Back in the days of the Babylonian exile -- say around 550 bce -- one Jewish family is doing rather well. Joacim, a wealthy man and his very attractive wife, Susanna, live in a prominent house with a large garden through which a stream flows and in which large trees grow.
A couple of local elders, who, among other things, help sort out disputes in the community, often carry out their duties at Joacim's place and have become much taken with Susanna's charms. Joacim. to carry out his business, has to travel and is sometimes away from home.
Susanna likes to bath in the garden's stream and one day sends her servants inside to find some things she needs for her ablutions. Driven by lust, we are told, the two elders spot an opportunity, enter the garden and demand that Susanna have sex with them. If she refuses, they will claim to have caught her committing adultery with a younger man, who then escapes, and have her put to death, Susanna is told.
When it comes to #MeToo moments, it doesn't get much worse: toxic masculinity at the top of the patriarchy.
Susanna, an exceptionally virtuous woman who lives by the laws of Moses, refuses their advances, but with no one else around, knows the community will believe the elders and she will die.
Leaving readers in suspense for the moment, I will pause to note that George Fredric Handel put Susanna's story to music in 1749 -- one of his English language oratorios that were sung, but not acted. This was after Italian opera had fallen out of favor in London.
The very excellent baroque orchestra and choir of Manhattan's Trinity Church just put on a performance of "Susanna" in three parts, which readers can find here. Clicking on the appropriate links will stream the oratorio, part of an ongoing project by Trinity to perform all of Handel's bible-based oratorios, the most famous being "Messiah."
But back to Babylon.
Susanna is brought to public trial in which the respected elders serve as judges, prosecutors and witnesses. No one defends Susanna. (Joacim is not specifically mentioned in the Bible as being at the trial although Susanna's children and other family members are. In Handel's oratorio, he is depicted as hurrying home to his wife whom he believes is innocent, having heard news of the events from afar. "Is fair Susanna false? It ne're can be!" Joacim sings, with great conviction.)
But just as Susanna is condemned to death, a young man named Daniel steps forward and demands to question the elders separately as to what they saw in the garden. When they tell him different stories -- locating the alleged act of adultery under different trees -- the assembled public sees that they are lying and rather than Susanna, they are put to death. Just like that.
Daniel goes on to become one of the Bible's most important prophets.
The story of Susanna is a somewhat curious one as biblical scholar Jennifer A Glancy explains in her article "Susanna: Apocrypha." Interested readers can click on that link to discover why.
But what about Trinity Church's "Susanna?" I HIGHLY recommend it!
Wednesday, March 20, 2019
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
Why Bother, One Wonders
I've just published a new, illustrated edition of my novella "Manhattan Morning" for Amazon's Kindle reader. It can be read on one of Amazon's physical devices or on a smartphone or computer where the Kindle reader app has been installed.
Now the question is, should I attempt to market this book? I ask because without any marketing, the original version of "Manhattan Morning," still available without illustrations as a print-on-demand book, has, shall we say, remained "undiscovered."
It's an uphill battle and probably one that can't be won. That's because most people read only or largely within certain genres these days and "Manhattan Morning" falls into one that is -- not to put too fine a point on it -- highly unpopular.
Writers write, an online portal that offers courses and advice to creative writers, business writers and bloggers has a list of the 17 most popular genres of fiction and, no surprise, "literary fiction," which is where "Manhattan Morning" would fall, is dead last.
Here's what writers write has to say about it:
Now the question is, should I attempt to market this book? I ask because without any marketing, the original version of "Manhattan Morning," still available without illustrations as a print-on-demand book, has, shall we say, remained "undiscovered."
It's an uphill battle and probably one that can't be won. That's because most people read only or largely within certain genres these days and "Manhattan Morning" falls into one that is -- not to put too fine a point on it -- highly unpopular.
Writers write, an online portal that offers courses and advice to creative writers, business writers and bloggers has a list of the 17 most popular genres of fiction and, no surprise, "literary fiction," which is where "Manhattan Morning" would fall, is dead last.
Here's what writers write has to say about it:
"Literary Fiction. This genre focuses on the human condition and it is more concerned with the inner lives of characters and themes than plot. Literary fiction is difficult to sell and continues to decline in popularity."
I've also heard literary fiction -- the stuff that largely populates what is known as "the canon" -- described as a "niche category," read mostly perhaps by college students -- because they have to. Well, they certainly don't have to read "Manhattan Morning" and few if any will.
So what's REALLY popular these days? "Romance novels," which in contemporary form, are mostly written by women and heavily into explicit sex. The most well-known, of course, is "Fifty Shades of Grey," which has old over 125 million copies worldwide. Interestingly, it was first released as a self-published e-book.
The author is middle-aged woman named E.L. James and graphic sex is what the story, and its various sequels, are apparently all about.
According to an article entitled "The Business of the Romance Novel" published by JSTOR Daily,
romance novels "despite their decided lack of cultural clout" are what's driving publishing these days.
"The average income for a romance writer has tripled in the digital age—an especially impressive feat in the age that finds writers of other genres struggling," the article said.
According to JSTOR, the romance sector had its ups and downs until 1972 when a woman named Kathleen E. Woodiwiss published a book considered to be the first modern "bodice ripper" -- "The Flame and the Flower." It had what was considered an overtly sexual cover and graphic, exotic sex scenes that occurred early in the book. Eventually it sold over 2.5 million copies.
And so it went from there. As we know, sex sells.
What about "Manhattan Morning?" Does it have any sex and could it squeeze into the romance genre? Yes, it does have sex -- possibly a bit exotic -- but not explicit. No bodices are ripped much less anything more graphic than that. And it isn't written by a woman, which probably no doubt undermines its credibility when it comes to romance and what that means.
So I'm afraid it will have to languish as "literary fiction."
I'll keep you posted as to the results of any marketing attempts.
Sunday, February 10, 2019
Considering Zadie Smith and her Novel "White Teeth"
According to an article in The Guardian, Zadie Smith recently reflected on her debut novel, "White Teeth," which quickly became a best seller after it was published in 2000 and subsequently won a number of awards.
The book, she said, "had been given an easy ride by the white critics because [its characters] were mostly brown." And, of course, Smith herself is a woman of color -- the daughter of an English father and a Jamaican mother -- just like one of the lead characters in "White Teeth." And the traditionally very white male-dominated Anglo/American publishing industry was, and is, under pressure to be more inclusive.
"It had all sort of mistakes, I'm sure," Smith said, referring to the book in question.
And on another occasion, Smith said: "I have a very messy and chaotic mind."
I mention these comments because I just finished reading "White Teeth." While this is certainly a memorable work by a writer with impressive powers of observation and an exceptional ability to write dialect, it is also a rather messy novel with room for improvement.
With respect to Smith's ability to write dialect, in my view the novel contains too much of a good thing -- far to much in some instances. Smith's characters often talk a lot while saying very little. That's the sort of people they are, she would undoubtedly argue, but as a reader I would tell her: "I got that message loud and clear earlier on." I found myself flipping through pages from time to time and I'm someone who generally carefully reads prose with a pen in my hand.
As for messy, this is a book in which one reads a lot about a particular character only to have him or her then disappear, often for extended periods. The book opens with a great deal about Archie Jones, leading one to believe he is going to be one of the main characters. As it turns out, he really isn't. Other characters, such as the wife of the controversial scientist Marcus Chalfen, seem to loom very large at one point, only to pretty much just peter out.
Topics, too, come and go without much in the way of resolution, with the exception of Smith's main topic: the lack of identity felt by immigrants, particularly those of color in a traditionally white nation, and mixed-race people who are also of color.
"But Irie (Smith's mixed-race protagonist) didn't know she was fine. There was England, a gigantic mirror, and there was Irie, without reflection. A stranger in a stranger land."
A couple pages later:
"And underneath it all, there remained an ever-present anger and hurt, the feeling of belonging nowhere that comes to people who belong everywhere."
And this:
"But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears -- dissolution, disappearance."
Or:
"Millat (one of an immigrant family's twin sons) was neither one thing nor the other, this or that, Muslim or Christian, Englishman or Bengali; he lived for the in between, he lived up to his middle name, Zulfikar, the clashing of two swords."
And so it goes -- and in the process of all this, Smith's characters, who in some respects seem richly drawn, end up appearing to be little more than types or caricatures crafted to make a certain point. One rarely has a feeling of being inside of them, of really understanding their feelings and motivations. Instead, one is forced to rely on what Smith's all-seeing narrator wants to tell us, sometimes to make a point and at other times for purposes that aren't all that clear.
Why be so critical when there is much to admire about Smith?
We are in a period where "the canon" -- the list of books thought to represent the best of what culture has to offer (Western culture, that is) -- is under reconsideration and Zadie Smith is a name one hears mentioned as where things should be going. Read "White Teeth" and decide for yourself.
The book, she said, "had been given an easy ride by the white critics because [its characters] were mostly brown." And, of course, Smith herself is a woman of color -- the daughter of an English father and a Jamaican mother -- just like one of the lead characters in "White Teeth." And the traditionally very white male-dominated Anglo/American publishing industry was, and is, under pressure to be more inclusive.
"It had all sort of mistakes, I'm sure," Smith said, referring to the book in question.
And on another occasion, Smith said: "I have a very messy and chaotic mind."
I mention these comments because I just finished reading "White Teeth." While this is certainly a memorable work by a writer with impressive powers of observation and an exceptional ability to write dialect, it is also a rather messy novel with room for improvement.
With respect to Smith's ability to write dialect, in my view the novel contains too much of a good thing -- far to much in some instances. Smith's characters often talk a lot while saying very little. That's the sort of people they are, she would undoubtedly argue, but as a reader I would tell her: "I got that message loud and clear earlier on." I found myself flipping through pages from time to time and I'm someone who generally carefully reads prose with a pen in my hand.
As for messy, this is a book in which one reads a lot about a particular character only to have him or her then disappear, often for extended periods. The book opens with a great deal about Archie Jones, leading one to believe he is going to be one of the main characters. As it turns out, he really isn't. Other characters, such as the wife of the controversial scientist Marcus Chalfen, seem to loom very large at one point, only to pretty much just peter out.
Topics, too, come and go without much in the way of resolution, with the exception of Smith's main topic: the lack of identity felt by immigrants, particularly those of color in a traditionally white nation, and mixed-race people who are also of color.
"But Irie (Smith's mixed-race protagonist) didn't know she was fine. There was England, a gigantic mirror, and there was Irie, without reflection. A stranger in a stranger land."
A couple pages later:
"And underneath it all, there remained an ever-present anger and hurt, the feeling of belonging nowhere that comes to people who belong everywhere."
And this:
"But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears -- dissolution, disappearance."
Or:
"Millat (one of an immigrant family's twin sons) was neither one thing nor the other, this or that, Muslim or Christian, Englishman or Bengali; he lived for the in between, he lived up to his middle name, Zulfikar, the clashing of two swords."
And so it goes -- and in the process of all this, Smith's characters, who in some respects seem richly drawn, end up appearing to be little more than types or caricatures crafted to make a certain point. One rarely has a feeling of being inside of them, of really understanding their feelings and motivations. Instead, one is forced to rely on what Smith's all-seeing narrator wants to tell us, sometimes to make a point and at other times for purposes that aren't all that clear.
Why be so critical when there is much to admire about Smith?
We are in a period where "the canon" -- the list of books thought to represent the best of what culture has to offer (Western culture, that is) -- is under reconsideration and Zadie Smith is a name one hears mentioned as where things should be going. Read "White Teeth" and decide for yourself.
Saturday, February 9, 2019
"A Doll's House" Resonates in the Opening of "White Teeth"
Back in 1879, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen shocked society with his play "A Doll's House," in which one of the chief characters, Nora Helmer, walks out not just on her husband, but on their three young children as well.
The idea that a woman could do such a thing provoked what James McFarlane, in an introduction to four of Ibsen's plays, described as "a storm of outraged controversy that penetrated far beyond the confines of the theater proper into the leader (opinion) columns of the Western press and the drawing rooms of polite society."
What prompted Nora's exit? The realization that her husband, Torvald, had put his "honor," which is to say his standing in society, above his love for her. And by implication, since her children are the product of a union that was in her view not a real marriage, they are not hers.
This was so transgressive that, much to his disgust, Ibsen was forced to provide a different ending for German theaters. In that ending, while Nora wants to leave her husband, she realizes she can't leave her children and the play ends with Torvald apparently then believing reconciliation is possible.
Over 100 years later, Zadie Smith's much-praised first novel, "White Teeth," opens with one of her main characters, Archie Jones, attempting suicide because his wife Ophelia recently divorced him.
Why is this such a humiliation for Archie?
"Generally," Smith's unnamed narrator tells us, "women can't do this, but men retain the ancient ability to leave a family and a past."
The idea that a woman could do such a thing provoked what James McFarlane, in an introduction to four of Ibsen's plays, described as "a storm of outraged controversy that penetrated far beyond the confines of the theater proper into the leader (opinion) columns of the Western press and the drawing rooms of polite society."
What prompted Nora's exit? The realization that her husband, Torvald, had put his "honor," which is to say his standing in society, above his love for her. And by implication, since her children are the product of a union that was in her view not a real marriage, they are not hers.
This was so transgressive that, much to his disgust, Ibsen was forced to provide a different ending for German theaters. In that ending, while Nora wants to leave her husband, she realizes she can't leave her children and the play ends with Torvald apparently then believing reconciliation is possible.
Over 100 years later, Zadie Smith's much-praised first novel, "White Teeth," opens with one of her main characters, Archie Jones, attempting suicide because his wife Ophelia recently divorced him.
Why is this such a humiliation for Archie?
"Generally," Smith's unnamed narrator tells us, "women can't do this, but men retain the ancient ability to leave a family and a past."
Sunday, January 27, 2019
Why Most Fiction Constitutes a Bunch of "Me Too" Books
Have you ever had the feeling that most of contemporary fiction is little more than a bunch of "me too" books? Where everyone seems to be writing more or less the same thing in any given genre?
If you're an author, and would like to write something different, in most cases, you can forget it, or publish it yourself and hope to heck you are far better at marketing than you are at writing, no matter how good a writer you are.
My basis for saying this is an article called "Comping White" in a recent issue of the "Los Angeles Review of Books," by Laura B. McGrath.
Of course the characters have different names and different characteristics and the plots have different twists, but fundamentally the differences are not that great. Perhaps you like that: since you bought and presumably read a particular book, publishers are pretty sure your would like another that is very similar, and based on sales, that seems to be the case.
If you're an author, and would like to write something different, in most cases, you can forget it, or publish it yourself and hope to heck you are far better at marketing than you are at writing, no matter how good a writer you are.
My basis for saying this is an article called "Comping White" in a recent issue of the "Los Angeles Review of Books," by Laura B. McGrath.
While Ms McGrath was trying to determine why the American publishing industry remains dominated by white folks, her extensive study is actually just as interesting from a different perspective. Ms McGrath, by the way, is an associate director of the Stanford University Literary Lab, a research collective that applies computational criticism, in all its forms, to the study of literature. I couldn't find a definition of "computational criticism" on the Lab's website, but it appears to involve counting things up and then drawing certain conclusions, much easier to do in the digital world than previously.
Ms McGrath apparently did a great deal of counting. "The question of counting, and who counts, in literature is an important one to me," she said, conflating two meanings of the word "count."
McGrath focused on publishers' seasonal catalogs from 2013 through 2019 to figure out that has been going on in the industry, extracting in the process "metadata about 10,220 new fiction releases."
What she discovered, with the help of one editor, is that what matters most when it comes to deciding whether or not to publish a new book is whether it is comparable to existing, successful titles. In other words, is it "me too" fiction?
"The logic is straightforward: Book A (a new title) is similar to Book B (an already published title). Because Book B sold so many copies and made so much money, we can assume that Book A will also sell so many copies and make so much money. Based on these projections, editors determine if they should pre-empt, bid, or pass on a title, and how much they should pay in an author advance. Above all, comps are conservative. They manage expectations, and are designed to predict as safe a bet as possible. They are built on the idea that if it worked before, it will work again." So says McGrath in her LA Review of Books article.
The nature of a particular author is also a significant factor in all of this, the article says.
“You get into the type of author that somebody is, and the type of audience that they’re reaching more than you do content," McGrath quotes another editor as telling her. In other words, if you've written a successful book, it doesn't much matter how good what you next write is. You'll get published again. This is called "author-audience alignment." And, well, your first book probably was a success because it copied the approach of a book that was previously successful.
"Comps perpetuate the status quo, creating a rigid process of acquisition without much room for individual choice or advocacy," McGrath said, terming prevailing publishing industry practices "basically systems of exclusion." Her point is that such practices help keep the industry racially white; my point is that even if you are white (as I am), if you don't want to write a "me too" book, forget it.
"Manhattan Morning," by the way, is not a "me too" title, and now you know what that means. You haven't read it!
Saturday, January 26, 2019
Thom Browne, a Man of the Hour, Deconstructs Masculinity
Well, this isn't about fiction, but it is very topical.
Traditional masculinity, often characterized as "toxic masculinity," is under assault as never before, in large part as a result of the Me Too Movement. One reads piece after piece these days about how men, and society as a whole, needs to re-examine and re-work just what it means to be a male.
Enter American fashion designer Thom Browne with his latest menswear runway show in Paris. (Click on that link to get a look).
Basically what Browne did this time around was quite literally deconstruct tradition menswear and sew various pieces back together to create new looks. While some commentators described these as "dresses" or "gowns," they look to me more like "un-bifurcated garments." But the point seems obvious: men need to take themselves apart and put themselves back together in a different form in order to successfully adapt to social change.
But what about Browne himself? He seems stuck in the mold of wearing mostly very traditional, precisely tailored men's suits and related garments.
So the message remains at best a mixed one.
Traditional masculinity, often characterized as "toxic masculinity," is under assault as never before, in large part as a result of the Me Too Movement. One reads piece after piece these days about how men, and society as a whole, needs to re-examine and re-work just what it means to be a male.
Enter American fashion designer Thom Browne with his latest menswear runway show in Paris. (Click on that link to get a look).
Basically what Browne did this time around was quite literally deconstruct tradition menswear and sew various pieces back together to create new looks. While some commentators described these as "dresses" or "gowns," they look to me more like "un-bifurcated garments." But the point seems obvious: men need to take themselves apart and put themselves back together in a different form in order to successfully adapt to social change.
But what about Browne himself? He seems stuck in the mold of wearing mostly very traditional, precisely tailored men's suits and related garments.
So the message remains at best a mixed one.
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
Elena Ferrante's Exceptionally Dark View of Humanity
The popular Italian writer known as Elena Ferrante has an exceptionally dark view of the human condition and of society, believing, among other things, that violence is "an essential trait of the human animal."
Violence in her view stems from nature rather than nurture, or to put the world nurture another way, from how societies happen to be organized. And each generation, she believes, is obligated to rediscover and verify the horrors of society, only to also discover their impotence to correct them.
Ferrante, which is a pen name, is most famously the author of four books known as "The Neapolitan Quartet," but she also earlier published three other novels. While she has declined to reveal her real identity or appear as Elena Ferrante in public, she has provided written answers to many questions and a great number of these have been collected in a book called "Frantumaglia," and subtitled "A Writer's Journey."
As a representative of her publisher explains: "The little problem was that, having promised the first publishers to whom we sold the rights that Elena would do an interview for each of those countries, the author suddenly found herself having to respond to some forty interviews, from all over the world."
In this post, I'm going to cherry pick her responses to various questions, starting with one from 2003 and proceeding forward in time.
Asked whether her fiction was undergoing a change after she had described the arrogance and insolence of a particular character and compared the character to the Italian politician Silvio Berlusconi, Ferrante replied as follows:
"I don't know, I hope not. Let's say that I am interested in understanding the fact that everything in life is turning into a show, draining the very concept of citizenship. I'm also struck by how the person is more and more unhappily dedicated to becoming a personage. And it frightens me that a classical effect of fiction -- the suspension of disbelief -- is becoming an instrument of political domination in the very heart of democracies."
Then, in 2006, a reader asked Ferrante how would she explain what the reader viewed as an increase in violence in Naples. Ferrante's response was:
"In Naples nothing more and nothing less is happening than what has happened for decades: an increasingly vast and well articulated intertwining of the illegal and the legal. The new fact isn't the explosion of violence, but how the city, with it's ancient problems, is being traversed by the world and is spreading through the world."
Then, at one point in 2014, Ferrante was asked to comment on the then-current state of Italy. Here is what she said:
"Italy is an extraordinary country, but it has been made completely ordinary by the permanent confusion between legality and illegality, between the common good and private interest. This confusion, concealed behind verbose self-promotion of all kinds, runs through criminal organizations as well as political parties, government bureaucracies and all social classes." That makes it difficult, she went to say, to be a truly good Italian, but the country does still have some excellent citizens.
Asked again, in 2015, about violence in Southern Italy, Ferrante replied:
"Violence is an essential trait of the human animal and it's always lying in wait, everywhere even in your marvelous country [Norway]. The perpetual problem is how to keep it under control." Later in the same interview, she declared that "our fundamental rights have to be won over and over again."
Again in 2015, Ferrante is asked why she finds the theme of "erasure" -- erasing oneself, or being erased by others; disappearing or being disappeared -- so compelling. The answer, in part:
"Every day we find ourselves faced with the intolerable, and no promise of utopia -- whether it be political, religious or scientific -- is capable of calming us. Each generation is obliged to verify this horror anew for itself, and to discover that it is impotent."
Later in the same year, Ferrante is asked, in effect, why she doesn't write more optimistic stories.
"I'm always surprised," she responds, "when somebody points out as a flaw the fact that my stories contain no possibility of transcendence."
By way of explanation she says: "Since the age of 15, I haven't believed in the kingdom of any God, in Heaven or on earth -- in fact, wherever you place it, it seems dangerous to me." But at the same time, she says, she believes most of the concepts we work with have a theological origin and that she is comforted stories than emerge through horror to redemption. "But I tried to write a story like that, long ago, and I discovered that I didn't believe in it. … I cling to those that are painful, those that arise from a profound crisis of all our illusions."
"Human beings are extremely violent animals, and the violence they are always ready to use in order to impose their own eternal, salvific life vest, while shattering those of others, is frightening."
Ferrante's stories are full of people quarreling and on that topic she sees a quarrel as a rhetorical device that metaphorically represents a suspension between two sides [or states of being], "and it effectively summarizes the time we live in."
Continuing … "With the concept of class consciousness and class conflict defeated, the poor, the desperate, whose wealth consists only of angry words, are kept, by means of words, on the threshold -- between the degrading explosion, -- which makes them animals, and the liberating one, which humanizes and initiates a sort of purification. But in reality, the threshold is continuously breached, it becomes a bloodshed, a bloody war among the poor. Or it leads to acquiescence, to subservience of the weak toward the strong, to opportunism."
Asked her view of the last 40 years of the 20th century, which in the view of one questioner, were a favorable period relative to the "violent widening of gap between rich and poor" in the early years of the current century, Ferrante responded as follows:
"History and stories are written from the balcony of the present, looking out on the electrical storm of the past; that is to say there is nothing more unstable than the past. The past, in its indeterminacy, presents either through the filter of nostalgia or through the filter of preliminary impressions. I don't love nostalgia; it leads us to ignore individual sufferings, large pockets of misery, cultural and civil poverty, widespread corruption, regression after minimal and illusionary progress. I prefer acquisition to acts. The forty years you cite were in reality very difficult and painful for those who started from a position of disadvantage. And by disadvantage, I also mean, above all, being a woman. Not only that, starting in the seventies, the masses that endured inhuman sacrifices to climb a few rungs up the social ladder were already experiencing the torments of defeat, as were their children. Not to mention a sort of latent civil war; so called world peace, always at risk; and the beginnings of the most devastating technological revolutions, which paralleled one of the most devastating deconstructions of the old political and economic order. The new fact is not that the millennium begins with the widening of the gap between rich and poor -- that is a given. The new fact is that the poor no longer have any horizons in life besides the capitalist system, or any horizons for redemption besides religion."
Asked about the family, Ferrante responds:
"The family is violent in itself, as is everything that is based on blood ties -- that is to say ties we don't choose, ties that impose on us responsibility for the other even if we never chose to take it on. … Principally, it's hard to accept that bad feelings are provoked not only by the stranger, the rival -- the one who is on the other shore of 'our' body of water, who is not on our soil and does not share our blood -- but, perhaps with even greater compulsion, by those who are close to us."
What is at the bottom of this seemingly hopeless situation? Once again we are back to Pogo and his observation that "we have met the enemy and he is us."
"What corrupts us is the passion for ourselves, the urgent need for our own primacy," Ferrante says.
Welcome to the "it's-all-about-me" culture where we are all supposed to create, develop and ultimately monetize our own personal "brand." Collective approaches to betterment are passé.
Violence in her view stems from nature rather than nurture, or to put the world nurture another way, from how societies happen to be organized. And each generation, she believes, is obligated to rediscover and verify the horrors of society, only to also discover their impotence to correct them.
Ferrante, which is a pen name, is most famously the author of four books known as "The Neapolitan Quartet," but she also earlier published three other novels. While she has declined to reveal her real identity or appear as Elena Ferrante in public, she has provided written answers to many questions and a great number of these have been collected in a book called "Frantumaglia," and subtitled "A Writer's Journey."
As a representative of her publisher explains: "The little problem was that, having promised the first publishers to whom we sold the rights that Elena would do an interview for each of those countries, the author suddenly found herself having to respond to some forty interviews, from all over the world."
In this post, I'm going to cherry pick her responses to various questions, starting with one from 2003 and proceeding forward in time.
Asked whether her fiction was undergoing a change after she had described the arrogance and insolence of a particular character and compared the character to the Italian politician Silvio Berlusconi, Ferrante replied as follows:
"I don't know, I hope not. Let's say that I am interested in understanding the fact that everything in life is turning into a show, draining the very concept of citizenship. I'm also struck by how the person is more and more unhappily dedicated to becoming a personage. And it frightens me that a classical effect of fiction -- the suspension of disbelief -- is becoming an instrument of political domination in the very heart of democracies."
Then, in 2006, a reader asked Ferrante how would she explain what the reader viewed as an increase in violence in Naples. Ferrante's response was:
"In Naples nothing more and nothing less is happening than what has happened for decades: an increasingly vast and well articulated intertwining of the illegal and the legal. The new fact isn't the explosion of violence, but how the city, with it's ancient problems, is being traversed by the world and is spreading through the world."
Then, at one point in 2014, Ferrante was asked to comment on the then-current state of Italy. Here is what she said:
"Italy is an extraordinary country, but it has been made completely ordinary by the permanent confusion between legality and illegality, between the common good and private interest. This confusion, concealed behind verbose self-promotion of all kinds, runs through criminal organizations as well as political parties, government bureaucracies and all social classes." That makes it difficult, she went to say, to be a truly good Italian, but the country does still have some excellent citizens.
Asked again, in 2015, about violence in Southern Italy, Ferrante replied:
"Violence is an essential trait of the human animal and it's always lying in wait, everywhere even in your marvelous country [Norway]. The perpetual problem is how to keep it under control." Later in the same interview, she declared that "our fundamental rights have to be won over and over again."
Again in 2015, Ferrante is asked why she finds the theme of "erasure" -- erasing oneself, or being erased by others; disappearing or being disappeared -- so compelling. The answer, in part:
"Every day we find ourselves faced with the intolerable, and no promise of utopia -- whether it be political, religious or scientific -- is capable of calming us. Each generation is obliged to verify this horror anew for itself, and to discover that it is impotent."
Later in the same year, Ferrante is asked, in effect, why she doesn't write more optimistic stories.
"I'm always surprised," she responds, "when somebody points out as a flaw the fact that my stories contain no possibility of transcendence."
By way of explanation she says: "Since the age of 15, I haven't believed in the kingdom of any God, in Heaven or on earth -- in fact, wherever you place it, it seems dangerous to me." But at the same time, she says, she believes most of the concepts we work with have a theological origin and that she is comforted stories than emerge through horror to redemption. "But I tried to write a story like that, long ago, and I discovered that I didn't believe in it. … I cling to those that are painful, those that arise from a profound crisis of all our illusions."
"Human beings are extremely violent animals, and the violence they are always ready to use in order to impose their own eternal, salvific life vest, while shattering those of others, is frightening."
Ferrante's stories are full of people quarreling and on that topic she sees a quarrel as a rhetorical device that metaphorically represents a suspension between two sides [or states of being], "and it effectively summarizes the time we live in."
Continuing … "With the concept of class consciousness and class conflict defeated, the poor, the desperate, whose wealth consists only of angry words, are kept, by means of words, on the threshold -- between the degrading explosion, -- which makes them animals, and the liberating one, which humanizes and initiates a sort of purification. But in reality, the threshold is continuously breached, it becomes a bloodshed, a bloody war among the poor. Or it leads to acquiescence, to subservience of the weak toward the strong, to opportunism."
Asked her view of the last 40 years of the 20th century, which in the view of one questioner, were a favorable period relative to the "violent widening of gap between rich and poor" in the early years of the current century, Ferrante responded as follows:
"History and stories are written from the balcony of the present, looking out on the electrical storm of the past; that is to say there is nothing more unstable than the past. The past, in its indeterminacy, presents either through the filter of nostalgia or through the filter of preliminary impressions. I don't love nostalgia; it leads us to ignore individual sufferings, large pockets of misery, cultural and civil poverty, widespread corruption, regression after minimal and illusionary progress. I prefer acquisition to acts. The forty years you cite were in reality very difficult and painful for those who started from a position of disadvantage. And by disadvantage, I also mean, above all, being a woman. Not only that, starting in the seventies, the masses that endured inhuman sacrifices to climb a few rungs up the social ladder were already experiencing the torments of defeat, as were their children. Not to mention a sort of latent civil war; so called world peace, always at risk; and the beginnings of the most devastating technological revolutions, which paralleled one of the most devastating deconstructions of the old political and economic order. The new fact is not that the millennium begins with the widening of the gap between rich and poor -- that is a given. The new fact is that the poor no longer have any horizons in life besides the capitalist system, or any horizons for redemption besides religion."
Asked about the family, Ferrante responds:
"The family is violent in itself, as is everything that is based on blood ties -- that is to say ties we don't choose, ties that impose on us responsibility for the other even if we never chose to take it on. … Principally, it's hard to accept that bad feelings are provoked not only by the stranger, the rival -- the one who is on the other shore of 'our' body of water, who is not on our soil and does not share our blood -- but, perhaps with even greater compulsion, by those who are close to us."
What is at the bottom of this seemingly hopeless situation? Once again we are back to Pogo and his observation that "we have met the enemy and he is us."
"What corrupts us is the passion for ourselves, the urgent need for our own primacy," Ferrante says.
Welcome to the "it's-all-about-me" culture where we are all supposed to create, develop and ultimately monetize our own personal "brand." Collective approaches to betterment are passé.
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