It was about 8 o’clock on a warm, sunny evening in July. Natalia, the young woman keeping pace with me along Leningrad’s Nevski Prospekt, was easily the most beautiful woman on either side of the Urals. An associate something-or-other at the Smolny Institute, the Communist Party’s local headquarters, she bore a striking resemblance to Julie Christie. But, alas, Natalia’s pout was distorted by genuine anger. It was 1969, and she was holding me personally responsible for the war in Vietnam.
Not that I, a 21-year-old American college student, had much to do
with the war effort. As even a casual perusal of the files of the
Selective Service System will reveal, I sought to distance myself
from both the war and the military as far and as fast as the torn ACL in
my right knee would carry me. Besides, I had protested, I protested. But none of this mattered a whit to Comrade Natalia. This was her moment to defend the
cause of international communism while practicing her English. So as any
hopes faded that she might prove a deliciously corruptible Ninotchka, I
looked for a path of retreat to beat.
Across the grand boulevard slicing through the heart of Russia’s second
city stood Dom Knigi, the House of Books. I made for the imposing building, the largest bookstore in Leningrad, with Natalia dogging my steps, saying things about Richard Nixon that I then thought quite paranoid but, years later, had to admit were oddly insightful. My hope was that the library-like atmosphere of a bookstore would, if not silence her tirade, at least mute its volubility. That
worked, up to a point. She calmed down amid encyclopedic collections of
the works of Marx and Lenin. She even asked what I intended to purchase.
The prices were unbelievable. Everything was sharply discounted,
presumably to move the merchandise to the masses.
Still, I had no intention of buying anything. For one thing, I had a
train to catch early the next morning from the Finland Station. After
10 days visiting Kiev, Moscow and Leningrad, I was bound for Helsinki
and a decent meal, and I planned to travel light. Moreover, my pocket
contained but four rubles (then worth a handsome $4.40 at the official
rate). And, even if I could have shaken Natalia, I had no desire to
engage in any last minute money-changing on the black market. But then,
glancing about, I was beckoned by a full-size poster of the founding
father himself, V.I. Lenin, hanging in a back room down a dim corridor.
As I approached, it was evident the entire room was given over to
posters that were nothing like the posters then common at home. There
were no psychedelic montages idolizing a Lennon, a Hendrix or a Joplin.
There were no Richard Avedons and no saccharine pleas for world peace
adorned with daisies or the sentiments of Kahlil Gibran. And there was
certainly nothing even vaguely reminiscent of Robert Indiana’s insipid
but wildly popular Love poster. No, what we had here were seriously
classic works of agitprop, posters drawn in a range of styles from
socialist realism to fantastic primitives. At least a score were
variations on Lenin, whose waxy remains I had viewed days earlier at his
Red Square mausoleum in Moscow. Most of the others showed brawny workers
of both sexes building monstrous dams or reaping bountiful harvests. (In
retrospect, it’s remarkable how closely these selfless icons of Soviet
industry resemble today’s personally trained, buffed-up
celebrities.)
Then there was the most striking poster of all. Against a dark red
background stood a shirtless and exceptionally muscular black man of
indeterminate nationality. In his right hand, he held an ancient rifle
while a broken chain dangled from his wrist. In the lower right corner
of the poster was a silhouette in white of the battle cruiser Aurora,
the warship that had fired the shot signaling the start of the Bolshevik
coup in 1917. Inscribed in Russian across the top (but needing no
translation) was the famous command: “Rise up — you have nothing to lose
but your chains!” As propaganda, it was, even for that time, well over
the top. As pop art, though, it was to die for.
I asked Natalia to inquire about the cost.
“They are 10 kopeks each. Do you wish to buy one?”
“Of course I do. But I want not one but …” (pausing to do a quick
calculation) “40.”
Natalia was puzzled. Had I suddenly undergone some
revolutionary epiphany here among the icons of Soviet life?
“Why so many?” she asked hesitantly, not quite knowing what sort of
answer she might receive.
“To bring home with me. This is a gold mine. A license to print rubles.
You can’t imagine how much these posters would be worth in America.”
She was confused. Worth is a variable concept. But she had her
suspicions. After all, to her I was already a warmonger.
“What do you mean? You would not sell them, would you?”
It wasn’t clear whether it was anger or disappointment that hit her
first.
“So you will give them to your friends?” she offered.
“No, Natalia. Sell. I’ll sell them to friends and anyone else who wants
to buy one.”
Cautiously eyeing me, obviously praying to her socialist gods that I
would redeem myself with charity: “Oh, you mean you will sell them for
what they cost you.”
Silly Communist. “No, you have no idea how much these will fetch. Maybe
$10 each or more. The profit margin will be incredible.”
Profit margin. The concept, of course, was as familiar to her as it was
antithetical. She may have been the most beautiful woman east or west of
the Urals, but the look she now assumed was horrid. Before her stood not
only an agent of U.S. military aggression in Vietnam but a gold-plated
capitalist.
I couldn’t resist a last dig. “By the way, do they have any of Trotsky
and Stalin in stock? I hear they were prominent here at one time.
Perhaps there is something of them behind the counter for special
customers?”
She was not amused. After all, this was 30 years ago, long before
Gorbachev and Yeltsin came to Western attention. There was a Cold War
going on globally as well as a very hot one in Southeast Asia. And just
the previous August, Soviet forces fraternally seized control of
Czechoslovakia from the Czechs. The Evil Empire was still open for
business. So maybe if I waited until hell froze over, perhaps then
Stalin, Trotsky or even Khrushchev — giants of Soviet history — would
be sufficiently rehabilitated to be shrunk to poster size.
The next morning I took the train to Helsinki along with my thick roll
of posters. From a post office there, I mailed the package via surface
mail to my college address in Worcester, Mass., where I’d pick
them up when I returned in early September. In all, my investment came
to $5.60.
When I showed up for classes at Holy Cross just after Labor Day, the
posters were awaiting me, only slightly worse for the trip. After
retrieving the package from the post office on the first floor of the student union, I went upstairs to the cafe for a coffee and to
inspect my booty. Within 10 minutes of unraveling the roll of posters,
I had sold two at 10 bucks a crack and one for $8 plus a
jelly doughnut. (It was all the guy had, and I happily took it.) Not
only had I covered my initial investment, I was well on the way to
paying for the entire trip to Russia.
That fall of 1969, in case anyone of a certain age recalls, I was the
fellow selling Soviet propaganda posters from Worcester to Boston. As
one would expect, sales were especially brisk in Cambridge, where I
turned Brigham’s ice cream parlor just off Harvard Square into something
of a showroom. Also, as anticipated, the most popular poster by far was
the one of the fearsome, gun-toting black guerrilla. Sales of that item,
which made up nearly half my inventory, tended to divvy up about equally
between guilty white liberals and black revolutionary manquis.
None of this story would amount to anything more than a mildly
entertaining yarn were it not for a certain customer who turned up on my
doorstep that October.
Knocking on my dormitory door one night were a couple of black Holy Cross
students, one of whom I knew from a seminar on racism in
American culture. Along with him was a shorter, stockier man who was a
year behind us. Both were big in the college’s small Black Student
Union. The one I did not then know wore what appeared to be combat
boots, a choice of footwear I did not take to be an artifact of a
previous life experience but rather a Statement. So shod, he didn’t need
his skin color to stand out on a campus where nearly everyone else wore
Chuck Taylor rejects or ancient Bass Weejuns held together with white
surgical tape.
His name was Clarence, but he was introduced as Cooz — a nickname he
had appropriated from a decidedly white basketball player who years
earlier had starred at the college and then achieved some notoriety with
the Boston Celtics. Ironically, Cooz, I would soon discover, was also a
devotee of Malcolm X.
They had come, they said, to check out The Poster. It was obvious which
one they had in mind, and, as luck would have it, there was just one
left in stock. I got it out of my closet and rolled it out across my
desk. They looked. They hemmed. They hawed. We negotiated. Or rather, I
told them I wanted 10 bucks for it, and they allowed as to how I was
ripping off the BSU. How about I donate it? I demurred, telling them at
great length of the great lengths — not to mention the dangers — to
which I had gone to bring this work of Soviet art into the United
States.
“Hey, this is contraband. I’ve probably got an FBI file because of
this. What do the feds have on you?” In the battle of drawing room
subversives, I had just trumped them.
In the end, we exchanged one poster for two $5 bills.
Over the next several months, I ran into Clarence a few times, most
memorably that December when a campus protest against corporate
recruiters got out of hand and a number of students were arrested. Those
charged with failure to disperse were disproportionately black, leading
to charges of racism. Clarence was not among those arrested, but, along
with the rest of the BSU, he withdrew from the college in protest. For
its part, the school suspended all normal activities for three days and
went into the sort of collective soul searching that small, Jesuit
colleges do best. In the end, Clarence and his colleagues returned,
albeit hesitantly, to a chastened college.
After graduation the following June, I moved to California and never
gave Clarence another thought. That is, until 20 years later when I
saw him on television. He’d put on a few pounds. He was standing next to
George Bush at the summer White House in Kennebunkport, Maine. The president
was telling the press and the nation that this man, Clarence Thomas, my
old customer, would be his nominee to replace Thurgood Marshall as an
associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.
The rest is history. My part was prologue. But I can’t help wondering
what he’s done with that poster.
Hello, I’m Pam and I’m an Idealist: NF (variant Teacher: ENFJ). My medieval persona is Dreamer-Minstrel, I’m right in the middle between a Type A and Type B personality and, for you enneagram folks, I’m a Reformer in the rational-idealist school. In terms of Values and Lifestyles, apparently I’m Actualized and Fulfilled. Ansir For One reveals me to be a well-poured cocktail of the Visionary, Scintillator and Idealist styles. And my Life Color is a nice deep Red (Fire-Earth quadrant) — although Insight insists on Blue. I’ve got to work on my tints.
What else do you need to know about me — other than that I’ve been spending far too many hours taking online personality tests?
Such tests have been a fad for some time, probably starting with the infamous “Purity” tests that became a Web hit after being popular on college campuses for at least a decade. To be precise, I’m talking about free, multiple-choice personality tests that provide results directly online and often don’t take more than 15 minutes or so to complete. Dozens now exist on the Web — more if you count the numerous parodies and corporate knockoffs.
Anyone who grew up addicted to the Cosmo quiz and has some free time can get a few kicks out of the exercise. Some may well find these tests useful — even comforting — in a generic sort of way (personality “typing,” by definition, places you within an identifiably large group).
The most popular test — numbers aren’t easy to come by — appears to be the Keirsey Temperament Sorter. David Mark Keirsey developed the site and is the son of psychologist David W. Keirsey, who penned the 70-question test for his 1984 book “Please Understand Me.” He says nearly 3 million people have taken it online in the last year and a half. Tabulated results from about 540,000 of those can be found on the site.
While many people say they take the Keirsey test as a lark, the four temperaments and 16 “variants” that form its categorization system are popping up all around the Net. One can now find routine mentions of Keirsey temperament results in online risumis and occasionally in e-mail signature files. Lengthy discussions about members’ “types” have filled newsgroups as varied as alt.gothic, alt.tv.nothern.exposure and (unsurprisingly) alt.support.depression. A college professor is collecting Keirsey results from anyone with a personal Web site; and you can find pages devoted to cataloging the temperaments of online diarists and fantasy-game aficionados, among others.
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Obviously, simple accessibility is the primary reason Keirsey’s and similar tests are so popular online. David Mark Keirsey cites, in particular, the Web’s openness to “ideas not from the mainstream academic or commercial institutions” (personality tests not offered by a practitioner in a face-to-face setting are still frowned on by the psychological establishment). Those on the Web, as in “real life,” may also be drawn to the idea of “belonging” to an identifiable type or a group and the feeling of affirmation that inspires.
But there could be more to why personality tests hold such a strong appeal for Net users: They may help fill a void at the heart of online communication. According to Marlene Maheu, a clinical psychologist with a strong interest in health issues online who is also publisher of the Web magazine Self-Help & Psychology, “People online are looking for quick and easy answers, for abbreviated-type interaction.” We’ve all felt the need for some common shorthand for describing ourselves to virtual friends, and Keirsey results are more fun to share than whether one is, say, for or against Microsoft — and arguably more enlightening.
Most such tests are amusing and typically harmless — though you may want to avoid those that require a name and address (as does the Church of Scientology’s tortuous 200-question version). Still, Maheu, who sits on the American Psychological Association’s professional practice standards committee, decries online tests’ lack of accountability. “What if a person gets depressed or decides to change jobs as a result of taking one of them?” she asks.
Kathryn, who collected Keirsey results on alt.support.depression (and who, like most of that newsgroup’s participants, posts using only her first name), says that, judging by the newsgroup member’s reactions, “A majority of them were taking the Sorter for fun, but there were some who really analyzed the results and applied it to themselves. Some said things like, ‘Well, I took the test last year and was an X; then when I took it today I was a Y.’ People didn’t know what to think about the fact that their results changed, and discredited the test, saying that they would constantly get different results depending on what kind of day they were having.”
According to an article by Linda V. Berens on the site of the Temperament Research Group, the Keirsey test has an “error” rate of at least 25 percent, which means that in cases where the test is administered by a practitioner “and a feedback session is conducted … the instrument results do not match the confirmed and/or observed type about 25 percent of the time.” A one-in-four failure rate seems high. Yet, in the same article, Berens defends the Keirsey temperament theory as “reflecting patterns of behavior that have been described by many great thinkers for over 25 centuries.”
The Keirsey Sorter and a test with which it is often associated, the similar but much longer Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (a popular psychometric tool used mostly by corporations but that cannot be taken online), are both based, at least in part, on Carl Jung’s psychological type theory of personality. Jung classified people according to their preferred modes of thinking and perceiving, relying heavily on the concept of opposition. He maintained that polarity is the source of psychic energy (the Keirsey and MBTI tests force you to choose between two answers in every instance). Jung coined the terms extrovert and introvert to refer to what he considered the central opposing characteristics of personality.
Jung’s type theory holds a lot of appeal and has seeped into our modern consciousness. While critics may see the Keirsey test as a form of “psychological Trivial Pursuit,” others may find it makes accessible to the common Web surfer theories of temperament that touch on apparently universal truths. Just don’t take the results too, well, personally. Even the Keirsey site describes the Sorter as, at best, “a preliminary and rough indicator of personality.”
Wally Glenn, a self-described test junkie who devotes a portion of his home page to listing (mostly parodic) online personality measurements, is still waiting for his ideal test: “One that comes back with an answer like, ‘You have a tendency to take online personality tests.’”
The first and only letter I ever wrote to an author was to children’s writer Joan Aiken (I loved her “Wolves of Willoughby Chase”). I was about 10 or 11 and wrote it in careful script on lined paper. When I was ready to mail it — could I have figured this out myself? — I addressed it to the company whose name appeared on the copyright page. I don’t know that I understood the word “publisher.”
Weeks went by, then months. But one day, well after I had ceased expecting a response, an air-mail letter on periwinkle-blue stationery arrived. A short, typed note thanked me for my letter and agreed with a tremulously offered assessment I had made of a particular character.
Even though I was still in the first flush of book love, I sensed that I had successfully breached, in some small way, the mysterious barrier between reader and author. Nearly 25 years later, I can easily conjure that sense of deep satisfaction. Yet, perhaps knowing that I had been ineffably lucky that first time, I never attempted to contact a writer I admired again.
That is, until last year.
A serious fan of what has come to be called Anglo-Indian literature, I picked up a copy of Vikram Chandra’s “Love and Longing in Bombay.” I had heard of Chandra’s widely acclaimed debut novel, “Red Earth and Pouring Rain,” with its monkey-poet narrator. I was eager to read him.
“Love and Longing” did not disappoint me. It comprises five long, sumptuous and occasionally suspenseful stories, all told by a rather mysterious civil servant named Subramaniam to his cronies in a bar. As I read it, though, I kept interrupting myself to revisit the blurb about Chandra on the book’s flap.
I was tantalized, for there, listed quite plainly, was his e-mail address. It was even phrased as an invitation: “He can be reached by e-mail at vchandra@mindspring.com.”
He can be reached.
When I finished the book, I wasted no time. I sent him a message. A response came quickly, no more than a day or two.
Pamela,
Thanks!! I’m glad the book gave you pleasure. I’ve just started work on a new novel, so it’ll be a while coming …
Best,
Vikram
In that instant, I felt my relationship to his work change forever — though in ways I still find hard to explain.
On one level, I was impressed, amazed even. Take a look through the displays at Barnes & Noble or Borders; you’ll find no other examples of literary fiction where an author’s e-mail address is supplied. Indeed, you’ll find few examples of nonfiction with one — even within the burgeoning category of digital culture books.
I imagined that Chandra must have some connection to the computing world — a prior career? — to explain this openness. One of the protagonists in “Love and Longing” is a programmer, and the occasional passage had hinted at an appreciation for technology unusual in a literary novelist. (“Where screens had scrolled they now snapped, lookups happened in a flash, every process was twice or three times as fast. It was beautiful. She had gone close to the metal and come out with a kind of perfection.”)
I felt restrained from further messaging, though. I didn’t want to take advantage of whatever generous impulse had prompted Chandra to make his address available. And so I tucked his message safely into a folder and moved on to other books.
A few weeks ago I picked up the paperback version of “Red Earth” at a book sale. I immediately turned to the back cover. There it was again: the same blurb, the same challenge to connect — that’s how I now thought of it. I bought the book.
Now I’m reading it and maintaining an e-mail exchange with Chandra at the same time. My curiosity as to why he included the address and the response he’s received needs to be sated — I cannot finish the book until I know.
My first message after a year-long absence elicited a long reply:
Pamela,
You’ll have noticed that in both “Love and Longing” and “Red Earth” there’s a storyteller who tells stories to an audience. And that the audience talks back. There seemed to me an opportunity, given the technology, to let my listeners talk to me, to close the circle. If Sanjay the monkey and Subramaniam can do it, why not me? …
So, as “Red Earth” made its way through production, I asked my various publishers to put my e-mail address on the book. I did meet some resistance, especially from my British editor at Faber. He thought it was a dangerous thing to do, that I’d be inundated with “psycho mail,” and be distracted from my work. Also I think there was some fear that it would be seen as a gimmicky, new-fangled thing for a literary writer to do. But I insisted, and finally they all put it in. But in that first Faber edition of “Red Earth” the e-mail address is tucked away discreetly on the copyright page.
I should say also that before I published these books I kept away the wolves that pursue close-to-starving graduate students/writers by working as a computer consultant, programmer and software reviewer. In that world, it is good form to put your e-mail address in your byline, as you know. So it seemed a natural thing for me to do.
I’ve since had a steady flow of e-mail from readers all over the world. The overwhelming majority of it is positive. There are thoughtful, insightful critiques; questions; quick pats on the back. There are alerts about factual errors and typos; requests for interviews and readings; questions from academics who are working on the texts. There are continuing conversations with some of these people. There were even some letters from actual descendants of Colonel James Sikander Skinner, one of the protagonists in “Red Earth,” and this I found extraordinarily moving. Talk about closing the circle.
The only really scary psycho mail I’ve ever received came through snail mail.
Best,
Vikram
So I had been right, Chandra had some direct knowledge of the tech world, though his reasons for including his address had as much to do with artistic values as past work habits.
“Closing the circle.” Is that possible, or even desirable? Generalizations won’t do here. The relationship between author and reader is fraught with Freudian perils — there are few things as intensely personal as reading. Authors may be justly afraid of allowing any breach of the wall. Yet readers, given the chance provided by technology, may provide succor in ways yet to be explored.
Chandra is willing to find out. From another message:
I think the new technology can have the effect of short-circuiting the distances that we’ve come to accept in the recent past as immutable and natural. I’m a storyteller; I don’t very much like the idea of myself as the distant “author,” a creature of the Romantic imagination and in some ways peculiar to the newly industrializing West. So if the current technology lets me get around the huge institutional structures of publishers, reviewers, big media, and speak more directly to the listeners, I take the chance …
I’m sure that there are writers who don’t want any such feedback, who would react with horror to the thought of actually communicating with the great crowd out there. There’s that very persuasive construction of artist as solitary prophet, who communes with his or her inspirations and demons in the desert, and comes back to gift the populace with an incandescent vision. And then the often-baffled but dazzled audience is properly grateful and worshipful. It’s a charming narrative, but I’m skeptical. Sanjay the monkey-narrator makes stories out of his own painful history, and through this difficult process, during which he forges several interesting things in the smithy of his soul, he comes to some understanding of his own morally ambiguous actions and troubled times. But he is also very aware that his very life depends on the attentions of his restless and resistant listeners, who are ruthlessly interested only in their own pleasures. He describes them collectively as the “monster that I was about to face … this fearful adversary — an audience.”
By contacting Chandra, perhaps I am “ruthlessly” pursuing my own pleasures, no more, no less. Instead of waiting for a local reading where I’d be just one in a crowd, I’ve inserted myself into his electronic mailbox and, by extension, his consciousness.
But he did proffer an invitation. And now my connection to his work feels somehow stronger. I am more aware of the essential role I play as the audience. He has paid me homage. The story does not live without me and those like me. Chandra e-mails:
As I work, as I write, I show the pages I produce to a small group of people, my sisters, my mother, a couple of friends. These are faces I know, my family, and I understand what I have to do pull them in, to keep them there. Once the story is out there in the world, it finds its own life in the hands and ears and eyes of that many-headed monster, which is impossible to fully know, or control — Sanjay’s crowd on the maidan outside the house finally breaks up in violence. But these individual voices that come floating in over e-mail, these mark at least some of the turns that the story takes in its passage through the world.
