today's poem: Don't Go to Art School!

Deep embarrassment
ah,
of what a mess I made of my life
(can't you say that better?)
a secret
some know, not many
mostly me
and Emily Dickinson
who knew better
than to try so many things

Everywhere I turn
I see half finished
I see intention
not accomplishment
white trash yard of a life

They were right:
Don't go to art school!

But I didn't!

Still, you thought you should.
thought you'd find yourself
there or somewhere
a commune perhaps
reinventing western civilization

that went well

and now in the mirror
an old man looks back
you read books
written by old men
about old men
lusting after young women
(J. M. Coeztee)

and still
you get a nice buzz
from coffee

full of ideas!
let's go make another mess!

Winter (I)

The winter comes too soon
though we tell each other
it's right on time
hoping our lie
will slow time
and show the gods
we are ready
and unafraid
of whatever comes our way

As the gods of time
eat our children
we dare not start to cry
that's how floods start

"The days are long, and
the years are short"
that's what they told me
when I tried to stay awake
as my son
crawled naked on the floor
in the sunlight
Now
he drives a red car and plays football,
thinks of college

My day's are numbered
My mother is dead
Winter is already here

What rule am I breaking
to be so full of life?

Coetzee

I'm trying to figure out what it is about certain fictional voices that grab me. I know I'm interested in "close in" first person narrators, but the danger is always, once you're inside this person, do you want to be there?

Usually, I don't, though it's the exceptions that interest me.

I'm reading J. M. Coetzee's SLOW MAN now, and not quite finished, so it's a odd time to be writing about it. But the plot doesn't matter. It's nearly all about voice, I'd say even more so than character. What is special about the voice? First I'll tell you what the voice reminds me of and then other voices that are similar but not as compelling.

The voice of Paul Reyment in SLOW MAN is very similar to the main character in Iris Murdoch's novel THE SEA, THE SEA. They are both older, white, Brit (empire), educated, artistic, lonely men who have strong feelings, clear thoughts, but don't hold to a certain philosophical structure (say, Christianity or leftist politics) that color everything. They are intelligent freelancers in life, aware that, given their age, it is highly unlikely that they will ever get answers to the philosophical questions they continue to ask (mostly of themselves) and nearly all the time.

The voice is similar to Philip Roth's (EXIT GHOST) voices and Richard Ford (INDEPENDANCE DAY, and THE LAY OF THE LAND), but much more compelling for me. Roth is irascable, smart, and cranky. Ford is opinionated, human, realistic, and ultimately boring. Neither Roth nor Ford, though highly intelligent, I would call philosophical novelists. A philosophical novelist (or character voice) is one that questions the meaning of life more or less constantly at the same time he or she goes through their series of mishaps that constitute a plot. Some of Graham Greene's characters have this philosophical approach, though it's often in the context of a worldview (shared by many around him) that is crumbling, a worldview that once attempted to explain life. So his becomes a cynical voice--life has no meaning, at least not in THAT (old) sense. Paul Rayment (SLOW MAN) is always questioning at every moment -- what does that mean? is that all there is to (human) life? It might sound irritating, and it is when the narrator is too young-- Holden Caulfield being an exception there. When an older person still questions the meaning of life without falling completely into victimhoood (why did my kids and wife and etc. abandon me?) I find it interesting. The character who steps back, watches his life while remaining totally in it (not "alienated" or depressed) is interesting to me. It's a person who I want to follow. I enjoy seeing/hearing them interact with the mundane events tossed more or less randomly at them.

The device in SLOW MAN of adding a character from an earlier novel (which, oddly, I haven't read yet), Elizabeth Costello, creates a very mild form of magical realism. The characters, Paul and Elizabeth, seem pushed together by (almost) mystical forces but in world where no one particularly believes such mystical forces are possible.

All the voices, Roth, Ford and Coetzee deal with love, unrequited mostly, but only in Coetzee is the yearning elevated to what the Tibetan Buddhist Pema Chodran calls "unrequited love is the heart of the world." Bummer. Can this be true? Only Coetzee's characters (in a completely non-religious style) could contemplate this as a visceral possibility. In other words, like the song Blasphemous Rumors by Depeche Mode, "I think that god's got a sick sense of humor... and when I die, I expect to find him laughing."
Either that or reading Coetzee.