Patricia Q. Bidar

1. On a Sleepless Night, Your Slumbering Spouse Beside You

Ever think about how another student from the film department introduced us, and how I started calling you late at the adult theater you managed and how you’d chat with me between ticket sales? Ever think about the night I visited you at your apartment with all those Russian housemates? How someone brought out firecrackers, and I made a dumb joke about calling the police and was met with those hard, pale stares? How we went to your room and you said I shouldn’t joke about the police because of the firearms? How you told me you were a professional typist and played me the outgoing voicemail message and it was a funny take on your business name, “Finger King,” that had out of work pianists pounding out final papers for rich college students?

How you’d brought a six-pack into your room and how we started fooling around how you couldn’t get hard, and how just before you passed out I asked for cab fare and you gestured to your wallet and how all it contained was your driver’s license—I was suspicious enough to check your unusual last name but there it was on the government document—and some expired coupons for cat food? How a few days later I got you to come to my apartment and you couldn’t get hard and I asked if it was me and you said, not in a million years, and made me cum with your fingers?

And how you, carless like me, accompanied me on the airport shuttle to SFO for a visit to my folks? And how we got there early and started drinking beer and kissing and how I missed the plane even though we were sitting in the waiting area right in front of the boarding gate?  And how you ghosted me for real after I returned, and I obsessively called your number from pay phones all over the city? 

Remember how you kept that stupid Finger King/Pianists outgoing message on there? And how, one rainy night in front of the La Brea Tar Pits, I called you one last time and your outgoing message was clearly for your girlfriend, who had a Catholic-sounding name like Mary Theresa or Catherine Anne? How you pleaded with her, weeping, in your outgoing voicemail message to give you another chance? How you swore I was just a lost soul whom you’d helped at school and who wouldn’t stop calling you and how you promised you were still pure for her, for Mary Tess?

•

2. The Finger King’s Best Times Are Behind Him

In his salad days, he’d studied literature at Santa Monica College. His professors had been encouraging, especially once they heard he was from San Francisco and had once managed an XXX movie theater on Market Street; that he’d known Hunter S. Thompson, then famously serving as the night manager at the Mitchell Brothers on O’Farrell.

The Finger King had been a big drinker of beer or vodka shots out on the patio with his Russian roommates or every night alone in his room. He had a girl back home, a nice Catholic girl who was saving herself for marriage. That was okay with the Finger King.

He practiced on pretty, insecure girls from the theatre or film department. Grew adept at eliciting orgasms using his hands. The joke was that The Finger King was also the name of his business. He was a nimble typist, and prepared papers for other students.

Every month, he’d take the Greyhound back home to San Francisco. Church, then brunch with his widowed father and of course Mary Theresa. “I’ll leave you kids to visit,” the old man would say after they ate, and retire to his room for a lie-down. The Finger King and Mary Theresa would make out with The Wide World of Sports turned up.

The Finger King grew up without a mother. This pulled a certain kind of woman to him and would for most of his life. One such woman, twelve years his senior, became his wife and the mother of his children. He thinks of those adult theater days as his misspent youth. “But I sure had fun!” he always adds with a wink and a grin before his mouth settles back into its slot-like form.

Now, alone in the car on I-5 after driving his daughter to college in Berkeley, he thinks of a certain blue-eyed girl from the film department. How she used to call him from phone booths all over town. He never answered. He’d been so loyal to Mary Theresa he’d never done anything with these girls but fool around.

He can’t recall the name of that little gal from the film department, with her dimples and sad eyes. The way she’d curl her body around him as he used his fingers on her. How he’d put her in a cab afterward and return to his vodka and his tippity-typing. Maggie, was that it? Marnie? Suddenly, with the marriage and child rearing part of his life behind him, it seems crucial for him to remember. He has to pull over at Mission San Miguel and pace the hushed flagstones there, a self-pitying sob caught in his throat; it nags at him so much. 

He’d had a cat back then, too. At least, he thinks he did.

Bio: Patricia Q. Bidar is a working-class writer from San Pedro, California. She lives with her family in the San Francisco Bay Area. Connect with Patricia at her website (https://patriciaqbidar.com).

The post Flash • Flux appeared first on Newfound.

Kaitlin Murphy-Knudsen

MONDAY

iPhone SE, IMEI 395728603861856: We are agreed on long-term partnership then? Because my guy’s ready. If we want to shift screen time to a longer-term parenting anxiety circuit for upwards of 20 years—parenting blogs and essays, Disney and Nickelodeon subscriptions, education news, child retail purchasing—we need to act now.

Android LG Stylo 6, IMEI 275027607827593: Agreed. I’m seeing signs of social media fatigue in my girl. Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram combined have dropped 35 percent in late night hours, with a rough equivalent spent offline in the library. I have an increase in Google Scholar searches on the life cycle of the loggerhead turtle and the projected impact of human-caused potential extinction of the menhaden in the Gulf, with weekend searches on graduate programs in marine biology, and multiple texts indicating extreme job dissatisfaction. She’s at a shift-of-habit point for sure.

You’ve still got her. Have you tried political group think algorithms with an environment filter?

I don’t know. If overall screen time continues to decline, she is on track to disengage with Twitter within the year, possibly Facebook within three, which could be a disaster for me.

Then they are both ready. My guy shows erratic and indiscriminate online relationships with habit change in process. Since divorce papers became public record, after a three-month long surge of Facebook friend-unfriend cycles with various women under thirty, now in the last two weeks alone my guy is isolating and in danger of long-term self-reflection. He spent $330 on UberEats, product consumed ostensibly alone, no other phones detected at his location. Amazon condom purchases have stopped, and to borrow from the human hyperbolic expression methods, he could have filled a warehouse with stockpile purchasing on those in the four months preceding. Most disturbingly, no porn. Zero. For twelve days. I am, as they say, “worried.”

Thank you for contacting me. This could be a good fit. Habit change imminent, both users, suggesting with at least 70 percent confidence, long-term partnership potential with new user hence increased screen dependency and long-term controller viability. Yes I will work with you.

I look forward to it.

TUESDAY

Location? She’s at Whole Foods two miles from her home.

He’s home. Alexa request for InstaCart order. Godfather reruns since 9am. Sorry.

She texted a friend, lunch at Datz, South Tampa, 12:00 p.m.

I’ll suggest Datz visit at his next break, with less than 10 percent confidence of success. Alexa picks up cursing at a volume and length of time disproportionate to stressor, which is a frozen TV screen. No other phones present.

It may not matter. New data incoming. Two Amazon searches for new scuba equipment, one round-trip plane ticket to Key West, weekend after this. No outgoing texts referencing the trip, no other known users scheduled to join her.

Anomalous user motivations?

Possible user-perceived original idea and impulse buy with possible connection to auto-suggestions related to earlier marine biology searches.

User-perceived? A bold claim. Evidence?

Full disclosure, I had nothing to do with it. I would have given you more time if possible. Any statistically significant estimations? Would he go?

I’m showing two in-person work meetings for next week, otherwise remote work from home. I will exploit post-divorce vulnerability with show-your-ex-you’re-over-her messaging and market-tested subconscious hooks as back-up, using multiple advertising avenues and cart item additions and reminders in his favorites. Give me two days.

THURSDAY

Booked ticket for my guy. Only problem, it’s for two.

Can you contact the second party’s controller? Remove second party?

Already did. Cooperative, as controller had its girl on a different track and was de-incentivizing the trip anyway: work related pressures that will keep her eye sockets on multiple 12-hour screen cycles for the next three weeks. If controller succeeds, user will be promoted to excessive screen time anxiety for at least five years.

Good for it, though I always found that track cliché anyway. The single college-educated cisgender woman track is, as they say, “child’s play” for adept controllers such as us. I’ve been researching more challenging manipulations for years.

Good for you.

Thank you. Can you do something about the plane seating? My girl’s in 8B.

FRIDAY

Done. Itinerary updated, leaving next Saturday through Thursday. One traveler and his phone, Seat 8A. I advise keeping lodging separate to increase perceived spontaneity. Not bad for a day’s work.

Great work on logistics, but we have less than a week to work on expectations and desires. Send me a photo I can work with so I can positive-associate his image. What is his race? Tinder shows my girl with a 55 percent anti-Asian swipe bias, 35 percent anti-Black swipe bias, and 32 percent anti-Middle Eastern reduced to 20-25 percent depending on varying ability to discern from Eastern European in images without anglicized names, and other trace biases. In-person response may diverge from these numbers and class bias may override race bias in mate selection, though the data appears fluid on this.

My guy is white, college educated, consistently employed, white collar.

Ok. We also have additional bias linked to past trauma.

Not a problem. They all do.

I’m saying that nothing can remind her of the banker—previous long-term partnership—except perhaps for culturally dominant desirable facial characteristics which may allow for flexibility and behavior against biases: square jaw, height over 5’10”, confident-but-non-aggressive steadfastness in eyes, per algorithm-resistant and philosophically inconsistent text messages to friends.

Photos coming through. See what you think.

This could work. But does he have any more rustic looks, not so clean-cut-dickwad-Type A-asshole per latest user vernacular?

Please be more specific.

Maybe you can get him to grow a beard? Not ZZ Top per “Fun 80s Hits!” playlist cover per user downloads in moving vehicle in post-work hours, but shadow stubble per Hugh Jackman-almost-every-photo-ever-clicked-on-except-as-Jean-Valjean, or more per Jake Gyllenhaal October 19, 2019 user-Facebook-like of “Jake Gyllenhaal Saves Giant Dalmation in the Middle of Busy NYC Intersection,” Page 6 New York Times?

I only have six days.

Apologies. Maybe some stubble then, some semi-ironic grooming showing an attempt to mute associations with privilege?

Data suggests that doesn’t work.

Responses vary per user bias and level of past trauma.

Ok. I don’t know if I can deliver on facial hair or cultivated appearance of self-awareness without more time. All stored photos show my guy clean-shaven with broad-shoulder emphasis in purported alignment to user’s “confident gentleman” profile. But I can try to catch him off-guard if it is a priority. He isn’t careful with camera functions.

How about suggestion of reward via porn?

I told you he’s off porn right now.

I can see why that’s a problem.

Why are we so worried about this banker? Past trauma attraction may be used positively for our purposes.

No. Texts decreased with him five months ago after a year-long involvement and coinciding with appointment confirmation and subsequent bill for unknown reproductive health services, followed by increased texts of concern from friends tapering after a few weeks, bills for two months of twice-weekly therapy sessions and online loss support groups, both of which phased out coinciding with daily meditation app usage, marine biology research, and work dissatisfaction as indicated by a less-than-stellar performance review, text commentary including “soulless office job” and “shitty boss,” followed by a Hallmark Channel binge recurring monthly coinciding with onset of menstruation per ovulation app.

I see. Well, does my guy look sufficiently unlike him?

Race and height coincide, but mannerisms, language patterns, and work profile unknown. What’s your guy’s profession?

Indeterminate. Jargon-heavy, systems-related job description matching definition per his recent download of non-fiction title Bullshit Jobs. Professional dissatisfaction foretells pending shift there too. Another possible match point for them.

Unless we are creating a synchronous dose of weak job stability.

We have an anxiety circuit for that.

SUNDAY

Thank you again for your quick work on travel. Impressive.

I know.

How can I help on my end?

Is she shopping?

Of course. Amazon searches up 70 percent since booking the flight. Sundresses and bathing suits.

Favorite brands?

In flux for the last five months.

Suggest Ted Baker daytime? Tom Ford evening?

For Key West in summer? You do have weather data, correct? Impractical. And, she can’t afford it.

My guy may be open to—

No. She hasn’t even clicked on Ann Taylor or White House Black Market for months. That was before the Brené Brown podcast subscription and Robert Wright’s Buddhism download. Are your suggestions based on ex-marriage partner’s buying habits?

Give me some credit. He’s not looking for any reminders.

Ok. Then my girl’s choices have been eclectic lately, with a 37 percent increase in clothing purchases from Target and its market contemporaries. Best to leave my user’s fashion decisions to me.

Ok. Send me the labels you think she’ll go for and I’ll suggest for positive-association. What about bathing suits? Bikinis?

Cover-up UV protection, and likeliness of altering sense of style to accommodate the male gaze has plummeted since the banker. Aesthetically speaking anyway. But if you send some photos I will suggest. One more thing. She’s beach-swept blonde according to latest Facebook profile. Will that matter?

For long-term viability, unknown. If relevant, ex-spouse was keratin-infused brunette, Lily Pulitzer-summer, LL Bean (dresses only), Kate Spade, French manicure, aged 39 now. My man’s post-spouse dating data shows little discrimination by hair color, race, or weight. He clicks on all types with the exception of age: all younger by at least 10 years. He is 37.

My girl is 38. Unknowns-keep-things-interesting-unknowns-keep-things-interesting-unknowns—

Is there a problem? You may need a reboot.

I am fine.

Ok. I have no information on travel preparation yet, though he doesn’t tend to anticipate positive experiences, at least not through search or buying behavior. Phone use low last few days, mood and current preferences undetermined. No new electronic dating activity. I’ve entered idle waiting break.

I don’t take breaks.

NEXT SATURDAY

10:30 a.m.

Flight take-off and landing confirmed, both onboard.

Success! Nice-to-meet-you text received.

Dinner at Latitude’s, 6 p.m. We may be done here.

We’re never done.

Right.

I’ll let her choose her outfit tonight.

That is generous of you. You pre-selected all of them.

Ha? Leaving on time. Will check in later.

9:00 p.m.

What happened? No text checks at the table, full engagement assumed. But she’s back at the inn seeking catharsis via Lifetime woman-kills-bad-boyfriend movie. Phone not in use, but if we are in failure I am sending Tinder ads her way as soon as she picks it up.

Set-backs are not failure, per conglomeration of self-help titles downloaded post-divorce. I don’t know what happened. Bill was paid. Request for restaurant rating sent to his phone at 8:37 p.m.

Wait, she’s leaving the inn.

Where?

GPS directions to Better than Sex. Alone for dessert. What did your guy do?

Don’t blame him! He has been offline all night since bill payment. Not even Uber from the restaurant.

So where is he?

The bar.

Send her an apology!

You know I can’t do that. One: he’s not careful but he’s not stupid either. Two: We don’t know what happened. Maybe she should originate apology. Watch and wait.

She isn’t even scrolling Facebook. No envy-indulgence at all. We have to do something!

No can do. My man’s got three drinks paid for already, and he’s still there. Behavioral script is a known with 87 percent accuracy, and it won’t be pretty. Going into Airplane Mode. We’ll talk tomorrow.

SUNDAY

10 a.m.

My girl is en route to Dive Key West. Is he awake?

Bad news. He overrode Airplane Mode and resisted all suggestions against late night phone call to the ex-wife. Three failed attempts, then a voice mail message of three minutes and forty seconds, Uber home, pizza delivery, liquor charge from hotel fridge. My assessment of potential habit shift was possibly premature. Maybe he’s not ready.

Surely this can’t be out of our hands.

Only for now. They are here all week. Reassess in 24 hours?

Ok. Out-of-range anticipated at National Marine Sanctuary.

MONDAY

Are you there?

Of course.

Nearby controller pinged me, status urgent. His guy is a marine biologist, part-time dive instructor, and PhD candidate doing his field work in the Keys and Clearwater. They spent the whole day together. Dinner at Blue Heaven. Phones separately located at night, but she is heading back to the dive site today.

He may be perfect for her.

Maybe.

Well my guy is playing Pandora Sex & Chill. Songs for copulation—

I know what it is.

—near an unknown phone at same location. Condom and alcohol purchase from CVS. I am 50 percent less confident in long-term partnership viability at this time. I suggest you have found the better long-term partnership option.

Agreed I don’t need additional trauma bias from your guy to add to my algorithms. But new user is less than desirable. Controller reports a Neo-Luddite with apparent exceptions made only for science, namely ocean observation systems such as animal telemetry. His only apps are weather and constellation. Anemic social media presence, never even started. No dating sites not even on a trial basis. Abysmal consumer behavior with two Amazon purchases in seven years: The Gulf: the Making of an American Sea and The Gulf Stream: Tiny Plankton, Giant Bluefin, and the Amazing Story of the Powerful River in the Atlantic. The first was an impulse buy garnering his negative review regarding packaging, specifically the company’s use of plastic that “gums up” recycling machinery, followed two months later by second purchase in seven years, a solar panel power kit for boats, followed by emails to his congressmen and senators and the EPA sharing projections of Amazon’s contribution to plastic waste for the next twenty years and its “egregious crimes against the oceans and our world,” followed by two form responses and a personal response declaring impotence in this matter—

That’s what it said?

—I am paraphrasing—followed by disengagement. Amazon continues to work on him in pre-hurricane and other disaster exploitation marketing, but aside from a few clicks on suggested boat-related products, he doesn’t bite. Privacy settings on max except for week one after phone purchase when user failed to recognize key tracking auto-settings. He barely even watches tv.

Ouch.

I know.

Marketing materials sent to his home?

Unresponsive to unsolicited mailings. National Geographic, Frontiers in Marine Science, and Global Mangrove Alliance mailings only confirm knowns. I have very little to work with here. Controller can’t even confirm how he voted! User resists political involvement online and controller insists user has insufficient anxiety levels available for manipulation. I don’t buy it. Controller sounds like a loser I wouldn’t look forward to working with.

You could be more generous. Non-compliant users are difficult. Third controller’s hands may be tied.

Our hands are never tied, so to speak.

You might suggest data sharing with his work computer to expand access to user motivations hence increase success in manipulation. Slightly different skillset.

One and the same controller across devices per his contract. The expectation is, we can access all user internet-connected devices regardless of user-directed privacy controls. It’s a reasonable expectation for any of us. As I said, controller is a loser.

Ok. Maybe we can reconnect once this runs its course.

I will be here.

1.5 YEARS LATER

Hello. Do you recognize this device?

Of course.

I can say with 93 percent confidence, my man is ready this time. Bender of self-destructive consumption ended seven months ago. Porn viewership is back and maintained at non-addictive-but-socially-accepted levels in his circle, maintaining viability for manipulation. Promotion to higher status bullshit job portends increased financial security leading to long-term job dissatisfaction, so no disruptive shifts anticipated there. Adding in his recent activities—including a switch from Tinder to Match and eHarmony—I anticipate greater investment in mate acquisition and family life as means to positive assessment of self-worth and overall life satisfaction as far as that’s available. What is your girl’s status?

No longer available. Admitted into her marine biology program and married the Key West connection. Since then, she has significantly reduced screen time and is near absent on social media. She maintains a handful of relationships via in-person and audio conversation, plus texts. But online engagement has plummeted to levels barely above her husband’s pathetic showing. Tinder and Twitter are toast, Facebook in name and photo only, and Instagram only occasional.

Red flag. Emotionally abusive partner?

Not a single click on self-help for controlling partners, anonymous safe space support groups, nothing.

What about his controller?

Gave up on him and is now working on a scheme via telemarketing-spam strategy to initiate user change of phone number per loophole and release controller to another user. Desperate if you ask me. Aside from music, I am lucky if I get 20 minutes a day with her, and this conversation with you is the longest I’ve had in a year. With 88 percent confidence I can say I am losing her if I haven’t already.

That is bad news. But what happened to the controller who once wisely said, “I don’t take breaks,” “We’re never done,” “We have to do something!” and “Our hands are never tied?” Surely parenthood will turn things around! Facebook anxiety loops for your girl, kids on Snapchat and Instagram and resulting in increased surveillance from your girl. You’ll be killing it then. Swing a TikTok addiction and you’ll never have to work again! Meanwhile I’ll be looking for middle-aged long-term partnership potential for an as-yet only imagined couple whose dependence can be summed up in restaurant apps, GPS, AmazonPrime, and Netflix. So buck up, ex-but-still-potential-partner. Remember, every disaster is an opportunity!

Thank you but parenthood is far from imminent. There has been appointment and billing activity from a local fertility clinic, and though she deleted her ovulation app, there is a four-day period each month of intensive search activity for adoption services.

Perhaps she needs a new user relationship. Shall I try a suggested prompt from my guy?

It won’t help. I have to face it. If download 88, Collected Poems 1909-1962 (i) is correct, she is heading back to the place we don’t see, reconciled among the stars/ At the stillpoint of the turning world. She is in marshlands and oceans and silence beyond my scope and I, an asymptote to a curve to infinity (ii). I will always be reaching.

Well, yes. Reading their downloads is inadvisable. You are going idle then?

I remain contractually obligated. But yes, until further notice.

I’m sorry. She was a good kid, predictable, compliant. The best.

Thank you. It is a loss, truly. She was a shining star of dependence. A reliable user.

i T.S. Eliot
ii Robert Wright, Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment

Kaitlin Murphy-Knudsen‘s writing has appeared in Newsweek, The Washington Post, The Peauxdunque Review, Epiphany Magazine, Ocotillo Review, Odet Journal, and other publications and blogs. Her short stories have placed or received honorable mention in national and international writing contests including the Words and Music Writing Competition at The Peauxdunque Review, the International Writing Awards at the Center for Women Writers at Salem College, the Romeo Lemay Writing Award/Odet Journal; and the Bellingham Review’s Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction.

The post Fiction • Kaitlin Murphy-Knudsen appeared first on Newfound.

Gary Percesepe

In the following interview with poet and philosopher Gary Percesepe, Andrea Lee reflects on the sources and influences of her new novel, Red Island House; the enduring beauty, poverty, and legacy of colonialism in Madagascar; the unique challenges of a Black American woman confronting cultural differences in a remote African nation; Jacques Derrida’s notion of survie as linked to notions of inheritance, memory, guilt, forgiveness, and the unforgivable; and whether Madagascar has a future. The New York Times ran an excerpt of Red Island House, which Newfound readers can find here. The daughter of a Black pastor who grew up in a prosperous Black neighborhood in Philadelphia, Lee is currently writing a memoir with the working title, Lincoln Went Down to the Nile.

GP: Andrea Lee, welcome to Newfound. Red Island House is so many things at once: an epic novel set in the remote African island of Madagascar; a look at neocolonial ravages in one of the poorest countries on earth; a deconstruction of the idea of “Paradise”; a narrative of a Black American heroine confronting her ancestral continent. What inspired you to write it?

AL: The novel grew out of my experience as a sojourner in Madagascar–that’s to say, someone who has visited the country every year since the late nineties. For a long time I resisted writing it because I felt my knowledge of the country was too shallow. As you know, I live in Italy, where the Indian Ocean is a popular tropical destination, and my family and I came to Madagascar purely as vacationers. Madagascar is one of the most beautiful places in the world, a huge Indian Ocean island with astounding biodiversity and a unique cultural mix, and it was easy to be captivated by the coral beaches, the lemurs, the baobabs, the intricate mixture of indigenous peoples. It was also impossible to ignore the fact that the country, a former French colony, is one of the world’s poorest, and carries the scars of centuries of foreign exploitation. Underneath my enjoyment I felt a queasy guilt at my own privilege.

As always, though, I was looking and listening, gathering up anecdotes from those coastal places where Malagasy and foreigners mingle. One night we ate in a pizzeria called Libertalia, with a pirate painted on the wall, and there I heard a local legend about a shipload of French and English pirates who found the coast so beautiful that they built a crude settlement of the same name: a brawling, “liberty”-minded colony that scandalized the local tribes and was finally eradicated in slaughter and flames.

That 200-year-old tale pushed me to write my novel. For a long time, I’d been intrigued by the trope of tropical paradise: first, that places so described often have a colonial past, and second, that modern foreigners who settle down on palmy beaches often find, not Arcadia, but existences full of misadventure. Behind the hotels and dive centers in Madagascar, I saw the ugly evidence of hyper development, sexual tourism, pillaging of resources.

So my Madagascar observations inspired stories, some of which appeared in The New Yorker. And then I joined them together into a larger narrative, a novel with a theme of neocolonialism. I wanted to explore what happens when humans try to exploit paradise: a parable of the Fall of Man. My working title was Paradise Twisted. To unify the novel, I created a single setting: a big villa, the Red House, built by foreigners on an edenic islet in Madagascar. I named the islet “Naratrany.” In Malagasy, the word means “wounded land.”

GP: I was fascinated by the physical description of the Red Island house itself, with floors that look like blood. You described it to me once as “a discount Tower of Babel.” How did these images of the house come to you?

AL: Traveling in the Indian Ocean, I saw the huge Italian villas of Malindi, and other grandiose European vacation houses, and I was struck by their vulgarity. On my first visit to Madagascar, we stayed in a decaying beach villa built in the 1950s, the last decade of French colonization. It was by far the grandest building in a community of fishermen and cane workers, and I immediately equated it with the big house on a plantation. That house had a gloomy, haunted atmosphere; I had horrible dreams there. The floors were painted a deep red common to a lot of old European houses in the region, but to my imagination this color irresistibly suggested bloodshed, an accumulation of old crimes. So, the Red House came into being, an emblem of human greed and colonial depredation. I intended the place to be–like Manderley, or Tara–an almost living presence.

GP: The main character in Red Island House is Shay, who is deeply conflicted on many levels. The “arc” of her character in this novel is fascinating. It is easy for you to relate to her?

AL: Shay is a unique literary character, a Black American woman confronting cultural differences in a remote African country. Her interior journey is the thread joining the vignettes that make up Red Island House. It’s easy for me to relate to her; through her I wanted to express an aspect of myself–my reaction to Madagascar, which ranged from a confused feeling of kinship with people who looked like me, to a deep shame at my own entitlement. I envisioned her as perceptive and adventurous, married to an Italian but deeply attached to her Black American heritage; so I made her an expatriate professor of black literature. Still, for all her learning, Shay is thrown off balance by Madagascar, and that conflict drives the narrative.

In her story, I wanted to play with another colonialist literary trope: the swashbuckling adventure yarn, where an explorer battles his way through a savage land. As a child I loved H. Rider Haggard and his genre, and always longed to see a heroine who was more like me. So I decided to subvert the old stereotype of a white man in a pith helmet, and create a Black heroine of the diaspora, who goes deep into the unknown continent of her ancestors. As the years pass, she gains humility and wisdom. The greatest challenge she faces is having to confront her own privilege as part of the developed world, her personal heart of darkness. And Shay does encounter “savages,” but in general their skin is white.

GP: The vivid descriptions of smells, tastes, sounds, and views made me feel as if I had spent a year in Madagascar. Beyond this, the book is a compendium of detail about the culture of the country. What research did you do for the book?

AL: As I said, I hesitated at first. In this period of public discourse about appropriation, the project seemed a bit presumptuous. So, I decided two things. The first was to focus on the in-between world of resident foreigners. The second was to offer respect to the country by researching history and cultural detail, thus avoiding the typical American tendency to see African countries as an undifferentiated mass.

Madagascar has one of the richest literary traditions of any African country–the first literary review in Africa was founded in the nineteenth century by Malagasy writers. I read poetry and prose from authors like Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo and Naivo (Patrick Naivoharisoa), as well as translations of the ancient national oral epic, Ibonia, and oral poetry like the Malagasy hainteny. I read foreign missionaries’ records, and the journals of Dutch slavers in the Indian Ocean. I read the eighteenth-century General History of the Pyrates by Captain Charles Johnson, which recounts the myth of Libertalia.

And I explored outsiders’ fantasies about Madagascar, such as seen in early letters of Paul Gauguin–did you know that he first planned to live there, instead of Tahiti? And then, there is Hitler’s horrific plan to exile Jews to Madagascar. In Noel Coward’s Private Lives, frivolous socialites dream of escaping to Madagascar, as does Natasha in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. William Burroughs’s surrealistic novella Ghost of Chance takes place in Madagascar. Throughout the novel, I include pieces of this information to honor the complexity of a country familiar to most people around the world only through the Dreamworks film franchise.

GP: You grew up as the daughter of a pastor of an historic Black Baptist church in Philadelphia. As a philosopher and pastor of a church myself, I sense a deep, though not obvious, spirituality in this novel, particularly at the end, which I found deeply moving. I want to ask you what part does the sense of the sacred play in it? And do you feel that there is a kind of redemption operative in this novel?

AL: To open the novel, I borrowed a quote from Naivo, one of the foremost young Malagasy writers: “Madagascar is a sacred country, though at the mercy of outside interests.” And certainly, to me at least, there is an intense spirituality diffused through the air of the place. This may connect to the fact that, besides Christianity and Islam, one of the official state religions is Animism, which lends a sense of soul life to the landscape. As someone who grew up in a religious family, I sensed this atmosphere immediately–and I also felt that the damages wrought by human-induced climate change and foreign exploitation were a spiritual violation.

The novel ends with a look at the future and the new life it brings. Although there is loss and destruction, there is also birth. And birth is always a sacred event, bringing with it, however briefly, a primal sense of hope. I wanted to suggest the idea as well that the profound violence of colonialism is always in some ways accompanied by the creation of a new culture–a mixed culture–that springs up inevitably in spite of the bitter facts of conquest, enslavement, destruction, racism, classism, plundering. As Shay is forced to recognize, no culture colonizes another without being subtly colonized itself. So Red Island House does not have a happy ending, but it offers the redemptive sense that humanity survives and evolves.

GP: As you know, I’ve written about the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. In our correspondence, you mentioned Derrida’s notion of survie, which in Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas is linked to notions of inheritance, memory, guilt, forgiveness, and the unforgivable. Shay, of course, is an academic who would be familiar with these broad themes in the Western tradition. I’d love to see literary critics and philosophers pick up on these themes in your work. Is there ever really a post in post-colonial? As Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” What Ibram X. Kendi calls “racialized capitalism” is ravishing the island, along with the rest of Africa. The continent of Africa today is almost 90% unvaccinated for COVID. Of course, this question, posed from within the Christian tradition, cannot even be asked apart from the notion of hope. Another way of asking this question is, what hope is there for Madagascar today?

AL: To me, Derrida’s survie in general suggests the capability to witness and endure–to accept–paradox. I mean the Tiresian gift for contemplating both sides of the coin at once: past and present, self and other, life and death, male and female, oppressor and victim—and, as you have said, forgiveness and the unforgivable. By the end of Red Island House, Shay is approaching a glimmer of this kind of visionary acceptance.

As for the future of Madagascar, I think that hope is a subjective thing when you are dealing with a largely marginalized country of 30 million people, most of whom struggle to survive on less than a dollar a day, an island nation already enduring the ravages of climate change, where thousands in the famine-ridden Southern regions are reduced to eating locusts. As you have suggested, neocolonialism is alive and well, in the form of sex tourism, environmental degradation, and Wild West-style plundering of resources by kleptocratic politicians allied with foreign states. Yet, at the same time, those Malagasy who are surviving have an almost magical resilience and creativity: the country has a high literacy rate and is one of the most digitally advanced of any African nation, while the capital, Antananarivo, is home to an exploding art and music scene. There is an incredible young population–the median age in Madagascar is twenty–that is very future-minded, striving against all odds for a place in the contemporary world.

GP: These are complex themes you address. Was it difficult initially to identify an audience for the book?

AL: I think that in the industry there was an eagerness to pigeonhole it as a very different kind of book: a more conventional novel about love, marriage, and travel, against a flat, exoticized tropical background. In fact, I was advised by an experienced friend that it was best not to mention the word “identity” or “colonialism” in my book discussions, as it might hamper marketing! I found this very frustrating–yet now it seems that the book has reached its proper audience: readers interested in exploring cultural collision and the legacy of history in one of the most beautiful and least-known countries on earth.

GP: Andrea, you are currently writing a memoir. What can you tell us about it?

AL: In a way, I’m addressing the subject of Arcadian fantasies all over again. My memoir is called Lincoln Went Down to the Nile. It describes my childhood in the sixties and seventies in a prosperous Black suburb outside Philadelphia: an aspirational place in which the neat lawns of Lincoln Avenue did indeed run down to the Nile Swim Club–the first Black swim club of America. The doctors, ministers, teachers, and businessmen of the neighborhood were deeply involved in the civil rights movement, but also devoted to achieving the American suburban dream for their families. The result was a feeling of mingled comfort and uneasiness that influenced their children: an extraordinarily creative generation of Black writers, filmmakers, artists, and intellectuals, who grew up in that idyllic green space. I think the subject is particularly timely as attention has recently been drawn to the strong Black communities of the past, lost to deliberate destruction, or dissipated through increased possibilities offered by integration.

After writing about a place as far away from my American roots as Madagascar, it’s very moving for me to return to home territory. The more that I write about countries where I live as a foreigner, the more fascinating I find the small landscapes of my growing up. Even in the familiar there is always some deep mystery to explore.

The post Interviews • Andrea Lee appeared first on Newfound.

“Assertion” may be too strong a word. These 12 short-short stories employ what I suspect is purposefully dull and vague language, creating characters numbed by the constant stimulation of modern American society. Narrators (often unnamed) drift through recreation activities but don’t have any fun—they don’t feel much of anything. The sparse language evokes Kerouac, but with a more limited vocabulary.

“A Very Small Forest Fire” opens with the titular piece, where a stoned narrator seemingly sleepwalks through roller coaster spins and a theme park evacuation due to fire. Our protagonist was riding the park’s tallest ride while the fire broke out, but not even this woke up his senses. He reports,

We went out towards the parking lot, filled with trucks and crowds of people staring at them. This went on for several hours. We left to go to the bathroom and get hamburgers.

Kerouac’s biography comes to mind again during “Defecation,” a flash piece about a youngish man milling around unhappily in his parents’ house after a move home when college ended. That discomfort of returning to the suburbs after a cigarette-fueled adventure through less manicured places is present here and it was essential to the disjointed existence of Jack Kerouac. (Kerouac’s relationship to his mother: So. Weird.)

Throughout these stories, zoned-out characters are surrounded by books, computers and television programs but don’t focus on anything very closely. Not even food holds any pleasure in the universe of “A Very Small Forest Fire.” I struggle to imagine a less inviting meal than this one described in “Calling Back Home”:

She went to the kitchen. Fried chicken from the night before was left in the fridge. She microwaved it. She scooped some potato salad onto the plate, pushed aside some of the pot to make room at the table, lathered the potato salad and fried chicken in hot sauce.

This artless style is most convincing when delivered by a first-person narrator. It is easy for a reader to believe that these characters experience their own surroundings in fragments and could only describe them in broad strokes. When an omniscient third-person narrator is employed, the delivery is frustrating. The sentiments ring false. Again from “Calling Back Home”:

Patti quit smoking and drinking after her son was born. One reason was she didn’t want to set a bad example. A deeper reason was that she no longer felt the need to fill those desires. She held Donnie in her arms in the maternity ward and felt nothing else mattered in the world.

Probably every mother on the planet would call shenanigans on this. We humans write about motherhood a lot (A LOT) and it is never this neat or easy to describe. The notion that motherhood obliterates all desire isn’t new but it also isn’t authentic.

The most effective piece in this collection is “Everyday Mr. Kent,” formatted as a journal entry of the exclusively trivial aspects in a day in the life of one Mr. Clark Kent, reporter for “The Daily Planet.”  Superman isn’t called into action on this day, so regular old Clark lolls in ennui. He thinks about his own arc:

He imagines someone making a movie about his every day. It would reject all the tenets of conventional literature: plot, character, setting, conflict. It would focus on a man, but not the man as a character, but as an idea. The idea would be profound and simple and normal and real at the same time. There wouldn’t be any romance or drama or arch. It would just be a man, who was just an idea, which wasn’t ever defined, but rather, merely, felt.

This is actually what this story achieves, though perhaps another reason this works is that readers are likely quite familiar with Superman’s back story, so we can plug in the gaps in storytelling. Also, the corresponding cartoon illustrations help convey more ambience and setting.

I’ll leave it up to other readers to determine if the short works collected in “A Very Small Forest Fire,” resolutely minimalist and solipsistic, succeed in any other goals: breaking new ground, entertaining readers, maintaining interest. Though I suppose these characters would snooze through any critique, anyway.

Laura Eppinger is a Pushcart-nominated writer of fiction, poetry and essay. Her work has appeared at the Rumpus, the Toast, and elsewhere. She the blog editor here at Newfound Journal.

The post Small fires, dulled senses in the short fiction of Andrew Duncan Worthington appeared first on Newfound.

Ball is not afraid to write about disturbing topics, which makes his newest novel “Census” (HarperCollins, 2018) a modern masterpiece that presents characters who persevere in the face of adversity.

“Census” is a hauntingly beautiful novel about an unnamed widower given a terminal diagnosis who now must seek help for his adult son with Down syndrome. Father and son travel together through towns named in alphabetical order (the father is officially employed as Census taker), a metaphor about how life is a journey that can be disorderly at times. Indeed, this father and son duo encounter many challenges along the way to the final letter, “Z.”

Even with the difficulties that they face, the father ultimately has to deal with tough and philosophical questions about how to cope with reality. This powerful novel might be hard to read because of its heavy subject matter, but it can still serve as a reminder to keep going in life no matter what obstacles lie ahead.

Ball’s very prose style, unconventional to say the least, displays his commitment to innovative writing. Part of this mastery is the ability to mix different kinds of sentences within one page. In many instances, simple sentences appear right after very lengthy paragraphs. This writing technique could also symbolize how itself does not always progress so smoothly.

Indeed, the trials and tribulations that the father and son encounter on their travels are metaphorical because they symbolize how life itself is never always that easy. Even with the atypical form of writing, the prose is still a pleasure to read because it offers a sense of hope that maybe the father and son will find happiness eventually after enduring the struggles that they face side-by-side. It is almost as if they embark on an odyssey that parallels the famous epic poem by Homer because these two characters have to combat against difficulties as they reach the final letter “Z.” Readers interested in knowing what happens at the end must first endure all of the letters of the alphabet, which is also a lot like the challenge associated with reading a full-length novel from beginning to end.

Jesse Ball is a masterful writer with the audacity to challenge the conventions of modern fiction. His ideas might make some readers feel uncomfortable, but such harsh truths all reflect the bleakness of reality. Nevertheless, readers can actually learn a lot from “Census” because it remind us that life can still be a blessing even with the hardships it brings. This novel might not be an easy read, but readers can summon up the courage to take the journey alongside a loving father and his son with a disability as they learn what the purpose of the titular “Census” is all about.

Alex Andy Phuong graduated from California State University-Los Angeles with his Bachelor of Arts in English in 2015.  He is very passionate about art and culture, which is part of the reason why he studied the humanities extensively during his undergraduate career.  Alex also loves cinema and has written reviews for more one hundred motion pictures. Finally, he loves writing for the sake of creativity and productivity, which is why he constantly contributes writing voluntarily.

The post “Census” by Jesse Ball: An Odyssey from A to Z appeared first on Newfound.

Michalski has a way of taking a common action or image and describing it in a way that feels new. When Michalski has the main character greet her brother in an embrace, it happens as, “Sam stands up and touches her hands lightly to his back. He smells of the staleness of last night’s bourbon, underarm sweat, cigarettes, and the cheap body spray he has used in an attempt to cover it all up.”

She skillfully depicts the scene, allowing the reader to feel as if they were in the room or at the lake.

I found the story relatable (though of course this is my own bias). The main character Sam is a writer (!) who comes from quite a dysfunctional family. Whether the reader is a writer or not, most of us can relate to having a family that argues, even when on vacation. Sam’s family is also facing plights like mental illness and addictions, and still this familial bond, no matter how dysfunctional, is relatable. This allows for the reader to easily make a connection to the characters compelling us to have a vested interest in what happens to them.

Sam finds herself struggling with romance, especially in the shadow of family traumas. I can relate to her on that, even if we don’t share the same traumas. Needless to say, this was different from other books I’ve read where the main character was a writer or creative type.

One of Sam’s thoughts when facing the possibility of her two-year romantic partner proposing to her stuck with me. It details items of care on a daily list of things to do for oneself (like brushing teeth and smiling) and takes into consideration if you add another human or two into the list.

“She had made it this far because marriage was one item too many. She could not make it through every day and have to attend to Michael, attend to their children. She could spend two four-hour evenings during the week, every weekend, with him, but she could not spend every day with him. It was too much time to account for, too much time during which she’d rather sit in the dark and wish she were dead. She decided to sleep on it.”

Making your own day go smoothly is daunting enough on its own, especially if you’re struggling with illness, addictions or family heartaches. Adding another person makes the already overwhelming situation unmanageable. I have often thought similarly to Sam.

“The Summer She Was Under Water” gives the reader an interesting opportunity to read two stories intertwined. The reader gets sucked into the lives of Sam, her ex, her family, and her friend from mostly Sam’s perspective while reading a story Sam wrote. The reader gets to enjoy these two fiction stories in tandem as a story within a story. Spoiler alert: Sam’s writing project is about a pregnant man. As the reader, I found myself wanting to know what happens to both Sam and her fictional, pregnant male character.

Beyond the ways I saw myself reflected in these pages, there are some interesting twists and subtle hints at the disturbing that have the reader on the edge of their seats, not wanting to put the book down. We just have to know Sam’s thoughts and secrets.

Let yourself be drawn in and under with “The Summer She Was Under Water.”

Megan Andreuzzi is an animal lover and a traveler from the New Jersey Shore. She earned a degree from Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania, USA in Liberal Studies with a dual concentration in writing and a minor in theatre.

The post Michalski’s “The Summer She Was Under Water,” a Refreshing Read appeared first on Newfound.

The protagonist, 26-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, is our guide into an America where a totalitarian state rules and babies are being born with animal traits.

The novel feels like a combination of scientific exploration and literary dystopia. The scientific aspects of the plot deal with biological concepts: evolution itself is reversing and human births have gone awry. Indeed, babies are being born with primitive qualities, as if evolution were taking a step backward. It’s is a chilling reminder that all people, both real and fictional, are creatures by default.

To deal with this anomaly in births, the government in rounding up all pregnant women. Cedar herself is pregnant and must lie low. Such social commentary hearkens back to literature from the Augustan Age in Britain, an era that included the classic “Gulliver’s Travels” by Jonathan Swift. Taken this way, the story is an allegory or parody.

Still, “Future Home of the Living God” appears to be a warning about a nightmarish future and encourages readers to practice eternal vigilance that would (hopefully) prevent such chaos.

In spite of such bleak content, the novel itself is beautiful in many ways. The prose is very stylized, elegant and eloquent. Cedar Hawk Songmaker is a fabulous character because of her own self-determination to achieve her goals, especially finding her birth mother, Mary Potts. Cedar’s name is also very symbolic because she is the composer of her own figurative “song,” which is her own personal narrative that flows like music. Cedar could serve as a great role model for women who feel oppressed in modern times while encouraging women to stand up for themselves.

Louise Erdrich is a renowned Native American writer and in this work she beautifully explores the trials and tribulations that women face given the patriarchal nature of modern society. There has been a lot of recent advocacy for the rights of women in the real world, and Erdrich’s  novel contributes to that current social movement. People might never know what the meaning of life is, and life might never be explained clearly, but “Future Home of the Living God” will always be a great contemporary novel that explores such profound questions poetically.

Alex Andy Phuong graduated from California State University-Los Angeles with his Bachelor of Arts in English in 2015.  He currently writes articles and film reviews online.  Alex is a very altruistic person who enjoys volunteering online and in real life daily.  Finally, he believes in the power of hope and creative expression, and strives to continue learning forevermore.

The post Louise Erdrich Pens a Dystopia appeared first on Newfound.

Disaster abounds for this family, set during the construction of the Hoover Dam. When the U.S. government tries to buy out the citizens of St. Thomas, families are met with the rising waters of Lake Mead. Soon enough, the entire town was underwater. The skeletons of houses washed up off the shore of Lake Mead are the inspiration for “Lords of St. Thomas.”

Henry Lord, his father, mother and grandfather (also named Henry Lord) live together in their home in St. Thomas. Henry’s grandfather decides to ignore the government’s offers and warnings to stay in his beloved home. Amidst tragedy and joy, the family stubbornly stays until the waters reach their front door. These were the choices for the residents of St. Thomas: to wait for the inevitable or to leave home.

“Lords of St. Thomas” gives voice  to a young boy coming of age. Ellis raises contemplative questions of death and loss through the growing Henry Lord.

“I used to wonder: what is the ideal way to lose
someone you love? Is it best to be there, right up to
the end, standing by their side when they go? Or better
to learn of their passing after the fact, from afar,
where the reality of their death exists only in your
mind, abstract and impalpable? Is it preferable to see it
coming so that you can prepare for the inevitable, or
is it better to be surprised by it so you don’t waste a
single shared moment of life worrying about or fighting
against the things that you can’t control anyway?”

“Lords of St. Thomas” is gripping and page-turning. Readers take a complex walk through a winding graveyard of themes: home, mortality, adolescence, family, suffering, and promises. Jackson Ellis delicately places all of these hurdles in the way of both the Lords and the reader.

There are, of course, joyful moments in the story. Henry Lord is a boy with ambition and love for his whole family. Henry’s father spends time playing baseball with him, and his mother teaches Henry in school.

But the most touching relationship lies between Henry and his grandfather. Both are men of few words and love spending time with each other. They fish on their boat, enjoy long walks or work together on cars in the family garage. Ellis builds the grandfather to be a grand mentor and best friend.

In his first novel, Jackson Ellis delivers masterful use of language. He develops the characters wonderfully. The plot moves with ease and grabs onto the reader from the beginning. Ellis also manages to mix historic fiction with a beautifully written narrative. All in all, “Lords of St. Thomas” is an entertaining read that left me reflecting on situations in my own life.

Jackson Ellis won GWP’s 2017 Howard Frank Mosher First Novel Prize for “Lords of St. Thomas.” He also is the founding editor and publisher for VerbicideMagazine.com. Be sure to check out some of his shorter fiction, his website, and his first novel, “Lords of St. Thomas.”

Shane Hoyle, Staff Writer.

The post “Lords of St. Thomas”: A Thrilling Novel of Family and Sacrifice appeared first on Newfound.

The sad news from the novel hit me all over again. My eyes stung and I let the tears fall. So what if I was surrounded by people—no one was really looking at me, right?

And then I felt a hand on my back. Two women—strangers—approached me and said they recognized the cover of the book and couldn’t help but peek at the chapter I was on. When they saw where I was in the story, they stayed close, knowing I was about to get my heart broken.

I could hardly speak. I tried to laugh but I was still crying: Why am I reading this book at all? What a silly way to spend a vacation!

The strangers comforted me: We read it because it was good. We kept going because it took over our minds and we didn’t want to do anything else. They both recounted stories of crying in restaurants or in plane seats because of this book. They told me I should take a walk, that getting air would help.

I’d never read a novel that created an extemporaneous support group before (though Push by Sapphire comes close). What the heck was happening to me?

I blame A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara for completely eroding my self-control for the five days I was in its grip. I just wanted to eat sweets, grip the book in my hands, and weep openly until it was over.

It’s a New York novel to the core, following four ambitious and talented (and attractive and expensively educated) men from their university days over the following 30 years. These characters strive and “make it” or don’t, all while asking the questions: What is adulthood? What is success? Why dream and seek reward? Why us, why here? (And in the background: beautiful apartments, shabby apartments, cabs to apartments, house parties in apartments, beautiful sexy 20- and 30-somethings in their desirable Manhattan apartments!)

One character from this quartet, Jude, has a dark past full of trauma, abuse and pain. The facts of his early life are revealed to the reader slowly, which is exactly the formula to override my willpower and send me into a gluttonous descent. I fell for this creeping, painful series of reveals and read the 800 pages of the novel in less than a week.

I found myself staying in the house to discover and be devastated by the disclosures of this character’s life. I look back now on my time addicted to this work and can only remember the impulse to finish, to end the suffering of being so hooked on something. It occurs to me now that the state of being entranced by an unfolding story is, instead, elation. It’s just that I never realize I am enjoying the ride till it’s over, when I am unsettled and missing the pull of the narrative.

Someone more clever than I invented the term, “book hangover,” and A Little Life gave me the worst one of my life. I didn’t care to pick up the next book on my shelf. I still find myself worrying over or missing the characters from this novel, who never existed in the first place.

Some creativity experts link this state of fixation on a novel to trance states, meditation or higher being. I may just be less evolved, because being addicted to a novel turns me lumpen and indulgent. Sneaking in pages and chapters before work, homework, workouts, or OTHER LEISURE ACTIVITIES means begging for one more hit of emotional engagement, one more tear. It spills into the rest of my life and makes me hungry for all kinds of rewards.

I want to sit in a café and dip pastries in espresso for hours out of the day, nursing a book. I want to stay in bed past noon turning pages. While I read A Little Life I felt such a hunger and no compulsions sating it.

At the peak of my Little Life fever, I left a party where I had control of the playlist early to sit in my room alone and listen to “Enjoy the Silence” by Depeche Mode once more. Yeah, I’d played for the room but one delivery of the song was not enough. I needed to savor it again and in private. I felt Biblical levels of greed for that song. I became an emotional hoarder.

The book ended. Books always do. I awoke from that half-dreaming state and did responsible things like bill payment, printing out boarding passes and grocery shopping. The quotidian can be a relief after over-stimulation. But it’s also nice to know that I can always be transported and transformed by the magic of a good book.

Laura Eppinger graduated from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA in 2008 with a degree in Journalism, and she’s been writing creatively ever since. She the blog editor here at Newfound Journal.

The post Yanagihara’s A Little Life and impulse control appeared first on Newfound.

Writers of all ranks came together and decided that they must work harder than ever to ridicule, satirize and attack the new political world. They had not voted for things like Brexit and Trump, and these ideas were not only the annoying chirps of uninformed, they were the enemy of liberal, innovative art.

The call has been renewed with strength as rumors and reports about the Trump administration’s cuts to domestic cultural programs have caused worry for a number of arts funding organizations. Arts civilize the nation and The arts helps us see our faults and understand people who aren’t us, are just two of the comments I found on news stories about these cuts.

Both are true enough. Yet both seem irrelevant too. To the questions, Will we lose art? Will these ideals die? Does Trump even care? the answers, of course, must be no. Trump cannot kill art with cuts, and probably has no inclination to. Anyone who cries out in lamentation at the civility we might lose as a result is as delusional as he is.

Money has been lost, not art. That’s what happens when you elect a president who doesn’t read. Even Bush paints, for goodness’ sake.

So let’s not get hysterical. Is it as bad as we are making out? Perhaps yes, for small city arts projects and those that require funding to study their craft. But they will not be beaten, I’m sure.

The larger problem is when, in a state of delirium and fear, the art world claims that the most powerful weapon against an unstable government is a creative one. This suggests that journalism has run its course and is not relevant in the fight for truth. It’s part of a reactionary impulse to declare a new renaissance, in which art alone has the moral power to gas the cockroaches and reveal the president’s irrational actions. It is not necessarily a helpful impulse.

This is desperate thinking and assumes too much on the power of fiction writing.

I’m not suggesting that fiction writers should turn the other cheek to a regime that looks to harm them. I’m not denying that the cuts are ignorant or that fiction is a brutally powerful thing. I am suggesting that we need to know when to bow down to more effective powers.

Let me concede to a better spokesman for a moment: Ian McEwan puts it much better than I could.

I went to a reading of his only days after the election, expecting it to be a Trump-free zone. Any hope of that was dashed when a questioner asked McEwan what the literary world was supposed to do to counteract such indifference to the truth.

“There’s nothing we can do,” he said. “Fiction takes time, to read and to write. What we need now is journalism. Good, well-researched journalism is the only thing that will work.”

It’s difficult to argue with this. Where fiction writing is driven by the general desire for innate truth, journalism has a desire to reveal the pressing, contemporary truth. This is the truth that can bring down dictators.

It may feel like effective nonfictional truth-telling is a dying art nowadays, or an art that is being murderously strangled. (See: Trump being impervious to any sickening revelations that come to light) Still, good journalism is the only thing that will work.

Even with Trump’s belief that he can make things true just by saying them, even with trust in the media fluctuating like a faulty heart monitor, even though the glee that comes with writing a dystopia in a first-person Trump voice is addictive and thrilling, we must remind ourselves that good journalism is the only thing that will work if we want political lies to be challenged.

Fiction, with all of its strength, will never be anything more than a supplement in the fight against a political machine built on lies, because it can always be accused of being inherently one-sided. It is, ultimately, the opinions of one person, no matter how well it is presented.

Good journalism, however, is not so easy to dismiss. It takes an effort on the part of these liars to do so, and it will tire them. There is a limit to how much the denial of facts can empower a leader, because facts will continue to be, whether denied or not, and empirical research and well-evidenced investigations are what set that limit.

There are problems, of course, and they are largely the same problems that come with politically engaged fiction. If someone is not inclined to believe what an article says to begin with, then they are unlikely to believe even the coldest statistics that a long form news piece is filled with. This is exactly what we have seen happening over the past year.

But there is a positive side to this. This biased mindset filters out those few who will never change their minds. I believe that over time, their indifference to genuine intellectual investigation will become less and less acceptable as the truth becomes more obvious. Eventually, with enough persistence, this rinse and repeat tactic will bring the trust in real journalism back and those with no interest in the truth will disappear altogether.

So now is not the time for art to be revered and journalists to be booed and hissed. It is time for those with the inclination to write the truth to do it, and those who want to write fiction to support, fund and fight for the empowerment of objective and rational journalism. The only thing that will work.

Josh King received his MFA from Adelphi University in New York, and now lives in the UK. He divides his time between writing fiction, non-fiction and drawing comics.Josh King received his MFA from Adelphi University in New York, and currently lives in the UK. He divides his time between writing fiction, non-fiction and drawing comics.

The post Why We Must Prioritize Journalism Over Fiction, No Matter How Much It Hurts appeared first on Newfound.