Real vs. Irreal: Mining a Thoughtspace Threading out Inner Realities

Prologue

The last two books I read were The Great Lover by Michael Cisco and The Sensualist by Daniel Torday. They were widely different, the first being 300+ pages of dark fantasy and the latter a slim novella set in the real world. It was a coincidence that I happened to read them successively, and I think if I hadn’t read both, if I’d only ever read either one, I might not have posed this quintessential question I’d like to pose to you. What genre, or style of writing, better reflects our modern existence: realism or irrealism? And, what is more important: to recreate the world around you and evoke an emotive experience that possibly transcends it, or to mine a thoughtspace threading out inner realities?

I’d like to take each book in turn as examples of their genre and let me think about these questions.

Irreal

“Do you ever write a story that isn’t weird?” A friend of mine asked me this question the other day.  I told her I didn’t see the point. I write stories to express some inner truth of myself, and a realistic story imitating my own life or someone like me would only be redundant. I wanted to write stories that limned the subliminal.  I wanted to explore only interiority, justifying my self-indulgence as microcosmic. I thought that my subjective feelings could somehow reflect objective, grander-scale issues. But I didn’t write about my feelings in a diary, emo way. I hid them buried deep under imagery and metaphor.

It was because of all these things that I was attracted to The Great Lover by Michael Cisco. Although not set in a traditionally otherworldly fantasy land, it refuses to describe a real world of any kind. It starts in what might be our own reality but quickly transforms everything into landscapes of pure language. The Great Lover doesn’t describe a real world; it is a real world. By eschewing any semblance of “reality,” it itself becomes hyper-real, the only reality we can be ensconced in and enveloped by. The words themselves and the emotions they evoke are the terrain for the Great Lover to frolic in.

It starts with the protagonist, only ever deemed the Great Lover, dying. He dies and his afterlife or resurrected body or zombie soul carries on trudging through sewer systems, given power. One of his powers is the ability to build a Prosthetic Libido for a scientist who can’t be bothered with his own urges as they distract him from his work. So the Great Lover cobbles together a robot golem to bear the burden of all of the scientist’s lust.

Even though there are these ideas and sometimes only ideas devoid of plot strung together, it was the prose that really encapsulated the tone of the novel. It was rich and chthonic, transporting you into different thought processes where pure emotive mandates were viable.

The book is published by Chômu Press who champions new irreal novels, works that explore the way life feels and not the way it occurs merely to our primary, primate senses.

In a chaotic world in which “truth” and verifiable facts seem to be a commodity, it may be of more value to trade in concepts.

This isn’t fantasy genre with wizards, dragons and zombies. This isn’t Twilight.

“It’s like time travel or music. . . . Don’t try to fit it all together into one story line, but transfer from line to line,” it says metafictionally. The book is self-aware and uses itself to its own end.

Real

After reading The Sensualist, I began to reanalyze the possibility of writing stories that were based on real experience. Because the environment is real, emotions evoked feel real as well.

The Sensualist doesn’t just take place in the real world, but specifically Baltimore. Torday, by reducing the focal point of his gaze, is able to make subtle and passive generalizations that are universally applicable.

The story tells “[t]he events leading to the beating Dmitri Abramovitch Zilber and his friends would administer to Jeremy Goldstein.” It is told in the first-person narrative of Samuel Gerson who falls in love and tries to stay true to new friends.

Readers can identify with a story set in reality or a realistic setting. They are more easily able to comprehend and empathize if they are not always required to decode the language. There is a given template which we all understand as the thing we have been raised in and guided by. Stories set in the real world obey laws and theories that we are familiar with. The readers can exchange themselves in the roles of the characters even if they don’t understand the characters’ exact motives or actions.

Because realistic story-telling is so enterable, it also has the potential of being less engaging. There is a thin line between the familiar and the rote or boring. It is possible that the flaw of realism lies in its closeness to reality, a reality that has its moments of overwhelming boredom. In human experience there tends to only be a handful of distinct stories, but a million ways to tell them. Which is why I left in all of those qualifiers like “possible” and “potential.” In Torday’s hands the story never feels stale even though it is intentionally modeled after classic literature. It directly points out its homage to The Great Gatsby and The Idiot, which strengthens the prose as part of a lineage.

In the real world with real problems, the only solution or salve must be couched in experiences that reflect that reality. Torday’s story is structured so that you feel every emotion as it piques itself viscerally towards its conclusion.

Epilogue

There are strange parallels between The Great Lover and The Sensualist whose titles might almost be interchangeable. They both deal with unattainable love, alienation, and the rites of tribes. They each use exquisite craft of language to evoke their respective ethos.

Here are passages from each that could almost be describing the same scene but to disparate ends:

I pulled her to me by her upper arms. I put my bare arm across the back of her neck and mashed the top of her head against my face. The move was clumsy, and after I had acted I hoped that at least some semblance of intimacy might come across. She pulled away. The momentary rejection of it made me want to grab her, hold her against me. . . .

I got in my car. In the rearview mirror I saw that Yelizaveta was watching. She had already lit another cigarette, and as I pulled away, the burning red ember glowing between Yelizaveta’s fingers became the only thing clearly visible.

—The Sensualist

I live borne up sustained held and tensed in a gossamer medium of will. Walking up the hump of the street, I have a yen to lean forward arms outstretched. Its slope receives my remains as easily as if they were tipped from a can: and this vile city that barks its hate at me from passing cars, whose buses and streets roar hate at me, whose hysterical citizens recoil from my bland, sallow, wickedly-vacant face. No I don’t belong among you with my nails imbrued in the loam of graves, my breath foetid with my own stale words. Coiled like a turd on my warm mattress, nestled in a chilly reckless draught I bring with me wherever I go. I am a spacious ruin. I am made, and despicable, and I will recount to you your crimes against my sainted person like beads of glowing amber. I have an excellent memory and nothing to gain from forgiveness; I have stored up the venom of blighted days, and trample out your pollution, your stupid trouble, your irreverent work. The music of my soul the world hates.

Ah, Vera!

—The Great Lover

In the end, I couldn’t tell which was more important or if such a distinction could be made. It might have expected that one relationship to the external world – mirroring or symbolizing – would be superior. But I just couldn’t determine the winner. It is like pitting photography against abstract expressionism. I would definitely recommend either / both of these books to see for yourself which reflects your own worldview.

The “Classic” Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby sat on my bookshelf for more than three years. I had bought it with other secondhand classics that I thought I really ought to read, most of which I placed proudly on my bookshelf and then promptly forgot about. Some, such as Wide Sargasso Sea and Wuthering Heights were prescribed to me by teachers back in high school and deserved a re-visit. Others like Huckleberry Finn, Animal Farm, and Sense and Sensibilitysimply struck a chord in this wannabe-literary mind of mine, and presented themselves as noble purchases.

However, about halfway through this modest collection, I realised that the term “classic” gave absolutely no indication of how I might react to each individual book. It seems obvious to me now, as all hindsight evaluations do, but I always thought that these books were supposed to be, oh I dunno . . . a special kind of special. I imagined a table (in a library) of old (and for some reason, British) people who (are drinking tea, and) had mystical powers of infallible good taste and intellectual insight, making their way through a list of every book ever published and deciding if they were “classic.” Their decisions were based on unobjectionable merits such as talent and originality, but in each chosen text there was also something more. There was a spirit, or a spark, or an essence or something possibly indefinable — whatever it was, each book had it, and that was how it earned its “classic” stamp. Nobody ever gave me an explanation why these books were in this class, so I think that justification could be as good as any.

Over the years I made my way through about two thirds of that bulk purchase, picking out books at random. A couple of weeks ago though, I was bumbling around the Internet and came across a shocking thing — a screenshot from a new movie featuring Toby Maguire, Carey Mulligan, and Leonardo DiCaprio strolling through a lavish garden, all laughing happily and looking ridiculously dapper. What was this!? I really like all those actors! Some minutes of Googling later, I was reading about this new adaption of The Great Gatsby, which was being directed by Baz Luhrman. Holy shit! I love Baz Luhrman! This movie is going to be so so so cool. It’s going to be beautiful and witty and it’s going to make me fall in love with it because it’s so awesome.

And then. Instantly. The panic set in. Holy crap. I haven’t actually read that book.

I sat up in my chair and straightened my pyjamas and re-plaited my hair. I was totally alone, and yet seriously embarrassed. I walked straight over to my bookshelf, found the title, pulled it out and began inspecting it. It was smaller than most “classics,” which was comforting because it meant I could read it quickly. And in that minute, I sat on my bed and began reading, and, after several intervals, was finished the following evening.

I really liked it. Really. It’s quite simple, and the themes and symbolic representations are easy to pick up on but nonetheless poignant, and for me this is one big reason that I’m now seriously fond of Fitzgerald’s writing. I got roped into the bright lights. I honestly did. The parties and houses and dresses drew me in so much, and I recognized similarities between the “roaring jazz twenties” and what I see in the “upper cut” of my generation now. Gatsby’s story is the epitome of the “rags-to-riches” mould, and the Nick’s humble humanity keeps the whole scene accessible and easy to reflect upon. The girls behave like absolute girls, and the boys behave like absolute boys, and it puts the reader in the comfortable position of being able to make conscientious judgments about everything. The judgment in the voice of the narrator himself is not the least bit pushy, and so when you find yourself (inevitably) agreeing with him, it gives you the feeling that you truly understand what it was all about. The Great Gatsby creates a relationship with you. You become friends with this book. There is a universality in it that goes beyond the specificities of location or time. It’s transcendent.

A good example is my favourite mini-scene from the end of the book, when Nick awkwardly runs into Tom in New York, and cannot bring himself to be as rude to Tom as he deserves:

“I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. I shook hands with him; it seemed silly not to for I felt suddenly as though I were talking to a child.”

There is just a really beautiful simplicity that that the narration brings to the story, and keeps it transcendent. That’s the word — the key word that forms the link between which “classics” engage me and which ones don’t. Transcendent. There is an underlying humanity in The Great Gatsby that lends itself just as easily to the 21st century, even though one of its greatest qualities is how well it captures that particular time in history. I know people like Daisy and Tom, and of course I don’t really like them. I know of people like Gatsby, who I wish I knew better, and I’m friends with people like Nick. It’s so easy to cut and paste this novel’s elements to my own situation to intensify my response as a reader.

It’s just really good and I want everybody to read it before they see the movie. Not because I think the movie won’t do it justice — but because I want people to enjoy the experience of entering Fitzgerald’s world for the first time, and respond to the narration for themselves. I want everybody to be friends with this little book and fall in love with it before they meet its glitzy Baz Luhrman cousin. I want them to put themselves in Nick’s shoes before those shoes are filled by Toby Maguire. I want them to think Daisy is pathetic before Carey Mulligan makes it impossible to hate her. And most of all, I want them to hunger for that slow trickle of information that we receive about Gatsby as the pages go on. Because it’s just too beautiful:

“As I went over to say goodbye I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby’s face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost five years! There must have been moment even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams — not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly heart.”

It’s poetry, it really is.

And as it turns out, I really do think some of these “classics” are masterpieces. The Great Gatsby is the perfect example of everything that can be great about a classic. It’s original and insightful and it came alive as I read it.

If you haven’t, you should read it too. If only because you bought it for a few dollars and always pretended you had. Or because you’re relieved by how short it is. Whatever your reason, once you finish you’ll wish it could have gone on forever. You’ll see the jazz of the twenties flashing before your eyes, and as you watch the American Dream come crashing down, you’ll see the Occupy Wall Street movement on TV and realise it’s always happening all over again.

My Love Affair with The Great Gatsby

I tell my students, "Never read without a pen or pencil in your hand." They look at me like I'm crazy, a destroyer of books, tagging illegible praise from cover to cover. The truth is, the notes I have written in my books over the past twenty years have become sort of the yarn of my life, a spooling reminder of where I was at that time, and how much I liked being in that place.

So imagine my surprise when I opened my battered copy of The Great Gatsby, only to find it was blank. No love letters adorning its margins, no shaky thin lines sprawling out their arms under a witty turn of phrase. Nothing. Blank. Just the prose F. Scott Fitzgerald intended.

Then I remembered. The last time I read The Great Gatsby, I was twenty-two years old. I was in an unhealthy and unhappy relationship and I was stuck in a job that I absolutely despised, grinding myself down to a nub just to help the rich get richer. So what did that have to do with Gatsby? I'm not sure. Maybe I was jealous, envious of the way Jay Gatsby seemed to be so solo in this world, gliding through his adventures with only the memory of a girl he loved locked away in his mind. Maybe it was Fitzgerald's prose, maybe it ignited something inside of me: my desire to write, to string brilliant words together to create sentences that students everywhere will one day underline. I had put that dream on hold, shoved it deep down inside of myself, and for what? To pay electric bills on time?

Whatever the reason, when I revisited The Great Gatsby last month, twelve years after I had read it last, I left the pages of what some call "The Great American Novel", stained with the ink of a thousand pens. Blanketed in admiration. But why now? What has changed? Well, I'm in a better place, for one. I'm happily married, teaching literature to college students, and working on a book of my own. Also, I've had some formal training: the letters M.F.A. stamped on parchment to declare me fit to interpret these sorts of things. Or, maybe, just maybe, I've grown up a bit. I see the characters in the story as symbols, as images, as archetypes of society. The way, I believe, Fitzgerald intended.

The Great Gatsby is many things to me now, as a mother in my mid-thirties. It is a social commentary, a story about the haves (the Buchanans) and the have nots (the Wilsons, and even Gatsby himself). Nick Carraway and I both share an "unaffected scorn" for the uber rich, and I have a deep appreciation for the  way he plucks at Tom Buchanan:

"[Tom was one] of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterwards savours of anti-climax."

"'Tom's getting very profound,' said Daisy with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. 'He reads deep books with long words in them. What was the word we — "

It is also a book of empowerment, a reaffirmation of the female influence. While the men in the story, Nick included, banter back and forth over the decisions of which they are seemingly in control, the person who holds all of the power is Daisy. Tom and Gatsby fight over her, Nick fights for her, and Jordan fights with her. Daisy is a soft light to which every man as moth flocks. And Fitzgerald paints her with the most beautiful language:

"It (Daisy's) was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again."

But I think what The Great Gatsby is at its core, what it is meant to be, is a great love story. It's a sweet, simple song about a boy who loves a girl, and what he will do to win her heart. He will go to war, travel the world, amass a fortune through whatever means possible, and risk losing it all, just for a glimpse of her.

And when I read that infamous last line —

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

— I can't help but remember that twenty-two year old version of myself, lying in a different place, in a different life, reading this same book, and feeling so scared of what would happen if I chased down my dreams.

Fitzgerald, who was ahead of his time in so many ways, was right again with this timeless image. We are constantly battling that from which we are born, and therein lies Fitzgerald's wisdom. He leaves us with a message that Gatsby himself would have been better for knowing:  We would do well to never forget where we came from, to never forget who we are, and to never forget that which makes each of us great. And the answer, the thing that exudes greatness, is seldom counted in dollars and cents.