Both Hitchens and Flannery have been castigated lately. Americans have a hard time forgiving authors their sins these days. The reason might be that our roots go back to Cotton Mather and the Puritan communities that shamed, banished, or destroyed sinners. All exceptions granted. There were thoughtful and educated Puritans. But even now, many Americans, right and left, love to gather around a sinner and jeer and scream like devils. It's in our blood.
Giovanni's Room
David has lived on the edges of a homosexual milieu in Paris, while conducting an upright heterosexual life. From a car he glimpses many butcher shops, and regards the daily lifestyle of unrestrained sexuality as a brutal reality that he ought to avoid.
But of course he follows Giovanni to his room, and he is never the same. He's repelled--repelled by himself--and he falls in love, and he despises his new lover.
“But it was not the room’s disorder which was frightening; it was the fact that when one began searching for the key to this disorder, one realized that it was not to be found in any of the usual places. For this was not a matter of habit or circumstance or temperament; it was a matter of punishment and grief.”
"People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget."
I feel intimidated when I read such a line of psychological learnedness. Then I remember to slow down to a speed of deep learning, allowing the words to become part of my own education.
“I did not say anything. I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stock yards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.”
Frederick Henry refuses all the abstractions of war. He is cold and clear-thinking in his position as lieutenant ambulance driver for the Italian army. But he is in love with Catherine Barkley.
But Catherine has real depth. She has experienced loss in the war before meeting Fredrick. She's strong, but also a bit broken and spooked. She imagines herself dead in the rain now and then. She's not crazy, but she feels the pull and dread of her psychology during war, especially.
“I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started. But with Catherine there was almost no difference in the night except that it was an even better time. If people bring so much courage to the world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”
And since Catherine is brave--and psychologically wounded by the world--she becomes an authentic Hemingway hero, a designation of high respect.
Amy Hempel in the 90s
Reasons to Live is Hempel's best book, oblique, difficult in a way, and each of her stories is absolutely about something that matters. And "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried" remains her most popular and anthologized story.
That surprises me because it's such a 90s story--the protagonist looking inward after doing something awful. In our current stories, protagonists tend to look inward only when someone else does something awful.
The central character in "Al Jolson" has abandoned her friend who is dying of cancer--it's hard to descend any lower in the category of friend. But she was too terrified of death to go to the hospital until now. Now she feels ready to face it, everything--death, and her friend she abandoned. She might be ready.
“It is just possible I will say I stayed the night. And who is there that can say that I did not?”
What follows is escape and exhilaration, failure, loss, and regret--and an exploration of her many calamitous fears, as she seeks to understand the depth of her suffering and betrayal.
Amy Hempel was my terrific teacher at the New School in New York City when I went there briefly in the late 90s. We took the train together a few times after class. She had modeled for Italian Vogue, and I resolved not to look at her. She talked about Gordon all the time. Gordon feels this way, Gordon doesn't care for that.
The great editor and teacher, Gordon Lish, had to make any genius he encountered his "creature," like he did with Carver, rewriting stories till they were his own. But he left Amy Hempel's stories alone, for the most part, though her work had genius also. Amy was Gordon's creature too, just in a different way.
I was telling Amy about the slight, social novels we were forced to read in our seminar. "Oh my God, Gordon hates those books. Why are you reading those?"
But this woman who seemed to consult Gordon on every issue was one of the most original writers around. She was friends with Mark Richard, Tom Waits, and other famous people in NYC, not just Gordon. In class she told us to get new friends, if necessary, and I thought, I'd pick you, but we were both shy and never got any conversations off the ground.
What a lovely presence she was in class, her voice shaking now and then, her cheeks blushing. Once, she told us something Tom Waits had said: "When I compose at the piano, these hands are like a pair of old dogs, going to all the places they've been before." She often dressed up in slacks and a blouse, conservative outfits. In the office was a photo of her on the board, with the caption "Got milk?" tacked there.
I liked seeing her shyness. It was one of the things that made me think that I could try writing. Amy seemed innocent but her stories were not. They were weighted with experience and personal knowledge that she preferred not to discuss, and they were her own stories. Few writers had such an unmistakable style.
On Virginia Woolf
When people discuss Virginia Woolf online, there are always a few strident Americans who object to her suicide, as if that action erases her accomplishments. But suicide is tragic, not immoral, in most cases. Since Woolf endured bipolar disorder without the aid of lithium--and suffered a gathering of voices that terrified her in the end--her last years played out with sympathy.
Interview, "His Own Private Idaho," in Rain Taxi Review of Books.
The author of the short story collection Horse All Over Hell (Wipf and Stock, 2019) and the novel Down in the River (Wipf and Stock, 2019) talks about his work, inspirations, and characters.
. . .
ASO’K: I’d like to ask about Horses All Over Hell, your short story collection released by Wipf and Stock in 2019.
It’s a book of related stories focused upon a family: mother, father, and two sons. You depict problems caused or affected by alcoholism, mental health issues, and religious fundamentalism. These are adult problems, viewed by Cory, a child, who is the elder son. He also does what he can to look after Matt, his younger brother. Why did you choose Cory as the central character?RB: A child inhabits a compelling psychological world. To a kid, a dog might have the power to read minds. A horse on the side of the road might cast a judgmental glance. Cory’s young enough to live in that magic, but old enough to grasp the troubles of his family. He’s an ideal observer.
ASO’K: The setting of Horses is rural Idaho in the early 1990s. Please forgive the cliché question, but may I ask how much of the setting and characters reflect your real-life experiences?
RB: The town of Laroy is, more or less, Lewiston, Idaho. My family lived there in the 70s and 80s. My dad was an alcoholic, but not the wild drunk that Marty is, and my mom was a very traditional, heterosexual Catholic woman who sat with the dying. My dad was an anxiety-ridden parole officer who didn’t talk much except to yell, though he was good-hearted. I was a sports kid and wore my team uniforms at home, watching TV always. My family was hyper-normal, patriotic and God-fearing without question. Once, I tried on my mom’s bra as a joke, and my older brother screamed in fear and tackled me. My mom shouted, “Ryan, this is a Christian household!” My dad was at work. Naturally, I wouldn’t have tried that stunt if he'd been at home.
ASO’K: Cory’s father, Marty, arrives drunk (or at least uselessly hung over) on the morning when he’s supposed to be coaching Cory’s baseball team practice, then again when he’s supposed to be coaching them for a game. Cory’s mother Joanna has quit drinking and found religion, but sees imposing her religious views on her family as a solution to their problems, and is sycophantically desperate for the approval of the more affluent and socially prestigious members of her church group. What’s the biggest thing preventing Marty and Joanna from fixing what’s wrong with their lives? If they appeared to you and asked for advice, what would you tell them?
RB: I understand your temptation to wonder about this. But I say literature isn’t about solving problems. It’s about presenting problems. After all, we follow character trajectories that make sense, based on psychological realities. I’d feel content leading a character to prison if I understood he had to go there because of the story’s urgencies. I’d feel sad but I wouldn’t try to fix his life or anything like that.
Regarding Joanna, I feel sympathetic toward her. She is troubled by anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. She has quit drinking and needs help. Since she’s speaking from pain and not judgement, I don’t get irritated by her reading the Bible to her kids, the way I might in a more self-righteous context. She’s deeply unhappy in Laroy, but church is the only game in town. She seeks to act like the other mothers because she has suffered a loss of confidence during her depression. She’s my favorite kind of Christian—deeply flawed, on the edge, trying to stay alive. The woman she meets, Lucy, the Native-American, is a similar kind of woman, though farther down the road in her sobriety. Later in the book, Joanna locates strength and toughness, partly due to Lucy’s influence. Where Joanna ends up is far more important than where she is at the start.
ASO’K: Birds seem to be a major motif in Horses All Over Hell. Marty, the father, expresses his dislike of large gatherings of birds. What do the birds represent? Other motifs, it seems to me, are the river and the horses of the title.
RB: My favorite metaphor is one that feels meaningful and right but is somewhat out of grasp. The birds resist explanation because characters speak of them differently. The metaphor changes depending on who’s exerting psychological pressure on it. Therefore, it wouldn’t do to nail it down too much. But I will say that I love the mystery of the image and I think it’s right on the money.
Regarding the horses, I suppose they represent disaster and chaos in the book. Of course, there’s got to be a dash of Revelation in the title too, but I wouldn’t make too much of it.
ASO’K: I’d also like to ask about Down in the River, your novel published by Wipf and Stock in 2014. The protagonist, teenager Lyle Rettew, commits an incredibly drastic act in attempting to come to terms with the recent suicide of his twin sister. If you would consider mentioning it to be a spoiler, we can keep mum about it, or mention it openly if you prefer. Anyway, it’s rather macabre, and truly unconventional. Can you describe how this idea came to you?
RB: When Lyle robs a mausoleum, he is flying on his mania, and therefore believes he’s doing something good. Of course, it is terrible and macabre. Lyle’s action is mitigated, though, when the reader understands he’s acting out of love for his sister, in his own cracked manner. Though his sister’s remains are in Idaho, and he’s in Eugene, Oregon, he associates this body he steals with his lost best friend and twin, Lila.
He meets Rosa, a Latina who says about him, “Oh, you’re not quite right,” but knows he’s a good person at the same time. They happen into some speed. She becomes disturbed when she discovers what he’s carrying around in his backpack, but he explains it again and again—when she’s alternately high and tired—and she stays with him.
Although there’s not much sympathy for bi-polar people in the world right now, especially ones who rob mausoleums, I felt very tender about Lyle. Once, Lyle stands up for a goose who hits the top of a bridge while flying. It sits on the pedestrian walkways below, very dazed. Lyle guards the bridge and forces two kids to turn around, so they won’t frighten the goose.
Rosa says to him, “You’re like some kind of protector.”
But some readers won’t tolerate a sympathetic story about a grave robber. That’s okay. I wasn’t trying to please everyone.

Pittsburgh's City Paper "Arts Feature" Interview:
https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/cp-catches-up-with-newly-arrived-novelist-ryan-blacketter/Content?oid=1851057

Paste Magazine's interview with Ryan Blacketter: "The human story is a fairly dark one with painful and dangerous impulses that we all have. And that's coupled with a fortress-like psychology that most people have, protecting them from the awareness of the fact that they are part of this human experience." https://www.pastemagazine.com/books/drinks-with/drinks-with-author-ryan-blacketter/

Fiction Writers Review: "What makes this novel so warm and heartbreaking despite its gruesome material is that all the characters are driven by their love and concern for each other." Click here to read the entire review:

The Rumpus: "[Down in the River] casts us deep into a haunting, crystalline forest of ice-lit trees, broken streetlamps . . . a place where a kind of inner wilderness has crept back through the city, where the lights of passing trains, the reflections of windows and the 'cry of night birds' appear intermittently like forms of meaningless chaos or secret signs." https://therumpus.net/2014/11/down-in-the-river-by-ryan-blacketter/
http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2019/07/ryan_blacketter.html


"I was completely enthralled by this haunting, page-turning novel. The disturbing events, the evocative landscape, and the chaos of mental disorder self-medicated by drugs and rebellion are all rendered in humanizing, beautifully-rendered realism."
--Wayne Harrison, The Spark and the Drive
"Down in the River is a startling, disturbing, and ultimately entrancing novel, a fever dream that astounds and never sits still for a moment, breathlessly played out in the sad twilight between the innocence of childhood and the despair of age, life lived on the last edges of love and loyalty strained to their limits."
--Ernest Hilbert, author of Caligulan
"Blacketter has created an outsider story of adolescence that left me wanting to travel more with his characters; I felt connected to them as they opened my eyes to new forms of chaos."
--Max Wolf Valerio, author of The Criminal: the invisibility of parallel forces.
—Mary Clearman Blew, author of Jackalope Dreams and Ruby Dreams of Janis Joplin
--Arthur O'Keefe, author of The Spirit Phone
“Lyle is clearly disturbed, but Blacketter never lets him become a caricature, never lets his mental illness cloud his personality or override his humanity. Like Dubus’s characters, even his most terrible deeds are driven by noble impulses and understandable grief.”
"A remarkable, darkly startling and endearing debut novel . . . As Lyle’s quest unfolds with messy inevitability, I am rooting for this young man, I am living as this young man, I am learning to feel as skewed and caring as Lyle does. And what a pleasure this is, and what great inspiration to a fellow writer the experience of Down in the River is. I cannot recommend this novel enough."
"A strange, haunting journey across the shadowy landscape of grief and longing. To our good fortune, Ryan Blacketter is a heroic guide into this exploration of the mysterious workings of the human heart . . . This is a brave first novel from a writer to be watched."
Ideology divides people and it divides the mind. It’s rare to encounter anyone who declares a love of Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf, for instance. Most people would pick one or the other, as an expression of their politics.
I wanted to locate Melville’s “howling infinite,” a territory of ambiguity and possibility, in which we are open to all things human and good. In Moby Dick, Melville invites us to love the cannibal Queequeg, who shares a bed very lovingly with Ishmael. In mid-nineteenth century America, such openness was indeed risky, and may have partly explained why the book was a flop upon publication.
Such openness to ambiguity isn’t allowed in the culture right now either. I appreciated Elon Musk when he was an apolitical geek who might have been on the spectrum. Then, as if he understood he needed a political party to back his brand, he met Jered Kushner at the World Cup and transformed into a MAGA dude, and was no longer intriguing.
We seek political fortifications on a smaller level too, in organizations and among our circle of friends. God forbid we should be seen standing alone.
I read recently in the New York Times that bisexuals are no longer considered “allies.” Apparently they’re too ambiguous, when what is needed is a clear choice for the sake of politics. Never mind the deeper impulses and the desires of our hearts that make us unique and human. What’s needed is a brain-centered steering of the vast and multifarious soul, so that others can recognize our persona instantly and we can fit into a group. Thus we shrink ourselves into slogans, like walking memes.
The culture wars rot the conversation on both sides. Every so often, I check out what's going on in the pages of a certain famous conservative journal, as if to escape the politics of left-leaning journals for a moment, and all I find there are photos of conductors leading an orchestra in a triumphant moment of western high culture, or lectures of old men who wish to resuscitate Allan Bloom.
But expressing an independent idea is next to impossible in America, right and left.
It's clear now that Christopher Hitchens carried the entire responsibility of creating fine independent cultural writing on his back for twenty years until his death. When he was gone, there were few writers out there who had the smarts to stand alone in their beliefs and shine a light on hypocrisy, no matter its ideology, and none so effective. He challenged major faiths for their treatment of women, but he was no academic pet who often changed his opinions to fit the news. He saw by his own lights, and he liked controversy.
But perhaps he was a bit strident in his condemnation of religion. Maybe he never met Marilynne Robinson, a Christian and a true genius, his equal in smarts, and also someone who embraces many pleasing contradictions--at least I always thought so, to her credit, when she was my thesis advisor and fellow Idaho writer at Iowa. She is a fierce liberal who protested nuclear pollution in Mother Country and loves Abraham Lincoln and John Calvin.
But Hitchens doesn't need schooling about his views. He left a wide circle that was his own terrain of individualistic discernment, and it has quickly been closed by ideologues right and left, who recognize no fine distinctions. His bright light of openness and reason inspired many who wished to think for themselves, in a world that tends to usher people into camps.
Two camps--that's all we're allowed. Pick one side or the other and sit quietly in the cold until it's your turn to say what you've heard so many times before.
“My own opinion is enough for me," Hitchens wrote, "and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line, and kiss my ass.”
Nothing Happening Here
In 2019, all the creative people I knew in Portland had given up painting or writing. A new business culture had spread through the city, and artists weren't respected anymore, unless they made money from their art. It's true these artists had to go to work to pay the new rents, which had doubled or tripled. But that's only part of the story. I believe the main reason they gave up the arts was that it was hard to keep working when everyone around you thought your life was a joke.
But it's always possible to keep writing. We all used to talk about Faulkner, who wrote As I Lay Dying while shoveling coal twelve hours a day. You simply find the time. You have to.
Now I felt ill that so many friends had given up writing. Some of them already had money jobs and others served pizza, but they all ceased creative production. Despite a few arts organizations still in business, the arts seemed to have lost its value among the people I met all over the city. I doubted Elliott Smith would have stuck around if he'd lived to see the new Portland.
Portland had always been a bulwark that insisted on the value of the creative life. In 2015, I met writers, painters, and musicians every day, in bars and cafes. I'd lived in Portland at other times before then, too, even in the 90s, and never realized how good it was.
The new Portland felt like Los Angeles County, with Super Duty trucks tearing up the little streets downtown, and everyone you met talked about money or work. One guy I met at a bar told me about his new "system" at work, and some tricks he had for learning the system. We had a long discussion about it. I had similar conversations with people at this time, about resumes, retirement funds, second home purchases, and inheritances. There was a good way to be rich or hope to be rich. But Portland hadn't found it.
One interesting wealthy person I met that year was an entrepreneur in his 30s. We met at Bar Momo in downtown Portland. A resident of Atlanta, he was leaving the next day for Paris to visit Pere Lachaise cemetery alone. He took trips around the world for specific and personal reasons. We didn't discuss his job at all. He was creative in the life he led, and he was interested in "people who had their own thing going." I had waited a long time before I ran into this compelling individual. When the bar closed we said our goodbyes.
I returned to Bar Momo the next night to discuss the money people had or would have. Most of the time, I was bored and lonely. I quit going out.
Portland remains one of the most gorgeous cities. But the old bridges and buildings seem to be waiting for better days.
The arts, though, always come back around eventually. Art is too good for the heart and mind to leave buried for long. Intelligent people grow sick without it. We have had artistic resurgences before, and we'll have them again.
In a culture without high-quality artistic expression, people suffer an evaporation of the interior. It's often a new generation that notices the terrible consequences of living lives that have nothing to do with who they are and how they feel, and they want to sing about it or write about it.
We shouldn't need a creative city or nation to coax us to do our work, but it's a lot more fun with other believers around.
Tropic of Cancer
Miller was a bohemian writer who intended to send shock waves through the English-speaking world. That might explain why his language is derogatory toward women and many others he encounters. It seems he's actually trying to alienate. At one point he laughs at the death of a colleague. Another time, he's horrified by the thought of a baby squirming in a woman's belly.
But he's up to something in his book that isn't readily apparent. He presents a Henry Miller who is far worse than the actual man. In life, for instance, he had a thousand friends, men and women. Once, when he was hungry and poor, he asked several friends if he could eat at their houses once a week. They all agreed. But he never would have received such hospitality if he treated men and women like that.
While writing the book at forty, he wanted to "get it out, spill it on them, saying shit, fuck," and all the rest of it. He included feelings and attitudes that most other writers left out of their books, and challenged the niceties and capitulations that many readers and publishers expected. Therefore he invented a Henry Miller who was built to shock.
His hero Rimbaud encouraged authors to take up a "scummy" appearance and attitude to fight the antiseptic falseness of middle-class morality. Celine, another influence, told the truth in a thousand forbidden ways. Miller writes with these authors at his back.
Baudelaire, Gide, and Genet were also part of this literary school of social combat. This describes part of their work, at any rate. They went out of their way to challenge norms, creating rebellious and sometimes low-life protagonists to strike blows against pious gatekeepers. Genet's glorified young gay criminals and prostitutes were indeed shocking, though he was beloved by literary authors.
For the most part, the French understand that exploration of taboo subjects and "crude" protagonists was part of their method and forgive them, or love them all the more.
Many American readers, on the other hand, who often fail to see the French influences in "Tropic," encounter a book that is inexplicably upsetting, as if it's a document without a context, history, or literary milieu.
Everyone knows that Henry Miller was American, but few know that his books are culturally French. That said, he can't escape his American side that pops up here and there.
Past the rude surface, the book is more inspiring and life-affirming than one might expect. On its first page, the protagonist states, “I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.” One finds similar Whitmanesque pronouncements throughout.
Tropic of Cancer is, in part, an experiment in contradictions, stuffing the pages full of all that is terrible and good about this fictional Henry Miller. He plays a role in the book--the vagabond artist, the womanizer, the streetwise cynic. But here and there in these chapters we find a gentler man, and he was vastly more gentle in life.
Anais Nin recorded the great respect he paid to their friendship over years in her journals. Also, she loved "Tropic."
"Here is a book which, if such a thing were possible, might restore our appetite for the fundamental realities. The predominant note will seem one of bitterness, and bitterness there is, to the full. But there is also a wild extravagance, a mad gaiety, a verve, a gusto, at times almost a delirium. A continual oscillation between extremes . . . In a world grown paralyzed with introspection and constipated by delicate mental meals this brutal exposure of the substantial body comes as a vitalizing current of blood."
Henry Miller was a lifelong iconoclast--he wasn't making it up for his books. But twenty years ago, I believed he was a creep who tried too hard to be bohemian. After watching a few of his interviews, I got a sense of this kind and curious writer who was so beloved by those who knew him. After that, I read him in a different light.
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