Nick Kocz's Ridiculous Words
  • SM Thayer
  • About
  • Writing
  • Contact
  • Blog

The D'Aguiar Interview

4/8/2014

 
PictureFred DAguiar
Fred D’Aguiar, the poet and novelist  whose most recent book about the 1978 Jonestown mass suicides (CHILDREN OF PARADISE) is earning wide-spread praise, sat down with me a couple of weeks ago to discuss his impulse towards writing about tragedies.  The result of our conversation was published earlier today at The Rumpus, and it’s well-worth checking out for D’Aguiar’s consistently excellent and thoughtful responses.

Readers of this blog will recall my praise for his novel last month, but you might also want to check out CONTINENTAL SHELF, his 2009 poetry collection that contained “Elegies,” his long and masterful ode the victims of the April 16, 2007 Virginia Tech shootings.  I referred to that poem several times in the course of our interview.  Because CONTINENTAL SHELF was only published (to my knowledge) in England, it really didn’t receive the attention it deserved in this country. 

My conversation with Mr. D’Aguiar actually ran quite a bit longer than what was published in The Rumpus.  Bits and pieces were cut by me from the transcribed conversation because of space considerations.   The other day, I found myself thinking about one of those unpublished bits:

     NK:   Can you recall where you were—you would have been in London, I guess, when you first heard of Jonestown, the massacre and suicides?  Can you recall that moment vividly?


     Fred D’Aguiar: It wasn’t a moment.  It was a series of days and weeks…The news traveled more slowly back in the 1970s.

     NK:  I was remembering that the other day.  In this country, we heard first of  Congressman Leo Ryan’s shooting a day after the fact.  Then, dribs and drabs of the mass suicides came out over the following days.

     Fred D’Aguiar: It was a real trickle.  And the good thing about a trickle of news is that you’re able to listen and hear.  It settles in the body, and then it gets corrected slowly.  Right now, the news goes off as a kind of bombardment and there’s no real sense of deciphering it.  You have to hear fact, counter-fact, a barrage of them.  So what you’re doing, which is what I find now, I’m responding to a portion of those facts and trying to slow down my response. 

     Whereas, back then, you heard something, and then the picture was gradually added to, incrementally, and so you were able to digest the news and theorize about it.  Whereas, now, there’s no chance to make a theory.  There’s all these quick responses are fired off.  And people are doing things now where they’re even firing off a response before they’re even accepting what’s going on around them, so in the middle of something happening, people are sending off news about responses.  How can you respond to it if you’re only in the middle of it?  So what’s happening is that they’re only half-engaged. 

     So, for me, that time was the privileged time that’s now lost forever, but it meant that you could hear the news and really listen to the news.

The other day, The Washington Post published an article about how digital and online reading is changing the way we process information.  The brain is a highly adaptive organ.  Neuroscientists warn that the short sentences, quick links, and the constant impulse towards “non-linear” jumps that one typically finds when reading online articles and websites is re-wiring our brains.  Comprehension issues are at stake.  Anecdotal evidence exists that college-age students are no longer able to access complicated sentence structures, thus perhaps forcing educators to dumb-down assigned texts.

“I can’t tell you how many people have written to me about this phenomenon. The students no longer will or are perhaps incapable of dealing with the convoluted syntax and construction of George Eliot and Henry James,” said Maryanne Wolf, a Tufts University cognitive neuroscientist.

So how does this relate to the quickening pace in which television news organizations report events around the world?  Well, I wonder if the flood of information somehow deadens our abilities to understand what is happening.  Or even empathize with what the victims of a tragedy experience. 

We’ve all experienced times when we’re been riveted to the television for hours on end during the course of some national or international tragedy.  Although television is a great medium for delivering images, it’s a horrible medium for conveying anything but a superfluous understanding of root causes and in-depth analysis.  So, to fill air time, we’re bombarded with snap judgments, quick opinion polls, and video collages.

I can’t any longer access a bygone era in which news was delivered at a slower pace, but my suspicion is that, in the absence of a constant stream of new information, our minds become more active in sifting through and understanding what has been delivered.  We step in and imagine, for instance, what it must have been like to be a child who is forced by a parent or cult elder to sip the Dixie Cup of Kool-Ade that Jim Jones has just poured for you.  We imagine, for instance, what it must have been like to listen to the agonizing moans of those dying all around Jonestown’s central pavilion.  We imagine, for instance, what it must have been like to experience the great events of our lives.

~~~

Thank you for stopping by this blog and reading this post.  If you have time, please check out some of my other postings.  Here’s an older one about my 2011 Thanksgiving.  And here’s one about my feelings toward Jane Fonda, cosmetics and beauty.



Comments are closed.

    Categories

    All
    Adam Johnson
    Alan Cheuse
    Alexander Solzhenitsyn
    Alexi Zentner
    Amber Sparks
    Amy Rowland
    Andrew Wylie
    Andy Warhol
    Anna Snoekstra
    Ann Patchett
    Arsène Wenger
    Aubrey Hirsch
    B.A. Paris
    Barack Obama
    Ben Fountain
    Ben Marcus
    BEST DAY EVER
    Bob Dylan
    Book Reviews
    Bryan Furuness
    Cathy Day
    Children Of Paradise
    Chimamanda Adichie
    Christine Butterworth-McDermott
    Daniel Patrick Moynihan
    Dave Housley
    David Bowie
    David Foster Wallace
    David Lynn
    Donald Barthelme
    Donald Trump
    Don't You Cry
    Ed Falco
    E.M.Forster
    Emma Chapman
    Emmanuel Adebayor
    Flannery O'Connor
    Flash Fiction
    Frank Conroy
    Fred D'Aguiar
    F. Scott Fitzgerald
    Gabriel Blackwell
    George Harrison
    George Saunders
    Gillian Flynn
    Girija Tropp
    Harper Lee
    Heart
    Hillary Clinton
    I Will Never Leave You
    Jacob Appel
    James Lasdun
    James Tadd Adcox
    Jane Fonda
    Jeff Ell
    Jenniey Tallman
    John Cusack
    John Lennon
    John Updike
    Joyce Carol Oates
    J. Robert Lennon
    Julie Lawson Timmer
    Kaira Rouda
    Kate Atkinson
    Keith Banner
    Kenyon Review
    Kim Jong Il
    Kyle Minor
    Lance Olsen
    Len Kuntz
    Lenny Dykstra
    Leslie Pietrzyk
    Lily Hoang
    Lisa Jewell
    Lou Reed
    Luke Geddes
    Mary Kubica
    Melissa Febos
    Milan Kundera
    Molly Gaudry
    Nicholson Baker
    Notes For My Biographer
    Pablo Picasso
    Paula Hawkins
    Paul Maliszewski
    Paul Mccartney
    Philip Roth
    REAL: Regarding Arts & Letters
    Richard Peabody
    Rick Moody
    Robert Kloss
    Robert Smartwood
    Roxane Gay
    Shirley Hazzard
    S.J. Watson
    S.M. Thayer
    SM Thayer
    Stéphane Hessel
    Stuart Dybek
    Submission Fees
    Sven Birkerts
    Tadeusz Borowski
    The Beatles
    The Fall Guy
    The Girls In The Garden
    The Good Girl
    The Official Catalog Of The Library Of Potential Literature
    Thomas Mallon
    Tim O'Brien
    Tony Earley
    Umberto Eco
    Virginia Woolf
    Wells Tower
    Willem De Kooning
    Working Class Hero

    Archives

    August 2018
    January 2018
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    September 2015
    February 2015
    November 2014
    September 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    May 2013
    March 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.