Is That A Frying Pan On Your Head Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?
When I was a wee one I used to read several books at once, probably because I was so excited when I got a new one I couldn't help but start it. Gradually my routine evolved into bringing the book home, reading the jacket material and possibly any introduction pages, and then shelving it until its time. Whenever that turns out to be.
Right now I find myself reading a bunch of non-book length pieces simultaneously: the current issue of Outside Magazine, the current "View From Africa" issue of Granta, a new Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and a book of essays on creativity by Ray Bradbury. This isn't something I want to make a habit of, but there are reasons.
First of all, I subscribe to three nature/adventure magazines: Outside, Adventure and Men's Journal. In an earlier post I talked about Outside; it's monthly column by Mark Jenkins is worth the price of the magazine by itself. I like National Geograpic's Adventure although in some issues there's a bit too much travel info for me and not enough good article writing. Men's Journal shares many of the same writers as Outside and therefore I like it for similar reasons. What I HATE about both those magazines, especially Men's Journal, is their insistence on having a celebrity cover story EVERY issue. I don't give a fig about Kid Rock or Jesse James or Ted Nugent, ESPECIALLY not how they can be, however obscurely, tied back to my actual interests, you know, the things that the magazines are supposed to be about. Laird Hamilton and Jack Johnson may be cool guys but I'm willing to get over that.
Anyway, if you don't keep up with the magazines they pile up in a hurry, even if you skip the celebrity profile junk. I'm reading the Hitchcock magazine because I haven't read one for a while and I just sent them the short story I talked about in an earlier post. It's called "Sock Monster" and I like the story just for that. But that's me.
The Bradbury essays are excellent and take a less than technical approach to writing and other creative pursuits, which I appreciate. He talks about Work and achieving quality eventually after sufficient quantity, then Relaxation, the point where you can let go and trust yourself and let your talent exert itself. Finally, of course, there's Don't Think. This is self-explanatory. Anyway, an excellent collection for someone not trying to figure out how to outline or format a manuscript. I finished it last night and enjoyed it very much.
This takes me to Granta's Africa issue which is providing as deep and fulfilling a reading experience as I've had in a while. For those of you who don't know, Granta, who bill themselves as "The Magazine of New Writing," publishes a mix of non-fiction, fiction and a color pictorial in each quarterly issue. Each issue also has a theme and the current one's is obvious from its title.
No, I'm not going to run down each of the stories and essays; I need to tie something to the title of this post. I've read a number of books on African countries and issues as part of the research for the book I've abandoned (temporarily, I hope), as well as a ton of books covering the white man's exploration and later exploitation of the continent, including the discovery and mining of diamonds.
It's difficult to discuss Africa without generalizing: it contains 54 countries but who knows how many tribal or village or other historical units. What's true for one group of people is not going to be true for all, but being specific about something so immense is impossible. In other words, if I cut with too wide a swath, I apologize in advance. By the same token, I have to limit my remarks here to a very limited subject or this entry will bookify itself.
Violence makes me squeamish. More than it used to. Ordinarily I won't read a book about rape or violence towards women (it has too be touched on lightly), or anything evil happening to children. I find that as I've grown older I avoid these things more. Yet adult on adult violence is fair game, especially in novels. Often in true crime, as well, especially living down here in the land of Ted Bundy and Danny Rolling. But some of the violence in African countries is so complex, so evil in its thoroughness, that even reading about it in pieces, juxtaposed with Outside Magazine and Ray Bradbury and a trite mystery in a traveling carnival, nearly overwhelms me.
Killing parents in front of their children, making the children participate in their mutilation, then conscripting them into the ranks of the evil. Giving them military ranks and comic book names such as "Captain Ear Taker" or some such thing. Sending them on missions to do the same to other villages, other parents, and other children like themselves. Insubordination is, of course, payable in death. The complete and utterly thorough destruction of a child's life through the obliteration of his family, mutilation of theirs or his own body, rape, maniacal discipline, and worst of all, the absolute shredding of his mind.
Can a murder or a crime in a novel, any murder, compete with that? Man's inhumanity toward man only works as an element in a story if it's not too evil, or too incomprehensible in its roots. Can these people really belong to the same race as ourselves, whoever that is? Can cultural differences be so profound that such a gulf in the consideration of human life is normal and accepted?
My mind reels. I can only read about it, know about it, in small pieces, diluted with light and fluffy pieces from other sources. The brutality in any novel doesn't compare, and can't compare, because we always know it isn't real. Always. And we can divorce ourselves from the emotional toll necessary in order to enjoy the rest of the story. But when the crime is worse than the worst fictional ones, more brutal and inhuman than those, and they're real, you realize there's no way out. If you put the book down, they're still there, happening in Rwanda, the Congo, Sierra Leone...
Maybe cartoon violence is necessary in order to blunt the instincts that respond to real life brutality. Maybe it's part of a cultural coping mechanism. If that's true, than crime novels (and even, in large part, American true crime books) are part of that, and perhaps even important in that regard. That's an interesting question.
In the meantime, I have on my shelf two video tapes of documentaries shot during Sierra Leone's civil war (ended in 2002). They apparently contain graphic and unadulterated scenes of the realities of that violence. I sent away to London for them and they took weeks to arrive. They cost me over eighty American dollars. They're internationally recognized although I understand they've never been shown on television in their entirety due to the nature of their contents. So far I haven't been able to even insert them into the VCR, let alone press play.
Laird Hamilton, you say? Ted Nugent? I wonder if Harrison Ford's gone whitewater rafting lately...
Right now I find myself reading a bunch of non-book length pieces simultaneously: the current issue of Outside Magazine, the current "View From Africa" issue of Granta, a new Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and a book of essays on creativity by Ray Bradbury. This isn't something I want to make a habit of, but there are reasons.
First of all, I subscribe to three nature/adventure magazines: Outside, Adventure and Men's Journal. In an earlier post I talked about Outside; it's monthly column by Mark Jenkins is worth the price of the magazine by itself. I like National Geograpic's Adventure although in some issues there's a bit too much travel info for me and not enough good article writing. Men's Journal shares many of the same writers as Outside and therefore I like it for similar reasons. What I HATE about both those magazines, especially Men's Journal, is their insistence on having a celebrity cover story EVERY issue. I don't give a fig about Kid Rock or Jesse James or Ted Nugent, ESPECIALLY not how they can be, however obscurely, tied back to my actual interests, you know, the things that the magazines are supposed to be about. Laird Hamilton and Jack Johnson may be cool guys but I'm willing to get over that.
Anyway, if you don't keep up with the magazines they pile up in a hurry, even if you skip the celebrity profile junk. I'm reading the Hitchcock magazine because I haven't read one for a while and I just sent them the short story I talked about in an earlier post. It's called "Sock Monster" and I like the story just for that. But that's me.
The Bradbury essays are excellent and take a less than technical approach to writing and other creative pursuits, which I appreciate. He talks about Work and achieving quality eventually after sufficient quantity, then Relaxation, the point where you can let go and trust yourself and let your talent exert itself. Finally, of course, there's Don't Think. This is self-explanatory. Anyway, an excellent collection for someone not trying to figure out how to outline or format a manuscript. I finished it last night and enjoyed it very much.
This takes me to Granta's Africa issue which is providing as deep and fulfilling a reading experience as I've had in a while. For those of you who don't know, Granta, who bill themselves as "The Magazine of New Writing," publishes a mix of non-fiction, fiction and a color pictorial in each quarterly issue. Each issue also has a theme and the current one's is obvious from its title.
No, I'm not going to run down each of the stories and essays; I need to tie something to the title of this post. I've read a number of books on African countries and issues as part of the research for the book I've abandoned (temporarily, I hope), as well as a ton of books covering the white man's exploration and later exploitation of the continent, including the discovery and mining of diamonds.
It's difficult to discuss Africa without generalizing: it contains 54 countries but who knows how many tribal or village or other historical units. What's true for one group of people is not going to be true for all, but being specific about something so immense is impossible. In other words, if I cut with too wide a swath, I apologize in advance. By the same token, I have to limit my remarks here to a very limited subject or this entry will bookify itself.
Violence makes me squeamish. More than it used to. Ordinarily I won't read a book about rape or violence towards women (it has too be touched on lightly), or anything evil happening to children. I find that as I've grown older I avoid these things more. Yet adult on adult violence is fair game, especially in novels. Often in true crime, as well, especially living down here in the land of Ted Bundy and Danny Rolling. But some of the violence in African countries is so complex, so evil in its thoroughness, that even reading about it in pieces, juxtaposed with Outside Magazine and Ray Bradbury and a trite mystery in a traveling carnival, nearly overwhelms me.
Killing parents in front of their children, making the children participate in their mutilation, then conscripting them into the ranks of the evil. Giving them military ranks and comic book names such as "Captain Ear Taker" or some such thing. Sending them on missions to do the same to other villages, other parents, and other children like themselves. Insubordination is, of course, payable in death. The complete and utterly thorough destruction of a child's life through the obliteration of his family, mutilation of theirs or his own body, rape, maniacal discipline, and worst of all, the absolute shredding of his mind.
Can a murder or a crime in a novel, any murder, compete with that? Man's inhumanity toward man only works as an element in a story if it's not too evil, or too incomprehensible in its roots. Can these people really belong to the same race as ourselves, whoever that is? Can cultural differences be so profound that such a gulf in the consideration of human life is normal and accepted?
My mind reels. I can only read about it, know about it, in small pieces, diluted with light and fluffy pieces from other sources. The brutality in any novel doesn't compare, and can't compare, because we always know it isn't real. Always. And we can divorce ourselves from the emotional toll necessary in order to enjoy the rest of the story. But when the crime is worse than the worst fictional ones, more brutal and inhuman than those, and they're real, you realize there's no way out. If you put the book down, they're still there, happening in Rwanda, the Congo, Sierra Leone...
Maybe cartoon violence is necessary in order to blunt the instincts that respond to real life brutality. Maybe it's part of a cultural coping mechanism. If that's true, than crime novels (and even, in large part, American true crime books) are part of that, and perhaps even important in that regard. That's an interesting question.
In the meantime, I have on my shelf two video tapes of documentaries shot during Sierra Leone's civil war (ended in 2002). They apparently contain graphic and unadulterated scenes of the realities of that violence. I sent away to London for them and they took weeks to arrive. They cost me over eighty American dollars. They're internationally recognized although I understand they've never been shown on television in their entirety due to the nature of their contents. So far I haven't been able to even insert them into the VCR, let alone press play.
Laird Hamilton, you say? Ted Nugent? I wonder if Harrison Ford's gone whitewater rafting lately...
posted by Rick Ollerman at 8:14 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home