Writing What I Know

An old friend commented on a chapter from the novel I'm currently publishing to the web, Learning to Limbo. He said: "How do you come up with this stuff? It's amazing!"

"I lived it," I replied. And it's true. Much of Learning to Limbo follows Mark Twain's advice to "write what you know."

Such advice might seem sorta stupid. How can we write about things we don't know, right? On the flip side, there's this quote from P.J. O'Rourke:

“Creative writing teachers should be purged until every last instructor who has uttered  the words 'Write what you know' is confined to a labor camp.   Please, talented scribblers, write what you don’t. The blind guy with the funny little harp who composed The Iliad, how much combat do you think he saw?”

(O' Rourke's example isn't the best: Homer was more of a compiler and adorner of campfire stories that had been around for centuries than he was an originator of those stories.)

One of my favorite novelists, Saul Bellow, based much of his fiction on real life experience. With the exception of  Henderson The Rain King, (Bellow's hilarious meditation on anthroposophy), Bellow's novels follow the arc of his own life, from the youthful Adventures of Augie March, into middle age with Herzog (Bellow really was cuckolded by his wife and best friend), on to his 60s with Humboldt's Gift (he really did have a friendship with a poet, Delmore Schwartz, whose life closely mirrored the character of Humboldt Von Fleischer). Even Otto Sammler is a mouthpiece for Bellow's philosophy in his later years.

John Irving fans know that he tends to include much of what he knows – wrestling, New England, Vienna, private schools like Exeter, his experience as a professional creative person (writer, but also actor, organist, children's book author etc.) – in his novels. Sometimes reading an Irving novel is like spending a week at his summer house going through family photo albums, over and over. To some, Irving may be a case of "write what you know" run amok. 

I'm not nor ever will be in Bellow's or Irving's league. In fact, it wasn't until I was 45 that I began to conjure real stories, often inspired by events in dreams and blended with my own experience. 

Hack

In my first published novel, Hack, I put a portion of myself, and my life, into the body of my best friend, the late Ted O' Connell, and turned him into an unemployed landscape painter named Henry Griffin. I do, in fact, paint landscapes, often while listening to Miles Davis's Bitches Brew. 

What else did I write about in Hack that I knew, or was actually true in one form or another?

I really did have comforting dreams about my childhood sweetheart, who appeared to me as sort of an angel. I used her physical characteristics for Hadley Scofield, but what I knew of her adult personality didn't give me enough to go on, so I embellished. We really did play with Sherri Lewis puppets in first grade: Lamb Chop and Charlie Horse, and we refer to each other by those names to this day. 

Mr. San Anselmo is a real person, though I haven't seen him in years. His real name is Mark. And all Marinites should know that the character of Razor Rick Morgan is a blend of George Lucas and Metallica's Kurt Hammet, or one of those other emperors of Lucas Valley. 

I have never driven a Fat Boy or even been on a Harley, but the Hadley Schofield character really did race motorcycles in her youth.  We did drop Orange Sunshine at Alpine Dam, several times. And I'm told that a spinet was dumped off the damn into the reservoir in the 70s. 

Russell Chatham is a real painter, though I don't know if there's an exhibit at the Oakland Museum that's dedicated to California turn-of-the-century plein aire painters, or if E. Charlton Fortune's work hangs there. 

The only access to the cabins on Pinecrest Lake is by boat, or footpath. It is true that women's menstrual odors infuriate bears. Also, there is a golf resort in Tubac, AZ, which I've played several times. It is where the first half of the movie Tin Cup was filmed. 

I really did have a bisexual girlfriend, once – a Francophile – though I can't claim to have participated in a "frisky three-way." And there was an art gallery on San Anselmo Ave. next to Ongaro's Plumbing: The Bradford Gallery. 

And the rest of it: Karl, Rex Wilcox, Cyril, Herte, Barbara Bassett, etc. is all imaginary, though based in varying degrees on people I know or have seen in the movies. The plot is entirely imagined as well, though I admit to borrowing the disguise idea from the movie, Mrs. Doubtfire (RIP RW).

Learning to Limbo

Unlike Hack, most of the setup plot in Learning to Limbo is autobiographical. I was out of work as a result of a startup going belly up, and we did move from San Anselmo to Indianapolis as described, even though I had a job offer from Sun and could have stayed.  We did have a close friend die from ovarian cancer, and she really did refer to herself as The Practical Princess. 

We did live in a wonderful four-poster in Wellington Heights, Washington Township, Indianapolis for about a year. The outfit I joined in Indy was subsumed by it's parent, and we really did move to Ridgefield, CT. My son is really a naturalist and teacher of primitive living skills, and I really did fancy myself a songwriter for many years. I built an awesome treehouse in Connecticut, but nobody fell off the deck. 

The rest of Learning to Limbo is made up. Basically, I took this cross-country professional odyssey and used it to satirize the corporate experience. I also used it to juxtapose the banality of corporate existence with human experience: family drama, affairs, and other things that matter more than corporate double talk. I haven't read up on how much an author should admit to being real in a work of fiction, but I do know that readers can tell when an author is writing from a place of personal knowledge, even if that knowledge is of something imagined, or not.

The Healing of Howard Brown, and others

The novel I'll publish next, The Healing of Howard Brown, is autobiographical in the sense that it attempts to work through the shock, pain, confusion, grief, and general altercation in the state of affairs following the deaths of one's parents. I experienced all that and more in 2008/2009 when my parent's checked out, along with a fair amount of inelegant behavior in the remaining family. But, like Bellow's attempt to work through being cuckolded by his wife and best friend in Herzog, the setup or situation is just a backdrop. Like a theater set, it provided me with context for the dispositions of the characters, as well the rich soil needed for the seeds of conflict to sprout and flourish. And, while The Healing of Howard Brown draws a great deal of inspiration from my labyrinthine Southern ancestry, the actual "healing" of the protagonist is, I'm sorry to report, purely fictional. 

Based on my experience to date, I can say that those stories that draw from my own life could be considered "low hanging fruit." The settings, the imagery, the characters, and to a lesser degree the plots of my first three novels are drawn from experiences that, being mine, are always relatively close at hand. I wouldn't go so far as to say that drawing from my own experiences has made it easier to write, but I would say it gives my imagination access to events, and people, and the associated imagery and emotions, that are immediate and close at hand. 

The other current novels in various stages of disrepair – Chasing Byron, Bury Me With My La-Z-Boy, and The Bolinians – are almost pure flights of fancy, though the historical references in each of them are real enough. 

Chasing Byron, set in the same locale of eastern Louisiana as Part II of The Healing of Howard Brown, challenges the historical fact that Byron Nelson won 11 consecutive PGA tour events in 1945, a record that still stands. It attempts to be both a portrait of the postwar, Jim Crow South, and a fantasy about The Gods of Golf and their supernatural influence on the protagonist, young Wyatt Johnstone. 

Bury Me With My La-Z-Boy was begun during NaNoWriMo, (National Novel Writing Month) and is a combination genre mystery and zombie thriller, also set in eastern Louisiana. The Bolinians, which is in it's infancy, is historical fiction that chronicles the adventures of a traveling band of Russian/Miwok dwarves and their Russian leader (and biological father), former fur trader Dmitri Pavlovich, as they interact with the real people and historical events of Northern California in the19th century. 

I don't know if the low hanging fruit novels, where I am "writing what I know" in a relatively strict sense, has made those stories any better or more engaging than the stories that are more removed from my direct experience. Hopefully I'll be around long enough to find out. It's always possible that some other idea will come along – like the "aspirational" story of the old man, given a year to live, and his band cronies touring the USA in a Country Squire caravan. I suppose that there's only so much writing we can do about what we know, since there's only so much we can know. Then again, a new dream is born in my overly noisy noggin almost every night, and if I can just remember to jot a few things down there may be limitless things to know and write about. Until, of course, there isn't. 

Read Learning to Limbo, 

online and in serial, 

right here, right now!

*********** 

HACK, on Amazon

Jimmy Smith

         

           The President is waiting for a helicopter, waiting for the whoof whoof whoof of spinning blades, tornado swirl and siphon overhead, beckoning. Up he will wheel and soar, bound to a B3, lashed to a Leslie, netted off the White House rooftop, pendent as the rising chopper climbs into the clouds. The President, all cool and finger snap, sways to the rhythms of the sky as the copter sails beyond the civil slaughter, headed to his clearing in the forest, the Presidential meadow at the top of the world.  

            It is days, nights, days, nights and still more until he is ready to begin, finally seated at the B3, the long fingers of his right hand hovering above the keys, the left on the Leslie switch, the black plastic cones awaiting the signal to spin. The President waits, head bowed, while miles below, far beyond the verdant viridian forests and noble wilds the people stink and bite in piss sweat rape meat over God.

            The sun counts two for nothing, and The President’s key fingers fall, pedal feet walk, smoke sound curls from the swirling Leslie, “The Sermon” snaking over rye and dandelions, down the hillside into the woods, ribbons around red cedar and sassafras, feathers over the Ohio, the Missouri, Superior, Huron bounding over boundaries, wreathing waterways, highways, bridges, roads, up side streets and down avenues “The Sermon” careens around causeways, twirls through tunnels, zigs and zags all riffs, hammers, pedals and tags. The President tickles Groove, Patterson, McDuff and McGriff. The President wails and screams Jimmy Smith, Jimmy Smith!

            She sees it before she hears it: glissandos glittering on the surface of the sparkling cerulean sea. She sees it on the seventh step to the library, the third step to her apartment. Blue steam squealing up from manholes. Notes, falling from the sky, crystal raindrops popping on the pavement. Wholes, halves, quarters, eighths, some dotted, some tied, stone blue cool and crispy deep-fried.

            “Cassie my dear, what’s wrong with you?” cries her grandmother. “Your eye are yellow and your face is blue!”

            But before Cassie knows anything, “The Sermon” has circled the world, enveloping every living thing in B3 blues: the soldiers, the sailors, the bakers, the tailors, babies in bassinets, widows in wheelchairs, school children on the playground, grey-suited businessmen now blue, all blue. Armies disarm, navies disavow, hearts become flowers that swing in the spring.

            The President, in his aquamarine sequin tails and shimmering cobalt stovepipe, all head thrown back and lip peel pearl teeth, all twitching fingers and pedaling feet, sits at the B3 in his Presidential clearing at the top of the world and plays “The Sermon” for hours that turn into days that turn into weeks, months, years, until the groove swallows the universe.

            Cassie jumps. “Grandma can’t you hear? The beginning is near! The beginning is near!”

Ending Endless Jihad

I'm no scholar. On those rare occasions when I have a serious opinion about something, my intent in sharing it is to stimulate conversation and the opinions of others, particularly those that have a more scholarly, informed point-of-view, and especially those who may have a better solution than whatever I might be suggest. The intent is to generate ideas toward solving the problem. That is all.

Would you allow a person or a group of people who consumed human flesh as a sacred rite to move into your neighborhood? How about an individual or a group of people that believed that sex with children was ordained by God? Or a gang that dined on dogs? Or a group that believed that God intended women to be slaves, to be raped and abused, and stoned to death for going out in public without an escort?

Of course you wouldn't.

Then why would anyone allow a group of people who believe that "Killing yourself in the process of killing the enemy is an act of martyrdom and brings a special place in heaven" to move into their country, or city, or neighborhood?

In other words, how can a group of people that believe in military jihad, or holy war, fit into any mixed, heterogenous society? How can a group of people that preaches intolerance of the tolerant possibly be expected to become a participant in the global society of the 21st century? Of course I'm referring to a very small percentage of the Muslim population. Islam, though still largely misunderstood by the Western world, represents many of the values that Pope Francis would like to imbue in Catholicism.

Then, like some fundamentalist Christians who would literally "beat" the devil out of a sinner, there are the extremists. Consider: Jihad, or "struggle," is defined, by some, as the sixth pillar of Islam. There is military jihad, and spiritual jihad. Personal, or spiritual jihad is similar to the beliefs of most religions, which is that the faithful must struggle to uphold the principles of their faith in a heterogeneous society, where ideas and practices of others may be temptations or unwanted influences. Islamic jihad, in the spiritual sense, isn't any different than Judeo-Christian proclamations of faith, and as such aren't a threat.

But how do you tell the spiritual jihadist from the military one? What military jihadist is going admit, whether signing a lease for an apartment in Brooklyn, Paris, Saint Petersburg, Vancouver, London or Cape Town, that they ascribe to the tenets of Islam that suggest that military jihad is a responsibility, indeed a holy command and a reservation for a "special place in heaven?"

Some estimate that 25% of the global Muslim population are active military jihadists: 375 million people. Others estimate that, in Europe as of January 2015, less than 1% of the Muslim population were interested in destroying Western civilization - around 175,000. Since then, approximately a million refugees, the vast majority of them Muslims, have moved or are attempting to move to Europe. If you subscribe to the idea that it is the poor, disenfranchised Muslim youth that are most likely to be recruited for jihad, and that Europe has no idea how to accommodate the refugees, you might assume that thousands of jihadist seeds are being planted as we speak. And, as President Obama remarked, "It's hard to reason with someone who willingly die to kill others" (or something like that.)

It took a dozen jihadists  on the ground and in the air to execute over 4000 innocents on September 11, 2001. It took less than that to kill 130 people in Paris on November 13, 2015. So, the percentages aren't even relevant.

What to do?

 

Let’s assume that we, as world citizens, believe that anyone that murders civilians and innocents, for whatever reason, forfeits some if not all of their human rights. In the U.S., felons are stripped of their rights as citizens, incarcerated and in some states put to death. But what about someone who believes that is their divine responsibility to kill those that don’t prescribe to their theology, but hasn’t killed anybody yet? What of the Muslim who says “yes, military jihad is the sixth pillar of Islam, and as such I must abide by it. However (that’s a big “however,”) I am too old to fight,” or “my first responsibility is to my family, which precludes murdering infidels,” or “I don’t have a gun. I don’t even have a scimitar.” Is such a Muslim thus excused and allowed to mingle freely in the global society? Would it not be prudent to have such an individual renounce military jihad, as the fundamentalists define it, altogether? What might effect might it have if the leaders of the many sects of Islam got together and said "any Muslim that murders innocents and civilians in the name of jihad is not a martyr, and the special place for them in the afterlife is hell?"

Many worldwide religions have made accommodations or updated their laws over the course of history to be able to function peacefully in a heterogeneous, globally connected society. Without such tolerance the human race surely would have destroyed itself by how. Admittedly, outlawing military jihad against civilians would be a parliamentary move at best, but no country can expect to accept refugees that may be following jihadist leaders, so there must be leaders to whom the refugees can declare allegiance, and in so doing at least protect the interests of their refugee followers as they attempt to integrate with Western society.

Unfortunately the Islamic leaders that influence the jihadists aren't likely to bend to such pressure. While the majority of the world's Muslims may be peaceful and rational, we know it only takes a few to wreck havoc on the free world. But the West, unable to form a coherent response to the jihadist attacks, have in turn been unable to articulate the consequences to those leaders that support the status quo. So now it all depends on the ability of the Western world to coordinate a response, with clear consequences, to ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, the Shabab, and every other stateless jihadist group out there.

Is it possible that the West and ISIS can call a cease-fire/cease-murder and sit down around the negotiating table. What's to negotiate? If you renounce jihad and stay within your own borders we won't annihilate you? That may ultimately be the agreement, but first doesn't the West need to show that they're ready, willing and able to annihilate ISIS and all other jihadist groups? Is there a way to do that without a show of physical force and imminent invasion, aka boots on the ground? Don't the jihadists have to be able to see that they are surrounded by the big guns, the tanks, the aircraft carriers, the soldiers, sailors, marines etc and that there is no escape?

You can't fight barbarians with international law and threats of legal persecution. Any organization that justifies killing civilians needs to be prepared for killing in kind. The jihadists trust that the West will not stoop to their level. This is the checkmate that prevents the West from successful eradication of the Islamic State. Without the threat of total annihilation, there will continue to be a dozen new fighters for every one killed by the West.  

The extreme scenario, with the military forces of the West poised to strike in the Middle East, and Western governments prepared to aggressively root out radical residents, is the highest of high stakes gambles. If the extremists are allowed to keep their little caliphate in exchange for renouncing military jihad and centralizing their believers in a designated area, like the North Koreans and other repressive governments, and making do with complete isolation and military containment, maybe they'll opt for survival. Many Westerners won't want to give the jihadists that option.

Then there are some Westerners who believe we have created this predicament by marginalizing and disenfranchising Muslims, particularly young, jobless males in the major metro areas of Europe and North America. Islamic fundamentalism provides purpose, direction, and, with martyrdom achieved in military jihad, the highest level of eternal paradise. What seventeen year old candied apple peddler on the streets of Montmarte, hungry, horny, and entirely directionless, isn’t going to find the promises of fundamentalist Islam appealing? President Obama has said that the front line of the battle is winning the hearts and minds of disenfranchised Muslim youth. If the leaders of Islam took military jihad out of the equation, and eradicated the notion of the martyr’s paradise, wouldn't Western society be more willing to include Muslims in the greater social sphere?

Soon, the shock of the latest atrocity will pass. The downed Russian jetliner, which ISIS in the Sinai Peninsula claims as their victory, is nearly forgotten in the West. The Lebanese barely got a nod from the international community after the attack that killed 40 in Beirut. The Parisiens will continue to feel the sting, as they did after Charlie Hebdo, but give it six months. Meanwhile security in the West will double down on Islamic extremists, until intelligence has arrested all the suspects and has no other leads. Then, somewhere in Europe, or the U.S. or Canada, or Russia, the Islamic jihadists will strike again. They may not strike as frequently as mentally ill Americans with easy access to lethal weapons, but, until the entire notion of military jihad is outlawed in Islam, there will be no end.

A New Start

I've decided to make a new start.

Beginning next year, I will become a 32 year-old single woman of uncertain ethnicities living in Brooklyn with a calico cat named Cattywumpus and two fulvous canaries named Yellow and Yellower. In my Crown Heights apartment with the bird cage hanging from the ceiling on a macrame rope by the bay window I will write stories about my inability to have a meaningful, sustainable relationship with a man or a woman because of my suffocating, shallow, trifling and often drunk mother, who insists that the Rose of Jericho tattoo around my belly button is offensive and unflattering. Using my formidable and exalted abilities to craft riveting and detailed narratives about my slightly overweight body, my anxiety-ridden brain, my oily complexion and oilier hair, and the cavalcade of lovers that come in and out of my life like spectral kangaroos, while employing my celebrated powers of detailed observation, I will become the favorite of literary critics the world over, almost indistinguishable from at least a dozen or so identical writers living in Brooklyn with a cat named Cattywumpus and two fulvous canaries named Yellow and Yellower.

Later that same year I'll fall in love with a tall, graceful Masai warrior after spying him sunning his dusty tallywhacker on the Serengeti plain, where I have gone into hiding after a much publicized affair with the married female director of the Bennington MFA program. My love for the wondrous Masai warrior, his stupendous spear and unintelligible language will backfire when I am accused of cultural misappropriation in my imagined flash fiction stories of sex with lions, hyenas, elephants, rhinos, baboons, orangutans, gorillas, warthogs and wildebeests. Tail between my bruised and battered thighs, I return to Brooklyn as a nobody, a nothing, a has-been wannabe, along with at least a dozen or so identical writers that have ventured to the Serengeti seeking the spiritual equivalent of the storied spear of the tall, graceful Masai.

And so, reluctantly, I return to Coon Hollow, a much wiser but still completely irrelevant and aching 60-year-old man with a beautiful, caring, warm, and understanding wife of 33 years, and two amazingly talented, beautiful and inspiring adult children, and Mr. Boo, a  4-legged ball warrior with a coat of pure velvet cacao, all of whom wait patiently for my next new start.

Grab it! It's not about a 32-year old woman, or about a graceful Masai sunning his dusty tallywhacker, but it's just as stupid!