But what do you believe in? Someone once asked me that, at one of those moments when I was being most critical of one thing or another. Attempting to survive in high school then, the question was very much in order, given my classroom interruptions. I spent entirely too much of my tine being critical of one thing or another. But, of course, that was the easier direction. It was always good to dissipate my anxiety through cynicism and criticism. Nevertheless, I did try to listen to what was being said and this would become a primary motivation for writing novels. I wrote one in high school that is mercifully lost—but the question and answer lingered on, and managed my mind through several other efforts.
I was already aware, given the short shrift that my classroom comments received, that there was no particular reason that what I had to say should receive any unique attention. I had not yet earned the right to any such consideration. But if the questions were carefully folded into the text of a narrative, I might be able to find the answers for myself. And that, given my peculiarities of nature, was a process that might entertain me indefinitely.
One of those answers might have first resulted from a classroom reaction as well. That was concerning the matter of narrative. I began then to see the narrative as a key element in communication. Just below the matter of subject. If you had a subject you liked, it was incumbent upon you to relate your appreciation in a narrative that might reflect that, or at least make the case for it.
But what do I believe in?
I will tell you, being that I have asked myself now more than once. Over time, I have come to believe in narrative. As a philosophy. As a means. Even as an end. If a coherent narrative cannot be found and related, that is a sign that the subject might lack some relevance.
I have found that there is some confusion between narrative and story. A story is what happened. Reporters are supposed to handle that (but seldom do). Narrative is why it happened, and often, what happened as a result. My grandfather was always full of stories that kept me on the porch into the night. But often he would enter into the realm of narrative. One of those might occupy the entire evening plus a few sequels in the nights following. His were the first stories I became conscious of, and thus the expansion of his stories into the matters of cause and effect made an impression on me at an early age. My grandfather being a relatively simple man, a farmer and peddler—the intricacies of his narratives beyond story were made more indelible by many retellings. And that was one key to my understanding of the difference. A story could change, with the emphasis altered to meet some current event in our lives. But a narrative remained relatively constant Because this happened, that happened, and not the other.
In my youth I was often heard to extol the importance of story. When I first began to publish things—magazines and books—I was still very much aligned with that line of thought. It was only through my personal attempts to write novels that the difference between story and narrative became apparent to me.
I had long been at odds with logic and math. Fine tools for good reason, but both inadequate means of understanding the human psyche. That the several hundred thousand years of human thought and thinking that resulted in the Parthenon and the Pantheon, Reims Cathedral and the Duomo of Milan must be ignored for the sake of two hundred years of faulty human reasoning resulting in the brutalist hives of urban planning seemed unjustified, especially for the obvious inadequacies apparent when applied to primary human wants and needs. Logic has no handle on love, or for that matter hate, or even friendship. Math had no means of judging beauty or the opposite. Logic or math could not even begin to assess right from wrong without following a legal guide. And those were only primary failures. The little stuff is inestimable.
In an age of science, where all must be verifiable, using numbers appeared to be convenient, even if insufficient. Reducing the human variable to numbers makes authoritarian control so much more probable. Eliminating individual autonomy in favor of the diktat of governmental decree makes modern socialism work. Insular families must be reduced and private property eliminated. Public school should be mandatory. Curriculums prescribed and proscribed. Controlling the money supply was as necessary as managing work hours. Taxing represented government income, as well as good public management. And golly gee, along comes the computer as the perfect digital tool for all those numbers, and with it, AI to make the computers efficient.
The deficiency of efficiency would be—should be— obvious to anyone who cared about art, or music or babies, or anything but time. But then the definition of art must be changed.
You might blame Matthew Arnold for the academic snobbery of differentiating between classical and what he called the Renaissance. He didn’t coin the word but he gave it substance. And his aggressive tagging of all things (at least this philistine would say) made categorization a sport—and an evil. As much good as he did for raising the stock of literary pursuits, he reversed by reducing the middle ages to a dark and medieval time.
But, what do I believe in?
I believe that in a choice between order and chaos, chaos is to be preferred. Chaos has received a bad rap. That love is messy and true. That art is indeed in the eye of the beholder, but like good aim, appreciation can be improved.
If the life of an ant appeals to you, I have little to explain. Western civilization may be failing beneath the onslaught of Mr. Arnold’s ‘barbarians,’ but I think it is likely to be stronger for having survived. And it will. The ‘Romantic’ era was only an easy academic tag for one culmination of human achievement. Categorize it if you must, but after a mere four thousand years, it is still a stunning achievement—then again so is the art in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, and music in the eighteenth and nineteenth. The twentieth century may have indulged many of the flaws of scientific thinking, but we survived that too.
And now we have other things to do.
I have a new novel about all this, ‘Whatever it takes,’ but you might want to start with something less didactic.
I recommend some local lobster chowder, an ear or two of fresh picked corn, some brewed ice tea, and homemade ice cream made with whole cream. If you are not from New England, I am sorry about that.