But What If We're Wrong? (28 page)
Read But What If We're Wrong? Online
Authors: Chuck Klosterman
1
This means that gravity might just be a manifestation of other forcesânot a force itself, but the peripheral result of something else. Greene's analogy was the idea of temperature: Our skin can sense warmth on a hot day, but “warmth” is not some independent thing that exists on its own. Warmth is just the consequence of invisible atoms moving around very fast, creating the
sensation
of temperature. We feel it, but it's not really there. So if gravity were an emergent force, it would mean that gravity isn't the central power pulling things to the Earth, but the tangential consequence of something else we can't yet explain. We feel it, but it's not there. It would almost make the whole idea of “gravity” a semantic construction.
2
The qualities that spurred this rediscovery can, arguably, be quantified: The isolation and brotherhood the sailors experience mirrors the experience of fighting in a war, and the battle against a faceless evil whale could be seen as a metaphor for the battle against the faceless abstraction of evil Germany. But the fact that these details can be quantified is still not a satisfactory explanation as to why
Moby-Dick
became the specific novel that was selected and elevated. It's not like
Moby-Dick
is the only book that could have served this role.
3
“The days of buying records are already numbered,” Gillett begins. “The current process is inefficient, cumbersome and expensive, with musicians transferring their noises onto tape, somebody else transferring the tape to disc, and the whole complicated mess of distributing and selling records, shipping unwanted returns back to the warehouse . . .”
4
This is the traditional bell curve. “Gaussian” refers to the mathematician who came up with it, Carl Friedrich Gauss.
5
I once gave a speech at a Midwestern college, and I asked the person who picked me up at the airport what other authors the university had invited to speak in the past. The driver mentioned George Saunders. When I asked what he was like, the driver claimed that Saunders had pre-Googled the name of almost every person involved with his visitâincluding the driver himselfâso that the brief conversations he would inevitably have with those around him would not be one-sided. He wanted to be able to ask them questions about their lives. Part of me finds this story implausible, but maybe that just proves I'm not very thoughtful.
6
And, in fact, on the 2015 list, this was indeed the caseâtwenty-six of the books in the fiction and poetry category were by female authors and twenty-seven of the nonfiction works were by male authors (although the second category is complicated by posthumous anthology collections of male writers that were edited or compiled by women). It's not like symmetry is the newspaper's policy. It's just an overwhelming trend, designed to combat an overwhelming disparity: In 2004, the first year
The New York Times
capped the list at one hundred books, only five women made the nonfiction list.
7
In the actual quote, Maugham used the word “selected” instead of “selects.” I think we can all agree that this mistake invalidates Lethem's entire career.
8
Now, the easy counter to this suggestion is, “That's crazy. Nobody uses the Deep Web for
artistic
purposes, and nobody ever would. That's like saying the next great movie director might currently be involved with the production of snuff films.” But this response is already false. The British electronica artist Aphex Twin released the title and track listing for his 2014 album
Syro
on the hidden Deep Web service Tor. The reason this was done remains unclearâbut that's part of the value here. Clarity is not required.
9
When casually talking to like-minded friends, people rarely say, “I saw a movie last night.” People more often say things like “I saw
The
Hateful Eight
last night” or “I finally saw the new Tarantino last night.” We live in a proper-noun culture. Now, is it possible that this specific film will be lost to history? Is it possible that referring to Quentin Tarantino in an offhand manner will be confusing or misleading? Sure. But the two seconds it will take a future reader to figure this out from context is better than directly reminding that reader that this is a fiction that never happened at all.
10
This is something I think actually
will
happen, in just the way I describe it here. Because of his suicide and specialized type of brilliance, David Foster Wallace will remain historically relevant.
Infinite Jest
will be perceived as his defining work, even though it will rarely be read, simply due to its size and complexity. Since that novel will be both deeply remembered and widely unread, it will become a perfect vessel for radical, obtuse interpretation (in the same way this is currently done with
Moby-Dick
). Two or three centuries from now, the events of September 11, 2001, will be the singular social touchstone for all creative American works that happened within the general vicinity of that date (and if you don't believe me, try to find deep analysis of any American art from the middle nineteenth century that doesn't glancingly reference the Civil War). This is the recipe for how a book about one subject ends up becoming the defining book about something else entirely. Someday, there will be a college literature class connected to the events of 9/11,
Infinite Jest
will be included on the reading list, and there will be an inordinate amount of emphasis on the passages about the militant Quebecois. And when that happens, the professor better give me credit for this prediction. Note me in the syllabus or something. I don't care if the students don't care. I mean, half of them will be cyborgs, anyway.
11
In the introduction of this book, I identify Schulz as the author of
Being Wrong
. It's the same person in both instances.
12
Which, technically speaking, would be a triangle.
13
This is probably obvious, butâjust in case it isn'tâI should mention that whenever I call something “great,” I'm not arguing that I necessarily consider that particular thing to reflect any greatness to me personally, or even that I like (or fully understand) what that something is. I'm using it more like the editorial “we”: There is a general harmonic agreement that this particular thing is important and artful, both by people invested in supporting that assertion and (especially) by people who will accept that designation without really considering why. My own taste might play a role in the examples I select, and it's certainly possible that I might misread society's opinion. But it's not part of my categorization process (at least not in this particular book). I mean, I've never finished a Faulkner novel. I've never loved a Joni Mitchell record or a Bergman film. But I still know they're great (or “great”). I don't need to personally agree with something in order to recognize that it's true.
14
In 1998, three of the year's ten best-selling fiction titles were published by romance novelist Danielle Steel, who somehow managed to have at least one book in the commercial top ten from 1983 to 1999. Steel is on pace to sell a billion books in her lifetime. Yet many of these novels don't have Wikipedia entries. They are not even critically appraised by non-critics.
15
Or, in the case of George R. R. Martin's
A Song of Ice and Fire
, a TV series.
16
Here is how cult writer Dennis Cooper described the term “cult writer
”
to
The
Paris Review
: “It's a weird term because it's complimentary but condescending at the same time.”
17
It's easy to imagine a future where commercial success matters much more than it currently does (since that has been the overall trend for the past two hundred fifty years). But it's equally possible to imagine a future where the only culture is niche culture, and commercial success becomes irrelevant (or maybe even an anchor).
18
Yeah, I know: This sentence is fucking confusing. But it's more straightforward than it seems: Our present time will eventually become the past, hence the designation “present (past).” Our future will eventually become the present, hence “present (future).” It's kind of like the prologue to
Star Wars
, where we are told that the following events happened “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.” But the people in
Star Wars
shoot laser guns and travel at the speed of light, so we are forced to conclude that their past is our future.
19
Here's a simple way to parse this not-so-simple description: Play the song “Rock and Roll” by Led Zeppelin. Based on a traditional twelve-bar blues progression, “Rock and Roll” is the only song in the Zeppelin catalog that is literally
rock and roll music
, unless you count “Hot Dog” and “Boogie with Stu.” Every other Zeppelin song is a sophisticated iteration of “rock,” even when the drums are reggae. Jerry Lee Lewis played rock and roll. Jerry Garcia played rock. The song “Rock Around the Clock” is a full-on rock and roll number, but the Moody Blues' “I'm Just a Singer (in a Rock and Roll Band),” Rick Derringer's “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo,” and Bad Company's “Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy” remain inflexibly rock (with no rolling whatsoever). John Lennon's 1975 solo album
Rock
'n' Roll
is actually a self-conscious attempt at rock
and
roll, while Joan Jett's 1982 cover of “I Love Rock 'n' Roll” professes a love for something it technically isn't. The least ambiguous rock and roll song ever recorded is “Tutti Frutti” by Little Richard, closely followed by the Kingsmen's 1963 cover of “Louie Louie.” The least ambiguous rock 'n' roll song is “(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones. The least ambiguous rock song ever recorded is “I Like to Rock” by April Wine.
20
Obviously, there have always been living humans between the ages of twelve and twenty. But it wasn't until after World War II that the notion of an “in between” period connecting the experience of childhood with the experience of adulthood became something people recognized as a real demographic. Prior to this, you were a child until you started working or got married; the moment that happened, you became an adult (even if those things happened when you were eleven).
21
In fact, it's possible to imagine a fantastically far-flung future where rock music serves as a footnote
to
the Beatles, where rock only matters because it was the medium the Beatles happened to pursue.
Rolling Stone
writer Rob Sheffield has asserted this on multiple occasions, in at least two different bars. And this isn't a solely retrospective opinion, eitherâpeople speculated about that possibility from the moment the Beatles broke up. When CBS News covered the group's legal dissolution in 1970, the broadcaster only half-jokingly categorized the split as “an event so momentous that historians may one day view it as a landmark in the decline of the British Empire.”
22
This contrast is complicated by those who insist the Beatles were actually a pop band (as opposed to a rock band), based on the contention that the Beatles had no relationship to the blues (which is mostly trueâJohn Lennon once described the track “Yer Blues” as a parody). But I'm not going to worry about this distinction here, since worrying about it might spiral into a debate over “rockism vs. poptimism,” an imaginary conflict that resembles how music writers would talk if they were characters on a TV show written by Aaron Sorkin.
23
What Good Are the Arts?
24
Here's Campbell's description of the monomyth from his book
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” This is loosely tied to Carl Jung's idea of the collective unconscious, and a heavy degree of symbolism needs to be appliedâ“supernatural wonder” can be anything creative or spiritual and the “mysterious adventure” (and its subsequent “boons”) can just be a productive, significant livelihood. These kinds of metaphors tie into another of Campbell's core philosophiesâthe notion that all religions are true, but none are literal.