Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself (21 page)

I wonder if people who have the ability to finish a long book, to see a task through till it’s finished, have a particular weakness. … The problem with TV watching is, it’s never finished. So you have the capacity to do something intensively for a long period of time, and perhaps a little bit past what’s useful, and it gets applied …

Yeah, you’re right. I’ve actually got friends—Betsy, for example. I was
shocked
that she has a TV, she
never
had one the whole time. It was one reason why in grad school we had very little to talk about. Most of my matrix of experience has to do with television, she would
not
understand references.

Huh. How much TV did you watch when you were a kid for example …?

I had to be limited. I was limited to two hours a day on weekdays, and four hours a day on weekends. And I could only watch one
rough
program. My parents determined the definition of
rough
up until I was like seven or eight. And I can remember once doing something really terrible, like I think hurting my sister badly, or uh making a terrible mess. And having Saturday morning cartoons denied me. And feeling almost like I was going to
die
, the sense of deprivation. This was in—this was in Champaign, so I would have been like four or five.

What cartoons were you watching?

What were the big cartoons back then? (Voice gets momentarily expansive, self-searching, Garrison Keillor and spooky. A reminiscence sound) I remember
Space Ghost. Jonny Quest
was really big. But there were also really cheesy shitty ones back then too. It’s
odd
, I remember cartoons once we moved to Urbana and there were things like
Scooby-Doo
, or the
Super Friends
where Ted Knight was the voiceover. But I was older then, I was like eight or nine then. There was some period when I was a very little kid that I had a very
intense
relationship with cartoons. Kind of like what Julie was talking about, like little kids with cars and trucks. But I don’t remember the specific cartoons very much. I remember the show
Wild Wild West
.

Oh—I adored that show
.

And I remember being
really
upset during the Vietnam War, because they would keep intruding on that show, to give updates on the war. And the violence and battle and the war of course didn’t make any
sense
. It wasn’t
exciting
, it was just mostly jerky cameras and, you know, bad, bad
film
—like bad film quality. And people in kind of ugly
khaki
, and I never understood it.

[I ask David what else he liked as a kid: it’s the big, fish-out-of-water family shows—
Beverly Hillbillies, The Munsters
—actioners like
Mission Impossible
and
Batman
.]

How did your parents enforce the two-hour thing?

Well, they were home. Mom didn’t start work until I was almost in sixth grade.

So they would say: “That’s enough. That’s enough, David, it’s been two hours, you have to stop”?

No, it would be like, I would get home, and they’d help me
plan out
how I wanted to spend my two hours. I mean, it was a very intense thing.

Debate the choice with you? Like …

I got one rough program a week. And I remember they had, I remember
Wild Wild West
was a young prog—was a—I’m sorry, was a
rough
program. And that I always spent my rough program on that. They
didn’t
count
Batman
as rough, which I remember at the time seemed like this
incredible
mistake on their part. But looking back on it, it was very cartoonish.

Campy. What about like the bionic shows …? I mean, you mentioned Charlie’s Angels, it’s the same era …

Bionic Man came out when I was ten or eleven. So that—I was quite a bit older. I mean, I remember watching those. I remember even at the time, I could tell Lee Majors was a
pathetic
actor. And I remember wondering why, if he was running sixty miles an hour, his hair didn’t move.

Ha! That’s a good question, actually
.

Which in a way is significant. ’Cause I think it means that my total, entranced, uncritical absorption into this fantasy world of TV was
starting to be over. Like I remember noticing in
Scooby-Doo
that Thelma always lost her glasses at some point. And it was always the amusement camp operator going around in a costume, and feeling pissed off, that like it couldn’t be any more sophisticated.

But what you’re describing doesn’t sound addictive at all. It seemed like your parents had it under control. As you got older, did you start watching more television?

Look, I’m not talking about one of these … this—I mean, this in a way is what the book’s about. It’s not about, “He watched television until his
bladder
let go,” or something like that—it’s more just, it’s a
reliance
on something.

What I’m talking about is, my mom would joke that it was dangerous for me as an adult to have my own television. I could start watching TV at nine on a Friday night. With people waiting for me. Wouldn’t stop still two or three on Saturday morning
.

Yeah. I’m with you.

I’d say I was going to make plans for after work in the morning, I’d turn on TV just while I was getting dressed, and end up watching TV till about ten or eleven at night again. So I had to get rid of cable
.

Yeah. Yeah.

But when did that happen to you?

In college we never had it—we never had a TV in the room. Mark, who was my roommate all through college, didn’t like TV. And I
knew
—and I was a
complete
just total banzai weenie studier in college. But I remember there—um, I mean I was really just
scared
of people in college. I remember, for instance, I would
brave
sitting in the TV Pit. There was like a central TV room—to watch
Hill
Street Blues
, in college, ’cause that was a really important show to me. In grad school, when I lived in an apartment, and could have my own TV, um, I remember I began watching a hell of a lot more. Although I made a decision that I would never
write
when it was on. You know: that I would never sit there and clip stuff off while watching TV. Which is—have you had a similar—?

Yeah, I wouldn’t do it. I mean, I’ve done spell-checks with TV on, but I know I can’t do that. I remember trying to write some book when I was in high school during that McEnroe–Borg tiebreaker at Wimbledon. Was it like
’
81 or somethin’ like that?

[His speech fully infiltrating mine.]

The first one was 1980. That one Borg won. And then McEnroe ended up winning the U.S. Open.

We’re talking about in 1980 …

So you would have been fourteen.

I remember that, and I remember trying to do that and being very happy I could do both things at once. But it proved not to be the case
.

During high school, when you went to your friends’ houses, would you watch more than you watched at home?

When I went to my friends’ houses we would do bones. That’s what I went to friends’ houses
for
.

I preferred my dad’s house over Mom, one reason, because no restrictions on TV at all. But there was no place where you had free—

You know, and realize, this is, you know, it’s not … I would just be concerned. I’m not saying, you know, “TV’s evil” or, you know: “Look out. The youth of America is …”

It’s just more like it, it’s got to do with this—here’s this
easy, passive
, I-can-feel-like-other-people-are-in-the-room, but I don’t really have to do anything. (Laughs) That it’s just, that it’s real
easy
. And I think I’ve, my whole life, had a real penchant for avoiding the hard and doin’ the easy. And then part of, you know, part of why we’re here is to kinda learn how to not do that so much. That it’s ultimately less painful not to do that. Which I know sounds like a piety. But …

No. It’d be a good end quote. Don’t edit yourself. I think that’s a great remark. What’s the most TV you ever watched?

In a sitting? I remember watching the entire Jerry Lewis telethon one time. But that was sort of, just to see whether I could do it.

How old were you then?

Fifteen, sixteen years old.

Could you?

Yeah. I watched the entire thing.

How did you manage that, if you had this restriction on your TV?

Not when I was fifteen, sixteen. That was when I was a very small child. At some point, particularly—both Amy and I, once we got into school and began getting grades, and my parents figured out finally that we could get our homework done, function, be on athletic teams,
and
still watch what seemed to them to be just absolutely
mind-crushing
amounts of TV. They really relaxed about it all. I had the restriction until I think I was about eight or nine.

Your folks wanted you, prescribed that you be on athletic teams …?

No. I just meant … I mean, Amy played softball and I played tennis. And I think Mom and Dad’s
nightmare
was that—’cause you got to remember, this was when, this might be a crucial four-year difference. I think TV really started to become a pervasive part of the culture in like the mid- ’60s. And
that’s
when I was—that’s when I was growing up. My parents didn’t have any experience with it, you know?

All the PBS/NPR parents even now try to restrict their kids. For all the good reasons
.

Yeah.

If your parents had had some idea of what you should be doing, it would be like Avril and James
. [The parents in the novel]

No, truly, my parents are very unathletic. My father had wrestled in high school, early in college, but had stopped. And I discovered tennis on my own, taking public park lessons. I’d been a
huge
fan of football when I was a little kid; even at twelve, though I had lost a lot of size advantage on other kids, and was looking for another sport.

No, it was more just that they could see—that my parents are
intelligent
, and they realized that it wasn’t, that they were projecting certain fears about TV onto their kids, and that we were giving the lie to them. I mean, my parents never leaned on us about grades or athletic teams, and both Amy and I were pretty functional as little kids.

OK. So aside from the telethon … what’s the most you ever watched at a sitting? Even now I’ll go on these kind of benders when I decide to schedule them. I’ll go on a bender now where I’ll decide I’m going to start watching, I’ll start with The X-Files on Friday night, and then decide to go on until, I’ll realize …

But it’s also sort of—I mean, it’ll be on for a while. Then you get
restless and maybe you’ll make a phone call while it’s on or maybe you’ll—[I’m shaking my head] No?

Not me
.

See … maybe we’re a little different.

No. If I get into that phase and someone calls, I’ll get off as quickly as I possibly can …

Now if I get that deeply
immersed
in something, what’ll happen to me now is that I’ll fall asleep. You know? Because I’ll get so relaxed. I think the most that I’ve ever sat and just stared at and watched would have been, you know, late in high school, and we’re probably talkin’ about eight hours.

Ha. And you haven’t watched that much TV since?

You mean all in a sitting? I can remember a couple of times having the
flu
, you know. And like being at my girlfriend’s house with the TV on, and just lyin’ there with the set on. And just kind of drifting in and out of consciousness, you know. But that’s—you seem to me to be meaning something different, by watching. Maybe in the posture of the Bose-through-that-speaker commercial. Where the guy’s just kind of sitting in the chair like this …? [Demonstrates: Hunkered in chair]

(Laughs)
You’ve never done that
.

I also, here’s the—like the thing that’s killed it recently for me, is the channel-surfing thing. Is because, I always have this terrible fear that there’s something even
better
on, somewhere else. And so I will spend all this time kind of skating up and down the channel system. And not be able to get all that immersed in any one thing.

But the problem is, there always
is
something better. So you can always find something else to watch
.

Yeah, but there’s this terrible
anxiety
, this gnawing anxiety about it. That was the great thing about last night, I just decided, I’m gonna watch
Sodom and Gomorrah
. This is gonna be cool.

No, but when you can trapeze to something else … swing on to the next bar … there’s always a next bar coming …

That’s true.

I mean I could go home
now
and watch ten hours of television
.

Fill me in on something … [Shuts off machine]

[Break]

…
and read for a couple hours, and it’s much harder if there’s a girl there. Because they want to interact. No, I’ll tell ya, I mean, in a certain way, I’m a little bit—but I
am
with reading I think kind of like what you are with TV. I mean there’s lots of times where I’ve read for three, four days in a row, pausing only to eat and sleep.

[Break]

So when you said TV addict, you were just being colorful. Or you see a potential for it, even though you’ve never exercised it fully
.

I think, I think what you’re betraying here is you and I have a somewhat different understanding of “addict.” I think for you, the addict is the gibbering, life-that-completely-grinds-to-a-halt thing. And for me—and the thing that the book is about, is—it’s really about a continuum, involving a fundamental orientation. Lookin’ for
easy
pleasurable stuff outside me to make things all right. And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it. But I’m saying it’s a continuum, and that we
slide
.