Article: 523 of alt.etext Path: news.cic.net!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!lll-winken.llnl.gov!taco!inxs.concert.net!rock.concert.net!ctporter From: ctporter@rock.concert.net (Christopher T Porter -- Personal Account) Newsgroups: alt.zines,alt.etext Subject: (news)letter, 1:8 Date: 12 Mar 1994 23:38:38 GMT Organization: CONCERT-Connect Public Dial UNIX Lines: 325 Message-ID: <2ltjpu$soo@inxs.concert.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: rock.concert.net Xref: news.cic.net alt.zines:2971 alt.etext:523 Herein is the eighth issue of _(news)letter_, a weekly I put out. I hope you enjoy it. ÉÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ» º º º º º _(news)letter_ º º º º º º º º º º º º "Say the thing with which you labor." º º º º Thoreau º º º º º º º º from porter micro.press º º º ÈÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍͼ Please send suggestions, submissions and subscription requests to CTPorter 117-A S. Mendenhall St. Greensboro, NC 27403 e-mail ctporter@mercury.interpath.net Your input is appreciated. Somebody told me that they were considering joining the Navy and asked me about my experiences there: "You didn't like it, did you?" I gave what has become my standard response, "I grew up a lot; I would do it again." All of a sudden, after saying that, I began wondering about the truth of that statement. Sure I'd learned some things in the Navy -- how the steam propulsion system propelled a guided missile destroyer; how to plug a hole in the bulkhead with freezing water pouring in; how to stand patiently in a cloud of tear gas awaiting your permission to leave. I did learn a lot, but now I realize I didn't "grow up" there. Rather, I would trace the beginning of my "growing up" to reading a book, Peter Mathiessen's _The Snow Leopard_. I was in Colorado, six months out of the Navy, washing cars, painting houses, digging ditches or whatever menial labor was the job of the moment, and reading this book opened up a whole new world for me. Mathiessen is a Zen Buddhist and _The Snow Leopard_ is a travel journal of a trip to the Himalayas in search of that rarest of animals, the snow leopard. Few white men have ever seen a snow leopard in the wild, and much to my shock Peter Mathiessen didn't see one either. How could he name a book like that when he didn't even see one, I wondered, but after a while the book and the 'failed' expedition made perfect sense. I learned of spirituality; I learned that a disappointment does not have to mean a failure; I learned that all I wanted to do was to learn more. I credit _The Snow Leopard_ for my decision to go to college: I'd always counted on going, but this book showed me I _had_ to go. I consider the process of growing up to be composed of a lot of different steps. _The Snow Leopard_ represents, in my life, that critical first step that made possible a whole new outlook. People will sometimes say of a difficult process, "I wouldn't trade it for the world," but I often wonder. If I could have had the experience at seventeen instead of twenty-two, I would gladly take it. The problem is, often you have to go through with the bad times in order to make the good times possible. I still hesitate to consider myself "grown up," I still do a bunch of unexplainable things, but I have come to a sense of identity and purpose with which I'm comfortable. I thought of this in relation to an essay that I read in this month's _Harper's_, Mary Gaitskill's "On Not Being a Victim" (35-44). You might remember that in the fifth issue of this _(news)letter_ I vilified the co-dependency industry using as example Michael J. Cohen's "Integrated Ecology," and using as support David Rieff's "Victims, All?" Mary Gaitskill, in her article, answers David Rieff: she defends the co-dependency movement, and the article (as well as a conversation with another subscriber) made me rethink my co-dependency venom. Ms. Gaitskill's point, and one that I neglected to take into account, is that the co-dependency process has helped lots of people to recognize gaps in their maturation. Though this movement, as any trend will, has attracted hucksters who spout the flippant jargon, critics shouldn't dismiss the importance of the whole. The problem with disparaging outlooks such as Rieff's is his idea that suffering is one definable thing, that he knows what it is, and that since certain kinds of emotional pain don't fit this definition they can't really exist. This idea doesn't allow him to have much respect for other people's experience -- or even to see it. (39) The author then describes her own learning process. Her victimization is discussed primarily in the context of two forced sexual encounters. In the first, which she likens to date rape, an acquaintance took advantage of her drugged state and pressured her into doing something she didn't want to do. Her sense of violation came from her lack of conviction that what she wanted mattered. She realized later that she had, in her words, "raped myself." By contrast, when she is forcibly raped two years later, the incident was easier to emotionally digest. It was "a clearly defined act, perpetrated upon me by a crazy asshole whom I didn't know or trust; it had nothing to do with me or who I was, and so, when it was over, it was relatively easy to dismiss" (42). The author feels her victimization began with not being taught how to make her own decisions. "Part of becoming responsible," she writes, "is learning how to make a choice about where you stand in respect to the social code and then holding yourself accountable for your choice" (37). She was never provided with a firm basis upon which she could make her own decisions. Instead she was given -- in the mid-1960s -- a set of black and white rules: nice girls don't wear skirts above the knee, bad girls do; nice girls don't have sex until they're married, bad girls have sex; nice girls don't do drugs, who knows what bad girls do. When her mother was confronted by the example of a nice girl who did wear skirts above the knee, the answer was simple -- that girl can no longer be considered "nice." The problem was in fitting happenings like the date rape into a behavior confused by the inadequacy of black and white rules. Better, Ms. Gaitskill suggests, that a child is brought up with the capability of making her own decisions. Hard and fast "IF...THEN" rules are bound to get muddled and confused. Her understanding of the co-dependency movement is that in trying to locate the inner child, one is harking back to "the part of yourself that didn't develop into adulthood and then to develop it yourself" (42). The inner child is an appeal for the tools by which one can assume responsibility, not an escape mechanism. When she successfully fends off a too-insistent date, we understand that not only has the author passed a point of growth, but she has helped the selfish attacker as well, by making a win- win situation out of an ugly occurrence. I ended this article with ambivalent feelings. I congratulate the author for her healthy attitudes -- I don't know, were I a woman, if I could ever forgive men a rape. But at what point do we acknowledge that our parents had the same problems (with different parameters, no doubt) that we face, and their parents before them? Life is difficult ("duh") and those who persist in placing blame outside of themselves fail to recognize an inherent drawback to attaining the solution. This cheats them of the wholeness that occurs when one does find the answers, with the sufferings then shown as necessary. To me there's nothing more satisfying than seeing a problem solved, convinced of the need for all of the parts that made it a problem in the first place. Okay, okay, I'll get off the soapbox . . . _The Uses of the Past_ Along a similar vein is an essay I read with a lot of sympathy in the March 7 issue of _Newsweek_. Margaret Brown's essay, "Whose Eyes Are These, Whose Nose?" (p. 12) describes her dismay at learning, at the age of sixteen, that the man she grew up knowing as her father was actually not her father. Since her mother was artificially inseminated, and the laws protected the anonymity of the donor, she will never know for certain who he might have been. I consider myself extremely lucky to be part of some families who have cared about preserving their legacy. With very little effort, I was able to name all sixteen of my great-great grandparents. I don't know about other people, but I find that amazing. That gives me what I consider to be a firm foundation in history, and my heart goes out to Ms. Brown because as important as that foundation is to me I cannot conceive not knowing from whence I sprang. "'Who am I?' is a hard question to answer when I don't know where I came from. I'd like to have the comfort of knowing whom I resemble." And while the burden of family can be heavy, I'd rather have the opportunity to escape it than never have the chance to know that burden. _Do You Believe in Magic?_ Haroun, the adolescent hero of Salman Rushdie's _Haroun and the Sea of Stories_, by contrast, goes out and solves his problems! I picked up this book on a recommendation from an Internet "acquaintance," and I'll admit that I was swayed by a review on the back of the book from Graham Greene: "One of the rare books since _Alice in Wonderland_ of which the fantasy appeals both to the young and old." _Alice in Wonderland_ was one of the funniest books I've ever read, and that's what I hoped from Rushdie. Rushdie's first page hooked me, and I hoped this story would give half the pleasure that Alice had. There was once, in the country of Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name. It stood by a mournful sea full of glumfish, which were so miserable to eat that they made people belch with melancholy even though the skies were blue. Admittedly depressing, that opening betrays a touch of the light- hearted genius. This is the story of Haroun and his father, the storyteller Rashid, "the Ocean of Notions, as stuffed with cheery stories as the sea was full of glumfish; but to his jealous rivals he was the Shah of Blah" (15). The storyteller's wife leaves him and he undergoes a dry spell -- he stands up in front of the multitudes and goes silent. Haroun undertakes to help his father, and the ensuing adventure lands them in the domains of Gup and Chup, on Earth's second moon. Haroun and father play pivotal roles in the apocalyptic war -- the bad guys are poisoning the very source of the ancient stream of stories whence all tales flow. The ending fits the world back together again, As It Should Be. But alas, _Haroun_ is just not that funny. It is an effective fable though I doubt it's very accessible for young children. Rushdie is just a bit too heavy-handed with some difficult concepts and I spent more time pondering the allegorical nature of the fable than enjoying the narrative. To be fair to Rushdie, his story should be taken on its own merit, not bracketed with the Lewis Carroll classic. I recently saw the author interviewed by David Frost on PBS and was so impressed by his sincerity and depth -- he gave thorough, intelligent answers to even the shallowest Frost question. One answer that I particularly admired that might have some bearing: Frost asked if Rushdie didn't sometimes admire people who don't lay abed at night tortured with spiritual doubts. No, he answered, because those people go to bed wrong! This interview was not long after he had made the decision to come out of hiding, and it's easy to forget that he still has a bounty on his head offered by the Iranian government for his _Satanic Verses_. He is a man of substance, maybe too much substance to succeed at the frivolity that comparison's to Carroll's excellent adventure would demand. _What a Word's Worth_ Conversely, another author encountered this week has too much levity for my taste. Lee Smith read from her latest novel _Devil's Dream_, and though she's extremely funny, I soon tired of all the clever hooks and phrases coming one after the other endlessly. I don't have any of her novels so I cannot give an example, but I noticed the tendency when I began _Oral History_. I couldn't read for very long before I gave it up -- the clever was too overdone. And she's too high-quality a writer to have to rely on cute. _Devil's Dream_, for example, is a fictional account of the country music history structured as if it were a record album. She mentioned that she wrote songs for this novel, and I almost wish she'd devote more energy to songwriting. Save the clever for the lyrics so there's less pressure on the narrative. But the relationships she described between the various characters and events and how they tied together really made me want to read the book just to learn from an artist's creativity and formation of structure. And while the subject of Southern Fiction is close at hand, a word about "white trash." I read Thom Jones' "Daddy's Girl" in this month's _Harper's_ and I'm sick of southern characters with names like Tootie, Moonie, Chunky and Ma. There seems to be a preponderance of Southern writers who feel compelled to use as subjects white trash and white trash only, as if white trash are a uniquely southern phenomenon. I don't know anything about Thom Jones and other work he might have published, I just use him as a convenient example. I wonder if the label "Southern Fiction" has served its purpose and now should be dropped from our critical vocabulary. _On the Net_ One of the appeals of the world that a modem opens up for a computer is the world of electronic mail (e-mail). There are various outlets for a letter: the personal letter you can send an acquaintance, or a letter you might post to a circle of users who share similar interests. On the Internet there is a forum known as the Usenet, with a plethora of usegroups to which one can post letters. I subscribe to several of these usegroups, one of which is called "rec.arts.books". This group generates about fifty to seventy-five letters a day on various topics, and at the most I might read ten or fifteen. The groupings of the letters around a topic is called a thread, and some of the threads that one might find in the rec.arts.books usegroup are: "10 Books You Can't Live Without," "10 Books You'd Throw Away," a thread on C.S. Lewis' Narnia Chronicles, and a thread dealing with poetry appreciation called "Poetic Need." Sometimes artists are discussed in detail, the participants given notice that the next subject might be, for example, the poetry of Sylvia Plath, and then you find a bunch of opinions and explications from around the world. An offshoot of the newsgroup is the smaller group which congregates in order to discuss something specific. I recently joined a Shakespeare splinter group with five others, and we will discus a different play every two weeks with one member responsible for leading the discussion. And can you believe it? I bragged in the third issue of the _(news)letter_ about the number of times I've read _Hamlet_. And guess which play we start with next week? Oh well, that's why I've read it so often -- if I read it once I find reason to re-read it soon after. The real fun is personal letters. I have a running correspondence with a couple of people and I even found mention of an old friend in a usegroup, and made contact with him. Here was a person I played Little League baseball with (he played, I tried to play), I hadn't seen nor heard from him in fifteen years, and we can strike up a little conversation. Just the fact that each of you are on the Net provides a point of dialogue. Making contact with a long-unseen acquaintance through e-mail is much easier than through the pen and paper, postage-stamped "snail mail." A lot less emotionally charged, too. I could whip out a letter of introduction to the old friend, "how are you, just thought I'd say 'hello,'" and that friend could deal with it at his leisure. E-mail is more informal, less permanent than a handwritten, mailed letter. And it hurts less if there's no answer. _Quote of the Week_ Alan Watts, from "This is It" (_This is It and Other Essays_, p. 34): No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve in quality as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing it is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them. Too many of us are convinced that if we can just turn things back and fix something at the beginning of our personal symphonies, we might enhance the quality of the now. Instead, we might consider that the imperfections contribute to our own, unique symphony, and glory in that. Because nobody else can play it quite like we can.