As a medium, blog posts - like any medium - have their strengths and weaknesses, and one of these (either a strength or weakness, take your pick) is that blog posts are not especially accommodating of footnotes. A footnote is, like, another blog post.
So here's a footnote to my prior post about E.M. Forster casting a fumbling male as a romantic lead in A Room with a View. My comments about males fumbling their way through courtship would benefit from a caveat. I wrote, "The fumbling man is the honest man, while the man who proceeds according to script, regardless of the circumstances, is not actually responding to the world around him. . . . if you want to live, you have to fumble," without qualifying that fumblers fall into two categories: (1) those who "step up"; and (2) those who don't.
The fumblers who are "responding to the world" - who are living life without a rehearsal, to paraphrase Forster - are generally the former and not the latter. The guys who won't "step up" are just as "unwilling to confront uncertainty and roll with it" and just as "defended against humiliation to risk genuine connection" as the straight-laced guy who never makes a wrong move.
And one reason why, culturally, we've "yet [to] work out the serious narrative of how the boy gets the girl when he's fumbling his way the whole time" is because the current crop of American male fumblers are of the latter category. They do not "step up." They fumble not by kissing women when they shouldn't or running around naked when they should be clothed (as George in A Room with a View does), but by getting stoned every day and generally being too passive. As any author knows, coaxing a plot line out of a passive protagonist ain't easy.
The obvious fix is that our passive fumblers need to step up, even though how we are to convince them to do so is not obvious. As Forster describes an analogous quandary in A Room with a View:
Forster provides - not a reader - but another character to assist Lucy Honeychurch: George's father, the wise and eccentric Mr. Emerson, who functions as the deus ex machina, the instrument of revelation who during a single conversation withdraws "veil after veil" until Lucy sees "to the bottom of her soul." (p. 238.)
Forster's solution doesn't seem replicable on a large scale (or, truth be told, even on an individual level). But in the absence of the artifice of a deus ex machina, allow me to harness the artifice of Web 2.0 communications networks to pass on this simple truth: stepping up makes life more fun.
And, on the off chance that my message in this context proves insufficient, that the serious narrative of how the boy gets the girl when he's fumbling his way the whole time can't be worked out in a foot note to a blog post, I've got a novel planned . . . .
(Image from the film version of A Room with a View from Fotolog)
So here's a footnote to my prior post about E.M. Forster casting a fumbling male as a romantic lead in A Room with a View. My comments about males fumbling their way through courtship would benefit from a caveat. I wrote, "The fumbling man is the honest man, while the man who proceeds according to script, regardless of the circumstances, is not actually responding to the world around him. . . . if you want to live, you have to fumble," without qualifying that fumblers fall into two categories: (1) those who "step up"; and (2) those who don't.
The fumblers who are "responding to the world" - who are living life without a rehearsal, to paraphrase Forster - are generally the former and not the latter. The guys who won't "step up" are just as "unwilling to confront uncertainty and roll with it" and just as "defended against humiliation to risk genuine connection" as the straight-laced guy who never makes a wrong move.
And one reason why, culturally, we've "yet [to] work out the serious narrative of how the boy gets the girl when he's fumbling his way the whole time" is because the current crop of American male fumblers are of the latter category. They do not "step up." They fumble not by kissing women when they shouldn't or running around naked when they should be clothed (as George in A Room with a View does), but by getting stoned every day and generally being too passive. As any author knows, coaxing a plot line out of a passive protagonist ain't easy.
The obvious fix is that our passive fumblers need to step up, even though how we are to convince them to do so is not obvious. As Forster describes an analogous quandary in A Room with a View:
It is obvious enough for the reader to conclude, "She loves young [George] Emerson." A reader in Lucy's place would not find it obvious. Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome "nerves" or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire. She loved Cecil; George made her nervous; will the reader explain to her that the phrases should have been reversed?(p. 165.) Men love dope; women make them nervous; will the reader explain to them that the phrases should have been reversed?
Forster provides - not a reader - but another character to assist Lucy Honeychurch: George's father, the wise and eccentric Mr. Emerson, who functions as the deus ex machina, the instrument of revelation who during a single conversation withdraws "veil after veil" until Lucy sees "to the bottom of her soul." (p. 238.)
Forster's solution doesn't seem replicable on a large scale (or, truth be told, even on an individual level). But in the absence of the artifice of a deus ex machina, allow me to harness the artifice of Web 2.0 communications networks to pass on this simple truth: stepping up makes life more fun.
And, on the off chance that my message in this context proves insufficient, that the serious narrative of how the boy gets the girl when he's fumbling his way the whole time can't be worked out in a foot note to a blog post, I've got a novel planned . . . .
(Image from the film version of A Room with a View from Fotolog)
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