(news)letter "Say the thing with which you labor." Thoreau from the porter micro.press Volume 1, Number 7 March 2, 1994 _________________________________________________________________ Please send suggestions, submissions and subscription requests to CTPorter 117-A S. Mendenhall St. Greensboro, NC 27403 or e-mail ctporter@mercury.interpath.net Your input is appreciated. _____ That Thoreau quote speaks best for me right now: midnight Wednesday, no viable rough draft and I've decided to stay up all night until this issue is printed, stamped, and in the mail. I've actually read too much this week, my brain is overloaded with themes and plots, characters and conflicts, and no wonderful string appears to help me tie the bundle together. I'm sure the network news teams felt the same way this past week, loaded down with stories to tell. For the longest time the news was so boring because nothing of any "importance" was happening. You know it's slow when Tonya Harding's arrival in Lillehammer warrants a mention on World News Tonight. Now the newshound's briskets are brimming with what to say. There's a truce (enforced) in Sarajevo, Serbian fighter jets have been destroyed by Americans. The lunatic fringe in Israel gets notice with a one man slaughtering crew downing forty Arab worshippers in a mosque in Hebron, and now that whole area is stirred up and smoking. A spy is caught, he's done some major damage, who knows exactly how much but one statistic that can be counted is the number of our spies executed in Moscow because of him. Branch Davidians are acquitted of first-degree murder charges in Waco, though several suspects face lesser charges, and the government takes it in stride. Cigarettes looking like they might be illegal soon. There's so much Peter Jennings wants to tell us, but he still has the same half hour that he had when they had nothing better to do than to watch Tonya Harding like vultures. So when these periods inevitably roll around, it's time to drop back and punt. Get back to the basics, tell the audience what you know and let them make the connections. Welcome to America Kid Zlata Filipovic's diary was excerpted in the February 28 Newsweek, and though one shouldn't expect much from an excerpt, I was very disappointed in what I read. This is not to criticize the thirteen-year-old girl whose diary was published by UNICEF in order to show the horrors of the siege of Sarajevo. Instead I question what others are doing to her. She was picked out to be a modern-day Anne Frank, the publicists knew what would tug heartstrings, and the excerpt shows a marked difference between when she was just Zlata, as opposed to the new Anne Frank. The entries become more aware of Zlata as diplomat, a writer with a patron, after she is informed of the decision to publish her diary. "BOREDOM!!! SHOOTING!!! SHELLING!!! PEOPLE BEING KILLED!!! DESPAIR!!! HUNGER!!! MISERY!!! FEAR!!!" gives way to "they filmed me for American TV as 'person of the week.'" I'd much rather read the original diary that UNICEF published than this US edition. The little girl is more interesting than the too-young pawn in a money game. Willy Does the Hand Jive An image of Dustin Hoffman playing Willy Loman inspired me to re- read Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. The salesman, Willy, has to be one of the most pathetic creatures in the history of the theater, he's absolutely miserable. Willy knows his time is coming soon, he can't function in the exalted position of the traveling salesman anymore, there's no money coming in except what he can borrow from his cousin, his sons are bums, the house is being surrounded by apartment complexes so he doesn't even have enough light for a garden: life is rotten. Willy has devoted his life to a dream that will never pan out for him, the dream of the salesman: "it's not what you do, Ben. It's who you know and the smile on your face! It's contacts, Ben, contacts! ...a man can end with diamonds here on the basis of being liked! ... You can't feel it with your hand like timber, but it's there!" (86). Willy is such an unpleasant character, though, mistreating everyone with a vituperative bite that won't heal. He alienates all of those around him save for the saintly wife, and it should not surprise anyone that the only people at his funeral are immediate family. The genius of Miller's play is in drawing the audience to Willy. There is little reason to like the man but we don't hate him. Why? Why feel pity for a man who enthusiastically digs his own pit? It is because we witness his breakdown in his dialogue with characters not visible to anyone but Willy -- his long-lost brother, his sons in their youth, the woman with whom he had an affair. We realize how screwed up he is and so Willy Loman becomes the Everyman who's dreamed too much and acted too little and realizes too late the treasure chest will never be opened for him. Follow Me, Follow You Short Cuts is a LONG movie, be forewarned. It's worth the sore butt, though, I promise. The reason it's so long is because there are so many characters whose lives we learn about. We follow one set of characters for a while, then switch to another set, and on and on and on. It's a fun movie with something for everyone -- there's bound to be several characters to enjoy amongst the bunch. One character who helped me get a grip on Willy Loman was the Aged Jazz Singer. Her band plays at a raunchy club and she's an absolute lush, very unattractive in the morning bathrobe on her porch, three sheets to the wind on Bloody Marys. We get to know her a little bit through her conversation with her daughter and we learn of the pain in her life, the lost husband, the frustration of the unappreciated artist -- the LA crowds only talk and snort cocaine, they can't appreciate fine jazz. And I realized, later in the movie, watching her sing in that dive, how much I was rooting for her. But, just like Willy, it's too late, all is lost. I realize these aren't very profound audience reaction observations. Fiction writers must learn the principle in Creative Writing 101 -- give the unattractive characters some mundane concerns and the audience will invest in those characters. Seeing it done well, twice in a week, brought the trope to the fore, and made me apprecate a new aspect to craftsmanship in plotting. Poetic Need In fact, I saw this principle, putting the human touch to the situation, from yet another source this week. "The Salvation of Faust," a poem by Thomas Carper in the February issue of Poetry led me to his chapbook, Fiddle Lane. Carper's usual form is the sonnet, a form that demands craftsmanship. Carper rarely falls into the trap that many sonnet writers encounter, making the poem flow without the reader noticing the rhymes too much. If the rhymes sound too contrived, too obvious, they take over the poem at the expense of what's being said. At his best Carper makes the sonnet sound like conversation, and the rhymes become clever surprises. "The Salvation of Faust" is a modern re-telling of the legend of the man who sold his soul to the devil in return for various powers (depending on the version you read). Carper's Joe Faust, a bench-pressing gym jockey working out, has a different fate in today's world when he meets the devil: "I've got to shower," Joe says, hoping his new friend will reveal Just what he might be good for, or supply A hint of what it takes to clinch a deal. "I'd sell my soul," he says. The other, by Unsubtle signals, lets him understand That, these days, souls are not much in demand. Joe's fate is similar to both Willy's and the Aged Jazz Singer -- they've paid dues, figured on a reward, and it's nowhere to be found. Another Carper sonnet, "Sisyphus's Pet Rock" gives modern meaning to an ancient myth. In Carper's version Sisyphus embraces his task of pushing the rock up the hill. He enjoys his duty so much that he purposefully lets go of the rock within reach of the summit. As long as he has this task, he figures, he's immortal. What if life is that easy? All you have to do is to release your rock at night, knowing that you will roll it back again the next day. And keep your sanity while doing so. Some Follow-up A few issues ago I wondered about the ending of the movie, The Age of Innocence, when Newland Archer does not visit his former love, the Countess Ellen. This is what I wrote: In the end Newland does not go to meet Ellen. Why? ... I say Newland was being loyal to May by not meeting Ellen; another theory holds that Newland was ever the cad and wanted to keep his memory of the Countess sacrosanct. Are there any other ideas? Janet Stites proposed a different idea: It was pointed out by a friend that Newland had made a deal with himself, echoing the one he made when they were all in Newport--if she came to the window, he would go up. She didn't come to the window. It's my contention that to go up would not betray May, but himself, as seeing Ellen again could possibly confirm that his whole life was a lie. I don't remember the deal he made with himself, but I do remember that the effects of the reflections -- off the water at Newport and off the window at the end -- were similar. And since Janet has the unfair advantage of having actually read the Edith Wharton book, I concede the point to her. Snow Bound Speaking of Janet, I'll have to hand it to her for her article in the November 1993 Omni, "Bordercrossings: A Conversation in Cyberspace." I've been waiting to read this article for a long time (I held out for a personal copy), and even after reading three times I'm still not ready to discuss it more than superficially. Some background is in order. In this article, Janet moderates an electronic mail discussion between three influential figures in different fields: Richard Powers, author of several books, including The Gold Bug Variations; Katherine Hayles, a literary critic with a scientific background, whose latest book deals with the study of the influence of chaos theory on contemporary literature (and vice versa); and chemistry professor Jay Labinger. The purpose of this forum was to discuss the status of the "two cultures" dichotomy. C.P. Snow, in a 1959 lecture, lamented the split between the science and the arts: Western society would not prosper without "closing the gap" between the disciplines. Had the fields grown any closer together in the decades since Snow's call to arms, or were they still in different worlds, strangers to the other? That question is answered by the form of the article itself -- the participants got together and discussed issues, they taught and were taught by the others, and they most certainly created a substantial dialogue. In short there were no language barriers or knowledge schisms. Through e-mail, the setting was provided and a conversation started. It's fun to watch the personalities of the different participants emerge through their correspondence in a way that would have been impossible had the author flown them to one place, provided the meeting room, and transcribed their discussion. If reading the article straight through is a trifle confusing, that's the nature of the beast: Hayles might be responding to a question from a month earlier, Powers might answering the original question after Labinger has gone on to the next question, and Labinger is ever providing a summary for the benefit of all. The high point is the rebellion: Powers wants to leave off answering any questions unless he feels like it -- he's having too much fun following the ideas of the others. They formed a community amongst themselves. The article itself was as strong an answer as any could give about the state of the humanities/science split -- provide the forum and the scientists can most certainly speak with the writers. E-mail provided the perfect meeting ground not only for scientists and artists, but for anybody. It is a medium which combines elements of each of the two cultures -- the computer technology which allows wide, rapid distribution plus the artistic pursuit, letter-writing. Just as a personal letter of the pen and paper, postage-stamped variety, e-mail retains a part of the writer -- you can hear your corespondent saying the words aloud, you can sense the sender near you. The saving grace of e- mail is its informality -- more like a bastard memo, you can be a little bit stupid, put your foot in your mouth, and the shame is not as permanent as a "snail-mail" letter. As if in independent confirmation of the article, Kelly Cherry responds to the same debate in her "The Two Cultures at the End of the Twentieth Century: An Essay on Poetry and Science," Midwest Quarterly (Winter 1994). In fact she fits in so well with Stites' discussion that I imagine her wanting to respond to the original question but missing the deadline. Labinger, in Omni, had differentiated between three kinds of influence science might have on a work of literature: there is name-dropping, a tossing in of a reference to a theory or scientist just to show familiarity; there is the use of scientific metaphors; and finally, "the scientific concept may appear to be intricately woven into the basic fabric of the literary work" (106). Although Cherry doesn't categorize the influences, she does examine different poets and poems according to these stages of influence, and comes to the conclusion that there is no hard and fast split, just a problem in finding the "arena." "We must listen to one another if we are not to grow old telling the same old anecdotes over and over, mumbling our way into graves of habit" (135). Like the participants of the Omni conference, Cherry decides that Snows concerns are somewhat moot. There's too much that he couldn't have known about -- the computer for one -- that has brought the differing disciplines together. The prime It's not often that two articles will come along and speak to each other so directly like that. Captain Planet Loves His Pickle-Schnappers! They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so I was pleased to receive in the mail, from Lilliburt and Hussfrau of Tampa, the first issue of their newsletter dedicated to pickle lovers everywhere. This issue really has to be seen to be believed! The springboard to their fame is the legendary pickle- schnitzel, a pickle with a cornbread cover, on a stick, much like its cousin the corn dog. The newsletter clarifies some terms that the pickle-lover may or may not know, for example the heavenly "Pickle Schnecker: a sweet spiral roll made from raised dough with chopped nuts, butter, cinnamon and, of course, ... pickles!" The editor's note goes on to explain that "these delights go splendidly with an ice cold Yahoo!" Great work folks! Lilliburt, Hussfrau and I own the marketing rights to this product sweeping the eastern shore, so invest now! Sid Caesar swears by his evening pickle-schnitzel, and he's just one of many. Hussfrau made me promise to tell you that pickle-schnitzels aren't just for evenings, they make a good brunch, too. Quote of the Week This quote comes from the Stites article. Richard Powers summarizes the group opinion of the vital element of the two cultures debate: The similarities in the ways we all attempt to solve experience are, in the wide lens, probably more important than the differences. (48) Just as those similarities can span any gulf between science and the humanities, they can help an audience identify with a character like Willy Loman or thrill in the image of Sisyphus letting go his rock.