The Opposite of Fate (31 page)

What I see in fact is a dream you will all share. Of course you may each dream it on different nights, but the dream goes like this: You are sitting in Java City, having a coffee mocha, when suddenly you realize you are late for class. The trouble is, you don’t remember which class, because you haven’t been to that class once since you registered for it. Mercifully, you see other students you recognize and you follow them. With great relief to you, things begin to look familiar as you make your way through
the Main Campus Building, noting the same old books sewn into the walls. At last you seem to be in the right class, and you sit down toward the back, where you won’t be noticed. Unfortunately, you realize, the person in the front of the room is Professor Gregory, and that means this class is the dreaded Philosophy 300, jolly times with Freddy Nietzsche. A second later, you realize as you watch Professor Gregory pass out some papers, the final exam is today. You look at your watch, five hours to go, and then read the first page of the test. It is written in Old German, in tiny type, a single question taking up the entire page, no margins. You skip to the next page. It is completely black, and you must discern the philosophical argument about your own existential identity contained within that blackness and answer it in the form of a
Jeopardy!
question. I have been a
Jeopardy!
question myself, so I know how difficult this is. The last page is a list of all the religions of the world in ancient dead languages, which you must put into the order in which Nietzsche might have despised them.

Although most of you are women, you begin to sweat profusely. But because many of you are women, you will be resourceful and wing it anyway. I’ve done that. Some of you, despite being women, will weep with despair, knowing the jig is up. A few of you, being men, also will cry, but you will know that it’s okay to do so, because, as Simmons grads, you know this is the sign of a sensitive male. And some of you will have an incredible epiphany: “Wait a minute!” you will shout, and leap up and point to Professor Gregory, whose mouth drops open in surprise as you announce: “I don’t have to take this class or this test, because I already have my degree from Simmons College!”

So there you have it: my prediction of your future, the dream you will all share. When it happens, I hope you will think of me. Having had versions of this dream so often myself, I can offer you useful advice. Frame your diploma. A scanned copy of it will suffice should you wish to hang the original on your front door, where guests are certain to see it. But frame at least one copy and hang it next to your bed. When you have this dream, open your eyes, look at your diploma, congratulate yourself, then go back to sleep.

For years and years, I had variations on this nightmare. I suppose the meaning is obvious: No matter how much we’ve accomplished, we still feel inadequate, unprepared. It’s not surprising. Many of the greatest moments we experience are moments we cannot adequately prepare for, the birth of a child, the death of a loved one.

Nowadays I have a new version of this dream. I am no longer taking a final exam. I am about to give a speech to a lot of people who expect me to transmit the wisdom of the ages, for instance, the best way to find a literary agent. But in my dream, when I look for the prepared notes I have brought to the lectern, I see that I have grabbed by mistake the lyrics to Madonna’s “Material Girl.” Today, I am pleased to say, I did bring the right notes. Don’t worry—it just looks like a twelve-hour speech, but that’s because I printed it in twenty-four-point type, ten words to a page.

So what can I as a writer tell you today that might be useful as you leave this period of your life and enter the next? One possibility was a list of my five favorite Chinese restaurants. This would enrich your lives and your stomachs enormously.

What I ultimately decided on, instead, are five writing tips, which you may find useful in areas other than writing, perhaps even in thinking about life, how you might conduct it in a manner that is interesting and worthwhile. Here is my list:

1. Avoid clichés.
They are all around us, and they are anathema to original thought. Take these, all having to do with an acceptance of fate: “That’s how it was meant to be.” Or “That’s our lot in life.” Or “History is doomed to repeat itself.” Or “She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” And how about: “Some things were just meant to be,” and “If it’s not one thing, it’s another,” a cliché brilliantly parodied by Gilda Radner. And what about that great chestnut some say can be attributed to Nietzsche himself: “Shit happens.”

When you are told, “It was meant to be,” ask, “Who meant it? What does it really mean?” Is someone trying to make you accept an undesirable situation or one in which you have doubts? When you are told, “Shit happens,” remember that plenty of other things happen as well, such as generosity, forgiveness, ambiguity, and uncertainty. When you are told, “It’s simply fate,” ask yourself, “What is simple about it? What are the alternatives of fate? What is fate’s opposite?”

If you hear others using clichés, stop to think whether you’re being lulled into inaction or the wrong action. If you hear overused expressions on the news, stop to think whether they are really meaningful. The spectrum of meaning is endless and fascinating and filled with humanity. Clichés are static, the emotion behind them long spent. If you are tempted to use them, here is a saying of my mother’s:
Fang pi bu-cho, cho pi bu-fang.
Basically that translates to: “Loud farts don’t stink, and the really
smelly ones don’t make a sound.” In other words: When you’re full of beans, you just blow a lot of hot air. If you want to have real impact, be deadly but silent.

Oh, also recognize the difference between a bad cliché and a good quotation. My mother’s saying is a good quotation. You should use it often.

2. Avoid generalizations.
As a fiction writer, I distrust absolute truths, homilies, bromides, sound bites, and also shorthand advice of the sort I am giving. I like specifics, the longhand version of a story in which it takes four hundred pages to answer a single question about a person’s character. Literary writers, unless they are writing fairy tales, learn early never to have characters who are polar opposites, one “good,” the other “evil.” That’s not believable. People are more than just good and evil. Intelligent readers will demand that you not reduce people to such simplistic terms, or resolve situations with “Good always conquers evil,” “Might is always right,” and so forth. And while such resolutions are common in murder mysteries and action stories, they are feeble in literary fiction, which is supposed to reflect subtle truths about the world. Better to be subtle rather than overbearing, subversive rather than didactic.

3. Find your own voice.
As college graduates, you have a good start. Your own voice is one that seeks a personal truth, one that only you can obtain. That truth comes from your own experiences, your own observations, and when you find it, if it really is true and specific to you, you may be surprised that others find it to be true as well. In searching for your own voice, be aware of the difference between emulation and imitation, inspiration and intimidation.

4. Show compassion.
Many beginning writers think sarcasm is a clever way to show intelligence. But more mature writers know that mean-spiritedness is wearying and limited in its one-dimensional point of view. A more successful story is one in which the narrator can treat human foibles, even serious flaws, with depth and hence compassion. Imagination brings you close to compassion. Practice imagining yourself living the life of someone whose situation differs entirely from yours—living in another country, having another religion—and the more deeply you can do so, the more you become that character as you write. You cannot help being compassionate.

5. Ask the important questions.
What makes a story worthwhile is the question or questions it poses. The questions might be: What is love? What is loss? What is hope? Those three could take a lifetime to answer. My story is one answer. Your story is another.

Another question posed in literature concerns intentions. What are people’s intentions, particularly as they relate to the well-being of others? What if their intentions lead to unexpected and undesirable consequences for other people? Who bears the consequences? Who should be responsible? How long do those responsibilities extend? The ultimate answers are found not just at the Supreme Court, or even among our leaders. We need personal answers, all the stories, as many as we can get. But to find them, you first must ask the questions. You need to ask yourself: What is important? What is at stake? In knowing what questions you are asking, you also know your individual voice, your own morality.

Those are the five writing tips: Avoid clichés, avoid
generalizations, find your own voice, show compassion, and ask the important questions. I hope that you find them useful, if not for writing the next Great American Novel, then for thinking about your life and the world around you. What you do with your careers will be only one part of the whole of your lives. Your thoughts, your evolving answers to the important questions, are what will give you interesting lives, make you interesting people capable of changing the world.

And later in life, as more interesting answers come to you, you may look back with deep gratitude to Professor Gregory, and all those other dedicated teachers at Simmons College, who gave you nightmares but also the basis for thinking about the world and your role in it. Perhaps one day you will even think that Nietzsche was one of the most useful classes you took. You will have that dream in which you have to take the test, but you will not feel at all unprepared. You will be able to see the questions and say, “I’ve been thinking about the answers for a very long time, and here they are.”

I wish you all interesting lives.

• required reading and other dangerous subjects •

S
everal years ago, I learned that I had passed a new literary milestone. I had been inducted into the Halls of Education, under the rubric “Multicultural Literature,” in many schools also known as “Required Reading.”

Thanks to this development, students now come up to me at book signings and proudly tell me they’re doing their essays, term papers, or master’s theses on me. By that I mean that they are analyzing not just my books but me, my private history and personal peccadilloes, which, with the hindsight of classroom literary investigation, prove to contain many Chinese omens that made it inevitable that I would become a writer.

When I was a student, the only writers I analyzed had long since passed on to that Great Remainder Table in the Sky. Those authors of bygone years could not protest what I said about them or their works. I could write, “What Henry James
really
meant . . .” and there was no Henry James to say, “You bloody fool, if that’s what I meant, then that’s what I would have said.”

I, however, have the distinct pleasure of hearing, while still alive, what I really meant when I wrote
The Joy Luck Club.
One student discovered that my book is structured according to the
four movements of a sonata; the proof lay in the fact that my parents had wanted me to become a concert pianist, as mentioned in my bio on the book jacket. I learned through another student who culled in-depth biographical information from an authoritative source,
People
magazine, that my book was based on my numerous bad experiences with men. I showed that essay to my husband, Lou, who has been my constant companion since 1970.

As the recipient of such academic attention, I know I’m supposed to feel honored. But what I actually feel is something more akin to shock and embarrassment. It’s as though I’d eavesdropped on a party conversation and discovered that I am the subject of juicy gossip by a group of psychoanalysts—or perhaps proctologists, depending on how in-depth and obsessive the analysis has become.

On one occasion, I read a master’s thesis on feminist writings that included examples from
The Joy Luck Club.
The student noted that I had used the number four something on the order of thirty-two or thirty-six times—in any case, a number divisible by four. Accordingly, she pointed out that there were four mothers, four daughters, four sections of the book, four stories per section. Furthermore, there were four sides to a mah jong table, four directions of the wind, four players. More important, she postulated, my use of the number four symbolized the four stages of psychological development, which corresponded in uncanny ways to the four stages of some type of Buddhist philosophy I had never heard of. Extending this analysis further, the student recalled that there was a character called Fourth Wife, symbolizing death, and a four-year-old girl with a feisty spirit, symbolizing regeneration. There was a four-year-old boy
who drowns, and perhaps because his parents were Baptists, he symbolized rebirth through death. There was also a little girl who receives a scar on her neck at the age of four, who then loses her mother and her sense of self; she symbolized crisis.

In short, the student’s literary sleuthing went on to reveal a mystical and rather byzantine puzzle, which, once explained, proved completely brilliant and precisely logical. She wrote me a letter and asked if her analysis had been correct. I was sorry I could not say yes.

The truth is, if I do include symbols in my work, they are carefully nudged out of their hiding places by others. I don’t consciously place symbols in such clever fashion as some students have given me credit for. I’m not that smart. I can’t plot where I will use literary devices, posting them like freeway signs that regularly announce rest stops, scenic lookouts, and the last exit before the denouement. I’m not that methodical. If I write of “an orange moon rising on a dark night,” I would more likely ask myself whether the image is clichéd than whether it is a symbol of the feminine force rising in anger, as one academic suggested.