The Fault (Dear Brutus)

It's something I've talked about often, implicitly or explicitly, on this blog: the debt we owe to fictional characters. Over the next few weeks, I'll be talking about it more.

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Last week I went to see two films at the Chicago International Film Festival. Both movies were filmed on location in prison, both movies had at least a 90% incarcerated cast, and both movies concerned the life of Julius Caesar.

There the similarities ended. String Caesar was highly experimental, raw, and not at all Shakespearean. Seated in the fourth row, I had to keep my eyes closed for the last fifteen minutes of the movie because (for the first time ever) the extreme close-ups and motions of the camera were making me ill and I knew I wanted to stay for the director's Q&A afterwards. Filmed in three prisons internationally, String Caesar draws parallels between the early life of Julius Caesar in Rome and the lives led by inmates in prisons largely ruled by gangs. Some of the more successful moments of the movie came about when the line between Rome and the prison blurred. Julius Caesar is sent to talk with a powerful general and essentially warned not to "drop the soap." In another scene, (the best, in my opinion), Caesar stands on the sole working toilet and refuses to budge, deaf to Cicero's pleas to let others have a turn.

By contrast, Caesar Must Die, an Italian Golden Bear Winner at the Berlin Film Festival, did not make me want to vomit. Nor did it leave me with as many questions. Here, rather than real life bleeding over into the script, the script (Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in Italian) bled over into real life. Sprinkled throughout Brutus and Cassius' plotting, Caesar's worries, and Mark Anthony's verbal maneuvering, there were supposedly-authentic documentary moments with the cast. These moments were highly stylized and obviously far from impromptu. They were also, quite possibly, scripted, and felt far less genuine than the camaraderie and antipathy (demanded by the script but maybe also genuine) on display in String Caesar.

Julius Caesar is a favorite for prison theater instructors. They assume, possibly quite rightly, that inmates will identify with its themes and ambiguities. I like Julius Caesar for the same reason. Indeed, it is the only Shakespeare play that I feel I enjoy of my own free will. Why? Well, for one, it's a tragedy possessed of a truly tragic hero. Welcome to a new favorite quote from a new favorite author: "Stumbling heroes linger longer." Edmund Pevensie, to whom Mitchell refers, owes a lot to Brutus, and characters like him. Brutus, like String Caesar's young Caesar, stumbles on an incredible scale and is all the more relatable and--dare I say it?--likable because of it. Of course, a tragic hero takes his or her stumbling one step further in their inability to survive said stumble.

So far, the actors in String Caesar and Caesar Must Die are doing it right, unlike another of my favorite characters, Francis Crawford of Lymond, who at one point alludes to his inability to "suffer reversals." They've survived their stumbles and may prove hardier than Brutus, more discriminating than Caesar. Each actor is benefits from the bleed between fact and fiction in that they are being granted a chance to examine their own life through the lens of another's.

Hope and the Ugly Places

I had two tabs open in my browser the other day. One was a Chicago Tribune article ennumerating overnight shootings, several of which had taken place in Englewood. The other was a Wikipedia page on H. H. Holmes, the Devil in the White City himself, who built a murder castle in Englewood where he systematically killed and disposed of his victims. I have no solid explanation for how both tabs came to be open at 2 PM on a workday. Chalk it up to my daily Tribune perusal coupled with the impending arrival of Halloween. At any rate, a stray thought flitted across my mind, soon chased away by my dominant, rational side: if anywhere on this planet is haunted, Englewood is surely haunted, and maybe the awful things one man did over a decade ago are somehow echoing across time. Stop being ridiculous, I told myself. You know what's haunting Englewood: poverty, racism, and violence.

Still, I couldn't quite shake H. H. Holmes and his horrific crimes, and as I drove home a couple days later I came up with a tentative explanation as to why. You would assume that the world's ugliness would come as less of a shock to an adult. You'd think that the unintentional information-gathering that is anyone's life would provide you with a strong enough foundation for contextualization. Maybe there are some people for whom this is true, but I'm not one of them. I think the more people I meet--complex, not 100% sympathetic people who have had more than their fair share of misfortunes--the more shocked I become that anyone, anyone, would do what Holmes did. I know a lot of imperfect people. I may even know dangerous people. I don't know anyone who would do what he did.

Intellectually, I know that anyone is capable of anything. I'm constantly being sold this message by books, movies, the news, historians, logic. Nonetheless, knowing something is very different from believing it, and the more I come to know myself, the more I come to realize that I am only shockable when one of my beliefs has been overturned or called into question. I'm not a blind optimist--there is evil in the world--but I find it hard to conceive of a world without hope, and everything about H. H. Holmes is hopeless. There are no easy fixes for Englewood, either, but I can feel a little better about a story that is still playing out.

Around the time I was sucked into the H. H. Holmes Wikipedia vortex, I started reading David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. Although it contains a handy helping of tragedy and more than its share of villains, Cloud Atlas is a humanist novel with an optimistic ending. It carries us from the Industrial Revolution (albeit without much industry) to self-inflicted ruin and back again via six loosely connected narratives occurring in different times and places but eerily echoing each other. As the New York Times put it:

[The novel's central narrative is] a postapocalyptic future on an Earth where stories of our storied civilizations past are all that remain of works and days, and then only as fragments, like those we’ve been reading. This is where the human race and its predatory nature will lead us, the novella would seem to suggest, while at the same time the novel is arguing otherwise. For that postapocalyptic fate is not the end of “Cloud Atlas,” merely its middle. The second half of the novel is the mirror image of the first, offering, in reverse order, conclusions to each of the novellas that turn out not to be unfinished but interrupted. By the time we reach the novel’s final page, we have traveled back to the journey that began in 1850, that of a man following footsteps into the unknown, a future that might lead to our end but that, just as possibly, the novel’s fluid form suggests, could lead anywhere, even to that most unlikely destination: salvation from ourselves.

 The forces at work in the novel are all-powerful and all-consuming. It seems ludicrous the one man could influence an all but inevitable trajectory. Life, as (only) one of the novels six narrators concludes, could be hopeless after all. Or...

Upon my return to San Francisco, I shall pledge myself to the Abolitionist cause, because I owe my life to a self-freed slave & because I must begin somewhere.

I hear my father-in-law's response: "[...] He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!"

Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?

You haven't heard the last of Cloud Atlas here. For one thing, I've been suffering from book-lag, unable to get it out of my head since finishing it three days ago. For another, I can already tell that this is going to be one of those books that I reflect on throughout my life. Like Dido Twite in Joan Aiken's Wolves Chronicles, or the characters in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, or The Wire, or Tales of the City, or The History Boys, I feel that Cloud Atlas and its characters will be touchstones, and that through examining those fictional lives I will better understand my own.

At the very least, it's something to think about on a rainy day. And if a droplet is one day motivated by this book to take on a thing like Englewood, so much the better.

Feeling Your Age (And When Not To)

I just got back from the cool movie theater near my apartment, where I saw the film adaptation of The Perks of Being a Wallflower. This is a young adult novel that I read for the first time last fall at age 22. I got it out of the library in Lincoln Park and read it on the train downtown, finishing it on a riverside bench I found by chance that day. I loved it. It was worth the wait.

The bench became my go-to outdoor reading and relaxation bench; the book, although I didn't know it at the time, became one of the catalysts for the writing I'm doing now.

But forget the bench and forget my writing. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a book many of my friends deeply connected with in their teenage years. I put off reading it because...well, the reasons have escaped me. Suffice it to say that I have never really read books at the age at which I was expected to read them.

I really, really liked the movie. Was it a Great Movie? Who knows? Who cares? This was not one of my childhood novels, so I was perhaps less invested than some. (Also, knowing the author adapted and directed the film left me with no worries about fidelity.) It left me giddy, mostly. I felt like I felt after reading the Hunger Games trilogy: like a teenager, like I was experiencing emotion like a teenager. At certain points during the movie I had contorted myself into shapes in my seat that I don't think I've found myself in since I watched Pride & Prejudice for the first time. (I was thirteen or thereabouts when I watched Pride & Prejudice for the first time.)

While I was watching the movie, I experienced two overwhelming emotions that had passed me by while reading the book: vivid, happy nostalgia and gut-churning discomfort. I really felt for Charlie, the main character, who struggles to "participate." Watching him struggle to give word to his feelings, watching him inch closer to the people he wants to befriend, watching him understand more than he can express: it all reminded me of moments in my own life--few and far between, but still present--when I feel uncomfortable and unable to connect. Those parts of the film were uncomfortable for the same reasons watching J. Edgar was so uncomfortable last year. I am far, far better off than Charlie (and light years better off than anyone in J. Edgar), but no one ever said that a character has to be overwhelmingly like you for you to identify with them, and when a film or a novel is successful and your connection with the character is strong, it can feel as if that character is forcing you to amplify your feelings to match theirs. (What is tragically hilarious about this phenomenon in the case of Charlie is that this is exactly his problem. He feels too much of what others are feeling and takes it all in, letting too little out in return.)

A beautiful this about identifying with Charlie: his high school friends. This part of the film was pure joy for me (and, if the noises the rest of the audience made were anything to go by, a sizable portion of the theater felt the same way). What a collection of crazy, imperfect people who talk over each other and know all the same stories and have all the same inside jokes. Their circumstances are very different, but they remind me of people I know very well. Watching the movie reminded me of spending time with my high school friends: how effortless it is, how when we're together it's as if we've simultaneously changed and stayed just as we were senior year. My high school was small, and leaving it made me realize which people exactly were worth keeping in touch with. Some people I could have predicted; other crept up on me. When you find a group of people like that, it's worth writing about, as Charlie discovers. It's worth writing about again and again, in different forms, in different genres, across age and time.

Charlie made me think of another boy, younger, and from a different country, in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Little Bill Roach is stuck in a boarding school whose customs he doesn't fully understand, struggling to fit in to a culture that doesn't come naturally to him. In John Le Carré's book, and in the BBC miniseries adaptation, Bill Roach is buoyed along by his friendship with Jim Prideaux, a former spy now teaching French at the school. Jim draws Bill Roach out, making him aware of his natural talents--observation and empathy--and celebrating those talents. Bill Roach feels as if he has become part of something through this friendship, and he realizes for the first time that his character traits may in fact be abilities.

I love this relationship between Bill Roach and Jim Prideaux, natural "singles" and "watchers" both, so when, last winter, I saw the (otherwise great) film adaptation of the novel, I felt let down when Jim, overwhelmed with his own problems and tiring of the ever-hovering Bill Roach, lashes out with, "Go and join the others. Just bloody join in. Go and play, damn you.” This is their final interaction.

In The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Charlie makes his own efforts to join in, but he makes it his aim to participate not because someone has told him he should, but because he knows what happiness it can bring him. His friends accept him because the  qualities that make him struggle to break away from the wall at a school dance are the same qualities that enable him to say to one of his friends, "I know who you are." Knowing that someone is watching--and watching out for--you is a powerful feeling. Charlie made the effort once, to participate, and it won him these wonderful friends. By the end of the novel, he knows he can do it again, and he can do it without trying to be someone else. It's easier to admit to your own good qualities when you surround yourself with people who can see those qualities in you, people who know that some things about you will change but that there are fixed points about you too.

Ultimately, I think what I like so much about The Perks of Being a Wallflower is that it's a celebration of all the things I like most: literature, conversation, observation, introspection, close friendships, loyalty. "Only connect," said E.M. Forster. Charlie connects, and he connects in his own way: "I know who you are." "And all the books you've read have been read by other people."

On going back and moving forward (or: THE PRIIIIIDE)

In my new job as a grant writer, I sit at a desk, in front of a computer. Next to me, I have a phone with my very own extension. The only people I talk to all day with any regularity are my two colleagues, L1 and L2, and our supervisor. Sometimes I run into other people in the hallway and say hello, or chat a little longer, especially in the case of the woman who I knew first as a mom in the classroom I worked in last year. It’s wonderful, glorious, quiet, and the only stressors are the ones that come with any due-date-centric job.

Another wonderful perk is that I get chances to go back to my old site and visit, as I round up quotes for the newsletter, take pictures for the annual report, or prowl the hallways for spelling errors in case the governor drops by. A couple times I’ve made special trips over there to do those things and also to make sure I saw certain kids who left an impression on me, in particular the girl who was so upset when I left that she could barely speak on my last day.

A necessary digression: In junior year, Roommate J and I went to see an Off Broadway play called The Pride. It starred Hugh Dancy (the reason I was there), Ben Whishaw (the reason Roommate J was there), and Andrea Riseborough (the reason I’m telling this story at all). Riseborough’s character didn’t have the most stage time, but what time she did have was endlessly appropriated by her friend (Whishaw’s character) and his problems. From the time that we saw the play, Roommate J took to exclaiming, “The Pride, The Pride!” in tones of doom, whenever I was about to devote a chunk of my time to anyone else’s personal problems. She did it when I called certain friends on the phone. She did it when I would read Facebook statuses that got me concerned. It was actually a pretty helpful formulation, when you think about it, because it refers to something concrete but it also warns of a waft of hubris in the room: as if I could be so proud as to think that I could singlehandedly fix another human being. Mostly, though, it was hilarious. It was a sight to behold: Roommate J grasping her face and intoning, “The Pride, The Pride!” while writhing around in her chair as I tried to carry on a normal phone conversation without laughing. I took her point, but I always laughed it off, too. I wasn’t trying to save anyone; I didn’t think I could, or should, or that there weren’t others, better-qualified others, with the same idea.

Well, dear readers, The Pride lives on. I think about it whenever I pass one of these gas stations, for instance.

I mean, seriously, what is that about?

Most recently, though, The Pride lived on when I e-mailed Roommate J to update her on my life and let slip that I worried about the kids I left behind and thought I should visit them more. Her reply went like this (excerpt from an actual e-mail):

Obligatory:

THE PRIIIIDE THE PRIIIIIDE

I cracked up when I opened it (at work, at my glorious desk, at lunch hour, where people treat you like an adult and acknowledge that you will be checking all your e-mails). This time, though, it actually put me in check. I had been tying myself in knots over a chat I had with M, who called me and, in the midst of a separate conversation, mentioned that this girl, the one who couldn’t say goodbye to me, had been really withdrawn and depressed recently. And had been grilling my coworker, the one with a kid in that classroom, about how often she saw me and what my office was like and whether I liked it there.

Getting Roommate J’s e-mail was a nice reality check. I was in that girl’s life for all of ten months. I’m not responsible for her happiness, and I don’t know all the factors leading to her depression (which was noticeable before I was even on the scene). I can drop by and cheer her up (and I did), but I can’t expect that to be the solution, and I can’t beat myself up about leaving when it was so clearly the right decision for me. Nor, layer #2 of The Pride reminds me, should I have such a high opinion of myself that I think I am the only solution.

I can, however, go back and volunteer once a week in the evening program. I did so last night, and it felt good: to be back, to be making a commitment to show my face regularly, and to know that, whenever I wanted, I could walk out the door.

Fresh from America! Madame brought them!

StoryCorps happened, to my delight. I went on over to the Mobile Booth they had stationed in Millenium Park and, to the sounds of the jazz fest two greens over and the families out enjoying Labor Day weekend, I sat and waited my turn. A couple people wandered up to me and asked me about StoryCorps, mistaking me for an employee. Others asked where the bathroom was, mistaking me for a park ranger. Finally, Lady #1 emerged and asked me what story I would be telling that day.

Until that moment, I hadn’t fully decided. I figured they would want whatever I said to be as fresh as possible, anyway. I told her that I would be telling the story of how my parents met. I gestured vaguely. “And some other stuff.”

None of that other stuff would be new to readers of this blog, or anyone who’s had a serious conversation with me over the past year. As to the story of how my parents met, and the story of my French godfathers, which I launched into as well…those are best heard in person. Or you could listen to the recording of the entire interview they handed me on CD once I was done. I went home and uploaded it to iTunes and from there to Dropbox to share with whoever wanted to hear it. I was figuring my parents would want to hear it, and maybe a handful of interested family members. I knew which of my friends actively wanted to listen. I sent the link to some people and left it at that, figuring they’d listen to it when they could (probably while stuck in traffic or folding laundry or something).

Instead, I started getting, alternately, barrages of people wanted to listen to the interview and barrages of notes from people who had already listened to and enjoyed it. These notes ran the gamut from, “Awesome!” (much appreciated; that’s what I strive for) to “I love your StoryCorps recording! The stories you told obviously mean so much to you and are so beautiful, and your voice sounds so good telling stories (I would say you got your father’s gift :D)! I’m so glad it’s preserved to inspire others: your parents and the quality of the relationships in your family truly are moving.”

This is me, now, curled up, feeling the love.

It wasn’t that I expected no one to listen—that would be veering away from humility and into denial—but the volume and quality of the responses I got really moved me. From the girl I hadn’t talked to in a while who materialized out of nowhere and asked to listen, to the very close friend who intended to listen while she was doing something else and found herself glued to her computer, listening: these friends of mine rock.

There were others who, in really well thought out e-mails, informed me of my maturity. This meant a lot. It’s unpopular for someone my age to rhapsodize about her parents. It’s not that closeness with your parents isn’t valued in America, it’s more that it’s seen as a dangerous quality; possibly those who possess this quality are about to crawl back home, possibly they already live there, possibly they have no lives of their own.

None of those things are true of me, or of my best friend, who is also very close to her parents, or of the other people I know in this situation. “You should call home more,” is the punch line of many a joke, but it’s always the parent who utters it who is the butt of the joke, not the grown child off doing their own (presumably fulfilling, fascinating) thing. The assumption is that, as time passes, it is the parent’s place to sit by the phone and the child’s to craft their own life at the expense of the life they left behind.

In Europe, in China, in certain American cultures (although not the WASPy mainstream), living with your parents, or allowing your parents to live with you, is the norm. It doesn’t mean that you rely on them overmuch, that you haven’t cut the cord, or that you’re incapable of adulthood. It just means that for financial or health or other reasons you have chosen to support each other. That, after all, is what families are expected to do.

Let me be clear: I don’t advocate leeching off your parents. I don’t think parents exist solely to cater to their children’s needs. Nor to I think your parents should factor in every decision you make. We’re all people, and we can all live our own lives. I’m just saying that those lives don’t necessarily have to be lived completely separately in the service of some weirdly developed notion of the American Dream. I have no plans to move to my parents’ house in Kansas, but I don’t think I have to feel ashamed about wanting to talk about or be with the people who mean the most to me. Once upon a time, after all, someone referred to me as “your filial piety daughter.” I don’t think I’ve ever been more honored in my life.

So it was nice to feel the love on Facebook, in text messages, and via e-mail. And it was nice, in true Nom de Plume fashion, to share the experience with my parents, even though I was in one place and they were in another. Now, and for the foreseeable future, we and all the characters in our stories will get to hang out together in the Library of Congress. I’ll bring dinner, my godfathers can bring the wine, and my mom can bring her, ahem, American cake. My dad can provide the entertainment and sit there and tell stories to remind us how we all got there in the first place.

A Brief P.S.

Today, I finally got around to finishing Quiet. I finished it in two installments. I read the majority on my favorite bench in Chicago.

It's a place perfectly suited to contemplation. Indeed, if I had been invited to contribute an essay to the hypothetical volume of essays I mentioned in my previous post on this topic, I would probably have written it sitting on that bench.

But enough about that.

In the end, I came around. Reality never quite measured up to expectation, but Cain did shift focus from society to the individual, and that certainly helped my enjoyment of the book. Like Cain (and I don't want to spoil anything here for those who haven't read Quiet and intend to, so I'm about to be vague), the theory I found most revelatory and most applicable to daily life was Professor Little's Free Trait Theory. You may sometimes act out of character and against type, but it's worth it in the service of something you really, really care about, even if it leaves you exhausted and hiding in the bathroom.

Which brings me to my next point! Only 10% sarcastic kudos to Cain for acknowledging the Universal Hiding in the Bathroom Principle. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, that's okay, it takes all kinds!)

Thanks, also, for:
1) The guy at Claremont McKenna who got up early "just to savor time alone with a steaming cup of coffee." Replace tea, and you've got my life now.
2) "...the life of the mind." My mother, once again vindicated in print for something she's been saying for as long as I can remember.
3) "'The stereotype of the university professor is accurate for so many people on campus. They like to read; for them there's nothing more exciting than ideas. And some of this has to do with how they spent their time when they were growing up. If you spend a lot of time charging around, then you have less time for reading and learning. There's only so much time in your life.'" That last line is something both sides of the spectrum should be able to say, but you so rarely hear it applied in this context.
4) Introvert guilt, which I completely identified with and had always chalked up to Catholic Guilt.
5) "Finally, pay attention to what you envy. Jealousy is an ugly emotion, but it tells the truth."

However, there was one serious problem. In all that talk of fear of public speaking, not once did anyone mention nervous poo. Forgive me for being frank, but it's a phenomenon Roommate J (who I am sending this book immediately) and I discussed endlessly. Quelle oversight!

"I'm telling you stories. Trust me."

If you know my family, particularly specific members of my family, you know that we're storytellers. In order to explain how three voodoo dolls showed up unexpectedly on a nippy Colorado night in the early 2000s, we like to go all the way back to the 1950s in Baltimore and thoroughly lay the groundwork.

My conversational style in high school and college could reasonably be described as story on top of story on top of story. When I wasn't telling stories, the well was dry and I was listening attentively instead. That's why people think of me as a good listener. I think I am too, and I'll take the compliment, but I think the reason for it is slightly different from what people suppose: I do genuinely want to solve your problems, but I also want slice of life stories from other perspectives, and there's nothing like a particularly fraught or tearful rant to deliver those stories.

My conversations still run like that, although to a lesser extent now. These days, I like to have deep, introspective debates with those who know me best. Just last weekend, my friends P and M were staying with me in Chicago and we delved deep until two in the morning two nights running. I was in heaven...until I had to get up at seven to go to work on Monday.

The point is, I love telling to stories, and I love listening to other people's well-told stories as well. There's a reason I listened (and wept along with a good percentage of) StoryCorps segments in the mornings before I headed off to high school. In college, I made one unsuccessful attempt to sign up for an interview slot at the StoryCorps office in New York. Those slots go fast. I had wanted to get my parents to sit down and tell the story of how they met. I love it, and I've heard it a million times, and a corner of my brain is convinced that the whole world (or at least the NPR-listening public) needs to hear it too.

A year and a half later, and here I am in Chicago, still a fan of StoryCorps on Facebook and an occasional dabbler in their podcast. I'm heading out to work one morning when I notice that not only is the mobile recording booth coming to Chicago, but signups will be the following day at 10:00AM. I file it away and rush out the door. The next day I arrive at work at 8:50 as usual, turn on my computer, and wait. This, I thought, is one of the reasons why this job is better than my last job. Here I sit, with all of the modern world a few key strokes away (barring the eccentric web filter).

As ten o'clock approaches, I start to get anxious. My supervisor mentioned that she might push my weekly meeting with her forward a bit to accommodate another meeting. It's only my third week; I couldn't very well say, "Sorry: StoryCorps," and gesture at the screen with supreme confidence. I shouldn't have worried, though. At the stroke of ten, I log in, see the rapidly disappearing times, an nab an available slot in the first weekend of September. I feed them my information, agonize for a while over whether I should put a specific interviewee (name and phone number) to accompany me, and ultimately mark that I'll be coming alone. I click submit and, miracle of miracles, the next page tells me that my attendance is confirmed!

I do a little dance at my desk surreptitiously take out my phone to make a Facebook status. This is modern life, and I like it.

The question remains: out of a lifetime of my own and other people's stories, which one do I pick? These can be multi-part stories, of course, as all good stories told by members of my family are. I have some ideas, a couple two short and one probably too bloated. I have an hour slot all to myself, so it should take time, but not too much time. Or (always assuming I can change my reservation) should I grab someone from Chicago or Champaign and interview them? At first I assumed that's what I would do, but the more I think about it, the more I think I want the freedom to tell the story I want.

Suggestions are welcome, either here or via e-mail, with the caveat that I may not listen to any of them. Which of my stories (or the stories you know I know) do you think are particularly deserving of a spot in the Library of Congress? Do I tell my own story, or another's? It goes without saying that part of it will be funny, and part of it will be heartfelt. What do you think?