Telling it like it is
I have to confess that I have never read any of Lynn Freed’s novels. In fact, I had never even heard of Lynn Freed before picking up her memoir from the new books shelf at my local public library. (I am sure this is more a factor of my own ignorance than of her lack of celebrity or talent.) I picked up the book because it was entitled Reading, Writing, and Leaving Home: Life on the Page, and that sounded right up my alley. Plus, there was a supportive blurb on the back from Anne LaMott: “Lynn Freed is a beautiful writer, dead-on brilliant, possessing a dark and comforting wisdom.” That was enough for me.
I liked the book, I guess, a series of autobiographical essays, but was not as taken by it as I thought I might be. Freed, originally from South Africa, white, and Jewish, seems to have based most of her novels on her exotic, somewhat dysfunctional family life, and thus has gotten a lot of flack from said family members and white South Africans in general.
Freed did have some interesting things to say about reading, writing, and the teaching of writing. As to the last, I think I gleaned that I never, ever want to teach creative writing because I would be too inclined to tell people who obviously lacked any writing skills: “This sucks!”
There was one passage in particular in Freed’s book that moved me deeply. In fact, it moved me SO deeply and was so well-written that I want to pass it along intact. It is from an essay entitled “Taming the Gorgon” and is about the author’s mother and how Freed writes about her or incorporates aspects of her in her own writing. The passage is about telling the truth, or telling it like it is:
“We are living in a culture that seems to believe that by unloading blame – on the couch, on the page, or both – we can set ourselves free. Therapists are enriched, the page seldom justifies itself – guilt, blame, and analysis provide arid ground for literature – and life itself goes on much as it did before. Except that we grow older and come in for a deal of guilt or blame ourselves. Which can lead us to subscribe, like so many others, to the myth of self-improvement. Only to land us more confused than ever. Striving for maturity can be like surviving to be middle class – punishable by success.
“The danger for art in all this lies in what one might call the Forrest Gump school of literary endeavor – a cheery little rainbow lens that deems the good ‘safe’ and the bad ‘dysfunctional,’ all in a world in which we are surrounded by ‘choices’ if only we could open our eyes and see them. If we could – if those who came before us could themselves have understood things differently – we might now be reading The Ten Stupid Things Emma Did to Mess Up Her Life, by Gustave Flaubert; Women in Love and Their Bad, Bad Choices, by D.H. Lawrence; [and] How Happy Families Are Destroyed by Unhappy People, by Leo Tolstoy.
“In the face of all this, I would plead loudly for sticking to the trouble of life – or, rather, to the truth of the trouble of life. What other duty can a writer have? In a culture rendered terrifyingly glib by the rhetoric of lying, one must grasp on to the truth with both hands – embracing what cannot be solved, asking questions to which there can be no answers.” (Freed, 2005, pp. 183-184)
Writing this blog has been a very scary endeavor for me. I am not sure I want to share my take on my life with people I know. Especially my family. I am always worried I am going to piss someone off or hurt someone’s feelings. This is why I am not really a very good writer.
There is much I have to say about West Point and my experience there. I realize that a lot of people will find what I have to say offensive or somehow disloyal. Unpatriotic even. That is not my intent. My intent is simply to tell it like it is. Or rather, as I personally experienced it, witnessed it, and processed it. I am sure there could be thousands of blogs on West Point, and they would all be different. Because everyone’s experiences are different. And West Point changes – not always linearly in a positive, mature direction, but sometimes more cyclically. Overall, I think West Point has moved up a few notches on the bar chart, but in my humble estimation it has a long, long way to go.
I received an email out of the blue the other day from one of my male West Point classmates. He has actually been mentioned in this blog before as the open-minded, forward-looking, all-around good guy who was sitting with a group of women classmates and me on the bus ride up to West Point for our 20th reunion. He was telling us that a woman grad from an earlier class had told him she had been sexually harassed at West Point. He looked at all of us and asked, “That never happened to any of you, did it?” And, of course, we were all rendered speechless with incredulity.
My friend and I sent several emails back and forth in our most recent exchange, and he mentioned that he had met up with two of his former Beast squadmates, one of whom had been his Beast roommate. He then forwarded me the photo that his Beast squad had had taken in front of the Huey helicopter after their ride around West Point. It startled me that he would write to me out of the blue and mention Beast and Beast squad members and then send the Huey photo the day after I had written my “Beast Squad” posting. The coincidence seemed like way more than just a coincidence. I don’t think it was cosmic or supernatural or destined or anything wacky. I think it has more to do with the fact that this summer marks 25 years since our class went through Beast, and it was a significant landmark in our formative lives. And many of us, whether consciously or not, are thinking back on this time and reliving some of those moments and even re-connecting with some of the people we went through CBT with. West Point affects you deeply, whether you are a man or a woman. My friend and I had been thinking of Beast and the people we went through it with, and we had both selected that Huey squad photo (each squad, of course, having its own Huey photo) as a tangible symbol of our shared experience.
We all remember things differently.
We remember different things, and we “don’t remember” different things.
In the end, then, when we “tell it like it is,” we can only tell it as we perceived it and processed it. And that just adds to that big ole gray area out there.
And isn’t that grand?
I liked the book, I guess, a series of autobiographical essays, but was not as taken by it as I thought I might be. Freed, originally from South Africa, white, and Jewish, seems to have based most of her novels on her exotic, somewhat dysfunctional family life, and thus has gotten a lot of flack from said family members and white South Africans in general.
Freed did have some interesting things to say about reading, writing, and the teaching of writing. As to the last, I think I gleaned that I never, ever want to teach creative writing because I would be too inclined to tell people who obviously lacked any writing skills: “This sucks!”
There was one passage in particular in Freed’s book that moved me deeply. In fact, it moved me SO deeply and was so well-written that I want to pass it along intact. It is from an essay entitled “Taming the Gorgon” and is about the author’s mother and how Freed writes about her or incorporates aspects of her in her own writing. The passage is about telling the truth, or telling it like it is:
“We are living in a culture that seems to believe that by unloading blame – on the couch, on the page, or both – we can set ourselves free. Therapists are enriched, the page seldom justifies itself – guilt, blame, and analysis provide arid ground for literature – and life itself goes on much as it did before. Except that we grow older and come in for a deal of guilt or blame ourselves. Which can lead us to subscribe, like so many others, to the myth of self-improvement. Only to land us more confused than ever. Striving for maturity can be like surviving to be middle class – punishable by success.
“The danger for art in all this lies in what one might call the Forrest Gump school of literary endeavor – a cheery little rainbow lens that deems the good ‘safe’ and the bad ‘dysfunctional,’ all in a world in which we are surrounded by ‘choices’ if only we could open our eyes and see them. If we could – if those who came before us could themselves have understood things differently – we might now be reading The Ten Stupid Things Emma Did to Mess Up Her Life, by Gustave Flaubert; Women in Love and Their Bad, Bad Choices, by D.H. Lawrence; [and] How Happy Families Are Destroyed by Unhappy People, by Leo Tolstoy.
“In the face of all this, I would plead loudly for sticking to the trouble of life – or, rather, to the truth of the trouble of life. What other duty can a writer have? In a culture rendered terrifyingly glib by the rhetoric of lying, one must grasp on to the truth with both hands – embracing what cannot be solved, asking questions to which there can be no answers.” (Freed, 2005, pp. 183-184)
Writing this blog has been a very scary endeavor for me. I am not sure I want to share my take on my life with people I know. Especially my family. I am always worried I am going to piss someone off or hurt someone’s feelings. This is why I am not really a very good writer.
There is much I have to say about West Point and my experience there. I realize that a lot of people will find what I have to say offensive or somehow disloyal. Unpatriotic even. That is not my intent. My intent is simply to tell it like it is. Or rather, as I personally experienced it, witnessed it, and processed it. I am sure there could be thousands of blogs on West Point, and they would all be different. Because everyone’s experiences are different. And West Point changes – not always linearly in a positive, mature direction, but sometimes more cyclically. Overall, I think West Point has moved up a few notches on the bar chart, but in my humble estimation it has a long, long way to go.
I received an email out of the blue the other day from one of my male West Point classmates. He has actually been mentioned in this blog before as the open-minded, forward-looking, all-around good guy who was sitting with a group of women classmates and me on the bus ride up to West Point for our 20th reunion. He was telling us that a woman grad from an earlier class had told him she had been sexually harassed at West Point. He looked at all of us and asked, “That never happened to any of you, did it?” And, of course, we were all rendered speechless with incredulity.
My friend and I sent several emails back and forth in our most recent exchange, and he mentioned that he had met up with two of his former Beast squadmates, one of whom had been his Beast roommate. He then forwarded me the photo that his Beast squad had had taken in front of the Huey helicopter after their ride around West Point. It startled me that he would write to me out of the blue and mention Beast and Beast squad members and then send the Huey photo the day after I had written my “Beast Squad” posting. The coincidence seemed like way more than just a coincidence. I don’t think it was cosmic or supernatural or destined or anything wacky. I think it has more to do with the fact that this summer marks 25 years since our class went through Beast, and it was a significant landmark in our formative lives. And many of us, whether consciously or not, are thinking back on this time and reliving some of those moments and even re-connecting with some of the people we went through CBT with. West Point affects you deeply, whether you are a man or a woman. My friend and I had been thinking of Beast and the people we went through it with, and we had both selected that Huey squad photo (each squad, of course, having its own Huey photo) as a tangible symbol of our shared experience.
We all remember things differently.
We remember different things, and we “don’t remember” different things.
In the end, then, when we “tell it like it is,” we can only tell it as we perceived it and processed it. And that just adds to that big ole gray area out there.
And isn’t that grand?
posted by delta at 2:43 PM
1 Comments:
Generally speaking, nobody complains and bitches about the Army like soldiers, dirty nasty civilian counter-recruiters included. It's a God-given right for GIs that we do this. Civilians don't understand this, and often misinterpret and are taken aback by the venomous fervor with which veterans often talk about the Army.
They don't get it.
Which is to say, just accept that some people in your audience can't and won't understand where you're coming from when you talk about West Point and the Army. Some of us can and will.
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