I Think You're Totally Wrong (28 page)
Read I Think You're Totally Wrong Online
Authors: David Shields
CALEB:
It's always interesting to me when religious people cite the benefits of an afterlife as proof of an afterlife. I'll concede that eternal peaceful life is a pleasant thought. So? What consolation for me? When I die, I want the knowledge that I've lived well, that family and love and art will continue.
DAVID:
You don't find that death haunts you on a daily level?
CALEB:
I'm a secular moralist, so of course I think about it often.
DAVID:
I want to believe the idea that by the time you're old enough to die it doesn't seem quite so awful.â¦Â What's that, a motorcycle?
CALEB:
How you guys doing?
DIRT BIKER ONE:
Good. How are you?
DAVID:
Good.
DIRT BIKER TWO:
You gonna check out the mine?
CALEB:
Mine? How far?
DIRT BIKER ONE:
Half-mile.
DIRT BIKER TWO:
Not even. Two hundred yards. It's awesome freaky.
DAVID:
Really?
DIRT BIKER ONE:
Just go up there. Can't miss it. Got some flashlights?
DIRT BIKER TWO:
It's big and deep and dark.
CALEB:
We'll check it out.
DAVID:
Have a good one.
DIRT BIKER TWO:
You, too.
CALEB:
Here we are, the entrance to the mine: corrugated sheet metal, rotted timbers. You would need a flashlight. All right, I'm going in. This is a legend I heard from the bartender at the Cascadia. It's supposedly true, or at least the Skykomish folk believe it.
(Caleb clicks on flip cameraâfootsteps on gravel)
The Skykomish Witch Project:
In 1921 a local miner, John Rockwell, discovered his wife and best friend in a compromising position outside the Whistling Post. Rockwell walked home, got his rifle and truck, returned, and drove them to this here mine. At gunpoint he led them inside and shot them dead. Or so he thought.
The next day he drank a fifth of whiskey, went downtown, and boasted that he killed his wife and that son-of-a-bitch friend. The police took John in for questioning. John took the police back to this very mineâto the site of the supposed murders. They found blood, but neither of the corpses. Three sets of footprints went in; only one set came out. Dogs followed the trail, but the deeper they went in, the more confused they became. They never found the bodies.
John went to trial and was convicted of this crime of passion. He served eight years, returned, became the town drunk, went crazy, and heard voices. John couldn't hold a job, even when the mines were busy. Two years later he hanged himself.
Little by little most Skykomish folk forgot about John
Rockwell, but in 1952 two hikers from California came to this mine, went inside with a flashlight, and came upon two people making love. Watching them was a man, hanging from the ceiling by his neck.
DAVID:
Oooh. Shiver me timbers.
CALEB:
I've been corresponding for over ten years with this Egyptian woman, Ceza, from when I lived in the UAE. Snail mail, email, Facebook. Ceza became a doctor, lived in the West, went to extremes with drugs, sex (with men and women), returned to Islam, but she always insisted on wearing the scarf. During the Arab Spring her friend was murdered, and the trial is fascinating. We discuss all this as a secular man and a Muslim woman.
DAVID:
You wouldn't believe how many people think I'm going to be interested in their memoir. I'm not. I'm not interested in memoir. How does that V. S. Pritchett line go? “It's all in the art. You get no credit for living.” A book doesn't become good because you were bad or had bad things done to you. If you can't transmute it into art, I'm not interested in it.
CALEB:
One of the best “bad” books I've read is a memoir. The atrocious writing would be difficult to replicate. It was written by two women who did time with Mary Kay Letourneau. Self-published, but it sold well. An editor
could have done wonders. I don't care much about Mary Kay, who's a one-page Wikipedia entry. These two women were far more compelling. One had been a stripper and murdered someone. The other was a drug addict who kept writing bad checks and embezzling. They took turns writing chapters. The stripper had been a willing fuck toy for her older brother's friends at the age of twelve. This made her feel dirty and helpless, destroyed her self-esteem. Neither woman could transmute their pain into art, but boy, do they make it real. And part of this reality was that they were really bad writers.
DAVID:
I think that's an incredible story. Sex is always serious. It just is.
DAVID:
I have a Twitter feed. And a Facebook page that says, “Hey, David did this.”
CALEB:
A fan page.
DAVID:
What's the other way I could interact?
CALEB:
You could have relationships on equal footing. Be friends. It's not literal.
DAVID:
But what does that mean? What would be the advantage of me changing? I suppose it'd feel more friendly.â¦Â Peter [Mountford] asked me about you.
CALEB:
What'd you say?
DAVID:
I said Caleb will get in your face, and that's what
makes him a lively opponent. That's why I thought you and I would be a good fit for this, or are you like that only with me?
CALEB:
No. Terry will vouch.
DAVID:
Did you do that with Lidia? Or Ander? Or Eula?
CALEB:
Not much. Their books didn't have much of an argument. Lidia's left-wing certain. Ander's talking about Frito-Lays and Americana and memoir and self. I think he shrinks from confrontation, which is usually fatal in a writer, but he makes it work. Eula's uncertain, concerned about the right things, and she's raising points that should be discussed. Do you know Patrick Madden?
DAVID:
I've met him a couple of times.
CALEB:
We're Facebook friends and he posted an article by Hitchens criticizing Mormons. I looked at the Hitchens article and then I wrote in the comment section on Madden's post: “Mormons have one too many
m
's.”
David laughs
.
CALEB:
Patrick writes, “That's not a very nice thing to say about a religion that fourteen million people believe in.” I'm thinking, Hmm, not what I expected. So I write, “Nice, schmice.” Then he writes, “So you insult me, my wife, my family, and my community?”
DAVID:
Whoa.
CALEB:
The back-and-forth isn't going the way I hoped. I go over the whole thread, dig up some info on Madden, and not only is he a Mormon but he converted. I can't tell him I didn't mean what I said, because I did, but I regret my attack and I want to convey this. I write an apology, saying that I respect him as a person and a writer and that my
words and opinions had no place, given the spirit of the conversation. He writes an elegant replyâhumble, understanding, kind, almost as if he's apologizing to me.
DAVID:
There's something very substantial about him; you can feel that immediately. He's a mensch.
CALEB:
I told him I'm universally disrespectful of religionâa vice that to me is a virtueâthat I drink beer while my mother says grace, and when someone sneezes I say, “Imaginary Friend bless you.”
DAVID:
What'd he say?
CALEB:
That he's had to deal with much worse.
CALEB:
I get the feeling David Markson spends fifteen hours a day, seven days a week, reading and writing. I'm not sure how much experience he has with life.
DAVID:
He died a year or two ago, but that's obviously a very scary model for myself.
CALEB:
There's no way all those writers Markson romanticizes have mastered that many languages. It's like some actress can say
bonjour
and her publicity agent sells her as fluent in French.
DAVID:
I find what you say reassuring, because I'm embarrassed that I've never gained true command of a second language. Even Nabokov's English is, to me, so phony. Markson calls it “the precious, pinchbeck, ultimately often flat prose of Vladimir Nabokov.” All those twenty-dollar
words of his, the enormous amount of alliteration. He actually has a really bad ear.
CALEB:
I can forgive stilted language in Nabokov or Conrad or anyone who speaks a second language and writes intelligently. You've grown further and further away from Nabokov.
DAVID:
Completely.
CALEB:
You used to put him on a pedestal in class.
DAVID:
I used to love his imperious distance. Now I hate it. There's never any blood on the page.