You told me not to read the book on the subway. I did not follow your advice and the results were, well, more, much more, than you predicted.
There I was on the subway, no one to talk to, nothing else to read. I had brought the Wall St. Journal to read on the way in, but threw it away. So, ignoring your sage counsel, I read.
People around me quickly noticed the effect the book was having on me and became curious. Soon, they were asking, hey man, what you reading? Then it was, hey man, read it out loud. The whole car was insistent. What choice did I have?
So I started to read it aloud. I'm no actor, but I read well. I read slowly, calmly, carefully. I did not ham it up. I did not overemphasize the racy parts. But then the writing doesn't need that, does it. Perhaps my calm reading only increased the effect.
I was focused on my reading, nose in the book. So I didn't at first see what was going on. People stayed on, let their stops pass by. They became flushed and a bit squirmy. At first, they didn't know what to do. But then one man and woman who were not traveling together, moved to sit together. Soon the entire car had paired up. Some of the pairs were a bit weird, ages and styles that did not belong together, but no one wanted to be alone. I just kept reading. I was totally engaged and I guess I became oblivious to those around me. When I finally came to a point where I needed to pause, I looked up. Every single couple, young, old, in between, mixed up, were lying back in post coital bliss. The car was now heavy not only with the words, but also the sounds, smell and taste of sex.
It was like the old cigar factories. One worker would read stories while the rest worked. I was the reader, they worked, so to speak.
Though I had not participated, not had the satisfaction the others achieved, I still felt very good. I hadn't written the book and I hadn't had the pleasure of letting it take me over. But clearly I had helped increase the pleasure in the world by a small amount in one subway car.
I left the car then to allow them all to put themselves back together and resume their anonymous travels. No one said a thing as I exited.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Elizabeth K. Mahon Interviews Francis Levy
Q: Tell us a little about yourself, what is your background and how did you come to writing?
I was an English major at Columbia and always wanted to write. Actually trash that, I went to Columbia and felt like shit, just hated myself, felt inferior, undesirable, my long time girlfriend had left me, I then went to Yale Drama School, in a program they had in critical writing and continued to feel like shit. I constantly wanted to be top man on the totem pole. At Yale I began my long career oedipalizing reality. I constantly wanted what everyone else had. There is an expression you've got to want what you have. It took me about thirty years to learn that. I started writing for all the wrong reasons basically as a way of looking for attention. I think all writers do this to some extent and I'n ending my career with the same base motives. You will never hear a heartening word from these lips. I look at writing as an animalistic activity, a delving into an unconscious instinctual world; this is where the addictive power of writing comes from. This is a world that psychotics inhabit unwillingly and that writers are free to come and go from as they please. There is a deceptive veneer of humanism to the enterprise, but essentially it has to do with the will to power. Who used that expression? When I first came to NY after my years in New Haven, I got a job in publishing. I expected the literary world to be kind of cult of sensiblility, EM Forster had talked about "the aristocracy of he heart." It was nothing like that.
Q. How long did it take you to write the book and find a publisher?
It's a short book, but it took a couple of years since it was rewrirtten a lot. I had published a lot of short fiction, essays, humor, criticism in a wide variety of places including The Village Voice, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, The East Hampton Star, The Quarterly and so on, but I had never published a book. I have written other books which I tried to publish unsuccessfully and I was a little wary of the situation. So I actually didn't really do much submitting. I think I queried a few places and maybe sent some sample chapters out, but I didn't seriously set out to get published in the way I had in the past. I work with a very good editor named Maggie Paley and she showed it to her agent at the time Jane Gelfman. Jane liked it, but wasn't going to handle a first novel whose only destination was going to be Morgan Entrekin at Grove. He is the one that everyone thinks off when they have an edgy book. You have to remember that the situation in publishing is particularly bad now. It really sucks. I think one of her authors someone with a big track record had spoken highly of a small publisher in the midwest called Two Dollar Radio. That's how I heard of it. I went on line, looked up their submission guidelines then submitted, sight unseen. I heard back from Eric Obenauf the publisher. He liked what I had shown him and wanted to see more. I sent the rest and he offer me a contract.
Q. Your first release is entitled Erotomania: A Romance. How did you come up with the idea? From your blog, you specifically state that the book is not autobiographical in any way!
The original title of the novel had been Savage Fuck, then Savage Kiss, but the publisher wasn't hot on it. So my wife Hallie said, why don't you call it Erotomania. It's a word I frequently bandy about. The significance of the title for me really is that Erotomania is a pathology and pathology is a form of consciousness. My two characters start as animals. they are really walking ids and they they develop personality and consciousness. It's what allows them to get to know each other and it;s the thing that always draws them apart. The romance part came because from the first my publisher regarded it as a love story. I think his acceptance letter said somethinng like "you have reinvented the love story."
Q. I have to say that even though I’ve read a great deal of erotic romance and erotic, I found myself blushing at the sexual nature of the book. Was that something that you were concerned about all? Did you find yourself ever pulling back during the writing?
Never, not once. I don't regard it as pornographic or sexually stimulating either. I just wrote. You have to understand the language the thinking is all a little like Bunuel and Dali's Chien Andalou, a mixture of humor, sexuality and agrgression. It's not the language of reality, rather that of dreams. if you look at the sexuality in that context you will hopefully see it in another way. By the way I have nothing against pornography or writing that is sexually stimulating. One of my favorite books is DH Lawrences's The Rainbow--which is wonderfully sexy.
Q. The book is not set in a specific place, although the characters travel quite a bit going to various museums, and Jim travels for work. Was there a reason why you didn’t set the book, say in New York, or Chicago?
Again, this isn't reality. It's more of a dreamscape and hence I wasn’t concerned with that kind of verisimilitude.
Q. Although this book is written solely from the male point of view, we get a strong sense of Monica’s character. Did you find it a challenge getting into Monica’s head?
Not really, I have always been fascinated by women. One of my jokes which has some truth in it is that I have a lesbian sensiblity. That is, I have the sensibiity of a woman who loves other women. I don't think sexual consciousness need be defined by sexual orientation or biology. I can be a woman in a man's body for instance while not being a transexual, who desires a sex change operation. I love being a man, but I also love thinking about what it is to be a sexual or even non sexual woman.
Q. Not to spoil it for everyone, but both Monica and Jim have suffered a similar experience with a parent, was this a conscious decision on your part? And I noticed that it wasn’t really addressed during the counseling sessions.
There was nothing consciously addressed with regard to the creation of Monica or Jim's back stories. They just evolved. However, I am a great believer in the significance of manifest content. In other words if you spot a relationship then there is a signifance to it. I am still seeing things in the novel that I hadn't consciously noticed when I wrote it. I'm a very regimented person. I work on a strict schedule the same time everyday etc, but when I actually get into the act of writing I'm in a rather manic state. It's like a good therapy session that is painful at the same time. I delve into area I might not have been aware of ideationally, then I wake up from my dreaming, only to return to the wet dream or nightmare the next day.
Q. The character of the relationship counselor, is almost the anti- Dr. Phil. Is he based on someone you know or a completely fictional creation?
It's a total fictional creation, as is the whole novel. I will say this however. I have had lots of experience with psychoanalysis, and marriage counselling both and let me add I only satirize or caricature that which I love. I actually have an article in the current issue of the psychoanalytic journaol Contemporary Psychoanalysis entitled "Catricide, Matriciide and Magic: the Artist as Chimera."
Q. Food also plays a major part in the book, particularly Chinese food. You live in New York, what are your favorite Chinese food restaurants?
I used to eat in a place called Jade Mountain. It was between 12th and 13th on Second. It was the old combination plate kind of deal with the naugahyde booths and linoleum tables, a staticky oldies station playing in the background. I always ordered the Number #1` chow main, egg roll, fried rice and wanton soup. The Chow Mein sign is still up there on the building if you pass by. Now it's a bar. It was run by a guy named Reggie Chan. He was chief cook and bottle washer. There was a delivery guy, but Reggie made deliveries sometimes too. One day the delivery guy didn't make it to work I guess and Reggie got hit by a flat bed truck while making a delivery. That was the end of Jade Mountain and a whole period of my life. My kids grew up there. When I got my black belt we had my party there.
Q. Monica and Jim spend a great deal of time watching TV. Are there any shows that are must see TV for you?
I watch no TV. I am not against it. I just watch no TV I don't have the time.
Q. What are some novels that you could read again and again?
War and Peace, The Brothers K, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Great Expectations, The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq.
Q. Who do you admire and why?
I admire mostly dead people, Chekhov, Freud, I loved Bergman more than my own life. He is the Shakespeare of film. I hate being entertained and I hate beauty which I find alienating, but I love art and artists whose currency is human pain. That is something I identify with. It's not the pain of living that is so difficult. It is being alone in it that has always been the problem for me. I don't find a movie like Through a Glass Darkly disturbing in the least for instance. I find I solace in it. When I first saw the great Bergman films I was overwhelmed with the feeling of consolation.
Q. What is your writing process? Do you plot extensively first or do you tend to “fly in the mist?” Has your process changed over time? Do you write multiple drafts or clean up as you go?
No plotting. I write as I go, I try not to think. Ideation is the enemy of invention for me. I never say I have an idea for something. A line or succession of lines occurs and I'm off to the races.
Q. You work out seven days a week, you manage your family’s real estate holdings as well as a homeless program called Safe Haven, and you’re in analysis, when do you find time to write?
I write at the same time every day for starters. I write and weight lift in the mornings. then I go to karate or spinning or I jump rope, then I go to my analytic appointment, then I write some more. In the afternoons I write again and rewrite. I am usually working on three different things at the same time. For instance I recently completed a long essay on my analysis called "Pscyhoanalysis:The Patient's Cure."
Q. Do you have any advice for aspiring novelists?
As I have said before writing is an irrational activity; that is where the power comes from, but to deal with the huge amount of irrationality unleashed, a firm regimen is necessary. The discipline, the regimen is everything. It's what allows the process to take place. I no more think about feeling like writing than I do feeling like working out. I just do it , the same time everyday. I rarely feel like working out. Who does? Do you know anyone who wants to do something that is difficult and exhausting?I feel the same way about writing.
Q. You are also the co-director of The Philoctetes Center here in New York. Can you talk a little bit about the Center and what it does?
The Philoctetes Center is psychoanalysis, neuroscience and humanitires. We run roundtables and are now running an increasingly ambitious research program. We have a poetry series and a jazz improv series and we have a collaboration with Film Forum where we preview films of theirs that have artistic or psychological resonances. We ran a whole series on creative process showing films about Kiki Smith, Chuck Close, Louise Bourgeois etc. Chuck Close and Kiki Smith came to talk about these film. The center began as a discussion about imagination. Imagination being the palette of psychoanalysis we were interesed in what creative people who have a particular intense connection to unconscious life could tell about analysis and conversely what analysis could tell us about the process of creativity.
Q. What are you planning to work on next?
Two things. I have a collection of interrelated short stories, really fables called The Kafka Studies Department. I term these "emotional mysteries." They are illustrated by my wife Hallie Cohen , who is a painter and chair of the art departmen at Marymount Manhattan College. My next novel is nearing completion. It's called "Seven Days in Rio" and concerns a sex tourist who gets waylaid at a psychoanalytic convention.
I was an English major at Columbia and always wanted to write. Actually trash that, I went to Columbia and felt like shit, just hated myself, felt inferior, undesirable, my long time girlfriend had left me, I then went to Yale Drama School, in a program they had in critical writing and continued to feel like shit. I constantly wanted to be top man on the totem pole. At Yale I began my long career oedipalizing reality. I constantly wanted what everyone else had. There is an expression you've got to want what you have. It took me about thirty years to learn that. I started writing for all the wrong reasons basically as a way of looking for attention. I think all writers do this to some extent and I'n ending my career with the same base motives. You will never hear a heartening word from these lips. I look at writing as an animalistic activity, a delving into an unconscious instinctual world; this is where the addictive power of writing comes from. This is a world that psychotics inhabit unwillingly and that writers are free to come and go from as they please. There is a deceptive veneer of humanism to the enterprise, but essentially it has to do with the will to power. Who used that expression? When I first came to NY after my years in New Haven, I got a job in publishing. I expected the literary world to be kind of cult of sensiblility, EM Forster had talked about "the aristocracy of he heart." It was nothing like that.
Q. How long did it take you to write the book and find a publisher?
It's a short book, but it took a couple of years since it was rewrirtten a lot. I had published a lot of short fiction, essays, humor, criticism in a wide variety of places including The Village Voice, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, The East Hampton Star, The Quarterly and so on, but I had never published a book. I have written other books which I tried to publish unsuccessfully and I was a little wary of the situation. So I actually didn't really do much submitting. I think I queried a few places and maybe sent some sample chapters out, but I didn't seriously set out to get published in the way I had in the past. I work with a very good editor named Maggie Paley and she showed it to her agent at the time Jane Gelfman. Jane liked it, but wasn't going to handle a first novel whose only destination was going to be Morgan Entrekin at Grove. He is the one that everyone thinks off when they have an edgy book. You have to remember that the situation in publishing is particularly bad now. It really sucks. I think one of her authors someone with a big track record had spoken highly of a small publisher in the midwest called Two Dollar Radio. That's how I heard of it. I went on line, looked up their submission guidelines then submitted, sight unseen. I heard back from Eric Obenauf the publisher. He liked what I had shown him and wanted to see more. I sent the rest and he offer me a contract.
Q. Your first release is entitled Erotomania: A Romance. How did you come up with the idea? From your blog, you specifically state that the book is not autobiographical in any way!
The original title of the novel had been Savage Fuck, then Savage Kiss, but the publisher wasn't hot on it. So my wife Hallie said, why don't you call it Erotomania. It's a word I frequently bandy about. The significance of the title for me really is that Erotomania is a pathology and pathology is a form of consciousness. My two characters start as animals. they are really walking ids and they they develop personality and consciousness. It's what allows them to get to know each other and it;s the thing that always draws them apart. The romance part came because from the first my publisher regarded it as a love story. I think his acceptance letter said somethinng like "you have reinvented the love story."
Q. I have to say that even though I’ve read a great deal of erotic romance and erotic, I found myself blushing at the sexual nature of the book. Was that something that you were concerned about all? Did you find yourself ever pulling back during the writing?
Never, not once. I don't regard it as pornographic or sexually stimulating either. I just wrote. You have to understand the language the thinking is all a little like Bunuel and Dali's Chien Andalou, a mixture of humor, sexuality and agrgression. It's not the language of reality, rather that of dreams. if you look at the sexuality in that context you will hopefully see it in another way. By the way I have nothing against pornography or writing that is sexually stimulating. One of my favorite books is DH Lawrences's The Rainbow--which is wonderfully sexy.
Q. The book is not set in a specific place, although the characters travel quite a bit going to various museums, and Jim travels for work. Was there a reason why you didn’t set the book, say in New York, or Chicago?
Again, this isn't reality. It's more of a dreamscape and hence I wasn’t concerned with that kind of verisimilitude.
Q. Although this book is written solely from the male point of view, we get a strong sense of Monica’s character. Did you find it a challenge getting into Monica’s head?
Not really, I have always been fascinated by women. One of my jokes which has some truth in it is that I have a lesbian sensiblity. That is, I have the sensibiity of a woman who loves other women. I don't think sexual consciousness need be defined by sexual orientation or biology. I can be a woman in a man's body for instance while not being a transexual, who desires a sex change operation. I love being a man, but I also love thinking about what it is to be a sexual or even non sexual woman.
Q. Not to spoil it for everyone, but both Monica and Jim have suffered a similar experience with a parent, was this a conscious decision on your part? And I noticed that it wasn’t really addressed during the counseling sessions.
There was nothing consciously addressed with regard to the creation of Monica or Jim's back stories. They just evolved. However, I am a great believer in the significance of manifest content. In other words if you spot a relationship then there is a signifance to it. I am still seeing things in the novel that I hadn't consciously noticed when I wrote it. I'm a very regimented person. I work on a strict schedule the same time everyday etc, but when I actually get into the act of writing I'm in a rather manic state. It's like a good therapy session that is painful at the same time. I delve into area I might not have been aware of ideationally, then I wake up from my dreaming, only to return to the wet dream or nightmare the next day.
Q. The character of the relationship counselor, is almost the anti- Dr. Phil. Is he based on someone you know or a completely fictional creation?
It's a total fictional creation, as is the whole novel. I will say this however. I have had lots of experience with psychoanalysis, and marriage counselling both and let me add I only satirize or caricature that which I love. I actually have an article in the current issue of the psychoanalytic journaol Contemporary Psychoanalysis entitled "Catricide, Matriciide and Magic: the Artist as Chimera."
Q. Food also plays a major part in the book, particularly Chinese food. You live in New York, what are your favorite Chinese food restaurants?
I used to eat in a place called Jade Mountain. It was between 12th and 13th on Second. It was the old combination plate kind of deal with the naugahyde booths and linoleum tables, a staticky oldies station playing in the background. I always ordered the Number #1` chow main, egg roll, fried rice and wanton soup. The Chow Mein sign is still up there on the building if you pass by. Now it's a bar. It was run by a guy named Reggie Chan. He was chief cook and bottle washer. There was a delivery guy, but Reggie made deliveries sometimes too. One day the delivery guy didn't make it to work I guess and Reggie got hit by a flat bed truck while making a delivery. That was the end of Jade Mountain and a whole period of my life. My kids grew up there. When I got my black belt we had my party there.
Q. Monica and Jim spend a great deal of time watching TV. Are there any shows that are must see TV for you?
I watch no TV. I am not against it. I just watch no TV I don't have the time.
Q. What are some novels that you could read again and again?
War and Peace, The Brothers K, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Great Expectations, The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq.
Q. Who do you admire and why?
I admire mostly dead people, Chekhov, Freud, I loved Bergman more than my own life. He is the Shakespeare of film. I hate being entertained and I hate beauty which I find alienating, but I love art and artists whose currency is human pain. That is something I identify with. It's not the pain of living that is so difficult. It is being alone in it that has always been the problem for me. I don't find a movie like Through a Glass Darkly disturbing in the least for instance. I find I solace in it. When I first saw the great Bergman films I was overwhelmed with the feeling of consolation.
Q. What is your writing process? Do you plot extensively first or do you tend to “fly in the mist?” Has your process changed over time? Do you write multiple drafts or clean up as you go?
No plotting. I write as I go, I try not to think. Ideation is the enemy of invention for me. I never say I have an idea for something. A line or succession of lines occurs and I'm off to the races.
Q. You work out seven days a week, you manage your family’s real estate holdings as well as a homeless program called Safe Haven, and you’re in analysis, when do you find time to write?
I write at the same time every day for starters. I write and weight lift in the mornings. then I go to karate or spinning or I jump rope, then I go to my analytic appointment, then I write some more. In the afternoons I write again and rewrite. I am usually working on three different things at the same time. For instance I recently completed a long essay on my analysis called "Pscyhoanalysis:The Patient's Cure."
Q. Do you have any advice for aspiring novelists?
As I have said before writing is an irrational activity; that is where the power comes from, but to deal with the huge amount of irrationality unleashed, a firm regimen is necessary. The discipline, the regimen is everything. It's what allows the process to take place. I no more think about feeling like writing than I do feeling like working out. I just do it , the same time everyday. I rarely feel like working out. Who does? Do you know anyone who wants to do something that is difficult and exhausting?I feel the same way about writing.
Q. You are also the co-director of The Philoctetes Center here in New York. Can you talk a little bit about the Center and what it does?
The Philoctetes Center is psychoanalysis, neuroscience and humanitires. We run roundtables and are now running an increasingly ambitious research program. We have a poetry series and a jazz improv series and we have a collaboration with Film Forum where we preview films of theirs that have artistic or psychological resonances. We ran a whole series on creative process showing films about Kiki Smith, Chuck Close, Louise Bourgeois etc. Chuck Close and Kiki Smith came to talk about these film. The center began as a discussion about imagination. Imagination being the palette of psychoanalysis we were interesed in what creative people who have a particular intense connection to unconscious life could tell about analysis and conversely what analysis could tell us about the process of creativity.
Q. What are you planning to work on next?
Two things. I have a collection of interrelated short stories, really fables called The Kafka Studies Department. I term these "emotional mysteries." They are illustrated by my wife Hallie Cohen , who is a painter and chair of the art departmen at Marymount Manhattan College. My next novel is nearing completion. It's called "Seven Days in Rio" and concerns a sex tourist who gets waylaid at a psychoanalytic convention.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Erotomania: The Sequel
I had been channel surfing when I came upon the interrogation scene in Basic Instinct (l992) with its famous crotch shot. The sight of Sharon’s Stone’s pussy must have been like Proust’s Madeleine awakening long forgotten memories. When a body changes as much as Monica’s had, it’s almost as if the personality has died and in the few times she talked about our past life fucking, it was as if she were describing another person. The fat had almost caused her to become disembodied from her former self. She was like an exile, like the diasporic Jew or the hegiric Muslim. She’d become a solitary consciousness seeking a home. I was reminded of so many of the ill-fated boats filled with Haitian and Cuban refugees whose cargos inevitably met a tragic fate. She had the look of the lifer, condemned to death in life, in the cell of overeating that she had created for herself.
I flipped the channel and on one of the public access stations a performer was reading the first line of The Communist Manifesto, “Workers of the world unite…” Flipping back, Sharon Stone was crossing her legs yet one more time.
“Let’s go to Sam’s Club,” Monica said, unwrapping a Twinkie and stuffing the whole thing in her mouth. “I have to change.”
Instantly La Grand Bouffe (l973) flashed through my mind. Michel Piccoli presided over a feast in a French Chateau where a group of bon vivants eat themselves to death. There was something elemental, almost heroic in the notion of gluttony. In Se7en (1995) it’s depicted as a mixture of Hieronymous Bosch and Arcimboldo. I could follow her descent from gourmet to gourmand, with us finally feasting on each other, a latter day Donner Party in which we ripped each other’s clothes off as we had in the beginning, literally dining on each other’s flesh. I imagined a dramatic decomposition and then a rebirth. Yes, I should give up the exercising and give in—watching television, cooking up Swanson’s Hungry Mans in the toaster oven—until we had achieved critical mass. Then would come the famous mushroom cloud sequence which ended Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (l964) with its ironic musical coda. Yes, we would meet again. This time the border of personality would literally be destroyed along with all the attendant meanings. There would be neither perception nor self-conception in the oblivion of mastication. We would literally vomit our brains out, becoming mindless torsos, and in so doing achieving our ultimate liebestod, a love in death, in which we had been so consumed by desire that we’d literally feasted on each other’s skin and bones.
“Can we watch a fuck film first?” I didn’t realize what I’d said until the words popped out of my mouth. It’s a funny thing about sex, when it’s not apart of your life, even the most harmless insinuations seem like vulgarity, and Monica looked like she was going to hurl there and then.
“All old married couples watch porn.” I was angry that I would have to explain myself, but when Monica wasn’t fucking her brains out there was something almost virginal about her. In her present sedentary condition she was as easy to shock verbally as she had been to stimulate physically in the days when we were two animals roving the veldt at night. “It’s how they get turned on.”
“We’re not married,” Monica reminded me. “But I heard of a terrific caterer named Leonard’s in Great Neck where they do Bar Mitvahs.” For a moment her eyes danced with delight, as if she drifted into a reverie of unattainable beauty, a dream which provided a moment of refuge from the harsh realities she faced. She momentarily forgot her annoyance about the porn as she contemplated the prospect of a catered affair.
“I had almost gagged at Pasolini’s Salo (1975), but I had often thought of the film when I considered the messy birth of our relationship. Is individuation an urge that is inherent in all life forms? Do molecules of substances, do atoms of inanimate matter exhibit the similar drive to differentiation and a countervailing need to return to oneness, commonality? Had we come full circle, doffing our clothes, losing ourselves in each other, going through the journey of self, in which we had ascribed identities to each other only to end up throwing off these identities and wallowing in our own vomit and shit? We were like those inside out sushi rolls. We had filled ourselves with so much food, culture, and identity that we had exploded. But we were in good company. Einstein had tried to unify gravity and quanta, but failed to discover a unified theory. Why should we expect to find that we would have an easier struggle in resolving the conflict in our existence between the chaos of the demi-urge and the desire for ultimate unity and oneness. It had been wonderful to be reborn, and ultimately lonely, and now we had entered an Orphic period of regurgitation in which we needed to destroy and rise up out of our own ashes, in order to create.
I stared meaningfully into Monica’s eyes. She looked like she was going to throw up and since she had a decent track record in this area, I took the alarm which had been ignited somewhere between my hippocampus and pre-frontal cortex (the area of the brain most involved in the production of short term memory) and ducked just in time to miss being hosed down with her insides. The only thing that Monica had left to do was to contract one of the hemorrhagic viruses which derive from Monkey’s, like Marburg’s or Ebola. Then literally she would have been able to pour her guts out to me.
Where to go from here? We had been reduced to the basics, like Beckett’s famous tramps Didi and Gogo. I’d recently done the sets for the Waiting for Godot which was playing in Fond du Lac. So the scene of devastation in which we found ourselves was close to home both physically and metaphysically.
I have always believed that the spiritual solution can be sought, but never taught. Augustine was struck by lightning and I had certainly had been struck in the face by Monica’s vomit, but I knew the solution she had to find. The ascetic life, the life of abstinence, the world of starvation and silence retreats, was something she would have to gravitate to. Cosmologists believe that something cannot come out of nothing, but nothing can come from something. Once there was literally no more room in Monica’s intestines, once her arteries were clogged, once her obesity had reached the point where she couldn’t budge and her legs were covered by broken blood vessels, when fat literally burst through her skin, once she had filled up all the empty spaces and stood there like the Hindenberg, waiting to burst, only then, when she had reached what we in AA call a “bottom,” would she be propelled to take that first step, to curtail her intake of junk food, and to consider the possibility of eventually denying her appetites. Like the serial killer who haunted Wichita and then lay dormant before striking again, the animal in Monica had arisen in her again—in the form of an obsession with food that equaled and indeed surpassed her one time desire for sex. And when I looked at her bloated face with its dumbfounded expression, I knew she was the only one who could do anything about it.
I flipped the channel and on one of the public access stations a performer was reading the first line of The Communist Manifesto, “Workers of the world unite…” Flipping back, Sharon Stone was crossing her legs yet one more time.
“Let’s go to Sam’s Club,” Monica said, unwrapping a Twinkie and stuffing the whole thing in her mouth. “I have to change.”
Instantly La Grand Bouffe (l973) flashed through my mind. Michel Piccoli presided over a feast in a French Chateau where a group of bon vivants eat themselves to death. There was something elemental, almost heroic in the notion of gluttony. In Se7en (1995) it’s depicted as a mixture of Hieronymous Bosch and Arcimboldo. I could follow her descent from gourmet to gourmand, with us finally feasting on each other, a latter day Donner Party in which we ripped each other’s clothes off as we had in the beginning, literally dining on each other’s flesh. I imagined a dramatic decomposition and then a rebirth. Yes, I should give up the exercising and give in—watching television, cooking up Swanson’s Hungry Mans in the toaster oven—until we had achieved critical mass. Then would come the famous mushroom cloud sequence which ended Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (l964) with its ironic musical coda. Yes, we would meet again. This time the border of personality would literally be destroyed along with all the attendant meanings. There would be neither perception nor self-conception in the oblivion of mastication. We would literally vomit our brains out, becoming mindless torsos, and in so doing achieving our ultimate liebestod, a love in death, in which we had been so consumed by desire that we’d literally feasted on each other’s skin and bones.
“Can we watch a fuck film first?” I didn’t realize what I’d said until the words popped out of my mouth. It’s a funny thing about sex, when it’s not apart of your life, even the most harmless insinuations seem like vulgarity, and Monica looked like she was going to hurl there and then.
“All old married couples watch porn.” I was angry that I would have to explain myself, but when Monica wasn’t fucking her brains out there was something almost virginal about her. In her present sedentary condition she was as easy to shock verbally as she had been to stimulate physically in the days when we were two animals roving the veldt at night. “It’s how they get turned on.”
“We’re not married,” Monica reminded me. “But I heard of a terrific caterer named Leonard’s in Great Neck where they do Bar Mitvahs.” For a moment her eyes danced with delight, as if she drifted into a reverie of unattainable beauty, a dream which provided a moment of refuge from the harsh realities she faced. She momentarily forgot her annoyance about the porn as she contemplated the prospect of a catered affair.
“I had almost gagged at Pasolini’s Salo (1975), but I had often thought of the film when I considered the messy birth of our relationship. Is individuation an urge that is inherent in all life forms? Do molecules of substances, do atoms of inanimate matter exhibit the similar drive to differentiation and a countervailing need to return to oneness, commonality? Had we come full circle, doffing our clothes, losing ourselves in each other, going through the journey of self, in which we had ascribed identities to each other only to end up throwing off these identities and wallowing in our own vomit and shit? We were like those inside out sushi rolls. We had filled ourselves with so much food, culture, and identity that we had exploded. But we were in good company. Einstein had tried to unify gravity and quanta, but failed to discover a unified theory. Why should we expect to find that we would have an easier struggle in resolving the conflict in our existence between the chaos of the demi-urge and the desire for ultimate unity and oneness. It had been wonderful to be reborn, and ultimately lonely, and now we had entered an Orphic period of regurgitation in which we needed to destroy and rise up out of our own ashes, in order to create.
I stared meaningfully into Monica’s eyes. She looked like she was going to throw up and since she had a decent track record in this area, I took the alarm which had been ignited somewhere between my hippocampus and pre-frontal cortex (the area of the brain most involved in the production of short term memory) and ducked just in time to miss being hosed down with her insides. The only thing that Monica had left to do was to contract one of the hemorrhagic viruses which derive from Monkey’s, like Marburg’s or Ebola. Then literally she would have been able to pour her guts out to me.
Where to go from here? We had been reduced to the basics, like Beckett’s famous tramps Didi and Gogo. I’d recently done the sets for the Waiting for Godot which was playing in Fond du Lac. So the scene of devastation in which we found ourselves was close to home both physically and metaphysically.
I have always believed that the spiritual solution can be sought, but never taught. Augustine was struck by lightning and I had certainly had been struck in the face by Monica’s vomit, but I knew the solution she had to find. The ascetic life, the life of abstinence, the world of starvation and silence retreats, was something she would have to gravitate to. Cosmologists believe that something cannot come out of nothing, but nothing can come from something. Once there was literally no more room in Monica’s intestines, once her arteries were clogged, once her obesity had reached the point where she couldn’t budge and her legs were covered by broken blood vessels, when fat literally burst through her skin, once she had filled up all the empty spaces and stood there like the Hindenberg, waiting to burst, only then, when she had reached what we in AA call a “bottom,” would she be propelled to take that first step, to curtail her intake of junk food, and to consider the possibility of eventually denying her appetites. Like the serial killer who haunted Wichita and then lay dormant before striking again, the animal in Monica had arisen in her again—in the form of an obsession with food that equaled and indeed surpassed her one time desire for sex. And when I looked at her bloated face with its dumbfounded expression, I knew she was the only one who could do anything about it.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
On the Writing of Erotomania: A Romance
Actual sexuality, what occurs between one or more persons in the bedroom, the bathroom, the cell, has little to do with the imagination of sexuality. The emphasis on bodily functions that characterizes the early part of Erotomania is an expression of the condition of man as animal. I don’t think as I write. In fact I work myself up into a state through weight lifting and karate practice that is meant to induce the illusion that I am writing with little concern or respect for my cognitive faculties. Essentially the unconscious is totally ruled by urges and drives that contravene the Enlightenment notion of man as rational animal. The imagery of this so-called “primary process” thinking is colored by instinct. That is why much of the speech of psychotic patients is laced with often disturbing erotic, sometimes violent imagery. In my writing regimen, I stick to a rational and repetitive practice, much like Zen or psychoanalysis, where I can enter this dangerous world in a disciplined manner—at the same time every day, 365 days a year. I think artists and psychotics have much in common, only the artist is able to move freely between the worlds of his conscious and unconscious while the psychotic is trapped. I make this daily appointment with myself in the early morning hours, and my unconscious is ready for me.
Years ago, when I was a freelancer, I interviewed Bertolucci for a piece I was writing. I asked if the incidents of Last Tango in Paris were taken from his life experience. He told me if he had lived them, he wouldn’t have been able to turn them into art. That’s the way I feel about Erotomania. Every artistic act is autobiographical in the sense that it reflects the concerns of the writer, but in terms of happenstance I have never delved into any of the areas that Erotomania describes with the exception of marriage counseling, nor have I even been to any of the places, including the Albright-Knox Museum in Buffalo or Akron. And while I once visited Key West, and in fact spent a night at the Casa Marina hotel, I never enjoyed any of the colorful night life that transpires on Key West’s famed Duval Street, nor have I ever visited a gay barbecue joint of any sort, especially one named The Golden Cock with a sister establishment named Sticky Fingers, nor a restaurant catering to gay farmhands in Kansas called Cock ’N Bull. I have never met any of the Russian avant-garde artists I describe inhabiting the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, nor do I know if such a community exists.
In a way the narrative of Erotomania is like what I do every day which is to go into a nether world, coming out and rejoining my life as a member of human society. My two main characters, Monica and James, basically are not people at the start of the book. They are walking id’s costumed as humans and by the end, they have developed character and consciousness. In this sense the book is about the emergence of consciousness from the animal state; it’s an evolutionary tract with evolution envisioned as an ontogenic process. Though scientists have had remarkable luck in making parrots learn up to l00 words, most animals remain animals for the entirely of their natural lives. Using writer’s license, I have created animals who turn into people. There is a part of the novel when my two protagonists are chimeras, man/beasts who are conflicted, as we all are, only more so. But for the most part I start with a couple who scent each other out without either the delight or restrictions of consciousness and end with a pair of humans who go to therapy to deal with their relationship problems. Erotomania may have a realistic veneer in that there are recognizable sights like the Holocaust Museum, but it is hardly a work that frames reality in a proscenium, presenting a kind of art that imitates the perception of so called reality. The provenance of the work is more Dalí and Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou, which presents a dreamlike universe tinged with violence, desire, and hopefully a good deal of humor.
Years ago, when I was a freelancer, I interviewed Bertolucci for a piece I was writing. I asked if the incidents of Last Tango in Paris were taken from his life experience. He told me if he had lived them, he wouldn’t have been able to turn them into art. That’s the way I feel about Erotomania. Every artistic act is autobiographical in the sense that it reflects the concerns of the writer, but in terms of happenstance I have never delved into any of the areas that Erotomania describes with the exception of marriage counseling, nor have I even been to any of the places, including the Albright-Knox Museum in Buffalo or Akron. And while I once visited Key West, and in fact spent a night at the Casa Marina hotel, I never enjoyed any of the colorful night life that transpires on Key West’s famed Duval Street, nor have I ever visited a gay barbecue joint of any sort, especially one named The Golden Cock with a sister establishment named Sticky Fingers, nor a restaurant catering to gay farmhands in Kansas called Cock ’N Bull. I have never met any of the Russian avant-garde artists I describe inhabiting the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, nor do I know if such a community exists.
In a way the narrative of Erotomania is like what I do every day which is to go into a nether world, coming out and rejoining my life as a member of human society. My two main characters, Monica and James, basically are not people at the start of the book. They are walking id’s costumed as humans and by the end, they have developed character and consciousness. In this sense the book is about the emergence of consciousness from the animal state; it’s an evolutionary tract with evolution envisioned as an ontogenic process. Though scientists have had remarkable luck in making parrots learn up to l00 words, most animals remain animals for the entirely of their natural lives. Using writer’s license, I have created animals who turn into people. There is a part of the novel when my two protagonists are chimeras, man/beasts who are conflicted, as we all are, only more so. But for the most part I start with a couple who scent each other out without either the delight or restrictions of consciousness and end with a pair of humans who go to therapy to deal with their relationship problems. Erotomania may have a realistic veneer in that there are recognizable sights like the Holocaust Museum, but it is hardly a work that frames reality in a proscenium, presenting a kind of art that imitates the perception of so called reality. The provenance of the work is more Dalí and Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou, which presents a dreamlike universe tinged with violence, desire, and hopefully a good deal of humor.
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