I'm Writing This as Though I'm Still Alive
The book for this meeting was Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. This is a book about the lies in truth, the truth in lies, and vice versa. Except that it goes deeper than that. Much deeper.
I'm not sure how.
The constant question at book club meetings is "What did the author mean by it?" THIS is why I don't read discussion books. The authors hide their messages. I enjoy information that is straight to the point. I like to discuss ideas; not whether or not an idea exists. If you spend your time trying to figure out what the author is trying to say, then you aren't discussing if what the author is trying to say makes sense.
Perhaps that is why some writers write that way. It gives them an out if they say something stupid. Let's say the author's point is that cobras make great pets. So you meet the author one day and you say, "Jeepers, Author, cobras make extraordinarily poor pets." He can backpedal and say, "You missed the point. By saying they make good pets I was really saying they make bad pets." To which you reply, "Well, aren't I a silly cow? You're such a profound writer." To which the author says, "Say, you want to buy a cobra? They make great pets."
So you're discussing a book and someone asks "What was the point of the book?" One person might reply something. Another person might reply something else. It really doesn't matter what the replies are. They're wrong. What the author meant was "Look at me! I got you to buy this book and I'm not even telling you what it is about. So you gather a bunch of friends to each buy this book and then, as a group, try to figure out what I mean. Even then, you're still not sure what I mean. So some of you buy some of my other books to see if you can find the meaning to this one. But I'm not going to tell you in those either. See ya at the bank. I'll be the one making a large deposit."
Where else but writing would this even work? Imagine if you went to listen to a speaker and this happened. If you listened to some guy talk for an hour and, in the end, he never told you his point, you'd say, "He never told me his point. What a horrible speech that was!" Imagine going to a garage and the mechanical just tells you stories about the crazy people he's met, but he never fixes the your car. You'd complain to the better business bureau. But when authors do that, it's a good read. Perhaps readers enjoy suffering. Maybe that's why so many of them listen to NPR.
Yes, yes, I took jab at NPR, as I'm apt to do. Later, I'll make fun of the president.
I was always taught the three parts of a speech or written work: tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em, tell 'em, and tell 'em what you told 'em. Authors don't do that. They do something called foreshadowing. That's where you give subtle suggestions regarding what will happen. I'd rather say flat out that I'm going to predict a long life of freedom for Tim O'Brien. None of these hidden hints for me; if they're effective, they only make the work more predictable. I'm telling you what I'm going to tell you. Just like Mrs. Hayek told us to do.
I know not everyone wants to be hit on the head and would rather enjoy the adventure of discovery, but when you hide an idea there's the good chance that it will be missed--which defeats the point of having an idea. Take, for example, "The Wizard of Oz." Now, most people realize it is not Ozzie Smith's biography. However, many don't realize that it was a political piece to convince people to follow a political agenda. For example, "follow the yellow brick road," was a subtle suggestion to use the gold standard. So not only can there be debate about what you're trying to say, but there can also be debate as far as what realm your point exists. If you have a point, why hide it? Put it out for the world to see. "Hi, I'm a scarecrow and I have no brain. I believe that lighters, matches, and torches should be outlawed and we should be on the gold standard."
There is a place for covert messages. If a person simply wants to make the work connect with more people or simply increase sales, covert messages are the way to go. For instance, take the band U2. If they said the song Run Away was about a drug-induced vision of the lead singer's couch running away, they'd lose connection with any audience member who'd never had a drug-induced vision. As long as there is no straightforward meaning to the song, the entire audience can relate and is more likely to buy the album. Likewise with politics. Some people lose interest the second politics are mentioned. If you want to make a political statement AND make money, you have to make the statement covertly. Since I'm not making money for writing this, though, I can come right out and say based on Osama bin Laden, Kenneth Lay, and Saddam Hussein; one could promise a long life of freedom for Tim O'Brien.
That's a freedom that starving artists enjoy. Except I'm neither starving nor an artist. There's a line in the song "Smells like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana which reads "I'm worse at what I do best, and for this gift I feel blessed." I'm no Tim O'Brien, but I have some skill at writing and am glad.
Speaking of being worse at what one does best, George W. Bush is allegedly adept at putting complex matters in black-and-white form. Arianna Huffington says it's more that he can't handle complex matters. It's either simplify or walk around in a stupor singing U2 songs that don't exist. I think it would be fun to watch Bush read Tim O'Brien's book. The truth is a lie, lies are based in truth, none of this is true, yet all of it is true except for the parts that are lies, which are really more truthful than the truths anyway. I think that (presumably before his head explodes) Bush would probably translate that into something simple like "Tim O'Brien is evil" and put him on Bush's claimed "wanted: dead or alive" list--which; as demonstrated by Osama bin Laden, Kenneth Lay, and Saddam Hussein; promises a long life of freedom for Tim O'Brien.
See, now that I've thrown politics in, you're not so interested and I won't make as many sales as I would have if I had been more covert. Good thing I'm not an artist or I'd be starving right now.
At one point in the book, O'Brien changes person; going from first to third. Apparently, he's a wizard with the clutch because I didn't even notice. Arguably, he did this because a guy dies and he can't very well say, as my sister pointed out, "I'm writing this as though I'm still alive." Imagine what would have hemorrhaged out of Bush if O'Brien had done that. Not that Bush would have read that far. He would have found "evidence" of weapons of mass destruction much earlier. (Page 32, if I recall correctly.)
On the other hand, Bush might have really gotten into the truth is lie and lie is truth thing. After all, he got TWO massive tax cuts for the wealthy passed using the "rich folks are poor and poor folks are rich" logic.
The reverse would be true for Bill Clinton. He would have thought the book was great ... at first. Then he would have discovered it doesn't always work the way O'Brien made it work. If he had read the book, he wouldn't have asked what the definition of "is" is. He could have said "Yes, the truth is I had an affair, which really makes my having an affair untrue." Of course, he love of the book would have dissipated when Hilary would have replied, "How stupid do I look, Altoid-boy?"
The reason I liked the book was that I was able to swear in front of my mom. Describing the scene without using the term seemed odd to me. I suppose I could have used the phrase "field of poopies," but that would have been even worse--for other reasons. We're all adults and a word is a word, for the most part. I didn't use it for shock value, just as a point of reference. Not only that, I'm no longer a teenager. I'm not proving anything to anyone by swearing in front of my mom. As a grown adult, trying to prove you're adult-like is immature. In the end, I didn't like this book. It made me feel old.
But I still got to swear in front of my mom.
After that day in 2001, Mark Wentz wrote a piece for this web site. It's a piece Wentz didn't want to write. It was a piece Wentz still doesn't like to read. It's a piece that he knew he'd some day look back on and say that, although it seemed important at the time, it was really quite stupid. It was too "in the emotion of the moment." But he felt he needed to write it. Wentz was frustrated by all the talk of the end of the world. The world would never be the same. There would never again be joy. There would never again be laughter. Jon Stewart would never again use the word "subliminable" as a punchline. Wentz didn't buy it for a minute. People are too resilient and have too short of attention spans, he thought, for them to not enjoy themselves again. Yes, the world has changed--as it does to differing degrees every day. Yes, we have a bit of a scar. But he felt that, one day, we would be able to laugh again. Of course, Wentz's calculation didn't include the assumption that Bush would tie terrorism into every celebratory event and raise the terror alert level for every holiday. But Wentz would have to believe we've, at the least, made progress. Or is trying to reclaim the past regress? What is the definition of "is"? Wentz just couldn't let a falsehood continue. So he wrote the piece.
Then he got to swear in front of his mom.
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The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer and do not neccessarily reflect those of the rest of the family.
© 2003, Mark Wentz