Q: Do you expect aspiring writers to follow your path? Are you setting yourself up as a model for what they should do?
A: I am describing the writing game as I have found it to be.
I
could be a poor observer, I could be engaged in faulty reasoning. I may be paranoid,
for example, a whiner, or making excuses for myself.
But New York has frozen
writers like me out, and if you want to be a writer like me, you'll be frozen out
too. You'll have to find a way around New York, a way to keep the faith. For decades.
I don't think writing programs corrupt writers.
I think the kind of people
who want to be apparatchiks have been damaged long before they opt to become writing
program careerists. They don't see anything wrong with doing something dishonorable
to advance their careers. They are ready when they get there. They aren't innocent.
They lost their innocence long before, wanting the things in the teevee ads, the
lifestyle.
They're empty inside, and trying to fill the emptiness with material
possessions and status symbols. Office and rank.
They go into journalism
to become celebrities, not reporters.
They want to be a rock star, to have
the limo, with the champagne in the back. The groupies. The dope.
Cale
was telling me about some movie he wanted to see, a movie I hadn't heard of, and
I said, "Where do you hear about such things," and he said, "Commercials."
Commercials and the grapevine, the bush telegraph, the zeitgeist.
The business
of business is culture. Is managing the zeitgeist. Getting people to do things
that aren't in anyone's best interest, except the businessman.
The artist's
job it to oppose that. The artist makes people look at the zeitgeist, the unspoken
premises, what Clyde Kluckhohn called enthymemes.
If you want to be an honest
craftsman, to tell the truth, to write, as George Orwell said, "honestly and
openly, about subjects that matter, in plain speech," you'd better be prepared
to be opposed by the slick, the manipulative, the deceptive, by people who practice
guile and dissembling, because the powerful don't want their hustle exposed.
Fighting them is a lonely job.
If you're not crazy to begin with it will
drive you crazy.
Is everybody else crazy and you sane? How likely is that?
Q: What does your No Oprah logo mean?
A: It's irony.
If you asked a publisher to put a No Oprah logo
on your book cover he wouldn't publish the book, because television is where books
are promoted and sold. The Oprah Show is where books are promoted and sold.
If they don't want to get on The Oprah Show to sell your book, they'll want
to get on there to sell some other, sappy book--they select books on how good a chance
the books have to be picked by Oprah--and they don't want to piss Oprah off.
In general, books that question the relation between objective reporting and ads
are not going to be well-received by the media which derive their income from commercial
advertisements-newspapers, magazines, radio, and television--so that we have the
sponsors determining the content, not just of teevee sitcoms, but of our literature--the
very way we see who we are, and what our options are.
They want people to
get that information from television, which they control, through their revenue-leverage,
not from books, which they do not control, at all.
They want people buying,
consuming, and buying again, upsizing products that are useless or destructive, they
want you eating sugar and saturated fats, driving gas-guzzling SUVs, living in the
suburbs and neglecting urban neighborhoods, wearing clothes with labels on them,
they want you insecure about your appearance, they want you to have self-esteem issues
the product-or service-they are selling is designed to supply, repair, replace, or
gin-up out of whole cloth, like magic.
It doesn't do to question that.
To say, stay at home, read a book. Go hiking. Take the kids along. Cook together.
Don't just eat take-out food together-cook fresh, nutritious food together and clean
up in the kitchen together afterwards. That's where meals come from.
Buy
Goodwill clothes. Drive an old beater. Ride a bike, if you can. Or walk.
Take up watercolor painting. Maybe you're a self-taught artist.
Don't watch
TV, don't buy newspapers.
Q: Not very practical.
A: No. Eccentric.
Q: You might as well go live with the Amish. Or live on a desert island.
You can't be Robinson Crusoe in the modern world. It's impractical.
A: I know.
Q: Thoreau was a crank. And you'll play hell not having a TV if you have kids.
A: If you're married.
Brenda has insomnia.
She gazes at
it all night long.
She watches dog shows.