Man Martin's Blog, page 229

Talking About Sex

This post may seem lengthy and dry.  I'm working on a story, Bread of Heaven, which, lately, frankly, I haven't done any work onat all , absorbed as I am in promoting Paradise Dogs. In any case, the book has a series of digressions, in fact, it's mostly digressions, such as the I share here.
Even cursory consideration shows a profound relationship between language and sex.  Except for homo sapiens, the animal kingdom reproduces by instinct.  The caterpillar doesn't need dirty jokes to know what is expected of it when it becomes a butterfly, the robin doesn't try several songs to find one that attracts a mate, the salmon never eavesdrops on older fish to learn about spawning.  But if you are reading this, your first sexual experience even before nocturnal emissions, menstruation, or masturbation was hearing about sex, whether from a forthright parent or a precocious playmate or just overheard conversation.  Before your first sexual encounter, you were armed with a weighty store of information, even if a lot of it was misinformation, and perhaps even more significantly, you'd already fantasized about it.  You approached the moment not only with physical desire, but intellectual curiosity.  What will this be like?  It is inconceivable that even the most intelligent Border Collie spends any time daydreaming about going into heat or that the young of other species ever wonder where cubs, calves, kittens, or puppies come from.  In The Blue Lagoon by Henry De Vere Stacpoole, two cousins, Emeline and Richard, are stranded on a tropical island as children and reach sexual maturity isolated from other human contact.  Consequently, they must discover for themselves what the rest of us first learn through language: menstruation, masturbation, sex, pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing.  As Stacpoole imagines, their journey of discovery is as slow and uncertain as Marco Pollo's, even more so because Emeline and Richard don't suspect there's anything to discover.  How two untutored innocents might navigate these biological mysteries and whether they even would, we can never know because for all of human history and before, mankind has carried out the reproduction with the heavy aid of language.  If humans suddenly lost the ability to communicate about sex either through words, pictures, or demonstrations, the species might not die out, but fertility rates would surely fall off dramatically.  Maybe this suggests the connection between human evolution and language acquisition: lacking the instincts of cicadas or timber wolves, hominids who failed to talk about sex, died out.  The survivors were the ones who talked.

Another Dream

On March 2nd I posted a dream I'd had and my sister Helen was sweet enough to offer her interpretation.  Last night I had another dream, much lengthier and more complicated, so lengthy and complicated, I suspect it may have been several dreams stitched together.  Here, as vividly as I can recall, is what happened.
I was in a banquet hall or cafeteria, having just attended some sort of conference or meeting.  An elderly woman took me by the arm, mistaking me for someone who'd been in a different conference with her.  She mentioned that this year's was not as good as the previous year's and that professor Rendelman's materials did not seem as well prepared as last time's. (I believe this name is a combination of the names of the English department heads at Georgia College and Columbus College.)  We passed someone who gave me a silent signal not to tell the old woman she was mistaken, and so I allowed her this misimpression, being amused in any case at the situation.
We sat at a table, where there was already a plate and a glass of tea.  I recognized Sheri Joseph, who had been my teacher at Georgia State, and who is currently on the board of the Decatur Book Festival.  Still amused at the old woman's mistake, I asked the table jovially what they thought of Rendelman's materials, and then, seeing a bowl of rolls under a celophane wrapper, I joked, "You haven't even touched your tower of rolls!"  Everyone laughed, and another plate went by with some yeast rolls, and I took one, saying, "I can't resist these."  I was feeling very amused by the situation, but then I realized I had to leave for another appointment.
I rose from the table, and shook hands with two friends and fellow-writers, James Iredell and Chris Bundy.  We all harumphed at each with comic self-importance, because my appointment was at Georgia Public Radio, where I was to be interviewed.
I began running, so as not to be late, taking a shortcut across the UGA stadium.  As I ran down the bleachers on one side, the steps were very narrow and had been pushed under each other to make room for something, an attractive blond warned me to watch my step, but I assured her I was fine, and sure enough, I was soon at the bottom, and running up the bleachers on the opposite side.  As I got to the top, I saw a man whom I recognized as a university administrator, and a woman who was the university president.  "Y'all better watch out," I warned, "or you'll get caught in the rain."  I heard the president ask who I was, and not in an unfriendly way, for she evidently recognized me, and I said with exuberant hyperbole, "I'm the most famous student you've ever had!"
I realized she had formerly been the president at Kennesaw State University and must've gotten a promotion.  Then I was at the top and near the parking garage where my car was.  I had to go down one flight, and there was my car.  I was conscious that I was cutting it close, but felt sure I could make my appointment in time.  I got out my keys, and that's when I woke up.

Liz Taylor (1932-2011)

I was never much of a fan, but that is owing to my own ignorance of her work.  Nevertheless, two times Elizabeth Taylor completely wowed me.  Once in A Place in the Sun opposite Montgommery Clift, and once in Cleopatra.  The word Super Star is overused.  She was one.  She will be missed.

Wisteria

Driving home from work today - and a long, and a weary, and a tiresome day it was - I saw the wisteria was in bloom, purple blossoms hanging over 285 noise barriers like clumps of grapes.  There are some varieties of wisteria that bloom into summer, but the wisteria that blooms this early doesn't last long.

When I was a kid, traveling with Mur, she would shout at us whenever she saw the wisteria in bloom.  "Kids, look, look!  Wisteria!  Look at it!  Beauty!"  Mur was impatient because, speaking for myself, at least, the prospect of seeing some purple flowers was not a thrilling one.  The fact that they would only be in bloom a short time offered little more inducement.  "Big whoop," applied ironically, to suggest something that was neither very big, nor worth whooping over, was not a phrase in my vocabulary, nor would I have been rude enough to say it about anything Mur held dear; nevertheless, "big whoop," applied with a thick and frosty coating of irony would have exactly summed up my emotions at the time.  So what if they're purple.  Lots of things are purple.  So what if they last only a short time.  They'll be back next year.  Only the littlest and least whoop-worthy thing would have elicited such a dismissive, "Big woop."

I get it now, Mur.  And I'm glad you shouted at me to look at the wisteria whenever it was in bloom.  Not that I was capable of seeing it then, but because you shouted when you saw it, I know it affected you then as it affected me today.  I saw the wisteria today, Mur.  A tiring day, and the ugly-ugly interstate were suddenly only the frame for those heavy purple flowers.  I ached that they are so brief.  That all things are so brief.

Accepting Rejection

As a writer, you always have to remember that rejection is not personal, reactions to work are subjective, and just because one magazine rejects a work does not mean it is "bad" or that no one else would be interested.


Take for example, this recent rejection I received.

"After reviewing your work, we have concluded you must be a terrible human being. Your writing made us feel all oogy inside, and we could not eat for several days. Never, never send anything to us again. We strongly urge you give up writing and follow less morally-offensive pursuits: electric-chair upholstery, perhaps, or asbestos-packer in a munitions factory."

You see how tricky rejections can be; they're so tactfully worded, it's hard to tell what editors really think. Some journals, of course, are more straightforward; I would consider very closely before resubmitting anywhere that has responded with death threats or packages of anthrax.

Of course, everyone gets rejections – it's part of the game, and you have to develop a thick skin about it. Ernest Hemingway collected a suitcase full of rejections before selling his first story. This may sound like a bizarre exaggeration, but as a big-game hunter and world-traveler, Hemingway may have used extremely small luggage. Also, the size of his rejections may have been bigger than average; if he submitted to magazines for the visually impaired, for example, they may have been sending out rejections the size of roadside billboards.

The key thing is not to get discouraged. Even William Shakespeare received rejections. Many people don't know this, but Shakespeare was very unhappy as a playwright; what he really wanted was to be a poet, but he just couldn't break in. This typical rejection is stored in the National Museum of London: "Bill – About your latest poem. Afraid it's not for us. I think it was something about the title. '18.' I mean the name doesn't say much, does it? And didn't you just submit a sonnet called '17?' The part about darling buds of May was okay, but the part where every fair from fair declines left us stumped. We've also noticed all your poems are fourteen lines. Looks like you're in a rut, pal. Maybe bust out with a fifteen-line sonnet once in a while – or thirty lines. Try something new."

Some writers I know actually collect their rejection letters. A friend of mine thumb-tacked his rejections to a bulletin board over his desk. When the board crashed to the floor from the weight of the thumbtacks, he began tacking them to his wall. Eventually the entire house was papered with rejections, the foundation began to sink, and the CFO of the Thumbtacks International, Inc., reported record-breaking profits, all traceable to a single purchaser living somewhere in Georgia.

And then, just when my friend was about to give up hope of ever selling anything… one of the rejection slips caught fire, the heavily-papered walls burst into flames, and his entire house burnt down.

My friend wrote a story about the experience.

It was rejected.

What Cartooning Taught Me About Writing

Before turning to writing, before the fame and glory that currently surrounds me like a giant halo, I wanted to be a cartoonist. In fact, being a cartoonist was my earliest aspiration. I was seven years old, living in Fort Pierce, Florida when it hit me.  I was reading the Sunday comics, marveling at a Peanuts strip, which seemed to be lifted straight from an experience I'd had with my sister, when suddenly it struck me that the cartoons weren't merely in the paper, that someone had to draw them.  "I want to be a guy who draws cartoons," I announced to my mother.  This is exactly the way I said it; I didn't even know there was such a word as "cartoonist."  I imagined someone who showed up at the newspaper office in a fedora hat, sat at a desk and drew that day's cartoons.
I did achieve my goal, having not one, but two syndicated strips: "Sibling Revelry" and the very short-lived "Hasty Pudding."  I will save the story of what became of them for another blog, but suffice it to say, that as a writer, decades of cartooning left their mark.
My characters are drawn in broad strokes, as is the world they live in.  The Man Martin universe is largely a place of bright primary colors.  Skies are blue, clouds are white, grass is green.  The cartoonist pares everything down to its essential identifying components, which are usually exaggerated, so it is with my writing.
I think I can say I have a very strong intuitive grasp of plot structure.  This too, I owe to cartooning.  Long before I had technical terms such as exposition, rising action, and climax, I knew that in a four-panel strip, there was a set-up, development, and punchline.  I created such little stories over and over again.  In the six years I drew Sibling Revelry," I created a mini-story a day.  Six times 365 is...  Hell, you do the math.  In a really great strip, there would also be something I called a "rim shot," a little extra joke in the final panel with the punchline.  The masters of this were Waterson, Breathed, and Trudeau, but I was able to pull off a rimshot myself once in a while.
Cartooning also teaches you timing.  Arranging pictures and words in space to direct the reader's attention, slow him down or speed him up, is a real art.  Will Eisner was the absolute master of this in The Spirit.  As a writer, you can't manipulate the size or location of panels to create emphasis or freeze time or collapse a year into two frames; you do it with the lengths of sentences and paragraphs, where you place the key phrase in a sentence, and chapter breaks.
Cartooning teaches you a fierce economy.  There can be no wasted motions when you're crowding an illustrated narrative into a space the size of four large postage stamps.
And from the really great cartoonists, Kelly, Schultz, Breathed, and Waterson, I learned about "giving something more."  As a little kid, back when I was a seven year old deciding to be a guy who drew cartoons and imagining how I'd look in a fedora, I never gave much attention to Pogo.  I read it, but for me it was all about Peanuts.  But then I got my hands on my first Pogo book, Pogo in Pandemonium.  As I read, it began to sink in, with an excitement so great it was almost like terror, how freaking brilliant that strip was.  No only was it about talking animals with all the word-play and puns Kelly adored, it featured dead-accurate caricatures of political figures, figures even then I was only just coming to know, and what's more - and for a cartoonist, this part is jaw-dropping - the books were composed of nothing but the daily strips.  Kelly was not only telling the traditional four-panel narrative - set-up, development, punch-line and on a good day a rim-shot - each strip dovetailed exactly into the next to create a longer more intricate narrative of delicious complexity and surprise.  That's the most important lesson, and it applies equally well to cartooning, writing, and any art.  Give something more.
Chabon has written a book, which if you haven't read you need to, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.  It's all about these two kids who set off to create their own comic book.  It has special interest for a cartoonist, but you don't have to be a cartoonist to love it.  I can see why Chabon would be interested in cartooning.  A writer can learn a lot from a cartoonist.

The Ides of March

This day 44 BC, Shakespeare and history tell us, Caesar was assasinated.  He was in the Theater of Pompey when sixty conspirators surrounded him - pretending to ask for the repeal of banishment for someone - and attacked.  Caesar recieved twenty-three stab wounds.  Shakespeare makes it "three and thirty" which sounds cooler in addition to being a larger number.  Even so, with sixty people at work, you'd expect more wounds than that.  Some people must not have gotten a knife in.
Caesar's last words are somewhat in doubt.  Plutarch says that at the start of the fracas, Caesar said the Latin equivalent of "Casca, you rascal, what do you think you're doing?"  Casca's knife had only grazed the back of Caesar's neck.  Suetonius reports Caesar saying "et tu Brute" which is where Shakespeare got the line.  Personally, I think after the first two jabs, Caesar wouldn't have had enough wind in him to remark any more than "ouch" or possibly "erk."  As unlikely as it is to get off a final zinger, Shakespeare can't resist gilding the lily.  "Et tu Brute," Caesar says, and then adds, "Then fall Caesar," mixing in a little stage direction with his dying breath.  Neat the part about Caesar talking about himself in third person, he's the one who started that, you know.
On general principle I'm in favor of killing tyrants, the problem is they don't stay dead.  Oh, particular tyrants die, but tyranny itself has more lives in it than a bag of cats.  After Julius Caesar came Augustus Caesar and then quickly things got really bad - Tiberius Caesar, and Caligula - who named himself a god and promoted his favorite horse to Senator - and Claudius.  History tells us Claudius was a moron but Robert Graves makes him out to be a pretty wise emporer.  I guess by comparison he was. Besides, it's hard to sympathize with the conspirators, killing someone that way seems pretty harsh.
Martin Luther King gets a day, Abraham Lincoln and Washington share a day, but Caesar gets an entire month, July.  Caear's name became the word for king, not only in Latin, but in German (kaiser) and Russian (czar).  It is the Ides of March.  It's worth remembering the day a man like that fell.
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Puppy Love

People are so smitten with their pets these days; they treat them like they were people. You have to know where to draw the line.

Take my dog, Zoe; she's half chow, half golden retriever. She's pretty smart, I'll admit. When she was a puppy, if my wife and I mentioned the word "walk," she'd go crazy, running around, wagging her tail – Nancy and I hated to let her down, so we began to spell it out. Well, next thing you know, whenever Zoe hears w-a-l-k, she starts jumping around and going crazy about that. So my wife and I had to start switching letters around – a-l-w-k – or throwing in whole new letters – q-z-e-r-t – anytime we wanted to discuss taking a walk. That's what I'm talking about, you have to be careful with dogs, Nancy and I got off on the wrong foot with Zoe, and she never did learn how to spell.

Anyway, the story I wanted to tell you has to do with Zoe's skin rash. Nothing serious, just an itchy spot, but a friend of ours said she needed active cultures in her digestive system, like you get with yogurt. Well, we started giving her a bowl of yogurt every evening with her supper, and sure enough, her rash got better. Once, we made the mistake of buying a high-priced brand instead of the generic, and after that, she wouldn't touch anything if it didn't come from the top of the shelf. Then we learned she didn't care for no-fat yogurt, but only low-fat. Then one night, she wouldn't eat her yogurt at all! We checked the carton, had we gotten the wrong kind? No, it was low-fat, the most expensive yogurt the store had. We even showed Zoe the label, which didn't do any good, because like I said, she never did learn to read.

Then my youngest daughter, Spencer, got an idea. She got on the floor and dipped Zoe a tablespoon of yogurt. Zoe ate the whole bowl, a spoonful at a time.

That's what I mean. It's important with pets to know where to draw the line. Nancy and I will give our dog human food, we'll buy her the most expensive brand, and make sure she gets the variety she wants. If need be, we will even spoon-feed her. But we will not, under any circumstances, let her sit at the table.

Well. Not yet.

St Patrick's Day

On St. Patrick's Day everyone wears green. They go to the bars and drink gallons of green beer. Then the day after everyone is green.
St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland, but someone must've driven out the Irish, too. In 2008 over thirty million Americans claimed Irish ancestry. That same year the population in Ireland was only four million. We have nearly ten times more Irish than Ireland itself, and surely at least few people in Ireland aren't even Irish.
The Irish have made a proud contribution to our culture when you stop to consider all the great Irish Americans: John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, Joe Kennedy, and of course also Ronald Reagan, Sandra Day O'Connor, and Barack O'Bama, just to name a few. On St. Patrick's Day, of course, everyone's Irish, but I really am. My ancestors, some of them, came over on the boat around 1850. They had no choice; they were too dumb to grow potatoes. Now that's dumb. We grow potatoes in the backyard just by throwing out the rotten ones.
Anyway every St Patrick's Day my wife and I host a dinner party. The highlight of the menu is the corned beef, which we make ourselves. What you do is take a brisket and soak it in salt water and pickling spice for three weeks. There's a tiny risk of botulism, but I always feel the threat of food poisoning adds a certain je ne sais quoi to fine dining, don't you? We got the recipe from that celebrated Irish Cookbook, The Joy O'Cooking.
After we eat, we sing that great traditional Irish ballad, "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling." A great traditional Irish song composed in 1912 in Buffalo, New York. Don't be too upset, St. Patrick himself wasn't Irish: his mother seems to have been Welsh and his father Italian. His name wasn't even St. Patrick, it was Maewyn Succat. It's hard to know any of this for certain – scholars think our modern St. Patrick might be a combination of at least two different people, one of them being a Gaulish missionary named Palladius. The only thing we know for sure is that whoever St. Patrick was, he drove the snakes out of Ireland.
Actually he didn't; Ireland never had snakes.
But at least we know that the official color of Ireland is green.
Actually it's blue.
But none of that matters. If we want St. Patrick to dress like a leprechaun with a shamrock in his hat and a red beard drinking green beer and singing "Irish Eyes," that's just what he'll do, no matter what they say in Ireland.
I've seen the statistics. We're ten times more Irish than they are.

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