WWII created a generation of men who were competent killers in a time when killing was much more personal than it is now. These men were hailed as heroes, though they were traumatized, and their families were seriously disrupted, even though women had been taught to compensate and idealize. The men who were not in the military had a head start in several ways but were careful to honor fellow warriors.
These military men became a class of proud leaders who were not finicky about what they did but excellent at organizing and collaborating. They are about gone. Following them were the Fifties men in suits who lived in ticky-tack and dreamt of cowboys. Contempt for suburban men was widespread, a disqualification in the eyes of the next "phase" which was rebels, romantics, and hippies. Then came the computer and its technicians. Somewhere in there was the gender role revolution. Men were always the same physical sex, but now they came out in the open to claim roles they often considered classic. This prepared us for the wave of ethnic and indigenous men who believe in family.
You might not agree with all that or have formed your own version, but when I consider the past I've lived, I think in terms of these levels and reactions. The story I've lived is about is about eighty years long. Since moving here, ironically I discovered a third cousin who thinks this way, yet lives where I grew up and walks some of the same paths through this incredible history. I've only been encouraged.
But sometimes I'm confused. In the beginning, trotting alongside Bob Scriver, I was perfectly confident that creating bronze portrayals of the people and animals of the high prairie was among the highest achievements of the time and place. I still get inquiries from people (men) whose grandfathers were friends of Bob's, consider that a mark of distinction, and bought bronzes on the strength of that. But Bob's military service was in a military band in Alaska -- it was his brother who saw combat and was never the same, but came home to maintain the family mercantile store the way it always was. As time went on, Bob -- who was already middle-aged while I was more of a kid than my age justified -- went more right-wing because that's where the customers were and that's where the art hustlers were. We were out of sync. Then in 1970, I asked him to divorce me because he obsessed that I would take half his wealth. He'd been seized by capitalism. And the need for control.
All this has literary reflections in terms of what sells and how publication is practiced, but also in terms of what people write or want to write. My generation venerated a three-legged stool: Hemingway with his European notions of the strong man; Steinbeck with his interest in cultures; and Faulkner the gentleman in a monstrous world. After Vietnam, none of that could be written in those ways again. Note that there are no women.
I'm reading "Sahara Unveiled" (1996) by William Langewiesche, one of my most admired authors. It's a simple, elegantly written travelogue that no woman could write because, as we see from the news, single women in the world this way can be grabbed and savaged, even if they have escorts with cameras. Barry Lopez writes along these same lines. (https://theweek.com/articles/831965/barry-lopezs-6-favorite-books-about-unfamiliar-places) Dave Lull sent me a link to Lopez' list, which I intend to pursue. This is the way that Ivan Doig set out to write, before he veered off into family and pinafore adventures, which pay much better.
Reading this category of writing is one way I survive our times. No one ever expected a time so degenerate and sadistic. We knew there would be a culture war between the old people who clung to WWII values and the young people who wanted to redefine war, nations, ownership, corporations, and the whole fucking system. No one thought voting would be so irrelevant or that we'd take every species on the planet into oblivion with us through the simple mechanism of climate change. Yet the climate always changes. Democracy is an invention with a lot of other inventions on its back. What do we do next?
So what is a writer supposed to do? Blog, I say. But also vlog, go to the images that carry the underworld of "felt meaning," embodied thought. In fact, we know so much more now about how the body forms meaning that we realize it's often arbitrary. Stigma is one of the most destructive ways of guiding it. We need powers of enlightenment.
Much is guided by social networks, people in touch and talking. This turns out to be impossible with my generational family who cling to their immigrant homesteader image (Scots on the prairie) surviving by denying disruptive knowledge and keeping their secrets to themselves as though no one else ever had them. But then it turns out that I have a third cousin who lives today a few blocks up the Portland street from where I grew up. Our great-grandmothers were five Scots sisters who married broadly different men. This cousin turns out to be much like me -- restless, literary, trying to help people, and willing to turn over the past no matter what falls out. It seems genetic.
So now my literary context is supported to a degree. The trouble is that when I try to imagine the future it comes out at a smoky stone croft in the Highlands and myself something like the "Last of the Jedi" in a hooded cloak, carrying a staff. It's hardly unique. The "war" in the "Star Wars" series is perpetual, binary, includes women, scatters the nations across planets, and uses tropes from the past. The devisor is not Scots. It's largely based on explosions rather than discussions of what is good, sustaining, worth sacrifice, and shelters us all. Maybe that's what print should be addressing. Although, how can we not write about concentration camps invented with cyclone fencing under a bridge?
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