Samir Chopra's Blog, page 85

Helping Writers Through Social Media

A very smart writer friend of mine wrote something on her Facebook page today, which I think makes a lot of sense and is worth reproducing widely. Comments and feedback from writers welcome.

Here goes. The first status:

I think we’ve reached the point at which a Like doesn’t necessarily mean Liking, or endorsement, or anything besides a vital sign? But there is a place where a Like counts, and that’s publishing. Something I’ve learned from a lot of writers and editors this week is that, if you are a writer, and your friends on the FB aren’t clicking Like on your work, and you don’t have a gazillion followers on Twitter, you have even less of a future in writing than everybody else who has no future in writing. That’s not the way things should be; that’s one of the cruel corporate realities of the profession. But so long as that remains the case, there is something you CAN do: if you have friends who are writers whose work you respect–they don’t have to be me, of course–do THEM a favor and throw a couple Likes toward their work. Follow them back and repost/RT. And though it kills me to say that you don’t have to give any more of shit about their poems and stories than about a baby or a sunset or a plate of deliciousness, because we ought to care about our friends’ work, and we ought to read, and talk about ideas…even if you don’t care, you can still click Like and parlay that uncaring into something real for them: the difference between nothing, and a gig–a solicitation–a book. In case you’ve been wondering, that is why I’m increasingly shifting my own social media (more on Twitter lately than FB, but I’ll circle around again) toward promoting my friends: because I would *like* to see them going to restaurants and ordering plates of stuff to photograph, but they can’t, if they’re broke. Am I talking about the debasement of the culture, in asking people to indiscriminately click Like for the sake of marketing? Fuck yeah, because an absence of even debased interest can kill whatever glimmers of culture we’ve got. 

And then, a follow-up comment:

Of course, reading and talking and taking our friends’ work seriously is essential–and reviewing…is even more important than tweeting and FB-ing–so is the sharing of contacts and networking, which has worked out well for me in the past month. I wouldn’t want anybody to think that I don’t believe in the importance of all that, especially in how it makes a difference in my own life (those of you who’ve cheered me on and argued with me and talked books have been, and continue to be, my very favorite people in the world). And this isn’t even necessarily about me, because luckily I often do the kind of work that finds a home among people who are accustomed to small audiences.

However, marketing: it’s ugly, but it can make the difference between an annual income of $26 (mine last year) and making a living as a writer. Unfortunately, the conversations I’ve been having have revealed some pretty depressing stuff about the market. Every piece that gets published online has page view, Like, and Tweet counts. Magazine and journal editors notice that; it’s the kind of thing that can earn commissions, repeat gigs, and contributing writer and staff positions. Book editors will refer to that stuff, and, as I found out from some other writers to whom it happened, may reject a proposal or manuscript that they like, on the grounds that the author failed to build a sufficient social media platform–it’s considered not only as a marketing fail, but also a sign of irresponsibility. The editor doesn’t care if the Like is “passive.” And when the editor rejects the book because you don’t have enough Twitter followers, s/he doesn’t care if you have a fiercely passionate support group of thinkers who will console you with reminders of your high-mindedness offline. And though I’m going out on a limb here, my guess is that DP’s point about people of color and women goes double when the social media presence is being reckoned in these decisions.

This is a really easy way to make a small difference, for people who don’t, actually, care about reading or talking ideas, but do know writers they care about, whom they’d like to give a boost in some way. And of course, not all venues are subject to these pressures. But there are enough that are, and enough that are struggling, who need the social media in order to justify publishing what they want to publish in an increasingly corporate market.”

April Bernard on Margaret Drabble as Moral Psychologist

In reviewing a selection of Margaret Drabble‘s novels, April Bernard writes:

Drabble, as a moralist, seems to believe that it is less important what and why we do what we do, than how we think about it—before, during, after….If the reason that a man always sins is that he is sinful, what matters can only be what he does, spiritually, with these hard facts.

“What we do” i.e., our actions. “Why we do what we do” i.e., the reasons for our actions. Agents’ reasons–their beliefs and desires–are the causes for their actions. And then, finally, “how we think about what we do”–before, during, after–our beliefs about our actions and their reasons, introspectively and retrospectively.

I do not know if Bernard intends to describe Drabble’s views of moral psychology as being a paradigmatic instance of what moralists do, or whether she is taking her stance as a particularly idiosyncratic one. Be that as it may, it is interesting to consider a moralist as being more concerned with our reasoning about our reasons for our actions than with their actions and their reasons for them.

Consider for instance, a putative rebel who consistently fails to file taxes on time and sometimes fails to do so altogether. A little introspection on his part reveals he does so because he believes that tax-collection authorities are instruments of oppression and thus want to let them know–however indirectly–that he cares little for their intrusion into his life.  For Drabble then, the failure to file taxes and the resentment of authority is not as interesting as the actual introspection indulged in by the agent.

The reasons for this should be evident: such introspection–prior to actions, concurrently and retrospectively–is bound to be interestingly revealing, a tapping into a rich mother lode of psychologically acute facts about oneself. Our rebel may find–when he commences his archaeological investigations, in guided or unguided form–that his resentment of authority stems from other deeply held beliefs, primeval in origin, shrouded perhaps by childhood amnesia. He might find that he does not derive as much pleasure as anticipated from the commission of his action, that indeed, while he delays his payment of taxes, he is gripped by acute anxiety and fear–while he resents authority he fears it even more. And lastly, he may discover that his actions, rather than leaving with flush with the glory of success, bring in their wake a curious emptiness.

The visible actions we take and our publicly professed reasons for doing so may then just be a kind of froth on the seemingly placid–and occasionally disturbed–surface of our beings; they are interesting precisely because they suggest we look deeper and wider. Perhaps we could find a broader pattern that indicts the same set of reasons and provokes the same kind of introspection, thus suggesting the fundamental importance of the issues brought to the forefront of our consciousness.

These closer looks at oneself thus may point to further avenues for exploration of that most uncharted land of all: our inner spaces of motivation and fear and pleasure.

 

Ian McEwan’s ‘Atonement’ and Post-Apocalyptic Literature

There comes a moment, as the reader moves through Part Two of Ian McEwan‘s Atonement, of sensing something familiar and  recognizable, a deja-vu of sorts, in the sparse yet rich, brutal, unsparing descriptions of physical and moral catastrophe on the long, hot, bloodstained road of retreat to Dunkirk. They are all here: the dead–animal and human alike, the wounded–ditto, the breakdown of social order, the confusion, the  stupidity of attempting to impose order on the essentially chaotic, the slippage of  familiar hierarchy, the formation of new alliances and the disintegration of the old, the cruelty of the mob, the heroism of the individual, the relentless reminders of the eternal importance of the most basic things of all–food and water, the suppurating wounds that will not heal, the dirt and squalor, the fragility of life, the greed and desperation and violence of the desperate, the sordid and sublime actions of those trying only to survive, the fear hanging over all human actions and pronouncements, the grim determination to persist matched by the hopeless flopping down, the giving-up in despair. This is post-apocalyptic literature.

Descriptions and evocations of the aftermath of the apocalypse-whatever its reason, whether pandemics, or vampires, global heating or cooling, asteroid, comet and meteorite strikes, or killer zombies, or human interference with the order of nature gone terribly wrong–are a modern staple of literature and film and television. They exercise a peculiar and particular fascination on our imagination and sensibility; we are obsessed by the opportunity the various apocalypses provide for all manners of investigation and speculation. Here may be found laboratories for moral experimentation, that will reveal how human ethics will reconfigured by challenges to its comfortable verities; here exist all manners of paradigm shifting notions of politics–anarchism and libertarianism obtain traction, perhaps?–and economics and law–think new modes of property and ownership and inheritance and criminal justice.

McEwan’s revisitation of an old disaster reminds us post-apocalyptic speculation is as old as the hills. (Darren Aronofsky‘s Noah is a Biblical tale of the supposedly oldest apocalypse of all.) And the most familiar member of that genre is the war novel or film. The battlefield is the oldest venue of apocalypse; the scorched, smoking, stinking, corpse-littered lands through which invading armies moved have always been classic settings for post-apocalyptic reckonings of the changes induced in man and world by catastrophic, deranged violence. The Grande Armée‘s retreat from Moscow was an apocalypse for its soldiers, as they fell, stumbled, froze, were picked off by wolves and Cossacks, or were sometimes beaten to death or had their throats slit by vengeful villagers. They too found occasions for heroism and cowardice; they too, fought for scraps of food and drops of water and betrayed friends and rescued strangers. They too, found on those frozen wastes of the endless, pitiless, Russian landscape, moments for the most elemental decisions of all, and found themselves turned into either saints or sinners.

To be fascinated by the apocalypse is the oldest form of staring into the abyss.

On Not Failing the Soccer Tebbit Test

A few days ago in a post on the US men’s soccer team, I wrote:

I find myself cheering for the US when it goes up against a European soccer powerhouse. When they play South American, Asian, or African countries, my underdog sympathies kick in.

Well, on Sunday night, the US was most certainly up against a “European soccer powerhouse” – in this case, Portugal.  And so, as promised, I was cheering for the US. But the nature of my support was markedly different. I think it marked a turning point for this naturalized American citizen of fourteen years.

First, I had noticed–even during the game against Ghana–that I was urging the US on to a win. The US are underdogs in the Group of Death, and so, despite their African opposition, they had my support.

Second, my sense of anticipation of Sunday’s game was palpably distinct from the sensations which have preceded past games played by the USMNT. I was keyed up; I had scouted my immediate surroundings for a viewing venue (my family and I were spending the weekend at a cabin in Bethel, NY, and so I needed to find a restaurant or bar with a large screen television); I had secured all the necessary home-front rights and permissions; my daughter’s sleep time had been suitably delayed; my wife would accompany me. We showed up early, found a table, ordered food and drinks and set ourselves up. This felt like a Big Game; I have never, ever set myself up for a US men’s soccer game like this.

Third, there is the business of Reactions to Goals. I groaned at the first goal by Portugal, and hooped and hollered at the two US goals. Indeed, Dempsey‘s goal brought me to my feet and prompted an exultant punch. Finally, that last-minute Portuguese goal left me stunned and speechless. I don’t think I managed anything more coherent than a ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ as a verbal reaction.  For the first time during a US men’s soccer game, I anticipated glory and tasted bitter disappointment. It was the first time I had taken their setbacks to heart.

Finally, there is the matter of fan solidarity. My viewing venue was relatively denuded of American soccer fans; besides my family, there seemed to be only one other couple paying attention to the game. But with them, I found easy companionship, a shared exultation and then, cruelly, at the last moment, a joint fall.

After the game was over, I walked out into the beautiful summer sunshine, crestfallen to the point of incoherence. I had to quickly drive back to our cabin to put our daughter to bed, and kept muttering inanities on the way back home. A couple of hours later, when I had finally calmed down, I ran the various group qualification scenarios through my mind and relaxed just a tad. Who knows what else this team is capable of?

I didn’t fail the soccer version of the Tebbit test. And it happened during the 2014 World Cup.

Teach Them Yo Damn Self

Tim Egan writes, in the midst of some sensible commentary on Walmart and Starbucks’ role in combating inequality:

It’s a sad day when we have to look to corporations for education…

But there is a certain kind of education–especially in the technology sector–for which it makes eminent sense to “look to corporations for education.”  To wit, we should expect corporations to train their employees in the particular technical tools that might be needed for them to perform their jobs well in their environments. This would be a boring and staid enough point were it for not for the pernicious effects that result from its being ignored by all concerned–universities and corporations alike.

I taught for several years in the computer science department at Brooklyn College, and during that period, served on the undergraduate curriculum committee. A constant refrain sent our way by those apparently in the know about the job market our graduates were entering was that we needed to make our education “more relevant.” Invariably, on closer inspection, I found that our department was being asked to provide instruction in highly specific computing tools and technologies–the current flavors of the month, if you will. We were constantly excoriated for concentrating too much on ‘abstract theory’ and not enough on ‘applied stuff’ – material that would help our graduates succeed in the job market. (Most of these jobs, as might be expected, were in the financial sector.)

It seemed to me then, as it does now, that an academic department was expected on take on a task, at its expense and time, that rightfully belonged to the employers. The department’s task–at the undergraduate level–as I understood it, was to provide basic instruction in the fundamentals of computer science so that our graduates could then go on to master more advanced concepts and techniques alike. It most certainly was not to displace aspects of this education in favor of instruction in specialized, domain-specific tools which would all too soon become obsolete. The net effect of following the advice of our corporate masters would have been to produce graduates severely lacking in an understanding of the fundamentals of their discipline, one which would enable them to transition smoothly to new technologies as and when an opportunity to apply them arose.

The corporate strategy was transparent enough to some: raise a din about the irrelevance of current university education, pressure universities to change curricula, and most importantly, cut training budgets to increase profit. Perhaps you wouldn’t even need to provide retraining when new technologies rolled around; you could dump the old, and just hire a new batch.

Note: In the past, it was standard practice for American research and development powerhouses such as Bell Laboratories to set aside fairly large budgets to provide post-graduate education to their new hires. An engineering or science student would typically be hired straight out of college with a bachelor’s degree, receive some training in his particular area of research at the labs, and then return to graduate school to earn an advanced degree. Tuition and expenses would be paid for by the labs. The graduate would then return to work on completion of his degree. I do not know what sort of post-degree commitment was expected, and whether any such programs currently survive.

The US Information Service and the Power of Air Conditioning

Shortly before my teen years commenced, my parents arranged a library membership for me at the American Library in New Delhi. (The library was administered by the United States Information Service; its membership rules only allowed adults as members, but my parents spoke to the librarians, signed up for two library cards, and handed them over to me). I was too callow to be anything more than an uncritical consumer of what I read and watched (the library featured an extensive video archive and it showed a weekly capsule of ABC news broadcasts). It was an ideal location for the concoction of elaborate fantasies about leaving India and heading straight for America’s shining shores. It all too quickly became another venue for learning another nation’s history, for processing its narratives about itself, all the while not noticing the absence of an Indian one.

The American library carried no cricket on its shelves, a fact that placed it one rank lower than the British Council Library in my mental peggings, but it did feature–among many other collections–elaborate histories of the Second World War and the American Revolution, tales of the American West (including, thankfully, many books on Native Americans), miles of American fiction and popular science, all of which I avidly consumed. I spent many summer afternoons there, reading books on American history and culture, watching videos—which provided little snippets of American life and thus made me privy to its details in glorious color—and looking through periodicals for a glimpse of the present-day US. The USIS could perhaps not have hoped for a more ideal purveyor of the information it hawked. During my reveries in the libraries’ spaces, it was all too easy to dream of a life elsewhere, perhaps on a sylvan campus, perhaps in a manicured suburb, away from India.

And nothing quite set you up for that indoctrination experience like walking into the American Library’s cool, air-conditioned interiors after a hot and sweaty ride through Delhi’s crowded buses; that change, as I walked in from Delhi’s loud bustle to the pristine silence of the library’s shelved spaces was a blessed relief; it hinted of the change that would presumably be introduced in my life once I left India and moved to the US. Outside was heat and noise, the bedlam of the street, the sounds of street vendors and honking traffic; and then, as you pushed open the glass doors, you felt the first blast of air-conditioned air, instantly settling on your perspiring skin, cooling and calming. You walked on, flashing your identification–the treasured library card–and then upstairs, up to the brightly lit main level, with its neatly arrayed shelves, its glass-top tables, its soothing tranquility. This didn’t feel antiseptic and colorless then; it felt like a balm to ease a soul made restless and agitated and eventually, inert in all the wrong ways, by the furnace outside.

Ideology promulgation takes many forms; sometimes it appears as a set of functioning air-conditioners, symbols of efficiency, power, and relief from the world’s troublesome afflictions.

 

 

Iraq and the Pottery Barn Rule: Don’t Break It Any More Please

As turban-wearing hordes ride down on their stallions from the hills, their sharpened scimitars gleaming in the bright Mesopotamian sunshine, threatening to add to the steadily growing mound of heads separated from their now-twitching bodies, should the United States saddle up, lock and load, and ride out to meet them? Should  it crush its enemies, see them driven before its eyes (and possibly, hear the lamentation of their women)? Should it, having broken it, now buy it?

Ja oder nein?

Ich glaube nicht. In the Middle East, the US is not just the proverbial bull in a china shop, it is a heavily armed and irresponsible member of Bos Taurus.  The last time the US went into Iraq, it was for an illegal war that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis; it set off a series of cosmic political earthquakes which sparked some of the most bitter and bloody internecine conflict seen in the region (and trust me, given that region’s history, that takes some doing.) The war criminals that conducted that war–George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld–are now comfortably retired and unlikely to face charges in a court any time soon; the political pusillanimity of Barack Obama and many others has ensured their great escape. But their ghoulish minions and their associated sensibility would presumably like to run the highlights reel of the Iraq War in repeat mode, thus ensuring a particularly nightmarish version of the eternal recurrence for all concerned, whether they be Iraqis or Americans.

Genug ist genug. There are, quite possibly, some domains in which a judicious application of overwhelming American military force might work to bring about better political outcomes–though I have to admit, I’m having a hard time thinking of any off the top of my head. Still, even if the set of nations ripe for American military intervention is a non-empty one, its characteristic function would most certainly reject any member of the set {x: x is a Muslim country in the Middle East} as an element. The US did not seem to realize, back in 2003, that armed invasion and occupation of a Muslim nation was geo-political dynamite–the kind that blows off your fingers in the most favorable of eventualities. More often than not, it incapacitates you permanently, permanently foreclosing many future paths of action. As it has.

Whatever strategy the US adopts in its response to the ISIS, it should not be one that includes high explosives–whether dropped with laser-guided precision or merely steered into the arsenals of one of the combatants. These options will ensure–I find myself saying this with some mysterious foreknowledge–an even more catastrophic denouement than the one currently under way.

The United States is the mother of all superpowers; it should find ways to express that power through channels other than the military. We are often reminded of American ingenuity and innovation, its most distinctive features in a world populated by unimaginative copycats; now might be good time to dig into the stores and put some of those on display.

But no more shock and awe please.

Does the Left Hate America? The Case of Soccer

Yesterday, as the United States struggled to hold on to its 1-0 lead against Ghana, the rumblings on social media grew: Ghana were surely due to equalize any moment now. When they did, the jubilation on Twitter timelines and Facebook feeds was palpable. But it wasn’t just Ghanaian fans that were cheering for that 1-1 scoreline. Plenty of Americans were too. And these folks, identified quite easily by their previous histories of publicly avowed political sentiments, were clearly of the leftist political persuasion. A few minutes later, John Brooks cast a pall over them. But not for long: some looked forward to the American team getting its comeuppance later, perhaps against Germany or Portugal.

There are few sports in which American sports teams are underdogs. Soccer is one of them. But America isn’t much of an underdog in any other domain or dimension. So for those who like to cheer for underdogs, cheering for America is a highly unnatural act–and so they won’t, even if it means supporting Germany or Portugal, two soccer powerhouses.

The leftist cheering against the American soccer team is motivated by something a little more visceral: a desire to not be on the side of those visibly cheering for the American team. Many American fans, like those from other countries, drape themselves in their nation’s flag–in various forms, sometimes shirts, sometimes bandannas, sometimes something else–and raise loud slogans and sing tuneless songs. The semiotics of the American flag and the American chant are quite complicated for this seemingly anti-American demographic.

The American flag–thanks to the complicated history of American imperial ambitions and its modern incarnations–is a loaded symbol; in the domestic political context it has often to come to represent a forced, unambiguous American identity, one that all must pledge allegiance to, a quasi-religious icon that cannot be desecrated. And the most common American chant–USA! USA! USA!–has, in this post-911 era, come to represent an aggressive proclamation of American triumphalism. (You can hear it in the background as George W. Bush speaks at the site of the Twin Towers and promises revenge; you could hear it on the day he threw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium that same season.)

I don’t think those cheering against the American soccer team have anything against the likes of Clint Dempsey or Jozy Altidore and their mates. The American team is, as befitting an American grouping, quite diverse: players of mixed racial parentage, of immigrant backgrounds, drawn from a variety of social and cultural settings. The American team plays a hybrid style all its own, and its many players entertain, in the US’ professional soccer league, crowds that are increasingly eclectic in their economic and ethnic makeup.  But when an international tournament is underway, the American team does duty for the nation, and they are often cheered on by those who seemingly would like to see yet another domain fall to the inexorable march of the American juggernaut. An American win–it is feared by those Americans who would cheer against their national team–would merely spark another orgy of self-congratulatory exceptionalism. Better to root against it–to ward off such unpleasantness.

Note: I find myself cheering for the US when it goes up against a European soccer powerhouse. When they play South American, Asian, or African countries, my underdog sympathies kick in. The US might be a soccer underdog, but its team does not seem to be lacking in resources.

 

War is Hell – I: The Battlefield as Open Toilet

The smell of the battlefield is, quite often, a recurrent theme in the ‘war is hell‘ school of military writing. As the dead decay, slowly putrefying in the open, their remain are worked on by maggots and flies and slowly leach into the ground beneath them. The malodorous miasma that results from these corpses hangs over the field of combat, seeping into the nostrils, sensibilities, and undying memories of those who fought on it, and those who are left with the pitiable task of cleaning it up.

But the battlefield is not just host to the dead; it is also host to the living (among them the soon to be dead.) The living still need to eat. And after humans consume food, after a process of biological digestion and processing, they need to defecate. Human centers of habitation have tackled this basic need by building toilets of varying–and the with the passage of time, increasing–sophistication. When human beings congregate in large gatherings like rock concerts, organizers provide portable toilets; campgrounds often feature these nods to a simple human function too. When the humans leave, their waste leaves with them, taken elsewhere for disposal. But on a battlefield,  on a stretch of land dedicated to killing humans and fending for survival, a portable toilet–complete with toilet paper and in American national parks today, even a bottle of hand sanitizing liquid–is an unimaginable luxury. So as men go about the business of killing and eating, they go–because when you have to, you just have to–anywhere and everywhere. And so they do their dirty business–that of killing–surrounded by, and in the midst of, their own waste.

A notable member of the ‘war is hell’ canon is Eugene Sledge‘s With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. In this memoir of his time with the Marines in two of the Second World War’s bloodiest battles, Sledge describes an often ignored aspect of the battlefield with a clear, unsparing eye:

Added to the awful stench of the dead of both sides was the repulsive odor of human excrement everywhere. It was all but impossible to practice simple, elemental field sanitation on most areas of Peleliu because of the rocky surface. Field sanitation during maneuvers and combat was the responsibility of each man. In short, under normal conditions, he covered his own waste with a scoop of soil. At night when he didn’t dare venture out of his foxhole, he simply used an empty grenade canister or ration can, threw it out of his hole, and scooped dirt over it next day if he wasn’t under heavy enemy fire.

But on Peleliu, except along the beach areas and in the swamps, digging into the coral rock was nearly impossible. Consequently, thousands of men—most of them around the Umurbrogol Pocket in the ridges, many suffering with severe diarrhea, fighting for weeks on an island two miles by six miles—couldn’t practice basic field sanitation. This fundamental neglect caused an already putrid tropical atmosphere to become inconceivably vile.

Conjure up, if you can, with your nose’s ‘eye’, the odor Sledge describes. The glory of war indeed.

 

The Pleasures of “Emotional Difficulties”

In his review of several exhibitions showcasing the work of Félix Vallotton, Julian Bell writes:

Vallotton is not so much an autobiographical artist as an artist who coolly and procedurally recognizes that his own emotional difficulties might supply him with viable imaginative material.

Vallotton wouldn’t be the first or last artist to recognize this, of course. Writers are among the most notorious exploiters of their autobiographies as source material for their works. So much so indeed, that many a writer has to strenuously object to critical assessments of their work that insist on viewing it as mere revisitation of their life’s previous narratives.

There is another kind of artist who draws on his “own emotional difficulties” to “supply him with viable imaginative material”: the neurotic.  Here, the afflicted soul, familiar–at unconscious, subconscious and conscious levels–of the many traumas and crises that have thus far impinged on his life, uses them to construct all manner of fantasy, again, at varying levels of availability to his conscious self. There are daydreams aplenty, many revisitations of conflict, and lastly, and most interestingly of all, the construction of an elaborate mythology around daily life, the events of which acquire a distinctive hue because of their coloring by these repressed and available memories.

The neurotic, or the depressive, can thus become a tragic hero of sorts–to himself. His past now has a value all its own; it is that which has made his present dramatic and invested it with a poignant quality. He can now conceive of himself as a traveler through a landscape of trial and tribulation, bravely weathering the many storms it sends crashing down on him. He carries a heavier burden than most, he tells himself; his steps are slow and measured in recognition of this crushing load. Sometimes he is Sisyphus, sometimes a composite mythical figure constructed from heroes and saints alike.

There is thus value in this kind of self-conception, this kind of self-portrait. The afflicted life is dramatic and heroic; the resolved and cured life not so much. Small wonder then, that when lovers urge their neurotic partners to get help, to seek palliation and cure, so as to bring relief to their troubled relationship, the neurotic resists. His afflictions, which torment him so, are what make his life not humdrum. They are what render him unique and set him apart from the boring, teeming masses.

The neurotic is aided in his endeavors by the artist. Novelists devote great works to the forensic examination of flawed characters, carefully dissecting, and yet bringing to life, the tormented and the tortured. Artists graphically depict the sufferings of the damned. Those in pain are the subjects of works of art. The neurotic sees his life, this limited span of time here on this benighted earth, as his canvas, his blank page. The materials with which it these can best be drawn and written and brought to life are at hand: his past life, his troubles.

Who needs a cure when an illness can give so much meaning to an otherwise ephemeral and transient life?