocacy of free speech rights. Gail had gone on the air to reassure the public that the station’s mission would continue undisturbed, but though she was a known journalist, and someone who had covered issues important in various communities, her words did not placate the demonstrators. When Gail called him, she said, “I have the job I was entitled to, and now I have the chance to do some good work for the station.”

James hadn’t eaten in two weeks, and his energy had diminished, his face was drawn, his body was learner, and he suffered headaches, when he got a tiny check for an article he did for a local giveaway paper on a recent special community board election. He cashed the check at a storefront check-cashing service and went to a local Chinese restaurant for chicken in garlic sauce. Hours later at home, in the bathroom, he read from Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil—“A human being who strives for something great considers everyone he meets on his way either as a means or as a delay and obstacle—or as a temporary resting place. His characteristic high-grade graciousness toward his fellow man becomes possible only once he has attained his height and rules. Impatience and his consciousness that until then he is always condemned to comedy—for even war is a comedy and conceals, just as every means conceals the end—spoil all of his relations to others; this type of man knows solitude and what is poisonous in it”; and James pushed out of his bowels tiny rabbit-like pellets. James thought of what he wanted—individuality, self-expression, the pursuit and exploration of an intellectual mission with a social purpose and appropriate rewards—and he thought of his own anger, distrust, and impatience when faced with obstacles and these feelings had made him sometimes, too often, politically clumsy: he had paid the people he disliked the tribute of honesty when he might have been a hypocrite, but hypocrisy would not have caused them to question themselves, their values, or their sense of reality. A human being who strives for something great considers everyone he meets on his way either as a means or as a delay and obstacle—or as a temporary resting place.Having read his fill of the book, taken a walk outside, and had a little something to eat, James called his friend Pete and asked him if he had time to get together during the weekend—maybe they could meet in a park and talk for an hour, or have a cup of tea somewhere. Pete said, No, he was busy with work, and as James put away the phone, he knew that he and Pete were not friends and had not been friends for years.


3.

James had applied for jobs in person and through letters, faxes, and electronic mail. He had sought reporting jobs and work in the various industries he’d previously worked in, but he found nothing.

James had drunk glasses of water to fill his belly and had taken aspirins for the headaches, but he was ravenous; he thought he was going mad with hunger.

It had been months since James had spoken to Pete, longer than that. He had not spoken to Calvin recently. James realized that he’d left several messages for Calvin that Calvin had not responded to—queries, invitations. James’s friend Gail, who was still enduring protests outside her office, and slanderous reports in the press—in which she was accused of egocentricity, professional favoritism, and political shortsidedness, in addition to being a corporate pawn—had loaned him money for rent, and he didn’t feel comfortable calling to ask for more.

The first time James entered a soup kitchen, one run by a national charity group with local offices, he felt lucky. Being served was roasted chicken, with potato salad, gravy, and string beans, and it all looked good and tasted good. He, dressed simply but neatly and carrying a canvas bag with his notebook and a magazine, took a seat across from a man seated alone, and James began to eat, glad he’d come even after the man opposite him started mumbling irrationally to himself. In time, James would see the range of food offered: food that was surprisingly good or quite bad, with little in between, with the worst being a tasteless stew of stringy chicken rumps over unsalted pasta.

Many of the people who came here were what he expected: homeless men and women, old people, toothless people who had been drug addicts, women whose salaries were not enough to sustain a life, and young men whose families abandoned them after they had lost jobs or gone into crime or jail. But there were also people who seemed ordinary, able, clean, and sane; they simply were hungry and wanted to eat.

Some of the people were quiet, and kept to themselves; and others acted as if this were a great social occasion, a chance to see and speak with good friends. James was not interested in them, in their oddly plump, weary, indistinct middle-age faces, nor in their comments—“I hate to throw food away, I hate to see food wasted, I won’t have any more food as I’m watching my weight, The powdered milk is so useful.” They were smart about pretending that frugality was chosen, or that if they didn’t get what they wanted here there remained options at home. James sat and ate, his attention entirely on the food, and when he wanted a second plate of food he asked for it. He would not pretend he was here for any other reason. Their friendliness, as he’d seen, might be followed suddenly by suspicion, fear, unsolicited self-defense, or even mockery.

One man had misplaced a bag and immediately thought it was stolen by one of the other people in the dining hall; but it was only on a chair underneath his coat. James thought, Paranoid people are worried about injury but they don’t realize that the injury they’re worried about is actually in the past, not the future; the wound is already there, misunderstood, unhealed. The man has already lost something and that is why he is here.

James couldn’t stand these conversations; he preferred silence to banality. He sat at a table, and took out a magazine, and was happy to see that the three people seated there whom had already eaten get up and leave, but then three more took their place. A chatty woman among them talked about having twins with a man who worked in a local beauty shop, something that surprised one of her tablemates.

James was surprised to find that the magazine he read carried an article about Gail, in which she was said to have fired people who questioned her authority—questioned her authority? A couple of them had called her a bitch on the air—and in the article she was also chided for being overweight: what does being overweight have to do with anything? James saw also that the co-anchor on one of her programs was being demonized as well, discussed as if he were bordering on the violent and insane simply because he was angry at being constantly insulted—he had talked about simply trying to do good journalism despite the surrounding controversies and had received nasty calls and letters and even threats.

At one point the chatty woman turned to James and asked if he’d been here a few weeks ago for a particularly good meal and he simply nodded yes. As soon as he had eaten, he folded close his magazine, wished them a good day, and walked outside into the gray, cold day.

At home, James put on a John Lee Hooker album, liking the wit of the blues, and he liked the drama, but when he heard the song “House Rent Blues,” with its story of a lost job, late rent, a disapproving landlady, homelessness, and an undependable friend, he turned it off. He took out a manuscript an editor had sent him to proofread, a small job.

He was having trouble concentrating after two hours and was glad to get Gail’s call. She laughed when he asked how she was. “Well, I’m not sure who on staff is for me, or who is against me. Someone will offer me a word of support and then I’ll turn into his program and hear him attack corporate puppets and women who put knives into men’s backs in order to advance and then conclude with how these words refer to situations near and far.” She laughed again. “I’d find this more acceptable if someone would say exactly what it is I’m doing that they object to, but instead they offer generalities and rhetoric.” James wondered if she was being ingenuous—if she was resisting seeing herself as part of institutional power, the appointment, the face, the tool, of a corporate board, as some of her colleagues claimed. Maybe she saw further—that all of them, and most people, worked for a large company. Toward the end of their talk, she did sound weary, and he realized she was surprised and confused by what had happened. How could people have once supported the idea of her becoming program director, and now that she was director not give her the chance to actually perform the job without obstruction?

James was late getting to lunch. He had spent the morning revising his resume, one of countless versions. After revising his resume, he had done some internet searches, using as key words names of past acquaintances; and he found that some of the people he had known had gone on to advanced degrees, television anchor positions, book contracts, prestigious teaching jobs; and he was depressed further. What had he been doing with his life? What had he to show for the years besides some published clippings and more free-floating worries and bad memories?

James passed a woman with two suitcases in tow, her everyday baggage, and he walked into the building, hoping that there was a decent lunch served. The woman, an office worker in the reception area, who usually told the men entering the building to take off their hats, was at the entrance. Thin, almost old, pious and tough, she stood at the door barring latecomers, and said in an angry burst, “No, no more. It’s over with—lunch is done.” James turned away, and began to think of where he would eat for the rest of the week, planning each day.

James decided to walk to the local library. James remembered a recent interview in which he had been asked whether he had journalism experience, a weird question in light of the fact that the ad requested an experienced journalist. Why else would he have been called for the interview? The interviewer was clearly surprised to see someone who looked like him apply, a fact that both amused and angered James. Inside the library James saw a man working on a craft project involving beads—he seemed to be making some kind of mat. James recognized the man from a soup kitchen he’d eaten in. James looked through some new magazines, then thought of borrowing some music, something different, and he walked to the music section and was suddenly overtaken by the smell of excrement, he looked around and saw an old man in layers of filthy clothes. To confirm this as the source, he walked near the man—yes, confirmed. James borrowed some Brazilian music, and thought he’d stop for a minute to look at some essay collections and hours passed before he left the library. James saw a guard tell a man he could not sleep in the library. The man, with piercing green eyes, tanned skin, light brown hair with a little white in it, was thin, obviously malnourished, and in dirty blue jeans; he stood up and left but returned about ten minutes later; and he saw James, sat across from him, and asked him where he was from. James told him, and the man said he thought he was from somewhere else—and then the man opened a book in front of himself, closed his eyes, and slept. When the man awoke, James took out of his bag a list of soup kitchens and gave it to the man. “This might be helpful to you. Sometimes it’s been helpful to me.” The man looked at it and said, “Thank you.”

James was using a reference computer in the library one afternoon, trying to gather together some books he thought he’d use in a proposal for a writing grant. He thought he might try to write a book on an Ohio-born writer who wrote about rather mad families caught between ambition and circumstance. Next to him sat a tall, tanned young man. James looked twice at him. James had seen him before, but didn’t know his name. He hung around with another man James thought crazy. James looked at him twice as the man had dyed his hair—what color is that? A light orange? The man sensed James looking and returned his gaze. They smiled. They worked silently next to each other, but a tension was in the air. James wondered if he should say something, either about what he was working on or ask the man bout his own concerns. James had become reticent to say anything about himself since losing his job, so he said, “Working on anything interesting?”

“I’m just printing some Japanese anime,” said the man, turning his computer screen toward James, who saw illustrations of half-nude women.

“Interesting,” said James.

The man laughed.

The tension, however, was not dispelled. Each attended to his concerns, but there was something remaining to be said. What could James say to this man, a stranger, someone he did not know, and someone he suspected he had little in common with? Every once in a while he felt this kind of thing—a connection having nothing to do with reason, nothing to do with will—and he dismissed it, but now that he was idle, now that his emotions were so obviously unfocused and unresolved in so many ways, he found these impulses harder to dismiss. James looked over at the young man, and then down into the man’s lap where he saw the man was aroused. After a brief exchange of looks, comments, and gestures, they went back to the apartment the man, Santiago, shared with his girlfriend, who was at work, and amid low laughter and high-spirited lust they drank liquor and fucked. James was charmed by the man’s energy and joy; and he felt as if he were lying down with an affectionate but dangerous animal.

“Does your girlfriend know about this side of you?” asked James.

“What’s there to know? It’s not like I’m going to fall in love with any guy,” said Santiago. “I don’t give guys flowers or taken them out to candlelit dinners. I hang out with guys sometimes and sometimes we play basketball and sometimes we fuck,” he said.

James looked out of one of the windows, onto the streets he’d be entering soon.

“You’re intelligent, sensitive, free. What do you want to do?” asked Santiago.

James was startled. He hadn’t expected that perception or the honesty, and he stumbled, “I don’t know. I just want to get a job that doesn’t involve too much humiliation.”

Walking in the neighborhood, James came face to face with a boy he had been seeing in the area for years. James had first seen the boy when he was about ten, chubby, and carrying a football, and now he was twenty-five, dressed all in black with longish hair, affecting a Manhattan style that was not entirely current. It was odd to have seen someone grow older without having any connection to him. When the boy was young, he had seemed open, pleasant-natured, and now he seemed a little closed, private, moody. James had seen this transformation in other boys. It might have been the narrowing of the focus of their energies that had led to this—they went from being interested in each other and everything to being interested principally in work, sports, women. James himself had not changed very much since he had first seen the boy—a fact he attributed to not being married or having kids, things that exhausted a man—and it was obvious that the boy recognized him. James said hello to the boy and asked about what he was doing and they talked about the weather, rock music, Manhattan, the too dull neighborhood. An hour later, when James kissed the back of the boy’s neck, after ruffling his thick dark hair, as James’s cock smoothly pushed in and out of the boy’s freckled pink ass in the boy’s bedroom, which still seemed the room of an adolescent, James felt a terrific sense of conquest. James was happy to substitute this sexual conquest for professional conquest, at least for a few minutes, but then he wondered if such a feeling—so small, so conscious—wouldn’t make the experience bitter to him later, and he knew then what he would do. When he whispered in a rush of words in the boy’s ear that he wanted the boy to fuck him, the boy seemed surprised, then disturbed, and finally he grinned.

When James spoke with Gail on the phone, they inevitably discussed what had been happening to her, but James tried to remind her about other things—about restaurants she might try, about films that were opening, about books to read, about places she might travel, about other jobs she might consider. He wanted her to remember that there was a wider world.
So they talked about different things, then Gail said, “I think Susan Sunshine”—and they laughed again at the name, which Gail had mocked in the past—“I think Susan Sunshine is behind a lot of the protests.” Sunshine was a reporter with a cult following—she presented herself as the girl next door but was known for aggressive reporting and had grilled the U.S. president so thoroughly several newspaper columnists had wondered if she had disrespected his office. “She wants to control this station—she used to, through the former program director,” said Gail.

James wasn’t sure he believed in human puppetry. Sunshine might have had indirect influence, but indirect control?

A mutual colleague of Gail’s and the woman claimed that Gail was jealous of Sunshine. James thought Sunshine self-consciously good, sweet, smart, but her audience read her eager grin as warmth and her plain hairstyle and clothes as integrity and read Gail’s precise diction as artificiality, her confidence as imperiousness, her girth as transgression, and her knowledge as foreign ideology. Gail’s proper Trinidadian upbringing was working against her in their eyes.
The protests against the television station where Gail worked, surprisingly well financed and well organized, had continued so long that newspapers were no longer even pretending to try to get the other side of the story. They had been bombarded with calls and e-mails and printed material from the protesters for so long, they were saturated with their version and simply reproduced it in their stories. Gail had even been recast in her own life story as someone incompetent and power-driven, somehow both clueless and so thoroughly calculating she had fooled many of her current coworkers and the public.

The harassment of board members by the protesters—calls at home and office, protests outside their children’s schools—had led some board members to resign and others to consider firing Gail but as yet there wasn’t enough board support for removing her from her position.
“I think our work is to report the news—yes, critically, intelligently—but to report it, not to be it or to make it, but Susan wants to make news. She thinks reporters are inevitably part of their stories and should advocate a position,” said Gail.

“Well, you’ve done advocacy journalism too,” said James.

“Sometimes it’s appropriate,” said Gail.

The truth was that power had changed her—or, if not power, the circumstances of power. She had gone from being hopeful though chastened, to trying to articulate a vision staff and viewers could rally around, to being defensive, to being controlling about what was said on the air by her staff about the controversies, to being unable to tolerate dissent. The atmosphere inside the television station had become calm but fearful, professional but without intimacies or the honesty that comes with intimacy. Gail had been treated unfairly; and that became the foundation from which she thought and acted.

Gail said, “You tell me I’m brilliant and strong—we agree about that—but you’re even more pleased by the fact that I’m not afraid to be tough or difficult.”

James laughed. It was true.

“You think many of us are complex, and that when that complexity is revealed it creates difficulty, and that’s why people are afraid to reveal complexity. They don’t want the difficulty or the punishment that might come with it,” she said.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes,” said James.

They both laughed.

It was the middle of the morning, and there were snow flurries. In yesterday’s mail there had been a telephone bill, which remained on James’s mind—how would he pay it? How would he pay to get his clothes cleaned? How would he pay his taxes? James gritted his teeth as he walked, wondering if his shoes would soon be soaked.

James saw a puppy take a bone under a car, where the dog huddled near the front right tire. James stopped to watch, thinking about the smallness of the dog and its obvious hunger. He walked on and a woman, who had seen him watching said, “I don’t know whose dog that is. He’s just eating those chicken bones.” James smiled at her. He thought about the dog’s tenacious gnawing at the bone, about his huddling against the tire, and felt sympathy. This is pathetic—I’m projecting myself onto a puppy, he thought.

A man was milling outside of the small trailer that operated as a food pantry, and James walked in his direction. James had seen the man before, inside, but this was the first time he noticed the man had a scar on his left lower cheek. A knife wound? The man had dark, intense eyes. He looked at James’s face, then at his coat, his scarf about his check, his pressed pants, his shining shoes; he looked skeptical. James saw the look and wanted to say, not everyone in need or trouble looks or sounds broken. But this is what they seemed to want, to see your need abject. James had been handing out his resume to businesses in the area, and so he was clean, shaven, and dressed very presentably but not especially well by his usual standards. He had sat down earlier in a real estate office to discuss the possibility of selling real estate, but had been told it would be about three months before he would be likely to make money he could live on. He would have to be able to afford training, licenses, a desk, and he would not get a salary but would make commissions. That was another dead end.

James asked the scarred man if the pantry was opened and the man said, No.On his way home, James stopped at a supermarket. He had no money on him, but it had become his habit to tour the aisles of food and clothing stores he couldn’t now afford, seeing the things he hoped to be able to afford again one day in the future. These were tours akin to brothel or museum visits, with most of the pleasure taking place in his mind, not on his lips or tongue. James realized he had a headache, remembered he was out of aspirin at home, and was almost surprised when he found himself picking up a a bottle of aspirin and slipping it into his coat pocket. A block away from the store, he smiled, pleased. I’ll have to do that again, he thought. He retrieved the bottle from his pocket, broke the plastic seal, and put the two white bitter tablets on his tongue.

The radiator in James’s bedroom kicked on; it was as if the house were breathing. James thought the heat was less than in previous years, and he knew that was because he was behind in his rent. He thought of this as he heard Gail say, “Two people can have the same strengths, do the same kind of work, but if they belong to different social groups, they’ll get a different reception, different rewards. We are individuals but we’re not appreciated as individuals.”James said, “No, we’re not.”

Gail had told him about finding herself, thirsty, at her office approaching a water fountain as Susan Sunshine neared the same fountain to drink. Gail had gestured, deferring to Susan, who drank first. As Susan was bent drinking, Gail couldn’t resist adding, “You think you’re entitled to public recognition and admiration.”

Susan had straightened, a look of surprise on her face, and said, “People recognize my work. Do you resent that?”

Gail said, “You’re not the only one who does relevant work. Do you feel at all guilty about the unequal attention you get?”

Susan said, “Would you?”

Gail had not answered. She had moved passed Susan, drank water, and then walked away.Gail said, “She’s oblivious—she assumes power is her right.” She paused, and asked, “How are you James?”

“I’m tired,” he said. “I’m very tired. The life I’m living is not the life I planned,” said James. He laughed sadly. “I’m no longer the hero in my own story—I’m more of a case study, a statistic. I guess not everyone’s allowed to be a hero.”

Gail said, “We’re individuals but we’re not appreciated as individuals.” She was quiet a moment. “You’re still a hero to me.”

“And you are to me,” he said.

The corporate board of the company Gail worked for had elected new members, many of them whom were either sympathetic to the protesters or who simply wanted the protest to end and were willing to make a sacrifice for that. Gail could see that when the new board had its first meeting in two weeks, she’d likely be the ritual’s sacrifice. She announced that she was resigning to write a book and consider other professional opportunities. James read a report of the board election and resignation in the morning paper and intuited the rest.

James saw a man alone making karate gestures and mouthing words, clearly crazy. The man crossed the street, and though a bus was coming he stood in the middle of the street, unzipped his pants and took out his prick and began to urinate.

When James entered the soup kitchen in the church basement, a nervous young man was speaking with someone. James assumed this nervousness was because he was new to such spare accommodations, but in the midst of James’ meal—spicy chicken wings, buttery whipped potatoes, string beans with other vegetables—the young man sat down next to him and began talking the social service program he was with and about health benefits James might qualify for. James asked him if he had a card, and after the man handed over a card and pamphlet, James said, “I’ll review these and if I need anything, I’ll call you.” The young man tried to continue talking. James asked, “Have you eaten the lunch? The young man said, No. James said, “Well, you should eat. This is really good, and I’m going to finish my delicious meal, which is why I’m here, and if I need anything I’ll call you.” The young man then tried to shake James’s hand, and James said, “I can’t—my hands aren’t clean: I’m eating.” The man kept his hand out as if it was okay, he didn’t mind James’s hand but James repeated his words. Would the man shake someone’s greasy hand in other circumstances? He must be new to his job, James thought. With his small build, light brown skin, small mobile eyes, cheekbones, short-cropped hair, and quiet manner, there was a resemblance to James, but the man saw in himself no resemblance to James or anyone else here. He’s so uncomfortable he’s dangerous, thought James. You can destroy someone with disappointment and pity, James thought. If I had been weaker. If I had been having a very bad day.

James received a small check for a proofreading job he did, and decided to go to a party. It had been months since he’d gone to a party. He’d had a bleak spring and a terrible summer—he had not known that a summer could be terrible.

James walked into the party and saw people smoking marijuana and doing powdered cocaine. He had rarely smoked the first and had never tried the second but he knew that tonight he would do both; and he did.

The noise in the party was no longer aggravating; it seemed far away. James no longer felt as if he would cry if someone asked him where he worked. James imagined the hands of a nearby clock spinning quickly, an acceleration of time. He noticed a man watching him and thought the man looked hostile and wondered if the man, whom he did not know, wanted to kill him. James suddenly imagined himself in a closed coffin, face up, the lid a few inches from his eyes, the coffin filled with cobwebs and dirt. Could he be feeling afraid and sleepy and sexually aroused at once?
Every day for a week, James thought of calling the party’s host to ask about getting more of the drug. He went to bed late one night having decided that he would do that the very next day.
James woke up the next day and turned on the television to find the towers where he and Gail used to work on fire. Two planes had flown into them. James smiled: there was justice on earth.James lay across his bed, reading Simone DeBeauvoir’s interview in a Paris Review anthology: “When one has an existentialist view of the world, like mine, the paradox of human life is precisely that one tries to be and, in the long run, merely exists. It’s because of this discrepancy that when you’ve laid your stake on being—and, in a way you always do when you make plans, even if you actually know that you can’t succeed in being—when you turn around and look back on your life, you see that you’ve simply existed. In other words, life isn’t behind you like a solid thing, like the life of a god (as it is conceived, that is, as something impossible). Your life is simply a human life.” He suddenly felt pressure in his stomach, and went to the bathroom; and moments later, after realizing he was almost out of toilet paper, he gazed down, seeing the thick snake-like turd in the white bowl, and bent to flush the toilet.

James stood in the food pantry line. After James was given a small bag of canned vegetables, a box of raisins, and some apples, he thought, So much humiliation for so little in return.

This world is too small for me, thought James.


(April 2002)(c) DG