It's not just we writers that are outsiders, but our characters are too.
Who but an outsider could have created one of the greatest outsiders, Captain Ahab? "Alright what was he outside of?" you ask cynically, your eyebrow arched so that it almost looks like a question mark recumbent. The simple answer: Humanity. It doesn't matter that he was pretty much evil incarnate (or was he?), he was superhuman in pursuing his goal and we love/hate that. Excess in the service of one's beliefs mark some of our favorite characters.
The obsession of Humbert Humbert; the neverending need of Holden to root out and expose the phonies; the desire of Portnoy to masturbate at all costs; the need for Cheever's swimmer to swim across the county, pool by depressing pool. We love the crazies with our own obsession that itself is perhaps story-worthy. And we love them because deep down we think there is something admirable in such purposeful craziness.
Mainstream lit folk will pooh-pooh the idea that such a thing exists. Here's something you might not know: a lot of the literati have no idea that we exist at all. We are outside their "spheres of interest," and they consider themselves lucky if they never have to deal with us at all, except to note us on slow news days when editors tell their reporters to round up the latest "new Beat writers" and "give me 1,500 words and get a quote from one of the original Beats, if any are still alive."
I call the situation of the mainstream literati the "last ride syndrome." And it goes like this:
Think of an upstanding member of your community, employed, following all the rules and doing all he can to be a noteworthy statistic, with all the statistical acoutrements that allow him to live statistically comfortably in the style in which he is accustomed. Every day he travels the same route to work. Every night he retraces that route to get home. It is a routine, but it is his routine. He loves it.
And then one day something breaks his routine. He dies. As the hearse squires him to his final resting place his spirit looks around at the new route the vehicle is taking. He sees things he has never seen before and he is really only a few streets away from the usual route. He wishes that when alive he'd veered away from the routine a bit -- even if it was only to take an alternate route to work occasionally. He continues to be amazed at the things he passes, shocked actually, at the variety he never knew existed in his town. But he has lived a good -- if mundane -- life and now he is on his way to his final reward. As he looks heavenward he asks sheepishly: "Excuse me...sir(?)...but do you think I could keep driving around a bit? I'm seeing some very interesting things I had no idea existe..."
"Oh no, that would be impossible," comes the answer. "I arranged everything just the way you like it -- by the rules. You always loved the routine didn't you?"
"Did I?" gulps the deceased. "But I had nothing to compare it too..."
"Nothing to...Listen Mac!" the voice thunders. "You had two eyes, two ears, a brain and all the rest. It's too late now to want the grand tour. Besides, you've got an appointment. Some of your friends are going to say a few nice things about you and then leave you under a shady Maple tree for the rest of time. Surely you know that death is the biggest routine of all."
The mainstream literati have subjugated their need to break the rountine and they have their degrees and contacts. They're connected like no faction of outsider or underground lit can be. They strive to be mentioned on Page Six and in Gawker. They comment on all the hippest lit blogs. They get Myspace and Facebook pages and write blogs about their latest projects which will ultimately be a DVD or mp3 or podcast or (gasp!) a book. It will look indie/DIY/ziney but it will be produced by a major corporation. It will grab the interest of the media as well as teenage girls just starting to get hip to "irony". The McSweeney's crowd will oh-so-gently mock it, but then pick up a copy in a bookstore on the other side of town. People like me will have to know about it in order to write a rant like this. I may even like some of it, in an offhand "it's not my style, but I can see where it's coming from" kind of way.
But what is that? Just another sort of routine. The outsider/undergrounder routine. Are we just taking the same route to the same thing, gaining no knowledge of anything outside of our little reverse snob sphere? Just recently there was a serious discussion -- by insiders, not outsiders -- about how the term "indie" should be retired from the literati lexicon. In a wonderful example of the snake eating its own tale, we have the likes of Jonathan Lethem (once an outsider by dint of his beginnings in the Science Fiction field; now a very insidery recipient of the McArthur "genius grant" of...a lot of bucks so he can continue to be a genius...And no, I don't begrudge him his winnings) declaring that "indie" is just a branding tool, and has no meaning anymore, as the term "alternative" also has run its course and has no meaning.
Wow.
I have to say that both of those words have meaning to me and inside my (admittedly non-genius) brain I know exactly what they mean. Those folks can declare that words like indie no longer have their intended meaning (snake has now made it well past tail and is chomping its on way up; soon it will disappear completely). Or the meaning they think they should have. Hmmmm.
Look, I can declare my front yard a sovereign state, but that doesn't make it one. For those establishment people to deny the meaning of indie...Well, to me it's sort of like astronauts who have been shot far out into space -- they're heroes; but then all of a sudden they deny Earth exists. I know we look like less than specks from way up there, but really, we do still exist.
And to anybody who doesn't like the word indie...
Or alternative...
Might I interest you in "outsider?"
J.D. Finch
Last update : 15-08-2008 02:05
|
|
|
Users' Comments  |
|
Average user rating
 (0 vote)
|
|
Add your comment
|
List All Content 
Fresh
By: David Blaine (Guest) on 18-08-2008 10:00