Being a Person: Sorrow & Santa Ana Winds
on being unable to escape election thoughts and migraines
Being a person
While it would be too strange to come back for the first time after the election without saying anything about it, I imagine you are a bit weary of the repetition of the same few messages. You’ve read them by now. I’m pretty sure everyone I know has shared this quote from Toni Morrison:
And it’s a good one. But a thought hums in me: haven’t we been going to work on this, for nearly a decade now? I’ve been writing about book bans and patriarchy. There’s also the financial contributions and the numerous letter writing campaigns. And I have friends, much better than I, who have canvassed for progressive candidates in and out of our state.
Yet, here I am, a flesh and blood person—lots of flesh and enough blood that I can donate a pint of it every three months to someone who needs it—feeling the aftereffects of last week. As it happened, the Santa Ana winds began to blow as we awaited election results. If you aren’t in Southern California, you may still know about the ‘devil winds’ through Joan Didion’s famous description from her essay “Los Angeles Notebook.”
There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air this afternoon, some unnatural stillness, some tension. What it means is that tonight a Santa Ana will begin to blow, a hot wind from the northeast whining down through the Cajon and San Gorgonio Passes, blowing up sand storms out along Route 66, drying the hills and the nerves to flash point. For a few days now we will see smoke back in the canyons, and hear sirens in the night. I have neither heard nor read that a Santa Ana is due, but I know it, and almost everyone I have seen today knows it too. We know it because we feel it. The baby frets. The maid sulks. I rekindle a waning argument with the telephone company, then cut my losses and lie down, given over to whatever it is in the air. To live with the Santa Ana is to accept, consciously or unconsciously, a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior.
I recall being told, when I first moved to Los Angeles and was living on an isolated beach, that the Indians would throw themselves into the sea when the bad wind blew. I could see why. The Pacific turned ominously glossy during a Santa Ana period, and one woke in the night troubled not only by the peacocks screaming in the olive trees but by the eerie absence of surf. The heat was surreal. The sky had a yellow cast, the kind of light sometimes called "earthquake weather." My only neighbor would not come out of her house for days, and there were no lights at night, and her husband roamed the place with a machete. One day he would tell me that he had heard a trespasser, the next a rattlesnake.
"On nights like that," Raymond Chandler once wrote about the Santa Ana, "every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen."
While the Santa Anas have never caused me to throw myself off a cliff, they do give me migraine headaches that begin a day or so before the wind actually arrives and that last for days afterward. Sometimes, in connection with these headaches, I smell something akin to caustic fuel (but unidentifiable). It’s pretty awful, and I can’t escape it although it exists for no one else around me. It’s just my body going haywire. It’s Saturday, and I’m still hoping all this goes away soon.
Plan B
My original plan for today was to post an email interview with
() , author of Those People Behind Us and The Lockhart Women, about her experience with SheWrites Press. But I’m afraid people are too downhearted for advice right now, and I don’t want you to miss it. She has done what Toni Morrison tells us to do: she’s gone to work writing about contemporary issues. And when the gatekeepers stood guard, she found another path for her voice.For today, I have this:
If you are trying to connect with others through reading and writing, you might find some insights from Evan Gow’s (indie developer of StoryOrigin) interview with Jane Friedman. Like everyone else in the author sphere, I’ve recommended Jane Friedman before. What I particularly liked about this interview was the discussion on being our authentic selves, the permission (or perhaps the directive) to include ourselves in our newsletters and Substacks because people want that human connection. When we share about ourselves, share links to what we’ve read, and comments on books we’ve enjoyed, we are making that connection. Please feel free to share in the comments anything that’s helped you this past week.
Spin Cycle
As to anything new I can add to what others on this and other platforms have said about the election:
The New York Review has an interview of Joseph O’Neill by Daniel Drake . It says some things I haven’t seen from all the talking heads looking to lay blame in the ‘what went wrong’ cycle. The interview isn’t long; I encourage you to read it in its entirety. Meanwhile, here are a few takeaways that resonated for me:
[T]he DNC should finally do what it should have done years ago: set up a political operations unit to devise and coordinate anti-GOP actions nationwide. (Fox News performs this function, and others, for the GOP.)
The current prevailing theory about Trump’s victory is that most Americans, irked by an unpleasant encounter with inflation, cast an anti-incumbent vote without giving much thought to the consequences of that vote for US democracy. I don’t totally buy this whoops! theory. My sense is that, in this era of the Internet, there are millions more fascists in this country than people think, young men in particular. And I believe that many more millions are fascinated by Trump not for his supposed business prowess but for his transparent wish to hurt others. He is an evil guy, a villain—and many Americans are excited by it. Harris and the Democrats, by contrast, are boring, boring, boring. In this sense, the election was like a choice between four more years of church or four years of violent entertainment. Nihilistic consumerism, as much as authoritarianism, prevailed.
Harris lost, yes—but let’s not overegg the pudding. Trump’s margin of victory was humdrum. His final vote tally will fall millions short of the votes won by Biden in 2020. The opposition to him is huge and intense and in the right. So let’s be clear: this malicious criminal does not have the barbaric mandate he claims for himself. On the contrary, it is the opposition that has a mandate, derived from centuries of democratic tradition.
And here’s something from the Washington Post’s Ron Charles’ Book Club email, which I’ve recommended in the past, is free and doesn’t require subscribing to the Washington Post. (Read it every week by clicking here.)
It’s the thinnest of silver linings, but I take some comfort in the words of legal scholar Eric Posner. Speaking on the Freakonomics podcast, Posner said, “It’s actually pretty hard to be a dictator. You have to be kind of smart. You have to be tough. You have to be brave.” For better or worse, America’s new Felon-Elect is none of those things.
Posner, author of “The Demagogue’s Playbook: The Battle for American Democracy from the Founders to Trump,” went on to say, “I think we’ll have another four years that are a lot like Trump’s previous term, but are not going to spell the end of democracy. If all of our presidents are like him, I think eventually we’d be in big trouble. But a huge institution like the U.S. government … I think it takes more than a bad president to destroy an empire.”
And if you have the resiliency for a truly hard look at reality, you can watch this interview between the always astute
and Jon Stewart.What I’m reading
I’m reading so slowly right now, I’m a bit ashamed. Also—I’ve been catching up on some magazines, making my book input even less.
I decided to listen to Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act again in the hope of inspiration. Plus, I can listen while lying in bed, waiting for Excedrin to work.
I’m still reading a few pages each night of Shadows of Carcosa: Tales of Cosmic Horror by Lovecraft, Chambers, Machen, Poe, and Other Masters of the Weird. This past week I read a 50-page short story (novella?) “The Willows” by Algernon Blackwood. It has what I'm looking for: a creepy, chill-inducing atmosphere of dread. In it, two male friends are taking a canoe trip down the Danube River when they come to an isolated region of shifting ground and tiny islands. They set up camp on an island that is washing away. There they are accosted by a supernatural force embodied in the nature around them (including the willow trees, which are abundant). They are the intruders who have awakened this malevolent force.
Part 2: Library and book challenge/ban news
Author Elana K. Arnold responds to an attempted ban on her novel Damsel across all grade levels from ACLU South Carolina
On November 5, the South Carolina Board of Education voted to remove seven books from K-12 classroom and library collections statewide. The Board took this action under Regulation 43-170, which enables the banning of books for all grade levels if they contain a description of “sexual conduct.”
One of the first seven books banned under this policy is the fantasy novel Damsel by Elana K. Arnold. Before the Board voted, Arnold wrote the following response to the challenge of her book (excerpt—click link for the entire response)
Let me be clear: My work and the work of my fellow authors on these lists are neither obscene nor pornographic. My books and the others that have been targeted all have significant literary value. No serious person can argue otherwise. And attempts to call these books obscene or pornographic by taking specific lines out of context, claiming they represent the works as a whole, is either ignorant, intellectually dishonest, or both.
For the second year in a row, Florida removed more books from school libraries than any other state, according to PEN America. From WUSF NPR
With about 4,500 book removals, the state topped the nation for the second year in a row. That's according to a report from PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for free speech.
That means the state made up nearly half of all book removals nationwide in the 2023-24 school year.
Commentary: South Carolina just banned seven books in public schools. This one [Crank by Ellen Hopkins] could be next from the Union Bulletin
Foes may say the book glorifies and glamorizes drug use and sex. In fact, it does the opposite.
One oft-cited passage of the narrator’s stream of consciousness reads, “Off came my shorts. Down went his zipper. I realized I was in serious trouble. ‘I’ll scream.’ Go ahead. No one can hear but skunks and coyotes. Still, as I opened my mouth, his hand slapped down on it. Those sublime muscles hardened. Just relax. You’ll love it. My brand-new Victoria’s Secrets shredded, and I felt the worst of Brendan pause, savoring my terror. They all love it.”
Hopkins responded to those banning her book in 2022, writing, “There’s nothing pornographic about it. Pornography is meant to titillate, and if that scene turns you on, you’ve got a problem. It’s painful. You want the character to be okay, to make it through, to please stop using. The vast majority of readers never want to find themselves there.”
The bottom line is books like “Crank” are neither pornography nor material that should be kept from high schoolers who could benefit from it. The state puts teens at risk by taking away a space where they could safely learn about the perils of drugs and priorities like consent.
High schoolers need help and often don’t know how to ask for it. Books, then, can be boons. Also, every parent knows it’s hard to get teens to read anything other than TikTok, and everyone should realize that a book rightly kept from elementary schoolers may be OK for teenagers who can drive or even vote. We should be encouraging older teens to read the books so many of their peers have read. And we should be leery of K-12 book bans and arbitrarily deciding classics are OK on one side but new YA books are not on the other.
You have captured the feeling of dread and concern for our future. Let's hope for minimal damage!
Exceptionally good content this week! Lots of portions to talk & share with friends.
Rest up.