Miscellaneous Posts

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.

We need to reclaim 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 the other day 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 heart 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.

I'm pro-respect, especially for those who are anathema in their towns, whether they are gays, Christians, conservatives, liberals, trans, hippies, artists, or free-thinking individualists without any terms associated with their identities. 

One day a new generation will appear, perhaps carrying musical instruments and books like Leaves of Grass, The Diaries of Anais Nin, and Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone (highly individualized political essays) and because of their efforts, people will be allowed to be themselves for a while. It's going to happen at some point. Each period of conformity falls away, and we have some time to breathe, until the next one comes along.

Red-State Freakout 

I intend this piece as a positive exploration, with all parties forgiven and unnamed, in preparation for my novel "God’s Hacker" that is forthcoming in 2025.

In 2015, I received the flattering offer to teach Advanced Fiction at an Idaho university after my first book, Down in the River, appeared. My boss was a great writer I'd read before, and I made two friends in the department. I'd taught creative writing elsewhere, but now I was teaching seniors. It seemed like a positive jump. 

Half of my students were enthusiastic about my class. But it was a religious-influenced public college and parents were heavily involved on campus. 

The other half of my class disliked the (nonexplicit) sexual content of two of the stories I presented on Blackboard--by Alice Munro and Chris Offutt. Two of them took up the curious activity of yelling in class, not at me, but just yelling their discontent.

They also suffered in my intense workshops for this advanced class. My model was the Iowa Writers Workshop--extremely frank in terms of craft. I had received difficult workshops as a grad student, and felt they were some of the best experiences I'd had as a writer. Nothing was handed to you in a care package. You were able to see what worked--especially what didn't work, and why. (But I did go on to mentor writers in PEN America's Justice Writing Program where I discovered the value of kind workshops).

When half the class didn't like my teaching style, I assumed a defensive posture of snobbery, holding to literary standards and ripping stories that were overtly religious or gratuitously conventional. 

Nervous before the unhappy students, I gave grumpy workshops, not personal, but frankly negative regarding craft. I had a habit of shutting my eyes too long when I talked: weird.

In addition, in the red state of Idaho, it was hard to find a med-check doctor for the lithium I needed. I soured in my intermittent treatment. One doctor believed I was a "drug seeker" when I landed in the emergency room for medication. 

During class I made light of my emergency room visit and revealed my diagnosis--a confession that was welcome in a Portland creative writing classroom, but not here. Boise was a gorgeous city with many writers, but its pockets of social conservatism were deep, even among Democrats. I was unaffiliated, an inscrutable type in the margins of the culture wars. In addition, this was also the start of what became a ten-year hacking campaign that my publisher, a notorious hacker, had commenced after I refused to do what he wanted me to--the subject, in part, of "God's Hacker."

Soon a parent or two waited outside my classroom to meet their  children--college seniors--after each class. A dean emailed me and wanted to bring several members of the Care Team to observe my class, and I, foolishly, swore at him on email and called some of the students "drama brats," and he fired me. 

In the end, the student newspaper published an article explaining that I was fired "with a life-time ban." The author noted good things about my teaching and interviewed students who liked me, but that lifetime ban, in the first line, was a hit job--a fabrication that seemed two-thirds mental health freakout and one-third sexual prurience. 

The chair was quoted in the newspaper stating they couldn't discuss my firing for legal reasons, but the dean had already placed my termination letter on his university site, as if they wanted to suggest to the public that it was bad, to justify my firing, while communicating to students and parents to rest easy, that nothing serious had happened. 

 A year later, the new student manager at the newspaper, Patty Bowen, retracted the "lifetime ban" language and stated in an email, and on the site, that there was no such ban. There remains an aggregated copy of the original article out there, but I was pleased to find Patty, a journalist who was willing to locate the facts. She works at Meridian Press now.