I watched A Serious Man today and it reminded me a lot of Waiting for Godot. I need to read that play again, but I recall it being about two men waiting for God to show up and give them purpose, direction, and answers. God, of course, never arrives. How like life, yes? And that’s why absurdism really works for me; because, often with humor, it stabs into that bleak, dark place that never echoes back when we shout into it. We can shout and shout and shout and nothing is ever going to come back to us.
That’s a type of ambiguity, I think, something I’m trying to wrap my head around for my own storytelling. Genre fiction doesn’t do much of that, I’m afraid. Genre fiction is about answers. Lessons. Crimes solved. Growth and change. But I empathize a lot with the more literary side of things, too, where there are no answers, only questions. Watching A Serious Man tonight was good for me, I think. I have some story ideas rattling around that got a little clearer tonight watching it. Especially the befuddled man at the center of it, just trying to get to grips with what the hell is going on.
I wasn’t productive today. I took the day completely off. I’m not going to do that tomorrow. I’ll get my writing in tomorrow. Whether than ends up being more or less than “normal,” we’ll see. But I’ll be up and doing it at a respectable hour. Back in the saddle, baby. Let’s get this book done. So. Close.
I recommend A Serious Man. It’s funny. Just know that the folk tale at the beginning sets the absurdist tone for what’s to come: is he a dybbuk, or is he a man? We never see. He is both and neither. That’s the movie in a nutshell.
Oh! And I also read The Old Man and the Sea today with the patio doors open and brief little pitter-patters of rain. In one sitting. I didn’t expect that, but I should have. It’s short, and Hemingway’s prose is not dense. At least not packed with words, like Joseph Conrad’s jungle of print in Heart of Darkness. It went by quick.
And I was reading analysis of the novella afterwards, and was surprised to find that I felt like I disagreed with pretty much everyone I read in terms of what the story was about. There was a lot about it being about the indomitable spirit of man…but Santiago lost. He fought as hard as he could, and he lost. That’s why everyone is crying at the end who sees him, because they can see how hard he fought out there, and they can see that the sharks took it all away from him. Which also feels like life. We fight as hard as we can, while we can, and yes, I suppose that matters a lot, it’s what makes Santiago a hero to Hemingway, and a hero to us, so nobody is wrong about that…but we never get it all, do we? Victory is temporary, because life is temporary. Another dark thought, I suppose, but true. And THAT is what I felt like Hemingway was trying to say. Hemingway is Santiago. He’s caught all the fish he’s ever going to catch, and the sharks have picked him to his bones. It was his last great piece of writing, and he died not all that long afterwards by his own hand. I think such dark thoughts were rattling around quite loudly, then, when he wrote that story. And his truth is true, but it’s also not the only truth. His reality, I’m sure, was far more complicated than that he gave Santaigo. But, no…I don’t think the point of that story, for Hemingway, was that man is indomitable. Quite the opposite.
Night night.