Storytellersunplugged

by Gerard Houarner

By a happy coincidence, this one follows up Elizabeth’s great essay from a few days ago, though takes a different track (which is scary, because you never really want to wander too far off a trail blazed by Ms Massie, but I’m brave, or perhaps a little too much like those unsung stars of COPS, with their inspirational bad choices…..).

I was reading Entertainment Weekly for January 15th (yes, I read EW, mostly because it’s the only nationally distributed periodical I know that treats horror, sf, fantasy in various media and cult art in general with a delicate balance of critical snark and geeky respect – it’s not WIRED, but it isn’t the Sunday Times Book Review, which doesn’t know it presents a viewpoint delicately balanced between critical snark and geeky respect on its own cult world that is as deeply rooted in a finely nourished and tuned cultural aesthetic as it is in very big money).

Breath. Taken.

Anyway, I was reading EW’s interview with Norman Mailer (his presence in EW perhaps taken as a sign by some of how far he’s fallen from the literary pantheon – you can hear Gore Vidal giggling), and he was asked about enjoying taking on the first-person voice of a “devil” in his latest novel, The Castle in the Forest. He answered first by saying you want to have fun with your narrator. Then he referred to Warren Beatty, who after his performance in Bugsy could have been worried his friends wouldn’t want to hang out with him anymore. The actor said something to the effect that you only need 5 percent of someone in yourself to perform the part. Norman Mailer then said that’s all you need in novel writing, and admitted to being 5 percent devil.

Now there’s a few things I found interesting in this point of view.

I personally think most of us, including Mr. Norman Mailer, have more than 5 percent devil inside us, but that’s just me talking.

If you do the math, that’s only about 20 sustainable characters inside you, including the ones you play in everyday life, unless you’re Max Bialystock (a bialy is a New York baked breakfast staple, with onions and sometimes other tidbits in the middle, originally, according to Wiki, bialystoker kuchen – oh, Mel) in which case you can sell limitless investment shares in a near infinite number of identities to unsuspecting little old lady readers.When I thought about this for a minute, I started reaching for the checkbook to sink a few bucks into old Max’s latest production.

How many characters are inside of us? For some folks, this is a pretty easy answer. They were raised right, vote red, or stay true to blue, believe in morality or ethics, hang on for dear life to what keeps the world simple and get pissed off at the use of the word “nuance,” never mind the phrase, “cognitive dissonance.” They are perfectly normal people who state firmly that they have one person inside them, maybe two if they’re Geminis, and I am frightened by them because they do not believe, or certainly don’t admit in conversations both casual and heated, that they may be capable of actions or even thoughts inconsistent with the identity they present to the world. They are who they were brought to be, who they think they are, and could never be anything other than the rational, faithful and balanced individuals they observe themselves to be in any and all situations.

Assorted riots, lynchings and cultural revolutions aside, I do believe there are a great many people who are solid, consistent, firm in their investment in and interactions with humanity. Rational and fair-minded. I just don’t think there are as many as stake a claim to this territory. Of course, I’m an urban guy, I read the newspaper, and I’m working at a state psychiatric facility after years in street clinics. I have a different perspective. Pressure tends to expose the inner landscape. Gut irrational reactions are easier to come by than facts or questions, however unpleasant either might be. Maybe I’m jaded.

But I believe there’s an unpleasant number of people who present an array of lies to the world, and to the themselves, about who and what they are. I include myself, though I struggle against the lies I tell myself, those pesky irrational impulses, the fear of questions I’d rather not answer. Really, I do. Trust me. I’m a writer.

Anyway, the folks who use normality as a shield against even the potential for irrational reactions and feelings frighten me far more than the sociopaths and psychopaths I have known who pretty much lay their cards out on the table, at least in the circumstances in which I’ve interacted with them. Because these nice Dr. Jekylls’ can turn and do turn on a dime, causing considerable damage at the drop of an exchange with a culture they know nothing about, or the sound of an alarm, or the unfolding of a natural or man-made catastrophe. And you don’t see them coming. They shake your hand, say hi, and the next thing you know they’re trying to deport you.

The revelation of character (good and bad) through crisis is one of those fundamental writing rules that works equally well as life advice – listen and watch during those first moments of meeting someone new, the opening of a relationship’s story, when the end may be implied; and listen and watch when the shit hits the fan.

Anyway, I’m saying all of this to say the writer in me feels more comfortable with the belief that we have tiny percentages of a vast array of characters at our disposal. Our central self-concept probably does revolve around a handful of daily roles we fulfill – parent, lover, friend, family member, geek, day-job worker bee and/or creator.

But there are daily life experiences ranging from childhood to about five minutes ago, from events that happened to us to things that occurred to people close to us, all the way to what we may feel when we read or see something on television, that plant the seeds of other selves in us.

Victims, abusers, raging killers, suicidal depressives are the types that come immediately to mind for the typical horror writer. We’re sensitive to any number of traumatizing and traumatized personalities. A long time ago, I read an article by Nina Kiriki Hoffman discussing the idea that horror is about pain, and in a recent Locus interview, Peter Straub talked about using pain and humiliation in his writing. Pain is certainly in horror’s roots.

But there are many paths through pain, and I think we come across them on our individual journeys – family, friends, associates, even strangers you stop and help. You hear about pain every day in the news. On the boards. Around the water cooler.

With a touch of empathy and imagination, encountering someone else’s pain can open the door to another character, somebody not at all like you, with nothing in common except that they experienced something traumatic. This is a point of vulnerability which opens up people to each other, because if it’s one thing we all share, it’s suffering.

But there are other common points. Rage works. Love. Those irrational impulses. The rational ones.

Whatever’s inside of us, each little five percent segment, especially the pieces we’re afraid to approach, is a resource for character development, and a window to other people which allows us access to a larger cast of characters. Bits and pieces of ourselves we may call desires and roles and fears and duty, the inner devil and the angel, whatever lie or hope we may hold up as a momentary mask, are all connections to types of people we might normally think we could never understand, never write about. I think it’s possible for us to identify on some level with just about anyone, if we have the stomach for it.

I suppose the process I’m trying to convey is something like what some actors do to prepare for a role – research the background of a character, the culture, study people and catalog physical and behavioral details, borrow from personal history and the lives of others, yes, but also reach for an emotional perspective in yourself, particularly the uncomfortable or scary ones, to reach the scary places in a character, perhaps even a hero; reach for the loving places to find the more tender parts of a villain.

I guess another way to say what I’m trying to say is that we’re all human, that the masks we wear – culture, religion, ethnicity, work – both shape and express what we are beneath the masks. We may not recognize ourselves in the masks of others, but somewhere in the funhouse mirror image of a man in a suit or a woman in a kimono, a kid in hip hop or goth uniform, is a piece of us. And the way to find it is in the basic human hungers, fears, lies, pain, joy, catastrophes and miracles we all contain.

I know what I’m saying goes against the tribal urge to separate, demonize, to engage in the us vs. them, red vs. blue, etc. Much of what I’m talking about rests on a foundation of empathy, which in many quarters is viewed as a weakness, even a betrayal of the tribe.

But as writers, working directly with the human condition like sculptors dipping hands in muddy clay, I think self-exploration and empathy is part of the job. Pretending to be someone else, doing something very different from our ordinary life, is probably one of the things that drew us to reading and writing in the first place.

We want to have fun with our narrators and characters. I’m saying as writers, we can create a richer, more diverse cast of characters by stretching beyond the limits of our casual daydreams and fantasies, reaching into more personal spaces. Everybody has limits, places you might try to reach and simply can’t. I personally can’t do child abuse. Don’t have the stomach for that. But I do try to go other places, in myself and others, to write about characters who may not necessarily be fun, or certainly don’t have anything to do with what I’ve experienced in my life. I do it to stretch, to play in someone else’s secret garden. I do it to tell a familiar story in a different way, to see the same stories we all tell through different eyes. I do it to try to reach new readers, to make a sale by being different, in a coherent and logical kind of way.

It’s a job to pay attention to those other selves inside us, face pain, weakness, the demonic, and find more than twenty 5 percent selves to use as emotional templates. Empathize with pain, the demonic, the normal beneath the odd costume. No matter how ugly, or scary, or different. Because we’re human, and those other selves are human, too. Even if they’re human in what we may call an “inhuman” or monstrous way, beyond the comfort zone of our expectations of others. Even if they don’t listen to the same music you grew up with, or use different spices in their food. To my mind, that stuff is also human. But call it inhuman if it makes you feel better.

Well, I’m afraid I’ve wandered away from the village of clear and concise advice once again. That is apparently my way, my secret and unpleasant self running rampant over the logical discourse of rational discussion and instructional presentation. Damn, I hate when I do that.

Just, you know, don’t take it personally. I wouldn’t want to be you when you’re angry…. –Gerard Houarner