Chaos, Coherence, and the Dream of a Narrative
By Porter Anderson (@Porter_Anderson) | December 17, 2021 |
At Notre Dame in Reims. Image – Getty iStockphoto: Josef Camera
Bringing Order Out of It
When the European Writers’ Council polled its member associations on how rough it’s been since March 2020 for the 158,000 writers represented by the organization, one of the questions they asked of their member associations was artfully phrased: “Were there any coherent compensation programs for writers and translators [offered] by your governments, e.g. monthly fixed state aid or short-term equivalents?”
Because many of the European cultures still maintain traditions of state support for their cultural assets, the answer – to an American, at least – looked heartening. During the pandemic-so-far, 59.26 of the writers’ associations in 24 countries said that yes, at least some such aid has been available. This thumbs-up came from cultures as disparate as Norway and Latvia, Northern Ireland and Corsica.
Needless to say, though, that left 40.74 percent reporting no such aid available. And the leadership of the council, which comprises 46 organizations in 31 countries overall – the German author Nina George is president – had shown a lot of foresight in asking whether coherent offers of aid had been presented. No wonder the council’s report is titled, “The Winter of Our Discontent.”
It has seemed from moment to moment, particularly in these recent omicronic weeks, that we’re watching the world’s scientists and researchers try to become writers.
The essential range of character types in our world’s struggle was selected in 2020: a new coronavirus, its maddening mutants, faithful medicos, ruthless politicians, victims, and heroes.
As always happens, the very attributes assigned to each of those archetypes created more confusion than clarity. Think of the “South African chapters,” when everyone rushed to praise the researchers for detecting a new variant at the state-of-the-art KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform in Durban, and then almost immediately enraged South Africans with potentially irrelevant travel restrictions from eight or more countries on the southern continent.
And since then, we’ve had the “Yes, But” chapters in which incomplete and contradictory studies have asserted that B.1.1.529 “omicron” is a variant that:
- might overrun our existing vaccines, might not;
- might be the fastest spreader imaginable, might not;
- might be as or more lethal than “delta,” might not;
- and/or might be upon us forever, might burn itself out within weeks.
It turns out that even science, in real time, is pretty messy, the labs-of-the-moment looking like what I call the landscapers’ “chaos corners” you find tucked out of sight in every garden in Italy.
The Going Gets Weirder
In a year in which travel was supposed to be dicey at best, some of us who cover the international book publishing industry found ourselves in as many as five countries on three continents between September and this month. “Remembering how to pack” actually was a thing. We got really good at doing antigen tests in our hotel rooms with live nurses on our laptops to observe and verify the results.
Provocations graphic by Liam Walsh
Enormous trade shows and book fairs that a year ago had expected to confine their output to glimmering digital events, found themselves welcoming tens and hundreds of thousands of people to physical gatherings. Guadalajara has just logged 251,900 attendees, albeit at a fair that normally sees 800,000.
Where a market’s book industry lacked the infrastructure – or the consumer habits – of online shopping, publishers and their authors have suffered. And yet in the well-rehearsed nations of the digitati and our online retail platforms, publishers and authors have seen gains.
What we tend to call chaos – from the yawning abyss, the khaos of ancient Greek – also has strange positives.
The news overnight (no, you hadn’t missed it) is that the 2021 flu vaccine you’ve had is mismatched for the main strain, H3N2. As if our already staggered health-care staffers can handle a bad flu season on top of a double assault from COVID-19 variants. The positive element of this is that we can understand what they’re telling us far better than we could have done two years ago. The 2021 flu vaccines are “still likely to prevent severe illness.” We get this now. We order more masks.
Nevertheless, this is when “the plot thins” would be a welcome phrase.
If I’m not too muffled by my KN95 here for you to read me, what I do want to say is that we who deal in one way or another with writing and storytelling have something of value to offer.
We’re already accustomed to the clamor of the character clashes; the aesthetic muck we can manage to make with too many plot thickeners; the marvelous messes we hide in our own “chaos corners.”
That’s why the European Writers’ Council knew to ask not about just any offer of state aid for creative workers but coherent aid.
And as the radiant, seductive aurora of another new year approaches us this time around, we’d do well to keep in mind that when coherence is not the rule of the day, we are more adept than many of our sisters and brothers at knowing there’s a narrative in there somewhere. We’ve seen the stories come together. We’ve shared the blessings of their coherence with those who needed it.
Not for nothing do we say, “bring order out of chaos.” Michelangelo knew what that meant when he searched for a sculpture inside a block of marble. We know what that means when we search for a coherent narrative for our characters, something to whisper in the stunning intimacy of our readers’ gorgeous minds. The dream of a narrative is not wrong, it’s our hope. It’s theirs, too, although they may be too confused to know that.
It may be the best thing we have to offer the world in 2022. So make it count, will you?
How are you doing at remembering your gifts and skills in coherence? Are you able to see the order behind our fascination with the chaos of the day?
@Porter_Anderson is a fellow of the National Critics Institute. He is Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives, the international news medium of Frankfurt Book Fair. He co-founded The Hot Sheet, a newsletter for trade and independent authors, which now is owned and operated by Jane Friedman. Priors: The Bookseller‘s The FutureBook in London, CNN, CNN.com and CNN International–as well as the Village Voice, Dallas Times Herald, and the United Nations’ WFP in Rome. is a recipient of London Book Fair’s International Excellence Award for Trade Press Journalist of the Year. PorterAndersonMedia.com
[coffee]
I always love your posts, Porter. They’re thoughtfully written and prompt as many questions as answers. (Something else we writers love to do!) I’m creating coherence in my own life through routines, both in the household and as much as possible in my writing life. It helps create a stronghold my family can depend upon as the world spins around us. It isn’t easy some days, but I work hard at it nonetheless, and I think it has truly helped calm some of that madness that was creeping over all of us through 2020 and much of this year, too. I’m keeping my eye on 2022 a d hoping for brighter times ahead…What else can one do? Doom and gloom is starting to get boring, not to mention exhausting
Heather!
So good to hear from you, thanks for dropping a note (and for the kind words, much appreciated).
You remind me that while I’m generally a foe of resolutions, I’ve wanted to spend this year-end period putting a few more routines into place for myself, too. You’re right that it’s calming, and some decent domestic repetition can be focusing and soothing. (Dogs know this. I understand that horses do, too, though I don’t know any horses personally.) During the winter break we do, I have more chances to get some habits installed, so I’ll work on that, I need them.
So thanks for that reminder. Hope your 2022 will be full of reliable routine. Personally, I could use a lot less exhaustion this time around. :)
Cheers!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Make it count. You bet. Now more than ever. Travel may be a confusing mess and our friends may exhibit vast range of behavior from masks off to bunker lockdown, but the good news is that book sales are everywhere booming.
Yes! It’s true! People are reading like crazy but reading what? Excellent fiction. Look at the best of the year lists. So many good books to read! Thus, not only does the world need stories, the world wants stories. So skip the hand-wringing and the “should I quit” thinking. Write! It’s the way out of our depression and despair. It is for me, anyway.
You’re so right, Don, and it’s great to hear from you.
The high level of quality out there is international, too, we’re seeing a lot of stunning work come in via translation. (If you haven’t read it yet, Bill Rodarmor’s translation of Nicolas Mathieu’s “And Their Children After Them” is terrific, just won the Albertine.)
I have to say, I’ve been cheered by how much uptake there is on strong nonfiction, too. With my own biases flying, of course, a lot of our best journalists have been taking “book leave” to write long-form analysis, and the audience is showing up for it. It’s a good moment for current affairs writing and critical thinking, considering where we are and where we don’t want to go in this country and several others.
Travel is deceptively interesting these days, by the way. Despite these atrocious air-rage moments we see on way too many flights, the international routes are actually all about cooperation. Huge numbers of flyers, dutifully working out the mask regulations, the testing — which test, how many hours before departure, what proof has to be shown, for which countries (all different), pre-flight forms, after-flight procedures. London has its “Day Two” test you have to do once there. And parts of the city look a bit like the post-war era, too many storefronts dark or boarded up.
So yes. As you’ve always told us.
Tension on every page.
Suddenly translated to life.
Intensity on every day.
So we must make it count.
Wishing you and the family a happy Christmas and rich 2022!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
The message here is one of my favorite of the year, Porter. Storytellers should be the world’s experts on “khaos”—seeing it for the raw potential that it brings, then finding a way to make meaning out of it. I would love a thinning of the plot, or at least to break much more often from the mesmerizing habit of watching the storm, in order to record what I see. Because there are truths here worth recording, gifts too if we’re quick enough to grasp them before the wind whips them out of sight and mind.
Hold on to your KN95s. And Happy Holidays!
So true, Therese!
If anything, I probably need a parallel column on what you’re saying about the chance — in fact, the duty — to record what we see in the storm. As good as we are at bringing narrative out of “khaos,” we also are the ones who need to capture the moments and signals and freakish sensations.
It reminds me of the difference in traveling to a beautiful place and living there. When I moved to Rome and Copenhagen, the last European spots I’ve lived for a while, I was struck by how in each locale, there was no time to really take in the amazing settings and sights around me. As a tourist, a visitor, you can do that. But if you live there, your job changes. You have to take it all in like grabbing laundry with both arms and trying to walk it to the next room without dropping anything. Living a life somewhere gets you past the visitor’s distance and makes every sound and sight and incident become just another element of the day’s chores and challenges.
So maybe to some degree, we need to keep that traveler’s distance, although we’re immersed in this strange place, living our lives. If we can remember to look up from the laundry, we might see the amazing angle of the floor, the tilt of the land.
Here’s to unmasking ourselves to the higher perspective, and you and the family have great holidays, too!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Can I say how much I love ‘chaos corners’? I got an instant visual of that closet in the hallway where you put all the stuff you can’t chuck yet. For me, at least, there’s a chance that somewhere in the debris is something valuable that I’ll find when I check back later. The frayed end of a string that I can follow out of the mess. Maybe this is why the act of sitting down to work every day calms me. I spend hours inside my story worlds, looking for that string. I also spend a lot of time in the woods where chaos reigns on the surface. But the implicit order is there if you can get still enough to feel it. Thank you for this today, and may you stay both safe and coherent.
Hey, Susan,
Thanks for the kind words, and you’re way ahead of me if you only have “that closet in the hallway.” I have multiple chaos corners around here and myriad promises to myself to get in and declutter them. That “frayed ened of a string,” yes.
The woods are fascinating — any natural setting is — for, as you say, that chaos on the surface but such amazing underlying order. I try to flatter myself that there’s order underneath my surface chaos, lol.
“Implicit order,” yes, that’s what we’re going for, thanks again, and keep looking for it — safety and good coherence for the holidays to you, too!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hey Porter, good to see you. Wonderful post!
It’s ironic how, just the other night, I also decided upon the “winter of our discontent” when ruminating over the past couple of years. And you hit the nail on the head with “chaos corner.” I truly have been in one, as I’ve gone through four deaths in two short years. Granted, two were my dogs, but one was my father and the other, my twin sister. My dogs were expected — one had cancer and the other, Cushing’s, so I was treating them with end-of-life care — but my father and sister were tragically unexpected.
So as I sit in a chaos corner sifting through the aftermath of the death of loved ones, I could either go crazy, or turn it around and make good use of it. I’ve done a little of both. I’m over the “crazy,” for the most part, and have moved into writing about it like crazy. And Teri’s new book (Out of Head, into Heart) is helping me work through it as well.
Happy holidays, my friend. And stay safe!
Mike I’m so sorry about all the losses you’ve endured. Writing can be such a balm. May God console and comfort you.
Oh, Vijaya, you sweet soul. Thank you very much. That means the world to me. I’ve appreciated the support I’ve gotten through the WU community and, after reading Grace’s interview with you, I feel I know you so much better and on a more personal level, even though we’ve never met. Thanks again. You take care and have a blessed season.
Mike,
What a difficult time you’ve had, very sorry to hear it. There are certainly times when you can feel like a chaos corner, yourself, I agree. The impact of multiple upheavals is very hard to handle (and you’ve certainly had yours).
One of the few things I’ve found helpful in such turmoil (and especially grief) is to allow myself to focus on a single task at a time. Steven Pressfield has written about a moment like this, too, when he found that simply letting himself wash the dishes started bringing him back to a more stable spot. And writing, of course, can be just that, particularly if you’re also good at allowing yourself to focus tightly on one part of a work.
At any rate, I hope you’re finding some peace in the season and seeing a path forward. The work, as I’ve always said, is what grounds me, but this is quite different for many people. Whatever works is what’s important.
All the best and thanks for reading me!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Your world-travel perspective is different from mine, Porter, though soon we fly to visit family and yes N95 covering our smiles while we wait to embrace our grandchildren. Writing saves me. Reading saves me. But that’s always been true. Wishing you health and good reading always. Beth
Thanks, Beth,
And I hope your travel to see the family has gone — or will go — very well.
The self-tests right now are much too expensive, but if you can get a few, that’s the way to go.
It’s great this year to see whole families testing, sometimes in the car just before walking in, so they’re sure they’re not inadvertently passing something on to loved ones. I’ve used BinaxNOW and iHealth’s tests with really good results.
(In overseas trips, I use the Ellume test kit or Go/Now — and once the Lucira test in England — with the service from Azova.com that gives you a live nurse-proctor on the screen to verify formally the results. This is always easily accepted by the authorities, I’m finding, unless it’s a full PCR they need. (I’ve had 12 PCRs this fall so far, lol.)
And yes to the salvation of writing and reading, indeed.
All the best for a great new year!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Thoughts on a page, whether a diary, an important letter, a meaningful blog post, or working out the emotional arc of a fictitious character, amounts to therapy for me. Quitting is not an option.
Hi, Veronica,
And thanks for dropping a note. A agree that the kind of writing that can be therapeutic hardly has to be one thing or another. I sometimes find just doing a new year message can be very helpful because it organizes my thoughts — gets me out of the chaos corner, lol — and pulls together the logic I need to put across an idea.
All the best with it in the new year!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Enjoyed your essay, Porter. And aren’t we blessed to be writers–spent most of the day on my back porch writing Christmas cards because it was beautiful, sunny and 75. Can’t beat it. There’s a very clear narrative in my head, pretty much that of a dystopian novel, but I’m not going writing it. Instead, I marvel at how faith inoculates against fear. I watched a little duck swimming happily and as soon as the alligator dropped a bit below, the duck flapped its wings and flew to the bank. He’s a little fellow but I’ve been watching him for nearly a month on my walks. That little duck is so ducky! Merry Christmas Porter.
Hi, Vijaya (and to your ducky duck, lol).
It sounds like he has very good sense about what to do when the alligator submerges. That’s faith, yes, but also the cleverness we all owe our faith — watching for what smart moves we can make, ourselves, to help with the inoculation. :)
I love this quote, from Christian Nestell Bovee: “Panic is a sudden desertion of us, and a going over to the enemy of our imagination.”
Hoping that your Christmas is a grand one, and that 2022 will be a ducky new year, Vijaya!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Late to the party, but this quote from Natalie Goldberg is timely, and timeless: “In the middle of the world, make one positive step. in the center of chaos, make one definite act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. just write. Just write. Just write.”
Ha! I’m later than you answering everyone (as usual), you’re hardly alone.
And thanks for the beautiful Goldberg quote, I love the concept of “the center of chaos.” Isn’t it interesting how we always feel chaos (and the world) as being all encompassing, surrounding us? That’s part of the debilitating impact, of course, and Goldberg’s zen-smart pressure to “just write” is really wonderful.
Thanks for this, and for the note!
Best for 2022,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson