More from the At-least-I-Have-A-Sense-of-Humor Department

The Roiphe article (New York Times Sunday Book Review, January 3, 2009) concerning The Roths, the Updikes and the Mailers and the right of the American writer to be sexually frank casts an interesting light on the state of Empire and the individual within it. The writer, as far as Empire is concerned is a schmuck, more or less, unless of course he's bringing in the dough, paying his bills, helping out with the tax revenue. The writer is a stubborn hold-out who claims to deserve the right to relations with a woman, another subject of the empire. He is, like Jesus, claiming rights to the Temple that will help him write better. No, it shouldn't be all about income and tax revenue, as much as Empire likes it. There is a place you have to expel the crass elements out of.

Yes, the poor writer, the one who hasn't made it, who's still working at it, working at being recognized in some way, not even sure he wants to be, survives in the Empire as everyone else does, by being employed. The writer is like the struggling actor, working at something like waiting tables, going to auditions when he can. Close the core of his creativity is the issue of... well... sex, sex with that female creature who has, at least temporarily, and probably more lastingly, bewitched him and all his senses and all his inner chemistry, such that his brain, per say, has no choice in the matter. But in contrast to his nascent creativity, affirming in itself, there is the matter of whether he himself has a right to even hold such attractions, and then beyond that, whether his wishes are appropriate given his prospects, earning power, the innate respectability of the station of life he manages. If there weren't a lot of outside voices telling him his wishes are inappropriate, there would be his own.

The writer claims the gratification, the consummation of his real desires (beyond the passing ones that the Buddhist warns us of), so that he can become a teacher. (He writes well enough to have a credential.) For teaching is the right profession, respectable in the eyes of society. Of course a serious writer who is circumspect, deeply reverent, has enough humility to see all sides of an issue he himself is involved in, asking an inner "Her Dad" if it's okay to even go so far as make a phone call, trembling as he does, rightly so, like Abraham before God. The real writer, even as he is capable of spinning an interesting take on matters of sex, has a sense that it is only through the greatest ever act of sweet holy offering of God's very gift shining down upon him that lets him enjoy his lovely other half. And he will only receive her with the deepest greatest humility, as he has tried, with human imperfection, to practice his whole entire life. (A teaching job, teaching something he cares about, would make him feel more legitimate.)

And this, you might say, is the great story behind many, if not all, great stories and moments of good writing, from Tolstoy, to Joyce, Roth, Kerouac, Hemingway, Anderson, etc. Tolstoy brings it to us as Levin waiting so patiently and chastely in Anna Karenina, a meeting of eyes, one pair in a passing carriage, the male pair out in the road doing Tolstoy things, that we would all recognize ourselves as a transforming sensation of deep attraction. The 'different' marriage proposal over a kind of Scrabble game, we could mention too here. (And poor Anna never gets that proposal.) Tolstoy was a bad boy, a sensualist in earlier soldier years, providing himself a mea culpa change so that he could feel he might actually deserve a Kitty, a wife. Joyce, well, again, what is Ulysses all about but being enough of a hero to claim a lady's affections. In Hemingway, well, at least we get a feather display of the entitled dominant male, though we'll always have the earth moving in For Whom The Bell Tolls, and some 'nature scenes' from the youthful picnics of Michigan of early short story.

A real writer will at least in some way have no arrogance at all and carry himself with a certain humility, humbly. (One imagines Lincoln carrying himself without show, with the simple dignity his own words convey.) For he knows the 'Beyond' aspect of inspirations, as he will never really know where the music he is able to write down comes from.

Roiphe is correct to applaud the courage it takes for the young writer, say, Roth, in Goodbye, Columbus, to render intimacy, to write so well with so much real juice, as to be able to properly claim that intimacy as a natural thing proper for him to engage in. Holy, if nothing else.

Yes, it's quite an interesting mix the male writer brings, from private thoughts to more bold and pleasant meetings. Why, however, have we not seen such a story brought to us lately? Is such honest self-revealing forbidden? Is the subject too passé, too simple for our 'sophistication,' as we seem involved with, if not journalism itself, journalistic fiction from the bizarre ends of the spectrums of identity in a desire to broaden our palates? I can only think of All the Sad Literary Young Men, Keith Gessen's fine and honest effort, of late, as an example of a real tale of love that made it to marketplace. Good simple cooking that offers sustenance. Yes, he strikes me as honest and accurate, and his book speaks to my own experiences. It did so, perhaps, out of undeniable dexterity and ambitiousness, though maybe its brilliance might somehow compromise that sense of dumb wonder of a young man struck by love, who bravely knows only the half of it, and must find the other half. Well, we all have our formulations of what it's like. I'm not going to criticize Mr. Gessen for being too clever, though for me, with this subject, I find him so. (Which says something, perhaps, about my own habitual cluelessness in these matters, my sense of standing mutely before a holy mystery that reveals the nature of existence.) He brings us the awful feeling of 'fucking it all up' quite well. He brings us 'the other guy dating the beautiful girl,' quite well too. And the critique his narrator raises against himself is, accurately, his own infidelity to the main love object, though she is brought to us maybe a little too quickly and mainly for the moment of huge chagrin.

Mr. Gessen is really really really good. And that's what it takes today. His book can't be faulted on its own terms.

I would rather have the poor narrator wholly obsessed with his vision from the outset, telegraphing it across, so that we, the reader, can look in upon his internal world and how it all reflects her, her beauty and what-not and all that stuff you'd want to sing about but can't. (This allows a book to be less egotistical than it would otherwise be, contrary to what you might think. More, to my tastes anyway, Chekhovian.) You wouldn't just sing about anyone, though that may be fairly well more expeditious, like from a practical perspective.