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Writers Notebook

dan lungu

(Auto)biography and empathy

On no few occasions, at various readings, I have been asked how much of what Iwrite is autobiographical. Almost every time, I hesitate to answer, not because I

have anything to hide, but because before each audience you have to find thesuitable nuance. Ultimately, I would answer, Everything is autobiographical,were I not convinced that I would be misunderstood. I dont know why, but Icannot reconcile myself at all with a restrictive definition of theautobiographical and I am convinced that in what an author does it is hisbiographical experience, to a greater or lesser extent, that reverberates. Thisis not a plea for dry biographical readings of the literary text, but rather for adifferent understanding of (auto)biography. For me, biographical experience is asuitcase that is much more capacious than it seems at first sight. It is not onlyeveryday events or objective occurrences that are part of my past, but also manyexperiences for which you cant find the most suitable word: a sensation, a smell,a landscape, the fulguration of a thought or a fear. Then, my life is not onlymade up of what happens to me. I have a family, friends, neighbours, relatives,

acquaintances, to all of whom things happen to which I have access as a spectatoror, quite simply, things which relate to me. To the extent that an event followedfrom a distance or merely read about in a newspaper has shaken me or set me tothinking, it begins to be part of my life. The emotion aroused in me by a womanon the bus telling me a story about her sons divorce was so strong that I wouldclassify it at unforgettable. I wasnt the protagonist of the event, but theamplitude of the experience drew me so close to it that I would not hesitate tosay that it was an autobiographical event. The same thing happens with books thatmove me deeply: they are no longer merely literary experiences, but, through theireffect at the time, they become concrete occurrences, events. I think that I canremember more books from childhood than what we conventionally call events. All Iremember is that they moved me or marked me in some way, and here books by farsurpass reality. This is as regards myself. For others, things may stand

differently. Thus, I believe that (auto)biographical material is polymorphous,not to mention the fact that a socialised I becomes plural in differentcontexts, which considerably multiplies the number of potential (auto)biographies.It is but a short step from saying this to saying that the novel is thegeometrical locus of possible autobiographies. I would hazard to say this,especially in the case of those authors, of which I am one, who are empatheticto their characters. For, what else is empathy except the capacity to putyourself in anothers place? But this means viewing the world as if you had hisbiography behind you. Thus, the others biography becomes a pseudo-biography. Ina way, this is the relationship between the author and the world he creates.

Avatars of the generic reader

Asked at a round table discussion once about whom or about what kind of reader Iam thinking when I write literature, I answered without hesitation: about no one when I write its a case of ferocious egoism. I have to confess that this answertook even me by surprise. But as it wasnt the first time spontaneous sincerityhas confronted me with thoughts apparently foreign to my nature, I took thesubject home for further reflection. In order for you to understand me better, Imust add that I am not one of those writers writers for whom I have an especialadmiration who polish their sentences to the point of musical brilliance, andnor am I a withdrawn type of person, or, even worse, one of those blokes with aninflated and vitreous ego who think that because they know the world it issufficient for you to see its reflection in their work. And nevertheless I was

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capable of giving the answer I gave.I meditated both on the content of the answer and on the categorical manner of itsdelivery. Ultimately, in the process of writing as such, the psychologicalcombustion is so intense that you cannot emerge from a world that is in the throesof genesis in order to examine it in an objective manner. At the time, you arenot thinking about anything external, you are wholly absorbed by atmosphere andcharacters, you dont have time even to cast a glance at yourself, the author.The ferocious egoism I was talking about is nothing other than total immersion

in a magmatic world, a world whose landmarks are shifting; it is the temporary andcreative incapacity to relate to others as persons in the flesh and blood. Idont think that this is the moment when the author adjusts his project to others,when he relates to a generic reader. This is more likely to happen in theprojects period of gestation, and, eventually, in collaboration with the editor,after the first draft of the text is ready. As for me, I cannot identify anyconcrete moment in which I have asked myself about my ideal reader. The firstcondition for my relationship with the text to work is for me to like it unreservedly, if possible. If it doesnt turn out like this, I have a seriousproblem of inner coherence. The fact that I have to like it doesnt mean that Iregard my taste as infallible or consummate not in the least but rather that Ihave to be responsible to myself in what I do. Otherwise, I cannot continue. So,the ideal reader to whom I relate when I write is myself. There is nothing

haughty or egoistical in this statement. It is a matter of an I myself that candiffer from one book to another.The trenchant way in which I answered set me to thinking. My style is usuallymuch more nuanced. Analysing it in retrospect, I think that my assurance camefrom the legitimacy of the answer. Ill explain what I mean. The existence of ageneric reader to regulate the narrative discourse of the writer and thisabove all in a society in which the after-effects of totalitarianism can still befelt is, at least psychologically speaking, hard to accept. Under thedictatorship, which from the very start imposed on writers a so-called creativemethod, this generic, all-powerful and all-seeing reader could be likened only tothe censor. The censor was the first reader, the one who tortured the writersconscience, who made him give up sentences before writing them or mutilate thembefore taking them to his editor. Thus, the presence of any authority external to

creation that might conduct in one way or another the authorial discourse is stillviewed with great suspicion. For writers of a certain age from Eastern Europe,the autonomy of art is much more than a mere uncoupling of creation from externalconditions: it is a defensive reflex of individual freedom. Hence, probably, mycategorical manner in formulating the answer.Of course, the majority of writers, creators of aesthetic jewels or imaginaryworlds, often want to transform readers into faithful inhabitants of their worlds.The fascination they exert over the other does not leave them cold, but nor doesit transform them into pragmatic managers of sensations or Machiavellianstrategists of prevailing tastes. I think that most of them are capable ofdecrypting post factum their own strategies of persuasion, of evaluating theirstrong points, but any rational and planned manipulation of public response isdoomed to failure from the start. At least from the viewpoint of the writer.

Obviously, the editor can have wholly different plans, but he cannot make themuntil he has the manuscript on the table.As for me, the literature I write functions on many levels at the same time, andso it can find an echo in different social media. Obviously, this is a qualitythe editor prizes. Ultimately, it is one of the tricks of postmodernism, which,using irony, parody and pastiche, arrives at a literature which, appreciated bydiverse audiences, temporarily reconciles economics and aesthetics. Of course, itis not from such reasoning that I set out when I write literature, but from theway in which I relate to reality. I think that it is precisely the complexityof reality and the ways in which it is constructed and unravelled before our veryeyes, its dynamic and plastic character, that are the primary material of the

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novel. The pluralism of viewpoints and attitudes, the polyphony of voices, theclash of mentalities, and the perverse effects are part of this fragile and at thesame time durable construct we call reality, which the novel can explore for thebenefit and delight of the reader. From such a perspective, reading can only bemultiple. If this can reconcile the elite with the popular audience, then so muchthe better.

Miserabilism or post-traumatic realism

Without having set out to do so, many of the writers who came to the fore in the1990s share a relatively common vision. Reality is tinted black, and caricature,derision, sarcasm, caustic humour, the absurd, and the bizarre are in theforeground. A critic such as Daniel Cristea Enache was inspired to classify themunder the heading post-socialist realism, but most often they are called, moreor less pejoratively, miserabilists. The adoption of a direct style and thecultivation of colloquial language or slang represent one piece in a largerpuzzle. The literature dubbed miserabilist accumulates a number ofcharacteristics: described in brief, it explores everyday misery, marginal socialworlds, the periphery and provinces, places with no horizons, petty lives, andlarval existence, it focuses on grotesque and repulsive details, it cultivates an

oral style, slang, and crude, direct, indecent or even vulgar expression, itdwells on the subject of sexuality to the point of being accused of pornography.The characters are socially dclasss or anomic: labourers, the unemployed,mutants of communism, failures, pensioners, drug addicts, alcoholics, suicides, atelephone sex line worker, listless youths, the hopeless, the disillusioned, theinsolent, the bored. Thus, viewed from the outside, this is a dismembered,asocial and ugly world peopled by anti-heroes. Viewed from within, it is anordinary, normal world, the world of (post)communist Romania. The phrasing isoften direct, brisk, dry. The tone varies from neutral to sarcastic, fromcomprehensive to judgemental, from bloody-minded to disillusioned. The authors ofsuch a literature are regarded as minimalists, anti-elitists, anti-intellectuals, miserabilists, and sometimes as uncultivated. I have tried todraw up a list of the writers in whose books are presented, at least partly, the

above-mentioned characteristics, without any claims to being exhaustive. Inprose: Radu Aldulescu, R zvan Petrescu, Petre Barbu, Cornel George Popa, Daniel B nulescu, Lucian Dan Teodorovici, Sorin Stoica, Alexandru Vakulovski, Ioana Bradea, Cosmin Manolache, Adrian Schiop, Ionu Chiva, Dan ranu, and, by your leave, the last in the list, I the undersigned. In poetry: Mihail G l anu, O. Nimigean, Constantin Acosmei, Dumitru Crudu, Marius Ianu, Dan Sociu, RuxandraNovac... What we can easily observe is their relative heterogeneity. Differentages, generations and literary groups, and, not least, notable differences ofstyle. Miserabilism is not the ideology of a particular group: we find theNineties Generation, Fracturists, Club-Eight-ists, Millenarianists andindependents here all together. What unites them is (with the exception ofR zvan Petrescu) a post-revolution debut and a shocking vision of reality. Plus a stigma.

We have now seen in broad terms what and whom we are talking about when we speakof miserabilism. Now lets move on to the reproaches. Besides vulgarity andpornography, in the press and in private discussions I have also met: theydescribe an ugly world and reveal all that is ugliest in man, they reveal to usa misery which in any case we see on the street every day, Im too well bred toread anything like that, things like that shouldnt be included schooltextbooks. There are, of course, many others. The accusation that theirliterature reflects in a direct way everyday misery seems to me the most serious,because it disqualifies it, either in the form of non-recognition of its artisticquality, or in that of framing it within a historically dated realism. This iswhy I think it deserves a wider-ranging discussion. The answer to this objection

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is that the miserabilists view of reality is not culturally innocent, it isguided by an aesthetic attitude, and the miserabilist depiction of the everydayperfectly inscribes itself in the logic and dynamic of the Romanian artisticfield. The fall of censorship is a necessary condition, but not sufficient forthe emergence of such a literature; it creates a context of freedom of expression,but it does not explain the succession of artistic forms.We know very well that artistic movements succeed each other according to a logicof distinction, both at the level of representation and of attitude.

Miserabilist realism gains tautness and distinguishes itself, in variousaspects, from the multiple literary forms practised during the communist period.It is opposed both to socialist realism and the literature obsessed with powerrelations, as well as to fabulist or stylistically escapist literature. Post-communist realism cultivates the photographic negative of socialist realism (anideological fiction, in fact), in which joyful, self-sacrificing people, under thepaternal protection of the Party, built a luminous future for the homeland. Toself-confident optimism and irreproachable morality with a whiff of propaganda areopposed despair, disgust, doubt, disillusion, moral misery. To problematisingpolitical realism, obsessed with the theme of power, in which charactersintegrated into the system, who master the jargon and logic of the regime, resolvevarious familial or social dilemmas, a good opportunity for allusions andknowing winks, the miserabilists oppose peripheral worlds, with under-

socialised and apolitical characters, slang and direct expression. The powerrelations that describe the macro-social reality and order are replaced with theprecarious relations of everyday life, in a micro-social reality dominated bydisorder. Fabulist and cautious expression is replaced with directness, love ofbeauty with authenticity. To language that is literary at any cost andbeautiful words are opposed recuperation of various everyday idioms and lexicaldemocratisation. To the realism cultivated or allowed by the one-party state isopposed a post-socialist, post-traumatic realism stripped of ideology, but notlacking in personal attitude.And so, this is the context in which, with the suppression of censorship and inthe logic of the succession of literary forms through distinction, colloquiallanguage and slang have massively entered the literature of the youngergeneration. One of the great gains is the exploration of new zones of expression

and aesthetics which, be it because of censorship, be it because of an aestheticautonomy understood in a rigid way, had long remained in the shadow.