Repairing Cars! (Social Justice Metaphor)

The Contrarian really likes cars these days. He won't even go to bed without clutching a car in his hand. He squeals and screams "Kas! Kas!" every time one passes. He cries when I change his diaper unless I make the "Prrrrow!" noises of a pneumatic torque wrench.  His favorite movie? Cars. A close second? Cars 2.  (Which is a travesty.)   

So I think a lot about cars these days.  Here is a social justice metaphor about cars. (There were two, but the first one got long. I'll do the second one as a brunch post next week.)

Let's pretend you tell me that you don't like repairing cars....

You then proceed to tell me how difficult diagnostics on cars are, and the lengthy process you have to go through with every single vehicle to determine what is wrong with it. You list out dozens of problems that all have the same "symptoms" in a car, and tell me that often you can't even tell what system the issue is in. You discuss air flows and valves and seem pretty sure that the electrical system is primarily to start the car and run the lights and radio. You don't seem to be aware of computer chips or a computer's role in the car. Everything you are describing is analog and mechanical.

Pretty soon, I start to get the idea that you don't have the first clue about modern day car repair.  Like maybe you have an idea about what repairing cars was thirty years ago or more, but you don't even seem to have acknowledged OBD diagnostic systems (which have been standard in every car since the mid 90s and ubiquitous before that) to say nothing of the fact that computers are assisting every system in modern cars from brakes to fuel injection. 

Wait, the car actually knows what's wrong with it?
What foul sorcery is this????

And if you're only forty or so, and I'm pretty sure you weren't repairing cars before you could reach their pedals, it becomes pretty clear that you have absolutely no actual idea what you are talking about. Your knowledge of cars and car repair is based on something second hand that someone told you or you read. Or maybe you repaired a few really old cars once and you think that's what it's all about now.

It's not that I don't think you've ever repaired a car or know how they work. It's just painfully clear that you don't have the context for an actually informed opinion of what modern car repair is really about.

This is why when people invoke Dworkin or Greer in their critiques of feminism, my eyebrow insta-Spock-arches. If the only feminism they seem aware of is a bicycle/fish radicalized expression from the seventies, I start to wonder what their interaction with actual feminism has been. If they don't seem to know that NOW has led the social and political charge to have women added to the draft, or to include men's rape under the legal definition of rape. If someone invokes third wave trans exclusion or sex-work antagonism without being aware of what a "TERF" or a "SWERF" even is and why mainstream feminism tends to edge away from these positions. If they have no operant knowledge of what the term "white feminism" means or why it's seen as problematic or what intersectionality is and what problems with earlier forms of feminism it seeks to redress or how feminism has been front and center in challenging the way gender roles harm men too....

Suddenly I have a very different picture of what they actually know. I get the idea that they don't have the first clue about modern day feminism. Like maybe they have a vague idea of what it was like thirty years ago, but they don't seem to have acknowledged three decades or more of social progress and development or the different struggles that modern feminism has tried to tackle.

[For a metaphor within a metaphor, this would be like insisting video games are still at the Atari 2600 level of sophistication.]'

Video games are boring. All those squares for graphics aren't making me want to play them at all.
They aren't doing themselves any favors by making every game two player.
What? You think I haven't played a more recent game. HOW DARE YOU!

And if these people were BORN in the 70's, I doubt highly that they were engaging feminist thought in the second grade. Basically, it becomes pretty clear that they have absolutely no actual idea what they are talking about. Their knowledge of feminism is based on something second hand (probably from another opponent of feminism who doesn't really understand it either) they heard or read. Maybe they've read a few anachronistic excerpts and they think that's what it's still all about.

It's not that I don't think they've ever encountered feminist thought. It's just painfully clear that they don't have the context for an actually informed opinion of what modern feminism is really about.

And that ignorance of modernity makes an opinion hard to take seriously as informed or valuable....cars or feminism. 

Wikipedia Mindreads. Kinda.

Of course I know that Wikipedia is a place for quickie trivia browsing or a place to start looking. But this open letter to Wikipedia by Philip Roth about Wikipedia's inaccuracy in its article for The Human Stain reminded me hard. I've seen flags in Wikipedia articles about books and movies. These flags are alerts that the flagged content comes from a primary source (such as the author of the book) and therefore, must be backed up by secondary sources or deleted.

As a writer, I'm appalled that Wikipedia rejected Roth's assertion about the inspiration for his novel even after Roth identified himself. Who is Wikipedia to determine that the writer of a book is not a credible source about the book, especially about what was on that writer's mind when writing the book?

But I don't know that my emotional reaction is in the best interests of Wikipedia users. Lots of times artists create works that incidentally reflect values or ideas that the artist had no intentions of creating. Too often, we apply presentism to a work, such as that silly essay that went around about Susan in the Narnia Chronicles a year or two ago. Lewis made a powerful statement about Susan and choice in the Narnia Chronicles, but if you look at the work through today's eyes, Lewis treated her shabbily. The essay chose not to view Susan in the context of Narnia nor in the context of the time and culture the Chronicles of Narnia were written.

But in Roth's case, he's talking about what was in his head when he created the Coleman Silk character. It might be fair to say that there was another person near Roth's circles who passed for white and had a dalliance with a cleaning woman -- perhaps Anatole Broyard was in the back of Roth's head when he wrote.

That's simply an interesting thing to note, though. It's quite different to reject Roth's stated inspiration, not even permit mention of it, and then to state that Anatole Broyard was the inspiration.

Wikipedia made good eventually. There's now a two-sentence acknowledgement of Roth's inspiration, Melvin Tumin. There is also a two-paragraph analysis of Anatole Broyard. There is no mention of the evidence that Roth supplied in his open letter in that brief mention of Melvin Tumin. It's quite a shame because when presenting his evidence, Roth also provided an analysis of the novel that made me see it differently: one innocent error sets the entire story into motion and itself provides context for the tragedy.

As a writer, I feel a vehement indignation on Roth's behalf. Readers get to analyze and critique a work as they wish. If they see a parallel with Anatole Broyard, then they need to say so and open that discussion. But writers get to say what was in their heads when they wrote. It seems stupid to me that Wikipedia and its ilk should fancy itself so much that its collection of nearly anonymous contributors are deemed more credible about what Roth was thinking than Roth himself.

Winning a Nobel and Fiction's Fate (Mailbox)

I thought I told you to get rid of the image finding intern.
What the actual fuck is this??!!?

Nobel Prizes and My Damned Promised Fiction FFS! 

Stephen asks:

Has anyone won a Pulitzer or Nobel Peace Prize for Literature? If you want to win either, how do you do it?

My reply:

Nobel is a prize that is given in various categories including "peace" and "literature." But the peace prize is separate. You don't win a Nobel Peace Prize for Literature. You win a Nobel Prize in Literature. That's like saying you got a Best Actor Oscar for Best Director.

The process is completely based on write in proposals, and they don't tell you who got how many nominations until 50 years later. To write in a proposal, you have to be a previous Nobel Laureate, a professor of literature and linguistics, a member of the Swedish Academy, or a president of your country's literary society. They send you a letter inviting you to write in a nomination. The nominations are then sent to the Swedish Academy, and 18 people sift through the nominations to pick a winner. So basically you have to LITERALLY own a monocle and a brandy snifter to even have input. Then I'm not sure what happens. Either those 18 people see which author makes them say "Yes. Quite." (in Swedish of course) the loudest. OR they pull a name randomly and hang out with the bikini team while they're supposed to be deliberating, and generally laugh at how seriously the world takes this whole thing, skimming off the top of the cash awards to support various debauchery.

Either way, the writer doesn't do anything. They get nominated without knowing it. The Swedish Academy will VERY discreetly send a winner a notification that they might want to come to Stockholm. But the writer has nothing to do with this process. Basically they just get told they won.

Stephen, I notice that this is your third or fourth question about Nobel prizes you've sent me on Writing About Writing's Facebook Page. I don't want to smear on too much undue snark for someone who hasn't actually sent me hate mail, but if you're this interested in a Nobel prize, and you have a computer to log onto Facebook, this stuff is pretty easy to find. Google: it's awesome!   nobelprize.org

Pulitzers are a bit different. They're mostly for journalism. They do give out one award each year for fiction, and you just apply for that by submitting the fiction you want them to consider. Very competitive, though, as you can imagine. pulitzer.org


Allison asks:

Hey you said you were going to write some fiction last week. I really like A Demon's Rubicon [Chris: I added the link], and I was all psyched. What happened?

My reply:

In my best Billy Crystal voice: Don't rush me Sonny. You rush a fiction piece, you get rotten fiction pieces. You got money? Hooooweeee, I never work for so cheap. Except one time. But that was a very Nobel* cause.

Wait forget that last part.

Yes, I'm still working on the exciting conclusion. I'm fighting the forces of maudlin conclusions and aggrandizing narration. Life rolled in on a poopy-diaper-smelling cloud and demanded attention. Plus Burning Man. August was crap. Sometimes you just have to hold on to the bare minimum of writing and know that it's going to get better.

Fiction is like peeling open my chest cavity and showing you all my soul–especially since it's self published, so I generally have fewer editors, so I'm going to work extra hard to get it right. Even if that means I miss a deadline....or three.

*See what I did there?

Reports from Burning Man (A Writer's Life)

We came back early from the playa this year. Fully six hours before the man burned, we were driving off of the playa onto hard pavement headed home.

Though many of this year's reason for early returns are not my stories to tell the short version is that The Brain missed her kiddo too much to stay away another couple nights.

I didn't want to leave, but I didn't mind leaving either. I've been there and burned that (like fourteen times), and I'm almost just as happy to get out of the place before the trip home takes 12-16 hours instead of seven because of the length of time it takes for 70,000 people to leave an event on a one lane road.

Still The Brain saw some things out there this year that I've written about before. At the risk of both the snide, "I told you so!" and the defensive, "You've lost the faith!" (neither of which usefully frames the complexity, nuance, and conflict of my feelings) Burning Man is no longer a place I associate with chiefly positive emotions.

The chic camps. The art installations and art cars that look more like they involve lots of money than lots of creativity. The very real stratification and "hidden" commodification. The creeper guys. The Brain called the camp across from us that foamed everyone down and then hosed them off, "very touristy," and I sort of had to agree.

The drum circles are all but gone. The sense of family with the local camps...virtually nonexistent. The radical politics at every turn....mostly a memory of yesteryear. Sexuality and drugs in the open...cracked down on over a decade ago. And everyone is stamping around feeling entitled to entertainment and/or adulation.

Perhaps the worst thing–and I'm taking the word of the women I talked to since as a dude I can't sense these things myself–was that Burning Man feels unsafe. Sexual assault has never been absent at Burning Man, but the statistics are getting alarming. A lot of women don't really feel comfortable walking down the street at night anymore or being alone with someone they don't know pretty well.

The Brain encountered a creepy guy giving kisses without consent to conventionally attractive women at the porta potties and was nervous to return. (He was gone when I went to have a [hopefully] friendly chat with him about silence not being consent.) A friend returned from an event table-flippingly enraged about how there had been a conversation among the buzzed and drunk men there blaming women for getting themselves into situations and giving false signals, and talking about how "most sexual assault is a misunderstanding that gets blown out of proportion." We were across from a camp where they were letting people jump the queue with "performative art."  Much of that meant telling jokes. So, so, so many were rape jokes or racist. I watched The Brain's face as she listened to a joke about Mexicans. It was like something inside her couldn't believe it was happening there of all places. A little bit of light died in her eyes right then. And I almost went across to pick a fight when I heard a gang rape joke that was so horrible, I can't repeat it (and the person who told it given a slight groan instead of scathing repudiation). This year I heard one woman say "watch my drink" to her companion when she went to dance.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not shaming the people who get their mac on. I wouldn't mind playing "Lick the Not-Dusty Spot" with many of the people out there–hardbodies that inspire the kind of thirst that even your camel pack and a Capri Sun are never going to quench are abundant. But informed, enthusiastic consent is absolutely vital and not kneeing someone substantially stronger than you in the nuts because they're kissing you without asking shouldn't be taken as a yes.

I've been watching this evolution from something culturally subversive to "massive desert party" for years and have been ambivalent about going for.....six or seven years. The huge influx of newcomers each year means that an established culture isn't "passed on" before it can be overwritten–this was compounded when they started selling out and had to go to a lottery system. And of course the shifting demographics of wealth and low  are impossible to ignore. The Brain really noticed a lot of it this year. We might skip a year or three before we next make it out.

However....it would be too simplistic to just complain about rich libertarians "moop"ing up the place, and how back in the good ol' days it was better, and "get these virgin whipersnappers off my lawn!" and then drop the mic. There is a bit of grieving going on that this might be our last year for at least a while.

And by a bit, I don't mean a bit.

I'm okay with this.

I'm not okay with this.

It's like loving someone deeply, but staying with them isn't healthy because the good moments are drifting further and further apart. (And why is my brain coming up with a contender for worst metaphor contests: "like the way microwavable popcorn pops only every few seconds once it's burning.") As long as I was being dragged along for The Brain's sake, I never really had to confront the enormity and complexity of my feelings that it was time to walk away, or at least take a break. I could go and shrug and say I liked it enough when I was there, which was all true. I packed up and shlepped up there for her, and then had a good time.

However, a part of it why I go can't just be dismissed as "for her." It will always be for me. I will always be standing near the perimeter (at some bit of art that wasn't snazzy or big and got relegated to the outer ring, but was GOOD and considered and meant something and fucking MATTERED and changed me in my soul and shit) and remembering who I really was in that deep relief, almost-quiet of a distant EDM beat and the sound of endless wind over timeless flats.

As long as I could say "Eh, I go because she likes it," I never really had to face how I felt. That *I* like it. And even though it's changed, there are still those refrains of sweetness that bring me ecstatic glee as I get my first nose full of playa dust. I never really had to mourn.

But now I do.

Well this is devastatingly appropriate.

One really, really cool thing did happen this year:

I was way out in deep playa, just a few minutes before a white out would reduce visibility and make me have to stand there for over an hour, just waiting to be able to see enough landmarks to know where "back" was.

A woman came over, looked at me like she recognized me from long ago (that sort of lower head look upish look.) "Are you....Chris Bree- chun," she asked. (Everyone gets my name wrong. I don't even bother to correct most people. It's actually pronounced bruh [rhumes with "duh'] KEEN [rhymes with "scene")

I thought maybe it was an old friend that I wasn't recognizing. (People usually look a little different out there than they usually do.) She was maybe in her mid fifties and decked out in a slinky dress made of shimmery, almost reflective scales.

"Yeah," I said, still trying to place where I knew her from.

"I love your blog!" she said. "I can't believe I recognized you, but the folder and the shirt tipped me off."

I guess my description of myself in my Burning Man article (overweight and short, Hawaiian shirts, always carrying a black notebook I write in, socks and shoes because of dry skin–all a little unusual out there) along with pics of my face was enough for someone to recognize me.

We had a huge hug, and she gushed a little, but unfortunately she was letting her group going the other way get way out ahead of her, so we had to keep it brief.

But it was AMAZEBALLS!!! Thank you Sarah!

August's Best

Though August was just about as much opposite of the power-slam month as I originally hoped for "Blogust," I did get a couple of articles posted that made some ripples in the water. Here are the best of August's offerings. (The popularity of our August poll notwithstanding.) Each will push on to the heights of fame and glory (third rate internet fame and glory, that is) in The Best of W.A.W.

The Hugo Nominees Were Robbed

The Hugos were an awful experience for a lot of writers, but were the slated authors truly "robbed" of their well-deserved awards?

15 Things A Very Cute Toddler Taught Me About Writing (Part 2)

The ongoing wisdom that raising The Contrarian has given me about being an artist and a writer.

Fortune Cookie Wisdom X

Because quoting myself is a little bit gauche.


We had to abandon "Blogust" mid month (See! I fail ALL THE TIME!), and as the second half with its Disneyland trips and Burning Man prep kicked in there was some pretty serious "what the fucking fuck was I fucking thinking?" going on. The good news was, even though I was off my game, you all were not, and with matching donations, we were able to raise $1123 for Oakland Reads. Of course, I will post any follow up here if they send thank you messages or anything.

We will try again in October. It's not as cool of a word play (Blogtober) but it will have to do.

We're trying a WHOLE NEW schedule here. The Contrarian now knows enough to not use psychic contrarian powers on strangers. So he's getting a superhero babysitting service to tag in from the time Uberdude and The Brain go on patrol until about noon. Then I tag in and take over the afternoon schedule. Hopefully that is a perfect balance of solid contiguous writing regimen without me having to take naps and/or wake up at weird hours. I usually prefer to write in the dead of morning, but my life is not exactly as elastic as I'd like it to be right now.

Most of the things I said I was writing for Blogust are still on the stove, and most of what's left should show up in September.

Off to Burning Man

For those of you who haven't been following closely, or who don't keep up with me on either my Facebook page or Writing About Writing's Facebook page, I am off to Burning Man on my annual trip to get dusty and wonder what the hell I'm doing. In fact, I scheduled this post, so I'm actually already there (unless there was some kind of problem).

We will be back with regular entries probably starting Wednesday next week. Thursday for sure.

I'm never sure exactly when I'm going to get back. Seventy five thousand people leaving an event on a one lane dirt road tends to turn into a clusterfuck pretty quickly, and there have been times where it took people six hours to get just from the event to the road. Since that sounds almost exactly what hell would be like to me, we always listen to the radio and try to leave when the exodus is light. That means sometimes we drive out of there on Sunday and lament missing the temple burn, and sometimes it's Tuesday afternoon.

Usually it's in the middle somewhere. And that means generally we're home some time on Monday spend Tuesday sleeping and are ready to rock by Wednesday.

Monday is, of course, a bank holiday, and none of the staff here will work. (Something about at least giving them days off if I'm going to pay them in fast food coupons or some shit.)  I've got a couple of our usual end-of-the-month articles that need posting, but it may be Wednesday or Thursday before I'm ready to kick off our regular schedule and hit September with the full force ferocity of a writer who's tired of being distracted from his writing.

Blogust's Final Tally

Hi folks,

As you know I melted down mid month with trying to keep up with the robust goals of "Blogust." (It happens to the best of us.) However, the Blogust fund raiser never stopped, and not one, but two anonymous donors jumped in with various matching offers. (Technically I was going to do 50% and there was a donor who said they'd match as long as 50% went back to the blog, but basically after the math shook out, it was this:) In the end every donation we got to Writing About Writing was be DOUBLED as a contribution to Oakland Reads.

And folks were extraordinarily generous. I'm not going to out anyone who doesn't want to be outed, but I got a donation bigger than most of my teaching paychecks (and those go by month), and lots of people kicked in.

So here's the final tally:

Donations from "Blogust."= $535*

Matching to Oakland Reads 535 (Mysterious donor #1) +535 (Mysterious Donor #2)= $1070
Plus the 10% I always donate $53

Total= $1123

*It's not worth trying to figure out what I make in a normal month, but I promise it's not this much.

When I get back from Burning Man, there will be many thank you e-mails (both to the Blogust donors, and the embarrassingly huge backlog).