Life and Art

I've never written anything so influenced by contemporary events as the short novel at hand. My protagonist is a retired history professor who is trying to escape history -- it's finally too much for him. He's long held the theory that in our culture, the most sensitive among us must be warehoused in mental hospitals because they don't have sufficient filters to ignore the widespread and common horrific behavior of many fellow humans: to carry on in life, you have to wear blinders. Without them, you'd go crazy. And the professor, at the end of his life, is removing his blinders. Intellectually he's known historical horror for a very long time, his specialty being the U.S. policy of genocide against American Indians (which makes him a controversial scholar). But he's been able to ignore human horror enough to get through the day, largely because of the influence of his more optimistic wife. But now he's a recent widower. The horror of history, the horror of current events, cascades down on him, threatening his sanity, his ability to function -- and he's seeing a shrink, hoping to get his footing back.

And then he meets a young woman released from a mental hospital due to over-crowding who agrees with him. And gives him a new strategy for survival, the zero-sum universe: that without sadists, we wouldn't have Bach.

I could go on but have already said too much. I don't like to get too articulate about work in progress, it dissipates energy in the wrong place. My protagonist is wrestling with events that surround him, as I am, and there's been a sudden rush of events lately, including the Occupy movement (which fits amazingly organically into my narrative) ... so I'm marveling at how sometimes in the process of creating a work, the line between life and art gets very fuzzy indeed.

Not that very many people give a rat's ass. But I find it fascinating.