Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself (38 page)

I guess. Yeah, I guess my first inclination would be to say that most of that would be—to create stuff that mirrors sort of neurologically the way the world feels.

[Dogs whimpering]

[Snapping fingers] Hey, c’mere! C’mere, Jeeves.

But you’re right: and the fact of the matter is—

I was quoting you, actually—

No wonder it sounds so, so very smart.

C’mere! You know what? You’re making me nuts. Sit down! Sit down, I can’t think when you’re doing this.

But I guess part of it is, it also affects the kind of inner experiences. And you know, the feelings that fiction is about. Today’s person spends way more time in front of screens. In fluorescent-lit rooms, in cubicles, being on one end or the other of an electronic
data transfer. And what is it to be human and alive and exercise your humanity in that kind of exchange? Versus fifty years ago, when the big thing was, I don’t know
what
, havin’ a house and a garden and driving ten miles to your light industrial job. And livin’ and dyin’ in the same town that you’re in, and knowing what other towns looked like only from photographs and the occasional movie reel. I mean, there’s just so much that seems
different
, and the speed with which it gets different is just. …

The trick, the trick for fiction it seems to me, is gonna be to try to create a kind of texture and a language to show, to create enough mimesis to show that really nothing’s changed, I think. [Different position from first interview, five days ago, when I defended the nothing-about-people-has-changed position.] And that what’s always been important is still important. And that the job is to find out how to do that stuff, in a world whose texture and sensuous feel is totally different.

And what’s important—you’ve been saying to me—is a certain basic humanity
.

Yeah … sort of, um, who do I live for? What do I believe in, what do I
want?
I mean, they’re the sorts of questions so profound and so deep they sound banal when you say them out loud.

I think every generation finds new excuses for why people behave in a basically ugly manner. The only constant is the bad behavior. I think
our
excuse, now, is media and technology
.

I think the reason why people behave in an ugly manner is that it’s really scary to be alive and to be human, and people are really really afraid. And that the reasons …

[As I get closer to the dogs, David likes me better too; has that pet owner’s helpless, natural, unavoidable faith in his dogs’ taste.

The dog keeps whimpering; David jokes he’s got “Godfather
Cheeks” from chewing the tobacco. Which he’s always spitting into things …]

That the fear is the basic condition, and there are all kinds of reasons for why we’re so afraid. But the fact of the matter is, is that, is that the job that we’re here to do is to learn how to live in a way that we’re not terrified all the time. And not in a position of using all kinds of different things, and using
people
to keep that kind of terror at bay. That is my personal opinion.

Well for me, as an American male, the face I’d put on the terror is the dawning realization that nothing’s enough, you know? That no pleasure is enough, that no achievement is enough. That there’s a kind of queer dissatisfaction or emptiness at the core of the self that is unassuageable by outside stuff. And my guess is that that’s been what’s going on, ever since people were hitting each other over the head with clubs. Though describable in a number of different words and cultural argots. And that our particular challenge is that there’s never been more and better stuff comin’ from the outside, that seems temporarily to sort of fill the hole or drown out the hole.

Could it be assuageable by internal means also?

Personally, I believe that if it’s assuageable in any way it’s by internal means. And I don’t know what that means. I think it’s fine in some way. [Tape off again; we keep turning it off while he mentally drafts and redrafts answers.] I think it’s probably assuageable by internal means. I think those internal means have to be earned and developed, and it has something to do with, um, um, the pop-psych phrase is lovin’ yourself.

It’s more like, if you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it’s probably
possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we’re here for is to learn how to do it. [Spits with mouthful voice into cup.] I know that sounds a little pious.

[We pause for a little.]

Women?

I date occasionally. I wouldn’t know what to say.

Hard?

I think if you dedicate yourself to anything, um, one facet of that is that it makes you very very selfish. And that when you want to work, you’re going to work. And you end up using people. Wanting people around when you want them around, but then sending them away. And you just can’t afford to be that concerned about their feelings. And it’s a fairly serious problem in my life. Because, I mean, I would like to have children. But I also think that the sort of life that I live is a pretty selfish life. And it’s a pretty impulsive life. And you know, I know there’s writers I admire who have children. And I know there’s some way to do it. I worry about it. I don’t know that I want to say anything much more about it—I mean, there’s jokes about getting laid on tour and stuff.

It’d be nice to have someone, for example, to be sharing this with?

Yeah. I really have wished I was married, the last couple of weeks. Because yeah, it’d be nice to have somebody to um—you know, because nobody quite gets it. Your friends who aren’t in the writing biz are just all awed by your picture in
Time
, and your agent and editor are good people, but they also have their own agendas. You know? And it’s fun talking with you about it, but you’ve got an agenda and a set of interests that diverges from mine. And there’s something about, there would be something about having somebody who kinda
shared your life, and uh, and that you could allow yourself just to be happy and confused with.

So nice to get back to hotel and call someone?

Yeah, it’s weird. You know—

I haven’t had a girlfriend for quite a few months, and I haven’t missed it that much. I’ve missed it the last couple of weeks. But I’m also—I mean, I’m aware that you don’t just
get
a girlfriend, so that you can have that. [The being close, the call from a hotel.] I mean, to get somebody in that sort of position takes some work, and you have to sacrifice some of your own stuff to get close enough with them so that they could do that. So I don’t really feel all that sorry for myself. But it is a problem.

Nice to have your borders redefined, though, by physical contact with another person … I’m not just a set of anxieties and ambitions. I’m a person confined to a limited range, realize your head is only a half-foot-long space, etc
.

Yeah, there’s other, I mean that kind of experience is gettable in a lot of ways. Through really hard exercise, where you learn all over again what it is to be a body. It’s gettable in a piece of music that’s so transcendently beautiful that you forget who and where you are.

Although, like anything else, if it’s done in the right spirit and with the right head. In certain ways it can be even lonelier. If it’s more like, “Oh—you know, if I do this, will it have this effect on this person?”

I remember hearing in New York, I forget who it was who was tellin’ this joke: What does a writer say after sex?
Was it as good for me as it was for you?

[We laugh: then I realize I’m not completely sure.]

And what is funny about that?

Well, why did you just laugh so hard? I think that there is, in writing, a certain blend of absolute naked sincerity and manipulation. And a certain way of trying always to gauge what the particular effect of something is gonna be.

That’s a very precious asset that really needs to be turned off sometimes. And one of the reasons why I think I’ve had such a hard time with females, you know, when I’ve been doing long work like this book, is that I think I’m sort of in that head that makes it, um—where I can be both spontaneous and very very very very self-conscious.

Do you think writers make bad bed partners then?

My guess as a private citizen is that writers probably make really fun, skilled, satisfactory, and seemingly considerate bed partners for other people. But that the experience for them is often rather lonely. And if you’re thinking of Orin in the book a little bit, that’s fine.

Tell me about the bandanna stuff we were talking about yesterday
.

I started wearing bandannas in Tucson because it was a hundred degrees all the time. When it’s really hot, I would perspire so much that I would drip on the page. Actually, I started wearing it that year, and then it became a
big
help in Yaddo in ’87, because I would drip into the typewriter, and I was worried that I was gonna get a shock.

And then I discovered that I felt better with them on. And then I for a while dated a woman who was—she was actually a
Sufi Muslim
, but she knew a lot about, she was like a ’60s lady, and she knew all about all kinds of different stuff. And she said that there were these various chakras, and one of the big ones was what she called the spout hole, at the very top of your cranium. [He demonstrates where it is, the dolphin and whale spot.] And in a lot of cultures, it was considered
better
to keep your head covered. And then I began thinking about the phrase, Keeping your head together, you know?

I mean, I don’t wear it all the time. I wear it—I know it’s a security blanket for me—whenever I’m nervous. Or whenever I feel like I have to be prepared, or keep myself together, I tend to wear it. It makes me—like last night we laughed, but it made me feel kinda creepy that people view it as an affectation or a trademark or something. It’s more just a foible, it’s the recognition of a weakness, which is that I’m just kind of worried my head’s gonna explode.

People just think it’s a way you’re trying to connect with the younger reading audience
.

I don’t know very many Gen-Xers who wear headbands. The worst thing about
here
is—I mean in the Southwest, people wear ’em all the time. And in New York, there’s a certain kind of hip way to dress that involves them.
Here
, one reason I got these plain-white ones is that people thought I was a biker. Here, it spells affiliation with Harley clubs. And I just don’t need that shit, you know? It’s hard enough to get a cab as it is.

But people thinking it’s a commercial gesture …

No. I don’t know what to say. I guess in a way I don’t even want you to have brought this up. [Like the “Borges and I” story.] Because now, I’m now worrying that it’s going to be intentional. Like if I
don’t
wear it, then am I not wearing it because I am bowing to other people’s perception that it’s a commercial choice? Or do I do what I want, even though it’s
perceived
as commercial—and it’s just like one more crazy circle to go around.

Another crazy circle: one of many crazy circles of this?

I guess. But once again, starting in about two hours, this is over. And I’m back, you know, to knowing about twenty people.

Do you feel your fame here? I mean, forget that I’m here, and I’m sure you felt it in New York and L.A.; but you’re sitting here with your two dogs?

I think it’s the sort of thing that you feel a lot more when there are other people around treating you differently. Like this FedEx guy came to the door. Whole different FedEx guy: You were maybe still in bed. To give me this
Village Voice
thing. He goes, “So how does it feel to be famous?” And
that
threw me. Because I like—this is my place not to have to deal with that stuff. So things may be weird here for a few months.

People here know? The FedEx guy knows?

Tell you man,
Time
and
Newsweek
. That’s, that’s—I hadn’t understood this, but that’s a whole different fucking level. That’s not the literary world, that’s the—and you know, I don’t
know
when the last person from Bloomington, y’know, who got mentioned in
Time
was, so it goes through the town like wildfire. You know, all my students’ parents had called them, to tell them about it … I mean, it was just like, your cover’s totally blown.

[Starts drumming on table; this makes him anxious.]

Not people in Walgreen’s or McDonald’s, but the FedEx guy. Did you feel invaded somehow?

Yeah, it was a creepy feeling.

And how’d you answer him?

I said, “My dogs don’t give me any more respect.” The thing about it is, yeah, when people say something like that, there’s this requirement always to be witty and
on
, and I feel it kinda now with
you
. Like there’s this, um—people expect a kind of witty, covering answer, that will allow everyone to walk away feeling good and chuckling. And there’s something, there’s something I resent about that, you know? That I should get to choose, when I’m on and when I’m not. Like with you, I don’t mind it, because this is all set up. But
that
, that
I minded. And I guess, I guess the solution is just to systematically disappoint people so often that they’ll quit asking.

What time?

It was like ten fifteen. The guy was forty. He also said, he also said he was coming to the reading at Borders, and I panicked, because I didn’t
know
about any reading at Borders. But he meant Barnes and Noble later this month.

Did he smile?

He smiled, but we were both looking down at the thing that I had to sign.

Are you at the point you wanted right now?