Rethinking Politics
I used to embrace a libertarian ideal of free-speech, until
I discovered the right and left censor in equal fashion. Right or left isn’t
the problem. Politics is the problem.
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.
Publishing works along these lines. It’s all either right or
left—you’ve seen the titles.
The culture wars have rotted the conversation on both sides.
One editor of a conservative Christian magazine announced recently on Facebook
that he wanted to see stories that argue from a pro-life perspective. I agree
that such a story ought to be considered, instead of canceled on sight, but
let's skip pro-life as a social genre--or any other such genres.
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.
It seems conservative editors are more interested in buttressing grand tombs
than in presenting fresh writing. But expressing an independent idea is next to
impossible in America, anywhere you look.
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.”
Hoping for a Renaissance
Back 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 it. 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.
It's always possible to keep writing. We all used to talk about Faulkner who wrote As I Lay Dying while shoveling coal for twelve hours a day. You simply find the time. You have to.
I was disappointed to see so many friends give it up. Some of them already had money jobs and others served pizza, but they all ceased creative production. Despite Powell's Books, 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.
Portland had always been like a bulwark that insisted on the value of the creative life. Even in 2015, I met writers, painters, and musicians every day, in bars and cafes.
The new Portland felt like Los Angeles County, with Super Duty trucks tearing up the little streets downtown, and everyone you met talking about money. One guy I met at a bar told me about his new "system" at work, and some tricks he had for learning it. We had a long discussion about it. He wasn't a bad guy, but he certainly represented new Portland. I had similar conversations with people at this time, about work, resumes, retirement funds, second home purchases, and inheritances.
Portland remains one of the most gorgeous cities. But the old bridges and buildings seem to be waiting for better days.
The good news is, the arts always come back around. Art is too good for the heart and mind to leave buried for long. Intelligent people grow sick without it. We have had renaissances before, and we'll have them again. A renaissance happened in the 16th century. Another one, in my loose definition of the word, came about in the 1960s, after the previous decade's dreary preoccupation with stability, conformity, and appearances. It also happened in the 80s with punk rock and in the 90s with grunge.
There have been large creative revivals and smaller ones. But they keep happening. A culture that goes along without high-quality artistic expression suffers a dissipation of the interior, and the surface personality--a false one--swells to accommodate the loss.
It's often some new generation who notices the terrible consequences of living on the surface and needs to sing about it or write about it. We're waiting for a generation that has been damaged enough by this culture to want to make art. When it will arrive is anyone's guess.
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.
