Remembering the "Other" Black Writers

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While trying to wrap one's head around the mindbending legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, it is important to remember black writers and artists who fit outside the dominant and often patronizing paradigms of black cultural production inculcated during things like "Black History Month." Growing up, I was taught to believe in a single cohesive narrative that explains how the leaders of black culture (to use an already fraught term) contributed to bringing the end of institutionalized racism in America. When reading Their Eyes were Watching God, Native Son, Invisible Man, and Go Tell it on the Mountain, the narrative was often oversimplified: black writers wrote books that overtly protested segregationist practices, and did so in a single unified voice. The truth is, of course, much richer and more complicated, but also more difficult to teach.

Hedi Kaddour's "The Bus Driver" and Ordinary Life

The Bus Driver: Hedi Kaddour

What has gotten into the bus driver
Who has left his bus, who has sat down
On a curb on the Place de l'Opera
Where he slips into the ease of being
Nothing more than his own tears? The passersby
Who bend over such a shared and
Presentable sorrow would like him
To tell them that the wind used to know
How to come out of the woods toward a woman's dress,
Or that one day his brother said to him,
Even your shadow wants nothing to do with you.
His feet in a puddle, the bus driver
Can only repeat, This work is hard
And people aren't kind.

-- from A Walk in the City, Treason (YUP 2010), translated by Marilyn Hacker

Like 35 Shots, Hedi Kaddour's amazing collection Treason explores the lives of characters confronting breakdowns in the flows and rhythms of their routines. I don't want to sound like a broken record citing recent French art for doing this kind of thing so well, but I thought this poem could be fun to think of next to Denis's film , especially because Lionel drives trains and the bus driver in Kaddour's poem...well....you get it (apparently there's just something super ordinary about working in public transportation in Paris).

Why it's Important to Start Using the Past Tense when it Comes to Hipsters

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Last October, Mark Greif published an appraisal of hipster culture in New York Magazine.  Greif is one of the founders of the supposedly-annoying magazine and online journal N+1.  I don't know enough about it to say whether I like the pubication or not (although characterizations of it as an elitist and pseudo-academic journal lead me to the assumption--if I am to be honest with myself--that I would probably dig it).  But I do think that the conceit of the article--assigning the past tense to consider hipster culture as a historically bound phenomenon--is a useful one.   

Some notes on "The Bell Jar," Richard Powers, and Evolving Definitions of Mental Life

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In an effort to make up for more than a few literary and personal-life-ish oversights, I finally read The Bell Jar this week.  From there, I turned back to some of the more famous poems in Ariel, making what I think is a common bonehead mistake when reading Plath.  It becomes incredibly difficult when reading Path's work not to consider biography as overdetermining every detail in her fiction and poetry.  Maybe it's partially her fault, sure.  The Bell Jar is so close to autobiographical that Plath famously prevented its publication in the United States and insisted upon releasing it under a pseudonym in Great Britain.  But I do want to try to put all of that aside.  To say that Plath's story is tragic (and even to suggest, as a friend put it, that Ted Hughs pulled of the most dastardly murder in the history of modern letters) does miss the point of this novel: namely, that Esther Greenwood is probably one of of the most distinctive characters in mid-20th Century American fiction.  I don't have the ability or background to articulate what the novel meant for the feminist movement, although Esther's observations about men and relationships are scathing and often hilarious.

Ordinary Life in "35 Shots"

We need more movies like Claire Denis's 35 Rhums. Beautiful in its composition, and subtle in the exploration of its themes, the film takes us on a ride (literally--we are moved around the city and banlieue-scapes of Paris in trains, taxis, buses, motorcycles, and vans) through the ordinary lives of its characters. Denis's exploration of the familiar seems so spot-on not only because of the understated way in which she deals with interruptions in the ordinary, but also the diligence and precision with which she records the everyday as an emotionally charged ground for exploration. By painstakingly documenting small daily rituals and routines, Denis's film helps us see how variations in the smallest facets of life become the record of momentous and often tragic events.Much of the emotional intensity of 35 Shots is staged in the apartment that Lionel shares with his daughter Jo, where the rhythms of daily life rule the action. Lionel takes off shoes in the hallway; Jo puts laundry in the machine and puts her headphones on to study; she prepares dinner and the two eat togehter. The film repeats these scenes over and again, to the extent that they condition our experience of the narrative. We see Lionel enter the apartment every night either after work or drinking with friends. We see him take off his shoes and walk down the hallway of his apartment to his bedroom. We see him put on his robe and get ready to take his shower. We become, in effect, sensitized to the fact that these are repeated actions, and can begin to look for variations in the manner that he carries out the routine. Instead of asking whether certain actions in the film will take place, we come to expect them, and in turn ask how the routines will change in response to events that take place outside of the apartment.

In this domestic space, we notice the subtlest variations, which stand out as a record of how characters manage the impact of events in the outside world. The way that Lionel takes off his shoes becomes an index of his state of sobriety. We notice that the only seated meal that Jo and her father share is the first in the film--a formal recognition of Lionel's unexpectedly thoughtful gift of the rice cooker (in every subsequent meal, they are standing). On nights when Lionel is particularly tired or affected by some event of the day, he forgoes the shower. Jo listens at the bathroom door for subtle variations in the noises her father is making as he bathes. They become signifiers of his emotional state.

Jo manages this domestic space, and attempts to control it by constantly cleaning and cooking. Despite Lionel's request that she stop trying to take care of him and live her own life, Jo feels compelled to make the home as blank a space as possible for the staging of everyday life. In turn, her impulse to clear the apartment of clutter is set off against Noe's penthouse, which is riddled with clothing, old furniture, garbage, and eventually his dead cat. He is constantly out of milk--unable to keep the kitchen supplied with what is necessary to have a smooth daily routine. Though he tries to remove the debris from his life, he eventually decides instead to sell the place. It is too fraught with memories. In essence, it can never be a space of simple domestic life because it is packed with objects that carry emotionally charged associations.

If the apartment becomes the place where characters find sanctuary--or perhaps, most often seek comfort--in rhythms, the outside world becomes a set of sites that resist the search for flow that is nevertheless constant. The film opens with an extended sequence of trains, shot from both the inside of a cab and from Lionel's perspective on the side of a track. Day turns to night. The trains move along and lights come on. Sometimes the noise of the trains passing is the smooth sliding of steel wheels on track. Sometimes we see the cab jerk to the side as it passes over a switch. We look for the reassurance of rhythm in the portrayal of commutes and labor. But there are only momentary sensations of in-flowness, punctuated by Lionel's cigarettes and by shots of commuters banging into Jo and causing her to wince. It seems significant that Jo and Lionel only seem comfortable in the outside world when they are experiencing a kind of domesticized rhythm together: sharing the motion of the motorbike, or in the comfort of their awesome little van--which contains a kitchen and enough space to share a meal. To feel in tune with the world, they must take their domestic space with them.

Jo insists that she could "live exactly like this," with her father; but of course, it is the interruptions in the rhythms of simple domestic life that drive the action of most of the film--and in effect, drive Jo precisely away from the life she shares with her father. The film suggests that while routine and ritual help us find comfort in the world, only interruption and exception drive us forward. That is: only interruptions in the narrative of routine can create forward motion that drives the plot. When Gabrielle's taxi breaks down and the group must miss the concert, Lionel spends the night with a bartender and Jo reacts by trying to strip the apartment of memories of her mother. The characters are forced to stop moving, and in doing so, must confront what is in front of them. This happens again toward the climax of the film. Rene's suicide on the RER tracks not only causes Lionel to stop his train, but also serves as the catalyst for Lionel and Jo to take a trip to Germany and visit the grave of Methilde.

I wonder whether Denis has set up a dichotomy between repetitive and forward motion, or if my reading of these two types of experiences in the world are necessarily set apart from one another in the film. Does ordinary experience require interruption for the reevaluation of self? Considering the final scene, I'm not exactly sure. Lionel celebrates the end of his current domestic life with his daughter by drinking the 35 Shots of Rum--a ritual whose origin goes unstated but which has a special significance for him. Here, Lionel turns to ritual in a case of celebration. It is the fusion of the repeatable or traditional and the exemplary or spectacular event. It is joy for his daughter and nostalgia for their already-lost life together that fuses the two.

Persistent Inattention

I had made it three and a half hours without talking to him.  Mostly by furiously underlining in my book.  The whole time I could feel him fidgeting in his chair, shifting positions.  He had brought a pillow in the shape of a pineapple and made a show of punching and tugging at it before setting it down on his tray table.  He wanted me to remark on the pineapple.  He wanted my attention.  I could feel it.  And when I didn't give it to him, he reached down underneath the seat in front of him and pulled his knapsack onto his lap.  He put the pineapple into the bag and then shoved the bag back under the seat.  I snuck a peek at his shoulders as he pressed the bag.  He sat back up and sighed.

We flew for a few hours.  He slept.  He was awake.  He played SuDoKu on his iPod.

I remained glued to the pages in front of me.  I felt as though I hadn't concentrated so hard on a piece of fiction in a long time.  The stories danced for me in a way they hadn't.  I felt very serious.

But on the 214th minute of the flight, I suddenly lost concentration and looked up at the back of the seat in front of me.  The kid in the middle seat, seizing the opportunity to break the plane of my attention, reached over me and pulled up the shade to look out the window.

"I'm just trying to see," he said.  In the grey yellow of my reading light, he looked unshaven and tired, but he had earnest eyes.  Dangerous eyes.  There was almost an hour of flight time remaining.  I turned toward the window and could see his reflection craning to see around my head.

"We're over Las Vegas," I said, looking down at the bizarre splotch of lights in the middle of the black desert.  I think I was hoping that by confirming our location, I could somehow get back down into the private headspace I had established for myself.  I looked back into my book, staring at the words more intently, but feeling the kid's eyes pointed out the window.  We crept by Vegas, and I stared at the Strip, unable at our altitude to pick out any detail.

"What class are you reading that for?" he asked.

I turned toward him.

"I'm not in school," I said.

"Oh, I just thought you had the look of a student."

We let that sit for a moment.

I decided that I would be ruthless in my disengagement.  That I would sit and listen with a flat look on my face.  That I would let whatever he said wash straight over me until he was pummeled into submission by my own inattentiveness.  This had been my defense before.

I looked at my watch and put my pen in the book to mark the page.

"What are you going to do in Los Angeles?" he asked.

"Visiting a friend," I said.

"I'm going home from my first semester in college at Southern University."  He leaned back in his chair, confident all of a sudden that he had attained my attention and could shift into easy conversation.

"Have you heard of it?"

I shook my head.

"It's a small Seventh-Day Adventist University in Chattanooga.  Do you know where Chattanooga is?"

"Yes."

"Well anyway, it's really right outside of Chattanooga, in a small town called College Crossing."

I imagined

The Suburbs

For a few years every December, my family would go driving around the neighborhoods to look at Christmas lights.  This was around when I was about five till seven years old, and my little sister between three and five. We never put up lights on the outside of our own house.  My father is Jewish, and for some reason there was an unspoken rule that--while we could have the biggest  tree on the block and enough lights inside the house to raise the temperature by a few degrees--we would never put lights outside.  This never seemed in any way contradictory to me.

"Why don't we put lights on the house," my sister once asked me.

"Because of Dad," I said.

Ironically, my father seemed to love these aimless overheated drives more than anyone else in the family.  And he had a real appreciation for people who seemed to put monumental time into stringing lights.

"Look at the detailing on that snowman!" he would say of an outline of white lights.  "I bet that took hours."

And he had a term for haphazard or half-assed attempts.  "Mish mosh," my father would say when we passed a house with a string of blue lights thrown over a hedge.  Or God forbid a house should have blinking lights.  "What are you going to do that for?" he'd ask, the aesthetic so repulsive to him that the question obviously did not need to be addressed.

"Oh Mike, just leave it alone," my mother would respond.

Sometimes we set out with specific destinations in mind.  Cul-de-sacs lit up with efflorescent motorized Santas, and wattage so intense you could probably have benefited from a pair of science-grade eye protection.  These were blocks in places like White Plains and Eastchester ("You have to hand it to these Italians," my mother would say) that people knew about.  Places where families had blood feuds every year over who got the best coverage or prime picture placement in The Journal News.

Slow moving Ford Windstars, Dodge Caravans, and Nissan Stanzas circled around.  Kids like me and my sister were glued to the windows, clouding up the glass and then wiping it off with our hands.  The sharp sensation of glass against the cold nights and the sound of rubbing our skin against it.

But mostly we just drove around, switching back around neighborhoods in search of the perfect house.  It was always best to run into a totally unexpected house on a dark block.  We would turn around a corner and everyone would say, "OooOOOOoooooh."  I remember one house we would visit every year.  It was our favorite, and became the standard bearer for light-decorations.  It was as though we had to go every year to remind ourselves of what was truly exceptional in the business of lights.  This particular house always prioritized white lights.  They used color, but used it tastefully (though that always seemed a bit random).  They never used reindeer on the roof or anything animatronic.  And of course, there were no blinking lights.

"Maybe we should knock on the door sometime," my mother said one year.

"What, are you crazy?" my father said.  "Like--hi we've been stalking your house for several years now, and just thought we would say hello."

"I don't know," she responded.  "I just think it would be nice to tell them that we appreciate their house."

It made me nervous to think of knocking on strangers' doors.  And more nervous to hear my parents fighting.

When we had driven around for about an hour, my mother would start to yawn.  We would drive back down the Hutchinson River Parkway to Mount Vernon, and up our darkened block of houses inhabited mainly by elderly couples.

"No lights on our block," my father would observe, and we wouldn't say anything.  I can't remember ever really wanting lights on our house.

We would get home and my mother would open the garage door and always say "Hey look at our tree!"  And we would look through our bay windows and see our warm living room, lit up, glowing in the dark.