The Grey Hair

Yehudah ha-Levi


One day I observed a grey hair in my head;


I plucked it right out, when it thus to me said:


"You may smile, if you wish, at your treatment of me,


But a score of my friends soon will make of you a mockery."

Historiography without the data, For Want of a Nail Part II

I am two-thirds of the way through Robert Sobel's For Want of a Nail, his alternate history of North America if the rebels had lost the American Revolution.

Besides being simply an enjoyable read (yes, reading is pleasurable, especially the feeling of a book in one's hands) there is a fine lesson for the writer of history to be gleaned from this book. 

The writing of history involves the marshaling of facts, figures, the citation of sources, but also involves a large modicum of creativity in arranging these materials.  Without it, history becomes flat and uninspired. 

What Sobel has done in this book is lay bare that process.  This history is not a history, but a creative illusion.  Sobel takes the apparatus of historical research, the form and function of it, and creates a beautiful and false edifice.  The historical framework is there, and he presents it elegantly and masterfully.  We get the feeling, when reading For Want of a Nail, that a knowledgeable guide is taking us on a journey.  This is the hallmark of all great works of history.  That the content is false makes little difference.

The lesson: good writing carries the day, no matter what the genre, but especially in a popular history.  History is a story to be told.  Why not tell it well? 

Posthumous Droppings

The Finca Vigia Edition of Hemingway's Short stories, deemed "Complete" contains all the undisputed canonical works from the First 49 short stories in Part one, short stories published in books and magazines after the first 49 in Part two, most about the Spanish Civil War. Readers will see familiar work here. One Trip Across is the beginning of the novel To Have and Have Not, and An African Story is David Bourne's story within a story in The Garden of Eden.


Part three, previously unpublished fiction, gets on more shaky ground. There is a piece that was pulled out of Islands in the Stream, called The Strange Country and called a short story by the editors. A Train Trip and The Porter where two chapters of a novel that Hemingway abandoned to pursue more promising work. Here they are considered self contained.


Noticeably absent from this "complete" collection are the Nick Adams pieces that were previously unpublished but published in The Nick Adams Stories (with the exception of The Last Good Country). Why the editors of this collection should consider one Hemingway abandoned novel a short story, while others are not, makes no apparent sense.


This is what happens when one monkeys about with an author's posthumous droppings. Categories get questioned and readers wonder what is going on.

The Crack-Up and Confessional Poets

In 1936, Scott Fitzgerald, on his downward spiral of drink and disintegration, decided to write about not being able to write. 

These essays were published by Esquire, the most famous of which is The Crack-Up.   There, Fitzgerald chronicled his descent (although he was short on specific details, like his binge drinking, and Zelda's insanity).

At the time, his fellow writers were horrified by the essay, feeling he had exposed sentiments that were best left to the private sphere.  In Jeffrey Meyers biography of Fitzgerald, he views The Crack-Up essays as a vital turning point in American fiction. 

First, Fitzgerald unwittingly performed the first act of 'any publicity is good publicity' for a public figure falling out of the public eye.  Until those essays, many had thought Fitzgerald was dead.  The essays reminded the American public that the darling of 1920s American fiction was alive -- in a sense.  We can see this monstrous legacy all around us.

Finally, Myers see a direct influence over later American post-war "confessional" poets, like Lowell, Plath and Sexton.  While Fitzgerald wrote about his decline and mental distress and was scolded, these topics became the grist for the mill of the confessional poets.  The Crack-Up, in part, gave them the license to do so.

Luckily for us, Esquire has the essay on line for all to read.

http://www.esquire.com/features/the-crack-up

The Short Story Market Killed F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

Since his death at 44 in 1940, people have speculated both why Scott Fitzgerald died so young, why he failed to live up to the massive talent he displayed in writing The Great Gatsby, and fundamentally, how it could have been different.

Reading Jeffrey Myers biography Scott Fitzgerald, it becomes apparent that it is impossible to separate all the strands that ruined Scott.  He drank, and was not the kind of drinker who could function.  His upbringing did little to prepare him for adulthood and its responsibilities.  His marriage to Zelda was disastrous to his health and creativity and further propelled his drinking (although he did drink too much before he met her.)  

But his profligate lifestyle would have been impossible without money, and he earned this not from his novels or short literary fiction, but from popular writing in magazines like the Saturday Evening Post.  A story in the Post, which in the 20s had a circulation of three million, could earn him three to four thousand dollars a story.  He made nearly forty-thousand dollars a year, four or five times the amount of an average American family.  He felt he needed this money, to keep Zelda in luxury, and to present a picture of himself to the world as the successful artist.  

But this dedication to hack writing at the expense of other work, made his art suffer and ultimately diminished him as a writer.  Without those massive fees in the 1920s the Fitzgerald juggernaut would have been more difficult to keep moving at its dangerous speed. It might have even saved him.

For current short story writers, this is an amazing and ironic situation.   There is no short story market, except for a few select writers.  Most short stories are taken by journals for little or no money.  A short story market, literary or popular, simply doesn’t exist anymore.  Bad short stories were replaced by bad radio, and later bad TV, as popular entertainment. 

Now short stories in any form can hurt no one.  Writers should have no fear of them.  Readers might even try to read them.

November Rainbow

Still Small Voice

ח וַיָּקָם, וַיֹּאכַל וַיִּשְׁתֶּה; וַיֵּלֶךְ בְּכֹחַ הָאֲכִילָה הַהִיא, אַרְבָּעִים יוֹם וְאַרְבָּעִים לַיְלָה, עַד הַר הָאֱלֹהִים, חֹרֵב.



ט וַיָּבֹא-שָׁם אֶל-הַמְּעָרָה, וַיָּלֶן שָׁם; וְהִנֵּה דְבַר-יְהוָה, אֵלָיו, וַיֹּאמֶר לוֹ, מַה-לְּךָ פֹה אֵלִיָּהוּ.


י וַיֹּאמֶר קַנֹּא קִנֵּאתִי לַיהוָה אֱלֹהֵי צְבָאוֹת, כִּי-עָזְבוּ בְרִיתְךָ בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל--אֶת-מִזְבְּחֹתֶיךָ הָרָסוּ, וְאֶת-נְבִיאֶיךָ הָרְגוּ בֶחָרֶב; וָאִוָּתֵר אֲנִי לְבַדִּי, וַיְבַקְשׁוּ אֶת-נַפְשִׁי לְקַחְתָּהּ.


יא וַיֹּאמֶר, צֵא וְעָמַדְתָּ בָהָר לִפְנֵי יְהוָה, וְהִנֵּה יְהוָה עֹבֵר וְרוּחַ גְּדוֹלָה וְחָזָק מְפָרֵק הָרִים וּמְשַׁבֵּר סְלָעִים לִפְנֵי יְהוָה, לֹא בָרוּחַ יְהוָה; וְאַחַר הָרוּחַ רַעַשׁ, לֹא בָרַעַשׁ יְהוָה.


יב וְאַחַר הָרַעַשׁ אֵשׁ, לֹא בָאֵשׁ יְהוָה; וְאַחַר הָאֵשׁ, קוֹל דְּמָמָה דַקָּה.


And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meal forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God. And he came thither unto a cave, and lodged there; and, behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and He said unto him: 'What doest thou here, Elijah?' And he said: 'I have been very jealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken Thy covenant, thrown down Thine altars, and slain Thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.' And He said: 'Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD.' And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.
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This portion of Kings is cited in nearly every New Age-y, Jewish Renewal book, as an example of the current status of the Divine in modern life. In this story, the prophet Eliyahu flees the northern kingdom of Israel, after defeating the prophets of Baal. He goes to Mount Horeb (Mount Sinai) to complain to HaShem about his treatment. HaShem seems poised to give Eliyahu the gift that he gave to Moses, to in some sense see HaShem.


Instead, HaShem creates actions in the world, but is not in the world. HaShem creates a wind, but is not in the wind; and an earthquake, but is not in the earthquake, and then a fire, but is not in the fire. And after this, Eliyahu hears a still small voice.


It is unclear where or what this voice is; in JR literature, the voice is within Eliyahu, and by proxy, within us.  This is a pleasant vision of what happened on Sinai.

But there is sad element to this revelation.  Sinai's moment is over. No more thunderous voice of HaShem. Now there is a still small voice. We have even less than Eliyahu. He may have had an “outer” still small voice. We must excavate our own inner “still small voice” which is so often smothered by louder voices.  And every day, it seems those voices grow even louder.