Song and dance men

Late in Michael Chabon's essay collection Manhood for Amateurs--I referenced the book in a previous post--he recalls a terrible trip he took in 2005 to Little Rock. In the middle of the trip he went online and started reading his wife's blog, only to find her writing exhaustively about her condition--bipolar II--and explaining that 25% of people diagnosed with bipolar II eventually kill themselves. Imagine, if you will, being a couple thousand miles away from home, feeling lonely enough anyway, and then discovering--through her blog no less--that your wife is calmly discussing suicide. Naturally, Chabon was shocked and immediately called her. He managed to reach her and their subsequent conversation reassured him, but not entirely. As it turned out, things were even worse than he feared. He found out when he got home that only through the intervention of a friend, who had also read the blog, was she kept from swallowing a whole bottle of pills.

This story is interesting enough as he tells it, but it's especially interesting to me because I had a kind of ringside seat on the whole episode. Well, maybe not ringside. I guess you could say I was in the auditorium. Sitting in the back row. You see, the reason Chabon was in Little Rock was to carry out a two-day residency at my university, the University of Central Arkansas. (We're just down the road a bit, in Conway.) Looking back, knowing what I now do, what astounds me is this: The man was able to go through with it at all. He put up with the banal, meet and greet, smiling busyness of a reception in his honor hosted by the Dean of the College of Fine Arts; he chatted politely with all comers as protocol required; he agreed to be photographed half a dozen times with people whose names he could not possibly have remembered or cared about; he spoke warmly and asked questions: about our school and our state. Later the same night, before a literally overflowing crowd, he gave an animated reading of an essay he'd written: the story behind his composition of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh twenty years earlier. He stayed long afterwards to answer questions and sign books. Then the next day he came to campus again to meet with a small group of our Writing Department students, answering even more questions and rendering advice, without attitude, without impatience. I drove him from Little Rock to Conway on both days. I do recall some cell phone calls to his wife: touching base with her, asking how she was, reminding her where he was, explaining where we were going. He seemed concerned but not at his wit's end. And when the calls were done we talked about books, kids, churches, universities, reading fees, the novel he was writing, other trips he would be making. Before the small group meeting with our students began he did seem tense and a little ragged. Just tired of meeting so many people all at once, I thought. He was happy at my suggestion that we grab a cup of coffee instead of loitering in the classroom, waiting for the students to stream in. But this was nothing really. Really, I had no idea what was happening. None.

I can only remember the whole incident now with awe and respect. Thing is, Chabon went through with it. He was here to do a job for us, and he did it. Very well, in fact. He not only read his essay, he performed it. He proclaimed it. And if you don't know the difference between an impassioned proclamation and an everyday recitation you haven't been to many literary readings (which are dominated by the latter). Chabon kept his focus, kept his cool, kept up his energy when he had to. He earned his money. He was amazing, actually. The whole episode makes me recall the line Bob Dylan gave out at a press conference in the hurly burly of the mid-60s: "I think of myself as a song and dance man." At the time, the line was greeted with derisive chuckles, as just another example of contrarian Dylan sticking his finger in the eye of anyone who tried to impose on him and his music fixed expectations, especially committed folkies who practically rioted at the thought of him playing that "fake" electric music. Well, of course, that was all part of it too. But I think fundamentally Dylan was serious. He did--and does--see himself as a song and dance man. Or, stated differently, as a performer, as someone who takes seriously the job of bringing a song alive as best he can for the audience in front of him. Whether or not the song says something trivial or profound isn't even the issue. What "it means" doesn't matter. The issue is that song as a performance and doing your damnedest to pull the performance off. That is a seriously difficult challenge to rise to, time after time, year after year, decade after decade. It's difficult, and it's a calling.

Now I'm no Michael Chabon--that goes without saying--and I'm certainly not Bob Dylan, but as a teacher and a writer I think I can appreciate the determination and the expertise of the song and dance man. Or of anyone who has to Put On a Show. I have to Put On a Show whenever I read one of my stories at a festival or a writing conference. I have to Put On a Show whenever the student newspaper needs to interview me about the latest visiting writer or happening on campus. I Put On a Show everyday for my classes, four each semester. No matter what fatigue, disappointments, distractions, nuisances, or crises are bothering you at that moment--no matter how much you'd rather be anywhere than in front of a group of students--you have to do it and do it well. That means blocking out Everything Else and being fully present, fully energized, for your audience. You can always rest later. You can go home later. You get to be quiet later. Later, you can lick your wounds and return to being the wholly ordinary person you really are. For now, because you're a song and dance man, you tie up your shoes, you tune your instrument, you face your audience--and you deliver.

Thanks, Michael.

Our best novelist

Over Christmas, my wife gave me Richard Russo's latest, That Old Cape Magic, along with several other titles. I'm always grateful for any gift, but I must admit that I asked myself "When am I going to have time to read all these?" Turns out I'm almost through the stack now--with Russo's book being the very first one I opened. I can never regret an opportunity to read more of Richard Russo. That Old Cape Magic is as engaging, honestly felt, and soundly crafted a book as Russo's ever written. Thinking about it afterwards, and specifically those qualities, made me come to a couple of convincing realizations: 1) The man never--I mean never--writes a bad book. He's the most consistent craftsman of fiction that I know of. 2) He's a master of plotting, endlessly resourceful at putting his characters in high water and then making matters even worse for them, even as his novels also demonstrate a fierce emotional depth and intellectual honesty. 3) His prose is note perfect, so clean as to be unnoticeable and yet at the same time sparkling, vigorous. By no means he is a maximalist like Rick Moody or Michael Chabon, but neither does he go to the far opposite end of the pole either. There's not a dull sentence in his work; and neither is there a tortured one. Every sentence does the work, and only the work, that it's supposed to.

When I finished Cape Magic I found myself brimming, aglow from the book and with less than fully articulated versions of the above thoughts. And then the truth of it hit me. He's the best novelist in America. I'm never not satisfied, never not completely engaged, never not enthralled, by the worlds of his books. I always put down a Richard Russo novel feeling not only nourished but educated, not only moved but entertained--way down in the center of my bones. I come out of his books feeling a tiny bit wiser. Not just about his characters but everybody. I simply can't think of a better, more consistently rewarding living novelist. At least in this country. Russo, of course, is hardly an unknown quantity. His name is widely familiar, his fans legion, his place in contemporary letters secure. But do we ever declare him to be our flat out Best Novelist? I didn't think so. Well, it's time that we should.

Holding My Breath

If you check into this blog on a regular or semi-regular basis you've probably noticed that in recent weeks I haven't had a lot to say about specific questions/issues/decisions I'm fighting through in regards to composing Yellow, my Van Gogh novel. Not a lot to say about how I'm "creating Van Gogh" at the moment. Well, there's a reason. I'm living through an exciting but difficult--and entirely necessary--period in which I must do one thing: Wait. To be specific, three readers I respect and trust are looking over the manuscript of the novel, which after years of composing and months of cutting, editing, and shaping had reached a point where I needed to release it to others and get some honest feedback. I liked everything that was there and everything that was there seemed to be there for a good reason, but then again as the author I was way too close to it. It was possible--even likely--that I couldn't see something that would be obvious to another reader. So in December I lined up three literary friends and gave each a copy of the book on a flash drive. And the wait began.

Yes, it's nervewrecking, especially as I am eager to begin final revisions on the book, to get it into firm enough shape that I can begin to contact agents. There are a few agents, in fact, that I already know I will send the manuscript to. Knowing that, it's really hard to sit on my hands. I worry that the clock is ticking on my book. Will it be relevant this time next year? Saleable? Exciting? My head flushes with worries and impatience and gripes; but then I tell myself to calm down. I remind myself of Heather Sellers's sermon in her Chapter after Chapter against rushing books to agents before they are ready. I don't want to throw away four years of work on an ill-timed last move, do I? No. So what do I do while I wait? Well, I've sent several different excerpts from the novel to literary magazines, hoping to earn it some advance publishing cred. I've written two longish short stories and the first draft of something that appears to be a novella. In other words, my writing continues; more than that, it moves on. None of the three pieces are historical or involve painting at all. No one cuts off any ears. No one's mad (not exactly). All three are completely contemporary. That's a relief, I admit. But its hard, and I don't want, to just forget about old Vincent. I can't. Not yet! I know it's likely that there is important writing business to tend to before I can call Yellow truly finished. In fact, I'm eager to get to it. But for now I've something else to do. Wait.

A centering place

When you move up the walkway that leads to the visitor's wing at St. Paul's hospital, just outside St.-Rémy in Provence, the first structure you see is not the buiding that houses the recreated "Vincent's Room," the recreated bathing room, the gift shop, and the viewing room where a short film about Van Gogh's twelve month stay at St. Paul's is repeated interminably. What you see directly ahead of you is the wooden front door of a church. The hospital, after all, started as a Franciscan monastery. The monks, actually, were the first to take care of psychiatrically ill patients. And in Van Gogh's time an order of nuns helped out at the hospital. The church is small and quite dark, given that the only light is what sunlight manages to work through the small door and down the center aisle. It can get so dark that in order to really see the statues you have to illuminate them with the flash on your camera. In the wall behind and just bove the altar, three long stained glass windows are established featuring Saints Peter and Paul and Mother Mary. Like the hospital itself, the church is an enormously quiet location, one that lends itself to a certain urgent, reverent concentration. Even in the height of tourist season, not that many people wander in. Most push on to the other building to see Vincent's room; and the few who do enter speak in hushed tones if they speak at all.

Soon after first entering this church in 2005 I knew it needed a place in my novel. True confessions: I find no reference to it in the letters of Van Gogh, who had long since given up on organized religion by the time he admitted himself to St. Paul's. But when I saw the statue of Christ affixed to a wall at the front of the church (see photo) I had an idea for a scene. Namely, Vincent confronts this Jesus to whom he gave over his life, in all possible ways, for several years running, adhering so literally to the gospel of giving away all that you have--adhering to it even more literally than Jesus did--that he lost the confidence of the church administrators who had sent him to work in the Belgian mine country. Even after this period of religious frenzy passed, Van Gogh didn't abandon his respect for Jesus. But how, I thought, as I stood there in the dark, this statue before me, could he not--at least in some profoundly painful moments--feel eminently pissed off at the man; how could he not feel used by him? After all, Van Gogh sacrificed whole years of life, years he could have been working at art. Even then, I suspect, Van Gogh knew what was his true calling, and in part I think his persistence in wanting to serve Jesus as a lay preacher or a small town pastor or a missionary to miners (his notions evolved with changing circumstances and failures) was a way of denying the real vocation gnawing at him, because he knew the fierce commitment that the life of an artist would demand; he knew just how much it would take out of him before he could ever reach the level of expertise he would expect of himself. (And he was right.) That's my read on the situation. And if I'm right, how could he not be angry? Especially given how it all turned out; especially given where life had landed him? He would naturally be furious. Not just for those wasted years, not just for his eventual failure as "a man of the cloth," but that the very individuals who most frustrated him--confirmed holier-than-thou traditionalists who saw only one way to view other people and their actions, i.e., good or bad--the very people who scorned him, doubted him, gossiped about him, and dismissed him--were regarded in the eyes of the world as Good Christians whereas he, who had tried in the strictest sense to follow in the path of Jesus, was regarded as a lunatic. Why and how did Christ allow this to happen? What was the point? What was the benefit?

His pent up anger, resentment, and questioning surely would have come out if he ever found himself inside a house of worship, the kind of place he'd deliberately avoided for years. Getting him there was the tricky part. For what reason would he have come and with whom? The nuns who helped at St. Paul's likely had little interaction with the male patients, but I developed a reason why one nun asks permission to escort Van Gogh to the chapel, leaving him at the front (by that statue of Jesus) so that he can engage in private prayer while she waits for him in a rear pew. It's one of my favorite scenes in the entire novel, as I bounce back and forth between the separate perspectives of these two people, with Van Gogh's anger making connections to several different "eras" in his life and the novel: those already shown and some to be shown later. Not anything I intended when I first drafted the scene, but what seemed to magically occur on its own. And nothing I would have thought of if I hadn't stepped through the door in 2005.

Perfect Chabon

Because I'd written last week about Van Gogh's stay in St. Paul's hospital in Saint-Remy, I intended to describe some aspects of the place as it stands today, especially a chapel that sits next to the visitor's wing of the hospital. (The hospital is very much a functioning treatment center today, with the visitor's wing intended for anyone curious about Van Gogh and what therapies would have been used in his day.) The chapel is a beautiful, dark, still, and vaguely musty place. It goes unmentioned in Van Gogh's letters, yet my visit there inspired a scene in my novel. But more on that on my next post. Because today, while reading Michael Chabon's new collection of essays Manhood for Amateurs, I came across a passage that just made me hoot--and salute. So much so that I need to share it with you. And there's actually a connection to what I will write about in regards to the chapel at St. Paul's. I am not Jewish, as Chabon is, but as someone who has tried to assist in a rather liberal Episcopal Sunday school class and in so doing have struggled to explain the ethical sense of certain Old Testament stories, I could only sympathize with the following: "One thing I know for certain, and have known since the age of five or six, is that I really can't stand the God of Abraham. In fact, I consider him to constitute the pattern to which every true asshole I have ever known in my life has pretty well conformed. In His infinite capacity to engineer and experience disappointment, in His arbitary and capricious cruelty, and in the evident pleasure He derives from the exercise thereof, there is probably a sharp insight into the nature of fathers generally, since at one time or another, if not on a daily basis, each of us fathers is the biggest asshole in the world."

I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. Btw, Manhood for Amateurs is such a brilliant and brilliantly honest book, I'm tempted to say that Chabon, who writes superb fiction, has found the genre he's really meant to work in. Back to Van Gogh next time.

Another impressionist novel

For Christmas, my wife gave me Harriot Scott Chessman's 2001 novel Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper. I hadn't read the novel before--I mentioned in an earlier post how long it takes me to get around to certain books--but now I'm glad that I have. In tone, scope, and character it's quite different from what I'm trying to accomplish in my Van Gogh novel. Chessman's novel spans less than three years of Mary Cassatt's life while mine survey almost all of Van Gogh's; her cast is decidedly female (these are the power brokers of Cassatt's world) while in my novel Van Gogh, as he did in life, exclusively surrounds himself with male friends and fellow painters. These two differences makes the atmospherics of our books strikingly different. Yet it's instructive and entertaining to see how a different fiction writer handles a different painter who worked during the same time period, and in the same country, as Van Gogh did. (Mary Cassatt, however, lived far longer than Van Gogh; all the way till 1926.)

Chessman's book is a supremely delicate one, focusing on the interior world of Cassatt's sister Lydia, whose life was drastically shortened by Bright's disease. The novel tells the the story of the composition of five paintings, paintings for which Lydia Cassatt modeled. In each successive painting we see her health deteriorate, even as she must also contend with feelings of regret for a life of marriage and children that could never be realized, her worries that her sister is becoming all too French in outlook, and simple jealousy over her sister's growing closeness with Edgar Degas, whom Lydia first suspects but then becomes infatuated with. This latter development creates a provocative triangle of mutual need, respect, and desire, the background against which Lydia struggles to put aside the inevitabily of her death and focuses on making life purposeful for months or years she has left. It's a deeply felt novel if at the same time decidedly airy, maybe too airy for some readers. As you can tell from this summary, the book is much more about Lydia--her frustrations, resentments, appetites, relationships, and priorities--than about Mary, although Mary (called May by her family) figures quite importantly.

A few stylistic nuances in the novel I questioned, such as the numerous times that French phrases are inserted into the conversations between Lydia and Mary. These are two native English speakers, after all. If the point is to remind us that the family lives in France, the point is reiterated more often than necessary. The motif of Lydia's dreams is bit overdone for my tastes. I was more interested in the real life details of Lydia's struggle against her disease and her disappointments. But these are minor reservations about a book I otherwise recommend. It's fascinating to see 19th century France--not just Paris but also the countryside--as it is imagined and interpreted by another novelist. Chessman's use of details seems impeccable and if nothing else, her lovely little book has rekindled the desire--no, the necessity--in me to return to "every man's second country," as Thomas Jefferson called it. Asap. And I just got back from there six months ago!

Et tu, Adam?

Last time I began responding to Adam Gopnik's well-written and provocative, but I think problematic, essay in the New Yorker titled "Van Gogh's Ear." A number of

speculations--regarding the reasons why Vincent moved to Arles, regarding the "Christmas Crisis" between he and Gauguin, regarding how the esteemed place Van Gogh occupies in art history was essentially determined by this crisis--are presented as facts. I responded to some of these in my last post. But none of the above represents the most serious weakness in Gopnik's essay. The worst fallacy in the essay is Gopnik's acceptance, indeed his propagation, of the notion that Van Gogh turned "mad" during the Christmas crisis and remained so the rest of his life. In point of fact, Van Gogh's "madness" was never that. Like the manic-depressives and epileptics of today, he suffered from a physical ailment that had psychological consequences. His "attacks" came on only semi-regularly, every few months or so; in between them he was more than lucid. In between attacks he was not, and did not act, crazy in any recognizable way. The letters he wrote at Saint-Remy testify to the essential soundness of his mind. While generally more despondent than his earlier letters, they are in no way irrational, manic, or delusional. In fact, because of his steadiness, relative to other patients, he was granted significant and unusual privileges--such as the right to paint at all, and a separate room to use as a studio, and the freedom to walk the outside grounds in search of subjects, even to travel unaccompanied to Arles! If one did not know of his earlier attacks one would have wondered what in the world this man was doing at a mental hospital. (Btw, Gopnik misrepresents St. Paul's when he calls it "an insane asylum," which suggests raving lunatics locked up for life. While the hospital was often proved ineffectual in doing so, the point of anyone being admitted to St. Paul's was to be treated, cured, and released. Its raison d'etre, if you will, was therapeutic not punitive or merely restrictive.) Theo Van Gogh's wife Joanna was surprised to see how healthy Vincent looked when he visited in May, 1890, after withdrawing himself from St. Paul's. Vincent, she thought, looked healthier and stronger than Theo did! (Click here to read a memoir of Joanna by her son.)

But here's the thing that really chews me up about the Mad Artist myth. Van Gogh never saw his illness as anything but debilitating, because that's what it was. During an attack he was completely taken outside of himself. He had no control. He had to be restrained. It was not as if he was enjoying a beautiful, ecstatic experience that he then transferred to canvas. In fact, when the attacks finally passed he couldn't remember what he did or felt or thought or witnessed during them. And the attacks left him completely enervated, useless to do anything. For weeks on end he could do nothing but rest and recover; certainly, he could not paint. And when he finally found himself feeling reasonable normal again and able to start working anew, he did not set down on canvas any brilliant insights or perspectives from his "madness," he merely went back to work painting the world around him, as he had his whole life. The few truly immortal pictures he did create in Saint-Remy were managed in spite of not because.

Van Gogh was so soul-sickened by this illness that he began to resent ever having gone to the south in the first place, because he suspected that there might be something in the southern air that led certain individuals astray. (In an era when the treatment of mental patients was a pitifully no-nothing enterprise, baseless theories like this one circulated frequently.) As productive as his years in Provence were, he almost wished they had never happened. Not the kind of talk you'd expect if his illness had finally allowed him to be the great painter he always wanted to be. No. Because he'd already become that: in Arles, in the spring, summer, and fall of 1888. (See my previous post.) After the Christmas crisis, Van Gogh was only so much treading water: hoping just to get better, hoping to simply be able to work, less concerned about making masterpieces than returning to the same level of life energy he'd enjoyed before the onset of his attacks. Sadly, this last hope was never to be realized.