Interviewed by Matthew Quick: Evan Roskos on Mental Health, Q, Friendship, Famil...

The Official Blog of Matthew Quick: Evan Roskos on Mental Health, Q, Friendship, Famil...

Matthew Quick interviewed me about my new release. Enjoy!

Springsteen, Women, and why artists are always looking in from outside

Here's a blog post responding to a blog post about a blog post. I love the internet!

Monica D'Antonio over at X Rated has an excellent essay about Bruce Springsteen's song presentations of men and women. Read it as well as the original article by Rebecca Bohanan ("The Only Three Women in Bruce Springsteen's Music"), which sparked Monica's analytical fury.

Then, because you have an hour of your life reading 3 articles about Bruce Springsteen, consider my additional thoughts here (with very inadequate summaries of Bohanan and D'Antonio):

Rebecca Bohanan acknowledges that Springsteen's a man and is thus entitled to write about men; but she accuses him of stereotyping females as saviors, objects, and/or goals. She cites lyrics (many of which are from 70s/early80s). She says she's a huge fan of his music, but that he's writing about a male type that's 50-60 outdated; and his women are barely present.

Monica's analysis (why didn't you read it, fool?) does an excellent job of citing lyrics to contend that Springsteen has plenty of male-female relationships that are about friendship; she also points out that the damaged men are often unhappy regardless of what the women do, which I'd like to expand upon a bit.

With music and poetry, people often fall into the trap of equating narrators with the authors. Some singers/poets invite that merging; others exploit that mistake.

I contend that Springsteen is not even writing from HIS perspective in most of his songs (especially once he achieves commercial success -- you think he's really knocking girls up, robbing banks, working at factories, etc after BORN IN THE USA?)

I reiterate, first, that the artist always views the world from the outside. Thus, they are from the world but disconnected. That disconnection comes before the artwork can flourish. The art is as much an escape as getting into a car and driving to a new town (and then writing songs about the old town). But there is a difference between the man who yearns of a chance to drive away from his burdens and sadness and the artist, who truly escapes but still suffers -- as the Marxists of the Harlem Renaissance learned, the working class doesn't have time to write stories and poems and songs about their own plight if they are working 12 hours a day. The artist is privileged in that they have opportunity to create, power to create, or the will to sacrifice time to create. This does not make the artist a better human being than a man or woman who works, raises kids, etc; this simply makes the artist an artist. The artist chooses the nontraditional path -- the chance to communicate something, but still suffer.

Remember: the artist is always outside looking in.

Springsteen, an artist writing from the outside of a world he knew first hand, is writing about a perspective that still exists, despite what Bohanan wants to admit. The alienated male stuck in ideas/communities does seem socially and politically 50-60 years out of date, but one cannot wish it away. It still exists. Nor can you fault the artist for shining light on it, unless they seem to be celebrating the suffering or championing the old ideas. Springsteen is not championing the class struggles of the men he sings about; at worst he's not writing songs about the class struggles of women. But is that really worth criticizing him for? (Consider: would he be able to satisfyingly represent the female perspective? maybe. Or, more interestingly, would Bohanan critique a singer who sings about the pain of racial divides? Even better, why isn't she critiquing Bruce for focusing on white men?)

According to Bohanan, these songs miss the opportunity to champion her ideology that men and women can achieve both happiness and equal power in relationships. I happen to agree with that ideology. But -- and this is what irritates me about her article -- not all men and women think that way! Springsteen is singing about the men that don't think that way; or, more accurately, he's singing about the men who are discovering that they don't think that way, but don't know how else to act!

Springsteen sings about these men and women and, while he champions their ability to survive, he never cheers the culture that allows their situations to exist! (As Monica points out, Springsteen doesn't seem to think their outdated/traditional perspectives will lead to any type of happiness.) It's a career-spanning critique: the struggle of men raised to accept traditional gender roles, struggling in near poverty (and worse). And maybe he's a Romantic, but Springsteen seems to think that Love (yes, with a capital L) still exists and can make the pain bearable.

It's here that I'm reminded of a quote from James Baldwin's story "Sonny's Blues," where the narrator confronts his brother Sonny about his (Sonny's) heroin addiction. They begin to talk about what's really important to them -- the nature of surviving in post-War Harlem when drugs and music offer a way out for guys like Sonny who cannot achieve middle class success/happiness.

"But there's no way NOT to suffer, is there Sonny?"
[...]
"No. There's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it, to keep on top of it, and to make it seem--well, like you. Like you did something, all right, and now you're suffering for it. [...N]obody just takes it!"

Springsteen's men use love the same way Sonny uses jazz and heroin -- they still suffer, but they feel like they're doing something if they don't suffer alone. In the climax of James Baldwin's classic story, the narrator watches his sober brother play piano with 2 of his friends and the connection amongst the musicians is foreign (to the narrator) but beautiful. It's the thing that will keep Sonny alive, even if he suffers. Springsteen is talking about the same thing, as far as I'm concerned. Love, even if it can't cure suffering, makes suffering bearable. Love makes the working class man, who's brought up with the traditional male gender role of silent suffering provider, feel less alone.

Bohanan basically comes across as an elitist citing sexism when she misses that Springsteen is a class critic.

Does Springsteen focus on the way class destroys men more than women? Yes. Are there female artists who focus on the way class destroys women? Yes. Do we need one artist to do both? No. Bohanan would have done better to find the complimentary artist that highlights the struggle of working class women, instead of blaming Springsteen for doing something he clearly hasn't been trying to do!

WHEN THE ONLY LIGHT IS FIRE by Saeed Jones

First things first: you should buy this book:

When the Only Light is Fire by Saeed Jones

If you are anti-Amazon, it's also available from Alibris or from Sibling Rivalry Press.

Second things second: you should buy this book because buying books of poetry is not difficult, helps the universal purpose of poetry (to communicate), and also keeps the economy healthy. Thus, it's patriotic.

Third things third: you should encourage other people to buy this book because then you can discuss the poems. It will give you something important to talk about aside from your pointless existences or the new ailments and sufferings of your life. 

Fourth things fourth: While you can read the rest of this post without reading Saeed Jones's book, the post will make a little more sense if you've read the poems. Plus, I can't just quote the whole damn thing here; it wouldn't be fair.

"I've heard that some men can survive / on dust mites alone for weeks at a time. // There's a magnifying glass on the night stand, / in case it comes to that." -- "Sleeping Arrangement"

Now, to the point:

I have a general issue with poetry -- I don't think it's a waste of time and ink; that's not a valid critique generally or in this case, even if I believe that the role of poetry has been marginalized in our visual- and narrative-demanding culture. But I tend to see poetry as highly personal and highly personal things like poetry and song lyrics often need to be decoded in ways that cannot always be done successfully, especially if the poet would prefer NOT to let us in. Sylvia Plath, for instance, writes poems that are highly coded. She wants us to experience the poems as poems, not as cliched windows into her soul. "Daddy" has a beautiful rhythm and sound, and it rises to a climax that can be felt when she closes with "I'm through." There's no denying the aesthetic beauty of that poem. 

But once you know that Plath didn't hate her father, that her father taught German at a university, that her father wasn't a Nazi, etc, "Daddy" takes on a new and more complex meaning outside of how beautiful it sounds. No longer is this a "poem about daddy issues." It's now a poem about grief and loss. And grief is so much more profound (in my opinion). How would we know that meaning aside from decoding things? 

Basically, I cannot see a work outside of its time and place or disconnected from its author. This doesn't mean I must know an author's biography to enjoy the beauty of language; it just means that I tend to look for these things to enhance my understanding of the poetry as whole. That jerk TS Eliot would of course scoff and call me a ninny. Fair enough, but he's dead and also willingly spent time with Ezra Pound so I don't really have to worry about him. 

TS Eliot: poet, jerk.

And yet, even if I look at WHEN THE ONLY LIGHT AS FIRE as simply a text, in the way that total dick T.S. Eliot would suggest, I don't miss out on the emotional power of a line like: "And if I ever strangled sparrows / it was only because I dreamed / of better songs." 

Sure I can celebrate that line metrically, but there's a human voice there, a human mind. A mind that is not mine, does not have my background, and yet has succeeded in communicating across the differences of race and class and age to punch me in the gut. I don't need to be Jones or to know him intimately to know that he is a specific, profound human being and that the speaker of this poem (Saeed? Someone else?) has felt something concentrated, unique, and real. TS Eliot wasn't denying that emotions needed to be at the center of poems; it's just the natural outcome of trying to experience art through only an aesthetic lens. Eliot would suggest that there are no barriers between a reader and a piece of art as long as the reader is looking at things aesthetically. I can't know the artist and even if I did, I might not know the artwork any better if armed with knowledge. So, I get what Eliot is saying. I just don't like to think that art lacks blood and fiery synapses.

There are, of course, specific barriers between me and Saeed Jones. I'm a white guy from New Jersey. Jones is an African American born in Tennessee, raised in Texas, who lives in New York City. I'm straight, he's gay. I'm this, he's that. We both wear shoes, we both have eyes, we both write. To paraphrase Tim O'Brien: everything is true if you generalize enough.

Saeed Jones: poet, not a jerk.

But, really, none of this is a true barrier unless I make it one. It would be easy for me as a straight white guy to only read poetry by straight white poets. From New Jersey. Easy, and perhaps not nearly as dull as one might expect. (Seriously, BJ Ward is an excellent poet. So is William Carlos Williams.) But  those labels on bookstore shelves or on Amazon ("Gay/Lesbian Literature" or "Gay/Lesbian Poetry") signal things that can act as barriers even though they do not have to.

Put simply, I don't need to be a gay black man to like Saeed Jones poetry. Just like I don't need to be a British actor to like Shakespeare or a baseball player to root for the Phillies. And yet, the labels can make it easy for me to dismiss a text. 

Think of it outside of poetry for a second. If my wife tells my she wants to see a film that's called a Romantic Comedy I might balk at seeing the film with her. I don't think I need to belabor the point or even suggest certain movies that are "romantic comedies" and yet don't feel like romantic comedies, right? 

Right. So as a straight guy I can read these poems. And as a great poet, Saeed can write about anything he wants without losing the power that he has as a great poet -- the power to wrestle/shape/control/unleash words. He does not have to (and does not) write only about the topics determined by labels. 

Because the labels are guides but they are not the writer. Sure, some writers might be happy to hang onto a label and give their readers exactly what they expect -- that is essentially how genre fiction works, how erotica, thrillers, action movies work. But if we assume that all labeled things are only what their label says, then wouldn't we be seeing the entire world as genre'd? And then we'd see less and less of the world.

Consider: 

"I don't read young adult books."

"I don't read memoirs."

"I don't read books with male/female narrators."

"I don't read gay or lesbian poetry."

"I don't read literary fiction."

"I don't read fantasy novels."

"I don't read."

I can read this:

"After his gasp and god damn / grunt, after his zipper closes its teeth, his tongue leaves / its shadows, leaves me / alone"

and feel a certain kind of loneliness. I don't need to be Jones or the speaker to know that feeling. I don't need to have ever had that loneliness to know that loneliness.

Isn't that what self-professed book nerds love? To feel things we've never felt? May never feel? Isn't that how stories and poems get all wrapped up in the concepts of compassion and empathy? 

True, the labels we are given or adopt (or both) can help draw in people who may understand us before we even speak, who already have expectations about us. Labels help filter the world so if we want to read something by a blonde Latino writer of High Fantasy Novels narrated by dragons, we can find such a thing. But those labels can be trouble -- they can give people excuses not to spend time with our words when our words might be exactly what they need. 

How lonely is that feeling? 

See the world in genres then start cutting out entire genres. See what you're left with: flavorless mush. Worse, the inability to connect to others about stories. 

Worse worse: you write blog posts condemning the very thing you've been guilty of a thousand times; but hopefully you (I) will change.

Why I don't publish negative reviews online....

I have a guest post over at Alice Ozma's blog that you should check out! Alice is a former literature student of mine whose book The Reading Promise can be found, amongst other places, here.

On Boredom and English Majors

I decided to take a stand against boredom this semester. "I just think it's boring" is not a great way to get conversations moving and yet, sadly, it's sometimes the only thing a student might say all semester.
Now, I'm lucky. I teach literature courses for undergraduates at Rowan University where I, too, was an English undergraduate. I love the campus. The English department is in an old building with huge windows and lots of light. I don't get to teach in that building often because fire codes don't mesh with the large classes our department must accommodate (English is very popular amongst Elementary and Secondary education majors).
My students sometimes feel unlucky. Because I teach literature courses that allow me to teach Joseph Conrad's wonderful, uplifting, optimistic, and all-around hilarious novella Heart of Darkness. Okay, it's not any of those things, but it is one of my favorite texts to teach. It's flawed, troublesome, filled with fog and mud, metaphor and meandering sentences. I think it's a text that should be taught because it's these things. In fact, I think the issues of race, famously highlighted and chastised by Chinea Achebe, make the text one to look at MORE not LESS.
I've found my undergraduates are often slow to love Conrad's tale, but many of them do learn to love it. Or at least appreciate it. I won't lie and say I want them all to love it. My philosophy in the classroom has been to always try to help my students to understand a text. Loving it is optional and sometimes not possible as I have to sometimes teach texts I do not love.
But what I recently realized is that there's another problem with Heart of Darkness. Many students think it's boring. There's not enough dialogue to break up the massive paragraphs. Marlow's meandering narration can feel like 3 am college freshmen philosophizing. The plot -- despite being based on a perilous journey up the Congo river -- involves more waiting and talking about death than actual threats of death. I love it, but for my students it's certainly no Twilight or Harry Potter (the texts of choice of the last couple of years of readers and non-readers alike).
So, here's a slightly modified version of what I told my class before we began discussing Heart of Darkness:

I want to say something about boredom. Boredom is not something that is inherent to the text you're reading. It's not an inherent quality. I know that plenty of philosophers and critics would argue that beauty can be said to be an inherent quality in a piece of art, but I'm going to stop short of allowing anyone to say that a text contains boredom. I need to point out -- gently -- that boredom is, well, your fault. I don't mean that you are flawed. But I want you to consider that if you are bored when you're reading something it's not the text's fault. Look inside yourself and try to figure out why you are bored. I can suggest a few reasons.

• Sometimes you have to read things that are given no context. You are not told when the book was written or why it was written at that time. You don't know anything about the world of the author and thus the world of the characters might seem just as strange. 
• Perhaps there's a problem of focus -- maybe so much is contained in the text that you have no idea where to look closely. And, especially on the first read, your mind may prefer to wander off than to try to highlight everything as important. 
• Perhaps, in a different way, boredom is a sign that the book just isn't for you. And when you are reading for pleasure, that's fine. I fully support people passing on a book that bores them if they got the book to be entertained. 

But as English majors -- as people who choose to study literature not simply "read" -- we have to use our boredom as a means to learn something, to be enlightened, to dive deeper into the text. Because, as book nerds, we love reading, but as English majors we love words, so we should use every opportunity to learn what the words are doing, why they work and, in some cases, why they don't. If the words don't work, if the sentences don't work, then if you sit there, you can't just stare at the page and say "This is not interesting to me. I'm bored." Instead use that moment to ask hard questions. The questions that start out in a negative place -- even one of judgment and rejection -- can lead to understanding. You may not end up loving the book. But if you can get past boredom, you've taken a step as a student of literature.

So, I cleaned some of that up and made the end more profound, but that was basically it. My attempt to try and start conversations that lead somewhere, not to engage in one where the judgment of boredom has been made and thus other inquiries rejected (because students stop thinking and caring if they are bored) I'm not sure if it was the greatest idea, the most inspiring speech, or if it ended up making some students more hesitant to speak up in class. But I gave it a shot.
Plus, I got an email from a student at the end of class that said "Just wanted to say that I never thought about the content of books, stories, and movies, like the way you described in the beginning of class. I'm one of those people who would normally say how boring the book or movie is, but I agree with what you said, it isn't the book that's boring, it's something in us that makes it boring. I had to re-read some parts [of Heart of Darkness] several times to make sure i understood. At no point was I ever 100% sure with what was going on or with what I was thinking. But I do think the story is interesting, in a very weird and uncommon fashion. I'm typing this as everyone leaves, and I just want to add that today's discussion indeed did help me understand some parts."
So, at least one person walked out thinking more positively!