The Sound and the Fury
I'm up to The Sound and the Fury in my Faulkner project... maybe it's the precursive reading, but I'm not struggling with the narrative the way I recall in high school. Maybe also it's the consequence of election season... the fact that I've somehow immersed myself in southern politics and culture, trying to comprehend the swing-state psychology and the way a crass New Yorker with a crooked script could appeal to it. Rather than being dated, the Compson family seems a little familiar-- something for everyone. In fact, poor promiscuous Caddie reminds me of my older sister who managed to smooth over her many-layered indiscretions with a colossal and expensive wedding cake which only fooled a few. The marriage was pretty much done before the cake went stale.
Every dysfunctional family has its parallels... there are the bad eggs, the mean alphas, the deflated father-symbols, the fallen daughters... the alcoholics, the narcissists, the mentally defective and the failures. The unforgiven. Many of these have a nanny-figure-- maybe a nurse or housekeeper-- a paid parental figure who heroically loves at least one member, and holds them together for at least a time. Then there are the funerals-- the disgraces, the suicides. As literature, the subject doesn't get old. We are the Family of Man.
The thing about being over 65 is that few really fault you for being outspoken... or else they don't bother retorting. I'm subtly motivated by the residue of resentments for the petty injustices I've swallowed during my lifetime; truth outweighs courtesy when time is limited. I am so very willing to offer comfort to the sweet and fragile who are suffering, but less so to the others who have caused as much pain as they have absorbed. You know who you are, I want to say... but 'you' don't. These people rarely take accountability.
The best literature shows us ourselves... it doesn't blame or moralize, it describes and shines a light on the shadows. It observes, where there are no witnesses. We have all done things, unseen, that have consequences. Writers take the opportunity of talent to expose their own past sins and injustices. And we all get to a certain age... the demons and villains of our childhood are long dead... it seems almost safe to write the stories, to point our fingers. This, we reason, is why I am this way-- why a marriage failed, or why another never had children... why success evaded us or our ambition consumed our capacity for empathy.
There are not many clear heroes in modern literature. We have plenty of those in the classics... and the more complex life becomes, the more we seem to turn to heroics and fantasy in our cinematic entertainment. It's a little absurd-- the apparently simple thematic formulae of these blockbuster extravaganzas.
Friday night, late, I watched that Chantal Akerman film where 95% of the action is a bourgeois woman in her little flat performing her daily chores in a sort of domestic claustrophobia. It's long-- it feels like the day passes in real time-- but it's hypnotic and, for me, mesmerizing. At a certain point in the afternoon, this woman who puts on a prim housecoat to do dishes turns tricks. You can't judge a book by its cover. But I can't imagine my son or any of his friends having the patience to screen this movie; they prefer Marvel or Scorcese... fantasy and extreme violence and gangster culture-- some horror thrown in. This is entertainment.
On the political front, I am too nervous to be entertained by any of the Town Halls or celebrity endorsements. We are immune to the pleading, sick to death of the accusatory and aggressive advertising... we are manipulated and lied to by the very same device that shows us drama-- movies, comedy, sports... it is altogether processed as a form of entertainment rather than our political future. The media describes Beyonce's simple dress and Michelle Obama's suit. Sure, their words reach some ears, but it is what they represent that remains like an afterimage... and then they are gone.
How can this be happening, I ask myself daily... a buffoon of a man convicted of both tax fraud and multiple sexual offenses, running neck-in-neck with a seasoned and reasonable politician who stands for American democratic values? What universe is this that there is even an argument? The election is not a TV show... it's a major event in our history and will shape not just the next four years but could damage and distort our national trajectory for decades, if we even survive the critical transition.
Among my friends there are those that threaten to leave the country. I did, too, after Bush, Jr was elected. But I came back. Then there was Obama... and here we are again, at some kind of brink which feels even more worrying to me now.
In my own city, today, Madison Square Garden.. where I saw my first Knicks game, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon... was turned into a kind of theatre of the extreme grotesque. Hideous soundbites were used like ammunition. Some of them went home with audience members, and stayed on their tongue. We are reduced to two opposing teams here, like a Sunday football match; there will be one winner.
The villains in our families either pass away, grow old and defused, vanish into cemeteries and old scrapbooks. My sister hurt a number of people by her manipulative behavior and changed my destiny, perhaps. We are forced to lie for these people whose blood we share, even while it changes and destroys people. We are punished by the Jason Compsons who dominate the softer among us. Families, even when we leave home at seventeen, have a kind of co-dependent effect. We share shadows and genetics and we all have a different take on the central narrative. It's complicated. No matter how good we think we are, there is residual guilt and pain in our past.
In an election, we cast our ballot alone. We get a clean sheet--no one supposedly knows our individual mind and some of us still believe we can change the narrative by a vote. Let us hope that, pen in hand, we put aside the entertainment factor-- the contest, the game... and consider carefully not just our personal but our civic responsibility.
A-women.
Labels: Beyonce, Chantal Ackerman, dysfunctional families, elections, evil, Faulkner, heroes, Madison Square Garden, Marvel films, Michelle Obama, New York, southern politics, the Sound and the Fury, Town Hall, Trump