The Stuff that Dreams are made of

 

“Idle dreaming is often the essence of what we do.”- Thomas Pynchon

I took a planned leave from work for about three weeks. And it felt so good to get away from the atmosphere of daily grind in the office where I work. It’s not just there, but everywhere you work, you find this stifling influence of creativity, really it can be found in any office environment.  Perhaps it’s the artificial lighting combined with superficial worries of the day, but whatever the reason it makes for a completely down-trodden environment. No creativity is allowed or encouraged. Just mindless day to day crap.

 That’s the way we’ve done it for the past 50 or 100 years of the Industrial Revolution, so that’s the way we’ll keep doing it….But eventually, I guess we’ll be replaced with robots.  There will be robots to answer phones and questions, and to push papers. Office workers will eventually be no more, thank God. People will be less needed.  We will be less in demand for every sort of thing that machines can do cheaper and better. Machines don’t complain or get colds. They need maintenance, but not health care. So it goes, as Vonnegut would say.

 

We will eventually be an obsolete race, but we probably won’t know it for a generation or two after the deed is done. Things like that happen silently and stealthily, not with great drama and gusto. There’s no clamoring to end life as we know it, as boring as it seems to us. But office workers will be the next wave to go, as factory workers have already gone the way of the dinosaur. We can work out of our homes, if we’re lucky. Some people could do very poorly and perhaps be out on the streets. And more of us will end up living in cars, or in trailers or utility sheds. It’s not such a bad life, really. I work in a converted shed, and it’s fine for the most part. Of course, I don’t have to live here full time with a room overflowing with other people. The words “it’s fine” would not apply in that scenario. Rather it would be annoying and confining. But it could be done.

 We would not be any happier if the office drone positions in society were eliminated altogether. We would be relieved on some level, and unfulfilled on another. For there is a deep and abiding need in Americans for the comfort of the boredom provided by monotonous work. We are free to daydream and dally without interruption, an eternal Mitty-esque dance of the macabre acting out in our brains.

Some of us daydream of sports, or sex, or food, or money. Others dally with power and revenge. There are seekers and doers that would happily imagine us helping others and saving the world. But most of the drones of the human race would be caught red-faced with their pants down around their ankles metaphorically speaking. We cannot judge the unseen nature of dreams and ambitions of others in their private thoughts, but if all of our most boring activities were suddenly gone from the face of the Earth, what then, would we do?  Most of us would drift aimlessly as we depend upon the stability of our boring existence to make it through each day. As the man said, idle dreaming may be our true purpose in life. In the end, it could be the essence of who we are and what we do.

The Commercialization of Writing vs Harper Lee & Marjorie Rawlings

Marjorie Rawlings at Cross Creek

 

My two heroines are Harper Lee and Marjorie Rawlings. They came along at a time when women in literature were still like children, seen but not heard. Their contributions to the literary world made them giants among us, but they spoke softly and both carried big sticks. Marjorie was a pioneer in more ways than one. Her move to Florida, her gutsy decision to stick it out when her husband left, and her high ethical standards make her a giant among writers. She was also the point man-(or woman)-in the battle for literary control in a non-fiction work. Her publisher left her out there to swing,( they had big Ernest Hemingway to defend), and she was left to defend herself against a long-running libel suit that drained her both emotionally and financially.

Harper Lee worked with Truman Capote, behind the scenes, to help him write his masterpiece, In Cold Blood. And then, in her own right, she published one of the most beloved books of the last 50 years, To Kill a Mockingbird. I think it still resonates because, from the time the story was published, it immediately captured one of the most important eras in our country, the Civil Rights movement. And it became timeless, sadly, because we are still fighting the battles of racial discrimination fifty years out. Unfortunately, those of us who were raised in the South have seen evidence of the naked prejudice and hatred portrayed in the book and the film. Harper Lee put it on the table, on display for all to see. And she did it in the most masterful way possible, telling the story through the eyes of a child.

In The Yearling, Marjorie Rawlings also gave us a timeless portrait of a people and a culture that will soon be extinct. She preserved the culture and ways of Cross Creek, and did so in the most careful and reverent way possible. She, too, tells the story of the Creek through the eyes of a child.

Both women have served as role models in their lives as well. Marjorie insisted that her home would not be in any way, shape, or form used to sell items for profit. Her home is preserved in much the same condition as it was the day she died. Upon her death it became a part of the University of Florida, as she donated her property to the University system.   There are other support groups for Ms. Rawlings’ work, one being The Friends of Marjorie K Rawlings Farm. I, too, am a friend of Marjorie. She speaks to me all these years later, eschewing the commercialism and material gain that is so rampant in our culture and, indeed, in our own literary world.

*Harper Lee, still living yet elderly, (Died 2/25/2016), never gave interviews or took gratuitous promotional forays to promote her book. Instead, she made a conscious decision to live quietly and fairly normally in the small town in Alabama where she had always lived. There were no pretensions or glitzy book tours to sell her work. She let it stand and speak for itself. And by all accounts, has led a happy and well-adjusted existence far from the public eye. That was her choice.

When I went to a writing conference recently, there was a young man pushing his book. He put up a list of the ten best ways to promote your work. I was the only one who laughed out loud when he displayed, “Good Writing” as the Number Five best way to sell a book! He did seem to get the irony in the statement, but still insisted that the best way to promote your work was to have an eye-catching cover for your text.

I love these two women. They were against the commercial hydra that has overtaken the publishing community. There will never be a return to the simple life that Marjorie and Harper Lee wrote about; but the values they lived by and the ideals they stood for are timeless reminders that there are some things worth fighting for, worth living for, and yes, even worth dying for.