A critic, or one so-called, has various approaches open to him. For example, he might fault a writer's style or structure; in other words, while understanding what a man has written, he thinks there's something wrong with the way that it's written. Building inspectors are important, and if a man can find cracks in what I've constructed, I'll shake his hand.
Conversely, the critic, or one so-called, might take issue with the “what” of a writer. This is thematic evaluation. Now, here, things tend to get sticky. You see, we've moved off the terra firma of objective literary mechanics and into the miasma of personal aesthetics. Still, like the pulp writer Bob Howard, the only thing I'm flatly against is being flatly against anything. And so, over the years, I've had a number of profitable discussions with people who've completely disagreed with what my fiction painted.
However, for a critic, or one so-called, to claim that a writer has no theme , to claim that a writer has, in effect, “said nothing” – Well, now, this is the literary equivalent of daring a man to step outside.
Unfortunately, this is the tact that Michael "The Pretentious Twit" Battaglia has taken in his “review” of my story Bent.
I'm game. Let's spill some blood.
Metaphor Missed: Jabs Landed
Mr. Battaglia does manage to start off on the right foot: he informs us, in his vaguely pedantic, highly digressive manner, that the tale is “metaphoric”. This pearl of wisdom, which a blind man sans cane could find, is, incredibly, labored in excess of nine hundred words.
The latch whereby our reviewer hauls himself up to this obvious level of comprehension is found in the only element he understood: the protagonist has his head stuffed up his ass, and that just ain't possible. This epiphany is meanderingly conveyed to us in some 1400 more words.
Thus, the first third of Bent (circa 900 words) is “reviewed”.
Here, however, a problem arises. I quote Mr. Battaglia:
“But the story keeps going. And this is where it starts to lose me.”
Having peppered my man with lefts, I will now land the first right.
You've got it bassackwards, pal – The story did not lose you, you lost it.
Metaphor Explained: Right Crosses
Quite simply: if the protagonist himself is a caricature and the entire milieu in which he moves metaphoric, all parts of the tale must follow suit. To do otherwise would violate the principle of thematic unity.
Mr. Battaglia compares the openings of Bent and Kafka's The Metamorphosis. Again, a step in the right direction – and then he promptly trips himself up. Gregor Samsa does not awake to find “himself turned into a bug” – but rather, as Vladimir Nabokov points out in his Lectures on Literature (Harcourt, New York, 1982), imagines himself to be so transformed. Indeed, when the novelette was first printed in 1915, the publishers wanted to garnish the cover with a garish man-insect sketch. Kafka immediately recognized this suggestion as nothing more than a vulgar interpretation of his metaphor and instantly rejected it. The trapping of dunderheads is, however, one of the sports of symbolists…
Now, what, pray tell, are the police and doctors symbolic of? Why, protection and healing, of course. And yet, in the dsytopia wherein Joe Schom resides, these institutions, at least in regard to him, are seen to do precisely the opposite .
Why?
Well, the man has his head up his ass.
As far as everyone else in the tale is concerned, Joe has opted-out of the only useful function a person can have in modern, industrial society: a consumer-producer. To be anything else, is to become less than useless – it's to become something to be disposed of.
In the world-view of the story – which I take as the underlying paradigm of the industrial world in which we live – those who, for whatever reason, are unable or unwilling to get into line and make a buck are treated as no more than human garbage.
The clues leading up to this conclusion are strategically positioned through the story. Any “good reader”, in the Nabokovian sense of that description, will have had no trouble with this little game. (Certainly, my grad students quickly knew what I was on about.)
In fact, at the very end of part one, the theme of Bent is overtly stated.
“Within the “Crystal Palace” of modernity, however, all points on the compass, from the few remaining mountain peaks to the very bottom of your average tax payer's ass, are mapped, plotted, and indexed on the procrustean bed of Progress, Security, and what-not.”
Now, to what degree has our reviewer discerned this black satire on modern society?
Dimly, but dimly…
I find it absolutely fascinating that Mr. Battaglia did indeed manage to pick up Bent's thematic undercurrent – and then just as quickly dropped – nay, threw – it down!
I quote:
“But we can get something out of this. Work with me, here, please. For a minute. Because Joe's state can be a cause for concern. After all, what does society need and rely on? People, working productive people. And if everyone starts to disappear up their own butt-cracks (the one officer implies that Joe is not the only one, they don't seem especially surprised at his state, unless they knew him in person and were expecting this) then what happens to society as a whole. Just room after room of people reenacting a perverse version of the snake eating its own tail, no work getting done and nobody caring. Would the State want that type of existence, to go down that spiraling path? I doubt it, since any entity seeks to continue its own existence and the only way to do that is to either cure them or eliminate them. So it tries to cure them first and as we'll see, it's a bit of a null-sum game. If they can't be cured, then maybe they aren't worthy anything at all. A very scary idea, when you think about it, where the people who can't take care of themselves any longer not worth being taken care of at all. The cops are acting as the hands, the tools, of the State and maybe they aren't the State itself but it's a fractal in its own way. The smallest part reflects the nature of the whole, in shape and in intent.”
Having gotten it right, Mr. Battaglia immediately proceeds to not believe a word of it.
I quote:
“I don't think this tale is meant to be taken seriously .”
“The broadness of the barrage speaks to how dear the author probably holds these beliefs (as in: not at all) and suggests that this is all a funny put-on.”
And, yet, our reviewer can't quite convince himself that's he's so easily dismissed Bent.
“And yet, you have to wonder, what it's all for?”
“And again, we ask, what was it all for?”
“But. But but but . The question lingers and remains.”
What is it about Bent that keeps nagging at the poor fellow? He claims to have “pulled back the curtain” of the story, and found only…more curtain.
Shall I pull that curtain back for you, friend?
Take a look.
You're faced with a black, cold abyss, awash with rotting corpses, decaying garbage, and the smell of burning oil… And not a person in sight gives a sorry goddamn.
Does the joint look familiar? Why, of course, it does! It's the times in which we live.
If this is not “shouldering the weight of a generation”, as Mr. Battaglia bombastically phrases it, then what in God's name is?
Negative Portraits: A Left Hook to the Ear
Not that I give a damn about this generation, or any other, for that matter. True, negative portraits, such as given in the story, may, in certain rare, isolated individual cases, bring about some kind of “personal change” or other (I completely dismiss the idea that literature today can have any wide-scale social effect).
In any case, it's certainly no concern of mine; such didactic trash is not in my line.
I take the function of the artist to be one who seeks the real and then attempts to express it.
Only this and nothing more …
Parthian Shot: Bust out the Smelling Salts
A small Australian magazine, some many years back, published a short story of mine called Something Strong; thematically, that story is similar to Bent. The tale was reviewed by a young female college professor.
In part, she wrote:
“ Mr. Tuohey's prose is very powerful; I might even say masterful. I admire both his skill as a writer, and his honesty as an artist. And yet, still, this story somehow sits wrong with me.
As I've said, it's the underlying metaphysic: it's dark, cynical, and rather disturbing.
But, still, it's human, isn't it? Yes, all too human…
Well, if you want “Something Strong”, this author has got it – but it was a bit too raw for me.”
The editor of the magazine asked me if I'd like to rebut this criticism.
I told him, “No. That woman was hands-down, dead-on me. She definitely got what I wanted to express. She just didn't want it once she'd gotten it. And that's her prerogative.”
She was a good, thoughtful reader. That critic had uncovered what lay beneath Something Strong (which is the same underpinning of Bent ) and had clearly and concisely set it before her readers.
Mr. Battaglia, however, fails miserably in both respects. First and foremost, he misunderstands the tale (evidently, Bent feinted him out of position and then hit him at a blind-spot). Then, adding insult to injury, this miscomprehension is ladled upon the head of the poor reader in an essay that, to be kind, would be called “rambling”, but more properly can only be termed convoluted and verbose.
"Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood." - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche.
* * *
See
Michael Battaglia's "Surrebuttal".
Send your comments on this story to the author:
