The Parable of the Seawall – Essays is a collection of writings by Matt. Some essays were written very recently, others many years ago. In the course of organizing the themes within the book, questions came to my mind. The interview is a clarification of his thoughts and ideas. The entire interview will appear in three parts. –– Jane
Part I
JF:You’ve seen changes and developments in the world generally and in the United States specifically over the span of 70 years. Your opinion of humanity remains bleak despite progress in civil rights, feminism, medicine, et al. Given what you know and what you’ve witnessed, why such a negative assessment of humanity’s progress?
I will respond to your question, although a host of questions come to mind more about your thinking process than mine. And that can be deferred for pillow talk in our marital bower. When I taught high school sociology I came across a term coined by Robert Bierstedt, a famous American sociologist, called “temporocentrism,” which he defined as an inclination or tendency to judge or evaluate other people in terms of “one’s own century, one’s own era or one’s own lifetime.” I use that here because your question latently smacks of this often unconscious or quite natural bias.
When I look at history I do not see a straight line of progress. Americans, unfortunately, think that we are continually progressing down the road (Manifest Destiny) which is a labile fantasy that I reject. In my readings as a young history major I came across several theories of history and one I dimly recall is that of the ever upward moving spiral, as if different ages, eras, reigns, empires brushed across the outward spiral, leaving both good and bad historical “residues,” the invention of the cotton gin or the Inquisition. Culminatively the spiral moves upward and mankind progresses or “improves,” whatever word you choose. I believe this is a delightful myth, good for historians, bad for living one’s life. I dismiss all theories of historical development. I view mankind as an evolutionary misfit – or anomaly, doing its haphazardly and slovenly best or worst throughout the eons.
I see no Newtonian force here – gods, civilizations, cultures, religions, great minds or masters influencing mankind for an eternal purpose. I do not believe in destiny. I do not believe in the future. It is all random happenstance in my world. Believe it or not, chance ain’t a bad game to play. When I am faced with this question which implies the improvement of the species in some ways, I merely respond it is luck or random event. I take no pleasure in the belief system that all will come out right in the end. That is pure rot. It is pablum, a self-fed nurturance to mask the real anxiety which is that there is no intention or purpose in this world unless you choose, existentially, let us say, to determine that for yourself.
Man does not improve; he hasn’t done so in 50 centuries. What may or may not improve is his physical environment, his societal, economic, sociological, psychological milieu.
As I mentally peruse the eons of evolutionary time and what man has done or is doing, I can agree that a flushing toilet and paper is far superior than one’s hand and a frond. I enjoy the present “evolutionary” gifts of the moment, of this time, but I also fully realize that Cro-Magnon man had the same cranium and brain power we have except for the mechanical and digital techniques we now own. Man has not changed but his petri dish has. He is the same creature acculturated into this milieu, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
Given my thinking on this, I see no significant difference in the instinctual traits man has had from the beginning. Think of Freud who I believe announced – thus so feared and despised — this clearly, and in this announcement was the real fact that civilization and its discontents would be an ongoing situation; that we need to examine our animal selves for what we can tame or domesticate and to learn what we cannotsafely harness, such as war. Freud’s repetition compulsion, which I subscribe to, informs me that we will repeat forever the horrors of war until evolution in its own good millennial time will mutate us into a different creature.
I see the darkness in the world, in man, in particular, and I have spent my later years trying to deal with it in myself and especially in others. No outstretched hand by God to Adam on the Sistine Chapel for me.
After all my years of writing about the Holocaust, the one great learning for me is that it is repeatable; that we may learn a little from it, but it will be massagedinto a softer, better to “sweeten” it historical lesson and not much metabolized by future generations who I couldn’t give a fuck about. “Never Again” is an inept, inane and useless slogan, representing more of the ache and agony of the generations after the Holocaust. The Holocaust will be mostly forgotten centuries hence and will be so attenuated that in American textbooks it will take its place along the genocide of the American Indian, a paragraph or two or three. If you want a measure of life in this existence, find love, find meaningful work; the rest is illusion…Gather thee rosebuds while ye may.
Having said all of the above, what is missing here is the non-rational response. And this requires a psychological or therapeutic response explaining why I may or may not have a dour sense of the present and of the species.Granted, I have supplied my rationale, but there are nether areas in me that, quite frankly, I choose not to share. Perhaps. I am a product of many lacquers and veneers laid down upon me over the years from childhood to adulthood. I am conditioned man. I will defer here, but my original thinking still stands.
JF: Could you, for a moment, explore somewhat you refer to as the “non-rational response”? Speculate, given your past experiences, why you have c hosen to have such a “dour sense of the present and of the species.” Is there something you gain from adopting this attitude?
Ah, the knife is not only put in but also turned. I am challenged. All kinds of associations come to mind because of this invasive question. Is my rage at the species masking a disappointment as well? Do I get off on secondary gain, deriving covert pleasure by constructing such a defense that is purely rational? We shall see.
Allow me to surf my wave-like feelings and associations. I am horn. I am nail. All this comes to mind. Have I been so hurt or ravished that I’ve allowed myself to grow horn over the wound, hard nail? Very much so – that is an admission. I see that. Was I so abraded as a child that to ease the wound I needed to grow armor? I think so. I know so. It is more than a belief. Particulars will follow but the associations keenly assault me.
Indulge the thought that we give ourselves self-lies, the rational KY gel that keeps us and our lives lubricated so that we can fit into all the vaginas of everyday living and life. We fear irritation. Moreover, self-lies can morph into full blown myths, completely grandiose constellations to explain purpose and intent, the meaning of this world, of our place in it. Often, I, you, confabulate these fables of self not in a conniving, smirking way but as the daily inhalation of breathing – like oxygen, we take it for granted. So, I have my myths and my self-lies. Like the skirl of bagpipes in the distance, I announce my distaste of this world and the species, part lie, part truth, no doubt, and part self-myth.
Religion is a deranged myth that bathes the illusionist in unguents and emollients. That a Jewish putz who most likely never existed – there is a well-known study made of the meticulous records kept by the Romans, much like the Nazis and their paper work about the Holocaust that reveal no mention of a Jew being crucified at that time and date, etc – is said to have risen and returned takes your breath away until you realize billions on this planet give it more than credence; the heirarchies; the abstruse philosophies; the anti-Semitism; the Inquisition; witch trials; pedophilia; thegenocidal behaviors of the Conquistadores; the endless horrors perpetuated by religion and its practitioners reveal the ornately baroque nature of myths and men. Radical Islamists and their perverted laws juiced in testosterone and mind-blowing rigidity all support my dim view of mankind as well as the inordinate power we all give our self-myths.
An anecdote from my childhood before 1950 may serve to reveal something. I recall at that young age before 10, I believe, that I had this habit of bringing my shoulders up, as if it was cold outside; it may have served as a self-protective haunch. Noticing this behavior, my father asked me to stop it. I became aware of the unaware. As I think back it is emblematic of anxiety. In my short story, “Down to a Sunless Sea, “ I wrote of my habit of rubbing the backs of feetwith the sides of my shoes, to such a degree, it hampered my walking at times. I attributed that to sexual anxiety, perhaps most likely masturbation. I am not here trying to be reductive, just go with it for a while. If you blow it off, think Jesus as he rises, for that may end your being dismissive. Something in my home and family at that time was stressing me and I expressed that by the haunching of the shoulders.I have no answer nor can I attribute what had caused that anxiety, but it was there. And as of this writing, I still have a hard time with mastering my anxiety.
What I am teasing out for you is that such anxiety most likely, and other stressors as well, to use the jargon, have helped me create a myth, that the world out there is the cause for my miseries; that “bad” people have always meant me harm — even my parents, they most of all, if I resort to a child-like cry. I have the astounding association at this moment that if we closely watch our children in their first 10 years we can see a kind of mimicry of the adult to be; how the child deals with stress, how the child views work, how the child handles absence or abandonment or how the child, like me, deals with benign neglect, the lack of cradling, of being read to, of hugs and embraces, of feelings well said and bravely acted upon.
As I look back, which is the obligation I feel, for someone my age, I assess my life story. However, as a writer, I have been assessing my life for many years now and I can only offer up the latest edition. I look at the world with a jaundiced point of view; I see that. I look at the species as a cynic. I use the term, a pesso-optimist, for I do relish the inherent beauties of nature and the joyous fact that I experience the day. I feel the inherent seething rage I have for what was not done with me or to me in a healthy or constructive way; that rage still broils and simmers and what better way than to discharge this, like an infant swipe at a miscreant toy, thanto strike out and look for the chinks in humanity’s armor.
Sadly, this insight or observation only compounds the validity of my original take on humanity which is that it is its own worst enemy; how ironic, that my microscopic shout at the gods among billions actually does validate something about the species. After the Holocaust, do I have to add my complaint? The Holocaust, that event which we run from like a leper, says more and more about mankind than ever needs saying. I run to that event to examine its scraps, its bones, its fetid history. I dig archaeologically as a writer within its ashes because it calms me, reassures and reaffirms me, tells me that I was inherently right. Being right does not give me any pleasure. Unlike Robert Frost’s epitaph, I do not have a lover’s quarrel with the world. Perhaps my stone shall read: “Torn.”
JF: You mention in your essays several men you admire, namely, Orson Welles, Nikos Kazantzakis, Krishnamurti, Peter Lorre, Daniel Day-Lewis, Sigmund Freud and your friend and therapeutic supervisor, Ben Rapoport. What traits do you perceive that these men have in common that you find especially compelling or admirable?
What they all have in common is that they are artists. And what is it about artists that I am so smitten with? A rejection of all tyranny over the minds of man (Jefferson), enemies of authority, especially of the state and of the culture they swim in as well, a lifelong struggle to see, that is, to decondition themselves, a passion of the mind, a feeling to or for a spiritual value in one’s own living free of cant and religion, an effort to realize themselves as much as they can, to experience life from moment to moment, and an enduring effort to rid themselves of fear, especially the fear of death, is the powerful glue that they all have in common.
I do not speak of Ayn Rand’s Howard Roark here; he is that writer’s pimple of what is the creative soul. Of all of them, Ben is the one I know in personal relationship. Often he speaks of himself as a life merchant, meaning that he sees his task as blowing oxygen into the lost souls who see him, to share with them the daily natural wonder of life. Ben is a kind of life force. Those around him feel it. Wouldn’t it be loverly if we all could attain that? Oh, we can. Life is art and we can become artists of that phenomenon. It is not for nothing that artists are not very valued in society for they remind the uninformed – oh, why pull punches here – the herd – of what they are not. Artists show life in process, in action and in deed and this is always threatening. I will venture an association here. Most of us identify with death, as a species, than with living. Nazi “culture” reeked of death and dying.
I am particularly attracted to transcendence, thinking here of Kazantzakis. Call it characterological if you will, but it has attenuated; often I take a nap when I feel its opalescence come over my spirit. Men like Camus and his Sisyphus do appeal to me, for I admire struggle, the bettering of one’s own self, perhaps the need to go beyond what one is. In his book about Saint Francis Kazantzakis stripped away all the namby- pamby gloss about the man and revealed in exquisite prose the agony he endured to transcend or to be cleansed. I am always moved by the desire to become better, although the desire to be takes priority with me at this point in life.
JF: With the exception of the fictional character, Babette, you do not discuss any women in your essays as either personal or artistic people that you admire. Are there any women who you do admire?
Yes. No.I’ve written about the death of my mother and my relationship to her in short stories, especially in “Down to a Sunless Sea.” I’ve written about my wife and my daughter in separate essays (passim ).However, I must admit that it became apparent in my own treatment that I have an ongoingstruggle with women. In a Rorschach Test I took in my forties, one interpretation of an inkblot I associated to involved my attempt to free myself of the “claw” or “crablike” image of my mother . My mother did not castrate me but her control over me was immense. “In the Parable of the Sea Wall” which opens this book, you can see the relationship undergoing tidal shifts. If she had not died early on, I probably would have had a hell of a time separating out from her which I never did as an adolescent. Her death freed me to go on as a child, but alone nevertheless. Of course, indeed I mention “Herbie,” that very significant short story in which I wrestled with my father Oedipally and with my mother, the all powerful She, for she controlled my father and myself. In “Mortise and Tenon” about a controlling mother I laid out all the psychic costs. Both stories appeared in Down to a Sunless Sea.
You may make the case that a significant theme of my writing is the attempt to be free of my mother among others.
So, on latent and manifest levels, I struggle with women, particularly those who control while ascribing nether characteristic to those who do not control.The wide Mississippi of my life has probably a great deal to say about my relationship to women. In short, I give wives and daughters a hard time. Given that, allow me to consider what women, literary or not, political or not, who I am respectful and admiring of. Ironically, as you can attest, I am not a sexist, enjoy the variety of behaviors which women evince but that may very well be a charming defense.
Mary Renault was the only woman writer who I felt had a commanding control of her art. She wrote two wonderful historical fiction books, The King Must Die and The Bull from the Sea. I recall her description of a jewel-encrusted saddle that is remarkable for its detail, a model of the writer writing as a lapidarist. Renault imagined the world of ancient Crete, her sentences declarative in nature and quarried from Attic stone. In terms of movies, I was impressed by Bette Davis, for her ferocity and all out commitment to her art. I admire Hedy Lamarr, an amazing beauty, but whose greatest contribution was the invention, with a colleague, of a coding device during W.W.II that was so advanced and secretive she was not awarded a medal for this until decades later.
I wish I had more to say about women; apparently my interests did not bring me into that direction, so my limitations in the field are quite haphazard and happenstance. As I remember, I think of the writer Tillie Olsen who had to defer writing for almost 20 years until her children grew up; I think of my grandmothers, both bizarre in their own ways – one a bag woman, the other a blunderbuss of a person, an old vaudevillian; I flashback to my mother who was a major depressive and unconsciously required that I “hold” her misfortunes and be so kind as to metabolize them for her. It is hard to cast this thought into words but I probably own a meanness or vindictiveness for the fair sex; perhaps I am being too hard on myself but women have defeated me here and there in my relationships, my mother being the prime culprit. I find this difficult to express here. I really wonder, at 70, whether these are mental constructs, of long standing, or are they reflections of what was and what has been attenuated by age and growing wiser. I don’t know, dear Jane.
