J: I was very interested in the dialog that you shared with "S" regarding your story "Diana." (In fact, although i have not browsed all your links yet to check whether you have done this or not, i think it would be really interesting to see more responses to your stories. . . . Well, at least, if they're half as interesting as your dialog with "S." On the other hand, having read some of your journal, i guess you've already got your work cut out for you . . .) (Note: I would love to see more responses to other stories from the readers. If J means he'd like to see more commentary on the stories from me alone...well, I'll think about it. Seems a bit narcisisstic, don't you think? Perhaps this entire dialogue is, though. - MA) J: I will start by saying that i was not in the least disturbed by what you wrote. But i wanted to contribute my thoughts on the dialog with "S" not because i think i can clear the air or make this more comfortable for anyone who reads the story. Quite the contrary, i would even like to encourage you to further challenge readers like "S." I mean by that simply that "S" wants you to do all the work -- wants too clear-cut of a story -- wants it 100% right (by some moral code or another) because it might be dangerous to make people think. At least that's how i look at it.
J: Consider this. Although it doesn't necessarily fit your story, death itself has important relationships with sexuality, relationships with others, and with orgasm specifically. Being a writer, i'm sure you know about the "little-death" and the various ways that it is imagined. (Shakespeare, just to use one example, uses "death" or "killing" to indicate sexual relations at times. "Antony and Cleopatra," one of my personal favorites, presents the sexual relation specifically in those terms. And Shakespeare even sets up a nice contrast between the martial/Roman/misogynistic "killing" of women and the loving/fecund "little-death" (symbolized as well in the actual deaths in which the two are united) of Antony and Cleopatra (Antony falls on his sword; the snakes bite Cleopatra's breast. But the underlying imagery is of a blissful and egalitarian sexual giving of one to the other).)
J: But more important than the "little-death" and the specifically orgasmic relation (and any deeper communion that symbolizes), i'd like to take this even one step further. "S" mentioned in one of the later responses something about the responsible or ethical self-sacrifice of a "hero" and properly indicated the violence that must be done to the self to make this gift to another. I don't simply mean that responsibility sometimes extends as far as giving one's life to somebody in the legalistic sense. But i do mean that death is related to any true giving of oneself to another. Because it is in the moment that i give myself responsibily that i cease to be merely self-identical. I open myself to a (risk of) wounding by giving something without expecting something in return. To put it bluntly (and perhaps risking superficiality), when i am responsible, i cease to be merely concerned with my own well-being.
J: And this seems to me what love for another requires -- this continual risk, this giving. And in particular, when two (and not just two, though it becomes substantially more difficult to speak about more than two) people have a very special relationship with each other in which they are both attentive to the other, they both make these offerings to each other (and they are also receptive of the other's gifts). In love, the two cease to have those clearly marked borders of subjectivity that we seem to tacitly accept in normal public, political, and legal circumstances. Again, to put it bluntly, those we love (however deeply, however passionately) make up who we are. There is a little-death in the responsibilities to each of these others. And, of course, the deeper that relationship is felt, the closer that person is, the more passionate those connections, the more fully my death affects me (in a strange sense, the life of the passion seems related to the death). I have the fewest borders "protecting" me against my lover -- s/he writes on my body, writes part of the book that affects who i am at the deepest level.
J: (Also, there is one interesting consequence of this kind of thinking about responsibility. It also requires a responsibility to the self which extends as far as a prohibition on suicide (somewhat of a paradox) since, in my responsibilities to these others, i cannot simply escape into the "comfort" of self-annihilation or apathy. The distinction between the one kind of suicide (in self-sacrifice) and the other suicide (in selfishness) is not as clear as it may appear . . . but that's another matter and requires a lot more than a simple, blunt statement.)
J: I would be hard-pressed to frame these thoughts as an interpretation of "Diana," but i'm not trying to make the case for it as an interpretation of that story. I am more concerned with making a different point. Your stories encourage thinking, not merely arousal. That is probably because they are written by someone at least as serious about writing as about turning-on other people. But you don't have to pander to your audience (i'm sure you know this, but it bears saying). If anything, you could push your readers further (particularly if they seem as unwilling to budge as "S"). Make them do more of the work. Make them think. Dare them to see the underlying threads and understand how the images connect.
J: Well . . . that's just my opinion. But i wouldn't bother telling you what i thought if i wasn't interested in reading more. I know that you like to challenge people to think. I read those articles about TV ratings and why you write what you write. I agree with your political motivations. And i suspect that you maintain different comportments in different genres. But it's like you said in your journal entry for August 1: "it all comes down to doing the work" (and not unimportantly, in making the reader do some work, too). But whatever you do, keep writing those wonderful stories! Thank you.
Yours,
J.
I responded, some of which is contained below.
MA: Thanks for the thoughtful comments on Diana. It interests me, this idea of my responsibility to the reader. I don't really think 'S' was lazy, y'know, or minded doing work. It may be more of a differing perception of what fiction is for, or of what the author is supposed to do.
J: That is probably more generous than i would be, but i think it says the same thing. I don't think 'S' was lazy in a general sense -- he wrote quite a bit about his opinons of the text. But i had the feeling that 'S' wanted the author to provide a crystal-clear allegorical work, easy to interpret and easy to accept (or at least the latter). I didn't take your story as a commentary on the way life should be lived . . . and even if somebody were to make the case that it is such a commentary, i still don't think i would have a problem with it. I just felt like 'S's viewpoint was a little narrow-minded regarding the very issue of the role of interpretation.
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MA: But I find that I prefer fictional ambiguity, areas where the author does not say, "these are my ethics", but instead, "here's an interesting ethical problem to think about".
J: Which puts us precisely in agreement. (I think you got to the heart of the matter more quickly than i did.)
J: If you'd like to add my email, feel free. Include any of it that you want (and feel free to edit it -- some of it isn't specifically pertinent, some of it rambles, some of it might be taken as rude to 'S,' etc. etc.). I'd prefer that you keep it at least somewhat anonymous for no other reason than that i'd rather not have my gender identified (a nickname or an initial would suit that purpose just fine). (You now have the benefit of knowing and you can make up your own mind about my motivations for wanting to keep it secret from my readers (in general as well as in this specific case) as well as about how that affects (if at all) your own reading of what i wrote/write to you.)