A continuation of the previous blog entry:
"I'm going to read some more of Trinity tonight. It's easy for me to get interested in the book, because it's a fictional account of the conflict in Ireland, and our family went to Ireland in the summer of 1976. We also went to Scotland and England. I liked Ireland the best, because it was more backward and more picturesque than Scotland or England I thought, and perhaps more tragic."
MANHOOD REDO: If I lived in Ireland and was reading this excerpt, I suspect I would be insulted. "Backward" isn't a word I would use now to describe anything or anyone. I suppose I was referring to things like seeing skinned pigs strung up outdoors where a butcher was selling meat, flies buzzing all around. In the States, where meat is presented in sanitized foam packaging, tightly wrapped cellophane keeping out air, a piece of white cloth paper layering the bottom to soak up any excess juices and blood, the cultural practices are obviously very different. Trained as I was in our food culture, I assumed that the Irish must be spreading all sorts of pestilence by keeping the meat in the open and letting flies land on it.
Who knows what I meant by "tragic"? Perhaps that was connected to Northern Ireland. Perhaps it was connected to England's colonization of Ireland. When I was a sophomore in high school, we had to write weekly five paragraph themes, the topics always assigned and in the vein of "The pen is mightier than the sword - pick a side for or against," except for one time when we were allowed to choose our own. Paul McCartney and Wings had just come out in 1972 with a single called "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" that was a response to Bloody Sunday. I suppose it was too political to do well in here (in fact it only rose to #21 on the charts), and it was banned in Britain, so it kind of came and quickly went, but I decided to write my five paragraph theme arguing that it shouldn't have been banned. I don't remember what my three points were in the body (first paragraph, intro; next three paragraphs, body; final paragraph, conclusion), but I do know that I didn't even mention Bloody Sunday because I knew nothing about it and these were not the kind of papers we researched. I would whip them out in half-an-hour or 45 minutes without any revision of any kind when I had free time during the school day. Each major grammatical error resulted in your grade being signifcantly lowered and for every misspelled word, a letter grade was taken off, so I wrote very simple sentences and used words I knew.
I received a C on the paper - not because I completely omitted Bloody Sunday but because I misspelled "album," putting in an extra "l" - "alblum."
Now I have to figure out what all this has to do with masculinity. There are a couple different directions I could go. On the one hand, if I want to stick with the Irish issue, I could relate it to my own history and manhood. With a last name like McGann, it might be obvious that there is a potential link to Ireland. In Lubbock, a city of a couple hundred thousand, I think there was one other McGann family listed in the phone book, and that varied by year; sometimes we were the only ones. But when I went to Ireland and looked in the phone book of even a small town, there was a long list of McGanns. And I felt I walked among people who looked more like I did than those in Texas. Plus, I've always thought there's a certain sarcastic humor especially present on my dad's side of the family, which traveled to the States from County Cork, that I could connect with the Irish. So in some sense I haven't fully unpacked, there's an Irish element to my masculinity. When we talk about masculinities, then, it's not entirely accurate to generalize and say "white masculinity." Maybe it's more accurate to say "Irish American white masculinity." Perhaps more about this later.
The other direction would relate to the grading of the five paragraph theme and the traditionally masculine approach to learning and knowledge, which tends to be quantifiable. Grammatical and spelling mistakes can be counted. Perhaps more about this later, too.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
JOURNAL EXCERPT: April 12, 1978 5:15 PM
This excerpt will be short and sweet (well, maybe not so sweet)...
"Felt full of lassitude today. Don't know what the problem is. Didn't write or draw. I think working the long hours at the Avalanche Journal [newspaper] is screwing me up."
MANHOOD REDO: While the long hours working on the AJ dock might have been part of the explanation for my inaction, I don't think they account for my lassitude in its entirety, especially since I seem to have the problem again and again, as anybody who read the journal would see. My writing production seems pretty spotty and unpredictable.
I'm going to pose another possible reason connected to something I wrote about in my dissertation: an internal conflict tied to two different selves, one I call the "Critic," the other the "Idiot." The critic is very much tied to traditional masculinity, the Idiot to everything that exists outside masculine norms and expectations. Here's how I explain it in the dissertation:
"Within the past two years, I have become increasingly more conscious of how this Critic's foundation rests on an internalized division, an inner split between the me in control, the 'dominant' me, who competently masters himself and the world for the betterment of all through his ability to present piercing theoretical insights (a Messianic intellectual?), and the me out-of-control, the incompetent, vulnerable, 'Idiot' me, less formed, who seems to begin in childhood and carry on into my adult years - a 'me' the other 'me' wants to disown, to distance myself from, because he is unpresentable, embarrassing, ignorant. It's the suppression of this 'Idiot' me that results in oppression. I project him onto others so that they are the ones 'out-of-control' and not me. To be out-of-control is, ultimately, unmanly, like my 'Idiot' self, so ignorant, so out of touch."
When I began writing seriously, I struggled with the part of me, the "Critic," that demanded perfection and control - expectations that would have seriously constrained my ability to throw myself fully into the art of learning to write. I must have known that I had years ahead of me learning the craft, that my stories and poems had a crudeness common to beginners, and rather than accept my place in the process of growth and development, it was safer to foist my attitudes about my fumbling, imperfect attempts at prose onto others, like R-- in an earlier journal excerpt or the older woman in the creative writing class.
Sometimes, you have to accept it's okay to be an idiot.
"Felt full of lassitude today. Don't know what the problem is. Didn't write or draw. I think working the long hours at the Avalanche Journal [newspaper] is screwing me up."
MANHOOD REDO: While the long hours working on the AJ dock might have been part of the explanation for my inaction, I don't think they account for my lassitude in its entirety, especially since I seem to have the problem again and again, as anybody who read the journal would see. My writing production seems pretty spotty and unpredictable.
I'm going to pose another possible reason connected to something I wrote about in my dissertation: an internal conflict tied to two different selves, one I call the "Critic," the other the "Idiot." The critic is very much tied to traditional masculinity, the Idiot to everything that exists outside masculine norms and expectations. Here's how I explain it in the dissertation:
"Within the past two years, I have become increasingly more conscious of how this Critic's foundation rests on an internalized division, an inner split between the me in control, the 'dominant' me, who competently masters himself and the world for the betterment of all through his ability to present piercing theoretical insights (a Messianic intellectual?), and the me out-of-control, the incompetent, vulnerable, 'Idiot' me, less formed, who seems to begin in childhood and carry on into my adult years - a 'me' the other 'me' wants to disown, to distance myself from, because he is unpresentable, embarrassing, ignorant. It's the suppression of this 'Idiot' me that results in oppression. I project him onto others so that they are the ones 'out-of-control' and not me. To be out-of-control is, ultimately, unmanly, like my 'Idiot' self, so ignorant, so out of touch."
When I began writing seriously, I struggled with the part of me, the "Critic," that demanded perfection and control - expectations that would have seriously constrained my ability to throw myself fully into the art of learning to write. I must have known that I had years ahead of me learning the craft, that my stories and poems had a crudeness common to beginners, and rather than accept my place in the process of growth and development, it was safer to foist my attitudes about my fumbling, imperfect attempts at prose onto others, like R-- in an earlier journal excerpt or the older woman in the creative writing class.
Sometimes, you have to accept it's okay to be an idiot.
Monday, December 24, 2007
JOURNAL EXCERPT: April 6, 1978 8:10 PM
"I worked on the sixth cartoon strip again today. I still have to ink in the first two panels. (I work from right to left because I'm left-handed. That way I don't smear the ink with my left hand.) I did a few things in the backgrounds that are kind of abstract. It's a little different, but I think they turned out pretty well.
"I also wrote a little today on the same story as yesterday, and I was going really well, when interupted by my mother. She wanted me to go pick up J-- [my sister]. I got quite mad. When I came back after picking up J--, I didn't feel like writing, so I read."
MANHOOD REDO: I'm writing this blog entry on Christmas Eve a little while before dinner. My relationship with this holiday has dramatically changed the past few years. My partner and I no longer exchange presents; instead, I've started taking off the last week of December (she's a university professor and not teaching then) so the two of us can share some quality together time at the end of the year. A little extra quality time with her is gift enough for me.
On the other hand, I didn't particularly want to spend any time with the above journal entry. In fact, I had initially decided to pass over this excerpt and choose the passage under it about helping a friend and co-worker at the Avalanche Journal who was in a band named TNT. He needed to move their equipment out of the show band van into the beauty parlor where they practiced because the starter on the van had gone out. I would have been much more comfortable writing about that than what seems to me now a childish and petulant reaction to my mother's request. It reminds me of those moments in junior high when she took me clothes shopping, and embarassed to be seen with her at the mall, I walked two or three feet behind her. That's the age when the pressure intensifies to disassociate yourself from mom and the likelihood of her becoming an object of scorn increases. I wonder whether that's culturally specific? Surely there must be cultures where masculinity isn't predicated on non-identification with the mother (not to imply that's all it's based on)?
Even as I write now it's hard to admit that at 22 I wasn't my own man, that my mother could come into my room and demand I drop what I was doing. But in the spirit of the holiday, I'm going to make as generous an interpretation as I can of both her actions and mine. I probably assumed that she just didn't want to bother to pick up my sister, but looking back, I'm certain her motivations were much more complicated than that. The possiblity that I comprehended the depth of her family responsibilities seems small; it was more likely that I took her for granted. That issue had come up in the recent past; a few years before I wrote the above journal entry she had left the house to check into a hotel because she felt much of what she did at home went unappreciated and we didn't help her enough.
While there were gender dynamics at play between the two of us, they don't capture the entirety of our conflict. When she interrupted my writing, I wasn't angry because this was my time to work and how dare she intrude on it. No, it had much more to do with my overwhelming struggle to put anything down on paper, as is evident in journal entry after journal entry. How many times do I write, "I wrote nothing today"? It was so difficult because I had no reason to take myself seriously as a writer. I had published nothing, taken no classes, hadn't even read much literature. No one read the little I had written and exclaimed how much they loved it, how talented I was, how I would become the next James Agee! (I could've used Hemingway or Fitzgerald, but A Death in the Family is one of my favorite books.) Carving out time to sit at a desk and put pen to paper (no computer then) felt preposterous, felt like putting on a Halloween costume so I would at least be dressed like Mark Twain even if I couldn't write like him. It was already difficult for me to take myself seriously as a writer, and when my mother came in and asked me to pick up J--, I probably felt she also didn't take my writing impulses seriously.
If I had a Christmas redo wish (wouldn't it be nice to have my own personal Jambi? We watched the Pee-wee Christmas Special on video this past Saturday), it would go something like this: I wish the both of us, my mother and me, better skills to practice mutual empathy and understanding on that day so long ago in April 1978. While I'm at it, I'll extend that wish to anybody and everybody at any and all times.
"I also wrote a little today on the same story as yesterday, and I was going really well, when interupted by my mother. She wanted me to go pick up J-- [my sister]. I got quite mad. When I came back after picking up J--, I didn't feel like writing, so I read."
MANHOOD REDO: I'm writing this blog entry on Christmas Eve a little while before dinner. My relationship with this holiday has dramatically changed the past few years. My partner and I no longer exchange presents; instead, I've started taking off the last week of December (she's a university professor and not teaching then) so the two of us can share some quality together time at the end of the year. A little extra quality time with her is gift enough for me.
On the other hand, I didn't particularly want to spend any time with the above journal entry. In fact, I had initially decided to pass over this excerpt and choose the passage under it about helping a friend and co-worker at the Avalanche Journal who was in a band named TNT. He needed to move their equipment out of the show band van into the beauty parlor where they practiced because the starter on the van had gone out. I would have been much more comfortable writing about that than what seems to me now a childish and petulant reaction to my mother's request. It reminds me of those moments in junior high when she took me clothes shopping, and embarassed to be seen with her at the mall, I walked two or three feet behind her. That's the age when the pressure intensifies to disassociate yourself from mom and the likelihood of her becoming an object of scorn increases. I wonder whether that's culturally specific? Surely there must be cultures where masculinity isn't predicated on non-identification with the mother (not to imply that's all it's based on)?
Even as I write now it's hard to admit that at 22 I wasn't my own man, that my mother could come into my room and demand I drop what I was doing. But in the spirit of the holiday, I'm going to make as generous an interpretation as I can of both her actions and mine. I probably assumed that she just didn't want to bother to pick up my sister, but looking back, I'm certain her motivations were much more complicated than that. The possiblity that I comprehended the depth of her family responsibilities seems small; it was more likely that I took her for granted. That issue had come up in the recent past; a few years before I wrote the above journal entry she had left the house to check into a hotel because she felt much of what she did at home went unappreciated and we didn't help her enough.
While there were gender dynamics at play between the two of us, they don't capture the entirety of our conflict. When she interrupted my writing, I wasn't angry because this was my time to work and how dare she intrude on it. No, it had much more to do with my overwhelming struggle to put anything down on paper, as is evident in journal entry after journal entry. How many times do I write, "I wrote nothing today"? It was so difficult because I had no reason to take myself seriously as a writer. I had published nothing, taken no classes, hadn't even read much literature. No one read the little I had written and exclaimed how much they loved it, how talented I was, how I would become the next James Agee! (I could've used Hemingway or Fitzgerald, but A Death in the Family is one of my favorite books.) Carving out time to sit at a desk and put pen to paper (no computer then) felt preposterous, felt like putting on a Halloween costume so I would at least be dressed like Mark Twain even if I couldn't write like him. It was already difficult for me to take myself seriously as a writer, and when my mother came in and asked me to pick up J--, I probably felt she also didn't take my writing impulses seriously.
If I had a Christmas redo wish (wouldn't it be nice to have my own personal Jambi? We watched the Pee-wee Christmas Special on video this past Saturday), it would go something like this: I wish the both of us, my mother and me, better skills to practice mutual empathy and understanding on that day so long ago in April 1978. While I'm at it, I'll extend that wish to anybody and everybody at any and all times.
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