Tipsy With Water

On Mark McGurl's "The Program Era" (Part 3)

2011-12-06T16:07:00.001-08:00

Writers and readers of the seemingly ubiquitous sub-genreof literature often called Flash Fiction may be pleased to find McGurl’s studyfeatures a brief yet admirable attempt to help explain the phenomenon of itssteady rise to acceptance these days as a valid literary form inacademe. The trotted-out consensus of Flash Fiction appealing to today’s abbreviatedattention spans I personally find tired and unsatisfactory for a host ofreasons—mostly because writers who read and write Flash (like myself) tend tostill read and write longer works of fiction, to say nothing of why poetry hasn’tenjoyed a popular resurgence if this is indeed the case. Not surprisingly,McGurl offers up the institutional perspective of Flash’s formal appearance inAmerican letters, which I find a much more original and plausible take on this indeterminatenarrative form's greater visibility.

McGurl traces the origins of American Flash Fiction inthe academy back to Raymond Carver and the beginning of what he refers to in The Program Era as the “lower-middle-classmodernism,” what is more derisively known as “K-mart Realism” but is usuallydesignated by critics as “Dirty Realism.” But McGurl’s terminology situatingthis movement in distinct socio-economic terms is crucial for reflecting thenew stratification within Higher Education in post-war America. The enrollment spikeof soldiers returning home coupled with the founding of new colleges anduniversities to meet the demand from the Baby Boomers diversifies thecollegiate ranks and lets the creative writing programs tap into a “dialecticof shame and pride.” This dialectic paves the way for not only Carver to turn working-classdrudgery into creative writing success (thanks to attending classes at ChicoState by John Gardner) but allow writers like Sandra Cisneros to enter the IowaWorkshop as marginalized ethnic voices and emerge with their own creative styleof what McGurl calls “institutionalized individuality.” The effect ofinstitutional programs on Carver and Cisneros, McGurl claims as primaryexamples, are evident in the minimalist modes of the collections Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? and The House on Mango Street, respectively,though it is the latter that he sees as coming into a distinct form, “miniaturism,”that will eventually work its way into long “maximalist” forms such as her novel, Caramelo.

The Program Erasuggests, then, Flash is a transitional narrative (or a narrative transition?)—somethingwhich I’ve often considered myself—whose purpose in the strictly academic vein ofcreative writing is to either demarcate that which is not provided for thereader or to lead toward the creation of other long(er) works normally embracedby the academy and, perhaps, by writers and readers of a more affluentsocio-economic background. This may also account in some way for why modern andcontemporary segmented novellas, for instance, remain kept aside on the far peripheryof literature courses and creative workshop considerations or are deemed to be “experimental”in value.

On Mark McGurl's "The Program Era" (Part 2)

2011-11-30T10:34:00.001-08:00

As I alluded to in my last post, one of the more discernable omissions from McGurl’s study is the proliferation of the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing, though I want to make clear I hardly think it’s a shortcoming of the book given how these programs are a relatively recent phenomenon in the academy and their impact on American literature is still being debated. When Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont (of which I’m a graduate) began its intensive residency model in 1963, it effectively created the nation’s first low-res MFA program that more institutional departments are now starting to incorporate alongside their traditional programs of Creative Writing study. The beginning of the Goddard model, however, would seem to fit nicely into McGurl’s Program Era history, particularly how it follows the original concept forwarded by Middlebury College’s renowned Bread Loaf Conference in 1926 and offers a discernable alternative to the institutionally rigorous semester-long Iowa Workshop model: students meet and write at a bucolic countryside campus for about a week, workshop, then return home to pursue their own course of study, sending work by proxy to their selected advisor for feedback, and conduct their own workshops with novice writers for teaching credit. These are only the broad strokes, to be sure, but they do stand in stark contrast to the sort of departmental machinations at Iowa that McGurl outlines.

With the Goddard model in mind, it appears the spread of such low-res programs today is an offshoot of the anti-institutional impulse McGurl details in his look at Ken Kesey’s open disdain of Wallace Stegner’s method at Stanford and the Merry Pranksters taking the workshop experience to the open road with their school bus Further during the 1960’s. As the sort of open “experiment” Further represented (and sometimes courted disaster with, according to McGurl), the low-res MFA’s selling point as an anti-institutional institution with no real spatio-geographic bounds other than the campus epicenter where writers occasionally converge is seductive enough for the self-invested writer. If one is confident in their abilities as a creative writer—as I believed I was when I started my graduate studies—the value of such a program is derived from its lack of interference but without the instruction nurturing completely those egocentric Tom Wolfe impulses which mark the beginning of McGurl’s Program Era. That the student is held in check at a distance from his or her advisor (an established, published writer) while operating on a virtual campus of the self where the idea of the “department” has vanished is an idea rooted in the chapter “The Social Construction of Unreality” whose time may have finally arrived in Higher Ed for many reasons. But the illusion of total individualism for graduate credit, something which McGurl thinks Kesey was blind to in his antagonism with Stegner, remains from the counterculture ethos, having not been altogether banished from campus. Further may, in fact, be refueling for yet another roadtrip in Higher Ed.

On Mark McGurl's "The Program Era" (Part 1)

2011-11-16T12:08:00.001-08:00

Writing a single blog post on Mark McGurl's award-winning The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing (Harvard UP, 2009), I have to say after a fairly entranced reading of it, seems unfair given the scope of this study in not only mapping the trajectory of creative writing studies from its earliest beginnings in progressive education to its current-day entrenchment in the university and college cirriculum but tying this to the novel proposition that American fiction is supremely better for it today (despite popular grousing to the contrary). There is much here of clear importance for anyone studying creative writing -- and perhaps for those who are not creative writers themselves in academia -- but I'll try to work my way through, however haphazardly, at least a few posts about this study over the next few weeks.

From the first sentence of the preface, I must note what was my immediate admiration for McGurl in the ambition of his following statement:

"This book argues that the rise of the creative writing program stands as the most important event in postwar American literary history, and that paying attention to the increasingly intimate relation between literary production and the practices of higher education is the key to understanding the originality of postwar American fiction." (ix)

As a creative writer, even before I reach McGurl's opening case study on Vladimir Nabokov as the archetypal anti-program writer-who-hates-to-teach and what this means about his Lolita, the idea alone of the institution being of fundamental importance to everything I've read in contemporary American literature and written is wonderous and frightening at the same time. Of course, as far as the latter is concerned, I'm referring to that notion of factory-line creative writing the biggest detractors of the Iowa Workshop usually refer to (and McGurl, to be sure, will delve into) or, on a more modest level, the traditional friendly-workshop model that was the basis for most of my own undergraduate and graduate experiences like most creative writers; but, regarding the former, it's as if McGurl is about to confirm a quiet, nagging suspicion we've all had for some time: that creative writing in Higher Ed has been, still is, and will continue to be a strange, contradictory proving ground of artistic achievement thriving in the drudgery of American institutional academia.

That his study will also "illuminate and appreciate postwar American literature by placing it in this evolving market context, examing how the university stepped forward in the postwar period both to facilitate and to buffer the writer's relation to the culture industry and the market culture more broadly" suggests how, like it or not, writers today may owe much to Higher Ed for recognizing both its cultural potential and capital profitability, allowing us to write our novels and stories as either an "experiential commodity" or a gesture of "self-tourism" (15). Given the recent development and spread of low-residency MFA programs in this country and elsewhere (of which I was a part of, and may address later), McGurl has poised this well-timed study to fully explain and clarify what he will refer to as the "conventional unconventionality" of American fiction which shows no signs of slowing down in the realm of post-secondary education.

Beyond Cannery Row: On V.S. Naipul's "Steinbeck in Monterey"

2011-11-12T12:32:00.001-08:00

Few writers of supreme talent in this country and others haveever enjoyed the privilege of being true living legends in both print andpublic, and even fewer of those have been accorded a lasting posthumouscelebrity where entire communities are devoted to keeping the memory of the authorand the work alive. Perhaps as an additionto Barthes’ notion of the death of the author, V.S. Naipul’s travelogue essay “Steinbeckin Monterey” (1970; collected in TheWriter and the World, 2002) exemplifies this rare public worship inAmerica, documenting the efforts of the residents of Monterey, California torevive the tourist trade there around their acclaimed native son, particularlythe squalid, near-deserted Cannery Row of John Steinbeck’s 1945 titular novel. “Awriter is in the end not his books,” Naipul establishes first and foremost, “buthis myth. And that myth is in the keeping of others.” Unfortunately for theresidents of Monterey (and Steinbeck’s literary legacy?), the myth is hardlybenign as he sees it. The economic concerns of their town almost pale incomparison to the cultural baggage of a communal memory which conflicts withthe author’s former attitudes, specifically Steinbeck’s apathy and dismissal ofthe Row after leaving it for New York City to become a major figure in Americanletters. Even the unintended consequences of The Grapes of Wrath in longstanding public perception of Californians’mistreatment of “Okies” like the Joads may create impediments to movecommunities forward, if we take Naipul’s concluding interactions with a local realestate developer at face value. This is the other side of creative writingseldom visited, and somewhat paradoxical: the idea that great literary works,great authors can in fact be harmful in their short-sightedness, at least iftheir readers don’t know the moment when to let go.

Despite Naipul’s inherent critique of American literary sentimentalityretained by twentieth-century readers, tempered with his opinion that theauthor himself deserves “some responsibility” for the quagmire Monterey founditself in following Steinbeck’s death in 1968, I imagine most established writersdo not pay attention to the temporal concerns of their work’s influence, evenas they may or may not consider any ethical responsibilities to the text (accuratecultural representations, etc.), to say nothing of possibly revisiting theeffects of their works in the world of living readers. Indeed, creative writerscould read into Naipul’s notion that Steinbeck, were he alive, should bepressed into resolving the problem in Monterey in some way, as farfetched asthat may seem. No writer sets about a work as potential popular lore—and norshould they, either, at the risk of self-aggrandizement (which there are alwaysplenty of opportunities for later, of course). Yet “Steinbeck in Monterey” remindsus, in that characteristically bitter delivery of Naipul’s which critic EdwardSaid always found fault with, that addressing the potential negative publiceffect(s) of their work may soon become the new standard grievance for today’sauthors to wrestle with.

Does "The Madwoman" Belong in the Workshop?

2011-10-31T14:35:00.000-07:00

It’s a well-known occupational hazard for creativewriting instructors that the workshop today carries a certain risk ofunintended consequences, at least regarding how they, deliberately or not, interferewith a student’s writing potential or creative freedom. We know this can beaccomplished in any number of ways, with responses to drafts, assigned readings asmodels and the overall classroom atmosphere being just a few of the moreevident. What is less evident are the lessons shared of the creation of a textitself that a student writer may not be aware of and runs counter to his or hercreative identity.

After reading Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s groundbreakingfeminist study of nineteenth-century literature by women, The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), andre-familiarizing myself with the construction of patriarchal texts and theireffects on writers of both sexes, I immediately asked myself whether thecontemporary workshop has addressed any of these issues for women who seethemselves as writing-as-woman. It hasn’t escaped my attention,over the last several years, the workshops and introductory creative writingcourses I taught have been predominantly attended by women; and of these attendees,it has been frequently (but not always, of course) the women who soldier onthrough the usual difficulties for a novice writer and voice the loudest concernsabout whether or not they are actually accomplishing anything. This is not tosay the men in my workshops are inherently lackadaisical about creative writing,but Madwoman has me considering the difficulties—atleast for women—of not only writing from a strictly male-centered traditionthat our canon still emphasizes to some degree but if I should address thisproblem—and not out of academic responsibility, either, but for those granderpurposes which a creative writing workshop is designed to fulfill.

Do I give my women students Gilbert and Gubar’sfirst three chapters, with particular emphasis on “Infection in the Sentence,” then, andawaken them to the horrible truth of what they may think are their original,feminine writings? Should this theoretical background come before I teach theconventions of genre, or are instructors obliged to make their women studentsgrasp and expose their limitations before springing the bad news? Personally,for introductory courses, I’m more inclined to have students chip away at thepatriarchy with the reading selections I give them and let them create theirown consciousness of the problem based on craft issues; this semester I’ve used Sylvia Plath’s Ariel as a primary model for our poetryassignments, as well as Gary Lutz’s Storiesin the Worst Way, which, for those not familiar with his work, employs adistinct gender-neutral syntax for male and female narrators with a heapingdose of sexual ambiguity. I tend to save the Dead White Males for literaturecourses when I have no other choice (and if I’m teaching Flash Fiction in theworkshop, Hemingway has got to come in there). As for the rest, it may seem ahuge trepidation to have women students as novices become the next Plath or CharlottePerkins Gilman—unless, that is, a specific workshop was set up with that intentand established from day one. Otherwise, even Gilbert and Gubar concede that “thereis no real reason why a woman writer cannot tell traditional kinds of stories,even if they are about male heroes and even if they inevitably fit into male-devisedgeneric structures” (68). If there is such harm afoot in a workshop to turnwomen writers into masculine subordinates, it may not be as great as onethinks, provided an instructor does not deliberately champion the production ofa specific male-oriented text through various methods and designs. But perhapsthat still doesn’t make things equitable in the long-run for a woman student’swriting life.

The implementation of Madwoman’s introductory chapters is anintriguing proposition for the workshopper to challenge women students, thoughone that shouldn’t be taken so lightly and executed without thoughtful deliberationof the skill level of that class, including its overall demographic. How thismaterial could have bearing on writing assignments for each particular literarygenre and whether it would be of any use to male students who want to write female-centered texts are certainly issues to consider further.

On Madison Smartt Bell's "Narrative Design"

2011-10-24T17:40:00.000-07:00

Madison Smartt Bell’s Narrative Design: Working withImagination, Craft, and Form (1997) is perhaps, to borrow from the author’sintroduction, the first real “craft-centered” working guide to narrativefiction I’ve ever picked up, as I’m fairly certain I have moreholistically-minded creative writing guides such as Natalie Goldberg’s WritingDown the Bones in my workshopping history as both an undergraduate and graduatestudent. Whereas texts like Goldberg’s attempt to tap more into the Zen of self-directedwriting—or, to be more practical, establishing the non-judgmental andcreatively favorable conditions one may attempt to write in—Bell dispenses withthe How-to and cuts to the chase: the work itself is all. We are given aselection of stories by established and well-known authors (including MaryGaitskill, Ernest Gaines, Percival Everett, and William T. Vollmann) dividedbetween “Linear Design” and “Modular Design” of narrative; then each story isannotated with brief notes at each phrase or area of interest, including asummary analysis of the usual conventions, including Plot, Character, Tone,Dialogue, Design, Theme, etc. The result is the story has been “workshopped”with both a precise eye for technique and a greater appreciation of thelarger craft trends within the story which happen as a result. Naturally, myinitial concern upon reading Bell was, “Would this approach succeed with a storyby someone who wasn’t Ernest Gaines?” and so forth; for novice writers lookingto learn anything from other novice writers in addition to the professionals,however, the number of ways a particular narrative could be dissected in thisregard could be fine-tuned to meet the aims and level of the course itselfwithout sacrificing any of the analytical rigor involved.

Narrative Design, then, is not much of a starting pointfor writers—but it could be a decent place to have students get their handsmessy in without so much as writing a single creative word of their own. Iteschews the sort of in-chapter exercises normally seen in mainstay creativewriting course textbooks like Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction, et. al., andassumes the model method will pay dividends once the writer recognizes his orher own idea of creative writing. Following a pointed critique of the IowaWorkshop style’s tendency towards “groupthink” drafts, Bell indeed refers tothis “inner process” of writing which the Iowa Workshop looks to subdue infavor of, as he sees it, classroom draft conformity and harsh judgment forthose who stray off the path. Regarding this point, there is not muchelaboration, other than further explaining the idea of creative writing asself-hypnosis, drawing upon an improvisional-spontaneous live reading by GordonLish using only four words printed on separate cards (which later would bepublished as his My Romance). This is a rather large jump to make from what isalready soft ground, to be sure, and one that may have required Bell to delveinto his inner Goldberg more—especially since he stipulates that this process should always remain private, shielded from classmates and instructorsalike. Still, the upshot of Bell’s approach is apparent: the writer beingallowed to select his or her own best narrative design so it may ultimately form thecrucial “unconscious apprehension of [effective narrative] structure” that so skillfullyevades workshop instruction.

On Alain Robbe-Grillet’s "For a New Novel"

2011-10-02T15:47:00.000-07:00

Creative writers today may not know what to make of awell-known collection of essays on the state of the contemporary novel that hasdoubtless been rendered somewhat obsolete by the progression of critical theoryof every single Post- over the lastfew decades. Adding a frank admission of lukewarm public and critical receptionto the mix doesn’t strike a bold note in hindsight, either. “Mynovels have not been received,” confesses Alain Robbe-Grillet in 1955, “uponpublication in France, with unanimous enthusiasm; that is putting it mildly.”Of course, Robbe-Grillet in his For a NewNovel (1963) is not necessarily writing of the contemporary novel as weAmericans know it but the nouveau romanof France about to arrive during the 1960’s and 70’s. That distinction aside, however,I acknowledge Robbe-Grillet’s better intentions. As he is dourly optimisticabout overthrowing the perceived irrelevance of a progressive fiction as theNew Novel, such as his own semi-notorious and parodied Jealousy, his immediate admission of not being a theoretician maypreclude any attempt to elaborate upon and elevate his work, or at least sealit under the big glass dome of “Art for Art’s sake” (though he does qualifythat notion in “On Several Obsolete Notions” as being acceptable). It occurs tome, at least, the problems with “style and construction” in the 50’s remainwith us in the form of, for instance, David Foster Wallace’s hyper-footnotes asa narrative limn; and For a New Novel,in this respect, hasn’t outlived its usefulness in the creative writing curriculum,at least in its readdressing the crucial problem about novel-writing: thoselazy machines (to borrow Umberto Eco’s term) run much lazier when notable instructionmanuals like Wallace’s Infinite Jestor, going further back, Gertrude Stein’s TheMaking of Americans may have no real instructions to follow.

For a New Novelappears to me a small courtesy on Robbe-Grillet’s behalf to help us out, thoughwe will be left to our own devices in the end. If there are any steadfastnotions for novel writers which have existed before Robbe-Grillet put pen topaper, his insistence in “The Use of Theory” that “Each novelist, each novelmust invent its own form” can be considered one of the more pertinent in thecollection—even if this dictum has likely created in America more failed novelsresembling Moby-Dick at its worstinstead of anything from the repertoire of vintage Faulkner. Following this in “AFuture For The Novel” with literary experimenters as the “the heirs of atradition”—a problematic suggestion, to be sure—one may be so inclined, despiteRobbe-Grillet’s sluggish reader response, to see a bright, rosy future anyway fora cumbersome literary form that more than a few claim died somewhere in the twentiethcentury. I think Robbe-Grillet’s fashioning of the New Novel as “exploration,not theory” does fit sensibly into the modernist progression of the Americannovel at least; yet, at the conclusion of these explorations, should writers bein some way make themselves the theoreticians Robbe-Grillet claims they cannot,particularly if they are academic creative writers? Do these writers have aprofessional if not creative responsibility to implement theory and later explaintheir novels with it? Since Robbe-Grillet insists “the function of art is neverto illustrate a truth... known in advance, but to bring into the world certaininterrogations not yet known as such to themselves” (which I can certainly agreewith), I imagine his positing serves up more benefits to creative writersoutside of academe rather than those who are in it; but, for the latter group,leaving themselves only with “an interplay of agreement and oppositions” mayseem an unsatisfactory avenue to revisit with post-modernism’s seemingly endlessbounty of texts and meta-texts to draw upon and potentially scatter all overthe page.

Robbe-Grillet spends the remainder of these essays tacklingthe conventions of fiction, sometimes revising his major points along the way, breakingit up with close-ups of master practitioners Italo Svevo, Samuel Beckett, andothers. There are any number of instances where he waxes ever-so-close to theory, andsuch sensible notions as how the contemporary novel is most concerned with “privatemental structures” of time and how spatial discontinuity dissolves “the trap ofthe anecdote” in “Time and Description in Fiction Today” become more attractiveaspects in this collection to balance out the less-than-enthralling ideas (i.e.,“the only possible commitment for the writer is literature”). The New Novel asRobbe-Grillet knew it then may still be a relic of the recent past if the Americanpost-modern novel hasn’t already superceded it; yet insofar as regarding the whole of For a New Novel itself is concerned, the collection's lasting value here, large or small, for developing American writers may not be the possible intellectual engagement or lack thereof in Robbe-Grillet's non-theoretical theorizing but anticipating the fundamental concerns in commencing the framework of their own version of the New Novel.

The Private Life of the Writer

2011-10-01T16:12:00.000-07:00

Having made the mistake this summer of acquiring a few DVDs of movie titles I’ve long been fond of to help offset my reading for Ph.D. exams, I wasted no time in adding to my collection my two favorite classics by British director David Lean, Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, which address the poet-warrior / poet-lover dichotomy in a mutual companionship I’ve always appreciated as a writer. As far as cutting into the mythos of T.E. Lawrence by way of his acknowledged writing prowess, Lean’s Arabia doesn’t shed any more light on that subject than Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom (a tedious reading which I attempted years ago to glean his popular appeal for myself before giving up half-way through); instead, we are treated to a portrait of the writer as a brave creature of public creation, thanks in no small part to media outlets needing a hero to beat the drum of war with, namely the opportunistic Chicago reporter chasing Lawrence down in the desert, “desperate to tell a story.” Three years after Arabia’s release, Lean follows this real-life historical legend with his sensitive, doe-eyed Russian doctor from Boris Pasternak’s famous novel, a different breed of Romantic Warrior who wants nothing to do with war—other than to cure those who have been wounded by it. He seeks to exist by simply living without political entanglements and bureaucratic interference, and accentuated by his own well-known poetry, a prospect which becomes less likely in the growing revolutionary tide of post-Tsarist Russia where privacy quickly becomes the true luxury no one will ever afford again.

The two films make a curious pair of cases in modernity’s malaise impacting the creative writer. Both stories end unhappily for these men in a time of war’s confusion, with Lawrence and Zhivago banished to virtual exile in their respective countries—the difference being, of course, Lawrence lives outside the state where he can (and does) act with reckless impunity in his self-imposed code of valor with fame, while Yuri Zhivago, the reluctant adulterer, is forced to flee and evade within both his own emotions and the borders of a state that now regards him a petty, sentimental bourgeois. These men, however, to borrow Yegref Zhivago’s dismal estimation of his hopelessly idealistic half-brother, are writers living with a noose around their necks, not at all aware of the nature of their predicament. Though products of the advance of modern history, they are, as their antagonists insinuate, never as political as their writing should be. They have their selfish ways to inspire the masses’ own selfish ways, for which the state must ultimately suffer should one subscribe to the thinking of Pasha Antipov, or even the kingdom-building Prince Faisal who, despite his utmost gratitude towards Lawrence, exhorts to his British allies as soon as he leaves stage left, “We are glad to be rid of him, are we not?” And in such fashion, the accolades for these two heros are rendered posthumously by those who never really understood what they were thinking.

Why I keep finding my sympathies being drawn towards Zhivago may have something to do with Lean emphasizing Zhivago’s impulses and writing process leading to what will later be heralded as his “Lara poems” in the film, written at the Varykino estate while in seclusion with Larissa, a perspective lacking in Arabia. In that film, we must take someone else’s word that Lawrence is “a mighty poet,” while in Zhivago, at least we witness the good doctor finding his triumph, albeit briefly, in the inspiration from his secret mistress, the true love of his “private life.” This private life, alternately scolded and prized throughout the movie by various parties, reveals itself in Omar Sharif’s performance as a propensity for staring off, observing minutiae, and intuitive connection-making (i.e., the sound of clothes being ironed which Lean uses to displace Tonya for Lara in Zhivago’s distraction) among other writerly traits, feeding the restlessness of Zhivago the poet. His joy to seek and create in his language is not tempered by the state’s disapproval of it alone (as this can only be mere disapproval to the poet), but by the moral implications of his infidelity serving as catalyst to his imaginative conception, having abandoned a content marriage with Tonya which, in turn, will abandon her and their son to a life outside Russia—a high price to pay for a single book of good poetry, Lean says. Is Zhivago the talented poet also a flawed humanist by circumstance if not a thoughtless, betraying husband? As Allen Tate would profess the poet’s responsibility to his conscience above all else, including society, Zhivago’s agonized decision to give Larissa up to the chiding Komarovsky for securing her safety is the death of his private life—and, hence, writing life—by his own hand. It is an ideal more dramatic than poetic, and a bit self-effacing.

Lean’s perspective on this matter of the writer acquiescing all that is private in Arabia, while not altogether clear since it is the grand military exploits of Lawrence’s character that is of greater concern than the poetic ones, does foreshadow Zhivago somewhat, especially when we see the futile political scribbling of Lawrence in the deserted Arab congress pulled away by the hand of Auda ibu Tayi as he admonishes his stupidity, “I know what is in your heart.” Certainly, no one can say the same about Zhivago. We know the political solution will not fare any better for our conflicted poet-lover, which Lean doesn’t even consider for him. He leaves the frail Zhivago to die at the base of a golden statue saluting the brave workers as he tries to chase down Larissa in the street, the Fallen Woman beautiful to his life because she becomes beautiful by virtue of his poetic method falling into jeopardy in the new Russian modernity. Everything else from his language has already been sealed away in the forsaken writer’s recognition of an unwelcome paradigm yet to come.