More Optimism, Please

Winter returned to badger the optimists, but I know I must be resilient. "Resilience" is a word that landed on my desk in the late 90’s, when I worked in social services. It's a shiny concept that suddenly got credit for being the prime quality that helps kids survive tough childhoods. Resilience also seems to be the key to success in the writing field. To thrive, a writer must triumph over life’s hardships and survive the ordeals of the marketplace. Frank McCourt is a writer who did both with panache.

The early years of McCourt’s life were filled with sufficient illness, danger, and heartbreak to kill a child of lesser grit. He lost three siblings to disease and nearly died of typhoid fever himself before reaching adolescence. According to him, his hometown of Limerick was a place where dampness “created a cacophony of hacking coughs, bronchial rattles, asthmatic wheezes, consumptive creaks. It turned noses into fountains, lungs into bacterial sponges.” His father was an unrepentant alcoholic who drank up the family’s cash. Young Frank often resorted to stealing bread to help feed his hungry brothers and sisters.

When he reached the age of 19, McCourt moved from Ireland to New York City. After working in the hotel industry and completing a stint in the military, he eventually established himself as a public school teacher. Although McCourt taught writing for decades, scribbling his own work on the side, he did not publish the bestselling Angela’s Ashes until he had already retired from teaching.

I heard McCourt talk about his writing breakthrough when he visited Philadelphia to promote his second book,‘Tis. He was a hilarious public speaker, funniest when he described how his late in life success had inspired scores of old fogeys to leap out of their beds and begin writing memoirs. I got him to sign a book for me and couldn’t help noticing how all that hardship had left no trace of bitterness on his face. He was a truly resilient person whose long years of toil brought him prosperity, happiness, and a Pulitzer Prize at age 67.

Spring Cleaning and Artistotle

Signs of renewal are everywhere. The ice is gone, the mud's firmed up, and the fishermen are ready stock the pond. As spring rain fills our local stream, neighbors prune dead trees, cast out trash, and embrace the spirit of catharsis. Aristotle would be proud.

In his "Poetics", the Greek philosopher explored the ways in which catharsis buoys the power of classic tales. For Aristotle, great stories pushed a character (or reader) toward a huge release of pent up feeling. To achieve this effect, a story's audience must experience strong emotions that result in a purge of passion -- like weeping or belly laughs. Some iconic characters invite us to the passion party by forcing us to witness their tragic fate. Think of Anna Karenina or Jay Gatsby, whose out-sized dreams tipped the human seesaw too far.

But for every memorable character who falls off the cliff at the end of the story, there is one for whom catharsis results in a new life and a resurgence of hope. These are the characters who survive tremendous challenges, yet reach for goals they can achieve despite their frailties. Characters of spring have the pluck of busy birds making new nests in your local elm. Think of Miles in Rex Pickett's "Sideways" or Louisa May Alcott's Jo March.

Though the cold months of winter break down our resistance to despair, green buds restore a sense of hope. Forget Madame Bovary...Take a breath of optimism and let your characters lead lives they once thought impossible.

Victory in Print

Between the oaks and hemlocks, trees with less resilience fall. Many could not survive the rough winter. Yet even in the coldest months, Stieg Larsson's novels brought heat to our corner of these chilly woods. Such a shame he didn't live to write more about "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo".

Larsson gained world fame as a crime writer who created Lisbeth Salander, a unique female character who hacks computers and brings villains to their knees. He wrote the series as a kind of hobby to relax from the stress of his real work. For decades Larsson wrote journalistic articles that tracked the activities of neo-Nazi groups in Sweden. His grandfather was a strident anti-fascist who was punished in a Swedish work camp for his political views. Following his footsteps, Larsson wrote journalistic exposes of right wing extremists.

As a young man, Larsson traveled the world on a shoe string budget. To finance his travels he did things like work as a dishwasher and sell his own clothes. While he earned respect as a journalist, he did not live to enjoy the wealth produced by his mystery series (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest). There is still hope that a fourth novel will appear one day. But that won't happen until his family members settle a suit with Larsson's long time girlfriend who has possession of the material.

Apart from the unsettled financial questions, his death at the age of 50 inspired many conspiracy theories. Did Larsson really die of a heart attack after climbing several flights of stairs -- or was he victim of some insidious act? Regardless of what provoked his death, it's very sad that he did not live to celebrate the worldwide victory of his printed work. His writing somehow captures the prime threats and contradictions of our times. We could sure use more of it.

The Long Winter of the Oppressed

Dictators have fallen on hard times. Their ceaseless efforts to stifle human creativity are like old man winter's fruitless bid to suppress the arrival of spring. Tyrants hate the vitality inherent in artistic expression. As Erica Jong has said, "If sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activities, it's because they lead to the knowledge that you own your own body (and with it your own voice), and that's the most revolutionary insight of all."

In some societies, the church drives censorship...in others, the political class takes the initiative. But in the most heinous cases of artistic persecution, all public institutions coalesce to silence creative discourse. Nazi Germany had very efficient methods for eliminating those who chronicled its atrocities. Among the many artists who were exterminated by Hitler, Irene Nemirovsky stands out as a remarkably talented writer whose stories of Nazi occupation have all the emotional grandeur of a Tolstoy novel.

Nemirovsky did not survive her imprisonment in Auschwitz. But her work still stands as a testament to the strength of her creative spirit. She wrote, "My God! what is this country doing to me? Since it is rejecting me, let us consider it coldly, let us watch as it loses its honour and its life. And the other countries? What are they to me? Empires are dying. Nothing matters. Whether you look at it from a mystical or a personal point of view, it's just the same. Let us keep a cool head. Let us harden our heart. Let us wait."

As we watch the fall of distant empires, consider the range of truths still unspoken against oppressors large and small. Do not relinquish your pen. It's a powerful weapon in the hands of a committed writer.