An unseasonably warm night here in L.A. It’s February and it feels like summer’s embrace out there. And a full moon to boot, which just might be feeding my depression, as if my darkness really needs a little more fuel.
I was reading Franz Kafka’s short story “The Hunger Artist” last night and I was struck by this particular passage:
Fasting would surely come into fashion again at some future date, yet that was no comfort for those living in the present. What, then, was the hunger artist to do? He had been applauded by thousands in his time and could hardly come down to showing himself in a street booth at village fairs, and as for adopting another profession, he was not only too old for that but too fanatically devoted to fasting. So he took leave of the impresario, his partner in an unparalleled career, and hired himself to a large circus; in order to spare his own feelings he avoided reading the conditions of his contract.
Books. I have so many of them. Too many. My shelves are lined with books. The floor behind my sofa is stacked high with books. I have boxes of books that have never been unpacked and are awaiting the purchase of a new book case so they can be aired out and properly presented.
My late kid sister – I don’t know how she died as we had a very estranged relationship – once paid me a visit and marveled at all my books.
“These are all yours?” she said.
I replied in the affirmative.
“And you’ve actually read all of them?”
Lynn always poked fun at my ambitions to become a working writer. When she died four years ago I doubt she knew that I had already been living that dream for eleven years.
Like Kafka’s Hunger Artist, though, I sold my talents to a large circus a long time ago and I’m anxious to get out from under the big top. I need to concentrate once again on selling my short fiction. That’s where I have to place my emphasis. I’ve written over 60 L.A. tales, including the Trace stories, and they’re just sitting here, waiting for exposure beyond 8763 Wonderland.
Over the weekend a few friends took exception to … well, to two things, to something I did recently (none of your goddamn business what) and to some material in my fiction postings at Wonderland. Even if I told you what stories they had a problem with you probably wouldn’t know why they are upset, angry, hurt, whatever, because they were approaching the read with deep insights into me and my life. They know the back story, if you will.
“You don’t care about people’s feelings,” a friend complained to me last night.
Honestly, can I write the type of fiction that I write and not care about the feelings of others? But what was it Truman Capote once said? Something to the effect that if you have a writer for a friend you immediately waive all rights to claims of betrayal. A writer’s life is fertile ground for his work and the person I betray the most in my own work is me.
The same friend who sat in my home last night and accused me of being bereft of sympathy for the feelings of others wrote the following in an e-mail recently after the posting of a particular story:
When did you write this? Our talk was a waste of my time? You told me you were going to hold off on writing about this. You were lying? What gives? I am not angry. I am dismayed. I don’t get you at all.
When I informed this person that they were approaching the story with insider knowledge that the readers do not have, the friend wrote:
I knew you’d say that. You didn’t write it for the readers. This is absurd.
Of course I wrote it for the goddamn readers and if there’s some personal fucking politics in there, well ,welcome to the writing ballgame. Grab a bat and suit up or take a seat in the stands. Of course, that’s just the kind of attitude that another friend – also writing in e-mail recently in response to a piece of short fiction – would probably expect from me:
Earlier today I just wanted to ream you that new asshole and be done with it, but I’ve had an exceptionally good day and there’s only one thing I want to tell you. When I get back here for a longer period of time I’m going to write you an email. It worries me that you have so much disregard for everyone including yourself and it’s somehow amusing to you. It’s not funny. It’s dreadfully sad. The email will be constructive, I won’t be raking you over the coals because you’ve really done a good job of doing that to yourself.
That’s right. Please don’t rake me over the coals while I’m doing such a good job by myself.
I’m a writer. It’s all I have. I want more than that from life but I don’t know if I’m destined to get it. We shall see. I haven’t read the conditions of my contract.
Psoriatic arthritis has migrated to my left hand today. Always nice to have some physical pain to wrestle with in between bouts of “How the hell do I climb out of this goddamn depression?” I had one day in the last week when I felt good. One.
Incidentally, I had dinner this evening at the Sizzler in Atwater Village with David and Julie Scott and their adorable 4-year old daughter. When I arrived home shortly after 6:00, I had this in e-mail from another friend that I think just about sums it all up:
The absence of pain. Sometimes I think that’s all we can ask for, not to be happy, but the absence of pain.
And oh – I’m sure I’ll be hearing from those other two friends I mentioned earlier shortly after posting this, no doubt to tell me what an unfeeling asshole I am for writing this.
You only started that last night?
Well, glad you enjoyed the lunch-that-became dinner, anyway. And it sure was hot… eerie moon, too.
For what it’s worth, circumstances nonwithstanding, I do understand what you mean by working out your issues in print. I mean, I guess that sounds weird, but sometimes I understand something better after I’ve written it in a story.
Of course, I suppose the problem may be posting them, not writing them, anyway.
No, IAA, this has been going on for days.
Yes, David, unseasonably hot. And I enjoyed meeting you, Julie, and the adorable Boo.
Hah, yeah, Julie calls her our ‘goodwill ambassador’…
No, I didn’t mean the drama, I meant the story.
Anyhow, I’m glad you liked it- for being the author who suffers for our sins- I was surprised you’d never read it before.
Don’t friends of writers know that the writer will always claim ownership of an event? Of course our version of events will be on record- we’re _writers_, what did you expect? Art is a state of mind- it’s performance art. Those who don’t understand this aren’t true friends of their artist acquaintances.
Sounds like you’ve been cast the villain in someone else’s delusions.
IAA, I have a 1952 hardback Modern Library edition of Selected Stories of Franz Kafka but I never read “Hunger Artist” until you recommended it to me recently. Thanks. It was a cathartic read for a blue Sunday. And I feel like a dolt for not having read it a long time ago.
The villain in a delusion — yeah, that’s sort of what’s going on here.
“You don’t care about people’s feelings,” a friend complained to me last night.
When you’re writing fiction, which is the best truth of all, feelings don’t enter into it, one way or the other; what matters is that some truth be served. This does not mean reporting facts, which a mere inventory list accomplishes; it means making a single truth, which has many dimensions.
If a truth is made, the writer has also done what a doctor does: made a diagnosis.
After the diagnosis, it’s up to the readers to decide whether or not there’s healing to be done. If the writer is talented, the diagnosis will be accurate, even irrefutable; the truth will be served. But still, there’s no guarantee that the diagnosis will be taken. Writers only diagnose—they don’t also heal.
Naturally, people don’t like diagnoses that indicate profound maladies, especially if the bedside manner (style) is a bit gruff. And so the first encounter with some kind of hostile truth is often fierce resistance. But after a few walks through life, if truths were presented, in a lot of people they will indeed register. Not that anyone will be grateful for this. Yet observing a healed soul based on a writer’s earlier diagnosis is also a stolen joy.
Nicely said, Joseph
Incidentally, heartfelt thanks to everyone who sent private e-mails in response to this post.
[...] By 6:30 I was in for the night, wrapped in my bulky gray bathrobe and confronting the computer, writing to assuage depression as usual. I was perhaps fifteen minutes into my Kafka essay when the night sky filled with the banshee-like wail of police sirens. Glendale police were responding to what was initially a domestic violence call at one of the Extended Stays rooms on the sixth floor. When officers arrived, they found 28-year-old Justin Harris on a sixth-floor balcony, allegedly throwing drugs and paraphernalia off the side. Harris and a friend were detained and handcuffed. [...]