The first half of First as Tragedy, Then as Farce presents a flyover of post-9/11 politics & culture in the West — it is what I think would have been called a work of political economy before that term went out of fashion with the rise of economics as a science. Zizek is a fluent, even sprightly, writer who can explain difficult concepts clearly and whose point of view can thus come to feel completely natural to the reader, who, if I am at all typical, adopts the author’s assumptions as if they were his own. This is a very effective rhetoric, if that’s what it is — style as rhetoric — but the reader must be on guard so as to not be swept away on a current of enthusiasm, which, admittedly, can be a pleasant experience, especially with a maestro as charismatic as Zizek.

Two big concepts emerge from Zizek’s essay, which is conveniently divided into two parts: 1. An analysis of the ways in which neo-liberalism & late capitalism effectively subvert & incorporate insurgent political movements. Zizek is particularly interested in the way that movements on the political left suffer this fate, but it would be interesting to see how he’d think about the so-called Tea Party movements on the American right, which will almost certainly be absorbed by the neo-liberal Republican Party. The genius of neo-liberalism is its ability to absorb insurgencies & naturalize them, making them safe for domestic consumption, as it were. 2. A thesis about Human Nature in which the capital letters are appropriate. Zizek sets himself up as a champion of “communism” as a mode of life that depends on the assumption that there is a core set of human values that unites all people across any supposed cultural divides. In this, he directly opposes the position of Theory in all its manifestations over the last thirty years, which has held that human nature is a variable construct. In my view, Zizek’s second thesis consists of a great deal of wishful thinking, but perhaps that is because I have been ensnared by theory. In any case, I have a student who, along with a bunch of Dickens and Tolstoy, has just read The Fountainhead this summer: I have recommended Zizek’s book as an antidote.

Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others came along at just the right moment for me. I have been reading William Vollmann’s big book Imperial, about the California county where my mother was born & where I spent a lot of time growing up & looking, too, at the separate volume Vollmann published, under the same title, of his photographs of people and places in Imperial County. Sontag’s book is an attempt to understand the usefulness of images — photographic images in particular. In this late essay, Sontag revises and even reverses her earlier (more aesthetic?) view of photography as a technology of distancing & comes to an understanding of the photograph – particularly the war photograph — as a necessary, if never sufficient, moral document. The second half of this book strikes me as the epitome of what an intellectual discourse looks like: full of passion & doubt.

Later: In his second Subdelineation, which comes near the end of Part I, Vollmann presents a long meditation on the difference between fiction and non-fiction & the ability of each to tell the truth. Non-fiction comes out ahead, but not because it is capable in any direct way of presenting the truth, or even, perhaps, a truth. In turning over these ideas, Vollmann actually writes a bit of the novel he might have written had he chosen fiction, then he writes a bit of the novel another character — an INS agent — might have written about the same incident. All this against the background of a sentimental novel from the beginning of the 20th century, set in Imperial, with a heroine named Barbara Worth. For all his hardcore reportorial mojo, Vollmann is throughly pomo.

Silver’s novel demonstrates what can be accomplished with the basic materials of realist narrative and style. The story is recounted by Ares, now an adult but recalling events that occurred when he was twelve. The plot is rigorously chronological and the prose limpid and without a hint of authorial narcissism. Ares and his younger half-brother Malcolm, who is severely autistic, live with their single mother in a trailer in Bombay Beach, on the Salton Sea. Laurel, the boys’ mother, has fled the pieties and restraints of a Midwestern childhood and come to rest in the desolation of Imperial County. The novel’s plot is too delicate a machine to summarize, but from the opening pages it is apparent that some terrible event will divide the characters’ lives into a stark before and an after. If the heroes of the Greek theater were doomed by the capricious but implacable decrees of the Gods, the ordinary people in this story are propelled toward their fates by the implacability of mere chance. But Ares, the god of war, discovers comes to rest in the strength bestowed by integrity — his mother’s, his brother’s, and his own.

Pornography is ubiquitous and prostitution is legal or semi-legal in Atwood’s ugly future; the presence of porn and prostitution allows Atwood to develop themes surrounding the roles of women in culture and society, but her feminism is subtle and sophisticated, especially in The Year of the Flood. For Atwood, a feminist perspective is not an add-on, but a fundamental assumption about the world. It’s in her artistic DNA and is particularly striking in the way she develops the female characters in this second novel. The Year of the Flood is not a sequel in the sense that it’s action follows that of Oryx & Crake; the action of the two stories take place during the same time frame, though in proximate locales separated by the infrastructureal and technological occasioned by a world-wide plague. Several of the characters believe — at least for part of the narrative — that they are the only survivors on the planet.

Atwood is a realist in the tradition of 19th novelists like George Elliot and Thomas Hardy; modernist stylistic innovations have affected her work very little. Atwood’s novels tend to focus on characters and situations and social / political contexts, which is quite enough to fully engage her imagination — and ours. [Useful hints and gists regarding realism from this Washington St. Univ. American Lit. website.] Atwood’s realism can have a satirical edge — she is tough on scientists despite coming from a family of scientists — but her main interest is in the way characters react to circumstances both personal and political. In both of these novels, all the central characters must come to terms with the end of Western, scientific, capitalist civilization as currently constituted; the various ways in which the characters react to the cataclysm in which they are caught up is the main subject of both books. These are novels about human agency.

Human agency, of course, cuts both ways. It does not imply human morality, a point that Oryx & Crake makes very powerfully. The Year of the Flood is concerned with how we poor humans might learn to join our human agency to morality, which is also human and therefore frail. To this end, Atwood invents a Luddite / Green religion that names itself The Gardeners. The Gardeners accept science, including evolution, but they believe that God doesn’t want people messing around with the genomes of his creations, so they have withdrawn from the mainstream of society, living in abandoned buildings in the pleeblands, where they grow rooftop gardens and create caches of food called Ararats in preparation for what their founder Adam One calls “the waterless flood.” (The leaders of the group all take then name Adam or Eve, affixing a number that represents the order seniority.) They conceive of themselves as preparing for a new Eden when the old society is swept away, which in fact it is, the waterless flood being a bioengineered plague developed by a renegade scientist working under the umbrella of one of the corporations. The Gardeners are vegetarians and don’t believe in writing things down. Their children use slates in school, which can be wiped clean. The Gardeners’ scriptures consist of orally transmitted stories and hymns and they have many saints: St. Farley Mowat, St. Dian Fossey, St. Peter Matthiessen, St. David Suzuki, and so on.

The action of both novels spans the period before and after the release of the plague. In the pre-plague chapters of both stories, Atwood focuses on the causes — cultural, technological, and economic — that lead inevitably toward catastrophe. Both novels move around in time, shifting back and forth between the pre-plague and post-plague worlds and, interestingly, it is only after the plague that her protagonists come into their own. This is particularly true of Toby in the second novel. Because Oryx & Crake is organized around the character of Jimmy / Snowman (his before and after the plague names), it moves easily back and forth in time and holds together structurally. The Year of the Flood presents more problems in this regard. In the second novel, Atwood introduces a number of characters and presents them at different points along the same arc of time that is covered by Oryx & Crake. Initially, this is somewhat confusing and until Toby and Ren are brought together in a Gardeners community, the story seems diffuse. For a reader of the first novel, it’s clear that Atwood is constructing a machine that will bring these characters together with Snowman by tale’s end. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Toby’s chapters are narrated in the third person and Ren’s in the first person.  I found all this authorial maneuvering somewhat offputting, but about a third of the way through the novel, the pieces fall together and the parts work more effectively together.

Why, though, have Ren narrate her own story while the rest of the book is written in the neutral voice of a mostly objective narrator? There are enough loose ends left untied at the end of The Year of the Flood to make me suspect there will be a third novel in the series, perhaps in Ren’s voice. That story will almost certainly move forward in time as the survivors begin to create a new life for themselves. And Ren and Jimmy will almost certainly wind up together. After all, they are both incurable romantics — and they dated in high school. It will be interesting, if I am right, to see how Atwood constructs her new society — how she balances the good and evil powers of human agency.

Of the various traditions, though, I have focused mostly on Zen. Of the various Buddhisms, Zen interests itself (more than the others) in literary & artistic matters. (In contrast, the early sutras of the Pali Canon have an outdoors, sunlit, brightly colored quality — a healthy-mindedness — that is also very attractive & that contrasts with Zen’s black & white brush strokes.)

Two main schools of Zen survive today from among the many that have flourished over the centuries since Bodhidharma traveled from the west bringing Buddhism to China in the 6th century. Both schools of Zen, the Soto & the Rinzai, make use of teaching stories called koans, but it is the dominant method in Rinzai, while it is treated more tangentially in the Soto school, which emphasizes “silent illumination.” (At least that is my understanding; experts should feel free to correct me.) In traditional Zen practice, koans are presented almost as law cases, with a brief statement, then the main narrative, then a commentary by one or more teachers, followed sometimes by a capping verse added by still another hand. Sometimes the cases are used by teachers to test students’ understanding; sometimes a student will use a particular case in meditation until it becomes clear — sometimes a matter of months or years! That’s the formal koan tradition & to be honest I don’t know all that much about it, but there is also what might be called an informal tradition of teaching stories that employs some of the same narratives and texts. Stories, I know something about.

That’s a long didactic run-up to mentioning two lovely little books from the Zen storytelling tradition, once ancient & one modern. The Sayings of Layman P’ang (translated by James Green) is a compilation of short conversations between the eponymous layman and various monks & masters. The Layman, who lived between 740 & 808 CE, gives new meaning to the word laconic:

At another time, the Layman asked Ma-tsu, “If you met someone who was a distinctly authentic person, how would you recognize him?” Ma-tsu directed his gaze downward. The Layman said, “Only you are able to play a tune on a stringless harp.” Ma-tsu looked up and the Layman bowed. Ma-tsu then returned to his room. The Layman followed him, saying, “Just now, I tried to trick you, but you made a fool out of me instead.”

The Buddhist tradition has other enlightened lay followers, most notably Vimalakirti, who loved during the Buddha’s time; the Vimalakirti Sutra is loquacious where P’ang’s sayings are hermetic. I prefer the Layman to the elaborations of Vimalakirti, but then I’ve always tended to respect silence — perhaps an odd trait for a poet & a fairly talkative one at that.

There is a blurb on the back of The Sayings of Layman P’ang from John Tarrant, an Australian Zen teacher & the author of Bring Me the Rhinoceros, a modern treatment of several traditional koans, along with some koan-like stories drawn from other traditions. Tarrant has a transparent and lucid prose style that does not get in the way of the stories he’s retelling and that serves the originals well without trying to displace or “improve” them. My favorite story in Tarrant’s book is based on a traditional koan, the title translated by Tarrant as “A Condolence Call,” is also known as “Daowu Won’t Say.” (Here is the formal version of the koan in John Daido Loori’s translation.) Tarrant takes this bare-bones bit of Zen scholasticism about Daowu & Jinyuan and turns it into a deeply human story about a student’s desire to understand & a teacher’s willingness to go to any length to help him. Tarrant adds some characterization & description in the manner of a modern storyteller and expands the narrative a bit; these modest changes, though, add up to something that does justice to the original story but is at the same time completely its own. Tarrant’s version is somehow more good-natured & humorous without in the least descending to parody. As both a teacher & a student, I find Tarrant’s version of this story deeply moving, profound without being freighted with “meaning.” That is, it is in the best Zen tradition, as I understand Zen.

[More koans.]

When the teen-aged Kayson refuses to consider going to college despite her obvious intelligence and verbal gifts, I found myself reacting with incomprehension until I realized that this was the most radical form of rebellion a young person of her class could engage in, whereas, where I came from, going to college was very often considered a kind of betrayal of one’s family. Remember Huck’s father berating him for going to school? Something like that. Going to college, I aspired to transcend my class; Kaysen does the same thing by “attending” McLean Hospital.

Kaysen’s personal recollections are for the most part objective, with a minimum of interpretation, so that when she does reach for the larger meaning of her madness her observations are grounded in direct experience; furthermore, she rejects easy conceptualization at every turn, refusing to create meaning where she does not see it. This gives the book an unsettling quality that emerges from this rhetoric of negation and refusal. The effect on the reader is a sense of the author’s integrity. Girl, Interrupted presents a fragment of the 1960s. From her genteel madhouse, the young Kaysen looks out on the assassinations, riots, the hippies & the Yippies, the Vietnam War & Watergate. These details are sketched sparingly, like the distant city in a Renaissance landscape, but they serve to establish both the cultural and personal context for the story.

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*She might also have mentioned Alice James, sister of Henry & William — and perhaps William himself, the records are missing and there is only circumstantial evidence.

I’m teaching the first half of the American Lit survey, which in twenty years at Clarkson I’ve never done before, and while I can’t work up much enthusiasm for the likes of John Winthrop and Jonathan Edwards, we’re quickly moving on to Emerson next week and I’m rereading some of the central essays with real pleasure and greater understanding than previously.(I’ve found Emerson something of a pious pill in the past, I confess.) Emerson sometimes seems tantalizingly like an American Buddhist, but then he starts talking about superior and inferior intellects in a way that seems contrary to the spirit of enlightenment,i.e., that while there may be quick and slow people that all are capable of enlightenment; the slow require “indirect” teaching (rituals and chanting, etc.) while the quick can grasp the truth sometimes from a single sentence or the way light glances off a bowl. Emerson, on the other hand, seems to condemn “the mob” to live their unenlightened lives as best they can — and women as well, though he never comes right out and says this, perhaps because he had lively daughters. Still, it’s hard to escape the feeling that the audience for “Self-Reliance” consists of young men of a certain class.* In getting ready to teach thias essay, I find myself wavering between asking students to defend themselves against Emerson’s charges of conformity and questioning Emerson’s assumptions about the “nature” of the individual. Of course, I’ll do both.

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There is an provocative complication to this observation in “Self-Reliance.” When Emerson compares the “Vermont or New Hampshire” country boy to the effete city boy he seems to be making room for a broader distribution of “genius,” but this strikes me as more of a rhetorical flourish than a heartfelt sentiment; that is, Emerson seems to be using the figure of the farmboy to beat up the city boy a little bit.

At a grass hut
I eat smartweed –
I’m that kind of firefly

the Western reader really needs the note provided by the editors of The Classic Tradition of Haiku: “Tade is smartweed, knotweed, or knotgrass. Thorny and stinging, it is spurned by insects, except for summer fireflies. Kikaku, who was a rich doctor’s spoiled son, debauched with heavy drinking and whoremongering, here likens himself to the brilliant firefly that stays up all night enjoying the bitterness and dangers of overindulgence and promiscuity. The poem refers to the proverb “some prefer nettles. . . ”

Another poem by Kikaku, though, comes across the spatial, temporal, and cultural distance without any additional information:

“It’s my snow”
I think
And the weight on my hat lightens

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about haiku lately because I’ve been writing short poems. My old teacher Donald Justice once told me he thought I was best with longer forms, but when I’m busy or preoccupied as I have been lately I resort to short poems. And what I’m looking for in a short poem is the condensed essence of the lyric or the joke — a setup and a pay off. A lot of Western haiku read like translations in need of notes, not because there is a cultural obscurity but because the poet hasn’t understood the need for the snap at the end of the whip. Sometimes this fault is excused, I think, as subtlety, but I don’t buy it. a successful haiku (or haiku-like poem) performs a delicate balancing act between closure and openness, between wit and mystery.