Learning from Evelyn Waugh’s “Decline and Fall”
February 1, 2015 2 Comments

Learning from Evelyn Waugh’s “Decline and Fall”

waugh-decline-and-fall-granger

Our work–our life–is the mash-up of our influences.

One of the chief influences upon my comic novel, High Concepts: A Hollywood Nightmare, was Evelyn Waugh’s first and brilliantly funny comic novel, Decline and Fall.

I don’t know if Decline and Fall is much read today, but it is hard for me to think of a novel that makes me laugh as much as this one. Of the book’s many virtues, the leanness of its prose and its quick, cinematic cuts between scenes are well worthy of emulation.

One of my favorite chapters is the one entitled “Vocation,” in which Paul Pennyfeather, sent down from Oxford for “indecent behavior” (he was innocently “debagged” by a group of drunken students on a rampage) transitions into a job as a schoolteacher. The chapter consists of three crisp unforgettable scenes.

The first features Paul and his guardian, who “cheerfully” informs Paul that he has no legal right to any of his money. The second features Paul and Mr. Levy, “of Church and Gargoyle, scholastic agents,” where Paul applies for a position. And the third features Paul’s interview with Dr. Fagan, the principal at Llannaba, a decrepit school in Wales. As Mr. Levy says about Llannaba:

“Between ourselves, Llannaba hasn’t a good name in the profession. We class schools, you see, into four grades: Leading School, First-rate School, Good School, and School. Frankly,” said Mr. Levy, “school is pretty bad. I think you’ll find it a very suitable post.”

(If you enjoy audiobooks, actor Michael Maloney does a wonderful job in this audiobook version of capturing Paul’s exquisite pusillanimity.)

In writing Chapter 2 of High Concepts, I had this chapter of Decline and Fall very much in mind as I imagined my protagonist Donald Wirt’s transition from adjunct professor of philosophy (a position he has lost after innocently being numbered among a group of drunken revelers at an academic conference) to a position as private tutor to Miles Taylor-Reese, a sixteen year-old high school junior more interested in pitching Hollywood production companies with his slasher horror ideas than with studying for the SAT.

With no pretensions to measuring up to Waugh’s standards, here are the scenes where Donald visits with Miles’s parents, and then where Donald meets Miles for the first time. I’d love to hear what you think of them…

highConcepts_highrez

Donald met with the couple the very next evening in front of a roaring fire in a spacious living room with a vaulted ceiling. Donald had never been inside a house so large and pleasantly appointed. Lionel poured them all a glass of red wine and Sabrina set out a plate of Brie and crackers.

“We don’t know what to do about Miles,” exhaled Lionel. “His I.Q. is through the roof. There’s no doubt he has the talent to get into Prestigious East Coast First-Tier Research University—”

The mere mention of this institution acted upon Donald like a jab from a Taser. Four times he had applied there—to the undergraduate program, the graduate program, the postdoctoral program, and for a tenure-track position in the philosophy department—and four times he had been rejected. Not even to mention losing the position at Fomes to a woman hailing from Prestigious East Coast First-Tier Research University. How different his life might have been, Donald often wondered, if just one of his applications to that glorious institution had been accepted!

“—but we just can’t seem to motivate him. In the past quarter his grade-point average has slipped to 2.643. We don’t think it’s healthy to fixate on the numbers, but frankly, Professor, Sabrina and I are worried. His class rank has fallen to 136.”

“He also doesn’t have any friends or interest in extracurricular activities,” Sabrina added. “He spends all his time in his room, doing what God only knows.”

“Hell,” Lionel remarked, “when I was his age, I was going to SAT prep, doing beer bongs, and hanging out with my girlfriend.”

“Don’t get us wrong,” Sabrina said, “he’s really a nice kid. And so talented.”

“Very talented” Lionel agreed. “And totally likable. But he just won’t get serious about his future.”

Lionel sat up on the edge of his leather chair and regarded Donald sincerely.

“Do you think you can help us, Professor? I think if he had one-on-one attention from someone of your intellectual caliber, he’d really blossom.”

“Well—” Donald blushed. “It sounds perhaps like Miles is bored with school. Perhaps his teachers aren’t challenging him.”

Lionel nodded his head like a trained horse.

“I think you’re right, Professor. I think you’re exactly right. I think in his gut he knows he’s smarter than they are. But with someone like you around, he’d know he’d met his match.”

“I’m here to serve,” Donald smiled. “It sounds as though Miles needs to awaken his critical mind. Then he’ll be able to regard his normal school subjects in a deeper, more intellectually satisfying way.”

“I love it!” Lionel said as he got up to refill their glasses.

“I think Miles will really get into sociology,” Sabrina beamed.

“Philosophy,” Donald corrected her.

“Of course. Forgive me.”

“Where will you start with him?” Lionel asked as he poured.

“First,” Donald replied, “I will help Miles realize that he doesn’t really know anything. That is philosophy’s first task.”

Sabrina gasped appreciatively. “That’s exactly what his Algebra II Trig teacher keeps telling us. Miles doesn’t know anything.”

“Second,” Donald continued, “I will show him that all one can really know for certain is a handful of highly specialized conclusions from the empirical sciences.”

“Of course,” nodded Lionel. “His college apps will go right in the trash if he doesn’t ace Physics.”

Donald, Lionel and Sabrina agreed on a sizeable hourly rate for Donald’s services. Then Sabrina suggested that Donald say hello to Miles. They pointed Donald down to the basement where Miles’s bedroom was located.

*          *          *

Donald knocked on Miles’s bedroom door, and a few moments later a voice barked, “Come!”

Donald entered not just a bedroom, but an entire suite of rooms. The first thing that caught his attention was an enormous flat-screen, high-definition television mounted on the wall opposite the door. The television, on mute, was showing The Daily Voyeur’s exclusive interview with a fetching starlet.

Pacing about the room was a pimply youth of sixteen. He had well-groomed, strawberry-blonde hair, and wore a navy blue bathrobe with matching slippers. He motioned to Donald with a finger as he continued to talk on the phone through a wireless headset.

“He’s still away from his desk? Well, could you please tell him that Arnold Martin called? Arnie. He’ll remember. It’s about the Miles Taylor-Reese script. Miles Taylor-Reese. He’ll know the script. Oh, by the way, your name is…? Azure? Really? That was my mother’s name. Listen, Azure, I bet you’re more than just a receptionist. Bet you have a couple of scripts buried in your pencil drawer, right? Of course right. Look, I’m always on the lookout for hot new clients, so if you want to pitch me some—Hello? Azure? Who are you, old sport?”

Donald did not at first realize that he was being addressed.

“Oh. I’m Dr. Donald P. Wirt, PhD. Your parents just hired me as your new tutor.”

Miles seemed distracted by a sound coming through his headset. He tapped a key on the computer on his desk.

“Hello? Yes, this is Miles Taylor-Reese.”

Again he held up his finger to Donald.

“I understand, Ms. Hennessey, that you’re not taking on new writers right now. But I just ask you to imagine two high school students meeting in the romantic deserts of Saudi Arabia. He’s the son of a Western imperialist oil family, she’s the daughter of Islamic fundamentalists. They meet when the boy comes to Riyadh on spring break to visit his parents. He comes in disguise to a party thrown by the girl’s family. They fall in love. But their families fight to keep them apart. It’s Romeo and Juliet for the post-9/11 world….Ms. Hennessey? Hello? Damn. So, you’re my Aristotle, eh?”

Again it took Donald a moment to realize that he was being addressed.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Aristotle, tutor to Alexander the Great. I’m afraid, old sport, that I’ll be no more docile than Alexander was. I, too, have an empire to create.”

“I understand your grades have slipped—”

“Collateral damage, old sport. My nights are spent slaying dragons on the telephone. We’re on a two-hour differential from L.A., you see, and most agents and prodco execs are only getting warmed up around six our time, so from eight to midnight I’m pitching my face off. Afterwards, I’m, like, totally drained, so it’s all I can do to catch a little late night TV before I totally crash. In consequence, I can only get to my Algebra homework during school hours. But then again, I usually spend study hall doing rewrites, so I’m not too surprised that I’m not being mentioned for the Nobel Prize in mathematics.”

“I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” Donald said.

“Diary of a film mogul, old sport. I’m an auteur in the making. Writer-director and, depending on who I’m chatting up, agent, manager, or New York publisher.”

“You make movies?” Donald asked, still confused.

“I will make movies, old sport. Here’s the posish. You have to be in possession of a high school diploma in order to enter film school. That’s a year and a half away for me—a lifetime. So I’m making the most of the delay by trying to sell a script to Hollywood. I may not even need film school. I may just sell a couple scripts, negotiate to direct a few bad sequels, go on to my first blockbuster, and after that it’s final cut for Miles Taylor-Reese.”

“I thought you were supposed to go to a regular four-year college or university?”

“Negative, old sport. That’s a parental paradigm. Sabrina will get over it when I take her down to Rodeo Drive to go dress shopping for the Oscars.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Donald said. “Your parents are paying me—and quite handsomely, I might add—to tutor you in critical thinking.”

“Not to worry, old sport. You can quiz me between calls. But you’re going to have to be fast, because my call sheet is pretty bountiful every night.”

Another call came in. Miles urged Donald to help himself to a coffee.

There was an espresso machine on top of Miles’s dresser, next to a fully stocked coffee bar. As Donald made himself a decaf espresso, Miles put his call on speaker.

“Yes, this is Miles Taylor-Reese. Hey, thanks for returning my call. I have a project that’s perfect for you. Let your imagination run with the following: Macbeth meets Goodbye, Mr. Chips. A notorious Gym teacher eager to position himself to be the high school’s new principal teams up with his ruthless girlfriend, the Advanced Spanish teacher, to plot the grisly murder of his rival for the position, the popular director of Driver’s Ed, Mr. Flatch. But one murder leads to another, and eventually they find themselves caught in a web of deceit, revenge and mayhem that ends with their explosive double suicide during the halftime festivities at the school’s homecoming football game.”

“What do you call it?” inquired the voice on the other end.

“Out, Out, Brief Candle!”

“Pretty good title. Lots of blood?”

“Buckets.”

“Have your agent send it to me,” said the voice.

“I’d love to,” Miles said. “But the thing is, I’m thinking of leaving my current agent. I’ll be happy, however, to have my lawyer send it over.”

Donald looked at Miles.

“Who’s your agent?” asked the executive.

Without missing a beat Miles replied:

“I’d rather not divulge his identity. I’m pretty ticked at him right now, but I’m not interested in making his name dirt around the industry.”

There was a long silence. Miles stopped pacing. Donald could not take his eyes off of Miles’s impassive expression.

Finally, the executive blinked.

“Okay. Send me the script.”

“Bang-o!” Miles exclaimed after the executive punched off. He moved to a large dry erase board hung on the wall and wrote “Slasher Films” under an underlined rubric, “PRODCOS: OUT, OUT, BRIEF CANDLE!”

“You seem to derive a fair amount of inspiration from Shakespeare,” Donald noted.

“They told me in English class that he stole all his plots. What’s good enough for the Bard is good enough for the Miles.”

Donald hesitated before asking his next question.

“Would you want to do some work now?”

“Nugatory, old sport. I just got a request for Out, Out, Brief Candle!”

“Can’t you just put it in the mail tomorrow?”

“I have to write it first! I don’t write them until someone shows an interest. Saves me a lot of time.”

“How long will it take you to write it?”

Miles considered.

“I should have ninety pages done in seventy-two hours, as long as the espresso is flowing. I work best on a deadline.”

High Concepts: A Hollywood Nightmare is available at Amazon for just $2.99.

Filed Under: On Creativity, The Craft of Fiction Tagged: , ,
May 13, 2014 Leave a Comment

Origin Stories

Mozart with the entire symphony in his mind before writing down a note. J.K. Rowling on the train imagining the whole Harry Potter narrative arc in a flash of inspiration.

Perhaps certain artists conceive of their works whole and entire, if that’s possible, before setting down to actually create them. I tend to think there’s a lot of mythology surrounding the origin stories of certain artworks. In any event, the origin stories surrounding Mozart and Rowling do not match my experience, and perhaps not yours either.

In my experience, a piece of writing gets started with some kind of fragment: the excitement of an influence, a scene or situation, a compelling character, an image, even a title. Then, over what is usually a fairly lengthy period of time, other fragments accrue, not always very complementary with one another. There is very little sense at first what the work is going to be. One has to push forward through the uncertainty to find out what it is one is working on.

A valuable creative concept is not (often) something delivered in a flash of inspiration and then put into words or some other medium. A valuable creative concept is something discovered, realized in the process of tracking it down.

The origin story is thus, for many of us, a quest.

Filed Under: On Creativity Tagged: , ,
May 12, 2014 Leave a Comment

Slaying the Artist as Moral Monster

The artist as moral monster. Misogynist. Misanthrope. For some it’s been a serviceable paradigm. Think of Gauguin, who abandoned his wife and five children (at his exasperated wife’s request) in order to stretch his canvases, and his moral sense, under the Polynesian sun.

There were one or two drawbacks to the business plan, however. Gauguin deeply hurt those he had once held so dear and didn’t even begin to return a profit until after he was dead.

One can’t deny that the moral monster route has produced some masterpieces, but at what human cost? The Romantic artist thinks that the creative Muse demands that the artist distort his own dignity and ignore that of others. Yet the fascinating and surprising fact is that very opposite is true.

As I noted in my last post, Pixar president Ed Catmull’s lifelong study of collaborative creativity reveals that creativity flourishes best when human beings are allowed to be their most human, when their inherent dignity is attended to and they are able to exercise their powers–all their powers, intellectual, moral, physical–in ways that lead to those excellences that in saner times were called the virtues.

Seth Godin, in the Icarus Deception, confirms this point when he observes that art in our connection economy thrives when human dignity, of both artist and audience, is respected, prized, brought to fulfillment.

The way of Gauguin and Lord Byron is always available. But even leaving the moral shortcomings aside, it’s a way out of step with the way in which artists today really connect with their audiences.

Filed Under: On Creativity Tagged: , , , , ,
May 10, 2014 1 Comment

Pixar’s Ed Catmull on the Virtues of Creativity

A Review of Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace (Random House 2014)

We live in a golden age of animation, an age arguably more dazzling and innovative, more populated with great stories and lovable characters, than any other in history. And what’s remarkable is that two of the most successful animated movies in recent years, the Oscar-winning Toy Story 3, which grossed over 1 billion worldwide, and the Oscar-winningFrozen, which just surpassed Toy Story 3 to become the highest grossing animated movie of all-time, were spearheaded by two of the same people: John Lasseter, chief creative officer of both Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, and Ed Catmull, president of both Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios.

Ed Catmull’s is a name that will be unknown to all but the most avid fans of computer animation and digital graphics. Holder of a PhD in computer science from the University of Utah, Catmull was at the forefront of the creation of the computer graphics industry in the 1970s. He eventually went to work for a unit doing computer-generated graphics for George Lucas at LucasFilm, but it was only when Lucas decided to sell that unit that Catmull’s career took the turn which eventually earned him, among many other honors, the Ub Iwerks Award for technical advancements in the art or industry of animation. For Catmull’s unit, which by 1986 included a talented young animator named John Lasseter, was bought by none other than Steve Jobs, after which Catmull and Lasseter began to pursue their dream of creating the first digitally animated feature film. Pixar Animation Studios was born. After an unprecedented string of box offices successes with which we’re all familiar, Jobs sold Pixar to Disney in 2006, after which Lasseter and Catmull established themselves as the heads of the animation studios at both entities.

In his new book, Creativity, Inc., engagingly written with journalist Amy Wallace, Catmull distills the lessons he has learned throughout his forty-year career. The book, above all, is about the art of collaborative creativity, about how to keep a business enterprise on the cutting edge of creative productivity. But the book is more than that. It’s also a history of Pixar; a detailed look into the management practices Catmull has employed to keep Disney and Pixar a double gold standard in the field of digital animation; and, especially in one of its appendixes, something of a counter-weight to the portrait of Steve Jobs found in Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography.

I found Creativity, Inc. riveting, provocative, inspiring. As someone working in the family entertainment space who, like both Catmull and Lasseter, dreamed as a kid of being a Disney animator, this is perhaps not especially surprising. But I was just as compelled by Catmull’s discussion of the management practices he has helped develop as I was hearing behind-the-scenes stories about the making of various Disney-Pixar films. And what I find so compelling in these practices is Catmull’s unflagging vigilance in identifying and rooting out all that would infect the environment needed for a collaboratively creative enterprise. From the famous Pixar Braintrust to the innovation of Notes Day, Catmull has made an art out of what keeps people at their creative best.

But here is what impressed me most about Catmull’s book, which I highly recommend to anyone involved in any kind of collaboratively creative endeavor, whether professional or not. As Catmull takes us through various management strategies designed to foster or reinvigorate creativity, what comes through is that the best creative practices are also the best human practices. That is, exercises designed to enhance creativity seem to be successful insofar as they bring out important human virtues: virtues such as trust, candor, humility, generosity, loyalty, perseverance, good humor, and respect. And this makes perfect sense, because creativity is not a discrete skill like the ability to speak French or ride a bike. Creativity is a complex expression of the very essence of human nature–one that involves the mind, will, emotions, imagination, and even certain physical attributes. Thus it stands to reason that creativity will flourish when human nature itself is allowed to flourish in virtuous activity.

Filed Under: On Creativity Tagged: , , , , , , , ,
March 26, 2013 Leave a Comment

Your Artistic Temperament, Or, How Is It Possible You Still Have Friends?

Imagine the following:

A writer deep into the second act of his magnum opus who realizes that he hasn’t brushed his teeth in a week. Or talked to his children. Or stepped outside long enough to check the mail. Or eaten anything not made with high fructose corn syrup.

Or a writer who spends months fighting brave battles in the land of her imagination, but who immediately gets sulky and petulant when her beta-reader doesn’t get her allusion to Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida on page one of her sci-fi epic.

Remind you of anyone?

Ah, the artistic temperament! So tedious to be around–and so tedious to be around. Not that there aren’t upsides to it. I mean, without a bunch of us super-sensitive, high-strung types, the world would never have been graced with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer, Snakes on a Plane, or the Twilight series.

But seriously. The artistic temperament is indeed a beautiful thing, but it can also be a right pain in the easel. And not just for friends and family members. The same temperament that sees God in a grain of sand can also undermine one’s work in any number of ways: through discouragement, procrastination, even vanity.

The good news is that temperament of any kind is susceptible of being formed. Just as someone who by nature is melancholic can learn how to work with what is best in that temperament and reject what is destructive, so too the artistic temperament (which is often melancholic, too) can be shaped and guided and formed.

This work of formation is part of what Flannery O’Connor means when she talks about the habit of art.

So now we have to talk about how to form the artistic temperament–that’s the agenda for this week on The Daily Muse. What strategies help to capitalize on what is best in the temperament and reject the stuff that makes our best friend want to run screaming from the room?

Your help is vital in collecting and clarifying these strategies. How have you handled the difficulties and promises of your artistic temperament? What’s worked and what hasn’t?

Filed Under: On Creativity Tagged: , ,
March 19, 2013 2 Comments

Seeing Things

“Man’s ability to see is in decline. Those who nowadays concern themselves with culture and education will experience this fact again and again. We do not mean here, of course, the physiological sensitivity of the human eye. We mean the spiritual capacity to perceive the visible reality as it truly is.” –Josef Pieper, “Learning How to See Again,” in Only the Lover Sings

How well do you really see the world around you?

When after a lost half hour of email and Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest you finally tear your glance away from your computer screen–your eyes buzzing from all the electronic stimulation–and look out the window–what do you see? Do you really see what’s out there, or is the reality outside simply a screen upon which you throw the thoughts and feelings going on inside of you?

To see, as Pieper says, is more than simply accounting for the sensible details of what’s outside the window. Authentic seeing is an intellectual process by which we grasp the essential structure of reality. It is a process, too, by which we realize the special kind of intellectual being we are.

Which is why Flannery O’Connor recommended to writers, among other strategies, the practice of the visual arts. “I know a good many fiction writers who paint,” she wrote in her essay, “Writing Short Stories,” “not because they’re any good at painting, but because it helps their writing. It forces them to look at things.”

How else, asks Pieper, but by building up a habit of seeing could Tolstoy ever have written such a gorgeous simile as “The girl’s eyes were gleaming like wet currants.”

Even when we take a moment to look, our vision rarely reaches deeper than the visible surface. But the more we cultivate the habit of seeing, slowly will our vision begin to see not only the visible contours of things, but all that is there.

* Those interested in O’Connor’s own impressive drawing ability will want to check out Kelly Gerald’s book, Flannery O’Connor–The Cartoons. An excerpt of Gerald’s book published in The Paris Review, showing further samples of O’Connor’s early cartoons, can be found here.

 

Filed Under: On Creativity Tagged: , , , , , , ,
February 21, 2013 Leave a Comment

Dogma and Originality

Steve Jobs is responsible for making the thought iconic for our time:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma–which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

That’s Jobs in his famous 2005 Stanford University commencement address. The thought is that dogma is opposed to originality. Dogma defined as being trapped by someone else’s paradigm. In The Icarus Deception, Seth Godin approvingly quotes Jeff Bezos saying much the same thing.

Okay. There’s a truth in what Jobs is saying. Creativity of whatever sort demands that we don’t slavishly attempt to reproduce the admired results of others. In terms of being human, authenticity–finding one’s own voice–is obviously a valuable concept.

But in a deeper sense, dogma and originality are not opposed. G.K. Chesterton well articulates the counter-thought to that of Jobs: “It is from the seed of dogma and from that seed alone that all the flowers of art and poetry and devotion spring.”

This may seem counter-intuitive, but think about it. Begin with the highest sense of dogma, religious dogma. There is nothing more perennial and clear than Catholic dogma, and yet there is no group of flowers more wild and various and utterly original than the lives of the saints. On the artistic level, the attempt to create a work of art without first apprenticing oneself to the masters of one’s craft and the craft’s dogmatic principles is to sow only weeds.

Originality–itself a misunderstood and overvalued concept–is the fruit of adherence to dogma.

Filed Under: On Creativity Tagged: , , , , , ,