Book Review: Just Kids

I read Just Kids a while ago, but I thought about it again this week with the news that Urban Outfitters has issued -- and now removed -- a graphic tee shirt sporting a print of one of Robert Mapplethorpe's self-portraits. Just Kids is the singer/writer/artist Patti Smith's remembrance of her youth in New York with Mapplethorpe, particularly the time they spent in the Chelsea Hotel as they both refined their creative impulses and etched out careers in the arts, she (most famously) as the leader of a rock band and he as a photographer who pushed the boundaries of depicting sexuality in a visual medium. As the title suggests, the book is mainly about Smith and Mapplethorpe when they were kids, from the time they met in the late sixties until they went their separate ways in the late seventies, with little said about the years leading up to Mapplethorpe's death in 1989, and through her writing, Smith perfectly captures the spirit of youth as well as the spirit of New York City in the middle of the twentieth century. When she shares anecdotes about cultural icons like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Andy Warhol, her simple, nostalgic style brings them down to a human level and never feels like name-dropping; perhaps this is because while she accompanied Mapplethorpe during some of his forays into the world of New York's artistic elite, she always maintained the perspective of an outsider and a unique personality, ultimately finding her place in the small punk rock club CBGB rather than lounging around Warhol's Factory.

Just Kids is, at its heart, a love story and an ode to two people who were destined to be together, even as the way they related to each other constantly changed -- first as lovers, then as friends; first as struggling artists, then as champions of the artistic paths each chose to pursue. Their relationship was full of contradictions, just as Mapplethorpe himself was a bit of a paradox: he was more hedonistic and inclined to the drug culture than Smith, but he was also more focused on turning his art into a career and scolded Smith when he felt she was letting her talent go to waste. He struggled to reconcile his free spirit with his strict Catholic upbringing, just as he struggled to reconcile his homosexuality with the love he felt for Smith, and it is his struggle -- as well as Smith's -- that makes their love story both universal and ultimately poignant. The moment when they meet again in the late eighties, as Smith is preparing to give birth to her second child and Mapplethorpe is gradually succumbing to AIDS, is a beautiful and sad coda to the story of their youth.

photo via here

What is interesting about Urban Outfitters using Mapplethorpe's photograph to sell tee shirts is not that the consumerism at the heart of putting any artist's work on a piece of clothing would necessarily bother Mapplethorpe -- as I said, he had a businessman's approach to photography as well as an artist's approach -- but the way art can easily end up serving a purpose contrary to the wishes of the artist, not to mention (some of) the art's consumers. As this article points out, Urban Outfitters caters to young, city-dwelling twenty-somethings with a penchant for the vintage and the ironic -- hipsters, in other words -- a group that is primarily associated with liberal attitudes and the support of human rights, yet Urban Outfitters' CEO is a stanch conservative who has donated large sums of money to politicians like Rick Santorum, which means that a photograph by a man who made a name for himself by blending elements of pornography with photography is now being used to clothe people who have the kind of money Mapplethorpe never had when he was hustling to pay his and Smith's rent, as well as putting money into the pocket of a politician who seems hell-bent on oppressing the gay population Mapplethorpe strove to represent and who recently said he wants to make pornography itself illegal. Now that is ironic.

Either way, the shirt is no longer available, either because it was pulled from the shelves (for one reason or another) or because it simply sold out, which, considering the scenario outlined above, might actually be the worse option. Yet it's naive to think this sort of thing doesn't happen all the time, because art doesn't -- nor should it -- exist in a vacuum; it is just as easy for someone to misappropriate and misinterpret art as it is for them to honor and champion it. We might cringe when a politician like Ronald Reagan tries to turn Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" into a patriotic anthem, but how many people today realize that "Born in the USA" isn't a patriotic anthem, that it's actually a protest song about the aftermath of the Vietnam War? I wonder how many people go into reading Just Kids knowing who Robert Mapplethorpe was, or that he was gay? But that's the beauty of universal art at the same time that it's the downside: no matter how art reaches us, it's still reaching us, and there's always the chance that it will change us, too. That fact alone might be worth the risk.

F.U., GQ

I loved reading magazines when I was in high school. I had a subscription to Entertainment Weekly, and whenever I had the chance I would pick up issues of Interview, Rolling Stone, and Blender (which I haven't thought about since high school, and apparently no longer exists). Part of my enthusiasm for magazines came from the fact that I wallpapered my bedroom with pictures torn from these magazines, but in general I liked them because I found the articles entertaining and was better able to concentrate on them at swim meets than on books. Plus, the words-and-pictures aesthetic of those particular magazines appealed to me, and still does, hence the layout of this blog.

Since high school, however, my interest in magazines has gradually waned to near-nonexistence, for a variety of reasons: Interview has become too esoteric; Rolling Stone's and my music tastes diverged a long time ago; and Entertainment Weekly has, of late, become far too concerned with seeming hip and snappy, like a hard copy version of their website. I think, overall, that the type of writing featured in entertainment magazines simply doesn't appeal to me anymore -- the best magazine article I've read in years was one on Welsh rugby player Gareth Thomas in Sports Illustrated -- but I will still occasionally buy Entertainment Weekly if it's featuring an actor/singer/writer I like, and the same goes for GQ, which I rarely bought even in high school. Aside from an interview here and there, GQ literally has nothing to say to me, which I used to think was because I was younger than its target demographic, but now that I'm slowly but surely inching my way toward 30 and it still doesn't have anything to say to me, I think the reason is because I don't live in a big city or have extra money to spend on $500 steel grey sweaters with whale bone buttons, harvested from the icy waters around Nova Scotia. GQ is the granddaddy of rich white guy magazines, and I am unfortunately missing the key adjective in that description ("rich").

That's not to say I begrudge GQ -- or any magazine -- for catering to its core audience, especially in these waning days of print journalism. Yes, some of the more expensive aspects of GQ's fashion advice seem a little ridiculous in today's economy, but if Neiman Marcus can still publish their Holiday Catalog with a straight face, GQ can certainly recommend a $1,080 Marc Jacobs sweater along with the teaser line "The NFL's number one draft pick, Cam Newton, is...a guy like yourself who looks good in one of our favorite fall trends." A guy like whoself they don't say, but somebody out there must have a spare grand lying around to drop on a bold-striped sweater. The point is, GQ has always catered to the privileged while still being available to the masses, and they shouldn't change their game plan just because I or anyone else can't afford to take their purchasing suggestions seriously.

What I can begrudge GQ, however, is being a big old fat hypocrite and ridiculing its core audience with articles that seem better suited for a magazine like Maxim. Case in point: in the July 2011 issue, which I bought because it has Chris Evans on the cover and I sort of like him, although maybe not as much as I think I do, since I've hardly seen any of his movies, there is, in addition to a five-page profile on Michael Bay (!) and an argument that Obama is unbeatable because he found Bin Ladan (July seems like a long time ago, doesn't it?), an article entitled "Are You a Pussy?" (Actually, the cover advertises the article as "How to Tell If You're a P%$$Y," and the article itself uses a photo of a kitten in place of the operative word, but I'm not even going to get into the irony involved in calling something "Are You a Pussy?" and then being too much of a pussy to write the word "pussy.") Let me say, first and foremost, that the article is supposed to be funny, and I know it's supposed to be funny, and it starts out promisingly enough, with the writers saying, "Just the other day, we were nursing a hot water with agave nectar while waiting for Water for Elephants to start, and we were like, 'We need to write a quiz to make sure our readers know how to spot all the tight bitches up in here!' And, you know, to find out if we are one of them. Because after we color-coded our underpants, we started to get a little worried."

What follows is a "quiz" in which the writers juxtapose two polar-opposite archetypes, the 21st century metrosexual and the ultra-masculine alpha male, while poking fun at both, with questions like: "They don't have the loose Darjeeling available at the Bookbinder Cafe, so you: 1) Just get a tea bag; it's cool, no biggie. 2) Order a Coke slushie instead, and add some crushed Bugles for texture. 3) Get out your own tin of loose-leaf Darjeeling and that pewter infuser you keep next to your writing quill. 4) Wrestle the barista to the ground and show him your tea bag." The idea is sort of clever, as far as humorous magazine articles go, but it misses the mark on two key points: 1) the quiz is definitely more anti-metrosexual than it is anti-alpha-male, which would be fine, except 2) the article is in freaking GQ, the Bible for metrosexual males, and the very next page after the quiz features recipes for "Panko Scotch Eggs" and "Blood Orange Espumas." If the quiz had, in fact, appeared in a magazine like Maxim, I wouldn't have an opinion on it one way or the other, but GQ can only poke so much fun at fussy, high-tech men when the magazine is otherwise dedicated to promoting the fussy, high-tech lifestyle. It's like if Vogue published a quiz entitled "Are You an Anorexic Snob?"

Plus, the whole quiz purposely avoids the real elephant in the room when it comes to GQ, which is that their readership might trend more toward "metrosexual" than "alpha male" for reasons other than the magazine's own influence. Take a look at the editorial spread from the same issue as the quiz, featuring True Blood's Joe Manganiello:

No straight man -- including Joe Manganiello -- would ever dress like that in real life, or fantasize about doing so; furthermore, I doubt many straight men have any interest in looking at Joe Manganiello dress like that in the pages of their magazine. The reason the editorial staff at GQ has him half-naked is because they know -- though they would never admit to such a thing -- that a significant portion of their readership is gay, which is why a quiz that champions the stereotypical alpha male seems doubly awkward for all parties involved. I'm not saying gay men can't be alpha males, or that plenty of straight men don't read GQ, but when you equate being a pussy with drinking prosecco, listening to Iron & Wine, and liking Fried Green Tomatoes (all of which feature in that quiz), you're definitely casting aspersions toward one type of person over another -- and that type of person could easily be gay. I don't find the quiz in the least bit offensive, but I do find it hypocritical and remarkably lacking in self-awareness, like a person who makes fun of the things they like because they're embarrassed to admit they like them. I'm all for self-deprecating humor, but, you know...don't be a closet case, GQ; the world doesn't need another Details.

Should We Write What We Know?

I just finished reading an essay in the "Fiction 2011" issue of The Atlantic in which the author Bret Anthony Johnston argues against the old writing mantra of "Write What You Know." Johnston claims that the students in his college Introduction to Fiction Workshop, "like all writers...have been encouraged, explicitly or implicitly, for as long as they can remember, to write what they know," which I consider a bit of an exaggeration -- I've taken multiple creative writing courses since I was a kid, and the only time I can remember being told to write what I know was in a book on screenwriting -- but I will admit to being aware of the idea, and to have never really questioned its validity before reading Johnston's essay. "Write what you know" seems like pretty sage advice, because what it's really saying is that you should have some basic knowledge about a subject before you incorporate it into your writing; you don't want to find yourself ten pages into a story about a forensic scientist before realizing you might need to know something about forensic science to make the story interesting.

What Johnston suggests, however, is that writing what you know limits your imagination, that it stunts your story before it even begins by setting up boundaries for your fiction within the realm of your own experience.  Writing what you know makes you timid, he says, prone to saying things like, "What I wanted to do was ______" and "I'm not comfortable writing about ______," and it also teaches you to depend too much on transcribing real events, the "realness" of which will always make your second-hand account pale in comparison. If, on the other hand, you take one of your own experiences and have it play out how you wish it might have happened, or fear it could have happened, or any combination in between, then the strength of your fiction is limitless. Little by little, "what you know" will fall away and what remains will truly be a product of your imagination.

Now, in some respects, I agree with what Johnston is saying. Transcribing reality is for nonfiction writers and biographers -- it really has no place in fiction, not only because it hampers a writer's style but also because it betrays the very nature of what fiction is. Fiction can, and should, be anything except a rehashing of reality. Reading a fiction writer's retelling of something that really happened to him (or someone he knows) is usually pretty boring for everyone except the author and his close circle of friends, because the inspirations for the stories and characters are what matter in this case, not the stories themselves.  As Johnston puts it, "Stories aren't about things. Stories are things."

My problem with Johnston's essay is that, in the end, he's actually making an argument against people who write only what they've experienced, not against those who are writing what they know -- and there's a big difference. "Write what you know" does not mean, and was never intended to mean, that you should only permit yourself to write about things borne directly from your own life, because to suggest such a thing would mean that only soldiers should write about war, that only doctors should right about medicine, and that only space aliens should write about space aliens. People who approach fiction from that perspective are doing it because they misunderstand the principle behind "write what you know," not because they're shackled by it. "Write what you know" means that you take your personal experience of the world and apply it to whatever scenarios your imagination invents, whether or not that scenario bears any resemblance to your real life. Can a straight man write about being gay? Of course he can, so long as he uses his own knowledge of the human condition to flesh out his characters, along with constant input from his imagination. (Now, some gay people might not like that he's writing about them from a straight man's perspective, but that's another issue entirely.)

"Write what you know" is supposed to help your writing, not hinder it. It doesn't tell you not to write a murder mystery if you've never been involved in a murder, but it does say to maybe set the murder in a location similar to one you know, rather than setting it in Venice just because Italy seems more exciting than Small Town, U.S.A. You'd be surprised how easily your imagination will soar when you're mapping out a mystery and how easily it will stop cold when you try to describe a real-life city you've never seen. This goes for writing about other time periods, as well -- surely you can write about an English peasant girl falling in love with a medieval knight, but what happens when you don't know what kind of drink the knight would order at the local inn, or if they even had inns in medieval England? (What should happen is that you do some research. People take for granted that fiction can require just as much research as nonfiction writing, but plenty of writers educate themselves about their subjects before they start writing so that thereafter their imaginations can run wild. If you really want to set your murder mystery in Venice, then set it in Venice -- but research the city first, so you don't lose your plot while you're busy worrying about the setting. If I'm writing a rooftop chase scene that ends up with my hero taking a plunge into a Venetian canal, I don't want any doubts lodged in the back of my mind about how close is too close to position the canal relative to his hotel. I'd sooner have him sprout wings and fly away.)

What Johnston never mentions, but what I consider an important truth for any writer, is that "what you know" is not a quantitative amount. People learn new things every day, and they imagine new things every day as well. What you know today might not just be less than what you know tomorrow, it might be different than what you know tomorrow, so the way you relate to your writing is constantly in flux. So long as you don't tie your writing to the finite events of your life, you'll be able to bring something new to the table (so to speak) every time you sit down to write. I think Johnston knows this, too, because even as he advises his students not to write what they know, he admits to doing exactly what I'm talking about in his own writing: "These are the facts: I was born and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas, the part of the country where most every word of fiction I've published takes place. I grew up around horses and hurricanes; my father worried about money...and died young; my mother smoked and paid mightily for it. If you read Corpus Christi: Stories, you'll undoubtedly recognize elements of my life in the stories; however, very few of the experiences in the book are my own." I don't mean to mince words, but as far as I can tell, Johnston is writing what he knows; he's just not always writing what he's experienced.

I have no doubt that, as a teacher of an introductory creative class (even at a school like Harvard), Johnston runs into plenty of students who take "write what you know" to mean "write what you've experienced." As I said, I agree with many of the points he makes in his essay, and if I were constantly reading stories inspired by real-life events, I'd probably be just as anti-"write what you know" as he is. What I wish, however, is that he devoted at least part of his essay to what I consider to be the real danger of the "write what you know" mantra -- that is, the tendency of many writers (including myself) not to put their own experiences into their fiction, but to put themselves into their fiction. The best writers are like actors, able to inhabit the psyches of their characters without letting their own personalities and opinions subsume who those characters are, but it is extremely easy, especially for young writers, to unintentionally let their characters become nothing more than differently-named extensions of themselves, which is probably the quickest way I know of to kill a good story. How can you write a thriller about a vigilante if you're constantly thinking, "But I wouldn't do that...maybe he should just let the bad guys off with a warning." Some writers avoid this trap by projecting their personalities onto less-important supporting characters -- Jane Austen is notorious for doing this -- but most have to work hard at not only disentangling themselves from their characters, but also freeing themselves of the tendency to want to always like their characters. In answer to my original question, I think it's a wonderful idea to write what you know -- so long as you don't end up writing about yourself.