Coronavirus Journal, part 4
“Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.”
–Emerson
On April 9 Anthony Fauci, head health honcho of the White House, urged at a press conference that we must not question the official story of the coronavirus pandemic; instead, “Let somebody write a book about it later on.” He’s obviously been reading the Karl Rove playbook. The former Bush advisor once confided to a reporter, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality…. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Since according to both officials running the show, and astrologers looking behind the scenes, we are at a historic crossroads, a point of no return, I guess it’s time to put the future book plans on hold and instead report day by day, as this “history” is unfolding.
Writers are often cautioned to avoid controversial or political topics lest we alienate some of our readers with different views. Contrary advice, however, urges us to write about what we care about, what moves us with passion and urgency. Again, it appears this is one of those times.
It’s happened to me before in my life, on a few occasions (which may be confirmed by the astrologer’s alignments of certain watershed moments in history). One was the early 1980s, when it seemed the Cold War nuclear arms race was heating toward “Mutually Assured Destruction.” I felt compelled to set aside my personal utopia-building project, as well as that first book (later to be known as The Last Book), to save the world by speaking, writing, marching, leafletting, teaching and studying ways to halt the rush to Armageddon. My inspiration to protest began in the sixties with the Kennedy assassination and Vietnam war protests; they continued in the seventies when my teaching career in the Arctic was sidetracked by a nonviolent Inuit revolution; and further down the line in the ’90s, I manned the blockades of logging and pesticides in my watershed. After that I continued to beat the drums of popular rebellion by playing with samba bands to uplift demonstrations against old-growth logging, oil pipelines, Monsanto poisons.
That’s all fine, you might say, but aside from telling those stories in your memoir (My Generation), what does it have to do with art, with literature? In truth, if I look through that lens of subversion, I see it animating every one of my books. So I might as well wear that badge, unapologetic. Allow me to illustrate:
My Generation – Among the scenes summarized above, a surprising line pregnant with meaning…
He loo
ked around the table at each one of us, a hard but merry glint in his knowing eyes. “It is important for you to realize that technically, you are all employees of the Quebec Government. From now on, everything you say or do will be a political act.”
We all flinched as if an electric pulse had passed through the room. No one spoke, as the cryptic prophecy hung in the air.
Hunter’s Daughter – In which company man Jack McLain comes to question his RCMP stripes and duties, when up against a more nuanced web of native Inuit intelligence, working out its alternative culture’s system of corrections.
My Country – Missives from the backwoods of British Columbia, where my walking meditations among the trees were disturbed by the roar of chainsaws, interrupted by expressive stumps, and challenged by questions of what it means to truly live a natural life.
Friday Night Jam – Bucking the jam convention of cover tunes led by the usual frontmen with guitars, I brought my African drums to play, leaning on the upbeat and offbeat for a reggae flavor, a Third-World feel. We had to find a way to get along, and more: to find gold in the moment.
Red Rock Road, Light Blue Sea – Off the tourist track, even the pilgrims’ trail… camping wild and free in the unspoiled southwest corner of Europe. With space to wander the ruins, and an ache for the mysteries of monuments, I had occasion to reflect on imperial history’s passing, in the light of the raw beauty left behind.
Rendezvous – Breaking the narrative train into variant loops, I refused to bow to the inevitability of a singular reality of a perilous mountain adventure. Other choices were possible, and with each, a different outcome, a different life… or even death.
Strange Love – Aside from the inherently subversive mode of magical realism that runs through these tales like those intriguing streaks in blue cheese, I deal explicitly with a political topic—without taking sides—in the story “New Moon.” What does it mean to claim “the right to life”? Sometimes, it’s complicated.
The Last Book – This most “political” of my novels starts out as a mere ironic romp through the bourgeois farce of Thomas Mann’s classic picaresque novel, Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man. As the very talents of such a trickster offer irresistible temptation for a political extrapolation, in due course we find ourselves at the very pinnacle of worldly power—and beyond.
Chameleon
– Arriving almost too close to home, we turn the last corner to an AI world, where our neurological circuits are interfaced with “smarter” programs calling the shots, insinuating choices, and penalizing missteps with nightmarish detours of synthetic reality.
What could explain this serial compulsion to rock the boat, or to get out of the boat altogether and strike out on foot, to chart an idisyncratic journey into the unknown?
Going back to my innocent beginnings as a child of the American dream, perhaps it had to be that I would, by a checkerboard of choices and synchronicities, write myself out of the box of TV programming, of public schooling, of the military mindset… only to find myself where I am today: back in the crib of enforced confinement, shaking the bars, crying freedom, liberty and justice for all.
Coronavirus Journal
Under Advisement (Coronavirus Journal, part 5)
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