It’s Probably Not the Orgasm or Where Do We Go From Here?

April 25, 2015 / Vito Gulla / 0 Comments

I just started teaching drama to my comp II class, and typically, the first play we do is Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet. It’s one of my favorite plays by one of my favorite dramatists. There’s a line that I’m particularly fond of:

The great fucks that you may have had. What do you remember about them[…]? I don’t know. For me, I’m saying what it is, it’s probably not the orgasm. Some broad’s forearm on your neck, something her eyes did. There was a sound she made…or me, lying, in the, I’ll tell you: me lying in bed; the next day she brought me cafe au lait. She gives me a cigarette, my balls feel like concrete.

It’s a great one because it’s so damn true–with anything you’ve ever enjoyed. Those fragments of memories that come streaming through your mind, it’s always one moment, always that one little image, insignificant, divorced from any goal or objective, but for some reason, it stays.

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When I was on the verge of adolescence, I couldn’t wait until the Christmas of 1998. I must have pestered my mother everyday to get my present early. Most of them could wait, but the one I needed was The Ocarina of Time. Of course, it did little to change the delivery date. I did eventually get it and played from start to finish in a few weeks. It was (and probably still is) the greatest game I have ever played. But at the time, I didn’t know why, didn’t know how to express it. All I knew was that it was different and “fun.”

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I’ve always been interested in movements, those paradigm shifts for the entirety of art. It’s nice to have those categories, to point to those commonalities of an era. And there always seems to be some figure who is leading the charge. Romanticism had Byron, Keats, and Shelley. Transcendentalism had Emerson and Thoreau. Naturalism had Crane. Modernism had Joyce and Woolf. Post-Modernism was Burroghs and Ginsberg. But what about now? What–really–is pushing us forward? We’re not at a loss for good authors: Junot Diaz, Johnathan Letham, David Eggers, Johnathan Franzen, Jennifer Egan, and this list goes on. They’re all wonderful in their own right. And we still have those legends who creep out from behind the curtain every so often, like Roth or DeLillo or Pynchon. But I don’t see anybody trying to shake things up. Everyone seems to be content with the way things are. It’s been over twenty years since Tom Wolfe said we should move back towards realism, as if that was the only way to capture an era. But nobody seems to want something different, something that is in the moment and also new. To me, the magic of movements isn’t just what they aimed to depict but how.

I guess what I’m asking is, Why aren’t we trying to reinvent ourselves?

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I once did a Google search for the movement after Post-Modernism. Most were unhelpful. The answer was typically Post-Post-Modernism. It didn’t give an explanation of the movement’s philosophies or goals or what differentiated it from what came before. The closest to a definition I found was a few writers who were thrown under the bus.

But then I saw something that seemed a little more interesting. They called it the New Sincerity.

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By the time I made it through my first year of undergraduate, I had probably watched more movies than most people watch in a lifetime. I had no interest in becoming a filmmaker because controlling a set and overseeing actors and editors seemed like a lot of work. Not to mention, somebody is going to come along to fuck it up. The less hands on what I’m making, the better.

I guess that’s why I choose writer instead.

But I spent a lot of time thinking about those movies too, about the choices those directors made and why. Little things started to fall into place: the use of shadow, the actor’s placement in the frame, the transition between scenes. I realized that the very good and the very talented didn’t leave things up to chance. They shot something a certain way not because it was cool or looked nice but because it had meaning.

A great movie wasn’t just good craft. That was a given. You had to make sure the acting was good and that the characters were realistic and believable and the dialogue felt true and that the costumes and sets and editing were spot on. Those things, production value, were what it made it easy to watch. But the true geniuses thought more deeply, saw things differently, they needed to convey something.

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Just recently, my girlfriend was reading some book in bed, something that recieved attention here and there in the papers. I read a few pages over her shoulder, and other than pointless fragments, the book had a good voice and good prose and seemed true and beautiful. It didn’t take me long to recognize what it was though.

I rolled over and shut my eyes, and my girlfriend asked me what I thought.

It’s just what this world needs, I said. Another book about World War II.

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The thing that bothers me about all the short fiction I read in the magazines is that they never seem to talk about the world I live in. It’s either a sorry account of hipsters trying to find meaning in their world of irony or about some long ago historical event or some academic who spends his or her time trying to bang students and read Proust. Rarely, do I find stories about real people, stories that aren’t preoccupied with rehashing the past.

I guess it’s easy to blame the MFA. It seems like the only people who read the magazines anymore are the MFAs trying to get into them. So I guess it’s about catering to your audience. But I don’t think all of us are that self-involved. I mean, I have an MFA too, but the last thing I want to do is read a story about workshops or seminars or some dickhead who enjoys Derek Walcott–especially when the reference is empty, only an attempt to display how widely the author has read.

I like reading probably more than the next guy, but I would never say it’s the only thing I do. And even though I’m a college professor (adjunct, of course), I certainly wouldn’t say it’s the most exciting part of my day.

When I get together with my friends, we spend a lot of time just talking, maybe have a few drinks, watch a movie, play some video games. We have things we want to do, things that worry us, things we like to do. I think we spend more time on our phones and on the internet than we do a lot of other things. And I don’t think it’s bad either. There’s a lot of great stuff on the internet: There’s Wikipedia and Facebook and Twitter and Imgur and Youtube and YouJizz. It’s a part of our lives now. Sometimes, it seems like the only constant, especially when you have to wonder how you’re going to pay off your student debt on your retail job salary–even though you went to college for medieval history.

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For as long as I can remember, I wanted to do something great. I wanted to make some kind of discovery, do something that had never been done before. For a time, it was going to be paleontology. By sixth grade, it was end global warming by discovering nuclear fusion. That lasted til college, and I settled on writer.

I guess I’m still pretty naive.

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Whenever you read a novel that focuses on technology, it seems like the message is always the same: This thing can be dangerous. Emerson probably said it best: “The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.” I understand the perspective, but I feel it’s far too common. Everyone seems to be a little too glass-half-empty on the subject, and it’s not an idea that seems to be going anywhere anytime soon.

Just look at the new Alex Garland movie, Ex Machina. Now, I have little doubt the film won’t be worthwhile. Garland’s writing is pretty damn good, and I’ve enjoyed everything he’s done with the exception of The Tesseract. But if the trailers are any indication, it seems like we’ll be getting that same old message once again. Of course, I haven’t seen it (though I probably will) and I’m rushing to judgment and maybe it’s just me, but why isn’t anybody saying how awesome this all is?

Instead, people seem to pine for that great yesterday, when things were simpler. There’s the paleo diet. There’s internet blocking software. There’s parent-controlled time limits on iPads. There are people going off the grid.

I don’t know about you, but I like progress.

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So where do we go from here? I don’t know exactly. This isn’t a manifesto. It’s not a how to guide on the direction we need to take to get out of this rut. If this is anything, I think it’s a push towards something greater. After all, the first step is admitting you have a problem.

Opening Lines, Opening Doors

April 19, 2015 / Vito Gulla / 0 Comments

I’ve been thinking about the first lines of novels and stories for a while now. Even though my professors in undergraduate literature classes stressed how everything you needed to know was right there in that first page or paragraph or sentence, it’s something, largely, I ignored. It wasn’t that I didn’t value them: I just didn’t give them any thought. That is until I started trading stories with Jeff Minton, an up and coming fiction writer and fellow professor.

The first thing I noticed about his stories was that I was immediately and irrevocably hooked from the first sentence. (Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who felt that way, since Jeff received honorable mention from Glimmer Train during one of their contests.) I wondered to myself what it was that Jeff was doing, what magic did he put in his words, and why, when I looked back at my own fiction, did all my openings seem dry and boring by comparison?

It’s a question that came up just this last week at a writer’s workshop. We were sitting around the table, discussing one of the pieces, when I mentioned the first line of this novel in progress. It was the typical “the sky was this color today,” and no one else seemed to question it. Even before I had read anything Jeff had written, I knew enough not to start by describing the weather. I asked the most obvious question: Why? Why start with that? What was it doing for the narrative? What did it contribute? Besides, isn’t it clichéd?

One of the other attendees was quick to challenge me, pointing to William Gibson’s Neuromancer, which begins, “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” Now while I pride myself on being the dumbest guy in the room, I’m not too dumb to see the difference. It didn’t take long for my adversary to see the folly either. Obviously, describing the bland orange of the sky versus some crazy ass shit is a big difference.

You know, I just got a copy of the latest Boulevard, and as soon as I laid my hands on it, I flipped through the pages and read the first lines of all the pieces of short fiction. Here’s one of them: “It was actually a joint multidisciplinary seminar undertaken by English, Philosophy, Women’s Issues and Paraplegic Studies” (Barbarese 80). Now I get there’s that winking sense of irony by the end of that first sentence, but really, who the fuck cares? What about that line makes me want to read further? Maybe I’m not the intended audience. Maybe this is aimed at academics who get a chuckle out of their own absurdity.

Here’s another: “He shared the room with no one in the New River Barracks” (Dow 133). While I get a little bit of a sense of the character’s isolation and loneliness, any interest I have is immediately gone when I read the following line: “In the room a car battery was hooked up with wires to an automobile tape player…. His shift would begin in an hour” (Dow 133).

Now call me an asshole, but neither of these stories’s openings really do anything for me. And the funny thing is that neither of these writers are amateurs. One has publications (poetry) in The Atlantic and The New Yorker, and the other was in The Best American Poetry. So maybe readers will stick around based on name and reputation alone.

I guess everyone is guilty of it, even the greats. DeLillo starts his masterful novel Cosmopolis with “Sleep failed him more often now, not once or twice a week but four times, five” (1). (And don’t get me started on the first chapter of The Body Artist.) Now again, there’s something of interest, a hint of a problem, but it’s not the central question of the novel, not the great quest that Packer sets out on, holds no kernel of what we as the reader will eventually find. In truth, it’s a lot of boring exposition–about some multi-billionaire who spends his time reading poetry and listening to classical music in his private elevator. (I guess because that’s what DeLillo does or wants to do.) If you ask me, the novel would have been a hell of a lot better without. In fact, I know the point of attack, the moment that I said to myself, “Now I’m interested”: “He didn’t know what he wanted. Then he knew. He wanted to get a haircut” (5).

Of course, by now, you must be wondering, what’s the secret? And I’ll tell you: Great openings have to introduce a problem.

Meville is probably one of the best examples, though you have to be familiar with the Bible to get it: “Call me, Ishmael.” Why is this one so good? Because we know something about the character in three words. With that one allusion, the narrator tells us that he has adopted this name, that it’s not who he is but who he has become. He, like the biblical character, has spent or will spend those 40 years (or is it days–and why is everything in the Bible 40? Because it’s an old way of saying a lot) in the desert adrift. He is a bastard child. He is the outcast child, punished only for the circumstances of his birth. I’d say that’s one hell of a problem.

Here’s another classic, this time from Fitzgerald: “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.'” In two sentences, we’re told that our narrator wants to be a nice guy, but then, throughout the entire book, all he does is judge people. He just never does it to their faces. Again, wanting to be a nice guy but having to think about it, that’s a problem.

Here’s one more: “Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn.” This one is probably the most mundane, but it’s great for what it implies, what’s underneath the surface. Our narrator and protagonist, Jake Barnes, gives us a portrait of a man he more or less despises. Why? Because Cohn thinks he’s hot shit, but Barnes sees right through him–and knows he could kick his ass. (A side note about the novel: That first page is even more brilliant since Barnes goes on to tell us that Cohn was “treated like a Jew at Princeton,” pretty much telling us that even though he thinks Cohn is a prick, he’s a prick because he’s a prick and not because he’s a jew–discrimination Barnes finds both sorrowful and pitiful.) One last time, in case you missed, there’s a problem: Two people who don’t see eye-to-eye.

So really, what’s the point of all this? First lines don’t exist in some vacuum of cleverness. They aren’t some bullshit hook. (Have you ever blah blah blahed?) They shouldn’t be trying to build some lame ass fantasy or sci-fi setting. (Just look at Startship Troopers for an example: “I always get the shakes before a drop.”) First lines lay out the rest of the story in such a way that if the rest of the paragraphs were accidentally deleted, you could still imagine the rest of the story. They have to infect everything that follows. They have to present that burning problem at the center of the work. Sure, they can bookend a work so there’s a nice little parallel between beginning and end, to show how much your character has grown by the story’s, but that’s more advanced shit that’s not always required. It’s not just the intrigue. It’s not the question of what happens next. It’s that moment when you say, “There’s something wrong here.” And it doesn’t have to be huge either. Not everything needs that flashbang open. Life isn’t a James Bond movie. Even, I doubt, real MI6 agents have that kind of life. Art is, as Hitchcock said, life with the boring parts cut out. Cut out the boring parts and start with a problem. Of course, now there’s the only problem left to solve: How the fuck do you do it?

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