Primal Scream Therapy with Tortured Authors: Marty Beckerman vs. Matthue Roth

 

 

Matthue, 

 

Writers are not exactly well-adjusted people. Posters of Ernest Hemingway and Hunter Thompson used to hang over my desk, but one day I realized with sudden discomfort that two suicides constantly looked down at me as I worked. I've never read anything by David Foster Wallace -- the Internet and Jack Daniel's have ruined me for any book longer than three hundred pages, let alone a thousand -- but he's another writer who bailed on existence.

 

And yet, even though we're writers, neither one of us will commit suicide anytime soon. We have different reasons for this -- you're an Orthodox Jew who believes that suicide is murder, and I'm an egomaniac who would never selfishly deprive the human race of his boundless and necessary wisdom, roguish good looks, etc. -- but even well-adjusted writers need to analyze ourselves sometimes. We can't afford psychologists to guide us on our reflective journeys, of course, but at least we have each other.

 

Despite our aversion to self-destruction, we are pretty goddamned fascinating people. (At least I am; what's your name again?) Nobody understands an author quite like another author, and the public deserves to know the motivations and psychologies of its most gifted citizens. Therefore, Matthue (oh yes, that's your name), it's time for us to explore each other, probe each other... I just want to get inside of you and dig.

 

You are a self-described religious zealot, although quite different than most. You seem non-judgmental, and lacking in palpable sexual neuroses. Call me a snide coastal elitist, but I immediately associate religious extremism with sexual perversion; it seems as if every week another conservative preacher or politician gets in trouble for allegedly being a totally creepy pervert. I would make a list of all the prominent "people of faith" who have recently landed in hot water -- or, as the case may be, lukewarm lubricant -- for their peculiar interpretations of family values, but we only have a few hundred words per day for this discussion, not a few (hundred) thousand.

 

It seems like common sense that if you repress and vilify normal human sexuality, it's going to emerge in a warped or self-loathing form. Are ferocious gay-bashers who happen to love peen (Ted Haggard, Larry Craig, etc.) aware of their own hypocrisy, or is it a purely unconscious phenomenon? Are they sucked (get it?) into religious fundamentalism because they fear their true selves, or do they become fascinated by the "forbidden fruit" (get it?) after demonizing the behavior? In other words, which came first: the chicken, the egg or the giant heathen cock, which might or might not refer to the aforementioned chicken?

 

Am I oversimplifying? Am I wrong to presume a direct link between the degree of a person's religiosity -- especially the condemnatory, "shame on everyone but me" variety -- and the degree of his or her (but probably his) sexual weirdness? You are a passionate believer -- you base your entire life around religion -- and yet you strike me as a shockingly well-adjusted person... I mean, I've visited your house and didn't find a hidden dungeon or anything... so are you the exception or the rule? Or did I simply forget to look underneath the rug?

 

Full disclosure: I probably have a reputation as a "totally creepy pervert" who loves to say "shame on everyone but me" thanks to my past writings, but A) my girlfriend has completely domesticated me -- I'm less edgy these days than a Gillette Venus Vibrance Soothing Vibrations Razor for Women -- and B) I'm a humorist, not a moralist, and I'm obviously not a cleric or spiritual advisor. God help anyone who asks me for advice about... uh... God.

 

Marty,

 

You're right. I know I shouldn't admit you're right -- I am, after all, one of those fundamentalist zealots you're talking about -- but the fact is, religion often gives people an excuse for idiocy.

 

It's not what Jewish Law is supposed to be. Jewish Law is supposed to place the responsibility on the individual -- if you screw up, you're culpable to God. But that's not how it plays out in contemporary religion. Instead, we let rabbis and priests tell us what the books say. When the religious leaders have that power, either through ignorance or a lack of dissent, the power has a tendency to get abused. The attitude is that, as long as you have a rabbi saying something's okay, you're covered. Some of them -- again, not most -- have learned to manipulate the system, and they use their power for no good, or even straight-up evil.

 

You proposed that there's a link between the degree of someone's fundamentalism and his/her kink. I feel duly obliged to note that, in Judaism, many forms of consensual kink are both acceptable and welcomed (and many others are debatably acceptable).

 

The greater world likes to divide religious fundamentalists as either incredibly knowledgeable, having the entire Bible memorized, or as totally ignorant, only thinking what, like, Meir Kahane or Pat Robertson or Swami Prabhubada tells them to think.  The reality is more of a bell curve. There are people who don't know very much -- or who are the least fundamental of the fundamentalists -- who are struggling (in prayer, with a job, in life itself) just to keep up.

 

Then there are the people who are on top of everything. Some of those people are totally comfortable with their station in life. Some of them are even really good at it, and some are obsessed with condescension and moralizing, but you can find others who don't make it a central issue. In a weird way, it's kind of the same phenomenon that happened with cable TV and Internet music: we're decentralized now. You can find a community that shares your own interests, quirks, and even kinks.

 

But fundamentalism is not merely about sexuality. There are tzaddikim of every faith who run soup kitchens and strive for the betterment of humanity. Their every thought comes back to God, but we never see 99% of these people because they are too damn busy saving others instead of condemning others.

 

Religious people aren't the only ones who condemn the ills of society; that's actually a big part of your persona, and certainly the approach of many comedians. This morning, getting off the subway, I saw Chris Rock on a fifteen-foot-tall video screen, promoting his new HBO special. I couldn't help but notice that his physical movements and posturing were remarkably similar to yours in the Dumbocracy promo video.

 

I think it's more than coincidental. You and Rock both possess both a drive and confidence that what you're saying has weight, and, more directly, is both correct and needs to be said, but neither of you is totally sure you're the right guy to say it. I suppose if I were a better person, I'd call it modesty, but I actually think it's closer to awkwardness, as if you're unsure you can handle that responsibility. Rock has learned to cover it up better, but he's had more practice.

 

 

Matthue,

 

I appreciate the comparison to Chris Rock, although he is infinitely funnier than I am, at least when he does standup instead of shitty movies. I don't know if we're compelled by the same impulse, or share the insecurity of "why am I the person who needs to say this?" because as I've gotten older, I've become aware that I'm not saying anything new.

 

If I mock grotesque hedonistic excess like I did with Generation S.L.U.T., I'm only following in Petronius's footsteps, never mind Bret Easton Ellis's. If I criticize authoritarian notions of morality, I'm boldly going where Socrates has gone before, never mind George Carlin. So maybe I'm not "the right guy to say it," because plenty of people have said it already -- and said it better -- and the world would keep spinning if I weren't around to identify its bullshit.

 

Plus it's getting harder to write with conviction because I've made plenty of mistakes along the way. There was an excessively puritanical bent to my writing for a few years, which makes me cringe now because it was so over-strident, over-earnest and over-preachy, which is what happens when college students try to share their opinions. (They need a few more years to become embittered and disillusioned.)

 

Sometimes I'm paralyzed by the feeling, "Whatever I write, it's going to embarrass me five years from now, because my perspective will be completely different." We're all on a conveyer belt in the same factory, getting assembled at approximately the same speed, and I know my opinions and outlook will change over time because I already want to go back in time and kick my own ass for being a complete douche bag.

 

But the bitch is that I need to speak my mind. I'm a loudmouth, a blowhard, a guy who loves the sound of his own voice nearly as much as the sight of his own (rockin') body. In some ways the WASP sensibility fascinates me -- politeness and discretion, never discussing sex, politics or religion -- and I wish I could be a debonair gentleman who epitomized tact and never offended anyone, but I wouldn't feel human. You have to ask yourself one big question when it comes to interacting with society: do I want everyone to like me, or do I want to be the slightest bit interesting?

 

Even though Generation S.L.U.T. is melodramatic and emo and preposterously morose when I look back on it -- now that I'm past adolescence, my hormones have cooled off, and I'm generally in a happy (or at least mellow) mood -- that's what the world is like when you're nineteen years old, dealing with your first serious relationship/breakup, and half your friends have tried to kill themselves. If I were to rewrite the book today, it would be funnier and more lighthearted, but it wouldn't be genuine because I can never feel those emotions again, at least never to the same degree. You build a wall to protect yourself, you become a man instead of a boy, and your memories suddenly seem hysterical and pathetic instead of tragic and devastating. You forget how much it hurts to grow up because scar tissue replaces the open wounds. You stop whining because you learn that happiness is your own responsibility. And if you don't, the world will eat you alive.

 

But that book was the best one I could write at nineteen/twenty, just like Death to All Cheerleaders was the best I could write at sixteen/seventeen. Dumbocracy might embarrass me down the road, but it's the best I can do at twenty-five, and the price of lifelong consistency is never expressing any opinions whatsoever. I'd love to extinguish any risk of future humiliation, and I'd love to erase some of my overzealous tirades from millions of people's memories, but all I can do is trust that I'm getting better and smarter -- and more entertaining -- as I go. And hope that readers agree.

 

(Or at least be willing to say, "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke," which is more difficult than you'd think.)

 

Marty,

 

I have the advantage of writing fiction, if we're making it a contest, and the biggest advantage of fiction is that "flaws" don't count. I don't mean flaws in spelling or when characters inexplicably pop up in the middle of scenes -- I'm talking about the emotional rawness and the fundamental awkwardness that authors have, which translates to the perfection of awkwardness and rawness that our characters have.

Case in point: My first novel, Never Mind the Goldbergs, is about a self-assured 17-year-old Orthodox girl who's punk-rock, confident, sassy and in-your-face -- basically, everything that I wanted to be at 17 that I absolutely wasn't. Four years later, I look back at Hava and I'm simultaneously wincing and kvelling. I was never that sure about anything in life -- not my religion, not my music, not even my attitude about myself. And then I started reading the reviews. People said I made her perfectly flawed, that I built up her bubble, and then popped it. The reviews were complimentary, but I was horrified. I was like, She's not egotistical! She's the coolest person I always wanted to fall in love with! It was great. My image of perfection imploded on itself, and apparently I learned how to create a tragic protagonist.

My new novel, Losers, is almost the direct opposite. I did it Elmore Leonard-style: wrote fast and took out whatever parts bored me. Is this imperfection as art? Freezing every moment in time, every mistake, cherishing every potential dorky or inappropriate gesture, word, or facial expression, and saying, Well, I meant it at the time.

I prefer to think of it as "Parker Lewis Syndrome." Parker Lewis, if you don't know, was the protagonist of the early-‘90s comedy Parker Lewis Can't Lose, an exquisitely weird show about this kid who wore paisley button-down shirts and made obtuse references to Twin Peaks episodes, but -- for some wildly improbable reason -- was the most popular kid in the town where he lived. It wasn't that he was rich or smart or talented; he didn't even really have a girlfriend. Instead, it was some indefinable combination of wackiness, iconoclasm, and chutzpah that endeared him to each one of the town's stereotypical teen-groups in a different way, from the jocks (who protected him) to the nerds (who helped him hack into the school computer system, although I seem to remember Parker being an expert hacker on his own) to the indy-rockers who played as the backing band when he finally went on a date.

It was being in the right place at the right time; it was the essence of je ne sais quoi, a phrase that we love to throw around and never think about the fact that it has no meaning. Maybe it's Divine intervention; maybe it's that the girl I'm crushing on is fully confessionally drunk the same night that I am. It's dumb luck.

I always wanted to be a Parker Lewis. Instead I ended up being a Jupiter Glazer: bumbling, fumbling, unapologetically trying to be someone I'm not and failing. When Goldbergs came out, people asked if it was autobiographical. Was it autobiographical? Did I want it to be autobiographical? The truth was probably a bit of both. Losers is a whole other side of me: the frank, tearfully honest, and painfully embarrassing side. The part that tumbles out before you have a chance to think about it or analyze at all, and then everyone's staring at you, and all you can really say is: Yeah, I said it.

What do you think of that?

 

Matthue,

 

You make an interesting point: authors are often unaware of what we say on paper, and sometimes our readers know more about us than we know about ourselves. When the chief of my publisher finished reading Dumbocracy, his exact words were: “The manuscript seems preoccupied with sodomy.” So I gave it another look, and discovered he was completely right -- I am preoccupied with sodomy!

 

A book reviewer friend of mine insists that an author’s life story should not affect our judgment of his or her work -- for example, we should loathe Mein Kampf because it’s logically unsound, not because a mass murderer wrote it. But we are products of our experiences, and our books are products of us, so it seems logical that our books are extensions of our experiences. (Shit, did I accidentally compare us to Hitler? And I thought comparing myself to Socrates was a little much...)

 

You write about a foreign-born social outcast in Losers, and his insecurities when it comes to prejudice and assimilation; if you denied that your novel is a vicarious examination of your Orthodox convictions, I wouldn’t believe you for a moment. Even if a book is marked "FICTION," it’s the product of a human mind, and Freud’s most enduring observation is that self-expression leads to unforeseen revelation. (Extraneous question for Sigmund scholars: do gay dudes want to slay their mothers and bone their fathers?)

 

Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook -- which allow people to share their humiliating personal lives with others -- became popular concurrently with blogs, which allow everybody to share their (unintentionally) humiliating thoughts with others. The Average Joe suddenly has the ability to write for a large audience, which was impossible ten years ago because of the editorial chain of command. Psychologists will have a voluminous supply of unhinged, self-incriminating bullshit to study for centuries to come.

 

As I said at the very beginning of our exchange, writers are not exactly well-adjusted people, but thanks to technology, everyone is a writer these days. Whereas authors once spoke for generations, we now speak with generations. And if we want to make our voices heard over the wretched cacophony, we might need to say more about ourselves -- scream more about ourselves -- than anyone wants to know.