Three Analysts Walked Into a Bar

There’s this story that Jacques Lacan used to tell about Freud coming to America for the first time. Freud and his erstwhile protégé Karl Jung sailed from Europe together. As the ship passed under the Statue of Liberty at the mouth of New York Harbor. Freud turned to Jung and said, “They don’t realize we’re bringing them the plague.”

Get it? Here’s neo-Freudian, neo-Lacanian Jacques-Alain Miller’s interpretation:

Normally we welcome the analyst as a therapist provided he/she brings along a method to cure-the psychoanalyst as a new curing method. Contrariwise, Freud's Witz (joke) posits the analyst as the one who hands over the disease, not the cure... as if Jung and Freud were two fundamentalist terrorists sneaking into the United States.

Freud said that jokes, like dreams, express subconsciously repressed instincts for sex and aggression – Freud the terrorist infecting America with a sexually-transmitted disease. Lacan sees in the joke evidence of Freud’s hubris:

To catch their author in its trap, Nemesis had only to take him at his word. We could be justified in fearing that Nemesis has added a first-class return ticket.

Lacan interprets the United States as Freud’s Nemesis. According to the Encyclopedia Mythica:

In Greek mythology, Nemesis is the goddess of divine justice and vengeance. Her anger is directed toward human transgression of the natural, right order of things and of the arrogance causing it. Nemesis pursues the insolent and the wicked with inflexible vengeance. She is portrayed as a serious looking woman with in her left hand a whip, a rein, a sword, or a pair of scales. In the Hellenistic period she was portrayed with a steering wheel.

So here’s the mythic hero Freud sailing into the West, taunting the immense statue of Nemesis standing guard over the New World. But, says Miller, tragedy awaits:

The hubris and Nemesis strike back: the real victim of the challenge thrown at the Statue of Liberty and to all that it represents in the modern world is psychoanalysis itself, Freud's creature.

In the glare of Liberty’s torch no subconscious desire or fear can hide in the shadows. But it’s not denial that characterizes America; it’s unhindered expression. We mean what we say and say what we mean, and what we mean is sex and violence, and we never stop talking about it. The subconscious has been evacuated; only the inhibitions are inhibited. We spill our guts; we give birth to our inner child; the inner child screams out what it wants. And what does the voice of the Father have to say to the inner child? “Go fer it, dude. Pursue happiness. Squeeze every drop of enjoyment you can out of life.”

America didn’t just catch Freud’s disease: it altered the metabolism of the disease and assimilated it into the organism. America infected the disease.

 

Triple Digits!

Remember late last year when Ivan the atheist got caught in the Jesus Creed spamcatcher and the conversation got rerouted over here? Well that conversation has continued, until now there are more than 100 comments on that one post. It’s kind of become a free-ranging, civil discussion of Christianity and atheism — almost a blog within a blog. Here’s the link.

The Combination is Lethal

Thinking about the proposed Iraqi surge and related political quaverings got me thinking back to the beginning. Here’s what Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s chief of staff from 2002 through 2005, said about his involvement in the former Secretary of State’s presentation to the United Nations on Iraq‘s weapons of mass destruction: “I wish I had not been involved in it. I look back on it, and I still say it was the lowest point in my life.”

There’s no need to revisit the details – no, I take that back: there is a. need to revisit them, and to realize just what a pile of crap it really was. And to think we went to war over this. Here, then, are a few excerpts from Powell’s 5 February 2003 address to the U.N. Security Council.

* * * *

I cannot tell you everything that we know. But what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years, is deeply troubling. What you will see is an accumulation of facts and disturbing patterns of behavior.

The inspectors can look all they want, and they will find nothing… The Iraqis are busy doing all they possibly can to ensure that inspectors succeed in finding absolutely nothing.

My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.

What’s being hidden? Why? There’s only one answer to the why: to deceive, to hide.

The photos that I am about to show you are sometimes hard for the average person to interpret, hard for me… But as I show you these images, I will try to capture and explain what they mean, what they indicate to our imagery specialists.

The bunkers are clean when the inspectors get there. They found nothing.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are not assertions. These are facts, corroborated by many sources, some of them sources of the intelligence services of other countries.

It took the inspectors four years to find out that Iraq was making biological agents. How long do you think it will take the inspectors to find even one of these 18 trucks?

We know that Iraq has embedded key portions of its illicit chemical weapons infrastructure within its legitimate civilian industry. To all outward appearances, even to experts, the infrastructure looks like an ordinary civilian operation. Illicit and legitimate production can go on simultaneously; or, on a dime, this dual-use infrastructure can turn from clandestine to commercial and then back again… Any inspections of such facilities would be unlikely to turn up anything prohibited. Call it ingenuous or evil genius, but the Iraqis deliberately designed their chemical weapons programs to be inspected. It is infrastructure with a built-in ally.

So it’s not just the photo, and it’s not an individual seeing the photo. It’s the photo and then the knowledge of an individual being brought together to make the case.

The question before us, all my friends, is when will we see the rest of the submerged iceberg?

Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons… And we have sources who tell us that he recently has authorized his field commanders to use them. He wouldn’t be passing out the orders if he didn’t have the weapons or the intent to use them.

I am no expert on centrifuge tubes, but just as an old Army trooper, I can tell you a couple of things…

Iraqi officials deny accusations of ties with Al Qaida. These denials are simply not credible… Early Al Qaida ties were forged by secret, high-level intelligence service contacts with Al Qaida, secret Iraqi intelligence high-level contacts with Al Qaida. Iraqis continued to visit bin Laden in his new home in Afghanistan.

Some believe, some claim these contacts do not amount to much. They say Saddam Hussein’s secular tyranny and Al Qaida’s religious tyranny do not mix. I am not comforted by this thought. Ambition and hatred are enough to bring Iraq and Al Qaida together.

The nexus of poisons and terror is new. The nexus of Iraq and terror is old. The combination is lethal. With this track record, Iraqi denials of supporting terrorism take the place alongside the other Iraqi denials of weapons of mass destruction. It is all a web of lies. When we confront a regime that harbors ambitions for regional domination, hides weapons of mass destruction and provides haven and active support for terrorists, we are not confronting the past, we are confronting the present. And unless we act, we are confronting an even more frightening future.

We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction; he’s determined to make more. Given Saddam Hussein’s history of aggression, given what we know of his grandiose plans, given what we know of his terrorist associations and given his determination to exact revenge on those who oppose him, should we take the risk that he will not some day use these weapons at a time and the place and in the manner of his choosing at a time when the world is in a much weaker position to respond? The United States will not and cannot run that risk to the American people. Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world.

Is the Audience Merely the President?

President Bush is trying to rally Congressional support for his Iraqi surge. Refering to a resolution co-sponsored by 3 Senate Democrats opposing Bush’s plan, White House spokesman Tony Snow asks:

“What message does Congress intend to give? And who does it think the audience is? Is the audience merely the president? Is it the voting American public or, in an age of instant communication, is it also al-Qaida?”

In a statement announcing her decision to support the resolution, moderate Republican Senator Olympia Snowe said, “Now is time for the Congress to make its voice heard.” Carl Levin (D-Michigan), one of the co-sponsors of the resolution, said:

“Just how serious this resolution is, although it’s not binding, is reflected by the fact that the Republican leader in the Senate has threatened to filibuster it.”

Why does a decision about war turn into a debate about “message”? When the seriousness of a message is measured by the opposition’s willingness to talk it to death, we know we’ve got trouble in Washington.

Alienation of the Literary Production Sector

I mentioned this guy before, a novelist Anne and I had coffee with back in Boulder. In the course of a long conversation I asked him if he ever heard from his readers. Not very often, he said. It’s not surprising. How would you go about getting in touch with a writer whose book you liked – or didn’t like, for that matter? This guy has a website, but no blog and no email address to be found anywhere. I once wrote to a writer c/o his publisher, but since I never heard back I have no idea whether he ever got my letter.

He said that most of the feedback he gets from readers is Amazon reviews. I looked at his Amazon listings: maybe three or four hundred online reviews per book. Helpful? Not really. Mostly he thinks the reviewers are showing off, trying to get readers for themselves.

Amazon has a frequent-reviewer recognition program. You can become a Starred Reviewer, a Top Ten Thousand Reviewer, a Top Thousand reviewer, and so on – these might not be the right titles, but you know what I mean. Earning this recognition is based on how many times someone who read your reviews found them to be “helpful.” Amazon regards this vote count as a proxy for “quality content.”

Which of course got me to thinking. If you write high-quality reviews, and a lot of them, you might get widely recognized as helpful. But what else might get you there quicker? First, you’ve got to get your review seen by a lot of people. That means reviewing books that people are already interested in. Best sellers are the best bet. Books climb the best-seller lists quickly, so get your review posted quickly so lots of people can see it. Next: are positive or negative reviews more likely to be seen as helpful? After a quick informal survey I concluded that 5-star reviews are regarded the most helpful. People want to latch onto popular memes – it makes you popular by contact. If you’re deciding whether to buy a best-seller, you don’t really want to hear bad news about it. You want to be persuaded to get on the bandwagon quick. So: write upbeat reviews about already-popular books and you’re well on your way to becoming a popular reviewer.

Meanwhile here’s the poor writer. What impact is my book having on the readers? Look at the sales receipts. But popularity isn’t the same thing as quality. What do the readers really think of the book? When even the reviewers are trying to get popular, the writer may never know. Just like Marx said: capitalism alienates the worker from his own work.

 

Seeing the Beginning from the End

[I keep thinking I’m done with the Genesis book for the time being. I’ve written a book proposal and tightened up the first few chapters of the book, getting ready to contact some agents. Then I find out it’s better to send a smattering of chapters from throughout the book – which means I’ve got to go back and do some more editing on chapters I thought I could leave alone for awhile. Here’s a little bit of new text I wrote last night to fill a gap in the last chapter of the book…]

Believers in the Judeo-Christian God live inside a self-contained reality that describes its own beginning. There may be disagreement on details, but the idea of a creator-God is an essential strand linking the individual with the community, the present with the past, the reader with the text. Did the idea of a divine creator originate in Genesis 1, or is it an a priori intuition that the reader imposes on the text? By now it’s hard to tell. If you watch a movie often enough the opening scene doesn’t just point toward its inevitable end: it contains the end. Your interpretation of the beginning is determined by how you know the story is going to turn out.

Evolutionary science is an empirical study of beginnings. But if we as a species had a different kind of brain – a brain like all the other creatures on our planet, for example – we might never have been able to imagine this particular sort of beginning. If we’d happened to live before Darwin we wouldn’t have been able to imagine it. Was Darwin’s insight inevitable, the product of those very forces he described? Or could some other cultural trajectory have spun itself out, so that we wouldn’t have been able to look back at the creation of evolutionary science as a turning point in our own self-understanding? Are we currently living through a turning point, a historical interval that future generations will look back on as formative but that we can’t even recognize? There’s no way of knowing; we’re stuck in the middle of history. We can’t understand the past until we reach the future.

You look back on your life and distinguish turning points: events that shaped your destiny. But if your life had turned out differently, would those same events have loomed so large in your own genesis story? Do defining moments create you, or do you create them after the fact just to make some sense of how you happened to end up here? You live inside this life and no other, so it’s hard to gain perspective on what might have been.

 

I Read Them With Interest

So I’m getting ready to send my book proposal for The Seven Creations around to some literary agents. One possibility I’m looking at is the Brandt & Hochman Agency in New York. So and I’m looking for info about this agency on the internet and I come across a discussion on WritersNet. Somebody says this about Brandt & Hochman:

One of its agent wrote me a rejection, thus:

Thank you for sending the pages to your novel. I read them with interest. But I must admit I was not fully drawn to the material. My personal feeling is that the storytelling seemed weaker than I usually like, and to my mind the characters felt underdeveloped. I never really felt I knew them. Without being passionate and with so many personal reservations I would not have the right instincts for selling it. I'm sorry I can't help more. I hope you will get other readings and I wish you success with your writing.

Sincerely,

xxx

Brandt & Hochman

A courteous enough reply, I thought. Then comes the next comment in the string:

Thank you so much for that! Just last night I received the identical, word-for-word rejection from you-know-who! This really helps me in my understanding of these rejections, because I thought that the wording applied directly to my novel - and I did find it hard to believe that he found my storytelling weak, which is usually what I get most praised on. Jeez, I thought I could tell whether I was getting a form letter or not, but this time, they really pulled the wool over my eyes! As usual, I'm grateful to Writers Net - and all you wonderful folks! Thanks!

Then, awhile later, the first guy again:

And my writer friend, quoted above, send him a non-fiction proposal, and she got the same identical rejection, which caused her to laugh. It's amazing how they attempt to masquerade in such lazy fashion!

A third commenter summarizes his thoughts on the matter:

Well, I guess they feel that if a form letter works, why not work it? LOL Maybe they want to be seen as benevolent and pro-writer but don't want to take the time to actually read the material so they crank out a standard form letter and never stop to think that any two rejectees might compare notes.

Finally there’s a fourth guy, who got a personalized rejection letter from B&H:

Whether a rejection is personal or form, all rejection letters are REAL rejections. I wasn't flattered that it was a personal letter. Bottom line it's yes or no, you're thrilled or pissed or whatever.

So, in dealing with a literary agency would I rather: (a) get no reply at all; (b) have them tell me my book sucks in very specific ways; or (c) get a form rejection letter tempered with encouragement that’s automatically generated without anyone ever having read what I sent them? (BTW, I’m not sending my stuff to Brandt & Hochman.)

 

Jerky!

“Now this is an American thing,” our 14-year-old daughter announced as she held up a bag of Slim Jim® brand beef jerky.

“No duh,” I remarked in my usual kindhearted fatherly way. Our Christmas care package had finally arrived, and my dad knows his granddaughter’s tastes in snacks. As you might have guessed, beef jerky isn’t a French thing.

“No, I mean this.” She read the product packaging to us:

Craving the big taste of real beef with the spicy bite only Slim Jim® offers? Slim Jim Beef Jerky combines whole strips of premium beef, bold special seasonings, and then slowly smokes it to deliver a jerky unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. This intensely flavorful jerky takes beef to a whole new level – the way only Slim Jim can!

 

Empty Speech

All speech calls for a reply, says Lacan. I shall show that there is no speech without a reply, even if it is met only with silence, provided that it has an auditor.

What happens when the subject of psychoanalysis opens his mouth? The first thing to make itself heard is the void. The subject perhaps is hiding something or is unaware of something; what comes out is empty speech. So you start analyzing the subject’s behavior looking for clues to what is not being said. But then the analyst has to talk about it, and the subject becomes the listener, and now who’s the analyst? But if in response to the subject’s empty speech the analyst remains silent, doesn’t it inevitably trigger frustration, aggression, regression? Maybe not, says Lacan:

Shall we ask instead where the subject’s frustration comes from? Does it come from the silence of the analyst? A reply to the subject’s empty speech, even – or especially – an approving one, often shows by its effects that it is much more frustrating than silence. Is it not rather a matter of a frustration inherent in the very discourse of the subject?

Empty speech isn’t inauthentic; rather, it’s the authentic expression of a self that is itself empty. In trying but failing to speak, the subject arrives at the frustrating realization of the profound silence that lies behind his words. The aggression that ensues is directed not at the analyst but at the self that can communicate only its own emptiness.

Mallarmé says that we typically use language as if it was a coin worn smooth which we pass back and forth in silence. That’s okay with Lacan:

Even if it communicates nothing, the discourse represents the existence of communication; even if it denies the evidence, it affirms that speech constitutes truth; even if it is intended to deceive, the discourse speculates on faith in testimony.

The analyst’s job is to understand the emptiness, to figure out where the meaning lies:

He takes the description of an everyday event for a fable addressed to whoever hath ears to hear, a long tirade for a direct interjection, or on the other hand a simple lapsus for a highly complex statement, or even the sigh of a momentary silence for the whole lyrical development it replaces.

Psychoanalysis isn’t popular in America, especially the kind that begins with a silent response to the empty speech of a hollow self. Even Woody Allen seems to have gotten up off the couch. As Lacan observed more than fifty years ago:

It appears incontestable that the conception of psychoanalysis in the United States has inclined towards the adaptation of the individual to the social environment, towards the quest for behavior patterns, and towards all the objectification implied in the notion of “human relations.”

I wonder if postmodernism will lead to an American revival of psychoanalysis. Or will psychopharmacology render both speech and silence equally obsolete?

 

Conversation Gap

If you already know everything I know, there would be no reason for me to talk or for you to listen. If it’s impossible for you to know anything I know, there would also be no reason for me to talk to you. Conversation exists in the gap between perfect knowledge and perfect ignorance. To ask questions in conversation is to close the gap.

What can we say about what is never said? Silence is the space occupied jointly by what we already both know and by what neither one of us can ever know. To ask questions in silence is to open the gap.

The Necessity of Extreme Unpleasantness

“Why do two people as different as Bertold Brecht and Martin Heidegger, both key figures of German art and thought of the twentieth century, share the feature of being extremely unpleasant! Is this a mere idiosyncratic coincidence, or does it indicate some kind of necessity?”

I wonder what necessity Zizek has in mind. Being German? Being a key figure of art and thought? Brecht was a socialist who fled Germany when Hitler assumed power; Heidegger was a Nazi party member. Brecht wrote plays, Heidegger wrote philosophy. If you work long and hard enough at something that’s intellectually difficult, maybe you can’t help but turn into an asshole eventually. Zizek must think so:

“It is impossible to endure the exteme effort of thought all the time – we have to have an easy place to escape to.”

Does Zizek worry that he has become an unpleasant person? Or is he just asking for reassurance that he’s not? Or does he feel guilty about spending too much of his own time in the easy escapes? It’s funny to read his stuff: he vacillates wildly in his attention span, from Hegel and Kierkegaard and Lacan to Johnny Cash and Steven Spielberg and Mel Gibson. But then it all ends up in his book somehow – doesn’t that turn even his easy escapes into hard work?

 

Retrospective 2005: Perfect Exile

At the end of 2005 I was starting to work on the Genesis 1 book. But I was also writing journal entries. Here’s stuff I was thinking about on the brink of 2006:

If it was to be the one thing in all the world I could do… what would it be? Regardless of response from or participation by the world, in perfect exile, with only the ghosts of legendary fellow travelers to keep me company, what is it that I would do?

I would write books — assuredly. But what else, if anything, would I put out there, perhaps as a lure to the spirits of the imagination? Would it still be the Salon? And what version would it be this time? Whom or what would I serve?

To understand anything at all demands that I make passage through the wretchedness to some other waters in which the free and open spirit can breathe. Not success, but rather some profundity of obscurity that renders me invulnerable. Not gripped by my irrelevance, but where I fully regard everything and everyone as irrelevant to my own personal plenitude.

If I could appeal to the greatness of man’s imagination… To create great ideas, great fiction and nonfiction, whether written or lived. To uphold the dream of an openness of life and of the spirit. Where, this time, do I begin? Can I stay the course, out of some sort of duty – or perhaps destiny? What is the work?

Retrospective 2005: Prop O’Gandhi

Toward the end of 2005 I was finishing off a new second half to my second novel. Most of the book takes place in the States, but here’s a segment from near the end that reflects my current glamorous-type Riviera habitat.

Muñécar brought the outboard back to life and eased the single-master into the harbor. He dropped his cigarette overboard, and a blunt black snout knocked it violently across the oily surface. Soon he had passed beyond the buoys, beyond the smell of fried fish and diesel fuel, and into the channel, where the dimly-lit fishing boats drifted silently toward a distant dawn. He could still hear the band playing on the big cruise liner docked at the edge of the deep water, but he didn’t look back. His eye followed the swift arc of the searchlight as it swept across the vast and empty sea.

Muñécar steered down and around the point, the industrial suburbs and warehouses merging into the haze as the little boat moved steadily away from the coastline. Farther out a widely-spaced caravan of freighters passed from right to left in stately procession toward some distant marketplace. Muñécar cut the running lights and set a heading that would slice straight across their path.

Not since he was a boy had Muñécar been all the way across. He had left with his father and brothers and sisters, at night and undetected, then as now. They had come to find the mother and to bring her home, but soon the father abandoned his search. Though he was the oldest, Muñécar made no silent pledge to the younger ones, and when the father too did not return there could be no mistake as to where the oldest son’s responsibilities lay. Now they were as grown as they needed to be, none lost but one and that through the fault of no man. There came a day when Muñécar realized that his small life could no longer keep him roped to these shores. Through unlikely yet persistent channels an offer had been made, and with it the tacit understanding that, whether accepted or no, the offer itself would change everything. And so he had made it a point of honor not to choose, for to choose was to acquiesce. Instead he would entice other forces, vast yet capricious, to choose him.

There may never come a time to say my farewells, he realized; never a time to settle accounts; never a time to pass a man’s wisdom on to those who care but little and who remember not at all. If there be a final reckoning let it come now, for I see as clearly this night as I have seen before or am likely to again. Gently lifting its mighty arms the sea bestowed its pardon in groanings too deep for words, and he went on.

At midnight Muñécar shut down the motor. He had brought plenty of fuel and provisions, more than enough. He went below and, crouching in the cramped quarters that were his home more often than not, he pulled a blanket off the cot. He climbed back up topside, where he wrapped himself against the chill of the open sea and smoked. There was no hurry; if all went well he would travel at his ease all the next day, finishing the crossing before dawn of the third day. The sea was calm, the air all but still, the vault strewn with stars. Once he had traveled into the far north and from a glacier-carved inlet he had watched the northern lights pulsating across the sky. He wondered why, in all his years sailing these warmer waters, he had never witnessed the phosphorescent shimmering of the nighttime sea, its countless teeming microcscopic creatures wriggling and spawning in profligate wonder. He slept and dreamed of music.

At dawn he ate coarse bread and thick ham and yellow plums. He drank boiled coffee and he smoked, and afterward he set the sail. With the boat passing lightly across the barely-rippled surface, Muñécar considered his options. He could return to the place of his birth, but would anyone know him? His father’s sister, stern and serene, who had mended his clothes and corrected his lessons; her well-kept home, the laundry strung across the whitewashed courtyard; the cousins, with whom he passed long afternoons planning and executing innocent intrigues – relics of another life altogether, a life that had unfolded in a timeless repetition of other lives equally distant from his own. Of course he could pick up his own life again, pay the necessary visits and tributes in another town on another shore, but what was the point? He had never really chosen it and, though he was good at it, for some time Muñécar could see that the old life was flaking away like a coat of weathered paint.

The sun came up strong and Muñécar stripped himself naked. He bated a couple of fixed lines with smallfry and set the lines off the starboard bow; he checked the ropes and windlass; he oiled the motor; he swabbed the galley and toilet in the little compartment below decks. Then from the curve of the prow he dove, the chill water washing him clean. He surfaced immediately; with practiced assurance he grasped the rope ladder as it passed within reach and he hoisted himself back aboard. For a long time he lay motionless as the sailboat moved under him, as the wind and the sea moved the boat under him.

No storms impeded Muñécar’s passage. When later in the afternoon a dead calm settled in he furled the sail and pressed the starter and continued on his way. A few working ships passed but none approached within hailing distance; there were no other small craft. Despite the ease of his journey, Muñécar by midafternoon found himself dozing: no more wine for me today, he told himself; perhaps no more ever. An hour later he shut down the engine and went below, out of the sun, where he stretched himself out on the cot. He heard the drone of a small aircraft passing low, and as he waited for it to circle back he fell asleep.

It was dark when he awoke. He looked at his watch in astonishment, for he had been asleep nearly ten hours. He pulled on a pair of shorts and clambered topside, bumping his already-aching head on the low hatchway. Sea calm, wind light, sky clear – just as before. He was behind schedule now; he’d have to run three-quarters throttle if he was going to make landfall by sunrise. The motor was reliable and surprisingly powerful; still, who would care if he came in late, or tomorrow, or never for that matter? He opened the first-aid kit and pulled out a packet of aspirin powder and poured it onto his tongue, savoring the astringency.

 

Retrospective 2004: Exceptionality & The Hole in the Whole

For me the end of 2004 marked the beginning of an extended depression. In June I finished my first novel, The Stations. Hoping for some useful feedback before sending it off to an agent, I asked several friends if they wanted to read the book. They said sure; I figured they’d all be finished reading within a month or two. Wrong. One finished in 4 months, another in a year, the others never got past about the second chapter. Meanwhile I’d finished the first draft of a second novel, called Prop O’Gandhi. In mid-October I sent both books to an agent (a friend of a friend) with no one other than my ever-supportive wife having read either one. Three months later (2 years ago yesterday) I got the bad news: too “experimental.” No agent has looked at either novel since. Here’s some of my journal from December 2004.

People don’t pursue the exceptional. Why not? Don’t know what to do. Afraid. Can’t see it. Cultural counter-pressure. Can’t engage. Not chosen. Don’t know why. Don’t see interest from other people. What, psychologically, does it take to engage relentlessly in the pursuit of the extraordinary?

Possible book topic: “Writing for an Imaginary Audience.” This idea has everything to do with motivation for starting and persisting on an exceptional course. Are you doing it to please, to get a big payoff, to be personally validated? Are you elite or just an oddball? How long can you stand the isolation? Is it good or bad for you, for the work? What happens when you leave the community of competitors and go it alone? How much trouble do you take to assess whether anybody likes what you’re doing? Do you need to be needed?

Does a thing exist if it isn’t seen? How many realities can one thing possess, if reality is bestowed by the audience? I would be picking up the Postmodern thread by pursuing this course: reader in the text, etc. From the reader/consumer’s perspective, there is “creative” reading, deconstruction, etc. I’m oriented on the writer’s side of the transaction, and from the writer/creator’s perspective it’s a different set of issues. Does my work point beyond me to an Other, beyond itself to a Consumer? Or does it point iconically to a Reality in which reader and writer can participate? Dunno.

* * *

Is every creation the cutting out of something from the undifferentiated whole? The hole is the evil twin of the creation; it is the complementary destruction of the whole, the hole in the whole. The hole is the double of every creation. The hole then becomes the template for duplication of the creation. What once was part of the whole has been isolated; the hole has become the pattern for what has been excised, the form for simulacra production.

A creation carves out from the whole an awareness of something that had already existed beneath conscious awareness. It leaves a hole, and so the first instinct is to stick the creation back into the torn fabric and sew it up; to de-create the creation. But once the creation catches on, it is the hole that forms the template for duplication, not of the whole, but of the separate piece. When the template becomes frayed, the dupes become distorted. This needs more thought.

* * *

Why do none of the ideas grab me these days? Nothing has momentum: it all feels old and forced. But there’s nothing else to take its place. When is it time to force something to happen? This seems to violate core principles of Portality. The better advice seems to be: be alert, then move when you see an opening. But you might already have to be in motion.