Summer notes

Cheever by Blake Bailey. This is a fine and detailed biography of the American writer, John Cheever (1912-1982) published in 2009. And now for some thoughts on Cheever's life and writing:
Cheever’s prose has a tartness that keeps you going; velocity and daring and urgency come to mind. You don’t wonder when you read his work, “What in the hell are these people doing here,” or “Why am I reading this,” or “Why was this written?” There is a great canniness and knowing in his work. A sense of different language registers and the clash between the intimate and the social always coming to the surface. I admire all his stories and novels greatly.

About Cheever's life, as revealed by Bailey, you are not shocked by the concupiscence but the harrowing self-pity and verbal and annotated outcries give pause. He had wonderful kids, a beautiful wife, for starters. He had unique accomplishments: he could have marshaled his own writing classes, he could have called any number of shots but so often (in his journals) he sidelines himself. Did he never pick up a book? Of course but you get the sense that absolutely nothing was steady with the man.
(photo: Nancy Campton)
The absolute childishness and lack of self-knowledge he reveals in his journals is beyond belief. The alcoholism is grotesque. Did he have no sense of the stage he had been granted? Three times on the covers of national magazines? Whence comes the roaring self-pity? He escaped hard bloody fighting during WWII; his regiment was practically wiped out after D-Day. Does that count for nothing? How about a bit of gratitude for that? Yes, of course Cheever writes about the quest for gratitude, love, valor, etc., but still there is an unbounded amount of sheer jawing and complaining across an otherwise valiant life.

Looking at Cheever’s torrent of introspection (The Journals) and afterwards you think: wait a minute. Shouldn’t all this ego-mass be injected into the novels and stories for God’s sake? There is great height and depth here. Do not hide your light under a bushel! It is a torrent after all. Not much gets by him, description, melancholy observation, smells, sound, atmospherics, making odd connections with simple stating or describing what he sees. Crows taking off from a roof, a woman buying a small bag of potatoes in front of him at the line in the grocery store. These are the observations, simply, of a man alive to his lashes. At the same time, my God. What is going on here? His marriage sounds truly hideous; why would someone want to live this way? You admire the arc of his life the redeeming work towards the end (Falconer) but the tools of analysis fall clattering to the floor when you try to make sense of it. At the top of his game he had love and accomplishment, candor, interest, a free life, at least free of the restrictions 99% of humanity toils under, a vastly interesting life, if interest can be deemed a point. So in the end you have to ask, “What was all the shouting about?” Yes, there were kinks in the origins but what about the later adult encounters of success? Do they matter for nothing? (An aside: why repeat the coldness of your parents with your own kids?) He did what he wanted to do for the most part; after that it becomes hard to forgive his cruel, lashing-out preponderances. Yes, it is a sorry thing to read of the money hardships of Cheever. Even those that loved and supported him couldn’t see him through dry spells and into a future of productivity. Easier said than done, perhaps, but was it such a long shot to bet on John Cheever? I think not. (Looks like The New Yorker ripped him off for years paying out at low scale for short stories.) It is unbelievable the pecuniary nature of it all--even at these success levels.

Contrast with Anthony Burgess who just gets on with it and writes a novel, a near masterpiece, Earthly Powers, with a homosexual protagonist to boot (homosexuality, one of Cheever's life-long demons). You wish Cheever had done the same. It gets worse, the cover ups, the hetero-boasting strike you as extremely bizarre.

There's the life and then there is the writing...

Ken Kesey: love and regret

First the love: Ken Kesey was an outstanding writer; among those who so believe there are two schools: A) those who think it's OK that Kesey didn't write much after the two great early 1960s novels (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion) and B) those who don't think it's OK. I'm of the latter group.

I can still see my young self, sitting in the red chair in my parents basement laughing and stirring to the pages of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I loved McMurphy; I had grown up around guys like him in a northwest milltown. Wild and untamed guys you would meet at Herfy's Hamburger stand on a Friday night getting ready to ride their motorcycles on a whim to Montana (to see a girl). I also liked the group therapy scenes in which each characters' fears and nuttiness emerges; I like the descriptions of northwest scenery - finally the northwest makes it into some good fiction, I remember thinking at the time. On the downside I thought Kesey kept underdeveloped the black flunkys of the psyche ward. I don't think Kesey really knew what to do with them. Why were they black, specifically? This is never explained. They don't even work out as some kind of sociological symbol. I also thought nurse Ratched underdone. Kesey, the skillful writer, as he showed in his portraits of the mental patients, could have done more to humanize her. Kesey had the perfect narrator, the perfect point-of-view in the character of the Indian, Bromden, whose depth, stealth watchfulness, knowingness allowed Kesey to go in any direction, in or out of focus, sharp or clear.

Sometimes a Great Notion should have inspired a school of fiction, a movement, hundreds of imitators but it didn't. It was snubbed by the east coast literary establishment. It did not get the critical attention it deserved. When this, his 2nd novel, came out, I wonder if Kesey didn't see himself, sudenly, in the same postion as William Faulkner a few decades earlier: he had staked out original literary territory and now the only way he could win and maintain it would be to write up another brace of novels defending it, defining and clarifying (uggh, what a horrible term in this context) it--as, again, Faulkner did with his Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, after writing The Sound and the Fury. Whatever the case, Kesey did not follow Faulkner, and, in fact, declined to write novels at the level of Sometimes a Great Notion. Kesey went on to become a counter-cultural figure, a kind of old-time medicine man, promoting the use of LSD and marijuana as life enhancing enhancements for American leisure--and consciousness expansion. Kesey made a choice and I believe it was a literary choice; let's take a look.
...the regret
Yes, you can say that Kesey’s attitude and program expressed a kind of freedom that might have been lacking in 1950s America but only if you define freedom in the most delicate and parochial of terms. Yes, America was a conservative country up until the hippy freedoms took root: hair was cut short and interracial marriage was generally not accepted and divorce was a social stigma. I remember a classmate of mine whose parents got divorced and he ended up moving away from our tight knit community. Teen pregnancy was frowned upon. A large swath of social pathology was not approved of publicly. My grandmother had a very hard time telling me of the shame she experienced when her parents divorced when she was a little girl in the 1920s. It was almost like she was describing the Salem witch trials. So, yes, there did exist social stigma to overcome. But personal freedom was available if not widely and vastly seized; Kesey was out-of-line to make grand claims for his originality of intent or purpose. Yet, it is hard to measure his influence because it was so vast. Are we better with drugs rampant and a reflexive anti-authority bent to our society? Not so sure. For KK to try to make the case for his own repression is not right. His gifts were recognized and sought after. He could have called the shots in any number of areas of social or civic or academic life. That he chose a kind of fiction to live in is disappointing. He was never really repressed. He didn’t have the money drive? OK, but he could have stretched himself more. If drugs were such wonderful things then where are the results of that enlightenment? Every college campus dorm is a mini Acid-Test cum rock concert; the authorities have not kept up pace with the nihilism. KK would not admit that individual achievement is the cornerstone of identity, not communal drug romps. KK could have chosen his place within American letters at any phase. Instead he retreated--well, not a retreat--but what would you call it? He was a father and a family man. He responded to community and family needs. Even so, we wanted him to give more to literature than he did. Isn't that is the crux? Artists give and who are we to demand that they give give give? Still, it rankles to imagine KK backing away from such great gifts.

Saul Bellow is right: there is, was, or can be a tremendous power in writers: a power of style. Kesey is a case in point, as were the Beats, and perhaps Hemingway before him. They hit on something that young people responded to. Truth does not matter here. It is the style that counts and writers can be very powerful when it comes to style. Take KK: you have an abundantly talented young man. He can do with words what people enjoy tremendously. He innovates and sets his own course. He can do anything call the shots, as they say. Then he swerves off into gadfly areas of knowledge: drugs, communal happenings, rock festivals, etc. He imputes to things bigger problems than really exist (that is what the whole counter culture did). I would give anything to hear Kesey on Proust or Gaddis or Bellow, but I suspect Kesey didn't give a rip for any of these. Problem is, once you declare for writing or literature you do belong to a club or a guild. You can deny this (KK already belonged to a guild by virtue of his novels), but it is still true. You owe it to yourself--if not your fans--to explore the guild, i.e., the history of literature; I'd hate to see in Kesey another American re-inventing the wheel as is our wont.

Drugs, and the counter-culture that Kesey helped foment, were the hammers that opened fissures in US society. When you hear debates about Texas school board debating this or that aspect of America, gays, guns girls whatever this is the fissure that the 1960s opened. Problem is, America wasn't all that oppressive and the liberators were not all that liberating. There was a fascist strain in the counter culture movement; conformity reigned. These ideas were always present in western literature. Kesey claimed that Neil Cassidy lived the perfect novel, but that is an absurd statement if you believe the point of novels is that others can share in them and you communicate a literary experience...a reflection of a lived experience. Kesey, the supreme individualist, turned his back on the novel for communal pleasures of hanging out and drugs and partying and dressing up in jester’s uniform. It's not that he was so unconventional; when you really scratched at him he was totally conventional. For real non-convention you have to turn to Kesey's novels or to Nabokov and Lolita. And what of the dangers of LSD? It did twist people's minds around nothingness and panic. The guy should have booted all the hangers on out long before he did. Drugs turned into anarchy which turned into a power play. In the wider culture, the worst elements came forward and dominated the weaker. You could see this in Haight Ashbury when all the drug dealers moved in and dominated all the runaway kids, and then later when the motorcycle gangs got involved in the drug trade. Bad news all the way around. Look at the toll drugs took on a generation of musicians.

Anyone who didn't catch the strains of fascism in the hippie/drug/counterculture/new left was blind. Worst of all, the counter-culture didn't grasp any clear idea of who or what the enemy was. Hence, the childish bashing of all authority. If you're going to make great claims for the ultimate things: consciousness, peace, love and cosmic understanding you must also account for the lowest things: brutality, oppression, mass murder and that the counter-culture could not do. Drugs may liberate yes, but for Kesey, to still be beating the drug drum through the 1980s and 90s, when every drug was available to every frat house in the nation--was simply unbelievable. If the magic of drugs was ever going to make itself felt it would have made it felt by then. Move on is something Kesey declined to do; he always maintained that some authority out was to get you; with no recognition of how generous and benign America really could be.

Kesey, with a personal integrity and a personal magnetism intact over the decades, nonetheless got sidetracked by performance art, communal espri di corps, gatherings of the tribe, a kind of free-floating love and peace, this and that and a strange brew of New Age flimflam. What of individual striving and achievement? He wrote a novel cherishing those qualities and ideals. In a modern democracy identity comes through achievement.

As Eric Hoffer wrote, America not hospitable to mass movements of any sort, so much reinventing the wheel in Kesey's ideology; he knew he should have cleared out the trash and cut the bullshit long before; that there was no enlightenment to be had in dope and low-grade tricks and nonsense. He let go of that vision of himself as a young striver and competitive literary scholar...as if you don't get better with effort...what we missed...greedy as we are...

Coda: I read this over and it seems harder on Kesey than I meant it to be. I do love his writing and find his life fascinating to contemplate. He is gone now and we can only speculate or continue to speculate about his career--Kesey himself was one of the grand speculators about Ken Kesey. Surely the indifferent reception of Sometimes a Great Notion wounded him. He took time off to party and celebrate youthful confidence and defiance. The party, unfortunately or not, lasted a long time; and his advocacy of hallucinogins threw the seriousness of his artistic achievement out of whack. He lost a son in a horrible bus accident in 1984; no one, I believe, had any right to demand anything more from him after that.

Swann's Way: a remembrance, Proust, etc

Last week I finished reading Swann's Way, the first volume of Marcel Proust's long novel: In Search of Lost Time (or Remembrance of Things Past as translated by Scot-Moncrieff). As with anyone who makes this claim you must squint your eyes and counter with, "Really?" Yes; really. But now for the qualifiers. I liked the opening section where the narrator sketches in portraits of family and friends; I enjoyed the description of the small town and the cathedral and the moments of recall as he ate his 'madeleine' biscut (they sell these at Starbucks now). Then we come to the long description or disquisition or exploration of Swann and his frustrating pursiut of love object, Odette. There were large stretches, say 50 pages at a time that barely held my attention. My eyes skeetered across the page; they saw words; I can't say for sure if they read the words but the two--words and eyes--did meet. I held fast though; the narrator goes on and on, no gunshots, no kidnappings. Just parties and more parties and party commentary and comments about people who go to parties or people who don't go to parties. This is all a bit hard on the modern American raised on a plain menu of guns n' ammo. Things pick up when Swann realizes that Odette is messing around with other guys. One evening he creeps back around to her house after having taken his leave earlier; he becomes a Peeping Tom. His obssession with Odette bounces him from polite society which he comes to realize is really stupid society. Of course there is more, much more and in the end strict plot lines are not what it's about. I think it's about getting caught in the net of Proust's prose style which becomes a way of looking at life...
(more later)

Nabokov vs everybody

Vladimir Nabokov, the exceptional, vivacious, singular American-transplanted-Russian novelist, was always quick to put down a contemporary writer (or a past writer, too). Recently I read an interview with Nabokov where he calls Saul Bellow “mediocre.” An astonishing insult. Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March, to take one example, bristles with life embodied in many dozens of original lively phrasings and perceptions. In a vibrant American English. Or those first beautiful pages of Bellow's Mr. Sammler's Planet where he sketches the main character's personality while hinting at the book's themes to come. I want to ask Nabokov, “If you call Bellow mediocre then what are your terms for judging talent?” What are Nabokov’s terms of comparison? The Nabokovian aristocrat comes out, perhaps. Just call everything “vulgar” and keep moving; seems to be VN’s M.O. But wait. There’s more: don’t comment about anything related to current events; to highlight social or historical context is vulgar. In one interview (or other) Nabokov states that courage is one of the highest human qualities. But if you disallow social context you void a huge arena of life wherein courage might be tested and displayed. No? Yes? Perhaps the aristocratic view maintains that human life is 90% waste and silliness? Not worth bothering about; a strange, jarring way of looking at life, that. Nabokov would deny his contemporaries any creative scope--much as V.S. Naipaul would deny them scope from the opposite end: contemporary writers--according to Naipaul--are not sufficiently socially engaged. (Naipaul has written that modern novelists are too self-involved, too inwardly glamorous for necessary social observation. As a result, the modern novel is used up, nearly dead, etc.)

Politically, we understand that Nabokov despises dictatorships and loves freedom. OK. Do we then bury our natural human curiosity about how dictatorships--or freedom, for that matter--come about? The history and the why? How to reconcile a perceptive original writer with a man who seems to live behind closed doors—figuratively speaking. In America the social vibe is strong along with the family squall. Must we oppose history, society, family, school, with the hillsides of mountains in which to chase butterflies? Nabokov is famous for his batch deletions of contemporary writers. What rankles in VN’s dismissiveness (“vulgar mediocrities”) is his lack of recognition that literature is built from the group up; its nature and development rises from a necessary social swell: language is its raison d'etre. Or does literature fall off trees? Individual writers, of course, make all the difference but Nabokov’s refusal to acknowledge the social packing of literature and influence across generations, gnaws. Are writers not a family of sorts? Whatever; they can, nabokovly, be dealt with by the wave of the hand. Vulgar. Mediocre. Nabokov presents a very cool character that you suspect couldn’t stand to share the spotlight with anyone famous. Whence come the sniffy attacks upon other writers, so ungenerous and spiteful; it must be fun to mumble, “topical trash,” from on high at everything that comes along. But for better or worse human beings are topical. Well VN’s aristocratic disdain only goes so far. I respect his writerly illumination enough to think of a dozen human occupations I would like to have had him investigate; or scenarios wherein his genius would illuminate. How about a main character as butcher or surgeon or racing jockey or farmer? Instead, we get Mr. Middle-aged obsesseser over 12-year old girls, Mr. Pervert--over and over again. VN too high to bend into the trashy topical quotidian? Or maybe I am one of Nabokov's dull, plodding, philistine readers...I hope not.

John Cheever

A great way to take in the short stories (and novels too) of John Cheever: cassette tape or disc recording. Cheever's sentences are, when read out loud, bouyant, brisk and paced. They almost seem measured as though annotated musically. Indeed they carry a great musical charge. They give Cheever solid ground upon which to say wonderful, sometimes weird and marvelous or nearly hallucinogenic things.

(More to come...)