Holy moly. What a busy couple of weeks. As you can see by the dearth of posts to this blog, I have been occupied elsewhere, including a wedding, a conference, and several other things.
The wedding was great. I was the official photog, but I was also a guest. Autumn and I had a fabulous time in Vegas. I took over 1500 photographs, including our visit to Hoover Dam and plenty on the Vegas Strip, not to mention the hundreds of the wedding and events surrounding it. Thanks, again, to Heather and Chris for letting be a part of their nuptials.
The Norman Mailer Society Conference was held in D.C. this year, the first time (for me) our of Provincetown. While it was a good conference, attendance was down, and Mike Lennon stepped down as president in order to focus on his biography of Mailer. While I think our new prez, Mark Olshaker, will do a good job, I get the feeling the Society will change. I think we’re back in P-town next year. I’ll be publishing my paper here soon. It’s really just a thought piece, as my original idea for a part two to last year’s film was not possible. Still, I like the connections I make in the essay. Stay tuned for that.
Here is a slideshow of my photos from the conference and from around the capitol.
On a similar note: we published our third volume of The Mailer Review. While I’m listed still as the Deputy Editor, I really didn’t do much. All the work should be credited to Phil Sipiora and his awesome team of graduate students, including the indefatigable Constance Holmes. The issue is gorgeous and chock full of Mailer goodness. Get your copy today.
So, now I’m getting caught up. This includes grading. Lots of grading. Hopefully the semester will begin to quiet down in November.
During the final panel of a conference last year, a panelist tried to squeeze a 15-page paper into his allotted 20 minutes. He read so quickly, that I’m not sure what his paper was about. Therefore, I decided that I would never go to a conference and read a paper again. The following video is my presentation for the Norman Mailer Society Conference for 2008. I used several images that were not my own, but I give credit in the works cited below.
For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula, the big answers don’t remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state and our education system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us. —Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)
It began with a beer.
OK, that’s not entirely accurate: first I had to earn my Ph.D., get a tenure-track job, find a place to live, and move to Macon, Georgia — about 80 miles south of Atlanta. It was the summer of 2002, and the next phase of my life was beginning . Though I had fond memories of graduate school in Tampa, it was time to begin the journey toward maturity. After accepting my position at a small college in Central Georgia, I began searching for a place to live. During my search, I met realtors, apartment complex managers, and landlords — all of whom asked me the same thing: “where do you go to church?” This question has reverberated through my life ever since.
Growing up in Florida, I never heard anyone ask this question, and I never asked it. Even though I was raised Catholic, until, as George Carlin says “I reached, the age of reason,” I was taught that religion was a personal decision that helps guide us in everyday life, but something that should be kept out of politics. Religion was something for church, the before-meal head bowing, and my heart. This silence about religion was profound: it was a weighty silence that kept me in-line and unquestioning. Indeed, if we never talked about religion, we couldn’t question it.
However, this place where I was moving — the new nexus of my personal and professional life — seemed to have the opposite view of religion. Southern Baptist is the religion of Central Georgia, and their practice of it is a bit more overbearing than the Catholicism of my childhood. It seems to command silent devotion through dicta, commandments, and imperatives that it proudly displays on church marquees, road-side signs, t-shirts, and bumper stickers on half-ton trucks and SUVs. As if to remind all citizens of God’s profound omnipotence, pithy sayings of His order are displayed liberally around town and the countryside, as plentiful as — well, as churches in the south. These signs demand obedience, threaten punishment, incite anxiety, and remind us of our place.ﾠ
As a symbol of the wealth, power, authority, and supremacy of God, cathedrals used to be built at the heart of a town, symbolizing the importance of God the center of the community. These imposing structures spoke of the greater glory of God, took lifetimes to construct, and stood as watchful reminders to citizens to behave themselves. The people’s life-long investment to the construction and support of the cathedral assured their loyalty to the community, to the state, and to God. Today in the South, the literal cathedral has been replaced with a figurative one: the architectural dominance of the cathedral is now a bazaar of smaller, cheaper, and decentralized expressions of right.ﾠ
However, while the centralized ideology remains the same, the practice is not: churches seem mostly segregated affairs where class and race rarely mix. A heterogeneity is maintained in isolated packets of devotion — the rich and white attending their stucco and steel structures surrounded by a sea of parking lots, while the lower-class racial minorities seem to attend rural churches that are little more than double-wide trailers at the end of dirt roads. Yet, despite these ostensible differences in class and race, the Baptist church keeps its flock under the same aegis of devotion that does its best to ignore racial and social inequalities. Discussion of devotion, belief, and faith is encouraged; questioning is ignored, frowned upon, or silenced. In order to avoid confrontation, Southern Baptists seem to think that these annoying realities should be kept in the closet, much like homosexuality, women’s rights, and education beyond high school.
Before moving to Macon, I was introduced to the writing of Norman Mailer. In most of his writing, I discovered an iconoclast who seemed to speak as the creative conscience of the American people. A hard-hitting conscience, he wasn’t about to let us get away with any self-deception in what’s important. Nothing was too sacred for his pen: the American dream, our involvement in war, our right to control our own destinies, our responsibilities as citizens, and our creative potential.
Shortly after 9/11 and the American invasion of Iraq, I thought that America was like Dante in his dark wood, about to enter Hell. I seem to have found a kindred spirit in Mailer. His 2003 book Why Are We At War? posits that America was going through an identity crisis, and a new breed of flag-waving American conservative was leading the battle cry into Iraq. This battleground was the beginning of an international crusade to define ourselves anew as a world empire. The goal, Mailer argues, is to morally reform America.
From a militant christian point of view, America is close to rotten. The entertainment media are lose. Bare belly-buttons pop on to every TV screen, as open in their statement as wild animals’ eyes. The kids are getting to the point where they can’t read, but they sure can screw. One perk for the White House, therefore, should America become an international military machine huge enough to conquer all adversaries, is that American sexual freedom, all that gay, feminist, lesbian, transvestite hullabaloo, will be seen as too much of a luxury and will be put back in the closet again. Commitment, patriotism, and dedication will become all-pervasive national values again (with all the hypocrisy attendant). (Mailer War 52).
So shut up. Do not ask questions. Do not listen to those who ask questions. Keep your mind on God and the moral cleanliness of the USA. This call for silence seems like the philosophy of the Baptist South writ large that I encounter daily as a college professor in Central Georgia.
Mailer observes that a flag-waving love for America springs from a like religious devotion, that
[[Play "mailer-war2.aiff" "In a country . . . distinctions" (108).]]
Freedom and democracy is what’s at stake here; indeed the former is an integral component of the latter. Totalizing views demand an uncritical devotion, a surrender of rights and freedoms, a rebuking of dissent or suggestion of the new or different, a silencing of individuality. Ironically, those who publicly claim to be the most American, the most patriotic, the most devout seem in practice to be the ones who are most inimical to democracy and freedom.
We all must beware of totalizing tendencies in our own practices. While I’m being critical of many groups of people here, my daily experience is that many who ostensibly belong to such groups are not determined by them. I have met many Baptists, conservatives, and Southern white gentlemen that do not fit an easy typification, but are thoughtful and generous people that struggle with complexities of living in America — the kind of people a democracy needs.
Democracy, it seems to me, depends on two freedoms above all: participation and education.
Participation must be active, deliberate, and gregarious. It takes place on street corners, bars, and coffee houses. It involves a practice of inclusiveness and a generosity toward others, regardless of their skin color, sex, or economic conditions.
Church and our current state also demand a participation, but it seems to be a passive one. Growing up, I went to mass every Sunday. Yes, it’s a gathering of people, but we’re all automatons sitting, standing, kneeling on command, mouthing the same prayers every week, like machines in a factory. After church, we go home and watch TV, apart from others, in the security of our castles that we work hard to build, afford, and maintain. This is the kind of participation that keeps us easy to control — participate passively by remaining silent, so you might keep your freedoms, your job, and your house.
We must move out of the house to participate. The classroom is where active participation likely begins — through education. Mailer states that “When we think we’re nearest to God, we could be assisting the Devil” (72). Through education, by openly and critically engaging these important issues that effect our everyday lives, can we learn the importance and the necessity of participation in our community. By reading fiction and non-fiction, can we discuss the complexities of life and develop a critical and creative capacity to support a delicate democracy, for
Democracy is a state of grace attained only by those countries that have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it. (Mailer 71)
Soon after I moved to Macon, I had my first experience with a southern penchant for silence and devotion. I was dining with an out-of-state friend at a local restaurant, and we were engaged in an animated conversation about students, teaching, religion, politics, and other issues throughout the evening. The next week, I was summoned to the Dean’s office along with my department chair. She had received a letter from a local attorney that accused me of being a vulgarian and questioned the appropriateness of allowing me in a classroom. After being admonished, I walked back to the department with my chair. We were silent for most of the way until he finally said: “Welcome to the south.”
That was four years ago. And while I have not had a similar incident, I do continue to speak of politics and religion in public, but more importantly, also in the classroom. Even though many a student evaluation suggests that the classroom is an inappropriate forum for these topics, it’s my duty as an educator to present alternatives and ask questions. I also respond to such criticisms by assigning more Mailer.
In my recent reading Mailer and Lennon’s conversations in On God, I took away a general lesson. Even in his thoughts on metaphysics and the afterlife, Mailer was, in the words of Don Delillo, a “writer in opposition” (49). In his life and his work, Mailer “was not just a voice, but a force—chronicler, participant, and provocateur” (49). Indeed, the first and only time I ever met Norman Mailer I told him where I live and teach. We discussed the South in a general way, and I asked him which of his novels he would teach in my Central Georgia classroom. He thought for a moment, and turning to me with a glint in his eye, said “teach my new one: it has something in it to piss everyone off.”
Well, what about that beer I started with? Another fact of life in Georgia is that citizens cannot buy beer on Sunday. To me, this seemingly trivial blue law stands as a testament to the totalizing religious and political South. It’s an annoying weekly reminder of my place in the Baptist South and the control that these forces have in my life. Yet, there is an upside to this law: it only imposes on package stores, not restaurants, so my friends and I make it a point come together on Sundays, and over a beer or two, we discuss students, teaching, religion, politics, and other issues.
We just don’t do it too loudly.
Works Cited
DeLillo, Don. “The Writer in Opposition” The Mailer Review Vol. 2 (2008): 49-50.
Mailer, Norman. Why Are We at War? New York: Random House, 2003.
The following photos and videos were either used or considered for this film. Most are licensed by a creative commons license, but if I use an image of yours illegally, please let me know so I can remove it.
I’m in the process of composing my paper for the Norman Mailer Society’s annual conference. Here’s the proposal:
I moved to the American South almost six years ago. About that time, I was introduced to Norman Mailer’s work. Both gave me an interesting perspective on America, its values and its problems (sometimes stemming from said values). This presentation will examine Southern religious values (mostly conservative Baptist) vis-a-vis those of Norman Mailer, particularly in his later work, including The Gospel According to the Son and On God. I will include a short multimedia presentation that documents some of my experiences, interviews members of the Baptist church, and attempts to come to terms with seemingly disparate perceptions on the place of religion in America.
The images I’m collecting are part of the multimedia presentation. I think I’m going to focus more on digital technology as a metaphor for the devil. Still thinking about it. But, if you have some images of church marquis, especially those that link religion with consumerism, I’d love to borrow them.
I’ve spent most of today at Panera trying to write my article on Speculative Fiction for the upcoming Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century American Fiction. My due date is September 1, but I got an extension to October 1 due to my recent setback.
My job is to write 3000 words that defines SpecFic within the context of American Literature. Easy? Nope. Anytime I begin to think critically about genre, genre tends to sink. Genre is a ship full of small holes. Still, it’s an interesting experiment, and I’m having fun getting back in to the history of science fiction.
I’m actually surprised I’m getting anything at all done today. After the cocktail party last night (Dr. Bell’s annual soirée for the faculty), I went downtown with Dan, Shawn, and Creighton. We played pool, drank, chatted, drank, listened to music, and drank. Did I mention the drinking? Yeah, it’s a bit hazy today, and no, I’m not talking about the lingering effects of Tropical Storm Fay. However, the continual gray rainfall outside mirrors the one in my head.
The Paris Review published my photo of Norman Mailer. It was taken during the Society‘s annual conference in October 2006. The journal actually credits me, not under the photo, but on the contributors page in the back (180). It would have been ultra cool to have had my name under his photo. Still, pretty darn cool.
If you’d like to see the original photo, or even purchase a print, check out my gallery.
While “José Chung’s ‘From Outer Space’” calls into question the validity of extraterrestrial abduction, sightings, and existence, it nevertheless confirms the reality of its visual iconography in the popular imagination of our age. There remains a perpetual debate about the literal existence of supernatural entities and aliens, but when turning to William Gibson’s “The Gernsback Continuum,” the manifestation of alternate, possible realities becomes a bit more uncertain and indeterminate, if that’s possible. While many critics suggest that “Gernsback” metafictively comments on the need for change in sf, from the utopian visions of the golden age of science fiction to a more socially critical and culturally conscious expression, others suggest that it and the collective dreams that it embodies plays a continued role in what Bruce Sterling calls a modern reform of science fiction (Sterling xv). Thomas A. Bredehoft (quoting Gibson quoting the Velvet Underground) uses the phrase “worlds behind us” to make evident the cultural and intellectual history that manifests “as the hidden underpinnings of our most modern-looking, modern-seeming machines” (Bredehoft 252). Gibson himself has reminded us several times that the computer itself is only a Gestalt of Victorian mechanisms packaged into a plastic box — a box that despite the stylish designs of Apple Computer’s candy colors and cubes retains its mechanical link to the past with spinning mechanisms and hard wiring (Trench). The hard wiring of “Gernsback” might be explained away by semiotic ghosts, but, in a truly science-fictional theory, they might represent breeches by quantum realities that continued to exist and evolve even though they were passed up in the waning days of Gernsback by a narrowing view of reality and possibility. Certain paths were chosen — Hitler’s rise to power precipitated the post-holocaust cold war — so the images and desires of “I.G.Y.” remain only romanticized fictions, or do they?
Yesterday, in my current sf course, we discussed and attempted to define what we mean when we talk about “science fiction.” We read several introductions to the topic, considered a couple of illustrative texts, and decided that any definition of science fiction must be locally situated: i.e., there is unlikely anything we can call “SF” as in an absolute, immutable genre, but we must content ourselves with the local and contingent “sf.” We decided we like the “sf” more than “sci-fi,” since the former also includes “speculative fiction,” and seems to be the choice of those who do the deepest thinking about science fiction. As one student said yesterday, “sci-fi” is a TV station, suggesting that this is the popular side of science fiction. Both are valid, but our study will stick with “sf.”
I’ve spent most of today at Panera trying to write my article on Speculative Fiction for the upcoming Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century American Fiction. My due date is September 1, but I got an extension to October 1 due to 
