Welcome!

I'm a writer; I have been one since I was in the fifth grade, when I discovered the deliciousness both of the opposite sex and of stories. I was a friend of the late great novelist Lawrence Durrell, who told me back in the '80s, "You've got the new book in you."

The Gavel Online interview with TKM: Here's a link to an interview with me about my new book, Grail Mysterium: An Adventure on The Heights.

Learning how to love: Before you turn to the stories here, first read about the table talks on my favorite subject that I've been holding with students at Boston College, where I teach in the English department.

And check this out on my recent book reading.

Mark Twain Responds to Critics of

Huck Finn

Having had much time on my hands over the past hundred years, I have heard and read of a number of critics who have gotten themselves all twisted up over my book Huck Finn, much in the same way that I have seen wrestlers kicking about in the dust, their arms and legs becoming so twisted that you can’t tell the arms of one from the legs of another. Nor can the wrestlers.

Rumors of my death no longer having been exaggerated, I feel compelled to offer a few suggestions concerning one way of understanding my book. The number of critics who have found the ending a falling off, as if Huck were sitting on a rock and tipped over, is legion. Their conclusion is that as a writer I must have failed in my work. Which is possible. Any writer worth his salt will admit to a nagging sense of failure. Those of us who actually complete books learn to live with that sense, like a bad conscience.

Thus my conclusion about their confusion is just that they have not grasped the point of the ending to the book. In fact, I submit that the “meaning,” if I must speak in those odious terms, lies so apparent in front of them that they are unable to see it. Of course their business, or the business of keeping themselves in business, is to obfuscate and insist that an explanation of literature be far more confusing to reader and student alike than the original could ever possibly be.

As anything too apparent is difficult to explain—Huck might say it’s like the spots on a cat’s eye: there in plain sight if you have the sense to see them—I will nevertheless attempt to navigate the shallow water.

As outrageous as it may seem, it is possible that an author intends to say just what he says, and that therefore I intended the burlesque at the end of the book, that everything put down as it was made perfect sense to me. If this is the case, then I would like to defend a book which cannot defend itself by referring to one of the main and august literary critics who have seen the book as a failure in many ways: Mr. Leo Marx. Let us examine his contentions to see if they hold water, or if they might be like Huck’s raft—you can float on it for a while, as long as the river holds, but finally it sinks or you get thrown.

Marx says I violate all sorts of sacred laws of writing, but it might be that he has gotten fooled by the jokes that were staring him in the face. I understand his dismay and even resentment at not being “in” on the joke, especially since it’s his job to be in on it.

However that may be, I would like to return his favor in “correcting” Huck Finn by correcting his own reading of Huck Finn. His charge that the ending fails is based on the following charges:

Miss Watson freeing Jim is not realistic—no one did that in real life.

Huck shows himself not at all in a heroic light, submitting himself to Tom at the end.

The “evasion” in the final chapters undermines Huck’s “moral maturation.”

Jim’s submission to Tom’s plan makes the book racist, as does the use of what modern life so delicately refers to as “the ‘N’ word.”

As to the first charge, the assumption would have to be that the rest of the book is “realistic.” I suppose it’s a charge that might stick, but for all the stretchers. Realism to my mind is this pile of bills on my desk that I have to pay. It’s true the book uses the terms of realism, but how many runaway slaves does Mr. Marx think floated south on a raft with a young boy who was convinced abolition stemmed from the devil?

The second charge requires we think of Huck as heroic. Huck to me is loveable and even capable of great kindness and generosity of feeling, but to put him in the company of Odysseus, Oedipus, Hamlet and the like is a compliment that Huck would have something to say about. To my mind he’d light out for the territories to get away from the very notion, and throw a thought back at the reader as he ran, perhaps to the effect that it might be Mr. Marx’s own need for a hero that makes him so wish Huck a hero (moral or otherwise) so as to be one. Does a hero do, as Huck does, “whatever comes handiest,” or wish he could poison his conscience like a yaller dog?

I believe I have just answered the third charge, and as to the fourth, I believe no evasion, no matter how “gaudy,” could attempt to deprive Jim of his dignity more than the institution of slavery did. Should I not show Jim behaving as a human (and a fairly kind, patient and caring one at that) just because he must appear superhuman in order to counter the social effects of slavery? As I did not invent slavery, I have no responsibility to contrive characters that might or might not support abolition. Or perhaps Mr. Marx believes that a superhuman Jim would show all those white slave owners that all men are created equal? As a writer, I prefer the person to the idea.

Mr. Marx charges the ending with being a “flimsy contrivance” that has no morality. I agree with him on this point—the entire book is a flimsy contrivance, and I rather like the phrase. But to think that a flimsy contrivance is a bad thing is quite another thing from seeing it as such. The king and duke are flimsy contrivances, the Grangerford and Shephedrson’s feud is certainly flimsy; Tom’s evasion is as flimsy as Huck’s own evasion and escape from his father.

Here is my understanding of the institution itself of slavery: it is a flimsy contrivance which pretends that some men are not free according to skin color. How much more flimsy can a contrivance be than to rest freedom on an accident of birth? Furthermore, and in final defense of the ending, the point I so labored to make that it has for more than a hundred years remained obscure to every single reader is that the freeing of Jim must be flimsy and a burlesque since the idea of freeing a man who by nature already is free—what used to be called “emancipation”—is itself not only a flimsy contrivance but a monstrously cruel one to boot. Slaves could no more be freed than any human can be freed, since we are all born free. I have no problem admitting the reality of racism while insisting on this point of supposed insight.

As to the use of the word “nigger” in my book, I no more condone its racist use than I condone Pap’s drunkenness, Miss Watson’s priggish self-righteousness, or even Huck’s peculiar deformed conscience. My job is to report on what I see as realities. It ought to hurt to read such an awful word. We writers are after all poor in ammunition, having only words to use against the tide of human injustice and cruelty. That and laughter, which elsewhere Satan reminds us is our only real weapon against our lower selves. The difference between someone in the world using the term and the book using the term is easily seen by referring to the action of yelling “fire!” in a crowded theater—it’s antisocial, illegal and hurtful--but only if you are a member of the audience. If you’re on stage and shout it, why, they sitting comfortably in their seats applaud you!

The morality of my story finally rests on the redemptive value of fiction, which I contend can and does teach us morality—far more than any ton of critical analyses. To my mind racism and every form of slavery will only disappear when we see it as a fiction, as a made-up story which is cruel, and no fun at all. I prefer stories that have some fun in them. I wish Mr. Marx did, but he’s too busy being moral.

Gothic America

The Halloween season is an appropriate time to talk about Gothic. At Boston College, where I teach a course in this literature, I kid my students that what we are engaged in in class is not just the Enlightenment, but equally the “Endarkenment”-the notion that what may appear as the light of day-open, clear, reasonable-may also contain things hidden in obscure shadow. For example, the fact that, while the world at BC may seem bright, with the Eagles now 7-0 and ranked near the top of the football charts, the country is racked with an endless war which is bankrupting the nation for generations to come.

In fact, the notions embedded in gothic literature can explain much of what we as a nation are experiencing. Gothic literature as a form began to be written about the time of the American revolution, and the father of the American novel, the now-forgotten Charles Brockden Brown, was a gothic novelist. The roots of America lie deep in the roots of gothic.

Gothic literature was a response to the prevailing Enlightenment Rationalist principles upon which our country was founded. ER assumed not only that “all men are created equal”, but that this is a reasonable and agreeable, rational observation. Further, our Founding Fathers separated church and state because kings rule by divine right, which was considered not rational. If I say, for example, that God told me to fully fund health insurance for everyone in the country, you’d be hard pressed to argue rationally against my conviction. So we keep the worlds separate; secularism for the government, and religion on our private time.

Gothic writers saw a problem with that: they, being some of the first psychological writers, assumed that humans are composed of two sides: rational and irrational, secular and religious, scientific and superstitious. Further, they declared that the more one tries to run away from one’s ‘other side’, the more one runs into it-what Freud later called the “Return of the repressed”.

So gothic explains not only Larry Craig but the war in Iraq. For the former, it says that when one condemns gays, one will (in some form) produce the very gayness in oneself that one is trying to flee via condemnation. On a national level, call other people “terrorists” and deny that you are a terrorist (in some form), and produce the very terrorism you are trying to eradicate. In short, as Pogo said, “we have met the enemy and he is us.” Or, as (Bill) Clinton said, there is no longer an us and a them, there is just an us.

So what’s the cure, if there really is terrorism out there? Do we just hug terrorists? No-that would be dangerous, not subtle, and reenacting the mistake. Gothic says that we begin with an assumption that we are all connected. If this is so-if the terrorists are, in some way, “US”, then we must look simultaneously outward to bin Laden, and inward to our own national security letters and wiretapping, to see where terrorism might lie. This way of proceeding terrifies the logical mind, be it conservative or liberal, because it risks undermining one’s moral stance; if anyone can be a terrorist, how am I to stand against terrorism? Yet, dangerous as this method of proceeding is, it’s the only way to not make the fundamental mistake of forgetting that because we are all humans, we are all capable of becoming what we condemn. To say “capable of becoming” does not mean we are terrorists, but that, because we could be terrorists, that notion will slow down our rush to judgment and war, will weaken the boundary we would really rather keep between us and them.

We can learn from reading pretty much any gothic story what the result of not proceeding this way will be: a blind lashing out at what we consider to be “the other”, only, like Edgar Allen Poe’s William Wilson, to find that when we do lash out, we have killed ourselves. We fight terrorists over there, and end up bankrupting our image in the world and our pocketbook. Gothic says this is inevitable and predictable.

We’re told by our leaders that it’s a scary world out there, with terrorists. It’s scarier, says gothic: by definition, once we say the terrorists are ‘those’ people ‘over there’, we have entered upon the repression and denial which will only make the inevitable return that much worse. Halloween was a time from ancient traditions not when scary ghosts from ‘the other world’ appeared, but rather as a time when the boundary between the daylight and the night worlds was temporarily suspended, so that we might see that the two are linked. What’s scary is not just the presence of ghosts; it’s the realization that the ghosts are us, in another form. Boo.

 

A Hearty Story

I'm in my early fifties, and was in reasonably good health, except for a weak heart. Recently my blood pressure started going up, and the docs discovered a malfunction in a heart valve; they decided I needed a new heart.

So I got one. Ironically, it was from an old lover of mine, who had died in an accident; so I got the heart. The operation went fine, but the new heart started acting up, and I went into a coma. In the coma this old lover showed up and said that I had to tell stories to keep the heart pumping regularly; otherwise I would die.

I'd always been a storyteller "at heart" anyway, so that didn't seem such a problem. I woke up suddenly (the docs couldn't explain why, of course), and the problems kept up with the heart. The docs said I had arrhythmia, and I told my dream.

The heart specialist shook his head and said I wasn't going to last til morning.

But I remembered the dream, and kept writing, telling stories. I'm still here, a year after they said I'd die in the morning. The docs now believe my dream and visit my site to read, since they know it's keeping me alive. And oddly, it does work; as I write, as you read, my heart beats more regularly. No logical explanation, of course. These are my stories, and they're all fundamentally about love; from the heart.

Does my story sound familiar? It does to me, and tells me we're all inside stories, acting the parts of characters. You've got a part in this story, too: read. Listen. Enjoy. Be absorbed, and while away the night with these stories-within-stories.

 

My Christmasectomy

Once again the holiday season is upon us. I wander the streets, taking in the window displays, dodging shoppers laden with bags rushing home, taking mental notes at how the natives celebrate this most important of their holy days.

“What are you doing for Christmas?” my friends ask.

“Nothing,” I smile. “Probably working; I’ll call my parents.”

“Oh, I see–'Bah, Humbug!'–right?” they challenge me with that slight nod and cynical twist of the mouth, half admitting the odd connection between the celebration of Christianity and consumerism. Still, if I don’t celebrate with them, I must be Scrooge before Christmas Eve.

“No, not at all,” I counter, and I mean it. I’m fine with consumerism and love the look of Christmas trees in particular. I don’t at all feel Scrooge-like. I’m very happy with everyone having a good time and celebrating the holidays. But I wasn’t always like this.

I was raised a typical child of 1950s Christian American culture, looking forward to Christmas as a holiday that was sacred, yes, but was also the time when magic took place right in our own home. Marvelous presents appeared completely by magic, without the intervention of humans. On Christmas mornings the five oldest of us were filmed, year after year by our father, walking in order of age (oldest first) down the stairs, rubbing our eyes, scuffing along in feet pajamas, to find the tree laden with gifts. In these old 8mm films, the camera pans slowly to the tree, back to the expressions on our faces. My oldest sister always looks a little wary and wry faced, but I, the fourth in line, every time wear the face of childlike surprise, delight, and awe. Wide-eyed and excited, I plunge toward the tree where all of us sit and tear open red wrapped packages, showing them to one another excitedly, running off finally to play with our new toys. I can even remember the Christmas when I got a bike–golden, shiney, three-speed, a marvel, magic!

As I grew into an adult, I still believed in the spirit of Christmas, but I felt growing in me a cynicism toward the holiday as well–its rank consumerism and secularization of the sacred. It was too apparent not to be noticed, and got worse every year. Yes, I’d bring presents for nieces and nephews, but I’d make myself an obnoxious presence at dinner, railing against the corporations, asking what we all thought we were doing spending ourselves into debt–how was this celebrating Christmas? My continuing belief in the spirit of Christmas and its partner, the cynicism at what’s happened to it, grew in me like a tumor. I was more and more thinking “Bah-humbug” even as I continued to believe–and I saw the same thing was growing in the adults around me, nodding in agreement at the dinner table, shaking their heads over how far we had wandered from the “true spirit” of Christmas. We were all, in short, becoming Scrooges in one way, and even while we were spending more and more frantically, as if to outpace our own cynicism, we were thinking “Bah!” to the whole thing. It appeared to me that we all shared this tumor and were simply increasing the medicine, which ended up increasing the illness, in a kind of dance with the devil.

But one Christmas eve when I was about forty, I woke up to find that something like an operation had been performed on me while I slept. Outside my room, bells were ringing and people were celebrating. But something in me was missing; I felt neither the love nor the hate for the day or the season, neither the belief nor the cynicism. In short, I felt nothing. It was rather odd, this feeling of not-feeling. The operation, my Christmasectomy, as I came to call it, apparently was a success, and the patient recovered completely.

I got up and wandered around the city, marveling at the lights, taking deep breaths of the pungent pine trees, dodging last minute revelers heading off to family dinners, laden with bulging bags. All of it seemed very...charming...and somehow distant and strange. I had a feeling I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about, but then again neither did I disparage the frantic shopping, the short tempers, the homeless people no one was giving money to.

When I ran into some friends on Newbury Street, they rushing off to host their Christmas dinner, I was invited along to watch their children open presents and celebrate the day.

“No, you go ahead. I may catch up later and have dinner with you.”

When they replied to my indifference by suggesting I was a Scrooge, I answered mildly, “No...I’m not down on Christmas. I’m not up on it, either. You go ahead and have a good time.” Oddly enough, I found myself feeling and acting more forgiving, more open, more, dare I say it–more “Christian” than I had felt when I actually believed in the holiday.

I went to dinner and was much better company, for I felt more like a visiting anthropologist than a member of the society. I brought presents for the children, because that’s what the natives, my hosts expected, and I wanted to appear as a good guest who knows the rules for behavior. At one point it seemed my host felt sorry for me. While he leaned close, holding a mug of spiked eggnog, I reflected that in his pocket were his maxed-out credit cards. He shook his head and smiled wryly, as one smiles at someone who doesn’t “get it”. But then he whispered: “At least you’re not in debt up to your ears.” I felt no compulsion to jump in with my own cynicism, because I had none.

He needn’t have worried about me, however. I’m fine being a visiting scientist. One day, studying my notes, I may understand what all the fuss is about. But if it means becoming cynical again, I’d just as soon remain at a distance. This way I can actually enjoy the holiday.

My only regret is at not being able to take responsibility for the operation. It was as if, overnight on Christmas Eve, I received perhaps the best Christmas present of all–something that appeared by divine intervention. Unlike Scrooge, I was not visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and To Come. Apparently I was instead visited by a divine surgeon.

I recommend a Christmasectomy to everyone. Happy Holidays.

 

The Rights of the Undead

Like most of our political and religious leaders, I am able to channel the needs, wants and desires of the unborn. Consider me with everyone else when it comes to respecting their rights–these "unborn humans," and forget the old-fashioned and clinical notion of calling them "fetuses," a term that is clearly designed to deprive these unborn humans of their due.

Recently I made a citizen’s arrest of a woman walking on Newbury Street. She was very fashionably dressed, about eight months pregnant, I would guess, carrying shopping bags that, from the way they hung down low at her side, I could see were quite heavy. The woman wore quite lovely high heels, revealing well-formed toes, and her hair and makeup were Newbury Street-perfect. This woman, whom I will call by the randomly chosen name of Laura Romney, paused as I approached her, popping a red candy into her mouth.

“Madam,” I began, retrieving a pair of plastic handcuffs I keep for this purpose and snapping them smartly around her slender wrists, “I hereby arrest you in the name of the Commonwealth and the Federal Government. Your unborn child carries, by scientific count, a minimum of 60 toxic substances in his or her little body. In addition, you have just ingested a sugary candy that will drive your blood sugar sky-high, putting your unborn child at risk of his or her diabetes. Further, your high heels are contributing to back stress, which the child clearly feels. And, as we know, innocent unborn children suffer to a degree greater than that of, for example, partially born children, and greater yet than that of fully born children–all of whom, I might point out, suffer the corruptions of us post-child humans. Your mascara and lipstick, while admittedly lovely, are also poisoning your child. I therefore arrest you in order to save this poor innocent.”

Ms. Romney was hauled off to court, where she entered a curious counter-complaint. In her spirited defense, she argued that while her unborn child certainly was due her or his rights, she, too, as the undead, was due hers. What were these rights? The right not to be arrested, not to be punished even while being held responsible. The right to be spoken well of, and only well of. Further, Ms. Romney argued, she should not have to pay any further taxes. Nor should she, as the undead, have to answer her husband’s demands, answer her cell phone, or even eat.

This last threat so disturbed the presiding judge that he quickly dismissed the case. “We are in danger of compromising the, er, health of this admittedly undead woman, if we on the one hand agree to her assertion and forgo forcing her to eat to protect her undead–excuse me!–unborn child. That is, we will deny her the right to her undead status if we do so force her to eat. The law clearly states that the rights of one equal party cannot trump the rights of the other. Case dismissed!”

I admit to having been disappointed in my crusade. But I am considering contacting Chuck, my accountant, to have him look into Ms. Romney’s various assertions.

 

An Open Letter to Senator Bill Frist

Dear Senator Frist:

I have a modest request, and I apologize ahead of time for any unintentional comparisons that might be made between my situation and that of Mrs. Schiavo. Let me say from the beginning that they are not at all alike. My problem is this:

I watch TV; my wife says I watch too much. She comes in the room, calls me a couch potato, and when I am unresponsive, she pulls the plug. Fortunately, I have friends who say that not only am I not a potato, but that I am postively chipper when I watch. I have a video to send you showing just how chipper I am. Still, my wife wants me to talk to her. I smile at her, but I prefer to watch TV. The problem has grown so bad that I now need you to intervene on my behalf. I do not mean to joke when I say that withdrawing TV from me is like killing me. I know I'm addicted, but that's another problem. I ask that you enact a law allowing my TV plug to remain in the wall, where it belongs. I know that President Bush will be happy to protect my rights and fly back from Texas to sign such a law. It won't take much time, and all the TV watchers in the country will thank you for protecting their rights.

I would never pretend that my situation is anything near as dire as Mrs. Schiavo's, and I applaud your intervention on her behalf. And I feel certain that you will do the same for me. I will look for my case in the news. Thank you.

 

An Immodest Proposal

Like most of our political and religious leaders, I am able to channel the needs, wants and desires of the unborn. Consider me with everyone else when it comes to respecting their rights–these "unborn humans," and forget the old-fashioned and clinical notion of calling them "fetuses," a term that is clearly designed to deprive these unborn humans of their due.

Recently I made a citizen’s arrest of a woman walking on Newbury Street. She was very fashionably dressed, about eight months pregnant, I would guess, carrying shopping bags that, from the way they hung down low at her side, I could see were quite heavy. The woman wore quite lovely high heels, revealing well-formed toes, and her hair and makeup were Newbury Street-perfect. This woman, whom I will call by the randomly chosen name of Laura Romney, paused as I approached her, popping a red candy into her mouth.

“Madam,” I began, retrieving a pair of plastic handcuffs I keep for this purpose and snapping them smartly around her slender wrists, “I hereby arrest you in the name of the Commonwealth and the Federal Government. Your unborn child carries, by scientific count, a minimum of 60 toxic substances in his or her little body. In addition, you have just ingested a sugary candy that will drive your blood sugar sky-high, putting your unborn child at risk of his or her diabetes. Further, your high heels are contributing to back stress, which the child clearly feels. And, as we know, innocent unborn children suffer to a degree greater than that of, for example, partially born children, and greater yet than that of fully born children–all of whom, I might point out, suffer the corruptions of us post-child humans. Your mascara and lipstick, while admittedly lovely, are also poisoning your child. I therefore arrest you in order to save this poor innocent.”

Ms. Romney was hauled off to court, where she entered a curious counter-complaint. In her spirited defense, she argued that while her unborn child certainly was due her or his rights, she, too, as the undead, was due hers. What were these rights? The right not to be arrested, not to be punished even while being held responsible. The right to be spoken well of, and only well of. Further, Ms. Romney argued, she should not have to pay any further taxes. Nor should she, as the undead, have to answer her husband’s demands, answer her cell phone, or even eat.

This last threat so disturbed the presiding judge that he quickly dismissed the case. “We are in danger of compromising the, er, health of this admittedly undead woman, if we on the one hand agree to her assertion and forgo forcing her to eat to protect her undead–excuse me!–unborn child. That is, we will deny her the right to her undead status if we do so force her to eat. The law clearly states that the rights of one equal party cannot trump the rights of the other. Case dismissed!”

I admit to having been disappointed in my crusade. But I am considering contacting Chuck, my accountant, to have him look into Ms. Romney’s various assertions.

 

Read reviews of Memoirs of a Shape-Shifter at Kepler Press.

Buy the print version of Memoirs of a Shape-Shifter from Amazon.

Buy the e-book of Memoirs of a Shape-Shifter from Amazon.

"Gothic America" is also available on the CommonDreams website.

Read my interview with Reader Views on Memoirs of a Shape-Shifter here.