To Arnold, bodybuilding was the world. In Sir Isiah Berlin's famous essay 'The Hedgehog and the Fox', the historian of ideas argues "there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory." Arnold was a hedgehog who pulled most of his meaning, purpose, faith, ambition, and ideas out of bodybuilding. For almost anyone else, it would have been like divining water from the desert sand, but Arnold filled his glass up. When he said years later that everything he knew from life he had learned from bodybuilding, he was not far from wrong.
-- Laurence Leamer,
Fantastic: The Life Of Arnold
Schwarzenegger
In Fantastic, Laurence Leamer's exceptional new biography of Arnold Schwarzenegger, there's a photograph of the young titan posing with his bodybuilding friends at the lake in the village of Thal, Austria, where he was born and raised. It is the summer of 1963, and Schwarzenegger is sixteen years old. In a few more months, American President John F.Kennedy will be shot dead in Dallas, Texas. The world will shift.
But let us linger on that picture a moment longer in this more innocent time, and the let the world's oncoming cataclysmic change remain distant. For here we have the freshness of youth, and the seeds of Arnold. If you had asked the residents of Thal, Austria, on this bright summer morning what would become of young Schwarzenegger, the policeman's son, the boy in the centre of the photograph (posed between childhood chums Karl Gerstl and Willi Richter), they would have answered, most likely, that he would become a carpenter, as his parents hoped, as his schooling led towards, and he would, most certainly, stay in Thal, get married, raise a family. Everyone did. You didn't leave Thal. And if you had had the temerity to suggest during this final summer of Kennedy's reign that young Arnold would, in fact, marry John F. Kennedy's niece, and become the most successful bodybuilder in the history of humanity, and the biggest movie star in the entire world, and the two-term Governor of the State of California in the United States of America, well. They would think you were mad, the citizens of Thal would. And rightly so. Nobody would believe you.
Nobody but Arnold himself.
For the essence of Arnold's story is the power of belief. Belief not in a higher being, but a belief in oneself. A belief in the possibilities of belief itself.
Fantastic is an appropriate name for this biography, and not only because it is Schwarzenegger's favorite word. Arnold's whole life is improbable and absurd. How could a boy from the middle of nowhere, in rural Austria, become a world champion in a little-understood, little-seen sport? How could a young man who spoke no English conquer the American silver screen? How could an immigrant be elected, twice, to the most powerful position (outside of the presidency) in American politics?
The book attempts to answer these questions, and the answer lies in the philosophy of Arnold Schwarzenegger himself.
From bodybuilding, Arnold learned that there were no limits, imagined or otherwise. He would push himself to the point of exhaustion, to the point of passing out. He believed that the true training began when everyone else quit. Sculpting his body was a means by which his will could be actualized, repeatedly, and the final result was nothing more than the logical result of one's own focused, laserlike intention.
Becoming the best bodybuilder of all time would have been enough for most men, any man. For Arnold, it was just the beginning.
People have always written that Arnold went out and got himself a Kennedy. No. He and I fell in love. He wasn't finished growing and he saw in me someone who believed he could go further. And nobody felt that he could go further but the two of us. And everybody laughed at his dreams. People were mad at me, because I was supposedly taking him further away. That's where Arnold wanted to go. You can't take a guy like Arnold somewhere he doesn't want to go.
-- Maria Shriver
By the time Schwarzenegger met Maria Shriver, daughter of Kennedy's sister, Eunice, and Sargent Shriver, founder of the Peace Corps, his bodybuilding career was all but over. It was on to bigger and better things. In Shriver he found somebody who could accompany him on the next stage of his journey. His mother wanted him to come home to Austria. After all, hadn't he done enough? Wasn't complete mastery of the bodybuilding world enough?
Actually, no.
Arnold set his sights on the world of cinema. He did not expect to become the best actor in the world, but he did forsee himself becoming the biggest movie star in the world.
Given that his English was heavily accented, his social graces almost non-existent, his sense of humor bawdy and outraegous, his acting skills non-existent, his politcal leanings Republican in a Hollywood that leaned distinctly Democraticm this would seem an exceedingly unlikely aim.
For Arnold, the policeman's son from Thal, it was perfectly plausible.
And here is thus revealed Schwarzenegger's most compelling quality: his enthusiasm in the potential of his own possibilities. Life is not an endeavor to be limited by the actions of others. Life, in Schwarzenegger's philosophy, can bent towards ourselves. Should we work hard enough. Should we seek our goals strongly enough. Should we demand levels of intensity within ourselves that are unseen even by our own secret souls, but must be summoned nevertheless.
Time Magazine: You wrote Arnold Schwarzenegger's first big action film, Conan The Barbarian. How do you think he's doing as governor?
Oliver Stone: It's irrelevant. He's got a face that people like and forgive. Arnold is one of the great faces of the 20th and 21st centuries. He's taken humanity to the cyborg stage, truly. Even at the time of Conan, we knew this man was a champion and nothing could stop his will.
-- April 19, 2004
By the time Schwarzenegger was elected Governor of California in 2003, he had long seen his silver-screen career begin to dwindle and fade. Not to worry. The foundations of the next chapter of his life had already been planted years before. He had worked with the first President Bush on national fitness programs; he had long been involved in Republican political events. The chaos of the California recall of 2003 added a carnival-like level to his candiacy, but his motives were serious and focused: He would change California.
And he tried. So much so that by the time Fantastic was published in 2005, it looked like Arnold was on his way out, that all his forceful rhetoric and unwanted special-elections had aggravated the California voting constituency to the point where he his approval ratings were at an all-time low. Leamer concludes his biography on a rather downbeat note, speculating that Schwarzenegger himself does not realize the extent of the morass he finds himself in: "If the last chapters of Arnold's life were to be a thick and worthy tome, they would have to be written in different colors and different tones. This was probably the most difficult challenge of Arnold's life, double difficult because he seemed not even to realize that he faced it."
So what did Arnold do?
He changed tactics, spending the last year of his first term of office mending fences with voters, reaching out to the Democrats he had recently ridiculed, promoting his environmental policies and reminding voters why they had liked him to begin with. As Oliver Stone pointed out, Arnold's face is one that people will choose to forgive, and they did, re-electing him by a landslide last fall.
Arnold enters his sixties as the two-term Governor of California. He turned it all around. And to one who has witnessed the astonishing rise of his ascent, one can only say: Of course.
Arnold used to say when he went to the gym on a rainy day, the sun was shining around the gym only. He can walk in the rain, he used to say, and it pours, and he's dry. Just like a spotlight of no rain is around him. I get goose bumps when he says this, because I've seen it. I've seen it so many times. He's bulletproof. I don't know what it is. It's something you can't even describe with words. He's chosen. I mean, it's a little tough to use that word. But he's chosen. They don't come around too often.
-- Sven Thorsen,
long-time friend
So what, one is tempted to say. Bodybuilding is a silly sport, most of his movies were terrible (box-office success notwithstanding), and politics is a crook's game to begin with. Fair enough. But the significance of Schwarzenegger's life has little do with the specifics and everything to do with the generalities that can be extracted from it.
Schwarzenegger is a testatement to intent. Plain and simple. What he intended, he achieved. I've long believed that if you want something, you will get it, and the formula for achieving such a goal is unique to the individual. You will learn how to write a book by writing a book; you will learn a language by learning the language. The how is irrelevant and particular to every different person; if the intent is there, the process will begin.
So many of us drift through life with no intentions, and are surprised that nothing substantial has been achieved. Schwarzenegger set goals, achieved them, learned from them, and moved on. If you don't aim, you can't score. All the stuff they teach us in grade school; all the stuff we forget. Arnold never forgot, and he never stopped moving, and he never looked back.
His life is not a saint's, and the biography paints a portrait of man that has his fair share of flaws. But it is also, at its core, a story of hope. Hope for the future. Hope that we can grow, excel, become better than we once were.
The most insightful observation the book makes is its acknowledgement that Arnold's success was not simply a lust for power, a monstrous testament to his own ego, as many critics claim. To the contrary, in fact. In life, Arnold did whatever brought him the greatest joy. If it made him feel good, he went after it. Bodybuilding provided the jumpstart, followed by acting, followed by politics, where he ultimately saw, based on the humanitarian legacy of his in-laws, that the most fulfilling contribution to life could be enacted by serving others.
Was Arnold 'chosen', as his friend Sven Thorsen claims?
Well, let's listen to one of Schwarzenegger's political consultants, a former speechwriter for Arnold's idol, Ronald Reagan, as recounted in Fantastic:
"Arnold built himself more than Reagan built himself," the speechwriter reflected. "Reagan felt the power of ideas. And Arnold feels the power of himself."
So, yes -- he was chosen to do great and mighty things.
Chosen by himself.
His greatest talent is his ability to learn new skills, to search and find the people who can advise him on how to obtain those skills. Then he masters these new skills and uses them when he goes in a new direction. Whether it be how to win a bodybuilding contest, become a successful businessman, make it big in movies, and now in the political arena. He just adds, adds, adds to his fund of knowledge and skills all the time. Most people can add a little bit here and there, or in only one direction, but he has added in all directions. He's learned from everything he does and has become a better all-around person for it. Believe me, I never thought Arnold would rise so high in certain aspects of his personality, but he did -- he surprises me all the time. Arnold is the Arnold he is today because of the learning process he has gone, and continues to go, through. His ability to learn is unparalleled by anyone I've ever know.
-- Albert Busek,
Schwarzenegger friend
The summer of 1963. At the lake in the village of Thal, Austria. Three friends pose for the camera, flexing, smiling their teenage smiles. The one in the middle is looking straight at us, into the future. He is happy but focused. He will leave the place that nobody ever leaves. He will choose himself, and see how far he can go.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Sunday, January 21, 2007
A BIRD IN YOUR PALM
I try to study Japanese every day, in the mornings and the evenings, and usually it is slow, and unfruitful, and frustrating, and the intended outcome -- fluency -- is essentially a fool's errand, the chances of success unlikely, and it is precisely for those reasons that I'm having such a good, enriching time.
One of the best things I learned as a teenage runner is the notion of working at something today for the (possible) benefit to come tomorrow. During the summer months you train for September, October and November: cross-country season. In the winter you put yourself through the paces to prepare for the indoor track season in January and February, and this season in and of itself is really nothing more than a means by which you can improve your speed and endurance for the outdoor track season in April and May. Then the summer comes, and you do it all over again.
Your run today is preparation for a race two, three months from now. If you skip today (assuming you're diligent every other day), nothing much will happen. Your fitness level won't slip all that much. You won't lose that future race. It basically means nothing, missing today's run.
And yet it means everything.
Years ago, in high school, talking on the phone in our basement pool-room with one of my friends trying to get me to skip my run so I could come over and watch a video, I told him I couldn't, but I couldn't explain why. Not really. It was early-winter, after all. The outdoor track season was, what, four, five months away? What was the big deal?
The paradox is (I would tell him now, not having the words then), even though I'm preparing for tomorrow, today is all that I have. And if I do not do what I am supposed to do today, then something important inside of me has been lost. My gamble at the future, essentially. My shot at something yet to come. By forfeiting today, I'm acknowledging that tomorrow, too, is unlikely, even unecessary.
Even being in and around cancer this past year has solidified this notion. Cancer makes the future seem frightening and uncertain, but steps must be taken to today for the mere possibility of tomorrow. Tomorrow itself is not guaranteed. But today's treatment will ensure the possibility, if not the probability, of its occurrence.
The ultimate irony, of course, of today's preparation for tomorrow is that it is not tomorrow that ultimately matters. It is the preparation itself. In the end, that's all we have. So many factors are out of our control, always. On race day it could be cold or wet, your shoelaces could come undone, you could get boxed in during a race, unable to make your long-planned move -- any of that could happen.
All you have is what you did to get you there. That's all you can rely on. Usually, it's enough. Sometimes (often?), it's not enough. And yet that, too, is life. The process of it.
Right now I have a vocabulary book designed for the Level 2 Japanese Proficiency Test (waaaay above my level), and a grammar book for that same test, and a few non-fiction books brought back from Japan that I'm trying to make my way through, page by page, dictionary in hand. It's boring and drudgery and wonderful and enticing. I don't know if I will end up taking the Proficiency Test later this year, or possibly next year, but that's not the point. The point is that I'm working on something, today, and it leads into tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. If I don't have a link between today and tomorrow and the beginning of next year, I feel bereft. I feel that today exists only for itself, and that feels unfulfilling.
Yet this process also, paradoxically, reinforces the necessity of today also being only for today, and today alone. The outcome is not what's important. What is the end outcome of a serious disease, after all? What is the end outcome of all of our lives? None of us are taking anything with us.
All we have are the moments at hand, the ones that fill our time now and earn credit for that all will follow.
Studying Japanese, for me, is not even about studying Japanese. It's about continuing to build on I something I already have, something I started in the past, something that can continue into the future, something that gives weight to my mornings and hints at future discoveries. Something that links all my yesterdays with most of my tomorrows.
It's about seizing the moments at hand, cradling them like a bird in your palm, then nudging them, somehow, into tomorrow, into flight.
One of the best things I learned as a teenage runner is the notion of working at something today for the (possible) benefit to come tomorrow. During the summer months you train for September, October and November: cross-country season. In the winter you put yourself through the paces to prepare for the indoor track season in January and February, and this season in and of itself is really nothing more than a means by which you can improve your speed and endurance for the outdoor track season in April and May. Then the summer comes, and you do it all over again.
Your run today is preparation for a race two, three months from now. If you skip today (assuming you're diligent every other day), nothing much will happen. Your fitness level won't slip all that much. You won't lose that future race. It basically means nothing, missing today's run.
And yet it means everything.
Years ago, in high school, talking on the phone in our basement pool-room with one of my friends trying to get me to skip my run so I could come over and watch a video, I told him I couldn't, but I couldn't explain why. Not really. It was early-winter, after all. The outdoor track season was, what, four, five months away? What was the big deal?
The paradox is (I would tell him now, not having the words then), even though I'm preparing for tomorrow, today is all that I have. And if I do not do what I am supposed to do today, then something important inside of me has been lost. My gamble at the future, essentially. My shot at something yet to come. By forfeiting today, I'm acknowledging that tomorrow, too, is unlikely, even unecessary.
Even being in and around cancer this past year has solidified this notion. Cancer makes the future seem frightening and uncertain, but steps must be taken to today for the mere possibility of tomorrow. Tomorrow itself is not guaranteed. But today's treatment will ensure the possibility, if not the probability, of its occurrence.
The ultimate irony, of course, of today's preparation for tomorrow is that it is not tomorrow that ultimately matters. It is the preparation itself. In the end, that's all we have. So many factors are out of our control, always. On race day it could be cold or wet, your shoelaces could come undone, you could get boxed in during a race, unable to make your long-planned move -- any of that could happen.
All you have is what you did to get you there. That's all you can rely on. Usually, it's enough. Sometimes (often?), it's not enough. And yet that, too, is life. The process of it.
Right now I have a vocabulary book designed for the Level 2 Japanese Proficiency Test (waaaay above my level), and a grammar book for that same test, and a few non-fiction books brought back from Japan that I'm trying to make my way through, page by page, dictionary in hand. It's boring and drudgery and wonderful and enticing. I don't know if I will end up taking the Proficiency Test later this year, or possibly next year, but that's not the point. The point is that I'm working on something, today, and it leads into tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. If I don't have a link between today and tomorrow and the beginning of next year, I feel bereft. I feel that today exists only for itself, and that feels unfulfilling.
Yet this process also, paradoxically, reinforces the necessity of today also being only for today, and today alone. The outcome is not what's important. What is the end outcome of a serious disease, after all? What is the end outcome of all of our lives? None of us are taking anything with us.
All we have are the moments at hand, the ones that fill our time now and earn credit for that all will follow.
Studying Japanese, for me, is not even about studying Japanese. It's about continuing to build on I something I already have, something I started in the past, something that can continue into the future, something that gives weight to my mornings and hints at future discoveries. Something that links all my yesterdays with most of my tomorrows.
It's about seizing the moments at hand, cradling them like a bird in your palm, then nudging them, somehow, into tomorrow, into flight.
FINDING YOUR PLACE
Sometimes our newfound interests and obsessions converge in an unlikely manner.
A few months ago at Kinokuniya bookstore in Tokyo I bought a popular-science book (something that I never, ever do) called The Fabric Of The Cosmos, by Brian Greene, a non-fiction work which examines the possibilities of alternate universes and time-travel, to the past and the future, via the prism of cutting-edge, modern-day physics. After reading this mind-blowing book (and after understanding only about, oh, twenty percent of it), I emailed back and forth various theories of time-travel and alternate dimensions with a friend, discussing the themes of the book, wondering if all of it is actually, entirely possible, and then I come back to Baguio, and currently in cinemas is the Denzel Washington time-travel thriller Deja Vu, which deals, in a Hollywood-thriller-kind-of-way, with all of these identical issues, and after looking up more info on the movie on the web, I see that the movie itself had, as a technical consultant, Brian Greene, the physicist whose book I had just read and debated not a few weeks before.
Weird.
To me, anyways.
The thing is, the timing was perfect. Back home, the Denzel Washington flick had come out a few months earlier. It's already headed for DVD, I imagine. But for me, it was new. It was fresh. It was part of an intellectual engagement I had started with a science book in Tokyo, continued with a friend online, and completed at a cinema in the Philippines. In the space of a few weeks, in two countries, throughout cyberspace, all of this stuff came together, just in time for me to witness it and watch it and debate it.
We've all experienced some like that, I think. We discover something new -- a hobby, an interest, even a person -- and suddenly, we can't stop thinking about it. We see signs of it everywhere. We try a new food and that food suddenly seems to be advertised all over the place. We find a new author, and his books suddenly leap off of bookstore shelves to demand our indulgence.
Things converge.
My theory is thus that people who don't get out much, who stay at home, who don't develop their own peculiar odd interests and obsessions, are missing out on a key principle of life: Things converge only happen when there are things that can be converged.
Sounds simple. But if you don't develop any real interests, any deep passions, then life becomes somewhat static. You can't see any connections between things because there's nothing in your orbit to be connected. (Which is why kids get easily bored, because they don't know all that much and are not interested in all that much, outside of one or two key things, like video games, or Doritos.)
If you step out of your comfort zone, if you pick up a science book even though you don't understand science, there might, just might, have a way and means by which your other interests will intersect. I don't like science but I love time-travel stories. I buy a book that deals with both, and watch a movie that deals with both, and suddenly for the past three, four weeks I'm shooting the shit about time-travel, other, alternate versions of ourselves, yada yada yada.
That's cool.
And the even cooler thing is, you never know precisely where and when things will converge.
But the more you keep your feelers out there, the more you try new things, the longer you maintain your interests and continue to seek out new ones, the more connections you'll have, and the possibility for convergence will remain high.
You will be connected to the world in a full and rich way, and it to you.
You will find your place, extensively and repeatedly.
You will connect.
A few months ago at Kinokuniya bookstore in Tokyo I bought a popular-science book (something that I never, ever do) called The Fabric Of The Cosmos, by Brian Greene, a non-fiction work which examines the possibilities of alternate universes and time-travel, to the past and the future, via the prism of cutting-edge, modern-day physics. After reading this mind-blowing book (and after understanding only about, oh, twenty percent of it), I emailed back and forth various theories of time-travel and alternate dimensions with a friend, discussing the themes of the book, wondering if all of it is actually, entirely possible, and then I come back to Baguio, and currently in cinemas is the Denzel Washington time-travel thriller Deja Vu, which deals, in a Hollywood-thriller-kind-of-way, with all of these identical issues, and after looking up more info on the movie on the web, I see that the movie itself had, as a technical consultant, Brian Greene, the physicist whose book I had just read and debated not a few weeks before.
Weird.
To me, anyways.
The thing is, the timing was perfect. Back home, the Denzel Washington flick had come out a few months earlier. It's already headed for DVD, I imagine. But for me, it was new. It was fresh. It was part of an intellectual engagement I had started with a science book in Tokyo, continued with a friend online, and completed at a cinema in the Philippines. In the space of a few weeks, in two countries, throughout cyberspace, all of this stuff came together, just in time for me to witness it and watch it and debate it.
We've all experienced some like that, I think. We discover something new -- a hobby, an interest, even a person -- and suddenly, we can't stop thinking about it. We see signs of it everywhere. We try a new food and that food suddenly seems to be advertised all over the place. We find a new author, and his books suddenly leap off of bookstore shelves to demand our indulgence.
Things converge.
My theory is thus that people who don't get out much, who stay at home, who don't develop their own peculiar odd interests and obsessions, are missing out on a key principle of life: Things converge only happen when there are things that can be converged.
Sounds simple. But if you don't develop any real interests, any deep passions, then life becomes somewhat static. You can't see any connections between things because there's nothing in your orbit to be connected. (Which is why kids get easily bored, because they don't know all that much and are not interested in all that much, outside of one or two key things, like video games, or Doritos.)
If you step out of your comfort zone, if you pick up a science book even though you don't understand science, there might, just might, have a way and means by which your other interests will intersect. I don't like science but I love time-travel stories. I buy a book that deals with both, and watch a movie that deals with both, and suddenly for the past three, four weeks I'm shooting the shit about time-travel, other, alternate versions of ourselves, yada yada yada.
That's cool.
And the even cooler thing is, you never know precisely where and when things will converge.
But the more you keep your feelers out there, the more you try new things, the longer you maintain your interests and continue to seek out new ones, the more connections you'll have, and the possibility for convergence will remain high.
You will be connected to the world in a full and rich way, and it to you.
You will find your place, extensively and repeatedly.
You will connect.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF DRY
Do you cry when it rains?
If the clouds turn gray, and the sky shifts to a darker, denser shade of blue, do you wait with glee for the coming storm, or long for the sun's return?
If there was a world where rain was the norm, would its people miss the absence of a sun they possibly had never even imagined, let alone seen?
Would they lie awake at night, discontent, rolling from left to right and back again, wondering what was missing inside of them? Perhaps they would dream of a harsh and yellow light, and wonder what it meant and where it came from. From inside of themselves, their secret hearts, or outside, distant but insistent, penetrating their dreams like a pin through skin. In their dreams this light would be soothing and healing, but upon awakening it would retract into the hole from which it escaped.
Once again there would be nothing but the dark and the rain, and perhaps that would be enough. Who can carry alone the burden of the weight of dreams into the waking world? Better to be wet, awake, than mourn the impossibility of dry, asleep.
I imagine a group of people on the shores of a beach, watching the fishermen from their families lazily drift back to land with the catch of the day. The rain hits the water like bullets. The clouds are black and full, like floating charcoal. The boats bob and sway as the waves rise and fall. As the boats get closer to home the families get more and more excited, eager to see this moment's fish and this evening's dinner, anxious to see their fathers and uncles after twelve, thirteen hours abscence. The rain is hard and constant, but the fish will be fresh, and, in a few hours, their bellies will be full.
If the clouds turn gray, and the sky shifts to a darker, denser shade of blue, do you wait with glee for the coming storm, or long for the sun's return?
If there was a world where rain was the norm, would its people miss the absence of a sun they possibly had never even imagined, let alone seen?
Would they lie awake at night, discontent, rolling from left to right and back again, wondering what was missing inside of them? Perhaps they would dream of a harsh and yellow light, and wonder what it meant and where it came from. From inside of themselves, their secret hearts, or outside, distant but insistent, penetrating their dreams like a pin through skin. In their dreams this light would be soothing and healing, but upon awakening it would retract into the hole from which it escaped.
Once again there would be nothing but the dark and the rain, and perhaps that would be enough. Who can carry alone the burden of the weight of dreams into the waking world? Better to be wet, awake, than mourn the impossibility of dry, asleep.
I imagine a group of people on the shores of a beach, watching the fishermen from their families lazily drift back to land with the catch of the day. The rain hits the water like bullets. The clouds are black and full, like floating charcoal. The boats bob and sway as the waves rise and fall. As the boats get closer to home the families get more and more excited, eager to see this moment's fish and this evening's dinner, anxious to see their fathers and uncles after twelve, thirteen hours abscence. The rain is hard and constant, but the fish will be fresh, and, in a few hours, their bellies will be full.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
WORTHY OF A SONNET
One of my Creative Writing teachers at university used to tell us that in fiction, as in life, a bum is never just a bum.
(By 'bum' I mean a homeless person -- not, you know, 'bum' as in 'buttocks'. Because if I were talking about a 'bum' as in 'buttocks', well, the truism would be different, because usually a butt really is just a butt.)
He was trying to get us young and eager scribes to understand that the characters in our stories, even the minor ones, especially the minor ones, had to reflect the complexity of real people, and the homeless who begged for change on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto, the ones we passed by on the way to our other, real lives, had histories and stories that would astound us, should we care to listen.
I've often found that the mark of a good fiction writer is how much attention he or she pays to the little guys, the characters who pop up for a page or two, then recede back into the margins of the story. Does the writer bother to describe these characters at all? Does he give them a little bit of life, or are they relegated to be non-performers in their own play?
And mystery writers, especially detective-series writers, often provide the most telling, evocative descriptions of these 'marginal characters'.
Consider this, from Ross McDonald's 1961 novel The Wycherly Woman, part of a series of books narrated his world-weary detective Lew Archer:
The offices of the Wycherly Land and Development Company were on the tenth floor of a ten-story stone-faced building south of Market Street. A girl who hadn't quite made airline hostess took me up in an express elevator and let me out in a reception room decorated with hunting scenes.
Aside from the now odd, anachronistic use of the term 'airline hostess', think of the way that he describes this elevator operator -- the wit, the shadings. 'A girl who hadn't quite made airline hostess' -- there's a whole life history right there. We don't know what she looks like or sounds like; we don't know if she's over-the-hill or still creeping up it. But we get a sense of her, a feel for her. It's a flippant, offhand remark, but it has the ring of authenticity. A woman who wasn't good enough to fly the friendly skies and had to settle for riding up, up, up and away in an elevator all day. A lady not quite good enough even to be a flight attendant. There's a sense of sadness and pathos in what is, ostensibly, a humorous aside. A life history has been hinted at. The detective noticed this, so we do, too.
Or check out this one, from later in the same novel, as private detective Lew Archer checks into a crummy motel:
...At ten minutes to five in the morning the place was like a catacomb. The night clerk looked at me the way night clerks were always looking at me, with dubiety tinged by the suspicion that the customer might be right and I might be a customer.
A perfect, succint summary of the cautious, guarded way by which employees often gauge their potential clients (and an offhand description of the narrator himself). Not wanting to work but wanting the money; understanding that everybody is a potential buck, so better to be hesitant than dismissive.
Crime writers, especially writers who specially in a series character spread out over a number of novels, often give the little guys their due, because the protagonists are inquisitive by nature and prone to examining people up-close and in-depth. They are trying to solve a mystery, these detectives are, and thus every person is a potential clue, and their appearance, their manner, who they are and where they are and why they are must be examined, if only briefly.
I've kind of found a lot of crime writers ass-backwards, starting with Robert B. Parker and his series of books featuring Boston P.I. Spenser, and then discovering John D.Macdonald and his Travis McGee stories, and then getting ahold of Ross MacDonald and his Lew Archer novels. (Eventually I'll make my way back to the beginning, where Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammet hang out.) Robert B. Parker has learned from both Macdonalds -- Ross and John -- about wit, and brevity, and tone. Their narrators are tough guys who have been fucked around by life, but still retain a cautious, involuntary wit and charm. The dialogue is lean and spare. The narrative momentum carries us forward. There is a mystery that must be solved; they must solve it; end of story. Along the way they meet the dregs of life and the best of life, and they show us them all, in all their twisted, wounded glory. Detective stories such as these are essentially about people who have fucked-up, and are paying the price, and need help. To not describe each and every one of these characters is essentially to dismiss all of us. (Because who among has not fucked-up, or paid a price, or does not need help?
My Creative Writing teacher was right. The homeless guy outside of the coffee shop, the one with the dirty beard and the paper cup, is never just a bum, and the bleary-eyed clerk at the 7-11 has a pathos and dignity worthy of a Shakespearean sonnet. We just have to look close enough, and listen, and imagine.
Imagine that they are the main characters in their own lives, and we are looking for answers, like a detective.
And then just wait and see what they will reveal to us, if we look hard enough and ask the right questions.
(By 'bum' I mean a homeless person -- not, you know, 'bum' as in 'buttocks'. Because if I were talking about a 'bum' as in 'buttocks', well, the truism would be different, because usually a butt really is just a butt.)
He was trying to get us young and eager scribes to understand that the characters in our stories, even the minor ones, especially the minor ones, had to reflect the complexity of real people, and the homeless who begged for change on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto, the ones we passed by on the way to our other, real lives, had histories and stories that would astound us, should we care to listen.
I've often found that the mark of a good fiction writer is how much attention he or she pays to the little guys, the characters who pop up for a page or two, then recede back into the margins of the story. Does the writer bother to describe these characters at all? Does he give them a little bit of life, or are they relegated to be non-performers in their own play?
And mystery writers, especially detective-series writers, often provide the most telling, evocative descriptions of these 'marginal characters'.
Consider this, from Ross McDonald's 1961 novel The Wycherly Woman, part of a series of books narrated his world-weary detective Lew Archer:
The offices of the Wycherly Land and Development Company were on the tenth floor of a ten-story stone-faced building south of Market Street. A girl who hadn't quite made airline hostess took me up in an express elevator and let me out in a reception room decorated with hunting scenes.
Aside from the now odd, anachronistic use of the term 'airline hostess', think of the way that he describes this elevator operator -- the wit, the shadings. 'A girl who hadn't quite made airline hostess' -- there's a whole life history right there. We don't know what she looks like or sounds like; we don't know if she's over-the-hill or still creeping up it. But we get a sense of her, a feel for her. It's a flippant, offhand remark, but it has the ring of authenticity. A woman who wasn't good enough to fly the friendly skies and had to settle for riding up, up, up and away in an elevator all day. A lady not quite good enough even to be a flight attendant. There's a sense of sadness and pathos in what is, ostensibly, a humorous aside. A life history has been hinted at. The detective noticed this, so we do, too.
Or check out this one, from later in the same novel, as private detective Lew Archer checks into a crummy motel:
...At ten minutes to five in the morning the place was like a catacomb. The night clerk looked at me the way night clerks were always looking at me, with dubiety tinged by the suspicion that the customer might be right and I might be a customer.
A perfect, succint summary of the cautious, guarded way by which employees often gauge their potential clients (and an offhand description of the narrator himself). Not wanting to work but wanting the money; understanding that everybody is a potential buck, so better to be hesitant than dismissive.
Crime writers, especially writers who specially in a series character spread out over a number of novels, often give the little guys their due, because the protagonists are inquisitive by nature and prone to examining people up-close and in-depth. They are trying to solve a mystery, these detectives are, and thus every person is a potential clue, and their appearance, their manner, who they are and where they are and why they are must be examined, if only briefly.
I've kind of found a lot of crime writers ass-backwards, starting with Robert B. Parker and his series of books featuring Boston P.I. Spenser, and then discovering John D.Macdonald and his Travis McGee stories, and then getting ahold of Ross MacDonald and his Lew Archer novels. (Eventually I'll make my way back to the beginning, where Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammet hang out.) Robert B. Parker has learned from both Macdonalds -- Ross and John -- about wit, and brevity, and tone. Their narrators are tough guys who have been fucked around by life, but still retain a cautious, involuntary wit and charm. The dialogue is lean and spare. The narrative momentum carries us forward. There is a mystery that must be solved; they must solve it; end of story. Along the way they meet the dregs of life and the best of life, and they show us them all, in all their twisted, wounded glory. Detective stories such as these are essentially about people who have fucked-up, and are paying the price, and need help. To not describe each and every one of these characters is essentially to dismiss all of us. (Because who among has not fucked-up, or paid a price, or does not need help?
My Creative Writing teacher was right. The homeless guy outside of the coffee shop, the one with the dirty beard and the paper cup, is never just a bum, and the bleary-eyed clerk at the 7-11 has a pathos and dignity worthy of a Shakespearean sonnet. We just have to look close enough, and listen, and imagine.
Imagine that they are the main characters in their own lives, and we are looking for answers, like a detective.
And then just wait and see what they will reveal to us, if we look hard enough and ask the right questions.
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