I Think You're Totally Wrong

by David Shields

  Every week I was giving part of my day to take a kid out of class, a bad actor whose parents refused to discipline him, and try to bring him up to speed. The school became obsessed with “attacking the gap”—the achievement gap between blacks and whites. Not by bringing black kids up to where the white kids were, but by willfully bringing the scores of the white kids down. It was a revisitation of everything I found so aggravating about my PC childhood. I yanked Natalie out of the school and sent her to a private middle school Laurie and I couldn’t afford. I’m embarrassed, because I’m privileged and white, but when the rubber hit the road, I wanted what was best for my daughter.

  CALEB: At Ava’s school we have to pay $2,300 a year for kindergarten. Kids whose income falls below a certain level don’t pay, and they also get free hot breakfast and lunch.

  DAVID: You guys can afford it.

  CALEB: I’m not complaining. It’s not the kids’ fault their parents are single parents, foreigners, low-income. Kids who otherwise wouldn’t have a better diet: their families can be helped financially. I’m okay with socialism as charity. Not as social engineering.

  I taught ESL for eight years, and no matter if it was in Abu Dhabi or Korea or Brazil, I’d teach the students who came to learn. In the UAE I’d teach three or four students who sat at the front of the class with pen and paper. I wasn’t going to bother with the students preparing for life as a government sinecure. That’d hurt the better students.

  DAVID: I’m okay with that. If there are thirty-two kids in Ava’s class, and Ava isn’t learning anything because the teacher’s spending half of her time teaching Gabriel to sit in his seat, I’m not cool with that.

  CALEB: These mountains—I’m going to take some pictures …

  CALEB: What is it with you and Ichiro?

  DAVID: What are you—a big anti-Ichiro guy?

  CALEB: I respect him as a ballplayer.

  DAVID: Not as a person?

  CALEB: There’s a scene in Lost in Translation when a Japanese man is asked a question through an interpreter and responds at length. The interpreter turns and says, “He agrees.”

  DAVID: So?

  CALEB: That’s what I think is happening with Ichiro. He just wants to take a shower. You ascribe poetry to him which I don’t think exists.

  DAVID: Have you read the Ichiro book? You read all those quotes and you still think he’s not up to something interesting? You don’t think he’s pushing back quite hard against the melodrama of American sports clichés?

  CALEB: No.

  DAVID: If I’m overreading him slightly here and there, then what the hell, you know, ’cause otherwise there wouldn’t have been a book.

  CALEB: There are inferior and superior cultures.

  DAVID: Wow. You’re saying that as a fact?

  CALEB: It is a fact.

  DAVID: I basically agree, but I don’t think you’re supposed to say that.

  CALEB: That should change. I’ve got to be careful with semantics, because culture and race overlap, so let me qualify. Racism creates unequal cultures and becomes self-perpetuating. Don’t get me wrong: I love cultures. Mix, integrate, travel, discover, but the idea that cultures are equal is nonsense. People have equal rights and abilities. Cultures aren’t equal, though. A culture of wealth is, by definition, not the same as a culture of poverty. Wealth correlates with better life expectancy, lower infant mortality, less violence. U.S. Southern culture in 2011 is superior to U.S. Southern culture in 1832. European culture of today is superior to the Europe of the Dark Ages.

  DAVID: How do you define culture?

  CALEB: Society’s collective modus vivendi: what a given people generally believe and practice. “The critique of culture is confronted with the last stage in the dialectic of culture and barbarism.”

  DAVID: Adorno.

  CALEB: Preceding the oft-quoted “To write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric.” Adorno isn’t saying, “Don’t write poems.” He’s questioning the conflict between the culture of poetry and the culture of barbarism: namely, solve Auschwitz, then solve art.

  DAVID: That’s wrong. That’s not how art works. You don’t solve questions first, then turn to art to embody the answers. The art is where you investigate the questions.

  CALEB: But Adorno’s asking, Does art offer solutions? If so, then you solve both. And that, I think, gets to what I’m trying to say. In other words, when a society, a culture, collectively believes that it’s okay to butcher Jews or purchase and own another person, that society is inferior. When a society believes that it’s okay to force sex on a woman, sell a woman, stone her for adultery, rape her, or kill her for honor, that society is inferior. Culture underlies society.

  DAVID: I wouldn’t call that culture, but politics and governance.

  CALEB: Politics reflects society. In most places an honor killing is treated as murder. Pakistan reports eight hundred honor killings a year. Hey, it’s dangerous territory, because when race and culture correlate, then to attack one you attack the other. By confronting culture, you risk being branded a racist. That’s a risk I’ll take. It’s an argument worth having. Oscar Wilde went to prison for two years for sodomy. The British court that condemned him came from an inferior culture.

  Asians and Africans are equal, but their cultures can’t be. No cultures are. Cultures evolve; politics change. In India and China, men outnumber women by large margins in some regions because of gender-selective abortion. I’m quantifying existentially. The Mayans and Incans and the followers of Abraham sacrificed children. The Korowai in New Guinea practice cannibalism today. The Yanamamo kill firstborn females. The Jivaro male must kill another man to be initiated into adulthood. In some cultures, you’re not a woman until your aunt slices your clit off.

  DAVID: I support reparations for African Americans—forty acres and a mule?—but I’m somewhat ambivalent about affirmative action. Why are so many African Americans still poor, and why do so many grow up without a father? Is it post-slavery stress disorder? History moves—1865, 1964, 2008—but does the clock ever run out? Obama has said as much, or at least tried to ask questions along these lines. I tend to romanticize the work ethic of Vietnamese, Koreans, Jews, whereas other cultures—Hispanic, African American—don’t appear to place quite as much value on advancing up the social ladder. Can one say that? Why couldn’t one say that?

  CALEB: It’s not race. It’s not ethnicity. It’s the culture. One culture dominates another: the oppressed has a disadvantage. It correlates more to poverty and class, racism exacerbates this, and cultures become unequal.

  CALEB: Are you familiar with the Ted Turner/Robert Olen Butler/Elizabeth Dewberry brouhaha?

  DAVID: I don’t know who Elizabeth Dewberry is.

  CALEB: She was Robert Olen Butler’s student in the graduate program at Florida State. Robert Olen Butler was almost twenty years older. Evidently, she was heavy, lost a lot of weight, became a very attractive woman, married Butler, and she’s published a few novels. I was talking with Rosemary Daniell at the Faulkner Festival in New Orleans when this attractive couple walked by. The woman shrieked greetings, hugged Rosemary, and then Rosemary introduced me to them: Elizabeth Dewberry and Ted Turner. At first, I didn’t know it was him. He’s six-three and big, like a linebacker.

  DAVID: Why was he at the Faulkner Festival?

  CALEB: He was being given some award or other: $10,000 for a billionaire. He was also there to promote his book Call Me Ted. And Elizabeth Dewberry had dumped Butler for Ted Turner.

  DAVID: What does she look like?

  CALEB: She’s tall, blonde, svelte. Gorgeous. So Ted and Elizabeth walk off, and Rosemary tells me that evidently during the Dewberry/Butler divorce Robert cc’d an email to his MFA grad students about the breakup. One of the students posted it online and it went viral. This letter got mentioned in the New York Times, everywhere. NPR even did something on it.

  DAVID: What was in the letter?

  CALEB: That Elizabeth had been sexually abused by her grand
father, had an abusive first marriage, and Robert saved her life by his presence, but she never could overcome that he was a successful author and so, according to Robert, the reason they divorced was that she was envious of Robert and his Pulitzer Prize. The letter goes on to say how Elizabeth is now Ted Turner’s girlfriend, but that Turner cannot be monogamous. Elizabeth will spend only one week a month with Turner while he rotates women. Elizabeth is attracted to the type of men that abused her, older men, and Ted is like that except he’s not abusive. The awards banquet starts and Ted Turner accepts his award and makes a speech.

  DAVID: And Robert’s there?

  CALEB: Near the podium.

  DAVID: Oh no.

  CALEB: So Ted says a few words about his memoir and then he says, “I’ve got a flight to catch, so I have to leave. Success is about class. Remember that, Bobby boy.” Ted walks out.

  DAVID: What did Elizabeth do?

  CALEB: She followed Ted out.

  DAVID: What’s the point?

  CALEB: What do you mean, what’s the point?

  DAVID: It’s just another one of your stories.

  CALEB: Okay, what do you think the point is?

  DAVID: We’re all blind as bats.

  CALEB: To me, the point is we all suffer. No matter how high you climb, someone will be punching you in the gut.

  DAVID: Finally, we’re in agreement about something.

  CALEB: Keep talking. I’ll take pictures.

  DAVID: I don’t think the book will include pictures.

  CALEB: It should.

  DAVID: Laurie reminded me: if I’m hiking in the woods, pay attention. Otherwise, I might slip. This is a solid walk. Coming back will be easier. I wonder how far we are.

  CALEB: The fallacy of contradictory authority is when two “experts” contradict each other: Keynes vs. Friedman. Michael Medved is certain that conservative economics fuel the economy. Norman Goldman is certain that conservative economics are harmful.

  DAVID: I like Goldman, actually.

  CALEB: He’s too certain. Both he and Rush are absolutists convinced that their opposition is brainwashed. They field too many calls from sycophants. Medved’s not so bad.

  DAVID: Does Medved ever marshal a coherent argument?

  CALEB: He attacks conservatives, calls Ron Paul a “Losertarian.” Medved’s a reasonable right-wing talk show host.

  DAVID: In what sense?

  CALEB: He takes calls from people who disagree, lets them talk. He calls out the fringe, anyone who’s a 9/11 Truther or in the Birther movement. He’ll ridicule, say, Donald Trump.

  DAVID: I do think there were some very odd things about 9/11.

  CALEB: Don’t tell me you’re a Truther.

  DAVID: I’m not, but still, Osama’s family being allowed to leave the U.S.? Someone gave Bush a memo in early 2001: Osama is going to attack the U.S. with hijacked planes on U.S. soil. Bush thanks the CIA person, says, “You can now consider your ass covered. Thanks. I’ll file it under ‘W.’ ”

  CALEB: Osama, or Al-Qaeda, had already attacked U.S. embassies in Africa. Newspapers regularly published stuff like “Al-Qaeda promises attacks on U.S. soil.” They still do. There probably have been thousands of threats made in 2011 alone that intelligence has picked up, and one of them might happen, and when it does, there will be a conspiracy that “we knew and let it happen.”

  DAVID: I still think it’s amazing how Bush avoided all blame for 9/11, whereas if it had happened on Obama’s watch, I don’t want to even contemplate what would have happened to him. The left never really attacked Bush, specifically, about 9/11. How’d he escape that?

  CALEB: Escape? The left shredded Bush nonstop. They still are.

  CALEB: The hot tub sounds nice. I’m glad you wanted to do this. I was wondering—soft city slicker?

  DAVID: City slicker?

  CALEB: You ever change a flat tire?

  DAVID: No.

  CALEB: I told Terry, “I bet he’s never changed a flat tire.” She says, “You’re not going to ask him that, are you?”

  DAVID: You can ask me anything. Laurie does everything. She’s Ms. Mechanical.

  CALEB: So you’re in the middle of nowhere, you get a flat, and she changes it?

  DAVID: Well, we’ve never had that happen, but if it did, we’d call AAA.

  CALEB: Ai-yai-yai.

  DAVID: Is that horrible? You do construction, and that’s the last thing I could do. I married my polar opposite. Laurie’s handy and reasonable in ways I’m not. I’m like Bertrand Russell, who didn’t know how to boil water. She’s incredibly practical. You do all the handyman work?

  CALEB: Pretty much. Terry gardens. I dig the holes. Even changing lightbulbs—stuff she could do—she’ll have me do.

  DAVID: So she’s not handy at all?

  CALEB: She’s self-reliant. If I’m not around, she’ll take out the trash, but she works, and these things become my responsibility. She supports the family.

  DAVID: I’m like Terry. In a good year, between the UW and all my other teaching gigs and publishing stuff, I make two hundred grand.

  CALEB: Damn.

  DAVID: What would we do if we saw a bear? What are you supposed to do? I forget.

  CALEB: It depends: grizzly, black, brown bear. Actually, I don’t know—run, punch ’im in the nose, create a diversion, play dead?

  DAVID: That would be scary. You play dead, he might come and bite you.

  CALEB: Mainly, if it’s a mother protecting her cubs: danger.

  DAVID: Wow, that’s quite a waterfall. It’s beautiful. Just beautiful.

  CALEB: Funny, how useful that word is in life. Just look and marvel: the lake. We made it!

  DAVID: I’m glad we made it.

  DAVID: Going back, downhill, do you make sure your speed doesn’t build up?

  CALEB: It’s hard on the knees. I climbed Huayna Picchu, almost straight up and down, 800 meters. (I’m “life-dropping,” subtly inserting how I went to Machu Picchu.) It’s cake compared to K2, but it was hard.

  DAVID: How’s your Spanish?

  CALEB: No es malo. It has problems. I’m functional, conversational, but when it’s fast I miss a lot.

  CALEB: There’s something appealing in an artist who turns toward contradictions, a troubled and tormented artist who seeks pain. There’s mystique, validity, even credibility. You may disagree, but one thing I’ve observed in your writing is that you seem like you almost wish you had suffered more than you actually have.

  DAVID: Then you’re a really bad reader and know nothing about my life.

  CALEB: Whoa. Whoa. I wasn’t saying that as a criticism.

  DAVID: You don’t think my work turns toward contradictions?

  CALEB: Sure, but—

  DAVID: You don’t think anyone who lives an ordinary life has plenty of trouble and torment to write about? You don’t seek out pain; pain—

  CALEB: Maybe that’s it. Maybe you’re interested in ordinary life and I’m interested in extremities of life.

  DAVID: I mean, we’re all going to die.

  CALEB: We all die differently. You’re interested in “mortality.” I’m interested in murder.

  DAVID: We all suffer as human beings.

  CALEB: “Pain is mandatory. Suffering is optional.”

  DAVID: You’re quoting my back doctor quoting the—

  CALEB: From Thing About Life. And then there’s Bukowski: “All this writing about pain and suffering is bullshit.” For the most part, we’re responsible for our own suffering. I realize there are victims of trauma coming from external forces, but for you and me and your students and peers, suffering is different. The widow of Kabul’s suffering isn’t David Shields’s suffering. You say literature saved your life? Really? Really? Your life was in jeopardy? You’re not politically or socially oppressed.

  DAVID: Wow. That’s an incredibly banal and Maoist view of what constitutes suffering. If only the widow of Kabul’s suffering counts, why read Hamlet? I love the Yeats line that goes, “
Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself.”

  CALEB: Yeats is an artist, he explores his abyss, and then says that takes more courage than facing a bullet?

  DAVID: He says as much courage.

  CALEB: Whatever.

  DAVID: If you take art seriously, it’s true.

  CALEB: You linger on pain, yours and others. I get the sense that you’re exaggerating your own—

  DAVID: Agony.

  CALEB: Sure, that. Perhaps, when you were younger, your suffering might have been more genuine. Stuttering must have had a tremendous impact. You could function one-on-one, but in groups you must have been terribly introverted. It would have made it difficult to “hang out with the guys.”

  DAVID: That’s right: ever since I gained a little more control of my speech, I’ve stopped suffering.

  DAVID: Natalie is insulin-resistant.

  CALEB: She’s diabetic?

  DAVID: Pre-pre-diabetic. I forget if you’ve ever met her, but she’s pretty heavy.

  CALEB: Related to the insulin?

  DAVID: She doesn’t process insulin correctly. Whenever she eats carbs, her body keeps telling her she needs to eat more. She’s doing better, though. She’s lost thirty pounds in the last year on a very specific regime of medicines, diet, and exercise. We’re hoping she keeps seeing progress.

  CALEB: When I first started dating Terry, I met her extended family—all happily married, financially secure, and with beautiful children. On the outside everyone seemed perfectly happy. The first time I met Aunt Karen, she said, “I hear you’re a writer. Our family must have many stories for you.” She married a man who worked hard. At a relatively young age, he retired a millionaire many times over. They have a house in Seattle, one in Leavenworth, one in Palm Desert. Two children, four grandchildren. The picture of the American Dream. Christian, churchgoing, golf, fantastic restaurants, vacations.