From Where You Dream

by Robert Olen Butler

  This is a good moment to make another point about how to read a work of art. You should read slowly. You should never read a work of literary art faster than would allow you to hear the narrative voice in your head. Speed-reading is one reason editors and, not incidentally, book reviewers can be so utterly wrongheaded about a particular work of art. By their professions they are driven to speed-read. Some book reviewers review three or four books a week. Such reviewers could theoretically be fine on works of nonfiction. Or certain works of fiction that do not rely on many of the essential qualities I've been trying to identify for you as the characteristics of art. But if you read four books a week and you read them all at pretty much the same pace, you are inevitably going to be a bad reader of literature. A speed-reader necessarily reads for concept, skipping "unnecessary" words; she is impervious to the rhythms of the prose and the revelations of narrative voice and the nuances of motif and irony. This makes a legitimate response to a work of art impossible.

  For this and for other nonaesthetic reasons, you're going to get all kinds of responses from all kinds of people in your lives, folks, and the nonsense never ends. It will never end for you, so you need to cultivate now your own inner confidence in your vision of things.

  Of course, the flip side of that is I had such inner confidence when I wrote "The Chieu Hoi," the terrible story I'm going to read to you next week, that I was blind to its deficiencies. It's a paradox of life as an artist (or an artist manque).

  While I'm at it, let me make a point about life experience. You grew up reading novels and collections of short stories—or Janet and I did—where no matter how short the bio of the eminent writer, there'd be a sentence like, "He picked grapes in California, drove an ambulance in Italy, worked as a newspaper reporter. Dishwasher. Worked in a power plant in Mississippi"—and so forth. It was understood in the culture that artists had to be directly connected to the real world. Now, even in this day and age, people who get lost in the track I'm about to describe to you have some kind of childhood or young adulthood, and the first novel of the hot young writer with the big-name publisher takes its power from the fact that there was some life actually lived at some point. But the bio says, "Got his undergraduate degree at Amherst or Brown, took his MFA at the University of Iowa, and has been teaching at such and such a college." The second novel, if the author is lucky, is a kind of derivation of the first; but the third novel is about a professor having an affair with a student, and the fourth novel is about a novelist. You just see the life—and, not incidentally, the career—shutting down. Then this author starts writing nonfiction. The enduring artists are ravenous for life, ravenous for experience. And so the things you've done in the world beyond academia, things that are not rooted in books and defined by ideas, these things fill up your unconscious, they are the primary stuff of your compost heap.

  Now, in the context of certain stories or books you are given to write, some of your "life experience" will necessarily have to come from a kind of research, and I'd like to mention several rich resources for that research—beginning with the Internet, which is a whole new sort of library for writers. The kinds of sense detail you need are available in a way that they never were before. An example from my own experience: in Mr. Spaceman there's an old woman telling a story about her youth when she went out walking, came over the peak of a sand dune, and observed the flight of the first Wright brothers plane—which gave her the lifelong yearning to fly. When she describes that plane later in her life, she would know exactly what kind of cloth was stretched over the skeleton. But I didn't know. Now, how do you find out such a detail? You could spend hours searching in a traditional library—because you wouldn't find it in the obvious places like an encyclopedia. But on the Internet—at the time, Google didn't exist; AltaVista was the best search engine, so I went to AltaVista and put in "Wright brothers," "plane," and "material," and "cloth." Three minutes later, I'm at a Smithsonian Institute Web page where I discover that it was muslin.

  There are also a number of useful books that should be on your shelf. One that's really helpful in terms of sense details is called The Oxford-Duden Pictorial English Dictionary,

  published by Oxford University Press. It's about 650 pages of line drawings of everything under the sun—a warehouse, a riverfront, a grocery store, whatever, and each of these very detailed drawings has sixty or seventy little numbered arrows to tell you what every part is called. If your character is walking out onto a pier in the Hudson River, and you have him sit down on one of those tubular, rounded things that comes out of the pier, with ropes around it where they tie up the ship— you sort of lose the moment if you say, "Well, he sat down on that tubular thing...." OK, you go to the drawing of the docks and you see an arrow pointing at that thing and, by golly, it's a bollard. They've got two pages of hats that tell you the difference between a porkpie and a boater and a bowler and a fedora, and so forth. It's a great resource.

  The Merriam-Webster's Collegiate and the Random House Webster's Unabridged are to my knowledge the only two dictionaries of American English that will tell you when a word entered the language—and when you're writing in period that can be crucial to know. I was writing Wabash, set in 1932, and the cop was swinging—I was going to say a billy club, but billy club came into the language in the 1940s. Nightstick came in at the turn of the twentieth century, so it's his nightstick he's swinging, not his billy club. These are very useful dictionaries in that respect. And, of course, there is the venerable Oxford English Dictionary, that gives you the timing for every subdefinition of each word, which the other two do not.

  Another useful book is The Pantone Book of Color by Leatrice Eiseman and Lawrence Herbert, published by the art

  house Harry Abrams, which contains thousands of different shades of colors along with their official names. Sometimes having such a visual point of reference will be helpful.

  There are several books that can aid you with period detail, but one I like is called American Costume, 1915-1970 by Shirley Miles O'Donnol, Indiana University Press, which will show you what people wore every day. You might also look for copies of all those wonderful old reproductions of Sears, Roebuck catalogs, which were popular a few years ago. You should steal a big city phone book next time you go to New York or Los Angeles.

  There are a number of baby-naming books that I find really useful. One I especially like is Beyond Jennifer and Jason, Madison and Montana, which gives the period popularity, connotation, classical meaning, and so forth of hundreds of names. I find it useful to name my characters very early in the process, and it can be important to find the right name.

  There's a great book called A Field Guide to American Houses, which will give you a view of and the accurate names for architectural features of common domiciles. Another, called American Shelter, is also useful in this regard.

  It's a good idea to have handy a good slang dictionary. Two I recommend are The New Dictionary of American Slang and the Thesaurus of American Slang, both edited by Robert Chapman.

  I know that you've read "Open Arms" for tonight [see appendix], which is a story I'm proud of. But if I'm going to critique many of your stories by telling you to put them away and never look at them again, I think it's only fair that I begin by expos-ing to you a story that I had to put away and never look at again—except for the purpose of illustrating a good writer's bad beginnings—a story whose origins were, eventually, eighteen years later, recomposted into "Open Arms."

  So tonight I'm going to treat you to that awful story, and I'm going to begin by reading a bit from the notebook that I carried around Vietnam in my hip pocket. I carried it with great self-importance. My ambition back then was to be famous. I carried that book in my hip pocket thinking that I could see it under glass some day: This was the curve of his butt. These are the smudges made by his fingers. Yes, this was his toothbrush.

  These are the false things, where ambition goes wrong. Your ambition as an artist is to give voice to the deep, inchoate vi
sion of the world that resides dynamically in your unconscious. That's what you must keep focused on; that's the only ambition worth anything to you as an artist. The desire to give voice and the desire to be published sometimes feel like the same thing, but they're not. The dream that comes from your white-hot center and the dream of fame—they are not the same.

  In any case, I always carried a notebook around and I made hundreds of notes. After I figured out what art is all about, I never looked back at them again—except to look for this passage; and I didn't do that until I started to teach. Here's the passage from the notebook:

  Nui Dat [the place where I was], chieu hoi [a Vietnamese phrase which means essentially "open arms"] at the stag films. Former political officer of large crack Viet Cong unit now watching the Aussies' Sunday night stag films, all four hours of them. Communist intense prudishness: punish people for having a pinup; what does he think of this? I talk to him later. He is very intelligent. A VC adjutant went to hills because he hated the wasteful, inefficient, corrupt government, and also because one day his wife and child were standing in a doorway and an ARVN [Army of the Republic of Vietnam; that is, South Vietnamese] soldier gunned them down. Went to the hills. Finally decided that the war would never end this way, returned and

  became bushman scout for the Aussies, took them to base camp after base camp. Names, stats on dozens of VCI [Viet Cong infrastructure, the shadow government people]. Driving through village, saw woman, just lower half of face, identified her as VCI. He met her only once six weeks ago. It took him four days to find the ARVN soldier before he went to the hills. The chieu hoi was a platoon leader of Sapper Recon Platoon. Went to COSVN, which is the North Vietnamese Army headquarters that nobody ever found. Went to Cambodia, a month's march. There he learned sapper techniques. One day I was watching Vietnamese television. He came in and smiled and he sat down with me. He asked if I spoke Vietnamese. He asked if I was an American. We talked and watched television together. I told him what I thought of the Vietnamese people, their warmth and kindness to me in spite of the bitterness they should have after all these years of the war. He said they'd had hundreds of years of war already—the Chinese, the French, and so forth—and it is part of life. He said they all want peace very badly, both those who speak against the war and those who make the war, but when the Americans and Australians pull out the Communists will take over. He says the Communists don't allow people to be anything but poor, don't allow people to print newspapers or speak against the government. The people who are against the war don't understand this; he says when you have a choice between a bad Communist government and a bad democratic government, you must choose the

  bad democratic government because you can change it eventually.

  That's what was in this little notebook I carried around. About six months after that event, I wrote the first short story I ever wrote as an adult. I had finally decided that I wasn't going to write plays; my future was in fiction. Luckily I didn't know how far-off that future was. The story is called "The Chieu Hoi," and—I take a deep breath—here it is:

  "Hey, Yank! You sure you want to stay around? We've got some bloody hot stag films coming up." The warrant officer they called Wally laughed and began moving wicker chairs at the back of the club.

  I hesitated a moment at the half seriousness of his jibe and thought of the tiny, sweet-smelling, whining girls lingering in the dark of our company street at Long Binh.

  "Think I'll chance it," I said.

  The snap of canvas in the twilight and I looked out the big tent at the blowing trees. I'd trade the Aussies some of our real sex for a few of their trees.

  "You don't get anything like these at your camp."

  "No."

  I heard the crunching of the gravel floor as he struggled with the chairs. One more look at the trees going purple outside.

  "Want some help?"

  "You just relax yourself. I can handle these."

  I got up. "I insist."

  I went back to him and helped put the chairs in line facing the raised platform at the far end of the club.

  "You going to be the projectionist?"

  "Yes indeed. It won't be anything fancy, mind you. But the machine's good and we use a nice fresh bedsheet for the screen. Appropriate."

  As we laughed, Thanh came in. I had seen him around the camp. One of the very few Vietnamese on the post. He smiled the eager, head-bobbing smile used for foreigners who don't speak Vietnamese and he sat down in a chair near the platform.

  "That's Thanh."

  "I've seen him around," I said.

  "He's a chieu hoi. He was the leader of a VC sapper platoon." The Australian paused for effect. I looked at the slim young man quietly smoking a cigarette. There is always a silent moment of shared respect when two allied fighting men talk about sappers. They are the combat engineers who penetrate perimeters and are the toughest, gutsiest VC of all. "If all their blokes were like Thanh, the VC would have kicked our asses into the sea years ago. He's a bushman scout for us now. That little bastard has led us to base camp after base camp. He sat down and wrote out biographies on dozens of VC infrastructure people all over Phuc Tuy province. Incredible mind, that bloke."

  Thanh continued smoking, seemingly unaware of our talk. He looked very small, sitting motionless in the large wicker chair.

  "Why did he join the VC?"

  "In '67 his wife and child were standing in the door of his house. A government soldier gunned them down. Killed them. It took Thanh four days to find the soldier. Then he went to the hills."

  I left the Australian and walked forward to where Thanh was sitting. He looked up as I approached and he smiled and nodded again.

  "How are you?" he asked slowly in articulated English.

  "Toi manh gioi. Con ong thi sao," I said. It was the standard Vietnamese reply.

  Thanh laughed loud and long and thrust his hand to me. "You speak Vietnamese very well," he said in his own language.

  I sat beside him as I shook his hand. "Don't put me on a paper airplane," I said, using the Vietnamese saying that amiably rejects flattery. Thanh laughed loud again.

  "Very good. Very good. You are an American, aren't you?"

  "Yes. I'm just working with the Australians for a couple of weeks. We exchange people sometimes."

  "How long have you been in Vietnam?"

  "About three months," I replied.

  "And you speak so well? That is amazing."

  "I studied for a year in America before I came to Vietnam."

  "I see. But you still speak very excellent Vietnamese. It is not the same just to study it. You are very good."

  "Thank you. I am happy to have the opportunity to talk to the Vietnamese people." I began to feel that inevitable awkwardness that always comes at the start of conversations, as I sound for many minutes like a daily dialog from our language textbook.

  Thanh took a long puff on his cigarette, savoring it, and blowing the smoke through his nose. After a moment of contemplating the cigarette in his hand, he looked at me and smiled easily again. "What do you think of Vietnam?"

  "I like Vietnam very much," I said. I glanced past Thanh and out at the darkening sky. "The evenings are very cool."

  "Yes, they are. Very fresh." I looked back at Thanh. He smiled and nodded, waiting for me to say more. I looked at his hands. I had heard so many whistles of respect for sappers from even the most grizzled "gook-killer" sergeants that I had an almost childish awe of these small brown hands. The left lay in repose on the arm of the chair. The right continually rolled the cigarette, meticulously keeping the lit end free of flaking ash.

  "The fresh nights are fine to be with someone," Thanh said.

  I looked up at him. The humor of the statement startled me as I saw in my mind the night roaming VC platoons. I could not tell if Thanh intended the joke.

  "But is that your only feeling for Vietnam in three months?" he continued.

  "No. Of course not."

  "I am interested in
your feelings."

  It seemed a good chance to crawl out of my textbook. "Before I came to Vietnam I had expected half the people to be so miserable from the war that they would hate any foreigner and the other half of the people to be Communist sympathizers and therefore want to kill me."

  Thanh laughed.

  "But since I have been here I have talked to many Vietnamese people. And it is amazing. Without exception, every man and woman has been as friendly and open as anyone I have ever met."

  "Of course."

  "In spite of all the years of misery, the Vietnamese people have an innate sense of cheerfulness that is truly extraordinary."

  "Vietnamese know how to enjoy life." Now Thanh looked out of the tent. His cigarette was gone and both his hands rested lightly on the arms of the chair. He turned back to me and smiled a more solemn smile. "The Vietnamese have had hundreds of years of war. Many countries have come here to war—China, Cambodia, Japan, France."

  "The U.S.," I said.

  "Many countries. So the Vietnamese people know what war is. But it makes no difference. If a people know how to enjoy life and they are used to war, it makes no difference. Their life goes on. The war is part of it. But they enjoy living. They are still happy in their days."

  Among the high branches a few stars were beginning to appear. Thanh was watching the night now too.

  "Why did you join?"

  Thanh turned to me. The easy smile was gone. But his solemnity was simply thoughtful, still friendly. After a moment he said, "The government was robbing the people. It was corrupt and wasteful and repressive. At the time, the Communists seemed to offer an alternative." He paused, watching my face closely. I nodded my head and waited for him to say more.

  Then I said, "Was that all?"