You can’t choose the formative moments in your life, the ones that
warp your personality, for better or worse. It’s from these moments that
creative expression is tinged. I’ve seen this is all my favorite authors. Eco’s
novels are concerned with Semiotics. Grant Morrison with justifications of his
alleged abduction into the “4th Dimension.” And Alan Moore
copes with his abuse at the hands of DC.
Autobiographically speaking, my writing
didn’t take hold of me until Post College. Even though I have written before
(as early as ten years old) large novellas and attempted writing a serial/novel
in Junior High and High School, these stories were regurgitations of
pre-rendered material. I was imagining characters in my mind’s eye and throwing
them into situations to see what would happen. Once I got out of college, I
wrote a very poor novel, that would be re-written and overhauled significantly,
until the end product would become my first book “Spirit of Orn.” During this
time I discovered the truth behind the great lie that all of you (if you are
near or around my age) heard in school: “Do good in school. Go to college. Live
happily ever after.”
While I will not contest the value of
college, why it’s incredibly important to be exposed to it, I will say that our
reasons to going are catastrophically short sighted. It was my shortsightedness
that brought me to all my formative moments. I was shown that we are not
special (in the eyes of the controlling powers of world affairs), but that we
are expendable, in an ever churning Nietzschean machine that compels us to
become ubermensch, to escape intellectual poverty, only to subject our peers to
that poverty and become tyrants to maintain our privileged superiority. (I’m speaking of CEOs,
factory owners, Lawyers, Doctors, “professionals,” etc.) I discovered this at
Apple, that despite my cognitive abilities, I was reduced to a brand mouthpiece
for a technology giant. After leaving Apple for a short lived stint at a bank,
which in hindsight was its own oasis from the horrors of corporate America, I
“hit rock bottom” and had to get a job washing dishes for At Stone Brewing
Company. I labored there for about 6 months, the bare minimum required to
transfer to another position, and moved into production, the making and
packaging of beer. Life was good, for a short while. But I soon became
acquainted with the reality that every American factory worker faces: that we
are not special, that we are unessential. My peers were systematic victims,
culturally rich, but socially and financially impoverished. One of my own
co-workers was killed in a forklift accident, and even though I did not know
him, his death occurred during an incredible spurt of productivity and
expansion that took it’s tool on all departments as we attempted to fill orders
at breakneck speed. Around the same time, the boiler in the main brewhouse went
critical, requiring the fire department to be called. I was told the boiler was
purchased “used” to save money. But there was so much unreliable information
communicated in the company that everyone was always ignorant of something.
That too could have been idle chatter.
I struggled to be kind, I struggled to be
sympathetic, I struggled to be forgiving because of my experiences at this
brewery, and they inform my plots and characters to this day. I write about
loss, about reputation, about intellectual conquest, and about exploitation. In
most of my stories someone dies, in order that another might be saved. (This
coming from my Christian worldview.) And I think all of this is important to be
conscious about. Because when we realize this, we can grow deeper with our
characters and plumb the depths of our experiences to make theirs more
evocative and convincing. The Bottle Falls a
short story featured in my recently released Tall Men and Other
Tales is pulled directly from my work at the brewery. Some people read
it and laugh because they know how much I complained about working there, but
when they do they are missing the point: it was a traumatic experience in my
life that made me into the egalitarian / socialist I am today, advocating
education to anyone that can pick up a book and read, so that they aren’t taken
advantage of a system designed to fuck us over.
So with me, other authors have been
irrevocably influenced by their experiences. Understanding those biographical
details helps readers to read between the lines, and get deeper insight into the
story before them. There are many authors I could mention, but for time and
space I’ll only mention those I am most familiar with.
When I was working for an academic press, Sequart Organization, I
spent a year researching the works of Neil Gaiman, in hopes that I could write
a book about his seminal work in The Sandman. My
impression of Neil is one of a man acquainted with literature, not necessarily
in an solely academic fashion—though he is very sharp—but as one with a
profound love for it. Anecdotes, if my memory serves me well, place Neil in
many libraries growing up, including a personal one, which inspired me to build
one of my own for my children. There he would read endlessly, building his own
literary acumen from a diverse pool of sources. The time he spent being a
journalist put him in contact with real people of varying morality, social
standing, religion, and status, and became an indispensable well for characters
and creatures to build his world. I recall reading an article he wrote about
staying in a Syrian refugee camp, and how he accidentally kicked over a water
bucket in his tent that could only be refilled some distance away at a spigot
used for the entire population. (I would append a link to the article here, but
the BBC no longer has it on their site.) Also his being raised in the Church of
Scientology seemingly had a profound effect on his philosophy of storytelling,
though he has distanced himself from the church completely and no longer
espouses to be a member, so I’ve heard. All these experiences distill down to
Gaiman’s style and substance in his writing.
Umberto Eco, on the other hand is a
different story all together. While I have digested his books slowly over the
last two years I have discovered a man obsessed with meaning, and how
duplicitous it can be. A typical postmodern as you would suspect, but also
sympathetic to the medieval institutions that promised knowledge could be
known. He is well acquainted with hermetic philosophy, and prone to make fun of
it on many occasions. It was the subject of an entire book called, Foucault’s
Pendulum. His awareness of traditions in epistemology and
participation in academia place him in close contact with social issues and
those in authority to make informed statements about them. My favorite
collection of essays I’ve read of his are focused on aspects of truth and
justice and their mutability (Inventing the Enemy). Even though
I am a fan of the eponymous essay, his essay on the addition and subtraction of
information as a form of censorship is still timely and speaks to how we
utilize the internet to distract ourselves and, subsequently, dehumanize what
we are as social creatures. Eco’s own personal library of approximately 30,000
books, comes through in his writing, which is encyclopedic in nature. And his
proximity to anti-fascists and their protests during the 60s and 70s in Italy,
give him a rebellious streak, though not one without wry deconstructions of the
movements as just repeating the mistakes of their forebears.
I had initially
wanted to end this on the subject of Alan Moore or Grant Morrison, but I am
still learning about their individual traits. Recently I’ve been attempting to
understand Moore’s work, which is very unpredictable. His understanding of
voice is profoundly accurate and can emulate the demeanor and mood of female
characters better than any writer I have encountered. But his work is very
moody, burdened by a history of being taken advantage of. He lacks the critical
distance to see what he’s accomplished in his career, and prefers to downplay
the contributions he’s made to the genre and the dozens of authors he’s
inspired (Gaiman included). This figure that writes of apocalypses as
transitionary events and not as catastrophes to be averted runs against the
grain of Grant Morrison’s rock-star demeanor plots which are bombastic and
playful, but also incredibly introspective and philosophical. His experience of
being “abducted” has influenced every plot he has written since, continually
through his creative artistry, attempting to justify his experiences as
authentic and not the product of some drug fueled trip in Katmandu. Like Moore,
Morrison fancies himself as an agent of the occult, with initiate knowledge
into the hermetic traditions that have colored the history of Great Britain.
Yet I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that, whereas Moore accepts the
changes offered by cosmic upheaval, Morrison’s work describes events that are
evaded, and any Lovecraftian horrors waiting to consume our universe easily
assailable.
My point is, after
all this, is that the author continually justifies him/herself in their writings.
Every piece of fiction is an attempt to convince you (the reader) that the
world is operating on a certain schema. And it’s good to be aware of these
things, as this ability to discern affects our understanding of world and
current events as well. If you are brave enough, consider your own lives and
identify the Acts that divide your growth from young to old and maybe things
will get a little clearer. If not for me, for science!
Happy July 4th!
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