The Future of Literature. And Stuff.

Because I am desperately trying to avoid writing my linguistics paper (and because I had kind of a weird day), I have spent the last few hours reading about the future of literature. I’m not trying to seem fancy; all I did was type “the future of literature” into google and then read the first couple pages that came up. Anyway, having conducted this survey of “the literature” on the topic, I think that I can say with authority that no one has any idea what they are talking about.

That is not -- BTW -- to say that I do.

Life is not a zero sum game, people.

If this is a topic that interests you, then you should absolutely read Ewan Morrison’s two-part series for The Guardian. It’s some of the most interesting and thoughtful and fun and wonky writing I have read in awhile. He also -- very gently -- goes to town on the complicated and troubled legacy that Harry Potter leaves us with. I’m glad people are starting to tackle that. I’ll get to it one of these days.

Otherwise, I can’t say that I have learned that much from my readings tonight. The crazy homeless stark raving mad contrarian in me would normally be happy to stand in the digital town square and yell at listicle writers who have never heard of me about how wrong I think they are about stuff, but I’m just not in that kind of mood.

I have things like “the future of literature” on my mind because I’m doing revisions on a short story right now and I think it is one of the more interesting and complicated short stories I’ve written (this is the D. B. Cooper thing I have mentioned before) and as good as I think it could be, I am left with this resounding and empty feeling that can only be described as who-gives-a-fuck-ness.

Now keep in mind, I said already that I am having kind of a weird day. If who-gives-a-fuck-ness was a big concern of mine then I wouldn’t have been writing this blog for the last 150 years, because - you know - no one reads these things anymore anyway.

I think the who-gives-a-fuck-ness thing is on my mind because I have been thinking alot about a conversation I had recently with one of my professors, who I respect very much. He is a professor second and a writer first and that’s why I respect him. He mentioned casually that MFA programs seem now to be looking for extracurriculars in their candidates just as much as undergrad admission officers are. That is to say that the fancy writing programs of America care as much about whether you were the prom king or the treasurer of your frat as much as they do about your writing.

I am being simplistic and reductive here, of course. But not by much.

The professor I respect was not saying that this is a good thing, he was just saying.

Well that thought has been stuck in my craw for a little while now.

I’m not Salinger or anything, but I am a bit of a loner simply as a matter of practicality and the idea of having to join things and make small talk with people in order to get what I want just annoys me to no end. “There is something to be said for Fascism, after all” Ezra Pound said.

(I made that up about Pound, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t say it.)

So add to that festering thought the idea (gleaned from my research tonight) that no one has any earthly idea what they’re talking about ... well that just seems unreasonable. The idea that there are gatekeepers I can accept (agents, editors, publishers, MFA boards, etc.) but the idea that the gatekeepers themselves have no fucking clue what they’re doing? Well that just annoys me.

In many ways I guess the internet is just a bunch of people standing really far apart while screaming at eachother. So maybe that is what I am trying to say here: that there is a lack of reasonable authority in the answers I am finding.

That’s life though, right? No religion or value system really holds up to pragmatic scrutiny, ultimately.

I guess that I sat down here tonight and googled something as pretentious as “the future of literature” because it is something that I find interesting both professionally and personally and because it is 100% not a conversation that I am having with human beings in my actual life (and I am a grad student in a creative writing program). I sit through (and sometimes enjoy) a lot of lectures and discussions about writing and literature in the the western tradition and yet I have no earthly idea if I should e-publish this collection of poems I have sitting here. They’re not particularly good, but not a single article or essay I read tonight addressed the issue of “good” writing and “bad” writing. Neither has my entire college education, by the way.

I guess I’m kind of just disappointed in a lot of things right now.

I’m not asking the world to take notice, especially not right now. There are plenty of real problems in this world and this country right now, but this is my little corner of the internet where I get to talk about what I want.

Also, I wasn’t kidding about avoiding my linguistics paper.

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The Cliff and this Bitch.

I am in the process of writing a short story for one of my workshop classes. I have been getting a lot of (very polite) blowback lately from numerous sources that all seems to indicate that I have sort of plateaued in my writing as of late. There are all sorts of very complicated ways to explain this, I could tell you what Proust said about such things and maybe break it down the way Derrida might, but really it just boils down to this: I have gotten pretty good at what I do and so now need to do some other stuff.

See how clearly and succinctly I articulated that?

Recently I met with a professor I respect (who is a writer herself) and she said that I need to “jump off the cliff” but she talks that way and I’m not exactly sure what that means. Though she was nice enough to shrug when I said that I desperately want to publish a novel. She shrugged and said, “You’re good enough now to publish a novel” and then went on to explain that I should be less concerned about that and more concerned with attending to the growth of my writing.

In an attempt to attend to the growth of my writing I have gone back to this idea I had a long time ago for a story about D.B. Cooper (the 1970s skyjacker) which I have never written because I didn’t know how to write it. I’d envisioned a sort of screenplay in the style of the third act of the movie Clue wherein nothing is really sorted out but many possibilities are imagined. Well I have started writing that as a kind of short story which doesn’t even care who the dude was, but rather revels in the possibilities and plays with the mythology of Cooper. And let me tell you, IT HAS BEEN REALLY HARD! I assume that if it is hard then I must be growing as a writer, or something. That’s how it works, right? That’s why the gym is so unpleasant to go to; because we have to do unpleasant things to make ourselves get better.

Anyway, I have been working my ass off on this story in a way I am not accustomed to. For the first draft I am writing it as an enumerated list story (I may remove that artifice later, but let’s just get through the first draft, shall we?). Below are a few of the first few sections that I have written so far. When this bitch is done I will post the whole thing here.

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Vector 23 (Excerpt).

1.The man who bought a one-way ticket with cash at Portland Airport on the afternoon of 24 November 1971 - who was the 36th passenger to board Flight 305 to Seattle-Tacoma Airport, who sat in seat 18C, who carried with him only a black attache case, and whose FBI file is now more than sixty volumes long - most certainly existed. 

He gave his name at the Northwest Orient Airlines counter as Dan Cooper.

Clyde Jabin, a young reporter rushing to file his story with United Press International that night spoke hastily on the phone with a records agent at the FBI.

“D. Cooper,” the agent had said.

“Is that ‘D’ as in dog? Or ‘B’ as in boy?” Jabin asked.

“Yeah, that’s right,” the agent said back in a hurry. “Look, I gotta go Clyde. Lots going on here tonight.” 

Jabin’s story identified the hijacker as D. B. Cooper. This was an unfortunate coincidence for a petty Portland Oregon criminal actually named D. B. Cooper who was visited by FBI agents Thanksgiving morning.

At about 8:13pm on the night of the 24th the nonexistent D. B. Cooper of Jabin’s story leapt from the aft stairway of the Boeing 727 as it passed over the Lewis River in southwestern Washington. He disappeared. Which is no small feat for a man who didn’t exist in the first place.

2.Everything presented here as fact is actually fact. Except for the things which aren’t.

3. The man who would be DB might have been born in 1926 in Vancouver Canada. His father could have been a fisherman, tall with thick arms, and a big beard that hung from his otherwise thin face. DB could have stood at the end of the dock each time his dad’s sixty-foot salmon trawler put out in the direction of Vancouver Island. DB might have waited there every time watching as the boat disappeared around a bend in the channel on its way out to the sea; such a very small boat when compared to the vastness of such a dark sea. As a little Canadian boy he could have read the Belgian comic book Les Aventures de Dan Cooper about the adventures of a Royal Canadian Air Force test pilot named Dan Cooper. The comic was never sold in the United States.  

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Scenes from a Skyjacking.

Scenes from a Skyjacking
by james bezerra

Scene 1: Have a plan.
The moment we seize
control, I am stopping this
terrible movie.

Scene 2: Don’t shoot the pilot.
Oh great! Now who is
going to fly this jumbo
jet to Mexico?


Scene 3: Make use of the hostages.
Ask the stewardess
if she knows how to lower
the front landing gear.

Scene 4: Have an exit strategy.
Mexico is a
non-extradition treaty
country … probably.

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