I wasn’t surprised. This is what it takes to write a good book. My best writing teacher, Tom Spanbauer, taught me as much. Tom called it “Dangerous Writing”, and by that he meant that a writer had to explore an unresolved personal issue that couldn’t be resolved. A death, for instance. Something that seemed personally dangerous to delve into. By doing so, the writer could exaggerate and vent and eventually exhaust the pain or fear around the issue, and that gradual relief would keep the writer coming back to work on the project, despite no promise of a book contract or money or a readership.
Moreover, the writer had to explore the issue through a metaphor. Like zombies. Or fight clubs.
Everyone has a mother. Everyone’s mother will die. Few people want to read about your own mother’s death, even if she’s a movie star. A metaphor allows other people into your story. Better yet, it charms you into going deeper into the pain than you’d otherwise go. You forget what you’re actually writing about, but you don’t.
Plus, with a metaphor, you’re not approaching the pain head-on. According to Michel Foucault, going in direct opposition to an issue does not necessarily effect change. It can make the pain worse. But to come in at an angle, with humour or a metaphor, that works. Case in point, during the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” protests over gays in the United States military, political pundit Andrew Sullivan wrote of one group of demonstrators who wore elaborate hats and carried picket signs that read Gays in the Millinery. Sullivan wrote, “Foucault would’ve loved that.”
As for me, people are always inviting me for coffee or lunch. Their treat. I can always see what’s coming. “I have this great idea for a book,” they say. “I’ve got it all worked out in my head,” they say. “You should write it, and we’ll split the profits.”
Like Mel Brooks, I sit there and smile.
These people have no idea how unpleasant the act of writing can be. To go back to Tom Spanbauer, Tom calls writing a first draft “S—- ing out the lump of coal.” Meaning it’s slow and painful. Even using the best metaphor in the world, Dangerous Writing requires long chunks of isolation. The isolation is the least of it. But at least when the draft is done, you feel relief. It’s your s—. Proof the pain is gone.
On the other hand, someone else’s excrement just smells bad. Sitting at these lunches, I’m always thinking, why would I want to take your bowel movement? That’s why so-called Great Ideas seldom get written. There’s nothing personal, nothing dangerous at stake. And if they do get written, the result is lacklustre. Formulaic. Just like the sort of outline and pitch that can get bandied about over coffee and sandwiches.
For years, I corresponded with the writer Ira Levin. I continue to champion his work. The man was the 20th century’s master at nailing the unspoken with a metaphor. His novel The Stepford Wives (1972) first recognised the backlash against feminism. I’d always asked him if his novel Rosemary’s Baby (1967) triggered so much horror because it was a metaphor for the tragedy of thalidomide. Early on in the book, a well-meaning character knits booties and mittens for the unborn baby, but knits them for hands and feet like claws and pincers, one of the physical defects of the drug. Rosemary Woodhouse, the title character, is bullied into consuming mysterious cakes and drinks. The result is a child so shocking that it can’t even be shown in the eventual 1968 Roman Polanski film.
Likewise, I’ve always held that Shirley Jackson’s 1948 short story The Lottery stood for the military draft. It was written a few years after young men had been chosen at random to die brutal deaths in the Second World War. Just as the woman in the story is stoned to death, these young men would be blasted to bits. The public outrage that greeted the story upon publication in The New Yorker suggests the collective guilt and denial Jackson had triggered.
Levin would never confirm or deny my theory. Jackson, I never knew. But after the novel Interview with the Vampire (1976) had become a huge success, its author, Anne Rice, described writing it while her daughter was being treated for juvenile leukaemia. At the time, their lives were all about blood: blood draws, blood tests, blood counts. A vampire was the metaphor that emerged, and since Rice’s daughter died at the age of five, the small girl in the novel also had to die.
You see – nothing good comes from nothing.
