The Glamor of Insanity

There are two ways for me to be as I write my book: I can go to my office at the Writers Grotto, open my laptop, type a sentence, then type another one, then type another one, noticing that some of them are good and some of them of them are bad but remembering that I can go back and make the bad ones better, and keep doing that until I'm exhausted. Then I can do it again for a bunch of other days until I have a book. I can work, in other words. Like a guy with a job. Like my dad.

      Or I can open my laptop and stare at it and slam it closed and get up and pace around and ask myself why the hell I can't come up with a good enough opening sentence. I can take a long walk with my eyes on the sidewalk trying to cut to the theme at the heart of the book. I can screw around on my Facebook page or burn a movie from my DVR to a DVD or try to read a Patricia Highsmith novel without actually comprehending any of the sentences I'm looking at or go back to bed for "just a few minutes" while I wait for more clarity about what I'm going to write today. In short, I can get nothing done for days while I hunger for the moment of galvanic insight or self-loathing fury or shallow-breathed, tunnel-vision terror ("My editor hates me! My career's about to end!") that will force me, just force me, through the walls of my resistance and send me exploding through the book with the unstoppable momentum of passion.

      Which would be my mom's choice. Not that she ever really lived it. She went to work every Monday morning through every Friday afternoon too. But she hated it, and she drank herself to sleep every night until she returned, and she was constantly looking for that new approach, that new specialty, that new way of approaching the whole thing that would inspire her to love it. She wrestled for years with the question of what to do with her life before economic logic and sheer resignation drove her to teach high school. Tried writing for a while, before her insecurities beat her. Always loved artists and their stories of struggle. And never quite trusted the ability of so many people (like my dad) just to keep plugging until the job was done.

      The downside to such madness is pretty obvious: not much work gets done. Oh, but what an upside! Life is so much more entertaining in the throes of artistic agony! When do you think I feel more alive, when I spend the night wrestling with demons and angels or when I'm sitting at a desk typing? When am I more fascinating to others, when I'm pouring out the fear and anger and self-loathing that turns every day on this book into a psychological drama or when I'm closing my door and saying, "I gotta work, I'll be out at five"?

      I'm sure you can understand, then, why I choose the glamor of tormenting myself over my book to the ordinariness of writing it. But there's a problem with that kind of glamor: it looks pretty tawdry once the game's been exposed. I mean, how do I sustain the charisma of the tormented writer after I've outed myself as a drama junkie? What the payoff for all my effort then, except for a few blog entries?

      So the only real reward left is the book. Just showing up and getting it done, like a regular job. Like my dad. God damn it.

Great Expectations

I know exactly when I froze up on The Undressing of America: when the publisher bought it. 

      Through my whole career I've been able to keep a pretty low profile, hiding behind modest expectations. Writing comic books, I could win the approval of my editors and most readers by meeting the expectations of the genre in a fairly workmanlike way; subtleties of technique and depth of character were appreciated by a select few but generally not missed if I didn't deliver. Writing pop-culture oriented humor, I had to be original and funny, but no one was really paying attention to the writing as writing. Writing non-fiction about TV comedy, violent entertainment, and comic books, I had to show that I knew my material, saw it in some unique ways, and could construct a convincing argument; whatever literary virtues I brought were always viewed as an extra, worthy of an "and it's surprisingly well-written, too." 

      But I avoided putting myself in positions where I would be judged on the potency of my sentences, the reality of my characters, the truth of my voice. I was a writer who managed not to be judged on his writing.

      The writing mattered to me. I always much preferred hearing a fan say, "You write the most human characters in superhero comics," or, "I really like this line," than, "Your Green Lantern stories were really true to the classic DC tradition." But what mattered most I kept partly concealed. I found a safe place where my efforts could be noticed if readers wanted to notice them, but if they didn't I wouldn't feel so exposed in my shortfall. I could always say to myself, "Well, the goal is to deliver a solid comic book story, and didn't I do that?" This protected the part of me that felt was most precious from the world's judgment and indifference. 

      Which was swell, except that it also held me back from really writing as well as I could.

Not So Dumb

I continue to respect my fellow voters more than the people who try to "work" us. For all the efforts of geeks, wonks, pundits, insiders, players and cynics to interpret election results as being about images, strategies, symbols, gaffes and gotchas, when times are tough most of us go on making pretty sensible, reality-based decisions. I often catch myself doubting this, especially when the aforementioned pundits try to convince me that trivialities like "Bittergate" could tip the election, but then I'll be reminded of something like Alan J. Lichtman's "13 Keys to the White House." I think I've mentioned this before: Lichtman's model matches up correctly with the popular vote in every presidential election since the Civil War. (The one catch in the model is that it can't predict Electoral College weirdness, so it predicted Gore in 2000. It did, however, forecast a very tight race.) And right now it's pointing toward a solid Obama victory. Lichtman, in other words, is one of my great sources of understanding and reassurance these days. So I was very interested to read this quote from him today:

The Democratic strategists who have expressed skepticism about academic models, including my Keys to the White House, that predict an Obama victory are themselves responsible for the shallow, empty campaigns run by Democrats in recent elections. Nothing changes from one election to the next, because the media, the candidates, the pollsters, and the consultants are co-dependent in the idea that elections are exercises in manipulating voters, and in giving us negative campaigns, bland and scripted lines, and meaningless debates. The Keys have correctly predicted the popular vote results of the past six elections because they reflect the basic truth that presidential elections turn on how well an administration has governed the country, not on how well candidates have performed in the campaign. If Obama could come to realize how elections really work and why he is ahead, he would fire the hucksters and handlers, speak from the heart to the American people, and articulate forthrightly and concretely what we should be accomplishing during the next four years. He could use the campaign to establish a mandate for governing and to build grassroots support for his ideas.

I think Obama's shown moments when he does realize exactly this. His campaign has been refreshing for its relative lack of Republican and Clintonesque stunts. If any candidate in recent memory has both the opportunity and the temperament to change the way the process is run and end the reign of the smarmy insiders, he's the one. The next couple of months will reveal a lot.

I Shall Return

I heard myself saying it to my son as I let myself out of the house: "I shall return." In an arch, mock-stentorian voice. He didn't react. He never does, and I'll bet I've said it a thousand times. I didn't intend to say it, but I know where it came from: My dad used to say it to me when I was a kid, in exactly the same circumstances, when he'd leave me alone in the house and wanted to make sure I noticed but didn't want to make a big deal out of it. I never said it back to him; in fact, for the first forty-some years of my life I may never have said it at all. But from the time my son hit the age when he was conscious of me leaving the house but no longer needed real reassurance that I'd be back soon, I think I've been saying it a lot. I say "think" because I'm sure I don't always notice. I definitely don't plan it. My father's words just appear in the air.

       For my dad the words were an in-joke. Not only a self-consciously wry phrase to cover a slightly awkward social moment, which was always his way, but also a reference to General Douglas MacArthur's pronouncement upon retreating from the Philippines in the face of the Japanese invasion in 1942: "I came through Bataan...and I shall return." Russell Jones was a Marine, stationed on a Navy ship, and the Marines and Navy did not think much of the performance of MacArthur's Far East Army. My father was in the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, and his ship was sunk off Guadalcanal. He lost a lot of friends there, and he knew a lot of Marines who would fight in the horrible island conquests to come. As far as he was concerned, MacArthur's fixation on retaking the Philippines was all posturing. By the time the Army got there, the Philippines had already been cut off by Navy and Marine combat, and the Japanese withdrawal was inevitable. The newsreels of MacArthur wading ashore at Leyte after the shooting was all done and declaring "I have returned" were just showbiz as far as he was concerned, and an expectoration in the faces of the men who'd died.

      Then my dad read somewhere that when MacArthur had first declared, "I shall return," President Roosevelt had asked him to amend the line to, "We shall return." MacArthur refused. That sealed it. From then on, he was going to trivialize "I shall return" by intoning it every time he went to the hardware store or the auto parts store and left his kid watching Bullwinkle on the couch.

      My son knows a bit about World War II. He watched the whole Ken Burns series. He's heard me tell retell a few of my dad's war stories. He can't ask my dad anything directly, because he's pretty much lost in dementia now. He would probably be interested to know about the MacArthur connection if I ever remember to tell him. And if he's ever even been conscious of my "I shall return." But he wouldn't think much about it. He could never feel the pain and indignation that his grandfather somehow managed to convey with that ironic cliché. It would be a bit of family trivia, quickly tossed into whatever half-memory holds such things.

      I wonder, though, if it's in him somewhere, the same way it was in me for decades before it came out again. I wonder if he'll ever find himself saying "I shall return" to his own kid as he lets himself out the door. If, even just once, that phrase, that tone of voice, the veiled satiric stance that's found its way from World War II to the '60s suburbs to San Francisco in 2008 will reach another set of ears, who knows where, who knows whose, carried from one slightly stilted dad to another to another, a century after it was born.

That's Entertainment

The post-mortems for the Clinton campaign still fill the punditverse, most of which fade into one long, annoying drone: hubris...didn't find her voice...no plan after Super Tuesday...underestimated caucuses...generation gap....

      But Dr. G. Clotaire Rapaille, founder of a marketing consultancy called Archetype Studies, brings a new twist that is, if nothing else, more fun than the rest. As Paul Mulshine summarizes this Frenchman's take: "What we demand in our politicians is not competency but entertainment value, a fact that explains the success of Hillary's husband." Quoting Dr. Rapaille himself: "Bill Clinton is a comedian. He is the entertainer-in-chief, with a girl in the Oval Office and a cigar." Hence Clinton's easy reelection in the midst of the Lewinsky mess and the fact that the Republican Congress began to bleed support from the time it chose to impeach him.

      Bush, Rapaille says, was popular as long as he played the dumb, folksy Texan. Now that he "is rigid and boring and is surrounded by people who are boring and rigid," we can't stand him. "The big mistake from Bush was that after 9/11 he thought he had a mission."

      As Rapaille sees it, Hillary Clinton, with her earnest, combative wonkiness, never had a chance against Obama's giant rallies, strutting, gutter balls, gangsta moves, and crazy preacher. And McCain will be making a serious mistake if he tries to choke back his obscene temper tantrums and bizarre outbursts in order to come across as some sort of grimly paternal conservative scold.

      Personally, I find McCain the most entertaining figure in American politics these days...although I don't know if it's in a way that will get him elected.

The Illusion of "Identity"

For all the talk of identity politics in this past Democratic race, what strikes me is how little it really was about that. The press wanted it to be all about "women for Clinton," how resentful they are and how hard it is for them to accept being unable to vote for a female president this year. And yet, millions of men voted for Clinton too. In many states, the male vote broke strongly in her favor. And in many states, Obama did better among women than Clinton did. The polls show that many women started the campaign supporting Clinton and then shifted to Obama; some shifted back later, many didn't.

       As for race: yes, by the end, Obama was polling between 80 and 90% of black people, but not in the beginning. Late last year, Clinton was leading him in the polls among black Democrats. African-Americans didn't flock automatically to him because of some great law of "identity politics"; the Clinton campaign had to alienate them actively. And if Clinton ended up winning among white voters, it was by the slimmest of margins. This was not a race dominated by race and gender, despite the determination of journalists to simplify it and sexy it up for the needs of headlines. It was far more about economics, generations, classes, managerial styles, people's expectations of their government, and ideas than it ever was about such superficial concepts of identity.

       When I started this blog, I quoted my friend Xandra Castleton (writer and producer of the movie Full Grown Men) on some of these issues—or actually kind of misquoted her by editing most of the nuance out of what she'd said. She then gave me a fuller version of what she had said, which I'd like to reproduce here. This is from late February, before the race became a long, angry battle, with the choices still seemed so electric. I had just written about how I wished my mother had lived to see this election, how it would have been such a thrill for her and yet such a difficult decision for a woman had been a feminist and a civil rights activist for decades, and Xandra responded:

When I heard that Oprah had supported Obama, I felt an instinctive initial resentment that in the hierarchy of identity politics, gender always loses. I thought that Oprah was choosing her race over her gender as black women did in the black power movement and as women in every cultural/racial/class struggle seem to constantly be asked to do. But I think I was wrong. I don't know if Obama really represents me so much more than Clinton does, but I'd rather have him representing this country to the rest of the world, and I'd like to have a president for the first time in my life as an eligible voter who is not named either Bush or Clinton. That has been my first and enduring opposition to her candidacy. But if she does become our nominee you can be sure I'll be sharpening my weapons against the Hillary haters and trying to expose the sexism behind the vehemence of that hatred, which I believe is very real and alive. I'm with the hope candidate, yes, so I hope that your mama will be looking down at a future election and smiling down at the female candidate of color sweeping the country off their feet (and I hope she's a lesbian too).

These were the sorts of decisions we had to make over these past few months, the sorts of conflicts we had to balance and negotiate. In the process we all learned a hell of a lot about what matters most to us. This has been a profound process of national self-examination, and I suspect we'll only gradually realize how much it's taught us. To reduce that to the simplest old definitions of "identity" completely misses the point.

      (Oh, but I do have to point out: if we do have a lesbian of color running for president in the near future, it'll probably be Condoleezza Rice. No thanks! There are a lot of old, straight white guys I'd vote for first....)