INTERVIEWCONVERSATION FOCUS

Michael Wutz

On the Craft of Fiction—E.L. Doctorow at 80

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PRELUDE

E. L. Doctorow is among a small cadre of with Welcome to Hard Times (1960), American novelists admired by a wide in- a parody of the classic Western, and has ternational readership and scholars. Thor- continued this narrative investigation by oughly anchored in a post-World War II focusing on critical cultural moments: American context, and often investigating The Book of Daniel (1971) deals with the the popular myths and self-constructions of Rosenberg trial, mapping the prevailing America, Doctorow’s literary sensibilities national sensibilities in the wake of Mc- address current global political and cultur- Carthyism; (1975), Doctorow’s al concerns: the intersection of official and first international bestseller, looks at unofficial history, the relays between print turn-of-the-century politics, racism, and culture and postprint media, literature and immigration in the manner of a pastiche; the discourses of science and technology, (1994) shows the dark as well as the idea of narrative as, what he underbelly of post-bellum prosperity and has called, “a system of knowledge.” While the perpetual balancing act of an ethical Doctorow understands the novelist as an science in the genre of the mystery ; archeologist of unacknowledged knowledge, and (1980) and the novelist him-or herself transmutes (1989) interrogate the myth of the self- such leftovers into forms of telling knowl- made man in the (under)world of crime. edge that speak volumes about a culture’s Often, it is through the lens of a distant historical moment. Fundamentally oral historical event that Doctorow reflects on without presuming to be oracular, fiction the present, by laying bare the gap between for Doctorow is capacious with the intent America’s idealistic promise and its politi- of offering pertinent cultural critique in the cal and cultural reality. At the same time, service of human betterment. philosophical and theological speculations Born and raised in New York City are never far away, as in City of God within a secular humanist and Jewish (2000), in which fictional and historical cultural milieu, Doctorow often uses the voices ruminate about the imponderables of city as an urban microcosm for the themes the universe. More recently, Doctorow has that are at the center of his fiction. For that returned to the subject of history in The reason, his narratives tend to have sug- March (2005), which reconstructs Union gestive allegorical overtones with a wide general William T. Sherman’s march from swath of signification akin to the romances to Savannah toward the end of the of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Often associated Civil War. Homer & Langley (2009), with a liberal tradition that has strong his most recent novel, tells of the United sympathies for the Left, Doctorow is careful States’ most notorious pair of fraternal not to infuse his fiction with overt politics hoarders, though not without touching on and ideology. On the contrary, while his many of the concerns that have informed a often propose themselves as counter- rich body of work spanning more than half narratives to the narratives of state power, a century. he has repeatedly asserted that fiction is As the recipient of many distinguished the province of art that has no place for prizes, among them the National Book propaganda. Award, two National Books Critics Circle Doctorow began his examination of the Awards, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the idea(l) of America, its myths and history, William Dean Howells Medal of the

2 6 WEBER THE CONTEMPORARY WEST American Academy of Arts and Letters, This conversation took place over sev- and the National Humanities Medal, Mr. eral days during Mr. Doctorow’s stay at Doctorow has written himself into the Weber State University in September 2010. canon of American literature. He embod- I want to thank Edgar for his generosity of ies the virtues of a classical storyteller time and spirit, and the Offices of the Pro- who is singularly capable of rendering his vost and the Telitha E. Lindquist College of cultural diagnoses in ambitious and lyrical Arts & Humanities for underwriting Mr. narratives that have rightly made him an Doctorow’s visit. international bestseller.

As a one-time editor and long-time writer, was very useful to me, as a result of which the art and craft of editing has been with I learned to edit myself in a way that actu- you throughout your professional life. At ally separated me from myself as writer. I what point do you yourself start editing put myself in another mental state so that I your work—revising it and looking back- could admit that something was not right or ward at it even as you move your narrative know that something was. And consequently forward? At what point do you start shar- it became my habit to hand in a manuscript ing your work with an editor (and perhaps to my editor only after I knew it was the Helen, your wife), and to what degree are way it should be. So basically, for most of you open to her or his suggestions? Can the books, editors have had nothing to do you recall moments when an editorial sug- except put the book through to production. gestion or discussion moved your books in There have been a few exceptions. When different directions? I finishedLoon Lake, I gave it to my editor, Jason Epstein, who was pleased with it. After With some novels I’ve found myself editing he had scheduled it and sent it off for design, page by page, not proceeding with the writing I decided that it was not right. I said, give me until I am satisfied with the page just done. the manuscript, give it back to me. (There In others I’ve raced right along, doing what were no pdf’s back then.) I said, give me six might be called gross editing every fifty or a weeks, I need six weeks. And I re-wrote the hundred pages, as the book begins to instruct book in the voice it should have had from me, and tells me what it needs to be realized. the beginning. I had a belated revelation Every book is different—in voice, in construc- about what the book should be. But it wasn’t tion, in texture—and as you work out its the editor’s insight, in that case. With The premises you find yourself revising in a way Waterworks, though, Jason suggested that that reflects the character of the book. I was not talking 19th century, I was talking Having worked in publishing for nine 18th century, and he was right about that. years as an editor, I learned to be as dispas- That was an extremely useful, even critical, sionate and objective about my own writing editorial comment on his part. It turned the as I was about the writing of others. And that book around. There’s one other exception.

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With Homer & Langley, Kate Medina, my cur- attitude, because once he handed in a manu- rent editor, said she felt a need for Homer to script, he gave us carte blanche to do what we say more about his parents. I was reluctant wanted with it. He’d be off in Paris and you’d to do that because I didn’t want to indicate send the galleys to him and not hear back, that there was any psychological reason for and not hear back, the production people hol- the way these brothers acted—that was a lering about the deadline, and Jimmy would different book. But I did make a few additions write, Dear Edgar, I’m sure you know what you that answered to that point, and I think they have to do, and it’s ok with me, you have my were a good idea and that she was right. blessing. A lot of the ideas I had as an editor were So you pretty much deliver your books for non-fiction books. In those days we were over to the editor at a level where they are trying to save Dial. It was barely scraping polished? along. So we were doing books about the Vietnam war teach-ins and publishing people Generally speaking, those books go in and like Abbie Hoffman, the Yippie leader. We that’s it. Not only that, but until I deliver the published a grand book the editors hoax called The have no idea what Report From I’m working on. I Iron Mountain, never talk about it, I a purported can’t, and they don’t secret govern- ask. They don’t ment document know what it is until claiming that it’s on their desk or peace was not in their computer. only impossible, I remember that but undesirable. That got the front you once observed Christian Wutz about your work- page story in the ing relationship New York Times with Norman Mailer that he was a dream and became a to edit. It sounds like that’s the case for you best-seller. We were very loose, very spunky as well. and non-corporate at Dial. I published an ex- perimental novelist named Ronald Sukenick, Did I say “dream?” But yes, Norman was a a book called Up. When I left Dial, he felt that professional, he listened and he was respect- no one else would publish him if I didn’t, and ful. He was nothing like the bombastic public he was right. He ended up starting something figure; he was a totally different fellow. When called the Fiction Collective, which published I came to The Dial Press there were already work that was outside mainstream publishing. galleys printed of An American Dream, and I saw immediately that the book had a serious Sukenick was, by the way, rather popular flaw, and I told him what it was. He agreed. in German academic circles for a while, But he said it was too late to go back to it, together with Raymond Federman. They it would require a total overhaul and he just were working together on the Fiction Col- couldn’t face it. He said: Why weren’t you here lective. three months ago? I never had much regard for what they were Another major writer to deal with was doing. Sukenick was the best of the group, I James Baldwin. His was an entirely different

2 8 WEBER THE CONTEMPORARY WEST think. I liked Up. I thought that was an inter- chestrates three imbricated narratives that esting book. take place in different historical moments, and we’ve got Everett who could be seen as Any other recollections about your editorial a sort of orchestrator of those narratives in relationships to writers? his notebooks. How did you decide to orga- nize and intersperse the various strands of My first job as an editor was with the New this novel. Was the process perhaps more American Library, which was basically a mass evolutionary and developmental? How do market reprint house, and so the actual edit- you arrange? ing was minimal, just seeing books through production. But the value to that was getting City of God developed from a story called to read a lot of good stuff—fiction, drama, his- “Heist” that I had published in The New tory, science, and to talk Yorker. (Uncollected to these authors and get until now, it has been some sense of how they I didn’t like the James Bond included in the recent conducted themselves books; I thought they were collection, All the Time when they were writing. in the World.) That I worked on books of racist and sexist and in denial story is the spine of Ayn Rand and Ian Fleming, of the end of the British City of God. It tells of an to name just two writers Empire, giving some sort of Episcopal priest whose of that era—consulting lower East Side church with them about cover Superman fantasy the name in Manhattan is vandal- design, copy, and so on, of an intelligence operative. ized. The big brass cross and being in position to But I liked Fleming, he was a on the wall behind the see what discipline they altar has been stolen. had or the self-esteem gracious man and charmingly He hears from a rabbi that was corrupting them. British in his self-denigration. that the cross has been (Laughter) I didn’t like found on the roof of the James Bond books; I the rabbi’s progressive thought they were racist synagogue in a town- and sexist and in denial of the end of the house on the Upper West Side. And the three British Empire, giving some sort of Superman characters of that story—the priest, the rabbi, fantasy the name of an intelligence operative. and the rabbi’s wife, who is also a rabbi—be- But I liked Fleming, he was a gracious man come friends as they try to figure out why the and charmingly British in his self-denigration. cross was stolen, and by whom, and why it Rand, by contrast, was a horrible woman, was put on the roof of the little synagogue. arrogant and ideologically stupid. I remember The priest, Tom Pemberton, is undergoing a suggesting to her that human beings didn’t crisis of faith. He finds himself falling in love have to be told to be selfish. I didn’t like her with the rabbi’s wife, Sarah Blumenthal, and at all, and she knew that. She said I had a lot becoming envious of Joshua, her husband. to learn (Laughter). I did, but not from her. The critic Alfed Kazin was fascinated with that story. He wrote me asking if there was I am curious about your editing practices, more to come. He had figured it out. He got in part, because structure and form tend to it. He was very interested in the religious be specific to each of your books and often consciousness of the nineteenth century largely depend on time frame and narrative novelists and poets I worshipped, like Haw- voice. City of God (2000), for example, is thorne, Melville, and Whitman. So he picked structurally complex because the novel or-

F A L L 2 0 1 2 2 9 CONVERSATION up on that, and he was delighted because he form of the book finally made itself clear to had this thesis that put him on the lookout. me when I realized that I had about a dozen He had published a critical work called God things going that I regarded as leitmotifs, and the American Writer and perhaps felt and I would just come back to them over something of his thesis in that book was and over throughout the book: the whole confirmed by the story. In fact I had already thing about birds, for instance, or Pember- moved to expand it, bringing in the character ton’s troubled relationship with his Bishop, of a professional writer, Everett, who, always Einstein and Wittgenstein, the events in the looking for a subject for his next novel, reads Kovno ghetto, that Holocaust material. a news account of the stolen cross, and I just modeled the book on my idea of senses it’s something that’s for him, and phase music, where every time you come back contacts Tom Pemberton. That’s the way the to a certain theme it changes slightly. That novel begins to take was the way I com- shape—it proposes itself posed that book, that’s as Everett’s day book as how it was assembled. he becomes friends with I modeled City of God on my Basically I found Pemberton and, later, idea of phase music, where myself working in what the rabbinical couple. every time you come back to is sometimes called The daybook, you “the mixed form,” see, means everything a certain theme it changes rather than doing a goes into it, every slightly. That was the way I linear narrative wound thought, every specula- composed that book, that’s how simply around a story tion, every report of line. And some people what’s happening with it was assembled. Basically I whom I respected—like the mystery. It invites found myself working in what the editor Ted Solato- free associative writing. is sometimes called “the mixed roff, who published And so, for instance, the excerpts of Ragtime fact that Sarah Blumen- form,” rather than doing a linear in the New American thal’s father had been a narrative wound simply around Review—were critical boy in the Kovno ghetto a story line. of City of God. He said in Lithuania during WW it was a ship without II, gave me a connec- a rudder or something tion to that, and I saw like that, and I was this whole novel spreading out and finding disappointed in him because I knew he was its depth. I wrote things as they occurred to wrong. He’d missed it completely, the conven- me, because I had the freedom of writing as tion of that book, its organizing principle. in a daybook where Everett would simply put down his thoughts as they occurred to him. You once mentioned to me that Harold It was, in a sense, accepting improvisation as Bloom called to congratulate you on your a creative principle, giving in to the intuition achievement. of spontaneous connectives, and so that’s Yes, the phone rang one morning and it was how we find riffs in the voices of Einstein and Bloom. He said, I got your phone number Ludwig Wittgenstein. That’s how we come to from Don DeLillo (Laughter), and he went on the Midrash Jazz Quartet interludes, where for fifteen or twenty minutes about how he the quartet does for the lyrics of well-known never thought that anyone could write about songs what a real quartet would do for the the Holocaust without exploiting it, without music, doing theme and variations. But the

3 0 WEBER THE CONTEMPORARY WEST somehow minimizing it by submitting it to time. Do you by any chance remember when aesthetic considerations. And I had. He ab- Everett describes the book as “a scissors- solutely raved about it, so that was hearten- and-paste-job” and thus analogous to the ing. I had for years resisted writing about the capacious narrative of the bible? Holocaust and more or less agreed with those who believed that you could not write about Yes, I do, and I must say that when I read it without being opportunistic, but I found City of God the first time, that passage myself writing this book and thought it was all suggested itself to me as a compositional right to be doing it the way that I was doing it. model for the novel right away. It is en- I regard City of God as a major work of mine. cyclopedic, of sorts, and full of internal When I look at it, I can’t find anything in it that tensions. doesn’t belong there. Yes, that is precisely what this book is. It be- City of God, I feel, is a particularly ambi- gins with a somewhat heated account of mod- tious book and received mixed reviews ern cosmology’s version of how the universe for perhaps precisely that reason. In the began. Now I didn’t see the book as having a New York Times biblical model behind it Book Review, A. O. until about the time I had Everett say that. In short, Scott acknowledged the I regard City of God as a novel’s commitment to without any conscious thought, but noted a major work of mine. When I planning on my part, the lack of coherence, and look at it, I can’t find anything book managed to affect the scissors-and-paste, in the New Republic in it that doesn’t belong there. Robert Alter saw City sewn-together form of as “a key to all my- the bible. The first per- thologies, and theolo- son to pick that up was gies, and histories, and sciences,” and as Mary Bahr, at the time the managing editor at “an undertaking that tests the limits of Random House. She said, you’ve constructed [Doctorow’s] abilities as a writer and finds a bible. Then it occurred to me, maybe that’s them sadly wanting.” These are harsh what got this fellow Alter so upset: he is a words. – I wonder whether these readers biblical scholar, who has translated the bible. are unwilling to accept a more theological Presumably he is religiously observant. (He and philosophical Doctorow who, in his is also the Alter who once said that The Book sixth decade as a writer, is writing directly of Daniel and Joe Heller’s Catch 22 were about contemporary America. Are they too anti-American novels. He’s from the love-it-or- steeped in a reductive image they may have leave-it school of literary criticism [Laughter].) of your work—sepia-toned stories of a by- Of course Srebnitsky, the tailor—one of gone New York—to grant you the creative your many sartorial figures in your work— freedom and courage to push your own exercises the craft that is very similar in boundaries and those of literary fiction? spirit to that of the writer, and his rag bin Well, it is an ambitious book, and when I hear too suggests an analogy to the stitched- from scholars who teach it, that’s enough to together textures of City of God. inure me from the criticism of the people who Yes. So that can be one way to understand the turn their back. Good and perceptive criticism way the book is put together. When I was do- can be valuable—you can learn from that. But ing it, I saw it mostly as circulated leitmotifs— in this case I thought these guys were wrong. ten or twelve different themes that I return to Maybe it’s one of those books that just take

F A L L 2 0 1 2 3 1 CONVERSATION over and over again. But I think it works both To me, they seem to spiritually reinvent ways, or perhaps with a subtext that proposes themselves, to be more in tune with their an additional anxiety for all of us, and so is a inner sense of being. much more impertinently radical book than I ever thought it would be. You may be right. I do give some lines to that scientist who talks about how you diminish City was published in 2000 a year ahead or minimize the universe by speaking of God of the attacks of September 11th, and I’m as a king. I remember enjoying writing that. wondering whether the book is marking, That minor character comes out of my experi- at least in retrospect, a kind of allegorical ence as a student at the Bronx High School caesura in the sense that we’ve got two of Science. And I think now of the remark of ecclesiastical figures, the late great physicist Sarah and Pem, who Richard Feynman who are both undergoing a wondered why, given spiritual transforma- The idea that Homer was a the vastness of the tion not sanctioned musician and that somehow universe, God would busy himself with our by their authorities. this would be reflected in his Does their marriage little planet. at the end of the book own language was crucial to the suggest a kind of new composition. That as a musician I ask partly because, as you know, often syncretism—a way of he would find a certain need maybe bringing various writers pick up on the religious traditions into to write sentences that had zeitgeist, the cultural a dialogue? rhythmic and tonal validity. tremors of their time, and then translate At that point, I wasn’t those into their work thinking about its out- and, in retrospect, of-book application. It just seemed to me that that work seems to mark a particular mo- by the time you get toward the end of the ment. City of God could be seen along narrative, you, the writer, don’t have many those lines. choices; everything is determined and you just have to fulfill your premises. It seemed to Perhaps so. It is not for me to say. me that somehow I envisioned this character Many of your novels use a specific histori- Tom Pemberton in a way that made his mar- cal timeframe as a constructive principle. riage and conversion to Judaism inevitable. Homer & Langley, by contrast, takes As a secular humanist in spirit, I have grave the reader on a panoramic walking tour misgivings about religion generally, its po- through almost a century of Americana, liticization, its divisiveness. But that ending and you extend the fictional lives of your was appropriate for Pem and Sarah, for those two major players to afford them, and us, particular people. I would not have thought this centennial glimpse. To what degree, of it as any applicable syncretism apart from if any, do you see Homer & Langley as what’s happening in the story. a structural departure from your previ- Given your secular humanism, I think it ous work—similar, perhaps, (only) to the would be fair to say that Sarah and Pem chronological unfolding of World’s Fair? are always thinking outside of their own Well, it is true that some of the other books (theological) box and do not fall within the are lateral in the way time is used. And I traditional parameters of revealed religion.

3 2 WEBER THE CONTEMPORARY WEST suppose this is a more vertical book. But I work, but the perspective is rather differ- was helpless to do anything else once I had ent. Homer and knew what he was doing—that this was his memoir, that it would come down Having read last night about Lissy and the through the decades of his life. At a certain hippies who move in on the brothers, I didn’t point I knew that there were certain qualities think I should read about another futile love of parable to this book. That if it had any value affair this afternoon (I mean both brothers’ at all, it was in the meaning that was not be- undeclared love for Homer’s piano student, ing expressed. I found myself choosing some Mary Elizabeth Riordan). But that certainly things that were not only typical of different suggests that Homer, and more secretively, periods of time, but that I had previously done Langley, led affective lives. And then of course in more detail in earlier books, as for instance the whole idea of Jacqueline Roux, the French this business about the gangsters, even writer coming to do a piece about America and though it might saving Homer from seem like I was getting run over doing some sort of and then becom- a round-up of my ing his muse, so own works. If read- that toward the ers came to that end we don’t know conclusion, that if he’s fantasiz- was their problem. ing about her or Because the spirit it’s real—that was and formal condi- nothing I could tions of this story have predicted were totally differ- for Homer when I Christian Wutz ent, and of course began the book. it would work if no And the idea one knew anything about the previous books. that she had this This is a chronologically linear narrative that hallucinatory vision of Central Park sinking comes out of Homer’s voice. The idea that he really appealed to me. It gave me a sense of was a musician and that somehow this would completion to the book. Maybe the genesis of be reflected in his own language was crucial that was the piano piece Mary Elizabeth Rior- to the composition. That as a musician he dan plays for Homer—Debussy’s The Sunken would find a certain need to write sentences Cathedral. that had rhythmic and tonal validity. And that Of course, I couldn’t help but wonder why was what occupied me, rather than any par- a French journalist would be the one to ticular event that we were covering, he and I, serve as a muse and have the vision of a in this book. You know, Mozart used the same sinking Central Park. melodies in different compositions. They all did. So I am too. (Laughter) Jacqueline is European—someone from a part of the world with more history than this Well, the very fact that Homer is blind and country has. I thought of her as a kind of a that the book is mediated by somebody who Simone de Beauvoir. She has this assignment has to negotiate and experience the world with no particular specificity, but just “to through his hands and his ears makes it get” America, to define it. Of all the European very different from your previous books. nationalities the French would be the ones You may have similar themes and concerns that come up in some of your previous

F A L L 2 0 1 2 3 3 CONVERSATION wanting to do that—they would choose some ing this book for me was not to get too heavily intellectual celebrity to come and try to figure into scene. That in writing a memoir what us out. In Central Park in Manhattan, as you was important was the flow of time, and so may know, there are places where you can that suggested the problem of writing a book have the illusion of looking up from a valley, totally in montage, which cannot be accom- the surrounding city skyscrapers all heaven plished. It had to alight at certain points. But bound, and the park land seemingly below I wanted the effect of montage even in scene. the level of the rest of the city. It was a very peculiar problem, I thought, not wanting to take advantage of the ordinary Coming back to sound and voice, especially opportunities of fiction. I felt perhaps I was as you hear yourself reading Homer & spending too much time with Vincent and his Langley to yourself, I’ve noticed that one crew, or spending too much time with Lissy of the compositional principles is almost an and her friends. But there is a way to do fully aural dialectic. There developed scenes with is Homer hearing the sense of time something and then passing through them all of a sudden anoth- At a certain point the problem of montage-like, so that er sound or noise in- writing Homer & Langley for the book doesn’t start terferes and produces and stop, start and dissonance. And me was not to get too heavily into stop. given that he’s very scene. That in writing a memoir attuned to sound, he what was important was the flow If I may switch to often registers that. the topic of war for When Langley and of time, and so that suggested the a moment, I would his wife, Lilly, are problem of writing a book totally say that in Homer having this debate, in montage, which cannot be & Langley, you Harold is playing touch on all the the cornet and all of accomplished. It had to alight at major wars of the a sudden there is the certain points. But I wanted the past century. The disapproving scream- effect of montage even in scene. Collyers’ collection ing going on in the of artifacts begins background. Homer with the Springfield & Langley contains that Langley brings many such moments of clashing sounds home and is later complimented by the M1 that seem to me to suggest that you really rifle, and both serve as these really ironic put yourself into, well, not so much the Christmas ornaments on the mantle. Army mind but into the ears of Homer. Surplus goods and equipment seem to be a major stock from which Langley is building That’s an interesting observation. and replenishing his accumulations. Why do you emphasize this connection, and it’s I don’t want to project too much into this, a sustained one, between the war machine but I was thinking of Eisenstein’s notion and consumer culture? It seems to be pres- of montage translated from film into the ent more in this book than in some of the realm of sound—these, you know, literally other books. jarring juxtapositions. Wars are very productive. What really got Well, your use of montage is appropriate America out of the Depression was World War because at a certain point the problem of writ- II, and suddenly with government infusions

3 4 WEBER THE CONTEMPORARY WEST into industry this enormous productive ca- including that of typewriters. To me he pability appeared. And not only in tanks and becomes a modern-day Tiresias of the City planes and guns, but in the amount of cloth- in that his blindness affords him a peculiar ing that was necessary to outfit the millions form of vision (or better, audition) and of men being drafted. So it’s another kind of authority that he wouldn’t maybe other- consumerism, isn’t it? Regardless of the rea- wise have. son for its production—the reason for a tank or an airplane—it’s material consumption and When Homer attempts to describe his com- part of this society. And then, of course, there pensatory sense system, he is actually telling is enormous waste, which is why Langley goes the truth about what he feels. And then, of into these Army Navy stores and picks up course, Langley turns it into an idea about these armloads of things for nothing and says the philosophical problem of knowing what they’ll be useful someday. So it seems to me is really out there. But Homer is telling his there is a legitimate physiological truth. connection to be He has developed made between this a compensatory kind of consumerism The traditional trouble is between ability. and a war. You lose truth as people find it in empirical You mentioned that men, you lose lives, investigation and truth that the the novel’s open- you gain an economy, ing sentence, “I am you gain material fiction writer finds. But now we are Homer, the blind possessions. And of in a new kind of trouble. It comes brother,” was cata- course that last world of the screening of every possible lytic for you. For war, as Kazin once me, as a reader, it wrote, was seen as a experience, with whole populations was important, too, victory of liberalism, carrying around pocket screens, and in the sense that but in fact it turned reducing communication to 140 this sentence an- the United States into nounces the novel’s a military-industrial characters. If Henry James were alive sensory change of state. today, he would take himself out. guards from sight Homer has the best to sound, and Hom- of all possible ears er, indeed, describes because he’s blind, and so the most impor- his dimming vision tant sense he has, which compensates for right away in terms of a cinematic fade his lack of vision, is his ears. The novel to out. I wonder whether you were writing for me seems to suggest a redistribution of your readers to maybe rediscover their own the senses, which the reader is invited to embodied sensorium, which the sight-based go along with. We need our eyes to read media of the present have accorded second- the text in front of us, but when Homer is ary status. In the same measure as vision feeling his way into the typewriters, he is has predominated since the beginning of doing that partly by sound. He can distin- the 20th century, other senses have been guish a Hammond from a Blickensderfer, forced into the background. Do you see the whereas Vincent, the gangster, associates verbal structure and texture of narrative the staccato of the typewriter with the fiction, with its imaginary appeal to the sound of a Tommy gun. Homer has such enervated body of the reader, as one of the finely attuned ears that he can pick out any niches which the novel can claim for itself particular noise from all the other noises, in the future?

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I think of the novel as a major act of the cul- example. But if plasticity is a fact, so can the ture. I would rather see it disappear altogeth- brain conform over time to the visually domi- er than have it as something to fit in a niche. nant culture so that the nature of thinking will Of course you are right about the dominance change. Reading may not be necessary except of the visual. Everything is screened; words for scholars, and someday they may be decod- are screened. In City of God Everett talks ing our novels as scholars today pore over the about movies and how ubiquitous they are, cuneiform tablets of Sumer. Not a pleasant and how he sees the whole world being put prospect, is it? But I thank you for thinking of on film. He doesn’t even begin to say anything Homer as a first responder to this emergency. about digital photography. Novelists have always struggled with one problem or another Your work of the past two decades, more so that the culture presents—and the form was than your earlier work, I feel, pays increas- accustomed to adver- ing attention to the sity from the very be- body. The Water- ginning. The tradition- works, of course, al trouble is between If plasticity is a fact, the brain can dramatizes in almost truth as people find it conform over time to the visually gothic fashion the in empirical investiga- dominant culture so that the abuse and misuse of tion and truth that the young bodies in the fiction writer finds. nature of thinking will change. service of old bodies But now we are in a Reading may not be necessary needing cellular new kind of trouble. It except for scholars, and someday replenishment, and comes of the screen- Homer & Langley ing of every pos- they may be decoding our novels tells the story of sible experience, with as scholars today pore over the physical challenges whole populations cuneiform tablets of Sumer. and sensory degen- carrying around pocket eration, not through screens, and reducing the eyes but ears communication to 140 and hands of a blind characters. If Henry James were alive today, narrator. Is this sensitivity toward a fail- he would take himself out. But for the rest of ing body perhaps connected to your own us this is our own new challenge, and we will awareness of the process of aging? have to do what writers have always done—to Well, I think that a book in whatever meta- take what they give you and turn it back on phorical way can reflect your state of mind. them. How that will turn out I don’t know. It’s Books always encode your own life in some inevitable that someone writes a novel in a way. But remember—codes are cryptic. form of e-mails. They have novels written on There’s a somewhat satiric attention to bodies cell phones in Japan. I don’t want to read any in Ragtime. In , after an explosion of them. They are not the answer. The problem one of the Union soldiers is unharmed except may be insoluble. for a spike protruding from his skull. In Billy In recent years neuroscientists have Bathgate, which I composed in my fifties, revised the standard model of the brain. I represent the active sex life of a teenage The old idea was intransigent localization, boy. Representing physicality is a way of whereas now it is understood the brain has doing character. So there has to be writerly plasticity and different areas can be retrained, attention to the physical being. People have or remapped, and made compensatory for bodies. They’re young or old, tall or short; areas that no longer work, as in a stroke, for

3 6 WEBER THE CONTEMPORARY WEST they are lovers, requited or not, they are Empire, and he says that this sentence blind or deaf, or hale and hearty, droolingly even to this day is better felt than read. insane, tattooed, handsome, beautiful, good Now, that speaks loudly to me, and I can tennis players. Whatever they are is pertinent see him reading this. He’s reading with his to who they are. Writers use bodies like they fingers. use weather, like they use landscapes. Could Falstaff be anything but what he is if he were Yes, I imagine the actual scholarship has not fat? Should we wonder if Shakespeare advanced since Gibbon wrote, and perhaps was fat? If a reader thinks of the writer’s life, scholars today know with more authority rather than that of his characters, then the the history of the Roman Empire. But I don’t writer is in trouble. Or the reader is. think any contemporary historian of Rome can match Gibbon’s magisterial prose. And he Homer is very much aware of his disability does get the story right. So you read him and and that conditions his entire . . . I can’t wonder if we’re getting to be more and more say outlook because he can’t see, but he’s like Rome—sending our armies, our ranks, our extremely sensitive to his lack of vision, of phalanxes out to destroy the barbarians at course. He has this line about, toward the the ends of the world, and finding them more beginning, Edward Gibbon’s The History than we bargained for. of the Decline and Fall of the Roman

Michael Wutz is Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at Weber State University and the editor of Weber—The Contemporary West. He is the co-editor of Reading Matters: Narrative in the New Media Ecology (Cornell, 1997), the co-translator of Friedrich Kittler's Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Stanford, 1999), and the author of Enduring Words— Narrative in a Changing Media Ecology (Alabama, 2009)

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