Writing something down makes it real. Until you do it’s just a collection of thoughts in your mind, likely incoherent. It’s in the act of writing that you’re forced to work out the incongruities your mind glosses over and from there the story truly takes shape. It’s also the point where the story no longer depends on you to exist in the world.
This is where I announce that I’ve got a novel almost ready for you. Originally I’d planned on self-publishing alongside this story — but instead I’ve submitted to a new local press. I like the cut of their jib and am interested to see if the feeling is mutual. If they’re interested it’ll be released on their schedule, whatever that is. If not I’ll publish shortly after their rejection letter, should I get one at all. They say I’ll know by September. So if you like what you read here like, subscribe, and all that jazz for notifications about Gregaro McKool’s That Naked Dream —or— Men Writing Women.
This not the kind of novel I imagined myself writing, but I’m pleased that I did. I’ve been working on a novel in one form or another my whole life but I’ve been playing it safe. I’ve been writing for the critic in my head rather than for me. I’ve been emulating the masters, not all of which I love, and thus running into my criticisms of their work in my own. I’ve been aiming for something else, something lesser, something better behaved. I’ve been deliberately standing in a shadow without realizing it. Some of these stories have fallen victim to faulty hard-drives or bouts of self-harm (destroying your art is a form of self-harm), but others wallow in the folder of abandoned stories. And that’s where they’ll likely stay because that’s not the writer I am. I see it now.
Ever since meeting Jules Octavian I’ve been thinking of writing in terms of painting, and I’ve been copying The Group of Seven. For the uninitiated The Group of Seven were impressionist landscape painters that ushered in the first big uniquely Canadian art movement. Algonquin Park had just become accessible by rail at the turn of the twentieth century and this group embarked on camping trips to capture that dramatic landscape. They called it The Algonquin School. What began as a fresh and unique movement is now so much part of the establishment that a century later every Canadian gallery has at least one Group of Seven tribute. They’re great. If you grew up in Canada chances are your grandparents had a Group of Seven print in their rec room. In any case, my point is that I’ve been doing the literary equivalent of copying the Group of Seven. Not that there’s anything wrong with copying the masters — I’d love a piece like that in my place but don’t have Lawren Harris money and would love to pay my neighbour to pursue their passion. What I’ve realized is that I’ve been painting impressionist landscapes well within the established canon when I’m actually a surrealist portrait painter. In the case of That Naked Dream —or— Men Writing Women they’re surrealist nudes and arguably a self-portrait. Not where I expected to find myself.
The thing about nudes is that they’re about vulnerability. To my mind the end-goal of life, inasmuch as there is one, is to build a world where we can all be vulnerable, which is to say we all benefit from each other being our best selves. Whether that’s even possible I have no idea but it’s the kind of goal I’d rather die failing to achieve than live without pursuing. I would even go as far as to say that the root of all evil lies in the over-protection of our vulnerabilities.
I think that’s where we’ve lost our way: the way we deal with vulnerability. Some hide, others grasp for control, a few have figured our how to not give a fuck, more avoid it altogether, and I could go on. Right now climate change is making a lot of us feel vulnerable while economic change is making others feel vulnerable at a time when we have infinite knowledge at our fingertips and little collective ability to interpret it. This insecurity has lead us to the brink of using force to get what we think we need and that will be bad for everyone. Now is the time to talk about vulnerability if there ever was one.
I don’t claim to have the answers. As a writer my skillset is telling stories, not having answers, and meaning is formed in the mind of the reader anyway. My job, as I see it anyway, is to build a playground for you to process the world. Stories, even at their most escapist, are how we contextualize the world. They’re all we have: the present is the intersection between a past made up of narratives formed around experiences and the future which is speculation as to how those stories continue. Beyond that anything we haven’t personally witnessed is a story we’ve heard from someone else. It’s stories all the way down and none of them have it completely right. Even dreams are thought to be our brain processing the events of our day into narrative form, albeit fragmented and full of dream logic. To my mind fiction plays a similar role but with more intention and structure, we choose our fiction. So my job isn’t to tell you what to think but give you an environment to process it yourself.
When I began working on That Naked Dream I was reading a lot of Murakami, Atwood, and Vonnegut shortly after the first wave of #MeToo. It had me thinking a lot about sexuality, the relationship between men and women, and the stories we tell about those things. Repressing sexuality just makes it erupt in less appropriate places, the kind that rightly get you cancelled, so it’s not the sex that’s the problem but the context. I feel like I shouldn’t have to say that but…maybe I do. In any case I began to wonder how I would approach a story with the kind of overt sexuality you might find in a Murakami book or the weird midcentury fiction he and I both clearly enjoy. Without any particular plan I began writing character sketches of these bad-ass strong sexually-empowered women. Something unapologetically thirsty but with depth and respect.
The problem that drove the rest of the project arose almost immediately: it just didn’t feel right. Was it shame? Was it that the characters were inauthentic? If so, why did strong sexually-empowered women feel so inauthentic? Isn’t that what everyone wants? Is it not? Was it that in the wake of #MeToo it just kind of sucked to be a man? Was I just a pervert? I thought all of these were good questions and a whole narrative grew up around them. I realized that as an omniscient creator if I was anything but perfectly authentic to my characters I was exploiting an almost divine power imbalance to force my characters into sexual acts they would not otherwise choose. That was worth writing a story about.
Stylistically I was getting tired of dark storytelling. Originally I had planned to keep it light, indulgent, and over-saturated. The kind of thing that celebrated hedonism and fantasy, because if stories aren’t fantasies then what are they? I don’t think enough people realize that prophetic writing, and all writing is to some degree prophetic, is supposed to inspire hope. How are we supposed to fight for change with an emotional hangover from staring into the void? I remember someone pointing out that we got Frank Underwood (House of Cards) when the previous generation got Jed Bartlet (The West Wing). On the one hand I could have gone for some Jed Bartlet but on the other it felt so naive and escapist. Yet as my story got darker the tone had to follow. What emerged was almost schizophrenic, like a dream that drifts between indulgence and nightmare almost imperceptibly. And that seemed to capture the message women were shouting from the rooftops.
This was not what I set out to do. In fact I think when it comes to anything approaching #MeToo men, especially awkward straight white men like me, should be doing more listening than talking. Not to other men, either. If you want to know how to treat a person ask them, and women are begging us to listen. For this reason I’ve put That Naked Dream back on the shelf more times than I can count. It doesn’t need to be commercially successful or even popular. It can be my reminder that I can write and of what kind of writer I am. I’m proud of my work, I loved the process, and that’s all that really matters.
The problem is this book dares you to put it out there. It’s about radical acceptance of yourself and the fucked up complicated world around us. It may have started as indulgent nude portraits but they, the convoluted plot, and the whole worldview came from my head. One of the characters goes on a journey where she finally sees herself clearly and I realized this book is the same journey for me. It invites the reader into my head to root around in places I wouldn’t share publicly. In other words it’s vulnerable. And this book challenges the reader, and apparently the writer, to be vulnerable. Some people aren’t going to like it or get it and I can already imagine the things they’re going to say but I won’t know until I put it out there. Why would I say no for you? Why would I stand between you and what could be some time well spent? What if I’m the one standing in my way? Even if it’s a horrible book, and I don’t think it is, I think I need to know why. I’ve got to find out.
This is a book about vulnerability. Sex is about vulnerability. And we’re not managing vulnerability well right now. Our world is rapidly gamifying everything and rapidly building big defensive walls. If we can’t get sex right, what hope is there for any of the rest? If you want someone to be vulnerable with you then you can’t make them feel insecure. It’s oxymoronic. Yet that seems to be where we’re at. So stay tuned for my debut novel and foray into the conversation around vulnerability: That Naked Dream —or— Men Writing Women.
-Greg
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