Islands of Words
Back when Bravo provided high culture, I was entranced by a South Bank Show episode on a Caribbean poet named Derek Walcott. When I saw Walcott would read at Stanford, I raced to hear him in person, only to be appalled by the meager audience which clapped and immediately dispersed. Alone with him, I nervously asked how his book Omeros was coming. Surprised someone knew of it, he said there were publication delays but it would be out soon. Shortly after, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
A few years later, friends and fortune combined to bring Derek for a reading. That afternoon, he said he had always wanted to see a redwood tree, so we hopped into my Ford Focus and headed for Palo Colorado Canyon, but stopped just south of Carmel so he could survey the light, the surf, and the hills along the coast. Walcott also paints, and looking through his framing hands, he slowly rotated and said, “Everywhere you look is a painting.”
Derek’s sold-out reading was magical, including Tiepolo’s Hound, “A Letter from Brooklyn” and his Odyssey section on the Cyclops, a metaphor for all totalitarian dictators who have no depth of vision.
Next day, Derek became impatient as his companion Sigrid embraced everyone, kissing, hugging, saying goodbye. He turned to me and said, “Let’s show them how men say goodbye.” He looked me straight in the eye, firmly squeezed my hand, and said, “Goodbye.”
I felt like a child in his presence, this aging yet vital man, numinous, strong despite infirmities and occasional vertigo. His masculinity was overwhelming.
Now his latest, and perhaps last, book has arrived, White Egrets. His lines move like waves and trade winds, elegiac, abundant with his island, the sea, sunlight, fields, lost friends, memory, art, and the enchantments of erotic women. You can own this treasure here.
Well, speaking as a woman, I usually feel that men who ostentatiously express a discomfort with hugging other men are rather suspect, and certainly to be avoided at all cost as potential romantic partners. Whether the source of discomfort is a painfully overwrought machismo, suppressed homosexual longing, or simply good old fashioned repression–I consider it a red flag as to a dubious personal relationship with masculinity.
Hi, Kate,
Thanks for the comment. Here’s what I say in my Literature By and About Men course:
“If I may paraphrase Derek’s goodbye, he was saying this: you and I have done what we were called upon to do; we have seen each other and judged each other and if we are not brothers, we are not enemies; what was of value lay in our doing of it; we have no reason to expect to ever see one another again; let the women act out their emotion, ours is always saved and rationed—dignity and manliness demand it.” Derek was not ostentatious, just reserved in the way that men are. I do wonder if you may be thinking that the more demonstrative female parting behavior is the correct one? I would argue that the ubiquitous “bro-hug” is both more ostentatious and more insincere. I do understand what you are talking about but dignified reserve does not necessarily imply one of the negatives you suggest. And such reserve is not wholly the province of men. I am thinking of the luminous Setsuko Hara in Ozu’s wrenching TOKYO STORY who gently suggests to a hopeful relative that, no, they will probably never see each other again. The young women cries, “Isn’t life disappointing?” Hara gently replies, “Yes, it is” and smiles, a smile more complex than Mona Lisa’s. No hug softens the harsh reality.
I just returned from Alaska, a remote lodge, where I told the Walcott story to a fellow guest (in what context I don’t recall). When I saw her off in Anchorage, she said, “Oh, that’s right, you don’t hug” and extended her hand. She was teasing and then threw her arms around me. I was moved by the gift of her affection, just as I was moved when shaking hands with the guides, eye-to-eye, man-to-man. My unasked advice: don’t trust the man who doesn’t hold back.
Thanks again, Kate.
Hi David,
Thank you for your response. How nice that you teach such a course. What materials are covered? I used to be a literature major (way back when), but I found that too much “in depth textual analysis” was destroying my positive relationship with reading or writing, so I gave it up (along with other vices) and switched majors.
Do I think that the “more demonstrative female parting behavior” is the “correct” one? Certainly not. I don’t think it is really the property of females exclusively, and many don’t choose to practice it. I, for one, am rarely moved to hug people I don’t know very well, but I also don’t mind if everyone around me chooses to practice an ecstatic excess of such behavior. What I find odd about the Walcott example, was that he felt the need to define the handshake in contrast to his companion’s behavior. “Let the women act out their emotion, ours is always saved and rationed–dignity and manliness demand it.” I am curious as to why a male would feel that it is more important to “save” his emotion, while finding it fine for women to disperse theirs in a more promiscuous fashion. Is male to male emotion some sort of non-renewable resource? Or is it rather that you were both agreeing to define such emotionality in males as a signal of weakness? I’ve heard many such interchanges amongst teenage boys, and I think that at that age it probably makes more sense to me; sexual identity is awkwardly tenuous and, as such, requires much posturing and definition through contrast to assert its existence. (This is based purely on subjective personal observation of teenage boys, naturally.) What I think is silly, is a grown man having to state that his behavior is what “guys ought to do.” And such assertions, whether occurring in teenage boys or in men, have rarely seemed manly or attractive to me, since I interpret them as insecurity. I’d find a female companion positively daft if she followed a round of “male” handshakes, by telling me that we should “show the men how women say goodbye” and then embraced me wildly. I’d probably be thinking something along the lines of: “I know I’m a woman and you’re a woman, I’m pretty sure that they do, too. What the hell is this really about and what are we supposed to be proving?”
Forced bro-hugs? Rather ridiculous looking to my mind, but I don’t really mind as long as they are not introduced by an announcement proclaiming their superiority to another gesture as a form of male farewell. I think if one is manly it really ought to announce itself through assurance of behavior.
Hi, Kate,
Thanks for extending the discussion and for your curiosity (which often seems absent in the blogosphere). However, I am certainly distressed at having lost a literature major! Sadly, many of today’s approaches to literature are . . . misguided.
My (online) class material is a combination of lessons (like chapters), films, books, and a course reader. The lessons address themes such as the biological differences between men and women, boyhood, fatherhood, love and marriage, competition and teamwork, the man of letters, male codes, war, misandry and surreal machismo, and manly aging and death. The books are Mansfield’s MANLINESS, a terrific short story cycle by David Lloyd called BOYS, Faulkner’s BIG WOODS for “The Bear,” Bob Greene’s DUTY, FAT CITY by Leonard Gardner, and McCarthy’s THE ROAD. Films include SEVEN SAMURAI, GHOST DOG, FIGHT CLUB, IN THE COMPANY OF MEN, DELIVERANCE, “I am the Lord Thy God” from Kieslowski’s DECALOGUE, et al. The course reader features works by Sam Shepard, Amy Clampitt, Christina Hoff Sommers, Bernard Malamud, Hemingway, Philip Larkin, Harry Crews, William Broyles, Mark Turpin, Joan Didion, Robert Pinsky, Sylvia Plath, Harvey Swados, Ethan Canin, Mark Richard, et al. The lessons make liberal reference to Leonard Sax’s WHY GENDER MATTERS and Thomas van Nortwick’s OEDIPUS: THE MEANING OF A MASCULINE LIFE. (Writing the course was like writing a book).
My students have been equally male and female with females generally being more successful as well as more enthusiastic. I believe that the online condition helps in this case, draining off the friction that might otherwise attend.
Thanks again, Kate.