A Wiley, Cagey Heart
Alexander Chee, trusting your subconscious, and slaying by accident
Hello my loves. I fear this will be a long one, but maybe I will say everything I want to say about life and art in four concise paragraphs, lolz.
I do not make a habit of discussing headlines in this newsletter but it feels coolly obtuse not to light candles (or, actually, pray for rain) for those experiencing the LA wildfires. But aside from actor Steve Guttenberg being in everybody’s feed more than we ever thought he’d be in 20251 (and I do love his message about everyone helping each other: we’re all people, we’re all one community, and we need to be nice to each other even when we’re not in crisis), I’m going to talk right now about a book that has helped me sort through some hairy places in my writing life.
That book is Alexander Chee’s collection of essays How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, which I read back in November and really, really loved. When he unrolled his history with the Tarot in its second essay with the words: “. . . when she drew the cards to help shape a graduation speech she gave, I understood just how different, how powerfully, she used the Tarot. . . . She was an artist and I was a drunk,” I lol’d and felt in good hands.
Among the many things it does, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel portrays what it was like to be in Annie Dillard’s workshop in college (i.e. profoundly helpful). It also beautifully plumbs the very real depths of being lost as a young person, as a grieving person, as a person so traumatized by certain events in your life that you don’t yet know how barely functioning you are in certain ways. The essays were intelligent and pretty and honest - mostly honest about Chee’s various coming-to-selves but also honest about the writing life, especially the writing life circumvented and sponsored by academia. I found them really quite seductive, in a way, which is maybe the best of what literary works have to offer: solid truths flashing extravagantly with strands of silver, a glittering parade of consciousness unspooling through the years.
But I fear I’m showing my hand too much here. Chee talks about some pretty hefty subjects in this book - AIDS activism, losing friends to the condition, losing himself in various circles or challenges or social dynamics, finding himself in planting roses or partnerships or subtle, almost random interactions, racism, the textures and absurdities of growing up in Maine, homophobia, classism, class traitorism - while also spooning into this reader’s face, at least, the most delicate souffle of words and ideas I almost forgot sometimes the hefty scenes he was stitching together so beautifully.
On the other hand, this stitching felt so loving to me, almost as if Chee were shielding me from the shrapnel he took from life in order to write these words.
This is the best of art, is it not? A serving of what we need in a way we can take it. Because of its successes, good art sticks in our bellies, in our teeth, maybe even in our bones. I have so many complaints for the art world, for literary and academic worlds, especially. The centering of whiteness, the centering of the male experience, the centering of winning in specific ways (grants, singularity, achievements stamped by certain establishments), even and especially the ironing out of idiosyncrasies, the gliding of souls into one long train of fancies-only dress. But before this post gets away from me (too late), one of the things I appreciate about Chee is that he sets my complaints about the literary world off-kilter by his presence - a gay man, bi-racial human of Korean descent (“to be more specific, Scotch-Irish, Irish, Welsh, Korean, Chinese, Mongolian”) and an artist who refuses to shut up in a world that threatens the safety and sanity of LGBTQ+ people at every turn. I do interrogate the reasons I love his work - its roots are so clearly, smoothly, literary, do I only love his clearly approvable sentence structure? - but I was, frankly, really taken by this book.2
On being a young cater-waiter in New York City, Chee writes: “Waiting tables was not just a good living, but also a good education in people . . . . Your imagination needs to be broken in, I think, to become anywhere near as weird as the world.” HARD AGREE!!!
Here is his description of being in Annie Dillard’s workshop at Wesleyan:
At the beginning of class she would unpack the long, thin thermos of coffee and the bag of Brach’s singly wrapped caramels - the ones with the white centers. She would set down her legal pad covered in notes and pour the coffee, which she would drink as she unwrapped the caramels and ate them. The pile of plastic wrappers grew by her left hand on the desk. The wrappers would flutter a little as she whipped the pages of her legal pad back and forth, and spoke in epigrams about writing that often led to short lectures but were sometimes lists. . . . She began almost drowsily, but soon went at a pell-mell pace. Not frantic but operatic. Then she might pause, check her notes in a brief silence, and launch in another direction as we finished making our notes and the sound of our writing died down.
This line - the pile of wrappers grew by her left hand . . . [and] would flutter a little as she whipped the pages of her legal pad back and forth - well, that was worth the whole price of admission. To lovingly reduce (and pay homage to) Dillard in a detail like that? Man. Chef’s kiss.
Dillard was trying to stop smoking for her second husband, another fine detail. (Awkward segue alert - I think we all know who Annie Dillard is, but in case you need a refresher here’s Under a Spell’s completely non-comprehensive post about my college roommate introducing me to her.)
My partner Tim likes to quote something Dillard wrote, quoting Thomas Merton, about not going around, spending all your time “making itsy-bitsy statues.”3 He used to say it when we were younger, and we thought it was kind of inspiring then. Now basically all we feel capable of doing is concentrating in itty-bitty ways, wasting our focus on small piles of twigs (child after child, student after student) while not concentrating on one big project that might flourish under our efforts. (This is also why I’m always bowing down to my friend Amelia, driven in ways that sometimes alarm her but whose focus feels like a miracle to me. To pick *one* thing and work on it like a dog with a bone? I was not gifted with this trait. In a culture that values product above process (and/or specifically dismisses the colorful detritus of my child-worn days), this absence is sometimes painful.
Anyway, in the words of Tim: “Annie Dillard has a bigger cock than all of us." Lol and I totally agree.
Relatedly or not, in the essay called “My Parade,” on the subject of talent Chee has this to say:
It may be that you, like many, think writing fiction doesn’t require study. And not only that: that it is not improved by study. That talent is preeminent, the only thing required to become a writer. I was told I was talented. I don’t know that it did much except make me lazy when I should have worked harder. I know many talented people who never became writers, perhaps because they got lazy when they were told they were talented. Telling writers this may even be a way to take them out of the game. I know untalented people who did become writers, and who write exceptionally well. You can have talent, but if you cannot endure, if you cannot learn to work, and learn to work against your own worst tendencies and prejudices, if you cannot take the criticism of strangers, or the uncertainty, then you will not become a writer. PhD, MFA, self-taught - the only things you must have to become a writer are the stamina to continue and a wily, cagey heart in the face of extremity, failure, and success.
Weirdly, this passage inspired me when I read it. I have nothing if not a wiley, cagey heart! And this: if you cannot endure . . . and learn to work against your own worst tendencies and prejudices . . . I mean, I do think there are a thousand ways to “become a writer” - the writer he’s talking about here may be a very specific one. Someone who publishes many books, perhaps. You can “become a writer” by writing in your diary every day, by my definition. You can “become a writer” at any point in your life, I believe. A writer is basically someone who tells the truth, and tries to tell it as concisely or entertainingly or maybe wittily as possible if they want, but who tells the truth at least to themself.
Anyway, the phrase learn to work against your own worst tendencies is definitely the phase of life I am in. I count my blessings in one million ways, among them the little sheep who wrangle my heart; the partnership I feel along blindly, as we sometimes crack each other up, sometimes snarl painfully; the safety of my body; the hints my ancestors left for me; the miracle workers who have helped me stay whole in spite of many surgical events (let’s not forget those adorable c-sections); the earth; the trees; the birds in the sky. I have so much to be thankful for, and I am. And yet, I still have some work to do.
Most days, this work frightens me. I forget that courage comes not from knowing what to do but from moving my limbs, trusting that I will figure it out as I go. The picture will reveal itself to me or it won’t. (I sometimes think I will die before I figure this out - not that I will die young but that I will die without solving this overly dramatic problem/goal I have made for myself.) Sometimes I forget to stop worrying and start playfully inching forward scene by scene, letter by letter, prayer by prayer.
Anyway. Hi, you’re in my inner sanctum now. Is it too dark in here? Shall we light a match?
Chee again, in “The Autobiography of My Novel”:
I think I knew all along the process of writing a novel was less straightfoward than it seemed. But thus far, it hadn’t seemed straightforward at all. . . . That day when I asked the fragments to tell me what they were when we arrived in New York, before I got into my loaded car and drove there, I knew I was calling out to a novel. I knew these pieces had their own desire to be whole. And as I opened the binder, that summer in New York, and read through the fragments again, I could sense the shadow of something in the links possible between them, and began to write to the shape of it.
For some reason, this facility with shadow - something Chee discusses, re: writing his novels, and which his essays inherently demonstrate4 - have been helping me reconceive my relationship to the novel I am working on right now. I am not a straightfoward person. (I mean, I can be, and sometimes my loved ones wish me to be less straightforward, lol.) When it comes to art, I work best by subconscious design. Even though I’ve heard it from thousands of people at this point (probably more like dozens including my partner who said something to me in grad school that I then tacked on an index card above my desk - trust your subconscious - and it served me for years until I forgot what it meant or I stopped doing it), for some reason, I needed to hear it again, perhaps from someone enchanting me in other ways so successfully.
From Chee’s book and others on the craft of fiction, I basically started hearing the message: Let the pieces float up to you how and when they do. Let the disembodied being of the work reveal itself to you, over time. Trust. Move slowly. See what happens. It was a slow unfreezing, eerie but calming.
This is perhaps also how life on earth works, yes? We learn the story as we go. We stumble over the pieces, get enchanted, pick them up. The trick with art is, we get to set them down where we want. Existentially, I don’t know if I like this. I don’t want to be sooooo in charge. It is completely overwhelming to me most days. (In other places in my life, however, I really do want to be in charge and am very much not.) For some reason, Chee’s description of the piecemeal ways he has made his art makes me relax. I do not have the whole picture of mine right now. That doesn’t mean I won’t someday (maybe).
That crack of maybe is so small but feels like a blast of light in my days. The obvious thing probably to all of you is that I’m in the middle of a draft and (sheepish now) have been asking this draft for too long to look and act just like a published novel. Meanwhile, it has no teeth, only four bones to speak of, and has a lot of cool but jiggly parts. There are all kinds of reasons that I’ve been too demanding of this lively but frankly messy pile, but now that I’m recognizing it, I might be able to help these demanding, critical sides of myself relax a little. Maybe? That’s the mission right now. I know how to write, I know how to play. I just have to get the inner guards to stand down a little bit. (Easier said than done?)
Is any of this interesting? Does it feel like I’m always saying the same thing? It feels scary to articulate this, but one thing I’m noticing is that saying things aloud (to the reading internet, ha) helps my soul move ahead in my life. So while it’s humbling to be so process-oriented (especially way before I have any product to announce), it seems to be the only way I function at a high level. You help me stay accountable. You help me stay clean. I can always lie to myself in delulu ways, but with your eyes and hearts with me in this endeavor, something calls in my higher angels.
Here is Chee again, confirming what I feel - that you and I (and fine, maybe Substack) are making something together: my “confessions” (feels too loaded, I prefer explorations instead) plus your attention makes this fabric we’re weaving. When I try to weave it alone, when I leave you out of the equation too long - my ego wanting to make a go of life in private - I tend not to go very far. Instead, I spin in circles like an anxious or one-legged duck. Why not include you and then together we fly?
From “On Becoming an American Writer”:
To write is to sell a ticket to escape, not from the truth, but into it. My job is to make something happen in a space barely larger than the span of your hand, behind your eyes, distilled out of all that I have carried . . .
If you don’t know what I mean, what I mean is this: when I speak of walking through a snowstorm, you remember a night from your childhood full of snow, or from last winter, say, driving home at night, surprised by a storm. When I speak of my dead friends and poetry, you may remember your own dead friends. . . .
Something new is made from my memories and yours as you read this. It is not my memory, not yours, and it is born and walks the bridges and roads of your mind, as long as it can. After it has left mine.
All my life I’ve been told this isn’t important, that it doesn’t matter, that it could never matter. And yet I think it does. I think it is the real reason the people who would take everything from us say this. I think it’s the same reason that when fascists come to power, writers are among the first to go to jail. And that is the point of writing.
I love this dismount, and love especially what feels like Chee’s faith in the power of writing. It is breathtaking to me, because sometimes it feels like I have to rediscover it every time I sit down to write: the medicine of going in, seeing what catches my eye, then bringing it out and holding it to the light with you.
Friends, thank you for hanging in there with me. We’ve covered a lot of ground, and I’ve talked about a book that may not be specifically appealing to all of you. I needed to do this both because I said I would and also because - Amelia again - I wanted to see if I could put into words the things this book made me feel. I worked on this post while it snowed outside and while wearing a big sweater with reindeer on it. (Try and take away my Christmas sweaters before March. I will eat your face.) My family called me to several meals and I lied several times saying, “Coming!!”
I also want to say that last Friday, in a public place, someone stopped me to ask if my glasses were actually matching my skirt. It turned out that they were, though of course I hadn’t meant to do that. I then quoted my mother who always says: “If you’re worried about things matching, just buy the things you like. Sooner or later, it all goes together.” Holistic fashion advice! Trust yourself, trust your taste. TRUST YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS. Did my floral-themed glasses match my floral-themed skirt? Yes. Slaying by accident: that’s the plan these days.
Now go forth and be driven by the great master(s) inside who want to match - and probably blur - all the things. Lean into those wiley, cagey hearts. Hold them close, they have beautiful, healing secrets to tell us all. Will you let me know what yours say?
We are listening, we are hungry.
XOXO
Kara
I was also really taken with this essay about a medical emergency that started in a plane, written by the patient’s wife. The tone is perfection: so funny, so stunningly singular and entertaining.
Here’s the passage from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: “Thomas Merton wrote, “there is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.” …
I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock - more than a maple - a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.” Gorg, no?
Chee is someone who has done the work, therapeutically. I’m curious who is able to discuss the meta of their art so proficiently if they have not actually done the work. Surely it’s possible, yes? I do believe a relationship with self and art is possible without therapeutic intervention. But I also know very few who can do it over a sustained period of time. Sooner or later, everyone needs soul tending and no matter how devoted an artist is or how well they take care of themselves (or their wives take care of them?? lol), I’m not sure it’s possible to make it out of this life unscathed enough to say the all of what you mean - especially in our cannibalizing Western world - without skilled intervention. This can, of course, take the form of non-professional healers, soul parents, magical beings, but I suspect that if one really wants to get where they want to go, they need help with their baggage, no? (This is the whole crux of life coaching, by the way, imho <3)
Ironically, I'm late to reading this post because I was so close to finishing another draft of my book and was putting all my extra time there. Process is so fascinating to me. And this post kind of makes me want to write about mine, to try and get to the bottom of it. In some ways, I feel like I do the opposite... Like I just move forward and then EVENTUALLY, like the person asking you if your glasses match your skirt, someday see all the connections. ? Point being, thank you for SEEING me and my somewhat mysterious need to make progress with a project. And last but not least, the radial arm saw book really made me smile. xoxx
So many good nuggets to sift through here. Trust my subconscious. Have courage. Wiley, cagey heart. Mmm.
I have not been able to carve out time for writing much the last few months and the subconscious is getting very cluttered with all sorts of things bubbling up, sinking back down, popping back up for another go around - just for me to go back to bed or say “hush, I’ll get to you later” 🫣😆
My word for 2025 is surly - a close second is wiley 😹