Drawing the Field

Carver Park—looking south toward the land homesteaded by John and Maja Lisa Lundsten in 1856. At any rate, that’s what it says on the plaque affixed to the bench I’m sitting on. Bright sun. A field spreads itself below me, with a patch of shady woods down in the valley, then a second field rising in the distance. A lake glistens through the trees off to the east.

It's a clear chilly morning. There’s no one out here but the goldfinches and the peewees. I’ve brought a little bag of books, but at the moment I’m very happy just sitting here, taking in the scene. In fact, at this moment I love everything—although I realize it sounds a little silly to say so. Call it an undirected superabundance of affection, a swelling in the chest, an inner zeal to embrace every twig and weed I see.
What’s to be done with such a feeling? There wasn’t much to be said about it, so I simply drew the field.

Such drawings look pretty lame at the time you’re doing them, but when you come upon them later in a notebook they provide a refreshing break in the midst of, say, an entry full of wordy quotations from Aristotle and Nietzsche.

"Regarding all aesthetic values, I now avail myself of this main distinction: I ask in every instance, 'Is it a hunger or a superabundance that has here been creative?"

And this very thought brings to mind an article by Derrida that I saw in a used bookstore yesterday. It was called “The Truth About Pointing,” or something like that.

When you draw something you’re saying “Look at this.” But you also take greater care in your own looking, and the physical process of transferring vision to line is a loving one.

I see two kinds of grass across the way—a taller wheat-type and a shorter cattail type. I should know the names but I don’t. Then the bank of sumac, which I ignored in my drawing. Down in the valley some rather misshapen ash and also an elm, I think, to judge from the branching structure. You can see a few junipers out in the field, too, looking like black splashes. The woods in the distance are tough, I lack the proper technique to stylize them effectively.

Derrida? He died a few months ago. I ought to read more of those French guys. But every time I take a look at something they’ve written, I immediately come upon howling errors in reasoning. For example, in a essay by Roland Barthes I glanced at in a sociology textbook the other day, he asks the very legitimate question: How does history differ from other forms of “discourse”? Unfortunately, he almost immediately reformulates the issue as a matter of linguistics. This is a mistake. History differs from other forms of discourse, not in a linguistic or grammatical way, but in its relation to events. History concerns itself with things that have actually happened. Other forms of discourse—fiction or poetry, for example— are not required to.

This distinction should be obvious, but it can easily be underscored by observing how often we ask ourselves, when we finish a novel, whether much of it is “really true?” Was the author actually telling us something about him or herself? Are there elements of personal history here, or were the events spun out of whole cloth? These questions have nothing to do with linguistics. They take us beyond the science of how words and phrases relate to one another--which are matters of convention,of history, in any case--and out into the world of specific reference, of experience--to things that have actually taken place.

As an aside, I might point out that whether or not a novel depicts events that have actually taken place has little bearing on its quality. If it rings true, or resonates deeply, then we call it “beautiful.” Historical inquiry, though less personal, perhaps, gives us a greater sense of the scope, gravity, and real-ness of events, in both their shape, details, and significance. Studying history is like taking the time to notice the difference between the wheat-grass and the cattail grass. (And now, as I look across the path at the edge of the field, I see a layer of the green crabgrass near the ground. Is this a different grass or the basal part of the other two?) In writing history, as in drawing a field, a certain amount of stylization will take place, in the form of general remarks. But everything in history is individual and specific, and the concrete details are what validate it, and make it come alive.

The unusual grip, dazzle, and detail of history—and its pre-eminant claim to “realness”—may explain why thousands of readers who would not get within ten feet, say, a novel by Ann Tyler or Barbara Kingsolver, wait expectantly for the next offering by David Mucullum or Steven Ambrose, be it on the Suez Canal or the South Pole. But it would be a mistake to limit our potted analysis of history to that most traditional of all its forms—the adventure narrative. After all, when I cue up my CD of the Bach sonatas for violin and harpsichord, I’m entering into history. When I open my food encyclopedia to determine the origin of the dromedary date; or spot a Kentucky coffee tree on the banks of a river and wonder if the Dakota brought the seed there—these are historical inquiries. When I mentioned a minute ago that “I ought to read up on those French guys,” I was expressing a truly historical impulse.

As far as the study of deconstructionism is concern, I might well ask myself, “Why bother? You know you don’t like these thinkers, and anyway, Who cares?” And yet, these folks were once wildly influential, and I’ve been intrigued, albeit only in passing, by their campy post-modern conglomeration of pop culture and metaphysical speculation. This is, at least in part, what makes Socrates “discourse” so interesting—the references to potters and horse-trainers, for example, in the opening pages of the Protagoras. I feel that I ought to be better informed about these things, to clarify the situation both for myself and possibly even for others. By entering into history in this way—-boning up on trendy French intellectuals, Swedish immigrants, or anything else—I’m not only entering into “the real” but I’m also making myself more real.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m no enemy of fiction. In fact, I just finished reading that novel by Umberto Constantini I picked up in a bargain bin the other day. It’s called The Long Night of Francisco Sanctis. It gave me an intuitive insight into a dark era in Argentine politics—something I'd never thought much about—and also offered a stirring portrait of the latent goodness that sometimes lies beneath the viccissitudes of a weak and troubled human spirit. I love the feeling of having read something that’s complete and entirely “of a piece,” and—slow reader that I am—I consider it an accomplishment whenever I do actually finish a book. But I immediately find myself evaluating what I’ve read, making connections with other works, a career, a genre, or a milieu. I’m taking that leap from the could-have-happened (the story being told) to the did-happen (the novel itself having been written, and beyond that, the era, the political regime, the cultural zeitgeist), from the personal and intuitive to the social and conceptual—I’m taking the leap into history once again.

The key word here, perhaps, is “evaluation.” History is an act of thought by which we determine what has value and what doesn’t. There are no rules to follow or laws to obey in separating the genuine from the bogus, the superficial from the deeply felt. The quality of our judgments reflect our grip on reality, the depth of our own experience and character—our capacity to both see and highlight the various grasses, growing at different heights, near at hand and on the other end of the field.

But wait just a minute. We can easily draw grasses without evaluating them, can’t we? Actually, no. The task of deciding what to draw and what to leave out, in order to make a true and vivid rendering, is inseparable from the act of judging the significance of things. Turn that notion on its head, however, and we reach the conclusion—though the particulars of the argument must wait until another time—that experience, history, life, is always, in some strange way, beautiful. I'm reminded of a remark by Octavio Paz to that effect, though I don't have it with me here this morning. For the time being, I'm more than content to simple take in "the field."