Where the author of Ocean and Camille Paglia find themselves to be odd bedfellows, united in the belief that Americans need more angst to write well

Much can be said about Paglia’s appearance at Borders tonight. Much. I took notes, if only to document this point of much-ness. [For cool photos and a more thorough analysis than you’re going to find here, check out Althouse.]

But I knew instantly which statement of hers would compel me to write an Ocean post, the minute she spit out the words (and if you ever heard her talk you would understand the appropriateness of my word choice here), for the woman doesn’t really talk: she throws sentences out in a cascade of fire and ice so that you’re at once entertained, enthralled, repelled – depending on your own personal inclination.

Here’s how it went. We were at the Q/A phase of the evening. Someone asked what she thought of the multitude of creative writing programs out there.
Her words (on this one point), crudely paraphrased by me: Can you make good art in the school context? Shouldn’t it come out of life itself?

And as she was about to say the above, I wanted to raise my hand and ask this of the questioner: Can you make good art in the school context? Shouldn’t it come out of life itself?

Before I could applaud wildly her insistence that one must live the adventurous life to be able to write the next great American novel, she moved on to an elaboration of this theme:

The trouble is that middle-class white America has never had anything happen to them and so really, it has nothing to write about.

And as she was saying this, I was thinking of all the Europeans (Poles especially) who fully believe that the trouble is that middle-class white America has never had anything happen to them and so really, it has nothing to write about.

We then witnessed Paglia stage an expressive portrayal (all gestures and sentences quickly delivered, darting at you from the podium) of where American novels have been forced to tread: forty years of writing about pills and suicide and mental breakdown and stepfathers making passes at stepchildren and divorce and AIDS and cancer and chemotherapy and prozac! Personal dramas detailed in horribly graphic ways until you cannot stand it anymore! [Not that some of these may not deserve the high drama status. Her point: an encounter with personal drama of this nature does not in and of itself spur great text.]

Of course, I can be guilty of this as well: guilty of exploiting (in my writing here, for instance) the internal sagas until I make myself retch. I am so adept at picking up the malaise of the moment, the personal tragedy du jour from my immediate environment!

But it’s short-lived. I am a product of a thousand + years of Polish history, where I am on safe ground again. There, I have enough tragedy and drama to help elevate my own angst to such levels that I need not ever fear drowning in an American white middle-class un-cataclysmic environment ever again.