Read Online How Literature Saved My Life by David Shields - Free Book Online
Authors: David Shields
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stylish, good-looking. I never made it past the Cub Scouts and even in the Cubs failed to distinguish myself. Slipknots and shiny shoes have never been very high priorities for me. Still, I wanted a Boy Scout belt and thought it would be easy. I stopped in at a Boy Scout office, where I was told that BSA clothing and accessories could be purchased only by Scouts or troop leaders. I went so far as to schedule an interview for a troop leader position until, fearing accusations of pedophilia, I ended the charade. Visits to several stores led me to the boys’ department of JCPenney, which carried Boy Scout uniforms in their catalogue and told me I could order a belt. I wore it once, maybe twice, with jeans, then tossed it into the back of the closet.
My sister and I were just kids in 1965—ten and nine, respectively—when my parents hired a guy named Gil to paint the inside of the house. After he left, my mother discovered the word FUCK etched into the new white paint in the dining room. I’d never seen her so infuriated. Had my parents underpaid or somehow mistreated him, andwas this his underhanded revenge? He adamantly denied it, offering to return to rectify the problem. Had my sister or I done it? We insisted we hadn’t, and I’m confident we were telling the truth (in any case, I was; I can’t speak for my usually well-behaved sister). Although over time the inscription lost its hold on my mother’s imagination, FUCK remained—if faintly—and continued to cast a subtle, mysterious spell over the dining room for the remainder of my childhood.
Is desire, then, a sort of shadow around everything?
Negotiating against ourselves
M Y INITIAL REACTION when I saw on the web the report that Tiger Woods was seriously injured was
What’s the matter with me that I hope he’s been paralyzed or killed?
Jealousy. The much ballyhooed Schadenfreude. The green-eyed fairway. Tiger is rich, famous (now infamous), semihandsome (losing his hair), semiblack, the best golfer ever (still?), married to a supermodel (no longer, of course). I wanted him to taste life’s darkness. Genes and talent and hard work don’t guarantee anything. Everything comes to naught.
It’s not enough for me to succeed—all my friends must fail
. Or
I want to rise so high that when I shit everyone gets dirty
.
At 2:30 A.M . on Friday, November 27, 2009, Tiger drovehis 2009 Cadillac Escalade into a fire hydrant, then into a tree. A minor accident: lacerations about the face. His wife either rescued him by knocking out the back window with a golf club or caused the accident by hitting him with same (more likely the latter, given the news that emerged shortly afterward). I was disappointed that Tiger was okay (for the nonce). But, really, I think we all were. The only reason this minor traffic accident was given so much attention at first was so that we could all pretend to cheer him on but really root for his demise (he is/was too perfect; he’s now said to be, à la Mickey Mantle, a “billion-dollar talent on dime-store legs”). Am I uniquely horrible?
Laurie and I were watching a football game on TV. When the star tailback was badly injured and taken off the field in an ambulance, Laurie said, “I can never watch football for more than five minutes without falling asleep, but as soon as someone is injured, I can’t turn away. Why is that?”
Later on, what was absent from all the coverage of Tiger’s self-destruction was even the slightest recognition that for all of us the force for good can convert so easily into the force for ill, that our deepest strength is indivisible from our most embarrassing weakness, that what makes us great will inevitably get us in terrible trouble. Everyone’s ambition is underwritten by a tragic flaw. We’re deeply divided animals who are drawn to the creation of our own demise. Freud: “What lives wants todie again. The life-drive is in them, but the death-drive as well.” (Note that he says “them.”)
My sister and I were just kids in 1965—ten and nine, respectively—when my parents hired a guy named Gil to paint the inside of the house. After he left, my mother discovered the word FUCK etched into the new white paint in the dining room. I’d never seen her so infuriated. Had my parents underpaid or somehow mistreated him, andwas this his underhanded revenge? He adamantly denied it, offering to return to rectify the problem. Had my sister or I done it? We insisted we hadn’t, and I’m confident we were telling the truth (in any case, I was; I can’t speak for my usually well-behaved sister). Although over time the inscription lost its hold on my mother’s imagination, FUCK remained—if faintly—and continued to cast a subtle, mysterious spell over the dining room for the remainder of my childhood.
Is desire, then, a sort of shadow around everything?
Negotiating against ourselves
M Y INITIAL REACTION when I saw on the web the report that Tiger Woods was seriously injured was
What’s the matter with me that I hope he’s been paralyzed or killed?
Jealousy. The much ballyhooed Schadenfreude. The green-eyed fairway. Tiger is rich, famous (now infamous), semihandsome (losing his hair), semiblack, the best golfer ever (still?), married to a supermodel (no longer, of course). I wanted him to taste life’s darkness. Genes and talent and hard work don’t guarantee anything. Everything comes to naught.
It’s not enough for me to succeed—all my friends must fail
. Or
I want to rise so high that when I shit everyone gets dirty
.
At 2:30 A.M . on Friday, November 27, 2009, Tiger drovehis 2009 Cadillac Escalade into a fire hydrant, then into a tree. A minor accident: lacerations about the face. His wife either rescued him by knocking out the back window with a golf club or caused the accident by hitting him with same (more likely the latter, given the news that emerged shortly afterward). I was disappointed that Tiger was okay (for the nonce). But, really, I think we all were. The only reason this minor traffic accident was given so much attention at first was so that we could all pretend to cheer him on but really root for his demise (he is/was too perfect; he’s now said to be, à la Mickey Mantle, a “billion-dollar talent on dime-store legs”). Am I uniquely horrible?
Laurie and I were watching a football game on TV. When the star tailback was badly injured and taken off the field in an ambulance, Laurie said, “I can never watch football for more than five minutes without falling asleep, but as soon as someone is injured, I can’t turn away. Why is that?”
Later on, what was absent from all the coverage of Tiger’s self-destruction was even the slightest recognition that for all of us the force for good can convert so easily into the force for ill, that our deepest strength is indivisible from our most embarrassing weakness, that what makes us great will inevitably get us in terrible trouble. Everyone’s ambition is underwritten by a tragic flaw. We’re deeply divided animals who are drawn to the creation of our own demise. Freud: “What lives wants todie again. The life-drive is in them, but the death-drive as well.” (Note that he says “them.”)
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