"A Hill of Beans"

Bear with me at first, this all has a point. A popular movie from the 1970’s starring Robert Redford was “Jeremiah Johnson”. This movie was based on a real frontier man of the same name. Jeremiah tries to live in civilized society only to find it’s pretty complicated and messy. So he heads out alone into the mountains. He becomes the ultimate mountain man wandering around looking for his next meal, living in a rudely constructed cabin and fighting (alone) Indians and animals. Redford portrays Jeremiah Johnson as being the last of the romantic, noble-man. Looks fun on the screen but it doesn't translate well to real life.

The second classic movie I want to address is the 1943 film “Casablanca” starring Humphrey Bogart. This movie tells the fictional story of a man, Monsieur Rick Blaine, who is on the lam from the United States for reasons deliberately not made clear. Rick comes to Casablanca and establishes Rick’s Café, a place where a person can get a drink, some great piano playing and maybe work a side deal in black market items. Since the Nazi’s have moved into Casablanca, what most people deal for are exit visas.

Rick is a loner and prides himself on staying out of other people’s business. He says, “I stick my neck out for no one”. Yet at the end of the movie he does stick his neck out for several people and even for the French underground. He plays tough but is sentimental at heart. The final (and iconic) airport scene is so great because 3 people that could be in it just for them end up sticking their necks out for each other.  Rick gives up his seat on the plane to the love of his life Elsa so she can go and be a part of her husband Victor’s cause. Elsa was willing to give up her seat, stay in Casablanca with Rick who she still loves and doesn't want to abandon again. The Police Chief covers for Rick’s killing of the Nazi, Major Strasser, even though that will cost him his cushy job and he’ll have to leave town. Rick’s famous line was, “it doesn't take much to see that the lives of 3 ordinary people don’t add up to a hill of beans in this crazy world”. But when the movie is over everyone watching the movie knows that it’s exactly the opposite of what Rick said. The lives of 3 ordinary people mattered very much.

“Jeremiah Johnson” for all its romance and adventure still has at its core isolation from society. If you look past the stoic “noble man” concept what you have is this: that if you go it alone in life you can end up lost and/or left behind. “Casablanca” shows us that when we look out for others it affirms both us and them. In short, when you do for others you benefit yourself and others at the same time.

As we go forward with our lives, we need to accept the kindnesses of friends and family and accept the help of strangers. In return, we need to offer kindnesses and help to others.  You, me and the people we know in our lives matter a  lot, we all add up to much more than a hill of beans in this crazy world.

Whatever and Why

Recently a friend said this to me, “Will, you always say “yes” that something is okay with you, you never say no”. My ex-wife used to get upset with me when she would ask questions like: where do you want to go to eat, or which movie do you want to see? I would say, it doesn't matter to me, either one is okay, what would you like? She thought I was being wishy-washy, non-committal, non-opinionated, passive and it bugged her. Why wouldn't I care about whether we go to Denny’s or Coco’s, Midnight in Paris or Horrible Bosses have buttered or not buttered popcorn?

I’ll tell you why.

When I was 6 years old my older brother Dennis (age 7 ½) died of what I found out many years later was a completely stupid, random reason. I adored Dennis so much (even though I was young). Dennis was like that kid Allie in Catcher in the Rye. He was the perfect kid, good looking, smart, teachers loved him, my mom loved him and he was so helpful to my mom. I have several photos of him and me and in each I am looking up (literally) to him. He looked so confident and handsome. He was such a cool kid. Seeing him lying in his coffin, not knowing the reason why was heartbreaking for me.

Then when I was in 4th grade (age 9) my best friend Homer Murray Jones was killed. He was hit by an 18 wheeler on the Highway outside of my small Nebraska town. For reasons I and I think no one else never knew, he ran across the highway after a fishing trip to the creek. Oddly enough I was in my backyard when I heard the siren screaming by and I remember thinking “uh oh”. I went to his funeral (all his classmates did) and believe me when I tell you that at age 9 seeing my friend looking like a wax figure in a coffin just 3 days after I was walking home with him from school, laughing and telling dirty jokes we’d heard at school was scary and beyond my ability to understand it, I just couldn't understand why this happened, why him?  Years later a girlfriend said to me, "God loves you no matter what" and I told her, “yeah, but make a big enough mistake and you’ll get your ass kicked.” She never understood why I thought that way.

I fell in love when I was 22. I was working at Knotts Berry Farm as a tour guide. She was a 21 year old college student named Mary Elizabeth _______. I met her because she was on my last tour of the night on the last weekend in August. She was magical, the chemistry unmistakable. For the next 4 months I spent half my time at her apartment in Redondo Beach. She was smart, feisty, and edgy. She loved me and cared for me. She was a catholic and took me to my first Midnight Mass.

I was just drifting along in college with no clear cut purpose or direction but she challenged me to get with it and be serious and so I did. That semester I posted my best grades! I was so happy. Before midnight mass, we each took a piece of paper and wrote down what we wanted from the other for Christmas (we had no money for gifts). I wrote down, "I want you love me like I love you", and on her paper she wrote “I knew I was in love with this cowboy (my costume at Knotts) at the end of our first date and my wish is one day you'll feel that way about me".

We just sat there on her bed looking at each other in total silence, and then hugged each other for minutes. We didn't have to say anything else. A week later on New Year’s Eve, after I got off work at Knotts, I was to drive up to her apt in Redondo Beach and then go with her to her New Year’s Eve party at General Telephone which was located off Coast Highway. Wouldn't you know it, a very heavy fog rolled in about the time I got off work? My car was this cute little British racing green 61 VW bug and while I loved the car, driving it from Anaheim to Redondo Beach in a fog bank seemed too risky to me. I called her and told her I didn't think I should drive up. She begged me to drive up anyway, and while I wanted to I didn't. I said I would drive up the next day and go with her to her parent’s house in Torrance for early dinner. She finally said, okay, but get here early "cowboy" so we can spend some time together.

The next morning (about 7am) her sister called me to tell me Mary had been killed the night before in an auto accident. She decided to go to the New Year’s Eve party anyway. You have to make a left turn off Coast Highway into the General Telephone parking lot but it’s not an intersection nor did they have left turn arrows. You just wait for traffic to clear and go. When she made the turn a car came out of the fog and nailed her. I was stunned and heartbroken for a long time. I felt guilty for years. I thought I should have been with her. What if I had gone up there, maybe we wouldn't have even gone to the party, you know, that kind of thing.

I hung in there for a while before everything caught up to me. I crashed big time. It took everything I had to get through a day of work. I was sad every day and depressed. My few friends soon drifted away (I wasn't much fun). I was in serious therapy for 5 years. Therapy really helped me. I slowly pulled out of a 2 ½ year depression. I never forgot that how much help I got and kindness of others. I promised myself that I would always try to help others in need and I have kept my word on that.

Finally, in 1987 when Austin was 3 ½ and I was living in Ramona, Ca. I decided to set up a trust fund and get a 150K life insurance policy with New York Life. Trust me, if anything happened to me, the list of available people to care for him was short and unattractive, so I wanted money to be there for his care but also to have it protected so he could have it when he turned 21. Well, that was during the time of the AIDS scare if you remember, and people were really freaked out. Life insurance companies in particular. But, I was in good health, running 10-12 miles a week and didn't think anything of the insurance company wanting a physical and blood test. I passed the physical, no problem and my blood work was sent to a lab in Texas.

About 10 days later I came home one day to find this notice from the Ramona Post Office marked Urgent. They had a letter for me that only I could sign for. Fearing what it could be (divorce related I thought) I went to get it. Inside was a form letter informing me I had at what looked like a potential life threatening disease and I needed to see my doctor ASAP. There was this list of potential fatal illnesses listed that included exposure to radiation, hanta virus, asbestos poisoning etc. but the key one was HIV. I mean there’s my name on the letter, my address, my social security number and I knew I hadn't been exposed to radiation poisoning, asbestos etc. What else could it be?

I totally freaked, I knew I hadn’t been sleeping around but it only takes one time. My general doctor (God love old Ollie) freaked out on the phone and told me to go directly to this special clinic in Hillcrest…….Hillcrest. I went, they looked at my letter and I could see the “I’m sorry” look in their eyes. They took sample after sample and told me I would have to wait 2-3 weeks for a complete blood scan. For those 2-3 weeks I thought I was a dead man. I am not being dramatic; I thought I was a dead man. Not only that but I wouldn't have the insurance money for Austin. You find out real quick what is important to you and what isn't when you think you are going to die.

Those were interesting weeks to be sure. Know what I didn't think about? I didn't think about my job, my career, my car, my bank account, how cool or un-cool I was. I didn't care one bit about any of that. What I did think about was my faith &God, my son, and the people I loved and even the people I knew I owed an apology too. Finally, I went in and the doctor told me the results were clear I did not have AIDS and in fact was very healthy. All I had was a slightly elevated salt level. The doctor at the clinic was furious, because he knew some bullshit was going on. So he called my so-called agent G. Strassberger and raised hell with him. Strassberger promised to find out what happened and he did. Turns out my lab results had been erroneously mixed up with someone else with a nearly identical social security number. This other person got my results and I got theirs.

Look my point with all this is: I've seen a brother, childhood friend, girlfriend die, and thought for sure I was a dead man myself. Every day, I am so grateful to be alive, to have a wonderful son and the chance to raise him, to have had a great career, and good friends. Do you really think I CARE about which movie we go to or whether or not its Coco’s vs. Denny’s? Hell no! I’m not being disinterested, wishy-washy, or passive; I’m just happy to be with you.  So if you ask me, do you mind getting together at 2pm instead of 11am? No, that’s fine? Do you mind changing from Tuesday to Wednesday? No, I don’t. Will butter on the popcorn be okay….sure? I’m sorry I will be a few minutes late... you don't have to be sorry just drive safely.

Having said this let me assure you if you want to see me get an elevated blood pressure just get me going on the sorry state of education today. Get me going on the disrespect for teachers or the stupid state of our political system. Ask me how I feel about seeing my generation endangering the future our young people, the lack of respect for senior citizens, the attack on the unions that created the middle class in this country or let me see someone ridiculing another person. I do get pissed off; I do have opinions but not about little stuff.

"Grim Fiction"

     

A few years back a student of mine asked me why the classic books of fiction were so depressing. Why were they filled with so much hardship and suffering. There is no doubt that classic novels like The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath and even Huck Finn have a lot of grimness to them. So do plays, and short stories. There are several good reasons why classic works of fiction are built around hardship and suffering.

          The first reason for fictional suffering is that there is more drama in suffering than in happy moments. Suffering heightens the reader’s interest. What would capture your attention more reading about someone’s nice day at work or seeing whether or not the Joad family can survive the great depression? If you ask someone how their day was and they say it was a good day you think well that’s nice but if they say it was an awful day, you want to know why. In the novel, Huck Finn, Huck’s running away with the fugitive slave Jim puts them both in constant, imminent danger and that is more interesting to read than if Huck were running away with a childhood friend.

          The second reason why there is grimness and suffering in fiction is because readers place themselves in the characters shoes and wonder how they would/will handle life’s difficulties. I don’t wonder how I would handle a nice birthday party because I have, but how would I handle the sudden death of my closest sister, or handle being thrust into an economic depression and instant poverty? What would I do? If I started to have a nervous breakdown like Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye where would I go, who would I turn to? We don’t always identify with any one particular character’s suffering or hardship but we do identify with hardship and suffering in general.

          The final reason why there is so much suffering and grimness in fiction is because it builds tension that will keep the reader reading. The reader wants to know how the character(s) troubles will turn out so they read to the end. Will Gatsby, in the Great Gatsby, get the love of his life , will Jim, in Huck Finn, get his family back, will the Joad family, in The Grapes of Wrath, find a new safe home. We want to know. The happier stories just don’t build up the tension and therefore the desire to finish reading the story nearly as well.

          When my student asked me why the classic books had so much hardship and depression in them I said in a flippant way, “So you’ll read them”. I was being humorous but it’s also true. We all have happy moments and difficult moments. It’s the difficult moments that shape us, define us and help us grow. That’s what the great writers write about.

"Tragedy or Justice: Jay Gatsby vs. Willy Loman"

The traditional definition of a tragic character is a person that is basically good and in fact someone that could be viewed as admirable but because they have a significant flaw in their personality (called the tragic flaw) they bring themselves down and often those around them as well. When you apply this definition to the main character of the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) you realize that Jay Gatsby is a tragic character. However, whenever this same definition is applied to Willy Loman, the main character of Arthur Miller’s 1954 play The Death of a Salesman it’s clear that Willy Loman is far from being a tragic character. Here is the difference between them.

Jay Gatsby’s   personality flaw was his inability to see reality when it came to the love of his life Daisy Buchanan.  Daisy is materialistic, shallow, child-like (when it suits her) but also calloused and calculating when she feels she needs to be. The characters around Daisy see this in her, but Gatsby is blinded by the fact that his “Golden Girl” (Daisy) loved him once and Gatsby believes true love lasts forever. There are important reasons why things are different now between them from seven years ago. Daisy is married to rich man Tom Buchanan and together they have a daughter. She mostly has forgotten Jay, the poor Army officer she was had a brief love with. He has never forgotten her.

 For most people if a relationship doesn't work out you move on. However,Gatsby is stuck in the past as far as Daisy in concerned. His friend, and the books narrator, Nick Carraway tried to warn him about this flawed thinking when he told him two things: 1. I wouldn't expect too much of Daisy and 2. You can’t repeat the past. Gatsby’s reaction was, “Can’t repeat the past? Of course you can…” The reader wonders how this is ever going work out well for Gatsby.  Of course it doesn't!  Gatsby is betrayed by Daisy and then later is shot in the back and killed by a man he never even knew George Wilson.  Some would say he was stabbed in the back before he was shot in the back.

 It's true that Gatsby used people to pursue his goal of getting back to Daisy but not in a way that hurt the people he used and he is otherwise generous with people. He befriends Nick, and stays loyal to several people thorough out the book. He lets a left-over party guest stay at his place; he was very generous with his father and despite the strong hint that he made his fortune with the mob, we never see or know of him hurting anyone other than himself. Nick, a man of integrity and moral values, summed it up when he said to Gatsby “You’re worth more than the whole damn bunch put together”. Nick admires Gatsby as does the reader and we want to save him from his own naivete but of course we can’t.  Jay Gatsby's tragic flaw, his inability to let go of his romantic ideal with Daisy brings about his downfall but only his. He is a tragic character.

Willy Loman is a traveling salesman in the 1940’s or so he says. In the play Death of a Salesman Willy Loman says a lot of things and that’s the problem. Most of what he says is untrue. He lies to his sons, he lies to his wife, and he lies to his next door neighbor Charley and most importantly lies to himself.  He often doesn't do well on any of his sales trips; instead he goes to his neighbor and friend Charley and borrows the money that he brings home. His lying is one thing but that’s not the worst. He has affairs on the road.  His older son Biff found out about this when he was in high school and he has never forgiven his father. At one point Biff tells his mother, “he never had an ounce of respect  for you, he always, always wiped the floor with you”.  Linda, not privy to the cheating, defends her husband.  Biff is right though because Willy besides being a liar, cheater, and all around loudmouth also constantly berates Linda throughout the play. He yells at Biff, yells at Charley, belittles Charlie’s son Bernard by calling him a pest, an anemic, and just not well-liked. Willy is obnoxious, and mean.

Willy doesn't have just one personality flaw either, he is filled with them and he takes his own unhappiness out on everyone around him. The final thing to consider is this, Willy commits suicide at the end of the play thinking that his death will get Biff his insurance money and then his son will go into business and will be on top again. On top like when Biff was the quarterback on the high school team. Willy is even foolish about this. He failed to realize something about this grand plan. He failed to investigate whether or not the insurance company would pay out for a suicide. They don't of course and his death is as meaningless and unfulfilled as his long, sad life. His family gets nothing. Do we feel sorry for Willy? probably, but  that doesn't make Will a tragic character. According to the definition above Willy Loman is not a tragic character.

If bad things happen to essentially good, admirable people we call it a tragedy. If bad things happen to essentially bad, unlikable people we call it justice.  The character Jay Gatsby was very much likable and there were things we could even say we admired about him. He didn't deserve what happened to him. Jay Gatsby is a tragic character.  On the other hand Willy Loman is an overly critical, corrupt, loudmouth, and a person hurtful to virtually everyone and especially him. When Willy kills himself we see him as being pathetic for sure but Willy Loman is not a tragic character.

"Willa Cather, Enigma No More"

Willa Cather, a famous American author, died in 1947. She was born in West Virginia and moved to Red Cloud, Nebraska in her childhood. After graduating from the University of Nebraska she moved to Pittsburgh to begin a writing career. She spent her last 40 years living and working in New York City. Cather authored such classics as O Pioneer and My Antonia. The latter book has been a staple of most high school (some college) curriculum s for the last half century. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1922 and numerous other major honors. Cather has plenty of fans, her books still sell well and her contribution to the American canon is significant. Why do I mention her in this posting?

Turns out this month a new book is coming out called, The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. This anthology will have in it 566 personal and professional letters from the estimated over 3,000 that Cather wrote in her lifetime. This will be the first time anyone has ever seen any of her correspondences. You see Willa Cather was the most secretive, enigma this side of another famous American writer J.D. Salinger (Catcher in the Rye). Like Salinger, she legally made sure that none of her letters would ever be quoted from, referenced in anyway or published during her lifetime. Like Salinger, she also took legal steps to make sure nothing would be revealed or published after her death. She personally burned many of her most deeply personal letters before her death and instructed her longtime friend and executor of her trust Edith Lewis to burn even more including an unfinished novel after her death. Some of the most personal letters are thought to deal with Willa’s long time “friendship” with Edith Lewis and even more racy a five year relationship with Isabelle McClung. It has been pretty well established that Isabelle McClung was a woman Cather seems to have shared her bedroom with for over 5 years. There is so much we don’t know about Cather and how her personal life is found in her works. That’s because she kept so much of her life private during her lifetime and just as private in the 66 years since. However, that’s about to change.

A Cather scholar, Janis Stout, a professor at The University of Nebraska, Lincoln has been in possession of about 1,800 notes and correspondences but until now could not publish any of them.  Willa, you see, set up a Willa Cather Trust and one of the executor’s main responsibilities was to keep under wraps all her personal correspondences. The first executor of the Willa Cather Trust was her friend of 39 years Edith Lewis. Lewis rigidly followed Cather’s instructions and wouldn't even allow Cather’s books to be published in paperback versions until the late 1960’s. The second and (as it turns out) last executor of her Trust was her nephew Charles Cather. He also continued the ban on making any of her letters public as well as a ban on everything else Cather related except sales of her books. As a result there have been no movie versions, TV adaptations of her works and no other information about Cather. Here is why the book will be on the shelves by April 30.

All direct descendants of Willa Cather have died, most recently her nephew and executor of the trust Charles Cather. Therefore, the Cather Trust has gone into a conservator-ship with the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. That is where Professor’s Janis Stout and Anthony Jewell come in. They both teach at the University and are Cather scholars. They now control what happens to at least a portion of her letters. They have the legal right to publish if they want and that is what they are choosing to do. Of course, in doing so they are flagrantly violating Willa Cather’s wishes. So why are they publishing the Selected Letters of Willa Cather?

The first reason is because Cather has been dead for 66 years and there are no significant family members left or any other people alive that would be directly affected by the publication of these letters.

The second and main reason is that the letters will help scholars understand what her driving forces, influences and personal connections to her work were. I agree with making these selected personal and professional letters (she wrote to Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Parker and many other known artists) available because the resulting study and scholarship can only help readers understand Willa Cather all the more. What is the point of writings being good enough to last generations but then know virtually nothing about the author and the author’s purposes? I mean I love Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby in and of itself but I especially appreciate it because I know something about the life Fitzgerald and his wife were leading in 1924-25 France. Knowing about their love, hate relationship the concept of the Golden Girl and other Fitzgerald biography makes that novel so more meaningful to read.

The legendary JD Salinger not only would never let his novels (most notably Catcher in the Rye) ever be made into movies or TV adaptations and no plays etc., he also was a writer that wouldn't even come out of his bunker like home in Cornish, New Hampshire to do an interview or talk to anyone about his works. He threatened to sue anyone that claimed to have interviewed him or anyone he thought had infringed on his copyright territory. He was either the ultimate temperamental “artiste” or a narcissist “curmudgeon”. I’d like to tell you he was both but that’s the point, who knows? He also has it in his will that no one can reproduce his works, do movies etc. after his death presumably forever.

The difference in his case is that he just died 3 years ago. My students used to ask me, “Mr. Bailey, is Salinger dead”? I would reply, “I have no idea and neither does anybody else”. I had visions of a news story coming out in 2009 saying he’d died in 1979 but the family was just now getting round to letting the public know. Let’s not forget other famous reclusive American writers like Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Harper Lee and even John Steinbeck to an extent. They all wanted to be thought of as good writers, most (not Dickinson) wanted to make a living at their craft but they also didn't want attention.

It’s ludicrous. I don’t ever remember hearing these writers refusing to cash a royalty check. Isn't it inherent with public fame and fortune that people want to know who you are? The minute you write a best seller (and especially an iconic book adopted as a standard in High School and college curriculum s  you become a public figure and I think that students, scholars and general readers have a reasonable right to ask you to share some of your ideas, your reasons for writing, any hopes and wishes for a particular book or future books.

I know what you are thinking, what if they are just shy people? The public understands shy, many people are shy. King George VI (the King’s Speech) was painfully shy and self-conscious, but he overcame it to some degree because he knew he had an obligation to the people of England to speak to them.  We can take pauses, stumbling, stammering, and gaffes. What we can’t take is the “buy my books, make me famous and rich but otherwise don’t bother me”. I’m sorry it doesn't work that way. Sign an autograph, do a carefully selected interview, do a print media interview, share your ideas in other writings just something. What’s the big deal? You wrote the book(s) you wanted publication, you hoped they would sell well and you cashed the checks so stop with the immature 8^th grade “don’t look at me, don’t talk to me” act.

Sorry, Willa your letters (566) are going to be published and yes, we might find out more about you. We’ll probably like you more and appreciate your work more. I can see a whole new generation of eager student scholars diving into the Cather works with fresh perspectives. If (you) writers want anonymity, fine, then publish under the name of anonymous or don’t write or publish at all. Be a mechanic, work on road construction or serve coffee at Starbucks. Instead of infringing on your delicate psyche we’ll just ask you to refill the half and half container.