Of Conversation and Culture

This weekend, I sat at a bar next to a lovely lady from Pittsburgh. I know she was from Pittsburgh because when I ordered my steak Pittsburgh style she said, “What’s that? I ask because I’m from Pittsburgh.”

We talked for a while about the differences between the North and the South in general and Pittsburgh and Panama City in particular, which was nice—spontaneous conversation is one of the reasons I sit at the bar when I eat alone.

We talked about how nice and friendly most folk around here are, and, given that, how shocking the racism is, and then she said, “We don’t have culture here, but we have the beaches.”

And I was like whoa, now. Wait just a minute, Pittsburgh. We have culture.

I had just returned from a book signing at Seaside. My new novel, “Double Exposure,” like all my books, is about this area. That’s culture. Jason Heddon and the college’s wonderful theater department are performing a play of it in November. That’s culture. Seaside has the REP and Sundog Books and art galleries. That’s culture.

Wewahitchka has The Tupelo; Apalach, The Dixie. That’s culture.

Last weekend, we had the 10th Annual Gulf Coast Writers Conference with #1 New York Times Bestselling author, Michael Connelly—and many other talented authors, agents, and editors besides. That’s culture.

Panama City has the VAC—the wonderful and only-getting-better VAC thanks to Linda MacBeth and the invested staff and volunteers who are working so hard. That’s culture.

We have Heather Parker’s Art Coop and Bay Arts Aliance and the Marina Civic Center (and the highly diverse and entertaining shows of this summer’s Backstage Pass series) and The Martin and Shakes By the Bay. And that’s culture.

We have local writers and photographers and painters and filmmakers and poets and musicians. And all of that is culture.

We have “The News Herald” and “The Entertainer” to cover all this culture, writers and editors like Jan Waddy and Tony Simmons, who work hard to keep the community informed about all the cultural haps and local artists’ works. Speaking of which, have you noticed how amazing “The Entertainer” looks? And how it keeps getting better and better. Well done, Jan!

We have a lot of good radio stations, but my favorite, WKGC, 90.7, is a great place for culture—music, arts, literature, news, and jazz and blues as good as any being broadcast anywhere.

This past weekend, I was out and about for Thunder Beach, and saw many displays of culture—including very cool performances by Twice Daily at Pineapple Willy’s and Steve Wiggins and friends at Edge Water.

Beauty and art and culture, like love, are actually all around. Easy to miss, but there nonetheless.

And if all this weren’t enough, we have the enduring excellence of the Kaleidoscope Theatre. On Sunday afternoon, I sat in a nearly full house, and saw a powerful performance of “To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday,” directed by Jason Blanks and featuring a talented cast of local actors, including Martin Hendrickson, Frankie Hudson, Tanya Ericson, and the warm, charming, funny Ray H. Stanley.

We have all this culture—and a whole lot more (I’m just recounting what I’ve seen recently, not attempting to be exhaustive).

We have all this, plus we have the world’s friendliest people and most beautiful beaches, the majestic Apalachicola River, the acres and acres of pine and oak and cypress of Florida’s Great Green Northwest and the splendid species—endangered and not—who call it home.

We have all, ALL this, AND we don’t ever have to shovel snow!

You might say we have it all.

But you’d be wrong. We could use more culture—more art, more literature, more concerts and plays and exhibits. And we could stand less thoughtless, tacky, greedy development, less racism (and sexism and homophobia and all other forms of xenophobia and ignorance so often on display), less pollution and more protection of the very land and animals and people that make this a place, for me, worth writing about and fighting for.

We may not have it all. But we do have a terrible, awful lot to be grateful for—culture and natural beauty.

Take a moment and thank those you see making art, beauty, and love. Thank them for the sacrifices, for their steadfastness to their vision, for working day jobs so they can, for creating and producing when they’re exhausted, for enriching our community, for doing all this—and constantly hearing there’s no culture in our area. And for this last, you may want to give them a big ol’ bear hug, too.

Lost and Found Light: An Appreciation of Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly writes about things lost—lost innocence, lost life, lost love, lost and missing persons, lost souls, Lost Angeles, and, most of all, lost light.

He can do this because nothing is lost on him.

He is a quiet, deliberate man—as much Pinkerton as reporter—continually taking everything in.

Harry Bosch, Connelly’s cop is a man intimately acquainted with loss. He lost his mother when he was only eleven years old. He’s lost partners and fellow foot soldiers, lost victims and predators, and, little by little, he’s losing his city and maybe even his own soul.

Harry Bosch inhabits a world so dark even the light is lost.

It’s a world he’s familiar with and at home in. In Vietnam, he was a tunnel rat with the 25th Infantry Division who specialized in making his way through the Vietcong’s underground maze of absolute blackness.

In honor of my friend and in homage to his complex character and concepts, I wrote the following passage in my new novel, “Double Exposure:”

“Glancing down at his camera, he pulls up the information for the last image. According to the time and date stamp encoded in the picture, it was taken less than two hours ago.

“The murderer had been finishing up about the time Remington was unloading the ATV and talking to Heather. And hearing what he thought were screams. He wonders if, like lost light, the horrific screams had been trapped in the swamp until someone had arrived to hear them.”

I have not mentioned this to anyone—including Michael—until this moment, and didn’t know that I ever would, but I felt it an apt example of the ubiquitous influence and impact of Michael Connelly and Harry Bosch on contemporary crime fiction.

It may well be that Harry Bosch is in the dark searching for light—the light at the end of the tunnel or some lost light trapped in the claustrophobic tube with him—but I think it more likely that Harry Bosch is that lost light. As if some of the lost light from his time in the tunnels in Vietnam clung to him, Harry is a faint, lost light in a city of oppressive, overwhelming darkness—a darkness more than night.

Down the dark, mean streets of LA, people grope around, night-blind, bumping into one another, doing damage, and the best that they can hope for is help from a tunnel rat from Vietnam, a lost light bearer.

Interviewing Michael this past weekend as part of the 10th Annual Gulf Coast Writers Conference, I was reminded just how gifted he really is.

Back when I was in college, we’d sit around in my lit class and discuss what we thought poems and stories meant. More often than not, when we’d concluded our analysis, I’d think there’s no way the author ever intended half of what we got out of his or her work, but occasionally, you could tell no matter what you took from a work, the author had intended it—and much beside that you didn’t get.

Years later, listening to filmmaker commentaries on DVD, I was struck by writer/directors who fully intended everything I got out of their films and far more that I completely missed.

The thing is, regardless of the art form—book or film or whatever—the author or artist who consistently produces emotionally resonant and thought-provoking work, isn’t doing so by accident.

Michael Connelly’s books are meaningful—mean so much to so many—because he takes every opportunity, uses every name or location or event or description to communicate something. Harry Bosch’s name is significant (he’s named after the 15th Century Dutch artist, Hierynomus Bosch)—more so as the series continues. His house, propped precariously on the side of a mountain, is a metaphor—as is the jazz he listens to, the relationships he’s involved in, the lone, lost coyote way he operates as an outsider within his own department, and every single space of what used to be Raymond Chandler’s, but is now Michael Connelly’s Los Angeles.

The Bosch books are about being in a dark tunnel journeying into light—an arduous, treacherous journey that is slow and painful and costly. Connelly knows what Milton knew, and what Harry and his many fans are learning—that “Long is the way, And hard, that out of hell leads up to light.” And this deep, this dark, lost light is all there is—all we can hope for—as we stumble around with Harry during his long day’s journey through the night.

A Very Fine Feast

One of the first and most important decisions a writer makes is point of view. We ask ourselves—Whose story is it? Who will make the best narrator? Does this story work best in the first person or third? Or as something else entirely? Determining who narrates a story determines the outcome of the story.

The choice Charles Baxter made for his novel, “The Feast of Love” is an ingenious one. There are nearly as many narrators as there are characters in the book—each one given the opportunity to tell his or her story like only he or she can. Instead of scenes utilizing multiple third person points of view, each character recounts his or her feasts and famines.

Late one night, a man wakes from a bad dream and decides to take a walk through his neighborhood. After catching sight of two lovers entangled on the football field, he comes upon Bradley Smith, friend and fellow insomniac, and Bradley begins to tell a series of tales--a luminous narrative of love in all its complexity.

We meet Kathryn, Bradleys’ first wife, who leaves him for another woman, and Diana, Bradley’s second wife, more suitable as a mistress than a spouse. We meet Chloe and Oscar, who dream of a life together far different from the sadness they have known. We meet Esther and Harry, whose love for their lost son persists despite his contempt for them. And we follow Bradley on his nearly magical journey to conjugal happiness.

Charles Baxter is both the author of the novel and a character in it. Once Bradley suggest that Baxter write a book titled, “The Feast of Love,” he begins to interview the various people Bradley suggests, allowing them each to tell him (and us) their stories—stories that intersect and intertwine and reveal the complexities of life and relationships. Baxter being the author of the book and a character in it is only one of many doublets. “The Fest of Love” is not only the title of the book Baxter is working on, but a painting Bradley created. Bradley is not only a man and a main character, but a dog—his dog, named after him by his wife. Sound complicated? It is a bit, but only a bit.

Charles Baxter is a wonderful writer. “The Feast of Love” is a well written, insightful, generous book. The characters who people it are interesting and real and engaging and complex. I highly recommend this book. Get it. Read it. Enjoy. But . . .

“The Feast of Love” should be called “The Feast of Relationships.” Sure, I know why it wasn’t. It doesn’t have the same ring. I get it.

If you’re a regular reader of this column, then you know how much I believe in love, how there is nothing higher humanity can aspire to, how it is what God is. Love is absolute and unconditional. It’s a choice, a lifestyle, a philosophy, a way of being in the world.

“The Feast of Love” is a feast of passion, of romance, of sex, of entanglement, of friendship, of need, of divorce and remarriage, of like (and of falling in and out of it)—something not possible with love. Sure, love can be present in passion, with feelings, with like, with infatuation, with sex, but we shouldn’t confuse these things for love. Often the most loving, most altruistic acts we take involve the least in the way of warm fuzzy feelings. Love is action, not feeling.

Is love present in “The Feast of Love?” Sure. But as is always the case, it is contaminated by desire and passion and selfishness and like and sex and infatuation and the rest. Nothing for it. It’s the human condition—which is what this book is about, the fascinating, fragile, phenomenal feast of the human condition, and our absolute need for connection.

Baxter’s book has also been adapted into a warm, charming film by director Robert Benton (“Kramer vs. Kramer” and “The Human Stain”) starring Morgan Freeman and Greg Kinnear.

Here’s how the movie is billed by the studio:

Bradley (Greg Kinnear) believes in the power and beauty of true love. He’s good at falling in love—just with the wrong women. He’s hoping that his relationship with sophisticated Diana (Radha Mitchell) will have a happier ending than his first marriage to Kathryn (Selma Blair). Bradley’s friend Harry (Morgan Freeman) is happily married to Esther (Jane Alexander), but they are dealing with the loss of a different kind of love. At the same time, Oscar (Toby Hemingway) and Chloe (Alexa Davalos) are busy falling in love at first sight and starting their life together even though the odds are against them.

Good stuff. Enjoyable. Fairly faithful adaptation. But again, love isn’t something you fall into or out of. It’s not something you lose. And though it may seem so, it’s not a simple matter of semantics.
Feast on this fine book. It makes for a truly great meal. Then, if you still want more, have the film for dessert.

A Maddening Silence

Increasingly, we’re living in a world where nobody listens.

There’s so much noise, such a continuous assault on our senses, that we have to create filters just to survive, but sometimes we filter out too much. Sometimes, we’re not really listening to the important things being said and not being said to us.

It’s as if we have an inverse form of ADHD—instead of letting everything in equally, we’ve stopped letting in much of anything at all. Of course, this is due in part to the rampant narcissism and self-involvement of our time, but I really do believe the deafening levels of noise, the sheer volume of stimuli have overwhelmed us to the point of living defensively—like little monkeys with our hands over our eyes and ears and minds.

Not so in the era of AMC’s “Mad Men,” when television was still novel (on only for a few hours a day), people read, and the assault known as advertising and entertainment wasn’t nearly so ubiquitous.

There is much to recommend about “Mad Men”—the characters, the sets, the sleek sexiness, but perhaps what is best about it is not what’s in it, but what’s left out.

The makers of “Mad Men” have mastered the art of silences.

Like the white space on a page of text, and the way it shapes the reading experience, the well-placed silences in “Mad Men” are exquisite and excruciating.

And it’s not just the silences, but the overall quietness of the sophisticated drama. There’s very little music, very little noise, just people talking—and not—so much so that commercial breaks are even more jarring in their intrusion than usual.

Set in 1960s New York, the sexy, stylized drama follows the lives of the men and women of Madison Avenue advertising. The series revolves around the conflicted Don Draper, the biggest ad man (and ladies’ man) in the business, and his colleagues at the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency. As Don makes the plays in the boardroom and the bedroom, he struggles to stay a step ahead of the rapidly changing times and the young executives nipping at his heels. The series also depicts authentically the roles of men and women in this era while exploring the true human nature beneath the guise of 1960s traditional family values.

“Mad Men” is one of the most existential dramas to ever air on TV. All the characters are vaguely aware something is missing, something isn’t right, but for Don the feeling is anxiety-causing acute. We are given a front row seat to the lives of men and women trudging around the abyss, the quietness of their lives, the many silences around them, an outward manifestation of the noiseless void inside of them.

Relish the quiet and silence of “Mad Men,” get caught up in the spectacular set pieces and the turbulent times, and, most of all, the complex characters. As you do, remember, if it appears nothing is happening, look again. It’s all there—only it’s in the subtext. If you only hear the text you’ll miss it. If you only see what’s on the surface, you won’t perceive most of what’s happening—the bulk of the berg moving these people is below the surface. Way below—where the current actually runs in a different direction.

If you haven’t tried “Mad Men” or tried it and weren’t immediately smitten, try it again. Still yourself from the frenzy of Twenty-first Century America’s frantic pace, shut out the din and noise and sound and fury that is modern, manic, shallow culture, and embrace the essential silence at the heart of “Mad Men.” Listen. It is the center of Job’s whirlwind, and out of its utter emptiness, truly transformational truths can be heard—but only if we are still and quiet and linger to listen.