Earlier this week, a fellow historian advised me, in the most well-meaning way, that my writing had been infected by the stream-of consciousness technique. Luckily, he suggested a couple of copy editors as an urgent and necessary corrective.
Ouch.
That hurt my feelings for three reasons. One of then is Revision: there was an implication of sloppiness on my part in the advice on his part, yet most of the writing I do— although I write quickly, because that’s what journalism training teaches you—goes through countless revisions. I will be the first to admit that almost everything I’ve ever written has gotten better with either fewer words or demanding editors, even the slightly daft ones.
A second reason for my emotional flesh wound is that my critic lives in San Luis Obispo, which means that he looks down on us bumpkins in Arroyo Grande or Morro Bay or Paso Robles from insurmountable intellectual heights.
The third reason that I got this counsel is that I don’t think like an academic historian. Although my books are researched in depth, with footnotes in platoons, my writing doesn’t progress in a methodical manner: I’m not a tugboat nudging a great passenger liner into its berth along the East River in New York.
Oops. I did it again.
I don’t think in a linear way. Never have. I think laterally: One idea will lead me to another that might be a continent or a century away from the idea I’m supposed to be discussing. I found that of immense help as a teacher, because I’d take the kids along with me in the comparison of one historical event to another, seemingly disparate, event. It worked, judging from the way their eyes would light up, because they understood metaphors and, even more, they loved understanding.
One of the historical events we studied was the impact of Freudian psychology on popular culture, and it just so happens that the stream of consciousness was part of one lesson plan. Here is a passage my kids read, from the opening to Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo
And here is an excerpt from an essay on Muhammad Ali that shows me doing the exact same thing. as if I were a member of the Junior Joyce Fan Club.
* * *
At a press conference at the Waldorf-Astoria before leaving for the 1974 Zaire fight against George Foreman, the “Rumble in the Jungle,”, Muhammad talked about his training:
I’ve wrestled with alligators,
I’ve tussled with a whale.
I done handcuffed lightning
And throw thunder in jail.
You know I’m bad.
just last week, I murdered a rock,
Injured a stone, Hospitalized a brick.
I’m so mean, I make medicine sick.
* * *
The novelist Norman Mailer, going into that fight, said that Muhammad was afraid. Foreman had destroyed Frazier, destroyed Ken Norton—two fighters who had beaten Ali–in two bouts that had lasted two rounds each. Mailer implied that the volume of Muhammad’s poetry was in direct proportion to the intensity of his fear.
But Ali had watched films of the fights, and when Foreman had knocked those men down, he’d meekly and quickly retired to his corner, breathing heavily. He didn’t have the stamina it would take to escape the trap Ali was laying for him—a fight intended to be a marathon. As Foreman pounded a crumpled Ali, gloves up, forearms locked at the elbows, in merciless showers of blows that would have hospitalized most men, Ali whispered to him, from the ropes, after one particularly jarring punch, “That the best you got, George?”
In the end, Mailer probably was right. Ali, the victor, was afraid of George Foreman. That is why he was so remarkable. George Foreman grew to love Muhammad Ali. That is why he is the greatest.
* * *
My late brother-in-law, Tim O’Hara, then living in Los Osos, took my nephew Ryan, then a little boy, to meet Ali at a Los Angeles-area sports-card show and signing. Ali signed a pair of boxing gloves, and took a moment to look at Ryan and remark on something I’m not sure Ryan had ever much liked. “I love your curly hair,” the Champ said softly.
* * *
In Famine Ireland, an English clergyman and his companion climbed into their carriage to leave a stricken town. A thirteen-year-old girl, expressionless, her clothing in tatters and so exposing ribs like an accordion’s bellows, her clavicle and shoulder joint with their contours visible just below her skin, began to run after the carriage. When the horses picked up speed, so did she. The clergyman, distressed, kept looking out the window and the girl and her long, bony legs were keeping pace with them. She did so for two miles. The clergyman could finally take no more, ordered the driver to stop, and gave the girl money. She took the money, expressionless and silent, and turned her back on them to walk home.
In the film When We Were Kings, African children, in the same way, ran after Ali’s car. They weren’t expressionless. Their faces were radiant with joy. They weren’t silent. They sang for Ali when his car stopped for them, a call-and-response song so beautiful that it makes you shiver to hear it. What the clergyman gave the little girl would have kept her alive, but only for a short time. What Ali gave these children would feed them all their lives.
* * *
So there is nothing in my writing that couldn’t be better with a good editor, or with ruthless pruning. But for those who use literary terms loosely or whose thinking is safely bound by convention and by academic conformity, my writing lacks the certainty and comfort of boredom. For that I’m not too sorry.
A Work in Progress 