Joseph Hirsch's Blog - Posts Tagged "failure"
My Angora Has a First Name: Or, How the Writing Gets Weird, and Weirdly Sexual
I used to be really obsessed with the filmmaker Ed Wood, officially Edward D. Wood Junior. Most people who know about him probably know about him mostly thanks to the feature biopic film, Ed Wood, directed by Tim Burton. They also know (or think they know) that he is the worst director of all time.
Understand, it’s not that Plan Nine from Outer Space is the worst film ever made (I can think of a dozen worse movies off the top of my head.) Rather, it’s that the disjunction between Ed’s heartfelt ambition and what he actually put up on the screen is so wide. In his screenplays, he wrote things with utter sincerity, pouring his heart out, and yet the results, when uttered by actors, were completely ridiculous. His films are lead balloons, burdened by protracted soliloquys on man’s violent nature, his refusal to accept people as they are, and the danger of narrowmindedness.
And yet there tends to be some weird joy in the laughter of people who set out to watch his films with the sole intention of mocking them.
Why?
Everyone who cares about answering that question (not too many of us) no doubt has their own theory, and mine goes back to something said by author George Saunders. He claimed that, while fiction had to make sense on a line by line basis, poetry was more about the inadequacy of words to express those things we wish to express. Sure, the poet utilizes words, but in the best poetry the desire to express something outruns the ability of words to express the feeling the poet desires to convey.
The disjunction, then, between what Ed Wood wanted to do versus what he could do becomes its own kind of crazy poetry. Had he been merely a competent journeyman, we likely would have forgotten his films by now. Had he failed but less spectacularly, his movies likewise would probably be destined for permanent obscurity.
But, like a madman sinking his fortune into a doomed venture, there is something romantic, even monumental about Ed’s failure. It is—in its own wild and paradoxical way—better than a success.
Something even his detractors also readily admitted was that Wood was an auteur. His stylistic thumbprint was distinct, or, as one critic said, "You'll never mistake a bad Ed Wood film for a bad film by someone else.”
One of the things that make Wood’s oeuvre stand out is how prominent a role his own sexuality plays in his pictures. His contemporaries like Hitchcock or Lang might have included veiled or symbolic references to everything from intercourse to masturbation in their works. But there was no such veiling or subtle innuendo employed by Wood. Instead, he favored a different tact: addressing his sexuality head-on, despite his fetish—transvestism—still being incredibly taboo in the 1950s, outside of a kind of vaudevillian mockery of the kink.
Some might credit Wood with being brave. And while that might partially be true, I think narrator Gary Owens hit closer to the ultimate truth in the documentary, “A Look Back in Angora,” in which he claimed that Ed’s sexuality “bubbled up” in his work in the unlikeliest of places. Or, in other words, Ed had no choice. His truth betrayed him, manifested whether he wanted it to or not.
I sympathize with Wood in many respects, regarding myself as an earnest but failed artist whose best hope is to wait perhaps for some posthumous reassessment. Even if, as in the case with Wood, said reception is laced with irony and all the superlatives heaped on me involve variations on “The worst…”
I also sympathize, more specifically, with Ed’s inability to control revealing certain things about himself in his work. It’s a compulsion I share, one that—like the narrator’s in “The Telltale Heart”—can do me very little good and much harm.
No, I don’t risk imprisonment, but I do risk severe embarrassment, and since the words live on forever (in print and online) that embarrassment can always return to haunt me.
Looking back over my own body of work, there are multiple instances of me sharing too much information about myself and sexuality. My own sexual weirdness “bubbled up,” especially in my book “Veterans’ Affairs.” Maybe if the narrator of that novel were not such an obvious alter-ego for yours truly, it might not be embarrassing to recall all the stuff I confessed about myself: interest in femdom, “queening” (look it up), my various crushes which were ongoing at the time, my desire to be dominated by a woman, weird residual oedipal desires that make me look like a less violent but still hopelessly pervy Frank Booth. Some of these fantasies were so elaborate in their staging and orchestration that many of them could be spun out into their own novel-length works, had I any interest anymore in writing “erotica.”
All of this weirdness could have been easily forgiven if it had been relevant to the story, if it had added anything besides extraneous and bizarre details to the narrative. But the exact opposite is probably the case. The weird sex stuff, when introduced, tended to disrupt the narrative flow, “spoil it” as one reader complained about the erotic elements in another of my works.
I never considered that while writing, though, simply because I couldn’t consider it, as I hope I’ve impressed upon you by now.
I remember getting personalized editorial notes back from a slush pile reader at a publisher who had given the MS of “Veterans Affairs” to his boss for review. This pair of eyes must have liked the MS enough to pass it on, but his superior, while intrigued by parts, concurred with that reader who thought I tended to “spoil” my own best work with the sexuality that kept bubbling up.
The bossman’s notes claimed he had enjoyed the novel, but found all the gratuitous references by the protagonist to his sexual fantasies unnecessary. In his words, “it got old quick” and derailed the narrative.
I knew then and know now that he was right. And yet I couldn’t change a word, and instead went with a much smaller publisher who cared less about such things.
Even weirder (and more cringeworthy at this great remove) is that I was actually proud of my “accomplishment” with “Veterans’ Affairs” at one time. I was still in college when it came out, in a graduate program that had nothing to do with literature (subversive or otherwise.) And, like a dumbass, I gave copies of the book to other people in the program, fellow-students about whom I knew very little. Students who would now know the thoughts and feelings hidden locked away in the innermost recesses of my mind.
Imagine writing your darkest and strangest thoughts in a diary, and then having that diary published, and available for perusal by your coworkers. Now imagine being crazy or stupid enough not to care, or even worse, to feel a sense of pride.
Such cluelessness reminds me a bit of that scene in Taxi Driver, in which Travis Bickle takes the Cybil Shepherd character on a date to a porn movie. And then has the gall to be confused by her storming out of the theater in a disconcerted huff.
I even gave a copy of Veterans’ Affairs to an instructor about whom I wrote explicit sexual fantasies in said-book, without considering the implications.
She must not have minded, though, as we continued meeting and being on friendly terms after that. Or perhaps she did mind and was too polite to mention it. Or (and this is probably the most likely scenario), she put the book I gave her on a shelf and never bothered to read it; I certainly hope that’s the case.
What hell was I even thinking, though, by not only publishing that book, but giving it to people I barely knew?
I wish I could track down every copy of “Veterans’ Affairs” still floating around out there, heap them all onto a giant pyre, douse it with lighter fluid, toss a match and watch it burn.
Maybe that sounds a little harsh, but it’s how I feel sometimes about that early work, in which I most definitely shared far too much.
As to why I tend to be less confessional in my work now than back then, who knows? I could offer some suppositions, like that I’ve gotten it out of my system, or that a decade has passed and that, having entered middle age, I’m less ruled by my raging libido.
Both of which statements are true, but neither of which, considered alone or together, quite explain the disappearance of the embarrassing personal stuff from my writing. And besides, who’s to say I don’t eventually go back to “oversharing,” say, when I reach my early seventies? After all, the concept of the “dirty old man” didn’t appear from nowhere. Let’s just hope that if it comes to that, that next time the sex at least is integral to the plot. And is not so informed by my personal kinks.
Understand, it’s not that Plan Nine from Outer Space is the worst film ever made (I can think of a dozen worse movies off the top of my head.) Rather, it’s that the disjunction between Ed’s heartfelt ambition and what he actually put up on the screen is so wide. In his screenplays, he wrote things with utter sincerity, pouring his heart out, and yet the results, when uttered by actors, were completely ridiculous. His films are lead balloons, burdened by protracted soliloquys on man’s violent nature, his refusal to accept people as they are, and the danger of narrowmindedness.
And yet there tends to be some weird joy in the laughter of people who set out to watch his films with the sole intention of mocking them.
Why?
Everyone who cares about answering that question (not too many of us) no doubt has their own theory, and mine goes back to something said by author George Saunders. He claimed that, while fiction had to make sense on a line by line basis, poetry was more about the inadequacy of words to express those things we wish to express. Sure, the poet utilizes words, but in the best poetry the desire to express something outruns the ability of words to express the feeling the poet desires to convey.
The disjunction, then, between what Ed Wood wanted to do versus what he could do becomes its own kind of crazy poetry. Had he been merely a competent journeyman, we likely would have forgotten his films by now. Had he failed but less spectacularly, his movies likewise would probably be destined for permanent obscurity.
But, like a madman sinking his fortune into a doomed venture, there is something romantic, even monumental about Ed’s failure. It is—in its own wild and paradoxical way—better than a success.
Something even his detractors also readily admitted was that Wood was an auteur. His stylistic thumbprint was distinct, or, as one critic said, "You'll never mistake a bad Ed Wood film for a bad film by someone else.”
One of the things that make Wood’s oeuvre stand out is how prominent a role his own sexuality plays in his pictures. His contemporaries like Hitchcock or Lang might have included veiled or symbolic references to everything from intercourse to masturbation in their works. But there was no such veiling or subtle innuendo employed by Wood. Instead, he favored a different tact: addressing his sexuality head-on, despite his fetish—transvestism—still being incredibly taboo in the 1950s, outside of a kind of vaudevillian mockery of the kink.
Some might credit Wood with being brave. And while that might partially be true, I think narrator Gary Owens hit closer to the ultimate truth in the documentary, “A Look Back in Angora,” in which he claimed that Ed’s sexuality “bubbled up” in his work in the unlikeliest of places. Or, in other words, Ed had no choice. His truth betrayed him, manifested whether he wanted it to or not.
I sympathize with Wood in many respects, regarding myself as an earnest but failed artist whose best hope is to wait perhaps for some posthumous reassessment. Even if, as in the case with Wood, said reception is laced with irony and all the superlatives heaped on me involve variations on “The worst…”
I also sympathize, more specifically, with Ed’s inability to control revealing certain things about himself in his work. It’s a compulsion I share, one that—like the narrator’s in “The Telltale Heart”—can do me very little good and much harm.
No, I don’t risk imprisonment, but I do risk severe embarrassment, and since the words live on forever (in print and online) that embarrassment can always return to haunt me.
Looking back over my own body of work, there are multiple instances of me sharing too much information about myself and sexuality. My own sexual weirdness “bubbled up,” especially in my book “Veterans’ Affairs.” Maybe if the narrator of that novel were not such an obvious alter-ego for yours truly, it might not be embarrassing to recall all the stuff I confessed about myself: interest in femdom, “queening” (look it up), my various crushes which were ongoing at the time, my desire to be dominated by a woman, weird residual oedipal desires that make me look like a less violent but still hopelessly pervy Frank Booth. Some of these fantasies were so elaborate in their staging and orchestration that many of them could be spun out into their own novel-length works, had I any interest anymore in writing “erotica.”
All of this weirdness could have been easily forgiven if it had been relevant to the story, if it had added anything besides extraneous and bizarre details to the narrative. But the exact opposite is probably the case. The weird sex stuff, when introduced, tended to disrupt the narrative flow, “spoil it” as one reader complained about the erotic elements in another of my works.
I never considered that while writing, though, simply because I couldn’t consider it, as I hope I’ve impressed upon you by now.
I remember getting personalized editorial notes back from a slush pile reader at a publisher who had given the MS of “Veterans Affairs” to his boss for review. This pair of eyes must have liked the MS enough to pass it on, but his superior, while intrigued by parts, concurred with that reader who thought I tended to “spoil” my own best work with the sexuality that kept bubbling up.
The bossman’s notes claimed he had enjoyed the novel, but found all the gratuitous references by the protagonist to his sexual fantasies unnecessary. In his words, “it got old quick” and derailed the narrative.
I knew then and know now that he was right. And yet I couldn’t change a word, and instead went with a much smaller publisher who cared less about such things.
Even weirder (and more cringeworthy at this great remove) is that I was actually proud of my “accomplishment” with “Veterans’ Affairs” at one time. I was still in college when it came out, in a graduate program that had nothing to do with literature (subversive or otherwise.) And, like a dumbass, I gave copies of the book to other people in the program, fellow-students about whom I knew very little. Students who would now know the thoughts and feelings hidden locked away in the innermost recesses of my mind.
Imagine writing your darkest and strangest thoughts in a diary, and then having that diary published, and available for perusal by your coworkers. Now imagine being crazy or stupid enough not to care, or even worse, to feel a sense of pride.
Such cluelessness reminds me a bit of that scene in Taxi Driver, in which Travis Bickle takes the Cybil Shepherd character on a date to a porn movie. And then has the gall to be confused by her storming out of the theater in a disconcerted huff.
I even gave a copy of Veterans’ Affairs to an instructor about whom I wrote explicit sexual fantasies in said-book, without considering the implications.
She must not have minded, though, as we continued meeting and being on friendly terms after that. Or perhaps she did mind and was too polite to mention it. Or (and this is probably the most likely scenario), she put the book I gave her on a shelf and never bothered to read it; I certainly hope that’s the case.
What hell was I even thinking, though, by not only publishing that book, but giving it to people I barely knew?
I wish I could track down every copy of “Veterans’ Affairs” still floating around out there, heap them all onto a giant pyre, douse it with lighter fluid, toss a match and watch it burn.
Maybe that sounds a little harsh, but it’s how I feel sometimes about that early work, in which I most definitely shared far too much.
As to why I tend to be less confessional in my work now than back then, who knows? I could offer some suppositions, like that I’ve gotten it out of my system, or that a decade has passed and that, having entered middle age, I’m less ruled by my raging libido.
Both of which statements are true, but neither of which, considered alone or together, quite explain the disappearance of the embarrassing personal stuff from my writing. And besides, who’s to say I don’t eventually go back to “oversharing,” say, when I reach my early seventies? After all, the concept of the “dirty old man” didn’t appear from nowhere. Let’s just hope that if it comes to that, that next time the sex at least is integral to the plot. And is not so informed by my personal kinks.
