Providence (2 page)

Well, of course that’s exactly what I was all about. I’d spent a dozen years out there howling in the wilderness, and Ted Turner was saying, Well, how about it? Is there anybody out there who would like to be heard?

The only trick was, he wanted a novel. I’d always resisted writing it as a novel. I’d had the idea (wrong, as it turned out) that ideas embodied in fiction wouldn’t be taken seriously by the reading public. But that was the deal, so I had to come up with version eight, and that was
Ishmael,
and that was how I came to spend my thirteenth year on the book.

I didn’t expect to win. I figured I’d be eliminated in the first reading, in fact, not because it wasn’t what Turner was looking for but because it was
precisely
what he was looking for: something absolutely
new
—and therefore something that doesn’t already have a slot in the matrix of
acceptable
ideas. I mean, after all, Turner wasn’t going to be culling the entries personally. That was a chore that was going to be handled by a roomful of college grads who wouldn’t know a valuable idea from a jar of Vaseline. That was my estimate, but I was wrong about that too—dead wrong. I’m told that
Ishmael
was recognized as the front-runner from the very first reading. For once in my life I was being more cynical than circumstances warranted.

At any rate, in May of 1991, when I learned that I’d won, this great beast that had been blocking my vision for so long was suddenly removed from my path by Ted Turner, who said to me, in effect, You don’t have to worry about this anymore. It’s finished. You no longer have to concentrate all your energies on figuring out how it can be done, because it’s done. And as soon as this great body was taken out of my way, I saw that another stood beyond it, down the road. Not a “Son of
Ishmael
” exactly, but certainly a sequel in the sense that it
follows,
in the sense that it’s a book along the same path. And that’s what I’ve been struggling with ever since: that next book down the path.

T
WO

         
No, don’t apologize.
I want you to ask questions, to interrupt with questions. That’s your function here. You say you want to know what I mean by struggling, or why I’ve had to struggle. Let me think about that.

You can look at it this way. When people read
Ishmael,
it seems to them very simple, very obvious. And it seems like a work that must have been produced with no effort at all. That’s good, of course. That’s the way it should be. The reader should never see you sweat.

Here’s a thing I never say: There are
new ideas
in
Ishmael.
Fortunately, other people say it for me. I was meeting with some group or other a few months ago—it was some folks from Greenpeace, actually—and a woman was
trying to explain the book to the ones who hadn’t read it, and she said, “The amazing thing about this book is that there are
new ideas
in it. Things you’ve never seen before, never heard before.”

Just after the award was announced, I read a review of the book somewhere—a review written in advance of reading, you understand, a review written by someone who hadn’t read the book—and this person said, “Well, look, we know there can’t be anything new in this book, because everything has been said that is possible to say. There is nothing new under the sun.” And I thought, Wow, I wonder when that happened? When was the very last new idea produced? Was it 1647, or 1763, or what? And how did they know it was the last one? Did all the thinkers of the world gather round and say, “Golly, there it is, the very last new idea in existence. From this point onward, all we can do is hash over the old ones.”

Well, of course this is nonsense. Human thought didn’t come to a standstill with Freud and Kant and Darwin any more than it did with Plato and Aristotle.

In
Ishmael
I cross over into virgin territory here and there. And these small incursions into the unknown were what cost me the years, with
Ishmael.
These small innovations were the product of years of struggle, and yet when you come across them in
Ishmael
people blink and say, “Oh yes! How obvious! Why didn’t I think of that? It was right in front of my nose!”

Quite a few people have written to say, “Boy, am I annoyed at you—you wrote my book!” Then they go on to explain how they’d been working on exactly the same brilliant ideas—except that their brilliant ideas in fact bear
no resemblance to mine. For example, people will say, “Yes, that’s what I’ve always said: The Fall was what happened when we became alienated from Nature.” But I don’t say anything remotely like that in
Ishmael.
The equation of the Fall with alienation from Nature is a dreary old Romantic cliché that has been around for at least two centuries. It’s every generation’s great new discovery. But your question was … the struggle.

When
Ishmael
was out of the way, I looked at what was standing there down the road and said, “Oh my God, I’m going to have to tell the truth.” For a writer, telling the truth is the struggle. Telling lies is easy. Telling lies is writing a book that anyone could write. Do you see what I mean?

Let me give you a quote, the best thing ever written for writers, or for artists of any kind. It comes from André Gide, and I give it to all my writing students:

When I spent all those years struggling with the book that ultimately became
Ishmael,
I was being faithful to that which exists nowhere but in myself. No one on earth
could have written that book but me, and that’s what Gide meant by making oneself indispensable. I wasn’t making myself indispensable when I wrote
Dreamer.
Any competent craftsman could have written that. Not so with
Ishmael.
Only I could have written that.

When I looked down the road beyond
Ishmael,
I saw that I wasn’t going to be let off the hook. I wasn’t going to be allowed to write another
Dreamer.
I was going to have to go on being faithful to that which exists nowhere but in myself.

I understand what you’re saying. You still don’t see where the struggle comes in. Okay. Watch. Listen.

This is it.

You’re seeing it. You’re hearing it.

There are readers who love
Ishmael
who write to me to say, “I’ve read it four times,” “I’ve given copies to everyone I know,” “I’m going to be reading this book for the rest of my life.” These are the readers who sense that there’s something more to
Ishmael
than years of hard work and frustration. Over and over again, people ask, “Where did this book come from?” as if it were some very mysterious object. If I were to tell them that it was handed to me by an alien from another galaxy, I think there are those who might believe me. This is how strange it seems to them. They have the feeling that the origins of
Ishmael
must be somehow magical, and they’re right. I don’t mean to suggest that I’m anyone extraordinary. The universe shaped you to come here tonight to elicit
this story. The universe shaped me to be here tonight to tell it.

This is the other half of
Ishmael.
This is the part that many readers sense was left untold.

In responding to readers’ letters, I soon realized that the question “Where did this book come from?” doesn’t have just one answer. It has dozens, because
Ishmael
came from every part of my life. I saw that some of the answers could be found in 1975 and 1974. But then I saw that some of them could be found in 1967 and some of them could be found in 1963. And some of them could be found even before that, in 1953. Finally I realized that the real beginning of the book had to be traced back to 1941, to one of the earliest memories of my life, and that’s where I’ll start here tonight.

Some patient biographer may discover that I’m setting this event in the wrong house or in the wrong year, but it’s the event that counts, not the house or the year. What I remember was that we were living in Mrs. Gilogly’s house on 32nd Street between Dodge and Farnum in Omaha, Nebraska. I don’t suppose any remnant of this lifestyle survives today, but it worked very well in the era of the Great Depression. Mrs. Gilogly’s was a huge old family residence that had been converted into a boarding house, which made for a very practical and economical way of life. We had the top floor, Mother, Father, Dennis
(my older brother), and I, perhaps four or five rooms. I remember only a couple of the other residents, but I suppose there must have been half a dozen, all white-collar workers or university students. It worked out very well for my parents, who both worked, since Mrs. Gilogly provided a sort of ad hoc day care for me, who was the only really young person on the premises (my brother being seven years my elder).

My parents were probably considered very modern, not only because they both worked but because they were very permissive with their children. Frankly, I doubt if this proceeded from any kind of principle, modern or otherwise. Mother liked the nightlife, such as it was in Omaha, Nebraska, at that time in history. They would come home from work, have dinner in the communal dining room downstairs, get dressed, and go out for the evening, coming home long after I was asleep. I think their attitude was that, since they liked to do as they pleased, it was only reasonable for their children to do as they pleased as well. I know that, at the very least, at the age of six, I would on Saturday afternoons, all by myself, take myself off to the movies, a mile or so away. I was a solitary child, even at this age, I don’t know why. I wasn’t conscious of being shy or special; I wasn’t conscious of being lonely. Until the event I’m leading up to, I wasn’t conscious of being anything, as far as I remember.

One night in the spring of 1941 I had a dream. It was the middle of the night in Omaha, Nebraska, in this dream—truly the dead of night, every radio silent, every lamp dark, every car in its garage, every man, woman, and child in bed asleep. Only one human being was abroad in
that dead of night, and it was me. I was trudging home after a movie, head down, one foot in front of the other, down the long, silent blocks, past the dark, silent houses.

Suddenly I found my path blocked. A tree had fallen across the sidewalk. This was strange, because the tree hadn’t been there two hours before, when I passed by on my way to the movie theater. I say it was a tree, and it was, but it was a kind of dream tree. It was the essence of a tree, which is to say it was a tree trunk. If it had been an actual tree, I would have come up against a huge tangle of leaves and branches, and the heart of the tree, the trunk, would have been hidden and inaccessible inside that tangle, which means that what happened next wouldn’t have happened at all.

A great black beetle came scurrying down the length of the trunk to confront me, and I shrank back, terrified. I was terrified because all insects terrified me at this age and because I was sure the beetle was going to blame me for what had happened to its home, which was this tree. But the beetle spoke up immediately to reassure me. It wasn’t a matter of vocalization. He spoke in my mind.

“It’s all right,” the beetle said. “Don’t be afraid, I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to talk to you.”

I drew a little closer, fear giving way to curiosity. It isn’t often that an adult actively seeks communication with a six-year-old—and this beetle was definitely an adult. It had an aura of great wisdom and authority.

It, he. I had the impression it was a he.

“This tree was my home,” the beetle said. “Mine and others’, of course. Squirrels, birds, and so on.”

“I know,” I said.

“We’ll have to abandon it now, of course.”

I said I was sorry it had fallen down.

“That’s all right,” he said. “As a matter of fact, it didn’t just fall down. We felled it on purpose to block your path, so I could talk to you. There was no other way to do it.”

I was dumbfounded, of course.

“It’s really dark out tonight, isn’t it?” he went on conversationally, making small talk to put a small boy at ease.

I said I guessed so, or something.