Hamlet in the Hospital

One of the books I happened to have with me during my first stay in a hospital psychiatric unit was a volume of Shakespearean tragedies, but it would seem that, despite my suicidal depression, I was in more of a dryly comedic frame of mind.  Plagued by insomnia and lack of appetite as side effects of my new medication, my intelligence insulted by the banality of the literal-minded professionals around me who offered a chemical solution to everything, I found myself envying Hamlet, whose purported "madness" was regarded with a certain awed solemnity, and whose suicidal crisis constitutes one of the best-known and most poignant passages in all of literature.  I doubted even the melancholy Dane would be taken seriously in the modern mental-health system.  With the play in hand, I sat down to vent my frustrations in parody.  Nearly every line in this is lifted directly from Shakespeare, with a few obvious tweaks . . . and what isn't Shakespeare was borrowed almost verbatim from conversations I seemed to have on a daily basis in the hospital.

SCENE ONE: Dining room, Elsinore.

(Ophelia, Prince Hamlet, Queen Gertrude, King Claudius, and Polonius are seated around a circular table, eating breakfast.)

HAMLET (to Gertrude): Who would bear the whips and scorns of time, th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of th'unworthy takes, when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin?

GERTRUDE: I would!  The pleasures of life are so much greater than the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

HAMLET (to Ophelia): Who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of?

OPHELIA: I would, my lord!  Of course I would!

POLONIUS (to Claudius): Your noble son is mentally ill.  Mentally ill call I it, for, to define true mental illness, what is't but to be nothing else but mentally ill?  That he is mentally ill, 'tis true: 'tis true 'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true.  You would do well to start him on an antidepressant.

SCENE TWO: Courtyard, Elsinore.  Two hours later.

(Hamlet stands alone in the courtyard.  Claudius and Polonius watch him secretly from around a corner.)

HAMLET: To be, or not to be - that is the question.

(Hamlet unsheaths his dagger.  Before he can plunge it into his chest, Gertrude walks into the courtyard and Hamlet quickly restores the dagger to its sheath.)

POLONIUS: He's a danger to himself.  I recommend that you confine him where your wisdom best shall think.

CLAUDIUS: It shall be so.  Mental illness in great ones must not unwatched go. (He exits.)

HAMLET (with a sudden start): A king of shreds and patches - save me and hover o'er me with your wings, you heavenly guards!  (To the air in front of him)  What would your gracious figure?

GERTRUDE: Alas, he's mentally ill.  To whom do you speak this?

HAMLET: Do you see nothing there?  Nor did you nothing hear?

GERTRUDE: Nothing at all.

HAMLET: Why, look you there!  Look how it steals away!  My father, in his habit as he lived!

GERTRUDE: This is the very coinage of your brain.  This bodiless creation psychosis is very cunning in.

CLAUDIUS (re-entering): How does Hamlet?

GERTRUDE: Mentally ill as the sea and wind when both contend which is the mightier.

CLAUDIUS: His liberty is full of threats to all, to you yourself, to us, to every one, and especially to himself.  If anything should happen, it will be laid to us, whose providence should have kept short, restrained, and out of haunt this mentally ill young man.

GERTRUDE: But so much was our love we would not understand what was most fit, but, like the owner of a foul disease, to keep it from divulging, let it feed even on the pith of life.

CLAUDIUS: Hamlet, for thine especial safety, which we do tender, we must send thee hence with fiery quickness.  Therefore prepare thyself.  The ambulance is ready, the paramedics tend, and everything is bent for the hospital.

SCENE THREE: A small conference room in the psychiatric ward of the hospital.  Later that day.

(Hamlet and a doctor sit facing each other.  Hamlet's sheath is empty; the dagger was taken away and put in a storage room.)

DOCTOR: Hamlet, do you know why you're here?

HAMLET: I will tell you why.  I have of late - but wherefore I know not - lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire - why it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.  What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!  And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?

DOCTOR: Will you sign yourself into the hospital voluntarily?  (Offers Conditional Voluntary Hospitalization form.)

HAMLET: Gentlemen, with all my love I do commend me to you.  (He signs it.)

DOCTOR: You'll probably have to stay here for a couple of weeks while you're getting stabilized on the medication.  We're going to put you on Zoloft for depression and Risperdal for psychosis.

HAMLET: Psychosis?  My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time and makes as healthful music.  Just ask the nurse who took my vital signs earlier.  It is not mental illness that I have uttered.  Bring me to the test, and I the matter will reword, which mental illness would gambol from.

DOCTOR: Okay, here's the test.  Tell me what you see in this inkblot.

HAMLET: Do you see this mark that's almost in shape of a camel?

DOCTOR: Hmmm . . . show me.  Ah!  By th' mass and 'tis, like a camel indeed.  Here's another one.  Tell me what you see.

HAMLET: Methinks it is like a weasel.

DOCTOR: Where?  Indeed, it is backed like a weasel.

HAMLET: Or like a whale.

DOCTOR: Very like a whale.  Now how about this one?

HAMLET: That's a hawk.  No . . . wait . . . I think it's a handsaw.  Or is it a hawk?

DOCTOR (nodding his head several times in a self-satisfied way): Hamlet, you are mentally ill.  Do you wish to know how you have been diagnosed?

HAMLET: I am tame, sir; pronounce.

DOCTOR: Major Depressive Disorder, severe, with psychotic features.

HAMLET: Is't possible?

DOCTOR: Our time is up.  My honorable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.

HAMLET: You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal - except my life, except my life, except my life.

DOCTOR: But can you contract for your safety?

HAMLET: I do not set my life at a pin's fee, but conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pitch and moment with this regard their currents turn awry and lose the name of action.  So, unfortunately, yes.

SCENE FOUR: The conference room.  Two weeks later.  (With apologies to Macbeth.)

(Hamlet and a counselor sit facing each other.)

COUNSELOR: Do you know me, my lord?

HAMLET: Excellent well.  You are a fishmonger.

COUNSELOR: Not I, my lord.  I'm a counselor.  We met last week.  How does my good Lord Hamlet?

HAMLET: O that this too too sullied flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter.

COUNSELOR: So I take it things could be better.

HAMLET: O God, God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!  Fie on't, ah, fie, 'tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed.  Things rank and gross in nature possess it merely.

COUNSELOR: What is the matter, my lord?

HAMLET: Between who?

COUNSELOR: I mean, why are you so unhappy?

HAMLET: I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offenses at my beck than I have thought to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in.  What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven?  To die, to sleep - no more - and by a sleep to say we end the heartache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. . . .

COUNSELOR: But, Hamlet, you have so much to live for.  You're a student at one of the finest universities in Europe, and you're next in line to the throne of Denmark.  I don't understand why a young man who has so much going for him would want to die.

HAMLET: There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.  To me 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.

COUNSELOR: I understand your father passed away not quite two months ago, and you're still quite upset about this.  How is it that the clouds still hang on you?  Thou know'st 'tis common.  All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity.

HAMLET: Ay, madam, it is common.

COUNSELOR: If it be, why seems it so particular with thee?

HAMLET: Seems, madam?  Nay, it is.  I know not "seems."

COUNSELOR: Let's not bicker over words.  'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet, to give these mourning duties to your father.  But to persever in obstinate condolement is a course of impious stubbornness.

HAMLET: He was so excellent a king, so loving to my mother that he might not beteem the winds of heaven visit her face too roughly.  Heaven and earth, must I remember?

COUNSELOR: We can change the subject, if you like.  How have you been responding to the medications?  Have you noticed any difference?

HAMLET: Methought I heard a voice cry "Sleep no more!  Zoloft does murder sleep" - the innocent sleep, sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care, the death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, chief nourisher in life's feast.

COUNSELOR: He's still hearing voices!

HAMLET: Still it cried "Sleep no more" to all the house; "Zoloft hath murdered sleep, and therefore Hamlet shall sleep no more, Hamlet shall sleep no more."

COUNSELOR: Who was it that thus cried?  You do unbend your noble strength to think so brainsickly of things.  Go get some water and I'll have the doctor give you some Risperdal.

HAMLET: My appetite is much decreased, too.  But what is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed?  A beast, no more.

COUNSELOR: I have to go now.  Is there anything else you want to say?

HAMLET: The time is out of joint.  O cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right!

COUNSELOR: Ah!  A delusion of exaggerated self-importance!

Green Eggs and Humanity

With apologies to Theo Geisel.  Though, knowing how he felt about Hitler, I'm not sure he would mind.

I am Stan,
Doctor Stan.
Would you like to kill this man?

I would not like to,
Doctor Stan.
I do not want to kill this man.

Will you shock him
'til he's dead?
Will you shoot him
in the head?

I will not shock him 'til he's dead.
I will not shoot him in the head.
I do not want to kill this man.
I will not kill him, Doctor Stan.

Will you stab him
with a knife?
Gas his children,
rape his wife?

I will not stab him with a knife,
Nor gas his kids, nor rape his wife.
I will not shock him 'til he's dead.
I will not shoot him in the head.
I do not want to kill this man.
I will not kill him, Doctor Stan.

Will you hang him from a tree,
by the neck for all to see?
Will you make him dig a pit,
and bury him alive in it?

I will not hang him from a tree
by the neck for all to see!
I will not make him dig a pit
and bury him alive in it!
I will not stab him with a knife!
Nor gas his kids!  Nor rape his wife!
I will not shock him 'til he's dead!
I will not shoot him in the head!
I do not want to kill this man!
I will not kill him, Doctor Stan!

Now settle down!  Don't have a fit!
Why must you be so obstinate?
Who do you think yourself to be,
to speak in such a way to ME?
You hesitate to kill this man?
You must not understand the plan.
One such as you can't comprehend
the higher things that I intend!
Be silent!  Do not stay your hand!
Give in and do as I demand!
In my position you can trust,
And I say kill him!  Yes!  You must!

I cannot keep from shuddering.
I do not want to do this thing.
I have no choice but to obey.
So I will kill him, as you say.

Say!  That wasn't bad by half.
In fact, it almost made me laugh.
I did just as you said I should,
and somehow it felt awfully good.
Have you another I must kill?
I'll do it gladly, yes I will!
I'd love to shock him 'til he's dead!
Please let me shoot him in the head!
What fun, to stab him with a knife,
and gas his kids, and rape his wife!
Let's gather folks around to see:
I'm going to hang him from a tree!
How droll, to make him dig a pit
and bury him alive in it!
To start, I'll spit into his face.
Then I'll exterminate his race!
I'll hunt them down until I'm done,
and won't it be such jolly fun?
I'm glad you made me kill that man.
Thank you,
thank you, Doctor Stan!

Mistake

This tiny story by Fredric Brown proves that a work of fiction doesn't need to be substantial to pack a whole lot of substance.  Anthony Boucher, editor of the 1964 anthology Best Detective Stories of the Year, which includes this tale, describes it as "the shorted murder story in history - and one of the most pointed."  It may be only five sentences, but I knew the moment I finished reading it that I would never forget it.  It's as if you could summarize Crime and Punishment in a single paragraph without losing the emotional wallop.

Standish gave himself up to the police.  "I killed a man," he said.  "I thought it was a perfect crime, but I made a mistake."  They asked what his mistake had been.  "I killed a man," he said.

To L--------

Today marks the 202nd anninversary of the birth of the poet and short-story writer Edgar Allan Poe.  I have always considered Poe a literary soulmate of sorts; his dark worldview, drenched in tormented passion, resonates deeply with me.  His work may not be everyone's cup of tea, but his ability to evoke a perfectly constructed atmosphere through his selection and arrangement of words must surely be an inspiration to all writers of any genre.  I wrote this poem several years ago in conscious imitation of Poe's style.  It's obviously quaint and a bit of a novelty, but I'm satisfied with the effect.

That day that troubles overtake thee,
And thou hast none to defend thee,
Though every man alive forsake thee,
I attend thee.

Should bitter grievance ever crush thee,
Any cursed foe offend thee,
I pray that heaven's angels rush me
To attend thee.

Whatever plague (alas!) dare harm thee,
Heart's blood shall I shed to mend thee.
Than this no pleasure more could charm me:
To attend thee.

May burdens never break nor bend thee!
Yet if sorrows here must send thee,
To thee I offer still nepenthe:
I attend thee!

Sonnet 29

This has always been one of my favorites among Shakespeare's sonnets, along with Sonnet 94 ("They that have power to hurt and will do none").  Having been a downtrodden and unlovely outcast for so many years of my life - be it as the crybaby kid getting picked on at recess or the sad-eyed mental patient locked away and forgotten - I find in this sonnet a sympathetic reflection of my own experiences and, ultimately, hope.  I post it here in tribute to the man I love.

When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at Heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Flower in the Crannied Wall

This poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, may be short, and, like the flower of which the poet speaks, deceptively simple, yet there is a world of truth in it.  An unusually metaphysical poem for the nineteenth century, it is possessed of a timeless impact.  It has long been one of my favorites.  I hope it inspires you.

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower - but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

The Egregious Excerpts: Truth Reads Lemony Snicket (So You Don't Have To)

First off, let me make it clear that I in no way mean to discourage anyone from reading A Series of Unfortunate Events.  I shall offer my very free disclosure that I had no desire whatsoever at first to dive into a long and reportedly ridiculous children's series, but I finally decided that I had better read the first two books, at least, since my mothers' students have sometimes chosen them for a Language Arts assignment, and I have taken it upon myself this year to read all the books that they have to choose from, as I have often found myself in the position of grading their papers and it's much easier to do if I really know what I'm reading about.  (It's not always necessary, however.  When, for example, a student states that the climax of The Bad Beginning is when the Baudelaire orphans learn how to make pasta with puttanesca sauce, I don't have to have read the book to feel reasonably confident giving a very low grade.)

I give fair warning to any reader who might deem it suitable to follow my example: Lemony Snicket can be addicting, particularly if you have a passion for wordplay, metafiction, and underdog stories.  If you have the time to read thirteen increasingly lengthy books, comprising 170 chapters in total (not counting two non-chapters and one moment of déjà vu), there are certainly worse ways you could spend it.  There is more to this series than the very frivolous diversion it may at first appear to be.  However, I recognize that many of you have better things to do with your time, or believe you do at any rate, and it would be most unfortunate if for this reason you were to be deprived of the wit, wisdom, and violently funny diatribes of Lemony Snicket.  The moments that have made me laugh out loud are too numerous to reproduce here, and many of them would lose something out of context, anyway.  But there are a few passages scattered throughout the series that are so brilliant they simply take my breath away, and it is these that I have felt it necessary to share with the readers of this blog.  Enjoy this moment of vicarious fiction discovery.

It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one.  We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up.  And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know.  It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is.  Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things. (from The Reptile Room)

There is a way of looking at life called "keeping things in perspective."  This simply means "making yourself feel better by comparing the things that are happening to you right now against other things that have happened at a different time, or to different people."  For instance, if you were upset about an ugly pimple on the end of your nose, you might try to feel better by keeping your pimple in perspective.  You might compare your pimple situation to that of someone who was being eaten by a bear, and when you looked in the mirror at your ugly pimple, you could say to yourself, "Well, at least I'm not being eaten by a bear."  You can see at once why keeping things in perspective rarely works very well, because it is hard to concentrate on somebody else being eaten by a bear when you are staring at your own ugly pimple.  (from The Wide Window)

If you have ever had a miserable experience, then you have probably had it said to you that you would feel better in the morning.  This, of course, is utter nonsense, because a miserable experience remains a miserable experience even on the loveliest of mornings.  For instance, if it were your birthday, and a wart-removal cream was the only present you received, someone might tell you to get a good night's sleep and wait until morning, but in the morning the tube of wart-removal cream would still be sitting there next to your uneaten birthday cake, and you would feel as miserable as ever. (from The Miserable Mill)

It is true, of course, that there is no way of knowing for sure whether or not you can trust someone, for the simple reason that circumstances change all of the time.  You might know someone for several years, for instance, and trust him completely as your friend, but circumstances could change and he could become very hungry, and before you knew it you could be boiling in a soup pot, because there is no way of knowing for sure. (from The Vile Village)

Entertaining a notion, like entertaining a baby cousin or entertaining a pack of hyenas, is a dangerous thing to refuse to do.  If you refuse to entertain a baby cousin, the baby cousin may get bored and entertain itself by wandering off and falling down a well.  If you refuse to entertain a pack of hyenas, they may become restless and entertain themselves by devouring you.  But if you refuse to entertain a notion - which is just a fancy way of saying that you refuse to think about a certain idea - you have to be much braver than someone who is merely facing some bloodthirsty animals, or some parents who are upset to find their little darling at the bottom of a well, because nobody knows what an idea will do when it goes off to entertain itself, particularly if the idea comes from a sinister villain.  (from The Vile Village)

You might think that being humiliated, like riding a bicycle or decoding a secret message, would get easier after you had done it a few times, but the Baudelaires had been laughed at more than a few times and it didn't make their experience in the House of Freaks easier at all.  The Baudelaire orphans knew that they weren't really a two-headed person and a wolf baby, but as they sat with their coworkers in the freaks' caravan afterward, they felt so humiliated that it was as if they were as freakish as everyone thought. (from The Carnivorous Carnival)

Grief, a type of sadness that most often occurs when you have lost someone you love, is a sneaky thing, because it can disappear for a long time, and then pop back up when you least expect it.  With the Baudelaire orphans, it was as if their grief were a very heavy object that they each took turns carrying so that they would not all be crying at once, but sometimes the object was too heavy for one of them to move without weeping, so Violet and Sunny stood next to Klaus, reminding him that this was something they could all carry together until at last they found a safe place to lay it down. (from The Carnivorous Carnival)

It is hard for decent people to stay angry at someone who has burst into tears, which is why it is often a good idea to burst into tears if a decent person is yelling at you. (from The Carnivorous Carnival)

Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant, filled with odd waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like. (from The Slippery Slope)

It is always tedious when someone says that if you don't stop crying, they will give you something to cry about, because if you are crying then you already have something to cry about, and so there is no additional reason for them to give you anything additional to cry about, thank you very much. (from The Slippery Slope)

Deciding on the right thing to do in a situation is a bit like deciding on the right thing to wear to a party.  It is easy to decide on what is wrong to wear to a party, such as deep-sea diving equipment or a pair of large pillows, but deciding what is right is much trickier. (from The Slippery Slope)

If everyone fought fire with fire, the entire world would go up in smoke. (from The Slippery Slope)

It is one of life's bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting. (from The Grim Grotto)

If you are considering a life of villainy - and I certainly hope that you are not - there are a few things that appear to be necessary to every villain's success.  One thing is a villainous disregard for other people, so that a villain may talk to his or her victims impolitely, ignore their pleas for mercy, and even behave violently toward them if the villain is in the mood for that sort of thing.  Another thing villains require is a villainous imagination, so that they might spend their free time dreaming up treacherous schemes in order to further their villainous careers.  Villains require a small group of villainous cohorts, who can be persuaded to serve the villain in a henchpersonal capacity.  And villains need to develop a villainous laugh, so that they may simultaneously celebrate their villainous deeds and frighten whatever nonvillainous people happen to be nearby.  A successful villain should have all of these things at his or her villainous fingertips, or else give up villainy altogether and try to lead a life of decency, integrity, and kindness, which is much more challenging and noble, if not always quite as exciting. (from The Grim Grotto)

The way sadness works is one of the strangest riddles of the world.  If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire.  You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black.  You may find that happy things are tainted with sadness, the way smoke leaves its ashen colors and scents on everything it touches.  And you may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down. (from The Grim Grotto)

People aren't either wicked or noble.  They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict. (from The Grim Grotto)

Deciding whether or not to trust a person is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree, because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch, or you might simply get covered in sap, and for this reason many people choose to spend their time alone and indoors, where it is harder to get a splinter. (from The Penultimate Peril)

One can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways. (from The Penultimate Peril)

Dewey was wrong when he said that being noble enough is all we can ask for in this world, because we can ask for much more than that.  We can ask for a second helping of pound cake, even though someone has made it quite clear that we will not get any.  We can ask for a new watercolor set, even though it will be pointed out that we never used the old one, and that all the paints dried into a crumbly mess.  We can ask for Japanese fighting fish, to keep us company in our bedroom, and we can ask for a special camera that will allow us to take photographs even in the dark, for obvious reasons, and we can ask for an extra sugar cube in our coffees in the morning and an extra pillow in our beds at night.  We can ask for justice, and we can ask for a handkerchief, and we can ask for cupcakes, and we can ask for all the soldiers in the world to lay down their weapons and join us in a rousing chorus of "Cry Me a River," if that happens to be our favorite song.  But we can also ask for something we are much more likely to get, and that is to find a person or two, somewhere in our travels, who will tell us that we are noble enough, whether it is true or not.  We can ask for someone who will say, "You are noble enough," and remind us of our good qualities when we have forgotten them, or cast them into doubt. (from The Penultimate Peril)

There are some who say that you should forgive everyone, even the people who have disappointed you immeasurably.  There are others who say you should never forgive anyone, and should stomp off in a huff no matter how many times they apologize.  Of these two philosophies, the second one is of course much more fun, but it can also grow exhausting to stomp off in a huff every time someone has disappointed you, as everyone disappoints everyone eventually, and one can't stomp off in a huff every minute of the day. (from The Penultimate Peril)

It is very difficult to make one's way in this world without being wicked at one time or another, when the world's way is so wicked to begin with. (from The Penultimate Peril)

The burning of a book is a sad, sad sight, for even though a book is nothing but ink and paper, it feels as if the ideas contained in the book are disappearing as the pages turn to ashes and the cover and binding blacken and curl as the flames do their wicked work.  When someone is burning a book, they are showing utter contempt for all of the thinking that produced its ideas, all the labor that went into its words and sentences. (from The Penultimate Peril)

If you live among people, whether they are people in your family, in your school, or in your secret organization, then every moment of your life is an incident of peer pressure, and you cannot avoid it any more than a boat at sea can avoid a surrounding storm.  All day long, everyone in the world is succumbing to peer pressure, whether it is the pressure of their fourth grade peers to play dodge ball during recess or the pressure of their fellow circus performers to balance rubber balls on their noses, and if you try to avoid every instance of peer pressure you will end up without any peers whatsoever, and the trick is to succumb to enough pressure that you do not drive your peers away, but not so much that you end up in a situation in which you are dead or otherwise uncomfortable.  This is a difficult trick, and most people never master it, and end up dead or uncomfortable at least once during their lives. (from The End)

Sooner or later, everyone's story has an unfortunate event or two - a schism or a death, a fire or a mutiny, the loss of a home or the destruction of a tea set. (from The End)

There is a kind of crying I hope you have not experienced, and it is not just crying about something terrible that has happened, but crying for all of the terrible things that have happened, not just to you but to everyone you know and to everyone you don't know and even the people you don't want to know, a crying that cannot be diluted by a brave deed or a kind word, but only by someone holding you as your shoulders shake and your tears run down your face. (from The End)

It is likely your own eyes were closed when you were born, so that you left the safe place of your mother's womb - or, if you are a seahorse, your father's yolk sac - and joined the treachery of the world without seeing exactly where you were going.  You did not yet know the people who were helping you make your way here, or the people who would shelter you as your life began, when you were even smaller and more delicate and demanding than you are now.  It seems strange that you would do such a thing, and leave yourself in the care of strangers for so long, only gradually opening your eyes to see what all the fuss was about, and yet this is the way nearly everyone comes into the world.  Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the crimes, follies, and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all stay in our mother's wombs, and then there would be nobody in the world but a great number of very fat, very irritated women. (from The End)

The world, no matter how monstrously it may be threatened, has never been known to succumb entirely. (from The End)

Truth to Power

They that have power to hurt, and will do much,
Who do the thing they most do show, a lot:
The wrath of heaven rightly rests on such.
I think they should be taken out and shot.

To Althea, from Prison

Seventeenth-century English poet Richard Lovelace wrote this in 1642, after he was imprisoned by order of Parliament for his support of King Charles I and the Church of England.  It is a favorite poem of mine, one which has sustained me through many difficult times when I was limited by unfavorable circumstances.

When love with unconfinèd wings
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair
And fetter'd to her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air
Know no such liberty.

When flowing cups run swifly round
With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with roses bound,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
When healths and draughts go free -
Fishes that tipple in the deep
Know no such liberty.

When, like committed linnets, I
With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetness, mercy, majesty,
And glories of my King;
When I shall voice aloud how good
He is, how great should be,
Enlargèd winds, that curl the flood,
Know no such liberty.

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.

Redefining Failure

This article by Julia Baird appeared in the September 20, 2010, issue of Newsweek.  I don't particularly care for Newsweek and I don't generally post the recently-composed works of others to my blog, but Baird's thoughts on failure thrilled me, perhaps because they (and the framework in which she expresses them) provide an interesting comparison to my own.

We've spent more than 60 years dissecting Willy Loman, the character artfully sketched by Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman.  Willy is, perhaps, America's consummate loser, a failure to his family.  But if you can bear with me for one moment, imagine he lived in current times, not amid the postwar prosperity of 1949.  Sure, his career was ebbing, but Willy kept a job for 38 years, he owned his house - he had just made the last mortgage payment - and had a wife and two children.  Today he'd be a survivor.

Has our view of failure softened since Willy Loman's day?  Ina a country with a level of unemployment so high that it is likely to determine the outcome of the midterm elections, and where promotions, bonuses, and retirement savings seem like relics, failure is something many of us are wrestling with right now.  But if we begin to accept that success is not a simple, upward career trajectory, this economic crisis may not just reduce the stigma of being sacked but transform the way we think of failing.  Shocking as it sounds, failure can be a good thing.

It's true, recessions can wreck self-esteem.  In a nation built on success and a gloriously entrepreneurial spirit, the prospect of failure can make people fearful - and shameful - even when it is not their fault.  "There is a crash in every generation," wrote Arthur Miller in 2005, just before he died, "sufficient to mark us with a kind of congenital fear of failure."  Miller was commenting on a wonderful book by historian Scott Sandage called Born Losers: A History of Failure in America.  Sandage believes Willy Loman was a success.  But the message of the play, he says, is that "if you are not continuing upwards, if you level off, you have to give up.  You might as well not live."

We did not always believe this.  In his book, Sandage argues that America's ideas about failure were formed between 1819 and 1893, as busts followed a series of speculative booms.  Before then, failure was not associated with individual identity.  It just happened to you.  Bankruptcy was thought to come from overreach - living excessively - not from lack of ambition.  By the end of the 19th century, says Sandage, failure had gone from being a professional mishap to "a name for a deficient self, an identity in the red."  Ralph Waldo Emerson encapsulated this in his journal in 1842: "Nobody fails who ought not to fail.  There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune."  By the middle of the last century, at the time Willy Loman was hawking his wares, Americans could not face "the possibility of defeat in one's personal life or one's work without being morally destroyed," according to sociologist David Riesman.  (Which may be one reason why the suicide rate in the Great Depression was remarkably high.)

This foolish, dangerous idea is under assault right now.  Should financial success really be a moral imperative?  Why do we think that an ordinary kind of life is of lesser worth?  Studies have found that our most potent emotional experiences come from our relationships, not careers.  Those who work in palliative care report that, on their deathbeds, most people don't regret not having clambered a rung higher, but having worked too hard, and having lost touch with friends.

And history shows that it is only when the economy is in the mud that Americans feel free to do what they want to do.  As the author J.K. Rowling said so succinctly in her 2008 address to Harvard graduates, failure can mean a "stripping away of the inessential."  When she was an impoverished single mother, she started to write her magical tales: "I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.  You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity."  This doesn't mean it is an uplifting experience to be unemployed, of course.  But it may mean we ease up on some of the judgment that springs from the false idea that a person without a job has not just hit bad luck or a poor economy - but is a failure.  Having a job is hardly the only, or best, measure of a life.

It may also mean we can accept plateaus, understand that a life has troughs we can climb out of, and that a long view is the wisest one.  A recession is a great reminder that all of us need to learn, as Samuel Beckett said, to "fail better."  Which means rethinking what we really want to do with our lives, who we want beside us, and how we measure worth.  Think of poor Willy Loman.  Today his grandchildren might be proud.

If We Must Die

I've never been particularly tuned in to slang. When I was in high school, someone asked me why I was "cheesin'." I couldn't for the life of me figure out what she meant. "Maybe she wanted to know why you were smiling," my mother speculated when I told her. "You know, like smile and say cheese." According to Urban Dictionary, my classmate must have thought my smile was intense and a bit odd. If the kids in school liked something, it was "da bomb." I thought that was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard. What's so great about a bomb? It hadn't been so very long ago that a bomb in Oklahoma City killed over 150 people . . . and now "da bomb" had become the height of cool? I don't know . . . I just wasn't - how you say? - down with that.

Lately, though, there's a certain phrase that's been edging its way into my consciousness - and although it makes the grammarian in me cringe, and there's no absolute consensus as to what exactly it means, I've found myself growing fond of it. Although in some circles its overuse has caused it to lose its original geek cred and take on a certain air of lame loserdom, I for one would hate to see it go.

I'm talking about "epic fail."

As far as I can tell, the phrase came from the game Dungeons and Dragons, and was popularized through such avenues as the cable program Attack of the Show! and the notorious, hilarious Fail Blog. There are some who define "epic fail" as a funny failure, or a failed attempt to be funny. Others insist that epic fail requires the failure to be in a venture in which it should have been reasonably easy to succeed.

Most definitions, however, agree that "epic fail" is simply the highest - or should I say lowest? - degree of failure possible: the devastating, soul-crushing experience of putting your hand to the task before you, and seeing all your efforts prove completely, utterly, and forever futile. This is the definition I prefer. We all fail, often, and for the most part we get back up, dust ourselves off, learn what we can from the experience, and keep on muddling through life much as we did before. Epic fail allows no such luxury. Epic fail requires you to rebuild yourself, not from the ground up, but starting from the bottom of that hole you dug yourself into. You may learn what you can from your failure - to do so, in fact, may become a matter of survival, spiritually if not literally - but you can never go on again exactly as before. Something dies with every epic fail: a bond, a dream, a bit of our faith that the world will be kind to us and gentle with our hearts.

There's another aspect, though, reflected in numerous definitions of "epic fail," and this gets to the heart of why I love this phrase so very much. There's a kind of inherent irony to epic fail: something almost beautiful about devastation so complete, something purifying about having been stripped so bare. We've all heard, a thousand times, that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but how many of us have taken that thought through to its natural conclusion, incontestable under the rules of formal deductive logic (so long as we accept the premise to be true), that what doesn't make you stronger must perforce kill you? Epic fail is just that moment of truth. There's something about seeing your world lie in ruins around you that makes you think, I don't know how the hell I'm going to live this down, face other people again, repair my reputation, regain what I've lost, make up for the harm I've done, get over this hurt. Maybe I won't. Maybe it really is as bad as it feels. But if I somehow manage to make it through this, I have nothing left to fear. Not because of anything we've done, but simply because the mean business of living hasn't killed us yet, epic fail ends up feeling strangely like a victory. A hollow victory, a Cadmean victory perhaps, but - in the words of the geek subculture that spawned "epic fail" - nevertheless a win.

The ancients understood epic fail, certainly. So did Shakespeare. Great writers always have. Think of Oedipus, a favorite subject of ancient Greek playwrights. He's the king of Thebes - not a bad gig if you can get it, and all he had to do to get it was show up shortly after the last king disappeared. He didn't exactly marry for love, and his wife, a good twenty or so years his senior, is hardly the stuff that fantasies are made of, but they've had four children together, so it seems they're getting along, at the very least. Then he consults an oracle about ending a plague, and before he knows what's hit him his whole life unravels. Turns out he was adopted and some old guy he killed (pure self-defense, mind you) on the road to Thebes was his biological father, and that woman he's married to now was . . . well, you know. His mother/wife kills herself, he blinds himself and goes into voluntary exile, his sons fight for control of the kingdom and both end up dead (along with who knows how many of their followers), one of his daughters also commits suicide after being sentenced to be buried alive, the daughter's fiance kills himself out of love for her, and the fiance's mother (Oedipus's sister-in-law/aunt by marriage) kills herself out of grief for her son. How many people had to die because Oedipus got into a tussle on the road all those years ago without stopping to notice that the guy he was getting the best of looked an awful lot like him? Epic fail.

How about Hamlet? The last scene's a bloodbath. Everyone dies. Hamlet's father is dead before the play even begins. (So is Yorick, of course.) After that, all the loss of life that follows is, directly or indirectly, Hamlet's fault. By the time the grand finale comes around, the hero has already driven his girlfriend to suicide, perhaps because he killed her father. Even a couple of courtiers, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are done away with for no particular reason, and the play ends with four dead bodies littering the stage. It would be five; Hamlet's best friend nearly commits suicide - for no better reason, apparently, than that he feels something of an anachronism in modern Denmark - but Hamlet talks him out of it on the grounds that somebody who knows what happened needs to be left behind to explain this massive scene of epic fail.

Hamlet is only trying to do the right thing, of course. He isn't about to go into the throne room and stab his stepfather/uncle (who happens to be the king) on the word of some ghost - after all, it could have been a demon trying to make a murderer of him, couldn't it? It's probably wise not to take the word of a ghost at face value. You never know with otherworldly beings. It's reasonable to want confirmation of some kind. Of course, after he gets the confirmation he needs, Hamlet has the perfect chance to take a (literal) stab at Claudius when he catches him off-guard, at his prayers - but then again, it really isn't so perfect, because killing a man in prayer is a pretty sure way to send him to heaven, and that's not exactly the destination most of us have in mind for the murderers of our loved ones. He may have a perfectly good reason for his hesitation, but unfortunately, the longer he waits and worries, the more time Claudius has to grow suspicious of his unusual behavior and plot to get him out of the way - so by the time Hamlet is ready to act, he has the other people drawn into Claudius's schemes to reckon with, as well as the others around him who have been hurt or misled by his own actions as he prepares to do what he must.

The harder Hamlet tries to get it right, the more tangled the whole situation becomes, until finally there's no way out at all. I've never been in line for the throne of Denmark, never seen a ghost, never had to watch my mother warming my uncle's bed before my father was cold in his grave - but all of a sudden I get the feeling I've been there.

Of course, Shakespeare, the ancient Greeks, and your eleventh-grade literature teacher had a more proper name for this sort of thing: tragedy. Strictly defined, tragedy is the story of the downfall of a great man or woman, as the result of his or her own actions, resulting in far more painful a consequence than those actions would seem to deserve. The Greek word for the action on which the tragedy hinges is hamartia. In the Bible, this is the word rendered in English as "sin"; in discussion of the classic literary tragedies, it's often described as the "fatal flaw," or the one defect in an otherwise noble character that brings about tragic consequences. In Greek, the word simply refers to an act of missing the mark, as in archery. It has been suggested that a better interpretation of hamartia, in the tragic context, is simply "mistake." The tragic action may arise out of some defect of character, or even from a positive trait, but in a true tragedy, the action is wholly in line with the character of the individual who does it, and, once it begins, the course of the tragedy is inevitable and irreversible. Not every epic fail is a tragedy in this classical sense, but every tragedy is the story of epic fail. I don't suppose many literature teachers or Greek scholars would be amused to see "epic fail" replace "fatal flaw" as the standard translation of hamartia, but somehow it seems to me . . . well, not too far off the mark.

More than ever (if such a thing be possible), we in the Western world live in a culture of success. Children grow up hearing that they can become whatever they want to be, regardless of gender, disability, or family background. The nonfiction bestseller lists are full of helpful guides promising the ambitious reader the secrets of success: financial success, romantic success, social success - the quicker and easier the better. On TV we have American Idol, America's Next Top Model, The Apprentice, and their ilk; we can't seem to get enough of those ordinary folk whose talent and/or cleverness open the doors for them into fame, fortune, and glamour.

Yet even our most cherished success stories are inseparably bound up with failure. The catchphrases of our reality competition shows are taglines of shattered dreams: "The tribe has spoken." "You're fired." "You are the weakest link - goodbye." How many of these shows would be as successful if there were no vote, no boardroom, no tribal council - if there weren't a dozen stories of failure behind every tale of rags to riches? We love to watch people fail. We need to watch people fail, and spectacularly. It's reassuring. It's entertaining. It's brutal, and it's honest. Like pornography or a train wreck, you know it's a damn shame, but for some reason you just can't tear yourself away.

Now more than ever, we need epic fail. In a culture of success, we need to be reminded of our limits, our humanity, our frailty. Just as every death calls our attention to the inexorable ticking away of our own mortal hours, every failure forces us face to face with our own weakness and vulnerability. In a culture obsessed with success, failure is as great a taboo as death. We wish to distance ourselves from our own failures, to justify or explain them into something more innocuous; we look away uncomfortably from our uneducated or unemployed or unhappily-single friends, muttering under our breath that's it's okay, when we both know really it isn't, that it does make a difference, whether it ought to or not. We all say it's okay to fail, but we know in our heart of hearts that it's simply not socially acceptable. Like death, failure makes us intensely uncomfortable, even as it utterly captivates us.

There's a word in German, "schadenfreude," that refers specifically to the satisfaction we feel in the sufferings of others - not a keen, sadistic kind of pleasure, but rather a primitive, cheerless sort. Jane Kenyon wrote of "the cheerless satisfaction we sometimes feel when others fail." The offspring of schadenfreude and empathy is what the ancient dramatists called "catharsis": a powerful emotional purge, an intense swell of feeling that breaks the tensions building up under our civilized facades and reduces us to our most primitive reactions of laughter and tears. Catharsis leaves us emptied, cleansed, and new, refreshed in spirit just as we feel queasily, tentatively refreshed in body after vomiting. It's the same feeling that comes in the end to those who have failed mightily, and lived to struggle on.

The word "epic" was associated first with stories of fundamental human struggles: the struggle for love, the struggle for greatness, the struggle of good against evil. In recent years, it has come to encompass any story vast in scale, broad in scope, and touching upon universal human experience, yet transcending it: not merely heroism, but heroism above and beyond the call of duty; not merely love, but love in the face of opposition, cruelty, and death; not merely effort, but utter absorption and devotion to a cause; not merely failure, but utter devastation and loss. We may never experience a threat so dire, a love so profound, a cause so moving, but we need these stories nevertheless, the stories that remind us what we, as humans, are capable of, for good and for ill. We need epic love, epic heroism, epic struggle, and yes, epic fail. That which is epic speaks of and to a thousand human experiences of less staggering import.

What would Elvis Presley mean to us if he were (indisputably) still alive today, a stately gentleman in his mid-seventies, living comfortably off his old royalties? As talented a musician as he was, our fascination with his life is less about his art than about the story of a young man who had the world at his fingertips and ended up dead on his bathroom floor at the age of forty-two. Would the stories of Oedipus and Hamlet resonate so strongly over hundreds, even thousands, of years if the Theban king and the Danish prince had been able to muddle through the hard times, sort out their troubles, and restore order without recourse to the utter devastation of themselves and everyone around them? Oedipus is the successful CEO whose accountants are found out cooking the books and whose lovely wife of twenty years leaves him the day he files for bankruptcy. The high school valedictorian who drops out of college to raise a baby she didn't plan for is Oedipus too. Anyone who ever set out into the world with the best of intentions, only to be misjudged, thwarted, and ultimately dismissed, is Hamlet in spirit. When Scarlett O'Hara runs through the mist in Gone with the Wind, having just discovered herself to have been passionately in love all along with the husband who has adored her for years, only to get home and find him packing his bags to leave her, she stands for the soul of all of us who have ever given our best efforts, only to find them too little, too late.

Ultimately, though, we need epic fail because without the potential for disaster, there can be no great triumph, no "epic win." Experienced investors know that the riskier the stock, the greater the potential payout. No one ever went broke playing penny-ante, but no one ever made his fortune either. We need to embrace the challenges, make intelligent decisions even when the answers are uncertain, preparing ourselves to hit the ground even as we set our sights on the heavens. It's better to fail at something worth doing than to succeed at nothing worth mentioning.

My friend, I wish you the greatest success on the road ahead, whatever form that may take for you. But I wish you something more. I wish you to know the rebirth that comes in the wake of devastation. I wish you to understand how empty the human soul can be, and to discover the fresh green tendrils that sprout up from the ashes of the human heart.

My friend, I wish you epic fail.